1960s girls on London underground

Julie Christie of course, and below: Brigitte Bardot, circa 1955, and a guy - me, in 1966 .... thankfully the tube is more modern now, even if  more overcrowded. 

I didn't know they had met ... (1)

Errol Flynn and Brigitte Bardot, Cannes, 1956. Talk about one star rising and the other descending ....

Showpeople: 1956: Royalty, MM, BB, Anita & Joan is not pleased ! + Belinda and the Rank girls.

What a glamorous night, at the 1956 Royal Film Performance, all in 90 seconds (below): this was the one Marilyn Monroe attended - I didn't know Brigitte Bardot and the recently departed Anita Ekberg were there as well, did the girls get to chat?. as - a decade later - Julie Christie, Catherine Deneuve and Ursula Andress did at the 1966 Royal Perf, as per my previous posts on that ... Showpeople label. 

Ekberg (next to Joan Crawford, below) was with her husband, the attractive British actor Anthony Steele. Bardot had not yet exploded on the scene with AND GOD CREATED WOMAN, this would have been about the time she appeared in Dirk's DOCTOR AT SEA. Sylvia Syms (in her MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER phase!) and Vic Mature were there and er, Norman Wisdom and John Gregson. The line-up is in alphabetical order, that should sort out any diva tantrums - so its Bardot, Ian Carmichael, Crawford, Ekberg,  Gregson - with Mature and Monroe further down the line ...

Joan Crawford was less than complimentary on the girls for being late and not attending rehearsals:
"If you want my opinion, far too many actresses today are little more than tramps and tarts. The Queen is a lady and expects to meet other ladies. Most of today's actresses can't even act politely. Arlene Dahl, Marilyn Monroe, and Anita Ekberg didn't even show up for rehearsals. And Monroe's hairdresser was still doing her hair while Her Majesty was on her way up the staircase. And when Monroe finally got there, she still didn't know how to curtsey. I felt so ashamed."
Below: more '50s glamour: some of the Rank Organisation girls at maybe another 1956 Royal Film event: Belinda Lee, Maureen Swanson, Shirley Eaton, Mary Ure and June Thorburn.
The James Bond golden girl Shirley Eaton is the only one still here, in her late 70s. Belinda was killed in a car accident in 1961 aged 25, and June Thorburn (tom thumb) in a airplane crash, aged 36 in 1967, Swanson married into the English nobility and died in 2011, Ure died in mysterious circumstances after the opening night of a play she was appearing in, in 1975, aged 42. Thanks to that fabulous site Poseidon's Underworld for the photograph. 

Pity these newsreels were not in colour, see the 1957 and 1966 Royal Film Performances and the London 1955 A STAR IS BORN premiere at Showpeople label.

Happy birthday, Brigitte

80 today - like Sophia Loren last week! 

From HELEN OF TROY's handmaiden (its on again today) to DOCTOR AT SEA with Dirk and NERO'S LOST WEEKEND, and then those Vadim films which exploded into the mid-50s with AND GOD CREATED WOMAN when she was a sensation. She really was a new archetype, the female James Dean as she scorned convention. I couldn't get to see them at the time, but later I liked the torrid HEAVEN FELL THAT NIGHT. This "B.B." may have been Vadim's invention, but she proved a delightful comedienne with items like UNE PARISIENNE, COME DANCE WITH ME, BABETTE GOES TO WAR etc. and a serious dramatic actress in LA VERITE. If you were an early teen back then in the early 60s BB was THE pin-up, while girls everywhere copied that tousled hair and gingham skirt look.

