Out of the closet and Behind the Candelabra

Michael Douglas is mincing across my TV screen in Behind the Candelabra, the HBO teleflick in which the Oscar winning star of Wall Street and husband of Catherine Zeta Jones plays Liberace, the pianist known to his intimates as Lee. To call Liberace a “pianist” is a bit of a stretch. He played piano, and I think those who are better capable of judging musicianship than I would say he played well, but his skill at tinkling the ivories was not what made him famous.

“Flamboyant” is the word usually tossed around when Liberace’s name comes up, but it doesn’t go far enough. It would be more accurate, if a little rude and certainly politically incorrect, to say he was a flaming fruit. Long before anyone talked about coming out of the closet, Liberace’s door was ajar if not wide open. He stepped out of his closet and brought his sequined wardrobe with him, but drew the line at admitting he was homosexual. He successfully won lawsuits against newspapers that dared to print the truth even though everybody – everybody except, perhaps, the more naïve middle-aged women who comprised his fan base – knew he was gay. Like “flamboyant,” “gay” doesn’t go far enough either. Liberace was the embodiment of the once popular homosexual stereotype: a lisping, mincing queen. He didn’t crossdress in the usual sense, but what kind of man wears floor-length fur coats, sparkling rings on every finger, or appears on stage wearing hot pants while twirling a baton?

Why would anyone want to make a movie about Liberace almost three decades after his death?

Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar winning director of Traffic, is the auteur who did the unfathomable and made a movie with HBO based on the trashy memoir of Liberace’s final lover, Scott Thorson. It was Thorson who kicked down the entertainer’s closet door in 1982 when filing the first same-sex palimony suit against the star who denied having anything but a professional relationship with Thorson. When Liberace was hospitalized in 1986, his illness was said to be due to his watermelon diet. Finally, when he died, the medical examiner refused to accept the death certificate, and demanded an autopsy. It was then that the world learned that Liberace died from complications related to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the scourge of homosexuals that had claimed beefy matinee idol Rock Hudson a year earlier.

But why a movie about a campy figure unknown to most of the modern audience”

It can only be to titillate an audience curious about that gay sex. There’s very little insight in Richard LaGravenese’s screenplay, no real explanation as to why the world’s most blatantly obvious homosexual would deny the truth about his sexual proclivities for so long. We see him courting Thorson who moves into Liberace’s gaudy mansion where the male servants treat him with scorn. There’s a scene in which the two engage in anal sex (though no anus or penis appears on screen), and one at a triple X bookstore where Liberace visits a gloryhole. It’s a very seedy contrast to the showman’s otherwise luxurious life.

You have to hand it to Michael Douglas for having the guts to play this bizarre figure. When his father, Kirk, played Vincent Van Gogh, the tortured Dutch painter who, by all accounts, was heterosexual, John Wayne allegedly asked him why he bothered to play such a “pantywaist.” Imagine how the Duke would have felt about Kirk’s son playing Liberace? Douglas is good and seems to be enjoying himself. So does Matt Damon as Thorson. It’s Rob Lowe, however, who seems to be having the best time as a grotesque doctor who prescribes drugs to help Thorson lose weight. Wearing a hideous wig and a too-tight shirt, Lowe always seems to be stifling a laugh.

That’s what the audience is likely to do, too, when watching Behind the Candelabra.

© 2014 Brian W. Fairbanks


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King of Kings (1961)

King of Kings was released in 1961 by Metro Goldwyn Mayer, which promoted it with a poster design similar to their 1959 Ben Hur (with the title carved in stone), but it was actually an independent production from Samuel Bronston who also made El Cid before going bankrupt with two bac-to-back 1964 flops, Fall of the Roman Empire and Circus World. King of Kings was actually a project begun by Cecil B. DeMille who planned to remake his 1925 silent as a follow up to 1956’s The Ten Commandments. After DeMille’s death, the project fell to Bronston and director Nicholas Ray. DeMille cast 50-year-old H.B. Warner, now most familiar to audiences as the pharmacist of It’s a Wonderful Life, as Jesus in the earlier production. Here the role is played by 33-year-old Jeffrey Hunter.

