BLUEBEARD 1972

When it comes to the preserved documentation of talent squandered and the irrefutable evidence of an artist in decline, few actors have as nagging a filmography as Richard Burton. And boy did he know it.

Indeed, it’s the occasion of my having just finished reading (more like devouring) The Richard Burton Diaries—wherein Burton attempts to rebuke the tiresome (to him) “myth” that his career is one of unrealized potential incarnate—that inspired me to revisit this cult film curio from the “anything goes” '70s. Cult film in this instance being the term applied to any movie of dubious merit for which one harbors an affection that defies logical explanation.

In 1971, just before starting work on Bluebeard, Richard Burton wrote: “My lack of interest in my own career—past, present, or future—is almost total. All my life I think I have been secretly ashamed of being an actor. And the older I get, the more ashamed I get.” 

Well, that explains a lot. 

In fact, combined with the obvious allure of travel (the film was shot in Budapest, Hungary...a place the globe-trotting Burton had never visited) and a hefty paycheck, only apathy, self-loathing, and a subconscious need to publicly humiliate oneself can be the possible explanation for Burton’s head-scratching participation in Bluebeard: a big-budget, yet awfully cheap-looking, black comedy/horror movie that by rights should have been a throwaway exploitationer from Hammer Films starring Christopher Lee or Vincent Price. In fact, Burton wrote of purposely hoping to emulate Vincent Price in the role: “It has to be done with immense tongue-in-cheek. I will try to remember how the master—whasssisname—Vincent Price plays it.”

Compared to the depths of degradation awaiting him with The Klansman (1974), Exorcist II: The Heretic (1976), and The Medusa Touch (1977), Bluebeard actually represents something of  late-career high-point for Burton, signifying as it does a movie that, at least partially, intends to be laughed at.

Richard Burton as Baron Kurt Von Sepper

Joey Heatherton as Anne

Basically a Playboy magazine pictorial disguised as a film, Bluebeard is a tongue-in-cheek, post-WWI retelling of the 17^th-century French folktale about a nobleman with a history of murdering his wives. Richard Burton plays Austrian (I think) war hero and famed fighter pilot Kurt Von Sepper, who, as the film begins, meets and hastily marries a spunky American cabaret performer named Anne, assayed—emphasis on the first syllable, if you get my cruder meaning—by '70s variety show stalwart, Serta mattress pitchwoman, and erstwhile Bob Hope USO Tour frug-er, Joey Heatherton. True to the very grim original fairy tale, the Baron’s bride soon comes to learn of the gruesome deaths of her six predecessors (and a stray prostitute, for good measure) at the hands of her literally blue-bearded husband, and, over the course of one very tense evening, is forced to rely on her wits(!) and assorted Scheherazadian ploys to avoid meeting a similar fate.

As movie set-ups go, this one isn't half bad. It's only in the execution (if you'll pardon the pun) where things start to go awry. The theme of the young wife suspecting her hubby of harboring a deep, dark secret has been used effectively in movies for ages. In The Stranger (1946) a slow-on-the-pickup Loretta Young discovers she's wed a Nazi (you'd think a little thing like that would have come up during courtship); in Conspirator (1949) teen bride Elizabeth Taylor learns much-too-old-for-her Robert Taylor is a Soviet spy; in the thriller Julie (1956), Doris Day weds a man who may or may not have killed her first husband (how inconvenient!); and Hitchcock requires Joan Fontaine to sleep with one eye open in both Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1941).

In this French/Italian/German production designed to showcase and undress its cast of international beauties, Miss Heatherton's unequivocal American-ness works rather well. Both as contrast (she has a delectably dissolute quality that makes her look like a debauched Sandra Dee) and in rendering her character believable as the one wife meddlesome enough to go snooping where she doesn't belong.
Richard Burton summed it up nicely: "Heatherton seems unbelievably ordinary, which might be good for the part. She has one of those one-on-every-corner, blonde, rather common, and at the drop of an insult I'm sure, rather bitchy faces."

Raquel Welch as Magdalena, the nymphomaniacal nun. Wife #4

Of course, top-billed Raquel Welch is also an American (total screen time: 8 minutes), but as Myra Breckinridge established, when Welch tries to be funny, she becomes so mannered and stilted that she barely even registers as human.

The device of having Heatherton forestall her execution by getting her homicidal husband to recount to her the whys and wherefores of each of his wives' deaths is also serviceable, for its fairy-tale framework is perfectly in keeping with Bluebeard's archly gothic tone, while the extensive use of lengthy flashbacks gives Bluebeard the feel of one of those jocular horror anthology movies popularized by Britain's Amicus Productions in the '70s (The House That Dripped Blood, Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, et al.).
Thus, with a solid horror film structure firmly in place and a script that asserts its dark/self-mocking humor at regular intervals, one would think that Bluebeard, in laying its "exploitation film" cards on the table, could effortlessly meet the low bar requirements it set for itself. Not so much.

Karin Schubert as Greta, the patient virgin. Wife #1

After viewing Bluebeard, the impression one is left with is that the filmmakers are more than up to the task of producing a low-rent Eurotrash skin flick, but just don't have their hearts in the horror side of things. Blacklisted veteran director Edward Dmytryk, who clearly has seen better days (Murder My Sweet, Raintree County, The Caine Mutiny), has produced impressive work in many genres over the years, but demonstrates little of his flair here.
Obviously finding it difficult to sustain a consistent rhythm of comedy/horror, the overlong Bluebeard frequently shows the strain of having to keep its featherweight premise aloft for its hefty two-plus-hours running time. Since we usually know right away which fatal flaw Bluebeard will find in his wives, the drawn-out scenes of his slowly reaching the end of his rope feel like overlong setups for jokes to which we already know the punchline.

