Psycho, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, and Feud;(Davis/Crawford in March) - Psycho (1960) Discussion

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Turner Classic Movies just finished its "Oscar month"(All of February and a little of March) , this year alphabetical and this year ending with "Z." Perfect!

The "W" movies included "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane." Suitable with "Feud" coming up, and no doubt planned.

I taped it, watched a fair amount of it, but not all. So some of the below is "from long ago memory," but it goes like this:

Robin Wood's wrote a famous and very good collection of essays "Hitchocck's Films". He elected to cover "in depth"(one long chapter each) Strangers on a Train, Rear Window and what he called "the unbroken series of masterpieces" from Vertigo through Marnie.(Yep, Marnie.) The main book was written in 1965. I bought my copy in 1970 and it had one additional in-depth chapter on Torn Curtain, which was odd: the book was now about a bunch of masterpieces and one all-accounts flop(though Wood made the point that Torn Curtain wasn't THAT bad, and continued in the vein of the masterpieces before it.)

Anyway, the 1970 copy of Hitchcock's Films had an opening essay called "Why Should We Take Hitchcock Seriously?" that gave me, as a young fan, a really good foundation upon which to build my lifelong affection for Hitch and his works.

And in that chapter, Wood spent a little time on "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane."

Wood's first point is that the 1962 film "must have been" inspired and greenlit because of Psycho. Though not nearly the shocker that Psycho was, Baby Jane was SOLD as Psycho, and continued on with the black and white cinematography and Gothic staircase interiors of the Psycho house(here, ironically, a mini-mansion on a block of same in Los Angeles, with perfectly normal people living next door to it.)

Wood recognizes much of this, but goes on to make the very valid point that Baby Jane simply doesn't work as a thriller like Psycho does. Its a weak substitute, in his opinion.

And Wood goes on to compare the "subpar" suspense of Baby Jane to the great suspense of ALL Hitchcock's technique. I can't forget Wood's dismissive line about an overdone sequence of Crawford trying to escape and get help before Davis comes back home: "One becomes intensely aware of Aldrich determinedly pulling on a dry udder." What a great line!

Wood's point is that while Hitchocck's suspense has rich levels (Doris Day trying to decide between saving her son and saving the diplomat at Albert Hall), Baby Jane specializes in basic "will she make it or won't she" drama. (Which, hey, I'd rebut, is what a LOT of suspense IS about: how about James Caan trying to escape Kathy Bates in Misery?)

Having watched a lot of Baby Jane and in remembering the rest of it, its pretty clear its not in Psycho territory. As a matter of drama, this is much closer to Sunset Boulevard, in content and in theme. There IS a murder in Baby Jane, but it is out of the frame and something one could see on TV all the time back then. (Aldrich would remedy this two years later with the graphic cutting off of Bruce Dern's head and hand in "Charlotte," but Baby Jane doesn't play in gore.)

And this memory: Charlotte in its late 1964 TV commercials(Christmas-time, I think) alone was terrifying me and my neighborhood kid buddies in the months before the re-release of Psycho in March, 1965 -- and I realize now that together, advertising for Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte and the Psycho re-release created in my mind a sense of the "60's b/w Gothic slasher movie." It was in the air.

I did a fair amount of newspaper/magazine archive research on Psycho over the years, but it took me to read reviews of Baby Jane and Charlotte, too.

I found one of Charlotte in which Robert Aldrich offered a great quote on WHY he made Baby Jane and Charlotte:

Aldrich felt(wrote Time magazine) that Psycho would have been even more horrifying, even more sick...if the Mother really HAD BEEN the killer. Its a nifty thought, when you think about it -- truth be told, for much of Psycho's duration, we are fearing an old lady we have to imagine. Well, Aldrich recreated Mrs. Bates as...Baby Jane Hudson. Imagine if Baby Jane Hudson had been wielding that knife in the shower or on the stairs.

That same 1964 Time magazine review of Charlotte made the point, however, that Aldrich's film had none of the tightness, structure or drive of "Psycho," and that's true.

Its also true of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane.

(MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I have good, vague memories of being a child in the 60's. They are very strong in 1964 and 1965(hence, my memory of the promotions of Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte and the re-release of Psycho about four months apart). They are less strong -- but definitely THERE -- for 1962.

And I remember the scary 1962 advertising for Baby Jane, the scary photos of Davis and Crawford and a shattered Baby Jane doll head. I remember this was a movie my parents would never take the family to. I remember this as part of a " forbidden cinema" that I feared in my childhood and yearned for as I grew older.

Over the years, it seemed that Baby Jane DID take on some sort of classic status. It must have been a "pop camp classic" because I don't recall the film making any Best Films lists . (Oh, maybe the AFI thriller list topped by Psycho, in 2001 or so, I'll have to check that.)

I would assume that Baby Jane is popular in gay movie-lover circles, if only for the presence of Joan Crawford and, (secondarily?) Davis. I always fear to tread in such areas, but I would guess there is some drag queen flash to how Davis and Crawford look in the film.

I expect the biggest strength of the film IS how it brought an aged Davis and Crawford back to the screen and gave visible life to a rumored feud. It was evidently a hit in 1962, and it got Davis a well-deserved Oscar nomination (under the great rule, "The nomination or win isn't for the acting; its for the character.)

Baby Jane joined Psycho in being a "modern Gothic horror film" but it created its ONN sixties sub-genre: "The Hag Movie"(a phrase nastily coined, not be me) in which any number of aged Golden Era actresses took on horror-type roles to survive on screen in older age. Davis and Crawford both took more of these roles(The Nanny for Davis; the William Castle/Robert Bloch Strait-Jacket, Berserk and Trog for Crawford.) But Olivia DeHavilland climbed on board for "Charlotte" and Tallulah Bankhead did "Die Die My Darling." Did I miss someone? Perhaps this wasn't THAT big a trend.

OF those movies, "Baby Jane" is the leader, the famous one, the "class act." Hell, it got Oscar nominations.

But I tell ya, Bette Davis is the main draw, with Crawford a fun foil. The storyline itself is poor, unstructured and largely event-free.

Weirdly(and he would do this with Charlotte, too), Aldrich spends FOREVER in opening flashback(two in the case of Baby Jane) to set up his story. It can't be this long, but it feels like a half hour before we even SEE Davis and Crawford on screen. First we have to get the "childhood" flashback(Baby Jane is the child star, Blanche the neglected sister); then we get the "adult star" flashback(Blanche is now a glamour star who requires that an aged Baby Jane get to make some movies too); then we get the "mysterious" flashback to the car accident that put Crawford in a wheelchair, and then finally we get the main movie(under the title "Yesterday").

Its an ungainly, overplotted start to a movie that then takes its sweet time going anywhere, except for establishing a sadistic/masochistic pattern, which, I guess, was pretty sexually out there for 1962: Davis' drunken, slatternly Baby Jane DOES "serve" her crippled sister, but torments her at the same time(servings of parakeet and, later, rat, as Blanches' meals seal the deal on Baby Jane's creeping madness.)

The classic exchange:

Crawford: You wouldn't be so mean to me if I wasn't in this chair!
Davis: (After a thoughtful, leering beat) But...you ARE in the chair, Blanche! You ARE in the chair!! (Which as read by Davis is delicious: "But yew AH in da chay, Blanche! Yew AH in day chay!")

A sympathic African-American maid is a strong link to sanity. She tries to help Blanche and dies trying(Baby Jane finally moves on from being funny-brutal to bein a true..psycho?) Victor Buono debuts. Two years earlier, he could have played Norman Bates if Bloch's novel was followed(with gray hair for age?) His character freaks out, but isn't killed (I think he WAS killed in the book from which this was written, and a murder scene was filmed and cut.)

I haven't made it to the final scene from the TCM tape of the other night, but I remember it. Its a twist ending, but it really has to "twist" to achieve its goal. And Baby Jane and Blanche finally get out of that creepy old house and down to Malibu, surrounded in their faded glory by the Beach Blanket Bingo set in a finale that rather brings together the Los Angeles of two different eras. I'll have to finish the film to fill in the blanks of memory.

(A LITTLE MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I don't think that Baby Jane is a very good film. It is not a shocker, really. And it doesn't move with the build or precision of a Hitchcock film or of Sunset Boulevard. But something about it is sure famous, and it has sure lasted.

I vote for the Davis/Crawford feud as its ballast.

And Davis is great. She finds the key to the character: she's funny and bad-tempered and drunk. And she dares to look terrible. This is the "Bad Santa" template, decades early.

I like this acting/sound track detail: when Baby Jane walks around the old mansion, her feet shuffle and drag on the ground. She doesn't even care to lift her feet when she walks. It is a summary of a woman who is likely depressed and ready to give up...but cannot. Will not. Even if it means murder.

Bette Davis as Baby Jane is the key to the legacy of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Davis and Crawford both took more of these roles(The Nanny for Davis; the William Castle/Robert Bloch Strait-Jacket, Berserk and Trog for Crawford.) But Olivia DeHavilland climbed on board for "Charlotte" and Tallulah Bankhead did "Die Die My Darling." Did I miss someone? Perhaps this wasn't THAT big a trend.

There were plenty more movies in the general Hag-core cycle: De Havilland did another one with a young/scary James Caan called Lady In A Cage, and there were a bunch in color in the late '60s and early '70s often given question-marked or otherwise grammatically flamboyant titles that directly recalled Baby Jane's memory: Who Slew Aunty Roo? (1971) w/ Shelley Winters, What Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) w/ Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon, What's The Matter with Helen? (1971) w/ Debbie Reynolds and Shelly Winters, even The Beguiled (1971) w/ G. Page again (which Sofia Coppola is remaking - out very soon - w/ Nicole Kidman in Page's role). Mumsy, Nanny Sonny and Girly (1971) a.k.a. Girly is in the conceptual vicinity of Baby Jane too (albeit the baby in Girly's case is an exploitation-naughty teen acting like she's about 5, but both Mumsy and Nanny are battling 'hags'.) I further tend to think that the sub-genre got well-established enough so that other films could play against it, i.e., by having a very sympathetic older woman in the mix somewhere. I'm thinking of Cloris Leachman in Last Picture Show and Ellen Burstyn in almost everything up to and including The Exorcist, maybe even Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude. These aren't 'raving things' and 'mad mothers', and these characters were, I suspect, even more affecting at the time than they'd later be *because* they emerged against that Hag-core back-drop, i.e., because it enjoyably flouted expectations when their movies didn't 'go there'.

Anyhow, I think it's certainly true that Baby Jane reflects some pre-Psycho, non-horror but haunting, creepy dramas including Sunset Blvd (1950), Suddenly Last Summer (1959), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), maybe even Baby Doll (1956) that somehow feature people who've drifted away from their times, from conventional life, and so on.

BTW, reviews of Feud suggest that it's Jessica Lange's Crawford who's at the center of the show not Sarandon's Davis. It's Crawford's resentments of Davis's cushier up-bringing (Crawford's background was genuinely hard-scrabble including rape by relatives early and periods of near prostitution in her teens) extra talent and success and longevity that *are* the drama. (In real life I think there were resentments going the other way too but they were mainly in the deep past by the 1960s: for most of the beginning of her career Davis was considered plain bordering on ugly for a leading lady - I've read interviews with Welles where he talks about how he can't even bear to look at Davis she's so hideous and how does she have a career? - whereas early on Crawford was considered a real beauty (albeit one who, like Monroe later, bore traces of her class origins) and *way* above Davis in initial Hollywood pecking order.

That Davis super-over-achieved relative to her initial beauty hand thereby breaking one of traditional Hollywood's near most iron-clad rules for women is probably one of the key resentments Crawford held against Davis, but you know Davis probably had Crawford down as one of the pretty mean girls n her early years in the business. All of this, Hollywood intersecting with class in a resentment souflee is why Davis-Crawford *was* a catfight for the ages.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

There were plenty more movies in the general Hag-core cycle: De Havilland did another one with a young/scary James Caan called Lady In A Cage,

--

Which, like Baby Jane, took place in modern Los Angeles as I recall, and, like Baby Jane, posited a certain Gothic flavor right smack dab in the middle of sunny "urban-suburbaia.

---

and there were a bunch in color in the late '60s and early '70s often given question-marked or otherwise grammatically flamboyant titles that directly recalled Baby Jane's memory: Who Slew Aunty Roo? (1971) w/ Shelley Winters, What Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969) w/ Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon, What's The Matter with Helen? (1971) w/ Debbie Reynolds and Shelly Winters,

---

Holy Tomoly! I forgot all about that bunch...which were CLEARLY entitled to create linkage to Baby Jane!

Even as, I would suggest, an "undertow of Psycho" was felt within them because of the idea that these films would sport mad killers(often women) and modern Goth.

--

even The Beguiled (1971) w/ G. Page again

---

And it is Sarah Paulson, I have checked, who is playing Page in "Feud." Also, Zeta-Jones as Olivia and Kathy Bates as Joan Blondell in a "frame" story about the feud as discussed by their co-stars.

--

(which Sofia Coppola is remaking - out very soon - w/ Nicole Kidman in Page's role).

---

What was intriguiing about the original "Beguiled" is that it was made by the joined-at-the-hip director/actor team of Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood, in the same year as their Dirty Harry and after the tough action of Coogan's Bluff and Two Mules for Sister Sara. I recall The Beguiled being offered proof that both men could handle a "woman's picture." Of a decidedly nasty sort.

Be interesting to see what Coppola does with it -- and it looks like Nicole Kidman is experience a comeback in prestige movies(that likely don't pay like her studio stuff.)

--

Mumsy, Nanny Sonny and Girly (1971) a.k.a. Girly is in the conceptual vicinity of Baby Jane too (albeit the baby in Girly's case is an exploitation-naughty teen acting like she's about 5, but both Mumsy and Nanny are battling 'hags'.)

---

On this "hag" thing. Its a shorthand I've read elsewhere again and again, and I will likely use it again, but it certainly does reflect a contempt for the 50+ actress in Hollywood, doesn't it? One irony of "Feud" is that at least one of the actresses (Susan Sarandon) is well over 60 but continues to present herself as a very sexual being. Still, in 1962, the forties and fifties were tough ages for actresses. 60 on? Grandmother roles.

---

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I further tend to think that the sub-genre got well-established enough so that other films could play against it, i.e., by having a very sympathetic older woman in the mix somewhere. I'm thinking of Cloris Leachman in Last Picture Show and Ellen Burstyn in almost everything up to and including The Exorcist, maybe even Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude.

---

this is a very interesting observation. Perhaps a new 70's generation of writers and directors saw the need to "un-do" the damage of the "hag" idea.

We certainly know of the double-standard by which James Stewart got Grace Kelly and Humphrey Bogart got Audrey Hepburn, and perhaps eventually the tide was turned somewhat. Cloris Leachman in Picture Show was meant to be in her forties, I think, and the film made that point that an affair with a late teenager was quite "do-able." Harold and Maude played to extremes, but made its point effectively by doing so. The very old woman was a teenager in spirit, the young man so old as to be almost dead. And then it changed.

---

These aren't 'raving things' and 'mad mothers', and these characters were, I suspect, even more affecting at the time than they'd later be *because* they emerged against that Hag-core back-drop, i.e., because it enjoyably flouted expectations when their movies didn't 'go there'.

----

Great point. Though it brings in "sideways" a thought I've always had about Psycho: it wouldn't have worked if Tony Perkins dressed up as his old FATHER. It was something about Norman's crossing "all the way over" to his feminine side that made the killer profound and troubling. In some ways, Norman Bates in Drag was the first "Hag," and the movies had to recover old age for interesting, sexualized women.

---

Anyhow, I think it's certainly true that Baby Jane reflects some pre-Psycho, non-horror but haunting, creepy dramas including Sunset Blvd (1950), Suddenly Last Summer (1959), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), maybe even Baby Doll (1956) that somehow feature people who've drifted away from their times, from conventional life, and so on.

---

True, though now a "twist ending" from me: I watched the rest of Baby Jane and found that it (a) resembled a Hitchcock thriller a lot more as it entered its third act and (b) was a pretty GOOD thriller in that third act, as some very good plot devices started to add up to something solid for me.

I'll do a little more "back pedaling" in response to doghouse's post, but I must admit...watching Baby Jane all the way through disabused me of some misconceptions of when I first saw it decades ago, and taught me more about what it IS.

All that said, its still not at the level of Psycho. Or of the impact. I think the very subdued murder scene in Baby Jane takes it back more to the melodramas of the 40s and 50's than to the shock level of the Psycho killings.

---

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

BTW, reviews of Feud suggest that it's Jessica Lange's Crawford who's at the center of the show not Sarandon's Davis.

---

...and I have read that this may be because the series show runner is Ryan Murphy, who has worked extensively with Jessica Lange on American Horror Story. They are pals, so Jessica is his "muse" on the project.

--

Crawford's resentments of Davis's cushier up-bringing (Crawford's background was genuinely hard-scrabble including rape by relatives early and periods of near prostitution in her teens)

---

Yikes! The secrets of Hollywood and the past of their stars. Seems like Joan had a bit of Marilyn Monroe's past..but with a stronger inner being to overcome the pain.

---

extra talent and success and longevity that *are* the drama. (In real life I think there were resentments going the other way too but they were mainly in the deep past by the 1960s: for most of the beginning of her career Davis was considered plain bordering on ugly for a leading lady - I've read interviews with Welles where he talks about how he can't even bear to look at Davis she's so hideous and how does she have a career? - whereas early on Crawford was considered a real beauty (albeit one who, like Monroe later, bore traces of her class origins) and *way* above Davis in initial Hollywood pecking order.

---

All interesting. You know, I suppose today I could decide how Charlize Thereon and Margot Robbie stack up comparatively as stars, but I'm at a loss to decipher The Golden Age.

Baby Jane offers us 30's movie clips of the young Crawford and the young Davis, and they are both attractive , though both (to my eyes) are not "classical beauties." Still, Crawford was cuter. As for Davis, she had that great VOICE , and it just got better. Her line readings as Baby Jane are spectacular, the stuff of a top level superstar in uniqueness.

----

That Davis super-over-achieved relative to her initial beauty hand thereby breaking one of traditional Hollywood's near most iron-clad rules for women is probably one of the key resentments Crawford held against Davis, but you know Davis probably had Crawford down as one of the pretty mean girls n her early years in the business. All of this, Hollywood intersecting with class in a resentment souflee is why Davis-Crawford *was* a catfight for the ages.

---

And hence this "Feud" film, or mini-series, or whatever it is. I'm intrigued it will run eight hours (less commercials.) I'd say that can't ALL be about Baby Jane, but its got Alfred Molina as Robert Aldrich and Stanley Tucci as Jack Warner -- sounds like we are about to get the "Hitchcock" we should have gotten with Anthony Hopkins -- long enough to really TELL the story of the making of a great movie. (Or in Baby Jane's case, a good one.)

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

What was intriguiing about the original "Beguiled" is that it was made by the joined-at-the-hip director/actor team of Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood, in the same year as their Dirty Harry and after the tough action of Coogan's Bluff and Two Mules for Sister Sara. I recall The Beguiled being offered as proof that both men could handle a "woman's picture." Of a decidedly nasty sort.

Be interesting to see what Coppola does with it

One problem I have with the very idea of Sofia Coppola's remake is that I recall the Siegel/Eastwood original (which I've not seen in full since High School) as being pretty damn good. I mean it was very atmospheric, well shot, unhindered by censors in the '70s, and perfectly cast with the amazing Page and all the young girls just as brilliantly sexy or scary or hysterical as required. It's hard to see what Sofia Coppola can add or change to The Beguiled that would improve it much in the same way that Peckinpah's early '70s stuff like Straw Dogs and The Getaway seem basically unimprovable (hence their remakes have been predictably terrible).

The Trailer for Coppola's remake suggests that it is 'movie starred up' and made 'hotter' compared to the original. The two main young girls are now Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning and the mom's Kidman-looking-glamorous, so there's just too much implausible beauty going on to feel real. Will wait for the reviews.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

On this "hag" thing. Its a shorthand I've read elsewhere again and again, and I will likely use it again, but it certainly does reflect a contempt for the 50+ actress in Hollywood, doesn't it?[/quote]
I remember the term 'hag-core' taking off in the '90s as an offshoot of -core being applied promiscuously to different music scenes in that period. Before then I think that the customary slang to refer to WEHTBJ? and the like was 'Psycho-biddy' flicks. This gentler-seeming term is the one that's used on WEHTBJ?'s wiki page.
[quote]Still, in 1962, the forties and fifties were tough ages for actresses. 60 on? Grandmother roles.

Compare with Isabelle Huppert who's 63 and is Oscar nom'd for her role in Elle where she's an unbowed rape victim, is seen in all sorts of weird, consensual S&M sexual situations with men 20+ years her junior (and no eyelids are batted), and runs a software company that specializes in first person shooters fused with Japanese-style tentacle porn. Obviously your Hupperts's and Sarandons and Mirrens are exceptional figures, but pretty clearly no more exceptional talent-wise than Davis, Stanwyck, and co who really did get pastured out to Grandma-ville after 50. Progress!

p.s. I'm watching ep. 1 of Feud right now. Am enjoying it. (So far at least) Could do without the framing story w/ De Havilland and Blondell.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

OK, have just watched Feud ep. 1 and rewatched WEHTBJ?... I enjoyed F quite a lot - the business backstory to WEHTBJ? is interesting and interestingly parallel to Psycho's. I would have guessed that Psycho's success would have made getting studio money for WEHTBJ? a breeze.... but, no, Aldrich ends up having to pay for a lot of the movie himself just the way Hitch did for Psycho, all the while having to give Jack Warner huge first dibs on the gross just to secure distribution!

It was fun to see Alison Wright (so good on The Americans) as Aldrich's assistant and fun to see Mad Men's Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka) show up as Bette Davis's daughter. Quality TV spreads! although it'll be a miracle if Feud hits Mad Men or The Americans heights for Wright and Shipka or for anyone else.

One thing that seeing WEHTBJ? again makes clear is that F stacks the deck in favor a particular sort of contrast between Crawford and Davis - Lange looks older and less beautiful than Crawford did in 1962 and Sarandon is taller, skinnier, probably flat out prettier and younger-looking than Davis was in 1962. The effect is that Feud's Davis feels even more relatively powerful than I believe Davis was and Feud's Crawford feels more beaten down by her fate than I tend to believe that Crawford actually was.

I agree with ecarle above that WEHTBJ? is a step down in quality from Psycho or Sunset Blvd or even from Aldrich's own Kiss Me Deadly (and also his great '70s trio: Emperor of the North Pole, Longest Yard, Ulzana's Raid). But it's still pretty great thanks to both Davis's and Crawford's performances and solid work from Aldrich throughout. The moment when Jane lets loose on Blanche still shocks - and the meta-level of Davis kicking Crawford in the head was appropriately gleefully anticipated in F ep. 1! - and this perhaps makes the murder even more disappointing. Aldrich's nerve failed him there. He could/should have had an Arbogast/gore moment but doesn't. Or even if we didn't see anything more gory than we did, if we saw Jane take a *couple* of swings to finish the maid off with appropriate skull-crunching - egg-shell-cracking a la Alien trailer years later? - sound fx each time that death could have been truly awful and memorable. And of course the score throughout WEHTBJ? is a disappointment, and never more so than in the murder scene (Psycho being the gold standard on these fronts).

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

OK, have just watched Feud ep. 1 and rewatched WEHTBJ?... I enjoyed F quite a lot - the business backstory to WEHTBJ? is interesting and interestingly parallel to Psycho's. I would have guessed that Psycho's success would have made getting studio money for WEHTBJ? a breeze.... but, no, Aldrich ends up having to pay for a lot of the movie himself just the way Hitch did for Psycho, all the while having to give Jack Warner huge first dibs on the gross just to secure distribution!

---

That's a great moment when THAT offer get's Warners' attention. We have to figure that Feud is written BY Hollywood insiders who know what the game of pitching entails.

It occurs to me that many, many, MANY famous movies have stories attached of all the attempts to NOT make them...all the studio turndowns, all the belittling by studio readers of the source novels:

Psycho: "Impossible for films."
Jaws: "Might make a TV movie, nothing more.

Movies like American Graffiti and Star Wars BOTH got tossed to the curb before being made.

It seems that the "easy" movies to get made were the surefire things from bestselling novels(The Godfather) , hit Broadway shows(West Side Story), and , for awhile there, The Bible.

But original material?

Peter Stone, the screenwriter of Charade, had an interesting story. He couldn't sell it as an original screenplay so he was advised to turn it into a novel. Instead he turned it into a Redbook short story...and THEN it sold!

Of course, Baby Jane and Psycho were FROM novels. But disreputable novels. And Psycho sold cheap -- $9,000. Compare that to $200,000 for Advise and Consent around the same time.

----

It was fun to see Alison Wright (so good on The Americans)

---

Don't know her; I don't watch(I hear I should, probably I'll binge)

--
as Aldrich's assistant and fun to see Mad Men's Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka) show up as Bette Davis's daughter.

--

I DO know her -- how great to see her, not much older -- and given my huge faux pas about Robert Aldrich's daughter playing a role in Baby Jane(no, it was BD's)...it will be fun to see Shipka in those scenes. I assume.

---
Quality TV spreads! although it'll be a miracle if Feud hits Mad Men or The Americans heights for Wright and Shipka or for anyone else.

----

Nope, probably not. As with great movies, truly great TV series don't come along all that often. Its the script, the script, and the script(as Ben and Matt reminded us that "the great Alfred Hitchcock said" when they presented the screenplay awards at the Oscars this year.)

---

One thing that seeing WEHTBJ? again makes clear is that F stacks the deck in favor a particular sort of contrast between Crawford and Davis - Lange looks older and less beautiful than Crawford did in 1962 and Sarandon is taller, skinnier, probably flat out prettier and younger-looking than Davis was in 1962. The effect is that Feud's Davis feels even more relatively powerful than I believe Davis was and Feud's Crawford feels more beaten down by her fate than I tend to believe that Crawford actually was.

---

An interesting point. I believe Sarandon is older than Lange, but Lange had that unfortunate plastic surgery and people just age differently. (Sudden bizarre flash: how about Janet Leigh as Baby Jane and Vera Miles as Blanche? Circa 1985.)

---

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I agree with ecarle above that WEHTBJ? is a step down in quality from Psycho or Sunset Blvd or even from Aldrich's own Kiss Me Deadly (and also his great '70s trio: Emperor of the North Pole, Longest Yard, Ulzana's Raid).

---

Yes, I think I agree on all of that, and that WAS a pretty cool -- and tough -- 70's trio. I think you can add Aldrich's Hustle to that group(it reteamed Good Burt and Bad Eddie Albert), but its a bit cheesy around the edges. And BTW, who would make Emperor of the North Pole today? Two middle-aged men -- one a "hobo" -- fighting it out on a Depression era train?

Have to take note: Ulzana's Raid went out FROM ITS FIRST DAY OF RELEASE with Frenzy attached as the second feature. I suppose Universal figured that Aldrich and Hitch were both auteurs -- who had both made very violent movies in 1972. I saw that double bill on Thanksgiving weekend! Frenzy had been a summer release.

----

---

But it's still pretty great thanks to both Davis's and Crawford's performances and solid work from Aldrich throughout.

---

Yes, like most Aldrich films, it is well-crafted and almost "industrial" in its craftsmanship.

I guess Aldrich struggled in the fifties after Vera Cruz hit, but BAby Jane really launched him for the 60s, with Hush Hush and then a swerve into Big Macho with The Dirty Dozen(his biggest hit.)

As I've noted before, Aldrich seemed to alternate between tough female movies(Baby Jane, Hush, The Killing of Sister George, the lesbian drama with Beryl Reid and Susannah York) and tough male movies(Flight of the Phoenix, Dirty Dozen, Longest Yard, Emperor of the North.) And then, at the very end, he mixed them together with "All the Marbles" about VIOLENT women(lady wrestlers.) And Peter Falk. Helluva way to go out.

---
The moment when Jane lets loose on Blanche still shocks - and the meta-level of Davis kicking Crawford in the head

---

Its rough. Roger Ebert claimed that Crawford was out of the shot during the kicking, but I'm not so sure. SOME woman gets kicked...probably a stunt woman. But maybe Joan too? Joan's revenge: going into "dead weight" when Bette(with a bad back) tried to lift her.

---
was appropriately gleefully anticipated in F ep. 1! -

---

Oh, its coming!

---

and this perhaps makes the murder even more disappointing. Aldrich's nerve failed him there. He could/should have had an Arbogast/gore moment but doesn't. Or even if we didn't see anything more gory than we did, if we saw Jane take a *couple* of swings to finish the maid off with appropriate skull-crunching - egg-shell-cracking a la Alien trailer years later? - sound fx each time that death could have been truly awful and memorable.

--

I suppose part of the problem was the casting of an African-American woman -- and a middle-aged one at that -- as the victim. She's wonderfully tough and confrontational with Bette Davis in their big showdown -- its a fine performance -- and perhaps you just can't DO that to that kind of character. She almost had to die offscreen and "nicely." But at that point..Baby Jane has no chance of being Psycho.

Note in passing: once Bette kills the maid, she's a killer and prison/asylum/death is the only end for her. Other movies did this -- kept a character ONLY menacing until finally they kill someone and ...GOTCHA:

Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear: He drowns a cop in a swamp.

Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear: He strangles a private eye in a kitchen.

Kathy Bates in Misery: She shot the sheriff. (An Arbogast scene with no gore.)

And in Clint Eastwood's "Play Misty for Me," HIS African-American maid is slashed(but not killed) by psycho Jessica Walter. Off to the loony bin Jessica goes. Only to get let out. And kill a cop with some scissors. And THEN Clint can go all Clint on the beyotch and just kill her.

---
And of course the score throughout WEHTBJ? is a disappointment, and never more so than in the murder scene (Psycho being the gold standard on these fronts).

---
Agreed. It occurs to me that I've read about 50 1960 reviews of Psycho, and almost all of them didn't mention the music -- even the screaming violins. One review said only "the score is standard spooky movie stuff, nothing more." Sometimes I could just go back in time and kill all those know-nothing critics.

Comparatively, I can't much even remember the BJ score.

---

Which reminds me: "Feud" has a fabulous credit sequence and it looks for all the world like a Saul Bass special!

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

quote]On this "hag" thing. Its a shorthand I've read elsewhere again and again, and I will likely use it again, but it certainly does reflect a contempt for the 50+ actress in Hollywood, doesn't it?[/quote]
I remember the term 'hag-core' taking off in the '90s as an offshoot of -core being applied promiscuously to different music scenes in that period. Before then I think that the customary slang to refer to WEHTBJ? and the like was 'Psycho-biddy' flicks. This gentler-seeming term is the one that's used on WEHTBJ?'s wiki page.

---

Given my tired typing fingers "hag movie" may be the easy way out, but at least we are noting that it was a bad thing to say about some nice ladies. I suppose we could add that often the actresses were made to LOOK like hags(Baby Jane, especially, but also Crawford's starved, dying Blanche.) Davis looked horrible in "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" -- on purpose -- too. But in that one , Olivia De Havilland was rather glam in a sharp matron way. And then we had Strait-Jacket, where Joan started the movie as a hag, but then tried to dress up as a 1940's hottie -- and boy was it weird.

Still, in 1962, the forties and fifties were tough ages for actresses. 60 on? Grandmother roles.

---

Very much so. You might say that Bette and Joan saved the movies for their generation of actresses.

It was happening for the men, too, by the way. As the story goes, the "retirement home for leading men" was Westerns. In 1967, we had John Wayne and Robert Mitchum in El Dorado; John Wayne and Kirk Douglas in The War Wagon; and Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas in The Way West(with Dick Widmark thrown in.) A lot of these guys needed the rather sexless role of Westerner(especially Jimmy Stewart) to hang on past their fifties. Til Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson arrived to stud things up again.

BTW, Joseph Uncle Charlie Cotton is in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte...a bit old, himself.

----
Compare with Isabelle Huppert who's 63 and is Oscar nom'd for her role in Elle where she's an unbowed rape victim, is seen in all sorts of weird, consensual S&M sexual situations with men 20+ years her junior (and no eyelids are batted), and runs a software company that specializes in first person shooters fused with Japanese-style tentacle porn.

--Hey, now.

---
Obviously your Hupperts's and Sarandons and Mirrens are exceptional figures, but pretty clearly no more exceptional talent-wise than Davis, Stanwyck, and co who really did get pastured out to Grandma-ville after 50. Progress!

---

Indeed. Those actresses had sexpot roles in their 20s and 30s and just kept going. Fitness and diet and their genes helped. Often plastic surgery but -- poor Jessica Lange. A real beauty in King Kong and Tootsie, and she ended up with one of those "cat faces." Oh, well, her choice.

