CACTUS FLOWER (1969)

Quentin Tarantino is a fan

I only recently saw it a year or two ago, but found it very cute and charming.

Would it have worked on the big screen with Betty?

They should have cast someone other than Matthau. The idea of a pretty young thing like Goldie Hawn and an attractive thirty or forty something woman that Ingrid Bergman played both lusting after a hideous, unpleasant troll like Walter Matthau is creepy, far-fetched and ludicrous.

What was the deal with Matthau's wife? Fan of Miss Havisham?

Groovy

According to Glenn Close, Carol Matthau's ghastly white makeup was her inspiration for Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.

Lovely movie, but I agree with R4, someone more attractive than Matthau should have been cast as the male lead.

I just can't think who should have been cast, Rock Hudson? He was about 45 then.

James Garner!

Walter Matthau wasn’t conventionally handsome, but I see why women would have found him sexy then.

Rod Taylor might have been a good choice too. The guy is basically a charming rogue who can't commit to a relationship, so it needed to played by someone with charisma like Hudson, Garner or Taylor. Matthau is just gross on every level.

What about Connery?

Connery would have been a good choice as long as he could pull off light comedy.

Goldie Hawn didn't think she was going to win the Oscar, and decided to stay in London, instead of flying in for the ceremonies

She didn't even watch the ceremonies and went to bed, only to be awaken in the middle of the night by a phone call with someone screaming on the end saying

"YOU GOT IT"

Goldie thought "Got what?"

Did any of our eldergays see Miss Bacall in the play on Broadway? How was she? Why didn't she get to do the movie version?

[Quote] Why didn't she get to do the movie version?

Washed up.

A temporary wife

I presume Bacall in the Bergman role was much like her turn in Designing Woman.

A remake would be fun. And I'm not usually a fan of remakes.

The premise wouldn't work in the present day.

R20 Why not?

We live in the age of the fuckboi. The expectation of marriage by a certain age has largely dissipated, or at least the stigma of being single has lessened so greatly. A man pretending to be married to the woman he's fucking would hold no appeal, even as a zany plot device, to today's audiences.

Loved it! One of the first movies I saw on tee-vee as a young queer boy. I really liked Bergman in it but Bacall woulda nailed it to the wall.

Bacall would have played it like this.

Did they already remake it with Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler about a decade ago? I can't remember the name of it. It sounded too generic.

How disappointing. I thought you were talking about real cactus flowers

Or at least the patter OP

R22, a remake could still work, there are still plenty of young women out there who want to get married and expect their men to follow their idea of a marriage timeline. And there are still plenty of straight men who want to make absolutely sure that this stay "no strings attached".

Starring Chris Pratt and Amy Adams... and hopefully not Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston.

A remake set in America in the current day would make little sense because American society is now very familiar with and used to the man child and also to otherwise stable men who have a fear of commitment.

Therefore Dr. Winston wouldn't need to pretend to be already married in order to avoid commiting to a steady relationship with Toni. It might work if Julian is a bisexual having a fling with Tony and lies about being married to a woman to prevent the fling from turning into anything more serious.

Bacall was deeply disappointed in not getting the film, but Applause soon came along which brought her even greater success on Broadway and a Tony Award. She didn't blame Bergman for her not getting the "Cactus Flower" film. A few years later, they made "Murder on the Orient Express" together.

Yes, a modern remake would work, if the dentist character were changed to someone seriously rich, and the nurse character was changed to his indispensable PA. Then all the women he dated would be keen to marry him!

And sadly, this is one story that wouldn't work as a gay remake.

Matthau was perfect as the archetype of a conservative man women desired, because he could take care of them financially and raise their social profile, being the wife of a doctor. He married a presentable woman and got himself a younger mistress.

Women lusting after men was considered demeaning (treating men like sex objects) and unladylike. Except when the men were singers (Elvis, The Beatles).

[quote] And sadly, this is one story that wouldn't work as a gay remake.

It would work as a satire where gays would fight over a right wing douche, like Peter Thiel or Aaron Schock, type of character. With a happy ending where the conservative falls for a scam artist who steals all his money and humiliates him.

