Glorifying the American Girl (1929)

It’s nice to hear Mary Eaton speak frankly to her boyfriend (a dreamy Edward Crandall) about wanting to live a little and see what she can do before settling down and raising children. He’s visibly hurt, but not petulant or insulting (like every boyfriend/husband in Ziegfeld Girl and The Dolly Sisters). He does wait for her and seems genuinely supportive of her success…, but eventually settles for available girl-next-door Gloria Shea — who actually is treated pretty badly by the film: abandoned and hit by a car! That’s what chasing love gets you….

Eaton discovers her beau has moved on just before she goes out for the finale in the Follies, and you see the emotions hit her as she struggles under the weight of an enormous headpiece that cascades around her like a fountain. Ok, so it’s not exactly deep, but at least she doesn’t die of alcohol poisoning or get slapped around like in the exploitational Ziegfeld Girl.

The production numbers are tame but realistic by Hollywood’s standards, and we wait the whole film to finally see one of Flo’s evolving stage contraptions (it’s worth it). Most of the numbers are arranged in tableau including a gorgeous scene involving a mermaid pulled from the sea in a fisherman’s net as a bishop and various neoclassical figures stand by…. Tableaus don’t make interesting cinema, but I was happy to see some man flesh in the mix as nearly nude males (like Johnny Weissmuller, sigh) have apparently been excised from Hollywood’s re-interpretations of Ziggy’s stagework — ironic since Flo had his first success displaying the muscular Sandow so you know he wasn’t shy about it.

Eddie Cantor has an overly long vaudeville scene as a Jewish tailor, but is actually funnier in a brief exchange with a haughty showgirl, Rudy Vallee might have been a somebody back then but he sure doesn’t show it here. Helen Morgan sings her signature torchsong from atop a piano (a schtick she invented by necessity as she was too short to be seen in many music halls). She is excellent in the film APPLAUSE which also came out in 1929 where she played an aging showgirl trying to keep her daughter out of theater life, but unfortunately her performance here suffers from the antique recording.

Ted Shawn is the imaginative choreographer who arranges the dancers up and down Ziegfeld’s stairs dressed as exotic animals, graceful swans, and Art Nouveau beauties clutching glass globes. Shawn would create the Jacob’s Pillow dance festival and was instrumental in forming a uniquely American branch of Modern Dance.

Silent stock-footage from a theater premier was edited in so we get a glimpse of Ziegfeld and Billie Burke, as well as other Broadway dignitaries of the age. It’s a tragedy the technicolor scenes are lost as this is the only film Ziegfeld personally worked on. There’s a lot of history here, and the opening montage is almost Fritz Lang-esque, but I wouldn’t try to show the whole film to any of my friends. All-in-all it’s not that bad. The pre-code heroine isn’t “punished” for having career ambitions but she experiences some bumps and bruises along the way (mostly from her crocadilian mother and an unscrupulous partner/manager). She loses the cute guy but he still comes to congratulate her when she stars in the Follies and that seems like a fair compromise — much better than the later lurid propaganda plots that would slap down (or just kill off) any woman who chose to be a Ziegfeld Girl instead of a wife.

Rosalie (1937)

Fans of Eleanor Powell will wonder how she detoured into this Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy overblown costume piece — and in the role of Jeanette MacDonald no less! Whereas delicate Jeanette would have floated through this pageant with an air of fluttering dignity, pants-wearing Ellie delivers too much punch for a princess. She barks most of her lines and unfortunately comes off as a bitch. A more delicate actress would have softened the barrage of “womanly” insults laid on Nelson Eddy and we would know this meant she was smitten. But with the confidant and athletic Powell delivering the insults you really start to wonder if wooden Eddy is a masochist or just extremely submissive. It’s an electric energy that cost Powell her spotlight, and didn’t fit with MGM’s idea of what a feminine leading lady should be.

Those who are fascinated by Ellie’s unusual (at least on film) gender-play will be thrilled to see her “go all the way” and dress as a man to sneak into a military academy where she leads the cadets in a marching drill in front of a phallic war memorial. While Powell is hardly mannish (and here with Jeanette’s wardrobe and make-up budget she never looked prettier) the production plays with her “masculinity” and dresses her in all extremes of buttoned-downed marching band jackets and crisp uniforms, interspersed with overly feminine gowns with frou-frou puffy sleeves and Jeanette’s corkscrew curls. It’s an inconsistent and mostly unsuccessful gender dichotomy — especially when compared to her smart wardrobe play and winning charisma in the Broadway Melody films.

