WEST SIDE STORY 1961

West Side Story is the first movie I ever OD’d on. 

It was my first pre-teen movie crush, my first filmic fateful attraction, my first case of movie musical mania. I saw West Side Story when I was in early adolescence and fell for it with the kind of overawed intensity and enthusiasm only the very young and impressionable have the time and stamina to sustain. I was so overwhelmed by the film's soaring music, glorious dancing, and striking visual style, I embarked on a decades-long campaign of self-inflicted West Side Story oversaturation so immersive, I ended up overdosing on it. Over the course of 35 years, I saw and listened to West Side Story so often and on so many different occasions (it was my go-to "comfort food" movie) that I ultimately reached a stage where I couldn’t stand to watch it even one more time. 

The Sharks

The last time I saw West Side Story in its entirety was way back in 2003 when the Special Collector’s Edition DVD boxed set was released. I think I watched it then about three or four times before finally hitting a wall.

But here I am in 2021, the year marking West Side Story’s 60th Anniversary, the death of Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim (WSS’s lyricist), and the release of Steven Spielberg’s long-delayed, eagerly-anticipated reimagining of the iconic film. No better time for me to fall off the wagon, acquire West Side Story in yet another home entertainment format (VHS to Blu-ray) and revisit the 1961 classic before my initial thoughts and memories risk becoming entwined, influenced, and shaped by comparisons and reactions to the latest adaptation. 

The Jets

The groundbreaking musical West Side Story—the show that introduced the world to dancing street gangs and balletic inner-city combat—premiered on Broadway on September 6, 1957. Conceived, directed & choreographed by Jerome Robbins, this seminal theatrical production was a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet as a contemporary star-crossed love story set against the violent backdrop of turf wars and racial conflict between rival New York street gangs. With a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, and lyrics by 27-year-old Oscar Hammerstein protégé Stephen Sondheim (his Broadway debut), West Side Story was an innovation in the advancement of the realistic musical. A gritty fusion of ballet and operatic romantic tragedy in a production that moved ensemble dance to the forefront.

Although I was around at the time (I was born roughly two weeks after West Side Story opened on Broadway) I was only four years old when the much-heralded Jerome Robbins-Robert Wise co-directed feature film was released, so I have no memory at all of what a big deal it must have been at the time. I don't even know if my parents went to see it.

In trying to recall when I first became aware of West Side Story, my earliest memory places me at about six or seven years old and the West Side Story original Broadway cast album being one of a couple of unopened LPs in my parent's record collection (in the days of mail-order record clubs that automatically sent members a monthly featured LP unless a "decline" card was mailed in time, it was quite common for families to have a couple of albums they just weren't interested in but couldn't bother to send back). 

 

As for me, I, too, ignored the West Side Story OBC album, my six-year-old sensibilities accurately gleaning from its cover art that it contained no songs to which I could do The Twist.

Natalie Wood as Maria

Richard Beymer as Tony

The opportunity to see West Side Story for the first time came in the fall of 1968 when the 10-time Oscar-winning film was given a national re-release before being sold to television (and to coincide with/cash-in-on the October 1968 release of Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet). I was then 11 years old and remember West Side Story was playing at our neighborhood movie house (the Castro Theater in San Francisco) for a single one-week engagement during the Thanksgiving holiday. In a rare gesture inspired, I suspect, by the theater’s close proximity and the prolonged underfoot proximity of a bunch of restless kids at home on Thanksgiving break; my parents decided to treat us all (me and my three sisters) to a rare family night out at the movies. 

Rita Moreno as Anita

George Chakiris as Bernardo

Going to the movies at night with my parents always felt like a big event and a little magical to me. For one, we all had to get dressed up. Plus, it was nice going by warm car instead of walking or having to catch a bus. But my favorite thing, and what really made going to the movies at night feel magical was the bright neon and colored lights of the theater marquee and lobby. As often as we kids had attended screenings at the Castro on weekend afternoons, the familiarly ornate theater looked totally different at night. More like a palace or castle. With parents along, we didn't have to ration out our allowance money for popcorn and candy, and best of all, we got the major thrill of being able to sit in the balcony. A place our parents forbid us to go when we were on our own because—according to mom—the balcony is where all the troublemaking kids sat. 

Russ Tamblyn as Riff

While I was overjoyed to be going to the movies that night, I don’t recall being particularly enthusiastic about seeing West Side Story. I still didn't know much about it, and what little I did (shots of Natalie Wood & Richard Beymer clinging to each other with their mouths open on a fire escape) didn't suggest a whole lot of laughs. But having gone to see Peter Sellers several times in Casino Royale (1967) earlier that year and later in The World of Henry Orient (1964) on TV,  the movie I was most excited about seeing was the one the Castro paired with West Side Story on a double-bill: Blake Edwards' The Party (1968) - in which Peter Sellers plays an Indian actor who comically destroys a Hollywood party. 

Screened first, I loved The Party and think it's one of Sellers' best. However, looking back I have to say that was one weird double-feature: Welcome to four full hours of ethnic cosplay and brownface!

(On a side note: the movie booked to follow West Side Story’s one-week engagement at the Castro was Rosemary’s Baby. So being traumatized by that film's spooky theatrical trailer was another memory I took away with me that evening.)

