JazzWax

'The Young Girls of Rochefort' (1967)

Each year at this time, I screen The Young Girls of Rochefort. Directed by Jacques Demy with music by Michel Legrand and Demy's lyrics, the film was a followup to Demy and Legrand's Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and features choreography by Norman Maen. The film is lush and colorful, sophisticated and cooly optimistic with glorious music—a perfect way to start the new year.

Young Girls takes place in Rochefort, a town along the west coast of France. During the summer of 1966, a caravan of trucks arrives in the town square to set up a fair that will last the weekend. Local talent is included. Much happens over the next two days concerning song, dance and love. The film stars Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac (the actress-model and Deneuve's older sister), George Chakiris (West Side Story), Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin (the sailor), Grover Dalem, Geneviève Thénier and Gene Kelly. [Photo still above, from left, of Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac]

The film has a cult following (I count myself among those intoxicated by the music and spirit). After you watch the film below (and don't click on the following links until you do), you'll find behind-the-scenes documentaries here, here and here.

A few notes. The proprietor of the cafe in the square (and mother of Deneuve and Dorléac ) was played by Danielle Darrieux (above), who had one of the longest careers in French film history, appearing in 110 movies over eight decades.

In The Young Girls of Rochefort, Darrieux's role was the only one in which a principal actor in any of Demy's film-musicals sang his or her own musical parts. Darrieux was a concert singer at the time. All the other actors had professional singers overdub their vocals.

Also, an English language dub of the film was made for the U.S. market, though the essential French charm is lost. Rare clips of the English version are here and here.

And finally, in June 1967, just three months after the film came out, Françoise Dorléac was racing to the Nice airport in France when her rented car hit a signpost, flipped over and burst into flames. She was unable to get out of the car and died at the scene. She was 25.

Here's The Young Girls of Rochefort. The resolution is great, so expand the film to fill your screen. Happy New Year!...

'I Was a Male War Bride' (1949)

Katharine Hepburn was a fast talker and fabulous with comedy scripts that called for rapid-fire banter. So was Bette Davis. On the male side, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant and Fred MacMurray were among the best at ping-pong repartee. All knew their lines cold but also their co-star's. Once on camera, they could turn scenes into saucy exchanges.

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Another actress who was terrific in this department and vastly underrated was Ann Sheridan (above). She started out in Hollywood in the late 1930s in films with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. In 1939, a Warner Bros. promotion announced that Sheridan had been voted by a committee of 25 men as the actress with the most "oomph" in America. She became known colloquially as the "Oomph Girl." She had mastered the art of seamless dialogue by knowing the last word of her co-star's line. This technique gave her lines a realistic freshness, a naturalism that sounded almost improvised rather than memorized. 

For me, many of Cary Grant's films today are weighed down by lumbering scripts or are worn out, largely because they've been viewed so often. However, one of my favorites remains I Was a Male War Bride (1949), co-starring Ann Sheridan. The two of them together were magic, nearly as fast as Grant (above) and Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (1938).

Directed by Howard Hawks (above), War Bride was based on an article that first appeared in the Baltimore Sun by Henri Rochard, the pen name of Roger Charlier, a Belgian resistance fighter who married an American nurse while still abroad after the war.

For the film, the story was reworked. Grant plays Rochard, a French army captain in post-war Germany who needs to travel to Bad Nauheim. Tasked with taking him by motorcycle and sidecar is Sheridan (as Lieutenant Catherine Gates). The problem is they have unpleasant history together. For the rest, you'll have to watch the film.

Sheridan became a major co-star in the 1940s and beyond but never achieved household-name status the way Hepburn and Davis did. In 1966, she began starring in a new TV Western-themed comedy series, Pistols 'n' Petticoats but became ill during the taping. She died of esophageal cancer in 1967. She was just 51.

Here's I Was a Male War Bride (1949), which you can expand to full screen...

'Il bell'Antonio' (1960)

One of Claudia Cardinale's finest and least known films in the U.S. is Il bell'Antonio (Handsome Antonio). Released in 1960, the Italian movie paired Ms. Cardinale with Marcello Mastroianni and centers on a man so overwhelmingly handsome that women of all ages can't resist him. Yet he seems to care little for those he wins over in Catania, Sicily, his home town, and in Rome, where he works, despite their undying love for him.

