Scene from Rebecca
By Cory Bilicko
Staff Writer
The Friday Film Forum at the Long Beach School for Adults is putting “ladies first” this spring with a newly picked crop of classic films that honor the female protagonist. The board of directors for the program includes: Max Fraley, director of Adult Education for the Long Beach Unified School District; Ray Sharp, program facilitator for the Office of Multimedia Services; Rob Ray, lead programmer; and Randy Skretvedt, resource specialist.
(For more about the formation of the Friday Film Forum, see http://www.signaltribunenewspaper.com/archives/2731#more-2731 )
They recently shared their insights on Joan Crawford’s comeback picture, opportunities for aging actresses and the current landscape of cinema in general.
Were there any particular criteria for the selection of movies for this season of the film forum, and was there any disagreement on any of the choices?
Max Fraley: The title must contain some reference to the female gender either by proper name (Mildred Pierce, Rebecca ,etc.) or by pronoun (She, Her, Lady, Girl, etc.).
Ray Sharp: There is always disagreement, and every schedule will feature a couple of Randy’s, a couple of Ray’s,a couple of Rob’s and a couple of Max’s picks, but for the most part we all support the other guys. It’s really quite democratic.
Rob Ray: Max, our fearless leader, picked the general theme of the semester and from there the title possibilities just flowed out. The only problem is narrowing the selection down to just a handful of titles. There’s seldom any disagreement on the choices. All of us have two or three pet titles that we want so there’s always room to accommodate everyone’s two or three “musts.”
Randy Skretvedt: Our themes are usually supplied by our fearless leader, Max Fraley. We’re all pretty skilled at coming up with themes that aren’t too restrictive; we want to have a variety of film genres within a given theme. (Even when we did a festival of “pre-Code” films this past summer, which limited us to films from 1930-34, we still had dramas, comedies, horror films and musicals.) This season we’re saluting “Those Fabulous Dames,” so each film’s title had to have a feminine element. (Note that we’re showing She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, a John Ford/John Wayne western, which probably wouldn’t be mistaken for a “chick flick.”) We have spirited discussions in our planning meetings but no real disagreements. Each of us comes with a few titles we hope to get into the semester’s program, and usually we all wind up happy.
The films you’ve selected won’t be shown in chronological order, so how did you choose the sequence for exhibiting them?
Max Fraley: We try to balance our schedule with film genre (noir, western, comedy, musical, drama, period piece epic), black/white vs color, decade (20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s) and performer (we try not to duplicate stars in a series, but if we do, we spread their films far apart)
Ray Sharp: We try to present the pictures in the most entertaining order. Variety seems to work best for our audience, so we try to follow a color film with a black-and-white film, or if we can’t do that, we might follow a comedy with a drama, or a western with a musical. That’s why Rebecca leads into Party Girl, and is in turn followed by She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
Rob Ray: We generally like to mix up the genres and eras of origin. In addition, since the classic Hollywood era contains an abundance of black-and-white titles, we also try to spread out our handful of color features so that they don’t all run as a group.
Randy Skretvedt: We want variety in our programming, and so we’ll go from a comedy to a drama to a musical to a western to a horror film, and so on. Since we show more black-and-white films than color entries, we try to space those evenly throughout a given semester.
In Adam’s Rib, Katharine Hepburn’s character Amanda, although intelligent, successful and confident, is a remarkably bad driver, to the point of it being almost painful to watch now. How do you think a stereotype like that will play to a modern audience?
Max Fraley: MANY good vintage films have moments of “not today, brother”, but they remain good in spite of a few chuck holes in the road. Sort of like a classic book.
Ray Sharp: Fortunately or unfortunately, we have to check our desire for political correctness at the door when studying the art of cinema, although we generally find that the stereotypes even out over time, as in that same film when Kate Hepburn challenges the male/female stereotypes as part of the plot. She also proves to be a better lawyer than her husband, which was somewhat startling in that era.
Part of the reason we did this series is that the female protagonists were such dominant, powerful characters in spite of sometimes
stereotypical treatment by filmmakers. Think of Bette Davis in All About Eve, or Rita Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai, or Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven. Those women all dominated the men in their lives without sacrificing their feminine allure.
