Athena

This film is a delight. It's about a culture clash in the LA of the mid-fifties, between Athena (Jane Powell), a numerologist from a large, eccentric family who own and operate a health-food store and live in a kind of New Age Olympus on top of one of the Hollywood hills, and Adam (Edmund Purdom), a conservative lawyer whose family hails from Massachusetts and who likes steaks, cigarettes, and martinis. He also happens to be running for Congress, which makes his relationship with Athena and her unusual family problematic.

This 60+ year old film humorously but respectfully presents the Southern-California health culture of the mid-1950's, that was still considered by many to be way-out and crazy - including vegetarianism, strenuous exercise, bikes vs. Cars, and body building.

The songs by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine are fantastic, including the lovely "Love Can Change the Stars", with its wonderful, unusual rhymes, and "I Never Felt Better," an energetic number headlined by Debbie Reynolds and Powell, and choreographed (as is the whole film) by Valerie Bettis.

Another great tune is Vocalize, first sung by Jane as she mulches some peach trees, and reprised several times.

The bodybuilders (Steve Reeves, Richard DuBois, et al) mostly come off as jerks, which I guess was necessary to the plot, so that the "regular" guys can get the best of them, but it's a bit unfair. By the end of the film there's harmony between all parties - not really adequately explained, but hey, it's not War And Peace, it's just an MGM musical, and a fun one.

Edmund Purdom is handsome, quietly charming, and appropriately stiff as the lawyer who loves Athena, but when he's supposed to be loosening up, well, he's still maybe a bit stiff. Vic Damone, in the second lead, plays a TV crooner who woos Debbie and has a couple of numbers to showcase his superb skills, including a reworking of "The Boy (Girl) Next Door" from Meet Me In St. Louis, and "Venezia," which has nothing to do with the plot (it's sung in a nightclub act) but is another terrific song by Martin-Blaine. The lovely and very talented Jane also gets to sing the obligatory classical piece (from Donizetti's "Daughter Of The Regiment") and really sells it. All in all, the musical interludes are legit, and make the picture one of the more truly enjoyable MGM musical shows.

The supporting actors in the film are great, especially Louis Calhern as the 78 year old grandfather who can still do gymnastics (Calhern was actually in his late 50's); Evelyn Varden ("I love you, let us be friends") as Grandma, who communes with a spirit called Narda; Ray Collins, Carl Benton Reid, and Howard Wendell as the three older law partners urging Purdom to maintain his dignity; the wonderful Kathleen Freeman as Purdom's stuffy secretary (who starts out eating chocolates and winds up munching on a raw carrot); and the subtly bitchy Linda Christian, who is so good as Athena's blue blood adversary you somehow can't quite hate her as much as you should. Also in the cast are the lovely actress-singer Virginia Gibson, as well as talented Nancy Kilgas, both of whom were also in "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers" (1954) with Jane. Also delightful is Henry Nakamura (you may remember him from "Westward The Women", or "Go For Broke") as Purdom's houseboy, who informs his boss that Powell speaks Japanese with a Spanish accent.

The settings are imaginative and expertly realized, especially the modernistic hilltop home of the Mulvains, and the vocal, orchestral and choral arrangements are fantastic.

There is just something fresh and likable about the movie, its setting, characters, tunes, and dances. Sadly, the era of the MGM musicals was on the wane when this one was made. Jane Powell's film career didn't survive her departure from the studio, though Debbie Reynolds became an even bigger star over then next ten years.

On a visit some weeks ago to my local Hollywood Video store, I noticed this title available among the VHS tapes in the Musicals section. Since I knew it had not been produced in CinemaScope (and therefore wouldn't suffer from the dread "formatting") and being a Jane Powell fan from 'way back, I rented it. It is certainly an odd concoction for a very conservative major studio of the mid-Fifties era; studio bound; directed by the pedestrian Richard Thorpe; packed with a cast selected to appeal, presumably, to the the younger members of its potential audience; and not as overflowing with musical numbers as I had hoped.

