"A brilliant chess game of contrasting overblown acting styles, deliriously funny, with some of the best pasteboard period décor and most flavorsome character acting to be seen anywhere. Jonathan Rosenbaum, Paris Journal, 1974"
All weekend, classic movie fans shall be extending a respectful tip of a spectacular chapeau in glorious Technicolor to Olivia de Havilland, who celebrated her 100th birthday yesterday. Sight & Sound has devoted their July 2016 issue to her illustrious career.
Olivia’s the TCM Star Of The Month and with good reason - she starred in numerous unbeatable classic movies for Warner Brothers, some among the studio’s biggest box office smashes, others under-the-radar.
For the blogathon, we review a unique and funny historical romantic comedy, The Great Garrick, which, both for Miss de Havilland and director James Whale, remains in the second category. It is Olivia's eighth silver screen appearance and, regardless of billing (especially in re-releases), essentially a supporting role.
No doubt those audiences who flocked to theaters with the hopes of seeing the gorgeous and charismatic young maiden from the rousing Errol Flynn swashbucklers Captain Blood and The Charge Of The Light Brigade found it quite a disappointment that new star Olivia de Havilland did not make her first appearance in The Great Garrick until 39 minutes into the movie!
Aherne stars in a very John Barrymore-ish self parodying role as an egocentric Shakespearian actor and is very much at the center of this film.
The supporting cast includes extremely talented character actors, led by the inimitable Edward Everett Horton and the diminutive Etienne Girardot. At times brilliant, The Great Garrick has moments of hilarity throughout.
The plot is based on a "what might have been" scenario involving celebrated 18th century actor and poet David Garrick (1717-1779); in other words, it didn't happen, but what the heck, maybe it could have.
Frankly, watching Aherne gently rib the art of shameless overacting playing "Hamlet - With Variations" in the opening scene gets this correspondent thinking of both the extremely funny Warner Bros. "Goofy Gophers" cartoon A Ham In A Role and Jon Lovitz as Master Thespian on Saturday Night Live (lo, 50 years after the production of The Great Garrick).
The star of London's acclaimed Drury Lane troupe, Garrick announces after his last performance of "Hamlet - With Variations" that he is leaving for Paris, where has been invited to be the special guest star performer with the Comédie-Française.
His loyal British audience is not thrilled at this news! They protest loudly ("YOU MEAN WE'RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH???") and hurl fruits and vegetables at him. The Great Garrick then offers to stay in London. An audience member in the capacity crowd yells that Garrick must be leaving town to teach the French how to act. This immediately catches like wildfire, leading to the entire London audience lustily shouting, TEACH THE FRENCH! TEACH THE FRENCH!
Alas, also in the audience: Beaumarchais, a most unamused Parisian playwright and Comédie-Française troupe member (portrayed with style and panache by Lionel Atwill).
The news gets back to Paris, causing outrage among the thespian community and the Comédie-Française. Not surprisingly, the enraged response from the besmirched acting community of Paris is "we'll teach that guy a lesson, all right." Soon enough, a hoax designed to humiliate The Great Garrick is on - and let the games begin!
The cunning plan, as if hatched by Baldrick in Blackadder: have the Comédie-Française troupe take over The Adam & Eve Inn that The Great Garrick and his long suffering valet "Tubby" (played to the hilt by the devastatingly funny Horton), shall stay in for one night - and then scare the living daylights out of both of them. While this is happening, a coach carrying Germaine Dupont, a young countess in England fleeing France and an arranged marriage, breaks down near the roadside inn.
Although wise to the Comédie-Française ruse immediately and playing along, totally convinced all the while that the countess is actually a not particularly good actress from the Parisian troupe, noted playboy Garrick is also quite genuinely taken with and charmed by her.
Complicating matters: the young and strikingly beautiful Countess de la Corbe is simply gaga over Garrick and knows his legend as England's most celebrated actor.
The hostile takeover of The Adam & Eve Inn by rampaging and out-of-control thespians means all Comédie-Française members on premises ham it up in the best/worst possible way while staging horrific episodes of roguery - including wild marital quarrels, shootings, swordfights, knife-brandishing loons, etc. not to mention wanton destruction of furniture and china - and inn-competence so grievous as to, hopefully, get "conceited popinjay" Garrick and manservant Tubby sprinting back to London.
