Director Garry Marshall, who died last month at the age of 81, owned American popular culture in the last quarter of the 20th century. His sitcoms from the 1970s introduced characters so iconic their costumes are on display in the Smithsonian, and his romantic comedies of the 1980s re-set the conventions for the genre. Set your DVRs to catch Marshall’s first foray into feature films, How Sweet It Is, Saturday, August 27 at 8:00am EST.
Marshall’s strength as a director was also his weakness—the enormous popularity of his work. It was his strength because, like the moguls of the Golden Age, he knew how to produce well-crafted entertainment for the mainstream public; it was his weakness because that style, by its very nature, is never innovative, ground-breaking, or even edgy. It hits mid-America where it lives, but it is the bane of culture critics. In an interview, Marshall made a fair comparison when he stated that he set out to be “the Norman Rockwell of television.”
Marshall was a graduate of the journalism department at Northwestern University, which is also my alma mater. Over the years, he gave back to the school that had helped him learn to write. When I was a graduate student in film studies, he returned once or twice a year to offer short classes on writing or directing to the production students. After he completed his first two films, Young Doctors in Love and The Flamingo Kid, he hosted advance screenings at a local theater for Northwestern students. In the 1980s, he and his family donated money to build a dance and theater center on campus.
MARSHAL WITH HIS WRITING PARTNER, JERRY BELSON
Each time Marshall returned to NU for a seminar or short class, he hosted an evening of blooper reels from his television shows. I was a projectionist for the Radio, Television, Film department as part of my teaching assistantship, projecting 16mm films in classes. I always volunteered to project for Marshall’s blooper parties, because the evenings were so much fun. He delivered the 16mm reels to the booth personally and stayed to joke around with me. One year he brought along his pal Jerry Paris, who was a director on Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. The two brought out the humor in each other: They were akin to a vaudeville act. The projectors at NU were old Bell & Howells, and they were definitely quirky. The year that Paris joined Marshall, one of the projectors in the booth needed a little finessing at times. It tended to lose its loop, and if it wasn’t corrected, the film would come loose in the gate. I could tell by the sound when that was going to happen, and I would place my index finger in the loop and get it back on track. My understanding of the inner workings of the projector surprised Paris and Marshall, and they made a big deal over “my skill,” making me feel special. Both were naturally funny and genuinely nice. When Marshall began to direct feature films, I felt honor-bound to see his movies as a show of support. In the process, I became a real fan.
IN THE 1960s, REYNOLDS APPEARED IN SEVERAL HIGH-PROFILE,SOPHISTICATED ROMANTIC COMEDIES, THOUGH MOST HAVE NOT STOOD THE TEST OF TIME.
Like Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, and Woody Allen, Marshall began his career in comedy by writing for television. That generation of writers was influenced by variety theater and the Borsht Belt circuit of Jewish stand-up comedians. Based on observations of human behavior and experience, the humor was sharp-witted and sometimes self-deprecating, but generally warm-hearted and relatable. In 1960, he was hired to write jokes for Jack Paar, who was the host of The Tonight Show, and the following year, he moved to Los Angeles to write for The Joey Bishop Show. In Hollywood, he teamed with new pal Jerry Belson to write episodes for The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Lucy Show, and I Spy. In 1966, the pair created and launched their first television series, Hey, Landlord, starring tv favorite Will Hutchins and comedian Sandy Baron. The series lasted for only 31 episodes, but it was the beginning of an era in television.
Marshall and Belson wrote their first screenplay for the big screen, How Sweet It Is, in 1968 while still contributing scripts to popular TV series. Unfortunately, this romantic comedy, which was directed by Jerry Paris, did not launch the movie careers of Belson, Marshall, or Paris, nor did it bridge the gap between small screen and big screen styles and conventions. After this film failed to light the box office on fire, Marshall returned to television to hone his skills, launching several hit series before successfully making the leap from television to film.
IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY, GARNER SAID VERY LITTLE ABOUT ‘HOW SWEET IT IS’ BEYOND THE FACT THAT HE HATED THE FILM.
How Sweet It Is stars James Garner and Debbie Reynolds as Grif and Jenny Henderson, the parents of a hippie teen who wants to follow his girlfriend through Europe. They allow him to go but decide to take the trip with him as a kind of working vacation. Grif, who is a photographer, plans to cover the excursion for a magazine. He travels throughout Europe, while Jenny rents a villa on the Riviera to await the trio’s reunion. Problems begin when Jenny is romanced by the villa’s owner, a slick Frenchman played by Maurice Ronet. Though Grif finds out, he is surprisingly nonchalant, because his attention is diverted by an attractive tour guide, making Jenny feel old and ignored. If the film’s plot seems a bit dated, it might be because it had been intended as a vehicle for Doris Day a few years earlier. After Day dropped out, the project lingered for just enough time to make it seem old hat.
‘HOW SWEET IT IS’ IS BASED ON MURIEL RESNICK’S NOVEL ‘THE GIRL IN THE TURQUOISE BIKINI.’
Reviewers, including a young Roger Ebert, thought the tone of the film was too much like a sitcom, partly because the plot was preposterous and contrived. Ebert noted that Garner traded too much on his persona as the affable, attractive leading man (a la Maverick), which he did not find “realistic.” But, the film features the same tone and acting style as other romantic comedies of the period, including Day’s films as well as family comedies such as The Impossible Years. The exaggerated tone was actually a convention of the genre during the 1960s. Plus, part of the charm of this film is the star turns by Garner and Reynolds who play into their star personas.
How Sweet It Is may have been a b.o. disappointment, but it did contain the seeds of Marshall’s style when he turned to directing 12 years later. Marshall was excellent at casting. He liked to cast well-known movie stars in roles that exploited their familiar personas to their best advantage. He understood how to use star image as a storytelling element to build character—Richard Gere and Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride, Matt Dillon in The Flamingo Kid, Goldie Hawn in Overboard, Hawn’s daughter Kate Hudson in Raising Helen, Julie Andrews in The Princess Diaries. The stories for these star vehicles were utterly contrived, or “high concept,” but the formula in which mismatched pairings came together was virtually irresistible. Feminists railed against Pretty Woman when it was released, and I am no fan of the Cinderella myth that the plot embraces, but I certainly prefer Marshall’s female characters to those in today’s misogynist gross-out comedies by Judd Apatow and his minions.
MARSHALL DIRECTS JASON SUDEIKIS IN HIS LAST FILM, ‘MOTHER’S’ DAY.’
And, no director of contemporary comedy had a stronger sense of craftsmanship, or a smoother visual style. Shots dovetailed from one into the other in seamless continuity while the plot was consistent and logical from scene to scene. His films epitomized the classic narrative style that Hollywood made famous for 100 years. Sadly, today’s corporate-run studios are hell-bent on tossing that style aside as they depend on hack directors who seem to edit their films with chainsaws.
I will always have a soft spot for Garry Marshall, and I believe mature movie-goers will miss his glossy, well-crafted comedies.