Toys in the Attic (1963)

In a recent 60 Minutes interview promoting The Iron Lady, Meryl Streep, when asked how current films and performers stack up to those of years past, claimed that while the classics are the classics, her contemporaries are just plain better actors. Certainly Meryl, like almost everyone else in the film-watching world, forgot about Geraldine Page.

Although Page finally won the Academy Award for Best Actress in the year before her death for The Trip to Bountiful, the award smelled of a payoff as she had previously been nominated for Oscars seven times, beginning with 1953’s Hondo. She was at her formidable best in the sixties, handling character-style leads in the adaptations of Summer and Smoke (1961) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). She earned Golden Globe nominations for the subject of this essay, Toys in the Attic (which merely got a costume nod from Oscar) and for the following year’s Dear Heart, a seldom seen dramedy opposite Glenn Ford in which she is absolutely spectacular.

I’ll give myself credit for one thing as a film watcher: my range is exhaustive. You name it, I’ll happily watch it if I haven’t seen it already. Genre? Who cares — and after having passed the twelve thousand mark, I’ve probably seen it already. Regardless, I’ve seen enough movies, read more than enough books, and surfed enough film writing on the internet and in newspapers to know with a large degree of certainty that Geraldine Page is one of the five greatest actresses in movie history, and undoubtedly the most underappreciated actress of all time by the masses and film buffs alike.

Like Streep’s The Iron Lady, Toys in the Attic is by no means a great film, but the 1963 adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s play is fascinating. Page is in her wheelhouse as Carrie Berniers, a New Orleans spinster who shares a house with her older sister Anna (Wendy Hiller, underappreciated as well, and no slouch either!) and dotes on her foolish younger brother, Julian, played by a game but off-cast Dean Martin, in his final dead-straight film role. Julian is a dreamer who bounces from one get rich scheme to another, always in trouble and falling back on the good will of his sisters. At the beginning of the film, he arrives unannounced at the family home, except this time he has money, gifts aplenty, and a brand new wife. His newfound fortune raises the eyebrows of Anna, while the presence his shy wife (Yvette Mimieux) seems to particularly upset Carrie. The film burrows — sometimes unpleasantly — into the issues of the Berniers family’s past and present. Where did Julian’s money come from? Who is his wife? What is the nature of his relationship with each of his sisters?

At the center of it all is Page, her performance here is probably too big for the film itself, once again bringing Streep to mind. Page dominates the thing so much that it’s as if the other actors are barely there, and she does it all without giving the impression of chewing the scenery. Her Carrie is someone we all know: the shrill, affected soul (gender doesn’t matter) who tries to hard — the one who pretends to be the smartest person in the room yet suspects deep-down that everyone exchanges secret, knowing glances when she makes an entrance. And yet in spite of this faint self-realization, she blindly plows forward in her pretension and vanity — becoming more and more manic as the scenes unfold and her sense of security is slowly stripped away, like the dark paint flaking off an aging iron porch rail.

Hiller accedes to her colleague’s meatier role and gives Page all the space she needs, but Dean Martin doesn’t fare well against her, and Mimieux — terribly miscast in the first place — seems lost. Jason Robards played the part of Julian on Broadway, and it’s interesting to imagine how the dynamic of the film might have changed with him in the male lead. A handsomely aging Gene Tierney appears as well, in a small but critical role, and she’s able to draw on her own sad misfortunes enough to generate adequate pathos to match Page in their brief time together. Actually their exchanges are some of the most gratifying in the film.

Hellman seems to wander into Tennessee Williams territory here. This is a story of unfulfilled, incomplete people. Dreamers, fools. The naïve and the cowardly. Beaten, broken, and at times — vicious. The moral center of the movie is Hiller’s Anna, though she seems to lack the courage to speak her mind or act on her suspicions. As the onion of the narrative is peeled back, the relationships of the characters are exposed layer by layer, until tragic consequences are unavoidable. And frankly, for such a verbose and theatrical production, the film’s climax is jarringly brutal. Toys in the Attic is a roughly made film that gets better as it goes: it plods through its first few acts towards an exciting and well-constructed finish. Although its home video status is rather vague, it is worth seeking out. If only for Page. 