Her tap numbers are too few and too short — a Pieroette “ballet” on giant drums is an weird jumble of inconsistent imagery, and a brief scene with Ray Bolger makes you wish they’d shared a competitive dance of lightning legwork rather than the time-wasting dialog in the script. Other supporting players are also underused: as the Queen, Edna May Oliver appears briefly in a tiered nightgown that exaggerates her Olive Oil frame, and Frank Morgan does his best to keep the banter rolling as a befuddled monarch with a ventriloquist dummy, but there isn’t enough comedy here to entertain. A sudden accidental revolution in the tiny Balkan monarchy has potential, but is dropped just as quickly. Even the production numbers are too short, following the pattern of the other MacDonald/Eddy films where actual choreography and musical style are ignored for lots and lots of extras (1500 in one scene by some accounts) arranged in expensive costumes and plenty of operetta bombast from Eddy.

Some moments shine, including a stunning solo by Ilona Massey as a nouveau Queen of the Night: she descends a marble staircase followed by an admiring fawn. Nine original songs by Cole Porter include “I’ve a Strange New Rhythm in My Heart”, “Spring Love is in the Air”, “In the Still of the Night”, and “To Love or Not To Love”. An abrupt wedding finale is a lovely tiered cake of gowned women, candelabras, and cellophane drapes, but leaves you wondering what the hell happened.

Other than seeing Eleanor Powell in one of her few starring roles this is a forgettable film that shows no one to advantage, except possibly MGM’s costume department. I can see how this was originally a vehicle for Marion Davies because the sets are jaw-droppingly huge.

The Clinging Vine (1926)

Something I’m learning about early Cecil B DeMille, he LIKED women. He was willing to flatter his actresses and record bold yet true emotions from them into his camera. The plots are farces, bedroom plays of cheating husbands and scheming wives which rely on coincidence to further the plot, and ultimately climaxing with his star in a stunning costume as she manipulates the men with sex appeal. Women were his largest audience, and DeMille courted them with powerful women characters who fall prey to victimization, then retaliate with glamor.

The Clinging Vine is a twist on his usual plots. Instead of the suffering housewife or or struggling engenue, DeMille puts his heroine in the workplace. But instead of a secretary running from a skirt-chasing boss, she is diligent, respected, and chaste. Enter Leatrice Joy as A.B. who is practically running the company, but has given up her femininity. Introduced only with initials, and seated at a desk of whirring office activity, we accept A.B. as a man. Helped by a dashing haircut and tailored business suit Leatrice Joy is the image of a young hero. Dedicated, hardworking, and ready to be the victim of DeMille’s female manipulation.

Much ballyhoo was made of Joy’s daring haircut at the time. Hollywood rags dished on how DeMille was angry she could no longer play leads, and titillating stories about Joy passing for a man and flirting with young women…. This was mid-1920s. Flapper styles were slim and boyish. Vamps had bobbed their hair. Women were adopting the modern look, and voting and working. Hollywood ballyhoo aside, Leatrice Joy just took it to the next level.

Once DeMille establishes that A.B. is actually a woman, he lingers on Leatrice Joy as she acts very convincingly as a man. There is a sort of titillation here as she runs the office efficiently, even writing on her sleeve. She is not just mannish, she is a man’s man, a go-getter, a brash young hero beating men at their own terms.

Yet it is clear she has no romantic life at all. She is even awkward when a secretary announces her engagement, sadly returning to her office alone. It’s not just that she’s de-sexed, just de-humanized. She’ss not adopted the clothing of men per-se, she has adopted the uniform of the office. As strong as DeMille’s transgender theme is visually, it is not a part of the script. A.B. is always spoken of sympathetically as a woman, just an overly-efficient office woman.

It’s hard to suppress our modern post-gender sensibilities, and Joy has creates such a convincing, even compelling masculine image that it is confusing when no one in the film reads A.B. as a man, but the this is a farce full of topsy-turvy characters. In spite of her masculine appearance the bumbling executives become afraid they may lose A.B someday to marriage, and begin scheming to keep her in the firm by one of them marrying her first! One protests that A.B. would put a timeclock in the bathroom and his socks in a filing cabinet. Her crime is that she is un-domestic, rather than being overtly masculine.

