That Cold Day In the Park

THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK              B            
USA  Canada  (113 mi)  1969  d:  Robert Altman

I want things to stay the way they are.

I remember my mother never stopped saying how lonely she was after my father died.  She kept talking on and on, always reminding me how little company I was for her. 

—Frances Austen (Sandy Dennis)  

Born February 20, 1925 in Kansas City, Missouri in a family descended from the Mayflower, Altman had an upper class background, raised in Catholic schools, graduating from a military academy in 1943 when he enlisted in the Air Force at age 18, becoming a crewman flying over 50 bombing missions in Borneo and the Dutch East Indies.  When he was discharged in 1947, he studied engineering at the University of Missouri, breaking into the motion picture business by accident, writing short stories and screenplay drafts at age 20, selling RKO studios the script for THE BODYGUARD (1948), which he co-wrote with Richard Fleischer.  When a move to New York City failed to jump start his career, he returned to Kansas City in 1949, accepting a job as a director, writer, cameraman, and editor of industrial films for the Calvin Company, directing about 65 industrial films and documentaries by 1955, securing $60,000 in financing for his first feature film about juvenile delinquency in Kansas City, entitled THE DELINQUENTS (1957), purchased by United Artists for $150,000.  While a primitive work, more of a teen exploitation film, it does contain naturalistic dialogue, an aesthetic associated with Altman throughout his career.  Moving to Los Angeles, he next co-directed THE JAMES DEAN STORY (1957), an exploitive documentary capitalizing on the recent death of a legendary movie icon, and while it was a box office disappointment, it did attract the attention of none other than Alfred Hitchcock, who hired him to direct several TV episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1957-58), but after just two episodes, “The Young One” and Together,” Altman was fired.  His exposure, however, led him to a successful career working for several television companies from 1956 to 1964, directing various episodes of Whirlybirds (1958-59), U.S. Marshal (1959), Bonanza (1960-61), Combat (1962-63), and the Kraft Suspense Theater (1963).  According to Robert Altman's "7 secret wars", Altman directed nearly the entire second season of Bonanza, claiming “they’re some of the darkest in its 14-year run,” while also suggesting “Altman's dark style was better suited for the gritty war stories in the series Combat.”  Television also allowed Altman the chance to experiment with narrative technique as well as develop his trademark overlapping dialogue, while at the same time learn to work with speed and efficiency on a limited budget.  Despite his apparent refusal to conform to network requirements, causing frequent firings, Altman was never out of work for long, as his wealth of experience continued to attract work in a burgeoning television industry.  His success allowed him to form his own production company, Lions Gate Films in 1963, but his prolific gambling debts nearly brought about its demise, eventually forcing him to sell his interests in 1981.  One of his episodes about a serial killer for the Kraft Suspense Theater, “Once Upon a Savage Night,” was expanded to a feature length film, commercially released as NIGHTMARE IN CHICAGO (1964), where he did not work again until he was hired to direct a low-budget space thriller called COUNTDOWN (1968), but he was fired near the end of the project for his refusal to edit the film to an acceptable length.      

The recognizable Altman style was not much in evidence in his first few studio efforts, but that would change with his next film, THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK (1969), a disturbing psychological drama financed by inheritance money from the Max Factor cosmetic empire, shot in Vancouver (circumventing the Hollywood unions), where the film screened out of competition at Cannes and features a dazzling directorial style.  The opening shot reflects the cold, subdued atmosphere of melancholy where the camera follows a woman as she takes a winding path home through a park in Vancouver, zooming in and out, constantly altering the focus, stylistically underscoring the significance of duality, where something sinister is going on under the surface, while the camera holds her in the frame during a lengthy pan where at times the sun explodes onto the lens, as the camera continually keeps up with her all the way home.  Immediately we get a taste of a unique visual style, beautifully shot by László Kovács, where there is also ample evidence of an overlapping soundtrack, with the camera keying on one subject while the soundtrack is dominated by the improvised conversations of others nearby.  The film was a critical and box office disaster, followed up by a comical adaptation of a little-known Korean War novel satirizing life in the armed services, a film passed over by more than a dozen other filmmakers, where production was so tumultuous that stars Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland attempted to have Altman fired due to his unorthodox filming methods.  Upon its release, however, MASH (1970) was widely hailed as an instant classic, winning the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and five Academy Award nominations, with Ring Lardner, Jr. winning the Best Adapted Screenplay, becoming the point in Altman’s career when he was recognized as a major talent.  THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK is the first of what might be called Altman’s “female subjectivity” trilogy that also includes Images (1972) and 3 Women (1977).  The focus of the film is Sandy Dennis as Frances Austen, vulnerable and overly naïve, actually one of the better performances of her career as a seemingly oversensitive, unmarried wealthy woman whose desperate loneliness is so acute that her psychological state of mind remains questionable, where one gets the impression, through oddly out-of-place extended confessional revelations, that she is extremely fragile and weirdly out of touch, symptomatic of the Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie syndrome where she is isolated from the outside world even as she associates with others.  The film’s greatest strength lies in its suffocatingly repressed atmosphere, where the characters live in self-imposed prisons, which is fully sustained throughout, even as the story itself disappoints, showing little sympathy for anyone onscreen, feeling like a well-crafted studio concoction figured out ahead of time, as so much of what’s memorable is the glossy, artificial stylization.  Interestingly, it was during this filming that Altman discovered the music of Montreal native Leonard Cohen and his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen FULL ALBUM ... YouTube (41:38), so prominently featured in McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), both films shot in the dreary dampness of Vancouver.    

