Zuzu, Lost and Found

Karolyn Grimes was a six-year-old movie veteran when she was hand-picked by director Frank Capra for the part of Zuzu Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Of all four of the Bailey children, Zuzu was the most significant: it is the discovery in his pocket of Zuzu’s petals (from a dying flower she had beside her bed) that makes George Bailey realise that he is back in the real world, to his ecstatic relief. And it is Zuzu who utters the immortal, penultimate line: “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.”

Grimes, now 81 has vivid memories of making the film. “I had a blast, ” she says. “There were other kids on the set – which made it fun, and the snow had a big impact on me too: I was born and raised in Hollywood so I had never seen snow and although this wasn’t real snow, it was close enough.”

During her short career, Grimes played alongside various leading men – John Wayne in Rio Grande, Cary Grant in The Bishop’s Wife (another Christmas classic), Bing Crosby in Blue Skies – but she had a particular affinity with James Stewart.

“He had a lot of patience with me,” she says, “and always helped me if I messed up a line.” Frank Capra also had a way with children. “He didn’t yell at us. Some directors were very fierce, but he’d get down on his knees and talk to us at eye level. He let us be natural. You didn’t have to stick to the script word for word and that gave us kids a feeling of relaxation. He and Jimmy Stewart had a special rapport and played a lot of practical jokes – there was a real family atmosphere on that set.”

Unfortunately, the rest of Grimes’s childhood was anything but wonderful. Her movie career ended abruptly in her teens when her parents died: her mother died of early-onset Alzheimer’s and her father was killed in a road accident just a year later.

“The court in Hollywood shipped me to a little town in the midwest to live with my uncle,” she explains. She trained as a medical technician and was raising her children when, one day, somebody knocked at her door and asked if she was Zuzu.

“It was a writer from a local newspaper, and they published an article about me. Then another one published something and pretty soon it was picked up by the wires. Then it was official – they had ‘found’ Zuzu.” This was the early 1980s, and It’s a Wonderful Life was about to undergo another boost – through its video release.

“I was aware of its increasing popularity, but I didn’t think much about it until I got my first fan mail. Then I got more and more – I was shocked. I had all the movie memorabilia in the basement and every time someone came to interview me, I’d drag it all up the stairs. Finally I thought, well it looks like this thing is here to stay. so I made a room and put the stuff on the walls, and in cabinets, and I now have a little museum!”

The other Bailey kids were duly tracked down too, and they were all reunited with one another by phone. Then, in 1993, they were brought together for a country-wide tour of personal appearances – 750,000 fans turned out to greet them on Sunset Boulevard.

These days, Grimes spends most of her time in the run-up to Christmas on such tours – her grandchildren call her Grandma Zuzu. “I’ve been on the road with It’s a Wonderful Life ever since. It’s really a second career.”

So why does she think it’s so well-loved? “Because there’s a message in it for everyone. We’ve all gone through adversity. I didn’t really watch it until 1990 when I lost my son. I was kinda compelled to watch it when I went to It’s a Wonderful Life parties, and that’s when I found the magic. Now I see it maybe 20 times a year. I enjoy watching it with people, and seeing their reactions, and I hear amazing stories about how this movie has affected their lives in such positive ways. I think that men especially love this film because they can identify with George in so many ways.

“For a lot of men, their dreams never come true. And I also think that one of the great fears that men havers that they won’t be able to support their families. They live with that almost continually, so they all identify with George.”

Perhaps the biggest thrill to come out of all of this for Grimes was the chance to be reunited with her screen father late in his life. “When people started looking for Zuzu, they would write to Jimmy Stewart and he would send them in my direction. We had a reunion in 1990, in New York. He and I spent the whole day together. There was a woman who had been his fan for 50-something years, and he had made it possible for her to come to New York. She met us at his hotel and she brought this huge scrapbook that she’d kept over the years of everything he’d ever sent her. We sat down and went thought he scrapbook and relived his life, page by page. It was really quite a wonderful experience. It’s a lovely memory to have of him.”

• This interview was conducted in 2006

It’s Still a Wonderful Life!

