50th Anniversary: Liza Minnelli in "The Sterile Cuckoo"
Tuesday, October 22, 2019 at 3:50PM by Camila Henriques
Pookie Adams is one of a kind. When we first meet her, she’s on her way to college and is the type of quick witted character that could very well be the Adam’s rib to the Amy Sherman-Palladino girls we have loved for the past two decades. With her round glasses and pixie haircut, Liza Minnelli’s Pookie is easy to love in Alan J. Pakula’s The Sterile Cuckoo. As the film turns 50 today (!), it’s magical to witness how Judy and Vincente's offspring always had a sparkle of her own, capable of turning a manic pixie dream girl archetype into a layered character that rightfully earned her that first Oscar nod.
Liza was by no means a newcomer when The Sterile Cuckoo came out. A child of Hollywood, she famously grew up on hotels and movie sets and, at the age of 17, made her debut in an off-Broadway play and did a number of performances alongside mama Garland...
Two years later, she got a Tony Award for “Flora and The Red Menace”. Around that same time, she performed in nightclubs and recorded albums. She was actually a seasoned performer when the film industry caught sight of her wide eyed gaze: her feature film debut came in 1968, and, a year later, she became Pookie Adams.
Cuckoo has the aura of other coming of age and/or /college-y films like Love Story and The Graduate. There’s the uncertainty and the fear, but also a fake self confidence of those who have yet to really experience life. Pookie and Jerry (Wendell Burton) are like two extremes in that sense - she doesn’t want to fit with the “weirdos” (so she says) and he is caught up between everything in his life. The confusion that is characteristic of the whole going-away-to-college life change is framed by the repetitive score by Fred Karlin and his and Dori Previn’s Oscar nominated song “Come Saturday Morning”.
The noise only goes away when Pookie is comfortable enough to show her vulnerability, and here is where Minnelli’s performance goes from a classic “star is born” kind of turn (no pun intended) to one of an actress mature beyond her years and capable of crafting something more substantial than the cutesy/awkward trope of that girl hiding behind her glasses. We can see that with stunning clarity in at least three moments of Pakula’s feature:
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When Pookie and Jerry go to the cemetery. "Sometimes you have to get away from the noise, you know", she says, as the music basically disappears (and then shows up again in a softer vibe). That’s when we see that she uses humor as a shield (‘how old were you when you mother died?’ ‘a minute! my first victim!’) and her no fuss relationship with death.
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Then, when the couple has sex for the first time. Once again, the scene is met with no music, as if to emphasize the self-consciousness of it all. And as our girl tries to break the ice and come in with the funny, we understand she isn’t used to being the pretty girl. The surprise and discomfort in her face as she hears Jerry say her body is beautiful is another moment of brilliance in Liza’s performance. Her eyes take center stage and, even though she tries to hide them with her specs, we can't miss them.
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Finally, the phone call scene. This moment is a showcase of Liza’s talents as a dramatic actress. Four years before wowing the world with her Sally Bowles in Cabaret (a personal favorite of mine and many members of TFE), she doesn’t got for the easy teary eyed Oscar clip - even though that is arguably her most remembered scene in this film -, and, once again, lets her eyes do the talking as we see the need, heartbreak and desperation of a misfit.
When The Sterile Cuckoo and her subsequent Oscar nomination came out, Liza didn’t have her mother to share it with. Judy had died a few months earlier. The film wasn’t all that embraced by the Academy, with just two nods - the second being for the original song by Fred Karlin and Dori Previn -, but the Minnelli nomination was more than a mere “welcome to the club” honor. She was raved from the get go, in film, and on stage, and as a recording artist.
That Oscar year, she went up against another Hollywood child, Jane Fonda (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They), Golden Globe winner Geneviève Bujold (Anne of a Thousand Days), Jean Simmons (The Happy Ending) and eventual winner Maggie Smith (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie). With the exception of Simmons, fifty whole years later we still have four of these nominees, with two of them (Fonda and Smith) working steadily. Isn't that great?