There is indeed a modern-day remake with Adam Sandler in the Matthau role. The Ingrid Bergman role is played by Jennifer Aniston (gasp!). It's called Just Go With It (2011). Whether it works or not is up to the viewer.

James Garner would have been perfect in the role. Then I would have liked it, instead of having the film be the lowest ranking in my own Ingrid Bergman-marathon.

So, about that Ingrid Bergman marathon. Which one is your favourite? Mine is Anastasia, I could watch it a dozen times and not get tired of it. Plus, Yul Brynner!!

French theatre revival a few years back. The woman playing the dentist's secretary is a comedy star in France. The actor playing the dentist has also been a very big name in recent years. He's quite unusual.

Of course the original play is French (1964).

If you look at it as French, it all makes sense.

The premise of this movie never made much sense to me. It implies a certain mindset, that I evidently don't have. Plus, two women fighting over Walter Matthau... That's stretching it a little bit.

Where was this Tarantino discussion from and what other movies did he introduce?

There was an Off Broadway revival in 2011 with Maxwell Caufield that was...um...not very good.

R35 Anastasia was fantastic. Autumn Sonata (Bergman squared!), Stromboli and Gaslight are my among my new found favorites.

She really had the range for comedy as well - I was surprised by how funny she was in Cactus Flower, she stole every scene she was in without overdoing it.

Did she do any more comedies? I suppose Murder on the Orient Express would count as a comedic performance as well.

Yes, Murder on the Orient Express definitely counts as comedy.

You have excellent taste! Those are among my favourite too.

Others that you might like:

The Visit for very dark comedy.

The segment she did with Rossellini for Siamo Donne is very funny. It's sort of a light-hearted documentary short.

I love Europa 51. There's no other film like it in her filmography. There are several versions of it and the one I saw is I believe the international version, found in the Criterion release.

I really like her Ivy Peterson in Dr. Jekyll et Mr. Hyde. She had a very good singing voice, too (as in Gaslight).

There are a few others that I like too, in Swedish and in French.

Europa 51 is very depressing drama. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde... Well, you know. Sorry for not mentioning that earlier.

R38 Tarantino curated a collection for SBS World Movies of American '60s films that inspired Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

He presented Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, Cactus Flower, Easy Rider, Model Shop, Getting Straight, The Wrecking Crew, Hammerhead, Gunman’s Walk and Arizona Raiders. There are clips on Youtube of the discussions as in R1

R41 R42 Thank you! I'm putting those at the top of my list right now. Goodbye Again with Anthony Perkins was quite good too, albeit depressing.

Tomorrow I'm either watching For Whom the Bell Tolls or A Woman's Face - I've only seen the American remake with Joan Crawford but remember really liking it.

[quote]There was an Off Broadway revival in 2011 with Maxwell Caufield that was...um...not very good.

Yes, but it's much easier to swallow the idea of women fighting over Maxwell Caulfield.

R41, Ingrid starred in a very good film with Anthony Quinn in the early 1970s, "A Walk in the Spring Rain", which is never shown on cable or movie channels.

A Walk in the Spring Rain is one of the very few movies with Ingrid that I have not seen... Because it is never shown.

Out of her early Swedish movies, Munkbrogreven is a must because it's her first. It's very early talkie and completely different to what we see today. She plays the ingenue in an ensemble village-feel comedy (in the heart of Stockholm, Gamla stan the way it used to be a hundred years ago). Juninatten might be my favourite, she plays a complex character in a complex set of situations - again, more of an ensemble drama. Her character is important but the movie isn't built around her. Dollar is a champagne couples comedy with a touch of melancholy to it. The Swedish characters she played tended to have a lot more range than what she did 1939-1948.

Elena et les hommes (Jean Renoir) has a very similar feel to Les Grandes Manoeuvres (René Clair). It's a romantic comedy and Ingrid is very attractive in it. Shot right before Anastasia. It's wonderful to be sharing this with you! As you may have guessed, Ingrid Bergman is my favourite actress.

R47 Wow, thanks again for the recommendations! Ingrid was a wonderful actress who gave consistently great performances throughout her career. I’ve liked her since I saw Casablanca and Spellbound as a young kid, it’s fun to finally go through her impressive body of work.

