THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE 1969

“I am in the business of putting old heads on young shoulders, and all of my students are the crème de la crème. Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.”

The malignant propagandizing of fascism—where the authoritarian poses as the individualist, the lockstep conformist masquerades as the iconoclast, and emotionalism and opinion are favored over facts and information—is vividly dramatized in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark’s 1961 novel about the influence an eccentric teacher at a conservative all-girls school has on her impressionable students, was turned into a stage play by screenwriter Jay Presson Allen (Marnie, Cabaret, Just Tell Me What You Want) in 1966. Set in Edinburgh, Scotland in the early 1930s, Allen’s straightforward, whittled-down play serves as the source of Ronald Neame’s exceptional 1969 film adaptation starring Maggie Smith in her Oscar-winning role.

Maggie Smith as Miss Jean Brodie

Pamela Franklin as Sandy

Robert Stephens as Teddy Lloyd

Celia Johnson as Miss Mackay

Gordon Jackson as Gordon Lowther

Jean Brodie is a dedicated Junior-sector teacher at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls who, while taking pride in cultivating fervent loyalty and compliance from her pupils (those deemed worthy of being among the elite members of her “Brodie set,” anyway), fancies herself a gifted shaper of minds and liberator of spirits. Refusing to allow herself to be labeled or stigmatized by the provincial mores of the day that would brand her a middle-aged spinster, Jean Brodie asserts that she is in her prime (“The moment one is born for”) and committed to having her students reap the benefits of such timely propinquity. 

Maintaining that the school’s orthodox curriculum promotes stagnation and the upholding of the status quo, the flamboyant Miss Brodie eschews traditional teaching methods, instead choosing to devote class time to waxing poetic on the topics of love, heroism, art, etiquette, and her romanticized fondness for the fascist dictators Benito Mussolini and Francisco Franco.

Passionate to a fault, Brodie’s dictatorial side rears its head in her penchant for passing off personal opinions and subjective tastes as unassailable facts; hard and concrete “Brodie Laws” subtly enforced and stringently adhered-to lest one risk falling out of the revered teacher’s much-coveted favor. Dismissive of “team players,” “joiners” and any institution or individual failing to share her world view, Jean Brodie is quick to characterize all who criticize or disagree with her as “the opposition” or “enemy.” This disdain for critique of any sort inspiring Miss Brodie to deputize her pupils and have them act as her protectors and co-conspirators in defying her nemesis, the school’s stern headmistress Miss Mackay.

"Do any of you little girls remember what the followers of Mussolini are called?"
"Fascisti."
"That is correct! F-A-S-C-I-S-T-I."

The narcissistic, leapfrog self-dramatization necessary to lead one to interpret mere professional criticism as personal assault (“I shall remain in this education factory where my duty lies. If they want to get rid of me they will have to assassinate me!”) is precisely the sort grand, larger-than-life attitudinizing that the four girls who make up Miss Brodie’s crème de la crème pupils find so appealing. From her florid gestures and affected speech, to the colorful palette of her wardrobe; Miss Jean Brodie represents romance and daring to the supple young minds of the Brodie girls. The members of the Brodie set: dependable Sandy, beautiful Jenny, histrionic Monica, and hopeless Mary McGregor (every clique needs someone to pick on and and blame).

As is often the case with self-styled iconoclasts, setting oneself apart and drawing attention to oneself eventually become indistinguishable characteristics of the breed, adding perhaps, in the case of Miss Brodie, desirability. Miss Brodie may incur the gossip and resentment of Marcia Blaine’s female staff, but the male staff members are drawn to Miss Brodie like the proverbial moths to flame.
She remains the object of amorous obsession for ex-lover Teddy Lloyd, the school’s very married-with-children art teacher—his being a Catholic the single quality disqualifying him as a suitable lover ("How could a girl with a mind of her own have to do with a man who can't think for himself?" ). Gordon Lowther, the school's vocal coach, is the current lover in her life, but Miss Brodie treats him so much like a work-in-progress sociology assignment, the precocious Brodie girls come to the not-unreasonable conclusion that Miss Brodie (who they know loves artists like Giotto) feels genuine passion for Mr. Lloyd, but because he is married, is merely "working it off" with Mr. Lowther.

The Brodie Set
Pamela Franklin, Diane Grayson, Shirley Steedman, Jane Carr
Even in this shot one can see that Sandy will be the force to reckon with

While keeping her adult relationships at an arms-distance, those most susceptible to the magnetism of Miss Brodie’s bohemian spirit (the most naïve and unquestioning of her charge) are taken into her heart and confidence. So bound are they to her by devotion and admiration, they are blind to her manipulation. Miss Brodie, who looks upon life as a series of heroic experiences, romantic ideals, and lofty principles recklessly applied, is less concerned with the genuine education of the girls (it’s hinted that the Brodie girls, while cultured, come up rather short when it comes to basic academics) than she is committed to teaching them all about life…on her terms.

Setting herself apart and above as the example for the girls to follow, she preaches individualism (if Lewis Carroll’s The Red Queen’s “All ways are my ways” can be thought of as individualism) while stressing that she alone is the source of all truth, honesty, and trust. In the end, as the emergent Spanish Civil War inflames Miss Brodie’s ardency for the fascist Franco (the film takes the girls from 12 to 18-years-old), her impact of her heedless influence takes a dangerous and tragic turn.

In many ways, the charismatic but pernicious Jean Brodie suggests a dark-side variant on that beloved, if overworked, theatrical archetype: the garrulous, irrepressible, meddlesome, manipulative "open a new window" drag queen pied piper exemplified by Mame Dennis, Dolly Levi, and Mama Rose. The latter being plenty dark already.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is one of those remarkable films I fell in love with the first time I saw it. Which was approximately 15 years ago. I had the opportunity to see it during the time of its initial release, but in a year that saw the release of Sweet Charity, Midnight Cowboy, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, and The Sterile Cuckoo, my unfamiliarity with Maggie Smith coupled with the starchiness of that title (I can’t even say The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie without my spine spontaneously stiffening) kept me away. Also, being a rather hard sell, marketing wise, the film had a really lousy and misleading ad campaign. As to why I didn't see it in the intervening years, I confess that I assumed it to be one of those remote, inaccessible, British “prestige” pictures that the Academy loves to award with Oscars, so it wasn’t until I was in my 40s and it was broadcast on cable TV that I settled down to watch it. Immediately I knew I would have adored this film had I seen it as a youngster. Not long thereafter, I made a point of reading both the book and the play, I loved it that much.

