Wednesday, March 9, 2016

I SAW WHAT YOU DID 1965

My not exactly unfounded opinion of gimmick-driven showman/producer/director William Castle is that he was the man with a Copper Touch: the genial, bargain-basement horror schlockmeister had the uncanny talent for making everything he came into contact with feel somehow cheap and derivative.

Take I Saw What You Did, Castle’s teen-targeted follow-up to the poorly-received Barbara Stanwyck feature The Night Walker (a film which, in nabbing the big-name star, he’d hoped would duplicate the success of Joan Crawford’s Strait-Jacket); its clever, harmless-prank-gone-wrong premise—which seemed to also anticipate the '80s trend in teen horror films—is actually a pretty nifty and original idea for a suspense thriller. But in William Castle's unremarkable hands I Saw What You Did comes off as a form of lukewarm hybrid: The World of Henry Orient meets “The Telephone Hour” number from Bye Bye Birdie, as envisioned as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
Joan Crawford as Amy Nelson 
Andi Garrett as Libby Mannering
Sara Lane as Kit Austin
John Ireland as Steve Marak
Seventeen-year-old Libby Mannering (Garrett) lives way out in the fog-bound boonies with her parents (Leif Erickson and Patricia Breslin), kid sister Tess (Sheryl Locke), and a menagerie of dogs, ducks, ponies, and goats. While her parents are away on an overnight trip, Libby invites best friend Kit (Lane) over and the girls amuse themselves—as teenagers with names like Kit and Libby are wont to do—by making prank phone calls to strangers.
Picking random numbers from the phone book, they pretend to be mysterious “other women,” children abandoned at movie theaters, or merely poke fun at people with “asking for it” names like John Hamburger and Donald I. Leak. What sets the suspense plot in motion is when they start calling people and whispering cryptically into the mouthpiece: “I saw what you did, and I know who you are.” A harmless enough, all-purpose head-game that spearheads a passel of trouble when it just so happens one of their phone-victims (John Ireland) has just killed his wife and takes the call seriously. Dead seriously.
I Saw What You Did marks the film debuts of high-schoolers Andi Garrett (17) & Sara Lane (15).
Making Sharyl Locke (as Tess Mannering), 9-years-old and already two films under her belt, the show business veteran in this shot

So where does top-billed Joan Crawford fit into all this? Joan plays John Ireland’s wealthy, single, 60-something neighbor with the pre-teen babysitter name of Amy Nelson. Amy, whom Ireland has been carrying on with behind his wife’s now knife-perforated back, is part Gladys Kravitz, part Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction; so small wonder he’s beginning to show signs of having second thoughts about her before the film even clues us in on the nature of their relationship.
Crawford’s role is really just a high-profile cameo, but, Crawford being Crawford, she makes every onscreen second count by giving each of her scenes at least ten times the emotion required.
I Saw What You Did reunited real-life (clandestine) lovers and co-stars Joan Crawford and John Ireland, who had appeared together in 1955's Queen Bee.

I Saw What You Did was adapted from the 1964 novel Out of the Dark by Ursula Curtiss. I’ve never read the book, but I have a hard time imagining it having as much trouble establishing a sustained and consistent tone as Castle does with his film. Sabotaged at every turn by a distracting (and annoying) musical score better suited to a family sitcom or Hanna-Barbera cartoon, I Saw What You Did is a pleasant enough diversion, working in fits and starts as a light comedy and taut suspenser. That being said, the film rarely ever seems to be of a single mind about itself, and comes off like three TV programs spliced together to make a feature film.

Show #1 is a pleasant teen comedy of the Gidget/The Patty Duke stripe, comically exploring the social habits of ‘60s teens. Show #2 is one of those twisty noir thrillers in which lovers with secrets to hide keep playing one-upmanship games on one another. Show #3—the core premise of the film and most effective element (when it’s allowed to be)—the harmless prank that’s taken too far and goes dangerously awry.
Although 60-something Joan Crawford had no problem portraying a woman 30 years her junior when she subbed for her daughter in the soap opera Secret Storm in 1968, Crawford is said to have balked at the idea of her adoptive daughter, 25-year-old Christina, campaigning for one of the teenage roles in I Saw What You Did. Three years later, Christina (who clearly couldn't take a hint) hit the same maternal roadblock when she rallied for the role of Crawford's daughter in Berserk. A role that went to Judy Geeson. 

For all his faults as a director, William Castle, thanks largely to his eye for bizarre material and his naïve genius for mining unintentional camp in every performance and line reading; makes entertaining movies that remain watchable almost in parallel proportion to one’s awareness that they’re not really very good.

I Saw What You Did benefits from an engaging cast of youngsters and a genuinely suspenseful premise those of us of a certain age can relate to (with today’s caller ID technology, I don’t suppose kids make crank calls anymore…not with the sophisticated joys of cyberbullying and fake identities to distract them). Though conspicuously padded out and sorely lacking in as much Joan Crawford “realness” as I’d like, I Saw What You Did is situated somewhere between being one of Castle’s best (Homicidal, Strait-Jacket) and his worst (Zotz, The Old Dark House, The Busy Body).
Leif Erickson and Patricia Breslin as Dave and Ellie Mannering
Both are William Castle alumni: Erickson appeared in Strait-Jacket, and Breslin starred in Homicidal 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM 
As much as I’m entertained by I Saw What You Did, there’s no denying that frustration is as defining a characteristic of the William Castle movie viewing experience as cheesy promotional gimmicks. Frustration born of seeing one promising story idea after another given the blandest, flattest treatment possible.
I'm not sure whether it was ego or ambition that led Castle to invest his meager talents toward trying to emulate the careers of his idols Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, but whatever it was had the double-edged effect of motivating him to indulge his strengths (producing and promotion) while blinding him to his weaknesses (directing).

