MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > OT: Helen Reddy and Mac Davis Die on t...

OT: Helen Reddy and Mac Davis Die on the Same Day, Each at 78

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
9 replies | jump to latest

This one is DEFINITELY OT, but of a kind of "coincidental impact" that Hitchcock often studied(in Psycho and Family Plot, for two.)

Earlier this week, Helen Reddy and Mac Davis each passed away. Same day, both at the age of 78. Newspaper researchers did their thing and found a photo of Reddy and Davis together on a show in the 70's(their heyday): Reddy was a guest on Davis's show.

I not sure which of the two is the "bigger" star. They were singers first, but each dabbled in movies. Reddy was in the Disney film "Pete's Dragon." Mac Davis tried to do the Robert Redford role in "The Sting 2"(with Jackie Gleason in for Paul Newman) and...failure.

In my world, Mac Davis has one big claim to fame: somehow, he nabbed the second lead -- behind star Nick Nolte -- in the NFL expose North Dallas Forty...my favorite movie of 1979. With Nolte the real lead of the picture, evidently no bigger star wanted that "buddy" role -- the quarterback who is pals with his wide receiver...but only so far when the corporate bosses want the rebellious Nolte out of the way. Davis took the role (based on "Dandy Don Meredith" -- who turned it down) and was really quite good.

Two of my favorite lines for Davis in the film:

(To Nolte about a monstrous linebacker who bullies everybody) "You keep me on the sports pages, but he keeps me off of the obituary pages."

(To two beautiful and willing females) "You ever been part of a quarterback sandwich?"

Hey, it was back when the movies could be like that.

I recall Mac Davis being on the Johnny Carson show, with Siskel and Ebert as co-guests. Siskel told Davis (and the world) "By the way, you were really great in North Dallas Forty." I felt good about that.

The Sting 2? Not so much.

As for Helen Reddy...great voice, good looks. She made her splash with the anthem "I Am Woman" (which was utterly destroyed by the four female leads of Sex and the City in one of their movies, I saw that), and then made some radio hits that were part of the soundtrack of the 70's. Delta Dawn was one of those "can't get it out your head" ditties. And she had a weird hit in "Angie Baby" -- abstract, surreal lyrics about a crazy girl who somehow shrinks a boy and traps him in her radio!

Hey, it was the 70's.

I think the unexpected bit of history attendant to Mac Davis and Helen Reddy now becomes, indeed, that they died on the same day at the same age -- and two little bitty pieces of the 70's died with them.

As Davis says in North Dallas Party: "Wait''ll I get to the WEIRD part of the story!"

RIP

[–] liscarkat (18388) 4 years ago

WTF? Reddy and Davis weren't in "Psycho". Go to their pages.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

There's a slight Hitchcock connection in that Hitch somewhat surprisingly really liked The Longest Yard (1974), enough so he grabbed a couple of actors from TLY for Family Plot (e.g., Ed Lauter). Mac Davis then was in North Dallas 40 which excellently closed out the cycle of football films that TLY began. Knowing Hitch, he would have enjoyed ND40's well shot, genial sexiness (the smart, sexy gals in ND40 aren't a million miles away from Marion Crane and Eve Kendall in Hitch's own films), and ND40 might well have been one of the final films Hitch had screened before he died.

[–] Gubbio (3893) 4 years ago

And she had a weird hit in "Angie Baby" -- abstract, surreal lyrics about a crazy girl who somehow shrinks a boy and traps him in her radio!

My favorite line:

"It's so nice to be insane,
No one asks you to explain."

I'm sure Norman would agree! 😁

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And she had a weird hit in "Angie Baby" -- abstract, surreal lyrics about a crazy girl who somehow shrinks a boy and traps him in her radio!

My favorite line:

"It's so nice to be insane,
No one asks you to explain."

I'm sure Norman would agree! 😁

--

Hey, Gubbio!

I just saw this post...amusing and true...perhaps Psycho has greater connection to Helen Reddy than I thought.

Angie Baby WAS a weird song. I remember being amused that the concept could power a radio hit, but somehow it did. I guess the tune was good, too.

Someone wrote that one reason The Beatles were such a monumental act was that they had so MANY hit songs, almost all of them in one way or another, probably about 100.

An artist like Helen Reddy had to make do with....10? Less?

I think her first hit was "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar.

"I Am Woman" got her onto the OpEd pages as an anthem of feminism(and a good song, too.) I rather liked the wistfulness of "Peaceful."

But then it got rather tacky, I thought. Delta Dawn was too simple. Angie Baby was weird. And that song with the refrain "Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone" -- you wanted to.

