Quote of the Day (St. Ignatius Loyola, on How to Serve God)

“It is not enough that I should serve God by myself: I must help the hearts of all to love him and the tongues of all to praise him.”—St. Ignatius Loyola, Thoughts of St. Ignatius  Loyola for Every Day of the Year, From the Scintillae Ignatianae compiled by Gabriel Hevenesi, S.J., Translated by Alan G. McDougall (2006)

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Godfather,’ on Family)

Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino): “When Johnny [Fontane] was first starting out, he was signed to a personal services contract with this big-band leader. And as his career got better and better, he wanted to get out of it. But the band leader wouldn't let him. Now, Johnny is my father's godson. So my father went to see this bandleader and offered him $10,000 to let Johnny go, but the bandleader said no. So the next day, my father went back, only this time with Luca Brasi. Within an hour, he had a signed release for a certified check of $1000.”

Kay Adams (played by Diane Keaton): “How did he do that?” 

Michael:  “My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse.” 

Kay: “What was that?” 

Michael:  “Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract....That's a true story.” [Cut to Johnny singing again for about 10 more seconds before going back to Michael] "That's my family, Kay, that's not me.”—The Godfather (1972), adapted from the novel by Mario Puzo, screenplay by Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, directed by Coppola

For an adaptation of a shameless potboiler, The Godfather—which premiered on this date 40 years ago—yielded a screenplay as notable for its memorable lines as for its sturdy structure. Today’s quote illustrates both. 

I didn’t select these lines because of the line in the middle about “an offer he couldn’t refuse,” nor because of the thinly veiled anecdote about how the Mafia induced recalcitrant jazzman Tommy Dorsey to release lead singer Frank Sinatra from his contract so he could pursue a solo career. No, it’s the last line, about family, that intrigued me.

In 1972, a protracted, dishonest foreign war that had lost any real purpose was winding toward a conclusion in keeping with the way it was conducted, and the reelection campaign of an American President was authorizing dirty tricks in a race he was unlikely to lose. In that atmosphere, the Puzo-Coppola screenplay would resonate with its insights into business, crime, power, and even the American Dream. (Kay: "Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don't have men killed." Michael: "Oh. Who's being naive, Kay?")

But it might have been in its perception of the American Family that the film cut most deeply.

In a post for the Koldcast blog, “How The Godfather Trilogy Changed the Face of the Crime Family,” Dan Berry took a now-standard view that the saga paid “homage to the traditional romanticized idea of the noble gangster as a ‘man of honor’ – one who acts outside the law but with an exemplary devotion to both the biological family as well as the crime family.” Some of this longstanding belief was propagated by Puzo himself, who once said he had presented "a highly romanticized myth" about the Mafia, as he had never met a gangster before he wrote his novel.

On the contrary, I don’t think that Coppola and Puzo romanticized the story of Vito Corleone anymore than the sagas of King David and King Lear were. In all three cases, the sins of a powerful man were visited upon him multiple times over in the divisions and deaths among his children.

If parents bask in the good fortune of their children, then Vito Corleone could only groan about how his turned out:

·        *  Connie is abused by her husband, who will pay for his sins—not merely physical mistreatment but betrayal of a family member to enemies—with his life;

·      *   Sonny’s hair-trigger temper makes him so unwary that he steps into a trap that leads to his blood-splattered end;

·        *  Fredo is a weakling chafing at his sidelined status within the family; and

·        *  Michael—the smart one that everyone hoped would lead the family to respectability—becomes a coldly calculating capo who orchestrates multiple hits that occur as he stands at the baptism of his wife’s child, where he hears the traditional Catholic ritual language about renouncing Satan and his works. 


     The film is, in fact, an ironic reversal of the opening scene of Connie's wedding to Carlo. Michael will eventually not only order Carlo's murder in retaliation for betraying Sonny, but also will advise the older, weakling Fredo, working for Vegas casino owner Moe Greene, never to side with outsiders against the family.


     The full import of Michael's transformation--in theological terms, his fall from grace--becomes underscored in a brilliant scene commissioned from screenwriter (and ace script "doctor") Robert Towne when Coppola sensed there was still something missing from the film. What Towne supplied works perfectly, not only in providing a plot hinge but also in yielding character insights and underscoring a principal theme of the film. Vito, increasingly relinquishing control of family operations following the attempt on his life that thrust Michael into the family business, now sits with his youngest son in the family patio, warning him about another crime family. 


     Vito: "So Barzini will move against you first. He'll set up a meeting with someone that you absolutely trust... guaranteeing your safety. And at that meeting, you'll be assassinated." (as the Don drinks from a glass of wine as Michael watches him) "... I like to drink wine more than I used to. Anyway, I'm drinking more..."

