SEPARATE TABLES 1983

With major motion pictures looking more like overproduced TV shows—Man of Steel, Star Trek Into Darkness, Fast and Furious: God Only Knows How Many. And binge-watch television programming providing the most satisfying viewing around—Sherlock, Downton Abbey, In Treatment; I suspect it's only a matter of time before I jettison the cinephile conceit of this blog entirely and concentrate exclusively on network television and cable TV. As it's a widely-held belief that today's Golden Age is taking place not on movie screens but on the HD flatscreens in our living rooms, I'll seize upon the current zeitgeist as an opportunity to highlight a 1983 cable-TV adaptation of a play that takes advantage of the intimacy-enhancing attributes of the diminished-screen medium to produce a work that's infinitely more faithful to its source material than the Oscar-winning 1958 motion picture adaptation. 

Separate Tables, Terence Rattigan's two-act play (or two, One-Act plays, if you like), debuted on Broadway in 1956 after having enjoyed a successful run in London's West End since 1954. Four years later, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth, David Niven, and Deborah Kerr starred in a significantly reworked film version that garnered seven Oscar nominations (including Best Picture), with Supporting Actor awards going to Niven and co-star Wendy Hiller. 

Rita Hayworth and Burt Lancaster in the 1958 film adaptation of Separate Tables

Though I was aware of the 1958 film adaptation of Separate Tables by reputation, I only got around to seeing it this month. Alas, despite its pedigree, cast, awards, and overall fine performances, I was underwhelmed. Burt Lancaster, doing all of his acting with his teeth, and Rita Hayworth, going for vulnerable superficiality, but landing at mannered artificiality, make a jarringly ineffectual pair. It's a handsome production, to be sure, but I found it to be strangely inert.

A Pay-TV presentation, Separate Tables premiered on Home Box Office
Monday, March 14, 1983

But to be fair, the true source of my dissatisfaction with the Lancaster movie lies in my having seen, just two weeks prior, the vastly superior 1983 HBO television adaptation of Separate Tables directed by John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, The Day of the Locust, Sunday, Bloody Sunday). Produced by Ely and Edie Landau, the pair responsible for that fabulous collection of filmed plays under the banner of the American Film Theater (1973 -1975), this videotape production starred—be still my heart—Julie Christie and Alan Bates. Heretofore unknown by me (how was THAT possible?), this movie is an extraordinary acting showcase for all concerned and comes off as something of a minor theatrical miracle: the filmed play that satisfies as a film. It's such a feast of stunning performances and heart-wrenching emotion that the rather cool 1958 film version can't help but pale in comparison.

Julie Christie as Anne Shankland

Alan Bates as John Malcolm Ramsden

Julie Christie as Sybil Railton-Bell

Alan Bates as Major David Angus Pollock

As director John Schlesinger's first project following the mega-flop of his $24 million American comedy Honky Tonk Freeway (1981), the modest Separate Tables, filmed in Bristol, England, feels like something of a return to his origins as a TV series director for the BBC in the 1950s. 

With his glory days as the Academy Award-winning, go-to expatriate director of big-budget hits behind him, the excellence of Separate Tables as a TV film suggests a career resurgence for Schlesinger. But instead, it represented the last glimmer of brilliance in a period of steady professional decline for the director. One that extended from his last profitable release—the 1976 thriller Marathon Man—to his death in 2003.

Irene Worth as Mrs. Maud Railton-Bell

It's anybody's guess why the director's post-1983 film is distinguished by its utter lack of distinction. But in bringing Rattigan's Separate Tables to television, something in the Schlesinger of old seems to have been reawakened. Maybe it was returning to his homeland, working with a nearly all-British cast, or reuniting with the two actors with whom he's done his best work (and whose careers he's primarily responsible for having ignited: Julie Christie, Darling - 1965, Alan Bates, A Kind of Loving - 1962).

Whatever the reason, Schlesinger, a former actor and always a gifted actors' director, gets compelling performances out of his cast, displaying a keen eye for shining a light on the wounded spirit behind the facade of control. Separate Tables is top-form John Schlesinger and a triumph on every level. When I settled in to watch it for the first time, I, of course, hoped I would enjoy the film. What I didn't expect was that a TV movie I hadn't even known existed before this year would turn out to be one of the finest works of John Schlesinger's career.

