Saturdays with the Stars Season 2 Finale

Two of our legendary Stars of 2020,
Sophia Loren & Jayne Mansfield

Yesterday with The Three Musketeers we hit the finale of our second season of "Saturdays with the Stars," and before we start the new year (and a new season, devoted to Hitchcock's leading ladies), I wanted to take time to celebrate another season, and one I treat as a success.  We never missed a Saturday (there was one close call, but that was really it-being stuck at home made at least this part of 2020 easier), and I saw a lot of new movies & now have a better understanding of twelve stars, some of which I knew next to nothing about before this year.  And I hope you learned something as well!

It's always fascinating to me to focus on an actor's career, rather than as we typically do in film discussions on a director's.  Watching these women, particularly under the guise of "Sex Symbols" was intriguing to me because Hollywood had different attitudes toward these beautiful women as the public began to find their sexuality passé, or eventually, absent.  It is kind of heartbreaking to watch someone like a Jayne Mansfield or Raquel Welch, who clearly chose poorly at select moments of their careers & paid the price for it, and fascinating to watch a figure like Sophia Loren or Ann-Margret who was able to rise above their studio-forced persona and eventually gain mainstream critical recognition in their lifetimes.

Every film I watched this year was a movie I was seeing for the very first time, as well, so once again I was blown away by the expanses of Classic Hollywood, rich with westerns and noir and musicals that I'd never been exposed to.  Next year we'll do our third and final tour of Classic Hollywood actresses (after that, if we continue the series, we're going to either add men or a more modern element for a fourth season), so we'll continue to mine this well, but before we do that, let's hand out some superlatives for this year's leading ladies.

Favorite Performance from Each Star

January: Jean Harlow-Red Dust

February: Betty Grable-I Wake Up Screaming

March: Lena Horne-Cabin in the Sky

April: Rita Hayworth-Separate Tables

May: Lana Turner-The Postman Always Rings Twice

June: Marilyn Monroe-The Misfits

July: Jayne Mansfield-Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?

August: Sophia Loren-Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

September: Gina Lollobrigida-Come September

October: Nancy Kwan-The World of Suzie Wong

November: Ann-Margret-Carnal Knowledge

December: Raquel Welch-The Three Musketeers

5 Favorite Actresses of the Year (Alphabetical)

Jean Harlow

Rita Hayworth

Sophia Loren

Marilyn Monroe

Lana Turner

5 Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Rita Hayworth, Separate Tables

Sophia Loren, Two Women

Sophia Loren, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Marilyn Monroe, The Misfits

Lana Turner, The Postman Always Rings Twice

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Cabin in the Sky

Cover Girl

I Wake Up Screaming

Imitation of Life

Libeled Lady

The Misfits

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Red Dust

Separate Tables

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Top 10 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Leading Ladies)

Clark Gable, The Misfits

David Niven, Separate Tables

Eli Wallach, The Misfits

Ethel Waters, Cabin in the Sky

Eve Arden, Cover Girl

Jennifer Jones, Beat the Devil

Juanita Moore, Imitation of Life

Laird Cregar, I Wake Up Screaming

Susan Kohner, Imitation of Life

Thelma Ritter, The Misfits

OVP: Tommy (1975)

Film: Tommy (1975)

Stars: Ann-Margret, Oliver Reed, Roger Daltrey, Elton John, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, Keith Moon, Paul Nicholas, Jack Nicholson

Director: Ken Russell

Oscar History: 2 nomination (Best Actress-Ann-Margret, Best Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Ann-Margret-click here to learn more about Ms. Ann-Margret (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the mid-1970's, Ann-Margret's career had taken some interesting turns.  By 1975 she was only 34, but that was considered a bit older back then than it would be today, and so in theory her days as a sex kitten/symbol were waning, if not gone.  Ann-Margret had a very successful nightclub act (oftentimes incorporating George Burns), but her film career was acknowledging that she was aging, and that she wanted to expand as an actress & play against type.  As you've seen throughout our year devoted to famous sex symbols, playing against type was usually a disaster for actresses most famous for their appearance, but Ann-Margret defied that, openly finding parts that skewed or countered her glamour without it affecting her popularity.  She had one of her biggest successes in this style of "deglam" role (as it would be known in the mid-aughts) with Tommy, which won her her second (and to date, final) Academy Award nomination.

