Enjoy "Christmas in July"

Betty:  "Is it good luck or bad luck when a black cat crosses your path?"

Sam:    "That all depends on what happens afterwards."

Preston Sturges, on the brink of a bright winning streak of comedies that he wrote and directed through the 1940s, wrote and directed that dialogue in his simple and elegant 1940 comedy, Christmas in July.

This comedy is a classic I recommend watching now that we're still in the grips of a Recession with high unemployment rates.  Yes, it's an old movie but the heart of it still resonates.  Especially in these economic times.  It also has two excellent monologues -- one for an older actor and one for a young actress.  They might make great monologues for acting class and/or auditions.  Christmas in July is about a working class New Yorker, Jimmy MacDonald, who describes himself as "poor and unknown."  He's a good young man, a hardworking office clerk full of ideas and ambition.  Jimmy believes that you need money in order to be validated in the world and be a success.  He worries about getting married without money.  We discover this as soon as the story starts.  Jimmy and his fiancee are on the roof of his apartment building bantering about furniture.  Jimmy and Betty work for the same company.  Actors Dick Powell and Ellen Drew are perfectly cast.  They have chemistry and charisma together.  They complement each other and they do make a wonderful couple.  Drew, who should have but didn't become a big star at Paramount, glows in this role.  You know why Jimmy fell in love with Betty Casey.  She's got charm, depth and character.  We fall in love with her too.

Betty doesn't mind being poor.  She's got Jimmy and he's all the riches she needs.  But she understands his antsy ambition and self-doubt.  His sweet parents were always financially struggling.  He wants to ease the burden on his mother.  His father was "worn out at 48" and died because he couldn't afford a doctor.  Jimmy enters a new slogan contest for brand of coffee that gets lots of airtime on national radio.  The prize is $25,000.  At the office, Jimmy is so obsessed with winning the contest that he's not paying attention to his work.  He adds figures and he's been off lately.  The boss, Mr. Waterbury, calls him into his office and Jimmy admits why he's been pre-occupied.  Mr. Waterbury is a disciplined boss and also a loyal employer.  He tells his talented young employee, "I used to dream about $25,000 too."  He's giving Jimmy a life lesson based on experience.  Just because he never got $25,000 doesn't make him a flop.  "I'm not a failure, I'm a success," he states.  Mr. Waterbury adds, "...ambition is all right if it works.  But no system could be right where only half of 1% were successes and all the rest were failures.  That wouldn't be right."  He concludes by warmly telling his office clerk, "Now get the heck back to your desk and try to improve your arithmetic."  Keep in mind Preston Sturges wrote that dialogue over half a century before Occupy Wall Street.  This comes about 20 minutes into the picture right before the incident  that changes everything.  Three guys in the office, knowing that Jimmy entered the contest, send a fake telegram as a prank telling him that he won.

The prank gets out of control.  Jimmy falls for it.  Betty falls it.  The whole office falls for it.  Soon he's mistakenly given a check for $25,000 simply because he showed the gag telegram as proof to the frazzled head of the coffee company in need of a new slogan.

This comedy precedes Preston Sturges' classics Sullivan's Travels, The Lady Eve and The Palm Beach Story -- all comedies that take a look at how money or the lack of it changes the way people behave and the way people are treated.  Consider the touches of spirit and character Sturges shows in this compact comedy compared to recent huge-budgeted comedies from Adam Sandler.  Jimmy could afford (so he thinks) to buy Betty the engagement ring with an ice cube-sized diamond she sees in a store.  Betty choses something much simpler.  "I wouldn't want it to be showy," she says.  Then they buy presents for relatives and neighbors on their low-income block.  One of the first people Jimmy and Betty give a gift to is a little girl in a wheelchair.  And another thing -- when Jimmy gets the telegram, he doesn't quit his job.  He likes working for the company.  When he "wins," executives listen to his ideas and say they're good even if all his ideas aren't good.  Jimmy will be getting his own office with his name on the door.  These are exactly the benefits he believed money could bring.

Now he feels like he belongs in the world and has a place in it.  Of course, the truth will come out.  Life has pulled the rug right out from under Jimmy MacDonald.  He's no longer sure of himself.  But Betty is sure of him.  The boss doesn't think it's practical to give Jimmy the promotion and office now that he doesn't really have $25,000.  Betty declares, "It is practical, Mr. Baxter.  It's the most practical idea you ever had."  Here, Betty doesn't just speak up for the man she loves, the man she believes in, she speaks up for every young person with ideas and drive to have a shot at the American Dream.  She speaks up for the right to try and succeed, for the right to try and fail.  It's one thing to be older and know that you tried your best when you were young.  It's one thing to muff your chance when you've had it.  It's another thing never to have had the chance at all.  Betty speaks up for Jimmy's chance and ends with "His name's already on the door."