Toys in the Attic (1963)

Directed by George Roy Hill

Starring Geraldine Page, Dean Martin, Wendy Hiller, and Gene Tierney

Running time: 91 minutes

Released by United Artists

Grade C

Torch Song (1953)

I'll probably return to this film later, but I just finished it and wanted to get my initial thoughts down, before I lose them in memories of pancake makeup (see above). Joan Crawford is a hot-button actress among classic film watchers — everyone has a strong opinion. After all these years and films, I still can't understand those who don't respect her, even if grudgingly. What has always drawn me to Joan and her work is that for a woman who was a perfectionist, and notoriously particular about how she was dressed and photographed, she was willing to give a great deal of herself to her roles, often in ways that were hardly flattering. Torch Song is a great example.

In Torch Song we meet Jenny Stewart, a Broadway star who got her spotlight by giving everything to her audience, always placing their needs first. For Jenny this philosophy becomes the crutch she uses against loneliness, and the club she wields to always get things done her way — which is almost always turns out to the best way. This is melodrama though, so of course Jenny is alone and without love, having domineered or alienated every man in her life. She's so abrasive she lacks female companionship as well. Aside from her maid, every guest at a party she throws is male, and none show the slightest interest in her affections. Only playboy / gigalo Cliff Willard (Gig Young) even gives her the time of day, and that's because she picks up his tabs. Miss Stewart, though Joan plays her sweet in private, is an ice queen.

The film itself is a colossal disaster, and exists firmly within the universe of camp — the colors are garish, the costumes are gaudy, and the dialog is over the top. (For over the top dialog though, it sure has some zing — this is one quotable movie.) And there there's the black-face number, Two-faced Woman. If the thing weren't so humiliating for those involved the film would likely never have seen a DVD release. Once you've seen it you'll understand that no amount of reproach will ever equal the embarrassment that had to be felt by those taking part in the film. At least the makeup would allow everyone involved, except Joan of course, to deny their involvement later.

What I love about this film is the focus on Joan's physical features. The movie takes great pains to showcase Joan's figure in a number of early scenes. Whether dancing, singing, or just sitting, we get to see plenty of the 48 year old's legs, midriff, and bare shoulders. Realizing that these things are happening in the film, one can't help but recognize that Crawford the actress is also vamping for your attention. Just when you are starting to think it all reeks of desperation on the part of the actress, not the character, a 15 foot tall cardboard cutout of Jenny Stewart in a showgirl outfit is delivered backstage, where Stewart pulls up her skirt just to compare the likeness that you realize that Crawford the actress is giving us this, humiliating herself just a little, in order to make Stewart are more human character. What Joan lacked in looks or talent, she made up in sacrifice; and this great quality is on display time and again in her work. It's the thing about Joan that allowed her to take mediocre material like Torch Song, and turn it into something you can't stop watching.

Maybe this was a case of art imitating life after all, but by the mid fifties the great parts for Joan and Bette were in the rear view mirror, and Baby Jane was still a decade away. As Joan herself said “You have to work with what they give you.”

At least she made the best of it.

Torch Song (1953)

Director: Charles Walters
Screenplay: John Michael Hayes and Jan Lustig
Starring: Joan Crawford, Michael Wilding, Gig Young, Marjorie Rambeau, and Harry Morgan.
Released by: MGM
Running time: 90 minutes

Availability: Widely on DVD

Goodbye, Columbus (1969)

In journeyman television director Larry Peerce’s Goodbye, Columbus, based on the short novel by Philip Roth, the underappreciated comic actor Richard Benjamin plays a New York librarian who falls for an out-of-his-league Jewish Princess played by Ali MacGraw, in her very first film appearance. Although both are ostensibly Jewish, and New Yorkers, they come from different worlds. The film explores the culture clash as the two attempt to move in one another’s circles, and the havoc, internal and external, that occurs when they can't seem to make a go of it.

Judging by the MacGraw-centric poster, this was marketed as a romance and a splash vehicle for the screen deb, which is a more accurate depiction of the film's content that the DVD release, even when one considers than Benjamin is clearly the star. The DVD artwork is suggestive a straight romantic comedy, which this clearly isn't. Goodbye, Columbus fits neatly into that cycle of late sixties / early seventies serio-comic pictures that tries to please all potential viewers and instead only manages to reach the least discerning. It’s nevertheless watchable, particularly when either Benjamin or Jack Klugman is on-screen — less so with MacGraw, who tries too hard (particularly in the story's emotional moments) and vacillates between too shrill, too seductive, or just plain over the top. (It's also worth noting that despite a PG rating, there very little of MacGraw that we don't get to see here…on numerous occasions.)

