HUSH...HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE 1964

Warning: Spoiler Alert. This is a critical essay not a review, therefore many crucial plot points are revealed for the purpose of discussion. 

In earlier posts on The Stepford Wives and Rosemary’s Baby, I wrote about how, as a youngster, I was drawn to horror films and scary movies; this in spite of everything in my personal and psychological makeup only reinforcing how ill-suited I was to the genre. A self-serious kid given to over-thinking everything, I was too literal-minded and took things far too much to heart to appreciate the cathartic benefits of what felt to me to be the casual sadism at the core of so many horror films and scary movies.

It’s not like I was immune to the escapist fun of being frightened by a movie—the rollercoaster thrill ride of jump cuts and shock effects—but that’s what B-movies were for. Cheaply made, poorly-acted programmers featuring creatures with visible zippers in their costumes were so artificial, their frights were reassuring. Once the genre started attracting Oscar-winning actresses and high production values, and the ghouls and monsters were replaced by cruel behavior and criminally dangerous people with mental illnesses…well, cathartic escapism gave way to inappropriate-for-the-genre empathy.

I grew up at a time when TV violence was full of bloodless bloodletting. Whether it be westerns, spy thrillers or sci-fi dramas, death on television was impersonal and at a remove. When people were killed, they simply fell: no visible wounds, eyes closed. The same held true of those B horror movies from the '40s and '50s screened on TV programs like “Creature Features”—death was just part of the drama and nothing to take seriously.

I don’t know when What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) first aired on TV, but I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine at the time. I remember watching it expecting to be scared out of my wits (in a fun way), but by the end, all I remember is trying to conceal from my sisters the fact that I was crying. Anything I might have been scared by in the earlier part of this Davis/Crawford horrorshow of grotesques came in second to how heartbreakingly sad it made me when Davis said to Crawford at the end, “You mean all this time we could have been friends?’’

And indeed, until I grew older and the film took on the mercifully distancing attributes of camp, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has always been for me less a shocker than a very sad melodrama populated with pitiable characters. Some fun I was on scary movie nights. 

I had a similar reaction to Robert Aldrich’s follow-up film, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Only with gore levels ratcheted up (as is the wont of horror films cashing in on a previous success), there was enough genuine fright to go around, too.

Bette Davis as Charlotte Hollis

Olivia de Havilland as Miriam Deering

Joseph Cotten as Drew Bayliss

Agnes Moorehead as Velma Cruther

Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, in reuniting the director, production team, writers, and many of the actors from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, stops just a hair short (make that a big bouffant wig, short) of being an actual sequel to the Bette Davis/Joan Crawford starrer whose surprise success kicked off the whole Grand Dame Guignol horror film trend. Director Robert Aldrich had initially succeeded in convincing Crawford and Davis to appear together again as co-stars, but after roughly ten days of shooting, Crawford bailed and/or was fired (details below*) and was replaced by frequent Davis co-star Olivia de Havilland.

  

Substituting the Hollywood decay of Baby Jane for dilapidated southern-fried gothic, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte tells the story of Charlotte Hollis (Davis) an eccentric, Delta Dawn-like southern belle (is there any other kind?) who has holed herself up inside her late father’s Louisiana plantation following a scandalous, horrific night in 1927 whose secret she must guard. An unsolved secret involving a daddy’s girl, an illicit affair, a married man, a domineering father (Victor Buono), and an unattended meat cleaver.

Mary Astor (in her last film role) as Jewel Mayhew

Jump ahead to 1963. The demure Charlotte has grown into a loudmouthed, hot-tempered, pistol-packin' plantation proprietress a few mint juleps shy of a full pitcher. With the home she shares with her slovenly housekeeper (Moorehead) now threatened with demolition by a highway commission, Charlotte enlists the aid of her level-headed cousin, Miriam (de Havilland). Unfortunately, Miriam’s arrival triggers all manner of past rivalries and resentments, not to mention elaborate psychotic episodes in Charlotte which the family doctor (Cotton) barely has time to tend to before the next one erupts. What's the secret Charlotte is guarding, and who is it she's trying to protect? Is Charlotte really off her southern rocker as everyone in town seems to think, or is she getting a little assist off the deep end from seeming well-wishers?

As thrillers go, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte is certainly not one lacking for secrets, suspects, and suspicious characters; so there’s a great deal of creepy fun to be had in trying to figure out just who is doing what to whom, and why. And while it’s been many, many years since the first time I saw it, I recall that after I thought I’d figured everything out, I was blown away by how many more surprises the film had up its sleeve.

