Greenbriar's Outlaw Week --- Part One
My truest definition of a hit movie is one that draws people who don't ordinarily look at movies. Jesse James in 1939 flushed patrons out of the hills that had never been in a theatre before. It was a hit the whole country wanted to see, and by far biggest of a western revival that included Dodge City, Stagecoach, and Union Pacific. JJ was an old west Grapes Of Wrath with Okies that fought back, its late 30's timing ideal. Jesse and Frank taking on railroads (code for banks, which they also robbed) made both contemporary heroes frankly recognized as such from opening credits (... for good or ill said an intro, though it was clear where sympathies lay). The biggest period-set hits are ones that trip modern concerns. Jesse James did in ways peculiar to 1939, and maybe to here-and-now's economy as well. It probably won't get Criterion hugs like Stagecoach, but for evoking an austere west, this is far more the genuine article. I'd call Jesse James nearest to purity of a silent outdoor show than any a major studio tendered through the whole Classic Era, a western remarkably stripped of artifice that characterized most such genre offerings. Henry King directed, having done so since 1916. He routinely cut dialogue as first order of business, hewing to conviction that pictures were better seen than heard. King's were rural sensibilities for having grown up in Virginia. Backwoods was preferred location and one he made most of, never so capably as here. Jesse James is countrified in the best and most evocative sense of that background all too often simulated in films. King went far off beaten location paths and found nature's last preserve of a nineteenth century he'd only barely have to redress.
They filmed Jesse James in and around Pineville, Missouri, a town beyond small that makes mine look like Metropolis, USA. Director King found it after scouting landscapes in his private plane. 1939 wasn't too late to uncover Civil War-era trains discarded rail side, as these were backwoods where, among myriad artifacts, horse buggies the James brothers might have ridden still saw practical use. Fox artisans modified Pineville's main street to a past century glow that came of having the real thing as foundation, which in this time capsule of a town, they did. Local folks played extras and a few of them spoke (you'll not mistake these for central casting). King had made Tol'able David and others deep in the sticks and had an unerring bead on natural settings. He'd be rewarded for such instinct with hectoring wires from Fox chief Darryl Zanuck, who maintained Jesse James' crew should come home and fake remaining exteriors on backlots with process screen assist. King must have called in plentiful markers to complete the shoot his way, and thanks be to posterity, he did, for Jesse James would not be half the show it is had DFZ's edict been observed (none of JJ's outdooring looks short-cutted, and I detect little rear projection). With regard creative and natural use of sound, Jesse James subs bird song and rivers running for music scored, a major lick for putting across a primitive backdrop that once-upon-a-time shielded outlaws. There are chases over field and wood that look like home movies the James boys might have shot given cameras, and a train robbery by night, a major advance, said King, in the progress of technicolor lensing, is marred only by Eastman processing done since and loss of three-strip elements that render impossible a true restoration for Jesse James.
Pineville still celebrates Jesse James Days during each year's August. The filming there remains uppermost of town events even after seventy years and counting. Attendance tends to around 2,500 for the four days they revel, and proceeds go to local volunteer firemen. Outdoor showing of the movie is a highlight. Fewer remain who stood before cameras, but sighting of grandparents and mostly gone neighbors persist. Think how many familiar faces (to Pineville residents) there are among the above mob surrounding Ty Power and Henry Fonda during a filming break. This photo, cribbed from my copy of Griffith and Mayer's The Movies, made a big impression upon mid-sixties acquiring of the book, being plain-faced (or rather thousands of faces) evidence of effect stars had on a movie-mad public. Pineville residents since may have forgotten Power and Fonda, but what fun to have had a major feature shot in your back yard, even if it's one folks way-back thrilled to. The closest we came was Thunder Road (several counties away, but it seemed like home) and a silent called Stark Love, directed by Griffith disciple Karl Brown and shot in these thar hills back in 1927. I attended a screening at Appalachian State University twenty or so years ago, where many in the audience yelled out names of locals they recognized upon that flickering, voiceless screen. Good thing Stark Love was run mute, for any mood accompaniment would surely have been drowned by who's who'ing from the audience (There's Great-Grandma!). I posted before about sentiment still accruing in Pinchot, Arkansas for A Face In The Crowd having been partly made there, and ongoing reminiscing over same. As to Jesse James Days, I'm sad for that time certain when no one will be left to spot loved ones among long-ago Pineville extras. A nice book written by Larry C. Bradley and published in 1980, Jesse James: The Making of a Legend, detailed impact the filming had on locals and preserved many anecdotes they passed down.
