TCM fest’s comic theme provides needed tonic in the wake of Robert Osborne’s passing

By Michael Wilmington and Film Noir Blonde

It’s glorious and exciting, but it’s also sad.

Once again, the TCM Classic Film Festival – running April 6-9 in Hollywood – presents a wondrous bill of fare of great films, unique cinema rarities and restorations, along with lively conversations with critics, scholars and some of the people who made the movies of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

It’s a time for celebration. But it’s also a time of melancholy and reverie. This year a vital link has been broken. The passing of critic/columnist/interviewer supreme Robert Osborne, whom many saw as the face and voice of Turner Classic Movies, marks the loss of a movie buff and guide who was (just like one of the programs he hosted so entertainingly) one of the “Essentials.” We will all miss him.

Fittingly in a way, the TCM Festival has chosen to celebrate Robert and the love of movies he exemplified, by choosing as its special theme this year that immortal slogan from “Singin’ in the Rain,” Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen’s rib-tickling masterpiece: “Make ’em Laugh” (Comedy in the Movies). The beloved musical will screen on Sunday.

Comic relief is much needed tonic – even for noiristas – RO’s passing is a huge loss. What else can you see this year? How about the movie lots of folks think is Hollywood’s greatest comedy – 1959’s “Some Like It Hot,” a funny film with a film-noir pedigree.

Curtis, MM and Lemmon star in a classic, enduring comedy.

Written and directed by the great noir auteur Billy Wilder, the risqué flick stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in drag, as “Josephine” and “Daphne,” pursued by Chicago gangsters (Including George Raft as the dour, murderous Spats Colombo).

The “girls” hide out in a female jazz band, tumbling into priceless erotic escapades with the nonpareil Marilyn Monroe as the slightly boozy doozy of a chanteuse Sugar Kane. Joe E. Brown also makes the most of every second of his screen time.

Another top choice is Stanley Kubrick’s and writer Terry Southern’s murderously funny, magnificently screwy masterful satire that’s drenched in noir mood, style and cynicism: “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” You might die laughing here and watch the planet blow up along with you.

Peter Sellers and Sterling Hayden star in “Dr. Strangelove.”

Sterling Hayden shines as the psychotic Air Force general, Jack D. Ripper, who illegally sends off the bombing raid that will trigger World War 3. George C. Scott is the bellicose hawk-and-a-half Gen. Buck Turgidson, who wants to blast the world too, but judiciously.

And the inimitable imitator Peter Sellers in three terrific roles: the mild-mannered Stevensonian U.S. President Merkin Muffley, the stiff upper lip British officer, Mandrake, trying to stay sane in a world of madmen, and the Kissingeresque Doomsday adviser himself, Dr. Strangelove.

Sellers was also slated to play the cornpone captain of the top plane on the bombing raid, “King” Kong, but dropped out for medical reasons (or, perhaps, as some say, because he was having trouble getting the accent). He was replaced by the amazing Western character actor and ex-rodeo clown Slim Pickens. Slim turned out to be practically perfect casting.

Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon are an unlikely pair in 1971’s “Harold and Maude.”

There you have three of the finest, funniest, most unforgettable movie comedies ever made. What else? How about the cult April-December romantic hit Hal Ashby’s and writer’s Colin Higgins’ 1971 “Harold and Maude,” starring Bud Cort as the boy who keeps trying to kill himself, and the amazing Ruth Gordon as the ebullient old lady who gives him back his life?

How about the super train comedy “Twentieth Century”? Here, Carole Lombard is the crazy glam-goddess Hollywood superstar and John Barrymore hams it up as her crazier stage director and Svengali. Directed by Howard Hawks (at his peak) with a script by Ben Hecht and Charlie MacArthur (at their peaks).

How about Stanley Kramer’s (underrated) all-star epic “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”? Or the Marx Brothers in “Monkey Business” and W.C. Fields in “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break,” which pretty much speaks for itself, and the great Charlie Chaplin, tweaking Hitler in “The Great Dictator.” How about Preston Sturges’ “Unfaithfully Yours” and “The Palm Beach Story”?

Oh, and don’t forget Frank Capra’s “Arsenic and Old Lace,” Leo McCarey’s “The Awful Truth,” Harold Lloyd in “Speedy,” plus Laurel and Hardy in “Way Out West.”

How about it? We’re in!

God bless the clowns. And Robert Osborne too.

Noirish ‘Some Like It Hot’ at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Marilyn Monroe as Sugar Kane in “Some Like It Hot.”

