MOMMIE DEAREST 1981

“After Michael Redgrave played the insane ventriloquist in Dead of Night, bits of the character’s paranoia kept turning up in his other performances; it would be hair-raising if Faye Dunaway were to have trouble shaking off the gorgon Joan.”
Pauline Kael - The New Yorker  Oct.1981

I grew up during a time when it was common practice to apply hairbrushes, belts, or sturdy switches (a thin branch from a tree or a stalk from a root or plant) to the backsides of children in the interest of instilling "discipline." Back then, kids knew the likely consequence of disobedience or backtalk was to get “a whipping” (spanked), or, if in public, a pluck to the ears or smack to the back of the head (seriously!). Misdeeds failing to warrant physical punishment were met with verbal reprimands ("Shut up back there!”), threats (“Mouth off to me again and I’ll slap you clear into next week!”), or other colorful forms of what we now know to be verbal/psychological abuse (“What are you, stupid?”). 

Welcome to Parenting 101: The Pre Dr. Spock years. Whether it be corporal punishment, verbal abuse, or psychological intimidation (“Wait ‘til your father gets home!”); our parents did it to us because their parents did it to them. No one bothered to question such behavior for the administering of strict parental discipline was widely held at the time to be the single ingredient marking the difference between the raising of a worthless juvenile delinquent, or a contributing member of society.

This hurts me more than it does you

This is one reason why, when I first read Mommie Dearest—Christina Crawford’s bestselling memoir detailing the physical abuse she suffered at the hands of her adoptive mother, screen legend Joan Crawford—I was among those who had no problem believing the allegations made against Crawford to be true. For those of us who grew up in the "spare the rod, spoil the child” era, the behavior described in Mommie Dearest was considerably less shocking than who was engaging in it: Mildred Pierce herself, Joan Crawford.

If ever there was an individual who epitomized the words “movie star,” it was Joan Crawford. Everything about her finely burnished image fed the public perception of her as a hardworking, glamorous star of ladylike hauteur and refinement. While other stars were battling studio heads, suffering public meltdowns (would Mommie Dearest have caused such a sensation had its subject been one of Hollywood’s more famously unstable stars like Judy Garland?), and living flashy lives of decadent excess, Joan always conducted herself as though she were Hollywood’s unofficial  Goodwill Ambassador.  

Published in 1978 (only one year after Crawford’s death), Mommie Dearest caused quite a sensation. Not only was it one of the earliest examples of the tell-all celebrity memoir, but it was one of the first popular books to shed light on the problem of child abuse. These days, I would welcome any public figure who didn’t feel compelled to publicly air their abuses, addictions, and mental-illnesses; but in 1978, it was a rare thing indeed to publish such an incendiary airing of dirty-laundry about a movie star. Especially one with an image as scrupulously manicured as that of Joan Crawford.

I saw the film Mommie Dearest the day it opened at Hollywood's Mann's Chinese Theater in 1981. By this time the bestseller had become something of a cause célèbre, galvanizing public opinion into three distinct camps: 1) Those who accepted the portrayal of Joan Crawford as a child-abusing, alcoholic, germaphobe; 2) Those who believed Christina’s allegations to have been greatly exaggerated and motivated by greed and vindictiveness; and, 3) Those who reveled in the memoir’s voyeuristic sensationalism and camp-tastic portrayal of a headstrong diva thoroughly out of control.  

To this latter group, the events of Mommie Dearest somehow bypassed sympathetic analysis and barreled headlong into being a book enjoyed as a Jacqueline Susann- esque hybrid of old Joan Crawford movies (specifically Queen Bee, Harriet Craig, and Mildred Pierce) crossed with The Bad Seed. I don’t know whether it was Crawford’s grand diva posturing or society’s deep-seated resentment of the rich and famous, but there was just something about Mommie Dearest that many readers found irresistibly satirical.

Pathos Undermined
Being screamed at by your mother: Traumatic
Being screamed at by your mother who's decked out in a sleep mask, chin strap, and night gloves: Priceless

However the memoir was received, the one thing everybody agreed upon was that Mommie Dearest had wreaked irreparable damage to Joan Crawford’s hard-fought-for image. Virtually overnight the name of Joan Crawford had become an instant punch line (no pun intended, but see how easy that was?).

