Beverly Gray's Blog: Beverly in Movieland, page 119

The Fault in Our Stars -- Just An Old-Fashioned Love Story?

What can you say about a teenage hottie who died? Such is a key questions broached by The Fault in Our Stars, a breakout summer hit among the younger set. The Fault in Our Stars is a faithful adaptation of a romantic YA novel that’s topped the bestseller lists since its debut in January 2012. Because of its focus on attractive young people coping with cancer, it put me in mind of the three-hankie novel and movie that some of us remember from 1970. Of course I’m talking about Love Story.
Improbably, Love Story was written by a young Harvard professor of classics, Erich Segal. I’m told he tried to sell a screenplay version, but was advised by a literary agent to publish a  novel first. It appeared on Valentine’s Day, 1970, becoming the year’s top-selling work of fiction in the U.S., while also being translated into upwards of 20 languages. The film, released in December of that same year, was a runaway hit. When Oscar season rolled around, Love Story was nominated in seven categories, among them Best Picture, Best Director (Arthur Hiller), Best Actress (Ali MacGraw), and Best Actor (Ryan O’Neal). In the end, it won only for Francis Lai’s swoony score (cue the violins!), which went on to be featured in thousands of wedding ceremonies thereafter. The Love Story legacy also includes a #9 slot on the AFI’s all-time list of great movie romances. And, I suspect, it’s the reason that so many Americans born in the 1970s are named Jennifer and Oliver. (It will be fun to see whether, given the current popularity of The Fault in Our Stars, Hazel and Augustus will soon end up becoming baby names of choice.) 
The curious thing about Love Story is that it’s not really about leukemia. Despite its famous opening lines – “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me?” – it does not spend most of its pages on illness. Instead, it’s a very polite and romanticized tale of class struggle, featuring the forbidden love between an upper-crust Harvard WASP and a working-class baker’s daughter. They meet in the school library; they spar (she disparagingly calls him “Preppie” at lot); they reconcile; they marry, after which Oliver’s banker-dad disinherits him. That’s when illness strikes, though father and son tearfully reconcile just after poor Jenny expires, having taught her young husband that “love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Prior to that, the movie’s been filled with now-common romantic tropes, like pretty young people romping through fields of flowers in slo-mo, their long locks flowing in the breeze. And, of course, illness itself looks pretty too: the sicker she gets, the more beautiful she looks. (The Carol Burnett Show brilliantly spoofed the film, via its hilarious “Lovely Story.”)
In writing The Fault in Our Stars, novelist John Green (who had worked as a chaplain in a cancer hospital and became a close friend of one young patient) was determined to cut the crap. True, his Hazel and Gus are both physically good-looking, and many elements of their story can be seen as pure YA wish-fulfillment. There is, for instance, that romantic trip to Amsterdam, where they drink champagne and fall into bed together, with her mother’s tacit approval. Still, their struggles with cancer – the toll it takes on them and on those around them -- are portrayed with heightened realism. Frankly, it’s encouraging to see a YA hit that deals with real-world problems, not the sex life of vampires. 