Miss Brodie's Lovers / Mr. Lloyd
Maggie Smith and Robert Stephen were married at the time. They divorced in 1974

The chief attraction of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is simply the patent magnificence of Maggie Smith, after which comes the film’s sharp and witty screenplay and the top-grade performances delivered by the exceptionally well-cast ensemble. A beguiling balance of character-study, romantic drama, and wistful coming-of-age story, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is also a sobering contemplation on the often disarming face of power.

In profiling an authoritarian figure who presents herself as the instrument of change when in actuality she’s merely a tinpot despot intent on imposing a new dictatorial order (demanding loyalty, repudiating differing points of view, labeling criticism opposition), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is impossible to watch these days without drawing parallels with a certain faux-politician, fame-culture miscreant who-shall-not-be-named. Indeed, the film’s “insidious dangers of fascism” angle has never felt more prescient and relevant.

Miss Brodie's Lovers / Mr. Lowther
Gordon Jackson was married to Rona Anderson, the actress who played Miss Brodie's rival,
Miss Lockhart the chemistry teacher

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I suspect that director Ronald Neame’s early career as a cinematographer accounts for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’s lack of staginess. While interiors dominate, the film feels neither unduly static nor needlessly opened-up, the focus remaining on the relationships, conflicts, and interactions of the characters.

The scenes come in four varieties of cyclical vignettes spanning the girls’ introduction to Miss Brodie during the school’s Junior cycle (age 12 to 15) though to their Senior cycle (15 to 18). The vignettes: 1) Miss Brodie teaching, or, more accurately, inculcating. 2) Scenes depicting the Brodie girls, spurred by their teacher’s romantic fictions and dalliances, evincing an accelerated sexual and intellectual precocity. 3) Miss Brodie’s relationships with Mr. Lloyd (arm’s length) and Mr. Lowther (a project undertaken…like starting a garden). 4) Miss Brodie’s run-ins with the formidable Miss Mackay—intensely hostile, tour de force encounters that make Batman vs. Superman look like a game of jacks.

I personally like how subtly the passage of time is conveyed in the film, but critics have cited (and here they do have a point) that while the young girls make credible inroads to visible maturity over the course of the film’s five to six year time span, Maggie Smith looks exactly the same at the end of the film as she does at the beginning.

The entertaining forcefulness of Maggie Smith’s performance posits the flamboyant teacher—who remains front and center of the narrative even when she’s off-screen—as the preferred alternative to the rigidly dour Miss Mackay. (I’m reminded of The Trouble With Angels when Gypsy Rose Lee pops up as a glamorous dance instructor to the delight of the girls dominated by Rosalind Russell’s stern Mother Superior.)

Smith’s Jean Brodie is so attractive and appealing a personality that we scarcely notice—much less mind—when she exhibits troubling traits like romanticizing a dictator or attempting to orchestrate the seduction of one of her students by a man old enough to be her father. At these moments she seems more naïve and foolish than malicious, and we, like her students, side with her and feel she is an inspiring breath of fresh air.

But as the film progresses and we sense a lack of flexibility in Miss Brodie's point of view; a lack of generosity or kindness in her treatment of Sandy or Mary; when her self-centeredness reveals a disregard for the feelings of the men in her life; when it looks as though the influence she wields over the lives of the girls is really a need to control...there arrives the point of conflict. The film grows darker and we’re no longer quite as certain of whose side we’re on. Suddenly, Miss Brodie doesn't appear quite so harmless.

"She always looks so...extreme!"
Miss Brodie is sized up by members of the Marcia Blaine teaching staff

PERFORMANCES

The risk of portraying an individual who hides behind a façade of studied (and appealing) artifice is risky. If the artifice is more compelling than the individual, caricature can eclipse character. I’m not sure how she does it, but Maggie Smith, while indulging in some of the most humorously florid vocal and physical posturings imaginable, manages to paint a vivid and human portrait of a woman of boundless spirit and reckless bravado who lives her life without a single thing of substance to moor it to beyond the worshipful, too-impressionable girls trusted to her charge.

Depicting a woman channeling her prodigious energies in all directions at once, Smith miraculously conveys both the self-deception and desperation behind the ostentation designed to conceal what may be the truth that Miss Brodie works so hard to evade: that she is not, in fact, in her prime at all, and she knows it.

Mary McGregor (center), devoted to Miss Brodie to a fault, is the film's most poignant character

Miss Brodie's ill-informed, naive proselytizing, encouraging the impressionable to adopt beliefs and pursue risky endeavors which yield no consequences or danger to herself, can't help but remind me of  those selfish, privileged, bubble-protected celebrities who have much to say about political risk-taking and protest (Susan Sarandon comes to mind) while personally having absolutely nothing at stake.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is Maggie Smith’s show, to be sure, but Celia Johnson is extraordinary (both to watch and listen to; her Scottish accent is pure, lilting music). Imagine, if you will, having to find an actress capable of posing a credible threat to the likes of Maggie Smith. On the strength of her facial expressions alone, Celia Johnson’s prim and provincial Miss Mackay is more than up to the job; her scenes with Smith providing the film with some of its most spirited, volcanic moments.

Miss Brodie: "My credo is 'Lift, enliven, stimulate!'"
Miss Mackay: "No doubt...."

But for my money, it is the assured, natural performance of the highly underrated Pamela Franklin (Our Mother's House, The Innocents) that serves to ground the comic/dramatic crescendos of Mmes Smith & Johnson. In portraying the character of Sandy, whose youthful impertinence is the genuine personification of the kind of  intellectual self-determination Miss Brodie professes to encourage in her girls, Pamela Franklin’s unshowy, utterly convincing transformation from inquisitive teen to disillusioned young woman (she was 18-years-old at the time) is one of the unsung miracles of an already outstanding film.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY/REALITY

While satisfying my fondness for Maggie Smith performances and ‘60s movies set in schoolrooms (Up The Down Staircase, To Sir With Love), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is ultimately a subtle and shrewd polemic on the seductive, corrupting nature of power, and the ease with which people can relinquish their freedom when confronted with a forceful personality.