In these moments Dmytryk tends to undercut what little suspense there is by seeming to telegraph the denouements long before they actually occur. He out and out flubs even the most cliché tropes of the genre, such as in a scene where the shock reveal of a character thought to be out of the vicinity is botched entirely by having the camera placed practically across the room from the action. Equally problematic: it's hard to be induced to laugh at the exaggerated, purple performances Dmytryk elicits from his cast when one is not entirely sure: 1) They're in on the joke, 2) They're capable of better.

Nathalie Delon (l.) as Erika, the latent lesbian babytalker. Wife #3
With her, Sybil Danning (r.) as a helpful prostitute

No, if Bluebeard can be accused of anything, it is of appearing to so aggressively court the lucrative softcore euro-sleaze exploitation market, it treats every scene which doesn't actively involve the gratuitous disrobing, display, or objectification of a pulchritudinous actress as necessary, but unwanted, filler.

Virna Lisi as Elga, the atonal songbird. Wife #2

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

It’s a strange thing indeed to find oneself drawn to a film specifically because of the disaster potential inherent in the collective interaction of its assembled particulars. I submit for your approval: A once-respected, bomb-prone, alcoholic Shakespearean actor not known for either his dramatic restraint or light touch with comedy; a legendarily "difficult," not excessively talented, reigning global sex goddess trying hard to hold onto the title after a string of notable flops; a pouty American perpetual motion machine and heir to the sex-kitten throne after Ann-Margret abdicated with Carnal Knowledge; a bevy of international "actresses" of varying degrees of stateside recognizability (translated: the more obscure the actress, the more extensive the nudity); and a director in his 60s taking a whack (pun again?) at trendy '70s permissiveness. All converging in a genre of film—an arch, basic black comedy and gothic horror movie gumbo—alien to everyone involved.

Marilu Tolo as Brigitt, the masochistic feminist. Wife #5

Marveling at the myriad ways in which these discordant ingredients interact in Bluebeard is like watching one of those chemical reaction science demonstrations from back when I was a kid. And it's just as much fun. There's the full-tilt sensory bombardment of having Richard Burton and Joey Heatherton "acting" together in the same scenes (so ill-matched they are actually MARVELOUS together). The visual clash of garish '70s art direction (one set looks like a furnished blood clot). And let's not forget the aural assault of the hollow, dubbed voices for many of the actresses colliding with Burton's free-flowing Austrian or Welsh or English accent; all buttressed unsteadily by Heatherton's flat, matter-of-fact, Yankee delivery on one side, and Welch's mechanical, mid-Atlantic elocution lesson whisper on the other. 

Agostina Belli as Caroline, the dispassionate free spirit. Wife # 6

The product of three screenwriters and no telling how many other collaborators (time and place is so inconsistent and poorly evoked in the costumes and makeup, each of Bluebeard’s wives appear to be a time traveler visiting from a different era...past and future), so many disparate ingredients are thrown into this Euro-sleaze potboiler that its working title could rightfully have been: Hungarian Goulash.

Audiences were puzzled by the insignia and flag used in Bluebeard. Although many thought it was a made-up substitute for a swastika, it is in fact a real-life crutch-cross (cross potent) symbol representing the Fatherland Front. An Austrian, anti-Nazi conservative group headed by Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in 1933

PERFORMANCES
Although the lovely Nathalie Delon gives what I think is Bluebeard's best performance (she was the only wife I was sorry to see go), and the stunning Virna Lisi the most beautiful (that she allows her beauty to be camouflaged by costuming and makeup designed to emphasize the ridiculousness of her character, perhaps speaks well of the actress' lack of ego and sense of humor); I have to say that I am thoroughly charmed by Joey Heatherton in this and she is my absolute favorite performer in the film.

Dream Project Never to Be:
A film of Chekhov's Three Sisters starring Joey Heatherton, Tuesday Weld, and Connie Stevens

With that perpetually open-mouthed, sex-haze look she falls back on whenever she finds herself at a loss for character motivation, Heatherton can be downright dreadful at times. But she also possesses that intangible, alchemic "something" that transforms bad acting, mediocre dancing, and a narcissistic self-absorption, into a special kind of camp, star quality.
Looking amazing and photographed most flatteringly (she first worked with Bluebeard director Edward Dmytryk in 1964s Where Love Has Gone), Heatherton may have you shaking your head in wonder as you see her dressed in a collection of anachronistic frocks better suited to one of her Hullabaloo TV appearances, but she nevertheless reveals a comic talent for the sarcastic throwaway line, imbues the sometimes sluggish film with a considerable amount of misdirected, giggle-inducing energy, and ultimately emerges the real star of Bluebeard. Oh, and did I mention she goes topless?

As Bluebeard, the man who invented Your-Fault divorce, Richard Burton is certainly game, and sometimes even appears to be enjoying hamming it up. But it's hard to laugh at an actor of his stature actually trying to emulate Vincent Price (who is the master of this sort of thing, but it IS this sort of thing). His Bluebeard doesn't really have any madness at his core. In fact, in too many scenes Burton appears to be either drunk, distracted, or bored...take your pick.

