Fridays in June | 30 Movies
Throughout the month of June, TCM is headed to camp, but there is no need to pack up your sleeping bag and canteen. Every Friday night this month, join TCM for a block of delightful films that are outrageous and over the top, with elements and characters that are flamboyant and fabulous.
The fun and the frolicking begin on June 2nd with a night filled with Early Tongue in Cheek Humor.
Based on the novel by Edward Everett Tanner III (under his pseudonym of Patrick Dennis) and following a successful adaptation into a stage play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee which ran on Broadway, 1958’s Auntie Mame focuses on an orphaned boy sent to live with his eccentric aunt Mame Dennis (Rosalind Russell), a bon vivant who makes it her mission to enjoy everything that the world has to offer and passes on that philosophy to her nephew, Patrick. Against the protests of many as to how her unusual and unorthodox lifestyle influences and effects Patrick, the arrival of the Great Depression and her marriage to the wealthy Beauregard Burnside (Forrest Tucker), Mame continues to go through each day with as much gusto as possible, with her personal motto, “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death” serving as both a motivator and rationale to carry on. Co-starring Coral Browne as sidekick Vera Charles, Roger Smith as the older version of Patrick and Peggy Cass as Mame’s secretary Agnes Gooch, the film would earn Russell and Cass Oscar nominations in their respective acting categories. Following another adaptation into a Broadway musical starring Angela Lansbury and Bea Arthur, a film version of said musical, 1974’s Mame (starring Lucille Ball and Bea Arthur, reprising her role as Vera) was released to less success.
Starring the undisputed queen of the saucy double entendres, in She Done Him Wrong (1933), Mae West does what she did best in all her films: postured like a peacock, fired off lines that showed her fiery and feisty personality and looked glamorous throughout. As Lady Lou, not only is West covered in diamonds, but gets them through her connections to some not-so-savory characters and illegal practices that go down at the saloon she works in as an entertainer. Singing some sassy numbers throughout and double-dealing just as much as her male counterparts, she’s no ingenue, and she also has her sights on plenty of gentlemen, including a younger Cary Grant as a Federal agent running surveillance on the saloon. Directed by Lowell Sherman, with a screenplay by John Bright and Harvey F. Thew and based on West’s play Diamond Lil , as she often did throughout her career, West continued to push the envelope against the confines of the Hays Code with the material, her unapologetic boldness and exciting performances.
Mondo Melodramas are on the menu June 9th, and the murderous child trope would get its start (and its name) thanks to the massive misdeeds of little Rhoda Penmark (Patty McCormack) in The Bad Seed (1956). Based on the novel by William March and adapted into a play by Maxwell Anderson, Rhoda may look and act the part of an angelic girl with long blonde braids, a pinafore dress and impeccable charm and manners, but if someone stands in the way of her getting what she wants or chastises her for her naughty behavior, not only will she throw an epic tantrum, but will not hesitate to kill.
Following the death of a schoolmate who won an award Rhoda coveted, her mother, Christine (Nancy Kelly), ends up in a tug of war between her own mind and heart as she starts to wonder if her beloved child could be capable of something so horrific. With the inkling that Rhoda is following in the footsteps of her own serial killer biological mother, not only is she genuinely afraid of her own daughter, but must decide if and how she’s going to stop her. While the ending of the novel and play shows how Christine’s mental decline takes a desperate, drastic turn, allowing Rhoda to continue to act on her psychopathic and homicidal tendencies, the enforcement of the Hays Code’s tenet which does not permit perpetrators getting away with their crimes guaranteed a graphic and satisfying ending to Rhoda’s reign of terror. Kelly would receive a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, and both McCormack and Eileen Heckart (who portrayed the grieving mother of the classmate Rhoda murders) would both be nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
In 1967’s Valley of the Dolls, the adaptation of the soapy 1966 Jacqueline Susann novel of the same name, three friends (Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Sharon Tate) have to navigate the cutthroat world of entertainment while loving and losing romantic partners and, for some, battling growing addictions to prescription drugs (the aforementioned “dolls” being the euphemism for said pills).
