On the Long Road With the Great Leslie and Professor Fate

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Leslie (Tony Curtis): Are you a native of Burracho?

Lily Olay (Dorothy Provine): I ain't no native. I was born here!

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"The Great Race," which made its theatrical debut half a century ago on this day in 1965, was pure slapstick from start to finish. If there was any doubt, the opening credits included this tribute: "For Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy."

It was set shortly after the turn of the 20th century. It was about a New York–to–Paris (by way of the Bering Strait) road race, and it was directed by Blake Edwards at a time when he was getting rave reviews for his early "Pink Panther" pictures — if you are familiar with his directorial style, you could see similarities between "The Great Race" and Edwards' other comedies.

Edwards made many of those movies, of course, with the great Peter Sellers, who had nothing to do with "The Great Race." In "The Great Race," Edwards worked with another of his frequent collaborators, Jack Lemmon.

The project also reunited Lemmon with his "Some Like It Hot" co–star, Tony Curtis, this time as genuine rivals (rather than the implied rivals — for Marilyn Monroe's affections — that they were in "Some Like It Hot"). And, although she seemed to shift her loyalties throughout the movie, Natalie Wood, as a feminist journalist reporting on the race, played Curtis' love interest.

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Kind of an interesting twist, given that, only a few months earlier, Curtis and Wood had been adversarial co–stars in "Sex and the Single Girl."

In the context of 1965, "The Great Race" was a star–studded show with prominent people showing up even in small roles. Vivian Vance (probably best known as Ethel Mertz in the I Love Lucy sitcom), Keenan Wynn, Peter Falk, Larry Storch were there — along with others whose faces you probably would recognize even if you never knew their names.

"The Great Race" clearly identified the good guy and the bad guy. Curtis (The Great Leslie) was the good guy who always dressed in white; Lemmon (Professor Fate) was the bad guy, always dressed in black. And they periodically swapped the lead — for the screwiest of reasons.

In the end, the good guy seemed to be on the brink of victory — but he gave it all up to prove to Natalie Wood that he loved her.

When he stopped his vehicle inches from the finish line, Wood's character protested, "What are you doing?"

"Proving that I love you," Curtis replied.

"But you'll lose the race," Wood said.

"Can you think of a better way to prove it?" he asked before kissing her in a passionate embrace.

Sorta reminiscent of the Sylvester Stallone/"Rocky" experience, eh? When Rocky lost the fight and won the girl. Yo, Adrian.

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Max (Peter Falk): We gotta do something.

Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon): Oh, don't worry. Before this iceberg melts and we drown like rats, we're going to do plenty.

Max: Yeah? What?

Professor Fate: We're gonna starve!

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But Professor Fate wouldn't take a victory that way, though. After all, he had a reputation ...

"The Great Race" was terrific entertainment — complete with an honest–to–God pie fight near the end. Wood got pelted numerous times, but Curtis' character seemed unusually blessed, walking through a crossfire of pies without getting hit once, his all–white duds showing not even a trace of fallout from a pie — until almost the end of the fight.

Meanwhile, Lemmon's double, a dandified drunkard of a king, got hit with a brandy pie and encouraged the participants in the pie fight to hit him with more brandy pies, then got hit with a rum pie and scolded them with the admonition, "I never mix my pies!"

At the Oscars, "The Great Race" beat "Von Ryan's Express" for Best Sound Editing — and lost for Best Sound Mixing, Best Color Cinematography and Best Film Editing. Although he wasn't nominated for his work on "The Great Race," composer Henry Mancini went on to win four Oscars in his lifetime.

A Not-So-Perfect 10

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George (Dudley Moore): If you were dancing with your wife, or girlfriend you knew in high school, and you said to her, 'Darling, they're playing our song,' do you know what they'd be playing?

Don (Brian Dennehy): What?

George: 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road.'

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Appropriately, Blake Edwards' "10," which made its debut 35 years ago today and had a wedding as its subtext, offered something — or, rather, someone — old and something (someone) new. (The something borrowed and something blue parts might apply, too. Kinda depends on how those terms are defined.)

Bo Derek, the comely co–star, wasn't exactly new to movie audiences — but she might as well have been. Her very first movie appearance was also rather brief — 1977's "Orca." Audiences didn't have a lot of time to see her in that one.

"10" was her second movie, and it gave her considerably more exposure. It doesn't appear to have led to better roles in better movies, though. Seems that "10" was the high point of her career.