Antonio Magnano (Mastroianni) is remote, blase and incapable of desire and love. He seems to go through the motions just to preserve his reputation and confirm what he sees in the mirror—his sexual magnetism. One day, while home in Catania, he is handed a photograph of Barbara Puglisi (Ms. Cardinale), whom his parents have urged him to marry.

He is instantly struck by her beauty and realizes she is his visual match. His parents are overjoyed for his happiness and for selfish business reasons. In short order, the two are wed, but you'll have to watch the film to learn their fate.

Directed by Mauro Bolognini and written by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the film is widely considered to be Bolognini's masterpiece. The direction is first rate, capturing the social claustrophobia and scheming of provincial Catania without condemnation or judgment. Mastroianni perfectly underplays his affect on women, treating his handsome looks as a tiresome defect or burdensome liability.

Ms. Cardinale is staggeringly beautiful but plays her character as modest and almost unaware of her visual appeal. The funeral procession scene with Mastroianni and Ms. Cardinale walking behind the hearse carrying her deceased grandfather to the local church still dazzles. Mastroianni and Ms. Cardinale can't take their eyes off each other, and the town notices.

The film bravely takes on a wide range of sensitive topics—the church, government, masculinity, arranged marriages, virility, conformity and the absurd fate of those who assume that happiness relies on looks alone.

The score is by Piero Piccioni (above), and the film won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival.

Here is Il bell'Antonio (1960), one of my favorite films by Ms. Cardinale (along with Girl With a Suitcase, which I screened here last year)...

'Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?' (1966)

The year 1966 marked a turning point in film. Much in the way British pop groups invaded America in 1964, cutting-edge European movies made by risk-taking French, British, Swedish and Italian directors were being distributed in the U.S. Their impact was huge, especially among young American adults looking for diversions more in sync with their experiences and sexual awareness.

Influential European art films of 1966 included Alfie, Blow-Up, The Battle of Algiers, A Man and A Woman, Georgy Girl, The Good The Bad and The Ugly and Masculin Féminin. These films also helped paved the way for the young directors of New Hollywood in the late 1960s and early '70s, a movement that infused American movie-making with brash reality and more youthful themes. [Photo above of director William Klein and model-actress Dorothy McGowen]

One of these influential French films in 1966 was Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? Directed by American-born photographer and documentary filmmaker William Klein, the satirical reality film starred American supermodel Dorothy McGowan (above), who came to epitomize the youthful Swinging London look on the covers of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Glamour and other publications in the 1960s. In a way, the film was an elbow from Klein, who viewed fashion photography as advertising, not fine art.

Also starring were Grayson Hall as Miss Maxwell, a fashion-magazine editor modeled after Diana Vreeland,and Philippe Noiret as the TV reporter and director. Also appearing in the film are Jean Rochefort, Sami Frey and Alice Sapritch. 

By 1966, the cult of the childlike supermodel had evolved and reached a high point. Beginning with the waif-like appeal of actresses Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina in 1954 and continuing with Jean Seberg in Breathless (1960), Mia Farrow in Guns at Batasi (1964) and Jane Birkin in Blow-Up, a wave of fashion designers and models such as Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton and Peggy Moffitt (also in this movie) took on the new look and became superstars.

Polly Maggoo masqueraded as a reality film and not only poked fun at faux drama of the new fashion world but tried to find depth in the models themselves, as if all beauty was automatically art. After the release of McGowan's first and only film, she vanished from public view and neither acted nor modeled again. In 2013, she gave an interview to Harper's Bazaar. She died earlier this year in January in Mamaroneck, N.Y., at age 82.

Additional note: The film's music is by Michel Legrand.

Here's Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?...

'Odds Against Tomorrow' (1959)

Directed by Robert Wise and produced by HarBel, Harry Belafone's production company, Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) starred Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Shelley Winters, Ed Begley, Gloria Grahame and famed dancer Carmen De Lavallade as Kitty. The score is by composer, arranger and Modern Jazz Quartet pianist John Lewis.