As I’ve stated before, William Castle isn’t a bad director in the Ed Wood vein, he’s mostly just artless and mediocre. In fact, had Castle not been so consumed with wanting to be one of the big players in motion pictures, I’m sure he would have found much more success (and considerably more respect) in television; a realm where mediocrity is not only encouraged but in most cases required.
William Castle - Master of Composition,  Blocking, and Framing
This kind of pedestrian, line 'em up, nail the camera to the floor shot would look right at home on 1965 television. Indeed, shorn of about 20 minutes of its running time, I Saw What You Did would probably have played better as a 1-hour episode of one of those suspense anthology TV programs so popular at the time

That being said, I’d be lying if I inferred that I don’t find some of Castle’s movies to be a great deal of fun. And by fun I mean disposably watchable fun in the way that B-movies and Drive-In exploitation films are fun. One enjoys them because, by virtue of their wholesale inconsequence, they give us permission to indulge the junk-food side of the cineaste appetite.

PERFORMANCES 
The stars of I Saw What You Did are the two teenage “discoveries” making their film debuts: Andi Garrett and Sara Lane. Speaking volumes about Castle’s directorial skills, the observable amateurism of these neophytes blends seamlessly with the caliber of performance typical of any William Castle production. In fact, both girls are engagingly natural in their roles, and awkward in ways both appropriate and believable to their characters. Little 9-year old Sharyl Locke, however, poses no immediate threat to the memory of Margaret O’Brien.
An interesting story angle centering around adolescent sexual precocity is introduced when the girls, intrigued by Steve Marak's voice on the phone, stake out his house in hopes of 
getting a glimpse of the "sexy" older man.

After hitting pay dirt with Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket, William Castle hoped to corral her for The Night Walker, but she declined, having already signed to reteam with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? co-star Bette Davis in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte. When Crawford got "sick" during the making of that film (sick of Bette Davis) and had to drop out, Castle offered Crawford, an uninsurable health risk, top-billing, and a $50,000 paycheck for a 4-day cameo in this little opus. 
Ever the style-icon, Joan Crawford's elaborate bouffant looks to have inspired
 the coiffure adopted by Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
In her forays into low-budget cinema, Crawford took to wearing clothes from her own closet.  
This extreme example of suburban glamour (outsized  hair, scoop-necked frock, and ginormous necklace) calls to mind the Afrocentric glamour getup of another diva favorite: Diana Ross in Mahogany

Crawford’s character and story arc is not the major focus of I Saw What You Did; but judging by the intensity of her performance, you probably would have had trouble convincing Crawford of that fact. Because I’m such a Crawford fan, I think she’s wonderful in that camp, overarching way that typified so many of her late-career performances. I can never tell if she outacts the others or merely overacts, but every one of her scenes is charged with a tension and electricity noticeably absent elsewhere in the film.
"I'm going to give you a nice, stiff drink."
(followed by the most superfluous sentence in movie history)
"I'm going to have one myself!"

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Did I mention how much I disliked this film’s musical score? Oh, I did?…well, when the music isn’t doing its best to subvert and undercut the onscreen action, I Saw What You Did mines a pretty fair amount of suspense out of the mounting trouble the girls unwittingly get themselves into with their silly phone prank. There’s a brutal Psycho-inspired murder early on that could have been very disturbing had it not been shot so incompetently (thanks, Mr. Castle, I guess), and since Castle has such a reputation for derivative homages, a “surprise” murder in the third act comes as no surprise at all. Rather, it feels like a narrative inevitability that simply took a very long time in coming.
Luckily, Joan Crawford is on hand to provide the one truly chilling moment of the film.
Catching Libby peering into Steve's window and jumping to the conclusion that the gray-curious teen has DILF designs on her man, Joan (ahem, Amy) launches into a memorably violent assault and slurred-speech tirade that brings those "night raids" passages in Christina Crawford's Mommie Dearest to vivid, blood-curdling life.


THE STUFF OF DREAMS
I grew up as the only boy among four sisters, so the rare occurrence of a movie with a teenage girl as the protagonist was well-nigh a must-see TV occasion in our house. I Saw What You Did, The World of Henry Orient (1964), and The Trouble With Angels (1966) are all a kind of happy blur in my mind being that each was such a favorite of my sisters when we were young. I cannot even count how often I've seen these films, yet every time I see them it brings back memories of occasions when my sisters and I would sit around the family B&W television set and laugh.
Another reason I Saw What You Did holds such a special place in my heart is because when our parents were away, my sisters and I played similar silly phone pranks. Nothing as provocative as what's said in the film—and mind you, I'm not the least bit proud of this—but we'd call up pizza and take-out joints and place party-sized orders for addresses we got out of the phone book. The only variance I recall was to call strangers and pretend to be a radio DJ offering a chance to win a prize if they could answer a simple question (Q: Who's the sexiest male recording artist today? A: Tom Jones). I have no idea what prize we offered or how the hell we even got away with it, what with our kiddie-sounding voices, but in those pre-video game/internet days, we kids had to find our fun where we could. Ah, youth!
If in the final analysis, I Saw What You Did fails to live up to the level of thrills promised on this high-strung poster, it nevertheless remains, thanks largely to the deeply-in-earnest contributions of Joan Crawford, a movie I enjoy a great deal. Like one of those not-very-scary house of horrors at small-town amusement parks.