This week marks the 75th anniversary of the most cherished Christmas movie of all time – It’s a Wonderful Life. Frank Capra’s life-affirming fable of a suicidal everyman whose guardian angel shows him that the world would have been a poorer place without him is now regarded as the most uplifting of all feel-good films. For its legions of fans, it is as essential a part of the festive season as carols, cards and carving the turkey. These days, most people have heard of the film, even if they haven’t seen it, and many cinemas and TV channels screen the movie year-in, year-out as a Christmas tradition. Yet, at one point, this classic was in serious danger of sinking into obscurity.

When It’s a Wonderful Life premiered in New York on December 21, 1946, it was a major event heralded by big spreads in newspapers and magazines. The movie was the first film made by both its director, Frank Capra, and its charismatic star, James Stewart, since they had returned from serving in the Second World War, and many of the reviews were glowing. One reviewer wrote that it “melted the barnacles off my heart and left me feeling young and full of ideals again.”

Capra, who had felt that the story was a gem from the outset, was entitled to be disappointed, then, when the film failed to live up to expectations at the box office. Although movie lore has it that It’s a Wonderful Life was a flop when it first came out, it actually performed quite respectably – just not as well as anyone had hoped. Telegrams flooded in to Capra congratulating him on the film. Joan Crawford wrote: “Just saw It’s a Wonderful Life. It was magnificent. Bless you.” And William Holden’s said: “Thanks for making us stop to think that it is wonderful.” Nevertheless, at the box office the takings were unspectacular and its failure to win any of the Oscars for which it was nominated stuck in Capra’s craw.

Perhaps audiences just weren’t ready for the film. Released just two months after the end of the Nuremberg trials and with the horrors of the war still fresh in most minds, It’s a Wonderful Life – for all that it is often dismissed as sentimental “Capra-corn” – was, in its darkest moments, considerably darker than the usual Hollywood fare. James Stewart’s character, George Bailey, is literally on the brink of suicide (he’s poised to jump into the river) because he feels he has let his family and friends down. In 1946, movies didn’t entertain the notion of suicide, let alone show the hero attempting it, on Christmas Eve of all days.

Just as shocking, from the 1946 point of view, was the scene in which Bailey gets drunk and, sobbing into his double bourbon, begs God for help. Movie-goers had seen James Stewart playing a champagne-burping drunk in The Philadelphia Story, but here he was playing a man driven to drink by gut-wrenching, raw despair.

In the run-up to the film’s release, Capra said: “People are numb after the catastrophic events of the past ten to 15 years. I would not attempt to reach them mentally through a picture, only emotionally.” And he certainly put his audience on an emotional rollercoaster with this one: the plunges into the pits of despair are more than balanced out (if not, like the horrors of childbirth, blotted out) by the ecstatic climax of the film – the wild jubilation of the hero as he realises the value of his life, the overwhelming outpouring of support and love, and the final message of “No man is a failure who has friends”.

The story behind the film echoes the “second chances” theme of the movie itself. Ironically, it was television which, in the early 1950s was blamed for wiping out cinemas audiences, which gradually came to be the film’s guardian angel. TV kept the film in circulation and introduced successive generations to its delights. It developed a cult following, and, by the late 1970s, converts in America – where it was shown much more often than here – were holding It’s a Wonderful Life parties. Watching it became an event; it was one to watch in company and preferably during the festive season.

The film’s second life was also the result of the copyright lapsing in 1973. It was such a neglected movie, and had been passed around among so many different companies, that it was allowed to slip into the public domain. This meant that not only could TV stations show it for nothing, but that clips from it could be pinched by filmmakers and used in their movies by way of homage – or to boost the feel-good factor of their own films. These tantalising snippets helped to pique the interest of viewers who were starting to hear about this quirky festive film. It was only in the mid-1980s, as the video took off that It’s a Wonderful Life took its place as a mainstream classic.

Of course, the main reasons for the film’s longevity and popularity are there for all to see in the two hours of screen time. It’s an inspired and daring blend of comedy, fantasy and tragedy. It appeals to children and adults alike. It boasts a tour-de-force performance by James Stewart and a supporting cast of such unforgettable, beautifully nailed, characters as his hapless guardian angel, Clarence Oddbody (Henry Travers), his loving wife, Mary (Donna Reed), his hapless uncle Billy (Thomas Mitchell), his Scrooge-like nemesis, Mr Potter (Lionel Barrymore), and the kind old pharmacist, Mr Gower (HB Warner). It offers hope and it restores or reinforces our faith in our fellow man. Now in its eighth decade, and better loved than ever, It’s a Wonderful Life is proof positive that second chances are always worth taking. Attaboy Capra!

