FUNNY LADY 1975

I had such a good time watching the Joan Crawford/ Bette Davis cable TV series Feud that when its eight-episode run on the FX channel was over, it left me with both a lingering taste for biographical films that play fast and loose with the facts, and a hankering for outsized performances by actors whose scrupulously-engineered screen personas are inextricably linked to their public image.

So naturally, I thought of Barbra Streisand. That is, Barbra Streisand by way of Fanny Brice; Fanny Brice by way of Funny Girl; and ultimately, Streisand and Brice by way of the misguided, contractually-mandated Funny Girl sequel—that rapturous, cotton candy fashion parade, ego-stroke of a musical guilty pleasure known as Funny Lady.

Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice

James Caan as Billy Rose

Omar Sharif as Nick Arnstein 

Roddy McDowall as Bobby Moore
(I wanted to give McDowall his own screencap, but the
poor guy hasn't a single close-up in the entire film)

When the narrative of the 1964 Broadway musical and subsequent 1968 film adaptation of Funny Girl concluded sometime in the late 1920s, we all knew there was more to the Fanny Brice story (punctuated by brief forays into film and television, Brice's success as a radio star lasted up to her death in 1951). Whether or not that story was anything worth telling is another matter.

Funny Lady (which some of you may know by its alternate title: “The Back of James Caan’s Head”) is ostensibly the continuing saga of Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice, who, when last seen in Funny Girl, was photogenically torchin’ on a dark stage, crying her Egyptian-eyelinered eyes out after having been dumped by recently-sprung-from-jail-for-embezzlement hubby Nicky Arnstein.

An admitted highly-fictionalized account of Brice’s later years, Funny Lady picks up roughly where Funny Girl left off (very roughly, in fact); with Brice shown backstage, still-pining-for-Nicky, being served final divorce papers by Arnstein in absentia. Romantic rejection of this sort is usually the stuff of tragedy, but as this sentimental setback grants Streisand the first of many opportunities to fling her head back in classic “suffering diva” mode (treating fans to the actress’s regal profile and shapely septum) Funny Lady instantly establishes an unfortunate precedent for a musical entertainment: Streisand is at her best when Fanny is at her worst.

Indeed, given the degree of care Oscar-nominated cinematographer James Wong Howe lavishes on La Streisand when in the throes of heartbreak, from a fan's point of view, the glow of a happy Fanny Brice is no match for the luminous sheen of a miserable Barbra Streisand. So, in essence, the worse things go for Fanny, the better things go for the Streisand-watchers. This is going to be a fun musical.

 Am I Blue?

What's bad for Miss Brice is super for Streisand-watchers 

At what point in history this all transpires is rather nebulously conveyed, for the film’s vaguely delineated timeline is actually a mashup of Brice’s real-life 1927 divorce, the 1929 stock market crash, and the onset of the Great Depression. However long it's been, clearly enough time has elapsed allowing for Fanny’s transmogrification from the optimistic, likable, gently self-deprecating “People” person of Funny Girl, to the overdressed, perpetually scowling, foul-mouthed know-it-all of Funny Lady.

Funny Girl was the rags-to-riches, broken-heart-for-every-bulb-on Broadway saga of a gangly waif whose prodigious talent triumphed over humble beginnings and unconventional beauty. Audiences responded to it because it took the usual Horatio Alger clichés of the celebrity bio, added a duckling-into-a-swan fairy-tale, and crossed it with a Cinderella love story.

Funny Lady, on the other hand, showcases a Fanny Brice who’s a firmly established star. Successful, confident, glamorous (to an almost parodic degree), calling her own shots, and without a single insecure bone in her body. This proves marvelous for Streisand, who gets to look fabulous throughout without once having to endure a single joke made at the expense of her looks; dominate in numerous scenes depicting her offering people professional advice and basically telling others how they can better do their jobs; and finally, she doesn’t have to be the least bit funny. This is thanks to a screenplay that has characters tell her…at regular intervals…to her face…just how delightfully funny she is.