Victor Buono as Samuel Eugene Hollis ("Big Sam")
Only 26-years old and portraying 56-year-old Bette Davis' father  

The film benefitted from a larger budget (nearly $2.5 million to Baby Jane’s $980 thousand), a name cast, a Top Ten theme song (Patti Page’s version on vinyl, Al Martino sung it in the film), and Davis’ tireless promotion (she was an unbilled associate producer with profit points). Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (amazingly) garnered seven academy award nominations -- Best Supporting Actress [Moorehead], B&W cinematography, score, song, art direction, costume design, editing). Upon release, it was met with a largely favorable critical response and emerged a boxoffice hit. Although not quite as big a hit as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Cecil Kellaway as Harry Willis

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM 

Ranking Baby Jane and Charlotte on the basis of entertainment value alone, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? comes out on top as the most original and conceptually daring of the two. There’s something audacious in both the premise and casting of a story about two washed-up movie actresses making their golden years hell for one another that makes Baby Jane feel like a lost chapter from The Day of the Locust. Horror credentials aside, Baby Jane succeeds in being an ingeniously grotesque Hollywood black comedy with a campy/bitchy bite.

Bruce Dern as John Mayhew

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, on the other hand, has two ghosts hovering over it: John Mayhew and Joan Crawford. As good as Olivia de Havilland is, there’s no way I can watch the film without wondering what might have come from the re-teaming of Davis & Crawford. They were a dynamite pair in spite of—most likely, specifically due to—their shared animosity.  But in comparing Baby Jane  & Charlotte as they stand and on their own terms, I find Charlotte to be the better film overall: better written, better acted, more solidly structured, and less of a one-woman show. It’s a genuinely riveting melodrama that loses points only for its too-traditional gothic structure (the movie tests one’s tolerance for dark shadows, long staircases, and women in long, flowing nightgowns), and over-reliance on familiar haunted house/woman in peril tropes (Thunder! Lightning! Gale-force winds! Weather is never as unpredictable as it is in a horror film).

But being a longtime fan of the whole crazy-in-the-heat southern gothic tradition, what I enjoy most about Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is how it feels like the explicit, pulp novel reworking of one of those dark, family-related secrets poetically alluded to or whispered about in the works of Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers.

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte was adapted from the unpublished short story What Ever Happened to Cousin Charlotte? by What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? author Henry Farrell (who obviously had a thing for these kinds of titles: What’s The Matter With Helen?,  How Awful About Alan).

PERFORMANCES

Although I’m never quite sure what to make of everyone’s southern accents (I have no ear for their authenticity, only the giggles they sometimes inspire), I like all of the performances in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte a great deal. The very capable cast of classic Hollywood stars appear to be enjoying themselves in roles that capitalize on and play off of past performances (both Cotten and de Havilland are likable personalities with screen experience showing their darker side). None more so than the Oscar-nominated Agnes Moorehead, who pulls off the amazing feat of making an over-the-top, very funny characterization, if not necessarily believable, certainly sympathetic. No one kids themselves that they're appearing in Eugene O’Neill, but neither do they condescend to the material.

As de Havilland demonstrated in The Heiress (1949), few people can
play the flip side of  sweetness and light to such chilling effect

However, it’s Bette Davis as the titular Charlotte in need of hushing who serves as the film’s center and driving force. Make that tour de force. Playing another pitiable, mentally fragile woman haunted by the past, Davis achieves moments of surprising sensitivity and subtlety of emotion almost simultaneously with instances of full-blown, drag-queen-level histrionics. It’s precisely what the role calls for, and Davis, clearly giving it her all, must have been disappointed when she was overlooked for an Oscar nomination.

Cecil Kellaway plays an insurance investigator looking into the unsolved Mayhew murder case
Davis & Kellaway's scenes are my favorite 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Were my list of favorite movies a ledger, Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte would occupy a double-entry column marked “loss of innocence”: movies that have changed as I've grown older.  There, alongside such titles as The Birds, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Bad Seed, and Valley of the Dolls; Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte would represent yet another film that I took seriously in my youth, but now can only watch through the jaundiced eye of camp and unintentional humor. 

Looks like Charlotte could do with some hushing.

As with the aforementioned Baby Jane, I was a child when Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte had its broadcast TV premiere. A night that stands out as an evening of traumatic firsts: 1. It was my first exposure to gory bloodshed: the meat cleaver murder in the film’s prologue was bad enough, but the sight of blood splattering on the statue of a cherub fueled more childhood nightmares than I’d care to count; 2. It was the first time I ever saw anyone die with their eyes open. Yikes! 

Add to all this the fact that I had yet to see the influential French thriller Les Diaboliques (1955), so Charlotte’s borrowed denouement twist was nearly as terrifying for me as it was for poor, put-upon Bette Davis.

So while Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte did a superb job of scaring me to death, like its predecessor, it was also a movie my younger self found to be very sad. Honestly, I must be the biggest softie around, but even today Bette Davis' crestfallen demeanor and wounded eyes can fairly make my heart break. But as a child I was just worn out by all the film put her character through...and as it turns out, unnecessarily. So once again, as the credits rolled, I had to conceal from my sisters that I had been reduced to waterworks by the thought of her character's life spent in misery for nothing.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

These days, my memory of Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte as a scary film has fallen prey to too many years of Bette Davis impersonators, too much quotable dialog, a 2015 drag spoof titled Hush Up, Sweet Charlotte, and too many laugh-filled evenings with my partner cracking up at this, his favorite line (and line reading):

Truth be told, I would have given Bette Davis an Oscar for this bit alone.