According to her co–star, Dudley Moore, she was a perfect 10. Hence, the title.

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Whether she really was a perfect 10 was — as beauty always is — in the eye of the beholder. But there was certainly a widespread public impression that she was. After being in "10," Derek was featured naked in men's magazines and appeared in movies that always seemed to show her in varying stages of undress; to be fair, perhaps there were exceptions to that, but none come to mind. (After awhile, she kind of faded from public view, seemingly having cashed in on her 15 minutes of fame.) Her braided hairstyle was adopted by young girls across the nation.

America was in the grip of a full–fledged Bo frenzy. "10" made her a superstar.

Moore, on the other hand, wasn't new. He had been appearing in movies for more than 10 years, and many moviegoers probably recognized his face, but he only managed to make his career breakthrough with "10," which he followed with "Arthur" a couple of years later. For awhile there, Moore, too, was a superstar.

In "10," Moore played a middle–aged man who was going through a midlife crisis. He seemed to have everything a man could want — a successful career, a beautiful home, a Rolls–Royce, a beautiful girlfriend (Julie Andrews). But it wasn't enough.

He fell victim to that nagging suspicion that nearly everyone must have at some point — that life was passing him by. As is so often the case with men, a big part of his melancholy had to do with his belief that an exciting sex life was history for him.

He found himself stealing glances at provocatively dressed young girls as they walked along the street, then looking away if it seemed they were on to him, and he was jealous of a neighbor he watched through his telescope. This neighbor seemed to be having orgies every day and every night.

One day, Moore caught a glimpse of Derek on her way to her wedding — and was smitten with her. (She wasn't actually a 10, he told his therapist. More like an 11.)

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So smitten that he followed the newlyweds on their honeymoon to Mexico — and wound up rescuing the groom, who had fallen asleep on his surfboard and drifted out to sea.

The groom wasn't injured — in spite of a near–encounter with a shark — but he was badly sunburned and had to spend a couple of days in the hospital.

In his absence, Moore's character gallantly paid Derek a visit and took her out to dinner. Upon their return to her room, she started to seduce him (which took little effort) — and kicked off a modest boom in popularity for Maurice Ravel's "Bolero" in the process.

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It was ironic, I suppose, that "10" came to be closely associated with "Bolero." The movie's only Oscar nominations were for its music — Best Original Score and Best Original Song, both the work of Henry Mancini.

As Derek and Moore were becoming intimate, the phone rang. It was the groom, and he spoke to both, apparently never guessing what he had interrupted.

When the phone call was over, Moore's character began having second thoughts and realized that the sexual relationship meant something completely different to Derek than it did to him. Maybe it was a generational thing. Anyway, he returned to America and tried to resume his previous relationship, reconciling with Andrews.

I guess that was the most surprising (and, in many ways, most rewarding) twist of all for me. It may seem hackneyed now, but, when I first saw it, it was surprising that, with the buildup for the movie, Moore chose in the end to stick with the faithful lover.

Maturity and personal values won over immaturity and impulsive infatuation. Moore's character was more mature than anyone guessed. Who knew?

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Dee Wallace, whom I have admired for many years. She is primarily known for roles that featured her more prominently, particularly as the young mother in "E.T.," and, more often than not, I have thought that she did quite well, but her performance in a supporting role in "10" really was remarkable, even by her own standards.

Wallace played a young woman who met Moore on his impulse trip to Mexico, and they hit it off in the hotel lounge. They returned to his room where they started to make love — but Moore's character was obsessed with Derek, and he was unable to perform with Wallace. She took it personally, and Moore tried to tell her it was a mistake to take it that way.

Wallace tried to relieve Moore of any guilt, explaining that something like that had happened with another boyfriend — who had since married and fathered several children. She told him not to blame himself, and there was something genuinely moving about her assertion that "Some of us just don't bring out the man in men." That was a reminder of the often unrealistic expectations we — and society — place on ourselves.

It was a stark contrast to the mood of the rest of the movie, which sometimes bordered on exploitation of Derek and other sexy young bodies. But the script was smarter than that. It managed to resist the temptation to pander. And it offered a generous helping of surprises, like Wallace's introspective observation and Moore's principled decency.

I thought Wallace deserved a nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but she didn't get one.

