The Love God?

The Love God?

August 1969
Universal
Comedy
VHS
B

Written and directed by Nat Hiken, of Car 54 fame, this is both more risque and more satirical than your average Don Knotts movie.  (And I've seen my share, although I don't currently own any besides this one.)  Knotts is playing a typical character, in this case Abner Audubon Peacock IV, the fourth-generation publisher of a bird-watching magazine, but what happens to him is far from typical.  Abner is used by everyone from hippie protestors (including in France!) to pornographers to civil rights attorneys to horny women (including Anne Francis, as a tough career gal editor who sort of falls for him) to uphold the twin causes of free speech and the sexual revolution.  In one of the nicest pieces of stunt casting I've ever seen, Herb Voland, who looks so much like then new Vice-President Agnew that he'd play him in the Rich Little movie Another Fine Mess (1972, I've never seen it), plays the attorney general out to wipe out smut, and even he wants Abner to keep publishing the "dirty" version of his magazine.

This is of course delightfully dated-- especially the proto-Ralph-Furley outfits that Abner has to wear as part of his Hefner-like image-- and sometimes very funny, mostly intentionally.  I like both the details of Abner's small town, including his bird calls at the annual concerts, and the big city, well, bigness, including Abner's lush penthouse.  Abner's old secretary Miss Pickering, played by Marjorie Bennett, takes to her new job in the wild world of New York publishing so much that she's soon wearing miniskirts and dying her hair.  There are some other nice cameos, like Jim Begg's as fellow bird-watcher Hotchkiss and James Gregory's as the crusading attorney disgusted by "the filthy little degenerate" but defending the degenerate's right to publish filth, while Edmond O'Brien and Maureen Arthur are perfectly cast as the initial pornographer and his covergirl wife.  When she says that Abner wanting to hold a press conference to confess his virginity (so he can marry the wholesome and loyal minister's daughter Rose Ellen back home) is the most disgusting thing she's ever heard, I just wish there were more of her and O'Brien.

They get pushed aside not so much by Knotts and Francis as by B. S. Pully as the mobster J. Charles Twilight, AKA Icepick Charlie.  Some of the stuff with Charlie is good, like his English lessons with elderly Miss Love, who turns out to be an FBI agent, but he brings too much violence to what is mostly a frothy comedy, Vic Mizzy music and all.  Not only does he slap around O'Brien's character, but he hits Francis when she prefers Abner to him.  And even Abner punches Rose Ellen!  Yes, it's to stop her from coming closer when Icepick and his goons show up at the village church, but it's still disturbing.  I mean, this is Don Knotts!  I'd probably give the movie a B+ if it were less violent.  The sexual content though, which earned an M (today's PG-13) rather than the usual G, is fine, pretty clean by today's standards, but a great contrast to Knotts's image.  Too great for the times apparently, as this was a flop.  (Hiken died before it was released.)
It seems to have a bit of a cult following now though, and I recommend it, albeit with reservations.

Oldest Choir Member Delos Jewkes (then 75) had performed in the Munchkin Medley of The Wizard of Oz.  Choir singer Betty Noyes ironically lip-synced for Debbie Reynolds lip-syncing on "Would You" for Jean Hagen in Singin' in the Rain.  Bob Harvey plays a photographer and had been Robert the Rat in the AIP Beach Party movies.  James McHale, a reporter here, was Shorty in Spinout.

Arthur Tovey had minor roles in earlier movies of mine, like The Graduate, and here plays a club patron.  Amber Smale played Sandra Dee as a little girl in Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding!, and was 12 by the time of her appearance here.  Angelique Pettyjohn plays a model here and was a secretary in The Cool Ones and Gloria in Clambake.  Dal McKennon plays a bird caller here and was the old soldier in Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady?

Araceli Rey, who plays the Italian cleaning lady, would be Señora Gavilan in Change of Habit.  Darlene Love (of "He's a Rebel" fame) would be a backup singer in Change, while here she's prominently featured singing "Mr. Peacock."  Glenn Dixon, a family member here, would be a sponsor in The Barefoot Executive, while Leon Alton, a club patron here, would be a TV exec there.  Barbara Bosson would do Mame.  Al Dunlap, who's the mayor here, would be a deputy in Escape to Witch Mountain.  Ceil Cabot, who has a minor role here, would be Miss McGuirk in Freaky Friday and the landlady in The Nude Bomb, but I'm guessing she's probably been seen by more people as Buddy Hinton's mother on The Brady Bunch.  

