With the Oscars out of the way, I thought I would nonetheless stick with movies for another day.

​Turner Classic Movies is finishing up its annual, glorious "31 Days of Oscar," where each presentation over that period are either Oscar winners, or had a least one nomination.  It's always a joyous time of year for just great movie-watching.  Movie after movie.  And the channel itself does wonderful job throughout the year with presenting and promoting old and classic and even just ordinary movies as its commercial and cultural mission.  Which brings me to what I fully acknowledge is nothing more than a Point of Personal Privilege.  Which in this case takes its form as a rant.

Tiny details are not especially important in the grand scheme of far-larger landscapes, and much of this is just quibbles.  And admittedly, as I said, a personal rant.  Though I think in the end it has a larger point because TCM heralds itself as the guardian of movies and the source of record, so such things matter in that context.  And for a long while, other than when the late Robert Osborne wasn't on the air, the results at TCM for its commentary are fairly empty.  To be clear, Osborne wasn't just a "movie geek" as bios describe some of their new hosts, but an actual movie historian who studied and knew and understood the details.  I have no idea how much research TCM's other hosts do about movies, and how much of what they say is written by others.  But the holes are too often so massive you could drive the train from the end of Bridge on the River Kwai through it.

Ben Mankiewicz has great movie-family pedigree, but I never get a sense that he has all that much love or even appreciation for movies.  And if he does, it doesn't come through.  It's not that his bookend commentaries on movies are far too often surface, pointless and tend to miss what is actually important historically and cinematically, but regularly veer off into other movies that have almost zero connection to the movie at hand.

This is more about what has come since, when TCM has brought in some new hosts, though I've only seen their Sunday addition, Australian Alicia Malone -- one of their "movie geeks," who at least has written about movies  Again, though, i don't know if she does her own research and on-air commentary, or relies on a staff, or if it's a mix of both, but over the last couple of weeks, when I first saw, her there have been issues that are glaring regardless of who did the writing.

To be clear, what I'm about to mention are just a very few examples and as such will come across as petty.  But it's only three because there are only three, but rather because I haven't written down all the others over time -- from her, Mankiewicz and others.  I've just gnashed my teeth and moved on.  And so these three serve, not as the evidence of what I'm saying, but examples of the larger issue of how uninformative and surface the channel in its commentary has become.

Last week, the channel showed the musical Bye Bye Birdie.  In her description, Malone admirably said who wrote the screenplay -- and she gets big points for that, since most people leave out the screenwriter.  But she didn't mention Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, who wrote the songs!  How do you talk about a musical and not mention who wrote the songs??  Even if you didn't write the commentary yourself, you'd think a person reading it would notice that beforehand and ask for the information to be included.  And when talking about how Paul Lynde recreated his role from the stage production...she didn't mention that...oh, the movie's star, Dick Van Dyke, one of the most beloved actors in American TV and film history. not only was also recreating his Broadway stage role...but had won a Tony Award for it!!  Moreover, it was the Broadway role, in fact, that helped get him hired for his legendary TV series, The Dick Van Dyke Show.  Seriously, if you're going to mention Paul Lynde recreating his stage role, how does one leave all that out??  Something a movie geek should know, or that a researcher would easily find out.

The movie was followed on the schedule that day by Oliver!  Or as it's actually, officially known -- since he wrote the book, music and lyrics -- "Lionel Bart's Oliver!"  And in Ms. Malone's commentary on the movie, nowhere did she once ever even mention the name...Lionel Bart.  How on earth do you do a commentary on Oliver!  -- sorry, on "Lionel Bart's Oliver!" -- and not even mention Lionel Bart??!  Forget for a moment that it's Lionel Bart you're not mentioning in "Lionel Bart's Oliver!"...once again, how do you not mention who wrote the music and lyrics (whoever the person is) for a musical??!!  

