BILLIE 1965

A favorite little-known Patty Duke film sandwiched innocuously between her Oscar-winning turn in The Miracle Worker (1962) and the near career-killing ignominy of Valley of the Dolls (1967)—the movie which has become, most assuredly, THE film she’ll be most remembered for—is Billie: a sprightly, featherweight teen musical about a tomboyish track and field dynamo struggling with gender-identity issues. 

Patty Duke as Billie Carol

Jim Backus as Howard G. Carol

Jane Greer as Agnes Carol

Warren Berlinger as Mike Benson

I won't kid you, the above description, as brief as it is, makes Billie sound considerably more substantial than it is. Point in fact, clocking in at brisk 87 minutes, Billie is so lightweight it’s barely there. This teen-culture tidbit (filmed in a swift 15 days!) feels like an expanded TV sitcom episode. Filmed just before the start of the third and final season of her weekly series The Patty Duke Show (1963 - 1966), Billie was made to capitalize on Duke's considerable TV visibility as a teen sensation, and newfound popularity as a recording artist (Billie was released while Duke's first single "Don't Just Stand There" was still in the top 40). And although the movie is the kind of breezy affair ideal for a summer Drive-In playoffs alongside the lucrative Beach Party musicals, Billie came out in the fall of 1965 to better take advantage of the crossover publicity opportunities afforded by the start of the new TV season (like having Duke sing one of the songs from Billie "Funny Little Butterflies" on an episode of her own show as well as on the teen variety show Shindig).  

But even back then, audiences must have gleaned that Billie was less a motion picture than a TV sitcom padded out to feature film length with musical numbers and what easily has to be 15-minutes worth of reaction-shot cutaways to Clown, the expressive family sheepdog. 

Such a Face!
In lieu of a laugh track, Billie relies on reaction shots of this adorable Old English Sheepdog to punctuate the comedy and facilitate what feels like the natural pauses in the narrative to insert TV commercials. Curiously enough, the first season of The Patty Duke Show featured a sheepdog named Tiger who was nowhere to be found in the second season. Perhaps Tiger and Clown are one and the same and he left TV to pursue a career in motion pictures.  

As is so often the case with '60s sitcoms, the plot of Billie hinges on a single, silly gimmick. In this instance, instead of talking horses, mothers reincarnated as automobiles, or identical twin cousins, we have an average teenager who, thanks to a bit of a mind flip called “the beat”—the ability to hear a rhythm in her head and transfer that percussive tempo into athletic prowess—is able to outrun, out jump, and outperform every male member of her high-school track team.

Billie's got the Beat!
(more accurately, Patty Duke's got a running platform attached to the back of a camera truck) 

If you're scratching your head wondering how, unless the story is set in Downton Abbey, a feature film’s worth of comic/dramatic conflict can be wrung from a non-issue like a female athlete in 1965; it helps to know that Billie is adapted from a wheezy 1952 stage play by Ronald Alexander titled Time Out for Ginger, and, save for the substituting of track & field for the play’s intergender football premise, makes it to the screen with its outmoded sexual politics intact. It also helps to know that as contrived as the plot sounds, in real life, athletic programs for girls were a very low priority in many high schools in America before Federal sex discrimination laws were passed in 1972.

The plot of Billie has Mayoral candidate Howard Carol (Backus) residing in a house full of women, yet runs his political campaign on a “Return to Gentility” anti-women’s-rights platform. Agnes (Greer), his long-suffering wife, is one of those wisely sardonic housewives typical of '60s sitcoms: she's genuinely smarter than her husband, but regularly defers to his oafishness out of love and an understanding of the fragility of the male ego. Eldest daughter Jean (Susan Seaforth) is the ultra-femme apple of her father's eye and the veritable poster girl for non-threatening '60s womanhood. Not only does she look exactly like a younger version of her mother, but at age 20 she wants nothing more from life than to quit college, marry, and get down to the business of making babies. Remarkably, goals her character has already achieved by the time she’s introduced.

That Girl's Ted Bessell and Days of Our Lives' Susan Seaforth-Hayes
contribute to Billie's large cast of recognizable TV faces

This leaves 15-year-old Billie (Duke), a self-professed “lonely little in-between” wrestling with puberty and grappling with anxiety over her gender identification (not sexually. At least not yet. At 15 she's merely an outdoorsy, athletic girl showing little interest in what girls are "supposed" to be interested in 1965). Billie's feelings of otherness are compounded by sensing she is also a disappointment to her father by falling just outside of what he ideally wants in an offspring. Liking his women traditional and old-fashioned, he clearly favors Billie's pretty and feminine older sister. But he also lets it known that he longed to have a son. And in this painful exchange, accidentally lets slip how he really feels about his youngest female offspring:

Father- “From now on, try to remember that you’re a girl!”

Billie- “I wish I was a boy…”

Father- “So do I, but you’re not!”

Ouch! I understand the title for the sequel is: Time Out for Therapy. 

