THE RITZ 1976

Three distinct memories spring to mind when I think of the movie version of The Ritz, Terrence McNally’s gay liberation-era Broadway farce that won Rita Moreno the 1975 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play: 

1) I was 18 years old and attending college in San Francisco when The Ritz had its West Coast premiere there. I recall the local papers running photos of Moreno posing on a special The Ritz cable car surrounded by a phalanx of attractive young men in tight-fitting “The Ritz” t-shirts, ready to be transported to the film’s screening, and later, if memory serves, to a disco after-party held at one of the city's more popular gay bathhouses. Movie premieres were rare in San Francisco, and everything about this one (disco-themed, gay-centric, hip, and a little kinky) encapsulated all the things I associate with that particular time and place.

2) The Ritz was released in the summer of 1976. America was caught up in Bicentennial and Olympics fever, and me...I was swept up in a fever of a different kind. One resulting from prolonged exposure to the pervasive and persuasive ad campaign for that other summer '76 release, The Omen ("You are one day closer to the end of the world!"). I went bonkers for that movie and saw The Omen at least four times that summer, never getting around to seeing The Ritz even once (although, in my defense, The Ritz performed so poorly that it was in theaters only a short time). 

3) Curiously, while I couldn't be troubled to see the film itself, I did make the effort to go to the theater where The Ritz was playing just so I could buy myself a "The Ritz" t-shirt. It was this very cool (for 1976, anyway) European-cut white shirt with the film’s title in black art-deco lettering on the front and Al Hirschfeld’s poster art caricatures of the film’s cast on the back. I absolutely loved that shirt!  It lasted all through college and survived for many years until finally disintegrating in the wash sometime in the mid-'80s.

Even the usually reliable Ebay has proved fruitless in searching for another one of these T-shirts. I knew I should have bought two of them when I had the chance back in 1976

When I finally got around to seeing The Ritz on cable TV in the late-'70s, I found I enjoyed it a great deal, and it instantly became one of my all-time favorites. I was so impressed with the attempt to create a kind of modern Marx Brothers comedy of chaos —a classic farce full of broadly pitched performances and McNally's irreverent send-ups of everything from homophobia to show business, gay culture to gangster films. 

The raw material is a great deal of outrageous good fun that could have perhaps benefited from that intangible, crazy "something" that Mel Brooks and Peter Bogdanovich brought to Young Frankenstein and What's Up, Doc?, respectively, but while The Ritz never reaches the heights of comic lunacy necessary to make this kind of comedy really soar, it nevertheless has a tremendously funny freneticism to it that throws new things at you so fast that even if you're not laughing, you're rarely, if ever, bored. 

Rita Moreno as Googie Gomez

Jack Weston as Gaetano Proclo

Jerry Stiller as Carmine Vespucci

Treat Williams as Michael Brick

F. Murray Abraham as Chris

Kaye Ballard as Vivian Proclo

One of the things that most struck me about seeing The Ritz for the first time, just a few short years after its initial release, was how swiftly it had become a period piece. Not in the superficial things like clothes and disco, but in reflecting an emerging liberalism that was already about to have the lid shut on it. In the intervening years since the glory days of the sexual revolution (the days of porno chic, Erica Jong, key clubs, wife-swapping, and Plato's Retreat —lest we forget that sexual recklessness was not the sole province of gays in the '70s) fundamentalist nutjobs like Anita Bryant, the AIDS crisis, and the burgeoning conservatism of the '80s conspired to render The Ritz's pro-sex, pro-acceptance, live-and-let-live egalitarianism something for the history books.

I always regret that I didn't first see The Ritz back when the climate of the times better reflected the optimistic spirit of healthy hedonism depicted on the screen. This out-and-proud retooling of the classic bedroom farce was one of the earliest (if not the first) mainstream examples of gay sexuality presented as normal, fun, and every bit as prone to comical chaos and misunderstanding as heterosexual sex. Gay characters are introduced in a non-tragic, comic milieu where for once, the humor derives from their personalities. Being gay is merely a part of who they are, not the source of a joke. I can only think of a handful of films from that era (Saturday Night at the Baths, A Very Natural Thing, Some of My Best Friends Are) that successfully portrayed gay people in a gay-specific environment that was neither defined nor impacted by hetero acceptance or disapproval. 

The fictional  bathhouse in The Ritz is modeled on New York's The Continental Baths, the infamous '70s recreational sex venue that boasted a pool, gym, cafe, disco, and most popularly, a cabaret where stars like Bette Midler, Barry Manilow, and Peter Allen got their start 

Summarizing a farce's plot in print is thankless and the written equivalent of a tongue-twister: you know what you intend to say, but it often sounds garbled. But I’ll give it my best (and briefest): Cleveland sanitation company president Gaetano Proclo (Weston) has a hit put out on him by his mafia-connected brother-in-law (Stiller), and mistakenly picks a N.Y. gay bathhouse to hide out in. 
Hoping to just lay low for the duration, Proclo finds himself the unwitting target of an amorous chubby-chaser (Paul B. Price), a blackmail-minded private detective (Williams), and a monumentally untalented Puerto Rican cabaret singer (Moreno) who mistakes him for a producer. Of course, everything that can go wrong does, and complications escalate to a delightfully silly pitch, all leading to the anticipated chase/free-for-all finale. 
Taking place over the course of one frantic evening, The Ritz is a door-slamming, identity-mangling, towel-snapping, man-chasing, gun-wielding, lunatic comedy of absurdly subversive sexual politics. Behind all the hilarity is a nifty little commentary on how hard it is to pin labels on people when everyone’s dressed in only a towel.

