THE FAN 1981

At a time when most of her industry peers were retired, forgotten, or guesting on episodes of Fantasy Island and The Love Boat, 56-year-old Lauren Bacall was enjoying a career resurgence and public visibility rivaling that of her 1940s heyday when she was known as “The Look.”  The year 1981 saw Bacall headlining in the Broadway musical Woman of the Year; topping the bestseller charts with the paperback release of her 1978 memoir By Myself; shilling everything from jewelry to cat food in TV and print ads; and, most remarkably in those pre-Meryl Streep/Helen Mirren years of elder-actress marketability, starring in a nine-million-dollar major motion picture release.

The Fame Game

The Fan, a suspense thriller based on Bob Randall’s 1977 epistolary novel about an aging Broadway star stalked by an obsessive fan, gave Bacall arguably the biggest role of her career. Certainly, the first to require her to carry an entire film on her own.

Filmed on location in New York from March to July of 1980, The Fan was poised for release at the most opportune time to take marketing advantage of Bacall’s already-in-motion Broadway and bookshelf publicity. Unfortunately, as The Fan’s PR-friendly release date of March 15, 1981 neared, several real-life, obsessive fan-based tragedies occurred (targeting John Lennon and then-President Ronald Reagan), conspiring to make this fame-culture melodrama seem more an exercise in bad taste than a film of ripped-from-today's-headlines relevance.

Lauren Bacall as Sally Ross

Michael Biehn as Douglas Breen

Maureen Stapleton as Belle Goldman

James Garner as Jake Berman

Hector Elizondo as Inspector Raphael Andrews 

Kurt Johnson as David Barnum

If musical theater geeks, Glee habitués, and folks capable of making it through an entire Tony Awards broadcast ever longed for an '80s slasher film to call their own, then The Fan more than fills the Playbill. This unappetizingly bloody, yet oh-so delectable/derisible blend of backstage musical, 1940s career-woman soap opera, slasher-flick, and woman-in-peril melodrama, is high-camp movie nirvana. An upscale cousin of the hagsploitation genre of the '60s, The Fan might have substituted seasoned glamour for the usual grotesquery, but in keeping with the requirements of the sub-genre, The Fan's raison d'être remained the prolonged persecution and victimization of a mature star from Hollywood's Golden Era. 

When The Fan opened in theaters in the spring of 1981, the film...to borrow a line from one of the hooty Louis St. Louis (Grease 2) show tunes sung in the film..."Got no love” from either audiences or critics. Patrons old enough to be enticed by the film's elder cast risked having their blue rinses turn stark white at the sight of the movie's copious bloodshed and some of the blunt, Bogie-wouldn't-stand-for-this dialog: “Dearest bitch, see how accessible you are? How would you like to be fucked by a meat cleaver?” Similarly, the teen demographic ordinarily drawn to slasher films weren't quite sure of what to make of a movie set in the middle-aged, Sardi's and cigarettes world of New York legitimate theater.  A wholly uninspired publicity campaign only added to the film’s troubles.

Had The Fan been a play, it would have closed in Boston. Whisked off screens within weeks of its release, The Fan resurfaced with some regularity on cable TV venues like HBO and Showtime throughout the '80s before ultimately disappearing into relative obscurity. Obscurity so complete that Robert De Niro's unrelated but same-titled 1996 sports-themed film has totally eclipsed Bacall's The Fan in the public's memory.
Happily, The Fan's recent release on DVD has rekindled awareness of this very '80s curio. A glimpse back at a New York still atmospherically seedy. A vision of a world populated with record stores, typewriters, payphones, legwarmers, and heavy smokers. All with nary a Starbucks in sight. And while it's no undiscovered classic, The Fan does have its merits (most of them camp-related, I'm afraid) that make it a movie worthy of rediscovery. Not the least of them being Lauren Bacall, a smoking, drinking, tough-as-nails star of Broadway and the silver screen, playing a smoking, drinking, tough-as-nails star of Broadway and the silver screen. And convincingly, too!

