How Vintage! Natalie, Jane, Mike & Julie At Roddy's Place!

Thanks to Matt @ Boy Culture for pointing this abso-wow home movie out. A friend of the late actor Roddy McDowall has uploaded silent movies from the prominent social butterfly's beach house.

This one features Natalie Wood, Mike Nichols, Julie Andrews with toddler... (I hear that's Jane Fonda sticking her tongue out? But I maybe wouldn't have recognized her given the sunglasses and that she's SO young)

I'm not crazy. This is Elaine May with Mike Nichols, right? The timing would be right.

See how many other stars you can spot. (This reminded me of a certain Hollywood socializing passage during the Bonnie & Clyde chapters of "Pictures at a Revolution" and damnit, now I'm going to have to read that all over again.)

This video is rather kind of almost no totally jawdropping.

In this second one Jane Fonda (again sticking her tongue out -- what's that about?) and Julie Andrews (playing with her kids) are more prominent and this time Jane is unmistakably Jane. Plus Ruth Gordon even makes an appearance. Yay, Ruth Gordon. 

There are more of these videos at soapbxprod's youtube channel. These videos are such a scrapbook of who's who in 1960s Hollywood.

Academy Mixer? Nat! Liz! Audrey!

I can't even remember where or how I found this photo -- I think it was during the rush of web activity mourning Elizabeth Taylor's passing. And I think it must be from 61/62? But how insane is this?

Elizabeth Taylor and Natalie Wood and Audrey Hepburn all awkwardly dancing with their men friends within bumping distance of each other? It's so "It Movie Stars of the 60s". CrazyHotNostalgia. That'd be like if you could find a candid shot of Meryl, Kathleen & Michelle dirty dancin' in the 80s or Faye, Jane & Diane boogieing in the 70s or Kate and Cate and Nicole letting loose in the 00s or, ah, ... well, you could play this game for hours. Gah! Wonderment.

Best New Favorite Old Picture of Infinity!

Hit Me: Natalie Wood and "Rebel Without a Cause"

It's time to wrap up the Hit Me With Your Best Shot season with a 1955 classic. Why this one? Well, today would've been Natalie Wood's 73rd birthday and we love ourselves some Natalie Wood. She was, in fact, Nathaniel's first actress obsession, an obsession formed in the late 70s while watching TV airings of various 50s & 60s movies (with an emphasis on West Side Story which has its 50th anniversary this fall!).

Natalie suddenly died in 1981, drowning as you know, after falling from a yacht during a break from filming her last picture Brainstorm (which was later released in 1983). Wee Nathaniel was heartbroken. Enough with the third person but I needed the distance; this one hits so close to home. Let it suffice to say that it was the first time I'd ever lost anyone I loved, virtual or otherwise. I hadn't even lost a pet at that point in life! The heartache maybe felt as formative as Natalie's in Splendor in the Grass; a first love never to be forgotten if you will.

Today we're talking about Rebel Without a Cause (1955) because it gave Natalie her first of three Oscar nominations and because we've been thinking about "first love" and high school lately. (See, we've recently started rewatching Angela Chase falling for Jordan Catalano on Netflix.)

The Nicholas Ray movie -- part of that unassailable James Dean Trinity -- is a spectacularly enduring piece of teen angst. It's as mesmerizing and febrile with feeling today as we assume it was in 1955 even though it's now most decidedly a period piece. But this happens to all contemporary entertainments... the period part I mean. (The enduring part only happens to the lucky or the brilliant. Have you seen My So Called Life lately? It's just as great 17 years later only now it's as much a period piece as Rebel -- it's soooo '90s.) Time marches on.

Best Shot

This beautifully sustained shot (it lasts for over a minute) captures two era-defining icons of youth in what can accurately be described as langurous mutual auto-eroticism. Judy (Wood) and Jim (Dean) barely ever look at each other in this sequence, letting their bodies and their voices do all the communicating. But aren't they still in their own little worlds, only dreaming of colliding?

