Black Is Beautiful in CASABLANCA

The Oscar-winning Hollywood classic celebrates a 75th anniversary this year.  It's returned to big screens for anniversary showings thanks to Fathom Events in conjunction with TCM (Turner Classic Movies).  CASABLANCA is a love story set against the tense backdrop of WW2 with Nazis devouring Europe.  We see bravery, sacrifice, loyalty, patriotism and true love.  We see all this while enjoying excellent performances and some of the most quoted lines of dialogue to come out of one movie.  Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid and Claude Rains keep attracting new generations to this early 1940s Warner Brothers drama.

I've written about this before and I'll touch on it again because CASABLANCA is getting publicity thanks to its upcoming anniversary.  It was the focus of a segment on CBS SUNDAY MORNING and there's a new book out by author Noah Isenberg that I must purchase.  It's called WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE CASABLANCA.  He covers the life, legend and afterlife of this beloved Hollywood movie.  He was included in the November 12th CBS SUNDAY news program feature in which we saw a current interview of Bogart's son, Paul Henreid's daughter and Claude Rains' daughter talking about their parents' classic film.  Isenberg seems like a pretty cool dude.

One of the other members of the famous cast, a performer who sings the song most closely associated with the love story, is Dooley Wilson as Rick Blaine's good friend, Sam.  Sam is the headliner in Rick's swanky nightclub/gambling joint.  African American actor/singer Dooley Wilson had Broadway credits on his resume.  He was Ethel Waters' leading man in the hit Broadway musical fable, CABIN IN THE SKY.  The property was purchased by MGM and made into a top MGM musical which marked Lena Horne's first Hollywood film role and Vincente Minnelli's 1943 debut as a film director. Wilson didn't recreate his Broadway role in the movie opposite Ethel Waters.  The role went to the popular Jack Benny radio show regular, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson.

A TV exec once asked me what classic films I would air during a Black History Month.  One of the movies I mentioned was CASABLANCA.  Let me tell you why.

CASABLANCA was released in December 1942.  This is just a few years after Hattie McDaniel made Hollywood history as the first black person nominated for an Oscar and the first to win.  Hattie McDaniel won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for playing "Mammy," the all-wise house servant in 1939's Civil War epic, GONE WITH THE WIND.

In Hollywood at that time, black actors and actresses were usually in servant roles.  Mammies, maids, butlers, domestics, porters, cooks, field hands, stable boys and such.

Sam is a sophisticated black character.  He's not a second class citizen.  He's important to the two lead white characters.  Dooley Wilson has a key scene with each star, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.  Sam is Rick Blaine's friend and confidante.  He's Ilsa's friend.  He saw their romance blossom.  He was there at its abrupt end.  He knows their story.  He knows that their song is "As Time Goes By."  Also, Sam dresses like he's ready to be photographed for ESQUIRE Magazine.  He's lookin' sharp.

 In how many other Hollywood films of that era did the you see the black character sharing a bottle of champagne with not just one, but two white characters both of whom were the stars of the film?  THAT was major.

And another thing, notice the dialogue near the end when Rick has to sell his nightclub.  All the employees keep their jobs.  Including Sam, the star entertainer.  Rick negotiates to get Sam double what his previous salary was.

Again...THAT was major.  A white guy got a black guy a sizeable increase in salary.  I wish I had an agent like Rick in CASABLANCA.  Keep in mind this was an era when Hollywood was still giving us blackface musical numbers (1942's HOLIDAY INN, 1943's DIXIE, 1944's HERE COME THE WAVES). 1942's CASABLANCA gave us a bold, refreshing image of a black person in a 1940s Hollywood film.  There's a lot more to Dooley Wilson's Sam to consider.  We wouldn't see more of that kind of upscale image until the 1950s.

Until next time..."Here's looking at you, kid."

