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 most 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

GYPSY 1962

Sing out, Louise!

It’s not exactly a picnic being a movie musical fan who’s also a devotee of live musical theater. These distinct yet inherently complementary art forms have made such strange bedfellows over the years, I've found it necessary to run myself through a staggering array of mental acrobatics just to feel ready to commit to even the simple act of watching a film based on a favorite Broadway show.

Sometimes this means I have to ratchet down an overeager anticipation of the sort that usually leads to disappointment (Nine, Dreamgirls). At other times this means I have to hold in check a guarded, over-protective attitude harbored toward a beloved source material (to this day, I’m not entirely sure I hate the film version of Grease so much because I genuinely think it’s a lousy movie, or because its '70s-mandated disco-ification [Spandex in the 50s!] is so at odds with the original show’s satirically nostalgic charm). Upon occasion, if the filmmaker is particularly clever, I find I can surprise myself by being flexible and willing to surrender to an ingenious reinterpretation and reinvention  (Hair, The Wiz, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever).
However, if I’m really committed to giving a movie adapted from a Broadway show the benefit of the doubt, I know my chief duty is to refrain from engaging in that time-honored, ultimately fruitless pastime of all self-appointed musical theater “purists”: stockpiling comparisons and evaluating motion pictures by live theater standards. 

When I let go of the desire for to-the-letter faithful transfers of Broadway shows to the screen and accept the fact that film and stage are two entirely different animals, I always enjoy myself so much more. In fact, of late I've come to appreciate how most of my favorite stage-to-screen musical adaptations have not always been those that have cleaved religiously to the stage production, but rather, those which have discovered a way to translate the essence and excitement of a stage show into cinematic terms (Jesus Christ Superstar, Cabaret, Oliver!).

Happily, I was spared all this with Gypsy due to having discovered the movie version long before I ever knew anything about the well-regarded Broadway show. Equally fortuitous was the fact that I fell in love with this movie while I was still too young to know I wasn’t supposed to.

Rosalind Russell as Rose Hovick

Natalie Wood as Louse Hovick / Gypsy Rose Lee

Karl  Malden as Herbie Sommers

Directed and choreographed by West Side Story’s Jerome Robbins, written by Arthur Laurents (West Side Story, Anyone Can Whistle), music by Jule Styne (Funny Girl, Bells Are Ringing) and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim (you name it), Gypsy, is the highly-fictionalized 1959 Broadway musical based on the memoirs of famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. On the strength of Ethel Merman’s star turn and the show’s then-novel integration of song, narrative, and character; Gypsy was already being heralded as a theatrical milestone by the time Warner Bros turned it into a critically lambasted, Top-Ten boxoffice hit motion picture in 1962.

Gypsy was adapted for the screen by Leonard Spigelgass (Pepe, of all things) and directed by The Bad Seed’s Mervyn LeRoy (can you imagine pushy Mama Rose coming across Rhoda Penmark? Gypsy would have had a 10-minute running time).

A backstage musical set in the waning, transitional days of vaudeville, Gypsy is a family drama (some would say tragedy) about Rose Hovick’s stop-at-nothing efforts to make her daughter, blonde and talented “Baby” June, a star. There’s another daughter, of course, the shy and talent-challenged Louise, but that’s a fact the thrice-married Rose makes the best of rather than rejoices in. As the family and their ragtag vaudeville act tour the country, Rose takes up with and secures the managing services of marriage-minded Herbie, a former kiddie talent show host. Meanwhile, her daughters grow restless for another kind of life: June, for a solo career on Broadway, Louise, for a stable home and family.

Four characters, four different dreams. But in Gypsy, only Rose’s dreams matter, which we come to learn is Rose’s one true talent. Mama Rose has a gift for deluding herself into believing her relentless ambition is genuinely in the interest of others. Gypsy’s humor, heart, conflict, and drama derive from the sometimes ruthless lengths Rose is willing to go to make those dreams come true.