Oscar-winner F. Murray Abraham (Amadeus) leapfrogs over what could have been the unendurable cliches written into the character of Chris, a befuddled bathhouse regular swept up in a comic case of mistaken identity 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Depending on the critic, the film legacy of director Richard Lester (A Hard Day’s Night, Petulia, The Three Musketeers) has been categorized as either varied or uneven. But that which has been most consistent in all of his work—a talent for brilliant bits of staged pandemonium—is well-suited to this screwball fish-out-of-water burlesque that mines traditionally uncomfortable gay/straight confrontations for laughs.
In comedy, all is forgiven if you just come through with the funny, and on that score, Lester, with just a few minor lags in pacing, succeeds in keeping things moving at the requisite frenetic pace. Lester's confident handling of the dizzying particulars of so many characters, doorways, and complications never gets in the way of his Broadway-trained cast (Moreno, Weston, Stiller, Abraham, and mustachioed chubby-chaser, Paul B. Price all reprise their stage roles), each of whom is allowed their moment to shine.

Devoted fat-fetishist Claude Perkins (Paul B. Price) puts the moves on a badly-disguised Gaetano Proclo (Jack Weston)

PERFORMANCES
Before talent-free, self-deluding, fame-whores became a staple of show-biz (thanks, reality TV), they were the deserving targets of satirical derision. After years of American Idol, Rita Moreno’s Puerto Rican bombshell, Googie Gomez, doesn’t seem nearly the awful performer she’s supposed to be (she sings only marginally worse than, say, Katy Perry), but the loony, comedic brilliance of Moreno’s performance hasn't waned a bit. Like the late Madeline Kahn, Moreno is an actress capable of being outrageous and natural at the same time. Fabulously sexy, Moreno imbues Googie with a comic lunacy that steals every scene she's in. 
Legend has it that Terrence McNally wrote The Ritz for Moreno after seeing her perform the character of Googie at parties. If so, the man should be commended for resisting the impulse to place this dynamically colorful character at the front and center of the play. As a peripheral but indispensable element of crazy in The Ritz’s party mix, she is the film's spice;  The Ritz offers just enough Googie ineptitudes, tantrums, and malaprops to leave you wanting more.

Googie Gomez launches into a grievously misguided rendition of "Everything's Coming Up Roses"

Every member of The Ritz’s gamely peripatetic ensemble cast is worthy of accolades (this film must have been a continuity nightmare), but Jack Weston is my personal favorite. A rubber-faced master of the double-take with all the corpulent grace of Oliver Hardy, Weston makes me laugh aloud time and time again over his incredulous reactions to the not-so-fine mess he’s gotten himself into.

Googie tries her hand at seduction

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The Ritz is about as New York as you can get in terms of setting, subject, and humor, but was filmed, most likely for financial reasons, in the UK (the illusion is shattered less than a minute into the film when the actress cast as Jack Weston’s daughter delivers the line, “I want to go back to Cleveland” with a pronounced British lilt). What fascinates me about The Ritz is how British and Carry On-ish it all feels despite hewing so faithfully to the stage show and employing a largely Yankee. Director Richard Lester may be American by birth, but in having made England his home since 1956, I think he brings something to The Ritz that makes me wonder if perhaps there isn’t something to the widely held belief that there are really subtle and not-so-subtle differences between British and American humor.

In farce, all beds are made for hiding under, and situations are never as they seem

A curious thing about The Ritz, something that Kaye Ballard mentions in her memoirs, is that for a film set in a gay bathhouse, the movie is woefully low on male pulchritude. The Ritz has been cast with a straight male's detachment from (or fear of) his appreciation of male beauty. Lester found a way to include (in the burlesque tradition) a bevy of sexy females in 1966's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum but clearly didn't think turnabout was fair play in this wholly appropriate male atmosphere. A peroxided Treat Williams (hilarious and endearing as the private eye with the helium voice and boyish nature) is pretty much it when it comes to beefcake.

"See something you like, buddy?"

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Given that the heaviest topics can be lightened through levity, humor has always been one of the most pain-free ways to broach controversial subjects on film. With The Ritz, audiences otherwise loathe to spend 90 minutes watching a movie set in an environment as alien and potentially disconcerting as a gay bathhouse can galvanize around and have their latent homophobia assuaged by the more traditionally accessible comedy targets: sexism - the sexually rapacious heterosexual female; xenophobia - Googie's Puerto Rican assault on the English Language (I think Al Pacino studied Moreno her for his accent in Scarface); and irony - Googie's deluded belief in her own talent.
And if laughs are hard to elicit from viewers unsure of what to make out of a nonjudgmental look at an establishment where men gather to have anonymous, promiscuous sex with other men, then Gaetano Proclo’s exaggerated Alice Through The Looking Glass sense of bemused amazement provides the perfect outlet for all that nervous tension building up inside.