The soundtrack orchestra included Lewis (arr,cond); Bernie Glow, Joe Wilder, John Ware and Melvyn Broiles (tp); John Clark and Tom McIntosh (tb); Al Richman, Gunther Schuller, Paul Ingram and Ray Alonge (Fr. hrns); Harvey Phillips (tuba); Robert DiDomenica (fl); Harvey Shapiro and Joseph Tekula (cello); Ruth Berman (harp); Milt Jackson (vib); Bill Evans (p); Jim Hall (g); Percy Heath (b); Connie Kay (d); Richard Horowitz (timpani) and Walter Rosenberger (perc.). [Photo above of John Lewis]

The film noir based on the novel looks at the star-crossed collaboration of former, disgraced cop David Burke (Begley), who enlists the help of Earl Slater (Ryan) a racist, ex-con to rob a bank. Burke also brings in debt-ridden nightclub performer Johnny Ingram (Belafonte). [Photo still above of Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte]

Belafonte chose Abraham Polonsky (above) to write the screenplay. Polonsky was blacklisted by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee at the time, so Polonsky used John O. Killens, a black novelist and friend of Belafonte, as a front to be the credited screenwriter. In 1996, the Writers Guild of America restored Polonsky's film credit under his own name. Lots of great New York street scenes.

Here's Odds Against Tomorrow...

'Woman of the Year' (1942)

This year's two-week JazzWax Film Festival opens with Woman of the Year, a favorite romantic comedy of mine and one of Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy's best. Directed by George Stevens, this was the first of the couple's nine films between 1942 and 1967.

Hepburn plays Tess Harding, a high-brow but tough scoop-getting foreign affairs correspondent whose reputation and access to foreign leaders earns her the title of "Woman of the Year." Tracy plays Sam Craig, a sports columnist. Both write for the same New York newspaper.

Garson Kanin had developed the script for Hepburn, a friend, and she ran it by Joseph L. Mankiewicz at MGM and won him over. Kanin was serving in the Armed Forces by then, so his brother, Michael, and Ring Lardner Jr. finished it. The quick-witted repartee between Hepburn and Tracy in this film would cement their relationship on-screen and off.

An early women's lib film or so it would seem, Woman of the Year includes one of the most fascinating wordless scenes in comedy-film history as Hepburn, clueless in the kitchen, tries her best for more than five silent minutes to fix Tracy breakfast. This ending was imposed on the film by Mayer, producer Mankiewicz and Stevens, with the new ending being written uncredited by John Lee Mahin. According to Ring Lardner Jr., in 2000, the original ending didn't go over well when tested with a live audience, so the MGM boss, the producer and director felt Tess "had to get her comeuppance for being too strong in a man's world, so they wrote a scene where she tried to fix breakfast ... and gets everything wrong." 

Despite the absurd reasoning for the scene's inclusion, it remains a study in Hepburn's exceptional acting ability in both drama and comedy. 

Michael Kanin and Ring Lardner Jr. won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and Katharine Hepburn was nominated for Best Actress. In 1999, the film was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. [Photo above of Michael Kanin]

Here's Woman of the Year, which was released just months after America entered World War II...

Julie London's Holiday Album, 2022

Once again, it's time for Julie London's Christmas album that never was. I started this tradition eight years ago because, for whatever reason, the singer never recorded an album of holiday favorites, just one side of a Liberty 45 in 1957. Why she'd release a single side but not a full-blown LP remains puzzling, to say the least. [Photo above of Julie London and husband, pianist and composer Bobby Troup in the studio for Liberty in 1956]

So in 2014, I assembled all of her seasonal tracks for a faux streaming release of my own. As JazzWax readers know, London is a favorite. She had a cool, sultry singing style that never felt forced. Her sophisticated, hip phrasing was deeply nocturnal and consistently relaxed. And she loved off-beat songs and aced them with a beckoning delivery backed by seemingly effortless vocal power. Her movie star looks have nothing to do with her appeal for me. It's her underappreciated jazz voice and with-it disposition that knocks me out.