"Some People"

In spite of its impressive showing at the boxoffice, the movie version of Gypsy is widely regarded as a disappointment...if not an out-and-out failure. Citing everything from Mervyn LeRoy’s uninspired direction to Rosalind Russell’s notoriously “manipulated” vocals, Gypsy’s reputation as a respectable misfire is so pervasive, few tend to credit it with one of the things it gets absolutely right: it’s an atypically faithful movie adaptation of a stage hit.

Me, I place myself in the opposite camp. While far from what I’d consider a classic, Gypsy is nevertheless one of my favorite movie musicals. It’s tuneful (not a clunker in the bunch!), funny, well-acted (save for that dreadful young Louise and the chorus boy with the overdone Bowery Boys shtick), and one of those rare musicals with genuine dramatic heft. And as good as I think Natalie Wood is in this, the real jewel in Gypsy’s crown is Rosalind Russell. She’s the first Mama Rose I ever saw, and although the role has been better sung and more showily performed, after all these years I’ve never seen anyone come close to Russell in giving Rose Hovick the kind of depth and humanity necessary to make me care about this somewhat monstrous creature.

Rosalind Russell IS Mama Rose to me.

"You'll Never Get Away From Me"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine when I saw Gypsy on TV for the first time. My older sister was a rabid Rosalind Russell fan, so watching Gypsy, a musical I knew absolutely nothing about, was not a choice, but a household edict. Viewed on the family’s living room console, Gypsy as first seen by me was in black & white, pan and scan, with commercial interruptions and edits for time. In fact, it wasn’t until many years later when Gypsy aired uncut on cable that I even KNEW the "Little Lamb" number was a part of the film, let alone had the opportunity to see it. (I can hear my partner saying that’s an opportunity he’d gladly pass up.)

But even with these limitations, I thought Gypsy was something pretty special. Being a child myself, I was enthralled, in those pre-Annie / Oliver! days, by a non-kiddie movie where kids played such an integral role in the plot, and similarly, the whole “family” thrust of the dramatic conflict was nicely within the scope of what I could understand. Although I must add, being at an age where my notions of good/bad - hero/villain were still pretty simplistic; the chilling vision of motherhood as presented by the charismatic, likable, yet overweeningly selfish Mama Rose was really quite a shock to the system.

Ann Jillian (age 11) as "Dainty" June Hovick with Caroline the Cow

I remember loving all the musical numbers (especially “You Gotta Get a Gimmick”), thinking Natalie Wood was really a knockout (something I dared not relay to my sisters, lest be teased unmercifully), and just being bowled over by Rosalind Russel’s powerhouse performance. Then, as now, she fairly eclipses everything else about the film for me.

Over the years, as my appreciation for Gypsy grew both in terms of concept and context, the film never ceased being a favorite; even if all those repeat viewings only made me more aware of the film’s many flaws and inadequacies.

When critics hail Gypsy for its seamless integration of song, story, and character; the downbeat themes masked by its cheery vaudeville visage, and the emotional complexity of its lead character, you’ll get no argument from me.

If I have any complaints, it’s that the film’s innocuously cheery, prototypically '60s roadshow approach to the material seriously undercuts what’s so special about Gypsy as a musical property. There’s something disturbingly Eugene O’Neill-ish lurking beneath all that Hovick family dysfunction that the movie only touches upon.

"If Momma Was Married"

Because we’re a country that worships success and achievement, people tend to react to Gypsy Rose Lee’s ultimate attainment of wealth and fame as some kind of happy ending. As if Rose’s cutthroat determination is finally vindicated and Louise’s lonely childhood rewarded. But I always leave the film thinking that nobody’s won a damn thing. Louise winds up with a “dream” that was never really hers; the anonymous adoration of “celebrity” a substitute for a heartbreakingly anonymous childhood. And Rose, in spite of the reconciliatory tone of the fadeout, is, in spite of all of her efforts combating a lifetime of being abandoned, still alone.  

Russell and Wood are both effective at accessing some of the darker corners of their characters (as much as the screenplay allows), but it would be years before Hollywood felt comfortable reshaping the movie musical—traditionally a family-oriented genre—to accommodate more serious themes (Sweeney Todd, Cabaret, All That Jazz, Into the Woods).