I let all that slide until the next Sunday, yesterday, when they aired the movie musical High Society.  Ms. Malone began by talking about last week they had three movie musicals based on Broadway musicals, and this week they have three more.  Except High Society is not based on a Broadway musical, but was an original.  (Yes, it's based on a movie which is based on a Broadway play, but that's very different.)  She also kept referring to the film as a "remake" of film and stage play, The Philadelphia Story.  But it's not -- any more than My Fair Lady is a "remake" of Pygmalion, or West Side Story is a "remake" of Romeo and Juliet.  It's a totally different creature, a musical adaptation.  That's another animal entirely from a "remake."  More to the point was a story she told about the film's Oscar nominations --

She mentioned High Society's two nominations for Best Song and Best Music Scoring.  And then told the tale of how there was a mix-up with "Best Story," confusing High Society with a film of the same title the previous year, until the other writers noticed it on the list of eligible movies and informed the Academy.  And then she added that the Motion Picture Academy apparently let those earlier writers keep the plaque with their nomination, noting with a smile that "I don't know if that's true, but I hope it is."  The problem is that just moments earlier, she said that the movie only got two nominations -- neither of which you'll recall was for Best Story.  So, by her own words, just seconds earlier, there is zero possible way that the writers would have kept a "Best Story" nomination plaque.  Since, by her own words, it didn't get a Best Story nomination!  And it doesn't matter if she did the research about that anecdote or someone else did -- anyone reading the copy could have easily noticed that.

To be fair, the movie that followed High Society on the TCM schedule was The Music Man, and she did a respectable job introducing it.  There was much more she could have added, like that the film's director Morton DaCosa (who she mentions) also directed the Broadway production.  A small, but valuable item, as long as you're mentioning him.  And that several cast members of the movie other than Robert Preston recreated their Broadway roles.  Pert Kelton (as Mama Paroo), The Buffalo Bills barbershop quarter, and Harry Hickox (who played the adversarial traveling salesman).  But still, it was a solid introduction.

And she also did a reasonable job with the following movie, 1776.  Yet even at this it was largely surface.  For instance, she mentioned that Peter Hunt directed the film -- but not that he had also directed the stage version.  She mentioned, too, that the production used much of the original Broadway cast -- but not that for the other roles, almost everyone else in the movie had also appeared in either a touring production or subsequent Broadway cast of 1776.  And while she mentioned that the film only did moderately-well and got mediocre reviews, she importantly left out the reason why!  I mean, if you're going to criticize a movie (especially one you're about to present), while that's fair, though odd with no context, it would seem proper to point out the reason for the criticism:  that 40 minutes of the movie had been cut out!  And left unsaid is that it's only been in recent years after intense research tracking down lost material and meticulous restoration (including footage that very conservative producer Jack L. Warner had ordered destroyed for it being too liberal) that the finally-approved "Director's Cut" movie -- which is now what TCM shows, as the filmmaker intended -- has finally received its share of long-overdue acclaim. Bizarrely, and I personally think unnecessarily, she even doubled-down after the film by quoting from bad reviews, rather than noting that the stage version (which is what this final just shown far-more closely matches) had not only won the Tony Award as Best Musical, but also the Pulitzer Prize..

As I said, I know that this is all niggling.  And it's only just a small handful of observations.  To be clear, it's actually not meant as a specific singling-out of Alicia Malone -- who does seem to have a knowledge of and love of movies, far more than the channel's main host Ben Mankiewicz -- just that with the luck of the draw she's the person I've most recently seen and can comment on.  (And have generally gotten to the point where I skip past what Mankiewicz has to say.)  But I repeat.  It's the culmination of A LOT of errors and glaring, core omissions I've seen on TCM for quite a while now, none of which I've written down or can remember the details of, and these are only the small handful of examples from just two days the past week to serve as examples of the larger issue.  And -- importantly -- because TCM prides and markets itself as the depository of movies as an important part of American culture (something they do a great job of in their presentation and much else, including festivals, seminars and original featurettes), it's not nit-picking to notice when they slide so far off the track so often in their commentary of that history.

​There, I got that out of the way.  For now.

Last year, on the day of the Oscars, I wrote the following, about a quest I've been on.

A long while back, I was on a mini-mission to get the Motion Picture Academy to open their Oscar broadcast with a particularly wonderful song that, though it had a bit of shelf-life in country music (reaching #10 on the country charts), I figured they wouldn't know.  I actually came close -- not to accomplishing my task, but having access to making the suggestion -- when my former boss at Universal Studios, Bob Rehme, was made president of the Academy.  Alas, I didn't have the contact information that would have helped and didn't make the effort -- which probably wouldn't have been too difficult, even it was before Google searches -- to track it down (hence never getting beyond being just a "mini-mission").

