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"Psycho", "The Apartment" and "The Facts of Life"(1960)

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Up front I will note that "The Facts of Life" to which I will refer is not that sitcom(which I've never seen.) It is a 1960 comedy starring Bob Hope and Lucille Ball.

As I recall, "The Facts of Life" was somewhat of a lost film through the 60's and 70's. It didn't get much network exposure; mainly because of the plot: Los Angeles suburbanites Hope and Ball are married to other people....all congregate at the same golf country club...and Hope and Ball decide to pursue an extramarital affair. And then to leave their spouses and share custody of the kids. Touchy stuff at the time, and for some reason "The Facts of Life" just didn't get shown much on TV.

Being a Hope/Ball comedy, the main thrust of "The Facts of Life" is that their several attempts to consummate the affair are all thwarted (the suspense is Hitchcockian as roadblocks appear and possible witnesses to the affair show up) , the affair never gets physical, Hope and Ball return to their spouses, and the ultimate plan -- to LEAVE their spouses, and marry each other, is revealed to Ball's husband through a letter she can't destroy in time. (He says nothing, it is implied he understands she didn't go through with it, and forgives her.)

I also recently rewatched Billy Wilder's "The Apartment," the Best Picture Oscar winner of 1960 which also beat Psycho in the three categories in which both films were nominated: Best Director(Wilder over Hitchcock; Wilder a repeat winner with Hitchcock never winning); Best Art Direction (black and white); Best Cinematography(black and white.)

Black and white. That's the thing of it, the first "clear" connection among Psycho, The Apartment, and The Facts of Life. They were all black and white movies in a year(1960) when the movies were using Technicolor and wide screen to fight that devil b/w box, television.

In 1960, Technicolor and widescreen powered epics like Ben-Hur(leftover from 1959 release and going strong), Spartacus, The Alamo, Exodus, and The Magnificent Seven.

But also in 1960, color was the choice for most romantic and domestic comedies. Back up a year and 1959's Pillow Talk(the Day/Hudson template) was in color, in 1960 itself Doris Day's Please Don't Eat the Daisies was in color and in 1961 a year later Day and Hudson returned(in color) in Lover Come Back.

All of which made both The Apartment and The Facts of Life pretty weird: romantic comedies done in the grim tones of b/w. And The Apartment was stranger still: b/w BUT Panavision wide screen (all the better to capture the size of a New York skyscraper working floor and the horizontal arena of the titular apartment itself.)

I have very vague memories of going to b/w movies in movie theaters in 1960 and even as a "widdle kid" it seemed strange to SEE black and white movies in movie theater. And it continued to feel strange as child development kicked in and I got the experiences I now remember well, in 1961(The Absent Minded Professor), in 1962(The Manchurian Candidate, Lonely are the Brave, Advise and Consent), 1964(Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe) and 1965(The Train.) I can't remember any 1963 b/w films I saw at the theater, but those other ones are big memories for me.

The thing was: given that MOST movies we went to at the theater were in color, the b/w ones really stood out. I didn't have a problem watching them(as new generations now DO); but they seemed strange.

And nothing seems stranger than a romantic comedy in black and white.

Hence, a return to The Apartment and The Facts of Life. Looking at both of them today, I get a very nostalgic sensation because of their "1960 ambiance." Both of those films look more MODERN than the typical b/w comedy of the forties(say, Its a Wonderful Life or The Lady Eve) or the typical b/w comedy of the fifties (say, Born Yesterday or Sabrina.) No, 1960 WAS the beginning of a new, hip modern era, and The Apartment and The Facts of Life show that off.

Things are more important with The Apartment than with The Facts of Life, however. In The Apartment, extramarital affairs are actually consummated (a LOT) by married New York City insurance executives(with their working class Bronx-accented switchboard operators and other working women, as their "higher class" matronly wives wait at home.) And one such affair(between amoral Big Boss Fred MacMurray and better-than-he-deserves elevator operator Shirley MacLaine) reaches tragic proportions: she attempts suicide in the apartment of the "little clerk"(Jack Lemmon) who truly loves her (and has been lending that apartment out for the afore-mentioned affairs.)

The sexual and corporate themes of "The Apartment" made it important enough for that Best Picture win and it doesn't feel like a movie that COULD or SHOULD have been made in color. The film is an important drama as well as a comedy. In its own heart-breaking, gritty way, The Apartment is like a direct rebuke to the Day-Hudson NYC kind of fluffy romance.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Which brings us to "Psycho." A romantic comedy it most definitely is not...but it has its intersects with The Apartment and The Facts of Life. First: the black and white in 1960 presentation...these three films are bound together as "other" and "outliers" in the Technicolor/Cinemascope world of 1960...there's something bleak about them that rules color out (though hey, I just remembered that Jerry Lewis had a black and white hit in The Bellboy the same year but...well, Jerry Lewis is kinda bleak all by himself. On the other hand, his "CinderFella" of the same year was in Xmas color.)

Another thing that Psycho shares with The Apartment and The Facts of Life: sex out of wedlock. Extramarital sex is attempted in The Facts of Life and achieved in The Apartment. In Psycho, the Sam/Marion affair is not really extramarital(Sam is divorced) but it is pre-marital(except Sam's already experienced in marriage and in marital sex) . But consider: all three films reject the usual 1960 template of happily married life, or of never-married singles pursuing marriage, with "no sex til ring on finger". These people are all in marriages, or have been in marriages, and sex is the driving force in their lives. THIS is 1960 in a nutshell, sexuality-wise. The sexual revolution ahead is peeking out (1960 was a big year for Playboy magazine.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Now, here's a direct connection between Psycho and The Facts of Life: motels. The Bates Motel is the most famous motel in movie history, but The Facts of Life has a long, long stretch in which, in an early attempt to have their affair, Bob Hope and Lucille Ball search what seems like 100 motels in Los Angeles until they pick one for their tryst; then there is the suspenseful bit of checking in to a motel without alerting the suspicions of the motel keeper(a cranky middle-aged man, but he's got Norman Bates' job in any event.) And then comes the Big Gag: Hope drives off to buy some coffee for Ball to bring back to the room, but upon driving back, he didn't memorize which of 100 motels he left Ball AT...so he drives through the night, never finding the right motel and having to call the night off (too bad...no cell phones in 1960.)

Psycho famously used a motel for horror; The Facts of Life uses a motel for comedy, but both films make note of the use of a motel for sex. Motels were already seen this way before those movies, I am sure; and later, I seem to recall Day and Cary Grant ending up at a motel in "That Touch of Mink" (1962) with all manner of suspicions aroused by management.

What's interesting about the Bates Motel and sex in Psycho is that the motel, during the movie, really isn't used in "the usual way." During the run-time of Psycho, a couple doesn't come to the motel to have quickie sex there. (But I'll bet some have -- Norman's peephole may well have been used for THIS kind of voyeurism more than for watching solo women, who are more rare at the motel.) No, basically, you have attractive Marion Crane arrive with all the possibilities of sex that suggests..and Norman goes, well, a little crazy over what he can't do (what Mother won't let him try.) Not that Marion would have allowed it, but its "in the air." Right up until shower time...

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Which brings us to Arbogast. The private eye's whole approach(we may realize) is based on the fact that he is a 1960 private detective, and hence probably has a LOT of experience with motels. Divorce wasn't "no fault and easy" in those days; private eyes were often hired to track down errant spouses and catch them "in the act" (with a camera) at motels.

Thus, you will notice that a fair amount of Arbogast's questioning of Norman is based on the motel being a place where maybe sex and "romance" is happening. Did anyone meet Marion here?(Arbo's thinking: Sam. For sex.) Did anyone call Marion here? Did she make any calls? Did she go out?

Arbogast then shifts this line of questioning towards Norman. After a fusillade of questions to which Norman answers "No...no...no," Arbogast springs this line:

Arbogast: Did you spend the night with her?

Norman is offended, but Arbo's just doing his job. This Norman Bates guy is young and pretty darn good looking. Why NOT make this surmise? (And if not, Arbogast is simply throwing Norman off guard: when Norman says "no," Arbogast says "Well, then how did you know she didn't make any calls?")

Arbogast continues his "Marion seduced Norman" theory out to the porch -- "She wouldn't still be here , would she?"..."Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that she wanted you to gallantly protect her...." Its all very ironic. Arbogast is using his experience as a private eye who probably works motels a LOT...to pursue all the wrong theories about what's going on here(though he's not entirely off the mark -- Marion's arrival at Norman's motel DID trigger Norman's sexual thoughts...and peeping on a nude Marion in Cabin One.)

And thus "Psycho" and "The Facts of Life" find connection: 1960. Black and white. Motels and what goes on in them.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

There are no motels in The Apartment -- that's part of the reason FOR the apartment...so Lemmon's married bosses can have quickie sex. (Discussions of The Apartment note that, in 1960, private eyes like Arbogast often staked out hotels to watch for errant spouses.)

