Saturdays with the Stars Season 3 Finale

Two of our stars, Shirley & Grace

With this past week's viewing of The Seduction fo Joe Tynan, we are officially done with our third season of "Saturdays with the Stars."  I really like to find a moment before I start the new season (which, unlike past seasons, I haven't told you the theme of & will be doing so in the coming days, as we will indeed do a fourth season starting on Saturday) to discuss the season, talking about what I learned, and also focusing on some of the best of the year's movies/performances.

When I decided to do this theme, I wanted to see how it would turn out picking twelve women who had really nothing in common other than Alfred Hitchcock.  You couldn't find stars as divergent in the way that cinematic history or even contemporary audiences treated them as, say, Maureen O'Hara & Barbara Harris or Shirley MacLaine & Margaret Lockwood.  Hitchcock wasn't always successful with his leading ladies, but it does show what a versatile director he was that he continually tried new things, occasionally making masterpieces but just as often strange curiosities.

It also showed, especially in our month devoted to Tippi Hedren, how Hitchcock's legacy is at once peerless in quality but blemished by the director himself.  Hitchcock was a complicated man, one who brought the downfall of a career or two (Hedren's career, as we discussed, never flourished the way it might have with a less authoritarian mentor), but who also clearly made some of the best films ever made.  What was great about this year was not just focusing on him, but getting to see unknown chapters in these twelve women's lives (I love that I stick to the rule of seeing only films I haven't seen before, because it means every week I get to see a new facet of an actor I thought I knew well, but frequently have my perceptions changed).  As I continue to watch deeper and deeper cuts from Old Hollywood (after three seasons devoted to it on the blog, it seems like watching fresh viewings demands getting into the rafters of these icons' IMDB pages), I am reminded once again how this period of Hollywood has countless movies & careers left to explore.  Thank you so much for playing along!

Favorite Performance from Each Star

January: Madeleine Carroll-The General Died at Dawn

February: Sylvia Sidney-Sabotage

March: Margaret Lockwood-Cast a Dark Shadow

April: Maureen O'Hara-Rio Grande

May: Carole Lombard-Twentieth Century

June: Anne Baxter-The Luck of the Irish

July: Ingrid Bergman-Autumn Sonata

August: Grace Kelly-Dial M for Murder

September: Shirley MacLaine-The Children's Hour

October: Julie Andrews-Thoroughly Modern Millie

November: Tippi Hedren-Marnie

December: Barbara Harris-Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?

5 Favorite Actresses of the Year (Alphabetical, and based solely on the films we watched as a collective & not on the rest of their careers)

Ingrid Bergman

Barbara Harris

Margaret Lockwood

Carole Lombard

Shirley MacLaine

5 (err-6, I couldn't corner down) Favorite Performances of the Year (Alphabetical)

Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata

Ingrid Bergman, Journey to Italy

Margaret Lockwood, Cast a Dark Shadow

Margaret Lockwood, The Wicked Lady

Carole Lombard-Twentieth Century

Shirley MacLaine, The Children's Hour

10 Favorite Films of the Year (Alphabetical)

Autumn Sonata

Cast a Dark Shadow

The Children's Hour

Dead End

Dial M for Murder

Journey to Italy

The Lady Vanishes

The Trouble with Harry

Twentieth Century

The Wicked Lady

Top 10 Performances of the Year (Not By Our Leading Ladies)

Diane Baker, Marnie

John Barrymore, Twentieth Century

Dirk Bogarde, Cast a Dark Shadow

Humphrey Bogart, Dead End

Sean Connery, Marnie

Audrey Hepburn, The Children's Hour

George Sanders, Journey to Italy

Claire Trevor, Dead End

Liv Ullmann, Autumn Sonata

John Williams, Dial M for Murder

The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)

Film: The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)

Stars: Alan Alda, Barbara Harris, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Melvyn Douglas

Director: Jerry Schatzberg

Oscar History: No nominations, though it was kind of in the conversation.  Streep & Douglas would go on to win the Oscars later that year for different performances, but won alongside Joe Tynan at major critics prizes as a sort of "let's honor all of their work" accolade that frequently happens from major critics prizes.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Harris-click here to learn more about Ms. Harris (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Well, after three years, it was bound to happen.  In a two-month period where life honestly overwhelmed me & I just couldn't handle it anymore (my job, the expectations of the holiday, the general unrest of Omicron, honestly my mental health itself), it makes sense that eventually I was going to miss a Saturday in our series. I'm not going to focus too hard on it, both because it was literally Christmas & because checking out was what was best for me (always remember-take care of yourself), but I am bummed our streak is over, and with such a unique star as Barbara Harris.  So I will be post-dating this for posterity, but today we will end our month looking at Barbara Harris, and indeed our year looking at the leading ladies of Alfred Hitchcock's movies, with a "Mondays with the Stars" segment.  