Edward Meeks as Sergio, Anne's unlikely partner in her cabaret act 

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Contemporary horror fans discovering Bluebeard are likely to find both the nudity and gore of this R-rated film to be well below even PG standards. But as for me, not having been weaned on Saw or whatever brand of torture porn passes for horror these days, I don't mind a bit that, outside of a pretty unwatchable hunting scene, the violence in Bluebeard is pretty bloodless.

Mathieu Carriere as the mysterious character known only as The Violinist

Where Bluebeard works best for me is in creating a suitably bizarre gothic atmosphere (silly and fun, but creepy) and in building suspense around how long it's going to take Heatherton to catch on to Bluebeard's "secret," and how, if possible she's is going to escape that castle. (Certainly not for lack of velocity. When Heatherton runs, floor-length gown or not, the woman seriously floors it).

 "Oh, I love the castle! I love the park. The woods. These curtains. These walls. The furniture. I even like these strange photographs!"  Joey Heatherton, folks.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

When Bluebeard was first released, both Burton and Dmytryk went out of their way informing/warning everyone that the film was intended solely as a lark and a laugh (as if anyone seeing a movie titled Bluebeard [starring an actor wearing a literal blue beard] could mistake it for anything else). When critics and audiences failed to find much comedy, black or otherwise, in the sadism of the violence directed toward women; little humor in the grim choice of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazi fascism as a backstory plot point; and sat stone-faced at images of real-life animal slaughter in the hunting scene, their complaints were summarily dismissed as being born of taking it all too seriously, missing the point, and failing to understand that the movie was…here we go again…a black comedy designed as escapist entertainment.

Von Sepper gets it in die nüsse 

A great many cult films, especially those poking fun at taboo/serious topics like murder and death, can come off as offensive. Of course, if it's a film by John Waters, Paul Morrissey, or David Lynch, causing offense is likely the whole point. But sometimes a film can cross a line for a viewer, in which case I think—so long as that individual doesn't try to censor a film or stop others from enjoying it —differing opinions should be respected. Often it's a matter of taste, not a matter of who has or hasn't a well-developed sense of humor.
Researching Bluebeard online, I read several reviews by individuals citing many of the above reasons for why they didn't ultimately enjoy the film. Of course, this being the internet, those observations were met with caustic rejoinders citing said reviewer's inability to understand the film's satirical intentions, or claims that the disapproving soul simply took it all too seriously.

Anne attempts to distract Von Sepper with a delicious dessert

I have a tendency to roll my eyes—with a vengeance—any time I hear a filmmaker or movie fan launch into variations of the overworked stock defense, “It’s not Shakespeare for Crissake! It's pure escapism...you're not supposed to take it seriously."
Well, just because something isn't "serious" doesn't mean it can't be deeply offensive. Indeed, when it comes to depictions of violence toward women, cruelty to animals, and a certain casual attitude regarding our culture of oppression; the inability to take any of it seriously can be precisely what lies at the core of its distastefulness.

Many considered a violent scene depicting Burton's character spearheading a fascist pogrom against Austrian Jews to be out of place (or at least poor taste) in a film Dymytrk described as being "Made purely for entertainment"

As comedian Ricky Gervais said (Oh god, I'm quoting Ricky Gervais...and using the word god in the bargain): "Just because you're offended doesn't mean you're right." And on the topic of reacting to potentially incendiary films, maybe I should add to that: Just because you take no offense doesn't instantly imbue you with the benefit of having a more profound understanding of the content. No movie worth its salt doesn't divide audiences.

I think that Bluebeard is a great deal of gaudy, campy fun. A real "only in the '70s" oddity that is definitely worth a look, but for many, it's not even that. In spite of how entertaining I find it to be, I'm aware that it is very much a dated relic of a time when male-centric Hollywood sought to counter the cultural one-two punch of Women's Lib and the sexual revolution with movies that were troublingly anti-woman (Roger Vadim's repellent Pretty Maids All in a Row [1971] being the worst offender).

Richard Burton would go on to embarrass himself onscreen for years to come, his rare, first-rate performances in films like Equus (1977) and 1984 (1984) reminding us just how good he can be when he tries. Meanwhile, Joey Heatherton made a lot of camp film lovers' dreams come true when she appeared as Joe Dallesandro's wife in John Waters' Cry Baby (1990), her last film to date.

So, if you're inspired by this post to give Bluebeard a look, please proceed with caution. 

And be very, very afraid...

BONUS MATERIAL:
See Joey Do Her Thing!
A mouth-watering collection of fantabulous Joey Heatherton variety show clips from the '60s and '70s await you on YouTube.

Joey's Best Performance.
In 1986 Joey Heatherton was acquitted on charges of having assaulted a passport office official. Heatherton should consider the verdict her unofficial Oscar for the absolutely incredible impersonation she does of her accuser. Her entire film career might have taken a totally different turn had she infused her performances with this much character detail. Here.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2014

CALAMITY JANE 1953

A look at Doris Day’s filmography doesn't exactly yield (at least on the surface) a kaleidoscopic portrait of versatility when it comes to the kind of roles the extremely underrated actress has undertaken throughout her career. From her debut in 1948’s Romance on the High Seas, the studios made it their business to place Day in movies in which audiences were encouraged to partner the sunshiny implications of her alliterative stage name with the homespun effervescence suggested by her strapping good health; freckled, apple cheeks; and pleasantly toothsome smile. This, coupled with Day’s well-scrubbed sex-appeal and soothing, honey-coated voice—–which in spite of its clear-as-a-bell virtuosity, rarely strayed convincingly into the sultry or sensual—helped her to become one of the reigning boxoffice stars of the day (pun not only intended, but shoehorned). It also saddled her with an image of such strenuous and unrelenting wholesomeness, that for years term “Doris Day movie” was a pop-culture punchline signifying a certain brand of clean-cut cinema artificiality.

