St Louis Blues (1958)

It’s actually the fictional biography of W. C. Handy the Grandfather of Blues, a talented composer who translated the voice of his people into timeless music, a scholar and savvy business man who in real life was among the first to publish and record the music of Black Americans. But like most Hollywood musical biopics, what ends up on screen ignores truth in favor of a scripted drama that has no other purpose than to string together a parade of top vocal talent of the day interpreting the man’s works.

Nat “King” Cole was breaking down racial barriers with his hit television show, shy demeanor, and a mellow silky voice that melts your spine in the most pleasing way. A movie vehicle for the star based around an internationally recognized songbook seems like a good idea. So what if it didn’t tell the true story of a Black composer who fought racial prejudice and uncompromisingly presented some of the greatest music ever played.

There’s a decent script here about a young Black man devoted to elevating the music of his people despite the tirades of his overbearing father, a stereotypical minister who represents a self-imposed yoke of deprication and subserviance. Torn between these two extremes the sweet-natured Cole is crippled by a fit of hysterical blindness that reduces him to writing hymns and playing the organ in his father’s church. Like Job he is miraculously healed during an uplifting spiritual sung by Mahalia Jackson (who wouldn’t be?). He eventually confronts the narrow-minded pastor, pursues his destiny as a great composer, and sees his music “legitimized” by a concert at the Eurocentric New York Symphony Hall.

It’s a contrived melodrama to be sure, but it is the first film made for mainstream audiences to feature an all Black cast. Despite a low production budget that always plays it “safe”, St Louis Blues boasts such an embarrassment of riches: Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, Ruby Dee, Pearl Bailey, Billy Preston as a boy, and Cab Calloway who gets to play a scheming jealous club owner as a nice change of pace from his wiggly-jiggly Hi-Dee-Ho band leader. But the movie belongs to the commanding presence of Eartha Kitt.

As Gogo Germaine, a no-nonsense sweet-voiced Creole chanteuse with an hourglass torso sculpted by costume goddess Edith Head, Kitt drives the plot with single-minded ambition and a cold detachment to the conflicted characters around her. Not only does Gogo Germaine stand in complete defiance to oppressive religion — cutting down the pastor with a lecture on prejudice, she defies the timeline in sleek and modern dresses while scolding a befuddled Ruby Dee who stands in the kitchen wearing old fashioned starched lace — as though a Black from the future has come to chastise the Black of the past! It’s a boldly anachronistic performance for it’s setting, but also for Hollywood, showing a career-driven woman who won’t be derailed by love (manipulative boyfriend Cab Calloway), society (Juano Hernandez’ disapproving pastor), or sentimentality (the blind Nat “King” Cole).

My Geisha (1962)

The greatest stories are based on deceit, and the deepest romances are forged from secret identities (not to mention the lies we tell ourselves). Think of Shakespeare, his plays within plays that illustrate the larger drama and enrich the plot with shades of emotion. Now, I’m not saying My Geisha, an early ’60s postcard from America’s favorite colony is quite Shakespeare…. The premise and characters are tissue-thin, especially Bob Cummings’ infantile playboy straight out of a Doris Day movie. But it does, at times, rise above its hackneyed plot of an actress assuming an exotic identity to fool her husband (and land a starring role in the show), to reveal a complicated dance of egos between man and wife, and the eventual submergence of her identity to provide his greatest happiness.

Shirley MacClaine plays a successful formula comedienne who is sidelined when her longtime director husband (Yves Montand) wants to film an epic version of Madame Butterfly in Japan complete with an authentic geisha as the lead. She is hurt, but realizes the film will be a chance to prove himself as a great director and not just her husband. But without her starring name attached, the studio slashes the budget and his hopeful opus will be filmed in black and white. With the help of the film’s producer and family friend (Edward G. Robinson), MacClaine trains to be such a convincing geisha that she will even fool her husband and save the film, but to protect his ego he can’t know his authentic geisha is really his meddling wife — at least until the film’s premier when her unmasking will spur publicity and probably win her an Oscar.
…more about My Geisha

What a Way to Go! (1964)

Shirley MacClaine is one of the few female stars who was able to get top billing over her male leads. Seeming to flaunt it she appeared in several “vignette” films where she is romantically paired (sequentially) with a string of Hollywood’s top men.
bonus Edith Head Gallery after the jump:
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Sweet Charity (1969)

Charity Valentine wears her heart literally tattooed on her arm, sacrificing herself on the altar of love with one undeserving man after another. Shirley MacClaine plays the quasi-prostitute who dreams of being a secretary, and stealing the role Gwen Verdon created for Neil Simon’s Broadway translation of Fellini’s Nights of Caberia.

The film is ultimately too dark, the characters too post, and it fails as an optimistic Hollywood musical. But New Yorker’s had embraced Gwen Verdon’s hardluck heroine on Broadway as if she were the city itself: mugged, abandoned, but still holding on to hope. Sweet Charity revived Broadway, brought tourists back to the city, and re-opened the venerable Palace Theater. But don’t think this is anyone’s show but Bob Fosse’s.
…more about Sweet Charity