Movie review - "Grand Prix" (1966) *** 1/2 (warning: spoilers)

 MGM's big roadshow made some money but I don't think recouped its cost. Director John Frankenheimer had a great time as he should with Bob O'Brien (very talent friendly) as the studio head, a large budget and European locations.

The movie was meant to star Steve McQueen, who turned it down, as did Paul Newman and Robert Redford, despite the latter not being famous yet. They got James Garner who was trying to be a movie star then. He doesn't quite work - the head is too big or something.

Two other big movie stars are in it - Toshiro Mifune and Yves Montand, who are comfortably cast (not always the case in their English language pictures).  Mifune's role is not that large and he is atrociously dubbed - I wish he'd been a race car driver. Montand is one of the four main stars. The other two are Brian Bedford and some Italian guy, Antonio Sabato.

The racing sequences are superb - justly famous. The land stuff is bland. It didn't have to be - it's not that interesting, that's all. The romance between married Montand and Eva Marie Saint is just... whatever. Saint is a great actress but wasted in the part. Who cares? Why have him married? At least Saint gets a chance to emote with Montand dies. 

Garner's plot is alright - seeking redemption after an accident. Ditto Bedford's.   I just wish more attention had been paid for it.

I'd love to see this on the big screen. 

Movie review - "Rally Round the Flag Boys" (1958) **

 George Axelrod complained he and Leo McCarey came up with a bold plan to adapt this novel but Fox backed out and so Axelrod left. Maybe his approach would've been better. But it's hard to see even that working with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the leads. Both are attractive and obviously talented actors but their comic timing is a mess and they seem too young - as does Joan Collins. Newman's trying to be Cary Grant but he doesn't seem like a family man especially one with an itchy eye. Maybe Tom Ewell? 

Joan Collins is better - too young as well but she's hugely fun. She would've been better a decade older but I liked her. She's stronger than Jayne Mansfield (the original choice vetoed by the Newmans) would have been.

Tuesday Weld is perfect as their yappy babysitter. She is involved in a very funny love triangle with Dwayne Hickman as a Marlon Brandon worshipper and some yokel soldier. This is funny. Jack Carson is funny too as a bombastic soldier.

But Newman wrecks it, basically. 

Movie review - "Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man" (1962) **

 Adapting the Nick Adams stories wasn't a great idea - they are by nature episodic - though maybe it could've worked more as a "coming of age of Ernest Hemingway" type tale

Richard Beymer is hopelessly out of his element here - not dreadful just not capable. The role needed a really, really good actor - not just an actor, a star. Not sure who could've done it then. Paul Newman maybe even if he was too old.

But the script isn't great. Ten stories! Goes for over two hours!

Martin Ritt gives scenes in the vignettes to the guest stars - Paul Newman as a punch drunk boxer, Arthur Kennedy as dad, Dan Dailey as a drunk editor, Eli Wallach as a soldier. Most of them are not good. A lot of over acting.

Maybe could have worked if it had just focused on young Nick in the woods. Or Nick as a journalist. Or him having a romance in Italy. Together it felt lumpy. 

Movie review - "The Long Hot Summer" (1958) **

 Disappointing. Tennessee Williams lite. CinemaScope, Fox stars, Method actors, Paul Newman looking sexy, Orson Welles mugging it up, Joanne Woodward isn't hot for Newman until the end so it's not fun to see Welles try to set them up. If she was hot for him but fighting it... that would've been fun.

Richard Anderson is dull though I guess that works. Tony Franciosca carries on. Lee Remick looks as though she's going to be more interesting than she is. Angela Lansbury provides solid support as always. 

I wanted to like this more than I did.

Movie review - "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1958) ***1/2

 MGM's luck wasn't great in the late 50s but it held for this Tennessee Williams adaptation - Dore Schary bought it as a vehicle for Grace Kelly who then retired but Elizabeth Taylor stepped in and for all her vocal limitations was a perfect horny housewife. Paul Newman wasn't a big star at the time - rising but not big - but he was offered the male lead (I think Ben Gazzara may have turned it down) and it worked like gangbusters.