Larry McCormick, the handsome young Black man playing Rich, also has a Brady credit, as the TV announcer on the episode where Bobby wants to run away, and he had other acting credits over the next 35 years, but to a Gen-X Southern Californian like me he is of course best known as a KTLA reporter/anchor.  (His earnestness adds to the hilarity of this movie.)  Bob Hastings plays Shrader, the other assistant attorney, a very different role than his in Did You Hear the One...?  Berniece Janssen would be an extra in Nine to Five.

The Swinger

The Swinger
November 14, 1966
Paramount
Comedy
VHS
C+

Ann-Margret wants to be taken seriously as a writer, but her writing is too wholesome for Girl Lure editor Tony Franciosa, so she plagiarizes a bunch of pulp novels and submits the new piece as her autobiography.  So then, with his aunt egging them both on, he tries to reform her while she tries to keep up her wild image.  He finds out the truth so he makes her "relive" her experiences for a series of photos and then pretends he's going to rape her in a motel.  He gets arrested for abduction and she and her parents (Gidget's mom Mary LaRoche [as well as AM's mom in Bye Bye Birdie] and Milton Frome, the police captain in Girl Happy) see his arrest on live TV, so she hops on her motorcycle to go down to the police station.  Meanwhile, Tony steals a police car.  They crash into each other and die, except the film reverses like it did for Soupy Sales when he was going to crash into a bridge in Birds Do It.  Cue the happy ending hug.  Oh, and there's a lecherous British publisher who regularly harasses his secretary but turns out to never "score."

Even in the pre-feminist '60s, this wouldn't have exactly been a lighthearted night at the movies, and watching it now, I'm not sure the campiness can make up for the wretched sexual politics.  But it is campy, especially the scenes set at AM's home, which seems to be some sort of proto-hippie commune, shared with, among others, a vice cop, a protestor, and this guy whose name I can't find on IMDB but he's also in The Cool Ones and is a dancer with a few lines in both movies.  Her housemates help her throw an "orgy," which involves her being used as a human paintbrush, more messy than sexy.  There are also random Batman sound effects, e.g. "Pooooooooow!"  And opening narration that makes LA sound like a cesspool.  So I guess, watch it if you must.  You won't be bored anyway.

Nydia Westman, who plays Aunt Cora, was Mamie the maid in Little Women, back when she was about 30.  Peter Gowland was in Citizen Kane.  Steven Geray, the man with the fish, appeared in All About Eve and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, while Craig Hill, was in All About Eve.  Horace McMahon, who is Sgt. Hooker of the vice squad (ho ho), was on the other side of the law, as Mugsy, in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.  Larry J. Blake, Honest Hal the Used Car Dealer here, was a finance man in Sunset Blvd.  Dick Whittinghill, who was a TV interviewer in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, plays a TV crewman here.  Phil Arnold, who plays a derelict here, was the hotel guest watching TV in I'll Take Sweden.  Romo Vincent, here playing Jack Happy, was the tuba player in Sgt. Deadhead.  Norman Leavitt, who appears as Herbie the Ice Cream Vendor, was recently Titus Zeale, gas station proprietor, in Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!  And Myrna Ross is cast against type, playing Sally, Franciosa's sensible secretary, after being Boots in the AIP Beach Party movies.

Diki Lerner, who was a tango dancer in Singin' in the Rain, plays "Svengali" here, and would be Zoltan in Easy Come, Easy Go.  Phyllis Davis, Veronica Ericson, and Heidi Winston would all be in Live a Little, Love a Little.  Marjorie Bennett was Miss Lark in Mary Poppins, is Philbert's wife here, and would be Miss Pickering in The Love God?  Robert Coote, who plays the lecherous publisher, would have a more sympathetic role, as Stanley Krum, in The Cool Ones.

Sabrina

Sabrina
October 1954
Paramount
Romance
VHS
B-

It took me awhile to sort out how I felt about this movie on my second viewing.  (My first was just a few months ago, when I bought the tape for a dollar.)  I think the problem is that while it's clearly in the romance genre-- it has moments of comedy and drama but it is primarily about who Sabrina will end up with and how-- the title question of the recurring song "Isn't It Romantic?" turns out to not be rhetorical.  To begin with, the three leads are all miscast to one degree or another, and the script (cowritten by director Wilder but based on an apparently very different stageplay) undermines them at every turn.