(Spoilers Head) Tommy is, for those who are not familiar, a rock opera (give or take The Wall, the most famous of the era's rock operas), which was a subgenre of film/musical theater that hit its popularity peak in the 1970's.  It focuses on Tommy (Daltrey), who as a child saw his mother Nora (Ann-Margret) and her new lover Frank (Reed) accidentally kill Tommy's father, who has returned from war after being presumed dead.  As a result, Tommy goes deaf-mute-blind, and neither Frank nor Nora can get him out of this state.  Eventually Tommy turns to pinball, and though he cannot see or hear the sounds, becomes something of a novelty attraction since he can feel the machine, and as a result is the greatest player in the world.  Tommy eventually breaks out of his near catatonic state to be able to speak, see, & hear, and develops a Christ-like following, but that wanes when it appears as if he doesn't have anything to offer his followers, and when he makes them like he was (deaf, mute, & blind) so they appreciate life more, they attack him, killing Frank & Nora, and eventually Tommy is left, finally free of his parents & his influences, and embraces a state of nirvana at the same place where he was conceived at the beginning of the film.

I...am surprised at how cogent that plot summary sounds, because Tommy is anything but cogent.  There are repeated detours throughout the movie to be able to have psychedelic musical numbers, and to capitalize on some of the rock cameos in the film.  Tina Turner, Elton John, Eric Clapton, and even (in a Carnal Knowledge reunion) Jack Nicholson all show up in various roles, getting their own songs.  The film's roots are firmly in the anti-establishment & being critical of their parents' generation (Clapton's preacher leads a parish that deifies Marilyn Monroe as a god, an indictment on celebrity-worship), but they also have the obvious overtones of drug use, particularly Turner's "Acid Queen."  

The cameos are fun initially, and certainly in a "WTF" way, but I will admit that other than Nicholson's (which I didn't know was coming), I found them a bit overlong and increasingly un-fun, which is how I'd describe Tommy as a whole.  The music is great ("Pinball Wizard" continues to hold up 45 years after the fact), but it keeps underlining the same points-every chorus seems to repeat one too many times, and the fat on the film is plentiful when it needs some leaning up.  The movie's motif is also dated, and its message is warped in retrospect considering so many of the "rebel acts" in this film would eventually become the establishment.  In 1975 the Who might have represented counterculture revolutionaries, but in 2020, a Millennial (like myself) knows people like the Who, Tina Turner, & Elton John as figures who become mega-millionaires that are so ingrained in corporate culture they literally headlined the Super Bowl, the most conventional of commercial American inventions.  As a result, the movie reads as false in its message, even if I understand its impact.

Ann-Margret's nomination was likely a result of both her taking on an atypical role and the dearth of good roles for women in 1975 (generally considered to be one of, if not the, worst years for Best Actress).  Her role here is intriguing, but eventually it just becomes exploitive, and I don't know what she's getting at.  It's obvious that director Ken Russell wanted to trade on Ann-Margret being the fantasy of a generation of young men by both deeply sexualizing her (there are multiple scenes in the film where it appears the actress is in the throes of an orgasm), and then skewing that sexualization (one of those orgasmic scenes, she's writhing in a puddle of baked beans & mud).  It's less of a work of acting and more a performance piece, and I left admitting that I saw something of note, but not necessarily of value.

1975 is where we're going to leave Ann-Margret.  The actress who took the sex symbol role and found a way to not only transform it in the 1970's, but to win industry accolades for her work, did make more worthwhile movies, and was a star for much of the 1970's with films like Joseph Andrews and Magic (and at one point, despite being 37, was considered for the role of Sandy in Grease), before eventually doing most of her career work in TV movies and guest appearances.  Next month, we will look at one last actress, a contemporary of Ann-Margret's whose career mirrored that of a classic sex symbol...even if it also seemed to hallmark the end of the trope.

