Play review - "After the Fall" (1964) by Arthur Miller

 A recording of the 1964 New York production from Elia Kazan, who directed a character based on him played by Ralph Meeker. It's got Jason Robards and Barbara Loden and Faye Dunaway. Fascinating.

Kazan only liked the Marilyn Monroe stuff. He was right. It's the strongest. The informing friend could have worked - needed to connect him with the Marilyn part, made it a love triangle. The first wife - dull, cheated on - is dull. Ditto the third wife - concentration camp and all. it's wife two, Marilyn, that makes this worth watching.

The making of this play would be a great movie/play. 

Movie review - "Some Like It Hot" (1959) ***** (re-watching)

 Just fun. Sexy. Cynical. Broad. Marilyn worth the hassle. Tony Curtis should've worked with Wilder again.

Movie review - "Let's Make Love" (1960) **

 The dud credit for Marilyn Monroe among her latter movies - this actually had some decent people on it, like Norman Krasna and George Cukor, not to mention marilyn, but it's a vehicle for Yves Montand, who struggles with English.

I don't like this movie. Don't believe Yves Montand as a millionaire, don't enjoy him, or his deception - a Frenchman in America is fish out of water enough. In Norman Krasna's defence he said he wrote the script for someone like Charlton Heston or Gregory Peck. There's no sense of Montand's world - Wilfrid Hyde White and Tony Randall don't feel like they come from it.

It's not a bad idea but there's not much development. No sense of why doing this deception will help make him a better person. Or why he likes Marilyn. Montand doesn't deserve his money.

I remember the awkwardness of scenes like a gag writer attacking Montand. 

It has studio production values, and Marilyn, who clearly doesn't want to be there but it the best thing about it. There's novelty of an off Broadway musical but too much Frankie Vaughan.  

The film is packed with people having an off day - Montand, Monroe, Krasna, Cukor. 

Maybe it would've worked had Montand be surrounded by French and it had been about the French falling in love with America. That would've worked. 

Movie review - "The Stripper" (1963) **

 William Inge's play wasn't perfect but could have made a decent film in the right hands. On paper this had the appropriate team - Jerry Wald, Franklin Schaffner - but it makes many key mistakes.

- Setting it in present day sees loss of a great deal of atmosphere. This needed some sort of location work.

- Miscast stars. Joanne Woodward too smart Not sexy enough. Sorry but she's not. Too classy. Needed low brow and sexy like Kim Novak or intended star Marilyn Monroe or Ava Gardner. Smeone wh'd been arond block.

- Richard Beymer not up to it. Poor Richard Beymer. He tries. He just can't do it. There's no sexual charge. Pat Boone, asked to play the role, would have at least brought clean cut vibes. Having said that Beymer doens't wreck it as much as Woodward.

- A lot of it is just dumb. Dumb dialogue. Best bits are when it follows the play.

 

Movie review - "Frankie Vaughan The Heart of a Man" (2008) ***

 Not the feature with that name starring Vaughan but a documentary about the singer-actor. I mostly know him from Let's Make Love where he has a weird grin and creepy vibe; he made a few more films in England, mostly with Anna Neagle, and had.a lot of hits. 

It's a very positive depiction - I assume it's true. Loving husband and family man, gave a lot of money to charity, easy to work with, turned down a chance to shag Marilyn Monroe, tried to stop knife fighting in Scotland. 

Talking heads include Tim Rice, Val Doonican and Vera Lynn. 

Top Ten Three Girl Movies

 (I'm also including ones with four girls)

1) Three on a Match

2) How to Marry a Millionaire

3) Where the Boys Are

4) The Student Nurses

5) Summer School Teachers

6) Valley of the Dolls

7) Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

8) Hollywood Boulevard

9) Night Call Nurses

10) 9 to Five

Donald O'Connor Top Ten

 Let's see if I can do it...

1) Singing in the Rain (1952) - easy choice.

2) The Milkman (1950) - fun comedy with O'Connor teaming well with Jimmy Durante.

3) Feudin, Fussin and Fighting (1949) - O'Connor meets up with Percy Kilbridge/Marjorie Main before they went off to their franchises - a joyous time.

4) The Buster Keaton Story (1957) - look, this isn't a good movie and it killed O'Connor's movie star career but he's very good and it's interesting.

5) Call Me Madam (1953).- first rate musical.

6) Anything Goes (1956) - not highly regarded and undercast female leads but a lot of talent and joy.

7) Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950) - shenanigans out west sort of a musical Westerner and entertaining.

8) There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) - ah, I know its flaws but it has Marilyn singing 'Heatwave'.

9) Francis Covers the Big Town (1953) - I'll limit myself to one Francis and this 'll be it.

10) Bowery to Broadway (1944) - an all star Universal musical so the talent is B level but it's entertaining.

Marilyn Monroe Top Ten

 Not many films but anyway

1) Some Like It Hot (1959) - easy choice, so perfect... imagine Mitzi Gaynr in this. No thanks.

2) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) - again, easy choice - shame she was never reteamed with Russell.

3) How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) - glorious fun. Steals movie. 

4) Bus Stop (1956) - I recall Don Murray being creepy and Marilyn being great.

5) All About Eve (1951) - one scene but a great one.

6) The Misfits (1961) - flawed, but marvelous

7) Niagara (1953) - she's probably miscast but it's a good movie.

8) There's No Business Like Show Business (1954) - hokey story but those song and dance numbers!

9) The Seven Year Itch (1955) - icon.

10) Don't Bother to Knock (1952) - haven't seen this in ages just throwing it in there.

Movie review - "Blonde" (2022) **1/2

I loved how the film got people arguing about a movie again, as in it's the foyer of a film festival. The music is divine. The photography. Many of the images have stayed with me. It's long. Don't think it needed to be. It makes the same point again and again - she was mistreated by men. And her crazy mother.

People say it's made up. Well, a lot of it could've happened. Joe di Maggio did beat her. Zanuck could've raped her. She could've had a fling with JFK.  You didn't head the head job scene, I don't think. I know why it was there. I just didn't think it didn't need to be.

It was a slog at times, it was hard at times. I get why people don't like it. But it stimulated me.

Ana de Armas is terrific.

Movie review - "Seven Year Itch" (1955) ***

 A one-joke film - man fantasises about cheating on his wife - but some of the variations on the joke are very funny, and Marilyn Monroe is incandescent. You'll see a lot of Tom Ewell - he's in most scenes - as the day dreaming wannabe Don Draper. Ewell works here - gumby face, self delusion... Jack Lemmon would've been too young, James Stewart wouldn't have been right.

Evelyn Keyes is his wife and Sonny Tufts not bad as the imagined love rival. Good on Sonny Tufts for being in a hit. It's Marilyn's film though.

Movie review - "Niagara" (1953) **** (warning: spoilers)

 One of the best films Charles Brackett ever made - watching his post-Billy Wilder output I think he benefited from working on tougher, pulpier material where his good taste and class elevated things, as opposed to comedy, where it dragged the material down.

This uses CinemaScope for good instead of evil - the Niagara falls setting works a treat and the photography is spectacular. Marilyn Monroe has star power to burn even if it is to see her play a bad girl (a rare lead where this was the case - her first two leads for Fox were bad girls, this and Don't Bother to Knock).

There's some terrific dialogue - "to wear a dress like that you've got to start laying plans when you're right" - and a decent story, plus Monroe's charisma, excellent work from Joseph Cotten as the traumatised sap married to Monroe, and Jean Peters and Casey Adams very engaging as a normal couple on honeymoon at Niagara.

The film does lose a bit of steam in the last half hour, after Monroe's character is killed.

Play review - "After the Fall" by Arthur Miller

 Controversial play - thought to be mean about Marilyn Monroe. Maybe it is a little, or too soft on the Miller character, but there is a lot of compassion and the character is terrific - messed up, insecure, confused. Not entirely smoothly shapen by constantly interesting.

Movie review - "There's No Business Like Show Business" (1954) **1/2 (re-watching)

 Not really a good movie but it's packed with legends: Ethel Merman, singing the title tune, and Marilyn Monroe, and now time has passed you could include Dan Dailey, Mitzi Gaynor, Donald O'Connor, and Johnnie Ray. There's Irving Berlin songs, Marilyn Monroe singing 'Heatwave" in a skimpy outfit, a love of old performers, a wonky story, but hey... they don't make 'em like this any more.

Movie review - "The Misfits" (1961) ***1/2

Legendary assembling of, well, legends - John Huston, Arthur Miller, Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift... even Eli Wallach and Thelma Ritter in their own more sensible way. Imagine the talk around that commissary.

Miller writes it like a play - there's entrances and exits - but it is carried off well, long dialogue scenes, much talk about people we don't see. It still works, because Huston has cast such superb actors.

