Watching Movies with My Mother-in-Law: Love in Karnak (Gharam fi al Karnak, 1965)

The Siren has admitted before to gaps in her viewing history, and one of them is Egyptian cinema. She hasn't even seen a full film by the great Youssef Chahine. What little viewing she has done has been accomplished on trips to Paris--clips, sequences and scenes watched with her Lebanese mother-in-law, Zahra. Zahra grew up watching these movies in cinemas in Beirut and her home town, Tyre, and she has always been happy to expound on her favorites with her non-Arabic-speaking daughter-in-law. Zahra is also an indefatigable channel-surfer, so the movies have been viewed piecemeal, as she flips through the many Arabic channels they get via satellite.

With Zahra I've watched dance numbers by the exquisite Samia Gamal, romantic scenes with the actress Raqiya Ibrahim, songs from Leila Mourad. I've watched social dramas like one set in a hospital in a desert, which had an extraordinary sequence showing a riot for water. None of them were subtitled, and the Siren often hasn't bothered to ask for a translation, especially for songs, as the reply is so frequently "She's singing about loooove." From Zahra I hear about what she thought of the actresses and the movies, what she heard of the stars in magazines and newspapers, which scenes she remembers best.

On this visit, we came across a musical number from a film starring the Syrian-Egyptian singer Asmahan, the one big rival to Umm Kulthum. Asmahan died in 1944, age 25, under circumstances even the non-conspiracy-minded Siren finds fishy. The Siren watched with Zahra as ball-attired men and women waltzed around Asmahan. The singer's voice was magnificent and she had presence so strong you barely notice what else is in the frame.

"Is she singing about loooove?" inquired the Siren.

"No," retorted Zahra, as one who says take that, smart aleck. "She is singing about Vienna. How beautiful is Vienna." The chorus sank to the floor, champagne glasses aloft, and Zahra added solemnly, "And they should interdire this song."

"But why?"

"She is telling everyone to drink!" Zahra threw back her head and roared with laughter.

The Siren didn't realize it, but she was revealing the true extent of her ignorance, because this song is extremely famous.



So this post is in no way a deep or analytical look at the rich history of Egyptian cinema. It is, rather, about the pleasures of viewing unfamiliar movies with someone you love.

Last week the Siren and Zahra were on the sofa while Zahra flipped through news channels and the many romantic-type TV serials that play a lot during Ramadan. She lighted on a movie that looked very promising to the Siren: Mad Men-era costumes for a musical number being performed in an ancient Egyptian temple.

"Look," Zahra said. "This is the movie that has Lina's dance."

Explanation here. The Siren was married in Tyre in 2000, in a ceremony and reception organized by Zahra with military precision and detail. My husband told me it was going to be small. I arrived to find that in Lebanon, "small" means the ballroom of the local hotel, champagne, dancing, a five-foot-tall cake that you cut with a sword, 150 guests and enough food to feed them all through a four-month siege by the Prussians. It was, of course, a roaring good time.

And one of the Siren's favorite moments was a dance performed by her husband's cousin, Lina, who has spent years studying classical Arab dance. (Please note: My mother-in-law detests the term "belly-dancing." "It's classical, it's folkloric," she says. "It is not vulgar.")

Lina danced beautifully, but this information was completely new to the Siren. "You're telling me that when Lina danced at our wedding, she was doing a number from this movie?"

"Yes."

"Somebody did a dance number from a movie musical at MY wedding? An OLD movie musical?"

"Yes," grinned Zahra. "You're pleased?"

"That," I said, with strong emphasis, "is THE COOLEST THING EVER."

"OK," said Zahra, setting down the remote. "We'll watch. I think Lina's dance is coming up."

Zahra told me the movie was called Love in Karnak (Gharam fi al Karnak, 1965) and was produced, written and directed by Aly Reda. Mahmoud Reda (the Siren has been unable to track down the precise relationship, and Zahra herself wasn't clear on it) was the man on screen sneaking around the ancient temple wearing a bowling shirt. Reda, a major figure in Arabic dance, clearly took some film-dance influence from Gene Kelly. His moves were very athletic and very balletic. "Many female dancers in Arab cinema," said Zahra. "Not many male. He is one of the few."

We were well into the movie and evidently in a dream sequence, with Reda moving gracefully around the temple spying on the proceedings as a pharaoh was carried in on a sedan chair and and a dance number was performed by a chorus line of beauties. "The beauty of our sun," translated Zahra as they sang, "in our country it is always spring." And then the dancers moved to the side, the door swung open and in came the heroine (Farida Fahmy).

"Aha," said Zahra. "Here is Lina's dance." And indeed it was, move for move, although despite Fahmy's skill the Siren's preference was for Cousin Lina. Lina had also incorporated some of the chorus's later moves into her performance.





The dream sequence ended and the scene gave way to Reda and Fahmy's dance troupe building a theatre at Luxor, quite like Judy and Mickey or Summer Stock. Lots of rhythmic shots of hammering, sawing, and people forming work lines and doing fun things like using a plank as a see-saw. In addition to the hero and heroine there was a sidekick in a porkpie hat and there were also plenty of showgirls in mufti, wisecracking away, which did the Siren's heart enormous good. Even Egypt has wisecracking showgirls. They unite the world.

Luxor looked beautiful, clean and empty, as Reda and Fahmy met beside a temple pool and had what was obviously the "big breakup before the make-or-break show opening." "I visited Egypt around this time, in the early 60s," remarked Zahra. "Beautiful. Big boulevards with trees. Lovely hotels. You could drive anywhere. Only 26 million people then."

"Why, how many are there now?"

"Eighty million," she replied. I absorbed that astonishing fact while the scene changed to backstage with a miserable Reda getting ready for his show, and more fabulously smart-mouthed showgirls chatting. Back to the sidekick trying to get Reda to buck up. Then we cut to Fahmy's hotel room, where she was wearing a fetching dress and throwing a bunch of other cute things into a suitcase while nursing one hell of a snit. The sidekick showed up and they argued.

"He's trying to tell her the show must go on," I announced.

"Precisely."

"I don't need subtitles," I crowed, immensely pleased with my backstage-musical decoding skills. "I don't even need you to translate."




I had to back off that a bit, however, when Fahmy sent the sidekick away with a flea in his ear and the movie moved to the show's opening number, a sword dance by Reda. "He is singing about a blonde," translated an amused Zahra. " 'I am in loooove, the fire of my love burns…' " Almost without exception the dances were shot very simply, but that was fine with the Siren, as she couldn't get enough of the troupe's energy and grace.

Reda left on a motorcycle to bring back Fahmy, and his journey was intercut with the showgirls' number, which Zahra also translated: "This is a popular-type song. 'This is the daughter of the mayor, see how she dances.' " The daughter of the mayor apparently has adorable verve and sways her flouncy skirt quite a bit. "This is how the people look at her"--with hands waggling near their faces. Man the Siren loves her showgirls.

The movie wound down, with Fahmy showing up at the last minute for her big number with Reda, which again showed a lot of Kelly influence, specifically some of the sweeping circular moves from "Love Is Here to Stay" in An American in Paris. And the Siren says if you're going to be influenced by a romantic pas de deux, you could scarcely do better.

Another big number, which Zahra told me was Nubian in origin, and then the final shot, of three poodles seated in the audience. That 42nd Street-type touch cemented the Siren's delight in the movie. It adhered to every backstage-musical trope you could imagine, but it was done with color and sparkle and enchanting sincerity. The Siren would like to see it all one day--with or without subtitles, but most definitely with Zahra.