Robert Townson & The Magic of Movie Music

Robert Townson, the film music producer who brought Hollywood legends to Glasgow in the 1990s and worked with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra on a series of recordings now regarded as mythic, is returning to Scotland next week. In two special concerts, the RSNO and Townson are reuniting to celebrate the 40^thanniversary of Varese Sarabande, the record label which showcased their unique relationship; a relationship which produced an astounding 40 soundtrack albums over seven years.

Just like the new audiences who have been coming to RSNO concerts after having their interest piqued by the organisation’s various film music events, so Townson, now Vice President of Soundtracks and Executive Producer at Varese Sarabande, found that film music was a gateway to classical music in general.

Back in the late 1970s, Townson was “just an 11-year-old kid” going to the cinema with his pals. Over the course of just two years, four movies came out which, he says, changed his life: Star Wars (1977) and Superman (1978), both with a score by John Williams, and Star Trek – The Motion Picture and Alien (both 1979), both scored by Jerry Goldsmith.

“These four films opened my eyes and ears to this music,” says the charismatic Canadian, who still sounds wonder-struck as he describes the effect that John Williams’s rousing fanfares had on him. “I was not a musically sophisticated kid; I didn’t even play the piano. I went to see the films with no expectation but I was struck by the scores, there was an immediate connection. John and Jerry sparked my passion in all music – through them I discovered classical music, in particular Dvorak, Mahler and Beethoven.

“The late 1970s was a fertile period of great film music – a near golden age. The composers who were writing still included the masters of earlier decades – Miklos Rozsa, Elmer Bernstein, Georges Delerue.”

Not only were some of the important figures from the 1940s and 1950s still active but film music as a distinct genre worthy of respect was given a shot in the arm around this time with the release of the Classic Film Scores by RCA. These records introduced the adolescent Townson to the first wave of Hollywood movie composers, who had come from Europe.

He recalls:  “I developed a voracious appetite for the music, especially Jerry Goldsmith’s. Every score I heard by him was mindblowing to me. The variety and range in his work was amazing. I look back now and admire my teenage taste!”

You also have to admire Townson’s teenage chutzpah. After all, he founded a record label Masters Film Music, before he hit 20. But why?

“Well, it was born out of frustration. I was frustrated that there were new films whose soundtracks weren’t being released. Three of these films really triggered me into action: The Final Conflict (The Omen 3) and Raggedy Man which had Goldsmith scores, and Heartbeeps, which John Williams did between Raiders of the Lost Ark and E.T, a magnificent period in his career. I realised that something needed to be done – and the conclusion I came to was to release all three myself!”

Operating out of his bedroom in his parents’ home, Townson made contact with Goldsmith, and, for distribution, approached Varese Sarabande as they were already specialists in film music, having recorded concert works by movie composers. The film studio allowed him to use the original soundtrack of The Final Conflict by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Goldsmith himself.

Goldsmith was delighted with the album. For Townson, it proved the launchpad for the career he has today. “It established me working with Jerry. From that first album until he died in 2004, there wasn’t a time when we weren’t working on something. We made 80 albums together; he was like a second father to me. He was a wonderful man, an absolute genius and a very cool guy – very demanding of himself and very driven. He would finish recording a score in the morning and start writing the next one that afternoon.”

A successful recording of Alex North’s score for 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired Townson to begin a new project: of recording existing scores alongside the new soundtrack albums he was producing for Varese Sarabande. Three albums into the series, he began to have logistical problems with the orchestra, and just at that point he heard that the RSNO was interested in recording film music.

Townson’s first visit to Glasgow, in 1995, produced a new recording of the peerless Bernard Herrmann score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, conducted by the up-and-coming film composer Joel McNeely. It was a tremendous success, winning the Gramophone Award and paving the way for regular trips to Scotland over the next seven years. “I’d do maybe three or four recordings each time, and I was recording pretty much exclusively with the orchestra. The RSNO was far and away my preferred orchestra and I always looked forward to my next trip.”