Ellen Drew delivers that one minute-long monologue beautifully.  All the love, belief and compassion Betty has gets crystalized in that plea for acceptance.  Her eyes shine with conviction and wisdom.  In Sturges' world, some of the most extraordinary people we could ever hope to meet are the ordinary people in everyday life.  People like Betty.  She's Jimmy's biggest Christmas gift in July.  That monologue in the final few minutes of the movie could work as a good classroom exercise or audition piece for 20something actresses.  The one minute-long monologue delivered by Mr. Waterbury early in the film is a perfect fit for men in their 40s or 50s.  As I've blogged before about Preston Sturges, one of the things I love most about his direction is that he gets out of the actors' way.  He's written good dialogue.  He tends to let the camera shot rest on the actors doing their work.  He does not use fancy angles or lots of cuts to add energy.  Good actors doing their work with good dialogue give the scenes the energy they need.  The shots don't feel static.  It's handsomely photographed.  Christmas in July has the black and white pearliness that seemed to be a hallmark of cinematography in Paramount Pictures of the 1930s and early 40s.  It looks smart, tailored.  What I respond to even more now in this comedy is its warmth and heart.  Preston Sturges cared about people.  That comes through in the comedies he wrote and directed.  His satires are not mean-spirited.

Christmas in July runs only about 1 hour and 5 minutes long.  Like the stone on Betty's engagement ring, it's a lovely little gem that's not showy.

Norma Shearer as "Marie Antoinette"

Bastille Day is celebrated this weekend.  One Bastille Day years ago back in New York City, I went to my favorite video rental shop -- Alan's Alley in the Chelsea section of Manhattan -- and rented a DVD of the lavish 1938 MGM Hollywood spectacle, Marie Antoinette.  The studio spared no expense mounting this vehicle for its top star near the end of her glory days on the lot -- Norma Shearer.

She received a Best Actress of 1938 Oscar nomination for playing the doomed monarch of France.  She'd have two fine films for 1939 -- Idiot's Delight with Clark Gable and The Women.  After that, she'd go from Camembert to Limburger cheese in the script aroma department.  The studio was easing out its actors who became big stars in the silent era.  Stars like Shearer, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo.  They all left MGM in the early 1940s.  With Marie Antoinette, you have to keep in mind that this is history as written by folks in Culver City, California.  In other words, count on entertainment more so than accuracy.  And it has one of my favorite clunky lines of dialogue in a good classic movie.  Longer than the standard Hollywood release of that time, it ran about 2 hours and 20 minutes yet it's lively.  The narrative takes a couple of detours but the movie isn't dull.  In fact, all the royal intrigue and gossip make that Real Housewives franchise on cable TV look like a kiddie squabble in a day care center.  Young Marie wants to be a royal.  She's like an Austrian version of The Bachelorette -- willing to wed a man she's just met.  She enters into an arranged marriage after getting hooked up with plump young Louis XVI played by Robert Morley.  When a girl sings "Some Day My Prince Will Come," this is not what she has in mind.  But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do if she wants to play the main room at the palace.  Marie longs to live of life of privilege and romance.

Marie will have plenty of free time on her wedding night.  Does Louis even know that he has a penis?  Morley gives you serious Kathy Najimy face (see the movies Sister Act and Sister Act 2).  He got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance.

The future King Louis is Marie's big ticket to Paris...and the Paris sights.  She sees them all.  She lives the glamorous life while the peasants starve.  She has to deal with a new social circle, with new rules and manners, with backstabbing and bitchery.  Versailles is full of queens and only one of those queens is a real woman -- Marie Antoinette.

There won't be any French kissing with King Louis so Marie's needs to finds something on the side.  That comes in the very handsome, physically fit form of Tyrone Power.

I can't remember the name of his character but he sure looked good.  That's really all he had to do.  Look good, kiss Norma, leave, come back years later, repeat.  Tyrone Power was on loan-out from 20th Century Fox studio.  MGM was loaning Myrna Loy to Fox to star opposite Tyrone in The Rains Came.  He doesn't have a whole lot to do because, well...it's not his studio and it's not his picture.  It's Norma's.  But he sure looks good.

He and Marie have this sort of Same Time, Next Year love thing going on for a long time.  While he's gone, Marie takes up with a palace fixture played by Joseph Schildkraut.

This part of the movie confused me.  How Marie could get hot for a guy who looked like he was doing the Jean Harlow role in a Versailles production of Dinner at Eight was beyond me.  But this is all because King Louis is unaware of his penis and his queen is focused on a royal life of glamorous excess.  Marie's biggest and most vicious opponent is Madame du Barry, played by the always excellent Gladys George.

Mme. du Barry was practically the bicycle of Paris.  She'd been ridden by just about every count, duke and coachman.  She had designs on the throne.  So, you know what that means -- verbal cat fight.  She and Marie really want to snatch each other's powered wig off, but they can't.  So they spar with clever dialogue and sophisticated insults.  Not like on Real Housewives.  This has better dialogue, better costumes, better sets, better hair.

In Marie's world, it's all about the parties, the pretty clothes, the jewels and a little sexual jest on the side because...yes.  Louis is still unaware of his penis.  She has kids but I'm not sure who the royal baby daddy is.  You feel sorry for Louis.  He's good but he's so clueless.  If he did have an erection in bed with his wife, he wouldn't know what to do with it.  He'd think something was wrong.  He'd probably just sit on the edge of the bed and wait for the swelling to go down.  Meanwhile, the peasants are rightfully pissed.  Marie doesn't realize how serious this is.  These people are pissed and French.  They've had it with trying to stuff a dead rat for Christmas dinner while she spends more a week on hair care than the average Frenchman earns in a year.  She gets a reality check when a hungry, angry mob storms Versailles.  The party's over for the French monarchy.

