To The First Absent Friends of 2022

As often happens when the calendar turns to a new year, the Departure Lounge fills rapidly, and as a result, The Grandstander falls behind in recognizing Absent Friends.  The exigencies of time means that I will be recognizing three Absent Friends in this post, and, as a result, they will no doubt be getting shortchanged in these write-ups, which is a shame, because each deserve full length treatments.

Let us take them in the order in which they left us.

Betty White

1922-2021

Betty White died on New Year's Eve, just a few weeks short of her 100th birthday.  A story I saw on her on CBS Sunday Morning last week indicated that Betty White's relationship with television began, literally, before television even exited.  It seems that she appeared on some experimental versions of this new art form before the medium was unveiled at the 1939 New York World's Fair.  IMDB lists an astounding 550 credits in her filmography.  Game shows, movies, talk and variety shows, voice overs, and, of course, her two most memorable roles in the classic sitcoms, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Golden Girls."  (That same Sunday Morning tribute showed a clip from the MTM Show where her character, Happy Homemaker Sue Ann Nivens, removes a burnt and fallen soufflé's from the oven and then slams the oven door shut with her knee.  My word description doesn't do it justice, but, trust me, it was hilarious.)  Then there was a Super Bowl commercial for Snickers and a hosting gig on Saturday Night Live at the age of 88.   And no one, no one, could deliver a double entendre like Betty White.

I talked with my pal Barb Vancheri, retired film and entertainment critic for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, earlier in the week,  and she told me that she once had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Betty White, and that she was a nice and as delightful as could possibly be imagined.

Peter Bogdanovich

1939-2022

The obituaries for film director and actor Peter Bogdanovich made for interesting reading.  They of course mention how he burst on to the Hollywood scene as a 32 year old wunderkind director when his "The Last Picture Show" was released.  There quickly followed smash hit comedies "What's Up, Doc?" and "Paper Moon", which were then followed by major flops such as "Daisy Miller" and "At Long Last Love".  His life was then peppered with love affairs, divorces, tragedies (including a homicide), bankruptcies, and ostracism from the Hollywood establishment.

In writing about "What's Up, Doc?" in this space back in 2018, I made this observation:

Also, whatever happened to Peter Bogdanovich's directing career?  After "The Last Picture Show" and this one, he had one other big hit, "Paper Moon" (1973) and after that, pretty much nothing of note.  In fact, IMDB lists more acting credits (53) for him than director credits (34).  He is probably most remembered as Dr. Elliot Kupferberg on "The Sopranos".

The story of Bogdanovich's own life would make a pretty good movie, I think.  Until someone decides to do that, though, I would highly recommend that you seek out and listen to Season One of Turner Classic Movies "The Plot Thickens" podcast, wherein Ben Mankiewicz interviews Bogdanovich.

I found it interesting that in searching Google Images for a picture of Bogdanovich to use in this post, it was almost impossible to find a single photo of him where he is smiling.

Sidney Poitier

1927-2022

Yes, two pictures of the great Sidney Poitier grace this post, pictures from perhaps his two most famous roles: itinerant handyman Homer Smith in "Lillies of the Field" (1963) for which he became the first Black male to win a Best Actor Oscar, and as detective Virgil Tibbs in "In The Heat of the Night" (1967).  In 1967, Poitier had an MVP caliber year, appearing in three box office blockbusters:  "In the Heat of the Night", which was the Best Picture Oscar winner that year and for which Rod Stieger won the Best Actor Oscar, "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner", and "To Sir, With Love".  Oddly, Poitier did not receive an Oscar nomination for any of them, but I think it is safe to say that none of those movies would have been as good had he not been in them.

You can see Poitier delivering one of his most famous lines in this YouTube clip here.

I would strongly urge you to seek out some of the news obituaries for these three Holly wood luminaries from Variety, the New York Times, or the Washington Post.  They all make for great reading, and tell they stories far better than I.

RIP Betty White, Peter Bogdanovich, Sidney Poitier.

A New Look at Three Old Movies

I love going back and watching older movies, movies that I enjoyed in the past, and watching them once again from the perspective of the passing of time and advanced years (my own!).  Thanks to TCM and my DVR, I recently watched three such movies, all comedies: PILLOW TALK (1959), WHAT'S UP, DOC? (1972), and THE SUNSHINE BOYS (1975).

Let's take this in the order in which I watched them.