Faye Dunaway IS Joan Crawford

Diana Scarwid as Christina (adult)

Mara Hobel as Christina (child)

Steve Forrest as Greg Savitt

The audience that crowded the Chinese Theater that opening day in 1981 was abuzz with that rare kind of anticipation born of knowing you were about to see a film that promised a rollicking good time whether it was a triumph or a travesty. A win-win situation!

Much in the manner that the incredibly stylish cubist/art deco title sequence for Lucille Ball’s Mame (1974) proffered hopes (quickly dashed) of a classy entertainment that never materialized, Mommie Dearest got off to a very promising start with a dramatically evocative, cinematically economical montage detailing the pre-dawn preparations going into the creation of Joan Crawford, the movie star.

It’s a marvelous sequence of compulsive self-discipline and dues-paying professionalism that turns a morning bath into a near-religious purging ritual built upon the duty and sacrifice of stardom. (I particularly like how Crawford, autographing photos in the back seat of her limo as she’s driven to the studio, never allows for a moment of idleness. It calls to mind my perception of what Oprah Winfrey must be like in her private moments…I seriously don’t know when that woman finds time to sleep.) 

Joan Crawford, world-class multi-tasker

For about five minutes, Mommie Dearest really looks like it’s going to work...and then the audience gets its first look at Faye Dunaway in her Joan Crawford makeup. Although the transformation is impressive, the effect is startling in all the wrong ways. Gasps are followed by giggles, giggles erupt into guffaws, and Mommie Dearest never really regains its footing. 

Which is really too bad, because Dunaway, who works her ass off, is really rather good (at least in that dicey, Al Pacino in Scarface / Jack Nicholson in The Shining way: where a ridiculous performance can be made to work under the right circumstances).  She deserved a better script, a surer production, and a director protective enough to rein her in when she went over top. Which, alas, is pretty often.

Perhaps it was misguided to even attempt to make a serious motion picture about an actress whose extreme sense of glamour (padded shoulders, mannish eyebrows, smeary lipstick, and mannered acting style) had long ago made her a camp gay icon and favorite among drag queens, impressionists, and parodists (Carol Burnett’s Mildred Fierce comes to mind). But director Frank Perry (Diary of a Mad Housewife, Last Summer) and a battery of screenwriters only compounded the risk by failing to find a dramatically viable means of adapting the material.
For starters, the film can't really decide whose story it is. Are we seeing Joan as Christina sees her (in which case Christina's psychological perspective gets incredibly short shrift), or is this a "behind the facade" look at a famous actress (which leaves us wondering, what's the point?).

America was years away from seriously addressing the issues of parental abuse, alcoholism, and possible bipolar disorder (the success of 1981's Arthur still pivoted on how hilarious alcoholics were). Which may explain why the mother-daughter conflicts in Mommie Dearest…scenes of familial dysfunction worthy of William Inge…consistently fall short of tapping into the pain at their source.

Mommie Dearest, like its titular subject, gets bogged down with the superficial. Lacking in depth, the dialog, costuming, and performances work in concert to turn each of its setpiece scenes into high-style, $#*! My Mother Says.

The illusion of perfection

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I’m guilty of whatever human frailty it is which causes people to rejoice when cracks are found in the façade of public figures who insist on portraying themselves and their lives as perfect. I was one of those so shocked by Mommie Dearest’s unmasking of little-miss-perfect Joan Crawford as a bit of a nutjob, that I failed to pay much attention to the not-so-funny issue of child abuse, which should have been my focus from the start. Viewing Mommie Dearest today, so many years after its release, I wonder if the film is not guilty of the same thing. The focus should have been on the character of Christina, not Joan. It’s her story after all. Since even the most world-famous parent is likely to be just plain old “mom” or “dad” to a child, the resultant shift in focus might have offered a less traditional view of Crawford and saved Mommie Dearest from becoming what it frequently feels like: the world’s longest drag act.

