Summer reads: Carol, Arthur, John, more Mapp & Lucia ...

Some fabulous summer reads, for dipping into, or greedily reading from cover to cover, as per those new MAPP & LUCIA items!

First a couple of perfect show-business memoirs, and a terrific new biograpy on skating legend, John Curry, a story that resonates very strongly now that athletes and sports people can come out without fear, how different it was then....

AMONG THE PORCUPINES: Carol Matthau was one of those originals I had heard about from various sources (and yes, she was the original for Holly Golightly). How marvellous to find she penned an engaging memoir back in 1992. Copies are still available folks! Carol was one of those people like Lauren Bacall, Dirk Bogarde or Rock Hudson who knew just about everybody. Here is the choice dust-jacket blurb:

A celebrated original in both New York and Hollywood, Carol Matthau (nee Grace) epitomizes a kind of glamour not known today: wife of William Saroyan (twice) and Walter Matthau (still), lifelong friend of Gloria Vanderbilt and Oona O'Neill Chaplin; muse and confidante to some of the century's most renowned writers (James Agee, Kenneth Tynan and Truman Capote - who divined his Holly Golightly as they breakfasted together in front of Tiffany's windows). But just beneath the look-no-further glitter lie the unique wit, wisdom and charm forged from private tragedy, privilege and a deep, powerful knowledge of love.

In her inimitable voice - salty, sly, incisive, hilarious - Carol tells the tales of her extraordinary roller-coaster life: from a lonely childhood in Depression-era foster homes to a fairy tale adolescence as a Park Avenue debutante, from terrifying bouts with Saroyan to sweet trysts with Matthau; from the high-society fetes of the Forties to glitzy Hollywood dinner parties to the ultimate social spectacle - the Oscars.

Filled with delicious meditations, anecdotes, and portraits of friends (Kay Kendall and Rex Harrison, Maureen Stapleton, Carson McCullers, Richard Avedon, Isak Dinesen and others), this is a tour of the high life on the arm of the original blithe spirit. 

Well yes, today's celebrities have a lot to learn before they are as effortlessly stylish as Carol Matthau. She died in 2003, aged 78 (Walter had died in 2000), but leaves a marvellous story. Her affectionate portraits of Kay and Rex are perfect too and nicely compement the memoirs of Rex and Lilli Palmer. Its the kind of book one does not want to end (like Lilli Palmer's CHANGE LOBSTERS AND DANCE) or Simone Signoret's NOSTALGIA ISN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE). 

Arthur Laurents (THE WAY WE WERE for which he wrote the screenplay aired on tv here over the weekend) was of course cut from a different cloth. Waspish and difficult he seems to have been disliked by quite a lot. He too wrote a fascinating memoir - I quoted from it in my review of SUMMERTIME (see below). - covering Broadway and Hollywood in the Golden Age, when he was one of the high fliers. Laurents (1918-2011) lived to be 92, his writing credits include Hitch's ROPE (below, right - Hitchcock was intrigued by Laurents' relationship with Farley Granger), ANASTASIA, THE TIME OF THE CUCKOO (the play which SUMMERTIME was based on), a favourite of ours: BONJOUR TRISTESSE, THE WAY WE WERE and THE TURNING POINT and the books for WEST SIDE STORY and GYPSY, among others. 

He too was very well connected so I am looking forward to a good read;  he also won numerous awards and directed productions of LE CAGE AUX FOLLES. He knew Barbra Streisand from the start of her career, when she was in I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE, before FUNNY GIRL. She rang him shortly before he died, just as he was sitting down to Sunday breakfast, so he told her to call back later - she did, as she was trying to get a new production of GYPSY up and runnng, despite now being too old to play Mama Rose ...

Like Gore Vidal, he was also a prominent gay, having a relationship with Farley Granger in the '40s and '50s, and then a long lasting relationship with an actor, Tom Hatcher. 

Now, ALONE - The Triumph and Tragedy of John Curry, by Bill Jones, a handsome new hardback, which just arrived today, I will be starting it right away. Curry seems a forgotten figure now, but in 1976 he skated to Olympic glory and overnight became world famous. He was awarded the OBE and showered with honours. Yet he remained a mystery to the world that had been dazzled by his gifts. 