Claire Bloom as Miss Cooper

The entirety of Separate Tables occurs within the dining room and lounge of The Beauregard Hotel, a modest residence hotel in the resort town of Bournemouth, on the south coast of England. Concerning itself with the lives and interactions of the hotel's sundry inhabitants—most of them elderly, nearly all of them alone—Act I: "Table by the Window" takes place in December 1954; Act II: "Table Number Seven" occurs some 18 months later. As is the custom with most theatrical productions of Separate Tables, the lead roles in Acts I & II, while different characters, are played by the same actors. Thus in this instance, not only was I blessed with the reteaming of frequent movie co-stars Julie Christie and Alan Bates (Far from the Madding Crowd, The Go-Between, Return of the Soldier), but granted the exceptionally rare treat of seeing these two exceptional talents in dual roles. (This device was abandoned in the film version, which cast different actors in each part and compresses a year and a half's worth of drama into two somewhat overwrought days.)

 "Table by the Window" 

In "Table by the Window," Julie Christie plays an aging fashion model who "accidentally" reunites with ex-husband Alan Bates, a disgraced Labor politician drowning his regrets in drink and a one-sided love affair with the hotel's compassionate proprietress Claire Bloom. Seeing these actors handling Rattigan's humor and pathos with such engaging ease is wonderful. Julie Christie, in particular, looks quite the stunner in an elaborate '50s hairdo that succeeds where several of her high-profile period dramas of the '60s hadn't: getting her to abandon her trademark bangs). "Table Number Seven" has Christie as a childlike, repressed spinster dominated by her mother (the splendid Irene Worth) and infatuated with a posturing military Major (Bates) harboring a dark secret.

"Table Number Seven" 

All of these characters share the common, pitiable trait of fighting to maintain a sense of dignity while struggling to cope with regret, loss, disillusionment, aging, fear, and, most acutely, loneliness. Within the crippling confines of staid, British social conventions—such as the doggedly adhered-to tradition of hotel guests dining at separate tables despite sometimes years-long associations—Separate Tables provides a most moving dramatization of the contradictious nature (frail, yet resilient) of the human soul.

Sylvia Barter as Lady Matheson

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I'm showing my age when I say I feel the same about good acting as young audiences today feel about noise, explosions, stunts, and special effects: I don't require much else from a movie. Separate Tables is pretty much a filmed play. It all takes place in what is essentially one big set, with no superfluous "opening up" scenes or cutaways. And if there's any kind of cinematic dexterity on display at all, it's Schlesinger's ability to come up with so many interesting angles in such cramped quarters (although a pesky boom mic shadow makes an appearance in one scene). But with a cast as talented as the one assembled for this TV movie, all you can wish for is that the director keeps the filmmaking gimmicks to a minimum and just lets the actors do their stuff. And, happily, that is precisely what Schlesinger does. The performances in Separate Tables are the main attraction and let me tell you, there's not an IMAX CGI experience that can match the thrill of watching gifted actors at the top of their game.

Brian Deacon and Susannah Fellows
Young unmarried couple Charles Stratton and Jean Tanner ruffle the feathers
of tradition with their casual dress and (gasp!) smoking in the dining room

PERFORMANCES

A welcome problem that comes with having a favorite actor about whose work I've written enthusiastically repeatedly is the worry that I'll one day run out of superlatives. Well, in the case of Julie Christie, I think I've hit it. Having already written essays on no less than six Julie Christie films to date, I think I've used up my entire thesaurus of Christie-related accolades. More's the pity because, in a long career of noteworthy performances that have never failed to leave me thoroughly impressed with her beauty, talent, and screen presence, her dual performances in Separate Tables had me floored. Christie's not just good in Separate Tables; she's phenomenal. For me, she gives what I think is the absolute best performance of her career. And given how over the moon I am about her already, that's really saying a mouthful.

Having carved an early career out of playing shallow, self-involved characters, Christie is in fine form and in well-trod territory as the vainglorious Anne in "Table by the Window." But what I love is how, after playing variations of this type for years now, she's still able to mine bits of genius in her characterization that makes this woman infinitely more dimensional and complicated than I think she appears on the printed page. A favorite: in a moment of defensive desperation when her character confesses to her accusing husband, "You see, I've still got a little pride left." Christie conveys in a split second, with just vocal emphasis and the look in her eyes, the kind of wounded dignity a person clings to moments before relinquishing everything to the fear of being alone. It's an isolated moment of brilliance in a ceaselessly pleasing performance. 

Liz Smith as Miss Meacham

But without a doubt, my highest praise is reserved for Julie Christie in "Table Number Seven." I've never seen her in the role of the mousy underdog before, and witnessing a severely deglamorized Christie - who always registers such strength and intelligence - losing herself within a character of tissue-thin self-esteem and naked vulnerability, is rather glorious. Watching Christie in this was like discovering her anew. The double-barreled impact of her performance in both roles is sensational.    

Bernard Archer as Mr. Fowler

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Say what you will about "English Reserve," but a culture rooted in formality and rituals designed to conceal emotion and ensure personal distance makes for some seriously fascinating drama. What makes Separate Tables so profoundly affecting for me (and where this particular cast most notably excels) is that the characters so often speak to each other in ways so obviously antithetical to how they genuinely feel.  