Once Upon a Time on Skype: The Siren and Dennis Cozzalio Convene a Summit, Part II

Dennis Cozzalio, who has labored long and hard despite a nasty illness this week, has finally finished the enormous task of transcribing Part II of our Movie Blogger Summit. This edition touches on Jack Warner and the Siren's cussed fascination with Russia, why cranky critics should read more Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, the things that make blogging worthwhile, under which circumstances the Siren likes movies with exploding skulls, the joys of pre-Code Kay Francis, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, the role of the personal in blogging and why you should watch Dennis' space for a guest appearance by Julien Duvivier.

Dennis is pure joy, an exceptionally talented writer and critical thinker, one with an open mind and an uncommonly kind heart. Our conversation, which was his brainchild and in the planning stages for a long while, turned out to be almost too much fun.

And we are both so happy about the large response that Part I got from the film blogosphere, which reception Dennis describes in his introduction to Part II. The Siren seconds his every thought, and adds her own warm thanks to the ever-generous, ever-mighty James Wolcott, the gracious and witty Tom Shone, the indispensable Daily Mubi, the equally indispensable Film Studies for Free, blogging idol Glenn Kenny and the ever-erudite Richard Brody of the New Yorker's movie blog. And many thanks also to all those who participated in the great thread at Glenn's place, including Hollis Lime, Kent Jones, Tom Carson, David Cairns, Keith Uhlich, Bill Ryan, Lazarus, Jean-Pierre Coursodon and many more. It was the most fun the Siren has ever had discussing a movie when absolutely everyone basically disagreed with her.

Now, if you'll excuse the Siren, she's going to clear away any outstanding tasks that might interfere with watching Freebie and the Bean when she gets back to Brooklyn at the end of the week.

Wee Willie Winkie (1937)

The first thing to know about Wee Willie Winkie is that it isn’t a Shirley Temple movie that happened to be directed by John Ford; it’s a John Ford movie that happened to star Shirley Temple. What makes it such a good film is that Ford doesn’t condescend to the material or the star. He shot it with the same loving attention to detail and deep, beautiful precision that would characterize Stagecoach two years later. And the themes that Ford, via Kipling, brings to bear-–the civilizing influence of women and children, sacrifice, courage, respect between enemies—-are also familiar from countless other Ford films.

To the uninitiated the name Shirley Temple tends to evoke one of two things: a ringleted, short-skirted, tap-dancing relic, or Graham Greene’s celebrated charge that there was something less than wholesome in her audience’s adoration. More on the latter in the sidebar below; here we will deal with the first. Temple was, in fact, a phenomenally gifted child performer, with charisma that leaps at you even today. She wasn’t the kind of transparently emotional actress that Judy Garland was, for example, and the Siren’s as grateful as everyone else that 20th Century Fox wouldn’t lend Temple for The Wizard of Oz. But Temple was frequently excellent and surprisingly subtle.

Temple has always said Winkie is her favorite of her films, and she got along well with Ford, who seems to have brought out the very best in her acting. You can see a few things that slipped through, though. Here’s a tip from the Siren, a Shirley Temple fan since early childhood: No good ever comes of a Temple line that begins with “why?”, and there's a "why?" line in every movie. “Why is Mommy crying?” “Why does Daddy have to go away?” “Why can’t the President stop people fighting?” “Why does this stage have a treadmill and state-of-the-art thunderstorm effects?”

Once you get around the “why?” questions Temple’s good films shine and even the lesser ones are often enjoyable. Her saccharine image belies her actual characters in the movies, usually spirited, naughty girls who only have to be told “stay right there” in order to go off exploring dangerous places, and who never, but never wait to speak until spoke to. (Why else do you think the Siren grew to love this child? That, and the tap-dancing.)

The Siren hadn’t seen this movie since childhood and viewing it again gave her a chance to enjoy all the cinematic things that flew over her head in elementary school. The opening, for example, on a train rattling through Northern India, and the way it echoed so much else in Ford with low-angle shots and dreamy close-ups of Priscilla (Temple) and her mother (June Lang) talking about the military outpost where they are headed. (The cinematographer was Arthur C. Miller, the genius who worked with Ford later on How Green Was My Valley, and also did a number of other Temple films.) They alight into the hurly-burly of an Indian marketplace, where they’re greeted by Sergeant McDuff (Victor McLaglen), who clearly hasn’t been around a gently bred Englishwoman in many a day, let alone one with a small girl, and at first the sergeant treats them rather like officers in skirts. Priscilla is told to stay put and of course, she doesn’t. Instead she climbs out of the carriage and runs smack into the arrest of Cesare Romero, a fairly credible-looking Indian revolutionary named Khoda Khan, who at first isn’t so much charmed as he is nonplussed by this moppet’s intrusion. Temple is at her best when she's allowed to play the normal inconvenient behavior of children, picking up an amulet and attempting to give it back to Khan even as he's being marched away at gunpoint.

Then it’s off to the outpost, to meet Mother’s handsome-but-dull love interest. The treatment of this romance reminded the Siren a bit of the lovers in The Informer; their presence kept at a minimum, the surroundings and shots particularly gorgeous, as though to distract from their lack of fire. The lovers become interesting only in a party scene. Dances are frequently a wistful affair in a Ford movie, some old tune (in this movie, “Comin’ Through the Rye”) sounding plaintively on a fiddle while the couple seem set apart from the revels even if they’re waltzing. The mother and her lover tryst in the garden and the partygoers are glimpsed as a swirl of skirts through a terrace door; the version the Siren saw also had the blue tint restored from the first release, and it adds to the melancholy. But parties, too, are almost always interrupted in Ford, and this one eventually is, by a native attack aimed at releasing Khan from the stockade.

Priscilla and her mother are on this army base to live with the requisite Formidably Stuffy Old Grandpa, played by C. Aubrey Smith, one of the most dependable stuffy old coots in the business. Temple-film protocol requires that this coot must be charmed by Priscilla and, to a lesser extent, her mother, but Smith is far from the primary focus of Wee Willie Winkie.



The strongest argument against Greene's interpretation of Winkie is the very thing he uses to back it up: Priscilla's relationship with Sergeant McDuff. From the start you see him trying to tone down his roughness when confronted with Temple and her mother, and gradually the mere attempt to behave like a gentleman becomes a visible sense of what he has missed all these years in the British Army--love, home, tenderness. It's in keeping with characters throughout Ford, from Wyatt Earp to Ethan Edwards, moving through the cavalry trilogy as well. There really isn't anything sexual about it. McLaglen's character no more leers at or simpers over Temple than does Ford's camera. Priscilla becomes determined to train like a soldier, and McDuff goes along with the game, barking at her with only the merest shade less of a voice than he might use with a recruit. It makes his love for the child more apparent, because he respects her fire and sincerity; if he fawned over her the whole thing would seem false. There's no one scene where Priscilla suddenly plays to McDuff as a father figure. It's just a growing sense of affection from them both, building to his inevitable death.

Ford complained to Peter Bogdanovich that it was bad drama to have a highly sympathetic character die halfway through a movie. The compensation is that the Sergeant's death is one of the most poignant scenes in all of Ford. McDuff has been severely wounded in a skirmish and the doctors have allowed Priscilla to visit, for what she doesn't realize will be the last time. McDuff knows he's dying, but in one last protective gesture he doesn't want her to know. Instead he lies and listens to her chatter, delivered with unaffected simplicity and innocence by Temple, until finally she starts to sing "Auld Lang Syne" for him, while (as filmmaker Michael G. Smith put it at Glenn's place) "an exquisite camera movement slowly eliminates him from the frame."

