Several weeks ago at Lance Mannion’s there was a mention of The Taming of the Shrew and a pointing to Self Styled Siren’s review of “Kiss Me Kate”, the 1953 movie with Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson. When I saw it was VIEW NOW at Netflix, I thought it might be fun to watch with H.o.p. as a somewhat introduction to The Taming of the Shrew, especially because he’s on this huge kick lately where he literally goes around wailing about how he wants to see his mom and dad have an argument because he thinks it’s funny.
“Come on, get in an argument!” he exhorts. “I want you to get in an argument!”
“But we don’t want to get in an argument!”
So he comes and he whispers things in my ear like, “Daddy says you’re stupid,” and then he goes and whispers in his dad’s ear, “Mommy says you’re stupid”, and he stands back and waits for Big Argument.
Tuesday night he was trying to get Marty in trouble with me because we had chosen an old sci fi flick we thought H.o.p. might enjoy but in it an alien gets his brain bashed in and H.o.p. was mortified. “MOM! GET DAD IN TROUBLE! HE CHOSE A MOVIE WHERE AN ALIEN GETS HIS HEAD CUT OPEN AND I COULD SEE ITS BRAIN AND I GOT REALLY GROSSED OUT! COME ON, ARGUE!”
“You want to see a couple arguing, then we’ll watch Kiss Me Kate,” I said, and cranked it up on Netflix. I didn’t take one single note so I’m going to do a half-assed discussion with myself here on what I thought of the movie because it just seems the thing to do.
I will go ahead and note that what H.o.p. had to say about it, off and on, was, “That man’s a shrew!” He thought Grayson (Lilli Vanessi, Kate) could be better behaved and not throw things, but he thought Keel (Fred Graham, Petruchio) was A SHREW!
* * * * * * *
ME: What’d you think?
ME TOO: Fine for watching once, except that middle part that threatened to put me to sleep where I finally said to H.o.p., this is boring, isn’t it. If I watched it again it would be for three things. One, the opening scene with that spectacular high bred New York apartment and Ann Miller in day glow pink clattering her taps all over the fine furnishings and kicking stuff off tables. If you’re going to have Cole Porter playing piano in your apartment, that is the apartment for it. And if you’re going to have that kind of apartment, it may be nice to have your buddy Cole Porter tinkling the ivories while you two plot your next Sensation, but there’s still no point to it until Ann Miller has clubbed the furniture to death with her shoes to the tune of “Too Darn Hot”. Now, that’s a christening! Put a champagne bottle in front of those toes and let her pile drive it into the wall. That’s an apartment to live in, where you look up from your morning toast at the dent in the wall made by Ann Miller and her fierce tap shoes.
ME: I was sitting there thinking, hey, that Cole Porter is kinda good looking, but also confused because it seemed to me Cole Porter would be a lot older than that, plus I thought I’d seen a pic of him previously and the movie’s Cole Porter didn’t look like the composer Cole Porter. Still, I couldn’t imagine their having someone else stand-in to play Cole Porter when he was alive, so I feel stupid to admit I was thinking I guess it could be him and that he may have written some fine music but he sure can’t act. So it’s weird that it wasn’t Cole Porter at all. Instead it was Ron Randall.
ME TOO: When he sat at the piano you got an inkling.
ME: Before.
ME TOO: In your heart you knew it wasn’t Cole Porter. You really shouldn’t be so stupid to admit here that you actually thought it might be.
ME: Shut up. Didn’t the apartment’s doors remind you of the set from “Family Affair”?
ME TOO: You don’t have to bring that up either. Instead you could talk about the spectacular color and how that opening scene would have been Floor You Incredible on a big screen. Now, that was a set.
ME: Plus, it had Ann Miller.
ME TOO: I never used to like her. In fact, I hated her dancing. Then one day this hard heart of mine turned to mush and she wormed her way in. Now I love her. Maybe because every Great Depression needs an Ann Miller whirlwind busting up the sepia crud settling over everything.
ME: Great Depression? Maybe you mean Great Tribulation.
ME TOO: Your call.
ME: Strange that you haven’t said anything about Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson, who happen to be the stars. Lilli and Fred! Kate and Petruchio! They’re what the film’s about. Once married and now getting ready to scrapple their way back into each other’s arms on Broadway.
ME TOO: Myeh. They were fine in the opening scene. In a typical and tired man-woman cat fight kind of way. But they could have been anyone. Why Grayson and Keel, I don’t know. Though I was already a little more impressed with Keel. At that point I was thinking, hey, Christopher Walken should be playing Graham. Maybe. If “Kiss Me Kate” was remade back in the late 80s. Which it wasn’t.
ME: Keel was…fine…later. Y’know what I mean. Fine fine.
ME TOO: He was. But we advance too far. What about that weird moving sidewalk bit at the beginning of the theater in the movie part. Everyone dressed up like Santa Claus in red tights though they’re not really dressed up like Santa Claus, but their outfits remind of Santa Claus but they’re just supposed to be traveling actors, I think. Did this open at Christmas? I told H.o.p., hey, I bet this opened at Christmas. And then there’s all that confetti being thrown around, looks like snow.
ME: Hey, you’re right! It opened the 26th of November in 1953 in the USA. So it was a Christmas film.
ME TOO: I’m so smart! Hey people, it’s Christmas. Get out on those escalators and shop!
ME: The set design for the Broadway stage was nice in a pseudo but not too mind-bending surreal way.
ME TOO: It was.
ME: What dressing rooms!