An Oscar for KILLER OF SHEEP

SAYONARA, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, THE DEFIANT ONES, ELMER GANTRY, EL CID, HUD, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, A RAISIN IN THE SUN, PARIS BLUES, SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, THE PRIDE AND THE PASSION, THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, Disney's THE PARENT TRAP, BYE BYE BIRDIE, THE BIG COUNTRY and the foreign film starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW.  All those movies I watched in the back seat of the family car.  For most of the, I had my pajamas on underneath my street clothes so I could be put to bed faster when we got home.  I'd surely be asleep in the backseat on the way home.  I was a little boy.  My sister was even...more little by a few years.  We saw all those movies at the drive-in.  Going to the drive-in, falling in love with films in the backseat as Mom and Dad sat up front, was some of my all-time favorite family entertainment when I was growing up in South Central Los Angeles.  But, if you watched TV news reports -- local and national -- about life in South Central L.A., you'd never guess that black people paid to see such cinema entertainment.  And ours was not the only car with black people in it at the drive-in when we saw those movies either.  I bet filmmaker Charles Burnett knew that working class black families in South Central L.A. went to see such features at drive-ins called the Twin-Vue, The Vermont, The Compton and The Century.  Charles Burnett is an independent filmmaker.  He's familiar with life in South Central L.A.

From our house, I would often walk or take the bus up Central Avenue to high school.  I attended and graduated from a parochial all-boys high school in Watts.  This was the Watts just a few years after being in the national news headlines for The Watts Riots.  The late Karl Fleming was a NEWSWEEK reporter who covered the Birmingham Church Bombing, the Watts Riots, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.  He was a Southern-born white man.  He wrote about this in his memoir, SON OF THE ROUGH SOUTH.  I mention that 2005 book because Fleming noted his surprise to be visiting THE LOS ANGELES TIMES when the Watts Riots had erupted.  He was surprised...well, more accurately, stunned to see that there was not one single black reporter on the staff. That was 1965.

 In 1970, I saw a notice in THE LOS ANGELES TIMES Classified Ads seeking film buffs for a new TV game show.  A written test had to be taken.  I talked my mother into taking me to Hollywood to take the test about classic film trivia.  I did better on that test than I would on my SATs.  In a few weeks that summer, I'd be the youngest and first black contestant on a syndicated show called THE MOVIE GAME.  It aired on Channel 9 in Los Angeles.  Army Archerd of VARIETY co-hosted with a guy named Sonny Fox.  With my mother and sister in the Goldwyn Studios TV audience, I became the show's first black winner.  Me. A kid from a high school in Watts who had Phyllis Diller and Hugh O'Brian as his celebrity teammates on THE MOVIE GAME.  My high school, faculty and fellow students, saw the show when it aired and I felt their pride at how I represented our community.  My grandparents in New Jersey saw it.  There was no mention of my national TV game show victory in THE L.A. TIMES or any other local newspaper.

In many ways. our black community was invisible to mainstream reporting in L.A. during my youth.  It irritated me, starting back in my high school years, that South Central L.A. was seen solely by mainstream media through lenses of Watts Riots footage or the sitcom SANFORD AND SON.  But we were not invisible to Charles Burnett.  He reflected the rhythm and beauty of African American working class South Central L.A. life in KILLER OF SHEEP (1977).

This weekend, Charles Burnett receives an Honorary Oscar for his contributions to world cinema.   Here is a trailer for one of his works, KILLER OF SHEEP.

We are so very, very proud of Mr. Burnett.  Other films talents receiving Honorary Oscars along with Charles Burnett this weekend are cinematographer Owen Roizman, Belgian director Agnes Varda and actor Donald Sutherland.

A Course in CASABLANCA

This is a classic film that, I believe, became as beloved as it is today because of us baby boomers when we were young.  We were the ones who watched IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE on television a lot in youth and rescued it from its public domain life after critics and moviegoers kicked the Frank Capra classic to the curb in its original theatrical release.  CASABLANCA was very popular as a rental on college campuses.  That was surely the case when I was an undergraduate at Marquette University in Milwaukee.  Whenever that film was booked to screen in a campus auditorium, the room was packed.  The first time I saw it on campus, I sat next to a guy from my dorm floor -- Charles P. Pierce who now write for ESQUIRE Magazine.  When Claude Rains said "Round up the usual suspects," the audience broke out into cheers and applause.  This was around the time that young adult moviegoers were enjoying a comedy film from new comedy talent, Woody Allen.  The movie was a romantic comedy valentine to CASABLANCA called PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM (1972).  Yes, we baby boomers loved Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains and Dooley Wilson in CASABLANCA.

The love for it has grown over the years.  Did you see ADAPTATION, the 2002 drama starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep?  Cage played a meek, insecure screenwriter in L.A.  Brian Cox played screenwriting teacher & guru Robert McKee, a real-life character.  Back in the 1990s, McKee was renowned for his weekend screenwriting seminars for aspiring screenwriters.  He was like a rock star to them and this adoration is accurately reflected in ADAPTATION.  If I recall correctly, the weekend seminars were about $500.  McKee pretty much talked solely about the brilliance of CASABLANCA, overly analyzing and explaining the construction of the script for that 1942 Warner Brothers Oscar winner for Best Picture of the Year.  Oscars also went to the scriptwriters -- Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein (brothers) and Howard Koch.

