The Users: Glossy '70s Trash TV

I grew up in the 1970s, a precocious child and an avid, advanced reader from the age of 8 or 9. I had a voracious need to devour anything and everything I could get my hands on. After blowing through all of The Wizard of Oz books, every Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mystery, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Wonka series and James & the Giant Peach, I set my sights on my parents’ vast bookshelf that lined the entire back wall of the living room. And, boy, did I ever get an education.

I was indiscriminate in my tastes, as were my well-educated parents. I read Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist long before I was ever old enough to see the films that were made from them. I read Updike, Mailer, Harold Robbins, Sidney Sheldon. (The Other Side of Midnight was my favorite.) I read Judith Krantz’s steamy Scruples and thumbed through Alex Comfort’s The Joy of Sex, scrutinizing every detailed illustration. I even read Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, a tome still potent enough to make grown men blush.

One of the adult-themed books I best remember was The Users by Joyce Haber. It was a seamy, tawdry tale of how a clever young hooker infiltrated the Hollywood movie machine and became a major power player, using her wiles and skills in the art of love. The sex scenes were explicit and graphic, and it was said that all the characters depicted were based on real-life actors and moguls of contemporary 1970s filmdom.

Hollywood gossip columnist Joyce Haber

Along with Rona Barrett, Joyce Haber was a doyenne of 1970s movieland gossip, having inherited the mantle from Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, who had wielded a tremendous amount of power with their well-read columns in major newspapers during Hollywood’s classic golden era. So I assumed Ms. Haber knew from whereof she spoke as she weaved her page-turning story of Elena Brent née Schneider, closeted gay movie hunk Randall Brent, billionaire entrepreneur Reade Jamison and the making of a big Hollywood blockbuster called Rogue’s Gallery.

Producer Douglas S. Cramer and Aaron Spelling with Lana Turner 

In 1978, the book was adapted into an ABC TV movie of the week, coproduced by Aaron Spelling and Douglas S. Cramer. Spelling, of course, was already a superstar producer, a former actor (I Love Lucy) who found his niche behind the camera, at that time already the creator of the megahit TV series Starsky and Hutch and Charlie’s Angels. Douglas Cramer was also a successful TV producer, with Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway, The New Adventures of Wonder Woman and the original TV movie version of The Love Boat already under his belt. Together, Spelling and Cramer would team up to produce some of the most memorable and iconic series of the 1970s and 1980s, including Love Boat, Dynasty and Vega$. 

(Joyce Haber happened to be married to Douglas S. Cramer at the time, which may have had something to do with her lucrative TV movie deal for The Users. Later, Cramer and Spelling would also produce the miniseries of Jackie Collins’s Hollywood Wives, which is a better adaptation and a more entertaining guilty pleasure than this version of his ex-wife’s book.)

Jaclyn Smith as Elena Brent—a little too pure!

Not currently available for streaming or on DVD (though lucky seekers may find a bootleg copy uploaded to YouTube), the TV version of The Users is basically a Spelling Productions family affair, headlined by Jaclyn Smith of Charlie’s Angels (the only Angel to appear in all five seasons of the series) as Elena Brent and John Forsythe (soon to be of Dynasty) as Reade Jamison. 

Curtis, Smith and Forsythe: Not the Carringtons or Colbys

The rest of the cast is reminiscent of an episode of The Love Boat, which was famous for giving past-their-prime classic stars a chance to keep working in the medium of television: Oscar winners Joan Fontaine (Suspicion, The Witches) and Red Buttons (Sayonara, The Poseidon Adventure) play the shrewd procuress Grace St. George and sleazy super agent Warren Ambrose. Tony Curtis (Some Like It Hot, Spartacus) is Randall Brent, the former A-list star who marries Elena. Darren McGavin (The Night Stalker) is Henry Waller, gruff and macho author of the book Rogue’s Gallery that’s being adapted into a big film.

Jaclyn Smith's Oscar winning costars: Buttons and Fontaine

Mamas & the Papas alum Michelle Phillips is superstar Marina Brent (whose popularity in the book is compared to the likes of Barbra Streisand and Liza Minnelli), daughter of Randy. Perpetually tanned and laid-back George Hamilton (Love At First Bite) plays director Adam Baker, apparently an amalgam of several hot young directors of the ’70s. Seasoned character actors like the comic Pat Ast (Heat), throaty-voiced Carrie Nye (The Group) and curly-haired Alan Feinstein (Looking for Mr. Goodbar) round out the cast, lending support to the ‘big names.’

Michelle Phillips: Move over Barbra, Liza and Bette

Hamilton: Too handsome to be behind the camera?