Rob Ray: I’ve seen Adam’s Rib numerous times and honestly can’t recall the scene to which you’re referring. But regardless, the stereotype of women being bad drivers is one that died off decades ago. I’d like to think we’re past that now. Addressing the larger issue of painful stereotypes in movies of the past, one does have to watch them with an eye towards history. Films that contain painful stereotypes of ethnic groups and other minorities shouldn’t be supressed but presented to new generations in a way that they can study where we came from as a society, note how we have evolved and learn from those changes.
Randy Skretvedt: Hmmm. I’ve seen Adam’s Rib many times and I’m not recalling anything about Amanda being a bad driver; there’s a sequence where she drops him off at work, but I don’t remember anything in particular about her skills behind the steering wheel. (In fact, usually Katharine Hepburn is depicted as being super-competent— note Woman of the Year, where Tracy feels that he can’t possibly live up to her.) In any event, “women driver” jokes are such a thing of the
past that I don’t think they’d even be seen as a stereotype.
See the scene in question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK0g2Bi-3ho
What was it about Mildred Pierce that made it such a successful comeback picture for Joan Crawford?
Max Fraley: She wasn’t supposed to be “that good” anymore since being released from any contractual obligations with MGM. Fortunately, she was a fine actress and this allowed her to escape from a glitz and glamour studio (MGM) to one (Warners) that preferred black-and-white dramas with a tough grit. It was perfect for Joan who sort of liked being slapped around.
Ray Sharp: Everything. First, it was a great screenplay from a James M. Caine novel, and no one could make this type of picture like Warner Brothers. Michael Curtiz handled the cast perfectly and they all gave great performances, but the main reason would have to be Crawford. Although I wouldn’t say that no one else could have played that role, Crawford had been unceremoniously dumped by MGM just as Mildred was dumped by Monte Beragon in the film. The audience senses that Mildred’s
bittersweet success is also Joan’s.
Rob Ray: It’s a solid story, well-written, profiling a mature woman facing lots of issues. It’s exactly the kind of role Joan Crawford at 41 (don’t believe the official records) needed to progress to and she knew it. Miss Crawford knew that if she wanted to remain on top she had to reinvent herself for something like the third time and move into mature roles profiling the traumas of women facing middle age. Other stars, such as Norma Shearer, opted to retire than face that transition, but the Crawfords, Stanwycks and Davises embraced the challenge.
Randy Skretvedt: A juicy role and a good script. Remember, she’d been on the Warners payroll for two years before she finally made this, her first film for WB. She and the studio clearly wanted a terrific movie for her return to the screen. (Rosalind Russell evidently had also wanted to star in Mildred Pierce, and had in fact made a film with director Michael Curtiz— a wonderful comedy-drama called Roughly Speaking–which was intended as a trial run to see how well star and
director worked with each other. When Roz didn’t get the part, she abruptly canceled her pact with Warners.)
We’re able to view She today only because Buster Keaton gave to film historian Raymond Rohauerhad a copy of the original print that he’d had stored in his garage. Ever ponder what films might be sitting in someone’s attic in Burbank and, in particular, how women’s cultural identity might be different if all those “lost” films had been preserved?
Max Fraley: Sorry to say I’ve haven’t pondered this. She is successful in spite of a not so appealing performance from Helen Gahagan Douglas. It’s an adventure film pure and simple. The gals have no claims on “lost” films. The guys also have a hefty investment. Because we are finding more and more rediscovered movies the “ponder” is not as difficult as imagined. The Kay Francis, Mary Astor, Barbara Stanwyck early flicks are just as compelling today as 70 years ago. One thing I have noticed, especially in 30s films, is the stereotype of the gay characters and their frequent appearance.
Ray Sharp: Sure, but these days it’s hard to find a teenager who knows who Paul McCartney is, never mind Duke Ellington. We believe that the more film is studied, the greater the effort will be to seek out cinematic artifacts and discover lost treasures. As for how women’s identity might have been different, women in film (ironically) seemed to lose their direction after the so-called women’s movement in the 60s and 70s. We still had great female roles, but suddenly they were few and far between. At one time studios had more female stars than male, but that all changed after the movement.
Rob Ray: I don’t think women’s cultural identity would be much different today if the “lost” films had been preserved. The many, many films that survive cover the entire range of human emotions and there are more films waiting to be rediscovered than one could possibly see in any one lifetime. There are selected stars, such as Norma Talmaldge and Theda Bara, who individually might be far better remembered today if their films had been better preserved. And, likewise, there are actresses such as Kay Francis and Nancy Carroll who’s films do survive but aren’t available to the general public on DVD. We hope to raise awareness of many forgotten actors of the past with our series.
