MYRA BRECKINRIDGE 1970

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raquel Welch as Myra Breckinridge

Mae West as Leticia Van Allen

John Huston as Buck Loner

Roger Herren as Rusty Godowski

Farrah Fawcett as Mary Ann Pringle

Introducing Rex Reed as Myron Breckinridge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

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

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

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

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

PERFORMANCES

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

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

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

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

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

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

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2013

FAHRENHEIT 451 1966

Looking over my sizable collection of DVDs...amongst the dramas, comedies, musicals, thrillers, adventures, horror films, and even documentaries; I note there to be a conspicuous paucity of four distinct genres of film: war movies, sports films, westerns, and science fiction. I’ve really not a single war film (Doctor Zhivago coming closest); only one western - the original True Grit, unless you count Doris Day’s Calamity Jane; and sports weigh in exclusively with Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. My sole concession to the field of science fiction is François Truffaut’s flawed, but nonetheless splendid adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. One of the very few science fiction films I really enjoy, perhaps due to the fact that it was made by a man who had gone on record as not being particularly fond of science fiction films himself.

Julie Christie as Linda Montag

Oskar Werner as Guy Montag

Julie Christie as Clarisse McClellan

Cyril Cusack as The Captain

Anton Diffring as Fabian

Ray Bradbury’s ingenious novel about a future society where reading is forbidden, books are banned, and marauding herds of fascist “firemen” canvas the countryside in search of books to burn, is sci-fi light. Its setting is futuristic but technology plays into it in the most mundane, everyday ways. What speaks to me most vividly is the story's overall concept and vision of a word distrustful of thought. There are just some ideas that, to me, are simply irresistible in their cleverness. Ira Levin achieved this twice: once with the idea of a thriving Satanic Coven in modern Manhattan overseen by a bunch of little old ladies and gentlemen (Rosemary’s Baby); a second time with a suburban community populated by ideal wives, all of whom, in actuality, are robots (The Stepford Wives). The concept of a world in which firemen are paid and trained to start fires strikes me as pure genius. It’s a sharp and concise idea that lends itself to all manner of dramatic possibilities and opportunities for social commentary.

The Fireman of Fahrenheit 451, on their way to a book burning

Fahrenheit 451 is a standout work of literature, but as much as I love the book and as fond as I am of the film, I find I enjoy both most when I leave off on trying to compare the two. It’s best not to look to Truffaut’s adaptation for faithfulness to the original text, nor is it worthwhile to ruminate on the possible improvements to Bradbury’s prose introduced by Truffaut’s articulate mastery of the language of cinema. Both are enormously entertaining and thoughtful works capable of being enjoyed as free-standing, independent narratives with slightly differing objectives.
Bradbury’s book is a political allegory, more sociological in bent, commenting on the dangers of censorship and threats to independent thought. Truffaut’s film is more personal in scope. Something akin to being the literary companion to both his 1973 valentine to the movies: Day for Night, and his 1980 paean to theater: The Last Metro; Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 speaks to the filmmaker’s love of books and reading. It's not so much a sci-fi film as a Grimm fairy tale about a nowhere man who finds himself by getting lost in the written word.

By the light of his big screen TV, Montag reads his first book - Dickens' David Copperfield.
An unexpected perk of seeing this film today is in noticing how many of Ray Bradbury's predictions for the future (Reality television, wall-sized TVs, earbuds, anti-intellectualism, a disdain for literature) have come to pass.

I derive a great deal of pleasure from both artists' approach to the material, and find that looking to the many ways in which the film deviates from Bradbury’s themes or corrupt the author’s intentions is a perfect way to both court frustration and blind oneself to the unique pleasures of Truffaut’s film.

The Book Lady
Montag finds his beliefs shattered and the course of his life altered when he encounters an old woman  (Bee Duffell), a lifetime book hoarder, who would rather die than have to live without books.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Perhaps my favorite thing about Fahrenheit 451 is Truffaut’s dogged resistance to meeting and satisfying the genre expectations of science fiction. In a 1970 interview with film critic Charles Thomas Samuels, Truffaut expressed his disinterest in science fiction and claimed to have felt no affinity for the novel’s political metaphor. Truffaut chose instead to construct an allegory about a closed-off, dissatisfied man who comes to fall in love with life, mankind, and himself, when he embarks on an epiphanic discovery of books and reading. For me, this is a brilliant tact on Truffaut's part, one which may have disappointed many fans of the novel, but saves Fahrenheit 451 from being just another sci-fi film with socio-political subtext. Truffaut's disinterest in politics increases the human interest levels in Bradbury's story in much the same way Roman Polanski's agnosticism helped bring a stronger emotional/psychological emphasis to Rosemary Baby.