Frankly, I always thought it was ironic that Derek came to be regarded as a sex symbol after appearing in "10." Other actresses in the movie (some of them uncredited) showed far more skin than Derek did. Through the first three–quarters of the movie, her most revealing scenes were in a decidedly unsexy one–piece swimsuit (ironically, CNN's Emanuella Grinberg recently asserted that the one–piece is staging a comeback), and her nude scenes with Moore were dimly lit.

Perhaps it was an example of the triumph of effective marketing.

Firing a Shot in the Dark

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Clouseau (Peter Sellers): Facts, Hercule, facts! Nothing matters but the facts. Without them the science of criminal investigation is nothing more than a guessing game.

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Some of my fondest memories from my childhood are of my family watching Blake Edwards' timeless "Pink Panther" movies. There was another family with whom we liked to watch those movies — but we got a kick out of the Pink Panther even if our friends weren't there.

We were positively obsessive on the subject. There's no telling how many times we watched those movies on TV and laughed uproariously at the same things each time (as if we had never heard or seen them before). Some of Clouseau's lines became running jokes in my family.

(Interestingly, after Sellers died in 1980, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Sellers' trademark accent was developed in "A Shot in the Dark," not in the original "The Pink Panther."

("It came from this brilliant concierge in a hotel I used to stay at in Paris," Sellers told Ebert. "He was a master of dealing with American tourists. He'd talk to them in a strange accent that wasn't French but sounded French to an English speaker.")

The only movie in the series that did not have "Pink Panther" in the title was "A Shot in the Dark," which premiered on this day in 1964. That was before my time. Mom and Dad may well have gone to see it at the theater, but I only saw it on TV until once, when I was in high school, an area theater held a Pink Panther movie marathon. I remember taking my girlfriend to see it.

"A Shot in the Dark" was also the only movie in that series that starred Peter Sellers and did not have an animated sequence in the opening credits with the pink panther cartoon character that became so popular on Saturday mornings ("Inspector Clouseau," which starred Alan Arkin in Sellers' role, also had no animation).

Here is the gist of the story. A murder was committed at a palatial French estate, and the prime suspect was the maid (Elke Sommer). The chief inspector (Herbert Lom) was ready to make an arrest, but the incredibly inept Inspector Clouseau stepped in to conduct his own investigation.

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Clouseau, you see, had fallen in love with Sommer. There was a series of murders, the evidence in each pointing to Sommer, and every time Sommer was picked up by the police — but Sellers managed to free her each time.

Sellers always seemed to have beautiful women co–starring with him, but Sommer may have been his most beautiful "Pink Panther" co–star. It isn't difficult to understand why Sellers' character was so smitten, but in the end, even his detractors had to admit that he was spot–on in his judgments that Sommer was not guilty.

Although Sommer was innocent, "A Shot in the Dark" still managed to find ways to use her physical attributes in not–so–innocent ways.

The funniest example probably came when Sellers and Sommer were arrested for public nudity after escaping a nudist colony.

It was actually a funny escalation of an ongoing joke in which Sellers, in his bungling Clouseau way, always managed to be in the wrong place at the right time and was arrested for, in succession, selling balloons, selling paintings and hunting, each time without a license.

Those first three times, viewers could see, after Clouseau had been arrested, a paddywagon on its way to the police station, presumably with Clouseau inside, and the security officers standing on the vehicle's running boards looking bored and disinterested.

But when the paddywagon presumably contained Sellers and Sommer, both nude, the officers could be seen with their faces pressed against the paddywagon's tiny windows.

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As I say, this was the second of the "Pink Panther" movies, but it was the one that really established the Clouseau character — as well as Dreyfuss' frantic eye twitching and Kato's judo ambushes.

Mom loved it all — the fractured French accent, Clouseau's clumsiness, everything. She would speak in his accent, sometimes using lines from the movies, sometimes using lines she made up but delivered in that accent. When she wanted to confer with a member of the family about something, she would say, "I must have speaks with you." (I don't remember offhand which movie that line was from. I don't think it was "A Shot in the Dark.")

I can only imagine the kind of conversation she might have had with Sellers' concierge. They might have needed an army of translators.

I am very fond of the "Pink Panther" movies and always try to watch when one is on TV because, well, they are funny but also because of Mom. Of course, I know, when I sit down to watch one, that I will be reminded of her, but that is OK.

They bring back happy memories for me.

Remembering Blake Edwards

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One of the most cherished memories of my childhood is of seeing "Pink Panther" movies with my parents and certain family friends.