Back in the 1990s, a good and talented friend of mine in New York City worshipped at the altar of Robert McKee.  He saved up enough money to take the weekend seminar.  A few years later, thanks to a columnist for New York's THE DAILY NEWS, he got invited to be the "plus one" at special brunch in Manhattan.  One of the other guests at the brunch was -- veteran screenwriter Julius J. Epstein.

Of course, my friend was awestruck.  He told me the story.  He politely approached the cigar-smoking senior gentleman and gushed that he'd studied his CASABLANCA screenplay in the Robert McKee course.  Epstein immediately asked, "How much did you pay for that class?"  When the screenwriter heard the amount, he let out a long sigh of "Oy."  Then he explained that, back in the Hollywood studio days, they didn't have time to make scripts symbolic and theo-philosophical like modern movies.  They had to crank out scripts for studio talent like Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, James Cagney and Ann Sheridan.

He then gave me friend the secret to a good script.  He condensed the Robert McKee weekend seminar to one short lesson.  Here it is:

"Act One:  Get your guy up a tree.  Act Two:  Throw rocks at him.  Act Three:  Get him outta the tree."

Julius J. Epstein died in 2000 at the age of 91.

Between just 1938 and 1948, the list of his screenplays included FOUR DAUGHTERS starring John Garfield, THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE, THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. starring James Cagney and Bette Davis, THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER, THE MALE ANIMAL starring Olivia de Havilland and Henry Fonda, CASABLANCA, ARSENIC AND OLD LACE and ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS introducing Doris Day.

He also did THE TENDER TRAP starring Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds (!955), the Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedy hit SEND ME NO FLOWERS (1964), PETE 'N' TILLIE starring Carol Burnett, Walter Matthau and Geraldine Page (1972) and HOUSE CALLS starring Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson (1978).

Journalism with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks

I vividly recall when this story was in the national news headlines.  A lot.  The Pentagon Papers.  The Washington Post.  The Nixon Administration.  Steven Spielberg's new drama that opens in December and January is called THE POST.  Millions of us moviegoers who have loved Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep since the 1980s surely would assume that those two powerhouse stars have shared screen time.  Wrong.  They have never made a movie together.  Steven Spielberg has changed that.  Hanks and Streep star in THE POST, based on a true story.  They play real-life, historical characters.  The Academy, since the 1930s, has loved given Oscar nominations to performers who play real-life characters.  So maybe Meryl will be on her way to receiving her 21st Oscar nomination.

Tom Hanks did not get an Oscar nomination early this year for his truly moving work in SULLY.  I felt he gave one of his best performances ever as the humble, life-saving pilot of a severely crippled USAir commercial airplane, Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberg.  I hoped Tom Hanks would get a Best Actor Oscar nomination for SULLY.

Hanks and Spielberg have teamed up before (SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, THE TERMINAL and BRIDGE OF SPIES).  They've teamed up again.

Tom Hanks now plays Ben Bradlee, a man previously played by Jason Robards in the 1976 film, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN.  Meryl Streep plays Katharine "Kay" Graham, owner of The Washington Post.  Bradlee and Graham battle the federal government for the right to publish classified information as it relate to the highly controversial Vietnam War.  It was journalism versus The White House.  Graham was owner/publisher of The Washington Post.  She also battled sexism.  Bradlee was the newspaper's executive editor.

 Here is a trailer for Steven Spielberg's THE POST:

I attended a parochial all-boys high school in the Watts section of South Central L.A.  Watts was still famous, if you will, for the Watts Riots that made national headlines for a week just a few years earlier.  I spent a lot of time in our high school library.  I wasn't the only one.  It was usually pretty full right before homeroom and during lunch.  We read newspapers.  We had The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Herald Examiner and the Spanish newspaper, Hoy.  Our student body was predominantly African American and Mexican American.