Unlike Loren, Bardot was never that interested in acting or the trappings of stardom, and came to hate it all, but then the press hounded her so much, as captured in Malle's VIE PRIVEE with Marcello in 63, but she was perfect in Godard's CONTEMPT and a delight in Malle's VIVA MARIA with Moreau. That was a big hit in 1966. The London cinema, The Curzon, that a friend and I went to to see it was full!
I like her too in Bourguignon's TWO WEETS IN SEPTEMBER in '67, but she shouldn't have bothered with SHALAKO (where she and Boyd looks trashed and used up a mere decade after their 1958 Vadim hit), and she more or less departed the movies by the early '70s, but was still newsworthy as her romances and life at St Tropez kept the paparazzi busy. But she certainly was a major star - up there with Marilyn - and cultural influence in the '50s, with those books about her which had all those intellectuals in a tizzy.
She leads a different kind of life these days, and her politics may be suspect, but she has done a lot for animal welfare, particularly against seal clubbing etc. so one wishes her well. More on BB at label - we like her a lot now ! 

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 final (?) dollop of Trash ...

... as we count down to 1,000 posts. (15 to go before I sign off for a while). We like a good or so-bad-its-good Trash classic here at the Projector, there's of course 'the higher trash' and 'the lower trash' as Pauline Kael once wrote. Here are some more delirious farragos to enjoy. See Trash label for lots on those Lana Tuner sudsers we like, and some truly awfully enjoyable bad movies, with Susan ! Bette ! Carroll Baker ! and more.

THESE OLD BROADS. Finally, a look at this 2001 telemovie about the problems of staging a reunion of 3 ageing stars: Debbie Reynolds, Joan Collins and Shirley McLaine, and Elizabeth Taylor plays a few scenes as their ballsy agent! How about that for star wattage? This could have been fabulous and is scripted by Carrie Fisher – but somehow it all goes horrendously wrong. It is just a bad cheap-looking telemovie; the scene with the 3 divas wowing the boys in the gay bar with their version of “Get Happy” is hilariously gruesome and other scenes just go on pointlessly. Debbie is fun as usual, Collins in horrendously over the top and McLaine is just her regular sourpuss. Her son, played by Jonathan Silverman, is amusing though as he tries to placate them all to get the show made.

Elizabeth seems to be having a whale of a time as the raucous agent, but her solo scene with Debbie is very odd - It is shot in continuous two-shots with the camera looking over the shoulder of whichever one is listening to the other speak – but they are never completely in the same frame together, so maybe that was filmed with each star and a stand in? Maybe director Matthew Diamond knows?

Reynolds and Taylor were reputedly friends again by then, but maybe both were not available at the same time that day ... though all four pose together in the group shots.

MARTIN AND LEWIS, another telemovie, from 2002, purporting to be all about Martin & Lewis, that oddball duo who were so big in the '50s before their solo careers. Again, its the casting what makes it ... you would not immediately think of Jeremy Northam as Dean Martin, but he gets that Dino laid-back vibe just right, and WILL & GRACE's Sean Hayes nails that manic Jerry Lewis schtick which used to drive me nuts. 
Together they are ideal, as they play out that rise to fame in those '40s nightclubs and then the movies in the '50s, pitting the suave lounge act of Martin against the buffoon version of Jerry's stand-up comedy. It captures Eisenhower America nicely, but again, how much of it is factual, as Dino and Jerry finally can't bear to be together, Dean wants his own career and Jerry can't see how much he is suffocating him. Directed by John Gray. 

MARRIAGE GO ROUND. Now you know how I like Susan Hayward, and how much I appreciate James Mason - just see labels. Put them together and what do you get? A tedious unfunny comedy based on a Broadway play, which also featured the stunning Julie Newmar as the visiting Swedish bombshell who wants professor Mason to father her ideal child, to the amusement and consternation of his wife, Susan, another college professor. It has that 1960 look in spades and I love that spacious house (by Frank Lloyd Wright I think - like the house in A SUMMER PLACE or that specially built one for NORTH BY NORTHWEST, capturing that mid-century look - love those sofas and cushions...). James and Susan though are in Rock & Doris territory and have nothing much to work with. 