I was pleasantly surprised by Peerce’s craftmanship — he paces the thing properly considering the lazy plot and episodic structure. He also deftly handles the story’s mildly uncomfortable transitions from the serious to the melancholy to the humorous — most of which is on the wry side. There are a few particularly good moments, again worth noting that the best of them don't involve MacGraw. My favorite finds Benjamin at work in the library, quietly ingratiating himself into the life of a young boy who visits the library in search of art books. The initial scene in the subplot suggests a break for comedy, but as the text develops we realize it’s one of Goodbye’s best moments. I finished the movie wishing more such interludes had been included, and wondered if there wasn’t some potential for another film in there somewhere, or if, at least, a few scenes hadn’t been sacrificed and left at the altar of running time.

Another good scene finds Benjamin visiting Klugman at his place of business: a Bronx plumbing supply company — down, dirty, and a million miles away from the family mansion-ette in Westchester — it’s Roth’s nod of respect to those folks who do things the hard way, and a subtle reprimand to those Anglos who believe affluent Jews don’t earn their pay in the way everyone else does. In the scene, Klugman is measuring Benjamin up for a spot in the business, and their tense interaction give the older actor the chance to show his chops. The characterization is on the money: Klugman says all of the things to Benjamin that he really just wants to say to his own son, a spoiled sports junkie who thinks he’s too good to work in the family business. Benjamin knows this, and out of respect for the older man he lets it all hang in the air — as an actor Benjamin is a great listener, and it’s never more apparent than here. His character serves as something of a lens into the kinds of lives Goodbye portrays, Benjamin is consequently quite well-cast.

In the end the movie seems to be a vehicle through which we learn more about how Philip Roth sees (and rails against) his own place in New York’s Jewish culture (it’s worth noting that in the novel Roth places his characters in slightly less movie-chic town of Newark, New Jersey) than we do about the human emotions of the two young lovers, their rather clichéd families, and what’s really going on in anything less than a superfluous way. It’s a film of loosely connected moments — some of them are very rewarding, but the whole doesn't measure up to the parts. Those looking for a straight comedy from the same period should instead consider Lovers and Other Strangers.

Goodbye, Columbus (1969)

Directed by Larry Peerce

Starring Richard Benjamin and Aly MacGraw

Released by Paramount Pictures

Availability: widely on DVD.

Running time: 102 minutes

Joe (1970)

Here’s a film that careens wildly from one theme to the next, and can’t seem to make up its mind exactly what it wants to be, or to whom. Joe is about young junkies in love, the estrangement between generations in the late sixties, the tension between blue- and white-collar workers, the alienation of an unhappy urban existence, and the perils of vigilantism. Each theme is worth its own movie, yet Joe tries to deliver on all of them.

The story revolves around the relationship between a wealthy Manhattan father (Dennis Patrick) who accidentally murders his junky daughter’s (Susan Sarandon, in her film debut.) drug-pushing boyfriend and the man to whom he accidentally admits his crime. In the wake of the murder, adman Bill Compton wanders into a bar where he finds Joe Curran (Peter Boyle) at the next stool. Joe is one of those working-stiffs who thinks the world owes him a little something extra for his forty hours a week, and hippies, liberals and minorities are taking the country to hell in a hand basket. He pines for the good old days and rails blindly against everything from his own kids to those on welfare. Conventional wisdom suggests that Joe will devolve into a simple blackmail story (and maybe if this had been made in the eighties it would have), but it turns out that Joe thinks Bill has done the world a favor, and the two strike up an uneasy, and somewhat one-sided friendship.

As the title suggests, the movie is far more concerned with developing Peter Boyle’s character than Dennis Patrick’s. Although throughout the years many movies have explored the consequences of an accidental killing, this should have devoted more time to Patrick’s tight-laced executive. He proves the more interesting character of the two, and by far the less rooted in cliché: after all, Joe is a racist, right wing, gun collecting nut job — a citified redneck of the first order. He rants, raves, and boozes it up; and like every other working man in the movies he goes bowling each week. Although we don’t see him smack his wife around, he’s short as hell with her — and Boyle plays Joe as a ticking time bomb, which of course he turns out to be. Boyle was a gifted actor who does much with his part, but Patrick matches him scene for scene in the more difficult and far less showy role.

