A few Blog posts ago I wrote a short tribute and catch-up with ’60s beach party gal Salli Sachse. I then embedded a YouTube video tribute she told me about at the end of the piece. I did not create the video. It was done by a filmmaker named Eric Gomez. Sorry Eric for the confusion.
sixties
IRENE TSU, JOHN WAYNE & THE GREEN BERETS
I am a big fan of Vietnam war movies. Apocalypse Now is one of my favorite films of all time and I really like Platoon, The Deer Hunter, and Full Metal Jacket. I was a huge fan of TV’s China Beach and caught Tour of Duty when I could. So I decided to watch John Wayne in The Green Berets (1968) one of the first Vietnam War movies and actually filmed in 1967 during the course of the war that recently aired on TCM. I hadn’t seen it probably since it was broadcast on the ABC-TV 4:30 Movie in the seventies.
After watching those other Vietnam War movies made anywhere from 5 to 15 years after the war ended, I was struck on how simplistic a view this movie took though it did keep me entertained even if the Alabama and Georgia locations where it was filmed no way came close to resembling the real Vietnam. I knew going in Wayne made the movie, with full cooperation of the U.S. Marines, to help boost and give credence to Americas’s presence in Vietnam, so not surprising it played like one of those John Ford westerns. Except here the good guys are the U.S. and South Korean soldiers standing in for the U.S. cavalry and the North Vietnamese were the bad guy Indians. Even the raid on the U.S. outpost with the Vietcong rushing the perimeter with ladders to climb up and over the barbed wire reminded me of all those oaters with the Indians attacking the fort as they are picked off one by one.
As for the cast John Wayne is John Wayne as Col. Kirby, but some of the other actors were just poor. Jim Hutton’s character is so out of place providing unnecessary and unfunny comic relief as a soldier who befriends a little orphan boy (Craig Jue who is touching in the role). Stoic David Janssen is the liberal reporter who ventures to Vietnam to do a story on why America should pull out of the war and tags along with Wayne’s platoon. He is probably the world’s worst journalist as we never see him write or interview anyone nor does he even have a camera. He does pick up a gun in one of the fierce battles and by movie’s end not only has he been swayed to agree with the U.S. intervention there but he has enlisted!
The one actor that impressed me the most was George Takei (Sulu of Star Trek fame). The TV show really never challenged his acting skills and here is gives an intense performance as a South Korean Captain determined to get back to his home in Hanoi once it has been liberated. His was one of the most sincere performances in the movie as was the one given by an actor I heard of but knew nothing about, Jason Evers. Handsome and solidly built ala Rod Taylor, he was the likable Captain of a battalion John Wayne came to replace since he was returning home the next day. His men are truly sorry to see him leave but an attack by the Vietcong changes his fate.
Finally the only woman in the cast was 60s starlet Irene Tsu as Lin. After playing small or decorative roles in beach movies (How to Stuff a Wild Bikini), Elvis movies (Paradise, Hawaiian Style), and spy spoofs (Caprice), The Green Berets was one of her really dramatic film substantive film roles. Lin first slinks into view wearing a tight evening gown at a high class supper club in Saigon. We later learn that she is the sister-in-law of Colonel Cai (Jack Soo) and her father was killed by the Vietcong general near where Col. Kirby’s platoon is encased. Lin has agreed to get the general to notice her and take back to his home where she will keep him “entertained” while the soldiers sneak in and take him prisoner. Things go as planned but Lin has to make love to him and Cai now thinks she has brought shame on the family. Lin now has to trek through the jungle with Kirby and his men with the North Vietnamese in hot pursuit. During the escape Kirby tells Cai that Lin is a hero and now only has her family to go back to. He agrees and tells her there is no shame in what she did.
Speaking about the movie Irene Tsu remarked in my book Fantasy Femmes of Sixties Cinema:
“I was the only female in the cast. Though I had a lot of admiration for John Wayne he didn’t like me. I heard that he described me to a friend as ‘that little hippie chick.’ We would take jeeps from the hotel out to the location where we were filming. I always tried to get out there early so I wouldn’t have to ride with Wayne.
Wayne wasn’t very communicative and didn’t have the patience for a director. I think he knew what he wanted to do in terms of the big picture but he was not very good working with actors. He was from John Ford’s school of using intimidation and absolutely terrified some of us. During one scene, he berated poor Luke Askew for not saying his lines the way Wayne wanted. Instead of taking the guy aside, he humiliated him in front of the cast and crew. Wayne screamed at him, ‘Walk over here! Say your line! Then walk over there!’”
The story left out of the book is how she got labeled by Wayne as “hippie chick.” One day Tsu was running late and got the last jeep out to the location. When she hopped in she saw only John Wayne sitting there reading his newspaper. He ignored her to her relief. During their trek, the jeep hit a bump in the road and Tsu’s pocketbook fell off the seat spilling its contents all over the floor. Wayne reached down to help her pick up her items and picked up a joint. He looked at it, made a disapproving face, handed it to her without a word, and turned back to his paper.