Directors rarely hold the camera on two faces simultaneously anymore and that's nothing but one of the greatest losses for the cinema. All great movie stars are auto-erotic, their principal love affair being with the camera rather than co-stars, but when they share a frame the power can feel infinite. (For a comic counterpoint example of this same face-pressing double whammy magic, see The Lady Eve with that sensationally funny scene where Barbara Stanwyck babbles incessantly while rubbing her face against an overheated Henry Fonda.) In this case the dual star magnetism doubles as youthful dreaming, disconnected from reality, though Judy and Jim are, in fact, speaking about connection. Judy is philosophizing about friendship, character, and love. She's about to launch into her famous "I love somebody" speech, the "somebody" is telling as she's caressing a man who is still more of an abstraction than a reality to her. Jimmy interjects.

We're not going to be lonely anymore. Ever ever. Not you or me.

The scene is heartbreaking for any number of reasons both for what precedes it and for what follows (poor Plato!), but mostly because you recognize it as a false prophecy, born of the loneliness it's trying to banish. Judy & Jim have long long lives ahead of them even if Dean and Wood didn't. Loneliness never stays away for good.

Rebels of the 'Best Shot' Cause

• Film Actually sees Rebel for the first time and contemplates that issue-heavy love triangle.
• Movies Kick Ass "Let's not ask the moon" is there a world larger than teenage problems?
  
• Clearly Up To No Good --- this is really cool. It's four themed photo folders. I love "Plato's Closet" and "Living on the Edge". Lovely
• Awww the Movies the looks.
• Stale Popcorn a dynamic shift in "family"

Reader Spotlight: K.M. Soehnlein

Are you still enjoying the reader spotlights? I hope you've found a few kindred spirits in the featured readers thus far. Today, I'm talking to K.M. Soehnlein in San Francisco who is a longtime reader and also a novelist. Discovering that novelists read you is a bit humbling. Anyway... let's talk!

Nathaniel: So... earlier this year you received the Warren Beatty book "STAR" from a Film Experience contest. What's your favorite nugget so far?
K.M. SOEHNLEIN: There’s a nugget on every page of “Star,” if by nugget you mean hot steamy chunk of gossip: “He made love to [Joan] Collins relentlessly, although every now and then he would accept calls while he was inside her.” In the Introduction to the book, Peter Biskind, the author, says he’s interested in Beatty as “one of the foremost filmmakers of his generation…at the intersection between politics and culture.” But he also talks about how difficult Beatty was to get interviews with, and you start to suspect, as the negative characterizations of Beatty pile up, that maybe Biskind is enacting some kind of revenge on his “star.”

But! There are absolutely page-turning stories about film production. I just finished reading the chapter on Bonnie and Clyde. I had no idea it was so difficult to get this film or that it was the vehicle that saved Beatty from a string of flops that would have sunk his career before he was 30.
 
You've written books yourselves and graciously sent me two. I'm really enjoying "The World of Normal Boys" and especially love the movie references, duh! How autobiographical are they?

Soehnlein's book references three huge musicals of its era

I’m glad you like the book! The scenes in my novel are mostly fictional – I never went to a drive-in to see Saturday Night Fever with the sexy older boy next door – but the music, the setting, the flavor of the times, that’s all from experience. Yeah, I’m a child of the 70s which meant we had one “stereo system” in the house. My parents had lots of soundtrack albums, so that was the first music I listened to as a kid: The King and I, Funny Girl, Godspell (we were Catholic), and the one I got completely obsessed about, West Side Story. I had every lyric memorized before I'd ever see these movies. I don’t think I could overstate the phenomenon of Grease when it came out in 1978. Kids were OBSESSED with it. I used to walk around with the girls in my neighborhood playing the soundtrack on portable cassette player, acting like the Pink Ladies.
 
Your three favorite actresses. Go.
Old school: Natalie Wood would be my first answer but that’s not because she was the best actress – in fact she’s often pretty terrible – but just because of my West Side Story obsession. When she cries those tears of injustice at the end of the film – “How many bullets left in this gun? Enough for you, and you, and you?” – I think some kind of tragic template lodged in my blood that has never quite left. Reigning queen: Julianne Moore. It might be a redhead identification thing, but I love her in everything. I especially like her in comedies, from The Big Lebowski to The Kids are All Right, though my favorite performance is in Far From Heaven. Rising star: Give me more Michelle Williams. (Meek’s Cutoff recently opened in San Francisco.)

