Triple Feature Feature
Hello again! Spring has definitely sprung around these parts. The days are getting longer, the air is getting milder, my skin is getting itchier.... Sorry; I overshared there.
The point is, when it's springtime, I start thinking about other springs when I used to go outside and what I did during them. This year, I'm reminded of the spring during my second year of university. My friends and I spent much of the weeks leading up to finals watching one of two movies: Calamity Jane or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. There was another movie — Kiss Me, Kate — we rented briefly, as I recall, but we didn't have the constant access to that as we did to CJ and SBSB (yes, we abbreviated the titles, we watched them so much).
Besides my second year at university, what do these films have in common? Well, they're musicals from the early '50s, yes, but they also feature the same lead actor: Howard Keel. So let's celebrate "Spring, Spring, Spring" with a healthy dose of Howard.
Calamity Jane (1953)
(Directed by David Butler. Starring Doris Day, Howard Keel, Allyn McLerie, and Philip Carey.)
Taken as a biographical film of Martha "Calamity" Jane Canary, Calamity Jane is laughably inaccurate and silly. Taken as a fun western sort of musical, it's... well, it's still kind of laughable and silly — and certainly problematic in areas — but it's a fun ride.
Calamity Jane tells the story of "Calamity" Jane Canary (Doris Day), a woman who dresses and shoots like a man, and "Wild" Bill Hickok (Howard Keel), her gambler friend, and what happens when Calam brings a beautiful actress named Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie) to Deadwood's finest saloon, the Golden Garter. Being a musical from the 1950s, there are naturally romantic entanglements to sort out, but needless to say, it all ends happily, after we get some really fun songs in there.
For Doris Day, this was kind of a defining role. She was already well-known as a singer and a film star, and she would go on to have bigger successes, but this is one of her favorite roles. Which isn't surprising, when you look at her performance. She gets to be a rough-and-tumble tomboy who shoots and drinks (only "sa's'parilly," as she says, but still) and is all jagged edges and buckskin. It's certainly a far cry from a turn-of-the-century small-town girl or a Broadway hopeful, which covers at least half of Day's roles so far. It's really fun how she changes her voice to be gruffer and deeper than normal. That's not something most musical stars were doing at the time. (It's also fun to notice how her singing voice changes, depending on how spruced up Calam is in the scene. You can barely tell it's the same singer!)
Howard Keel's performance is good, of course, but... it's kind of retread territory for him. You see, one of the biggest Broadway hits of the 1940s was Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun. MGM made a successful (if troubled) adaptation of it in 1950 that starred, yep, you guessed it, Howard Keel. Calamity Jane is very clearly Warner Bros.' attempt to tell a similar story. I mean, there's even a song that features the two leads confronting each other ("Anything You Can Do" in Annie... and "I Can Do Without You" in CJ). That said, Keel still brings some wonderful moments to the screen as Bill. He's got a great sense of comedic timing, he shows real tenderness when trying not to hurt Calam's feelings at her cabin, and he has some pretty great reaction shots, too. And, of course, his singing is lovely, too.
Speaking of the singing, the best-known song from this movie, "Secret Love," won the Academy Award for Best Original Song — and it became one of Doris Day's most popular songs. The other songs aren't as lasting or effective outside of the movie, but they are no less fun. There are a couple of bouncy tunes about places — "The Deadwood Stage (Whip Crack Away)" and "Just Blew In From the Windy City" — that are fun and infectious (in a good way). There's the aforementioned "I Can Do Without You," which is a great confrontation song between the leads. There are a couple of kind of disposable saloon songs, since we're in a place called the Golden Garter; "I've Got a Hive Full of Honey" is just plain fun (and one of my favorites), "It's Harry I'm Planning to Marry" gives me a move that I love but wish I could do better, and "Keep It Under Your Hat" gives Katie a great Crowning Moment of Awesome. "Higher Than a Hawk" is staged kind of strangely, but it's a got a sweetness to it.
"A Woman's Touch" is... you know how I said that this movie is problematic in areas? Well, this is one of them. Don't get me wrong; I love "A Woman's Touch," but because it's saying anything good. (Actually, I noticed a number of issues like this in the movie, but this just concentrates those issues into handy song form.) The set-up is that Katie is moving in with Calam, but Calam's cabin's not very genteel. Katie says, "All it needs is a woman's touch," which brings us into the song, starting with, "A woman's touch / A woman's touch / The magic of Aladdin couldn't do as much / With the magic of a broom / She can mesmerize a room." And it goes on from there. It's kind of backward-thinking, even for the '50s. Then again, the song also gives us a complete transformation of the cabin, up to and including altering the glass windows, painting and decorating the front door, and growing a rose (I think) in the flower box, and this all happens in the course of a couple of days. This is funny. Like, ridiculously, absurdly funny.1 Which takes some of the edge off the whole "women are the only ones who can cook and clean and do household stuff" message. But just some.
