The Decline of the Musical? Says Who?

The album cover of the original soundtrack of 'Camelot' (1967)

The decline of certain genres of Hollywood movies is not something to be celebrated. I was raised on a heavy dose of musicals a a time when the genre was in decline. It comes to something when you're eleven years old and after the movie is finished you turn to your mother and say: "That was terrible. Why did we come to see this for??" There was a rash of musicals released roughly between 1966-1971 that are now almost canonical in their badness. They are blamed for such things as sinking their studios because they were too expensive to make, turning audiences off in droves, wasting the talent of performers and technicians and generally giving the genre a bad name and reducing it to a sad oblivion in contrast to the glories of its past achievements. I was taken to see most these 'canonically' bad musicals, and wasn't impressed at the time. But they've kind of grown on me down the years, and I have reserved a soft spot for them in my heart. They weren't all bad I guess, and it's true that despite the mediocrity, the music itself could not be disparaged, that is if it had any merit at all, and it usually did.

The remake of  'Goodbye Mr Chips' was not a success. But  it has its admirers today.

 The point I'd like to make is that one generation's decline in interest in a genre, may be another's rise. I checked on the IMDB lately to find out if westerns were still being made, and it seems they are. The westerns that I remember, when they were made at all, questioned the notion of manifest destiny, say, in a way that more traditional westerns made in the forties and fifties wouldn't have dared. But there was a revolution in social mores going on in the late sixties, so that if  westerns got made at all, we were expecting them to question the conventions of the genre they supposedly represented. That's just the way things were back then. These days, I think that audiences prefer not to have their basic assumptions about life questioned, and maybe that's a good reason for a lot of the pedestrian entertainment we have to tolerate. And I now proceed to directly contradict myself by coming to the defence of a collection of films that were deemed to be, exactly that: mediocre, trite and a complete waste of time to anyone with an IQ above their shoe size.

Bet you didn't know that Lee Marvin could sing. Well  he couldn't...exactly.

You could hardly call the following titles a mixed bag. None of these received much in the way of critical acclaim and they didn't do very well at the box office either.  And I got to see them all, thanks to my overzealous family who wanted me to have an appreciation of musicals. And I guess that's what I got, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this post. My life wouldn't  be the same without them, although that can't be said of most people. So, hold your breath for a collection of '60s kitsch that will make you wonder what you may have been missing, that is if you hadn't been born yet to appreciate it.

Vanessa Redgrave looking beautiful in 'Camelot' as Lady Guinevere, who marries Arthur and becomes  queen.

As a genre, the musical was popular and profitable from the advent of talking pictures onwards. But by the late sixties, the musical was having a difficult time surviving the new Hollywood of raging bulls and easy riders.Fantasy became frowned upon by a new sense of realism, the abandonment of the Hays Code, and a societal shift that thought it was pretty silly having people singing their thoughts out aloud and dancing in the rain. After the success of 'The Sound of Music' (1965), the musical took a turn for the worse, and the following, are held to blame for what is still thought of today as the decline of the genre. Since I've become more sentimental down the years, I have chosen to abandon my ridicule, and thank my lucky stars instead that I had a chance to see them at all, and leave it up to others to judge whether they should be so unfairly treated.

CAMELOT (1967): Starring Richard Harris Vanessa Redgrave Franco Nero. Music and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. I was taken to see 'Camelot' three times by an older sister who had a crush on Richard Harris. I rightly felt it was a little above my head. I didn't understand the romance and could only see the pain that people go through when they fall in love and didn't have an explanation for it. But the songs were bewitching and I always remembered them. Standards like 'If Ever I Would Leave You', 'What Do the Simple Folk Do' and many others guaranteed that this Broadway hit would be transfered to the screen. The part of King Arthur on-stage was played by Richard Burton, who apparently talked the song lyrics as if he were reciting poetry because he couldn't sing. Richard Harris plays Arthur in the movie and he went on to have a successful recording career as a singer, most notably with 'Macarthur Park' which was a worldwide smash hit in 1968. It's a very long film which runs for at least two hours, and when there is no music, it tends to lag. It's beautifully photographed and won an Oscar for Best Costume Design. To me, Vanessa Redgrave who plays Queen Guinevere will always be 'the pretty lady wearing the pretty costumes' in 'Camelot'. And they were beautiful. Franco Nero makes a dashing French knight and there is plenty of whimsy combined with the more adult storyline of a woman loved by two men who want her exclusively for themselves. I own 'Camelot' on DVD and watch it every now and then for the music and if I'm feeling a bit blue on a Sunday afternoon. It's that kind of movie.