And those memories came flooding back to me when I heard that director Blake Edwards had died at the age of 88. Edwards, of course, directed the "Pink Panther" movies ("The Pink Panther," "A Shot in the Dark," "The Return of the Pink Panther" and "The Pink Panther Strikes Again") in the 1960s and 1970s.

(By the way, you can see "A Shot in the Dark" on Turner Classic Movies this Monday at 10 a.m. Central.)

What memories they were.

I remembered sitting in movie theaters and laughing with my parents at Peter Sellers' bumbling Inspector Clouseau. My memory is that it was fairly easy to get my mother to laugh at the movies, but my father seldom laughed aloud unless he was really amused — and he was always laughing at the "Pink Panther" movies, deep rumbling laughs that came from somewhere deep inside.

It was like the laugh bubbled to the surface, and he simply couldn't contain it even if he wanted to.

I know a new generation of moviegoers thinks of Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau, but Sellers is the original.

Sellers alone, though, couldn't pull it off. He needed Edwards, and, in my mind, Edwards and Sellers are forever linked, thanks to their work on those movies.

That's strange, I suppose, because they were hardly buddies. Sellers, who died in 1980, could be hard to work with. I have heard there were times when he and Edwards stopped speaking in the midst of making their films. Must have made it rather difficult to complete the films.

But Edwards always respected Sellers' talent. When he made "Trail of the Pink Panther" two years after Sellers' death and included outtakes and deleted scenes from other movies in the series, Edwards dedicated it to Sellers' memory: "To Peter ... The one and only Inspector Clouseau."

My mother didn't live long enough to see the Steve Martin version, but I suspect she would have agreed with Edwards.

I think she would have been adamant about it. There was only one Clouseau.

And the truth is that, although I strongly associate Edwards with Sellers, much as I do Robert Redford and Paul Newman, their collaborations represent small fractions of their careers.

Sellers worked with many directors, most of whom — apparently — found him hard to work with.

Edwards, as many people don't realize, began as an actor, getting small roles in some pretty classic movies (like "The Best Years of Our Lives" and "A Guy Named Joe," which was remade by Steven Spielberg as "Always") and big roles in some pretty forgettable ones.

Perhaps that gave him insights that helped him when he made his transition into the next phase of his career.

By the time he was in his 30s, Edwards had moved behind the camera, working first as a screenwriter, then as a director, and it was as a director that he made his reputation, mostly with comedies, although one of his earliest directorial successes was a decidedly dramatic tale, "Days of Wine and Roses."

A few years later, the "Pink Panther" franchise was born.

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And it spawned all sorts of running jokes in my family, much of it centered on Sellers' exaggerated French accent as Inspector Clouseau.

My mother (who, I always suspected, would have loved to participate in one of Carol Burnett's parodies of movies or TV shows) would begin speaking in Clouseauese almost without notice — but she usually had to be in the company of folks who would understand.

For example, the phone would ring and she would say, in her best Clouseau impression, "The phin is ringing" — with extra emphasis on the G's in "ringing."

Or she would speak of a "minkey." (That's the Clouseau pronunciation of "monkey.")

And everyone in her presence would crack up — provided, of course, that they were in on the joke. Not everyone was so Mom picked her moments for that sort of thing initially. Later in her life, she was pretty open and uninhibited about it.

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By the time the final "Pink Panther" movie to be made in Sellers' lifetime was released, the running jokes were so widely known among devotees of the series that they served as pretty much the foundation of the plot for the former chief inspector's conspiracy to assassinate Clouseau.

The things that annoyed him the most about Clouseau were the things that made audiences laugh. It was movie magic.

Sadly, there were no other Edwards–Sellers collaborations after "The Pink Panther Strikes Again."

Edwards continued to entertain audiences ...

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... with movies like "10."

And he worked with his wife, the incomparable Julie Andrews, in many of his films, like "S.O.B." and "Victor/Victoria" as well as "10."

But his career sort of tapered off after that. He made a few more movies, but it has been nearly 20 years since his last one.

Nevertheless, he was recognized by the Academy Awards in 2004 for his life's work. And, in true Blake Edwards/Inspector Clouseau fashion, he made a slaptstick entrance and acceptance speech (after being introduced by Jim Carrey).

I've heard that, on that night, Edwards began planning a remake of "10" — a remake that, unfortunately, he never made.

It would have been interesting — and probably quite entertaining — to see what kind of spin he might have given the story a quarter of a century later.