Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Angel, Angel, Down We Go - 1969

ANGEL, ANGEL, DOWN WE GO 1969 lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2013/04/angel-angel-down-we-go-1969.html

In my previous post about the James Cagney / Doris Day film Love Me or Leave Me, my praise for Doris Day’s remarkably accomplished, against-type assaying of the dramatically intense role of Jazz-Age songstress Ruth Etting, was followed up by a lengthy harangue about stars who play it safe and fail to venture very far beyond the narrow parameters of their carefully crafted images. An extremely talented actress and singer, Day’s choice of film roles may have made her a star (she worked that fresh-faced, girl-nextdoor thing well into middle age), but they were films that largely ignored her considerable versatility and dramatic range. Day is so effective in playing a not-so-nice character that it led me to further lament the perceived cultural loss of her having turned down the role of Mrs. Robinson (that sexually predatory, chain-smoking, alcoholic) in Mike Nichols’ The Graduate.

Of course, all this tsk-tsking about the failure of image-conscious Hollywood stars to take creative risks is a stance nurtured exclusively by memories of those instances where said risks actually paid off. Eternal ingénue Audrey Hepburn gave the best performance of her career playing a disillusioned wife in Stanley Donen’s Two For the Road (1967), while perennial sex-kitten Ann-Margret’s moving portrayal of an aging party-girl in Carnal Knowledge (1971) garnered her an Oscar nomination.

My guess is that this was Jennifer Jones' mantra throughout the entire filming of Angel, Angel Down We G o

What tends to fade from memory are the far more plentiful instances wherein actors, in a sincere attempt to break from type, inflict untold damage to years of hard-won legitimacy and respect by taking on roles which have the end result of making them look more ridiculous than courageous.

One such doozy of a miscalculation is the aptly titled Angel, Angel, Down We Go , a film that sees Oscar-winner and member of old-school Hollywood royalty Jennifer Jones extend herself so far out on a wobbly limb that the only trajectory can be downward.

Angel, Angel, Down We Go is a marvelously loopy artifact from the age of culture-clash psychedelia, and a primo example of that weird transitional period in motion picture history (roughly 1966 through 1970) when it appeared at

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times as though Hollywood had completely lost its mind. How else to explain the green-lighting of a film which casts classy Jennifer Jones as a former porn star unhappily married to a gay industrialist (Charles Aidman); saddle her with an unwanted, overweight teenage daughter (Holly Near); and have her seduced by a Jim Morrison-esque rock star (Jordan Christopher)?

Released by American International Pictures (the Drive-In exhibitor's best friend) and penned by the same writer who delivered the 1968 sleeper hit Wild in the Streets; Angel, Angel, Down We Go is an exercise in youth rebellion exploitation that didn't pay off back in 1969, but reaps considerable dividends today for being an astonishingly weird product of a time when Hollywood was seriously grasping at creative straws.

Jennifer Jones as Astrid Steele

Jordan Christopher as Bogart Peter Stuyvesant

Holly Near as Tara Nicole Steele

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Charles Aidman as William Gardiner Steele

Rock star/mogul/cult-leader Bogart Peter Stuyvesant (“My mother went into labor pains during a Bogart flick...she almost dropped me in the lobby!”) first deflowers, then insinuates himself into the life of unloved, overweight debutante, Tara Nicole Steele. Stuyvesant and his motley band of sky-diving cultists (an uncomfortable-looking Lou Rawls; obligatory pregnant flower child, Davey Davidson; and a underutilized but probably just-happy-not-to-bewearing-monkey-makeup. Roddy McDowall) see in Tara a symbol of overindulged, fat America. In her decadent parents: the personification of older-generation corruption and greed. Beyond, perhaps, talking them to death, what is the seriously unhinged Bogart’s plan for this family? Your guess is as good as mine. "You're insane!" people keep shouting at him, as though we hadn't hadn't noticed.

All I know is that along the way he sings a passel of pop/rock songs written by the Oscar-nominated songwriting team of Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann (Somewhere Out There ), spouts a lot of anti-establishment gibberish, then winds up seducing mom, dad, and daughter. Not necessarily in that order.

"We say hip hooray, hip hip hooray for fat!"

