Our Man in Vienna

Right to the Top

Keith Carradine went right to the top. He won the Academy Award for best song for I’m Easy from Nashville. Young and handsome with a wonderful voice and a talent for music and lyrics, he set out on a career as a singer. Unfortunately, instead of just singing his songs and playing guitar, as he had done in Nashville, he let his music producer talk him into being backed up by soft disco arrangements. The “commercial” aspect didn’t turn out to be very commercial. Actually it cancelled his singing and music out, and the two LPs did not catch on. Being watered down does not always insure success. So Keith’s two moments as a singer were It’s Been so Long and I’m Easy in Nashville.

                                                                        Keith Carradine

Keith more or less gave up on singing and composing, but continued reaching for stardom with good dramatic roles. Let me say here, no one could have done better in Emperor of the North Pole and Thieves Like Us. Those roles were made for Keith.

Boyish good looks become problematic when hair at the temples starts to get grey. Keith’s popularity diminished as his boyishness began to fade.

The acting was as good as ever, but stardom was no longer within reach.

Shenanigans and Success

She’s young and beautiful, and made every effort to garner a past as quickly as possible. After college, there was a short stint as a secretary, which she broke off to become a stripper. And stripping today means more than removing your clothes and underclothes one by one. The stereotypical climax of an act is bringing yourself to a climax.

She’s got a gaudy tattoo on her arm and her nipples are pierced. Well, that’s the fashion these days, like it or not! It signifies being frivolous and carefree.

She knows what it’s about, and she knows how to relate it. She wrote her memoirs as a sex performer, and they hit the bestseller list. Who isn’t interested in the ins and outs of a stripper? And after that, she wrote the script for a top Hollywood film. Not only did the film receive awards, but her script is also award-winning. And there are writing offers galore.

Her past is not a problem; it’s an asset. And you can’t really call it the past, since she’d like to go back and relive it.

Now you’re no longer an outcast if you engage in any kind of shenanigans. Shenanigans are a key to the inner sanctum – as well as wealth. As far as the motion picture business is concerned, the game has changed since the Stone Age of the Hays Code.

But one thing’s for sure, the lady has talent. She can write. No question about it. And she caught on. Her life has not been a life of struggle and it never will be. She’s got it made.

The Brokeback Wives

Ennis and Jack are two cowboys of the Sixties who fall for each other. Brokeback Mountain deals with their love affair over the years. Today homosexual relationships are less problematic. Gay Rights is an active movement and gays now not only receive equal benefits but are knocking at the matrimonial door.

In those days things were a bit more complicated, and I will grant you that the love of the two cowboys has elements of tragedy. It would probably be somewhat less tragic today. However, a man who loves a man but doesn’t want to be a homosexual would have problems at any time.

Question: Are erotic relationships often tragic, no matter what? Literature has been chock full of tragic love affairs and unrequited love over the centuries. So what else is new?

Sorry, my sympathies are with the women of Brokeback. The fate of these two desirable young ladies is presented en passant. The love of the cowboys is the thing. The ladies fall for Ennis and Jack and end up married to them with all the trimmings. The hubbies both prefer intimacy with a male to intimacy with a female.

I’ve been told, infidelity is an everyday occurrence, but a tragic love is a true tragedy. A woman who ends up in a household with a man who has yen for another man is just having a bit of tough luck.

Where the hell are we?

We’ve seen more than one male public paragon of virtue “exposed” as preferring the company of men to that of women. Mostly they are of the Born-Again Gay-Bashing variety, and they are usually to be found in the Grand Old Party. Such bashing is lowdown, or rather “lowest down,” as is using a wife as a ploy and decoy. My sympathies are entirely with the
woman. Her ruined life is the real tragedy.

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner

Wicki the Stickler

Bernhard Wicki was a stickler. He is rumored to have actors wear costumes for the radio plays he directed. He started off playing romantic foils for woman stars in the George Brent fashion. Wicki was usually the understanding physician, who waits for Milady, while she was engaging in hijinks with a shallow-minded Lothario.