My Friend’s Place: In Search of Morgan Freeman

“I Wish Morgan Freeman Narrated My Life.” That’s what it said on one of those gag buttons for sale at my local pharmacy. I found the idea striking: who wouldn’t want to have her life story chronicled by a man whose voice conveys sincerity, downhome nobility, and hard-earned wisdom? (I’m told that March of the Penguins, that 2005 documentary set at the South Pole, didn’t turn into a global blockbuster until Freeman’s voice was substituted for that of the original French narrator.)
 There was a time, about seven years ago, when the dream of a Morgan Freeman voice loomed large in my creative endeavors. As a member of Women in Film, I was deeply involved with the PSA committee, whose goal was to craft professional-grade public service announcements for worthy charitable groups. Film professionals hoping to perfect new skills volunteered to join forces on these PSAs. I, with my background in writing, was paired with an experienced cinematographer who planned to make the leap into the director’s chair. Dana Kroeger, who’d been part of the camera crew on Terrence Malick’s The New World, had plenty of ideas and plenty of chutzpah. It would be my job, as both writer and associate producer, to rein in her enthusiasm and make this PSA happen.
Out of all the applying charities, Dana and I chose My Friend’s Place, a shelter for homeless teens in Hollywood. We learned everything about My Friend’s Place, and then sat down to create a vision that could be conveyed to the public via 15 and 30-second TV spots. The biggest challenge: as per Women in Film rules, all of our filming needed to take place in a single day. Dana, always ambitious, imagined two  very different scenarios. One of our nearly-silent vignettes showed a young girl who’d lost her parents, and then lost her grandmother. Another portrayed a teenage boy, hounded by abusive parents, heading out into the unknown on his skateboard. In each case, the kid ends up – in a stark black & white photo – living on the streets. After which, a strong, compassionate Morgan Freeman-esque voice intones, “Behind every homeless teen, there’s a story. Join My Friend’s Place, and help us help America’s forgotten youth.”
I can’t begin to tell you how many challenges we faced as we went through the casting process, dealt with Screen Actors Guild paperwork, rented equipment, found locations, and assembled an all-volunteer crew. There were some memorable personality clashes, and an experienced line producer we badly needed dropped out at the very last second because she’d been booked to appear on a short-lived reality show. Filming at two locations (an Altadena cemetery and an Echo Park home) in a single day required lots of hustle, and our shoot stretched from near-dawn to after dark. As a newly-minted script supervisor (one of several hats I ended up wearing) I loved being where the action was. And my family got involved too. My loyal spouse, serving as a production assistant, schlepped equipment, and proudly took part in the symbolic handshake that provided a coda for our various versions. Later my son contributed the musical score. Eventually, our PSA won some prizes for excellence, a true happy ending.
Where was Morgan Freeman in all this? We couldn’t hope to land him, but briefly tried to get his female counterpart, Whoopi Goldberg, as our narrator. Of course we failed, but found Laura Leyva, whose strong but gentle voice was a good substitute. Laura also voiced the screechy mom in one of our spots. Quite a change of pace, but that’s Hollywood!  

Self-Judgment after Nuremberg: Jack El-Hai’s “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist”

Moviegoers get much of their knowledge of the Nuremberg Trials -- in which prominent Nazis had to answer  to American military tribunals for their crimes against humanity -- from Stanley Kramer’s 1961 courtroom drama, Judgment at Nuremberg. That long but fascinating film is a rare example of Hollywood royalty banding together to confront an evil from the recent past.  Judgment at Nuremberg stars such luminaries as Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, and (in a powerful dramatic role) Judy Garland.  It incorporates actual footage shot by British and American soldiers upon entering Dachau, thus becoming the first Hollywood movie to introduce audiences to the piles of corpses and the skeletal survivors that the Nazis left in their wake. But the film is not about the prosecution of infamous Nazi leaders. Instead it’s a fictionalized look at the Judges’ Trial, in which prominent German jurists of the World War II era were called to account for their handling of the odious racial laws of the Third Reich. As a film it’s slow going, but definitely worth the effort.
Jack El-Hai may love movies, but he writes books. In the past he’s explored such troubled (and troubling) men as Walter Freeman, known as the Father of the Lobotomy. The Lobotomist was made into a PBS American Experience documentary in 2008, and has been optioned for a motion picture adaptation. Now Jack has turned his attention to the aftermath of Nazi Germany. The result is The Nazi and the Psychiatrist , which chronicles the coming together of two complex and fascinating figures, German Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and the pioneering American psychiatrist who observed him as he languished in a Nuremberg prison cell.
Major Douglas McGlashan Kelley, grandson of a Northern California lawyer obsessed with the fate of the Donner Party, was sent by the US Army to maintain the mental health of Nazi prisoners awaiting trial. That’s how he came to rub shoulders with such notorious men as Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess, Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher, and Hans Frank, the brutal governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland. Kelley’s early use of the Rorschach inkblot test was one way through which he sought to explore whether top Nazis shared a common psychological profile. In this he was particularly drawn to Göring, a deceptively cartoonish figure whose intelligence and highly theatrical nature in some ways mirrored Kelley’s own. 
Göring, for his part, clearly looked forward to his frequent interaction with Dr. Kelley. When, with  the Nuremberg trials not yet over, Kelley announced that he was returning to civilian life, the  Reichsmarschall wept. Before Göring met his fate (in a way that I will not spell out here), Kelley was back in the U.S. In 1949 he was named Professor of Criminology at the University of California, meanwhile advancing his career by consulting with police departments and others regarding the criminal mind. Director Nicholas Ray, for one, consulted with him while making Rebel Without a Cause.
Adept at stage magic, Kelley tried to tap into early television by launching a reality series called Fakes, Frauds, and Fools. It didn’t fly, but he received $50,000 to help create and host a twenty-part educational TV series, Criminal Man. In the long run, Kelley – with his love of showmanship – became his own worst enemy. Author Jack El-Hai, who himself doesn’t lack for dramatic flair, begins his book with a prelude that left me gasping. Where did he find the model for this decidedly cinematic opening, one that tours Kelley’s last home and plants hints of what lies ahead?  From, of course, the original trailer for Hitchcock’s chiller, Psycho.

