The Boys are Back in Vogue?

The fight for marriage equality is all but won as of 2015. Gay rights are now seen by the majority of the world for what they are, human rights. Gay is OK. But just a few short decades ago, the subject of homosexuality was taboo, and honest portrayals of gay people in theater and film simply did not exist. Until The Boys in the Band. 

Mart Crowley’s groundbreaking play was made into a film in 1970 and starred all the actors from its original 1968 stage production. Produced more than a year before the historic Stonewall riots, where a group of bar patrons banded together against police brutality and started the movement for equality, the play provided unprecedented visibility to the contemporary gay experience. Though leavened by its memorably caustic wit and humor, Crowley’s work revealed the loneliness and isolation of the gay lifestyle, and underlined the lack of emotional support available to gay men among members of their own “tribe.”

A rare moment of camaraderie 

In the intervening years between Stonewall and the present day, the reputation of The Boys in the Band suffered a backlash by the gay community itself. Perhaps fearing that Crowley’s brutally honest storytelling would forever brand gay people as pathetic, promiscuous, unlovable freaks of nature, downright scary to the rest of society, many shunned this seminal work for its negative portrayal of gay life. 

Beneath its razor-sharp wit and self-deprecating humor, The Boys in the Band is a searing and often heartbreaking exposé of urban gay life. When a group of friends converge for Harold’s birthday party at Michael’s downtown apartment, high drama ensues. With a nod to Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Albee was among one of several “angels” who helped Crowley along the way), the centerpiece of the story is a terrifying party game in which the participants are dared to phone and reveal their feelings to the one person they have loved.

Natalie Wood and Mart Crowley

It was the play Mart Crowley was born to write. After failed forays into writing for film and television (authoring a campy TV pilot starring Bette Davis as an interior decorator!), Crowley had been working as a personal assistant to movie star Natalie Wood when he wrote the first draft of a groundbreaking and controversial new play. Championed by Wood and her second husband, attorney Richard Gregson (who came between her first and third marriages to RJ Wagner and is the father of actress Natasha Gregson Wagner), the play found its way into the right hands. Edward Albee helped arrange the play’s first workshop, which led to a successful Off-Broadway production that ran for more than 1,000 performances. 

In a rare example of artistic integrity winning out over the financial concerns of the “business of show,” Crowley refused to sell his property to Hollywood unless the entire original Broadway cast reprised their roles. Incredibly, Crowley prevailed, and the film version has forever preserved the brilliant ensemble’s now iconic characterizations. 

Hank (Laurence Luckinbill) and Michael (Kenneth Nelson)

Crowley later wrote a sequel, The Men from the Boys, became a writer and executive producer on Robert Wagner’s series Hart to Hart, and wrote the teleplay for There Must Be a Pony starring Elizabeth Taylor as a fading movie star attempting a comeback. But Boys in the Band is his masterpiece, and the 1970 film has captured it in perpetuity. 

Director William Friedkin (The Exorcist), the only artistic collaborator not a part of the original stage production, brings a cinematic approach to what could have ended up as merely a filmed stage play. His opening sequence captures the energy of New York and offers brief, telling glimpses into the main character’s lives. Though the rest of the action takes place in one setting—various rooms and the terrace of Michael’s apartment—Friedkin’s artful choreography and blocking and masterful use of the camera help drive the story, following and tracking the actors’ movements, darting in and out of the action for two shots, three-shots and close-ups. 

Harold (Leonard Frey) and the Cowboy (Robert La Torneaux)

Wisely, though, Friedkin creates an atmosphere that allows the actors to shine. The all-male cast (save for a fleeting glimpse of future Bond girl Maud Adams in an unbilled bit as one of fashion photographer Larry’s models) is uniformly astonishing, bringing to life just about every archetype in the gay pantheon. 

Kenneth Nelson is unforgettable as the high-strung host Michael, who shops obsessively, frets about his thinning hair and becomes a frighteningly mean drunk when he falls off the wagon early in the proceedings. Leonard Frey is hilariously caustic as neurotic guest of honor Harold, who has issues of his own, struggling with weight, food, acne and being Jewish.  