Director John G. Avildsen does fine with Norman Wexler’s Oscar nominated script, and the film boasts one good scene after the next. The best concerns a dinner party at Joe’s house. The strange circumstances of the friendship are briefly forgotten and the film becomes concerned with the culture clash between haughty Central park West and lowbrow Astoria, Queens. The men take a backseat while the wives (K Callan and Audrey Caire) steal the show. Curtains and Chinese food were never the source of such tension. This sort of thing has been done a million times over the years, but hardly ever so well. A later scene finds Joe and Bill searching the Village for Joe’s missing daughter. They fall in with some hippies for a culture clash of a different sort. In terms of plot development a lot happens here, but it’s worth watching for Avildsen’s ability to believably shepherd a scene through fast, smooth transitions from situation comedy, through sex, and ultimately, to violence — all the while connecting the transitions with believable dialogue.

The film’s climax is extremely silly and hard to swallow. Bit since Joe is so worthwhile I won’t spoil the ending — though the climax is of the sort that comes to the writer in a moment of inspiration and then requires the narrative to be contrived from that point backwards. In this case the machinations required to get us to the payoff just don’t work — the coincidences involved are worthy of Saving Private Ryan. Joe wants to be a morality story, but would have been a much more successful character study. It tries too hard to be too many things to too many people, and falls short in nearly every case. But it sure is a far out trip.

Joe (1970)

Grade: C

Directed by John G. Avildsen

Starring Peter Boyle, Dennis Patrick, and Susan Sarandon

Released by Cannon Productions

Running time: 107 minutes

Availability: DVD, Netflix

One Eyed Jacks (1961)

Marlon Brando takes his one and only turn in the director’s chair with uninspiring results in the 1961 Western character study One Eyed Jacks. Not surprisingly, he stars in the film  as well, once again opposite Karl Malden. The two actors play a pair of gringo bandits running amuck somewhere in Sonora. They knock over one bank too many before being trapped by the Mexican rurales atop a dusty, wind-swept ridge. A shoeless Malden flees upon their only horse in an effort to secure fresh mounts, but instead high tails it with the loot and leaves Brando to suffer a five-year prison sentence. This is quite a long film at two hours and twenty minutes, yet the action described above takes place in the first few scenes. The remaining two hours cover events following Brando’s escape from prison — how he searches for Malden in hopes of revenge, to eventually find him employed as a sheriff in some idyllic town on the California peninsula.

One Eyed Jacks is an overlong film that suffers greatly from having an auspicious beginning that the rest of the film doesn’t live up to. It’s difficult to care very much about this cast of characters — something Brando seemed to realize. He repeatedly goes out of his way to show himself doing one good deed or another (which usually means protecting a girl from some whisky-sodden stumblebum) in an effort to win viewers over, but in the end we are just left with the awkwardness of trying to accept his brooding, mumbling, needs-to-break-free screen persona in the wide open spaces of the west — he just doesn’t fit. The are a half-dozen subplots going on, each a well-worn cliché: Brando allies himself with some banditos who turn out to be much worse than he realized, he falls in love with Malden’s beautiful Mexican stepdaughter, he busts out of jail, narrowly dodges a hanging, and so forth. The film’s two brightest spots come from its cast, in the form of Katy Jurado and Slim Pickens. Jurado plays Malden’s wife, and she offers a welcome sense of calmness and assured professionalism in an otherwise clumsy film. Pickens is just, well, Pickens — always an asset to any film he’s in.

I streamed this through Watch Instantly on Netflix. The quality of the transfer is horrendous and not worth your time. I share this in acknowledgment that it can be very difficult to enjoy, or at least appreciate a film one hasn’t been viewed under the appropriate circumstances. I haven’t seen the print on the commercial DVD but it has to make for a better experience than I had streaming.

One Eyed Jacks (1961)

Grade: CDirected by Marlon Brando
Starring Marlon Brando and Karl Malden
Released by Paramount Pictures
Running time: 141 minutes.
Availability: DVD, Netflix Instant Watch