My Favorite Year

I felt so bad about trashing the Peter O'Toole movie Lord Jim—I think O'Toole is "the finest man who ever breathed"—that I went scouring for an old review of another of his movies, and I found the one where he played a fictional version of Errol Flynn (featured Tuesday). Ya know, you watch a lot of movies and coincidences just happen...

My Favorite Year (Richard Benjamin, 1982) Surely one of the best jobs during the early 1950's was being a writer for "Your Show of Shows,"* broadcast live Saturday nights on NBC. Starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris, the writing staff contained such wits as Reiner, Mel Tolkin, Larry Gelbart, Danny Simon, his odd couple brother Neil Simon, Lucille Kallen, and Mel Brooks.** The work environment was so fondly remembered it has consistently been used as comedic inspiration. First, Reiner used it as the work environment for "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Neil Simon wrote the stage-play "Laughter on the 23rd Floor."*** And Brooks took the kernel of a script by Dennis Palumbo about a going-to-seed celebrity and his "minder" and morphed it into his remembrance of "Your Show of Shows," My Favorite Year.**** Brooks served as neither writer, nor director, but as Executive Producer, he completely re-imagined the film as this sunny, hilarious remembrance, dripping with nostalgia, of being a cocky kid in New York in the '50's working for a hit comedy show. 

"King" Kaiser (Joseph Bologna) is the high-strung, neurotic star of a network variety show, and one week it falls to writer's assistant Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker) to "manage" movie star Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole) through the rehearsals and broadcast. Two problems: Swann's a perennial lush, and he's never acted before a "live" audience. Fortunately, Benjy is Swann's biggest fan and forgives a lot of bad behavior, but Swann's "bad boy" behavior, insecurities and inebriation keep throwing up barriers.

O'Toole was initially hesitant to take on the role of the Errol Flynn-like Swann (he was convinced by an odd coincidence--the date of Swann's death inscribed on a tombstone--in a scene cut from the film--was also O'Toole's birthday. He was, again, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance. Richard Benjamin solidified his transition from actor to director with this film, which also featured Jessica Harper as the apple of Benjy's eye, Bill Macy, Anne De Salvo and Basil Hoffman as the show's writers, legendary composer Adolph Green as a producer, Lainie Kazan as Benjy's mother, Cameron Mitchell as a mobster unhappy with his portrayal on the show, and even former "Show of Shows" performer Selma Diamond in a small role. 

But the highlight is O'Toole's swashbuckling star. Looking gaunt and rheumy-eyed even when he's not plowed, Swann benefits from O'Toole's charm, crack timing and physical comedy—O'Toole can do a prat-fall and make it look deadly—but the actor makes the drama work as well. Swann's freak-out at being told he's performing "live" ("I'm not an actor! I'm a movie star!!") is both comic and tragic. And he plays off well with a sharp cluster of East Coast character actors. 

The all-pervasive air of nostalgia begins immediately with the opening of Nat King Cole's "Stardust" over animated credits, and continues to the last frame with a joyous semi-sadness. My Favorite Year works on so many levels--as a drama as well as a comedy, as a fond remembrance as well as a fond farewell. And any movie that has a decent role for O'Toole to show how good he is, dramatically or comedically deserves a place on any list of 'favorites." 

* To give you a glimpse of "Your Show of Shows" here's Carl Reiner, Sid Caesar, Howie Morris and Louis Nye performing a sketch called "This Is Your Story." 

And here's Errol Flynn guesting on TV's "The Colgate Comedy Hour" with Abbott and Costello

** And Woody Allen became a writer for the 60 minute version of the show, "Caesar's Hour." 

*** Coincidentally, when "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" was video-taped for PBS, it was directed by "My Favorite Year" director Richard Benjamin, and featured its star, Mark-Linn Baker. 

**** The original screenplay took place in the early 1900's, and Wyatt Earp was the personage to be "minded."

Goodbye, Columbus

Goodbye, Columbus (Larry Peerce,1969) In my early, stuttering days seeing as many movies as I could, I watched this Paramount production of Philip Roth's 1959 novella on television (ABC Network, I think). I remember it being a bit bewildering for there would be whole stretches of film that would be frozen on an image while the soundtrack remained intact. I don't recall hitting my portable television to see if there was a broadcast issue—in those days, I would have adjusted the "rabbit-ears"—but it was a little frustrating. Frustrating enough that I bought the book to see if I could find out what was going on (I should also mention this was pre-home video/VHS-Beta/DVD/streaming or any of that, which occurred with a big roll-out in 1980). "Buying the book" was what I did whenever these things happened, a tried-and-true researching method that I'd employed ever since watching 2001: A Space Odyssey bent my 13 year old brain into incomprehension.

For Goodbye, Columbus, however, the issue was ABC censorship, as those frozen scenes involved the lead characters—played by Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw—indulging in pre-marital sex and some rather PG-13-ish nudity (Benjamin's, actually). It made me read the book (which didn't explain what was going on but gave me more depth into the characters) and started my appreciation of the work of Philip Roth and I proceeded to binge his books like they were a tube of Oreo's.

This is one of the shots ABC censored

MacGraw was a big star at the time (but not at the time this movie was released) and Paramount was the King of Hollywood with The Godfather and Love Story being popular and critic-approved and it marshaled in the very good movie decade of the 1970's with some seriously good fare. Goodbye, Columbus did well for its time and it was MacGraw's very brush with stardom after modeling and her performance here is actually quite good and vulnerable, but Benjamin has the true actor honors in this one, with a good turn by Jack Klugman, as well.