Julie Andrews had 125 costume changes in 'Star'. This is one of them.

STAR! (1968): Starring Julie Andrews Daniel Massey Richard Crenna. Music arranged by Lennie Hayton. Director Robert Wise enjoyed working with Julie Andrews so much in 'The Sound Music' that he suggested  they re-unite for a biography of British stage actress Gertrude Lawrence. Most of the musical numbers take place as I recall, on the stage which does away with characters suddenly breaking out into song for no apparent reason. Whilst receiving mixed reviews on its release, 'Star' has stood the test of time and has a loyal following of fans, who make sure that its virtues are not glossed over. Daniel Massey received an Academy Award nomination for his role as Noel Coward, a life-long friend and supporter of Lawrence's as she went through the many ups and downs of her private and public lives. The film was hacked about a bit, and taken away from Robert Wise by 20th Century Fox because hopes dimmed of recouping the money it took to make it. Julie Andrews is required to use some salty language in keeping with Lawrence's roots in working class London, which came as a bit of a shock to those of us who were more comfortable with her image as a goody-two-shoes. My favourite musical number in 'Star' is 'Has Anybody Seen Our Ship', a hilarious music-hall number with Andrews and Massey dressed up as two drunken sailors who remain landbound after a hard night. See the video below.

SWEET CHARITY (1969) Starring Shirley MacLaine John McMartin Chita Rivera Paula Kelly Sammy Davis Jnr. Music by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields. Choreography by Bob Fosse. Originally a stage musical, this was adapted by Bob Fosse from the Fellini film Nights of Cabiria, about the life of an optimistic Italian prostitute. The character became instead a taxi dancer in New York who has bad luck with men but remains hopeful of finding true love. What sells 'Sweet Charity' is firstly the great costumes, secondly its setting in the present-day, and thirdly, the spectacular dance numbers. MacLaine gives it all she's got and had been a dancer when she first started in show business. Paula Kelly and Chita Rivera are prominently featured as Charity's friends and their dancing is really amazing.  Charity is a sympathetic character, if a little dim as she confides in her dance hall girlfriends about how badly men treat her. Unfortunately, the space between the musical numbers isn't terribly interesting. Sammy Davis Jnr sings and dances to 'The Rhythm of Life' and other great songs include 'There's Gotta Be Something Better Than This', 'Hey Big Spender, and 'Rich Man's Frug' which is actually a dance number with no singing. I enjoy" 'Sweet Charity', it's charming but wafer-thin especially on the story side but the music is very entertaining and will keep your toes tapping for most of its 149 minute running time. Below is the 'Hey Big Spender' dance number.

SONG OF NORWAY (1970) Starring Florence Henderson Toralv Maurstad music by Robert Wright and George Forest, based upon the music of Edvard Grieg. This was an attempt to cash in on the success of  'The Sound of Music', but it is a very pale imitation. Harry Secombe, who had a supporting part commented later that "Song of Norway is the kind of film you can take the kids to see....and leave them there" and he's not far wrong. Shot on location, the only thing spectacular about this is the scenery. I simply do not remember the music, because it was that awful. A supposed biography of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg, who wrote 'In the Hall of the Mountain King', this is really terrible. It didn't make a nickel and everybody hated it. 'Song of Norway' is by far the worst musical on this list. It deserves its obscurity and if any single film is to blame for the decline of the musical, this must surely be it. No previews of this one, you may not be able to take it. I know I couldn't.

FINIAN'S RAINBOW (1968) Starring Fred Astaire Petula Clark Tommy Steele, music by Burton Lane. 'Finian's Rainbow' is a harmless piece of whimsy, unkindly described by one critic as a 'cheesy, joyless thing'. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, it is difficult to believe that this is as disappointing as it is, but it is. Warners had the rights to the stage play for twenty years, and hoping for musicals to have a resurgence, Jack Warner got back into the dangerous waters of predicting audience interest after the success of 'My Fair Lady', but this may have been a miscalculation.  Petula Clark is the best thing in it, she has a lovely voice and a warm personality on-screen and was well-known at the time for pop hits such as 'Don't Sleep in the Subway' and 'Downtown'. This was Fred Astaire's last dancing role and critics complained that he looked too old. Tommy Steele plays Og the leprechaun and he may be energetic, but it is tiring to watch. I thought the story was convoluted when I saw it as a youngster and there is a racial sub-text which the Wiki page labels 'pre-Civil rights' in its depiction of race relations, and I'm inclined to agree. The fantasy aspects of the plot never quite merge to make the film a whole, and it just comes across as simply unbelievable. The songs include 'Old Devil Moon', 'Look to the Rainbow' and 'How are Things In Glocca Mora'. The film was partially choreographed by Astaire's long-time collaborator Hermes Pan who was fired by Coppola before the film was finished. See Petula Clark sing 'Old Devil Moon' below.