McDuff's death is more like two-thirds of the way through Wee Willie Winkie, but Ford was right that some of the drama that follows seems wan without him. But the immediate aftermath is almost as stunning as McDuff's deathbed. The Siren was thunderstruck by one shot of the Union Jack being lowered to half-mast against a heavy sky. Now why, she asked herself, should this touch her so intensely? The Siren is, as was Ford, an American of Irish descent, not a background to make one get all misty over the trappings of the British Empire. It's partly the sheer symmetrical perfection of the shot. But it's also drawing on what Ford has established before: the things large and small that are sacrficed by soldiers, the end of a surrogate father's presence, the intrusion of war into a child's life. When you hear the bagpipes and see the flag go down, it's an act curtain drawn across the stage, and it foreshadows the closing door in The Searchers, and it is, in short, Ford's genius. In this Shirley Temple movie, John Ford makes the flag as purely and wholely fitting as the final chord in a symphony. The flag's lowering is followed by a funeral procession of soldiers, often discussed in Ford literature for its elegance. But the Siren was even more enamored with the sight of Priscilla entering the men's barracks while they're marching, the empty cots with their rolled-up mattresses a spooky vision of coffins that echo the child's grief.


Later scenes involve Priscilla mediating Khan's uprising, complete with faux-Raj dialogue that has an admittedly high cringe factor, as with Smith: "Up in those hills are thousands of savages, waiting to sweep down and ravage India." Those nasty natives and their harebrained pursuit of self-rule, egad. Smith delivers the line with brio, as it was the sort of thing he said in every movie. Temple does her best to carry her own political freight, as when she tells Khan with shining conviction that "Queen Victoria wants to protect all her people and make them happy and rich." Khan's response, a guffaw, may have played as sinister during the movie's first run (or was it Ford's little Irish dig?), but these days he's just echoing the audience.

Still, Ford's camera treats Smith, Temple and Romero with sensitivity and respect as they hold hands and advance up the long steps to Khan's mountain lair, and the Siren saw an echo of Temple holding Bill Robinson's hand in The Littlest Rebel, a moment that put some Southern censors in traction just two years before. And there is a beautiful shot of Priscilla asleep on a pile of cushions, net curtains drawn around her and the mountains visible in the distance. Smith and Romero, British and Indian, Christian and Muslim, work out a peace agreement during the child's nap. It may be Ford's Kipling fantasy--there is neither East nor West, border, nor breed, nor birth--but it is possibly even more appealing in 2010 than it was in 1937.

Sidebar: Graham Greene's Fancy Little Piece

Now that we have dealt with the best movie Temple made as a tot, the Siren wants to deal with something that comes up one whole hell of a lot when you discuss Shirley Temple. A while back the Siren posted about movie quotes she didn't want to hear anymore. After spending a couple of weeks researching Shirley and Wee Willie Winkie, she would now include Graham Greene's observations about the relationship between Temple, her movies' "daddy" figures and the composition of her fan base.

Everyone knows the story of Greene's review and the furious reaction it inspired, but for ages the subsequent litigation meant the precise passage was hard to find. The Siren encountered it in its entirety only about 18 months ago, via David Ehrenstein and the wonders of the Internet. Here it is--the "libelous" passage from a review of the Ford film:

The owners of a child star are like leaseholders--their property diminishes in value every year. Time's chariot is at their back; before them acres of anonymity. Miss Shirley Temple's case, though, has a peculiar interest: infancy is her disguise, her appeal is more secret and more adult. Already two years ago she was a fancy little piece (real childhood, I think, went out after The Littlest Rebel). In Captain January she wore trousers with the mature suggestiveness of a Dietrich: her neat and well-developed rump twisted in the tap-dance: her eyes had a sidelong searching coquetry. Now in Wee Willie Winkie, wearing short kilts, she is completely totsy. Watch her swaggering stride across the Indian barrack-square: hear the gasp of excited expectation from her antique audience when the sergeant's palm is raised: watch the way she measures a man with agile studio eyes, with dimpled depravity. Adult emotions of love and grief glissade across the mask of childhood, a childhood that is only skin-deep. It is clever, but it cannot last. Her admirers--middle-aged men and clergymen--respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire.

The contemporary reaction to this review was way overdone, and the Siren vehemently disapproves of trying to suppress speech. As is true of many libel cases, if Temple's parents hadn't sued to get this paragraph out of the public discourse, it might have lapsed into obscurity. Instead it's immortal.

Greene was a genius all right, one who wrote the screenplays for two of the Siren's most deeply and dearly loved films. But the Siren finds his film criticism a chore. The style is there, but good lord he can be snooty, like he when he informed readers that if they were watching High, Wide and Handsome, a Rouben Mamoulian musical in which Irene Dunne plays a scene with a horse, they would be able to pick out Dunne by looking for "the one without the white patch on her forehead." (All right, yes, it's funny, but my beloved Irene was NOT horsey-looking.) No great film critic should give the persistent impression he's slumming. The Siren also scratches her head over aspects of Greene's taste. He couldn't stand Hitchcock, and his review of My Man Godfrey is so humorless it becomes hilarious. It is probably also worth noting, with regard to the Winkie review, that Greene was described as "obsessed with sex" by no less an authority on that state of being than Otto Preminger.

In the passage above, Greene complains about the "adult emotions" on Temple's face, and ignores the fact that Temple's ability to show deep feeling was neither inconsistent with childhood, nor evidence of corruption; it was simply what made her a great screen actress. Especially now that she's re-watched Wee Willie Winkie, the Siren sees the review as more bitchy than subversive, the moan of a highly intellectual man who cannot believe he just had to sit through that, that tripe. Never mind the millions of kids who adored Temple as much as did any adult. If she's popular, it must be because she wiggles her ass.

Sure, you can read Shirley Temple movies Greene's way if such is your kinky wont; but there's a few that lend themselves to it far more readily than the John Ford film. Little Miss Marker comes to mind, mostly because Adolphe Menjou is so much creepier than Victor McLaglen. In fact, you can read a lot of child vehicles of that or any other era as sublimated sex, and sometimes you'll be right. But it's a tiresomely reductive view to take of a film as good as Wee Willie Winkie, and it diminishes the good points something like The Little Princess or The Littlest Rebel still possess.

So if you want an analysis of the incestuous/pedophilic qualities of Wee Willie Winkie, that's as much as you're going to get from the Siren. She doesn't think the movie, or indeed Temple's performance, deserved that review.

Once Upon a Time on Skype: Dennis Cozzalio and the Siren Convene a Summit

The Siren has long had a mutual admiration society going with Dennis Cozzalio of the most excellent Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, despite such obstacles as living on opposite coasts and the Siren's lack of affinity for, well, you know. But even though we reside in a Web world when it's easy to ignite a blog war over, say, whether a movie about a weedy-looking twentysomething vanquishing exes is too hip for the room, or whether a movie about dreams should include nekkid people, Dennis and I find our differences amusing and stimulating and always have. We're also very similar in ways that count.

Some time ago he came up with the idea of talking to one another via Skype about movies and blogging and (reckless soul) he volunteered to transcribe it. Part I of our epic yakfest is up at his blog, covering, as his title promises, origins, childhood visions, writing philosophy and the Beetlejuice of film bloggers. Part II is due later this week.

Anecdote of the Week: You Can Post From Paris, but Not Everything Can Be Exported

As she's mentioned approximately 1,348 times in various social media, the Siren is off to Paris today for a visit with the in-laws. The Siren hates air travel--how heretical of her--but comforts herself with the notion that she could have in-laws in, say, Phenix City, Ala., a town where her father used to try cases and come back muttering that the movie flattered the place. (The Siren hastens to add for any readers in Phenix City that this was 25 years ago and Daddy may have missed the renaissance.)

The Siren always tries to do some shopping in Paris, however small, so here is a small anecdote regarding the perils of that pastime, from Billy Wilder in Hollywood by Maurice Zolotow.