Michael Jackson, In Memoriam

I must be getting old. As I browse my daily newspaper, my eye is often caught by the obituary section. There I’m partial to those large memorial boxes featuring a photo of the deceased as well as a long description of his or her earthly accomplishments, lovingly written by survivors. On June 25, I was stopped in my tracks by something unexpected. There was no photo, just the reproduction of a scrawled signature. Above it were the words “In Memoriam.” And below the signature I saw a name and some dates: Michael Joseph Jackson, August 29,1958 – June 25, 2009.
Yes, it’s been five years since Michael Jackson left the building. Conrad Murray, the cardiologist who administered to Jackson—as a sleep aid—the powerful anesthetic that shortened his life, is now out of jail, having served two years of a four-sentence. (Fortunately for the rest of us, his medical license has been revoked, and I’ve read he plans to embark on a singing career.) But as I understand it, Jackson’s tangled financial holdings are still being sorted out. A good friend of mine, an attorney for one of Jackson’s own attorneys (don’t ask!) has said this is the most complicated, most fascinating case he’s ever encountered.
I have no idea who put together the memorial tribute. But it’s highly emotional, and seems the work of a friend or family member, not a business associate. Here are some excerpts:
“The Creator blessed him with never-before-seen musical talent.”
“He had a lifelong dedication to his profession which never allowed him to form a traditional family of his own.”
“He lived to see unprecedented success and basked in the admiration of millions. By the same audience, he was unjustly persecuted under unfounded cruel allegations which broke his spirit.”
“Human neglect and carelessness forced his body into an early rest and his soul entered eternity on June 25, 2009 at the age of 50. He is mourned by his extended family and millions of people around the world.”
There’s much more, including a listing of Jackson’s unheralded talents (he was apparently both an inventor and a gifted sketch artist) as well as his many charitable activities. But for all the affectionate chronicling of Jackson’s “irresistible” smile and  “infectious” laughter, I see a huge reservoir of anger. This tribute reads like the life of a saint, one whose goodness couldn’t withstand the cruel machinations of others.
I don’t pretend to know the real truth about Michael Jackson. I don’t understand his mysterious lifestyle, his baffling choices. I do know that he was immensely talented. Like many, I suspect that his personal life was somehow stunted by the show business career toward which he was pointed almost from birth.
I also know that he made a difference to many he never met. A small example: I was on a family vacation at a Mexican resort, the kind where members of the staff put on the evening’s entertainment. One highlight was a Michael Jackson tribute show, highlighting his most popular numbers. The star, lip-syncing to Jackson’s falsetto and pulling off his idiosyncratic dance moves, was a slender young Mexican who during daylight hours worked as a bartender. When, over a frosty piña colada, I asked how he’d developed his uncanny impersonation, I learned he’d been a fan since age eight. Through years of practice before his bedroom mirror, he’d turned himself into a Michael Jackson clone.
I wish him a happier life than Michael Jackson had. Perhaps (aside from those Club Med talent shows) he’ll steer clear of showbiz, which can give generously, but also taketh away.

