Tony Curtis is getting good mileage out of his memoir American Prince, co-authored by Peter Golenbock and published this month by Crown Publishing, a division of Random House. Featured as the October selection at Turner Classic Movies’ Book Corner; I’ve not yet received my copy but have enjoyed a hefty excerpt published in the November 2008 issue of Vanity Fair. That excerpt primarily concerns itself with Curtis’s brief but sweet love affair with Marilyn Monroe and their reunion on the set of Some Like It Hot, and follows Sam Kashner’s revelatory Vanity Fair article on Monroe published last month.
Billy Wilder’s 1958 comic masterpiece of gender shenanigans screened at the Pacific Film Archive as part of their Spring 2007 “A Thousand Decisions in the Dark” program, hosted by David Thompson. Thompson offered considerable insight into Some Like It Hot, both through a pre-film lecture and a post-film Q&A. Monroe’s difficulty on the set, Wilder’s masterful handling of her, and the shimmering sultry results on screen are all part of Hollywood legend. As Curtis recollects: “[T]he problem was that she wanted to control every single man she met. Depending on the man, it was either ‘I love him’ or ‘I hate him.’ But she was incapable of not paying attention to a man. She felt she had to play to every one.” The on-set tension was heightened by the presence of Paula Strasberg, wife of Lee Strasberg, founders of the Actors Studio and “the method.” “Marilyn wanted to be an intellectual, and they played to that desire, which made her very dependent on them. She had completely succumbed to the Studio philosophy that it’s good to mumble your words—what I called the Marlon Brando style of acting. The problem was that only Marlon could do it. I came to hate the Actors Studio for what it did to Marilyn. Lee Strasberg was certainly a great acting coach. In my opinion, the problems came from Lee’s wife. Paula’s presence made things hard for Marilyn, because she felt torn between Paula and Billy. Marilyn played the ding-dong for Paula, and she played the diva with Billy, giving both of them what she thought they wanted, because that was how Marilyn was wired.” Curtis finally sets the record straight regarding the well-trafficked quote that kissing Marilyn Monroe was like kissing Hitler: “After the scene on the yacht, some of the crew and I stood around to watch the rushes, and afterwards they wanted to know what it was like to kiss her. I figured a question that stupid deserved a stupid answer, so I flippantly responded by saying, ‘Kissing Marilyn is like kissing Hitler.’ I was right—it was a stupid answer. What I should have said was ‘What do you think kissing her is like, birdbrain?’ Or I could have had the good sense to just say nothing. But my thoughtless comment became public knowledge, and the story still makes the rounds. So let me set the record straight once and for all: I hated Hitler. As a Jewish kid in New York, I threw condom bombs on pro-Nazi parades. I loved Marilyn Monroe. And she was a terrific kisser.”
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Mark Vieira has an undisputed eye for beauty, especially the glamorized beauty of Hollywood’s golden studio era. A portrait photographer, film historian, and the author of four previous volumes—Hurrell’s Hollywood Portraits, Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood, Hollywood Horror: From Gothic to Cosmic, and Greta Garbo: A Cinematic Legacy, all published by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.—Vieira graciously forwarded me his latest Abrams publication, Hollywood Dreams Made Real: Irving Thalberg and the Rise of M-G-M, and I’ve been admittedly ensorcelled by Vieira’s stunning selection of previously unpublished photographs and his informative and revelatory commentary.
Nicknamed Hollywood’s “Boy Wonder,” Irving Thalberg was running Universal Pictures at the age of 20 and M-G-M at 23. From 1924 to his untimely death in 1936, he supervised more than 400 M-G-M films; made stars of—among others—Norma Shearer, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Lon Chaney, and Greta Garbo; and helped to elevate film to the level of fine art. Hollywood Dreams Made Real tells the story of Thalberg’s short but productive life and confirms his role as the prime architect of the Hollywood studio system.
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Jasper Sharp and Tom Mes are gods of the written word. Midnight Eye has long been one of my favorite haunts. Their latest contributions are cinematic sections to Ian Luna’s Tokyolife: Art and Design, published by Rizzoli.
As Jasper has announced: “This magnificent tome, put together by Ian Luna of Rizzoli, just arrived through the post the other day. It’s been a long time in coming, with the publication date put back on several occasions, but well worth the wait.
“Something between a coffee table book and a particularly lavish art catalogue, this 500-page hardback contains numerous essays, photos and art reproductions of all aspects of creative production in Tokyo, including fashion, architecture, graphic design and music.
“Tom Mes and I contributed the inevitable sections on cinema, with Tom’s essay Center Stage City: Tokyo in the Movies focussing on recent live action productions that use the city as their backdrop, and my essay Futurscape looking at how the shifting face of the city has influenced both the form and the content of a number of key animation works over the past few decades. There’s also a selection of several directors whose work has made specific use of the city. I’ll leave it up to you to guess who these might be…
Though obviously I’m a little biased, it’s a beautiful-looking book, and something I feel honored to be included in. (If I never get another thing published….) For those interested in the broader synergy between this vibrant cultural hub and the creative agents who inspire and are inspired by it, this is something you’d certainly want on your bookshelf.”