To celebrate Marilyn Monroe’s birthday, on Saturday, June 1, Cinespia.org will present “Some Like It Hot” (1959, Billy Wilder) at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Though the film is considered one of Tinseltown’s all-time best comedies, Marilyn reportedly objected to the fact that her character, Sugar Kane, actually believed her fellow musicians (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon dressed in drag) were women. No girl is that dumb, she said. Nevertheless, the movie was a hit and her performance is unforgettable. You can read Mike Wilmington’s review here.

The Noir File: Marilyn, Jack and Tony: Still the best threesome in Billy Wilder’s classic ‘Some Like It Hot’

By Michael Wilmington & Film Noir Blonde

The Noir File is FNB’s guide to classic film noir, neo-noir, sort of noir and pre-noir on cable TV. All movies below are from the schedule of Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which broadcasts them uncut and uninterrupted. The times are Eastern Standard and (Pacific Standard).

PICK OF THE WEEK

Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon star in this noir comedy.

Some Like It Hot” (1959, Billy Wilder). Saturday, March 2, 1:15 p.m. (10:15 a.m.)

The place: Chicago. The color: a film noirish black and white. The caliber: 45. The proof: 90. The time: 1929, the Capone Era and the Roaring Twenties, roaring their loudest. We’re watching “Some Like It Hot” and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are playing Joe and Jerry: two talented but threadbare Chicago jazz musicians working in a speak-easy fronted as a funeral parlor. Joe, who plays saxophone, is a smoothie and a champ ladies’ man. Jerry is your classic Jack Lemmon schnook, with a couple of kinks thrown in.

Curtis and Monroe on the beach, filmed at San Diego’s  Hotel del Coronado.

After getting tossed out of their speak-easy band jobs by a police raid and accidentally witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (ordered by their ex-employer, George Raft as natty gangster Spats Colombo), they flee to Miami. They’re chased by the gangsters and the cops (Pat O’Brien as Detective Mulligan) but the guys are disguised as Josephine and Daphne, musicians in an all-female jazz orchestra.

The star of Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators, songbird and ukulele player Sugar Kane, is the Marilyn Monroe of our dreams. Sugar has a weakness for saxophone players. Josephine and Daphne have a weakness, period. Director Billy Wilder, who made lots of gay jokes in his time, deliberately keeps his two cross-dressing stars straight.

Read the full review here.

Wednesday, Feb. 27

10 p.m. (7 p.m.): “The Third Man” (1949, Carol Reed). With Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. [Read more…]

Marilyn Monroe honored with exhibits, Hollywood film festival

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death on August 5, 1962.

In New York, more than 50 photographs of Marilyn by Lawrence Schiller, many never-before-seen, go on public display this week at the Steven Kasher Gallery.

Tonight I am heading to a preview of Marilyn MonroeAn Intimate Look at the Legend at the Hollywood Museum. The exhibit opens Friday, June 1, which would have been Marilyn’s 86th birthday.

On display will be work by photographer George Barris, photos from her childhood, early modeling days and life as a star as well as famous wardrobe pieces, private documents and personal effects, such as cosmetics.

Also, on June 1, Playboy and Grauman’s Chinese Theatres are hosting a Marilyn Monroe Film Festival. Opening night is “Some Like It Hot” and one of my fellow fans has kindly provided this review.

Writer/director Billy Wilder deliberately kept his two cross-dressing stars (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, at left) straight in order to heighten the humor.

Ribald, jazzy, sexy joy and pure gold from the 20th century’s reigning sex symbol

SOME LIKE IT HOT/1959/MGM, UA/120 min.

By Michael Wilmington

The place: Chicago. The color: a film noirish black and white. The caliber: 45. The proof: 90. The time: 1929, the Capone Era and the Roaring Twenties, roaring their loudest.

Sugar Kane of “Some Like It Hot” was one of Marilyn’s top roles.

We’re watching “Some Like It Hot” and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are playing Joe and Jerry: two talented but threadbare Chicago jazz musicians working in a speak-easy fronted as a funeral parlor. Joe, who plays saxophone, is a smoothie and a champ ladies’ man. Jerry is your classic Jack Lemmon schnook, with a couple of kinks thrown in.

After getting tossed out of their speak-easy band jobs by a police raid and accidentally witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (ordered by their ex-employer, George Raft as natty gangster Spats Colombo), they flee to Miami. They’re chased by the gangsters and the cops (Pat O’Brien as Detective Mulligan) but the guys are disguised as Josephine and Daphne, musicians in an all-female jazz orchestra.

The star of Sweet Sue and her Society Syncopators, songbird and ukulele player Sugar Kane, is the Marilyn Monroe of our dreams. Sugar has a weakness for saxophone players. Josephine and Daphne have a weakness, period. Director Billy Wilder, who made lots of gay jokes in his time, deliberately keeps his two cross-dressing stars straight.

