Film on Inspiring Feminist Hedy Lamarr

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Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017) is that rare documentary that is somehow uplifting–even when its tale is not. The fact that Bombshell is a story of triumph amidst adversity makes it a perfect film for our time.

I knew the bare outlines of Lamarr’s story: the scandalous film that began her rise to fame, her fraught history with her husband and his Nazi buddies in Austria, her tenure as a beauty in Hollywood, and her frequency hopping invention that eventually led to my sharing this post with you right now, on WiFi. Those details would be enough to make a decent film, I figured, even if it turned out to be–as many actress documentaries are–cookie cutter in style.

But the documentary is so much better than I thought it would be. It seeks to make sense of the elusive personality behind the thousands of lives the actress/inventor lived. The story is greatly enriched by interview tapes of Lamarr, letting viewers hear her story as she wanted to tell it.

It’s hard to picture Lamarr’s life, that brilliant woman who co-created an invention to save soldiers’ lives after long days on the set of (mostly) inane films…and then was patted on the back for her little invention by the military and sent off to sell war bonds with that pretty face instead….which she did.

Crazy as the outlines of the life I knew were, there was so much more, as this inventor was equally bold in other roles she took on–in movie production, in entrepreneurship, in everything really. In the film, she says she helped boyfriend Howard Hughes with airplane design; she even managed to squeeze a big initial salary out of Louis B. Mayer with no English. What an amazing feminist she was, not letting societal conventions for women dictate her moves, but plowing ahead, doing whatever she believed she could do.

Director/writer Alexandra Dean has chosen her sources well, particularly the young animator wowed by Lamarr’s accomplishments. A Mel Brooks cameo, with reference to his Blazing Saddles tribute to the actress through the character Hedley Lamarr, is an unexpected treat.

Lamarr’s personal life was largely tragic: bad marriages, the public’s focus on her looks instead of her mind, the cruelty as those looks faded, financial woes, and the failure of others to value or credit her patriotism since she was an immigrant. The film gives Lamar her proper place in history, but it’s clear to all the subjects in the documentary that they’re trying to reclaim for Lamarr a tribute (besides some very late awards) she never received herself.

But what’s more tragic than her treatment is that had Lamarr been taken seriously earlier, her invention might have saved American lives in WW II, which was her goal all along. The bigotry, greed, bureaucracy, and sexism that made her life so challenging and her invention so tardily applied aren’t exactly difficult to trace in our society or government today. That such obstacles can actually PREVENT heroism like hers is a sobering thought, and a dismayingly timely one.

But the film remains inspiring because we witness Lamar’s refusal to let poor treatment override her determination to act with courage and integrity. What you mainly feel in watching are awe and a profound wish to cheer, Rocky style. Lamarr was a complicated person, and not without flaws, but she was an AMAZING person, and your time with her is truly something to savor.

You can find the film on Netflix (while it’s still there!) or rent it on Amazon. Why are you waiting?

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Books that Make Bad Films: My Cousin Rachel

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I had hopes for My Cousin Rachel (2017). I don’t know why. I’d already discovered–despite my enjoyment of the 50s version–that the book wouldn’t translate well to film without a big overhaul. I guess I hoped a director smart enough to cast Rachel Weisz in the key role would know to make such changes. (She had added complexity to Definitely, Maybe for crying out loud. Who better to take on the mysterious, unreadable Rachel?) But within minutes, it was evident this director of slight rom-coms lacked the imagination to even equal the previous film’s quality. The 2017 take is incomprehensible, just short of laughably bad. I had flashbacks of Season 3 of Bloodline. What the ksljfkjslkfj! is even going on?

***Mild spoilers–I won’t give away the end. Here’s the plot: a sheltered young man, Philip, is taught to hate women by his cousin/foster father Ambrose. He discovers his cousin has fallen in love with and married a woman while abroad in Italy. Philip’s jealous, angry, anxious. Then he receives strange letters indicating Ambrose is afraid of his wife and quite ill. On arriving in Italy to save his beloved cousin, Philip discovers him dead, with shady characters delivering the news.

Back home in England, he vows revenge on the widow, just on time for her arrival for a visit. The story takes off from there, as Philip falls for the widow and acts completely besotted right away.

