Fifty Years Ago Today

Fifty Years Ago Today was Monday, August 25, 1975…Bruce Springsteen's album Born to Run was released in the United States, and made Springsteen a rock superstar…In a luxury railroad car parked in the middle of the Victoria Falls Bridge, Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia and leader of the white minority government of that African nation, met with Bishop Abel Muzorewa of the black African National Council, to negotiate a peaceful solution to a threatened war. The bridge linked white-ruled Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) and black-ruled Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia). The meeting was not successful…Get Down Tonight by KC and the Sunshine Band was the #1 song in the U.S. Check out the video from Dahn Kuushnah’s Rahk Consutt,

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KC & The Sunshine Band - Get Down Tonight (Live)

I was still 25, a dangerous condition with which I would suffer for another 5 months. Youth is great, you know, apart from the massive stupidity. 

I was barely an actor at all in 1975. It was my second year as a member of Actors Equity, and I was beginning to wonder if joining up had been a good idea. This year I was logging a solid ton of electrician work with my dad. Long hours, feeble pay, and Dad for a boss. Pretty ugly.

Since my last 50 Years ago date of July 26, I’d seen a handful of genre movies which I’m not revisiting and not reporting on. Titles include…DOC SAVAGE, THE MAN OF BRONZE, SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON, CAPTIVE WOMEN, VENUS AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES, and the highly marginal TV-movie CATHOLICS which was memorable for a stunning performance by Trevor Howard. Among those others…well….SEANCE OF A WET AFTERNOON was quite good. ‘Nuff said.

It was a hot one, hitting 94 fahrenheit. I don’t really remember that, but the newspaper reports it. There were so many hot, sweltering, miserable days in the unholy Ohio River Valley that I think I can be forgiven for forgetting one specific trip to Hell. 

So…JAWS…big movie, right? Great movie, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big ol’ classic movie, no doubt about it.

JAWS opened in Louisville on June 20, 1975 just as it did all around the country. So, of course, as a big time movie fan and legendary Monster Kid, I was right there on that first day, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I just??!!  Well, no. I wasn’t. I didn’t see JAWS till this day, more than two months after it had opened. Very late to the game, eh? Why was this?

This was also playing locally when JAWS opened.

I think I explained this tardiness in my last FIFTY YEARS AGO TODAY thingamuhbob-- I didn’t want to have to wait in those endless queues to get in, and I didn’t want to follow the trend. A rebel, that’s me.

But two months? Even knowing why I’d delayed, that surprises me. I must have been playing really tough on not-following-the-trend. Thankfully, I eventually caved. 

The movie was still playing at the same theater in which it had opened. And that night the place was almost full. By getting there early, I was able to nab a favored seat, about 5th row, on the aisle, and let the place fill up around me.

My recollection is that the audience gasped and sighed and laughed and screamed in all the right places, but I don’t remember particular responses. I assume they freaked at the underwater corpse and at the first real sight of the shark --and probably I did too--but I have no specific memories of such moments. Too bad.

Local review below. This critic once reviewed a show I was in and gave me an “okay”. But it was obvious from her review that she had left after the first act and never even saw me onstage. So…keep that in mind when reading this review.

But I did love it. I did recognize that it wasn’t just a decent thriller; I knew it was something special. I’ll admit, however, that I didn’t recognize at the time just HOW special. 

And now, half a century on, JAWS seems like something I and everyone else in the world has always known. We were all born, it seems, with John Williams’s music in our baby brains.

I’ve watched it numerous times since then though, sadly, never again in a theater. But no matter how many viewings I’ve racked up, I’m always ready for another thrill ride. So…

How about a skinny-dip, Chrissy? You first.

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And there’s the music. 

In 1975 I was unimpressed by Lorraine Gary. It’s an embarrassing admission, but my problem with her was almost entirely--no, it was entirely entirely--that she just wasn’t movie-star-beautiful. What a jerk I was. What I’ve learned since is that, in addition to being very real-world-pretty, she gives a truly fine performance. Sharing the screen with four top-notch actors, she holds her own with no visible effort.

Dreyfuss’s reaction to Chrissy’s mangled bits is perfection. He flinches and gasps for air and we are right there with him. We’re not seeing what he’s seeing, but, yeah, that’s how we would react. If we didn’t faint, that is.