In Miami, land of dreams and beaches and bathing beauties, the “ladies” meet millionaires, including Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown), who marries chorus girls like some people catch trains. They also meet gangsters jumping out of birthday cakes, waving submachine guns. Miami, to quote Sugar Kane, is runnin’ wild. (“Runnin’ wild. Lost control. Runnin’ wild. Mighty bold. Feelin’ gay, reckless too! Carefree mind, all the time, never blue!”)

“Some Like It Hot” is full of playful references to classic gangster movies like “Little Caesar” and “Scarface.” (At one point, Edward G. Robinson, Jr. flips a coin just like Raft did in Howard Hawks’ “Scarface.” Raft grabs it and demands: “Where’d you learn that cheap trick?”)

Risqué, quick-witted, scathingly funny, unfazed by foibles and unfooled by phonies, Wilder and co-writer I. A. L. “Izzy” Diamond were two Hollywood moviemakers who could cheerfully rip up the establishment, and make the establishment love it – a pair of razor-sharp script wizards who understood our society to its core, relishing its delights and scorning its hypocrisies. And with “Some Like It Hot,” they broke the comedy bank.

The movie provided plum roles for Tony Curtis, Marilyn and their co-stars.

Jerry and C. C. Baxter, of “The Apartment,” were Lemmon’s two greatest performances, and they’re as good as any American movie actor ever gave. The movie also handed Tony Curtis and Joe E. Brown their best movie roles (well, for Tony, probably a tie with Sidney Falco in “Sweet Smell of Success”). Sugar Kane was one of Marilyn’s top roles as well.

Ah, Marilyn. Who could forget the country’s and the 20th century’s reigning sex symbol crawling all over Tony Curtis in a borrowed yacht and a skin-tight gown (while Tony does his best Cary Grant impression)? As Jerry says when he spots her doing her famous wiggle-walk in the train station: “Look at that, it’s like Jell-O on springs! I tell you, it’s a whole different sex.”

Marilyn had a little trouble with her lines in “Some Like It Hot,” but we’re talking about dialogue, not curves. Wilder insisted to his dying day, that although it may have taken a while with Marilyn, it was worth it. Always. What you got was pure gold. The movie is pure gold too. Pure hilarity, pure straight-up Billy Wilder. It’s a ribald, jazzy, sexy joy – an absolute delight. As Osgood would say: “Zowie!”

Film noir feline stars: The cat in ‘Bell, Book and Candle’

More on the most famous kitties in film noir

The Cat in “Bell, Book and Candle” 1958

Name: Cy A. Meese

Character Name: Pyewacket

Kim Novak catches James Stewart with help from her cherished pet.

Bio: Kim Novak and James Stewart starred in two movies together in 1958. One was the classic Hitchcock neo noir “Vertigo.” The other, now lesser known, was the lighter-toned “Bell, Book and Candle” by director Richard Quine, based on the hit Broadway romantic comedy by John Van Druten. In the film, Novak plays Gillian Holroyd, a stylish New Yorker and successful store owner with a knack for witchcraft.

But, despite her busy schedule and relentlessly chic wardrobe, Gillian is tired of spending her nights, especially Christmas Eve, talking shop at the campy Zodiac nightclub in the Village with her fellow sorcerers (witch Elsa Lanchester and warlock Jack Lemmon). You know, eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog. Blah, blah, blah.

Gillian much prefers the company of her lovely cat Pyewacket (Cy A. Meese) and flirting with her tall, gray and handsome neighbor Shepherd Henderson (Stewart). After Gillian learns that Shep is engaged to her rival (Janice Rule), she calls on her blue-eyed, gray-furred companion for help in turning the romantic tables.

As the witch’s “familiar,” the role of Pyewacket is pivotal to the film and surely one of the most significant feline roles in Hollywood history. Not only is Gillian’s beloved Pye the agent for casting a spell on Shep, this stunning and eminently self-assured kitty manages to reunite the lovers after they hit a few bumps on the road to bewitchment.

The real-life puss who played Pyewacket later became a Manhattan legend. A life-long New Yorker from a prominent family, Cy was a classically trained actor and had worked steadily in theater before trying his paw at movies. Still, despite his success on stage and screen, Cy’s first love was reading and in 1960 he left acting to open a shop on Greenwich Avenue named “Book, Bell and Candle.”

Besides his excellent taste in titles, he was known for his uncommonly cushy sofas and for encouraging customers to nap in between browsing the aisles. (Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and John Cheever were regular snoozers.) In 1968, Cy opened a second location on London’s Cheshire Street and divided his time between the cities until he died peacefully in his sleep in 1982.

Need a bigger Jimmy Stewart fix? Don’t forget the Christmas Eve classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which offers a healthy dose of noir amid the heartwarming joy.