Jeffrey Wells

Gaynor’s Nellie Forbush Was Almost An Icon of Repression

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Before last night I had never watched Joshua Logan, Buddy Adler and Leon Shamroy’s South Pacific (‘58) in its entirely. I watched the whole thing (2 hours, 37 minutes) on my iPhone 15 Pro Max with JBL headphones — obviously an irreverent and sacrilegious way to watch a film shot in large-format Todd A-O. But at least it sounded good.

Anyway, I wrote yesterday that even in her prime South Pacific star Mitzi Gaynor, who passed last Thursday (10.17) at age 94, wasn’t any kind of sultry sensual presence. HE commenter K. Bowen took issue with this. I elaborated this morning:

“Gaynor had narrow, smallish eyes but her spritzy, bubbly, open-hearted manner was engaging. She had that gamine athletic thing going on, and was obviously quite pretty in her youth. She had a certain prim sexual appeal. Slim dancer’s body, approvable boobs, great gams. But earthy she was not.

“Gaynor seemed innately kind and caring, but there was something a tad antiseptic going on, at least in her South Pacific performance as Nellie Forbush — a proper, disciplined quality that felt Doris Day-ish or even Gale Storm-y, a quality that seemed to emanate from the bland, hemmed-in aesthetic of the ‘50s.

“And I don’t even know how to process Nellie’s bizarre racist repulsion when she learns of Rosanna Brazzi’s Emile de Becque having been married to and sired two kids with a fetching Polynesian woman who died some years earlier. Toward the end Nellie actually says the words ‘her color’…weird and ugly.

“Thespian skills aside, most popular actresses of the ‘40s and ‘50s activated or at least hinted at some form of inner heat…some kind of bedroom intrigue or fantasy. Whatever it was that Rita Hayworth or Lana Turner or Maureen O’Hara or Lizabeth Scott or Anna Magnani or Jean Simmons or Gloria Grahame or pre-Cleopatra Elizabeth Taylor or even Deborah Kerr had that indicated a vigorous or perhaps even a hungry-python approach to sex, Gaynor had almost none of.

But she had conveyed so much in the way of heart and kindness and a certain open-hearted decency, plus a strong one-man-woman quality. You just knew she wasn’t the type to cat around, and that’s attractive. (Well, whadaya want me to say, that a woman prone to catting around is attractive?)

“Conclave” Finale Stirs Major Tremors Among Montclair Swells

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Earlier today I obliquely discussed the “whoa, mama” finale of Edward Berger’s Conclave.

When this moment arrived during tonight’s Montclair Film Festival screening, the entire audience responded with mostly pleasurable surprise….damn near the whole place went “whoa-hooaahhwwwhhh!” When this same moment unfolded during the first Telluride screening, the reaction was subdued…some quiet “hmmm” and “uh-huhm” responses but very few.

Nobody will be able to discuss this until Conclave opens commercially on 10.25, and to be extra fair not until it’s played for at least a couple of weeks.

Warning: Habitual spoiler whiners are advised to see it as early as possible. Move it or lose it.

Incidentally: Earlier this evening I was about to post a riff titled “Worst Theatre Seat of My Entire Life.” Dyian and I were seated in upper-balcony “heaven”…row W, and I mean waaay up there with very small seats and no leg room. The movie screen looked like a standard business envelope…it was like watching a film on a 13-inch MacBook Pro from the other side of the room. And the festival had the chutzpah to charge $35 each for these wretched seats.

At least the sound was strong and distinct.

Zoomer Bank Teller Knew JFK But Not Ike

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I asked if she’d ever heard of D-Day or seen The Longest Day or Saving Private Ryan or anything in that realm…uhm, nope. She didn’t know Susan B. Anthony or Martin van Buren either.

I like carrying heavy coins around. I love early 20th Century silver dollars. I’m also a sucker for $2 bills.

Analogous Up To A Point

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The Manhattan-Brooklyn-Bronx-Queens parallels hold water for the most part, but the Eagle Rock, La Canada, Altadena and Pasadena territories should have been labelled as Westchester County or maybe Long Island. And the flush Woodland Hills, Tarzana, Hidden Hills, Calabasas and Malibu Canyon regions are hardly analogous to Staten Island. New Jersey (Morris, Somerset and Union counties) would have been more like it.

Originally titled Fun and Games, this obviously substandard sexploitation cheapie…what kind of creep would want to actually buy this Kino Bluray?

Remember that prurient Cool Hand Luke scene with the hot blonde soapy-sudsing her car in front of the sweaty convicts? I’ll bet that was the inspiration for this British piece of shit, which came along four years later in ‘71.

Poor Alexandra Hay died in ‘93 at age 46.

As a few readers have said my current GATE CRASHERS photo is too chilly and “butt-hurt”-ish, here’s a friendlier replacement photo that I’ve sent along to the extremely industrious and hard-working Sasha Stone:

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