The sexuality of Susan Sarandon and Huppert fits the world "out here," too. The Sexual Revolution of the 60s and 70's has not -- to my eyes -- been abandoned by the 60-somethings and even 70-somethings of today. Turn down the lights, and everybody's 21 again ...and capable of all sorts of sensual pleasure.

.

reply

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Over the years, it seemed that Baby Jane DID take on some sort of classic status. It must have been a "pop camp classic" because I don't recall the film making any Best Films lists . (Oh, maybe the AFI thriller list topped by Psycho, in 2001 or so, I'll have to check that.)

I would assume that Baby Jane is popular in gay movie-lover circles, if only for the presence of Joan Crawford and, (secondarily?) Davis. I always fear to tread in such areas, but I would guess there is some drag queen flash to how Davis and Crawford look in the film."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As a gay man who has known thousands of other gay men, I can't say that either I or any of them has ever suitably explained exactly what defines or constitutes camp or gay appeal, iconography or diva status. I do think I can safely say that Davis has it all over Crawford in that department, at least among boomer gay men. WHTBJ would still have been more or less what it was with Astor, de Havilland, Stanwyck or any other comparable contemporary in Crawford's place, but not with anyone else in Davis's. It's her show, and I'm sure Crawford realized it, and that the best she could hope to do was hold her own.

Lest I'm perceived as bestowing some general sort of superiority upon Davis, I'd add that, during their respective leading lady heydays of the '30s-'40s, I always found Crawford the more credible actress of the two: where Davis was full of theatrically grand gestures and exaggerated, eye-popping, stage-like mannerisms, Crawford injected hundreds of subtleties geared for the camera rather than the balcony into her performances. Perhaps that's why she never really generated any drag queen/impersonator popularity as Davis, Bankhead, Garland or Streisand did (at least, not until after Dunaway's Mommie Dearest, which resulted in impersonations of Dunaway's caricature).

But although Crawford had more work in features than Davis did during the '50s, it was Davis who spent the decade exploring character roles befitting her age, while Crawford sought to cling to glamorous, romantic leading roles (as did Stanwyck to some degree), almost invariably with younger leading men such as Jack Palance, Jeff Chandler or Cliff Robertson (and becoming somewhat gargoyle-like in the process). Thus, Davis continued developing as an actress after Crawford had allowed herself to ossify (even five years after WHTBJ, she was appearing in revealing tights and playing the irresistible object of Ty Hardin's affection in 1967's Berserk). So while I feel that Crawford could have been interchangeable with certain other actresses, her and Davis's career trajectories in the preceding decade had suited each to their WHTBJ roles.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Baby Jane joined Psycho in being a "modern Gothic horror film" but it created its ONN sixties sub-genre: "The Hag Movie"(a phrase nastily coined, not be me) in which any number of aged Golden Era actresses took on horror-type roles to survive on screen in older age. Davis and Crawford both took more of these roles(The Nanny for Davis; the William Castle/Robert Bloch Strait-Jacket, Berserk and Trog for Crawford.) But Olivia DeHavilland climbed on board for "Charlotte" and Tallulah Bankhead did "Die Die My Darling." Did I miss someone? Perhaps this wasn't THAT big a trend."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Swanstep's already pretty much rounded out the remainder of the sub-genre (unless you count Stanwyck's 1964 The Night Walker, in which she's apparently stalked by the living corpse of husband Hayden Rourke, before discovering - SPOILER ALERT! - the whole thing's been engineered by her greedy attorney (and real-life ex-husband) Robert Taylor. Oh, how the mighty fell!

But of all the waggish phrases coined at the time, the one I admired most (but which never caught on) was Grande Dame Guignol.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I would assume that Baby Jane is popular in gay movie-lover circles, if only for the presence of Joan Crawford and, (secondarily?) Davis. I always fear to tread in such areas, but I would guess there is some drag queen flash to how Davis and Crawford look in the film."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As a gay man who has known thousands of other gay men, I can't say that either I or any of them has ever suitably explained exactly what defines or constitutes camp or gay appeal, iconography or diva status.

---

I am straight, but my lifelong love of movies has brought to me any number of gay "comrades in film" with whom to talk movies. I might add that at least three of the acknowledged Hitchcock scholars -- Robin Wood, Donald Spoto, and Camille Paglia -- are/were openly gay and seemed to bring certain perspectives to Hitchcock's work.

That said, I've never professed to be able to understand exactly how the gay experience -- which I know is just as multi-varied and complex as the straight experience -- comes to bear on films in general. I think with Baby Jane, I've read of a lot of gay fanship of Crawford, and Bette Davis had this one female impersonator -- Charles "Something" -- who made a career of doing Davis.

---

I do think I can safely say that Davis has it all over Crawford in that department, at least among boomer gay men. WHTBJ would still have been more or less what it was with Astor, de Havilland, Stanwyck or any other comparable contemporary in Crawford's place, but not with anyone else in Davis's. It's her show, and I'm sure Crawford realized it, and that the best she could hope to do was hold her own.

---

Yes. I am told that as "Feud" tells the story, Crawford initiated the project of Baby Jane, taking the script to Robert Aldrich and telling him that she felt Davis had to play Jane. Crawford's career was in trouble by then and she was evidently willing to face up to both the feud and Davis's greater talent to make a potential hit happen. It was a shrewd move on Crawford's part as we now know: suddenly Crawford AND Davis had work through the sixties on the hag movies they had created.

Side issue: from my readings of Hollywood in the sixties, Crawford and Davis were considered "broke" as the sixties began, which is shocking reality about how comparatively low star pay was in the Golden Era. That said, Bette Davis had just done "Pocketful of Miracles" the year before "Baby Jane," and that was a big movie. Crawford had done "The Best of Everything" in 1959. So they were both still names. Evidently just not paid to handle their lifestyles.

---

Lest I'm perceived as bestowing some general sort of superiority upon Davis, I'd add that, during their respective leading lady heydays of the '30s-'40s, I always found Crawford the more credible actress of the two: where Davis was full of theatrically grand gestures and exaggerated, eye-popping, stage-like mannerisms, Crawford injected hundreds of subtleties geared for the camera rather than the balcony into her performances.

---

Interesting comparison. Perhaps Davis was Al Pacino to Crawford's Robert DeNiro.

---

Perhaps that's why she never really generated any drag queen/impersonator popularity as Davis, Bankhead, Garland or Streisand did (at least, not until after Dunaway's Mommie Dearest, which resulted in impersonations of Dunaway's caricature).

---

Is that what happened? Honestly, I thought Joan Crawford was popular in that way a lot sooner. See...I'm just not adept in this area.

---

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

But although Crawford had more work in features than Davis did during the '50s, it was Davis who spent the decade exploring character roles befitting her age, while Crawford sought to cling to glamorous, romantic leading roles (as did Stanwyck to some degree), almost invariably with younger leading men such as Jack Palance, Jeff Chandler or Cliff Robertson (and becoming somewhat gargoyle-like in the process).

---

Again, interesting. It occurs to me in the last few weeks on TCM, I've watched two "late" Bette Davis movies and she was willing to look like hell in both of them: "The Catered Affair"(1956) as an embittered old housewife out to get her daugther a big wedding and "Pocketful of Miracles" as a Bowery Bum of a woman("Apple Annie") who is magically turned into a duchess for a night to fool her distant daughter of her rich status. She was good in both roles.

---

Thus, Davis continued developing as an actress after Crawford had allowed herself to ossify (even five years after WHTBJ, she was appearing in revealing tights and playing the irresistible object of Ty Hardin's affection in 1967's Berserk).

---

Well, I dunno, maybe Joan Crawford was the forerunner to Jane Fonda and Susan Sarandon as today's "septuagenarian sexpots." (Which I am entirely for, of course. I'm getting up there myself.) Though I do remember feeling somewhat queasy about Crawford in the tights in "Berserk."

There's a story about William Castle approaching Joan Crawford -- then 50-something -- with Strait-Jacket, and this dialogue ensued:

Crawford: What's the story about?
Castle: Well, its a horror story in the Psycho tradition. Its about this 50-year old woman who is released from a sanitarium for axe murders she committed 20 years earlier--
Crawford: No. Its about a FORTY-year old woman who is released from a sanitarium...

---
So while I feel that Crawford could have been interchangeable with certain other actresses, her and Davis's career trajectories in the preceding decade had suited each to their WHTBJ roles.

---

And if Crawford brought Davis the project, she seems to have understood that. Some say that Crawford has the "thankless straight role" in Baby Jane, but she really follows quite a harrowing arc, trying to reason with her ever-crazier sister and being starved down to near-death in the final minutes of the film. And Crawford's final speech to her sister is doubly moving because her character is saying it so weakly, while "dying"(but I don't think she does. The film is explicit on the point, but I think Crawford is found in time to survive.)

reply

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

After so-called monsters - vampires, werewolves, ambulatory mummies and so forth - had petered out by the end of the '40s, and with them the concurrent "old dark house" genre (in which the monsters were generally revealed to be merely monstrous humans), along came the super-monsters (giant ants, spiders, resurrected dinosaurs, etc) and their space-alien fellow travelers. By the close of the '50s, the trendiness of those creatures was slipping, and low-budget producers like Castle and Corman were re-scaling horror to once-again human size...and bringing it back into the home. And then Hitchcock made it chic.

While all this was happening, less youth-oriented films of the '50s were exploiting then-mature leading ladies - most often, Crawford and Stanwyck - in a series of what I call "woman on the edge" dramas, in which they were either menaced by unhinged killers or, driven by jealousy, betrayal, greed or some combination thereof, became unhinged killers themselves. It was perhaps inevitable that an enterprising producer-director like Aldrich, who had already done his own "woman on the edge" drama with Crawford (Autumn Leaves) six years earlier, would engage in some cross-pollination. If he hadn't, someone else likely would have.

In spite of Robin Wood's suffer-by-comparison evaluation of Baby Jane, there's some significance and even flattery in his choice to invoke Hitchcock at all. But although it may look and feel like Psycho in superficial ways, there's as much Rear Window as Psycho in Baby Jane, with some Shadow Of A Doubt mixed in: a wheelchair-bound and trapped innocent; growing awareness of personal jeopardy; ultimately life-threatening menace at the hands of a homicidal and desperate killer.

Yet, as you observe, there's also just as much Sunset Blvd underlayment: the "old Hollywood" milieu; a vintage palazzo and auto; pining over glories of lost careers; escalating madness resulting in both death and detachment from reality. There's really not much thematic ground between the dreamlike states of Norma Desmond "back in the studio making a picture again" and "Baby" Jane dancing on the beach for adoring admirers, is there?

I remember Mary Astor writing in her autobiography about her approach to the characters she played, likening it to cooking, with the repeated phrase of getting her "pot bubbling" serving as the metaphorical point at which she'd gotten a handle on each, and that metaphor could be extended to film making in general. There are only so many edible substances, but it's their selections, combinations and proportions that create new recipes with cups, teaspoons, pinches and dashes of this or that.

And it's the truly imaginative chefs like Hitchcock inspiring "who would have thought to combine these ingredients...it's like nothing I've ever tasted" reactions, rather than "it's good, but it reminds me of..." ones.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

After so-called monsters - vampires, werewolves, ambulatory mummies and so forth - had petered out by the end of the '40s, and with them the concurrent "old dark house" genre (in which the monsters were generally revealed to be merely monstrous humans), along came the super-monsters (giant ants, spiders, resurrected dinosaurs, etc) and their space-alien fellow travelers. By the close of the '50s, the trendiness of those creatures was slipping, and low-budget producers like Castle and Corman were re-scaling horror to once-again human size...and bringing it back into the home.

---

...isn't that a great review of the nostalgic pull of all those movies when many of us saw them on TV (in our youth) and can now rent them for further pleasure. Or perhaps the greater pleasure of NOT reviewing them and leaving them back in our minds?

---
And then Hitchcock made it chic.

---

True, that. One of the themes that runs through the reviews in 1960 of Psycho that I have read is: "This is beneath Hitchcock's dignity. He shouldn't be working in horror, he shouldn't be working in B material."

Oddly enough, that thought was even in reviews that felt Psycho WAS a damn well-made thriller...just not Hitchcock should be making. "Prestige" studio directors shouldn't do that.

The major miscalculation about all this at the time was that a youth-driven culture was going to want to see MORE of what Psycho was about: shock sensation, graphic violence, up-front sexuality and "overall outrage of subject matter." Meanwhile, "prestige Hollywood movies" sank.

---

While all this was happening, less youth-oriented films of the '50s were exploiting then-mature leading ladies - most often, Crawford and Stanwyck - in a series of what I call "woman on the edge" dramas, in which they were either menaced by unhinged killers or, driven by jealousy, betrayal, greed or some combination thereof, became unhinged killers themselves.

---

An interesting sub-category, not recognized by me til now.

--

It was perhaps inevitable that an enterprising producer-director like Aldrich, who had already done his own "woman on the edge" drama with Crawford (Autumn Leaves) six years earlier, would engage in some cross-pollination. If he hadn't, someone else likely would have.

---

Interesting. This tells me that while "Psycho" may have helped Aldrich get his greenlight for "Baby Jane"(with its two "elderly" stars -- tough to get a greenlight FOR), Aldrich had worked in other sub-genres which equally fed what Baby Jane was about.

--

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

In spite of Robin Wood's suffer-by-comparison evaluation of Baby Jane, there's some significance and even flattery in his choice to invoke Hitchcock at all. But although it may look and feel like Psycho in superficial ways, there's as much Rear Window as Psycho in Baby Jane, with some Shadow Of A Doubt mixed in: a wheelchair-bound and trapped innocent; growing awareness of personal jeopardy; ultimately life-threatening menace at the hands of a homicidal and desperate killer.

---

Well, its time for me to check in with a "back pedal." Its my usual self-amusement: if I had read the above first, would I have been so hard on Baby Jane? Should I do a "180" and admit I was wrong in saying " Baby Jane is not a very good movie."

I think so. I was wrong in saying Baby Jane is not a very good movie. With a caveat or two.

First of all, I have now finished all of "Baby Jane" from my TCM taping and it has become clear to me that it works very well as a suspense film and very much uses Hitchcock's suspense rule: "Give the audience information that the characters don't have." For instance: at the end, two cops having lunch at a beach hut are talking about the missing Jane and Blanche Hudson, and how they've got to find them soon before Blanche is dead -- and those two ladies are RIGHT NEAR THE COPS, by a matter of yards, lying on the beach, and Blanche IS dying, and For God's Sake, Cops -- go over there and save Blanche!

The scene that Wood called "determinedly tugging on a dry udder" -- Blanche's desperate crawl down the stairs to the phone -- WAS quite suspenseful as intercut with Baby Jane's drive back home. I'm not sure what Wood's problem was with this. By the way, this scene is almost an exact duplicate for a scene of crippled James Caan trying to get to a phone while Kathy Bates is out in "Misery": should Stephen King or director Rob Reiner or screenwriter William Goldman be called out for plagiarism?

I noticed some of the "face in half darkness/face in half light" photography of Bette Davis near the end of the film much matched Hitchcock's filming of Arbogast in the motel office, and my feeling was: I'm not so sure Aldrich was copying Hitchcock as much as BOTH directors had a good feeling for noir/Expressionism.

A shot of Jane pushing the blanket-covered body of the maid down the outdoor steps of the house to the driveway and car is a near exact match of the shot 10 years later in "Frenzy" where Bob Rusk pushes a wheelbarrow with Babs body in it. I mean, the same damn shot!

---

Yet, as you observe, there's also just as much Sunset Blvd underlayment: the "old Hollywood" milieu; a vintage palazzo and auto; pining over glories of lost careers; escalating madness resulting in both death and detachment from reality. There's really not much thematic ground between the dreamlike states of Norma Desmond "back in the studio making a picture again" and "Baby" Jane dancing on the beach for adoring admirers, is there?

---

No, not really. And indeed, having watched ALL of Baby Jane, the linkages between Norma and Baby Jane seemed all the more clear, and the pathos all the more strong in BOTH cases.

I noticed this about Bette Davis' performance as I watched it all the way through: the shuffling, hard-drinking mean old bat of the first hour of the film gradually gives way to a sunny-spirited, happy and -- amazingly -- almost PRETTY woman when Jane gives way to her reveries of past glories as Baby Jane. Honestly, there were a few close-ups of Davis smiling sweetly where I thought: God, how pretty. What an actress!

However, in that same second hour, Davis the Sweet swerves into Davis the murderous. She's very much in akin witih both Norman Bates before her and...years later Kathy Bates' Annie Wilkes after her.

All of which is to say that, while I still think a fair amount of Baby Jane is flat and overplotted and underdeveloped, it IS a suspense film, after all, and DOES have some fine pathos and drama within it.

SPOILER:

The twist IS moving: Jane didn't cripple Blanche by hitting her with a car. Blanche crippled herself trying to hit JANE. Jane was too drunk to remember and took the blame for decades. This at once converts Jane into a victim and Blanche into a villain...a villain who, we realize, has let Jane do everything to her over the years as a means of penance. And THAT's meaningful, and I forgot all about it.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

PS. Talk about your "in-jokes." For almost the entire movie, Baby Jane is beleaguered by her nosy next-door neighbor(wait for it): MRS. BATES! Except this Mrs. Bates is youthful in her middle-age and stylish, with a teenaged daughter(played by Robert Alrdich's lookalike daughter -- hey there Pat Hitchcock.) The Mrs. Bates storyline is interesting in that it demonstrates how "regular people" can live right next door to a house of horrors and not know the secrets.

To her credit, Mrs. Bates suspects there's something wrong in her never getting to see Blanche -- but she never calls the cops.

Its interesting to me that Mrs. Bates and daughter have no man on the premises. Daddy must be divorced or dead. The result is that this is a tale of "women among women" -- Jane and Blanche and The Bates Women and the Black Maid(interestingly up-do-to-date sympathetic casting for the film's one murder victim.) The one notable man in the story is Victor Buono's massively overweight, nonetheless snobbish Mama's Boy of a piano accompaniest for Jane. But he carries little weight in the story, aside from his own.

Buono would show up in Aldrich's Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte as young Bette Davis's tyrannical Southern father. Funny how that film ends up in the same boat as Baby Jane: Weird-looking crazy Bette Davis isn't the REAL villain in the story...

reply

[–] Gubbio (3893) 8 years ago

>>> Except this Mrs. Bates is youthful in her middle-age and stylish, with a teenaged daughter(played by Robert Alrdich's lookalike daughter -- hey there Pat Hitchcock.) <<<

Hey, EC... The girl who played Mrs. Bates' daughter was Davis' real life daughter, Barbara Davis Hyman.
_

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

>>> Except this Mrs. Bates is youthful in her middle-age and stylish, with a teenaged daughter(played by Robert Alrdich's lookalike daughter -- hey there Pat Hitchcock.) <<<

Hey, EC... The girl who played Mrs. Bates' daughter was Davis' real life daughter, Barbara Davis Hyman.

---
Hello, Gubbio and.

WHAAA?

Man, I'm screwing up responses AND posts. Something in my water.

I thought I read that somewhere about Aldrich's daughter.

As is my fashion, I'll let the mistake stand. It will remind me to be more careful.

But this: I'm almost certain that Robert Aldrich's SON is in his "Flight of the Phoenix." Its rather comical. The opening of the movie is a plane crash with a freeze frame on each terrified passenger(all men) as the plane dies. With each freeze frame, we get the actors' name...JAMES STEWART...ERNEST BORGNINE...WILLIAM ALDRICH.

Wait a minute...William Aldrich?

And when the plane does crash...William Aldrich is the one who gets killed. Something falls on him.

"Thanks, Dad!"

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Talk about your "in-jokes." For almost the entire movie, Baby Jane is beleaguered by her nosy next-door neighbor(wait for it): MRS. BATES!

This reminds me to mention that recently I got around to seeing the long-forgotten, now restored Private Property (1960) directed by Outer-Limits guy Leslie Stephens. It's certainly *not* the great, lost, could-have-been-Psycho gem it was rumored to be early last year, but has enough edgy strangeness to it to be worth a watch I'd say. Anyhow, here's the connection with the 'Mrs Bates' neighbour anecdote for Baby Jane: Private Property's two creepy, rape-y, young guys stalk a pretty blonde woman in an early corvette back to her house in the just-off-Mulholland Hollywood hills (read now, they kind of foreshadow the late '60s counter-culture and the Manson murderers).

Although the 'dumb one' played by a young Warren Oates suggests that they'd have half an hour to rape her etc.before the fuzz would show up, they decide not just go in and force themselves on her, and instead they set up shop in the big empty house next door first to spy on her (including on her nude swimming in her backyard pool) and then try to get to know her and sort of seduce her.

The hunky, Marlon Brando-type of the pair first knocks on the woman's door posing as some sort of tradesman who's got the wrong address. He asks her 'Is this the Hitchcock residence?' After some discussion he leaves and the blonde woman closes the door and we see and hear her say 'Hitchcock?' quizzically to herself.

On the one hand, this is just a knowing in-joke. On the other hand, as I mentioned above, the creeps read now as foreshadowing the Manson murderers, so there is a momentary frisson when you think of how wide open stars including the Hitchcocks were to a horrific home invasion in the early 1960s. (I believe, however, that in fact the Hitchcocks always stayed down in not-quite-so-wide-open, more gated-community feeling Bel Air - still the point is made, and we get an early whiff of the justified star-paranoia that would blow up in the late '60s.)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

This reminds me to mention that recently I got around to seeing the long-forgotten, now restored Private Property (1960) directed by Outer-Limits guy Leslie Stephens.

---

One of TWO Outer Limits guys; Joseph "Psycho" Stefano being the other one. I'm not sure who had the bigger producing job, but both names were on the series.

--

It's certainly *not* the great, lost, could-have-been-Psycho gem it was rumored to be early last year, but has enough edgy strangeness to it to be worth a watch I'd say.

---

I'd heard about it over the years -- read about it in 1960 film periodicals within which I did "Psycho" research -- and your updates have me interested. It can be seen again, which is another good thing.

---

Anyhow, here's the connection with the 'Mrs Bates' neighbour anecdote for Baby Jane:

....

The hunky, Marlon Brando-type of the pair first knocks on the woman's door posing as some sort of tradesman who's got the wrong address. He asks her 'Is this the Hitchcock residence?' After some discussion he leaves and the blonde woman closes the door and we see and hear her say 'Hitchcock?' quizzically to herself.

---

Ha. He was "in the air" back then, I guess.

===

On the one hand, this is just a knowing in-joke. On the other hand, as I mentioned above, the creeps read now as foreshadowing the Manson murderers, so there is a momentary frisson when you think of how wide open stars including the Hitchcocks were to a horrific home invasion in the early 1960s.

---

I think the main shocker of the Manson killings was that Charles Manson had been making the party scene for much of 1968 and 1969 as a "party guest" of all manner or rock stars and rock producers who had an "open door policy" concurrent with the counterculture. Manson had made pals with some of the Beach Boys, some of the Mamas and Papas, and famously , Doris Day's son Terry Melcher -- a record producer who owned the house where Tate and the others were killed.

Manson disturbed some fellow partygoers(MIchael Caine, for one; he said he left a party where he met Manson and his girls BECAUSE of Manson and his girls) but was embraced by others.

....and came the night of the Tate murders, Charlie's hippie-style killers just walked right in and started killing people.

Things locked up after that.

---

(I believe, however, that in fact the Hitchcocks always stayed down in not-quite-so-wide-open, more gated-community feeling Bel Air - still the point is made, and we get an early whiff of the justified star-paranoia that would blow up in the late '60s.)

---

This is true, but Hitchcock ended up connected way too close for his comfort to some OTHER Manson style murders around 1970. Up near his SECOND home: in the Santa Cruz mountains near Monterey and Carmel(near the Mission San Juan Bautista of Vertigo fame.)

Hitchcock spent a lot of time at his Santa Cruz ocean-view home, and in 1970, a psycho killed an entire family by their swimming pool, very near Hitchcock's home. Meanwhile, in the same vicinity, a psycho named Edward Kemper was picking up college coed hitchikers...and beheading them.

Hitchcock was all too aware of these killings while they were unsolved. He was scared. He checked in with the Santa Cruz cops for protection and updates on the cases(all the killers were captured.)

I can only figure that maybe Hitchcock felt a little "payback" for Psycho with these Psycho killings near his Santa Cruz home. And heck, these killing might well have inspired him to make Frenzy..which he began work on in, 1970.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

@ecarle. I vaguely remember you mentioning these crimes too-close-for-comfort to Hitch's Santa Cruz/Carmel area home before, but...wow, what a nightmare. And these atrocities were at roughly the same time as the Zodiac killer terrorized NorCal... that's a recipe for serious unease and for the forces of social reaction to kick in big time.

One of Private Property (1960)'s nastiest moments foreshadows Edward Kemper: Warren Oates's dumb-guy, Boots, is right at the point of raping the blonde woman they've targeted and badgered and confused. He's on top of her on a bed and finally she wises up to what's really going on and starts screaming and struggling. At this point Boots first ties to quiet her by saying he won't hurt her etc., but she immediately starts screaming again. Then Boots pulls out his knife and, holding it up to her face, says, "You keep still or I'll cut your head off."

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Feud - Episode 2
The cold open to this ep. was dynamite (esp. if you know how WEHTBJ? turned out): Crawford and Davis make common cause against Aldrich's casting of a too-vivacious-young-blonde as the next-door-neighbor. C&D not only crush the girl's dreams without a second thought, they show Aldrich and the crew who's boss and that they know who's boss.

All the best scenes that follow build from this cold open as C&D and A struggle for control and we see each of them treat their spouses or children almost as poorly as the original starlet-wannabe gal. This basic spine for the episode was very strong and reminded a lot of Mad Men (Kiernan Shipka is an explicit overlap, but Alfred Molina's Aldrich *feels* like a missing Mad Men character: he looks quite a lot like Harry Crane who became Stirling Cooper Draper Pryce's media guy - and spiritually Aldrich just is Harry Crane with a lot more talent who becomes the true in-house TV ad director that Harry Crane didn't become and that SCDP never had and who then skipped out to do movies.)

As with last week, I could do without the some of the padding with Kathy Bates as Joan Blondel looking back on the Joan and Bette phenomenon from the perspective of 1978, including some unconvincing reconstructions of 1940s films from both Davis and Crawford. And some of the Hedda Hooper stuff could and probably should have been left on the cutting room floor. One starts to suspect that there's a dynamite 4 part-series struggling to get out from within this baggy 8-parter.

The episode landed a big punch from Jack Warner, who was strangely lukewarm about the project in ep. 1, but who in this ep. after seeing dailies knows he's lucked into to something good (but would he have that much pull with Director Aldrich just as the distributor?): 'Let's face it, after Psycho, horror's the future and we got it.'

Sarandon's Davis got the one-liner of the week: [pestered by a reporter as she arrives at the set] "What's your name?" "Sylvia." "Fuck off, Sylvia."

Molina, Sarandon, Lange and Tucci as Warner are all great. This is an Oscar-bait movie level cast so that even with its slight bagginess Feud remains must-see TV, a real communal watching event I'd say. What did everyone else think?

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

The cold open to this ep. was dynamite (esp. if you know how WEHTBJ? turned out): Crawford and Davis make common cause against Aldrich's casting of a too-vivacious-young-blonde as the next-door-neighbor. C&D not only crush the girl's dreams without a second thought, they show Aldrich and the crew who's boss and that they know who's boss.
---
Lange's face after the young pretty actress says "my mother loved your movies when she was a kid" is a study in long-held calculation and simmering rage. Followed by execution.

A little confusion for me: the "next door neighbor" in question, I expect is the DAUGHTER of Mrs. Bates, who is more prominent. But I guess they didn't have the time to specify that. And I guess I'll leave who plays the daughter unspoiled, though we've discussed it here.

Also: in a documentary on William Castle and his movies, there's a segment about how Joan Crawford also fired a young, sultry actress off of the movie "Strait-Jacket," and had her replaced with Diane Baker. Baker was pretty, too, but in a more "girl next door" way. The fired actress -- Anne Helm -- was more of a sexy type and Crawford felt threatened(Helm, much older, appears on the documentary, sad and still enraged over Crawford's treatment of her -- Crawford insulted her in front of cast and crew before getting her fired.) Interesting that Diane Baker(playing Crawford's daughter, who turns out to be Norman Bates) was in something as cheesy as Strait-Jacket in the same year she did Marnie for Hitch. Also, the documentary makes the point that Crawford bullied William Castle much as we see her bully Aldrich in this film.

---

All the best scenes that follow build from this cold open as C&D and A struggle for control and we see each of them treat their spouses or children almost as poorly as the original starlet-wannabe gal.

---

As "expose" type stories go, this one is a reminder of how tough and vicious the movie business can be, and how power games behind the scenes give us the movies we out here so lovingly attach to. And, while I can't speak to perfect marriages, children and relationships "out here," it does seem that the Hollywood folk REALLY have trouble making those things work. Plus, Crawford and Davis just seem to have had neurotic, mean streaks...even as only one of them had hardscrabble beginnings.

---

This basic spine for the episode was very strong and reminded a lot of Mad Men

---

Yes, the writing is pretty close to that level(whereas, Bates Motel is NOT at that level, by comparison), and as with Mad Men, the story is about the games people play in a "creative" community to get rich, stay rich, and stay powerful. EVEN AS ...they ARE creative people.

---
(Kiernan Shipka is an explicit overlap,

---

And how great it was to see her get that nice long scene to unload on Sarandon's Davis -- "Its MY turn, and you're jealous!" I felt pangs of nostalgia FOR Mad Men...sad that its gone. (Also sad: Jon Hamm doing H and R Block commercials; I'm sure he's paid well, but they aren't very glamourous.)

--- but Alfred Molina's Aldrich *feels* like a missing Mad Men character: he looks quite a lot like Harry Crane who became Stirling Cooper Draper Pryce's media guy -

---

Yeah, he kinda does! The boyishness, the glasses, the overweight....and the sexual drive underwritten by HIS Hollywood power(lots of so-so looking men got women in Hollywood.)

---
and spiritually Aldrich just is Harry Crane with a lot more talent who becomes the true in-house TV ad director that Harry Crane didn't become and that SCDP never had and who then skipped out to do movies.)

---

A great analogy. In its own way, "Feud" has been focusing(for now at least) on Aldrich as the interesting main character. In most ways, he has been sympathetic -- alternatively bullied and begged by his two female stars while Jack Warner comes down hard on him to undercut the stars, and Hedda Hopper comes in mean at him to feed her gossip("You've had three flops...you need this movie.") And ultimately...Aldrich does the bidding of the bad. He does the dirty work. He's not quite a villain though, because all his foes are vipers, too. Hollywood. I'm reminded that someone said "you can't just make a living in Hollywood, you can only get rich." And therefore, the fact that careers are based on the gaining of, and loss of, fabulous wealth, can make people vicious.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

(MORE)

As with last week, I could do without the some of the padding with Kathy Bates as Joan Blondel looking back on the Joan and Bette phenomenon from the perspective of 1978,

---

I guess this is the "necessary" expositional narrative spine of the piece, but I'm curious what it is supposed to BE -- they are at Dorothy Chandler pavilion, home of the Oscars, and Bates/Blondell disses "Coming Home" the Oscar winner of 1978. Were the two women at the Oscars for some special presentation and agreed to interviews on Davis and Crawford? I guess I should research the 1978 Oscar ceremony(for 1977 films, though, so Coming Home was simply out, not up.)

---
including some unconvincing reconstructions of 1940s films from both Davis and Crawford.

----

Well, "young age" make-up on older actors just doesn't work too well. I think they needed the scenes, and just threw up their hands on the execution.

---

And some of the Hedda Hooper stuff could and probably should have been left on the cutting room floor.

---

Though Judy Davis is wonderfully venomous as Hopper...using her power to ruin lives. (Though she would lose that power rapidly.) I liked two things here: (1) Her feud with Louella Parsons is used by Crawford against HER; and (2) Crawford also nastily reminds her "You're lucky, you didn't make it as an actress and didn't have to go through this." All the while as Crawford exposes her status as a "broke single mother in Hollywood" TO Hopper. I think this is an entertaining part of the show, if not quite necessary(though she IS the vehicle to help Warner and Aldrich control their stars.)

Note in passing: Hedda Hopper went to bat for Hitchcock's Psycho nomination: "Hitch overdue for Oscar...it will be a crime if he doesn't get one for Psycho." Thanks, Hedda. Maybe that HURT his chances.

---

One starts to suspect that there's a dynamite 4 part-series struggling to get out from within this baggy 8-parter.