The idea time has long-since passed, since the group who sang the song, the Statler Brothers, have retired, and also some of the references in the song -- while many are still classic -- aren't all likely as impactful on today's audience.  Still, it's a very fun song, and would make an enjoyable number in the middle of the broadcast, sung by a cobbled-together quartet of movie stars singing.  Or the Statlers themselves could come out of retirement.  They did briefly a couple years ago for an event when elected into a country music Hall of Fame.

But no, that's not going to happen.  But it doesn't stop me from at least presenting the song on the day of the Oscar broadcast.  So, here it is -- one of the most affectionate and clever songs I've heard about movies. And it fits perfectly into the portfolio of "list" songs that the Statlers were so well-known for.

Indeed, the name of the song is "The Movies."

There's one change from previous years.  When I've posted the song in the past, it was a video with Jimmy Fortune who had replaced Lew DeWitt who'd had to retire for health reasons.  But I've found a video with all four original Statlers, all the more notable since it was Lew DeWitt (on your far right, with the guitar) who wrote the song.

[Note: Since posting this article, the video below seems to have been removed.  However, here's a link to the version with Jimmy Fortune that I've posted in the past.]

There was an Oscar controversy this year when the Motion Picture Academy announced that they would only be presenting two of the five Best Original Song nominees -- which was just such a bizarre decision, taking out one of the few actually entertainment moments of the broadcast.  That decisions appears to have been happily reversed, but it prompted to think this would be an appropriate video today, with the telecast tomorrow.  It's also wildly fun.

This is a montage of ever Academy Award-winning Best Song from 1934 through 2017!  A few things worth noting:  One is that I found it interesting how many songs are now seen as standards that most people likely have no idea were in movies, let alone won the Oscar.  Also, the Oscar-winner for 1949 was in the news just a few months ago -- which I suspect will surprise people that it had won an Oscar.  (Also, note in the clip that in the original version, it is sung two different ways, contrary to the controversy.)  And finally, the little kid singing with Frank Sinatra in the 1959 winning song is Eddie Hodges, who three years earlier starred on Broadway as the lisping Winthrop Paroo in The Music Man.  One other thing stands out -- songs clearly were a whole lot more central to movies up until about 15 years ago.

On this week's 3rd and Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America, the guest is screenwriter and multiple Oscar & WGA nominee, David Magee, who wrote Mary Poppins Returns, as well as such films as  Life of Pi and Finding Neverland.

I wrote about this a while back, but the video wasn't available.  It is now, very happily.  I don't know how long it will be up, hopefully a long while, but for now I want to jump back in.

This is the one reason why the movie version of Hello, Dolly! is worth it.  That's not to say the movie is bad and shouldn't have been made.  It's an okay movie, some things in it are very good -- and it was a massive hit on stage, so of course it was going to be made, and deserved to be.  But it was massively miscast, and so that throws the movie off, a story that exists in large part of because of its charge has only a minimum of it. But this one moment in one scene explodes with charm.  And it's because they had the good sense to put Louis Armstrong in the "Hello, Dolly!" title song number.  And in a way that fits perfectly and actually make sense.

Louis Armstrong's recording of "Hello, Dolly!" was one of the biggest selling songs in the history of singles.  I think at the time it was the #3 best-selling songs ever.  It knocked the Beatles out of first place on the Billboard list.  It's called one of the reasons the Broadway show became the hit show it did.  It was massive.  In fact, I've told the story that when I saw Louis Armstrong at the Ravinia Music Festival the summer that his recording was released, the response from the crowd was SO wildly enthusiastic that he had to sing SIX encores of it!!!  Really.  No exaggeration.  (It may have even been more.)  He sang the song all the way through in its entirety three times.  The other times he just sang reprises.  But still  Six encores.

So, when they made the movie of Hello, Dolly!, he was so indelibly associated with the song, even having nothing to do with the show, that the filmmakers were smart enough to try and get Satchmo in the film -- and in the title song.  And they way they did so was really smart.  One of the plot points of the scene is that there's a dance contest at the Harmonia Gardens restaurant where Dolly is returning to for the first time in years.  Which means there must be a band there, to play for the contest.  And so...they made Louis Armstrong the bandleader.  Really smart.