The "overall" connection of Psycho to The Apartment is a matter of the Hays Code. It was well known by then that powerful directors Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder(and one more, Otto "Anatomy of a Murder" Preminger) were conducting an on-going battle with Hays Code censors to keep "pushing the envelope" on content. All three directors saw the Coming Sixties as a time to make the boldest moves yet, and 1960 was thus a "gateway year."

Billy Wilder noted that he had had the idea for The Apartment since the early fifties, but simply "had to wait" until 1960 to feel that he COULD try to make this sex comedy-drama(of course his 1959 Some Like It Hot, with cross-dressing hetero men amongst easy women, laid the groundwork). Wilder also told actor Paul Douglas before he made The Apartment, "I'm making a movie about f'''ing. Would you like to be in it?" Douglas said yes...and died of a heart attack before production began (Fred MacMurray took over the evil role and was great in it.)

The Apartment IS a movie about 'f---g," but we see no 'f...ing" in the movie. Its all in the mind and the dialogue. Having found a sudden sexual prospect, Ray Walston desperately asks Lemmon to use the apartment,..."Only for 45 minutes...OK...30 minutes!" And when Fred MacMurray has to leave gf MacLaine in the apartment to go home to his family for Xmas, he gives her $100 "to buy yourself a present" and she sees that as a payment for sex that she immediately offers(MacMurray is outraged.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The Apartment is also a movie about "the little people" struggling in a capitalistic 1960 economy. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine toil for their corporate NYC bigwigs. Psycho gets this, too: Janet Leigh toils for her greedy realtor boss Lowery and his disgusting millionaire client Cassidy. Eventually, everybody rebels: Lemmon quits his corporate job just as MacMurray has promoted him; Leigh steals the $40,000. Of course, not everybody succeeds(poor Leigh.) And meanwhile, still: both Norman Bates and , to a lesser extent, Sam Loomis, operate small struggling businesses that the main highway has bypassed. 1960 is a sexual crossroads, but it is still tough on some folks economically.

I am not as familiar with "The Facts of Life" as I am with The Apartment (which I have seen many times) and Psycho (which I have seen many, many times.) I didn't watch ALL of The Facts of Life the other day to get the entire plot (I missed the beginning) but I'll say this: whereas The Apartment and Psycho deal with workaday people under great pressure to survive economically, The Facts of Life is about prosperous suburbanites with kids in the Cub Scouts , PTA meetings, country club dances and cocktails and...evidently...still a driving desire to get out from under family life and "swing." It was interesting that this movie was made in 1960. Still more interesting that Hope and Ball agreed to star in it (and, its at once weird and salutary that Bob Hope and Lucille Ball in 1960 look way too middle-aged for a hot sexual affair...but hey, why not?) Of course, the film makes the case ultimately: don't do it. Its too hard, you'll get caught...stay with your families.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As a matter of 1960 movies, The Apartment is my second favorite after Psycho...I can almost forgive The Apartment its Best Picture win (sandwiched between the much bigger Ben-Hur and West Side Story) when Psycho wasn't even nominated, BECAUSE I like it so much...and because it feels so connected to Psycho(b/w, little people, pushing the Hays Code, the sexual content -- AND the aching nostalgia for 1960 itself.)

I also like to note that The Apartment is a massively SUSPENSEFUL film, using Hitchcock's rule "give the audience information the characters don't have." WE know Shirley MacLaine is MacMurray's lover, but for the longest time, Jack Lemmon does not. The suspense kills us...until Lemmon finds out...and then things are very sad (and Lemmon is sad at the same time MacLaine is sad, she having just learned that MacMurray dumps all his lovers for new models.) There is also the great suspense of Lemmon's next door neighbor , Jewish doctor Jack Kruschen, thinking that Lemmon is a predatory playboy and louse -- Lemmon is not, but if Lemmon told Kruschen that he loans out his apartment to his bosses for sex to advance his career -- Kruschen would like him LESS.

The Apartment is a comedy with a lot of sad drama...it pays off happily only in the last two minutes(after one of the greatest "long takes of close up acting" in screen history by a silent Shirley MacLaine, as she realizes she loves Lemmon and will give up the rich swine MacMurray for him)...but the overall ambiance is grim and somewhat sleazy.

Just like Psycho. Just like The Facts of Life.

Three 1960 movies with something to say about where American life was headed....and the same bizarre black-and-white look to say it.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"I didn't watch ALL of The Facts of Life the other day to get the entire plot (I missed the beginning)..."

- Don't know how much you missed, but the first half of the film is really the sweetest, and far less forced for comedy effect. It begins rather like The Four Seasons, with three couples who do everything together. When last-minute business, illness and other conflicts interfere with a planned Mexico vacation, Hope and Ball find themselves there on their own. The hook is that these two individuals have always annoyed each other but, away from the group, get to really know one another for the first time and affection develops.

Had it continued in this vein, it might have worked better; sort of an Americanized, light-hearted Brief Encounter.

"Still more interesting that Hope and Ball agreed to star in it..."

- And I suspect that's why it didn't, veering instead into more sit-com-y complications. Hope and Ball had previously done two films together - 1949's Sorrowful Jones (a remake of Little Miss Marker) and 1950's Fancy Pants (a reworking of Ruggles Of Red Gap) - and would do one more - 1963's Critic's Choice - and I'm guessing the "packagers" anticipated that audiences would be expecting something harmlessly zany. I guess also that this is where the B&W came in. During that brief period of flux, when color was beginning to overtake B&W, I remember my own sense as a "widdle kid" that B&W signaled a film that was more adult (even when a comedy) and not necessarily intended for the whole family, (Jerry Lewis notwithstanding*).

*I suspect that The Bellboy (his first film as a director) and his next, The Errand Boy (his last B&W), were intended to demonstrate to studio bosses that he was an efficient and fiscally responsible film maker who could generate profits. By '63 or '64, I recall him saying in an interview, "People want to know only two things when choosing a movie to see: who's in it and is it in color."

Cont'd...

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Perhaps The Facts Of Life's B&W was also a budgetary hedge against those audience expectations: "It's got Hope and Ball. How dangerous can it be?" - "You know that new Bob Hope/Lucille Ball movie?" We saw it, and it ain't for the kids!"

Some of the other "mature" B&W comedies around that time: Some Like It Hot (gender-bending and gangsters); The Gazebo (blackmail and murder); Never On Sunday (a hooker); Seven Thieves, The Happy Thieves (high-value heists); Tall Story (financial and sexual frustration among college students); One Two Three (cold war geopolitics); Period Of Adjustment (newlywed marital discord); The Pigeon That Took Rome (WWII espionage); Love With the Proper Stranger (one-night stand consequences).

How do The Absent-Minded Professor and The Shaggy Dog fit into this? Beats the hell outta me. Each employed a cusp-of-adulthood milieu (college, high school), so maybe even Disney felt B&W would lure that audience by making it all seem more grown up. How else to get the passion-pit crowd to a Disney movie?

Ultimately, the casting of Ball and Hope may have been The Facts Of Life's biggest flaw. Hope was more or less coasting by that point in his film career, and it would be the last film in which he attempted a role of any substance.

Ball herself was rather adrift at the time: just coming off of nine years as Lucy Ricardo, and off of twenty as Mrs. Arnaz (and soon to assume the reins of their production empire). Shortly after The Facts of Life wrapped, she would go to NY to begin rehearsals for her only B'way show, Wildcat, which had a decent enough six-month run (and incidentally had recently deceased Valerie Harper, in her second B'way gig, among its dancers). Before another year passed after its closing, Ball would successfully return to the safe environs of half-hour television, venturing only occasionally into features thereafter (one of which was the star-cameo-filled martial infidelity comedy A Guide For the Married Man).

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Had it continued in this vein, it might have worked better; sort of an Americanized, light-hearted Brief Encounter.

"Still more interesting that Hope and Ball agreed to star in it..."

- And I suspect that's why it didn't, veering instead into more sit-com-y complications. Hope and Ball had previously done two films together - 1949's Sorrowful Jones (a remake of Little Miss Marker) and 1950's Fancy Pants (a reworking of Ruggles Of Red Gap) - and would do one more - 1963's Critic's Choice - and I'm guessing the "packagers" anticipated that audiences would be expecting something harmlessly zany. I guess also that this is where the B&W came in. During that brief period of flux, when color was beginning to overtake B&W, I remember my own sense as a "widdle kid" that B&W signaled a film that was more adult (even when a comedy) and not necessarily intended for the whole family, (Jerry Lewis notwithstanding*).

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The b/w for The Facts of Life(I mean that TITLE was risqué in 1960) might well have been meant to intuit "adult content." I expect we will find the exceptions in Jerry Lewis and Walt Disney comedies, but certainly your examples and my examples reflect "adult material" often.