Perhaps Altman’s only real stab at a genre film, this is a grim, uneven effort that veers into the gothic horror realm, where Frances is listlessly entertaining a group of older guests when she spies a young man sitting on a park bench in the rain, who holds her rapt attention throughout her party, where her gaze out the window through the Venetian blinds remains fixated, eventually inviting the young man (Michael Burns, known only as the Boy) inside where she offers him every hospitality, food, a change of clothes, a hot bath, and even his own private room.  While she rambles on in an extended monologue, talking incessantly, he remains mute but passively accepting, which allows Frances to delve into her own private world, one of manners and politeness and orderly décor, barely concealing her sexual attraction as she has her eyes on him all along.  In a bit of a surprise, she locks him in his room at night, guaranteeing he’ll be there in the morning when she serves him breakfast in bed.  While she goes out on meaningless social engagements, it’s all a distraction from her real intent which is to return to this young man later in the evening.  As the day progresses, however, it unfolds in dual sequences, one where Frances visits her gynecologist, sitting apart from the other women who remain unseen, yet their voices dominate the soundtrack, reflecting a psychological schism in her character, and one where the Boy returns home, escaping out the window and down the fire escape, living in a cramped apartment with his sister Nina (Susan Benton) and her boyfriend Nick (David Garfield, son of John Garfield), where we soon learn he has a voice and a noticeable attraction to his sister, who continually flaunts her sexuality in front of him.  The Boy describes the overly generous treatment he has received from this strange woman whose lavish attention obviously still fascinates him.  When Nina hears she gave him a bath, she comes to the apartment to see just what her brother has gotten himself into, and treats herself to a luxurious bath, despite her brother’s protestations that the woman is expected back at any minute.  Paying him no mind, she casually strips completely naked in front of him, where she seems to thrive on his sexual powerlessness, making him a passive onlooker, provoking him at every step, until eventually they are both splashing around in the tub together.  Altman ratchets up the tension with shots of Frances returning home while the mess created in the bathroom turns into a disaster area, holding the shot at length as he builds the suspense. 

When she returns to the dark and quiet of her home, the audience is clueless what to expect, though it does have the feel of gloom hovering in the air.  After puttering around the apartment putting things away, she discovers nothing is amiss, entering the Boy’s bedroom, speaking to him anxiously, even crawling into bed with him, finally offering herself sexually, only to discover a doll and some stuffed animals under the covers, where she lets out a blood curdling scream.  Enraged in disappointment, she waits for his return, where her calm demeanor and impeccable manners helps set the trap, but not before he returns with pot-laced brownies, where they play a sexually charged game of blindfolded hide and seek, where soon she’s in a state of childish bliss, eventually peeking through the keyhole into his room, completely distraught to discover he’s left through the window again.  Only then does she decide to take matters into her own hand, bolting the windows shut to lock him in, keeping him prisoner next time.  The oppressiveness of her apartment, with each object perfectly placed, belies the underlying psychological turbulence, where the viewer is witness to plenty of fractured mirror images, shooting people through objects, like glass or candlelight, where humans are seen as abstract reflections constantly moving in and out of focus, bringing to mind Fassbinder’s elegantly shot but as yet unmade CHINESE ROULETTE (1976), both opulent uses of dual imagery through mirrors to show a deteriorating psychological rift.  The cold precision and austere formality in each case is created through artificial means, while also creating an exaggerated, near hallucinogenic state of mind.  Altman is obviously fascinated by the marginalized female character and the lengths that she’s willing to go, where the extent of her disturbance is never fully realized until it’s too late, shown through calm and tranquil surface imagery, where even the viewer has a hard time believing what’s actually taking place as it seemingly evolves with the calculating shrewdness and detachment of a chess match, yet hysteria eventually supplants the existing reality, much like Norman Bates in Psycho (1960).  If the story weren’t so coldly literary, following an orderly story logic without the meandering Altmanisms that would later define his true talent as a director, it instead feels overly technical and even cliché’d, dropping the homosexuality angle of the Boy from the book, also a club with performed sex acts, but featuring another sexually repressed character who can only unleash their inhibitions through violent means.  That she mothers the Boy with affections and sweet talk throughout is a mere diversion from her real intent, feeling a bit too calculated and overly obvious by the film’s end, where the better film is the slow build-up of tension through meticulous detail, where the extent of psychic disorientation does come as a surprise, where perhaps the film is ultimately about a strange and mysterious passivity resembling normalcy that has the capacity to turn destructive.      

When asked if he ever looks at his older movies, Altman replied, 

I look at them.  And there’s nothing I’d change in any one of them.  They’re finished works, reflecting a specific film experience.  To change them would be like doing plastic surgery.  And, honestly, I like ‘em better than I did at the time.  I looked at That Cold Day In The Park recently and I wanna tell you, that’s one hell of a movie!

MASH

Ring Lardner Jr. (far right) with eight others of the Hollywood 10 charged with contempt of Congress in 1947

 

Robert Altman at the Cannes Film Festival, 1970

MASH             B+          
USA  (116 mi)  1970  ‘Scope  d:  Robert Altman 

Hot Lips (Sally Kellerman) angrily to Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) 

I wonder how a degenerate person like you could have reached a position of responsibility in the Army Medical Corps?

Father Mulcahy (René Auberjonois) 

He was drafted.