Kenneth Nelson

Leonard Frey

Peter White

The question of monogamy versus promiscuity is explored through the relationship of schoolteacher Hank and photographer Larry, played memorably by Laurence Luckinbill (longtime husband of Lucie Arnaz) and Keith Prentice. Reuben Greene is quietly affecting as Bernard, who struggles valiantly with the double whammy of being gay and black in a world that is slow to accept either. Frederick Combs underplays admirably as Donald, Michael’s compassionate friend and confidante. 

Peter White (familiar to longtime watchers of the ABC soap All My Children) perfectly captures the sexual ambiguity of Alan, the unexpected guest who serves as catalyst to Michael’s alcoholic breakdown. Robert La Tourneaux is charming and amusing as the guileless male escort who serves as Harold’s birthday present. 

Bernard (Reuben Greene), Emory (Cliff Gorman) and Hank (Laurence Luckinbill) 

Michael and Donald (Frederick Combs)

Cliff Gorman triumphs in the role of the flagrantly effeminate Emory, the outrageously campy queen who cooks up a storm and longs for domestic bliss but can’t find a man except in the dark caverns of the baths.  

To some gay audiences of the time, the character of Emory was as cringe-worthy a stereotype as Uncle Tom and Stepin Fetchit have been to the black community, but through Emory, Crowley makes a strong statement about the gay world’s own caste-and-class system. If you appear to be masculine, the unwritten rule goes, you can sleep with men, as long as you blend in with the mainstream. Hide your fabulousness under a bushel if you want to maintain your dignity as a human being. Effeminacy is the self-hating gay world’s ugly little secret...and only in very recent years has gender-fluid self-expression become more socially acceptable. Today, in viewing Boys in the Band, Emory comes off the strongest and most courageous character in the film.  

Cliff Gorman

But the LGBT community, hyper-vigilant and hyper-aware of how they were being portrayed in films, theater and television, turned their back on Boys for many years. (Interestingly, 10 years later Friedkin directed the even more controversial film Cruising, similarly accused of using gay life to perpetuate negative stereotypes.) Indeed, mainstream entertainment of the past tended to portray gays as either victims or villains, rather than fully developed characters. But in light of the tremendous progress the equality movement has made, the years have been kinder to The Boys in the Band, and I hope it now can enjoy its rightful place in the history of gay film. It is after all, a moving story about people—and Mart Crowley’s complex characters are flawed, fascinating and endearingly human.

Luckinbill, Greene, Frey, Prentice, Combs, Gorman, Nelson, White and La Torneaux

Hats Off to Billy Wilder's Fedora

Legendary director Billy Wilder’s penultimate film is far from his best, but it’s an absorbing yarn nevertheless, with a neat plot twist and lively (if a bit over-the-top) performances. 

Fedora (1978) concerns a Garbo-like superstar who supernaturally retains her beauty and appeal through five decades, only to die under tragic and mysterious circumstances. Superior to Robert Aldrich’s turgid Hollywood fable Legend of Lylah Clare a decade earlier, and the ho-hum 1976 adaptation of Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, Fedora has so far failed to achieve the cult status of those films, or of the more deserving Day of the Locust.  But if you enjoy the “untold tales of Hollywood” genre and are willing to suspend your disbelief, you’re bound to be entertained and engaged. 

Marthe Keller in the title role

While obviously not in the same league as iconic Wilder classics like Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, Fedora has gotten a bad rap, its reviewers implying that the director was somehow losing his faculties when preparing and filming this picture. I personally find it at least as entertaining as some of Wilder’s lesser efforts of the ’60s and ‘70s, including One, Two, Three, Irma La Douce and Avanti. Wilder directed only one more film after Fedora, the forgettable Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau comedy Buddy Buddy. 