BONUS MATERIAL


Sara Lane & Sharyl Lock pose with one of the oversized phones William Castle arranged to have placed outside select theaters to promote the film. According to his memoirs, when the movie resulted in a rash of crank calls in the cities showing the film, the phone company had the prop phones removed


                                                                                           ZombosCloset.com
I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I really hate the musical score for I Saw What You Did. Oh, I did? Well, wouldn't you know it; in addition to the usual William Castle gimmicks: intended but never used - seat belts for the prevention of you being shocked out of your seat; there was an actual 45 single of the vocal version of the I Saw What You Did theme song sung by a girl-group calling themselves The Telltales. Music by longtime William Castle composer Van Alexander, lyrics by Jerry Keller, a singer/songwriter who had a pop hit in 1959 "Here Comes Summer"  (which is actually pretty good). The song is about as awful as you'd imagine it to be, but since you'll have the instrumental version stuck in your head for hours after seeing this film, you might as well check it out with vocals HERE.

I Saw What You Did was updated and remade as a TV movie in 1988 (cue the fried perms and shoulder pads) with Shawnee Smith and Tammy Lauren as the phone-cradling teens. Brothers Robert and David Carradine co-star. 

I Saw What You Did, And I Know Who You Are

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2016

Monday, February 29, 2016

THE HEIRESS 1949

"I'm sure you recognize this lovely melody as 'Stranger in Paradise.' But did you know that the original theme is from the 'Polovtsian Dance No. 2' by Borodin? So many of the melodies of well-known popular songs were actually written by the great masters…."

Thus began the TV commercial for 120 Music Masterpieces, a four-LP set of classical music selections offered by Columbia House and Vista Marketing from 1971 to 1984. This ubiquitous and long-running commercial featured British character actor John Williams (famous for the Hitchcock films Dial M for Murder and To Catch a Thief, but known in our household as the "fake Mr. French" from the sitcom Family Affair) touting the joys of discovering how many classical melodies were appropriated for contemporary pop songs.

This commercial and Williams' cultured English accent unfailingly come to mind whenever I watch The Heiress. The reason being that The Heiress' oft-repeated love theme—the 1784 Jean-Paul-Egide Martini classical composition Plaisir d'Amour (The Joys of Love)—had its melody borrowed for the popular ballad Can't Help Falling in Love in the 1961 film Blue Hawaii. The unfortunate result of all this is that every time the melody is played in the movie (and that's quite a lot), it evokes for me not Victorian-era romance, but Vegas-era Elvis Presley.
Ever the Method actor, Clift learned to play the piano for this scene
in which Morris sings The Joys of Love to Catherine

This pop music cross-referencing has always only had the effect of cheapening the original compositions for me. Coming as it did a full 12 years before Elvis serenaded Joan Blackman in Blue Hawaii, it's not The Heiress's fault Elvis's version (never a favorite) is so hotwired into my brain that I fairly wince every time Plaisir d'Amour swells on the soundtrack, wrenching me out of The Heiress' scrupulously rendered 19th century New York, and thrusting me onto some kind of Gilligan's Island vision of Hawaii. (I react similarly to the now-distracting use of 1939's Somewhere Over The Rainbow in the 1941 film noir I Wake Up Screaming.) Happily, my personal aversion to the song Plaisir d'Amour and its use in the film's score (something I might share with the film's Oscar-winning/Oscar-disowning composer Aaron Copland) is the sole complaint I have with William Wyler's classic romantic melodrama, The Heiress.
Olivia de Havilland as Catherine Sloper
Montgomery Clift as Morris Townsend
Ralph Richardson as Dr. Austin Sloper
Miriam Hopkins as Lavinia Penniman
The Heiress is one of my favorite popcorn movies. And that's "popcorn movie" in the old-fashioned sense: an enjoyably entertaining film, well-acted, with a good story intelligently told, no heavy message. Not the current definition signifying a check-your-brain-at-the-door exercise in sophomoric cretinism (cue my usual Adam Sandler, Fast & Furious diatribe).
Based on the 1947 Broadway play by Ruth & Augustus Goetz, which itself was adapted from Henry James' 1880 novel Washington Square, The Heiress is a serious drama, to be sure. But anything more profound to be unearthed in its subtext regarding the emotionally stifling social class system or the lingering imprint of love lost (The Heiress overflows with widows and widowers who live in the memory of the departed, never entertaining the thought of finding someone new), remains in service of a not-unfamiliar "Poor Little Rich Girl" romantic melodrama.
As a motion picture adapted from an esteemed literary work, The Heiress was Paramount's "prestige film" for the year, its pre-release publicity suggesting a Grand Romance between fated-to-be lovers kept apart by some shadowy adverse obstacle. In truth, the film is really a rather severe, withering rumination on love (familial love, romantic love, self-love) and the injurious cost of its absence.
Three is the Magic Number
The Heiress was Montgomery Clift's 3rd film, and his co-star was three years older
 

Catherine Sloper (de Havilland) is an unprepossessing, socially awkward young woman whose very existence is a source of nagging disappointment to her widowed father, physician Austin Sloper (Richardson). Dr. Sloper's beloved wife died giving birth to Catherine, yet lives on as an idealized phantom presence in Dr. Sloper's heart and in the household he shares with his daughter. A presence to whom Catherine, in her failure to live up to even a modicum of her mother's beauty or social graces, is ceaselessly compared and judged. Forced to grow up in the shade of her father's barely contained reproach and resentment, Catherine's natural virtues (visible to us in private moments where she reveals herself to have brains and a winning sense of humor) have understandably failed to flower.