The production values are pure Spelling and foreshadow the look and feel of Dynasty a couple of years later: indeed, Jaclyn Smith and her castmates are dressed by none other than the legendary Nolan Miller, who was discovered by Aaron Spelling while he was working as a Beverly Hills florist. 

Designer Nolan Miller and one of his many beautiful leading ladies

I wish I could say that The Users is a great or even good film; it really isn’t, and the movie bears only the most superficial resemblance to the book, which was a bawdy, racy and incisive look behind the screen at Hollywood politicking and deal-making. The TV movie version obviously had to be sanitized to remove references to blue movies, omnisexual West Hollywood orgies and blow-by-blow descriptions of hot and heavy encounters at Hollywood parties. (If you want that, watch 1975’s Shampoo instead.) Unfortunately, without all of Haber’s trashy (and addictively readable) accoutrements, The Users is nothing more than a tepid soap opera, glossed over with those slick and deft touches of a Spelling and Cramer production.

But the story behind the story is kind of fun—and I recommend you read the book and try to guess who’s who in Joyce Haber’s roman à clef. 

(Bonus, thanks to Brian in the comments below – Joyce Haber and ex-husband Doug Cramer on an episode of the 70s game show Tattletales!)

This is an entry in the Spellingverse Blogathon, hosted by the beautiful and talented Gill of RealWeegieMidget Reviews. I look forward to reading all your posts about Aaron and Company. 

Browsing Through Time with Peggy Sue

If you could go travel back to a crucial time in your past and alter the trajectory of your life, what would you change? Is it possible to change one’s fate and destiny? This is the theme of Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) starring Kathleen Turner and Nicolas Cage.

A change of pace for director Coppola after his epic blockbuster hits The Godfather and Godfather II and the lushly produced but disappointing version of The Outsiders, Peggy Sue is a wistful yet comedic film with an odd charm and metaphysical underpinnings. Here, Coppola assembles a powerhouse cast for a seriocomic and bittersweet film that’s as much about about unresolved issues and dreams that don’t come true as it is about time travel.

On the eve of her divorce from straying husband Charlie (Cage), Peggy Sue attends her 25-year high school reunion, where she suddenly collapses, waking up in the same high school gym in 1960, 25 years earlier.

Kathleen Turner in the title role

“I have come here from 25 years in the future,” Peggy Sue confides in Richard Norvick, the class genius who has become a world-famous inventor by the time of the reunion, played by Barry Miller (memorable as the troubled guy from Saturday Night Fever who falls from the Brooklyn Bridge). Richard shares his own theory of time—Richard’s Burrito, where two ends of space/time time fold in upon themselves and “you can fill it with anything you like.”

When she made Peggy Sue, Kathleen Turner was one of the biggest names in the movies, with a string of hits including Body Heat, Romancing the Stone and Prizzi’s Honor. After her box office mojo cooled, Turner would conquer the Broadway stage and then settle into quirky character roles on film and TV, including a brilliant turn in the John Waters black comedy Serial Mom—another Turner title role.

Peggy and Richard (Barry Miller)

As Peggy Sue Kelcher Bodell, Kathleen Turner has one of her most multidimensional roles, as she must retrace the steps of her teenage life, seeing it now through the eyes of an adult. 

She sees that her soft-spoken mother (a lovely performance by Barbara Harris of Nashville, Freaky Friday and Family Plot fame), with her familiar scent of Chanel #5, is actually an iron butterfly who holds the family together in spite of her sweet and amiable but ne’er do well failure of a husband (Don Murray from Bus Stop and Endless Love). Peggy’s mother warns her not to grow up too fast—and get trapped by man. “Do you know what a penis is, Peggy?” she  asks pointedly. “Stay away from it!”

In spite of herself, Peggy finds herself falling in love with high school sweetheart Charlie all over again, even while telling him, “I’m not crazy enough to marry you twice.” She turns the tables on him and pressures him to make love to her in a parked car in a reversal of 1950s sexual stereotypes.

Nicolas Cage as Charlie, with Jim Carrey, Glenn Withrow and Harry Basil

Charlie is afraid he’ll grow up to be just like his father, selling appliances and chasing women around the store—which is exactly how his life will play out. His long-shot of a dream of becoming a pop star earns him the nickname of “Treble without a Cause,” and Peggy gives him a Beatles song from four years in the future, hoping he can make a success of it, but he changes the lyrics (‘She Loves You - Oooh Ooh Oooh’). “I’ve got the hair, I’ve got the voice, I’ve got the car. I’m gonna be just like Fabian,” he wails. But it is not to be.