William Holden as Barry Detweiller

Perhaps such unfair comparisons are drawn between Wilder’s Fedora and his legendary Sunset Boulevard because both are Hollywood stories of a leading lady as mentally unhinged as Hamlet’s Ophelia…...and the fact that Wilder casts the same leading man in both, a somewhat unfortunate homage now that a haggard William Holden is far from his prime here.

Holden (who won his only Best Actor Oscar for Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17) worked steadily up to his death in 1981, even scoring a huge commercial and artistic success with 1976’s Network, but his continuing struggle with alcoholism had begun to take its toll, and in Fedora he’s not really firing on all cylinders. As Barry Detweiller, a down-on-his-luck producer desperately trying to lure Fedora out of retirement so he can get his film produced, Holden has some good moments, but the heavy lifting of the story is achieved through the efforts of the rest of the ensemble cast. 

Hildegarde Knef as Countess Sobryanski

José Ferrer as Dr. Vando

Frances Sternhagen as Miss Balfour

Stephen Collins plays the young Detweiller in the 1947 Hollywood scenes, when he has a brief fling with the star while assistant director on one of her films. The reliable character actress Frances Sternhagen (Misery, And So it Goes) plays Fedora’s no-nonsense personal secretary. (And amazingly looks the same age today as she did in 1978 when the movie was filmed.) Scene stealer José Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac) is gerontologist to the stars Emmanuel Vando, upon whom Fedora depends to maintain her ageless beauty. Hildegarde Knef (The Snows of Kilamanjaro) is the dour, wheelchair-bound Countess Sobryanski, a bitter old crone swathed in black who keeps Fedora firmly under her bony thumb and speaks only in a raspy whisper. Michael York plays himself in a brief cameo, as the catalyst that causes the distraught Fedora to throw herself in front of a train, a la Anna Karenina, and end her stormy life. 

Fedora falls hard for her handsome costar (Michael York)

Marthe Keller is effective as the enigmatic Fedora, once a vibrant superstar and now a schizoid recluse, an amphetamine addict and a virtual prisoner on a private island off Corfu. The Swiss actress had enjoyed quite a Hollywood buildup in recent years, having costarred with Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man and opposite real-life paramour Al Pacino in Bobby Deerfield, and in the big-budget mid-’70s epic Black Sunday.  After Fedora, she appeared with George C. Scott and Marlon Brando in The Formula, but her career as a leading lady in the States never really took off. But as Fedora, Keller gives a creditable performance in a difficult role, though the film’s failure at the box office obviously didn’t do her career much good. 

Young Detweiller (Stephen Collins) and Fedora

Fedora on the set for the nude swimming scene

Without crossing the line into full-on camp, the film offers a heightened reality, rife with melodramatic moods and situations that stretch credulity against a backdrop of picturesque Corfu and Paris locations, embroidered with touches of dark humor and guignol.  Fedora sleepwalks around the Greek island in picture hats and big Jackie O sunglasses, always wearing a pair of white gloves despite the summery climate. A peevish Countess Sobryanski smashes Fedora’s record player with her heavy black cane when Fedora’s music annoys her. Out of the blue, Henry Fonda, billed as the President of the Academy, appears in Corfu with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for Fedora in a velvet drawstring pouch. In the flashback scenes, Fedora swims nude in a pool on the Hollywood studio soundstage a la Esther Williams. Later, an out-of-control Fedora is strapped into a straightjacket by her handlers before they throw her into the back of the Countess’s Roll Royce. And so on...

Fedora and her friends

The shrine to Michael York

Mr. Fonda delivers an Oscar to Corfu

The superstar lies in state

The flamboyant production design of scenes where Fedora’s body lies in state are pure Hollywood-style artifice, replete with the staples of funereal showmanship: hundreds of bouquets of roses and a string quartet playing mournful dirges as the public files solemnly past Fedora’s skillfully spotlighted casket--open, of course! (The effect is eerily similar to the outrageous Campbell’s Funeral Home scenes in Ken Russell’s Valentino, made the previous year.) 

