A Christmas Memory - made for TV

 

original draft of opening page

Director David Perry

Author and narrator Truman Capote

Capote as a young child

Capote kissing Geraldine Page at a party

A CHRISTMAS MEMORY – made for TV             A                                                           USA  (51 mi)  1966  d: David Perry

Imagine a morning in late November.  A coming of winter morning more than thirty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town.  A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it.  Just today, the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar.

Among the better Christmas movies to play on television, where this was an annual holiday event in the late 60’s, right alongside annual screenings of Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), which was a holiday staple before it was snatched up from private domain, or Menotti- Amahl and the Night Visitors, 1955 YouTube (46:13), a film that always used to play on Christmas Eve.  Originally published in Mademoiselle magazine in December 1956, A Christmas Memory (a christmas memory. - now voyager.) remains one of Truman Capote’s most anthologized short stories, one that Capote called his personal favorite and his most perfect work.  Part of a circle of American writers that included Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, Terry Southern, James Jones, and many more, Capote’s work reflects America of the late 1940’s and 1950’s, deeply engaged with the social anxieties of the postwar years, as his writing captures the isolation, marginalization, and persecution of those who deviated from or failed to achieve white middle-class ideals and highlights the artificiality of mainstream idealizations about American culture.  After publishing his first novel in 1948 at the age of 24, Other Voices, Other Rooms, he was already being compared to William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Carson McCullers.  Elevating the art of the novella, Capote was as well known for his lifestyle and flamboyant mannerisms as he was for his novels.  With a versatile career as an author, playwright, screenwriter, and actor, his literary style ranged from an early take on Southern Gothic to comedy, while revolutionizing the genre of true crime with In Cold Blood (1967), yet his extensive use of description is nothing short of mesmerizing, informing us of a writing technique that would insure a timelessness in his works, “One, never use slang, it dates your work and you want to always make it classic, two, never take notes, and I forgot the third one, but I have it somewhere in my notes.”  Drawing on his youthful experience in rural Alabama when his mother left him with relatives while she looked for work in New York City, one of the few relatively secure periods in an extremely unstable early childhood, this is an idealized recollection of a remembrance of a happy childhood, not unlike Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales (A Child's Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas, free ...), recorded by Thomas in 1952, Dylan Thomas - A Child's Christmas in Wales, A Story YouTube (19:52), while Capote reads his own story in 1959, Truman Capote Reading His "A Christmas Memory" - Original ... YouTube (37:00).  While the story appeared earlier, and was reprinted in The Selected Writings of Truman Capote in 1963, it was this made-for-television release that originally aired on December 21, 1966 on ABC Playhouse, eloquently narrated by Capote himself in that distinctive high-pitched nasal whine, that established the story’s enduring popularity, where perhaps no other piece is as fondly remembered by so many.  The original production was in color, but subsequent broadcasts were in black and white.  This ode to the American South is what Terence Davies achieves in Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992).  Set in rural Alabama during the Depression in the 1930’s, this tender and strangely personal story of a seven-year-old boy named Buddy (Donnie Melvin) and his aging cousin’s holiday traditions was made into an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning television movie starring Geraldine Page as his older cousin in her 60’s who is never identified by name, but only as “my friend.” 