Much of Love in the Afternoon was filmed on location in Paris. While Billy was over there, Audrey [Wilder] suddenly got the most irresistible craving for...a bidet! She had to have a bidet. She could not live without her very own bidet in the master bedroom. She cabled Billy to purchase a bidet and ship it to their Westwood apartment. Unable to locate a French plumbing supply firm which exported bidets, Wilder replied: IMPOSSIBLE TO OBTAIN BIDET STOP SUGGEST YOU DO HANDSTANDS IN SHOWER.

Over at Awards Daily, there is a poll about the Most Influential Film Critics. What struck the Siren about this poll is that there are only about a half-dozen, give or take, critics on the list whose good opinion is enough to get her watching. She won't tell you who they are, with two exceptions. Obviously the Siren's TCM tovarich Lou Lumenick carries much weight with her.

And then there is Glenn Kenny, the only critic named for an individual blog. The Siren suggests you go over and take the poll for the sake of voting for Glenn. The honor of the blogosphere compels you.

The poll, of course, is looking at which critics carry weight with the largest number of people (and in Oscar balloting, which to the Siren is like Kremlinology, only less transparent). But applying it to your own reading is an interesting exercise, and it made the Siren realize most of the critics left off the poll who wield substantial influence over her are either Web-based or have a large Web presence. Her own list would include (but is by no means limited to) Kim Morgan, Dennis Cozzalio, David Cairns, Dan Callahan, Peter Nelhaus, Tony Dayoub, Vadim Rizov, Dan Sallitt, Keith Uhlich, Jim Emerson, David Ehrenstein, Flickhead, Tom Shone and Girish Shambu. There are also wider-ranging bloggers whose film forays the Siren loves, such as James Wolcott (yes, I know he's primarily Vanity Fair, but he's a primo blogger so we like to claim him), Lance Mannion and Sheila O'Malley. And there's a few who've gone silent of late, but still make the Siren snap to attention when they do say something, like Filmbrain and Michael Phillips. These critics often share the Siren's tastes, but a lot of them also tend to like all sorts of things the Siren most definitely does not. They're all a pleasure to read, though, and often that's all it takes. Don't you think?

By that standard, the Siren could also name a lot of her commenters for that poll.

The Siren must now return to staring at her suitcases and waiting for them to speak up and tell her what she forgot. Before she leaves, one more critic who belonged on that poll had anyone consulted the Siren: Stephen Whitty. Please check out Stephen's marvelous exchange with Joan Lowell Smith, who once shared Hollywood digs with goddess-in-the-making Kim Novak.

That's all from Brooklyn for now. The Siren will be posting from Paris at her usual erratic rate. See you soon.

In Memoriam: Patricia Neal, 1926-2010

Just yesterday, before either one of us had heard of 84-year-old Patricia Neal's death in Martha's Vineyard, the Siren was having an email exchange with a friend about Breakfast at Tiffany's, and the new book about it by Sam Wasson. And the Siren mentioned that one of her several problems with the film is the treatment of Neal's character, a rich woman paying George Peppard's every bill while he works, theoretically, on a novel. She's given a nickname that shows what she means to him--an apartment number, 2E--and we're meant to see Neal as an obstacle to his destiny as an artist, not as someone trying to make things easier for a lover and getting barely concealed contempt in return. She leaves him money, the harpy! How's he supposed to write if she's doing things like that?

But, as always with Neal, there are more things in that face and that voice than the lines or blocking are meant to suggest--a pained vulnerability, the idea that Peppard's shameless use of her is a wound she covers with brittle chatter and a sophisticated attitude.

In her films, as well as in her life, Patricia Neal always seemed to be giving more than she got.

In Bright Leaf, the 1950 Michael Curtiz epic about tobacco farming, Neal is the one character simmering with emotion, attracted to Gary Cooper but determined to destroy him. The scene where she turns on Cooper is the most dramatic in the movie, their sexual chemistry roiling even as she confesses how much she has hated him. When he rides out alone in the end, it seems wholly fitting, not just because he couldn't keep faith with truehearted Lauren Bacall, but also because he wasn't man enough to do anything with the passion that had been flying off Neal the entire time. He didn't deserve either one of them.

She made one earlier film with Cooper, The Fountainhead. The Siren feels obligated to mention that one, but much as she loves Neal, in truth the Siren cannot bear that movie, King Vidor or no King Vidor. Ayn Rand's fans sometimes complain the film strays too far from her novel; the Siren thinks it's a visual match for Rand's writing style, and that is no compliment. Even so, the Siren still sees Neal's warmth and intelligence glimmering behind her risible lines and motivations.

During the filming of The Fountainhead, and continuing through and after Bright Leaf, Neal had an affair with Cooper that brought her agony, as Cooper's Catholic wife refused a divorce. Cooper urged Neal to have an abortion when she became pregnant, a decision Neal grieved over for the rest of her life. Her later marriage to Roald Dahl was marked by a horrifying taxi accident involving her four-month-old son. Theo survived, but Neal's seven-year-old daughter Olivia later died of complications from measles. In 1965, as she was in the early stages of shooting John Ford's Seven Women (a part that might have been perfect for her), she suffered a catastrophic series of strokes while she was pregnant with daughter Lucy. The effects on her speech, her body and her memory were devastating, but Dahl, with savage dedication, nursed her back to life and to acting.

Less than twenty years later, they divorced when Neal discovered Dahl's longstanding affair with her best friend. Betrayal haunted Patricia Neal off-screen as much as it did on.

Her misfortunes, her philanthropy and her courage became perhaps even more famous than her work, and tinge the perception of something like The Subject Was Roses, her first major role after the strokes and a beautiful performance. But simple nobility is almost never enough on screen. Neal always showed you the struggle, how damn hard everything was--but in a way that told you pity would be an insult to such a woman. It's evident even in an earlier role, such as her magnificent work in A Face in the Crowd, where you feel her revenge on Lonesome Rhodes as a blow for every woman who ever wasted time, intelligence and love on a worthless egomaniac.

She was one of those actresses whose beauty became softer and more inviting, not less, with age. In Hud, her housekeeper character Alma fends off Paul Newman's advances with the torment of loving him emphasizing every line on her face, and yet it only adds to her magnetism. Later parts became more like Alma, such as warm, gentle Olivia Walton in The Homecoming.

Always there was that voice, its timbre joining the Tennessee accent to create a sound you anticipate the way you might yearn for a close-up of another actor. The Siren has spent this morning collecting the adjectives. Corncrake, said David Shipman (a bird, evidently--the Siren had to look that one up). Molasses, says the Times. Throaty, husky, sandpaper. And the Siren can hear all that even just reading a printed interview with Neal, like the one where she explained the fears of a young contract player at the old Warner Brothers: "Bette Davis was queen of the studio, and you couldn't just go up to her and ask her to solve your problems.

"They were real stars in those days, babe."

(Postscript: You will most definitely want to read Sheila O'Malley's tribute.)

An overdue update: Reader Carol wrote the Siren some time ago to point out that contrary to her original post, Cooper was not Catholic at the time of his affair with Neal, and that the Siren's rather harsh allusion was in error. Research shows that Carol is right. The Siren regrets the error, and the sideswipe at Cooper. Mea culpa.

Affairs of Cellini (1934)

Historical movies fall into one of three categories. Some strive for meticulous accuracy, some leaven accuracy with a few liberties. Then there are those that frankly don't give a damn beyond costumes and sets--and so it was with Affairs of Cellini, the 1934 Gregory La Cava film. This odd comedic swashbuckler sits right near the start of the director's great run of films up to 1941's Unfinished Business. Despite the 16th-century trappings it does fit with the later films, if you figure that instead of monkey imitations, you're getting little bursts of swordplay. It's based on a play by Edwin Justus Mayer, "The Firebrand," about which the Siren knows nothing. Presumably it drew from the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, which the Siren read in abridged form years ago. And the movie is somewhat less weird than the book, which as the Siren recalls had Cellini swearing he saw halos and had clairvoyant visions and conjured up a bunch of devils in the Colosseum in order to get back a mistress who had gone home to mother.