Happily, none of this has lessened my affection for this film or for Davis' memorable (to say the least) performance. My appreciation for Bette Davis—the rabid scenery-chewer with the yo-yo-ing southern accent and forceful screen presence—is matched by my genuine admiration for Bette Davis the talented actress, and the nuances she brings to a role (at least in the film's quieter moments) written in such broad strokes.

Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is a watchable, fun, atmospheric old-style escapist movie (still a little sad for me in parts, but in a nice way) featuring a cast of good actors giving solid performances. Agnes Moorehead is a scene-stealing hoot, but it's Olivia de Havilland who winds up being the film's Most Valuable Player. She has an easy naturalism that grounds the high-flung theatrics surrounding her. While no classic,  Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte is nevertheless a viewing pleasure too rarefied and full of surprises to ever be considered "guilty."

BONUS MATERIAL

Who needs Patti Page's willowy-soft vocals singing the Oscar-nominated song Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte when you can listen to Bette Davis' smoky rendition (and I mean that literally, as it sounds as though she just smoked an entire pack of cigarettes) HERE.  With a full orchestra, yet.

Olivia de Havilland & Agnes Moorehead (r) recreating a scene first filmed with Joan Crawford (l). Although nothing alike, de Havilland also wound up replacing Joan Crawford in
1964s Lady in a Cage as well as Airport '77

I intentionally steered clear of the whole Bette Davis/Joan Crawford feud as it relates to the making of Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. These documentaries and "making of" featurettes cover the territory nicely:
AMC Backstory: The Making of Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte 

Wizard Work: a 1964 featurette narrated by Joseph Cotten 

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2016

NOT WITH A BANG, BUT A WHIMPER: A List of Lamentable Last Films

“This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.”   - T.S. Eliot   

It can’t be easy maintaining a film career. The practical side of the motion picture business doesn’t readily correspond with an artist's desire to work well and consistently while trying to hold onto whatever faint vestiges of integrity and self-respect are left intact after one is deemed no longer young or the pop-culture “flavor of the month.” Fans, critics, and rear-view-mirror biographers tend to speak of an actor’s career and body of work as though they are things strategically orchestrated and mapped out. Perhaps in some cases this is true, but for the most part, the cold realities of the business of fame suggests an actor’s lingering legacy is often the result of nothing more premeditated than the serendipitous meeting of talent, luck, ambition, and tenacity.

A film career of any length is bound to have its ups and downs, but if an actor is lucky, the ups outnumber (or outweigh) the bad to sufficient degree as to have little impact on time’s overall evaluation of an actor's merits. Because Hollywood films ween us on happy endings and tidy conclusions, perhaps this breeds in us an expectation (or hope) that the careers of our favorite stars culminate in films and performances worthy and emblematic of their lifetime achievements, in toto.

Occasionally it works out: as in John Wayne, dying of cancer in real-life, portraying an aging gunman dying of cancer in his last film The Shootist (1976); or Sammy Davis Jr. appearing as a revered, aging tap-dancer in Tap (1989) his final film. But all too often stars with illustrious early careers bow out in vehicles severely at odds with their cumulative talent, reputations, and dignity.
So here's a list of the less-than-celebrated last films of a few of my favorite actors. An unlucky list of 13 movies - indicative of nothing deeper than a movie fan's wish that these talented stars had been shown to better advantage in their final movie roles.
   

1. Mae West — Last Film: Sextette (1978)
The final film of screen legend Mae West turned out to be something of a good news/bad news affair. The good news being that the self-enchanted octogenarian ended her four-decade movie career in a name-above-the title star vehicle (vanity project) designed as a tribute to her image and career. The bad news, of course, is that I’m referring to Sextette: an ill-advised, fan-produced exercise in celebrity exploitation so unflattering to its leading lady, it essentially ends up being a 90-minute exercise in character assassination and idol-smashing...set to a disco beat.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: My Little Chickadee (1940) 

*****

2. Laurence Harvey  — Last Film: Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974)

Speaking in terms of equal opportunity, it’s nice to know that late-career leading men are as susceptible to the beckoning charms of the B-grade horror film as the cadre of older actresses populating that subgenre known as Grand Dame Guignol. On the heels of appearing with gal pal Joanna Pettet in a 1972 episode of TVs Night Gallery, and co-starring with longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor in Night Watch (1973); Oscar nominee Laurence Harvey (Room at the Top - 1959) went the full  slasher route in the rarely-seen cheapie Welcome to Arrow Beach. Appearing again with (VERY) good friend Joanna Pettet, Harvey underplays a military vet with a cannibalistic taste for hitchhiking hippie chicks and blowsy booze hounds. Looking gaunt from the stomach cancer that would claim his life before this film was released, Harvey also directed this bloody exploitationer which rode a short-lived 70s trend of cannibalism-themed horror movies. I remember seeing this as a teen (under the alternate title, Tender Flesh) on a double bill with the another  cannibal horror film, The Folks at Red Wolf Inn (1972). I guess we all have our low moments.  View trailer HERE