---

Perhaps this stems from things like how major cable series split their final season into two sub-seasons: more episodes make money for advertising. I'm at a loss to see how this story can stretch to 8 episodes with all the emphasis on Baby Jane. But it will. Perhaps the film will move on from Baby Jane to things like Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte(which would bring in Zeta-Jones as DeHavilland and detail how/why Crawford quit that picture); Strait-Jacket(and the firing of the OTHER young actress) and even...an imperious Joan Crawford being saddled with Boy Child Steven Spielberg on the Night Gallery pilot. Hey, that would be a great end to the story! Bette Davis went on to do some quality films -- 1978's Death on the Nile comes to mind -- and in the eighties, did an HBO movie with James Stewart(they played an elderly couple out to joint-suicide themselves.)

---

The episode landed a big punch from Jack Warner, who was strangely lukewarm about the project in ep. 1, but who in this ep. after seeing dailies knows he's lucked into to something good (but would he have that much pull with Director Aldrich just as the distributor?): 'Let's face it, after Psycho, horror's the future and we got it.'

---

This second Psycho reference reminded me yet again how much THIS is the movie(or series) that "Hitchcock" should have been. It almost makes me ache to see the perfectly recreated scenes, lines, actors from "Baby Jane," versus what we DIDN'T get in "Hitchocck' about Psycho(because the Hitchcock estate forbade use of most of these elements.)

Warner's glee about how great Baby Jane looks in daillies looks to reverse next week(per a clip they showed), with the mogul suddenly berating Aldrich about how BAD the movie now looks("And I've booked this in 400 theaters!") That psychological whiplash("Its GREAT...its TERRIBLE!") is another reminder of the horrors of Hollywood.

---

Sarandon's Davis got the one-liner of the week: [pestered by a reporter as she arrives at the set] "What's your name?" "Sylvia." "Fuck off, Sylvia."

---

It was great. There's an undertow of QT profane comedy to this show, a reminder that the Hays Code may have kept such words off the screen, but not behind the scenes...

---

Molina, Sarandon, Lange and Tucci as Warner are all great.

---

They are. Its the combination of great script and great actors to play the juicy parts. Tucci in particular feels to me like he is giving a movie level performance. He's "bigger than the story he is in."

And Molina is a focal point, too. An actor who has always fought weight gain here seems to have been told: "Bob Aldrich was very overweight. Let yourself go." And yet he maintains a certain sex appeal and power in the role.

But the Main Event is Davis and Crawford via Sarandon and Lange. This is a great moment for both of them.

--

(MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

is an Oscar-bait movie level cast so that even with its slight bagginess Feud remains must-see TV, a real communal watching event I'd say.

---

The hour flew by...always a marker to me of grand entertainment. I didn't want it to end, I wanted more...I can't wait til next week. Its only eight hours, but I got that Sopranos/Mad Men feeling I haven't had in a few years. Maybe the next "Feud"(Prince Charles and Princess Diana) will be equally well-cast and fun? And if so...why, there's an anthology SERIES here. Could go on for years.

---

Also: the actor who played Victor Buono. Nice visual and vocal match. As someone told me once: "Everybody has a double." There are only so many faces in the human assembly line. Davis's light revulsion that Buono is her "leading man" was interesting: she must have realized that a character like Baby Jane wasn't going to do much better than this guy.(And, as Buono admits to Davis, an avowed gay off-screen as well, not helpful to a vain woman.) Aldrich holds firm: I'm not going to fire Buono, he's from Broadway, an artist. An interesting moment. The pretty girl who was playing the next door neighbor? Easily fired, interchangeable.

--
What did everyone else think?

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

One more thought about Episode 2 of Feud...

....the scene where Bette Davis.. in b/w is enacting one of her Baby Jane scenes under a hanging lamp(shades of the lamp in the fruit cellar in Psycho), deep into her performance and...

....Joan Crawford-- madder 'n hell about Davis' gossip about falsies(but it wasn't Davis who gossiped) -- WALKS RIGHT INTO THE SHOT while Davis is vamping.

Can you imagine what Christian Bale would have done?

Davis is funny enough:

Davis: What the hell, she's walking into my f'ing TAKE!

Aldrich: Cut.

This scene really "got me" because it led me to realize:

Some of the most classic scenes in movie history -- scenes imbedded into our minds as if they were real memories -- were simply staged and shot on a soundstage.

Imagine if someone walked into the set as Bogie said "We'll always have Paris."

Or while Gable said "frankly Scarlett, I don't give a damn."

Or after Mrs. Bates pulled back the shower curtain(from behind her)

Or(bonus): imagine Arbogast down there in the foyer, contemplating going up the stairs and..somebody walks up right next to him.Not Mrs. Bates. A grip, say.

The shot would be ruined of course...

....but seeing as this usually DOESN'T happen...the shot is preserved for years, DECADES after it was shot. "Just the right way."

Anyway, I was thrown as Crawford entered Davis's take...and then I laughed. And then I "pondered."

And I came here...

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Although I've always liked WEHTBJ? I've never loved it to death or found it endlessly rewatchable. And it was solid hit in 1962 but it was no Lawrence of Arabia or Psycho or Mary Poppins or Rear Window or.... For these reasons I suspect that Feud is probably really elevating WEHTBJ? in the canon: fixing the film in people's minds for several generations at once and becoming belatedly a genuinely common movie resource for people to draw on in conversation (comparable to the way The Manchurian Candidate only really reached that status after its re-release in the late '80s - suddenly you could know that everyone had seen it, that everyone agreed it was fascinating, etc.).

Exhibit A: I was reading an article at slate.com about how Trump's more conventional, adult appointees (Mattis, McMaster, et al.) are being isolated and frozen out of key decisions in favor of Steve Bannon, Trump's son-in-law, et al.. One of the first comments on the piece was:

"These guys were confirmed by the GOP to serve as the the proverbial "mask of sanity" for this administration, to reassure a twitchy nation that the functionally insane wouldn't drive the nation off of a cliff. But they are, Blanche! They are in the driver's seat!"

This made me laugh! I'm pretty sure no one would have made this joke before Feud, but it's so good. Expect to hear more stretched uses of WEHTBJ? dialogue after we all marinate in its pleasures both on Feud and in rewatches of WEHTBJ? over the next month or two.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Davis's light revulsion that Buono is her "leading man" was interesting: she must have realized that a character like Baby Jane wasn't going to do much better than this guy.

I was actually a little puzzled by this...since, at least in the finished film Buono's character is *never* positioned as a leading man/romantic interest for Jane, instead he's a bit of a sad-sack chancer trying to scrape together a living, dogged by his mother (and physically is Bloch-novel Norman!), and forced by circumstances into trying to make some money off a crazy-woman. If Davis really did call for a recast with a William Holden/Ryan Gosling-type (movie-Norman!) then that whole side of the script would have to be reworked (and maybe we wouldn't believe that such a guy would ever be *so* short of options that he'd stick it out with a crazy-lady - Jane is *way* crazier and more delusional than Norma Desmond ever was!). Doesn't sound much like Davis to me.

In general, this sort of quibble is being taken up quite a bit in nymag's (excellent) coverage of the show. They're *into* it but aren't completely convinced yet that the show really understands WEHTBJ? itself that well. Matt Zoller Seitz over there, however, isn't impressed at all.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Davis's light revulsion that Buono is her "leading man" was interesting: she must have realized that a character like Baby Jane wasn't going to do much better than this guy.[/quot
I was actually a little puzzled by this...since, at least in the finished film Buono's character is *never* positioned as a leading man/romantic interest for Jane, instead he's a bit of a sad-sack chancer trying to scrape together a living, dogged by his mother (and physically is Bloch-novel Norman!), and forced by circumstances into trying to make some money off a crazy-woman.

---
Well, yes and no. It seems that Baby Jane is HOPING for a handsome suitor to come calling; she is notably distressed to find Buono at her door. But as the story continues, Baby Jane DOES(to my mind) start to see romantic possibilities in Buono.
Buono himself teases his mother that maybe he'll come back that night from Baby Jane's...but maybe he won't. He even confronts his mother over having conceived him in an anoymous Hollywood motel tryst. Probably just out to bug his mom, but again...who knows. Perhaps Buono sees dollar signs in romancing Baby Jane.

Still, romance isn't OVERTLY on the menu between Davis and Buono.

More to the point, I suppose the scene as scripted it in Feud with Buono(nice lookalike!) is one of those things "ginned up" to put some things across: Victor Buono was gay. He knew he was overweight, not great looking. So..write the scene as if Buono wants to kid around with Davis about this...all the while driving her a little nuts. What if this IS her leading man?
----
--- If Davis really did call for a recast with a William Holden/Ryan Gosling-type (movie-Norman!) then that whole side of the script would have to be reworked (and maybe we wouldn't believe that such a guy would ever be *so* short of options that he'd stick it out with a crazy-lady - Jane is *way* crazier and more delusional than Norma Desmond ever was!). Doesn't sound much like Davis to me.
--
All true. I doubt Davis would have called for a hunky recast. These were different stories, and the man matters in Sunset Boulevard. Baby Jane is much more round the bend -- and poor -- than Norma Desmond, who can at least feign professionalism and still make love.
I would expect that the novel gave us more of a Victor Buono type, too.

---

In general, this sort of quibble is being taken up quite a bit in nymag's (excellent) coverage of the show. They're *into* it but aren't completely convinced yet that the show really understands WEHTBJ? itself that well. Matt Zoller Seitz over there, however, isn't impressed at all.
---
Well, I very much like Seitz's writings so..I'm a bit disappointed reading that.(Hell, he even liked The Lone Ranger.) Especially given that Seitz has so sung the praises of Mad Men that his weekly recaps became a book.
But still: in some ways, Seitz is right. The writing on Feud isn't Mad Men level; FX network has required something more profane and campy and "bio-pic-ish." I certainly think the writing on Feud is better that the writign on Bates Motel(my current comparison show) and if Feud has me hungry for each week's episode as Mad Men and The Sopranos did, perhaps my cravings are for this deep dive into 1962 Hollywood, when Psycho was still in the air. But hey, some of Mad Men was set in 1960 and 1962, too.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Although I've always liked WEHTBJ? I've never loved it to death or found it endlessly rewatchable.

---

Nor I. But beyond the movie plot, I think there is real power in any given shot photograph of Davis and Crawford together. There's a real doozy of a color photograph taken of the two -- not from the movie, a publicity shot of just the two faces in darkness -- and Davis in now-blue pancake make-up is a horror to behold on the one hand, and wonderfully expressive on the other hand. Crawford sort of holds her own in the shot with Davis if only with that unsightly mop of hair and tired looking appearance.That one publicity photo rather sums up everything this is "classic" about Baby Jane.

--
And it was solid hit in 1962 but it was no Lawrence of Arabia or Psycho or Mary Poppins or Rear Window or....

---
No. I expect that the "powers that be" in film criticism see Baby Jane much as you and I do (I think we share the opinion, but I think doghouse likes it better.) The story is ultimately not terribly dense or complex; the playout is rather predictable. And the one murder in the film is quite sedate and mundane. Its not much of a shocker.

----
For these reasons I suspect that Feud is probably really elevating WEHTBJ? in the canon: fixing the film in people's minds for several generations at once and becoming belatedly a genuinely common movie resource for people to draw on in conversation (comparable to the way The Manchurian Candidate only really reached that status after its re-release in the late '80s - suddenly you could know that everyone had seen it, that everyone agreed it was fascinating, etc.).

---

Interesting comparison to Candidate...though I think once it was "out in release again," Candidate proved that it WAS a classic. And likely a much bigger deal than audiences and critics thought in 1962. (1962! What a great movie year! But no Hitchcock film in it; The Birds was almost a Christmas 1962 release though, maybe we should make it "honorary.")

---

"These guys were confirmed by the GOP to serve as the the proverbial "mask of sanity" for this administration, to reassure a twitchy nation that the functionally insane wouldn't drive the nation off of a cliff. But they are, Blanche! They are in the driver's seat!"

This made me laugh! I'm pretty sure no one would have made this joke before Feud, but it's so good.

---

That IS funny and suggests that Slate knows what's in the TV culture right now.

---
Expect to hear more stretched uses of WEHTBJ? dialogue after we all marinate in its pleasures both on Feud and in rewatches of WEHTBJ? over the next month or two.
---
Yes...I expect theWEHTBJ will get some rental and streaming action over the next few months. It is "reborn." And certainly good enough. CERTAINLY all of Bette's work in it is fantastic.

PS. On Youtube, you can find a pretty funny clip of Bette Davis(looking fine, not in Baby Jane make-up) on the Andy Williams show SINGING and twisting to a 1962 twist number entitled...oh yeah.."What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" Its a gag, but a classy one with Davis all in. (In color, yet.)

reply

[–] MissMargoChanning (6630) 8 years ago

I hadn't heard of "Feud", the series until I came here. This is precisely why I love the message board! Not only do I get ideas and insight from others..... I get tips and information. Thank you!

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

You're welcome...and with "MissMargoChanning" as your byline, perhaps Feud will be right up your alley.

In the US: Feud will air at 10:00 pm on Sundays(starting March 5) on FX.

PS. I've read that the NEXT "Feud" series will be on Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I watched the Feud opening episode -- "Pilot" and -- impressed, I was.

The film very much feels like the 2012 theatrical about the making of Psycho -- "Hitchcock" -- and I felt two things were better about this one:

ONE: Plenty more time to get into details about "how the movie came to be." And how it was made. Could have a movie about Psycho been given true justice at 8 hours?(7 less commercials?) Probably yes -- except for TWO below:

TWO: "Free rein" to recreate -- exactly -- scenes and dialogue from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane. The Fox Searchlight producers of Hitchcock never got that clearance from Universal beyond evidently "bare minimum" references to the shower scene, the house, and Arbogast's death(blink and you miss THAT one.)
And they had to re-write the (unseen) dialogue from the sheriff's living room scene entirely (with lines like "I think your detective was in the cups.")

But with Feud, they've already recreated two scenes from the original with eerie precision...albeit not quite the right faces on screen.
---
So, "Feud" has the luxury of eight episodes(maybe TOO much luxury -- I mean we're already seeing the start of filming of Baby Jane in Episode One), and the luxury of evidently being able to recreate any scene or any line in the movie. How I MISSED that in "Hitchcock." How fun it was to get it here.

---

"Hitchcock" had a cast you'd pay to see -- Oscar winners Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, but also ScarJo -- but so does "Feud" without such payment: Oscar winners Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange. Oscar winners Kathy Bates and Catherine Zeta Jones. Oscar winner Judy Davis(didn't she eventually win, or am I wrong?)

Plus Stanley Tucci and Alfred Molina. Hardly chopped liver.

Speaking of Tucci -- he's doing Jack Warner and, given a role somewhat akin to the studio chief in "Hitchcock" -- he's a lot more wild. FX network allows Tucci's Warner to utter the F-word with abandon and to throw in the C word as well -- his take on his two aged, wayward female studio rebels is pretty damn nasty. And, I expect more on target than what we got in "Hitchcock" on how studio execs talk.

As with "Hitchcock," "Feud" offers us a tantalizing look at how movie people gestate a movie INTO a movie. Hitchcock read a review of Robert Bloch's Psycho in the New York Times, and pursued the film as a producer up against a studio(Paramount.) "Feud" has Joan Crawford(Lange) rather desperately trying to find a property for herself, finding Baby Jane among a pile of "women's books" and then trying to convince Robert Aldrich to direct it and Bette Davis to star.

There follows a nifty sequence of Aldrich -- lacking Hitchcock's power in 1961 after three flops -- pitching everywhere to get the movie made. He gets the answer "Davis and Crawford are too old" a lot. He gets the answer "keep Davis and Crawford, but make the story about the nosy neighbor ala Rear Window...and cast Natalie Wood as her."

And in a rather painful scene he gets: "Davis and Crawford, we're fine with. We don't want to work with you. Sodom and Gomorrah flopped."

Eventually, Aldrich finds sewer-mouth Jack Warner and...we're in business.

---

One thing that "Feud" shares with "Hitchcock" is the feeling that when a first scene or two are being filmed to "start a movie" -- it doesn't look very thrilling or interesting. One realizes that directors like Hitchcock and Aldrich had to "see the movie in their mind" and galvanize their actors to believe in it, too. "Hitchcock" and "Feud" give us the impression that in the making, movies are rather dull and silly experiences. Its only once the acting is underway, the film is shot and post production has been added that "the movie emerges."

---

BTW, right off the bat, we get this dialogue between Aldrich and his female assistant:

Aldrich: Crawford wants to make a horror movie?
Assistant: Why not? Hitch just did, with Psycho, and its still raking in the dough.

And so..."Feud" becomes the sequel to "Hitchcock"(which started with Hitchcock enjoying the successful premiere of North by Northwest and looking for the next thing.)

(MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Well, an entire other post on Feud just disappeared on me.

I have to figure out a way to keep them locked in. I know I can copy them, but they disappear as I type.

"Later"

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

One realizes that directors like Hitchcock and Aldrich had to "see the movie in their mind" and galvanize their actors to believe in it, too.

Absolutely. Moreover if as an actor you mainly just want to be in very good movies then while the script is a reasonable indicator of how things turn out, at least equally important is if the Director can convince you that she knows what she's doing, what film she's making and that it rocks. Does she really see the movie in her head so that she can enthusiastically and with lots of detail pitch it to you over dinner and drinks?

I was rewatching the very entertaining Alien-making-of dvd extras the other day, and two relevant points jumped out.

1. Ridley Scott accepted the directing job then went away for 3.5 weeks and storyboarded the whole film that he saw from the script. His storyboards are *amazing* and 20th Century Fox instantly doubled his budget.
2. John Hurt was a late replacement for Frenzy's Jon Finch (Finch fell seriously ill on a Friday afternoon near the beginning of production, and a replacement had to be found over the weekend). Hurt didn't have a chance to read the script, instead he agreed to report for work Monday Morning just on the strength of Scott's enthusiastic multi-hour pitch of the film to him over a long dinner on Saturday. Good decision.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

quote]One realizes that directors like Hitchcock and Aldrich had to "see the movie in their mind" and galvanize their actors to believe in it, too.[/quote]Absolutely.

---
Moreover if as an actor you mainly just want to be in very good movies then while the script is a reasonable indicator of how things turn out, at least equally important is if the Director can convince you that she knows what she's doing, what film she's making and that it rocks. Does she really see the movie in her head so that she can enthusiastically and with lots of detail pitch it to you over dinner and drinks?

---

I'm reminded here that Teresa Wright compared how Hitchocck told her the story of Shadow of a Doubt before filming and "it matched exactly" whereas Richard Brooks told her the story of "The Happy Ending" before filming and it didn't match at all. As a sidebar, Farley Granger said that Hitchcock had him out to Hitch's house and told GRANGER the whole story of Strangers on a Train and IT matched exactly. As yet another sidebar, Paul Newman said Hitchcock told him the whole story of Torn Curtain and "I thought it sounded very exciting"(said Newman) and..wha happen?

----

I was rewatching the very entertaining Alien-making-of dvd extras the other day, and two relevant points jumped out.

1. Ridley Scott accepted the directing job then went away for 3.5 weeks and storyboarded the whole film that he saw from the script. His storyboards are *amazing* and 20th Century Fox instantly doubled his budget.

---

I would expect that well-crafted storyboards that can "visualize the story" when the script cannot would make a big difference.

HERE, I'm reminded that in trying to sell Universal on "The First Frenzy"(a NYC set psycho tale circa 1967), Hitchcock had created a package of staged scenes in photographs and filmed footage of unknown young actors and actresses enacting the film's hoped-for "hip and nude" scenes. This backfired. Universal wanted nothing of the project. It was never filmed. The title was affixed by Hitchocck to an entirely different property for release in 1972.

---
2. John Hurt was a late replacement for Frenzy's Jon Finch (Finch fell seriously ill on a Friday afternoon near the beginning of production, and a replacement had to be found over the weekend).

---

What of the great "what ifs" in movie history, you ask me. Jon Finch was in a well-reviewed hit(of sorts) with Frenzy, but that leading role was rather thankless and un-heroic; he never gained traction as a leading man. Still, to be in the "chest-buster scene" in "Alien" would have made him instantly famous in a new way and COULD have given Finch a "new career" in the 80's. He was more handsome than John Hurt (which actually, could have uh, hurt -- John Hurt did quite well in character parts.) That said, John Hurt soon got "The Elephant Man" and a part of such disfigured power that one cant imagine anyone else playing it. Still...had Jon Finch kept his Alien role, well....his most famous movie sure wouldn't have been Frenzy. I would like to add that, perhaps as years-later solace, Ridley Scott cast an alarmingly old-looking Jon Finch in a supporting role in "Kingdom of Heaven" or whatever that Orlando Bloom movie was called.

---

Hurt didn't have a chance to read the script, instead he agreed to report for work Monday Morning just on the strength of Scott's enthusiastic multi-hour pitch of the film to him over a long dinner on Saturday. Good decision.

--

Indeed it was. I flash here on what it must have been like to be Janet Leigh in 1959 being told by Hitchcock, "I want you to play a role in my new movie in which you will be stabbed to death in a motel shower, it will be quite violent." The actor has to contemplate a role in which the "fame" will derive from getting killed. You'd like to figure that Leigh AND Hurt instinctively knew these scenes would be career-changing. But maybe not. I figure Hitch met with Martin Balsam as well: "Mr. Balsam I'm asking you to take a role in which your character will be quite brutally stabbed to death on a staircase." I figure Balsam didn't care at the time, but little did he know how HIS life would change, too.

In short, Janet Leigh was the woman who got slaughtered in the shower, Martin Balsam was the man who got slaughtered on the stairs, and John Hurt was the guy who gave birth to a monster through his chest...

---

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Oscar winner Judy Davis(didn't she eventually win, or am I wrong?)

Davis hasn't won; she's been nom'd twice, for Passage To India and for Husbands and Wives (great, unconfortable-to-watch film - Woody's best of the '90s? - in which she was *amazing*). In the latter case she was robbed by Marisa Tomei's controversial win for My Cousin Vinny (which did nothing for me).

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

quote]Oscar winner Judy Davis(didn't she eventually win, or am I wrong?)[/quote]
Davis hasn't won; she's been nom'd twice, for Passage To India and for Husbands and Wives

---

Appreciate the answer, swanstep. Davis is one of those actresses who was so good so many times that I sort of figured she HAD to have won. But not yet.

She had/has a great face for nastiness, a great capacity for barely-suppressed rage that just HAS to come out. She used it well for comedy in a little seen movie "The Ref" where her marriage to an equally sneering Kevin Spacey is hilariously hateful. And she was great as a villainous and mean Presidential aide in Clint's "Absolute Power" who is told by a co-conspirator Secret Service agent(Scott Glenn) that he would "like to tear your face right off your skull." (HUGE applause and cheers from the audience.)

--
great, unconfortable-to-watch film - Woody's best of the '90s? - in which she was *amazing*).

---

I've only seen parts. She's quite angry in that one, too, right? And Sydney Pollock(a famous director who started as an actor) is quite good too, I hear.

I guess I'd better watch it all the way through.

---

In the latter case she was robbed by Marisa Tomei's controversial win for My Cousin Vinny (which did nothing for me).

---

Well...I have great affection for Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, so we'll have to agree to disagree there. I think what people forget is that Tomei got all sorts of rave reviews for Vinny when it came out in early 1992. She beat a slate of Europeans and seemed to generate a real backlash as the Yank. Tomei was served by a great script that gave her some long, technical speeches to master(about plumbing fixture and car tires!) and she had to make us believe that Joe Pesci was lovable(she did, to Pesci's great aid as the star of the show)

Its the same old thing about the Oscars. My choice, your choice, anybody's choice -- is the right choice. But Oscar famously ignores great comedy performances and...not that time. I think Mona Lisa Vito is one of the great screen characters(and..."the character wins the Oscar, not the actor..")

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

I didn't see My Cousin Vinny until much later on TV, and I guess my overall feeling about the film interfered with my ability to appreciate Tomei's character: I actually found it hard to believe when I saw it that MCV came out in 1992 since it felt like such a lazy '80s formula fish-out-water comedy (with a bit of formula emotional uplift at the end) to me. It had no zip to it, and it's a car-crash of NYC stereotypes meeting Alabama stereotypes, and it just didn't strike me as especially funny at any point.

Tomei was good-to-very-good but the material was pretty blah really in my view (Groundhog Day, Clerks, Dazed and Confused were from around this time for comparison). Also it struck me that Tomei's was a lead role, so that whatever she was doing was strictly incomparable to what someone like Judy Davis did in a true supporting role. Tomei is a constant pleasant presence throughout the film and she has *the* conventional female lead, 'reform-him-and-marry-him' character arc. It becomes impossible, I think, for Oscar Voters to vote for a true supporting actors handful of scenes against someone who's in most scenes in the movie and that you get to know, see change, etc.. Quantity overwhelms...

reply

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

I'm in general sympathy, swanstep, with the sentiments expressed in your first paragraph, if not as specifically applied to MCV (a watch-anytime-and-never-tire-of favorite). Some Like It Hot, for instance, has always left me cold other than for a few isolated moments (placing me, I'm sure, within a negligible minority). It all speaks to the perhaps apocryphal "comedy is hard" remark supposedly made by a dying actor, and its subjective and inscrutable nature.

Fish-out-of-water formula MCV indisputably is but, from my purely personal point of view, it's overcome by the sheer likability of all the participants, whose deft skills enable it to rise above its premise, and demonstrates that even that which has been done before can be successfully done again by those with an interest in doing it better (even as Hitchcock sought to do, and succeeded in doing, with Psycho). So while the premise may have been tired, the vitality and sure-footedness with which it's executed appeals to me. And I say this as someone who had found Joe Pesci's previous work in the near-annoying category.

On the Oscar side of things, Tomei's supporting rather than leading nomination is one of many examples of the cynicism inherent in the process, presumably reflecting 20th-Fox's, her agent's and publicist's and/or the actress's own simple calculation that her chances were better in that category. And it seems to have worked.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I'm in general sympathy, swanstep, with the sentiments expressed in your first paragraph, if not as specifically applied to MCV (a watch-anytime-and-never-tire-of favorite).

---

I'm going to line up with doghouse here(who likes MCV as I do) not to gang up on swanstep's interpretation so much as to align myself with what he said as why I like this, too. Perhaps with some additional embellishments. Hah. But first:

---

Some Like It Hot, for instance, has always left me cold other than for a few isolated moments (placing me, I'm sure, within a negligible minority). It all speaks to the perhaps apocryphal "comedy is hard" remark supposedly made by a dying actor, and its subjective and inscrutable nature.

---

I will forever be fascinated that the American Film Institute named Some Like It Hot the Number One comedy of all time, and then, a year later(I think), named Psycho the Number One thriller of all time. I have respect for the AFI voter list(filmmakers AND film critics) and this told me: those folks love that 50s/60s cusp I do. And yet: Some Like It Hot doesn't feel like the funniest movie ever made anymore, and (alas) Psycho surely isn't the most terrifying movie ever made, anymore. But they were. I think they share a certain landmark status AND a rather "mid-point" status: they came out as the Golden Era studio system and Hays Code were shutting down, and pointed the way to the more frank and radical "cinema" about to begin.

I can't say I laugh at much of anything in Some Like It Hot, anymore, though I like the "movieishness" of the shots of Lemmon and Curtis by the train watching MM board. I love shots of two people side by side looking off at someone else; its just a "cool" shot to me. And I laugh a little bit at Lemmon's "Look how she moves! Like jello on springs! I tell you, its a whole other sex."

How much better I love The Apartment of a year later -- but not for its comedy either. Rather for its pathos, its suspense, and its wonderful payoff.

--

Fish-out-of-water formula MCV indisputably is but, from my purely personal point of view, it's overcome by the sheer likability of all the participants, whose deft skills enable it to rise above its premise, and demonstrates that even that which has been done before can be successfully done again by those with an interest in doing it better (even as Hitchcock sought to do, and succeeded in doing, with Psycho). So while the premise may have been tired, the vitality and sure-footedness with which it's executed appeals to me.

---

Bingo! All the way through. I was preparing a post defending MCV that said a whole lot of that(not as well)...right down to the Psycho comparison.

I think the two things that lift MCV above are the "surprise casting" and, in very specific ways, the script. It IS a fish out of water tale, but everything felt different.

---

And I say this as someone who had found Joe Pesci's previous work in the near-annoying category.

---

What a weird career that guy had. He breaks through in Raging Bull for Scorsese with DeNiro in 1980 -- and then practically disappears for all of the 80's. Then, suddenly in 1989 and 1990...boom(Lethal Weapon II)...boom(Home Alone)...boom(GoodFellas...a full 10 years after the last Scorsese/DeNiro collaboration) and Oscar.

Thus was Joe Pesci made a star, but only My Cousin Vinny really clicked for him. By the time he went to the Scorsese/DeNiro well one more time(Casino, which was great despite the overfamiliarity of it), what had been great at first was...tired.

And Pesci disappeared again.

---

On the Oscar side of things, Tomei's supporting rather than leading nomination is one of many examples of the cynicism inherent in the process, presumably reflecting 20th-Fox's, her agent's and publicist's and/or the actress's own simple calculation that her chances were better in that category. And it seems to have worked.

---

Its quite the game, isn't it. Its how Sean Connery won for The Untouchables, though, he sort of IS support in that movie...but superstar support.

And it goes the other way: Anthony Hopkins demanding of his studio to be nominated for Best Actor for Silence of the Lambs. The character won. Hannibal Lector. With a lot less screen time than Best Supporting Actress nominee Janet Leigh had in Psycho.

(MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

The casting in My Cousin Vinny:

They had the four main roles:

Vinny
The kid who is on trial
Mona Lisa Vito
The Formidable Southern Judge

And two of them were cast in total surprise:

Lisa -- clearly a Fran Drescher role at the time -- went to the new, skilled, beautiful and very funny Marisa Tomei

The judge -- likely a Gene Hackman or Robert Duvall role, but they cost too much -- was given to a perfect Fred Gwynne, who had not done too much in recent years and died not long after MCV. This is Gwynne's showcase legacy role to me; his hangdog, hounddog face crinkled in confusion and irritation, his sonorous voice given that deep South flavor ("What's a yewt?")

Even the kid on trial was a good choice -- The Karate Kid himself, Ralph Macchio, possessed of a sweet and sympathetic face. Coupled with Tomei's beauty, these two actors gave MCV a "heart" that humanized Joe Pesci.

Plus: the return of Austin Pendleton, in a glorious gag as a supposedly top drawer local public defense attorney who reveals a hilarious stammer(yes, speech impediments can be properly used for comedy) at just the wrong time in the trial.

---

The script. Among the reasons Marisa Tomei won the Oscar were that she was given what actors treasure: real long speeches. One was about plumbing (but really a sex-play come-on to Vinny, who understands this immediately and responds in kind) and the other was about cars(a VERY long technical speech that Tomei handles with crack comedy timing and sexy intelligence). That second speech wins the trial and wins the Oscar. (Plus her bit about a "sweet little deah"(deer) getting its f'in head blown off if Vinny goes hunting with the local prosecutor.)

Meanwhile, great comedy construction(with a certain legalistic purity) between Gwynne's by-the-book judge and Vinny's rebel:

Pesci: Now, your honor my client is completely innocent and didn't do anything--
Judge: No. No. I just want to hear one of two phrases outta yo mouth: guilty or not guilty.
Pesci:(Snarkily) I think I understand what you're tryin' to tell me, judge.
Judge: (Angrily) No...I don't think that you DO, Mistuh Gambini.

And off to jail for contempt Vinny goes.

The movie is careful to make its points about Vinny's surprise lawyerly skills(as an "arguer") at the same time it unfolds a surprisingly sweet love story about how Lisa's technical intelligence not only makes her a great lover for Vinny...but a great technical expert witness.

Funny, sweet, and very intelligent -- My Cousin Vinny is my favorite personal movie of 1992. And I have some friends who can do the lines with me all the time.

What My Cousin Vinny was NOT was: perfect. It does sink to fairly simple comedy motifs at times. (Gwynne would never fall for the Jerry Gallo/Jerry Callo ruse.) It IS a fish out of water story. But cast and script carry it over the line for me.

Oh, and Vinny's opening statement in response to the prosecutor's: "Everything that guy just said is bul.....it."

PS. It took some years for MCV to become my favorite movie. It started when I stopped to watch it anytime it came on TV...and carried on through when I found that I knew most of the lines and "bits" -- and had some friends who did, too.