The psychological subtheme of The Fan

And the audience LOVES me! And I love them! And they love me for lovin' them and I love them for lovin' me. And we love each other. And that's 'cause none of us got enough love in our childhoods. 

And that's show biz, kid!  - Fred Ebb

No low-budget, body-count slasher flick featuring nondescript teens stalked by a masked phantom, The Fan was conceived as a stylish, A-List, Hitchcockian thriller along the lines of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980). The latter a sleeper hit that garnered '50s sexpot, Angie Dickinson, some of the best notices of her career. 
At least that's how things started.

Produced by movie/music mogul Robert Stigwood on the downturn side of a '70s winning streak that included youth-centric films like Jesus Christ Superstar, Saturday Night Fever, and Tommy; The Fan was Stigwood’s most expensive film to date and first stab at cracking the grown-up ticket-buying market. To this end, he amassed a distinguished cast of New York actors and pedigreed Broadway composers (Marvin Hamlisch and Tim Rice collaborated on two–fairly terrible but nonetheless irresistible–original songs). On the production end, he secured the talents of up-and-coming first-time director Edward Bianchi (from TV commercials and music videos) and choreographer Arlene Philips (Can’t Stop The Music, Annie).

If you've ever seen a Lauren Bacall musical, you know that her being lifted and carried about is a choreography requisite. I was surprised at the number of online reviews that questioned Bacall's "believability" portraying a Broadway musical star in The Fan. Reviews that later expressed surprise upon learning that she was indeed a musical theater star in real life. Bacall was the Best Actress Tony Award winner for both Applause - 1970 and Woman of the Year - 1981.

But as the saying goes, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and somewhere between screenplay to movie-house, The Fan transmogrified into a film beset by:
1) Bad decisions -  Friday the 13 became a hit during The Fan's post-production, prompting Paramount to order reshoots to ratchet up the violence. 
2) Bad timing and bad decisions - Three months before The Fan's release, John Lennon was killed by an obsessive fan outside NY’s Dakota apartments (as it happens, also the home of Lauren Bacall), after which it is said the film's original downbeat ending (if true to the novel) underwent some 11^th-hour tinkering and reshoots.
3) Bad luck -  Bacall's idea of promoting The Fan was to express to the press her disappointment in the finished product. Making matters worse, three weeks into The Fan's less-than-illustrious release, an attempt was made on President Reagan's life by a Jodie Foster-obsessed fan. Suddenly, a film very few people were interested in in the first place began to look to everyone like an exercise in exploitation and bad taste.

Bacall the Buzzkill
Bacall: "The Fan is much more graphic and violent than when I read the script."
Anna Maria Horsford (who appeared in Stigwood's Times Square in 1980) as detective Emily Stolz

Stigwood severely scaled back his usual bombastic pre-release publicity for The Fan (STD results have been released with more fanfare), while Paramount added a disclaimer to its theatrical trailers claiming The Fan was in no way inspired by the tragic death of John Lennon. The latter decision prompting the outspoken Bacall to declare to People magazine: “I think it’s disgusting, revolting, and exploitive!”

In the end, it didn't really matter, for The Fan wound up being one of those rare films capable of offering audiences simultaneously contradictory experiences–none of them satisfactory. Stylishly shot, overflowing in chichi urban gloss, and embellished with a chilling Pino Donaggio score (Carrie, Don’t Look Now) The Fan ultimately failed to find an audience because it clearly didn't know who the hell that was. Classic movie fans familiar with Lauren Bacall thought the film was too classy to be so trashy; slasher fans thought the film wasn't trashy enough. Gays had their own problems with the film.

Strangers in the Night

The Fan did itself no favors by alienating the very audience most receptive to a film offering up ample doses of musical theater, backstage drama, show tunes, tight male bodies in various states of undress, and Lauren Bacall in full Margo Channing mode. On the heels of Windows (1980), a stalker thriller about a lesbian psychopath, and Cruising (1980) a crime thriller about a gay psychopath; many members of the gay community felt The Fan's closeted theater-queen stalker was one gay psycho too many.

