McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits: 4-6

Welcome back to what some say is everyone's favorite "internet" feature, McNeil's Li'l Bogie Bits! Our friend McNeil is already up to Bogart's third wedding in the biography of that icon he is reading. It seems that the drink of choice at the splendid affair was something called a Black Velvet, which I could research and tell you all about, but I have decided not to. You don't care about me! Why should I care whether or not you know what a Black Velvet is? The main thing is it got everybody really drunk really fast. That's bogie bit #4 for you collectors! The Black Velvets caused the character actor Mischa Auer to take off his pants and run up and down a long table. You know Mischa Auer best from Hellzapoppin. No you don't! Philistine! I can't keep spoon-feeding you details about who Mischa Auer is. I have my own life to live! Allegedly. Whether or not Mischa Auer was wearing underpants was not divulged in McNeil's email. In conclusion, I have a leftover bogie bit that I forgot to include in the previous installment. It seems that Humphrey Bogart's boyhood nickname was "Hump." For no very good reason, it reminds of how John Wayne took banjo lessons from a boy named Fat. And THAT reminds me of the time that John Wayne pulled an apple corer out of Bogart's back. It had been jabbed in there up to the hilt by his clearly upset wife, though whether said wife was the one alluded to in bogie bit #4 is beyond the scope of our current narrative. Furthermore, the thing about having an apple corer jabbed in his back does not count as bogie bit #7. Bogie bits come only from McNeil. Get it straight!

Kinda Scary

I half-watched some of a Frank Capra movie on TCM last night and I'm not gonna say it reminded me of David Lynch, even though it did, but I am aware that everything reminds me of David Lynch now because I just watched a lot of David Lynch.

(Megan Abbott did point out the IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE quality of the recent TWIN PEAKS finale.) But the title of the Capra movie I half-watched is A HOLE IN THE HEAD, which isn't comforting, is it? So Frank Sinatra and his little son are trying to sleep and Carolyn Jones suddenly appears in their window, dancing in her swimsuit and long gloves. It was supposed to be funny! But it struck me as eerie. Once again, this is all my own fault. Then Carolyn Jones shows up with a whole apple in her mouth and strikes a Laura Palmer pose:

The way Sinatra expresses affection for his son is to say he's gonna sock him or punch him or "flatten" him. He's consistently violent in his love imagery, but we never think he's really gonna flatten his son. At one point he says wistfully, "He's a funny kid, you know? I could beat him up, anything, leave him someplace, and I bet he'd still love me. Kinda scary." KINDA!

The background (and foreground) is filled with strange, silent animals, for which I choose this monkey that blows bubbles as representative. The monkey that blows bubbles is next to a photo of Eleanor Parker's husband and son, whom she matter-of-factly describes drowning together before her eyes. Frank Sinatra's little boy is immediately taken with Eleanor Parker because (I think it's obvious) she is like his dead mother come back to life.

She catches the little boy staring at her because she reminds him so much of his dead mother (I believe is the subtext) and gives him a sultry wink as he peeps at her from behind a porcelain dog. Oh, and Dub Taylor works the desk at Frank Sinatra's hotel, where they use the same kind of keychains you get at the Great Northern.

You know, I really have more screen shots than I know what to do with. You should see the ones I'm skipping. There was this disturbingly infantile character (below), a very poor man's Jerry Lewis, who, in his father's words, "runs to the toilet" whenever there's a customer in the store (the same father, Edward G. Robinson, who complains about his "underwear crawling up" on him, a complaint I do not recall hearing expressed so bluntly - or indeed at all - in any other 50s movies; does he say "crawling" or "creeping"? Does it matter?) and you know how much Jerry Lewis reminds me of David Lynch, even though this is not Jerry Lewis, just a tulpa.

I hardly know what to end with.

Well, here's a guy in a white dinner jacket with a pistol on a diving board. Moments later he will pretend to shoot himself in the head with a blank for a laugh, but I don't think that's where the title comes from.