Michael: "It's good for you, Pop."

Vito: "I dunno. Your wife and children. Are you happy with them?"

Michael: "Very happy..."

Vito:  "That's good. I hope you don't mind the way I...I keep going over this Barzini business..."

Michael: "No, not at all..."

Vito:  "It's an old habit. I spent my life trying not to be careless. Women and children can be careless, but not men. How's your boy?"

Michael: "He's good."

Vito: "You know he looks more like you every day."

Michael: "He's smarter than I am. Three years old, he can read the funny papers."

Vito: (laughs) "Read the funny papers. Oh...well... eh, I want you to arrange to have a telephone man check all the calls that go in and out of here because..."

Michael: "I did it already, Pop."

Vito: "Ya know, cuz it could be anyone..."

Michael: "Pop, I took care of that."

Vito: "Oh, that's right. I forgot."

Michael: (reaching over, touching his father) "What's the matter? What's bothering you?" (after the Don doesn't answer) "I'll handle it. I told you I can handle it, I'll handle it."

Vito: (as he stands) "I knew that Santino was going to have to go through all this. And Fredo...well... Fredo was...well…. But I never...I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life - I don't apologize, to take care of my family. And I refused to be a fool dancing on a string held by all those - big shots. I don't apologize; that's my life. But I thought that...when it was your time that - that you would be the one to hold the strings. Senator Corleone. Governor Corleone, or something...This wasn't enough time, Michael, it wasn't enough time."

Michael: "We'll get there, Pop. We’ll get there."

Vito: (after kissing Michael on the cheek) "Now listen. Whoever comes to you with this Barzini meeting – he's the traitor. Don't forget that."

The admonition that begins and ends this long scene can be seen in another way besides the running of Murder Inc.: an aging, weakened parent's attempt to pass along the secrets of the family business--or, more benignly, the wisdom accumulated from a lifetime.

But sandwiched in the middle of this is Vito's half-strangled cry of pain. "What's bothering" Vito? A life of suspicion and violence is not what he had hoped for this son with the most impeccable credentials: a college education, an enviable war record, a beautiful fiancee. This son could have ascended to heights that the father, fighting to make his way forward in a country that maligned his ethnic group, could never achieve. Its lack of fulfillment leaves a regret that won't go away, any more than the loss of Sonny will.

You could imagine Joe Kennedy nodding his head in agreement with Vito's sentiments--just as you can imagine the political patriarch's similar anguish over the dark fates coming to his children.

Flashback, March 1937: ‘Lost Horizon’ Inspires One Classic, One Disaster

Most of his works are not read these days, but in the two decades before his death in 1954, the English writer James Hilton churned out a stream of novels eagerly snatched up by the public. Several of these were adapted to film, including two that became classics in the 1930s: Goodbye, Mr. Chips, about a beloved longtime British prep-school teacher, and Lost Horizon.

The latter film premiered in Los Angeles on March 10, 1937. Directed by Columbia Pictures’ ace director, Frank Capra (who would later helm the Yuletide evergreen, It’s a Wonderful Life), it fulfilled initial expectations as the studio’s biggest “prestige” project to that point. Over the years, this film about Shangri-La, an idyllic place deep in the Himalayas, secluded from a war-torn outside world, has maintained its high reputation.

Not the least of the movie’s virtues was its music, created by rookie film composer Dimitri Tiomkin, which supported the action on screen without upstaging it. Thirty-five years later, producer Ross Hunter decided to make music the focus of a remake.

The difference between the two versions can be summarized in this way: Capra’s launched one career, started a longtime collaboration and friendship, created a catchphrase, and became a classic. Hunter’s derailed several careers, disrupted a couple of collaborations and friendships, sparked a host of legendary wisecracks, and became a camp classic. Oh, and did I mention that it led to a messy tangle of litigation and may have contributed to a divorce?

Everybody associates Capra’s name with the first film. You’d be hard-pressed to find a movie fan who could name the director of the remake without consulting a printed or Internet reference. (If you really must know, it was Charles Jarrott, who had handled Anne of the Thousand Days with far less incident only five years before.) No, the names associated with the remake were not a director, but the previously golden lyricist Hal David and composer Burt Bacharach.