If, however, at film's end, audiences are left with their presumptions challenged, replaced with only the awareness that one has spent 90 minutes in the presence of a bunch of zany, eccentric characters, each unique and yet somehow the same...sympathetic, misunderstood, likable;...well, to me that's one small blow for the power of comedy.

Three Gay Caballeros

The Ritz is not perfect, but it IS a funny film, and there are more genuine laughs to be found here than in a great many more well-regarded comedies out there. It's a forgotten gem that has garnered a well-deserved cult following.  
The Ritz was revived on Broadway in 2007 for a limited run and featured Rosie Perez as Googie.

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2012

SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON 1964

This film was first brought to my attention by a friend in a discussion on The Stepford Wives and director Bryan Forbes. Informed that the stylistically uneven and nepotism-prone director (wife Nanette Newman appears, by contract it would seem, in virtually every film) had really scored a hit with the noir-ish kidnap caper film Séance on a Wet Afternoon, I was eager to get a look at this well-regarded British thriller that seems to have fallen through the cracks a bit here in the U.S. Well, rather obligingly, TCM recently screened Séance on a Wet Afternoon and I must say, I was seriously floored and thoroughly impressed. What a marvelous, wholly satisfying surprise! If, as I suspect, Forbes was hired to helm The Stepford Wives on the strength of this film, I fully understand why. Where has this movie been all my life?

Séance on a Wet Afternoon is a claustrophobically tense suspense thriller/crime drama about a kidnap plot hatched by an eager-for-fame trance medium (Kim Stanley) and her dominated husband (Richard Attenborough).

Kim Stanley as Myra Savage

Richard Attenborough as Billy Savage

Nanette Newman as Mrs. Clayton

Patrick Magee as Superintendent Walsh

Mark Eden as Mr. Clayton

Possessed, since childhood, of a psychic gift granting foresight through communion with spirits in other dimensions, Myra Savage has always known she was “different,” but has sustained herself with the notion that she is also "special." But an adult existence of workaday mundanity (she supports herself and her unemployed, asthmatic husband by conducting once-a-week séances in the gloomy Victorian home they share) and lingering remnants of a past tragedy have conspired to render her gifts, if not wasted, then of minimal consequence. Determined to right fate's wrongs and fulfill her arrogate destiny, Myra prevails upon her weak-willed husband to carry out the "borrowing" of the daughter of a wealthy businessman so that a charade might be enacted wherein, after ransom is demanded and the press alerted, Myra can gain notoriety by way of what she calls  "The lie that reveals the truth": the feigning of psychic intervention in leading the grieving parents to the whereabouts of the daughter and the discovery of the ransom.  

Of course, the Gothic turn of the screw in Séance on a Wet Afternoon is Myra’s obvious mental instability (raising doubts about her claim of psychic talent) and the peculiar, Lady Macbeth-ish influence she wields over her apprehensively compliant, yet devoted husband Billy.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM 
I have a fondness for films about crime capers that go terribly wrong. Whether due to human error (some character’s “fatal flaw”) or merely faulty planning, it always strikes me as a marvelously theatrical dramatization of the folly and arrogance of mankind ever thinking it has control over the outcome of anything. The rather deranged motivations that set in motion Séance on a Wet Afternoon’s kidnapping plot are unsettlingly compounded by the codependent master/slave relationship shared by Myra and Billy. 

Many shots in the film are composed to place Myra in positions of looming dominance over her passive husband 

In an ambiguous interplay that recalls the dysfunctional dynamics of George and Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the “gifted” Myra, the family’s sole breadwinner and whose inherited house they share, clearly dominates Billy. But Billy’s brow-beaten silences have an air of weary condescension. One senses that he has learned that it is easier to suffer his wife’s erratic behavior and cutting invectives than to challenge them. Billy relates to Myra as one might a person suffering from Alzheimer’s. In scenes where Myra appears to forget or has re-imagined some event from the past, Billy either recants or hesitates at revealing the truth (e.g., when Myra turns off the blaring Victrola only moments later to accuse Billy of doing so, he doesn't contradict her). 

Myra visits the parents of the kidnapped girl to offer her services as a "professional psychic"

PERFORMANCES
Kim Stanley’s screen appearances may have been infrequent, but in each instance (most notably Paddy Chayefsky’s The Goddess- 1958) she seriously came to clean house. This woman wasn't fooling around! In portraying the escalatingly unhinged mastermind of a spiritually mandated kidnap-for-fame scheme, Stanley creates and inhabits a character of mesmerizing and terrifying complexity. Both fragile and steely, Myra Savage is a role so inherently distasteful that marketable stars Simone Signoret and Deborah Kerr declined it outright. Yet Stanley imbues Myra with such a mercurially shifting palette of conflicting emotions that she emerges never exclusively a villain or victim; merely a frighteningly authentic incarnation of the internal desolation that is madness. Stanley's performance garnered an Oscar nomination, and rightfully so.

Billy - "We're mad, you and me. Both mad."

