Futbol and Football In The Burgh

 First, the Positive...

Pittsburgh Riverhounds Win United Soccer League Championship

A fun conversation starter among Pittsburgh sports fans is to ask "Which Pittsburgh sports teams will be the next one to win a championship in its sport?"   Had we asked 100 Pittsburghers that question back in January, I am willing to bet the number of people who said "The Riverhounds" would have numbered in the low single digits, if, indeed, anyone would have given that answer.

Lo and behold, however, on Saturday evening, the Riverhounds held FC Tulsa to a 0-0 draw in regulation and overtime, and then defeated Tulsa 4-3 in penalty kicks to claim their first USL championship in their twenty-six year history.

All hail the Champions, Pittsburgh's first professional team champions since the Penguins won the Stanley Cup in 2017, the Steelers won the Super Bowl in 2008, and the Pirates won the World Series in 1979 (that was eight Presidential Administrations ago, but who's counting?).

Unlike a celebration for a Stanley Cup or a Lombardi Trophy, the City isn't going to shut down and hold a parade for what is essentially a minor league soccer team in North America, but the Riverhounds accomplishment certainly deserves to be celebrated.

I admit to being a shameless bandwagon jumper here, but I did start watching the Riverhounds games on TV beginning with their final regular season game when the Hounds secured their USL Playoffs seeding status and their three Playoff games, culminating in Saturday's Championship victory.  I found myself getting caught up in the hunt for the title and enjoyed seeing the atmosphere created by the sellout crowds at Highmark Stadium.  And how could you not be excited in watching those games and seeing the Rivrhounds shut out each if the four opponents.   That's right. In over 500 minutes of game time, no opponent scored a single goal against Pittsburgh. Of course, and not to nitpick, in that same length of time, Pittsburgh managed to score only ONE goal, and three of those games had to be decided by penalty kicks, but hey, that's soccer for you.

Easily the most impressive performer of these games has been Hounds goalkeeper Eric Dick.

During the course of my following of the team, I learned that Dick was the USL's Most Outstanding Keeper of the 2024 season, and he was deservedly named the MVP of these just completed playoffs.  His performance on Saturday night was spectacular.

Again, CONGRATULATIONS to Pittsburgh's newest Sports Champions.

Now, the bad news....

Steelers lose to Bears, 31-28, and Fall to 6-5

It is hard to put a bow on the Steelers loss to the Bears yesterday. Once upon a time in this season, the Steelers were 4-1 and the Ravens were 1-5.  Both teams now sit at 6-5 and as of today, the Ravens hold the tie-breaks, and the Steelers would be out of the Playoffs.  All of that could change over the next six weeks, but let's be real here.  The Steelers just aren't a very good team.  They are mediocre at best, and they may stumble their way to a 9-7 record and find a spot in the playoffs, but they will certainly not be able to advance far, if at all, when playing a higher seeded Playoff team.

I'll not go over the details of the Bears game yesterday.  If your are interested enough to be reading this post, you know what happened.  Here are a couple of thoughts of mine, however.

• The coaching staff obviously has no faith in Mason Rudolph, who was playing in place of an injured Aaron Rodgers, to throw the ball downfield or over the middle.  The offensive game plan consisted of lots and lots of swing passes that gained less than ten yards.   And this was against a Bears defense that was riddled with injuries.  What's next for OC Arthur Smith?  Bringing back the single wing?
• The talk of the town all week was the devastation that tight end Darnell Washington caused the Cincy Bengals last week, but where was he yesterday? By my recollection, and I could be wrong, he was targeted only two times yesterday.  Why was that?
• Speaking of tight ends, Pat Freiermuth was targeted only three times yesterday.  He caught all three passes, one of them a touchdown.  So, why only three targets?

