Word: jacks
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Jeff and Beau Bridges play Jack and Frank Baker--brothers who make their living in a two-piano nightclub act. Frank spits out the typical lounge-lizard vapid-speak which is endemic to "fill-the-tables/move-the-liquor" -type establishments. Jack, the younger, hipper and better-looking of the two, steadfastly suffers through the schmaltz for 31 years...
...imposing and inviting. Pfeiffer gives to Suzie Diamond such a joyous, sultry energy that all who listen feel the spirit of the music surround and lift them. They actually believe and wish all those old torch songs to be true. Suzie's version of "Machine' Whoopee" on top of Jack's piano is straight out of Hollywood history and perfectly executed...
...even though Fabulous Baker Boys is filled with familiar movie techniques and traditions, writer-director Stephen Klores does not overplay those old standbys. Jack and Suzie move through their "we're going to ignore each other even though we're madly in love" scene with style and grace. Jack and Frank play the bickering brothers to a tee, and they even manage to get into a not-half-bad food fight in their hotel room. (They call a cease-fire when Jack picks up a whole pineapple and warns his brother, "Don't tempt me." Talk about deterrance...
Klores avoids putting the two brothers into direct conflict over Diamond by making Frank happily married with children. The movie instead focuses on a battle for Jack's soul. On one side is Suzie, representing a passionate love of jazz, the extreme, the bold and the dangerous. On the other is Frank--safe, married, dependable, boring...
...fact, 25 Harvard men revived Sigma Alpha Mu on this campus because they had not found a better way to fulfill that need, then we, sadly, must at least be partly to blame. Ethan A. Budin '90 Jack S. Levy '92 Co-Chairs, Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel Social Committee