And they do a great job hiding his appearance.  He's in the scene throughout the number in a few places, but you just see a bandleader from the back, and give it no thought, it's just natural.  And then, finally, when Dolly -- played by Barbra Streisand -- came by the band, he finally notices her and turns around...and to the joy of the audience, it's -- wait, oh, my God, it's Louis Armstrong!!  And better still, without changing a single word, the lyrics he sings welcoming Dolly back fit perfectly.  Including the line, "It's Louis, Dolly," which he sang on his famous recording.

I wish the clip had more of the lead-in, to set up the wonderful moment of reveal.  And I also wish Barbara Streisand would have been more comfortable when sharing the moment to Louis Armstrong and letting him have the spotlight, rather than taking some of the attention.  But to her credit, she did agree to share it with him,  I'm sure she could have said she didn't want anyone else in the scene, knowing that the moment absolutely would be his.  And ultimately, it is his moment and there's nothing anyone can do to distract from that, and at least the two performers do work lovely together.  

And most of all, this is pure charm, down to his final, joyous, endearing wave at the end, my favorite part in the number.  An appearance beautifully done that makes the film totally worth it for this moment alone.  Recording Satchmo so smartly on film in The Song for posterity.

(Note: When their scene ends, with that final wave, the video continues with the rest of the number.  Your choice whether to keep watching.)

I just love this.  For how good it is, and just that they had the wisdom to do it, and do  it so properly.
​​

​A few years ago, my friend Vicki Riskin asked me to read the first draft of her new book that she'd just finished writing.  I said I was very happy too -- though in truth as happy as I was, I was also wary, almost terrified.  After all, while most writers say that they want your honest opinion, they don't.  What they want is to hear you say, "This is my absolute 100% honest opinion -- not since William Faulkner has literature moved me so much."

But this was more of a challenge.  Not only was it a book that Vicki was giving me, over 400 pages, not a screenplay that one can breeze though in a couple hours, but far, far, FAR more problematic is that it was a memoir about her parents.  If I didn't like -- no, if I didn't love -- the book, how on earth do you tell someone that their story about their parents isn't any good.

The added challenge here is that Vicki's parents were renowned.  Her father was screenwriter Robert Riskin, one of the founders of what is now the Writers Guild of America, as well as the long-time partner of director Frank Capra, and the Oscar-winning screenwriter for It Happened One Night (the first film to win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress).  Robert Riskin was also the writer of Mr. Deeds Comes to Town, Meet John Doe, You Can't Take It With You, Lost Horizon, Lady for a Day (which was later remade by Capra, as well, as Pocketful of Miracles), and many, many more.  And he headed the U.S. government's Bureau of Motion Pictures during WWII. (I wrote about him in more detail here.)  And her mother was even more famous -- honest -- the actress Fay Wray, best-known, of course, for starring in King Kong, but also with a half-century-long career of making more than 100 films, and even wrote Broadway plays and books. And an autobiography with one of the best titles ever -- On the Other Hand.
​

I knew that Vicki was an excellent writer.  She herself is a former president of the Writers Guild. And the writer and producer of numerous screenplays and TV movies.  (Not to mention a former practicing psychologist, an international board member for 12 years of Human Rights Watch, and recipient of the WGA's Valentine Davies Award for "bringing honor to writers everywhere.")  But writing a book is another matter entirely from a screenplay.  Especially one that's a memoir of your parents.

So, it was with great trepidation that I opened the fist page of that first draft with clenched fingers and clenched jaw.  And it's important that you know all this as I dive into my reaction to it all.

The book was tremendous.

I don't say this lightly.  Or as a friend of Vicki's.  I say it in relief. I was terrified about what to say if to her it wasn't any good. By page 30, I was overjoyed. By the end, I was sorry to see it over.  And I said this to her not to be nice, but knowing that if I'm not honest with the author when they've given me a draft to read for comments, I don't do them any good.  Worse, I'm doing them a disservice because they can't fix what needs work.  And I did give her  some comments about things I thought should be addressed.  But the overriding first comment was that she'd written an absolutely wonderful book.

And before I go any further, it's important for me to interrupt here to say that I'm not alone in thinking this, because after battling the hellish and uphill world of publishing, Vicki broke through the near-impenetrable walls and sold the book to Pantheon Books (part of Knopf Doubleday) and it's being released in just a few weeks, on February 26, 2019.  The title is Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir.  