Jane is as pretty as ever, in overlit but warmly rich Eastmancolor, chirrupping in her matchless colortura; Debbie Reynolds lends her usual lively support; Vic Damone, despite his eminently listenable baritone, once again demonstrates why he never became a top boxoffice draw; and Edmund Purdom is perfectly cast as an unlikely stuffed-shirt suitor to Jane's way-out-there Athena. One can only imagine the chasm of misunderstandings that would bedevil their future marital bliss. With the elegant Louis Calhern as an unlikely patriarch, health and fitness obsessed, and the lovable Evelyn Varden as his woozy mate, convinced that astrology is the key to happiness. Add a passel of pre-steroid Muscle Beach denizens, including the handsome Steve Reeves and Ed Fury, before their emigration to Italy to appear in all those Hercules epics, and you've got a brew that's not really indigestible but doesn't really coalesce as its makers may have hoped.

A film starring Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds and featuring songs by those behind the wonderful songs for 'Meet Me in St Louis' Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine promises much. They certainly do not disappoint, though 'Athena' could have been better than it turned out to be.

It is let down by a story that is paper-thin, flimsy is being generous, sometimes contrived and routine in direction in the non-singing and dancing scenes. The script is even sketchier (if shining in the scenes with the grandparents), with little logic and even less attention to characterisation which is all nice and pleasant (with nobody being characters that you hate) but not much else. And as beautifully as Vic Damone sings (and goodness isn't it a wondrous sound he makes), it is not matched by his dull presence and wooden acting.

However, Jane Powell is cute as a button and effortlessly charming as well as being on top-form vocally (especially in "Chacun Le Sait" from Donizetti's 'La Fille Du Regiment'). She is matched and partnered wonderfully by the energetic and spirited Debbie Reynolds, who also shows a knack for beautiful singing. Edmund Perdum brings a delicious dry wit to his character, and while the stuffy, pompous and stiff kind of character can easily be an annoyance when poorly executed Perdum does bring enough charm to stop him from being insufferable.

Louis Calhern is an absolute joy in his supporting role and it is a shame that he didn't have more scenes. Steve "Mr Universe" Reeves is imposing and commanding, with the body-building scene one of the film's highlights. Evelyn Varden is delightfully eccentric without overdoing it, while Virginia Gibson also has fun with her role.

Production values in 'Athena' are above average, with luminous photography and very attractive costumes. The sets are less than lavish but have enough imagination and colour to stop them from looking ugly. The songs, while not classics like the best of the composers' songs for 'Meet Me in St Louis', are better than given credit for. The melodies are easy to remember and very beautiful, the marvellous orchestration helps it, and there is some very clever and sophisticated lyric writing.

Standouts are "Love Can Change the Stars", "I Never Felt Better" and the role-reversal version of "The Boy Next Door" (here called "The Girl Next Door"). "Vocalise"/"Harmonise"/"Imagine" are also lovely. "Venezia" is touchingly wistful but holds the least relevance to the story. The dancing is full of dazzling energy and the choreography always avoids being overblown or routinely static.

On the whole, unexceptional story and script wise, but when it comes to all but one of the performances, the songs, the choreography, the singing and the dancing 'Athena' is also irresistible. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Unlike MGM's expensive, classic musicals of the 1950s, the modest, light-hearted but equally delicious "Athena" has been all-but-forgotten. A shame, because this lilting, lively melodious lark is not only a wryly amusing satire on an eccentric family of health-food nutritionists/numerologists, but, most importantly, a dazzling showcase for some of the most tuneful musical numbers to grace any film of its era. The score, by Ralph Martin and Hugh Blane (of "Meet Me in St. Louis" fame), offers such treats as Jane Powell singing the poignant, haunting ballad "Love Can Change the Stars" (which should have become a popular hit); Powell, Debbie Reynolds and their 5 sisters performing a breathtakingly energetic, knockout song-and-dance production number "I Never Felt Better"; and Ms. Powell (never more bewitchingly alluring) setting off vocal fireworks with her superb rendition of Donizetti's "Chacun Le Sait" from the operetta "Daughter of the Regiment." The plot, wherein Powell & Ms. Reynolds defie their nutritionist fanatic grandfather's (a delightful Louis Calhern) dictums by falling in love with, respectively, Edmund Purdom and Vic Damone (two carnivores with the wrong "signs") is decades ahead of its time in its wise, gentle and good-humored satire of life-styles and fads (culminating in a body-builder contest where one of Calhern's proteges is Steve Reeves, who would a mere 4 years later attain international screen stardom as "Hercules"). Amusing as it is, the plot rightfully takes second-place to the wondrous cast of MGM's most gifted young musical talents of the day--in their full vocal and dancing glory captured in glistening pasteled Technicolor. (Sadly, they were all soon to be given their walking papers when Television became the new national rage, and the first of the terrified studio's contract players to be dismissed were the stars of its taken-for-granted musicals. Indeed, Powell, Reynolds and Damone would co-star in only one more MGM songfest, "Hit the Deck"--as warm, charming, and tuneful as "Athena"--as well as a boxoffice disappointment.) Meanwhile, tune in "Athena" the next time TCM shows it--and don't be surprised if, weeks later, you find yourself humming, whistling or singing Ms. Powell's glorious delivery of what is perhaps this delectable movie's most rousing, catchy tune--the zesty, jubilant "Vocalize"!