(Spoilers Ahead) The Seduction of Joe Tynan is a late 1970's political drama centering on Joe Tynan (Alda, who also wrote the film).  Tynan is a liberal New York senator who has made something of a name for himself, and clearly has presidential aspirations.  His wife Ellie (Harris) is ambitious as well, a smart woman who is studying psychology & is a proponent for analysis (which seems too "East Coast intellectual" for Tynan's staffers).  Tynan is getting pushed on the upcoming Supreme Court nominee from both sides.  On his right is longtime Senator Birney (Douglas), who knows the Supreme Court nominee will challenge him in the primary if he can't get him on the Court, while on his left is a lot of progressives, including Karen Traynor (Streep), an attorney who wants Tynan to make a stand against the nominee, in the process tanking a segregationist from making it onto the Court and setting up Tynan as a future presidential challenger.

This is the premise, and much of your opinion on what happens later will inform what you think of the movie.  I am not one of those people who judge movies of the past based on a new rubric; I think that is foolishness, and while I don't think we necessarily need to celebrate movies that clearly have aged poorly, I do think that we need to recognize that all things age one-way-or-another.  This is worth mentioning because the center of this movie is around Karen, a smart, capable woman in her own right, having an affair with Joe Tynan.  This doesn't appear to impact his vote (though he does, it's worth noting, side with Karen & eventually tanks the nomination), but what makes this remarkable isn't that Alda's screenplay has the beautiful woman in politics sleep with a powerful man, but that he does so while keeping her smart.  Streep's Karen is placid (Streep famously said that she was on "auto pilot" during this movie in the wake of the death of her longtime love John Cazale), but she's knowing.  She's done this before, and she knows not to put her heart too into the center.

Honestly, Joe Tynan is a bit dull as an overall movie (the direction is slow, and takes too many detours), but the script has a knowing glance at politics & it's filled with strong performances.  Alda is borrowing from Ted Kennedy in this part (it's hard not to see the Massachusetts senator in every policy speech), a deeply imperfect man who might well be perfect for America in 1980 (sadly, that didn't happen-I'd take a philandering liberal over Ronald Reagan any day), and he nails the well-meaning "still a man" role well.  Same could be said for Melvyn Douglas, who brings such instant stature you don't realize until late in the movie that he's clearly suffering from dementia, and has no business staying in politics longer.  There's a moment where he starts soliloquizing in French during a congressional hearing that is remarkably effective (it's the sort of thing that Aaron Sorkin would vastly overplay but here they get just right).

And best of all is our star of the month.  Harris could just be playing the neglected wife, but Harris (and Ellie) are too smart for such things.  She's a modern woman, and she won't take her husband back easily.  She also won't put herself into a closet without getting something in return.  Harris does, it's worth noting, take Joe back, but she does so with the real promise that he has to change...cause if he doesn't, she knows she can take him down.  It's a great, subtle part from an actress who would never really get an opportunity like this again.  She'd star in Hal Ashby's famously awful Second-Hand Hearts, which caused any momentum in her career to stall (she wouldn't make another movie for five years).  She would appear in films like Peggy Sue Got Married and Grosse Point Blank, but her heart wasn't really into it (she'd always kept film acting at a distance as it was), and she retired from acting to become a teacher at the turn of the century.  Harris died of lung cancer in 2018, one of the last of Hitchcock's living stars.

While it is just Monday, we will still have time before the new year (Saturday is the first of the year) to not only do a retrospective of our year devoted to Hitchcock, but also to take a peak at next season of the show, as yes, there will be a fourth season of Saturdays with the Stars (with a new theme!).  Stay tuned!