Randy Skretvedt: Well, an overwhelming percentage of the important films from the 1910s on have been preserved. Yes, there are some which are still elusive— several Theda Bara titles, for example, and the 1928 version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes starring Ruth Taylor and Alice White— but trust me, there are hundreds and hundreds of 1920s—50s films which have been perfectly preserved, so I think our understanding of how women were perceived and portrayed in the culture of that time is very thorough.
In his journal article entitled “The ‘Best Actress’ Paradox: Outstanding Feature Films versus Exceptional Women’s Performances,” Dean Keith Simonton, Ph.D, of the UC Davis psychology department suggests that actresses not only have appreciably shorter careers and make less money than actors, they also have fewer options for good roles as they get older, whereas the opposite effect is often true of their male counterparts. Do you see much progress being made in the film industry these days, in terms of gender equity?
Max Fraley: Yes. In the last 10 years there have been more and more films made with strong female roles. My feeling is the Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Hilda Swinton, etc. generations have helped to open the door to more development with female-oriented movies.
Ray Sharp: No. During the studio age, women’s films brought in at least as much money as those featuring men’s stories, so Bette Davis made as much money as Humphrey Bogart. Since the studio system ended, so-called women’s pictures don’t earn as much money at the box office as men’s films, so a female star earns less than a male star.
Some say the scripts for women’s films were so much better during the studio days, while others say it’s the stars. But whatever the reason, successful films featuring a female protagonist are a rarity in modern film. The good news is that we can still screen the classic successes at the Friday Film Forum.
Rob Ray: Sadly, it’s exactly the opposite that’s happening. Back before television, when everyone went to the movies, wives and girlfriends had much greater say in which pictures couples went to see. As a result, older movies were about women and explored issues important to women much more frequently than happens today. In 1932, Marie Dressler, a sixty-year-old, ugly, fat woman with a face that could stop a clock was the most beloved woman in the country. Her career was at its zenith when she was struck down by cancer.
Similarly, seventy-ish May Robson starred as Apple Annie in Lady for a Day and had pivotal roles in such films as A Star is Born and Bringing Up Baby and was never out of work until the day she died. There were countless other women such as Edna May Oliver and Jessie Ralph whose careers flourished until the very end of their lives. Since movies were for everyone, there was room for all ages in the pantheon of stars.
Now, the movies pander to kids and the results are on the screen. Juvenile genres with juvenile plots and juvenile actors. There were juvenile movies back in the classic era too, but there was so much more that we lost to television before it disappeared entirely.
Randy Skretvedt: Only when women produce films for themselves, as happened recently with the remake of The Women by Diane English. Older female stars such as Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton are having to put their own projects
together. Otherwise, older actresses are showing up mainly in small independent films. I don’t know if we’ll see the female equivalent of 78-year-old Clint Eastwood having the best opening weekend of his career with Gran Torino.
Do you think most of the great cinematic performances by females have come when: they were in their youthful prime as movie stars; when they were older and had to contend with playing less “attractive” but often more compelling “character actress” parts; or at some interesting point in between?
Max Fraley: I believe it’s strictly up to the written word and the character development by those who put it on paper. I suspect if we surveyed the past we would find that “middle age – 30 to 50) leads the pack. Today most of the best roles are on TV drama, or on the stage.
Ray Sharp: I don’t think you can say one way or the other. Bette Davis’s Margo Channing came relatively late in life, but Judy Garland and Jean Harlow did all their great work when they were young. It really comes down to the material, because virtually all the studio stars could hit a home run with a great script. We should really be discussing the lack of quality screenplays in today’s film industry. That problem hurts women far more than audience expectations.
Rob Ray: Probably somewhere in between. Take Barbara Stanwyck for example. She had a long career from the very beginning of talkies until the 1980s. In her earliest roles she was a street-smart young woman and had many memorable roles in such precode dramas as The Miracle Woman, The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Baby Face and this semester’s Ladies They Talk About. But the pictures for which she’ll always be remembered are the probably the ones she made as she entered her middle years: Stella Dallas, The Lady Eve, and especially Double Indemnity and many later things such as Sorry, Wrong Number.
Randy Skretvedt: Personally, I think most actresses and actors are more interesting after they’ve been around for several years. Certainly Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Irene Dunne, Jean Arthur and many of the more contemporary actresses did their best work after they’d reached middle age.