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*I suspect that The Bellboy (his first film as a director) and his next, The Errand Boy (his last B&W), were intended to demonstrate to studio bosses that he was an efficient and fiscally responsible film maker who could generate profits.

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In the 50s and 60s, I do believe that b/w WAS cheaper than color and that's likely why a lot of B movies were made in it. Roger Corman and William Castle used b/w for horror films, but I think that was for cheapness as well as mood (meanwhile, The Blob is in color, I'm guessing to show the red blood of its victims manifesting in an ever redder blob.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

By '63 or '64, I recall him saying in an interview, "People want to know only two things when choosing a movie to see: who's in it and is it in color."

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I guess Jerry "saw the future." As we have discussed around here, the advent of color TVs in American homes by around 1967 led to a real shutdown on the production of b/w films(The b/w Oscar categories were eliminated that year, I think.)

While Hitchcock worked in color from 1953/54 on(Depending on your release date of Dial M), breaking only for The Wrong Man and Psycho, Billy Wilder held on to b/w to the bigger end: 1966 and The Fortune Cookie (oh, he made a few color films in there, but against his own desires.)

Interesting: three of Hitchcock's "psycho films" were in b/w: Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train, and Psycho. But he did Frenzy in color, and made color a PART of Frenzy. Principally in the wild red-blond hair of the killer Bob Rusk(you never miss HIM), but also in Rusk's deep purple necktie and Babs bright orange suit, among other dashes of color to the film. (Hey, if Rope is a psycho film, it is noteable that this is his first film in color, but I am not sure that it is his first psycho film, necessarily.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Some of the other "mature" B&W comedies around that time: Some Like It Hot (gender-bending and gangsters);

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...and Billy Wilder(who also noted he felt the men-dressed-as-women would look too garish in color; rather a corollary to Hitchcock making Psycho in b/w to avoid red blood)

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The Gazebo (blackmail and murder);

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In which mystery writer Glenn Ford phones his current employer -- Alfred Hitchcock -- to ask advice on how to bury a body in the new script(but its a REAL body in Ford's living room).

"Hitch" is never seen -- just someone on the other end of the phone.

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Never On Sunday (a hooker);

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The times they were a changing. And...a "furrin film."

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Seven Thieves, The Happy Thieves (high-value heists); Tall Story (financial and sexual frustration among college students); One Two Three (cold war geopolitics); Period Of Adjustment (newlywed marital discord); The Pigeon That Took Rome (WWII espionage); Love With the Proper Stranger (one-night stand consequences).

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There's another Billy Wilder in there, plus other films with serious things on their mind. I'd add The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Cape Fear as one's I forgot. And the very great "To Kill Mockingbird." (My folks took little me to the drive-in to see that one, and the final killer-stalks-kids-through-woods might as well have been Psycho, given its impact on my psyche.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

How do The Absent-Minded Professor and The Shaggy Dog fit into this? Beats the hell outta me. Each employed a cusp-of-adulthood milieu (college, high school), so maybe even Disney felt B&W would lure that audience by making it all seem more grown up. How else to get the passion-pit crowd to a Disney movie?

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Aha. Maybe more of a "teenage draw" than for kids. You know, there's a bit in The Absent Minded Professor where bad guy Keenan Wynn is bouncing up and down, higher and higher, in his flubber shoes which uses a process screen rather like Hitchcock used it for Arbogast's fall. A weird linkage, but there it is.

BTW, here's a young memory: waiting in a long, long, LONG interminably long line for The Absent Minded Professor. Kiddie matinees could be like that back then, and I actually started to ask my parents not to take me until a few weeks later when the crowds died down. (Population was lower, but screens were fewer.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Ultimately, the casting of Ball and Hope may have been The Facts Of Life's biggest flaw. Hope was more or less coasting by that point in his film career, and it would be the last film in which he attempted a role of any substance.

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Agreed, Hope was truly a star(I'd say, Bill Murrayish, and Woody Allen claimed he stole Hope's coward act) in the forties(The Road pictures, the My Favorite (Blonde, Brunette) films...truly a star, funny and with the sex appeal of youth. Came the 60's he really was coasting.

And Hope made a horrible comedy in 1973 called Cancel My Reservation, which I think was his last movie. It was set on an Indian reservation(er, Native American) and poor older Eva Marie Saint had to play her role in hot pants. It was a Bob Hope Movie Too Far.

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Ball herself was rather adrift at the time: just coming off of nine years as Lucy Ricardo, and off of twenty as Mrs. Arnaz (and soon to assume the reins of their production empire). Shortly after The Facts of Life wrapped, she would go to NY to begin rehearsals for her only B'way show, Wildcat, which had a decent enough six-month run (and incidentally had recently deceased Valerie Harper, in her second B'way gig, among its dancers).

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I did not know that, and RIP Ms. Harper...who surprised us all with her survival.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Before another year passed after its closing, Ball would successfully return to the safe environs of half-hour television, venturing only occasionally into features thereafter (one of which was the star-cameo-filled martial infidelity comedy A Guide For the Married Man).

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I grew up more on The Lucy Show that I Love Lucy(John Wayne and Liz and Dick made noteable appearances, though I know Wayne came on in the 50s too), dropped out by "Here's Lucy."

A Guide for the Married Man is an "interesting" comedy. Walter Matthau gets one of his earliest leads(but not a good one) as the faithful husband being lured by cheater Robert Morse to have an affair(with a woman). An all star cast illustrates Morse's lessons on what NOT to do with an affair(have it at home; admit to it). Its a funny movie with a sexual theme to be sure. But not showable today. (Great "Turtles" theme song though.)

SPOILERS: Matthau never cheats on his wife(sexy Inger Stevens); Morse is finally caught and alimony bound.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"You know, there's a bit in The Absent Minded Professor where bad guy Keenan Wynn is bouncing up and down, higher and higher, in his flubber shoes which uses a process screen rather like Hitchcock used it for Arbogast's fall. A weird linkage, but there it is."

- Hmm. Maybe not so weird. In theorizing Disney's reasons for B&W, I briefly considered the possibility that he and his creative people thought the visual effects would both look and play better that way in a contemporary, nominally reality-based setting (no such concerns for more fanciful atmospheres like Babes in Toyland or Mary Poppins).

One of the peculiarities of color is that it exposes artifice more readily than B&W (Billy Wilder had something there): by photographing and depicting everything more realistically, it tends to reveal what's fake in the way of makeup, costumes, sets, visual effects or what have you.

You mentioned up top that The Apartment was not "a movie that COULD or SHOULD have been made in color." For what I called that "flux" period, roughly mid-'50s to mid-'60s, when neither B&W nor color was the default, the question (apologies to Shakespeare), to hue or not to hue, and the criteria film makers employed to address it, are matters that have piqued my curiosity.

Take Tall Story, for instance, Perkins's immediate predecessor to Psycho. No reason not to shoot in color: a bright adaptation of a B'way play of campus shenanigans among students and faculty alike; director Josh Logan had never worked in B&W before, and never would again. It had titillating sex talk (the unhealthiness of abstinence, the fringe benefits of showering together in a tiny trailer to save water) and provocative situations (Jane Fonda confronting naked and dripping wet Van Williams in the men's locker room).

Cont'd...

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

The following year, though, 20th-Fox released The Marriage-Go-Round (in which statuesque Swedish house guest Julie Newmar proposes to her happily-married hosts, professors James Mason and Susan Hayward, that he father her child, judging their combined genes to be an optimal combination of the physical and intellectual) in CinemaScope and DeLuxe color. What was good for Logan apparently wasn't for Walter Lang.

Back in '58, Perkins had made another film at Paramount, The Matchmaker; shot in VistaVision, brimming with elaborate, back-lot-and-soundstage-bound, turn-of-the-century atmosphere and opulent costumes (including a scene with Perkins in drag), it cries out for Technicolor. But no. Perhaps it was only that principal players Shirley Booth and Paul Ford weren't judged to be ones whose names on a marquee or in an ad would draw enough business to justify any additional cost.

Is it fair to guess that considerations fell into three basic categories: budgetary; artistic; practical? Psycho, of course, would be an example of all three brought to bear, and I'm sure there was often overlap in other cases. But in those others, I'd love to know how those decisions were arrived at. Some directors have explained them - Wilder for Some Like It Hot; Nichols for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - but answers from most of the period are few and far between.

Some film makers have chosen B&W to impart hard-edged realism: what is often called a "documentary quality." Richard Brooks's In Cold Blood is an example. But the funny thing about it is that by its very nature, B&W is stylized: it resembles nothing experienced in the real world (even by the so-called color-blind, who see not in true monochrome, but in muted tones rendering them unable to identify or distinguish between most colors, but who can nevertheless see a difference between B&W photography and color).

Cont'd...