None of that applied to me, however. I was a presold audience in and of myself. I’d read The Fan back in 1978, intrigued by the way the book used the thriller genre to comment on the odd love/hate relationship between stars and their adoring public. I was also a longstanding fan of Lauren Bacall from her old movies with Bogart on The Late Show, Applause (the 1973 TV broadcast, anyway), and Murder on the Orient Express; so I was thrilled when I heard she'd been cast.  

Actress Dana Delany making her film debut in The Fan

Adding to my anticipation was the fact that Edward Bianchi was hired to direct and Arlene Phillips was to do the choreography. Bianchi & Phillips had collaborated on a series of eye-popping Dr. Pepper commercials in the late '70s for the advertising agency Young & Rubicam. Commercials I had been inspired by and borrowed from for a couple of my film school projects. When I also learned that Broadway great Maureen Stapleton had joined the cast and that Bacall’s rumored real-life paramour, James Garner, was also on board, The Fan swiftly became one of the most eagerly-awaited films of the year...for me, anyway.

I saw The Fan on opening day at Grauman’s Chinese Theater where the smallish audience of young people in attendance (clearly in search of a good scare) was underwhelmed. I, on the other hand, felt as though I’d died and gone to camp film heaven. Not since Eyes of Laura Mars had I seen such a slick-looking thriller. On capable of being enjoyed on so many levels at once. I wound up seeing it a total of three times before it disappeared from theaters.

Shot on location, The Fan provides many great glimpses of 80s-era New York.
Here the famed Shubert Theater is the site for Sally Ross' opening night in Never Say Never; the fictional musical providing The Fan with so much of its camp appeal

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

What brings me back to The Fan time and time again are its many sequences depicting the behind-the-scenes creation of the fictional Broadway musical, Never Say Never. Much is made of it being Sally Ross’ singing and dancing debut, a point we in the audience don't doubt for a minute. Bacall's foghorn baritone and reliance on chorus boys to lug and lift her about give the scenes a comic authenticity. 

Populated with recognized Broadway dancers, shot in actual NY rehearsal studios with a knowing attention to procedural detail; the show in question may look terrible, but these sequences are really rather marvelous. The '80s vibe is irresistible (all those short-shorts, spandex, legwarmers, and Arlene Philips' trademark Hot Gossip choreography), and the risible music ("No energy crisis, my professional advice is...") gets caught in your head like an earwig. Of course, it certainly doesn't hurt that I saw this film during my early days as a dancer and that in 1983, when I took my first trip to New York, I took classes at Jo Jo's Dance Factory, the studio used in the film.

All the Boys Love Sally

UK Choreographer Arlene Phillips wouldn't actually choreograph for
Broadway until 1987's Starlight Express

Call Her Miss Ross
Broadway dancer Justin Ross (l.) appeared in the film version of A Chorus Line,
and dancer Reed Jones (r.) originated the role of Skimbleshanks in Cats 

 PERFORMANCES

If you’re going to make a film about the kind of old-school, glamorous, show-biz diva capable of inciting the flames of obsessive fandom, you couldn’t do much better than landing all-around class-act, Lauren Bacall. Her gravitas as a full-fledged movie star from the golden era gives The Fan a shot of instant legitimacy every time she appears. In one of the largest roles of her career, Bacall is not always filmed as flatteringly as you'd expect, but the effect is rather refreshing. Her face looks terrifically lived-in, and her still-striking looks serve as a welcome change from the botoxed mannequins we've grown used to. Playing a role that isn't perhaps much of a stretch, awfully good. So good in fact, that I kept wishing the film would just allow the story's natural character conflicts (an aging star grappling confronting loneliness, self-doubt, and vulnerability) play themselves out minus all the genre machinations.

