TV… Robert Montgomery Presents (1956), Sunset Boulevard, Se 8 Ep 13

#1950s #AllPosts

 

Where am I going and what will I see?

 

Returning to Sunset Boulevard and finding a TV episode remake, but is it streets ahead of one of Oscar’s Best Screenplays?

 

Joe and Norma

Joe and Max

Mary Astor em Crepúsculo dos Deuses (Sunset Boulevard, 1956) – TV, MemoriaCinematografica and photos © nbc

 

In the history of the Academy Awards, only 15 films have had four acting talents nominated for the Academy Awards in all four acting categories. The revered black comedy satire, Sunset Boulevard (1950) won Oscar nominations in these categories with Gloria Swanson as Best Actress, William Holden as Best Actor, Nancy Olson as Best Supporting Actress and Erich von Stroheim as Best Supporting Actor.

This streak was seen in this noir, satire and black comedy which predated others with four acting Oscar nods such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Network (1976). In my eyes, the acting accolades alone make these films untouchable. The films were so perfectly scripted and characters created on screen, and I couldn’t see them recast or created on screen in any other way.

Sunset Boulevard was nominated for Best Picture and had an additional 6 nominations for the off-screen talents. The film won three Oscars including those for the screenplay and musical score. Before seeing there was a remake, I’ll admit part of me hoped I wouldn’t find one, with this movie cemented as just perfect in my mind. So, it was with a fair amount of trepidation that I watched the TV episode remake.

This self contained episode from Se 8 Ep 13, 1956, shares the same title, Sunset Boulevard and was part of the TV series Robert Montgomery Presents (1950-57). This series was presented by the actor, Robert Montgomery who introduced – and sometimes starred in – these TV presentations. The series was nominated three times at the Emmy Awards, in three separate years and won once.

The episodes homaged screenplays and written plays in episodes of less than an hour’s running time. These stand alone episodes starred some prestigious and up-and-coming Hollywood names which included James Dean, Lee Remick, Burgess Meredith, Angela Lansbury and Charlton Heston. Episodes included The Big Sleep, A Star is Born and The Last Tycoon.

The screenplay of Sunset Boulevard has one of the greatest tragedies brought to the big screen (and here the small screen). The film plot is reflected in the astute narration from the protagonist, Joe Gillis and the 1hr and 50 minutes of this film collates motifs including props, cameos, ambience and lighting contrasts and these add much to the storytelling in the screenplay.

Many of these motifs are not portrayed as effectively – possibly due to the budget and time restraints – in this 50 minute TV version of this movie screenplay. Because of the extra time and money, the film has the time to strengthen the presence of these differences between the past and present, or to put it another way delusion and reality.

The episode featuring Sunset Boulevard was recreated for the small screen, with a script from writer Doria Folliott. The TV episode begins with a short opening monologue from the series host instead which although essential in this series format, detracts from the story immediately. This was compared with the film’s introductory scenes, and I was intrigued immediately by the nuanced introductory narration of the protagonist, Joe Gillis opening this screenplay. The scene set in the film has police cars and press speeding down Sunset Boulevard heading towards the crime scene of his murder, and this scene is omitted in the TV version.

We also travel to the crime scene by foot along Sunset Boulevard as the credits are shown in the film, and like the TV version cuts to the press and police at the swimming pool where – in both versions – Joe Gillis is face down in the pool after being shot. To its credit, the TV version adds many of the familiar beats of the film version and borrows some of the original script and narration.

However, it condenses scenes and narration and appears to condense pivotal scenes and characters. For example, the dead chimp’s significance is lost and those actor and director cameos are absent. These devices add to the film’s satire and storytelling and reinforce the themes of Norma being sheltered from the past (as the chimp couldn’t communicate this with her), and her still living in the past and that time has moved on without her.

The film and TV cast members also moulded the characters, and these casting choices affected the ambience in unique ways. In the movie, it’s Gloria Swanson’s tour de force performance as Norma Desmond,  and we believe that she is Norma in her performance. It’s significant this performance from her heart as at the time of filming, Swanson was also by coincidence a one time silent movie actress returning to the screen after an absence.

Swanson is strongly emphatic about this character’s plight in her overwrought, expressive and at times suicidal woman. I’d believed in Norma’s world, her misguided narcissism, histrionic and her delusional world in the 1950s movie. Her character is already entrenched in her beliefs that she will return for those fans who write to her, and she will have a role as Salome, with DeMille directing her screenplay.

In contrast, fellow former silent star, Mary Astor’s performance as the TV Norma is at times appropriately angry and she gives a more soft, melancholy, dreamy, placid and stable performance as this “Old Time Movie Star”. Her Norma seems more sad, hopeful and optimistic about her big return compared to the film Norma who assumes and demands her return so you become more sympathetic to this character. This aspect makes her the more tragic figure when her reality shatters and as a result, her full-blown delusion is more sudden.

With an extra hour in the film storytelling, William Holden’s film Joe Gillis has the time and place, to develop as a character compared to Darren McGavin’s TV version. In the film, Joe is seen as a struggling screenwriter who wants to pay his debts, become more cynical and manipulative about his situation and then become Norma’s lover. His character arc also becomes increasingly opportunist with the upper hand in helping her, Then with the use of shadows and the power shift changes these are indicated in the film character’s changes in height within the scenes, he appears more equal in his relationship with Nancy and their screenwriting meetings.