At Sea with Roger Corman (and TCM)

Sailing, sailing, over the bounding main . . . . Now that summer’s officially here, it’s pleasant to contemplate an oceanic adventure. If you’re a movie fan, you can get in the mood by watching Master and Commander, or perhaps Pirates of the Caribbean, or even Finding Nemo. Or you can go one better and sign up for Turner Classic Movies’ latest Classic Cruise, which will troll the warm waters off the Florida coast between October 21 and 26.
This very special Disney cruise, overseen by TCM hosts Robert Osborne and Ben Mankiewicz, will cater to movie lovers by showcasing classic films and featuring a goodly assortment of legendary Hollywood folk. No, not Tom Cruise, though the idea of cruising with Tom seems just about perfect. But if you’re keen on oldies but goodies, you can meet Ann Blyth, whose biggest hit was 1945’s Mildred Pierce. If film noir is your passion, you’ll enjoy hearing from film historian Eddie Muller. Nostalgic Baby Boomers might like to take a gander at one-time heartthrob Tab Hunter.
To my amusement, three of the top-billed guests on this year’s TCM excursion are Hollywood legends with whom I’ve interacted. Pride of place goes to Richard Dreyfuss, whose heyday was the Seventies. In that busy decade he flew off to college in American Graffiti, put out to sea in Jaws, and hobnobbed with space aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He was also a comic romantic lead in The Goodbye Girl, winning himself an Oscar in a category that included such international stars as Richard Burton and Marcello Mastroianni. And I can honestly say I knew him at the start. Back when I was in high school, I attended a summer theatre workshop held on the UCLA campus. Wannabe thespians came from all over Southern California. Some were so serious about their future careers that they already had agents and stage names. Rick Dreyfuss from Beverly Hills High had none of that, nor did he strike me as a standout in the talent department. But he was an awfully nice fellow, and I’m delighted that he’s had such a major career. (As for those others, whatever happened to them?)
 Shirley Jones was nice enough to make time for me when I was researching Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon . . . and Beyond. Since she’d played the sister of little Ronny in The Music Man and his future stepmother in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, she was well equipped to tell me about his professionalism and his charm. I was also pleased to discover that Shirley is a straight shooter. Her comments on the strange career of Ron’s brother Clint were insightful, and she made a fascinating digression into some of the branches on her own family tree. (More on that, perhaps, some other time.)
But the #3 guest on the TCM list is someone I know particularly well (to the extent, of course, that ANYONE knows him). I’m talking about Roger Corman, my former boss and the subject of my insider biography, Roger Corman: Blood-SuckingVampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches,and Driller Killers. Roger loves freebies, so it’s no surprise that he’s willing to go cruising on TCM’s dime. And there’s no end to the monster-from-the-deep flicks that can be programmed in conjunction with his appearance. How about Piranha, for starters? Or She Gods of Shark Reef? Or Creature from the Haunted Sea?
Friends have suggested that I sign on for the cruise. But given Roger’s recent attitude toward me and my book, I might end up getting fed to Sharktopus.