Joan Crawford's palatial Bel-Air home (top) first appeared as the mansion of gangster J. Sinister Hulk (Jesse White, bottom photo, left) in the 1964 Annette Funicello musical, Pajama Party

PERFORMANCES

In spite of the many hours of enjoyment I've had at Faye Dunaway’s expense (tears running down my cheeks, cramped stomach muscles, desperate gasps for air between full-throated howls of joyous laughter), as I've stated, I really think she does an amazing job in Mommie Dearest. It’s not so much that she’s good, although she does have her moments; so much as she’s incredibly brave and frighteningly committed. She throws herself into the role so wholeheartedly that I don’t know that she can be completely faulted for failing to land right on the mark.

I’m of the opinion that much of what is accepted as funny about her portrayal of Joan Crawford is only partially her fault. No insult intended to the Joan Crawford fans out there, but the real Joan Crawford in full “Joan-mode” is pretty hilarious. Dunaway’s impersonation is so spot-on that the laughs she gets can’t really be attributed completely to her performance/impersonation. I mean, those are Joan’s eyebrows and pinched-constipated smile; that is Crawford’s butch, bitch-queen bossiness; and anyone who’s ever seen the level of overwrought emotionalism she’s capable of bringing to even the most easy-going scenes (check out Trog, sometime), knows that even a lot of Faye's overacting belongs to Crawford herself.

Dunaway makes some odd choices (the cross-eyed bit during the wire hangers scene is just asking for it, and who exactly thought the whole “Don’t fuck with me, fellas!” line was going to work?), but within the confines of a rather choppy script, there is an attempt on Dunaway’s part to add some dimension to the at-times cartoonish monster Mommie Dearest would have us believe is Joan Crawford.

Joan Crawford (center) flanked by the contenders to the throne. Oscar winner Anne Bancroft (r.) was Christina Crawford's personal choice for the role of Joan. When Bancroft declined, Faye Dunaway (who, ironically enough was a favorite of Joan Crawford's) took over the reins. 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that Mommie Dearest isn’t a bad film so much as a series of gross miscalculations all around. Here are just a few things the makers of Mommie Dearest failed to take into account:

a) 40s era Joan Crawford looks disconcertingly like Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

b) Power plays between curly haired brats and mannish glamour stars are inherently funny.

c) Extreme wealth undercuts tragedy.

e) Casting a legendarily temperamental actress in the role of a legendarily temperamental actress encourages the audience to wonder if they're watching Dunaway being Dunaway, or Dunaway being Crawford. 

Madonna & Child

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

There was a time when I really couldn’t get sufficiently past Joan Crawford’s extreme look and affected style of acting to see her as anything other than a comically camp timepiece. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate her skill and talent, and today she’s one of my favorite actresses. Mommie Dearest is too flawed a film for even nostalgic revisionism to one day convert into a misunderstood classic; but I think there stands a good chance that time will be kinder to Faye Dunaway’s performance. Like many of the under-appreciated performances of Marlon Brando that have come to light to be among his best (Reflections in a Golden Eye), Dunaway’s Joan Crawford may be a bit “out there” at times, but it is a fascinating, almost athletic performance. Perhaps far more layered and intelligent than the film deserves.

Understatement of the Year Dept:
"Today Faye sees herself 'as starting on a second phase of my professional life, just as Joan Crawford did...'"
                                                                                               People Magazine  Oct. 1981

BONUS MATERIAL

Mommie Dearest First Draft Screenplay (Anne Bancroft version)

Mommie Dearest shooting script (Faye Dunaway version)

Copyright © Ken Anderson

ALL THAT JAZZ 1979

All That Jazz is the movie I wish had inspired me to become a dancer. Bob Fosse's artily stylized, semi-autobiographical, cinematic dissertation on the artist as self-destructive skirt-chaser, is just the kind of self-mythologizing fable that appeals to the romantic notion of the fragility of the creative process.