"Rose's Turn"

PERFORMANCES

Movie musicals were having a hard go of it in the 1960s, and studios hedged their bets wherever they could. In Gypsy’s case, this meant turning a groundbreakingly complex, 4-character dysfunctional family musical drama into a splashy, $4 million, widescreen crowd-pleaser. It also meant ignoring the near-unanimous praise heaped on Ethel Merman’s head for what many considered to be her career-defining role and performance (vocally immortalized on the Original Broadway Cast album that seemed to be in every home, by law, when I was growing up), and going with a more skilled actress with marquee recognition. An actress whose biggest drawback was that her voice wasn’t up to the demands of the written-specifically-with-Merman-in-mind musical score. 

Bankable Rosalind Russell, adding a touch of Lavinia Mannon steeliness (Mourning Becomes Electra) to her Auntie Mame steamroller ebullience, controversially stepped into the made-to-order shoes of Ethel Merman in the iconic role of Mama Rose: stage mother to end all stage mothers.

Rosalind Russell's vocals were largely handled by Lisa Kirk
A 2003 CD release of the Gypsy soundtrack included a few outtake samples
of Russell singing unassisted. 

After having seen Ethel Merman in the movies Call Me Madam and There’s No Business Like Show Business, it’s hard for me not to appreciate the soundness of any decision designed to keep her off the screen (although I have to concede she’s pleasant and very un-Ethel Merman like in those early Eddie Cantor musicals). However, the by-product of Merman being passed over has been the fostering of an idealized “What if?” scenario regarding Merman recreating her greatest stage success onscreen, A fantasy scenario that has followed Rosalind Russell’s Gypsy around like one of Madame Rose’s trunks.

But speculating about what was missed in not granting Merman the opportunity to play onscreen the role she originated onstage, fails to take into account what a significant contribution an actress of Russell’s caliber (equally deft at playing comedy or drama) brings to a movie this stagy and set-bound. 

"Everything's Coming Up Roses"

Natalie Wood, fresh off of doing whatever she thought she was doing with that Puerto Rican accent in West Side Story (1961), was cast as late-blooming ecdysiast, Gypsy Rose Lee.

Natalie Wood has always held a lot of appeal for me, and her genuinely sweet persona is used to great effect during the film’s first half, just as her remarkable figure and stunning beauty provide a perfect contrast/payoff in the second. I’m not sure how she does it (star quality alone?) but her Louise looms larger in the film than it does in any stage production of Gypsy I’ve ever seen. That Wood naturally has the ability to make you care about her is one of the reasons I think her rather underwritten role carries so much poignancy.

Natalie Wood shines brightest in her quiet scenes. Consequently, her big, dressing room outburst moment is, for me, her weakest. But in delivering a few well-placed snarky lines to her meddlesome mom, Wood’s transformation from mouse to sardonic cat is a delight.

"Let Me Entertain You"
Gypsy afforded Natalie Wood a rare opportunity to do her own singing.
To help with her strip routines she visited a Sunset Blvd strip club where
strippers had names like Fran Sinatra and Natalie Should

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

In defense of "Little Lamb"

Maybe it’s because I was deprived of it for so many years. Maybe it’s because Natalie Wood’s vocals remind me of Audrey Hepburn singing “Moon River” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Maybe it’s because all my taste is in my mouth. Whatever the reason, “Little Lamb,” a song so maudlin it would make Mother Teresa roll her eyes, is my favorite song in the film.
I love that it is the single, solitary moment afforded the pushed-to-the-sidelines Louise, and the first time we get to hear about what someone else feels besides Rose. This external internal monologue captures so perfectly a child’s loneliness (associating sadness with what should be a happy occasion) with the single lyric: “Little cat. Little cat. Oh, why do you look so blue? Did somebody paint you like that, or is it your birthday, too?” 

That just knocks me the hell out. Reduced to waterworks each and every time.

