Wash This Man Right Outta Your Hair

With a screenplay co-written by Robert Towne (Chinatown) and star/producer Warren Beatty, direction by Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude), production design by Richard Sylbert (Rosemary’s Baby), original music by Paul Simon and featuring a glittering cast of Hollywood acting heavyweights, Shampoo is a satiric sex farce with an impressive cinematic pedigree.

Made in 1975, just months after the Watergate scandal resulted in the resignation of President Richard Nixon—a time of cynicism, escapism and hedonism in America—Shampoo takes place in Los Angeles (chiefly in the neighborhoods of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood) on election night in November 1968, as Nixon is poised to win his first term as President.

Warren Beatty as George

The sexual revolution sparked by the tumultuous 1960s was still going strong in Hollywood well into the 1970s, which makes this film’s 1968/1975 time warp plausible—the specter of AIDS was almost a decade into the future. It was an era where trashy novels like Joyce Haber’s The Users and Judith Krantz’s Scruples delved deeply into the (supposedly) secretly perverse lifestyles of Hollywood’s rich and famous. Shampoo reflects and exploits that mid-70s sexual obsession to satiric and titillating comic effect.

Julie Christie as Jackie

Goldie Hawn as Jill

Reportedly Warren Beatty and screenwriter Robert Towne became BFFs while collaborating on the script for Shampoo, apparently finding they had quite a bit in common. Their rumored kinky sexual predilections included making love to their respective female dates on double beds in the same hotel room, thereby satisfying both their shared voyeuristic and exhibitionistic tendencies. (Later, Beatty and Towne would also share a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination for Shampoo.)

Jack Warden as Lester

The film covers a day and night in the complicated life of a free-spirited Beverly Hills hairdresser and Lothario, played of course by Warren Beatty. Warren’s portrayal of the womanizing yet guileless George Roundy is spot on—and why wouldn’t it be?  The subject of Carly Simon’s iconic song “You’re So Vain” (You had one eye in the mirror/as you watched yourself gavotte”), Beatty is cashing in on his own legendary offscreen image as playboy of the western world. Back in the day, the stories of Warren Beatty’s prowess with the ladies was mythic and epic in its proportions, and there were few famous women of the era—from Natalie Wood to Barbra Streisand—who had reportedly not succumbed to his charms.

Far from a cold and calculating Machievellian Casanova, George is a vague, foggy airhead (Beatty is an Aquarius, by the way), a not-very-bright “himbo” who’s a pushover for a pretty woman and seems to fall into his constant sexual conquests almost entirely by default.

Tony Bill as Johnny

Beatty’s George is a peacock, hot stuff indeed as dressed by costume designer Anthea Sylbert.  In his tight blue jeans (often found down around his ankles), white pirate and tuxedo shirts unbuttoned almost to the navel, chunky silver belt and turquoise jewelry, with a few gold chains thrown in for good measure, George is an establishment hippie rebel, riding his motorcycle through the Hollywood Hills with nonchalant cool, brandishing his holstered hairdryer like a gun, his overgrown, tousled “bed hair” blowing in the breeze.

But Beatty imbues his insouciant womanizing protagonist with his own brand of sweet masculine vulnerability, the kind women find irresistible. Inarticulate, unable to describe his feelings or his life with any other word than “great,” George nevertheless has his troubles, experiencing guilt and regret and feeling like a failure in life, not proud of his obsessive promiscuous behavior. “Let’s face it,” George finally admits to Goldie Hawn’s character with weary resignation, “I f*cked them all.”

Carrie Fisher as Lorna

Goldie Hawn, Oscar-winning Best Supporting Actress for 1968’s Cactus Flower, parlays the zany, kooky persona she perfected on TV’s Laugh-In (“Sock it to me!”) into a brilliant tragicomic performance. As Jill, George’s current main squeeze, pretending not to notice that her boyfriend is a notoriously promiscuous cocksman, Goldie is simultaneously hilarious and touching. She scores in scenes that include a hyperventilating panic attack, vain attempts to get a straight answer about George’s whereabouts, and displaying dumb blond naivete as she undergoes a modeling interview with Tony Bill (who later directed the charming My Bodyguard).