The Wonder Years. When Celebrities Were Interesting

Here are some images of my favourite celebrity couples from the late sixties and early seventies. In those days they knew how to party, get married, get divorced, and manage their careers all at the same time. The beauty of it  was they didn't pontificate, and even if they did, we didn't mind because  we knew they weren't on the take. And they didn't 'take' themselves too seriously -- they were grateful for their privileged position, and were generous enough to make their lives entertaining for the rest of us. Without rubbing our noses in it.

I'm including Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, because they seem such an interesting pair, although people at the time thought of them as kind of mismatched. Beauty versus the Brains, and all that.  Well, they must have been, because their marriage ended in divorce before Marilyn's tragic death in 1962.

That seems to be a dog Elizabeth Taylor is holding. And it looks like she's also wearing the Hope diamond. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were larger than life, and as a child, I really loved them. Still do.

Sean Connery visits wife Diane Cilento on the set of 'Hombre' circa 1966, with director Martin Ritt. Diane Cilento recently passed away, but she was, and still is, beautiful. They made a handsome couple.

Beauty and the Bald -- I mean beast. Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow were married briefly in the late sixties. This pairing made for some head-scratching. It was like -- 'but why?' Age difference aside, they seemed to get along. At least until they realised they'd made a mistake and parted amicably.

Princess Margaret was the Royal rebel, and when it was revealed she was 'holidaying' with  boyfriend Roddy Llewellyn on her private island, it caused a bit of a stir. Naturally, a lot of us loved it,  and thought 'good on you', but they were never married, and must have parted amicably.

Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline Kennedy was another pairing that had  curious onlookers scratching their heads. Onassis always kept a low profile, but he was very rich, and had known his future wife when she was First Lady. The public love affair with Mrs Onassis continued, despite trouble with the paparazzi, which seemed to make the public adore her even more than when she was First Lady.

Terence Stamp and Julie Christie starred together in 'Far From the Madding Crowd' and this is a still from that film. They were immortalised by the Kinks song 'Waterloo Sunset' with the lines 'Terry meets Julie/at waterloo station/every friday night'. Everyone naturally assumed that The Kinks were singing about them. They were both young, good-looking and talented, and the press ate it up.

Singer/songwriters James Taylor and Carly Simon got together and became the royalty of American popular music. Taylor had a massive hit with 'Fire and Rain' and Simon had a big album on her hands with 'No Secrets'. This was around 1972. They retired into domestic bliss, and stayed together till 1983, when they were divorced. Which is sad when you think about it.

Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw  met on the set of  'The Getaway', a heist film directed by Sam Peckinpah. Both of them were married to other people at the time, but that didn't seem to be a problem. They got divorces to be with each other. Both of them were gorgeous and it was fun while it lasted.

Jean Shrimpton was an English model who caused a sensation when she wore a mini-skirt to the 1965 Melbourne Cup in Australia. Terence Stamp was a promising young actor, and they both look great in this picture, photographed by Terry O'Neill.

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie were reticent to talk about their relationship. They were apparently together for a number of years, were politically active on behalf of the Democratic party, and made a number of movies together, including 'McCabe and Mrs Miller', 'Shampoo' and 'Heaven Can Wait'. The press respected their privacy, as they parted, and forged their careers separately.

Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero became parents without the benefits of marriage. Despite a lot of blather about how tolerant everyone was supposed to be in those days, it surely must have come at some cost to them both. Vanessa Redgrave has always commanded respect, no matter what she's done, so I suppose there was no harm done to their careers.

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward seemed like the perfect Hollywood couple. In actual fact, they lived on the East coast, devoting themselves to charity work and bringing up their children. They were also politically active, when it wasn't the fashionable thing to be doing. Newman campaigned for Eugene McCarthy and got a mention on a list of celebrities whom president Richard Nixon wished would keep  quiet. Something he must surely have relished. 

