Große Lüge Lylah Clare

Every once in a while Hollywood feels obligated to turn out cautionary tales to encourage young people in Iowa to stay at home instead of hopping a Greyhound to Los Angeles. People ignore them and keep on coming, but it's created a whole sub-genre of films. In a fairly short period of time we had this, VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, and BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS.

The film starts very well: Kim Novak, wearing glasses, walks around Hollywood Boulevard early in the morning. She passes Mann's Chinese Theater, where THE DIRTY DOZEN (director Robert Aldrich's previous film) is playing. Kim plays Elsa, a reserved, somewhat bookish young woman, who resembles Lylah Clare, an actress who died in the late 1940's after marrying Lewis Zarkan, the director who shaped her screen persona and made her a superstar.

An agent has found Elsa and thinks she'd be perfect to play Lylah. Soon the movie spirals into silliness that's fun to watch but not very rewarding.

Elsa changes her last name from Brinkmann to Campbell and work begins to transform her personality so that she can play Lylah in a filmed biography. Imagine putting MY FAIR LADY and VERTIGO in a blender: you'll get some idea what the project is like.

Finally Elsa is ready for her debut to the Hollywood press, especially the much feared gossip columnist Molly Luther- a dynamite performance by Coral Brown, who played the lead in THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE for Aldrich the same year.

Elsa descends the stair at Zarken's mansion, her hair and wardrobe perfect. She confronts Molly, and instead of submitting to Molly's questioning she suddenly starts speaking in a guttural voice with a thick German accent and humiliates Molly.

Bear in mind that the film comes from over forty years ago, and gossip columnists did wield tremendous power. Much goes into the buildup for the confrontation, it takes place, and........really, nothing. The story lurches on as if it never happens.

There are good performances here. Novak is looser and more relaxed in front of the camera than I remember ever seeing her. Ernest Borgnine as a hearty vulgarian studio chief, Rossella Falk as a drug addicted lesbian with a peripheral connection to the story (she seems to function with Zarken like a sidekick to a villain on an episode of Batman), and, of course, Coral Brown all gleefully overact so much I wondered if MGM wrote checks to them or vice versa.

The chickens all come home to roost in a circus scene that comes out of absolutely nowhere. There was no reference to any big top films with Lylah, but it does put the characters in place in a setting that possibly reminded someone at MGM of Fellini: the same mistake would be visited upon Robert Altman at the same studio when he made BREWSTER MCCLOUD two years later.

This film seems more antique than many others from the same time period. THE GRADUATE, BONNIE AND CLYDE, YOU'RE A BIG BOY NOW and EASY RIDER feel so much looser, more organic, more like real life caught on film. This feels very much studio bound, and watching it you appreciate the scenes under the opening titles mentioned in the second paragraph for their naturalness.

Case in point: an important scene takes place at the Brown Derby restaurant. The place is packed. During the dialog scenes there's no background noise at all: no conversations, no sound of people moving, no clink of silverware and plate. No ambient noise at all. It's as if the characters had entered a soundproof recording studio and closed the door.

This film takes Robert Aldridge into a dimension he'd never touched on before. He'd made dramas like AUTUMN LEAVES and THE BIG KNIFE, action films like KISS ME DEADLY, TEN SECONDS TO HELL, THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX, and THE DIRTY DOZEN. THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE just doesn't fit in his filmography. Like Mark Robson's VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, this seems to totter toward Camp.

Aldridge is one of the great directors of time, so this is definitely worth watching. And it's certainly not unwatchable: in fact, it's like watching a school bus go over a cliff- it's hard to tear your eyes away. You just can't help wondering if this was what Aldridge really intended it to be.

Another piece of yesterday from Robert Aldrich, filthied-up through his askew, slightly campy/slightly serious vision. We never know where we sit with an Aldrich movie; he enjoys setting up a comfortable scenario before wickedly pulling the rug out from under his audience. He also exposes the weaknesses of Kim Novak as an actress, rather cruelly allowing the puckered blonde to look silly (at her expense) and without ever giving her a fair shot at a meaty scene. The opening moments are richly evocative, but they don't last long: Kim (in a mousy brown wig) hangs out in a dingy apartment in Hollywood, surrounded by movie magazines and celebrity biographies. Turns out she resembles a long-deceased movie queen named Lylah Clare and is quickly tapped to star in a picture of the actress' doomed life--to be directed by Lylah's widower husband! Bits of satire, supernatural elements, trendy lesbianism and symbolism muddy up this potboiler, which is almost always overwrought but never boring. Peter Finch and Coral Browne are worth watching, and Novak's mere presence is tantalizing (even if her acting is not). Frank De Vol's background score is lush, and the finale is interesting if a tiny bit inscrutable. It is Aldrich's stamp as a filmmaker to go over-the-top; here, he goes over-the-edge as well. **1/2 from ****