The movie was still pretty weird, though. Supporting player Fay Wray recalled years later, "It had a certain amount of charm, even though it was a little wacky." The Siren couldn't have said it better herself. The rather murky plot doesn't reward much summary, involving as it does Cellini's need to maim and murder various Florentines whom he finds annoying, the Duke de Medici's need to punish Cellini for doing so, and everybody's need to find someone wholly inappropriate to sleep with.



So what was so wacky? Well, the supporting players obliterate the lead, for one thing. Fredric March was a longtime scene-stealer himself, but he doesn't seem comfortable with this character. Instead he glowers from underneath masses of dark curls and moves like he's trying to convince himself the doublet is an English-drape suit. Which is a shame, because March's legs looked great in tights, something that can be said of very few actors. Maybe (here the Siren indulges in idle speculation) maybe March, one of Hollywood's staunchest liberals, had a bit of trouble finding a way into playing an artist, even a great artist, who wrote with perfect sang-froid about beating the hell out of his mistresses and was also a viperous court intriguer, (possible) political assassin and plain old murderer. But the problem is less with March, a fine actor, and more that the script marginalizes its own title character. Cellini's art is confined to one scene in his workshop where he's making his assistant do all the labor. He's reacting to the plots of others as much as he's doing his own scheming, and Cellini's lines aren't as funny, either. And that's also a shame, because March could time a joke to the millisecond, as he showed in Design for Living and Nothing Sacred.

One of the few lines March really gets to tear off is "For your own sake, don't be any dumber than is absolutely necessary"--spoken to Fay Wray, who's playing Angela, an artist's model of wondrous stupidity. Wray, to whom the Siren had never given much thought one way or another, is unexpectedly funny in this simple part. She doesn't have snappy lines; instead she gets laughs just by sticking to the unflappable demeanor of a person who seldom gets upset about anything because she never understands what the hell is going on. Angela sucks the crumbs off a finger or picks at her sleeve, stares off into the middle distance, finally tunes into the conversation, listens patiently and then, having visibly decided that the man isn't saying one thing worth hearing, goes back to whatever constitutes her inner life. The longer Angela stuck around, the more the Siren enjoyed her, and she was often more interesting than Cellini.

The movie's primary flaw, though, was the Duke de Medici. Frank Morgan's Best Actor nomination for Affairs is often cited as a reason why the Academy needed a supporting category, proving that this unavailable-on-home-anything movie hasn't been seen much. Morgan's got almost as much screen time as March, and his performance dominates the movie. Which is not a good thing, or at least the Siren didn't think so. Understand, the Siren finds the actor delightful in many things, including The Shop Around the Corner (easily his best work), Bombshell and The Wizard of Oz. But if you saw Oz (and hasn't everyone?) you will immediately recognize Morgan as de Medici. It's the same performance. The stammering, the stop-and-start motion, the furtive looks, even the humbug. There are some places where the tricks are still funny, particularly in his dinner scene with Angela. The Duke tries to slide one raddled hand up Angela's arm and Wray looks at him like he's picking his teeth with his fork: "What are you doing that for?" Great line delivery by Wray. Angela really does want to know why his hand is on her arm. She really is that stupid. Responds Morgan, as baffled as his seduction target: "Doesn't that make you, ah, burn and tingle?" And then, later, from Morgan: "Would you like some more peacock tongue?" (Technically this was post-Code. Not sure how that line made it in there.) "Yes, milord." Responds Morgan, like a lecherous Santa Claus: "Don't call me milord. I'd prefer that you call me Bumpy."

Mostly, however, Morgan is just tiresome, fluttering everywhere and being such a ninny that you never have a moment's suspense thinking he's any threat to anyone. Louis Calhern (miles from The Asphalt Jungle, but you'd know that nose anywhere) has some Rathbone-esque bite as the Duke's cousin, Ottaviano, but he isn't around enough to build up a sense of menace.




Thank god for Constance Bennett. The other characters may be dumber than one of Cellini's plates, but Constance is smart enough for the entire movie. The usual routine for swashbucklers, even semi-sorta-swashbucklers like this one, is a fiery heroine with a nice line in flashing eyes and snappy comebacks, who spends the first part of the movie telling the hero he's a common pirate, thief, musketeer, ruffian, whatever. Here, however, we have coolly adulterous Miss Bennett as the Duchess de Medici, more Snow Queen than spitfire. As usual, Constance is the most wised-up person in the picture, going after Cellini and manipulating everyone in sight. Also as usual, Constance was the Siren's favorite, giving just the right cynical touch to the picture's best lines: "The tragedy of all great ladies is to discover that the men with the most exaggerated reputations make the poorest lovers. That is the reason we probably marry half-wits." Bennett always seemed ineffably early 1930s, no matter what decade the movie was filmed or set in, and here her silky walk and line deliveries would fit nicely in a later La Cava picture. She's delightful, sweeping into the apartment that the Duke has set up for his adulterous tryst with Angela, pretending to think it's all for her and maliciously complimenting him on every detail.

Constance, along with March's tights, also provides the dose of sex the movie needs. Watch her sink onto a couch as the slinky dress fabric outlines her legs all the way to her ass. The movie looks good, if not great, with sumptuous sets and a few fight scenes that show La Cava's ability to film chaos and make it coherent. Overall, however, if the Siren watched it again, it would be for Constance, sashaying off at the end, ready to keep out-conniving one of the Renaissance's greatest heels.

Anecdote of the Week: "You Remind Me of Carole Lombard."

The Siren's Dazzling Better Half (that gentleman having informed her, with finality, that he does not wish to be called Mr. Anything) is out of town, and this never does her movie viewing any favors nor, frankly, her mood. So where to turn when skies are gray, the projected high in New York City is 97 degrees Fahrenheit, and you say you are blue? To Carole Lombard, that's who.

Courtesy of Anita Loos, in Kiss Hollywood Good-by, a story the Siren really hopes is true.

Carole Lombard, Clark's third wife, was the wish fulfillment of every man in and out of Hollywood; a natural blonde who, both a lady and a hoyden, had a sense of humor and lack of pretense that seldom go with beauty as glittering as hers. I recall one day when she was strolling down a road and a passing truck driver offered her a lift. Carole accepted and, because the driver was good company, she drove with him all the way to Bakersfield. But before very long the young man began to sense he'd picked up an angel unawares. "Know something baby?" he ventured, "you remind me of Carole Lombard." "If you compare me with that cheap floozy, I"ll get right off your truck!" Carole flared up. So the driver apologized.

*****

Kim Morgan has re-posted an appreciation of Phantom Lady, in which Ella Raines proved she could act, but the Siren can't resist posting Kim's paean to Winnipeg (yes, Winnipeg) alongside a rendition from either the World's Sluttiest Auto-Translator, or someone with an exceptionally dirty mind. (Warning: If you are put off by repeated use of a certain versatile four-letter word, stick with Kim's original Winnipeg post.)

Years ago the Siren saw the original production of Oleanna and, despite a great performance from William H. Macy (does he give any other kind?) thought the play was a crabby, unfocused, scattershot mess. Marilyn Ferdinand saw the film and has a lucid and decidedly fair-minded write-up right here.

When it comes to The Red Shoes, Tony Dayoub is on Lermontov's side. Bravo. So's the Siren.

Ed Howard didn't like Seconds quite as much as the Siren did. But he did see a great deal of merit in the terrifying body-and-mind-swap movie directed by John Frankenheimer (or Handsome John, as I suppose he is now known in these parts), and Ed also has some great screen caps.

