Schoolboy
[uncredited]: “We was doin'
arithmetic on the blackboard when Miss Foster took sick.”
Flower
Belle Lee [played
by Mae West]: “Oh, arithmetic... I was always pretty
good at figures myself.”— My Little Chickadee
(1940), screenplay by Mae West and W.C. Fields, directed by Edward F. Cline
I first became aware of this quotation while reading Maureen
Dowd’s New York Times interview with playwright Tom Stoppard back in
September.
However, while Ms. Dowd notes, correctly, that
Stoppard did some script-doctoring on 102 Dalmatians at
the behest of Glenn Close, I think she identified the wrong quote for the
movie. This quote that she (and I!) enjoy so much came from the 1996 Hughes
version, rather than the 2000 sequel with a screenplay by Kristen Buckley, Brian
Regan, Bob Tzudiker, and Noni White.
(Hughes was not associated with the 2000 project,
whereas, as producer in 1996, I doubt that he would have allowed anyone
tinkering with his script.)
The image accompanying this post is from my favorite Preston Sturges comedy, The Lady Eve (1941). I love how Henry Fonda plays bumbling brewery heir Charles Pike with a mix of enthrallment and alarm as he falls under the spell of the alluring gold digger Jean (played by Barbara Stanwyck).
And well he might: As
Jean tells a confidante, in one of the great lines in Sturges’ hilarious
script: “I need him like the ax needs the turkey.”
George Spiggott
[played by Peter Cook]: “It's the standard contract. Gives you
seven wishes in accordance with the mystic rules of life. Seven Days of the Week,
Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Seas, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers...” —Bedazzled
(1967), screenplay by Peter Cook, from a story by Dudley Moore, directed by
Stanley Donen
(Not that there hadn’t
been tension between them already on the set: In interview excerpts included in
the blog, Cinephilia and Beyond, Bogdanovich related, “I had to keep
Ryan from killing her” over the child’s inability to learn her lines.)
Clouseau [played by Peter
Sellers]: “I'm a little short.”— Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), screenplay by Frank Waldman, Ron
Clark and Blake Edwards, directed by Blake Edwards
The French painter, printmaker, draughtsman,
caricaturist and illustrator Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec died 120 years
ago today at only age 36, from the combined effects of alcoholism and syphilis,
in Château Malromé, Saint-André-du-Bois, France.
There are all sorts of reading materials for anyone
interested in finding out more about the life and art of this consummate artist
of Parisian nightlife, including this post, from the blog of the Milwaukee Art Museum, by Christa Story.
But non-art majors may have encountered his work
already, in John Huston’s 1952 film Moulin Rouge, with Jose Ferrer as
the artist, bringing Oscar nominations to both star and director. Though not
particularly accurate as to the facts of the artist’s life, the movie is usually
considered, along with Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life (1956) on
Vincent Van Gogh, as among the great artistic biopics of the Fifties.
It is the indelible image created by Ferrer that
Sellers and Edwards are sending up in the above quote. At roughly six feet
tall, Ferrer had to subject his body to all manner of contortions to simulate
the diminutive Lautrec (unable to grow beyond five feet because of a congenital
bone disease).
Sellers may not have found this process quite as
agonizing as Ferrer, for this was the second time he dressed up as the
chronicler of the Parisian demimonde, following his appearance in in the 1967
James Bond spoof Casino Royale. But his inimitable detective Clouseau donned
several other disguises, too, in Revenge of the Pink Panther: priest,
Mafia don, even the boss he literally drove insane, Inspector Dreyfus.
You don’t have to press too hard to get me to confess
that it’s Sellers’ Lautrec, not Ferrer’s, that I remember. But that’s because
comic genius carries everything before it.
Except for Trail of the Pink Panther, a collection of outtakes from the earlier The Pink Panther Strikes Again that were released after Sellers' death, this was the final collaboration of the actor and Edwards. The writer-director was frustrated, and sometimes alarmed, by his star's mental deterioration (e.g., displaying increased difficulty in coordinating his lines with his physical bits, calling Edwards overnight to say that God had just told him how to solve a problem with a scene).
But the two men brought enough to this last time together to produce some of the most laugh-out-moments of the series, and to intrigue viewers like me in researching further into the objects of their humor.
[turns it on]
Dink, Dink, Dink, Dink, Dink, Dink:
“Ooooh!”
Yogurt [reacts to Dinks]:
“The kids love this one.”
[A Dink hands him a doll that looks likes Yogurt.]
Yogurt: “And last but
not least, Spaceballs the doll: me.”
[Pulls string]
Doll: “‘May the
schwartz be with you!’”
Yogurt [kisses the
doll]: “Adorable.”— Spaceballs (1987), screenplay by Mel
Brooks, Thomas Meehan, and Ronny Graham, directed by Mel Brooks
Chester Hooton
[played by Bob Hope]: “What're you doing?”