With Rodgers turning 42 next week, and Rudolph showing all the signs of being just a competent back-up, it is obvious that Steelers need to find themselves a quarterback. How badly did that training camp injury to rookie Will Howard upset their plans?  Howard never saw any game action in the pre-season, so, understandably, the coaches are not going to use him in any game action unless disaster befalls both Rodgers and Rudolph.  How far has that lack of game action for Howard set back the team as they search for a long term replacement for Ben Roethlisberger?  Howard looked awfully good last year as he led Ohio State to the CFP Championship. He looked better then that Drake Maye ever did at North Carolina, and in his second NFL Season with the Patriots, he is a serious candidate for the MVP Award this year.  Having never seen Howard play, though, will this affect what the team does in terms of drafting a QB out of college in the upcoming NFL draft?

The Steelers next six games are as follows:

• Bills
• @ Ravens
• Dolphins
• @ Lions
• @ Browns
• Ravens

As it looks today, I would guess that the Steelers would be favored in three of those games, and that could change depending on Rodgers' availability.  So, I'd say that at best, we are looking at a 9-7 season.

Mediocre.

One More Futbol Note (Non-Pittsburgh)

Yesterday afternoon, we eschewed watching the Eagles-Cryboys game and instead watched the Major League Soccer Eastern Conference semi-final playoff game between Inter Miami and Cincinnati FC.  This, of course, was prompted your seeing Miami and its great player, Lionel Messi last month in Nashville.  (See HERE)  Neither Miami nor Messi let us down.  They defeated Cincinnati 4-0 and Messi had a goal and two assists.  The goal was amazing, but the passes that he made in assisting on the other two goals may have been even more remarkable.

Miami will play  at least one, and possibly two more games in these MLS playoffs.  Don't miss the chance to see him play.  I am no soccer expert .and you don't have to be one either to know that when you watch Messi play, you are seeing soccer's version of Willie Mays, Jim Brown, Michael Jordan, or Wayne Gretzky.

Lionel Messi

You gotta love the pink shirts!

 

An Old Movie...."Cactus Flower" (1969)

 

Linda and I happened to tune into TCM on Friday night just as Ben Mankiewicz was introducing "Cactus Flower".   This movie was released in 1969, the year that I graduated from high school, and it was Goldie Hawn's first featured role in a motion picture, and she won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her performance.  I suppose that I did see this movie way back when, but I had no special memory of it, and I was glad to watch it on Friday as if it were the first time I was seeing it.

"Cactus Flower" was originally a Broadway stage play written by Abe Burrows.  The screenplay for the movie was written by I.A.L. Diamond (frequent collaborator of Billy Wilder).  It was directed by Gene Saks, who was fresh off of directing hits like "Barefoot In The Park" and "The Odd Couple".  Its stars, in addition to Hawn, were Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman.  All of that means that the structure was in place for a pretty good comedy film, and everyone delivered.

The story:  Matthau played a successful dentist in New York City.  Bergman was his straitlaced office nurse who kept everything in line in the good dentist's professional life.  Hawn was Matthau's much younger mistress.  Matthau kept things from getting complicated with his lady friends by telling them that he was married and had three children.  The kicker is that he is NOT married; he never has been. That kept them from pressuring him into marrying them.  Complications arise when.....

• A distraught Hawn attempts to kill herself in her crummy NYC walk-up apartment because she realizes that she will never be able to fully have the love of her life
• Her next door neighbor, a hunky young struggling playwright, played by Rick Lenz, smells gas in the hallway, breaks into her apartment and saves her life
• Matthau finds out about the suicide attempt (how he finds out is a part of this whole magilla), and realizing that he doesn't want to lose the beautiful Goldie, tells her that he will divorce his wife
• Hawn then starts asking a lot of complicated questions:   When did you decide to do this? When will you tell her? What about the children?  This all leads up to Goldie saying that she wants to meet Matthau's wife
• In an effort to quell this pending disaster, Matthau asks his ever loyal Nurse Dickenson, played by Bergman, to meet Hawn and pretend to be his soon to be ex-wife
• At first Bergman refuses to have any part of such a tawdry scheme, but then.....