Kendra Bean, lucky woman, got to interview Universal Classic-Film Crush Robert Osborne. At her blog Viv and Larry.


You know how people claim to hate saying "I told you so"? What's up with that? The phrase "I told you so," wielded when someone winds up loving a movie you've been nagging them to see, is one of the most satisfying in the language. But the Siren will bow to convention and just point out, in the most casual manner possible, that hers was among the voices urging Ryan Kelly to buy Close-Up, even though he'd seen it already.

Finally, there is simply no way, no how that the Siren was going to post anything about the goddess Carole without linking to VP81955. Here's a post tied to the Day Lombard Told Off Laughton, with stills.

Handsome Directors: A Brief Visual List

Last night the Siren attended a swell dinner marked by good conversation, good wine, and the best damn roast chicken ever. Since the guests included a number of film writers, naturally the discussion long lingered over the most esoteric, enlightening and intellectual corners of film love...

But after a while we ditched all that and got down to brass tacks: Who was the best-looking director of all time?

We didn't come up with many names. One host ventured that the last time he broached this topic, the one most often mentioned was Francois Truffaut. Well, the Siren loves Truffaut's movies--a lot--but, nah. Then the Siren got up this morning and remembered all sorts of names, most them not mentioned last night.

Thus this mischievous exercise in the most superficial kind of auteurism imaginable.



Frank Borzage


John Cassavetes. How on earth did we forget him?


Vittorio de Sica


Joseph Mankiewicz (on right). Numerous affairs included Linda Darnell, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford and Loretta Young.


Leo McCarey. Frequently cited as a huge influence on Cary Grant's screen persona.


Vincent Sherman. Had affairs with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Lived.


Luchino Visconti


Raoul Walsh. Pre-eye-patch Walsh, in full Mexican bandit regalia, was our host's pick.


Orson Welles. The most beautiful depraved baby face of all time, and as a bonus, you get that voice. Precisely the kind of voice you want to hear saying, "Good morning."


William "Wild Bill" Wellman. The Siren's pick until she was reminded of Welles' youth.

Gratitude, and Giving

My old friend Irving Kolodin gave my Tschaikowsky recording a bad review in the Saturday Review, of which he is musical editor. Later he called me up in California and asked, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Yeah," I said, "give me a good review of the Tschaikowsky."

He never did.

On one of my recent trips to New York, I had dinner with Irving and his wife. The next day, wanting some reassurance, I called him and asked, "How was I at dinner last night?"

"Sporadic," he replied.

I hadn't wanted a one-word review of dinner.

--Oscar Levant, Memoirs of an Amnesiac

The Siren's one-word review of her inclusion in Film Comment's roundup, "It's Alive! The Top Film Criticism Sites: An Annotated Blog Roll": flabbergasted?...grateful?...flattered as all hell?

Well, writing short was always the Siren's weak spot. Many, many thanks to Paul Brunick and Brynn White. The Siren will try to live up to that write-up, and the stratospheric standards set by the distinguished company in which they have seen fit to include her.

And please read Paul's call for online and old-school media to learn to live together with peace, brotherly love and cuckoo clocks instead of squabbling over who ate the last of the film-critical pie. It is persuasive, witty, sensible and very much worth your time.



Meanwhile, Donna Hill of Strictly Vintage Hollywood has alerted the Siren to a campaign by the British Film Institute to restore and preserve the nine silent films made by Alfred Hitchcock. The Siren plans to give, and hopes her generous readers will do the same. Details on the films are here and the donation link is right here.

More Mary & Marylyn

The Siren gets a steady trickle of emails from readers who are a little intimidated by what the Mighty James Wolcott called the "cocktail-party bonhomie" of her comments section. And this week one well-loved reader sent along some beautiful, rare photos of Mary Astor, which were duly forwarded to daughter Marylyn Roh.

You see one such above, carefully cleaned up to eliminate a crease. The Siren has never seen it before, and she and Marylyn were mesmerized by the same thing. "Those shoes--do you bet they're red?" asked Marylyn. Yes, I bet they were.

Marylyn has been avidly reading the comments to her interview, but has given up on navigating Blogger's fussy demands about how to log in and respond. (Glenn Kenny has the same problem, and don't even get the Siren started on Mubi, a brilliant site with a comments-registration system that has been merrily blackballing her almost since its inception.) Marylyn emailed some responses, and the Siren posts them here.

I'm bowled over by the responses! Bless all their darling hearts.

The last post I read was from Krystin who is my niece--not my granddaughter as she said. Her dad is my "baby brother." She's another beauty in the family. My brother, Tony del Campo, is the son of Manuel (Mike) del Campo.

For Falcon fans--so many out there! Thank you for your generous remarks and appreciation. I wonder if you know that The Maltese Falcon was used at UCLA California to teach drama, cinematic photography, and related subjects for several years. It was an archetype of detective movies. When Ted Turner managed to ruin the dramatic B&W movies, with fake colorization, Mom's hair turned straw-colored, lipstick was pasty, and the clothes were boring because they were chosen for black & white. All the mystery of the film was squelched to the max.

I can't begin to thank you all for writing. I've never done blogging before! I did want to correct the following: On the web, there are references to me, Marylyn, as named MARYLYN ASTOR THORPE, born June 16, 1932. The extra Y in MarYlyn isn't a typo. It's from MARY, and FrankLYN Thorpe my Dad. My middle name is Hauoli, meaning "happy" in Hawaiian. My parents went on a yacht race from San Pedro, Calif., to Hawaii when Mom was 6 1/2 months pregnant. They came upon heavy weather. They landed OK, but I was born two months early at 4 pounds 11 oz. You can look in the newspaper morgues for dozens of pictures of this event, and also look for the "Purple Diary" news and the custody battle of my parents. I doubt if the REAL truth will ever come out about these things.

For David Ehrenstein, about Fayard Nicholas: :o) When I was little, I went to see Fayard and his brother in every movie they were in; the most brilliant tap dancers on the planet, ever. I was visiting Mom at the MPCH and Fayard, who was living there at the time, came to visit her. I nearly fainted. Mom had never seen me so badly starstruck. We had a great conversation together. He's adorable!

I am reading Larry Harnisch's newspaper article on the custody battle with that picture I've never seen. I also have a picture of 'little Marylyn' sitting on the lap of Goodwin Knight, who because he won the case for Mom, became California's governor in those years.

And, in response to another photo sent by the same reader, Marylyn says:

Your friend has the best of the best of young Mary. Note the early pathos in her bearing. The eyes kill ya, don't they? Little did she know then what she was going to go through in her life.

Now the Siren seizes the chance to post another picture from her email pal and to quote two passages, about the great John Barrymore, from Astor's A Life on Film. Truly, if you have any interest in the nuts and bolts of being an actor in the studio era, the Siren can't recommend this book highly enough. Robert Avrech and Marylyn both cite the chapter about filming a love scene with Clark Gable as their favorite, and certainly no actress ever did a better job of explaining the decidedly anti-erotic nature of shooting a kiss. This next passage, however, is the Siren's favorite, chiefly for the way it gives the lie to the notion that the actors in classic films were all instinct and calculation and no technique.

I remember we were sitting at lunch and I said, 'May I have some more butter, please.' [Barrymore] used it. He said, 'Before any scene--go over how long you've known him--or her. You even say "Pass the butter" differently, according to how you feel. Right now you're bored--I can hear it. There's always something under what you are saying--caused by a million things. How does it make you feel? Suppose, for instance, the guy says--maybe he's your husband--"I've quit my job." And your line is "Pass the butter, please." O.K., now don't giggle like an ass. Listen, there'd be a world of difference if you think, "Well screw him, I'll get somebody else to buy my sable coat." Or if you feel happy that the guy's finally got up nerve to do something that was your idea all along. Now let's try it. Let's improvise. I'll go out and come in and tell you I've quit my job and you invent something and let me see you thinking.'

