Lawrence Eisenberg

By Lawrence Eisenberg

Published By Total Television, May 28, 1988

Making a fast buck was the original--and almost only--motive of pioneer motion picture producers. They had no idea how the lives of moviegoers would ultimately be affected by the themes or the actors, or even how the lives of the actors would be affected.

One phenomenon that began occurring early was the identification of an actor with one role that was so strong that people rarely thought of him in any other context. Boris Karloff was Frankenstein's monster until he died, just as Judy Garland never outgrew Dorothy. In 1939, Don Ameche, who had a decent career as a 20th Century Fox romantic leading man and sometime singer, was cast in the title role of THE STORY OF ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL (Monday, May 30 at 9 p.m. on Channel 31). Co-starring Loretta Young and Henry Fonda, the film was a literate, romantic treatment of the struggles of the man who invented the telephone. Little did the actor know that for the remainder of his career (even beyond his Oscar winning role in COCOON), people would continue to identify him with the telephone. In fact, characters in other movies even joked about it. Sample: "Okay, check back with me on the Ameche."

Sometimes a theme or a line in a movie has become the basis for a joke that screenwriters or lyricists never imagined. Consider 1945's STATE FAIR (Tuesday, May 31 at 8:30 pin on Channel 32), featuring the only original movie score ever written by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Starring Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes and Vivian Blaine, the film is about a family's adventures at an Iowa State Fair. Crain got the enviable assignment of singing the Oscar winning "It Might As Well Be Spring," a beautiful ballad about recognizing the first signs of love. Looking up at the sky with one of the all-time great ingenue faces, she sang the opening lines, "I'm as restless as a willow in a windstorm/I'm as jumpy as a puppet on a string..." The song inspired a generation of lovers. It also inspired a parody. At the time of the film's release, the Borscht Belt was the leading vacation spot for Jewish people from New York, and some jokester concocted the following lyric to the same tune: "I'm as jumpy as a gentile in the Catskills.. "

Movies are even capable of inspiring historical events: The story of King Edward VIII, who abdicated the British throne for Wallis Simpson, has been the basis for three TV films, each successively worse, the most recent having starred the polyester twins, Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour. Still, people are endlessly fascinated by the courage and originality of a monarch giving up a throne for romance, and it's generally regarded as the love story of the century.

Well, King Edward (David, to those of us who were his intimates) may not have been so original after all.

He probably got the idea from the 1933 film QUEEN CHRISTINA (Saturday, May 28 at 12 pm on Channel 13) in which Greta Garbo, as a 17th century Queen of Sweden, gives up her throne for the man she loves (John Gilbert). Considering how Wallis was built, maybe Edward was doing the same thing. Speaking of which, Robin Williams and Dudley Moore recently appeared together on the "Oprah Winfrey Show." Discussing the differences between American and British cultures, Williams said to Moore, "You have one queen, we have many."

P.S. Try to catch REVEILLE WITH BEVERLY (Tuesday, May 31 at 11 am on Channel 35), the story of a spunky World War II disc jockey (Ann Miller), who organizes a show for servicemen, featuring such performers as Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. The theme had no lasting effect on the lives of moviegoers, but, for historical value, it's worth seeing Ann Miller before her hair got its own career.
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