Ah, "Frenso." What the hell do we do with "Fresno?" It's definitely a miniseries, on the longer side no less ("Holocaust" is only an hour longer and that takes place over nearly a decade). It definitely has a slumming cast (everyone in it is slumming by virtue of showing up, but there are legends here who should know better), it leans towards the romance side of the miniseries genre, or more so than it does history or adventure. "Fresno" is a saga that takes place among the great raisin-growing Kensington and Kane families of Fres...wait, raisins? Not oil? Not wine? Not even figs? Raisins!
And thus, the problem, or part one of the problem. "Fresno" ranks as THE ONLY miniseries created as an intentional comedy. It's unique in that way, but the second part of the problem is that it's consistently un-funny. With Carol Burnett at the helm, it should be so much better, but instead, desperate writers keep stuffing in her schtick so that at least a few minutes are bound to work here and there. Okay, there is fun to be had here with maybe a dozen good lines, character names, a station wagon and a perfectly white t-shirt, but not nearly enough.
Ostensibly, "Fresno" was created to spoof "Dynasty, Dallas, Falcon Crest," "Knots Landing" and even some of the less successful prime-time soap operas (although some of the character names are spoofs of daytime soaps) . Rich people manipulating each other, but willing to die to keep their business going (that applied for the oil of "Dynasty," the oil of "Dallas" and the wine of "Falcon Crest," but I'm honestly not sure what anyone did for a living on "Knots Landing). It completely forgets to spoof the miniseries format, which is lazy and bizarre, instead sticking just to soaps, which can't hold anyone's attention for this much time. "Fresno," apparently, was only shown once on American TV, proving that comedy does have a very short shelf life and also that the shelf life is even shorter when the comedy is bad. It will wither as quickly as, well, as raisins on the vine.
In an early episode of "Falcon Crest," the grande dame of evil magnates Angela Channing (Jane Wyman) tells her grand-daughter-in-law that if she didn't sign over rights to her dead father's vineyard, she would "be the raisin queen of the Tuscany Valley." Perhaps that was the inspiration for "Fresno." If only anything else here were as clever as that stinging line...
In 1581, Spanish Conquistadors are in Northern California and have found grapes, "the fruit of life," to the excitement, but there's a problem. "They taste like fresno!" the leader says, spitting them out. Paging Mel Brooks.
I will admit that the opening credits are amusing, because they nail the opening credits of the great 80s soaps. Huge cameras swooping around for miles, a wildly orchestrated score, three-way split-screen pictures of the actors. And of course an aerial view of the show's central mansion.
Raisin baron Charles Grodin reminds his foreman Luis Avalos that the survival of his empire depends on getting a particularly shipment of raisins to Sacramento. Who can't sympathize with that? Sacramento without raisin? What would be the point of ever going? Plus, with this shipment, "were not just making raisins, we're making history!" Trouble hits Luis immediately when his truck is stopped by rival raisin workers. They have heard about his boss' new raisins, that "taste like crunchy whole wheat," and they throw the raisins to the ground (sorry, Sacramento).
As they are trashing the truck, out of the mist and dirt comes Gregory Harrison (as Torch), wearing skin-tight jeans and a shirt thrown over his shoulder. "Problem?" he asks. "No problem," says the head bad guy. "I have a problem," says Luis, a knife held to his throat. Just then rival raisin giant Dabney Coleman shows up in his big car, let's his boys off the hook and has his driver back the car up over the raisins about 15 times. Gregory doesn't understand what is so special about these few raisins. "They are bran raisins...the cereal is already inside them," Luis explains. If you aren't laughing at anything yet, don't worry, nothing has been funny. The jokes go by, older than when Plautus first used them and the actors pause after every one, as if hearing imaginary laughs, thus killing the momentum over and over.
Naturally, the First Family of Fresno lives in a big mansion with a huge gate and a huge drive populated by huge trees (just like Southfork or Falcon Crest, natch). The family is on hard times, having to dine at the kitchen table. There is matriarch Carol Burnett (who is Southern for no particular reason), Charles' wife Teri Garr (as Talon), and siblings Valerie Mahaffey, managing to mention always that she's adopted, to great eye rolls from Carol, and nerdy Anthony Heald. Not a bright bunch, this family. Carol wonders if they can "do the same thing with toast" as they did to the bran raisins. "You mean put a whole piece of toast in a raisin?" Teri snaps? The stuffed raisin jokes are already old and it's only been 10 minutes. Charles goes through the sad state of family affairs, but Valerie cuts him off. "Do we always have to talk about who is on top of who? It's so unpleasant," she whines. Brother Anthony has a topic: "I have decided to become celibate for two years to protest the killing of sperm whales." Carol Burnett has to push hard with lousy material, but her "that's nice" to him is pretty damn funny.
In the foyer (and we know it's a foyer because the title cards tell us), Teri and Valerie get their first look at shirtless Gregory. "Torch? You want to tell me where that came from or should I just let my imagination run wild?" Terri asks sucking on a celery stalk from her Bloody Mary. Carol hires him on the spot and then Charles launches into a tirade that is apparently meant for the folks in the balcony two counties away when he finds out the bran raisins have been destroyed.
Carol shows Gregory around the estate. He asks where her husband is. "Dead...I assumed you knew," Carol says, proving her comedic timing is still intact, stretching that line as far as it can be stretched. The rest of her family history has to be delivered as the two fight their way through cobwebs because Charlotte notes, "I haven't kept up with the place as much as I should have." Echoing the Digger Barnes-Miss Ellie-Jock Ewing triangle, Carol explains that her late husband and Dabney used to be best friends in business together, but had a falling out and then her husband had his fatal "accident." A flashback shows us television's first, and, as far as I know, only, death by raisins. Gregory indulges in a bit of spoof that actually is halfway amusing. He asks her why she assumed it was an accident, considering her husband got a late-night phone call from a stranger, went to the dehydration facility and believed he wasn't being set up. It used to happen all the time in primetime soaps. Things would happen on dark stormy nights, brakes would fail, children would appear, but no one questioned anything!
A running joke is that Luis is constantly asking for a meager raise (Gregory was hired instantly, but Luis is always turned down). He stops Carol to tell her the money he wants "is for my family, for food and clothing." "I've seen what you eat and what you children wear, surely they can't cost that much...the world is made of haves and have nots. I have, you have not," Carol says. "So do I have the raise? "No, you have not." "Who's on First" this definitely ain't!
Wanna-be country singer Teresa Ganzel, the maid who dusts wearing big white boots, is grabbed from behind by hubby Bill Paxton (she's Bobbi Jo Bobb and he's Billy Joe Bobb, so aren't you glad I'm actors' names?). "What are you doing here? You know they don't allow no one inside who's perspiring," she says in that nasal voice that was a staple in early 80s movies. This happens right outside Charles' office, where he's been meeting with Jeffrey Jones. Charles has asked Jeffrey to pollute a man-made lake, for cash, of course, that is between his property and Dabney's. Charles thinks Teresa, who harbors a lifelong passion to be a country singer, has heard the conversation, so he offers to put her on a singing show broadcast from...and you sitting down?...one of the capitals of song...BAKERSFIELD! Except she's too dumb to realize what is going on and hasn't heard anything. She kisses Charles as thanks and of course wifey Teri, perpetually with a drink in her hand, is not happy to see that.
Like the family meals on "Dallas," everyone dresses for dinner, but unlike "Dallas," they have to crowd around the table to do it. One by one, each child gets upset over something and leaves (Charles throws the first of MANY drinks in Teri's face as she snaps, "it's okay, I was about to take a sip anyway"). "I wish just once I could finish a meal with just one of my children still at the table," Carol huffs, as poor Valerie almost chokes in sorrow.
Valerie is struggling getting a saddle on a horse when Gregory, who has taken a shine to her, walks over (t-shirt in pocket now so both hands are free). "Why don't you ride bareback?" he asks. "You mean the horse, right?" she replies in an awfully racy joke for this movie.
The polluted lake is actually on Louise Latham's property and Dabney wants to buy it from her to cut off his rivals' water supply. Louise lives in a trailer with ticking clocks. Ticking clocks. Wow, that's funny. No, no it's not. Louise refuses to sell and Dabney angrily tells her, "I'm coming back again. And again. And again. And each time it will be more unpleasant because each time I will offer you more money!" he says while the clocks chime "cuckoo."
One of the funnier ongoing jokes is that chauffeur Charles Keating (a refugee from daytime soaps) is constantly telling the family that the Rolls Royce is not working. This forces them to use a beat up old station wagon. Watching Carol Burnett, in a big Alexis Colby hat, being helped into the way back seat with her knowledge of physical comedy is what this miniseries should have more of.
Carol and Charles have to go to Dabney's office to plan a masquerade ball, the highlight of the raisin community's social season (what's the lowlight?), which Carol has always hosted, no matter her financial status, because her late husband insisted. Dabney wants the ball at his home, and Carol is furious. "That was his pride and joy." Someone says, "I thought roses were his pride and joy." "Roses and balls. It's impossible to tell which he prized more," she responds with an amazingly straight face. Dabney still argues. "You didn't serve food last year." "We did so," Charles pipes in." "Crackers and canned cheese." "We had raisin mousse jubilee and you know it," Carol hisses. A vote sends the ball to Dabney's place.
With everyone having left the room, Dabney and Carol can duke it out. He makes yet another offer on her business and she refuses. It all comes around to the competition between Dabney and her late husband. "You aren't half the man he was," she notes. "He's dead. Right now I'm double the man he is," he replies (in an honest-to-goodness funny line). Drink #2 is thrown in Dabney's face.
Poor Bill is all upset that Teresa is off in Bakersfield (I think he's upset that she's off, he can't be jealous of Bakersfield) and slinks home to his trailer, where Teri is lounging with a drink. Running the competition in a bar in Bakersfield is Jerry Van Dyke, who gives a painful speech to all the hopefuls before Teresa wants to tune her guitar. "Tune her guitar? I thought you said this was an amateur contest," another hopeful asks Jerry. Terri wants to sleep with Bill as revenge on their perhaps wayward spouses, and Bill is incensed. In a line that has him talking about "looking smart because sometimes I'm shirtless and the sweat glistens off my chest," he insults Teri, who throws drink #3 and responds with #4, which is actually a spraying beer can.
Valerie catches Gregory in the dehydration plant, where he says he's investigating "how 37 tons of raisins could fall on someone." "How could they?" she blankly asks. "They couldn't, that's the problem." Meanwhile, nature-loving Anthony discovers all of the fish in the lake are dead (and tries to give mouth-to-mouth to one of them in an incredibly lame bit).
Bill listens to the radio show on which Teresa will be singing. She thanks Charles for getting her there, which Bill of course misinterprets. "Just because you're a migrant worker, don't mean we got a migrant love" is the first line of a song that doesn't get any better (and I'm not sure I even understand that line). Fortunately, Bill shoots the radio so put us out of misery hearing the rest of the song. Unfortunately, the bullet goes through the radio, through his trailer, into Louise's and kills her.
Charles informs the family of the previous night's events. "I'm just surprised you could sleep through it all." "Being married to you proves (say it along with me folks) I can sleep through anything," Teri snarls. "I got him the best lawyer money can buy," Charles reassures everyone. "Can we afford that?" Carol asks. "It's a public defender, the county pays for it, Mama," he says. Huh? Just a tweak to Charles' line would have been a perfect set-up for Carol's question and his answer. But, hey, I'm just writing about "Fresno," not writing it. And if it were the other way around, I wouldn't be taking any credit.
At the police station, Bill confesses to the crime, since it was an accident anyway, but just then in comes his lawyer, Melanie Chartoff (as Desiree DeMornay). "What took you so long?" one of the cops asks. "It takes me a while to get ready, OKAY?" she answers. Uh huh. There's a "joke" that could have been cut without losing ground. The charge will be second degree murder because Bill "shot that radio in anger."
Since Carol understands what it means to lose a spouse, she offers to go to Louise's widower Pat Corley and use her "wiles" to get the water rights. "The man is a slobbering imbecile. I will have not have my mother debasing herself by coming onto a vile disgusting creature like that." Wait for it. "We'll have [Teri] do it." Zing! "I'm still the head of the family...if anyone is going to get debased, it's going to be me!" Carol insists.
Dabney beats Carol to Pat's trailer, where Pat says he's just lucky to have the crime scene outline of his wife for memories, but then turns into a shrewd negotiator and wants to hear the other side's offer and give both of them terms. "You drive a hard bargain," Dabney says. "No, I drive an Impala." Even Dabney rolls his eyes at that one.
Anthony decides to find out what's at the bottom of the lake, but unfortunately, he shares the scene with Luis, whose nonsense about never getting a raise was old the second time we heard it. Anthony discovers the barrels of toxic waste at the lake bottom (talk about the 80s!). He tells Charles what he's found, issuing all kinds of threats to the person who did it and dropping a dead fish on the table, which Charles throws over his shoulder into the pool (no, not to worry, Charlene Tilton in her heels is not at the pool, no harm done). Charles immediately calls Jeffrey to warn him.
Gregory feels "drawn to" Valerie. "I know you're an orphan. I'm not an orphan myself, but I only had one parent. I never knew my father," he explains to Valerie's wide-eyed stare. He plants the notion of finding her real parents into her head, somehow for the first time in her life.
The only thing amusing about Jeffrey Jones' toxic waste plant is that parking spots are marked on decaying oozing waste drums. Anthony is there to sputter and stammer and threaten, so Jeffrey slips into the bathroom and orders a hit on the annoying do-gooder. The hitmen (one is Michael Richards pre-"Seinfeld") plant a bomb in Anthony's truck...except, and you predicted this from the moment they parked next to each other in matching cars, it's Jeffrey's truck that blows up. Uh huh. I know, not at all funny. Not even a chortle, let alone a mild giggle.
Even more dire is the scene with Bill in prison. Valerie visits him with a gigantic raisin pudding. The guard checks it with his hands as a couple takes advantage of his turned back to sneak an arsenal of guns through. Teresa, who has stolen a bus to get back to Fresno, arrives at the prison, but Bill is upset all over again because Charles' name comes up. He stalks away after yelling at her. "Something's
Better is when Teri tarts it up and goes to seduce Gregory. She drops her top and Gregory says, "fellas, will you excuse us," revealing a gaggle of massive shirtless men playing pool. "I only did it because I don't like to have company when I let a lady down," he explains. She actually thanks him. "For what?" "For saying something to me no other man ever has. You know, I've been called a lot of things in my time: tease, trick, trollop, come-on, a tramp, vixen, harlot, slut, but you are the first man who has ever called me a lady" she says and departs with her top slung over her shoulder a la Gregory.
It's time for Carol's big seduction scene. We first see her draped head to toe in a long fur coat with hood and she calls for the car. Only the station wagon is available, though she elects to sit in the front seat this time. I couldn't tell you what the script said, but my guess is Carol Burnett knew better than to make physical comedy lightning strike twice. No one else seems to have that problem anywhere in "Fresno." After some amusing pleasantries where Carol is grossed out by Pat over and over, she finally drops the coat to reveal a ravishing Bob Mackie (who better to spoof Nolan Miller than the man who did it all first, though jokingly?) evening dress, with a swooping wig and lots of jewels. Pat is excited until Dabney's teenage niece comes out of the trailer bathroom, infuriating Carol. In the middle of her wacky monologue, she says that her son was against her coming and wanted to send his wife, to which Pat says, "and she is welcome to come," but Carol stalks out in a rage. The scene so missed the mark by not giving Carol nearly enough to play with.
In the middle of an argument between Charles and Teri (where he throws drink #5 in....oh, it's a trick, the glass is empty!), Carol barges in full of fire, explaining what happened. "He sent his niece, you sent your mother," Teri says dryly. "Maybe it's time to face it. I don't think we're gonna win," Carol cries. "I'll go to my grave before I see this family ruined!" Charles declares. "You'll go to your grave," Teri deadpans again.
I would say skip the scene where Luis slips into Carol's bedroom with a gun (which isn't loaded) to force a raise out of her, but it has a decent punch line. Carol agrees not to involve the police. "It was your greed that got you into this and it's your greed that must be punished. Tomorrow you will go back to work for half of what you were making before," she says, full of gusto.