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

You were quite right that color was once more expensive, even after Eastman's introduction of "monopack" color negative stock made it vastly more affordable than Technicolor's three-strip process, but each year brought refinements that took costs ever closer to B&W. Here's a factoid of which many are unaware: for nearly 40 years, the major suppliers of motion picture film haven't even manufactured B&W negative stock. Directors like Woody Allen have had to shoot on color stock and process and print in monochrome.

And another: three-strip Technicolor used B&W negatives in the camera. That's right. A prism behind the lens split the light into primary colors, and each B&W negative strip recorded only that portion of the light spectrum to which it was assigned. In what the lab called an imbibition process, each negative then absorbed a dye corresponding to its primary color. Kooky, huh?

"BTW, here's a young memory: waiting in a long, long, LONG interminably long line for The Absent Minded Professor."

- The longest line I remember from that age was for 13 Ghosts (in B&W so the cheap 'ghost viewer" effects would work with its red and blue cellophane), and the theater was so packed at that matinee that I had to see it from a far-right seat in the front row.

Another memory from the same period: the odd kiddie matinee combo of Corman's (color) House Of Usher and (B&W) Murder, Inc. (with Stuart Whitman, the would-be Sam Loomis, Peter Falk and, yes, Simon Oakland).

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Back in '58, Perkins had made another film at Paramount, The Matchmaker; shot in VistaVision, brimming with elaborate, back-lot-and-soundstage-bound, turn-of-the-century atmosphere and opulent costumes (including a scene with Perkins in drag),

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Including a scene with Perkins in drag...

...and Hitchcock watched all movies, especially Paramount movies while he had a contract there...

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it cries out for Technicolor. But no. Perhaps it was only that principal players Shirley Booth and Paul Ford weren't judged to be ones whose names on a marquee or in an ad would draw enough business to justify any additional cost.

---

Here we enter the area you cover in greater detail elsewhere, doghouse: b/w as a budget decision. It seems to have been the key decision a lot of the time...at least when comedies and love stories were filmed in b/w. B/w was made for drama and horror and "realism"(even though color is MORE real; but I'm thinking "The Wrong Man" and "12 Angry Men" here.) It seems that if a comedy or love story went b/w,its cuz they wanted to do it cheap.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Hmm. Maybe not so weird. In theorizing Disney's reasons for B&W, I briefly considered the possibility that he and his creative people thought the visual effects would both look and play better that way in a contemporary, nominally reality-based setting (no such concerns for more fanciful atmospheres like Babes in Toyland or Mary Poppins).

One of the peculiarities of color is that it exposes artifice more readily than B&W (Billy Wilder had something there): by photographing and depicting everything more realistically, it tends to reveal what's fake in the way of makeup, costumes, sets, visual effects or what have you.

---

Yes. I can give you an example from Hitchcock -- back to back if you will.

By now, most folks know of my very high regard for the shot of Arbogast climbing the stone steps up the hill to the old house before he gets killed. The composition is such that the motel wall frames the right side of the screen; to get this effect, the camera is closer to the house than earlier in the movie. And mother's window gleams brightly as Arbogast climbs. There is a clip of this on YouTube (from movieclips.com or some such), which makes the shot seem almost three-dimensional in its clarity -- better than I first remembered it.

Well, anyway, one movie earlier in NXNW, Hitchcock had a nearly identical shot -- Cary Grant walking up the hilly drive-way to Vandamm's big, modern Cliffside house. The "idea" is the same as in Psycho -- "tiny man climbs hill to menacing house; everything looks cool." But this: the shot in COLOR gives away the fakery of the matte painting house, and has trouble rendering "day for night" -- in short, this NXNW shot , though impressive in composition and meaning, doesn't LOOK nearly as crystal clear and perfect as the shot of Arbogast climbing black and white, one film later.

At least that's my feeling -- and its not a theory, the NXNW shot doesn't look as good as the Psycho shot.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

You mentioned up top that The Apartment was not "a movie that COULD or SHOULD have been made in color." For what I called that "flux" period, roughly mid-'50s to mid-'60s, when neither B&W nor color was the default, the question (apologies to Shakespeare), to hue or not to hue, and the criteria film makers employed to address it, are matters that have piqued my curiosity.

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Well, Billy Wilder is almost a special case. He seems to have preferred black and white for EVERYTHING, and rather grudgingly made color films in the fifties/sixties: The Seven Year Itch, The Spirit of St. Louis...Irma La Douce(which weirdly looks like b/w sets were used.)

Still, The Apartment was and is billed as a "comedy drama"(not quite a "dramedy") and I've always found the humor to be pretty weak in the film (like the one irritating scene about commercials before "Grand Hotel" and the other irritating scene where Lemmon on the phone must juggle all the nights that men get to use the apartment.) The anguish and suspense of the film override the comedy and...black and white "fits." Its that Panavision that is rather weird. Panavision b/w films are a late 50s/early 60's phenomenon.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Take Tall Story, for instance, Perkins's immediate predecessor to Psycho. No reason not to shoot in color: a bright adaptation of a B'way play of campus shenanigans among students and faculty alike; director Josh Logan had never worked in B&W before, and never would again. It had titillating sex talk (the unhealthiness of abstinence, the fringe benefits of showering together in a tiny trailer to save water) and provocative situations (Jane Fonda confronting naked and dripping wet Van Williams in the men's locker room).

--

I've always felt that the importance of Tall Story is several-fold:

Jane Fonda debuts -- as a "boy crazy" college co-ed in search of her MRS degree. Oh, the irony! (Though in real life, Jane had a lot of husbands!)

Its the "final normal Anthony Perkins role before Psycho": one last chance for Tony to play a "regular guy" before Norman Bates changes him forever(he would play regular guys AFTER Psycho...but nobody really believed it.)

Perkins looks and sounds almost exactly like Norman Bates. Proof that the key to Psycho is that Norman Bates IS Anthony Perkins. The only difference is a shorter "jock's haircut" almost a crewcut.

It has a shower scene. Two, actually. In the first, Tony and Jane visit the trailer of a married college couple(Tom "Billy Jack" Laughlin is one of them; he was considered for Sam Loomis.) The couple sing the praises of showering together for lovemaking purposes. Titillating enough. But in the final scene of the movie, Tony and Jane are married and (in a blur) seen canoodling in that shower.)

--
More weirdness: Tony Perkins trying to play a "regular" college athlete(basketball) comes off as miscast and weird, even though he is handsome and sensitive. He needed something different to BE Tony Perkins...he needed a crazy man role...

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The sex talk(and Jane Fonda's aggressive sexual stalking of Tony Perkins) certainly puts Tall Story in that 50s/60's cusp. Exactly why B/W fit(which also helps summon up Psycho in a way that Perkins in Friendly Persuasion and Green Mansions in color do not) is somewhat of a mystery. Cheap? The sex? Maybe the basketball footage?

I like Otto Preminger's films of this period, well, about three of them very much: Anatomy of a Murder(about the court system); Advise and Consent(about the US legislative process back when it worked); and In Harm's Way(about military bureaucratic battles as well as real battles.) Otto made all three in black and white, and yet in the same period , chose to make Exodus and The Cardinal in color. What's weird is that I like the three b/w films much more than the two color ones (well, I haven't seen the Cardinal, but I've read about it, and I don't much like what I read.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Is it fair to guess that considerations fell into three basic categories: budgetary; artistic; practical? Psycho, of course, would be an example of all three brought to bear, and I'm sure there was often overlap in other cases.

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Its interesting about Psycho. Hitchcock gave as a public reason: he didn't want red blood on screen(and felt the censors would kill the movie.) But he also needed to make the film very cheaply on his dime. And I suppose the "practical" part was matching Psycho up to William Castle and Diabolique.

Irony: one great version of Psycho is in black and white. A remake, three sequels and a cable series(plus a broadcast pilot) are all in color. And yet we STILL wonder what Psycho in 1960 would have looked like as a color film. Color was different back then...

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But in those others, I'd love to know how those decisions were arrived at. Some directors have explained them - Wilder for Some Like It Hot; Nichols for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf - but answers from most of the period are few and far between.

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This ties into something I say all the time: we movie FANS can never, never , NEVER know exactly what the process is(was?) by which a property becomes a movie. The acquisition process. The writing process. The casting process. The art direction(there are no sketches existing of the Bates house as imagined; though one has surfaced of the foyer and stairs.) And the color/no color decision of that era (50's/60's - the 30s and 40's defaulted to b/w even though color films were made.)

What WAS Nichols reason for Virginia Woolf in b/w, might I ask? (If you wrote it, I apologize for missing it.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Some film makers have chosen B&W to impart hard-edged realism: what is often called a "documentary quality." Richard Brooks's In Cold Blood is an example.

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Coming off of his VERY colorful color films Lord Jim and The Professionals, In Cold Blood was all the more surprising from Richard Brooks in b/w, but we knew why.

