By the way, if you happen to be seeing this on December 24th, Meet Me in St. Louis is playing tonight on TCM 1o:00 pst/1:00 est and again in March. Here’s the scoop.

I’ve posted the same video with some additional commentary on this attempt at a generational crossover hit, at Premium Hollywood.

When it came to TV and movies, her material was often not nearly as strong as her talents, but Beatrice Arthur, who according to the AP died today of cancer, was the kind of performer who never let anything stand in her way.  Certainly, as Maude she made TV history and brought to the screen the kind of outspoken, and charismatic woman who is beyond strong and very much a fact of daily life, particularly if you belong to any of a number of ethnic groups.

Whether it was delivering the often, at least by modern TV standards, rather contrived sitcom dialogue both on Maude and even more so on her longest running sitcom, Golden Girls,  holding her own, or even emerging triumphant during such notorious musical comedy fiascos as the ill-conceived film version of Mame (which I haven’t had the guts to see in decades) and the really ill-conceived and now legendary Star Wars Christmas Special – in which she is, actually, kind of marvelous — she was as reliable a performer as they ever come. If there was a moment to be found in material, she would find it.

Indeed, artistically she seems to have had better luck on the stage and in early television. It’s not generally known that her “big break” was as Lucy Brown in Marc Blitzstein’s groundbreaking 1954 off-Broadway version of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil’s masterpiece, Threepenny Opera, a production that first brought original Pirate Jenny Lotte Lenya to the United States and also featured Jerry Orbach, Ed Asner, and Jerry Stiller. Clearly, the production had a great impact on Ms. Arthur, and she reportedly said that “Sid Caesar taught me the outrageous; Lee Strasberg taught me what I call reality; and Lotte Lenya, whom I adored, taught me economy.”

Anyhow, the sad news of Ms. Arthur’s  passing has really only just gotten out (I heard about it just before writing this via Pasadena public radio station KPPC), but I don’t think it too early for a sampling of how one woman could be a part of history, turn mediocre (or worse) material into a kind of poetry, and generally just be an entertainment immortal based on, among other things the outrageous, reality, and economy.

We’ll start with a moment where Bea Arthur and Maude Findlay collided with American history.

More videos, including musical highlights, after the flip…

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Up to now, I’ve been a no-show at the several cinephile exams that have been hosted over the last couple of years at Dennis Cozzalio’s legendarily brainy film geek blog, Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. Well, before splitting for a hard-earned vacation, Dennis has posted a new exam on film-related matters, up in honor of the cartoon dog genius, Prof. Peabody, which you’re all encouraged to take.

I’ve posted my responses in the comment thread over there already, but now that I’m a SLIFR slacker no more, I thought I’d make ‘em do double duty here because we know that my opinions matter, or something.

Here goes….

1) Favorite Biopic

“Lawrence of Arabia” – an obviously great film and a rather pedestrian choice given that I really like biopics, sometimes the cheesier and and more ridiculously fabricated the better. Therefore, quasi-demi-honorable mention is alluded this triumvirate of absurdly wrong biopics – “The Jolson Story” (it’s amazing how much Al Jolson’s life was just like the plot of “The Jazz Singer”!), “They Died With Their Boots On” (the love affair between Custer and the Indians your socialist history teacher doesn’t want you to see!) and “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story” (he didn’t just appear in action movies…he lived them!).

2) Dyan Cannon or Tuesday Weld?

It’s close, but I give it to Dyan Cannon for being hilarious onscreen and genuinely wacky offscreen.

3) Best example of science fiction futurism rendered silly by the event of time catching up to the prediction

The Jetson’s treadmill? I’m drawing a blank here.

4) Annette Funicello & Frankie Avalon or Troy Donahue & Sandra Dee?

Frankie & Annette – I grew up watching those movies on channels 5 & 9 (I think) out here up to age 10 or so. Not that those movies are in any sense “good” (I wonder if I could sit through any of them now?), but F&A at least have a certain amount of charm and sense of humor, which I really can’t say about Troy Donahue, at least.