You Dragons

Dug out a couple of books about Shakespeare and looked up CYMBELINE in them. Edith Sitwell, in her "Notebook on William Shakespeare," quotes this: "To the Truncke againe, and shut the spring of it./ Swift, swift, you Dragons of the night, that dawning/ May bare the Raven's eye! I lodge in fear;/ Though this is a heavenly Angell, Hell is heere." I should have mentioned that when Lee asked me for memorable lines. See, Ethan Hawke is like, "Hey, uh, I almost forgot, can you hold a package for me for a few days?" (I paraphrase.) and Dakota Johnson from 50 SHADES OF GREY is like, "Sure!" (I paraphrase again.) So that's no package! It's a steamer trunk, and Ethan Hawke is hiding in it in his underpants, and when Dakota Johnson from 50 SHADES OF GREY goes to sleep he pops out and takes selfies with her. I don't recall if he said the part about "dragons of the night" but I do know he said, "Though this is a heavenly angel, hell is here." And "hell is here" struck me at the time. To be fair to CYMBELINE! And Ethan Hawke. Looked in a Frank Kermode volume and didn't get much (well, I didn't try very hard) except for a casual and tantalizing aside about "the astrologer Simon Forman" who saw the original production and (which has nothing to do with CYMBELINE) later "died, as he had precisely predicted, on 12 September 1613."

McNeil's Movie Korner

Welcome once again to McNeil's Movie Korner! Email from McNeil: "...just finished watching Dead End with [McNeil lists a couple of his kids here], so I looked up Billy Halop on IMDB and realized the next time we get together (whenever that is) we could have a Billy Halop film festival AND still see some of our all time favorites (the ones no one else will watch). Billy is in: Fitzwilly - uncredited as a restaurant owner * A Global Affair - cab driver * The Wheeler Dealers - uncredited subpoena server (I remember that scene!) * For Love or Money - elevator operator * Boys' Night Out - elevator operator * Too Late for Tears - boat attendant...I haven't seen this one, but it looks great and I don't know how it's escaped my attention." Thus ends McNeil's email. I hate to tell him I've never heard of FOR LOVE OR MONEY (though I can't believe we've never covered BOYS' NIGHT OUT on the "blog"). I should illustrate this "post" with a photo of Billy Halop, but (as McNeil implies above) you jerks don't care about Billy Halop. So here is an unusual publicity still of James Garner and Lee Remick from THE WHEELER DEALERS, since James Garner just died, but here he is in his underpants. :(

Everyone

I was wrong! EVERYONE is interested in Vera Caspary's novel BACHELOR IN PARADISE. Looks like it will be our next Doomed Book Club selection. Ace Atkins and Scott Phillips are already onboard, so that's a good sign. And the anonymous Hollywood producer "favorited" my "tweet" on the subject BUT DOES THAT EVER MEAN ANYTHING? Megan tells me that the novel is based on a treatment Caspary did for the Bob Hope movie, and that a great pulp illustrator named Robert McGinnis did the cover for the paperback (I'm not sure it's the one above), and that McGinnis is still around and occasionally turning out new covers for the Hard Case Crime imprint. ("Known for drawing women w impossibly long feet!" Megan tweeted at me.) McNeil, basing his observations on the film versions of BACHELOR IN PARADISE and Caspary's novel LAURA, claims to have already spotted a connection between the "outta control soap" scene in BACHELOR IN PARADISE and what he calls "the highly mannered and homo-erotic soap situation involving Clifton Webb's bath" in LAURA. I have to say I don't recall the "outta control soap" scene in BACHELOR IN PARADISE. I'll soon fix that. Finally, the mention of an ice bucket in this selection from Rosemary Clooney's autobiography prompted Megan to email it to me: "Just a few months before, I'd been sleeping - or trying to - in a room over the clattering kitchen in a honky-tonk in Wildwood, New Jersey, where Dizzy Gillespie was working on his tan in the parking lot, wearing only a leopard-skin thong. Now I was swaddled in the silence of an air-conditioned suite: ankle-deep snowy carpet, silver bucket of champagne, more roses." I have to say that clattering kitchen and parking lot don't sound too bad either!

