A Year with Kate: The Rainmaker (1956)

 Episode 31 of 52: In which Katharine Hepburn lets her hair down and rolls in the hay with Burt Lancaster.

 It makes a certain kind of sense that The Rainmaker, which is the last of Kate’s Spinster Films, should be the most archetypal of this phase of her career. N. Richard Nash’s screenplay about a silver-tongued conman (Burt Lancaster) who promises water to a town and love to an old maid (Kate) works almost as a genre checklist: Lonely Single Woman? Check. Scenes establishing that most folks find her plain? Check. Handsome outsider who sees the beauty in her? Check. Life affirming rendezvous? Check. Throw in a metaphor about the drought-stricken land and Lizzie’s lovelorn heart, and you have The Rainmaker.

Make no mistake, Lancaster and Hepburn elevate The Rainmaker. Their acting styles clash--Kate’s Old Hollywood manner butts against Lancaster’s charismatic, physical style (which he’d later hone for the incredible Elmer Gantry). Apparently, the two actors disagreed on the set as well. As a result, though both are compelling, they’re never connected in their scenes together. This works in the film’s favor. It’s completely believable that Starbuck and Lizzie are two people who can love each other for a night, but don’t like each other enough to truly fall in love for good. Their dreams are too different; they don't see each other for who they really are.

The best thing about having a film as unsubtle as The Rainmaker is that it relies heavily on its stars, both in acting talent and in star image. Much of this series has been devoted to identifying, attempting to dissect, and--as often as not--flat out worshipping Katharine Hepburn’s star qualities. We’ve touched on everything from Kate’s beauty to her tomboyishness to her charisma and comedic chops, but we’ve neglected one physical trait which was as defining to later Kate as her famous cheekbones: her hair. More specifically, this is about Katharine Hepburn’s hairography, in the key scenes where she unwound the topknot and let it all hang loose.

My official Katharine Hepburn Hair Theory after the jump

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Happy Centenial, Burt Lancaster!

Anne Marie here to celebrate a Hollywood icon on his 100th birthday.

November 2nd is the centennial of that charismatic giant of an actor, Burt Lancaster. He had Clark Gable's charisma, Cary Grant's charm, The Grin, a mop of hair that couldn't be tamed, and a voice that dripped sweetness from every syllable. With all of these admirable qualities, Lancaster could have settled into a career as a leading man, however he chose to pursue challenging roles and a career directing and producing as well. I first saw him in The Rainmaker starring opposite Katharine Hepburn. It takes something special to tear my attention away from Kate The Great, but the minute Lancaster appeared I was starstruck.

But if we're going to talk about iconic Lancaster performances, we have to start here:

While this particularly sexy kiss is what we all remember the film for, it's worth mentioning that Lancaster's also very good in the film. As Sgt. Warden, Lancaster balances military bravado, empathy for his soldiers, passion, vulnerability, and steeliness on his well-muscled shoulders. He was rightfully nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. [Trivia Note: From Here To Eternity is tied with 8 other pictures for "most acting nominations from one film" with 5 (!) an achievement that is now extremely rare, ending with Network (1976)] 

Lancaster wouldn't win the gold until Elmer Gantry in 1960...

Elmer Gantry is a role tailor-made for Lancaster's particular brand of charm. Gantry is a con man who starts starts evangelizing at revivals because he wants to get into the habit of Sister Sharon (Jean Simmons). Gantry is a bad man preaching the Good Book. But my goodness, I could listen to him read the phone book! It's impossible not to root for him or fall for him. Lancaster roars and cajoles and cries while he's preaching, but his quiet moments are equally powerful. One such quiet scene is between Gantry and a prostitute played by future Partridge Family matriarch Shirley Jones. Lancaster portrays Gantry's powerful personality with an equally potent physicality, so when the wordsmith is temporarily broken, you can see it in his shoulders as well as his eyes. Elmer Gantry is more a whirlwind than a simple performance.

Burt Lancaster's career was as long as it was diverse. He played pirates, preachers, thugs, Nazis, conmen, convicts, and cowboys. One thing's certain: he was definitely never dull. Happy Birthday, Burt!