Since the Academy Awards are around the bend, let’s talk
Oscar……
Only about one-quarter of the female recipients of acting Oscars are older than 39, but about two-thirds of the male recipients are 40 or older. Do you think older women are not only underrepresented relative to older men but are also portrayed as more unattractive, unfriendly, and unintelligent than men?
Max Fraley: Yes… but I see the trend changing, and it’s because of the leading dramatic actresses today. Fortunately the ladies take pretty good care of themselves and can still look and act appealing well into their formative years. I’d walk a mile to see Helen Mirren, Cate Blanchett, Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, etc in just about anything. Sort of the way I use to feel about Ingrid Bergman, Gene Tierney, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck and, of course, Gloria Graham.
Ray Sharp: Maybe, but it all comes back to the writing. What’s left of studio and film distribution has a very narrow window of what the audience will pay to see, and frankly, they haven’t got a clue. Studios like to release sequels and so-called “important” films in spite of the fact that audiences want more family-friendly fare. It could be that women’s films like we saw during the studio age would be a big hit today, but studios don’t produce them. Even a film like The Women, which has been a big hit twice for MGM, didn’t take off when it was remade last year, mainly because they concentrated on causes, rather than characters. When was the last time somebody recommended a movie because it had a great cause?
Rob Ray: They are underrepresented today because they are no longer the target audience. But they most definitely were not underrepresented seventy years ago. Acting is the one area where women were the full, complete equal of men until the movie-going demographic changed everything. Too many women over 40 today are dismissed as past their prime. I think it’s a shame. To me women get more fascinating as they age. I think Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep are much more fascinating today than they were when they were just starting out in such now-classic films as The Godfather and Kramer vs. Kramer.
Randy Skretvedt: No. In fact, I think that when there are good roles for older women, they tend to be multi-layered characters and much more interesting and complex than older men, who more and more frequently are being
portrayed as doddering or insensitive. I haven’t seen a role for an older man that’s as multi-layered as, say, Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment. You’ll notice that Clint Eastwood and Harrison Ford are still playing the same type of role— if not the same exact role— as they were playing 30 or more years ago.
If older female actors are compelled to play less appealing roles, does that make it more difficult for them to gain the sympathetic
following necessary to earn an Academy Award?
Max Fraley: I fear for the future of film as we know it. Too many “youngsters” are gaining prominent decision-making positions without having much regard or inclination for a broad view of making good movies. The all mighty buck is dictating a much lower quality of production from beginning to end. The training, experience and education that should result in a higher quality of product is almost GONE WITH THE WIND. The insane have taken over the asylum.
Ray Sharp: It’s my opinion that unappealing characters can often result in an Oscar. Meryl Streep’s character in Doubt is a perfect example. But moviegoers don’t go to the theater to see groundbreaking performances, they go to see people whom they like find a happy ending, or at lest a satisfying one, which is another reason Bette Davis and Joan Crawford movies were more popular.
Rob Ray: I don’t think it’s a question of sympathy. It’s a question of finding roles with the texture and depth that Oscar likes to reward. Meryl Streep, for one, has no problem at all racking up a record-breaking number of Academy Award nominations, far unmatched by any male actor. The only reason I think she hasn’t won the award itself since Sophie’s Choice is that she’s taken for granted. Of course she’s going to give a great performance. She’s the greatest living American Actor, our generation’s Katharine Hepburn and Laurence Olivier rolled into one.
Randy Skretvedt: I think there’s an awful lot of assumptions in that question. Who says that older actresses (which, by the way, I don’t think is a demeaning term at all) are not necessarily compelled to play less appealing roles— they just don’t get the lion’s share of the footage. And it’s not necessary to have a sympathetic following to earn an Oscar. It’s true that many Oscar-winning roles for women have depicted them as victims or as long-suffering, but there are several roles where the characters were not particularly warm and cuddly.
Do you think some of the most compelling work comes from an older actress embracing her age and savoring the opportunities that come with her “station” in life (think: Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?)?
Max Fraley: Not so much in film…much more on the stage and TV. Savoring opportunities can be true at any age. It depends on the individual. Anne Hathaway will be with us for a long time. Most of the others will be long forgotten.
Ray Sharp: Yes!some. Geraldine Page in The Trip to Bountiful and Marie Dressler in virtually every picture she made are good examples, but others like Thelma Todd and Jean Harlow never got that chance. Many actresses, like Rosalind Russell and Betty Grable virtually retired from films at a certain age, although not from public life. The blame for that can be placed squarely on the shoulders of the men who ran the studios. I like to think we’re beyond that now, but!