When Billie is later recruited by the high school track coach (“…to shame the boys into trying harder”), her newfound notoriety as the team’s most valuable player not only threatens to alienate her sweet but chauvinist potential suitor Mike Benson (Warren Berlinger) but also derail her reluctantly supportive father’s run for mayor. What's a girl who wishes she was a boy to do? 

"I should have been a boy, but here I am a girl!"
Billie decides to throw herself a Pity Party and sings
 "Lonely Little In-Between" to her stuffed animals

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Unless, like me, you're a nostalgia-prone boomer who grew up on white-bread, middle-class, suburban family comedies of the '60s and nursed a prepubescent crush on cute-as-a-button Patty Duke, you're apt to find Billie's contrived plot and dated sexual politics more trying than entertaining. 

True to its genre origins and obviously tight shooting schedule, Billie is a movie devoid of visual style and is as straightforward as moviemaking gets. The cinematography records the action and makes sure everyone remains within the frame and stays in focus. The editing is of the ping-pong variety, cutting back and forth to medium shots of whoever is talking. There's not even much to say about the acting either, as the cast of TV and movie veterans all deliver professional, wholly serviceable, competent performances of their sketchily written characters. 

Given all this, you might wonder what it is that I actually enjoy about Billie. 

Well, it comes down to the fact that each time I revisit it, its surface simplicity begins to look more complex.

Like a great many family-oriented films that haven’t aged particularly well (particularly those that peddled conformity, tradition, and gender role rigidity in a propagandist fashion) Billie has evolved over the years into one of those cult-worthy, meta-movies that, when viewed through the prism of contemporary mores, can't help but operate on several different levels simultaneously. Most of them, inadvertent. All of them more interesting than the film as originally conceived.

The simplistic gender politics of Billie are either/or.
You're either a track star or a girl...you can't be both

One level of Billie is a high-school musical and puberty allegory about a tomboy teetering on the brink of womanhood who bristles at having to fit into society's narrow definition of femaleness. On another level, Billie operates as an insincere social-conflict farce that pays lip service to women's equality, yet in its heart really believes that men and women are just happier occupying traditional gender roles. Then there's Billie as a "very special episode" of the ABC Afterschool Special about a transgender male teen struggling with internally identifying as male while outwardly presenting as female (the most persuasive layer for me). And finally, Billie operates on a level that is like a "be yourself" Glee episode about the growing pains of a latent lesbian high-school track star (Duke's resemblance to Ellen Degeneres adding yet another layer).

One potential unexplored level is one that mental health advocate Patty Duke would likely attest to as uncannily in character with the trend of her early career and its real-life parallels in living with bipolarism. In her memoirs, Duke references how often she was cast as characters dueling with opposing, contradictory natures. 

Billie, post-makeover

PERFORMANCES

Thanks to the availability of The Patty Duke Show on DVD, I've had the opportunity to reacquaint myself with what a charming and natural comedienne Patty Duke can be. Her Patty Lane may not have been as glamorous as the teens Elinor Donahue (Father Knows Best) and Shelley Fabares (The Donna Reed Show) played on their respective shows, but what Duke lacked in adolescent elan she more than made up for in likeability and energy. (Patty Lane was quite the scrappy little toughie. Episodes highlighting her character’s selfish, bossy side show signs of a budding Neely O’Hara.)

Boyish Warren Berlinger was 27 years old to Duke's 18. The athletic field used in Billie is at
John Marshall High School in Los Feliz, Ca. Recognizable to fans of Grease as Rydell High. 

The talented Patty Duke is undeniably the glue holding Billie together (She co-produced. The film is credited to Chrislaw/Patty Duke Productions. Chrislaw being the Peter Lawford-headed production company responsible for The Patty Duke Show), but her trademark vitality feels strangely subdued and the film doesn't always make the most of her talents. Saddled with a character who spends the majority of the film feeling wounded, confused, or bewildered, Duke is left shouldering all of the film’s dramatic weight (which she handles capably), a lot of its singing (Duke's real voice gets a healthy assist from Lesley Gore-style overdubbing), some of its dancing (as with her track scenes, doubles are occasionally used), but very little of the film's comedy. Granted, there really isn't that much to go around.

Regrettably or fortunately--depending on your fondness or antipathy toward the character actors in question--the lion's share of Billie's comedy falls to the supporting cast. Represented by a bevy of TV-familiar faces, these actors are great but provide no surprises. Each is cast to give the same stock comedy schtick they've delivered on sitcom after sitcom for years.

Clockwise from top left: Richard Deacon, Dick Sargent, Charles Lane,
and Billy De Wolfe. If you've ever seen any of these actors before,
you already know what you're getting from them in in Billie

I must admit that the pleasure of having the great Jane Greer appear in Billie (one of the all-time great film noir femme fatales: Out of the Past and The Big Steal) is mitigated significantly by seeing her lethal brand of smoldering insouciance reduced to playing the placatingly sweet housewife to a blowhard husband. Jim Backus' character is just the kind of chauvinist sap one of Greer's film noir incarnations would have tossed into the trunk of a car sent hurtling off a cliff without batting an eyelash.