Now her palace home has become her prison.  We're in the last 15 or 20 minutes of the movie and my favorite "What the heck were they thinking?" line is coming up.  Marie's nerves are shot and she's trying to make a nighttime getaway with the kids.  A faithful palace guard is helping her.  Heaven forbid she just throw on some used clothing and haul ass down the back exit.  No.  The anxious guard has to wait outside her  room while she puts on her matching getaway outfit (costumes by Adrian). Typical Queen Behavior.  She's terrified and flitting around the room as she nervously opens closets.  The guard tells her to hurry up..  She's freaked out because she can't recall where the she hid the outfit.  He says something like "Your Highness, did you look in the trunk?" and then comes my favorite line.

A frantic Marie Antoinette says in her state of confusion, "Oh, where is my head?!?"

Three credited writers on this screenplay and they came up with a line like that.  For Marie Antoinette.  I giggle every time I see this scene.  You know how the story ends.  The angry French find her and throw her in prison without her pretty clothes and her wigs.  She's sentenced to the guillotine.  Her hair's a mess.  Marie looks raggedy near the end.  But guess who shows up?  Tyrone Power obviously finished shooting an Alice Faye musical over at Fox, so he drove back over to MGM for one last love scene.  Broken down Marie looks like Carol Burnett as the charwoman.  He looks just as good as he did in the first act.  Only a little gray at the temples.  Let's face it, he was basically loan-out eye candy in this picture.  Norma's Oscar nomination came for the last 20 minutes of Marie Antoinette.  She did some of her best screen acting in that section, especially in the prison scenes leading up to the queen's horrible fate.  We hear an audio montage of things Marie Antoinette said in happier times as she's transported to her execution site.

We do not hear "Oh, where is my head?!?"

Here's some Hollywood trivia for you:  If it wasn't for Norman Shearer, Janet Leigh would never have received an Oscar nomination for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.  When Shearer was happily in retirement in the 1940s and no longer a Hollywood movie queen, she met a young woman whom, she felt, had screen charisma.

She arranged for Janet Leigh to meet with MGM studio executives and the rest is movie history.  Norma Shearer discovered Janet Leigh.  Both women got Academy Award nominations for playing a character who got an unkind cut after coming into big money without considering the consequences.

Diversity on TCM: Spike Lee

Thank you, Turner Classic Movies, for recently presenting Oscar-nominated filmmaker Spike Lee as a guest programmer with host Robert Osborne.  Seeing the renowned African-American director/writer/actor/producer introduce four of his favorite classic films was so significant for young minority viewers, future filmmakers and for the future appreciation of classic films.  It was welcomed and refreshing racial diversity.  We got new information too.  I loved hearing how Spike Lee was influenced by director/writer Billy Wilder and how a shot in Wilder's Ace in the Hole (formerly titled The Big Carnival) was referenced in his major 1992 release.  I also loved hearing how he got the legendary director and its star, Kirk Douglas, to autograph his souvenir poster of that film.

Here's how TCM again scored points in racial diversity:  Rarely do we see black people on TV talking about classic films even though millions of us do love classic films.  Remember when AMC was American Movie Classics and had hosts?  Except for Whoopi Goldberg in a guest host spot, none of the hosts was black.  All the hosts were white.  When AMC, in the last few years of its previous format, was auditioning for new hosts, I could not get an audition to save my life.  And this was after I had a VH1 celebrity talk show to my credit -- a show on which I'd had actors Kirk Douglas, Don Ameche, Debbie Reynolds, Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine and Fay Wray as guests. They were in some of the movies shown on AMC.  On the network morning shows and film review programs, you did not see a black people as the weekly film critics.  Gene Shalit, Gene Siskel, Joel Siegel, Siskel & Ebert on their syndicated show, Jeffrey Lyons, Richard Roeper, Leonard Maltin, Ben Mankiewicz & Ben Lyons (son of Jeffrey Lyons), Christy Lemire, David Edelstein on CBS' Sunday Morning, even Kathie Lee Gifford's son, Cody, for a summer on NBC's Today show -- that list covers four decades of a non-racially mixed group.  We black folks do not see reflections of ourselves in that group.  Think about this.  What if Olympics coverage had no women doing sports commentary?  What if a pop music talent competition show like American Idol or The Voice never had a black judge?  Would viewers complain "Are you saying that black folks don't know anything about pop music?"  We occasionally see Elvis Mitchell, film critic formerly of The New York Times.  But some TV segment producers must think Elvis, an excellent writer, is the only black person who knows movies.  When they need to book a minority, Elvis has become the Touré of film talk. Trust me, there are many black movie critics in New York City.  I've seen them, chatted with them and sat with them at screenings.  You just don't see them on TV.  In that group of movie critics I listed before Elvis, who got this year's Pulitzer Prize for Film Criticism?  None of them.  The winner was this guy --

Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe.  From my experience, the playing field in the area of movie critics on TV was not a level one.  Just about all of us minorities have hit a "color wall" at some time in the course of our careers.  In my many years of broadcast TV, the thickest color wall I ever had to break through was the one in New York's TV news area so I could review movies like Cody Gifford got the chance to do.  Even though I had critic's TV/radio and print experience before I got to New York, there was always an odd resistance.  I write "odd" because it always disappeared in late January when my news producer bosses would enthusiastically ask me to put together classic film pieces perfect for February's Black History Month segments.  It did make me wonder what message TV news was implying by rarely presenting black people doing upscale film and theatre reviews.  On TCM, Spike Lee presented The Night of the Hunter, the first and only film directed by actor Charles Laughton.  I discovered this film on KTTV local Channel 11 when I was a kid growing up in 1960s South Central L.A.  Before I was in high school, this was a favorite film of mine to see around Christmastime.  It was like a Bible story to me.  It frightened and fascinated me.  In 1989 when I saw the outstanding Do The Right Thing, I thought of Laughton's film when I saw the rings worn by one of Spike's characters.