Funny Girl was a Cinderella fantasy, which everyone loves. Funny Lady is built on a Have-It-All Fantasy (I have talent, wealth, fame, and beauty...why can't I find love?) which is kinda annoying

A screenplay highlighting a self-possessed Fanny Brice no-doubt proved instrumental in getting Streisand to agree to appear in a sequel she really didn’t want to do, but the lack of character conflict leaves Funny Lady with almost no narrative thrust. Sure, there’s a Depression going on, but the film has Streisand parade around in so many outlandishly glamorous Bob Mackie/Ray Aghayan outfits, Brice merely comes off as living in a bubble of privilege.
Similarly, the plot sets up Brice as professionally rudderless in her post-Ziegfeld years, weathering the financial storm of the Great Depression by having to team up with novice-showman/seasoned-huckster Billy Rose in order to stay afloat. But after approximately two lines of expositional dialogue and a couple of brief exchanges, Bruce’s money woes are quickly dispatched, never to be mentioned again. 

Down on her luck, Fanny Brice goes slumming in a casual daytime frock

No, Funny Lady’s single dramatic arc (milked for all its worth for close to 2½ hours) concerns whether or not Fanny can shed her romantic illusions about the dashing Nick Arnstein in time to realize that falling “in like” with the sloppy, unsophisticated, very Henry Street, Billy Rose is perhaps where her happiness lies. But even THIS minimal, not terribly compelling conflict is undermined by the casting of athletic, macho James Caan as the diminutive (4' 11"), unprepossessing Billy Rose. What could have been an interesting gender-reversal of Funny Girl’s “opposites attract” relationship is reduced to Fanny having to choose between the extraordinarily handsome guy who says “tomato” and the extraordinarily handsome guy who says “tomahto.”

Streisand in an interview; "It comes down to whom the audience wants to see me kiss.
Robert Blake [an early Billy Rose contender], no. James, Caan, yes."

  

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I get a kick out of Funny Lady in spite of the fact that it’s fairly useless as biography, bloodless as a love story, and too disjointed and episodic to even satisfy as a cohesive narrative (it’s impossible to keep track of how much time has elapsed between scenes). But Funny Lady works best, makes the most sense, and proves both an invaluable source of information and entertainment when taken for what it really is: a Barbra Streisand report card.  

Here, Streisand grants the audience permission to get a load of her

Think about it. Beyond the old “If they liked it once, they’ll love it twice” maxim that serves as the inspirational catalyst for most movie sequels; the only reason Funny Lady exists at all is that Streisand owed Funny Girl producer Ray Stark one more film on their four-picture contract. Press releases claim the reluctant Streisand had initially informed Stark that he’d have to sue her before she’d do a Funny Girl sequel, but changed her mind after reading the script.

Not buying it. Anybody who’s seen Funny Lady knows that its script is more likely to instigate a lawsuit, not stop one. No. My gut tells me that Streisand agreed to appear in the sequel because, after a long musical hiatus (her last was 1970s On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) Funny Lady provided her with a showy vehicle that amounts to being a $7.5 million dollar progress report showcasing how far she’s come in the seven years since Funny Girl.

Funny Lady is an investors presentation of a movie, furnishing fans and the public at large irrefutable evidence, in spite of Oscar-winning Johnny-come-latelys like Time magazine’s “New Miss Show Biz” Liza Minnelli (Funny Lady enlists the talents of Cabaret’s songwriting team [Kander & Ebb] and screenwriter [Jay Presson Allen]), that Barbra Streisand—after one Oscar; eight films; and countless albums, awards, and TV specials—still has the ol’ musical comedy poop.

Funny Lady is Streisand as she enters the most self-aware (and self-serious) phase of her screen career. In this film Streisand moves to shed the old screen persona she helped create—that of the self-effacing, pigeon-toed kook with lungs of brass—and presents herself as strong, self-confident, glamorous, and in control. Admirable qualities, to be sure, but not exactly conducive to fun. In fact, this Fanny is a bit of a pill.