It’s always struck me, from first viewing, that the remains of poor Chrissy, as described by Hooper, really wouldn’t fit in that little tray. It makes a shocking visual when this full-grown blonde is pulled from the fridge in a brownie tray. But, no. She wouldn’t have fit.

So we bid a fond farewell to Alex Kintner. Alex, we hardly knew ye.

They did a great job of casting local amateurs. They’re not great actors, by any means, but they feel right. And, especially, Spielberg manages to set them up to win. There’s a quirk here, a funny little line there, an offhand glance elsewhere. Spielberg also moves the camera on to them -- and OFF of them, at just the right moment.

I mentioned elsewhere around here a while back that Quentin Tarantino considers JAWS to be a “perfect movie.”  As do I. So I wrote about the little imperfections in perfect JAWS. 

The only glaring imperfection, I think, is Hooper’s late night excursion to check out Ben Gardner’s boat. It’s unacceptable. Hooper has already shown us that he’s the one person here who really knows sharks and that he’s the one sensible person. 

Then he goes night-diving in shark territory?  Nope. 

Yes, it sets up the jump scare beautifully, but ya gotta really turn your brain off to go along. It’s a horror movie cliche. It’s the ultimate, “Don’t go in the basement!!” moment. The scene is a shocker, but it almost forces the audience to check out for a moment.

I wish the mayor’s great anchor jacket fit him better. Looks like it’s two sizes too big. His later striped jacket fits just fine.  Murray Hamilton, by the by, is pretty great as the mayor you’d never vote for.

On this viewing, I appreciated the stuntmen for the first time. Not so much for the stunt work as for how well they match the actors. I’m sure a freeze frame or even slo-mo might reveal some fake Shemps, but just watching a beautiful Blu-ray straight through on a big screen tv, there was no flaw. I took to looking carefully whenever there was a moment which obviously called for stuntmen.  And the match was terrific. Surely that’s not Robert Shaw there, but it does look like him.

Credit here again--as if he needs more--to Spielberg, who positions the camera at a distance and angle to maintain his illusion.

I wonder, though, if Spielberg didn’t maybe over-stress Chekhov’s compressed air tanks. He needed to set up the possibility of an explosion, sure, but maybe, just maybe, there’s one too many early glimpses of the tanks. Maybe?

Finally, looking back 50 years--I remember reading some gossipy movie article about this new smash hit movie, JAWS. This article made it slyly plain and clear that the movie had been saved in the editing room by Verna Fields. After all, the writer inferred, no way this 27-year-old meeskite Spielberg could have accomplished this. No. No no. Certainly we must agree that the brilliant Fields had saved this childish pretender’s butt.

We can all shake our heads and laugh about that now. Verna Fields did a great editing job on JAWS, but she never set sail on the water during the months of torturous, frustrating filming of the movie. She never had to deal with the shark. Or with Robert Shaw, for that matter. 

I wish I knew who wrote that hateful piece because I’d dearly love to spread the silly article around with his name firmly attached. 

And, by the way, Verna Fields also didn’t write the music.

So there.

Oh, if I forgot to mention, this is a great dang movie.

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Let’s close out with a neat, but very small coincidence. As I was writing the start of this essay, I was simultaneously watching an old comedy on TCM, A GIRL, A GUY, AND A GOB with Lucille Ball, Edmond O’Brien, and George Murphy. 

While typing away, I heard Murphy say to Ball, “There’s a sailor on the Indianapolis who’s got an engagement ring…”

Duh-duh, duh-duh, dumpadumpadumpa….

 NAME THAT MOVIE #3

Below you will find an accurate description of the plot of a famous movie. It's just that the description is couched in unexpected terms.

A well-to-do military man and a show girl... they may seem an odd couple, and the romance is short-lived. He's dead, she's arrested and endures a difficult trial. Meanwhile, she has lent supposrt to another prisoner and has fallen under the loving and/or lustful gaze of both a writer and an officious stuffed shirt.  Old stuffed shirt has an award-winning associate who saves the girl from a nasty drop, after which she moves in with him. The assistant loves his job, although he suffers a disability because of it. An assault on God's domain results in death and injury. Eventually, old stuffed shirt pays for his hypocrisy, the writer and the show girl face a shared future, and the assistant asks a poignant question of a silent observer.

