Gidget Goes Hawaiian

Gidget Goes Hawaiian
June 21, 1961
Columbia
Comedy, Musical
VHS
B+

This is an utterly delightful sequel, improving on the original in every regard.  No offence to Sandra Dee, but I think this is a great debut for Deborah Walley, then almost 20.  She could actually surf and this would be far from her last beach movie.  She's spunky in a different way than Dee, more obviously tomboyish, and she actually comes across as more innocent.  (Ironic, considering her AIP roles.)  She even has a bit of chemistry with James Darren, who stops being a jerk for the last 20 or 30 minutes of the movie.

Instead of just a triangle, we get a nine-sided group of teens and post-teens, with various pairings possible, although if the movie does have a weakness, it's that two of the guys and two of the girls are forgettable.  The other girl, Abby, is played by the deliciously feline Vicki Trickett.  (She's even scared of water, which pays off in her "punishment" at the end.)  Moondoggie's main rival is Michael Callan, playing a charming dancer, Eddie Horner.  (He gets saddled with a Broadway-Melody-Ballet-like number, but it's shorter and more bearable.)  Joby Baker actually plays a different character in this one (not just his nickname, since Judge has never met Gidget or Moondoggie before), and he adds to the hokey comedy.  Not that the film isn't genuinely funny much of the time.

It helps that Gidget's parents and Abby's are played by respectively Carl Reiner, Jeff Donnell (she nicknamed herself after "Mutt and Jeff," not after Moondoggie's birth name), Peggy Cass, and Eddie Foy, Jr.  They get a lot of screen time and they deserve it.  Not only do they all know how to make the most of out of their lines, but they manage to make Gidget's suspicions of wife-swapping plausible.  Yes, wife-swapping, although it's not called that.  She has a vivid imagination, and when Abby spreads rumors that Gidget sleeps around (not that it's called that), Gidget imagines herself as, in order, a streetwalker, a fan-dancer, and an unwed mother!  The movie is surprisingly outrageous, and even has jokes about suicide.  Yet it never comes across as sleazy.  Even when Moondoggie, Eddie, and Judge are singing the title tune and 'Doggie emphasizes, "When the Gidget goes Hawaiian, she goes Hawaiian all the way," it's suggestive, not tasteless.

This is the most fun movie of the '60s so far.  I will note in terms of continuity, that this is allegedly set the summer after the first movie, making Gidget almost 18.  Jeff pinning her is changed to this year rather than last.  I'll talk more about chronology when we get to Gidget Goes to Rome, also written by Ruth Brooks Flippen.

Donnell would return as Mrs. Lawrence for GG to Rome, but Foy would be "Beachgoer Wanting to Use Phone."  Don Edmonds, who plays forgettable guy Larry, would do Beach Ball.

The Apartment

The Apartment
June 15, 1960
United Artists
Comedy, Drama, Romance
DVD
B+

Although this has big stars, won five Oscars-- best picture, director, original screenplay, film editing, and set direction-- and has received critical acclaim, then and now, it feels like an obscure little picture.  I don't mean that as an insult.  It's just that Wilder's use of black & white here, and the feel of a stageplay (much of the film is indeed set in the title location, and the cast is relatively small), as well as the intimate, human tone, suggest a low-budget gem.  Yet there are those big stars, and the workplace is huge, with the floor that C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) works on seeming to stretch into infinity.  There's another contradiction in the way the genres clash with each other, the comedy, drama, and romance not blending so much as fighting.  This works much better than it did in Wilder's Sabrina, in part because the central romantic triangle is so much better cast.

