LOVERLY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MY FAIR LADY

LOVERLY: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MY FAIR LADY. Dominic McHugh. Oxford University Press; 2012.

This scholarly tome looks at virtually every aspect of the world-famous and wonderful musical, Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion to the Broadway (and subsequent) productions of the musical, the acclaimed motion picture version, and reassessments of the show over the decades. McHugh goes into various attempts to go against Shaw and turn the piece into a conventional romance, and how librettist and lyricist Alan Jay Lerner did his best to avoid that situation. The book goes into casting choices and decisions -- Mary Martin was for a long time the front-runner to play Eliza Doolittle -- as well as rehearsal problems and how they were dealt with. McHugh also scrutinizes and analyzes the music (unless you're a music student these passages may be a little dry, of course) and cites composer Frederick Loewe's influences. McHugh hardly leaves a stone unturned, although I must say I was given pause when he describes "On the Street Where You Live" -- in my opinion a beautiful and soaringly romantic number and a major highlight of the score -- as "superficially pretty, but a little dull and insipid [like Freddy]." Dull and insipid? To each his own. I also recommend The Musical Worlds of Lerner and Loewe.

Verdict: More than anyone could possibly want to know about My Fair Lady. ***. 

STAR!

Daniel Massey, Julie Andrews, Richard Crenna

STAR! (1968). Director: Robert Wise.

It must have seemed like a good idea back in the sixties. Let's take the director of the mega hit The Sound of Music, Robert Wise, and team him up with Julie Andrews, the star of not only that film but of Mary Poppins. This was the period of big, long "road show" movie musicals, and everyone must have figured Star! would be one of the biggest and most successful of them all. Boy, were they wrong! Let's get one thing straight at the start. Star! didn't fail because tastes had changed (even if they had); it failed because it was bad.

"Poor Jenny" from Lady in the Dark

Even if The Sound of Music hadn't been based on a hit musical, it had a compelling story line. Star! is not based on anything but the life of Gertrude Lawrence, best known to those of us today as the star, with Yul Brynner, of the wonderful Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical The King and I. She had only a few film appearances, and while she was well-known in theatrical circles, she was perhaps not quite a household name. So Star! was already lacking built-in pre-appeal. Then there was the fact that the only thing Lawrence and Andrews had in common is that they were British; Andrews simply wasn't able to successfully approximate the real Gertrude Lawrence. The sketches and songs early in the picture that are meant to be funny fall completely flat because Andrews, despite her talent, is no Lucille Ball  -- nor Lawrence. Andrews makes a good try at coming off like a tempestuous and difficult diva (which is how the film tries to portray Lawrence ) but she just can't get that far away from Maria Von Trapp.

Spending spree at Cartier's 

Star! provides some basic facts of Lawrence's life, although it fictionalizes and exaggerates a lot and combines two suitors, a banker and a small-time producer, into one character (Richard Crenna). Her other suitors include a military captain (Michael Craig), another actor named Charles (Robert Reed), a show biz type briefly essayed by Anthony Eisley, and a husband named Jack (John Collin), who is nothing much like Lawrence's actual first husband. Her closest relationship is probably with Noel Coward, played herein by a de-sexualized Daniel Massey. (The production saved money no doubt by casting male actors who couldn't command large fees.) The film also details her troubles with debts and taxes that nearly landed her in jail, and one of the best scenes has her dramatically declaiming before a a judge (Murray Matheson of Wall of Noise) in bankruptcy court. Lawrence spent much more than she earned, thinking nothing of, say, dropping into Cartier's to buy whatever she fancied.

"He Never Said He Loved Me"

There are several production numbers in the film, staged by actor-choreographer Michael Kidd [It's Always Fair Weather], but most of them are unmemorable, campy, too-weird, or all three. The "Poor Jenny" number from Lady in the Dark is at least lively, but also staged in a way that is more stupid than inventive. There is a silly number set in a Limehouse brothel that could have used more dancing. The one production number I enjoyed, very well performed by Andrews, was one in which she appears to be a harem girl singing about how her doctor loves all of her separate parts but "He Never Said he Loved Me." It has the whimsy that the rest of the film is lacking. At another point Andrews sings a simple love song on a bare stage and nails it beautifully.