Unfortunately, he can’t determine whether Ambrose died of a brain tumor (making his suspicions delusions) or by his wife’s hand. Is the widow just mercenary in this visit, trying to get her late husband’s estate by wooing Philip? Or is she an independent woman who means well but is reluctant to yoke herself to a silly boy who can’t distinguish between sex and marriage? And regardless of which she is, is that dreaded tea she’s making poisonous? And when he’s ill, will she help Philip get well, or attempt to slowly kill him off?

The lure of the book is the constant back and forth of the reader’s (and Philip’s) suspicions about whether she’s a killer. The did-she, didn’t she is brilliantly developed by Du Maurier. Philip, the narrator, is, by any definition, a dupe. Suspecting Rachel as he does, offering her all of his worldly possessions because she smiles at him isn’t exactly a bright move. What redeems the narrator for the reader is that he’s telling this story AFTER THE FACT, and we understand he’s not quite so foolhardy now. We also get inside his head, understanding why he trusts when he does. We also know more of the sheltered background that explains (as it turns out) his dangerous lack of experience with women. How else could we understand his dogged pursuit of a woman who is not attracted to him?

Without this context, the narrator comes across on film as not only unlikable, but unhinged. In the 1952 version, he acts like a dangerous stalker after Rachel stops allowing his seductions.

Luckily, the role is played with such relish by Richard Burton that you enjoy it even as you know the book’s intent has been completely overthrown. (Philip HAS to be the enemy, with behavior like this.) In the 2017 version, far less ably played by Sam Claflin, Philip is so pathological in his pursuit of Rachel that you see her possible poisoning of him as an act of self-defense. How else can she ensure he won’t kill her, he’s so obsessed? That attack on her throat is just the beginning!

With this upending of villain roles, the did-she, didn’t-she becomes, “Who cares what you did, lady. RUN!!” I don’t have a problem with changing a book’s focus, but as it turns out, that uncertainty about Rachel was also the narrative’s greatest appeal. Without it, we’re stuck watching an unlikable dupe turn into a psycho, which isn’t interesting viewing. I also don’t think voiceover from Philip would have worked; the story needs more nuance and he’s not intelligent enough to provide it.

As I see it, the only way of salvaging the story on film was to change the lead. What about his godfather’s daughter, who likes Philip for some unaccountable reason? We’d see Rachel’s behavior more clearly from her eyes; she may be biased, but she’s perceptive. Again, no need for voiceover, but she’d notice different details, like Rachel’s manipulative ways. (Though let’s stop the anachronisms, please, 2017 version; I can’t see this young lady frankly talking about homosexuality with Philip.) Or what about the godfather as the lead? He’s protective and smart.

Or you could go full-tilt into unreliable narrator mode, and make Rachel–the most interesting character–the lead. She could be like the riveting James Cain narrator in The Cocktail Waitress. With Rachel, I wouldn’t even mind a bit of voiceover.

It’s funny that the 2017 version completely dropped the notion that Rachel was foreign in her ways—and yet that foreignness helps explain her greater independence, her unknowability to Philip, and her tenuous status in the community (who, like Philip, are a bit entrenched in their xenophobia and rigid biases).

And it also helps show her confusion. She’s lived a cosmopolitan life in Italy, and Philip’s (and his community’s) rigid morals about sexuality don’t make sense to her. With more of her character unfiltered through Philip’s perspective, we viewers might come to understand her better.

As it is, the 1952 version is entertaining at least. The 2017 version, alas, is not, with Claflin making even histrionics dull to watch. Only some pretty cinematography redeems it at all. The 2017 version adds a dumb ending and strips away much of the questioning of Rachel’s motives. Rachel seems delicate rather than arch at all times and her character is so terribly underdeveloped that Weisz–for once–is tedious to watch. View the 1952 version for Burton’s high drama and Olivia de Havilland’s riveting confidence as Rachel. But if you love the book, be prepared for disappointment: your beloved psychological thriller is now a crush-gone-bad procedural.

This post is part of the Classic Literature On Film Blogathon, hosted by Silver Screen Classics. Check out all the great posts!

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Classic Feel-Good Movies for Shut-Ins

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So you’re shut in and feeling glum. Watching the news isn’t good for your blood pressure. So put away those updates for few hours, cut off that cable news, and melt into these classics. They’ll make you smile.