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Night Watch (1973)

                                                                         *****

3. Joan Crawford — Last Film: Trog (1970)

As a journalist once noted, the boon and bane of every Crawford fan has always been the actress’s dogged professionalism. No matter how low she'd fallen (and Trog is about as low as it gets) Crawford always emoted as though Louis B. Mayer were still breathing down her neck. Crawford’s co-star in Trog is a professional wrestler in a rubbery Halloween mask (Joe Cornelius), but by the level of her intensity and commitment, you’d think she was acting opposite Franhcot Tone. And while this trait is certainly admirable, it has the unfortunate effect of making Joan appear to be performing in a vacuum; acting her ass off independent of the tone and timbre of the scene, not really relating to her co-stars. In Trog, Joan – looking tiny and occasionally pretty well-oiled – plays an anthropologist who attempts to tame a "Kill-crazy fiend from hell!” amidst public outcry and resistance. As always, Joan is the best thing in it (on my personal Camp-o-meter, anyway), but this B-horror movie programmer is so beneath her talents it makes the schlock she made for William Castle look dignified.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Berserk (1967)

*****

4. Gene Kelly — Last Film: Xanadu (1980)

A curious inclusion given how much I love this film and how, considering what he had to work with, I actually think Gene Kelly acquits himself rather nicely.
But I have to admit I've always found my enjoyment of Kelly in this musical to be running neck and neck with a sense of missed opportunities and a disappointment in how poorly he’s served by this charming but rather weak vehicle as a whole. Xanadu is nothing if not respectful of the influential actor/singer/dancer/director/choreographer who helped shape the face of the modern movie musical; it’s just that he’s let down by an insipid script, sabotaged by editing and camerawork which fails to understand the rhythms of dance (or rollerskating...they cut off his feet!), and is left to play third-fiddle to two low-wattage leads who fail to possess even a fraction of his screen charisma. So while Xanadu is not exactly a career embarrassment (I'd say that honor goes to his direction of Hello, Dolly! & The Guide for the Married Man), it ranks as a poor representation and send-off for the genius that was Gene Kelly.

Shoulda Quit  While I Was Ahead: The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)

*****

5. Gloria Swanson — Last Film: Airport ’75 (1974)     

In this loopy sequel (of sorts) to 1970’s Airport, silent screen star Gloria Swanson appears as herself and makes up for all those mute years by never shutting up. Swanson’s not onscreen a great deal ‒ although it feels like it since, in a film overrun with nuns (Helen Reddy, for one), Swanson makes the curious choice of dressing exactly like a nun who’s been to a couturier ‒ but when she is onscreen you can bet she’s talking about herself. Ostensibly under the guise of dictating her memoirs to her self-medicating secretary (Planet of the Apes’ Linda Harrison or Augusta Summerland, who knows a thing or two about keeping quiet), Swanson, who is said to have written her own dialog, captures perfectly what it’s like to be in the company of an actor: they are always their own favorite topic of discussion.

Overlooking the suspense-killing casting of having Swanson playing herself in a fictional narrative (what are they gonna do, have her get sucked out a window?), her role feels like a far-in-advance infomercial for her 1980 memoir Swanson on Swanson. A title describing the entire thrust of Swanson's self-enamored characterization here.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Sunset Blvd. (1950)

*****

6. Dean Martin / Frank Sinatra — Last Film: Cannonball Run II (1984)

Although I tend to consider myself a child of the '60s & '70s, and therefore lay no claim to the cinema atrocities committed in the 80s; the next time I go on a jeremiad about the craptastic bros-before-hos movie oeuvre of Adam Sandler and Kevin James, someone needs to remind me that Burt Reynolds – an actor from my generation – pretty much originated the lazy buddy comedy genre. That's when you find someone to pay for you and your pals to get together and have a good time, hand somebody a camera, film it, slap a title on it, and then call it a movie.