Curry had changed his sport from marginal curiosity to high art. Men's skating was supposed to be muscular, not sensual and ambiguous like this. But with Olympic gold came the revelation of his secret as he informed the world that he was gay. In the extraordinary years which followed, Curry battled to transform skating into a theatrical sensation worthy of Nureyev. At his magnificent peak he brought The Royal Albert Hall and the New York Met to their feet (I saw one of his spectaculars about then with my pal Sally who was besotted about him). But behind his epic struggles lay a tortured, lonely man of labyrinthine complexity (wasn't it ever so?).

It is a story of childhood nightmares, sporting rivalries, homophobia, cold war politics, financial ruin and deep personal tragedy. Here is revealed the restless, impatient, often dark soul of a man whose words could lacerate, whose skating moved audiences to tears, and who - like many of his closest friends - died of AIDS, aged just 44, in 1994.

This chimes in with my reviews of THE NORMAL HEART and MY NIGHT WITH REG recently (gay interest label) and the fact that more Americans died of AIDS than in Vietnam. Also we realise now that today's actors and sporting stars have it easy when they come out with all the support they get on social media and from the press (Ben Whishaw had a big spread and cover story in last weekend's "Sunday Times", while Tom Daley and Ian Thorpe are the latest sports stars to come out to universal approval). How different it all was in the '70s ... Curry too had a secret relationship with actor Alan Bates (who visited him before he died), which shows how one could keep things under wraps in that pre-internet, pre-cellphone world. 

And now a return to Tilling, and the delightful books about MAPP & LUCIA, by E.F. Benson, and the television series (now on dvd) made in 1982 where Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales and Nigel Hawthorne are perfection, as indeed are all the cast, as it captures that 1930s dreamworld where well to do people had domestic staff. It was filmed too at Rye, where Benson lived, as per my previous post on them, as the Mapp & Lucia label.  There were six book intially, but there are now four more, written in the style of Benson taking the characters forward through the war years and after. Indeed the latest one, AU RESERVOIR, kills them all off interestingly in old age, so I don't imagine there will be any more. 

LUCIA IN WARTIME and LUCIA TRIUMPHANT by Tim Holt are great reads, but LUCIA ON HOLIDAY and AU RESERVOIR by Guy Fraser-Sampson are simply too much. LUCIA ON HOLIDAY takes us to Italy, Lake Como to be precise, where the Mapp-Flints (thanks to a generous Majarajah) follow Lucia and Georgie to their luxury hotel, and Georgie - now with his opera singer muse Olga Braceley - becomes entranced with his superb, handsome new valet Francesco (who is not what he seems) with his addictive 'turksh' cigarettes. 
Real people are also written in, we get the famous writer and poet Gabriele D'Annunzio here, while AU RESERVOIR writes Noel Coward and John Gielgud into the story as they appear in several chapters, as Mapp tries (in vain of course) to prove that Lucia does not know them. How it is all worked out is simply too delicious for words. Perfect summer reading.

Paris in 1957 ... magic time.

Rome in the early '60s - the LA DOLCE VITA era; London in the mid-'60s - it swung; New York in the '70s - tough and gritty .... the zeitgeist always moves on and comes full circle again ..... it was Paris in the 1890s, that Fin de Siecle era, and in that jazz age the 1920s with Hemingway and Fitzgerland and the 'Lost Generation', but in the late '50s Paris was also, it seems, the place to be. Hollywood studios must have been falling over each other there (like they were in Rome in 1962).

Fred and Audrey were doing FUNNY FACE .... with Donen creating a magical Paris, not least with Audrey being photographed Avedon-style, in all those locations ...

Fred and Cyd heading up SILK STOCKINGS .... I wonder how much of this was actually filmed in Gay Paree ?

Gene Kelly, often in Paris - got in the act with his dance troupe LES GIRLS - but this was actually filmed at MGM - Kay Kendall's only film actually made in Hollywood, but George Cukor and Heuningen Heune gave it the required French look, and with Orry Kelly's clothes, the girls were perfect. I simply love their French apartment, which seems to be on several levels ... 

Otto too had Jean Seberg driving around Paris in those moody black and white scenes in his seminal BONJOUR TRISTESSE - more Sagan - or dancing while - who else? - Juliette Greco intoned that theme song ...before Godard teamed her with Belmondo in some other French classic ...

1958 saw Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh in Paris in their comedy THE PERFECT FURLOUGH, an early Blake Edwards film. Later in 1961 Tony Perkins and Ingrid Bergman (right) were driving around Paris in Sagan's GOODBYE AGAIN - review at Bergman label - while Tony teamed again in Paris with Sophia for 1962's FIVE MILES TO MIDNIGHT. Hollywood was also in town for Ritt's PARIS BLUES with jazz musicians Newman and Poitier. By then the Nouvelle Vague was in full swing after Malle's LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD in 1958, and Truffaut's 400 BLOWS, Chabrol's LES COUSINS, Mocky's LES DRAGUEURS, another Paris-by-night opus, all 1959 ...