Famously, director Roman Polanski used the term “Like a Doris Day movie” to describe the disconcertingly sunny look he wanted for the early scenes of Rosemary’s Baby; and only recently I've come to learn of the existence of the slang phrase, “Doris Day parking,” which apparently is the name given to a miraculously open parking space found exactly in front of the point of one’s destination. (An allusion to a familiar movie trope, by no means restricted to Doris Day films, in which characters always seem to find available, convenient parking near, or right in front of, the place they need to be…even in crowded cities.)

The rather tragic particulars of Doris Day’s real life, pooled with her personal values and a loyalty to her sometimes rabidly image-sensitive fanbase, has led Day, throughout her career, to shun some of the darker, more against-type  material offered her (Mike Nichol’s The Graduate, for example) that might have better showcased her range. For example, her fans reacted strongly to Doris smoking and drinking in Love Me or Leave Me, and as late as 1968, when the actress was well into her 40s, some fans bristled when, in her last film, With Six You Get Eggroll, her character—a widow with three children, not the constant virgin she usually played—goes to bed with suitor Brian Keith before they marry.

But Doris Day never set out to be a character actress. She was a star. And if the limitations of her squeaky-clean image and light-as-a-feather roles conspired to create in the public’s mind the impression that she was more a personality than an actress (especially during the “kitchen sink realism” era of the late '50s when her style of films began to fall out of favor), it’s nice to know that the passing of time has ultimately brought about a much-deserved reevaluation of her body of work. A reevaluation which rightfully places Doris Day amongst the most talented of Hollywood’s Golden Age stars.

Doris Day as Calamity Jane (nee Martha Jane Canary)

Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickok (James Butler Hickok)

Allyn McLerie as Katie Brown

Philip Carey as Lt. Daniel Gilmartin

Calamity Jane, a tuneful, quadrilateral romance fashioned around the highly-fictionalized lives of real-life Old West figures Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok, fools no one in its actually being a blatant, rather bald-faced, carbon copy of  Irving Berlin’s Broadway hit Annie Get Your Gun; a show which Day's studio, Warner Bros., lost the screen rights to in a bidding war with MGM. The 1946 Ethel Merman musical was made into a film in 1950 starring Betty Hutton and Howard Keel, he playing essentially the same role he plays here in Calamity Jane, albeit under a different name.

Dick Wesson as Francis Fryer

Calamity Jane was released to great success in 1953, and were not for the merit it earns on the strength of its own unique gifts, I’m certain its “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” similarities to Annie Get Your Gun would have branded it an embarrassing copycat. I've never read anything about what the creators of Annie Get Your Gun thought of Calamity Jane, but I’m surprised that two such similar products didn't lead to some kind of courtroom shootout at one time or another. That being said, as much as I like Betty Hutton (an acquired taste, to be sure) and think she acquits herself very nicely in a role she had to step into when an ailing Judy Garland was sacked, I much prefer the more modestly-budgeted Calamity Jane to Annie get Your Gun.

Deja Vu All Over Again
Howard Keel's face-off with Doris Day in the number, "I Can Do Without You," is a dead-ringer for Annie get Your Gun's "Anything You Can Do"

A staple of Saturday afternoon TV programming when I was a kid, Calamity Jane is the very first Doris Day movie I ever saw. And, discounting Love Me or Leave Me (1955) which features Day giving a standalone, powerhouse dramatic performance, Calamity Jane is perhaps my favorite of all of her films. Absolutely nothing else I've ever seen her in has matched Calamity Jane for flat-out, lift my spirits, always-puts-a-smile-on-my-face, double-barreled (to use the vernacular of the trailer) enjoyment.

Made at a time when original movie musicals were fast being replaced by adaptations of Broadway shows, Calamity Jane is, at 101 minutes, a brisk and snappy far cry from the butt-busting  roadshow behemoths that musicals would become in later years, and is an example of the Hollywood musical at its entertaining and unpretentious, best. (Historical and artistic merit notwithstanding, I've never been too enthusiastic about the arty self-seriousness that overtook the movie musical in the post-Agnes de Mille/An American in Paris years).

Gale Robbins appears briefly as sagebrush songbird, Adelaid Adams

As befitting the time, the genre, and the film’s featherlight approach, Doris Day gives a performance that is oversized, but never overdone. Liberated from having to be all sweetness and light, Day is allowed to give full vent to the tomboyish, outdoorsy quality (read: butch) that has always lurked beneath even her most glamorous screen appearances. Calamity Jane gives us a Doris Day at her most rambunctiously appealing, and, in being given lively support by a score of catchy songs by the Oscar-winning team of Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster (Love is a Many Splendored Thing), Calamity Jane ranks among a short roster of films I think provide near-ideal showcases for a particular star’s talents and strengths. A list which includes: Meet Me in St Louis for Judy Garland, Singin’ in the Rain for Gene Kelly, Funny Girl for Barbra Streisand, The Unsinkable Molly Brown for Debbie Reynolds, Mary Poppins for Julie Andrews, and Cabaret for Liza Minnelli. 