It’s clear to us from the start that Jean Brodie—with her strict guidelines for the proper height to open a window and dismissive attitude towards loyalties shown to anything or anyone but herself—is no champion of independent thought and critical thinking. For all her obvious professional dedication she is more an autocrat than a teacher, her self-serving politics rooted in nothing deeper than a deluded sense of her own importance.

"Benito Mussolini. Il Duce. Italy's leader supreme. A Roman worthy of his heritage.
The greatest Roman of them all."

Touting her own teaching methods as revolutionary while (inaccurately) promoting fascist regimes as drain-the-swamp implementers of a new world utopia; Miss Brodie, like all dictators, merely couches age-old totalitarian philosophies in the rhetoric of liberation.

Back in 1969 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie spoke to the anti-authoritarianism of the youth movement, the sexual revolution, feminism, and the anti-war movement. Today…well, I hardly have to say why a film about a fascist sympathizer being given a broad forum to spread misinformation is as relevant now as George Orwell’s 1984.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a film so good that it warrants a revisit on the strength of its performances and entertainment value alone. But taken as a cautionary tale for our times—a reiteration of the duty and necessity of resistance—I’d say that in this instance, a little time spent in the classroom of one Miss Jean Brodie would be time very well spent, indeed.

"I am the potter and you are my pride.
You are shaping up.
Soon you graduate to the senior school and I will no longer teach you
...but you will always be Brodie Girls."

BONUS MATERIAL

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was nominated for only two Oscars: Best Actress and Best Original Song. "Jean" is sung over the film's closing credits by composer Rod McKuen, but singer Oliver (who had a hit that same year with Hair's "Good Morning Starshine") had a #1 hit on the adult contemporary charts with his single version. Rod McKuen's “Jean” was performed by Lou Rawls on the Academy Awards broadcast, and lost to Burt Bacharach’s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” from Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid.

AUTOGRAPH FILES

Got Pamela Franklin's autograph in 1981 when she came to Crown Books on Sunset Blvd where I was employed. (she's married to Harvey Jason, hence the last name in parentheses at the end of her signature). In 1998 Franklin and her husband would open up a bookstore of their own on Sunset Blvd - Mystery Pier Books

Al Hirschfeld

Copyright © Ken Anderson

SETTLE FOR THE DREAM: SONDHEIM IN THE MOVIES

Legendary composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim appears in remarkably good spirits considering what Elizabeth Taylor is likely doing to one of his songs in this Graham Morris photograph capturing an August 1976 London recording session for the Harold Prince movie adaptation of Sondheim's A Little Night Music.

Stephen Sondheim

March 22, 1930 - November 26, 2021

Countless obituaries, tributes, eulogies, and “In Memoriam” articles reiterated the indisputable fact that the death of Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim signaled the end of an era in American Musical Theater. And indeed, the breadth of his impact is difficult to overstate. Stephen Sondheim almost single-handedly changed the look, sound, and content of the American musical. Transforming the popular medium that once strove for nothing deeper than “pleasing the tired businessman” (i.e., to amuse and entertain, not instruct or strain the brain) into a sophisticated and challenging art form illuminating complex societal themes and exploring the darker corners of the human condition. It’s impossible to imagine the likes of his particular genius will ever be seen again. 

But to me…a gay man who discovered the brilliant composer-lyricist during my floundering adolescence in the Sexual Revolution/Gay Liberation ‘70s, it’s hard not to look upon the obvious tragedy of Stephen Sondheim’s death at age 91 as simultaneously representing a kind of triumph. A triumph of survival, a triumph of the indomitability of the creative voice, and certainly a triumph of a queer artist's personal journey (from being closeted, coming out in his 40s, to [shades of "Marry Me a Little"] getting wed at the age of 87) in a nearly 70-year career. 

For what’s not triumphant in being a gay man surviving the devastation of the AIDS plague of the ‘80s and living to the astoundingly ripe old age of 91? It’s certainly a triumph that the trajectory of Sondheim’s long career dramatizes the struggle of the American LGBTQ experience: Sondheim’s first Broadway show (1957s West Side Story) was the creation of no less than FOUR societally-mandated closeted gay and bisexual men. By the time of his death, Sondheim was an out-and-proud, world-renowned public figure legally wed to his husband of four years.

Sondheim with the cast of the movie version of Into the Woods

As one of Broadway’s most lauded composer-lyricists (8 Tony Award wins - including an Honorary Lifetime Achievement in Theater Award, 8 Grammys, a Pulitzer Prize, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and more) Hollywood beckoned Sondheim from the start. And of his 18 theatrical productions, six have made it to the screen to date. The work he created specifically for the movies includes composing a score for French director Alain Resnais, writing original songs for several feature films (one even garnering him an Oscar win), and collaborating on the screenplay of a murder mystery with his friend and rumored lover Anthony Perkins. 

A 1970s Polaroid featuring Anthony Perkins, Pat Ast, and Marisa Berenson surrounding Sondheim at the piano. Sondheim met Tony Perkins in 1966 when he wrote the words & music for Evening Primrose, an original made-for-TV musical starring Perkins and Charmian Carr (of The Sound of Music).

The relative or comparative success/failure of Hollywood’s adaptations of Sondheim’s work has sparked much unnecessary debate over the years. In the end, it's Sondheim himself who comes across as the level-headed mediator, what with his understanding of the differences between the mediums of film and theater, and therefore being considerably less bent out of shape than his acolytes by the often necessary compromises required in bringing his theatrical works to the screen. 

I think evidence of Sondheim's easygoing philosophy can be found in his music. 

One of the more consistent themes running through Sondheim's work is that, while idealism is both an elemental and essential part of being an artist, a lover, a character in a fairy tale, a dreamer, a suburban married couple, or even a sociopathic killer; the achievement of perfection itself is something unattainable. There can never be such a thing as perfection or "happily ever after" where human beings...in all their flawed complexity...are involved.

 

So many of his musicals end with characters thinking they are “settling” for the less-than-perfect when the overarching theme stresses that once one abandons illusion and fantasy (which makes us question whether we're happy "enough" or if our happiness is the "right kind"), it opens us up to recognizing the often very real happiness that already exists in our lives. Usually, to be found in the only place it can ever truly be: in the here and now, wherever that is, and whatever that may look like. Accepting who we are, what we have, and finding that there is both happiness and contentment within the imperfect, is, I think, the key to happiness and what it means to grow up.   