Strong female characters of the sort Jane Greer built her career on in the 1940s were almost nowhere to be found by the 1960s. I suspect it was difficult for mature actresses to be cast as anything BUT housewives during this time.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Between Billie's rote comedy complications and contrived misunderstandings, I'm always able to console myself with the dancing. Having grown up watching TV musical variety shows targeting the teenage crowd like Shindig and Hullabaloo, the numbers in Billie resonate as welcome nostalgia. 

Choreographed by Elvis/Beach Party movie stalwart David Winters in that curiously self-mocking, frenetic style that looks like a hybrid of '60s go-go and traditional musical comedy jazz (popularized in Broadway shows like Promises, Promises and Applause), these numbers are lively and a great deal of fun in their unabashed silliness. 

Making her film debut (and serving as the film's co-choreographer) is A Chorus Line's Donna McKechnie, showing impeccable form in the red-and-white rugby stripes. She, along with director/mentor Michael Bennett, were dancers on the teen variety show, Hullabaloo. Several of the dancers in Billie are recognizable from '60s-era films like West Side Story and The Unsinkable Molly Brown. A triple-bill of Bye Bye Birdie, Billie, and The Cool Ones would serve as a terrific primer on the effect pop music had on contemporary choreography.

The robust and amusing musical number "The Girl is a Girl is a Girl" is one of my favorites. Wittily staged in a high-school locker room, the rousing routine features lots of chorus boys dancing with each other while adopting (none too convincingly) macho attitudes and extolling the virtues of the fairer sex. The song includes the lyric "And who can complain when she looks so terrific in shorts?"

Looking at this scene, I'd say that's a male-gaze pendulum that swings both ways.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

While it's hard to imagine that Billie did Patty Duke's reputation as an Oscar-winning actress any good, I think it's fair to say it didn't do it much harm, either. In fact, I was surprised to learn that Billie was actually a modest hit when it came out. 

The dress...

Patty Duke's managers (about whom much has been written) obviously had a vested interest in milking Duke's teenage appeal for as long as they could, so putting her in a disposable pop confection like this must have appeared, if perhaps a bit short-sighted (Duke was fast approaching adulthood), nevertheless expedient and profitable. Personally, I would love to have seen her take on Inside Daisy Clover (released the same year as Billie), a film not only better suited to her talents, but one which might have eased her into adult roles a little more gracefully than Valley of the Dolls. 

Billie was directed by Don Weis, who had an extensive career in television and directed one of my favorite classic-era MGM musicals, I Love Melvin.

Quad-City Times.  Sept. 12, 1965 

BONUS MATERIAL

As much as I enjoy this movie, the enduring popularity of Ronald Alexander's play, Time Out for Ginger, truly baffles me. At various times in its revival history, the play has attracted the talents of Liza Minnelli and Steve McQueen! Go figure. As far as I'm concerned, it's Patty Duke, the '60s music, the dancing, and the time-acquired abstract levels of camp and multiple interpretations that make Billie's thoroughly run-of-the-mill plot even remotely bearable.

By the way, for the benefit of any Rosemary's Baby fans out there, playwright Ronald Alexander is also the author of Nobody Loves an Albatross.

Watch Jack Benny in a 60-minute TV adaptation of Time Out for Ginger from 1955 HERE 

Watch the unsold pilot for a 1960 TV series based on Time Out for Ginger  HERE 

If you're unfamiliar with actress Jane Greer, you owe it to yourself to check out this brief TCM clip on Out of the Past (1947) HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013

PORTRAIT IN BLACK 1960

Although I like to think of my taste in movies as being somewhat broad and varied, the sad truth is that I’m an oddly finicky film fan who only rarely steps outside of his comfort zone of favored tropes, themes, and genres. Case in point: as a rule, I don’t like war movies, westerns, sports films, or sci-fi; thus, there are a great many classic and perhaps marvelous motion pictures made in these genres which I have never seen...nor is it likely I ever will. That’s a hell of a lot of movies to cut out of one’s life. Of course, some of this boils down to plain old discernment (at age fifty-plus, I've seen enough western, war, sci-fi, and sports films to know that, by and large, they’re just not my cup of tea); but there's no denying that some of it is simply kneejerk prejudice and inflexibility.

Back in my film school days, before my opinions and preferences began to fully take shape (read: calcify), I was one of those guys who considered it time well-spent to sit and watch ANY kind of movie; for I was then of the mind that it was possible to learn as much from bad films as from good. Not anymore. When one reaches the age of 50 and beyond, the once-illusory concept of time becomes such a concrete concept, the idea of passing time suddenly morphs into wasting time, and with it, the dawning that the odds are not in your favor.

I've reached the stage where I don’t welcome spending my dwindling hours on this earth slogging through movies my cinephile Spidey-senses signal to me I’m not going to enjoy. These days, it’s my partner who takes the broadminded, democratic approach to movies, while I largely content myself with watching films I’ve already seen or films which I'm instinctively drawn to for whatever reason. I take my chances on the unfamiliar and uncharted only after they've been thoroughly dusted for signs of Tarantino; Sandler; auto racing; handguns held sideways; Katherine Heigl; or anyone wearing a cape and body armor.