McNeil's Movie Korner: Fourth Beach Girl

Welcome once again to McNeil's Movie Korner, your one spot on the "internet" for things you don't care anything about. Here is an intriguing paragraph from a recent McNeil email: "So I was at my parents the other day and they casually mentioned that when they were in high school, someone they knew left town after graduation and took off for Hollywood. It wasn't long before they saw this gal in a Jerry Lewis movie as well as an episode of Petticoat Junction. I have no idea why I hadn't heard this story before. To top it off, my parents began arguing over her name. Her real name was Mary Lee H_______. She had two sisters: Mary Ruth and Mary Ann. But when Mary Lee went to Hollywood she changed her name to, my mom says, Marilee Summers. My dad disagreed, of course, having nothing to do with my mom's obvious fabrication of this Marilee business. Anyway, it went on and on....Then my mom couldn't remember if she were actually in HS when she saw the pic or not...or if Dean Martin was with JLew or not. I went through a lot of 'full cast and crew' lists looking for Marilee Summers. Turns out everyone was wrong. The real girl is Lorrie Summers. She was on Beverly Hillbillies, not PJ....and Beach Party, Muscle Beach Party, and The Man with the X Ray Eyes instead of The Patsy (which is what I was rooting for). Anyway, Lorrie Summers ended up marrying the heir to the Lear Jet fortune - so I guess she didn't move back to Mississippi." Some editorial notes here! First, McNeil's Mom was right. The "internet" tells me that Lorrie Summers played "Fourth Beach Girl" on THE BEVERY HILLBILLIES under the name "Marilee Summers." And here is the interesting part (ha ha! It is not interesting). On imdb, we see that Ms. Summers was in one movie uncredited, one TV show as Marilee Summers, and TWO MOVIES as "Lorie Summers" - that's right, with one r! And that is her entire filmography. So why is her given name on imdb Lorrie Summers with TWO r's, A NAME UNDER WHICH SHE NEVER ACTED? What is behind this conspiracy, imdb? Merely by doing a "Google Image Search" using the one-r variation, I immediately found this variety-show publicity still of McNeil's parents' old high school chum with Bill Dana (speaking of comedians you have never heard of), suggesting that this is only the beginning of... eh, I'm tired now.

She First Laid Eyes on Jeffrey When He Burst Out of a Pie

It has been a busy few days! Many revelations. Just for example, we learned that Bill Griffith watches THE LAWRENCE WELK SHOW every week. He said of the midwest, from which he hails, "Polka was our blues," and we all laughed, but then he kept expanding his argument until we were all nodding thoughtfully. "We" included Laraine Newman and Ace Atkins and Megan Abbott. Bill was doing his usual amazing job of showing us around Rowan Oak. He got out Jill Faulkner's rarely-seen scrapbook in which she pasted pictures of her favorite stars, snipped from movie magazines. (Jill was Faulkner's daughter, of course.) There were quite a few photos of Lucille Ball from her pre-comedy pin-up days - a coincidence, as Laraine and I had just been talking about her (and would continue to do so during our panel the next night). In one of them, Lucy was "showing her bloomers," as Laraine put it. I guess it felt strange to stand in a girl's bedroom and nose through her private scrapbook, even though (or especially because?) she grew old and passed away years ago. Another revelation: Laraine once auditioned for Bob Hope! She said it was nightmarish and mortifying. She did her "Valley Girl" character for him, back when no one - especially Bob Hope - knew what a "valley girl" was. He stared at her with a look on his face that said they did not belong in the same room, the same building, the same universe. If I paraphrase, it is only slightly. What else? The revelations are only beginning. I read things in REPROBATES: THE CAVALIERS OF THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR about which I neglected to inform you. I did make it to twitter - a poor substitute! - to quote Robert Herrick, who was quoted in the book: "Get up, sweet Slug-a-bed, and see/ The Dew-besprangling Herbe and Tree." When I got to "besprangling" I had to put down the book for the night, I really did, because nothing was going to top it. Besprangling! At the end of the chapter we found out how Queen Henrietta met her favorite dwarf: "She first laid eyes on Jeffrey Hudson at a banquet held in her honour by the duke, when he burst out of a pie and greeted her." What else? Megan and Bill had a good talk because - unbeknownst to one another - they had both been watching Lawrence Welk's Halloween special at the same time. Dr. Theresa and I missed it because we were watching HOUSE OF THE SEVEN CORPSES as part of our Halloween film festival. (Megan took the above photo of her TV screen during the Lawrence Welk Halloween special and tweeted it at me while I was watching HOUSE OF THE SEVEN CORPSES.) HOUSE OF THE SEVEN CORPSES does not linger in the memory. But I did write down three things on the back of an envelope to tell you about it: 1) John Ireland wears an ill-fitting lavender turtleneck. 2) It is one of those movies in which a cat appears at the beginning, and you think "Oh no! Something awful is going to happen to that cat!" And it does. 3) HOUSE OF THE SEVEN CORPSES concludes with a touching expression of gratitude to the Utah Historical Society! I wonder how the Utah Historical Society felt about that. I knew that Bill Griffith was a big horror fan, but I did not know that Megan Abbott and Laraine Newman were just as avid. So Bill and Megan bonded over pioneering camera techniques in BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974). At dinner last night Dr. Theresa and Laraine enthusiastically discussed THE STUFF (in which Laraine's friend Garrett Morris appeared) and other works of Larry Cohen. Megan and Laraine rhapsodized about THE BROOD and DEAD RINGERS, both by Cronenberg. Laraine brought up Kolchak: The Night Stalker. By coincidence, Dr. Theresa and I had just watched THE NIGHT STRANGLER, a TV movie starring that character, as part of our Halloween film festival. Hmm, what else? While Dr. Theresa and I were on the way to the airport to pick up Laraine, a song by Jim Ed Brown came on the radio, containing this rhetorical question: "Did you ever hear of a clown with teardrops streaming down his face?" To which I responded, "Yes! All the time." Yet somehow Jim Ed Brown seemed to think we'd be surprised.