In place of the ingratiating, eager-to-please woman we met in 1968, 1975 Streisand doesn’t appear particularly concerned with whether or not you like her. You’re welcome to worship her if you like, but this Streisand doesn’t need your validation. Nor does she need anyone to tell her how fabulous she is. She knows it. (In fact, this is the least smiling Streisand ever…she actually looks angry 90% of the time. But as any woman who’s been told by a perfect stranger on the street to “Smile!” can tell you, a woman choosing NOT to smile is practically an act of social rebellion.)

Let's Hear It For Me...or else

PERFORMANCES

Leaving Streisand aside for the moment (dare I?), I’d like to give a quick shout-out to all those shuttled to the wings while the funny lady commands center stage.

James Caan is one of the more underrated actors to come out of the ‘70s, and I’m as guilty as the next of never quite giving this versatile actor his due. While I’m of the mind that Robert Blake would have made the most intriguing Billy Rose, James Caan is no slouch. He's actually very good here, playing Rose as a fast-talking sharpie reminiscent of Jimmy Cagney in comedy mode. He sings well, is charming, and as Streisand co-stars go, he’s one of the strongest. Too bad the overall effectiveness of his performance is sabotaged by editing which relegates him to co-star status rather than leading man.

For a gay icon with a gay son, Barbra Streisand has a pretty shady reputation for onscreen gay representation. Several of her films have characters uttering homophobic slurs (in The Owl and the Pussycat and For Pete’s Sake, she’s the culprit), and in Funny Lady, the points Roddy McDowall’s openly gay character gets for inclusion (he’s her best friend and world’s oldest chorus boy) are subverted by a script which seldom misses an opportunity to refer to him in “period-appropriate” derogatory ways.

I can’t speak to McDowall’s performance because, as in 1965s Inside Daisy Clover, he doesn’t actually have anything to do, but there’s something old-Hollywood comforting about seeing him.

It’s doubtful Tony Award-winning performer Ben Vereen had a very sizable role to begin with, but most of what he did contribute became a casualty of all the editing Funny Lady underwent before release. Playing vaudeville entertainer Bert Robinson (a fictional combination of real-life artists Bert Williams and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Vereen has no interaction with the main cast at all, and with the three-minute “So Long Honey Lamb” number cut to three seconds (a bullet dodged, in my opinion); only Vereen’s dynamic singing and dancing in “Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie” remains. He’s marvelous, of course, and gives the film a much-needed kick in the pants, energy-wise, but it feels disembodied from the rest of the action, like those Lena Horne novelty sequences in MGM musicals which were filmed in ways that made them easy to be removed in Southern theaters.

It’s poor Omar Sharif who fares the worst, however. His character is set up to be knocked down; so much dialogue is given over to Streisand (“No, you don’t have any lines here. It’s my turn” she actually says to him in one of Funny Lady’s many startlingly meta moments) he merely shows up, smiles, and bows out. Twice!

Streisand draws our attention to her favorite co-star: Her nails

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Like a great many musicals, Funny Lady is at its best when no one is talking. The film looks spectacular, thanks to the contributions of no less than three on/off cinematographers: Vilmos Zsigmond, Ernest Laszlo, James Wong Howe; and the nifty musical score is a combination of period classics and five new numbers by John Kander & Fred Ebb (though the fan-worship pandering of “How Lucky Can you Get?” and “Let’s Hear It For Me” is so shameless you might find yourself blushing). Adding to the film’s pluses are the witty, Oscar-nominated costumes by Mackie/Aghayan, which capture the theatrical, over-the-top appeal of classic Hollywood musicals.

Streisand in a little knockabout crowd-pleaser she throws on
for those nights when she just doesn't care what she looks like  

Funny Lady’s production numbers play better now than they did in 1975 when the musical arrangements and intentionally garish costuming made 1930s Broadway look like 1970s outtakes from The Carol Burnett Show (not exactly a coincidence since Funny Lady features Burnett show alumni Peter Matz [Oscar-nominated musical director], Mackie [costumes], and several members of Carol Burnett's dance chorus.)

The "Great Day" number featuring Streisand surrounded by an all-Black dance ensemble (top), perhaps found its inspiration in the similarly staged "High/Low" number Ethel Merman performed with an all-Black chorus in 1936 musical Strike Me Pink (bottom). It's wonderful, but the cringe optics of Streisand as the Great White Goddess has aged terribly. 

