Homer Simpson: Katharine Hepburn Fan

In Simpsons episode 1F02, “Homer Goes to College,” Homer is found to be grossly under-qualified for his job and is ordered to go to college and pass Nuclear Physics 101.  In this scene, Lisa tries to help Homer fill out his college applications:

Lisa: “Dad, don’t let these application essays throw you.  Let’s see… ‘List your three favorite books and how they’ve influenced your life.’”
Homer: “Is ‘TV Guide’ a book?”
Lisa: “No.”
Homer: “‘Son of Sniglet’?”
Lisa: “No.”
Homer: “Katharine Hepburn’s ‘Me’?”
Lisa: “No!”
Homer: “Oh, I suck!”

An Evening With Kerry Kelly Novick

Last night I had the absolute pleasure of attending a presentation on the life and career of Gene Kelly at the Detroit Opera House as part of a series they’re hosting about dance in film.  But this wasn’t just any ordinary presentation, it was given by someone very near and dear to Gene — his daughter Kerry Kelly Novick.  For about two hours, Kerry shared memories and stories about Gene, showed clips from some of his movies, and took questions from an enthusiastic audience.

The people in the audience came up with some excellent questions about Gene.  Questions ranged from how tall he was (5 feet, 8¾ inches, and he was serious about those three-quarters of an inch) to how his political activism influenced his work (the best example being how he refused to make The Pirate unless The Nicholas Brothers could be in it).  And then there was the eternal question of whether or not Gene had a favorite dance partner.  Gene was always very tactful about answering that question and Kerry was as well, saying that he always picked his dance partners based on the style of dance the scene called for.  And although she did mention that he particularly enjoyed working with highly trained dancers, she said that even they came with their own set of challenges.

Ever wonder what Gene did to stay in shape when he was in between movies?  Surprisingly, he didn’t have a set exercise routine.  He would play various sports, but that was pretty much it.  According to Kerry, “he was blessed with the best metabolism in the world.”  He would gain a little bit of weight when he wasn’t working on a movie, but as soon as he went into rehearsals, it dropped right off again.

When asked about her father’s friendship with Fred Astaire, she pointed out something interesting that I didn’t know about the movie Easter Parade.  I knew that Gene was originally supposed to star in Easter Parade but then he broke his ankle so the part went to Fred instead.  What I didn’t know is that before Gene broke his ankle, he had choreographed the first dance number, Drum Crazy, and they kept his choreography for that scene.  So in Easter Parade, you can see Fred Astaire doing Gene Kelly’s choreography, which is something I’m going to have to watch for next time I see that movie.

Kerry also had plenty of childhood memories to discuss.  She talked about how after dinner every night, she would choose a topic and she and Gene would read about it together in the encyclopedia.  When asked if she ever considered getting into the film industry, she mentioned briefly wanting to be a set designer, but she knew pretty early on that she wanted to get into psychology.  Earlier in the evening, while introducing “The Mexican Hat Dance” scene from Anchors Aweigh, she said that she really wanted to play the little girl in that scene, but wasn’t allowed to because she doesn’t look Mexican.  One person asked if she had a favorite memory of visiting her father’s sets and she said that during the production of Singin’ in the Rain, it was interesting for her to go to the set and see adults learning new things.  When you’re a kid, you tend to think that adults just know everything.  So by going to the set and seeing Debbie Reynolds working so hard to learn the dances, it showed her that nobody ever just knows everything and how important it is to keep learning new things.

If you were wondering what Kerry herself is up to these days, she is a psychoanalyst and has lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan since the 1970s.  Together with her husband, they have written several books about child psychology and have founded the Allen Creek Preschool.

Overall, the evening was truly wonderful.  Kerry was very nice, approachable, and witty and I’m thrilled to have had the opportunity to hear so much about Gene from someone who was so close to him.

The Hollywood Revue Turns 2!

Today marks my second blogaversary!  My second year of blogging was even better than my first.  Over the past year, I’ve had a wonderful time with events like Blogging Under the Stars, 30 Days of Pre-Codes, hosting the Fashion in Film blogathon, and participating in blogathons like the Loving Lucy blogathon, the Carole-tennial (+3!), Project Keaton, and the Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier blogathon, just to name a few.  Hopefully my third will be just as delightful!