Let's face it, trying to name your favorite Neil Simon play/movie is like trying to name your favorite Sinatra or Beatles song.  There is just too much rich material from which to choose to come up with a definitive favorite.  THE SUNSHINE BOYS often gets overlooked when discussing the Simon canon, but it is one of my favorites.  It started as a play in 1972, received multiple Tony nominations, and ran on Broadway for over 500 performances.  In 1975,  it was released as a movie that starred George Burns and Walter Matthau as Al Lewis and Willie Clark, "The Sunshine Boys", a famous vaudeville act that had a run of success for over forty years, but there was one small problem: they hated each other.  It seems that Clark never forgave Lewis for, among other things, retiring and ending the act.  However, they have been asked to reunite for one last time to perform on a "History of Comedy" television special.

Burns won an Oscar for his performance, Matthau is his usual brilliant self as the cantankerous Willie  (Matthau was 24 years younger that Burns, but you'd never know it), and in an supporting role, Richard Benjamin as Willie's nephew and agent is fabulous.  So many great bits in this one:  Matthau/Willie trying to open his apartment door, Benjamin's continued frustration in dealing with both Lewis and Clark ("Oh, I'm getting chest pains"), and both Lewis and Clark reminiscing about old show biz acts and disagreeing about who was whom when reading the obituaries in Variety.

Great line:

Benjamin - "Mr. Lewis, aren't you excited about doing the old act again?"

Burns - "I've done this sketch 11,000 times.  11,001 doesn't excite me."

THE SUNSHINE BOYS is touching, poignant, and, above all, funny.  I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

In 1972, thirty-three year old director Peter Bogdanovich, fresh off a big hit, "The Last Picture Show", decided to revive the genre of "screwball comedy" of the 1930's and '40's with WHAT'S UP, DOC?.  The plot, such as it is, involves a mix-up of four identical plaid travel bags, an absent minded music professor, Ryan O'Neal, his nagging fiance, Madeline Kahn (her movie debut), and, of course, the flighty, madcap heroine, Barbra Streisand, who falls in love with the clueless O'Neal.

I recall seeing this movie back in 1972 on at least two occasions in crowded movie theaters and laughing hysterically at the slapstick elements - cars crash into each other as Streisand blithely crosses a street, a guy follows another guy through the streets of San Francisco while lugging a set of golf clubs,  a hotel room catching on fire while Streisand is out on the ledge of the building wrapped only in a towel, a pie fight, and, in the piece de resistance a four car (plus a bicycle pushcart) chase scene throughout San Francisco that involves, among other elements, a guy on a very high stepladder trying to hang a sign in the middle of the street, while two guys try to cross the street while carrying a huge pane of  glass.  

Like I said, it was big laughs in a crowded theater forty-five years ago, and that is perhaps how this movie should be seen.  In a crowd with a lot of other people.  Then the laughter would be infectious   It was still funny with just Marilyn and I watching it in our living room, but it wasn't quite the same.  Also, Bogdanovich and screenwriter Buck Henry made one big mistake.  The last line of dialog between Streisand and O'Neal at the end of the movie is a riff on the "Love means never having to say you're sorry" line from O'Neal's hit movie, "Love Story".  It was pretty funny line back in 1972, but audiences seeing it today would have no clue as to what the joke was supposed to be.  The rest of the comedy in WHAT'S UP, DOC? is pretty much timeless, though.

Interestingly enough, this was the first movie that Streisand made that was not a movie remake of a big Broadway musical.  For the first time in a movie, Streisand was not required to sing in this one (although she did sing over the credits and had one small musical bit in the movie).   She was required to be a comedic actress in this one, and she pulled it off quite well.

Also, whatever happened to Peter Bogdanovich's directing career?  After "The Last Picture Show" and this one, he had one other big hit, "Paper Moon" (1973) and after that, pretty much nothing of note.  In fact, IMDB lists more acting credits (53) for him than director credits (34).  He is probably most remembered as Dr. Elliot Kupferberg on "The Sopranos".

Of the three films, this is the one that I thought that I would like the least, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this one.  In her opening comments, TCM hostess Alicia Malone noted that by the end of the 1950's, the musical films in which Day had starred were becoming passe, and that she needed something to boost her career when she was approached to make this "sex comedy" (more about THAT term later on).  She was reluctant at first, but did it anyway, and, presto-chango, Day's career was revived - she was nominated for an Oscar for PILLOW TALK -  and a great screen team, Doris Day and Rock Hudson (and Tony Randall) was born.  The three of them would take two more movies together after this one.