In the visual, hyper-literal language of film, I think it would have been unwise to emphasize those political elements of Fahrenheit 451 which are so obviously stated, underlined, and emphasized in the plot itself. Truffaut avoids overstatement and didacticism by letting the film’s agenda regarding fascism, repression, and censorship play out in the background…reserving his foreground focus for the characters and the human drama.

Family

State

Self

PERFORMANCES

Fahrenheit 451 marks my 6^th post for a Julie Christie film, so by now, most visitors to this blog know the drill: a brief introduction to the character followed by a paragraph or two of gushing, fawning, thoroughly over-the-top (yet not-unwarranted) admiration for the iconic sixties actress. All unencumbered by neutral, objective appraisal. And as Christie assays a dual role in Fahrenheit 451 (Time Magazine- “…it strongly supports the widely held suspicion that [Julie Christie] cannot actually act. Though she plays two women of diametrically divergent dispositions, they seem in her portrayal to differ only in their hairdos"), it affords twice the opportunity for unbridled fandom.

I'll make it brief. Cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, working with Christie for the first time (they would collaborate several times more in the future) makes her look positively stunning no matter which character she plays. Lastly, she's a major asset to the film and its lifeblood despite never really getting as strong a grasp on the Clarisse role as that of Linda...a character who has more than a few things in common with Darling's Diana Scott. 

Cyril Cusack is charming, paternal, and ultimately
terrifying as the doctrine-spouting Chief of firemen.

Christie plays both Linda Montag, the superficial, self-absorbed wife of fireman Guy Montag, and Clarisse, the inquisitive, rebellious schoolteacher who inspires Guy to examine his life. Of course, I think Christie is fabulous in both roles chiefly because she doesn't engage in over-broad, showy acting devices delineating the two characters - something audiences at the time faulted her for, but which seems to me to be an authentic realizing of Truffaut's overall concept. I saw Fahrenheit 451 many years before reading the book, and I must say that the impression I got from Julie Christie appearing in dual roles was one of Truffaut offering to audiences the visual similarity between Clarisse/Linda as an external manifestation of Montag’s inner perspective.

Linda and her mirror double (Clarisse?) confront  Montag about reading books when it is forbidden. Tellingly, the challenging Linda remains physically estranged from her husband, while her double seems to stand in solidarity with Montag in his defense of thinking and feeling. The very things Clarisse believes in and fights for.

By this, I mean that I've never taken it to be a literal fact that two complete strangers in Montag's life are perfectly identical women. Rather, I've always held the belief that it is only Montag who sees them as identical. Montag responds to the similarities between Clarisse and Linda (“She’s rather like you, except her hair is long”) and sees them as twin halves of the same person. The intellectual and spiritual/the unimpassioned and superficial. This is not, however, consistent with Bradbury’s vision. In the book, Clarisse is a teenager and different from Linda in every way...but the duality fits Truffaut's more personality-based interpretation of Fahrenheit 451. I like to think that the Clarisse and Montag we see at the end of the film are a vision of what Linda and Guy were before their senses and passions were dulled by suppression and conformity.

Fueling my theory that much of Fahrenheit 451 deals in intentional ambiguity  and concepts of duality is the brief scene where a spying schoolmistress looks like (is?) Montag's nemesis, Fabian (Anton Diffring). 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Fahrenheit 451 is marvelously devoid of the usual futuristic hardware fetish I find so stultifying in most science fiction movies. The film presents futuristic progress as boring, workaday and banal; which is somehow always what seems to happen with technology. The fact that the internet—the most revolutionary invention for the gathering of sharing of information—is chiefly used as a tool for bullying, bickering, and pornography, is proof enough that technology always surrenders to the inalienable fact that people obstinately remain no more than human in the face of the most incredible technological advances.