Not that Jesse James was any textbook of the badman's actual life. Liberties they took were many and varied, despite director King's consultation with James family members (including Frank's still living son). There was no denying Hollywood convention even among remote environs, and who cared then about strict adherence to fact? Zanuck even considered alternate ends where Jesse survives (two such finishes were made, tested, then discarded). Tyrone Power was soon to be 1939's King Of Hollywood (succeeding Clark Gable) and few relished TP back shot by craven John Carradine (drat history for its bummer ending imposed on a great yarn). Jesse James came out in a rich filmgoing year and its $3.1 million worldwide rentals (on $1.1 spent) made Fox that much richer. I'd post more images off the film's spectacular pressbook, but the thing's as big as a horse blanket and my scanner balks at it. Jesse James had appeal across boundaries of class and mass. Social/political barbs went down smoother for a half-century's distance from events depicted, though few missed JJ's ongoing relevance. The film's thumping success probably gave Zanuck surer footing for the coming body slam of The Grapes Of Wrath, which neatly substituted autos and banks for horses and trains. Patrons viewing one within months of the other would recognize mid-westerner lives changed, but remaining pretty much a depreciated same (and in case parallels were missed, Henry Fonda's there to update Frank James as wronged man turned outlaw Tom Joad, with Jane Darwell again as enduring Ma).
Coming in Part Two: When Jesse James Rode Again --- A North Carolina Exhibition Story.
MGM's Remake Rally of 1956
1956 was the year MGM fired Dore Schary and let their pre-48 backlog go to television. It was also a parched season when most of what they released lost money. I don't know of anything short of geese laying golden eggs that could have survived such a drought as theatres suffered then. A lot of what Metro did was remake or reissue old properties. Sometimes that worked, more often it didn't. The Philadelphia Story came back musicalized as High Society and was a hit, while The Swan with Grace Kelly reprising Lillian Gish's 1930 performance lost $764,000. A Cinemascope'd updating of The Women called The Opposite Sex ran aground with $1.5 million gone. These last two intrigued me for stills found on both during Liberty storage searches back in the seventies. I wondered then how such things performed new in 1956, but wasn't inspired to watch either on televised pan-and-scan. What's worse than wide movies on a square tube? Warner Archive has lately released The Swan and The Opposite Sex on anamorphic DVD with bounce-around-the-room sound (that last a good thing). Both are gorgeous transfers that transported me back among sweet seats at 1956 flagships where they played as intended and hadn't again till now.
Very poor business. Metro has gotten so "arty" in the past few years that Leo's trademark on a newspaper ad is almost enough to kill a picture, said manager Jim Fraser of Red Wing, Minnesota's Auditorium Theatre. He was talking about The Swan, and for 104 minutes viewed last night, I sort of felt his pain. How old-hat was this in a year when Elvis hit and restless youth were shucking off movie choices parents made? Put yourself in Jim's place ... here's a show dusting off a play first performed in 1923, with Grace Kelly clothed to the neck and coldly patrician besides. She'd married Prince Rainier in April '56 and that was primary hook for merchandising The Swan. For comparison's sake, I looked at One Romantic Night, the 1930 Lillian Gish version also just released by Warner Archive (guess MGM acquired it with remake rights). Turns out this one, at 72 minutes, has more energy than 1956's successor. The Swan is a comedy of manners revolved around royal amours and class conflict, riveting stuff, I'd imagine, if you're descended from crowned heads, but deadly for patrons in blue jeans or pedal pushers. Most of the $1.7 million it earned (in domestic rentals) likely derived from urban carriage trade, or maybe those curious to see Grace Kelly courted by pretend-prince Alec Guinness (who did favor Rainier a little). A location boost for me was The Swan's outdoor filming at Asheville NC's famed Biltmore House, a palace completed by George Vanderbilt in 1895 and truly fit for kings. I've walked enough through the joint with Ann (she'd live there if they'd rent) so that it seemed like home week watching Metro principals frolic about manicured grounds (but not amongst interiors --- those were built back in Culver).