In less capable hands, such emotional restraint can result in characters we can't feel anything for and a film that keeps us at a remove. But when you have a cast of actors capable of showing the concealed layers of emotion and sensitivity behind the stiff-upper-lip posturing and dialogue, they create the necessary underlying tension that brings a chamber piece like this to life. 

The resident busybodies of The Beauregard Hotel unearth
some unpleasant news about one of the hotel guests.

It's unexpectedly touching to see such frosty characters fighting to maintain appearances while, deep inside, they struggle to cope with the need to be loved, accepted, and understood. Alan Bates is quite astounding and is particularly heartbreaking as Major Pollock in "Table Number Seven." If I'm less enthusiastic about Bates' heartsore Mr. Martin in "Table by the Window," it's only marginally so. It's a marvelously versatile turn on his part; no shade of either of his performances rings false. I just tend to harbor an antipathy toward male alcoholics in drama. Which is to say, how they're written. They're often so self-pitying that they leave the viewer with none of their own to contribute. Bates' performance in each play, however, is unquestionably solid.

The always-enchanting Claire Bloom is extremely well-cast as the hotel proprietress, a classified "alone type," but not necessarily by choice. I've always found Bloom to be an actor possessed of a kind of grounded warmth and dignity, two qualities she draws upon in each playlet to poignant effect. Never sentimental, she radiates a womanly resilience that makes her sympathetic character a realist and survivor. As she comes to assist so many in ways where she must sometimes sacrifice her own wants, her openness inspires empathy but never pity. 

The "modern," anti-marriage" couple of Act I return to the hotel 18 months later in Act II.
Married, with an infant, and the seeds of narrow-minded conservatism already taking root. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Gay playwright Terence Rattigan often wrote works that subtly critiqued the cold rigidity of the upper classes. In dramatizing the crippling effects of sensitive people forced to live lives of suppression and isolation, in Separate Tables, Rattigan (author of The Sleeping Prince, which was made into the Marilyn Monroe film, The Prince and the Showgirl) makes a deliberate plea for the acceptance and tolerance of those who are "different"; those don't easily fit into the narrow confines of what is socially perceived as normal or conventional.

Sibyl: "What's the matter with me? There must be something
 the matter with me... I'd so like to be ordinary."
Miss. Cooper: "I've never met an ordinary person. The one thing I've learned in five years
is that the word 'normal' applied to any human creature is utterly meaningless."

There are other equally insightful and moving entreaties in the play for the abidance of compassionate humanity towards those we don't understand, each capable of inducing a major case of waterworks when delivered by actors who inhabit their characters so completely.  

Note: Those interested can research Separate Tables online to read more about the gay subplot of ACT II that was considered for the Broadway production, but ultimately jettisoned by Rattison before opening. But truthfully, one need only listen to the dialogue as is to grasp specifically that the Major is '50s coded gay, and that his being charged with "indecent behavior in a Bournemouth cinema towards women" refers to a different gender. 

I love Separate Tables as it is. It's really quite a lovely play. The language is so beautiful, the characters are so rich, and the overall theme is so loving and humane. But this play written by a gay man, and, in this instance, interpreted by a gay director and brought to life by a bisexual actor--could only be improved upon if one day the second ACT/ second PLAY were allowed to convey Rattigan's true message with the forthright authenticity originally intended. 

BONUS MATERIAL

A big shout out of thanks to my good friends Jeff Marquis and Chris Tassin, two faithful readers of this blog who, upon learning of my obsession with all things Julie Christie, graciously and very generously sent me a copy of Separate Tables. This particular film has only ever had a VHS release, never seems to pop up on television, and is as rare as hen's teeth on eBay. So you might well imagine that I flipped my graying wig when I received it, and as I had such a delicious time crying my eyes out watching it, I will forever be in their debt.

Jeff and Chris are the comic geniuses behind Punchy Players, a series of hilariously loopy viral videos that have made a smash on YouTube. If you're a classic film fan (and what would you be doing here if you weren't?), you owe it to yourself to check out these great videos HERE.  

Lastly, I have to give a big hug and kiss of thanks to my sweetheart (whom I'll spare by not mentioning his name). Without him, I would never have seen the long-out-of-print 1958 version of Separate Tables. After watching the Schlesinger version, he knew the film geek in me was chomping at the bit to see how it compared to the award-winning original. I was nevertheless content to wait and see if it would turn up on TCM sometime, when, out of the blue, my hon dug up a rare DVD copy online and surprised me with it! That just about knocked me out.

As Separate Tables is a film about the importance of friendship and the indispensability of love, I dedicate this post to my good friends and my life partner. Thanks, guys!