I don’t care for Hunter’s wispy beard or the bangs which curl slightly above his eyebrows, but his blue eyes radiate compassion and make him a very impressive Jesus. The rest of the cast is good, too, especially Hurd Hatfield as an appropriately arrogant Pontius Pilate, Harry Guardino as a hot-tempered Barabbas, and Robert Ryan, an actor whose specialty was playing psychos, as a grizzled John the Baptist. Best of all for fallen man is Brigid Bazlen as a cute, kittenish, and very sexy Salome whose stepfather, King Herod Antipus (Frank Thring), finds so fetching that he offers her anything she wants – the throne of her mother, half his entire kingdom – if she will dance for him.

Christianity is sneered at by those desiring to be hip, so director Ray’s cult following has all but ignored his impressive work on this biblical epic. The crucifixion is movingly depicted with the sky growing dark and gloomy behind the image of the three crosses at Calvary once Jesus dies and His spirit ascends to heaven. Other impressive imagery abounds, including at the conclusion when Jesus’ shadow overlaps with the fishing nets that his apostles have laid out on the shore of Galilee. Composer Miklos Rosza won an Oscar for Ben Hur, but his score here may be superior. Orson Welles provides a narration to which Ray Bradbury is rumored to have contributed, but receives no on-screen credit (nor does Bradbury with the screenplay carrying only the name of Philip Yordan).

King of Kings performed adequately at the box-office, but bypassed the big three networks when it was released to television. It went directly to the local stations where it was a staple on many a Good Friday of my youth. Even without that nostalgic appeal, it holds up well, and is a moving experience.

Brian W. Fairbanks

© 2014 Brian W. Fairbanks


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The Bible . . . In the Beginning

Released by Twentieth Century Fox in 1966, The Bible . . . In the Beginning was produced by Dino DeLaurentis, the Italian mogul who made just about every kind of film during his lengthy career but is probably most famous, or infamous, for the 1976 remake of King Kong.

The subtitle (. . . In the Beginning) was hastily added to warn audiences that this was not an attempt to cram the entire Old and New Testaments into one three hour film. The movie might have been more accurately titled Genesis, but that title would have been familiar only to those who have actually read the Bible rather than bought a copy to place on the coffee table beside a bowl of plastic fruit.

The movie opens with God creating the heavens and the earth. Of course, we don’t see God, only lots of multi-colored mist and fog with a few clouds thrown in followed by shots of mountains and oceans and trees. Today, when more eye dazzling effects can be achieved on a computer, the opening is impressive for director John Huston’s deep-voiced reading of text from the King James Bible. That’s Huston again voicing the unseen serpent in the Garden of Eden who instigates man’s fall. The music, the subtle use of strings and foreboding flutes – the work of composer Toshiro Mayuzumi – adds a lot to this scene in which Michael Parks and Ella Bergryd play Adam and Eve.

Banished from the garden, the couple follows God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, giving birth to Cain and Abel. Cain is played by Richard Harris, but Abel is swiftly murdered and appears too briefly to warrant the presence of a high-priced star.

We soon move on to the story of Noah, and here the movie gets positively surreal since Noah is played by John Huston who continues to serve as narrator. We now have Huston talking to himself. A mob of heathens mock him as he builds the ark, and we can tell they’re heathens because of their colorful garb, quite a contrast to Noah’s dull sackcloth. The ark, though nicely made, looks too small to accommodate one male and one female representative of every living creature, but their entrance is the highlight of the film. Elephants, giraffes, monkeys, tigers, ducks, birds, turtles, and so on, all board the ark in pairs, doing so with none of the chaos found in the hallway of an elementary school when a class lines up to visit the bathroom. This sequence is cleverly and sweetly done, with one of Noah’s daughters running after a turtle that loses its way.

Once the rain falls and the ark rises, Noah remains calm, but then he’s also the director, less at the mercy of God than the film’s budget. Flooding the world has its advantages, but it does not drown out evil. Naughty man builds the Tower of Babel under the direction of Nimrod who “stores up thunder and wears the lightning like a crown.” The tower, more than likely a matte painting or a miniature, is quite a sight, as is Nimrod himself, played with heavy mascara by Stephen Boyd.

Ten generations later, Abraham is born and looks like George C. Scott. His wife, Sarai, looks like Ava Gardner. Scott was allegedly drunk during filming and his inebriated pursuit of Gardner raised the ire of director Huston. The tension may explain why this segment seems longer and slower paced than the others. When three angels appear to tell Abraham to rescue his brother, Lot, from Sodom and Gomorrah, these apparitions are portrayed by an ethereal Peter O’ Toole. Of course, Sodom is a hotbed of sin, filled with homosexuals and scantily clad women, all wearing exotic makeup and cavorting about to the sound of demented laughter and cracking whips. Scott and O’ Toole summon all their acting skills to convince us that they are offended.

The Abraham segment, culminating with the near sacrifice of his son, Isaac, concludes the film.

The screenplay is credited to Christopher Fry who salvaged, without screen credit, the script for Ben Hur. The credits for The Bible say that Fry was “assisted by Jonathan Griffin, Ivo Perilli, and Vittorio Bonicelli.” That seems like a lot of writers for a script built upon words from the book for which the film is named.

The Bible . . . In the Beginning doesn’t overwhelm with either its effects or dramatics, but it holds the attention, entertains, and adheres closely to scripture.

Brian W. Fairbanks

© 2014 Brian W. Fairbanks


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Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: Who's Afraid of Sadomasochism?

When Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf was released in summer 1966, its coarse language (several “goddamns,” at least one “Up yours,” and a lot of other words and phrases thought too profane for the movies) made Warner Bros. designate it for “Adults Only,” three years before the MPAA introduced the first edition of its rating system: G (general audiences), M (mature), R (restricted), and X (no one under 17 admitted).

The film was still controversial when it had its television premiere on The CBS Thursday Night Movies in February 1973. In that pre-home video and cable era, a major movie’s TV debut was a big event, but many of the network’s affiliates refused to carry the prime-time broadcast, choosing to air it instead following the 11 o’ clock news.

Based on Edward Albee’s play, considered by many the finest theatrical piece of the 1960s, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf gave Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton their finest hour on screen as a couple. It remains powerful, but the big revelation at the end – George and Martha are childless and their profound disappointment leads them into the sick games of verbal abuse that their two young guests are drawn into – is not convincing. The playwright had to tie things up at the end, to explain “motivation,” but the couple’s failure to go forth and multiply was merely a safe and acceptable denouement for audiences that would likely have been appalled at the true nature of George and Martha’s relationship.

This is a marriage built on sadomasochism. Martha is the dominant (or “top”) dishing out abuse to George, the self-loathing but appreciative submissive (“bottom”) who derives sexual satisfaction from humiliation. In the ‘60s, some of the more daring and perceptive critics, aware that Albee is gay, saw George and Martha as symbolizing a homosexual couple at a time before Gay Liberation when such a thing was considered shockingly perverse. One doesn’t have to bring homosexuality into the equation, however, since sadomasochism is neither gay nor straight, and is also practiced by heterosexuals. Some of these relationships are strictly professional with the submissive paying the dominatrix to disparage his manhood and humiliate him sexually, as Martha humiliates George, calling him a “flop” and cuckolding him with his younger more athletic colleague.

Ignore the phony conclusion, and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is still powerful drama.

Although he was initially considered miscast as George, the diffident associate professor of History at a New England college, Burton may have been telling the truth when he told director Mike Nichols, “I am George.” As his recently published diaries attest, Burton was a frustrated scholar whose first love was not acting (or drinking and sex), but “a book with lovely words in it.”

© 2014 Brian W. Fairbanks


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