Dinner that night is sparsely attended (following the ratings slip, no doubt). Teresa decides to devote all of her time to freeing Bill and will perform "wherever there is a stage, klieg lights and an audience." Charles answers the phone when the man he hired to kill Anthony calls, handing the phone to Anthony so we can hear the Peter Lorre-esque voice tell him to come to the dehydrator for the umpteenth time, but Anthony refuses, not after the bomb scare! "Death threat or not, I think the polite thing to do is to go out and see what the man wants," Charles erupts and then goes to the dehydrator "to tell whoever is out there that [Anthony] is not coming!" The hit man is awfully dim, giving Charles yet another excruciating scene to overact, pretty much all by himself, and then he uses a fake voice to tip off the police that Anthony is guilty of "environmental insanity" and was part of a conspiracy to kill Louise.
Charles hightails it over to Pat to make a deal, but Pat says Dabney is coming at noon with $250,000. "Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Why, it's worth double that, I'll give you $300,000," Charles says, never losing his fake smile. Pat agrees.
As for Mama Carol, she's off to prison so save her baby. "It's just like in the movies," she says to the prison guard. "Except here the creeps and social deviants are for real," the guard unhelpfully tells her. This visit to prison gives Carol Burnett something meatier to sink her teeth into (albeit briefly), namely a Scarlett O'Hara speech, but with a twist. "I know you didn't do anything wrong and I will not allow a Kensington to be treated like this and if this town thinks it can keep you here then it's wrong. Maybe it's time someone realized that without the Kensingtons, Fresno would be nothing. You see, Kensingtons are fighters. And more than that, the Kensingtons are spenders! And if I have to spend every last nickel we've got, I will! As God is my witness, no Kensington will ever have to spend a single night in this hell hole of incarceration!" she rips out, building and building until turning her head to the guard, "Guard how much is the bail?" Upon hearing the number, there is a pause, and all we see is the back of Carol's hat. She turns back to Anthony with amazing precision. "Are they treating you all right, son?" Now THAT is vintage Carol Burnett! Just reading this, you can see in your mind how she would play it. It ends on another high note. "You are my son, I'll sell my hats if I have to!"
A not-so-funny comedy of errors occurs at the bank. Charles rushes in with the $300,000 that Jeffrey gave him, pushing ahead of everyone in the line. "The entire Kensington fortune is on the line!" he begs and the customers in line agree. Eh, okay, that one works a little. As soon as he leaves, Dabney comes in to request $250,000 and on his way out, he runs into Carol, who begs the bank for money, offering as collateral everything from her jewels to those "galloping gobs of little boxes of raisins," but the bank managers tells her Charles has just been in depositing $300,000, so it's not a problem.
Valerie summons Gregory to lunch. "That you for meeting me here." "You don't have to thank me for that." "Well, I know they require a shirt," she replies and he looks down at his covered body (though most of the buttons are undone). She informs him that she intends to find her real parents. "This is something I've wanted to do ever since yesterday afternoon!" she declares. Gregory agrees to help, but the scene is ruined by the obnoxious presence of Peter Scolari as a rude waiter for absolutely no reason.
In prison, Bill and Anthony put their clues together and realize Charles is behind all of their troubles. Teresa is living up to her promise to sing until Bill is freed and she sings in an outdoor mall with the help of an organ store manager (Raleigh Bond). At the end of the long song, a policeman shows up to bring her to the jail and escorts her bus (she's still using the damn bus). All along, he's been jealous of her and Charles, though nothing has happened, so when he tells her Teri had been at his trailer, she is incensed and leaves in a huff.
It's deal time at Pat's trailer, where Charles and Dabney are there to battle for his water rights, but Pat calls the bank to verify Charles' check and finds out the check will bounce. With Charles sputtering on the phone with the bank, Louise's lawyer shows up and says there will be a will reading at 2pm the next day. Only Charles is excited because it's bought him time. Charles gets the groaner line to end the episode. "I've always believed where there's a WILL, there's a way." Wow, we ended on that pun? Can't wait for the next installment.
Despite Jeffrey having told he he will pay no more extortion money, Charles returns to him for another $300,000. "I just gave you $300,000 an hour ago!" "My mother spent it," Charles replies. "She used it to get my brother out of jail." "I gave you that money to keep him in jail!" Jeffrey orders his hitmen to take Charles "to the high country" as "he's about to commit suicide."
At the "Fresno Home for Poor Orphan Children," Valerie and a returned-to-shirtless Gregory hope to find out who her real parents are. There is no record of Valerie's adoption. "Is it possible you've lost the records?" "Anything is possible. We haven't lost a record in 81 years, but it makes sense we would have lost yours," the snarky woman tells them. Gregory says maybe the hospital will have a record of Valerie's birth. "If not, be sure to ask if they lost it. They'll love that," the matron shouts after them.
In desperation, Luis goes to Dabney for a job. "I'll pay you twice what they are paying you, if you work as a spy," Dabney tells him (and for those of you doing the math, that would be the original salary because Carol had cut it in half a while back). He has no choice but to agree.
The hitmen discover there is no high country in Fresno and the only place high enough for a suicide (after going through a gaggle of not-high-enough ideas) is the water tower in the municipal square (why is there a water tower in the center of town?). The scene's only humor comes from watching Charles Grodin's face as he listens to the two nitwits plan the execution. For once, he doesn't have to overact and he's just fine.
At the hospital, Gregory and Valerie find out that a Jane Doe baby was born to a Dorothy Doe mother and the doctor who delivered her is the family doctor!
There's a great deal of physical nonsense involving trying to throw Charles off the water tower, and coincidentally, cameras are present to cover Anthony's release from prison. Anthony sees Charles and rushes to help him as the hitmen yell, "hey look, someone is trying to commit suicide, let's help him," which is genuinely funny. Anthony makes it to the top of the water tower in time to save his brother, only to start choking him as the reporters turn to Carol for her input on the importance of family as the two chase each other around the water tower.
Carol is still hopping mad when she gets her boys home, demanding that they "settle their differences like civilized people, with a cocktail!" Luis is there reading and Charles finally notices him in a dumb bit of business. Charles' solution to both problems (Anthony's safety and the money for the water rights) is to put Anthony back into prison. As they argue, Luis comes back, this time to water the plants. Carol agrees, that Anthony going back to jail is the best solution, but what of Charles' life? It's in danger too. "I'll just have to live by my wits." "Oh, honey, that really would be suicide," Carol says. UGH!
Dr. Tom Poston is awakened in the middle of the night by Valerie and Gregory for what he assumes is an examination brought on by "trouble" by the shirtless man, who has to wait outside. Instead, Valerie gets the truth out of him. "Then I must know, where can I find Dorothy Doe?" The whole scene is infused with these infuriating rhymes. Dr. Tom takes his time getting to the truth, finally admitting that, "your mother, my dear is" her own mother! "You mean, Mom is Mom?"
Inspired by Teresa and Bill (who reconciled and broke up again in one scene at the prison), Teri tries to seduce Charles with memories of their early life together and a particularly snug negligee. "You mean when I was cheating with you on my first wife?" Outraged, Teri reaches into the closet and snags one of a zillion furs, darts out the door and almost trips over Luis, who is now not only spying, but acting as Charles' bodyguard. Teri rails that she wishes Charles had been killed and he throws drink #5 (this time there is liquor in the glass) at her.
At breakfast the next morning, as soon as Charles sits down, Teresa and Bill's son (unseen up until this point) throws drink #6 at Charles. "Where did you learn to behave like this?" he roars. Carol is upset, feeling the family is falling apart because the table is empty. "What's with you and breakfast anyway?" Charles lashes out at Carol and then turns on the kids, summing up the events of the movie so far. "Now that we know where everyone's Mama is, do you think we could get back to something important like saving this ranch? Good God, you would think this is 'Roots!'" That line is of particular interest here as it's the first time in the whole movie that "Fresno" remembers it's also a miniseries and not just a plodding spoof of primetime soaps.
Having spent the entire night on Dr. Tom's front porch, Gregory finally gets Valerie to understand the only way she'll know about her past is to ask Carol. "You've always been honest with me," she tells the hunky stranger. "Yes...more or less," he replies before a paper boy throws the morning edition at her head, though with one of the stupidest lines yet. "What time is it? Why didn't you wake me? We have to go home!" Valerie chirps.
Teresa returns to Jerry Van Dyke's to sing again for bail money, and he convinces her that she needs a telethon and, with one call, finds out that "all three networks and PBS" are theirs for 24 hours starting that night. That's a commentary on mid-80s television, a wasteland if ever there was one.
Luis is doing well as Dabney's spy, on the phone spilling details when Charles comes in, which leads to a maddening scene where Luis has to pretend it's his cousin with Charles telling him to get off the phone and Dabney trying to understand the code. Four-year-olds could have written this scene better. Eventually, Dabney understands that Charles poisoned the water with Jeffrey and calls a press conference, where reporters aren't sure what's going on. "I'm just a reporter, I don't ask questions," one notes. Dabney reveals the toxic waste scheme and implicates Charles. Dabney rushes back into his car without answering any questions and a call from Jeffrey, who proposes a solution to their mutual problem: kill Charles. "I can live with that," Dabney says, giving Jeffrey 48 hours to make it happen.
When Carol sees the press conference, she goes running into Charles, asking him if she really just saw what she saw, or is she on a soap opera or losing her mind...and other inane "blathering" as Charles calls it. He's saved from having to explain when Valerie wants to have a serious discussion with Carol. "Is there somewhere we can go that's private?" "Why don't we go up to your room, no one ever looks in there," Carol says. When Valerie says they have to talk about "you and me," listen to Carol drop her voice to say, "oh really" and it's the great Carol Burnett for another brief moment. As Valerie launches into the story, Carol asks, "is there anything like a bar up here?"
Actually, Carol nails this scene because Valerie isn't trying to hog it from her like Charles does. "There are so many times I wanted to tell you, to unburden myself, but something always came up," she cries. "Like what?" "The phone would ring or there would be someone at the door." Here's the story: in mourning, a man "preyed on my confusion" and "took advantage." Pregnant and afraid of scandal, she "went to Africa on a safari for seven months" and returned just in time to give birth. "No one recognized you?" Valerie asks. "I dressed down," Carol admits. This staple of soaps, both day and night, still doesn't answer who the father is. "If you have any feelings at all for the woman who bore you and took you into her own home, you will not pursue this!" Carol orders, giving Joan Van Ark and Michele Lee at the same time. But Valerie insists on finding out. Carol calls the father and begs to meet him at the masquerade ball that night. She'll be dressed as Scarlett O'Hara (she and Bob Mackie just had to pull that costume out of storage).
Gregory goes home to find Teri in his bed and delivers, bar none, the best line of the entire miniseries: "I just came to pick up a clean shirt." Teri tells him that she spent the night "barhopping" and came up with one conclusion, that she's a "decent woman" who deserves an affair with a "decent man" and he's the only one she knows. Gregory pushes her off, saying "I think I'm in love with your sister-in-law." Teri figures out he's "not just some stranger" and he says he's not sure who he is, but "it's possible I might be your illegitimate half-brother-in-law by your second marriage." Valerie walks in to find Teri sprawled out on the bed and, for no particular reason other than the laws of soap opera inevitability, they have a cat fight. Their stunt doubles crash around the room breaking everything as Gregory, showering outside, laughs at what he thinks are "ranch hands." Once the furniture is done, they move on to whatever food is handy and are only broken up by Louise's lawyer, telling them he needs the whole family at the will reading as they are benefactors. He then has to tell Dabney the same thing.
Thankfully, the pace is picking up, due to the movie's sudden realization that it's soap opera cliches that give it more zing. In under an hour, we've done the surprise press conference, the revelation of a true parent, a cat fight and more money woes for Luis. Now it's time for another big cliche: the reading of the will. The lawyer begins. Pat is left all of his wife's "earthly possessions...with the following exceptions." She leaves a saddle to Valerie, her buffalo head nickels to Charles and Teri in the "hopes that one their avarice will be as extinct as those animals." "Are these things worth anything" Teri asks? "About $40." Dabney gets the Elvis clock. Carol is left a lucky clock. Neither are excited.
What about the water rights? Weeeeeeeeell, she didn't actually own them ("Do I still get the $300K? How about the Impala?" Pat asks Dabney). She was just taking money from both raisin families for use of the water on behalf of a dummy corporation with a Swiss bank account. "You mean some yodeler has got all our money?" Charles says feverishly.
With that done (and done well because it was done QUICKLY), we skip to our next delightful cliche, the masquerade ball. Every soap had one, a yearly event, usually during sweeps, when the entire cast of the soap would be together under one roof. Secrets were spilled, old plots wrapped up and new ones started. "Dallas" has the "Oil Barons Ball" and Falcon Crest had "Founder's Day" (the latter was far goofier, because no one ever needed to see Susan Sullivan or David Selby dressed in 19th Century clothing--only vets Jane Wyman and Lana Turner could make that work, old hands at wearing studio costumes).
Charles goes as the Devil, which is a one-joke outfit that has him asking the following question of his wife: "Have you seen my tail?" "Not in years," she sniffs. Teri is Lady Godiva, with nothing but hair cascading down her body. Carol's outfit starts by hanging onto the bed post so her rather large African American maid can do up her corset, while she watches the WHIP telethon (Women with Husbands In Prison). Hell, they are watching it in prison, where the boys cheer on Bill for being married to a babe like Teresa. And we hear "Number One With a Bullet" again.
Unfortunately, most of the costumes at the ball are not made by Bob Mackie, but rather someone's mother who is only mildly handy with a needle and thread. Jeffrey is a beekeeper and his henchmen are bees. Gregory is in some sort of helmet and torch outfit and when he cuts in on Valerie's Little Orphan Annie wonders how she guessed it was him (he's shirtless, of course). Even the man who was the mayor of Fresno at the time (so the title card tells us) is there, given a cameo asking Carol to dance. He does better with his one line than most do with chunks of script. When Valerie goes to the powder room, a "strange hefty" woman in a mantilla comes in to whisper "your father is a clown" and disappears. Gregory gathers every clown (costume) at the party, where she explains her history to them. "So, tell me, which one of you Bozos is my father!" That's now the second time "Fresno" has referenced being a miniseries, burying "Lace" in a 1,000-year-old joke. With that, she faints from drinking whatever was in her glass.
Apologies. Charles' costume leads to TWO jokes. He tells his friends he and his family are boycotting the party's food since they are not hosting, and one asks if he can put aside the feud long enough to have a (want to say it along with me?) Deviled Egg.
The hitmen report to Jeffrey that they have taken care of Charles by poisoning the punch, which he happens to be drinking. People fall all over the room. Carol goes to the gazebo to wait for Valerie's father, who, you knew this from the onset, is Dabney. Dabney confesses his eternal love for her as she struggles to get away from him. "Together we could rule Fresno! Together we could have a raisin dynasty!" he pleads. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," she says until he kisses her so strongly that she can't help but admit the truth (and with a face full of clown make-up). Gregory and Valerie have watched the whole thing from the bushes.
The next morning, Carol and Dabney wake up in bed together happily. "Can we put the past 20 years of blackmail, bitterness and death behind us? Pretend they never happened?" he asks. "I don't see why not," she says happily. She won't stay for breakfast, okay, one muffin, she says as she walks into the bathroom and comes out a half-second later in full Scarlett regalia. As for Valerie and Gregory, they repeat their scene at Dr. Tom's office, having stayed up all night in front of the bush. Gregory has confession for Valerie. He does know who his father is, told by his mother on her deathbed and that's why he came to Fresno. His father is Carol's dead husband. He wants to know who killed his father. Valerie realizes how selfish she's been and utters a line that truly could have come from any gooey soap scene: "Maybe it's time I stopped thinking of myself and started thinking of US!" The two go in for a kiss, but Valerie stops. "Can we make love?" she asks. "You don't have to ask," he says, but that's not why she's asking. Aren't they related. He does the math for them and yes, they can make love. They go in for the kiss again when the sprinklers go on. Hey, let the sprinklers do their worst, they finally kiss anyway!
Charles finds out from Charles Keating that his mother spent the night at Dabney's. Charles Keating appears to have been the mantilla lady. Charles bursts into Dabney's house to see his mother at breakfast with Dabney and she confesses her love. Charles dives into the deep end of the overacting pool with the news, yelling so loudly even the microphones run away to hide. "They only way you two will be together is over my dead body!" he brays dragging Carol out. "Fine by me," Dabney says and calls Jeffrey to remind him of his promise to kill Charles.