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2013

PRETTY POISON 1968

For as long as I can remember, I've been intrigued by films whose themes dramatize a perception of reality I have held since my teens: the banality of evil. A term first coined in 1963 by political theorist Hannah Arendt in her Holocaust trial book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, it's a theory that has gone on to signify many things, most persistently for me—the notion of wickedness thriving in the most innocuous of environments. 

Rosemary's Baby found Satanic evil lurking behind the everyday meddlesome intrusions of nosy neighbors; The Stepford Wives exposed the murderous misogyny cloaked within patriarchal social systems; and Andy Warhol's Bad used basic-black comedy to satirize the lethal side of suburban materialism. In Pretty Poison, a bizarre little chiller that slipped past audiences in 1968 but has since developed a loyal cult following, first-time director Noel Black (with an award-winning screenplay by Lorenzo Semple, Jr. adapted from the novel, She Let Him Continue by Stephen Geller) treads a path well-worn by directors as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock (Shadow of a Doubt) and David Lynch (Blue Velvet): the dark underside of small-town life.

Anthony Perkins as Dennis Pitt

Tuesday Weld as Sue Ann Stepanek

Beverly Garland as Mrs. Stepanek

Anthony Perkins is Dennis Pitt, a recently-released-from-a-mental-institution loner (for the arson death of his aunt when he was 15) with, to put it charitably, a tenuous grip on reality. A pathological liar, albeit not a particularly accomplished one, Pitt is given to flights of espionage fantasy so elaborate, one is never quite sure…least of all Dennis himself…if he knows he's lying or not. Into his peculiar orbit comes drill team flag-bearer Sue Ann Stepanek, a 17-year-old high-schooler every bit as wholesome and unrefined as her name.

Convincing the gullible Sue Ann that he's a CIA agent on a covert mission to investigate environmental crimes committed by the chemical plant where he's employed, the delusional Pitt fancies himself the city slicker to Sue Ann's easily-seduced farmer's daughter. Unfortunately, it isn't long before things grimly escalate in this bizarre game of "Who's zooming who?" - a game that finds the hunter, a tad slow on the uptake, discovering he has been captured by the game.

Although Most Men Are Loath to Admit It, Women Terrify Them
Pretty Poison dramatizes this unassailable fact (the very genesis of the femme fatale) by adopting a familiar film noir trope: the wiseguy male who thinks he knows all the answers, gets himself mixed up with a woman who has rewritten the book. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

One of my strongest memories of being a pre-teen in the late '60s was the prevailing, almost oppressive sense (from movies, television shows, and newspaper articles) that America was in a tumultuous state of self-reflection. After so many years of looking outside ourselves at Germany, Russia, Japan, and the vague specter of communism as this monolith of absolute evil out to overthrow our just and unsullied American Way of Life; the ethical and moral morass that was the Vietnam War—coupled with the rash of political assassinations, civil-rights related violence, and campus rioting exploding throughout the country—posed the discomforting postulate that we were now living in an age when what we most had to fear was ourselves.

Movies as dissimilar and ostensibly politically benign as Last Summer, Rosemary's Baby,  Bonnie and Clyde, Petulia, Angel Angel Down We Go, Easy Rider, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? The Parallax View, and Targets, all reflected the late-'60s zeitgeist: ambiguity about and disillusion with the beliefs, conventions, and institutions in which we once placed our absolute trust.

The All-American Girl
Rather pathetically, this image of a handgun amongst the innocent, little-girl trappings of a teen's dressing table still embodies the American ethos for a great many people: every man, woman, and child in the country armed to the teeth.

For a time, it felt as though everything clean and shiny about American culture was revealing itself to have an underside of decay and rot. Pretty Poison, a film whose title even captures this sense of wary disquietude, gives us a film that appears on the surface to be a harmless, anarchic black comedy about misfit youth, but is, in fact, a twisted and rather unexpected tale where nothing is as it seems and good intentions don't amount to very much.

Dennis studying a vial of the chemical his plant produces whose waste pollutes the river and nearby lake...or is he thinking of Sue Ann?

American films in the sixties were obsessed with unearthing the villains who presented themselves as the clean-cut upholders of family values; in exposing the hypocrisy behind the small-town bastions of normalcy and conformity; and in confronting the violent institutions and belief systems that casually traded lies for lives in the belief that something real was being defended. Films like Pretty Poison—films that sought to explore the enemy within—asked audiences to take a good look at what America had become.

PERFORMANCES

Whether Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld deconstruct or merely exploit their trademarked screen personas in Pretty Poison is debatable. But what is clear is that in assuming roles that both recall and add unexpected twists to past performances for which they've become indelibly linked in the public's mind (Psycho's unhinged Norman Bates for Perkins, Lord Love a Duck's covetous co-ed Barbara Ann Greene for Weld), Perkins and Weld—who share an electric chemistry—take audience preconceptions and make us choke on them.