Her sole holiday side of a 45—I'd Like You for Christmas (1957)—was written by her husband, Bobby Troup. Did London avoid an album because it was square? Or did her label, Liberty Records, decide to avoid one to preserve her cool image? Or maybe she did record one but it's lost among dozens of other forgotten reels in some vault.

Whatever the reason, I asked myself in 2014, "Why should we be London-less this time of year?" So I crafted a London holiday album by assembling her winter-themed tracks at JazzWax. I playfully named it Julie London Wishes You a Merry Christmas. I see that some have lifted the idea as their own on YouTube, creating a cover that looks as if London had recorded such an album, going so far as to use my title and order of presentation. Makes no difference to me. Imitation is the most delightful form of flattery.

This Christmas weekend, it's time once again to give a listen to my phantom London holiday classic using eight seasonal songs. Happy holidays, to one and all:

Here's I'd Like You for Christmas...

Here's Warm in December...

Here's I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm...

Here's Sleigh Ride in July...

Here's November Twilight...

Here's The Thirteenth Month...

Here's The Party's Over...

And here's London with Pat Boone singing Winter Wonderland on TV's Pat Boone in Hollywood in 1967...

Thom Bell (1943-2022)

Thom Bell, a producer, arranger and songwriter who was one of the architects of the Philly Sound in the late 1960s and early 1970s and had hits with soft soul vocal groups backed by his engaging orchestrations, died on December 22. He was 79.

Thom pioneered a movement that ushered in a new soul style that featured mostly male vocal groups singing lush, romantic songs. The groups he produced in the studio at Philadelphia's Sigma Sound were highly choreographed for stage and TV shows, such as Soul Train. Often dressed in what today can be described as elaborate prom outfits, their shirt collars were wide and lay over ruffled velvet jackets. Groups such as the Delfonics, the Dramatics, the O'Jays, the Stylistics, the Spinners, Blue Magic, Tavares and others sang about the ecstasy of being in love, the beauty of women and the twists and turns of relationships.

Lead vocalists of these groups often sang in higher voice to emphasize vulnerability and pull in both male and female record buyers. The movement was perfectly timed. By the early 1970s, car cassette and 8-track players had become affordable and turned cars into bachelor and bachelorette living rooms on wheels. In performance, the other members of soft-soul groups sang background and danced in a manner that illustrated the lyrics of a song.

Thom was among the first to produce these groups in Philadelphia. He also composed the music and arranged many of the hit songs his groups recorded. With the Stylistics, Thom collaborated with lyricist Linda Creed. Today, the songwriting pair still haven't been given their due. Creed, who was white, died of breast cancer at age 26.   

I miss Thom. We spoke multiple times over the years by phone about his songwriting and the soft-soul revolution. He was key to my "Anatomy of a Song" column on the Spinners' I'll Be Around (go here), which can also be found in my new book, Anatomy of 55 More Songs (here).

Here are 10 songs plus three bonus tracks produced, arranged, conducted and, in some cases, co-written by Thom:

Here's La-La Means I Love You (1968) by the Delfonics, co-written, arranged and produced by Thom Bell...

Here's Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time) (1970) by the Delfonics, co-composed, arranged and produced by Thom Bell. Catch the French horn at the start...

Here's You Are Everything (1971) by the Stylistics, co-written by Thom Bell and Linda Creed, and arranged and produced by Thom...

Here's Betcha by Golly, Wow (1972) by the Stylistics, co-written by Thom Bell and Linda Creed, and arranged and produced by Thom. The lead vocal is by Russell Thompkins Jr....

Here's Break Up to Make Up (1972) by the Stylistics, co-written by Thom Bell, Linda Creed and Kenny Gamble, and arranged and produced by Thom...

Here's I'll Be Around (1972) by the Spinners, co-written, arranged and produced by Thom Bell. Dig drummer Earl Young's early, pure disco beat...

Here's the Spinners' Could It Be I'm Falling in Love (1972), produced, arranged and conducted by Thom Bell...

Here are the Spinners with Dionne Warwick singing Then Came You (1975), arranged and conducted by Thom Bell...