But before then, my favorite of 1992 was "Unforgiven." THAT was some right choice, huh? Again, an absolutely magnificent script that lifted everybody who read the lines -- and that great "over the hill gang" cast of Eastwood, Hackman, Freeman, and Harris. However, Unforgiven simply doesn't have(and doesn't WANT to have) the scene by scene entertainment value of MCV. Its a personal list.

reply

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

More than any other single element, I have to conclude the casting is what allows MCV to achieve the magic it does. The screenwriter's other produced projects - six of them - range from unmemorable to annoying. The director's dozen other credits are equally unremarkable. In the hands of lesser - and less harmonious - players, I can easily imagine the whole thing just laying there as (and as swanstep has noted) labored and threadbare formula.

To those you've singled out, I'd like to add an honorable mention of versatile Lane Smith as the genially smug prosecutor (his cry of "I - (clap) - DENtical" has long been something of a catch-phrase around our house), and along with Bruce McGill's low-key presence as the determined but honest sheriff, what emerges is a dramatic construction with antagonists but no villains. There simply isn't anyone to dislike anywhere in the piece (even the poolroom goon Pesci eventually decks with a flying haymaker is too comically ineffectual to actually dislike).

Along with them, equally versatile and reliable character players like Maury Chaikin and James Rebhorn represent people it's dramatically necessary only to neutralize rather than defeat and humiliate. In this way, every last character is allowed their humanity, and this approach - which contributes greatly to the film's overall sweetness - is no more satisfyingly distilled than in Fred Gwynn's imposing and formidable Judge Haller, for whom we can't help but develop affection even as he appears to menace Vinny.

I'd like to think that this character is the one that finally sent Herman Munster to his rest at long last, and for which Gwynne will be best remembered.

P.S. A glance at his credits reveals something of which I wasn't aware (and can't imagine how I missed at the time): an appearance as Jonathan Brewster in a 1969 TV production of Arsenic and Old Lace. I'm sure Gwynne's still-fresh association with Herman Munster must have added a layer of comic dimension to the play's "He looks like Boris Karloff" running gag.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

More than any other single element, I have to conclude the casting is what allows MCV to achieve the magic it does.
---
Probably so. As I note, the casting of Marisa Tomei and Fred Gwynne in such substantial roles was a pleasant surprise. Her because I'd barely seen her in anything else(though Oscar, an intriguing 1930s screwball gangster comedy with Sly Stallone directed by John "Animal House" Landis was where I saw her first -- a dead ringer, she was, for an old girlfriend and I noticed HER), and Gwynne because well...where had HE been lately? (In Pet Sematary getting killed by a zombie boy, for one, but not much else.)
Pesci was riding high --- not for long perhaps but nonetheless high -- and the storyline made him about as accessible and "heroic" as he'd ever be in movies. Tomei's growing pride and love in her man was charming, too.
But (as you note below), Vinny also had a passel of great supporting actors, all giving us capsule summaries of a group of Southerners who were wary but winnable -- plus Rebhorn's straight-arrow FBI expert witness whom Tomei outthinks.
---

The screenwriter's other produced projects - six of them - range from unmemorable to annoying. The director's dozen other credits are equally unremarkable. In the hands of lesser - and less harmonious - players, I can easily imagine the whole thing just laying there as (and as swanstep has noted) labored and threadbare formula.

---
Possibly. I didn't go over to imdb, but didn't the writer also do that 1986 movie about shrewish Bette Midler getting kidnapped and Danny DeVito not wanting her back? I thought that one was funny. Dale Launer was the writer here, yes?
---

To those you've singled out, I'd like to add an honorable mention of versatile Lane Smith as the genially smug prosecutor (his cry of "I - (clap) - DENtical" has long been something of a catch-phrase around our house),

---
Ha. I--DENTical! Yes, quite a showman as the prosecutor. I like how friendly he is with Vinny -- "Ah like the competition" and his invitation to Vinny to go deer hunting sets up another great Tomei Oscar winning speech.
--
and along with Bruce McGill's low-key presence as the determined but honest sheriff,
--
What a classic character guy he has turned out to be. Famous first for D-Day in Animal House, McCall carved out a fine career over four decades as a character guy. I have "met" him at a few celebrity golf tournaments where he has allowed a little chit chat. (I came with a group each time and he came to remember us. We even met his wife who would be watching him play. The key thing: show him that you know he played parts OTHER than D-Day. I raised My Cousin Vinny, Runaway Jury(he's a Southern judge) and The Insider(he almost got an Oscar nom for playing a fiery lawyer in that one.) McGill has a great moustache in Vinny.
--
what emerges is a dramatic construction with antagonists but no villains.

---
Antagonists but no villains. I like that.
--
There simply isn't anyone to dislike anywhere in the piece (even the poolroom goon Pesci eventually decks with a flying haymaker is too comically ineffectual to actually dislike).
---
True. Capra with cusswords. Pesci's discussion of the man's challenge to fight as an offer requiring a counteroffer and money on the table first is...fun.
In cross-examing witnesses, Vinny is pretty mean on the men ("I got no more use for this guy" he says after destroying one's story) but very nice to little old African-American woman("Could you help me out with this, dear?") Its character polishing, well done.
---

Along with them, equally versatile and reliable character players like Maury Chaikin and James Rebhorn represent people it's dramatically necessary only to neutralize rather than defeat and humiliate.
--
Again well put -- the movie is careful about this, and the actors are "warm" and make it right.

---
In this way, every last character is allowed their humanity, and this approach - which contributes greatly to the film's overall sweetness - is no more satisfyingly distilled than in Fred Gwynn's imposing and formidable Judge Haller, for whom we can't help but develop affection even as he appears to menace Vinny.
---
Again, all true. Again, the reviews were good for Tomei AND the movie. Word got out in the spring of 1992 that "My Cousin Vinny" was a "sleeper hit" -- a GOOD movie.
With a sour ending: A "My Cousin Vinny 2" WAS planned, but fell apart, the producers said, because Tomei wouldn't do it after her Oscar win. Its just as well. I don't think we needed a "My Cousin Vinny 2."
---

I'd like to think that this character is the one that finally sent Herman Munster to his rest at long last, and for which Gwynne will be best remembered.
---
My thoughts exactly. It was a little career-end, life-end gift to Gwynne. Sort of like The Shootist for John Wayne. Though Herman Munster will likely live on in Boomer memories.

(MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

P.S. A glance at his credits reveals something of which I wasn't aware (and can't imagine how I missed at the time): an appearance as Jonathan Brewster in a 1969 TV production of Arsenic and Old Lace. I'm sure Gwynne's still-fresh association with Herman Munster must have added a layer of comic dimension to the play's "He looks like Boris Karloff" running gag.

---

I remember that! Bob Crane of Hogan's Heroes had the Cary Grant role, and I think Jack Gilford had the Peter Lorre role. Were not Lillian Gish and Helen Hayes the sisters? But Gwynne and the Karloff thing were the best idea in it.

It was done on video tape. I remember that show as a rather haunting memory of a move my family had made from a very big city(LA) to a very rural small one. TV networks weren't fully on the air in that town and they would show The Sunday Night ABC Movie late on Wednesday night to allow for religious shows on Sunday. It was rather a "wasteland."

Into that wasteland, very early in my move to the rural city, came "Arsenic and Old Lace" with Herman Munster and Colonel Hogan as familiar faces. I CLUNG to them. And that's the first version of Arsenic and Old Lace I ever saw. The second was a local play where my uncle played the Teddy Roosevelt nut and got to yell "Charge!" on the stairs. (Boy did that make him a star in my eyes -- what a fun role to play.)

It was years before I saw the Capra/Grant version, which I actually like for what Grant didn't like about it -- he plays his manic reactions way over the top for the whole movie, not in usual low-key Cary Grant deadpan.

Aresenic and Old Lace is a great memory to me, for all the above-stated reasons. Why....its almost Hitchcockian (murderous old ladies and bodies in the basement....)

reply

[–] Barclays (960) 8 years ago

Sorry I don't mean to interrupt your interesting discussion but it would be a whole lot easier to read your replies if you used the quote markup, put the quote within the bracket. Like this,

[ quote]insert quote
[/ quote]
The result looks like this

this is a quote

The quote markup organizes your reply. It distinguishes your reply from the poster you are quoting making it easier to read. Just using a line break and indention to separate the quote from your reply to that quote, looks like the quote is part of your reply.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I am appreciative that you are reading our stuff here, and I will try.

The other posters are not in violation, as I am , of this kind of etiquette.

In my weak defense, I'll say that I often have trouble getting posts to "stick" to this board at all, so trying to add elements is problematic.

Also if I can't SEE the quote becoming a quote before my eyes(as with bolding), I have to guess that it will like right after I apply the application.

But I will try. We will see.

Thanks for reading and please join in when you can!

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

@Barclays. I often use Moviechat's quote markup but it's not fit for many purposes, including ecarle's. The markup only really works reliably for single quotes. Even if you determinedly keep the multiple quotes all 'single level', the mark up system still breaks in incredibly frustrating ways.

There is in fact *no* alternative on moviechat to ecarle's lo-tech solution for continued annotation of a prior post. Interestingly, IMDb's otherwise slightly less functional markup system *did* handle multiple (single level) quotes properly. Somewhat frustratingly, when Moviechat ported over posts from IMDb they reproduced the long, continued annotations and quote markup chains crafted by users such as myself just fine, but no posts written from scratch at Moviechat have been afforded the same courtesy.

reply

[–] Barclays (960) 8 years ago

Wow, that sucks. Then I won't be able to read ecarle's posts because it is too hard to distinguish his reply from the other person's.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I didn't see My Cousin Vinny until much later on TV,

---

I saw it on 1992 release, and though I went in expecting just moderate formula entertainment, I was so taken by the script, the gags, the casting -- especially Gwynne and especially Tomei(with whom, I gotta admit, I fell in love with for that character) and I was hooked.

My Cousin Vinny in general and Tomei in particular got very good reviews. It was announced as a "genuine sleeper" of good quality in some reviews, and both the director and the writer got some solid movies to make from it(though not nearly as good as it.)

Says I.

---

and I guess my overall feeling about the film interfered with my ability to appreciate Tomei's character: I actually found it hard to believe when I saw it that MCV came out in 1992 since it felt like such a lazy '80s formula fish-out-water comedy (with a bit of formula emotional uplift at the end) to me.

---

Here's where I have to go to a usual place, and with the greatest respect. If that's what you saw, that's what you saw, and I would certainly agree that both the "fish out of water" aspect and the uplift at the end aspect WERE formula. Just done exquisitely right and better than usual, as I saw the film.

In looking to respond to your post, swanstep, I felt I would have to offer a "disclaimer": my affection for My Cousin Vinny is likely not in accord at all with what you personally value in a movie. We've been rather mismatched on these boards for a long time, but in a good way, I think: you know so many films, from so many countries , of so many types. I stick to the mainstream and, I think, I spend a lot of my time running "parallel" to your insights with a kind of "running commentary on the good stuff at the multiplex." Nothing more. But -- nothing less.

And thus: My Cousin Vinny. A formula entertainment (of small budget low expecations) that WORKED for me. And got Marisa Tomei and Oscar. So it had that going for it.

---

It had no zip to it, and it's a car-crash of NYC stereotypes meeting Alabama stereotypes,

---

What worked here for me was Gwynne's judge and the prosecutor being such smart men -- and sly in the prosecutor's case -- who essentially told Vinny "We're NOT country rubes, and we don't think that YOU are up to our level of legal expertise." And he proves them wrong AND wins their respect.

And as for Vinny's attacks on the real rubes who are witnesses("Did the law of physics cease to exist on your stove? Were these grits bought like the magic beans in Jack and the Beanstalk?") were at once mean AND good lawyering. Vinny is like James Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder: fighting hard and smart and a little bit dirty..to save the of life of his client. The movie keeps front and center the fact that Macchio and his buddy are on trial for murder in the South. The death penalty is a real possibility that keeps MCV "serious while funny."

---
and it just didn't strike me as especially funny at any point.

---

Absolutely fair enough. I think I'm defending MCV only to myself, frankly.

---
Tomei was good-to-very-good but the material was pretty blah really in my view (Groundhog Day, Clerks, Dazed and Confused were from around this time for comparison).

---

Good movies, not any better reviewed than MCV(except Groundhog Day, a classic) -- but they didn't have Marisa Tomei and Fred Gwynne. And the Tomei/Pesci love story was much better chemistry than Murray and Andie MacDowell(an actress I could never warm to) in the better story of Groundhog Day. Actually, look, on Groundhog Day: a brilliant concept, a philosophical marvel for debate...but for me, an extremely irritating movie. I wanted OUT just like Murray did.

---

Also it struck me that Tomei's was a lead role, so that whatever she was doing was strictly incomparable to what someone like Judy Davis did in a true supporting role.

---

Fair enough.

And this:

I'd have to review the nominees, but it is possible that Tomei, even in a "modest April release hit" was still seen by more Oscar voters than Davis in the Allen, or the other women in the other movies. I do recall the "Yank versus the European" thing as almost snobbish in the write-ups. Marisa Tomei got NOTHING but raves in 1992 as a breakout star. It was like Chris Walz and HIS rave reviews as a breakout star in Inglorious Basterds. A rather pre-ordained winner(which is why I was surprised when people were surprised that Tomei won.)

---

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Tomei is a constant pleasant presence throughout the film and she has *the* conventional female lead, 'reform-him-and-marry-him' character arc.

---

Yes, but with the added attraction that while both characters have "dese, dem, and dose" vocal patterns, they are both extremely INTELLIGENT people and, ultimately, very caring people. They care about the cousin on trial for murder, they've come to help him. They care about each other.

And I love Vinny's pride after Lisa demolishes all technical arguments from the witness stand, and he brings the "professional" technical witness back up to discuss Lisa's testimony:

Vinny: She's pretty smart, huh?
Expert: Yes.
Vinny: And cute, too.
Expert: Very.

I'm smiling just thinking about that moment.

---

It becomes impossible, I think, for Oscar Voters to vote for a true supporting actors handful of scenes against someone who's in most scenes in the movie and that you get to know, see change, etc.. Quantity overwhelms...

---

Well, that's very true. And that's the Oscar game. Who won Best Actress in 1992? I bet Tomei couldn't have gotten THAT one.

---

I expect I've spent more than enough time extolling a film which was pretty minor stuff to you, swanstep. But its like triggering an alarm you didn't know was there. When a movie makes my personal list as the favorite of a year(not the best, just my favorite), there are personal reasons.

And I like to express them.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Thanks for tolerating my grinchiness/snobbiness about MCV, ecarle... I do agree that comedy is very personal and perhaps especially comedy that's got a relaxed, performance driven quality (and that's neither manic nor ideas-driven).

I think I find MCV a lot more uneven in tone and character and basic scripting than you do (see examples below), but it's a good bet that I'm only bugged by this stuff because I'm somehow (perhaps as function of my mood when I saw it) immune to some of the film's basics charms. Compare with Guarding Tess: I really enjoyed it when I got around to seeing it last year for the first time... but I'm absolutely certain that the fact that I just find MacLaine and Cage enormously appealing and great together is the reason (hell I could go for a Guarding Tess 2 right now - or a thinly disguised variant of the premise with Cage as MacLaine's bodyguard... and I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone and that that picture would make money on concept alone). If MacLaine and Cage aren't amusing to you then the picture's not for you end of story.

Anyhow, you evidently liked Fred Gwynne's character a lot, but I actually found the characterization very uncertain. He's originally set up not just as prim and proper judge but as what in westerns used to be called a 'Hanging Judge', he's utterly shameless about favoring the prosecution and hindering the defence team.

Similarly, the Police are shown to be extracting utterly-tendentious confessions in malevolent ways. (All of that stuff would have to be recorded these days and would be found out, but historically bogus confessions extracted from confused people without lawyers and under extreme pressure has been a huge problem - it's no laughing matter really). That whole side of the prosecution was awful but kind of played for laughs: the boys are so jumpy that they not only mistakenly confess or near-confess, they mistake Vinny for a gay-panic-provoking cell-mate. These jokers. Not funny to me.

Anyhow, when later all the witness testimony turns out to be 'from a distance' (so much so that the positive identifications of the defendants in lineups from close up, etc. were deceptive, probably coached by the prosecution), well, the prosecution really has no positive argument, which only makes the whole 'hanging judge', 'this is open and shut', initial impetus seem even more sinister. We're supposed to believe, for example, that if the boys *hadn't* had access to their own lawyer and only had the public defender appointed to them then they were actual goners. Hilarious not.

But somehow we're supposed to just forget about all this at the happy-clappy ending when Vinny w/ Lisa's help not only establishes reasonable doubt for the Boys but also identifies the real bad guys beyond a reasonable doubt. And gets his gal.

BTW, looking up what other middle-of-the-road comedies were around in 1992, I noticed Wayne's World and A League of Their Own w/ Geena Davis and Tom Hanks and Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell doing women's baseball in WW2. I saw both of those at the time and quite enjoyed them both. I'd need to rewatch to be sure but I think that both are just a little more fun for me than MCV. I'd take MCV over Scent of A Woman though!

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Thanks for tolerating my grinchiness/snobbiness about MCV, ecarle...

---

Grinchiness...maybe, but just as a "for fun" concept...but not snobbiness.

I think, once again, that we have been placed together on these boards as a nice example of graciousness, but not as an example of "same mindedness" about "the movies." I'm probably in a weird spot. I feel that I MUST extol the personal pleasures of my personal list, but in doing so well...its a personal list.

I will say this:

Most of my seventies choices are pretty mainstream/good:

MASH
Dirty Harry
The Godfather
American Graffiti
Chinatown
Jaws
The Shootist
Black Sunday
Animal House
North Dallas Forty(the only real "offbeat" one on the list)...

....but by the time I get to the 90's and 00's "something happens." Something in which either I only like parts of these favorites(The Dark Knight, King Kong) or like decidedly "lesser" films that I did in the 70's. My Cousin Vinny? Really? Really. And its just the movie I most remember from 1992 as "sticking with me." As an entertainment that meant something. Now some aspects of this are personal -- who I saw it with, how much THEY liked it, hell even(PERSONAL SPOILER) how I once dated a woman who looked somewhat like Marisa Tomei. (Well, not exactly like her...ha.) And who rather acted like Mona Lisa Vito.

---
I do agree that comedy is very personal and perhaps especially comedy that's got a relaxed, performance driven quality (and that's neither manic nor ideas-driven).

---

I often feel its a matter of character, dialogue and timing.

Most all of the Gwynne/Pesci exchanges made me laugh, the set-up worked.

---

I think I find MCV a lot more uneven in tone and character and basic scripting than you do (see examples below), but it's a good bet that I'm only bugged by this stuff because I'm somehow (perhaps as function of my mood when I saw it) immune to some of the film's basics charms.

---

That's possible.

---

Compare with Guarding Tess

---

Another Austin Pendleton picture!

---

: I really enjoyed it when I got around to seeing it last year for the first time... but I'm absolutely certain that the fact that I just find MacLaine and Cage enormously appealing and great together is the reason (hell I could go for a Guarding Tess 2 right now - or a thinly disguised variant of the premise with Cage as MacLaine's bodyguard... and I'm pretty sure that I'm not alone and that that picture would make money on concept alone). If MacLaine and Cage aren't amusing to you then the picture's not for you end of story.

---
That's something important about any movie, isn't it? I'd say the script comes first, but chemistry among the stars comes next.

Which reminds me: I brushed against and over Andie MacDowell earlier as an actress who did NOT do it for me, and I mean it. She was, to my mind, the worst host I've ever seen on SNL -- utterly unable to connect with her cue cards, her jokes, anything. She even blew the standing on the stage at the end part. That quality seemed "hidden" but still there in her scripted films. Consequently, I feel that movies like "Four Weddings and a Funeral" "Michael"(with a charming John Travolta) and, yes, "Groundhog Day" are lesser works because she's in them. (Its not just a woman thing, there some male actors I don't much like on screen either. Can't think of one right now. Martin Sheen maybe? Apocalpyse Now will always be short of masterpiece to me because of his anti-charmisma.)

(MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Anyhow, you evidently liked Fred Gwynne's character a lot,

---

Yes. The character, his look and his voice, but also -- I"m pretty damn sure -- just the fact that Gwynne LANDED THE ROLE. I was happy for him, I wanted to root for him as an actor, if not for the character.

As for the local judge favoring his local prosecution: Well...they do that. Its "movie rigged," but as Vinny proves his mettle in the courtroom, Gwynne starts to let down his defenses and let Vinny have his way.

---

Similarly, the Police are shown to be extracting utterly-tendentious confessions in malevolent ways. (All of that stuff would have to be recorded these days and would be found out, but historically bogus confessions extracted from confused people without lawyers and under extreme pressure has been a huge problem - it's no laughing matter really).

---

Well, to me that first scene is pure screwball -- Macchio is confessing to stealing a candy bar or something when the sheriff questioning him(a favorite of mine, Bruce McGill, with a moustache that plays the role) is asking him questions about murder. To me, it played at a level of such ridiculousness that I figured, "OK, for this movie playing at this level, this is reason enough for the trial to have to happen." I felt rather the same way about the gay-panic scene. It got laughs when I saw it, for the sheer profane ridiculousness of it. Truth be told, these early segments of Vinny are its weakest parts. It "gets going" once the trial is on and the players are in place.

----

--

Anyhow, when later all the witness testimony turns out to be 'from a distance' (so much so that the positive identifications of the defendants in lineups from close up, etc. were deceptive, probably coached by the prosecution), well, the prosecution really has no positive argument, which only makes the whole 'hanging judge', 'this is open and shut', initial impetus seem even more sinister.

---

Well, it IS sinister. I don't think Vinny ever gets TOO serious, but it is making a serious point about how quickly a case can be declared "open and shut." I recall the words of Inspector Oxford in Frenzy about Blaney HAVING to be the killer: "There's not even the complication of another suspect."(Wrong.) Indeed, MCV goes for the big coincidence as the solution: a couple of guys in ALMOST the same car and ALMOST matching the wrong guys description DID do it.

That happens in real life, too. Scary.

---

We're supposed to believe, for example, that if the boys *hadn't* had access to their own lawyer and only had the public defender appointed to them then they were actual goners. Hilarious not.

---

But a real life risk, yes. Although folks in the know have told me that a real-life Vinny with his meager court credentials would not get to try a murder case like that...and if he lost, appellate backup would be required. This is, at heart, a movie fantasy. Capra with cusswords.

---

But somehow we're supposed to just forget about all this at the happy-clappy ending when Vinny w/ Lisa's help not only establishes reasonable doubt for the Boys but also identifies the real bad guys beyond a reasonable doubt. And gets his gal.

---

It was fun. 'nuff said. (With last chance kudos from me for the whole car tire and cars technical stuff and how Lisa says "But wait, there's more!")

---

BTW, looking up what other middle-of-the-road comedies were around in 1992, I noticed Wayne's World and A League of Their Own w/ Geena Davis and Tom Hanks and Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell doing women's baseball in WW2. I saw both of those at the time and quite enjoyed them both. I'd need to rewatch to be sure but I think that both are just a little more fun for me than MCV. I'd take MCV over Scent of A Woman though!

---

One funny thing about this "favorite movie of the year stuff" is how OTHER films rather fall out of my memory or come back later to "challenge the champ."

I've changed my favorite a few times in the years since I saw what I thought was my favorite. I THOUGHT it was Jurassic Park in 1993; no, its Carlito's Way, now and forevermore. (And the nasty Scarface of 1983 has been pushing my avowed favorite of that year, the heartbreaking Terms of Endearment.) Sin City might get the drop on King Kong. (See, I must feel buyer's remorse about the monster movies.)

I saw League of Their Own and liked parts of it -- Tom Hanks(beginning a comeback that turned into a winning streak, by ceding his power to "the girls"), Jon Lovitz, the Madonna/O'Donnell comedy team. But the story didn't particularly grip me, the sisterly rivalry wasn't my bag(nor was Lori Perry).

Wayne's World well...I liked the TV episodes better.

Scent of a Woman...hoowah...I liked Glengarry Glen Ross better(THAT could/should be my favorite of 1992, I can quote THAT one..but maybe its just too mean.)

Anyway, that's it for me on MCV. For now...?

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

1992 had a bunch of at-at-least-very good films that functioned in part as black comedies: Glengarry Glen Ross and The Player principally, but also Man Bites Dog, and Dead Alive for complete carnage black humor. Looking back it was not only a very macho year with all this stuff + Unforgiven and Reservoir Dogs and One False Move, it also had quite a few moving dramas from Crying Game to Last of the Mohicans to A River Runs Through it to Husbands and Wives to (even though it's not my sort of thing) A Few Good Men, plus a couple of good R-rated genre near-blockbusters, Basic Instinct and Coppola's Dracula. Plus there were quite a range of good indies and foreign films from Bad Lieutenant and The Waterdance and Bob Roberts to a couple of Bergman scripts filmed by others (Sunday's Children, The Best Intentions) to Hard Boiled really announcing that John Woo was ready to come to Hollywood now please, to Romper Stomper and delicate French heartbreaker, L'Coeur en hiver, and so on. It was one of those years when there were good films around for almost all tastes.

1992, like 1997 and 2007, seemed pretty good at the time but has grown in stature as a movie year since as people have caught up with all the good movies from the year that they *didn't* see at the time.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Feud - Ep. 3 ('Mommie Dearest')
A strong episode, pleasingly unmarred by any of the late '70s framing story w/ Kathy Bates & Catherine Z-J. Kiernan Shipka's B.D. was particularly good and poignant this time from her Sally Draper bad-girl smoking at the beginning to her reconciling with her mom near the end (Brutal contrasts between Davis's and Crawford's differing parenting styles and how they each arrived at them.) Tricky job for Shipka playing a bad actress!

Bette's growing appreciation of Victor Buono was nice as was the payoff with bailing him out. I assume that the bailing out must have really happened. It's a great production detail if so. As was the soundstage reshoot of Crawford's big death-scene-reveal. I'll look for the changes in lighting of those shots next time I watch WEHTBJ?.

I was a little surprised that we rattled through all the rest of the production of WEHTBJ? this time. That means that next week is going to cover the release of the film and maybe even up to the Oscars fracas. What are the final 4 eps then going to focus on one wonders?

Lots of nice shots this week, and lots of groovy sniping back and forth between Davis and Crawford including Crawford getting in the dig about Swanson being the one who was robbed for 1950 Best Actress.

Just a meaty story well told, with Lange and Sarandon and Molina and Shipka and Judy Davis and Tucci and Buono-guy all doing Emmy-nominatable work. It occurs to me that the scoring isn't quite movie-quality but almost everything else is.

What did everyone else think?

reply

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

It's probably worth bearing in mind the title is Feud: Bette and Joan, rather than Feud: Whatever Happened To Baby Jane.

However they choose to use it, they've got two more years' worth of material to mine, presumably culminating with Crawford's ultimately abortive participation in Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte. In the meantime, they have the critical and box office reception of WHTBJ; plenty of potential drama surrounding the nominations; Crawford's crafty engineering of arranging to accept the Best Actress award for any nominee who might not be present which paid off with Bancroft's win (and which reportedly rankled Davis twice over for both the loss and Crawford's showboating); the effects WHTBJ had on their careers in the interim; their eventually putting business and career interests over personal ones in planning another film together; Crawford's bailing from HHSC after completing location work; post-HHSC epilogues.

It must be acknowledged that viewers tune into a series such as Feud for the dirt, whether factual, inferred or manufactured from whole cloth, and it's in this colorful direction the series indicated it would go from the very start. It's also a very "television" approach. As most are probably aware, the mechanics of film making entail laborious and really rather dull processes that don't ordinarily make for compelling drama, and the best feature films depicting the industry - both versions of A Star Is Born, The Bad and the Beautiful, The Barefoot Contessa, Day For Night, for example - concentrate the bulk of their drama on offscreen matters, limiting on-set processes largely to passing references. The necessarily brisker pace of a one-hour TV format (even in multiples of eight) demands higher concentrations of melodrama in response to the shorter and more easily-distracted-from attention spans of home viewers, and one interrupted by commercial breaks, as opposed to an HBO-type limited series, enforces an even stricter discipline, with each 10 to 15 minute "act" requiring its own dramatic arc of buildup, climax and denouement.

With these expectations, Feud has so far delivered as well as any, enhanced by the untypically high caliber of participants such as Sarandon, Molina, Tucci and Davis, but I can't say it's truly surpassed them. Rather than each entry improving on the last, I've observed a rapid slide into laziness after a somewhat promising opener. I was initially encouraged, for instance, by Sarandon's approach to portraying a personality as well-known as Davis's, feeling that she was capturing its essence without descending into a caricature of familiar mannerisms. But the two subsequent episodes have revealed just such a tendency, with the actress mimicking characteristic Davis physical gestures, or speech eccentricities like the pronunciation of the "d" at the end of a word like "good" as a "t."

Lange has a tougher row to hoe, as I'm not sure anyone really knew who Crawford was at her center. I recall reading some time back of one of her MGM cronies (I can't remember which one) remarking, "Joan tried to be all things to all people," encapsulating the importance of performance to every aspect of her life from the professional to the public to the private, as she cast herself into the role she felt most appropriate to each: tough-as-nails or dewy-eyed romantic; sweetness-and-light or strict disciplinarian. On a side note, it was disappointing to see the show falling back on more or less recreating an adoption agency scene from Mommie Dearest, right down to the staging. It may very well be that Frank Perry and Fay Dunaway set the tone 30-odd years ago for all possible future versions of Crawford.

Both Tucci and Davis began in over-the-top mode and have maintained that pitch, seemingly opting for generic portrayals of apoplectic exec and scheming, dishy gossip. What their performances - and the writing - are missing are Warner's corny joviality (by all accounts, he fancied himself quite the life-of-the-party jokester) and Hopper's deceptive folksiness or aggressive jingoism. But now I'm venturing into the realm of nitpicking, I guess.

As long as I've done so, I'll add that I'm always annoyed when current-day slang such as "buzz" finds its way into dialogue meant to have taken place a half-century ago.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

With two meaty responses from swanstep and doghouse to work from, I'm abandoning(temporarily) my attempts to cut and paste your remarks and my comments in response to them.

I sense swanstep liking this episode more than doghouse, and I sense the series itself going more for the flamboyant and contentious than the nuanced. No, it turns out this is not Mad Men ...but then Mad Men operated at such a minimalist level of conflict and "action" that it could almost be considered "boring." It was novelistic, thematic, character-driven, etc. Still, I like Feud. And I was entertained by this episode.

I realize I have no real background on Baby Jane as I have on Psycho(or Vertigo or NXNW for that matter) so exactly how "true" the incidents portrayed thus far are...I dunno.

I realize, biopic style, that an incident didn't really have to have HAPPENED to be dramatized. When Davis and Crawford got into their argument on Oscar and Davis started screaming about losing to Holliday because Anne Baxter got a Best Actress nom for All About Eve too -- well, that's documented Hollywood history. All the writers had to do was to put the history into Joan and Bette's mouthes and make it more "angry."
But it was fun to watch.

And Jack Warner simply saying "I've got to go see f'in My Fair Lady" opened up a whole OTHER Hollywood story, didn't it? How Warner wouldn't cast Julie Andrews, went for starry Audrey Hepburn and saw Andrews win the Oscar for Mary Poppins saying "I want to thank Jack Warner for this award."
The entire "My Fair Lady" story flashed through my head -- just like that. As did "Charade." Anybody notice how one sequence was scored TO the instrumental credit overture of "Charade"? I asked out loud why they did that and my companion said "to sucker early 60s movies freaks like you into loving Feud all the more." Hah!

Jack Warner didn't last much past the 60's, but he's THERE in the sixties -- the last Golden Era mogul, yes? -- at the center of movies like Baby Jane, My Fair Lady, Virginia Woolf, Wait Until Dark(he paid Hepburn a million and had to stop her from quitting anyway) and of course, Bonnie and Clyde. I think Camelot was his last as an exec. And then he produced 1776 in 1972.

Tucci's Jack Warner wasn't in this episode much, but he's almost like Roger Sterling in his ability to show up, snap off the one-liners and rule the episode. I loved him here "This was always a B picture...BeeBeeBeeBeeBee..."

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

(MORE on March 19 episode)

Davis's respect for Buono was a nice subplot. Interesting: how Davis was more interested in going over lines with Buono than with her daughter. Seemed complex to me. Buono's scenes are WITH Davis; they were more important for her to get right than her daughter's "stuff at the other house," which WAS minor and thus inconseqential to Davis. I thought there was a guarded realism mixed with kindness in Davis not prasing her daughter's performance beyond the technical: "You hit your marks. You remembered your lines. You spoke clearly. You didn't look in the camera lens." Nice compliments. All that was missing was "...but you are not an actress, and you are not going to be a star like me."