Fedora is based on the short story of the same name in Thomas Tryon’s fascinating collection of fictional tales of classic Hollywood, Crowned Heads. Better known as the author of legendary horror novels The Other and Harvest Home, Tom Tryon began his career as a Hollywood actor. Classically handsome, with chiseled features reminiscent of his contemporary John Gavin (indeed, Tryon lost the part of Sam Loomis in Psycho to Gavin), Tryon appeared in films as varied as I Married a Monster from Outer Space to Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal, and played Marilyn Monroe’s hunky fellow castaway in her last unfinished film Something’s Got To Give in 1962. 

Beefcake actor turned best-selling novelist Thomas Tryon

Tryon gave up acting in the late 1960s to become a very successful novelist, his brand of suspense/horror on a par with Stephen King and Ira Levin. Two of his biggest best-sellers were The Other (made into a 1971 film starring Uta Hagen) and Harvest Home (adapted into a 1970s miniseries with Bette Davis and Rosanna Arquette). Each of these stories featured a famously ingenious plot twist or reversal that results in a satisfying jolt for the unsuspecting audience. (And so does Fedora.) 

  

Deeply in the closet all his life, the bisexual Tryon enjoyed long-term relationships with A Chorus Line original cast member Clive Clerk and with gay porn star Casey Donovan but never publicly admitted his sexuality before his death in 1991 at age 65. 

Though Fedora’s screenplay was written by Wilder and longtime creative partner I.A.L. Diamond, credit for the film’s unique storyline and impressively startling deux ex machina must go solely to original author Tryon...they are what make this lurid and melodramatic film special.  No spoilers will be found here...so see the film if you can!

How old IS Fedora?

A Lifetime with Marilyn, A Week with Michelle

Michelle Williams

In the 2011 film, Eddie Redmayne’s character enjoyed A Week with Marilyn, but I have had a lifelong obsession with her...and as a result, no actress who ever attempted playing her in a film has ever satisfied me. All have been disappointments, until I saw Michelle Williams’s characterization of the iconic star. 

 It started before I had ever seen her on the screen or heard her tremulous voice. While visiting a neighborhood bookstore when I was 7 or 8 years old, my mother told me I could have any book I liked. I gravitated to a beautiful white coffee-table-type book with a close-up of an ethereal and angelic woman with a wispy white-blonde bouffant, blood red lips and sparkling blue-green eyes on the cover. Inside were lots more pictures of this supernaturally attractive woman. When I brought the book, Norman Mailer’s Marilyn, to my mother at the checkout counter, I swear I remember her rolling her eyes. “You sure this is the one you want?” she asked, rhetorically. In retrospect, I think she knew her young son was going to grow up gay in the 1970s... 

The cover of Norman Mailer's book

 Thus began my fascination with Marilyn Monroe. After reading the Mailer, I obsessively bought, borrowed and devoured every book about her life and career, searching for clues as to what had made her so legendary and so famous, and why this lovely young woman had died so young. I still had not yet ever seen a movie with Marilyn Monroe in it, but I read about her performances in all of them. 

Our TV fare in those days was limited to four channels--the three major networks and PBS. A fuzzy parade of what were called UHF stations were also accessible if you carefully turned the dial and adjusted the antenna, but the picture quality was still so poor that no one in my family could stand watching them. But finally I was given a small black-and-white TV of my own, so I could start watching old movies in the privacy of my room...wavy, blurred and indistinct, panned-and-scanned, cut up with dozens of inane commercials and edited for length and content, all in contrasting shades of snowy gray. There, I first caught glimpses of the motion picture magic that was Marilyn Monroe. 

It wasn’t until the VHS Blockbuster era of the mid-1980s that I was able to see great old films in their entirety, among them Marilyn Monroe’s iconic performances in films like Bus Stop, Some Like It Hot, The Seven Year Itch, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Prince and the Showgirl. Monroe was an utterly unique presence on screen. Like many gay men, I intuitively understood her appeal on many levels. 