Newman doesn't sleep with Taylor because of guilt over his friend more than being gay for his dead friend but that works on its own terms. There's still Burl Ives' bombastic Big Daddy, and Jack Carson and Madeleine Sherwood as Taylor's dreadful in laws (because it's Williams she's more of a shrew, he's amiable but waeak).

It's a solid movie. Richard Brooks suits it, at that stage. Taylor, Newman and Ives all get a chance to monologue.

Movie review - "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962) **1/2

 Tennessee Williams play had plenty of familiar characters - the male drifter failed actor (a type that was in Picnic), the ageing film star - but was very well done with solid drama, such as the drifter Chance giving his ex the clap, and her foul family castrasting Chance at the end.

MGM cleaned it up. The piece is robbed of its doom and tragedy. It retains much that is very effective - Paul Newman is terrific (as you'd hope so considering he played it on Broadway), ditto Geraldine Page. It think Richard Brooks, with his yelly style, suited Tennessee Williams. He makes sure there's a sexual charge.

This lost money though. Maybe the Williams tide was running out. Maybe it would've been a bigger hit with say Ava Gardner in the lead - but their scenes wouldn't have had the same charge.

Shirley Knight isn't bad but doesn't have the heavy aura of tragedy that role really should have. She doesn't seem like someone who's lost a child. Rip Torn and Ed Begley are electric. Knight was always pretty and fine but her performances seemed to lack an extra gear - just imagine what, say, Joanne Woodward or Gena Rowlands could have done with it.

The ending is dumb. So dumb. That awful pompous bland newspaper editor. Them beating up Chance. But then Chance/Newman and Heavenly/Knight going off together. It's really abrupt too like Brooks was embarassed.

I think the film needed a tragic ending for it to have power. He didn't need to be castrated but he needed to die - he could've come back and heroically died trying to protect Heavely, gets shot by Rip Torn, dies in her arms... that would've worked Because as it is too much of the play is kept for that ending to work. Newman begs Page for a scren test only a few minutes before the final scene. So there's no redemption. No heroism. He's taking what he can.

Documentary review - "The Making of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1970) ***

 Fascinating look at the film - narrated by George Roy Hill mostly, with some voice over from Paul Newman and William Goldman, full of on the set footage. Hill is matter of fact about his decisions and vision- he was a smart guy.

Movie review - "The Color of Money" (1986) **

 Does anyone talk about this film any more? It was a big deal at the time. Newman finally getting an Oscar. Scorsese doing something commercial. Tom Cruise doing something classy. Eric Clapton. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio winning the reviews. You couldn't go near a pool table for a few years there without people flipping around the pool cues like Cruiser.

I was getting sick of Scorcese's needle drops but this has dumb 80s soundtrack-itis. It was dull. So dull.

Good actors. Newman was fine - no one begrudged him an Oscar, though he'd been better in lots of other movies. Mastrantonio is excellent. So too is Cruise.

I guess the characters are interesting. But they just sort of hang around. The one memorable scene is when Newman realises he's been hustled by Forest Whitaker. That was effective.

There's some Scorsese flourishes like zooms and Italian Americans yelling (Cruise, Mastranotonio) - when Newman joins in it's not as fun.

I remember watching this at the cinema when I was a kid and feeling guilty I didn't like it because the reviews told me to like it. I was wrong to feel guilty this simply isn't very good. And they spent so much time on preparing it, too.

Book review - "Ernest Lehman: The Sweet Smell of Success" by John Krampner

 Excellent book. Looks at the short stories, novels, different drafts of scripts. Compares how he improved apparently easy jobs eg West Side Story, Sound of Music. Retrieves Lehman's contribution to Virginia Woolf from the cult of Mike Nichols and to West Side Story from the cult of Arthur Laurents and Steven Sondheim.