And then there was…Korea, which flashes at the opening (at the studio’s insistence) to distinguish it from the Vietnam War, which was in full battle mode at the time this film was made, offering Altman’s own commentary on the military experience, sort of his own cinematic CATCH-22 (1970), both films satirizing American wars, which were ironically released in the same year.  The director’s cynical views are based on his own World War II experiences in the Air Force, flying over 50 bombing missions in Borneo and the Dutch East Indies.  Still to this day, this remains Altman’s most popular and certainly his most commercially successful film, shot for $3 million, a half a million under budget so as not to draw attention or unnecessary interference from the studio brass, who never really knew what was happening, and grossing close to $90 million dollars, all but saving the studio, according to Altman.  The film’s popularity spawned an extremely popular TV show (starring Alan Alda) that ran for over a decade in the post Vietnam era, which used the same opening helicopter sequence, theme music (without the lyrics), with actor Gary Burghoff as Radar, and at least initially C. Wood as General Hammond, reprising their roles for television.  Altman’s son Mike wrote the lyrics to the theme song “Suicide Is Painless” at the age of 14, and reportedly made more money from the movie than his father, who reportedly made only $75,000.  Altman’s criteria for the song was that it had to be the “stupidest song ever written” called “Suicide Is Painless,” but found the task of writing stupid lyrics at age 45 too difficult for himself, assigning the task to his son who reportedly wrote the lyrics in five minutes.  The song is now ranked at #66 on AFI’s top 100 songs in American cinema, AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs.  Many more people remember the television show M*A*S*H (1972–1983), with 99 Emmy nominations breaking all network records, without ever having seen the movie, where Altman detested the television show (which lasted four times as long as the war itself), feeling it was the antithesis of what he hoped to achieve with the film, which was questioning the United States involvement in Vietnam, as America was never attacked or in danger, as it was in a politicized, artificial state of emergency left over from the rabidly anti-communist days of Senator Joe McCarthy that had little meaning to the ordinary people on the street. 

The politically subversive tone of the film struck a nerve with audiences in the late 60’s when people were feeling rebellious and anti-war, where the dark humor fit the times, much like the mocking tone of Kubrick’s DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) towards the Cold War.  Movies with liberal, anti-authoritarian themes were all the rage in the late 60’s, like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), THE GRADUATE (1967), Rosemary's Baby (1968), MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969),  Easy Rider (1969), or The Wild Bunch (1969), a time when the studios were still run by powerfully staunch conservatives.  To make a film like this within the Hollywood studio system of the times took some clever subterfuge, where Altman describes the journey as having escaped mostly unscathed without anybody noticing, where he did his best to keep a low profile, as 20th Century Fox was more concerned with their other big budget war movies being produced at the same time, PATTON (1970), which went on to win 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, also the 4th top grossing movie of the year, and TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970), the 8th top grossing film, while MASH surprisingly topped them both at #3, while also winning the Palme d’Or Best Film at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.  The origin of the film was Richard Hooker’s 1968 book MASH:  A Novel About Three Army Doctors, a pen name for Dr. H. Richard Hornberger, a former military surgeon whose book fictionally recounts the exploits of three insubordinate Korean War surgeons, revealing how they comically resort to zany antics in order to maintain their sanity during the insanity of war.  Screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr, a former communist, was one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten during the late 40’s and early 50’s era of McCarthyism, notable for serving a year in prison for contempt of Congress by not naming names of other alleged communist sympathizers, dismissed by Darryl Zanuck, the head of 20th Century Fox studios in 1947, where the blacklist was not lifted until he as given co-writing credits for Norman Jewison’s THE CINCINNATI KID (1965).  His interest in the novel, as he identified with the blasphemous nature of anti-establishment tone, prompted the interest of the same studio that blacklisted him, ironically rehired by Zanuck’s son, Darryl Zanuck, Jr.  Supposedly a list of about 15 directors (including Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Bud Yorkin, and George Roy Hill, among others) turned down the project until it was finally offered to Altman, something of an unheralded novice at that time with a reputation for going against the grain of studio wishes.  His work in television on the gritty war-oriented show Combat (1962–63) was notable for its anti-war flavor, which got him fired as the networks hated it, so here he gets the chance to reprise the same subversive elements again in a movie.  

One of the film’s revelations is the historical accuracy about doctors being drafted out of medical school, some after only a year or two in medical practice, where they were whisked off to the front lines in helicopters and placed somewhere close to the battlefront in one of these emergency mobile hospital units.  As soon as their boots hit the ground, they’re thrust into immediate action where they’re up to their elbows in blood, amputations, and death, where they routinely worked 16, 18, or 24-hour shifts, with one doctor reportedly working 80 straight hours due to the continual onslaught of maimed, wounded, and dead soldiers.  Some of these medical students didn’t even know where Korea was on a map, and knew nothing about the army, as they had absolutely no military training, but their surgical skills were in high demand in the early 1950’s.  Because they came from a non-military background, they tended to be eccentric, non-conformists who enjoyed tweaking the noses of authority.  This irreverence led to the tone of the book, as these doctors didn’t respect rank, they respected competency.  Always placed close to the front lines, as that’s where the casualties were, these MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) units were constantly on the move, sometimes twice daily, reportedly as many as 27 times in 11 months.  This aspect was not depicted in the film, but it did show how desperately they needed blood and basic hospital supplies, a point noted in Herbert Kline’s searing Spanish Civil War documentary HEART OF SPAIN (1937), Heart of Spain + Photo League Shorts, with the filmmakers living with a mobile medical clinic and filming it in operation, saving wounded soldiers on the front lines through blood transfusions.  Because of how valuable these doctors were, the reality was they couldn’t take them out of duty for minor military infractions, as they were needed to save lives.  The Korean War was the first use of helicopters to transport the dead and wounded out of battle zones, as there were no passable roads, where the symbol of helicopters turns out to be an interesting parallel between both the Korean and Vietnam Wars, as the helicopter has come to personify both wars.  It was also the first war that routinely treated all wounded patients, friend and foe alike, where the doctors made no distinction.  One constant in the MASH units was lurking behind every off duty moment was the arrival of more helicopters, where there was a neverending demand for the services of doctors. 