A filler spot on TCM told how June Allyson swung on Joan Collins while they were making The Opposite Sex and knocked some teeth out. It was accidental, but happily stayed in the print. Watch it now and you'll see (and hear) Joan's earring flying across the room as well. Allyson/Collins battle memories of Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford in 1939's The Woman in addition to each other. The original was largely unseen since MGM tried a 1947 reissue ($162,000 in worldwide rentals), and now came time to jazz up same with color, expanded frame, and a cast including men, their sex verboten in the oldie that resolutely maintained conceit of femmes only for its 133 minutes. Turns out that template was friskier in situations and dialogue (1956 dropped, for instance, a noted exit line about names for ladies not used outside a kennel --- had Code restrictions tightened since 1939?). Cinemascope still in comparative infancy played havoc with actress faces and fashions. Figures go squat and dresses already expansive billow like circus tents. I might have done something better with June Allyson's hair using toenail scissors (and she utterly blows Norma's blockbuster "jungle red" line). Dress and deportment had evidently gone a long way (down) since 1939. There's just no consistency in the designs, as if every shop window had been raided willy-nilly. We can guess this was MGM's 1956 idea of what smart women wore, but how did real-life smart women respond? Metro sent starlets cross country to model outfits from the film and stir up interest in same when what they really needed for The Opposite Sex was a producer with Ross Hunter's fashion sensibility. He knew how to render rags glad and make women want to wear them (and consume films in which they were worn).
Too many shows out of a studio system in decline tried too hard to please everybody. Instead of going forward in confidence, even with a set-up that worked before, they'd plump up as if staging a Ziegfeld Follies. Such excess breeds fun in The Opposite Sex, where more always ends up amounting to less. June Allyson has a back story where she entertains at World War II camp shows with cameo guest Harry James, and later Jeff Richards rocks out with a cowboy number that for all I know charted beside Little Richard and Bill Haley. A truly weird and would-be comic interlude featuring Dick Shawn and Jim Backus only adds to a whimsical anything-might-happen flavor. Veterans (Ann Sheridan/Joan Blondell) who'd have been ideal as 1939 Women now play in support of Allyson, Joan Collins, and Dolores Gray, the latter succeeding (respectively) Shearer, Crawford, and Rosalind Russell. When in doubt (often) as to these ladies' properly filling heels of forebears, The Opposite Sex brakes for outsized production numbers joyously out of keeping with a story they're trying to re-tell. There's pleasure here (never "guilty" --- as I don't acknowledge such things) of watching a train jump tracks and careen down a mountain side, so polluted is The Opposite Sex by committee-driven mentality. Credited director is David Miller, who I'd envision being overruled as to everything he tried to do right (exemplary work on Sudden Fear four years earlier was his). The Opposite Sex is another for those who've seen the classics and are ready to revel in the dregs. It is beautifully served up by Warner's Archive (as is The Swan) and well worthy of view time just for fact we can finally experience something very near what 1956 audiences did.
Spreading More Deanna Love
Universal recently (and quietly) issued another Deanna Durbin Collection on DVD as part of their TCM Vault series. This time it's five rather than the six titles we got in a "Sweetheart" pack of several years back, with pricing on Volume Two a deal-breaker for many at $69.95 retail (the initial half-dozen came delivered at $26.98, before discounts). Classic DVD is getting to be a boutique enterprise. If you want a lot of this stuff, get prepared to pay for it. A question just occurs to me ... did Deanna Durbin ever negotiate for profit participation in her films? Given she was Universal's principal asset for over a decade, wouldn't there have been a clause, at least in mid-to-latter 40's contracts, for a piece of turnstiles action? She'll be eighty-nine in a few weeks, by the way. I'd like to think there's a slice of my purchase $ winging to France and payable to venerable DD, just for sticking around so long and entertaining me (and hopefully some of you) with musicals still best in their category.
