THE OSCAR 1966 lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-oscar-1966.html
“You finally made it, Frankie. Oscar Night!. And here you sit, on top of a glass mountain called ‘success.’ You’re one of the chosen five, and the whole town’s holding its breath to see who won it. It’s been quite a climb, hasn’t it, Frankie? Down at the bottom, scuffling for dimes in those smokers, all the way to the top. Magic Hollywood! Ever think about it? I do, friend Frankie, I do….” And thus begins one of the most sublimely terrible movies ever to grace the screen. A speech rife with overelaborate hyperbole (it's hard to imagine anyone taking the Oscars this seriously, even in the '60s), clumsy metaphors, labored clichés, and the name “Frankie” repeated no less than three times in a breathless paragraph. Remarkably, three (count ‘em, three) screenwriters are responsible for the dialogue in this gilt-edged burlesque, which, given how the characters are prone to repeat the name of the very person to whom they're speaking, sounds as though it were written for the radio. With nary an ironic or self-aware bone in its bathetic, threadbare body, The Oscar is the kind of pandering-yet-earnest, self-serious Hollywood trash no one has the old-school, out-of-touch naiveté to know how to make anymore. A 1966 film that would have felt warmed-over in 1960 (the year Ocean’s Eleven and Sinatra’s Rat Pack made this kind of clean-cut, pomaded, sharkskin suited, ring-a-ding-ding brand of cool into a veritable brand), The Oscar is from the Joseph E. Levine (The Carpetbaggers, Harlow) school of overlit, elephantine artifice. Every interior looks like a soundstage, everyone’s clothes look as though they’d never been worn before, and the characters are so lacquered and buffed they resemble department store mannequins. As though encouraged to get into the spirit of things, The Oscars’ flirting-withobsolescence “all-star cast” (eight Oscar winners in all) contribute performances that somehow
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manage to be mannequin stiff and over-the-top at the same time. Performances wholly unacquainted with the psychology, normal speech patters, or recognizable human behavior. With each viewing of this unrelentingly unconvincing take on what I assume was intend to be a cautionary tale about the dangers of unbridled ambition, I grow less and less surprised that one of its screenwriters (Harlan Ellison) is known principally for his work in science fiction.
Stephen Boyd as Frankie Fane "I'm fighting for my life! And there's a spiked boot for anyone who gets in my way!"
Elke Sommer as Kay Bergdahl "It's that seed of rot inside of you which makes you what you are that you can't change. You just dress it better!"
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Tony Bennett as Hymie Kelly "You lie down with pigs, you come up smelling like garbage!"
Eleanor Parker as Sophie Cantaro "You go after what you want. In some men it's admirable, in you it's...unclean!"
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Milton Berle as Arthur "Kappy" Kapstetter "You never know you're on the way out until you suddenly realize it would take a ticket to get back in."
The Oscar, subtitled: Memoirs of a Hollywood Louse, is an unabashed laundry list of every show biz/Hollywood cliché handed down since What Price Hollywood? (1932). A beyondcamp, glossy soap opera whose overripe performance and purple prose presents the first male-focused challenge to the women of Valley of the Dolls (and Beyond). Stephen Boyd, he of the narrow frame and chiseled, Tom of Finland profile, is Frankie Fane; your garden-variety ruthless user with a suitable-for-movie-marquees alliterative name. Side note* I don't recommend anyone try playing a drinking game in which you take a shot every time someone in the film says Frankie’s name, you'll be rushed to the hospital with alcohol poisoning by the 20-minute mark. As this told-in-flashback opus begins, Frankie and longtime buddy Hymie Kelly (Tony Bennett, making his film debut/swansong and looking like he wished he were back in San Francisco with his heart) are eking out a living largely thanks to the bump and grind efforts of Frankie’s stripper girlfriend, Laurel Scott (Jill St. John).
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Jill St. John as Laurel Scott "What does he think I am, dirt? Every morning I'd get the feeling he was gonna leave two dollars on the dresser for me!"