Marilyn is heartbreakingly good - a superb part, she's smart, beaten down by life, warm.  Gable is terrific too as the uncomplicated but melancholic cowboy who has done a lot of living. Clift rounds out the trifecta. Of course Wallach and Ritter are fine.

I didn't realise that Wallach's part was so big - he's a love rival for Monroe. Maybe his part could've been blended with Clift's.

It's moving seeing these people who are about to die soon pal around. It's a hang out movie - like The Sun Also Rises should have been. 

I will admit I felt it went too long. It needed maybe a half hour cut out or something.

Book review - "Screewriter, the Life and Times of Nunnally Johnson" by Thomas Stempel

A biography of Nunnally Johnson? Sure, why not? It helps that Stempel is a pleasant writer, who has done a number of illuminating book on screenwriting.

Johnson occupies a curious place in American film history - I'm not sure how well he is remembered. Possibly he was better known say 40 years ago when his films would have been more widely seen on television.

He was a journalist and short story writer who went to Hollywood, as so many of them did at that time (Charle Brackett, Ben Hecht etc). Like many of them he sometimes had a reputation of someone who sold out their talent - a trope which Stempel rightly mocks. Did we really lose so much from Johnson giving up his stories of small town life in Georgia for Hollywood screenplays?

It took him a little while to get going, but what made him thrive was working for Darryl F. Zanuck at the new Twentieth Century Pictures, which became 20th Century Fox. Johnson became one of Zanuck's gun screenwriters, along with Philip Dunne and Lamar Trotti. Like he eventually moved his way up to producing, more out of boredom than anything else. Like Dunne he became a director as well who isn't remembered particularly fondly - though I feel his reputation is slightly higher than Dunne's because he made Three Faces of Eve with Joanne Woodward.

He did leave Zanuck for a period, working for Bill Goetz at International Pictures, but didn't do particularly well and returned to Zanuck. He eventually retired in 1970.

It was an extremely good career, a lot of classics: House of Rothschild, Jesse James, The Grapes of Wrath, Roxie Hart, The Gunfighter, The Desert Fox, How to Marry a Millionaire. He kept relevant up until the end - in the 1960s his credits included popular James Stewart comedies like Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation (with Fabian), as well as The Dirty Dozen and Flaming Star. He tried Broadway a few times and it didn't work but there's no shame in that.

He seems to have been a nice man, gentlemanly, perhaps a little fond of the bottle, very dedicated to work. The book hints his third wife - the marriage that lasted - wasn't perhaps entirely happy giving up her acting career.

Stempel doesn't touch on some of the more racist aspects of Johnson's work such as the depiction of blacks in The Prisoner of Shark Island. He is very strong otherwise on analysing Johnson's scripts, particularly the man's interest in writing about marriage and having married heroes.

A very interesting book.

Script review - "Some Like It Hot" by Billy Wilder and IAL Diamond

Such great fun. You remember the visuals of this film - Marilyn Monroe and her ukelele, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in drag, but they leap off the brilliant scaffolding of the script. It has a fantastic setting of the late 1920s - gangster, prohibition, St Valentine's Day Massacre. The version of the script I read didn't actually specify "sequences" but you can see Wilder using a sequence method
A - set up of the two leads seeing a murder and fleeing to Miami as girls
B - on the train, meeting Sugar, finding out about her
C - arriving in Florida, Osgood falls for Jerry, Joe starts to pursue Sugar
D - extended sequence of Joe pretending to be millionaire seducing Sugar while Jerry dances with Osgood
E -the guys decide to leave as the gangsters turn up.

The first four acts are so strong it was a surprise (and didn't really matter) that Wilder muffs the last one - it's a bit convenient the gangsters are having a convention at that hotel, and that another gangster wants to kill Spats. Why make this decision? Why not just have some gangster identify them and tell Spats, and have Spats killed while trying to get the boys?

But like I say it doesn't really matter... the situations are strong and the jokes clever. Wilder/Diamond incorporate things that pay off beautifully - like Osgood having a yacht, and giving Jerry and engagement present which Joe gives to sugar. I love the pop culture references like "I've got Rudy Vallee records".

The character of Sugar is a real dimwit - I give her and Joe maybe a month before he betrays her. But at least she acts consistently. Osgood and Jerry make a much better couple. The sexual harrasment and other things women have to endure, and their camaraderie, is very well depicted. A great read.