Here's Games People Play (1975) by the Spinners, arranged and conducted by Thom Bell. The Spinners' Bobby Smith sang lead vocal, with Evette Benton of the Sweethearts of Sigma singing the female lead part...

Here one of the Spinners' least-known, outstanding tracks, I'm Tired of Giving, off their Spinners/8 album (1977), arranged and conducted by Thom Bell. Dig Thom's arrangement...

Bonus: Here's Thom's strings-and-horns arrangement for The Back Stabbers (1972), by the O'Jays...

Here's Deniece Williams singing It's Gonna Take a Miracle (1982), arranged and produced by Thom Bell. The No. 1 single was a remake of the Royalettes' hit in 1965...

And here's Thom's arrangement for Elton John of Mama Can't Buy You Love (1979), co-written by Thom Bell...

Drums 'n' Brass: 10 Video Clips

More swinging brass you say? Hey, why not. With the holidays upon us, what better way to usher in the season than with killer drummers driving powerful big bands. Here are 10 video clips of great big band drummers plus one of the finest drummers of the post-war years who also was a crackerjack arranger [photo above of Tiny Kahn]:

Here's Big Sid Catlett, the father of modern jazz drumming, in the late 1930s, with Charlie Shavers (tp), Buster Bailey (cl), Russell Procope (as), Billy Kyle (p), John Kirby (b) and Big Sid on drums...

Here's Gene Krupa in 1945 on Ed Finckel's arrangement of his Leave Us Leap...

Here's 27-year-old Shelly Manne with Stan Kenton in 1947...

Here's drummer Stan Levey with the Stan Kenton Orchestra in Berlin, Germany, in 1953 playing Gerry Mulligan's arrangement of Swing House...

Here's drummer Kenny Clarke playing Bebop in Italy in 1962...

Here's drummer Jake Hanna with Woody Herman in London in 1964...

Here's drummer Mel Lewis taking a solo on Once Around with the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band in 1969...

Here's Buddy Rich and his big band in Copenhagen in 1970, a clip that just went up at YouTube a couple of weeks ago (click on the "watch on YouTube" link in the embed below)...

Here's drummer Sonny Payne with Harry James in 1970...

Here's drummer Louie Bellson with the Tonight Show band in December 1973...

Bonus: Here's 46 minutes of Tiny Kahn, one of the greatest big band drummers of all time and a sterling big-band bop arranger, with Chubby Jackson's big band at the Royal Roost in 1949. This band featured Norman Faye, Al Porcino and Charlie Walp (tp); Mario Daone and Rob Swope (tb); Frank Socolow (as); Ray Turner and Al Epstein (ts); Marty Flax (bar); Teddy Charles (vib); Gene Di Novi (p); Red Kelly (b); Tiny Kahn (d,arr,vcl); Joe Harris (bgo,cga); Chubby Jackson (cond,vcl) and Paula Castle (vcl). Listen to Tiny drive the band wild on his own arrangements...

Four Maynard Ferguson Videos

What would the holidays be without brass. Here are a bunch of recently posted YouTube clips of Maynard Ferguson in action, including Christmas for Moderns, an Ed Sullivan Show performance in 1960 and a full album uninterrupted by ads [photo above of Maynard Ferguson and Rufus Jones on drums]:

Here's the famed 1960 Maynard Ferguson Big Band on The Ed Sullivan Show in August 1960 playing Don Sebesky's composition and arrangement of Humbug, with Ferguson playing multiple instruments, Chet Ferretti on lead trumpet in the horn section, Jaki Byard on piano, and Willie Maiden on tenor saxophone...

Here's Willie Maiden's arrangement of the band's Christmas for Moderns medley live in Riverdale, Ill., in 1976...

Here's Ferguson's funky big band at Corona High School in March 1973...

And here's Ferguson's entire Newport Suite album recorded in 1960, wtih Maynard Ferguson (tp,v-tb); Don Ellis, Chet Ferretti and Rick Kiefer (tp); Mike Zagatini and Charles Greenlee (tb); Jimmy Ford (as); Joe Farrell and Willie Maiden (ts); Frank Hittner (bar); Jaki Byard (p); Aubrey Tosin (b) and Stu Martin (d)...