Then another topsy-turvy character appears: the boss’s wife (Toby Claude) as a jazz-age Grandma who steps in as fairy godmother to transform A.B. into Abigale, a “clinging vine” who is decorative and flirtatious. Sensing Abigale has no experience with love, Grandma manuvers her to her own grandson Jimmie, whom A.B. has recently fired from the company. Abigale’s Pygmalion transformation is so complete that no one from the company recognizes her. Most of the comedy derives from Abigale’s clumsy attempts at femininization, in exaggerated puffy gowns and over-sized bonnets. DeMille and Joy are presenting a polemic image of dualities, first a studied and convincing young man, then a fluttering and exaggerated female.

To modern feminists The Clinging Vine seems like a nightmarish scenario: giving up a career to coddle a simpering man-child — worse A.B. invests her life savings in his hair-brained invention, but DeMille is not a woman-hater. He takes every opportunity to make A.B. sympathetic, while making Abigale ridiculous. It’s true she gives up her career for marriage to an inferior man — one she even fired, and learns to pacify men by pretending to be stupid…, but it is no different when she affirms her boss’s ego allowing him take credit for her work. In DeMille’s world women are superior (if unthanked) in the bedroom and the boardroom. When encountering a glass ceiling they don’t give up, on the contrary they adapt and switch tactics.

The theme could be interpreted as the goal of a corrupt patriarchy, to be pampered and aroused by over-talented yet submissive superwomen. However, the patriarchy falls apart all together when you look at Grandma. This dichotomy of young and old, who slides down banisters and dances to jazz music in her underwear, embodies the ultimate power-wielding matriarch. Knowing her grandson isn’t gifted with brains she marries him off to the company’s top whiz. Grandma secures her own bloodline as well as her company’s future with an injection of female power, and by the end of the film Abigale has doubled her wealth using Jimmie as a financial puppet armed with her new powers of sexual manipulation.

The moral isn’t pre-feminist, it’s reverse-sexist! And in the world according to DeMille, love takes care of the rest.

Fantasia (1940)

The world’s top conductor Leopold Stokowski was a bit of a rock star, associated with dating Greta Garbo and jetsetting around the world. Walt Disney pioneered family entertainment with the risky, but wildly successful Snow White. The two couldn’t have been more opposite, but when Disney described his idea to animate famous classical works and Stokowski offered to conduct, Fantasia quickly inflated from a series of classical shorts to an overblown road show presented in quadrophonic sound! Even “Smell-o-Vision” was considered to enhance the film, but was thankfully discarded when Disney couldn’t clear the air before the next scent was introduced (Smell-o-Vision, a system that puffed odors into the theater was actually used in the 1960 film Scent of Mystery and later lampooned with scratch-n-sniff cards as Odorama in the John Waters film Polyester).

Disney’s folly nearly bankrupted the studio. Given free-reign to interpret as they saw fit Uncle Walt basically handed over control to his top animators with uneven results. Many took every opportunity to add nipples and overt sexuality to what was thought would be adult entertainment. Some segments are dry and pompous, some remain at the pinnacle of animation as fresh and funny as when they were made. Disney always intended to re-release Fantasia with new sequences every year, so it’s possible his motive was to branch out his animation studio into different looks and specialized styles — a legacy that would be unique to Disney Studios and enable them to become the most accomplished animation studio in the world.

The Bliss of Mrs Blossom (1968)

If you don’t love Shirley MacClaine then you haven’t seen The Bliss of Mrs Blossom, a surreal skewering of marriage and conventionality. Mrs Blossom adores her stodgy workaholic husband, but also keeps a younger man hidden in the attic for daytime fantasies and romantic romps. Mr Blossom is so busy at the factory saving the world with an inflatable bra that he doesn’t notice for several years! Is polyandry the answer to woman’s happiness?