(I will note that this story has been filmed more than once and, while most of the above matches all of the various versions, there are elements which are particular to this one movie.)

Fifty Years Ago Today

Fifty Years Ago Today was Saturday, July 26, 1975…Pyotr Klimuk and Vitaly Sevastyanov return to Earth, having set a new Soviet space endurance record of 63 days (62 days 23 hours 20 minutes 8 seconds) and the mark for the most people in space simultaneously (seven) was tied during the mission. …The Hustle, by Van McCoy and celebrating the most popular new dance in America, became the #1 song in the United States...Born: Liz Truss (Mary Elizabeth Truss), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from September 6 to October 24, 2022 after being elected leader of the Conservative Party; in Oxford.  Ms. Truss’s short term in office is apparently only referenced in the UK these days as either a joke or as a supreme example of failure.

Van McCoy - The Hustle (Official Music Video) [HD]

There was absolutely no debate, no question about the big movie of the day. Summer of ‘75 was the summer of JAWS. It was a sensation along the lines of, and perhaps more so than GONE WITH THE WIND, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, and THE GODFATHER. It was, as everyone in the world has already noted, “The First Summer Blockbuster.” But that’s not the movie I saw this day. Matter of fact, I wouldn’t see the Spielberg masterpiece for another month. 

At such a remove (it’s been half a century, after all), I can’t confidently explain why I delayed so long in seeing such a big movie. But I’ve got a pretty good idea, I think. 

First, just like THE EXORCIST, there were all those news stories and images of people waiting in long, long lines. I was pretty sure that, like THE EXORCIST, the movie could wait till I could see it in a more comfortable, less crowded atmosphere.

Also, just like THE EXORCIST and THE GODFATHER, I was loath to jump on the popular bandwagon. If everybody else was het up about something, that was something I was likely to ignore, or, at least, delay. 

So that’s why this entry is not about JAWS. Maybe next month. 

Personally, I can’t be sure exactly what I was up to at the time. Sometime during the heat of summer, ‘75, I spent a couple of weeks rehearsing and performing a production of GYPSY. A friend of mine was directing it and found the actor playing “Herbie” to be insufficient. So he asked me to step in.

Buuuut…by this time I had joined Actors Equity, and this GYPSY was a non-Equity production, so I wasn’t supposed to do it.  But the theater arranged with Equity for me to perform on a Guest Artist contract. The problem was that the theater group had no money. I mean NO money. So I agreed, gladly, to accept pay for the job, then, semi-secretly--donate the bucks back to the theater so they could pay for rent, costumes, electricity…everything and anything. If anyone in the Equity offices reads this (doubtful), that’s okay. I figure the statute of limitations has dissolved that ancient sin.

So I played Herbie in that production, which was no better than okay. My performance, likewise. But I don’t know the dates of the gig, so who knows?  Maybe I was in the midst of performances at this time. Or maybe I wasn’t.

I at least know I didn’t have a performance this night because I was off to the Preston Drive-in, way out in distant, unexplored areas of Louisville. Not sure why I trekked all the way out yonder, when the movie was also playing at my drive-in, The Lakewood. Of course, at this time I was living in Louisville itself rather than, as usual, across the river in Jeffersonville. So, in actuality, the driving distance between The Lakewood and The Preston may not have been so much.

The movie, for which I was hopeful, but of which I was mostly ignorant was…

PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE

Another question with no answer-- why had I not already seen PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE by this time? It had been around earlier. In this engagement, PHANTOM served as a second feature in support of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (which I had already seen). I don’t know. You’d think that I would have jumped on a bigtime Brian De Palma horror musical as soon as it showed up. But I didn’t and I don’t know why.

I do know that I absolutely loved the movie that night. Adored it. Still do.

I loved the music, the design, the performances. A totally immersive movie love. 

I became an instantaneous fan of Gerrit Graham. Let me make it plain-I freakin’ loved this movie.

I’ve watched it many times in the last 50 years, but I’m always ready to watch it again and, here, on this 50th anniversary of my first look at it, that’s what I’m a-gonna do.

Roll ‘em!

This movie references and pays homage to and, if you prefer, steals from a lot of sources, including of course PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, but also FAUST,  FRANKENSTEIN, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, PSYCHO, THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, even Orson Welles’s TOUCH OF EVIL.