OVP: Carnal Knowledge (1971)

Film: Carnal Knowledge (1971)

Stars: Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, Candice Bergen, Rita Moreno, Carol Kane

Director: Mike Nichols

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Ann-Margret)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Ann-Margret-click here to learn more about Ms. Ann-Margret (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to jump seven years into the future in our series for two reasons.  One, we have a lot to cover (Ann-Margret has been an enduring star for many decades), and two, Ann-Margret's career post Viva Las Vegas was kind of a bust.  Similar to some of the other stars we've talked about this year (like Jayne Mansfield), after just a few years as the center-of-the-world, the public began to crave a new star on their screens, and Ann-Margret could only be the "new star" for so long.  She had bad instincts during this time period (she turned down Cat Ballou, which went to Jane Fonda & opened up new doors in her career, and according to legend also turned down the part of Liesl in The Sound of Music, though I can't tell if this is just urban myth or is based in reality like the Cat Ballou decline, which actually happened), and her movies frequently had her being overshadowed by her male leads.  Instead, she struck up a Vegas nightclub act during this time frame (a successful one), and went on USO tours.  That is, until Mike Nichols gave her a role that would change her life.

(Spoilers Ahead) Carnal Knowledge is not about Ann-Margret's Bobbie, not really.  It's instead centered around the lives of two pals, Sandy (Garfunkel) and Jonathan (Nicholson), and their 25-year friendship.  Both men, virgins at the onset of the film, have completely different views on women; Jonathan considers them to be "ballbusters," something there for him to enjoy & control, while Sandy deifies them, treating them as life-changing.  

The movie is divided into three chapters.  In the first, they both fall in love with the same girl, Susan (Bergen), who attends their college.  Susan thinks Sandy is a nice guy, but is attracted to the excitement of Jonathan, and sleeps with him first.  As the relationship moves, though, Jonathan becomes angry that Susan doesn't give him the contentment that she gives Sandy.  As a result, they break up (Susan & Sandy marry), and we flash forward to the future, where Jonathan begins pursuing Bobbie, a gorgeous women whom he finds desirable, but eventually too complicated (because she is undergoing depression, and is desperate for him to love her in a traditional way, which Jonathan is not capable of because he views women as objects-of-desire).  Bobbie attempts suicide as a result of the depression, which we find in the final chapter led to Jonathan marrying and then divorcing her.  In this chapter, Sandy has found love with a new young woman named Jennifer (Kane), but has outgrown Jonathan-they have a falling out (not before Jonathan accidentally, wordlessly acknowledges that he & Susan had a relationship during a sadistic slideshow of his past sex partners), and we then see that Sandy truly leaves Jonathan behind, still financially successful but truly incapable of love.  The final scene is a pre-scripted monologue he has with a prostitute (Moreno) who talks about a man's power over her, as this is now the only way that Jonathan (who has increasingly suffered from impotence problems) can achieve an erection.

There are parts of Carnal Knowledge that simply wouldn't work today, and not just because of the deep core of misogyny that runs through it.  The film is an obvious commentary about the Sexual Revolution, and in this case two men trying to make sense of it in completely different ways, and that wouldn't make sense today.  Honestly-it's difficult for me to understand what of this film is dated & what of it is meant as a critique of these two men as a modern audience member.  In some respects I think it does this rather well-it's unflinching, nasty, & not forgiving of its main characters, particularly Nicholson's Jonathan.

But it also dismisses the women at its core.  The problematic people in this film are the men, and any audience member now would be able to tell that.  Jonathan's emotional abuse of Susan & Bobbie is rigid & hate-filled, but not much worse is Sandy begging these women to define him, to be the missing piece he isn't offering them (and to constantly blame them rather than himself when they don't).  Their friendship is unhealthy & they bring out the worst in each other, but that doesn't mean that the director's treatment of the women is much better.  Most of the women as written are nothing parts (Kane's Jennifer doesn't even speak), and with the exception of Moreno in a 5-minute long cameo at the end (where her reciting a script for money shows that she, ultimately, is in control), there's no focus on these women as anything other than through the eyes of the two male leads.