Today, I can't recall ever seeing a high school student read a newspaper.  In this age of great technology, I rarely get the vibe that high schoolers are reading major newspapers online.  I still like newspapers and magazines.  In the trailer for THE POST, I get the feeling Spielberg is sending out a plea for the life of print journalism.  The art of print has been decreasing and disappearing rapidly.  I'd hate to see it go.  To be reminded of the power of print and the exhausting, non-glamorous but vital work of serious print journalists...see ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN before you go see THE POST.  Spielberg's new film will definitely be at the top of my "must-see" movie list.  Viva, Freedom of the Press!

A Quick STAR WARS Question

I have been a STAR WARS fan for decades.  I know.  That's a long time.  But, it's true.  I was in my first professional broadcast job -- news reporter for an FM rock radio station in Milwaukee -- when I got two passes to a preview of STAR WARS.  I saw it before it opened nationally to make box office and pop culture history.  Man, what a great movie-going experience that was!  And I am still grateful to my fabulous lesbian friend, Janet, for going with me because no guy wanted to be my date.  Something all the guys who turned me down later regretted when the movie was a hit.  But that's another story.  STARS WARS rocked.

Today, I was watching GOOD MORNING AMERICA and there was a commercial for Disney Resort Hotels.  In the spot, we a beautifully-gowned Cinderella descends a grand hotel staircase.  Then we see a family enter the lobby and we follow the family to the lobby elevators.  Elevator doors open and Stormtroopers file out.  The camera cuts to the gleeful look of excitement on the little boy's face.

My question is this: When the Stormtroopers file out, shouldn't the family have the same reaction that the French people had on their faces in the classic film CASABLANCA when the Nazis marched into Paris?  The Stormtroopers are under the command of Darth Vader, the villain!

Maybe I'm being too sensitive, too particular, about this because I'm such a longtime STAR WARS fan.  But, to me, the Stormtroopers are Space Nazis.

If you were eating in a hotel restaurant and when your meal arrived, the waiter said, "Your dinner was prepared by our chef, Darth Vader," would you eat it?  Would you send it back if the baked potato was cold in the middle?  Suppose you were having the seafood casserole and Chef Vader stopped by your table as you enjoyed it and you said, "Chef Vader, your seafood casserole is delicious.  What's in it?"  If he said, "The Little Mermaid," would you really be shocked?  He's Darth Vader!

Actor John Ortiz, Always Good

He may not be a famous Hollywood actor whose name and face you know -- like a Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Denzel Washington and Brad Pitt.  But he is an actor who always delivers and, like those guys, deserves to rack up an Oscar nomination one day.  I was home, turned on a cable station and saw John Ortiz and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a 90-minute indie movie called JACK GOES BOATING.  Hoffman's performance made me say, "Damn...he died way too soon."  John, who I've seen in several roles over the years, is at his best in this film.  He was so moving, so connected to his character that I wondered who directed that fine work out of him.  The answer?  Philip Seymour Hoffman was the star and also the director.  Hoffman and Ortiz play limo drivers in it.  Hoffman is Jack.  Ortiz is Clyde.  The drivers are best friends.  Clyde and his wife set Jack up on a blind date.

We see the messiness of ordinary life and matters of the heart that make relationships memorable.  Jack is a big shaggy dog of a guy who drives out of the usual lane of his life to take swimming and cooking classes.  Clyde has a complicated life and marriage.

Onstage, one may have to play emotions big so all the audience members can see them.  Not so with film.  Onscreen, you can do less.  You keep your inner life active.  A thought will register in your close-up and the viewers can see your inner activity.  With that said, you really need to see the John Ortiz performance.  All the pain, hope, confusion, humiliation and love in Clyde's soul register in John Ortiz's eyes.  He's got a big personality to the public, but we see the little breaks in his heart that he tries to hide from public view.  And there's humor.  The limo driver enters a deluxe hotel because he needs to use a restroom.  You see Clyde stand still, absorbing all the luxury he sees, all the kind of material things he doesn't have, and you feel the lack he must be feeling.  And then he finds the men's room.  Here is this working class guy who drives high-tone folks around town, he uses the men's room and the men's room attendant assumes he's an upscale dude.  And expects a tip.  The look on Clyde's face broke me up laughing.  I knew exactly what he was feeling.  In a Hollywood big studio comedy, that scene would've had dialogue making all the feelings obvious.  Dialogue wasn't needed.  Ortiz has great economy with his acting.  He knows the art of being still and bringing the viewer into the character's emotions.

I first saw John Ortiz in a New York City performance art space in a comedy show.  Actress/comedian Kim Coles was a regular on the LIVING SINGLE sitcom.  She did a one-woman comedy revue that opened with a funny musical number.  John Ortiz was one of her back-up chorus boys.