It begins to dawn on Dennis that Sue Ann is something of a force to be reckoned with

Tuesday Weld, an incredibly talented actress who has shunned fame the way most people avoid a trip to the dentist, is said to have been miserable during the making of the film, loathed her director, and blamed him for her giving what she considered to be one of her worst screen performances. (Although upset and trying to make a point, Ms. Weld should know that dubious honor falls to her timeless work in Sex Kittens Go to College.)
On the contrary, despite being labeled a "neurotic" by Pretty Poison co-star John Randolph and said to have been frequently in tearful hysterics during the filming, Tuesday Weld gives a masterfully canny performance in the film. One that is, at turns, both charming and chilling. She's mesmerizingly good, her performance here ranks among the best of her career. And at almost 25 years of age at the time and playing 17, she somehow manages to get away with it...her preternatural physical development hinting at a shrouded psychological maturity.

Roger Corman stalwart (and personal fave), the consistently excellent Beverly Garland
 is a particular standout as Sue Ann's brassy mother. 

And then there is Anthony Perkins. When I was growing up, he always gave me the creeps. But upon discovering more of his pre-Psycho work, I have begun to find him strangely attractive and have since developed quite the posthumous crush. In Pretty Poison, Perkins is again cast to type in the kind of role he found near-impossible to escape following Psycho. Yet, typecast as he was, no one could ever accuse him of sleepwalking his way through Pretty Poison. His Dennis Pitt is one of his more affecting and underplayed performances. Sympathetic, complex, and imbued with a great deal of dimension. I especially like how his character reverts to an almost childlike state of bewilderment and confusion as his overactive fantasy life spirals out of his control into a nightmarish reality.

John Randolph plays Dennis' appropriately concerned case officer, Morton Azenauer

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Adding to Pretty Poison's already considerable quirk factor are the odd ways in which Pretty Poison's plot intersects with Tuesday Weld's 1966 teen-culture spoof Lord Love a Duck and Weld's real life. Spoler note: If you haven't yet seen Pretty Poison, you may want to skip over this section.

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a Duck / Real life

The characters Weld plays in both films have aggressively contentious relationships with their mothers. In real-life, Weld loathed her mother and was fond of telling reporters that her mother was dead, even though she was quite alive and kicking. This prompted Weld's mother, one Yosene Ker Weld, to write the tell-all book If It's Tuesday...I Must Be DEAD! published in 2003 - ironically, after her death.

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a Duck / Real life

The ageless, feckless men Weld manipulates in both films are portrayed by actors (Perkins, Roddy McDowall) who, in real life were closeted gay men. In 1972, Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins reteamed for the film Play it As It Lays, in which Weld portrayed an actress suffering a nervous breakdown and Perkins her gay best friend, a suicidal film director. In real life, the depressive Anthony Perkins was indeed Weld's good friend and directed two films...one of them being the last-straw sequel Psycho III.
The Lord Love a Duck connection finds Weld marrying the assistant of her good friend Roddy McDowall in 1965, only to discover that her new husband also happened to have been McDowall's lover.

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a Duck

Weld's character in both films is a dissatisfied, disaffected high-school senior who comes under the influence of a strange man whom she can manipulate into helping her out with her "problems."

Pretty Poison / Lord Love a Duck

In both films, Weld's character rises like a phoenix from the ashes while her male compatriot rots in prison.

  

Pretty Poison / How Awful About Allan

In Pretty Poison and the 1970 TV movie, How Awful About Allan, Anthony Perkins plays a man who, in his youth, causes the accidental death of a relative by fire. Both roles cast the twitchy actor as a potential villain, only later to reveal him as a victim of a complex, calculated scheme.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Given how superior their performances are and what a thoroughly hard-hitting thriller it is, it's a pity that neither Anthony Perkins nor Tuesday Weld care(d) much for Pretty Poison. Weld, for the aforementioned animosity she felt toward her director, Perkins, less for his performance than for finding the film "slow moving." I remember being intrigued by the newspaper ads and TV commercials when Pretty Poison was released in the San Francisco area in 1968. Still, given all that, it seemed to disappear from theaters so quickly that I never got around to seeing it until the late 1970s, when it was screened at a revival theater compatibly double-billed with Pert Bogdanovich's Targets (another socko, small film from the same year that I highly recommend).

I was simply floored by Pretty Poison and still consider it to be a film far superior and more frightening than some of the more high-profile films with similar themes (Badlands, Kalifornia, Natural Born Killers). There's really much to recommend it, not the least being a '60s vibe that somehow doesn't feel dated, and, most gratifyingly, top-notch lead performances by two of Hollywood's more charismatic (if idiosyncratic) stars.