Sharing their home in Washington Square is Dr. Sloper's sister, Lavinia (Hopkins), a somewhat frivolous but prototypical example of the kind of aimless social butterfly women were expected to be in Victorian times. Given to silly flights of romantic fantasy and hyperbole, yet well-versed in the dos and don'ts of society protocol, Lavinia is tolerated for her ability to assist Catherine in developing the social graces. Supportive of her niece and devoted to not seeing her drift heedlessly into spinsterhood with only her embroidery to keep her company, Lavinia is nevertheless one more pitying voice reminding Catherine of her lack.
Miriam Hopkins is the queen of the silly and superficial busybody.
No matter how extremely her character is written, she finds both the humor and the humanity

Although Dr. Sloper and Lavinia are both of the mind that Catherine's failings in looks and charm are significantly mitigated by her being an heiress with a considerable fortune, Lavinia is too much of a romantic to ever admit to such base pragmatism, while Dr. Sloper regards the assessment as indisputable fact…like a medical diagnosis.

Curious, then, that when an outside party is suspected of appraising Catherine by similarly pragmatic terms—the outside party being the dashing, obscenely handsome, and penniless young suitor Morris Townsend (Clift)—it is Dr. Sloper who lodges the loudest protest.


What I like about The Heiress is that it does a remarkable job of putting us in the middle of the film's dramatic/romantic conflict without specifically telling us how we should feel about it. At times it appears as though Dr. Sloper is unnecessarily brusque in his assessment of his daughter, but he isn't entirely wrong. At the same time we also see that there is more to Catherine than her retiring demeanor belies, making us hope that "someone" comes along and sees in her what those around her fail to recognize.
When that someone comes in the form of Montgomery Clift, playing a man in possession everything that Catherine lacks except money; we can't help but feel (hope) that at least in some ways, this pair is well-suited. Certainly the superficial attractions of physical beauty are no more a barrier to true love than the superficial allure of wealth?
Playboy After Dark
Does our distrust of Morris come from the reversal of the beauty ethic (women are supposed to be the pretty ones), or the reversal of the patriarchal tradition (men are expected to support women)?

The Heiress deviates from the play in that it never makes the honorableness of Morris' attentions entirely clear. At least not initially. As the film progresses, we are manipulated back and forth, forced to view Morris' whirlwind courtship of Catherine through the alternating perspective of Dr. Sloper's suspicious eyes or Lavinia's willfully rose-colored gaze.
Provocatively, we're placed in the position of preferring to be right rather than see Catherine happy (her father, again), or hoping…perhaps beyond reason…that Townsend is not really what he seems and merely a penniless suitor genuinely seeing in Catherine that which we ourselves have been witness to: her very real charms have just not been given the opportunity to develop in the loveless home she shares with her father in Washington Square.

The film tugs at our beauty biases, our belief in Cinderella fantasies, and our weakness for ugly duckling myths. It also, in providing an emotionally and dramatically satisfying ending that deviates from the novel, taps into the kind of visceral revenge scenario beloved of any individual who has ever felt undervalued or underestimated. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Popular Hollywood movies all tap into common fantasies. There's clearly a market out there for romantic comedies about cloddish, schlubby boy-men who win impossibly beautiful women simply because they possess an ounce of common decency. That is to say, I assume there to be a market for it based on the sheer number of Seth Rogen films out there; I'm just happy I don't know that market personally. 

Because of the unique circumstances of my adolescence: shy, a member of one of the few African-American families in a largely white neighborhood, gay in an all-boys Catholic high-school—I find myself drawn to stories about outsiders. Those who are habitually overlooked and underestimated because they don't conform to established norms.
"I'd never contradict him."
I'm afraid my response to my formative years are reflected in the brand of "outsider" films which have become my favorites over the years: Carrie (shy teen kills entire senior class), That Cold Day in the Park (shy spinster kills for and imprisons sex slave); 3 Women (shy enigma engages in personality theft - deaths to follow)...you get the picture. While never seriously interested in purging the patina of my youth in such melodramatic ways, I'm aware that revenge fantasies rate inordinately high amongst the films in my collection. Vicarious projection, I guess.
The Heiress fits easily into this informal sub-genre, it being a kind of tragic pop fairy-tale that tells the story of a woman who, having misguidedly invested her sense of self and happiness in finding someone who deems her worthy of being loved, seeks that tenuous approbation in the eyes of not one, but two woefully inadequate men. Though her path is one both heartbreaking and life-alteringly painful, Catherine nevertheless comes to arrive at a place of self-discovery, self-acceptance and, ultimately strength. 
And, conforming to the ambiguous emotional tone of all that went before, the ending of The Heiress can be viewed as either tragic or triumphant with no loss to the film's overall effectiveness and poignance.
"That's right Father. You never will know, will you?"
Olivia de Havilland's thorough and complete transformation from doting daughter to embittered adversary is as chilling as it is heartbreaking.