R47 Here's A Walk in the Spring Rain as a download if you use torrents (download something like uTorrent to your computer - then just click download followed by the magnet symbol and it opens in uTorrent). It's very good Blu-ray quality, just under 2 GB.

OMG, Thank You! I'll be watching that. WOW.

Just Go With It is pretty funny.

I didn’t know the made champagne in Idaho!

R11 Rod Taylor would have been perfect. I can actually see him as a playboy.

I always love a dancing Goldie!

Quinn was in The Visit (mentioned n the list above) with Bergman too. She is excellent, and it's well directed and photographed, but still stagebound.

R56 The Visit is a fantastic film, probably one of Ingrid's best performances. It's very dark and Kafkaesque with a touch of comedy, too bad it isn't talked about more.

Jack Westen never appeared in a bad movie.

Great character actor

Who played his role in the Adam Sandler remake?

Good point, R58 - and that's including Dirty Dancing.

[quote]Jack Westen never appeared in a bad movie.

You mean Jack "Can't Stop the Music", "Gator", "Short Circuit 2" "Ishtar" Weston? That Jack Weston?

r60=Marge Redmond

Goldie alone saved the movie from being a crashing bore, and she deserved her controversial Oscar for that reason. Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman were miscast and they looked awful, especially Bergman, who looked heavy and more matronly than she did 10 years later. And any comedy with the grossly unappealing Jack Weston in a featured role was bound to be trouble. I guess they cast Weston since he was one of the few actors uglier than Matthau.

"Cactus Flower" was Ingrid's first made in Hollywood movie since the Rossellini scandal. Up to then, all of her movies since the scandal had been made elsewhere.

R62 You're wrong. Ingrid owns this movie, she's the "Cactus Flower" after all!

[quote]Walter Matthau and Ingrid Bergman were miscast

What are you talking about? The play starred Barry Nelson and Lauren Bacall, complete contemporaries.

There was a time when he might have seemed attractive enough. I think no one thinks of him now because all we remember of him is the grumpy old slobs he's played (well, I might add).

Matthau was miscast, Bergman was not. She's the "flower" of the title, and she did a brilliant job of blossoming before our eyes, transforming from dowdy to radiant! Which yes, requires looking dowdy at first.

Matthau was really miscast, because you just can't believe that Goldie's character would take a serious interest in him. I mean, she's a free-spirited and sexy young woman, and he's a guy who has nothing to offer a woman except the money to raise a family in a nice house in the suburbs. And Goldie's girl character doesn't seem to be interested in that, it's hard to believe the two of them have any interest in each other at all. That's a problem in the script, but it could have been fixed by casting someone much more attractive as the dentist.

R68, Matthau was as miscast as Jimmy Stewart was in "Rear Window".

Why did the cast Matthau? Did they have anyone else in consideration? It's like they deliberately went with the worst possible actor for the part.

Matthau had come off "The Odd Couple," hadn't he? I think some of you are thinking too much with your unimpressed dicks...

Sometimes actors who lack good looks can win you over with their charm. The British are especially good at this.

Matthau had no charm.

Have you seen "Charley Varrick" (sp?). I've never found Matthau sexy but he's believably sexual. And that's more important than floating everyone's boat.

There's someone on this thread repeatedly trying to present the gross Walter Matthau as someone attractive or sexy.

Goldie

Goldie's nosejob was pretty damn good.

I’ve always liked “Cactus Flower”. Ingrid Bergman is a favorite of mine, and she was wonderful in the film. Goldie Hawn was delightful in the role played on Broadway by Brenda Vaccaro, but still believe Catherine Burns in “Last Summer” deserved the Oscar that year. And the Quincy Jones score is great!

Did Goldie and Ingrid enjoy working together? Their chemistry was great in the movie

Goldie later worked with Isabella Rossellini (Ingrid’s daughter, obviously) in Death Becomes Her

[quote]Did she do any more comedies?

"Indiscreet," a romantic comedy with Cary Grant.

I didn't realize she had appeared in so few comedies. She is very funny in "Murder on the Orient Express", although it's not a comedy. And she appeared on Broadway in Shaw's comedy, "Captain Brassbound's Conversion". Is that all?

In "Indiscreet", Cary Grant played a man who, coincidentally, also pretended to be married to discourage his girlfriends from getting too attached.