Roadshow! -- Listening to the Sound of Money

Oh what a day!  June 20 marks the release of Jersey Boys, yet another attempt to bring a Broadway hit musical to the screen. There’ve been other movie adaptations of Broadway musicals in recent years: Les Misérables, Sweeney Todd, Mamma Mia!, and Dreamgirls immediately come to mind. Some have had distinguished casts, and have picked up a few critics’ prizes. But with the exception of Chicago in 2002, none has been an outstanding success. This time around, the director is Clint Eastwood, who’s insisting that Jersey Boys is not a musical so much as a dramatic story that happens to feature music. We’ll soon see how well that approach works, and whether today’s moviegoers can be persuaded to overlook the dreaded “m” (as in “musical”) word when they choose an evening’s entertainment.
There was a time when Hollywood was all about musicals. Once The Jazz Singer introduced synchronized sound, every studio rushed to make films that featured “all talking -- all singing -- all dancing.” The marquees of 1930s movie palaces touted Busby Berkeley’s backstage extravaganzas, with their oodles of beautiful girls dancing in formation. Later that decade, audiences thrilled to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who specialized in elegant dancefloor tête-à-têtes. The 1950s were the great years of Gene Kelly, the inventive genius behind such classics as An American in Paris and Singin’ in the Rain.
By the late 1950s, moviegoers would just as soon stay home and watch that newfangled wonder, television. That’s when Hollywood moguls—looking to compete with the tiny black-and-white screens in America’s living rooms—turned to Broadway. They shelled out big bucks for the film rights to stage musicals that could be filmed in living color, then augmented by stereophonic sound.  It worked, sometimes very well. West Side Story (1961) was an enormous critical and popular success. My Fair Lady (1964) was a hit too, despite the casting of a leading lady (Audrey Hepburn) whose singing voice needed to be dubbed. After Julie Andrews, the stage star of My Fair Lady, was snubbed in favor of Hepburn, she was quickly snapped up by the Walt Disney Company, which cleverly cast her in a charming original musical, Mary Poppins.
By this time, every studio was vying to make the biggest, splashiest, most lucrative musical of all. A fascinating book called Roadshow! , by my colleague Matthew Kennedy, is subtitled “The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s.” Matt chronicles how Hollywood’s determination to produce spectacular roadshow musicals (the kind with reserved seats and intermissions) eventually killed off the genre. His opening chapter, “The Musical that Ate Hollywood,” is devoted to a Broadway adaptation that was so successful it saved Twentieth-Century Fox from ruin, following Fox’s monstrously expensive 1963 production of Cleopatra.
Of course I’m talking about The Sound of Music. This nun-and-Nazi fest hardly had instant appeal in Hollywood. Detractors called it The Sound of Mucus, and actor Doug McClure sniped that “Watching The Sound of Music is like being beaten to death by a Hallmark card.” But the film turned Julie Andrews into America’s new sweetheart. And a brilliant mountaintop opening that made maximum use of location shooting and a wide-screen format showed how cinema can breathe fresh life into a stagebound play. The film’s original release was so successful it lasted a full 4 ½ years. Only problem: all of Hollywood was now looking for the next Sound of Music. Doctor Dolittle, Camelot, Star!, Paint Your Wagon, Hello, Dolly! . . . . the costly flops just kept on coming. Which goes to prove that extravagance has its price.