The gogo ’60s has no shortage of swinger movies and sexual epiphanies, but none are as sweet or as fun as Mrs Blossom. MacClaine is wonderful in a swirl of gauzy gaudy dresses straight from Carnaby Street, spiraling hair pieces, and false eyelashes a mile long. Her lovely cottage home, presumably the result of her many days alone, is practically a fourth character in the film with brightly painted art nouveau flowers and carefully detailed domestic trimmings (like the miniature village tea set). The billiards parlor is a riot of psychedelic purple paisleys, and her paintings are straight out of Yellow Submarine. Contrast with a later trip to a pop-psychiatrist whose office is all blinking lights, metal structures, and industrial gadgetry.

The film is driven by sight gags and sudden changes in decor and costume, as Mrs Blossom’s daytime fantasies spill over onto her two men’s lives. Her lover becomes a whiz at self-help books learning to build furniture and dabbling in the stock market, meanwhile Mr Blossom’s only relaxation pretending to conduct a pretaped orchestra suddenly erupts into full musical montages. As a happy woman, Mrs Blossom’s magic inspires and transforms everything and everyone she touches!

The soundtrack is a swinger’s paradise. Shirley sets the tone whispering sexy distracted syllables in the opening song by Cinecitta great Riz Ortolani, but watch for an appearance by novelty act The New Vaudeville Band who vodo-diodos through a megaphone in a wild rose-patterned suit!

Barberella (1968)

Although based on the French sex comic of the same name, Barberella is part of a significant genre of film where an ignorant American plops into decadent and politically corrupt Europe, and amidst much destruction and upheval saves them from themselves. That the naive American is both a ridiculed bumpkin and enduringly heroic is probably a theme Europeans have chewed over without answer. And it would do the Americans some good to understand.

From The Wizard of Oz to Flash Gordon this good-natured simpleton faces tyrants, evil plots, bizarre cultures, and extensive historical backstory, cutting through the confusion with a pure heart and a desire to make friends. Their charisma is infectious, their can-do attitude comes from having never been conquered, and their corn-fed goodlooks certainly help. World War II became the embodiment of this character as GI Joe stormed across Europe, bombing the shit out of history and saving France despite the fact that She preferred to capitulate rather than fight. Europe had a long history of tyrants and racial oppression. It’s the way things were, why resist? But the American’s saw it differently. Enter Barberella who in the midst of destroying Tau Seti and rescuing almost no one, still considers the mission a success!

Jane Fonda was the perfect doe-eyed American trophy-wife for Roger Vadim. She was famous, gorgeous, and manipulatable. Although she later disowned the film and divorced the fillandering Vadim, she has nothing to be ashamed of that Barberella will become her most memorable role. It doesn’t really matter that she wasn’t in on the joke, at 29 her body is the best effect in the film, fantasticly decorated in space-age gogo boots and vacuum molded breast cups. Her near brain-damaged line readings are the fault of a lousy script, and the near-unwatchability of the film is a result of crappy editing, not bad acting. Several stars of the day put in an effort, but not Vadim who must have been absent, high, or just too arrogant to see what a good thing he had going. Barberella could have been iconic, instead it’s a campy bore.

Return to Oz (1985)

Fans of the original books beware: Disney Studios and Jim Henson’s Muppet factory go to great detail to lovingly recreate the art nouveau illustrations, but disreguard L Frank Baum’s books! Gone is clever rascal Tip, Princess Ozma’s pre-fem identity and wayward servantboy of Witch Mombi. Some of his children are here, including Jack Pumpkinhead and the amazing Gump made from a hunting-trophy head, a sofa, and and other drawing room furniture. The wooden sawhorse makes a cameo as a playroom rocking horse, and other beloved characters appear without speaking. Ozma herself is practically expunged, appearing only at the end of this overlong film. Don’t even get me started with the Mombi-Langwidere hibrid. Why have they mangled the Oz legacy into this boring snoz.