John Lennon was also someone that a lot of us really loved, and it was heartbreaking when he died. John and Yoko were made for each other. People at first, didn't understand the attraction, but they made their presence felt with a big contribution to the on-going public opposition over the war that was going in in Vietnam. Their concern for their fellow man was sincere and heartfelt, and Yoko still carries on to this day, a strong and urgent reminder to the rest of us not to be so complacent.

Creatures in Love Part I: Road Runner and Coyote

An existential desert back-drop as Coyote ponders next move

 I have a theory that the Coyote is in love with the Road Runner, but being totally inept,  he could never divert the  Road Runner’s attention away from the road. The Road Runner exists purely for the purpose of running along a stretch of desert road that lasts only as long as the running time of the story, (that is, cartoon),  but as far as Coyote is concerned, exists in eternity.  The Road Runner has an almost existential purpose of looking straight ahead, neither left nor right, in his determination to stick to his schedule of getting from one place to the next, inA a pointless journey of which only he knows its destination and purpose. The audience as well as the Coyote are well aware of this, but are compliant, in awe of the Road Runner’s determination to live his own life.

Did you ever see such running shoes?

 To Coyote, Road Runner is the prey, but Road Runner is blissfully unaware of this.  Hence the Coyote exists in a state of perpetual frustration, making a fool of himself, as Road runner shows off his superior attitude to life by constantly and easily escaping from the Coyote’s childish attempts at capture. Road Runner is modest, but also a show-off, with his expert ability to survive the travails and pointless hijinks  of the Coyote, always  at great costs to the Coyote’s physical well-being, whilst the Road Runner escapes without any injury. The well-being of the Coyote is even of less concern to the Coyote himself. He does not seem to care what happens to him, or what he does to himself, in order that he captures the Road Runner. The prize of his effort seems to be that once this has been achieved, all will be well, and the Coyote will be happy and fulfilled.

Glue on the road only worked if it was a truck

 Superficially at least, it appears that the  Coyote is chasing the Road Runner for food, but I think this is a diversionary tactic, in order  to make Coyote out to be smarter than he is.   Whether he catapults  himself out of a giant sling slot in the direction of  Road Runner; whether he positions himself in front of a giant truck only to get run over by  Road Runner; all of this points to the Coyote’s obsession with catching that which is the most inaccessible and closed off to him, thus the most inviting. Road Runner appears to be the only food supply there is.  There is nothing else in the desert available for the Coyote to eat.  A few empty tin cans are on the ground, which the Coyote kicks away in derision, knowing that his well-being is not being  provided for in the most rudimentary fashion.

Another ridiculous contraption doomed to failure

 The Road Runner is constantly oblivious to the existence of the Coyote. He is unafraid of the Coyote; he is alone in the wilderness, cut off from the Coyote and their desert backdrop in a fashion that is almost attractive in its singularity. The Road Runner seems perfectly calm and at ease. He is almost Zen-like in his acceptance of his fate as a cartoon character who exists only inso far as he is a moveable pencil drawing. In contrast, Coyote lives in a state of perpetual and constant dissatisfaction. He is not one with his environment. He constantly uses dynamite in an effort to attract Road Runner’s attention,  which leaves their desert environment in a state of mayhem, as Coyote  attempts to track Road Runner’s whereabouts,  which are always unsuccessful and ridiculous in both their rudimentary planning and execution.

 The Road Runner constantly rises above the Coyote’s efforts with a silly pointing of the tongue, but with dignity. He  silently berates the audience as well as  the Road Runner for their ineffectuality and inability to grasp his superior nature and ability. Does the Road Runner have any feelings for the Coyote? We will never know, but I think it’s certainly possible -  it’s the romantic in me.

Dynamite was often the funniest

The travails of the Coyote in attempting to capture the Road Runner exists in our collective imagination as a state of Nietzscheian  perpetual (or eternal),  recurrence. Every cartoon is exactly the same as the last. Like the trope of a horror movie that gets used by all  the best directors because they have nothing better to do than steal from the film which used the sequence originally. 

The Road Runner and Coyote also remind me of ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Their love for each other will never be consummated; they don’t die but are both virgins and will never end up caring for anyone else. They still exist in our minds  after the story has been told over and over again, like a folk tale a Serbian peasant might once have told  his  children at bedtime.

Whatever Became of the All-Star Cast?