Gregory goes to the only person who might know the truth about his father's death, Charles Keating. Charles, showing off his Shakespearean chops, launches into a monologue about that night and Gregory has to stop him. "The weather was good, right," he says, getting him to skip ahead. The only detail he has to add to the story is that he saw the Rolls outside the dehydrator and it was back in the garage at the morning. Why didn't he say something? "I guess I didn't pay it proper attention, until now" and remembers that the only other person with a Rolls back then was Dabney.
After Charles rips into Carol again, it's Valerie's turn. "Two days ago I was an orphan and perfectly happy and today I have two parents and I'm miserable," she says, pouring a drink. Carol is shocked by this. "Now that I know who my relatives are, I might as well begin acting like them," she chirps and downs it in one gulp. When she throws drink #7 at Carol, the latter says, "you are a Kensington!"
"I think I have the problem with the Rolls solved," Charles Keating tells Charles Grodin as it explodes from the bomb the hitmen have put in there. "Now tell me how much a mechanic would have charged for that," he adds sourly. When Dabney finds out Charles is not dead, he's furious and threatens to do it himself. Gregory, playing pool boy, overhears this admission of guilt and confronts Dabney. The latter pulls a gun on him, but Gregory taunts him about his shaking hand enough to annoy Dabney into shooting him. Luis discovers his body and drags him out of the room in yet another really awful bit of physical business.
There is yet one more cliche to explore: and that's a trial. Nothing will ever beat "Dynasty" introducing Alexis through a trial, but every soap ended up in court over and over again. Carol, drenched in fur, tells Charles Keating to bring around the Rolls. "The Rolls exploded, ma'am," he tells her. Teri, drink in hand, and Valerie are equally dressed up when Luis barges in with the news that he's rushing to the hospital and "stopped by to see if anyone wanted to rush with me." Valerie of course wants to go!
When Carol tells Dabney she knows Gregory has been shot in his study, Dabney admits it, but in self-defense, and for her because he was her husband's illegitimate child. "He cheated? On me?" she says with a warped face only she can manage. "Hey, you got your son's trial, good luck with that one" Dabney says to a still-shocked Carol.
As we near the end, we have our first real potty joke (I was hoping to get away clean). In the hospital, Gregory awakes and tells Valerie and Luis, "I have to go." "Help me find the bedpan," Valerie tells Luis. "No, I have to go to the trial. I have vital information," Gregory says through his tubes.
There are two trials going on in the same building at the same time. Anthony and Billy are being tried for murder, which sarcastic Melanie, who will be dumped as their lawyer as soon as the money from Teresa's telethon is available, says "is not first degree murder, but just stupid."
Then there is the Water Commission's hearing pitting Charles and Dabney against each other. Dabney is suave, puffing on a cigar as he talks to the commission, but Charles is in trouble, because the Chairman says
"I will not have outbursts of any kind at this hearing," and that's the only way Charles has communicated since the movie began.
After prosecution lawyer Dakin Matthews finishes with Pat Corley, Melanie is asked if she wants to cross-examine the witness. "I wouldn't have any idea what to ask your honor," she wines. The next witness is Charles, who is at the other trial. Dabney thinks Charles should go to the other trial, where he will be under oath, so the Chairman moves their hearing to the other trial. Thank goodness! I was getting dizzy going back and forth. Unfortunately for Charles, telling the truth at one trial does not square with the truth at the other. Dakin nails that with his first question, asking which truth he wants to tell, the one that will implicate his brother or the one that will implicate himself. "Maybe if I tell the truth this one time, it will make up for all those times I lied," Charles tells the judge, with the twinkly catharsis music behind him...and then sells Anthony down the river. Everyone pops up with an opinion, but Dabney has the only good line, and said with the utmost sincerity: "Your honor, if that man has perjured himself, I move he be given the death penalty."
Anthony insists that Teresa testify about the meeting she saw and though she doesn't know what was said, it's enough to send Jeffrey, who has continually jumped from his seat to say something confusing and then take the fifth, to do that same again, but this time he's not only taking the fifth, but "taking a cab" and runs from the building. Just as the judge has decided that he will listen to testimony by pointing at specific people, Gregory is wheeled in saying he knows the truth. Dabney tries to deny it, but Gregory knows it was his Rolls there that night. "You drove my Rolls?" Dabney explodes...at Pat! Yes, Pat did because Dabney wouldn't let him drive (say it together) the Impala. Pat killed Carol's husband on Dabney's orders and tells the whole story. "I know what I did was probably wrong, but I didn't do it for hate or nothing. I did it for a car," he adds.
"I rest my case," Gregory says. But the judge reminds him this isn't the murder case of his father, but of Louise Latham. So Pat confesses to that one too, because she was so obsessed with her clocks and on the night in question, he was cleaning his gun when she said, "why you stop cleaning that gun and come over here and clean my clock? See, temptation, your honor, so I did just that," he confesses. Luckily, Bill shot the radio at the same time, so Pat was able to get away with it. Pat and Dabney are taken are charged with murder, but Carol stops Dabney on the way out. He says he killed her husband because he loved her and she says she could never love a man who killed. "I feel like a complete fool," he says, shocked by that revelation.
Only one question remains: what is DDDLP, the company that owns the water rights? It's the old man who has been sitting in the back of the courtroom, Don Diego De La Pena (talk about slumming, he's played by the legendary O'Neill director Jose Quintero). He launches into a story about how he owns the land and has only been able to visit it once before, on a trip where he met many beautiful women, one of them being Louise, whom he let live there so she could collect the water rights money. And with another woman, he left a son. Luis' grandmother was Rosarita Gonazles! "That's not exactly an uncommon name with your people," Charles notes. Grandfather and grandson are united. "Wait a minute, if he owns the land, what happens to us?" Charles asks. The judge says whatever the rightful owner wants them to do and frees Anthony and Bill.
Luis is given all of the land. "I will want to show your family the same kindness you have always shown to me," Luis says. He adds that they can stay on the land, but at twice the price. Carol dresses down Charles with the inevitable, "from this day forward, I no longer have a son!" Teri chimes in to say she's leaving him. "I can't stand by a man who can't stand by his brother. I just can't stand it," she says, working as hard as she can to give her character one last possible moment, not that the line allows for much.
Outside the courtroom (way too much time went into the silly antics in court without any punch line at all), Jeffrey wants to know how the hitmen plan on doing away with Charles and they guarantee that this time, they have made sure he's a goner. They have planted bombs in every car in the area. We watch as they blow up one by one. Except the station wagon, of course. "I've lost all the men I love," Carol tells Charles Keating. "There's still one man who has always loved you. Loved you from afar," he says. "Really? Where?" she asks, looking around. "Here, madam," he says and she orders him into the way back seat with her until the realize that means no one can drive the car. "It's not going to work, is it?" she asks glumly. "No, madam."
"Thank God, tomorrow is another day," Carol says for the last line (except another "yes, madam" from Charles Keating) and then the movie ends with Luis dancing in his fields. Wow, after everything, we just sputter out? Did no one even try to put an ending on "Fresno?"
If "Fresno" was the only comedy miniseries ever made, is it also the biggest missed opportunity? Did it kill the potential for other comedy miniseries? No, absolutely not. Even if it had been better, the answer is still no. The miniseries format is not suited to comedy. The kind of comedy being used in "Fresno" is the stuff Carol Burnett had been doing her whole career, but in front of a live audience where it could build from the laughter. The reason that so many of the jokes fall completely flat here is that there is no one to laugh at them. An audience can make any joke land, no matter how bad it is, through laughter. Okay, okay, not all sitcoms are filmed live and the elementary school humor certainly suited people like Mel Brooks who did full-length films. Well, sitcoms are less than 30 minutes and Mel Brooks was a one-of-a-kind genius, but not all of his movies were successful. That style of comedy died in the middle of his career and his latter movies were duds because of it.
I don't see how "Fresno" could have possibly worked. Shave two hours off of it and perhaps it would have been crisper, but it's aim was to spoof primetime soaps (which were at their zenith in 1986 and should have been a very easy target) and that leads to two problems. The first is that it takes a long time to get to all the cliches (making it miniseries length), but the second is far more important. What no one here dealt with was the fact that primetime soap operas were already spoofs. By the time we got around to "Who Shot J.R.?" at the onset of the 80s, the soaps took full advantage of their popularity and went haywire. If you watch the first season of any of the big 80s soaps, you will probably be bored. The first season always set the tone, introduced the characters and the plot lines that would run through the whole series (control of Ewing Oil, control of Falcon Crest, control of the cul-de-sac), but they were not typically outlandish yet. It was the second season (when Joan Collins joined "Dynasty" and David Selby joined "Falcon Crest") where the creators let loose. By 1986, all of the big soaps had long surpassed trials and questionable parentage. By 1986, whole seasons were dreams, there were aliens, cartels taking over the world, crazy women in wedding dresses holding people hostage in the basement. Hell, there was even a "Dynasty" spin-off with Charlton Heston! Supplant wooden movie star John Forsythe with even more wooden movie icon Charlton Heston and you have just gotten so self-referential that it can't be sustained.
Therefore, since the soaps were already grand jokes on purpose, what could a spoof add? Touches of gentle humor? Thanks, but no thanks. We can watch the real thing and have a lot more fun.
There must be SOMETHING good about "Fresno," right? A lot of things are good, but good doesn't stretch over the length of a miniseries very well. Bob Mackie's costumes are absolutely hysterical in every scene, but, as noted above, so were Nolan Miller's because the fashions of the 80s were pure lunacy, so Bob Mackie didn't have to actually spoof anything; he could simply do exactly what Nolan Miller was doing. Carol Burnett has some fantastic moments, but she's Carol Burnett and she has fantastic moments when she sleeps. A two-hour movie can rely on her, but not this. With Charles Grodin battling her comedic style with his loud obnoxious one is irritating and since she's the bigger talent, he loses. Dabney Coleman does okay as the straight man, and there is fine support from Pat Corley, Valerie Mahaffey, Gregory Harrison and especially Teri Garr, who would be a lot better if she had any decent material. The idea of a raisin feud is cute, but only for a TV Guide description. As with the soaps, the commodity over which everyone argues is not really what the shows were about (after Julia left "Falcon Crest" no one took over her job as the only scientist there to make the wines), so any chance of finding humor in raisins is dead after a few minutes. Unfortunately, this is not a cast you want to see rolling around in bed any more than we wanted to see Larry Hagman doing it, so any sex factor is definitely out of the question (which is why poor Teri Garr has nothing to do). So, the costumes, a few jokes and Carol Burnett unfortunately do not add up to a miniseries.
The miniseries demands a different kind of grandiosity than primetime soaps. The miniseries has to sustain itself over a longer span than soaps, which were all just an hour at a time. The emotions and plots need to be epic even in the tinier stories. The two television formats are really not the same. Joan Collins certainly learned that lesson trying to play "Sins" and "Monte Carlo" as Alexis and turning them both into immediate camp by doing it. And, if soaps and miniseries are not the same, what the hell can a spoof of soaps as a miniseries hope to accomplish? Since 1986, I've been asking that question and I still don't have an answer.
Comments? Questions? Email me at hpmaraka@gmail.com and we can chat or have more laughs at "Fresno."
Monday, May 30, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Wallenberg: A Hero's Story (1985)
Richard Chamberlain is, of course, miniseries royalty. Even if he had done just "The Thorn Birds" and "Shogun," he would have that bragging right. But, roles in "Centennial" and especially "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story" are actually bigger acting gigs for him. His dreamy looks (for the 70s and 80s) and romantic swagger were ideal for the miniseries, and he was able to sustain his performances across the epic sweeps of the movies. In "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story," he gives what I think is easily his finest performance, an old-fashioned acting performance where he sinks his teeth into a complex and interesting character and never lets go. Of course, being the saviour of Jews in World War II is the kind of role every actor wants, but what makes Wallenberg such an interesting man is his unyielding and very chipper devotion to what he's doing. Unlike Oskar Schindler, whose reasons for saving Jews were a but more clouded and selfish, the Raoul Wallenberg of this story does it simply for the humanity of it, which gives Chamberlain a chance to bask in the reflected glory of the character, but not relying on that reflection. He pushes himself here and it works.
It's August 30, 1944 at the Wallenberg estate in Sweden. There is much celebrating and a bonfire. However, on the same night in Budapest, a synagogue is also on fire. And further, there is a party going on at Admiral Horthy's (Guy Deghy) is hosting Adolph Eichmann himself (Kenneth Colley). He is introduced by Baroness Lisl Kemeny (Alice Krige), who flatters him by saying he doesn't look at all "fearsome" like his reputation. Her husband, Baron Gabor Kemeny (Stuart Wilson), is to be part of a "cleansing" in Budapest.
At the Wallenberg party, a drunken Raoul Wallenberg (Richard Chamberlain) actually dares to insult the Nazis, much to his parents' horror. "You have supplied them with gas...for heating and cooking, of course," he quips before launching into an imitation of Hitler that gives the usually-sleep-inducing TV icon a bit of ham on which to chew.
Resistance worker Nikki Fodor (Mark Rylance), warns a concert of Hungarian Jews of the coming hoodlums. Admiral Horthy, who says "I was an anti-Semite before you were born," as proof of his commitment to the Nazi cause, but "I am not going to violate this ancient Hungarian tradition" of trusting the Jews with their money and turning them over to death camps.
Now, that our story is set up, it's time to get to know Raoul Wallenberg. His father considers him a "dilettante," though his mother defends him. He has some sort of job importing and exporting, but nothing too taxing. Raoul is not at all thrilled by the Nazis, and that leaning has caught the attention of Roosevelt's people in Budapest, who offer him a diplomatic cover in order to help their cause. He's already converted, of course, nothing that "I would go to any lengths to save Jews."
Up against Raoul's knowledge of what is going on, the Baron and Baroness are the voices of idiocy. She whines that she can't find a tailor in Budapest anymore because all the Jews have "disappeared." The Baron has some idea, but ignores it, hoping to cozy up to Eichmann in the hopes of being made foreign minister, replete with a new uniform and all.
If you've been wondering how all of this will come together, it only takes 25 minutes of the miniseries before Raoul is sent to Hungary for his top secret and very dangerous mission. It's late in the war and conditions are so grim that "Second Secretary" Raoul Wallenberg has to ride a crowded train, a melting pot of different flotsam and jetsam still able to travel through Europe. But, his discomfort is nothing compared to what he sees outside of his window as a train going East rolls by, with desperate Jews begging for help.
In Budapest, the Jews are wrangled up by the Hungarian police ("they will treat us with respect," one man assumes), but Nikki refuses to go. Before being able to fight, he has to get his girlfriend Hannah (Georgia Slowe) to understand exactly what is happening.
When Raoul arrives at the Swedish embassy building in Budapest, he has to fight through throngs of people begging to be let in and given Swedish protection. He is told by Per Anger (David Robb) that they can only help the Jews who "can establish family or business ties...there is a limit." Raoul asks, "why?" and Per dismisses the question, as Raoul will have to find out for himself just how difficult this task will be. He tells everyone at the embassy that "we can make honorary Swedish citizens of them all," but is told "that's impossible." Raoul still doesn't understand what is going on completely. He says he needs a staff of 100 people to help on his mission, although he's not asking the embassy for money or staff. The money is coming from the people who actually hired him and for staff, he wants to use all the Jews begging to be let in. Well, that sounds good to everyone at the embassy, but they warn him, "do not offend anybody" or else the whole plan will be at risk.
Raoul better act quickly because Eichmann is making his rounds of the area, telling Jewish leaders they must select workers, as he did in Poland and other countries, the Nazi way of letting others think they had a choice. He's interrupted by an aide who gives him the horrifying news that a train bearing over 12,000 Jews to Birkenau ("a new record, I think," he says with glee) has been stopped and turned back to Budapest. "That train must be stopped and we must carry on until we clean out every piece of Jew crap in Hungary," Eichmann says, more villainous with every line.
This is Raoul's first big success. Word gets around quickly and the embassy is swamped. "We need something bigger!" he tells Per, in order to save 700,000 people. He does help one woman, Sonja (Melanie Mayron), who has a small son and because of her proficiency with languages and skills. She's hired on the spot and thus has her protection as an employee of the Swedish legation. He's not above printing fake royal seals on letters to save Jews either.