The Narcissists 
I don't recall if it was in the book, but Truffaut suggests sensual narcissism as a kind of side-effect of a technological society wherein people are discouraged from interacting and thinking. Throughout the film, people are glimpsed absent-mindedly stroking, kissing, or caressing themselves. Certainly, the current mania for self-involved social media, selfies, and online over-sharing can be seen as the ultimate real-life actualization of Truffaut's hinted-at phenomenon of self-absorption.

This is Truffaut's first color film, and he makes great use of the gloomy countryside locations and contrasts them strikingly with eye-popping, Kubrick-red interiors and crimson fire imagery. On a side note, what would this film be without the music of Bernard Herrmann? Beautiful, sweeping themes that remind me very much of Vertigo.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

At the start of this essay, I stated that I think Fahrenheit 451 is a splendid but flawed Truffaut effort. Its chief flaw, as I see it, being that a film about people benumbed and rendered passionless due to the oppressiveness of a totalitarian society, risks being the very thing it hopes to dramatize. In reference to the 1996 film Fargo, a critic (Pauline Kael, perhaps) made the very good point that even an excellent movie about moronic people is still ultimately a film about moronic people, and therefore one not easily endured, no matter its proficiency.

Francois Truffaut envisions a future in which hyper-technology lives quaintly aside the old-fashioned (antique telephones, oil lamps). Here, Montag is gifted with a straight razor by his wife ("It's the very latest thing!") and encouraged to ditch his old-fashioned cordless electric.

François Truffaut (who didn't speak English and whose first and only English language film this is) does a great job of finding photogenically bland, cold landscapes in which to play out his drama, and he takes some real chances in intentionally asking for stilted, sometimes robotic performances from his actors. While all of this is consistent with the theme of the story, it is deadly to entertainment. If Fahrenheit 451 suffers at all, it is from a lack of blood coursing through its veins. In focusing so effectively on the aspects of the plot demonstrating the spiritually deadening effects of an oppressive society, Truffaut fails to arrive at a satisfactory way of conveying what is at stake and what stands to be lost when people are deprived of the freedom to think. Without some sense of life's vitality expressed somewhere on the screen, there just seems to be something elemental lacking in the depiction of the life-changing effect books and reading can have on the human spirit.

But I’m a sucker for movies about emotional and spiritual transformations (virtually ANY version A Christmas Carol can easily reduce me to tears by the end), so I find myself moved—perhaps unaccountably so, given the film’s cool presentation—by the awakening of Guy Montag to the miracle of books. Oskar Werner's scenes discovering the written word, specifically the sequence in which he tries to make sense of a woman who'd rather die than be separated from her books, are sensitively rendered and unexpectedly moving. 

Montag finds his bliss

As a teen, I retreated into books as a means of coping with my crippling shyness. As an adult, I'm happy that my onetime escapist immersion into the written word has blossomed into an appreciation of the way books actually serve to expand one’s world. I love libraries, old bookstores, and the heft, weight, and texture of books. So much so, in fact, that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able surrender to the practicality of e-books and electronic readers. While on that topic: there is something very Ray Bradbury-ish in naming an electronic device (one poised to replace books and paper-printed literature), a Kindle and Kindle Fire. I understand the name is intentional, but, boy!...in these anti-intellectual times, talk about Bradbury’s book-burning future coming to pass!

 Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2013

SPLENDOR IN THE GRASS 1961

The weird thing about sexual repression is how it creates, then proceeds to foster and perpetuate, the atmosphere of shame and sin it purports to be on guard against. Case in point: so-called "family" entertainment.

Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1955) is the dirtiest movie I ever saw. Really. This corn-fed ode to spring, sparkin', and spoonin' is nothing but a wall-to-wall smut-fest obsessed with fornication. Or, fornicatin' as the characters themselves would probably drawl, were the film able to stop being so coy and wholesome for five minutes and just lay out on the table what is obviously its sole purpose, preoccupation, and focus. For nigh on 2 ½ hours (dialect helps to get into the spirit of things), horny farmhands in tight jeans and overheated farmer's daughters in calico dresses and bullet bras talk and think of little else but sex. Sure, it's all coded and cloaked in innuendo-soaked songs and double-entendre choreography, but Oklahoma! is like one long, whispered-behind-the-barn dirty joke. A rumps and udders horse opera. There's your dim-witted, semi-nymphomaniac who "cain't" say no; Kansas City bur-lee-cue dancers going just as "fer" as they can go; randy traveling salesmen; rape-inclined farmhands; and, lest we forget, that sexual assault disguised as a kiss: The Oklahoma Hello.