In PILLOW TALK, Day plays a single career woman, an interior decorator, who is forced to share a party line with Hudson, a philandering song writer.  Now today, no one watching this movie under the age of fifty would know what a "party line" was, but you get the idea pretty quickly.  Unknown to each other, they are connected by Randall, a three times divorced rich guy who is in love with Day and who is employing Hudson to write songs for  show he is backing.

As it can only happen in the movies, Hudson realizes that his hated party line partner is not some wizened old crone, but rather the beautiful Doris Day, introduces himself by using another identity (again, only in the movies), Day, of course, falls madly in love with him, and hijinks, as they say, ensue.

One very funny scene involved Randall talking to Hudson and telling him point-by-point why he needed to give up his woman-chasing, philandering ways, find a nice girl, settle down and get married.  To each point that Randall made, Hudson calmly asked "Why?"  A frustrated Randall finally says "well, if you want to be difficult I suppose you could find an argument for anything!"

The movie also co-stars Thelma Ritter playing Day's wisecracking (what else?) maid with a drinking problem.  Essentially, she plays Thelma Ritter, and she's very funny.

I came away from watching PILLOW TALK with a heightened respect for Doris Day.  She was quite beautiful (as emphasized with a gorgeous wardrobe), and very funny.  She  also had the ability to roll her eyes and make faces to terrific comic effect.  The scene where she realizes that Hudson's "Rex Stetson" is really her party line nemesis Brad Allen by playing a bit of music on a piano is a brilliant bit of comic acting.

I mentioned that this was considered a "sex comedy" when it was released.  Sexual mores have sure changed since then.  In 1959, the sex comedy PILLOW TALK featured a New York City single career woman fighting off leering men in an effort to preserve her virtue.  In the early 2000's, the sex comedy "Sex and the City" featured New York City single career women like Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Catrall shedding their clothes and boffing good looking guys at the drop of a hat.  Times have certainly changed.  Whether for the better or not is, I suppose, in the eye of the beholder.

For better or for worse  Doris Day became typecast as the virtuous not-until-you-marry-me type soon after PILLOW TALK.  This probably worked against her in the mid-1960's when director Mike Nichols strongly considered Day for the role of Mrs. Robinson in "The Graduate", or so the story goes.  Of course that role went to Anne Bancroft, but one wonders "What if Doris Day became the predatory Mrs. Robinson?"  We'll never know, but it's fun to speculate. 

Anyway, there are three comic movies from the Wayback Machine.  All of the still worth watching in 2018.

Doris Day is still with us.  She turned 96 last April. 

Doris Day

Today and Yesterday

Old Movie Time

I have spent some time in recent weeks watching some old movies.


One of these was really old - Billy Wilder's 1945 classic, "The Lost Weekend." If you've never seen it, and this was the first time I had, it is a grim story about alcoholism, and despite being 66 years old, it is so well made, and the subject matter is treated so realistically, that it totally relevant in 2011.

Like "The King's Speech" this past year, "The Lost Weekend" took down the four big Oscars in 1945: Best Picture, Best Actor for Ray Milland, Best Director for Billy Wilder, and Best Screenplay for Wilder and Charles Brackett. Milland's performance is quite good and certainly Oscar worthy. Also, as I watched this I was struck by the thought that I don't think I've ever seen a Billy Wilder movie that wasn't great. (Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Double Indemnity, Stalag 17....you get the picture.)

The other oldie that I watched was Peter Bogdanovich's "The Last Picture Show" from 1971. I can remember seeing this in college and liking it so I was almost afraid to watch it again. Sometimes a fondly remembered movie of your youth can seem pretty lame many years later (prime example: "Easy Rider"). "The Last Picture Show" still holds up well as a period piece and a portrait of small time life in a tiny, dying Texas town in 1951. Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman won Supporting Actor Oscars for this movie, but it may be more notable for the early performances of a very young Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepard. It was almost surreal to see the baby-faced Bridges in this movie after seeing him play the grizzled Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit" a few months ago.

There were also good pefromances by Timothy Bottoms, (and whatever became of him, by the way), Ellen Burstyn, and Randy Quaid.

It's still a good, if somewhat bleak movie to experience.