As Charlie Bodell, Nicolas Cage, nephew of director Coppola, is either adorable or annoying, depending upon your point of view. He affects a comedically nasal, adenoidal voice that brings to mind a bad impression of Marlon Brando, but in my opinion, the character is quite endearing, sweet and guileless. Cage’s performance is soulful and engaging; as quirky and charismatic in its way as his upcoming role opposite Cher in Moonstruck. 

Peggy is a little rusty at cheerleading practice.

Peggy Sue’s grandparents, beautifully played by Maureen O’Sullivan (the original Jane from the Weissmuller Tarzan movies and Mia Farrow’s mother) and Leon Ames (Judy Garland’s stern but loving father in Meet Me in St. Louis) believe Peggy’s story, revealing their belief in the reincarnation, the paranormal and psychic phenomenon. In fact, Peggy’s grandfather takes her to his masonic lodge meeting, where they conduct a weird ritual to send her back to her own timeframe, replete with a harpist’s rendition of “Beautiful Dreamer” and legendary classic film actor John Carradine (The Ten Commandments) performing the ceremony.

Catherine Hicks and Joan Allen

Suffusing the entire film is an air of melancholy, and between the laughs you’ll find a few moments that may bring a lump to the throat: Peggy “remembering the future,” missing her unborn children; reuniting with her obnoxious sister who obviously had died young, played by Coppola’s daughter Sofia (later to find her own niche as a director rather than actor). When Peggy returns to her own time, it is discovered that her near-death experience was due to an attack of tachycardia, and paramedics had to restart her heart.

Somewhat of a cross between Grease and blockbuster time-travel hit Back To The Future (made the previous year), Coppola's Peggy Sue effectively evokes the period with the music (including “Tequila” by The Champs and “I Wonder Why” by Dion and the Belmonts) cars (“Dad bought an Edsel!”)  and fashions of the day (designed by Theodora Van Runkle). 

Soulmates through time—Charlie and Peggy: "Is, was and always will be."

Viewed today, the film is nostalgic in other ways, too, as we see a few of the cast who went on to greater fame after this film: Jim Carrey before he rocketed to superstar status;  multiple Oscar nominee Joan Allen (The Crucible, The Contender); comedian Wil Shriner; Catherine Hicks (7th Heaven, Marilyn: The Untold Story), and a young Helen Hunt (As Good As It Gets) as Peggy’s teenage daughter.

Is time travel possible? That’s always a very interesting question. Peggy Sue Got Married is an entertaining exploration of that timeless theme.

This is an entry in the It's In The Name of the Title Blogathon hosted by RealWeegiemidget Reviews and Taking Up Room. I look forward to reading them all.

Lemmon and Dennis: An Unlikely Screen Dream Team

When I think of iconic screen couples, so many come to mind. Gable and Harlow. Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford. Tracy and Hepburn. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (now that was chemistry!).

Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis are not among them. (Lemmon and Matthau, yes.) But maybe they should be. 

I tend to think of Lemmon chiefly as a light comedic actor in films like Bell, Book and Candle, Some Like It Hot and The Fortune Cookie. (Though, on the other hand, he did break my heart in Days of Wine and Roses.) Dennis brings to mind heavy drama, stürm and drang, with the anxious, neurotic and damaged characters she created for movies like The Fox, Come Back To The Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and of course, her Oscar-winning turn as that very high-strung young housewife in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Jack Lemmon as George Kellerman

Sandy Dennis as Gwen Kellerman

In Neil Simon’s The Out-of-Towners (1970), both play against type to enact the misadventures of George and Gwen Kellerman, a pair of hapless and harried travelers from Twin Oaks, Ohio, on an unfortunate trip the New York City. Here, Lemmon is intense and complicated as the uptight, controlling (and occasionally explosively angry) husband, while Dennis ironically gives one of her most engaging performances as his dutiful, ‘go with the flow’ spouse who wants nothing more than to make her husband happy and support his choices. (Though she loses her cool once or twice as well!)

A New York story that depicts The Big Apple as sprawling, tough and hard-as-nails, The Out-of-Towners lampoons every negative stereotype about the city that never sleeps, and about the rigors of travel in general. (Writer Neil Simon was, of course, a lifelong New Yorker himself.)

The film’s other main character: “Is that a beautiful city?” “That is a beautiful city.”

Famous for his witty, lightning-fast dialogue that’s funny and human and honest and relatable all at the same time, Simon treads into more serious territory here than many of the comedic plays that made him famous. This is an edgier, darker story than the feather-light Come Blow Your Horn or Barefoot in the Park, or even his hilarious mismatched buddy comedy The Odd Couple.