To mark the occasion, I put together a little retrospective.  I figured just posting links to some of my favorite posts from last year would be boring, so instead I decided to liven up that idea a little bit.  I present to you The Hollywood Revue: Year in Review, a montage featuring clips of 39 movies and events that I wrote about over the past year.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t include clips from everything, but I got in as many as I could!  Hope you enjoy!

What’s on TCM: February 2012

It’s already time for yet another round of TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar!  I’ve reached a point where I’ve been watching 31 Days of Oscar for so long that I’m not seeing as much stuff that’s new to me, but as always, there are a lot of great movies I’m looking forward to revisiting.  Those of you who tend to worry about TCM showing more modern movies during 31 Days of Oscar can rest assured that there are only three movies from the 90s this year and they are both on pretty late at night.  This year, the theme for the month is “Around the World in 31 Days.”  So each day, movies will be grouped together based on where they take place.  With no further ado, let’s get on to my choices for the month.

Movies That Could Have Been: The March of Time (1930)

Recently, I had the pleasure of revisiting the That’s Entertainment! trilogy.  As much as I love the first That’s Entertainment!, I love how much rare footage is featured in part three.  One of the movies discussed in part three is an abandoned project from 1930 called The March of Time.  The March of Time was intended to be a follow-up to The Hollywood Revue of 1929 and was set to be shot in two-color Technicolor and feature stars like Bing Crosby, Joan Crawford, Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Ramon Novarro, and Marie Dressler.  Only unlike The Hollywood Revue of 1929, The March of Time seemed to have more of a central concept — the past, present, and future of entertainment.  A number of musical scenes were shot for the film, but then the project was scrapped and never completed.

I’m sure that if The March of Time had been completed, it’d be thought of as a historical curiosity today, but I kind of wish that it had been completed.  As awkward and creaky as they are, I sort of love early musical efforts.  They’re just so earnest that I can’t help but find them endearing.  Especially in cases like this where lots of top stars of the era were put together in one movie just because it’s interesting to see all those stars together.  I’d also be quite interested in seeing what they thought the future of entertainment would be.

Even though The March of Time was abandoned, some of the filmed scenes eventually ended up being included in other things.  You can find some of these scenes on YouTube, but I want to specifically highlight one scene called The Lock Step featuring The Dodge Twins:

What I want to know is if this number was supposed to be representing the present or the future of entertainment.  Because if this was supposed to be the future, then they were surprisingly accurate in predicting Elvis’ Jailhouse Rock number.

The V.I.P.s (1963)

On any given day, you’re bound to encounter all sorts of characters at an airport.  On this particular day, it seems that all the drama is happening in the V.I.P. lounge of Heathrow Airport.  Movie director Max Buda (Orson Welles) is there with aspiring actress Gloria Gritti (Elsa Martinelli), trying to get out of the country so that he won’t have to pay a massive tax bill.  Frances Andros (Elizabeth Taylor) is about to leave her mogul husband Paul (Richard Burton) and run off to New York with her boyfriend, Marc Champselle (Louis Jourdan).  Then there’s Les Mangrum (Rod Taylor), who desperately needs to get to New York so that he can get a loan to save his tractor company.  He’s accompanied by Miss Mead (Maggie Smith), his loyal secretary who is secretly in love with him.  And last, but not least, there’s The Duchess of Brighton (Margaret Rutherford).  She’s fallen on hard times and in order to afford to keep her family’s estate, she has to go to Florida to take a job.

All of these personal dramas become even more tumultuous when all flights out of Heathrow are delayed by fog.  At first, they expect to only be delayed an hour, but it soon becomes clear that they won’t be able to fly out until the next morning and they are all put up in a hotel for the night.  By then, Paul has found out about Frances’ plan to leave him and shows up to put a stop to it.  Les makes a few last-ditch attempts to get the money he needs, and just when he thinks he’s ruined, Miss Mead saves him in just the nick of time.  Max finds a way out of his tax woes, but not a particularly desirable one.  Even the Duchess is able to find a way to keep her family home.