I know, you're going to say, "What, Audrey Hepburn miscast as the awkward girl turned glamour queen?"  The thing is, she's not actually much more glamorous after two years in Paris than she is before she leaves.*   She has a better wardrobe, a fluency in French, and a poodle.  There's a moment when she shows up at a party and the male guests have exaggerated jaw-dropped reactions that wouldn't look out of place in The Girl Can't Help It.  (No milk bottles overflow though.)  Now, I know tastes change, especially after sixty years, but the truth is to my modern eyes, Hepburn is a pretty girl yet one with fairy-like looks that would not be ogled at a distance of several yards.  Beyond that, there's an unpleasant undertone to her character, as if she's a less honest (including to herself) version of Monroe's gold-digger in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  She pines for (almost stalks) David Larrabee for years, including when he's engaged (and possibly married, see below).  She almost commits suicide over him.  And then there's an implication that she becomes an elderly baron's mistress while in France.  True, she refuses bribes to give David up, but there's no question that part of her infatuation is with the Larrabee lifestyle.  Although I haven't seen a lot of Hepburn movies (I think this is the only one I own), usually (except in Breakfast at Tiffany's) her character doesn't have such an innocent surface with so much rot underneath.

Hepburn was 25 playing a girl of 20 and then 22, so at least she was well-cast by her age.  But then we have 36-year-old William Holden as David.  He was not too old for Hepburn, as they fell in love while making this picture.  His character, on the other hand, is presumably not past his mid-20s, as David kissed Sabrina when she was 9 and it would be creepy if he were then more than 11 or 12.  Yet he's somehow had the time by 1954 (his parents have been married 48 years, since 1906, so the movie is mostly set in the then-present) to attend several colleges and get married and divorced three times.  In fact, his second wife wore an Adlai Stevenson button to the wedding, so that must've been in 1952, when Sabrina was in or on her way to Paris, although no mention is made of this.  His third marriage would definitely have been while she was away, yet the household servants (including Nancy Culp, the future Miss Hathaway of The Beverly Hillbillies) keep shipping Sabrina/David.  See what I mean about an unpleasant undertone?  Also, he's a lazy playboy, and he's got the baggage of the unscrupulousness of Holden's characters in Sunset Blvd. and to a lesser degree The Moon Is Blue.

Then there is of course the colossal miscasting of Humphrey Bogart, as Bogie would be the first to agree.  He was 54 and had always looked old for his age, plus he was a few years away from dying of cancer.  In a different way than in The Band Wagon, I don't buy the older-man/younger-woman romance, because Hepburn is not the right sort of younger woman for Bogart.  (Lauren Bacall had a surface toughness and an underlying romantic side, which is sort of the inverse of Hepburn's steel pixie.)  His character of Linus Larrabee is at least old enough to have gone to college in the '20s (he has a phonograph with "Yes, We Have No Bananas," which was a hit in 1923), but there's never any explanation of why there's such a big age gap between him and his brother David.  (In the family painting, they look like they were children at the same time, with no more than maybe a five years' difference.)  Also, Bogart has his own screen baggage, as a tough guy, and while I could buy him as a self-made businessman, I can't believe him as a rich man's son.  (IMDB says Bogart's father was "moderately wealthy," but that's not his film persona.)  In great contrast to Holden and Hepburn, he and Hepburn don't have chemistry together.  The only reason why we're meant to root for him is because he's hard-working and wants to bring capitalism to developing countries so that they can have straight teeth and movies on Saturdays.

Say what?  This is where I remind you of who the writer-director is: Billy Wilder, a deeply cynical man, who not only gave us an obsessive romance in Sunset Blvd., but in Some Like It Hot would include a marriage-merger, like the one Linus is trying to orchestrate for David, until the chauffeur's daughter throws a monkey wrench into the business.  In Some Like, a made-up merger is Joe's excuse to get out of his lying affair with Sugar, and it's the antithesis of romance.  Here, Linus has a plan for David to marry the lovely Martha Hyer (not as sensible as in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars but again playing a girl whose engagement is threatened through no fault of her own).  This marriage will help Larrabee Industries (or one of their subsidiaries) produce a miracle plastic.  (And somewhere Mr. McGuire of The Graduate is taking notes.)  Hyer's character seems a bit shallow, but so is David, and it's not like he couldn't just divorce her quickly like usual.  (After all the paperwork is finalized of course.)  He does marry her in the end and Linus goes off to Paris with Sabrina, after trying to trick her into going there with David but then revealing his scheme because he's fallen in love with her himself.  This isn't Casablanca and the problems of three little people-- played by three big stars-- apparently do amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Or do they?  I'll note that the other recurring song in the movie is "La Vie en Rose," which Sabrina explains means looking at life through rose-colored glasses.  But the main glasses in the movie are the champagne glasses David sits on, getting a literal pain in the ass.  He wants to write a love poem to Sabrina and asks Linus what rhymes with "glass."  Linus suggests "alas."