The sexual subplot with Buono was touching in its own way. Certainly fairly graphic. I don't know if it happened or not. I believe the showrunner Ryan Murphy is gay, so the "gay aspects' of Baby Jane needed to be discussed, I guess. The casting of a gay actor, for instance, and Davis saying to Buono, gratefully I thought, that it took gays and female impersonators to make her a bigger star.
---

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

(MORE on March 18 episode)

What can lie ahead? Well, certainly Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, which brought back Bette and Joan and Aldrich and even Buono. They can all do some scenes together as to how that movie came together and then fell apart -- for Joan only. Olivia De Havilland stepped in for Joan...will Zeta-Jones play her? (And why is Sarah Paulson playing Geraldine Page?)

The whole Oscar brouhaha can probably take up a whole episode. The successful run of Baby Jane at the box office(kinda like Psycho as a hit, but not really that big) could be covered...along with how suddenly Bette and Joan and all the older women got all those horror movies to save them. They could show Crawford firing ANOTHER pretty young competitor off of Strait-Jacket.

I haven't checked to see when Joan Crawford died, or when Bette Davis died...but I will guess Joan went a lot sooner. And thus they may get some sort of "final scene" between the two actresses.

And this: I'm still betting we get some vignette about how Joan Crawford was saddled with a "little boy" as her director for the Night Gallery pilot. Steven Spielberg. It will be some nice icing on the cake.
---
By the way, check this out about me:

I never understood that Blanche(Crawford) actually DIES at the end of WHTBJ. She does? I guess its the Hays Code way to atone for her sins , and she does say "I'm dying." But I always thought that the cops got to her in time..... So she dies? Or, is this really more of an ambiguous ending? Maybe she dies, but maybe not. (At the end of Lonely are the Brave, also from 1962 in b/w, Kirk Douglas is hit by a truck and it is left open as an ambulance takes him away if HE dies.)

reply

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

Reading your comments and looking back over mine, ec, I realize mine came off more harshly than I'd really intended. I might have added, for instance, that I've been enjoying most the moments when it "gets real," as in the sincerely-played heart-to-hearts between Davis and Aldrich and later, she and Crawford. Whether or not such exchanges actually took place seems secondary to their having, for the sake of drama, felt real.

Parenthetic interjection: I sure do miss by bold and italic fonts for emphasis. But hell, maybe their absence will teach me how to better communicate meanings without depending on such textual crutches.

I guess maybe the biggest problem I'm having is with balancing of the varying tones. Hitchcock, of course, demonstrated over and over that it can indeed be accomplished smoothly and deftly. But the thing does have me well and truly hooked, and that says something. When it pops up on the DVR each Sunday, it makes for welcome late-night viewing.

About that ending, the show seems to be stating that the intended interpretation was that Blanche did die, but it isn't explicit, and as I always say, we can imagine anything we want about what happens after the fadeout.

Did Scarlett get Rhett back? Of course she did. Or so say I.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Anybody notice how one sequence was scored TO the instrumental credit overture of "Charade"?[/quote]
Good catch! I did not notice this myself. Will check that out. (I don't think I have Charade's themes in my head - every time I try to conjure it/them up I get Two For The Road!)
[quote]And Jack Warner simply saying "I've got to go see f'in My Fair Lady" opened up a whole OTHER Hollywood story, didn't it? How Warner wouldn't cast Julie Andrews, went for starry Audrey Hepburn and saw Andrews win the Oscar for Mary Poppins saying "I want to thank Jack Warner for this award."

Intriguing how two of the biggest roles-and/or-awards-controversies in Oscars-history happened within a couple of years of each other with WEHTBJ? and Mary Poppins/MFL. And then just a few years later another biggie (again with Best Actress!): Streisand (Funny Girl) and K. Hepburn (Lion In Winter) tieing in votes and hence both win Best Actress for 1968.

BTW, Feud-publicizing Jessica Lange was on Colbert last week (the interview's on youtube if you search on the obvious terms etc.). Colbert credited Lange for his show-biz career, saying that seeing All That Jazz in college (and being especially taken with Lange as the Angel of Death) had made him switch to a Drama Major (?) or take up drama after college. At any rate, it and she changed his life. Colbert in a self-ironizing way suggested (and Lange kind of agreed) that ATJ painted a very dark picture of show-biz hence that it made no sense that he should have been so drawn to show-biz by it. This felt *very* odd to me since, of course, while ATJ has its dark 'show-biz will kill you' side, the picture it paints of show-biz is incredibly sexy and intoxicating too. Death by Lange and Reinking and awards raining down on you is a pretty sweet way to go, and that that vision should attract a young man like Colbert is not some big mystery that needs explaining!

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Kiernan Shipka talks about Feud and playing a bad actress here:
http://tinyurl.com/mneokfp

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

It may very well be that Frank Perry and Fay Dunaway set the tone 30-odd years ago for all possible future versions of Crawford.[/quote]
Two points. Frank Perry is pop-star Katy Perry's uncle, and I need to see 'Mommie Dearest'.
[quote]However they choose to use it, they've got two more years' worth of material to mine, presumably culminating with Crawford's ultimately abortive participation in Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte.

That must be where things are going I suppose. I guess I'm still a little surprised tho'. The credits sequence made it seem like the whole series was going to be about WEHTBJ? maybe with just a little before-and-after material (hence, it seemed, the felt necessity for the Blondel/OdH 1978 story-line and other interleavings of out of temporal sequence materials).

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

I have now watched Mommy Dearest (1981)... and I thought it wasn't as bad or as campy as I'd heard. MD does have a very flat TV-ish look to it though.... You wouldn't think that the director of The Swimmer (1968) would be comfortable making something that *looked* like MD does.

Dunaway's pretty great throughout (and the spitting image of Crawford at a range of different ages) and Psycho 3's Diana Scarwid is affecting as Christina Crawford. Both are let down by the script which, e.g., avoids most specifics of Crawford's career aside from Mildred Pierce. No other stars and no directors are so much as mentioned in the film let alone given parts! So nothing about Baby Jane, Bette Davis, the B-movie part of Crawford's career, and so on. The best scenes in the film involve Joan's standing up to Pepsi after her husband's death, and Joan subbing for Christina's character on a soap. Overall, DM is a lot less fun than it really should be. (Note too that, bizarrely after Feud, MD omits the twins Crawford adopted.) More missed script opportunities: the film covers 1940-1977 yet somehow exists so in its own bubble that none of the great social changes through those years makes any impact. One might have expected some discussion of how parenting norms changed through those years at least, but no....

So, MD is not a dreadful film but it's not very good either.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Feud - Ep. 4 ('More, or Less')
In my view a sloppy episode. It had details wrong, e.g., Crawford saying that she was called out as Box Offie Poison in 1937 when it was 1938. Pauline, Aldrich's assistant is initially puzzled by Crawford invoking 1937 and suggest that maybe she has Hitler taking Austria in mind form that year. But that's also wrong: the Anschluss with Austria was also in 1938. Do your research Ryan Murphy!

And, chickens coming home to roost a bit, it's getting big things wrong. E.g. Jack Warner devaluing Aldrich's talent at every turn. Sure Aldrich needed a hit in 1960-1962 but Kiss Me Deadly and Autumn Leaves had both been masterful and not at all the work of a journeyman (and Attack! and The Big Knife weren't chopped liver either). E.g. 2, the banging on about how women's picture were completely out of fashion by 1960 is a load of bull as far as I can see: 1959 is the year of things like Imitation of Life, Suddenly Last Summer, and The Nun's Story, and Pillow Talk. 1958 had things like Auntie Mame, I want to Live!, and Indiscreet. You could also argue that Vertigo and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Some Came Running and Gigi and Bonjour Tristesse were really women's pictures.

And, as I've remarked before, the casting of impossibly youthful and beautiful Sarandon as Davis and the aged-less-well, much older-feeling Lange as Crawford makes the dynamic between Crawford and Davis too one-sided: Davis simply holds all the cards, and Crawford is almost continually near-pitiful.

The big new element this ep. was revealing Aldrich's assistant Pauline (well-played by Alison Wright) as a writer and wannabe-director. I found the story-line both heavy-handed (winking at today's headlines) and implausible. On the later point, I don't believe that Pauline would think either that she'd get to direct A-list stars right off the bat or that she'd take Crawford turning her down as the definitive end to her ambitions in the show's present which I think (more heavy-handed-ness) we're supposed to believe it is.

Rather I think that after being rebuffed by Crawford, Pauline would work on accepting Aldrich's offer to produce for her and start to think assembling a lower-wattage cast....Or, hell, maybe she'd work on getting someone *else* to direct and juts use The Black Slipper to get her first writing credit and possibly a First Asst Director Credit. Maybe then direct someone else's script *then* writer-direct after that. In other words, I think that Pauline expecting everything all-in-a-rush - a writer-director gig with A-list stars - *was* just too unrealistic, but so is her giving up her dream completely for the conceivable future when there are many half-way houses if she's really talented and promising enough to impress Aldrich.

Blondell and OdH were back to no good end that I could see.

Best scene tonight (along with Joan-at-the-first-preview) was possibly Joan giving her William Morris agent's what-for. The scene reminded me a lot of one of Mommie Dearest's best scenes, where Dunaway's Crawford crushes the supercilious Pepsi Board like bugs after her Pepsi-husband dies.

Anyhow, next week's the Oscars imbroglio. Should be good. Onward!

What did everyone else think?

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

In my view a sloppy episode.

---

I take (and agree with) practically all your points below and yet -- I enjoyed it immensely and again had the same sensation at the end: it all seemed so fun and so fast that when it ended, I felt like I didn't want it to. Only three left, I believe. Probably one hour for the entire Oscar story; two hours to "wrap it up." Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte? Zeta-Jones as Olivia IN Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte? And I'm still placing bets on Joan meeting up with Stevie Spielberg on Night Gallery -- has he ever been portrayed in a biopic? (Actully, given his power today, they'd better be careful.

---

It had details wrong, e.g., Crawford saying that she was called out as Box Offie Poison in 1937 when it was 1938. Pauline, Aldrich's assistant is initially puzzled by Crawford invoking 1937 and suggest that maybe she has Hitler taking Austria in mind form that year. But that's also wrong: the Anschluss with Austria was also in 1938. Do your research Ryan Murphy!

---

I'm always intrigued when, in "getting it wrong," the writer is only off by one year. It suggests that somebody worked from memory rather than even looking it up(example: me, all the time, with these posts.) But when its a million-dollar broadcast product, it should be more accurate.

---

And, chickens coming home to roost a bit, it's getting big things wrong.

---

Here, I think we have fully entered "the biopic zone" where the "Hitchocck" filmmakers, as an example, had no compunction about getting so much of the "Psycho" production story wrong(if only to goose up its imagined story about Alma really directing the film -- so as to land Helen Mirren to play her -- and having an affair about 10 years after it supposedly really happened), and has, evidently been almost flamboyantly flaunted by biopic makers before or since. The idea being: "Look, we need a story that works as a story...so we're making up whatever we want to." The issue becomes: will we make the allowance for entertainment purposes? I think the answer is..."yes, if we don't know the real story." Maybe, if we do. No...well, don't watch?

----

---
E.g. Jack Warner devaluing Aldrich's talent at every turn. Sure Aldrich needed a hit in 1960-1962 but Kiss Me Deadly and Autumn Leaves had both been masterful and not at all the work of a journeyman (and Attack! and The Big Knife weren't chopped liver either).

---

The skill set that divides a Matthew Weiner from a Ryan Murphy manifested in this episode, i.e. writing up some scenes to get a heavy-handed point across without really thinking through the reality of it.

Robert Aldrich was a journeyman in some ways, but he made at least three giant hits: Vera Cruz, The Dirty Dozen, and The Longest Yard. That alone gets you respect in Hollywood and those (plus Baby Jane and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte) kept getting him work in between big hits. The Dirty Dozen was such a hit in 1967-1968 that Aldrich formed a "mini-studio" and made movies using it for several years before closing it down. (He even made a "Sunset Blvd meets Vertigo" movie called "The Legend of Lylah Clare" with Kim Novak during this period, and one of the first overt stories of lesbianism, The Killing of Sister George.)

---

Aldrich's hits aside, he certainly developed a cult auteur reputation with Kiss Me Deadly(above all), Attack, and The Big Knife (and Autumn Leaves, I guess, I''m not so familiar with that one.)

So the whole Jack Warner attack rings false except for one aspect: Warner may not have cared at all about auteur criticism, wouldn't know about the above. And Aldrich DID make that Sinatra Western(more on that anon) and THAT's not the work of an auteur.

I wonder where Robert Aldrich ended up in Andrew Sarris' famous "Panethon of Directors" that had Hitchcock and Hawks in the top tier? And Billy Wilder down a few levels("Less than Meets the Eye".)

---

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

(MORE)

E.g. 2, the banging on about how women's picture were completely out of fashion by 1960 is a load of bull as far as I can see: 1959 is the year of things like Imitation of Life, Suddenly Last Summer, and The Nun's Story, and Pillow Talk. 1958 had things like Auntie Mame, I want to Live!, and Indiscreet. You could also argue that Vertigo and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Some Came Running and Gigi and Bonjour Tristesse were really women's pictures.

---
Well, it has become clear that one of the roles of "Feud" is to make a case against the poor teatment of women in Hollywood and -- again lacking the finesse of a Weiner script -- it has a heavy-handed agenda. Which seems to be to ignore things in favor of its storyline.

That said, you move things a couple of decades -- to the 70's and 80s -- and you DO get a male takeover at the star level at least. All those action men(Eastwood, Reynolds, Bronson) all those emerging male Italian-American stars(Pacino, DeNiro, Stallone, Travolta), the other new men(Nicholson, Redford) all those male buddy stories, all those teenage boys as fans.

MORE

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

And, as I've remarked before, the casting of impossibly youthful and beautiful Sarandon as Davis and the aged-less-well, much older-feeling Lange as Crawford makes the dynamic between Crawford and Davis too one-sided: Davis simply holds all the cards, and Crawford is almost continually near-pitiful.

---

This has troubled me in a "creeping way" since the series started, and seemed to come to a head this episode with Sarandon's to-the-letter version of Davis' rollicking Andy Williams Show 1962 "rock and roll Baby Jane." (Even the green dress is right.) You can see the real thing on YouTube, and Sarandon's exact impression here (voice, body, gestures) of Davis is Emmy Time. (Irony: Sarandon, and not Lange, may end up the Emmy winner of this show; will Lange even get nominated?)

One realizes that Ryan Murphy is "connected" to Jessica Lange, and practically had to cast her, but it seems now that she was miscast. Yes, Crawford was more imperious and regal than Davis(if even from poorer roots), but as Faye Dunaway showed, you can play that with more sex appeal and "oomph." Jessica Lange has her own aging actress issues(her facial features) and has chosen a vocal tone which eradicates Crawford's real star power. Who might have played Crawford better from our current crop?

---
Speaking of actor impressions, Murphy threw in a "bonus Frank Sinatra" and I thought he was pretty good -- the voice better than the face, maybe the voice DUBBED onto the face. I do recall that Aldrich released two 1964 films, indeed -- Four for Texas was the Sinatra/Dino comedy Western and then Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte.

The nasty and vicious version of Sinatra we got in that one scene (with Victor Buono, again, and yes, he WAS in Four for Texas) wasn't too far off the mark from what I've read, but there are copious Warners memos showing that how Sinatra actually wrecked Four for Texas was to show up for an opening stagecoach chase and gunbattle(with Dino) scheduled for five days shooting in the Mojave desert that Sinatra demanded be finished in two. Aldrich DID fight with Sinatra, and DID plead with Jack Warner for studio support...but DID finish the picture to Sinatra's specifications. (It seems that certain directors knew only to do it Frank's way and didn't get yelled at. Much.)

Maybe it was overdone, maybe it wasn't, but what "Feud" has given us a lesson on is the care and feeding of egotistical stars. Alfred Molina's Robert Aldrich is shown having to move from one set of furious people(Bette and Joan) to another(well, one -- Frank.) I felt the implicit message was: "You think the actresses can be ugly? Get a load of how the worst MEN will treat you." And yet, Aldrich hung on...looking to make his fortune in Hollywood. Its the director's job.

Note in passing: Burt Reynolds made two films(The Longest Yard, Hustle) with Robert Aldrich and said Aldrich was a "man's man" who on both pictures, fired rebellious actors off the set and tended to yell like a drill sergeant, calling tough male actors "pansy asses" if they complained. Reynolds wrote of the late Aldrich, "I miss him every day, especially when I have to work with a young film school graduate director." So maybe the Molina version of Aldrich is "off."

A funny thing happened to Robert Aldrich in the 70's: Robert ALTMAN became hot and respected. But Aldrich made more hits in that decade. Still, they were confused. One young actress signed onto an Aldrich picture thinking he WAS Altman!

For future pondering:

Two probable future "Feud" seasons have been discussed by Murphy:

Prince Charles and Princess Di

and:

Johnny Carson and Joan Rivers

I'm partial to seeing the showbiz one first(and hey, the 80s!), but it may not happen that way. Who could play Carson and Rivers? Perhaps Sarah Silverman for Rivers? That guy who played Duck on Mad Men was called Johnny Carson-esque, but he's not a "name." Rich Little is too old(is he alive?). Dana Carvey?

We shall see...

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

The big new element this ep. was revealing Aldrich's assistant Pauline (well-played by Alison Wright) as a writer and wannabe-director. I found the story-line both heavy-handed (winking at today's headlines) and implausible.

---

The "winking at today's headlines" was perhaps cogent enough. There STILL aren't a whole lot of female directors, and its still a mystery as to why this is so. I would suggest that trying to impose "workplace equality" on an airtight, small-population, wealth-driven, highly competitive system such as Hollywood never quite works right. People aren't ENTITLED to work in Hollywood, millions come from all over the world just to try. (You can be a dentist in any town, a car mechanic in any town, a teacher in any town...but you wanna be a star? Hollywood is where you have to go. Oh you can base in New York or elsewhere, but Hollywood is the symbolic name for the small-population, closed system itself)

"Feud" also demonstrates, even if heavy-handedly, that film directing can be a brutally tough profession. Burt Reynolds said that Robert Aldrich was a "drill instructor," and I've read of other directors being called "sociopaths."(Think William Friedkin) Its hard for women to WANT to be that way, even if they are built for it.

---

On the later point, I don't believe that Pauline would think either that she'd get to direct A-list stars right off the bat or that she'd take Crawford turning her down as the definitive end to her ambitions in the show's present which I think (more heavy-handed-ness) we're supposed to believe it is.

---

Still, I liked the "roundelay of viciousness" in this episode: the agents having no work for Crawford and handing Davis over to a "kid agent"; Crawford turning on Pauline ("Its not because you are woman, its because you are a nobody"); Warner breaking down Aldrich(so that Aldrich loses patience with Pauline's dreams) -- "Feud" postulates Hollywood as the meanest place to make a living on earth, with people insulting and belittling each other all the time. I dunno. I can't tell. Though one former studio head once said: "I ran a studio for two years, and I wanted to commit suicide five times. I've never met such heartless souls." And Billy Bob Thornton said "Maybe Hollywood doesn't make people mean, sociopathic and damaged -- maybe it attracts mean, sociopathic and damaged people to congregate there."

---

Rather I think that after being rebuffed by Crawford, Pauline would work on accepting Aldrich's offer to produce for her and start to think assembling a lower-wattage cast....Or, hell, maybe she'd work on getting someone *else* to direct and juts use The Black Slipper to get her first writing credit and possibly a First Asst Director Credit.

---

It all makes sense. To my knowledge, no such movie was ever made, under tha title or any other, btw. Which would make this subplot a "fantasy to make a social message."

---

Maybe then direct someone else's script *then* writer-direct after that. In other words, I think that Pauline expecting everything all-in-a-rush - a writer-director gig with A-list stars - *was* just too unrealistic, but so is her giving up her dream completely for the conceivable future when there are many half-way houses if she's really talented and promising enough to impress Aldrich.

---

Well, they've only got so many hours. This was probably a "writer's room rollout" of a story idea that had to be compressed to make its point.

---

Blondell and OdH were back to no good end that I could see.

---
Eh..they're narrators, I guess. Astonishing to me: I just can't SEE Catherine Zeta-Jones in the face of this woman. She looks like some other actress to me. Ashley Judd, maybe? Meanwhile...will Zeta-Jones appear in a "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" scene? We'll know soon.

---

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Best scene tonight (along with Joan-at-the-first-preview) was possibly Joan giving her William Morris agent's what-for. The scene reminded me a lot of one of Mommie Dearest's best scenes, where Dunaway's Crawford crushes the supercilious Pepsi Board like bugs after her Pepsi-husband dies.

---

I haven't seen Mommie Dearest. I should. I would expect that an actress who knows how to fight in Hollywood could rip a garden-variety Pepsi Board to shreds.

Speaking of this scene with the agents, I read of Cary Grant firing all his MCA agents in a meeting, after North by Northwest hit, where they suggested he have a "Cary Grant TV Show" like Hitchocck's. The mere IDEA of shifting to TV enraged Grant to fire his team (though he still made some Universal movies.)

Another thing with that scene with the agents: low-power Joan Crawford may have been at the time, but we are reminded that 20 guys in suits are necessary to handle ONE star. Stars ARE special people, after all.

Anyhow, next week's the Oscars imbroglio. Should be good. Onward!

--
Many of us know where THAT is going. And it should be fun.

Now: about those final two hours after that....

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

This has troubled me in a "creeping way" since the series started, and seemed to come to a head this episode with Sarandon's to-the-letter version of Davis' rollicking Andy Williams Show 1962 "rock and roll Baby Jane." (Even the green dress is right.) You can see the real thing on YouTube, and Sarandon's exact impression here (voice, body, gestures) of Davis is Emmy Time.[/quote]

Yes, Sarandon is spot on in that Andy Williams clip....but Sarandon is just so much more youthful/girlish/hotter than Bette! [One imagine Bette watching the clip and laughing, 'Hell, if I'd looked like Susan I'd never have bothered learning how to act!' IRL Sarandon is something like 20 years older than Davis was at the time of Baby Jane yet Sarandon registers as so much younger/more youthful it's crazy.

[quote]One realizes that Ryan Murphy is "connected" to Jessica Lange, and practically had to cast her, but it seems now that she was miscast. Yes, Crawford was more imperious and regal than Davis(if even from poorer roots), but as Faye Dunaway showed, you can play that with more sex appeal and "oomph." Jessica Lange has her own aging actress issues(her facial features) and has chosen a vocal tone which eradicates Crawford's real star power. Who might have played Crawford better from our current crop?[/quote]

Someone like Sharon Stone or Sean Young or Kathleen Turner maybe? But any of these would have a lot of risk attached. Are they really in the right shape to carry a mini-series? Do they still have the chops, etc.? Lange's a super-pro whom Murphy has worked with repeatedly, so I'm sure that it was an easy decision for him to cast her as Joan even if it meant that his Joan was going to end up a little more beaten down and out-of-cards than the real Joan was at the time.

[quote](Irony: Sarandon, and not Lange, may end up the Emmy winner of this show; will Lange even get nominated?)

Yikes. Maybe!

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

That said, you move things a couple of decades -- to the 70's and 80s -- and you DO get a male takeover at the star level at least. All those action men(Eastwood, Reynolds, Bronson) all those emerging male Italian-American stars(Pacino, DeNiro, Stallone, Travolta), the other new men(Nicholson, Redford) all those male buddy stories, all those teenage boys as fans.

Exactly. And it's really only quite recently that the studio have almost *completely* stopped making womens pictures.

All Davis and Crawford had to complain about in 1960 really was age-ism + the inevitable fading of the special *dominance* of female stars (esp. in non-prestige releases) that had happened in their primes in the 1930s and 1940s. (Davis talks wistfully in her Dick Cavett interview in the 1970s about how the boys had to get their turn in the 1950s and 1960s but she wasn't complaining that womens films had *disappeared*.) That dominance was built on a huge female and middle-aged audience that saw multiple movies a week after work etc., which disappeared once TV came along.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

That dominance was built on a huge female and middle-aged audience that saw multiple movies a week after work etc., which disappeared once TV came along.

---

I have also read that as more women entered the workforce, female theater-going declined. They had been going during weekday afternoons as housewives, evidently. ("The Purple Rose of Cairo" evidently.) Who took care of the kids?

As the audience shifted to teenage boys with money in their pockets(earned or from their parents), the shift began. Not to mention: the TV action series template was recrafted(and made more violent) with movies like Dirty Harry and Lethal Weapon.

That said, SOME women's pictures remain. Meryl Streep gets to make them and that gal from Zero Dark Thirty makes a tougher kind.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

I take (and agree with) practically all your points below and yet -- I enjoyed it immensely and again had the same sensation at the end: it all seemed so fun and so fast that when it ended, I felt like I didn't want it to.[/quote]

I kinda got on a roll with articulating negative points.....which your remark here helps correct: notwithstanding its problems, Feud is still Must-See-TV for me, and there's lots to enjoy even in the weaker eps.. E.g., I can't believe what they've written for Molina and Tucci but those guys are great fun to watch, really some of the best character actors out there. E.g. 2. I wasn't that impressed by the Sinatra-guy's Sinatra impression but I *was* impressed that the show dared to depict nasty/bad-behaving Sinatra, probably him at his absolute worst (Frank has a lot of mega-fans still who won't thank you for showing that).

[quote]I wonder where Robert Aldrich ended up in Andrew Sarris' famous "Panethon of Directors" that had Hitchcock and Hawks in the top tier? And Billy Wilder down a few levels("Less than Meets the Eye".)[/quote]

Here's Sarris's taxonomy:
http://www.theyshootpictures.com/sarriscategories.htm
Aldrich isn't mentioned but neither are Hawks, Mankiewiscz, Kazan, Welles, Preston Sturges! Even on its own terms, Sarris's article was so uncomprehensive as to be completely worthless. I imagine that the original article probably cost Sarris a few friends and almost certainly made him a few enemies.

[quote]The skill set that divides a Matthew Weiner from a Ryan Murphy manifested in this episode, i.e. writing up some scenes to get a heavy-handed point across without really thinking through the reality of it.

Exactly. Murphy got a lot of credit and probably the best reviews of his career for his OJ mini-series last year (which I've not watched; after the excellent Espn 7 hour doc I didn't have energy left for any more OJ). Well, that series was written by Scott Alexander & Larry Karazewski (sp?) who an established big-shot writing team in Hollywood *not* by Murphy and his flunkies. Feud season 1, by way of contrast, feels planned out by Murphy, but finished by B-teamers. That is, I'd guess that Murphy had the final scene with Joan's scream locked in an early outline, and the writers B-team got to flesh out and finish the rest of the ep....with the results we saw.

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

I don't think it's been mentioned here (nor do I know if anyone cares), but the song Bette Davis sang on the Andy Williams show was taken directly from Baby Jane, the film. It plays twice, but in an instrumental version.

The first time, when Blanche is typing the letter to her neighbor, asking for help. The second time is toward the end, during the opening shot of the daytime beach, it's playing on a transistor radio before it's interrupted by the news that the maid's body has been found.

And to change subjects: Regarding B.D. Merrill's performance as the neighbor. I remember years ago watching the film with my mother (who was a huge Bette Davis fan). Nobody knew who B.D. was yet, but I remember my mom saying, 'Who the hell hired HER? She MUST be some producer's daughter or something!'

I agree. I have a difficult time thinking of anyone's performance that was worse. True, she wasn't an actress, but she was just plain embarrassing.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

@MizhuB. I did not realize that the record released by Davis and then promoted on Any Williams was there in instrumental form in the movie s/track. Thanks, I'll listen for that next time I watch WETBJ? (I'll probably watch it once more before the end of Feud, Season 1.)

I never realized before Feud that the next door neighbor was played by Davis's daughter. Her performance never bugged me though - it's a very small part that kind of registers as 'callow teenager is callow' which I supposed was wanted. I suspect that after Feud though, I'll really scrutinize BD's performance.

I guess the issues evidently raised by BD's performance does make one appreciate again Patricia Hitchcock's performances in her father's films. She's *excellent* in a major role in Strangers On A Train and at least very good in her small but important role in Psycho. Pat didn't do much acting on screen other than for her father or his company (on Alfred Hitchcock Presents), but that appears to be film and tv's loss.

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

I always thought Pat Hitchock's performance in her one scene in 'Psycho' was also excellent. When she said to Janet Leigh, 'He was flirting with you! I guess he must've noticed my wedding ring', people laughed at the CHARACTER, not her.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I always thought Pat Hitchock's performance in her one scene in 'Psycho' was also excellent. When she said to Janet Leigh, 'He was flirting with you! I guess he must've noticed my wedding ring', people laughed at the CHARACTER, not her.

---

Yes, she knew how to read a line and make fun of the person she was playing. And willing to sacrifice her looks for a laugh(like, yeah, that's why Cassidy didn't flirt with her. Right.)

I've noted this before: in Van Sant's Psycho, Caroline(Rita Wilson, in a cleavage dress) is pretty much as attractive AS Marion(Anne Heche),so the line just seems more like garden variety competitive mean-girl lording over her lesser, cattiness. A point was made: change the casting, the line changes, too. Or it CAN.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I guess the issues evidently raised by BD's performance does make one appreciate again Patricia Hitchcock's performances in her father's films. She's *excellent* in a major role in Strangers On A Train and at least very good in her small but important role in Psycho. Pat didn't do much acting on screen other than for her father or his company (on Alfred Hitchcock Presents), but that appears to be film and tv's loss.

---
As I recall, Hitchcock paid for his daughter to get top flight training at the Royal Academy of London(but she had to audition her way in.) Makes a lot of the difference, I would suppose.

And then, Hitchocck cast her correctly and Pat acceded to being so cast...as a irritating pest(in Strangers) and as a dowdy married ninny in Psycho. Though some have found her rather sexy in Strangers; probably out to outdo her prettier sister as fun in bed?.....

I think Pat Hitchcock did a fair amount of acting on 50's live TV and some stagework. Marriage and kids led to her retirement, but Hitchcock lured her out for her perfect work as Caroline in Psycho...

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I don't think it's been mentioned here (nor do I know if anyone cares)

---

I care! And I did not know that!

---
but the song Bette Davis sang on the Andy Williams show was taken directly from Baby Jane, the film. It plays twice, but in an instrumental version.

The first time, when Blanche is typing the letter to her neighbor, asking for help. The second time is toward the end, during the opening shot of the daytime beach, it's playing on a transistor radio before it's interrupted by the news that the maid's body has been found.

---
I'll check it out. Funny that they fleshed it out for Davis to sing. I guess Crawford wanted nothing to do with it.

----

And to change subjects: Regarding B.D. Merrill's performance as the neighbor. I remember years ago watching the film with my mother (who was a huge Bette Davis fan). Nobody knew who B.D. was yet, but I remember my mom saying, 'Who the hell hired HER? She MUST be some producer's daughter or something!'

---
I recently mildly humiliated myself in assuming that BD was Robert Aldrich's daughter -- I even saw a family resemblance. Wrong..but Aldrich did cast his son in Flight of the Phoenix...and killed him right after the opening credits rolled(he dies in a plane crash.)

---
I agree. I have a difficult time thinking of anyone's performance that was worse. True, she wasn't an actress, but she was just plain embarrassing
--
Its tough when an obvious amateur wrecks the realism of a film. The biggest example to me is Glen Campbell in True Grit. Here are John Wayne and Kim Darby doing very believable(if stylized) professional acting and this guy who is acting as if he is in a 3rd grade play speaking lines that almost kill everything.

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

I almost hated to drudge this up again about the music, but I've been thinking since I wrote about Davis' song being a lyrical version of the instrumental played in the film that, what the hell? I might as well.

The excellent (in my opinion) opening theme during the credits also uses a lot (though not all) of the melody from 'I've Written a Letter to Daddy'. Including the opening notes. Then it resurfaces on and off throughout the theme.

Just thought I'd mention it, for those who may not have noticed.

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

I almost hated to drudge this up again about the music, but I've been thinking since I wrote about Davis' song being a lyrical version of the instrumental played in the film that, what the hell? I might as well.

The excellent (in my opinion) opening theme during the credits also uses a lot (though not all) of the melody from 'I've Written a Letter to Daddy'. Including the opening notes. Then it resurfaces on and off throughout the theme.

Just thought I'd mention it, for those who may not have noticed.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I almost hated to drudge this up again about the music, but I've been thinking since I wrote about Davis' song being a lyrical version of the instrumental played in the film that, what the hell? I might as well.

---

Absolutely, you should! Thinking over a previous post and coming up with some new thoughts from it is a great way to "continue the dialogue."

---

The excellent (in my opinion) opening theme during the credits also uses a lot (though not all) of the melody from 'I've Written a Letter to Daddy'. Including the opening notes. Then it resurfaces on and off throughout the theme.