Knuckle Sandwich 
Anthony Quinn & Lana Turner engage in a little oral sex

The only time my resolve weakens as to what films I positively, absolutely, will not watch, are on the occasions of my body weakening. Which is to say, when I’m confined to my bed and so sick with a cold or the flu that I’ll literally watch anything to keep my mind off of how miserable I’m feeling.
Occasionally this leads to my being subjected to unfortunate “entertainments” like Gene Kelly’s old coot comedy-western, The Cheyenne Social Club (1970); a film that, 15 minutes in, had me praying for a high-grade fever. But what I like best is when my incapacitated state brings about my exposure to (and enjoyment of) a film I might not otherwise have been inclined to sit through. Such is the case with Ross Hunter’s overdressed opus of melodramatic camp, Portrait in Black; a film I consciously avoided (rather surprisingly, given its reputation for overheated hysterics and histrionics) until it screened on TCM a few years back—when I was laid up with the flu—and has thereafter remained a lasting favorite. For all the wrong reasons. 

as Sheila Cabot

as Dr. David Rivera

as Cathy Cabot

as Blake Richards

Portrait in Black is an old-fashioned reminder that people once paid good money to see the kind of overwrought hand-wringers and melodramas which became standard fodder for TV movies, miniseries, primetime soaps, and the Lifetime Network. All plot, no character, Portrait in Black exists solely as a parade of lacquered hairstyles, overelaborate sets (or San Francisco locations so overlit that they LOOK like sets), and —most importantly—smart fashions for the well-dressed middle-age socialite. Sixties variety.

Propping up all this material display is a workaday murder/suspense plot involving a cantankerous shipping magnate (Lloyd Nolan); his sexually frustrated wife, Lana Turner (“Too bad they can’t find a shot for your condition…a vitamin shot for ‘Love’ deficiency!”); and his morally conflicted physician, Anthony Quinn. Also thrown into the mix as sundry red herrings and narrative speed bumps of varying annoyance are Sandra Dee as the snippy stepdaughter; her scrappy, poor-but-honest suitor, John Saxon; and the dull-to-the-point-of-genius Richard Basehart as Nolan’s legal advisor.

 Yes, Portrait in Black is one of those movies where even the phones are color-coordinated to the leading lady's wardrobe.

There’s nothing going on here that you haven’t seen about a million times before (and better), no plot point or suspense twist that isn't telegraphed ages before it occurs. But thanks to dated acting styles which result in theatrically stilted performances worthy of a Carol Burnett Show spoof; the uniquely kitschy look of early '60s high style (gold vein mirrors, Chinese Modern knickknacks, quilted headboards, gilt filigree); and producer Ross Hunter’s unparalleled gift for making every one of his films look as though it were made at least ten years earlier; Portrait in Black fails as legitimate drama in direct proportion to the heights it hits (and believe me, this movie soars!) as derisible, highly-entertaining camp.

Chinese-American silent screen icon Anna May Wong was coaxed out of an 11-year retirement  for this, her last film role, to appear (along with everybody's favorite Martian, Ray Walston) as an appropriately mysterious member of the Cabot mansion "help." 

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with this blog would think Lana Turner and Sandra Dee co-starring in a film produced by the man who gave us Lost Horizon, Tammy Tell Me True, AND the camptastic Doris Day classic Midnight Lace, would be a no-brainer of a must-see for a man of my particular “tastes.” But the truth is, I’m no great fan of Lana Turner (although I’ve always got a kick out of her very “movie star” name, for me she peaked, both in beauty and talent, in The Postman Always Rings Twice); and in spite of Ross Hunter’s reputation for being one of Hollywood’s foremost purveyors of inadvertent camp, I tend to find his static, studio-bound melodramas to be a little hard going.

Trouble in Paradise
The mortality rate of Lana Turner's movie husbands is never all that great to begin with, but start man-handling her and you're pretty much looking at a cameo. Curious side note: it's been said that Truman Capote harbored a lifelong crush on actor Lloyd Nolan, often speaking of him as the "ideal man"(!) 

Having previously endured his backpedaling remake of Imitation of Life and the arid romance of Magnificent Obsession, I wasn't exactly inclined to give Ross Hunter benefit of a “three strikes” vote when Portrait in Black was recommended to me: hours of my life irretrievably lost to two Ross Hunter productions was more than enough, thank you. Of course, now I see the only things wasted were all the years of laughter I deprived myself of by waiting so long to see this howler. Thank god for that miserable, debilitating, 6-day bout of influenza, huh?

Try not to look suspicious!

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Where to start? There’s something sublimely liberating about watching a potboiler so superficial and devoid of subtext that after it’s over, you needn’t waste a second mulling over what it all signifies. It’s a pleasurable time-killer, pure and simple. And beyond being a tale of illicit lovers implicated in the suspicious death of a despised industrialist, and the thin mystery surrounding the identity of a blackmailer, Portrait in Black is true to Hunter’s oft-stated objective to “…(give) the public what they wanted. A chance to dream, to live vicariously, to see beautiful women, jewels, gorgeous clothes, melodrama.”  Note that at no point does he mention credible storylines, good acting, or simple character development. 

