The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band

The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band
March 21, 1968
Disney
Musical, Comedy, Drama, Romance
VHS
B-

Now that we're getting into the movies that are younger than I am (though it'll be awhile till we reach any I actually saw on first release), I feel like I should attempt to explain what the deal is with these long, sometimes full-sentence-or-question, and sometimes crazy titles.  (And I don't even own The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.)  I have a couple overlapping theories.  One is that these titles catch the eye and the attention, even if they take up a lot of room on the marquee.  (From here on out, I'm abbreviating this movie as The...Family Band.)  Another theory is, well, it was the '60s (the trend might have started with Dr. Strangelove's full title in '63), and everything was getting more and more colorful and larger than life.  That some of these movies-- this one and John GoldfarbPCH spring to mind-- actually have title songs only adds to the craziness.

Although the family band plays that title song and others-- including a recurring salute to Grover Cleveland!-- the family isn't fully fleshed out.  (There are four younger girls, and I couldn't really distinguish them, except by hair color.)  Mostly, we see Grandpa Walter Brennan, who rails against "Ree-publicans," and his lovely eldest granddaughter, played by 21-year-old Lesley Ann Warren.  There are a couple other notable family members though, Buddy Ebsen (only 14 years younger than Brennan but playing his son), returning to his dancing roots, and an always smiling 16-year-old Kurt Russell, who would soon sort of replace Tommy Kirk as the campus-hijinx lead in Disney movies like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.  (I find them mostly boring, although Computer does have a catchy title tune.  I'm more of a Barefoot Executive kinda gal.)

This film, based on a book by Laura Bower, is set in 1888, when Cleveland was defeated by Harrison.  (And, although no one mentions it, Cleveland in turn would later defeat Harrison.)  The stuff about the electoral college looks even more ironic after the 2000 election, but even in '68 it would take only a few months for the election-day "riot" in this film to seem bizarrely mild, compared to the ugliness surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  Yes, it's Disney, but even so, the message that we can put aside our political and other differences must've been a hard one to swallow.

The Republicans are mostly represented by Ebsen, Richard Deacon, and 26-year-old John Davidson.  Davidson's character is courting Lesley AW.  He also urges everyone to move to Dakota, where most of the film is set.  He combines his interests when he sings about the Territory, with a line about "virgin fields" waiting to be "ploughed," sung right at Warren.  Their romance is mostly sweet, although I don't like it when he forces a kiss on her near the end and then makes her join him on a wheelbarrow ride, although she stops being mad when he gives her a wedding ring, so we're supposed to just find it funny and charming.  The two of them try to make each other jealous, he with "Giggly Girl," played by none other than Kurt Russell's future wife, 22-year-old Goldie [Jeanne] Hawn, whose Laugh-In premiered a couple months before this film was released.

Ben Frommer would be in Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?, as would Larry J. Blake, who was in Sunset Blvd.  Delivery boy Hank Jones was in Girl Happy and would be in The Barefoot Executive.  Dakota townsman Peter Renaday would be the roller derby ticket-taker in The Shaggy D.A.  Nine-year-old Pamelyn Ferdin (Laura Bower) would provide the voice of Fern in Charlotte's Web, while nine-year-old Bobby Riha (Mayo Bower) would voice Chinook in Santa and the Three Bears.  Vest Dancer Guy (The Swinger, et al.) shows up, in a period-appropriate vest (far right, below).

Easy Come, Easy Go

Easy Come, Easy Go
June 14, 1967
Paramount
Comedy, Musical
VHS
C

While this isn't like the Elvis movies that I couldn't get through even once (Roustabout springs to mind), it's hard to get excited about a movie that has indifference built right into the title.  That title is played on, with Pat Harrington's club, the Easy Go-Go, but mostly it applies to the way that all the major characters react to a treasure turning out to be relatively worthless.  Also, there are characters who appear in a scene or two and then disappear with no notice, including unfortunately Elsa Lanchester, who does get to sing a song about Yoga with Elvis.  Even with "beatniks" (here on the edge of the Summer of Love), including that dancer guy from The Swinger and The Cool Ones (still wearing his usual dark vest), Schneider, Marilyn Munster (Pat Priest), and Dodie Marshall (sort of playing Elvis's love interest, although romance is minor here), the movie had trouble holding my interest this time.  Oh, and it's got Tom Hatten, who in 1988 shared memories on Family Film Festival of making the film.  (The LA TV host has a very small role, but it's early on and you'll recognize him if you're an X-Generation Southern Californian.)

Besides Vest Dancer Guy, this movie shares a couple things with The Swinger.  Diki Lerner, who plays the crazy car-artist Zoltan here, was Svengali there.  Also, Dodie Marshall lives in an artists' commune where they have "happenings," including using women as paintbrushes.  Robert Isenberg, who plays an artist here, would have a small role in Elvis's Live a Little, Love a Little.

