HarlowMGM

I don't know who first said the famous line "Show business is my life" but that certainly could have been said by Kaye Ballard. From her teenaged years to right before her death at age 93, she lived for the limelight. She was respected, acclaimed, and loved by audiences but still rarely got a "star turn", mostly working in supporting roles. It's kind of ironic for the film to ponder that given even the opening credits of this documentary don't give her first billing, instead listing the all-star interviewees alphabetically before her name comes up as part of the title (and a touch upsetting for Ballard admirers).

Ballard is most famous for the closest thing she came to bona stardom in the 1960's sitcom "The Mothers-in-law" in which she starred with Eve Arden that ran two seasons but she was a well-known supper club star in the 1950's and had major roles in a number of Broadway shows as well as being a familiar tv presence throughout her career, particularly in the 1950's and 1960's. She was better known as a singer for years thanks to her nightclub act and a number of well-received record albums and the documentary has many clips of her stunning vocalizing from various old tv variety shows. It's regrettable there never was a Broadway producer of composer who created a showcase vehicle just for her. And certainly Kaye had the great ideas, recording an album of Fanny Brice songs in the 1950's and later a comedy and music lp based on the Peanuts characters, mainly her as Lucy with Charlie Brown, years later classic Broadway musicals created along those lines as "Funny Girl" and "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown".

She has fond memories of virtually everyone she worked with, even friends she never did such as Marlon Brando and Lenny Bruce, adding at one point "I'm one of the few people who loved Jerry Lewis (who worked with him)." One person she doesn't have good memories of was Phil Silvers who was terrible to her throughout the run of their Broadway show "Top Banana". She also loved all the various talk show hosts but wonders why Johnny Carson virtually never used her on The Tonight Show.

Famous friends such as Carol Channing, Ann-Margret, and Carol Burnett praise her talent and as a person, as does director Hal Prince and Woody Allen, in a rare appearance in such a documentary. There is very little downbeat in this film other than Kaye briefly suggesting her parents were not warm people but she loved them, nevertheless. Others may wonder why she didn't become a bigger star but Kaye, here at the end of her life, has nothing but happy memories, adding "the last fifteen years have been the best of my life". I do recall somewhere years ago though reading an interview with her if she had any regrets or disappointments and she said that she never won any major show business awards or was even nominated. But her career was a triumph, much more so than many who did win such trophies. One regret her admirers surely have is that she passed away several months before this film was released, missing any chance to see first-hand any lovefests this picture would have given her at the screenings. This movie can be seen online and on television via a number of sources.

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950) is, of course, one of the greatest American films of all-time, most film buffs would comfortably place among the top two dozen. The movie starred silent film legend Gloria Swanson and gave her what many consider second only to Scarlett O'Hara as the cinema's most iconic screen heroine, Norma Desmond. It was Swanson's first film in almost a decade and arguably her first major film in twenty years, a "comeback" (sorry, Norma, the word applies) to a level that has almost never happened before or since. Without it, Miss Swanson might be just as obscure with the general public of recent decades as such contemporaries as Norma Talmadge or Corinne Griffith. Swanson received a Best Actress Oscar nomination (arguably, her loss was the most unjust in Oscar history) and made her a household name again in America. She was able to keep her fame up to her death in 1982 thanks to the film's enduring fame, Gloria's multiple television appearances for the next thirty years, and a best-selling autobiography but getting another great film role proved fairly impossible, being in her fifties in an era when no film studio would dream of producing star vehicles for a woman of that age. Dabbling in music in during her "early talkie" career, Swanson came up with the idea of doing a Broadway musical on her screen triumph in the mid 1950's back when Andrew Lloyd Weber was just a schoolboy. A gay couple in Hollywood, struggling songwriter Dickson Hughes and unsuccessful actor Richard Stapley, were trying to get a career going running stage revues and nightclub acts and had a revue they thought Swanson might be interested in. She wasn't - but the fact that "songwriters" were eager to work with her thrilled her and she immediately tried to interest them in working on her dream project.

BOULEVARD! Can't help but make comparisons between what was going on with Gloria and the men to the plot of SUNSET BOULEVARD itself; this has been overdone many times in articles, books, and documentaries when some veteran star befriends some obscure writer or wannabe producer. In this case, it's unquestionable true, down to a bizarre scene when Swanson accidentally kills a baby chick that echos the death of Norma's pet monkey but especially when Gloria develops a romantic interest in Stapley if not as possessive as Norma's to Joe Gillis certainly even more improbable.

The production never gets very far though all continue to work on it even without any legal rights to the project, audaciously to the point of Swanson performing a number from the "upcoming musical" on a television variety series. For all of Swanson's astute vision (Broadway musicals based on films was almost unheard of at that point), there are the big problems in that the songwriters are not that good nor does Swanson have the voice to project while singing on the stage. Beyond an inability to get the rights secured, there's also no major interest from potential investors. And when it's clear Stapley has no romantic interest in her or possibly becoming husband number six, Gloria interest starts to wane as well although it takes some time before she completely gives up since there are no other projects on the horizon.

Classic movie buffs will eat this up with a spoon. There are many tantalizing snippets of rare footage of Swanson (candid and televison clips) that one longs to see more than the brief clips shown. Several film historians are interviewed including Cari Beauchamp and Swanson biographer Stephen Michael Shearer and Hollywood publicist Alan Eichler (whom many may know of thanks to his archive of amazing vintage videos on youtube), as well as brief comments from beloved Robert Osborne. Gloria's granddaughter also provides invaluable insights on her grandmother.

