Great Women of Soaps

[EricMontreal22]

I'm with Sylph here--sorry Carl. i thinkt he public persona of Joan is a bit more trashy (if we have to uyse that word) than Liz--sure she played a drunk a number of times, and won an Oscar for Butterfield 8 but those were fiarly rpestige picture and not comparable to The Stud. Even that crazy Italian film Liz did in the 70s umm... *goes to look up* Identikit, aka Driver's Seat, aka Psychotic could be called a bold experiment LOL (it's a wonderful camp film though--just so... bizarre). Although, while a pretty [!@#$%^&*] adaptation of one of my fave Tenn Williams' plays, Sweet Bird of Youth, the tv movie version she did (for director Nicholas Roeg! with Mark Harsmon int he Paul Newman role lol) is worth seeing for her campy performance (too bad they've never filmed a decent version of that play--the Brooks film is so censored with that ridiculous happy ending not in the play even if it preserves Newman and Geraldine Page's amazing performances).

But yeah, to me someone like her role in Virginia Woolfe isn't "trashy".

[EricMontreal22]

Wha?> She's one of the most controlled and sober presences in Cat on a Hot TGin Roof (man I wish they coulda done that with the uncensored original thetrical dialogue) Even in Butterfield 8 she's awfully classy and controled--down to the tragic ending.

[DRW50]

The main difference was that Liz was still a star when she made some of those movies. Joan was a back number. When you're a star, you don't get the same reaction to your films.

Something like Reflections in a Golden Eye, it's a fascinating movie, but if names of the era like Brando and Liz weren't attached, would it have just been dismissed as trash? I mean that movie has some very out there moments, and Liz's character goes around whipping Brando with a riding crop.

[EricMontreal22]

As great as she was in Woolfe I do agree with what some others have said--she was at least 10 years too young (I guess the chance to cast a star couple in that role was too much to pass up). I still wouldn't call it camp. Cate Blanchett was talking on Charlie rose about her recent amazing sounding run as Blanche in the Liv Ullman directed revival of Streetcar Named Desire and she mentioned how important it is to play all the melorama, even the broadness but not go into camp--and there's a thin line. I see the same line with much Albee, particularly Virginia. I've seen amatuer productions which IMHO do become camp--and as I mentioned above some critics like Clive Barnes (in a pretty famous rant about too many gays in the theatre colouring people's view of gender roles from the 60s) claimed Albee was obviously writing the roles of two men and just casting them as a straight couple ("because how would a gay man know how to write from that perspective"--never mind that as Albee pointed out a good writer can write from any perspective, or more to the point most gay men, having non gay parents, know a good deal about straight relationships). It's VERY stylized writing but IMHO it's not camp.

On the other hand there's that awful 60s "homosexual" play that was made into an awful movie with rex Harrison and Burton that I would call camp--Staircase about an old bitter gay couple--which wqas apparently written by its author as a "serious" gay answer to Virginia Woolfe. It's wonderfully awful--shows up on TCM during their annual "obscure gay film" pride fest lol

(On the other hand both writers, particularly Williams did go into full on camp--there's no other way I can describe Williams' much hated, but I think hysterical, play The Milk train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore which in its flop Broadway run stared Tallulah Bankhead and Tab Hunter!! And then was turned into a flop movie by Joseph Losey, titled Boom! with Liz once again starring with Burton and a very queenie Noel Coward--man I wish they'd finally release that on DVD).

[EricMontreal22]

Ha that's another one TCM airs during their Pride week. Well it pretty much is trash I suppose (as is Boom and certainly Identikit is) but it's PrETENTIOUS trash. Whether they work or not, there are thoughts and ideas behind the movie, if that makes sense, unlike something like The Stud. I get your point, and I don't think I'm being clear but I still don't think Liz's characters would be described, by me, as trashy in them.

Actually I kinda really like Reflections in a Golden Eye

[EricMontreal22]

And on a random note--for Xmas I got the Peyton Place TV DVDs and have been devouring them--I love it far more than I expected. Anyway, I'm a bit surprised the wonderful Babara Parkins didn't end up on any of these 80s soaps...

(And another aging star, one of the biggest, who did was Ava Gardner as Ruth on Knots Landing--a role I wish they could have made longer)

[DRW50]

I like the movie too, even Pauline Kael liked the movie (especially Brian Keith) but I think the material had some similarities to what people often describe as trash, in so many of the outrageous moments designed to keep our attention (the riding crop, nude horseback riding, Julie Harris playing a character who had cut off her own nipples).

Ava was wonderful on KL. I loved her bitching with Laura.

I tried to get Peyton Place on Netflix and for some reason they were unavailable.

[EricMontreal22]

It's completely won me over--in fact before I got into this thread and my endless posts I came on here looking for old posts about it--I guess I'll have to go to the canceled folder. It's in many ways more of a daytime soap with nightime (for the 60s) production values but I love it--already worried about going to the darkside and buying those bootlegs of the later seasons on ebay when I'm done part two of the DVD set (Shout factory has promised more vols will come, and surprisingly it's been one of their better selling titles, but still no dates). Still, I'd really recommend it even as a blind buy for you--I'm assuming you haven't seen it before.