One Chicken Leg, One Lightning Leg

Reading another old comic book: MYSTERY IN SPACE #104, from December, 1965. It's all about this guy Ultra the Multi-Alien, who I guess was a human until four aliens shot him with ray guns at the same time! They show it in flashback, and when the guy is getting shot by four ray guns he is saying, and I quote, "YIIIII!" And who can blame him? Anyway, one of the aliens shooting him looks like a chicken, and one looks like a bolt of lightning, and another guy is smooth and blue and a fourth guy is furry and green. And for some reason, when they get through shooting him, this former human has one chicken leg and one lightning leg, while up top he is half smooth and blue, half furry and green. WHAT KINDS OF GUNS ARE THESE? And also he is suddenly and magically wearing a diaper. And thus he has become... ULTRA THE MULTI-ALIEN. He is tickling me so much! The narration box informs us: "LATER, A GRIM FACT WAS REALIZED..." Love that passive construction! Ultra is shown studying a couple of sheets of paper and saying, "THESE SCIENTIFIC PAPERS STATE I CAN NEVER REGAIN MY HUMAN FORM AGAIN -- I'M DOOMED AS THIS AWESOME... MULTI-ALIEN! BUT I MUST GO ON LIVING... HAVE A PURPOSE... AN IDENTITY!" All right, I can dig it. And now his ex-girlfriend, who thinks he is dead, mournfully gazes at his picture, as Ultra peeps and creeps around outside her window, moaning, "OH, BONNIE... BONNIE..." I don't know why this is making me laugh! But just look at his face in the next panel. (He's still lurking right outside Bonnie's window.) His thought balloon, which I have cropped out while taking this photo for you, says, "OH WHY... WHY DID THIS TERRIBLE THING HAVE TO HAPPEN TO ME?" Look how mopey he looks! The mopiest! The champion mope. Arguably, a superhero should not place his hands on his face in such a frail fashion! Somehow he makes me think of Tom Chaney, the villain of the novel TRUE GRIT, who is always saying things like, "Nothing is going right for me," and "Everything is against me. Now I am shot by a child." Well, I'm only on page 3 of this story about old Ultra the Multi-Alien. Maybe I'm misjudging him.