As Spike told TCM viewers, Radio Raheem's Love Hate bling was inspired by the marked fingers of the preacher man Robert Mitchum brilliantly played in that 1955 classic.

I can assure you that some young black Spike Lee fan who loves Do The Right Thing watched The Night of the Hunter and saw the source of his inspiration.  The door has been opened.  Minority youths watching Spike co-host were also inspired by him to sample the work of Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, Fellini and Kurosawa.  He mentioned all those directors.  I loved discovering that Laughton's film spoke to Spike the same way it did to me.  It taught me to notice other aspects of a film.  Here, the story and the acting grabbed my attention immediately.  I loved how Laughton realized that childhood is not easy.  It has its horrors.  Horrors that come from grown-ups, the people who order "Do what I tell you to do."  The movie appeals to children the way a storybook fable does.  It's simple, meaningful.  So is the set design.  The preacher is a psychotic killer, a wolf in sheep's clothing.  His weapon/phallic symbol is a switchblade.  I noticed how the lighting and set design made an interior look like the inside of a chapel and the tip of a lethal knife.  Religion and danger, good and evil, in the same image.

This is picked up in the shot on Shelley Winters as the widowed mother who becomes the preacher's new bride.  In one shot of her lying on the bed, a light on her face illuminates her pillow like a halo on a martyred saint, the kind of saint we saw in Catholic school on holy cards.  There's another light, a light that references the tip of the blade.

Those images, that composition were true art to me then and now.  This was the kind of stylized look that earned praise for German silent filmmakers in the 1920s.  Think of Murnau's 1927 classic, Sunrise:  A Song of Two Humans.  I still find of the images in The Night of the Hunter so beautiful that I'd love to have a few of them framed.  Like the stand-off between the evil preacher and the protector of two children, the older lady played superbly by Lillian Gish.  I'd have given her a Best Supporting Actress of 1955 Academy Award nomination for this performance.  The Oscars® ignored this film.

Gish became a Hollywood movie actress in the silent era, several years before films learned how to talk.  She was a top star by 1917 after having appeared in 1915's controversial The Birth of a Nation and 1916's Intolerance.  She was no "Norma Desmond." Gish worked a lot through the years.  Her last starring role was in 1987's The Whales of August with Bette Davis.  When it came to acting without dialogue, she was an artist.  In another scene, the preacher chases after the two children.  When he charges up the cellar stairs, he looks like the monster in James Whale's classics from the 1930s, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein.  Laughton had a great directorial eye.

The use of light and dark and shadow is so rich in The Night of the Hunter.  Unfortunately, as Lee mentioned with Osborne, most critics were so cold to this tale of good versus evil that their reception broke Laughton's heart and he never directed another film.

Maybe if there had been critics like Spike and me around at that time, Charles Laughton would've had the motivation to make a second movie.  Today, the term "media circus" is used frequently when describing big news story coverage -- like the coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial.  Wilder literally gave us a media circus in Ace in the Hole, his film after his classic Sunset Blvd.  Kirk Douglas played the unscrupulous smalltime reporter who exploits a miner trapped in a cave to land a juicy news job in New York City.

Spike said he copied Wilder's final shot of this climatic scene in his 1992 film, Malcolm X. 

Again, a connection was made between popular modern work and a classic film.  Again, the door was opened.  Oscar winner Whoopi Goldberg is the only other black celebrity I can recall who has been a TCM Guest Programmer.  (I'm gonna brag.  I helped TCM book her after I was contacted by one of the channel's producers, Darcy Hettrich, to lend a hand.  I worked with Whoopi on her radio show at the time.  As a movie critic.)  Seeing Spike was also a joy.  A significant joy, I might add.  He showed that the audience of those who studied, were influenced by and can talk about classic films is racially diverse.  That's a vibe we never really got from network news programs.  Thanks, TCM.

Mom & Dad & Ernest Borgnine

A lot has been written today for newspaper or TV reports on the long career of Academy Award winner and TV sitcom star, Ernest Borgnine.  The veteran actor passed away over the weekend at age 95.  Like millions of others, I'm sure, my first thought upon learning of his death was of his Oscar-winning performance as Marty.  As the lonely middle-aged butcher who's so deserving of love, he gave one of the most elegant and touching lead performances by an actor in a 1950s Hollywood film.  Then I thought of a time in his personal life that provided a rare moment of goofiness between my parents.  It's a moment I have cherished for years and years.  It came about because "Marty" had married "The Merm."  Yes, Ernest Borgnine married Broadway belter Ethel Merman after her sucess onstage in Gypsy and during the run of his hit ABC sitcom, McHale's Navy.

Borgnine had gotten a divorce from Katy Jurado, the Mexican actress seen in the classic western, High Noon with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly.

How'd he go from her to the battle-ax mother-in-law in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World?

I have no idea.  This was decades before Match.com, JDates and Craigslist.  But somehow, those two got a hook up.