Doris Day croons the Oscar-winning song, "Secret Love"
Thanks to its gleefully butch heroine and subversively playful preoccupation with gender-normative behavior, Calamity Jane has grown into something of a Queer Cinema cult-favorite over the years. All that repressed, '50s-era skirting the issues of sex and gender allows for the contemporary attribution of gay-coding subtext  to the mismatched romances at the center of the plot. For years, "Secret Love" has been regarded as something of a gay anthem, with pop singer k.d. lang recording a rendition to play over the closing credits of the 1995 documentary, The Celluloid Closet.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

I’m not sure when it happened, but of late it has become a subtly dismissive form of insult to label anything as fun or purely entertaining. Crowd-pleasing pop stars Madonna and Lady Gaga became crashing bores after they stopped making infectious dance music and took up the mantle of serious artiste; likewise, Jerry Lewis ceased being even remotely funny (and he wasn't all that funny to begin with) once he and the French came to a meeting of the minds regarding his genius status.
Pretentiousness and self-seriousness has killed a lot of what is lively about the lively arts, so when a film like Calamity Jane comes along, devoted as it is to providing its audience with a rollicking good time and plenty of toe-tapping music, it is by no means a minor statement to assert my fondness for this film chiefly because it succeeds in being such a cheerful and thoroughly captivating entertainment.

The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away)
You'll have to look hard to find a sprightlier opening sequence for a movie musical than this bouncy, marvelously economical little ditty that gets across a staggering amount of expositional information while showing off Doris Day as a consummate musical performer. Her energy and charm is totally winning. And just check out how effortlessly she glides through Jack Donahue's athletic choreography and manages the timing of all those props!

The list of what works in Calamity Jane extends to the music (joyous, not a clunker in the bunch), performances (sharp as a tack), and pacing (glides along at a clip). But Calamity Jane starts out way ahead of the game by merely avoiding a few Musical 101 pitfalls which trip up filmmakers to this day:
Hire actors who can sing and dance
Seems a no-brainer, but after the mid-'60s, Hollywood adhered to a perverse prerequisite of ONLY making musicals with individuals devoid of musical skill of any kind (see: Camelot, Man of LaMancha, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Paint Your Wagon, Lost Horizon).
Give songs a melody
I’m not calling for nursery rhymes or jungles, but hummable tunes of the sort that made the songs from The Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins ones children remembered and wanted to sing along with. Too many musicals today are hamstrung by atonal, over-sophisticated melodies songs designed to either earn the composer a spot on the Billboard charts ("Colors of the Wind" from Pocahontas), or land the composer an Oscar nomination. The latter often resulting in songs so lacking in distinction, they could be inserted into any number of films with no loss of relevance (pretty much everything written by Randy Newman).
Entertain
I don't mean keep it light or frothy; I simply mean keep in mind that things like pacing, good humor, and energy go a long way with audiences. When Vincente Minnelli excised each and every uptempo song from his film adaptation of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, one had to wonder, was it his express purpose for audiences not to have a good time?

Above: Character actor Dick Wesson's reluctant drag number, "Hive Full of Honey," is a comic highlight in Calamity Jane. Below: Wesson in drag again, fifteen years later in an episode of That Girl with Marlo Thomas.

PERFORMANCES

The price of being a Doris Day fan is having to resign oneself to the fact that only occasionally do her films measure up to her talent. Calamity Jane is such an occasion. Always a fine singer and actress, what’s impressive about Day in Calamity Jane is the sheer athleticism of her performance. Leaping about in form-fitting buckskin (which makes her resemble William Katt in Butch & Sundance: The Early Days) she displays a boisterous physicality that perfectly matches her full-throated brand of singing. A particular jaw-dropper is when she's singing while sitting crossing-legged on the bar, then raises herself to he feet by pushing off of her ankles. Amazing!

My partner and I take particular pleasure in poking fun at Calamity Jane's over-emphatic, inconsistent western dialect; which consists of terms like "cigar-reets" and "sarsparilly," yet accommodates words like "malign." And don't get me started on her adjective/verb/noun formula for insults: "You mangy pack of dirt-scratchin' beetles!"

Growing up, strikingly handsome Philip Carey was more familiar to me as Granny Goose—the cowboy spokesman in a series of popular TV commercials for the potato chip company in the '60s. But it was several years before I came to associate Calamity Jane's Katie Brown, engaging comedienne/singer/dancer Allyn McLerie, with Red Button's sardonic marathon dance partner in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, or as Tony Randall's comically stern secretary, Miss Ruebner, on his eponymous 1976 sitcom.

On the topic of the natural beauty of the Dakota Black Hills, Calamity Jane inadvertently proves that a lack of education  (ignorance) has always played a big part in Manifest Destiny and the legacy of entitlement. I saw Calamity Jane at a revival  theater once where I'm happy to say this exchange was met with a deafening chorus of "boos" from the audience

Howard Keel (who always seems to be on the losing end of a battle in trying to navigate his lips over his gorgeous but sizable teeth [caps?]) makes for a very appealing co-star. As was the case with Annie Get Your Gun, he has the curious ability of making chauvinism look charming.


THE STUFF OF DREAMS
It’s easy to see how Calamity Jane gained a reputation as a paean to gender independence and a coded, gay-identity musical viewed through the prism of '50s repression. The amount of time the film invests in comedy centered on identity, drag, and gender role reversal is certainly intentional, as are the gender-normative romantic complications that don’t quite gel: tomboyish Calamity is in love with hyper-masculine Lt. Gilmartin, who has eyes for ultra-femme Katie Brown. Calamity’s best buddy, Bill Hickok, relentlessly teases Calamity about her lack of womanly virtues, and he too is smitten with the girlish Katie. But the overall (unintentional) impression it leaves is that it is a film about the oppressiveness of traditional gender roles, and that the day-to-day "drag" of feminine clothes and masculine clothes doesn't define how much a woman is a woman and a man is a man.