1. After that semester was over, I stayed in town for about a week after most folks left, and one of my friends was taking summer classes. We got together one day, missing our group of friends, and used fabric scraps she had to turn one of her "kitchen chair[s] into a Chippendale," à la "A Woman's Touch." It was hideous, just like the movie, but it amused us while we did it.
![turn one of her "kitchen chair[s] into a Chippendale,"](calamchair.jpg){kind=link}
My favorite song is, by far, "The Black Hills of Dakota." It's got a beautiful melody. It features both Doris Day and Howard Keel singing together, in unison and in harmony. Well-performed duets are one of my favorite things generally, so it's no surprise I love this song. It's not a particularly romantic song, but this song, for me, does more for Calam and Bill's relationship than anything else. It's just a pretty, pretty song with a lovely, mellow sound to it.
It's been several years since I'd last watched this movie, and the rewatch was an interesting experience. I still know quite a bit of the dialogue, and some of the little things my friends and I loved are still just as lovely as ever. However, I'm not as able to gloss over the poor way this movie treats women and Native Americans; if I think about it for very long, I become a ball of frustrated exasperation. (Seriously, "That's female thinking, and nothin''ll get ya into more trouble"? Who says that?) Overall, Calamity Jane is a really fun movie from a completely different era that might start to fall apart at too intense a gaze. For me, it's a movie I enjoy in spite of itself. And myself.
Kiss Me Kate (1953)
(Directed by George Sidney. Starring Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Ann Miller, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Rall, and Bob Fosse.)
Based on Cole Porter's Broadway hit, which was itself based partially on William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, Kiss Me Kate tells the story of the opening night of a greatly anticipated Broadway show, cleverly called Kiss Me, Kate. The levels of meta in this are kind of staggering, so let me explain.
The movie opens with a fictional Cole Porter (Ron Randell) and Fred Graham (Howard Keel) trying to convince Fred's ex-wife, the star Lilli Vanessi (Kathryn Grayson), into appearing as Katherine to Fred's Petruchio in a new musical Kiss Me, Kate. She seems open to the idea until Fred's new girlfriend Lois (Ann Miller) shows up. Lois is set to play Bianca, Katherine's younger sister. In order for the story to continue, Lilli eventually agrees to be in the show. So far so good. Now, we're at the final rehearsal for the show, and there are combative (and other) sparks between Lilli and Fred; he tells her what to do better, she berates him, the usual. Meanwhile, Lois covers up for her real boyfriend, Bill Calhoun (Tommy Rall), who is playing Lucentio in the play, who has just lost $2,000 playing craps. Bill signed an I.O.U. for it, but he signed Fred's name rather than his own. By the time the show opens that night, there are so many tangled threads that need sorted, it's no wonder things get wacky.
Like I said, this movie is very, very meta. For starters, there's no reason in this fictional world that Cole Porter had to write the in-show show, but he did, and he's portrayed by an actor. The whole opening, actually, is full of little meta-jokes and references. Fred and Lilli, for instance, co-starred in several shows together, so what do we see dotted around Fred's apartment? Publicity pictures of Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson from their other movies together, most prominently Show Boat. (There's also a publicity picture from Annie Get Your Gun with Keel and Judy Garland, but it's not shown in focus, so it's easy to mistake Garland for Grayson.) Then there's the number "Too Darn Hot." Ann Miller performs it early on in the film, and then it's remarked that the song was cut from the show. Except it wasn't, because we just saw it.
Beyond the meta, though, is just a lot of fun, starting with Howard Keel. It's strange, really, that he is most associated, particularly on film, with westerns, since he grew up in Illinois and southern California; he just kind of vibed as a cowboy. Regardless, he's in top form here and completely at home playing the sophisticated dapper dan who can rattle off Shakespeare with lovely elocution. You can tell that he's just having a blast with the role, too, which for me makes it that much more fun to watch. Whether he's posturing as Petruchio or overreacting as Fred, it's a really fun performance.