Family Plot (1976)

Film: Family Plot (1976)

Stars: Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, William Devane, Karen Black

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: Harris was nominated for Best Actress at the Golden Globes, but couldn't translate that to an Oscar citation.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Harris-click here to learn more about Ms. Harris (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are celebrating Barbara Harris all month long on the blog, but as we are seeing a film that was released within several months of Freaky Friday, our movie from last week, we're going to take a little break this week from discussing Harris's career (since we're in roughly the same spot), and instead focus on our other star of the year, Alfred Hitchcock.  I will admit that a new job & the jolt of being back in public has made it difficult to keep up with all of my goals of 2021 (anyone who hits all of their goals every year, teach me your ways), and one of the projects that kind of fell by the wayside was our Sunday Leftovers series.  Though I saw a lot of Hitchcock films this year, I still have twelve remaining so we will not have the synergy of me finishing Hitchcock's filmography completely this week with his final picture.  I will eventually get to those twelve remaining (non-lost) movies, but alas we will just have to chalk off my goal of finishing all of the Master of Suspense's greatest masterpieces a different day.  Today, we will bid adieu to Hitchcock, though we still have one more week left of star Barbara Harris, who continued making movies after they intersected on Family Plot.

(Spoilers Ahead) Our movie is focused on a couple, psychic impersonator Blanche Tyler (Harris) and her long-time boyfriend George (Dern) who are trying to find the long-lost nephew of a wealthy woman who is dying, and wants to give him her fortune before she dies.  Blanche & George try to track down this nephew, Edward (Devane) whom they originally assume is dead when George sees his grave, but they soon discover that he faked his own death and is living as Arthur Adamson.  He's doing this because he and his girlfriend Fran (Black) are involved in a criminal enterprise where they kidnap dignitaries and demand jewels as ransom.  These two intersect, with Edward & Fran assuming that Blanche & George are investigating them due to their involvement in crime, when in reality they are trying to give them a large sum of money (a classic Hitchcockian bit of black comedy).

Family Plot is good.  I think it gets a bit of a bad rap because it's Hitchcock's final film, and because it's not Vertigo (to be fair, few films are).  The movie is silly and occasionally the fun kind of twisty, but it probably needed a starrier cast to work better.  Black & Devane aren't able to pull their characters off the screen quite well enough, and in both cases we need them to pop more to make the contradiction to Harris/Dern's more fully-fledged romance feel sharper.  Harris is the best in show (though at this point, you have to question when is she not?), and John Williams taking up the baton from Bernard Herrmann (his only work with Hitchcock) works well as Williams has enough talent to make Family Plot's score standout.

Hitchcock would attempt to make one more picture, a spy film called The Short Night, that made it to pre-production but not much further (if you want to daydream, some of the stars considered for the film included Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Catherine Deneuve, and Liv Ullmann...I prefer the strange combination of Eastwood & Deneuve in terms of actors I think Hitchcock could've made magic with).  Both he and his wife Alma had a series of health problems, and while he made public appearances, they became less frequent.  Hitchcock was knighted in 1980, but was in so ill health he couldn't accept the designation from the Queen, and would die three months later.  We'll talk a little bit more about Hitchcock in a week when we do a recap of this season of Saturday with the Stars, but it's nice to know after Family Plot that he didn't end on a dour note, even if it wasn't also a triumphant one.  Next Saturday, we're going to conclude our month-long look at Barbara Harris when we see what happened beyond her brief period as a leading lady, and a movie where she'd star alongside an iconic blonde of an era beyond Hitchcock.

Freaky Friday (1976)

Film: Freaky Friday (1976)