The 1968 West Side Story re-release was shown minus the overture and intermission of its 1961 roadshow engagements, but it was presented in breathtaking widescreen (a welcome change from our 20-inch B&W console TV), eye-popping color (growing up seeing 95% of all entertainments in grayscale, a bigger thrill than you might think), and with stereo sound that fairly lifted me out of my seat. But none of these things would have mattered if the film they buttressed hadn’t measured up to the fanfare. And on that score, West Side Story fairly blew the roof off the Castro Theater that night.

A phenomenal film experience, West Side Story was like nothing I’d ever seen (granted, at 11, the list of things I'd never seen was pretty extensive, but you get my point). I couldn't think of any movies I'd seen that looked even remotely like West Side Story. From that astounding 8-minute Prologue that sets the stage and establishes the film's stylized realism and visual vocabulary of saturated colors, to the vivid elegance of its cinematography and evocative use of music, it was obvious from West Side Story's jaw-dropping first frames (those aerial views of New York!) that it was a breed apart from the kind of musicals being turned into films at the time (Bells Are Ringing, Flower Drum Song, The Music Man). Even its innovative score…classical, operatic, jazzy...one unforgettable song after another--didn’t sound much like the other musicals (Bye Bye Birdie, The Sound of Music). 

And the dancing. Had there ever been such engagingly witty, extraordinarily exhilarating dance sequences? Electrifying ensemble dance numbers that were genuine showstoppers, not because of empty spectacle, but because dance, music, cinematography, and editing were in simultaneous, seamless service to character, emotion, and the dramatic flow of the narrative. In the large-scare numbers, every dancer is doing more than dancing...they're acting, they're revealing character, they're giving a performance. There's so much detail to take in and so much "business" going on in every corner of the frame, it feels like this 1961 movie was made for the digital age of the freeze-frame. To watch the way Rita Moreno and George Chakiris look at each other when they dance is to learn everything you need to know about the relationship between Anita and Bernardo.

My first goosebump moment in the movie came when West Side Story, heretofore rooted in a kind of lyrical reality, bursts into magical fantasy when Maria's twirl in the dress shop leads to one of the heavenly scene transitions in musical cinema.

I’ve recounted in earlier essays how averse to age-appropriate movies I was when I was young. That's how I missed out on seeing Funny Girl, The Sound of Music, and Mary Poppins...I thought they were all "kiddie movies" or worse, movies deemed  “fun for the whole family.” West Side Story won my heart in no small part due to it being a grown-up musical. Grown-up by ‘60s movie musical standards, anyway. The film was pretty dated and tame in some ways. I mean, the Jets—direct descendants of The Bowery Boys and Dead End Kids who pronounced “world” as “woild” and spoke in the colorful bop-slang patois of those low-budget ‘50s juvenile delinquent movies my sisters and I devoured on Saturday afternoon TV (“Daddy-o!”)—were harmless hoodlums. (The Jets' cartoonishness had the perhaps intentional effect of softening the distastefulness of their "Make The West Side Great Again" racism.)

But this was also a movie, a musical, no less, that was critical of what was wrong with American society and referenced mature themes like racism, drugs, poverty, gang violence, prostitution, rape, and police corruption. It even had good-girl Natalie Wood having sex without benefit of marriage (although I admit, at the time, I thought Maria and Tony had just spent the night cuddling). 

The Delicate Delinquent

Speaking of things I'd never seen before, gay Ken, whom I hadn't yet been properly introduced to, never saw ANYTHING like George Chakiris. I don’t quite know what I did with the feelings aroused by the sight of Bernardo in that purple shirt and skinny tie, but I suspect they were tucked away in the same place I put my unconscious identification with/recognition of the queer-coded character of Baby John. 

(Ask Anybodys: For those who don't know, the creators of West Side Story - Laurents, Bernstein, Sondheim, and Robbins - were all gay or bisexual men in various stages of closeted/denial. Too bad at least one of them wasn't also Puerto Rican.)

Somewhere
As the song that best expresses what co-creator Arthur Laurents described as West Side Story's theme: "How can love survive in a violent world of prejudice?" --Somewhere has gone on to become a pop standard and a gay anthem. The latter confirmed when The Pet Shop Boys reworked it into a synth-pop dance tune.

My earlier use of the word "dated" wasn't intended as a pejorative. As it relates to my impression of West Side Story as a product of the past, a film reflecting the perspective, aesthetics, and concerns (and occasional cluelessness) of a very distinct point in time, I see it as one of West Side Story's strengths. The same way I would mean it if I referred to the films of Fred Astaire and many of the classic MGM musicals as dated. They are of the time they were created and reflect a kind of past urgency or vitality that can't be wrested into another era.

West Side Story being behind-the-times in some aspects (while simultaneously raising and setting the bar of innovation in others) lends the film an air of parable or fairy tale. Its themes are rooted in realism, but the world depicted is very different from reality.  

One scene in West Side Story is far from dated and is so firmly rooted in contemporary reality I no longer watch it. Although it's one of the strongest and most pivotal scenes in the film, sometime during the Reagan '80s I lost my taste for the sequence where Anita is assaulted in Doc's drugstore by the Jets. The pain in Rita Moreno's eyes and the vulnerability of her performance is a little too raw. The look on the faces of the Jets, a look I've seen too often in my life. It's the look of Charlottesville tiki-torch bearers. The scene is powerful and Moreno and Ned Glass as Doc are terrific, but it's too ugly and too prevalent a face of America. I fast-forward past it. 