The rest of the cast is fab, too. Kathryn Grayson sticking her tongue out will never not be awesome. Ann Miller is one of the seemingly rare Hollywood lady dancers who could more than hold her own vocally, too; "Too Darn Hot" is just an amazing dance number, and one of my favorites, period. Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore as the gangsters are the most entertaining hoodlums this side of Guys and Dolls. Tommy Rall plays a wonderful sort of cad and dances up a storm. Throw in Bobby Van and Bob Fosse in small but striking roles, and you've got this amazing cast.
As this is a musical, I can't not talk about the numbers; I mean, a musical's plot is just the talky stuff between the numbers, right? ;) So, the numbers.
I've already mentioned "Too Darn Hot," but it bears repeating because it is a fantastic number. Ann Miller was an amazing tap dancer, and in the 1940s set a world record for the most taps in a minute (something like 500 or so), and this might be her finest routine. It's certainly the most iconic. In fact, in the original stage show, this song is performed by a man, but I can't not think of this as a great song for a woman; that's how strong an impression Ann Miller made with this number. Yes, the whole throwing things at the camera is a little odd, but that's because the movie was filmed in 3-D, and the director wanted to make the audience more a part of it all. (This is why there's often a lot of stuff coming directly at the camera.) It's a bit odd, but it doesn't take away from the 2-D experience at all. Also fun with this song are the reactionary performances by Howard Keel and particularly Kathryn Grayson. They manage so much without saying a word.
When you have singers like Grayson and Keel, you've got to give them the chance to sing together. "So In Love" is a nice taste, but they really shine in "Wunderbar." The operetta styling of the song works beautifully with their voices, and the staging is fun. It's not many movies that give you your singing leads dancing in and out of rooms, leaving them not on screen for part of the sequence. (Also? Kathryn Grayson, with the red wig and wearing a yellow dressing gown, is gorgeous.) And I love that they're clearly alone while they're playing to the imaginary audience of their reminiscence, but they're really performing to the movie audience. More meta, whee!
My favorite of Keel's solos is "Where Is The Life That Late I Led?" It's basically Petruchio on his wedding night mourning the loss of all the other women in his life, now that he's married; he even pulls out his little black book. The song does a lot of rising and falling with the tempo and style, and Keel handles it all beautifully, putting the winks in there when needed. And, oh boy, does that song have a lot of winks. Cole Porter — the real one — gave us some really clever, if occasionally groan-inducing, lyrics: "And lovely Lisa, where are you, Lisa? You gave a new meaning to the leaning tow'r of Pisa." Yeah, I want to groan, but I'm grinning at the same time.
Ann Miller gets quite a few songs, in solo or group. "Why Can't You Behave?" gives us a lovely display of Miller's vocal talents, as well as more of her dancing. It also gives us a great introduction to Tommy Rall dancing. He's great; he was so adept at all sorts of dancing styles. In this movie, he gets to do tap and a sort of moderny balletic thing. "Always True to You In My Fashion" is a sort of mirror image to "Why Can't You Behave?" down to opening with a reprise of it. But it doesn't stay serious; it's a fun number played for comedy. It also gives us a cameo from the movie's choreographer, Hermes Pan, which I always love.
The two in-show numbers with Miller and Rall throw in at least two other dancers. "Tom, Dick, or Harry" has Bianca's three suitors singing and dancing for her affections, and this is when we first see Bobby Van and Bob Fosse dancing. Bobby Van was a talented dancer whose film career didn't really go as far as it should have; here, you can see he's got an odd, eccentric sort of style of dancing. Bob Fosse is, of course, a legendary director and choreographer, but he was just a contract player at the time. Still, you can start seeing glimpses of his style starting to emerge in this number. And Tommy Rall... well, he's literally flying through the air; just lovely.
The other number featuring Miller and the boys is kind of amazing, and that's not an exaggeration. It's perhaps the most famous number from this film. The song is "From This Moment On," which was a song Porter wrote for and cut from another show; it was added to this movie and became iconic. Hermes Pan had been working in film choreography since the 1930s, having worked with Fred Astaire in more than half of Astaire's musicals and won an Oscar for his dance direction. That said, for reasons I don't think have ever been properly documented, the Bob Fosse/Carol Haney dance section was choreographed by Fosse himself. The section feels very Fosse, even so early in his career. And, even though it's not my favorite style of dancing, there's no denying that it's a truly fresh perspective on dance, particularly film dance. Even though the rest of the number is quite good, it pales in comparison to the Fosse section.
"Brush Up Your Shakespeare" and "I Hate Men" are both really fun and entertaining songs, though the visuals don't really add much to them. In "I Hate Men," Kathryn Gryason gets to highlight all the ways men can be kind of horrible. It's a really fun song to sing. *g* "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" is full of more clever Cole Porter lyrics, this time about Shakespeare plays. Even a passing familiarity with the titles is enough to really get a kick out of the song. Plus, we get another moment of the film recognizing the movie audience rather than any in-world audience.