5) Favorite Raoul Walsh movie?

Not really “White Heat,” and no, definitely not “They Died with Their Boots On”… The winner is “The Roaring Twenties” – by far. Just a magnificent entertainment. I need to see that one again some time soon.

6) Sophomore film which represents greatest improvement over the director’s debut

This is tough, but I guess I’m going to say Polanski’s “Repulsion” as it’s brilliant and “Knife in the Water” left me feeling merely 90 minutes older after it was done. Though, that was in college and I might have a very different reaction now. (Another possibility is “Rushmore” – though I loved “Bottle Rocket” quite a bit, so it’s dicey.)

7) Ice Cube or Mos Def?

Mos Def – because he convinced me he was actually English in “Hithchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

Favorite movie about the music industry.

Many, many fun movies in this category, but I guess I’m going to have to go with “Nashville.”

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Though I culturally identify myself as Jewish, I’m not a believer in any religion. I nevertheless still feel the need get spiritual sometimes at this time of year, if only in a musical theater-adapted to film sort of a way.

This time, I’ll give you a couple of clips from the two musicals directed by Norman Jewison, who, famously, was not Jewish but was nevertheless, I imagine, forced to think about such matters because of his name. Jewison was not a great director of musicals, but he was a wonderful director of straightforward drama like In the Heat of the Night and had style to spare, particularly in The Thomas Crown Affair. That was close to being enough in his two back to back seventies musical translation of theatrical superhits, particularly when he had great music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick behind him.

I’m no fan of Andrew Lloyd Weber. On the other hand, as the Lord says in “God’s Comic,” the Elvis Costello song which imagines Yahweh opining on Weber, among other matters, “I preferred the one about my son.” So did I, and this is by far my favorite musical moment from the film, featuring Ted Neeley as the eponymous leading man/diety and Carl Anderson as Judas singing some of the strongest lyrics Tim Rice ever came up with.

Judas in Superstar is a relatively sympathetic character, but when you think about it, Judas might have been world culture’s first purity troll.*

Have a happy whatever, folks.

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* Blogger’s note to those unschooled in the verbiage of political blog commenting. Dkosepedia defines “purity trolls” as:

…trolls from the left. Otherwise known in real life as drama queens. No matter how pure your position is, their position is more pure. No matter how compassionate or informed or skeptical or vigorous your opinion is, theirs is more of it. These trolls are insistent that they are the true spirit of liberalism, and spend their time being quite put out that the rest of us don’t turn over our resources, our audiences, and our respect to them, regardless of how thin their positions may be on the merits…..

If you don’t have true love, there’s always liquor. Of course, some people have both.

Cocktail purists please note, those martinis Nick and Nora keep shaking so vigorously would have been made with gin. The James Bond rule, I thought, was meant to apply strictly to vodka martinis (which some of us insist aren’t martinis at all), but I’ve been experimenting and I’m starting to think shaking gin martinis is just fine, but I’m still open minded on the topic. Any chemists care to share with me if there’s any validity whatsoever to the idea of “bruising” gin? It’s a liquid, not a banana!

The coincidence of this coming so soon after the death two weeks back of Ricardo Montalban was not lost on the Robot Chicken staff, who dedicated the last episode to him, but I would like to think he would have loved it.

 
Advantage: Rockford

Thanks to BKS for forwarding me this story on the end of a sartorial era at New York’s famed 21, which I guess will soon be allowing men to turn up in the pajamas Jimmy Stewart wore as he managed to make Grace Kelly feel stupid for being so wonderful to him in Rear Window.

Some choice quotes:

“It is the final victory of Los Angeles,” Tim Zagat said….

….“Etiquette is on a downward spiral, and politeness is disappearing,” said Michael O’Keeffe, the dapper owner and proprietor of the River Café, who said that jacket and tie have been his unvarying uniform since his days at Fordham Preparatory School. “I will miss the tie policy at ‘21.’ It held up an example of what etiquette could be.”….