The world had changed a great deal between the time West Side Story first appeared on screens and the time I saw it. It wasn't a seven-year gap, it was a lifetime. Even as a kid I thought the film's depiction of a world where restless youths (just how the hell old  ARE the Jets and Sharks supposed to be?) blew off steam by having turf wars and zip-gun rumbles seemed as remote as Neverland when contrasted with the what young people were dealing with in 1968: Two political assassinations in 1968 alone, race riots, the Vietnam War, police brutality, campus protests.

Yet the film still spoke to me. And I think that's because the things it talks about (even in its clumsy '50s jargon) is still real for young people. And it has been since the days of Romeo and Juliet. 

Cool Never Goes Out Of Style 
For a maddeningly long time after seeing this epic number, my sisters and I got into the annoying habit of preceding every question and answer with - "Boy, boy, crazy boy." 
Mom: Did you take the garbage out? - Me: Boy, boy, crazy boy...I'll do it right now.
 I don't know how our parents stood it.

Looking back, I feel so lucky to have seen West Side Story for the first time with no idea of its significance, no sense of its legacy, and no prior exposure to its music (I HAD heard the lilting "I Feel Pretty" on some variety show, and was so surprised to learn it came from this show). I’ve never forgotten what it was like experiencing this innovative, visually dazzling, and highly entertaining musical as a journey of complete discovery. I was taken on a real emotional roller coaster that night, from the ecstasy heights of those fabulous numbers to that ending that gave me major waterworks (I think you always cry harder in movies if you see your mom is crying, too) everything came together so beautifully. West Side Story was without a doubt a most extraordinary movie experience.

I Saw You and The World Went Away

West Side Story remained an ongoing passion and fan favorite for lo these many years. The visual aid purpose of this collage is to show not only how much fun I had being a West Side Story fan, but also illustrate how I came to reach such an oversaturation point. And if you're wondering about that TV Guide ad at the bottom that has nothing to do with West Side Story, let me put it this way... there's a reason I say dreams are what the cinema is for.

The year 1985 (five years after the movie Xanadu inspired me to study dance) found me on a cordoned-off city block in Los Angeles--folks watching from behind barriers, massive speakers blaring musical playback, a camera on a crane---dancing as a member of a terpsichorean street gang in a West Side Story-inspired musical fantasy sequence for a CBS Schoolbreak Special: Ace Hits the Big Time. 

The hilariously cheesy number was more nightmare than dream sequence, and my dancing in it didn't give George Chakiris any sleepless nights, but for that entire day I felt as though it wasn't really happening...that it was all a fantasy playing out in the head of  11-year-old Ken sitting in the balcony of the Castro movie theater.

Gee, Officer Krupke

Always thought Russ Tamblyn deserved an Oscar or Golden Globe nomination

Nobody does a flip-out like Natalie Wood. I really adore her in this movie, and she's at her strongest in this scene. The way she yells "Don't you touch him!" is heart-wrenching. Cue the waterworks.

Anita's Gonna Get Her Kicks
Perhaps it's been run into the ground, but there's no getting past Rita Moreno really bringing it and earning her Oscar and Golden Globe wins. The only Puerto Rican in the cast, her performance has humor, authenticity, grit, and tragedy.

I didn't expect to be as moved by seeing West Side Story again after so many years. In fact, each musical number left me as something of an emotional wreck. It was nice to see these old friends again. Especially Maria and Tony. 

WEST SIDE STORY INFLUENCE & INSPIRATION

(Top - Tony Mordente as Action). This quotable admonition, in addition to the Jets' stare-down, finger-snapping response to authority figures, found its way into the 1967 teen musical The Cool Ones, choreographed by West Side Story's David Winters (A-rab).  

Critics couldn't make up their minds as to whether Bob Fosse's rooftop staging of "There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This" in Sweet Charity was a skirt-flipping homage or blatant rip-off. The same with his decision to stage the "Rhythm of Life" number in a subterranean parking structure (a la West Side Story's "Cool").

It's not unusual for artists to be unfamiliar with the trailblazers and innovators in their field. Indeed, in many cases, ignorance behooves the young artist, lest they find out their trumpeted originality is often just history repeating (see: Lady Gaga, Bette Midler, and a singing mermaid named Delores DeLago).

But director Bob Giraldi's persistent claim that his music video for Beat It (featuring dancing rival street gangs - complete with singer-snaps and a choreographed rumble) was not influenced by West Side Story is both laughably unconvincing and blatantly disingenuous. And (the most likely option) the kind of cagey deception one engages in to sidestep potential legal hassles.

 In any event, Rita Moreno once relayed in an interview how Michael Jackson approached her at a social function and proclaimed to be such a huge West Side Story fan that the film inspired the song, concept, and choreography of the music video.

Premiere at Grauman's Chinese Theater on Wednesday, December 13, 1961. A week earlier, on December 5th, Natalie Wood had her footprints placed in the cement in the theater's forecourt. 

 

BONUS MATERIAL

Actress, singer, dancer, and TV game-show stalwart 
Elaine Joyce making her uncredited film debut

Womb to Tomb
Former Jets Russ Tamblyn and Richard Beymer appeared in the
David Lynch series Twin Peaks in 1990 and its 2017 return.