"Surprise!  There is no movie called Duck Soup!"-- Joe Adamson, Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo (1973)

Billy Wilder has taken many disparate elements, some of which he couldn't have planned on, and subversively made them into one of the most unromantic romances ever.  For that alone, and because he's given me so much to think about, I'm giving the movie a B-.

Walter Hampden, who plays Oliver Larrabee, was the Aged Actor in All About Eve.  I couldn't spot Gregory Ratoff this time.  (Or Marion Ross for that matter!)  But, yes, that's Ma and Pa's Billy Reed, Emory Parnell, as Charles the Butler.  Sam Harris was in Citizen Kane and at least one other of my movies.  Ellen Corby, who's Miss McCardle here, was Miss Davis in It's a Wonderful Life.  (But she's best known as Grandma Walton.)  Marcel Dalio, who at 54 plays the 74-year-old Baron, was the magistrate in Gentlemen Prefer.

Chuck Hamilton was in Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation and would be in There's No Business Like Show Business, which would also feature Ralph Brooks, again as a party guest.  John Williams, who's actually quite good (and well cast) as Sabrina's father, would go on to Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?  (I'm numbering him, to distinguish him from the composer and any other John Williamses we run into.)  Rand Harper would be in Auntie Mame.  Marjorie Bennett, who plays the cook and was the corset saleslady in MaPK at Home, would appear in Mary Poppins.  Francis X. Bushman, who portrays Mr. Tyson, was a silent-film star, so it's surprising he didn't appear in Sunset Blvd., but I do have his very last film appearance, in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini of all things.


*We see much less of Paris than we did in Ma and Pa on Vacation or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, just the Eiffel Tower out a window.  Bogart's character says that Paris is for lovers and that's why he stayed only 35 minutes.  Consider this a hint.

"Bogie, hold her like you've just met and wish you hadn't."

Ma and Pa Kettle at Home

Ma and Pa Kettle at Home
March 10, 1954
Universal
Comedy
VHS
C+

In this entry, the previously never mentioned second (?) Kettle son, Elwin, has just finished high school and hopes to win a college scholarship that The National Magazine is sponsoring.  So he's written an essay lying about the family's rundown farm, but the magazine sends out two judges to investigate the farm and that of his local rival/girlfriend Sally Mattocks.  Why a New-York-based magazine would do this is beyond me, but it's just one of the oddities of a script that includes Pa convincing his Indian friends and their tribe to pretend to go on the warpath so Pa can look like a hero.  There's also Ma sort of matchmaking the local spinster librarian (Mary Wickes) with the older judge, the obviously symbolic courtship of the Mattocks's cow by the Kettles' bull (who wears a bowler), and what's meant to be a heartwarming Christmas that just comes across as awkward.

Apparently Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki was filmed before this, and it's possible this was meant to be the last entry.  In any case, all the Kettle kids have been replaced by the following:

• Patrick Miller, then 33 (!), as Teddy
• Brett Halsey, then 20, as Elwin
• Carol Nugent, then 16, as Nancy
• Tony Epper, then 15, as Donny
• Judy Nugent (Carol's sister?), then 13, as the otherwise unheard of Betty
• Whitey Haupt, then 13, as Henry
• Gary Pagett, then 13, as George
• Patricia Morrow, then 10, as Susie, although she'd be two non-Kettles in the last two entries in the series
• Richard Eyer, then 8, as Billy (the one who likes frogs and wears a propeller beanie)
• Nancy Zane, then 7, as Sarah
• Coral Hammond, age unknown, as Eve
• Donald MacDonald, age unknown, as Benjamin
• Donna Cregan Moots, age unknown, as Ruthie

There's no mention of Tom, but Rosie is working in Seattle over Christmas.  This again gives us a total of fifteen kids.

James Flavin played a policeman in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars as well.  Helen Gibson was in MaPK at the Fair.  Ken Terrell and Hank Worden were in MaPK on Vacation, but I think they were playing French rather than Indian then.  Alice Kelley, who's Sally here, was a stewardess in that movie.  Marjorie Bennett, who portrays the corset saleslady, would appear in Mary Poppins.