What a Way to Go

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things just don't work out. Sometimes, no matter how much money and starpower you put into a movie, it just doesn't turn out. Such is the trouble with What a Way to Go.

Shirley MacLaine is our lead, with Gene Kelly, Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum AND Paul Newman as her leading men. Screenplay by Comden & Green, costumes by Edith Head, hair by Sydney Guilaroff, jewels by Harry Winston. Yet, somehow, What a Way to Go doesn't quite get there. It wants to be an outrageous, self-mocking comedy, but it's afraid to muss its hair or make any waves. So why watch it then? Well..

Edith Head's career contained many dazzling achievements, from Elizabeth Taylor in a A Place in the Sun to Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard to Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief. In What a Way to Go, Head was, well, given her head--and half a million dollars, which was some serious scratch back in 1964. Shirley MacLaine is attired in a series of fur hats, beaded gowns and marabou pajamas that would knock the most discerning eye out. If you lean back, put some Peggy Lee or Raveonettes on the stereo, pop open a bottle of bubbly and let the fashion show commence, What a Way to Go is far more enjoyable.

So, out opening introduces us to fabulously wealthy widow Shirley, who is trying to give her fortune away to the U.S. government. See, every one of her husbands has gotten rich and then died while she was married to them Since she actually loved her husbands, this is problematic and she thinks she's cursed. We are told the story in flashback as she tells it to a psychiatrist (part of the telling-it-to-your-shrink genre that was popular for a bit.)

Actually, this would be a great film for little girls with all the pink & sparkly & fancy.

Well, little girls who can find the humor in death, anyway.

We start with the young Shirley flouncing around the family home with drawn-on freckles and a giant lollipop. Her mother rants about the importance of "money success money success"--even for what's basically a 90-second role, they got Marx Brother foil Margaret Dumont. We immediately get the heavily parodic tone of the movie, but somehow it feels forced, not funny. Perhaps Frank Tashlin or a Billy Wilder could have gotten it right but, instead, one gets the feeling that What a Way to Go is waiting for a punchline that never comes, which is actually sort of is--it's a comedy with virtually no jokes, just a jokey tone. I mean, if you're already making a comedy predicated on multiple deaths, why are you playing everything else vanilla?

"You turned out real beautiful! You have something to sell!
Take a mother's advice and sell it now!"

(Yes, we're all told this is bad advice. But, frankly, as someone who's been there, I wish i'd sold it when i still looked like a damn Barbie doll. Prince Charming ain't coming, sweet cheeks, and it's better to wind up with something than nothing. If I could go back in time and tell myself one thing, it would be this. So i'm telling you in case you can use it. Or, if find yourself back in time and run into me, pass on the message.)

Here we meet Dean Martin as the town rich asshole--Shirl's boyfriend, even though she hates him. We're supposed to hate Dean, but it's hard to hate Dean. We also get Dick Van Dyke as some kind of general store-owning, Thoreau-reading proto-hippie, who becomes Mr. MacLaine #1.

Her time as Van Dyke's bride is rendered as a silent movie with her as Mabel Normand and him as
Buster Keaton. This conceit of rendering each romance in a different style will continue--Paul Newman's New Wave art film, Robert Mitchum's big-budget epic, Gene Kelly's flashy musical--but it never quite lands. It may be because the film never quite abandon's its own 20th Century Fox production values to embrace those of the style it intends to inhabit.

So Dino insults Dick, so Dick decides to make his general store into Wal-Mart and run local scion Dean out of business. Doing so makes him rich, but deprives Shirley of his company and eventually he dies from counting his money too hard or something...

Sad Shirl arrives in Paris, where she meets boorish beatnik Paul Newman, who is weirdly like some kind of post-millennial hipster with his machines that paint and his being a dick to the locals and his beard. But Shirley is happy in her Parisian garret with her bullet bra and Paul Newman. Who wouldn't be?

(Few invoke as much of a universal "I'd hit that" as young Paul Newman. I still recall sitting in Lucy's bar on Avenue A sometime back in the 90s, watching The Long Hot Summer with my friend Denise and Lucy, the little Ukranian babushka who owned the place. When Paul first appeared shirtless and sweaty, Lucy poured us all a shot of whiskey and we drank to his hotness...)