 She was a mass of contradictions--a love goddess who could not find lasting affection, a sex symbol who reportedly could not have an orgasm, a serious actress who never got a role that could fully realize her potential, yet she excelled as a self-satirizing comedienne. Her delicious sense of humor, quick wit and lightning-fast comic timing were juxtaposed against an equal measure of sadness and dark despair. She was the embodiment of the American Dream, a rags-to-riches fable of the poor orphan girl who rose to heights most people only dream about, and a cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for. Like her Gemini soulmate and fellow gay icon, Judy Garland, she transmuted her pain and insecurities into art and beauty, leaving the world too soon. In short, Marilyn Monroe is a near-impossible character for an ordinary mortal actor to play. 

Catherine Hicks

Poppy Montgomery

Mira Sorvino

 Over the years, many a brave and talented and actress has made the valient attempt, including Catherine Hicks in Marilyn: The Untold Story (1979), Constance Forslund in Moviola: This Year’s Blonde (1980) and Poppy Montgomery in an adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s Blonde (2001). But to me, not one of them did my idol justice. 

 Most decent female impersonators can imitate the most obvious facets of Monroe’s persona clearly enough, but the familiar gestures, mannerisms and breathy voice do not even begin to plumb the depths of Marilyn’s mysterious magnetism. How does one capture the essence of someone whose appeal still can’t be fully explained by her photogenic beauty, mannerisms or physical measurements? 

So complex and seemingly schizoid was Monroe’s personality that often two actresses are cast to portray her in the same film, one as the young Norma Jean and the other as the star persona Marilyn Monroe—think of Ashley Judd and Mira Sorvino in Norma Jean and Marilyn (1996) or Misty Rowe and Paula Lane in Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976) and Goodnight, Sweet Marilyn (1989). 

(Tellingly, almost all Monroe bio pics have been made for television, as if the producers knew that to splash a less-than-mythic Marilyn across a vast and wide cinema screen would fail miserably in conjuring movie magic and reveal their mere sleight-of-hand and legerdemain.) 

Michelle

 Before My Week with Marilyn, I must admit I had been underwhelmed by Michelle Williams. I had barely noticed her on Dawson’s Creek, and her much-lauded performance in Blue Valentine had left me cold (apparently, blank expressions and halting dialogue are enough to earn Oscar nods, I thought), and I approached seeing this movie with trepidation. But it was a movie about Marilyn, and I had to see it. 

 On the whole, I was more than pleasantly surprised by the film. With its literate and historically accurate script by Adrian Hodges, who obviously drew on a wealth of source material and not just the two memoirs by Prince and the Showgirl assistant director Colin Clark (The Prince, The Showgirl and Me and My Week with Marilyn), the film details a slice of Monroe’s personal and professional life in an entertaining and absorbing manner. Kudos are likewise owed to director Simon Curtis who keeps the action moving at an engaging pace and allows all the actors to shine. Painstaking attention to period detail also pays off for Monroe scholars like me...the recreation of the sets and costumes from the 1957 Olivier/Monroe film is truly uncanny. 

 The story is rooted in truth, whether or not you believe the protagonist’s claims that he had an affair with Monroe during the ill-fated filming of the souffle-light Terrence Rattigan comedy, and the movie’s brilliant ensemble cast does an impressive job, giving a birds-eye view of what might have really happened at Shepperton Studios all those years ago. 

Sir Laurence

Sir Kenneth

 As the uptight and egotistical Sir Laurence Olivier, more comfortable on a theater stage than a soundstage, Sir Kenneth Branagh (who inherited Olivier’s mantle as “the world’s greatest living actor”) is a delight, spoofing the image of Shakespearean actor as supercilious, sulking, pompous ass. Branagh also weaves in some vulnerability and compassion to his characterization, grudgingly acknowledging his impossible costar’s talent and accomplishments. Sir Kenneth received a well-deserved Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting actor for his performance as Olivier. 