PERFORMANCES
When writing this essay, it came as something of a surprise to me to discover that I've only seen Olivia de Havilland in six films; four of them from her less-than-stellar, post-Lady in a Cage period. But this is more a reflection of the type of movies she appeared in (westerns, period adventure films...neither particular favorites) than a reaction to the actress herself, who, as of this writing, is still with us at age 99.
The Heiress represents Olivia de Havilland's 5th (and final) Oscar nomination
and 2nd win in the Best Actress category
Within my admittedly narrow sphere of exposure, I have nothing but admiration for de Havilland's work in The Heiress. It cannot be an easy feat to imbue an outwardly plain, reactive character like Catherine with as much depth and feeling as de Havilland achieves. Perhaps a flaw in the play's structure is that it is impossible to adapt it in a way in which Catherine can ever be seen in a light reflective of how her father sees her. (Wyler encourages us to identify with and like Catherine. Her comic resilience in the face of humiliation after humiliation wins us over.)
In our being able to so readily appraise and recognize Catherine's worth, her father becomes a villain before he gets a chance to show the sympathetic side of his case. (Marginally sympathetic, anyway. One can empathize with a man missing his wife, but to withhold affection from a motherless child due to repressed resentment or blame is cruel and tragic.). But as I've stated, the narrative tipping point falls to the casting of Morris, and whether or not the actor playing the role is able to conceivably play sincerity and knavishness with equal credibility.
Recreating the role he played on the London stage, Ralph Richardson (knighted Sir in 1947)
is remarkable as the over-assured and unyielding Austin Sloper. The sureness of his performance
serves as the virtual touchstone for everyone else in the film 

I like Montgomery Clift a great deal, but if reports are true that he was deeply dissatisfied with his performance in The Heiress, I can't say his feelings are entirely unfounded. Simply put, he seems to be outclassed and a tad out of his depth when it comes to the performances of de Havilland, Richardson, and Hopkins. To be sure, this could merely be an instance of clashing acting styles, his co-stars representing a more formal, old-guard style of acting to his more relaxed contemporary technique. The latter resulting in the actor occasionally coming across as stiff and uncomfortable.

However, in his defense, Clift's very "otherness" in manner and speech (whether intentional or not) works marvelously within the context of the story. His Morris Townsend is a character we are meant to be unsure of; unaware of where the real person ends and the artifice begins. He introduces passion and impulse into the Sloper's world of strict formality. Clift's awkwardness, which wreaks havoc with the viewer's ability to ascertain his character's sincerity, winds up adding a great deal to Morris' ambiguity.
Sizing Up The Interloper
Montgomery Clift's Method-era naturalness comes from somewhere so genuine that you don't entertain for a minute that he is not as he seems. His beauty is suspicious, but his behavior is not. He seems ill-suited to a certain level of showy artifice, so his scenes with de Havilland have a warmth that has you rooting for their union even as you sense it is ultimately impossible.
I like him a great deal in the film, even while recognizing his Morris Townsend is perhaps not one of his strongest performances.
As Audrey Hepburn did in Two for the Road, Olivia de Havilland is able to convey very distinct stages in the emotional maturation of her character simply through her facial expressions, body language, and voice modulation. Here, Catherine Sloper has grown into a woman at peace with herself 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The Heiress garnered a whopping eight Academy Award nominations in 1949: Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Richardson), Cinematography - winning in the categories of Best Actress (de Havilland), Music (Aaron Copland..a matter of contention), Art Direction (J. Meehan, H. Horner, E. Kuri), and Costume Design (Edith Head, Gile Steele).
I'm particularly fond of the costume design and art direction in The Heiress, which is truly gorgeous. Even more so with today's digital restorations and HD TV screens.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Adapted from a Broadway production, The Heiress shows its stage roots in being a somewhat stagy and talky motion picture more reliant on dialog, performance, and characterization than action. In this instance I wouldn't have it any other way, for The Heiress has such marvelous, quotable dialog.

"No child could compete with this image you have of her mother. You've idealized that poor dead woman beyond all human recognition." 

"Headaches! They strike like a thief in the night! Permit me to retire, of course. It's not like me to give in, dear, but sometimes fortitude is folly!"

"He must come. He must take me away. He must love me. He must!...Morris will love me, for all those who didn't."

"How is it possible to protect such a willing victim?"

"Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters."

"I can tell you now what you have done. You have cheated me. You thought that any handsome, clever man would be as bored with me as you were. It was not love that made you protect me. It was contempt."



BONUS MATERIAL
Composer Aaron Copland composed the original music theme for The Heiress before it was controversially reworked by Nathan Van Cleve under director William Wyler's orders.


Washington Square (1997): Agnieszka Holland - the director of the 2014 TV-movie remake of Rosemary's Baby - helmed this impressive-looking adaptation of Henry James' short novel starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Albert Finney, and Maggie Smith. It's truer to the book than either the play or the 1949 film, so purists should be happy. But in spite of the good performances and lovely cinematography, the film failed to stay with me very long after seeing it. Some are sure to prefer it to the William Wyler film, but it reminded me of the kind of faithful movie adaptation you're required to watch in a high school English class after having read the book.

