March Madness Preview: 1950s Bracket/Sweet And Sassy Division

Eleanor Parker (1922-2013)

All the newspaper headlines today noting Eleanor Parker's passing trumpet her role in The Sound of Music, which is a pity, I think, since it's probably the worst showcase for her talent. Better to take a look at her Oscar-nominated performances in Caged, Detective Story and Interrupted Melody. Or how about her wicked supporting performance in Frank Sinatra's The Man With The Golden Arm? Or for that matter, The Naked Jungle with Charlton Heston where she at least looks super hot.

Anyway, some photos.

That's Typing Tuesday #2: The Sound Of Music

"That's Typing" Tuesday, in which I share unpolished, unpublished writings from my vast store of unpolished, unpublished writings. On Tuesdays.

This, from my notes on The Sound of Music:

The Academy's choice for best picture of 1965, The Sound of Music, is not the worst movie to ever win the Oscar for best picture, but thanks to the weakness of its potential competition, it may be the worst movie to nevertheless deserve to win for best picture.

... Dramatically, the movie is the story of Maria's search for her purpose in life, and that story reaches its perfect conclusion with her marriage while the nuns reprise the song "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" Really, a perfect ending to a great little musical/romantic comedy.
And then it's like somebody ran into the editing room and said, "Oh, hell, we're thirty minutes short, can you tack on some Nazis?"

I realize, of course, that Maria's escape from the Nazis was the real-life incident that inspired the story in the first place, but the fact is, the writers never figured out how to integrate the politics and the love story, and so they distill out like oil and water into two separate movies, with one storyline poking its head in from time to time to nod hello to the other, until by the end, they break apart altogether.

And then there's the acting.

The kids are fine, I guess—Kym Karath, who got her finger caught in Friedrich's teeth, is adorable—but Richard Haydn and Ben Wright (Max and Herr Zoeller, respectively) play their parts like refugees from a rejected episode of Hogan's Heroes, while Eleanor Parker and Christopher Plummer—well, how can I put this: I love Parker's early work and I think Plummer's later work was sublime, but here they meet in the middle of their careers and frankly, they're just awful.

Plummer as Captain von Trapp is so coy in his scenes with Julie Andrews, he comes across not like a grieving widower stunned to find himself suddenly raising seven children alone but more like a bewildered teenage virgin who has no idea where those children came from in the first place. Did the late Madame von Trapp find them under a cabbage leaf (or perhaps a sprig of edelweiss)? Watching Plummer fumble his way through his seduction of Julie Andrews, you might think so.

As for Eleanor Parker, who was very good in such movies as Caged and The Naked Jungle, she plays the Baroness like she's auditioning for the part of Cruella de Ville in a Walt Disney cartoon. This was Parker on the way down—it's all Love Boat and Fantasy Island from here on out—and if you remember and care about her work in the Fifties, it's painful to watch.

And yet Julie Andrews is sublime. It might be the best performance by an actress in a musical ever. At least I can't think of a better one. Ginger Rogers was indispensable to Top Hat and Swing Time, certainly; Judy Garland was a dynamo until drug addiction caught up with her; and Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe are a wonderful team in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. But better?

In any event, The Sound Of Music rides on Julie Andrews's shoulders. She supplies all the energy, all the emotion, all the truth, and when she's not on screen, the movie turns sluggish, and drowns in its own insincerity.

Next Tuesday: random notes about Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day.