I never thought I could ever forgive Richard Attenborough after what he did to A Chorus Line (1985), but after seeing his chilling turn in 10 Rilllington Place (1971) last year, and now Séance on a Wet Afternoon…well, I can see that the man is quite prodigiously talented when kept in front of the camera. As the somewhat infantilized spouse (there’s an emasculating absurdity in this well-past-middle-aged man being referred to as “Billy”), Attenborough’s quiet anguish is well-matched with Stanley’s showier display of insanity. Not allowed a “backstory” as to how he came to be so cowed by his wife, Attenborough’s surprisingly expressive eyes convey the defeated compromise and devotionally loving tolerance that binds this obviously intelligent man to a delusional woman determined to lead them both toward tragedy.

Portraying a largely silent character, Richard Attenborough's eyes betray a past of torturesome sorrows

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Atmospheric and loaded with dramatic tension, Séance on a Wet Afternoon nevertheless might be too procedural and talky for some people’s tastes. Indeed, the screenplay, as adapted by director Forbes from the 1961 novel by Mark McShane, could easily be turned into a stage play with few alterations. (In the year 2000, Séance on a Wet Afternoon was remade as a Japanese horror film titled, Séance, and in 2009 it was made into an opera composed by Wicked’s Stephen Schwartz.) 

The unpleasant topic of a child being terrorized has been said to have accounted for the film's mild reception upon its release. Here, schoolgirl Amanda Clayton (Judith Donner) attempts to thwart her abduction by Billy Savage by locking him out of the car (Richard Attenborough) 

Personally, being a tad weary of the flash cut, ADD, CGI stuff of today, I enjoy seeing a film so deliberately paced. It's nice to have a film that trusts an audience to allow events to unfold as they need to, not just in a way dedicated to providing a thrill-a-minute. The time spent in allowing us to know and understand the characters on a more substantial level has the remarkable effect of creating empathy for both the villains and the victims. I found myself simultaneously rooting for and against the kidnappers' detection.  
Note* Based on several reviews and summaries I've read online, it seems there exists the possibility of misunderstanding what occurs during the film’s gripping conclusion if one fails to pay close attention. What is spoken is so important during these crucial final moments (and alas, the DVD release comes without a “captions” option) an unheard word or two is apt to leave you walking away with an entirely different impression of how this film really ends.

The Savages - as unsavory a couple as ever appeared in a film.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Shot in exquisite black and white by cinematographer Gerry Turpin and employing all the deep-focus/high-contrast flourishes of the best of film noir and mid-'60s thrillers, Séance on a Wet Afternoon makes a great companion piece to those similar exercises in bloodless terror: The Innocents (1961) and The Haunting (1963). I very much liked the hauntingly sinister score by the late, great John Barry, and Bryan Forbes methodical buildup of suspense was especially to my taste. It’s often difficult to know specifically what a director is responsible for in a film, but in comparing The Stepford Wives with Séance on a Wet Afternoon, I’m leaning towards investment in character over plot. Both films kept me riveted because the characters came alive for me in such complex, deeply flawed (human) ways, I cared about what happened to them. For a film to succeed in drawing the viewer into the emotional reality of a film, seems the most thrilling special effect of all.

The bleak Victorian London home where most of the film's action takes place. A house haunted by more than ghosts

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

FUNNY GIRL 1968

I've always been a big fan of movie musicals, but enjoying them often requires a kind of dexterous agility when it comes to the suspension of disbelief. I learned long ago that if I really want to surrender myself to films in which ordinary people in natural surroundings spontaneously burst into fully-orchestrated song and dance, well…it’s just best I not hold too tight a tether on reality. 

In the patently false world of movie musicals, believing in impossible things is, as the White Queen explained to Alice in Through the Looking Glass, not so very difficult to do. What poses a significantly greater challenge is that hybrid genre of musical fantasy which also purports to be rooted in fact: the musical biopic. For years, movies like The Great Waltz (Johan Strauss), Gypsy (Gypsy Rose Lee), and the 1955 Ruth Etting saga Love Me or Leave Me (penned by Funny Girl screenwriter Isobel Lennart), have been tunefully blurring the lines between truth and myth, gleefully playing havoc with audience suspension of disbelief...all just part of Hollywood's long history of playing fast and loose with history.

Funny Girl, William Wyler’s big-screen adaptation of the smash 1964 Broadway musical based on the life of Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice, is one of the more successful stage-to-screen translations of a musical to come out of the '60s. It's colorful, vibrant, funny, with a score of hummable songs marvelously rendered by an engaging, highly photogenic cast. In short, it's a great deal of old-fashioned fun. And yet, in its own way, it's also rather perplexing. 

By this I mean that whether by design or sheer force of star power, somewhere along the line this biopic gently shuttles aside the character of Fanny Brice at some point and becomes a Barbra Streisand infomercial—I'm never quite sure which myth I'm supposed to be following. 

Like a cinematic dissertation on the Wormhole Theory, Funny Girl's fictionalized depiction of the life of Fanny Brice feeds into the real-life Brooklyn-to-Broadway legend of Barbra Streisand the stage star, which in turn funnels into the from-obscurity-to-fame mythologization of Streisand, the movie star. Whew! Streisand's image hews so closely to Funny Girl's representation of Brice, small wonder then that as a kid I used to think Brice's signature song, Second Hand Rose (written in 1921) was actually introduced by Streisand.

"Hello, gorgeous!"
I know, I know. It's trite, cliche, and been done to death. But you knew it was going to crop up somewhere. Better now than leave you in suspense...looking for it...wondering when it was going to spring out at you.