“Feed the plot to the fish. Life is not what the movies make it seem. Still, we got Dorothy Gish. We can lean back and settle for the dream.”   

- "In The Movies" - from Sondheim's first musical Saturday Night - 1955 (unproduced until 1997)

“In the Movies” is a comic musical number calling attention to the discrepancy between life as we know it and life as depicted on the big screen. In the end, the song makes the case that wishing for reality to be more like the movies is an exercise in futility when it’s precisely life’s deficiencies that make movies so pleasurable (and necessary!). Better to relax, sit back, and enjoy these idealized fantasies for what they are. Why dwell on the unhappy thought that life is so seldom as magical as the movies when the greatest gift that movies offer us is the magic of fantasy? Why not just sit back and “settle for the dream”?

That repeated lyric, with its echoing of the Sondheimian ethos of accepting things as they are…accepting the things you cannot change, feels just right for the title of my brief look at the uneven cinema legacy of the man who became the face of American Musical Theater.   

In 1971 I fell in love with the OBC album of Sondheim's Company (1970).
In 1993 got to see the original cast perform it in concert. 

I suspect theater fans will always prefer their Sondheim onstage and lament that his film adaptations inevitably fall short. And I can see their point. Live theater presents the uncompromised vision and is different each time you see it. But live theater is not as available to some as it is to others. Certainly not as available as film. 

I'm a movie guy and a Sondheim fan to boot, so my attitude is that while I would love it if every screen adaptation of a Sondheim show was "perfection," there is no such thing. And certainly, when it comes to film, what's done is done. There's no matinee the following day where problems can be fixed.  

In any discussion on the topic of whether the movies have ever done justice to the work of Stephen Sondheim, my answer would be a qualified no. But instead of blocking my blessings by playing "It Would Have Been Wonderful," how much better it is for me to sit back and simply appreciate the rare gift it is to have any of Stephen Sondheim's genius preserved on the screen at all. It's a dream I'm more than happy to settle for.  

WEST SIDE STORY - 1961

Directed by Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins, and adapted from the Tony Award-winning musical that marked Sondheim’s Broadway debut. As I fairly exhausted the topic of West Side Story in my previous essay (hint: I'm crazy about this movie) the only thing to add here is that the triumph of this now-classic, Academy Award-winning screen adaptation (a whopping 10 wins including Best Picture and Best Director) still finds Sondheim critical of his own efforts, not the film. Serving as lyricist for Leonard Bernstein’s compositions, Sondheim has said he is embarrassed by the “poetry” of the language he put into the mouths of street kids. He has also stated that many of the changes screenwriter Ernest Lehman brought to the film (specifically as to where certain songs were re-situated) are improvements on the stage version. 

GYPSY - 1962

Directed by Mervyn Leroy and adapted from the 1959 Ethel Merman Broadway musical. Hitting two for two, Sondheim’s second Broadway hit (this time supplying the lyrics to Jules Stein’s music) became his second movie adaptation and second collaboration with Natalie Wood. Controversially cast in place of the bombastic Merman, the vocally-manipulated Rosalind Russell. A delightful, relatively faithful adaptation, Gypsy is another film I’ve exhaustively covered in an earlier post (hint: I’m crazy about it), my only gripe being that it cuts one of my favorite songs “Together Wherever We Go.” 

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM - 1966

Directed by Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night) and adapted from the hit 1962 Broadway musical that won 5 Tony Awards including Best Musical. I confess I’ve never been particularly fond of this "Roman farce meets vaudeville schtick" musical comedy. The frenetic mugging and hamminess of Zero Mostel always crack me up, as do the old-fashioned jokes. But the plot and Lester’s shambolic direction and handling of the musical sequences (almost dutifully, as if he’s trying to get them over with as quickly as possible) make this an adaptation I welcome, but don’t necessarily appreciate. “Forum” marked Stephen Sondheim’s first Broadway show as both composer and lyricist. 

THE LAST OF SHEILA -  1973

Directed by Herbert Ross from an original screenplay by Stephen Sondheim and actor Anthony Perkins.  Sondheim combined his passion for puzzles and games with his early experience writing for television in the ‘50s (he wrote several episodes of the comedy program Topper) and came up with a doozy of an all-star whodunit set on the French Riviera. The Agatha Christie-style plot is as complex and twisty as any Sondheim melody, and it’s easy to imagine Perkins contributing a great deal to the gossipy, insider feel of the film's movie-industry setting and its cast of unsympathetic opportunists. The Last of Sheila is another film I’ve written about in a previous post…and by now you know the drill. I’m crazy about it.

STAVISKY - 1974

Directed by Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad). Sondheim was approached by Resnais (who professed to be a fan of the composer) to write the period score for this stylish crime noir set in the early ‘30s and based on the life of real-life political swindler, Serge Alexandre Stavisky. Resnais’ film is an Art Deco visual feast to which Sondheim contributes a breathtakingly lush, sweepingly romantic score. Even if you never have the opportunity to see the sumptuous motion picture, you owe it to yourself to get your hand on the soundtrack. The music is beyond exquisite. 

THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION - 1976

Directed by Herbert Ross and based on the 1974 Nicholas Meyer novel that posits Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud joining forces to solve a crime. Sondheim contributes a song sung by a high-class madam (French nightclub legend Régine Zylberberg) at a whorehouse soirée. The liltingly raunchy tune “I Never Do Anything Twice (The Madam’s Song)” recalls the comic double-entendre vulgarity of "Can That Boy Foxtrot!" (a song excised from his show Follies). For all its risqué wit "The Madam's Song" is featured for mere seconds in the film. Happily, the song can be heard in its entirety on any number of Sondheim CD collections out there. 

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC - 1977

Based on Ingmar Bergman's 1955 comedy Smiles of a Summer Night, A Little Night Music won Harold Prince a Tony Award for his direction of the 1973 Broadway production (it won 6 awards total, including Best Musical). But his somewhat lumbering direction of the film adaptation won him nothing but critical brickbats. One of Sondheim’s most popular and accessible shows (a happy ending!) features a score of waltz-time melodies so sublime, that the flaws of the movie adaptation never bothered me. I'm in the majority-of-one camp that finds the film version to be absolutely enchanting, the rewritten song "The Glamorous Life" and new lyrics for "Night Waltz" being worth the effort alone.   