As stated in an earlier post, the movie that actually inspired me to abandon my film studies and embark on a 25-year career as a dancer, is the legendarily reviled roller-skatin' muse project, Xanadu (1980). Don't get me wrong... Xanadu, in all its flawed glory, is, and always will be for me, an infinitely more joyous, emotionally persuasive experience than All That Jazz ever was (those soaring notes reached by ELO and ONJ on Xanadu’s title track could inspire poetry). It's just that when one is recounting that seminal, life-altering moment wherein one’s artistic destiny is met square-on, face-to-face, it would have been to be nice to be able to point to a serious, substantive work like All That Jazz, instead of a film dubbed by Variety as being about, "A roller-skating lightbulb."

Roy Scheider as Joe Gideon (a.k.a. Bob Fosse)

Jessica Lange as Angelique (a.k.a. The Angel of Death)

Leland Palmer as Audrey Paris (a.k.a. Gwen Verdon)

Ann Reinking as Kate Jagger (a.k.a. Ann Reinking)

Ben Vereen as O'Connor Flood  (a.k.a. Sammy Davis, Jr.)

 All that Jazz is the story of Broadway choreographer Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider); a pill-popping, chain-smoking, serial-womanizing choreographer/director who struggles to prevent the demons that fuel his creativity from consuming his life. Simultaneously mounting a Broadway show and editing a motion picture, Gideon's intensifying abuse of his health (both physical and mental) manifests, surrealistically, as a literal love affair/dialog with death (a teasing Jessica Lange). Fosse makes no effort to mask the fact that Joe Gideon is Bob Fosse and All That Jazz is Fosse's 8½; but, as gifted as he is, Bob Fosse is no Frederico Fellini. His essential shallowness of character (something he takes great pains to dramatize in the film) makes for the baring of guardedly superficial insights, leaving the larger philosophical questions of "what price art?" unaddressed.

Director/choreographer Joe Gideon engaging in his other talent: disappointing loved ones.
In this case, his daughter, Michelle (Erzsebet Foldi) a.k.a. Nicole Fosse.

All That Jazz asks us to accept that Joe Gideon is selfish, an adulterer, a neglectful father, a philanderer, a manipulator, and a liar; but gosh darn it, at least he knows it! Nobody’s perfect, the film seems to be saying, but isn't a little of that imperfection mitigated by their ability to bring art into the world? What Gideon offers as a means of earthly penance for the pain he causes others, is his genius. And it's a point well-taken, for (at least to me) Fosse's choreography in All That Jazz is so brilliant as to justify almost anything. Almost.

And thus we land at what ultimately dissatisfies about All That Jazz for me. It purports to be introspective, but at its heart, it’s apologist. Fosse isn’t invested in getting to the root of what makes Gideon/Fosse tick, so much as pleading a case for the redemptive power of artistic genius.

"It's showtime, folks!"

I buy happily into the enduring romantic myth of the tortured, suffering artist. The tortured, suffering artist as asshole? Not so much. It seems to me a curiously male perspective that allows for the emotional collateral damage of a life of self-indulgence to be tolerated, and ultimately absolved, through one’s art. (The female equivalent: the fragile, too-sensitive-for-this-world type, more apt to do harm to herself than others.)

Although we're given scene after scene of Joe Gideon indulging in the self-serving candor of the cheater (“Yes, I’m a dog, but I’m upfront about it!”), these confessions never once feel emotionally revelatory. Rather, they recall this exchange from 1968's Cactus Flower-

(Walter Matthau's aging lothario prostrating himself before girlfriend Goldie Hawn)

Matthau:  I'm a bastard. I'm the biggest bastard in the whole world!

Hawn:  Julian, please...you're beginning to make it sound like bragging.

Personally, I'm waiting for the day when someone will make a film that sheds some light on what kind of women attach themselves to artistic, self-centered men - never resenting having to play second, third, or sixth fiddle - as they float, like interchangeable satellites, in the orbit of genius.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Gaydar Setting? Off the Chart
Dime-store psychologists seeking the origins of Bob Fosse's serial-womanizing need look no further than these two dishy publicity stills from early in Fosse's dance career. This guy must have felt he had something to prove. It couldn't have been easy being a heterosexual (possibly bisexual) dancer in an era when most male dancers were presumed to be gay, and the pervasive concepts of masculinity (none of which applied to the slight-framed, thin-voiced Fosse) were inflexible. The phenomenon is dramatized in the 1977 ballet film, The Turning Point when a straight male dancer admits to marrying and having a child at a young age in an effort to prove to himself he wasn't gay.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

If you haven't yet gleaned it, I'm not overly fond of the autobiographical structure of All That Jazz's plot. But much like the women who put up with Joe Gideon because he's a genius of dance, I confess that I endure the clichéd narrative just so that I can enjoy the stupendous dance sequences. Bob Fosse is my favorite choreographer of all time, and his work here is beyond splendid. It's absolutely amazing, and among the best of his career.