It also means that
The Great Garrick
is squarely and resolutely in The Suspension Of Disbelief department, as there are no French actors in the movie. This is with the full understanding that the price tag for Michel Simon, Dita Parlo, Raymond Condy or Jean Dasté would have very likely been prohibitively high for Jack Warner and also that Maurice Chevalier would have turned the danged film into a musical.
So all Comédie-Française players speak like the English, the only one we could imagine as a Frenchman is Atwill, and not even Warner Brothers perennial Hugh Herbert is on hand to do the cheesy French accent he would employ in the 1938 musical Gold Diggers Of Paris.
With the two stars heading the cast, supported by such stalwart members of the Character Actors' Hall Of Fame as Horton, Melville Cooper and Luis Alberni, as well as a teenage (and darn near unrecognizable) Lana Turner, why did The Great Garrick lay an egg at the box office? It may have simply been that it was a witty period piece comedy with an original and clever script - seldom a ticket to boffo box office success - and simply did not have the star power demonstrated in spades by the Warner Brothers vehicles for Bette Davis, Jimmy Cagney, Errol Flynn and later Humphrey Bogart. Olivia de Havilland would soon possess all of that star power - and then some - just a bit down the road, but doesn't have a heckuva a lot to do in this opus other than be adorable, which, naturally, she does exceedingly well.
The storyline, which attempts to merge the European stage lore of 1750 with elements of 1937 style screwball comedy mayhem, presents a tough assignment for the two stars. Any attempt to match the humor seen in such iconic screwball comedies as The Half-Naked Truth, Twentieth Century, Hands Across The Table, She Married Her Boss and My Man Godfrey, even as one element in a film (then and now) proves most ambitious and difficult to achieve.
Miss de Havilland gives a warm and heartfelt performance, emotionally investing herself in her role, which does not demand a story-driving screwball comedy turn a la Carole Lombard, Claudette Colbert or Irene Dunne. The screenplay does not offer additional nuances or a sense of what makes her character tick to give the story more interest. We know the countess looks fabulous and ran away from France, her father and an arranged marriage, but that's about it. As always, with personality and good humor, Miss de Havilland gets the maximum from the script, but, given the depth and breadth of her acting talent, one knows she could nail a much more complex characterization with ease.
Aherne's task is even more daunting: as a great Shakespearian actor, match the florid yet nuanced and hilarious self-parody that was John Barrymore's stock in trade. He's good, through much of the movie very good, but not that good. Perhaps the decision to not be quite as larger-than-life and outrageous as Barrymore (or for that matter, Peter O' Toole 30 years later) was not the right choice.
More importantly, key to the premise is that David Garrick is so laser-focused on his craft that he's unable to see or feel real emotion, and thus, the film is built around a character who is not particularly likable. While not nearly as unsympathetic as John Gilbert as "the cad" in Downstairs or any number of very bad bad guys played by Robert Mitchum, the character of The Great Garrick is . . . well, unsympathetic enough to make this movie problematic. Now matter how many witty exchanges happen between the star and his manservant Tubby - and there are many - it's difficult to root for this guy, or give a darn about the budding romance between David Garrick and the Countess de la Corbe.
That said, all the world's a stage and in the film's final moments, a deeply, profoundly smitten David Garrick confesses his adoration for the fetching Countess de la Corbe in the only way he knows how - before an adoring SRO audience at the Comédie-Française! It is an excellent payoff to a unique film filled with surprises.
The hijinx at the Adam & Eve Inn includes several brilliant sequences of physical comedy and offers the supporting cast an opportunity to go way, way over the top and have a blast doing so. In the end, as funny as said cast is - Horton, regal Atwill, stentorian Melville Cooper and especially a cheerfully wacko Luis Alberni - their stellar contributions (unlike in the aforementioned My Man Godfrey or several Preston Sturges features) cannot carry the movie by themselves. The film belongs to the two stars.