And what do we call Deanna's brand of amusement? To me, she's tops among screen underpups, that legion of girlish songbirds Hollywood once issued in such abundance. They seem alien to a current public that hasn't seen their like in generations. When did adolescents last go vocal in movies, let alone achieve stardom for doing so? I guess most recent (recent?) was Jane Powell. Should we blame their extinction on a culture's loss of innocence? (though I don't buy notions we were ever really "innocent"). A thing that impresses me reading about Durbin is her stability through celebrity's grind. The girl dodged improvident moves you almost expect from cover teens today. Not for a moment does she seem to have bought into studio foolishness, all the more remarkable in light of intoxicating effect a dream factory's angel dust had on late 30's/early 40's psyches. There was a Fortune magazine article in October 1939 called simply "Deanna Durbin," as if that were shorthand for money, which as of then and years after, it was. Unlike fan rags with their dribs and drab of truth, this was a profile written for serious dollar merchants to whom picture stars were ordinarily ephemera itself (I'd guess Fortune subscribers shunned theatres because there were no ticker tape machines in lobbies). Fortune laid down statistics normally withheld from film-followers, to-wit fact that Durbin's output had been accounting for seventeen percent of Universal's entire yearly gross. She'd been credited with putting that company into unaccustomed profit as well, after repeated seasons of near-bankrupt performance.
Did Durbin really save Universal's hide? Well, she certainly thrust them into bigger theatres, being a first contract player that could, and on a repeated basis. It got to where lines formed for whatever she did, and according to Fortune, Universal was for a first time able to increase percentage demands for first-runs from a maximum twenty-five to thirty-five percent of paid admissions. This was rarefied air for a purveyor of mostly westerns, serials, and B actioners. A thing I enjoy most about Durbins is fact of their being Universal pictures, with unmistakable look and sound attendant upon that. One from last night's viewing was the 1938 Mad About Music, set in Switzerland by way of village backgrounds congenial to Uni monsters long known and loved. I half expected bicycling Deanna to whistle past Wolf Frankenstein's castle retreat (perhaps to Ygor's shepherd horn accompaniment), so much did Mad About Music's art direction remind me of the following year's Son Of Frankenstein.
Durbin would soon turn eighteen when the Fortune article hit. Had I been her, there might have resulted a Take It Or Leave It contract renegotiation with Uni chiefs, assuming even half the content of said piece was on the level. Did any personality back then, let alone one of tender years, possess such bargaining power? Among things wonderful about these DVD's is how lush Durbin vehicles are, all the more so now that they're decently pressed from original elements. Universal didn't splurge often, but when they did, watch out. From penny-pinching over decades came expertise at stretching dollars that's delight here to behold. Three Smart Girls Grow Up opens with titular trio tracking through mansion environs (clear that Universal's just showing off for downtown palace audiences) toward the money shot of a formal gathering to overshoot entire cowboy and monster budgets elsewhere on the lot. It helps watching these to like Deanna's voice (in fact, that's essential). So happens I do, plus her admittedly go-get-it personality. That last can rankle if you don't cotton to aggressive adolescents, though Durbin tempered hers, knowingly I think, by adding piquant sex allure as soon as she was able. That last made her adult transition easy, as Universal put off transition toward maximizing viewer eagerness to see Deanna cut loose re girl meets boy. That she does in this set's Because Of Him, where she applies seductive wiles to unlikely partner Franchot Tone (hardly boyish ... he was sixteen years her senior) and reworks comedic bits with again co-star Charles Laughton from 1941's It Started With Eve. You'd think by obscurity of these shows that none amounted to much commercially, but au contraire, they were all hits to her last, and Universal cried real tears when Durbin finally closed the iron door in 1948.
Deanna wrote me once (in 1986). Yes she did. It was just a note acknowledging a flyer I'd sent for our Film Den show of First Love, but here it is, and from what I'm told online, she's no longer responding to fan mail (so much of it, with internet advent, as to finally overwhelm her). That last got me wondering if DD has a computer and maybe follows activities of her web-based fan legion (considerable). There are folks my age who refuse to acknowledge the keyboard monster, so how would this woman who chucked stardom sixty-plus years ago feel about it? I do hope she has a DVD player so as to watch these Universal volumes that are so superior to 16mm prints she's understood to have owned since Hollywood days (but how many of those have turned vinegar during the interim?). Durbin spoke to sound reasons for retirement in that one-off interview she gave David Shipman in the eighties: Why did I give up my career? For one thing, just take a look at my last four films and you’ll appreciate that the stories I had to defend were mediocre, near impossible. Whenever I complained or asked for story or director approval, the studio refused. I was the highest paid star with the poorest material ... today I consider my salary as damages for having to cope with such complete lack of quality. Interestingly, her final film, For The Love Of Mary, and yes, about as lame as she obviously found it, is among the recent DVD's. Others of the five include aforementioned Mad About Music, That Certain Age (Jackie Cooper for puppy love, Melvyn Douglas as suave object of DD crush, and my fave song of hers, You're As Pretty As A Picture), Three Smart Girls Grow Up (maybe her richest looking vehicle, and a good one), Because Of Him (Laughton and Tone reunited ten years after sailing the Bounty ... Deanna works well with both), and reviled, but still fascinating, For The Love Of Mary.
