From Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Directed by John Frankenheimer
Starring
Eva Marie Saint
Warren Beatty
Karl Malden
Angela Lansbury
Brandon deWilde
Constance Ford
Barbara Baxley
Evans Evans
I guess I don't scratch my head over the failure of this film to ignite with critics or the public. Critics savaged it and many of them didn't fully understand it. Despite the presence of the very hot Mr. Beatty, even the public stayed away. The reasons for this may have something to do with the fact that all five lead characters have traits that fall somewhere among odd, very questionable and downright unpleasant.
Beatty's the focal point and critics carped that it's just not sensible that four reasonably intelligent people would not only like or love him but fawn over a character as despicable as this one.
Oh yeah? I recall seeing the previews to this film and knew then that I would have to see it because it reminded me of a former friend and his family. We were teenagers and he hated his wealthy parents. He demolished his father's home architectural office, burned his mother's mink coat, flushed her diamonds down the toilet, stole and wrecked three family cars and more. And his family still held him up as a good guy, if a bit troubled. So I didn't find this film so preposterous. I found it a treat. I could hardly wait to see how it all turned out.
The story opens with Clint (deWilde) Greyhounding it to the Florida Keys to round up his older brother Berry-Berry (Beatty) and give him $200 to help him start his own shrimp business. In trying to locate him, Clint finds that everyone seems to hate him. Clint locates a stripper (the strangely-named Evans Evans who was Mrs. Frankenheimer) who had Berry-Berry jailed because he beat her up. As Clint is about to head out to the jail, she tells him to tell Berry-Berry that he's still welcome in her bed.
When Clint tells the cops that he wants to bail his brother out and he that he has $200, they say that happens to be the amount of the bail. Clint has a serious case of hero-worship and Berry-Berry treats his brother with more consideration and kindness than anyone else he knows.
He runs across rich Constance Ford who is about to embark on the family yacht to the Bahamas with her husband. She gets so steamy over Beatty's mere presence that she invites him along. Clint has no choice but to return home to Cleveland.
There we learn more about Clint and meet his parents. He has quit school, smokes too many cigarettes and is an obvious sneak. He listens in on his parents conversations and writes down what he hears in a series of notebooks. He goes to public places and makes notes on what he hears. We'd label him a weirdo and write him off if he wasn't so damned sweet.
Family patriarch Ralph is a real estate broker who lives in a huge house but stays in the basement in his robe with a crazed look in his eye as he works on jigsaw puzzles and guzzles booze which he hides about the room. He argues incessantly with wife Annabel who never shuts up or stops bossing others around. Both sons call their parents by their first names. Both parents long for Berry-Berry to come home.
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| You know... |
Into their lives comes Echo O'Brien (Saint) who is the daughter of Annabel's best friend. The story doesn't make it clear why she is staying with the family for awhile but Clint falls crazy in love with her. She calls him my guy and says playfully that one day they will marry. She is obviously well-to-do with her beautiful clothes, fancy Packard roadster and stylish ways.
Meanwhile Berry-Berry has become a sudden driver for a horny schoolteacher (Barbara Baxley) who is just starting her vacation. She takes one look at him and all common sense flies out the window. She doesn't want someone to drive her car but rather drive her to ecstasy. The next time we see them, they're in a bar and he punches her in the face and she lands on the floor. He lands in jail again.
He calls his father to bail him out and as a result Berry-Berry returns home. He is obviously Annabel's favorite son but he hates her guts. His inability to be around her is palpable if not a little scary. They have a kitchen table scene that certainly capture's one's attention.
He is about to run off again when he meets Echo. Of course, we know he must have her but why this otherwise intelligent woman would waste her time with the likes of him is... well, never mind, we know why she wants to waste her time.
There are a few cursory scenes of their getting to know one another but then Berry-Berry, as he is with other women after getting what he wants from them, has decided to end his relationship. We know that he knows she is way above his social station, They have a scene in the basement (with Clint looking and listening outside at the window). She tells him she's pregnant. He's unconcerned and flees. She cries. Clint's steamed.
Echo packs her things, handles a loving goodbye with Clint and off she goes in her fabulous Packard. Shortly thereafter comes the call that she has been killed in an accident going off the rainy highway and down an embankment. The family discusses what might have happened and reacting to a claim that she committed suicide. Of course there's also the discussion about her being an excellent driver although Berry-Berry claims she was reckless.