The newly liberated Tara dances to Bogart's composition to corpulence: " The Fat Song." Barely considered chubby by today's Big-Gulp, Super-Size standards 19year-old Holly Near, making her film debut, gained five pounds for the role (the studio asked for 20).

According to screenwriter/director Robert Thom (a Yale graduate [so much for higher education] and the man with the mixed-bag resume of All the Fine Young Cannibals, The Legend of Lylah Clare, and Death Race 2000 to his (dis)credit), Angel, Angel, Down We Go is adapted from his 1961 play and was intended to be “A far out version of a (Michael Arlen’s) The Green Hat kind of play about a wild girl heading for destruction…a present day type of F. Scott Fitzgerald heroine.” (Source: Jennifer Jones: The Life and Films by Paul Green).

It being adapted from a play certainly explains the film’s talkiness (you've never encountered a lippier group of flower children in your life), but the rest of that quote is a bit of a stretch. Anyone detecting even a note of F. Scott Fitzgerald in this monumentally disjointed morass, has likely gone the way of Zelda. Angel, Angel, Down We Go

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was Robert Thom's debut/swansong as a director.

Pills with an alcohol chaser accompany Jennifer Jones' explanation for why she named her daughter Tara. Meanwhile, David O. Selznick, Jones' recentlydeceased real-life hubby and Gone With the Wind producer, can be heard spinning in his grave.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM The economic power of the newly-emboldened youth audience of the late '60s really threw old-guard Hollywood for a loop. Long out-of-touch and more concerned with capitalizing on the counterculture zeitgeist than trying to understand it; Hollywood during this period produced some of the oddest most out-there films in the annals of cinema history. Angel, Angel, Down We Go is an unholy marriage of studio system aesthetics trying to pass itself off as an underground, college campus youth-rebellion flick. The result is a work of pandering insincerity that manages to alienate both its target audience (trying to pass off 40-year-old Roddy McDowall and 35-year-old, recedinghairlined Lou Rawls as agents of an impending youth revolution is very close to science fiction), and the mature demographic most likely to actually know who Jennifer Jones is.

The Mild Bunch (L.to R.) Popular soul singer Lou Rawls makes his embarrassing film debut as Joe. Jordan Christopher fronted the rock group "The Wild Ones" and was married to Sybil Burton (Richard's ex) at the time. Holly Near is a well-known folk singer and activist. Davey Davidson as pregnant Anna Livia is known to fans of the sitcom, Hazel, as Nancy, Mr. B's virginal niece. Roddy McDowall as Santoro was friends with director Robert Thom and clearly owed him a favor.

For fans of bizarre cinema, however, all of the above are merely ingredients for the creation of obscenely entertaining train-wrecks from major studios that could not have been made at any other time in cinema history. Get a load of this dialogue:

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Jennifer Jones yelling at her husband- “Oh, you’re out of your Chinese skull!" (He's not Chinese.)

Jennifer Jones playing the truth game- “I made 30 stag films and never faked an orgasm!”

Jennifer Jones to her masseuse- “Stop it, Hopkins, you’re hurting me. You’re a bloody, sadistic dyke!”

Jennifer Jones in a moment of self-reflection- “In my heart of hearts, I’m a sexual clam.”

Jennifer Jones rebuffing the advances of the man who just bedded her daughter- "There's a word for you, but I don't think I even know what it is."

Yes, Miss Jones has the lion's share of quotably bad dialogue. She delivers it with so much gusto and bite, one wonders if perhaps she thought she was appearing in another absurdist hoot like John Huston's Beat the Devil (1954). Unfortunately for her, Robert Thom is no Truman Capote.

Only in the Sixties My favorite film of five-time Oscar-nominee Jennifer Jones is Madame Bovary (1949). Who would guess that 20 years later the 49-year-old actress would appear in a film requiring she rest her head near the crotch of a naked, 26-yearold balladeer?

PERFORMANCES Jennifer Jones in Angel, Angel, Down We Go is less a instance of against-type casting so much as it is “What the hell was she thinking?” casting. If you can get over the shock of seeing the star of The Song of Bernadette wallowing in the sordid gutter of sex and drugs exploitation, you can catch glimpses of a sensitive performance that never had a chance. She’s particularly good in a scene where her character revisits the Santa Monica Pier cotton candy stand she worked at as a girl. Alas, the quiet moments in this film aren't allowed to last too long.