It was a sunny, breezy, lazy early morning in Southern California.  I was a grade schooler.  My little sister and I were in the kitchen with Mom and Dad.  Neither of them had to work that day.  Mom was still in her robe, soon to fix us breakfast.  Dad had gone out, as he usually did, to get the Los Angeles Times newspaper.  My parents divorced after 13 years of marriage, when I was just starting high school.  It was a long, dry Catholic marriage.  Mom and Dad never seemed to take delight in each other's company.  I can't recall ever seeing them hug and hold hands.  Instead of a married couple, they often seemed more like two veteran co-workers who had to share a hotel room on a business trip.  From what I saw as a youngster, their marriage didn't have any laughs.  Except for one great day.  That morning, Mom sat in one chair at the kitchen table with the same facial expression you see on Thelma Ritter listening to Eve Harrington tell how she wound up in New York and backstage in All About Eve.  Dad was back home with the paper and sat with her at the table.  He read the paper.  Neither spoke.  I could see Dad was focused on the celebrity photo smack dab in the middle of the front page.

He also had a deadpan expression, like he'd just read news of a Hollywood accident, not a marriage announcement.  Mom had a "What is it?" face.  Dad slowly turned the paper around and showed her the front page.  Mom focused on the photo, silently read the news, gazed up at Dad and now with a Thelma Ritter-like delivery said, "Can you just imagine what they look like first thing in the morning?"  A pause -- and then my parents spontaneously broke out into gales of laughter.  I'd never seen them make each other laugh like that before.  And I never would again.  They laughed the way my sister and I did watching Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons.  They were like big kids.  They were fun to watch.  I loved it.  Their laughter was so infectious that I started laughing too.  Mom and Dad's marriage lasted a heck of lot longer than Merman's did.  Her comments on the short marriage to Borgnine warranted a blank page in her autobiography.

Larry Ashmead, my late friend, was the beloved executive editor of HarperCollins Books.  When I was new in New York City and working for WPIX TV, Larry invited me to his office.  We were chatting.  Come to find out, one of his literary credits was having been Merman's editor for that book.  Larry made me promise nevcr to repeat it on camera (a promise I kept) and then he told me the story behind the blank page.  I laughed like Mom and Dad did reacting to her wedding photo.

Ernest Borgnine had a long, accomplished career in film and television.  He may not have considered it an accomplishment, but a bit of his life made for a golden moment in my family history.  One sunny day, I saw my parents get giddy and actually take a sheer delight in each other's company.  They shared big belly laughs in our South Central L.A. kitchen at the thought of how Ernest Borgnine and Ethel Merman looked the morning after their honeymoon night.  What an odd and wonderful childhood memory that is.

Overlooked by Oscars 2: Andy Griffith

"Wouldn't that be wonderful." ~Whoopi Goldberg

I whole-heartedly agreed with Whoopi Goldberg the early morning I told her about the Andy Griffith performance I'd seen the night before at a New York City preview screening of Waitress, written and directed by the late Adrienne Shelly.  I reviewed the movie on Whoopi's syndicated radio morning radio show.  Before we went on the air, I told her I hoped the movie would bring Andy Griffith an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.  The above quote was her immediate reaction.  As the dapper, somewhat mysterious character called Old Joe, he's as crusty as the pies that make the lead female character so popular in a small town Southern diner.

This indie comedy about the sweet and sour in Americana was one of my favorite films of 2007.  It's a beauty of a movie and Griffith's performance adds to its wonderfulness.  He's not Matlock here.  He's not Sheriff Andy Taylor from TV's classic The Andy Griffith Show.  Old Joe in Waitress reminded us of Griffith's versatile gifts as an actor.

One of our radio show co-workers in the room only new Griffith from his famed CBS sitcom.  Whoopi and I quickly brought up and recommended his searing dramatic performance in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd.  In an earlier post, I blogged about actors who were "Overlooked by Oscars" -- never nominated after decades of memorable work.  This was inspired by a remark Whoopi made at work one morning.  When actors say "It's an honor just to be nominated," that's serious.  When young entertainment reporters comment that a star "has only one Oscar," that's a lame thing to say.  Some veteran acclaimed actors were never even nominated.  Like the first actor I mentioned, Edward G. Robinson.  Now I want to add the late Andy Griffith to my list.  His blistering and brilliant work as media monster Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes in A Face in the Crowd is one of the best performances of the 1950s by an actor in a Hollywood film.  Andy Griffith burns up the screen in that role, a role that still has relevance today.

Discovered by a lifestyles reporter for a radio show (played by Patricia Neal), he's a boozin', brawlin' good ol' boy drifter whose got a personality that instantly clicks with listeners and, later, television viewers.  There are warts behind his homespun, friendly public image.

If you only know Griffith from his TV shows, you must see this film.  The same kind of raves attached to Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in the Broadway and film versions of A Streetcar Named Desire apply to Griffith here.  His work is raw, primal, sexual, intense, brutal and unrestrained.  You just know "Lonesome" Rhodes is like a wild stallion in the sack.  He's magnetic.  You feel the pull he has on people.  You feel his power to pervert that pull as his TV fame escalates like an undeclared war.  He manipulates the medium of TV for financial gain and dark political influence as he warns "I'm not just an entertainer.  I'm an influence, a wielder of opinion, a force.  A force!"