Watching it I felt they would have been ideal casting in 1966 for the roles of George and Martha in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? The Burtons, excellent as they are, are really stunt casting here. By 1966 Mason and Hayward would have been about the right ages and could certainly go to town on those roles - even if no longer considered top box-office. You can imagine Susan spitting out "What a dump" and "You married me for it", while LOLITA and GEORGY GIRL showed how Mason could have approached downtrodden George - I think Albee wrote it with him in mind.
Walter Lang directs and it has that nice 20th Century Fox Cinemascope look.  I like the scene where Julie wows the guys in the pool, including Trax Colton, a Fox discovery who went on to star with Jayne Mansfield in IT HAPPENED IN ATHENS, (that is now available again and on its way to me, so more on that later).  

COME DANCE WITH ME. Not strictly Trash per se, this remains a delicious 1959 French comedy with BB in her prime - dig that gingham skrit look with the tousled hair that girls in their millions copied, as Brigitte dances in this amusing scene - as mentioned before at BB label.  
In this one she goes undercover as a dance teacher to track down the murderer of the dance teacher (sizzling Dawn Addams) who was blackmailing BB's dentist husband Henri Vidal - who died that year aged 40 - Vidal label. BB dances up a storm and its nicely amusing, taking in as it does gay Paris by night, as the killer turns out to be a drag queen ! Its the best of that BB boxset of 5 titles, though I liked TWO WEEKS IN SEPTEMBER too, a long missing Swinging London item from 1967.

Showpeople: Girls with guitars ...

Girls with guitars ...

Bardot

Francoise Hardy

Marie Laforet

Joni Mitchell - still playing after all those years.

Joan Armatrading

and stars and their disks:  Romy and Alain, 1959 - and Rock, sometime in the fifties.

 

Coming soon: Rock (another, like Dirk, who knew/met everyone) and his pals at play.

Forgotten '60s movies: Dear Brigitte

DEAR BRIGITTE is another of those gloopy comedies 20th Century Fox turned out in the early '60s featuring James Stewart, and directed once again by veteran Henry Koster. Here in 1965 Stewart (plus hairpiece) is the quirky professor and poet, who lives with his family on a riverboat. He always has a smart, spunky wife (its Maureen O'Hara in MR HOBBS TAKES A VACATION in '62, Audrey Meadows in TAKE HER SHE'S MINE in '63 (which I have not seen, but will before too long) and here it is Glynis Johns - last teamed with Stewart in 1951's NO HIGHWAY (also directed by Koster, who also helmed Stewart's HARVEY). There, Glynis was the air hostess helping Stewart's boffin about that dangerous flight ... here, they could be that married couple 15 years later ....

There is also of course a blonde daughter who again (as in MR HOBBS) has Fabian as a boyfriend. Fabian was amusing in HOUND DOG MAN and NORTH TO ALASKA but often ended up playing second banana to older stars like Stewart, Wayne, Crosby etc. Glynis (still here in her 90s) shines here, after her mother role in MARY POPPINS, I met her the next year 1966 when she was doing a play in London, and remember her enormous false eyelashes!  Wonderful Alice Pearce is also amusing here as the lady in the unemployment office with an eye for Professor Stewart ...

In DEAR BRIGITTE the professor's son Erasmus (freckled Billy Mumy) turns out to be a maths genius, attracting the attention of crooked John Williams. Erasmus though has no musical talent but writes letters to French star Brigitte Bardot - surely though he could not have seen many or any of her films? The plot takes us to Paris for the highlight of the film - a few minutes with Brigitte herself who appears very charming and friendly here and she even gives Erasmus an adorable little puppy! It is all pleasant, forgetttable stuff, so forgettable in fact that I had not seen it since its 1965 release and it never showed here again! 