I promised myself that I wasn't going to post this somewhat overworked image, but I have to concede that there's a very good reason for its popularity. The tenement backdrop, the natural light, the low camera angle (accomplished by digging a pit in the asphalt), and the graceful athleticism of the dancers as they execute a grand battement à la seconde in relevé...is pure visual poetry. With their faces lifted to the sun and their bodies literally rising above their gritty reality, this image perfectly captures the aspirational spirit that is the essence of West Side Story's "Somewhere." 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2021

STAR! 1968

"Crickey! I'm tired of playing bloody virgins." - Julie Andrews 1967

When music icon Debbie Harry was asked in a 2019 interview if she would be interested in seeing her life and the legacy of Blondie turned into a musical biopic, she responded: “I’m not so sure that I’m terribly fond of them. The way the industry works and the way the artist works within the industry, it’s all very similar. The only thing that’s different is the personality of the artist. It’s basically the same old story, only with different performers, different faces.”

Ms. Harry nailed it. Whether set in the worlds of music, movies, or theater, biographical films--no matter how creatively envisioned--suffer from an elemental sameness. A formulaic, 3-Act cycle of “rags-riches-rundown-redemption” that may make it easy for Hollywood to keep reselling the same product with different packaging, but encourages the production of films whose only distinction is budget size and the degree of talent, dynamism, and charisma of the particular performer tasked with the job of being the celebrity impersonator. 

Seeing Double

Los Angeles, October 1968: Julie Andrews & Hollywood newbie Barbra Streisand were the Doublemint Twins of Roadshow musicals. Star! the eagerly-anticipated musical about the life of English Music Hall star Gertrude Lawrence, opened just three weeks after the premiere of Funny Girl, the equally anticipated biopic about Broadway star Fanny Brice. The similar films employed the same flashback framing device, each leading lady seated in a theater, looking back over her life. (Note La Streisand's positively lethal nails.)

Funny Girl and Star! shared near-identical scenes depicting a theater neophyte “comically” bungling an ensemble number; winning over an audience with a dazzling solo; routinely bumping heads with a stern but avuncular employer; and, de rigueur of the genre, suffering for love in mink. Where these two films diverge is that its stars at the time were on very opposite career paths: Streisand seeking to establish a screen persona, Andrews hoping to shed one. This proved to be the difference that made all difference.

Dame Julie Andrews as Gertrude Lawrence

Daniel Massey as Noel Coward

I adore Julie Andrews, yet I’m something of a Johnny-come-lately where her films are concerned. The first Julie Andrews movie I ever saw was Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1967 when I was 10-years-old, and I never saw another until 10 (which I loathed) in 1979. I was in my 40s when I got around to seeing Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music was unseen until 2015, and Star! only a few years before that.

I'm aware that my lifetime aversion to movies branded "clean" or "wholesome" is what kept me away from Andrews' two most iconic films, which is a pity, for they are both marvelous films I would have loved as a child. However, Star!--an overstuffed musical "sure-fire hit" that wound up one of Hollywood's more legendary "crash and burn disasters" (I'm looking at you, Mame and Cats)--is just the kind of elephantine entertainment that would seem to be right up my aesthetic alley.

Andrews, Bruce Forsythe, and Beryl Reid sing the popular 1921 Music Hall song "Piccadilly"

Discounting my usual complaint about overemphatic musical titles (those exclamation points!), I like to think I approached Star! with an open mind. But I gotta say, things got off to a very rocky start when this $14 million, spare no expense, travel the globe for locations musical epic hit me over the head with its “Fox contract player” casting vibe. Throughout the film, in scenes meant to be taking place in London & Paris, up pop familiar American TV faces like Eugene Roche (Mr. Ajax dish detergent) and Cathleen Cordell (stalwart of episodic TV) to break the illusion. 

Some 15 minutes into the movie there’s a scene set in a meticulously re-created British Music Hall, but verisimilitude flies straight out the window the second I recognize the cockney drunk harassing a young Gertrude Lawrence to be the same drunk who harasses Darrin Stephens in every episode of Bewitched set in a bar: none other than TV's Charmin-pusher, Mr. Whipple, aka character actor Dick Wilson.

Filmed on location in New York, London, and the French Riviera!
Well, you're just going to have to take the publicist's word for it, because between the rear-projection shots, obvious backdrops, and interiors so brightly lit they look like sound stages, it's pretty hard to believe Star! ever left L.A.  

Then there are the two Parisian theater/cabaret impresarios played by American actors (Alan Oppenheim and Richard Angarola) chipping away at my already overtasked suspension of disbelief by speaking with cartoon French accents. Indeed, fans of Valley of the Dolls will recognize Angarola as Mr. Chardot, Sharon Tate’s, sleazy French "art film" director with the Pepé Le Pew intonation.

Hitting perhaps the hardest is the lineup of actors cast as glamorous Gertrude Lawrence's paramours. Looking over this bunch, my best guess is that in order for a family film to legitimize its leading lady juggling multiple lovers without benefit of marriage, they sought to cast leading men guaranteed to drive thoughts of sex out of anyone's mind on sight.

Richard Crenna, Anthony Eisley, Michael Craig, and Robert Reed
If it was STAR!'s intention to generate sympathy for Gertrude Lawrence by presenting her as a woman cursed with attracting only the blandest, dullest suitors from several continents, it succeeded beyond all reasonable expectation

When production on The Sound of Music wrapped in 1964, Julie Andrews agreed to reteam with director Robert Wise and producer Saul Chaplin on a film about the life of Gertrude Lawrence. In the years before production began on Star!, Andrews completed three films (Torn Curtain, Hawaii, and Thoroughly Modern Millie), and most significantly, her fourth, The Sound of Music had become a global cash-cow, cultural phenomenon, and 20th Century-Fox savior.

I have no idea how the Gertrude Lawrence biopic was originally envisioned in 1964, but by the time it morphed into the musical reunion of the creative team responsible for the then highest-grossing motion picture in history, I suspect it outgrew itself.