Affectionate towards Lehman to a degree but also exasperated. Hypochondriac, night owl, distant father, workaholic, loving husband but not around, tolerant of wife's long affair, devoted carer towards end, became a dad in his eighties, super talented, decent supervisory producer but bad hands on one, terrible director. Skill as novelist left him in 70s apparently, though could still write good essays. Probably retired at right time, I can imagine him getting kicked off Mission Impossible. Fitted in well at classy studios like MGM and Paramount and Fox. Mate of David Brown's. Should have written another original. Should have teamed more with Robert Wise, they collaborated so well together.

Really good work.

Movie review - "Exodus" (1960) *** (warning: spoilers)

Otto Preminger does Leon Uris' best seller in that 1950s/60s style - widescreen, colour, self importance, stars. Dalton Trumbo got screen credit which was gutsy of Preminger. Because Hollywood doesn't make this sort of movie any more its virtues can be more appreciated - particularly the cast (now mostly dead), photography and location work. That and the fact that the issues are still hot -  it's not as though Jews have life much easier.

Eva Marie Saint is an American nurse. Paul Newman a Jewish freedom fighter. Peter Lawford a nasty British officer. Ralph Richardson a nice one. Sal Mineo a heavily traumatised concentration camp survivor. Jill Haworth (a role turned down by Hayley Mills apparently - or, rather, her parents) is a more optimistic camp survivor. George Mahari is another Jewish fighter. J Lee Cobb is Newman's dad, Alexandra Stewart his sister. She doesn't do much, hangs around in shorts - ditto Saint.

Some scenes are very potent - such as Mineo trying to join the Irgun, and an old guy (David Opatashu, playing Newman's brother) sussing out what he really did in the war.

Newman walks around moodily and charismatically. Saint hangs around occasionally dispensing medicine. Haworth is sweet but pretty awful. Support cast generally strong.

Solid set pieces - King David bombing, escape from Acre prison, final attack. Effective moments with Haworth dying rather than Mineo which you would think would happen. John Derek smiles as an Uncle Tom Arab but gets an effective death, strung up with the Star of David etched into it.

It's not as anti British as the book but is still fairly anti Arab, who are in cahoots with Nazis here.

A film for adults, still. Those days are gone.

Play review - "Sweet Bird of Youth" by Tennessee Williams (1959)

 The aging female film star, the ageing beautiful male prostitute, the flowery dialogue. Easy to mock, but Williams writes it so well and with conviction and also underpins it with some first rate drama - he's back in town to get his old girl, whose powerful and scary dad threatens to castrate the man. And it leads up to that finale.

The movie start part, the Princess, is actually a support part really - she's at the beginning then comes back at the end which feels like Williams going "I need to pay off that relationship more".  Once I read that it started as a one act play you can see the seams but it does work very effectively.

Top Ten Imitation James Deans

 1. Michael Parks - played broody enigmatic loner in Bus Riley's Back in Town

2.Paul Newman - took Dean's part in Somebody Up There Likes Me

3. Christopher Jones - very Dean style in films like Wild in the Streets

4. Tab Hunter - under contract to Warners... more a nice young man that Dean's moody people

5. Troy Donahue - soulful man in a series of 60s films at Warners

6. Warren Beatty - discovered by Elia Kazan in a Dean style role

7. Robert Wagner - don't laugh - played Dean role in True Story of Jess James

8. Elvis Presley - occasionally went into Dean territory eg King Creole

9. Nick Adams (not Dennis Hopper) - copied Dean

10. Dean Stockwell - Dean style actor in Compulsion

Movie review - "Quintet" (1979) *1/2

 This begins with a stunning shot of two figures in a snowy landscape but then goes inside to some very unconvincing sets that kept reminding me of Guns on Ice Planet Zero the two part ep of 1978's Battlestar Galactica.