Dr. Rivera: "Look at this. It's more deadly than a gun...a thousand times less detectable!"
A puncture from a hypodermic needle is less detectable than a big ol' gunshot wound? Imagine that.

You gotta love the creaky screenplay by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts (based on their 1945 play) wherein all the characters find it necessary to say each other’s names even when speaking face to face. It’s never“You mustn't!” when it can be, “David, you mustn’t!” Never, “Would you like fries with that?” when you can say, “Sheila, would you like fries with that?” This practice lends an air of comically mannered artificiality to all human interaction, which fortunately is right in step with the old-fashioned, histrionic performances director Michael Gordon (Pillow Talk, Move Over Darling) elicits from his cast. Even the reliably naturalistic (and, for my taste, tiresomely lusty) Anthony Quinn seems peculiarly hamstrung and stiff. 

A real comic highlight is the hilarious rain-slicked drive along curvy coastal roads scene which has Turner more or less recreating her scream scene from The Postman Always Rings Twice

Because the film's simple “Who’s blackmailing us and why?” plotline has to strain to build suspense and pad out its running time, the script has our star-crossed lovers making one boneheaded misstep after another. Their actions only serving to compound the many sizable obstacles they already face in trying to navigate (and failing spectacularly at it) the film's choppy sea of red herrings. A veritable rogues gallery of malcontents and secret-keepers which comprise their circle of friends, employees, and family members. In short order, events intended to provide dramatic conflict quickly play out like a farcical comedy of errors.

PERFORMANCES

As members of Ross Hunter’s unofficial film repertory company, Lana Turner, Sandra Dee, John Saxon, and the ever-regal Virginia Grey had each, by the time they made Portrait in Black, developed a firm grasp on the overly sincere, purple dramatizing required of this kind of melodrama. And while I wouldn't go so far as to say any of them actually make fools of themselves, in certain scenes (the tormented curtain-pulling episode in particular), Lana Turner comes awfully close.

Indeed, Lana Turner takes all the prizes for making Portrait in Black so watchable for me because hers is one of those truly awful performances that only the committed can give. She's marvelous to look at, oozes star quality out of every pore, but I honestly haven't a clue as to what she's trying for in her scenes. Whatever it is, natural human behavior doesn't factor into it. She gives one of those Master Thespian "Movie Star" performances that torpedoes realism, but makes for a hell of an entertaining evening at the movies.

Although he seems a tad out of his element, I have to say it's nice to see Anthony Quinn all gussied up for a change. Usually covered in stubble, sweat stains, and acting all earthy and robust, I welcomed this buttoned-down, Brooks Bros Zorba. Meanwhile, Lana here doesn't appear to be too pleased with her Minnie Mouse in Mink look. 

I've always found the troubled Sandra Dee to be a very appealing presence in movies, but here her innate charm is undermined a bit by the scornful, worrywart character she's saddled with. And by the efforts of Hunter and Universal Studios to glamorize and update the 17-year-old's teenybopper screen image. Personally, I kept hoping for Dee to break into her Tammy Tyree Mississippi twang and start lecturing these corrupt city folk on how much simpler life was down on the river with her grandpappy; all the while peppering her homey, colloquial diatribe with cute phrases like, "It's a puzzlement!" 

It would be a few more years before Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon, and the youth movement at large encouraged young women to actually look like young women. Judging by Sandra Dee's glam makeover in Portrait in Black, the goal of sophisticated 17-year-olds in 1960 was to look like their mothers. Dee looks fabulous here, but honestly, she could pass for a woman in her 30s.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

There are many categories of camp: there’s pretentious (Showgirls), clueless (Can’t Stop the Music), and my favorite--inadvertent. The enjoyment of pretentious camp is rooted in a kind of mean-spirited schadenfreude wherein you find yourself reveling in each failed attempt at legitimacy a film strives for. Clueless camp makes you shake your head over how out-of-touch the filmmakers can be, but can also make you feel a bit sorry for them (i.e. Mae West's Sextette). But inadvertent camp is guilt-free and the most enjoyable of the lot because the laughs come less at the expense of the individuals involved and more at how the passage time and the fickle finger of fate can turn what was once solemn into something that is now side-splitting.

The passage of time brings with it changing tastes and attitudes about everything from acting styles to fashion. So if a once-serious film falls victim to cultural shifts which render its content and themes outmoded (The Bad Seed), it’s nothing anyone could have foreseen, and laughing at it feels, well...just a little bit kinder. 

A few of my favorite things:

Richard Basehart as family friend Howard Mason, making a play for "grieving" widow Sheila Cabot a day after the funeral 

Turner's mink-clad stroll through San Francisco's I. Magnin department store (complete with doorman!)