The movie makes the mistake of proceeding as a documentary of Lawrence's life which the lady herself is watching and commenting on. Although this is a widescreen picture, about half the movie uses about only a third of the screen to reproduce black and white newsreels. It's a dumb and pointless approach. But then the whole project was ultimately pointless, laying an egg at the box office, almost killing off Andrews' career, incurring the wrath of bored critics, and doing little to revive interest in the real Gertrude Lawrence, considered one of the greatest theatrical talents of the 20th century -- more's the pity. The movie never even mentions her appearance in the film version of The Glass Menagerie, nor --shockingly -- her triumph in The King and I. 

Verdict: Ten good minutes out of three hours (!) is not enough to save this movie. **. 

ROADSHOW: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s

ROADSHOW: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s. Matthew Kennedy. Oxford University Press; 2014.

If you've reached a certain age you may remember going with your parents to see big, splashy, over-produced versions of Broadway musicals such as The Sound of Music, which I saw at the Rivoli in New York when I was a kid. You may not remember that many of these films were released as "roadshows" -- you got tickets and reserved seats in advance -- and while most of these roadshows were musicals, a few were not. They were long, often had intermissions, and, of course, higher ticket prices. [The last roadshow I remember seeing was, of all things, Last Tango in Paris.] In any case, with wit, solid research, and large doses of amiability, Matthew Kennedy traces the birth and death of the roadshow musical in this marvelously entertaining and very well-written volume. Once upon a time Julie Andrews [Darling Lili] was seen as the greatest thing since sliced bread, but that was before she appeared in Star! and others and soon her "mega-star" days were over. Then we have all the musical adaptations -- Paint Your Wagon, Camelot, Goodbye Mr. Chips -- in which most of the lead performers could not sing.  When producers ran out of Broadway shows to adapt (Funny Girl, Hello Dolly) they made musicals out of films that originally had no music in them  (the aforementioned Mr. Chips) or adapted films, such as Dr. Dolittle and The Happiest Millionaire, from other medium. And we mustn't forget the hilarious "feud" between Barbra Streisand [A Star is Born] and Carol Channing [The First Traveling Saleslady] when the former got the coveted part in Hello Dolly which Channing felt should have been hers. Roadshow dissects what went wrong with most of these over-bloated pictures, whose musical values were often lost behind inappropriate actors and overblown budgets, as well as producers and directors who often had no idea what they were doing, such as Joshua Logan of Paint Your Wagon. Broadway adaptations of the previous decade may have been more effective (Carousel, The King and I etc.), but  in the sixties for every Sound of Music there were half a dozen or more critical and financial mega-turkeys.

Verdict: Compulsorily readable! ****.

DARLING LILI [DIRECTOR'S CUT]

Hudson and Andrews

DARLING LILI (1970). Director: Blake Edwards.

NOTE: This review is of the shortened, more "serious" director's cut put together by Edwards twenty years or so after the film's original release. The DVD also contains nearly an hour of the missing footage.

Lili Smith (Julie Andrews) is a beloved music hall singer who visits injured allied troops during WW1, but she's also a German agent who passes along information that she gets from high-ranking officers. Her latest conquest is Major William Larabee (Rock Hudson), who is up to his neck in something called Operation Crepe Suzette. When Lili, who is falling for the major, discovers that there's a sexy French singer named "Crepe Suzette" (Gloria Paul), she assumes that she is the "operation" and decides to get revenge. Once you accept that Darling Lili is another one of those movies that operates in its own dimension -- there is little sense of time and place, location, or even that there's much of a war on -- and that it is not to be taken seriously, it's decidedly enjoyable on its own terms. Andrews is hardly the best choice for a Mata Hari-type, but she gives a good performance, as does the supporting cast. Hudson is okay, but although he's supposed to be Andrews' co-star, in this version of the film he hasn't much to do. Gloria Paul nearly steals the movie in her turn as Suzette, who has a memorably erotic dance number. The completely unrealistic ending has Hudson and soldiers seemingly ignoring the fact that Lili's spying might have cost the lives of hundreds of their comrades.  Of course, the casting of "Von Trapp" Andrews [combined with the light tone of the film] makes some of her other reprehensible actions -- such as framing an innocent woman out of jealousy  -- more "palatable." "Whistling in the Dark" is a nice number, well-warbled by Andrews.