The movie is heavily illustrated with wonderful caricature art by Maurice Vellekoop although I do feel it was a mistake to use some of it for poster art which gives the impression it's a campy story rather than a nonfiction film that's straightforward and often moving.

Richard Stapley almost proves to be as fascinating as Swanson. A British actor who briefly had an MGM contact (though hardly considered "the next Clark Gable" as the film suggests though it may have BS hype that was told to him), the studio dropped him after supporting parts in just two films in the late 1940's. Good-looking but not the stunningly handsome man the commentors suggest (I personally think Dickson was better looking), he trudged through with generally small parts on film and television making no impact. Stapley was gay but played the Hollywood game by marrying a woman though it was pointless given his very minor career. And then he met Dickson Hughes, an aspiring musician and fell in love, becoming a couple.

Not long after the ties with Swanson were cut, their gay romance also fell apart and Stapley, now in his thirties returned to England. His career actually picked up working steady in leads and having filled out a bit, he got better looking as well. But again, stardom alluded him and it pretty collapsed yet again in the early 1970's.

But this story doesn't end there and with the success of the Weber musical, the history of the first attempt becomes known and is reworked by Hughes as a musical on their project much like this film, with Hughes audaciously not informing Stapley of the production and outing him on stage in the process. To add unintended new Sunset Boulevard touch, the elderly Hughes plays himself in the project with a young hunk half his age cast as Stapley! The filmed clips from that performance look like incredibly amateur, cheap production that looks like the worst smalltown little theatre project one could imagine and what we hear of the songs is certainly not promising. This is a fascinating story that true movie fans will love and despite that it's clear only the idea was the only good thing about the project, one ends up admiring not only Swanson but Stapley and Hughes.

I saw a trailer for this online and it appeared that the lead was played by the actress Sarah Baker who played the beleaguered librarian on YOUNG SHELDON so delightfully and so I decided to watch it. In fact it's not her but two-time Oscar-nominated actress Jacki Weaver. Ms. Weaver may have some years on Ms. Baker but like her she does a very good Texas accent. I actually don't recall seeing Ms. Weaver in anything despite a fairly high profile career but then I don't watch that many contemporary movies. This is apparently a rare starring role for her and she is terrific, finding a real human being in a somewhat improbably drawn character. She plays Maybelle Metcalf, a Texas woman somewhere in her sixties who is the choir director for her local Baptist church. Maybelle receives a telephone call from San Francisco informing her that her long-estranged gay son Ricky has died from a drug overdose. She is devastated and flies in for the funeral although her more hardline conservative husband refuses to go. She is very uncomfortable when the services have blue jokes, F bombs, and drag queens and leaves in a few minutes. Still hurting though, she stays in town in hopes to meet Ricky's partner Nathan perhaps to find someone who can share her grief in a more comfortable setting only to find Nathan is quite bitchy toward her in part due to the estrangement but also because he's stressed that the failing gay club he "owns" with Ricky has everything legal in Ricky's name and their not being married means he has no access to his bank accounts or financial records to keep it going. When Maybelline learns Ricky was broke from his records she decides to keep the club going with her own money. Not telling her husband what the money is for or Nathan that it's her money, claiming it was in Nathan's account. This is rather hard to believe someone would give thousands to a stranger who was nasty toward them but perhaps it's partly due to a desire to keep her son's dream and legacy going. She decides to stick around and act as something of a manager, teaching the drag queens to sing in harmony rather than lip-sync to records and fixing up the place in hopes of making it turn around.

This is actually a fairly gentle drama with only occasional touches of humor and might be something that the real Maybelline Metcalfs of the world could relate to, the bluer parts few and far between. The script alas has several holes and improbabilities. It's pretty hard to believe Maybelline could so quickly get into the world of drag entertainment after so long disapproving of her son's involvement. Indeed, we know hardly anything on Ricky and his parents history; the movie says they were estranged for ten years but given the actors playing Ricky and Nathan are over forty that seems a little too recent. Perhaps the roles (and that of Maybelline) were written for younger actors (someone's review thought Weaver too old which is obviously not true to play the mom of someone that age). Ricky and his mom apparently occasionally wrote so why wouldn't they call now and then? Would such a conservative as married Maybelline flirt with a local hotel executive her age (and honestly, would such an executive be interested in a woman his own age?) It's also a little hard to believe Maybelline would be so immediately supportive of the various drag queens when she had issues accepting her own son but one scene that absolutely rings true is when she visits the estranged mother of one of the "girls" at the diner she works at and urges her to accept and reconcile, wishing someone had done this for her.

This movie is set in San Francisco but obviously was not filmed there; Ricky's club looks like something in a run-down strip mall in a low-income area.

The performances are what makes this work particularly Jacki Weaver who is excellent and moving even in the moments the script or director aren't helping much. She is perfect as a Texas woman, soft and gentle but with a tough edge when need be, a little too dominated by her husband but also able to stand up to him. Adrien Grenier's part all but disappears a half hour into the movie which is weird given Maybelline is constantly at the club and he's still running it.

The final musical number is a knockout with Maybelline on stage singing a famous 80's melodramatic pop song with video of Ricky in drag imposed on her as her mind flashes back thirty-plus years as she and her son sang the tune in the day. It's very moving and a show stopper for this modest little film that is ultimately is successful in it's goals.