Robert is in the Park

After a glorious six-day honeymoon in the Plaza Hotel, newlyweds Paul (Robert Redford) and Corie Bratter (Jane Fonda) settle down to married life in a fifth-floor walk-up apartment in New York City's Washington Square.  Dealing with the vagaries of life in the City (that we love!), Corie and Paul face broken windows, a bedroom that is actually a closet, plumbing that works backwards, a bathroom without a bathtub, and an upstairs neighbor who uses their bedroom window to get into his attic apartment.  Let's all go Barefoot in the Park (1967).

This was not the first time we'd seen this movie, though most had seen it many years ago. From my perspective, this has always been a movie I enjoyed. However, watching it with a more critical eye brought to all our attentions many issues with the film that we found, at the very least, to be annoying. Most of our irritation focused on Corie Bratter.

Corie is, by and large, a nitwit. She's gone from her mother's home to her husband's home. We've no indication that she has ever worked or even gone to college. We know her mother, Ethel Banks (Mildred Natwick) is a financially secure widow, living in New Jersey. Mrs. Banks has the money to send Corie costly - and frivolous - gifts from Bergdoff-Goodman (one of NYC's more expensive department stores). Corie has never wanted for anything. Nor it seems, has she ever been asked to use her brain. She sits around her new apartment all day; she's so bored that, at 5pm, she stands at the bus stop waiting for her husband to come home. And she has no concept of what is required to get ahead in the working world.  One wants to shake her periodically.

This is not Jane Fonda's fault - she is doing what the character was written to do.  If anyone is to blame for Corie, it is playwright Neil Simon, who really doesn't know much about women.  If you are familiar with his later film, The Goodbye Girl (1977), we have a similar ditzy woman. Paula McFadden could be seen as what could happen to Corie if Paul left her with a small child.  Mr. Simon writes about a woman whose only skill (and ambition in life) is to redecorate her apartment. At least Corie sticks to a budget. 

The role on Broadway had been played by Elizabeth Ashley, and Ms. Fonda was by no means the first choice.  Among the many actresses considered were Geraldine Chaplin, Elizabeth Hartman, Susan Saint James, Faye Dunaway, Yvette Mimieux, Sandra Dee, Suzanne Pleshette, Samantha Eggar, and Marlo Thomas (AFI Catalog). Though she is the focus of the story, Corie is the weakest character in the film, when viewed with 21st Century eyes.

Robert Redford reprises his role from the Broadway play.  He had to think long and hard before he took on the film - he didn't particularly like Paul, feeling the character was too uptight (TCM article). However, we found Paul to be likeable. Sure, he's not really open to new foods and he gripes a bit too much about the six flights of stairs to his apartment (he counts the stoop!), but he is also a responsible grown up. He's trying to build a law career and support his wife, while she spends all her time trying to get him to play, discouraging him from going to work, preventing him from preparing for a case, and keeping him out til 2am on a work night.  He is more sinned against than sinning. 

By far, the most interesting and enjoyable characters in the story are Ethel Banks and Victor Velasco (Charles Boyer). Ms. Natwick was reprising her role from the play, and received an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress. She's wonderfully delightful as a middle-aged matron tossed into the maelstrom that her daughter and Victor Velasco create. Despite their chaos, she tries to become part of the festivities, even though everything that they suggest (a ride on the Staten Island Ferry in the dead of winter, food that must be "popped" rather than nibbled, a selection of unfamiliar alcoholic beverages) are way out of her comfort zone. You can't help but love Ethel.

Charles Boyer serves as an excellent foil for Ms. Natwick. The older couple are very much like Corie and Paul - one irresponsible, and the other perhaps a tad too responsible.  Mr. Boyer brings a joie de vivre to the part to which the audience easily responds. Taking on the role that Kurt Kaszner had originated on stage, Mr. Boyer been working in films, both in America and in France, since the 1920s. His first English-language picture was 1931's The Magnificent Lie. He would become one of Hollywood's most popular leading men when he appeared with Marlene Dietrich in The Garden of Allah (1935). He worked on Broadway and on radio, had a career on television, working with partners Dick Powell and David Niven on Four Star Playhouse. He continued working in film and television well into the 1970s.  His only child died in 1965; following his wife's (of 44 years) death from cancer in 1978, Mr. Boyer committed suicide at the age of 78.  

Another cast member from the play is Herbert Edelman (later billed as Herb Edelman - you may remember him as Bea Arthur's husband, Stan on The Golden Girls), playing Harry Pepper, the telephone man. New characters in the film include Mabel Anderson as Aunt Harriet (she has one scene) and Fritz Feld as the owner of the peculiar Albanian restaurant on Staten Island. 