The More the Merrier. You know what’s interesting to watch when you’re feeling isolated? A film about a city being overcrowded. Makes you appreciate the (comparative) quiet and helps you see what enterprising (OK, a bit pushy!) folks do when they’re in a tough spot. More importantly, this is THE most romantic film ever, and so funny. If Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea’s chemistry doesn’t get to you, nothing will. Bonus: Charles Coburn, in his best cupid role (of many).

The Awful Truth. The title of my blog may clue you in that I’m a fan of Cary Grant’s. This film shows why. His perfect comic timing is matched in this outing by Irene Dunne’s. They’re marvelous together.

They’ve mastered that banter you want to hear in every rom-com. They play two smart, sophisticated adults who just need to wake up to what’s good for them. And it costars Skippy, the most gifted dog actor of all time (you may recognize him as Asta).

Mae West Films. Do I really need to specify a movie? I’m No Angel is my favorite. Her earliest hits are pure gold, with more good lines in 20 minutes than you’ll find in modern films in 200. And how she delivers them! Before the censors got to her, she was on fire.

But even afterward, her ingenuity in sliding in those double entendres makes up for the less witty later scripts. And in case you’re not yet a Mae West lover, don’t forget that she also wrote these scripts and had the moxie to demand—and get—a higher salary than a studio head.

Indiscreet. A friend recently recommended this treasure. A reteaming of good friends Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman (after the toxic romance/suspense masterpiece, Notorious).

It’s totally Bergman’s show: Just watch her commanding performance once her character gets mad and turns conniving! And there’s a classic dance sequence with Grant’s moves on full display—fantastic. As a special bonus for readers, here’s a heartwarming post about their friendship that will made you sniffle (with joy) from Sister Celluloid.

Jean Harlow Films. It doesn’t matter if everyone around her is acting out shrill caricatures (Bombshell), she still rises so far above her material that you don’t care about the rest of them at all. I watched The Girl from Missouri recently, which is a delight.  I can’t stomach Red Dust (too offensive). But skip the rest of the movie and watch her—or catch clips on YouTube. View her at her conniving best in Red-Headed Woman.

Watch her outshine the star-studded cast in Libeled Lady as an outraged bride to be. Harlow’s funny and lovable and you just want to spend your life watching her in a huff.

I’ll be back with updated recs. Hang in there, everyone. Stay safe. Spread the joy you can.

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Guilty Pleasure: Somewhere in Time

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Do I watch this film in front of others? No.
Do I recommend it to others? No.
Do I praise it anywhere public? No.
Have I watched it many times? Oh yes.

There’s something to be said for that first love story that gets you as a kid. I was quite young when I first saw Somewhere in Time on TV–I have a faint memory of my mother recommending it, but whether I watched it with her, I don’t know. What I do know is that at whatever single-digit age I was when I first viewed this film, it became the MOST ROMANTIC STORY EVER for me.

A man traveling through time for a woman? A woman giving up big stardom for a man? Both of them finding their longer lives without each other worthless in comparison with the time they had together? I mean, what kid wouldn’t swoon? But now, as an adult far more comfortable expressing sarcasm than sentiment, I have to confess: I like it still.

I feel reluctant to share the plot, as anyone reading this probably already knows it, but here it goes: An elderly woman approaches playwright Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) after a party celebrating his first college production. She gives him a pocket watch, saying, “Come back to me,” goes back home, and smiling, dies. In the meantime, Collier moves to Chicago to work on his plays. Eight years later, experiencing writer’s block, he books a room in the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island for a night away. The island is near his former college, and its rules forbidding cars give the place an otherworldly quality.

Waiting for the hotel’s restaurant to open, he wanders into one of those little museum nooks in the hotel, documenting the history of the hotel. On the wall is a photo of a breathtaking woman.

Collier, intrigued and quickly becoming obsessed, asks Arthur (Bill Erwin), an elderly hotel employee who spent his youth at the hotel, about her. Collier learns that she was Elise McKenna, a stage star who put on a play in 1912 at the hotel theater. Collier goes to the library to discover more about McKenna and learns she became the old lady who gave him the pocket watch at his play. Through a visit to McKenna’s old caregiver (played by Teresa Wright!!), Collier discovers that the stage actress pored over a book about time travel written by his professor in college. Naturally, Collier hunts him down and discovers the professor once tried self-hypnosis into another time. The professor believes if you have no modern trappings around you, it’s possible to go back, however briefly. Collier, with an early 1900s suit and old coins, begins his attempt. Eventually, he’ll succeed, woo his love, be chased away by her oppressive manager, William Fawcett Robinson (Christopher Plummer), and finally get to be with her in time for her to take the photo that inspired his journey. What happens next, I won’t spoil, but trust me, it doesn’t get any less sentimental.

