I'm back. Sorry I missed ya last night. I actually did start to write a blog, about a movie I watched called "Rally Round The Flag, Boys" (1958), which starred Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Joan Collins. It was a fun movie, a farce comedy done in a lighthearted, playful style that was popular in the late 50s and early 60s, with a lot of PG rated sexual innuendo and pastel color schemes (and spectacular Color By Deluxe). "Rally" was directed by Leo McCarey, who also directed the five star classic "The Awful Truth" way back in 1937. I watched and reviewed that one just a few weeks ago, and I found "Rally" by doing a Leo McCarey search at the Libe.
The problem with last night's blog was that I intended to simply review the movie like I always do, but I started to write about the director McCarey instead, and I got into a real esoteric and obtuse comparison of his directing styles between the pre-war "Awful Truth" and "Rally", which came out two years after Elvis. I got into this big cultural comparison, and all of a sudden I had gone on a tangent that would have taken me about an hour to get out of, if I was going to make my points on the various themes I had set out.
That can be a problem with spontaneous writing, and most especially when the writer is a Tangent Monger like myself. With last night's blog, I looked at the clock. The hour was late and I was still jabbering away. I read back what I had written, and it was so All Over The Place, and none of it was even about the movie, that I had to just say "scratch it". It was one big tangent, and so I just deleted the whole thing and went to bed. Sorry 'bout dat. :)
"Rally Round The Flag, Boys" is really just a culture clash comedy, executed in the previously described breezy and colorful style of the times. It is the story of a man in public relations (Newman), who lives in a small town with his wife (Woodward, who was Newman's wife in real life). His job takes him out of town a lot. His wife doesn't love that fact, but she deals with it by joining a lot of civic groups, thus her time if filled too. The couple love each other but they never see one another. Enter sexy neighbor Joan Collins, whose own husband is way out in Hollywood, working as a TV executive. She is bored and lonely, so she attaches herself to Paul Newman, who does everything he can to both placate her (because she is unstoppable in her quest), and go right up to the edge of the cliff with her, without actually going over (i.e cheating on his wife). All of this is presented as farce, with a lot of gags interceding. Then the whole "lonely marriage" scenario is interrupted by a Big Military Decision. The Army has decided to use the small town as a place to construct a base for a Secret Project.
This happens after the stage has been set with accusations of adultery and Newman's wife has kicked him out. She focuses all her energy into organizing her civic groups and townspeople into resisting the Army's land grab, which as it turns out is for a missile base. Now she needs her husband Paul Newman back, because he is a PR expert. He can help with the cause.
But not if Joan Collins can prevent it, and she seems to have Newman caught in her web.
"Rally Round The Flag, Boys" is most entertaining as a time capsule of late 50s culture, and everything that was new back then: Rock 'n Roll was new, youth culture was brand new, the whole idea of Teenagers as a demographic. Famous 50s cutie Tuesday Weld has some great scenes as the daughter of a town leader. She speaks an unintelligible lingo made up of "Daddios" and "Squares" and "Cubes", with plenty of "Weird"s thrown in for good measure. It reminded me of something my Mom once said about my sister Vickie; that when she was a Teenager, all she ever said was "Weird"! and "Wow"!
So yeah, the late 50s brought on the advent of Teenagers, and they influenced the adults to lighten up, and so all of a sudden drinking whiskey before dinner was routine, and Martinis were an every night thing. Going to dinner parties was a regular thing too.
A brand new Humongous Military Machine was brand new as well. We had just finished bombing Germany into the stone age, and now we had built not only the Atomic Bomb but the Hydrogen Bomb too. So those themes were brand new, with all the attendant paranoia included.
And finally, Outer Space was brand new, because we were just then developing rockets to compete with the Soviets, who had launched the first satellite, Sputnik.
All of this Newness, this new post-WW2 middle class optimism, cultural largesse, and military might is on display in what is otherwise a mostly funny but not classic big studio production.
It's worth a look for all the reasons mentioned, especially for Paul Newman fans, and for the excellent Deluxe Color, which, at that time period, I think was the best ever produced by a film lab.
Let's be generous and give "Rally Round The Flag, Boys" two thumbs up, though we will do so in lower case letters. Fair enough. See it if you are a film fanatic like me. ///
Tonight I watched another movie - I was back with Mr. Moto, which is a good place to be. :)
The title this time was "Mr. Moto Takes A Vacation" (1939). Actually he is just pretending to take a vacation, because he has just returned from a trip to Egypt, where - in disguise as a professor - he has overseen the excavation of the Crown Of The Queen Of Sheba. Here we go with culture again. In the 20s and 30s, "exotic peoples" was a theme. The Far East, the Middle East. Africa, Egypt. All were Exotic. Even Japan, Mr. Moto's home country. Japanese were said to be "Inscrutable". Peter Lorre plays Moto this way.
Just as you can study a film like "Rally" in order to get a fix on the emerging New American Culture that began in the late 1950s, you can also study a film like any of the "Moto"s, in order to understand the ways that America dealt with understanding other cultures that were already here, like the Chinese and Japanese, who are Pacific Rim located, as are we in California.
Hollywood is in California, and so a lot of this depiction of changing American culture can be said to originate from here, and then it is broadcast to the rest of the country, where trends are assimilated.
I have now seen four of the eight Mr. Moto films, and I have seen 'em in a span of just three weeks.
I am reading Phillip F. Nelson's book about the assassination of Martin Luther King, and it is such a horrible story that I could go on a tirade about it, but I won't. Instead, like the "Indigenous People's History" book recently reviewed, I will only suggest you read it.
Truth is important, memory is important, because without truth and memory, bad guys can make up anything they want to make up, and they can present it as "truth" and "history". And there have been a lot of bad guys in world history. That is why you should read at least one of the books I occasionally suggest.
Have a happy Fourth of July, a great holiday for a great country.
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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