REDS  - 1981

Directed by Warren Beatty. Sondheim was originally enlisted to write the entire score for this love story set during the early days of the Russian Revolution. Sondheim declined– score chores then taken over by David Grusin – but did contribute a delicate instrumental theme song “Goodbye for Now.” Instrumental and vocal versions of the song appear in several Sondheim collections. The song's boon and bane is that it does what all movie music should do-- enhance the drama of the story without calling attention to itself. But when it comes to Sondheim, I'm not sure being unaware of him is what I'm after. 

DICK TRACY - 1990

Directed by Warren Beatty. In Sondheim’s second collaboration with Beatty, the director/star again wanted the composer to write the entire score, and again Sondheim declined. Danny Elfman went on to handle that chore in this primary-color action-comedy that brings Chester Gould’s comic strip detective to life. Sondheim contributed five 1930s-inspired songs: “Back in Business”, “What Can You Lose”, “More”, “Live Alone and Like It”, and the torchy “Sooner or Later” which won Sondheim his first and only Oscar.

THE BIRDCAGE - 1996

Directed by Mike Nichols and adapted from the 1973 French play La Cage of Folles which had already been turned into a film in 1978 and a Broadway musical (by outspoken Sondheim critic Jerry Herman) in 1983. My dislike for this fiercely unfunny film knows no bounds, so I’m going to be as terse as possible here. It would take the likes of Hercule Poirot to find the three songs Sondheim contributed to this movie. An original song, “It Takes All Kinds” went unused. Then there's a song titled “Little Dream" that plays for about six seconds. The delectable duet “Love is in the Air” (a song originally written for “Forum”) gets about 45 seconds of screen time. The nip/tuck treatment of Sondheim's music is especially irksome because so much of The Birdcage takes place in a nightclub.

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET - 2007

Directed by Tim Burton and adapted from the 1979 Broadway production that won 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Score. This blood-soaked Grand Guignol opera is my #1 favorite of all Sondheim’s works, and I’ve listened to it countless times. That I consider it to be his masterpiece might suggest I would find fault with the faithful but severely truncated Tim Burton adaptation. But–weakish lead vocals and humorlessness aside–I think this is a rather splendid adaptation. Granted, I might be cutting this film some slack because a full version of the national touring company with Angela Lansbury & George Hearn had already been committed to video in 1982, so it's not like Burton's movie needs to be the definitive screen version. Also, Burton's version earns points for not being guilty of the musical adaptation sin of having a superfluous new song awkwardly shoehorned into the original score in hopes of garnering an Oscar nomination.

INTO THE WOODS - 2014

Directed by Rob Marshall and adapted from the three-time 1987 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical. Remarkably, this film version of Sondheim’s grim adult take on Grimm’s fairy tales marks my first time ever seeing Into The Woods (1984’s Sunday in the Park with George had put me off Sondheim for a bit), so I’m willing to accept the tiresomely patronizing assurances from my theater-geek friends that until I watch the complete production performed by the original Broadway cast for cable TV in 1991, I STILL haven’t seen Into the Woods. Be that as it may, in the spirit of discovery I must say I had the best time watching Marshall's film. Wonderful performances throughout, and that absolutely superb and complex score. Subsequent revisits…with fast-forward remote at the ready… have been less ecstatic. The film was nominated for 3 Oscars.

CAMP - 2003

Todd Graff wrote and directed this musical comedy-drama set in a performing arts camp for teenagers. Sondheim donated three of his songs to this low-budget labor of love: “I’m Still Here” and “Losing My Mind” from Follies, and “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company. (I'm honestly not sure if teens singing these decidedly mature songs was part of the joke ["I'm Still Here"...from what, detention?] I sincerely hope so.) Sondheim also donated his time and gravitas by appearing as himself in a brief cameo. In a sort of Waiting for Guffman moment, the patron saint of musical theater teens arrives at the camp in a limousine with the license plate 4UM, his entrance given an appropriately rockstar welcome.

WEST SIDE STORY - 2021

Difficult for me to call Stephen Spielberg's adaptation of Sondheim's West Side Story a remake because it feels so fresh. It's more like when great Shakespearean works are revisited...each becomes its own unique interpretation. Given my strong affection for the 1961 film, I wasn't truly expecting to fall in love with this version the way that I ultimately did. It kind of swept me off my feet. Hearing new arrangements of long-familiar songs and seeing an old story told through a younger, more aware, cringe-free prism was a thrilling experience that had me in tears throughout. 

TICK, TICK...BOOM! - 2021

I honestly tried, but I found it impossible to make it through even the first 20 minutes of 2021's Tick, Tick...Boom!, so I missed out on experiencing Sondheim's audio-only "cameo" (as himself) in dramatic context (I watched a clip of the scene on YouTube). In a mini-monologue written by Sondheim himself, his voice is heard on an answering machine giving up-and-coming composer Jonathan Larson (Andrew Garfield) a timely pep talk. The film, set in 1999 gives us Stephen  Sondheim in the flesh, portrayed by actor Bradley Whitford of Get Out (2017). My personal feelings about the movie aside, I can't imagine a greater testament to Stephen Sondheim's enduring brilliance than his being depicted in this film as an icon of musical theater, a patron saint and inspiration to young artists. 

GLASS ONION - 2022

"Sorry, Blanc. You're thrown out of the airlock. It's a no-brainer."  - Those are the only lines spoken by Stephen Sondheim in this, his last screen appearance. Playing himself, he appears in a COVID lockdown Zoom gathering with Broadway legend Angela Lansbury (also her final screen appearance), NBA All-Star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and actress Natasha Lyonne. They are all playing the online video sleuthing game "Among Us" with world-famous fictional detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) in this, his second screen mystery (following the character's debut in Knives Out - 2019). Sondheim's appearance as gamer "Steve S." is but a cameo, but in context, it's an ideal screen sendoff for one of popular culture's most well-known game-players. A screen farewell made all the more satisfying because Benoit Blanc's fondness for Sondheim music was wittily referenced in Knives Out, and because Rian Johnson's murder mystery Glass Onion consistently pays loving homage to Sondheim & Perkin's twisty & bitchy 1973 whodunit The Last of Sheila.