This opening narration is great, both in its writing and in Rod Serling's reading of it. But in this Shout Video Blu-ray it was so quiet that I had to turn the volume up to absolute maximum to even barely hear it. Then of course the musical number which follows is too loud, though not deafeningly so. I ended up watching the entire movie at about 80% volume.

I would eagerly buy a Juicy Fruits album.

Immediately after that great opening song, we get George Memmoli delivering a whole load of exposition. But he does it well.

Hey, I have a neat Death Records t-shirt and as soon as I lose 20 pounds I am going to wear that thing.

Hey there's Rainbeaux Smith! And, for the first time ever, she keeps her shirt on.

Ah, there’s a guy I worked with back in ‘82. Can’t remember his name….

The breathing we hear during the subjective camera sequence is interesting as it is not only pre-HALLOWEEN, it's even pre-Darth Vader. And if you would say, “well, that's coincidental,” which I'll admit it could be, I'll also note that other filmmakers definitely paid attention to Brian de Palma in those days. The most glaring example of that is the final shock in CARRIE which became de rigeur in all horror films after that. Did any horror film from 1976 to 1990 not have a final jump scare? It was a regular infection, I tells ya. 

The Phantom’s mask is perfection.

Almost exactly halfway through the movie, “Beef” appears. The magnificent- and I mean that- Gerrit Graham blesses us with a golden turn. He probably should have won an Oscar, and definitely deserved a massive career boost from this, which he sadly didn't get.

“I am a professional. I have been in this business a long time. Now if I don't want to do a show, it's not because I got stage fright. It's because some creature from beyond doesn't want me to do the show.”

The “Somebody Super”/”Life at Last” number is set on a delicious black and white Frankensteinian lab set. Got to love it.

The makeup on the singers in that “Somebody Super” scene is very Kiss-like. The movie was released in ‘74 and, according to Google, the band was formed in ‘73. I suppose it’s possible that one entity may have inspired the other. Somebody call Gene Simmons.

The movie is not just wildly cinematic. It is also at times highly theatrical. A beautiful mix.

In the end credits we learn that the set dresser was Sissy Spacek. Not too surprising, since her husband Jack Fisk was the film’s designer.

Well, what is this? The 15th time I’ve seen PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE? Maybe the 20th? And it’s still great. Hopefully I’ll live long enough to log another dozen viewings or so.

Just for gits and shingles, here’s the Movie Clock for that day 50 Years Ago. What have you seen?

My ongoing project of reading all of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books moves glacially along. I have just finished reading GOLDFINGER which is right in the middle of the series. The movie of GOLDFINGER has always been and remains my favorite individual entry in the franchise. The novel of GOLDFINGER does not hold nearly so high a position of regard. 

Frankly and honestly, it's kind of a loss. I'm not going to say that it's a terrible book because that's reaching too far. But it's not a good novel. The best that can be said for it is that it supplied the plot and the characters for the movie. But the movie has picked and plucked and contracted and expanded in all the right ways. I know a lot of people opine that Fleming's novels really should be adapted for the movies much more faithfully than they have been. But I don't know. Maybe that's true for some of them. But not for GOLDFINGER. Definitely not for GOLDFINGER. 

The plot of the book and the movie are essentially the same. Auric Goldfinger is plotting the big one--robbing Fort Knox--and Bond is assigned to stop him. Essentially that’s it. The rest is just details, which is where, you know, the devil lives.

The golf game is in both book and film. In the film it’s a fun, character-defining few minutes. In the book it fills maybe 10% or nearly of the book’s total page count. It’s too too clear that Fleming is simply describing a golf game. He liked golf, he probably enjoyed writing about it. Every now and then he reminds us that Goldfinger is a dangerous, mysterious man. But the golf episode is pretty much a stroke-by-stroke description of a round of golf. Yeah, okay, we got it, Ian, let’s move along.

The slow speed car “chase” across France is peppered with occasional fun incidents but, like the golf, it’s mostly just a pleasant driving episode.

Then, worst of all, for most of the book’s final third, superspy James Bond is simply Goldfinger’s secretary. And I’m not exaggerating. For a long, boring stretch, Bond takes notes at Goldfinger’s meetings, he types up those notes, he creates a schedule for the big criminal get-together, then he types up, copies, and distributes the schedule ‘cause we wouldn’t want a bad guy to not know what the day’s agenda might be.

