Judy Fest: "For Me and My Gal"

Bless the Walter Reade theater and The Film Society of Lincoln Center. This summer has been so trying in so many ways, but the Judy Garland retrospective is bliss. It helps that the Walter Reade is such a great place to see older films what with great air conditioning, comfortable seats and a big screen. The same can't (unfortunately) be said for the other prime NYC HQ for cinephiles (Film Forum). Anyway, people often think of Judy as an icon of tragic catharsis: heartbreak voice, trembling gesture, short life... but then you see the movies and she's just got charm for miles, a full range from light touch to direct hit, and she's funny and dazzling.  Watching her proves far more joyous than tearful though sometimes the two come together.

I caught two consecutive features earlier this week from the brief moment between her ascendance (Dorothy Gale + all those Mickey Rooney pictures) and adult superstardom (Meet Me In St. Louis).  Both pictures were made around her 20th year, as she left teen stardom behind. 

For Me and My Gal (1942)
This was the first of Judy Garland's three pairings with Gene Kelly (and his film debut!) and the first picture where she alone was billed above the title, indicating Hollywood's new confidence in her bankability. It's a period piece with Gene & Judy playing low rent vaudeville act "Palmer & Hayden". They're attempting to up their game and become headliners at the Palace (New York) just as Judy's brother and all able bodied young men are being shipped off to World War I. Palmer (Kelly) doesn't want to go when the draft hits him and this relentless career drive looks like cowardice and lack of patriotism to everyone including Hayden (Garland).

Two of the movie musical's greatest bond over song and dance. It's a little bit like that famous scene in ONCE (2007) actually, a kindred spirit discovered at the piano.

The film peaks quite early with the title song, a thrilling example of what modern musicals are always forgetting: songs are supposed to move the story along! "For Me and My Gal" was an old standard at the time -- this is essentially a jukebox musical like Singin' in the Rain -- but it's used as a plot device, the performance of which, falsely casual over coffee, is a sneaky ploy by loveable cad Palmer (Kelly) to win innocent Hayden (Kelly) away from her current act.

As anyone who's ever seen Kelly & Garland perform together knows, they're a match. The ploy will work. That swoony soft tenor of Kelly's, the aural equivalent of a randy comfortable blanket for vocal partners to take to their beds, just nuzzles right up to her more powerful alto, and let's it do the heavier breathing while he moves. And oh how he moves. John Fricke, noted Garland historian, was on hand to introduce the film and he shared that Kelly credited Judy with teaching him how to act for the camera. He didn't yet know how subtly you can play for the camera as opposed to the stage (Before this film he'd become a Broadway sensation in "Pal Joey" and Garland lobbied to hand him this debut.). You can see Kelly's learning curve in this film but as a song and dance man, he just can't be beat. 

I amend. The film peaks a little later than that, when Judy sings "After You're Gone" which would become a concert staple for her (see below). 

You can chalk up the song's staying power to the weird combo of its fickle tempo changes and Garland's unfaltering emotional control of its content. The film version of this number (I couldn't find a good video), takes place in a improvisational hurry because Kelly has been seeing another woman (Márta Eggerth -- more on her in the next post) and is late to their performance. Garland is essentially selling the song AND three separate character and plot points within its ebbs and crescendos: Hayden's ascendance into a confident entertainer who is able to leave her personal drama offstage, a young girl's immediate and unruly love for a man who is clearly trouble, and a maturing woman's worry about their future as partners. The song is prophecy, future tense, but Garland manages to sell her character's past, immediate present and future depending on the note.

Amazing.

The film's second half -- once we arrive at draft dodging and war bond selling patriotism and even an actual grenade throwing war sequence, is weirdly ungainly and choppy. But the film is definitely worth seeing as a milestone in three of the greatest careers within cinema's musical genre: Garland's, Kelly's, and director Busby Berkeley who considered For Me and My Gal his best film. (People aren't always the best judges of their own work but that's still something.

For Me and My Gal (first half: B+; second half: B-)

As exit music, why not Gene Kelly dueting with wee Liza on the title track years and years after her mama's movie hit it big?

Isn't that sweet?

Next up... the other film from this time period, with some interesting similarities Presenting Lily Mars (1943)

50th Anniversary: "Judy Judy Judy"

10|25|50|75|100 -anniversary specials

In the annals of showbiz history few one night events are as seismic as "Judy Judy Judy" the night Judy Garland hit Carnegie Hall, 50 years ago at this very moment, for her comeback performance. She was called many things during her legendary career: Hurricane Judy, The World's Greatest Entertainer, Ms. Showbiz and a lot of those titles coincide or funnel right into or through this big night. There's not really any concert footage of this event though it was famously recorded live to fulfill her record contract and eventually became her most important album.

I can't for the life of me remember how that Garland miniseries with Judy Davis covered the event but they must have done so given that it was one of those 'from cradle to grave' bios. Garland died just 8 years after this concert at the age of 47. Do you think the proposed Anne Hathaway as Judy Garland film will stretch this far into Judy's career? Or maybe it will never get made?

Hathaway is 28 years old at the moment, just ten years younger than Judy was on this big night...

Lots more after the jump including four melodic videos because I couldn't help myself. I do get carried away with the mythic actresses, don't I?

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April Showers: Stanley Kowalski

wateworks weeknights at 11

Have you ever been so out of control drunk that your buddies had to do a physical intervention and shove your sorry ass in a cold shower? Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando) has.

In A Streetcar Named Desirei, which I haven't been able to shake since we did our "Best Shot" episode (how about you?), Blanche Dubois is always taking baths to relax or to clear her head. Her nemesis and brother-in-law law Stanley isn't obsessed with bathing. His liquids are clearly blood, sweat and tears. But in this scene the shower wakes him from his violent stupor.

But still dripping wet, he's back to generating his own waterworks; a crying boy seeking comfort from the woman he's abused.

Hey baby? HEY STELLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

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!

Tennessee 100: "The Fugitive Kind"

Michael C. here from Serious Film to join in the Tennessee Williams festivities. When I picked a film to write about I jumped at The Fugitive Kind because

A) I'm a big Sidney Lumet fan and
B) I was curious how a second Brando/Williams collaboration could fly so far below my radar. I got my answer and then some.

The Fugitive Kind (1960) directed by Sidney Lumet based on Tennessee Williams’ play Orpheus Descending is one of the most fascinating messes I’ve ever seen. There is no getting around the fact that it just doesn’t work, yet I think I’d recommend it more readily than a lot of successful movies I’ve seen. Of all its flaws being dull is not one of them.

Williams writing was as inescapable in the fifties as Jane Austen’s was in the nineties. After burning through his major works Hollywood decided to take one of his rare unsuccessful productions and give it the full feature length treatment. Thus Opheus Descending, the story of a musician named Snakeskin with a questionable past who strikes up a relationship with a trapped middle-aged woman while lying low in a tiny southern town, hit the big screen under the title The Fugitive Kind.

This film represents Brando’s return to Tennessee Williams for the first and only time following his iconic work as Stanley Kowalski, and Anna Magnani’s second Williams project after winning the Best Actress Oscar for the movie of his play The Rose Tattoo. This was Sidney Lumet’s first encounter with Tennessee but his success with the adaptation of Broadway’s 12 Angry Men made him a natural choice. With such a collection of talent it can leave one wondering why so few still talk about The Fugitive Kind.

Brando and Magnani: Tennessee Williams Sophomore Slump

Until one actually watches the movie that is.

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