The Celluloid Closet

The Celluloid Closet
March 15, 1996
HBO etc.
Documentary
VHS
B

Although this remains an insightful and often funny look at the history of gays and lesbians (and to a lesser degree transfolk and bisexuals) in a century's worth of movies, I don't think it has aged entirely gracefully.  There are two things, not unrelated.  One, almost twenty years have passed, and the way we look at "gay movies," and indeed the LGBT (etc.) community/communities has changed.  Homophobia definitely still exists, but there's a lot more mainstream tolerance, as evidenced in the progress with the gay marriage issue.  Also, sexuality (which now includes asexuality) is by no means a binary subject anymore.  (Not that it ever was, but people are more conscious of that.)  And two, although this is better organized than Hollywood Uncensored, I felt it didn't do a good enough job of putting things in context with the larger culture.  For example, there's only a brief mention of the medical view of homosexuality and some mention of Catholic censorship, but Hollywood was heavily affected by the perspectives of the dominant culture.  Still, the movie continues to offer a different way of seeing the movies, and I know I've never been able to watch the gymnasium scene in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes without grinning.

With the exception of Will H. Hays, I've decided not to tag everyone in the film clips, but instead focus on those who are interviewed (Gore Vidal is hilarious of course), as well as Tomlin, who narrated.  At the time this movie was released, she wasn't officially out, but then she was never exactly closeted either.  Interestingly, Paul Rudnick would soon write In & Out, which was quite an experience to see with a mainstream audience.

The movie is based on a much more pessimistic book by Vito Russo, who had died in 1990.

"I just went gay all of a sudden!"

Sextette

Sextette
March 3, 1978
Crown International Pictures
Comedy, Musical
VHS
B-

From the opening lyrics that proclaim that Marlo Manners is "the female answer to Apollo" (I guess they didn't want to do a rhyme for "Venus") onward, this movie will have you scratching your head, shaking your head, dropping your jaw, and/or laughing affectionately and/or scornfully.  Even by the standards of an octogenarian Mae West sex comedy/ slash vanity production (if you thought they overdid the soft-focus on Lucy in Mame, you ain't seen nothin' yet), the movie makes little sense.  But if you start asking yourself questions like, "Why can't Marlo remember all her marriages and divorces?  Liz Taylor always managed it," or "Exactly how is this nutty scheme going to achieve world peace?", you probably won't be able to let go enough to get into the movie.  As it is, I can't say it's an enjoyably bad enough movie to hold up to more than a dozen viewings, but I still got things out of it this time, including of course being amused at the cast.

Of those I've tagged, three of them are Marlo's six (ish) husbands: Tony Curtis as Russian diplomat Alexei (hubby #2 or 3), Ringo as Polish (I think) film director Laszlo (#4), and George Hamilton as gangster Vance (#5).  (One husband, seen only in newspaper clippings, was a count.)  Number 6 (or 7) is Sir Michael Barrington, who turns out to be a spy.  Marlo's manager (Dom DeLuise) declares Sir MB is "bigger than 007," which would be ironic a dozen years later when Timothy Dalton (33 in '78) became James Bond.

As for Ken Hughes, he directed Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which is fortunate because this is a musical.  True, some people (like Dalton) seem to be reciting lyrics more than singing, but then there are others, like DeLuise, who are giving it their all.  Most of these songs are of '60s and '70s vintage, like DeLuise's "Honey Pie" and Dalton's "Love Will Keep Us Together." The script by Herbert Baker, who also wrote the screenplay for The Girl Can't Help It, is based on West's 1961 screenplay.  I have to say that, as high a tolerance as I have for double entrendres and innuendos, even such chestnuts as West delivers here (yes, even the "gun in your pocket" one), it does get to be a bit one-note after awhile, which is why I went with a B- rather than a B.