Kim Novak was a real Movie Star with hits such as "Picnic" "Pal Joey" "Bell Book and Candle" "Man With The Golden Arm" " Middle Of The Night", "Strangers When We Meet" and Alfred Hitchcok's masterpiece "Vertigo". After leaving Columbia Kim was offered and passed on "Breakfast At Tiffany's", "Days Of Wine and Roses", "The Hustler" and one that was created especially for her "The Sandpiper" Kim Novak made a few films in a row: "Boys Night Out" at MGM with James Garner, Billy Wilder's "Kiss Me Stupid" with Dean Martin at UA, the very fine remake of "Of Human Bondage" at MGM and Terence Young's frisky "Moll Flanders" at Paramount and was filming "Day of the Arrow" with David Niven for MGM and Filmways and fell of a horse, was injured, and had to leave that picture. Kim Novak then off the screen for 3 years in the mid-60'searching for a great return project thought she found one in a major MGM production as star and title character in "The Legend of Lylah Clare" directed by Robert Aldrich who had just had a sensational hit in MGM's "The Dirty Dozen". The combination of Robert Adrich, the gloss of an MGM super production, and the box office bonanza known as Kim Novak and a superb cast should have produced a major hit movie which sadly was a major failure.

Kim Novak headlines a great cast of two Oscar winners Peter Finch and Ernest Borgnine and they are given great support by Coral Browne, George Kennedy, Valentina Cortese, etc. The first part of the movie is fine, very fine. "The Legend of Lylah Clare" falls apart at the end and believe Robert Aldrich dubbed Kim Novak in some of the latter scenes-against her knowledge- (how could this happen to a major star?) and the film ends weirdly with a dog commercial to this day mystifies me.

Kim Novak astoundingly beautiful and as one reviewer noted 'was as close to perfection in the looks department' and gowned by a great costumer Renie Conley gave it her all and is very fine in this film. Robert Aldrich who knew the Hollywood scene and had a great hit at WB in"Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" fails here. (Aldrich would go on to make a worse movie than this if possible in "The Choirboys" which one sees wide eyed in astonishment on what Aldrich puts on the screen!)

"Legend of Lylah Clare" was supposed to be a great return project for Kim Novak and ended up being Kim Novak's finale as a superstar of the first rank.

Well yes, it's compelling viewing in spite of, everything. So overwrought it's jarring and at the center of it all, Kim Novak. The swan of Picnic. James Stewart's obsession in Vertigo. She appears in The Legend Of Lylah Clare, but she's not really in it. Distant, cold, awkward. Pale, almost white lipstick. She has a death scene for goodness sake! It reminded me of that death that Goldie Hawn plays again and again in "Death Becomes Her", she watches it on TV as her arch rival, Meryl Streep, brilliantly plays an actress without talent - dies again and again strangled by Michael Caine. Meryl's Madeline Ashton even licks her lips before her death - Well, Kim Novak's Elsa Campbell/Lylah Clare doesn't lick her lips but almost.Peter Finch is the leading man. Peter Finch! Howard Beale in "Network" His dialogue here is not by Paddy Chayefsky, no, not by a long shot. Hysterically funny I must admit, specially because of the seriousness of the delivery. Then, surprise surprise a few genuine delights, Coral Browne plays a columnist with a wooden leg, Rosella Falk, a talkative lesbian and the glorious Valentina Cortese plays a costume designer. As I'm writing about it I feel an urge to see it again to make sure I didn't imagine the whole thing.

THE LEGEND OF LYLAH CLARE looks initially like some sort of camp classic. Don't expect a companion piece to VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, however. Kim Novak plays a mousy aspiring actress picked to portray Lylah Clare, a Marlene Dietrich/Greta Garbo-type screen goddess from Hollywood's golden era who died tragically 30 years before, in a screen version of her life. Under the tutelage of Peter Finch, Lylah's director and husband, Novak is transformed physically and psychologically into the screen star. Along the way, we're treated to three different versions of Lylah's death(kitschy flashbacks in watery black and white framed with lurid red borders, with Novak's close-up in the corner of the screen), a great bitch-out scene between Novak as Lylah and a crippled gossip-columnist hag based on Louella Parsons, a lesbian drama coach, and Novak spouting dubbed, throaty, German-accented dialogue. The make-up job on Novak to make her look like Lylah really doesn't reflect 1930s movie glamour; with her teased and bleached bob, frosted pink lips, and inch-thick eyeliner, she looks more like Dusty Springfield than Jean Harlow. Despite all this, the film isn't some out-of-control camp fest. Really. No scenery chomping, bad dubbed singing sequences, emotional breakdowns, down-and-dirty catfights, or the like. The only fault with a performance might be with Novak during her fits when she impersonates Lylah, throwing her head back to laugh maniacally in that throaty, faux-Garbo accent. Still, its the only real fault in an otherwise competent film. Aldrich is hardly subtle with his digs at the Hollywood system and corruption, but they come out during the course of his characters' conversations and aren't sensationalized. Too many good performances and sympathetic characters to keep it from being an all-out guilty pleasure, but still engaging