He wasn’t the only one. Jerry Goldsmith became such a regular here that musicians back home in Los Angeles joked that they were lucky to have him at his own 70^thbirthday party; they had thought he might be celebrating in Glasgow with their Scots counterparts. Mind you, Goldsmith did have a 70^thbirthday concert here where audiences were thrilled to hear such powerful themes as those for Patton and Air Force One (the appropriation of which by Trump would not have gone down well with its composer, says Townson).

But it was Elmer Bernstein, the one-time blacklisted composer responsible for bringing uniquely American sensibility to the Hollywood movie score, who perhaps provided the most stardust, as well as forging a very special, mutually affectionate, relationship with the orchestra.

His music, along with Goldsmith’s, is represented in the programme for next weekend’s concerts and there will also be compositions by one of Glasgow’s own film music greats, Patrick Doyle, and the evening’s conductor, composer Diego Navarro. As Townson, who will be presenting, says: “It’s going to be a film music concert like no other!”

Robert Townson & Jerry Goldsmith, City Halls, Glasgow by Matthew Joseph Peak

*****

If you’re a film aficionado or a classical concert-goer, chances are that at some point in recent years you have attended a film screening with live orchestral accompaniment or a concert featuring a programme of iconic movie scores.

Film music has become big box office business, and, over the last few years we in Scotland have been spoiled for choice – the BBC SSO devoted a weekend to the music of Bernard Herrmann, the John Wilson Orchestra visits every winter with songs from the great musicals, and all the film festivals (even – or especially – the silent one at the Hippodrome Cinema in Bo’ness) tend to include some sort of celebration of movie music.

But it wasn’t always thus. Back in the 1990s, following a series of annual screenings of silent movies with music performed by the RSNO, conducted by composer Carl Davis, something magical happened: Hollywood itself began to come to Glasgow thanks to record producer Robert Townson who came to work with the RSNO to produce definitive new recordings of important scores from Hollywood history.

Nobody who experienced the diminutive white-haired movie giant Elmer Bernstein conducting his own, majestic and catchy music for The Magnificent Seven or his exquisitely delicate and beguiling themes for To Kill a Mockingbird at one of his birthday concerts with the RSNO in 1997 and 2002 could forget how their spine tingled at being in the presence of Hollywood history.

Robert Townson recalls that on the day they were about to record To Kill a Mockingbird, Bernstein was “trotting to the podium when the horn section started playing The Magnificent Seven theme”, much to his delight.

I, personally, remember the impact that news of Bernstein’s first visit to Glasgow had on colleagues at The Herald. When Michael Tumelty, the classical music critic who went on to become a favourite writer and friend of Bernstein, bumped into some musician pals outside the City Halls and asked what they were doing, he was gobsmacked to learn that they were recording The Great Escape, and zoomed back to the Herald office on Albion Street to share the news.

Fifteen minutes later, anyone who happened to pass the “smoking room” would have seen a conga line of middle-aged reporters and sub-editors slowly shuffling round a cupboard-sized space, jangling the coins in their pockets and collectively humming the rousing theme to that classic war movie. Such was the Bernstein effect.

And such is the effect of the iconic movie scores that the RSNO recorded back to worldwide acclaim back then, and continues to champion in film music concerts and events, such as their sell-out Back to the Future screening-with-live-accompaniment in Edinburgh last year. The orchestra even has a film music specialist from Hollywood, Richard Kaufman, on its roster of regular conductors and a dedicated, and concert-filled, film section – RSNO At the Movies – on its website. The giants of movie music may no longer walk among us but their legacy lives on …

* Varese Sarabande 40^thAnniversary Concert, November 16 & 17 at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh and the Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow respectively. Visit www.rsno.org.uk to book tickets.

* An edited version of this feature was published in The Herald on Saturday November 10th, and online at http://www.heraldscotland.com

A 1950s Christmas Carol

Yesterday I was at a press screening of the most gorgeous-looking film I’ve seen this year. Carol is its title, and it was directed by Todd Haynes – who also directed the similarly ravishing-looking Far From Heaven back in 2002. To be honest, I wasn’t really convinced by the characters or gripped by the plot but I was utterly seduced by the autumnal palette, slightly grainy film and – most of all – the  way the two central characters, socialite Carol (Cate Blanchett) and young department store clerk Therese (Rooney Mara), looked. (Scroll to the end of this post for more images plus trailer.) Anyone who loves and appreciates 1950s style and beauty, as I do, will not be able to take their eyes off the screen!