Whatever became  of the ‘all-star cast’? This is the question I ask myself in moments of unease when I look my DVD collection up and down, wondering if I will ever decide what movie it is I want to watch next. Should it be ‘The Towering Inferno’ or ‘The Poseidon Adventure’? ‘Drugstore Cowboy’ or ‘Mulholland Drive’?  And why is it with me that escapism usually wins out over art? I guess I was programmed that way, and I’m old enough now  not to complain and just enjoy it. 

Lewis who?

Once upon a time, movies were one of the  few sources of popular  entertainment available for the mass public. Television reached its zenith of popularity in the fifties, sixties and seventies, and it was  popular to the extent of eating into the movie industry’s profits in the fifties and sixties.  What about when going to the movies, (apart from following your favourite sporting team) was the chosen pastime for the majority of people, not only in America, but for people in virtually every corner of the globe who could afford to while away a couple of hours at their local flicks when they had the time or inclination? 

I recall a story my mother once told me, about maybe the first  bizarre case of mass audience stalking. Gary Cooper, who was a big star during the Depression was in a film called ‘The Plainsman”, and at the end he gets shot in the back by the baddie. Gary Cooper always played the hero and his fans loved him.  Gary’s fans found out where the actor who played the part of the baddie lived, and harassed him constantly day and night because he was the one who had killed ‘their Gary’. Apparently they were very upset.  Such was the power of movies to sway audiences who, because of economic circumstances, were in thrall of their heroes on the big screen to a degree that seems naïve to us today. Also, it goes to show how performers have always been treated as commodities by the Hollywood studio system, and also by the public.

 

Great silent screen star Mabel Normand

The movie industry is extremely  profitable, especially  in periods of the greatest economic hardship. I don’t have the box office receipts at my fingertips, but  it seems to be a provable fact  that any leisure activity that can take people’s minds off their problems is  bound to make its investors better off. This sounds like profiteering in the harsh economic climate of today, but a buck was a buck in those days, and there were no politically correct liberals running around telling people that it was a sin to make money off people when they could ill-afford it.  

In the days of silents it was discovered that audiences attended movies to see people that they like to watch on-screen. They wanted to know their names and they wanted to see them in as many movies as possible. Consequently the world was introduced to  such luminaries as Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Lon Chaney and lesser lights   known  by only the most ardent specialists in the genre of silents in the present-day.  To collect all of them all together on the one project must have seemed a difficult task, and the idea of assembling an all-star cast began proper with the advent of sound movies.

Silent movies aside, (the films of D.W. Griffith immediately spring to mind, but since I haven’t seen them I cannot include them in this discussion), I would say that the first  attempts to produce movies with all-star casts occurred as America was struggling with the economic disaster of the Great Depression. 

The book-ended films ‘Dinner at Eight’ and ‘Grand Hotel’ were  both produced by the MGM studio in the 1930’s. Both these  are what you would call comedy-dramas. The plots concern the private lives of rich socialites, down-at-heel actors and  elderly matriarchs, ‘disparate’ characters brought together for a dinner, or conversely, reservations at an exclusive hotel. The majority of Americans were poor and out-of-work at the time, and they fell for these films hard,  presumably for the escapism they offered in a time of economic despair and uncertainty. 

Irving Thalberg is credited with creating the concept of the ‘all-star’ cast since he was MGM’s most important producer, but he never formally asked for a credit on any film he worked on.  MGM was the studio in the ‘30s with the majority of the prestige. It had many stars signed to long-term contracts, and it must have seemed like a good idea to get them to work together.  Both movies were a big success with the public and the ‘all-star cast’ was launched onto an unassuming public. ‘Grand hotel’ and “Dinner at Eight’   were cast with  major names  such as Greta Garbo, Wallace Beery, John and Lionel Barrymore, a young Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow and Marie Dressler. This forms an important leitmotif of the all-star cast: few of the performers just mentioned are remembered in the popular imagination today, but  as interesting relics of a by-gone era, no matter how popular they may have been in their own lifetimes. 

The next film of any note   with an all-star cast was  ‘Gone With the Wind’, produced by David O Selznick as an independent producer.  Granted, Vivien Leigh was a new discovery after a much-publicised search for the ideal actress to play Scarlett O’Hara, so she was hardly a major star when she was picked for the part.  Many  better  known actresses were screen tested but were turned down for various and probably, long-forgotten reasons.  But there are a number of others in the cast who were well known to the public including Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, Hattie McDaniel and Thomas Mitchell. 