That was in the early 90s.  John went from getting laughs and dancing behind Kim Coles to landing film work that gave him an extensive list of credits.  I saw him in CARLITO'S WAY, AMISTAD, BEFORE NIGHT FALLS, AMERICAN GANGSTER and SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK.

John Ortiz is a knockout as Detective Torres in THE DROP, the last movie from the late James Gandolfini and co-starring Tom Hardy.  It's a good, solid crime mystery.  Ortiz is also a standout in STEVE JOBS as the magazine journalist in that biopic starring the Oscar-nominated Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs.

JACK GOES BOATING is the only movie that the gifted, late Philip Seymour Hoffman directed.  This is the film adaptation of a play.  Hoffman and Ortiz were in the play.

I haven't seen all of the big screen films John Ortiz has done.  But every time I see him in a big screen performance, he's always worth the price of the ticket.  I just wanted to tip my hat to a mighty fine actor.

Stay In for GET OUT on HBO

It's one of the most fascinating, frightening, imaginative and socially relevant psychological horror movies I've ever seen.  And it's entertaining.  The big surprise was that the film, released early this year, was directed and written by a young man who gave us lots of laughs on Comedy Central for a few seasons.  Even President Barack Obama loved his comedy.  Jordan Peele was half of Key & Peele.  Jordan and his friend, Keegan-Michael Key, graduated from being part of the MADtv sketch comedy series staff to getting their own sketch comedy series on Comedy Central.  In this era of "Black Lives Matter," Jordan Peele wrote and directed GET OUT -- not a comedy -- but a modern-day social horror movie.  If I was a member of the Academy, I would give Peele an Oscar nomination right now for Best Original Screenplay.  It's Saturday, November 4th, and GET OUT makes its bow tonight on HBO.

It's obvious that some of Jordan Peele's education as a director and writer included studying classic films.

If you're a regular viewer of cable's TCM (Turner Classic Movies), you know that channel has a monthly Guest Programmer.  The celebrity co-host joins full-time host Ben Mankiewicz and presents four classic films.  The celebrity selects the films and tells why she or he did in the intros with Mankiewicz.  No reflection on Ben, who's totally cool, but there's been a lack of African American representation in TCM segments since iconic full-time host Robert Osborne had to reduce his duties due to health issues.  Osborne passed away in March of this year at age 84.  During the years in his segments, Mr. Osborne presented such guests as Charles Burnett, the African American filmmaker of KILLER OF SHEEP, director/writer Spike Lee, Whoopi Goldberg, Diahann Carroll and Ethel Waters biographer, African American author Donald Bogle.

Nowadays it's oddly rare to see an African American Guest Programmer or as a co-host for TCM's Saturday at 8p ET program, "The Essentials," hosted by Alec Baldwin.

I write that to say that Jordan Peele would make a great TCM Guest Programmer.

His GET OUT has tastes of GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER plus ROSEMARY'S BABY and THE STEPFORD WIVES.

A young black man in love with a young white woman drives with her to meet her upscale and very liberal parents in the suburbs.  They're very welcoming.  They voted for Obama! That's all I will tell you.  But you can probably guess that strange things begin to happen and he wants to leave.

GET OUT is a movie that friends emailed or otherwise messaged me that I had to see.  Street buzz on this movie was hot.  Critics were enthusiastic.  It was such a hit that NBC/Universal's TODAY Show had Jordan Peele on as a guest.  Maybe that's because leading lady Allison Williams is the daughter of NBC News employee Brian Williams, formerly anchor of the NBC Nightly News.  He's now on MSNBC.

GET OUT is a Universal Pictures release.  However, so was the critically acclaimed box office champ, F. Gary Gray's STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON.  The TODAY Show pretty much ignored that 2015 movie even though Matt Lauer appears in it more than once.  NBC/Universal's TODAY Show gave more attention to MINIONS than it did to STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON.

Jordan Peele had a budget of almost $5 million to make GET OUT.  Reportedly, it grossed $253 million at the box office worldwide.  Key & Peele won prestigious Peabody Awards and Emmys for their comedy sketch series.  Key is now doing film work too.

Entertainment news columnists reported this week that Jordan Peele has been tapped to helm a CBS All Access reboot of the classic Rod Serling series, THE TWILIGHT ZONE.