Duke Johnson
[played by Bing Crosby]: “Putting mine in my hat in a safe place. And
you'd better do the same thing.”
Chester: “In a safe
place, huh?”
Duke: “Sure.”
Chester: “Say, what do
you think of my underwear?”
Duke: “Not much, but
put it there anyway.”— Road to Utopia
(1945), screenplay by Norman Panama and Melvin Frank, directed by Hal Walker
Nobody who has worked with her or seen her
performances onscreen could ever lob an accusation of “uninteresting” at Diane Keaton, born 75 years ago today in Los Angeles.
Utterly idiosyncratic, the actress has put some people
off with her mannerisms and overall quirkiness. But look past that and you’ll see an actress unafraid
to defy convention or to challenge herself.
Although much of her fame in the 1970s derived from her
comedies with Woody Allen (including her Oscar-winning title role in the
semi-autobiographical Annie Hall), these were interspersed with dramas in
which she invested her characters with increasing depth and complexity (notably,
The Godfather II, Looking for Mr. Goodbar, Reds, and The Good Mother).
The daughter of an amateur photographer, she has honed
her eye for startling visuals with photography books of her own, as well as
with her work as director for the small screen (China Beach, Twin Peaks) and
the big one (Unstrung Heroes).
In the last decade, she has taken to writing,
exploring the fragility of love (the most prominent past men in her life
include Allen, Warren Beatty and Al Pacino), the inextricable bonds of immediate
family and the endurance of memory in a trio of memoirs: Then Again, Let's
Just Say It Wasn't Pretty and Brother and Sister.
Mrs. Susan Elliott Potter [played
by Jean Dixon]: “He used to live with us.”
Professor Nick Potter [played
by Edward Everett Horton]: “We've come to warn his future bride about him—he
never puts the cap back on the toothpaste.”
Edward “Ned” Seton [played
by Lew Ayres]: “Mm-hmm. Then we'll drink a toast to Johnny—he needs it.”
[Fills champagne glasses]
Susan: “Needs it?”
Ned: “Oh. I'm wrong. He
doesn't need it. Johnny's doing all right.”
Linda: “What's on your
mind, Ned?”
Ned: “Nothing's on my mind.”
Linda: “What do you mean—‘Johnny's
doing all right’?”
Ned: “I mean he's doing All
Right. He's having a whirl. Julia's got his hair slicked down and Father's
seeing that he meets the important people.”
Nick: “My word—are
there important people downstairs?”
Linda: “Oh—frightfully
important—that's why I want to give a party up here.”
Nick: [Quoting an
imaginary society column] “'Miss Linda Seton—on New Year's Eve— entertained
a small group of Very Unimportant People.'”
[Lifting champagne glass]
Nick: “To our hostess.”
[They all drink to Linda]
Linda: [Chuckles]
“May I drink, too?”— Holiday
(1938), screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman, based on the
play by Philip Barry, directed by George Cukor
The Philadelphia Story, a
later Katharine Hepburn-Cary Grant rom-com, may be more famous, but Holiday has
its own charms—especially in this New Year’s Eve scene, with Lew Ayres, as the sodden
truth-teller Ned, almost stealing the picture from its stars.
Most of all, what I love about this film (and the original play, by the marvelous Irish-American playwright Philip Barry) is the
sobriety that keeps rising to the surface amid all the bubbly—the price and
glory of Linda and Grant’s Johnny as they resist convention.
In recent years, some commentators have seen Ned’s
flip but ultimately submissive descent into alcoholism as the retreat of a gay
son in the face of an overpowering father. I dismissed that, until I noticed
other lines of his that seemed to sink under the weight of family history and suppressed
sexual orientation:
“You see, Father wanted a large family so Mother
promptly had Linda, but Linda was a girl so Mother promptly had Julia, but
Julia was a girl and the whole thing seemed hopeless. Then, the following year
Mother had me, it was a boy and the fair name of Seaton would flourish….Drink
to Mother, Johnny—she tried to be a Seaton for a while, then gave up and died.”
In this same dynamic of a wisecracking drunk who
constantly disappoints his father, other movie fans may be reminded of Dudley
Moore’s decidedly heterosexual Arthur.
Aficionados of real estate development—not to mention
of Presidential history—will summon up a relationship more recent, crushing, and sad.
(While The Philadelphia Story was turned into a
celebrated Cole Porter musical, Holiday was transformed into one that
gained far less notice: Happy New Year. This 1980 Broadway production,
while also featuring songs by the great songwriter, also demonstrated the
importance of a musical “book”—or, in this case, with an awkward one
constructed by Burt Shevelove, what can happen with an inadequate one.)