I never saw the original The Cannonball Run (1981) but the appeal of having the '60s Rat Pack reunited onscreen in this movie (Sinatra, Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. & Shirley MacLaine all appear) got the better me, and so I watched it one night on cable TV. With this movie (and I use the term loosely) I discovered that nostalgia is no match for a film that clearly holds its audience in low regard. The level of contempt this movie has for the intelligence of its audience is palpable and pungent. Dean Martin dares you to call him on the obvious fact that he really doesn’t give a shit, and Frank Sinatra looks exactly like someone dutifully following through on a favor/obligation. Dreadful. An unspeakably depressing last film for two of my favorites.    
Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Airport (1970) / The First Deadly Sin (1980)

*****

7. Elizabeth Taylor  — Last Film: The Flintstones  (1994)    

Beyond the garden-variety complaint that Hollywood never seems to know how to properly showcase stars once they cease to be young, I’ve no objection to an actress of Elizabeth Taylor’s magnitude and reputation being cast as Fred Flintstone’s harridan of a mother-in-law (one Pearl Slaghoople) in a live-action version of the enduring 60s primetime TV cartoon show (inspired by the live-action The Honeymooners). Indeed, given Taylor’s sense of humor about herself, lack of pretension, and past success in playing shrews and shrill, fishwife types, it’s actually a pretty cool idea.
My problem lies with how dismal a comedy The Flintstones turned out to be. Taylor's role is little more than an extended walk-on, but in it, she's saddled with some strenuously unfunny material that she doesn't handle particularly well. There's so little to The Flintstones beyond the wittily prehistoric costumes, sets, and special effects (it's all concept, no content), that one is left with too much time to contemplate why the only laughs the film earns derive from how accurately the production team has captured some device or creature recognizable from the cartoon. Taylor (sporting that awful Jose Eber feathered helmet hairdo she adopted at the time) has definitely been better, was capable of better, and I only wish she had been given better.
Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Mirror Crack’d (1980)

*****

8. Peter Sellers — Last Film: The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980)

It’s anybody’s guess how this flat, misguided comedy ever got beyond the planning stages, but avarice likely played a role in this unsuitable-for-release trainwreck ever seeing the light of day (it was released weeks after Sellers’ death). Fandom fuels a desire to see the last professional efforts of any favored celebrity, but it’s hard to imagine any Peter Sellers fan deriving much joy from this slogging crime comedy. A film which also served as the last screen role for Mary Poppins’ David Tomlinson and features Helen Mirren impersonating Queen Mary, the grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II, whom Mirren would win an Oscar portraying 26-years later. Sellers was a comic genius who made a career out of disappearing behind impersonation, but by the '80s his extended yellowface Fu Manchu shtick was strictly cringe material. Matters aren’t helped much by Sellers (ill at the time) playing dual roles: bored & tired.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Being There (1979)

*****

9. Tallulah Bankhead —  Last Film: Die! Die! My Darling!  (1965) 

This one’s a bit of an academic call. A call resting both on the awareness of Tallulah Bankhead being an esteemed stage actress whose motion picture appearances were rare (thus branding this Z-grade exercise in Hag Horror as a film far beneath her talents); and the full understanding that no one in their right mind would care to deprive the world of Bankhead’s mesmerizingly over-the-top performance in said Psycho-Biddy gothic. Bankhead is too fine an actor for a title like Die! Die! My Darling! to stand as the representative coda to her brief film career, but as a longstanding connoisseur of camp, I can’t deny that I’m forever grateful to her for having undertaken it.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: A Royal Scandal (1945)

*****

10. Bette Davis — Last Film: Wicked Stepmother (1989) 

It’s kind of a good thing this chaotic comedy about a homewrecking witch (Davis) is so aggressively unfunny, for the sight of the frail, reed-thin, surgically tightened, post-stroke, eerily animatronic Bette Davis croaking out her lines while chain-smoking like a madwoman is a bonafide laugh-killer. A problem-plagued production that had the ailing, dissatisfied Davis deserting the film shortly after shooting began (resulting in her onscreen time amounting to slightly less than 15-minutes), Wicked Stepmother may have brought Davis a hefty paycheck and yet another opportunity to work – something obviously very important to her – but beyond the curiosity value of seeing one of Hollywood's greats in her last film roe, the whole affair has a ghoulish feel to it.
The only joke in the film that works is a brief sight gag revealing the late wife of Davis' new husband (Lionel Stander) was Joan Crawford.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Whales of August (1987)

*****

11. Charles Boyer — Last Film: A Matter of Time  (1976)

Charles Boyer is an interesting case. He dodged having to be shackled with Ross Hunter’s Lost Horizon (1973) as his last film by following up that misstep with the stylish Alan Resnais film Stavisky…; a fine and suitably distinguished movie to end his career. Unfortunately, Boyer dodged the Ross Hunter bullet only to jump into the firing line of Vincente Minnelli’s calamitous A Matter of Time (1976). A film which not only reunited Boyer with the director of two of his earlier films (The Cobweb and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse), but reunited him with his Arch of Triumph and Gaslight co-star, Ingrid Bergman.