When my friends and I first sought out Kiss Me Kate, we were mostly looking for MOAR HOWARD AND TOMMY (though we didn't put it that way, of course), but what we got was a really entertaining — and fairly faithful — adaptation of one of Broadway's most navel-gazing and enjoyable shows.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)
(Directed by Stanley Donen. Starring Howard Keel, Jane Powell, Russ Tamblyn, Tommy Rall, Virginia Gibson, and Julie Newmeyer.)
Oh, man. This movie. I don't think there's anything about this movie I don't love. Which is honestly a really bad way to review a film, so let's break it down.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers opens in 1850 Oregon, as Adam Pontipee (Howard Keel), a bearded backwoodsman, is trading various goods at the general store. He asks if they happen to have a wife he can trade for; that's really why he's in town. You see, he has six brothers, and they'd like to have someone around who can cook and clean and mend while they're working their farm. The shopkeepers think it's an impossible task, but Adam says that when he sets his mind to something, he gets it. A little while later, he sees Milly (Jane Powell), a young woman working as a cook in the... inn or saloon or something. He decides that she's the girl for him and asks her to marry him; she agrees, and the two are married later that day (after Adam gets cleaned up a bit). Of course, Adam fails to mention his six brothers, who are quite the surprise for Milly, who realizes why exactly Adam was so eager. Nevertheless, she gets to work on the house and the boys, determined to teach them some manners so they can find wives of their own. From that point, well, things get fun... and a little complicated.
Really, so much of this movie hangs on Howard Keel and Jane Powell. If you don't like one of them, you're not going to like the movie. Luckily, they're both in top form here: on their own, they're lovely; together, they're utterly charming.
And it honestly takes an inordinate amount of charm to make Adam Pontipee a likeable character. I mean, within a few minutes, shortly after he's declared his intention of finding a wife, he tells a group of young women, "You're all pretty and fresh and young. I'll keep you in mind, but I ain't deciding on nothin' 'til I look 'em all over." That's not a promising start. And he doesn't really get much better. "What do I need manners for? I already got me a wife." Yeah, no. Just... no.
Really, through most of the movie, Adam's kind of horrible, but he's also really likable, and I put that all on Howard Keel. I mean, for starters, there's the laugh/chuckle. Actually, it's on display in all the movies this month, but this is probably the movie I first noticed it (since I watched it so much). It's an infectious laugh, which just makes whoever Keel is playing that much more likeable.
Which isn't to say the character is just awful, start to finish. Early on, he shows signs of not being horrible. When Milly confronts him about their marriage, he explains (rather than defends or retorts or anything; just explains) that, yes, he was looking for a woman who could handle the work, but he counts himself lucky because her eyes are the color of cornflowers. Which is a nice detail to pick up on, considering the little amount of time they've known each other and the small number of interactions they've had. It doesn't make up for, well, anything, actually, but it shows he's not necessarily a hopeless case.
Milly, on the other hand, is pretty amazing throughout. I love her at the inn, charming all the patrons, even if she does dump a ladle full of stew into Harry's lap. Her speech to the reverend about saying yes to marrying Adam, it's a great moment of standing up for yourself and not backing down. Where she really shines, though, is when she arrives at her new home and discovers why Adam was wife-hunting in the first place. As Adam takes her through the house, dirty, worn-down, shoddy, you can see that she's realizing the truth. When she's left alone in the kitchen, with dirty pans and plates everyone, she has a moment of being overwhelmed by everything, but then she pushes up her sleeves and digs in; she's basically, like, "This may not be what I thought I was signing up for, but this is my life now, so I have to deal with it."
And deal with it she does! She gets the brothers to get cleaned up and start acting more mannerly. She teaches them how to act around the ladies, and she's genuinely proud of them. And you can tell they adore her, and I don't blame them one bit. I really love Milly; she's a strong and feminine woman, which isn't something you see very often in movies, particularly not in the 1950s (or even today, for that matter).
Now, the brothers. I won't go into detail about all of them (Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank, and Gideon), but I want to highlight my favorites of the bunch. Why? Because I want to. ;) And, strangely enough, my favorites haven't changed since I first saw this movie with my friends in their little campus apartment, all those years ago. (Actually, I think these two were the most popular amongst us.)