"I don't know, but somewhere along the line, 'Shrinking Violet' got Sanforized" - Lucy Ricardo

Costing nearly twice as much as The Sound of Music with less than a third of its plot and none of its warmth or humor, Star! is a gargantuan production for no other reason than Julie Andrews was the #1 box-office star and The Sound of Music had made a mint.

Like many, I knew next to nothing about Gertrude Lawrence before seeing Star!, but years of reading show business memoirs and seeing movie biopics with "Story" tacked on the end (The Helen Morgan Story, The Eddy Duchin Story, etc.) resulted in a nagging sense of déjà vu from Star!'s depiction of Lawrence as a willful, ambitious girl from humble beginnings who achieves great fame as an actress, only to find happiness elusive because her professional desire to be “lots of different people" leaves her not knowing who she is or what she wants. 

Presented as a series of episodic, tangentially-connected highlights and lowlights interspersed between splashy musical numbers, the essentially unremarkable events of Lawrence’s life story (at least as presented here) left me wondering how in the world anyone thought $14 million and three hours were necessary to tell it.

Of STAR!'s seven Oscar nominations (0 wins), Daniel Massey was deservedly singled out for the film's sole nomination in the performing categories. He also won the Golden Globe, for which Andrews was also nominated.

Perhaps criticizing the film’s script for being superficial, its characters undeveloped, its supporting cast serviceable, and production old-fashioned is quibbling. Star! was never really selling Gertrude Lawrence in the first place. As implied by the movie posters declaring “Julie Andrews as The Star!”, Julie Andrews—her singing, her dancing, her wigs, and her costumes (by Donald Brooks)—was the whole show. And I have to say, as a showcase for a sumptuously glamorized Andrews in all her singing and dancing glory, Star! is an outstanding film record that I'm overjoyed exists. 

Andrews is in exceptionally fine voice and is clearly working her ass off. And rather than revisiting the tried-and-true, she's taking a genuine creative risk. I applaud actors (especially those labeled "stars") who try to spread their creative wings. Too many bad films have been made and far too many exciting talents dulled by surrendering to typecasting, going for the easy money, and pandering to fanbases obsessed with a star's “image.” 

While some newspaper ads heralded, "Julie Andrews is a different Julie Andrews in STAR!" others promised, "Julie Andrews as you love her!"--whatever that meant. As it turns out, she was neither and both. Consequently, STAR!, like Gertrude Lawrence's character in the Broadway musical Lady in the Dark, suffered from not being able to make up its mind. 

Although the sincerity of her effort shows (which may be part of the problem), with reluctance I have to say I never found Andrews convincing for a moment as Gertrude Lawrence (1968 Maggie Smith would have been ideal). A reluctant observation because I really do like Julie Andrews SO much and think, in addition to being very talented, she is and always has been a humble and gracious class act and charming personality. 

But for an actress who mostly radiates crisp efficiency and common sense to make real a character charitably described as an ill-tempered, hard-drinking, child-neglecting narcissist, Andrews needed the kind of special handling and solid material Doris Day received with Love Me or Leave Me, or Mary Tyler Moore with Ordinary People. Certainly something better than William Fairchild’s fatuous screenplay or Robert Wise's famously hands-off direction. Outside of its Michael Kidd choreographed and staged musical numbers, overall I feel Julie Andrews is poorly served by Star!, not the other way around. 

14-year-old Jenny Agutter (Logan's Run, Walkabout) as Gertrude's daughter Pamela Roper

As movie musicals evolve (de-evolve?) into pyrotechnical CGI displays of machine-gun editing and flying camerawork, an old-school, studio-bound movie like Star! is not without its pleasures. I knew when I first saw it that Star! was going to be a film I’d add to my collection and rewatch...but likely never again in its entirety. And I was right...Star! has joined The Music Man, Paint Your Wagon, Nine, A Chorus Line, and Rent as one of my movie musical “Fast-Forward Favorites.”

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE  -  The Musical Sequences  

My “Fast-Forward Favorites” are movies I visit most often with my finger poised over the FWD button on the remote so I can sidestep the unpleasantness and hone in exclusively on the joys. In nearly every film I place in this category, this means the musical numbers (George Cukor's The Women is one of the few non-musical films I most enjoy a la carte). The musical sequences in Star! hold a special sway over me because I fell in love with the movie's original soundtrack album long before I ever saw the film. I was a freshman in high school when I purchased the deluxe, photo-crammed, gate-fold Star! soundtrack LP for 99¢ in a remainder bin. It’s an absolutely brilliant song collection and I played it to death (still do) because it’s essentially a Julie Andrews concert album in disguise.

The use of music is where Star! differs from its 1968 look-alike Funny Girl. In Star!, like Cabaret, only four years earlier, all the songs and dances take place onstage or are sung in realistic performance. For the longest time, the discordant tone of the screenplay left me with the impression that the musical numbers in the film were unconnected to the action and that each time Dame Andrews breaks into song, the already overextended story grinds to a halt. But in rewatching the film in recent years and for this piece, I now see that most every song actually comments on the action or relates to Lawrence’s romantic and psychological conflicts. It's just that with the film's unwieldy structure, that particular thread isn't all that easy to find. 

Favorite Musical Sequences 

Dear Little Boy (Dear Little Girl)

Ironic as hell that my top fave musical moment in this Herculean production is Julie Andrews just standing still and singing with that bell-clear voice of hers. Star! was my introduction to many of the standards and showtunes in the score, and this Gershwin song from 1926's Oh, Kay! (those damned exclamation points, again) is lovely.