I found Christopher Reeve’s Richard Collier (what a name!) adorably awkward and smitten. I particularly enjoyed his affectionate treatment of the young version of hotel employee Arthur (Sean Hayden), and his refusal to be embarrassed even though he’s wearing a suit that (in McKenna’s day) is completely out of fashion. He also doesn’t seem to mind that he keeps sleeping in and dirtying up this suit, which must be disgusting by the time he unites with McKenna. But it’s that oblivious, single-minded attention to his lover that is so attractive in the film (though in real life, it would be alarming).

Jane Seymour’s Elise McKenna is stunning. The woman Seymour played was the person I wanted to be as a kid: an artist, accomplished, passionate. I wanted her hair, her clothes, her allure. For years afterward, Jane Seymour was my vision of unattainable beauty, and while my other 80s standards faded with time and/or growing sense and taste, that one didn’t. Because seriously? How ridiculously beautiful is that woman now, much less then?

And Christopher Reeve was so handsome, two years after Superman fame. Just check him out in his period duds:

If fact, it took this most recent viewing of the film for me to even note Christopher Plummer’s shockingly good looks, so distracted was I by the others.

Of course, the best parts of the film are the perfect music choices, just lovely enough to elevate the film: John Barry’s haunting score, and the The 18th variation of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

I became intrigued about the novel on which the film was based, and learned the early stage actress Maude Adams and her manager/producer, Charles Frohman, were the loose inspiration for McKenna and her manager. Best known now for putting Peter Pan (with Adams in the lead) on the stage, the pair were tremendously successful. She never married. Frohman’s personality is captured sympathetically by Dustin Hoffman in Finding Neverland. The producer comes across as charming, friendly, and well loved in true accounts as well, not as the lonely, bitter figure Plummer portrays in the film; clearly, the cruel figure fit the film’s plot better (though I found myself sympathetic to his annoyance–if not his responses to–Collier’s puppyish behavior this time). I found the real producer’s final brave hours and words on the doomed Lusitania moving.

In more lighthearted research, I learned that the hotel in the film STILL has Somewhere in Time celebration weekends, that its fan club has a playful quiz on the film. For someone abashed about loving such a sentimental film, I admire this group’s openness. My embarrassment at liking it, however, does make sense too: there’s too much use of slow-mo, some stilted dialogue, and a disturbing approval of the lengths the couple goes to for love at the end of the film.

But Seymour’s sincerity in the role and Reeve’s earnestness and good humor made me love the movie again, despite my reservations. I decided, as before, to dispense with judgment and just live in this world a while. (As with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, when I just accepted the flying as a given.) There is some wistful magic to the couple’s commitment to one another; there is charm in the ease of Collier’s time travel, suggesting their love was destined. The narrative seems to borrow heavily from the film Laura (also with captivatingly sweet music, also with a picture of the heroine that haunts a man) and from Portrait of Jennie, which likewise gets longing right. The actors’ chemistry is perfect; they truly seem in love. Just check out these expressions as they look at one another.


It’s not surprising that the two remained lifelong friends.

And you know, this kind of nostalgic story is never going to lose its appeal. Witness the book and TV series Outlander, winning new audiences into enchantment at the idea of time-crossed lovers as I write.

This blog post is part of The Leap Day blogathon, hosted by Taking Up Room. I love this idea of celebrating February 29th by reflecting on time-confused/unexpected films. Check out the other entries here!

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Top 3 Kirk Douglas Performances

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Kirk Douglas lived a very long life, but it’s still shocking to learn of his death. He was so incredibly alive onscreen. There are few performers in Hollywood history as charismatic as Douglas. Since his effect on his viewers was physical in its impact, I want to focus on the three performances that shocked me with their force.

3. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. For some reason, I watched this in class as an adolescent. (What exactly was the purpose of that unit?) I wasn’t into classic films then, and was skeptical about the movie’s cheesy premise. But in the center of this silly, over-dramatic film leapt Kirk Douglas. Who IS this guy? I thought, shocked by the actor’s joyous energy, cockiness, and sheer confidence. It’s probably also the first time I realized a classic film star could be very sexy. It obviously wasn’t the last.