Veteran character actor Jack Warden scores in his role as middle aged Beverly Hills businessman Lester Karpf, who keeps a younger woman in a love nest off Mulholland and tortures his hair forward to cover his balding pate. Beatty and Warden have marvelous chemistry in their scenes together in which hairdresser George (with a a few subtly mincing gestures and breathy tone of voice) allows Lester to believe that he’s gay to cover up the fact that he’s sleeping with both Karpf’s wife (Lee Grant) and his mistress (Julie Christie). Warden would cop an Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actor, and the pair would work together again in Beatty’s next picture Heaven Can Wait.

Lee Grant as Felicia 

Julie Christie is memorable as Jackie, Lester’s mistress and ex-lover of George, a glamorous but tense gal with a drinking problem, still holding the torch for her former boyfriend. The beautiful and versatile Christie, who had achieved iconic superstardom as Lara in Doctor Zhivago and won the 1965 Best Actress Oscar for Darling, was Beatty’s costar in McCabe and Mrs. Miller and had recently been his longtime paramour and domestic partner. (Long before Annette Bening came on the scene, Christie had been the odds-on favorite to get the notoriously marriage-shy Warren to the altar.)

Two years before she shot to stardom as Princess Leia in Star Wars, Carrie Fisher gives a sardonic portrayal of the Karpfs’ nubile teenage daughter Lorna, who taunts George into proving he isn’t homosexual, just to make her mother crazy. In the scene with Beatty, Fisher vehemently protesting “I’m nothing like my mother” has added dimension when you know that Fisher is the daughter of establishment, G-rated movie star Debbie Reynolds. (Lee Grant’s real-life daughter, of course, is the talented Dinah Manoff of Grease and Ordinary People fame. And incidentally, another movie star progeny,  Andrew Stevens—son of Stella—has a bit role with plenty of exposure in the grotto skinny dipping sequence with Jack Warden.)

George and Felicia

Practically stealing the film out from under her very talented costars is Lee Grant as Felicia Karpf, a horny Beverly Hills housewife on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Whether straddling and humping George (to the campy strains of Herb Alpert’s “Tijuana Taxi” on the radio) still wearing her mink coat and curlers in her hair; addressing her maid in ludicrous baby talk (“Mona, Mona, Mona”); or looking daggers and baring her teeth and claws at her husband’s drunken mistress, Lee Grant’s Felicia is a thing of comic beauty, and the quintessential blueprint of the “desperate housewife” archetype.

Grant’s long and storied career, which has spanned seven decades, included the dark period in which the young actress, and many other artists were summarily blacklisted from the Hollywood film industry, branded as un-American subversives in the shameful McCarthy Communist witch hunt of the 1950s. A determined Grant would come back with a vengeance in the 1960s, no longer an ingenue, but now a skilled character actor in dozens of memorable roles, on television (Peyton Place), and in film (Valley of the Dolls, In the Heat of the Night) over the next half century.

The prolific Ms. Grant, who had been nominated for Oscar in 1951 for Detective Story and in 1971 for The Landlord, finally won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her brilliant performance here. She would receive an additional Supporting Actress nod for Voyage of the Damned the next year. In the 1980s, Grant expanded her resumé, becoming an acclaimed documentary filmmaker, garnering praise for directing the groundbreaking transgender documentary What Sex Am I? before winning her second Academy Award for Down and Out in America, while continuing to take occasional acting roles.

George does Jackie

"Let's face it...I f***ked them all."