After a nasty run-in with a crooked sheriff—a bulldoggish Broderick Crawford playing the flip side of his Highway Patrol TV character—the vagabond trio thumb a ride to NYC where breadwinner Laurel (who’s, of course, basically a nice, decent girl who just wants “a kid”) soon tires of Frankie's freeloading. This in spite of the fact that Hymie, the perennial 3rd wheel, appears to be living with the couple, yet shows no signs of being any more gainfully employed than his pal. As audiences wait in vain for Hymie to happen upon a microphone and solve everyone’s problems by discovering a latent talent for singing (and in the bargain provide a much-needed respite from the film’s ceaseless stream of risible dialog and ‘60s slang); Frankie the hound dog decides to accompany Hymie to “a swingin’ party in the village…lots of chicks” where he meets aspiring costume designer Kay Bergdahl (Sommer). In no time Frankie makes his move: Frankie- “You a tourist or a native?” Kay- “Take one from column A and two from column B and get an egg roll either way.” On the strength of that nonsensical rejoinder, one would be forgiven for leaping to the assumption that Kay was suffering a stroke-related episode and in need of immediate medical attention, but not our Frankie. Clearly smitten by Kay’s pouting accent, silk-awning bangs, and mink eyelashes, our smarmy antihero instead continues to engage the comely blond in more Haiku-inspired small talk. Kay, perhaps as a nod to the film's title, has a way of making everything she says sound like excerpts from an Academy Award acceptance speech: 5/20
“I am the end result of everything I’ve ever learned… all I ever hope to be, and all the experiences I’ve ever had.” Uhmm...O.K. We return now to Laurel—that hip-switchin’, nice-walkin’, bundle of loveliness—who, in a latein-coming display of backbone, lays down the law to Frankie when he returns home: “If you think I’m gonna work my tail off so you can run around with the village chicks…oh, stop spreadin’ the pollen around, Frankie...or else!” Unfortunately Laurel's ultimatum doesn’t have the desired effect on Frankie as she'd hoped, for after having spent the evening with hard-to-get Bergdahl, Frankie starts to look upon roundheeled laura as used goods. In no time, Frankie, the village pollen-spreader, beats a hasty retreat. So hasty he misses out on hearning the joyous news that Laurel is pregnant. In much the same way Willy Wonka’s shiftless Grandpa Joe miraculously finds the energy to haul his wrinkled carcass out of bed once the prospect of a candy factory tour looms; the heretofore serially unemployed Frankie promptly lands a job in the garment district when it affords the opportunity to see more of the glacial Miss Bergdahl. But it isn’t long before Kay’s middle-European cool proves no match for Frankie’s hotheaded, borderline sociopathic personality.
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Koo Koo Frankie shows a wise-guy actor (Jan Merlin) what it's like to be on "the business end of a knife."
Frankie expends so much abusive energy exorcising his inner demons (“The way he sees it, no woman’s any better than his mother,” intones Hymie, deep-thinker) that Kay scarcely has time to examine her own Bad Boy issues (“Sometimes I get the feeling, Frankie, that you ought to be chained up with a ring in your nose!”), before their relationship begins to go south and take on all the dysfunctional sparring rhythms of Robert De Niro & Liza Minnelli in NewYork, New York…minus the warmth & mutual respect. One particularly theatrical outburst of Frankie’s captures the rapacious eye of roving talent scout Sophie Cantaro (Parker), who sees in Frankie’s mercurial mood swings the makings of a star (Charlie Sheen, no doubt). Faster than you can say “Bye bye, Bergdahl! Hello, Cougar Town!” Frankie is whisked off to Hollywood and becomes exactly the kind of noxious nightmare of a movie star you’d expect. Think Neely O’Hara crossed with Helen Lawson combined with every ego-out-of-control rumor you’ve ever heard about Jerry Lewis, and you get the idea.