Burlington Bertie from Bow

I’m no fan of clowns, baggy-pants comics, or those maudlin, cured-ham vaudeville-burlesque hobo “swells” like Red Skelton’s Freddie the Freeloader...but this number is a keeper. The song itself is a witty delight and Andrews handles the many props and comic stage business with waggish aplomb. She often refers to it as the most challenging number she's ever had to learn.

The Physician

I love this clever Cole Porter tune so much, and the comical staging it's given really soars in spite of the cringe-inducing brownface adopted by the performers (the less said about that “Limehouse Blues” number, the better). I’ve heard this song interpreted by many people over the years, but Andrews' rendition is the top.

The Saga of Jenny

A defining characteristic I associate with Michael Kidd’s choreography (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Hello, Dolly!, Guys and Dolls) is that while most dance strives for the appearance of effortlessness, Kidd’s work displays a conspicuous strenuousness. That’s not a criticism so much as an observation citing what makes this number so impressive for me. Kidd puts Julie Andrews through the dance equivalent of a decathlon, but she wins the gold.

Damage Control

When Star! flopped, Fox pulled the film from theaters early, lopped off nearly an hour, and released it to theaters in 1969 under the optimistic, totally nonsensical title Those Were The Happy Times. While I've always liked the original (misleadingly modern) movie poster, I am mad about and positively mesmerized by the sheer, absolute flop-sweat desperation of the re-issue poster. "Be Glad they still make pictures like this!" ...that's like when you complain about the lima beans and your mom responds, "Be glad there's food on your plate at all!" And what's up with that "demented flower girl" artwork? ...by The Sound of Music poster artist Howard Terpning, no less.

BONUS MATERIAL

In 1999, Twiggy (The Boy Friend) and Harry Groener portrayed Gertrude Lawrence & Noel Coward in the Off-Broadway production If Love Were All. Never saw the show but the cast CD is terrific. Sets and costumes were designed by Julie Andrews' first husband, Oscar and Tony Award-winning designer Tony Walton (All That Jazz).

"When you flop in one part, always start in another as soon as possible." 

- Gertrude Lawrence STAR! screenplay

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2021

CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG 1968

Last year, whenever I came across a review complaining about the 3½-hour running time of Martin Scorsese's The Irishman (2019), my first thought was that none of these folks would have survived being a kid in the 1960s. Not at a time when Hollywood's most eagerly-anticipated family movies all wore their lengthy running times like emblems of prestige: Mary Poppins (1964): 2hr 20m; The Sound of Music (1965): 2hr 55m; Doctor Dolittle (1967): 2hr 32m; Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967): 2hr 33m; and Oliver! (1968): 2hr 33m.

And certainly not at a time when double-features were the norm, and theaters, under the guise of presenting "Top Family Entertainment," offered child-abuse programming like pairing the 2hr 25m Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with the 3hr 4m Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Such was the bladder-challenging bill at San Francisco's Castro Theater in the summer of 1969 when I was 11-years-old and saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the first time.

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A 1968 Christmas season release, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang opened in San Francisco as a reserved-seat roadshow attraction (complete with overture, intermission, & exit music) at a then-steep minimum $3 ticket price. When it played regular engagements in 1969, its revamped ad campaign underplayed the musical and magical car angles and instead emphasized the comedic. Specifically highlighting Dick Van Dyke's silly pose and anachronistically (the movie is set in 1910) showcasing Sally Ann Howes' legs.   

Most roadshow films went immediately into wide release after their exclusive engagements were over (Continuous Performances! Popular Prices!), but the underperforming Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was swiftly yanked from screens after its poorly-reviewed initial run (The SF Examiner called it "abysmally saccharine"), re-emerging six months later as a get-the-kids-from-underfoot summer release in August of 1969. But by then, it was too late. Over the Easter holidays, America's fickle kiddie population had fallen in love with another four-fendered friend…Herbie, the matchmaking Volkswagen Beetle of Disney's The Love Bug. A case of love at first sight that saw the modest feature earning more than ten times its $5 million budget at the boxoffice while the heavily-promoted Chitty Chitty Bang Bang remained unable to recoup its $12 million budget. 

Dick Van Dyke as Caractacus Potts

Sally Ann Howes as Truly Scrumptious 

Adrian Hall and Heather Ripley as Jeremy & Jemima Potts

Lionel Jeffries as Grandpa Potts

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the only children's book written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming. It's also the only non-Bond film made by James Bond franchise producer Albert R. Broccoli. Fleming's slight story of a family and their magical car was made into a grand-scale movie musical (at the time, the most expensive musical ever made in England) that is commonly (and accurately) described these days as a James Bond film for children.

This is certainly true of its story, which pits a good guy devoted to gadgetry (crackpot inventor Caracticus Potts) and a woman with an outrageous name (candy heiress Truly Scrumptious) against an eccentric villain (Auric Goldfinger himself, Gert Fröbe as Baron Bomburst). But the Bond connection also applies to the production team, many of whom began work on CCBB fresh from completing the latest Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967). The screenplay for the Bond film was written by Chitty Chitty Bang Bang screenwriter Roald Dahl (with director Ken Hughes). Both Hughes and CCBB's Baroness Bomburst Anna Quayle, had just finished work on the Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967).