Well, you'll have to watch the movie to see what happens next.  Hawn was charming in her role, and she no doubt earned her Oscar, and Matthau was great as the philandering dentist, but the real revelation in this movie, to me at least, was seeing Ingrid Bergman, the marvelous Ilsa Lund herself, playing a comic role.  One of the great dramatic actresses of her generation, she was 54 years old when this movie was made, absolutely nailed it playing this part. Scenes of her pretending to be someone she was not, which included her dancing in a 1960's era discotheque with Goldie Hawn, were simply delightful.  

She totally and completely nailed her role.  Just because you are used to seeing great actors in dramatic parts doesn't mean that they can't do comedy as well, and Ingrid Bergman proved that in spades in "Cactus Flower".

As the comic complications unfolded in the movie, you could pretty much see how the story was going to unfold, but that takes nothing away from what was a delightful movie.   If you've never seen it, try to find it somewhere - it is available on Prime Video and Tube - and watch it.  You won't be disappointed.

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.  

And a note on the Passage of Time.  Why was TCM showing "Cactus Flower" on Friday night?  Because Friday was Goldie Hawn's 80th birthday.  Yikes!

Critical Commentary - Three Streaming Series (All On Netflix)

"Death By Lightning"

This four part series tells the duel stories of James Garfield, our 20th President, and Charles Gaiteau, the assassin who shot and killed him in 1881.   We learn how Garfield, an obscure member of the House of Representatives from Ohio, came out of a deadlocked Republican convention and somehow got himself elected President.  We also learn the story of Gaiteau, a real certifiable loon, who somehow felt that he was destined for great things and that he was owed those things by Garfield.

Michael Shannon, so good in the movie "Nuremberg", played Garfield with a great deal of dignity, and Matthew Macfayden played Gaiteau with the manic intensity that he deserves.  Other historical characters like Roscoe Conkling, James Blaine, and Chester Arthur are also well played by Shea Whigham, Bradley Witford, and Nick Offerman, respectively.  However I especially liked the performance of Betty Gilpin who played Garfield's wife, Crete.  A scene wherein she confronts Gaiteau in his prison cell hours before he is taken to the gallows is really terrific.

However, we should all remember that this is a TV series we are watching, not a documentary.  I sincerely doubt that Mrs. Garfield ever had such a death row confrontation with her husband's killer, but that doesn't take anything from it being a terrific piece of theater. I am sure that similar liberties are taken with many of the other characterizations shown.  Was Chester Arthur really a drunken head-buster on the New York city docks prior to becoming Vice-President? Whatever the actual truth, it all makes for an entertaining and compelling four episodes of television viewing.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

"Nobody Wants This"

We ended up binging two seasons worth of this RomCom series over the last two weeks.  (Ten episodes per season, each about 25 minutes long.  It was easy to do.)

The story is about Rabbi Noah Roklov, played by Adam Brody, who meets and falls instantly in love with hot shiksa podcaster, Joann, played by Kristen Bell.  Naturally, many, many complications arise from such a relationship.  Bell and Brody are charming in their roles, although I think that Bell tries too hard to be a reinvention of Sarah Jessica Parker's Carri Bradshaw, but it is the peripheral characters that really add to the comedy of the show.  They include Justine Lupe as Joann's sister and podcast partner, Morgan,  Timothy Simons and Jackie Tohn as Sasha and Esther, Noah's brother and his wife, and Stephanie Faracy and Tovah Feldshuh as Joann's and Noah's mothers.

We really liked it and look forward to Season Three, whenever it comes.  Three Stars from The Grandstander.