That isn't for lack of trying, though, on the part of Ann-Margret.  As written, Bobbie is a throwaway role; she's simply a gorgeous woman who wants to get married to this guy that she loves, and who is incapable of loving her.  But Bobbie is the crux of the film-she needs to both show us someone that we think is a throwaway one-night-stand, and then have it dawn on the audience (but not Jonathan) that Bobbie is perfect for Jonathan, and that if he can't make it work with her, it spells his doom.  

It's a tricky part, not least of which is that most of that isn't on the paper, and that might've been why Nichols struggled for months to cast it (supposedly everyone from Ellen Burstyn to Raquel Welch to Dyan Cannon to, in a twist, Jane Fonda, pursued the part but didn't land it), but in Ann-Margret he cast it flawlessly.  Ann-Margret is not the actress that Jane Fonda or Ellen Burstyn are, but she knew a good thing when it landed in her lap, and she understood Bobbie.  The way she plays her is marvelous-she shows Bobbie as a girl who had likely been worshipped by men her whole life, but is now on the cusp of thirty, and doesn't understand that while men still pursue her, they aren't willing to give her everything she desired (namely, a traditional family life).  Ann-Margret, still a knockout, but several years removed from her peak time in the spotlight, finds a way to impart that persona into Bobbie, playing her as someone who understands that her time-in-the-sun is over & she might've missed her window for happiness if it doesn't work with Jonathan.  There's a sexism in that reading, but it's the one that Nichols gives us, and I think Ann-Margret plays it well.

Viva Las Vegas (1964)

Film: Viva Las Vegas (1964)
Stars: Elvis Presley, Ann-Margret, Cesare Danova, William Demarest
Director: George Sidney
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Rating: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Ann-Margret-click here to learn more about Ms. Ann-Margret (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

In order to understand what Viva Las Vegas meant to the career of our star this month (Ann-Margret), we need to first focus on the other star of this picture, and just what he meant in 1964.  Elvis Presley is now universally acknowledged as one of the legends of 20th Century Music, up there with the Beatles and Frank Sinatra.  But like Sinatra, Presley's career took ups-and-downs, enough so that before his death he needed to have a comeback, and also like Sinatra, Presley had sort of a second career as a movie star, which reached its financial peak with this film.  In 1964, Presley would've been still a pretty big deal, certainly at the box office (according to reports at the time, this outgrossed A Hard Day's Night despite the Beatles being more relevant to the era's youth culture), but this was a peak for a reason-his career would start to slide after Viva Las Vegas, and in terms of his musical output, was already on the wane at this point (the soundtrack to this film was not a hit), and would continue to skid until his famous 1968 televised comeback.  This is all to say that Ann-Margret getting this part was not a step down in her career on-paper; getting to costar with Presley was still a big deal.

(Spoilers Ahead) Lucky Jackson (Presley) is a car mechanic who is determined to win a Grand Prix race in Vegas, and has been saving for months to buy the new engine he needs to compete in the contest.  However, while trying to woo swimming instructor Rusty Martin (Ann-Margret), he drops the money in the pool and ends up having to work as a waiter in order to make it back (and pay for the debts he's accrued).  In the process, Rusty & Lucky start dating, but Rusty is reluctant to marry a man who puts himself in such danger, and therefore they break up.  However, Lucky finds a mysterious benefactor to give him the money (it turns out to be Rusty's father, played by Demarest), and he drives in the race, winning, and afterwards marries Rusty in a very quick scene (there's no words even spoken).

The movie itself follows the formula of a lot of Elvis Presley romances-he is a groovy, ordinary guy who falls in love with a beautiful woman, and uses every excuse he can come up with to sing (during the "What'd I Say" number, try to spot a very young Teri Garr as one of the background dancers).  Presley's acting is not a draw here (you can visibly see in one scene where he has to fall forward after Ann-Margret has pretended to shoot him with her finger that he has missed his mark of where to fall, and for some reason the editors didn't notice this & kept it in the movie).  But, the reason you watch an Elvis Presley film is for the musical numbers, not the plot or acting.