The nostalgic mood has prompted some critics to dismiss the story, including playwright Tennessee Williams, who characterized the story as saccharine, overly sentimental, or even repulsive, though Capote himself described it as a catharsis which helped him to deal with his experiences as a child in the South.  It contains darker elements such as loneliness and loss, poverty, social isolation, sorrow, and death, which demonstrate that the innocence of childhood may protect young people from the elements of the human condition, but not remove them from it.  The story is also an example of a common theme in Capote’s writings, a friendship forged among social outcasts, many of which are eccentric women.  A largely autobiographical story, the idiosyncratic woman is based upon Nannie Rumbley “Sook” Faulk, the oldest of four adult cousins who was reclusive and many considered peculiar, perhaps even developmentally disabled, who suffered from the trauma of losing a close friend at an early age, but Capote describes as his best friend, providing a special warmth, as she was able to relate to him in ways others couldn’t, living in a small home with other distant relatives who didn’t approve of them or pay much attention to them.  What’s so incredible about the story is that it documents a relationship that many gay men encountered in their childhood, a loving, eccentric older female relative who takes him under her wing when his family and friends abandon him due to his “otherness.”  As the leaves fall in late November, a woman looks out the window and exclaims, “Oh my, it’s fruitcake weather!”  She is speaking, of course, to Buddy, an iteration of the author as a “sensitive boy.”  A surprisingly subversive ideological project at work, Capote’s presentation of male characters forces us to rethink gender roles, as Buddy revises the traditional coming-of-age narrative in which the male protagonist demonstrates their self-worth through masculinity, while Buddy romanticizes the traditionally female sphere of domesticity.  Geraldine Page is a national treasure, an iconic actress and one of the great legends of the American stage, only 42 at the time, yet playing a woman in her 60’s, refusing to wear any trace of make up in a heart-wrenching performance, beautifully described by the narrator, “In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except the funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry.”  From the maker of DAVID AND LISA (1962), which uniquely examines mental illness in a manner that is so distinctively humanist that French director Jean Renoir called it “a turning point in world cinema," this beautifully textured narrative bears a strange resemblance to Jason Robards in Fred Coe’s A THOUSAND CLOWNS (1965) made about the same time, as both fervidly avoid the tedious conventionality of ordinary life by transcending the tyranny of normalcy, where it’s all about the personal touches you bring to your life that make all the difference.  Genuine authenticity is the key, refusing to sell out to convention or bow down to the latest trends, remaining true to yourself, even if that means being shunned by others, where being a uniquely heartfelt version of yourself is what makes this storybook presentation so memorable, as there’s an art to being human.    

Who are our cakes for?  Friends.  Not necessarily neighbor-friends; indeed, the larger share are intended for persons we’ve met maybe once... perhaps not at all.  People who’ve struck our fancy.  Like President Roosevelt.  Like the Reverend and Mrs. J.C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo who lectured here last winter.  Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year.  Or Abner Packer, the driver of the six o’clock bus from Mobile, who exchanges waves with us every day as he passes in a dust-cloud ‘whoosh.’  Or the young Wistons, a California couple whose car one afternoon broke down outside the house and who spent a pleasant hour chatting with us on the porch.  Young Mr. Wiston snapped our picture – the only one we’ve ever had taken.  Is it because my friend is shy with everyone except strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us our truest friends?  I think yes.

This film marvels at the now forgotten custom of fruitcake baking and then sending them as holiday gifts through the mail, getting at the source of why it was such a special handmade gift during the Depression when people were too broke to buy conventional gifts, as it reminds us of why we give and what we have to be thankful for.  The visual acuteness and simplicity of style looms large in this film, as there is nothing artificial about this presentation, and nothing diluted either, where the authenticity of emotion and the surety of vision is in every line.  It’s so short, so sincere, and yet so touching, as it manages to balance the sought-after intimacy of the performances with Capote’s spare narration, conveying that youthful excitement where every day is an adventure bringing something new, where having a friend to share it with is all that matters in the world.  Buddy, his cousin, and their dog Queenie have developed a special relationship symbolized by the baking of fruitcakes on a cast-iron stove, foraging the nearby fields for fallen pecans, while scraping together spare change from contests they’ve entered or selling jars of jams, jellies, and preserves they’ve made from berries and flowers they’ve picked, which they use to buy all the necessary ingredients, including a rare bottle of whisky from the local bootlegger, a Native American Indian man named Haha Jones.  Having a few sips leftover, they decide to celebrate, even giving a few spoonfuls to the dog, becoming all warm and fuzzy inside, getting the giggles as they sing and dance around the kitchen, only to be rudely interrupted and scolded for their sinful behavior of setting such a poor example for a minor child by her devoutly pious sisters, who seem to have perpetually built-in frowns on their faces, as they simply never smile.  The small details on display are stunning, as “his friend” is genuinely hurt by their accusations, weeping that night in bed, never wanting to be the cause of anyone’s unhappiness, so Buddy lifts up her spirits by reminding her they have to go cut down a tree the next day.  But it has to be the right size, one tall enough that Buddy can’t reach up and grab the star sitting on top, so they cut out decorations from colored paper and tinfoil and sprinkle the tree with shredded cotton, making it look like snow.  Buddy makes his cousin a kite out of old newspapers, and he suspects she is making him one as well, just as they did last year, as their annual tradition is flying kites together on Christmas day, offering them a sense of joy and liberation, even if only for a brief moment, which seems to place them perfectly in harmony with the surrounding cosmos lurking so far beyond.  While there is a cheeriness about the untainted bond between them, this is also a sad and increasingly poignant tale, as anyone who has lost someone feels what Capote projects, the mixed emotions between that everpresent Christmas cheer and the grief that sits on your heart, becoming an elegiac love letter to Christmas and those lives we have lost.  We learn this was their last Christmas together, as a none-too-pleased Buddy was shipped off to military school the following year “by those who know best,” presumably to make a man of him, which he characterizes as “a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons.”  Told entirely in flashback, “home is where my friend is, and there I never go,” and there she remains, puttering around the kitchen, bringing these memories back to life, where this all happened some time ago, where it’s been years since she passed away, yet she remains alive through the evocative imagery of the story, as Buddy finds himself walking the grounds of his school and looking up at the sky, “As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying toward heaven.”  Suffering from drug and alcohol abuse, habitually in and out of rehabilitation clinics, Capote died at the age of 59 in the home of comedian Johnny Carson’s ex-wife Joanne in Bel Air, who read the final passages of this story at the eulogy, reminding us all of the transcendent power of the written word. 

Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory - Starring Geraldine ...  entire film may be seen on YouTube (48:15)

The Beguiled (1971)

Director Don Siegel (left) and Clint Eastwood on the set

Actress Jo Ann Harris

THE BEGUILED          B                 

USA  (105 mi)  1971  d:  Don Siegel

Well the dove she’s a pretty bird, and she sings as she flies
She brings us glad tidings and she tells us no lies
Well she flies in the mountains and the valley so low
And if you live peaceful then she never will go

Come all you young men, take a warning by me
Don’t you go for a soldier, don’t you join no army
For the dove she will leave you and the raven will come
And death will come marching to the sound of a drum

And come all pretty young girls, come walk in the sun
And don’t let your young men ever carry a gun
For the gun it will scare her and she’ll fly away
And then there’ll be weeping by night and by day

Well the dove she’s a pretty bird, and she sings as she flies
She brings us glad tidings and she tells us no lies
Well she flies in the mountains and the valley so low
And if you live peaceful then she never will go

—The Dove She Is a Pretty Bird (Traditional), sung by Corporal John ‘McBee’ McBurney (Clint Eastwood) 

Made a year before Eastwood’s first directed movie, PLAY MISTY FOR ME (1971), and just months before the release of DIRTY HARRY (1971), which became an Eastwood staple in popular culture, this film was largely lost and overlooked, having failed at the box office, though the French revered it and invited the film to the Cannes Film Festival, but the producers declined, as they hadn’t a clue how to market this film, advertised as a psychedelic western, which is a major reason the film never struck a chord with the public, where this sense of confusion only adds to the film’s lore, rediscovered decades later in a flimsy remake by Sofia Coppola, The Beguiled (2017), that actually won the Best Directing prize at Cannes, though it’s a pale substitute of the original, which is an explosion of bizarre and oddly unfamiliar ideas.  Watching this film is a reminder of a superior age in filmmaking in the late 60’s and early 70’s, an era of greater freedom, when directors constantly took risks, exhibiting a greater sense of urgency, where the 70’s was actually a golden age of American filmmaking.  While hardly an example of one of the better films, this is instead a more provocative effort, a battle of the sexes, where a wounded soldier from the north finds himself cooped up in a sanctuary of Southern belles in the plantation era of the antebellum South during the Civil War, notable for being the sole film in the entire Eastwood repertoire where he gets his comeuppance, described as a castration fantasy by the director, outsmarted by a group of women in the heyday of feminism and the women’s liberation movement, headed by the great Geraldine Page, queen of American theater and stage, nominated for eight Academy Awards (winning once) and four Tony awards, who is at her most devious when confronting the likes of Eastwood.  While Coppola’s film is immaculately photographed, it remains calculatingly reserved and feels more like a minor work, perhaps trying too hard to retain that balance between comedy and camp, never registering the bleak dramatic overtones of the original, which suggests a greater sense of inner desperation.  While Coppola depicts the film exclusively from a woman’s point of view, capturing subtle nuances, the original does as well, but is all Eastwood (check out the hair!), distinguished by his male bravado, showing his guile and charm, attempting to have his way with women young and old, feeling he is invincible in a house filled with women, only to be rebuffed by Page in one of her more disturbing roles, where her moral authority is continually undercut by flashbacks of incestial relations with her brother, altogether left out of the more sanitized Coppola film, creating a darker more perverse vision, while also adding ambiguity to the chosen title.