"Man On The Inside"

A perusal of the Grandstander Archives tells me that I never wrote about this series when its first season ran earlier this year.  Brief summary:  Ted Danson plays a recent widower who is hired by a private detective to go under cover at a senior living community to see who might be behind a series of jewel robberies in the building.  Yeah, stuff like this can happen only in television, right?  Linda and I found the series to be both funny and touching in the way  it dealt with issues like spousal loss, aging, and the, shall we say, challenges of living in a closed community, challenges like HOA meetings.  Fun casting:  one of the residents of the community was Sally Struthers of  "All In The Family" fame.  

Like I said, we liked it, and had I written about it at the time, it would have rated Four Stars from The Grandstander.  So, go to Netflix right now and watch it.  

I bring this whole thing up now because on Thursday, November 21, Netflix will be dropping Season Two of this series.  I don't know what the "case" will be for the Man on the Inside this time, or if characters from the senior living center will be involved because after all, that case was closed, but I do know that one story line will be a developing romance between Danson's character, Charles, and a character played by Mary Steenbergen, who is Danson's real life wife of thirty years.

Looking forward to watching it and we will no doubt blow through it in a couple of days.

"Nuremberg"

 

"Nuremberg" is a movie that certainly can be classified as an "Oscar-bait" movie.  It is being released at the end of the year when the studios release their big gun films, it is about a serious and important subject, it has big stars in the lead roles and it gives each of them large swatches of dialog that they deliver in ways that only Big Stars can, and this is the important part, the movie delivers in every way.

On the day that the war in Europe ends, Allied soldiers stop a chauffeur driven car bearing a Nazi flag.  Its passengers:  Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, the highest ranking Nazi official still alive and his family.  Upon his surrender, Goering calmly asks his captors to please get his luggage for him.   That is the first glimpse we get into the personality of Goering.

What follows is the story of a US Army psychiatrist, Douglas Kelley, played by Rami Malek, who is assigned to examine the captured Nazis as an international tribunal comprised of the Allied powers prepares to try them before the world during the War Crimes trials in Nuremberg, Germany.  The movie focuses on the relationship and the cat-and-mouse game that develops between Kelley and Goering, played brilliantly by Russell Crowe.  

The movie is filled with great performances by a number of other actors besides Crowe and Malek.   Foremost among them is Michael Shannon, playing US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who proposed that such war crimes trials be held, despite the fact that there was no legal precedent for them and huge questions about under whose jurisdiction the trails should take place.  He was terrific in this role.

The role of the US Army officer who is in charge of the prison in which the defendants are held is played by John Slattery, best known, to me at least, as the guy who played Roger Sterling in "Mad Men", and who always delivered the best lines of dialog in that series.  I couldn't help but see, and hear, "Roger Sterling" as he delivered his lines, particularly his farewell line to Kelley near the conclusion of the movie.  I loved it.

While the subject matter of the film is a hard and a gruesome one, the movie essentially becomes a courtroom drama and a character study between its two main players, Crowe as Goering and Malek as Kelley.  Be warned, though, that at one point during the trial, we are shown films taken by Allied troops as they liberated the Nazi concentration camps.  These films are brutal, horrible, and difficult  to watch, as they show man's inhumanity to man at its absolute worst.  Which is exactly why the world needs to see them and constantly be reminded of what happened, and know that it must be prevented from ever happening again because there exists in mankind people who can cause it to happen again.  This is the point that the prosecutors were making at the time of the trials, and largely speaking, that the filmmakers are making to the audiences of today.

Crowe, Shannon, Malek

I expect that there will be many Oscar nominations for this one.  Picture, Director (James Vanderbilt), and a Best Actor nomination for Crowe for certain and possibly Malek.  I would also be disappointed if Shannon did not receive a Supporting Actor nomination.

The Grandstander gives this movie the full Four Star rating.

An aside about my attendance yesterday,  While visiting the rest room after the movie, a guy in there, who also was at the showing, asked what I thought.  We both said that it was good movie with a powerful message, but then he said this:  "Yeah, it was good, but you wonder how much of it was true and how much was made up."  I wanted to scream.