*****

Stephen Sondheim's legacy for me is indelible and rich. For some reason, he seems to have been the perfect composer to introduce me to musical theater at an impressionable age. He set a very high standard. That his reputation continues to grow and his work is recognized and lauded by an entirely new generation makes me glad that at least a few of his shows have been preserved on film. 

My Favorite Stephen Sondheim Musical Scores

My Top Five Favorite Sondheim Songs:

"Every Day a Little Death"

"Not While I'm Around" 

"Losing My Mind"

"There's Always a Woman"

"Side by Side by Side/What Would We Do Without You?"

Readers: No one should have to pick a "favorite" from Sondheim's sizeable catalog of impossibly beautiful (and riotously funny) songs, but if you care to share a particular Sondheim composition you enjoy or that means something to you, I'd be interested to know.  

BONUS MATERIAL:

Liza Minnelli sings Sondheim's "Losing My Mind" - from her Results album -1989

I know a music video doesn’t officially fit the “Sondheim in the Movies” theme of this tribute, but this is included here because Oscar-winning, Miss Show-Biz herself, Liza Minnelli, delivers more deliriously extravagant drama, anguish, camp, and genuine pathos in 4 ½ minutes than you’ll find in a Douglas Sirk/David Lynch film festival. 

For those desperate to make a movie connection; imagine this video as a 20-years-later short film sequel to Minnelli's The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) with an adult Pookie Adams still getting herself into obsessive, one-way relationships.

Pet Shop Boys (Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe) produced this infectious synthpop dance version of Sondheim’s torch ballad from Follies. On the strength of Minnelli’s committed, full-throttle performance, I also find this majestically melodramatic music video…which even features a nod to the Emcee in Cabaret…to be delicately moving. Directed by Briant Grant.

In the comic whodunit Knives Out (2019) Daniel Craig
plays a gay master detective with a fondness for Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim made his acting debut in the Oscar Levant-esque role of songwriter Maxie Schwartz in the 1974 TV adaptation of George F. Kaufman's 1929 comedy June Moon. The entire telecast is available for viewing on YouTube or as part of the Great Performances DVD collection.

Crazy business this, this life we live in
Can't complain about the time we're given
With so little to be sure of in this world,
We had a moment
A marvelous moment

-"With So Little To Be Sure Of" - from Anyone Can Whistle - 1964 

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2022

MAKING A MEMORY: CINEMA & THE CULT OF LONGING

In this photo by Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco Chronicle photographer Joe Rosenthal (of Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima fame), the marquee for The Castro Theater advertises the double-feature It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and Far From The Madding Crowd. I saw this very double feature at the Castro (a real butt-buster, if ever there was one) in January of 1971.

In Walt Disney's The Parent Trap (the good one with Hayley Mills), there's a scene where the twin raised in California greets her Boston grandfather (Charles Ruggles) for the first time. As they embrace, Susan (Mills), prolonging the hug, buries her face in the lapels of the old man's jacket.

Grandfather: "What are you doing?"

Susan: "Making a memory."

Grandfather: "Making a memory?"

Susan: "All my life...years from now, when I'm quite grown up, I'll remember my grandfather and how he always smelled of (sniffs his lapel again) tobacco and peppermint."

Apart from always giving me a major case of waterworks, this scene fairly sums up for me what moviegoing was like before the days of cable, satellite, VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray, and online streaming. When there was no telling when you'd ever have the opportunity to see a favorite film again, a standard part of the moviegoing experience was learning how to make a memory. Developing skills, rituals, and habits by which one could hold onto the experience of a movie for as long as possible.

A few of the double features I enjoyed at the Castro Theater circa1968-1969

For the devoted film fan, it was practically a survival tactic. By the time I reached my teens, it had become second nature for me to take detailed mental pictures; subconsciously log, file, and catalog significant sequences for later recollection rewind; and keep seismic record of the goosebump moments of every movie I liked. Even on those occasions when I'd sit through a movie twice in one afternoon, the subconscious goal was always the same: to have the film make as indelible an impression as possible on my psyche so that thereafter, the film became "mine." A memory of an experience I could relive and draw upon at will, be it to inspire, lift my spirits, or see me through any number of then-earth-shattering adolescent crises.

I fell in love with movies in the late '60s, back when there were only three TV networks, and movies could take as long as two years to reach the TV screen. Then, lacking the technology allowing one to watch and rewatch a beloved movie in the comfort of one's home—ad nauseam, ad infinitum, to the point of torpor—one had to rely on extended memory. Deprived of having the easily-referenced details of a film at our fingertips (not to mention the demythologizing, demystifying, explain-every-subtlety-and-detail contribution of DVD commentary tracks), the memory of movies were all you had. And even then, often only in the form of fractured recall, personal reminiscence, and hazy, emotion-diffused impressions of the sort that made it easy to misquote and misremember entire scenes.
Ultimately, all of this goes to explain the origins of my subjective/emotional philosophy of cinema: In lieu of being able to possess a film in actual fact, I came to base my love of movies on how they made me feel.

The most coveted (by me) part of the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle was the entertainment "Date Book" section, known to locals as "the "pink pages." Here would be found a host of movie-related articles, as well as information about upcoming releases and premieres. This issue, dated June 16, 1968, mentions the forthcoming release of Rosemary's Baby (my #1 favorite film of all time) at the Century 21 Theater on Wednesday, June 26th.

But even fond memories require the occasional bowl-stirring, so a big part of film fandom for me as a youth involved finding new ways to prolong the moviegoing experience.

For example, my predilection for repeatedly watching the same movie is rooted in the fact that when I was growing up, once a film had completed its initial theatrical run, there was no telling when it would appear again. Back then, revival theaters (those that didn't specialize in underground, foreign, and art films) served the same purpose as TCM today, providing access to classic uncut films like Dinner at Eight & My Little Chickadee from Hollywood's Golden Age. When it came to mainstream releases like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or Up The Down Staircase, after their initial release (which was longer then and not so saturated), you had to scan the newspaper movie section waiting for them to reappear on the bottom half of a double or triple bill at some 2nd or 3rd-run neighborhood movie house. Short of that, there was waiting for them to appear on network TV—butchered, censored, and commercial interrupted.