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Joseph Cotten as Kenneth Regan, head of Galaxy Pictures "I find myself repelled and repulsed by you."
Of course, this is precisely when the already dizzying lunacy of The Oscar really swings into high gear. Cue the laughably garish sets meant to signify high-style glamour, the tired visual short-cuts (EVERY scene in a studio backlot features strolling cowboys, gladiators, and showgirls in headdresses), and the standard-issue What Makes Sammy Run? rise and fall of an unscrupulous schnook scenario. Yes, whether it be the simile-laden narration ("Man, he wanted to swallow Hollywood like a cat with a canary.”); the rote, claws-his-way-to-the-top conflicts (“The fact is my 10% before taxes is paying your office overhead. And you stop earning it when you stop giving me what I want!"); or clumsy, tin-eared metaphors (“Have you ever seen a moth smashed against a window? It leaves the dust of its wings. You’re like that Frankie, you leave a powder of dirt everywhere you touch.”), The Oscar leaves nary a cliché unturned and untouched. And for that we should all give thanks.
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Ernest Borgnine & Edie Adams as Barney and Trina Yale
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM The Oscar is artificiality as motif. Without actually intending to do so, director Russell Rouse (who made the must-see Wicked Woman -1953) has crafted a film so phony and plastic, it winds up saying a great deal more about the real Hollywood than this contrived, self-serving fairy tale that would have us believe Hollywood is comprised of basically decent, principled, hard-working folks, and unscrupulous bad apples like Frankie are the rotten exception. When I watch The Oscar I always wonder: was this a movie pandering to star-struck yokels and serving up a patently false, fan-magazine/press agent image of tinseltown because it believed that’s what they wanted to see; or had years of lying to itself deluded “The Industry” into believing its own publicity? This can’t be how ‘60s Hollywood actually saw itself, could it?
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In the film's most blatantly parodic role, Jean Hale is hilariously spot-on as the self-absorbed Cheryl Barker, an obvious and rather mean-spirited swipe at Carroll Baker that must have been included at Joseph E. Levine's behest. (Baker & Levine clashed famously during the making of Harlow, leading to her ultimately suing the producer).
It’s not as though nobody knew what a good film about Hollywood looked like (Sunset Boulevard -1950, The Bad & the Beautiful -1952, A Lonely Place -1950, Stand-In -1937), so I’d like to think everyone involved in The Oscar knew exactly what kind of trash they were making (Bennett doesn’t recall the experience fondly in his memoirs). But given the expense, effort, and the fact that many similarly fake-looking, questionably-acted, poorly written, overstuffed ‘60s films had found acceptance (The Carpetbaggers comes to mind); I can only imagine that the eventual awfulness of The Oscar wasn’t as much of a surprise to those involved as was the public’s total indifference to it.
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Exteriors of The Oscar were shot at the 37th Academy Awards in 1965. Bob Hope hosted that year, but as the interior set of the actual ceremony that year were different, I can only suspect these scenes were shot on a sound stage. The Oscar actually did garner two Academy Award nominations in 1967: art direction and Edith Head's costume design.
PERFORMANCES It’s an overcrowded, competitive field, but Stephen Boyd walks away with the honors for The Oscar’s most exaggerated, indicating performance. In a film of parody-worthy performances, Boyd's bellowing, bombastic over-emoting (much like Faye Dunaway's in Mommie Dearest) sets the bar and serves as the rudder for this Titanic testament to overstatement. It's a performance that towers over the rest. And while one might argue he’s no worse than anyone else (certainly not Bennett) and only as good as the knuckleheaded screenplay allows; when there’s this much collateral damage, every offender has to be held accountable for their fair share of the carnage.