The legendary 120 Music Masterpieces  TV commercial



Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2016

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

NIGHT GALLERY: The Joanna Pettet Episodes

The Pettet Principle: The face that launched a thousand fantasies
For the unversed (or those who've left the seventies back in the '70s where they belong), Rod Serling's Night Gallery is a suspense anthology TV series that ran Wednesday evenings (final season: Sundays) on NBC from 1969 to 1973. A supernatural/horror follow-up to Serling's more sci-fi driven The Twilight Zone (1959 -1964)—still in heavy rerun rotation at the time. Night Gallery most definitely had its moments, but I remember it mainly as an exercise in protracted fizzle. 
As a means of building suspense in episodes whose narrative trajectories were telegraphed within minutes of their setup, it was common for even the briefest of segments to be drawn out to almost comic effect. Episodes routinely featured characters speaking in needlessly vague, cryptic language ("You don't mean…!") that never came to the point. All while assiduously avoiding any and all action that might bring about a resolution to their problem. Unfortunately, when it came time for the payoff, it always seemed as though the slower the buildup, the more unsatisfying and frustratingly ambiguous the final twist.
But as one does with SNL these days—suffer through 95% of ho-hum in hopes of the occasional 5% of brilliant—Night Gallery was my Wednesday night ritual. A ritual fueled in part by a pre-cable paucity of bedtime-stalling TV options, and that still-mysterious-to-me adolescent fascination with horror and the desire to be frightened. Besides, whether good or bad, each Night Gallery episode was sure to be the water fountain topic of conversation at school on Thursday mornings, so one needed to be up on such things.
Rod Serling on the cover of TV Guide - July 3, 1972
That being said, it's still probable for the entire Night Gallery series to have remained just another dimly-remembered blip on my post-pubertal pop-culture chart had it not been for the four profoundly memorable appearances made by London-born actress Joanna Pettet during the program's three-season run. Holding what I believe to be the record for Night Gallery appearances, Pettet starred in four mesmerizingly eerie segments which, due to their spectral eroticism and Pettet's mythic dream-girl persona, thoroughly captured my imagination and burned an indelible tattoo on my teenage psyche. Even now, some 40+ years later, I still find these episodes to be as hypnotically compelling and intoxicatingly seductive as ever.
As Mata Bond in the James Bond spy spoof Casino Royale

My initial familiarity with the work of Joanna Pettet stemmed from the TV broadcast of The Group (1966, her film debut) and falling in love with her (and her killer dimpled smile) as Mata Bond in the overstuffed spoof Casino Royale (1967). Both films are ensemble-cast efforts in which Pettet, by turns, distinguished herself splendidly as a talented dramatic actress and as an appealing light comedienne. But by the time she made her first Night Gallery appearance in 1970, the accessible, dimpled ingénue had been replaced by the slinky, strikingly beautiful, irrefutably dangerous '70s equivalent of the classic film noir Woman of Mystery.
As detailed in the marvelous book Rod Serling's Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour by Scott Skelton and Jim Benson, Pettet consciously used her Night Gallery appearances to cultivate a mysterious, ethereal screen persona for herself. Adopting a contemporary "look" every bit as smoldering and distinctive in the '70s as Lauren Bacall's was in the '40s, Pettet offset the aloof quality of her rail-thin physique, long hair, and angular features with soft, gauzy "boho gypsy," "hippie chic" outfits from her own wardrobe. The combined effect was that of a modern seductress/enchantress: welcoming but unapproachable, a preternatural being who was very much of flesh and blood, yet something slightly less than real.
The dramatic landscape of early '70s television was largely male-centric, with women primarily occupying wife and girlfriend roles (Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, and Charlie's Angels would come along later). One of the reasons Pettet's Night Gallery episodes stood out so firmly in my mind is that she broke the mold. This was no girl; this was a woman. She wasn't pliable, she wasn't agreeable, she wasn't even attainable. She was a distinct feminine force operating from a place of her own needs and desires. Provocative in her mysteriousness, the men in these narratives were drawn into HER orbit, not the other way around. The characters she played were enigmas – entities perhaps, more than real women – but they exuded elegance, romance, sex, and danger. All contributing to Joanna Pettet being the perfect neo-noir femme fatale for an age that held precious little in the way of sexual mystery. 

The House - 1st Season: Air date December 30, 1970   
Everything Joanna Pettet would build upon to greater effect in future episodes of Night Gallery appears for the first time in "The House," a legitimately haunting ghost story that pivots 100% on Pettet's wispy, wraithlike persona. In "The House," directed by John Astin (Gomez of TV's The Addam's Family) and adapted by Rod Serling from a (very) short story by Andre Maurois, Pettet plays Elaine Latimer, a somewhat chimerical former sanitarium patient – "She's dreamy…Never walked. Just sort of wafted along like a wood sprite. Never put her two feet on the ground." – plagued by a recurring dream. Not a nightmare, but a tranquil, languorous dream in which she sees herself driving up to a secluded country house, knocking on its door, but always leaving just before the inhabitant answers.
The dream, a sun-dappled, slow-mo symphony of flowing hair and gossamer garments billowing in the wind, replays over and over in this episode, creating a truly hypnotic effect once the events of the story (she finds the dream house in real life, only to discover it is haunted...but by whom?) call into question the very nature of reality and illusion.
When a dream comes true, is it then a premonition? And when fantasy and reality merge, can one honestly know where one ends and the other begins?
Chasing Ghosts
Whenever anyone mentions Night Gallery, unfailingly, this is the episode that comes to mind. Embodying as it does every one of the qualities/liabilities listed above as representative of the series as a whole, "The House" is perhaps the quintessential Night Gallery episode. But in this instance, all that evasive dialog and narrative ambiguity really pay off in an indelibly atmospheric story that perhaps makes not a lick of sense, but captures precisely the strange, floating quality of dreams and the way they never quite seem to hold together in the bright light of day.
I was just 13 years old when this episode premiered in 1970, and trust me in this, you cannot imagine how deeply this episode got under my skin. To use the vernacular of the time, it was a mind-blower. It wasn't any one particular thing about the episode, but rather all of its elements combined to make it a uniquely unsettling TV experience. I mean, what kid can make sense of eerie eroticism? "The House" episode is one I never forgot, and I revisited it every chance I could when it cropped up on reruns. (In those pre-DVD days, anticipation played a significant part in the cultivating of pop-culture obsessions. Once a particular show aired, one had to content oneself with memory until the summer reruns came along.) 
The use of slow-motion photography, already an overused cliche in TV commercials and counterculture films of the day, feels oddly innovative and fresh in this episode's dream sequences 