Fanny Brice, née Fania Borach, was one of four children born to New York saloon owners Rose and Charles Borach in 1891. Fanny, who changed her name to Brice in 1908, was a plain-but-talented burlesque comedienne/singer who rose to international stardom as a headliner for Broadway impresario, Florenz Ziegfeld in the early 1900s through the mid-1930s. In 1912, the already once-married Brice found her true love in still-married con man/ex-convict Jules “Nicky” Arnstein, and after six years of cohabitation (Nicky’s divorce was a tad slow in coming), they wed. Their tumultuous union lasted nine years—at least three of which Arnstein spent behind bars for bond theft—producing two children: a boy and a girl. Along the way, Brice got herself a nose job, unsuccessfully tried her hand at dramatic roles, and made a few modest forays into film. A third marriage and greater career triumphs were to come…but that's venturing into Funny Lady territory. So there you have it, the Fanny Brice story. 

Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice

Omar Sharif as Nick Arnstein

Walter Pidgeon as Florenz Ziegfeld

Funny Girl, on the other hand, is about a charismatic, extraordinarily talented, exotically beautiful, ragingly self-confident woman with dragon-lady nails, Cleopatra eye-makeup, and immense, gravity-defying, '60s-type hair. Coincidentally—and only by coincidence—also named Fanny Brice. Set in a picture-postcard, quaintly ethnic New York during a historically imprecise era in America’s recent past (where 1910 showgirls look like moonlighting taxi-dancers from Sweet Charity’s swinging '60s Fandango Ballroom), Funny Girl is the rags-to-riches chronicle of Brice’s rise to fame as star of The Fanny Brice Follies (misidentified in the film as The Ziegfeld Follies, in spite of the fact that the film makes it abundantly clear she calls the shots and is the show's main focus), and her ill-fated marriage to the dashing and atypically ethical gambler, Nick “Too-proud-to-be-Mr. Brice” Arnstein. 

Echoing the themes of countless other “There’s a broken heart for every light on Broadway” musical made since movies first found their voice, Funny Girl ends with Brice reaching the pinnacle of success only to discover (to no one’s surprise but her own) it’s lonely at the top. Our final image: Brice onstage—it’s the only place she can find happiness, y'know— symbolically bathed in a solo spotlight, looking like a million bucks, resplendent in her noble suffering.

Fame - Gotta Get a Rain Check on Pain
Aphoristically speaking, I think Billy Dee Williams said it, if not best, then certainly cheesiest, when he informed the candle-wax-encrusted Diana Ross in Mahogany: "Success is nothing without someone you love to share it with."

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Sure, in many ways Funny Girl is corny, derivative, and certainly not the direction movies were headed in the Bonnie and Clyde late-'60s. But given the leaden flatness of similar big-budget musicals of the era (Camelot, Finian's Rainbow), it’s rather amazing Funny Girl came out so well. Doubly so when you realize that it is the only musical ever made by veteran and versatile director, William Wyler (65 at the time and hard of hearing, yet). Seriously, Funny Girl’s opulent sets, sparkling cast of character actors, and seamless blending of music and narrative have the look and feel of classic Vincent Minnelli. In the end, perhaps a little too classic.

For all the pleasure I derive from the film, I'm the first to concede Funny Girl feels altogether too familiar in its telling and is so much the archetypal show-biz biopic that it seems to have been cobbled together from bits and pieces of every backstage Hollywood musical that came before (especially A Star is Born–both versions). Its plot: an equal parts mélange of ugly-duckling fantasy, rags-to-riches fable, soap opera, hagiography, tearjerker, and paean to noble female martyrdom—unfurls as predictably and without incident as a morning train commute, with nary a surprise or unanticipated curve along the track. It's blessed with a sprightly score of songs by Jules Stein and Bob Merrill, and several, by-now-iconic musical setpieces (who today can look at a tugboat and not think of Streisand?...I mean in a good way); but there’s nothing in Funny Girl that I haven’t seen a half dozen times before. Except Barbra Streisand.

Make that the phenomenal Barbra Streisand. A new kind of movie star for a new kind of Hollywood, Streisand’s thoroughly one-of-a-kind, 900-megawatt star quality has the effect of single-handedly wresting Funny Girl from its wholly traditional moorings. Just a decade or so earlier Streisand's unconventional beauty would likely have relegated her to a career of Nancy Walker-type supporting roles in MGM musicals. But in 1968 her look was the new glamour, her voice the new sound, and her talent the singular spoonful of sugar that made this at-times antiquated musical medicine go down.

Streisand's Swan Lake schtick

PERFORMANCES
Personally, I don’t think most musicals benefit from naturalistic acting (i.e., One from the Heart and New York, New York). Musicals operate in a kind of theatrical hyper-reality that requires the actors, when emoting in non-musical scenes, to adopt this thing called “performative excess” - a superficially broad style of acting pitched to a level so as not to render the incidental introduction of fantasy sequences of song and dance ridiculous or incongruous. It's a style most recognizably associated with farces, screwball comedies, and a good many of those grating TV Land sitcoms.

Rumors surrounding Anne Francis (she'll always be Honey West to me) and her displeasure at finding her co-starring role (as Follies showgirl Georgia James) whittled down to nothing, are as plentiful as they are contradictory.