Rob Ray: Yes, absolutely, but I wouldn’t think of Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane where she’s something of a freak show, but All About Eve in which she’s a woman facing middle age and having to accept the consequences of the choices she made when she was younger. Though she always claimed it was one of her lesser challenges as an actress, it’s perhaps her most compelling work.
Randy Skretvedt: I’d rather think of Bette Davis in All About Eve, which is precisely about an actress who has become insecure about her career and her marriage because she’s turning 40. (Davis in this role is actually much more compelling than she is in the ones she’d done years before, encased in old-age makeup, i.e. The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and Mr. Skeffington.) Some actresses simply gave up their careers after they’d reached a certain age (Norma Talmadge, Clara Bow, Theda Bara, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo), but those who continued into middle age and beyond often did their best work in later years. Barbara Stanwyck is certainly very compelling as an older actress, as is Joan Crawford, as is Lilllian Gish.
In Rosanna Arquette’s 2002 documentary Searching for Debra Winger, Roger Ebert contends that studio executives greenlight projects based on the preferences of teenage boys and young men, who tend to favor light comedies laced with bathroom humor and action films, neither of which offers substantial roles for women, especially older ones. Seven years later, how much has changed?
Max Fraley: Not much except the graphic comic has taken a place among the leaders. The really good gals with a pedigree established from their past accomplishments are now migrating to TV where much of the best writing is now taking place. With so many large TV screens in the living and bedrooms the silver screen of the theaters finds itself in an entirely different world so they show what they have to show to compete. The bathroom and/or gutter syndrome is what pays their bills. You do what you have to do to keep the doors open. In the meantime the studios are making more money from DVD and pay-for-view than they ever dreamed, but the profits are fragmented among many more players.
Ray Sharp: Not much. Intelligent films like Sex in the City have proved that audiences will flock to a women’s picture if it’s good. The morons who run the studio and distribution system would rather put their faith in bathroom humor than smart women.
Rob Ray: I haven’t seen any change. It only seems to get worse as each new film has to top what’s come before in attracting new crowds. So the bathroom humor is more egregious and the CGI explosions are more insistent. And it’s brought a schism to the Academy Awards and their audience. Since the Motion Picture Academy rightly doesn’t pander to what passes for entertainment today and bestows its awards on the few films worthy of the honor of being called “Oscar winners” the audience of regular moviegoers to such films as King Kong have less of a vested interest in who takes home the Oscar. There are two kinds of films made today: Oscar Winners and audience pleasers. In the Golden Age of Hollywood, they were often one and the same, but now, I can’t think of a title since Titanic over ten years ago that fits that bill.
Randy Skretvedt: Not much, especially since the people who greenlight movies are themselves getting younger and younger. I saw a flyer advertising new releases on Blu-Ray DVDs, and they were things like Superbad, Pineapple
Express, and a whole slew of blow-’em-up action movies or grisly horror things. I’d welcome mature movies for mature audiences, and I don’t care whether the lead characters are men or women, just as long as they have a brain.
If a first-time viewer of all these films attended all the showings
of this season’s Friday Film Forum, what do you think might be the
overall impression he or she would develop after seeing them all?
Max Fraley: WOW! What a wide range of subject matter and “broad” range of female species can be offered in an 18-film series.
Ray Sharp: That the multiplex theater is on life-support as an entertainment venue, and that he or she should spend every Friday evening at the Friday Film Forum.
Rob Ray: I’d like to think that first-time viewers would come away with a respect for the talent and art that came out of Hollywood in the 1920s—1950s and that they would be hungry to discover the many wonderful treasures that seems to emanate effortlessly from the studios of old Hollywood. They would discover that a film doesn’t have to be smarmy or filled with loud digitized noise and explosions to classify as entertainment. The whole range of the human condition, young and old, was on the screen and can be savored and enjoyed for generations to come and perhaps hold a beacon for a better future.
Randy Skretvedt: That our culture has sunk into the abyss; that the barbarians have long since crashed the gate and are
running the show; that we used to be a far better educated, more sensitive, intelligent, polite and refined civilization. I think our best hope for the future is to learn from the past, particularly the past of several decades ago, and thank goodness we have a time machine called the movies that can show us the error of our recent ways.