Although I hate it when movies feature scenes of seasoned theater professionals breaking
character simply when things go wrong on stage, I absolutely adored this set design

You're forgiven if you assume the above screencaps are from The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, The Donny & Marie Show, The Captain and Tennille, or The Brady Bunch Hour...all '70s TV variety shows looked like this.

Portraying a Friend of Fanny Brice Proves Risky Business
Actress Carole Wells, as Brice's friend Norma Butler in Funny Lady, suffered a fate similar to that of Anne Francis in Funny Girl. By that I mean, finding that the bulk of her scenes had been left on the cutting room floor

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Funny Lady debuted in March of 1975, the very same month that saw the release of Ken Russell’s Tommy and Peter Bogdanovich’s At Long Last Love. Tommy was such a revelatory thrill to me that I went to see it practically every weekend during its entire run at SF’s Northpoint Theater, so by the time I got around to seeing Funny Lady, I had grown so besotted with Tommy’s mind-blowing innovation that Streisand’s film seemed positively underwhelming by comparison. Having not yet seen Funny Girl at this point—Funny Lady was just my third Streisand film—I didn’t even have sentimentality on my side (the significance of that yellow rose featured so prominently in the film’s advertising was lost on me). It was only when Funny Lady was in second-run and came to the Alhambra Theater (where I ushered) that I came to appreciate it: the patchy musical playing significantly better when viewed à la carte.

Critics seemed to hate the unconvincing old-age makeup used in Funny Lady's final scenes, but I thought Caan and Streisand looked absolutely adorable. Certainly preferable to when in 1991 Caan teamed up with Bette Midler in For The Boys and the old-age makeup applied made both actors look like reptile people

These days, Funny Lady remains both a guilty pleasure and the last of the enjoyable Streisand musicals. More Grande Lady than Funny Lady, it’s a marvelous film to revisit whenever I find myself in need of a Streisand fix.

A Streisand fix being akin to my Joan Crawford fixation: both being stars of such unique talents; they fascinate even when they’re awful. I like Barbra Streisand considerably more as a singer than an actress, but in these cookie-cutter times when I honestly can’t tell a bland Chris Pine from a vanilla Bradley Cooper, I find I’ve grown fonder (or at least more tolerant of) her distinctive screen persona. When Streisand is on her game (Funny Girl, On a Clear Day, What’s Up, Doc?) there isn’t anyone better. And while Funny Lady is not much of a showcase for Streisand the actress or comedienne, it’s a helluva showcase for Streisand the star.

BONUS MATERIAL

Distributed in theater lobbies: My Funny Lady promotional foldout from 1975.  

For those interested, the terrific The Barbra Streisand Archives offers more info than you'll likely ever want to know about the making of Funny Lady. From deleted scenes and interviews to costume sketches and behind-the-scenes trivia.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2017

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 to know just what it was that 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 '30s 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 factory that systematically exploits its talent, treats them like property, 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 this abuse. Providing, of course, 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 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)-'60s movies are notorious for always looking like the '60s, no matter what era they try to depict. Inside Daisy Clover takes the trouble of changing the novel's 1950s setting to Hollywood in the 1930s. But beyond a few vintage automobiles thrown at us, there seems to be little interest in period authenticity.

I know it's partly a matter of aesthetics… '30s standards of beauty (pencil-thin eyebrows, narrow silhouettes, 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 (over-acted, perhaps). Yet so little of what happens feels particularly true to life. Part of it's due to the acting, which seldom moves beyond the surface. The other 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 all that which should be moving feels under-directed and under-performed. For example, Daisy's frequent outbursts and eruptions of temper have all the requisite sound and fury, but there's no anguish behind it… Instead, Natalie Wood's 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, unavoidably 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 lady falls victim to self-destructive behavior and suffers a mental breakdown. And, of course, both Neely and Daisy are singing stars with dubbed voices. And 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

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 (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) might be the result of how much had to be left out.

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!

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013