Based on the 1966 novel The Painted Devil by Thomas P. Cullinan, the film is notable for the exaggerated delirium and towering performances, becoming an expression of Southern gothic horror, taking place at the Farnsworth Seminary for Young Girls, a cloistered community on the outskirts of war with a near religious devotion to manners and etiquette.  While the war itself is never seen but only heard in the background, the gated seminary remains a safe refuge, surprisingly absent of discord, led by founder and school headmistress Martha Farnsworth (Geraldine Page).  The opening credit sequence is notable, shot by Bruce Surtees in sepia tones, featuring blown-up vintage photographs of Lincoln, but also fallen soldiers, where we hear the bloody sounds of war as the screen is flooded by images of the dead still lying on the battlefield.  What follows is the soft, yet distinct voice of Eastwood himself singing a traditional anti-war folk ballad with ominous implications, as a tattered and badly wounded Corporal John ‘McBee’ McBurney (Eastwood) is discovered hiding in the woods by a young 12-year old girl, Amy (Pamelyn Ferdin, the voice of Lucy in the Peanuts movies), while picking mushrooms.  When announcing her age, he mysteriously suggests, “Old enough for kisses,” and kisses her right there on the spot as a squadron of soldiers passes by on the road.  Enough to make you squirm.  Helping him into the grounds of the school, his arrival causes quite a commotion, as the women all want to get a good look at him, though he is nearly unconscious, uttering delirious remarks.  What’s immediately recognizable are the litany of voiceovers from many of the women, where viewers can hear what they’re really thinking, offering a woman’s perspective, while also using skewed camera angles accentuating a feeling of disorientation.  This feeds into the flashbacks of the headmistress, frolicking in the fields with her brother, hidden messages undermining her moral authority.  Meanwhile, all the girls want to sneak a peek, peering around corners, sneaking in for a visit with the soldier in their midst, the lone man on the premises for quite some time, where each seems intoxicated by their own internalized fantasies.  The women start dressing nicer for the occasion, apparently trying to impress, with Miss Martha acknowledging, “The Corporal seems to be having an effect on all of us.”  Hallie (Mae Mercer) is the only slave on the premises (also left out of the Coppola film), yet she has some of the best lines in the film, showing an uninhibited nature, singing hymns to herself, where much more than the rest, as she’s not a student affiliated with the school, she feels like a free spirit, and she is the one asked to clean him up, washing his body, including his private parts.  When he awakes, she tells him, “Mr. Yankee, there was enough iron in your leg to shoe a horse!”

Any film that features a harpsichord on the soundtrack is weird, and this one is wildly bizarre throughout, featuring lots of swooping camera movements and super imposition, shot at the Ashland-Belle Helene Plantation near Baton Rouge.  The writing in the film is distinguished, partially adapted by Albert Maltz and Irene Kamp, both writing under pen names, though the lion’s share was probably written by associate producer Claude Traverse, who was uncredited, as there is a choreography of lines, each one feeling like a zinger, revealing something irrefutable about the person or place.  In this way, the various personalities are revealed, including the ultra-repressed Edwina (Elizabeth Hartman, plagued by depression, committing suicide in 1987), the oldest girl, who is also a teacher, a shy and romantically dreamy character right out of The Glass Menagerie, as fragile and forlorn as they come, instantly falling in love with the first man she sees.  Having discovered him, it’s Amy though who feels she has original rights to him, speaking candidly with him every chance she gets.  17-year old Carol (Jo Ann Harris, who became Eastwood’s girlfriend even after the film) is the most sexually precocious, a sultry vixen kissing him right on the lips, leaving an impression there’s plenty more where that came from.  And finally there’s Miss Martha herself, too proud to admit it, though she openly flirts with the Corporal as well, having late night drinks by the fire, removing the key to his door, allowing him free admittance to her room.  This myriad of sexual opportunity is like a revolving door, with something different offered behind each door, where McBurney openly plays each one, as if he only cares for them, leading each one of them on in a web of deceit that causes the women to turn on each other in a jealous fury.  This kind of mischief casts a dark shadow, though with this director there’s not an ounce of subtlety, as McBurney is a fraud and master of deception, a complete hypocrite, unashamed to blatantly lie (flashbacks reveal otherwise) in order to portray himself in the best possible light, though his ultimate goal is left unspoken, yet he seems to be having too good a time to want to leave.  After all, he’s constantly the center of attention, surrounded by girls that adore him, which in itself is a kind of male misogynist fantasy, especially in view of his overly deceptive motives, where all he wants to do is take advantage of the situation.  So the Corporal is not a noble character, more of a sly fox who is raiding the hen house.  As his health improves, so does his opportunity.  McBurney tries to get Hallie on his side, suggesting they are both prisoners, that maybe they should both help each other, where flashbacks suggest she was violated by the former master of the house, yet she is perhaps the only one strong enough to stand up to McBee, as she never allows herself to fall under his spell, but views him much as she does all white men, where whites with their monstrous history are simply not to be trusted, blatantly revealing, “You white folks ain’t killin’ each other ‘cause you care about us niggers.  White man’s the same everywhere in this world.” 