At a rather bizarre nightclub where a woman belts out "Stormy Weather" without any clue as to what lyrics she's singing, Raoul and Per are in attendance when Eichmann, the Baron and Baroness come in. He has a bottle of champagne sent to the table. "Do you know what it is to be a Rockefeller in America? That's what it is to be a Wallenberg in Sweden," the Baron says his wife, who has never heard of him. Eichmann clucks that he "has to keep the neutrals happy" and trots off to make nice with Raoul. The Baroness takes quite a fancy to Raoul from across the restaurant too. "I'm here to help you with your Jewish problem," Raoul gives Eichmann as an excuse for his being sent to Budapest. "What can Sweden help with? Freight cars? Winter clothing? Please, don't try to camouflage your mission," which he knows of down to the Americans who are behind it. They actually pretend to play nice and make a business deal for housing. Raoul offers Eichmann money for housing, but Eichmann snaps that it works out to "only a dollar a Jew," and he's been offered more. Even worse, as he gets up to go, the sinister man notes that he's overcome "your little delay" and managed to get two trains of Jews sent East to make up for the one Raoul was able to bring back. Per tells Raoul, "some Nazis are less interested in the war than they are in murdering Jews." "I am determined too, and stubborn," Raoul says in response, believing himself to be Eichmann's equal.
There is a terrific scene where Raoul goes to the Hungarian leader to beg for his help. The wily old diplomat, playing both sides, says he can't understand why Sweden's King Gustav is "so interested in Jews," and is peeved that the Swedish legation is playing around with Hungarian citizens in the first place. Raoul wants him to agree to let hundreds of thousands of Jews come under his protection, but he is allotted only 4500. International politics being what they are, the quid pro quo is that Raoul "tell the Allies of my benevolent treatment of Jews." What makes the scene so interesting is the mindset of the Hungarian government. It's clear that the Nazis are losing the war by this point, but they are still very much a presence and to antagonize them can still mean big trouble. Raoul can't understand it, but he has to accept it.
As if the Nazis aren't enough of a problem, Raoul doesn't find an easy time with all of the Jews. Asking a wealthy Budapest Jew to sign over his houses to the Swedish government for the duration of the war, the man actually refuses because they are all he has left and he wants his children to inherit something. Raoul cannot guarantee the outcome of the war. "Who are you to lecture me? Some nice Swedish boy with nothing at stake?" "I'm one of you, I'm half Jewish. Don't you see I'm fighting for my life as well as yours?" That does the trick, at least partially. "Does this entitle me to one of those Swedish documents of yours?" he man asks. "A mint copy," Raoul assures him. "Half Jewish? You told me your great-great-grandfather was Jewish," his driver quips. "One-sixteenth Jewish, call me a liar for a fraction?" he jokes back. What's important is the last line of the scene. "I feel half Jewish," Raoul says, and it's not just lip service.
Then there are the resistance leaders who have taken the Swedish paperwork in order to make fakes from it, but so many that Nikki is worried that the Nazis will be suspicious. They have their own way of doing things.
However, with houses and Swedish flags, Raoul can save a lot of Jews, and right under the nose of the Hungarian army, without their yellow stars. It's a major victory for Raoul and his friends. Of course, just when all is going so well, Eichmann shows up at the Swedish legation. "I respect the Swedes, even new ones," he snarls to Raoul and Per. Eichmann strides around room full of Jews in Raoul's office with a joking demeanor that is even scarier than when he yells directly. Raoul disarms the tension by doing an imitation of the awful man as soon as he leaves. "Could we really be winning here?" Per asks. "Better to hope than not, especially for them," Raoul replies. He figures that Eichmann is leaving Budapest because the Hungarian army is too small and Eichmann has to beg Hitler for more soldiers. In the meantime, the Russians are on their way West, so Budapest might still stand a chance.
That doesn't mean atrocities are halted completely. The Baron and Baroness drive into a mass execution and almost get shot themselves, the first time the Baroness realizes what is actually happening. "Women!" she exclaims. Her husband tries to sooth her by saying it's "old hatred" and not their problem, but her eyes are now open. Buying flowers, she sees Raoul on the street motivating his men and wants to meet him. "I have heard such wonderful things about you. I had to meet you," she says, all aglow, handing a rose to a Jewish worker before going off to have coffee with Raoul.
Raoul has a marvelous crack made to shock the Baroness. They are offered pastry in a restaurant and she refuses. He insists, saying, "if only to reassure ourselves that the ovens of Budapest are still turning out splendid (pause) pastry." She is pulled back down to earth that one, but still claims "I find it hard to believe." "Decent people always find it hard to believe," he retorts. She says she sought him out to hear his side, but he tells her "there are no sides" and lists all of the Nazi atrocities. He wants her help, to convince her husband to "stop this extermination or he will pay for it like the others." She is very upset by the conversation and leaves.
He picks up the thread at a party the Swiss give for the diplomatic corps, stealing a dance with her to parry dialogue back and forth. The Baroness starts off frosty, but is just about to drop that demeanor when her husband reappears to fetch her. Per rushes in with the bad news that the Nazis are on their way back to Budapest.
Hungary surrenders and Horthy is forced to abdicate upon the return of Eichmann and he's in a mood to kill. The Hungarian army falls right in line, though the resistance continues to plug away. Nikki dresses up as a Nazi and tries to save Hannah, who has come to a work camp to deliver fake Swedish papers. However, a German officer takes her "for fun," and Nikki is powerless to stop him. At least until Raoul arrives and summons everyone in the camp with Swedish papers. The Nazis are not happy to see him, pointing guns and threatening to shoot him. That's a perfect place to end the first part of the miniseries.
The second part starts exactly where we left off, with the young German Nazi soldiers firing over his shoulder and Raoul still insisting that anyone with a Swedish pass join him. "You will answer to the Red Cross and the Swedish-German Friendship Society" if he is touched, Raoul tells the Nazi in charge, a bold move, but one that works! Nikki watches with relief as Hannah is saved, along with many others. Raoul even takes those who don't have passes, accepting any piece of paper they can produce, with the Nazis powerless to do anything. "He has a Swedish flag on his car, doesn't he?" the Nazi in charge spits out.
As Raoul heads the flank of Jews leaving the camp, like Moses, the saved hear gunshots, aimed at Jews as reprisals from the upset Hungarian soldiers. "Keep walking!" he shouts.
Raoul still needs the Baroness, hoping once again to push her into pushing her husband, but she insists, "I will not be disloyal to him." Raoul trots out his fear tactic again, that if the Baron doesn't "disassociate himself from this government of madmen," he will stand trial and be executed when the war is over. She tells Raoul she is pregnant, and can't let her baby grow up without a father.
The Baroness decides to take a crack at her husband, telling him that she's worried about the approaching Russians and gently slipping in Wallenberg's name. The Baron isn't buying it. "Who gives a damn about him or his Jews?" but she continues to gently pursue the matter, though the Baron is only interested in sex. But, later on, as Russian bombs rain down on Budapest, the Baroness is stronger, not only using political arguments, but the whole "I will not let our baby be born into a world where..." argument. The Baron initially rages against the Jews, saying "I've told them for years" to essentially blend in and go unnoticed, but she heads that off, telling him he must go to the cabinet and "make them see what they must do!" It seems to do some good because she hears later on the radio the cabinet proclaiming safety for the Jews just as he arrives home.
Crowing a bit, with gifts of cigarettes, Raoul goes to Eichmann to report that he's heard Himmler has "ordered the gas turned off" and that Auschwitz is "to be dismantled." Eichmann claims it's not true. In fact, he is dogmatic in his mission: to be the person responsible for the most Jewish deaths in Europe. "Don't be encouraged by your little moment," he tells Raoul. "Himmler be damned. I'll decide the fate of Hungarian Jews." Undeterred, when Eichmann says he knows Raoul's little secret, that he's Jewish, Raoul retorts, "I'm one-sixteenth Jewish, less than I would prefer." Raoul keep baiting Eichmann until the latter explodes, showing his desperation. "I want that Jew lover dead before the day ends," Eichmann tells his staff as Raoul leaves.
A trap is set and a German truck pummels Raoul's car. Sonja is injured, but not seriously. Raoul calls Eichmann to congratulate him on the ruse, "but I was not in the car" and hangs up, with a clearly irate Eichmann still holding the phone. For that, Eichmann orders the Jews "to be marched." That includes the ones under Wallenberg's protection. "Let them blow their noses in it," one soldier jokes with another as he pulls down the Swedish flag. Even the resistance is forced to say it's time to call in Wallenberg.
Teicholz (Ralph Arliss) goes to see Raoul where all the Jews have been rounded up. At first, the Pole is argumentative, but Raoul says they "are beginning to overlap." If Teicholz won't directly ask for help, Raoul speaks up and says he wants access to the resistance underground or Budapest "will have no survivors." Teicholz has "room for 300," but Raoul wants 1000, "so make room."
As the Jews are corralled into the Hungarian labor camp, trust Nikki is there in his uniform. The only people left at the Swedish legation are Raoul and Per. "Do you ever miss those carefree Scandinavian days?" Raoul asks? Per does, but Raoul doesn't not. "Perhaps nothing ever did before now, Raoul," Per replies, "you found yourself HERE." Per is despondent and wants to go home to his wife as Raoul says, "we hit rock bottom today."
At the end of this very difficult day, there is a bright spot when the Baroness walks into the legation. Is she there to "plead your husband's case" as Raoul puts it? Well, she does want him to know that her husband tried to stop the Nazis and that "he's a good man," but there's a bit of self-preservation too. If he ever is tried, will Raoul testify?
But there's more, and this is where the movie hits a snag. This tight tense story is interrupted by a love plot. The miniseries format virtually demanded it of every movie, but it's particularly needless here. "I'm here because I have to be," she says breathlessly. There's a kiss and then she says she has to go, but she has some superb words on her way out. She says their mutual priest friend told her, "the Nazis' greatest victory was convincing the Jews they were doomed. But now, you changed that, for thousands of them." That's an incredibly powerful line and redeems the entire scene.
The situation for the Jews in the Hungarian camp worsens. Some of the characters we've met are killed, others beaten. For Raoul, it's a race against time. If he can stop the trains from leaving Hungary, he may be able to save them, because once the trains leave Hungarian soil, he cannot help. As he drives to the train station, his car slowed as it winds its way through the miserable masses headed to the same place, he wonders how this can be possible in Christianity. "Perhaps we are witnessing the death of God," he says mournfully.
At the station, Raoul is frantic. Luckily, the Hungarian army is fine with being bribed, and then he has to physically get as many people off the trains as possible, using phony certificates, saying "they are in the ledger," anything to stall. The Nazis on hand are not happy, but the Hungarians calm them. When a Nazi asks the Hungarian commander if he was bribed, he says he was, "but you'll get your chance." After all, Raoul can't save them all, so plenty will be on those trains to make the Nazis happy.
I'm going to be uncharacteristically brief about the end of the movie. Raoul is able to save Jews over and over through various methods, but his triumph is getting the local Nazis to call off an order from Eichmann to machine gun 100,000 Jews. The Germans flee as the Russians approach and the Jews are free to break the padlocks on the ghetto doors. It's this wonderful sight Raoul sees as he drives out of Budapest. "We did make a difference," he says.
Though the story ends better for many of the Jews in Budapest than it did across most of Europe, Raoul's personal story is one of epic tragedy, almost unreal if it weren't the truth. In January 1945, Raoul Wallenberg went to meet with the Russian commander and was never seen again. It's believed he died in captivity in 1947, but rumors and sightings popped up for many years. The man who had literally stood in the firing line to save so many people simple vanished.
I don't know how many stories the creators of "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story" intended to tell. Obviously, the one involving Raoul Wallenberg, but what also comes across strikingly is the Hungarian situation near the end of the war. We are so used to hearing about the Western Front or the concentration camps themselves in the Eastern Front, or the great naval battles of the Pacific that it almost seems like the entire world was not at war. Hungary was very much a part of World War II, on the Axis side, though under Nazi domination. Through a very small lens (the Baron and Baroness), we're able to learn a lot, mainly how even countries in the thick of the Final Solution could be unaware of what was happening, if they chose to be. Something similar happens in "Holocaust" as we watch simple Germans come under the spell of Hitler's propaganda, but that's a more familiar story.
Of course, the main story goes to Raoul Wallenberg, a hero is ever there was one. The title doesn't even need to say "A Hero's Story," to crown him as such, but I suspect that her was so long forgotten, that without it, no one's interest would have been piqued. No doubt Steven Spielberg told Oskar Schindler's story with far more brio and pathos, but a network miniseries could not have told that story and been nearly as powerful. Wallenberg's story, which takes place in just a few brief months, is fascinating, and made believable by Richard Chamberlain's actorly charm and passionate devotion to creating a robust character.
Comments? Question? Email me at hpmaraka@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.
It's August 30, 1944 at the Wallenberg estate in Sweden. There is much celebrating and a bonfire. However, on the same night in Budapest, a synagogue is also on fire. And further, there is a party going on at Admiral Horthy's (Guy Deghy) is hosting Adolph Eichmann himself (Kenneth Colley). He is introduced by Baroness Lisl Kemeny (Alice Krige), who flatters him by saying he doesn't look at all "fearsome" like his reputation. Her husband, Baron Gabor Kemeny (Stuart Wilson), is to be part of a "cleansing" in Budapest.
At the Wallenberg party, a drunken Raoul Wallenberg (Richard Chamberlain) actually dares to insult the Nazis, much to his parents' horror. "You have supplied them with gas...for heating and cooking, of course," he quips before launching into an imitation of Hitler that gives the usually-sleep-inducing TV icon a bit of ham on which to chew.
Resistance worker Nikki Fodor (Mark Rylance), warns a concert of Hungarian Jews of the coming hoodlums. Admiral Horthy, who says "I was an anti-Semite before you were born," as proof of his commitment to the Nazi cause, but "I am not going to violate this ancient Hungarian tradition" of trusting the Jews with their money and turning them over to death camps.
Now, that our story is set up, it's time to get to know Raoul Wallenberg. His father considers him a "dilettante," though his mother defends him. He has some sort of job importing and exporting, but nothing too taxing. Raoul is not at all thrilled by the Nazis, and that leaning has caught the attention of Roosevelt's people in Budapest, who offer him a diplomatic cover in order to help their cause. He's already converted, of course, nothing that "I would go to any lengths to save Jews."
Up against Raoul's knowledge of what is going on, the Baron and Baroness are the voices of idiocy. She whines that she can't find a tailor in Budapest anymore because all the Jews have "disappeared." The Baron has some idea, but ignores it, hoping to cozy up to Eichmann in the hopes of being made foreign minister, replete with a new uniform and all.
If you've been wondering how all of this will come together, it only takes 25 minutes of the miniseries before Raoul is sent to Hungary for his top secret and very dangerous mission. It's late in the war and conditions are so grim that "Second Secretary" Raoul Wallenberg has to ride a crowded train, a melting pot of different flotsam and jetsam still able to travel through Europe. But, his discomfort is nothing compared to what he sees outside of his window as a train going East rolls by, with desperate Jews begging for help.
In Budapest, the Jews are wrangled up by the Hungarian police ("they will treat us with respect," one man assumes), but Nikki refuses to go. Before being able to fight, he has to get his girlfriend Hannah (Georgia Slowe) to understand exactly what is happening.
When Raoul arrives at the Swedish embassy building in Budapest, he has to fight through throngs of people begging to be let in and given Swedish protection. He is told by Per Anger (David Robb) that they can only help the Jews who "can establish family or business ties...there is a limit." Raoul asks, "why?" and Per dismisses the question, as Raoul will have to find out for himself just how difficult this task will be. He tells everyone at the embassy that "we can make honorary Swedish citizens of them all," but is told "that's impossible." Raoul still doesn't understand what is going on completely. He says he needs a staff of 100 people to help on his mission, although he's not asking the embassy for money or staff. The money is coming from the people who actually hired him and for staff, he wants to use all the Jews begging to be let in. Well, that sounds good to everyone at the embassy, but they warn him, "do not offend anybody" or else the whole plan will be at risk.
Raoul better act quickly because Eichmann is making his rounds of the area, telling Jewish leaders they must select workers, as he did in Poland and other countries, the Nazi way of letting others think they had a choice. He's interrupted by an aide who gives him the horrifying news that a train bearing over 12,000 Jews to Birkenau ("a new record, I think," he says with glee) has been stopped and turned back to Budapest. "That train must be stopped and we must carry on until we clean out every piece of Jew crap in Hungary," Eichmann says, more villainous with every line.