Shot on back lot of 20th Century Fox studios in the Lake Malibu area, recently flooded just before shooting began, so the green foliage was quite pronounced, giving the film what could possibly be a lush Southeast Asian look, though in the background are the Santa Monica Mountains outside Los Angeles.  This is a curious little war film with no guns, no battle scenes, and is perhaps more anti-authority than anti-war, as the war itself is never in view, but instead features three doctors and a continuous line of casualties, blending comedy and carnage, where at the heart of the film are the bloody operating scenes that take the place of the battlefield operations.  Confined to their tiny geographical area, this medical unit remains psychologically confined or imprisoned by their so-called safety zone, where there are few, if any, quiet or silent moments, while they’re also restricted by the ineffectiveness of the military order and chain of command that seems to have little plan or interest in actually winning the war or understand the ramifications of any of its arbitrary rules.  In a Vietnam weary nation, where the parallels between the Korean and Vietnam Wars resonated, audiences loved the outrageousness of it, expressing shocking realism with scathingly dark humor.  Highlighting exaggerated issues of morality and sexuality, the film shows the grimness of war through the scandalous behavior of the characters who got through the war with the use of bizarre humor, which led to continuous acts of rebellion, especially the two lead characters who are flown in, Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce and Elliot Gould as Trapper John McIntyre, two out of work actors that resuscitated their professional careers by playing perversely unruly surgical doctors that dealt with life and death every day on the operating table, developing a mocking tone towards army rules and regulations, which meant nothing to them, eventually building a community of characters onscreen that exist in opposition to military authority, perhaps hoping to have a similar influence with offscreen viewers.  Gould especially seems to be channeling Groucho Marx (“Say the magic word and win a hundred dollars”), where a gong sounds after the joke punch line where a drum roll plays in stand-up comedy, where the film is a series of crude bathroom jokes and barroom humor, the more obscene the better, as according to Altman, there was nothing more obscene than patching up these wounded young men and sending them back to the front lines again, which is the true insanity of war.  14 of the 30 speaking roles were novices who had never worked on a movie before, where Altman hoped their fresh faces would enhance the film’s realism, as they could act naturally instead of offering a grand dramatic acting “performance,” which tend to be overwrought, which is exactly what Gould initially portrayed in the beginning and had to be toned down by Altman.  And if you want to see what a perfectly crafted, toned down performance looks like in an Altman film, look no further than Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye (1973).  As is typical in Altman films, though not known by the actors at the time, there is a constant mumble in the background with people stepping on each other’s lines through overlapping dialogue, where Altman favors a more freewheeling, improvisational style to rigidly sticking to the actual script.  Ring Lardner Jr. was furious how his dialogue got lost on the set, and felt sabotaged by Altman, though he was the only one to win an Academy Award for his Best Adapted Screenplay, where Altman always followed the tone that was established in his irreverent, wildly hysterical script.

Both Sutherland and Gould couldn’t understand why Altman was paying all this attention to the extras in minor roles when they were supposedly the starring lead characters, questioning his sanity, complaining to their agents and the Fox producer that they wanted Altman out, as they felt he was an irresponsible madman who had no idea what he was doing, as there was such a chaotic atmosphere on the movie set.  Little did they know how magnificently Altman creates order out of chaos, as that is his signature style as a director, a reputation only further enhanced throughout his brilliant career.  Altman tends to get everyone involved on the set, even the minor characters, as no one knew who was miked or where the focus of the camera was during each shot, so everyone had to remain on high alert, as if the camera was on them, and it wasn’t until they saw the final edit that they had any idea what the overall vision was for the film.  In this manner, a wonderful sense of camaraderie develops on the set, as Altman loves to use an ensemble style where everybody matters.  Altman is known for embellishing the screenplay, in this case, making it more exaggerated and outrageous, creating a total farce, where the only way to survive the madness of war is by laughing in the face of certain death.  For most of the new faces, Altman raided San Francisco of all its acting talent, digging up all these personalities, where actors are given such wide latitude to offer uninhibited expression in their performances.  In order to pay for all the extras, Altman had to go through the script and give each of them at least one line, as otherwise the studio wouldn’t hire them.  One of the surprises of the film to the participating actors was the use of loudspeaker announcements that are interspersed throughout, like chapter headings, offering absurdly amusing war commentary, announcing what movie will be shown, what food establishment is suddenly off limits due to heath regulations, or a change in some military regulation, often followed by some ridiculous sounding Japanese song, written by musical composer Johnny Mandel who also scored the music to the theme song.  This decision to add a stream of messages occurred during the editing of the film, adding cohesiveness to the comical set pieces and helping to keep the chaos in order, where some were taken word for word from Korean War Almanacs and military manuals, where they also discovered (and used) an actual prayer in the army hymnal for blessing an army vehicle, in this case the stolen jeep that both brought Hawkeye Pierce to the MASH unit while also sending him back home.             