Most musicals have draggy second acts, but Act II of Gypsy has two wonderful numbers: The show-stopping “You Gotta Get a Gimmick” and that masterfully-constructed musical nervous breakdown, “Rose’s Turn.”

"You Gotta Get a Gimmick"
Roxanne Arlen as Electra, Betty Bruce as Tessie Tura, and Faith Dane as Mazeppa

The one number that's perfectly fine but that I could do without is "All I Need Is The Girl". But this likely has to do with the song being done to death on TV variety shows long before I ever saw Gypsy. But the rousing "Mr. Goldstone We Love You" is a number I could watch a hundred times.  

"Mr. Goldstone, I Love You"
That's character actor Ben Lessy as Mr. Goldstone -  dubbed Mervyn Goldstone in
inside-joke honor of director Mervyn LeRoy

It's a shame the cute "Together Wherever We Go" number was deleted from the film before its release. Karl Malden had all of his singing bits (he sang briefly in "You'll Never Get Away From Me") left on the cutting room floor. Happily, 16mm prints of both numbers appear as part of the extras on the Gypsy DVD.

"Together Wherever We Go"

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

One of the things I like most about Gypsy and why I think it’s so deserving of its status as one of the greatest American musicals, is that one could talk to fans and detractors of the show all day and never hear the exact same take on Mama Rose. In spite of her dominating presence in every scene of the musical, hers is a character influenced as much by a particular actress’s interpretation as by the audience’s response to her behavior.

"Don't you DARE answer that phone when I'm yelling at you!"
That's Jean Willes quaking in her boots as Mr. Grantzinger's secretary

I’m one of those who sees Mama Rose as (to quote Lewis Carroll on the topic of unicorns) a “fascinating monster.”  She’s pitiable and perhaps sympathetic in that she’s a woman clearly driven by frustration (what outlets did a woman with her brains, drive, and ambition have in the 1920s?), selfish desire, and her own childhood abandonment; but her treatment of her daughters—all in the name of love—qualifies her as a largely detestable character.

And as a look at some of my favorite films with strong female characters will reveal (Blue Jasmine, Queen Bee, Mommie Dearest, Angel Face, The Day of the Locust, Darling, Hedda), I have a real affinity for fabulous monsters.

Rosalind Russell, in not shying away from Rose’s unpleasant side, gives a portrait of a woman of contradiction. Contradictions so keenly felt during the “Rose’s Turn” number, that by the time mother and daughter take a hesitant stab at reconciliation at the finale, the scene resonates with melancholy. Melancholy because (if you’re as old as me and your parents are no longer around) it seems to be the inevitable legacy of the adult child to one day realize that one's parents, even at their worst and most flawed, were never more or less than simply human.

"Madame Rose and her daughter Gypsy!"

 BONUS MATERIAL

The real-life Gypsy Rose Lee appeared onscreen opposite her motion picture mother,
Rosalind Russell in the 1966 comedy, The Trouble With Angels

"Mama's Talking Soft," a song composed by Styne & Sondheim for Gypsy that failed to make it into the production (it was to be a duet sung by June & Louise following "Small World"). In 1959, pop star Petula Clark recorded a cover of the song for the B-side of her single, "Where Do I Go From Here?"

"Let Me Entertain You"

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2015

INSIDE DAISY CLOVER 1965

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. It's a strange feeling, indeed, to harbor a fond memory of a film enjoyed in childhood, only to reencounter it as an adult and find yourself at a complete loss as to what captured your imagination in the first place.

Had this post been written in the recollection of the many times I enjoyed Inside Daisy Clover on late-night TV as a kid, I'm certain my comments and observations would reflect my generally positive response to this not-uninteresting-in-concept (but veering towards camp in execution), very '60s look at 1930s Hollywood and the dark underbelly of the film industry. Back when I could only see Inside Daisy Clover in black & white with commercial interruptions, I guess I was just young enough to have found the era-inappropriate music to be rousing, and the strung-together show biz clichés that make up its plot to be a bold inversion of the usual rags-to-riches success story.
So when, after many years, the opportunity arose for me to finally get a look at Inside Daisy Clover in color, digitally restored, and widescreen, I couldn't pass it up. Alas, I should have left things as they were.