Just thought I'd mention it, for those who may not have noticed.

---

I did not notice. Now I will. I still have "Baby Jane" on my DVR from a viewing a couple of months ago ahead of Feud. I'll take a look.

Thanks for expanding the knowledge...

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I take (and agree with) practically all your points below and yet -- I enjoyed it immensely and again had the same sensation at the end: it all seemed so fun and so fast that when it ended, I felt like I didn't want it to.[/quote]

I kinda got on a roll with articulating negative points.....which your remark here helps correct: notwithstanding its problems, Feud is still Must-See-TV for me, and there's lots to enjoy even in the weaker eps..
---
And this is not "impossible' in my much-more-lenient view(mainstream and "I'm easy.") The entertainment value is right there in the Saul Bass-esque credits(which resemble the Saul Bass-esque credits AND music for the great titles to "Catch Me If You Can.") And that the whole thing is set in 1962 brings this Mad Man/Psycho fan right into the zone. But perhaps what's working the best is the cast. Stanley Tucci seems wildly overqualifed for this series, and yet he also looks like he's having the time of his life, capturing the merciless power drive of a man who greenlights the movies.

----

---
E.g., I can't believe what they've written for Molina and Tucci but those guys are great fun to watch, really some of the best character actors out there.
--
Yes. It is interesting that this show about women has two such great male performances. And clearly Robert Aldrich is emerging as a linchpin figure in the tale. I wonder what his family thinks. They should be happy, I would think. As to the unbelievablity of the Tucci/Molina dialogue, I figure it this way: I just watch as if this is entirely fictional material about two men who resemble the real ones not at all.
--
E.g. 2. I wasn't that impressed by the Sinatra-guy's Sinatra impression but I *was* impressed that the show dared to depict nasty/bad-behaving Sinatra, probably him at his absolute worst (Frank has a lot of mega-fans still who won't thank you for showing that).
---
Rather as with Hitchcock, I am a mega-fan of Sinatra for his work(which peaked around the same 50's/60's period Hitchcock's did) and dubious about his personal life(Hitchcock firing Bernard Herrman and whatever happened with Tippi). But Hitchcock was a pussycat compared to Sinatra.
I have to say that the scene with Buono and Aldrich seemed overdone to me; I've read a lot about how Sinatra threw his tantrums and I don't think he was quite such a animalistic savage. He was colder, prone to walk off the set (though he did slap one co-star for blowing his lines on Tony Rome..it was a comic friend of Sinatra's named Pat Henry, so maybe he felt he could get away with it.)
One realizes that its a wonder directors survived doing their work at all. Sinatra, Brando, Marilyn Monroe...you had to be pretty tough to make a movie with one of THEM. (Hitchcock publically said he would never work with Sinatra or Brando "because they direct themselves.") John Wayne, a lot, too.
Funny: after Baby Jane, the Sinatra film, and Hush Hush, Robert Aldrich next directed...Jimmy Stewart! In Flight of the Phoenix. Stewart had one of the best working reptuations in Hollywood. Maybe Aldrich wanted a break.

---

[quote]I wonder where Robert Aldrich ended up in Andrew Sarris' famous "Panethon of Directors" that had Hitchcock and Hawks in the top tier? And Billy Wilder down a few levels("Less than Meets the Eye".)

Here's Sarris's taxonomy:
http://www.theyshootpictures.com/sarriscategories.htm
Aldrich isn't mentioned but neither are Hawks, Mankiewiscz, Kazan, Welles, Preston Sturges! Even on its own terms, Sarris's article was so uncomprehensive as to be completely worthless. I imagine that the original article probably cost Sarris a few friends and almost certainly made him a few enemies.
---
You know, I have a book with this list somewhere and I'm wondering if this version of the list is incomplete, only naming SOME of the names "included" on the list. I'll go looking. I could have thought there were more Pantheon directors(Hawks included) and that Aldrich DID make it, a level down. Maybe I'm dreaming...
--

Exactly. Murphy got a lot of credit and probably the best reviews of his career for his OJ mini-series last year (which I've not watched; after the excellent Espn 7 hour doc I didn't have energy left for any more OJ).
--
I kept getting the two confused. Yes, OJ's been done about to death, and what his story is about isnt too helpful to society right now.

---
Well, that series was written by Scott Alexander & Larry Karazewski (sp?) who an established big-shot writing team in Hollywood *not* by Murphy and his flunkies.
--
Aha! You bet! They wrote Ed Wood and Larry Flynt, among other films. Top drawer. But evidently willing to do TV work for another guy.

---

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

He even made a "Sunset Blvd meets Vertigo" movie called "The Legend of Lylah Clare" with Kim Novak during this period

I finally got around to seeing this one, albeit in a very low resolution copy taped off TCM (there's a big reveal at one point where someone we've assumed is a man is revealed to be a woman, but the copy of the film I had was so blurry that I couldn't really *see* that for myself and just had to take the dialogue on trust!).

Anyhow, TLOLC is a completely bizarre follow-up to The Dirty Dozen. Whereas TDD, notwithstanding it's period setting, really sets the stage for all the grittily violent but humorous studio films of the whole 1967-1974 period, TLOLC is deeply backward looking, and really feels like it's about 15 years behind the times! Sunset Blvd and The Bad and the Beautiful and A Star is Born and Barefoot Contessa and Vertigo and Suddenly Last Summer and Baby Jane (and probably quite a few others) all gnawed on some of these same melodramatic bones, and had done so pretty definitively. Aldrich doesn't really have a new tail to tell here, and, by Aldrich's standards there's very little real visual and editing juice in the film beyond some of the worst flashback scenes ever put on film (presented with the flash-backer's current head in the bottom left corner so that the rest of the screen becomes their thought-balloon) and bizarre ending with a dogfood commercial (possibly the best scene in the film!). Above all, the florid score and overblown acting-styles are not going to fly by the late '60s post-Blow Up/Alfie/The Graduate/In Cold Blood, etc.. Poor Kim Novak is just left to flounder and show off her still killer body...

Compare TLOLC with another disaster of a Hollywood-insider-picture, Inside Daisy Clover (1965). IDC is *terrible* but its got a great fresh *look* about it, and its irritating features feel like the sort of mistakes that no one ever made before about 1965. It's a completely up- to-date mess in other words. TLOLC on the other hand feels like it's a botched version of a mid-1950s picture, which is just fatal.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

by Aldrich's standards there's very little real visual and editing juice in the film beyond some of the worst flashback scenes ever put on film (presented with the flash-backer's current head in the bottom left corner so that the rest of the screen becomes their thought-balloon)

---

That's an interestingly bizarre idea...

---

and bizarre ending with a dogfood commercial (possibly the best scene in the film!).

---

I'm reminded that Crawford's first scene in Baby Jane has her (and her neighbors at the same time) having to watch a dog food commercial in the middle of an old Crawford film. Maybe some "self homage" here?

---
Above all, the florid score and overblown acting-styles are not going to fly by the late '60s post-Blow Up/Alfie/The Graduate/In Cold Blood, etc..

---

Once The Dirty Dozen became a huge blockbuster, Robert Aldrich embarked on an odd course of action. He formed his own mini-studio and set out to make some pretty weird films, all "Suggested for Mature Audiences"/early Rs: Lylah Clare, Sister George, The Grissom Gang. They all had somewhat tawdry but poor reputations.

Ulzana's Raid in 1972 was well-reviewed but ultra-violent, and a box office flop.

I think he needed "The Longest Yard" to make a comeback, and boy did he. Then he went back to making weird, clunky movies. Hustle and The Choirboys have their fans, but I'd say The Longest Yard was the final truly meaningful Aldrich film.

--

Poor Kim Novak is just left to flounder and show off her still killer body...

--

I remember not being allowed to see Lylah Clare (but then my parents didn't want to, anyway.) But I saw the Western comedy "The Great Bank Robbery" (1969) and finally got to see a LOT of Miss Novak's great body. It looked like Kim was willing to join the ranks of the filmic female sex stars which would soon include Angie Dickinson(Big Bad Mama) Diane Keaton(Looking for Mr. Goodbar), Kathleen Turner(Body Heat), Jessica Lange(The Postman Always Rings Twice) and eventually Sharon Stone(Basic Instinct.) But Kim got into it a little too late in her aging process and soon retired from the screen less the occasional return(wonderful with fellow 50s stars Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis in The Mirror Crackd.)

----

Compare TLOLC with another disaster of a Hollywood-insider-picture, Inside Daisy Clover (1965). IDC is *terrible* but its got a great fresh *look* about it, and its irritating features feel like the sort of mistakes that no one ever made before about 1965. It's a completely up- to-date mess in other words. TLOLC on the other hand feels like it's a botched version of a mid-1950s picture, which is just fatal.

---
Different directors, different writers, different stars...even different studios. It makes a difference...

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Lylah Clare, Sister George, The Grissom Gang. They all had somewhat tawdry but poor reputations.[/quote]
I haven't seen The Grissom Gang or even ever heard of it before, just the way I'd never heard of Lylah Clare until recently. Sister George, however, was on TV in appropriately adult hours, quite a bit when I was a kid in the '70s. It's a strong film. Too serious and too 'domestic' to ever be a big hit (none of the camp pleasures of Baby Jane and Hush Hush, etc. and none of the 'out in the city', 'glamorous squalor' appeal of Midnight Cowboy a year later), but I think it's a strong film with a devastating story (right up there with They Shoot Horses a year later I'd say), astonishingly well-acted and well-directed.

[quote]Ulzana's Raid in 1972 was well-reviewed but ultra-violent, and a box office flop.[/quote]
Love that film and also 1973's Emperor of the North (Pole). In a perfect world, Emperor would have been a big hit - it's such a lot of tense fun! Borgnine who looked *so* uncomfortable and miscast as a supposedly slick Hollywood producer in Lylah, gets one of the best roles of his career (one of the best roles of anyone's career!) as The Shack.

It's true that studio directors have to have hits (maybe we would do better to call them 'Home Runs' - it's very hard to keep working steadily at the studio level with just minor hits or singles). That's the significance of The Longest Yard - Aldrich gets his big '70s hit or home run to go with Baby Jane and Dirty Dozen in the '60s and Vera Cruz and Kiss Me Deadly in the '50s. But film fans know that aside from the Home Runs that Aldrich has at least, maybe as many as 8 other films that are just terrific. It just doesn't matter to *us* that Aldrich occasionally made disasters like Lylah (to me it looked liked Aldrich simply stopped trying at various points though Lylah - there are some scenes in restaurants for instance where it's as though no one's behind the camera framing anything. It's as if Aldrich half way through knew that he was making an unsalvagable turkey and just wanted to get the damn thing finished and move on).

[quote]Different directors, different writers, different stars...even different studios. It makes a difference...

Indeed! I'm sorry if my referring to Inside Daisy Clover came off as utterly random, but I was trying to get at there are many ways movies (even on quite similar topics) can fail, and that Lylah's pervasive behind-the-times problem is a very odd and specific way to fail. Hitchcock's Torn Curtain and Topaz have *some* of the same creeping problem but both are far more polished and flat-out better than Lylah.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I haven't seen The Grissom Gang or even ever heard of it before, just the way I'd never heard of Lylah Clare until recently.

---

This triggered a memory of a different "cusp" than the one that I linger on the most -- 50's into 60's, that 1958-1963 corridor where one finds Vertigo, Some Like It Hot, North by Northwest, Anatomy of a Murder, Psycho, The Apartment, and on out to The Birds and Irma La Douce.

That 50's/60's cusp lives on in a "place of my imagination" -- I saw none of those films except The Birds in theaters, I can only imagine the experience, and with The Birds, it is very long ago and very far away.

However, I WAS quite lucid and cognizant(if still very young) for the next cusp -- 60's into 70's -- and thanks to a quirk of personal history, I was living in Los Angeles and reading the LA Times movie page every day for fun.

My point being...the LA Times ran ads on EVERY movie that got ANY kind of release -- most every movie had to have an LA screening....and I found myself reading about all these "new fangled" R- and X- rated films which I wasn't going to be allowed to see, and which all had a kind of tawdry, verboten quality to them.

ESPECIALLY the films of Robert Aldrich. "The Dirty Dozen" given its title, had the cachet of a dirty movie in my household -- I saw it years after release. Sister George was breakthrough on lesbianism(though so was another film I read of in the LA Times at the time -- "The Fox") and The Grissom Gang got some bad reviews as being some sort of really perv version of Bonnie and Clyde. Lylah Clare had a "sex movie" cachet -- was Kim Novak really nude in it?

I didn't get to SEE any of these movies on release, but boy did I read the reviews, and thus did I grow up just a bit faster(I think) than some of my friends who didn't read movie reviews.

But then came this: once I was of age and seeing all the R(and eventually X) rated movies I wanted to, movies like Lylah Clare and Sister George and The Grissom Gang had pretty much disappeared. They weren't on TV, VHS movies led with classics(like Psycho)...you really have to track these "lost R movies" down. In Robert Aldrich's case, it seems only The Longest Yard and Hustle get much play anymore after The Dirty Dozen in his chronology.

--

and Sister George, however, was on TV in appropriately adult hours, quite a bit when I was a kid in the '70s. It's a strong film. Too serious and too 'domestic' to ever be a big hit (none of the camp pleasures of Baby Jane and Hush Hush, etc. and none of the 'out in the city', 'glamorous squalor' appeal of Midnight Cowboy a year later), but I think it's a strong film with a devastating story (right up there with They Shoot Horses a year later I'd say), astonishingly well-acted and well-directed.

---

I saw it once, a couple of decades after its release. It was a pretty brutal tale of lesbian love, as I recall, with the older woman getting left by the younger woman for yet another, tougher, richer older woman. It was also a hard-knuckled show biz tale, as I recall -- the older woman was has been TV actress of some sort.

Note in passing: the young woman in the plot was the lovely Susannah York, evidently risking some things career-wise. And the woman who stole her away became the wife of Vincent Price in real life, when she played one of Price's victims in "Theatre of Blood"((1973), the grisly sleeper about a mad Shakespearan actor who kills all his critics in bloody Shakespearean ways. THAT movie came out a few crucial years down the road from the late sixties, and was more in atune with the gritty commercialism of the 70's.

---

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Ulzana's Raid in 1972 was well-reviewed but ultra-violent, and a box office flop.

Love that film

---

I do, too. Remember I saw it on a double-bill with Frenzy during Thanksgiving weekend, 1972, and together, they were two classic examples of the 70's R rating at its most powerful and raw. Ulzana's Raid did for the Western what Frenzy did for the thriller -- not simply injecting "violence" into the equation, but cruel REALISTIC violence. Aldrich and Hitchcock wanted to say something about that. (I seem to recall Ulzana's Raid having a scene where white settlers and cavalrymen shot themselves in the head before the Native Americans could get to them for rape and torture. The film was frank about savagery on all sides in certain conflict.)

---
and also 1973's Emperor of the North (Pole). In a perfect world, Emperor would have been a big hit - it's such a lot of tense fun!

---

I saw that one with "the guys" and we had great anticipation going in and came out having enjoyed it immensely. Two middle-aged men(Marvin and Borgnine) going at it hammer and tongs(and axe and chain) on top of a speeding train. And Marvin throwing that punk kid hobo Keith Carradine off the train at the end -- very satisfying.

---
Borgnine who looked *so* uncomfortable and miscast as a supposedly slick Hollywood producer in Lylah, gets one of the best roles of his career (one of the best roles of anyone's career!) as The Shack.
--
Ernest Borgnine is one of the unsung great and curious stars of an era. I go on and on here about Richard Boone, but Borgnine had a much bigger career than Boone with arguably even less sex appeal to him.

With the launch of a Best Actor Oscar for playing a nice guy(Marty), having just played a bad guy(Fatso Judson) in From Here to Eternity, Borgnine could switch sides for his whole career. Whenever I saw Borgnine in a movie, I'd gauge him -- "Is he good in this? Or bad?" And sometimes it took awhile to tell.

Amazing: Borgnine took a few years off to be a TV sitcom star(McHales Navy) and then CAME BACK as a major motion picture star, with quite a run there 1968-1973: Ice Station Zebra, The Wild Bunch(all-time classic), Willard(cheapo horror movie with a touch of Psycho, where Borgnine gets eaten by rats and earns big with a piece of the sleeper's profits), The Poseidon Adventure(BIG hit, with a sympathetic role)...Emperor of the North(well, WE know its good.)

By the way, Borgnine said he took McHales Navy when some kid mistook him for Richard Boone. Borgnine said "I saw TV stardom as necessary to get my name straight."

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

It's true that studio directors have to have hits (maybe we would do better to call them 'Home Runs' - it's very hard to keep working steadily at the studio level with just minor hits or singles).

---

Yes, Aldrich said that saw his home runs as Vera Cruz(the fifties), The Dirty Dozen(the sixties) and The Longest Yard(the seventies.) Aldrich said this in a promotional interview for his first film of the 80's -- 1981' lady wrestling fable, All The Marbles, saying "...and I hope that All the Marbles is my big hit of the 80's." Not even close, but its funny to realize that Aldrich was still trying to act like he mattered. As it turned out, All the Marbles was his ONLY film of the 80's, he died a couple of years later.

---

That's the significance of The Longest Yard - Aldrich gets his big '70s hit or home run to go with Baby Jane and Dirty Dozen in the '60s and Vera Cruz and Kiss Me Deadly in the '50s.

---

Just as I have Psycho(college revival), Wait Until Dark, and Jaws as the three big "nights of screaming" at the movies in my life, "The Longest Yard" had the incredible abilty to get a full movie house yelling and cheering on the final minutes of an entirely fictional football game as if it were the real thing. Rather like "Psycho," "The Longest Yard" wasn't "just" a movie. It was a visceral, audience-participation event.

Alfred Hitchcock loved The Longest Yard, watched it over and over in his private screening room and cast three actors from the film in "Family Plot"(chiefly, menacing Ed Lauter as Joe Maloney;he'd been the head prison guard in Yard.)

As great as The Longest Yard was for audience participation, I do remember how clunky it looked. The flat cinematography made the film look like some sort of industrial training film -- "The Wonderful World of Steel Manufacturing" or something. No matter. Watching Burt Reynolds move from self-centered NFL sellout to hero was a great experience, and Eddie Albert as the prison warden was the epitome of evil.

----

But film fans know that aside from the Home Runs that Aldrich has at least, maybe as many as 8 other films that are just terrific.

---

Yep. A fine career at least until The Longest Yard. Kiss Me Deadly, Attack, The Big Knife, Baby Jane, Charlotte, The Flight of the Phoenix, Ulzana's Raid, Emperor of the North...there's eight right there.

The Choirboys was from best-selling cop-turned-author Joe Wambaugh, and it has a great, big cast of male cops. Its looks as clunky as The Longest Yard, but it is meaty in its representation of what cops are like...the good, the bad, and the ugly of them.

And even All the Marbles had its bona fides. To me, with its women in the ring, its a mix of Baby Jane(where Bette was kicking Joan around) AND The Longest Yard(both films end with a sporting event in about 25 minutes of real time; unfortunately the "tag team" wrestling match is presented as for real when we know it just couldn't be. Still, I've read that some crowds cheered the All the Marbles final match as the Longest Yard football game had been cheered.) Plus , as a long-time Columbo fan, I enjoyed watching my man Peter Falk play a decidedly less smart and more low-down character as the ladies' manager.

---
It just doesn't matter to *us* that Aldrich occasionally made disasters like Lylah (to me it looked liked Aldrich simply stopped trying at various points though Lylah - there are some scenes in restaurants for instance where it's as though no one's behind the camera framing anything. It's as if Aldrich half way through knew that he was making an unsalvagable turkey and just wanted to get the damn thing finished and move on).

---

Directors sometimes get stuck in bum projects. Hitchcock wrote a introduction for a book by revered LA Times critic Charles Champlin, and for once, I don't think Hitchcock had a ghost writer. One thing that Htichcock wrote was that he believed that Champlin understood that sometimes a film director simply gets stuck with a poor project and can't fix it -- Topaz is what Hitchcock had in mind. Hitchcock wrote to Maurice Jarre, the musical composer of Topaz, "You have given me a great score when, I'm afraid, I was unable to give you a great film."

----

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Different directors, different writers, different stars...even different studios. It makes a difference...

Indeed! I'm sorry if my referring to Inside Daisy Clover came off as utterly random, but I was trying to get at there are many ways movies (even on quite similar topics) can fail,

---

Well, the quite similar topic of "Hollywood behind the scenes" is probably a real trap in movie making. Its gotta be just right in tone and few movies got that -- Sunset Boulevard the most of all. Trying to believe in a "make believe" Hollywood and make believe stars and make believe directors can go terribly wrong; audiences seem to know what's "real" about Hollywood, from all our readings of it. As someone said, "Everybody's second career is movies."

--
and that Lylah's pervasive behind-the-times problem is a very odd and specific way to fail.

---

I guess I'll have to see it. As I recall, Aldrich had a good cast, and he had the goodwill from The Dirty Dozen behind him.

Speaking of The Dirty Dozen, I looked at Aldrich's imdb page to check his filmography and the 1967 poster for The Dirty Dozen is a "1960's classic" -- a near-photographic painting of Lee Marvin(mainly) and most of his men, firing machine guns and whatnot that creates the impression that this movie will be the MOST exciting, MOST epic, MOST violent war action movie every made. I was going to say that they don't make war movie posters like this anymore, but actually a very similar one was commissioned for QT's Inglorious Basterds.

-- Hitchcock's Torn Curtain and Topaz have *some* of the same creeping problem but both are far more polished and flat-out better than Lylah Clare.

Well...Hitchcock even in his dotage was a better artist than Robert Aldrich. Its just the way it was. The way that certain shots and scenes are framed and timed in both Torn Curtain and Topaz show that Hitchcock's "movie machine" of a mind never really faltered even if the scripts and his energy did.

The murder of Gromek in Torn Curtain isn't just one of Hitchcock's greatest scenes, its one of the greatest scenes in movie history, taking the act of murder one more horrible step to reality than it was in Psycho. But unsung in Torn Curtain are such great moments as : how the plane door opens onto the German airport and the plane in reflection; how Newman, Andrews, and a crowd of reporters are staged for Newman's defector's press conference; how Newman and Andrews are placed at a distance from each other in a hotel room. All sorts of cinematic brilliance going on here even as the critics attacked the film for being more boring than Bond or NXNW.

As for Topaz: the murder of Juanita deCorboba. Maybe worth having the whole movie just for that scene. But the opening defection in Copenhagen is classic Hitchcock "silent movie making" with a dash of Eurofilm up-to-date-ness. And I love everything having to do with Roscoe Lee Browne and the Hotel Theresa. Hitchcock in Harlem!(Is this his version of 'Shaft"?)

---

Its funny about Robert Aldrich, as it would be with many other name directors of his time. Aldrich never really had a hit again after The Longest Yard, but Hollywood kept letting him work. He'd earned his keep with home runs and he put movies into the pipeline for studios that needed them. The Frisco Kid(one film before the end) has Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford as stars -- it had major stars, it had "heat," it was major in the making. But it was not a hit.

And not long before Aldrich died, he was working on a SEQUEL to All the Marbles, which evidently had a VHS following. In short, Aldrich was never put out to pasture, never fired for his inability to produce home runs after awhile.

From what I've read, filmmakers such as Aldrich and even Billy Wilder were allowed to keep working, even with flops, because Hollywood agents and producers rather depended on those guys getting work so that THEY could get work and commissions. It was a mutual dependence system that took a long time to break down.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Lylah Clare had a "sex movie" cachet -- was Kim Novak really nude in it?[/quote]

No - unless there were a few topless frames somewhere that I missed (my attention wandered a bit; the film's something like 2 hours 20 mins and could really do to have picked up the pace and lost half an hour). You do see Novak in her underwear a lot tho' and there are some Vertigo-style shots of her shoulders and back in bed. She looks great but the film's not sexy fun the way the R-rated films around this time really can be.

E.g., I just saw Candy (1968) which I thought was a blast. Very funny and very sexy (but with only very small flashes of nudity so all the really sexy stuff is going on in your mind) with great music throughout. One of the best trippy, picaresque R-rated films ever I'd say. It evidently had a huge budget too - how did that happen?

[quote]the young woman in the plot was the lovely Susannah York

York's in a few movies I really like: Silent Partner, Images, They Shoot Horses, as well as Sister George.

I think that York's career might have been hurt slightly by a glut of classy blonde UK actresses with similar names around this time, esp. Susan George (more of a sexpot) and Susan Hampshire (more of a serious stage-y actress for period parts). This may have left York mostly with 'pretty neurotic next door'-type roles.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Feud S01E05 'And the Winner Is....'
Probably the key episode of the series is staged - beautifully staged - as a caper/heist (at least after preliminary framing stories are out of the way). Joan's going to steal away Oscar night from Bette Davis, and yet it's also an act of assured self-destruction. Joan knows that she'll be damning herself forever by doing this, that this stunt will loom over her whole career and memory. Murphy (who wrote and directed this one) rather clumsily and implausibly - on Oscar night it's too late to change anything - has George Cukor tell Joan what the score will be and has her admit that she knows that this is a self-destructive act too. But the heavy hand here is probably a price worth paying to ensure that all viewers are on the same page about what the stakes are.

Lange's Joan is like a battleship patrolling and parting the shark-infested waters backstage at the Oscars. One masterful long tracking shot - shades of Goodfellas' Copacabana club entry - has her walking right through the Men's Room! Bette finds out late that Joan has commandeered the Green Room and knows instantly that something very bad for her is probably up. Sarandon only really got to react in this ep. but killed it from that moment on.

We get led very clearly through the Rififi-like preparations for the heist with the most interesting and important steps being Crawford's arranging to accept Bancroft's and Page's awards if either wins (including getting Page to sit out the awards as a favor to Joan). Sarah Paulson (who's such a chameleon - I didn't recognize her) playing Page is great, but it's Serinda Swan (new to me; what a name?!) as Bancroft who almost steals the ep.. She looks amazingly like the young Bancroft, which is to say that she comes across as both very beautiful and intense and smart (Swan's agent's phone will be ringing off the hook tonight!). Bancroft it turns out has thought a lot about Crawford in WEHTBJ? and is happy to feed Crawford the raw meat that Crawford desires. (I wonder whether Murphy ran these scenes by Mel Brooks? He'd almost certainly know Bancroft's feelings from the time for sure.)

Lots and lots of other nice touches in this ep. that I'll leave for others to cover. Is this Feud's 'Red Wedding' or 'Shut the door. Take a seat'? Maybe not quite, but it's the same sort of stunner-wannbe ep. and its quality is getting up there. And THIS REALLY HAPPENED.

So, I reckon this episode was an A.

What did everyone else think?

Update: It occurs to me that within a single week we got Bates Motel's well-directed take on Psycho's shower scene *and* Feud's well-directed take on Crawford's Oscar Heist/The Point of No Return for the catfight of the century. That's peak-TV for ya!

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Update: It occurs to me that within a single week we got Bates Motel's well-directed take on Psycho's shower scene *and* Feud's well-directed take on Crawford's Oscar Heist/The Point of No Return for the catfight of the century. That's peak-TV for ya!
---
And in my case, I saw both of those on the same day...with a "Hitchcock bonus": I also saw North by Northwest on the big screen.

I guess you could call it a "peak TV/Hitchcock/50's-60's cusp day."

The day began with a screening of North by Northwest at 2:00 pm at a local theater. Great print, great sound, smallish crowd...but the movie held its own, brought back all the great memories for me. The small crowd applauded, too.

Then back to the telly to watch the episode of Bates Motel that I missed last week -- with the afore-mentioned shower scene(well, both of them, Marion's sparing and Sam's victimization.)

Then continuing on with the telly to finish the night with that great Feud episode.

Sometimes one just has a great movie day! Even with two out of three items being on TV...

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Probably the key episode of the series is staged

---

Probably so. I've lost track of how many are left -- two I think -- but it will be hard to beat the power of this one. Key to me about it was how a movie that had been rather a "life-saving miracle of career survival" for both Davis and Crawford suddenly became, with its success, a flamethrower of competition and rage between the two fading stars. Success can be worse for people than failure.

---
- beautifully staged - as a caper/heist (at least after preliminary framing stories are out of the way). Joan's going to steal away Oscar night from Bette Davis, and yet it's also an act of assured self-destruction.

---

Well stated. People do THAT, too.

---

Joan knows that she'll be damning herself forever by doing this, that this stunt will loom over her whole career and memory. Murphy (who wrote and directed this one) rather clumsily and implausibly - on Oscar night it's too late to change anything - has George Cukor tell Joan what the score will be and has her admit that she knows that this is a self-destructive act too. But the heavy hand here is probably a price worth paying to ensure that all viewers are on the same page about what the stakes are.

---
I think so. It was a good scene(with a once-young actor from my film-watching past named John Rubenstein, I think, playing old George Cukor) and intended to make sure we knew those stakes and Crawford's self-knowledge of the self-destruction.

Cukor: You're bigger than this.
Crawford: No, I'm not.

---

Lange's Joan is like a battleship patrolling and parting the shark-infested waters backstage at the Oscars. One masterful long tracking shot - shades of Goodfellas' Copacabana club entry - has her walking right through the Men's Room!

--

I caught the GoodFellas nod and loved the men's room bit. This scene is among many all through the episode that I bet DIDN'T happen in real life, but was a great invention...Crawford leading David Lean(of all auteurist giants) on and on and on to get to that press room. I believe it is much closer than that.

And a funny thing: I've always felt the GoodFellas shot is pretty easy to do with a walking Steadicam -- but it is still pretty impressive even today. All the actors and extras and props and lighting have to be "just so" for it to work.

And this: the other night I watched DePalma's famous misfire "The Bonfire of the Vanities", and it opens with a shot almost the equal of the GoodFellas shot , this one involving a drunken Bruce Willis being escorted from a limo into a hotel to speak on a stage. Funny thing: "Bonfire of the Vanities" is from 1990, just like GoodFellas. But Bonfire was a horrible notorious bomb(and having just seen it -- oh yes, it is!) Still, two 1990's films with one great shot.

Bette finds out late that Joan has commandeered the Green Room and knows instantly that something very bad for her is probably up. Sarandon only really got to react in this ep. but killed it from that moment on.

---

Yes, things were all in Joan's corner for the setting up, and then we watched it all pay off AGAINST Davis -- with the side-bar of Olivia De Havilland being the pal(indeed, Olivia really DID fly in from Paris to support Bette._ ) I liked Olivia talking about "Your Joan and my Joan" -- each woman having their own lifelong feud to deal with. We all know who Olivia's Joan was, don't we?

(MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Probably the key episode of the series is staged

---

Probably so. I've lost track of how many are left -- two I think -- but it will be hard to beat the power of this one. Key to me about it was how a movie that had been rather a "life-saving miracle of career survival" for both Davis and Crawford suddenly became, with its success, a flamethrower of competition and rage between the two fading stars. Success can be worse for people than failure.

---
- beautifully staged - as a caper/heist (at least after preliminary framing stories are out of the way). Joan's going to steal away Oscar night from Bette Davis, and yet it's also an act of assured self-destruction.

---

Well stated. People do THAT, too.

---

Joan knows that she'll be damning herself forever by doing this, that this stunt will loom over her whole career and memory. Murphy (who wrote and directed this one) rather clumsily and implausibly - on Oscar night it's too late to change anything - has George Cukor tell Joan what the score will be and has her admit that she knows that this is a self-destructive act too. But the heavy hand here is probably a price worth paying to ensure that all viewers are on the same page about what the stakes are.

---
I think so. It was a good scene(with a once-young actor from my film-watching past named John Rubenstein, I think, playing old George Cukor) and intended to make sure we knew those stakes and Crawford's self-knowledge of the self-destruction.

Cukor: You're bigger than this.
Crawford: No, I'm not.

---

Lange's Joan is like a battleship patrolling and parting the shark-infested waters backstage at the Oscars. One masterful long tracking shot - shades of Goodfellas' Copacabana club entry - has her walking right through the Men's Room!

--

I caught the GoodFellas nod and loved the men's room bit. This scene is among many all through the episode that I bet DIDN'T happen in real life, but was a great invention...Crawford leading David Lean(of all auteurist giants) on and on and on to get to that press room. I believe it is much closer than that.

And a funny thing: I've always felt the GoodFellas shot is pretty easy to do with a walking Steadicam -- but it is still pretty impressive even today. All the actors and extras and props and lighting have to be "just so" for it to work.

And this: the other night I watched DePalma's famous misfire "The Bonfire of the Vanities", and it opens with a shot almost the equal of the GoodFellas shot , this one involving a drunken Bruce Willis being escorted from a limo into a hotel to speak on a stage. Funny thing: "Bonfire of the Vanities" is from 1990, just like GoodFellas. But Bonfire was a horrible notorious bomb(and having just seen it -- oh yes, it is!) Still, two 1990's films with one great shot.