One of the more farcical elements in the film is the meeting of the two strictly by-the-book soldiers, Major Burns (Robert Duvall), an old school, Bible-reading surgeon of questionable medical skill, ridiculed relentlessly by both Hawkeye and Trapper, and Major Houlihan (Sally Kellerman), brought in as the new head nurse, who finds the contempt for Major Burns an appalling example of military protocol.  When the two devise a plan to write a letter of complaint for such a deplorable example of army morale, they can’t take their hands off each other, leading to an infamous bedroom scene where Radar places a microphone into their tent so their sexual antics can eventually be broadcast throughout the camp over the loudspeaker.  Houlihan gets the nickname “Hot Lips” afterwards, based on her own sexual ferocity on display, while Major Burns is goaded mercilessly into a ridiculous fight, where he’s sent home afterwards in a straight jacket under psychiatric evaluation.  The sexual taunts toward women aren’t the least but subtle, but are crude in nature and continue throughout the film.  While some find this an example of Altman’s misogynist nature, it’s more reflective of how women are treated in the military, showing the attitudes that existed then and now, especially with those giant male egos involved.  Despite the exaggerated satiric absurdity on display, the distrustful, anti-authority tone was reflective of the mood of the country, which was also growing tired of hearing the endless military assessments of successful missions that only sounded more and more absurd when so many dead soldiers continued to return in flag-draped coffins.  The script was about the Korean War, but all the criticisms were aimed at Nixon and the war regime.  The studios themselves felt the display of blood and guts was excessive, that it would be too grotesque for audiences, but those were the scenes that provided the authenticity of soldiers maimed and dying, which reflected the reality of a protracted war.  All the attempts to take advantage of their recreational time only grow more deliriously bizarre, going to ridiculously comic heights, like Hawkeye and Trapper turning the helipad into a driving range, wearing flamboyantly snazzy attire just to hit golf balls, where Trapper grows annoyed when an actual helicopter lands, “Wish they wouldn’t land those things here when we’re playing golf,” yet the extravagance of these outrageous stunts are continually contrasted against the bloody carnage of war. 

One other notable development involves John Schuck as Captain Waldowski, the Painless Pole who provides dental expertise, known for being the most endowed member of the male species throughout the entire Asian front, where soldiers actually line up to get a peep when he’s taking a shower.  When he has an in-bed performance crisis, which completely contradicts his Don Juan prowess, he’s ready to admit life’s not worth living anymore, that the only option is suicide.  A black capsule is the method of choice, suggesting a quick and instant (and painless) death.  On the day of the shoot, Altman changed the original plan and after a break for lunch, had an entirely new set design, also an enlarged photo of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting The Last Supper, lining up his characters in a similar looking, brilliantly staged scene, creating an homage to Buñuel’s VIRIDIANA (1961), which also creates an unforgettable beggar’s banquet Last Supper moment set to Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.”  This scene is set to the movie theme song, beautifully sung by Kenny Primus, who performed in a Broadway production of Cats for perhaps twenty years, where Hawkeye has to convince the always likable Father Mulcahy (René Auberjonois) to offer the last rites, who of course considers suicide a mortal sin and an abomination.  But according to Hawkeye, he’s not really committing suicide, he’s only “intending” to commit suicide, drawing a distinction, where a little church intervention might actually prevent the poor soul from actually going through with it.  The solemn ritual is carried out with a great degree of gravity, eventually lying down in a coffin, removing his gum, and washing down the poison pill (actually a sleeping pill) with some Scotch, with everybody bringing mementos to take with him to his grave.  Bud Cort as Private Boone is deeply disappointed, reminding him that “You’re throwing your whole education away.”  While the method worked for Hitler and Eva Braun, Painless has an altogether different reaction, requiring the therapeutic services of an attractive nurse known as Lt. Dish (Jo Ann Pflug), where apparently Mulcahy’s prayers were answered. 

There’s also the infamous Hot Lips shower sequence, where the group sits around and drinks martinis in folding chairs as if they’re having a country picnic, but they’re waiting for the nurse’s allotted time to use the shower, where as they arrive each woman is casually pulled away in some needless conversation, leaving Hot Lips alone in the shower, where one side of the tent is set up to collapse on demand, leaving the poor woman naked on display in front of the entire unit, where she’s so infuriorated afterwards that she runs to the commanding officer shouting “This isn’t a hospital, it’s an insane asylum!  And it’s your fault, because you don’t do anything to discourage them!”  Certainly one of the memorable moments, as they do behave like animals, where it’s typical of the adolescent bathroom behavior exhibited throughout, where this vein of ridiculous humor is the lifeblood of the movie.  Adding to that is the infamous football game, where two military units make obscene bets over a football game.  Shot in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, the opposing team is actually a collection of professional and semi-pro players, including 6’ 8” defensive tackle Ben Davidson and tiny punt return specialist Noland Smith (aka Super Gnat), who opens the game with a touchdown, both stars from the Kansas City Chiefs, while the MASH squad enlists the aid of Fred Williamson as “Spearchucker” Jones, another Kansas City Chief defensive back player (both Davidson and Williamson also played for Oakland, but Altman knows them through his Kansas City connections) in his first film before leading a long and active career in the movies, starring in blaxploitation films during the 70’s and 80’s, where he’s still working today.  The game itself, when looked at from today, could easily be perceived as racist, where just the name “Spearchucker” was a lot for Williamson to overcome, but Fred is always a cool dude and he rises above the indignity of the occasion, as does the humor, which includes players on the opposite team smoking a joint, one of the few mainstream films of the times besides Easy Rider (1969) to freely acknowledge smoking dope, and the first use of the word “Fuck” in an R-rated film, where Painless makes a crack on the scrimmage line across from Ben Davidson, telling him “You’re fuckin’ head is coming right off,” which gets him run completely off the field.  With Hot Lips as a surprisingly enthusiastic cheerleader, putting everything she has into every cheer, even as she remains clueless about football, the game turns into a demolition derby pile up of MASH unit injuries, where Altman has a chance to add more battlefield metaphors.  There’s perhaps no way to avoid the existing racism among the troops that existed then and now, but Altman’s over-the-top portrayal is joyously crafted, grounded in ribald humor.    