Perfect for a caption contest

The Cool Ones

The Cool Ones
April 12, 1967
Warner Bros
Comedy, Musical, Romance
VHS
B

Oh so mod movie that was probably dated a minute after it was released (or maybe a year before), this not only offers a mainstream look at mid-'60s teen and post-teen culture (with Warner Bros updating things slightly from their four-years-earlier vision of Palm Springs Weekend, although again much of the scene is set in that desert town), it also has a delightfully absurd script and mostly very watchable "stars."  Debbie Watson plays Hallie, a cute and charming but scheming and ambitious would-be singer, who hits clinkers right in the first minute of the film but no one notices.  She teams up with Cliff, a has-been singer played by wooden yet grouchy Gil Petersen.  They meet at a club run by Robert Coote, who was pushing 60 but not only uses slang like "groovy" and "don't blow your cool," but is supposed to be the brother of Roddy McDowall, who's "practically a teenager himself."  (The age difference is never explained, even though they were "kids" together, "unless one of us was suckled by a very kind stranger.")  McDowall was pushing 40, but he's playing the young and crazy genius music producer Tony Krum.  His "shadows" are played by Nita Talbot and Jim Begg.  There are some others in the cast (including Teri Garr), but it is the way these main six interact that is the core of the movie.  Every one has their own agenda, even the weakest link, Jim Begg, who since he's not given much to do will have moments like falling asleep and snoring in the limo.  Talbot is amazing, her very New-York accent adding to the fun of her lines, like "I like Frisco.  I spent a whole marriage there."  McDowall's character is unsympathetic, but he's so out there-- with his obsessions with purple, Napoleon, and his pregnant analyst, not necessarily in that order-- that I could watch him in this role for hours.  (Luckily, he'd have a similar role in Hello Down There a couple years later.)

OK, there are others to watch in this movie besides those six, notably Phil Harris as the producer of Whiz Bam! (think Hullaboo and Shindig) and Mrs. Miller, the offkey warbler of "Downtown," as Mrs. Miller the wardrobe lady with singing ambitions of her own.  The way McDowell and Talbot try to hide their giggles when she performs looks authentic.  The most ridiculous song & dance number is played straight, the tram-and-mountaintop-set "High."  No, it has nothing to do with drugs, although the Leaves' "In the House of Dr. Stone" probably does, like a less subtly titled answer to the Beatles' "Dr. Robert."  Another notable number is the one Tony, his brother, and his assistants sing, "Where Did I Go Wrong," which manages such rhymes as "Nappy did/happy, kid" and "ego/amigo/we go."  And of course, there's the dance sensation "The Tantrum," which we first see when Hallie leaves her go-go cage and interrupts Glen Campbell.  I'd love to know what Susan J. Douglas, author of Where the Girls Are, would make of this film, with its themes of love, hate, anger, rebellion, and containment.

Robert Kaufman surprisingly wrote the very sexist Ski Party, while this movie at least considers feminism, even if Hallie decides she'd rather be "Mrs. Cliff Donner" than a singing sensation.  The script was cowritten by Joyce Geller, so that may be a partial explanation.  Hallie is not only professionally ambitious but sexually curious, as when she exclaims, "Oo, naked men!" and when she tries to be sophisticated in her reactions to the Krum brothers.  The movie ends with the Krums and the shadows trying to convince Hallie to change her mind, Tony claiming that you can combine marriage and a career, offering Madame Curie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Virginia Woolf, and Lassie as examples.  (Roosevelt's bisexuality may not have been known back in '67, but Woolf's certainly was.  And Lassie has always been played by unmarried male dogs.)  This is what I mean about the craziness of the script.  It's hard to tell how much was intentional.  And I'm finding it hard to not quote more of it.  But it's better that you see it for yourself and be surprised.

Christopher Riordan, who'd done later AIP Beach Party movies and some other teen flicks, plays a student here.  James Milhollin, who gives a slightly Franklin Pangborn touch to his small role as the hotel manager, would be more Pangborny as the hotel manager on Mike and Carol Brady's honeymoon, but before then he'd play Stafford in Perils of Pauline.  Angelique Pettyjohn, who's one of the secretaries, would be a model in The Love God?  Phil Arnold, who plays the stage manager, would be the Mayor's Husband in Skidoo.  Annette Ferra would do one of the voices in Santa and the Three Bears.

Teri Garr on the far left, that guy who was Ann-Margret's "Swinger" roomie to Teri's right.

More of the fabulous choreography of "High," although stills can't do it justice.

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.