The first movie I ever got taken to see

To flash forward twenty or so years on, Roadshow movies often used to have all-star casts and  depended heavily upon  casting  a number of well-known performers in the roles which would attract an audience. Film in America  had passed its pioneering period. Movies were coming to be regarded as a serious medium. To get audiences interested in  more serious subject matter, (adaptations of Broadway plays and books for example),  big casts of famous actors were assembled to ensure the studios managed to recoup their losses.  Roadshow movies were  initially conceived by an individual producer or Hollywood studio to have a big cast and a big budget. They were especially  made to a certain time-frame designated in pre-production,  in order that exhibitors, (ie the people who owned the cinemas),  could fit in a certain amount of showings per day that would make them a profit.

 

Forty, fifty years ago, people had stricter hours of work and could only go to the movies either at night or on the weekend. The busiest nights and the weekends  were called ‘no free list’ periods where booking was essential, and you just couldn’t show up to buy a ticket.  These were the days, when, after a movie was withdrawn from exhibition it would take years for it show up on live-to-air television (at least where I come from). Video tape was not made for domestic consumption, cable TV was merely an interesting idea, and digital entertainment was non-existent. There was also a certain snobbery involved that appealed to the upwardly mobile, in that you could boast to your neighbours about getting in to see ‘Spartacus’ on a Saturday night with the kids, when maybe the neighbours had tried but been unable to.

 Talented directors, most notably David Lean, were attracted to this more showier and commercial style of filmmaking than they had previously been used to. ‘Bridge on the River Kwai’ and ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ were phenomenally successful  with audiences and critics and they boasted big casts of well-known actors, such as William Holden, Peter O’Toole, Anthony Quinn, and  Alec Guiness,  Also, the stories and themes were grandiose. They were ideal  middle-brow entertainment for undiscerning audiences, or audiences that were thirsty for more substance to their entertainment. 

Stop him! He's got a bomb!

Roadshow movies  gave the medium a certain reputation for prestige that it may not have known previously, and the ‘epic’ became Hollywood’s ideal export to the rest of the world. ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire’; ‘The Agony and the Ecstasy’; ‘The Ten Commandments’; ‘Ben-Hur’; ‘King of Kings’; ‘Doctor Zhivago’. These are just a handful of the roadshow films that dragged audiences back into the movie theatres and away from their television sets and with their all-star casts made money (hopefully but not always!)  for the Hollywood studios (and overseas investors) who funded them.  The roadshow film was also an effective method of displaying Hollywood’s superiority to television, with its normally 70mm ratio, stereo sound, big casts and grandiose and important historical, biblical or political stories.

Steve McQueen: 'when will you architects ever learn?'

As the seventies dawned, Hollywood seemed less interested in making roadshow films. For one thing, they were expensive, and sometimes took years to make. They involved extensive pre-production and filming away from the studio at remote locations around the world, in difficult conditions for the cast and crew. No matter how much mystique surrounded these epic movies, if they didn’t turn a profit, well, then, what was was the point of making them? Audience expectations also changed to include films that were ‘smaller’, and less influenced by the financial aspirations of the Hollywood studios.

We didn't know a swarm of bees could be so scary. And they weren't.

But all-star casts never really went out of fashion, and when the disaster movie was born, there seemed to plenty of takers for roles in films such as ‘Airport’ and its sequels, ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ ‘Earthquake’ 'The Swarm'  and a number of others. ‘Airport’, arguably one of the worst films to gain a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars, kicked off this cycle of disaster films, with a cast heavily publicised as stupendous. But sadly, many of the players are less well known today. The cast includes Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Helen Hayes, Jean Seberg and Jacqueline Bisset. ‘The Poseidon Adventure’, which I happen to think is a very good film, has a excellent cast including Gene Hackman, Shelley Winters, Stella Stevens and others less well known today. ‘The Towering Inferno’ may be the best known of this cycle simply because of its cast including Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, William Holden and others. Sadly this cycle of disaster films reminds us of the ready-made redundancy of popular culture, when performers can be relegated to supporting parts or even to the scrap-heap as they become older, do not win any awards, or are less interested in making themselves better known to the public.

Iconic Poseidon Adventure poster

I for one, am nostalgic for movies with all-star casts. They are usually entertaining, fun to watch and offer the best that Hollywood, at least in the past, had to offer. Dare I wonder who would be cast in one of them these days? It’s a well-known fact that movie budgets are excessive, and people (including me) rail against films costing the gross national product of a small third world country that  flop with the audience, because they happen to be lousy. Maybe what Hollywood needs is more panache, and less political correctness. As a place as well as a state of mind, it would be far more fun, and entertaining for the rest of us. 