Natalie Wood as Daisy Clover

Robert Redford as Wade Lewis

Christopher Plummer as Raymond Swan

Ruth Gordon as Mrs. Clover

Inside Daisy Clover (adapted by Gavin Lambert from his 1963 novel) is about two traumatic years in the life of its titular character, a 15-year-old Santa Monica beach urchin with a big voice ("I open my mouth and a song comes out") who, in 1936 Hollywood, becomes America's Little Valentine virtually overnight. Advertised at the time with the tagline "The story of what they did to a kid...," Inside Daisy Clover is a behind-the-scenes exposé of the Hollywood Dream Machine as assembly-line sweatshop. A hardhearted fantasy factory that systematically exploits its talent, treats them like property, and ultimately (and callously) discards those who are too sensitive to withstand the near-constant demoralization. All in the pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. It's a story Hollywood never seems to tire of telling about itself, this time the familiar tinsel-town pathos given a tawdry facelift by having an adolescent as the target of all the abuse. That is, of course, if you can buy 26-year-old Natalie Wood as a 15-year-old. 

Natalie Wood felt her performance was compromised when the heavily edited film (21 minutes were cut prior to release) left much of her character's motivation and voiceover narration on the cutting room floor. I shudder to think what they left out when what they left in are such piquant Daisy-isms as: "My mother says the world's a garbage dump, and we're just the flies it attracts. Maybe she's right. But when I sing, the smell doesn't seem so bad."

Two things struck me on seeing Inside Daisy Clover again after so many years: 1) A common complaint I have about '60s period films, one so pervasive I should by now accept it as a given (yet can't) is that '60s movies are notorious for always looking like the '60s, no matter what era they intend to depict. Inside Daisy Clover goes through all the trouble of changing the novel's 1950s setting to Hollywood in the 1930s, but beyond a few vintage automobiles scattered here and there, there's a notable lack of period authenticity.

I know it's partly a matter of aesthetics… '30s standards of beauty (pencil-thin eyebrows, baggy clothing, severe hairdos) can be unflattering to celebrities who still need to look alluring to their contemporary fans. But in Inside Daisy Clover, a movie I assume wants to be taken seriously, its anachronistic appearance merely comes off as lazy, cheap, and uncommitted. Compare Inside Daisy Clover's studio-bound, overlit artifice to the gritty 1930s authenticity rendered just four years later in Sydney Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. Movie fans who mourn the loss of Old Hollywood need a film like Inside Daisy Clover to remind them of what used to pass for gritty realism in movies before foreign films and Bonnie and Clyde came along to shake things up.  

Former child stars Natalie Wood and Roddy McDowall. 
McDowall (a tad overqualified for such a small role) appears as Walter Baines,
producer Raymond Swan's vaguely sinister flunky 

2) Why is it that when Hollywood attempts to be hard on itself and show the world its true face, warts and all, it comes across as being phonier than when it's feeding us platitudes and myths? Based on what's come to light over the years about the lives of countless child actors, the events of Inside Daisy Clover are far from exaggerated (although perhaps over-acted). Yet, so little of what happens onscreen feels particularly true to life. 

Part of it's due to the performances, which seldom move beyond surface indications of emotions. Another part points to the writing. Everything grim in the movie has been unnecessarily pitched to melodrama (Plummer's Swan only lacks a top hat, cape, and a handlebar mustache to twirl), and those aspects that should be emotionally moving or affecting instead feel under-directed and unengaging. 

For example, Daisy's frequent outbursts and eruptions of temper have all the requisite sound and fury, but there's no anguish behind them. I suspect they're supposed to be born of Daisy's inability to articulate complex feelings, but in Natalie Wood's hands, her often one-note performance turns a young girl's pain into a series of shrill tantrums.

