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!

Quickie Critical Commentaries

On this, our 19th day of self-isolation (with the exception of doctor visits and trips to the grocery store), I offer for your consideration, three movies and a novel......

"Snowpiercer" (2013).  This movie was directed by  Korean filmmaker  Bong Joon Ho.  After he swept the Oscars this year with his movie "Parasite" (which I enjoyed, btw), and upon the high recommendation of my pal Alan, I sought this one out on Amazon Prime, and watched it last night.  

After a cataclysmic event causes the earth to freeze and all life to become extinct, only a handful of humans survive and do so while residing on some sort of super train that endlessly circles the now frozen earth.  While I can appreciate the filmmaking - depiction of the train and the apocalyptic remains of Planet Earth are pretty neat - this just isn't my kind of movie.  I watched it on our downstairs TV while Mrs. Grandstander remained upstairs.  When it was over and I came back upstairs, she said "From what I could hear that sounded awful."  Pretty much so, I had to agree.

There were some names in the cast - Octavia Spencer and Ed Harris to name two, and the star was Chris Evans, who has gone on to make a name for himself in all those Captain America / Avengers movies.  In this one, he seemed to be trying to do nothing more than make himself a look-alike for U2's The Edge.

Two Stars from The Grandstander.

The next two movies are oldies and came to me courtesy of Turner Classic Movies and my DVR.

Based on and Agatha Christie play and novelette, "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957) was directed by the great Billy Wilder and starred Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Elsa Lanchester.  Laughton plays distinguished English barrister Sir Wilfred Roberts who is being urged to retire for health reasons. Lanchester is the nurse who is constantly nagging him to slow down, take a nap, get his shots, and stop smoking cigars and drinking brandy, all of which Laughton delightfully ignores.  He is drawn into one last case defending American ex-GI Power against a murder charge, and Dietrich plays his wife, who may or may not be devoted to him.  It's a terrific courtroom drama with a fabulous Christie twist.  Its as nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director (Wilder), Best Actor (Laughton), and Best Sporting Actress (Lanchester).  It did not win any Oscars, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable and fun to watch.

Three and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.

Based on a novel by John Godey, "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1974) was directed by Joseph Sargent and starred Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, Martin Balsam, Hector Elizondo, and Jerry Stiller.  It is the story of a ruthless gang of four bandits, led by Shaw, who hijack a New York City subway train and hold it and seventeen passengers for $1 million ransom, and, oh yeah, if the money isn't delivered in one hour, they're going to start killing the hostages.   Matthau is great as the Transit Authority police lieutenant  who must negotiate with head hijacker Shaw.  Matthau plays the dramatic tough guy cop while still being, well, Walter Matthau, and he's great.  He even wears an Irish tweed hat similar to the one I bought for myself when we were in Ireland last year!  Also great in small parts of this movie were actors Lee Wallace, Doris Roberts, and Tony Roberts as the Mayor of New York, his wife, and the Deputy Mayor.

This is always a movie that is brought up when the subject of Remakes of Movies is discussed.  In 2009, someone in Hollywood thought that this movie should be redone, and it was, with Denzel Washington and John Travolta in the Matthau and Shaw roles.  Some remakes of movies are good ("Murder on the Orient Express" comes to mind), some put a different twist on a story that makes it delightful ("His Girl Friday" and "The Front Page), and others are flat out awful.  The 2009 version of Pelham One Two Three was one of them.  My own memory of the remake was the constant and incessant cursing that took place it.  It was terrible.

Stick with the 1974 Walter Matthau version.  It gets Four Stars from The Grandstander.

And for you readers out there....

Alison Thomas is the gorgeous, somewhat snotty, and affluent 18 year old daughter of a Westchester, NY family on a Christmas vacation on the Caribbean island of Saint X (a fictional place for the purposes of this recently released novel).  On the last night of the trip, Alison goes missing, and a few days later, her dead body is recovered.  Two Saint X natives who worked for the high end resort where the Thomases stayed are held and then released for lack of evidence.  

How does such an event affect the lives of those upon whom it touches?  That is the story of this novel. 

The story quickly flashes forward eighteen years, when Claire Thomas, the younger sister who was seven years old when Alison was killed, is now 25, lives and works in New York, and goes by her middle name, Emily, hops into a NYC cab and sees that her driver is Clive, one of the then young men who was arrested for and then released after the death of Alison.  Thus begins the crux of the story as Emily tracks down and develops a relationship of sorts with Clive in an effort to find out THE TRUTH behind her older sister's death.  She also needs to learn just exactly who her sister Alison was, and why her death has shaped who she, Emily, has become.

The story is then told through both Emily's and, to a lesser extent, Clive's point of view, and author Alexis Schaitkin also offers snippets of points of view from some of the people who are a part of this story....the Saint X police chief, a news reporter, other vacationers at the resort at the time of the death,  and a host of others.  It's as really clever device, I thought.  I also thought that the opening chapters, where Schaitkin describes the island and the people who inhabit it, both natives and vacationers, and what lies just below the shiny veneers of these tropical paradises, we're brilliant.  It was what hooked me from the get-go on this book.

The story also touches upon other topics - white privilege and  tabloid journalism, among others - but the most intriguing is the existential question of timing of little events in a person's life when a seemingly minor decision can effect the entire course not only of that person's life, but the lives of countless others with whom they come in contact.  It was those little moments that caused this book to stay with me after I finished it.

There were parts of the story that dragged on a bit too long for me, and might have been a bit superfluous, but I still liked the book and would recommend "Saint X"  to anyone.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

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