Desmond Llewelyn, as garage owner Mr. Coggins.
Llewellyn portrayed "Q" in a staggering 17 James Bond films. 

But in 1968, the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang most eagerly sought to emulate was Disney's blockbuster Mary Poppins (1964). And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was so sincerely devoted to flattering Mary Poppins that it all but followed a blueprint. Same songwriters (Robert and Richard Sherman Sherman); same choreographers (Mark Breaux & Dee Dee Wood); same period (the book's contemporary setting was changed to Mary Poppins' Edwardian era); same casting (Poppins' Dick Van Dyke—mercifully, minus the English accent), and a Julie Andrews substitute (Sally Ann Howes). I've read that the producers sought to reunite Mary Poppins co-stars Julie Andrews & Dick Van Dyke. But unless the role of Truly was conceived as being significantly larger than its present incarnation, I find it difficult to believe Julie Andrews--a headlining Oscar winner at this stage--ever seriously entertained the idea of playing second lead to the actor who was her supporting co-star in her very first picture.

So intent was CCBB on duplicating Mary Poppins' winning formula; it features a copy of what has always been my least-favorite Poppins number: "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank." In this instance, the "comical old coots" sing the livelier but no-less-deadly "The Roses of Success."

But Hollywood wishes do come true, and when released, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang did indeed have critics comparing it to Mary Poppins…unfavorably on all counts. In his memoirs, even star Dick Van Dyke joined the chorus, citing that he felt Hughes was the wrong director for the job and that the film ultimately failed to capture the magic of Disney's classic. Given that Ken Hughes would go on to direct the Mae West travesty Sextette (1978), perhaps Van Dyke has a point. Falling short of its fantasmagorical expectations, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang joined the ranks of Camelot (1967) and Paint Your Wagon (1969) as representative of a form of "Bigger is Better" filmmaking whose era was nearing its end. But time has been kind, and in the 50-plus years since its release, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang has emerged from the shadow of Mary Poppins enough to be hailed as a beloved children's classic judged and appreciated on its own considerable merits. A far cry from the days when my attempts to recommend the movie to schoolmates were met with chants of "Shitty Shitty Bang Bang." 

Anna Quayle and Gert Frobe as Baroness & Baron Bomburst of Vulgaria

Seeing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang for the first time on a double-bill with Around the World in 80 Days was quite the thrill and nowhere near the backache challenge for my 11-year-old self as I would find it today. Though I confess to having fallen asleep during part of Around the World in 80 Days (one moment Shirley MacLaine hadn't yet entered the movie, the next, there she was in that balloon), by and large, as long as the Jujyfruits and popcorn held out, I was a happy camper. 

The only big musical I'd seen at this point was Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), so without prior visions of Mary Poppins dancing in my head, I thought Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was the most extraordinary movie I'd ever seen. I was utterly wowed and enchanted by it. On an enormous screen and with glorious stereophonic sound Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a storybook fantasy adventure come to life. It seemed to have everything: action, laughs, chases, comic schtick, rousing songs, zany characters, romance, dance, spectacle, and a big wooly sheepdog named Edison. It even had a bit of a dark side.

Robert Helpmann as The Child Catcher
I was too old to find this legendary kindertrauma character scary at the time. But as an adult, I've often wished (usually when I'm in a restaurant or on a plane) such a service existed.

I remember being very taken with Potts' kooky Rube Goldberg-style inventions (the work of Frederick Rowland Emett), particularly that ingenious breakfast-making machine I still would love to own. But what stands out most memorably is the titular automobile itself. Designed by Academy Award-winning production designer Ken Adams under what must have been no small degree of pressure to live up to the laundry list of glowing superlatives ascribed to it in the title song, the magical car dubbed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is every bit the iconically miraculous motorcar the movie needed it to be. 

Critics were tough on the film for what they asserted were disappointingly primitive special effects for a movie of this size and expense (they may have had a point, as Chitty's budget was equal to or larger than that of another 1968 release, Stanley Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey whose special effects had set a new standard), but back then I didn't notice or didn't care. When Chitty turned into a boat, or the first time it took wing, just the sight of it (crude special effects and all) hit a fanciful, fantasy nerve in me. I remember getting such a goosebump charge out of it.   

Custom cars were all the rage on TV in the '60s; the George Barris-designed automobiles on Batman, The Monkees, The Munsters, & The Green Hornet were big hits with the young set. But even amongst these memorably snazzy machines, Ken Adam's whimsical design for the flying, amphibious Chitty Chitty Bang Bang stands out with class and distinction. 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang two more times that summer, by then paired with Heaven with a Gun, a truly awful Glenn Ford western made bearable only by its being half the running time of Around the World in 80 Days. And in all these years, my love of it as a cheerful, brightly-colored confection as sweet and loaded with empty calories as anything whipped up by the Scrumptious Sweet Company, has only increased. I say empty calories because Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a delectable film that, for all its whimsy and charm, has always engaged my spirits more than my heart. The story—essentially a kidnap/rescue adventure fantasy—is fun in a cartoon kind of way…full of activity and "business" meant to entertain and amuse. But the screenplay keeps the characters at a bit of a remove, their personalities and goals presented so cursorily that the movie never touches me or gives me waterworks in the manner of The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, or Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

It's not entirely true that nothing in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang gives me waterworks. For some reason, the duet performance of "Doll on a Music Box/Truly Scrumptious" gets to me every time. It's a lovely courtship dance in a film skimpy on romance. So when Truly breaks character at the end to give Caractacus a loving smile, I always melt. 