Anyhow, What a Way to Go. So, Paul Newman become a famous painter (thus giving Edith Head reason to design Shirley some dope outfits that match his paintings and look great with her Anna Karina wig) but this means he has no time for his lady. We're supposed to be charmed by the fact that Shirley wants a man who spends his every waking minute with her but, frankly, it seems kind of clingy and needy... or maybe she's a nymphomaniac and needs a man who has no job but giving her some D every 20 minutes. Add in the fact that she seems to have no personality characteristic besides a love for pretty clothes and the need to latch onto a man (Hey, it's Jupiter Ascending!) and we have a lead character with no character. Which would be fine if it were obscured by a nonstop barrage of jokes, but it's not. Oh, believe me, it's not...

So, anyway, Newman buys it at the hands (brushes? rollers? poky sticks?) of one of his steampunk painting machines (see, told you he was a hipster) but sales of his paintings have left Shirley, once again, a rich widow....

The widow runs across the Millionaire Playboy, played by Robert Mitchum. As always, Mitchum is a welcome presence and he and MacLaine have a nice chemistry--probably because they had it in real life in the form of a multi-year affair... anyway. He's a fabulously wealthy captain of industry.

The "Lush Budgett Production" joke is funny the first or second time. By use #9 they've pretty much torn it and are you seriously telling me that, with all the drunken, bitter, overeducated screeenwriters in Hollywood, you could only come up with ONE pun on a movie mogul's name. Anyway, we do at least get the most magnificently glamorous costumes. Bow down to Edith Head!

 

So there's that and then there's Mitch and Shirley repeating "Remind me to tell you that I love you" a few dozen times. It is literally a 20-minute sequence that hangs on two jokes repeated over and over again. A large part of the problem with What a Way to Go is that it is one of the most lazily written films ever made--in scenes like this, you get the feeling that Betty Comden and Adolph Green didn't even finish it. The wit that made Singin' in the Rain and Auntie Mame is nowhere here apparent. But, still, the outfits...

Mitchum dies when they go back to the farm he grew up on--he's been fixated on the cow he had as a boy, Melissa, throughout the film. It makes you sorry they didn't include any if the many bestiality jokes Mitchum must've made off-camera. Especially since he dies trying to milk a bull...

Husband number next is Gene Kelly, a struggling hoofer. We get a nice dance number starring Kelly and MacLaine and then some more non-comedy as Kelly, of course, becomes rich and famous. Since his name is Pinky, he demands that everything be painted pink, which leads to some really great lewks, both is set and in costume, if nothing else (and there is pretty much nothing else)...

But, again, we have our lazy screenwriters who come up with no other joke other than "everything's pink!" Kelly becomes an unbearable stereotype of a narcissistic Hollywood star and comes off as an asshole, not a comedian. Maybe because he doesn't have any funny lines. Everything's pink! Geddit? He's a jerk! Geddit? Anyway, he dies too when his fans swamp him Day of the Locust style. So funny!

Which brings us back to the present, and you can guess whether Shirley decides to go with the psychiatrist, go back to a now-broke Dean Martin or strike out on her own to find her own purpose in life beyond obsessive devotion to a man. Well, I'm sure you can guess which one is not happening...

Apparently the first choice for the lead role in What a Way to Go was Marilyn Monroe and one cannot help but thinks she would have been better--MacLaine was a professional dancer and a skilled comedienne, but somehow she didn't have the aptitude for physical comedy nor the innocent deadpan that Monroe possessed. Few played the straight woman as well as she did and if What a Way to Go had let its male leads go to town with a sort of reverse Lorelei Lee at its center... that might have worked. Or Comden & Green could have just gotten off of their asses and written some jokes.

Still, the costumes--72 of them, if you're counting--are to die for. If you own a hair salon or boutique or a bar that does brisk sales in rosé, you should consider putting What a Way to Go on your screens just for the visuals. Just be sure and turn the sound off. No one wants to hear that "remind me to tell you that I love you" joke again....