Bernhard Wicki

When Wicki became serious, he became serious, and good films resulted like The Bridge.

Marlon Brando insisted on bringing him to Hollywood to direct Morituri, which starred “the great one” and “versatile” Yule Brynner.

In this film, the Germans are the good guys and the Americans are the bad guys, who even stoop to rape. Good Nazis were Brando’s habit. Remember The Young Lions! In that one a blonde Brando was outraged at every atrocity committed by Maximilian Shell, his commanding officer.

However, once Brando had Wicki, he turned his life into hell. Stickler Wicki lost control of the film. Brando kept revising and rewriting the script and the film turned out to be typical Hollywood fare. Brando knew that it was an artistic disaster, and maybe he knew that he had helped make it that.

At any rate, he blamed Wicki and showed his contempt by using him as a fireplug.

A Film by a Toughie

In Apache, directed by toughie Robert Aldrich, Burt Lancaster is an Indian on the run, who has had to kill in self-defense. A ruthless posse rides at his heels, and he leads them on a merry chase to, of all places, his adobe, when they close in on him, his crops are ready for harvesting, his squaw gives birth and there’s the cry of his newborn son.

The men of the posse realize that from now on, this Induian brave will harvest his crops, bring up his son and lead a peaceful life. So instead of closing in for the kill, they ride of and let Burt take care of his domestic chores.

The original ending had been changed for a Hollywood solution. Reality had given way to fantasy.

The Way Babs and Bob Were

I wasn’t exactly a fan of Barbra Streisand. I wasn’t one until I recently saw The Way We Were. She’s a Jewish girl who’s an idealistic Lefty. Yes, she wants to change the world and make it livable.
Does that sound familiar?

She falls hook, line and sinker for Robert Redford, who’s a handsome blonde WASP. Bob is ambling through life. He’s a writer who intends to use his trade to enable himself to continue the pleasant life he’s leading. The prestige that comes from being a successful writer will fit in well. But of course Barbra wants him to write “the great American novel” – and follow that up with more of the same.

Barbra, my dear, he’s a casual WASP, he’s not an intense Jew. He wants to have all the good things in life with no sweat and no strain. The sweat and strain are for people like you. And having you as a partner is going to mean sweat and strain for him.

But like all dreamers who fall in love, you want to have your cake and eat it too.

No, Bob is not going to change his spots. But Babs the hunter fells him, and they get hitched.

Of course the marriage is doomed and the doom does not take long to come. But not before Babs is pregnant. Bob hangs around until the birth – at her request. Then he’s off for a life of success in his trade. And that’s it. Being what he is, he can’t miss, and he won’t miss Barbra. Basically Bob gives people what they want, and it’s hard to fail at that.

The break is complete. He doesn’t drop in to see the daughter.

Time goes by.

Then they meet by chance. He’s coming down the Plaza steps on 59th Street with a beautiful blonde at his side. She’s beautiful in the sense of what elegant men want a partner to be. They are a perfect couple.

Barbara is across the street on the Central Park side agitating with women like her to “Ban the Bomb.” They see each other.

He’s the one she loved and still loves. He’s the love of her life, and he always will be. He will be till the day she dies. She has a man at home who’s what she wants a man to be, but Bob is the man who can make her heart beat faster.

Does this all say something about love? Seeing this scene breaks my heart. I have loved in this way. Notice I’m using the past tense, but that’ not accurate.

Why can’t Cupid’s bow hit the mark of those who match us? It’s always the prince or the princess.

Princes are handsome and princesses are beautiful and they’re charming, but charm and superficiality always seem to go hand in hand. It’s the tinsel that fascinates us.