Aside Number Two.  The 1961 movie "Judgement at Nuremberg" dealt with these same topics and was probably a better movie this one.  It was filled with great performances by stars like Spencer Tracey, Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Judy Garland, and Maximilian Schell, who won and Oscar for his performance.  Seeing "Nuremberg" yesterday is prompting me to watch this one once again.  If you have never seen it, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

For Your Reading Pleasure...

Some books that I have recently read......

In 1870, engineer and inventor Alfred Ely Beach dug out a tunnel under a couple of blocks beneath Broadway, installed a passenger car that would take people from Point A to Point B in New York City via a pneumatic tube, and thus was born the city's first subway.  The amazing thing is that Beach was able to do this in secret!

How he pulled this off is the story that my friend Matthew Algeo tells in his latest book, "New York's Secret Subway".  It is a story of New York at a certain time in history. A city with streets clogged with people, horse drawn "omni-buses" and carriages for hire, horse shit, and sometimes even dead horses.  A city wherein it took hours to travel short distances, distances that could be traversed in minutes if a transit system such as the one Beach was proposing - and building - was put in place.

A sure thing, right?  Well, not exactly because what stood in the way of Beach, and a few other visionaries like him, were a lot of special interests, like the horse carriage trade that might be put out of business, retailers who relied on foot traffic on Broadway, and lots of crooked politicians looking to get their palms greased.  In other words, life in 1870 was a lot like life in 2025, which is one of the points that Algeo makes in this book.

In addition to Beach, the narrative in this book revolves around NYC politician and power broker William "Boss" Tweed, who you may have learned about in your high school American History classes.  Another guy is someone about whom I had never heard, Alexander T. Stewart, a retailer who might have been one of the richest people in America at the time, and who would stop at nothing to make sure that there would NEVER be anything put in place that would cause people to be taken off of the sidewalks and thus be unable to walk past his storefronts.

It is an interesting book about a subject that I knew nothing about, and Algeo tells it in a breezy and oft times humorous manner.  Like his books on Harry Truman, Grover Cleveland, Robert Kennedy (the good one; not the current one), the sport of pedestrianism, the war time Steagles, and Abe Lincoln's pet dog you learn not only about the specific subject, Beach's secret subway, but other collateral issues, like how burgeoning populations that caused people to move further out from city areas created a need for what we now call mass transit, and of course how the wheels needed to be greased with the politicians in order to get anything  accomplished.  I even learned something about one of my former employers, the Equitable Life Assurance Society, in this one.

The Grandstander gives Three Stars to this one, which, I hope will put a smile on the author's face like the one below.

Matthew Algeo and his latest

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If you are a movie buff or a fan of the 1950 classic movie, "Sunset Boulevard", or both, then here is a book for you. As the sub-title suggests, this is an in-depth study of the "behind the scenes" stuff that went into the making of that terrific movie, which celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2025.

If you are a long time reader of this blog, you might, but most likely don't, remember that I wrote of a similar book way back in 2012.  This one was a lot better than that one.  My only quibble on this book is that it is written in an almost scholarly fashion, something like a doctoral thesis in film Studies.  However, it's not like there is anything wrong with that.  In fact, what I probably most liked about this one was the biographical details of all of the principals involved in this movie.  Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olsen, Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and even Cecil B. DeMille.  Some of this stuff I had already known, but I learned a lot about Gloria Swanson that I did not know and came away from this book with a real admiration for her.  Lupin carries it forward with a sort of "whatever became of" coda in the book for all of the featured players from this great film.

If you've never seen "Sunset Boulevard" make it a point to seek it out and watch it.  Then read this book.  Then watch the movie again. 

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

********

And if you're looking for a novel for sheer entertainment purposes, some mental junk food, if you will, then I highly recommend "Parents Weekend" by Alex Finlay.