More Deanna Durbin at Greenbriar's Archive: Her Glamour Starters Part One and Two, plus Deanna, How Could You Let Them Do This?, and Deanna in Technicolor.
Comedy Curiosities --- Part Two --- Boeing, Boeing
Boeing, Boeing took on added interest after all I'd read about its troubled production. That's often the way with fabled disasters you can't wait to see once supplied with behind-the-scenes knowledge. There are several places to go for accounting of Boeing, Boeing travails. Tony Curtis' autobiography is a start. Then there are Hal Wallis' recollections. Director John Rich talked about Boeing, Boeing in a book he wrote called Warm Up The Snake. Reams on Jerry Lewis are out there to reference, Shawn Levy's the most rewarding. Fans go for tawdry 60's show-biz like flies to a light bulb. Then-stars on the fade seemed to have no idea theirs was an era dying fast. Would Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis have misbehaved so on Boeing, Boeing had they seen decline waiting around a late-sixties corner? Their kind of movies were packing it in even as last of them were made and released to a public past indifference. The two convened a League Of Nations to settle billing dispute for this, their first (and only) as co-stars. As neither would cede first placement, it was suggested their names spin propeller-like during Boeing, Boeing credits so neither would dominate. Poster art found them billed criss-cross, symbolic perhaps of Curtis and Lewis being at cross-purpose with a changing culture, though "Tony" got favored left position, an advantage I'm sure Jerry noticed and dutifully complained about. Both these guys were sat aboard a bobsled and which one topped marquees should have been least of their concerns. Ego was long since an engine driving them (not that C&L were alone in that). They were way down a list of preferred talent for Boeing, Boeing in any case, as producer Wallis and director Rich hoped initially to cast Dean Martin, Jack Lemmon, Dick Van Dyke ... well, almost anybody else. A sense of Tony and Jerry as hot names cooling off was surely palpable by the time Boeing, Boeing began shooting in May 1965.
Hal Wallis was an old man retired by 1980 and published year of Starmaker, but seethed still over antics indulged by his Boeing, Boeing co-stars. Curtis and Lewis were spoiled rotten by his definition. One mid-production memo referred to them as sick people. OK, let's consider that. Does celebrity indeed warp a human mind and spirit? You'd think so based on ways Jerry Lewis treated (and continues to treat) people. A movie star's truth is different from yours and mine. They just don't see things like we do. One Boeing, Boeing anecdote Tony Curtis told in his memoir was jolting reminder. On Jerry's wild and crazy on-set ways, TC had this to say: If the camera was just on me, (Jerry) would drop cigarette ashes on my jacket in the middle of a scene, or reach down and quietly unzip my fly. Now, a moment please ... let's reflect on that last part ... Reach down and quietly unzip my fly?!?! Surely among gestures that would alarm, Jerry Lewis unzipping one's fly, quietly or otherwise, ranks near a horrific top. Could Tony have found his later research to play The Boston Strangler any more unsettling than this?