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But the funny thing about it is that by its very nature, B&W is stylized: it resembles nothing experienced in the real world (even by the so-called color-blind, who see not in true monochrome, but in muted tones rendering them unable to identify or distinguish between most colors, but who can nevertheless see a difference between B&W photography and color).

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Again, an incredible irony. To render "realism" in movies, filmmakers went for b/w. I suppose part of it is that for many years, b/w was the color of newsreels at movie theaters("REAL current events and history") and film documentaries, and WWII footage(though some of that was in color.)

But this: b/w didn't render realism so much as it rendered GRIMNESS. A depressive quality that was worse than the color of real life. The Hoboken and docks of "On the Waterfront" probably would have looked grim in color, but they look REALLY grim in b/w. (Speaking of which, a film noir in color is almost an oxymoron; though Chinatown and LA Confidential and Body Heat may qualify...)

With the "official" end of b/w as a "usual" choice in 1967(Oscar categories removed, demands from broadcast networks given color TVs), it was interesting seeing black and white becoming a "rare specialty."

I'd say it took until 1971 for a b/w film to be really, really important again: The Last Picture Show; lots of Oscar noms(and wins) and good box office and a countercultural movie company that was willing to fight to let Bogdanovich shoot in b/w. (And he got to do it again with Paper Moon!)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

On TCM the other night, the host told an anecdote about Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein." Brooks had a deal with Columbia to make Young Frankstein UNTIL he demanded b/w. The deal ended. He took it to Fox. Big hit.

My other thought about b/w since 1967 is that it is a "sign of clout" -- our biggest deal directors have generally gotten to use it when they wanted to:

Scorsese: Raging Bull
Spielberg: Schindler's List
Burton(after Batman): Ed Wood
Woody: Quite a few(just because, I guess.)

I wonder if QT might consider B/W. I guess he can't -- he's held himself to only one film left.

But nowadays, a b/w film is an "event." I think b/w is a little more fascinating in the early 60's as a "choice."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

You were quite right that color was once more expensive, even after Eastman's introduction of "monopack" color negative stock made it vastly more affordable than Technicolor's three-strip process, but each year brought refinements that took costs ever closer to B&W.

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Interesting. I always FIGURED that b/w was simply a cheaper choice(that's why so many 50's horror movies are in b/w.) But if refinements brought color costs lower...well, broadcast TV and the Oscars killed the b/w movie "irregardless."

--

Here's a factoid of which many are unaware: for nearly 40 years, the major suppliers of motion picture film haven't even manufactured B&W negative stock. Directors like Woody Allen have had to shoot on color stock and process and print in monochrome.

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"I did not know that." Makes sense.

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And another: three-strip Technicolor used B&W negatives in the camera. That's right. A prism behind the lens split the light into primary colors, and each B&W negative strip recorded only that portion of the light spectrum to which it was assigned. In what the lab called an imbibition process, each negative then absorbed a dye corresponding to its primary color. Kooky, huh?

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This is where I sit back, relax, and learn. From you, from swanstep, from others. I wish I knew this technical stuff, but I don't. Though guessing IS fun.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"BTW, here's a young memory: waiting in a long, long, LONG interminably long line for The Absent Minded Professor."

- The longest line I remember from that age was for 13 Ghosts (in B&W so the cheap 'ghost viewer" effects would work with its red and blue cellophane), and the theater was so packed at that matinee that I had to see it from a far-right seat in the front row.

---

I remember TV and newspaper ads for 13 Ghosts , but they scared me and I wasn't allowed to see that movie anyway.

But this fascinates me sometimes: I looked at newspaper ads in that summer of 1960 and I remember the "scary" ads for 13 Ghosts and for The Time Machine and..I HAD to be looking straight at the ads for PSYCHO without knowing what I was seeing. Makes sense: I probably couldn't understand how to say the word PSYCHO or what it meant, and the ad isn't really scary -- its Janet Leigh and John Gavin half-clad and Tony Perkins looking scared. (I doubt I "got the scare" from the slashed letters of the logo.) I likely "looked right past it" at 13 Ghosts.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Another memory from the same period: the odd kiddie matinee combo of Corman's (color) House Of Usher and (B&W) Murder, Inc. (with Stuart Whitman, the would-be Sam Loomis, Peter Falk and, yes, Simon Oakland).

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Hmm. An odd combination. Though both were violent(Peter Falk stabs good ol' Morey Amsterdam to death in Murder, Inc. -- I was shocked! Dick Van Dyke show!)

And a lesson: the pool of movies matched the pool of actors pretty well back then. Its too bad that Stuart Whitman had to give Sam Loomis to John Gavin(MCA pushed Hitchcock to change his mind), but Whitman got plenty of other movies to make. Indeed, I've read that Stuart Whitman convinced John Wayne to dump the actor cast in "The Commancheros" with Wayne and to give him the role. The other actor? Anthony Perkins!

As for Simon Oakland, he just may have been bigger than Martin Balsam in 1960. Didn't Oakland have very high billing with Susan Hayward in "I Want to Live" in 1958? And yet Balsam got the longer role in "Psycho" -- he was better casting for Arbogast. (Recall that Joe Stefano recommended Balsam and Oakland to Hitch for their roles.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A comment about the "long line syndrome":

I HATED long lines as a kid in the 60's and tried to avoid them. And I remember feeling really bad for my mother when she endured one with us for "The Three Stooges Meet Hercules." Even I knew we shouldn't have had to go through that much pain(in the line and in the screaming-kids balcony) to see such a crummy movie.

It took until the 70s and young maturity for me to develop the patience and strategy( a deck of cards with friends) to handle the long lines for The Godfather, Jaws, and The Exorcist. In fact, as I now recall, I braved those with male friends...I wouldn't subject dates to this.

Modernly: no lines. When a movie is on 3500 screens -- and maybe four screens in one theater -- no worries.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

What WAS Nichols reason for Virginia Woolf in b/w

In the doc. Becoming Mike Nichols (2016) Nichols says that he chose B&W because 'When you watch black and white it’s not literal. It is a metaphor automatically.' He wanted the audience to have that unconscious heightened response. Jack Warner opposed the decision but gave in after Nichols said he'd walk if he didn't get to do the film in B/W.

Note that this is the doc. where Nichols talks about freaking out after he gets the V. Woolf job because he knows absolutely nothing about film sets, cameras, etc.. He therefore gets his buddy Anthony Perkins to teach him over a weekend everything Nichols would ever know about cameras and lenses.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Thanks for jumping in there. It's been at least a year, maybe two, since I saw the doc, and I was having trouble recalling just how Nichols put it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he say something about Warner wanting to switch to color even as late as during the first week of shooting?

He obviously got some good advice from Perkins, but in any case, a first-time director with no film background of any kind has to put a great deal of trust into his crew, as Nichols must have with Haskell Wexler, Richard Sylbert, Sam O'Steen and so on. And you can't find better than such people.

Still, I've always looked upon Nichols as some sort of prodigy. Many directors develop certain identifiable stylistic signatures, but from the start to the end, Nichols adapted himself to the material, and each project, whether hit or miss, exhibited its own unique characteristics.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he say something about Warner wanting to switch to color even as late as during the first week of shooting?

I don't remember that & unfortunately I don't have a copy of the doc. I can rewatch to check (I originally watched the doc. on HBO-affliated cable).

Moreover, I so far haven't been able to find any free copies of BMN floating around, nor do there appear to be any subtitle files available for the doc. (a trick I often use to check quotes from movies I don't have copies of). A streaming purchase will probably be required.....

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

HBO's where I saw it too.

Not important; had the idea in my head and thought you might recall. Don't want you to go to any trouble, much less any expense.

I had remembered that Warner had done it before. A Star Is Born began production in '53 in standard aspect ratio, and he decided he wanted to restart in CinemaScope and Warnercolor. They did, and the Warnercolor results were terrible, so they restarted again with Technicolor.

Ah, Hollywood (or Burbank, as the case may be).

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

OK.... after digging for ages I found some subtitles. Here's what Nichols says in the relevant sequence:

At this point, Jack Warner, who actually was sort of a person, called us into his office and said, "Boys, you can't do the picture in black and white. New York says it's got to be color."

Now, there is no New York at Warner Brothers. That's Warners. It's Warners. It's called Warners and Warners owns it. New York is only a city. It doesn't care whether movies are made in-- he was pretending he had a sort of release organization in New York.

I said, "Well, I'm sorry, but Elizabeth is 32.
The character is 56. [In color] Her makeup is going
to look like shit. You can't do that to someone."

And she had lost weight. And I said, "No, no. You're supposed to gain weight now."
And she said--oh, she was thrilled. She said, "You want me to gain weight?" I said, "I certainly do."

And I explained to Warner that you couldn't do it. And the sets we're building can't be done.

He said, "Well, I'm sorry, but you have to do it."

And I said-- discovering that I had that ability-- I said, "Well, then, you make it. I'll go home. I like it at home."