James Whale's direction is imaginative, his shot selection and framing of actors ingenious, while the cinematography and camera movement of Ernest Haller, as always, is inventive and fluid. All of the above, plus excellent costuming, makes for a fine motion picture, but does not entirely compensate for the need for a more bravura, electric and humorous performance from Aherne and less of a standard ingenue characterization for Miss de Havilland.
Nonetheless, this is latter-day nitpicking. The original blend of backstage scenario, period piece and wacky comedy equals highly entertaining movie fun, especially if one is lucky enough to live in the vicinity of such film friendly venues as the Stanford, the Castro Theatre, UCLA, the New Beverly, George Eastman House or NYC MoMa that will give screen it, as intended, in proper big screen glory.
For the entire group of blogathon entries, click here.
The classic movie-loving reprobates who are both Way Too Lazy To Write A Blog and Way Too Damn Lazy To Host A Blogathon appreciate the opportunity to contribute and shall enjoy reading the posts by the many fine writers. Kudos, bravos and huzzahs to all who participated - and cheers to Olivia!
Here's Olivia de Havilland, accepting her Academy Award for Best Actress from none other than Jimmy Stewart.
While only able to participate in a scant few of the numerous classic movie blogathons out there these days, we're happy to contribute a post to this 3 day look at the six decade career of Olivia de Havilland.
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog will take a break from doing 16mm film presentations, don our "wordsmith" hat and review the 1937 film The Great Garrick, just one among Miss de Havilland's numerous wonderful films and among several exceptional classic movies directed in the 1930's by a favorite of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, James Whale (1889-1957).
Where does one turn, at this point between ennui and activity that always marks the period between Spring's end and the Fourth Of July? Why, the awaited return of the indescribably delicious and good for youKFJC Psychotronix Film Festival at Foothill College, silly!
Yes, that means yet another hallucinatory excursion through the irritated bowels of 20th century popular culture!
16mm films, the vinyl of visuals, formerly unwanted and unloved, now presented for your entertainment! Robert Emmett, host of "The Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show" on KFJC, hosts the festivities with rapier-like wit and cheesy door prizes.
Our overstocked archive is bursting at the seams with new material that demands another show, to show-off some of the coolest odd-ball films you are likely to see.
Curators Sci Fi Bob Ekman, Paul F. Etcheverry and Scott Moon of Planet X Magazine present a delirious deluge drawn from Our Celluloid Past and shall plug the all-16mm celluloid extravaganza on the evening of June 20, from 6:00 - 7:00 p.m. PST with host Robert Emmett on the KFJC 89.7 FM Thoughtline show.
That means the usual suspects, starting with ancient commercials!
And the inevitable forgotten cartoons.
Cheesy Scopitones, of course, will be on hand.
As will uber-campy Soundies and Snader Telescriptions.
We'll also have serials (featuring psycho-robots and the hardest working guy in 1940's showbiz, Guy In A Gorilla Suit) trailers from schlocky B-films. . . no, make that Z-films.
Totally stuck for a topic today, we'll go with monkeys (and Monkees) in the movies.
First and probably not foremost, there were the Snooky The Humanzee chimp comedies, noted in Steve Massa's Lame Brains And Lunatics: The Good, The Bad And The Forgotten Of Silent Comedy and a Trav S.D. post on Travalanche. Snooky wasn't the first ape headliner in movies - among many, there were Napoleon & Sally and Mr. & Mrs. Martin - but he was a hit. Chimp comedies were so big with moviegoers that there actually was a feature film titled Darwin Was Right, starring a simian trio.
The king of these monkeyshines was C.G. Chester's wildly popular Snooky The Humanzee series, which would be in demand through the 1920's, get reissued with music tracks well into the sound era, then sold to the home movie market via Castle Films and other 16mm purveyors.
To this we attribute the fact that, while Laurel & Hardy in Hats Off, horror guru Todd Browning's London After Midnight and F.W. Murnau's 4 Devils are still missing, lots of Snooky The Humanzee extravaganzas survive. As fate would have it, Huntley Film Archives has posted a slew of the chimp's adventures on YouTube.
Admittedly, Snooky's not exactly Chaplin or Keaton - or even Al Joy - in the comedy talent department, but there is something rather perversely funny about the simian's anti-social antics. The humor derives from the fact that Snooky is a bastard. No doubt the director of The Night Of The Bloody Apes grew up on this series.