A Boiled Owl

And now I would like to say a few feverishly anticipated words about THE IRON PETTICOAT. Aw, it wasn't so bad! Or maybe that's the whiskey talking. Bob Hope and Katharine Hepburn started drinking whiskey early in the movie and I am highly suggestible. First Robert Osborne came on and introduced it. He said that nobody has seen this movie in 40 years, because when the rights reverted to Bob Hope, he locked it up tight. I guess Bob was ashamed of it! Ben Hecht wrote the screenplay, but Bob decided to have his gag writers punch it up Bob Hope style, which made Ben Hecht furious. There was lots of trouble. But I must say that anything I laughed at in the movie bore the distinct mark of having been added by Bob Hope's gag writers. The movie starts with a score that indicates we are about to watch the curtain rise on a turbulent opera. It's heavy! Like Wagner trying to evoke a stormy seascape or something. Katharine Hepburn's Russian accent is somewhere between German and Dracula, with some French thrown in and something else... Spanish? She rolls her r's really expansively. But the minute Bob comes onscreen the energy and pep are palpable. He just breezes in and starts tossing off one-liners, walking in that supremely graceful way of his. He's so relaxed that during a scene with his commanding officer he just swivels back and forth on a chair casually, like a little kid, like he's thinking of something else. I was proud to notice an actual Russian (I think), a guy I recognized - decades younger here! - from Woody Allen's own Russian epic, LOVE AND DEATH. He plays a martial arts expert in THE IRON PETTICOAT. This Russian (I guess) and Bob have a funny fight scene, during which Bob unforgivably breaks character to make a Bing Crosby joke. So that's another Woody Allen/Bob Hope connection, which we collect here. The politics of the film is standard Cold War stuff, except that a porcine anti-communist senator from Alabama is portrayed as a dumb boob. Very early in the movie, Katharine Hepburn is said to be "as sore as a boiled owl," an expression I have heard before, maybe in other old movies, but I still don't get it, not really, a boiled owl, sore, why? What's that? In conclusion, what's the big deal? Who cares? Who cares about anything? Goodbye forever.

McNeil's Movie Korner

Welcome once again to "McNeil's Movie Korner"! Emailed McNeil to tell him the seldom-seen THE IRON PETTICOAT is coming on TCM tomorrow night. He replied that he doesn't have access to TCM right now, and has been reduced to watching EIGHT ON THE LAM on the "streaming video" they have nowadays. "I love it when Bob slips on the banana peel!" McNeil reports of the latter film. "Bob also has a 25 year old love interest! And, not coincidentally, the film is a Bob Hope Enterprise," he concludes. You know, I seem to recall that when Kelly Hogan was sick a couple of months ago, she watched EIGHT ON THE LAM to help her feel better. I'll try to confirm and get back to you with the tantalizing results of my in-depth investigation! Why am I so excited about THE IRON PETTICOAT? Dave Kehr, who is usually so pro-Bob, had nothing nice to say about it. He said that watching Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope act together was like watching "a giraffe attempting to mate with a hedgehog." Hey, maybe that's why I'm excited! So long from "McNeil's Movie Korner."

The Discussion

Megan Abbott came to town and took lots of pictures of me eating quail. We discussed whether or not Hot Stuff the Little Devil wore a diaper (answer above) then she got in an airplane and flew away.

Of Underpants and Clowns

I am perfectly aware that the thing which most concerns you is what movies I watch on TV at three in the morning when I can't sleep. Last night's feature was RICOCHET. What's the word I'm looking for? Subtle? No, that's not it. "Operatic" might be a polite way to put it. When I flipped to it, already in progress, the first image to greet my weary eyes was a clown staring directly into the camera and blowing a trumpet at me. This is never a good sign in a movie! It means you are about to enter an off-kilter realm where anything can happen and not in a good way. And sure enough, uniformed beat cop Denzel Washington soon has a fateful standoff with a gunman. And he responds the way any normal cop would respond, by stripping down to his underpants in the middle of the fateful standoff, to the surprise of the gunman and the hostage and everyone else. Is his wisecracking partner Kevin Pollak (see the photo above, which takes place right around the time the clown pops out and blows a trumpet) the most surprised of all? I really can't remember. But I bet he makes a wisecrack about it! He even makes a wisecrack after he has been - SPOILER ALERT - fatally shot by like a million bullets. (By coincidence, the cop played by Kevin Pollak does some of the same professional-level celebrity impressions that the real-life Kevin Pollak does in his comedy act!) I guess you think the movie is done with clowns and underpants now. You think wrong! Much later (years later in the movie's chronology) we get this line: "Don't shoot, please don't shoot, I'm just a clown!" The clown is addressing Denzel Washington, who - because he is slowly being driven mad by his nemesis - is wearing an open pink bathrobe and underpants! The clown removes his red rubber nose and waves his hands weakly about in a gesture of clowning. None of this is meant to be amusing as far as I could tell. But mainly the movie consists of John Lithgow suddenly turning around to reveal that he is John Lithgow or stepping into a patch of light to reveal that he is John Lithgow or rising from a stooped position to reveal that he is John Lithgow.