And you're right of course but even with soap opera there's a way to handle those over the top moments that makes it seem trashier and a way that doesn't. I'm not being very clear but a lot of people who say like really trashy movies might be pretty bored by Golden Eye.

[DaytimeFan]

I think you're right. Joan's roles in The Stud and The Bitch were trashy, she'd be the first to say it, Jackie Collins would say the same thing since they were her trashy novels that the movies were based on. However, The Stud and The Bitch are FUN. They aren't pretentious, they just are what they are. Like Collins, they are movies that are secure in themselves (plus, they were massive box office hits, The Stud was made for $600,000 in 1978 and grossed over $20,000,000 worldwide in 1978/1979).

That being said, I think the public personas of Collins and Taylor, when they are footnotes in history, will be favourable to both. Taylor will be hailed as a success in her youth, a terrific dramatic actress and a fearless campaigner for AIDS, though she experienced a tremendous decline as she aged, becoming a shadow of her former self. Essentially, Taylor burned bright and then dramatically snuffed herself out. Collins will be noted as being a mediocre actress in her youth, a major star in mid life, a preternaturally good Hollywood mother and an engaging, fun, sexy woman regardless of her age.

[Cat]

Wow. Liz did some stodgy Eurotrash in her day (as did Joan). Having said that, I always loved Cat..., Butterfield 8 and A Place in the Sun. Especially Butterfield 8, for some reason. There is something relatable about her in that film.

In the early 80s, she also starred on stage in The Little Foxes. My parents went to see it. I asked them about it when I was older -- they weren't particular fans of La Liz but they didn't hate her either -- and they said she was great in it. Restrained and understated and, as a result, here performance was all the more chilling and powerful because of it.

The thing about Liz is not only did she love soaps (yay to her for being an "out" soap fan!) but her life was a soap opera! Her symbiotic relationship with Montgomery Clift always fascinated me. They were most probably in love but Clift was gay (and his Hollywood career forced him into the closet, scarring him for life in the process) and so they remained intensely close BFFs. He had a car accident leaving ET's house one evening. She ran down the drive, crawled through the car window, saw he wasn't breathing and shoved her hand down his throat to pull out his teeth which had been knocked into his windpipe by the crash. She saved his life, although he never got over the crash which caused his face to be reconstructed. Later, when he fell out of fashion with casting directors, she was often getting him parts on her films until she, too, became a Hollywood has-been.

A few years ago, she did a ROLLICKING interview with that peepaw, Larry King. She was frail and white-haired but loaded down in diamonds and totally open about her life and its tragedies and triumphs. What a great broad.

[Cat]

LOL, true. I always put Buffy in the 90s category -- "my" generation, in a way. But your post reminded me of Veronica Mars, the Buffy of the '00s. That show really underscored the pitfalls awaiting girls and women. I loved it -- and the fact that the male characters (Keith, Logan) were as strongly drawn and portrayed as the females.

However... Veronica Mars had pitifully low ratings and was cancelled after 3 seasons. Meanwhile, The Hills (which I confess to having watched) and those krazy Kardashians churn out series after series after series! I wish MTV would do another season of Surf Girls instead and give the vapid Hills a rest for a year or two.

[EricMontreal22]

Of course I could point out that the male role models (thanks partly to shows like The Hills) aren't looking any better, really... But yeah, I definitely see your point (and ok, Buffy is 90s--*my* generation too )

[EricMontreal22]

Well said. Place in the Sun is probably my fave film (no surprise I guess). I love that Liz story--of course Monty was apparently drunk AND stoned when he took off in a mood--which is why she knew to go after him (and dislodge those teeth! wow). It's always sad watching his post crash movies (of course Liz is amazing, and his post crash daze suits his role, in the Gore Vidal rewrite of Williams' Suddenly, Last Summer they made). He had a substance abuse problem before that of course, but post crash he filmed nearly all his movies in a sorta pain killer (and who knows what else) daze. They did a remarkable job with his face, especially considering this was the '50s, but it just never was the same.

[All My Shadows]

Credits for Berrengers and Emerald Point NAS used to be on YouTube. NAS looked like a big, fantastic, rollicking good time. Men in uniform, dames in fabulous gowns, Maud Adams and Jill St. John.

Berrengers always reminds me of Hollywood Wives (which...there just aren't enough good things I can say about those 6 hours...why it's not on DVD is completely beyond me) for some reason. I think because of it was a glamorous show that went straight to the horse's mouth with the glamor. Instead of having to deal with the unglamorous oil industry, it dealt with the department store business, which was like overdosing on Nolan Miller.

[EricMontreal22]

Aww I wish they were still up. Was the beloved Lynn Marie Latham who created Berrenger's hired to Knots Landing after it folded?