Obvious Child; Not-So-Obvious Parents

Seeing the new indie, Obvious Child, on the eve of Father’s Day has sent my mind in some interesting directions. On Father’s Day, of course, the media were full of dad stories. NPR chronicled heroic dads.  Parade magazine interviewed delightfully goofy dads. At the gym, my treadmill TV offered movies about sad dads (Bruce Willis, as a New York cop unable to afford his daughter’s dream wedding) as well as police procedurals about bad dads (a rapist whose goal is to impregnate his victims—yuck!).   
All of which sent me back to Obvious Child, whose central figure is Donna Stern, a screwed-up but rather adorable stand-up comedienne (Jenny Slate). Her career isn’t taking off, and her day job has just evaporated. Then a bad break-up leads to a boozy but joyous one-night-stand, and bingo! she’s on track for a bundle from heaven. Concluding that she’s not good mom material, she elects to have an abortion. And decides—in her own quixotic fashion—to let the father-to-be know what she’s planning for Valentine’s Day.
Surprise! Max turns out to be a stand-up kind of guy. Sure, he’s WASPy and doesn’t travel in the same circles as Donna’s hipster friends, but he’s also both smart and understanding. And his chance remark about hoping someday to become a grandpa clues us in to the fact that this fellow might turn out to be a keeper. Donna’s choice regarding her pregnancy made me think about  Juno and Knocked Up, two other recent comedies in which unlikely couples face the consequences of their bedroom shenanigans. Those films are both similar to and different from this one, in ways I won’t spell out here. But I’m slightly puzzled that the situation keeps arising, both on movie screens and (I suspect) in real life as well.
Whatever happened to the Pill? I grew up in an era when the new availability of oral contraceptives was a very big deal indeed. The birth-control pill was first marketed in the U.S. circa 1960, but state laws and medical anxieties at first limited its spread. It wasn’t until 1967, two years after a Supreme Court decision overrode bans in many states, that Time magazine featured this new medical advance on its cover. One expert representing Planned Parenthood estimated for Time that  by 1967 more than five million American women considered the Pill their contraceptive of choice. Most of those women were married, because until 1972 states were still free to keep oral contraceptives out of the hands of females who happened to be single.  
Time devoted the bulk of its cover story to medical issues, debates within the Catholic Church, and population control in underdeveloped nations. Only gradually did the article arrive at the question of how the Pill was transforming American society, solemnly noting that “a girl who is promiscuous on the Pill would have been promiscuous without it.” What Time did not think to stress was the importance of reliable contraception in an era when abortion was strictly illegal.
Sixties Hollywood of course steered clear of the whole issue. An industry whose longtime production code had its basis in Roman Catholic strictures was not about to make contraception a plot point. Today, as social mores have loosened, we encounter lots of on-screen sex, but almost no acknowledgment of its possible consequences. That’s why I appreciate Juno, and Knocked Up, and Obvious Child. However pollyanna-ish they might be in suggesting the possibility of happy endings, at least they recognize that when you get horizontal with a person of the opposite gender, something might possibly develop.

I’ve promised my good friends in Ridgecrest, California that I’d spread the word about their summer movie festival. So here goes. The Historical Society of the Upper Mojave Desert is presenting “Summer of Movie Magic” on Wednesday nights through August 27. Disney favorites will alternate with silent film classics, and each evening’s festivities will kick off at 7 p.m. with selected cartoons. Hot dogs and other goodies are available. It all happens at the Historic USO Building, 230 W. Ridgecrest Blvd, Ridgecrest, CA For more information, phone 760-375-8456. Be there or be square! 