Bacall's appearance on Garner's TV show The Rockford Files in 1979, followed by their re-appearance in Robert Altman's HealtH (1980) and yet again here in The Fan, really had gossip-columnist tongues wagging about a romance between the two

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The '80s come vividly alive in the film's Broadway musical sequences, which are sort of Solid Gold meets Can't Stop The Music. As would be the case with the Broadway musical numbers in 1983s Staying Alive, it's near-impossible to imagine just what kind of Broadway this could be, as the numbers look more appropriate to a Las Vegas revue. But they left me wanting more. not less. (I feel safe in saying I'm likely the only person who felt that way.)

A Remarkable Woman

Hearts, Not Diamonds

Disco Bacall - Has to be seen (and heard) to be believed

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I've never considered The Fan to be as bad a film as its reputation has led people to believe. Its screenplay is clichéd to be sure (the stage doorman is actually named “Pop”) and the violence needlessly gruesome for such a visually distinguished and stylish film (Bianchi’s music video background is in full evidence), but with a provocative theme and talented cast, The Fan has quite a bit going for it even with its flaws. 

One might have wished for a little more finesse in the areas of motivation and character, but I seriously have a soft spot in my heart for this movie...mostly centered around the Broadway setting, the images of a still gritty and grimy New York, and reminders of my early years in dance. And, of course, it really is great to see late-career Bacall–with that amazing Gena Rowlands-like mane of hair–command the screen once more. Who was it that said, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be"?

BONUS MATERIAL

THE QUEEN OF BROADWAY
The Fan opened in theaters in May of 1981, Bacall's Broadway musical return in Woman of the Year (granting her a second Tony Award win following her Tony Award-winning turn in Applause in 1970) was in March. For a brief time, Bacall enjoyed the rare distinction of having her name appear on side-by-side marquees. (photo: Walter McBride)

"Deep Brewed Flavah!"

During the '80s Lauren Bacall's commercials for High Point instant coffee were the stuff of lampoon legend. In honor of The Fan, here's one of her most Sally Ross "theatah"- themed ones. HERE 

Before "Be a Pepper!" became the company's slogan, Dr. Pepper was sold as "The Most Original Soft Drink Ever." Edward Bianchi directed this stylish and award-winning commercial from 1975. HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2015

FOR LOVE OF IVY 1968

After more than a decade of shouldering, with both dignity and grace, the damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t burden of being Hollywood's first African-American superstar; being the representative movie face of the entirety of Black America, while at the same time liberal Hollywood’s unofficial Civil Rights symbol-- Sidney Poitier’s appearance in the well-intentioned, but nonetheless cringe-worthy 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? successfully brought his trademark Noble Negro character to its logical conclusion. I number myself among those who felt that by 1967, if Poitier's godlike paragon of Afro-American perfection was the kind of sugar necessary to make the medicine of racial equality go down, then the time had indeed come for a complete overhaul of the cinema image of the American Black male.

Sidney Poitier as Jack Parks

Abbey Lincoln as Ivy Moore

Beau Bridges as Tim Austin

Lauri Peters as Gena Austin

Leon Bibb as Billy Talbot

Carroll O'Connor as Frank Austin

Nan Martin as Doris Austin

I was just ten years old at the time, but I recall Sidney Poitier being all over the place in 1967. First, there was To Sir With Love, which I went to see more times than I can count; In The Heat of the Night, which was powerful (that slap!), but I can’t say I enjoyed it much; and the release of the much-ballyhooed and then-controversial Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? was such a major event in our household (my mom both adored Poitier and was a Katherine Hepburn fan), it occasioned the rare movie outing for the entire family. (As much as I can't really abide the movie now, you have no idea what a groundswell of controversy it sparked when it came out. I also remember how weird and eye-opening it was that no matter how divided opinions were about the film's themes, Blacks did not wage any public protests against the film. All levels of picketing, angry protests, violent threats, and acts of hostility leveled at theaters showing this almost comically circumspect movie were the usual domestic terrorists: white racists and extremists.