He's a user.  Yet Griffith gives you glimpses into the desperate loneliness Rhodes tries to cover up with his aggressive abuse of power.  You see that media monsters are not born.  They're made.  And, perhaps, we help make those monsters at a cost to our freedoms and democracy.  This film was made after Griffith's Broadway debut, in a military comedy, and three years before the premiere of his CBS sitcom with Don Knotts and little Ron Howard.  Hard to believe today that his blazing A Face in the Crowd performance did not put him in the Oscar race for Best Actor of 1957.  Marlon Brando was up for Sayonara.  Alec Guinness won for The Bridge on the River Kwai.  Two-time Oscar winner Anthony Quinn was nominated for Wild Is The Wind.  I saw Quinn as the Italian widower who flies back to the Old Country and returns to his farm with a new bride -- his late wife's sister, played by Anna Magnani.  Quinn's good but, unlike Magnani and co-star Anthony Franciosa, he overbakes it sometimes.  You catch him acting.  Andy Griffith becomes "Lonesome" Rhodes.  His portrayal gets a grip on your neck and drags you to the dark side for a while.  A Face in the Crowd co-stars Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau (both in pic below), Lee Remick, Kay Medford and Anthony Franciosa were all Oscar nominees for other film work.  Franciosa was a Best Actor Oscar nominee for 1957's A Hatful of Rain.

Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd got no Oscar nominations.  Andy Griffith never got an Oscar nomination.  To me, that was a major oversight.

This is the classic film and character regularly referenced by Keith Olbermann when he was on MSNBC and verbally slapped national TV/radio show host Glenn Beck.  Did you know Whoopi Goldberg was considered to star in a possible late 1980s/early 1990s remake of A Face in the Crowd?This movie aired frequently on local KHJ TV/Ch. 9 in Los Angeles when I was a kid.  That's when I discovered there was so much more to Andy Griffith's talent than his Mayberry adventures I enjoyed so much on CBS.  Kazan's film made me think about the power of television and our responsibility as Americans when faced with corruption.  To this day, I'm surprised that more of Griffith's TV fans aren't aware of this picture.  His work in Kazan's film is powerful and unforgettable.  It's a disturbing knockout.  That same channel (now called KCAL 9) aired his performance as the hillbilly whose brains and brawn baffle and amaze his Air Force officers in the World War II comedy, No Time for Sergeants.  Griffith recreated one of his Tony-nominated Broadway roles here.  My Army veteran dad loved that 1958 comedy movie.  Griffith's other Tony nod came for taking on one of James Stewart's top 1939 roles when he played the lawman in a musical version of Destry Rides Again. I loved Andy Griffith as a cowboy actor in the 1975 Hollywood-on-Hollywood comedy, Hearts of the West.  In the early days of talking movies, he's a veteran who knows better than to volunteer for no-pay stunt work.  He teaches this to the clueless young Hollywood hopeful Jeff Bridges plays.  A free stunt he performs with a horse has him moaning in a state of testicular distress.  Griffith's wise mature cowboy tends to the pained young one and says, "You never do it for nothin'.  You'll ruin the business."  Broadway, film, television -- what a talent Andy Griffith was.  Here's some trivia about Waitress:  Three of the movie's cast members are now ABC TV stars.  Nathan Fillion solves murders as TV's Castle.  Cheryl Hines and Jeremy Sisto get laughs in Suburgatory.

To give you an idea of the quality of films Hollywood gave us in 1957 versus today, here are some of that year's releases:  A Face in the Crowd, 12 Angry Men, Sweet Smell of Success, Paths of Glory, Funny Face, The Pajama Game, An Affair to Remember, Wild Is The Wind, A Hatful of Rain, Peyton Place, Sayonara, The Prince and the Showgirl with Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier,  Elvis Presley in Jailhouse Rock, Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution and Love in the Afternoon, Disney's Old Yeller, 3:10 to Yuma and The Bridge of the River Kwai.  Ingmar Bergman gave us the subtitled Swedish film, The Seventh Seal.  From Italy, Fellini graced us with Nights of Cabiria.

Kazan's A Face in the Crowd is a Warner Brothers DVD release.  You'll see what I mean about Andy Griffith's brilliance.

Bravo, Anderson Cooper

I used to wake up just about every weekday to Anderson Cooper.  But he wouldn't know me if I sat next to him in a New York City diner.  And I have sat next to him in a New York City diner.  I'll explain later.  I did a CNN segment with him once.  It didn't feel like a friendly set over there but he was extremely friendly and welcoming.  Today the gay community welcomes him as he publicly announces he's a member of the club.  Honestly, this is not a "news bulletin" for many of us.  I'd have been more surprised if CNN reported that he's straight.  (Which CNN could very well do considering its recent track record.)  Still his statement is significant and I sincerely wish him an even happier heart and much love in his life.  Here's a blog on my memories of Anderson Cooper and why his public "coming out" is a great step forward in my opinion.

In the mid-to-late '90s, I worked on a local early morning news show, "Good Day New York," on Fox5 Television/WNYW.  I'd get up at 3:00 in the morning.  Many times I had to be at work at 4:15 or 4:30am.  My habit was to turn ABC to get the pre-dawn news and updates on the overnight developments so I'd be up on the current events by the time I got to the office.  Anderson Cooper worked on ABC then.  I'd watch his features and say, "Wow, that guy's a good reporter."  Then I noticed that he lived just a couple of blocks away from me, so I frequently saw him walking around the neighborhood.  This was when the Chelsea section of NYC was still delightfully under-the-radar and before he shot up to network stardom.  Off-camera, Anderson Cooper could really dress down then.  Military pants and festive T-shirts.  Sometimes the look was sort of "Fighting in Fallujah"-meets-"Hello Kitty."  I'd often see him in neighborhood restaurants on what seemed to be a date with another gent. I wanted to compliment him on his great journalism but I didn't want to intrude.  Through the years, when I constantly heard that chant of "Why doesn't he come out? Why doesn't he come out?," I did wish guys would shut up about it.  First of all, he certainly didn't act closeted when out with friends in the neighborhood.  Well-behaved but not closeted.  Second, I felt he didn't want to go from "journalist Anderson Cooper" to being called "openly gay journalist Anderson Cooper."  He didn't want his sexual orientation to be his intro, if you will.  No one ever said "Openly hetero news anchor Tom Brokaw" or "Openly hetero journalist Katie Couric." But "openly gay" surely would've been tagged onto his credentials.  Third, I was convinced many of those male chants sprung from his being handsome young man with network celebrity status and good pay.