First, there's Frank. He's the one in the red shirt, and he's played by Tommy Rall. You might recognize that name from a bit earlier in this review; he played Bill Calhoun in Kiss Me Kate. (It was actually one of the things that prompted us to watch Kiss Me Kate; there was a promo at the beginning of one of the videos, and it had a clip of Tommy Rall and Ann Miller dancing, and as we all loved Frank, we wanted to see more of him! Memories....) As you see in both movies, he's a fantastic dancer, and he's got a nice set of singing pipes, too. I love watching him during the Barn Dance and "Goin' Co'tin'" and, well, pretty much whenever he's on screen. Frank's the brother who always seems ready for a fight... except when Milly wants him to stop one. ("There's only three little ones!") He also seems to be the snarky brother — at least, as snarky as a Hollywood backwoodsman can be, and I'm a sucker for the witty one full of one-liners. Plus, he's clearly the king of the boards! What's not to love?
Next, there's Gideon (in the blue shirt), played by Russ Tamblyn. Gideon wears his heart on his sleeve; he's definitely the brother with the biggest character arc. He's the youngest, so he definitely looks up to his older brothers, especially Adam, but he gains the courage to stand up to Adam when Adam's being kind of horrible. But, he also recognizes the change in Adam and supports him, too, which is just as important and actually I think the harder thing to do. He's just so precious. And awkward. "Don't you like girls?" Milly asks; "We ain't never hardly ever seen one," Gideon answers. Aw, that's adorable. Not to mention that ax handle jumping; that was quite impressive, young man. Yeah, Gideon's a doll.
This is a musical, so let's talk numbers. Honestly, there's not a bad song in here. Okay, "Lonesome Polecat" is a bit odd, and the ax dance somehow always makes me giggle, but it's still a good number. Keel's big solo, "Bless Your Beautiful Hide," is a fun song2, though it does show us Adam being rather horrible (What can I say? It's a theme). Jane Powell's "Wonderful, Wonderful Day" and, to a lesser degree, "When You're in Love," could be much more saccharine and cloying than they are; "Wonderful, Wonderful Day" is more about celebrating being married than anything else, and "When You're in Love" is saved by being a simple song about love. "Spring, Spring, Spring" is a happy little song about spring love and nature and stuff, and it's nice to see them actually outside for once. "Sobbin' Women" and "June Bride" aren't my favorites lyric-wise, but they're catchy and kind of earwormy, and I like how they look on screen.
2. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.... ;)
The two best numbers, though, are ones that involve the brothers and dancing. First, we have "Goin' Co'tin'," in which Milly teaches them a bit about etiquette ("Etti-what?") and courting girls: "You gotta call her my darlin', my dear, my precious, my pet." It's a really fun song, and once they get into "goin' dancin'," things really start moving. Milly shows them a step or two and then gets Frank and Caleb to dance together — stiffly at first, though they totally get into it, and quickly, too. I love how Benjamin sits out and claps time... and is the dedicated Gideon catcher. I love Gideon getting tossed around, period, to be honest. The whole thing is fun and exuberant and, I don't know about you, but it makes me want to get up and dance.
If there was one thing in SBSB that everyone should watch, it's the Barn Dance. Good lord, the Barn Dance is amazing. It starts out simply enough: the brothers want to dance with some of the town girls, but their town beaus get there first. One by one, the brothers start moving in, until all the girls are dancing with the brothers, not the townies. This creates the tension needed for the rest of the number. The girls go back and forth between the brothers and the townies, who are constantly trying to one-up each other. First, it's more elaborate dancing; then, it's stunts on various bits of building supplies around the barn; finally, it comes down to an actual contest of sorts (which Frank totally wins, yay) before the song's big finish.
Even though we don't see one of the brothers doing too much (Benjamin, in orange, is played by MGM contract player Jeff Richards, who wasn't a dancer at all; he's usually hanging out in the background or off to the side, much to the detriment of his girl Dorcas, played by none other than Julie Newmar, or, as she was known then, Julie Newmeyer), the brothers are really impressive, and their dancing doesn't seem that out-of-place. I mean, yes, they're clearly more polished than any backwoodsman has the right to be, but their dancing feels more organic and grounded than you often see in musicals of the time. On top of that, their various stunts and whatnot are incredible. All that leaping around on boards barely wider than their feet? Very dangerous business, that, but an amazing thing to watch.
In the making-of documentary on the DVD, Julie Newmar describes this movie as "lusty," which it is. And it's not just lusty in the way you'd expect (though it's that, too); it's just full of life and energy and affection. I think it's one of Hollywood's best feel-good movies, and certainly one of the best musicals ever.