The plot centred on the love affair between these two women – and it was a bit like watching Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn (in Sabrina – pre-Paris transformation) getting together. They both look amazing in clothes designed by costume designing legend Sandy Powell: Blanchett sports chic suits or fitted dresses with silk scarves and elegant jewellery, tidy little hats and a ubiquitous mink, while Mara wears simpler, gamine gear. (Indeed, the pinafore-turtle neck combo she sports for Christmas in the country is a direct lift from Sabrina.)

In an interview earlier this year, Blanchett said: “The mink was old and it kept falling apart. Between takes, Sandy Powell  the costume designer, would sew it back together by hand. I considered changing coats, but when you find the right thing, you know immediately. That coat was the one to tell Carol’s story. It was perfect.”

Just as perfect and every bit as striking was the make-up look created for Blanchett by her regular movie make-up artist Morag Ross, who told the MakeUp411 website: “The character of Carol Aird was a sophisticated, wealthy woman, so the make-up and hair had to reflect that. As was the norm of the period, she was always made-up and lipsticked, always put-together and elegant when in public. When the two women go on their road trip the look became more relaxed and free.

“Cate’s look really came together with the immaculate and stunning hairdressing by Kay Georgiou. We took our inspiration from period photos of Grace Kelly who, of course, always seemed effortlessly elegant and beautiful, and we made our aim to channel that kind of look and feeling.” Carol’s coral-red lips, says Ross, were painted with Chanel’s Rouge Allure Lipsticks in Coromandel and Incandescente (used on the middle of the lower lip), while her nails, throughout the film, sport the Lilis shade of Chanel Le Vernis.

And Blanchett’s verdict on her make-up also referred back to Chanel. She said: “I had to pluck my eyebrows nearly every day to achieve that very stern look. I just hated it. I much prefer a natural approach to beauty. You know, Coco Chanel always said to take one thing off before you leave the house, and I think that also applies to makeup.”

Carol is in cinemas from November 27

Style on Film: The Seven Year Itch

The Seven Year Itch (1955), which is playing at the BFI this week as part of its month-long Marilyn Monroe retrospective, is not one of my favourite Marilyn films but it is a very summery movie – and it features some of my favourite MM summer outfits, in particular the dotty, backless, halter neck dress (above) worn by “The Girl” when she makes her rather chaotic entrance in the brownstone where literary agent Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) is living alone, having waved his wife and kids off on their vacation, during a sweltering Manhattan summer.As with six of her previous films – notably Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire – Marilyn was dressed by costume designer (William) Travilla for The Seven Year Itch, which was set during a blistering heatwave. Trying to stay cool and slipping in and out of comfortable/uncomfortable clothing and is a recurring theme in the film and the pastel pink shirt and capri pants ensemble below (which always reminds me of one of Audrey Hepburn’s outfits in the fashion shoot sequence of Funny Face) was what The Girl changed into from her tight sundress. Of course, the most iconic dress of Marilyn’s film career is the “subway” dress, the white halter neck with pleated full skirt which The Girl wears for a wander round New York after dark. Pausing over a subway grill, she is blasted with a gust of air which makes her skirt billow and provides some welcome relief from the oppressive heat – as well as a prolonged flash of the Monroe thighs (and big pants!) for passers-by to ogle.

What you can’t see in the many stills that feature the Subway Dress is the fact that there is more to Travilla’s most famous frock than the bust-emphasising, drapy halter neck and the light, floaty pleated full skirt. There is a beautiful mid section which highlights the fact that this is a Grecian-style dress, with a distinctly 1950s twist. This photograph from a wardrobe test shows off the full effect. And although The Girl doesn’t go to any formal events in The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn Monroe’s wardrobe for the film did include a striking evening gown which is almost as memorable as such previous Travilla designs as the hot pink Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend number in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The “Tiger” dress appears in a fantasy sequence, when she visits Richard’s apartment and falls under his spell when he plays Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto for her.* The Seven Year Itch is showing at the BFI on Friday June 19 and Sunday 21. For more on the BFI’s Marilyn season, which runs till the end of June, click here