Unless you're a major Presley fan, you're only going to recognize the title track as being an Elvis hit ("The Yellow Rose of Texas" is also sung, but that's not really a song associated with Presley).  The movie is stupid, very stupid in fact, but it kind of works in the way that certain stupid movies do. Presley is a good singer, he looks great, and Ann-Margret is awesome against him because she's the rare person that understands that he's a little ridiculous.  Presley, so ingrained in pop culture is he at this point, looks more like Bugs Bunny than a flesh-and-blood human being to a modern audience, and so Ann-Margret making Rusty super over-the-top is a smart counter.  The actress is in a cascade of skimpy outfits showing off her physique, but it's in hyper-sexualized line readings that she steals the movie from Presley.  She honestly sounds (and I don't mean this to be rude, but I have no other way of putting it) like she's having an orgasm every time she commits to a line reading, making Rusty a smart combination of "girl next door" and Playboy bunny...which was, let's face it, the combination that made Ann-Margret famous.

Ann-Margret dated Elvis Presley for roughly one year, and they were supposedly broken up by the end of this shoot.  The actress, though, is notable in that she's one of the only people who costarred (or romanced) the legendary singer who has not made a lot of public comments about their relationship, and has been very reluctant to discuss it publicly (you can google and find an uncomfortable Charlie Rose interview where he keeps pushing her to talk & you can tell she's not happy).  It's clear based on what was released that they did have a romantic relationship, what seems like a very serious one, but it didn't last, and Presley would go on to make increasingly lambasted movies before recovering his musical career, and then dying famously at the age of 42 of a heart attack.  Ann-Margret could've done something similar, and for a while she did-she would go on to do dismissible sexpot roles in the late 1960's opposite Dean Martin & Tony Franciosa, and made some bad career decisions, most notably turning down the Jane Fonda role in Cat Ballou.  She even, like Elvis, became a headliner in Las Vegas.  But next week we're going to find that Ann-Margret was very different than a lot of the sex symbols we've profiled this year who only got one major peak of fame, and then rode that until the end.  Ann-Margret, as the 1970's approached, was about to experience a surprising second act in her career.

OVP: Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

Film: Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

Stars: Janet Leigh, Dick van Dyke, Ann-Margret, Maureen Stapleton, Bobby Rydell, Jesse Pearson

Director: George Sidney

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Scoring, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Ann-Margret-click here to learn more about Ms. Ann-Margret (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to start our look at Ann-Margret's career this month with where most people started their looks at Ann-Margret's career.  The redheaded actress made high-profile films before this feature, including Pocketful of Miracles with Bette Davis and the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical State Fair with Pat Boone, but it was 1963's Bye Bye Birdie that turned Ann-Margret from a prominent supporting player into a genuine movie star.  The all-American girl with clearly a little mischief in her eye, her work here would turn her overnight into an icon, a new sex symbol for the post-Marilyn era, one that would be so prominent that decades later her work would be central to an episode of Mad Men.  But what was it about Bye Bye Birdie that made Ann-Margret so intoxicating?  Let's investigate.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is a musical, largely inspired by the real-life decision of Elvis Presley to join the army.  Here, an Elvis-like figure named Conrad Birdie (Pearson) is drafted, and before he goes into the military, they decide to have one last appearance of Birdie on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Songwriter Albert Peterson (van Dyke) is down-on-his-luck, and so his girlfriend Rosie (Leigh) convinces Sullivan (playing himself in the movie) to use one of Peterson's songs for the show for Conrad to sing (therefore making him a fortune).  Rosie intends to do this so that perhaps Albert will marry her, though he's unable to break free of his mother Mae's (Stapleton) shadow.  As part of the appearance, they run a contest that will have a local girl being sung to by Conrad, and he'll kiss her in the end, and this girl is Kim (Ann-Margret), who wants to kiss him even though her boyfriend Hugo (Rydell) is jealous.