The V.I.P.s may be regarded as one of Elizabeth Taylor’s lesser movies, but I actually enjoyed it.  It’s a guilty pleasure of mine.  If you go into it hoping for straight drama, look elsewhere because it doesn’t really work on that level.  However, if you’re in the mood for something campy, then you might have some fun with The V.I.P.s.  Essentially, it’s Grand Hotel, but set in an airport and campier.  The writing isn’t particularly good, but it was over the top enough to be fun.  Elizabeth Taylor seemed kinda bored most of the time, apparently she only took the role so she wouldn’t have to worry about Richard Burton getting distracted by Sophia Loren.  But boy, does she ever look fabulous!  Richard Burton hams it up big time and Orson Welles’ accent is pretty ridiculous.  And Margaret Rutherford’s boozy, pill-popping Duchess of Brighton is just a hoot.  But I think the most hilarious part of this movie is the hotel the airline puts these people in.  If that were the hotel you really got to stay at when your flight gets delayed, travel delays wouldn’t be quite so bad.  But we all know in reality, you’re really going to the nearest Best Western, not a swanky, stylish place like that.  Also, if you’re into 1960s fashions, this is worth checking out if only for the eye candy factor because it is a very stylish movie.

What’s on TCM: January 2012

Happy 2012, everybody! January is, as always, chock full of good stuff on TCM.  The first star of the month in 2012 is Angela Lansbury and her movies can be seen every Wednesday night this month.  Every Thursday night will be dedicated to showcasing the work of cinematographer Jack Cardiff.  With no further ado, let’s get to my picks for January.

The Artist (2011)

In 1927, George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is world famous as one of the biggest movie stars around.  After the premiere of his latest film, he steps outside to greet the crowd of adoring fans and ends up having a run-in with fan Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo).  Their encounter is photographed by the press and winds up being featured on the front page of Variety.  Peppy is more than a fan, she’s an aspiring actress who winds up getting hired as an extra at Kinograph, the studio where George works.  When George sees that Peppy is a talented dancer, he gets her a bit part in his new movie.  The two of them hit it off and Peppy quickly finds herself getting bigger and bigger parts.  But with the advent of sound films, George finds himself pressured to make talkies, a transition he does not want to make.  He leaves the studio to produce his own silent films, but finds that he can’t compete with the new talkie stars like Peppy Miller.  He loses everything, but with help from a friend, he finds the potential to reinvent himself to a new audience.

The Artist is easily my favorite movie of 2011.  Not that I saw many new releases this year, but anyway.  I loved everything about it — the acting, the cinematography, the story, the direction were all top notch.  I most often hear the plot of The Artist described as being like Singin’ in the Rain meets A Star is Born, and although that is a pretty good way to describe it, don’t think that it’s just a rehash.  It does have elements of both, but it stands well on its own and I had no problem judging it independently from those. It also isn’t just an endless parade of homages to other silent films, either.  Director Michel Hazanavicius clearly did his silent film homework, but very much made it his own.  In this article, Hazanavicius names six movies that inspired him to make The Artist, and I never would have guessed Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld or Lon Chaney’s The Unknown were among his influences for it.

Fans of silent films are bound to recognize characters and events in the movie as being inspired by real people and events.  The character of George Valentin was essentially John Gilbert but with Douglas Fairbanks’ on-screen image.  Although Gilbert didn’t hesitate to make the transition to sound the way Valentin does, his career did fall into a rapid decline after fighting with Louis B. Mayer and something similar happens to Valentin.  When Valentin wants to continue making silent films, he produces and finances one on his own, reminiscent of how Gilbert wrote the movie Downstairs for himself when he was tired of getting lousy movies.  Peppy Miller was definitely meant to be a Clara Bow, Colleen Moore type, but with a few moments of Greta Garbo thrown in.  Yes, at one point, Peppy even says, “I want to be alone.”  And when she wants to help George get work again, she demands that he be cast as her leading man, just like how Garbo got John Gilbert cast in Queen Christina.

Right now, it’s looking like The Artist is shaping up to be the top contender to win Best Picture at the Oscars.  But when a movie gets as much acclaim as The Artist currently is, sooner or later, there will be a backlash against it and I can tell you right now what some of its detractors will say.  If it does indeed win, there will be some who will say that it won just because it’s a silent film made in 2011 and that was such a novelty that it won for being a novelty.  And even if it doesn’t win, they’ll just say all the hype was because it was a novelty.  I can feel that argument is coming, so I’m just going to go ahead and comment on how absurd and condescending that idea is right now.