This is another...personally, they're SFW

Goodbye, Columbus takes place over six months in New York as Neil Klugman (Benjamin—and no relation to Jack...), mid-20's and slightly adrift after graduating from college (English lit. major) and a military stint has taken a job at the New York Public Library (I'm going over the film scenario, not the novella as novella-Neil lives and works in Newark, New Jersey). Taking advantage of cousin Doris' membership at Old Oaks Country Club (Purchase, New York), Neil's life changes despite the non-New York-based pleasures of sun-bathing, swimming and scanning swim-suited bodies in the sunshine. It's a privilege for Neal to be among the privileged, and has no idea that he will be beguiled by the simplest of siren's songs—"Would you hold my glasses, please?"

The inquiry is made by Brenda Patimkin (MacGraw), who then jumps into the pool, while being bird-dogged by Neil, who is then swept away from him by a large male, who tell her it's time to go, takes her hand and accompanies her from the club. Neil finds out who she is (and, subsequently, that the guy who took her from is her brother) and he becomes obsessed with meeting her again and pursuing her. He gets her number and they have a meeting after her tennis match with a friend. And the next day, Neil gets invited to the country club as Brenda's guest.

Love blooms. Dates happen. Music-backed montages ensue (music by Charles Fox in his chirpy "Love, America-Style" mode). Brenda and Neil become a "thing." He gets invited to the Patimkins for dinner ("He eats like a bird!"). Dad Ben (Klugman—Jack) has a plumbing supply business that is doing very well, which is what has propelled the Patimkins into the lifestyle to which they become accustomed, but have not always enjoyed. Mother Patimkin (Nan Martin) is cordial, but a bit cold, especially given Neil's job—he's been at the Library for a year! But, Dad isn't concerned—"Leave her alone, she'll get tired of him."

He's so unconcerned that, at Brenda's request, Neil is allowed to stay with the Patimkins for a couple weeks, while the family is preoccupied with brother Ron's upcoming wedding. Mom is absolutely against the idea—she and Brenda have their mom-daughter conflicts and she's seen as spoiled. But, for Dad, things are going great and the kids are great, so why not? Brenda has Ben wrapped around her finger and so, Mom's concerns aside, Neil is welcomed. To a point.

For the lovers, this is a opportunity to take advantage of. They start to regularly sleep together under the Patimkins' collective noses. But, the differences between the two become apparent leading to conflict—Neil insists on some sort of birth control (for her, of course), while Brenda prefers nothing. In the novella written in the late 1950's, there was no "pill" but screenwriter Arnold Schulman takes care of the issue by having Brenda say that it makes her bloat "plus, you keep reading something bad about it everyday" (nice deflection that people could identify with and works well with her "princess" personality).

It's one of the areas where Schulman's updating for the fruging 60's works. No mention is made of Vietnam regarding Neil's military service, and the screenplay goes out of its way to stress the "generation gap" between the kids and the parents, sometimes uncomfortably so. One grating area is when Neil visits Ben at his company and the older man states that you need a little "gonif" to survive in business ("You know what that means, 'gonif?'" "Thief"). In the novella, that plays out with a mutual understanding of the ways of the world, but in the film, Ben then goes off on a bitter, deprecating "you kids, you think you have it so easy" speech that comes out of left field.

This little aberration from the novella's text—and intent—as well as the insistence to show the older generation in the worst satirical light (and given that everybody is Jewish gives a further suspicion of "prejudice" or "snobbery"—to be kind) makes one suspicious that the idea was not to follow Roth's work, but to present a box-office cousin to the previous year's The Graduate, with the cross-cutting dance sequences with fast-zooms (which don't communicate anything other than "this is frenetic, man" as opposed to picking out something in the wide shot or creating an emotional "realization" shot) and an exploitable soundtrack featuring a pop-group.

The soundtrack to The Graduate (featuring Simon and Garfunkle) was a best-seller, but I don't think anybody remembers—or bought—the soundtrack to Goodbye, Columbus, featuring The Association, a "safe" easy-listening vocal group (akin to the Four Freshmen) 180 degrees in opposition to the folk-rock harmonies of S&G, their only similarity being both groups played the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967. Where S&G voiced the angst of a generation, The Association could have played the Patimkin wedding, so unoffensive and mainstream was their music. Actually, the way Peerce goes over-the-top in the staging of thewedding sequence, unoffenisve might not be what they'd be going after.

My view of Goodbye, Columbus has changed over the years—actually it changed quite quickly after I saw the whole movie, given the reading of Roth's original story. What Roth was going for was a comment on assimilation and how the gentrification of class destroys common threads in people no matter how tightly bound. And he couched this in a love story—but is it really?—where privilege breaks down with the danger of losing it. I've always loved the final argument between Brenda and Neil that dances around the basic point that he's not a good match for her, given his lack of ambition, and the parental pressures put on her so that she can maintain her privilege. Princesses do not marry below their stature. It is just not done. But, that is never said. It all revolves around circumstantial evidence and past sins and is straight out of Roth. Summer love cannot stand the Winter chill. 

But, Benjamin is great in it, and he would become tagged as the actor to go to when portraying a Roth character. But, I was dissatisfied enough to want to see another adaptation that was more like the original story, maybe a period piece set in the late 1950's as it was written—its own thing and not a knock-off of passing trends.

MacGraw and Benjamin, already facing the other way.

* Wikipedia calls them "a sunshine-pop band from California." So, naturally that works for a movie set in New York. I don't think Paramount was so inspired by The Graduate that they said "Hey, The Graduate was set in California and used a duo out of New York! Let's use the same geographical inappropriateness!" They just wanted to sell records.