You feel Nroma’s increasing possessiveness and her dependency on Joe in the space and different rooms and situations used to tell this tale, such as when his bedroom is moved to one adjoining hers, where she can monitor his comings. These devices and motifs are less obvious and less developed in the TV version which was filmed on a soundstage in New York. This change however adds a different view in the TV version as these make spaces feel more confined and claustrophobic than in the film, where the use of outdoor scenes reinforces Joe’s character arc.

The casting of Norma and Joe affects the storytelling in both mediums. The leads’ physical differences in height and age differences are less pronounced in the TV version, as Mary Astor’s Norma Desmond and Darren McGavin’s Joe Gillis have 14 years and 7.5 inches between them. Physically and visually, it feels less of a gulf between them when compared with the leads of the film. In the film, the height and age difference between Swanson and Holden is 1ft and 19 years respectively.

This height difference is seen less subtly and intentionally reinforced in their scenes compared to the TV version. It strengthens your view that tragedy lies in waiting for Swanson’s more vulnerable smaller Norma. Their height and age difference suggests that like those silent films, she hopes to return to has a much smaller chance against the bigger forces of the then new Hollywood ideals in the casting of the younger and taller Gillis.

These differences are further developed in the New Year’s Eve scene in both the film and TV versions. This is as the screenwriter, Gillis (the struggling writer of Hollywood) leaves Norma (the star and screenwriter of the past) to go to a party (to be recognised as one of those Hollywood newer and younger talents) with friends his own age. He phones Max to pack his belongings (and decides to escape the past and concentrate on his future).

Norma’s world where she believes she is still remembered and loved, with fans writing to her and that De Mille is keen to work with her on her script is revealed to be delusional and narcissistic. She has an inflated sense of self worth and delusions of grandeur and these are reinforced by her butler, Max Von Mayerling (Von Stroheim) to prevent her from harming herself. Von Mayerling still loves her and sends these letters to her himself, tells her constantly how wonderful she is and hides the truth. In both mediums, it’s clear he is still fearful of her becoming suicidal with the locks removed from rooms and he indicates she gets depressed.

Max Von Mayerling in the film is a less chilling, and more protective man than in this TV episode. He is ironically played by a one-time director of Gloria Swanson. His character’s hypervigilance is reflected in scenes where you see him face the truths and then hide those harmful discoveries from Norma as he believes these would destroy her delusions. In the TV version, in Walter Kohler’s performance as Max Von Mayerling, he has fewer scenes and at times seems more delusional than Norma. At the end of the episode, he seems more than a well-intentioned former lover, director and husband, as it seems Max hopes for her return to movies with him in the director’s chair.

Props seen throughout the film add volumes to the story and in the film include a larger array of photographs of a younger Gloria Swanson – as Norma Desmond – which adorn every room, and a more glamorous and earlier time is evoked by every piece of furniture and her car. The lack of mirrors helps her avoid seeing her present looks and her reality. These props are seen at a minimum in the TV episode, and therefore it’s believed Astor’s character Norma is less narcissistic in nature.

The TV episode naturally has only a few outside scenes, and this again gives a new representation of Norma who seems more agoraphobic and avoids the anxieties of facing the real world. Norma does not socialise with her (cameo) bridge partners. Both this scene and some outdoor scenes are only seen in the film version.

In all fairness, to conclude this TV version suffers from a lack of budget and time to showcase the words and motifs of the talented writers from the movie. The cast and script make a different take on those characters and we observe a less delusional more hopeful Norma for her big return, a well-intentioned former lover, Max who shares these hopes perhaps in a folie a deux, and a more genial and less cynical protagonist in Joe. One wonders how this script and its execution would have developed had this been a TV Movie instead.

Each of these films I listed earlier, celebrated nominations with all four Oscar nominated acting categories has been – at least one time – destined for a new remake. My internet research results relating to this tell of productions with new possible cast members over the years. On reading more about these four mentioned, I discovered now unmade film productions of those plays Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  to star Michael Caine and Glenn Close and Network to be headlined by George Clooney. These unmade films also included a retelling of 1976’s Bonnie and Clyde with Megan Fox’s name attached as the titular, Bonnie.

When researching for this post on Sunset Boulevard, I had expected to find a colour TV Movie remake in the mid-1980s. This I imagined starring Joan Collins as Norma Desmond and with a younger actor, Stephen Collins – an actor 26 years her junior – in the role of Joe Gillis. However, instead, I learned Joan Collins was offered the lead in this film’s remake in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical of the same name. She spoke about this in an interview with the press HERE…

Andrew Lloyd Webber talked to me once about playing Norma but although I can sing… I couldn’t do it in Sunset. I told Andrew I just couldn’t handle the vocal. I couldn’t do eight performances a week and sing five songs.”

Then with the truth stranger than fiction, Norma Desmond became a musical role for Joan’s on-screen soap opera co-star – and off-screen friend – Diahann Carroll. Had these two true facts been made into a fictional prime-time soap plot flashback, this could have had their on-screen rival characters compete at an audition for this role for a Sunset Boulevard movie, for a later Dynasty.