Take an Oscar away. Give it to someone else.
Only one? Didn’t one of your recent readers get six? OK let’s take away Cate Blanchett’s Oscar for that hammy imitation of Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator and give it to any of the four women she was nominated against: Laura Linney in Kinsey, Virginia Madsen in Sideways, Sophie Okonedo in Hotel Rwanda, or Natalie Portman in Closer. (Maybe if Natalie had won that year we could have seen Michelle Williams win this year… Sorry, wishful thinking.) Just for the record I love me some Cate Blanchett but I’d have given her the statue all the way back for Elizabeth. Sorry, Gwyneth.

Supporting Actress 2004

Name your favorite in each of the following 4 genres: Drama, Horror, High School, Woody Allen.
Drama Something by Mike Leigh, probably Naked or Secrets and Lies. Horror Carrie. High School The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love, which was my good friend Maria Maggenti’s debut back in the mid-90s and which I have a huge sweet spot for. (Plus: Dale Dickey in an early role.) Woody Stardust Memories.

They put you in charge of the movies. How do you wield this awesome power?
Well if I can be completely self-interested the first thing I’d do is green-light the film adaptation of The World of Normal Boys which I’ve been trying to get made for ten years.

Then I’d wield my awesome power to dump money on all the filmmakers I love: Mike Leigh, Todd Haynes, John Cameron Mitchell, Kelly Reichardt, Spike Lee, John Waters, etc. etc. etc. I’d put limits on the amount of money any single film could cost. I’d set up some kind of incredibly well-funded National Film Agency, maybe run by a cabinet-level Secretary of the Arts, (how about Meryl Streep?). I’d make sure artists had health care. Socialism. Yes please.

previous spotlights

"Maggie the Cat is Alive!"

Tennessee Williams Centennial Week Wraps

Maggie the Cat, the sex-starved slip-covered wife at the heart of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (discussed earlier this week) is not just alive, she keeps coming back to life. True to her feline symbolism she's had several of them, eight bigs ones actually. Who will risk playing Maggie the Cat's ninth major life and how soon will that be?

Here is a history of the key Maggies for those who love the play... or just if you like to see major actresses in their lingerie. Have you ever seen a production of this play anywhere or just the 1958 film? Do tell in the comments. Would love to hear Tin Roof stories.

1955 ~ Original Maggie

Barbara Bel Geddes, originated the role on Broadway in the 1956 and won a Tony nomination. (She lost to Julie Harris in "The Lark"). Other Key Roles: I Remember Mama (1947, Oscar nomination. Lost to Claire Trevor in Key Largo), "Midge" in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), "Mary, Mary" on Broadway (1961, Tony nomination), and "Miss Ellie Ewing" on Dallas (1978-1990, 3 nominations/1 win at the Emmys)

1958 ~ Legendary Maggie

Elizabeth Taylor slinked, steamed, pawed and nagged her way to consecutive Oscar nomination #2 in the 1958 film version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Suddenly Last Summer was Oscar nom #3 in 1959. Then a win for her fourth consecutive nomination for BUtterfield 8 (1960). Many more Liz photos in the gallery section of the site. If you've been away, catch up on the Liz commemorative posts.

Elizabeth is not the only two time Oscar winner who played Maggie. Lots of stars have slinked around in that white slip: Jessica Rabbit, a Dreamgirl, and even one of Elizabeth's few rivals in 60s Movie Superstardom. 

1974 ~Cognoscenti's Maggie

Elizabeth Ashley's early 60s film breakout gave way to a highly acclaimed theatrical career with lots of guest starring TV roles on the side. She won raves and a Tony nomination for the sexually charged 70s revival of Broadway. People Magazine featured her in their Stage section at the time.

'I was one of those people who became a 'star' very young, and I turned into a monstrous human beging - Bessie von Bitch, they called me. I was in analysis forever.'

She now sees herself as made for the stage - 'a leading woman who can handle anything they've got, but God knows I'm not a movie star.'

Other Key Roles: The original Corie from Broadway's Barefoot in the Park (Jane Fonda got the movie role); "Mollie" in Take Her She's Mine" (1962 Tony Award); Monica in The Carpetbaggers (1964, Golden Globe nomination); Jenny in the Best Picture nominee Ship of Fools (1965); Recently played Mattie Fae in August: Osage County (replacement).

Jessica Rabbit, a Dreamgirl and some crazy oroborus-style Jessica Lange trivia after the jump.

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