Shampoo is a delicious romp for its talented ensemble cast, set against the backdrop of 1968 Southern California. The hippie chic, psychedelic Hollywood party sequence is replete with skinny dipping and LSD-spiked punch and a cameo appearance by Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, as the newest Beatles album (Sgt. Pepper, of course!) blares in the background. George’s hairdos for both Lee Grant and Julie Christie resemble Barbra Streisand’s 1968 Funny Girl bob— and in the Bistro black tie sequence, Lee Grant even wears a sailor suit, in another Streisand homage from costume designer Sylbert.

Punctuated by mournful Paul Simon music (a few years later, Carrie Fisher would become Mrs. Paul Simon), the soundtrack also includes hits that topped the charts in 1968, including “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys and “Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” by the Beatles.

The Criterion Collection has recently added Shampoo to its roster of digitally restored and beautifully presented blu-ray films, so we can enjoy it in all its lush, remastered 4k glory when it is released in October 2018.

For even more on this marvelous movie, visit the fabulous Le Cinema Dreams blog here.

Thanks so much for reading this entry in the Lovely Lee Grant Blogathon, cohosted by my friend Gill at ReelWeegieMidget Reviews. Can’t wait to delve into our sizable blogroll and read everyone’s posts! 

Survival of the All-Stars

Warning to the award-winning actors performing in all-star disaster epics: Your Oscars and box office mojo do not necessarily guarantee your survival. But if your character does happen to bite the dust before the final reel, you may get nominated again, and prolong your career longevity in the process.  

The success of Ross Hunter’s lavish productions of Arthur Hailey’s novels Hotel in 1967 and Airport in 1970 revitalized the tradition of the all-star ensemble that had begun with MGM’s Grand Hotel in 1932 and continued through film fare as varied as The Ten Commandments, Judgement at Nuremberg, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Ship of Fools. (Later, the all-star concept became a TV staple, with shows like The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and Murder She Wrote consistently topping the Nielsen charts.) But it was Airport that offered an exciting new wrinkle--put your stars in peril  amid some disastrous occurrence to heighten the drama--spawning the age of the 1970s disaster movie. Throughout the decade, a surprising number of disaster flicks were released, with varying degrees of artistic merit and box-office success, including Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, The Swarm, Airports ’75, ’77 and ’79 (aka The Concorde). But The Poseidon Adventure (1972) is arguably the best of the bunch.

Literate, thought-provoking and entertaining, The Poseidon Adventure boasts a compelling theme, a cogent through-line, spectacular special effects and notable performances by a group of talented and award-winning actors--it’s an old-fashioned, story-driven crowd-pleaser.

The special effects were groundbreaking for their time and created the appropriate suspension of disbelief necessary to keep viewers on the edge of their seat. Even today, they’re impressive--especially film’s the iconic set piece as the ship capsizes and overturns amid a New Year’s Eve celebration. To achieve the realistically terrifying topsy-turvy effect, producer Irwin Allen and director Ronald Neame rigged the vast dining room set to revolve 180 degrees to literally tumble and scatter dozens of actors and extras, a feat never before attempted on film up to that time. (Perhaps they were inspired by Fred Astaire’s famous dancing on the ceiling moment from Royal Wedding, but that was a much smaller room and only involved one actor). It’s an action-packed ride.

Gene Hackman as Reverend Scott

But unlike many of today’s big-budget films, the pyrotechnics do not detract from the strong performances of the seasoned actors with whom we take this harrowing journey. The actors and the effects both serve the story--a rollicking, well-plotted adventure interwoven with the universal themes of triumph over adversity, determination and courage.  

Ernest Borgnine as Rogo

Red Buttons as Mr. Martin

Consistent with the values embraced in what was soon to be dubbed “the Me Decade,” the film’s chief protagonist, a radical and rogue man of the cloth, preaches a libertarian gospel of self-determination and survival of the fittest. Foreshadowing the concepts of today’s New Age philosophies, Reverend Scott asks his followers to depend on the god force within rather than looking to an external father figure in the sky. Follow your own instincts, he advises, rather than relying on groupthink (or faith or prayer, for that matter) to solve problems. But, in this film as in real life, there are no guarantees. Only the strong survive--and even then, not always.