So much money got frittered away on Boeing, Boeing. Scenes were filmed in Paris and Curtis/Lewis used that occasion to bleed white Paramount's expense account. So what was up with Lewis and seventy-five pieces of luggage? Was this to assert his star's prerogative? John Rich said one steamer trunk was just for Jerry's socks (cue well-known fact that JL never wore a same pair twice). Both he and Curtis took random leave of Boeing, Boeing's set without explanation. Studio underlings sustaining brunts for all this must have hated the pair's guts. There seemed always to be war ongoing between Tony/Jerry and Paramount brass over some or another point of order. Jerry's relationship with the studio was a vessel sinking. Now that his pics weren't doing so well, they were giving back as nasty as they'd got (for a past decade and a half). Curtis riled Wallis by demanding a wardrobe person be on the set at all times to take his coat whenever he removed it, a silly gesture sure, but one Tony recognized as emblematic of power and who wielded it. There were also squawks over what sort of limousine he'd be chauffeured about in. I suspect what others dismissed as gratuitous ego tripping made sense (if imperfect) to a star aware of how tenuous his or anyone's grasp of fame is. So much that seems absurd to us now was, in 1965, combat intense among power players jousting for an upper hand, but what of livelihoods imperiled throughout lower ranks, like the guy driving the Cadillac Tony rejected because it wasn't a right color, or the schlep they assigned to catch his coat before it hit the stage floor? I don't wonder that so many spoke of such incidents with oft-justified bitterness even after years had past. Sometimes it was minor aggravations that were most revealing. Director Rich told of Lewis causing delays by cutting off Curtis' tie with scissors and obliging the latter to change wardrobe. Rich warned Jerry that similar liberties with him would yield a swift kick to the groin, to which Lewis reacted with genuine surprise. Still, Tony Curtis at least looked back on Boeing, Boeing as a charming movie, and called working with Jerry wonderful (the greatest comedian of our time --- and I ate him up alive ... huh?).
I'd always assumed Boeing, Boeing was a dog. A boy in sixth grade called it Boring, Boring. My interest in Jerry Lewis was mostly nil in 1965-6, save The Nutty Professor and Martin/Lewis pics turning up on NBC, while Tony Curtis was, for this eleven-year-old, Houdini and not much else. Fans of Jerry disliked Boeing, Boeing because he played it largely straight. A lot of them were drifting wide of Lewis in any event. Boeing, Boeing made five or so years earlier might have scored better than $2.4 million in domestic rentals, a sum disappointing but maybe not surprising in light of Jerry's boxoffice erosion (The Family Jewels with $2.3 and The Patsy $2.0, these having followed The Nutty Professor's $3.3 million). Boeing, Boeing would be the comedian's last for Paramount. What he'd subsequently do for Columbia made for trying afternoons at the Liberty. I remember Three On a Couch and The Big Mouth on first-run weekdays, followed by reissues like Cinderfella and Rock-A-Bye Baby on various Saturdays. Those older Paramounts were lush as opposed to Columbia's habitual drab. Color especially was a difference. Boeing, Boeing was (is), for me, Jerry's finish in class pictures. On widescreen and high-definition, it can still entertain, given a viewer's thick hide for conventions of farce --- back-and-forth'ing through doors, relentless double shuffling between Tony and Jerry, etc. Actually, both stars are good, at least as good as source material permits (the play from which Boeing, Boeing derived was a hit on European stages, less so stateside). Curtis by 1965 had this kind of tomfoolery down to a science, even if his wasn't applied so deftly as idol Cary Grant, for whom advancing age was no impediment (TC was forty and that ice-cream face was starting to melt). For his part, Hal Wallis got the last lick at Jerry with concluding remarks on the Boeing, Boeing ordeal, to-wit: Later, Jerry got the autonomy he sought from the beginning. He produced, directed, wrote, starred in, edited, and supervised the music of his pictures. There is no need to comment on their quality.
Comedy Curiosities --- Part One --- The Facts Of Life
High-Definition exposure of library titles is pretty haphazard. Ones on DVD are limited to settled classics (so far), but with satellite TV, things get looser. Random Showtime and MGM/HD scheduling put The Facts Of Life and subject of Part Two's Boeing, Boeing on last week's viewing plate and since I'd seen neither before, it seemed good opportunity to check both off to accompaniment of a wide screen and much increased clarity. High-Definition has a way of melting resistance to shows I'd ignore otherwise, and usually, I'm glad to have taken flyers (except when it's a dog like Taras Bulba, which despite HD, invited bailout after a first and excruciating half-hour). My policy says any Bob Hope is worth a glance. Most will reward as time capsules even if the comedy doesn't. Hope's intent was always to stay current. During a thirties start and forties peak, that took less effort. By 1960 and The Facts of Life, a strain was evident. Bob was by now game to vary his formula, but not to any radical extent. He'd gone a last decade making same sorts of movies over and again to diminishing boxoffice. Radio ended for Hope, but television covered that loss and then some. His name was never bigger despite fewer paid admissions. One or two features per annum was a norm, none of them exceptional, but all readily financed by partners who figured Bob for a reliable, if not windfall, profit. Teaming with Lucille Ball was wish realized for free-vee fans of both. She hadn't done movies since a last (and dire) vehicle with recently ex'ed Desi Arnaz, and given remote possibility of their co-starring again, a parlay with Hope seemed natural, especially as they'd top-lined two (Sorrowful Jones and Fancy Pants) prior to both's airwave dominance.