Anthony Quinn going mano-a-mano with the Hippocratic Oath

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

As fun as a movie like Portrait in Black can be for the occasional mindless diversion, reminding oneself that there was once a time when movies of this sort represented a sizable percentage of Hollywood's output always makes me grateful for the revolution in film that brought about the New Hollywood of the late '60s and '70s. Things really needed shaking up.
As Hollywood began to respond to the realist influence of European New Wave cinema and the naturalism of East Coast "Method" acting, old-school producers like Ross Hunter prided themselves on their efforts to bring "glamour" and old-fashioned family entertainment back to Hollywood movies. Hunter in particular made films that existed within a bubble of willful irrelevance so out of touch with the real world, they bordered on the surreal.

Portrait in Black marked the third and final screen pairing of John Saxon and Sandra Dee

Although he was gay, Hunter made films promoting staunchly status-quo heteronormative values which featured men and women occupying traditional gender roles, and people of color depicted, if perhaps more plentifully than many of his peers, always as occupying positions of a non-threatening, subordinate status. And, as befitting the times and Hunter's own closeted always-appear-in-public-with-a-beard-on-your-arm inclinations; gays were invisible or non-existent except as humorous reference points in his sex comedies.

Ross Hunter's films understandably struck a chord with those of an older demographic. Those moviegoers left bewildered by cinema's new permissiveness (or the term cinema, for that matter) and still enamored of the perhaps apocryphal Samuel Goldwyn quote, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union!" So while college kids in 1960 were lining up to see Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, Ross Hunter was getting rich (and very little in the way of respect) releasing Portrait in Black, a movie so timely it was once considered as a vehicle for Joan Crawford.

Ross Hunter good luck charm Virginia Grey as Miss Lee- the proverbial secretary in love with her boss.
Fans of George Cukor's The Women will remember Grey as Pat, Joan Crawford's wisecracking shopgirl friend

I'm not familiar enough with Ross Hunter's work (and too much the devotee of '70s movies) to appreciate his contribution to film. But as a connoisseur of camp and good/bad movies, the outmoded, overdressed, overemotional charm of Portrait in Black places him high on my list of those who have made the most significant contributions to guilty-pleasure cinema.

BONUS MATERIAL
If you're a fan of Ross Hunter or late-career Lana Turner, check out these sites:
A terrific review of Imitation of Life can be found at Angelman's Place
Read all about Lana in Madame X at Poseidon's Underworld

Copyright © Ken Anderson

ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE 1974

Given how so many of my favorite movies are films I first saw while working as an usher at San Francisco’s Alhambra Theater on Polk Street (it still stands, currently a Crunch gym), it's no wonder that I tend to look back upon my high school years working there as my preparatory film school education (after graduation I studied film at The San Francisco Art Institute).

The Alhambra was a beautiful, ornate, old-fashioned first-run theater (until they split it into two), but as it was considered the neighborhood sister-theater to the ritzier, high-end Regency Theater on Sutter, it was the custom for the Alhambra to be assigned the low-budget and independent first-run films. Thus, it was something of a fluke when the Alhambra was chosen as the site of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore's exclusive San Francisco engagement in February of 1975 (the post-Christmas "dog days" of movie exhibition) and proved to be the breakout hit of the new year.

Ellen Burstyn was popular after her Oscar-nominated turn in The Exorcist (1973), but female-driven narratives were still so rare in the male-centric '70s that Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore was given a limited release in urban markets to test its appeal (it played in Los Angles a full month before opening in San Francisco). Neither Martin Scorsese nor rock-star-turned-actor Kris Kristofferson had what you'd call marquee names at the time, so expectations for the film were modest, and advance publicity minimal.

Ellen Burstyn as Alice Hyatt

Kris Kristofferson as David

Diane Ladd as Flo

Alfred Lutter as Tommy Hyatt

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore—the story of a newly widowed housewife (Burstyn) who sets off on the road with her 12-year-old son to become a singer in Monterey, California—from a marketing angle, didn't have much in the way of publicity bait (no hookers, no gunplay, no nudity, no car chases), yet I recall it as being the biggest film to play the Alhambra during my time there. As one of those films that opens slowly, only to boom practically overnight, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore had sold-out screenings and lines stretching around the corner for nearly the entirety of its exclusive engagement. Patrons came back to see the film two and three times, almost always with someone new in tow to whom they'd recommended it. I had never seen anything like it. A true word-of-mouth hit. And what amazed me even more was the high volume of elderly people this film attracted. For some reason (the film's nostalgic tone, perhaps), older audiences—a market largely ignored by the youth films of the day—absolutely flocked to this movie! Sunday matinees looked like an AARP convention.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow...with a really foul mouth
Mia Bendixson portrays 8-year-old Alice in the Wizard of Oz-inspired opening sequence

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

There are several books, online articles, and even a DVD commentary detailing the significant role Ellen Burstyn played in getting Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore made. Aside from the almost mythic appeal of the story (a feminist collaborates with a famously male-centric director to make a film considered by many to be the quintessential cinematic articulation of the '70s women’s movement), what comes through strongest is the passion and commitment of everyone involved.