Growing up in Australia in the Sixties

The announcement of President Barack Obama’s visit to these shores has caused me to indulge in a wave of rosy nostalgia. Mainly concerning such things as  Australia’s relationship with America, and long hot summers spent frolicking aimlessly  on the beach. These two pre-occupations may not  have much in common but they are connected forever in my memory of growing up during the conflagration of the Vietnam war.

 Looking back, it seems a time when Australia was  tied to the coat-tails of America through a combination of realpolitik and what today we may think of as some kind of bizarre racial necessity. But am I falsifying my own memories?    News of what was going on in Vietnam at the height of the conflict, acted as a sober backdrop to my innocent summer holiday breaks whilst growing up and enjoying my  very conventional childhood summer holidays in Sydney.

 

Everyone listened to the radio in those days. I spent a lot of time with  relatives in a southern beachside suburb, every summer holiday for three years running,  where the Vietnam conflict could not have been further away. But the radio was always on, and in between the ad breaks and the Top 40 countdown of hits,  the Vietnam war  was the unofficial narrative of almost every Sydney radio station. In turn, the radio was something like the communal fire of olden times that members of the tribe crowded around, for comfort and a sense of belonging.  I also can remember a few of my favourite songs that were playing on the radio. Among them was ‘In the Year 2525’ by Zager and Evans; ‘Classical Gas’ by Mason Williams; ‘The Real Thing’ by Russell Morris;  ‘Arkansas Grass’ and “A Little Ray of Sunshine’ by Axiom, and the double A sided single of ‘Something’ and ‘Come Together’ by The Beatles which got played to death on all the major AM radio stations. For better or  worse, these songs made me what I am today.  By the end of this post, I will probably reach by circularity, the conclusion that it’s pointless to indulge in nostalgia in the first place, but  since I’ve barely started, this is a pointless observation to make. Then again, I am the master of pointless observation.

Ever since the British decline of influence in Asia, it has been assumed that the relationship between Australia and America has been, well, a good one. There’s no denying it. Americans and Australians  have the same background, the same language, the same political heritage of democracy and so on and so forth. Australian Prime Minister during the Second World War, John Curtin made it clear that, with the Japanese incursions so close to our shores, it was a  necessity to  forge closer ties with the United States. Ever since then, I believe that Australia has unfortunately been backed into a corner of appearing to be   junior partner to a more vocal and  powerful nation.  


 Yet also, if I allow myself, I recall a brief, shining moment when many Australians found it necessary to speak out against what they considered to be an unjust and unnecessary war.  See here.  It was as if we were acknowledging  something wrong with the relationship we had with America. It was somehow…one-sided. Dare I say…perhaps a little dysfunctional? (Not that we knew what that word meant in those days.)  I feel sorry for the young people who will grow up having no recollection  of any  opposition movement to injustice, and I am reluctant to point out the lack of such a thing to the war against terror, but there it is, and I would prefer not to dwell on it. 

Sojourning with my mother into the central business district by bus, we would pass the University of Sydney campus, and usually, during the Vietnam war, there were quite a few students sitting out in the local park either on strike, or protesting against the war. My older brother grew his hair long and was listening to a lot of loud music, a little scared that he may be drafted and picked out of a death lottery, after the Australian (Liberal Party) government opted to send more troops as reinforcement against a possible North Vietnamese victory. With the fateful transformation of Australian society there also came disappointment and disillusion, as the Liberal Party was swept from power in 1972 after 23 years to be replaced by a relatively young and forward looking government that within its first weeks recognised the People’s Republic of China. Symbolic perhaps, but unthinkable just a few years before. Unfortunately the Whitlam Labor  government was felled by many mistakes of its own making, (as well as appointing a man as  Governor General who had his own agenda,) but its achievements remained as an example to younger Australians like myself of the possibility of reform and change, and how it may  not be such a dangerous thing after all.

 At the risk of showing my age and lecturing people younger than myself, I think now, looking back on it, that the late sixties and early seventies was our own Australian spring, or ‘renaissance’, as many of us like to refer to those heady years. Maybe these days, outsiders can consider Australia as less of a partner in America’s wars, and more as an independent nation with its own interests and a desire to be thought of as more than just a junior partner to the world’s major power. 

