Billy Dee Williams was present at a screening of Lady Sings the Blues for a Q&A as part of a tribute to him at the TCM Film Festival.It wouldn’t be a trip to the TCM Film Festival if I didn’t catch some of the great romances of yesteryear.
In particular, the enemies to lovers romantic comedy troupe was alive and well. Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner provides the foundation for this trope. Decades later, Doris Day and Rock Hudson would use this dynamic to great success in many collaborations, including the bonkers comedy Send Me No Flowers. Romance isn’t all fun and games though. The Billie Holliday biopic Lady Sings the Blues borrows less from the biopic genre and focuses more on the troubled relationship between Holliday (Diana Ross) and Louis McKay (Billy Dee Williams, an honoree at this year’s festival).
Did all these pairs sell us on their celluloid love? Find out after the jump...
THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940) Ernst Lubitsch
People write about “The Lubitsch Touch” quite a bit, referring to the special sauce that makes an Ernst Lubitsch film work. The Shop Around The Corner has that touch all over it. Every frame of this charming and affecting romantic comedy sparkles with whimsey, pain, love and loss. It’s all borne out of its characters' unwavering desire for love and respect, in more ways than one.
It all takes place in a leather goods shop in Budapest called Matuschek and Company. Alfred Kralik (Jimmy Stewart) is the top salesman and a favorite employee of the shop’s owner, Mr. Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan). Things seem to be going well for Alfred, who expects to get promoted. He confides in his work colleague, a genial family man named Pirovitch (Felix Bressart) that he has been exchanging letters with a mysterious girl who put an ad in the paper that she wanted to talk about literature. The two know nothing about each other, except for their book tastes and the intimate musings of love they have traded via snail mail.
Instead of a meet-cute, we get a meet-hate when Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) enters the shop. She’s looking for a job and impresses Matuschek when she’s able to sell a singing cigar box that Alfred thinks could never sell. Klara gets the job and instantly becomes work rivals with Alfred. Even by today’s standards, the jabs between Klara and Alfred are both appropriately mean and infuriating, while also tinged with just the right sexual avarice and attraction. It’s clear that beneath all that hate is the desire to be with one another thanks to the deft acting and chemistry of Stewart and Sullavan.
As the letters continue to trade back and forth, the two writers decide that they should meet. The fateful day coincides with Alfred’s firing after a misunderstanding. Depressed and wandering around Budapest, Alfred realizes the girl of his dreams is Klara, waiting there with Tolstoy and a red carnation. Alfred doesn’t reveal to Klara that he is her date and the two continue on with their animous relationship, Klara devastated that her shot at love may be gone. Even knowing the broad strokes of the film, it’s really astounding how many emotional threads The Shop Around the Corner weaves, while still delivering an impactful and engrossing central love story. Much of the second and third act is driven by its central characters' complicated mental health journey. Alfred is depressed after losing his job, while Klara struggles to get out of bed following what she sees as a rejection. The characters may be in the same room together, but they’re on different mental journeys, resulting in really interesting points of missed connections and some sparkling, yet heartfelt dialogue.
There’s so much more to the movie beyond the central romance. The Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan, looms over the film as the hard, yet benevolent puppeteer behind the scenes. While the central lovers try and find their way to each other, Matuschek must wrestle with the potential that his love may be leaving him, as he suspects his wife is having an affair. It would be so easy for him to be painted as an angry, scorned man but instead Morgan brings forth his character’s sadness. We are equally as invested in Matuschek’s struggle to find the beauty in life and find love among those in the shop.
Seeing this for the first time made me appreciate its place in pop culture even more. Remakes like You’ve Got Mail are able to make their own mark on the film’s central hidden lovers/enemies to lovers story because the bones of the film’s structure are so strong. What can’t be replicated are the details. Every single character gets a defined personality and arc. Errand boy Pepi Katona (William Tracy) is more than just a plucky side kick to Alfred. He’s an ambitious person whose desperate to be taken seriously. This informs choices that make him central to the plot. Joseph Schlidkraut is delightfully vain and sneaky as the duplicitous salesperson Ferencz Vadas, making for an expert villain.
The Shop Around the Corner is a classic not just because it’s a template of so many stories we love today. It endures because of its deep understanding of the human condition and our longing for love. As funny and as sweet as the film is, the sadness and longing on display is what’s novel. With a detailed and intoxicating world, I just know I’m going to be returning to Matuschek and Company many times for years to come. There’s nothing like discovering a new favorite. A
SEND ME NO FLOWERS (1964) Norman Jewison
There’s nothing as comforting as a strong, proven star pairing. With Doris Day and Rock Hudson, you know exactly what you’re going to get - in a good way. The two stars have an effortless charm, selling the love behind each barb they toss at one another. Their movies are often set in a candy colored fake world, but their lived in relationship hits on something very interesting and true. The people who love us the most are also the ones that get under our skins. There’s a tenderness and familiarity the two stars have is present in all their pairings, but feels deeper and more fascinating the third time around in Norman Jewison’s Send Me No Flowers.