It's Parents Weekend at Santa Clara University, and four sets of parents of freshman students arrive on campus to spend a weekend with their children.  At the welcoming dinner on Friday  evening, the parents show up at the designated restaurant, but none of their children do.   What happened?  Is it a case of irresponsible college kids just being irresponsible college kids, or is there something more sinister at play here?

Well, of course there is, or else we wouldn't have a story here, would we?  The story is told from various points of view.  There is each of the kids' viewpoints, of course, but also the parents POV as well, and what a group they are:  a divorced mother who is a Very Important Person in the State Department who must travel with a team of security agents, a wealthy plastic surgeon to the rich and famous and his wife whose marriage is teetering on the rocks, a high profile judge and his wife who also are in a teetering marriage, but for a different reason, a single mother who works as a secretary in the University Dean's office so her son can go to college for free, and there is a fifth student involved, one whose parents are not in attendance, because his father is living in a halfway house after just getting out of prison after serving time as a convicted child sexual predator. Whew! Oh, and does the disappearance of these five students have anything to do with the magic death of another student earlier in the week?   The investigation into the crime, if, indeed, a crime has been committed, is led by a female FBI agent, who apparently is a recurring character in other Alex Finlay novels.

Like I said, this thriller novel is a pure entertainment piece.  Two weeks from now I probably won't be able to tell you much about it other than it was easy reading and fast paced.  I blew through it in three sittings, and I highly recommend it.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

To Absent Friends - John Cleary

John Cleary

1951-2025

This past Sunday's edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette included a news obituary for John Cleary, 74, a resident of the Pittsburgh area for the past fifty-plus years, Mr. Cleary was a native of Glenville, NY who was a student at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, the day that members of the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a group of students who had gathered in protest of the war in Viet Nam.  Four students were killed that day and nine others were wounded.  John Cleary was one of those wounded, and a picture of him taken in the immediate aftermath of the shooting appears on the cover of LIFE magazine the following week.

The obituary recounts how Cleary took a year off from college to recover from his wounds and then returned to Kent State to finish his studies.   He met his future wife at Kent State and they moved to Pittsburgh to start his architectural career and start a family, and there they stayed.  At first, Cleary didn't involve himself with commemorations of the May 4 events as he was starting his career and had family commitments.  In an interview in 2019 with the Post-Gazette, Cleary stated "Now that I'm older and have the luxury of time, I try to make more effort to come back more often." He developed  friendships with two others who were wounded that day, Thomas Grace and Alan Canfora, and the three of them would often attend Pirates games at Three Rivers Stadium.  Mr. Grace was quoted in the obit saying Cleary eventually "got more comfortable speaking in public about his experience" and that "while none of us were prepared to be thrust into the public eye, John was probably the least prepared."

I have told this story before, but I will tell it again.  What I most remember about that day was how upset my father was about the whole thing when he came home from work that night.  With anguish in his voice, I can still hear him say "They killed four kids."  The fact that he still had two kids living at home who were about the same age as the Kent State victims, no doubt played a role in his feelings that day.

It bothers me that every year when May 4 roles around, it is noted EVERYWHERE that it is "Star Wars Day".  I'm happy that the Star Wars folks have their fun that day, but what should really be talked about that day are the events that took place at a university in Ohio on that date in 1970.  I know that I mention it every single year on May 4.  It is a date that should never be forgotten, but, alas, the passage of time erases a lot.  (Incredibly, a friend once told me that on a college tour of Kent State with his high school senior son, he asked about the May 4 Memorial on the campus, and he, my friend, had to explain to the Kent State student conducting the tour what he was talking about!)  

John Cleary was an inadvertent participant and victim of one of the awful events of the era in which he lived, but he overcame the traumas of that day, had a good business career, had a fifty-plus year marriage, raised a family, and became a grandfather.   A good life well lived.

Also quoted in the obituary was Roseann Cleary, the sister of Alan Cleary:

"With each passing year at Kent State, and with every loss of a wounded survivor or eyewitness, we lose more than a storyteller. We lose a guardian of national memory - someone whose very experience challenges America to reckon with its past and resist the repetition of injustice."