Looking at the episode today, I still feel its fundamental appeal for me lies in its eerie mood and atmosphere of ambiguity. Something I'll attribute to its director, but only with the evenhanded observation that I'm certain none of it would have worked quite as well with another actress in the role. In all these years, I've never been able to put my finger on precisely what quality Pettet brings to this story. But it's essential and remains, rather appropriately, confoundingly elusive. 



Keep In Touch- We'll Think Of Something:  2nd Season: Air date Nov. 24, 1971
In this nifty Night Gallery outing, real-life couple Joanna Pettet and Alex Cord team up (for the first and only time in their 21-year marriage) in this supernatural update of the old film noir trope of the man who thinks he has all the answers, only to cross paths with a woman who's rewritten the book.
Directed and penned by Gene R. Kearney, screenwriter of one of my favorite underrated Diabolique-inspired thrillers: Games (1967), "Keep in Touch - We'll Think of Something" casts Cord as Erik Sutton, a musician who concocts elaborate, ever-escalating schemes to meet his dream girl. That is to say, a woman he has only seen in his dreams…he really has no idea if she is a real person or even exists. However, Sutton doesn't let the fact that she may only be a figment of his imagination dissuade him from exhausting and even harming himself in her pursuit.
Mr. Groovy
Long, styled hair; sideburns; porn-stache; rugged features; and a form-fitting
wardrobe of leather and suede. Alex Cord threw my adolescent hormones into overdrive

When he, at last, discovers the vision haunting his dreams is an actual, flesh-and-blood being – an unhappily-married woman of mystery named Claire Foster – we realize in an instant just why his search for her has been so fervent; for she comes in the exquisitely beautiful, vaguely celestial form of Joanna Pettet.
But if the visual compatibility of these two near-perfect physical specimens augers a fated meeting of two kindred spirits, then a plot twist revealing Sutton's object of obsession may harbor an obsession or two of her own paints these dream lovers in a decidedly darker palette.
"Keep in Touch" successfully builds upon the enigmatic dream-girl persona Joanna Pettet established so vividly in "The House." In fact, "Keep in Touch" feels in many ways like an "answer" episode to "House," incorporating as it does a similar "dreams vs. reality" narrative with a Cherchez le Femme overlay which has Alex Cord's character acting as the surrogate for every viewer left intrigued by Pettet and that earlier segment's ambiguity.
As a supernatural noir pair, Pettet and Cord make an outrageously sexy couple (in an über-hip, '70s way), their palpable chemistry placing one in the position of rooting for the couple's hookup even while sensing there to be something a tad duplicitous in the mystery woman's suspiciously empathetic manner.
Best of all, in the tradition of some of the best film noirs, the ostensibly objectified female turns out to be the more complex character and the one revealed to be holding all the cards. Once again, Joanna Pettet acquits herself nicely in a made-to-order episode and easily steals every scene with a persuasive performance and her unique star-quality presence.


The Girl With The Hungry Eyes - 3rd Season: Air date October 1, 1972
This episode is actually Joanna Pettet's fourth and final appearance on Night Gallery, but I've listed it here in the third position because it completes what I consider to be Pettet's Dream Girl Trilogy. A rather exceptional episode titled "The Caterpillar" precedes this one, but it's the sole Night Gallery outing to cast Pettet in a fundamentally traditional role. "The Caterpillar" casts her as a wife, a romantic ideal, and a lust object, all rolled into one. And though functional to the plot as a credible figure of desire for the male protagonist/villain, as written, her strictly ornamental character has no objectives to speak of, and does nothing to advance the plot herself.

"The Girl with the Hungry Eyes," on the other hand, is an answer to an adolescent fanboy's prayers. Adapted from a 1949 short story by Fritz Leiber and directed by John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, Reflections of Murder) "Hungry Eyes" is another updated nourish tale featuring an icy femme fatale; this time out, a soul vampire who lures men to their doom out of desire for her.
James Farentino plays David Faulkner, a down-on-his-luck photographer whose fortunes change (but luck runs out) when a nameless woman (Pettet, known simply as The Girl) wanders into his office wanting to be a model. Although lacking in modeling experience or even a personal history, The Girl proves a natural in front of the camera, skyrocketing Faulkner to fame as the exclusive photographer of the woman who has become, practically overnight, the hottest face in advertising.
Photographer to the stars Harry Langdon is credited with
all the photos attributed to James Farentino's character 