To my surprise, he said, "All right, all right. Damn it. Black and white."

And then I had gotten it. I understood what you did with the old guard in Hollywood. You went ahead anyway.

Oh, I had a famous cameraman that I had wanted. One day I ran into this guy.

He said, "Mike, Mike, I've got to tell you something.I thought of how you're gonna get that look like Fellini. The secret would be to shoot it in color, but print it in black and white."

I said, "Oh, Harry. You're fired." I said, "I'm so sorry. 'Cause I know you're working for the boss, but I've got to really shoot it and print it in black and white. That's all we're gonna do."

(Cont.)

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

(Cont.)
But here's the thing also about black and white. It's why it was so sad to say good-bye to it. It's not literal. It is a metaphor automatically.

And my orientation is that that's the point. A movie is a metaphor. What is the metaphor, you ask? When you're trying to solve the problem. If you're in black and white, it's partly solved. It is already saying, "No, this is not life. This is something about life."

It's like an oil painting. It doesn't move. It does something else. A version of life. A version of life.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Great of you to track that down, swanstep. And if I may add, gratifying to know my thoughts on B&W were aligned with Nichols's.

Among peculiar little questions to which there can be no answers is one that's always interested me: if color photography had been a viable and affordable option since the dawn of motion pictures, what might the percentage of those shot in B&W have been?

Nichols's film career just happened to have begun at the point when the choice of B&W over color had to be justified and/or defended, after decades of the reverse having been the case.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

OK.... after digging for ages I found some subtitles.

--

Joining doghouse in thanks!

--
Here's what Nichols says in the relevant sequence:

At this point, Jack Warner, who actually was sort of a person,

--

Now there's a hilarious quote, right there

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called us into his office and said, "Boys, you can't do the picture in black and white. New York says it's got to be color."

---

"New York" seemed to pull a lot of strings in Hollywood -- ironic, yes. As I recall "New York" fired some Hollywood Paramount execs for not doing enough to stop Hitchcock from making Psycho...this was before the huge grosses.

----

Now, there is no New York at Warner Brothers. That's Warners. It's Warners. It's called Warners and Warners owns it. New York is only a city. It doesn't care whether movies are made in-- he was pretending he had a sort of release organization in New York.

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Ha. I suppose "New York" is the old famous excuse : "If it were up to me, I'd love to, but the folks upstairs won't let me." Except, again, Psycho: "New York" REALLY fired Hollywood guys, and then sent lawyers out to try to stop Psycho some more. Too late: Wasserman and Hitchcock had them outmaneuvered.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I said, "Well, I'm sorry, but Elizabeth is 32.
The character is 56. [In color] Her makeup is going
to look like shit. You can't do that to someone."

---

The make-up issue, again (after Some Like It Hot for the men in drag.) Sounds like a knowledgeable reason to go b/w. Ever see a photo of Bette Davis in her Baby Jane make-up in color? I rest my case.

---

And she had lost weight. And I said, "No, no. You're supposed to gain weight now."
And she said--oh, she was thrilled. She said, "You want me to gain weight?" I said, "I certainly do."

---

I've read that contrary to popular belief, actors LOVE to be asked to gain weight. Makes for fun eating. The issue: being able to lose it again (DeNiro yes; Shelley Winters, no.)

---

And I explained to Warner that you couldn't do it. And the sets we're building can't be done.

He said, "Well, I'm sorry, but you have to do it."

And I said-- discovering that I had that ability-- I said, "Well, then, you make it. I'll go home. I like it at home."

To my surprise, he said, "All right, all right. Damn it. Black and white."

---

There's that Nichols early on clout...

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Oh, I had a famous cameraman that I had wanted. One day I ran into this guy.

He said, "Mike, Mike, I've got to tell you something.I thought of how you're gonna get that look like Fellini. The secret would be to shoot it in color, but print it in black and white."

I said, "Oh, Harry. You're fired." I said, "I'm so sorry. 'Cause I know you're working for the boss, but I've got to really shoot it and print it in black and white. That's all we're gonna do."

--

Ha. Nice try, Harry!

And Nichols had the street smarts to see it and fire the guy.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But here's the thing also about black and white. It's why it was so sad to say good-bye to it. It's not literal. It is a metaphor automatically.

And my orientation is that that's the point. A movie is a metaphor. What is the metaphor, you ask? When you're trying to solve the problem. If you're in black and white, it's partly solved. It is already saying, "No, this is not life. This is something about life."

It's like an oil painting. It doesn't move. It does something else. A version of life. A version of life.

--

Very well said, swanstep. And I suppose the one sad negation of this artistic viewpoint is, in the final analysis, not only commerce, but a change in sensibility has entered in. Evidently "youth" (and some older adults I know) simply won't WATCH a movie in black and white. Can't curse 'em, the world keeps changing.

But its nice to have the b/w films we have.

Thought: it seems like 1962 had a LOT of b/w movies, from classics(Liberty Valance, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Manchurian Candidate) to just good movies(Advise and Consent, Cape Fear.) I wonder if filmmakers "saw the writing on the wall" as color TVs started to come in, and decided to make as many b/w movies as they could before it all ended.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Among peculiar little questions to which there can be no answers is one that's always interested me: if color photography had been a viable and affordable option since the dawn of motion pictures, what might the percentage of those shot in B&W have been?

---

Its a great question. I am not the expert that you folks are on when/how color WAS chosen in that era, but it certainly seems that cost was an issue and the project had to be deemed worthy of that cost. GWTW? Sure. The Wizard of Oz? Had to be...with that great sepia/b/w beginning for contrast.

But tons of Westerns were made in b/w and folks had to imagine that blue sky. Costume dramas like Captain Blood.

Hitch lucked out in that thrillers seemed to be a "b/w genre" in the forties, But perhaps Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur would have played "bigger" with color(NXNWwesty, eh?)

And how about the ORIGINAL (was it?) Mutiny on the Bounty with Gable and Laughton?

Oh, well.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Nichols's film career just happened to have begun at the point when the choice of B&W over color had to be justified and/or defended, after decades of the reverse having been the case.

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Well put and this is a variation on my quote "film history is history, period." How the world changed was reflected in our movies as THEY changed.

Television was a big driver...knocking down movie going numbers through the fifties, being battled with color movies for a number of years. Then the shift to color TVs...so the movies went R-rated(yes, "the times they were a changin' but it was a NEW way to get people into theaters and away from TV at home.)

I guess what's amazing today is that practically all TV shows are in color, and R-rated(and worse) material is broadcast on cable and streaming...but people still go to the theater, for socialization means if nothing else.

Still, losing b/w films was a loss of artistic expression. That's for sure.

Hey.. on topic...there are tons of Psycho sequels, a remake, a broadcast TV pilot, a cable series...but only the original is in black and white.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

In the doc. Becoming Mike Nichols (2016) Nichols says that he chose B&W because 'When you watch black and white it’s not literal. It is a metaphor automatically.' He wanted the audience to have that unconscious heightened response.

---

I suppose a very "sharp" director knew that black and white WASN'T reality once it was choice and color was the norm. I would suggest that the b/w movies of the sixties were invariably depressing in some way, too.

Take "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"(1962.) John Wayne and James Stewart together for the first time, John Ford directing -- the John Ford of many great COLOR Westerns(She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Searchers...well, the not-so-great Horse Soldiers and Two Rode Together), who here chose to work in the b/w of his early years. There aren't too many(any?) Monument Valley vistas in TMWSLV; its mainly a soundstage job, inside and out. But very DEPRESSING. Methinks Ford knew of what he done.

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Jack Warner opposed the decision but gave in after Nichols said he'd walk if he didn't get to do the film in B/W.

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And that's Nichols as a FIRST-TIME movie director, with no track record. Ah, but he was part of the famous Nichols and May and had a helluva STAGE reputation...Warner probably felt Nichols was a real "catch." And gave in...

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Note that this is the doc. where Nichols talks about freaking out after he gets the V. Woolf job because he knows absolutely nothing about film sets, cameras, etc.. He therefore gets his buddy Anthony Perkins to teach him over a weekend everything Nichols would ever know about cameras and lenses.

---

I'll here drag in that cryptic NicNote that this is the doc. where Nichols talks about freaking out after he gets the V. Woolf job because he knows absolutely nothing about film sets, cameras, etc.. He therefore gets his buddy Anthony Perkins to teach him over a weekend everything Nichols would ever know about cameras and lenses.

---

I'll here drag in that cryptic Nichols quote: "Anthony Perkins is the only intelligent actor I worked with...and Richard Burton was...something." Leaving Burton aside, my research won't yield the answer: WHEN did Nichols say that?

After 1970, I'd guess...Perkins only worked on screen for Nichols in Catch-22. So Liz(Burton spared) , Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft, Alan Arkin and everybody else in Catch 22 other than Perkins...WEREN'T intelligent? (Hey, ORSON WELLES was in Catch 22, but maybe Nichols didn't consider him an actor first..)