Hickok has to appear in public in female Native-American costume as a form of shaming

Calamity Jane doesn’t know it, but it sets up a “Born This Way” dynamic with Calamity’s character. She is happiest and most at ease when she is just being herself (the only person she knows how to be) and the fact that her natural way of living is labeled “masculine” comes as news to her…she’s just being Calamity. In fact, it’s not until she visits “Chicagy” and gets a dose of the crossed messages her demeanor and mode of dress elicit (women flirt with her, men regard her as either an unsophisticated male or female curiosity), that it evens dawns on her that there is a different way for a woman to be.

Wannabe showgirl/full-time maid Katie Brown returns to Deadwood with Calamity, becoming her roommate once landing a job at the local saloon. And if the cohabitating pair are revealed to share a livelier and more palpable chemistry than what has thus far been exhibited by either of the women with their rather stolid male love interests; that fact has nothing to do with what the film is intentionally trying to convey, and everything to do with the natural, unforced butch/femme synergy Doris Day and Allyn McLerie.

Female duets are rare in musicals, and McLerie and Day shine in the marvelous, "A Woman's Touch"

Sure, Doris Day arguably looks “better” to our glamour-trained eyes after she gets her feminine makeover, but Calamity never again appears as carefree or seems to have as much fun as she did in the earlier part of the film. The otherwise playful film suddenly gets all misty-eyed and slow, as if both Calamity and the movie itself are reined in by her corset.

In the end, heterosexual love wins out and the gender roles realign, but I don’t think it takes a Queer Eye to see that the two lantern-jawed males make a more appropriate-looking pair, just as the duo of Katie and Calamity look made for each other.

Seriously, who wouldn't have wanted to see these two hook-up?

Calamity Jane predates Some Like it Hot by five years, but both films, in poking fun at sex, cross-dressing, and gender roles, manages to unintentionally—through the adherence to the standardized cultural norms of the day—make revealing (and subtly subversive) statements about the liberating aspects of not always having to conform to society's rules of accepted gender behavior.

Bonus Material
In 1963, Carol Burnett starred in a TV adaptation of Calamity Jane. See a clip HERE.

Philip Carey in a Granny Goose Potato Chips commercial  HERE 

In 1963 Doris Day teamed with Robert Goulet for a studio album of songs from Annie Get Your Gun. Listen to their duet "Anything You Can Do" HERE

Hear Gil Peterson sing an ersatz rock & roll rendition of "Secret Love" in The Cool Ones  HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson

MIDNIGHT COWBOY 1969

I’m sometimes asked if I only like movies about women, or if a film has to have a female protagonist in order for me to enjoy it. Granted, even a cursory look at the films I list amongst my favorites would lean toward the answer being, yes; but the truth is, I’m not drawn specifically to movies about women so much as I have a strong aversion to what passes for manhood in a great many motion pictures. Preoccupied as most films are with perpetuating a narrow, outmoded, and distinctly white, hetero-normative vision of manhood, often consisting of oversimplified macho/hero stereotypes and care-worn heroism tropes, I have merely grown weary of outsized masculine totems standing in for fleshed-out, human-scale men.

Never being one to find plot-driven action and adventure to be a preferable alternative to the intensity of simple emotional conflict, I gravitate instead to movies about flawed characters grappling with the human condition. That these have largely been movies about women says more about our culture’s rigidity in its onscreen depiction of masculinity than it does any gender preferences I may hold in the way of  narrative central characters. 

Joe Buck sees the cowboy as the epitome of hetero-masculinity

Hollywood has never lost a dime trafficking in gender stereotypes. In the standard Hollywood film, men “do” while women “feel”; men propel the action, women do all the emotional heavy-lifting. The prototypical American male movie hero is a stoic, unemotional, lantern-jawed man of action, rarely given to moments of self-doubt, diffidence, or introspection. He’s the strong, silent type, indigenous to westerns, war movies, crime dramas, espionage thrillers, sports films, sci-fi, or any testosterone-leaden genre requiring things being “blowed up real good,” or cars raced fast and furiously. Few things are more boring to me than films about men fearful of losing their "masculinity." I really have no idea what that means, and I suspect if I did, I'd have a hard time being convinced of it being anything of value to lose.

Happily, a great deal of this changed (albeit briefly) in the late-'60s with the emergence of the movie anti-hero. The New Hollywood, in its youthful repudiation of America's cinematic status-quo, challenged the old-fashioned concept of masculinity and reimagined the traditional Hollywood leading man as an individual of unprepossessing countenance (Elliott Gould, Richard Benjamin, Malcolm McDowell, et. al.) capable of uncertainty, and more apt to be at war with some inner aspect of his character than to be found pointing a .44 Magnum at some punk and asking, “Do you feel lucky?”

Urban Cowboy
Archaic notions of masculinity collide with the modern world 

A perfect example of the American male redefined can be found in one of the films I consider to be a true, genuine-article, movie classic: John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy. A buddy film for a new generation which in every way embodies the kind of perceptive, complex characterizations I love to see in movies. When a film is this textured in exploring emotional isolation, vulnerability, loneliness, and (a favored theme of mine) the human need to connect—from the relatively rare perspective of the male—it only emphasizes how much time has been wasted and how many rich stories we've missed out on due to Hollywood's persistence in depicting men in terms of masculine archetypes rather than authentic, recognizably flawed individuals.