Loopy
Daisy Clover's nervous breakdown while looping a song in a sound booth has become a camp touchstone over the years. I found it quite harrowing when I first saw it as a kid. Now, Natalie's histrionics are overshadowed by my taking note of the inspired sound editing, which is quite marvelously done.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

For reasons that make sense only to me, Inside Daisy Clover remains weirdly engrossing and watchable in spite of not being in the least bit good. How is this possible? Well, chiefly due to my certainty that the entire film is haunted by the campy ghost of Patty Duke as Neely O'Hara in Valley of the Dolls. I can't help it. When I watch Inside Daisy Clover—from fade-in to fade-out—I can't stop drawing parallels between Clover's story and that of the pint-sized trainwreck at the center of Jacqueline Susann's iconic soap opera. That and thinking how much better—and more hilarious—this film would be had Patty Duke been cast instead of Natalie Wood. (Even Clover's "The story of what they did to a kid..." tagline recalls Dolls' "Neely...such a nice kid. Until someone put her name in lights and turned her into a lush!")

I consider myself a fan of the immensely appealing Natalie Wood, but at age 19, Patty Duke would have made for a much more persuasive 15-year-old. Not to mention the fact that Duke's less glamorous, tomboyish looks fit the character better than Wood's delicate, inescapably mature countenance. In addition, Duke's natural speaking voice has the low register and rough edge that Natalie Wood works so conspicuously hard to capture in the film's early scenes. 

The Circus is a Wacky World / Give a Little More
As much as I like her in Splendor in the Grass, I truly find Natalie Wood (who campaigned aggressively for this role) terribly miscast in Inside Daisy Clover. I would have much preferred to see Patty Duke or Sally Field in the part. That's Duke pictured above as Neely O'Hara, just minutes before getting her big song cut from Helen Lawson's show. For the uninitiated: the only hit that comes out of a Helen Lawson show is Helen Lawson.

In both form and function, Daisy Clover IS Neely O'Hara to me, and Inside Daisy Clover is full of scenes that recall or inadvertently reference Valley of the Dolls and Patty Duke's legendarily comic dramatic performance. 

Both Neely and Daisy are given to striking "little toughie" postures to convey defiance. Their careers are chronicled with climbing-the-ladder-of-success montages. Each marries a gay or rumored-to-be gay husband. Each suffers a nervous breakdown while trying to manage self-destructive behavior patterns.  And, of course, both Neely and Daisy are singing stars with dubbed voices. Perhaps best of all; Daisy's and Neely's songs were penned by the same composers: husband and wife team Dory & Andre Previn—two individuals who never heard a Vegas-style musical cliché they didn't like.

Natalie Wood and Robert Redford doing what they do best in Inside Daisy Clover...looking pretty.
Wood and Redford reteamed in 1966 for This Property is Condemned

PERFORMANCES
I hate to say it, but 26-year-old Natalie Wood plays Daisy Clover as Peck's Bad Boy with bosoms. She doesn't inhabit the character so much as reduce the rather enigmatically-written teen down to a series of broadly drawn attitudes. There's that awful pixie/waif haircut wig (and if it isn't a wig, Ms. Wood should have sued); the freckles; the studied, ungainly gait; and let's not forget the artfully applied smudges of dirt to the requisite nose and chin to convey pugnacious spunk. 

In lieu of characterization, we're given a too-mature actress in '60s false eyelashes and eyeliner, trying too hard to convey spirited adolescence by utilizing cartoonishly rendered explosions of piss and vinegar feistiness. 

Riled-Up Ragamuffin
I half expected her to sound like Edward G. Robinson in this scene

Like Elizabethg Taylor, Natalie Wood is an actress that needs a strong director. And when she has one (Rebel Without a Cause, Splendor in the Grass, Love With the Proper Stranger), she always delivers. It's hard to guess what director Robert Mulligan was going for, but Wood's performance during the first ten minutes of Inside Daisy Clover borders on amateurish. She's so unpersuasive in these scenes that it takes the film a long time to regain its footing. Wood gets better once she drops the butch act, but not by much. I don't know if this is considered one of the worst performances of her career, but I'll wager it's pretty close. 