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Frankie's cutthroat efforts to win an Oscar make up the bulk of the 1963 Richard Sale novel upon which the film is adapted, but comprise only the last half hour of the film
Indeed, in a reversal of my usual standard in camp movies I adore, the women don’t really dominate in The Oscar. In spite of their towering hairdos and colorful wardrobes, Elke Sommer, Eleanor Parker, Jill St. John, and a woefully over-rehearsed Edie Adams have their work cut out for them in trying to keep pace with the hambone scenery-chewing of Boyd on one side, and the Boo Boo Bear blandness of mono-expression crooner Tony Bennett on the other (whose raspy voiceover narration is almost as annoying as Joe Pesci's in 1995s Casino).
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The Dynamic Duo Hope you like Tony Bennett's expression here, 'cause that's all you're getting for two hours
Add to this, schticky comedian Milton Berle as another one of those saintly talent agents that only seem to exist in Joseph E. Levine films (Red Buttons, another face-pulling comic, played a similar role in Levine’s Harlow). Berle’s approach to serious drama is something out of an SCTV Bobby Bittman sketch: go so low-wattage as to barely register any vitality at all.
Not really sure the last time I saw a character in a movie resort to knuckle-biting to convey distress, but in The Oscar, it happens twice!
THE STUFF OF FANTASY As hard as it is to believe that the Motion Picture Academy actually endorsed this sordid melodrama, one has to wonder about the many drop-in guest appearances of so many "stars" adding verisimilitude and unintentional comic relief. Were they contractual, or were they simply prohibited from reading the entire script?
Edith Head (or an amimatronic copy) as herself
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Columnist Hedda Hopper balancing several pounds of hair and a Joan Crawford necklace
A puffy Peter Lawford portrays a has-been actor (a little too convincingly)
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Jack Soo as Sam, Frankie's live-in valet
A beaming Frank Sinatra and daughter Nancy, in her brunette phase 15/20
THE STUFF OF FANTASY The bad film delights of The Oscar are so myriad, I can only speculate that its relative unavailability is to blame for its not having risen in camp stature equal to Valley of the Dolls or Mommie Dearest over the years (it’s not on DVD and pops up on TV only sporadically). That, perhaps, and its lack of an ostentatious drag queen aesthetic or even compelling roles for women. I’m not sure why, but a lot of the best camp is rooted in seeing women presented in the traditional “drag” of ornamental allure (big hair, theatrical makeup, elaborate costumes), only behaving in the aggressive, assertive, ambitious manner we habitually ascribe to male characters (Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!).
The incongruity is a pleasant surprise and welcome change of pace, and often accounts for why a nasty piece of work like Neely O’Hara tends to remain in one’s memory longer than the passive Jennifer North.
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The women in The Oscar are, despite giving lip-service to the contrary, a pretty passive bunch and more or less serve a traditional, reactive function in the plot. Pointedly, one of the film's two exceptions (the other being the blowsy but street-smart Trina Yale), the poised and elegant Sophie Cantaro is presented as both sexually desperate (“You, you’re 42. There are many good minutes left for you,” a well-meaning, tactless friend tells her) and unable to prevent her feminine emotions from playing havoc with professional decision-making. I'm not sure if this preponderance of masochistic females has anything to do with The Oscar falling short of becoming the midnight screening hoot-fest its entertaining awfulness suggests; but such wrong-headed thinking prevails throughout The Oscar, making it one of the best of the worst, the apex of the nadir, and unequivocally one for the books. A book no doubt titled: " What The Hell Were They Thinking?"
BONUS MATERIAL
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Elke Sommer wore the same Edith Head gown to the real 1966 Academy Awards she wears in the fake ceremony that bookends The Oscar (top photo). Here's a clip of a somewhat botched dual acceptance speech with Connie Stevens for Doctor Zhivago's absent costume designer, Julie Harris. Watch HERE
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Although only an instrumental version plays in the film, Tony Bennett sang the Muzak-ready theme song from The Oscar (titled, "Come September" ) on the soundtrack album. This 45rpm single was an opening day giveaway at many first-run theaters. Listen HERE
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Copyright © Ken Anderson
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