With Poitier starring in three such profitable and high-profile films in the same year, signs would seem to indicate the Academy Award-winning actor’s already illustrious career (1964 Best Actor -Lilies of the Field) was on the ascendance. But, irony of ironies, after being virtually the sole lead Black actor working consistently in films for many years, Poitier's popularity started to decline in direct proportion to the emergence of the youth-market-fueled, Black film explosion of the 1970s. With a new decade dawning, and with it an exciting array of new Black talent and afro-centric narratives filling movie screens, Poitier must have found it dismaying to have the very doors he had been so instrumental in opening for actors of color, feel as though they were beginning to be closed to him.

40-year-old Sidney Poitier grooves at a '60s Happening
Poitier's comforting, buttoned-down image began to look dated as the more militant '70s approached 

Sidney Poitier’s screen persona—that of the non-threatening, nobly acquiescing, almost saintly Black male—embodied the assimilationist ideals of the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. But it wasn’t long before factions of the Black community began to find the sexless, selfless characters Poitier played in films like A Patch of Blue (1965) and Lilies of the Field more representative of white fantasy than Black reality. In the tumultuous social climate of the late '60s, as Civil Rights assimilation gave way to the more self-identifying thrust of the Black Power Movement, and galvanizing events like the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (four months after the release of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?) signaled a new self-determination and militancy; Poitier's image (inseparable from Poitier the actor) had become an anachronism.

Thus it was perhaps with no small sense of relief on his part when Poitier at last discarded his socially-appointed halo and embarked upon a series of human-scale roles designed to update and reconstruct his image. That he essentially had to write, produce, and eventually direct most of these roles in order to achieve this points to the level of reluctance he faced within the industry when called upon to relate to him as anything other than a symbol of tolerance. In 1969s The Lost Man Poitier played a militant revolutionary (!), a single father in A Warm December (1973), and a thief in A Piece of the Action (1977). But his very first attempt at downsizing the saintly Poitier mystique was in the charming romantic comedy, For Love of Ivy.

Debunking the myth of the contented domestic
who's happy to be treated "Like one of the family." 

Jack - "Looks like you've got a pretty good setup here."
Ivy - "Too good!. I don't want to die here."
Jack - "You've got to die somewhere."
Ivy - "Well, isn't it better not to go ignorant and alone?"

The upscale suburban household of the Austin family is thrown into a tailspin when Ivy (Lincoln), the family maid of nine years, decides to quit, move to New York and attend secretarial school. In other words, make a life for herself. Certain she’s simply suffering from loneliness, the younger members of the family, Tim & Gena (Bridges/Peters), elect to find her a boyfriend. Not just any suitor, since they certainly don’t want her falling in love and leaving to get married or anything, but someone who’s altar-shy and willing to wine and dine Ivy with no strings attached. Their best candidate for the job is Jack Parks (Poitier), the wealthy owner of a trucking company whose reputation as a swinger assures Ivy won’t be whisked away, and whose illegal mobile gambling operation makes him a shoo-in for a little maid-courtship extortion.

With Ivy thinking she's dating Jack just to help the family business (the Austins own a department store and contracts with Jack's trucking company), and Jack taking Ivy our to avoid exposure of his illegal nighttime activities, each assumes they know what they're getting into as they embark on their arranged rendezvous. And if you’ve ever seen a rom-com before, there’s likely to be no mystery as to how things between Ivy and Jack will play out.

The Set-Up

The farcical plot is negligible, but the context is what fascinates. The well-intentioned Austins mistake their need for Ivy with actual concern for her welfare. She's a buffer between the acrimonious father and son, a sister of sorts to the daughter, and she completely runs the household. White liberalism is lampooned, Black self-reliance is championed, and among a cast of characters at loggerheads over how to best live their lives, Ivy emerges as the one clear-headed individual who never strays from her desire to strike out on her own and make a life for herself.