Perkins had started in movies in 1953 and worked opposite pros like Tracy and Cooper en route to learning "the technicals" those guys knew how to ACT in front of the technology. Nichols had a good teacher in Perkins -- who would need til 1986 and Psycho III to get his chance to direct.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

He obviously got some good advice from Perkins, but in any case, a first-time director with no film background of any kind has to put a great deal of trust into his crew, as Nichols must have with Haskell Wexler, Richard Sylbert, Sam O'Steen and so on. And you can't find better than such people.

---

A true "collaborative." Perkins to set him up "behind the scenes" and those other pros to guide him on set.

Though such "pros" can be a real challenge to a tyro director. He or she has to establish themselves as "worthy" of ordering such pros around(however nicely) and making the key decisions.

But Nichols had plenty of stage experience doing THAT.

(On the other hand, I'm reminded that someone asked Hitchcock why he didn't direct a play and he said "Because I have no idea how to do that job...I wouldn't know what to do." Work harder with the "cattle," Hitch?)

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Still, I've always looked upon Nichols as some sort of prodigy. Many directors develop certain identifiable stylistic signatures, but from the start to the end, Nichols adapted himself to the material, and each project, whether hit or miss, exhibited its own unique characteristics.

---

Nichols was from that era where showing some flash made a reputation. I'd contend the flash WORKED with Virginia Woolf and The Graduate.. and then rather broke down with Catch-22 , which was OVERLOADED with flash (arty style) and somehow flopped(famously, in the same year that MASH introduced ANOTHER director with a style, Robert Altman.)

People forget how Nichols "wobbled" after The Graduate. Catch-22 was a disappointment(I've always felt the whole movie was cast out of Elaine's); Day of the Dolphin a big flop(recall that Polanski was working on this around the time Sharon Tate was killed); The Fortune...with Jack Friggin' Nicholson right after Chinatown and Warren Friggin' Beatty right after Shampoo...flopped. (Nichols "ends" there for awhile; scurries back to the stage for a long time...)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I don't dispute Nichols "gift" right out of the box, and Woolf and Graduate are landmark films, enough to rest on forever.

But it sure went wrong for Nichols. I think he still had that gift...but he lost confidence.

And yet he came back to movies and worked for decades and his final film is my favorite of 2007: Charlie Wilson's War.
("Let's call it water under the dam," "By the way, water goes OVER a dam and under a bridge, you ponsy schoolboy!")

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

@ecarle. In your review of Nichols initial run of success you leave out Carnal Knowledge for some reason. I know it wasn't a big hit & it remains a tough watch but I'd rate it only just below VW & The Grad in quality. Killer performance from Ann Margaret. In any other year, she wins Best Supporting Actress Oscar (she won Golden Globe) but it had to go to Cloris Leachman for Last Picture Show.

'Scurrying back to the stage' and making great TV out of it with Wit (2001) & Angels In America (2003). Emma Thompson in both & Streep & Pacino in the latter. These were real landmarks each of which would have won top Oscars if they hadn't been on HBO. I know that Sopranos was the 'big one' for announcing an HBO-led new golden age of TV, but Nichols' home runs were a big part of that new era's arrival too.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

@ecarle. In your review of Nichols initial run of success you leave out Carnal Knowledge for some reason.

--

In the immortal words of Steve Martin: "I.......forgot."

"Senior moment." See why I stick to boards on old movies?

So I guess I'll say..."I say all the same stuff except start with Day of the Dolphin as a flop, after Carnal Knowledge, not."

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I know it wasn't a big hit & it remains a tough watch but I'd rate it only just below VW & The Grad in quality. Killer performance from Ann Margaret. In any other year, she wins Best Supporting Actress Oscar (she won Golden Globe) but it had to go to Cloris Leachman for Last Picture Show.

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Very famous movie, got a US Supreme Court case I think, on "obscenity" when arrests were made in Georgia at a theater or some such(managers? or just a ban?)

And Ann-Margaret's nomination ALONE suddenly vaulted her into "respected dramatic actress" land(see also: Tommy.)

So on balance, I'm in agreement: I simply forgot that film in the "order" of films and it is an acknowledged "very good one," if not quite the great one that Woolf and Graduate are.

THAT said, I've seen the film a few times, and it does seem to owe a lot to Jules Feiffer(sp?); it plays rather like a cartoon. Art Garfunkel is well cast but not particularly memorable as an actor.

And My Man Jack (lifelong fan here), in his younger, thinner form(does one scene nude sitting in a chair with a leg over his knee blocking the view)...what an awful character. The Male Chauvinist Pig personified. I recall one problem I had with the character is that he always seemed too dumb to be the successful NYC lawyer/accountant he was supposed to be, but I dunno.

I'll toss in my kudos for Rita Moreno in this again. Very daring role at the end.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Anyway, OK:

Virginia Woolf(landmark classic)
The Graduate(landmark classic and blockbuster)
Catch-22(interesting wobbler -- an OK movie of a classic "unfilmable" book)
Carnal Knowledge(landmark classic)

and then...

Day of the Dophin
The Fortune(which really is worth discussing sometime -- its so SLIGHT. BTW Nicholson scores big comedy points in a weird perm and stache; Beatty is , well, Beatty.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

'Scurrying back to the stage'

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Oh, I think I was thinking of right after "The Fortune." I didn't go to IMDb but isn't his next movie 8 years later with "Silkwood?" I'm guessing again, I may be wrong. From then on, I'd have to check the list. Did he do "Heartburn" and/ or "Working Girl?" If so, big stars, rather predictable movies -- though I did like Harrison Ford taking supporting duty to Melanie Griffith(but still top billing.) It was a charming gesture, I felt.

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and making great TV out of it with Wit (2001) & Angels In America (2003). Emma Thompson in both & Streep & Pacino in the latter. These were real landmarks each of which would have won top Oscars if they hadn't been on HBO.

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These were powerful, landmark events and I know that Nichols continued on as a great of sorts. But he didn't really stoke that the auteur movie maker career that his first two movies(and Carnal Knowledge) portended. Hey, it was hard for Arthur Penn, too. And William Freidkin. And certainly Peter Bogdanovich.

I also seem to remember Nichols doing "The Birdcage" a perfectly acceptable comedy hit with a certain sitcom edge. Big hit though. Nichols abided.

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I know that Sopranos was the 'big one' for announcing an HBO-led new golden age of TV, but Nichols' home runs were a big part of that new era's arrival too.

---

Agreed. Wit reduced me to big tears and I'm loving Big Al and Streep and the rest in "America."

Hey, I'm not against Mike Nichols. I just think he came along maybe at an odd time, when "grand auteurs" were announced, celebrated and then tossed aside, at least for awhile.

I recall, for instance, The Day of the Dolphin getting crushed in the 1973 Xmas that had The Exorcist and The Sting(and Magnum Force)...nobody went. I watched it on cable, and ...other than the explosive ending, I remember nothing.

But certainly Nichols worked his way back and finished a respected artist who made money.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Footnotes:

."Charlie Wilson's War." Every scene with Phillip Seymour Hoffman makes me laugh hard. A lot of that is Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, a lot is PSH's performance(so deadpan and low-voiced), but I'm sure Nichols' directorial timing chops made the difference too.

And this: one thing I read in former Paramount Chief Robert Evans autobio("The Kid Stays in the Picture") that intrigued me is how he "called in a favor" and asked Mike Nichols to direct Evans -- on a set for a TV show called "The Young Lawyers" , sitting at a desk and introducing a bunch of upcoming Paramount projects like Love Story and The Godfather(before any footage was shot.)

The five minute film was meant for an audience of "New York" Paramount execs -- to save Evans' job. It did(so did those movies.)

And yet: what did Mike Nichols direct for Paramount in the 70s? Catch 22, that's what.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

who made money

When I checked, Closer (2004) was the surprise money-maker - cost $27 mill, grossed $120 mill. Surprise money-loser: the rather good (great ending) Primary Colors, cost $65 mill, grossed only $52 mill worldwide.
Surprising just-about-broke-evens: Postcards from the Edge & Regarding Henry.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

When I checked, Closer (2004) was the surprise money-maker - cost $27 mill, grossed $120 mill.

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Well, it had Julia Roberts, Natalie Portman(as a stripper!) Clive Owen(when he was hot, both ways)...etc.

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Surprise money-loser: the rather good (great ending) Primary Colors, cost $65 mill, grossed only $52 mill worldwide.

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Political movies sometimes do well(All the President's Men) but movies about politicians ...don't. Plus maybe Bill and Hillary's fans were offended.

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Surprising just-about-broke-evens: Postcards from the Edge & Regarding Henry

--
The former reminds me that from 1983 on, Nichols worked several times with Meryl Streep== Prestige Protection.