Why did one project (at least largely) succeed while the other became a fiasco? The difference between success and failure is seldom as clear-cut as it seems at first, and Capra’s version flashed alarming signs of being a stinker at an initial preview in Santa Barbara. Nevertheless, several factors undoubtedly meant vastly different fates for the two motion pictures:

  

          1) Attention to pacing. Columbia boss Harry Cohn was notorious for claiming that his twitching behind was a sure sign that a film was in trouble. (Upon hearing this, wiseguy screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz famously cracked: “Just imagine—the whole world wired to Harry Cohn’s ass!”) His subordinates developed similar tendencies, perhaps none more so than Capra, who, after hearing howls of laughter at the preview, spent more than two days sweating out what to do before cutting the first two reels. That single change shortened the film by 20 minutes and grabbed the audience by the lapels with a spectacular opening scene: the burning of a city. In contrast, the remake featured the title tune, then did not feature another song until nearly another 40 minutes had elapsed. True, it’s hard to imagine what song Bacharach and David could have concocted to fill the space. (I don’t think “I’m a-Dyin’ on a Jet Plane,” as a British diplomat and his fellow passengers brace themselves for a crash landing while fleeing unrest in Southeast Asia, would have worked). But without something, audiences must have twitching for the music to start in earnest, even if it turned out to be middle-of-the-road pap--which it did.

2    2) Actors exactly right for the lead roles. If you’ve seen David O. Selznick’s adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, it’s impossible to imagine anyone topping the portrayal by Ronald Colman of brilliant, world-weary, damaged Sydney Carton. Lost Horizon’s Robert Conway might have been a 20^th-century diplomat rather than an attorney during the French Revolution, but he was the same psychological type. Capra correctly insisted to Cohn that Colman was the only “actor in the world to play the lead,” then pulled another coup by casting, against far more studio opposition, 38-year-old Sam Jaffe to play the ancient High Lama. If only the casting of the leads had been similarly impeccable in the Hunter version. Now, it’s true that Hollywood had grown accustomed, over the last decade or so, to dubbing for actors who couldn’t sing. But to employ three nonsinging principals in the same movie (Peter Finch, in Colman’s role, along with Liv Ullman and Olivia Hussey) was really pushing matters.

           3) Composers and music suitable for the project. Capra went to bat not only for his cast, but for his composer—and it was an even bigger gamble. Tiomkin, an ex-concert pianist, had no track record in scoring to speak of. Yet Capra backed him to the hilt. (The director’s only attempt to pull his punches was to hire, as the conductor, famed movie composer Max Steiner—who, Capra was certain, would assume control of this score if he sensed trouble. It wasn’t necessary, for, as the director crowed later, “Tiomkin’s music not only captured the mood, but it darned near captured the film.” Hunter wasn’t so lucky in getting studio execs to back his choice for the music, Michel Legrand.  In one sense, their feelings were understandable. Legrand might have created fine music for several films (including The Thomas Crown Affair and Summer of ’42), but his experience with musicals was nil. (In fact, he would not have his first, Amour, until nearly 30 years later. It flopped, but at least, for his fans, it has become a noble failure on the order of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro or Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along.) Bacharach and David not only had an Oscar in hand for “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” but had also created the Broadway hit Promises, Promises (not to mention 39 charting singles from 1962 to 1970 with Dionne Warwick alone). But their success with Promises, Promises, I’d argue, was chimerical. The latter did as well as it did largely because of Neil Simon, who had crafted funny, tight books for Little Me and an uncredited pinch-hit for Sweet Charity.

4) A sense of the zeitgeist. Capra’s film appeared at a point when horror over World War I and indignation at the propaganda and profiteering generated by it had mounted so high that isolationist legislation threatened to hamstring FDR’s response to Fascism.(Later, after WWII broke out, an anti-war monologue by Colman was deleted, lest it interfere with the war effort.) “The world was hungry for a lift,” Capra wrote in his memoir, The Name Above the Title, “hungry for quickening examples of how individuals overcome the dreads of their environment.” Though there was some question about whether Lost Horizon really was a money-maker for Columbia, there seems little reason to dispute Capra’s contention that its release, publicity drumbeat, and favorable critical reception lured a host of filmmakers to the studio.

In the 1930s, Capra’s feel for the popular pulse seldom faltered. Hunter’s, on the other hand, proved abysmal. For the past half-dozen years, various Hollywood attempts to duplicate the megablockbuster success of The Sound of Music—i.e., Doctor Doolittle, Star, Hello Dolly, and, yes, and adaptation of Hilton's Goodbye Mr. Chips—had failed dismally. The powers that be missed the new style of musical sequences ushered in by the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, in which director Richard Lester filmed the Fab Four in performance rather than as characters breaking out into song. The possibilities of such naturalistic filming were exploited in an unprecedented fashion in Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, in which the songs comment on the plot but the characters themselves sing in traditional performance venues.