What's your favorite Burt Lancaster movie?

But soft! What link through yonder blogpost breaks?

Just Jared it's official: Aishwarya Rai, will finally pass her gorgeous genes on. She and star hubbt Abhishek Bachchan are expecting their first child.
I Need My Fix Ian McShane joins the cast of Snow White and the Hunstmen as the leader of the dwarves. Unless they've TOTALLY changed the story, I'm confused. Isn't he contractually obligated to only play evil characters?
Jewish Journal talks to James Franco about his new film The Broken Tower in which he plays gay poet Hart Crane. Good interview.
The Wrap interviews John Slattery on his fascinating Mad Men character Roger Sterling. Can he finally win the Emmy this year?
La Daily Musto [NSFW] claims these are Burt Lancaster nudes unveiled but it's hard to trust any nude photos in the age of photoshop.
Playbill Angela Bassett coming to Broadway with Samuel L Jackson for Mountaintop.

Booth & Steinfeld (maybe they're going for a brother/sister vibe this time?)Finally... In case you haven't heard it's contractual by law that every generation get their own Romeo and Juliet. Or thereabouts. There was kind of a big gap between Franco Zeffirelli's (1968) and Baz Luhrmann's (1996) but it's basically a perennial. Perhaps because it's Shakespeare it's never a grotesque matter of 'rebooting' so much as "hey, we haven't done that one in a while!"

Variety reports that we have our new Romeo and Juliet and it's 19 year old British actor Douglas Booth and 15 year-old Hailee Steinfeld for the new version, scripted by Julian Fellowes. If you ask me they're never going to be able to top Baz's psychovisual poetry or the doubleplusgood acting of Leo + Claire but here's a bright note: Holly Hunter as Nurse!!!

Cast This: "From Here To Eternity" Redux

By now you may have heard the news that an uncensored version of the famous novel From Here To Eternity, a "director's cut" to speak in film parlance, is being released on e-books next month? It will restore profanity and some homosexual content to the military epic; In the 1950s, you didn't ask and they certainly didn't want any telling (or cussing).

"THE BOLDEST BOOK OF OUR TIME... HONESTLY, FEARLESSLY ON THE SCREEN!"

It's maybe a bit corrupt of me to play a casting game with a remake I've never rooted for -- it's a terrific movie as is -- but "Cast This" is fun, isn't it? And in the case of a this new author's cut, why not? Movies have been remade for far stupider reasons. And I don't feel too bad at proposing a remake of 1955's Best Picture From Here To Eternity because it's already been remade once as a television miniseries in the late 70s.

The reinserted homosexual content would be mostly in reference to offscreen events but it got me to thinking about the movie and the fact that Frank Sinatra, an able actor and massively popular singer won an Oscar for the role that contains the content. (Basically it amounts to him being gay for pay, a hustler.)

Monty & Sinatra in From Here To Eternity | Sinatra's Oscar Win

Meanwhile Montgomery Clift, an actual homosexual and one of the defining actors of the 20th century, never won one. What a world. I don't know how close Monty ever came to winning in his four times at bat, but it would make sense that he had a reasonable shot with From Here to Eternity. It was a wildly popular film and won eight other Oscars. It's also one of those rare films where every principle member of the cast was nominated.

CAST THIS
So who would you place in the five main roles?

Prewitt & Lurene, bickering loversPrewitt (The Monty part) is a stubborn principled transfer from the Bugle corps who used to box but refuses to fight anymore... even when provoked violently. He takes up with a nightclub girl and keeps getting dragged into Maggio's troubles, some violent. This actor should be handsome and believable as a former fighter and be a bit of an enigma.

Lurene (the Donna Reed part) is a girl of somewhat shady reputation -- and conflicted about it -- who works at the nightclub where all the soldiers go for entertainment. She wants to be something other than what she is and return to the mainland (if I remember correctly?)

Maggio (the Sinatra part) is the undisciplined volatile Private and loyal friend to Prewitt, who has a hustling past and gets in bar fights and is later violently abused by a superior officer.