2. The Bad and the Beautiful. What a perfect casting decision, to have Douglas play the sadistic, yet gifted producer who lures others to bad fates because he cares more about his art than treating his cast humanely.

Observe the way his three victims lean in to hear his new film idea, despite his previous treatment of them.

Of course they would, with Douglas’s talent and magnetism at full wattage in the role. Even the nicest characters Douglas ever played had an edge, but in this part, Douglas revealed his skill in capturing the cruelty of a ruthless man.

1. Ace in the Hole. What a brilliant performance as the reporter who risks a man’s life to get a big story! After watching Douglas in action, it was hard to get behind any other actor playing an ambitious reporter. Who else could show that flashing excitement about a story, that single-minded intent? And what other actor could be convincing enough to make audiences believe that one unscrupulous man could persuade a community of sensible people to make such a dangerous mistake?

Douglas owns this film. Thanks to his perfect performance, he gives Billy Wilder’s dark satire the resonance it deserved. The film is one of the greatest of its era, and is so eerily prescient it can be difficult to watch. It wouldn’t have had nearly the power it does with a different actor.

I know others would argue for Spartacus, another of his momentous roles, and certainly one that showcased Douglas’s impressive physicality. But these three were the roles that fixed me to the screen, unable to turn away.

I know there’s much more to say about the actor, particularly his part in ending the blacklist. But today I just want to say how grateful I am for his powerhouse presence onscreen. I always felt if I would just reach forward, he’d jump out to join me in my living room, that sexiest and most riveting of classic actors. No wonder it’s so hard to let him go.

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The Gender Gap in Film

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Check out these two articles, both of which show the gap between awards for women and men in the Oscars over time in visual format.

“The Oscars’ 92-year gender gap, visualised”

“Maybe Those Are Just the Best Movies This Year”: #WhiteMan’s Oscar in Context.”

The Guardian‘s statistic about the lack of awards for female cinematographers was particularly illuminating.

In addition to showing what female-driven films could have been honored but weren’t over the years, Relatively Entertaining covers the diversity of voices in film, how we’ve regressed since a high point in the 40s in honoring women’s stories–even if told by men. The post also highlights how seldom black actresses are repeatedly honored for their work: “For that matter, it’s a strange quirk of Oscar that of the 35 times a black woman has received acting Oscar nomination, only three (Whoopi Goldberg, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer) have been nominated more than once, and only Spencer has been nominated after winning her award.”

I wonder how long Academy voters could sustain the fiction that women’s films just haven’t been good enough yet to get awards after viewing the articles’ startling graphics. I wonder if the lack of repeat nominations for women (and women of color in particular) will finally bring home just how much has to change.

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The Academy Loves Directors Who Play It Safe

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I watched Marriage Story with excitement. I’ve been following Noah Baumbach’s career since Kicking and Screaming (1995), a hilarious movie about East Coast college men’s arrested development and how their romantic immaturity interferes with their happiness.

The déjà vu happened immediately: This new, supposedly innovative film was about a New Yorker’s arrested development and how his romantic immaturity interferes with his happiness.

Sigh.

Had I seen growth in the treatment of this subject matter, I wouldn’t have been so troubled, but the earlier film, though rough around the edges, was twice as entertaining and unique as Marriage Story, which felt like a weak combination of Baumbach’s old themes and Kramer versus Kramer. Yet the Academy awarded Baumbach for this water treading with a Best Picture nod. They then gave a Supporting Actress nom to Laura Dern for the worst caricature of a woman I’ve seen outside of an action flick in years, a Rush Limbaugh characterization of a female divorce lawyer if ever I saw one. That nod alone says a lot about Academy voters.

This worrying backward movement extended to The Irishman as well. Academy voters rewarded Martin Scorsese for returning to mob territory, even though he made no attempt to switch the perspective away from the mobsters, or to include one female character whose personality existed outside of men’s treatment of her. True, there are some changes—he replaced the flashy narrator of Goodfellas with a quiet, suffering cog, who supposedly played a pivotal role in Hoffa’s death in real life as well as in the film. Only he didn’t: his involvement in Hoffa’s death was a fabrication, which was the most interesting thing about him. What would cause a man to lie about such a thing, knowing his family would condemn him for it? THAT’s a topic for a movie! Instead the film presents his lie as true; the plot focuses on how the hero has gotten himself caught up in this miserable mob life, which is a story line expressed in a much more interesting way in Goodfellas.