Congratulations Jasper and Tom!
Cross-published on The Evening Class.
Though styles apart, along with his American counterpart Ray Harryhausen, Japanese tokusatsu (special effects) wizard Eiji Tsuburaya left an indelible imprint on my childhood sensibility. Balanced with the coming-to-life of the bronze Talos statue in Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts are the images of Godzilla ravaging Tokyo. No wonder I was always begging my mom to let me go to the movies! Imagine my delight that—in conjunction with the Chronicle Books publication of San Franciscan author August Ragone’s impassioned visual biography Eiji Tsuburaya: Master of Monsters—Landmark Cinemas and San Francisco’s Clay Theatre hosted a Tsuburaya double-bill of Battle In Outer Space and Mothra in dazzling Tohoscope, with Ragone in attendance to introduce the films and sign his book. My thanks to Bruce Fletcher of Dead Channels for alerting me to same. Anticipate an interview with August Ragone in the next week or so.
I would be hardpressed to outdo Ragone’s own synopses of the films at his site The Good, the Bad, and Godzilla, where he has written up both Battle In Outer Space and Mothra. But I would like to share some of my notes from Ragone’s slide-illustrated introduction to both films, which supplement his blog entries.
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I met Jesse Lerner a little under two years ago when he guest-curated a program on La Raza for Stephen Parr’s Oddball Cinema. We exchanged addresses and, shortly thereafter, Jesse generously forwarded me copies of his films Natives (1991), Frontierland (1995), and Ruins (1999), along with the 1998 catalog for Mexperimental—a traveling retrospective of 60 years of avant-garde film and video from Mexico, which he curated. (The Mexperimental catalog is available in its entirety online.)
I have been meaning for quite some time to profile Lerner’s work. Impetus to follow through on my intentions has arrived with the publication of F Is For Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing (University of Minnesota Press, 2006), edited by Lerner and Alexandra Juhasz. Helping to promote the anthology’s publication, the Pacific Film Archives is sponsoring a book signing Tuesday evening, February 5, with a program of shorts that highlights the anthology’s themes and invites suspicious attitudes.
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Kneeling before each and every one of them as if they were the pantheon capriciously in command of my life at that given moment, I took advantage of Noir City’s book signing for A Hell Of A Woman (Busted Flush Press, 2007) to speak to “Queenpin” Megan Abbot—the anthology’s editor—and to several of the contributors to the volume.
In her introduction to the anthology, Megan Abbot explains: “The women in these pages are climbers, dreamers, hustlers, holders of secret truths tucked close to their shuddering chests. They’re both hardscrabble and manor-born, regal yet gutter-sprung. They’re guileless and stout-hearted. They’re steely and smooth as silk. They’re love-riddled and heartbreakers. They’re shopworn angels and stone-cold dazzlers, avenging angels and knights in shining armor. We have a boxing cutman with a fierce heart, a trailer park Madonna whom neither man nor nature can vanquish. We have a police detective with a wicked bluff and a housewife with hidden steel. We have one, two, three waitresses, dreamers all, and a milky-eyed recluse with a past darker than she can bear. We have a country girl, lashed with fear, finding her chance to make things right. And they all bear secrets heavy as this blue, sick world can hold.” (2007:5)
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Are you ready? Have you dusted off your rain-weathered fedora and bent its brim? Cinched your raincoat? Straightened the hem of your nylons? Polished your handgun? As I announced earlier, Noir City is on its way this week and I’m starting out my coverage with an interview with author Alan K. Rode.
I met Alan at last year’s Noir City Film Festival where I discovered that—along with “Czar of Noir” Eddie Muller—he was one of the key forces behind the Film Noir Foundation and the festival proper. During the course of our conversation I learned he was working on a biography of noir heavy Charles McGraw. Admitting I was fairly new to noir and not familiar with McGraw, Rode took it upon himself to educate me by forwarding me copies of The Threat (1949) and Roadblock (1951), which I devoured before moving on to T-Men (1947) and Border Incident (1949).
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Andrew Bailey’s Cinema Now, handsomely published by Taschen, wields considerable heft. Not only because its heavy paper stock will earn you a bicep or two; but, because intellectually it’s a rich overview of contemporary filmmaking. If the logical depth of a film is the invested meaning harbored within it, then Cinema Now reflects a logical—indeed necessary—breadth to any focus on film culture. Andrew Bailey takes us on a guided, visually-articulated tour through today’s world cinema. Along with his directorial profiles and capsule reviews of their respective films, the volume includes a DVD with such extras as trailers, music videos and short films by Alexander Payne and Carlos Reygadas. His research is supplemented by working indices of film festivals, awards and websites (including Twitch).
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