Black History Month: Endless Love (1981)
Wednesday, February 18, 2015 at 11:00PM I know what you're thinking. You're working out some variation of "how perverse to feature a lily white teenage romance for a Black History Month feature!"... and I get it. But let's travel back to 1981 together anyway and I'll explain.
The Italian auteur Franco Zeffirelli had found great success in America directing Romeo and Juliet (1968) which became both a populist hit and an Oscar magnet finishing in the year's top five at the box office and in the Best Picture shortlist. A dozen or so years later Zeffirelli took another stab (pun intended) at the zeitgeist with a similar if much cruder tale of an ill advised tempestuous and horny teenage affair. Endless Love was critically panned (multiple Razzie nominations) though it managed to be a hit if not quite a blockbuster. Its eponymous Best Original Song nominee "Endless Love" by Lionel Richie on the other hand was a monster...
The love duet featuring Diana Ross topped the Billboard Hot 100 charts for two full months before being dislodged by "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)". That popular tune eventually beat it at the Oscars and then both songs lost the Grammy for Record of the Year to another movie-themed pop hit "Bette Davis Eyes". But "Endless Love" was immensely popular, the third biggest selling single of the entire decade and Diana Ross's all time biggest hit... which is saying a lot considering her record sales and classic discography.
Below you can see Diana & Lionel performing the ballad at the Oscars on March 29th, 1982 (which was coincidentally the year that little Nathaniel began to figure out what the Oscars were though though he didn't see this ceremony). Both were one time Oscar nominees at the time - Ross had been nominated for Lady Sings the Blues (1972) -- the first black nominee in the category since Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones (1954) -- and this was the first of Lionel's three nominations. He later won for his White Nights (1985) song "Say You Say Me."
This is a joy... check out Diana's glazed gazing off into the middle distance during Richie's first verse.
I include Endless Love in our Black History post primarily because it's a hugely famous example of something that is so commonplace as to merit no mention at all: the use of African American voices as soundtrack to movies primarily aimed at white audiences. I'm not sure when that began but within another ten years you basically couldn't watch an animated or family movie without an R&B, rap, or hiphop artist doing the theme song over the end credits. For as rough as American History has been on people of color, and despite inequal footing and the industry's early racism, Hollywood, or in general showbiz in the larger sense, right from the start provided opportunities to minorities that allowed many of them to transcend imposed socioeconomic limitations.
Consider Hattie McDaniel's famous paraphrased quote from the 1940s:
I'd rather play a maid and make $700 a week than be a maid and make $7.
And then consider the culture-changing power of the superstars who were just around the corner like Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte. The Original Song category in particular has honored more black talent than any other single category (22 black songwriters have been nominated versus 18 supporting actresses*). Not that things were exactly rosy in the early 80s when Lionel Richie & Diana Ross were both still selling records by the millions. It's absolutely unthinkable now to be reminded of it but it was true: MTV would not show music videos by black artists at first. It took the Michael Jackson "Thriller" phenomenon to change that.
But back to the movie...
Given that this song took on such a life of its own as a adult contemporary wedding standard outside of the movie that shares its name, it's funny to remember that Diana and Lionel, both in their 30s at the time, were singing über romantic lyrics written by Richie to serve a story about a troubled erotic affair between an 15 year old girl and her mentally unhinged possibly violent 17 year old boyfriend.
* If you consider each nomination instance rather than individual nominees (since some people recieve multiple nominations in their careers and some categories, like song, can have multiple honorees for the same nomination), than the top categories in terms of honoring black talent, by far, are these four: 1. Best Actor (20 nominations / 4 wins) 2. Best Original Song (19 nominations / 5 wins) 3. Best Supporting Actress (18 nominations / 6 wins) 4. Best Supporting Actor (17 nominations / 4 wins)
Reader Comments (8)
That song became as insidious as Let it Go. It still gets played at weddings although usually at the request of the parents (or grandparents) of the happy couple.
The "My Heart Will Go On" of it's time.
oh my, that video just makes me so emotional and bewitched!
This was also up against "For Your Eyes Only" which was a Bond song and another huge hit.
My favorite WTF Oscar win for Best Song is "Last Dance" from Thank God it's Friday ('78). Donna Summer and crew took the stage and the audience just did not know what to do.
Martin Hewitt--yummmm.
Nathaniel, thanks for pointing out certain ironies in how black artists have succeeded in spite of institutionalized preconceptions.
or, as best song presenter bette midler described it, "that endless song from the endless movie..."
par -- Bette was so funny that year!
Wow! This was unexpected. I think The Bodyguard is an even better example. I miss Whitney.
Bette Midler presenting this Oscar is one of my favorite Oscar memories...and I wasn't even alive when it happened.