Evil Piñata Island

Okay! I am not kidding! The "present day" action of the evil piñata movie starts with a contest to find thousands of pairs of underpants that have been "scattered around the island."

Gary Cooper and His Chimpanzee

Re: that photo of Sylvia Sidney and Gary Cooper. I have to keep convincing myself that it is Gary Cooper, because sometimes when I look at it, it just doesn't look like Gary Cooper. Now, in the movie (CITY STREETS) itself, there are lots of times when Gary Cooper looks just like Gary Cooper. In the publicity photo, his identity is not as easy to grasp. Why? Is it because we're not used to seeing Gary Cooper in profile? Is it because his eyelashes seem so long? Is it because Gary Cooper wasn't "Gary Cooper" yet in 1931, and the photographer missed out on what makes him "Gary Cooper"? The other day when I was looking for a photo of Gary Cooper in CITY STREETS, I came across one of Gary Cooper and (supposedly) his pet chimpanzee, though I suspect it was something cooked up by the studio to make him seem interesting for a fan magazine. There was something phony about the setup. Still, maybe you are asking yourself why on earth I did not supply you with a photo of Gary Cooper and his supposed pet chimpanzee. Well, there was something depressing about it. Sometimes photos of monkeys and/or chimps depress me, as you know. The chimp had a resigned look on its face. And it was wearing a diaper. So here instead is a frame of Sylvia Sidney from the movie, and it's a good one, but you're not getting the full effect. The shot starts with an extreme close-up on her eyes, then one closes, and then, as the camera pulls back, you see she has a gun, and finally you see she's at a carnival shooting gallery where Gary Cooper works, wearing a cowboy hat and looking a lot like Gary Cooper.

Bob News

Bob Hope news from Brian Z.: Hope's "old dark house" thriller/comedy THE CAT AND THE CANARY is finally coming out on DVD. Here's the story. Meanwhile, McNeil sits around waiting in vain for THE IRON PETTICOAT. Do you care? No? Stop reading "blogs"! Leave me alone with my sorrow.

Frasier, Briefly

Much as we have chosen to do for the late Soupy Sales, we include a new (to the "blog") photo with this edition of our popular regular feature "Frasier, Briefly," despite the "blog's" recent ban on wasteful new illustrations and the fact that Frasier is still very much with us. (Hey, look! It's Frasier hanging out with my best friend Elvis Costello! I wonder if they talked about me!) For you see, this is a special occasion: Kelly Hogan is pleased to announce that she has finally watched each and every episode of FRASIER. "I'm done with Frasier," as she tersely puts it. But I don't believe that for a minute! No one is ever done with Frasier. Hogan reports that she thought of our long conversations about Frasier's frequent shirtlessness as she viewed a show from the final season. "He's EXTRA naked in that one!" she said, referring to an episode in which Frasier is forced to wear a diaper for hilarious reasons.