Her first movie, Munkbrogreven, was a comedy. Her last movie in Sweden, Dollar, was also a comedy. In fact, she excelled at both comedy and drama, and she enjoyed playing both. Hollywood typecast her in the 1940s on the basis of a hit she had in Sweden, Intermezzo, a romantic melodrama which was remade in America using the same title. Elena et les hommes, shot in France in 1955, was again a comedy.

I'd like to see a remake - with modern alterations obviously

R5 holy shit that's so bizarre!

oh my god!

Matthau's son got a little nosejob. Was he an actor too?

Carol Saroyan Matthau always wore white makeup. She was besties with Gloria Vanderbilt.

Why did she wear her makeup like that?

oy vey

I guess if you're not best pleased to be a star's "plus one," you find ways to grab attention...

"Walt, where'd you put my sift?"

The make up artist of this movie must have been persuasive. Or the producer was...

When Matthau won his Oscar in 1967, his wife was next to him looking like a ghost. At the Oscars no less. I guess it was the style of certain women in the 60s and 70s to do this, but I’ve never seen it on anyone else.

absolutely bizarre

In one of the bar scenes in CF, there is a female extra wearing a dress with a monarch butterfly print. Not small butterflies, but a bright orange dress with black and white, like an animal print but very large monarch butterflies instead. It's so gorgeous, I always rewind and pause to get a good look at it. I wish i could find a picture of it, I am obsessed.

Are you a drag queen?

Charlie Matthau played Glenda Jackson's son in House Calls. Walter (whose character was named Charley) played her doctor/boyfriend, and he made a meta joke when he met her son, something like "He looks just like you". He still acts a bit.

That Oscar clip at R95 is a hoot, because Carol Matthau truly looks like a ghostly apparition sitting in the audience. She was lifelong dear friends with Gloria Vanderbilt and Oona Chaplin, and I’ve seen photos of her in the 1940s and 1950s where she was pretty. I wonder when and WHY she chose that bizarre makeup look!

[quote] I wonder when and WHY she chose that bizarre makeup look!

I wonder when and WHY Matthau liked that bizarre makeup look!

Designer Mary McFadden did the same look.

[quote]Jack Westen never appeared in a bad movie.

Maybe not, but Jack Weston and Peggy Cass played the parents of chimpanzees in the TV sitcom "The Hathaways."

R104, Did Peggy have them by Cesarean?

Classic!

I LOOOOOOOVED Cactus Flower when I saw it at the movies in 1969. Laughed my head off, cried, couldn't stop laughing. I was 13.

Now? It's like a migraine. All of the men are disgusting, and Goldie Hawn can't act. The only thing I like is Sarah Vaughan over the titles.

Wasn't Mrs. Matthau one of the social arbiters of Hollywood?

Matthau after The Odd Couple was huge and a much bigger box office draw than either Garner or Taylor. Also you didn't see either of them at all with Bergman. You would have seen them automatically with Hawn. They didn't have that middle age factor that Matthau so strongly has. Even if they were middle aged at the time.

[quote]You mean Jack "Can't Stop the Music", "Gator", "Short Circuit 2" "Ishtar" Weston? That Jack Weston?

The Incredible Mr Limpet

[quote]James Garner would have been perfect in the role. Then I would have liked it, instead of having the film be the lowest ranking in my own Ingrid Bergman-marathon.

Ingrid Bergman was 13 years older than James Garner, 10 years older than Rock Hudson, and 15 years older than Rod Taylor. She and Matthau were more or less the same generation (she was 5 years older than him).

This dentist was supposed to be a regular, middle aged human being, not a gorgeous Hollywood hunk. Barry Nelson played the part on Broadway, opposite Bacall. Brenda Vaccaro played Goldie's part.

Some snaps and quotes from it:

Has Brenda ever spoken at length about Bacall?

Goldie Hawn winning Best Supporting Actress for "Cactus Flower" - presented by Fred Astaire and accepted by Raquel Welch

When I was in my early 20s, I thought it was hysterical. I saw it recently and didn’t hold up to my memory but still good.

A remake is a bad idea. This is actually a wonderful film and when it is done right the first time, it doesn't need to be remade.