A legend on Broadway, director/choreographer/sometime-actor Bob Fosse directed but three movie musicals (Sweet Charity, Cabaret, and All That Jazz), yet their influence on dance, the musical genre, and choreography for film has been far-reaching and incalculable. Raked over the coals by critics for the stylistic excesses of 1969s Sweet Charity (Pauline Kael went so far as to call the film "A disaster"); by the time these talents were honed and polished to a fine gloss in Cabaret (1972), Fosse's fluidly kinetic camerawork and slice and dice style of editing eventually became the definitive visual style for contemporary movie musicals.

What has always struck me about Fosse's dance style was how it was so perfect for the female form. If the lines of classic ballet celebrated the idealized feminine form— ethereal and untouchable—Fosse's sensuous style took women off the pedestal and celebrated her sensuality and reveled in her carnal vulgarity. Drawing from his days in burlesque, Fosse's style somehow sidesteps the passive, camp allure of the showgirl and captures an exhibitionistic hyper-femininity that carries with it a touch of danger. To watch the way Gwen Verdon moves as Lola in Damn Yankees is to see the pin-up ideal come to life. I've always thought that if a Vargas Girl portrait could move, she'd move like a Bob Fosse dancer.

PERFORMANCES

Fosse elicits many fine performances from his cast. Roy Scheider, a non-dancer, is surprisingly good, displaying an easy charm behind a keyed-up physicality that makes him believable as a dancer and object of masochistic female affection (my heart blanches at the thought of originally-cast Richard Dreyfuss in the role). Leland Palmer is perhaps my favorite; a fabulous dancer and one of those actresses whose edgy quality makes you keep your eye on her even when she's not pivotal to the scene.
No surprise that Ann Reinking is a phenomenally talented dancer and truly a marvel to watch, but it's nice that she also displays an easy, husky-voiced naturalness in her non-dancing scenes. Jessica Lange has had such an impressive career that it's easy to forget her debut in King Kong (1976) almost turned her into the Elizabeth Berkley of the '70s. Wisely turning her back on Hollywood's blonde-of-the-month publicity machine, Lange took three years off and reemerged in the small but pivotal role in All That Jazz which successfully showcased her ability to do more than look pretty sitting in an ape's paw.

Flirting with Death

The brilliance that is All That Jazz pretty much extends to everything but the central conceit of the plot (which somehow worked for Fellini and no one else. Rob Marshall's Nine was pretty dismal). Fosse gets Fellini's cinematographer, Giuseppe Rottuno (Fellini Satyricon), to give the film a smoky sheen, the music is sparkling, and the dreamy stylization employed throughout is sometimes breathtakingly inventive. One just wishes they weren't in the service of such meager emotional epiphanies.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

In the book, On the Line: The Creation of A Chorus Line, the collective of authors (several members of the original Broadway cast) recall how, after several years of film treatments, director/choreographer Michael Bennett was unable to land on a satisfactory method to translate his show to the screen. All involved in A Chorus Line thought that Fosse had, for all intents and purposes, beat them to the punch and delivered (in a virtuoso eight-minute opening sequence), everything that a screen adaptation of A Chorus Line should have been. And indeed, the opening of All That Jazz is a matchless example of film as storyteller. It's so perfect, it's like a documentary short.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I'm crazy about all of the dancing in All That Jazz. Understandably, most people recall the remarkable "Take Off With Us/ Air-otica" number, but I have a particular fondness for "Bye Bye Love/Life" number that ends the film. A fantasy fever dream/nightmare taking place in the mind of Joe Gideon as he slips away on a hospital bed, this number is outrageous in concept and phenomenal in execution. We're in Ken Russell territory when you have a dying man dressed in sequins (complete with silver open-heart surgery scar) singing his own eulogy to an audience of everyone he's ever encountered in his life, while flanked by gyrating dancers dressed as diagrams of the human circulatory system.  