This is Raoul's first big success. Word gets around quickly and the embassy is swamped. "We need something bigger!" he tells Per, in order to save 700,000 people. He does help one woman, Sonja (Melanie Mayron), who has a small son and because of her proficiency with languages and skills. She's hired on the spot and thus has her protection as an employee of the Swedish legation. He's not above printing fake royal seals on letters to save Jews either.
At a rather bizarre nightclub where a woman belts out "Stormy Weather" without any clue as to what lyrics she's singing, Raoul and Per are in attendance when Eichmann, the Baron and Baroness come in. He has a bottle of champagne sent to the table. "Do you know what it is to be a Rockefeller in America? That's what it is to be a Wallenberg in Sweden," the Baron says his wife, who has never heard of him. Eichmann clucks that he "has to keep the neutrals happy" and trots off to make nice with Raoul. The Baroness takes quite a fancy to Raoul from across the restaurant too. "I'm here to help you with your Jewish problem," Raoul gives Eichmann as an excuse for his being sent to Budapest. "What can Sweden help with? Freight cars? Winter clothing? Please, don't try to camouflage your mission," which he knows of down to the Americans who are behind it. They actually pretend to play nice and make a business deal for housing. Raoul offers Eichmann money for housing, but Eichmann snaps that it works out to "only a dollar a Jew," and he's been offered more. Even worse, as he gets up to go, the sinister man notes that he's overcome "your little delay" and managed to get two trains of Jews sent East to make up for the one Raoul was able to bring back. Per tells Raoul, "some Nazis are less interested in the war than they are in murdering Jews." "I am determined too, and stubborn," Raoul says in response, believing himself to be Eichmann's equal.
There is a terrific scene where Raoul goes to the Hungarian leader to beg for his help. The wily old diplomat, playing both sides, says he can't understand why Sweden's King Gustav is "so interested in Jews," and is peeved that the Swedish legation is playing around with Hungarian citizens in the first place. Raoul wants him to agree to let hundreds of thousands of Jews come under his protection, but he is allotted only 4500. International politics being what they are, the quid pro quo is that Raoul "tell the Allies of my benevolent treatment of Jews." What makes the scene so interesting is the mindset of the Hungarian government. It's clear that the Nazis are losing the war by this point, but they are still very much a presence and to antagonize them can still mean big trouble. Raoul can't understand it, but he has to accept it.
As if the Nazis aren't enough of a problem, Raoul doesn't find an easy time with all of the Jews. Asking a wealthy Budapest Jew to sign over his houses to the Swedish government for the duration of the war, the man actually refuses because they are all he has left and he wants his children to inherit something. Raoul cannot guarantee the outcome of the war. "Who are you to lecture me? Some nice Swedish boy with nothing at stake?" "I'm one of you, I'm half Jewish. Don't you see I'm fighting for my life as well as yours?" That does the trick, at least partially. "Does this entitle me to one of those Swedish documents of yours?" he man asks. "A mint copy," Raoul assures him. "Half Jewish? You told me your great-great-grandfather was Jewish," his driver quips. "One-sixteenth Jewish, call me a liar for a fraction?" he jokes back. What's important is the last line of the scene. "I feel half Jewish," Raoul says, and it's not just lip service.
Then there are the resistance leaders who have taken the Swedish paperwork in order to make fakes from it, but so many that Nikki is worried that the Nazis will be suspicious. They have their own way of doing things.
However, with houses and Swedish flags, Raoul can save a lot of Jews, and right under the nose of the Hungarian army, without their yellow stars. It's a major victory for Raoul and his friends. Of course, just when all is going so well, Eichmann shows up at the Swedish legation. "I respect the Swedes, even new ones," he snarls to Raoul and Per. Eichmann strides around room full of Jews in Raoul's office with a joking demeanor that is even scarier than when he yells directly. Raoul disarms the tension by doing an imitation of the awful man as soon as he leaves. "Could we really be winning here?" Per asks. "Better to hope than not, especially for them," Raoul replies. He figures that Eichmann is leaving Budapest because the Hungarian army is too small and Eichmann has to beg Hitler for more soldiers. In the meantime, the Russians are on their way West, so Budapest might still stand a chance.
That doesn't mean atrocities are halted completely. The Baron and Baroness drive into a mass execution and almost get shot themselves, the first time the Baroness realizes what is actually happening. "Women!" she exclaims. Her husband tries to sooth her by saying it's "old hatred" and not their problem, but her eyes are now open. Buying flowers, she sees Raoul on the street motivating his men and wants to meet him. "I have heard such wonderful things about you. I had to meet you," she says, all aglow, handing a rose to a Jewish worker before going off to have coffee with Raoul.
Raoul has a marvelous crack made to shock the Baroness. They are offered pastry in a restaurant and she refuses. He insists, saying, "if only to reassure ourselves that the ovens of Budapest are still turning out splendid (pause) pastry." She is pulled back down to earth that one, but still claims "I find it hard to believe." "Decent people always find it hard to believe," he retorts. She says she sought him out to hear his side, but he tells her "there are no sides" and lists all of the Nazi atrocities. He wants her help, to convince her husband to "stop this extermination or he will pay for it like the others." She is very upset by the conversation and leaves.
He picks up the thread at a party the Swiss give for the diplomatic corps, stealing a dance with her to parry dialogue back and forth. The Baroness starts off frosty, but is just about to drop that demeanor when her husband reappears to fetch her. Per rushes in with the bad news that the Nazis are on their way back to Budapest.
Hungary surrenders and Horthy is forced to abdicate upon the return of Eichmann and he's in a mood to kill. The Hungarian army falls right in line, though the resistance continues to plug away. Nikki dresses up as a Nazi and tries to save Hannah, who has come to a work camp to deliver fake Swedish papers. However, a German officer takes her "for fun," and Nikki is powerless to stop him. At least until Raoul arrives and summons everyone in the camp with Swedish papers. The Nazis are not happy to see him, pointing guns and threatening to shoot him. That's a perfect place to end the first part of the miniseries.
The second part starts exactly where we left off, with the young German Nazi soldiers firing over his shoulder and Raoul still insisting that anyone with a Swedish pass join him. "You will answer to the Red Cross and the Swedish-German Friendship Society" if he is touched, Raoul tells the Nazi in charge, a bold move, but one that works! Nikki watches with relief as Hannah is saved, along with many others. Raoul even takes those who don't have passes, accepting any piece of paper they can produce, with the Nazis powerless to do anything. "He has a Swedish flag on his car, doesn't he?" the Nazi in charge spits out.
As Raoul heads the flank of Jews leaving the camp, like Moses, the saved hear gunshots, aimed at Jews as reprisals from the upset Hungarian soldiers. "Keep walking!" he shouts.
Raoul still needs the Baroness, hoping once again to push her into pushing her husband, but she insists, "I will not be disloyal to him." Raoul trots out his fear tactic again, that if the Baron doesn't "disassociate himself from this government of madmen," he will stand trial and be executed when the war is over. She tells Raoul she is pregnant, and can't let her baby grow up without a father.
The Baroness decides to take a crack at her husband, telling him that she's worried about the approaching Russians and gently slipping in Wallenberg's name. The Baron isn't buying it. "Who gives a damn about him or his Jews?" but she continues to gently pursue the matter, though the Baron is only interested in sex. But, later on, as Russian bombs rain down on Budapest, the Baroness is stronger, not only using political arguments, but the whole "I will not let our baby be born into a world where..." argument. The Baron initially rages against the Jews, saying "I've told them for years" to essentially blend in and go unnoticed, but she heads that off, telling him he must go to the cabinet and "make them see what they must do!" It seems to do some good because she hears later on the radio the cabinet proclaiming safety for the Jews just as he arrives home.
Crowing a bit, with gifts of cigarettes, Raoul goes to Eichmann to report that he's heard Himmler has "ordered the gas turned off" and that Auschwitz is "to be dismantled." Eichmann claims it's not true. In fact, he is dogmatic in his mission: to be the person responsible for the most Jewish deaths in Europe. "Don't be encouraged by your little moment," he tells Raoul. "Himmler be damned. I'll decide the fate of Hungarian Jews." Undeterred, when Eichmann says he knows Raoul's little secret, that he's Jewish, Raoul retorts, "I'm one-sixteenth Jewish, less than I would prefer." Raoul keep baiting Eichmann until the latter explodes, showing his desperation. "I want that Jew lover dead before the day ends," Eichmann tells his staff as Raoul leaves.
A trap is set and a German truck pummels Raoul's car. Sonja is injured, but not seriously. Raoul calls Eichmann to congratulate him on the ruse, "but I was not in the car" and hangs up, with a clearly irate Eichmann still holding the phone. For that, Eichmann orders the Jews "to be marched." That includes the ones under Wallenberg's protection. "Let them blow their noses in it," one soldier jokes with another as he pulls down the Swedish flag. Even the resistance is forced to say it's time to call in Wallenberg.
Teicholz (Ralph Arliss) goes to see Raoul where all the Jews have been rounded up. At first, the Pole is argumentative, but Raoul says they "are beginning to overlap." If Teicholz won't directly ask for help, Raoul speaks up and says he wants access to the resistance underground or Budapest "will have no survivors." Teicholz has "room for 300," but Raoul wants 1000, "so make room."
As the Jews are corralled into the Hungarian labor camp, trust Nikki is there in his uniform. The only people left at the Swedish legation are Raoul and Per. "Do you ever miss those carefree Scandinavian days?" Raoul asks? Per does, but Raoul doesn't not. "Perhaps nothing ever did before now, Raoul," Per replies, "you found yourself HERE." Per is despondent and wants to go home to his wife as Raoul says, "we hit rock bottom today."
At the end of this very difficult day, there is a bright spot when the Baroness walks into the legation. Is she there to "plead your husband's case" as Raoul puts it? Well, she does want him to know that her husband tried to stop the Nazis and that "he's a good man," but there's a bit of self-preservation too. If he ever is tried, will Raoul testify?
But there's more, and this is where the movie hits a snag. This tight tense story is interrupted by a love plot. The miniseries format virtually demanded it of every movie, but it's particularly needless here. "I'm here because I have to be," she says breathlessly. There's a kiss and then she says she has to go, but she has some superb words on her way out. She says their mutual priest friend told her, "the Nazis' greatest victory was convincing the Jews they were doomed. But now, you changed that, for thousands of them." That's an incredibly powerful line and redeems the entire scene.
The situation for the Jews in the Hungarian camp worsens. Some of the characters we've met are killed, others beaten. For Raoul, it's a race against time. If he can stop the trains from leaving Hungary, he may be able to save them, because once the trains leave Hungarian soil, he cannot help. As he drives to the train station, his car slowed as it winds its way through the miserable masses headed to the same place, he wonders how this can be possible in Christianity. "Perhaps we are witnessing the death of God," he says mournfully.
At the station, Raoul is frantic. Luckily, the Hungarian army is fine with being bribed, and then he has to physically get as many people off the trains as possible, using phony certificates, saying "they are in the ledger," anything to stall. The Nazis on hand are not happy, but the Hungarians calm them. When a Nazi asks the Hungarian commander if he was bribed, he says he was, "but you'll get your chance." After all, Raoul can't save them all, so plenty will be on those trains to make the Nazis happy.
I'm going to be uncharacteristically brief about the end of the movie. Raoul is able to save Jews over and over through various methods, but his triumph is getting the local Nazis to call off an order from Eichmann to machine gun 100,000 Jews. The Germans flee as the Russians approach and the Jews are free to break the padlocks on the ghetto doors. It's this wonderful sight Raoul sees as he drives out of Budapest. "We did make a difference," he says.
Though the story ends better for many of the Jews in Budapest than it did across most of Europe, Raoul's personal story is one of epic tragedy, almost unreal if it weren't the truth. In January 1945, Raoul Wallenberg went to meet with the Russian commander and was never seen again. It's believed he died in captivity in 1947, but rumors and sightings popped up for many years. The man who had literally stood in the firing line to save so many people simple vanished.
I don't know how many stories the creators of "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story" intended to tell. Obviously, the one involving Raoul Wallenberg, but what also comes across strikingly is the Hungarian situation near the end of the war. We are so used to hearing about the Western Front or the concentration camps themselves in the Eastern Front, or the great naval battles of the Pacific that it almost seems like the entire world was not at war. Hungary was very much a part of World War II, on the Axis side, though under Nazi domination. Through a very small lens (the Baron and Baroness), we're able to learn a lot, mainly how even countries in the thick of the Final Solution could be unaware of what was happening, if they chose to be. Something similar happens in "Holocaust" as we watch simple Germans come under the spell of Hitler's propaganda, but that's a more familiar story.
Of course, the main story goes to Raoul Wallenberg, a hero is ever there was one. The title doesn't even need to say "A Hero's Story," to crown him as such, but I suspect that her was so long forgotten, that without it, no one's interest would have been piqued. No doubt Steven Spielberg told Oskar Schindler's story with far more brio and pathos, but a network miniseries could not have told that story and been nearly as powerful. Wallenberg's story, which takes place in just a few brief months, is fascinating, and made believable by Richard Chamberlain's actorly charm and passionate devotion to creating a robust character.
Comments? Question? Email me at hpmaraka@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Sinatra (1992)
If you idolized Frank Sinatra when he was lanky heartthrob, adored him as a Rat Pack leader or even felt the glow of nostalgia in his latter confusing years, the 1992 "Sinatra" is the miniseries for you. If you want the truth, I suppose you should go find Kitty Kelly or Ray Liotta. This "Sinatra" was produced while Old Blue Eyes was still alive (by his daughter Tina, no less, the one with no career of her own other than carrying Dad's torch, a step lower than Frank Jr. and Nancy, who don't do much more), so it's a very adoring, no, make that slavishly adoring, biopic. There are some outbursts and some unsavory characters, but this Frank Sinatra gleams as innocently and brightly as he did as far back as the 1930s.
The soundtrack is by Sinatra himself, so like this movie or not, the music is terrific.
Hoboken, NJ, 1925. Ten-year-old Frankie is already something of a little hoodlum, stealing cigarettes and sheet music. He gets his gall from his mother Dolly (Olympia Dukakis), helping the poor by arranging jobs and making sure the Mayor owes her favors. The minute little Frankie walks into his parents' bar, the denizens beg him to sing, "with feeling." "With feeling costs a nickel," enterprising Frankie tells them before launching into "My Wonderful One." He sasses both Mom and Dad (Joe Santos), but they are helpless against his charm. Frankie wants to a boxer. "Just what the world needs, another punch-drunk palooka," Dolly quips. She wants him to carry a sign at a rally for the Mayor the next day, but he refuses to participate unless he can sing the national anthem. "It's not a love song, Rudy Valley, it's the 'Star Spangled Banner,'" Dolly tells him when she sees him mugging to young girls in the crowd.
A few years pass and miniseries hunk Philip Casnoff joins us the older Sinatra. He doesn't look like Frank (he's must more handsome), but he has the mannerisms down pretty well. He informs his parents that he wants to be a singer, "to be someone," but his father tells him if he doesn't work, he can't stay at home, live there or eat there. So, off he goes to New York City and makes the rounds looking for an agent and work.
Frank brazenly goes backstage at a burlesque theater and asks if they need a singer. You know 'It Had To Be You?'" the manager asks. He does, and stands center stage singing it (Casnoff lip syncs to Sinatra doing it) while the few men present crowd long for any scrap of female flesh that can be produced. He sneaks home to his mother, who says, "get in here, you little son-of-a-bitch" just before a neighbor rushes in with the news that Marty has been taken to the hospital. Father and son kind of reconcile, at least if Frankie will "come home and get a real job."
"Hey, I'm Frank, you're Nancy," Frank says when he strides across the street to meet Nancy (Gina Gershon) and get an impromptu manicure since he sees her doing hers. He gives her a few bars of "Ain't She Sweet" on his ukulele and then meets her on the beach with her large family the next day. Frank accepts a job with Nancy's father as a plasterer. Her father is also salt-of-the-earth, so when one of the female family members says, "he's dreamy," Papa says, "he's a dreamer." Nonetheless, he is eager to teach Frank to appreciate opera and it affords Frank the chance to take singing lessons from Mr. Quinlin (Jeff Corey). His peppy version of "Stormy Weather," doesn't impress the teacher because "you don't understand the words." Frank is not deterred. He wants to learn anything he can be taught. The combination of starting from scratch with Mr. Quinlin and listening to opera with Nancy's father does the trick in a handy montage. Eventually, he has to quit the plastering job because he can't manage the schedule of work and singing lessons. "No work, no Nancy," her pop tells Frank.
When has that ever stopped two youngsters in heat? Witless lover dialogue pretty much sets it up: "I don't wanna lose you," says he. "I don't wanna lose you," says she. It's Nancy, with one line of dialogue, who convinces Frank to go for it again. So, he auditions with "Stormy Weather," this time for Major Bowes (Jay Robinson), who puts him in a group, not exactly what Frank had in mind, but he does make Frank the lead singer. Major Bowes anoints them "The Hoboken Four" and gives them "Shine" to sing. And with that, Frank gets to tour the country with the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, once again using flirtation as a hallmark of his performance style. The girls go for it in a big way, much to the annoyance of the other three group members. So, the scrappy lad ditches Major Bowes and returns to Hoboken and Nancy's waiting arms.
He finds out that Dolly has been arrested for being an "abortionist." She defends her actions because it's the Great Depression and she's helping people who already have too many mouths to feed. "Most people don't make $75 a month and if they did, they wouldn't quit," she yells at him, outraged that he would give up his $75 A WEEK job! Nancy chooses to believe Frank when he says he quit the job because he was "afraid he might lose" her, but this is while they are in bed necking to King Edward VIII's abdication speech. Nancy wants to elope, but Frank insists they have a real wedding, with her gown "covering the floor like the first falling snow." Oh, my stars, where the hell did he dig up that groaner?
When Frank gets a job in the middle of nowhere singing with just a piano between the band's sets, he's told by the bandleader that his name is "too I-talian." When he's introduced that night, Dolly loudly grumbles, "who the hell is Frankie Trent?" Frank has to wheel on the piano player (who is blind and told to "shut your eyes, you're scarin' the customers") while singing "Pennies From Heaven" for tips.
For a tiny bit of "Francis Albert Sinatra, No Saint Was He," the movie tosses in a groupie who refuses to take no for an answer and they have sex in the car. This takes up all of three seconds and is done through fogged-up windows. However, the girl ends up pregnant and Frank is arrested on a morals charge. His explanation to fiancee Nancy is that the girl is married and "there is a whole string of guys." But, Nancy is angry, especially since she has already given up her virginity to him! He swears fidelity to Nancy so many times that he says, "if I swear anymore, God will strike me dead." "Good, you deserve it," she replies, but of course she'll forgive him. And marry him, in a big white dress, just as promised.
Harry James (Matthew Posey) comes to hear Frank sing one night and offers him a job touring with his orchestra on the spot, if he changes his name to Frankie Satin. "I like Sinatra," Frank says and it sticks. He tours and even records. Just as Harry announces they have a gig in Chicago for the holidays, Frank finds Nancy puking in the toilet. He doesn't want pregnant Nancy going on the road with him, predictably. It's late 1939, the news is that "The Reds Invade Finland," but Frank wants to jump from the James band to that of Tommy Dorsey (Bob Gunton). Dorsey gives him a terrific offer (though 42% of it goes to Dorsey "for life"), too good an offer to refuse. "If Harry lets you out," Dorsey cautions. James does and with no rancor, just a hug for Frank. A quarter of the way through the movie and more than that of Frank's life and Frank has been an angel, making no enemies and only officially sleeping with one woman besides beloved Nancy.
Things are not immediately smooth with Dorsey and company. Buddy Rich (Tommy Simotes) rides him for being late (on the drums, of course). Dorsey wants him to sing the previous singer's song, and Frank won't. Cocky as all get out, he declines the use of a lyric sheet for "I'll Never Smile Again" because he knows the words, and of course sings it perfectly the first time out. Even Mama Dolly sways to the gentle version on the radio and Nancy gazes into space hearing it.
"We have a problem," a hotel manager says, "we don't serve Coloreds here," referring to Sy Oliver (John Wesley). This is the first time the famous Sinatra temper flares up in this movie. "Give him the key or I'm gonna wreck this barn. I said give him the key!" Frank brays, pulling the hotel manager by the tie. And this was before all that Chairman of the Board crap.
Confident as ever, Frank has a wow of a conversation with Dorsey late one night. "So, what's your signature song gonna be?" Tommy asks. "I don't want a song, I want a sound. You see, TD, if I can do with my voice what you can do with a trombone, I can knock the whole gang right off the charts." How the hell is Dorsey supposed to follow that? "Breath control" is all he can say. Frank's mixture of undying self-esteem and talent seems to push through any roughness. When Frank launches into "I'll Never Know," the scene is pretty, but the recording used is of very poor quality, and obviously Frank couldn't re-record it. Strange to include that scene, which doesn't further the movie at all.
Frank asks Dorsey for time off to be at the birth of his first child. "When an entertainer is at the birth of his children, it means he's not working. You are!" Dorsey thunders. Frank offers Dorsey the godfather role to his kid, but Dorsey can sling the crap just as well as Frank. He tells him the band is going to be in a movie and that "Billboard is going to name you Top Band Vocalist." That one hits Frank and he forgets about the kid. Instead, he asks Dorsey for not more money, not better billing (which Dorsey was willing to give), but "more strings." By the next tour stop, not only are there an acre of violinists supporting Frank, but even a harp!
The only person not bowing at the altar of Sinatra is Buddy Rich, but since he keeps referring to Frank as a "grease ball," he loses all credibility as a person. And that, my friends, is how you write a movie about people still alive and keep them happy (Rich had died in 1987, so no one needed to walk on eggshells for his sake). In fact, when the two get into a physical altercation that Frank starts over Rich's inability to keep to Frank's tempo, Dorsey takes Frank's side, but only quickly because Nancy is on the phone, complaining that he's never around to talk to her. Since poor Gina Gershon is directly to be as annoying as possible in this scene, Frank still seems like a hero, even though he's clearly not walking on the straight-and-narrow.
In Hollywood, filming a totally insignificant song in a totally insignificant role in a totally insignificant movie, Frank says "I can't sing to a camera," so the director puts a girl in a chair near the band so Frank can focus his attention on her. In the scene and in bed, where he becomes a tiger. But, wait, folks! He doesn't actually do anything but mack on the girl, all clothing on, when his mother calls with the news that he has a daughter. Again, that's how we keep Francis Albert Sinatra and family happy but still remain somewhat faithful to the past. "I'm a father!" Frank says to the girl. "I don't know what to say," she replies. "How about goodbye?" How very family man-esque of him, no?
The rest of the world is still revolving. Frank gets home to Hoboken to celebrate with Nancy and his family, Dorsey in tow. Dolly nags about Frank's billing and Marty has asthmatic attacks while rummaging through old photo albums. And the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Patriotism was good for the Big Band Era.
Frank's career is taking off just when Nancy needs him at home. "You have no right to stop me," he yells. "I don't want to stop you. I want you to be the greatest singer there is. I just don't want to lose you," she whines, to an assurance that he will never leave her. Frank quits Dorsey, though with a year's notice, especially since Dorsey owns over 40% of him. Oh, wait, the latter might not be true anymore, especially since Frank now has a fleet of lawyers, producers and big companies behind him. "You know, not everyone thinks you are as talented as you do. Personally? I hope you fall flat on your face," Dorsey says in frustration.
Initially, the owner of the Paramount Theatre doesn't think Frank can fill it. "You've got a small voice," he's told. "The girls will fill the Paramount," one of his minions says. Indeed they do. Lines of them fight to get in. Frank is on the bill with Benny Goodman (David Kimball), performing what is easily the most complex and important Big Bang contribution. "And now, Frank Sinatra," Goodman announces to screams of delight from the crowd and the legend of the bobbysoxers is born (though the rendition of "Where or When?" is another tinny version that could have been cleaned up for the soundtrack). Casnoff nails the Sinatra presence, the light-as-air performance style and especially the connection with the harpie fans. Even Nancy is impressed.
Everyone Frank knows is on the payroll. Nancy goes over the bills and signs autographs for him while Frank tends to the parts he enjoys. He's loving life in Hollywood, where MGM is putting him under contract. Nancy wants him home, since she's pregnant again, but life on the East Coast is pretty much done. He misses the birth of his second child, despite promises he would be there. "You are 0 for 2," Dolly tells him when she picks up phone, saying it "had a guilty ring." Pretending to be asleep, Nancy cries. He can't get to Nancy because he first has to meet President Roosevelt.
And then it hits. A cliche moment that always has to happen in any miniseries about a real person. Frank and Nancy are arguing about giving Dolly money over and over and Nancy turns to Frank to say (you can say it along with her), "I don't know who you are anymore." Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Luckily, the conversation doesn't go any further than that, but even just the one sentence is one cliche too many. He's having way more fun with his fans and his entourage. Looking at Philip croon "I Fall in Love Too Fast," he actually looks like Sinatra. Until an egg is thrown at him by an angry boy, "on the night my father comes to see me!" bellows Frank.
With fame comes the underside of fame: the boy with the egg, the morals charge popping up out of legal death, the press twisting his words, the fact that he's not in the war and the hellish schedule that has him drinking heavily. He yells at his entourage a lot, but also treats like them like family. Worries are suddenly chucked out when Marilyn Maxwell (Carol Barbee) arrives backstage to spend some personal time with Frank.
The family moves to Hollywood so Frank can take on his first real role, but he has demands. The studio is willing to throw the biggest names in songwriting his way, but he wants Jules Styne (then just about to start a Broadway career) and Sammy Cahn. "They don't start Monday morning, neither do I," he insists. The conversation ends abruptly when Frank sees Ava Gardner (Marcia Gay Harden) walk by. She's crying over her latest dust-up with Artie Shaw, but he makes her laugh.
Nancy learns how to drive a car, but a fancy car isn't to her liking. "There's no room for the groceries," she whines. Her mother says, "the way he eats, you could fit them in here" and opens the glove compartment to find a jewelry box containing a heart bracelet. Let's assume it's not for her. Frank's roving attention hits Nancy square in the face during a New Year's party they host (with Sammy Davis and Bogie, among others), when Nancy sees Marilyn wearing the bracelet from the car! As the countdown reaches it's zenith, Nancy orders Marilyn "out of my house."
The next morning, Nancy lays into Frank. "It's nothing," he assures her, regarding Marilyn. "It's not nothing to me," she says. He replies with another star biopic cliche that better writers could have found a way around: "It's just there's so much pressure. It doesn't let up for a second. Sometimes I feel like climbing the walls." That one appears in every male-with-a-wandering-penis movie about a star. The rest of the conversation follows familiar track, including the expected, "maybe we should go away together, just the two of us," but Frank pricks a hole in that one. How about nights together? The next film is to be filmed in NYC, so that won't work either.
As a reporter gets a soundbite out of Frank about Communism that will no doubt come back to haunt him, he gets in a car with pal Peter Lawford, he meets Gene Tierney, snuggled up with JFK. Loyal agent George Evans (Joe Grifasi) tries to get Frank to play nice with the press (instead of slugging them), to not get his mug on the front page with a dame who isn't his wife and to even stop drinking because it's ruining his voice. "Go away for a few days...no women!" So, Frank takes a few days off in Havana, where he's photographed with Lucky Luciano, among other notorious mobsters. Frank doesn't see the harm in knowing Luciano. "I drive the getaway car," he jokes, and then adds to George, "you said no women. You didn't say anything about mobsters." George begs him to stop his trip down "this self-destructive path."
We met Sammy Davis Jr. (David Raynr) again for a split second because Frank decides to knock out right-wing columnist Lee Mortimer, which lands him in jail. LB Mayer calls him and tells him to apologize. Never one to admit his mistakes, Frank gets rip-roaring drunk and dresses as a priest to meet his pals at Romanoff. This is the perfect place for a tirade. Bogie tells him to get some sleep so he can work. "Work. This isn't work. They dress me funny and I sing. If they gave me 'Hamlet,' they would make me sing," he rails. Frank is ruining his career and he wants his marriage to be over, though Nancy is pregnant again. But mainly, his problem is "I lost it. I lost the feeling."
Even the fans have disappeared. Columbia wants to let him go and he's not even upset. "I'm only 33...is it all over at 33?" "It's a big pendulum, you'll come back," he's assured. He does perk up when he sees Ava Gardner in the hotel lobby. She grabs his arm and takes him to see Billie Holliday (Leata Galloway) perform. That's the spark they need to start their intense affair, one that became Hollywood legend in no time. They are physical wild animals together. Ava is far more practical (and experienced), so when Frank wants to see her again, she purrs, "it was just a brief moment, Francis. Let's not make history out of it." No one has ever refuse Frank before! That makes him even more obsessed, phoning in Christmas with his family and not able to concentrate on his new film.
Though Ava was not married when she met Frank, he was, but somehow, the movie makes her the villain. She yells at him and then kisses him passionately. She toys with him horribly. "It's not enough for you to have a guy, you gotta mess with his head too?" Frank says, grabbing her. That sets Ava off, demanding that he never touch her like that again. "It's never gonna work between us," she says.
As for Nancy, she knows the gossip, and Frank decides it's time to move out. "Come home, Frank. You belong here," she assures him. "Then why don't I feel it?" With that, Nancy is forced to agree. As much as they try, Frank and Ava can't stay apart. When he's singing at a fancy club, Ava, appearing from the mist, walks slowly down the center aisle, drops her fur to reveal a gorgeous outfit. "Every chick in here wants to be you and every cat in here wants to be me," he tells her as they walk very slowly to their table in order to show off. Frank can't keep calm when a photographer snaps a picture of him with Ava, ripping out the film and pushing the guy.
The affair with Ava, volatile as it is, exacts a heavy toll on Frank (of course it does, since this is a rough episode in Frank's life that cannot be ignored, no matter how many children were involved in the making of this film). His faithful George has a heart attack and dies trying to get him out of one scrape or another. MGM drops his contract. "Ah, what the hell? They never gave me a decent role anyway," he says, trying to sound okay, but clearly devastated. He wants Ava by his side, but she has her own career to think about and can't afford to be with him as he heads to London for a singing gig.
However, as he's singing, sounding particularly broken-hearted, Ava actually does show up so Frank can see her in the wings. Naturally, a song is picked that has lyrics matching the exact moment the end of the first portion requires.
What of Nancy? She remains supportive, begging him to "take a rest" when he complains that he is dreading performing. "It doesn't mean anything to me anymore, nothing does," the complaining crooner says, actually speaking of Ava. "Why do you want to hold onto me if I don't want to be here?" he coldly asks her. She believes he will tire of Ava and come back to her.
Things hit rock bottom when Frank gets on stage and cannot sing, spitting blood into his handkerchief. Unfortunately, it's at the Copa in Hollywood, so everyone knows instantly what's going on. The news reporting it says, "that's the old Frank here's the new Frank, Frankie Lane..." and that radio gets switched off immediately. He's supposed to be on complete vocal rest, but when he sees a picture of Ava in the paper with another man, he gets the first plane to Spain where she's filming a movie. Her handsome co-star speaks no English, so Frank gets even nastier. "This is my woman, mi senorita, so adios!" he tells the poor guy. As always, being with Ava brings out the worst in both, but once they get the arguing done, then it's happiness and loving, at least until the next argument. "You're kinda cute when you can't speak," Ava says as Frank presents her with an expensive necklace.
On a rainy romantic day, sweetness in bed turns into a brawl because Ava says he's not "trying hard enough" to divorce Nancy and he can't have both women. "This is torture, Frank. It's wrecking my career. I can't do this anymore," she says. "Two minutes ago, we were happy. What happened?" "I was being a sap. I want you to go home and get a divorce," Ava demands and stalks out.
Back to the Paramount, the site of Frank's biggest success, he goes, but the joint is empty and after that, bookings are few and nothing exciting. Things are so bad that when he goes to light a cigarette at the stove and the pilot does not light, he can kill himself. So, he turns the gas all the way up. Luckily, he's caught in time (obviously). Did this ever really happen? It's tough to believe that someone like Frank Sinatra ever thought of suicide, but easier to accept the fact that it makes for a pungent dramatic twist. "It's torture when we're together and worse when we're not," Ava tells him as a way to cheer him up (?). With Ava in the audience at a New Jersey concert, he can sing perfectly.