 

 

Mad About Marilyn’s Movies

Marilyn Monroe in a publicity shot for How To Marry a Millionaire (courtesy of BFI)

This month, the BFI is treating London film-goers to a terrific retrospective of the ultimate movie star: Marilyn Monroe. It’s more than 50 years since her premature death  – and it’s certainly time to honour her in the way she would have wanted: as an actress and performer. After a half century of speculation about the myths that swirl around her suicide, we need to move on – and look past the legend, to the legacy on film. The riddles of Monroe’s mixed-up mind and the hushed-up circumstances of her death will never be fully understood – and the obsession with her personal life, her sex appeal and her status as a cultural icon overshadow one important thing: her work.

Marilyn Monroe’s was a dazzlingly impressive if spectacularly short career. Not only was she a phenomenally talented comedienne who created the definitive “dumb blonde” persona, but she was also an exceptionally gifted and affecting actress – some of whose performances are so raw that they make for uncomfortable viewing – and a wonderful singer whose recordings of even established pop tunes became iconic, if not definitive, versions. Like other geniuses who died young, she left a small body of work packed with moments of greatness and at least one bona fide masterpiece, in the form of Some Like It Hot.

Indeed, it’s astounding to realise that a star whose name has been known in every corner of the globe for half a century only had leading roles in 11 films spread out over the last decade of her 36-year-old life. Such was the impact of her unique brand of irresistible sex appeal –  vulnerability combined with voluptuousness, sensuality plus serenity, child-like naivete fused with a very wholesome and womanly guile – that her presence transcends much of the material she worked with. She was born to be a movie actress: the camera loved her. Billy Wilder, the only director who worked with her twice during her leading lady phase, described her appeal on camera as “the flesh impact .. Some girls have flesh that photographs like flesh. You feel you can reach out and touch it.” He made great use of this when he filmed her in Some Like It Hot.

It was, of course, her physical appeal which first landed her a screen test – but it was immediately apparent to no less a figure than 20th Century Fox’s production chief Darryl Zanuck that she was more than a particularly sexy starlet. “It’s a damn good test,” he said when he saw the rushes. But that didn’t stop his studio, or others – like Groucho Marx who cast her in Love Happy (1949) on the strength of the fact that she had “the prettiest ass” – from casting her purely in decorative roles. This soon instilled in her the resolve to become an actress and win respect.

She won some especially valuable respect early on – from John Huston who directed her when she played a crooked lawyer’s naive young mistress in his superb heist movie The Asphalt Jungle (1950). She may only have been in two short scenes, and her name may have been omitted from the titles when the film was previewed, but Monroe caught the audience’s eye then – and again that year when she stole a scene from right under Bette Davis’s over-powdered nose in All About Eve. Those films got the public talking but Monroe’s launch into the bigtime was still a couple of years away. And she used that time to get professional help with her acting.

The breakthrough came in 1953. Monroe had the opportunity to get her teeth into a juicy dramatic role (and her bottom into a particularly tight skirt – essential for the scene in which the famous Monroe walk was first captured on camera) when she played the treacherous, man-eating Rose in Niagara. And, that same year, she created the definitive dumb blonde in the lavish comedies Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire. She may not have been the first dumb blonde but, with her combination of big-eyed innocence, dopeyness and a hapless way of always landing on her feet, she was the most lovable and the most enduring.

In those two career-making films, she revealed herself to be a great comedienne, up there with Mae West in the comic timing stakes (and in her own, offscreen, gift for one-liners) and willing to send herself up a la Carole Lombard or any of the screwball comedy era stars. This aspect made her particularly appealing to both sexes.

Director Nunnally Johnson later said: “I believe that the first time anyone genuinely liked Marilyn for herself, in a picture, was in Millionaire. She herself diagnosed the reason for that very shrewdly. She said that this was the only picture she’d been in in which she had a measure of modesty about her own attractiveness. She didn’t think men would look at her twice, because she wore glasses … . In her other pictures they’ve cast her as a somewhat arrogant sex trap, but when Millionaire was released, I heard people say ‘Why, I really like her!’ in surprised tones.”