WOW!

I never tire of watching this number, as it appeals to both the dancer and film enthusiast in me. Fosse, whose signature style consisted of small moves, isolations, and minimal gestures, always seemed better suited to the movies than the stage. He ushered in the use of the camera and editor as collaborative choreographers, punctuating the rhythms and drawing the eye to the details.

Bob Fosse died in 1987, mere months after the death of his closest professional peer/rival, Michael Bennett. Broadway and dance suffered a loss that year that I don't think it has ever recovered from. Bennett didn't live long enough to leave his stamp on cinema, but lucky for us, Fosse left a recorded legacy that represents the best of cinema dance as art. "Thank you" doesn't begin to cover the debt of gratitude.

Bye-Bye, Love

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2011

THE LOVE MACHINE 1971

The Waiting Is Over...The Love Machine is on the Screen!

So declared the graphically austere poster ads (a gold ankh against a simple black background) heralding the arrival of The Love Machine—sorry, Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine—to movie theaters in 1971. Hard to believe when looking at the film now, but there actually was a degree of anticipation attending the release of The Love Machine, the big-screen adaptation of Susann's 1969 best-selling follow-up novel to the phenomenally successful Valley of the Dolls.  

Much of the anticipation was due to so much having transpired in the four years since 20th Century Fox first released Valley of the Dolls to big boxoffice and a torrent of lousy reviews in 1967. First and most significantly, Jacqueline Susann had proven herself a viable boxoffice name in her own right, capable of selling tickets regardless of the project's relative artistic or critical merit. Secondly, movies themselves had grown increasingly permissive in terms of nudity and language since 1967 (Fox's own Myra Breckinridge had seen to that); thus, there existed, at least among Jacqueline Susann's broad fan base, the hope that the film of The Love Machine would have more overall license to be every bit as tawdry and smutty as the source novel.

Naughty, Naughty

At last, the newfound permissiveness in movies allowed gay characters to be acknowledged as such, and they weren't required to die before the final reel (although they usually did, anyway). For movies that sought to be daring and hip, the inclusion of gay characters—always depicted as stereotypically as possible—was shorthand for provocative, taboo decadence. Here we have David Hemmings, in full flame with a cigarette holder, as fashion photographer Jerry Nelson and his blow-dried inamorato, British Shakespearean actor Alfie Knight (portrayed by Clinton Greyn).

In the minds of many, there also existed the misguided belief that The Love Machine was going to be a better film than Valley of the Dolls. Why? Well, putting aside for a moment the obvious...that it would be hard to make a movie that could be worse, it was Jacqueline Susann herself (who had never made secret her dislike for the movie version of Valley of the Dolls ) who promised fans that both she and her husband, Irving Mansfield, were taking steps to guarantee that they both would have creative input in bringing The Love Machine to the screen. 

Indeed, thanks to a lawsuit filed by Susann against 20th Century-Fox and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)—that unofficial, unauthorized, non-sequel—Susann and Mansfield were able to take The Love Machine to the more lucrative and contractually friendly pastures of Columbia Pictures. Columbia paid Susann $1.5 million for the film rights and granted her a possessive author's credit for the movie's title (Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine). With her husband installed as executive producer (apt enough, given that he was a TV producer by profession and The Love Machine was set in the television industry), this time around, the Susann-Mansfield household held a slightly tighter grip on the creative reins of bringing Susann's bestseller to the screen.  

The Hitchcock of Coarseness
Jacqueline Susann makes another cameo appearance in one of her films.
(That's LA newsman Jerry Dunphy on the left)

Possessive film titles like Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine are almost always clumsy and invariably rooted in contract perks, ego-stroking, and product branding. But like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval, an author's name attached to the title also implies that the film will be a more accurate, authentic realization of the writer's intent and vision. Well, as anyone can attest who's seen Stephen King's abominable self-penned 1997 TV-movie adaptation of his novel, The Shining (he disliked the many alterations and omissions in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film), an author's participation in the adaptation of their own work is in no way a reliable guarantor of anything resembling quality. Or even watchability.