She Let Him Continue
"I was such a fool, Mr. Azenauer. I let him go on even after I knew he was crazy..."

BONUS MATERIAL
In 1996, Pretty Poison was made into a pedestrian TV movie of profound mediocrity. All plot, no subtext.

Happily, Noel Black's Pretty Poison is available on DVD. Unfortunately, the U.S. version is without the director's commentary on the UK DVD release. 

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013

DINAH EAST 1970

It's a little-known fact, but just three years after 1967's hippie revolution dubbed "The Summer of Love," America enjoyed an unofficial "Transgender Summer." It occurred in 1970 when the films Myra Breckinridge, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, The Christine Jorgensen Story, and Dinah East were all released in the very same month. Before summer became known as the time Hollywood reserved for the release of its potential blockbuster action flicks, sci-fi movies, and superhero franchises, the movie industry once associated the warm summer months with the Drive-In trade and thus released a slew of exploitation films and teen attraction fare. That meant biker flicks, B-horror movies, and beach party musicals. It was also the perfect market for softcore sleaze. 

I suspect it wasn't just happenstance that all the above-listed films with gender-identity plotlines were released in June of 1970. The lower budget features clearly sought to compete with and share the publicity overflow of whatever market was imagined to be waiting with bated breath for the release of 20th Century-Fox's big-budget Myra Breckinridge. Fans of camp and cinéma de l'étrange will most certainly recognize three of the titles, but what exactly is Dinah East? Well, to put it simply, Dinah East is the best camp classic you've never heard of.

Jeremy Stockwell as Dinah East
"Too much love or too little of it...isn't that why people take chances?"

Matt Bennett as Ex-boxer, Tank Swenson
"It makes no difference to me whether you're a man or a woman!"

Ultra Violet as Costume designer, Daniela
"Dinah, have you thought of what will happen if you are found out?"

Ray Foster as Matinee idol, Tony Locke
"You took me home and gave me more liquor than I ever had. Then asked me to drop my drawers!"

Andy Davis as Alan Sloan, Dinah's attorney
"Have you always thought of me as...a man? I mean, 100% male in every respect?"

Reid Smith as Jeff East, Dinah's adopted son
"I suppose being one's mother gives one the right to look every once in a while."

Joe Taylor as Bobby Sloan. Alan's son and Jeff's best friend
"How did you and Dinah East make love...did you do it to her, or did she do it to you?"

Dinah East takes a “What if it were really true?” approach to the age-old rumor about silver screen legend Mae West being transgender. (A legend gleefully kept alive today by West’s understandably grudge-holding Myra Breckinridge co-star Raquel Welch.) From this premise, Dinah East fashions a fictitious, deliriously camp (i.e., dead serious), surprisingly sincere soap opera about a 1950s screen siren whose death reveals her life to have been one great big drag. 

The brainchild of producer Paula Stewart, publicist-to-the-stars Phil Paladino, and screenwriter/ director Gene Nash, Dinah East (originally titled The Demise of Dinah East and The Great Put-On of Dinah East, alternately) chronicles—through flashbacks—the guarded life of movie goddess Dinah East, and tackles the subsequent emotional and psychological fallout amongst those who came to know her, following the headline-making revelation of her death.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Dinah East (a title that not only recalls the whispers about Mae West, but the lesbian rumors surrounding TV personality Dinah Shore during her heyday) is part 1940s "Suffering in mink" women's film, part Douglas Sirk melodrama, and part daytime soap. Or at least that's how it sees itself. Conceived as the type of glossy, behind-the-scenes Hollywood expose Jacqueline Susann and Harold Robbins came to be known for, due to its meager budget, amateurish performances, and frequent concessions to its sexploitation roots, it comes off largely as the kind of gender-fluid underground film of the sort associated with John Waters or Andy Warhol.
But what Dinah East lacks in production values, it more than makes up for in deliciously low-rent '70s ambiance. It boasts gaudy fashions, tacky décor, a cliche-saturated plot, and Hollywood insider jokes—Dinah does a pretty good impersonation of columnist Louella Parsons, and matinee idol Tony Locke parodies Tony Curtis' infamous, "Yondah lies da castle of my faddah."—plus, a sensibility that's both salacious and sentimental. In addition:

Lesbianism!

Wigs!

Slow-motion romantic romps!

Lots of full-frontal male nudity!

Scenes in '70s gay bars!

Porn-level  Performances!
"That's too hard to swallow...love for a son born out of rape? That's much too heavy to swallow!"

Derisible dialog accompanied by theatrical,  unconvincing displays of temperament!
Alan- "You're nothing but a deranged little faggot!"  (*Slap*)

Did I mention the male nudity?