Jon Voight as Joe Buck

Dustin Hoffman as Enrico Salvatore Rizzo

Sylvia Miles as Cass Trehune

Brenda Vaccaro as Shirley

Midnight Cowboy is the story of Joe Buck (Voight), a naïve Texas dishwasher with a sad, abandoned past who, possessed of little beyond an elemental self-awareness—“The one thing I ever been good for is lovin’”—seizes upon the tin-pot ambition of going to New York and making it big as a sought-after gigolo, servicing the sexual needs of neglected, Park Avenue socialites. Unfortunately, a string of bad breaks (not the least of them being Joe’s ignorance of the largely homosexual implications drawn from his beloved cowboy attire in a Metropolitan setting) results in a drastic reversal of fortunes for Joe, leading to his forging an unlikely friendship/bond with a tubercular, disabled grifter and pickpocket: one Enrico Salvatore Rizzo (Hoffman), or, as he's loath to be called, Ratso.

In detailing the tentative alliance between these two wounded misfits, director John Schlesinger (Darling, The Day of the Locust) and screenwriter Waldo Salt (from the James Leo Herlihy novel), have not only fashioned one of the screen’s great (platonic) love stories, but in the bargain create a terribly moving and heartrending essay on isolation and the need to be needed.

"Joe sees how profusely Ratso is sweating and untucks his shirt to pat down his friend's hair. Ratso, not used to such tenderness, holds onto him, his eyes closed in a stolen moment of bliss."

                        - Dustin Hoffman commenting on one of the film's most poignant scenes

The kind of mature-themed major motion picture unimaginable in today’s teen-driven multiplex marketplace, the then X-rated Midnight Cowboy fairly knocked me for a loop when I saw it in 1969 (I was fairly shaken by it, finding some parts absolutely harrowing, later feeling heartbroken and bawling my eyes out at the end...then staying to watch it all again). I was just 12-years-old at the time, and in my film fan fervor, Midnight Cowboy looked to me like the future of American movies. Strange to think of it now in the age of Iron Man and The Avengers, but try to imagine: I was only an adolescent movie enthusiast, but already I'd had the good fortune to have been exposed to the brilliance that was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Rosemary’s Baby, Secret Ceremony, and Bonnie and Clyde…and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? was just around the corner.

Like an unspoken promise, the quality of these movies led me to the optimistic (naïve?) belief that American films were headed in an entirely new direction. I thought that motion pictures, freed from the constraints of censorship by the dissolution of the Production Code and recently-relaxed definitions of obscenity, could at last take their place as the emergent pop-cultural art form of the 20th century. Alas, conservatism and consumerism ultimately won out, but for a brief time there, Hollywood was turning out the most AMAZINGLY offbeat and thought-provoking movies.  Small wonder that the '60s and '70s still linger in my memory as my absolute favorite era in American film. I see now that it's because we were both growing up at the same time.

X-Rated
Bernard Hughes appears as Townsend "Towny" P. Locke in one of Midnight Cowboy's most  controversial scenes

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Putting aside for a moment Waldo Salt’s absolutely incredible screenplay (and if you've read Herlihy's novel you know what a splendid adaptation it is), as far as I’m concerned, cinematographer Adam Holender (Puzzle of a Downfall Child) and composer John Barry (and all sundry music contributors) are as much the stars of Midnight Cowboy as Voight and Hoffman.
Displaying the kind of seamless collaboration which served to both feed and mislead auteur theorists critics back in the day,  Holender and Barry create a look and sound for Midnight Cowboy so cinematically well-suited to its themes of fractured dreams and abandoned hopes (the use of disorienting flashbacks and subjective audio were considered innovative for its time), that the mode of storytelling becomes as important as the story itself. And, of course, who can listen to Fred Neil's Everybody's Talkin' (sung by Harry Nilsson) without visualizing Joe Buck strutting like a peacock down the crowded Manhattan streets, the diminutive Ratso Rizzo at his side, struggling to keep up.

Repeat viewings reveal the incredible amount of backstory and character exposition that's relayed through the film's economic and artful use of flashbacks and dream sequences. Everything you need to know about Joe Buck's troubled past is revealed in jarring flashes, like memories he's trying to repress. But I find the true richness of this device in that it reveals so much without explaining anything. It's both refreshing and challenging when a film asks you do some of the work yourself.

Shown in flashback, Joe is sexually assaulted by town rowdies jealous of the attention paid to him by the town goodtime-girl, Anastasia Pratt, aka Crazy Annie (Jennifer Salt, daughter of screenwriter Waldo Salt). 

PERFORMANCES

Midnight Cowboy is so chock full of amazing performances that it becomes an exercise in futility to extol the virtues of any one particular actor. Still, each time I watch it, I find I'm left with lingering impressions of newly-discovered bits of brilliance in performances I thought I was long-familiar with.