Paul Newman lookis for revenge on the person who killed his pregnant girlfriend - a scene we actually see 30 minutes on. Maybe it would've been better had that been all of screen. 

Ah, that's not the issue. The issue it's confusing. There's this game. Someone is killing the others. Newman is the hero. People get knocked off one by one. Vittorio Gassman is in it. And Fernando Rey. And Bibi Andersson.

No one looks comfortable.

Maybe if this had been contemporary it might've worked?

Movie review - "Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson" (1976) **

 That's right, Robert Altman made two films with Paul Newman. This one has Burt Lancaster too. And Harvey Keitel, Will Sampson, Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Duvall.

It's long. Over two hours. Ambles. Nice visuals, production value. It ambles. Bill puts on a show. Chats. Chats with a woman in his bed. There's Indians. Sitting Bull is stoic.

It shows Bill to be a bit of a braggart and a tool. That was blamed for the film's commercial failure. I don't think it was that - I think it's because the film was dull. Altman wrote the script with Alan Rudolph but they weren't working from a particularly strong source material, I'm guessing.

I was glad it was over. The acting and photography and stuff is fine, it's just dull.

Play review - "Come Back Little Sheba" and "Picnic" by William Inge

 Sex and loneliness in small town Kansas. Sheba is the dog that used to be owned by a middle aged lady (Lola) married to boozy doc. They both get het up about young hot things - a sexy dame and a muscular athlete she's rooting who takes his shirt off. There's a milk man who takes his shirt off - alright already Inge.

Picnic is about a hot stud who comes into town. A middle aged lady paws at him and wants him, a younger girl wants him even though he's no good. It is very well crafted and written with affection. The world is bigger than Sheba. 

Both had just the right amount of sex and empathy for the times. In Sheba the depiction of an abusive marriage is extremely well done - when Doc lets Lola have it. Picnic is also very well crafted.

Both are famed for middle age horny woman but both also have horny young women - I think this was the secret sauce to making a hit of these 50s plays.

Book review - "The Drowning Pool" by Ross MacDonald

 The second Lew Archer novel, I think - filmed with Paul Newman. There's a small town, drinkers, dodgy cops, a gay husband, a matriach, troublesome teen, a chauffer. It's a solid mystery. Archer didn't come alive for me the way Philip Marlowe did - maybe it's me. His philosophising can be interesting.

Movie review - "The Towering Inferno" (1974) **** (warning: spoilers)

 Pure entertainment. Disaster films were mocked at the time but this has so much going for it: genuinely exciting storyline, skilled script by Sterling Silliphant that juggles a lot of balls in the air, confident handling from John Guillermin, decent stunts and effects, and a genuinely starry cast: some B listers sure (Robert Vaughan, Richard Chamberlain, Susan Blakely, Robert Wagner), and camp casting (OJ Simpson) but two genuine former A listers (Fred Astaire, Jennifer Jones) one on the slide (Bill Holden) and three at the top of their game (Newman, McQueen, Dunaway).

Dunaway has the least to do though she looks gorgeous and is good. Wagner has a moving trapped and death scene with his girlfriend. Chamberlain is great fun - I'm surprised Dunaway didn't ask for his part. Newman and McQueen are entertainingly heroic. I did expect Holden to die. Jones' death is a real jolt.

There's a death mother and a cat, but some of it is genuinely moving. The fire starts quite quickly into the action and it's scary in that Newman is on to the problem straight away.

Excellent fun.

Book review - "The Moving Target" by Ross MacDonald (1949)

 The first Lew Archer novel which I read because of the Paul Newman. It's a solid mystery without Chandler's flourishes but tight and well done. I miss William Goldman's humour but the ending was emotional because the relationship between Archer and Arthur was stronger. Archer doesn't talk to his ex in this.