The Seven Ages of Jane Fonda

Shakespeare said it: “All the world’s a stage . . .  and one man in his time plays many parts.” Jane Fonda is emphatically not a man, as she’d be the first to point out. But she’s had a remarkable life, full of entrances and exits, which is why she’s just been honored with the American Film Institute’s 42nd annual lifetime achievement award. (Videotape of the ceremony will be aired tomorrow night, June 14, on TNT, with an August 1 encore on TCM.)
That Shakespearean soliloquy from As You Like It  goes on to divide a man’s life into seven ages: the infant, the schoolboy, the young lover, and so on, all the way up to the old man approaching death “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”  Fortunately, Jane Fonda still seems to have her teeth, and much more. At 76, she looks and sounds quite marvelous, and she’s by no means ready to slip off to oblivion. But it’s fair to say that she’s been through at least seven ages, some of them overlapping. Several of these ages seem to dovetail with the interests of the various men in her life, to the point where one might assume that Jane was a malleable creature, molded in turn by a series of Svengalis. If that was once somewhat true, it is so no longer. Through the decades, as her addresses and her hairstyles have kept changing, she has clearly evolved into her own person.
So . . . here’s my take on the Seven Ages of Jane:
(1) Jane as ingénue: The only daughter of the famous Henry played a bouncy cheerleader in Tall Story (1960), a wacky schoolmarm-turned-outlaw in Cat Ballou (1965), and a ditzy newlywed in Barefoot in the Park (1967).
(2) Jane as sex goddess: For her husband Roger Vadim, who had previously discovered and then married Brigitte Bardot, Jane starred as the sexually provocative Barbarella (1968). Around this time, Newsweek ran a story titled “Anything Goes: The Permissive Society.” To highlight the collapse of social taboos, Newsweek displayed on its cover a provocative but discreetly posed nude shot of Jane—all bouffant hair, pouting lips, and white skin—on the Barbarella set.
(3) Jane as serious actress: She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her grueling role in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969), and won for Klute (1971). There was another nomination for Julia (1977), and a second win for Coming Home (1978). Three additional nominations followed.
(4) Jane as activist: Many still condemn Jane for her 1972 visit to North Vietnam, where she naively posed seated on an anti-aircraft gun. This was the era of her marriage to anti-war activist Tom Hayden, and her outspoken political views stirred up much controversy.
(5) Jane as workout queen: Beginning in 1982 Jane’s exercise books and videos kicked off a national fitness craze. I personally survived more than one sweat-intensive workout at her Beverly Hills studio.
(6) Jane as Lady Bountiful: While married to cable-TV tycoon Ted Turner, she founded a center for adolescent reproductive health at Atlanta’s Emory University, and has since spearheaded other organizations supporting women.
(7) Jane as Hollywood legend: She is still performing, in movies and on Broadway. Remarkably, she appeared as Nancy Reagan in Lee Daniels’ The Butler.
Something I really admire about Jane  Fonda: she gives great Oscar acceptance speeches. Unlike her close friend Vanessa Redgrave, she doesn’t always insist on airing divisive views when she’s in the spotlight. Witness her 1972 Oscar win for Klute, when she knew enough to keep her mouth shut.

The Ghost Army Saves the Day

All the pomp and circumstance surrounding the seventieth anniversary of D-Day reminds me of how hard the movies have tried to capture the events of June 6, 1944. On this pivotal date, Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, France, paying a huge price in human lives but also turning the tide of World War II. The Longest Day, from 1962, was an international spectacular starring every Hollywood bigwig from John Wayne to Robert Ryan to Henry Fonda to Robert Mitchum. Sean Connery appeared as a lowly private, just before winning fame for his breakout role as James Bond. France’s Arletty and Jean-Louis Barrault took part, as did Britain’s Richard Burton, Frank Finlay, and Peter Lawford. The big cast also found room for teen heartthrobs Sal Mineo, Paul Anka, and Tommy Sands. And famed novelists Romain Gary and James Jones were among those contributing to Cornelius Ryan’s screenplay, based on his bestselling non-fiction book.
Cut to 1998, when Steven Spielberg used the Normandy landings as a jumping-off place for his story of a soldier gone missing, Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg’s film was beaten out as Best Picture by Shakespeare in Love, in a year when two other war-related movies (Life is Beautiful and The Thin Red Line) were also in the running. Though I have some gripes about Saving Private Ryan, few will deny the power of Spielberg’s harrowing staging of the Normandy segment, as captured by Janusz Kaminski’s Oscar-winning camerawork.
I salute, of course, the brave men and women who helped make D-Day a success. But there’s one aspect of that invasion I didn’t learn about in my high school and college history texts.  In fact, it remained secret until 1996. I’m talking about the Ghost Army.
I first heard of the Ghost Army from Jack Masey. When I served as a guide at Osaka’a Expo 70, Jack was the honcho leading the U.S. Pavilion’s design team. I didn’t get to know Jack well then, but many years later—as we planned for a 2010 reunion—I had the pleasure of learning more about him. When he explained his service in World War II, I couldn’t quite follow. He was a designer and builder of fake military equipment? Come again? 
Now, thanks to a documentary by Rick Beyer that was broadcast by PBS in 2013, I have a better sense of what Jack was up to. At age 18, a recent graduate of New York’s High School of Music and Art, Jack was drafted, soon landing in the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops unit. As he recalled on camera, “We were told we were going to be using inflatable equipment to try and fool the Germans into thinking that we were a real army, when we were in effect, I suppose, a rubber army.”