His Kind of Woman

When you think of great teams from the golden age of cinema, you may think of Loy and Powell (Who doesn't adore them?), Rogers and Astaire (Who doesn't enjoy them?), Hepburn and Tracy (neither of whom i've ever particularly liked).  But my favorite may be Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, two actors that never seemed to give much of a damn about acting. Russell seemed perpetually bemused onscreen -- movie stardom beat the hell out of working in a chiropodist's office, but so would a lot of things. As for Mitchum, his nonchalant savoir-faire is the stuff of legend. The man rolled through freight trains, chain gangs, cowboy movies, weed busts, film noir, endless spread-thighed starlets, Calypso albums, Technicolor blockbusters, fifty-something years of marriage, international superstardom -- all this, half-asleep and completely blase.

His Kind of Woman was their first film together, a kind of screwball noir. It was made at RKO during the Howard Hughes era, back when the mogul was only slightly deranged, but he still made films according to fetish and whim -- and fetish and whim with inexhaustible financial backing can sure drag out production time. Thus, His Kind of Woman took over a year to shoot (Vincent Price apparently threw a swingin' party to mark his first anniversary of being on the set), had two directors, three villains and was stopped about five times for rewriting, recasting and/or reshooting.

It opens a bit slow, with a lot of panning back and forth across maps with droning voiceovers. (It's better than a cheesy montage, but not better than a cartoon plane moving across the big map.) and some guys in suits babbling in front of some ugly art. Then some other guys in ugly suits play cards. All of this happens in low angle shots with heavy chiaroscuro. Finally, Robert Mitchum shows up, trades quips with the diner counterman, beats up some ugly suits, passes out, wakes up, answers phone. "No, I'm not busy. I was just getting ready to take my tie off. Wondering if I should hang myself with it." Naturally, poor Mitchum is getting set up by all the suits. He's being paid off to go hide out in Mexico for a year and... well, he's not sure, but he'll take the money and head south and see what happens. Robert Mitchum is not one to fight fate. Unless it hits him first. Or insults his buddy. Or knocks over a cripple. Or slaps a dame around. But fate (or Jane Greer) totally has to make the first move...

Their meeting is exactly as it should be. Mitchum tinkles the piano while Russel preens in her compact, both feigning obliviousness while putting on a show. He offers her a drink, she announces, "I'm drinking champagne." Mitchum one-ups her by pulling out an already uncorked bottle with a wry grin. Russell one-ups him by pulling out a bottle of her own, raising an eyebrow ever-so-slightly. He shrugs, reaches for the glass, "Where's yours?" She's a singer and, uh,  socialite who just happens to be hanging around this seedy bordertown bar, waiting for a plane out of the country.

Russel was always oddly believable in these jaded woman of the world roles -- one, she seemed like she could take care of herself (Look at her: If she socked a fella in the jaw, it would hurt.) and, two, she seemed to have alternately fended off and absorbed life's slings and arrows with more humor than pathos. And whatever exotic locale you drop Jane in -- Mexico, Macao, Minneapolis -- she's always popular with the locals.

Another pan across maps, this time to Mexico to the most fabulous mid-century tropical resort ever constructed on a soundstage. We will stay at Morro's Lodge, as it is called, for much of the remainder of His Kind of Woman because, frankly, who would want to leave? It's introduced to us in a glorious tracking shot, following two blondes (Look closely! One is Mamie Van Doren back when she was still Joan Olander.) and their sugar daddy up from the beach, then losing them in the lobby, picking them up again in the bar, then losing them again on the dance floor before swinging around to catch Robert Mitchum coming in from the pool.

Everyone's wandering around in Hawaiian-print shorts and wiggle dresses, wanting to play gin rummy or go hunting or have a martini or play chess or sunbathe, surrounded by palm trees and white sands, googie prints and vertical blinds. Even Thurston Howell III himself is in the house!

Mitchum is still wondering why he's here. (So am i, when i remember to.) He skulks around the lobby, has a lot of enigmatic conversations and listens to even more. The avuncular resort host, the jolly guy in the ugly shirt, the newlywed degenerate gamblers, the misanthropic German chess master -- none are what they appear to be.