Movie review - "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953) ****

It terms of sheer fun, female bonding and high spirits this musical remains hard to beat - Jane Russell became famous for her chest, so assiduously promoted by Howard Hughes, but when she died everyone was posting clips from this film on Facebook, not The Outlaw. She's perfectly teamed with Marilyn Monroe as the gold digging Lorelei Lee. Russell's out for sex, Marilyn's out for diamonds, both care deeply for each other. Is it the best female friendship depicted in a movie? I can't think of a better one. (I probably will the minute I post this.)

It's full of terrific numbers - "Two Girls from Little Rock", "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend". It feels very much like a filmed Broadway show - I haven't seen the original production, but much of the plot just smells of Broadway - most of the action takes place on an ocean liner and in Paris, the thrust of the actual plot concerns a missing tiara, there's very musical "bits" like the two girls being down and out at a Parisian cafe and talks on a shipboard galley at night.

The biggest debit is Elliot Reid's Malone. Tom Noonan's nerdy millionaire is fine - he's actually perfectly cast - but was there no one in Hollywood better than Reid to play Russell's love interest? The part doesn't involve singing or dancing or even that much acting - all you have to do is be handsome and virile, and Reid is hilariously inept. It doesn't really matter because the crux of the film is Monroe and Russell - it's just weird casting from Howard Hawks, that's all.

There's moments of pure high camp, such as Russell singing "Is There Anyone Here for Love" while men prance around in skin coloured short-shorts. (What was Hawks thinking?) "Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend" is done very well, both by Monroe and Russell. I love the gendarmes clapping along to Russell in the courtroom.

One thing I noticed on a recent viewing was that Lorelei really is quite mercenary. I mean, I get she was outwardly meant to be but at the end always thought that she would settle down and take good care of Noonan. But although she's engaged she's barely five seconds on the ship when she's seeking out other men, and trying to get diamonds off Charles Coburn. What's she planning on doing to get those diamonds? She's going to put out, isn't she? So surely even after she's married she's going to be susceptible to the lure of diamonds in exchange for favours?

Book review - "Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept the Secrets" by James Spada (1991)

Peter Lawford is best remembered for his association with other people rather than anything he did on his own terms: supporting various starlets as a contract player for MGM, marrying JFK's sister, being friends with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jnr which made him part of the Rat Pack, talking to Marilyn Monroe the night she died. Nonetheless he lived a rich and fascinating life and it's well recounted by Spada.

It's a gossipy-feeling account but is also well footed and seems to have been thoroughly researched. Lawford came from an unstable, if well connected home: mum married well but cheated on his step dad with a distinguished soldier (she hated sex but wanted to upscale) resulting in a scandalous divorce case; mum was going to kill herself during labour it was so painful; mum and dad jet-setted around the world in the 1930s on inherited money; beautiful young boy Peter was molested by men and women from a young age. He did some early acting work sporadically as a child, including in Lord Jeff, but only got really serious about it when the family was stuck in the USA during World War Two; Lawford attracted the attention of agent Sue Carol (better remembered today as Alan Ladd's wife), and picked up various bit parts - a notable one in A Yank at Eton - before getting a contract with MGM.

Hollywood was lacking in leading men because of the war and Lawford was 4F because of an arm injury (he cut it badly in a childhood accident); he had a high pitched voice and wasn't much of an actor but he was handsome and had a healthy physique (honed from much mucking around on the beach). He leapt to kind-of stardom in The White Cliffs of Dover and found a niche for himself supporting bigger names on the MGM lot - Lassie, June Allyson, Fred Asatire, Esther Williams, Kathryn Grayson, Elizabeth Taylor. MGM rarely entrusted Lawford with a flat out lead role - and they were completely right because when they did the results underwhelmed eg Kangaroo (shot in Australia for 20th Century Fox), The Hour of 13, Rogue's March. Lawford's career was hit with a double whammy - the decline in movie attendance, the replacement of Louise B Mayer with Dore Schary at MGM - and was let go by the studio. He went into TV and had two decent-ish runs with Dear Phoebe and The Thin Man but what really saved him was marrying Pat Kennedy. This kept him in the nation's eye, especially after JFK was elected, and helped him become best mates with Frank Sinatra and part of the Rat Pack.

