This Woman's World Now a House Of Strangers
How Many Do You Know That Would Recognize A One Of Them?
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| $125 K in 1954? That's Over $1.1 Million Today |
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| Jean Negulesco Directs Cornel Wilde and June Allyson |
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| Forget What Andrew Sarris Wrote --- Jean Negulesco's Cinemascope Pics Are Swell |
posted by John McElwee at 9:27 AM
17 Comments:
Great article John! I do find it interesting that I run into people who will not watch a black and white film or movies with lots of dead people in it. When I first started showing, ala projector, my Laurel and Hardy films to people in the early '70's, the most heard comment was: "Laurel & Hardy? They're dead!" It seemed then there was an unwritten rule that watching dead people perform was strange.
Another reason classic film is being buried in our present culture is that there are so many entertainment choices not available 40 years ago.
Even I might have trouble telling Van Heflin from Cornel Wilde! They always seemed a matched pair to me.
I saw the cover image for this year's Oscar issue of Vanity Fair, I recognized 4 out of 11 young stars in it. I guess that's official old fogeydom. There are certainly younger performers I think are highly capable-- both Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver, when they're not fighting Star Wars, seem strong and charismatic and deserve to live in an era that would make better use of their abilities like the early 70s; on the female side, Amy Adams gets better and better, again, when she's not playing Lois Lane-- but seeing most young stars makes me feel like an Oliver Sacks patient who has lost the ability to distinguish between faces. So many scrubbed, good-looking, utterly generic young people! Wait till they get some crinkles, if they can avoid going to the plastic surgeon to iron them away. But I suppose my grandfather probably felt the same way when asked to evaluate Edd "Kookie" Byrnes vs. Gardner McKay.
I, too, relate better to movies and actors of the past, particularly pre-1950, than anyone today. It's an odd feeling -- what am I doing here when I should be back there?
I have grown to appreciate and enjoy more the black and white movies of the forties to the widescreen and color movies of the fifties. I have been finding that those CinemaScope shows in contemporary settings feel today far more obsolete and unappealing than the contemporary shows of the previous decade.
I frankly have a complete dislike of cars from the 50s with the marginal exception of the Ford Falcon which, in Argentina, it still commands devotion despite failed attempts to put some negative lights to it.
And the music of those years is mostly disappointing. Most of my favorite artist of that time were actually people from previous decades that were still active and in full command of their craft while others began a notorious declination in quality.
A thought: Match films to modern-made shows and movies about that era. Modern-made items often takes into account audience unfamiliarity and, at their best, build in the necessary exposition.
"Mad Men" would give context to a lot of 50s-60s films set in that world. That runs the gamut from Hollywood fantasies of big business like this one to more realistic, sidewalk-level fare.
"Downton Abbey", soapy as it is, could likewise enhance films made or set in upper-crust Britain from WWI on.
"Matinee" works as a gateway to 50s-60s horror and scifi, illustrating what those films were to their audiences.
"Mr. Bean" teaches viewers to look for the joke rather than listen for it. A possible gateway to silent comedy, unless Bean himself is already too ancient.
The excellent British mystery series "Foyle's War" covered home-front crime and dug deep into real history. That would lend interesting context to stiff-upper-lip epics such as "Mrs. Miniver".
If you want to see Mr. Wilde in true form catch a viewing of The Naked Runner - Great movie!
Stinky's plan is much more practical and much less empathetic: make no attempt to show an old movie to someone who has no interest. It is doomed to failure.
When Stinky was a li'l nipper, he cared not if the actors were alive or croaked, or what year the film was made. Is this cultural or personal? Are more people uninterested in older movies today? Who knows? But it is distressing to contemplate.
One this is for certain: Cornel Wilde is a tough sell. He makes me long for Victor Mature, and that is saying something.
Stinky wishes someone introduced Arlene Dahl to him years ago. She is hot stuff.
Donald Benson- Foyle's War is one of the best things ever. But if a person does not care about old movies, it is not likely he will care about history. And after unsuccessfully attempting to show it to an unreceptive friend, you will be left weeping into your pint of bitter.
Steve: It's THE NAKED PREY.