Hopes couldn’t have been higher when it was announced Vincente Minnelli (making his first film since 1970s On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) was going to direct daughter Liza (in need of a hit after Lucky Lady) in a lavish costume drama. Without going into the ugly details behind a problem-plagued production, suffice it to say A Matter of Time didn’t do anybody’s resumés any favors. Boyer, as the husband of dotty Contessa Bergman, is really rather good. It’s the film that’s such a mess.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Stavisky…(1974)

*****

12. Lucille Ball — Last Film: Mame (1974)  

Mame was released with a ton of hoopla and cheery smiles all around, but once the smoke cleared (and a few years had passed) what were we left with? A star who claimed making the film “was about as much fun as watching your house burn down”; a costar (Bea Arthur) who went on record stating, “It was a tremendous embarrassment. I’m so sorry I did it,” and that the leading lady was “terribly miscast”; a discontented composer (Jerry Herman); and a marriage dissolved (according to Arthur, her husband – Gene Saks, Mame’s director – used emotional blackmail to get her to do the movie: “As my wife you owe it to me to play this part.”).

Mame was to be TV legend Lucille Ball’s return to the silver screen, but reviews and reception to the film were so harsh, this $12-million misstep was her swan song. Oops! Maybe it’s not polite to bring up singing in this context.

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: The Long Long Trailer (1953)

*****

13. Barbara Stanwyck — Last Film: The Night Walker (1964) 

After playing a bordello madam (Walk on the Wild Side) and appearing in an Elvis Presley movie (Roustabout), I guess Barbara Stanwyck decided to make her career degradation complete by working for William Castle. The Night Walker is a somewhat listless, surprisingly gimmick-free William Castle melodrama that, while not doing much for Stanwyck, at least reunited her with former hubby and co-star Robert Taylor.

As always, Stanwyck and her trademark intensity are fascinating to watch and the only worthwhile elements in a film that really would have been just fine as an episode of one of those suspense anthology TV programs (although the really creepy music by Vic Mizzy is effective as hell).
Happily, with the movies treating her so shabbily, it's nice to know television provided Stanwyck with some of her finest latter-career moments (I'm crazy about her performance in The Thorn Birds).

Shoulda Quit While I Was Ahead: Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

"I am big! It's the pictures that got small."

Norma Desmond - Sunset Blvd.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

THE INCREDIBLE SARAH 1976

To a major extent, mid-‘70s Hollywood was a bit of a boys’ club sandbox overrun with buddy films and disaster movies in which women were required to do little more than support the dreams of the hero, or sit around waiting to be rescued. Jane Fonda, Karen Black, and Faye Dunaway divvied up the few plum, non-“clinging girlfriend” roles to be found (Liza Minnelli & Barbara Streisand being not-quite-human entities unto themselves); while Glenda Jackson remained in demand for parts requiring the kind of accessible, high-toned hauteur American actresses tend to look ridiculous trying to carry off outside of TV soap operas.

But even a two-time Oscar-winner like Jackson must have found it tough going, for in order to play something other than co-starring roles opposite then-bankable stars like George Segal and Walter Matthau —roles for which she was grossly overqualified—financing for her films had to come from unusual places: an independent patron of the arts (Ely Landau: The Maids), a cosmetics company (Brut: Hedda), and a magazine publisher (Reader’s Digest: The Incredible Sarah).

Readers Digest. I can’t even look at those words without picturing the stacks of unappealing-looking mini-magazines which seemed to grow like weeds in the corners of my grandmother’s living room. And don’t get me started on those volumes of Reader’s Digest condensed books. Condensed books…what was up with that?

But I digress. For a time in the 1970s, Reader’s Digest was in the movie business, producing a string of “Family Classics” (often musicals) based on works of literature. There was Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (1973) and Huckleberry Finn (1974), and an adaptation of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop titled Mr. Quilp (1975). The British arm of Reader’s Digest deviated from G-rated kiddie fare and produced this PG-rated biographical drama about the life of French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Certainly, the notion of having Glenda Jackson, the greatest actress of the 20^th century, portraying Sarah Bernhardt, the greatest actress of the 19^th century, must have struck everyone as ideal. Indeed, in 1971 Ken Russell entertained the idea of making a Bernhardt bio-pic with Jackson after first-choice Barbra Streisand(!) failed to follow through. 

But alas, Glenda Jackson, in spite of having garnered an Oscar nomination the previous year for Hedda, was in a bit of a career slump, having not appeared in a hit film since 1973's A Touch of Class; a slump not reversed until House Calls in 1978. The modestly-budgeted The Incredible Sarah was released in November of 1976, just when the studios were going full bore (pun intended) with its saturation promotion of the high-profile Christmas releases of Streisand's A Star is Born remake, and Dino De Laurentiis' King Kong reboot.
With Bernhardt neither a household name nor a familiar face (a star of the stage, Bernhardt nevertheless made a few silents and talkies) and only lukewarm reviews to assist it, The Incredible Sarah came and went without much notice or fanfare.

Glenda Jackson as Sarah Bernhardt

Daniel Massey as  Victorien Sardou

John Castle as Aristides Damala

Douglas Wilmer as Adolphe Montigny

Bridget Armstrong as Marie

The Incredible Sarah has occupied a spot on my list of holy grail films (out-of-print or hard-to-find movies I’ve always wanted to see) for a whopping 40-years now. The initial San Francisco Bay Area run of The Incredible Sarah in 1976 was so brief; it seemed to disappear from theaters before I even knew it had opened. In the ensuing years, I’ve no recollection of it appearing on either broadcast television or cable TV, and its release on VHS in 1992 was one of the best-kept secrets in the video rental business.