Despite her success and the fact that she had proved that she was more than window dressing, Monroe was still trapped in what she described as “sex roles” – even River of No Return (1954), a western drama by no less serious a director than Otto Preminger, offered her little opportunity to show her worth as an actress. Announcing the formation of her own production company (and act which ensured that Fox renewed her contract and met her terms), she told the press : “I want to broaden my scope. I want to do dramatic parts. It’s no temptation to me to do the same thing over and over. I want to keep growing as a person and as an actress … in Hollywood they never ask me my opinion. They just tell me what time to come to work.”

Her next four films marked the peak of her short career. She gave a nuanced comic turn as “The Girl Upstairs” in Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch (1955) and a superb dramatic performanceas the flighty, southern “chantoosie” Cherie in Bus Stop (1956); a performance which prompted the film’s director, Joshua Logan, to later describe her as “as near genius as any actress I ever knew”. By this time, Monroe was studying with the Actors Studio in New York, and her un-starry, “courageous”, willingness to sacrifice her looks for the sake of her character was one aspect of her work on the film which impressed Logan. She may not have had a rapport with Laurence Olivier on The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) but this period drama garnered her more rave reviews. The pinnacle of her success came in 1959 with her gloriously endearing portrayal of the uber-naive Sugar Kane in the uproarious Billy Wilder comedy Some Like it Hot.

Monroe was never better than as the gullible Sugar and her performance was the perfect blend of comedy and tragedy. Sadly, though, she was descending into her own personal hell – a troubled personal life that was so thoroughly and intrusively documented in the press that it became increasingly difficult to appreciate where reality ended and performance began. And which makes her final complete film, The Misfits (1961) – in which she played a damaged, child-like woman in search of direction and in need of protection – all the more poignant.

* The Marilyn Monroe season runs from June 1-June 30. For a full list of films and times, click here

The Beauty of Bergman

Is there a more radiant screen smile than Ingrid Bergman’s? It lit up the scenes she appeared in, and it is infectious even now when you watch her movies. And what a diverse bunch of films she made – something that’s obvious from the retrospective that the Glasgow Film Festival has put together for this, her centenary year.

Bergman was like a breath of fresh air when she arrived in Hollywood, already a successful actress back home in Sweden. Her natural beauty and the air of vitality and wholesomeness she exuded were in contrast to the heavily made-up glamour pusses who populated Hollywood studios in the early 1940s when her career took off. Audiences loved her in such hits as Casablanca (1942), Gaslight (1944), The Bells of St Mary’s (1945) and Notorious (1946). Her short cropped, curly hair in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) launched a trend, and her androgynous appearance in that film was ahead of its time.

She was also somewhat ahead of her time in her determination to be the master of her own career path, rather than relying on others or waiting to be offered parts. When, in the late 1940s, she saw Rome, Open City she decided to write to its director, Roberto Rossellini, in Italy and tell him that she would like to be considered for a role in one of his films. He offered her a part and she went to Italy to work with him.

They fell in love and, not yet divorced from her husband back in America, Bergman bore him a son – and went on to have more children with him (among them the future model/actress Isabella Rossellini). They were married
by then but the relationship had been an international scandal, with Hollywood horrified by Bergman’s behaviour and the press outraged by it. Even Congress weighed in; she was denounced there as “Hollywood’s apostle of degradation”.

But she went on to win her second Best Actress Oscar (the first was for her brilliant portrayal of a young woman being driven to the brink of madness in Gaslight) for her “come-back” performance in the title role of Anastasia
(1956), an Oscar that was widely interpreted as evidence of Hollywood forgiving her for her “sins”. In 1974, she won her final Oscar, the Best Supporting Actress statuette, for her turn as the apparently simple Swedish nanny in Murder On the Orient Express. By that time she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, which would kill her eight years – and several more acclaimed performances – later.

* The Glasgow Film Festival runs until March 1

Katharine the Great

Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003) is the subject of a major retrospective through February and March at the BFI in London. Much as I admire her, I find a little of her goes a long way – but she did appear in some wonderful films during her six-decade career, including several of my all-time favourites. Here’s a list of my top five Katharine Hepburn films from the vast collection screening at the BFI.

1. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Who could forget Hepburn as the haughty, ice maiden who has a meltdown on the eve of her society wedding when Spy magazine sends an attractive young reporter (and his photographer girlfriend) to cover her big day, her still-smitten first husband turns up, and she discovers that the high moral standards she imposes on others are occasionally hard to adhere to herself. An Oscar-winning James Stewart (for my money he could have won the award for his drunk scene alone) and an especially charismatic Cary Grant also star in this glorious, sophisticated and very funny classic from director George Cukor.

2. Woman of the Year (1942)

Hepburn plays a famous political newspaper columnist who first spars with then falls in love with her newspaper’s sports editor in this utterly delightful George Stevens romantic comedy which features one of the all-time great comedy sequences, when Hepburn’s gal-about-town character tries to prove that the domestic stuff is as easy as pie, and comes a memorable cropper in the kitchen. Like The Philadelphia Story, this is a particular delight for wardrobe-watchers as Hepburn’s clothes were designed by the great Adrian. And it’s also the first of the nine films that she made with her real-life long-term love, Spencer Tracy.

3. Summertime (1955)

While other middle-aged female stars were forced to play bitter and twisted women clinging on to their youth (and their men) – All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard etc – Hepburn gave a wonderful, appealingly vulnerable performance as a “spinster” falling in love for the first time during a holiday in Venice in this beautiful and sensitive film by director David Lean. Neither the 40-something Hepburn nor Venice ever looked lovelier.

4. The African Queen (1951)John Huston’s exciting First World War-set adventure/romance stars Hepburn as a buttoned-up missionary who finds herself (in more ways than one) when she and boozy steamboat captain Humphrey Bogart (who won his only Oscar for his performance) undertake an increasingly dangerous journey downriver, taking on the elements, the river currents and even the Germans at various points.

5. Alice Adams (1935) 

Despite what the poster says, Hepburn was in fact in her later twenties when she played the awkward young social climber whose compulsive need to put on airs and graces (and force her slightly screwy family to do the same) is her undoing in this gentle comedy from George Stevens. It also starred a young Fred MacMurray, and Hepburn counted it as one of her favourite of her own films.

* Visit www.whatson.bfi.org.uk for the full programme

Style on Film @ Christmas

Christmas movie time comes but once a year – and it seems to me that some of my favourite Christmas movies boast some very stylish characters, some of whom have influenced me over the, ahem, decades.. In The Bishop’s Wife (1947), Loretta Young (above) is not really a fashionplate, but I have always covetted her black ankle boots and, one year, my Christmas wish came true when I stumbled across a pair in the Office sale – immediately after seeing that lovely Christmas movie on the big screen at the Glasgow Film Theatre. Another festive favourite is The Man Who Came To Dinner (1942) which is not only gloriously funny, but also boasts some covetable ensembles sported by Ann Sheridan (below) who played a Hollywood movie star. I’ll be looking at her – and Bette Davis’s – wardrobe from that film in another post but here’s a publicity shot of one of her Orry-Kelly outfits.A movie which is often forgotten about in the festive film roll call is the deliciously stylish Bell, Book and Candle (1958) which shows off a modern day Manhattan witch’s simple, sexy and elegant wardrobe to delightful effect. Kim Novak slinks around memorably in a selection of Jean Louis clothes, while working her magic on unsuspecting James Stewart. Like Bell, Book and Candle, The Thin Man (1934) isn’t usually included in festive movie round-ups – its status as an influential screwball comedy, and as the first in one of the most successful series of Hollywood films of the 1930s, tends to take precedence – but it is set around the Christmas holidays. Myrna Loy appears in a number of wonderfully chic outfits by the British costume designer Dolly Tree. Her jaunty tartan get-up is immortalised in this lovely sketch. 

Mirror, Mirror

I’m currently reading a biography of movie star Barbara Stanwyck. She was not the most beautiful of stars but she certainly exuded sex appeal and knew how to get a guy – a trait she shared with one of her most memorable characters, the eponymous heroine in the glorious 1941 comedy The Lady Eve. I’ll be writing a Style on Film soon about this movie, the first in which Stanwyck wore high fashion, but in the meantime, here’s a wonderful clip which shows why a single gal should never be without a mini mirror …