I'm 62, and I still find myself referencing the '70s as a measuring point of what movie going was to me during an impressionable time. But even a Dustin Hoffman or Robert Redford are now 80 and up, for durn sake! Burt Reynolds is dead. Jane Fonda hangs on. Clint Eastwood amazes, but for how much longer? Former young pups Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are now, at last to me, the prevailing status quo--but who am I kidding--they're in their 60s! I know who Jennifer Lawrence is, but I just haven't been interested in her movies. I have to catch myself when I express interest in Stan & Ollie and The Green Book--new movies, but period pieces. Gotcha! I don't want to feel alienated from current pop culture, but it's way more an effort to feel as attuned as I was. I'm now an old coot--that must have heppened during the night!
First off, an absolutely terrific post coming, I might add, after quite a string of winners. You've really been on the top of your game lately, John! And, yes, just the phrase "an actress named Jennifer Lawrence" brings a smile to my wrinkled mug. It almost sounds like someone is calling attention to an unknown exotic species that has somehow snuck into the ecosystem. In fairness to the woman, besides raking in bazillions of dollars making sci-fi blockbusters many of us will never watch, she did nab four Oscar nominations including one Best Actress win all before her 25th birthday. Still, my amused reaction reading this was "Boy, am I on the right blog!"
Actually just watched WOMAN'S WORLD with my wife, not on Blu-Ray but Youtube (don't judge me!) A lot of fun! We both loved it, even though Jean didn't remember ever seeing it with me 35 years ago. I think much of your observations are spot on but I might differ on some details. I have many friends, even some way out of my age demographic, who would have a hard time identifying half, or even any of the actors but would still watch and enjoy this sort of thing. Not recognizing Hollywood elite from three generations ago doesn't mean one lacks the frame of reference you mention.
I would guess your crash prep course is a little less necessary than you might suspect. As Donald Benson points out BBC, MAD MEN and a host of films and streaming shows have hipped a lot of younger folks to various 20th century milieux. The MAD MEN DVDs even came with little mini-documentaries to fill in their audience to events, fads and movements referred to in individual episodes! THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL seems to be the big popular streaming hit of the day and that one is a candy box of 1950's clothes, cars, color schemes, social attitudes and pop culture references. The title character, as a mythical trailblazing female comic, often comes off like Groucho Marx in GO WEST talking about Don Ameche inventing the telephone, but one presumes that's part of the fun. Lenny Bruce is a semi-regular character! In that role actor Luke Kirby gives a startling authentic recreation of a performance on a 1959 Steve Allen Show that I'm sure sent thousands to Youtube to see how closely it matched the original (spoiler: very!)
I'm off to our local independent theater tonight to see four restored Laurel & Hardy shorts on the big screen, booked no doubt to exploit the current run of STAN & OLLIE. Will these old movies ever regain their status as the coin of the realm they were when we were young? Of course not. Will our grand kids kvetch that nobody now days recognizes any of the characters from THE SIMPSONS? You bet! Time does march forward.
Getting back to WOMAN'S WORLD, I think a great double bill would be to team this one with pre-code goodie FEMALE where randy lady CEO Ruth Chatterton actually does run the car company (and goes through handsome middle management types like potato chips!)
I agree with you, John, that STAN AND OLLIE will not "bring back" Laurel and Hardy... not to the household words they were in the 1950s and '60s, anyway. But I am pleased to report at least one ray of sunshine. I am an officer in the international Laurel & Hardy society Sons of the Desert, and since STAN AND OLLIE has started playing in theaters, I've heard from 17 people who want to start their own local chapters. That's an average of every other day. So the movie is indeed turning people on to Laurel & Hardy, or reminding them of how much fun Laurel & Hardy can be.
John and Scott MacGillivray - Quick follow up to my comment yesterday. I did go to that one night only show of four restored Laurel & Hardy shorts (including BATTLE OF THE CENTURY) at our local theater last night. House was almost packed. Saw a few of my Sons of the Desert cronies, but mostly unfamiliar faces and of a surprisingly wide demographic range. No kids, but two twenty something women sat directly in front of us and howled through the whole show.
I may have missed the info, but what were the four L & H shorts?
Barry Rivadue - BERTH MARKS, BATTLE OF THE CENTURY, BRATS and BUSY BODIES. BRATS looked great but like every print I've ever seen of this title , still has a soft diffused focus. The second half of THE BATTLE is, of course, blown up from 16mm, but was looking pretty good. Major revelation was BERTH MARKS... amazingly sharp picture and SOUND!
A surprisingly poignant post. Let me make a couple of observations.