George Raft plays a gangster named "George."  Seventy-year-old Rollin Moriyama, who's the Japanese delegate here, would soon be a Japanese doctor in Rabbit Test, then get his most famous role, as a taxi passenger in Foul Play, before becoming Chinese for Americathon.  One of the athletes, Kal Szkalak, would also be in Americathon.  Keith Allison, who plays a waiter, was apparently a '60s teen idol and famous enough to be one of the "guests at Heartland" at the end of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Alice Cooper, who's almost unrecognizable here (he plays the glass piano and is greeted as Alice by DeLuise), would have a much more important role in Sgt. Pepper.  Ed Beheler seems to have made a bit of a career impersonating President Carter, but this is the only one of his six movies I own.  There are appearances by "journalists" Rona Barrett, Regis Philbin, and Gil Stratton playing themselves.  And the soon to be late Keith Moon plays a mad dress designer.

Some Like It Hot

Some Like It Hot
March 29, 1959
United Artists
Comedy, Historical, Musical, Romance
DVD
A

Probably my all-time favorite movie (as well as the top comedy on the AFI list), this is hilarious, clever, sexy, warm, sweet, romantic, cynical, dark, light, wise, silly, gay-friendly, and remarkably well-timed.  That last quality really struck me on this viewing, how not just the wisecracks but everything, from sound effects to exits and entrances, is Swiss-watch-like.  The script by Wilder and Diamond is top-notch, from running jokes like "Type O" to plot twists to its justly famous curtain line to double entendres .  (This time I caught "cherry tarts.")  The three leads were probably never better than they are here: Curtis, playing "heel" Joe, prissy Josephine, and Cary-Grantesque Shell Oil Jr.; Lemmon as insecure Jerry and unsinkable Daphne; and Monroe, still lighting up the screen as she did at the beginning of the decade in All About Eve, here more vulnerable but also more fun-loving as Sugar Kane.  They're well-supported by the rest of the cast, especially the veterans, with "satchel-mouthed" Joe E. Brown priceless as Lemmon's suitor.  Although the film is not a musical per se, it does use music very effectively, not just the jazzy background themes and incidental music, but Marilyn's three very different songs.  (Needless to say, far more memorable than poor Jayne Mansfield's ditties in The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw.)  The costumes, Marilyn's especially, are just right, and the movie is definitely an argument for the beauty of black & white.  (In fact, on their anti-Colorization program, Siskel & Ebert showed a clip of Marilyn teasing and being teased by the shadows and lights during "I Wanna Be Loved by You.")  The comparisons to the farce of the Marx Brothers don't seem overblown, and in fact there's a great improvement on the "crowded compartment" scene of A Night at the Opera.

So why not an A+?  Well, I could say something about perfection, but I think it's that the gangster plot doesn't quite work.  Don't get me wrong.  It provides some great moments, especially when George Raft (Spats) and Pat O'Brien face off, or when we see how stupid and crude Spats's henchmen are, and it doesn't bring the movie too far down, as the gangsters do in The Girl Can't Help It.  But when the mob, or rather mobs, show up in the last half hour of the movie, it takes away some of the sunny bubbliness of the Florida setting.  Still, the two wrong-for-each-other-yet-so-right couples manage to go off into the horizon, on their way to a yacht, and there is that lovely end-line.

Tom Kennedy (not the game show host), who plays a bouncer here, was in the Marxes' Monkey Business.  Jack Gordon was in It's a Wonderful Life.  Carl Sklover was in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.  Billy Wayne was in The Girl Can't Help It.  Bert Stevens was in Citizen Kane and Auntie Mame, the latter with Arthur Tovey.

Joe Palma and Joan Shawlee (Sweet Sue) would be in The Apartment.  Tiger Joe Marsh would do Beware! The Blob.  Dave Barry (not that Dave Barry), who is Beinstock here, would be in Spinout.  Mike Mazurki, one of Spats's more memorable henchmen, would appear in The Magic of Lassie.  George Raft would play himself in Sextette, while Tony Curtis would chew a lot of scenery as one of the many ex-husbands (the Russian one) of Mae West's character.  Nehemiah Persoff, who's Little Bonaparte, would have a completely different role as Yentl's papa in the Streisand movie.