The On-Going Republican and Democratic Meat Parade

And so it goes on.

Is Thomas Jefferson turning in his grave?

2012 will be upon us sooner or later. Whether you're an American citizen or not, the twelve months of boredom known as the election year will again be lumbered out into the unforgiving gaze of the public arena. Presumably to comfort the locals  in their delusion that they still are living in the greatest democracy the world has ever seen. Or is likely to see.


For outsiders like me, the entire process is of dubious value, save only for the politicians who seem to enjoy  making as much publicity and mileage for themselves out of the event as they possibly can. Recent developments, such as the sudden emergence of the Occupy movement serves to highlight the paucity of policy on both sides of the House, and how bereft America has become when, at a time of economic crisis, the same tired, old wise saws are trotted out as gospel: the country is still a great power; we can fight back our enemies; don't let the terrorists win; -- and so it goes on, ad nauseum.


As the supposed opposition to this kind of nonsense that is apparently trotted out because it's the only way  the Republicans can get re- elected, the Democrats fashion themselves as the spokespeople for the underdogs: the unemployed, working people, African Americans, minorities, trade unions, that is anyone who isn't a millionaire and cannot hope to profit from the brutal austerity measures and giant corporate funding policies of the Republican party. The Democrats remind me of a peashooter thinking he can down the elephant, and upon discovering that he can't, proceeds to join the elephant.


The Democrats are ideologically off-balance. Loathe to be murdered by the Republicans by acknowledging that American society is as riddled with class bias and inequality as any other country in the world, the Hill has the unhappy knack of stabbing its mainstream supporters in the back whenever it suits them, with the threat that if Republicans win back office, things for them will be  far worse than they are now.


We had the unedifying spectacle of that bastion of fearless journalism 'Mother Jones' not only attempting to smear Julian Assange as he was emerging as a hero for his exposure of state secrets through the Wikileaks website. Recently, (and surprisingly ) they were one of the first to put the boot into the Occupy movement in an article which was not only negative but downright hostile, from a magazine that supposedly encourages dissent and is some kind of 21st century version of the counter-culture movement magazines like 'Ramparts' and 'Rolling Stone' which genuinely encouraged free expression and political involvement of groups and individuals in such issues as Vietnam and the Watergate scandal.


To put it bluntly, 'Mother Jones' is no 'Ramparts', and is doing its readers a disservice if it thinks that it is.  Attacking movements and individuals who have a sincere agenda for change, rather than attempting to correct their own ideological pratfalls, will not win 'Mother Jones' a wider readership. If they would only stop hitting their supporters over the head with a lot of meaningless noise about how profoundly wonderful Barack Obama is, and  concentrate on  the issues without giving the opposition all  the free publicity, they would get a fairer hearing from those of us who believe in honest journalism, even if it has to come from the mainstream-liberal-establishment media.  


I guess that after all is said and done, it's going to be the public who loses out. The media of the left as well as the right, only think of the 'public' in the crudest of all possible terms, that is, how much money is to be made out of us, and how stupid they seem to think we are. In that respect, I cannot imagine the 2012 Presidential race as anything more than a protracted and corrupt piece of political theatre, merely designed for the lowest common denominator and utilised for the business of keeping the public in the dark, and severely ill-informed of any concrete or meaningful political agenda.

MOVIE REVIEW: From my misspent youth: The Music Lovers (1971)

 I remember this for a number of personal reasons. My older sister took me to see this at the pictures when I was eleven years old, and it was one of the first films I ever bought on video through overseas sell-thru. It is a biography of the Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky and was directed by Ken Russell the enfant terrible of the British film industry; he would be best described today as an English sixties version of Oliver Stone (if such a thing is possible). Russell made his career making both cinematic and television films of the great classical composers, the made for TV product only being shown on English television as far as I’m aware. As a director, Russell has a totally distinctive style which unfortunately can alienate him from an audience who may not get it. He enjoys creating outstanding visuals at the expense of plot that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, but his films are welcome for their originality and are often beautiful to look at for this very reason. Glenda Jackson, who plays Tchaikovsky’s wife has an extraordinary nude scene on a train that was considered daring for its time, and the film is good to look at but it got terrible reviews and didn’t do very well. There are a number of outstanding but little known English actors in important supporting parts. I suppose it’s not the greatest movie ever made but I have sentimental reasons for liking it and I would like to see it come out on DVD sometime in the near future.