The 23rd came ashore on D-Day with lightweight phony tanks, trucks, and aircraft that, when combined with sound effects recordings, gave the appearance of a major military presence. Members of the unit, who included young painter Ellsworth Kelly and future fashion designer Bill Blass, proved adept at deception, even hanging out at local cafes to spin stories designed to fool lurking Nazi spies. In a recent Memorial Day address, documentarian Rick Beyer paid tribute to these men: “They did not employ the steel of the bayonet, or the power of artillery, but instead wielded imagination, bravado, and creativity. They staged twenty-one different battlefield deceptions to keep the Germans guessing about the real strength and location of American forces.” How wonderful to know that artists too could use their skills to help save the world.

My Best Friend’s Gay Wedding

This morning when  I unfolded my Los Angeles Times, I was greeted by a twelve-page advertising supplement designed to usher in the annual L.A. Pride weekend. The cover asks the question,  “What is Gay L.A.?”  Inside, a service feature suggests “7 Ways to Celebrate Pride,” including a special after-hours party at Universal Studios.  Ads tout a hair restoration clinic, a big-ticket theatrical production, and Dodger baseball (“Pride. Available in Blue”). A fashion article quotes Joan Rivers’ right-hand man on the joys of luxury sneakers, and a book review introduces a coffee-table pictorial called My Buddy: World War II Laid Bare. (This Amazon advance best-seller offers glimpses, I learn, “of soldiers and sailors cavorting and hamming it up – often in the buff – during a time when homosexuality was criminalized in the United States.”) And the Times itself is announcing a new web presence, to debut June 20, keyed to its coverage of what it calls LGBT-LA.
 How times (as well as the L.A. Times) have changed! Today, especially among young people, “gay” is often synonymous with “hip.” The 2014 movie heroine, a direct descendant of  Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding, could never survive romantic trauma without her gay BFF by her side. On television the success of Modern Family proves that audiences are happy to embrace a gay couple—and even a gay wedding complete with kissing—as just one of the many permutations of contemporary life.
I now take you back to March 7, 1967, and the airing of a special episode of CBS Reports, hosted by Mike Wallace. Its title: “The Homosexuals.” It is a somber piece of black-&-white footage, featuring Wallace’s interviews with a series of well-dressed men who admit to being part of what Wallace calls “the most despised minority group in the United States.”  A few boldly look into the camera and identify themselves, but most have their faces obscured. One twenty-seven-year-old who’s shown hidden behind a potted plant claims he can’t hold down a job because of his orientation; homosexual acts have sent him to jail three times. He regards himself as sick, fights off his urge for “animal sexual gratification,” and longs for the home and family he’s sure he’ll never have.
As host, Wallace provides some statistics. According to a CBS News survey, a majority of Americans “are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality.” And that’s hardly surprising, given the view that the average homosexual is promiscuous, “not interested in nor capable of a lasting relationship like that of a heterosexual marriage.” The general consensus -- even in what Wallace calls “this era of bold sexual mores”-- is that homosexuality is a mental illness. Some psychiatrists interviewed on camera blame this epidemic on an overclose relationship between mother and son. We’re told that that if a father is warm and caring, it’s impossible to produce a homosexual child.
The year 1967 was marked by important advances in racial equality. It was the year not only of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner but also of the Supreme Court decision that voided all restrictions on marriage between people of different races. Still, homosexual acts performed in private between consenting adults were still illegal in every state but Illinois. A judge from North Carolina admits that in his state there are heavier legal penalties for homosexuality than for second-degree murder. Wallace fades out with the story of a closeted homosexual who’s a husband and father, but finds himself profoundly unhappy: “At the center of his life he remains anonymous, a displaced person, an outsider.”  Hardly a gayman, sad to say.