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner

Homage to the Thalia

I remember the old Thalia well. It was located off Broadway at 95th Street. The daily fare was two foreign double-feature films with subtitles which were shown for the duration of a day. There was an elaborate folded program on which the films were invariably described as “masterpieces.” Most of the films were French. They were directed by such masters as René Clair, Julian Duvivier, Marcel Carné and Jean Cocteau. The names alone are music.

You went to see Hollywood films in theaters that resembled Moroccan palaces. Some of the films were black-and-white, but many were in Technicolor. I saw a lot of good ones at those venues, but the Thalia is where I got my education. It was the antithesis of being luxurious. Rundown and ramshackle is the best description. The films were the “Vielle Vague.” The Nouvelle Vague had not yet struck the cinematic shore.

I frequented the Thalia in the mid-Fifties while I attended Columbia. I spent hours and hours sitting on its hard, uncomfortable seats, watching black-and-white French films of the Thirties and Forties. Now and then, the film would break and you had to wait for it to be spliced before you could continue watching it.

Yes there was irritation and discomfort, but film is the thing.

What can I say? Where else could I have seen those wonderful French films? I don’t know what my life would have been like if I could not look back on the Thalia.

Attending the Thalia was like drinking vin ordinaire to a crisp baguette – or in other words, a fare of nectar and ambrosia.

Remember the Days!

Who was Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry? He was Stepin Fetchit? Who dat? Here’s Stepin to provide he answer: “I was the Sammy Davis of the Stone Age.” Stepin was the “sacred nigger” of the Thirties and Forties Bs. He’d turn up on his tiptoes with eyes bugging when there was a threat of gangsters or ghosts. He was good for a laugh or two. Stepin was a nice fellow who wasn’t too smart and he was just plain scared when he thought that danger loomed.

Stepin Fetchit

That’s how we saw blacks in those days. The women were mammies and the men were “Stepin.” (Actually his Jewish counterpart was Jerry Lewis, who was the stereotypical schlemiel. But that cliché lasted longer.)

High Sierra, directed by Raoul Walsh in 1941, stars Bogey as gangster on the lam and Ida Lupino as his loyal girlfriend. Bogey’s star was rising and he’d go on to Casablanca. Ida’s star was falling and she’d go on to starring and directing Bs. Walsh was a good and successful director, but he stooped in Sierra to using Stepin for a few cheap laughs.

The “Stepin” image was so ingrained that even one of Hollywood’s best directors apparently couldn’t free himself from it.

Thank God those days are over!

From Stromboli to The Visit

Ingrid Bergman left Hollywood to make Stromboli for Roberto Rosselini in 1949. Her intention was to leave Tinsel-Town glamour behind her to in order make neo-realistic European films. And Roberto’s manly appeal may have influenced her decision. Roberto had made Roma, Open City and Paisa, which are indeed stunning. Some film buffs love the films he made with Bergman. I think Stromboli was so-so, but that all the others were duds.

Twenty-five years later she starred in a film version of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit directed by stickler Bernhard Wicki, which was a European production. Wicki had died a thousand deaths when he filmed Morituri with Marlon Brando. Brando had moved Heaven and Earth to get Wicki on the set, but once he had him, he made Wicki regret that he had ever been born. And the result of Wicki’s tribulations was nothing to be proud of. Ditto for Ingrid.

In Dürrenmatt’s play, an unattractive, crippled old lady returns to her hometown as a wealthy, powerful revenge-seeker in order to bring about the lynching of the man who seduced and ruined her. However, in the film “the old lady” turns out to be younger, attractive and with limbs intact. Instead of having her quondam lover, the present mayor, done in, she relents and shows mercy.

Thus Bergman rewrote and “glamorized” one of the most significant and successful contemporary plays, riding roughshod over author and director. And Hollywood celebrated a triumph over realism, neo-realism, surrealism and what-have-you, albeit in Europe. And thus Bergman propelled herself right smack back to the spirit she had left behind in Tinsel Town.

to be continued . . .

– Herbert Kuhner