Now let’s turn to Quentin Tarantino. His material is always imaginative, violent, unique. His films are exciting to watch, but typically, he treats his characters as paper dolls rather than humans. In Jackie Brown, he turned down his jets and humanized his middle-aged hero and heroine. He gave them regrets and nostalgia, which imbued that film with insight as well as style. For the adolescent Tarantino, that’s some serious growth. So why is anyone impressed with his depiction of Sharon Tate as a wide-eyed viewer of her own movies, a woman who loves nothing more than sexy dancing at the Playboy Mansion, who throws her hair flowing behind her before riding in an open-topped car?* Why, in a film about opportunity cut short, pretend that Tate’s real opportunity loss was that of continuing to be a schoolboy’s fantasy, and not a mature mother? Do we honestly find it good storytelling to continue to pretend that the sexual playground of the 60s was so very fun for the women who didn’t have the biological option of being so carefree?

I don’t know how we can expect male directors (let alone female, who have so few opportunities) to be innovative, to embrace perspectives beyond their own, when they’re rewarded with nominations for circling and re-circling the same tired subject matter and stereotyped characterizations while their finer, fresher films go unnoticed.

This year Clint Eastwood was the director with a real breakthrough. His career was founded on celebrating renegade men with authority. To have him suddenly turn the tables on that legacy in Richard Jewell was groundbreaking. What happens, he asks in the film, if the man who grew up revering lawmen as heroes is suddenly victimized by them? In other words, Jewell could have been, probably was, a fan of Dirty Harry—and that very love destroyed his life. For all this talk of the Oscars and male rage, the real-life Richard Jewell EARNED his rage, and yet his film, the most interesting exploration of white male anger this year, was left out of the running.

Usually, I dislike Eastwood’s films, finding his sexist heroes annoying and his overwrought storytelling verging on silly. But in Richard Jewell, Eastwood even toned down his considerable love for melodrama and sky-high messaging. The result is a brilliant, affecting, subtle film. (One scene—Kathy Bates sadly rubbing her Tupperware after a police warrant destroys it—is more affecting than almost every moment in the Oscar-nominated films; the diner scene beats them all.) This is what great filmmakers do: they surprise us with what they have to say about life, with technical and storytelling techniques that have some kind of direction or point beyond divorce sucks or mobsters’ lives are bad.

I enjoyed all of the Oscar-nominated films I’ve seen, but I’ve been disappointed in most of them as well. With this kind of talent, why play it so safe? Why not fully humanize Tate, as Tarantino did the fictional Jackie Brown? Greta Gerwig didn’t play it safe; she tampered with a beloved story and came up with something truer to Louisa May Alcott’s vision and intent than any previous cinematic version of Little Women. (If you don’t think that’s risky, you haven’t met any fans of classic novels.)

What if Scorsese had called into question his own legacy of celebrating violent men, as Eastwood did with lawmen? What a brilliant film The Irishman could have been!

Unfortunately, there’s an answer to why these directors didn’t make their films more innovative, nuanced, surprising—especially Scorsese. He knew his Academy too well. He anticipated what would happen to Gerwig, to Eastwood. (Only directors the Academy doesn’t know are allowed to take those types of chances.) So he put his head down and gave the voters what they wanted of him, same-old, same-old. And he got his nomination.

*I think we all know from Bridget Jones how well that turns out, but not in Tarantino’s world, where all sexy women can throw their hair back without any falling into their eyes.

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Richard Jewell’s Awful Snub…and Other Golden Globe Gaffes

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Richard Jewell is taking a hit at the box office, due in large part to an angry campaign by the Atlanta newspaper who employed reporter Kathy Scruggs, the real-life journalist in the film who broke the story that Jewell was a suspect in the Olympic bombing. I agree that besmirching a real person—in this case, suggesting that Scruggs traded sex for information—is unacceptable. But it’s hard not to see the hypocrisy here, as the paper who helped destroy Jewell’s life is besmirching a belated tribute to his character.

I watched this film with reluctance. I worried about supporting it after reading about its treatment of Scruggs. I dislike Clint Eastwood and most of the films he directs, which I find heavy handed and troubling in their messaging. But after all, this film was about Jewell, and I admired Eastwood’s choice to tell his story.