RIP John Cleary

HERE is the obituary for John Cleary that appeared in the Post-Gazette on November 2.

"Ninotchka" (1939)

During our long drive to and from Massachusetts in September, Linda and I whiled away many hours listening to a podcast called "Talking Pictures".  This pod is hosted by TCM's Ben Mankiewicz and in each episode he interviews people connected with movies and the motion picture industry.  We listened to great interviews of people like Mel Brooks, Henry Winkler, Carol Burnett, Jane Lynch, Bill Hadar, Bill Murray, and even Charles Barkley (!!).  It's a great podcast, and if you like movies, I highly recommend it, but that's not why I'm here today.  During those interviews, Brooks, Burnett, Lynch, and Murray all referenced the movie "Ninotchka" as having a great and profound influence on them and their love of movies and in their careers in the movie business.

So, we resolved then that we had to see it, and last night, we watched it via Amazon Prime Video.

"Ninotchka" was made in 1939, directed by Ernst Lubitsch with a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, and it starred, and this was the big deal at the time, Greta Garbo.   Garbo was a star of the silent screen, and was known for her dramatic roles and her enigmatic persona.  So her doing a comedy for MGM was a very big deal at the time.  So much so, that studio promoted the film with the tagline "Garbo laughs".

The story takes place in Paris in 1939 where three bumbling apparatchiks from Soviet Russia are there to sell crown jewels seized by the government during the Revolution, the proceeds of said sale are to be used to buy tractors for Russian farmers.  The problem is that these three guys have succumbed to the pleasures of Paris life and the capitalistic system, and have been living it up at a luxury Parisian hotel.  In order to bring them in line,  the Party sends a no-nonsense operative to Paris to finish the job. That person is Nina Invanova Yakushova, played by Garbo, and she plays the stone faced Communist Party official to the hilt.  According to some things I've read on line in research for this post, including some contemporary reviews, it was almost a self-parody of herself.  Example:

Garbo (as Ninotchka):  Must you flirt?

Melvyn Douglas:  Well, I don't have to, but I find it natural.

Garbo: Suppress it!

Of course, things get off track when Melvyn Douglas, who plays a Count who's attached himself to an exiled Russian noblewoman, who is the rightful owner of the jewels, falls hard for Garbo, whom he calls Ninotchka, she resists, then she falls for him.  Comic hijinks ensue.

The movie is filled with terrific comic lines and touches (the "Lubitsch Touch"), some great satirical pokes at both the Soviet Union and capitalism, and some sexuality that is understated just enough to get by the Hollywood's Production Code taboos in place at the time, as exemplified by the French maid cigarette girls at the hotel that make several appearances a few times in the film.  "Comrades, you must have been smoking a lot" says Nina when she sees them.

There are other great scenes:

• When Garbo finally laughs while lunching at a cafe
• Garbo drinking champagne for the first time
• When a drunk Garbo lines up for a make believe firing squad while Douglas pops a champagne bottle
• Just about all of Garbo's austere dialog and persona before she gives in to her feelings towards Douglas.

While this movie is now eighty-six years old, I found it to be not at all dated.  It could be made today with very little change in dialog and still be funny and sharply satirical.  Of course, today, who could possibly replace Garbo?

There is one joke in the movie that references Hitler and Germany that jarred you a bit because it made you realize what else was going on the world at the time.  The movie was released in 1939, and one year later, Paris and France was occupied by Nazi Germany.   By then, it was not the wonderful place depicted in the movie.

"Ninotchka" was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Picture, Actress for Garbo, and Screenplay for Wilder and Brackett, but it was steamrolled by "Gone With The Wind" for all awards that year.

We really liked the movie, and I give it  Four Grandstander Stars.

Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas

Before the"firing squad"

Garbo Laughs!