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After the new tie policy was announced, one blog, Lost City…asked: “Couldn’t we get the old-school La Grenouille to uphold the old ways and begin requiring ties again?”

Not likely, said Charles Masson, general manager of the 47-year-old restaurant that abandoned its tie-only policy in 2003 (but not its jacket requirement). “There used to be a time when men wore white wigs, too,” he said.

Maybe partially because I’m an L.A. native whose only observed a world where men were expected to wear neckties pretty much everywhere, except the beach and the park, via the glamor of the movies, I’ve never been all that hostile to ties. In fact, I actually kind of like wearing ties at times — but  wearing them at places where the only neckwear is on waiters makes me feel like I’m either wearing a costume, or working. It’s similar to the reason I can’t seem to find a hat, other than a baseball cap, I’m comfortable wearing…and I definitely have the kind of head that wants a hat.

Still, I guess I should be happy for my hometown’s victory. On the other hand, whenever something is gained, something is lost.

On the other hand, I’m not sure if it really makes much difference or if politeness and elegance ever truly reigned….

I was just starting the Patrick McGoohan RIP below this when I saw the news that another seriously underrated and really interesting actor with an extra dose of geek appeal had passed on. And sad news it is.

The Spy Kids have lost a grandpa. Capt. James T. Kirk has lost his showyest and most poetic adversary and the LAPD’s Frank Drebbin is sans  his suavest foe. Fantasy Island is without a leader, and Corinthian leather will never, ever be quite as rich. Ricardo Montalban, the kind of wonderfully dignified ham actor who gave overacting a good name — sometimes a great name — has left our earthly sphere at the age of 88.

What I love and genuinely respect about Montalban was his embrace of artifice, which became more effortless and enjoyable over the years, whatever kind of movie (and there are more than I can possibly recall) he was in and whether the quality was outstanding or, as in the case of Fantasy Island, pretty much beneath contempt. As per Wikipedia, it was actually “soft Corinithian leather” the Mexico-born Montalban spoke of in that notorious car commercial…and said leather was actually produced in New Jersey.

That’s show business and few performers have expressed such a smooth grasp of the unreality of dramatic reality. Of course, he emerged in an era where, for a minority actor, a certain stealy determination to do anything was probably needed. It worked. Starting his U.S. career as a 1940s “Latin lover” (relieved only by occasional dramatic turns, like Anthony Mann’s eternally topical Border Incident), Montalban transformed over the decades into one of Hollywood’s most reliable utility actors and undoubtedly the best known Latino thesp of his generation (though Fernando Lamas was always snipping at his heels).

The geeksphere will no doubt be celebrating his twin Star Trek appearances as Khan Noonien Singh in one of the best regarded episodes of the series as well as the most popular of the many films in the franchise (and others are still obscessing about the provenance of his apparently miraculous sixty year old physique in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan). But, as much fun as his performance is there, it’s not my all-time favorite Montalban role. I’ll take his supporting part as an egocentric but basically decent Italian-like film star in that FtY favorite, Sweet Charity.

He neither sang nor danced in that film, but he did both in a number of lightweight MGM musicals and comedies he appeared in during his first flush of stardom alongside Cyd Charisse, Jane Powell, Esther Williams and others where he showed he could hold his own as hoofer alongside pretty much anyone. Like any minority actor in his day, he had to be three times better and more professional than the typical Anglo performer, and he was. Sometimes four or five times better.

As he aged — and he aged about as well as any human — Ricardo Montalban was a link to another time. Sillier, of course, but also in many respects more courtly, elegant, stylish and fun than our own era of entertainment. As a person, L.A. Times obituary writer Lorenza Muñoz reminds us of traditional religiousity as well as his activist side on behalf of Mexican and Latino actors — he was irritated that he rarely played actual  Mexicans (his enormous IMDb listing includes the character of Nakamura in Sayonara).

All in all, Mr. Montalban was a gentleman of the old school, and that’s something to celebrate.