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| Saint and deWilde |
Clint and Ralph make the decision that they are done with their errant family member but Annabel says she stands behind Berry-Berry no matter what. Clint walks off into the sunlight. Fini.
It reeks of pedigree. The book, a big success, was written by James Leo O'Herlihy and the screenplay was adapted by the much-admired William Inge. Both writers were gay and one cannot dismiss the notion that Berry-Berry is essentially a gay character dressed up as a straight one, much as playwright Tennessee Williams did with his male protagonists. The same could be said for the character of the hustler Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy, another O'Herlihy work.
Additionally, Inge (whose work I was nuts about) had worked with Beatty earlier on and was likely in love with the actor. One imagines that when Inge hired on to adapt the screenplay that he had Beatty clearly in mind. Though not gay, Beatty was certainly aware of the gay sensibility and his appeal to gay men. He knew how to work it. He seemed to shine in roles written by gay men.
Berry-Berry is a self-possessed narcissist, flouts convention, devoid of empathy, who can't get along with anyone, thinks only of getting laid and who treats women badly. Hmmm, let's see now... who can we get to play him? Must be someone believable, someone who understands such a character. I'm not sure that Beatty treated women badly (and I mean I'm not sure) but the rest of it sounds like him... at least in those days.
He was legendary for his treatment of coworkers on film sets. Mostly, it seems, it was his contempt for film crews and may have been more pronounced on films he was not directing. Hanging out at a bar awaiting setups, Beatty apparently got beaten up by some in the crew who disliked him and his prima donna ways. In the jail scene, once he was locked in the cell, the crew let him sit there awhile before filming began.
I think Beatty, in only his third film, did a good job here and does the same in most of his films but let's face it, he was always playing himself. He knows how to project that onto a movie screen with impeccable clarity. John Wayne made a career of doing the same thing quite well. Unlike some of Beatty's female leads, Saint found working with him to be a total delight and has always said so.
I am not sure that Saint was ever the top-billed star of any movie but she was here and I wonder why. It is the writing (not her acting which is a delight) that seems to leave her character adrift. For one thing, we really never learn much about her and what we do know doesn't make a lot of sense. Would someone of her refinement take up with an unlikable drifter who has traded his good looks as a way to get through life?
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| Malden and Lansbury |
I would have attended this film just knowing Malden and Lansbury were the parents. What a joy. Malden's character is not as formidable as some of his others but he comes through at the end when he realizes what a naive fool he's been about his older son. It would be a good year for him, too. He would go on to make Birdman of Alcatraz (with Frankenheimer), How the West Was Won and Gypsy.
As the destructively manipulative mother, Lansbury's role here, good as it is, was a test run for the one she would play next, as Laurence Harvey's evil mother in Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate. I just loved watching this woman act.
The star of the film, at least in terms of screen time, is deWilde. It is really through his (eavesdropping) eyes that the story unfolds. It's an engaging performance and he outshines Beatty in every scene they share. Like Lansbury, the part was a trial-run for his upcoming role as Lon in 1963's Hud.
Character actors Constance Ford, as the stud-hungry southern matron, and Barbara Baxley, as the horny schoolteacher out of her depth, were welcoming presences.
The esteemed director, Frankenheimer, had not quite earned the esteemed tag quite yet. This was his third film and those with dysfunctional family plots were new to him and he would not venture into this territory again. I love his spirited, big adventure films. I think he took a hit on this one, which was undeserved.
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| William Inge |
I adored Inge's writing. He was primarily a playwright. His plays that were turned into films include Come Back Little Sheba, Picnic, Bus Stop and my beloved The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (another Lansbury project). The only work that he wrote directly for the screen is Splendor in the Grass. He was a deeply-troubled and closeted midwesterner who wrote about emotional pain as though it were poetry. He committed suicide at age 60.
Alex North composed a score that was not intrusive but every few minutes one would hear a strain and think how moving it was and how appropriate to what we were then watching.
John Houseman, that natty old intellectual fussbudget, was the one who came across the story and bombarded MGM with requests to buy the property before they finally gave in. They never truly got behind it, however. The little black and white film was obviously not their cup of tea nor was Warren Beatty.
I wonder if anyone recognized the large family home as the same one in 1944's Meet Me in St. Louis.
Boy, gimme a great cast in a work by a famous writer for a little film about a family who can't seem to get along and I am so there. Here's a trailer, mainly a hype for Beatty...
Next posting:
A glittering cast;
a glittering epic
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