Word: clare
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...legend of Lylah Clare was met by complete critical indifference and/or scorn and generally written off as a disaster. Well, film critics don't know anything about anything, as everyone knows, and Robert Aldrich has (perhaps inadvertently) put together a sensational picture. Lest potential Aldrich cultists get their hopes up unduly, his recent Killing of Sister George turned out truly mediocre, the same restless cutting that compels in Lylah Clare working against him in Sister George. Aldrich is a heavy-handed man, and Lylah Clare deals in heavy-handed mysticism, heavy-handed acting stylization, heavy-handed melodrama, heavy-handed tragedy...
...from South America and the U.S., other TIME correspondents reported the same combination of caution and anxiety to be heard. Their reports reflected an uncommon amount of argument and uncertainty about a difficult subject, but the staff that handled those files in New York had some special qualifications. Researcher Clare Mead got her master's in history at Notre Dame, taught high school in Texas as a Dominican...
...some point in the filming of Lylah Clare it was apparently decided to turn it into a spoof of those Holly-wooden melodramas about moviemaking, like The Carpetbaggers or Harlow. Perhaps the film was always meant to be funny. On the other hand, perhaps its producers wanted to broaden the humor because the script was enriched with such heady verbiage as "I'll rummage through your soul like a pickpocket through a stolen purse." Or because one way of dealing with Kim Novak's acting is to pretend that it was meant to be that...
...trouble is that instead of being outrageously funny, The Legend of Lylah Clare is merely outrageously silly. The cliches don't click, though they are all there. They include the egomaniacal director (Peter Finch) who tells Star Novak: "You're an illusion. Without me you don't exist." And the tyrannical studio head (Ernest Borgnine) who has monograms even on his toilet seats. And even the lesbian pass-made in this case by Italy's Rossella Falk, whose slinky version of a dope-shooting dyke is the best bit in the film. Director Robert Aldrich...
...talked well, ate well, hunted superbly, and knew every U.S. President from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson. The wedding reception of his daughter Clare in 1910 was attended by four members of the British Cabinet, including Churchill, then Home Secretary. It was also attended by several bill collectors, who were seated by themselves in a downstairs parlor. Frewen had, however, paid cash for his daughter's wedding gown. The seamstress who delivered it that morning had refused to accept a check...