Lemmon's Baxter has some of the sweetness and "getting-tookness" of Jerry in Some Like It Hot.  But there's also an unsavory undertone, with him loaning his apartment to executives in his company.  Rock Hunter at least had some fun pretending to romance a movie star in order to achieve success, including that key to the executive washroom.  (Here there's also an unseen executive dining room.)  All Baxter gets at first is a cold.  Mostly, he's pushed around by those four executives, including such familiar faces as Mame's Mr. Upson (Willard Waterman), Bewitched's Larry Tate (David White), and My Favorite Martian (Ray Walston).  (The other exec, David Lewis, would go on to John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!)  When Baxter gets to sit at home for a change, he can't even enjoy himself, because (despite a then-cutting-edge channel-changer) there's nothing on TV but westerns and commercials.

This was an early yet transitional movie for Shirley MacLaine, as Fran Kubelik.  She is amazing in it, even though she's giving probably the most understated performance.  Fran makes mistakes, and knows it, but keeps making them, until she finally has her epiphany in the end.  Her chemistry with Lemmon is just right, as is her reply to his declaration of love.

Then there's Fred MacMurray as J.D. Sheldrake.  This was right around the time MacMurray was making Disney movies, and he would soon be the father of "his three sons" on TV.  At first it's strange to see him play such a sleazeball, but it works, because he does have that bland, pleasant surface.  You can believe he's fooled everyone.  It's almost a throwaway, but I like how one of his preteen sons wants to put two flies on a toy rocket and see if they'll "propagate."  Sheldrake shows as much discomfort as he does with other matters that shouldn't be talked about, like adultery and suicide.  It's not that he's prim and proper; it's that he doesn't like to take responsibility.

You can see how much the Code had crumbled in the seven years since The Moon Is Blue.  Then it was a big deal that a virgin went to a bachelor's apartment, took money from an older man with "no strings attached," and came out of the experience with two marriage proposals.  Here, when Sheldrake gives Fran $100 for Christmas, he does it because he's too uncaring to take the time to buy her a present.  She sees it as him calling her a whore, although this isn't said aloud, just through MacLaine's performance.

The movie is also interesting to contrast with its contemporary, Please Don't Eat the Daisies.  There, a blonde bimbo tells a married man (played by Moon Is Blue's David Niven) that she's on the make for him, but he doesn't succumb, even when he's living in a hotel.  Here there's lots of adultery, including almost Baxter's with the wife of a jockey imprisoned by Castro for non-political reasons.  (And one blonde bimbo is compared to Marilyn Monroe, a forgivable cruelty on Wilder's part, considering the hell Marilyn put everybody through on Some Like It Hot.)  The cheating men always make sure to make the train from New York City back to the suburbs, while Niven's character missed trains while keeping vows.

In Daisies, there are some black extras at Macy's, presented as equals to Doris Day.  Here I think there's only a "shoeshine boy," whom Sheldrake gives a small tip.  More memorably, there are three significant Jewish characters: Baxter's landlady and his neighbors the Dreyfusses.  They speak stereotypically, but believably, as Jewish New Yorkers of their time and generation (roughly 50s).  They are also the heart and soul of the movie, the most decent people, even when they're scolding Baxter, whom they think is a love-'em-and-leave-'em playboy, because of what they overhear from his apartment.  Jack Kruschen as Dr. Dreyfuss is quite good at going back and forth between the comedy and drama, and he, along with Lemmon and MacLaine, was nominated by the Academy, although none of them won.  (Kruschen played French in Ma and Pa Kettle on Vacation.)

Comparing this briefly to my other Billy Wilder movies:

• Fran's suicide attempt is much more realistic and heart-wrenching than Norma Desmond's in Sunset Blvd., because she's a much more sympathetic character, and she's not manipulative, but manipulated. 
• The business world is presented much less sympathetically than in Sabrina, where we're supposed to believe that Linus Larrabee will somehow be able to balance love and success, despite being a workaholic.  (The bowler hat is a very different symbol in that movie.)
• Both Some Like It Hot and this movie have sequences that alternate between two "dates," with Lemmon's dates played entirely for laughs, while Junior & Sugar's rendezvous has heat as well as humor, but Sheldrake & Fran's is dramatic with moments of dark wit.