R113 I always thought it was funny when they had people accept for an absent winner who had no connection to them. Raquel probably just flew out on stage on an impulse just to get some attention and the spotlight on her.

I remember my parents went to it and enjoyed it, but I only saw it for the first time on TV recently. I liked it but I thought the sets and colors were extremely ugly and cheap-looking.

R116, The year Cliff Robertson won Best Actor for "Charly", Frank Sinatra accepted for him.

Yet, Cliff's wife, Dina Merrill was sitting in the audience.

Lord, hard to tell which witch was which.

Scroll down to see Carol Matthau, Oona O'Neill Chaplin, Gloria Vanderbilt; Southampton, New York.

Make-up by Baby Jane Hudson...

Suicide is a not uncommon theme for comedies.

R119, that is an entertaining blog! Why were Oona’s hands so BLACK? I thought she was wearing gloves! Maybe it was just the lighting. And Gloria’s hands look like she’d just finished picking potatoes from the potato fields of Southampton.

Thanks for posting it.

R36

Je suis allé voir Fleur de Cactus, Michel Fau était très bien mais j'ai été déçu par Catherine Frot et j'ai complètement oublié la jeune fille... Les pièces de Barillet et Grédy sont toujours une réussite!!

Today is Goldie Hawn day on TCM. All Goldie, All day!

R123 I was just going to start a thread on this but I’ll just go on this one instead. It’s not her birthday — is TCM just doing a celebrity day every day this month?

I love Seems Like Old Times and Foul Play — I literally grew up watching them!

R124 it’s Summer under the stars. They do it every year in August highlighting one actors work per day.

R124 thanks!

I can’t believe Farrah Fawcett was the original choice for Foul Play. Ugh. Thank God she was too dumb to take it.

I'm a fan. But I ALSO agree with R4 & R8 regarding Matthau. Also: I have always had a crush on Rick Lenz's "Igor" character.

R5, Was Walter wearing a wifebeater underneath his white shirt?

🌵

Ingrid thread:

"Bacall was deeply disappointed in not getting the film, but Applause soon came along which brought her even greater success on Broadway and a Tony Award. "

The idea of Lauren Bacall getting extremely disappointed makes me happy to no end. The idea of her enjoying great success makes me hate her even more.

R131, Why such disdain for Miss Bacall?

Because she was an utter cunt to most.

I put little Miss Lauren in her place.

It's surprising that Bacall didn't have a clause in her Broadway contract that she'd have first refusal on the movie verison.

R135, For one thing, Bacall's career was at a low ebb when she signed to star in Cactus Flower in 1965, so she was in no position to make demands.

Plus, her producer was David Merrick, who would have balked at such a demand.

In "By Myself", Bacall wrote that she was initially told the movie was a done deal, which made the signing of Bergman all the more painful for her.

Lauren Bacunt didn't have the relevance at that point in time for that kind of contractual demands.

Bacall was doing supporting roles in A-picture like "Harper" and "Sex & The Single Girl." She was an industry veteran - thinking that her participation in the movie of "Cactus Flower" was a done deal makes absolutely no sense.

Those types of unfulfilled promises are what makes old, fading stars like her become monsters. She was a monster to people she considered inconsequential: her hairdressers, the crews, her supporting cast. She treated Michael Biehn like shit on The Fan, where she was supposed to play the damsel in distress and he a maniac trying to kill her. Watching that movie whilst knowing what went on behind the scenes you cry for the maniac.

r139 More details about her abuse of Michael Biehn please.

The producers were right to hire Bergman and not Bacall. Because Bacall couldn't have done the later scenes as well as Bergman, where the Nurse character starts to open up and enjoy life, Bergman was radiant in those scenes, warm and glowing in a way that Bacall has never glowed in her life. Because Bacall doesn't have nearly the range that Bergman does, and as actress, she can never quite shed her intrinsic chilliness.

Not that Bacall can't be damn good at what she does, but she's got a very narrow range as an actor, and warmth isn't in it.

[Quote] Bacall couldn't have done the later scenes as well as Bergman, where the Nurse character starts to open up and enjoy life

What kind of homosexual are you!?