As we all know, Liza wouldn’t sweat that loss to dame Maggie, as Sally Bowles was waiting in the wings. But, even though her work in Fosse’s masterpiece is one the great film performances of all time, it shouldn’t eclipse her turn here as Pookie Adams. If you give The Sterile Cuckoo a chance you'll see that it’s impossible not to fall in love with this girl and her journey of self discovery through heartbreak.
Reader Comments (8)
Liza really is a talent. I wish she has had more opportunities in the last 20 years to show it off. Also, Wendell Burton was such a cutie. The only other thing I saw him in was Fortune and Men's Eyes, and then he seemed to just disappear. It looks like he passed away a couple of years ago.
I know everyone says Fonda or Smith but I would have handed Liza that year's Oscar,she's just too real sometimes as Pookie,My heart was with her from the first moment on that bench.
I was actually rooting for Liza that year -- the telephone scene just knocked me out. Maggie Smith's win was a surprise to most of us; going in, the question seemed to be which second-generation young star would take the statue.
1969 is one of my favorite Oscar years, first because Midnight Cowboy won best picture (and seemed a world away from the Oliver!/Man for All Seasons wins that had just preceded), and second because it brought so much young talent to the fore, many of whom -- Hoffman, Voight, Fonda, Minnelli, Nicholson -- had Oscar wins before a decade had passed.
The Sterile Cuckoo made Liza Minnelli a star. She gives a performance that is exuberant, enthralling.
Minnelli’s mother, Judy Garland, read the screenplay to The Sterile Cuckoo and advised her daughter not to play the role. She warned that perhaps Liza was too drawn to the role of needy Pookie. She may have been right. Minnelli, already a Tony winner, declined the lead in the musical Promises, Promises to be available to director Alan J. Pakula who was chasing Oscar winner Patty Duke to play Pookie. Duke declined ultimately, and Minnelli was cast.
Pakula, directing his first film, spent weeks in rehearsal with Minnelli. He arranged for the actress to spend an evening with college women. Each told her story. When it was Minnelli’s turn, she did not discuss her childhood but shared the back story she has created for Pookie.
For the opening sequence of the film, Pookie who is leaving for college waits at the bus stop with her father. Relatively unknown actor Austin Green is cast for his resemble to Vincente Minnelli. This tip of the hat to the Liza Minnelli’s very public upbringing works. The fact that Judy Garland died at age 47 only weeks before the film’s release contributed to the audience’s desire to shelter the young actress.
The ill-advised romance between college freshmen who meet by chance and then begin an affair that is prompted by Pookie’s overwhelming need to feel loved and the boy’s irrepressible desire to get laid. The comedic elements of the situation scored by a romantic ballad (played a tad too often) blind us to little moments that are meant to let us glimpse the depth of instability in this young woman.
Minnelli’s performance comes into full effect in a much heralded phone call. Filmed in a single shot of over five minutes, the scene is a close up of Pookie in a dark phone closet framed by shadows and shafts of light. In a brilliant piece of set design, the rotary dial phone is oversized. The receiver drawfs Minnelli’s head visually reinforcing Pookie’s odd place in the world. During the scene, Pookie shifts randomly from manipulation, grief, pleading, and sorrow in a moment of heartbreaking realism. Minnelli’s emotions are raw. While Pookie’s desperation leaves the viewer agonizing for the slow unwinding of this young woman that is in the offing, the bravura performance from this young, gifted actress is exhilarating to witness.
For first time viewers - I encountered this movie while young & stoned on weed. Talk about a mind trip! Pookie is so spastic, she literally jumps off the screen. The images (and Pookie’s voice) are mind-altering - swinging on a cemetery gate, sledding down a hill, bursting a pillow at a college party, seeing Pookie in a pointy bra...Even hearing Come Saturday Morning constantly is a brain warp. If certain 60’s films were marketed as ‘good trips’ - this film (to me) is a stoned stunner...
This film is on of my favorites!! I Loved the song "Come Saturday Morning" still play it routinely on my iPod! :-)
The best telephone scene since Luise Rainer’s!
Yes, I do remember this film and I remember liking it a lot. Did anyone else notice that the whole thing looks like it was filmed in the Summer, even the Winter scenes where everything is unnaturally green?