The Stepford Wives (1975) is one of my best-loved films. It had its network television premiere on Sunday, October 24, 1976. I was excited to see it again, but I recall being disappointed (but not altogether surprised) that the ending had been trimmed, muting its overall impact. Having to endure the subtle censorship or total excision of favorite moments in beloved films was a standard part of the old-school "luxury" of having feature films broadcast into your living room.                                                           Image: coolasscinema.com

Since I liked to read, there was always the option of going to the local library and checking out the novels from which some of my favorite films were adapted (I especially liked the movie tie-in paperbacks, which always included loads of stills). A rare and mostly last-ditch effort on my part to keep a movie memory alive was the paperback "novelization"—a marketing device reserved for films adapted from original screenplays. I recall my experience reading the novelization of Thoroughly Modern Millie, mainly in terms of the great pains I took not to let the other boys at school see what I was reading. 

Fake novel / Real Novel
Because I was shy, I always had my nose buried in a book at school. While reading Millie, I dreaded the day (which, mercifully, never came) when one of my classmates would ask me what I was reading, and I'd be forced to witness the color drain from their faces as I summarized its cotton-candy plot. On the other hand, The Sterile Cuckoo got me some unearned points from my English teacher, who misheard it as One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Thereafter, she seldom missed an opportunity to commend me on my reading"At a high-school level!" (I was eleven) and selecting such heavy material for recreational reading. 

One of the more accessible in-home ways to sustain the excitement of movies (thanks to an older sister who spent substantial hunks of her weekly allowance on issues of Rona Barrett's Hollywood, Movie Mirror, Photoplay, and Silver Screen) was the movie fan magazine. While other kids my age were reading Batman comic books, I was reading about why Liz was too sick to satisfy her man and what new heartbreak The Lennon Sisters were having to endure. Before People magazine and 'round-the-clock "entertainment news" channels convinced folks that non-stop celebrity gossip was actually real news, these mags served their fandom purpose by keeping pop-cultural ephemera where it belonged: on the sidelines amongst the scandal sheets and teen-celebrity magazines.

Screen Stories was my favorite movie magazine because each issue contained
complete, spoiler-filled synopses of all the latest flicks. With pictures!

I eventually gave up raiding my sister's stash of movie gossip rags once I discovered the "serious" movie periodicals section of the library. There, magazines with chi-chi names like Sight and Sound, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, and Films in Review not only fed my adolescent pretensions, but fostered my lifelong love of movie criticism and film analysis. Feeding my equally keen adolescent fondness for looking at pictures of naked men was British-based Films and Filming magazine, a self-billed "sensible magazine for serious film-goers" that was loaded with intelligent film reviews and could always be relied upon to feature the most salacious and homoerotic stills culled from even the most harmless movies.

When it came to helping me convince my parents that all the nudity in those age-inappropriate movies I so wanted to see was actually "artistic" and "significant to the plot," serious film periodicals (doesn't that sound better than movie magazines?) like Films and Filming proved invaluable.

Reading about movies or rewatching them to the point of memorization is all well and good, but those are but mementos of the mind. I don't know of a movie fan worthy of the name who, at some time or another, hasn't longed for some sort of concrete, tangible, take-home token of a film. 

For me, it was through the collecting of movie-themed souvenirs. Not so much when I was very young (because I had to wait for movies to come to the neighborhood theater), but in my teens, through to early adulthood, I loved it when first-run movies would offer some kind of chintzy promotional giveaway to the first 50 to 100 patrons at selected screenings. The thrill of being one of the few to take home a small memento of a movie (not to mention the silent, mean-spirited joy to be had in gloating over empty-handed patrons 101-plus) is what prompted my then-annoying penchant for dragging my friends to theaters way too early, making them stand in long lines (something which I quite enjoyed).

Andy Warhol's BAD opened in San Francisco on Wednesday, April 27, 1977. I didn't see the film until several years later, but at the time, the Music Hall theater sold the BAD T-shirt at the boxoffice. I purchased one for $5 and wore it so often that it disintegrated. The shirt pictured is a knock-off I bought on eBay in the '90s for considerably more than $5.

Over the years, I've sold or donated the bulk of my movie souvenir collection of buttons, T-shirts, banners, and posters, but stashed away somewhere in my apartment, I still have a few items of interest to nobody but me: the pinback button from the opening day of Alien (sounds good, but it's a dull graphic that merely has the words "You Are My Lucky Star" [the song Ripley sings to herself moments before the final attack] printed over a starry background); the sample soundtrack LP handed out at the premiere (and Joan Tewkesbury autograph signing) of the forgotten 1979 Talia Shire film Old Boyfriends; and a poster given out at an early screening of Peter Bogdanovich's Nickelodeon.

Although my original "Pray for Rosemary's Baby" button is the pride of my collection,
I still possess quite a few promotional pinback giveaways 

Another favorite of mine was the souvenir program. Big-budget movies and roadshow attractions traditionally sold "official" souvenir programs at the theater lobby concession stands...right next to the Jujubes and Milk Duds. Crammed with photos and PR puffery, these glossy brochures were little more than glorified pressbooks. But there was no better feeling than coming home from a movie, excited and tired but not wanting the evening to end, settling into bed and reading yourself to sleep while poring over all that prepackaged publicity material, the film replaying on a loop in your head.

Of the many souvenir programs I purchased when these films opened in
 San Francisco in the '70s, these three were my favorites

Pop-art pinup posters were all the rage during the late '60s & '70s. And while I loved having blow-up posters of old-Hollywood movie stars like WC Fields, Marilyn Monroe, and Clark Gable on my bedroom walls (ironic nostalgia was in), my favorites were those of contemporary stars. My prized items were my posters of Peter Fonda on his Easy Rider bike, and a twin set of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton from The Taming of the Shrew.

Liz  & Dick: The "It" couple of my youth graced these individual 
posters. It felt like a crime not to buy them as a pair.