Making his film debut, long-time favorite Bob Balaban is appealingly vulnerable as the young student who, even in his naif outing as a sexual outlaw, has it over Joe Buck in the street-smarts department

"I got a strange feelin' somebody's bein' hustled!" - Doris Day in Calamity Jane
Oscar-nominee Sylvia Miles makes more out of 6 minutes-worth of screen time than any actress I've ever seen. As the Park Avenue "socialite" with the braying voice and whiplash temper, Miles creates a vividly dimensional character out of little more than a sketch. I could go on about what I adore about her performance, but I couldn't put it any better (or more hilariously) than a fellow blogger does HERE

Sylvia Miles had the showier part, but I have a soft spot for Brenda Vaccaro and what she does with her thoroughly unique role as the emancipated woman who gets a kinky kick out of paying for sex with, as she puts it, a "cowboy-whore" she meets at a party. Like almost every supporting role in Midnight Cowboy, hers is a character one can easily imagine having a life beyond the frame of the screen (judging by her apartment, possibly a pretty fascinating one).   

Midnight Cowboy was my first exposure to both Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, both of whom give the kind of performances that make stars. Some of the actors considered for the role of Joe Buck include: James Caan, Don Stroud, Alan Alda (!), Michael Sarrazin, Lee Majors, Alex Cord, Gary Lockwood, Robert Forester, and Michael Parks.

Hoffman is, of course, a revelation, especially in light of the extreme departure Ratso Rizzo is from his work in The Graduate; but it's the sad-eyed Jon Voight who ratchets up the film's pathos by way of achieving, in his portrayal of the hapless hustler Joe Buck, what I've always admired in the work of Julie Christie: the ability to instill in shallow, not-very-bright characters, a considerable amount of inarticulate depth.

Haunted
If it's disappointment and sadness that leads Joe to willingly accept sexual objectification as a viable means of existence, then Midnight Cowboy qualifies as the male perspective of a tragic real-life circumstance we tend to see played out in public most often by women. Consider the doomed fates of sexualized small-town girls, Dorothy Stratten and Anna Nicole Smith.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Fantasy isn't perhaps the best word to describe what I mean, but I adore the seedy, grimy look of late '60s New York captured in Midnight Cowboy. It's an Alice Through the Looking Glass view of Manhattan inspired, one can't help but assume, by Brit director John Schlesinger's unfamiliarity with the city, and his fascination with its sordid contrast to the cheery image of America presented in advertising and TV commercials. As would be the case in later years in films like Klute (1971) and Taxi Driver (1976), Midnight Cowboy uses New York as though it were another character in the story.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
As it is rare for a director to even turn out ONE classic film in the entirety of their careers, I find it sometimes a little baffling how easily John Schlesinger's name—the man who gave us Midnight Cowboy, Darling, and The Day of The Locust...three genuine classics, in my book—is so often bypassed in discussions of great directors. Even the gay community rarely gives it up for this director (to my knowledge, the only "out" director working in mainstream film at the time) whose body of work is decidedly uneven, but nonetheless yields several impressive efforts. Happily, Schlesinger won the best directing Oscar for Midnight Cowboy, and the film won Best Picture that year (Salt also won for his screenplay).

There’s no telling what, if any, impact Schlesinger’s sexuality had on the way Midnight Cowboy turned out (after all, the original novel was written by a gay man, but adapted by a straight). But even by today’s standards, what still impresses me about Midnight Cowboy is how strongly it stands as one of mainstream cinema’s most persuasive examples of the purposeful deconstruction of the masculine myth.

Joe Buck embraces a traditional concept of masculinity no longer considered relevant or even valid in an urban (modern) environment. In fact, Joe is rather stunned to learn that everything he once thought represented masculinity and manhood (macho posturing, sexual pursuit, and dressing like a cowboy) has, somehow, become perversely feminized ("You're gonna tell me John Wayne's a fag?!"). Manliness of the sort he admired as a boy in the movies, or copied from the rodeo cowboys that populated his grandmother’s bed, had transmogrified into the macho “drag” adopted by homosexual prostitutes plying their trade on New York's Forty-Second Street.

Joe discovers he's but one of many Midnight Urban Cowboys

Like a great many men who haven't a clue as to how to view themselves without clinging to an antiquated hunter-gatherer/alpha-male paradigm; Joe, without a defined code of “masculinity” to follow, is at a loss. Ironic, because, as revealed in the novel and an early draft of the screenplay, what inspires Joe to come to New York in the first place is his learning that the urban phenomenon of the overworked businessman has resulted in a surplus of sexually frustrated city women. In short, Joe believes there is a shortage of "real men" in New York, and his goal is to step in and fill the void, so to speak.

Even within the sex trade where he hoped to make his fortune, Joe finds himself unwittingly cast in the feminine role of being the one pursued by males rather than in the (equally passive) part of easygoing stud sought after by women. Yet, in his inarticulated longing to love and be loved (his only familiarity with it is as a purely physical act) Joe finds the closest thing he has ever known of it in the deep friendship he develops with another male. One every bit the misfit he is. 

Scenes of Domesticity

Over the course of the film, as Joe and Ratso come to need and depend on one another, Joe’s deep-rooted masculinity anxiety shows signs of being replaced by both a fragile sense of self-worth, and a broader concept of what it means for him to be a man. Joe even tables his dreams and awakens to the reality that he's not cut out for hustling. He places the needs of someone else before his own, and though he commits a violent act out of desperation, it's one born of a genuine concern for the only person that has come to mean anything to him (the only person he has, in fact). Rico drops his tough-guy front and reveals his vulnerability (who could call a man in a Hawaiian shirt Ratso?) forcing Joe to abandon his own false macho attitudinizing, resulting in two individuals at last becoming defined (in our eyes and their own) by their humanity; not the empty labels of masculinity.

And for a rather bleak and somber film, I think that's a really lovely, bittersweet  message to end with.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

Bernard Hughes - 1980

Copyright © Ken Anderson