Maybe my dry eyes are because, as children's movies go, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's emotional stakes are kept on a low boil. Both The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins saw lonely children reclaiming their fathers thanks to the spunky intervention of Julie Andrews, and in Oliver!, a severely brutalized and exploited orphan finds a home. But Chitty Chitty Bang Bang presents us with a cast of characters whose lives may not be perfect when the film begins, but are far from unhappy. Caractacus is a widowed fantasist whose inventions come to naught, but his loving children's belief in him is unshakable. And I couldn't have been the only kid who thought Jemima & Jeremy had it pretty sweet living with minimal parental supervision out there in the country in a picturesque windmill crammed with toys and gadgets made by a fun dad. 

You Two
Caractacus Potts and his two unaccountably British children. Though Potts' father and children speak with English accents, Dick Van Dyke, still stinging from criticism of his problematic Cockney accent in Mary Poppins, only agreed to appear in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang if he could forgo the accent.

Even Jemima & Jeremy's quest to rescue the junked Chitty from the fiery furnace is a low-wattage conflict due to the notion of Chitty being a sentient machine is never fully developed (she shivers at the mention of being melted and rescues the family at moments of danger, but has no personality to speak of) not mention the kids are ready to abandon their salvage mission when it appears doing so will cause their dad undue hardship. However, one thing the film gets right is granting the frosty Truly Scrumptious character a thawing-out musical number with the children. What's ideal about the casting of Sally Ann Howes is that she's pretty in precisely the way a child can relate to...like a teacher one develops a crush on. By the end of the number, it's been firmly established that Jeremy & Jemima need a mom, and we in the audience can identify with them in their wish for Truly and their dad to fall in love.

Benny Hill as The Toymaker

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I didn't like movie musicals very much when I was young. No fewer than 13 musicals were released in 1968 (3 by Elvis alone!). To this day, I could kick myself for passing opportunities to see current favorites like Funny Girl, Finian's Rainbow, and Star! in their original release. But what I did like were cars. Toy cars, model cars, and, after seeing the 1967 theatrical re-release of The Absent-Minded Professor (1961), flying cars. Fred MacMurray's flying Flubbermobile captivated me to no end, so when Chitty Chitty Bang Bang came on the scene, the car was the primary attraction for me. Nowadays, my absolute favorite things about Chitty Chitty Bang Bang are its songs and musical sequences. The eleven songs by Robert and Richard Sherman (showcased by Irwin Kostal's brilliant orchestrations) are catchy and hummable and have aged remarkably well. Not a clunker in the bunch; the entire original score is splendid...even the dreaded "The Roses of Success" has started to grow on me.

Toot Sweets
This pitch-perfect musical pitch meeting is a visual delight. The candy factory set is an eye-popper, and I still get woozy with vertigo when I see those dancers up on that narrow ledge near the rafters. 

Me Ol' Bamboo
CCBB's answer to Mary Poppins' "Step in Time" is this rousingly entertaining and athletic number in which clever choreography takes center stage. Production on the film was shut down for a week due to 41-year-old Dick Van Dyke sustaining a leg injury while performing one of the dance routines (sources vary as to whether it was this one, the most likely suspect, or "Toot Sweets"). 

Chu-Chi Face
My partner never saw the film, but when I played this song for fun in my dance class, the silly lyrics and comical vocal performances of Gert Frobe & Anna Quayle made it one of his instant favorites. When we finally watched it together, he was so surprised by its ironic staging (cloying terms of endearment are exchanged amidst the Baron's many unsuccessful attempts to kill the Baroness). I don't think the number ever made much of an impression on me as a kid, but because it never ceases to make my sweetheart laugh, this sequence has become my most-replayed favorite.

Though Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was one of the more eagerly-anticipated releases of 1968, when award season rolled around, only the music of the Sherman brothers (their first non-Disney score) garnered any attention...no wins, but attention. Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for that irresistible earworm of a title song, and a second Globe nomination for Best Original Score. 

Emmy Award-winning TV star Dick Van Dyke had the opportunity to display his versatility as an actor, dancer, and singer in several iconic movies. He made his film debut opposite Janet Leigh in Bye Bye Birdie (1963), his likable persona transferring easily to the big screen. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I'd allowed a lot of time to pass between viewings of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, this recent revisit stirring up dust clouds of nostalgia of such density as to fairly obscure my awareness of what I might have once characterized as the film's flaws. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang hasn't changed, but in the last few years, my appreciation of the value of good, old-fashioned schmaltz, cornball comedy, and sweet-natured sentimentality has. One doesn't have to try very hard to draw contemporary parallels to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's child-caging Vulgarians and the tyrannical, childishly petulant, tantrum-throwing Baron Bomburst. And indeed, it's for that very reason that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang's liveliness, tuneful good cheer, and elemental, storybook sweetness (and silliness) proved to be just the right "happy endings" spoonful of sugar medicine I needed to make the waning days of 2020 a little easier to deal with. (There go those Mary Poppins comparisons, again!)

BONUS MATERIAL:

Two of my favorite stars from Ken Russell's The Boy Friend (1971) appear briefly in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: British cinema icon Barbara Windsor (top photo) and dancer Antonia Ellis (bottom photo, far right)

Ballet star Robert Helpmann (The Child Catcher) with Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes (1948)

Actress/dancer Paula Kelly (Sweet Charity) dances to an instrumental rendition of the Oscar-nominated title song "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" at the 41st Academy Awards. It lost to "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair.

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2020