But the main reason I loved the book is that it did in a memoir what I look for when reading biographies of any sort.  I tend to wade in very warily when I read biographies, most-especially celebrity biographies.  What I like in any memoir is not so much that it's just nice tales of famous people's lives, but that it's as much a history book of the times with "edges" and shadings that give context.  And to my great pleasure, this is that.  It is not a mere collection of stories by a loving daughter putting her family world in the most-shining light, but rather about the Depression, the Golden Age of Hollywood, world war, McCarthyism (with her father being a target, despite his work for the government's war effort) and more -- at the center of which are the two separate lives of the author's parents pushing through it all until they finally meet.  Fascinatingly, that meeting doesn't even come until the last third of the book, so it's like following a winding path of successes and major hurdles before simply getting to that point.
 
And its portrait of Hollywood is no snapshot thing, but encompassing since her mother's 57-year movie career began in the silent film era up to an acclaimed TV movie with Henry Fonda in 1980, the true-story Gideon's Trumpet (written in a nice bit of life's kismet by her son-in-law, and Vicki's husband, David Rintels).  And Vicki's father's career started with SIX movies in 1931 -- including the classic Platinum Blonde with Jean Harlow -- and continued through TV work in the mid-1950s, before his untimely death from a stroke.  And included his involvement with Frank Capra and also in the creation of the then-called Screen Writers Guild..

(Okay, here's another quote about the book, worth mentioning since it specifically is in regards to the Golden Age, from Kirk Douglas.  "I was always curious about life in Hollywood before I came here. I found out in this fascinating book. And wow! What a story it is!")

​And the thing is, the book doesn't just tell Hollywood Golden Age stories about her parents -- but from all manner of perspectives.  There is a long, detailed, fascinating diversion into the life history of Merian C. Cooper, who directed King Kong, that is as adventurous and odd as that famous movie itself.  And some of the best stories in the book have nothing to do with her parents at all, but are about that era in Hollywood.

(I'll digress a moment with my favorite story from the book about the screenwriter Jo Swerling who was one of Robert Riskin's closest friends -- and who with his wife Florence were godparents to Vicki. Swerling was a highly-accomplished writer whose many credits included It's a Wonderful Life, The Pride of the Yankees, and co-writer of the Broadway musical -- and its film adaptation -- Guys and Dolls.  Swerling was a no-nonsense fellow not easily pushed around and working at the time at Columbia Studios, run by the dictatorial and oppressive Harry Cohn.  One day Swerling's wife came to visit him at the studio.  She got flustered this day and rammed her car in the parking lot into Harry Cohn's very expensive Rolls Royce.  The tyrannical Cohn was furious and came storming into Jo Swerling's office.  "What the hell was your wife doing smashing into my car?!" he screamed.  Swerling calmly looked back and finally replied, "She probably thought you were in it.")

The book also includes my favorite "writer's story" that I'd read long before I even met Vicki (in fact, when I was still in college) and as it happens is attributed to her father.  Though Vicki knows the tale, she notes that she's never been able to verify whether it's true or apocryphal.  When Robert Riskin and Frank Capra teamed up on their series of classic movies, it was director Capra who got all the acclaim, known throughout the press and to movie audiences for his "Capra Touch."  Indeed, Capra was happy to push his prominence throughout his career, and when writing his autobiography called it The Name Above the Title.  One day, as the story goes, Robert Riskin came into Capra's office, dropped a ream of blank paper on the desk, pointed to it and supposedly said, to the eternal gratitude of screenwriters everywhere, "Let's see you give that the famous Capra Touch."

But more that wonderful stories like this, the book is about a much larger world that eventually brings these two, endearing people together.
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Helping too is that it's wonderfully written by a daughter who is herself a terrific, professional writer with great skill and insight.  The risk of all memoirs like this is that it will fall into adulation, and in fairness while there are a few times when the book does creep towards that, it consistently pulls itself away by adding context, further depth and then moves on.  I sense that's because (beyond being so well-written) underneath it all is the running theme that the best biographies have in making them not just specific on fascinating lives, but universal, asking who we are and how did we get here?  The book is a gem.

For those interested, you can pre-order it here.  And if you want to read more about the book, or people involved, or see more photos, this is the website for it all.