Bullying but delightfully erudite movie critic John Simon once wrote of  Liza Minnelli’s acting:  “[It's]...a desperate display of synthetics forlornly straining for the real thing.” Take away the malice from that statement, and you have exactly what I think is most effective about Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl. The vitality of Streisand as a performer—an energy that feels at times as though it might jump right off the screen into your lap—is born of her studied artificiality. She's "on" every single minute! Self-aware and controlling every aspect of her performance down to the bat of an eyelash, with nary a move or gesture left to chance or spontaneity (She played the role on stage for nearly two years). Streisand is a skilled physical comedian with marvelous delivery, but in Funny Girl I think she is rather more an entertainer than actress. Hers is a synthetic method of acting that actually succeeds in conveying the real thing. The result? A stylized performance that feels sublimely attuned to the rhythms required of an intentionally old-fashioned vehicle like Funny Girl .

In a kind of meta reenactment of all those tabloid rumors that had movie first-timer Barbra Streisand squaring off against veteran director William Wyler, Follies neophyte Fanny Brice goes toe-to-toe with boss Florenz Ziegfeld (Walter Pidgeon)

Streisand is one of those stars whose movie career has been built on essentially playing herself in film after film. It may sound like a put-down to say so, but I believe it to be something of a gift to be able to project one's personality dynamically on film. Not everybody can do it...just ask Madonna. 
Streisand can be a wonderful actress and comedienne (personal faves: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and What's Up, Doc?) but I don't believe anyone goes to a Barbra Streisand movie hoping she’ll so immerse herself in a character that they'll forget it’s her. No, when you’re paying for Streisand, you’re pretty much counting on getting Streisand...and plenty of it. (One exception: In 1981's All Night Long Streisand amusingly played against type in a supporting role as a soft-spoken suburban housewife who dreams of being a country & western star…only she can’t sing. Audiences stayed away in droves.)

12-minutes into Funny Girl, Streisand sings "I'm the Greatest Star" a tongue-in-cheek showstopper that is nevertheless (to borrow a line from the musical, Chicago) "A song of unrelenting determination and unmitigated ego."

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

If I seem to speak of Barbra Streisand to the exclusion of all else in Funny Girl, it’s just that without her, I suspect I would be rather on the fence about the film as a whole. Funny Girl is professional and competent in that way you’d expect from a big-budget studio feature, but I can't help but feel it lacks a certain distinction. The cinematography by Harry Stradling, Sr. (A Streetcar Named Desire, My Fair Lady) can’t be faulted; he turns Streisand into a goddess with each loving (and frequent) close-up. Nor do the musical numbers by Herbert Ross (later Streisand’s director for The Owl and the Pussycat and Funny Lady) come up short, being amiably witty if not particularly dance-filled. The music arrangements, while anachronistically contemporary in sound, show off Ms. Streisand’s million-dollar voice to great effect, and Irene Sharaff’s eye-catching costumes call attention to what a thoroughbred clotheshorse Streisand can be.

The pairing of Sharif and Streisand became an international incident when the Egypt/Israeli War broke out during filming. The married pair (to other partners) consoled one another...if you get my cruder meaning.

Three-time Academy Award-winning director William Wyler, in this his penultimate film in a four-decades-long career, is no stranger to divas (Bette Davis – Jezebel, The Letter, The Little Foxes), camera neophytes (Audrey Hepburn – Roman Holiday), or spectacle (Ben Hur), and as such, acquits himself nicely his first time to bat in this toughest of movie genres. Accounts vary as to whether Wyler molded Streisand’s performance or merely got out of her way, but whatever the circumstances, the result was a critical and popular success that became the second highest-grossing film of 1968, garnering Streisand her first and only Best Actress Oscar win (Wyler was left out of the film's eight nominations).

 Note* Lightning failed to strike twice for "Funny Girl" producer Ray Stark when he enlisted the talents of John Huston—another veteran director not known for musicals—to bring the Broadway hit, "Annie", to the screen in 1982.

Funny Girl's only other nomination in the acting categories was a Best Supporting Actress nod for Kay Medford as Mrs. Brice.   (Folks of my generation will remember her as a regular on "The Dean Martin Show") 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Sometimes I think film is called a lively art because the longer I live, the better certain films begin to look. Funny Girl was released 44 years ago, and since that time, not only has the quality of musicals drastically declined, but the only criteria for stardom today seems to be a pulse and a personality disorder. As I grow older and nostalgia gently overtakes discernment, Funny Girl’s flaws gradually diminish, born of an awareness of Streisand having, in the ensuing years, more than made good on her promise/threat of being "The Greatest Star" (minus scandals, drug busts, or rehab, I might add). 

A healthy suspension of disbelief might be necessary to reconcile Funny Girl's historical and biographical inaccuracies, anachronisms, and outright fabrications; but as a lasting record of the career genesis of one of the last of my generation’s truly great stars, Funny Girl could practically be classified as a documentary.