The latter reminds me that Nichols made some movies with big stars that just seemed to miss the mark. Wolf with Nicholson was another one. The premises were compelling, but the stories didn't "click."

And Regarding Henry had a tough sad story to tell: if you married a man because he was a brilliant lawyer who was rich from it, and he was shot in the head, and became child-like and unable to earn...would you stay?

The movie had its answer. The LA Times published a tough article about a real life lawyer that happened to: no, the wife left The shot lawyer ended up in assisted living.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A little more on Mike Nichols:

I DID check his imdb list and he DID take a break from movies from The Fortune(1975) to Silkwood(1983)...with the exception that he directed the filmed Broadway show Gilda Live in between. Not really a movie.

From Silkwood on, Nichols survived and sustained as a "class act" director of stars, working multiple times with Streep, Nicholson, and Ford. His HBO films may have been events, but his theatrical movies seemed "glossy but lacking," and very dependent on the material(if I love Charlie Wilson's War, its likely more for the script than the direction.)

I'll reiterate that I think Mike Nichols was a "victim" (along with several other directors) of getting his biggest acheivements right up front(Virginia Woolf and The Graduate) and never really living up to their promise...with Carnal Knowledge allowed in for its landmark status even if it didn't quite hit like those other two.

The Graduate was the Big Movie of 1967 along with Bonnie and Clyde, and THAT film's director felt the same kind of pressure. Arthur Penn went on to direct the quirky "Alice's Restaurant" and then HIS "Catch 22" -- "Little Big Man." Both films were prestige epics released in 1970(and both had...Martin Balsam!) But both "under-performed" in certain ways, to certain expectations. Thinking out loud, I lose track of Penn after Night Moves(very good)...I think he ended up working on the Law and Order TV show.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

And when Fred MacMurray has to leave gf MacLaine in the apartment to go home to his family for Xmas, he gives her $100

IIRC we never find out what Fran actually earns per week (Bud takes home $94.70), but that $100 is at least a couple of weeks' wages and around the equiv. of $1000 today. On Mad Men, Season 1 set in NYC in 1960, secretaries earn $35 per week and junior exec. Pete Campbell earns $75 per week. In Breakfast at Tiffs (1961) Holly's shady money is $50 tips for the powder room, and $100 per week from Sally Tomato. Fran isn't crazy to assume that her $100 comes with some serious strings, which of course it does (Sheldrake's retaining her availability, he just had no use for it then).

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

IIRC we never find out what Fran actually earns per week (Bud takes home $94.70), but that $100 is at least a couple of weeks' wages and around the equiv. of $1000 today.

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You know, I usually try to consider inflation in movies -- like a $40,000 house in 1960 -- but I kinda forgot just how much Sheldrake is giving her (Billy Wilder named other villains Sheldrake in his movies, btw.) On the one hand...its Xmas. On the other, yeah....that's money for a kept woman, and Fran knows it.

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On Mad Men, Season 1 set in NYC in 1960, secretaries earn $35 per week and junior exec. Pete Campbell earns $75 per week. In Breakfast at Tiffs (1961) Holly's shady money is $50 tips for the powder room, and $100 per week from Sally Tomato.

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All those lowish salaries for the Mad Men workers, but the higher ups are evidently millionaires. It makes the heavy competition of the ad game worth it. (Roger Thornhill is a fairly rich man, btw.)

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Fran isn't crazy to assume that her $100 comes with some serious strings, which of course it does (Sheldrake's retaining her availability, he just had no use for it then).

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Yep. Sheldrake's villainy is that he just keeps stringing Fran along. (He's good at it; WE almost believe his heartfelt pleas to Fran to "just wait awhile" and then we see him tell Jack Lemmon that he has no such intentions.) And in a last burst of agonizing suspense, Fran doesn't know that Sheldrake finally agrees to marry her because his wife has thrown him out. And he intends to keep on cheating....

I've always noted this: Sheldrake's behavior in a 1960 movie marks him as a cad and a swine. But both Andre Devereaux(in Hitchcock's 1962-set Topaz) and Don Draper(on Mad Men) behave the same way and somehow retain sympathetic hero status. A different era, a different public.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

You know, I suppose that Psycho, The Apartment and The Facts of Life are a bit tenuous in the connection, but I always think of the others when I see one. Same year of release. All in black and white. A certain frank sexuality. The motel motif in all three(the apartment is an "ersatz motel room.") Psycho goes farther with its horror and ultraviolence, but one reason Psycho is so good is because it "sounds" in the same themes as the other two ("non horror") movies.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

As a "completion" to all this, I'm reminded of a book written by an author named, I believe, Danny Peary, from about 20 years ago (or more) called "Alternative Oscars," in which Peary named an alternative Oscar for every year in only three categories: Picture, Actor, and Actress.

Sometimes, Peary didn't disagree with the real choice. I think he went ahead and gave The Godfather the Best Picture award again, for instance. And he let George C. Scott keep Patton's Best Actor honors(even though Scott didn't want them).

But for 1960, Peary went with Psycho in two out of the three categories:

Best Picture (instead of The Apartment)
Best Actor(Anthony Perkins instead of Burt Lancaster for Elmer Gantry.)

I don't have the book in front of me, but I recall these two paraphrased lines:

Begin:

ONE: (Best Picture) The Apartment was good but what happened in that apartment was far LESS compelling than what happened in Cabin One of the Bates Motel in Psycho.

End

By zeroing in on Cabin One, I suppose Peary was saying that the shower murder alone(and perhaps Norman's clean-up of it) were more compelling than all of The Apartment. Fair enough. Some critics have suggested that the entirety of Psycho OTHER than the shower murder were merely "filler," the movie WAS the shower scene. I heartily disagree with that assumption(the Arbogast scenes, start to finish, are my favorite part of the movie) but...yeah...the shower scene made history.

Peary himself went on in his one-page essay on Psycho to make a strong overall case for it, not just the shower scene. And he had a photo I've never seen before -- Hitchcock in a raincoat at night, standing in front of the Bates Motel, with a microphone in his hand -- directing the shadowy mother up in the window first seen by Marion. Its odd to see "Mother" in a new position up in that window, waiting for Hitchcock to direct her.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The other paraphrased line

Begin

TWO: (Best Actor) Burt Lancaster's performance was great, but there was one performance that year that was greater: Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates

End

Of course, Perkins wasn't even NOMINATED for Best Actor , particularly embarrassing after he told the press he thought he would be ("...and Janet, too." And SHE was.)

The five nominated slots were taken by daunting actors in 1960 starting with the two Greatest Actors Alive at the time other than Brando -- Tracy and Olivier.

Trevor Howard, Sons and Lovers
Burt Lancaster, Elmer Gantry
Jack Lemmon, The Apartment
Laurence Olivier, The Entertainer
Spencer Tracy, Inherit the Wind

(Critic Dwight MacDonald said that "Psycho" could have been called "Sons and Lovers," too -- Norman was a son, Sam and Marion were lovers, but I digress.)

Anyway, it would seem that Trevor Howard got Perkins' slot, but Tracy that year said "I need another award like I need a hole in the head," so maybe Perkins could have gotten that one. As for me, I like Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, and he finds the sad side of his manic comedy character, but it is not a very LIKEABLE performance...he's a flibbergibbet too much of the time(especially in his early wooing of MacLaine.)

Burt Lancaster was a very big star when he made Elmer Gantry, a role that allowed him to show off all his best qualities, from toothy flamboyance to brooding self-loathing. If they say "the character wins the Oscar," Elmer Gantry was likely the best character Burt Lancaster ever played(aside from his ultra-villain in Sweet Smell of Success and his tough Army sergeant in From Here to Eternity.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

But Anthony Perkins took a HUGE risk in playing a mother-fixated, cross-dressing madman, and achieved the near impossible: kept us LIKING the character for most of the movie, depite his horrible crimes. And he lives on. More people today know who Norman Bates is than Elmer Gantry.

In 1960, maybe a harder call. But Peary got it right in his "alternative Oscars" book: Perkins was the right call.

Peary also gave Robert Walker Best Actor for "Strangers on a Train" in 1951, but made Walker share it with someone else; Alec Guinness, I think, for a movie I don't know. Bogart had to give up his Best Actor Oscar for The African Queen, but I think Peary gave Bogart a Best Actor Oscar for some OTHER Bogart movie. Casablanca, maybe. Or The Maltese Falcon. It was that kind of a book.

And for us "Bullitt" fans, Peary awarded the 1968 Best Actor Oscar to Steve McQueen as Bullitt(instead of Cliff Robertson as Charly.) McQueen wasn't nominated, but...why not. Bullitt is iconic like Dirty Harry, but has "depth" -- like Norman Bates. I think Peary made points about McQueen's powerful "silent acting" in the film, and how McQueen projected authority, vulnerability and some angst in the role.