Verdict: This should have been much darker, but provides modest entertainment as it is. ***.

RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN'S CINDERELLA (TV/1957)

RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN'S CINDERELLA (1957). Director: Ralph Nelson.

This is the one and only musical written and composed by the great team of Rodgers and Hammerstein that had its premiere on television -- about 60 million people tuned in! Reportedly, the show was written specifically for Julie Andrews, who starred in this production. (There was another TV production eight years later starring Lesley Ann Warren, and a much later one with Brandy.) While Julie Andrews has never exactly been an actress who radiates much vulnerability, she's still quite good in this starring part and sings beautifully as well [21 at the time, she rehearsed this by day while appearing nightly on Broadway in My Fair Lady!] . Jon Cypher (pictured with Andrews) plays the prince and is fine; he's been a busy character actor ever since, appearing on numerous TV shows and even in Bert I. Gordon's production of The Food of the Gods (1976). Howard Lindsay and Dorothy Stickney are perfection as the King and Queen (especially when they sing and argue over what to serve 1700 guests at the prince's ball) and Ilka Chase, Kaye Ballard, and Alice Ghostley certainly score as the wicked stepmother and her two daughters. Edith (Edie) Adams makes a nice fairy godmother as well. The lilting songs include "Ten Minutes Ago," "A Lovely Night," and --prime Rodgers and Hammerstein -- "Do I Love You (Because You're Beautiful)?" A funny touch has Kaye Ballard not only flirting with one of the servants in line at the climactic wedding but even with the Prince (Hope springs eternal)!

Verdict: A real pleasure. ***1/2.

SHOOT OUT

SHOOT OUT: Surviving Fame and (Mis)Fortune in Hollywood. Peter Bart and Peter Guber. Putnam's; 2002.

Just what we need. Another book on how Hollywood works – or doesn't – from one producer and one former producer who wish to impress upon us their own self-importance while mentioning all the “brilliant” hit movies they made. To be fair, for much of its length the book is a good read, more or less intelligently dissecting the way Hollywood operates today [nobody seems to know anything, for one thing] with some good anecdotes along the way. But there's little here that even a Hollywood outsider doesn't already know or at least suspect. Who doesn't know that mega-corporations have taken over the studios, and that any film that is over the heads of the target teenage audience is having a tougher time getting made? Who doesn't know that most Hollywood types don't like to read, and rarely do? Still, there are some insights into the whole process, especially in the marketing and promotion of films [the ads for What Lies Beneath, a well-made suspense thriller with Harrison Ford and Michell Pfieffer, did not feature the stars because they were considered too old to attract the teen audience!] And there are quick mini-descriptions of certain Hollywood assholes, such as the studio executive who would listen to pitches from writers while letting a distracting toy woodpecker peck out how much time they had left before they were through. There are some stupid moments, such as when Bart, writing about Darling Lili, mentions that “it already was getting out that [star Rock] Hudson was not exactly captivated by women in general, or by Andrews in particular” which seems to trade on the old stereotype of gay men hating women. And unintentional hilarity when the authors write that David O Selznick “didn't have to beg talk shows to book his stars.” Talk shows? – back in the days of Gone with the Wind! On the other hand, the authors rightly assess why The Great Gatsby has never worked as an adaptation in any medium: “there's really no story there, and Gatsby is more a metaphor than a character.” Both Bart and Guber come off as men who are not necessarily stupid, but rather pedestrian.

Verdict: An interesting but non-essential read. **1/2.