In several ways, Dinah East does indeed recall the work of Jacqueline Susann. If one of Jacqueline Susann's novels was directed by Ed Wood, cast with models from a 1970 Ah Men catalog, and produced by Andy Warhol. From start to finish, Dinah East is such a campy delight; I'm still rather stunned that I had never heard of the film before a couple of years ago. Everything about it seems ripe for discovery by the cult hit/midnight movie crowd, yet no one I know has ever heard of it, and there is no mention of it even in books devoted to trash obscurities.
As is often the case with movies slipping through the cracks, Dinah East owes much of its obscurity to a muddle of legal issues involving copyright ownership and distribution. Too bad. This is a film deserving of a much wider audience.

Tony takes Dinah to the fights
Ray Foster (l.) was to be seen that same year as Mae West's
stereotypically fey receptionist in Myra Breckinridge

According to producer Paula Stewart (a former Broadway star [Wildcat, What Makes Sammy Run?], lifelong friend of Lucille Ball, and one-time wife of Burt Bacharach), the X-rated Dinah East had its world premiere in San Franciso in December of 1970. It opened in Los Angeles (even garnering a favorable review from LA Times critic, Kevin Thomas) in early 1971. That is, before the government shut it down and confiscated all prints of the film due to unpaid withholding taxes. Unable to meet its financial obligations, Dinah East was fairly submerged in a quagmire of copyright and legal hassles that extended over several years, rendering the film virtually lost.

Stewart's legal hassle account contradicts the more publicity-friendly reason used to promote the 2010 DVD release. DVD promo material asserts that Mae West herself halted distribution of the film because she was displeased with it and didn't want the potentially libelous film to distract from her Myra Breckinridge comeback. However, Paula Stewart, whom I spoke to by phone before writing this, claims to have known Mae West well and says that while the legendary star was most assuredly “Pissed off” by Dinah East's obvious allusions to the rumors that have followed her throughout her career, she did not in any way try to hinder its release. 

Dinah East director and screenwriter, Gene Nash, was also a manager, composer, and country western singer (1959 single, "I'm an Eskimo, too").  

PERFORMANCES

As Marilyn Monroe-esque glamour queen Dinah East, New York actor Jeremy Stockwell (he appeared Off-Broadway in Fortune and Men’s Eyes - 1969) is a little too stiff and inexpressive to radiate the necessary diva quality to make the character a believable superstar (Candy Darling would have been great). Wearing a wide array of wigs and smart slacks ensembles, Stockwell comes off resembling Doris Day, Carol Wayne, or Donna Mills depending on the scene. He plays Dinah in a refreshingly straightforward manner, happily refraining from adding any problematic "feminine" flourishes that could have instantly turned the character into a caricature. 

Indeed, Stockwell's performance is infused with so much sincerity that after a while, it seems as though his constricted body language and modulated line readings are actually acting choices; the intentional means of conveying the behavior of a person holding themselves in reserve for fear of detection. The screenplay leaves viewers on their own to intuit what would motivate an aspiring actor to keep up such a life-changing charade for so long (like Dustin Hoffman's Tootsie, the initial goal is to merely land a job). Nor does it shed much light on whether Dinah's gender identity as a woman is an actual realization rather than a deception. In any event, whatever flamboyant fun is lost by Stockwell refusing to camp it up as a movie diva is more than compensated for in the depiction of Dinah East as such a likable person. 

Maybe I'm just corny, but the romance that develops between Dinah
 and ex-boxer Tank is really sweet. 

This brings me to one of the points I think works against Dinah East ever realizing its true camp potential: the film doesn't have a bitchy bone in its body. The film is singularly lacking in bitchiness or spite, prime ingredients in gay film camp-dom. The characters in Dinah East are flawed but decent, and treat one another in an uncharacteristically considerate manner for an exploitation film (the very odd character of Dinah's emotionally-conflicted attorney, Alan, notwithstanding).
Stockwell’s performance falls into arch camp primarily due to the limitations of his acting, the Douglas Sirk-inspired twists of the melodramatic plot, and the camp array of wigs and '70s fashions at his disposal. Beyond those trappings, there's a wellspring of sincerity written into the story of Dinah East that makes the characters too compassionately conceived for us to want to laugh at them for too long.

A big star requires big hair

But sincerity is not what one usually watches exploitation films for, so fans of over-the-top drag theater might be disappointed in finding Dinah is no Margo Channing or Helen Lawson. Though often funny, the script is not well-acquainted with wit, so those looking for All About Eve levels of catty dialog and diva posturing will have to look elsewhere. By way of compensation, the film does at least try to shoehorn nudity and sex into the plot with clockwork regularity. Also, there is a priceless scene set in a gay bar (Bitchy queens! Nude go-go dancer! A bubble machine!) that screams 1070 and gives a hint of the levels of outrageousness this film could have risen to if it just wasn't so darn decent. 