While there are some initial thoughts about turning the prisoner over to the Confederate soldiers, the women’s personal interest quickly changes all that, each with their own designs on the man, with Miss Martha thinking she may need a handy man on the premises to keep up the place, to grow a garden that produces food, to help stabilize the future of the school.  When Carol finds the Corporal smooching in the garden with Edwina, promising a world of possibilities, she jealously ties a blue cloth to the entrance gate, a sign to alert the troops of a Yankee trespasser.  Quickly there are three armed soldiers surrounding McBurney, but Miss Martha has the presence of mind to pretend he is a distant cousin from Texas, a state loyal to the Confederacy, and not from around there.  This incident adds a certain amount of suspense, but also shows how far some are willing to go to protect their prize, as if he’s their own personal possession.  Another example is a visit from drunken Confederate soldiers offering to spend the night, suggesting safety is their utmost concern, but their lecherous behavior suggests otherwise, almost as if they’re marking their territory, adding a tantalizing moment of terror that requires cunning and sophisticated misdirection from Miss Martha, who must refuse without drawing suspicion, leaving McBurney duly impressed afterwards with her savoir faire.  Martha’s infatuation grows, leading him on even further, which only fans the flames of her sexual hysteria, including a surreal dream of a near naked McBee in a ménage a trois with Martha and Edwina, who are seen kissing together, suggesting an unbridled inner spirit that breaks all bounds, merging into an image of the Holy Trinity, like something we might see in the graveyard hallucination section of Easy Rider (1969), expressed through a steamy montage of illicit sexual desire that is shockingly memorable.  A study of suppressed sexuality only grows more terrifyingly macabre, as three women leave their doors unlocked for McBurney, but only one (Carol) is bold enough to follow his tracks, making sure he doesn’t make the wrong decision, inviting him into her boudoir, removing her clothes, where the man simply can’t resist her offer.  But they make noise that can be heard, causing Edwina to explore what’s going on, opening the door, finding them naked on the bed and screaming bloody murder, waking up the entire house.  When McBurney tries to explain, she knocks him down the winding staircase with the candlestick, fracturing his leg and leaving him unconscious.  Seizing the moment, Miss Martha sends the younger girls to bed, suggesting the onset of gangrene could result in slow and painful death, having only one recourse, amputation, which Siegel shows in graphic detail, including Expressionist lighting and a hacksaw, never shying away from blood and gore, becoming a gruesome operatic horror show of exploitive excess on display, with the key being Martha’s mad steely resolve, as only someone with her dignified air of bravado and panache could pull this off.  At the time, Eastwood had not yet developed the iconic reputation he has today, a rugged Hollywood figure of stoic masculinity, but it’s rare for actors in their careers to allow themselves to become this vulnerable, this openly susceptible to dirty tricks, where the inestimable actions of Geraldine Page literally provide chills.  Eastwood is quoted in interviews (Clint Eastwood: Interviews, Revised and Updated) as saying, “I thought Geraldine Page was out of my league, being a big star on the Broadway stage and all, but when we started The Beguiled she told me she was a big fan of mine on Rawhide.  I’ve got no regrets, man, no regrets at all.”  Showing why she is one of the greatest actresses of her generation, inviting criticism and comparisons, she simply rises above with the poetic ease and grace of a dove transforming into a raven, as Eastwood’s foreshadowing song of grave warnings are heard again over the closing credits.