MM and Paula Strasberg

Zoe Wanamaker as Paula Strasberg

 The mysterious figure of acting coach Paula Strasberg (wife of iconic Method guru Lee) is brought to life by the talented Zoe Wanamaker. Swathed in black caftans (she was nicknamed “Black Bart”) she resembles a witch whose over-the-top flattery casts spells that conjure Monroe’s ephemeral gifts from the ethos. Dominic Cooper is subtly effective as disgruntled photographer Milton Greene, who reinvented Monroe’s public image and helped her establish Marilyn Monroe Productions, and is now losing his grip on the star. 

Marilyn took Vivien's role for the film version of the Terrence Rattigan play

Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh

Perfectly played cameo appearances by Julia Ormond as Vivien Leigh, terrified of aging and losing her husband (she eventually did, to lovely young actress Joan Plowright), and Dame Judi Dench as compassionate costar Dame Sybil Thorndike, add dimension to the storyline. Dougray Scott as a cold and preoccupied Arthur Miller, and Toby Jones as beleaguered publicist Arthur Jacobs (who later produced the megahit Planet of the Apes film series), are equally on the mark. 

As Colin Clark, the privileged and seemingly naive young man who serves as the third assistant director and personal assistant to Olivier, Eddie Redmayne gives a charming performance, as does Emma Watson in one of her first adult roles as a studio wardrobe mistress. 

Emma Watson and Eddie Redmayne

 In short, the cast is uniformly excellent—but it’s Michelle Williams who is truly remarkable and holds the entire picture together. Without resorting to a cheap imitation, Williams closely approximates Monroe’s voice, gestures and famous walk. She recreates scenes from The Prince and the Showgirl with Marilyn’s uncanny quirkiness and joie de vivre. Obviously building the character from the inside out, Williams channels Monroe’s mercurial essence in a startling multilayered performance--here is a troubled yet talented girl, obviously suffering from anxiety, depression and overwhelming stage fright but determined to give her public its money’s worth. She is equal parts villainess and victim in the unfolding plotline, alternately adorable and exasperating. This is a miraculous performance by a skilled actress who clearly understood the complicated woman she was playing. I was entranced. 

The only suspensions of disbelief a die-hard Monroe fan might mention involve the musical numbers "Heat Wave" and "That Old Black Magic" which are given fresh contemporary restagings and arrangements—but Williams’s musical stylings as Monroe are so startling you would swear this is exactly how Monroe had performed them. 

 When Oscar nominations were announced that year, I was rooting all the way for Williams to take home the gold, and was appalled when Meryl Streep was named Best Actress for her lifeless, cardboard portrayal of another real-life legend, Margaret Thatcher, in The Iron Lady. (Had any of Streep’s other 5,000—ok, 17—nominations given her that third Oscar, I would have said she deserved it, but not this one!) As far as I’m concerned, Michelle was the winner that year. 

Today, I’m an unabashed and bonafide fan of Williams and feel she can do no wrong. (I even loved her sweetly underplayed Glinda the Good in the universally panned Oz the Great and Powerful.) So thank you, Michelle Williams: Your stunning portrayal achieved the impossible. You brought Marilyn back to life for a few precious hours for stalwart fans like me...and you’ve introduced her to a new generation of eager fans, proving that, in the hands of a keenly sensitive artist, nostalgia can still be a relevant art form. Marilyn herself would be proud!

The Other Side of Doris

The very name Doris Day conjures sunshine, happiness, sweetness and light. She brought smiles to the faces of millions with her ebulliently positive persona, wholesome good looks and angelic singing voice. Eternally, she’ll be known as the epitome of the girl next door...an image manufactured by Hollywood but largely embraced by the star herself, a down-to-earth midwestern girl from Cincinnati. In the Eisenhower ’50s, Day’s purity and virtue were held in high esteem, but that didn’t stop pianist and wit Oscar Levant from caustically joking that he knew Doris Day before she was a virgin. Her apple-pie image made her a star...but pigeonholed her into too-often bland film roles.