The story has been redone several times. Broadway saw a new production in 2006, with Jill Clayburgh as Ethel, Tony Roberts as Victor, and Amanda Peet as Corie. It was made into a 1970 TV series with Scoey and Tracy Reed as the Bratters. In1982, a TV movie (based on a stage play) was aired, starring Richard Thomas and Bess Armstrong as the newlyweds.

When the film opened at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, the New York Times review was not complimentary, calling it a "carelessly knocked-together film". While the story hasn't aged well, it is still worth seeing, if only to see Mildred Natwick and Charles Boyer working together. We'll leave you with a trailer from the movie. 

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Barbara Runs a Brothel

In the 1962 film Walk on the Wild Side, Barbara Stanwyck takes on an interesting supporting role, as Jo Courtney, owner of a New Orleans brothel, and lover of Hallie Gerard.  Regardless that Jo should be a minor character to the romantic leads, Laurence Harvey (Dove Linkhorn) and Capucine (Hallie Gerard), it is Stanwyck you remember at the end of the film, not Harvey or Capucine.  Her strength and power as an actress resonates throughout the project, and is the one saving grace of a fairly disjointed film.

Dove Linkhorn is hitchhiking his way from West Texas to New Orleans in search of his great love, artist Hallie Gerard.  He meets a young runaway, Kitty Twist (Jane Fonda), and they begin to travel together.  Kitty is a forward young lady, and makes romantic overtures towards Dove, but he'll have none of it.  When he discovers that Kitty has robbed a generous innkeeper, Teresina Vidaverri (Anne Baxter), he rejects Kitty totally, and returns the stolen item (a rosary) to Teresina.  Grateful, Teresina hires Dove to work in her restaurant, and helps him run ads in the local newspaper, in an effort to locate Hallie.

Hallie, meanwhile, is unaware that Dove is searching for her.  She's a lazy woman, she sleeps all day, lives off of Jo Courtney (the owner of a local brothel, known locally as The Dollhouse), and bemoans the loss of her art (the photo above shows Jo examining some of Hallie's work).  For some reason, Jo is passionately in love with Hallie, having discovered her in New York, where Hallie was trying to break into the art scene. It's made repeatedly clear that Jo does not want Hallie turning tricks (Jo despises the touch of men, and she doesn't want Hallie soiled); it's also quite clear that Hallie routinely ignores Jo, and ventures down into the brothel to turn a trick or two.  She doesn't have to provide sexual favors (to anyone but Jo, that is), but she chooses to. Why? Who knows.

It doesn't help that Capucine couldn't act her way out of a sack of potatoes.  A French model who came to America with Charles Feldman (the producer of this film), she had a moderately successful career - she's best known for The Pink Panther (in which she played Inspector Clouseau's adulterous wife, Simone).  But she is so stiff and frozen faced throughout this movie, that one wonders what the heck all these men (Dove, of course, and she's obviously a big hit in the Dollhouse) and Jo could possibly see in her.

She meets her match in lack of affect by her co-star, Laurence Harvey.  Cast as a Texas dirt farmer who's never left his home before, Harvey gives new meaning to the words "cold and aloof".  What worked beautifully in The Manchurian Candidate doesn't work here at all. According to this TCM article it was hate at first sight between Harvey and Capucine.  She accused him of being "unmanly" in his kisses.  He responded by saying that "kissing her was like kissing the side of a beer bottle".  And, as with Hallie, we have all these women queuing up to bed him. It's unreal.

On the other hand, Stanwyck is amazing.  She is controlled, elegant, and sinister.  She does her best to make the viewer understand her passion for Hallie, her disgust of men in general - and her handicapped husband in particular.  She isn't the least afraid to make Jo unlikeable, but with a cool collection that makes her fascinating to watch.  The ultimate professional, she dressed down Laurence Harvey when one of his tantrums resulted in an hour delay.  (He never did it again!)

We also enjoyed seeing Anne Baxter as Teresina.  Sure, her Spanish accent is rather odd, but she does a good job with the character in spite of it.  A historical aside, Baxter discovered she was pregnant at the time of the filming began, and relied on her wide skirts to hide her girth when filming finally ended during her 7 month.  This TCM article will give you more information on the behind-the-scenes of the film.

We get a couple of scenes of Jane Fonda with Barbara Stanwyck, but young Fonda is such a nascent actress (this is only her second film) she is overwhelmed by Stanwyck (the character of Kitty is supposed to be, of course).  Good as Ms. Fonda is, you still can't take your eyes off Stanwyck.  We would have enjoyed a scene between Baxter and Stanwyck - as the bookends for Good and Evil, but alas, it was not to be.  The characters are in the same room for a brief period, but there is no interaction. 

All in all, with a disjointed story line that verges into taudry soap opera at times, a cast that never quite all seem to be in the same movie, and some plot twists that seem to be thrown in just to shock (what is the point of Jo's leg-less husband? A symbol of emasculation, maybe?), this is a film that just never quite gets to the point.  We'll leave you with our introduction to Jo and Hallie: