Turning to the Bard

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I like comedy.

Given a choice, I would prefer to watch a sitcom on TV than any other kind of show. Being a writer myself, I appreciate the well–crafted dialogue that is the hallmark of truly great comedy. But if the show is not a sitcom and it tries to do a crossover, it usually falls flat.

That was the problem for Twilight Zone on a few occasions. It was designed to be a dramatic program, and its comedy episodes generally did not work. A case in point is "The Bard," which first aired 55 years ago tomorrow night.

It was written by series creator Rod Serling and served as the finale for the fourth season. It was also Twilight Zone's final one–hour episode; the fifth season marked a return to the half–hour format. As I have mentioned on this blog, there were some excellent episodes in the one–hour format. "The Bard" was not one of them.

Jack Weston, whose work I usually enjoy, was a streetcar conductor–turned–aspiring TV screenwriter whose efforts kept getting rejected by TV executives. He was a shameless — and talentless — self–promoter who jumped at a chance to write a screenplay about black magic — even though he had no knowledge of black magic.

To make up for this deficiency he went to a bookstore in search of a book about black magic — and one literally flew off the shelves. It was loaded with spells, and Weston took it home with him. With the help of the book, Weston conjured up William Shakespeare (John Williams), who offered his services, and Weston took him up on it, intending to pass off Shakespeare's work as his own.

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Well, that was the plot in a nutshell.

Weston's play was accepted for production on a weekly TV playhouse program, and he was invited to appear on a program that featured all the hottest names in the industry.

But there were problems afoot, chiefly with Shakespeare, who resented not receiving credit for his considerable contributions. He agreed to stay until he had had a chance to assess the performances of the cast in a rehearsal the next day.

One of those cast members was Burt Reynolds.

Reynolds is known today as a movie actor, but in 1963 his experience was exclusively in television. His was not a new face — but it was a somewhat familiar face, having appeared in nearly two dozen TV series, almost always as a guest star.

He was a guest star in "The Bard," playing — fittingly — an actor named Rocky Rhodes, and he kept making noises about his "motivation."

It was all too much for Shakespeare, who decked Rhodes with a right cross and walked out on the rehearsal.

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That was a bit awkward for Weston, who had already been given his next assignment — an extensive program on American history. To meet it he conjured up several figures from American history — folks like Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Pocahontas and others.

Overcoming Stage Fright

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On this night in 1966, Bewitched aired its final black–and–white episode, "Prodigy."

That was a big deal in 1966. Color television was not nearly as prevalent then as it is today, but there were enough color television sets in homes across the country that many TV series were making the transition from black–and–white production to color production. Bewitched went to color programming when the next season began in the autumn of 1966.

At the time, the networks were known to precede broadcasts with special announcements if the episodes were being shown in color. Such announcements were not necessary for owners of black–and–white TV sets — after all, color programming still appeared black and white on those TVs — but I suppose it alerted owners of color TV sets that their investments were about to pay dividends.

That last episode was also the final appearance of Alice Pearce as the original Gladys Kravitz, the Stephenses' busybody neighbor. Pearce died of ovarian cancer three months before this episode aired, and she was replaced as Gladys by her friend, Sandra Gould, when that first color season began. Gould played Gladys for the remainder of the series' run.

Gould did such a good job that most viewers probably forgot Pearce ever played Gladys, just like most viewers didn't really seem to notice when the original Darrin (Dick York) left the series. (Personally, I never saw the episodes with Pearce until the series was in syndication, and I grew up believing she played a different character altogether. For me, Gould was always Gladys Kravitz.)

I suppose much of that was due to the appeal of the undisputed star of the show, Elizabeth Montgomery.

But while Montgomery was the star of the show, the star of the episode that aired 50 years ago tonight was Pearce, who invited Darrin and Samantha to come over to watch her violinist brother Louis' (Jack Weston) first nationally televised performance, prompting the Stephenses to recall the first time they met Louis.

The Kravitzes considered Darrin and Samantha responsible for Louis' success. He had been regarded as a prodigy when he was a child, but he had been emotionally scarred when, midway through a public performance at the age of 9, his knickers had fallen to the floor. While he still had great talent, he suffered from extreme stage fright and had not performed in public since. He had taken to traveling from one relative to the next and living with each as long as possible.

On the night the Stephenses met Louis, Gladys' husband Abner (George Tobias) dismissed Louis as a freeloader, but Gladys continued to defend him, repeating what was no doubt the family line about how talented Louis was and how he was destined for greatness. Louis seemed to believe it as well and argued with Abner when Abner implied that Louis was the family leech.

Louis was pompous and arrogant, all right, but he definitely possessed a skill that he demonstrated before the astonished Kravitzes and Stephenses. Well, Gladys wasn't astonished. She had known that Louis had talent all along and didn't hesitate to remind Abner of that.

I took piano lessons as a child (regretfully, I haven't kept it up as an adult, mostly due to lack of access to a piano), and the students performed in an end–of–the–year recital every year. As I recall, many of those kids suffered from stage fright, but they were afraid mostly of bad things that might happen, not a repeat of something that had already happened. At least Weston had a real experience he did not wish to repeat.

Samantha was convinced that Louis needed a gig to boost his confidence, and she got one for him — playing at a benefit event. It served its purpose, and Louis was on his way.

It was a pleasant enough episode to wrap up Bewitched's black–and–white era and to end Pearce's career. It wasn't the best episode Bewitched ever aired, but it was entertaining enough — and it helped to introduce viewers to Weston.

He wasn't exactly a newcomer in 1966, but he wasn't a household name, either. I guess his appearance on Bewitched 50 years ago tonight brought renewed attention to him — and opened the door for some of his best performances on TV and the big screen.

A 'Cactus Flower' in Full Bloom

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Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman): Mr. Greenfield, please don't handle the instruments.

Harvey (Jack Weston): I was reading the other day, a dentist in New Jersey has topless nurses.

Stephanie: I didn't know you were interested in reading.

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It was simply impossible to not like Goldie Hawn's character in "Cactus Flower," which premiered on this date in 1969.

She was so sweetly earnest, almost naive. There wasn't a deceitful bone in her body — which is probably why her relationship with Walter Matthau, playing a deceitful dentist, became so distasteful for her. That wasn't clear at first. Hawn and Matthau were having an affair. Hawn was led to believe Matthau was married with children. Turned out, though, that he was a bachelor; he just told women he had a family to avoid becoming too involved with them.

But Hawn's character had a strong sense of ethics. She wanted to be married, but she would not take another woman's man and she would not stand between a man and his children. If the relationship with Matthau continued, she would eventually violate those ethics so Matthau had to go.

But it was Hawn who apparently was on the way out when the movie began. She tried to kill herself, but a neighbor intervened — and it was when Matthau learned of the aborted suicide attempt that he realized how much he really cared for Hawn.

To save the relationship, Matthau needed a temporary wife so he turned to his dental assistant, played by Ingrid Bergman, who, as it turned out, had been nursing an infatuation with her boss for quite some time. Matthau told her he needed someone to pose as his wife and assure Hawn that the relationship was over and had been for awhile. Bergman resisted at first but eventually agreed to do it.

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Bergman brought two little boys with her (I think they were her nephews in the story) to her meeting with Hawn and did everything she could to sell the idea that her "marriage" to Matthau was over, but Hawn was a tough interrogator. She had to see Bergman with the boyfriend she claimed to have — he was played by Jack Weston, one of Matthau's patients — before she was convinced.

You know, even though Bergman was in her 50s when she made "Cactus Flower," it seems ironic that someone as beautiful as Bergman was a few decades earlier — in "Casablanca" and "Gaslight" and "Joan of Arc" — and was still beautiful when she made "Cactus Flower" ended up portraying a presumably plain dental assistant. But she did it well.

Perhaps so well that she was inspired to insist, five years later, that she play possibly the plainest character in "Murder on the Orient Express" — for which she was rewarded with an Oscar.

Hawn did win an Oscar (Best Supporting Actress) for her performance in "Cactus Flower" — which, as I recall, surprised some people. Perhaps not so much because of the caliber of her competition — as always, the nominees were good but none seemed to strike observers as particularly inevitable — but because the public memory knew Hawn as the ditzy blonde on TV's Laugh–In.

Stereotypes can be powerful things, and sometimes they distract from the truth — in this case, that Hawn deserved the Oscar she received. Fortunately, the Academy's voters weren't distracted from the truth.

And the truth — as it so often is — was complicated.

Hawn has never been the greatest actress who walked the earth. But she was convincing — and she was not nominated for Best Actress Who Ever Lived. She was so convincing that observers struggled to differentiate between Goldie Hawn the person and the airhead she played on Laugh–In. Like Suzanne Somers a decade later, she was much smarter than the characters she played.

"Cactus Flower" was filled with unexpected surprises — not unlike the cactus that Bergman kept on her desk.

One infrequently sees a flowering cactus, but it does happen, even in the most inhospitable of environments. The cactus that Bergman's character kept on her desk didn't bloom often, but, when it did, it was a sight to see.

I Recommend ...

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I don't often do this. Really.

But Turner Classic Movies will be showing a really good — and underappreciated — Walter Matthau movie tonight at 7 (Central).

It's called "A New Leaf," from 1971, and it was actually written and directed by Elaine May, who co–starred with Matthau.

May apparently tried (unsuccessfully) to have her name removed from the credits when the studio made considerable changes. In spite of those changes, the movie remained a dark and extraordinarily funny story about marriage, money and murder.

I don't want to give too much away because the fun of watching "A New Leaf" is experiencing it for yourself, but I feel I must give you at least a taste.

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Matthau, you see, played a thoroughly self–absorbed playboy who had wasted his inheritance and had no marketable skills.

His first thought was to commit suicide — "All I am, or was, is rich," he lamented, "and it's all I wanted to be" — but he couldn't bring himself to do that so he went for his second option — he had to borrow money from his uncle to keep up appearances while he tried to find a wealthy woman to marry. If he found such a girl and married her in a certain length of time, he would pay back his uncle and resume his extravagant lifestyle.

If, on the other hand, he failed to find someone to marry, his uncle would seize all his assets, and he would be poor. But that was no worse than the predicament in which he found himself. That did not really sink in, though, until his gentleman's gentleman observed that "in a country where every man is what he has, he who has very little is nobody very much."

So Matthau reluctantly embarked on his journey to find a mate — and had no success at first.

(While I know I'm going at this out of sequence, I must say that I think one of the funniest moments in a movie filled with funny moments comes early when Matthau's financial adviser, played by character actor William Redfield, tries to tell him that he is broke.

(He explains to Matthau that he has even dipped into his own pocket at times to cover bills for which Matthau had insufficient funds. He did this, he says, so he could have the satisfaction of knowing that he did not in any way contribute to Matthau's inevitable poverty.

(Matthau, of course, seems oblivious to what his adviser is telling him, insisting that he explain why shares of a stock that he owned had been sold without authorization. Those shares had been sold to raise funds to cover debts.)

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But then he met Henrietta Lowell (May), an isolated and eccentric young heiress, and he set about wooing her. To the amazement of his uncle, he won their wager by marrying May — but was already planning her demise for their honeymoon. However, his plans went unexpectedly off the track, thanks to a number of obstacles, not the least of which was the zany cast of supporting characters played by the likes of James Coco and Jack Weston.

And, if you only know Doris Roberts as the 60–ish matriarch of the Barone family for whom housework was a labor of love in Everybody Loves Raymond, you owe it to yourself to see her when she was about 40 and playing a paid housekeeper whose primary occupation was finding creative ways (which had nothing to do with love — except for the love of money) to supplement her already–extravagant pay.

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Roberts and the rest of May's household staff were not eager to share their cash cow with Matthau — and Matthau had no intention of sharing it with anyone.

Inevitably, there was a clash, and I'm sure you can guess which one won — but it's still fun to watch it happen.

What is even more fun to watch is the effect of May's endearing personality on Matthau in spite of his worst intentions.

Roger Ebert, the movie critic who died recently, wrote that "A New Leaf" was "hilarious and cockeyed and warm."

That about sums it up. Don't miss it.

'Wait Until Dark' Was Classic Suspense

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Few of their mid–20th century contemporaries could match the appeal of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly.

A large part of their appeal, I think, was the fact that they could be credible damsels in distress — but, when it became clear that no one was going to come to their rescue, they were able to rescue themselves ... plausibly.

There was steel beneath the facade.

Not an easy task, considering that both actresses, especially Hepburn, seemed rather frail. You wouldn't think from looking at them that either could stand up to a sudden gust of wind.

But, somehow, they did. It was largely because the characters they played were resourceful and independent — truly deserving of admiration.

My admiration for Kelly knows no bounds, but, frankly, Hepburn takes the prize for her performance in "Wait Until Dark," a movie that made its debut 45 years ago today.

Hepburn played a young blind woman who was believed to be in possession of a doll that had been used to smuggle heroin into the country.

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The doll had actually been given to Hepburn's husband by a woman he met on a flight. The doll's presence in the apartment was unknown to Hepburn.

But that was something that a trio of criminals — played by Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna and Jack Weston — who wanted the doll (or, rather, what was inside it) did not know. They assumed she knew things she did not.

And they tried to take advantage of her blindness, playing the roles of police officers who were investigating a suspicious death in the neighborhood. Through this ploy, they won her confidence, gained access to the apartment and searched unsuccessfully (and right under Hepburn's nose) for the doll.

With the help of a young girl named Gloria, Hepburn's character discovered what was really going on around her and fought back.

Modern audiences might not appreciate the way most of the action in the film takes place in a small apartment. But "Wait Until Dark" was a psychological thriller, and there are few scenes in movie history that are as gripping as the climactic struggle between Hepburn and her ruthless nemesis, played by Arkin.

Each time I have watched "Wait Until Dark" — and I have watched it many times — I have been struck by how effortlessly the movie leads the viewer to empathize with Hepburn's predicament.

That, it seems to me, is the essence of a truly suspenseful movie. The viewer can see the threats to Hepburn, but she cannot. It reminds me of what the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, used to say.

Hitchcock rejected the idea that suspense could be achieved merely by watching an explosion. True suspense, he said, came from letting the audience in on the presence of a threat — a ticking bomb, perhaps — of which none of the affected characters in the scene was aware.

Hepburn proved that he was right.