Here, Simon crafts a hilarious and often terrifying comedy of errors, using Murphy’s law to plot an unbelievably bad trip for the Kellermans. Anything that can go wrong, does. First there’s a delay in landing the plane, then the flight is diverted to Boston due to bad weather. A crowded claustrophobic train from Boston to New York becomes a cattle car. When they arrive in the city there’s a garbage strike, a transit strike, a heavy rainstorm; the hotel did not hold their reservation. Gwen steps on a bottle and breaks the heel of her shoe; the couple is robbed at gunpoint. And so on.

Comedy is not the wheelhouse of Method actress Sandy Dennis, but as Gwen Kellerman she has impeccable instinctive timing, and many moments, mostly priceless reaction shots, that make you laugh out loud. Harvard-educated Lemmon, who won his first Oscar as the insecure but lovable Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts, depicts what is his darkest character to date in George Kellerman, a seemingly mild-mannered salesman who is triggered by circumstances into rage and utter despair. (Later, Lemmon will a second Academy Award playing an even darker character in Save the Tiger.) Interestingly, both Dennis and Jack Lemmon studied under Herbert Berghof and Uta Hagen (Respect for Acting) at the HB Studio in New York and even appeared together in an Off-Broadway play years before teaming for this film.

“Two wet, insignificant out-of-town travelers.”

“Oh my God, I think I lost an eyelash.”

“George?? Can you hear me?”

“We could ask Traveler’s Aid...”

“I think I broke a tooth. Yep, there goes my smile.”

At first, it seems that the couple are mismatched to their environment—a classic fish-out-of-water theme, two Midwesterners vs. the Big City. But the travails of George and Gwen point out their mismatched personalities in the way that they deal with the vicissitudes that await them around every corner. Here, Lemmon overplays and Dennis underplays; he rages like King Lear while she assumes inscrutable blank expressions that try to hide her feelings. Their interplay is a joy to watch, though; together, they create a real chemistry and are totally believable as a married couple from Ohio.

Bringing the Kellermans’ urban nightmare to vivid life are a bevy of consummate character actors to lend support and expertly spout Simon’s acerbic dialogue at a rapid-fire pace. Most portray service people trying in vain to calm irate customers; all give unforgettable cameo performances: Ann Prentiss (sister of Paula) as a deadpan stewardess; Billy Dee Williams (Lady Sings the Blues)  from the airline Lost & Found; Johnny Brown as the smiling dining car waiter with nothing but bad news for the hungry travelers; Anthony Holland at the Waldorf Astoria front desk;  Ron Carey (High Anxiety) as a Boston cab driver; Graham Jarvis as a Good Samaritan with an ulterior motive; Anne Meara (mom of Ben Stiller) as a nonplussed purse-snatching victim.

Anne Meara: “You carry a pocketbook in this city, you’re a marked woman.”

Billy Dee Williams as Clifford: “I see no reason to assume it won’t show up.”

Graham Jarvis: “Just tell them that Murray sent you.”

Dolph Sweet, Johnny Brown, Anthony Holland and Ron Carey

Director Arthur Hiller paces the film as a frantic run that keeps you on the edge of your seat and as breathless as our protagonists. (Hiller’s masterful direction provided the engine that also made Silver Streak and The In-Laws such memorably fast-moving comedic sprints.) With his bold and original scoring, Quincy Jones skillfully underlines the urban tension and frantic urgency, and displays a sense of humor, too, adding comic musical counterpoint to the proceedings.

But it’s the Sandy Dennis and Jack Lemmon who hold the entire film together with their outstanding performances and palpable screen chemistry, a seemingly mismatched couple but actually a Classic Movie Dream Team. They are the reason I return to this movie again and again.

 (The less said about the execrable 1990s remake, the better, despite the presence of Goldie Hawn and Steve Martin, whom I love in other films.)

This is an entry in the Mismatched Couples Blogathon hosted by Realweegiemidget Reviews and Cinematic Catharsis. What fun we’ll all have this weekend!

It’s Not Easy Being Green

According to Soylent Green (1973), the future has already come and gone—the film is set in the year 2022, and it is already far too late to save the planet. 

Soylent Green tackles the issue of climate change long before the issue had become a universal concern—the very first climate summit in Stockholm occurred in 1972, the year this movie was filmed.

Its famous opening montage is a frantic kaleidoscope of images depicting the ravaging effects of rampant industrialization, punctuated by an ever-quickening musical cacophony, quickly reaching its peak and then decelerating in inevitable decline.  

Though unremittingly bleak, the story is well-told and excellently played by a cast of skilled actors, and its blatant warnings about society resonate more than ever today.