(Admire the mosaics on the pool deck.) Despite all the noir baroquery, Mitchum weirdly sticks to sipping milk and ginger ale in His Kind of Woman, odd for one of moviedom's and, indeed, humandom's greatest drinkers.
"I'm a professional gambler," he explains to one of the many persons of interest loitering around the Morro.

The response: "Who isn't?"

And, hey! Look! It's Vincent Price! Price plays movie star Mark Cardigan, sometime playmate of Jane Russell. (Yes, those are tailfins on Jane's bodice. And dig the tiki lamp over Price's shoulder.) It's a delightful performance that really powers the second half of the film, rife with with humor, a certain smarmy charm and thespian self-parody. A scene in which he watches himself in his latest hokey epic is especially droll.

We also discover that Jane Russell is no woman of wealth, but rather a lounge singer who is impersonating a member of the leisure class in order to snag a high-class husband. (Career options for women were more limited in those days, when the only way to make a nice life for yourself was to get some guy rich enough to foot the bills to wanna fuck you badly enough that he'll put a ring on it.) The lady was chasing the ham, but now that he's turned up with that wife that he told Jane was "separated" from (like they do), she's rethinking going back to the piano bars and possibly...

....Oh yeah, gurrrrl, i'd be seriously thinking about it too. Anyway, Mitchum is still hanging about amidst the foliage and parabolas, flirting with Russell, smirking at Price, trying to figure out what he's doing South of the Border for this five grand. Eventually he hooks up with some FBI or CIA or IRS agents who are trying to catch the mobster who is trying to steal Mitchum's identity (Aha!) but as soon as that can happen, one of 'em gets whacked and then it's on! Mitch and Price wind up in a beachside shootout with the bad guys -- hack actor Price keeps forgetting he's not in one of his movies, meaning he's alternately impressively cool and totally ridiculous.

Here is where the plot of His Kind of Woman goes completely two-faced. Mitchum bum rushes the mobster's yacht and is quickly overpowered and winds up subject to a series of particularly fetishy tortures at the hands of (identity-thieving mobster) Raymond Burr and chess Nazi and a half-dozen burly muscleman types. (Apparently this series of steam blasting, goon-beating and experimental drug-injecting was one of the things Hughes fixated upon and kept doing and redoing over and over. Makes ya wonder....)

But in the meantime, Vincent Price mounts a slapstick rescue attempt, spouting Shakespeare as a group of bewildered Federales try frantically to row their sinking boat. About the only believable moment is that Price only keeps Russell from joining the effort by tricking her into getting locked in a closet -- because you know she's not the kind of dame to wait around at home and hope for the best.

Eventually Mitchum kicks the shit out of all the villains (Not unrealistic: After over a year of shooting and endless retakes of getting punched in the gut, Mitchum finally snapped one night and completely destroyed the set.) after Price and posse provide a diversion. Evil is dispatched and Bob and Jane are reunited for some final cynical repartee before the final clinch -- she pours the champagne, he irons out the few dollar bills they have between them....

Mitchum was always greatly underrated as an actor. (Check out this old clip of "What's my Line" at 17:00 to observe his Streep- or Williams-level ability to fake a variety of accents.) Charles Laughton (Mitchum's director in Night of the Hunter) once said, "He'd make the best Macbeth of any actor living" and Laughton has a point. Mitchum always played a man manipulated by women into things he would normally find morally reprehensible (well, he still thinks it's wrong, but he's doing it anyway).

A great part of the charm of His Kind of Woman is in its curiously schizophrenic air -- which was surely abetted by its repeated reshoots and bizarre production history. Mitchum inhabits a violent noir film, rife with plot twists and beatdowns. Russell lives in a sort of romantic dramedy, girl torn between posing as an heiress with a wealthy schlub or going back to her life as a singer with the hunky broke guy. And then there's Vincent Price's comedy/parody, with its cast of eccentric characters, self-referential twists and slapstick scenarios. The stories separate, loop back, come together, then split again, all at a fast pace with clever dialogue. Logical? No. Entertaining?  Hell, yes!

Besides, if you ever wanted to see what Vincent Price looks like in the kitchen cooking a chicken, here's your opportunity.