To view What’s Up Doc? click here.
Next year, I plan to teach a course on romantic comedy covering the Golden Age through the contemporary era. Not surprisingly, the choices to represent the Film School Generation are limited. It’s not that there were no romantic comedies during the late 1960s through the 1970s, but it was not a preferred genre for directors like Scorsese, De Palma, Altman, Coppola, Friedkin and their socially conscious colleagues.
Fortunately, Peter Bogdanovich’s What’s Up Doc? (1972) fits the bill nicely. One characteristic of the directors of this era was their fondness for paying homage to influential or classic films; another was their reworking or deconstruction of popular genres. What’s Up Doc?, which is an homage to Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby (1938), honors the classic era while updating the screwball comedy.
Bogdanovich did not actually go to film school. As a teenager, he studied acting with the legendary Stella Adler, landing a few roles in off-Broadway plays and mounting a production of The Big Knife at age 20. An avid movie-goer, he began writing monographs on directors for the Museum of Modern Art during the 1960s as well as criticism for Esquire. His writing caught the attention of producer Roger Corman, who asked Bogdanovich to do a rewrite of The Wild Angels (1966) and to serve as an uncredited second-unit director. Shortly thereafter, Corman gave the novice a chance to direct a film on the condition that he cost-cut by using footage from previous Corman productions. Also, he had to cast Boris Karloff, who owed Corman a movie. The result was Targets (1968), an impressive debut feature by any standards. Stories like this remind me just how vital Corman was to American film history because he gave so many “film school brats” their start. I also like the innocence and simplicity behind the story of Bogdanovich’s beginnings; in today’s corporate-driven Hollywood, no one gets into the business like this anymore.
Of all the Film School Generation directors, Bogdanovich was arguably the most reverential to the films and filmmakers of the Golden Age. By the time he directed his first feature, he had already completed documentaries on Howard Hawks and John Ford. In the early years, Bogdanovich liked to refer to his films in terms of the director he was channeling when he made them. The Last Picture Show (1971) was “my Ford picture,” he would say, while What’s Up Doc? was “my Hawks picture.” (Viewers can test Bogdanovich on his claims by streaming the five titles in FilmStruck’s collection of “Early Bogdanovich,” which includes Targets, The Last Picture Show, and What’s Up Doc?.)
Pick your adjective: madcap, zany or wacky! What’s Up Doc? has been described as all three. The story revolves around four visitors to a hotel in San Francisco, each with an identical piece of red luggage. The plot is advanced by the continual misplacement of the four bags. Ryan O’Neal, a bona fide heartthrob after his starring role in Love Story (1970), proved to be adept at comedy in the role of nerdy Howard Bannister, a musicologist who keeps his collection of prehistoric musical rocks in his luggage. Howard is destined to fall in love with his polar opposite, a free spirit named Judy Maxwell, played by Barbra Streisand. Their “rocky” romance is complicated by the presence of Howard’s controlling fiancée, Eunice Burns, played by the irreplaceable Madeline Khan. A perfect screwball set-up.
Playing an uptight academic, O’Neal wore black spectacles in the film. One of Bogdanovich’s detractors claimed that the reason Howard was saddled with glasses was because the director wore them in real life. I think the author was trying to suggest that Bogdanovich equated himself with the leading man for reasons that were not particularly flattering. But, anyone who has seen Bringing Up Baby knows that Howard’s glasses are a nod to Cary Grant’s character, David. Both O’Neal and Grant were stars who were famous for their handsome good lucks and considerable charm with the ladies; in both films, the characters’ glasses, clumsiness and unflattering wardrobes denoted the opposite of the actors’ screen personas.
Judy, much like Katharine Hepburn’s character Susan in Bringing Up Baby, creates disasters wherever she goes. But, she never seems to sweat it. The love triangle between Grant, Virginia Walker and Hepburn (two uptight academics and a free-spirited screwball heroine) is echoed in What’s Up Doc? with Howard, Eunice and Judy. Some of the physical comedy from Bringing Up Baby, including the ripping of Grant’s suit jacket, is reworked nicely by Bogdanovich for his film.
What’s Up Doc? references other classic movies as well. Judy sings “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca (1941), seductively crooning to an anxious Howard whom she calls “Steve”—just as Bacall famously called Bogart’s character “Steve” in Hawks’s To Have and Have Not (1944). Wealthy Frederick Larrabee, played by Austin Pendleton, has the same last name as Bogart’s wealthy family in Sabrina (1954). And, it’s hard to watch the climactic chase through the streets of San Francisco without thinking of Bullitt (1968), though the scene is more of a spoof than an homage.
Director Robert Altman was one person who did not find Bogdanovich’s homages interesting or clever. Altman called Bogdanovich the Xerox director, because he was “copying” the work of those he idolized. But, Altman may have been angry over an incident that occurred during the production of What’s Up Doc? He wanted to cast actor Michael Murphy in his film Images (1972), but Bogdanovich refused to release him from What’s Up Doc?. Reportedly, Murphy had only one scene left to do, and his part consisted of one brief long shot in which he stands on a street holding his piece of red luggage. But, Bogdanovich did not finish the scene in time to release Murphy to do Images. Altman never forgot what seemed like a deliberate slight.
During the early 1970s, Bogdanovich was at the top of his game, which inflated an already bulging ego. The Last Picture Show was released during the production of What’s Up Doc? to excellent reviews. A pumped-up Bogdanovich quickly became the darling of the entertainment press, and photos of him alongside main squeeze Cybill Shepherd graced the covers of many magazines. When the Oscar nominations were announced, The Last Picture Show garnered eight.
Taking advantage of the publicity, Warner Bros. released What’s Up Doc? at Radio City Music Hall around Easter of 1972. Streisand and powerful Hollywood agent Sue Mengers attended the opening screening. Surprisingly, both felt the film was a disaster. Even Streisand’s manager, Marty Ehrlichman, who had not wanted her to do the film, screamed that she had ruined her film career. Streisand’s camp proved to be wrong. Within a few weeks, What’s Up Doc? was a major hit, eventually becoming the third highest grossing film of 1972. It returned $28 million on a $4 million investment.
A few short years later, Bogdanovich’s personal life turned so tragic and strange I can’t imagine how he got through it, while his directorial career took a cataclysmic nosedive. Looking back in an interview, he recalled those heady days when What’s Up Doc? became his biggest hit: “My name circled the marquee: ‘PETER BOGDANOVICH’S COMEDY.’ It was the peak of my career. It was worth a lot of the shit that followed.”
Susan Doll
Comment Policy:
StreamLine welcomes an open dialogue with our readers and we encourage you to comment below, but we ask that all comments be respectful of our writers, readers, viewers, etc., otherwise we reserve the right to delete them.