R140 She was an ice cold bitch to him from the start, rolling her eyes at the director whenever she didn't like something he did or refusing to feed him her lines. You know, the classic sabotage actors do to each other when they're not just acting but acting out. He was starting out (this may have been his first role) and bought her a giant bunch of roses when the filming started as a gesture to the "great" star he was getting to act against. She completely ignored it, wouldn't even say hello or good night to him. But this is just the way she was. There is some story going around that one of her hairdressers told, I think it's online. The woman was a turd.

Hairstylist.

R143 They only had about a five minute scene at the end when she finally comes face to face with him. You make it sound like the whole movie and the two of them interacting. Plus Biehn hardly had any lines. But with Bacall, anything’s possible considering her imperious ways.

"She was mean to everybody except her hair and make-up people".

Okay, okay, Bacall was a bitch. WHY is this soooo personal to you? You never experienced her bitchiness, you didn't get the Michael Biehn or any other role in a movie of hers.

Are you trying to play Hall Monitor? This is a gossip forum. People will gossip about what they wish.

VERY well-put, R141 — I wholeheartedly agree.

Douglas Sirk said he cast Bacall in Written on the Wind because she had a "calculating" quality.

You didn't answer the question, R148. Gossip all you want, I'm talking about hatred. It's not like Bacall was Trump. And you're still not getting the Michael Biehn part.

R151 Your bullish attitude makes you undeserving of an answer. Go fuck yourself.

R152 = IQ of 5

Bacall was given a huge opportunity to shine and glow in Designing Woman. She didn't which is why she ended up in supporting roles in film and had to go to Broadway if she wanted to continue being a star. Next to Gregory Peck she comes off as Miss Birds Eye of 1957.

I wonder how Bacall treated Dolores Gray.

R154, Bacall showed some fine comedy chops in "How to Marry a Millionaire".

In "By Myself", she wrote that Jack Benny once told her that she had perfect comic timing.

Bacall played herself, the utter bitch, in HTMaM. It wasn't acting. As far as having perfect timing, if Benny was judging her by her film acting, he should have commended her editors as well. Anyone can have great timing on film. On stage, she wasn't bad. From afar, the stage diminished her bitchy qualities.

I know that Ingrid B was supposed to be playing a dowdy woman in CACTUS FLOWER - but did her clothes have to be so ugly and ill-fitting? Was she just fat at the time?

Even her blue evening gown that was supposed to be stunning looked like a big stiff caftan with some sequins pasted on it....and her nurse's uniform was way too big as well......

Is the dress meant to be stunning? Compare it to Hawn's "effortless" dress. And no, Bergman wasn't fat.

I just don't think it was flattering to her at all, and there was no reason that she couldn't have had something that FIT her at least in that scene......

The character was trying too hard - the dress was chintzy, the hair was overly elaborate, the comic dancing. All appropriate for the character.

Didn't Bacall voluntarily go into semi-retirement to stay in New York and look after (to a point) son Sam Robards, born in 1961? A fatal mistake.

Are you kidding? Bacall was already washed up as a leading lady before the 1950s rolled around.

^ uneducated

Bergman wasn't fat, she was just a big gal. Nearly 5'10" when it wasn't fashionable to be tall, and strongly built like a proper descendant of Vikings.

It's just that the fashions of the era didn't suit big Viking women, they didn't even suit wispy models! The respectable formal fashions of the era featured blocky cuts, pale pastel colors, and stiff fabrics (mostly synthetic), things that added pounds to any figure. The flowing hippie fashions of the era actually would have suited Bergman better, but she was playing a solidly respectable middle-class woman in her forties, the kind who'd go to Lord and Taylor when she wanted a cocktail dress and be guided to that dreadful pale blue thing. So the dress didn't flatter her, but it was the sort of thing the character would have worn at that time.

[Quote] ^ uneducated

Not at all. By time of "Key Largo," where Trevor was the female who made the most impression, it was a wrap for Bacall as a leading lady. She was very much a secondary lead in "Young Man With a Horn." She was sold as a successor to Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn but that hyperbole cooled after only another film or two post "To Have and Have Not." "Written on the Wind," "Designing Woman" etc. were not Lauren Bacall vehicles. She may have been first billed female but that didn't amount to much.

Absolutely true. She would have disappeared if she hadn't married Bogie and raised her legs for Sinatra while her husband was dying.