Lawford did offer JFK some genuine help in terms of media training and Hollywood connections. But when the Kennedys distanced themselves from Sinatra in 1962 Lawford was kicked out of the Rat Pack (only Sammy Davis Jnr remained loyal) and when he divorced Pat a few years later the family kicked him to the curb as well.

The last decade and a bit of Lawford's life is depressing reading - alcoholism, drug addiction (particularly cocaine), financial troubles (he spent money hand over fist), marital troubles. He remained handsome and charming and had no trouble getting female attention right up to the end of his life - although the relationships didn't last, mainly due to his drug addiction and taste for kinky sex (he preferred oral, would like a bit of S & M and a girl to join in, and was probably bisexual too - Spada doesn't hide anything!).

People interviewed in the book frequently refer to Lawford's charm and likeability, and he must have had something to have friends to were loyal for a long time, who managed to charm the Kennedys and  executives for many years. But to be honest he was a bit of a drip - a poor actor who had some good moments and was obviously professional but who never pushed himself; a bit of a dimwit; a poor financial manager, and a worse career manager; a crybaby on the topic of the Kennedys; a poor husband and father.

Quite a few things I didn't know. His mum had a relationship with a much younger lover/friend/something which was reportedly the inspiration for Harold and Maude. He had a production company which made The Patty Duke Show. He was supposedly considered for James Bond (another one!).

Book review - "Hawks on Hawks" ed Joseph McBride

Do people still care about Howard Hawks any more? Once upon a time he was right up there on the auteur tree, along with John Ford and Hitchcock. He never quite enjoyed the high brow acclaim of either of those but was always respected - his films perhaps enjoyed more for sheer enjoyment's sake.

This is a highly entertaining collection of interviews with the great man where he reminisces about the films and espouses his philosophy. Some of it feels like typical exaggeration - everything was his idea, he takes credit for a lot of the writing, stock Hollywood stuff - but other feels fresh and true: the importance of getting bad scenes over and done with quickly, how to cast someone interesting and different, freshness in writing, the necessary of a good story.

He slags off Rio Lobo and Jennifer O'Neill (says she got too big for her boots), has some interesting things to say about discovering Lauren Bacall, chats a lot about the movie he hoped to make in the 70s with Starsky and Hutch, wonders (as everyone does) why Paul Prentiss didn't become a big star, doesn't mention The Thing, is candid-ish about his less successful pics (The Land of the Pharoahs, Redline 5000), loves Wayne, Grant, Cagney and Bogart. It's a shame Hawks never wrote a memoir but this is great to have anyway - we're lucky to have it.

Movie review - "Goodbye Charlie" (1964) **

Was Paul Thomas Anderson inspired by this film when making Boogie Nights? It opens with a long tracking shot at a wild party which results in a middle aged man getting annoyed that his wife is having it off with a younger hunk, taking out his gun and shooting at the guy. Stranger things have happened.

That was one of several surprisingly interesting things about this movie, which is little remembered today. That's probably because people dismiss it as a standard 60s sex comedy - it was based on a play by George Axelrod, stars Tony Curtis, has an animated credit sequence and Andre Previn score, Walter Matthau is in support cast etc. But there's more to it than that.

You never really hear about it in discussions of queer cinema, but the premise is really bold - a womanising man is killed and reincarnated as a pretty woman (Debbie Reynolds), who then visits the dead man's best male friend (Tony Curtis). Reynolds seems to fall for Curtis and vice versa; Reynolds tries to blackmail some of "her" exes and gets involved in dealing with "her" murderer (Matthau); she also romances a millionaire (Pat Boone).

That's a fairly racy storyline. The action has been rendered sexless by the casting of Debbie Reynolds in the lead - she gives a professional "get-in-there-and-try" performance, which can't mask the fact she's miscast, and out of her league, never convincing as a former man, or rogue. (It's fascinating to imagine what Marilyn Monroe, originally announced as star, would have done with the material.)

Curtis doesn't do much either, basically playing the straight part, reacting to things. Matthau hams it up outrageously and it's fun to see Ellen Burstyn in an early role - though not as fun as it is seeing Pat Boone romance a former guy. Good old Christian Pat, sitting in a car and trying to make out with Reynolds, even proposing marriage - it's bizzare.

Entertainment wise the movie is too long for a farce (it's almost two hours), and lacks decent story development - the set up has so much potential but the writers don't do anything with it. Censorship would have been a big reason for this, but the lack of imagination didn't help. 

Vincente Minnelli wasn't the best director of this kind of thing either, although the production value is impressive.