But shyness, concern that my sisters would tease me (and the ultimate fear that my mom wouldn't let me keep them anyway) prevented me from owning the two pinup posters I most wanted and which always caught my eye when I'd walk past the head shops and record stores on San Francisco's Haight Street: Jane Fonda in full Barbarella gear, and one-flop-wonder Ewa Aulin posed provocatively in an airplane cockpit as Candy

Tame by today's standards, these were popular and racy posters in 1968. And only being 10 or 11 at the time, I was certain I had no chance of owning them. It then never occurred to me that my father might have been encouraged as hell to have his quiet, non-athletic, bookworm son post a bit of female pulchritude on his bedroom wall.

It wasn't until I was in high school that I learned civilians could actually purchase the posters, stills, and lobby cards displayed at movie theaters (detailed in my essay The Show Began on the Sidewalk). Thereafter, movie posters remained my preferred, all-time favorite motion picture collectible.

For a time, I kept a scrapbook filled with newspaper ads for the movies I'd seen. The Northpoint Theater in San Francisco was one of my favorite moviegoing venues. I was thrilled to see The Exorcist (1973) and Tommy (1976) when they made their Bay Area debuts there. 

But so far, all the modes of movie memory-making I've covered have been of the visual-aids variety: items that work like sentimental signposts designed to jog my memory along a recollection map whose coordinates and points of reference it remained largely up to me to determine (i.e., they could only trigger memories I'd already backlogged).

Movie soundtrack albums were another thing entirely. I speak not of the soundtrack albums for movie musicals, which are both culturally accessible (the source of many top 40 hits) and require no real affinity for the film itself (e.g., the double platinum LP success of the otherwise flop musical Xanadu). No, I speak of the limited, almost cult-like appeal of the original soundtrack album devoted to the instrumental, chiefly orchestral, musical score composed for a dramatic or comedic film. Not everybody has the stomach for long play records devoted to the non-diegetic (outside-of-story) thrills of background themes, melodic excerpts, and music categorized as incidental or transitional.

Listening to music composed for the express purpose of (imperceptibly) enhancing a film's mood and influencing the viewer's emotional response to images on a screen may not be everyone's taste, but whether it was music for a chase scene, bar fight, suspenseful moment, or comic interlude; for the longest time, motion picture soundtrack albums were the only way to really take a movie home with you.

Some of my happiest memories are of lying on the living room (shag) carpet in front of our wood-paneled TV/Radio/Hi-Fi record player console behemoth (with space for album storage!), listening to soundtrack albums I rented from the public library. Remembering a film is nice—and that's where memorabilia and souvenirs come in—but listening to a movie's soundtrack LP, with eyes closed and headphones on, is more than recollection; it's rediscovery.
By listening to music you most likely felt but never really heard (if the movie did its job of keeping you engrossed), you got to replay and relive a cinema experience in your mind. There's a definite geek element to this method of making a movie memory (the scores to a great many '60s comedies sound like music for a cartoon or bad TV sitcom). But nothing compared to soundtrack albums for their ability to inspire new dreams while revisiting the old.

I don't know if it's true, but it has always felt like I grew up during the golden age of movie music. Theme songs from motion pictures were all over the radio and TV variety programs. My earliest memories of the kind of movie music played around my house are not of movie soundtrack albums, but albums devoted to cover versions of popular songs from movies. My mom had a crush on Tom Jones, and though she played his What's New, Pussycat? album to death, I don't remember a single other song on it.

My dad's crush was on Nancy Wilson, so I often heard this album. It included the songs EVERY popular singer of the time recorded—Moon River, The Days of Wine & Roses, and Alfie—plus the ubiquitous More (theme from Mondo Cane), which to this very day always makes me think of the 1963 film Toys in the Attic. You see, my folks took us with them to a Drive-In movie to see the Dean Martin starrer Toys in the Attic (Dino was another of my mom's crushes...she really had a "type," didn't she?), and it was there that I was traumatized by the trailer for the gross-out shock documentary Mondo Cane.

As much as I loved movies, when I was young, thanks to the proliferation of light classical and easy-listening LPs like these, movie scores carried the stigma of being associated with Muzak and thought of as "elevator music." You really couldn't go anywhere without hearing Lara's Theme from Doctor Zhivago (Somewhere My Love), or the Theme from Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart?).  

Today, I carry these with me on my iPod. Time has been the least forgiving to the soundtrack of Barefoot in the Park (1967). But nothing evokes 1969 San Francisco for me like The Magic Christian soundtrack. Midnight Cowboy is perhaps my favorite complete score of the four. To this date, I've never seen The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom, but when I was 10, I was a fan of The New Vaudeville Band (Winchester Cathedral), so their presence on this LP was enough to make the gamble worthwhile.

TOP 20 Motion Picture Soundtrack Albums

(not a list of the "best" albums - a list of albums that made me happy)

I simply marvel at the many things that technology has made readily available to the modern film buff. Movies can be viewed in laser-sharp Blu-ray within months of their theatrical releases, complete with deleted scenes, alternate endings, informative commentary tracks, and director's cuts. There's untold online access to stills, posters, storyboards, soundtrack cuts (no need to listen to the entire album!), early script drafts, interviews, poster galleries, and all manner of behind-the-scenes trivia and factoids. I could never have imagined even a fraction of all this growing up.

And while I'm sure my 12-year-old self would have been over-the-moon enraptured had any of this been available to me during my formative film fan years, my older and wiser present-self knows better.

I know that my lifetime love affair with movies has always been nurtured by the courtship phase. The anticipation, the counting-the-days-until-release excitement...all followed up by the exquisite agony of wondering when you'll get to see the movie again, and hoping your memories will sustain you until then. 

The elemental unavailability of movies--no attendance allowed on school nights, having to take a bus to get to them, seeing them exclusively in cavernous movie palaces resembling churches--gave them their mystique and made them special. All of this fed into what I call "the cult of longing"—those myriad rituals I engaged in (posters, souvenirs, memorabilia, records, etc.) to best make a lasting memory of a favorite film. 

Over the years, I've found that what this method lacks in instant gratification has been more than made up for in its ability to create a bridge linking the magic of cinema to the durability of dreams.

The Alhambra Theater on Polk Street in San Francisco - The site of my first job
I moved to LA in 1978 but took this photo in 1981 during a visit

BONUS MATERIAL

Moving to Los Angeles allowed me to add autograph collecting to my arsenal of memory-makers. I've still not quite adapted to the celebrity selfie.

Celeste Holm - 1980

Walter Matthau - 1995

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2017