Like all great comedies, the weekend of madness we watch all happens because of a miscommunication. This is not a miscommunication between lovers or friends, but between a more sacred union - a man and his doctor. Hypochondriac George (Rock Hudson) decides to pay his doctor (Edward Andrews) yet another visit after a bit of indigestion he mistakes for something more serious. While out of the room, he mishears another patient’s fatal diagnosis and believes he has just a couple weeks before his heart will give out. What is a man to do as he prepares to kick the bucket? Set his wife up with another man.
George worries that his wife, Judy (Doris Day), will not be able to take care of herself after his death because she’s bad at math and has young men hitting on her (honestly, a serve). So he and his best friend, Arnold (Tony Randall), search high and low for a man that will take good care of Judy once George passes. The main complication - Judy doesn’t know George is dying and instead sees his weird behavior as signs of a potential affair.
It’s hard not to draw gay undertones from this movie, especially knowing that Rock Hudson was living a closeted life at the time. Yet, that’s what’s weirdly comforting and transgressive about this film. Hudson and Day, though married in the film, are coded as this lavender marriage. He has his eyes on men and the two live happily in a relationship that feels no less close than a marriage, but more platonic than anything. The plot not only calls for Hudson to be “searching” for the right man, but also goes out of its way to paint a really loving relationship between him and Arnold. Upon hearing that George is dying, Arnold starts hitting the booze hard, unwilling to face the fact that his good friend is dying. Late in the second act, George is thrown out of the house by Judy and is forced to shack up in Arnold’s house… in the same bed. These winks and nudges never punish or mock George or Arnold for how close they are or where their eyes wander. In many ways, the movie seems to nudge us to consider how natural the two are together, something wild and interesting for the time.
As good as the chemistry is between Rock Hudson and Doris Day, the magic of their films go beyond their performances. Send Me No Flowers has all the iconography that makes their screwball comedy shine. Hudson and Day play high drama, with Hudson selling the fantasy that he’s dying and Day wondering if she’s being cheated on. Yet, the color coated production design and the xylophone reaction notes all keep the audience on board for laughs. Director Norman Jewison completely understands and reveres the genre he is stepping into, demonstrating early skills at staging comedy. Every prop has a payoff and the world feels completely built out and defined. Plus, every character gets large moments to shine, down to the day players. One of the more outlandish and fun moments of the film belongs to Paul Lynde as an overly excited funeral home owner.
Does Send Me No Flowers rank among the greatest comedies of all time? No. Yet, it’s an incredibly fun, satisfying watch that only becomes more interesting when contextualizing in the careers of Hudson and Day. B
LADY SINGS THE BLUES (1972) Sidney J. Furie
Casting a music legend and superstar like Diana Ross is like gambling at a high roller table. You can strike magic, or you can watch a performer’s real life persona take over any character they’re trying to portray. With Lady Sings the Blues, the former is true. Diana Ross gives a one of a kind performance - one that shows its work and makes you marvel at it. Ross is a grand dame, a legendary diva, THE Supreme. As Billie Holliday, she’s something else. She’s never seemed smaller, more unpredictable or more of a live wire. Ross’ transformation is a marvel, which is why it’s so interesting that the movie around her shoe horns her raw portrayal of a difficult legend into an effecting, yet standard, romance that didn’t quite happen.
When we meet Billie Holliday, at that point Eleanora Fagan, she’s a wiry young girl working for a madam and listening to records every spare moment she gets. When we jump forward in time, Eleanora is turning tricks, but ready for something bigger and better. She bets on herself and takes herself to a local singing joint. Vouched for by the piano player (Richard Pryor), she auditions and earns herself a performing spot. Only later does she understand there’s a… very sexual way the women pick up their tips. Ross makes herself seem small and meek in the face of this scarier world, her voice the only thing that can propel her strength. It’s a really interesting way she transforms herself and brings us into this new creation and character she’s built. It’s here that she gets her start and eventually earns her first touring gig, which introduces her to many more ears, but also a darker view of the south and the temptation of drugs.
The film frames Holliday’s roller coaster journey with drugs and singing through her romance with Louis McKay (Billy Dee Williams), a loosely defined “businessman” who’s Billie’s first benefactor. Ross and Williams have incredible chemistry and Williams lights up the screen as a matinee idol. Yet, his character is never defined well enough to make for an interesting romance. By the end of the film, he slips into Supportive Wife (TM) and Worried Wife On The Phone (TM) territory.
Here’s where the cliches go from benign to malignant. There’s a charming, star is born fable about a woman who works at a brothel using her talent to pick herself up out of poverty, only to find herself at the mercy of a different force of power trying to exploit her talents. As Holliday turns to drugs, the only question the movie seems interested in is “can Billie sing again? Can she play at Carnegie Hall?” What about her activism? One of the most powerful scenes finds Holliday accidentally happening upon a lynching, which becomes the inspiration for her controversial song, “Strange Fruit.” In this moment and in a subsequent scene when the bus is swarmed by the KKK, Ross taps into a poignant Kay to the character of Billie Holliday. How can one not go mad when confronted with the extreme violence of racist individuals? How can someone internalize the hate behind those actions and then go on to perform for those same people? As Billie cries and reacts, Ross uses her talents as a performer to make us feel the dread and sadness that Billie feels, making us too want to cry out with her. B-
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