If a ten-year-old is capable of moral indignation, then indeed I was. By the time that surrey with the fringe on top rolled in at the end, my cheeks were hotter than Hades, and I could barely look my parents in the eye. 

"A raging torrent of emotion that even nature can't control!"
OK, that's actually the ad copy for the 1953 Marilyn Monroe film Niagara, but it so succinctly captures Splendor in the Grass' metaphorical use of rushing waterfalls barely contained by dams (not to mention the film's overheated, Freudian themes) I just had to use it.

I'll admit my tongue-in-cheek scandalized reaction to Oklahoma! might seem a tad incongruous coming from someone who saw all manner of R-rated movies during his adolescence. Still, I'm not kidding about how vulgar this musical seemed to me when I was young. The comparatively straightforward approach of movies like Barbarella and Midnight Cowboy didn't embarrass me so much as demystified sex for me. Their explicitness made it feel as though sex and nudity were no big deal. Oklahoma!, on the other hand, mirrored my repressed Catholic upbringing. By figuratively and literally dancing around the film's all-pervasive topic of sex, the film turns sex into a sinful no-no suitable only for giggling and snickering about in empty, euphemistic codes of indecency.

A firm memory I hold from my adolescent movie-going years is how filthy I considered the family films of my era (the '60s): David Niven's The Impossible Years, Doris Day's Where Were You When The Lights Went Out, Debbie Reynolds' How Sweet It Is – compared to the permissive, let-it-all-hang-out R-rated films that were coming into fashion.

The pernicious effect of repression and guilt - its power to distort and pervert natural sexuality - is the theme dramatized in Elia Kazan's sensitive film adaptation of William Inge's original screenplay, Splendor in the Grass.

Natalie Wood as Wilma Dean "Deanie" Loomis

Warren Beatty as Arthur "Bud" Stamper

Pat Hingle as Ace Stamper

Barbara Loden as Virginia "Ginny" Stamper

Audrey Christie as Mrs. Loomis

Splendor in the Grass is set in a small town in Kansas in 1928. Not, as immortalized by Rodgers & Hammerstein, a Kansas corny in August, but one overrun with oil derricks born of an oil boom. And all that pumping, pumping, pumping of the land serves as unsubtle metaphoric counterpoint to all the pent-up sexual energy of the town's young folk. Experiencing the first rushes of jazz-age permissiveness, the air is full of sex (in a nice touch, almost all the half-heard background conversations have to do with sex, sin, or something forbidden) and high-school sweethearts Deanie Loomis (Wood) and Bud Stamper (Beatty) find their barely-understood passions clashing with the repressive, Victorian-era values of their parents. As a result, archaic notions of propriety and decency intrude upon their natural urges, and the young lovers suffer painfully and unnecessarily under the strain of trying to do "what's right."

"Mom...is it so terrible to have those feelings for a boy?"
"No nice girl does."
"Doesn't she?"
"No...no nice girl."

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

William Inge is one of my favorite playwrights. His works, among them: Picnic, Come Back Little Sheba, and The Dark at the Top of The Stairs, find the poetry and tragedy in small lives – recalling for me the best of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill. In Splendor in the Grass, Inge's gentle evocation of the subtle frustrations, conflicts, and inchoate desires festering below the surface of otherwise tranquil small-town life is engagingly realized by director Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, East of Eden).

William Inge appears as the sad-eyed Rev. Whiteman, whose sermon on holding onto
 what's real in times of material prosperity falls mainly on deaf ears. Inge's original screenplay for Splendor in the Grass won an Oscar.

In this story about "innocent" passion, a young couple, excited by newly awakened feelings but confused by their intensity, are left without guidance by well-intentioned adults incapable of doing anything but projecting the failures and frustrations of their own lives onto the pair. The young feel an obligation to live up to the ideals of those who have sacrificed to give them a better life. Yet, in trying to orchestrate the happiness of their children through the stressing of false morals, shame, and repression, these parents succeed only in passing on a legacy of compromise and regret.