1962 saw Truffaut's JULES ET JIM in Paris, where Agnes Varda's CLEO FROM 5 TO 7, wandered around, waiting for her medical test results ... Audrey Hepburn of course practically lived in Paris with so many of hers set there ... 1957 also saw LOVERS OF MONTPARNASSE (left) about the painter Modigliani practically starving in a garret, with those quintessential Parisians Gerard Philipe and  Anouk Aimee,

Brigitte charmed us too as UNE PARISIENNE in 1957, with Henri Vidal, who was also (his last film) in her COME DANCE WITH ME (VOULEZ VOUS DANSER AVEC MOI?) in 1959 ...  more on all these at French label.

Next location: Australia and the Outback !!!

A glamorous weekend at the movies

Both PLEIN SOLEIL and BONJOUR TRISTESSE have been re-released and are back in selected specialist cinemas - seek them out if you are in London - and want to weekend in Italy or the South of France; alternatively, put the dvds on! (PLEIN SOLEIL - see THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY book, post below - is of course a perennial favourite of mine: it opened my eyes to art and beauty and Europe when I was 14 - will be out too on a restored Blu-Ray - different from the Criterion American one. I will have that next week ...).

Otto's BONJOUR TRISTESSE, from the Sagan best-seller, is also of course a marvellous treat and will look terrific on the big screen. Jean Seberg and Deborah Kerr are at their best here, and the movie still dazzles. See Bonjour Tristesse & Plein Soleil, Mr Ripley labels. One cinema in London, The Rio, is showing both of them, plus CLEOPATRA ! ...

Jean Seberg: In the French style ....

A trio of Seberg's best ....

Nice to see - and get - a new edition of IN THE FRENCH STYLE, another of 1963's stylish romantic dramas, featuring that perennial - the American girl in Europe. I have done reports on this before here, see Jean Seberg label. I like the cover of this, showing part of Jean's goodbye speech to Stanley Baker at that bittersweet airport meeting.

She is now that brittle playgirl, as opposed to the naive young innocent who first arrives in Paris - to learn how to paint and study art! We get her father's disapproval, the young man she first gets involved with, men about town like Stanley Baker who loves his foreign correspondent job more than her, as she becomes a "Citizen of Paris" and "embraces its endless parties and jaded view of love." Then there is the doctor who adores her and whom she decides to marry and go back to America with (played by a favourite writer of mine, James Leo Herlihy), all based on two Irwin Shaw (TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN) stories which make up this Robert Parrish film. It has that early '60s black-and-white international jetset look in spades, as Jean refines her American Girl in Paris after of course BREATHLESS ...

It is always a pleasure too to go back to 1958's BONJOUR TRISTESSE, her second film with Otto Preminger, from - that word again - the bittersweet Francoise Sagan tale. More on this too at Seberg label, and photographer Bob Willoughby's photos from the set, as above left. More on that at Bonjour Tristesse label.  IN THE FRENCH STYLE, below.

 

Another favourite is the 1965 MOMENT TO MOMENT, a late Mervyn LeRoy romantic thriller which we like a lot, Jean as I said before is perfection here in that Yves St Laurent wardrobe (which would still be very chic today), driving around St Paul de Vence in her red sportscar and taking her naval officer lover to the Colombe D'Or restaurant, while her husband is away. Add in Honor Blackman  (just after

her GOLDFINGER stint) as the maneater next door, a missing body, a husband and suspicious detectives and the stage is set for a fabulous drama. A lot of it is studio bound but the South of France locations are enjoyable too .... as is that Henry Mancini score.

These were Jean's good years, after Rossen's LILITH (one to re-see), before those darker late ones - that Chabrol thriller THE ROUTE TO CORINTH in '67 was enjoyable too. 

More French stuff next: R-Patz as BEL AMI ! 

Aimez-vous Brahms?