Joe Palma and Joan Shawlee were in Some Like It Hot, she as Sweet Sue.  One of the office workers, Dorothy Abbott, was a showgirl in There's No Business Like Show Business, and would be a radio operator in Palm Springs Weekend.  Hal Smith, who's a drunk Santa here (he's best known as Otis on The Andy Griffith Show), would be Santa and a ranger in Santa and the Three Bears.

Please Don't Eat the Daisies

Please Don't Eat the Daisies
March 31, 1960
MGM
Comedy, Drama
VHS
C+

Welcome to the 1960s!  OK, it's very early in the '60s, so early that when there's a reference to "an ex-president," it can only be Hoover or Truman.  Still, you can see the cultural shift beginning, particularly with male-female relationships.  There are moments, like when Spring Byington (well cast as Doris Day's mother) gives advice, or when Day uses her "feminine wiles" on husband Niven, that you're not sure where things are going to land.  Is Niven's character right that he's always right?  Is Day really selfish?  Or is it the reverse?  And what's going on with the half-serious seductive actress?  Not to mention the butch doctor who answers a little boy's question of whether she's a man or a woman with "I'm a veterinarian.  That's in between."  Another sign of the times is that I noticed more black extras than in my earlier films (with the exception of It's a Wonderful Life), particularly in the scenes set at Macy's.

The movie is very, very loosely based on Jean Kerr's book, which I reviewed here: http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/06/please-dont-eat-daisies.html.   This has little wit in comparison, except for the semi-in-joke about Rock Hudson.  Day sings three songs, including the title song and her trademark "Que Sera Sera," but the only one that really works is her duet (with a heavyset woman) on "Any Way the Wind Blows."  There are four bratty kids, each with a different hair color (although two of them are supposed to be twins), and a big sheepdog, but they don't contribute much to the entertainment.  Patsy Kelly is welcome as always, although she's not playing to her strengths.

Charles Walters also directed Easter Parade.  Marina Koshetz was in Little Women.  Kenner G. Kemp was in Singin' in the Rain and some of my other movies.  Harold Miller was in Auntie Mame.  Hal Taggart might've been in one of my earlier movies, and he would definitely be in Mary Poppins.  Peter Leeds would appear in I'll Take Sweden.  Jack Chefe, who plays the Sardi's headwaiter, would be in Take Her, She's Mine.  Len Lesser, who plays another Sardi's waiter, would be in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, which would also feature Marianne Gaba as Animal.  Milton Frome would do John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!  Frank Delfino would be in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory and Americathon, but his best known role is probably as a Kaplutian on The Brady Bunch.  Irene Tedrow would be in Foul Play.

We're supposed to feel sorry for them that they bought this house?

Plan 9 from Outer Space

Plan 9 from Outer Space
July 22, 1959
DCA
Sci-Fi
VHS
B-

This was one of the trickier movies to grade, partly because I want the grades to reflect not how "good" or "bad" a movie is, but rather how entertaining I find it.  Also, I've seen this movie multiple times (although not recently) and it's received so much attention-- especially with the Medveds calling it the worst ever-- it's as difficult to come to it fresh as it is to write about some of the "classics."  Watching this time, I tried just approaching it as a film, admittedly a cheap '50s sci-fi film.

What most struck me is how, intentionally or not, Ed Wood, Jr. (writer/director/producer/plus a cameo role) alienates the audience, pun sort of intended.  This is seen most obviously in the way he plays with time.  TV psychic Criswell speaks of the future and yet claims that the events onscreen have already happened.  We're told at one point that "modern women" have "been like this through the ages."  Wood also goes beyond "day for night" shots and seems to not care that it can be entirely different times of the day depending on whether we're at the Trents' home, the graveyard, or the field in between.  At least I think it's the field in between.  We're also dislocated in space.  In fact, space is dislocated in space, with "cigar-shaped" saucers that look more like paper plates (heck, they look more like sombreros than like cigars) able to travel from Earth to I forget what the planet was called in only one Earth day.  Characters keep contradicting each other and themselves, most notably the alien ironically named Eros, who's simultaneously a pacifist and a mass murderer.  A police officer asks a war veteran if he can handle a gun, after we've been treated to multiple scenes of the cop waving his own gun around and even scratching himself with it!