Speaking as somebody who routinely watches silent films, the idea of watching a movie without spoken dialogue isn’t a novelty to me, even if it is a modern movie.  I’d have been just as eager to see this one even if it did have dialogue.  The concept of a modern silent film might be more of a selling point to others, but I highly doubt they’re going to like it purely because it’s a silent.  At no point in time have I ever liked a silent film just because it was silent and neither have any of the other silent film fans I know.  We’re not a bunch that’s that easily amused.  I watch silent movies because I appreciate that method of storytelling, but there has to be a good story being told.  The Artist is much more than just a silent film, it also has a wonderful story, an excellent cast, strong direction, and beautiful cinematography and those are perfectly valid reasons for it to be getting the acclaim it is.  If the story isn’t your cup of tea, or even if you’re just not into silent movies, that’s just dandy, but to write it off as a novelty or a gimmick is completely ridiculous.

Merry Christmas!

Just wanted to wish you all a very merry Christmas!  And now, for my favorite non-traditional Christmas song…Bette Navidad!

 

Book Vs. Movie: The Maltese Falcon

When you have more than one screen adaptation of a novel, usually one is more faithful to the novel than the other.  However, in the case of The Maltese Falcon, it has two pretty accurate adaptations.  The first version, released in 1931 and stars Ricardo Cortez, Thelma Todd, and Bebe Daniels, does a pretty good job of sticking to the source material.  However, the 1941 Humphrey Bogart version is an even more accurate representation of the book.  It doesn’t stick to the novel exactly, but most of the dialogue is taken verbatim and the key story elements are kept in tact.

Most of the differences are pretty subtle and probably were changed for the sake of pacing.  For example, in the movie Sam finds out about La Paloma after he wakes up in Gutman’s hotel room and starts looking around the room.  It’s a much more drawn out process in the book.  In the book, Sam finds out Miss O’Shaugnessy didn’t go to Effie’s apartment like she was supposed to.  Instead, she had the cab stop to get a newspaper, then she asked to be brought to the ferry building.  So Sam gets a copy of the paper in question to look for clues, but doesn’t figure it out until he starts snooping around Cairo’s room and notices that the newspaper section with ship arrivals was of particular interest to him.  Although there’s nothing wrong with the way that part plays out in the book, if it were filmed that way, it would have slowed the movie down.  Another difference is that the character of Gutman’s daughter is completely absent from the Bogart movie (as well as from the Ricardo Cortez version, for that matter), but she wasn’t exactly a vital character in the book.

A lot of the other changes were definitely made because of the production codes.  What’s interesting about that content is that neither the 1931 or the 1941 version gets it exactly right.  The 1931 version tends to be a bit more scandalous than the book was, but it does include things that were in the book that couldn’t be included in the 1941 version.  There’s no way the 1941 version could have gotten away with the scene where Spade strip searches O’Shaugnessy after noticing that $1,000 of the $10,000 Gutman promised him was missing, but it was in the 1931 version.  The 1941 version also really had to downplay the fact that Cairo and Wilmer were both supposed to be gay, the 1931 version made that much clearer.  In the book, when O’Shaugnessy finds out that Sam has been talking to Cairo and that he’s prepared to offer more money than she can, she offers to sleep with him and proceeds to spend the night at Sam’s apartment.  When it comes to that part in the 1941 version, O’Shaugessy can’t offer herself to Spade or spend the night, so Sam just kisses her instead.  As for Spade’s affair with Iva Archer, the 1941 version actually depicts what went on more accurately than the 1931 version.  The 1931 version made that affair more salacious than the book described.  First of all, the book made Iva Archer out to be a little past her prime, which Thelma Todd most certainly was not.  There also weren’t any scenes involving Iva showing up at Sam’s apartment and finding O’Shaugnessy wearing her kimono nor were there any of Miles listening on the extension while Sam and Iva set up a tryst.

I really enjoyed reading The Maltese Falcon and I think anyone who likes either movie version would, too.  Like I said, what you see in either movie version is pretty much what you get in the book.  And since it’s not a terribly long book, either, I definitely recommend reading it.  As for which movie version I prefer, I think it goes without saying that the Humphrey Bogart version wins hands down.  The Ricardo Cortez version is good, but it doesn’t have the flawless cast and direction that the Humphrey Bogart version did.  I always loved the cast of the Bogart version, but while I was reading the book and got to read exactly how each character was described, I feel like that version had some of the most perfect casting of all time.  Nobody will ever make a better Sam Spade than Humphrey Bogart.

For more Bogie, be sure to visit Forever Classics for more Humphrey Bogart Blogathon contributions.