It's at this concert that Frank meets Sam Giancana (Rod Steiger), and though Ava is worried that he's in the mafia, Frank says he owes his career to men like that. Even more unlikely in this room is columnist Earl Wilson, and it takes all of Ava's charm to get him to agree not to print a story about seeing her there.
Except Earl Wilson prints an article calling Frank and Ava Romeo and Juliet, which Nancy carps makes her "a villain for trying to keep my family together." For the 53rd time, Frank begs for a divorce, but this time, it works. When word gets out, a reporter asks Frank, "what are your wedding gifts to each other, boxing gloves?" Ava takes it all in stride, but when another reporter asks if it will be a "white wedding" Frank pushes him to the ground and breaks his camera. Ava, naturally, does not wear white. Set to "They Can't Take that Away From Me," Frank and Ava have a montage of great moments, even if one of them is a jealous spat ending in a kiss.
Ava is off to Africa to shoot "Mogambo" with Clark Gable and Frank doesn't trust her, so he goes along. He's obsessed with "From Here to Eternity" and knows the role of Maggio could revitalize his career. The heat is unbearable, but Ava thinks she might be pregnant, which is not good news for her because this role is too important for her. Frank gets good news, a telegram in Africa (uh huh) saying Columbia Pictures has agreed to test him for "From Here to Eternity" and though Ava isn't at all thrilled, he asks her for money to get back to the US.
The screen test is powerful, with Frank giving a tour-de-force, but bad news comes when Frank is told that Ava collapsed in Africa and was rushed to a hospital in London. When he gets there, she's actually in a hotel room dressed for dinner. "I was pregnant and now I'm not. I don't want to talk about it," she tells him. The loss of the baby is left a little vague, but if you bet on abortion, I think you have the safer bed. He thinks having a baby would be good for the marriage. "Did having a baby bring you and Nancy closer together?" she asks dryly? Ouch. Ava is off to a New Year's Eve party, and Frank roars, "walk out of that door and you walk out of my life!" However, the incessant pattern of good versus bad comes back AGAIN and Frank gets a call that he's won the part of Maggio. Unable to accept his success, Ava leaves while he's still on the phone.
As we all know, Frank wins a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (at the expense of a horse, if "The Godfather" is accurate) and his career is back, bigger than ever. He does movies and records, in that ring-a-ding-ding period of his life where he could do no wrong. Yet another montage takes care of the passage of time.
Frank misses another family event, but this time he has a good reason, Sammy has been in a car accident. We've seen Sammy twice, and only for half a second each time, but now he has a full dramatic scene, where he wonders how he'll dance with only one eye. "If I can't dance, I don't want to live," Sammy says as Frank trade vulgarities like teenagers. Frank takes him into the steam room in Vegas where the entire Rat Pack is gathered wearing eye patches like Sammy. Even JFK is there. Dino (Danny Gans) joins them and the three do pretty much the Rat Pack schtick, racism and all. When Frank introduces girlfriend Juliet Prowse from the stage, Mama Dolly quips, "what's he got at his front door, a turnstile?"
Well, speaking of JFK, he's running for President and Papa Joe comes a-callin' on Frank to enlist his friend Sam Giancana's help in securing the election. "What's in it for you? They gonna make you Ambassador to Italy or somethin'?" Sam wonders, but agrees to help. Frank loves being pals with the Kennedys, but practical Bobby Kennedy wants Sammy Davis removed from campaigning because he's black and about to marry white Mai Britt. Bobby has some god-awful reasoning to convince Frank to make Sammy back down, but he doesn't have to worry, because Sammy knows what's going on and even postpones his wedding.
Frank goes to visit "Chicky Baby" JFK in his new digs at the White House. Jack is excited for an upcoming visit to Los Angeles where he will stay with Frank, busy making "improvements" so the whole staff can fit. "I'll see you in the spring," Jack says to Frank on his way out. It's Peter Lawford who is sent to break the news to Frank that the Presidential visit is not happening. "You got no loyalty, you got no guts," Frank yells at Peter for taking sides with the Kennedys against him.
And the mob isn't any happier. With Bobby Kennedy cracking down on the mafia, Sam Giancana and his friends are in trouble and Frank is their link, though Frank is persona non grata at The White House pretty quickly. Sam wants payment on the favor of delivering West Virginia in the election, but Frank says he's the one who asked for the favor, not the Kennedys. It's getting very complicated. Frank has to shed friends just to look proper, but he packs them off with goodies like his music publishing company.
During his European tour, Frank gets to spend time with Ava in Spain, where she now lives. Why Spain? "They got people, real people," she says. He asks her to marry him again. "What could you possibly miss about me?" she asks and bolts. From here, it's the "One For My Baby" mini-montage where Frank watches JFK's funeral procession and cries.
On the set in 1965, Frank meets Mia Farrow (Nina Siemaszko). Frank offers an autograph and she jokes, "no, who are you?" Cue "You Make Me Feel So Young" as Frank and Mia begin their oddball romance. Poor young Mia isn't thrilled with Frank's house, as it's filled with pictures of Ava, and Frank never really cottons to Mia's vibe, which is anything but Old Hollywood. She meditates and reads (take that Ava) and wears love beads. They marry with Frank looking like he's getting hitched to Rosemary's baby itself. Oh, and she has bad taste in music. "It's not music, it's crap," Frank bellows as he grumbles about the state of music. Mia does have one good comeback when he complains about bad lyrics, going through the do-be-do-be-dos of "Strangers in the Night." They have the again inevitable conversation about her advancing career, she wants a baby ("my kids grew up thinking the telephone was their father") and he doesn't, and finally Mia puts her finger on it. "Hey, I'm not Ava!"
In other words, the marriage is doomed from the start. Rather than rehashing conversations Frank has had with either Nancy or Ava (mostly Ava), we breeze through the whole kooky romance at top speed. None of those glamorous sable-and-satin-drenched arguments like Frank and Ava, just stilted phone conversations and bing-bang-boom, it's over. One supposes that the Sinatra children were not at all fond of Stepmother Mia, because the rush job is very obvious.
By the time Frank divorces Mia, he's graying and getting heavy. But, the nurses at the hospital where Marty is dying still think he's pretty foxy. Frank confides in his father that "I'm thinking of leaving the business...I'm tired, tired of being in the spotlight. The music business changes so fast, I can't keep up with the next guy anymore. Maybe I should stop trying," he tells the man who never expected him to make it. He retires, just as he promised his father before Marty expired.
Less than two years later, in 1974, retirement is over. "That's Life." We're now into the tux and toupee years. But, he sells out Madison Square Garden and they still throw roses to the stage. No underwear, for granny panties aren't particularly aerodynamic. At the end of the song, Frank blows a kiss to the audience and the move ends.
Frank Sinatra never seemed so squeaky clean, but you know what? That's not such a bad thing. Despite the temper and such, he was one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th Century and he did lead a colorful life. It may not have been the Technicolor one on display here, but it was a great ride.
Comments? Questions? Laughs? Feel free to email me at hpmaraka@gmail.com so we can chat.
The soundtrack is by Sinatra himself, so like this movie or not, the music is terrific.
Hoboken, NJ, 1925. Ten-year-old Frankie is already something of a little hoodlum, stealing cigarettes and sheet music. He gets his gall from his mother Dolly (Olympia Dukakis), helping the poor by arranging jobs and making sure the Mayor owes her favors. The minute little Frankie walks into his parents' bar, the denizens beg him to sing, "with feeling." "With feeling costs a nickel," enterprising Frankie tells them before launching into "My Wonderful One." He sasses both Mom and Dad (Joe Santos), but they are helpless against his charm. Frankie wants to a boxer. "Just what the world needs, another punch-drunk palooka," Dolly quips. She wants him to carry a sign at a rally for the Mayor the next day, but he refuses to participate unless he can sing the national anthem. "It's not a love song, Rudy Valley, it's the 'Star Spangled Banner,'" Dolly tells him when she sees him mugging to young girls in the crowd.
A few years pass and miniseries hunk Philip Casnoff joins us the older Sinatra. He doesn't look like Frank (he's must more handsome), but he has the mannerisms down pretty well. He informs his parents that he wants to be a singer, "to be someone," but his father tells him if he doesn't work, he can't stay at home, live there or eat there. So, off he goes to New York City and makes the rounds looking for an agent and work.
Frank brazenly goes backstage at a burlesque theater and asks if they need a singer. You know 'It Had To Be You?'" the manager asks. He does, and stands center stage singing it (Casnoff lip syncs to Sinatra doing it) while the few men present crowd long for any scrap of female flesh that can be produced. He sneaks home to his mother, who says, "get in here, you little son-of-a-bitch" just before a neighbor rushes in with the news that Marty has been taken to the hospital. Father and son kind of reconcile, at least if Frankie will "come home and get a real job."
"Hey, I'm Frank, you're Nancy," Frank says when he strides across the street to meet Nancy (Gina Gershon) and get an impromptu manicure since he sees her doing hers. He gives her a few bars of "Ain't She Sweet" on his ukulele and then meets her on the beach with her large family the next day. Frank accepts a job with Nancy's father as a plasterer. Her father is also salt-of-the-earth, so when one of the female family members says, "he's dreamy," Papa says, "he's a dreamer." Nonetheless, he is eager to teach Frank to appreciate opera and it affords Frank the chance to take singing lessons from Mr. Quinlin (Jeff Corey). His peppy version of "Stormy Weather," doesn't impress the teacher because "you don't understand the words." Frank is not deterred. He wants to learn anything he can be taught. The combination of starting from scratch with Mr. Quinlin and listening to opera with Nancy's father does the trick in a handy montage. Eventually, he has to quit the plastering job because he can't manage the schedule of work and singing lessons. "No work, no Nancy," her pop tells Frank.
When has that ever stopped two youngsters in heat? Witless lover dialogue pretty much sets it up: "I don't wanna lose you," says he. "I don't wanna lose you," says she. It's Nancy, with one line of dialogue, who convinces Frank to go for it again. So, he auditions with "Stormy Weather," this time for Major Bowes (Jay Robinson), who puts him in a group, not exactly what Frank had in mind, but he does make Frank the lead singer. Major Bowes anoints them "The Hoboken Four" and gives them "Shine" to sing. And with that, Frank gets to tour the country with the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, once again using flirtation as a hallmark of his performance style. The girls go for it in a big way, much to the annoyance of the other three group members. So, the scrappy lad ditches Major Bowes and returns to Hoboken and Nancy's waiting arms.
He finds out that Dolly has been arrested for being an "abortionist." She defends her actions because it's the Great Depression and she's helping people who already have too many mouths to feed. "Most people don't make $75 a month and if they did, they wouldn't quit," she yells at him, outraged that he would give up his $75 A WEEK job! Nancy chooses to believe Frank when he says he quit the job because he was "afraid he might lose" her, but this is while they are in bed necking to King Edward VIII's abdication speech. Nancy wants to elope, but Frank insists they have a real wedding, with her gown "covering the floor like the first falling snow." Oh, my stars, where the hell did he dig up that groaner?
When Frank gets a job in the middle of nowhere singing with just a piano between the band's sets, he's told by the bandleader that his name is "too I-talian." When he's introduced that night, Dolly loudly grumbles, "who the hell is Frankie Trent?" Frank has to wheel on the piano player (who is blind and told to "shut your eyes, you're scarin' the customers") while singing "Pennies From Heaven" for tips.
For a tiny bit of "Francis Albert Sinatra, No Saint Was He," the movie tosses in a groupie who refuses to take no for an answer and they have sex in the car. This takes up all of three seconds and is done through fogged-up windows. However, the girl ends up pregnant and Frank is arrested on a morals charge. His explanation to fiancee Nancy is that the girl is married and "there is a whole string of guys." But, Nancy is angry, especially since she has already given up her virginity to him! He swears fidelity to Nancy so many times that he says, "if I swear anymore, God will strike me dead." "Good, you deserve it," she replies, but of course she'll forgive him. And marry him, in a big white dress, just as promised.
Harry James (Matthew Posey) comes to hear Frank sing one night and offers him a job touring with his orchestra on the spot, if he changes his name to Frankie Satin. "I like Sinatra," Frank says and it sticks. He tours and even records. Just as Harry announces they have a gig in Chicago for the holidays, Frank finds Nancy puking in the toilet. He doesn't want pregnant Nancy going on the road with him, predictably. It's late 1939, the news is that "The Reds Invade Finland," but Frank wants to jump from the James band to that of Tommy Dorsey (Bob Gunton). Dorsey gives him a terrific offer (though 42% of it goes to Dorsey "for life"), too good an offer to refuse. "If Harry lets you out," Dorsey cautions. James does and with no rancor, just a hug for Frank. A quarter of the way through the movie and more than that of Frank's life and Frank has been an angel, making no enemies and only officially sleeping with one woman besides beloved Nancy.
Things are not immediately smooth with Dorsey and company. Buddy Rich (Tommy Simotes) rides him for being late (on the drums, of course). Dorsey wants him to sing the previous singer's song, and Frank won't. Cocky as all get out, he declines the use of a lyric sheet for "I'll Never Smile Again" because he knows the words, and of course sings it perfectly the first time out. Even Mama Dolly sways to the gentle version on the radio and Nancy gazes into space hearing it.
"We have a problem," a hotel manager says, "we don't serve Coloreds here," referring to Sy Oliver (John Wesley). This is the first time the famous Sinatra temper flares up in this movie. "Give him the key or I'm gonna wreck this barn. I said give him the key!" Frank brays, pulling the hotel manager by the tie. And this was before all that Chairman of the Board crap.
Confident as ever, Frank has a wow of a conversation with Dorsey late one night. "So, what's your signature song gonna be?" Tommy asks. "I don't want a song, I want a sound. You see, TD, if I can do with my voice what you can do with a trombone, I can knock the whole gang right off the charts." How the hell is Dorsey supposed to follow that? "Breath control" is all he can say. Frank's mixture of undying self-esteem and talent seems to push through any roughness. When Frank launches into "I'll Never Know," the scene is pretty, but the recording used is of very poor quality, and obviously Frank couldn't re-record it. Strange to include that scene, which doesn't further the movie at all.
Frank asks Dorsey for time off to be at the birth of his first child. "When an entertainer is at the birth of his children, it means he's not working. You are!" Dorsey thunders. Frank offers Dorsey the godfather role to his kid, but Dorsey can sling the crap just as well as Frank. He tells him the band is going to be in a movie and that "Billboard is going to name you Top Band Vocalist." That one hits Frank and he forgets about the kid. Instead, he asks Dorsey for not more money, not better billing (which Dorsey was willing to give), but "more strings." By the next tour stop, not only are there an acre of violinists supporting Frank, but even a harp!
The only person not bowing at the altar of Sinatra is Buddy Rich, but since he keeps referring to Frank as a "grease ball," he loses all credibility as a person. And that, my friends, is how you write a movie about people still alive and keep them happy (Rich had died in 1987, so no one needed to walk on eggshells for his sake). In fact, when the two get into a physical altercation that Frank starts over Rich's inability to keep to Frank's tempo, Dorsey takes Frank's side, but only quickly because Nancy is on the phone, complaining that he's never around to talk to her. Since poor Gina Gershon is directly to be as annoying as possible in this scene, Frank still seems like a hero, even though he's clearly not walking on the straight-and-narrow.
In Hollywood, filming a totally insignificant song in a totally insignificant role in a totally insignificant movie, Frank says "I can't sing to a camera," so the director puts a girl in a chair near the band so Frank can focus his attention on her. In the scene and in bed, where he becomes a tiger. But, wait, folks! He doesn't actually do anything but mack on the girl, all clothing on, when his mother calls with the news that he has a daughter. Again, that's how we keep Francis Albert Sinatra and family happy but still remain somewhat faithful to the past. "I'm a father!" Frank says to the girl. "I don't know what to say," she replies. "How about goodbye?" How very family man-esque of him, no?
The rest of the world is still revolving. Frank gets home to Hoboken to celebrate with Nancy and his family, Dorsey in tow. Dolly nags about Frank's billing and Marty has asthmatic attacks while rummaging through old photo albums. And the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Patriotism was good for the Big Band Era.