Duke portrayed Neely O’Hara, the teenaged vaudevillian-turned-massive movie star whose fame greatly inflated her ego, but would be squashed due to her volatile behavior triggered by alcohol and drug abuse; Parkins as Anne Welles, who leaves her pedestrian New England town to assert her independence and achieve career success, but keeps running back to a selfish man who can’t and won’t fulfill her emotional needs; Tate as Jennifer North, an actress who wants to be known for more than her looks (the character was said to have been modeled on Marilyn Monroe to some degree) and craves genuine love and a family. Between the big hair, ramped-up performances and casting issues (Judy Garland was originally attached to the project, but was fired and replaced by Susan Hayward), while Susann herself was said to have disliked the picture, according to IMDB, it did very well at the box office. While the film did allow Patty Duke to transition from the juvenile parts many were accustomed to seeing in her in to more mature ones, sadly, this would also be the role that would immortalize Sharon Tate, as it was one of her final ones before her tragic and much-publicized murder in Los Angeles two years later.
June 16th features some Over the Top Productions, and for those of you who experienced the outlandish era that was the late 1980s, get ready for a film that positively embodied every piece of pop culture from that time.
In Earth Girls Are Easy (1988), we get a story that’s part fish out of water, part romantic comedy, with splashes of flashy music videos and musicals and a dash of science fiction. Starring Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, Charles Rocket, Julie Brown and Michael McKean, this mishmash of genres was peppered with Day-Glo outfits and new wave elements that came to be staples of MTV, which is fitting since the film was released seven years after the channel’s launch.
When manicurist Valerie (Davis) finds herself in a now-floundering engagement to an adulterous doctor (Rocket), her world is rocked further when three aliens crash their spaceship into her pool. While attempting to move on from the shock of her fiancé’s cheating, she now must stash the extraterrestrials (who have been fascinated by Earth’s women) until the spaceship is operational. True to form, this also employs a Cinderella-type makeover subplot, with the trio from Jhazalla (Goldblum, Wayans and Carrey) getting new looks that allow them to acclimate and assimilate into their temporary surroundings. Learning everything about Earth life through television, they are ready to paint the town red and find love. Will Valerie do the same?
Directed by Julien Temple and written by Brown, Terrence McNally and Charlie Coffey, Brown also contributed to the soundtrack, which included the satirical and catchy songs “Cause I’m a Blond” and “I Like ’em Big and Stupid.” With so much of the film tailor made for the MTV demographic, it’s no wonder that Brown had previously graced the network as a musical artist, but would star in her own show, Just Say Julie, which ran from 1989 to 1992. In addition, famed musician and producer Nile Rodgers would score the film and and produce several songs for the soundtrack. While practically everyone in the cast has had wildly successful careers, this would be one of our first glimpses of the acting abilities of Jim Carrey and Damon Wayans, as both would star in the sketch comedy show In Living Color a couple of years later.
Bigger Than Life Performances are on the horizon on June 23rd, and one would not expect a documentary whose subjects are the extended family of a former First Lady to fit this profile.
Directed by David and Albert Maysles, 1975 ‘s Grey Gardens follows mother and daughter Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and Edith Bouvier Beale (known as Big and Little Edie, respectively), two former socialites living in poverty and squalor in their dilapidated home in the tony Hamptons area of Long Island, New York.
Surrounded by filth and rogue animals, not only was the condition of the home quite a shock to the viewer, but so were the very identities of the women. As the paternal aunt and cousin of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, while one could certainly hear the similarities to their relative in the Beales’ speech patterns and cadence, the differences in their lives were obvious. At times equal parts humorous and saddening, the display of the pair’s reclusiveness and eccentricities, including Little Edie’s wild outfits and bouts of dancing, have often been attributed, in part, to a mental decline and life’s difficulties. Often classified as one of the most riveting documentaries to date, Grey Gardens would inspire a 2009 television movie remake, earning leads Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore nominations (and a win for Lange) for Primetime Emmy awards.
In addition, you won’t want to miss a night of Post Modern Camp on June 20th, which includes a mix of 1970s and 1980s campy classics, including La Cage aux Folles (1978), Victor/Victoria (1982), Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975) and the TCM premiere of John Waters’ raunchy black comedy Pink Flamingos (1972).
These films spare no expense when it comes to the style and attitude that camp is known for, nor do they have any qualms about how hammy some of the performances can get. Those theatrics are what keeps us coming back again and again.