ME TOO: With the dressing room scenes I was finally starting to warm up to Keel. Though not Grayson.
ME: What’d you think of Ann Miller’s boyfriend?
ME TOO: Tommy Rall? I liked him. Thought he was good for the part. He struck me as someone who would gamble away non-existent money and sign Graham’s name for it. I liked the twist that Ann Miller, Graham’s supposed new girl, was just using him to advance her career. That was a nice touch. And I liked it you could still love her despite that. The “Tom, Harry or Dick” number was fun. And she sold the “Always True to You in My Fashion” number as well.
ME: The future flashed before my eyes with Miller and Rall doing “Can’t you Behave”. There’s H.o.p. being begged to behave by someone else who can’t behave.
ME TOO: And jumping on trampolines.
ME: Incredible dancing. Rall is powerful. For some reason I started plastering Jim Carey over Tommy Rall. Not when he was dancing, but when he was speaking.
ME TOO: No,no.
ME: How about the gangsters?
ME TOO: Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore! Where’d the hell that come from? The gangsters becoming unintentional clowns, keeping Lilli/Kate in line on stage, could have been funny. Could have, but wasn’t. I wished it was funny.
ME: Okay. You’d watch the movie again for the opening scene. You said three reasons to watch again. What’s the second one.
ME TOO: Keel’s transformation about the time he takes Kate home into 6 foot 3 guy in gold earrings and black and white manly tights with lots of eyeliner and Suntan 2 make-up and yet way too easy on the eyes to be comfortably near, so it’s good he’s a fiction, and easier on the psyche too with Howard eventually morosing over Lilli having fled with the cattle baron, the bite taken out of him, Wynn and Whitmore doing their number on how it’s time for him to start polishing up on his Shakespeare in order to impress the girls. That was wonderful and I was glad for them that Wynn and Whitmore finally had something to do and they look like they’re celebrating it, showing, hey, we can act and kick up our heels too. Keel had so solidly seized the stage by this number that as they perform he sits with his back to the audience, which could be taken just as a directorial decision to keep him in the shot without being distracting. But what star is going to sit with his back to the audience? Though he’s not Howard performing before an audience at this point, it communicates a relinquishing. He’s powerful enough that even with his back to the audience throughout the number, he doesn’t begin to disappear, and you’re left to ponder it all.
ME: “Where is the life that I led?”
ME TOO: I liked Keel singing “Where is the Life That I Led”, thumbing through his little black book. The thing that didn’t work is that Grayson just wasn’t powerful enough. At the end, when she enters and gives her subservient speech, she’s just not powerful enough to convince you that Howard’s Petruchio would give up his wilder ways for this Kate.
ME TOO: Where was Ann-Margaret?
ME TOO: Ann-Margaret was about 12 years old at the time.
ME: Perfect! A barely pubescent Ann-Margaret facing off with Petruchio! Didn’t they marry them off young way back then? Thirteen or so?
ME TOO: But Kate is the older sister.
ME: Yeah, problematic.
ME TOO: So the ending completely failed for me except the expression on Graham’s face of amazed comeuppance. He looks like he’s had a revelation about love but it has nothing to do with Grayson or what she’s saying or even how she’s playing it. The expression on his face, in fact, makes her anemic speech into something other than it actually is here. Because there isn’t anything to the story of “Kiss Me Kate” than their having been two talents who became celebrated and self-absorbed, hissed at each other a lot, divorced, have recognized they still love each other and are getting back together. They’ve both been abhorrent, he in particular. There’s no reason for Lilli to return to Howard except as part of a pattern of rage then make up. But Keel communicates some revolution in his character. Whereas Lilli more reads as playing another part that suits for the moment. In this way it makes for an uncomfortable, twitchy end. One doesn’t doubt that it’s not going to be too long before they’re pitching things at each other again. If there was more to Grayson than the weirdly pious almost religious submissiveness of her expression, then it might not be so twitchy. Anyway, “Kiss Me Kate” just isn’t deep, so let’s not go there. “Kiss Me Kate” is lots of good dancing, a grand Ann Miller, and a drop dead gorgeous Petruchio. End of story.
ME: Now, the third reason to watch the film a second time?
ME TOO: Bob Fosse’s jazz dance number with Carol Haney. Comes right out of the blue and is wonderful. The only reason to not like it is it makes you feel like a few of Ann Miller’s wild peacock feathers have been plucked and doesn’t fit in the film, but there are a number of movies from the 50s and 60s where things are rolling along then wham out of nowhere there’s a jazz dance routine and then afterwards the movie goes about its business again. So though I love the jazz dance number, it’s an uncomfortable one. I feel like the way it could have worked would have been to have it separate from any of the Miller-Rall dance routines, because in combination with Miller-Rall it reads like, “Get a look at the New School!”
ME: There you have it. Our assessment of “Kiss Me Kate”.
ME TOO: I suppose.
ME: Except, why was Ann Miller’s character named Lois Lane?
ME TOO: I couldn’t begin to address that.
ME: Where was Superman?
ME TOO: Lois Lane first appeared in the Superman comics in 1938, predating “Kiss Me Kate” which opened on Broadway a decade later. Superman is of course both himself and the fabricated identity of Clark Kent, whereas Lois Lane is just what she is. I don’t know why Ann Miller’s character is named Lois Lane when she’s a hustler who is working her own illusions. OK? I dunno. I told you I didn’t want to address that.
ME: Oh, OK.
ME TOO: Never mind. It’s all right.
Leave a Reply