It took 5 years before Baum wrote a sequel The Marvelous Land of Oz, essentially an origins story that mixes satire politics and genderplay with clever adventures which once again lead to the Emerald City and a resolution by benevolent witch Glenda. Like Dorothy before him, Tip sets events in motion that radically change the political structure of Oz, but rather than simply repeating the themes of Wizard with a male character in the Dorothy role, Baum steps it up a notch by revealing that prankster Tip is also a girl who has been cursed with a boy’s body! Where Dorothy’s mantra is no place like home, Tip has no home and worse, he must abandon everything he knows about himself and start over! He becomes she, and (other than the empty-headed Jack Pumpkinhead who continues to call her “Father”) everyone just goes on as normal. The fact that young children will accept a transsexual heroine where adults can’t shows just how far Baum was willing to push imaginations before gender prejudice set in. It also reveals the liberated pagen sexuality of the early last-century — contrast to the beginning of this century when it’s a scandal to release a children’s book about (true) male-coupled penguins! Oh.., and if that isn’t enough liberating gender-switch politics for you, Oz is subsequently attacked by an all-female army who in a post-feminist debate must balance their desire for superiority with their inherent feminine needs….

So what a travesty that 80 years later (long after the so-called sexual revolution) themes of gender fluidity and female fascism can’t be depicted in a studio movie. Return to Oz takes place sometime after Ozma’s ascention to the throne, but she was never a boy and Jack dilligently refers to her as “Mom” — a joke that is now meaninglessly stupid. Ozma isn’t even a good ruler, since she’s been conquored by an aliance between two characters from the third book: The Nome King and Langwidere, the lazy beauty with 30 heads. The Emerald City is shattered and its people turned to stone, with the ineffective wheelers having free run of the place. Re-enter Dorothy after a long and boring visit to a psychiatrist who plans to electrocute the bad dreams of Oz from her head. Wha-? The film slowly dwindles in melencholy with characters and events from Baum’s third book Ozma of Oz, but shifting the focus to Dorothy played by doe-eyed Fairuza Balk who wanders through the film looking dazed and fragile…. Again gender is taboo and the sassy hen Bill has been carefully renamed Billina. Ugh. Puke on Disney’s commie-accuser grave!

What went so pathetically wrong with Disney’s Return to Oz, is what went right with the beloved MGM classic Wizard of Oz. MGM endlessly tampered with Wizard, ending up with a glittery hammy contemporary musical that stayed faithful to the themes of the original story. During the production of Return to Oz a Disney executive reportedly said they were going back to the original turn-of-the-century look; “Not that vaudville shit like MGM!” So how ironic that they decide to release a depressing sequel to MGM’s Wizard apparently without reading any of the books! Why remain faithful to the illustrations while committing endless castrations on the stories? Not only is Ozma too contraversial to star, she is robbed of her contraversial body altogether, becoming a dissembodied reflection in a mirror! Dorothy becomes a sad near-labotimized waif, a far cry from the plucky farmgirl who makes friends and confronts wizards. Instead of Baum’s wondering themes of complex incongruities (friendly witches, cowardly lions, and a boy who becomes a princess), Disney’s Oz contains the images from Baums books but none of the imagery. None of the imagination.

One nice touch is the vision of the Emerald City as a turn of the century world fair in the vein of Chicago’s famed Columbia Exhibition. Endless arches, colonnades, and towering cupolas provide an excuse for the ubiquitous parades that Oz bestowes on her heros. It’s a lovely and intelligent homage to fantasy architecture from an age of industrial enlightenment.

What’s New Pussycat? (1965)

Michael James (Peter O’Toole) has got it rough. Beautiful women throw themselves at him, and despite being engaged he doesn’t have the strength to say no. His therapist Fritz Fassbender (Peter Sellers in his funniest role ever) isn’t helping, in fact he’s started following Michael hoping for leftovers! Another so-called friend (Woody Allen, who based the script on the hectic love life of Warren Beatty) is hoping Michael will fail so he can have a chance with his adorable broken-hearted fiancée (Romy Schneider).

There’s no shortage of lovely women! Paula Prentiss is a crazy stripper who writes political poetry and overdoses on pills each time Micheal tries to end their affair. Harder to resist is the sublime Capuccine, a sophisticated sex-addict from Fassbender’s group therapy. By the time nymphomaniac Ursula Andress parachutes directly into Micheal’s car the laughs are coming so fast your face hurts.

Like Casino Royale two years later, there isn’t much plot (or maybe there’s too much plot), and rapid fire comedy flies from all corners. A swinging score by Burt Bacharach sets off a series of exquisite Parisian art nouveau locations, climaxing at an off-season chateau where all players converge in an out of kilter farce of escalating chase scenes. Throw in a transvestite, a Valkyrie, a terrorist, a jealous husband, and Michael’s future in-laws racing across the French countryside in stolen gocarts.