John Phillip Law as Robin Stone

Dyan Cannon as Judith Austin

David Hemmings as Jerry Nelson

Jodi Wexler as Amanda

Maureen Arthur as Ethel Evans

The Love Machine tells the story of the swift rise and fall of Robin Stone, an ambitious local news anchor who ruthlessly muscles his way into the job of network television president. Despite looking thin, wan, and in desperate need of a blood transfusion, Robin is an irresistible ladykiller who leaves a trail of broken-hearted, blue-bathrobed lasses in his wake. A cad with Nielsen ratings and audience-share figures where his heart should be, Robin Stone is like a male version of Faye Dunaway's Diana Christiansen in Network (1976), crossed with Valley of the Dolls' Helen Lawson, with a little of Stephen Boyd's Frankie Fane from The Oscar (1966) on the side.

Like most of Jacqueline Susann's characters, Robin Stone is allegedly based on a real-life individual. In this instance, the late CBS TV executive James T. Aubrey—the man we can thank for The Beverly Hillbillies and a host of other fragrantly lowbrow moneymakers during the '60s. Like his movie counterpart, Aubrey is said to have been a calculatingly shrewd cookie who held the TV-viewing audience in the lowest contempt and made a fortune banking on the public's insatiable appetite for mediocrity. Judging by the popularity of today's Jersey Shore/Kardashians train wrecks, you can't say the guy wasn't something of a visionary.

The Love Machine
In all but the most archly ironic circumstances, Jackie Susann failed to get the public to adopt "dolls" as popular slang for barbiturates. Her efforts getting "The Love Machine" into the vernacular as slang for TV sets (because it "sells love, creates desire"...you see) fared even worse.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

My fondness for a specific brand of bad film is as difficult to explain as it is to defend. It's not like I just get off on making fun of them. On the contrary, most of these films are very professional, technically well-made films in every regard. What I think I respond to is that scary zone in the creative arts where the attempt fails to match the execution. That twilight zone where all the talent, creativity, and hard work on one end somehow yields the 100% opposite of what anyone intended. It fascinates me because it can occur at any moment, no matter how heavily the deck is stacked for success. For example, consider Marlon Brando putting cotton in his cheeks in The Godfather. That could have turned out disastrous, but instead became iconic. Or what about Al Pacino's Cuban accent in Scarface. What an enormous risk that was! It would have derailed the entire picture if audiences found it ridiculous and started to chuckle whenever he spoke.  

No,  this isn't a shot of Robin Stone visiting Pee Wee's Playhouse.
This is just a horrific example of chic '70s decor.

I'm pointing out that the collaborative art of film is often like a dance on a wire; fiasco or triumph is sometimes based on tiny, intangible miscalculations or moments of blind overconfidence. Something that might not even be visible until after the film is already in the can. Hindsight makes it seem like an overripe performance or a particular narrative miscalculation could somehow have been avoided, but that's not true. It's the whole crapshoot element of it all that fascinates me.

If it's true in life that we learn most from our failures, I also believe there are similar lessons to be gleaned for the film buff confronted with a well-intentioned mess. When you watch a film that costs millions, involves hundreds of decisions, hours of hard work, the collaboration of many talented individuals...and the result is sometimes deplorable, you're staring straight into the face of the elusiveness of excellence. That or perhaps hubris, too many cooks spoiling the broth, or maybe (worst of all) professional cynicism: films that don't really care if they're good, so long as they make money.

Ambitious Robin Stone goes head-to-head with network
programming executive Danton Miller (Jackie Cooper)

 The Love Machine tries to be a hard-hitting, cynical, claw-his-way-to-the-top drama along the lines of The Sweet Smell of Success and The Young Philadelphians, but for all its faddish clothes, bare bosoms, and cuss words, it's fundamentally a creaky Fannie Hurst melodrama. It strives hard to be sensational and daring, but its focus needs readjusting. The story is too shallow to be good character drama, and its depiction of the inner workings of the TV industry is too superficial and cliche-ridden to serve effectively as expose. Even with all this considered, The Love Machine still manages to be a curiously addictive viewing experience, if only due to its utter cluelessness as to how airless and old-fashioned it is. 