So it was with no small degree of excitement when—that after all these years—I discovered it on YouTube just a month ago and was finally afforded the opportunity to watch personal fave Glenda Jackson in what was to be one of the last of her major “star” vehicles. Always a critical and Academy Award favorite, Jackson was never really a populist favorite in the States. Though TV audiences took to Jackson in the BBC via PBS broadcast of  the miniseries Elizabeth R, her biggest successes tended to come from being paired with likable, light comedy male co-stars capable of “softening” her somewhat remote, intellectual image.

Well, there’s no denying that merely seeing The Incredible Sarah after such a long period of anticipation is gratifying in and of itself, and certainly the remarkable Glenda Jackson doesn’t disappoint. However, no amount of fandom, expectancy, or nostalgia can make this wholly undistinguished, startlingly old-fashioned bio-pic into anything more than a fabulous Glenda Jackson showcase (she's had better) and well-intentioned, honorable misfire.

I don’t know much about the life of Sarah Bernhardt—which, under the circumstances proved a distinct and decided advantage. But I do know a thing or two about show biz biographical movie clichés; an awareness which turned large segments of The Incredible Sarah into a bordering-on-camp laundry list of hoary bio-pic tropes.

King Lear - 1866

The Incredible Sarah chronicles the life of acclaimed French actress Sarah Bernhardt (born Rosine Bernardt) between the years 1863 to 1890 (taking her from age 19 to roughly 45; something it helps to know since the only person to visibly age in this film is her illegitimate child). From her inauspicious beginnings at the Comédie Française through her gradual emergence as one of the principal players at the Odéon Theatre, Bernhardt is depicted as a headstrong individualist and rebel, drawn to the calling of acting simply because…well, that’s never quite explained beyond her stating it's “Something I have to do!”—which could well be applied to getting one’s eyebrows tweezed.

On her path to becoming hailed as an international star and earning the name “The Divine Sarah,” Bernhardt is briefly shown appearing in several of her classic roles: King Lear, Le Passant, Phaedra,  The Lady of the Camellias, & Joan of Arc. Meanwhile, her offstage life rivals her stage performances in theatricality and excess. There’s the aforementioned illegitimate child born of a Belgian prince; her household menagerie of animals; her habit of sleeping in a coffin; her many lovers; her interest in sculpting; her legendary temperament; her stage fright; and her unpropitious marriage to a handsome Greek attaché. Lest we get the impression Bernhardt’s life was one rosy romp of self-interest and accolades, we’re also shown how she selflessly turned the Odéon Theatre into an infirmary during the Franco-German War, and battled an unsympathetic public judgmental of her wicked, wicked ways. 

The Incredible Sarah ends on a high note—some 33-years before Bernhard’s death at age 78—with her triumphant portrayal of Joan of Arc. As the film faded to black, I was left with the dual sensations of feeling how much I really missed Glenda Jackson and wondering about the film (like Bacharach’s Alfie), what’s it all about?

Le Passant  - 1869

I was entertained throughout (how can one NOT be entertained watching Glenda Jackson?), but save for a scene in the theater converted into an infirmary, strangely unmoved by anything that transpired between the characters. I loved the elaborate costumes, hairstyles, ornate art direction, and, here and there, even a performance that wasn’t Jackson’s, but I never got a sense of the film having anything particular to say about its subject. I thought I'd certainly come away with at least more knowledge about Sarah Bernhardt's life than when I arrived, but given that the film begins with the disclaimer: “This motion picture is a free portrayal of events in her tempestuous early career,” can I even say that?

I’m too much of a fan of the freewheeling liberties of Ken Russell’s biographical films to hew to the notion that historical accuracy and chronological fealty equal a good bio-pic. That The Incredible Sarah plays fast and loose with the facts doesn’t trouble me so much as the fact it has (for me, anyway) no point of view, perspective, or motivation beyond Bernhardt being a notable person whose life deserves recording.

The closest thing I could glean, and perhaps this was more obvious in ’76, is that The Incredible Sarah, in being a film produced and written by women (Helen M. Strauss & Ruth Wolff, respectively) sought to present a notable historical female figure in a feminist light. And indeed, it is refreshing to see a woman deciding for herself what is important in her life and not having her womanhood or value as a person called into question because she chooses the career path. But this theory is undermined a bit by the script making Bernhardt's chief adversary a woman jealous of Sarah stealing her man.

On the whole, The Incredible Sarah ranks as the perfect kind of historical film to show in school history classes or something. As a stand-alone entertainment with no lessons to impart to impressionable minds, I’m afraid The Incredible Sarah  measured up as being a must-see vehicle for Glenda Jackson enthusiasts like myself, but an easy pass for the general film fan. 