 A natural actress, Day rarely had the opportunity to exercise her strong flair for drama, except for a few non-singing forays into the mystery and thriller genres. Personally, I prefer her work in films like Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, Julie and Midnight Lace to either her early Warner Brothers musicals or her frothy 1960s sex comedies with Rock Hudson, Cary Grant and James Garner. Day always sparkles, but often in spite of her material.

 But what is arguably Doris Day’s greatest film performance combines both her musical and dramatic skills. As Ruth Etting in the biopic Love Me Or Leave Me (1955), Doris Day cemented her status as a lasting superstar by playing decidedly against type. Day’s first film as a freelance star, after a seven-year-long indentured servitude as a contract player at Warner Brothers, Love Me or Leave Me boasts a strong script, a juicy role for Doris, a selection of musical standards for her to sing, lushly arranged in high-MGM style, and a legendary costar who kept her on her toes in some highly dramatic scenes.

The dynamic performances of Cagney and Day

This film truly crackles with excitement in Day’s scenes with James Cagney, who plays Ruth Etting’s aggressive, crude and domineering manager husband, Marty “the Gimp” Snyder. Doris more than holds her own against Jimmy, one of the screen’s most iconic tough guys, and the pair create remarkable screen chemistry together. The combative, love-hate relationship of Etting and Snyder is beautifully realized in the tense and gripping square-offs between Day and Cagney, both actors giving surprisingly strong performances.

As Ruth, Doris wavers between admiration and appreciation for Snyder lifting her out of the dancehall and jump-starting her singing career, and fear and revulsion at his crudity and strong-arm tactics. Day should have been nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her triple-threat performance. The scene in which she’s reduced to utter hysteria as Cagney’s character hits her, knocks her down onto the bed and prepares to rape her (on the couple’s wedding night) is some of Day’s very best onscreen work.

 It’s Cagney’s last great role, too, in which he pays homage to his own iconic image of the violent bad guy, but adds touches of humor and vulnerability that he only rarely displayed in his early Busby Berkeley musicals and his Oscar-winning performance as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy. For his performance in Love Me or Leave Me, Cagney earned his final Academy Award nomination as Best Actor.

The film contains some of Day’s best musical numbers, too, including one that highlights her flair for dancing as well as singing. (Day’s original ambition was to be a hoofer until her legs were crushed in a freak train accident as a teenager.) Her performance of “Shakin’ the Blues Away” in the Ziegfeld Follies sequence is fortified with verve, and while she’s no Ann Miller, Miss Day can move. She really sells it. And her vocal renditions of "Everybody Loves My Baby," “You Made Me Love You” and “Ten Cents a Dance” are utterly sublime.

 Her portrayal of a street-smart dancehall hostess smoking, drinking and carousing in nightclubs provided her a change of pace, and Doris Day garnered almost unanimous raves for her multilayered performance, but not everyone was thrilled. She actually received a considerable amount of hate mail from her conservative fan base that preferred to see her continue to play sunny virgins or dutiful wives and mothers. Day, herself a Christian Scientist who had a soda fountain installed in her home to take the place of a bar, gloried in the freedom the role gave her to explore a darker side.

 If she looks a little different in this film than in any other, it’s by design. Director Charles Vidor preferred to shoot her from what she considered her “bad” side, which had a cheekier and harder look appropriate to the shrewd and ambitious character she was playing. This is the first and only film in which Day allowed herself to be photographed from the left side. (On a later picture, even the handsome Cary Grant had to accede to her request and allow himself to be filmed on his own “bad side” to accommodate Day.)

 After nearly a decade of playing bland ingenues, little sister types and arm candy to male stars from Ronald Reagan to Frank Sinatra at Warner Brothers, Doris Day had reinvented herself. Soon she’d work with Hitchcock, and then begin producing films on her own with her husband and manager Martin Melcher. Four years later, she’d earn her only Oscar nod for the souffle-light Pillow Talk and begin a long reign as Hollywood’s #1 box office star. But it was as Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me where she reached her cinematic zenith as actress, performer and legendary star.