It's too bad was it Lazar? spilled the beans on the Bacall/Sinatra wedding. It was a marriage made in heaven for the rags and DLers.

Bacall admitted in "By Myself" that a marriage to Sinatra would have been disastrous.

A marriage to everyone she ever married was disastrous, so she wasn't admitting very much, no?

Who is the freak on this thread mercilessly attacking Lauren Bacall?

Cactus Flower is one of my all-time favorite films. The script is fantastic -so many great lines. Matthau plays a great cad, very believably. Hawn is sexy, funny, and vulnerable -but with flashes of the independent woman she would become. And then there's Bergman, who radiates class and beauty as her character develops through the story. You can easily see why Cute-Young-Thing-Nextdoor Rick Lenz is enamored.

R171 I think it's Michael Biehn, as usual stalking the DL.

R171 needs to watch the Judy Crown interview. I helped her in a store once. It's all true. A friend was in a busy Balducci's and she demanded to be served first. She was old to wait in line so she left.

She was a cunt ya hear, a cunt.

"Lauryn Bacall was vile" is a mainstay subject on DL. It's almost cute that someone is outraged.

*Lauren

She was the original Faye only not crazy, just mean.

Faye Dunaway won an Oscar.

Bacall was awarded an honorary Oscar.

And nobody knows why. She just lasted a very long time but hardly had the career worthy of an honorary Oscar. She never carried a hit film by herself and had to turn to Broadway while still fairly young to sustain interest. Broadway! Can you imagine?

R181, Speaking of honorary Oscars, this would be my choice for most undeserved.

Whine all you want, bitches -Goldie won an Oscar for Cactus Flower!

Walter Matthau acted circles around her.

Circles? Like the enormous bags under his eyes?

Goldie was young perky slightly kooky and enchanting. She won an Oscar for her charm, hardly her performance.

Goldie was young perky slightly kooky and enchanting. She won an Oscar for her charm, hardly her performance.

We are charmed by many performances.

True, but do they deserve Oscars?

Yes, they do. You just try to be as charming. That is great acting.

Some folks have said that the karate chop done by Goldie during Matthau's "confession" that made them really like the performance and the character......but it's in the script!

"I am THE Eunice Burns!" was also in the script. So what?

So, R186, you think Goldie is kooky, enchanting, and charming in real life? That's sweet of you!

Cuz if you don't think so, then she was ACTING and deserved that Oscar.

The Sophia Loren honorary one was a head scratcher. She was hardly the first international star who broke through to the US. Now they gives ones to the likes of Jackie Chan and Steve Martin (even more u deserved). While Glenn Close has zero. Goes to show how cliquish the board of governors is.

Undeserved ^

Sophia Loren, Jackie Chan and Steve Martin made billions for the film industry, especially the first two (in adjusted dollars). That's something the Academy always values. Glenn Close will get her honorary award when she turns 80 in a few years.

R194, It's not as though Sophia didn't already have an Oscar and the Academy was correcting a past injustice.

R196 well let’s just give The Rock an Oscar if that’s the point. The Oscars are supposed to be about art AND commerce. Loren and Martin were never huge box office anyway. In fact giving it to Chan is like giving The Rock one in my book.

Ethel Merman also thought she had it in her contract for the stage version of Gypsy that the sale of the film rights would include her. She was not only furious but astonished when she read in the papers that Rosalind Russell would be Mama Rose in the film version.

What was wrong with these women? Didn't they bother to actually read their contracts before signing them?

That's why Hepburn bought the rights to Philadelphia Story. She knew she didn't have a chance in hell of getting the movie if she hadn't.

After losing all those roles in the movie adaptations, I doubt Merman would have just let first refusal for the movie slip out of her hands. She was likely realistic about her chances.

Glenn Close allegedly has first dibs to play Norma Demond in Sunset Boulevard if a movie is made. Bitch was too damn old for that part 15 years ago.

Norma is 50 years old. Close is 23 years older than that.

A 50 year old could conceivably fuck a young guy. A 73 year old does not fuck anyone.

^ That's right. Nothing but cobwebs, dust and bitter memories down there.

Did Goldie ever talk about working with Ingrid?