In animation, of course, Walt Disney Productions, always on the cutting edge, preceded stop-motion genius Willis O'Brien's King Kong in riding the monkey bandwagon with this Silly Symphony.
Terrytoons in New Rochelle simply had to counter with a simian-filled epic, which looks pretty much indistinguishable from a 1927 Farmer Al Falfa cartoon, sans 15,000 Mickey Rats.
Then there's the Les Elton cartoon Monkey Doodle, starring Simon The Monk. Whatever Elton's independently produced cartoons lack in virtuoso drawing technique, they more than compensate for with imagination and originality. The animation of the dog in this cartoon reflects a certain oddball genius.
Also responsible for series starring monkeys: Paul Fennell's Cartoon Films Ltd., the modest but prolific Walter Lantz studio and the budget-busting former Disney animators Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, the 1920's Disney cohorts turned independent producers (for Warner Brothers, then MGM).
While the monkey stars of the Gran' Pop series by Cartoon Films Ltd. and Walter Lantz' Meany, Miny and Moe have the collective personality of a bologna sandwich, their cartoons are pleasantly enjoyable, if no great shakes (of a monkey's tail).
More interesting are Hugh Harman's Gothic and weirdly imaginative mini-series featuring the callow, innocent and obnoxiously moralistic "See No Evil See No Evil See No Evil" monkeys, who also possess the collective personality and charm of a liverwurst sandwich on pumpernickel bread.
In their silver screen debut, the "goodie goodie monkeys", whose motto is "not a single wild oat will we sew," co-star with none other than Satan, hot off an appearance with Krazy Kat in The Hot-cha Melody.
The 1938 "goodie goodie monkeys" opus Pipe Dreams definitely anticipates the hippie era by almost three decades, especially the scene with the simian trio taking hits off a pipe like Dennis Hopper thirty years later.
Any letters between MGM brass to Harman demanding an explanation for this cartoon must be hilarious - and we all know darn well that Harman ignored them!
After the quixotic adventures in Pipe Dreams, the "See No Evil See No Evil See No Evil" monkeys would return for the 1939 spectacular Art Gallery, then be retired ignominiously.
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog loves Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe - only every movie they ever made. Except for Marilyn, they get totally upstaged by a chimp in Howard Hawks' zany 1952 film Monkey Business. No doubt during production Cary had more than a few witticisms he uttered to friends regarding playing second fiddle to an ape.
One of this pop culture vulture's all-time favorites on TV was Nat Hiken's hilarious You'll Never Get Rich show a.k.a. Sgt. Bilko. The smart money is that the chimp in the following clip took direction far better than Joe E. Ross and Maurice Gosfeld.
Not exactly anyone's all-time TV favorite - other than the actors, writers and production crew that worked on the series and got regular paychecks - The Hathaways, starring Jack Weston, Peggy Cass and a bunch of chimps.
And speaking of the hippie era again. . . well, straight from The Wide World Of WTF, here's a musical number from Lancelot Link Secret Chimp. The show is funny, although we suspect that creators Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng took the 5th Amendment when asked about it. Frankly, it troubles this amateur musician that the chimps play the electric guitar than he ever did!
Hanna-Barbera's Banana Splits were to the Lancelot Link psychedelic band what The Turtles were to Roky Erickson and The 13th Floor Elevators.
The extremely funny punk rock band The Dickies made a career of playing cartoon theme songs enthusiastically and very very fast.
1960's popsters The Monkees were inspired by both The Beatles and the Marx Brothers and their very enjoyable TV show still holds up quite well (surprise surprise surprise, the surviving Monkees still sing and play most adeptly in 2016 and have a new album out). Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog has a soft spot for their feature film Head, especially the scene in which the Prefab Four are dandruff in Victor Mature's scalp.
Here they are in January 1967, then in a 1969 TV special co-starring Brian Auger & The Trinity. The latter in particular is a fitting showcase for Messrs. Jones, Dolenz, Tork and Nesmith.
The Goose Gossage style closer today will be a "monkeys in space" sketch from The Ernie Kovacs Show. Would happily follow it up with a "Pigs In Space" segment from The Muppet Show but it doesn't quite fit today's theme.