Movie review - "What a Way to Go" (1964) **

This has a cute idea a little bit like Kind Hearts and Coronets  - Shirley MacLaine is a woman who dislikes money, keeps marrying poor men who then become rich and die, leaving her richer and richer.

The film took no chances at the box office, roping in Robert Mitchum, Paul Newman, Dick Van Dyke, Dean Martin and Gene Kelly to play husbands, with Robert Cummings thrown in for good measure.

How well you enjoy this depends on how much you like the stars. I'm not a massive MacLaine fan - Mitchum seemed irritating (sometimes I like him, sometimes he feels genuinely lazy and this was such a time), Dean Martin was... fine, Van Dyke was... fine, Newman was trying to be Funny (in a beard as a French artist). Cummings was fun as a nutty shrink who falls for MacLaine.

For me the best was Gene Kelly, in part because he does a few song and dance numbers - including one with MacLaine who does it terrifically. It made me wish this was a musical - at times it feels as though it was meant to be and had songs cut out or something. Because in those scenes you see the actors really trying as opposed to being a smart arse. That may be unfair but the rest of the movie felt like stars being smart arses - drenched in costumes and production value, pulling faces. But like I say if you adore those actors you might feel differently.

It was directed by J. Lee Thompson who actually made a few comedies in his career, people just didn't remember them. I'm actually surprised this wasn't turned into a stage musical or remade because of the concept.

Book review - "Homework: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years" by Julie Andrews (2019)

No one denies Andrews' status as a Hollywood icon but what should be a fascinating book - a look at the peak of her Hollywood career, from Mary Poppins through to That's Life! - is a hard slog. It covers what should be interesting stuff - the making of Darling Lili, for instance - and manages to make it dull.

I think it was the logistics. There's so much logistics - all her kids, and step kids, and ex, and family, and Blake Edwards' family - and dealing with homes in Switzerland, and Malibu and going on tour. She didn't make that many movies in the 70s but she seems to be always on the move, making TV specials or following Blake Edwards around or performing in concerts. She's forever worried about the kids education or what the kids are up to. It's a wearying book to read.

Andrews doesn't seem like the brightest tool in the shed though her heart is in the right place (she did a lot of charity work for Vietnamese/Cambodian orphans). She seems a fairly uncomplicated person - I could be wrong about this, but her world view seems narrow: she's spent most of her life working and performing and when she made enough to not work as hard she got drawn into this life of domestic minutae.

The book is invaluable however as a portrait of Blake Edwards - charming, charismatic, talented, self centered, selfish, adulterous (it's implied... Andrews only talks of a flirtation with Peter Sellers' wife but then admits Edwards wrote all those scripts about middle aged men tempted into adulterly), manipulative, controlling, drug addicted, boozy, manic depressive. He has a gall bladder attack than turns out to be nothing when Andrews' mother is dying meaning Andrews couldn't be with her - that sort of thing.

Andrews has done a lot of psycho analysis (she meets Edwards by sharing the same analyst) but it doesn't seem to have given her a lot of particular insight - I get the impression she just liked talking about herself (I could be wrong). She talks about her shrink giving her geography lessons and what not to make up for her lack of education - that's a tutor's job! Julie the guy was ripping you off. But then I think Andrews was one of those performers who are susceptible to people pushing her around - which is why she lasted so long with Blake Edwards.

Andrews encounters with famous people are remarkably un-notable - James Garner was nice, Omar Sharif was nice, Paul Newman was nice, Chris Plummer was nice. Rex Harrison was impatient - that's about as juicy as this gets. The one surprise was that she was good mates with Carol Burnett - they should have made a movie together.

Worth readings if you are an Andrews fanatic and/or interested in Blake Edwards.

Aside: I always figured Andrews sabotaged her career in the late 60s with her choices (Star, Darling Lili)... but when you think about it what other musicals could she have been in? Camelot I guess but... Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? Bedknobs and Broomsticks? She would have been tricky to cast in the 70s.