If Anderson Cooper had all his intelligence, wit, soul, heart, manners and journalististic skills but possessed those qualities in a package that looked like actor Jack Black....

...most of those dudes wouldn't have cared if he came out or not.  If he looked like that, sat on a barstool in trendy Manhattan gay club and caught on fire...they wouldn't have picked up the seltzer gun to put him out.  Let's face it:  Anderson Cooper is a rich handsome TV star which makes his announcement today a juicy headline.  I started my professional TV career at the ABC affiliate in Milwaukee.  I loved working on WISN but the big problem I had there was the same problem I had on my previous job which was on 93QFM Radio -- dealing with racist and homophobic bullshit.  It started with hate mail.  The n-word.  The f-word.  When I got to TV, the hate mail decreased drastically.  Just because folks are bigots doesn't mean they're stupid. They saved money on postage.  They waited until I was off work, called the station, asked for my voicemail and left verbal anonymous messages with racial slurs and/or calling me a fa***t.  I got hate voicemail. In the '80s, you didn't have openly gay people hosting syndicated entertainment talk shows and you sure as hell didn't see them doing network news.  Just like, back then, you didn't see black folks covering entertainment news, doing film reviews and hosting celebrity talk shows.  Max Robinson had broken the color barrier on ABC World News as the first black person to anchor a network evening newscast.  I co-hosted and produced a live daytime entertainment talk show on WISN called More.  One of the biggest battles I ever had with the station VP of Programming was when I wanted to fly in former NFL star Dave Kopay to talk about his new book.  He came out in The Dave Kopay Story. 

Within one hour, the $3000 budget we had to fly in any cast member of Dynasty (if we could've gotten one) was suddenly gone when I pitched flying in Dave Kopay to be a guest on our show for May ratings.  I won the battle.  He came on as a guest. I paid his L.A. plane fare out of my own pocket and he was most appreciative.  He was a great guest.  The studio audience loved him.  The guys in the audience and the crew could've cared less about him being gay.  They wanted autographs and wanted to talk about his gridiron days with the Green Bay Packers.  Kopay really had balls.  He could've stayed in the closet and made big bucks covering sports on TV like other former pro athletes.  He wanted work as a sportscaster but couldn't get any because of being openly gay.

Dave Kopay was the first NFL star who ever asked me to take him out to dinner.  I, of course, did.  After my VH1 years, I was approached to work on WNBC News and be a regular on a new live program it was launching, "Weekend Today in New York."  I was there for the premiere in September 1992 (with Matt Lauer) and one of the reasons why I quit that hit show in January 1995  because of diversity issues.  I refused to continue being treated like a 2nd class citizen.  I've blogged before that the news director at that time had "a problem" with Harvey Fierstein being openly gay and refused to air the interview of Harvey I'd taped when he was promoting Mrs. Doubtfire.  That interview could've aired on Nickelodeon.  There was nothing inappropriate in it.  The same boss nixed me doing a street fair fundraiser segment with NY members of SAGE, the organization for gay and lesbian seniors.  But hidden camera reports on irresponsible sexual practices of some gay men in sex clubs made the news.  As I've also mentioned before, my unemployed partner was diagnosed with full-blown AIDS four months after the show premiered.  I was strongly advised by gay co-workers to keep that news quiet in order to keep my job.  That's how it was in 1992.  The hardest chapter of my career was that period when I was supposed to be funny and entertaining on a live weekend news show while being caregiver to someone terminally ill off-camera.  I could not share it with staff and viewers the way Katie Couric had the freedom to share her private life when her late, wonderful husband was stricken with cancer.  I wish I'd had that freedom.  I wish I could've done segments on what it was like for me -- segments that could've helped other people also caring for someone critically ill while they tried to hold down a job.  I wish I could've helped put a face on the AIDS caregiver and partner.  But I couldn't share because I'm gay.  I could not afford to lose that job.  It took care of me and my partner.  I couldn't share his illness.  I couldn't share news that he died.  Remember, after Ellen DeGeneres came out, she didn't work for quite a while.  She was scorned.  Today, no one is saying "Wow. Can Cooper keep his job?" simply because he's gay.

Things have changed.  Sometimes it may not feel like they have, but they have.  If the kind of diversity embrace Anderson Cooper is feeling today had existed back in 1992/93, I could've shared my truth on TV and felt safe.  If it had existed in 1984, WISN TV would've paid for Dave Kopay's plane ticket.  OK. Anderson Cooper's news may have been met with -- as Claude Rains says in Casablanca -- "I'm shocked, SHOCKED..." by some.  If he was in a closet, he was in there to get a new blue shirt and some shoes. The door was definitely open. But this could mean less fear for gays and lesbians in the future in areas of the media that have not been so liberal.  Just like Max Robinson broke the network anchor color wall in the 1980s, we might see a gay or lesbian journalist anchor the network evening news in the future on ABC, NBC or CBS.  That a possibility Cooper's announcement presents.