While the movie features a single Korean character, Kim Atwood as Ho-Jon (who learns to mix a perfect dry martini), though that is apparently not a Korean name, and features populated street scenes in Seoul, Korea with people uncharacteristically (and amusingly) wearing Vietnamese hats, in reality MASH units were saturated by Koreans working as cooks, hospital attendants, where they were regularly assigned to clean up afterwards and keep the surgical areas and medical instruments clean.  Also, nurses, like doctors, were equally indispensable during the Korean War, though almost all were volunteers.  While it’s likely none would have actually been as openly harassed as Hot Lips, but the high percentage of rape of women in the military, where more than 20% of currently serving female veterans will be sexually assaulted according to the statistics from the recent Kirby Dick documentary 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: # 5 The Invisible War, keeps the situation a hot button issue to this day.  Nurses from the Korean War era do report placing a Korean woman with a baseball bat in front of the shower door when it was reserved time for nurses to shower.  The last MASH unit in Korea, by the way, was decommissioned in 1997.  At the time the film was released, it opened in New York during a January winter blizzard, yet there were lines around the block to get in.  A theater in Vancouver ran the film for more than a year in an era that proceeded the building of Cineplex theaters, so it was extremely popular with all audiences, including GI’s, where the military initially banned the film from playing in military bases, thinking exactly like Hot Lips and Major Burns that it would lead to poor morale, but they quickly rescinded the order when soldiers were leaving the bases in large numbers and going AWOL to see the movie.  The war was still going full blast when it was released, where the bold and audacious tone just fit with the times, expressing a little bit of the insanity in the air, a war film where the only guns fired were on the football field.  The film also expresses the bittersweet emotions that overcome soldiers when they’re informed they can go home, where there’s a guilty feeling about leaving others behind when the war was still raging.  As a result, there’s no real end to the film, as the lingering war was not over.  The Vietnam War would not officially come to an end until April 30, 1975, the year Altman released Nashville (1975), a film some consider his greatest work.  By that time Altman had made eight consecutive uniquely original visionary films that alone would have placed him among the great legendary directors of all time, but it also established him as one of the few great American auteurs with such a distinctive style to his work, where he continued to make films for another thirty years.   

Corn's-A-Poppin'

Local film preservationists Julian Antos, Kyle Westphal, and Rebecca Hall

CORN’S-A-POPPIN’                        C+        
USA  (58 mi)  1955     director:  Robert Woodburn    co-screenwriters:  Robert Altman, Robert Woodburn

While it’s not known exactly what role Robert Altman played in this rare early work, preserved by the Northwest Chicago Film Society with funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation, but it most likely did not include directing, though there are rumors to the effect that Altman may have directed some scenes, from anonymous sources on IMDb, repeated again by the local theater website, Corn's-A-Poppin' | Music Box Theatre, both listing him as a co-director, but there is no credible evidence to support this.  When one of the user reviews pointed out this discrepancy, IMDB corrected the listing, noting only a writing credit.  So more accurately, Altman co-wrote the screenplay and it was directed by someone else, Robert Woodburn, who also served as co-writer and cinematographer.  Woodburn, as it happens, never directed anything else in his short-lived career.  After a brief attempt to establish a career both in New York and again in Hollywood as a screenwriter, Altman returned to Kansas City in the late 40’s without any filmmaking experience, where he initially helped produce industrial films in the service department of The Calvin Company, a job that included writing, editing, directing, and doing his own camerawork, eventually moving into the production division by directing about 65 documentaries by 1955.  Typically twenty minutes in length, shot on 16 millimeter, industrial films were either educational films or product sponsored films that placed the spotlight on one of the featured products, where the first completed Robert Altman film was reportedly Honeymoon for Harriet, made in 1948, with a camera following a veteran retiring mailman and his young replacement along country roads as he trains his apprentice.  The film tells the story of newlyweds whose honeymoon was constantly delayed because an International Harvester dealership was located on the way to the travel agency.  Written by Altman, Calvin allowed him to direct the film because no one else could figure out how to record the soundtrack of the open road conversation, where the film is currently housed in the International Harvester Film Collection.  The film is also notable because it starred Altman’s second wife, Lotus Corelli.  In a later 1954 film called The Perfect Crime, sponsored by the Caterpillar Tractor Company and the National Safety Council, Altman experimented with quick cuts and personal subjectivity, writing an action sequence, the holdup of a neighborhood Mom and Pop convenience store, including a shot from Pop’s point of view as Mom and another little girl get shot.  As the killers get away “scot-free,” the case is made for better highway construction, suggesting if taxpayers invested in better roads, in other words those built by Caterpillar construction equipment, these unfortunate roadside incidents could be avoided.  The film won Altman an Oscar award by the association of industrial filmmakers in 1955. 