A few years ago I was working with Actors' Studio people in a TV show, trying to make sense of the nomenclature they used. I asked one of them, 'What do you mean by "subtext?"' He explained. My thoughts whisked back thirty years to 'Pass the butter.'

The Siren already referred briefly to Astor's last meeting with Barrymore, who was in the final stages of his alcoholism; they were doing a radio show together. God knows you can read endless anecdotes about the drinking habits of the great stars, and some of the stories are amusing. And even in our Celebrity Rehab age there's some glamor that clings to tales of dissipated nights at El Morocco. But the Siren finds, as she reads Lee Server's excellent, admiring Mitchum and Gardner biographies, or encounters yet another hell-raising tale of Errol Flynn, that the reality was far less rollicking.

This week, by coincidence, the gossip outlets were rocking with laughter over Lindsay Lohan's travails. In between the bad jokes you could hear people tongue-clucking over Lohan's lack of character. Such beauty, such talent and privilege, recklessly thrown away--as though this is somehow worse than an ordinary person tossing life's small gifts over the hedge. The Siren encapsulated her double reaction in an email to a dear friend: "Basically, I a. do not find drunk jokes funny in general and b. really bleeping viscerally hate a mob of people in high moral dudgeon over someone's personal failings."

If that seems like a strange and contradictory response to a modern actress whose filmography could be kindly described as "inconsistent," the Siren thinks Mary Astor, with her extraordinary talent and troubles, might have understood.

A long bleak fluorescent lighted hall: There was no one else around. I saw him walking alone down the hall ahead of me. I wanted to catch up and say hello, but I didn't. He had stopped, like someone who just couldn't walk another step; he leaned against the wall in sheer fatigue. His body sagged. It was no time to intrude, so I retraced my steps. I couldn't help thinking: Where was everybody? Where were the valets, the little train of admiring hangers-on?...I hated all the Barrymore jokes--the sick ones, the dirty ones. I hated the people who said, "I was with Jack at a bar one night," ready to recount a wild story. This was a giant of a man, one of the few greats of our time. He was someone with enormous dignity, and he never lost it. He occasionally threw it away--for his own reasons. But that was his business. And now, in that long bleak hall, I saw a man who was catching his breath before doing battle, and quite a battle it was, with death.

"You Don't Wanna Know About How Frank She Was:" A Conversation with Marylyn Roh About Her Mother, Mary Astor

About two weeks ago, the Siren logged into her email and found a note from one Marylyn Roh of Utah. Subject heading: Mary Astor.

I just crossed your blog postings about my mother, Mary Astor. Yes, I am that child of custody you mentioned, Marylyn Hauoli Thorpe (Roh). (6/15/32)

That got the Siren’s attention, all right.

…Always I learn more things each time I read something about Mom, knowing that much must be taken with a grain of salt.It was fun reading. I don't blog or Facebook, but if you'd like to know stuff about her, that you don't already know, I'll be glad to add my two bits. I just received a bio book of Ann Harding by Scott O'Brien which I helped him with a bit in that way. Mom and Ann did Holiday together - she was expecting me during the making of that picture.

I'm always surprised that Mom still has so many fans all over the world - she died 9/1987.

The Siren wrote back immediately to say that in our corner of the Web, the name Mary Astor still means a great deal. Last week, for example, the Siren watched Meet Me in St. Louis with her daughter and was entranced all over again with one of Mary Astor's small moments. It's the scene where the father tells them they are moving to New York and then, in a quintessentially male gesture, tries to ameliorate this catastrophe by making them eat cake. He cuts a huge piece for Astor; she makes a weary face, takes her fork, cuts off one finger-size sliver and slides it onto her plate. There is so much in that little cake maneuver--her unhappiness over the move, her resignation that she isn't going to change her husband's mind, her still wanting him to know she's upset. Watching Mary Astor in even the least of her many movies always yields such a moment, and it's why so many cinephiles treasure her memory.

Well, Marylyn turned out to be a joy, and she was happy to give some sharp, forthcoming answers to the Siren’s questions about her mother and her own life as a child of Golden Age Hollywood.

Cobbled together from several different emails, here is what we talked about.

For background on my discussion with Marylyn, you can check my old post, as well as this beautiful Slant Magazine essay by the awesome Dan Callahan. One of Marylyn's grandchildren, Andrew Yang, has a blog where he writes of his famous great-grandmother from time to time, and if you click through you can see a wonderful, rare photo of Astor with James Dean. See also this great L.A. Times blog post, about the custody battle for Marylyn, by the ever-excellent writer (and Siren Facebook pal) Larry Harnisch.

Your mother is one of the few Golden Age actresses, aside from her friend Bette Davis, who talked extensively in her memoirs about technique and preparing for roles. Did you ever see any of these preparations, or did she talk to you about them?

No, the only prep I witnessed was how she memorized her scripts. She took ten matches and counted how many times she took to memorize a paragraph or scene. With her gone from 5:30 am to midnight or so, I didn't see any preparation, even when I was on set.

Did you ever spend time on her sets? Was it fun, or a chore?
Yes, many hours on the set when the nanny was off. I met many stars over the years. But if you knew me, you'd know I have never been hooked on celebrity. They were not the people they were on film. They were just doing their job. I had a crush at age nine on Bogie. Heh heh. On Meet Me in St. Louis, I met Judy and the rest of the cast. She was darling in those years. Little Women gave me the chance to have lunch at the commissary with Liz Taylor. Lavender-eyed beauty, always late on the set. Mom was ALWAYS on time--which she gave to me. Fun most of the time, but tedious when all you really do is sit around and wait for the cue to get up and "act." Even though I had acting talent, I am grateful to have stayed clear of that kind of life.

Have to tell you this "funny" before leaving this question. We were in the mountain location for Brigham Young, Frontiersman in Big Bear, Calif., (1939?) and it was hot and out in the fields with horses and equipment all around. There had been an unbearably long silence. This seven-year-old could stand it no longer. Apparently, the cast was doing their lines out of my hearing range, and M was a part of it. I yelled out, "IS SHE WORKING YET?” They had to do the whole scene entirely over again. Bux bux bux. $$

Are you laughing yet? M was really sore at me.

I am laughing, because I can hear one of my seven-year-olds doing the same thing. When I wrote about her before, I said it was evident to me that acting never engaged Astor's full intelligence. Do you agree? What sort of intellectual outlets did she rely on--books, current events, socializing with like-minded people?
She was a rabid reader of heavy-duty history books mostly. She was definitely multitalented. She did put her all into her roles, for sure. She was a legend. A very unique personality. You either loved her or couldn't stand her! Years ago during World War II she knitted socks for the service men. She enjoyed playing the piano, and was an avid classical music fan. Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Gershwin, et al. Read in her first book of how she stopped singing.

Brilliant mind; she was self-taught because she left school after 8th grade. Remember that her dad, Otto Langhanke, had $$ in his eyes once she entered the beauty contest. She didn't win, but he hauled her off to Jesse Lasky's office for an interview. She was deeply scarred by ol' Otto. What greed!




As for socializing--her 3rd husband, Mike Del Campo, was a playboy and they did some heavy-duty nightclubbing. But she hated it because she was the one who had to get up to get to the studio. Mike was gorgeous, and at age seven what does a little girl (me) know about playboys, nightlife, the hot-and-heavy and seedy side of the industry. My mother divorced him because of his not being dependable, not a “husband,” which she couldn't maintain anyway with her career--and he was in the RCAF in England. He was a lush and an opportunist. Nice enough, and I really liked him a lot, if and when I saw him. After their split, Mom and I lived in a huge Georgian mansion with my baby brother, and servants. She threw parties; Bogie and I chatted for a bit. He was nice.