I did a movie review segment with Anderson Cooper live on CNN in 2002.  About 6-8 minutes.  I had a fabulous time with him.  I used to eat just about every day at the Eros Diner in Chelsea, right next door to my apartment.  Anderson came in frequently.  I said "Hello" to him a lot.  He said "Hello" back never look up from his newspaper when he did.  And he was often seated right next to me.  He never recognized me -- even though I'm positive I'm the only gay black man who sat next to him on live TV to talk about Jodie Foster movies.  This always made the Greek diner staff laugh because I'd sit there with a Kathy Griffin expression on my face like I was about to say "Cooper!  Do you only look at black people when they're next to a FEMA trailer? Hello!!! Look at me and say 'Hi!' dammit!" Seriously. I could've been next to him in nothing but a thong and jackboots with a ferret on my head and he would not have noticed. And, as Kathy Griffin might say, "Bitch! Ya waited until after Pride Month was over and then you break the news!?!?!?  You coulda been a Grand Marshal in a parade!!"

But he's a nice guy. An excellent journalist. And he did something many didn't feel free enough to do 20 years ago.  Especially those with network jobs and high profiles.  We've come a long way.  All the best to him.  We snarky, slightly jaded big city types are not surprised at his news.  But it is a surprise to millions of other people, believe me.  When I was a kid, we didn't have openly gay people on TV to look up to and make us dream bigger.  Anderson Cooper's step forward today is relevant to and important for gay youth in America.  Let's give him credit for that.  Bravo, Anderson Cooper.  (Even though you don't recognize me.)

On VH1 with Spike Lee

This goes back to those, for me, great days in the late 1980s when I worked happily on and for VH1 as a veejay and talk show host in New York City.  If I got a book deal to write a celebrity memoir or collection of observations like every single one of those Real Housewives seems to get, this would definitely be in my book.  It's about my first interview of celebrated filmmaker Spike Lee.  More specifically, it's a little story behind his understandable tardiness to our studio for that interview.

Veteran television producer Sharon Kelly is still a dear friend to this day.  Back in 1988, I was lucky to have her as a co-worker.  Blonde, funny, focused, fair, candid, compassionate and as disciplined as a drill sergeant on the set, she was one of my segment producers and she was our studio co-ordinator.  She scheduled times for interviews and arranged for cars to pick up our guests.  The network had a corporate account with a car service.  Spike Lee was scheduled to come so I could tape an interview of him for our show, Celebrity Hour.  The filmmaker was about 15 minutes late.  Sharon called the car service headquarters to make sure a car had arrived at Lee's residence in Brooklyn.  It had.  Now nearly thirty minutes late, Spike Lee hurries into our studio.  He's rushed, perspiring and apologetic.  Sharon, of course, asked if there was a problem with the car service.  Without anger, Spike matter-of-factly and honestly answered, "The driver wouldn't let me in."

"What?!?," Sharon responded.

Then the filmmaker told us that the driver would not let him into the car.  He locked the doors.  He didn't have time to argue with the driver because it was getting late for our interview.  So he took the subway.  From Brooklyn to our studio near 30th and Third in Manhattan.  Where Spike lived in Brooklyn, Yellow cabs weren't plentiful.  Trust me, I know.  Spike took a train, got off and dashed to our VH1 studio.  Sharon got on the phone, called the car service company, demanded to speak to the manager and took care of business.  The manager called the driver in his car and confirmed that Spike Lee's story was accurate.  The driver sent to pick up the film director at his home address did not let him into the town car because..."he didn't look like a film director."  That's what the driver told his boss.  Sharon fumed, "What's a film director supposed to look like?!?!  Does Penny Marshall 'look like a film director'?"  Penny is a Caucasian actress/filmmaker who had no problem with a car service driver.

Multiple Oscar winner James L. Brooks had no problem with a car service driver when he came in to talk to me about Broadcast News and War of the Roses.

Norman Mailer had no problem whatsoever with the car service driver we dispatched to pick him up so he could talk to me on VH1 about a film that he'd directed.

But Lee "didn't look like a film director."  Here he is with fellow director/actor Clint Eastwood.

The company ordered the driver back to the base, the main office, and he was fired that very afternoon.  Spike took the whole incident in stride.  He was used to cabs not stopping for him because he's black.  I know that feeling too.  Most black folks I knew back in New York had a problem stopping a cab at one time.  Sharon and I were embarrassed and glad that mess up hadn't happened during a New York winter.  Spike gave us a good interview.  On camera, he told us he was in the early stages of production on a new film -- Do The Right Thing.  The driver wouldn't unlock the doors for him because he felt Spike didn't look like a movie director.  And Spike was working on Do The Right Thing.  The film, about the uselessness of racial divides, would earn him an Academy Award nomination.

Spike Lee received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.  I still say Spike should've also had an Oscar nomination for Best Director.  Danny Aiello got an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.  Do The Right Thing made Spike Lee a top nominee at the Cannes Film Festival in France.  Here in the States, it was released nationwide June 30th 1989.  I wonder if that driver ever saw it.  Do The Right Thing is one of the best, most provocative American films of the 1980s.