More fun than any rating could indicate, CORN’S-A-POPPIN’ originated with Elmer Rhoden Jr., an old school friend of Altman’s whose father co-owned the Commonwealth Theatres, a regional chain of 102 movie houses, while his brother Clark was chairman of the Popcorn Institute, a local trade organization.  With money to invest, Elmer got the idea to shoot a film promoting popcorn, hiring Robert Woodburn of The Calvin Company to direct, while Altman was brought along to help with the script, with both flying out to Los Angeles in search of talent for a musical review, discovering nightclub singer Jerry Wallace, who was actually from Kansas City.  To back him they hired the local country band Hobie Shepp and the Cowtown Wranglers.  Originally entitled Ozark Hoedown, the title was a variation on HELLZAPOPPIN’ (1941), a spoof of the many Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland backstage musical shows that they headlined while raising money for the war effort, not to mention the exuberance of their overly formulaic MGM musicals.  While the film clearly falls into the camp category, a film so bad it’s good, where you may be besieged afterwards by corny jokes and hokey country music songs in your dreams at night, leaving behind an unmistakable imprint of something altogether bewildering, featuring some of the worst performances in history, Wallace as Johnny Wilson, it turns out, is a real discovery as a singer, not to mention his sidekick, amateur actress Cora Rice as Susie who is the show’s scene stealer.  Unfortunately, they’re not onscreen for the majority of the film, but when they are they literally light up the screen, Corn's-A-Poppin' (1956) Trailer - YouTube  (2:20).  Instead it’s bogged down by an atrociously poor production design that makes FLASH GORDON (1936) seem like the gold standard and an insipid story about Thaddeus Pinwhistle (Keith Painton), owner of Pinwhistle Popcorn, who’s about as interesting as that relative you least look forward to seeing again.  Timid to the point of dysfunction, Thaddeus allows his newly hired PR man Waldo Crummit, James Lantz, who also starred in Honeymoon for Harriet, by the way, to run roughshod over him in order to sabotage The Pinwhistle Popcorn Hour, a half-hour variety show that features lame musical acts in between the important commercial spots of Johnny Wilson live on camera pushing the popcorn.  Crummit’s plan is to feature the worst acts he can find while lowering the quality of the popcorn, making it inedible, in an attempt to have a rival company “buy popcorn for peanuts,” where they purchase the popcorn empire for next to nothing.  The beleaguered Thaddeus hasn’t an inkling he’s being hoodwinked, though his secretary Sheila (Pat McReynolds), always introduced as “more than a secretary,” couldn’t be more bored sitting alone at her desk all day, seen communicating with her boss via phone intercom, sees right though the con man’s smoke screen.  But its little Susie that expresses it best, seen throughout holding her nose as she watches the show, complaining “It stinks!” 

While there’s not an ounce of the Altman ingenuity behind the camera, shot in a strictly point and shoot mode from a fixed position, where each shot features a square box, not much different than the way television was shot in the early 50’s.  Filmed on the cheap using two or three threadbare sets from the old Lyceum Theatre, which was at that time an old abandoned Baptist church, now Missouri's oldest professional regional theatre, where much of the film takes place in a makeshift TV station, featuring corny jokes, amateur acting so bad that it will make you squirm in your seats, and a dull central storyline that is occasionally interrupted by somewhat inspired musical numbers.  Underneath it all is some uncomfortable intimations, as what’s initially creepy is the audience doesn’t know the relationship between Johnny Wilson and Little Susie, seen living together, where she is seemingly the pint-sized boss of the relationship, always in full make up, just like the other adult women, where she belts out her lines with authority, at times carrying the picture on her shoulders.  She actually cooks a meal when Johnny invites the band over after the show for a spaghetti dinner party, seen dressed in her apron, where for all practical purposes she may as well be taking care of Johnny, ordering him around like a hen-pecking wife, where she could be his midget wife.  It’s only much later in the picture that we learn they are brother and sister, where the actual suspense for the audience is waiting for her to finally appear on the show, as she has such a unique camera presence, like Judy Garland as a child, capable of belting out musical standards with ease.  But instead we get the bullying antics of a conniving Waldo, who continually butters up Pinwhistle with neverending compliments and a rosy outlook for this ridiculously awful TV show, featuring hog-caller turned singer extraordinaire, Lillian Gravelguard (Nora Lee Benedict), whose Tiny Tim resembling rendition of “Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes” will surely make you wish you were elsewhere.  What we hear at Johnny’s place when he relaxes with the band, on the other hand, is a true delight, reminiscent of those episodes on The Andy Griffith Show (1960 – 68) when Andy would get together with Denver Pyle as Briscoe Darling, who’s come off the mountain for some real down home bluegrass music.  It’s in these freewheeling musical numbers that we realize Susie is the real star of the show, as Johnny has a raw and appealing talent, especially singing the upbeat “Running After Love,” but Susie’s 12-year old swagger is like nothing we’ve ever seen.  Unfortunately, we’re forced to spend most of the movie watching the back and forth shenanigans of Pinwhistle and Waldo, two pinheads that grow extremely tiresome after awhile. 

As it turns out, Pinwhistle may have been based upon a real figure, Kansas City popcorn mogul Charles T. Manley, an innovator whose electrical popping machine helped make popcorn a staple in movie theaters.  It wasn’t a fixture during the Silent era, but could be purchased in other areas like circus or stage shows.  Popcorn exploded during the Great Depression, sold for as little as five cents a bag, where vendors could obtain a space either inside or outside the theater to sell their product, which was at that time generated by hand.  It was only during the labor shortage of World War II, which also saw sugar rationing that cut out popcorn’s main competitor, candy bars, that mechanical machines made popcorn faster and easier to make.  It was the war years, and the rise of the National Popcorn Association, that made it patriotic to eat popcorn at the movies.  CORN’S-A-POPPIN’ exaggerates this love of corn, where it’s a dark and dreary world depicted by a dearth of quality popcorn, continually undermined by the dreadfully unprincipled Waldo Crummit, who’s like a dastardly character out of the cartoons, where it takes a cavalry saving appearance from a popcorn guardian angel, Dora Walls as Agatha Quake, whose Norman Rockwell visage could easily make her a kissing cousin of Margaret Hamilton as Miss Gulch/The Wicked Witch of the West from THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939), who just happened, by chance, to make a sinister appearance in Altman’s Brewster McCloud (1970). Ms. Quake’s secret ingredients not only improve the taste of popcorn, but create orgasmic effects at the popcorn machine, where the performers onstage are deluged by flying kernels of corn that quickly resemble a blinding snowstorm.  Ms Quake’s success is immediate, in more ways than one, offering a deliriously happy ending, but not before Little Susie finally gets a chance to sing onstage with older brother Johnny in what turns out to be the sequence of the film, singing “On Our Way to Mars” On Our Way To Mars - Jerry Wallace and Cora Rice - Corn's  YouTube (2:42) while sitting on one of those toy rocket ships that used to sit outside grocery stores along with rocking horses for kids to ride on for anywhere from a nickel to a quarter, only here it’s a cardboard rocket ship.  It’s exquisitely innocent, given a slightly jazzy flair, imagining what it might be like to “dream in Cinemascope” and find a grilled cheese sandwich on the moon, ending in “Zoom! Zoom!” While Wallace made a few singing appearances on television, neither he nor Cora Rice ever made another movie.  What all this has to do with Robert Altman is anybody’s guess, where Altman all but disowned these crude early works.  Patrick McGilligan, in his Altman biography Jumping Off the Cliff, Robert Altman: Jumping Off the Cliff - Page 100 - Google Books (pdf format), has offered his own views, calling it “one of the worst movies ever made…the movie is slumberous, hammy, amateurish and clichéd, ultra-boring.  Folks who rate Quintet the nadir of Altman’s career have not seen Corn’s-A-Poppin’”  While it’s one of the final films Altman made while working at The Calvin Company, as the same Elmer Rhoden Jr. offered Altman a chance to write and direct his first feature, a film about juvenile delinquency in Kansas City, THE DELINQUENTS (1957), which has the distinction of being one of only two films, the other being 3 Women (1977), made throughout his entire career where Altman worked without collaboration and was the sole writer of one of his films.  