To my surprise, I barely noticed the reporter’s sex favor scene (which I would have assumed to be Hollywood exaggeration anyway, had I read nothing beforehand). I wish the reviews had focused instead on Scrugg’s quiet regret in the film when she discovers the impossibility of Jewell’s involvement in the bombing. The real-life Scruggs didn’t do anything that unusual: reporting that Jewell was a suspect before investigating the likelihood of his guilt or the bias of her source/s. She serves as a stand-in for any reporter rushing to get the story out; that rush carries with it significant risk to others, as any viewer of Absence of Malice (or really, anyone who has lived through the twentieth century) will remember.

Used to Eastwood’s usual loud themes, I was struck by this movie’s quiet grace. It’s a rare film, one that relies on understated eloquence, realistic performances, and a stirring portrayal by Paul Walter Hauser. The film slowly reveals how Jewell’s admiration for authority helped contribute to his undoing. Hauser’s performance is nuanced, powerful, and ultimately heartbreaking. While at first, we viewers wonder if he’s simply a dupe, we soon discover he’s more self-aware than he seems, and the betrayal he feels at his idols treating him as a terrorist—even after they know better—is devastating. The way society (led by the media) went along with this faulty judgment—generalizing him as an overweight, friendless guy living with his mom, and therefore sketchy—didn’t even jibe with his real-life actions or social personality. I read a number of articles after watching the film and was struck by the accuracy of the movie’s characterizations and storytelling. The Scruggs sex claim (which apparently was also in the book that was the film’s source) was an anomaly in a film that otherwise hewed surprisingly close to the true events and characters, including Scrugg’s.

The skill of the man portraying Jewell isn’t being touted, any more than the film is. Why nominate someone who is playing an everyman, real-life hero with pitch-perfect realism and heart, when you can nominate folks playing popes or super-villains? Why pay attention to an actor who has played minor roles when you can celebrate the movie stars you always celebrate? He may have made an impression as an exceedingly dumb criminal in I, Tonya, but Hauser barely registered in Late Night, given the stereotypical nature of his role, and he lacks the glamour of the well-known figures who were nominated. So no one will say anything when you leave him off your nomination roster, right, HFPA? Sigh.

I would have given nods to Eastwood, the film, Hauser, Sam Rockwell (charming and very likable here), and the always-wonderful Kathy Bates, but only the latter has received any credit from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. I could see the organization thinking the film too controversial and backing away from it, but that doesn’t explain all the nods for The Irishman, which is based on the confessions of a man whose claims have been universally condemned as false by mob authorities-–and by logic. I guess the nominators thought real-life mobsters and teamsters didn’t deserve fair treatment. Or that entertainment was a good value in a film, a bar The Irishman clearly failed to meet. (Only Al Pacino succeeded in stifling my snores during that tedious endurance test.) And it’s hard to believe an association who yet again nominated no female film directors had concerns about a faulty portrayal of a woman in Richard Jewell.

Alas, the Hollywood Foreign Press seems to be on a roll this year in dismissing creative content and good acting. There are the shut-outs of The Good Place and Schitt’s Creek and the group’s admiration for the bland The Kominsky Method. The gutting, visceral When They See Us and its director and largely unknown actors are ignored, but superstar Jennifer Lopez gets a nod. Killing Eve was very weak this year, but it and the star-laden Big Little Lies (which I couldn’t even get through this season) are up on their nomination lists, while Veep is ignored for its weakest season (which is still better than these shows’ best). At least Unbelievable is getting its due.

I hope that some of you will ignore the nominators’ seriously questionable taste and celebrity pandering, and watch Richard Jewell. After viewing it, I stayed in the theater’s tight seats as others filed out, taking it in. I kept thinking of another favorite film, Searching for Bobby Fischer, and how its subtle messages stayed with me for years to come. I kept pondering the dangers of small assumptions, and how pernicious they could become. I wondered what kind of faith could sustain what Jewell had gone through. I looked at my sister, another disliker of Eastwood’s, who was also failing to stir; she was as surprised and moved as I was. 

I don’t think these kinds of films often get much credit, even when they lack controversy. They’re not splashy enough. They don’t involve mob hits or distinctive villains; they don’t feature many actors who look like supermodels. But they stick to you, change you, sometimes make you wiser than you were before. I regret every minute I put into The Irishman. I am ready to watch Richard Jewell again and again, if only to bring others along.  