William Wyler and Streisand on the studio backlot

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

THE GROUP 1966

The generic Hollywood “woman’s film,” those melodramatic, get-out-your-handkerchiefs – style weepies that were once Joan Crawford’s and Bette Davis’ stock in trade, underwent a colorful (that is to say, increasingly explicit) transformation during the '50s and '60s. Reflecting the changing role of women in American culture, the once romance-centric genre transmogrified into the multi-character, hand-wringing, career-girl soap operas of the sort typified by Rona Jaffe’s water cooler drama The Best of Everything (1956), in which Joan Crawford’s stock '40s shopgirl character gets an executive upgrade, and that deservedly iconic ode to Broadway, booze, and barbiturates, Valleyof the Dolls (1967).

Jessica Walter (Lucille Bluth on my favorite TV show, Arrested Development) looks "Joan Crawford fabulous" and almost walks away with the film as Libby, the least sympathetic but most dynamic member of The Group

These films dramatized, in highly glamorized fashion, the challenges facing women as they strove to balance love, friendship, and the pursuit of their dreams while navigating the patriarchally hostile waters of the American workforce. Always purporting to “blow the lid off” one taboo subject or another (in George Cukor’s The Chapman Report it was the sex lives of suburban housewives) these films offered at most a cursory nod to female independence before reverting to type and getting back to the business of subtly endorsing traditional gender roles.

Valley of the Dolls, in its exquisite awfulness, remains the gold standard by which every “sex and soap” women’s film is and should be compared. But one of my favorite forgotten examples of the genre that managed to fall through the cracks due to past unavailability (it had a brief VHS life [Thanks, Poseidon3!], was never released on Laserdisc, but is currently available on made-to-order DVD) is Sidney Lumet’s lively screen adaptation of Mary McCarthy’s 1963 bestselling novel, The Group. 

Eight is Enough
The sparkling cast of up-and-comers that comprise The Group

I don’t know who first coined the phrase “superior soap opera” but the term categorically applies to this expensively mounted, surprisingly well-acted tale of the interweaving lives of eight friends—graduates of Vassar College, Class of ’33— as each sets out to make her mark on the world. The experiences of these economically and psychologically diverse heroines reflect, in microcosm, the emergent state of (white) American womanhood in the mid-20^th century. Specifically, the Roosevelt Administration years from The Great Depression through to the earliest days of the outbreak of WW II.
As each woman embarks on the journey of realizing the American Dream that their wealth, position, and privilege have practically guaranteed them, they discover that life outside the protective bubble of college and "The Group" poses considerably greater challenges. 

With a cast of eight beautiful women all falling histrionically in and out of love, bedrooms, and careers, The Group basically takes the usual all-girl triad formula of The Pleasure Seekers and Three Coins in the Fountain (along with the aforementioned The Best of Everything and Valley of the Dolls) and merely ratchets up the stakes by moving it into territory first blazed by Clare Boothe Luce in The Women. All of which is sheer Nirvana for fans of camp cinema and movies about high-born women brought to low circumstances, but a headache for studio publicity departments and folks seeking economic ways of recounting the plot and summarizing the characters.  

The challenge presented in having to promote a film with an ensemble cast of relative unknowns is revealed in the giggle-inducing tone adopted by the film’s ad campaign; the copy of which I’ll borrow to briefly introduce the members of The Group:

Lakey: The Mona Lisa of the smoking-room…for women only!

Dottie: Thin women are more sensual. The nerve endings are closer to the surface.

Priss: She fell in love and lived to be an “experiment.”

Polly: No money…no glamour…no defenses…poor Cinderella.

Kay: The “outsider” at an Ivy League Ball.

Pokey: Skin plumped full of oysters…money, money, money…yum, yum, yum!

Libby: A big scar on her face called a mouth.

Helena: Many women do without sex, and thrive on it.

If I remember correctly, most, if not all of these lines come directly from the novel (a terrific read, I might add) and several are even repeated in the film. How anyone was able to resist such sleazily salacious come-ons is beyond me, but The Group didn’t fare too well at the boxoffice at the time and slipped quietly into obscurity after that. My guess is that it’s because the film at its core wasn’t really as trashy as its hard-sell. Well, more’s the pity, for The Group, by benefit of its remarkable cast and director Sidney Lumet’s deft handling of the wide-sweeping plot, is a step above the usual glossy soap opera.

Dottie (Joan Hackett) loses her virginity to emotionally remote artist Dick Brown (Richard Mulligan). In real life, Hackett & Mulligan were married from 1966 to 1973. They appeared together in a 1971 episode of  Love, American Style

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

As a fan of both Robert Altman’s trademark ensemble opuses and movies with overdressed women dramatically suffering in opulent surroundings, there isn’t really much to dislike about The Group. Touching on everything from politics, birth-control, lesbianism, marriage, mental illness, spousal abuse, adultery, childbirth, alcoholism, and date-rape (all in the course of 2 ½ hours) The Group has a lot of field to cover. Director Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, Network, Dog Day Afternoon) keeps things moving at a rapid-fire pace that adds spark to the light comedy (Jessica Walter is a hoot as a bitchily gabby gossip) and tension to the drama. If the expeditious pacing of the story spares The Group from ever being plodding or dull, it's fair to say it also occasionally undercuts the film’s overall emotional impact. The commitment to brevity that results in Joan Hackett’s character disappearing for a protracted time in the middle of the film is a considerable flaw as far as I'm concerned, but at least it’s a flaw born of an attempt to tighten the sprawling narrative. 