But she was there, she had a career, she has that ONE big song about woman, as her legacy....

...and Psycho fans get "Angie Baby."

[–] Gubbio (3893) 4 years ago

Re: Helen. After her death, I visited some of her YouTube performances. Yes, some of the songs were trite, but I had forgotten how cute she was and how good her voice was.

Guess I'm reliving the '70's when I was YOUNG! 😲 😥

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Re: Helen. After her death, I visited some of her YouTube performances. Yes, some of the songs were trite, but I had forgotten how cute she was and how good her voice was.

---

She most certainly was cute, and she did have a distinctive voice...as we know from all this "American Idol" stuff, a truly unique voice is gold and Helen Reddy had one.

I re-thought her songs, and maybe I was a bit too harsh. The radio hits were...radio hits. Delta Dawn was sort of hard not to sing along with, and between the refrains, Reddy was sexy in her enuciations "She's 41 but her daddy still calls her baby..." (41, right?)

Something that I ponder from time to time: I was raised on the "American Songbook" which to me reached its peak with Sinatra in the 50's, even if some of the songs were written in the 30's. (One -- "Nice and Easy" -- I think was from 1960.) Anyway, songs like "They Can't Take That Away from Me," "The Tender Trap," "Our Love is Here to Stay," "Without a Song," "But Not for Me" --- all have a sophistication and a strength of construction that just slowly ebbed away by the 70's, where our "pop tunes" were taken over by Tony Orlando and Dawn and a radio hit could be Mac Davis singing "Baby, Baby, Don't Get Hooked on Me."

Wo' hoppen?

I'm guessing that there just might BE geniuses out there who could still write "American Songbook" songs...but they don't fit anymore. We devolved down.

Against that background, Helen Reddy's 70's work was actually...pretty good.

----

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Guess I'm reliving the '70's when I was YOUNG!

---

And for folks of our age, those were the FUN young days. High school, college and after. In this thread, I flashbacked on Helen Reddy's song "Peaceful" and I felt GOOD...because it was from a VERY good year in my young life, and it brings it back.

Funny, though: I was not much of a fan of the much-played Rod Stewart song "Maggie May" when it hit 1971 radio..but NOW when I hear it, I feel good. A so-so song from a year I loved. "Peaceful" is, on the other hand, I song I loved THEN, in a year I loved, so I feel, uh...double good.

PS. I had all the Led Zepp albums, too....

[–] Gubbio (3893) 4 years ago

I was raised on the "American Songbook" which to me reached its peak with Sinatra in the 50's, even if some of the songs were written in the 30's. (One -- "Nice and Easy" -- I think was from 1960.) Anyway, songs like "They Can't Take That Away from Me," "The Tender Trap," "Our Love is Here to Stay," "Without a Song," "But Not for Me" --- all have a sophistication and a strength of construction...

Now, you're talking my style. I've often thought I was reincarnated from someone in the 20's, 30's, 40's.

A friend of mine once said,"Those kinds of songs make you feel like you have memories -- that you couldn't possibly have." ('Cause we weren't around then!) 😲

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Now, you're talking my style. I've often thought I was reincarnated from someone in the 20's, 30's, 40's.

--

Well, its another reason that I take issue with a current generation that "can't think back past 1980." (And I don't mean to insult anyone who DOES; its the press you are getting and the remarks being made on YouTube by some of you.)

But everyone gets a different life, and I like this aspect of mine: in the household I grew up in, on Saturday mornings, the records of Sinatra (in the main) and Bennett and Peggy Lee were playing (Dino , not so much -- he was considered "too jokey.") The car radio was oftentuned to a "Music of Your Life" station playing the same great music. I took this as "relaxing background music" for my parents(even as I was playing my radio in the backroom, and asking for rock records for Xmas.) but whaddya know...they came to rest in my OWN brainpan and they have been wonderfully nostalgic to listen to , ever since.

---

A friend of mine once said,"Those kinds of songs make you feel like you have memories -- that you couldn't possibly have." ('Cause we weren't around then!)

---

There you go. But we GET to be....music from years before my birth actually works better on me than movies made before my birth.

Note in passing: Hitchcock movies in the fifties to the early sixties match up rather well to Sinatra's music and stardom in the same period. Two "style makers" who gave audience great memories. Hitchcock said "I will never direct Mr. Sinatra or Mr. Brando ...because they direct their own films." (He meant: all of them.) But I can see Sinatra as the Italian-American lead of "The Wrong Man," or a less aged but just as lovelorn Scottie Ferguson(maybe with another name)...and screenwriter Ernest Lehman first pictured Sinatra as Roger Thornhill. Didn't happen...Hitchcock would not let it.