More than ever, audiences sensed the enormous anachronism of characters bursting spontaneously into song in Bacharach and David’s Lost Horizon. And, in a year when the wounds of the Vietnam War remained open and the crimes of Watergate were exposed, it seemed positively ludicrous to listen to a song called “Share the Joy.”

Bacharach and David were old enough—and well-connected enough in the songwriting fraternity—to remember that even the great songwriter Harry Warren (42^nd Street) had stumbled with his 1956 Broadway musical adaptation of Hilton’s novel, Shangri-La, which lasted a mere 21 performances. The fate of that show should have given them pause.

But if your lyrics are being sung by the likes of Dusty Springfield, Jackie DeShannon, Tom Jones, Dionne Warwick, and too many others to keep count—or, better yet, if your music has led to an Oscar for Best Song and you’re married to Angie Dickinson—well, it’s hard to think that much is denied you.

It was as inevitable that this extraordinary streak of successes would come to an end as that the fall would be so spectacular. Tensions had begun to surface even before Hunter signed Bacharach and David to this project, and additional strains—including what Bacharach felt was his disproportionate share in trying to keep this project from falling apart—finally tore the two collaborators apart. (Warwick, whose recording contract involved them producing her work, ended up collateral damage, and her suit against them only widened the litigation morass now unfolding.) The reviews were atrocious (according to the ever-quotable John Simon, the movie "must have arrived in garbage rather than film cans"), and the box office was so bad that the film shortly became nicknamed “Lost Investment.” The film ended up losing $9 million, or an inflation-adjusted $47 million.

(Actually, preview audiences sensed the turkey coming even sooner. They laughed even harder than those that had given Capra heart palpitations 35 years before. The cause: this musical, featuring what Hunter had claimed would be "wholesome entertainment," featured a "fertility dance" replete with heavily oiled and toned guys frantically running around, as if they had lost their way to the health club. Still, the decision to yank the sequence might have been a mistake: At least it made audiences howl. The rest of the footage made them yawn.)

And so, as audiences followed the image of a plane going down in flames in Asia, they also were watching the crash-and-burn of one of the half-dozen most successful songwriting teams of the last decade; the prolonged depression of Bacharach, as he absorbed the blows from critics ready to pile on after his great success; and, perhaps not surprisingly, the end of his marriage to Dickinson.

When you consider this fallout, I’m sure that Bacharach has, over the years, tuned out anything reminding him of this project, whether indirect (the news of a version of Capra’s original, with the antiwar material restored) or direct (the announcement of a DVD release of the musical). This year, however, as he works on his memoir, Anyone Who Had a Heart (due out this November), he might at last be forced to dredge up all these bad memories.

Quote of the Day (Richard Byrd, on Men’s Inner Strength)

“Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.”—Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Alone (1938)

Quote of the Day (Jane Fonda, on Acting)

“The weird thing about acting is that you get paid for discovering you have multiple personalities.”—Jane Fonda quoted in Patricia Bosworth, Jane Fonda:The Private Life of a Public Woman (2011)

In case you’re wondering, one of Fonda’s “multiple personalities,” pictured here, was her Oscar-nominated turn as playwright Lillian Hellman in Julia (1977).

This Day in Film History (Troubled Korda ‘I, Claudius’ Abandoned)

March 21, 1937—An auto accident involving actress Merle Oberon proved the last straw for the production of I, Claudius, which ceased following weeks of trouble on the set of the adaptation of Robert Graves’ works on imperial Rome.

British and American viewers became addicted to the 1976 Masterpiece Theatre miniseries starring Derek Jacobi in the title role, and early last summer HBO announced plans to film their own version soon, in a deal with the makers of their series Rome. But The One That Got Away was Alexander Korda’s in 1937—a project starring Charles Laughton as the stammering member of the imperial Caesars who, amid an atmosphere of unremitting corruption and treachery, survives to assume the throne.

Korda, a Hungarian émigré to Britain, was in the middle of a solid decade-long run as an independent producer of intelligent, often history-based drama, including Fire Over England, That Hamilton Woman, The Private Life of Henry VIII, and Rembrandt.  At the height of his artistic and commercial prestige, he also had a good track record as a director, and could very well have taken over this role as well.

Instead, he turned to Josef von Sternberg to take direct Graves' script of his own novel in the form of an "autobiography" of the Roman emperor. Sternberg had a reputation as a “woman’s director,” in no small part due to the several films he made at Paramount featuring Marlene Dietrich. Korda's choice might seem curious at first, given that the main character in I, Claudius was male. But Sternberg’s films often were suffused with themes of corruption and sexual depravity—certainly elements of the Roman Empire—and Korda thought that Sternberg could carefully guide his lover Oberon in the complex role of Messalina, the virginal teen bride of Claudius who eventually becomes the worst of female Roman voluptuaries. The price of Sternberg's acceptance of the job: he had no say in the casting of Oberon.