The family that prays together is still pretty screwed up
In an effort to move the plot forward and get Alice on the road as quickly as possible, several scenes that would have fleshed out the character of Alice's husband, Donald (Billy Green Bush) had to be cut. 

Martin Scorsese speaks of having the foreknowledge of the studio expecting him to turn out a genre film—a romantic comedy with a happy ending—yet he and Burstyn turn in a film of such unexpected freshness, I still find myself dazzled by it. Its characters, settings, dialogue, and character-based humor felt so refreshingly personal, so original, and so surprising. Scorsese succeeds in creating a '70s revisionist take on the '40s woman's picture, something he endeavored (with considerably less success) with the '40s musical genre when he made New York, New York in 1977. Now there's a film that could have benefited from Ellen Burstyn's level-headed feminine perspective. 

I'd never seen an onscreen mother/son relationship like the one Alice and Tommy share

Scorsese’s fluid visual style gives the film a gritty kind of grace, while his laser-sharp editing has a way of turning simple cuts into clever visual punchlines. The performances are uniformly first-rate (I have a particular fondness for the sweetly oddball waitress, Vera. I always wanted to know more about her character's life), and the very funny screenplay never scarifies character or theme for an easy laugh. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is one of my enduring favorites from the 1970s. 

As Alice's best friend Bea, actress Lelia Goldoni (so memorable in John Cassavetes' 1959 film Shadows) doesn't have a lot of screen time, but I always remember how touchingly real her character's relationship with Alice felt. Only in later years did I learn of Burstyn's and Goldoni's lengthy real-life friendship.

PERFORMANCES 

True to the axiom that comedy never gets any respect, whenever I think about my favorite film performances by an actress in the '70s, my mind goes straight to Jane Fonda in They Shoot Horses,Don’t They? and Klute, Faye Dunaway in Chinatown, Karen Black in The Day of the Locust, or Glenda Jackson in anything. I always overlook the absolutely astonishing job Ellen Burstyn does in bringing the character of Alice Hyatt to life. I thought so in 1974, and looking at the film again after so many years, it still stands out as such a thoroughly realized performance. And by that, I mean Burstyn makes Alice Hyatt so authentic an individual, you honestly feel as though you have been observing a real person, not a fictional character. She is no male fantasy construct. She's not even a Women's Lib figurehead; she only seemed so when compared to the type of degrading roles being offered women during the '70s.

Smart Women / Foolish Choices
As  Ben Eberhart, Scorsese stalwart Harvey Keitel gives a chilling portrait of the kind of courtly gentility that often masks a dominating nature. One of the many things I like about Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore is how, in presenting a woman's point of view, it doesn't take the easy route of vilifying men. Instead, it explores why some women are drawn to a kind of archaic definition of masculinity that can lead to abusive relationships. I love the scene where Alice tells David how she was drawn to her husband's bossiness ("Yes, master!" she says, mocking her own passivity) and how she initially liked that he forbade her to have a career, admitting that his oppressiveness was, "My idea of a man...strong and dominating."

The depth of Burstyn's performance has the effect of fulfilling what the premise of the film promises: an ordinary woman is revealed to be remarkable by sheer force of her humanity. Alice goes from being someone's wife and mother to being the standout heroine of her own life. And it's the talent of Ellen Burstyn, giving an Academy Award-winning performance, that makes it happen.

The Academy got it right in awarding Burstyn the Best Actress Oscar, but seriously dropped the ball with the terrific Diane Ladd. Her folksy waitress, Flo, is one of the screen's great character performances. By the way, back when I was a movie usher, Flo's frustrated outburst: "She went to shit and the hogs ate her!" got the longest, loudest laugh I'd ever heard in a movie theater, yet it was also the single moment in the film I was most questioned about by departing patrons. It seemed like every third person came up to me after a screening asking, "What did that waitress say?" Apparently, folks were only able to make out the word "shit" and that (along with Ladd's explosive tone and body language) was sufficient for the scene to work.
When I told them what she'd actually said, their faces almost always registered bewilderment. Like me, not a single individual was familiar with the old saying (referring to someone who should be working but keeps disappearing), plus, I think most people's imaginations had conjured up something far funnier and vulgar, so finding out what was really said inevitably came as something of a letdown. 

11-year-old Jodie Foster, two years before her explosive Oscar-nominated performance in Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
Another question I was often asked by patrons was whether Jodie Foster was a boy or a girl. This despite the fact that her character's name is Audrey and is shown wearing a dress in her last scene.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

In spite of it being a somewhat troublesome film genre with a built-in anecdotal construct that frequently leads to directors being unable to arrive at or maintain a consistent tone, I like road movies a great deal (a personal unsung favorite being the quirky Rafferty & the Gold Dust Twins – 1974). Like most road movies, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore has a literal road trip serve as a “journey of life/path of growth” metaphor, but in this instance, the cliché feels fresh because Alice’s story—a woman approaching middle age forced to confront life as a single mother—isn't the kind Hollywood has been falling over itself in an effort to tell.