Charlton Heston as Thorn

This future is a nightmarish world of abject poverty. Unemployment and homelessness are universal. Only the 1% elite have any sort of comfort or normalcy—and even that is breaking down. Books are no longer being printed. Technology is in disrepair and unable to be replaced due to the collapse of all manufacturing. The police are totally corrupt, on the take—they have to be in order to survive.

A green, hazy pea soup smog permeates everything in the city of New York (population 40 million). Even the mod, shiny futuristic apartments of the super-wealthy aren’t all that extravagant and impressive since society itself is breaking down and all manufacturing has come to a halt. They’re merely middle-class dwellings.

It’s a world where hundreds of homeless huddle in stairwells to sleep every night and even a gainfully employed police detective must generate his own electricity by pedaling a bike. Even ice is a rarity, and air conditioning and running hot water are luxuries only for the super-rich. (Most of the characters wear a thin sheen of perspiration and sweat on their brows throughout the movie, just one of the many subtle details that make the story seem all too real.)

Edward G. Robinson as Sol Roth

Soylent Green was the great Edward G. Robinson’s final film; dying of cancer and stone deaf, he had been working only intermittently in recent years but decided to come out of retirement because the was interested in the film’s premise: “It’s about something,” he said.

‘Eddie G,’ as he was affectionately known, was one of the finest character actors ever to grace the silver screen. Whether playing a famous gangster (Little Caesar), a Norwegian farmer (Our Vines Have Tender Grapes) or an intuitive insurance claims adjuster (Double Indemnity), his characters were always believable and human.  He could play comedy or drama with equal skill. Never blessed with good looks, audiences nevertheless found it hard to look at anyone else when Robinson was in the frame; he is so arrestingly watchable, a natural scene stealer. Here, he plays Sol Roth, a former professor now working as a police ‘book’ and rooming with Thorn, played by Charlton Heston (Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man).

Leigh Taylor-Young as Shirl

One of the great action stars in the tradition of Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn, Charlton Heston was tall and lanky and laconic, a square-jawed beefcake with a masculine physique he never minded showing off on the screen. He’d achieved icon status with his larger-than-life roles in The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur but his performances were often (in my opinion, unfairly) criticized as wooden and two-dimensional. Here, as Detective Thorn, Heston gives a low-key performance that turns out to be one of his very best, especially in his memorable scenes with Robinson, with whom he’d remained close friends since they squared off as the saintly Moses and dastardly Dathan in Ten Commandments 17 years earlier.

The film focuses on Paradise Lost—all the things that sustain life on our home planet, things most people still take completely for granted. 

Food and sensual pleasures are a central theme in Soylent Green. For 99% of the population, there’s nothing to eat except manufactured nutrient squares from the Soylent Corporation (which controls the food supply for half the world), presumably plankton and other nutrients from the sea.

Paula Kelly as Martha

Fresh food is exceedingly rare—and the sight of a wilted celery stalk, barely red apples and a fist-size slab of beef commandeered by Thorn is enough to bring Sol Roth to tears. The scene where Thorn and Roth prepare their modest feast is a masterpiece of fine acting and reveals the real camaraderie between Heston and Robinson and the joy they had working together on this film. 

The unwashed masses wear kerchiefs and caps reminiscent of Soviet communists. When the allotted portions of Soylent Red and Green are cut due to shortages, the rioters rebel but then are picked up by tractors with ‘scoops’ sent in to disperse the crowds.

Beautiful women are commodities and come with apartments as ‘furniture,’ a package deal, possessions of the men, subject to violence by the vicious ‘apartment manager’ who really serves as a prison warden.

Chuck Connors as Tab Fielding

Beautiful Leigh Taylor-Young is Shirl, ‘furniture’ in the apartment of a powerful politician played by Joseph Cotten (Shadow of a Doubt, Niagara). It’s the murder of this man that sets the plot in motion. 

A graduate of Northwestern University (also Charlton Heston’s alma mater), Taylor-Young was briefly married to Ryan O’Neal, whom she met on the set of the TV series Peyton Place. Extremely moved by the premise of this film, she later became a UN environmental activist herself. (And she is still working as an actor, most recently in the reboot of American Gigolo on Showtime.)

Brock Peters as Chief Hatcher

Heston was remote and distant on the set according to costar Leigh Taylor-Young, but always a consummate professional. (She found Robinson much more approachable, warm and kind.) Despite never getting to know each other, Heston and Taylor have a definite on-screen chemistry, especially in their romantic scenes. “You can turn on the hot water and let it run as long as you like,” Shirl purrs as a come-on to Thorn, but the pair end up conserving water anyway by sharing a shower together!