I was going to give this movie a B but, and I know this is an odd time to bring this up, it's too sexist.  Not only do we have everyone "protecting" Mrs. Trent (and putting her in harm's way), but I don't like the way Tanna (the female alien) is treated, especially by Eros.  (Joanna Lee would go on to much better things, as a TV writer, winning an Emmy for The Waltons.)  Yes, I know it's the '50s, and yes, I know the movie makes no sense anyway, but it bugs me because it seems so unnecessary.  You could argue that Gidget is also a sexist movie, with Grandma's old-fashioned sampler presented as profound wisdom about male-female relationships, but even if you don't like what happens to/with the girls in that movie, at least they're presented as full human beings.  That said, yeah, it's kind of fun to watch Vampira walk around as a sort of zombie, even if I can't believe she'd ever marry Bela Lugosi, living or dead.

Gidget

Gidget
April 10, 1959
Columbia
Comedy, Drama, Musical
VHS
B-

Almost 17-year-old Sandra Dee* plays the turning-17 title character (girl + midget).  This is the granddaddy of surf/beach movies, so we first see the-leads-surfing-against-rear-projection-waves mixed in with stunt surfers in long shots, and first hear a lot more talk about than practice of sex among the beach crowd.  This is based on the first of the Gidget books (which were in turn based on the author's daughter).  I've read only one of the books, and my review is here: http://rereadingeverybookiown.blogspot.com/2012/07/affairs-of-gidget.html.  The movies are apparently very different than the books, and I suspect the moral lessons that the mother gently passes on were not in the first novel.  When I first saw the movie in my early teens, I could relate to the pressure to have a boyfriend, and it wasn't till years later that it occurred to me that Gidget's boyish friend Betty Louise's initials may've stood for something else, fraternity pin or not.  Watching it now, I find Cliff Robertson a hell of a lot more attractive than cold fish James Darren, even when the latter is singing love songs.  Darren nonetheless would return as Moondoggie in the sequels, though the Gidgets would change.

Joby Baker is the only other member of the cast who would do the two film sequels, although his character's nickname would change from Stinky to Judge.  Paul Wendkos would stay on as director.  This film also features a 21-year-old Yvonne Craig (Batgirl) as one of Gidget's more buxom pals; and future Billy Jack, Tom Laughlin, as Loverboy.  Mary LaRoche, Gidget's sympathetic mom, would be in The Swinger.  (I don't own Bye Bye Birdie, but that's a very different Ann-Margret film she did.)  Four Preps member Bruce Belland would write "He's Gonna Make It" for The Barefoot Executive.  And, yes, orchestrator John Williams, Jr. is that John Williams.


*Dee's mother may have lied about Sandra's age, making her 15 in 1959.  In any case, she looks much younger than everyone else.

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.

The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw

The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw
March 14, 1959
Fox
Comedy, Western
DVD
D-

I could go on and on about how remarkably unentertaining this is, with its poor writing (including songwriting), direction, and acting (Mansfield's accent is so bad that "loco" sounds like "local"), not to mention the racism against Indians, slightly redeemed towards the end.  I could point out all the things I disliked, with the only things I liked being a too brief Robert Morley cameo and a collie that knows how to play poker.  Or I could compare this to the far from brilliant but still better comedy westerns of 1940 Go West and My Little Chickadee.  But I think this trailer explains things better than I ever could:
http://youtu.be/VyhXwEn9EQs

Unlike Raoul Walsh, at least Tashlin could've done something with the Freudianism.