Thirty Christmas seasons ago, Home Alone was
romping at the box office. All this time later, it remains laugh-out-loud
funny.
Rufus T. Firefly [played by Groucho Marx]: “That's what you think!”— Duck Soup (1933), story by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, with additional dialogue by Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, directed by Leo McCarey
Take a look at the guys in the above picture. Now, imagine them replaced by the prominent names mentioned by Ramis. Quite a difference, eh?
By “we” in the above quote, Ramis had in mind himself,
his co-writer Chris Miller, and co-producers Ivan Reitman and Matty Simmons.
John Landis, brought in to direct, had his own ideas—and sounds like he rubbed
the original creative team the wrong way by calling the project “my movie.”
In general, Landis desired to cast straight dramatic
actors—quite a contrast from those mentioned above. But some of his other
choices were, shall we say, unusual. He sounded out Jack Webb to play
Dean Wormer and Meat Loaf for Bluto, in case Belushi wouldn’t or couldn’t take
on the role.
But, for my money, his most unusual idea was Kim Novak as Mrs. Wormer. She had, by this time, fled Hollywood without
completely abandoning her film career.
But the hard-drinking, libidinous dean’s wife would
have been quite a change from the far more restrained roles that the blond
Fifties goddess played in films like Bell, Book and Candle, Pal Joey and Picnic.
What might have happened if she decided to go through
with it? Might other roles have come her way? Would she have played the wild
cucumber scene with the same uninhibited delight that Verna Bloom did, or would
she have tantalized Otter by staying just out of reach, aisle after aisle in the supermarket, as she did with Jimmy
Stewart early in Vertigo?
We’ll never know. But it’s as startling an alternative
casting idea as the original choice for Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate: Novak's fellow
blond Fifties star Doris Day.
Burt Johnson
[played by Stephen Elliott]: [smiling broadly] “When I was 11
years old, I KILLED a man.”
Arthur Bach
[played by Dudley Moore]: “Well, when you're 11 you probably don't even
know there's a law against that. Is Susan here?”
Burt [oblivious as he
reminisces]: “I knew what I was doing. We were poor.
He came into our house to steal our food.”
Arthur: “Well, he was
asking for it.”
Burt: “I took a knife, and I killed him in the kitchen.”
Arthur [laughing nervously]: “You, uh... probably ate out that night, what with that man lying in your kitchen.”
Burt: “You seem to
find humor in everything.”
Arthur [nervously]: “Yeah,
sorry.”—Arthur (1981), written and directed by Steve Gordon
Even though Arthur has been out nearly 40 years
now, I had only caught bits and pieces of it over the years until this summer,
when I viewed it in its entirety on TCM. There are so many aspects of this
comedy to savor, starting with the performances of Dudley Moore and Sir John
Gielgud.
But what I think has been overlooked over time is the sheer toughness of Steve Gordon’s screenplay, which pulls off something pretty stunning: Despite its surface sunniness, a throwback to the Cinderella rom-coms that Jean Arthur, Carole Lombard or Claudette Colbert might have made in the Thirties, this film is under no illusions about the rich.
Released in the first summer of the Reagan
Administration, it offers a caution that the men who profited the most in this
era would have no one’s interests but their own in mind. They may be different from you and me, as Scott Fitzgerald maintained, but they don't have more charm, just more money--and the muscle to maintain it.
Burt Johnson may be the most dramatic example of the abusive
1% here, but he’s not the only one. While visiting his grandmother, Martha,
Arthur shares his feelings for Linda, the thief he had encountered while she
was filching a necktie at a department store.
Yet Martha warns him bluntly that he will be disowned
if he does not marry longtime rich girlfriend Susan: "We are ruthless people.
Don't screw with us!"
Knowing that he is gravely ill, the butler Hobbes
likewise warns about the dangers of defying his family, in some of the
strongest lines of tough love ever delivered on film: “Poor drunks do not find
love, Arthur. Poor drunks have very few teeth, they urinate outdoors, they
freeze to death in summer. I can't bear to think of you that way."
When salvation does come nevertheless for Arthur, it
comes in the only realistic scenario possible. In church, as Burt Johnson
pummels Arthur for jilting his daughter, Martha simply can’t abide an outsider
delivering punishment to any member of her family, no matter how wayward she
might regard him. Coming to the aid of her grandson, after all, does not
contradict what she said earlier. Notice the subject of her first sentence: We
are ruthless people.
So the rich turn on each other, only this time it comes
through blows rather than lawsuits.
Hmmm…Well, right now they’ve started this season 3-0. (And even in 1995, when this romantic comedy opened, they won their first division title since 1972.) So I’d say, “Don’t sweat it, Mr. President.”
(That’s Michael Douglas—presumably, using his remote,
without success, to locate the Packers—with Annette Bening by his side in The
American President.)