As Martha, the beautiful and talented singer dancer Paula Kelly (Sweet Charity) has little to do, though she adeptly turns a spoonful of strawberry jam (value: $150 per jar) into an ecstatic religious experience in a key moment and displays her athletic prowess in a violent fight scene with Heston and Chuck Connors (star of TV’s The Rifleman). 

Joseph Cotten as William Simonson

Amid the cruelty and coldness of Soylent Green’s world is an undercurrent of profound sadness and melancholy. Those who knew the world before its breakdown are forced to adapt to its inhumanity in order to survive, tortured by dim memories of a better time. “The world was beautiful once,” Sol tries to explain to an uncomprehending Thorn.

When Sol learns the horrible secret behind the Soylent Corporation (and the impossibility of better days ahead), he is appalled and disillusioned. “I’m going home,” he sighs resignedly.

The right to die is the only benefit afforded the average citizen, the ability to vacate the hell on earth with dignity. 

Sol joins the downtrodden in the water line

Euthanasia is an immersive Disney World-esque experience, featuring massive projections of Technicolor nature scenes and soothing classical music—which can only be enjoyed after drinking the poison sleeping potion from a cup proffered by white-clad attendants.

Here, swathed in a white sheet, a surprisingly small Eddie G is vulnerable and touching as he watches the majestic nature tableaux in rapturous ecstasy, long-ago images of a world that was once vibrant and alive. (Robinson himself passed away just weeks after filming on Soylent Green wrapped.)

Exactly what is Soylent Green, exactly?

Bodies wrapped in white sheets are unceremoniously dumped into garbage trucks, where they’re then taken to the Soylent factory for…well, I won’t reveal the big spoiler for anyone who hasn’t yet seen the film.

Directed by Richard Fleischer (Fantastic Voyage, Mandingo) the story is told with surprisingly few special effects, pre-CGI, with just a few well-orchestrated crowd scenes to capture the film’s scope.  Though usually billed as a sci-fi action movie, it’s more of a thoughtful and provocative psychological thriller. Soylent was the last movie to be filmed entirely on the backlot of MGM—within weeks after filming, the lot was sold off to build condos. The Golden Era of movies was officially over. 

It’s 2023 now, and the world has not yet fallen to the depths depicted in this thought-provoking film, thank goodness. The question is, are we headed in the right direction yet?

I hope you enjoy all the entries in the fabulous Futurethon hosted by Cinematic Catharsis and Realweegiemidget Reviews. I look forward to reading them all.

Deconstructing Daisy Clover

Hollywood loves making films about Hollywood; but very rarely do they do it well.

What can I say about this film I have seen at least a dozen times (and own a copy of in my DVD collection) but really, really don’t like?  I guess I would file this one under ‘Bad Movies I Love,’ or more accurately, ‘Bad Movies Starring Actors I Love.’

Inside Daisy Clover (1965) features some of my all-time favorite stars at the height of their fame, beauty and talent: The radiant Natalie Wood, a dreamy Robert Redford, the brilliant Christopher Plummer, Ruth Gordon and Roddy McDowall. Too bad the film takes advantage of so few of its potential assets and delivers less than stellar entertainment.

It’s directed by Robert Mulligan  (To Kill A Mockingbird) who had directed Wood in her moving Oscar-nominated performance in Love With the Proper Stranger opposite Steve McQueen, so it’s only natural they’d want to work together again. But instead of another gritty slice of life, they picked this glossy, overblown melodrama for their next project.

America's Sweetheart: Natalie Wood in the title role

Set in the 1930s, the film has absolutely no sense of period. It has that slick, anachronistic mid-1960s Panavision feel, much like Harlow, made the same year. A few marcelled hairstyles on the extras and period roadsters in the background are about the only nods to any specific place and time. (Can’t compare to the authenticity of a Bonnie and Clyde or a Paper Moon.)

In the film, Daisy Clover, played by Natalie, is being built up as the latest Depression Era child star—presumably the next Shirley Temple or Judy Garland. Yet the over-the-top metallic pixie elf costume she wears in her debut film is pure ‘60s mod (shame on you, Edith Head); Miss Wood even tosses a bit of psychedelic frugging into Herb Ross’s choreography in the  “You’re Gonna Hear from Me” sequence—and that the scene is filmed in black and white does not lend a shred of authenticity.

At 27, Natalie Wood was a bit long in the tooth to be portraying the 15-year old tomboy who shoots to stardom but those who know something about her life can understand why she was attracted to the role.

The story of Daisy Clover, adapted by screenwriter and film historian Gavin Lambert from his 1963 novel, held personal significance for Wood. A former child star herself, Natalie had some heavy baggage of her own. Her embattled past had included a disfiguring injury on the set of an early film; reportedly being raped by a he-man superstar as a child; affairs with a director and a legendary male crooner (both old enough to be her father) while still underage; adultery, divorce, suicide attempts and all the tabloid soap opera that seems to go hand-in-hand with glamour and fame.