When I wrote my analysis of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, I peeked at the user-reviews on IMDB for inspiration and direction – no need to say the same things everyone else says…. That would hardly be possible since my copy of the film stars Patricia Neil, but she seems to be conspicuously absent from other versions of the film. Where I see a script that is fundamentally built around her character, and the sobering compromises she’s had to make before the film begins, other viewers (male, presumably) omit her entirely.

It’s no secret I’m sexist. I’m not even interested in the “male” point of view – unless it’s someone who is actually doing some comedy like Edward Everett Horton or Eddie Cantor. But we’re not talking about musical comedy – this is Sci-Fi, the nerdiest of nerd-chismo genre. Robots that blow shit up and the little boys who love them. If there’s a girl, she’s a space-vixen or a nurse (think of it as an atheist Madonna/whore complex)….

It’s not just the boys that do this. Even my nerdettes promote and perpetuate the impression that women play no role in science, fiction, and especially science fiction. DAY is certainly not alone. Star Wars had no female Jedi (six movies and there are only two women, both princesses). It’s the boys who befriend robots, poke around in crash sites in the woods, and ultimately get to go to space to save the universe….

There *are* exceptions. When the genre turns to the softer sex (and happily it does rather often) we get a glimpse of imaginative fashion, deviant sexuality, and the social-norms of society go topsy-turvy. I’m not talking about Ripley battling a Queen Alien. The hot babe that can kick your ass is a two-dimensional stereotype, more a sex fantasy really, like Laura Croft. There will be grunting and sweating as she flexes some muscle. If we’re lucky her shirt will be turn strategically and she will suffer some tribal-looking scratches on or near her breasts….

But the real girls in sci-fi, I mean the girly-girls, are going to be doing more fabulous things than just bitch-slapping each other…. They will go SHOPPING, they will wear amazing outfits, they will go to unusual parties, and get involved with aliens who hit on them. They will *think* about their situation, and deal with it – because sci-fi is about the brain, about evolving humanity and shedding old values. Sci-fi is where women should rule. Think Ann Francis in FORBIDDEN PLANET or Jane Fonda in BARBERELLA. They don’t *go to* space, they’re already there. They are not the “normal” at the beginning of the film, the wide-eyed innocent, the “boy” who becomes a man on some Joseph Campbell journey….

The real sci-fi babes are already surrounding themselves in the luxuries and conveniences the future has to offer. Embracing technology, using it, wearing it. When their adventure starts, it’s generally the result of an abrupt REgression – cataclysmic disaster, sailors landing, or some egomaniac threatens to destroy the world…. Rather than discovering *advanced* technology, these women are confronted with *primitive* kind.

At first dumb-founded that anyone would be so backwards, they might dabble at dumbing it down (hey, we all gotta date), she networks, she social-climbs (how quickly does our heroine find a job at the villain’s lair dressed as a slave girl, while the hero takes the whole movie to tour the entire continent and round up some buddies before he finally moseys his way to the final battle?) 9 times out of 10, she has dated the supervillian. At the end of the day sci-fi babes get around. Dale Arden’s line at the end of FLASH GORDON is a classic: “I’m a New York City girl. Things are a little too quiet around here for me.”

While women are constantly being written out of history, it’s a fallacy to think they weren’t there turning events to their favor, flirting with the barbarians and hitting the parties until they climb to the top…. So I created this site to counter-balance a sexist bias. If this journal has one purpose, it is to change the dialog. To point out the feminine sensibilities from a feminist perspective. And especially, to remember that female iconography *is* there, you just have to know what you are looking at.

Metropolis (1927)
director Fritz Lang
writer Thea von Harbou
starring Brigitte Helm

In Fritz Lang’s scifi epic Metropolis, Bridget Helm stars as the saintly Maria who urges the ruling class to respect the lowly workers that keep the city functioning. As her popularity grows, the Master of Metropolis commands a scientist to create a robot changeling who will trick the workers into abandoning their goals of equality. The machine is given the face and body of Maria, but its soul is her evil twin. Instead of frustrating the working class the robot sews a revolution and corrupts the city’s wealthiest sons who fight for her attention. She dances as the Whore of Babylon while Metropolis collapses in ruin.