But unexpectedly, it was Laughton rather than Oberon, a young, beautiful, but not terribly gifted actress, who presented problems for Sternberg. Though the two had previously been friendly, Sternberg now left the actor adrift as he groped for a woman into his character.

Many actors would have killed for Laughton’s gifts, which included a marvelous voice, the ability to play comedy and drama with equal dexterity, and an intelligence so keen that, a decade later, he worked with Bertolt Brecht on perhaps the best English translation of the playwright’s Galileo. But the actor was in a sham marriage to Elsa Lanchester to conceal his homosexuality from the public; he believed himself physically hideous (“I have got a face like an elephant's behind!"); and when he couldn’t find the key to a character, the portly star’s torment could capsize a production. Korda, who had worked with him previously (including his Oscar-winning role as Henry VIII), remarked, “With him, acting was an act of childbirth. What he needed was not so much a director as a midwife.”

Sternberg made it painfully obvious to cast and crew that Laughton was on his own in the role. But, no matter how frustrated set observers might have felt with the tormented star, the director squandered any reservoir of sympathy he might have had with them because of his own behavior. His aristocratic pretensions (including what many believed to be a bogus "von") and his hypocrisy in sneering at Laughton's mental anguish (Sternberg had suffered a nervous breakdown when his own career at Paramount came crashing down) increased tensions on the set immeasurably.

Under these circumstances, Oberon's auto accident came as "a godsend," according to Emlyn Williams, the actor-playwright who played Claudius' mad nephew, the cruel Caligula. Indeed, some cynics have wondered not just about Oberon's injuries (she did not end up in critical condition), but whether they occurred at all. The accident furnished such a ready pretext for ending the production, in this view, that the whole thing smelled phony.

I think that argument can be dispensed with easily: If Oberon was faking, then why did she carry a facial scar for the rest of her life--one noticeable enough that her second husband, cinematographer Lucien Ballard, had to create a special compact spotlight that would reduce the incidence of notable lines such as this?

Just before production was abandoned, Laughton believed he had finally found the key to his character, a royal thrust into circumstances beyond his control, in the fate of King Edward VIII, and he began to listen obsessively to the latter’s famous abdication speech. The ironic thing was that, if the actor wanted a real royal model to follow, he might have tried to learn more about the man who assumed the throne after Edward stepped down, his brother George VI—someone who, like Claudius, suffered mightily from his vocal impediment (as the world now knows, famously, because of The King’s Speech).

Given Korda's record as a producer and director, there is plenty of reason to mourn the loss of I, Claudius. Among the list of potentially great (or at least fascinating) films that never got made (including two by Orson Welles, It's All True and The Other Side of the Wind), this takes pride of place. 


Most of the talented personnel associated with the film moved on to projects at least as good as this (notably Oberon, cast two years later in Wuthering Heights). The one whose career was never really the same was Sternberg. He was involved in eight other movies over the remaining three decades of his life, but I, Claudius represented his last significant attempt to stay on the radar as a filmmaking force. His last years were notably dour. He had a great deal to teach film students at UCLA, but interviewers inquiring about his last work, including the young critic (and future director) Peter Bogdanovich, ended up getting a stream of short, surly responses.

Among these interviewers were the makers of a documentary from the 1960s about the making and unmaking of I, Claudius, The Epic That Never Was, narrated by Dirk Bogarde. On camera, Sternberg notes that the film was shut down because of "the actors"--a contention that surviving cast members had to restrain themselves in rebutting.

A long, telling excerpt from this documentary--including a haughty, none-too-pleased Sternberg--along surviving footage--can be found here.

Quote of the Day (William Wordsworth, on March’s ‘Life in the Fountains’)

  “Like an army defeated
   The Snow hath retreated,
   And now doth fare ill
   On the top of the bare hill;
 The Plough-boy is whooping—anon—anon:
  There’s joy in the mountains;'
  There’s life in the fountains;
  Small clouds are sailing,
  Blue sky prevailing;
The rain is over and gone!”—William Wordsworth, “Written in March While Resting on the Bridge at the Foot of Brother’s Water” (1807), from The MajorWorks: Including the Prelude, edited by Stephen Gill (1984)

I took the photo accompanying this post this past weekend at the Tenafly NatureCenter, not far from where I live in Bergen County, N.J.