Fame (1980)

I mean, if I don’t have a personality of my own, so what? I’m an actress! I can put on as many personalities as I want! Accepted in the Drama department of New York’s High School for the Performing Arts are sensitive Montgomery MacNeil (Paul McCrane) who thinks he’s gay, Doris Finsecker (Maureen Teefy), a shy Jewish girl, and brash Ralph Garci (Barry Miller) who succeeds after failed auditions for Music and Dance. In the Music department, Bruno Martelli (Lee Curreri) is an aspiring keyboardist whose electronic equipment horrifies Mr. Shorofsky (Albert Hague), a conservative music teacher. Lisa Monroe (Laura Dean) is accepted in the Dance department, despite having no interest in the subject. Brazen Coco Hernandez (Irene Cara) is accepted in all three departments because of her all-around talent. Leroy Johnson (Gene Anthony Ray) goes to the school, performing as part of a dance routine for an auditioning friend, but the dance teachers are more impressed by his talents than hers. We follow the progress of the students through four years of high school until it’s time for graduation …  I’s young, I’s single, and I loves to mingle! Time to ‘fess up:  like all kids of the Eighties my Thursday nights were Top of the Pops followed by Fame, the TV show inspired by this Alan Parker film. And two of the highlights of my life were – therefore – seeing the back of Lee Curreri at NBC when he was recording a kids’ show; and some years later, Debbie Allen (Lydia the taskmaster dance teacher) leading the parade at New Orleans Mardi Gras, cher! That’s the fame of Fame, which had us delirious on all platforms before the term came into use. Its diverse cast pleases millennial taste although the un-PC jokes (about being gay, Jewish, black, female) would probably tee off some. It’s an equal opportunities offender! Personable, characterful, there’s one for everybody in the audience which is why everyone could relate. It’s bold and dramatic and fun and the Hot Lunch sequence makes you squeal with sheer enjoyment while the songs are just great.  Some of the plot lines strain to reach a conclusion and it’s not exactly tied up with a big red bow at the end, but you know, it’s kinda wonderful in an enervating way and no way can you not sing with delight and dance yourself dizzy watching it again! The film within a film is The Rocky Horror Picture Show and for those of us who used to go see it as a weekly performing event it’s a fabulous aide memoire. Shot at a time when Annie and Grease were on Broadway, this is a liberating, joyful viewing experience and the cast are wildly talented and charismatic in a NYC before it was cleaned up.  It’s simply teeming with infectious energy, danger, ambition and inchoate teenage rage. Written by Christopher Gore.  Music is the hardest profession of them all

The Awful Truth (1937)

Back on my ranch, I got a little red rooster and a little brown hen and they fight all the time too, but every once in a while they make up again and they’re right friendly. Leo McCarey was probably the best looking, classiest, coolest director in Hollywood in his time. When smoother-than-thou Cary Grant suffered a crisis of confidence shooting this comedy of remarriage and couldn’t switch roles with Ralph Bellamy he ended up imitating McCarey and inadvertently became the hero of the screwball genre and probably the greatest comic actor of all time – and that’s saying something. And this was the role that shaped his approach to most of his other performances. Excuse me, you’re sitting on my prospectus.He and Irene Dunne are both playing around and agree to a divorce – but argue for custody of the fabulous Mr Smith the wire fox terrier played by Skippy aka Asta from The Thin Man series – and who wouldn’t? Bellamy is the hayseed oilman she takes up with, Molly Lamont is the wealthy playgirl Cary fools around with, but they can’t avoid their attraction to each other. This ends with a notorious tease and a black cat. Truly, Leo McCarey had the Lubitsch Touch – better even than Lubitsch himself. Art Deco screwball at its most sophisticated and witty. Adapted from Arthur Richman’s play by Vina Delmar with help from Sidney Buchman and McCarey himself. Permanently atop the list of greatest romcoms, this is simply sublime.  I guess it was easier to her to change her name than for her whole family to change theirs