The Green Berets is infamous for its closing scene with John Wayne and little Craig Jue on the beach watching the sun set into the East. For most critics, this was just one more scene that mae the movie odious to them. As one reviewer remarked, “We have dropped so many bombs on Vietnam, what is one more?” The movie was released a few months after the Tet Offensive in January 1968 so its rah-rah optimistic black and white approach made it even worse for a lot of the public though the movie was a box office hit.
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THE WOMEN CONQUER WHILE DAISY CLOVER FLOPS
I am trying to broaden my cinema horizons and watch classic or popular movies that I have never seen before on Turner Classic Movies. I recently just saw for the first time The Women (1939), with its all-female cast, and Inside Daisy Clover (1965).
Of course I heard of The Women’s top-billed actress Norma Shearer who I know was a huge movie star in the 20s, 30s and 40s but I had never seen a single motion picture of hers. I was very impressed with her in The Women. More so since she had on paper the less interesting role of the headstrong prideful wife who lets her husband go after she is set up by her cruel envious cousin to purposely discover that he has been having an affair with a viper who works behind the perfume counter at a department store. Shearer makes her character just as interesting as the more flamboyant women that surround her. The vixen is played by Joan Crawford who is equally good as Shearer. Less so is my fave Rosalind Russell as the malacious cousin who comes off like a fast-talking buffoon more annoying than humorous. No Auntie Mame is she here.
Another first for me was seeing pretty Paulette Goddard. Toward the end of the movie when Shearer hightails it to Reno for a quickie divorce, Goddard is along for the ride and stands out as a married showgirl who turns out to be the woman who stole Russell’s millionaire husband. Among the lesser roles, the best is the blonde actress who played the wisecracking co-worker of Crawford’s. She sees knows what a rotten she-wolf Crawford is and has a glib comment on everything Crawford says on the phone as she tries to entice Shearer’s husband away from a night out with his way to her apartment instead. This film was a surprising delight.
However much I enjoyed The Women, I despised Inside Daisy Clover starring Natalie Wood as a teenage actress in the thirties. It is surprising to me since this was a 60s movie, my cinema decade of choice. 1965 was not a good year for movies about Hollywood with the dueling Harlow bios but at least those movies were lively and fun. If you think Carroll Baker and Carol Lynley were miscast as Jean Harlow you haven’t seen anything like 26 year old Natalie Wood trying to pass herself off as a fifteen year old beach urchin who becomes Hollywood’s newest Judy Garland. That is bad enough, but the producers let her sing without being dubbed! She has one of the most annoying singing voices I ever heard. It is torture hearing and watching her catawail in the few musical numbers. Where oh where is Marni Nixon when you need her?
Wood is not entirely to blame for the movie being a failure in my eyes. The script really lets her down and didn’t give me an emotional connection to this unpleasant girl who becomes a star even though she shows no sign of talent. Finally realizing her Hollywood dream, Daisy is always brooding and unhappy. We know it is because Hollywood is trying to change her, but the screenwriter never gives her a scene to explain herself or to fight back. Even Daisy’s breakdown scene in a recording booth where she is looping dialog over and over is a bust. Perhaps if Wood just went over the top she would have rivaled Patty Duke’s breakdown-in-the-gutter scene in Valley of the Dolls.
Christopher Plummer is no help either playing a stone cold movie mogul who discovers Daisy. But a handsome young Robert Redford as a closeted matinee idol and the always amusing Ruth Gordon as Daisy’s wacky mother almost, but not quite, make up for Natalie Wood’s miscasting. She and this movie are just painful to watch.
Valerie Starrett Responds
A number of weeks ago I did a Blog about actress Valerie Starrett whom I interviewed about the hit biker movie Run, Angel, Run with William Smith. Near the end of the interview we spoke about her time on General Hospital where she originated the popular role of Diana Maynard Taylor in 1969. Starrett left the role in 1977 at the time when Tom Donovan took over as executive producer, brought in new directors and wanted to take the show in a different direction. This included the Diana Taylor character who would go from the show’s popular heroine to a more grasping desperate woman. Starrett left (Brooke Bundy took over as Diana) and her fans were outraged. Shortly after Donovan was replaced by Gloria Monty. With Luke and Laura now the soap’s main focus, Diana was pushed to the backburner and became more grasping than ever trying to keep her adoptive son from the birth mother. To put the character and the audience out of their misery, Diana was found murdered lying in a pool of blood in her kitchen with the name Ann Logan spelled out in blood.
My Blog was picked up by General Hospital web sites and fans still outraged considering what was were posted on my Blog. Below is Valerie’s response to them:
“Hi! It’s Valerie Starrett. I just saw this! The fans mean’t everything to me! and you are all right! I did not like the direction Diana was going and I ‘m happy I got out before it went downhill. You have no Idea how much I enjoyed being Diana and will forever thank you for watching me! As a funny side note, I am still best friends with Rachel Ames, Audrey! We see movies and plays together often!”