Natalie Wood shined as both child and adult actress; at the tender age of 9 she was remarkable in Miracle on 34th Street, and as a teenager earned her first Oscar nomination (for Best Supporting Actress) in Rebel Without a Cause. Perhaps her finest hour on screen is her heartbreaking performance as Deenie in Splendor in the Grass opposite her soon-to-be lover Warren Beatty.

By sheer force of personality, Wood is able to breathe believability into the troubled young woman she portrays in Daisy Clover, conveying the complexities of a character who is tough on the outside but fragile on the inside, despite the fact that her role is severely underwritten. That in the movie Daisy is finally able to exorcise her demons and exact revenge in the film’s fiery climax may have been satisfying for Wood, but less so for mystified audiences trying to follow the threadbare plot. 

Sorry, Natalie, Miss Show Business you're not

It’s a hackneyed rags-to-riches anti-Cinderella tale. Sporting the same boy haircut/wig as she did as Louise in Gypsy, tomboy/urchin/gamine Natalie smokes moodily and scrawls lame graffiti on the walls of the crumbling Angel Beach boardwalk before sending her demo record to Hollywood. A miracle occurs—she’s whisked away to La La Land, screen-tested and molded by the studio head into the biggest star in the business. Daisy’s demented mother is put away in a sanitorium so Daisy can be a workhorse and money machine. Daisy falls in love with bad boy Wade Lewis but he ditches her on their honeymoon. Daisy’s mother dies. Daisy has a breakdown. And so on...fill in the cliché.

But perhaps the biggest mistake of Inside Daisy Clover was to make it a quasi-musical instead of a straight drama.

Other than “You’re Gonna Hear From Me,” which is actually quite lovely (when performed by a fine singer!), the songs by Andre Previn and his then-wife Dory Previn, who also provided the musical interludes of Valley of the Dolls, have an ersatz feel and lack of substance. But worse, the great, powerful talent as described in Lambert’s script– which makes you think of a little girl with a big voice like Judy Garland–is sadly not embodied in Natalie Wood’s Daisy Clover.

It’s supposed to be magic when dirty-faced urchin Daisy opens her mouth to sing. But it just isn’t. Dubbed by the brassy but otherwise unmemorable voice of Jackie Ward, Natalie mimes like a trouper and passably executes the energetic choreography of Herbert Ross (who also staged Funny Girl for stage and film), but no matter how much Hollywood wants us to believe it, Natalie Wood is simply not a singer or musical star.

(Why did they force this lovely young actress into so many musicals? Wood’s singing voice in West Side Story had been famously dubbed by Marni Nixon. Natalie did do her own singing in Gypsy, but the result was not pretty, her untrained voice a little too loud and slightly off-key. Here, she merely gives another competent lip-sync job. )

Stick to the drama, Daisy, you're much better at that!

To her credit, Wood does have a few great moments in this so-so film. The sequence when Daisy is plagued by interruptions as she attempts suicide (by putting her head in a gas oven) is darkly comedic and brilliantly played. And the unforgettable scene where Daisy has a nervous breakdown while looping the Previns’ bizarre Circus number is truly terrifying, raw and real. (No wonder that Hollywood princess Carrie Fisher would pay homage to this iconic scene in her own show business opus, Postcards from the Edge, nearly 30 years later.)

For Daisy Clover, Natalie Wood was surrounded with a cast of talented heavyweights, many of them dear friends in her real life, so I do hope they all had a better time making it than audiences had seeing it. (Not that many did; it was a critical and box office flop.)

Mystery Man: Robert Redford as Wade Lewis, aka Lewis Wade

Gay subtext: Roddy McDowall as Walter Baines (wait, did he also handle Wade?)

Poor Roddy McDowall is forced to essay another thankless role here, one of many in his long career. He has about six lines of dialogue total as the Swan Studio head’s supercilious (read gay) henchman and Daisy’s watchful handler Walter Baines. (Thank goodness Mr. McDowall was able to carve out a piece of immortality for himself with the wildly popular Planet of the Apes series a few years later.)

A lifelong friend of Wood’s (he too had been a child star, along with their mutual close friend Elizabeth Taylor), McDowall was also an obsessive documentarian. The year that Daisy Clover was made, McDowall shot hours and hours of footage of Wood and a galaxy of stars who visited his Malibu beach house– including Lauren Bacall, Tony Perkins, Judy Garland, Jane Fonda and Christopher Plummer. (These home movies are more fun to watch than this film.)