But for Faulkner, new-found success brings with it the nagging sense that he has unwittingly entered into some kind of Faustian bargain. Fearing that in exchange for riches, his photographs of The Girl - which seem to inflame an obsessive, trancelike desire in men - have unleashed a kind of vampiric scourge on the world, Faulkner seeks to unearth the mystery behind "the look" he's convinced sends men to their doom.
John Astin, director of "The House" episode of Night Gallery,
appears as Brewery magnate Mr. Munsch
 

Serving almost as meta-commentary on my own obsession with Joanna Pettet's Night Gallery career, "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" builds a solid, very sexy supernatural suspenser around that indefinable something we all seek in (and project onto) those idealized creatures we deify in the name of fandom. And as a fitting vehicle for Pettet's final Night Gallery trilogy appearance, "Hungry Eyes" provides her with the opportunity to be the most forceful she's ever been. Playing a woman who doesn't suffer fools gladly, there's a kind of bitch-goddess kick to Pettet's cool awareness of exactly what kind of effect her looks have on men. A kick made all the more exciting because of the feminist subtext inherent in having a woman turning the tables of the objectifying "male gaze" on men...to homicidal effect.
Pettet's character is fully in charge in this episode, and there's no small level of eroticism in the tug-of-war byplay she has with Farentino. With her husky voice, commanding presence, and penetrating gaze, Pettet comes across as more than a match for any man. Whether intentional or not, "The Girl with the Hungry Eyes" brings the Dream Girl Trilogy to a satisfying conclusion. The cumulative effect is a subtle and controversial point about the degree to which a woman owns herself and her appearance and to what extent men project their own fantasies upon them. 

Not to be ignored (and certainly fitting with a male adolescent's point of view) is the equally persuasive notion that these episodes embody a kind of naif, fear-of-women trilogy. In these episodes, sex and feminine allure are intrinsically connected with danger and death. 
However interpreted, what I now find I'm most grateful for is the way these episodes depicted women. They breathed fresh and provocative life into the feminine mystique, creating fascinating women of mystery during an era known for its "let it all hang out" transparency. In addition, they proved marvelous showcases for Joanna Pettet's versatility. They made the most of what I think is her one-of-a-kind ability to appear to inhabit the ethereal and corporeal worlds simultaneously.
NightGallery.net

The Caterpillar - 2nd Season:  Air date  March 1, 1972
My strong affinity for the episodes which make up the unofficial Joanna Pettet Dream Girl Trilogy is so firmly rooted in my adolescence and decades-long crush on Ms. Pettet; I concede that I speak of these episodes with nary a trace of objectivity. I have no idea how others respond to them; I only know they represent my absolute favorite episodes of the entire series. That said, I'm comfortable recommending the episode "The Caterpillar" as one of Night Gallery's best. One so successfully creepy and well-done, you don't have to be Pettet-infatuated to enjoy it.

Directed by Jeannot Szwarc (helmer of the terrific TV movie, A Summer Without Boys), this episode is another Rod Serling teleplay, adapted and significantly retooled from a short story by Oscar Cook titled Boomerang. A macabre Victorian-era love triangle set on a tobacco plantation in Borneo, "The Caterpillar" is a revenge tale with a nasty twist. It's about a man (Laurence Harvey) who devises a diabolical plan to win the beautiful wife (Pettet) of his elderly business partner (Tom Helmore). A plan that (as it must in shows like this) goes nightmarishly wrong. Laurence Harvey and character actor Don Knight star in the episode and walk off with the lion's share of honors in this atmospheric piece which I recall finding uncommonly creepy when I was young.
Joanna Pettet is once again the object of obsessive affection, but her role is so slight one is left to assume, overall quality of the script and production notwithstanding, that her longtime friendship with Laurence Harvey played a significant part in her accepting it. (She would co-star with Harvey in his final film–which he also directed–the oddball cannibal horror feature Welcome to Arrow Beach -1974.)  
While Pettet is photographed lovingly and offers a not-unpleasant change of pace as the reserved, principled wife of a man old enough to be her father; for me, it just feels like a waste of natural resources. She's beautiful, yes. And she does convey a certain mystery about her that makes you wonder just why a woman of such youth and refinement would be content in such an isolated environment, but I think Pettet brings this to the role; as written. I don't really think there's that much there.

Which brings up the issue of why these remarkable Night Gallery showcases failed to launch Pettet into the kind of stardom she deserved. Old Hollywood always seemed to know how to showcase their glamour stars (did Hedy Lamarr or Marlene Dietrich ever play a housewife?), not so much Hollywood in the '70s. In my opinion, Joanna Pettet wasn't particularly well-used by either television or films following her Night Gallery years. She remained a near-constant figure on episodic TV and Movies of the Week in the 70s, but her roles were akin to casting a diamond to play a Zircon. Appearing in projects that muted rather than emphasized her unique appeal, she just always struck me as so much better than a lot of her latter-career material. 

In 1967, Shirley MacLaine starred in an Italian anthology film titled Woman Times Seven. Because I consider these Night Gallery episodes to represent some of Joanna Pettet's best work, AND because this is a film blog, I've taken the liberty of visualizing Pettet's four TV excursions into the macabre as a single, four-episode anthology film; Woman Times Four, if you will. A tribute to one of my favorite underappreciated actresses of the '70s.  
Unforgettable.
All Night Gallery paintings by Thomas J. Knight


Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2016