Ruth Gordon was nominated for an Oscar for her role as Daisy's eccentric (what else?) mother.
To be fair, this was Gordon's return to the screen after a 22-year absence. The Academy had no way of knowing she'd be giving variations on this same performance for the next 20.

My favorite performance in the film is given by Christopher Plummer as the ironfisted producer, Raymond Swan. Plummer plays him in an amusingly reptilian manner—holding himself very still, lizard-like eyes darting about—making his scenes the most compelling in the movie. But, unfortunately, the same can't be said for gorgeous superstar-to-be Robert Redford. His method of conveying ladykiller charm is to precede each line of dialog with a drop of his chin and a purposeful stare upwards into the eyes of whomever he's talking to...like a superannuated member of some boy band.

Daisy gets Schooled

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

I do have a weak spot for Inside Daisy Clover's two big production numbers. The songs: You're Gonna Hear from Me, and The Circus is a Wacky World are arranged in a manner that plants them firmly in the mid-1960s, making Daisy's 1930s musical clips look like excerpts from a TV variety special. The numbers are staged by choreographer Herbert Ross (he did the numbers for Funny Girl - 1968), who would later make his film directing debut with Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) and go on to have a successful, Oscar-nominated career as a film director and producer. 

"Listen, world, you're gonna love me!"
Intergalactic megalomaniac Daisy Clover foists herself on an unsuspecting planet

Like Sammy Davis Jr's I Gotta Be Me, Frank Sinatra's My Way, Anthony Newley's Gonna Build a Mountain, or Helen Lawson's immortal I'll Plant My Own Tree, Daisy Clover's You're Gonna Hear from Me is one of those self-aggrandizing show-biz anthems beloved of aging pop stars and Vegas lounge singers. Though the song failed to nab that Best Song Oscar nomination it was so blatantly seeking, in 2003, Barbra Streisand covered it for her The Movie Album.

The Pepto-Bismol-pink musical extravaganza, The Circus is a Wacky World stands as Inside Daisy Clover's metaphor for the phoniness of Hollywood. It's also a melody so infectious that it takes several days to dislodge it from your brain after seeing the film. 

Character actor and vaudevillian song and dance man Paul Hartman (best known as Emmett the handyman on The Andy Griffith Show) is seen here with Natalie Wood in a deleted scene. Most likely from the film-within-a-film "Dime Store Kid."

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

It's difficult to imagine how any well-constructed film can survive the excision of 21 minutes of footage, so perhaps one of my biggest dissatisfactions with Inside Daisy Clover might, in part, be the result of how much had to be left out. As it stands, Daisy's disillusionment with Hollywood is near-instantaneous. We're never given even one scene where she's happy to have her dream come true.

That being said, it's still unlikely that Inside Daisy Clover would ever register with me again as it did when I was young. For one, when I was a kid, EVERYBODY looked older, and it didn't bother me so much how little Natalie Wood looked or acted like a teen. Now, I can't get past it. Similarly, the then-shocking revelations of the film—bisexuality, adultery, family dysfunction, child labor abuses—lack much gravity in a screenplay where the characters are given so little dimension. 

Katharine Bard is really rather good as Raymond Swan's neglected wife, Melora.
There are better screencaps I could have used of her, but the ever-shaggable Robert Redford is just so darn cute here

On a positive note, I must say that Inside Daisy Clover looks rather spectacular in widescreen DVD. 

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES:

Christopher Plummer
I got this autograph back in 1983 when I was taking dance classes in New York. Plummer was walking down the street somewhere in the theater district, and I asked if he would be so kind as to sign this (a schedule from Jo-Jos Dance Studio). Of course, I had one of those cheap pens that made you scratch the paper just to get ink to come out. That accounts for the undecipherable first word preceding "...of best wishes" in the autograph above. As I recall, he was very courteous, very tall, very tan (this was dead of winter, mind you), and VERY handsome!

Inside Daisy Clover opened in Los Angeles on
Wednesday, December 22, 1965 at the Pantages Theater on Hollywood Blvd.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013