The Dealer: Ruth Gordon as Lucile Clover

Returning to the screen after a 20-year absence is Ruth Gordon as Daisy’s eccentric mother, aka The Dealer. One of the great character actors of all time (as well as the brilliant co-writer of classic films like Adam’s Rib and Pat and Mike with her husband Garson Kanin), Gordon is given precious little to do here; she speaks not a word of dialogue for 3/4 of the picture, so we’re prevented from enjoying much of her famously sardonic delivery. But the Academy did award Gordon with a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, which opened the door to a new career and paved the way for her iconic Oscar-winning performance as Minnie Castevet in Rosemary’s Baby in 1968. Gordon’s wisecracking old lady persona became her stock in trade for a very successful third act—in films from Harold & Maude to Every Which Way But Loose and My Bodyguard, she was the 1970s version of Betty White.

 With a face made for the silver screen, Robert Redford proves himself the quintessential male movie star—he positively glows with gorgeous golden boy vitality as the insouciant maverick film star Wade Lewis. This is Redford’s first major film role, after hitting the big time on the Broadway stage with Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park (he would star with Jane Fonda in the film version two years later).

Unfortunately, Redford and his publicity team insisted that Lambert downplay his character’s bisexuality (it’s barely even alluded to in the finished film), further diluting the film’s already thin plotline. Thus it’s a mystery why Wade keeps disappearing and abandoning Daisy to the Tinseltown wolves. Nevertheless, Redford and Wood display real onscreen chemistry in their scenes together here, better served the next year when they costarred again for This Property Is Condemned.

Daisy’s producer, Alan J. Pakula, would go on to become Redford’s producing partner, where their greatest film triumph would come a decade later with All the President’s Men.

The two actors who fare best in this basically unsatisfying film are Christopher Plummer as studio head Raymond Swan and Katharine Bard as his deceptively sweet wife Melora. Bard skillfully plays good cop to her hard-nosed husband’s bad cop, gaining Daisy’s trust, but shows her true colors and her own baser instincts in a wild drunk scene in which she reveals the dirty secret of Wade’s sexuality. (Other than an unimpressive resume of TV guest shots, including a couple of Alfred Hitchcock Presents episodes, this is Bard’s most notable role, and she is memorable.)

Katharine Bard as Melora Swan, sporting some flamboyant Edith Head-gear

As the avaricious impresario who wants to exploit, cash in on and ultimately own Daisy Clover, even taking the teen to his bed to exert total control over her, Christopher Plummer goes to the dark side and practically steals the film. Nicknamed The Prince of Darkness by Wade Lewis, Plummer’s Raymond Swan is handsome enough to be a leading man himself. He is simultaneously sexy and sadistic, charming and revolting. The unsettling scene where he takes Daisy into his arms to comfort her and ends up kissing her passionately is quite startling, even by today’s standards.

Prince of Darkness: Christopher Plummer as Raymond Swan

It’s obvious Plummer relishes his role and he plays it to the hilt. (Frankly, I always preferred Plummer’s stern and scary Captain Von Trapp in the early sequences of Sound of Music, before he transforms into the moist-eyed, guitar-wielding, “Edelweiss”-singing Father of the Year. And so, apparently, did he: Plummer always jokingly referred to his most iconic film as The Sound of Mucus.)  Fifteen years later, Plummer would play a similar Svengali-like role as Jane Seymour’s producer/lover in Somewhere in Time.

After Daisy Clover, Natalie Wood would go on to enjoy less success than her colleagues on this film...it seems her salad days as a film icon were already over. True, she would costar in the hip sex comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice in 1969, but her credits after that are far from memorable. But, she would be the first to say in her own defense, she found a far more rewarding career as a doting mother raising a houseful of kids, first with second husband Richard Gregson and then after remarrying ex-husband Robert Wagner.

Cute couple: Their chemistry is undeniable.

An unsatisfying mélange of hoary showbiz cliches, Inside Daisy Clover is for the most part lugubrious, gloomy and depressing, enlivened by the fleeting moments of camp provided by a couple of rather ludicrous musical numbers, and the strong performances of a seasoned company of actors. Is it melodrama or satire? I still don’t know. The mood in each scene swings between these polarities. But it’s also an opportunity to see some of my favorite actors working in what, regrettably, is not one of my favorite films.

 And yes, I’ll definitely be watching it again one of these days. I can’t resist.

This is an entry in the Charismatic Christopher Plummer Blogathon, hosted by Realweegiemidget Reviews and Pale Writer. I look forward to reading all about this acclaimed actor's greatest roles in the days to come.