Newsletter: Classic Hollywood: Looks like we remade it
Welcome to a special edition of the Classic Hollywood newsletter. I’m Scott Sandell, and for much of my 23-year career at The Times I worked in entertainment alongside Susan King, our longtime guardian of the Golden Age of Hollywood galaxy. Hopefully a little of her knowledge rubbed off before she went on to other adventures. You can always find the latest at the Classic Hollywood Facebook page.
CHARIOTS OF IRE
Speaking of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, let’s talk about remakes. The big one coming out today is “Ben-Hur.”
Sacrilege, you say? William Wyler‘s 1959 film won an unprecedented 11 Oscars, including the lead actor prize for Charlton Heston. But the epic was itself a remake of a 1925 film inspired by an 1880 novel.
My colleague Steve Zeitchik talked with the makers of the new “Ben-Hur” and found they were cognizant of the skepticism they’d be facing but went for it anyway.
“A lot of [film] people would look at ‘Ben-Hur’ and say, ‘I’m not going to touch that,’ ” screenwriter John Ridley said. “But as fantastic as the 1959 film was, there are things you want to excavate more clearly, relationships you want to look at more closely. When I realized that, I went from skepticism and trepidation to, ‘There’s a way forward.’”
The reviews, however, haven’t been too kind.
Nevertheless, Hollywood’s eternal embrace of the remake continues.
We just saw the all-female “Ghostbusters” hit the cineplex (and bring out the trolls), and new theatrical versions of “A Star Is Born” and “It” are on the way.
TV has remake fever too. ABC revived the classic game shows “Match Game” (replete with skinny microphone), “To Tell the Truth,” “$100,000 Pyramid” and “Celebrity Family Feud.” Fox is doing the time warp again with “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” airing Oct. 20 and including Tim Curry in the cast. And CBS is rebooting “MacGyver,” the ABC series that starred Richard Dean Anderson and his Swiss army knife.
Maybe we need to remember the words of Cecil B. DeMille, who made the film “The Squaw Man” three times. For the third go-around, in 1931, he said, “I love this story so much that as long as I live I will make it every 10 years.” Except he apparently was wildly depressed about having to do so.
WHERE DO I BEGIN?
When Arthur Hiller got the script for “Love Story” written by Erich Segal, he reportedly read several pages before giving a big “Yeccch.”
“I thought, they’ve got to be kidding: A story about a rich boy and a poor girl?,” Hiller told The Times in 1971. “But when I finished reading it, I had a tear in my eye.”
And love means never having to say you’re sorry. The film naturally became a blockbuster hit that was the recipient of seven Academy Award nominations, including for best picture, actor (Ryan O’Neal), actress (Ali MacGraw), writing (Segal) and directing (Hiller). Its sole victory was for Francis Lai for original score.
When Hiller died this week at age 92, The Times’ obituary recounted his many accomplishments, including his term as president of the academy from 1993-97. It also mentioned one of his most spectacular failures: 1997’s “An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn,” a documentary-style satire written by Joe Eszterhas.
But for a more unguarded look at Hiller, check out Susan King’s 2012 story about his Wednesday lunches with a group of comedy legends who would “kibitz, kvetch, eat pastrami sandwiches, trade gags and grieve when one of their members dies.” Actually, Hiller got the cheeseburger.
AROUND TOWN
Jerry Lewis and his film “Max Rose” are back. You might recall that it had a somewhat disastrous outing at Cannes in 2013, made all the more so when Lewis said of female comedians: “I can’t see women doing that. It bothers me.” Three years later, they’re hitting the reset button on the movie, which stars Lewis as a jazz pianist devastated by his wife’s death. The American Cinematheque is presenting an advance screening Aug. 25 with Lewis participating in a post-film discussion. It will kick off a retrospective that includes “The Nutty Professor,” “The Ladies Man” and “The King of Comedy.”
The UCLA Film & Television Archive continues its Kirk Douglas centennial celebration. The estimable Times film critic Kenneth Turan writes of the actor, who turns 100 on Dec. 9: “What finally seems most remarkable about Douglas is his gift for being at the same time defiantly himself and convincingly other people.” Check out the schedule here.
The New Beverly Cinema offers a Harold Lloyd double feature consisting of “The Freshman” and “The Kid Brother” on Aug. 24 and Aug. 25.
TCM Big Screen Classics and Fathom Events bring back “Thelma & Louise” to theaters Aug. 21 and Aug. 24 to mark its 25th anniversary.
COMMITTED, INDEED
Another film marking its 25th anniversary is “The Commitments,” directed by Alan Parker, who was previously Oscar-nominated for directing “Midnight Express” and “Mississippi Burning.” Parker told my colleague Kevin Crust that the film about young Dubliners who form a band to play American soul music was his most enjoyable filmmaking experience. It was a lot of work, though: seeing 3,000 hopeful musicians and starting with 300 soul songs before winnowing them down for the production.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
-- A new statue has replaced the infamous “Scary Lucy” in Lucille Ball’s hometown.
-- The documentary “Women He’s Undressed” spotlights the costume designer who helped Marilyn Monroe and Jane Fonda look fabulous.
-- Inside Villa Bonita, the Hollywood building that Errol Flynn, Francis Ford Coppola and others called home.
-- A Pacific Palisades house commissioned by “Death in Venice” novelist Thomas Mann and his wife, who were part of the German intellectual exodus to Southern California that shaped Hollywood, is for sale as a tear-down.
FROM THE HOLLYWOOD STAR WALK
Notable births for the remainder of August include Colleen Moore (Aug. 19); Ogden Nash (Aug. 19); Friz Freleng (Aug. 21); Gene Kelly (Aug. 23); Vera Miles (Aug. 23); Barbara Eden (Aug. 23); Ruby Keeler (Aug. 25); Van Johnson (Aug. 25); Leonard Bernstein (Aug. 25); Martha Raye (Aug. 27); Charles Boyer (Aug. 28); Donald O’Connor (Aug. 28); Preston Sturges (Aug. 29); Ingrid Bergman (Aug. 29); Joan Blondell (Aug. 30); Fred MacMurray (Aug. 30); Buddy Hackett (Aug. 31); and James Coburn (Aug. 31).
For more vintage Hollywood, go to the Classic Hollywood Los Angeles Times Facebook page.
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