A somewhat dodgy-looking movie poster for one of Dinah East's films  

Although essentially a melodrama, Dinah East does contain much humor  (whether you find it to be particularly funny is another thing), but happily, there is unintentional humor in abundance. There are laughs to be had at the expense of the film's pushed-to-its-limit budget (the '50s flashbacks are particularly challenging), uneven performances, often hilariously tin-eared dialogue, and the curious commingling of sincere soap opera with grindhouse sex exploitation. While Dinah East's endearing ineptitude is to die for, I also found myself appreciating its lack of cynicism or self-aware snark. So many of the movies that have gained cult status in the gay community have done so in part because of the comedy inherent in their outre homophobia (Valley of the Dolls, Myra Breckinridge). Dinah East at least comes off as far ahead of its time in its empathetic depiction of gays, lesbians, and transgender.

Cornball montages were very popular in '70s movies, and Dinah East has a romantic montage that wouldn't be out of place in a Debbie Reynolds or Doris Day film. Tank and Dinah fall in love (rather appealingly) to the wince-inducing strains of, "Thank you, Alexander Graham Bell...you're swell!" An original song sung by '40's singing combo, Jon and Sondra Steele (My Happiness- 1948). 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Movies about Hollywood can always be counted on for the camp recycling of over-familiar soap opera tropes and hoary show business clichés. Dinah East is no exemption. With the film's obviously slim budget not allowing for even a passable representation of the 1950s or a convincing depiction of the opulent high life of a major Hollywood star (Edgar Bergen’s home stands in as Dinah’s Bel Air mansion), the one thing Dinah East gets incredibly right is its depiction of Hollywood as a town where it's possible to keep lifelong secrets simply due to the fact that absolutely everybody else in town has secrets they also don't want to have exposed.

In the satiric 1973 Hollywood murder mystery, The Last of Sheila (penned by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim, two then-closeted homosexuals who obviously knew a thing or two about the need to keep secrets), the character played by Raquel Welch sums up the phenomenon perfectly when she says: "That's the thing about secrets. We all know stuff about each other...we just don't know the same stuff."

Dinah and Daniela forge a friendship out of  a commitment to protecting one another

In a welcome change of pace from most hetero-centric exploitation films full of shapely but untalented bimbos hired with an eye towards the director’s casting couch, Dinah East is loaded with good-looking himbos and male eye-candy who can’t act their way out of their tight pants. Which, I'm happy to say, they're never required to wear them for very long.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
With all the great purveyors of cinema camp either dead (Jacqueline Susann, Andy Warhol, Ed Wood, Russ Meyer) or unofficially retired (John Waters, Roger Corman), I can't tell you what a kick it was unearthing an honest-to-god, period-perfect, classic piece of ripened '70s cheese like Dinah East. Although virtually every frame feels made-to-order for my personal warped sense of aesthetics, it was actually my partner who brought the film to my attention after discovering it on Netflix. I fell in love with Dinah East at first sight.
It's funny unintentionally; sometimes, it's even funny on purpose. It's bizarre, silly, audacious, tacky, unevenly paced, and mostly terribly acted. But it's also marvelously entertaining, better-plotted than most movies today, and as a bonus, given the subject matter's potential for vulgarity and offensiveness, it's a surprisingly sweet-natured, forward-thinking film.
It has become an instant favorite of mine, and I understand that it has been re-released on DVD in a restored, widescreen version that should be a good deal brighter and crisper than these screencaps indicate. Still, Dinah East is one of those films worth seeing any way you can get it. They don't make 'em like this anymore. And more's the pity for us lovers of retro camp cinema.

Dialogue between two grave-diggers at the end of the film (one being Studio-54- flash-in-the-pan-to-be, Sterling St. Jacques)
"Just goes to show you; you can really put the world on if you try hard enough."

"Yeah man, but who wants to go to that much trouble?"

BONUS MATERIAL

Actor Jeremy Stockwell out of drag.
Photo by Kenn Duncan from the 1969 Off-Broadway production of Fortune & Men's Eyes

Some of My Best Friends Are... (1971)

Dinah East's Joe Taylor (bottom left) went on to appear with Warhol superstar Candy Darling in another gay-themed film that has somewhat disappeared. That's Gil Gerard of Buck Rogers fame to Taylor's right. Also in the cast, future TV stars, Rue McClanahan, Fannie Flagg, and Gary Sandy, in addition to Sylvia Syms and Carleton Carpenter (of MGM, Debbie Reynolds, and  "Abba-Dabba Honeymoon"). 

You can read more about Dinah East at Poseidon's Underworld


Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 -2013