From Kyle Westphal, one of those Northwest Chicago Film Society forces, along with Julian Antos and Rebecca Hall, behind the film preservation, written after the film was rediscovered in 2007 at the University of Chicago DOC Films, calling it “a truly insightful look at the kind of unaccountable cinema that a certain contingent of Doc people/alums are particularly entranced by,” October 9, 2011:   Northwest Chicago Film Society Blog [Kyle Westphal]  

A rabid auteurist might stretch the connection and claim Corn’s-a-Poppin’ as a clear antecedent to Nashville or The Prairie Home Companion, as all three share a vaguely similar down home milieu. But this suggests a clear line of personal development—and one that leads quickly, conveniently, and inexorably away from Corn’s-a-Poppin’—rather than the messier, and inherently collective, mystery of the film itself.

On its own, Corn’s-a-Poppin’ is a beguiling experience. Few films have seemed prouder of their low-rent constraints. The sets are dressed-down television leftovers, which is actually appropriate, as the plot revolves around the trials of producing an inept program called The Pinwhistle Popcorn Hour. The show, a wild scheme hatched by marketing man Waldo Crummit (James Lantz) to boost sales for Thaddeus J. Pinwhistle (Keith Painton) hovers between an embarrassment and outright sabotage. In the first reel Waldo introduces Pinwhistle to his newest headliner, former hog-caller Lillian Gravelguard (Nora Lee Benedict) whose rendition of “Drink to Me Only” actually makes the anemic popcorn seem the rightful highlight of the program. Just about the only positive effect of this enterprise is the flirtatious manner affected by Pinwhistle’s “more-than-a-secretary” secretary Sheila (Pat McReynolds) and folksy Pinwhistle Popcorn Hour announcer Johnny Wilson (Jerry Wallace), whose charm helps viewers to forget that the show only runs half an hour. The only obstacle to their union is Johnny’s pushy kid sister Susie (Little Cora Rice) who orders him around like hen-pecking wife and airs her opinions about his TV show with minimal tact. Susie speaks with all the bluster and toughness of a boozed-out Hollywood sideshow, cooks all of Johnny’s meals in an apron, and possesses a disposition very unbecoming of a child star.

Part of what makes Corn’s-a-Poppin’ so unaccountable is the way it moves effortlessly between studied sarcasm and stiff line readings. Waldo Crummit seems like a creation shoplifted from a Frank Tashlin comedy—a vulgar showbiz mover who profits in proportion to the talent’s bust. When Pinwhistle finds Crummit making a deal with an executive at Chicago’s Crinkly Corn, Crummit deploys some improbable hooey about negotiating with a senator. We’re clearly meant to take Crummit’s listless recitation as a bad joke. Likewise when he insists that the vocal talents of Miss Gravelguard are not a danger to Pinwhistle or his popcorn, reasoning that his business is about corn, not critics. Or when he laments a strain of ‘vocal cord-itis.’ These are lousy one-liners and lame locutions infused with a consciously pathetic air. Much in the same manner, Gravelguard’s singing is meant to be bad, horrendous, an ongoing train wreck of a thing. She becomes the butt and embodiment of a familiar joke about no-talent floozies crooning through a sea of cheap whiskey tears.

The performances are all over the map. How are we to reconcile the knowing dumbness of James Lantz’s performance and the near-documentary coyness of Pat McReynolds and Jerry Wallace? Keith Painton screams all his lines into an intercom, frets while twirling his girly fisticuffs, and always dances on the line of being hip to the whole ploy but never quite crosses it.

Satirically speaking, the main targets of Corn’s-a-Poppin’ are amateur ambition, outsized egos, outrageous shysterism. Yet all these qualities are abundantly present in the film, too. If the Pinwhistle Popcorn Hour is supposed to be a pathetic outpost for fifth-rank talent—horrible enough to wreck the whole popcorn empire—then what does that make Corn’s-a-Poppin’? Even rowdy crowds in the back row intuit the silliness (and limited promotional value) of pelting musicians with popcorn during a set.

And yet, the characterizations are so insistent that they overwhelm the material. After seeing Corn’s-a-Poppin’, you may find yourself referring to someone as ‘a real Waldo Crummit.’ If only more people could see this film, the name might enter the cultural lexicon and take on a real Dickensian largess. It’s such a useful and illustrative shorthand—a spot-on accurate rendition of a certain kind of marketing sensibility that has made so many of our relationships stilted and false. There’s a lesson here.