The big finale is much deadlier, potentially, and much more vast in the book than in the movie. It’s also considerably more ridiculous and laughingly unlikely.

By the way, how does Bond, while a prisoner of Goldfinger, get word of the master plan to friendly eyes? Why he scribbles a note and hides it in an airplane toilet. He has to merely hope hope hope that someone finds it and that that someone is a nice guy who acts on the note rather than simply flushing it away. 

Here we have a book in which the author was not all that interested. So he interpolates a golf game, a driving weekend, and he’s happier. Who knows, maybe he delighted in turning James Bond into a secretarial lackey for his villain.

I do know that Ian Fleming should have kissed the feet of the folks who made the movie. It was the film of GOLDFINGER which turned a modestly successful book and movie series into an international sensation. A sensation which continues to this day (assuming Amazon actually gets something made.) And a sensation which derives from a book which is not…very…good.

 NAME THAT MOVIE!

#2

It's a modern-ish classic and the description of the plot is genuinely accurate, but it's couched in unfamiliar terms.

This movie's poster may...or may not...be included in this montage. If it isn't there, it probably ought to be.

He's tough and he's a loner and he likes it that way. He saves a garrulous ass from the military and finds himself with too much company. Meanwhile a bigwig plans to marry a very hot young lady. Our loner wins a contest and gets a job as a result. He escorts a lady and an unlikely romance blooms. The garrulous ass forges a relationship with a plus-size female. The lady is grabbed by thieves, and there is suspicion of cannibalism. Finally, the truth about about the lady's night life is revealed so that we can enjoy a happy ending.

Here are a few things I didn’t learn when I should have. 

1.  How to use chopsticks.

But, I mean…when I was a kid we once had canned chop suey, didn’t like it and never had it again. My first actual Chinese food came my way on a lunch break from rehearsal when I was 24 years old.

2. How to use the “speeds” on a bicycle

My only bike when I was a kid was a “cruiser”. No gears, pedal brakes. When I first hopped on a 10-speed with handlebar brakes I was lost. Lucky I didn’t kill myself.

3. How to tie the waistband in sweatpants so they don’t fall down.

I didn’t often wear sweatpants when I was a kid and when I did first wear them, the pants had an elastic waistband, no tying required. My first tie-up sweats were a constant threat to my modesty.

And the thing is…I still don’t know how to do any of those things. And yet I have somehow survived 75 years. Ignorance may or may not be bliss, but it seems to somehow be consistent with survival. So that’s awright.

A good while back, maybe three or four years ago…shoot, maybe five or six years ago, who knows?...I saw an old interview with actor Lee Marvin. It was interesting and I thought, I’d like to know more. 

So I went online and found that there was a biography available titled simply “MARVIN”. A copy was available on Amazon from some independent seller. He or She had one copy, used. And that was all I could find. The asking price was not unreasonable, but was more than I felt like paying at the time. I think it was somewhere between 20 and 30 dollars. So I plunked it into my “Saved for Later” section and hoped either the price would go down or I would win the lottery.

And it stayed there all these however many years. The price did fluctuate, however. Boy, did it ever. After spending a while in the $70-100 range, it started moving up. Way up. Every time I looked the price was in the $200-400 range. Way too steep for me, but I left it there, mostly just to watch the numbers joggle. A few months ago it really hit the heights. The price was approximately $750. “Wow,” I thought, “this must be really rare.”

It didn’t stay at those heights for long, but dropping to the $300-400 range didn’t make it any likelier that I’d buy it.

A few weeks ago, I was surprised to find it had dropped to something near the $100 price. It hovered there for a couple of weeks.

Then the day, about two weeks ago, when I checked in and Amazon told me the price had dropped from $98 to $4.20. That’s four dollars and twenty cents. 

I figured it had to be a mistake. I even checked the book page itself and indeed it read $4.20. So I immediately plunked it in my cart and ordered it, figuring all the while that something would pop up at the last minute “Price has risen to $257.89”  But it didn’t. 

My email from Amazon said I’d paid $4.20 and the book would soon be on its way. 

As of now, delivery is supposed to occur sometime next week. I feel like I’ve gotten away with grand larceny. And I can only think of the guy selling the book. He had hopes of getting the down payment on a new car, and now he’ll be lucky to afford a couple of candy bars. Maybe only one and a half.