Frank's career is taking off just when Nancy needs him at home. "You have no right to stop me," he yells. "I don't want to stop you. I want you to be the greatest singer there is. I just don't want to lose you," she whines, to an assurance that he will never leave her. Frank quits Dorsey, though with a year's notice, especially since Dorsey owns over 40% of him. Oh, wait, the latter might not be true anymore, especially since Frank now has a fleet of lawyers, producers and big companies behind him. "You know, not everyone thinks you are as talented as you do. Personally? I hope you fall flat on your face," Dorsey says in frustration.
Initially, the owner of the Paramount Theatre doesn't think Frank can fill it. "You've got a small voice," he's told. "The girls will fill the Paramount," one of his minions says. Indeed they do. Lines of them fight to get in. Frank is on the bill with Benny Goodman (David Kimball), performing what is easily the most complex and important Big Bang contribution. "And now, Frank Sinatra," Goodman announces to screams of delight from the crowd and the legend of the bobbysoxers is born (though the rendition of "Where or When?" is another tinny version that could have been cleaned up for the soundtrack). Casnoff nails the Sinatra presence, the light-as-air performance style and especially the connection with the harpie fans. Even Nancy is impressed.
Everyone Frank knows is on the payroll. Nancy goes over the bills and signs autographs for him while Frank tends to the parts he enjoys. He's loving life in Hollywood, where MGM is putting him under contract. Nancy wants him home, since she's pregnant again, but life on the East Coast is pretty much done. He misses the birth of his second child, despite promises he would be there. "You are 0 for 2," Dolly tells him when she picks up phone, saying it "had a guilty ring." Pretending to be asleep, Nancy cries. He can't get to Nancy because he first has to meet President Roosevelt.
And then it hits. A cliche moment that always has to happen in any miniseries about a real person. Frank and Nancy are arguing about giving Dolly money over and over and Nancy turns to Frank to say (you can say it along with her), "I don't know who you are anymore." Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Luckily, the conversation doesn't go any further than that, but even just the one sentence is one cliche too many. He's having way more fun with his fans and his entourage. Looking at Philip croon "I Fall in Love Too Fast," he actually looks like Sinatra. Until an egg is thrown at him by an angry boy, "on the night my father comes to see me!" bellows Frank.
With fame comes the underside of fame: the boy with the egg, the morals charge popping up out of legal death, the press twisting his words, the fact that he's not in the war and the hellish schedule that has him drinking heavily. He yells at his entourage a lot, but also treats like them like family. Worries are suddenly chucked out when Marilyn Maxwell (Carol Barbee) arrives backstage to spend some personal time with Frank.
The family moves to Hollywood so Frank can take on his first real role, but he has demands. The studio is willing to throw the biggest names in songwriting his way, but he wants Jules Styne (then just about to start a Broadway career) and Sammy Cahn. "They don't start Monday morning, neither do I," he insists. The conversation ends abruptly when Frank sees Ava Gardner (Marcia Gay Harden) walk by. She's crying over her latest dust-up with Artie Shaw, but he makes her laugh.
Nancy learns how to drive a car, but a fancy car isn't to her liking. "There's no room for the groceries," she whines. Her mother says, "the way he eats, you could fit them in here" and opens the glove compartment to find a jewelry box containing a heart bracelet. Let's assume it's not for her. Frank's roving attention hits Nancy square in the face during a New Year's party they host (with Sammy Davis and Bogie, among others), when Nancy sees Marilyn wearing the bracelet from the car! As the countdown reaches it's zenith, Nancy orders Marilyn "out of my house."
The next morning, Nancy lays into Frank. "It's nothing," he assures her, regarding Marilyn. "It's not nothing to me," she says. He replies with another star biopic cliche that better writers could have found a way around: "It's just there's so much pressure. It doesn't let up for a second. Sometimes I feel like climbing the walls." That one appears in every male-with-a-wandering-penis movie about a star. The rest of the conversation follows familiar track, including the expected, "maybe we should go away together, just the two of us," but Frank pricks a hole in that one. How about nights together? The next film is to be filmed in NYC, so that won't work either.
As a reporter gets a soundbite out of Frank about Communism that will no doubt come back to haunt him, he gets in a car with pal Peter Lawford, he meets Gene Tierney, snuggled up with JFK. Loyal agent George Evans (Joe Grifasi) tries to get Frank to play nice with the press (instead of slugging them), to not get his mug on the front page with a dame who isn't his wife and to even stop drinking because it's ruining his voice. "Go away for a few days...no women!" So, Frank takes a few days off in Havana, where he's photographed with Lucky Luciano, among other notorious mobsters. Frank doesn't see the harm in knowing Luciano. "I drive the getaway car," he jokes, and then adds to George, "you said no women. You didn't say anything about mobsters." George begs him to stop his trip down "this self-destructive path."
We met Sammy Davis Jr. (David Raynr) again for a split second because Frank decides to knock out right-wing columnist Lee Mortimer, which lands him in jail. LB Mayer calls him and tells him to apologize. Never one to admit his mistakes, Frank gets rip-roaring drunk and dresses as a priest to meet his pals at Romanoff. This is the perfect place for a tirade. Bogie tells him to get some sleep so he can work. "Work. This isn't work. They dress me funny and I sing. If they gave me 'Hamlet,' they would make me sing," he rails. Frank is ruining his career and he wants his marriage to be over, though Nancy is pregnant again. But mainly, his problem is "I lost it. I lost the feeling."
Even the fans have disappeared. Columbia wants to let him go and he's not even upset. "I'm only 33...is it all over at 33?" "It's a big pendulum, you'll come back," he's assured. He does perk up when he sees Ava Gardner in the hotel lobby. She grabs his arm and takes him to see Billie Holliday (Leata Galloway) perform. That's the spark they need to start their intense affair, one that became Hollywood legend in no time. They are physical wild animals together. Ava is far more practical (and experienced), so when Frank wants to see her again, she purrs, "it was just a brief moment, Francis. Let's not make history out of it." No one has ever refuse Frank before! That makes him even more obsessed, phoning in Christmas with his family and not able to concentrate on his new film.
Though Ava was not married when she met Frank, he was, but somehow, the movie makes her the villain. She yells at him and then kisses him passionately. She toys with him horribly. "It's not enough for you to have a guy, you gotta mess with his head too?" Frank says, grabbing her. That sets Ava off, demanding that he never touch her like that again. "It's never gonna work between us," she says.
As for Nancy, she knows the gossip, and Frank decides it's time to move out. "Come home, Frank. You belong here," she assures him. "Then why don't I feel it?" With that, Nancy is forced to agree. As much as they try, Frank and Ava can't stay apart. When he's singing at a fancy club, Ava, appearing from the mist, walks slowly down the center aisle, drops her fur to reveal a gorgeous outfit. "Every chick in here wants to be you and every cat in here wants to be me," he tells her as they walk very slowly to their table in order to show off. Frank can't keep calm when a photographer snaps a picture of him with Ava, ripping out the film and pushing the guy.
The affair with Ava, volatile as it is, exacts a heavy toll on Frank (of course it does, since this is a rough episode in Frank's life that cannot be ignored, no matter how many children were involved in the making of this film). His faithful George has a heart attack and dies trying to get him out of one scrape or another. MGM drops his contract. "Ah, what the hell? They never gave me a decent role anyway," he says, trying to sound okay, but clearly devastated. He wants Ava by his side, but she has her own career to think about and can't afford to be with him as he heads to London for a singing gig.
However, as he's singing, sounding particularly broken-hearted, Ava actually does show up so Frank can see her in the wings. Naturally, a song is picked that has lyrics matching the exact moment the end of the first portion requires.
What of Nancy? She remains supportive, begging him to "take a rest" when he complains that he is dreading performing. "It doesn't mean anything to me anymore, nothing does," the complaining crooner says, actually speaking of Ava. "Why do you want to hold onto me if I don't want to be here?" he coldly asks her. She believes he will tire of Ava and come back to her.
Things hit rock bottom when Frank gets on stage and cannot sing, spitting blood into his handkerchief. Unfortunately, it's at the Copa in Hollywood, so everyone knows instantly what's going on. The news reporting it says, "that's the old Frank here's the new Frank, Frankie Lane..." and that radio gets switched off immediately. He's supposed to be on complete vocal rest, but when he sees a picture of Ava in the paper with another man, he gets the first plane to Spain where she's filming a movie. Her handsome co-star speaks no English, so Frank gets even nastier. "This is my woman, mi senorita, so adios!" he tells the poor guy. As always, being with Ava brings out the worst in both, but once they get the arguing done, then it's happiness and loving, at least until the next argument. "You're kinda cute when you can't speak," Ava says as Frank presents her with an expensive necklace.
On a rainy romantic day, sweetness in bed turns into a brawl because Ava says he's not "trying hard enough" to divorce Nancy and he can't have both women. "This is torture, Frank. It's wrecking my career. I can't do this anymore," she says. "Two minutes ago, we were happy. What happened?" "I was being a sap. I want you to go home and get a divorce," Ava demands and stalks out.
Back to the Paramount, the site of Frank's biggest success, he goes, but the joint is empty and after that, bookings are few and nothing exciting. Things are so bad that when he goes to light a cigarette at the stove and the pilot does not light, he can kill himself. So, he turns the gas all the way up. Luckily, he's caught in time (obviously). Did this ever really happen? It's tough to believe that someone like Frank Sinatra ever thought of suicide, but easier to accept the fact that it makes for a pungent dramatic twist. "It's torture when we're together and worse when we're not," Ava tells him as a way to cheer him up (?). With Ava in the audience at a New Jersey concert, he can sing perfectly.
It's at this concert that Frank meets Sam Giancana (Rod Steiger), and though Ava is worried that he's in the mafia, Frank says he owes his career to men like that. Even more unlikely in this room is columnist Earl Wilson, and it takes all of Ava's charm to get him to agree not to print a story about seeing her there.
Except Earl Wilson prints an article calling Frank and Ava Romeo and Juliet, which Nancy carps makes her "a villain for trying to keep my family together." For the 53rd time, Frank begs for a divorce, but this time, it works. When word gets out, a reporter asks Frank, "what are your wedding gifts to each other, boxing gloves?" Ava takes it all in stride, but when another reporter asks if it will be a "white wedding" Frank pushes him to the ground and breaks his camera. Ava, naturally, does not wear white. Set to "They Can't Take that Away From Me," Frank and Ava have a montage of great moments, even if one of them is a jealous spat ending in a kiss.
Ava is off to Africa to shoot "Mogambo" with Clark Gable and Frank doesn't trust her, so he goes along. He's obsessed with "From Here to Eternity" and knows the role of Maggio could revitalize his career. The heat is unbearable, but Ava thinks she might be pregnant, which is not good news for her because this role is too important for her. Frank gets good news, a telegram in Africa (uh huh) saying Columbia Pictures has agreed to test him for "From Here to Eternity" and though Ava isn't at all thrilled, he asks her for money to get back to the US.
The screen test is powerful, with Frank giving a tour-de-force, but bad news comes when Frank is told that Ava collapsed in Africa and was rushed to a hospital in London. When he gets there, she's actually in a hotel room dressed for dinner. "I was pregnant and now I'm not. I don't want to talk about it," she tells him. The loss of the baby is left a little vague, but if you bet on abortion, I think you have the safer bed. He thinks having a baby would be good for the marriage. "Did having a baby bring you and Nancy closer together?" she asks dryly? Ouch. Ava is off to a New Year's Eve party, and Frank roars, "walk out of that door and you walk out of my life!" However, the incessant pattern of good versus bad comes back AGAIN and Frank gets a call that he's won the part of Maggio. Unable to accept his success, Ava leaves while he's still on the phone.
As we all know, Frank wins a Best Supporting Actor Oscar (at the expense of a horse, if "The Godfather" is accurate) and his career is back, bigger than ever. He does movies and records, in that ring-a-ding-ding period of his life where he could do no wrong. Yet another montage takes care of the passage of time.
Frank misses another family event, but this time he has a good reason, Sammy has been in a car accident. We've seen Sammy twice, and only for half a second each time, but now he has a full dramatic scene, where he wonders how he'll dance with only one eye. "If I can't dance, I don't want to live," Sammy says as Frank trade vulgarities like teenagers. Frank takes him into the steam room in Vegas where the entire Rat Pack is gathered wearing eye patches like Sammy. Even JFK is there. Dino (Danny Gans) joins them and the three do pretty much the Rat Pack schtick, racism and all. When Frank introduces girlfriend Juliet Prowse from the stage, Mama Dolly quips, "what's he got at his front door, a turnstile?"
Well, speaking of JFK, he's running for President and Papa Joe comes a-callin' on Frank to enlist his friend Sam Giancana's help in securing the election. "What's in it for you? They gonna make you Ambassador to Italy or somethin'?" Sam wonders, but agrees to help. Frank loves being pals with the Kennedys, but practical Bobby Kennedy wants Sammy Davis removed from campaigning because he's black and about to marry white Mai Britt. Bobby has some god-awful reasoning to convince Frank to make Sammy back down, but he doesn't have to worry, because Sammy knows what's going on and even postpones his wedding.
Frank goes to visit "Chicky Baby" JFK in his new digs at the White House. Jack is excited for an upcoming visit to Los Angeles where he will stay with Frank, busy making "improvements" so the whole staff can fit. "I'll see you in the spring," Jack says to Frank on his way out. It's Peter Lawford who is sent to break the news to Frank that the Presidential visit is not happening. "You got no loyalty, you got no guts," Frank yells at Peter for taking sides with the Kennedys against him.
And the mob isn't any happier. With Bobby Kennedy cracking down on the mafia, Sam Giancana and his friends are in trouble and Frank is their link, though Frank is persona non grata at The White House pretty quickly. Sam wants payment on the favor of delivering West Virginia in the election, but Frank says he's the one who asked for the favor, not the Kennedys. It's getting very complicated. Frank has to shed friends just to look proper, but he packs them off with goodies like his music publishing company.
During his European tour, Frank gets to spend time with Ava in Spain, where she now lives. Why Spain? "They got people, real people," she says. He asks her to marry him again. "What could you possibly miss about me?" she asks and bolts. From here, it's the "One For My Baby" mini-montage where Frank watches JFK's funeral procession and cries.
On the set in 1965, Frank meets Mia Farrow (Nina Siemaszko). Frank offers an autograph and she jokes, "no, who are you?" Cue "You Make Me Feel So Young" as Frank and Mia begin their oddball romance. Poor young Mia isn't thrilled with Frank's house, as it's filled with pictures of Ava, and Frank never really cottons to Mia's vibe, which is anything but Old Hollywood. She meditates and reads (take that Ava) and wears love beads. They marry with Frank looking like he's getting hitched to Rosemary's baby itself. Oh, and she has bad taste in music. "It's not music, it's crap," Frank bellows as he grumbles about the state of music. Mia does have one good comeback when he complains about bad lyrics, going through the do-be-do-be-dos of "Strangers in the Night." They have the again inevitable conversation about her advancing career, she wants a baby ("my kids grew up thinking the telephone was their father") and he doesn't, and finally Mia puts her finger on it. "Hey, I'm not Ava!"
In other words, the marriage is doomed from the start. Rather than rehashing conversations Frank has had with either Nancy or Ava (mostly Ava), we breeze through the whole kooky romance at top speed. None of those glamorous sable-and-satin-drenched arguments like Frank and Ava, just stilted phone conversations and bing-bang-boom, it's over. One supposes that the Sinatra children were not at all fond of Stepmother Mia, because the rush job is very obvious.
By the time Frank divorces Mia, he's graying and getting heavy. But, the nurses at the hospital where Marty is dying still think he's pretty foxy. Frank confides in his father that "I'm thinking of leaving the business...I'm tired, tired of being in the spotlight. The music business changes so fast, I can't keep up with the next guy anymore. Maybe I should stop trying," he tells the man who never expected him to make it. He retires, just as he promised his father before Marty expired.
Less than two years later, in 1974, retirement is over. "That's Life." We're now into the tux and toupee years. But, he sells out Madison Square Garden and they still throw roses to the stage. No underwear, for granny panties aren't particularly aerodynamic. At the end of the song, Frank blows a kiss to the audience and the move ends.
Frank Sinatra never seemed so squeaky clean, but you know what? That's not such a bad thing. Despite the temper and such, he was one of the greatest entertainers of the 20th Century and he did lead a colorful life. It may not have been the Technicolor one on display here, but it was a great ride.
Comments? Questions? Laughs? Feel free to email me at hpmaraka@gmail.com so we can chat.
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