Bette finds out late that Joan has commandeered the Green Room and knows instantly that something very bad for her is probably up. Sarandon only really got to react in this ep. but killed it from that moment on.

---

Yes, things were all in Joan's corner for the setting up, and then we watched it all pay off AGAINST Davis -- with the side-bar of Olivia De Havilland being the pal(indeed, Olivia really DID fly in from Paris to support Bette._ ) I liked Olivia talking about "Your Joan and my Joan" -- each woman having their own lifelong feud to deal with. We all know who Olivia's Joan was, don't we?

(MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

We get led very clearly through the Rififi-like preparations for the heist with the most interesting and important steps being Crawford's arranging to accept Bancroft's and Page's awards if either wins (including getting Page to sit out the awards as a favor to Joan).

---

This was "Close the Door, Take a Seat" caper-like subterfuge(with the human elements of that famous Mad Men episode), but with a darkness, it seemed. It was rather nifty in both cases how Crawford used the Broadway roots of Page and Bancroft against them(and how each of them paid that insult back in her own way; Page saying "I want Hollywood to see what they did to her" and Bancroft sneakily noting that Davis had the flashier role.)

There was also Crawford praising Bancroft for such a great performance on stage "even with a half full house." And later telling 17-year old winner Patty Duke,"there's nowhere to go but down." This cat's claws strike EVERYBODY.
---
Sarah Paulson (who's such a chameleon - I didn't recognize her) playing Page is great,

---
Paulson particularly got Page's distinctive VOICE down, letter-perfect. I mean, letter perfect. Paulson is also a Ryan Murphy show veteran, yes? (Marcia Clark in OJ, other things.)

And this: the guy on the couch near Page was playing one of my favorite actors of all time -- Rip Torn -- young, when Torn was married to Page. He was pretty close in hairstyle and a bit in voice.

This follows by a few weeks ANOTHER guy playing Davis' husband Gary Merrill. I think its just great that they cast all these actors in small roles AS actors. I knew Gary Merrill from All About Eve AND a favorite Harryhausen/Herrrman movie, "Mysterious Island."

And then: they even got a guy to play -- Wendell Corey(Detective Doyle) from Rear Window -- as the MPAA President.

Ive mentioned before that I have the "great idea"(heh) of a "TV miniseries about Hitchcock's career." It would multiply the Making of Psycho story of "Hitchocck" into a bunch of episodes about Joan Fontaine and Lifeboat and Rope and Robert Walker's early death and Rear Window and the Grace Kelly story and the making of NXNW ("This isn't a Cary Grant movie, its a David Niven movie," groused Cary until it hit big), and The Birds and the Tippi Story and the Frenzy comeback...and now I believe this COULD be made. There are evidently plenty of "fascimile actors" out there, or others could just play famous names(like Wendell Corey) and make us believe.
---
but it's Serinda Swan (new to me; what a name?!)
--
"I didn't believe it ,, either" (Cary Grant's line about Sergeant Emile Klinger in NXNW)

--
as Bancroft who almost steals the ep.. She looks amazingly like the young Bancroft, which is to say that she comes across as both very beautiful and intense and smart (Swan's agent's phone will be ringing off the hook tonight!).

--- Bancroft it turns out has thought a lot about Crawford in WEHTBJ? and is happy to feed Crawford the raw meat that Crawford desires. (I wonder whether Murphy ran these scenes by Mel Brooks? He'd almost certainly know Bancroft's feelings from the time for sure.)
--
Its possible. I think Bancroft was meant to be sympathetic to Joan -- she was SERIOUS about Joan's work in the non-flashy role making the movie work -- but Bancroft also sensed how desperate Joan was to get the gig.
And in real life, there was more: I found a photo of Joan Crawford awarding Bancroft's Oscar to her On Broadway, ON STAGE(with Bancroft in old lady wig and make-up.) So Crawford got to keep sticking it to Davis...even on Broadway. (I wonder if that scene will make it into next week's ep?)
---

Lots and lots of other nice touches in this ep. that I'll leave for others to cover. Is this Feud's 'Red Wedding' or 'Shut the door. Take a seat'? Maybe not quite, but it's the same sort of stunner-wannbe ep. and its quality is getting up there.

---
Its a biggie. And really, its hard to think of anything bigger happening. (Except maybe if Joan meets Young Spielberg.) One thing I'm waiting to see: "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" ultimately ended up being made by Robert Aldrich at Fox, not Warners. Did Jack Warner let the project slip away, or dump it when Crawford backed out and Olivia backed in? We shall see.
--
And THIS REALLY HAPPENED.
--
Evidently, for the most part, yes, it really did. (I kinda think the Page and Bancroft scenes were "fattened up" for drama; Cukor, too.) Its a lesson in just how monumental those Oscars COULD be, and maybe still are. Lesser wattage stars, today perhaps, in lesser-seen movies(except La La Land)...but the stakes are always high.

Which is why somebody's gonna pay for Warren's Wrong Envelope...

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

I caught the GoodFellas nod and loved the men's room bit. This scene is among many all through the episode that I bet DIDN'T happen in real life, but was a great invention...Crawford leading David Lean(of all auteurist giants) on and on and on to get to that press room. I believe it is much closer than that.[/quote]

I'm pretty certain at least that there wouldn't have been hall-way through the Men's Room for Crawford to lead Lean through! Still this was a good piece of extravagance by Murphy: some of his shows are ludicrously over-the-top but here everything was so nailed down to WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED that the occasional, fanciful, Fellini-ish touch (there was a dash of La Dolce Vita and 81/2 in all the backstage scenes) was very welcome I found.

[quote]Yes, things were all in Joan's corner for the setting up, and then we watched it all pay off AGAINST Davis -- with the side-bar of Olivia De Havilland being the pal(indeed, Olivia really DID fly in from Paris to support Bette._ ) I liked Olivia talking about "Your Joan and my Joan"

Yes, the coincidence of the first names is delicious. And, really, the OdH/Joan Fontaine feud is probably the #2 female star feud of all time.

One things that seeing Zeta-Jones's OdH and Sarandon's Bette together this week rammed home is that casting really matters/changes everything. The whole Bette/Joan Feud has been thrown off a bit because Sarandon is so ridiculously good-looking and youthful (check her out on Colbert a few nights ago - the 10+ minutes clip is on youtube - and let;s just say that she can have her pick of young lovers if she wants them!) that it makes her Bette too powerful relative to the show's Crawford. Now Zeta-Jones looking twenty years younger than OdH did in 1963 and the image is complete: Murphy has made Bette and OdH princesses brought low by a wicked queen.

A minor quibble about some of OdH's dialogue.... she says that Crawford never felt competitive with her because she always saw her as second banana, Melanie Wilkes from GWTW. Really? Joan was in the industry and would have known her as much for all her lead/voluptuous roles in Robin Hood and Captain Blood. Or consider OdH playing a bombshell opposite Davis as a pretty homely Queen Elizabeth in the Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. Melanie Wilkes was *the exception* - OdH's basic type was 'super-pretty, sunny but classy lead'. She'd have competed directly with Crawford for roles and, probably very irritatingly for Crawford been preferred ahead of her for aristocratic ingenues and the like, and all without ever having to do Crawford's hard yards in the Hollywood trenches.

Anyhow, it was interesting where the ep. *didn't* go: we never got to see OdH interact with Crawford and, a big surprise, we never got to see Sinatra this week. Once we knew that Sinatra was hosting the 1963 Oscars I firmly expected to be given the image of him suave and in charge to balance out the Bad Frank scenes from the previous week, but no...

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Anyhow, it was interesting where the ep. *didn't* go: we never got to see OdH interact with Crawford and,

---

Maybe that's coming...around the time of Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte?

---

a big surprise, we never got to see Sinatra this week.

---

Yeah, the second I saw his name on the Oscar door, I figured we'd see that guy they hired. We HEARD him, didn't see him -- and Sinatra DID host. I guess Bob Hope wasn't as regular as I recalled him to be.

---

Once we knew that Sinatra was hosting the 1963 Oscars I firmly expected to be given the image of him suave and in charge to balance out the Bad Frank scenes from the previous week, but no...

---
That would have been a nice comparison. On the "Siriously Sinatra" Sirious Radio channel, I oftimes hear Sinatra's concerts from the 60's and 70s, and he's seriously charming and intimate and raffish with his audiences, making everybody feel like their his best pals, and clearly respectful of both the writers and arrangers of his songs, whom he references by name every time. Its the "good Frank" whom I am certain existed right alongside the "bad Frank," and, well, "Feud" just gave us the bad one.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

There's a clip(re-staged in Feud) on YouTube of Bette Davis talking to Jack Paar in 1962 about the success of Baby Jane.

Its fascinating in its own way. First of all , Davis seems to have near-laryngitus, or a cold or something. Her voice is very muffled. Modernly, you'd think a star would cancel the appearance. But no, she soldiers on.

Jack Paar talks of how he saw the film with a male friend and it scared them both silly. "We gripped each other...I mean, we weren't holding hands or anything like that..."

But the audience still finds it funny...and the camera cuts to the OTHER guest up there: Jonathan Winters. And he reacts, and I laugh. Hard. Bette Davis and Jonathan Winters. It doesn't get any better than that.

The old "Dean Martin roasts" of the 70's aren't all that funny , except for the one of Frank Sinatra, where BOTH Don Rickles(RIP this week) and Jonathan Winters have routines that kill, kill, kill...putting all the other cue card readers to death. Recommended.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

The whole Bette/Joan Feud has been thrown off a bit because Sarandon is so ridiculously good-looking and youthful (check her out on Colbert a few nights ago - the 10+ minutes clip is on youtube - and let;s just say that she can have her pick of young lovers if she wants them!)

---

You got that right. Its one of the great "still sexy" aging jobs in Hollywood history. And she's always had a great chest and overall bod(I expect she works out.) And if she has had "work done"(facial), it sure was done well. But I doubt much of that happened. Some people get all the genes.

And personally, I'm for it, of course. Susan Sarandon is older than me. I want to have a sex symbol who is older than me.

Which reminds me: I want to have MALE role models who are older than me. I'll likely see the remake of "Going In Style" this weekend: three great actors -- Caine, Freeman, Arkin -- pushing 80 from various sides. (With Ann-Margret STILL the older man's femme fatale 20+ years after Grumpy Old Men.)

I've got my whole life ahead of me! Here's hoping for Michael Caine as a pal and Susan Sarandon as a lover. Hah.

reply

[–] movieghoul (213) 8 years ago

I loved reading in one of the obits on Rickles that before he became well known, he was working a night club and Sinatra popped in. The two had never met, but that didn't stop Rickles from ad Libbing "Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit someone." To which Sinatra reportedly practically fell on the floor laughing and instantly became a fan for life.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I loved reading in one of the obits on Rickles that before he became well known, he was working a night club and Sinatra popped in. The two had never met, but that didn't stop Rickles from ad Libbing "Make yourself at home, Frank. Hit someone." To which Sinatra reportedly practically fell on the floor laughing and instantly became a fan for life.

---

The current TV series Feud gave us a one-scene portrait of Sinatra as a raging, tempermental tyrant. The "biographical literature" on the man suggests that yes, sometimes he was. But sometimes he wasn't -- he was very caring towards his family, for instance.

In any event, Rickles seemed to have figured out how to "defuse" Sinatra, which was to stand right up to him in public and in private. Sinatra respected that, and he respected Rickles talent and he respected Rickles success.

Put another way, Don Rickles helped SINATRA look like a good guy and a better human being, just by standing up to him.

In addition to your story there, I've noted the one about Rickles askiign Sinatra to please come by his table to say hello to Rickles date...and how when he did, Rickles said "Can't you see we're eating and trying to have a little privacy?"

AND: At the 1969 or 1970 Oscars, Rickles did a bit where he came on stage to interrupt Sinatra's introduction and went over the cue cards with him, insulting him all the way. Again..this made SINATRA look good, a guy who could go along with a joke.

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

Joan's going to steal away Oscar night from Bette Davis, and yet it's also an act of assured self-destruction. Joan knows that she'll be damning herself forever by doing this, that this stunt will loom over her whole career and memory.

-------------

True. Joan Crawford cut off BOTH their noses to spite Davis' face.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Feud S01E06 'Hagsploitation'

A bit of an unbalanced downer of an ep. after the Oscars barnburner... In particular it seemed to be missing a scene or two. We need to understand why both Joan and Bette (and Aldrich to a lesser extent) would ever agree to work together again, but we only *hear* that Bette's in a bad way, we aren't *shown* her unhappily employed on Wagon-train or squabbling with with BD (or whatever it may be). As a result of this missing material Bette's not in the first half of the ep. at all which threw off the balance in my view.

The downer-ness of the ep. stems from Joan having to deal with her nasty, bitter brother effectively blackmailing her over a Stag reel or two from the 1920s (which it's long been rumored Crawford had MGM's fixers buy up and otherwise keep suppressed, but Joan doesn't have MGM behind her now - nobody does really in 1964 - so now she's having to do her own dirty work now). Tucci's Jack Warner sounds the other downer note: saying that the main appeal of Hagspolitation films is degradation - the audience gets to avenge itself on former movie goddesses (who'd never sleep with them) by seeing them go through the indignities of wrinkles and disreputable situations alike.

I think the show *wanted* to connect these two downer points but never thought of how to make that connection visually, so left it to us to do the connecting: Crawford's from the school of hard knocks and has been down before when almost anyone could have her (that's the reality represented by the stag reels), escaped all that to become an unattainable Goddess, and now she *is* feeling degraded by the Hagsploitation roles and having to participate in Castle's carnival-barker (shades of Baby Jane's first flashback) hard-sells, and now the bubbling up again of the porno problem (with no Eddie Mannix to fix it).

It's so bad that even Mamacita's threatening to leave Joan, and the ep. ends with Joan in pre-A/C Louisiana ready to begin work on Charlotte but in some sort of nightmare of Bette's devising. Not only is Joan not getting any star-treatment or even basic courtesy on arrival (does this make sense?), Bette and Aldrich are restarting their affair now that Aldrich's marriage has fallen apart. I don't actually know the details of how Joan bails out of Charlotte, but it's all been set-up now, and it's not going to be much fun I take it

It was fun I guess to see a version of Straitjacket's Trailer (including its ringing the Bloch/Psycho bell loud and clear), and John Waters as William Castle trying to be a low-rent Hitchcock.

What did everyone else think?

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

I think that this episode has been following a trend of being 'Crawford heavy', and I hope the next episode focuses on how Davis treated her so badly that she feigned illness...and got out of the picture. Which forced Aldrich to Sweden (I think) to convince DeHavilland to take the part.

Otherwise, it's turning into another bio pic of Crawford. I miss Davis (Sarandon) when she's not given equal time. But there's lots of material that CAN be covered about that. We'll see.

I also think that although John Waters bore absolutely no resemblance to William Castle, it was inspired, tongue-in-cheek casting. He definitely got the showmanship of manipulating audiences down correctly.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

It was fun I guess to see a version of Straitjacket's Trailer (including its ringing the Bloch/Psycho bell loud and clear), and John Waters as William Castle trying to be a low-rent Hitchcock.

---

I feel like leading with this part of the episode, which opened the episode.

---

The trailer was a pretty good reproduction of the original 1964 trailer for Strait-Jacket.

The footage of the Psycho book cover and the Time review(positive) of Castle's Homicidal(with Lange's Crawford then cut into it) is from a DIFFERENT, long-form publicity trailer that should still be on YouTube. In that trailer, star Joan Crawford, director William Castle, and writer Robert Bloch sit on couches and discuss "Strait-Jacket" in rather dumbed down dialogue that includes Crawford saying "this is our movie, so we can have as many murders as we want. How many should we have?" That Crawford-Castle-Bloch piece is a pop artifact that reminds us: Hitchcock made a lot more out of Bloch's Psycho than Castle and screenwriter Bloch would have!

John Waters as Castle , I believe stems from Waters being the "chief interviewee" in a fun documentary of a few years ago about William Castle. Waters spoke of his Baltimore childhood and being a huge fan of the whole "Castle experience" -- the scary but not too scary movies, their b/w cheapness, and above all THE GIMMICKS.

I am reminded that Castle's reign was pretty tightly in my favored 50's/60's cusp: It starts with Macabre in 1958 and finishes a couple of years past my deadline: 1965. With yet another Joan Crawford/Castle collaboration: "I Saw What You Did." (But Crawford is an extended cameo victim.) Castle pretty much specialized in ghost-tinged stories until Psycho hit in 1960, then Castle became a "Psycho copycat" through 1965.

In that period, Castle gave us one color movie(The Dark Old House, a horror comedy) and one straight-out comedy("Zotz," rather an Absent-Minded Professor clone)..but 1958 through 1965 was mainly ghost stories pre-Psycho and Psycho stories thereafter.

---
The scene of Crawford swinging that axe in the theater, being pelted with popcorn(shades of Ed Wood), and looking humiliated was powerful -- but I don't think she ever had to do that. More "biopic make 'em up."

Though I suppose having to do Strait-Jacket was humiliating enough. And Trog and Berserk lay ahead.

(MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

One thing that I felt the Strait-Jacket material reminded us was that, after Baby Jane, both Crawford AND Davis found themselves heading more directly in to "Psycho territory." Baby Jane had played as a melodrama with one out-of-shot murder. But Strait-Jacket and Charlotte each had some gore murders (five in Strait-Jacket, just one in Charlotte, but the body parts come back to haunt Davis later). Crawford first, and then Davis, had to confront the fact that now they were "horror queens."

A funny childhood memory: Mad Magazine did a 1964 spoof of "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" which had a frame in which we saw -- under heavy magnification -- the gigantic magnified tip of a knife cutting through layers of epiderma and bouncing off little circular blood corpuscles. The gag was that THIS bloody murder movie would go beyond Psycho and show us microscopic close-ups of a stabbing that were, patently ridiculous and safe-for-a-child's eyes.

But Mad made the point to me -- and other kids - that Psycho had unleashed a lot of Grand Guignol psycho murder movies...with such bladed weapons as big knives(Psycho), small knives(Homicidal), axes(Strait-Jacket) and meat cleavers(Charlotte.)
Could chainsaws be far behind?

--

Its funny. Psycho fans are pretty familiar with Strait-Jacket, its Bloch screenplay, and its Psycho-inspired twist(daughter, not son, is the killer.) But Davis made one called The Nanny around this time, and I never saw it and don't know a thing about it. Perhaps it was less the gimmicky bloodfest that Strait-Jacket was, less a direct descendant of Psycho.

Also funny: the scene of the "table read" in which Davis and Crawford tear at each other, Aldrich and the script. Just trying to get through it are -- Victor Buono and Bruce Dern. Yes, an actor playing Bruce Dern! They are doing the opening scene where patriarch Buono(in gray hair makeup) tells Dern he can never marry Young Bette. (Dern gets meat cleavered shortly thereafter, head and hand.)

So thus far, Feud has had two Hitchcock actors played by doubles -- Dern and Wendell Corey.

(MORE)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I think that this episode has been following a trend of being 'Crawford heavy',

---

And hence, I wonder...is there time for one to be "Davis heavy" -- or does Crawford have the more juicy life story?

---
and I hope the next episode focuses on how Davis treated her so badly that she feigned illness...and got out of the picture. Which forced Aldrich to Sweden (I think) to convince DeHavilland to take the part.

---
I expect it will. We are down to two hours left, and I think the end is shaping up:

One hour to detail how Crawford left Charlotte(which, I suppose, is the final act of the feud.)

Then, a final hour to speed Crawford and Davis to the end of their lives. I've looked it up: Crawford died in 1977, Davis in 1989, so Davis got 12 more years and a number of significant roles in movies(Death on the Nile) and HBO(Right of Way, with James Stewart; they played an old couple out for joint suicide.)

That last hour (or so) will likely be an "anything goes" study of how Old Hollywood Actresses ended up. Near-poverty, I think, for Crawford. Though I expect she had some funds to take care of food and shelter. I'm sure a Crawford expert could tell me.

Though I expect that we will get one short scene of Crawford and her "Night Gallery" director, Little Stevie Spielberg.

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Then, a final hour to speed Crawford and Davis to the end of their lives.

That's a lot to cover though. Too much for one hour unless you run a couple of minutes of explanatory titles at the end which doesn't seem to be Murphy's style.

I originally thought that the show would end with the grim irony that both Davis and Crawford end up betrayed by daughters' tell-all books. But BD has dropped away completely and Crawford's pre-Twins kids (including Christina) have never even been mentioned....so it looks like the show won't go there at all.

My guess: we end in 1977/1978 with Crawford's death, Davis dropping one of the great burns of all time ('They say you should only say good things about the dead. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.') followed by the 1978 Oscars where the interviews w/ OdH and Joan Blondell have been talking place all along. I checked and Bette Davis was at that ceremony presenting the Hersholdt Humanitarian award to Charlton Heston. And Joan Crawford was on a short list of very mighty In Memoriam figures (Hawks/Crawford/Bing Crosby/Elvis Presley/Chaplin/ Groucho Marx) for which Sammy Davis Jr w/ Marvin Hamlisch on piano provided the accompaniment. Lots of killer-shot potential there with Davis getting to watch that from the wings. Also, since this was the year of Star Wars there's ample stuff like Mark Hamill presenting an award with R2-D2 and C3PO so lots of very visual possibilities for having the grande dames shudder at where movies are going, etc.. (Maybe Davis is going to be aghast at the hordes around the red carpet cheering loudest for R2-D2, or maybe competing tribes of Star Wars and Close Encounters fans are going to draw her ire...lots of potential for this anyway. Note that Annie Hall and Diane Keaton won the night and Vanessa Redgrave gave a famous anti-Zionist speech so if Murphy rather wanted to emphasize 'new sorts of women in charge' rather than 'movies are becoming SFX-centric cartoons' then he's got that option too. The 1978 ceremony was rather dense with meaning now you look back on it!)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

My guess: we end in 1977/1978 with Crawford's death, Davis dropping one of the great burns of all time ('They say you should only say good things about the dead. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.')

---

She really SAID that?! Well, talk about a feud to the end...

---

followed by the 1978 Oscars where the interviews w/ OdH and Joan Blondell have been talking place all along.

---

Given your follow-up below...makes all the sense in the world, doesn't it? We KNOW there has to be some payoff for the interviews with ODH and Blondell...(who, I might add, was the first actress offered Strait-Jacket!)

---

I checked and Bette Davis was at that ceremony presenting the Hersholdt Humanitarian award to Charlton Heston. And Joan Crawford was on a short list of very mighty In Memoriam figures (Hawks/Crawford/Bing Crosby/Elvis Presley/Chaplin/ Groucho Marx) for which Sammy Davis Jr w/ Marvin Hamlisch on piano provided the accompaniment. Lots of killer-shot potential there with Davis getting to watch that from the wings.

---

Boom...boom..boom..BOOM! And it gives us a "matching" Oscar ceremony to the 1962/63 affair.

---

Also, since this was the year of Star Wars there's ample stuff like Mark Hamill presenting an award with R2-D2 and C3PO so lots of very visual possibilities for having the grande dames shudder at where movies are going, etc.. (Maybe Davis is going to be aghast at the hordes around the red carpet cheering loudest for R2-D2, or maybe competing tribes of Star Wars and Close Encounters fans are going to draw her ire...lots of potential for this anyway. Note that Annie Hall and Diane Keaton won the night and Vanessa Redgrave gave a famous anti-Zionist speech so if Murphy rather wanted to emphasize 'new sorts of women in charge' rather than 'movies are becoming SFX-centric cartoons' then he's got that option too.

---

Its a rich pick...and he can go with clips or re-enactments.

---

The 1978 ceremony was rather dense with meaning now you look back on it!)

---

I think a lot of the 70s and some of the 80s ceremonies were ripe with meaning...because "Old Hollywood" was being honored and yet "giving up the ghost" as New Hollywood(very political, very feminist in ways) was taking over. The next year -- 1979 for 1978 films -- would see John Wayne giving Best Picture to The Deer Hunter the night Jane Fonda (and current right-winger Jon Voight) winning for Coming Home; Wayne died within months.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

The downer-ness of the ep. stems from Joan having to deal with her nasty, bitter brother effectively blackmailing her over a Stag reel or two from the 1920s (which it's long been rumored Crawford had MGM's fixers buy up and otherwise keep suppressed, but Joan doesn't have MGM behind her now - nobody does really in 1964 - so now she's having to do her own dirty work now).

---

I recall that story being given the fictional treatment in the movie "The Carpetbaggers," with Martha Hyer playing Crawford under another name. There were/are the rumors. The show certainly gave the impression they were true....

---

Tucci's Jack Warner sounds the other downer note: saying that the main appeal of Hagspolitation films is degradation - the audience gets to avenge itself on former movie goddesses (who'd never sleep with them) by seeing them go through the indignities of wrinkles and disreputable situations alike.

---

I'm not sure (the fictional) Warner was all that right. Davis wasn't ever really a "babe" and even Crawford hardened early(I'd say around "Johnny Guitar.") I go with Aldrichs statement about Psycho being more scary if the Old Mother(a grandmother, really) WAS the killer.)

---

THAT said, I know that Edgar Bergen told his beautiful young daughter Candace that she should take up a hobby or other profession for when her looks went away. Papa told daughter he knew too many young beautiful actresses who went the way of booze, pills and suicide when the looks faded. Candace took up photography accordingly. Irony: she stayed beautiful well into her sixties and beyond; a new age of beauty was upon her.

and now the bubbling up again of the porno problem (with no Eddie Mannix to fix it).

---

Which reminds me: Eddie Mannix was gone, but Hedda Hopper was taking some venomous last steps.

Whatta scene! Crawford physically helps Hopper, who is showing heart attack repercussion symptoms -- and Hopper seeks to nail Crawford on the stag film thing as "my last scoop." Could this have REALLY happened? Feud certainly made the case for Hedda Hopper(and her unseen rival, Louella Parsons) as a particularly evil woman...under cover of "protecting morals." The idea of trying to destroy an actress one last time before death...sickening. (As some critic pointed out, Feud isn't really much of a paeon to female solidarity.)

Perhaps the death of Hedda Hopper will give Feud a bit of a happy ending...

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Which reminds me: Eddie Mannix was gone, but Hedda Hopper was taking some venomous last steps.[/quote]

One way in which Lylah Clare (1968) felt sorely behind the times to me was that it had a super-powerful Hedda Hopper figure in it. But Hopper had been dead 2 years by then, and she'd managed to outlast the old Hollywood systems she'd preyed on! But maybe I should cut Aldrich some slack given how extensively he'd been exposed to Hedda Hopper's power via his association with Joan Crawford for at least ten years. That's a part of Hollywood he knew well even if it had become historical by the time he got to make a movie containing it.

[quote]Whatta scene! Crawford physically helps Hopper, who is showing heart attack repercussion symptoms -- and Hopper seeks to nail Crawford on the stag film thing as "my last scoop." Could this have REALLY happened?[/quote]

It doesn't seem very likely but it was nice writing all the same. Hopper being able to segue smoothly from eliciting sympathy towards her health problems to preying on Joan's PR probelms definitely had shades of Joan's manipulations of Geraldine Page and Anne Bancroft last week. According to the show, then, Hopper and Crawford really aren't just superficial pals, rather they're very similar, conniving people, who saw Classic Hollywood as a jungle from the beginning and both have outlasted the whole studio system.

One scene I found hard to follow in real time and will need to watch again was Warner at the beginning of the episode with two peons (but of vastly different ranks?), whom he has instantaneously swap jobs? Really? Maybe I miseed something or even a couple of things. Rewatch needed.

[quote]Tucci's Jack Warner sounds the other downer note: saying that the main appeal of Hagspolitation films is degradation
---
I'm not sure (the fictional) Warner was all that right.[/quote]

I'm not convinced either. The main audience for Baby Jane et al. is too young to have actively lusted after Joan or even Bette back in the day. Older people just make for different sorts of roles and different sorts of shocks - a different sort of menace and vulnerability. Wayne and Eastwood and Nicholson all made good livings in their later decades and Crawford and Davis were just doing the same thing in a newly teen-driven market-place in the 1960s, so horrors were a big part of what was open to them. Horror roles still come along for older actors now: Don't Breathe was a solid hit last year, and it would have worked almost as well if it had starred Sigourney Weaver in Stephen Lang's role. But if it had it doubtless would have been called 'neo-hagsploitation'. The label really is pretty sexist in how it's applied.

[quote]('They say you should only say good things about the dead. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.')
---
She really SAID that?! Well, talk about a feud to the end...

Yes indeed. THIS REALLY HAPPENED. Margo Channing or Baby Jane Hudson themselves couldn't have dreamed up a better line. The unbelievableness of of so many details of what actually happened between Bette and Joan is, of course, why we're here talking about this 50 years after the fact.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

One scene I found hard to follow in real time and will need to watch again was Warner at the beginning of the episode with two peons (but of vastly different ranks?), whom he has instantaneously swap jobs? Really? Maybe I miseed something or even a couple of things. Rewatch needed.

---
I've only seen the scene once, but the gist I got was that the guy who said "But on Sinatra's orders, you've banned Aldrich from the lot" was challenging Warner and had to be put in his place IMMEDIATELY. Hence the jacket/job switch.

Its a nice bit of continuity with Stanley Tucci's ace portrayal of Jack Warner as a fun but ruthless Hollywood buccaneer.

Tucci can be so DIFFERENT. I remember him in the original Captain America playing a quiet, bookish European scientist so you almost wanted to CUDDLE him. Here? A ruthless, self-centered, arrogant SOB. In both portrayals, Tucci makes great use of his handsome features to draw sympathy for EITHER type.

Much as other people know who won the World Series in 1966, I knew that Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte was made at Fox, not Warners. So it was a satisfying scene when Aldrich turned the tables on Warner. Irony: Aldrich was "beating" Warner by using ANOTHER Hollywood egotist(Darryl Zanuck), who would probably be just as mean. That's Hollywood: you pit one viper against the other.

Rather as Crawford and Hedda Hopper were doing in that other scene.

"Nice guys finish last." Well, so what?

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Feud S01E07 'Abandoned!'

A fine episode but not much fun... Joan at this point has completely lost her marbles. It's the 1963 Oscars Redux (George Cukor again counseling Joan to not do this, etc.) only this time there's no payoff even short-term from all of her vindictive behavior. It's assured self-destructive behavior even on the shortest time-scale. And as previewed last week, the craziness soon costs Joan Mamacita as well.

Lots of material rehearsing Bette and Joan's early years in Hollywood and the beginnings of both their shoulder chips. It felt like old news at this point to me but maybe that's because I've been obsessively following the show and deepening my knowledge of the surrounding materials in parallel with the show.

BD (Keirnan Shipka) shows up again with Bette being rather brutish about her marriage. Maybe this means that we will get some of the kids fallout for both Bettw and Joan in the finale next week after all.

Victor Buono showing a soft shot for the the unrealistic glamor of an old Joan movie (Humoresque, which I've not seen or even heard of before) that Bette dismisses was nice. Bette's on the right side of movie history for the most part but it's important dramatically that she doesn't have everything figured out.

BTW, I just noticed tonight (I'm slow!) that the titles sequence lists Jessica Lange first in odd-numbered eps and Susan Sarandon first in even-numbered eps (the second title in each case slides in and bumps the first aside, nice!).

Catherine Zeta-Jones again far too young-looking and girlish and un-matronly for OdH in 1964! Interesting too that the show has taken a pretty merciless or even dim view of Lady in a Cage. I saw it for the first time last year and thought it was decently gripping for the most part w/ a young James Caan definitely something new and special and scary as a young hood.

Did Bette and OdH really get a deal endorsing Coke to spite Joan?

What did everyone else think?

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

Actually, swanstep, I notice the alternating titles for Lange/Sarandon in the second episode. And that's because I was surprised Lange got first billing in the first episode. When I saw Sarandon get first billing next, I thought, 'Ah! This is a variation of the old staggered billing, ala 'The Towering Inferno'. But since there are eight episodes, they can get four each.

I knew all about Crawford feigning illness and checking herself into the hospital to stop production, but I didn't realize it was this involved. I always thought Crawford feigned illness to get out of her contract and the picture. This episode depicted that she thought she could cause the entire production to be cancelled.

I'd really like to know...is that really when Mamacita left Crawford?

I've been iffy on CZJ playing DeHavilland since the beginning. At times I've thought she really caught her essence, at other times I've thought 'That's Catherine Zeta-Jones playing Olivia DeHavilland'.