A Hasty Man

Speaking of interesting old 45s, here I am violating my own rule again by adding a new image to my already dangerously overloaded computer. But it had to be done! As promised, I watched THERE'S A GIRL IN MY SOUP all the way through to its closing credits, so I could find out for McNeil who sang "Arabella Cinderella." Here is the single, and as you can see, the performer is Mike d'Abo. I found the picture on Mr. d'Abo's "web" site, which he still maintains (I think; his last message appears to be from 2007, though the site itself was updated just a few weeks ago). The main page shows Mr. d'Abo with his family, and they look very happy and nice, and I admit that I somewhat regret my easy dismissal of "Arabella Cinderella," of which, after all, only snippets are heard in the film. And what kind of man judges a snippet? A hasty man, that's what kind. Please note that the 45 cover includes a shot of Goldie Hawn flung over Peter Sellers's shoulder, and I must admit that her underpants are showing, which is out of keeping with the "blog's" usual policy vis-à-vis raciness. But the "blog's" editorial board decided that the unexpected discovery of the "Arabella Cinderella" 45 was of sufficient interest to allow for an exception. (By the way, having at last seen the film all the way through, I must admit that it does not adhere to the socio-comedic tradition of a ritualistic affirmation of bourgeois norms, as McNeil and I originally speculated. In fact - SPOILER ALERT! - Ms. Hawn traipses off into a seemingly abusive relationship and the abandoned Mr. Sellers reverts to shallow hedonism, and the whole thing turns out pretty bleak if you ask me, so who's bourgeois now? Well, the movie still is, somehow. As Henri Lefebvre observes in his CRITIQUE OF EVERYDAY LIFE, "Protesting against bourgeois stupidity and oppression, the anarchic individualist is enclosed in 'private' consciousness, itself a product of the bourgeois era, and no longer understands human power and the community upon which that power is founded. The historical forms of this community, from the village to the nation, escape him… By following alienation to its very extremes he is merely playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie.") A final curiosity: Ms. Hawn's underpants are a bright, shiny green in the actual film. The 45 jacket has faded, perhaps, or there was a mistake by the printer, or perhaps the color was purposefully altered. Another mystery!

I Thought of Four More Things, For a Total of Eleven Things of Which I Have Thought

I thought of four more things to say about RALLY 'ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS! 1) It gives you a chance to see Paul Newman trying out his method acting up against the unapologetic mugging of Mr. Mooney of THE LUCY SHOW fame. (Yes, I am aware that you have never heard of Mr. Mooney or THE LUCY SHOW, so here's your chance to do some research for extra credit!) 2) Yes, the title has an exclamation point in it, but the fun doesn't stop there! There's a comma and an apostrophe, too! 3) SPOILER ALERT! Like all good movies, it features a chimpanzee wearing underpants. 4) This one is a warning. It contains a long Native American skit of the unfortunate kind that prevented us from giving a proper obituary tribute to Joey Bishop. The skit begins with a dance number that you are almost tempted to forgive because of the interesting gyrations of Joan Collins and Tuesday Weld. The skit devolves thereafter into a certain kind of mayhem that will put you in mind of ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES (directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, with whom I once shared an elevator) or BUFFALO BILL & THE INDIANS (also starring Newman, this time with an ampersand in the title) but lacking the rather more enlightened attitude of those films.

McNeil's Gold Medal International Emergency Exit Theatre

Today's MGMIEET has archeological value: McNeil has finally found a snippet of his video white whale THE IRON PETTICOAT.

Meet Me In Las Vegas

I only caught glimpses of the film MEET ME IN LAS VEGAS on TCM today, because I was getting ready to go have my picture made with Sheri Joseph. When I left the house, Cyd Charisse (pictured) was pantomiming beating up a lady in underpants as Sammy Davis, Jr. (off-screen for the entire song) offered a rendition of the old love-and-murder ballad "Frankie and Johnny" with the words updated into hipster lingo ("Everyone was juiced, as you may have deduced" providing one of the milder examples). I should take a moment to express a certain sentiment again in regard to TCM: DEAR ROBERT OSBORNE, PLEASE LET ME BE A "GUEST PROGRAMMER" ON YOUR NETWORK!!! I WILL DO A REALLY GOOD JOB! I WILL SIT IN A CHAIR AND BEHAVE! Okay. Ms. Joseph happened to mention to me today that she tried to "click" on the review that compares me to David Sedaris, and was led back only to my own "blog," which does not quote the review on that point. That's because the review of my book only appears in the print edition of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. For some reason it's not on the "web" version. But I promise it compares me to David Sedaris! Go thumb through a copy at your local bookstore and see if I'm not telling the truth. But please don't drop any of those subscription cards on the floor. Someone else will have to come along and clean up your mess! It's the one with Michael Moore on the cover, rather than some starlet or another, so I imagine there will be plenty of copies left.