Stars: Jodie Foster, Barbara Harris, John Astin, Sparky Marcus

Director: Gary Nelson

Oscar History: No nominations, though both Foster & Harris (and the Original Song "I'd Like to Be You for a Day") were nominated for Golden Globes, so it was relatively close to inclusion.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Harris-click here to learn more about Ms. Harris (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned last weekend, Barbara Harris had an unusual film career, and it's not entirely clear what caused it.  Harris seemed to take long breaks in her career, sometimes very long ones (we'll talk more about that in two weeks when we get to the conclusion of our month devoted to her), and at least a few of these were voluntary.  Her offbeat persona seemed a bit at a loss in the 1970's, though, in a way it might not have been a decade later when the 1980's were more welcoming to comedic talents & nontraditional beauties (the best comparison I can make to Harris might be Madeline Kahn, who like Harris also enjoyed a long stage career interspersed with memorable film roles) so it's possible she also struggled to find work that suited her.  This series focuses exclusively on movies I'd never seen before, and so we are going to skip what is generally considered to be Harris' best performance, as Albuquerque in Robert Altman's Nashville (one of my all-time favorite films, and a performance I would've definitely nominated Harris for in my personal awards), and move to the height of her movie stardom in 1976, where she won two Golden Globe nominations, including for today's sleeper Disney hit.

(Spoilers Ahead) Freaky Friday is one of the many body-swapping comedies that audiences in the 1970's & 80's became obsessed with, and is about Annabel (Foster), a 13-year-old girl who hates her braces, has a crush on the boy-next-door, and struggles in school (despite an aptitude for learning), who on Friday the 13th swaps bodies with her uptight, perfect housewife mother Ellen (Harris), who cannot make a connection with her daughter.  The two try to make their own lives work, at first assuming the other one has it easy, but eventually gaining an appreciation for the other, attempting to deal with a 30-person meal last minute for an adult Annabel and a young Ellen having to win a field hockey game (with less than happy results).  The two eventually switch back, firmly understanding each other & vowing to have a better relationship going forward.

Freaky Friday was one of a number of Disney films that Lindsay Lohan made her name off of during the successful period of her young career (Lohan also made The Parent Trap and Herbie Fully Loaded, the latter being her last commercial success to date).  Lohan's film was how I was familiar with the Freaky Friday franchise, as I saw this in high school & loved it-Jamie Lee Curtis is superb as the mother, and Lohan & Curtis play well off of each other.  The film also allows more interactions between the two post-swap, helping each other & making it feel like a truly earned relationship build, rather than just something they both do away from each other, which is what Freaky Friday does.  Harris & Foster only have one scene together post-swap, and never interact while they're "in each other's bodies."

This is the wrong choice, and Disney was wise to correct it because the original Freaky Friday is an unmitigated bore.  Even if it's your first body-swapping comedy, you still are going to see every joke coming a mile away, and it's ridiculous how clueless both women are about their counterparts' lives.  I know that in the 1970's the assumption was that parents were less-aware of what was going on in their children's lives, but come on-Ellen in her daughter's body at least has to realize how ludicrous she's going to sound if she doesn't at least tamp down her behavior, and Annabel somehow knows how to properly stuff a turkey, but doesn't know where her mother keeps her checkbook?  It's a stupid movie, and while the lead actresses do their best (Harris is fun, in particular), it doesn't save a slog of a film from collapsing on its premise at least twenty minutes in.

OVP: Who is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me?

Film: Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971)

Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Dom DeLuise, Barbara Harris, Jack Warden

Director: Ulu Grosbard

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actress-Barbara Harris)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Harris-click here to learn more about Ms. Harris (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the time Barbara Harris had made her film debut in 1965's A Thousand Clowns, she was already a pretty big name, at least in the industry.  Harris had founded the now-legendary Chicago improvisational Second City by this time, getting a Tony nomination for her work.  Just before A Thousand Clowns would be released, she opened in the (then critically-mixed) Richard Rodgers musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, which earned her a second Tony nomination.  While A Thousand Clowns won Harris a Golden Globe nomination, it didn't turn into major film stardom, though with Harris (who took frequent self-imposed breaks from acting) it was always hard to tell how much of that was the actress & how much of that was Hollywood.  She returned to the stage, finally winning a Tony for what would be considered her most significant stage work in The Apple Tree, but while she appeared in films (including Neil Simon's Plaza Suite), she wouldn't be back into awards conversations until 1971, when she won her sole Oscar nomination for the bonkers-monikered Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me (the longest titled film ever cited for an acting Oscar).