Although she never says so explicitly in her two autobiographies, it seems that John Barrymore was the real love of your mother's life, and that he had a huge influence on her acting as well. By far the most heartbreaking passage in A Life on Film is her encounter with him shortly before he died; you can see how protective she was of his memory. Did you have the same impression? Did she ever speak of him to you?

Oh my yes. Again ol' Otto got in the way. [Note: Astor said Langhanke’s influence made Barrymore despair of the relationship with her, and Barrymore moved on to Dolores Costello.] Yet here was a non husband-type that might have been my father. She had to make a choice. Otto was a toughie. No thanks. JB taught her elocution for two years when sound came along and actors dropped away like flies because of their lousy speaking voices, and M, as you know, had a perfect speaking voice, without her Midwest twang. She told me a lot about "Jack" Barrymore, but probably not much more than you know from your sources. Yes, that was a sad encounter. They looked fabulous onscreen together, viz. Beau Brummel.

Astor was also very frank, in a way most actresses aren't, about the psychological difficulty of making the transition to “mother” roles when she was still under 40 and attractive. Did you see any impact from that at home?

You don't wanna know about how frank she was. I’m sometimes accused of the same behavior and I shrink with horror at the idea.

I didn’t see the difficulty especially. I think she felt the fall from more specialized roles. She was an active alcoholic, and the 40s were especially hard on her. Although the change to TV appearances took its toll on her, it encouraged her to finally begin writing as she always wanted to. She didn't feel glamorous any more. It was too much trouble to be dressed up, to go to the set. Both my brother and I were in boarding schools; she was married off and on. What kind of life is that?



I don’t want to pry too much…
Pry away girl!

All right then. When did you see her alcoholism come into full force? Did she quit drinking permanently, or take it up again later?

Let's put it this way. I imagine M had been drinking fairly heavily a long time before I noticed it. When I was a teen coming home on weekends from boarding school, my stepfather [fourth husband Thomas Gordon Wheelock] and she were heavy at it. They always had weekend drinking friends over and it would get louder and louder--one guy was a songwriter and another played whore-house piano. HA! My sainted mother gave me rum and cokes (deadly) to drink during my 14th summer. Eek! While I drank with my husband years later, I only remember one time I was actually out of it! Never came near being addicted. I haven't had anything heavy since 1972.

I know she at one time got so bad she did a job on her wrists in the bathtub, my sister-in-law found her, and my brother was booked for questioning. I know that in her young New York theatre years, she'd party with drug-lit people. I imagine she did her share of heavy everything. She had the reputation of never drinking on the set.

Did you want to know this much?! There was actually a two-year stretch when she was writing she was dry. But then she was back to square one when her Siamese kitty was killed by a German shepherd before her eyes. So yes, she took it up then--and until about 1985--because she had to stay in the Motion Picture Country Hospital. She was there until her death. Emphysema, heart disease. And, obviously, she HAD to quit smoking--at last!

There have been many instances of children of stars who grew up bitter and maladjusted. You, however, seem to have turned out secure and happy, with a genuine admiration for your mother--this after being the subject of one of Hollywood's most famous custody disputes. Do you have any observations about life as the child of a star?
Well, I'll tell you, I don't know about being all that secure, or "unmaladjusted!" I have chronic anxiety, for one thing. I was married for 57 years to Frank Roh. We had four children, then 33 grand and great-grand children. I think about schoolmate Shirley Temple and Margaret O’Brian, who were deadly doted on by their parents on the set. I'm glad I never got into the business.

I loved my mother, but was usually scared of her. I never won. She was always right. I was always “Mary Astor's daughter,” which in a way was a burden, being only recognized as such. I was her "shadow" for years--not good! (Boring! Are you asleep yet?)



My favorite Mary Astor performance (and that of many other film writers) is her superb work in Dodsworth, the movie she was making during the legal battle over you.

Of course! It was also her favorite of them all.

Which of her movies are your favorites? Are there any relatively obscure movies that you think people should seek out?
I think Red Dust is pretty sultry. I love The Maltese Falcon over and over, and Little Women and Meet Me in St. Louis. I'm a silents fan, so any of those are fun. (I'm also a Chaplin fan.)



There isn't a lot of material out there about your mother's waning years. Can you fill in any of the blanks?

She wanted it that way, just to kind of blend in with the scenery when she worked mostly in television; those years aren't covered in her two books. I can’t really fill things in. I didn't see her much in those years; I was married in 1950 and in my own world of a teen mother.

Was novel-writing a large source of contentment for her?
She loved it, but her subject matter was a bit too lurid for me. And boring. A Life on Film and Mary Astor: My Story were readable and were best sellers for a short time. My favorite chapter in ALOF: "What It’s Like to Kiss Clark Gable." Heh heh.

I read A Place Called Saturday, which I guess fulfills your adjective "lurid," as it's about a woman who is raped, conceives a child and refuses to have an abortion.

You know, Farran, frankly I had to force myself to read two of her novels, beside the bios. She definitely had a talent and a way with words, but to me, they were just boring. She probably took snippets of her life as an abused child and experiences. She had a great imagination as well. That's what made her good at her crafts of writing and acting. She couldn't speak in front of people without a script though. No teleprompters in those days!

She had talent, alright. She also was an avid reader of anything she could get her hands on, even the medicine bottles around her. (She told me that she always looked around for something to read. That's pretty desperate. Ha!) With me, it's crosswords. It infuriated her that I couldn't read like she could; I had astigmatism as a child and now. She also played the piano, (The Great Lie), painted and sculpted, and was an avid "birder." She loved nature. She didn't really like people very much. She was pretty much "on stage" at any one time, i.e., the center of attention.




How often did you visit her at the Motion Picture Country House? Was she happy there?

M lived about 10 years at the MPCH. She had her own little cottage with her personal belongings. She ate her meals in the common dining room, she had her own little table, so she wouldn’t have to listen to the "old folks" and their "organ recitals"--my kidney this, my bladder did that, my eyes this, my heart that. Organs! (Was she funny or not!) She was happy enough there where she could do her writing away from “people.” She couldn't “stand all those old people,” she told me. She also claimed it was hard for her to see her peers at the place leave the planet before her. “Why can't I go too,” she'd say. She made it to 81, in spite of how badly she treated her body.

Yes, I visited her as often as I could, but I had children, and she couldn't stand them for more than 15 minutes. I also lived at a distance--the final years, a three-hour drive from the mountains--ironically, back in Big Bear, Calif. We had a set-to my last visit, where she simply told me to GO! I went, and never saw her alive again. She died four months after.


What made her a unique actress?

I believe it's the various painful experiences she suffered throughout her life. Abuse, early widowhood, four husbands, her own temperament, alcoholism, and her own drive for perfection! She was scarred by a lot of it, yet she was indomitable, picked herself up and carried on, in spite of three tries at suicide.

You knew all that though, right?


Many thanks, Marylyn, for giving so generously of your time and memories.

Say hi to your readers and tell them I appreciate their support for Mary. She would have loved it, and would have written a few comments with her own special wit.


(Except for the stills from Beau Brummel, Dodsworth and Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte, all pictures are courtesy of Marylyn Roh. From top: Marylyn's favorite picture of her mother and herself. Next: "This is Mom and her green 1934 (?) Cadillac LaSalle in front of the house where I was a new baby. It was a wonderful Spanish home in the area of a lot of stars' homes in Toluca Lake, Calif. Bing and Bob were just down the street. Harold Arlen lived across the little manmade lake from us." Next, a publicity shot of a young and gorgeous Astor. Finally, Marylyn as a young mother, aged 20.)