Genre-wise, it's all very familiar territory that feels delightfully fresh due to how much fun it is to see (at long last) these well-worn Doris Day/Rock Hudson rom-com cliches employed in the service of a Black couple. Black characters at the center of a romantic narrative in which they are allowed to be relaxed, funny, determined, amorous, conflicted, self-assured, independent, and imperfect were a rarity in 1968. And it's not exactly a commonplace occurrence now.

For Love of Ivy was taken to task for being corny in the Swinging '60s. In today's atmosphere of misogynist, mean-spirited rom-coms, the respectful, genuinely sweet romance at the center of the film looks positively cutting-edge. 

With a screenplay adapted by Robert Alan Aurthur (All that Jazz) from a 19-page story treatment written by Poitier himself (that was turned down by three studios), For Love of Ivy is one of those familiar, old-fashioned romantic comedies built around a grand deception. A lie first contrived to bring the lovers together, followed by a misunderstanding, ending with a romantic reconciliation. It’s exactly the kind of movie Hollywood has churned out for years. And therein lies the twist. 

For the longest time, Hollywood’s depiction of African-Americans in movies has been defined by the narrow parameters of symbols, stereotypes, sidekicks, or vessels of suffering in need of white rescue. Black characters just being human in a motion picture is still such an original concept, you could probably use plots from silent movies and the film would come out looking like an innovative act of cultural insurgency by the mere casting of Black actors in the lead roles.

Paraphrasing the sentiments of a movie critic from the time—after having played so many solemn, “uplift the race” roles, Poitier, as a Black movie star, was more than entitled to exercise his right to appear in the same mindless, escapist movie fare white stars like Frank Sinatra and Tony Curtis had been making for years. Sidney Poitier had earned the right to be in an amusing, escapist diversion.

After nearly 20 years in the business, leading man Sidney Poitier finally gets a love scene

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

When a film dismissed at the time of its release for being too light and conventional provides: 1) One of the screen’s most independent, dimensional Black female characters, 2) The still-rare occurrence of a Black romance at the center of a mainstream, non-niche motion picture, 3) An Afro-centric narrative in which the goals and objectives of the Black characters are in no way invested in, nor dependent upon, the happiness of white characters—perhaps there’s a bigger statement to be made about why it is today, during the Administration of our first Black President, Hollywood still seems unable to move beyond butlers (The Butler- 2013), maids (The Help- 2011), and slaves (not enough space to list them all).

Though she's always being told she's like one of the family, Ivy is the only Austin "family" member required to use the service entrance. This silent, throwaway shot of Ivy returning home from a date contains the crux of the reason she wants to leave. A reason right under the noses of the people who profess love for her, yet are unable to understand why she needs to quit.  

I have a real soft spot in my heart for For Love of Ivy...and not just because I find Poitier and Lincoln to be such an engaging couple. The broadly farcical aspects of its plot notwithstanding, I respond sentimentally to For Love of Ivy because the character of Ivy Moore is one of the most satisfyingly believable Black female characters I've ever seen in a film.

Surprisingly, this feather-light comedy was directed by Daniel Mann, the director behind the film adaptations of the dramas Come Back Little Sheba, The Rose Tattoo, and I'll Cry Tomorrow. Sidney Poitier was inspired to write For Love of Ivy to provide his four daughters with an alternative to the usual glamorized (fetishized?) images of Black women onscreen. Stars like Lena Horne, Dorothy Dandridge, and Diahann Carroll (with whom Poitier once had an affair) were favored for their Eurocentric features and exotic sexuality. Poitier wished to present his daughters with a more authentic representation of Black womanhood.
And authenticity is exactly what I find in the character of Ivy, as embodied by the late Abbey Lincoln. Ivy is a dignified, independent woman who wants love and a better life, and best of all, isn’t looking to be rescued or saved by anyone but herself. She's a woman who only works as a maid...it's only what she does, not who she is.