We loved Stewart in the '30s: MR DEEDS and DESTRY; in the '40s: his Macaulay Connor in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, his films with his old pal Margaret Sullavan, his George Bailey in Bedford Falls in ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE; in the '50s with those Anthony Mann westerns, and Hitchcock classics - 1958 saw his last leading man roles in VERTIGO and BELL BOOK AND CANDLE, then 1959 saw the start of his older character roles in ANATOMY OF A MURDER. He did some more westerns: Ford's THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALLANCE is highly regarded (though I never cared for it myself, he seemed too old here for a start), HOW THE WEST WAS WON, SHENANDOAH, and those Fox comedies where he was the bumbling parent - rather an acquired taste now.  The best of his later roles was as the doctor with the equally aged John Wayne in THE SHOOTIST in 1976, where it was touching seeing the two old warriors having a last hurrah. (He died aged 89 in 1997).

Some more Brigitte:  with Robert Hossein in LOVE ON A PILLOW or THE WARRIOR'S REST in 1962 - which was a tedious chore to sit through, while BB and  Henri Vidal in COME DANCE WITH ME, 1959, is an absolute delight, totally charming with BB going undercover as a dance instructer to save her dentist husband from blackmail by scheming Dawn Addams; and with Vidal again and Charles Boyer in UNE PARISIENNE, 1957, another pleasant comedy by Michel Boisrond. 

We liked BB a lot in 1967's TWO WEEKS IN SEPTEMBER, at BB label...

In truth BB's career was winding down by then, 1965 - she had one great movie left, Malle's delightful arthouse hit VIVA MARIA with Moreau, in 1966, and I liked her TWO WEEKS IN SEPTEMBER from '67, but that dreadful Spanish western SHALAKO trashed her and the rest of the cast in 1968, and she had finished with movies by 1973, as she devoted her time to her animal welfare interests. 
BB sang too - I remember having a disk of hers "Sidonie" from the early '60s.

Forgotten '60s movies: BB's Two weeks in September

Serge Bourguignon was one of those new French directors in the early '60s - we didn't get to see his work though - the award-winning SUNDAYS AND CYBELE never showed during my London years, and his 1965 modern western THE REWARD (with Max Von Sydow) never played here at all - and his 1967 Bardot film TWO WEEKS IN SEPTEMBER also mysteriously sank without trace. Its one I had been meaning to catch up with, particularly as a lot of it is set in London in that mythical Swinging year - when I was 21 and we had BLOW-UP in the cinemas and The Beatles Sgt Pepper on the record player, and The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" on the radio ... 

Its marvellous seeing TWO WEEKS IN SEPTEMBER now - its another great London movie, with its model girls, (Mike Sarne is the photographer! giving David Hemmings a run for his money), discoteques, the red mini car lanky Laurent Terzieff drives around in,  and BB looking fabulous. I thought VIVA MARIA in '66 was her last great picture, but she is equally joyful and more mature here.

BB is Cecile, married to the rather dull, older Jean Rochefort - she is too animated and in the moment for him, is she a trophy wife, did she marry for security? - it is not explained. She meets a handsome man Laurent Terzieff (my discovery of last year in 1959's LA NOTTE BRAVA, see label) and his adorable dog. He also turns up in London where she has gone on a model assignment. Cecile tries to resist but soon they are getting serious, and then he drives that red mini off to Scotland, where they meet and stay with eccentric laird James Robertson Justice. 
This is the heart of the film as our runaway lovers have their two weeks in September - cue lots of sea walks, gulls, Scottish countryside, as our lovers realise their idyll cannot last forever, as they grapple with passion and its repercussions. There is an amusing scene too where he reads her feet ... It gets rather like UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME here, with even a lilting chorus. 
Bourguignon creates some great images in scope and colour and frames his couple nicely. Back in London, there is a row - a flight to Hong Kong, a mad dash to the airport, and a bittersweet ending .... 

I rather liked it actually, BB looks marvellous (as does Terzieff) and it fits in with her iconography. They do smoke rather a lot though ... 
More BB soon: UNE PARISIENNE from '57, LOVE IS MY PROFESSION with Gabin in '59, and her minute or two in Fox's DEAR BRIGITTE in '65! Interestingly, BB and Loren were both born the same month: September 1934.