Yeah, Woman’s World is terrific. And, seriously, isn’t Clifton Webb an asset to any movie. He is so good in this. It’s one of his best performances.
I understand the challenges you face showing classic films to younger audiences. They are just not interested. This is amazing to me; I was raised during the “nostalgia craze” of the late Sixties/early Seventies. Bogart and the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy had as much cultural currency then as they did in the Thirties and Forties. (Hell, I even remember a prime time television comedy making a joke about Lionel Atwell.)
But I think you are more than nostalgic for a lost type of movie … I think you’re nostalgic for a lost America.
As I said, I grew up during the Nostalgia Craze; even as a youth, I realized we were in the midst of enormous social change. (I’ll leave it for the reader to decide whether it was for the better.) But by the time this social change was over, those who grew up in the world of Woman’s World were suddenly adrift. There ‘people’ gone, their way of life, their way of looking at the world.
Again, this isn’t just the differences of time. The Thirties were radically different from the Mad Men era, but they were recognizably the same world. After the social changes of the late Sixties/early Seventies, not so much.
I mourn that time and that people. There are some of us left (and some of us were the rear guard, like me); and all of us are wondering, what the hell happened….?
Dan Mercer considers multiple aspects of WOMAN'S WORLD:
“Woman’s World” is cycled on FXM Retro, so I’ve had the opportunity to watch it from time to time, savoring the whole of it or just a taste. I enjoy it, but then, I’m not at all removed from the sensibility it reflects. I wonder, though, what another, younger audience would make of it?
The story is of men in line for an important position and the women in their lives. One man will be chosen, but as important as his own qualifications are, the woman he’s married to is equally important. Thus, what is ostensibly a man’s world, in which he will take the position and receive credit for the success, is also a woman’s world, in which his success depends upon her inspiration and support.
I haven’t looked at the last edition of Maltin’s movie guide, but I suspect that, if there were ever to be future editions, “Woman’s World” would be described as a “dated comedy of manners.” A comedy of manners it may be—when you suggested that, John, though it hadn’t occurred to me before, I could only think, “of course,” in response—but with regards the mores of today, I cannot think of anything more out of touch.
As depicted in the film, marriage is in the nature of a joint venture, in which husband and wife play complementary roles. In what venue, apart from the more conservative religious denominations, would such a concept be recognized, let alone celebrated? When commitment is thought of now as being essentially to one’s self—that is, to one’s nature or desires, even to one’s whims--what place would a relationship have that was based upon the mutual difference of a man and woman to each other?
“Woman’s World” appeals to me because, for all its archness and satirical touches, it suggests what are to me eternal verities, with all their variations and permutations over the years, but the same. There is a realization that men and women need each other, and that only in the closeness of a marriage between a man and woman is a completed human being formed. In this age, however, such connections are being severed, such relationships fragmented. There is only the individual and, perhaps, the state, with no connection with other individuals except fleetingly, through a kind of sexual pleasure that has no relationship to real consummation or the creation of life.
If it does appeal to those who have been so carefully taught to disregard those older virtues, it may be as a kind of refuge, an escape from chaos to order.
This post and comment thread certainly paints a bleak picture, but I don't see things so 'black and white'.
While I agree that there are concerns to be had, it's worth noting that this stuff has ALWAYS been a niche market, and that niche will continue, albeit smaller than before. My grandparents would all be in their eighties (or close to it) if they were alive today, and yet none of them had any interest at all in anything vintage, and certainly no interest in passing any appreciation of such material to their children or grandchildren. Old movies, radio, comics etc. were things of the past and deserved to stay there.
And yet, here we are in the 21st Century. TCM soldiers on with no apparent signs of stopping, largely appealing to a demographic who want to watch old movies but have no interest in collecting them.
Podcasting has given younger folks two smash hits of the format that focus almost entirely on classic cinema (You Must Remember This and Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast) surely introducing those who listen to audio via their phones to movies and people that they'd otherwise have not heard of (listenership is in the hundreds of thousands for each).
Theater chains trot out the old warhorses on the regular in sparkling digital transfers to play nationwide engagements that surely wouldn't continue if the attendance (ie: money) wasn't there. Indeed, even new transfers of Laurel and Hardy material is touring the country.
We are a very different society than we were when these films were made, and it is true that an increasing amount of them will be considered "problematic", but good storytelling is good storytelling. There will always be people who appreciate that.
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