The Facts Of Life was about close-call adultery among suburbanites. That struck home for Lucy who'd recently closed marital accounts with oft-straying Desi. Their shared business interests were too lucrative to bust up, however, so here they were side-by-side on a dais crunching Desilu numbers and planning Lucy's performing schedule. Good sport Desi even kicked in seed dollars for The Facts Of Life. Hope got along with both sides of this couple no longer a couple and doubtless recognized conviction the divorce might lend to The Facts Of Life. Patrons would be curious to see LB for a first time since the final Lucy/Desi Comedy Hour broadcast in mid-1959. Headed toward fifty now, it seemed promising too for her to explore a serio-comic side. Director Melvin Frank wanted The Facts Of Life to play straight with dashes of humor, and Lucy was good with that, but Bob was for bending it toward funny and more funny, thus dialogue (his) got polluted with quips Hope-ful writers slipped under the star's dressing room door, wisecracks and slapstick denuding what amounted to a Brief Encounter for tired old comedians. Was Hope afraid to let go the happy face? Director Frank thought so and argued as much. Lucy said later it was a shame Bob had played things safe instead of exploring dramatic talent untapped. A disadvantage of star control is potential to wreck a project on caprice or misjudgment. Hope had been getting laughs too long to forfeit them now. Was he burnt by the disappointing $1.4 million in domestic rentals his previous dramedy, Beau James, had earned?
Lucy was by the sixties too show-biz hardened to play audience identifiable characters. So was Bob, for that matter. Not for a moment do we believe in them as plain folks. Hers is a dour mask that smokes constantly. It was suggested Lucy ducked out for cosmetic work as preliminary to The Facts of Life. Her looks get by, assuming one found her appealing to begin with (I never did), but who needed to see this woman plunged head-first into a river of mud as dictated by The Facts Of Life's contradictory narrative? Lucy claimed she never inhaled smoke, but needed the fags to relieve nervous tension. Still, the voice betrayed nicotine, too much libation, or both. She could summon moods, maybe laughs, but not warmth. As for Hope, if a line was funny, it stayed in, and never mind fitness, or lack of same, to the character he played. Bob could act given the impulse, but The Facts Of Life was past point where he could imagine himself as anything other than laugh of the party. Was it too many years since this man was just a human being as opposed to an ongoing Trendex rating? Dialogue and situations in The Facts Of Life reflect Hope's writing crew being around too long, guys still miffed over prohibition having cramped their style. There was even a joke about Francis X. Bushman, for pity's sake. Bob wears stocking garters (so when did men finally give those up?) and keeps a maid in crisp aproned uniform (Louise Beavers' final role --- wonder what she thought of all this). A New Frontier was upon the rest of us, but never Hope. For presumed old time's sake, even Walter Winchell visited the set and gave Bob favorable ink in a column few still read. Still, The Facts Of Life had moments where its stars calmed down and let the story reveal itself, too little and way late for Hope and Lucy, but withal the last really interesting feature either would appear in.
Hope could always rely on help from a compliant media. Even critics put away brickbats they'd used on recent Alias Jesse James and Paris Holiday. Lucy in particular got kind notices for exemplary work in the face of private adversity. The Facts Of Life may not strike us as sophisticated now, but time of release reviews compared it favorably with 1960's Best Picture hit, The Apartment, and LIFE magazine lauded Bob's smash-hit comedy in a pictorial celebrating he and Lucy's new direction (the fact Hope had just hosted an NBC 25th birthday bash for LIFE may have enhanced their appreciation for The Facts Of Life). United Artists unleashed what was surely the ugliest poster art yet devised for any film (two variations shown here), so unflattering that you'd have to assume neither Hope nor Ball vetted them. UA also put the stars in Santa suits for a trade ad (above) to encourage holiday bookings, as The Facts Of Life was the distributor's bet for Christmas receipts. Those plus business into 1961 would total $2.997 million in domestic rentals and $893,000 foreign, the best money for a Hope since The Seven Little Foys and impetus for another decade of big screen foolery.