Stella Stevens as Linda Rogo

Waiting for “the authorities” to arrive and save them, the vast majority of the passengers are lost. But those aboard the Poseidon with the sharpest survival instincts are a diverse and motley crew--from an elderly Jewish grandmother to an unusually bright 10-year-old child. One by one, many of these characters lose their lives in pursuit of freedom, often right after helping others to safety or having given their own lives to save others.

Roddy McDowall as Akers

This unforgettable ensemble of stars--Roddy McDowall, Stella Stevens, Jack Albertson, Carol Lynley, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters, Leslie Nielsen, Ernest Borgnine and Gene Hackman, joined by young newcomers Eric Shea and Pamela Sue Martin (who later gained TV fame on The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries and Dynasty)--make this a film worth watching over and over. The chemistry among all of them is strong; this must have been a difficult shoot, obviously involving some potentially dangerous stunt work, and there is a familial feel among the group and an underlying strain of dark humor throughout that enhance the audience’s experience.

Eric Shea as Robin

Pamela Sue Martin as Susan

Of course, as in almost all adventure films, the he-men of the group are its leaders--Hackman and Borgnine vie for the alpha male position, while lonely bachelor Red Buttons (is this character gay, I wonder?) lends support to the group with compassion and common sense. Both Borgnine and Buttons enjoyed long lives and careers--Borgnine lived into his mid-90s and Buttons into his late 80s. Prior to this film, both had won Oscars, Borgnine for Marty in 1955 and Buttons for Sayonara in 1957.

The great Shelley Winters as Belle Rosen 

Gene Hackman dominates the film as the maverick Reverend Scott. Hackman had just won the Best Actor Oscar for The French Connection, after nominations for Bonnie and Clyde and I Never Sang for My Father. Of all the surviving stars of The Poseidon Adventure (basically now just Stevens, Lynley, Shea and Martin), Hackman is the only one still working steadily in Hollywood.

Carol Lynley has little to do but whimper and cry when she’s not lip-synching to Maureen McGovern’s Oscar-winning rendition of “The Morning After,” but brassy Stella Stevens has her all-time best film role as the former prostitute now married to a gruff cop (Borgnine), who gamely slips out of her skirt to climb to safety in nothing but panties and gold-toned high heels.

McDowall must have enjoyed the break from donning the ape makeup of his Planet of the Apes epics to join the adventure, taking on a charming Scottish brogue as Akers the waiter, but his character is one of the first to perish and his screen time is all too brief. A former child star (Lassie Come Home) who became one of the most reliable of supporting actors, it’s a shame he was never even nominated for one Academy Award in his long career. He died in 1998.

Veteran scene-stealing Method actress Shelley Winters, already the recipient of two Best Supporting Actress Oscars (for Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue) earned another nod for her portrayal of the brave (if a bit kvetchy) Belle Rosen, who saves Reverend Scott from a gruesome underwater death before expiring herself. Once a svelte blond sex symbol, Winters gained respect as an actress as her weight ballooned--but she lived to be 85, obesity be damned.  

A big box office hit when it was first released, Poseidon’s popularity has only grown through the years, attaining cult status for its spectacle, its star performances and its sheer audacity. Its early special effects must have inspired James Cameron’s vision for his own epic masterpiece,  1997’s Titanic. Its camp value, underlined by the ballsy performances of actors Winters and Stevens, the wooden delivery of other actors including a humorless Leslie Nielsen, and the high-’70s production design (I personally dig the “groovy” gyrations of the black-tie New Year’s revelers on the dance floor) make it a beloved staple in the film collections of anyone with a gay sensibility. It’s a well-made film with something for just about anyone, and holds up well.

For a delicious video overview of this film from a gay standpoint, visit classic movie “vlogger” Steve Hayes here.