"What do you want?"
"I'm not sure. I just know I haven't got it now."

When I watch For Love of Ivy, I see my four sisters, my mom, and every Black woman who has ever had to define herself, for herself, because society, by and large, can't be bothered. I've no doubt that the main reason the character of Ivy resonates with me is that, when I was small, my mother worked for a time as a maid. Later, when I was a pre-teen, my parents divorced. I remember my mom going to night school and getting her driver's license, eventually working her way to a managerial position in government at San Francisco’s Federal Building. All the while sending all of us kids to private Catholic school.
That she eventually came to meet and marry a terrific, well-to-do gentleman who was her own Sidney Poitier figure (and a dynamite father figure for me), making it possible for her to quit her job and live out her days in comfort, is the kind of real-life "Hollywood" ending for a deserving woman that makes the fairy tale romanticism of For Love of Ivy feel a good deal less sappy for me than perhaps it does to others.

Self-reliant and proud, my mother, as remarkable as she sounds, isn’t really unique among Black women. There are lots like her around. But I never saw any Black women like my mother represented in the movies (glamorized and glorified, to boot!) until I saw For Love of Ivy.

Principally a jazz singer and songwriter, here is 25-year-old Abbey Lincoln as she
appeared in the 1956 film, The Girl Can't Help It

PERFORMANCES

For all its abundant charm, For Love of Ivy is a bit of a puzzler when it comes to comedic tone. It’s like when I was a kid and easy-laugh sitcoms like Gilligan’s Island aired before laugh-free “heartwarming” humor shows like The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. In trying to adjust to this shift in tone, I always felt as though my funny bone had a short in it or something.

Watching For Love of Ivy, comedically speaking, I get a sense of where it’s coming from. It’s part one of those fraught-with-complications Cary Grant romantic comedies like That Touch of Mink; part class satire along the lines of Goodbye Columbus; and part bourgeois romantic comedy, like Cactus Flower. Unfortunately (and in many ways puzzlingly) the bubble-light comedy of For Love of Ivy has trouble staying aloft.

Making her film debut (far right): Jennifer O'Neill of The Summer of '42 (1971)

Making her film debut (far right): Gloria Hendry, the first Black Bond Girl in Live & Let Die (1973)

I get a sense of where the comedy in the film is coming from, but too often it never really arrives. Which may be a matter of direction more than writing. Farces like this thrive on pacing, wit, and a kind of effortless effervescence, but the comedy rhythms in For Love of Ivy always feel a little off. Beau Bridges, as one of those super clean-cut hippies that only exist in the movies, has great comic energy. He’s a terrific actor capable of conveying sincerity while inhabiting the genre-mandated hyperactivity of expression, inflection, and body language. But too often it feels as if he’s working a particularly tough room.

Tim Harbors A Not-Too-Secret Crush On Ivy
No stranger to onscreen interracial relationships, Bridges fell in love with Diana Sands in 1970s The Landlord, and most recently, portrayed Tracee Ellis Ross' father on the TV show, Black-ish

Sidney Poitier, playing a morally dubious character for the first time since Blackboard Jungle (1955), looks to be enjoying himself and is more relaxed than he’s been in years. Cutting a dashing figure in his tux, and fairly oozing sex appeal and star quality, Poitier finally gets the chance to look the part of the matinee idol he’s always been. Poitier has a splendid chemistry and rapport with co-star Lincoln, but when it comes to the comedy; the palpable intelligence behind his piercing eyes has a way of grounding even the most convoluted of plot contrivances in an emotional reality antithetical to the breeziness of tone required of material like this. (It would be six years before Poitier loosened up enough to give his disarmingly funny performance in Uptown Saturday Night -1974.)