The Stampers
This awkward portrait sitting pretty much says all there is
to say about the functionality of the town's wealthiest family

PERFORMANCES

Stage director and Actor's Studio co-founder Elia Kazan is heralded as an "actor's director" for the sensitive performances he's credited with eliciting from those under tutelage. It's not a title I'm likely to argue with in that I think Splendor in the Grass is a remarkably well-cast movie, with everyone involved giving colorful and fleshed-out performances devoid of some of the fussier affectations of Method Acting. Sure, Warren Beatty's pauses can drag on a little, and one strains to hear him speak on a couple of occasions, but by and large, the natural performances here all crackle with vitality and life. 

Future Mrs. Kazan Barbara Loden makes an indelible impression as Ginny Stamper, the flapper-out-of-water in the small, conservative Kansas town. Her screen work is minimal (she died of cancer at age 48), but in 1970 she wrote, directed, and starred in the noteworthy independent film Wanda. 

As deserving of praise as all the players are, I just have to single out a personal favorite, Natalie Wood. Tapping into a natural edginess and heartbreaking eagerness to please that had only been hinted at in previous roles, Wood gives what I consider to be the best performance of her career. As the lovesick, worshipful Deanie, she displays an emotional daring I always find so compelling in actors. She is tragically vulnerable throughout, and she and the absurdly beautiful Warren Beatty (making his film debut) make a stunningly beautiful screen couple and display a palpable chemistry. (Tip: watch her in scenes where she's not the focus. She's entirely in character and reacting to everything at each moment in a way that feels so wonderfully spontaneous. I can't say enough about her in this film. The Oscar nomination she garnered was so very well-deserved.)

Zohra Lampert as Angeline
I have always had a thing for this appealingly sensitive, low-key actress (and marvelous comedienne) who deserved a bigger career. She has a bit of a cult fan base built around the horror film Let's Scare Jessica to Death, but outside of her scene-stealing performance here, I mostly know her as the Goya Beans spokeslady.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Splendor in the Grass is a tragic love story in the grand tradition. True love, in the form of Deanie and Bud, finds no solace or sanctuary in small-town (small-minded) mores that uphold the curious notion that the pursuit of happiness is good, but the pursuit of ecstasy is sinful and wrong. Instead, love that should be simple and uncomplicated descends into confusion and madness, the star-crossed pair suffering at the hands of false morality and parental interference.  

Understatement

Aside from Natalie Wood's stubbornly contemporary look throughout most of the film, Splendor in the Grass has one of its greatest assets in its detailed depiction of small-town life and attention to period. In addition, it's a great-looking film, from the atmospheric cinematography (Boris Kaufman) to the costumes, to the eye-catching art direction.

Personal favorite Sandy Dennis (l.) makes her film debut as Kay,
a somewhat fair-weather friend of Deanie's.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I first saw Splendor in the Grass when I was a youngster back in the late sixties, and recall being struck by how much the film's chronicling of a uniquely American brand of sexual restlessness in the face of cultural change (rampant horniness crossed with faith-based guilt), echoed the cultural climate of what was going on in America at the time. In terms of young people confronting changing attitudes about morality, sex, family, religion, double-standards, and women's roles, the America of the late '60s was not dissimilar to the America of 1929. A reality even 1961 audiences must have felt when confronted by the relative sexual candor of Splendor in the Grass hot on the heels of the conservative Eisenhower years.

Comedienne Phyllis Diller makes her film debut as real-life nightclub owner, Texas Guinan

I can't say I really understood Splendor in the Grass when I first saw it. Thrown by the film's portentous manner and the pedigree of talent both behind and in front of the camera, I simply thought the film had gone over my head. I went away from it thinking I had just seen the most poetic film about blue balls ever made.

Life experience has revealed to me that Splendor in the Grass is about much more than sexual desire. Familial obligation, guilt, love, innocence, loss, and coming-of-age maturity all make William Inge's bittersweet look at young love a film I always enjoy revisiting, and one of my all-time favorite Natalie Wood movies.

Copyright © Ken Anderson     2009 -2013