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Classic Film’s Damsels in Distress

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My friend Grace Collins of True Stories of Tinseltown and I chat about women in peril in classic films, including the riveting thriller Gaslight; the Barbara Stanwyck showcase Sorry, Wrong Number; and the tonally inconsistent, oddball Nazi-hunter film, The Stranger. And of course, the weeper, Waterloo Bridge. We had so much fun talking about heroines who are having no fun at all–especially Mary (Loretta Young in The Stranger), whose affection for her mate is truly baffling.

Check out the podcast on her site and on podbean.

Enjoy Grace’s other wonderful posts and podcasts on her sites or check out her Facebook page for more. Her summer series on famous blondes in film is fabulous, especially the one on Mae West.

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When Funny People Die: Jean Harlow

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I’ve been thinking about how hard it is to grieve the loss of a funny person. The grim process of American funerals—the still church/mortuary, the solemn rituals, and the steady tears—can feel inappropriate when mourning the loss of someone who enjoyed breaking conventions, who made you bend over laughing when you were supposed to be acting with decorum.

I attended two parties recently to celebrate the lives of such funny individuals, complete with amusing anecdotes and the shared company of those who’d loved them. These memorials felt so fitting, so much better than typical funerals for such amusing personalities, that I returned to my home thinking of other lost comedians and comediennes, especially those whose lives are so often described with the “funny but died tragically” designation. And it struck me that Jean Harlow was someone who deserved the kind of festive send-off I’d just attended, a woman who relished breaking the rules of others on and off screen (especially prim others) in such a breathtakingly funny way.  So I watched The Girl from Missouri (1934), the lesser known of two entertaining gold digger tributes originally penned by Anita Loos, to celebrate her.

Harlow stars as Edith Chapman, a young woman eager to escape the clutches of the family entertainment/bar business, which is full of men trying to keep her from staying “straight.” Marriage to a millionaire in New York is her plan, and she won’t have sex until she gets her goal, which she brazenly sets about doing. Her very transparent efforts first amuse, then mildly annoy the wealthy self-made businessman, Thomas Paige (Lionel Barrymore)—that is, until her attention turns to his son, Thomas Paige, Jr. (Franchot Tone). Paige Sr. wants Junior to be courted by the upper-crust society he aspires to join, not for his progeny to be dismissed as the target of a silly gold digger. Predictably, Papa Paige is soon plotting against Edith. But she, like the actress who brought her to life, doesn’t take that kind of treatment passively….

Like many of Harlow’s characters, Edith is goofy and blatant and oblivious to any kind of etiquette or class mores. But there’s something about Harlow…you just can’t dismiss her characters. (And you can’t pay attention to anyone else—a Barrymore, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, even a Powell/Loy combo—when she’s onscreen.) Her characters usually dress in frilly, showy clothes, and their words and actions are designed for punch lines at their expense. Yet the deep humanity, sincerity, daring, and lovability of Harlow’s heroines make you adore them all the same, root for them even when they don’t deserve it (i.e., Red-Headed Woman). 

And Edith deserves fair treatment and compassion. She even manages to make a Franchot Tone playboy character palatable to me. Edith begs Paige, Jr. not to toy with her, confesses that he could make her sacrifice the virtue she’s worked so hard to protect, but pleads that he let her go instead.

Paige, Jr.’s reversal of expression, his contrite response to her words is really all of us: Don’t take this awesome woman for granted. We won’t have her for very long.

I didn’t expect to catch my breath and feel for a Harlow character’s pain, but The Girl from Missouri caught me offguard, and that made me smile. Wow, Harlow can get to me. I did expect to laugh often as I watched, and of course I did. There are some cute turns by others–Paige Sr.’s teasing, Edith’s sex-obsessed sidekick’s (Patsy Kelly’s) flirtations. But why pay attention to anyone else? Harlow is MARVELOUS—with every preening smile, with every stomp/bustle, with every huff (and huffs there are a-plenty with Harlow), you can’t stop smiling. And you can’t stop thinking, What a joy it is to be in her company. I’ll take every second I can get.

And so I laughed. And expressed a silent thank you for the gifts she’d given me. And that, to me, was the perfect send-off.

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