I've seen 'Lady in a Cage'. Numerous times. And this series has mostly done an excellent job reenacting the actress' films from the past. But CZJ, even in those few short clips, didn't capture DeHavilland's performance at all. And I like CZJ.

I never thought Davis and OdH actually got a deal endorsing Coke. I know Davis had one installed on the set, but I figured you could just buy/rent one.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Actually, swanstep, I notice the alternating titles for Lange/Sarandon in the second episode. And that's because I was surprised Lange got first billing in the first episode. When I saw Sarandon get first billing next, I thought, 'Ah! This is a variation of the old staggered billing, ala 'The Towering Inferno'. But since there are eight episodes, they can get four each.

---

These billing matters come up from time to time. I know of two involving Tony Curtis in the sixties. With "The Great Race" some print ads alternated the first name of Curtis or Jack Lemmon. (On screen, Lemmon goes clearly first.) In "Boeing Boeing" with Jerry Lewis and Curtis, different ads alternated in different ways. And the print ad spun their names like a propeller(it was, after all, a movie about juggling flight attendants for lovers.)

Though Steve McQueen and Paul Newman broke over billing on Butch Cassidy(McQueen quit); came the Towering Inferno, they worked the "Steve left, lower; Paul right, higher." Still seemed to favor Steve. Your eyes go left , first.

---

Intriguing how the Sarandon/Lange thing somewhat paraells the Davis/Crawford thing. No feud -- that I know of -- but billing has to be "worked out."

---

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I knew all about Crawford feigning illness and checking herself into the hospital to stop production, but I didn't realize it was this involved. I always thought Crawford feigned illness to get out of her contract and the picture. This episode depicted that she thought she could cause the entire production to be cancelled.

---

This was intriguing. As swanstep notes(borrowing a part of my style) THIS REALLY HAPPENED.

But the question is: did it happen this way? Certainly some productions have collapsed under star withdrawal -- Hitchcock's "No Bail for the Judge" got its plug pulled when Audrey Hepburn quit, but nothing had been filmed.

This version has Crawford "losing big" as she did when Davis got the Oscar nom for Baby Jane. On the other hand -- are we to construe that Davis' producer-based cruelties to Joan on Hush, Hush , Sweet Charlotte were HER revenge for Joan's "win" at the Oscars themselves?

Feud suggests move and countermove, win and counter-win...until every winner has lost.

---

I'd really like to know...is that really when Mamacita left Crawford?

---

I'd really like to know: where there really a Mamacita? I'm serious in asking this. And: did Mamacita ever come back? If not, I assume Joan could hire a new one, if not one so connected to her. (Recall that Sinatra had a faithful black manservant named George, who lived high, was treated poorly , and finally quit.)

---

---

I've been iffy on CZJ playing DeHavilland since the beginning. At times I've thought she really caught her essence, at other times I've thought 'That's Catherine Zeta-Jones playing Olivia DeHavilland'.

---

At times, I could find neither DeHavilland NOR Zeta-Jones in this facial glamour-wigged performance.
But certainly the "person" whom Zeta-Jones has given us is quite a fetching and elegant beauty. I'll BELIEVE her as some sort of idealized De Havilland.

--- I've seen 'Lady in a Cage'. Numerous times. And this series has mostly done an excellent job reenacting the actress' films from the past. But CZJ, even in those few short clips, didn't capture DeHavilland's performance at all. And I like CZJ.

---

Well, she doesn't really match up to the real Olivia at that time or how she acted the role.

----

I never thought Davis and OdH actually got a deal endorsing Coke. I know Davis had one installed on the set, but I figured you could just buy/rent one.

---

I assumed that was all the shot was about. Rental, not endorsement.

I must admit, in the home stretch, the Davis/Crawford feud has gotten pretty ugly. I assume -- in terms of this production -- that Crawford's hijacking of the 1962 Oscars was the last straw for Davis. Davis is unleashing "total war" in retaliation and poor Joan is the loser who can't really win. The production moving forward with Olivia brings back some Oscar night vengeance, too -- Olivia was on Bette's side that night, too.

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

'I'd really like to know: where there really a Mamacita?'

-------

Since this series has been going on for 7 weeks now, and I'm very interested in it, I can say that I've seen pics on the 'net of JC with the real Mamacita. At least, that's how they were labelled.

------

'Davis is unleashing "total war" in retaliation and poor Joan is the loser who can't really win.'

------

I can't help but remember in the 80s, Davis was being interviewed. By who, I don't remember. It was a taped interview. But I DO remember her saying about Baby Jane something like: 'Joan was great. She just handed it to me on a silver platter.'

I didn't get the impression that it was the same kind of offerings of the dead bird and rat she served to JC in Baby Jane, but it was an interesting choice of words.

As for Olivia, here's a recent article with a statement by her:

http://www.vulture.com/2017/04/olivia-de-havilland-emails-about-how-she-doesnt-watch-feud.html

There are those who think she's not being exactly truthful.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Interesting that Olivia would weigh in...with nothing. I'm a little suspicious, too.

Its funny about Bette saying how Joann handed it to her on a silver platter.

In the same year, Robert Mitchum said that Gregory Peck had handed HIM a movie over "on a silver platter" -- Cape Fear, where Mitchum played the slow tawkin' laid back good ol' boy Psycho. Peck(later?) retaliated..."I PRODUCED the picture...I KNEW I was giving Mitchum the juicy part, but it was the villain role, it had to be."

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

A sidebar on the song "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," sung by Patti Page, that played over the end of this episode.

"I was there" in 1964, and quite aware of my film, TV and musical environments.

And I could NOT reconcile the fact that TV commercials and neighborhood talk pegged "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" as a bloody gore-fest with a "muddy monster angle"(Bette Davis hiding under basement wooden steps as the muddy male feet of her "dead lover" slowly stomped down the stairs ala Frankenstein -- a TERRIFYING childhood memory from a TV ad!)...connected to that sweet, lullaby like song.

The song played on the car radio all the time, not only on the Sinatra-based "easy listening" channels that my parents listened to, but on the regular AM channels where one could hear Downtown and Eight Days a Week.

It all mixed together...the scary and the sweet. It was 1964.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

For what it is worth....a number of my replies to swanstep and others have simply disappeared on posting, and I can't rewrite from memory.

My replies will be limited for awhile til I fix this issue.

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

That's funny. I was also there in '64 and '65, albeit a kid, and I remember Downtown and (I can't get no) Satisfaction, They're Coming to Take Me Away, and Eight Days a Week, Help!, etc.

I even remember Satisfaction going to Number 1, dropping down lower, then going back up to Number 1 again.

But I have absolutely no memory of Patti Page's 'Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte'. And I remember my family going to the theater to see it. I ALSO remember, somewhat, the previews on TV. The one I specifically remember started with quick shots of everyone who screamed in that film, in succession. I actually thought that was one scene from it, and was a little disappointed when it didn't turn out that way. Stupid kid ;)

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

That's funny. I was also there in '64 and '65, albeit a kid, and I remember Downtown and (I can't get no) Satisfaction, They're Coming to Take Me Away, and Eight Days a Week, Help!, etc.

I even remember Satisfaction going to Number 1, dropping down lower, then going back up to Number 1 again.

----

Anyone's childhood decade is memorable, but to have it be the sixties was pretty cool. For the movies, for the radio music, for the sheer "mixture of it" -- as Golden Age Hollywood gave way to New Hollywood; as Sinatra gave way to the Beatles, but with everything still going at once.

It occurs to me that most movies had a theme song on the radio. This continued through the seventies(Shaft, The Way We Were, The Sting and Exorcist instrumentals), but in the sixties, the songs were often sweet even if the movie was rough: Days of Wine and Roses and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte in the latter category.

Henry Mancini was a one-man movie theme song hit machine in the sixties: Moon River, Days of Wine and Roses, Charade Emily (from the Americanization of Emily) , and the instrumentals The Pink Panther and Arabesque. Plus the novelty tune "Baby Elephant Walk" from Hatari.

As we've discussed elsewhere, two Hitchcock movies got radio theme songs that barely got played: "Marnie"(Nat King Cole did it) and "Torn Curtain"(called "Green Fields" or something like that, by the Johnny Mann Singers.) Not classics!

---
But I have absolutely no memory of Patti Page's 'Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte'. And I remember my family going to the theater to see it. I ALSO remember, somewhat, the previews on TV. The one I specifically remember started with quick shots of everyone who screamed in that film, in succession. I actually thought that was one scene from it, and was a little disappointed when it didn't turn out that way. Stupid kid ;)
--
Ha. Not stupid. Misled. I don't recall that one...but the muddy Frankenstein feet on the stairs near Davis' face...I do.

PS. "They're Coming to Take Me Away" was a weird spoken-word novelty song sung as if BY a psycho("They're coming to take me away ha ha, to the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time, and I'll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats...") The flip side was the song IN REVERSE.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

With but one hour left in "Feud," I think its worth thinking what "Feud" has been about.

The essence OF a feud.

"Feud" has been fun to watch with all those Hollywood types slinging insults at each other and playing power games, but ultimately, its a very sad story, isn't it? Crawford got her "gotcha" moment vs Davis at the 1962 Oscars, but has come off as the loser in the story, with Sarandon's Davis seeming far more "together" and happy than the spiraling-down Crawford. (Davis didn't have to do "Strait Jacket" or "Trog.") Both women are without men, living alone(but what's wrong with that?) Both women drink a lot in the series, but it seems to be hitting Crawford harder.

And over WHAT? Well, a feud. Jealousy, envy going back years when one actress was more the beauty(Crawford) but one actress was more the talent(Davis.) Of course, beauty would fade. Perhaps that's the nasty moral of the tale.

Some critics have noted that the show isn't much about female empowerment, given the toxic character of Hedda Hopper pitting Crawford against Davis and trying to ruin ALL Hollywood women. So much for sisterly solidarity. And yet there was the charm of Olivia de Havilland flying over from Europe to give Davis support.

The show can be seen as the usual cautionary tale about Hollywood: it will make you rich, but it will steal your soul. And ruin your life...alcohol, drugs, loneliness "without someone to share the fame with."

Happiness in Hollywood seems to be a sometime thing. Tom Hanks is in a long term marriage, but Tom Cruise never seemed to get it together. Highly paid actresses have trouble convincing lesser-paid men to marry them. Sandra Bullock had that terrible marriage to the biker guy. And yet Julia Roberts has had a successful marriage to a sometimes cinematographer. I think Michelle Pfeiffer is still married to TV showrunner David Kelley(for awhile, he was hotter than she was in the business, but no more. Still, I'm sure they're rich.)

Where am I going with this? Oh, I dunno. I suppose it is just that the idea of a show about a feud is proving that feuds are bad things, toxic things...and nowhere worse than in Hollywood, where you can go from rags to riches and then back down again; Star careers used to plummet . (Now, I'd say, they hang in there; we've had Toms Cruise and Hanks for years.)

And this: recall that in the 1956 film "Somebody Up There Likes Me," Paul Newman is the above-the-title star, and Steve McQueen is down the support list about 20 names below Newman. By Towering Inferno, they were equals. Or this more obscure fact: in 1964's "Goodbye Charlie," Walter Matthau is support to star Tony Curtis. In 1980's "Little Miss Marker," Tony Curtis is support to star Walter Matthau. And they had been acting school friends as youths. How'd that hit them, the billing switch?

Here in civilian life, I've been caught up in a few feuds, sad to say. Not always my fault...some other aggressive person out to compete with me at work started it. Or maybe vice versa. But its a horrible feeling once you know that you are IN a feud. The only way out(I've found)is for somebody to change jobs.

Or to avoid feuds in the first place.

Which is what, perhaps, "Feud" is trying to tell us. Try to avoid them! Even when you are winning, you are losing...

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

But I have absolutely no memory of Patti Page's 'Hush...Hush Sweet Charlotte'. And I remember my family going to the theater to see it.

---
OK, I'm going to check in with one more bit of "childhood nostalgia" about how the movies worked back then in the sixties for a kid who went to the movies with his family.

We went to drive-ins a lot. Easier for "kid control."

And between movies at a double-bill, you would get trailers. This being the early sixties, a lot of the trailers were for Cinemascope, Technicolor epics like "55 Days at Peking." Or reissues of colorful musicals like "The King and I." Or the latest John Wayne Western. Or the latest Doris Day comedy, with Rock or James or Rod as her co-star.

But occasionally..and often, "outta nowhere"...the trailer would be in black and white, and the music would be scary and it was pretty clear that we were getting a horror movie/shocker trailer.

And when that happened, boy was I scared. Because there was no warning. And we were "exposed" to the night air of a drive-in theater's parking area. And the trailer INSTANTLY conveyed a sense of a lack of safety, of danger, of something HORRIBLE about to happen.

I never saw the Psycho trailer at the drive-in, but I'm pretty sure I saw the Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte trailer there.

And I remember one in particular for a movie called "Shock Treatment." B/w, scary music. Modern. The opening shot of the trailer showed two old ladies sitting at a table having tea outside. Near them, a young man(Roddy McDowall) is chopping hedges with giant hedge clippers -- you know, they look like big scissors?

And in a near-trance, Roddy takes those hedge clippers, surrounds the neck of one of the old ladies with it and...CLIPS. Its just a close up on Roddy's face, but we get the picture: he clipped the old lady's head off!

You think I'm not going to be scared by that at such a young age? Well...its a delicious memory now.

I read, years later, that Anthony Perkins himself was offered the McDowall role in Shock Treatment, but turned it down.

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

Funny you should mention Drive-Ins as easier for kid control. My sis and I were well behaved, but I get what you mean.

One sort of funny memory I have of seeing Sweet Charlotte as a kid: We saw it at the Drive-In.

Our mother had to use the rest room early in the picture, and as she was walking back to the car, she could hear through the other speakers Bette Davis screaming at deHavilland, 'You're a vile, sorry, little bitch!'

Mom got in the car and immediately asked Dad, 'Did she just call her a BITCH?' We all just said, 'Yes.'

Mom was flabbergasted 'cause she'd never heard the word 'Bitch' in a film before. But it meant nothing to the rest of us, because we'd heard mom refer to other women as 'bitches' plenty of times, so we barely even picked up on it!

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

We went to drive-ins a lot. Easier for "kid control."

Not ever having been to a drive-in, I've got a stupid/obvious question that's related to the alleged kid-control aspect of drive-ins. How do kids and people in the back-seat generally see the movie? Surely the answer would have to be 'not very well", which would make for grumpy, 'getting-out-of-the-car' kids I would have thought. Or to try to overcome this sort of problem did everyone try to squeeze into the front seat (i.e., back when front seat were long benches rather than individual, 'bucket' seats)? I imagine that that produced lots of squirming, restless kids too!

I guess what I'm saying is that it feels like Drive-ins should work relatively well for couples or maybe trios but not for families with 4+ members, unless the assumption is that for any given feature half the family won't be *that* interested, e.g., maybe kids sleep in the back through Virginia Woolf, Advise and Consent, and other more adult-oriented features.

reply

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

Oddly enough, swanstep, I don't recall visibility ever having been a problem. Dad would be over on the driver's side of the front seat, Mom all the way over on the passenger side, and even with three of us in the back seat, I don't remember there being a problem seeing the screen through the space between them. Now that I think of it, there may have been some "rotation" among we kids being placed in that space. As a teen later on, we'd sometimes go in groups of four or even five friends, but I still can't dredge up any recollection of issues with visibility.

There must have been some science involved in the design of those places. Each row of parking stalls was on a slight incline which, when viewed in the daylight with no cars present, gave the impression from a distance of a giant sheet of corrugated aluminum covering acres. They did seem to place the cars in each row at an optimal viewing angle (which, I admit, has little to do with your question).

More problematic was the sound quality from those speakers, which were in heavy metal encasements that clipped to the inside of your partially-lowered window (and could probably have withstood blows from a sledgehammer), and were connected by a thick cable to poles maybe four feet high located between each pair of stalls. By the time drive-ins advanced to the systems allowing you to tune the sound in on your car radio, I had long since stopped going to them.

I'm not sure I can speak to ecarle's "kid control" issue. When we went to regular theaters, we knew enough to sit still and be quiet, and tended to be less restrained in the car, either with our unsophisticated questions about the film itself ("What's going on...why are they doing that?") or just plain restless rowdiness. As often as not, the trip home (if we were still awake) or the next morning would involve barked words like "brats" or phrases such as "This is the last time...."

In my family, an evening at the drive-in was more likely to result in grumpy parents than grumpy kids.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Oddly enough, swanstep, I don't recall visibility ever having been a problem. Dad would be over on the driver's side of the front seat, Mom all the way over on the passenger side, and even with three of us in the back seat, I don't remember there being a problem seeing the screen through the space between them.

---

Ditto for me, says ecarle. I think the cars of the 60's didn't have headrests a lot of the time, so the view was clear and wide. And kid heads aren't that big.

But the reality is probably that I(for one) didn't watch the ENTIRE movie. There would be reading(while it was still light.) There would be napping. There would be stargazing. There might even be an accompanied trip to the snack bar WHILE the movie was playing (like background.)

---
As a teen later on, we'd sometimes go in groups of four or even five friends, but I still can't dredge up any recollection of issues with visibility.

---

For me, the teenage years were drive-in years as a "group sport". Definitely in the summer, but fall and spring were fine, too. With good weather, the deal was to bring beach chairs and "spread out" across three spaces -- one car, the rest chairs. Or someone would bring a truck and park backwards with the flatbed pointed at the screen. Or you could sit on the roof.

And eventually there were drive-in dates. Just the girl and the boy. Not always allowed by the parents, but sometimes. Very nice. Nuff said. (But hey, you know me -- I HAD to watch the movie much of the time. Heh.)

---

There must have been some science involved in the design of those places. Each row of parking stalls was on a slight incline which, when viewed in the daylight with no cars present, gave the impression from a distance of a giant sheet of corrugated aluminum covering acres. They did seem to place the cars in each row at an optimal viewing angle (which, I admit, has little to do with your question).

---
But it makes sense; the lots were angled to maximize the POV for all viewers.

----

More problematic was the sound quality from those speakers, which were in heavy metal encasements that clipped to the inside of your partially-lowered window (and could probably have withstood blows from a sledgehammer), and were connected by a thick cable to poles maybe four feet high located between each pair of stalls. By the time drive-ins advanced to the systems allowing you to tune the sound in on your car radio, I had long since stopped going to them.

---

Roger Ebert once wrote "I can admire the concept of the drive-in more than the idea of going to one anymore." He was right. In the era where we demand digital or HD or Cinemascope clarity, and multi-track wraparound sound, a drive-in's projection and sound just ain't gonna cut it.

---

It cut it in the 70s because so many 70's movies were ratty looking. Even the good ones. Nobody needed clear images and great sound to see The Last Detail or Joe or Straw Dogs. And with my teenage gang, we saw a lot of Kung Fu movies, Blaxploitation, and girls-in-prison movies(directed by Jonathan Demme and the like) that looked like they were shot through a Coke bottle.

.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I'm not sure I can speak to ecarle's "kid control" issue.

---

Oh, I suppose I mean it spared the cost of a baby sitter and the parents didn't worry that the kids were home alone.

---

When we went to regular theaters, we knew enough to sit still and be quiet, and tended to be less restrained in the car, either with our unsophisticated questions about the film itself ("What's going on...why are they doing that?") or just plain restless rowdiness.

---

Understood, but I think my parents figured that they needed to give us that outlet because they took us to movies we could never sit through in "indoor places."

Advise and Consent. For instance. I remember seeing Advise and Consent at the drive in in '62. But for the life of me, as I watched it, I understood NOT A THING that was going on. With Breakfast at Tiffany's at least I understood Mickey Rooney's awful comedy and the sad bit with the cat in the rain at the end. With To Kill a Mockingbird, I got all the kid stuff...AND all the scary stuff.

But Advise and freaking Consent? Why'd my parents think I could sit through any of that. And yet, I did. I remember thinking, "when I grow up, I will see this again. Its about government. That's important."

And eventually, I did. In the 70s when I caught up with everything from the 60's that I didn't understand. Its a good movie, actually (and no, I didn't get the major gay subplot at all.) I saw Advise and Consent in 1962, but I didn't really SEE it.

---

As often as not, the trip home (if we were still awake) or the next morning would involve barked words like "brats" or phrases such as "This is the last time...."

In my family, an evening at the drive-in was more likely to result in grumpy parents than grumpy kids

---

Ha. I honestly can't remember. Sometimes, I think, things got a little hectic and grouchy in there.

The mind forgets what it wants to...

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

Feud S01E08 Grand Finale
Two weeks ago I guessed that the show would end with the 1978 Oscars which Davis attended and where Crawford's In Memoriam would feature. That was essentially correct. The episode's one real misstep, however, was a final flashback to the first production day of Baby Jane, when the film represented a fresh start for Davis and Crawford. That struck me as an ending too far, as did Davis stiffing the Documentary people and having their dealing with that be even a momentary focus. In general, if I'd been writing the ending I would have done more with the details of the Oscar ceremony. It was the year of Star Wars so we could have Chewbacca reminding us of Trog, and it was the year of Diane Keaton/Annie Hall and Vanessa Redgrave being super-political. There was so much stuff there to have Davis and De Havilland and Blondel bounce off and have their responses to Joan's death be real but still plausibly caught in the whirl of the event. And Murphy distorted the actual In Memoriam which was among the starriest *ever* with Hawks/Crawford/Bing Crosby/Elvis Presley/Chaplin/Groucho Marx to make it all about Joan. (Why have the key quip be just about how no one gets more than a couple of seconds in an In Memoriam as a Joan thing when even bigger figures like Chaplin get the same treatment - time destroys everyone and the world is always much bigger than any one person?) Somehow the sense of old Hollywood dying even as new ones were being born would have been emphasized in my perfect screenplay for the ending of the ep..

Setting aside problems with the very ending, however, the first 50 minutes of the ep. were pretty fantastic. Playing The Doors' 'The End' over Crawford doing Trog may have been a bit on the nose but the rest of the fast-forward through Joan's final struggles were quite beautifully done up to and including Joan's big fantasy scene (the entry into that fantasy was particularly nice - breath-taking even). Both women's struggles with their children (including Joan getting some consolation from one of her twins and implicitly also from her grand-children and Joan being excluded from her BD's children's lives and also finding out something terrible about her own mother) were heart-rending to watch. Ultimately this part of the ep. felt thematically broader than the rest of the show - all of us got to think about aging, about who we've disappointed, who will be there for us in our old age, and how we'll be remembered. Universalizing things like this perhaps made it difficult for the show to stick the the more particularized landing of the 1978 Oscars.

Lots and lots to talk about with this ep. I suspect. (I've only scratched the surface.)

What did everyone think about this ep. and about Feud in general?

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Feud S01E08 Grand Finale
Two weeks ago I guessed that the show would end with the 1978 Oscars which Davis attended and where Crawford's In Memoriam would feature. That was essentially correct.
---
Yes, a very good call -- though I was surprised at how comparatively little of the (extended 80 minute ) episode this sequence took up.

---
The episode's one real misstep, however, was a final flashback to the first production day of Baby Jane, when the film represented a fresh start for Davis and Crawford. That struck me as an ending too far

---

Here, swanstep, one of our infrequent and respectful disagreements. I felt this return to the Baby Jane set helped return the series to its "anchoring focus." This final episode was so overridingly sad(and moving) in the presentation of the final years of Crawford(especially) and Davis that to "go back to 1962" put things in a new perspective: Crawford and Davis may have been middle-aged and struggling in 1962, but the Old Hollywood system was still in place (with Jack Warner as father/opponent) and the two ladies DID get a big hit and newfound public adoration. For awhile. At the end of "Feud," Joan and Bette are about to feud in earnest, but the moment in their lives is good . I loved the final high angle shot of them moving to their respective "private dressing rooms"(no Trog VW van here), and closing their respective doors. The high angle shot was...Hitchcockian.

---
as did Davis stiffing the Documentary people and having their dealing with that be even a momentary focus.
--
I rather coupled Davis's tough talk to the documentarian with her (to me, now) infamous quote: "Joan Crawford is dead. Good." A certain respect for the reality of their feuding relationship. A certain self-knowledge that she and Joan had more in common than she thought. A certain professionalism ABOUT Joan Crawford("She was a professional.") Niftily contrasted, I might add to the unseen Faye Dunaway's WORSE behavior on the TV production.

MORE

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

In general, if I'd been writing the ending I would have done more with the details of the Oscar ceremony. It was the year of Star Wars so we could have Chewbacca reminding us of Trog, and it was the year of Diane Keaton/Annie Hall and Vanessa Redgrave being super-political.

---
I guess here, "Feud" rather missed the boat as the film "Hitchcock" did in not covering all there was to cover. I'm assuming that there may have been "clip rights" problems? Or just no time given what the episode ended up being about.

---
And Murphy distorted the actual In Memoriam which was among the starriest *ever* with Hawks/Crawford/Bing Crosby/Elvis Presley/Chaplin/Groucho Marx to make it all about Joan. (Why have the key quip be just about how no one gets more than a couple of seconds in an In Memoriam as a Joan thing when even bigger figures like Chaplin get the same treatment - time destroys everyone and the world is always much bigger than any one person?)

----

It was a "weird" In Memoriam segment. I found the male faces before Crawford turned up to be unrecognizable(where ANY of those real movie stars?) No names on the screen. Only Bing Crosby at the very end was recognizable to me, and indeed the others were just skipped. Clips rights? Or Ryan Murphy not wanting to lose Crawford in a flurry of stars?

MORE

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Setting aside problems with the very ending, however, the first 50 minutes of the ep. were pretty fantastic. Playing The Doors' 'The End' over Crawford doing Trog may have been a bit on the nose
---
On the nose but...effective. A reminder of how "doom and gloomy" the counterculture music could be as the fantasy of Hollywood burned out(as Crawford notes, Easy Rider is the hit of the season.) The playing of Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head, however, was a reminder that the biggest hit of 1969(Butch Cassidy) tried to stay upbeat...even with the anti-heroes dying at the end.
"The End" and "Raindrops" follow by a week "Bates Motel" using "Call Me Irresponsible" over footage of a cop sweep of the Bates properties. I guess this is a gimmick of "peak TV"?
---
but the rest of the fast-forward through Joan's final struggles were quite beautifully done up to and including Joan's big fantasy scene (the entry into that fantasy was particularly nice - breath-taking even).
---
A great scene -- the big surprise of the episode and indeed, how it seemed, for awhile, to be "real" was at once suspenseful and then suddenly reassuring. And how great to get Judy Davis and Stanley Tucci back one more time. Tucci's Jack Warner was a wonder of energy, tyranny and somehow reassuring "base masculinity." Funny how a show about two female stars ended up with two great male characters, too: Jack Warner and Bob Aldrich. (With Victor Buono nicely kept on as a rather kindly advisor to Bette.)

MORE

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Both women's struggles with their children (including Joan getting some consolation from one of her twins and implicitly also from her grand-children and Joan being excluded from her BD's children's lives and also finding out something terrible about her own mother) were heart-rending to watch.
---
This was rich material. Joan with twins who adored her even as another child would soon publicize her hatred. Bette professing that childless Kate Hepburn would be miserable without kids -- but Bette's miserable WITH them. And the revelation about Bette's mother...
The biographies show us that many Hollywood stars had tough childhoods -- poverty, abuse, parental abandonment. It seems that maybe our modern stars are from more "suburban roots" but the old timers seem to have come from such hardscabble(or cold) family lives that their attempts to make things right were...sadly unfulfilled.
---
Ultimately this part of the ep. felt thematically broader than the rest of the show - all of us got to think about aging, about who we've disappointed, who will be there for us in our old age, and how we'll be remembered.

---
Yes, I thought about that. A famous Bette Davis quote from her later years didn't make it in: "Getting old ain't for sissies." I've read that old is always 15 years older than one is now(hah) --I don't feel THAT old yet. But certainly this episode forced me to think about the future. I could only grasp for the positive memories of the elderly relatives who have come before me in my family, their last years and their deaths. They were all treated pretty well to the end. The inevitable sadness is when one partner dies(usually the husband in my experience) and the other plays out their days without their spouse. But other family DID fill some of the gap. I'm not too worried. Not TOO worried.

MORE

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Crawford's struggles were "low balled." Yes, she took Trog...but then she quit the business and withdrew from the spotlight. I had the feeling that she had enough money for an apartment retirement(and to re-hire Mamacita, that wonderful character.)
(NOTE: They didn't cover Crawford's 1969 "Night Gallery" with young Spielberg. Perhaps this would have clashed with the "decline" aspect of this episode: Crawford got some positive publicity for Night Gallery. Perhaps Spielberg didn't want this material used?)
I thought about some of the other stars who managed to finish their careers better -- Cary Grant with "Walk Don't Run"; John Wayne with The Shootist; Henry Fonda with "On Golden Pond." Perhaps Joan Crawford just didn't have the kind of "top drawer" career(or MALE career?) that lent itself to big budgets to the end. And all of those men died with money in the bank(Grant, the most.) That said, Henry Fonda made "Tentacles" near the end, and joined friend James Stewart in having some failed TV series. Hollywood isn't built for happy endings, career-wise. Best to save your money and retire. (I'm also reminded that Hollywood has the "Hollywood Home" for actors who need a final retirement home and can't afford other places. People like Bud Abbott, Charles Lane, and director Stanley Kramer ended up there.)

MORE

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Universalizing things like this perhaps made it difficult for the show to stick the the more particularized landing of the 1978 Oscars.
---
Probably so. Its ever thus -- the ending we WANT to see, and the ending the makers give us.
--

What did everyone think about this ep. and about Feud in general?

---
The episode was second best behind the great Oscar episode. The series is my favorite entertainment of 2017 so far, might end up being my favorite all year. I'm reminded that "at the movies" during this same time, I've seen King Kong, Going in Style and Fate of the Furious and...well, none of those were as meaty and stylish and fun and...ultimately...EMOTIONAL as "Feud." Its true: the meaningful work is on TV nowadays. At least until Oscar season.

(END.)

reply

[–] MizhuB (165) 8 years ago

One last thing about Drive-Ins. Sheets of corrugated metal is an excellent description of the look of the spaces. You parked on them so the car was facing slightly 'up'.

But there was music coming from those speakers, long before the sun went down and the picture came on. My parents would first drive around, looking for the speakers that had the best sound. They'd choose that one, though always somewhere around the center area.

As far as seeing the screen was concerned from the back seat, we would always lean forward and rest our heads on our arms on the back of the front seat. Sometimes I'd even lay on the panel behind the rear seat, but I could always see. Because unlike today's multiplexes, those screens were HUGE. And since it was the only technology available at drive-ins anyway, if the movie was good enough, you still got lost in it.

As far as the end of FEUD is concerned, I actually think this is the only episode I'll have to watch twice to decide. I almost feel it jumped too far ahead. Sure, Crawfish (hah!) was stuck on 'Trog', but the only mention of Davis' later work was failed TV shows. What about 'The Nanny'? Which was actually a good movie, IMO.

Well, I guess since they only glossed over Sweet Charlotte and all that entailed, The Nanny wasn't worth mentioning at all. But it was certainly better than Berserk! or Trog!

reply

[–] swanstep (2745) 8 years ago

This final episode was so overridingly sad(and moving) in the presentation of the final years of Crawford(especially) and Davis that to "go back to 1962" put things in a new perspective: Crawford and Davis may have been middle-aged and struggling in 1962, but the Old Hollywood system was still in place (with Jack Warner as father/opponent) and the two ladies DID get a big hit and newfound public adoration. For awhile.[/quote]I felt that that the fanstasy reunion of Hooper/Warner/Davis and Crawford restored to 1962 (now remembered very fondly by them all) not to their 1940s peaks already gave us what we needed from the past as it were, so the final sequence felt redundant to me. Oh well, I'm sure the Feud Team must have tried a bunch of different cuts of the ending in the editing room including some that went deeper the Oscars and ended things there. Who know what problems those cuts posed? Maybe as you've alluded to ecarle there were some rights issues they ran into there (and budgetary ones always). Literally they might have had some great ideas for shots at the Oscars that would have cost enormous amounts to do right and maybe they tried with available budget to cover them and they just didn't work.

[quote]Niftily contrasted, I might add to the unseen Faye Dunaway's WORSE behavior on the TV production.

Yes, it's almost *too good* that Bette has some unpleasant interaction Faye when we know that she was Crawford's choice to play *her* and then that that will occur in the most calamitous way possible from Crawford's perspective. And yet, Hollywood Karma being what it is, Mommie Dearest brings down the curtain on Dunaway's time as a leading actress, maybe even makes her a bit of a joke, she gets some of the hagsploitation taint after it. And in general the '60s and '70s gals not named Keaton or Christie will struggle a lot in '80s and '90s Hollywood.

reply