ATHENA is a strange movie in many ways, some of which still resonate today. As a satire of a certain kind of Southern California lifestyle it was ahead of its time. Astrology, numerology, exercise, body-building, vegetarianism, non-smoking, environmental allergies, animal rights, contemporary art and architecture are all parodied or touched on here, and all became joke punchlines in the '50s and '60s -- until these 'isms' became part of mainstream culture. Here for the first time in movies we see familiar aspects of American life as we take it for granted in 2004.

On a completely different front, it was the lack of tuneful, memorable original scores that began to kill the movie musical in the 1950s and the exceptions were few: ROYAL WEDDING, CALAMITY JANE, GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS, GIGI, then much later, THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE. Can you think of others? Those that were as good or better were either revues of old song catalogs (SINGING IN THE RAIN, THE BAND WAGON) or else were filmed versions of hit Broadway shows. On the other hand I LOVE MELVIN, HIT THE DECK, LUCKY ME, TWO TICKETS TO Broadway, Texas CARNIVAL, GIVE A GIRL A BREAK, SMALL TOWN GIRL, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, THE GIRL MOST LIKELY, THE GIRL RUSH and others like them presided over the slow death of a great film genre. Blane and Martin's score for ATHENA isn't top notch, but it's good and it deserves to be better known than it is.

Then we have the coded gay sensibility that slumbers in every film musical but occasionally awakens in '50s Hollywood in the 'Is There Anyone Here For Love?' number in GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, in the 'Put 'Em Back' number from L'IL ABNER and throughout ATHENA, which even has an appearance by physique god and gay icon Steve Reeves, along with a gaggle of other adorable, glossy-haired muscle studs who were almost certainly gay to a man (for the right price, anyway). Somehow, ATHENA weaves these various skeins in a way that is simultaneously entertaining and mind-blowing, awful yet kinda terrific. All this and Jane Powell and Debbie Reynolds in the same picture.

Which turns out to be revealing. Jane Powell was always pretty, peppy and efficient, and I've always preferred her operetta-style singing voice to those of Jeanette MacDonald, Deanna Durbin or Kathryn Grayson. And yet more than some others, this role reveals a certain detachment, a lack of affect. Having now watched six or eight Powell films over a short period (via the Universite de TCM), it gradually dawned on me that for all her niceness and professionalism she never really seems to connect to her material, her surroundings or her co-stars. Did she ever make you believe she was Walter Pigeon's daughter? George Brent's? Fred Astaire's sister? Or that she was in love with Peter Lawford, Cliff Robertson or (in this picture) Edmund Purdom? It's as if she's starring in a film in her own head where the other actors are her creations. Compare her to Debbie Reynolds here, whose talent and personality seem so much more engaged and energetic -- this may be a construction (Debbie was an ambitious and hard-working gal) but she is more immediate, more alive than Powell, and she effortlessly steals the 'I Never Felt Better' number out from under Janie, making it the best in the film.

Need more reasons to check out this curious and curiously enjoyable musical? Well, there is the very handsome Edmund Purdom, whose stiffness is for once used well in a film, and who manages, in his sly, quiet way to be very sexy and charming. Then there is dishy, bitchy Linda Christian, who loses Edmund to Jane, but who is so much more believable as his consort. As she must have seemed in real life: after husband Tyrone Power died, she briefly married Purdom. And then there's the fact reported by Esther Williams in her memoir "Million Dollar Mermaid" that she and Charles Walters originally dreamed up ATHENA as a swimming musical for her. Do seek it out. It's not entirely successful, even on its own terms, but it's worth a look.