The real star of The Love Machine is Robin's collection of blue bathrobes.
It got so that I started to miss them if they failed to show up in a scene.

PERFORMANCES

The likeable late actor (and last-minute replacement) John Phillip Law portrays Robin Stone with startling ineffectualness. Last seen sporting angel's wings and a feathered diaper in Barbarella, Law, who by all accounts sounds like a terribly nice guy in real life, latches onto Robin Stone's closed-off, inexpressive side and gives a performance that's too stiff even for a character referred to as a machine. He's given no help from the script, whose risible dialog suits the actor's robotic delivery. I've read that Jacqueline Susann (ever the fantasist) wanted Sean Connery for the role.

John Phillip Law's somewhat lifeless performance is partly due to his stepping in at the last moment as a replacement for originally-cast Brian Kelly (star of TV's Flipper), injured in a motorcycle accident three weeks into filming. In several scenes, it's evident that Law is wearing ill-fitting clothes cut for the shorter-in-stature Kelly.

Dyan Cannon has always been a favorite of mine, but her performance here (no great shakes, but heads above the rest of the cast) is consistently undermined by the jaw-dropping, high-fashion get-ups she's called upon to wear. Given that she's not really provided a believable character to play, her bizarre fashion sense always takes center stage. According to a Jacqueline Susann bio, Cannon was so struck by a case of the giggles during a preview of The Love Machine (inspired by both her performance and the film) she had to excuse herself from the theater.

Whose idea was it to dress the lovely Dyan Cannon, playing the wife of a television executive, in a test pattern? The answer to that rhetorical question is Oscar-nominated costume designer (Giant, What a Way to Go!, Morituri, The Way We Were) Moss Mabry.

In the movie Barbarella, Jane Fonda's title character makes the sound observation, "A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming." I've an observation of my own that's equally on-point:

A good many bad movies feature fashion shows. A parade of Moss Mabry's coif-centric costume designs amusingly pad out The Love Machine's running time.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

For anyone finding the film hard going (it's relatively slow by today's standards), I beg you to stick around for the climactic "Hollywood party fight scene." Here Ms. Cannon (balancing 23 pounds of teased hair) finally abandons her heretofore starchy acting style and lets loose with that infectiously raucous laugh of hers, setting in motion a truly memorable free-for-all that should have become a camp highlight by now. Finally, in trying to top Valley of the Dolls' infamous wig-down-the-toilet scene, The Love Machine finally does something right.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

When The Love Machine was first released to theaters, I was a mere 13 years old. Too young to see the much-ballyhooed motion picture but old enough to take my mom's paperback novel to school and pore over the "dirty parts" with my schoolmates. I'm not sure what my problem was at such an early age, but I was very much taken with this sleazy novel. Particularly the iconography of the ankh ring Robin Stone wears on the paperback cover art. (In my defense, I grew up in San Francisco during the hippie era, and ankhs were all over the place.) I also unsuccessfully tried to persuade my sister to buy that Faberge "Xanadu" perfume that was cross-promoted in the film (ads for which recommended you mark "his" favorite spot with an "x").

Xanadu by Faberge
Samples were given away at many theaters showing The Love Machine

2021 update

Reader swag! A longtime reader of this blog who has since become a dear friend (although we've never met) gave me the shock of my life when she sent me this vintage Xanadu Cologne she unearthed online. So, thanks to a very kind gesture of thoughtful generosity, a tiny bit of The Love Machine movie premiere experience is mine some 50 years after the fact. 

In spite of my unseemly youthful preoccupation with this movie, I didn't actually see The Love Machine until I was well into adulthood. However, I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed. A little bored, perhaps (this movie takes itself WAY too seriously), but not disappointed. And while it's not nearly as much fun as Valley of the Dolls, The Love Machine has more than enough in the way of over-the-top fashions, poky dialog, and questionable performances to rank high among my favorite guilty pleasures.

"...and when you put it on, you'll live forever. And love me forever."

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2011