(Spoilers Ahead) The story of Harry Kellerman is not about Barbara Harris, and in fact it's not really about Harry Kellerman, but instead about Georgie Solloway (Hoffman), a successful rock composer going through a moment-of-crisis because a man named Harry Kellerman keeps calling his lovers (past & present) and confessing lies about him.  He struggles to understand who Harry is, and through both moments of quiet introspection and conversations with his therapist (Warden), which frequently turn into elaborate fantasy sequences with Warden taking on different accents & personas, he rehashes his life.  We see the women that Georgie has loved, but because of his inability to commit or take responsibility, has lost as a result.  One of these women, Allison (Harris) is a woman that he's recently met at an audition, and whom he feels a connection for but you also get the sense that he will once again blow it.  In the last sequence, which it's difficult to tell at this point if it's reality or what is actually happening, it's revealed that Georgie is in fact Harry Kellerman, and has been calling these women to confess the worst parts of himself...right before he crashes into a mountain side.

This crash is part of the most interesting part of Harry Kellerman, as it's one of many moments in the film that Georgie kills himself, or watches others kill themselves.  As a result, it's hard to tell if he does, in fact, kill himself over the close of the film by crashing his plane into the Manhattan skyline, or if this is yet another indulgent fantasy of Georgie's.  This would be more interesting if it felt like it was part of a cogent storyline, but the problem with Harry Kellerman is that it's a total mess.  Even if you grant some leeway for the 1970's & the experimental nature of this type of filmmaking, Harry makes no sense.  There is no grounding in reality, and the film isn't strong enough on its merits to simply be a series of vignettes.  Hoffman, a fine actor & good at playing a narcissist, doesn't give us enough humanity for Georgie, who comes off as a jackass (honestly-Harry Kellerman is saying these terrible things about you because you're a terrible person), and there's not enough catharsis in the final moments to change that opinion.

That being said, if you can make it through 80 minutes of dreck, Harris is very good in this movie and while I'm shocked that the Academy noticed such a performance (Maureen Stapleton in Plaza Suite, which also starred Harris, or Eileen Brennan in The Last Picture Show would've been more traditional nominations), it's nice that they did considering she'd never be cited again.  Her Allison gets two big scenes in the movie, and Harris nails them both, giving us far beyond what's on the page (a struggling woman, attempting to understand her life).  There's a speech where she talks about the trouble of being 34 ("not old, but never again young") that literally any person in their thirties has thought countless times before.  Harris stands out, which is what she tended to do in her brief career, and is a lantern in a dreadful storm throughout Harry Kellerman, a movie not remotely as interesting as its title.

Saturdays with the Stars: Barbara Harris

Each month of 2021 we will be taking a look at the leading ladies of some of Alfred Hitchcock's many celebrated classics; we'll be doing this series chronologically to when they first entered Hitchcock's filmography.  Last month we focused on Tippi Hedren, whose offscreen relationship with Hitchcock has overshadowed the two classic films they made together in the early 1960's.  This month, we will conclude our series looking at the leading ladies of Alfred Hitchcock's career with one final leading lady, and as would be appropriate, we will focus on the actress who got top billing on Alfred Hitchcock's final film.  This month, our star is Barbara Harris.

The daughter of a pianist & an arborist, Barbara Harris grew up in Evanston, Illinois, before she eventually ventured to Chicago for college.  While she was there, she got involved with the Playwrights Theatre (where she'd work alongside Elaine May & Mike Nichols), and would eventually be the first headliner for Second City, Chicago's legendary improvisational company.  She'd venture from Chicago to New York in the early 1960's, where she'd spend the decade being the toast of Broadway, debuting the role of Daisy in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever and winning the Tony for Best Actress for her work in The Apple Tree.  Throughout this time, Harris was making a number of TV appearances, including on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Harris is not the traditional Hitchcock leading lady, and to be totally honest (since I haven't seen Family Plot), I don't know how significant her part is in the movie.  She gets above-the-line billing, but not top billing (that goes to Karen Black), so she may not be an appropriate choice for this series when we get to the movie (in my defense, she was nominated for Best Lead Actress at the Globes for this performance).  But Harris is a fascinating performer.  She was Oscar-nominated in 1971 for the loquaciously titled Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying These Terrible Things About Me? and while Family Plot didn't get her there, she still starred in an all-American classic, Nashville (one of the best movies I've ever seen).  This month, we're going to look at her brief but intriguing filmography, as well as with Family Plot bid adieu to Alfred Hitchcock, our official casting director for Season 3 of Saturdays with the Stars.