Uncharted Territory
Stars Wars wouldn't premiere until some three years later, but to 1974 audiences, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore - a movie about a 35-year-old woman, told from her perspective - was a visit to a world as remote as any galaxy far, far away.

Scorsese, Burstyn, and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Robert Getchell (one of the many writers involved in wresting Mommie Dearest to the screen) fashion an engagingly contemporary Alice in Wonderland liberation allegory out of Alice Hyatt’s automobile pilgrimage to, as one writer astutely put it, the Monterey of her mind. Whereas most road films tend to run out of steam somewhere around the midpoint, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore grows increasingly funnier and more emotionally substantial as it goes along. I love the opening scenes in Socorro, New Mexico; the hilarious moments on the road that delineate Alice's unique relationship with her son; and the scenes highlighting Alice's early employment efforts or the ones that show her navigating the choppy waters of dating. But my favorite section—where the film fully hits its comedic stride—are the latter scenes of the film that take place in Tucson, Arizona. Specifically those within Mel & Ruby's Diner.

Being at turns funny, gritty, touching, dramatic, and very sweet, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore is a movie that covers a great deal of ground. But throughout, the film somehow sustains that amazingly delicate balance of being true to its genre conventions while still being a solid character drama focusing on people we come to really know and care a great deal about. Best of all, it gives us a story of an individual's journey of self-discovery that is also one of the most well-rounded, dimensional portraits of a woman ever committed to film.

The depiction of the friendship that develops between the superficially dissimilar Alice and Flo is one of the best things in the film

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

A lot has been written about Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore’s somewhat problematic ending. An ending (two, actually, if you count the brief coda after the diner scene) suggesting Alice, after finding the love of a good man (a ranch-owning, dreamboat of an eligible bachelor who also happens to be the only guy for miles around who doesn't look like an extra from Hee Haw) is going to table her dream of going to Monterey. This Warner Bros-mandated ending proved a real crowd-pleaser with '70s audiences growing weary of all that New Hollywood nihilism, thus making Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore one of the top-grossing films of 1974. And while many welcomed the change of pace that an old-fashioned Hollywood happy ending presented, others were dismayed by the extent to which the chosen ending conflicted with—if not outright contradicted—much of what preceded it. 

Had Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore been just one of many films made during the '70s that told a story from a woman’s point of view, audiences would likely have accepted the ending as being merely a choice suitable for this particular character (after all, as the honey-tones of the opening sequence imply, Alice’s memories of her life in Monterey are likely as idealized as the scope of her early singing career). But being that the vast majority of roles available to women in the '70s could be typified by Karen Black’s catalog of supportively deferential, frequently-abandoned trollops, a disproportionate amount of feminist significance was therefore placed on Alice Hyatt and her personal journey of self-discovery.

That's 6-year-old Laura Dern (daughter of Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern) listening in on Alice and David's conversation

As is my wont, I’m of several minds about the ending.

a) From a movie buff’s perspective, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore’s ending feels like a perfect full circle for a film that begins with a title sequence (cursive lettering on satin) that references the tropes and clichés of the women’s film genre of the '40s. Happy endings were a big part of what many of those 1940's films were about, so thematically, it makes a lot of sense for Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore to end with what could be described as an updated take on the standard Hollywood happy ending. 

b) From a character-based perspective, I think it’s possible to look upon Alice’s dream of returning to Monterey as a romanticized fantasy…a retreat to childhood, if you will…that she clings to in the midst of an unhappy marriage. In this light, her ultimate decision to be with Donald and remain in Tucson (“If I’m gonna be a singer I can be a singer anywhere, right?”) indicates a newfound maturity and personal growth on her part. She’s gained the ability to find happiness in her life as it is lived in the present, not by trying to return to an idealized happier time in her past.

c) It’s only when I look at the film from an ideological or sociological perspective that I have a problem with the ending. And that’s largely the film’s fault for establishing such a compelling narrative trajectory. One that takes us from the words of Alice’s friend Bea at the start of the film: “Well, I sure couldn’t live without some kind of man around the house, and neither could you.”; to Alice’s declaration near the end: “It’s my life! It’s not some man’s life I’m here to help him out with!”

So many '70s films ended with the male protagonist leaving behind a girlfriend or wife in order to find themselves (think Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces), that it virtually became a cliché. In each instance, the ending is presented as a happy and necessary step toward independence and self-growth. Given how Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore sets itself up as a challenge to the long-held belief that a woman’s life has little to no value without a man, who can be blamed for wishing this brilliant film had ended with a repudiation of that persistent myth?

In an early draft of the screenplay, the diner sequence was to be followed by (and the film end with) a close-up of Alice's hands playing the piano. The tight framing of the shot providing an ambiguous coda, as it is not apparent whether she's playing piano in a bar in Monterey, or in the living room of David's house—we just know that Alice didn't stop singing. Since this footage is used in the sidebar of the film's closing credits, I'd like to think that Alice did indeed become a professional singer...perhaps somewhere in Tucson where she made a happy life for herself with Tommy and David. (Best of all, this allows Flo to remain her new best friend. Now, that's what I would call a happy ending.)

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2013