Phaedra - 1879

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Liking Glenda Jackson as much as I do, it’s very rewarding to see her in a film where not only is she front and center (and given very little in the way of competition), but she’s photographed flatteringly and made to look movie-star glamorous in a multitude of sumptuous, Oscar-nominated costumes by Anthony Mendelson (Macbeth, Young Winston).

The film is handsomely mounted (its only other Oscar nomination came for Art Direction: Elliot Scott & Norman Reynolds) and it's something of a feast to see Jackson in every single scene, playing the classics, hamming it up, being funny...basically being given free rein in a film designed to showcase her talents. But alas, I’m aware of clinging to these particular joys—all centered around the film's star—because the very weak screenplay gives Jackson quite a lot to do, but not very much she can to sink her teeth into. When she's not reciting the words of the Masters, Jackson is saddled with some of the most mundane dialogue imaginable.

Simon Williams portrays Henri de Ligne, a Belgian prince with whom Bernhardt has a child out of wedlock

Directed by Richard Fleischer, whose skills run the gamut from the outstanding 10 Rillington Place-1971 to the laugh-a-minute vulgarity that is Mandingo-1975, The Incredible Sarah is so old-fashioned in its construction and execution, it feels as though it were made at least a decade earlier. 

Joan of Arc - 1890

PERFORMANCES

A film about the world’s greatest actress would be terribly embarrassing without an actress about whom those words could be uttered onscreen without inciting laughter, so the casting of Glenda Jackson is perfection on that score. Where things get a little dicey is that, for all her skill as an actress, Glenda Jackson's innate intelligence seems incapable of being tamped down. Coming across as the human personification of common sense, level-headedness, and reason, Jackson doesn't exactly convince when trying to depict Bernhardt’s rootless flamboyance and fiery nature. Jackson doesn’t have a frivolous bone in her body. And so while it’s fun when she gets to run amok in not one, but two rip-and-tear temper tantrum scenes, the effort in trying to appear irrational shows.

Perhaps counting on the plausible likelihood that not many people caught his Golden Globe-winning, Oscar-nominated performance as Noel Coward in the 1968 Julie Andrews flop Star! (anther biopic about an actress few Americans were familiar with), Daniel Massey essentially repeats himself and gives the same performance. Massey and Jackson had previously co-starred in 1971's Mary, Queen of Scots

Much like the joyless Anthony Hopkins was a bust in his vulgar showman scenes in 1978's Magic, but ideal for the off-his-rocker stuff; sound-as-a-dollar Glenda Jackson is an ideal fit for Sarah Bernhardt the brilliant actress; but as an eccentric narcissist, she has both feet a little too firmly planted on the ground to make it work.  

Sarah Bernhardt relaxes in the coffin she traveled with

THE STUFF OF FANTASY 

The Incredible Sarah and the show business biofilm cliché checklist: 

Scene in which the artist conveniently declares her life’s ambition aloud (Funny Girl, Sparkle, The Loves of Isadora, Star!).

Scene depicting the artist’s unbridled, unsubstantiated self-confidence (Funny Girl, Sparkle, The Loves of Isadora, Star!)

Scene where artist makes amusingly disastrous performing stage debut (Funny Girl, The Loves of Isadora, Lady Sings the Blues, Love Me or Leave Me, Star!)

The confidant to whom the artist can give voice to her inner yearnings and provide plot exposition (Funny Lady, The Loves of Isadora, Lady Sings the Blues, Star!)
The bad marriage trope (Funny Girl, Star!, Sparkle, The Loves of Isadora) 

The so-called comic scene depicting Sarah Bernhardt's calamitous stage debut could have been
 lifted directly from an episode of That Girl

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I've watched The Incredible Sarah twice. The first time I was just too taken with the pleasure of at last seeing it to be able to access it with any objectivity. On the second go-round, its script flaws stood out a great deal more (events happen in biographical films because "they really happened"...screenwriters don't always concern themselves with making sure the events and character motivations fit a narrative logic. Real life is haphazard; I tend to like a little more structure in my drama. Even biographical drama), but I was happily surprised by how much the film is buoyed and made pleasurable by Glenda Jackson alone.

It isn't one of her best performances (as stated earlier, I was largely left unmoved) but it's a good one. Much better in my opinion than her Oscar-winning turn in A Touch of Class (1973). The Incredible Sarah didn't live up to my expectations, but I have to say, Glenda Jackson, even with weak material, is still the personification of incredible.

BONUS MATERIAL

The Incredible Sarah concerns itself with the actress' early career. Sarah Bernhardt was one of the first stage actors to appear in film. Here is a clip of the real Sarah Bernhardt playing Hamlet in her 1900 film debut. 
She made several other films and continued to tour and perform onstage even after the amputation of a leg in 1915. In addition to acting, she managed and directed her own theater company, sculpted, and published a novel and a memoir of questionable veracity. She passed away in 1922 at the age of 78.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2016