Marlon Brando flies all the way from
Tahiti to warn us about the plight of the American Indian,
whether we want to hear about it or not. Bette Davis calls the film Myra
Breckenridge “a disgrace.” Fred Astaire treats us to his singing and
dancing until we want to beg him to stop. Alfred Hitchcock unintentionally
shows us his Alfred Hitchcock impression. Groucho tells tiresome stories as
we watch his mind slip away before our very eyes. Orson Welles relates to us
his sitting next to Hitler during some social function (probably not a bar
mitzvah). And for all her excellent breeding and private-school education,
Kate Hepburn has terrible posture: she sits low on her spine with her knees
up to her chin and her dogs on the coffee table.
Watching Dick Cavett: Hollywood Greats is
like enduring a long weekend at your grandparents’ house. You love ‘em; you
want to spend time with ‘em; you value their contribution to your world; you
know they won’t be around forever and you want to appreciate ‘em; but STOP!
Please, please STOP!
Cavett, wearing seventies ties that are larger than he is, is the darling of
the intellectual set and the preferred interviewer of the mahvelous
old-time stahs of grand old
Hollywood.
They pretend to be humble, but they never seem to tire of talking about
themselves. And why should they? Cavett’s audience of leftover fifties
fuddy-duddies and sixties freaks and eggheads, all badly dressed, feed their
egos.
For
instance, take Groucho. Please. He’s the emperor sans his clothes. Genius
maybe, but not here. Maybe at some point, but not during his overlong
interview, where he sucks more air out of the room than his cigar and Dan
Rowan’s cigarette.
In
between ranting that President Harding was a crook and spinning other
stories that go nowhere, Groucho wheels out his latest lay (just call her
Groucho’s Yoko). She’s a young chippie and “aspiring actress” named Erin
Fleming who is about one-third his age. She claims to be his “secretary.”
“That’s the euphemism of the year,” responds Groucho, as only Groucho could,
eyebrows and all. Still, he has moments of clarity: he realizes that his old
“pictures” are now a huge hit on college campuses (“the kids are crazy about
these pictures.”) and that “it’s no fun being married after two years.”
Speaking of crazy, Marlon Brando makes a very rare TV appearance, at the
height of his moviemaking legend (The Godfather, Last Tango in
Paris, and Cavett quips to him, “seen any good movies lately?”). Brando,
in a jean jacket and scarf and about two hundred pounds lighter, is here to
tell us, in his vaguely scary way, “We have so little time to talk about
Indians and there is so much to say.” He manages, though. Oh, boy, does he
manage.
There are other social issues in the early seventies, even for big movie
stars. New York City was crime ridden and nasty, but does that mean that
Bette Davis had to walk on stage carrying her purse? Couldn’t she trust
anyone to hold it for her while she appeared on national television, or
couldn’t they have at least rented her a locker? And when Cavett tells Davis
that he’s for Women’s Lib, she clarifies by asking, “You mean you’ve
liberated a lot of women?”
If
these old coots are, on some level, our extended family, then we have at
least one cool relative to hang out with. His name: Robert Mitchum. The
macho star, previously infamous for being busted for possession of marijuana
before it was “in,” has one-word answers for everything (Cavett: “What’s the
secret to [your] thirty-year marriage?” Mitchum: “Deviousness.” Cavett:
“Were you ever kicked out of school?” Mitchum: “Often.” Cavett: “What drives
people in Hollywood?” Mitchum: “Fear.”).
Director John Huston, when asked, while filming The African Queen,
what he used for leeches, he answers, “Leeches.” Equally practical is
Huston's advice that
Hollywood
should remake bad pictures better rather than remake good pictures worse
(advice that is still relevant – and necessary!).
Orson Welles is the uncle with the magic tricks, who tells us that he hates
being called a boy genius, but he wears black, the color worn by all boy
geniuses, and not just because it’s slimming. “I like when people talk to
me, not when they talk to Orson Welles,” he warns us. And Alfred
Hitchcock, who, by 1972, still is but still really isn’t Alfred Hitchcock,
promotes his new flick, Frenzy, about the body of a murdered girl who
has fallen off a potato truck.
The movie-going
public, with much more meat and potatoes on their plate these days, did not
work themselves into a frenzy over this Hitchcockian effort. And pity poor,
bearded Kirk Douglas, who is as passé as his son Michael is new and fresh on
the scene, and who says, “I wanted to do a picture, Dick, that’s sheer
entertainment.” Whatever that “picture” was, it was forgettable and
ignored.
Our
favorite bohemian aunt, Kate Hepburn, lectures that “kids today” are pompous
because they don’t listen, and yet she throws around the word “stupid” a
lot.
It’s
a time when ninety-minute conversations are more tolerated by viewers not
conditioned by remote controls and five-hundred channels, and these old-time
legends are not as legendary these days as they were even thirty years ago
(take a random man-on-the-street poll today, and see how many citizens know
who these people are). We are still required to worship them, but the
services are less sparsely attended and the idols are being replaced by
lesser quality imitations.
Ronald Sklar
Copyright
©2007 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: January 14, 2007.