Things unfold as I think you'd imagine based on the plot.  In the end, both Kim & Rosie get their men, as well as success, though Conrad never gets his kiss (Hugo punches the singer on live television).  The musical is cute, and I liked some of the numbers, particularly the ridiculously sexual ones that Pearson is forced to sing as Conrad Birdie (Pearson is so much fun in this movie).  I'm not wild about Dick van Dyke's movie roles during this era (he was a very big star) even if I love him as a celebrity (then & always), and that's true here-he's too one-note, and it's kind of hard to imagine what va-va-voom Janet Leigh, smart & sexy as Rosie, sees in him, but it's a musical so it's time to suspend some belief.  The sound was also Oscar-nominated, and while Birdie's numbers have an elevated quality I liked, the rest is more middle-of-the-road pleasures.

And as for Ann-Margret?  Yeah, I get the draw.  The movie actually opens on the actress singing the title song, seemingly as if she's on a treadmill running forward against a blank blue screen.  It's weird-she's a good singer, but not a great one, but it works so well.  She's intoxicating, alluring, magnetic.  It's hard to imagine what this must have been like to watch for the first time in 1963 (we have, in retrospect, the knowledge that Ann-Margret would become a legend), as it's pretty much a textbook example of star power in its rawest form.  The rest of the movie never quite lives up to that jaw drop of an opening act, but Ann-Margret is an actress who can command the screen, and I'm excited to see what she does with our three other films this month.

Saturdays with the Stars: Ann-Margret

Each month of 2020 we will be looking at the movies of some of Hollywood's most famous sex symbols, women whose intense beauty frequently overshadowed their filmic careers.  Last month, our focus was on Nancy Kwan, an actress born in China who found international fame in American movies in the early 1960's.  For the final two months of the year, we'll continue bridging the series back to the states with an actress born in Europe but quintessentially known as an American starlet, a woman who somehow toed the line between girl-next-door and fire-haired temptress.  This month, our star is Ann-Margret.

Ann-Margret, despite working almost exclusively in the states during her long film career, was not actually born in America but in Sweden.  She moved to the US at the age of 5, becoming a citizen when she was eight, and quickly showed a propensity for dance.  After high school, she started to appear in shows in Los Angeles and Nevada, eventually catching the eye of George Burns of all people, who saw her potential and put her in one of his television specials, which brought her to the attention of pretty much every casting director in town (Burns & Ann-Margret enjoyed a longtime friendship and would frequently appear together in acts until his death).

Ann-Margret's success in film was almost instantaneous (she had a bit of fame with music at the time, trying to be both a pop star & a film actress, but it was the latter that made her a household name).  After appearing opposite Bette Davis in Pocketful of Miracles, she had massive hits with Bye Bye Birdie and Viva Las Vegas, the latter with Elvis Presley in one of his more memorable onscreen roles.  Throughout the decade she'd play sexpots opposite people like Louis Jourdan and Steve McQueen, including Kitten with a Whip, which would become her nickname.  In the 1970's she was the rare sex symbol who transitioned into critically-acclaimed work, getting two Oscar nominations for Carnal Knowledge and Tommy (she didn't win for either).  By the decade's end, she was starting to see her film career slow, and like many other actresses of her generation, began to move into television, where she had solid success, even winning an Emmy Award for her work on Law & Order: SVU.

Today if people talk about Ann-Margret, it's almost always in the context of her "kitten with a whip" persona.  When she was featured as a subplot in a Mad Men episode, it was to do with her distinctive beauty singing the opening of Bye Bye Birdie rather than anything to do with her as an actress.  This month, I want to turn that on its head-we'll be discussing the woman behind the gorgeous face and mane of red hair, and on her career, focusing in on both of her Oscar-nominated films as well as some of her earlier work.  Ann-Margret was the rare sex symbol who enjoyed genuine critical success during her time in the sun, but still is remembered today for her looks more than her thespian talents-let's take a look as to why.