An example of Sidney Lumet's masterful framing and use of space in The Group 

I generally just like the propulsive feel of The Group's visual style. I can’t remember when I’ve seen a movie that handled the staging and filming of group scenes better or to greater effect; nor can I recall a cleverer employment of cinematic devices to provide plot exposition. In rewatching the film, my attention is drawn to the many subtle character interactions and small details (like the financially-struggling Kay always wearing the same hat to every wedding) easily overlooked on first viewing due to the film’s quick cutting and Lumet’s skillful use of the foregrounds and backgrounds to relay information.

When I think of what I like about The Group, the conclusion I always arrive at is, what’s not to like?

The telephone features prominently in The Group not only as a means by which the friends stay in contact but as a handy device to relate plot exposition

PERFORMANCES

If you’ve ever harbored the notion that a film like, say, Valley of the Dolls would have been “better” with real actresses in the roles (sorry Patty Duke), watching The Group should pretty much lay that fantasy to rest. The cast assembled for The Group couldn’t be more accomplished or better-suited to their roles, but even they can’t surmount a screenplay or a basic story construct so plot-driven. The mere volume and frequency of crises and conflict in films like these reduce even exemplary performances (Hackett, Knight, Pettet, and Hartman) to “best of” moments.

Sidney Lumet cast his father, Baruch Lumet in the small role of Mr. Schneider, Polly's paternal neighbor

A standout, both appearance and character-wise, is Jessica Walter, who either annoys or enchants in a showy role that is essentially Rosalind Russell in The Women. Also very good is the highly appealing Shirley Knight. My personal favorite, however, is Joan Hackett (making her film debut along with Bergen and Pettet) whom I never tire of watching and who never seems to hit a false note.

60s lesbians were always portrayed as severe, vaguely predatory types who stood around giving each other knowing looks under arched eyebrows. Here, an admittedly outclassed Candice Bergen introduces her sorority sisters to her "friend" the Baroness (Lidia Prochnicka)

Before I finish, special mention must be made of the men in The Group. True to the genre, the men are a pretty odious bunch. Almost to a man they are characterized as weak, bigoted, manipulative, oppressive, brutalizing, or womanizing. Some all at the same time. This is of course to be expected and goes with the soap opera territory. What surprises me most is that there isn’t a single looker in the bunch. I know it’s a matter of taste and I'm taking into account that perhaps in 1966 these guys passed for handsome (so what was Paul Newman?); but to a most distracting degree, the men at the center of The Group are like a grandmother’s wish-list of desirable males. Hal Holbrook? Larry Hagman? Richard Mulligan? James Broderick? The film features such a parade of sexless, daddy-fixation types that after a while I actually started to take it as some kind of personal affront. Valley of the Dolls suffered from the same malady.

No, this isn't an image of Polly (Shirley Knight) and her father. This is Gus (Hal Holbrook) the patently implausible object of desire of two gorgeous women and one unseen wife in The Group

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
My older sister (whom I credit/blame for a good deal of my love of bad movies) got me to watch The Group on TV with her when I was a kid. A protofeminist if ever there was one, she tended to gravitate towards movies with female protagonists but lamented the fact that a great majority of these films tended to be vaguely masochistic soaps and cheesy exploitation films. 

The Group was Elizabeth Hartman's follow-up to her Oscar-nominated film debut in A Patch of Blue. As Priss, she's cast again as a victim of an oppressive relative, this time a husband.
 Sloan (her physician husband, following a miscarriage): "We'll, we can't have this again, Priss. Worst possible advertisement for a pediatrician!"

My sister (who was drawn to the bitchiness of the Libby character but identified with the self-sacrificing nobility of Polly) enjoyed the camp fun to be had at the expense of the fancy clothes, elaborate hairstyles, and frankly unsympathetic milieu of the privileged classes; but what she also responded to, and in turn helped me to appreciate, was what the film was trying to say about the challenges of maturity. The idealized vision of the world (and oneself) one can safely harbor while sheltered within the walls of youth and academia can take quite a beating when confronted by the disappointments and compromises of the real world. Is a person really failing in life if they put to rest youthful dreams in hopes of achieving some unforeseen, yet perhaps more authentic, realization of fulfillment? And how much pain does one cause oneself clinging to idealized illusions of "potential" and entitled success...all the while ignoring the possibility for happiness dressed in humbler clothing? 

Have to hand it to my sister...if she could find that kind of insight within a glossy potboiler like this, I'd say I learned about the value of "bad" films at the feet of a master.

In a role rendered considerably smaller in the film than  in the book, Carrie Nye has at least one memorable scene as Norine, a low-income Vassar classmate and outsider excluded from The Group 

Now, I’m not going to make out like The Group is some kind of profound, unacknowledged classic, but in light of what women's films have become over the years (they proudly proclaim themselves "chick flicks" and celebrate shopping as a valid expression of female empowerment), and in our current boomerang culture that doesn't encourage young people to seek and accept struggle as an integral part of the growing-up process; well...let's just say that there's something to be said for a 46-year-old guilty-pleasure movie that comes across as more progressive and perceptive in 2012 than it did in the year of its original release.

Halcyon Days
Helena's scandalous painting of The Group (that's Helena as the satyress)

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012