Karen (The Deborah Kerr part) is the Base Commandes's neglected and unfaithful wife. She takes up with the Sergeant under her husband and is eager for him to become ambitious so she can divorce her husband and marry him without, one presumes, losing her way of life. She has a great line I've never fully understood which I've written about before when she's flirting with the Sergeant and invites him in.

You're doing fine sergeant. My husband is off somewhere and it's raining outside and we're both drinking now. You probably only got one thing wrong: the lady herself. The lady is not what she seems. She's a washout if you know what I mean. And I'm sure you know what I mean.

Sgt Warden and his Captain's WifeI don't!

Like every other character in the story, she's pretty conflicted about her own desires and action.

Sgt. Warden (The Burt Lancaster part) is a man who's conflicted about cheating on his Commanding officer by bedding his wife. This actor should be masculine, confident someone you'd take orders from but who is complacent about being a cog in the machine. So a leader but not too much of one.

Obviously Sgt. Warden and Karen have to have sizzling chemistry for their legendary beach sex scene.

GO!

The Man With the Italian Tattoo

Williams and MagnaniJose here, to continue celebrating the centennial of American playwright and icon Tennessee Williams.

Williams grew up watching movies. He was one of the major playwrights who learned his craft, not through Shakespeare and Moliere but through the works of De Mille and Chaplin. This can easily be seen in the way his works lack the naturalism of "the theater" and their reality is more grounded on high drama, film noir and even slapstick. You can almost picture the young Williams sitting inside a dark movie theater, enthralled by the images projected on the screen (makes a case for why some of his characters are usually described as "larger than life" huh?).

During one of his many movie adventures, Tennessee spotted Anna Magnani. I like to assume it was Rome, Open City, but of course am probably wrong.

He became so obsessed with the Italian diva that he ended up writing an entire play just for her: The Rose Tattoo. When he approached her to play the leading role of Italian widow, Serafina Delle Rose, Magnani declined because she was unsure her limited English skills would do justice to the play. (Maureen Stapleton did the role on Broadway instead, winning the Tony in 1951.)

This didn't stop Tennessee and Anna from starting a friendship that would endure until their deaths. Williams described Magnani, 

 I never saw a more beautiful woman, with such big eyes and skin like Devonshire soap.  

The temperamental Magnani felt at home with Tennessee and when the time came to take The Rose Tattoo to the movies, she obliged. 

She took on the role of Serafina with such intensity and passion that she ended up taking home the Oscar for Best Actress. She didn't attend the ceremony because she thought she would lose, even after she'd won the critics' awards, the Golden Globe and BAFTA for the role.

The film might not be counted as one of the strongest Williams' adaptations (and the play itself is often regarded as a minor work) and in the years that followed, the movie earned a reputation for being full of stereotypes and even for discriminating against Italian immigrants.

Sure, the film is filled with symbols, bare chested lovers (Burt Lancaster mostly), weeping, screaming, gossiping neighbors, Virgin Marys (and nods to virginity), wine, loud laughing fits and thick accents but few back then realized that the film wasn't being touted as a portal into reality. It was an interpretation of the immigrant experience by someone whose knowledge consisted mostly of neorealist films.

More than this, the movie was a tribute to Anna Magnani. Not the Magnani Williams came to know later, but the Magnani who embodied a nation in the aftermath of WWII. The one Williams had met at the movies.

The Rose Tattoo therefore, is less about the characters than about what inspired their creation. The play is filled with nods to Williams' own life and the motifs that would define his work (sex, passion, humid settings, dead men...) The very tattoo in the title can mean much more than the ideas associated with the flower (love for example) since Rose was the name of Tennessee Williams' favorite sister. I'm sure she accompanied him to see Magnani's films on many occassions... 

Therefore, we understand that the role of Williams in the play is that of the tattoo artist, imprinting precious memories on the skin of his characters and his audience. But above all, imprinting them onto his own creative skin. Some works of art are misunderstood because the are too personal and deciphering their meaning only leads to migraines and shouts of "pretentious".

The Rose Tattoo would be one of these works; so private, so intimate; that we carry them around with us all the time, waiting only for a casual slip of the sleeve, a careless morning after, an accidental movement, to share them with others who might be fascinated, disgusted or even indifferent to their nature.