A new selection of Movies We Love! starting with the 1961 sudser GOODBYE AGAIN (others to include BLACK NARCISSUS, JOHNNY GUITAR, A LETTER TO 3 WIVES, ALL ABOUT EVE, NORTH TO ALASKA, LEGEND OF THE LOST, DONA HERLINDA AND HER SON, A BIGGER SPLASH, THE HISTORY OF ADELE H, WILD RIVER and ooh several others...)
GOODBYE AGAIN is a nice entry to those early '60s sudsers like IMITATION OF LIFE, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, A SUMMER PLACE, BACK STREET, ADA etc. this is a rather low-key one though in black and white, and again we zoom around Paris in the early 60s with rich spoilt Tony Perkins, and his rich bitch mother Jessie Royce Landis (a good role for Jessie here).

It is Ingrid Bergman's show though as 40ish Paula, a successful interior decorator, hired by Jessie and getting involved with her son Tony. Paula has been carrying on for 5 years with businessman Yves Montand who is certainly having his cake and eating it, often letting Paula down at the last minute when he picks up a new 'Maisie' (he calls them all Maisie...). Paula is used to this but longs for commitment. Tony is going to provide it in spades as he follows, woos, flatters and finally gets Paula, which of course in turn makes Montand jealous. There are nicely judged moments along the way as our stars eat, drink, dance and drive around Paris by day and night. Perkins' little boy act gets a bit tiresome actually - he has a nice drunk scene in a nightclub with singer Diahann Carroll, and interesting to see British actress Alison Legatt (the spinster sister in THIS HAPPY BREED) sharing his office where Perkins pretends to work.


Francoise Sagan's novel is nicely adapted here, though the end is amusing now - Paula sends Perkins away saying she is "too old" [Ingrid too old at 40!], when Montand decides to marry her - as his single life isn't quite so satisfying without her to return to. But once married he reverts to his old ways with a new Maisie, leaving Paula on her own again, rubbing night lotion into her face. A nice touch too is when she is driving and crying so she turns on the windscreen wipers as she thinks it is raining.

The older female does not fare too well in these Sagan stories: Kerr in BONJOUR TRISTESSE, Joan Fontaine in A CERTAIN SMILE or Bergman as Paula here. Litvak was good with actresses, viz his films with Davis, De Havilland, Kerr (THE JOURNEY) and Bergman previously in ANASTASIA. This is a nicely satisfying soap - Perkins after PSYCHO had a good run in Europe with some super ladies: Ingrid here, Mercouri (PHAEDRA), Orson's THE TRIAL with Moreau and Romy, with Loren again in FIVE MILES TO MIDNIGHT in '62 and Bardot in THE RAVISHING IDIOT.

Bonjour Tristesse

Staying with 1957 for now, I should have been at a screening of BONJOUR TRISTESSE last evening [part of the National Film Theatre's Deborah Kerr retrospective] but a knee injury intervened - apologies, Donal and Jerry (Timshelboy) - so its back to the dvd of this Otto Preminger classic, made in '57 for '58 release. That ace photojournalist Bob Willoughby was on the set (as he seems to have been on all the important-to-me movies of the late '50s, and he shot this classic shot of Seberg (above) and (botttom) best-selling author Francoise Sagan on set with Niven and Kerr.

David Niven plays a wealthy playboy, the father of teenaged Cecile (Jean Seberg). Cecile tolerates father’s girlfriends, particularly Mylene Demongeot, but doesn’t know what to make of the prudish Anne (Deborah Kerr), who will not cohabit with Niven until after they’re married. Feeling that her own relationship with her father will be disrupted by Anne’s presence and the plans for her further education, Cecile does her malicious best to break up the relationship, only to be beaten by Niven, who despite his promises of fidelity to Anne cannot give up his hedonistic lifestyle.

The combination of the daughter’s disdain and the father’s rakishness leads a fatal accident. Niven and Seberg continue pursuing their lavish but empty lifestyle, though both realize that their lack of moral fibre has destroyed a life, but was it an accident or suicide? The incestuous undertones of the original Sagan novel are only slightly downplayed in the film; the “tristesse” (sadness) is visually conveyed by filming the flashback scenes in colour and the opening and closing of the film in bleak black and white, as they drive and party around Paris - another Sagan best-seller "Aimez vous Brahms" filmed in 1961 as GOODBYE AGAIN is another bittersweet tale (which I must revisit) also with lots of driving around Paris by Anthony Perkins and Ingrid Bergman .... TRISTESSE is perfectly directed by Preminger with his SAINT JOAN star Seberg in her element here, Geoffrey Horne is her boyfriend, Juliette Greco sings the theme song "... my heart has no address, bonjour tristesse" in a nightclub and then the colour seeps in as the memories intrude ... Niven and Kerr are perfectly cast here, as opposed to their playing against type next in SEPARATE TABLES.