Not really given much to do in this film, Nan Martin would go on to play a tougher version of the same role the following year in Goodbye Columbus. Carroll O'Connor, along with his fame from All in the Family, would play the Rod Steiger role in the  long-running TV series based on Poitier's film In The Heat of the Night 

But while the broader comedy doesn't always catch fire in For Love of Ivy, the very gentle, very affecting character humor and touching relationships are handled rather extraordinarily. Beau Bridges' character may be a misguided liberal, but his very real affection for Ivy is rather endearingly portrayed.


THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Displaying that rare brand of professional generosity I tend to associate with Clint Eastwood (he being one of the few leading men willing to hand over a film to a female co-star) Sidney Poitier allows For Love of Ivy to be Abbey Lincoln's show completely. And the picture is all the better for it.

For Love of Ivy should have made the beautiful and gifted Abbey Lincoln a movie star.
Nominated for a Golden Globe, she wisely (in terms of holding onto her sanity and dignity) stuck to her music career. Lincoln didn't make another film until 1990 - Spike Lee's Mo' Betta Blues.

Abbey Lincoln is a natural at capturing the essence of a uniquely contemporary type of female character: an intelligent, self-possessed individual who nevertheless projects a kind of old-fashioned dignity. Word has it that Lincoln, a singer and Civil Rights activist for whom Ivy represents just her second film role (following the must-see 1964 drama Nothing But a Man), beat out 300 actresses for the role. I can easily see why. She's one of a kind.

From beginning to end, Lincoln commands the screen in a way born not so much of technical skill, but rather, an ability to appear 100% genuine every minute. In the film's brightly-lit, Love American Style  TV sitcom gloss, Lincoln stands out as the real thing.
Not a single one of her scenes is ever less than compelling because she comes across as incapable of being false. Her performance so fills my heart up, I confess that in the many times I've seen the film, I have yet to make it through dry-eyed. Her character is so endearing, and Lincoln's performance at times so emotionally raw, I've pretty much got the waterworks going full-throttle by the film's conclusion.

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs 
I have many favorite scenes, but this one slays me. Poitier has never been more charming,
and Lincoln is a heartbreaker 

Along with Two for the Road and A New Leaf, For Love of Ivy is one of my top favorite romantic comedies. Nostalgia plays a role (after all, it was released the same year as so many of my most beloved films: Rosemary's Baby, Barbarella, Secret Ceremony, etc.), as does sentiment (Poitier & Lincoln have chemistry to spare). But there's also a bittersweet element. I think of Sidney Poitier's heroic career and all he sacrificed in the way of personal choice, taking on roles because of his deeply felt sense of social responsibility. I think of Abbey Lincoln and all the other Black actresses whose gifts we've all been deprived of because nobody was writing roles like this for Black women.

And then I think of how things are today, and how it is clear that more progress needs to be made. For all the outcry for women to play a larger role both in front of and behind the camera in films, the call seems to come mostly from a white feminist faction that doesn't always recognize the contributions of women of color. And when it comes to Black filmmakers creating roles for women, I have to make sure my mind doesn't entertain thoughts of what someone like Tyler Perry would do to a remake of For Love of Ivy (For Love of Medea?), and instead ponder what the vast underutilized armies of Black women filmmakers would contribute.

Although For Love of Ivy has been a favorite of mine for years, how I came about rewatching it is due to my being asked to participate in a podcast where we were to discuss the contrasting depiction of Black women as domestics/maids in 1968's For Love of Ivy vs  2011's The Help. Although the podcast is no longer online, to sum it up, I felt the 2011 film was retrogressive in the worst way. Both in its superficial Black characters and its dominant white gaze. In 1968 For Love of Ivy seemed quaint...but compared to The Help, it's almost revolutionary. What a difference 43 years can make. 

BONUS MATERIAL
Quincy Jones' title song (sung by jazz singer Shirley Horne in the film and on the soundtrack LP) was For Love of Ivy's sole Oscar nomination. Listen.

Unused title song commissioned for the film. Composed by John Phillips and performed by The Mamas and the Papas. Listen. 

Nothing But a Man (1964)  - Complete film available on YouTube

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2015