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The ever-refined Astrid Steele responds to her daughter complimenting her on being "The most beautiful woman in the world."

Watching an actress as good as Jennifer Jones in a film as crude and intentionally vulgar as this, you never get a chance to applaud her "bravery" in breaking out of her Selznick-Shell. Why? Because not only is the film so far beneath her, but because you're never quite sure whether she's in on the joke. Her participation feels like it's part of a secret put-down, and you feel a little embarrassed for her. Angel, Angel, Down We Go joins the ranks of the many Hollywood films from this era that made it their business to present former leading ladies of the silver screen in as unflattering a light as possible: Lana Turner, The Big Cube (1969) / Eleanor Parker, Eye of the Cat (1969) / Rita Hayworth, The Naked Zoo (1970) / Miriam Hopkins, Savage Intruder (1970) Mae West, Myra Breckinridge (1970).

"The Biggest Mother of Them All!" Astrid builds up a head of indignant steam listening to Bogart's newest insult composition, the sprightly ditty, "Mother Lover." In the meantime, Tara nervously waits for the shit to hit the fan.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY One of the niftier byproducts of Hollywood’s embracing of the economic potential of the sexual revolution was the industry’s fascination with homosexuality, bisexuality, and narratives in which opportunistic young men sleep their way through entire families (Entertaining Mr. Sloane - 1970, Something for Everyone -1970, Teorema -1968). As I first saw Angel, Angel, Down We Go when it came out in 1969 and I was just 12-years-old, what made the biggest impression on me, and contributed to my seeing it at least three times that summer, was the surprising amount of male nudity. It's one of those rare exploitation films where the women remain dressed and the guys doff their clothes left and right. The movie made absolutely no sense to me then (nor now, for that matter) but with all that male skin on parade, who was I to complain?

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How can you hate a film whose first four minutes feature a girl's voiceover narration praising her perfect parents, only to have the idealized father appear in the shower with a young man!

The ever-game Roddy McDowall shows that his celebrated boyish charm didn't stop at the neck.

After seducing the daughter and the mother, Bogart Peter Stuyvesant (Jordan Christopher, bottom tier) literally takes the place of Mr. Steele's previous boy-toy (top tier, actor unknown).

THE STUFF OF DREAMS Filmed in February of 1968, Angel, Angel, Down We Go was released in August of 1969, the same month as the Manson murders. This was the film’s title when I saw it at the Embassy Theater in San Francisco that year. I had no idea until many years later that in 1970 Angel, Angel, Down We Go (which was a considerable flop) was re-released

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under the title Cult of the Damned in a tasteless effort to capitalize on the film’s eerie similarities to the Manson case (those similarities extend as well to the Patty Hearst kidnapping case in 1974, but by then, this movie had long been forgotten).

Jordan Christopher was just one of several actors (among them Christopher Jones and Michael Parks) that tried hard to work a James Dean vibe in late '60s exploitation films

A bomb under either title, Angel, Angel, Down We Go has more or less disappeared into what some might say is well-deserved obscurity. But for those with a taste for the bizarre, a taste for the jaw-droppingly weird, a taste for the clumsy collision of old-Hollywood and the shape of things to come‌well, Angel, Angel, Down We Go is a psychedelic mind trip well worth taking.

Much of Angel, Angel, Down We Go was shot at a Beverly Hills mansion that once belonged to Marion Davies. Fans of old Hollywood will get a kick out of seeing this beautiful palace, which still stands today Check it out HERE.

Literally high on drugs, Tara finds she can't get down from the ceiling (I told you this movie was weird).

NAME DROPPER'S CORNER In 1995 I worked as a personal exercise trainer for the late Jennifer Jones. I remember her as an extremely gracious lady with a wonderful sense of humor and terrific discipline when it came to exercise. After working with her for about 4 months, I found the courage to tell her that Angel, Angel, Down We Go was the first film of hers I'd ever seen.

Laughing, her response to me was, "I'm sorry to hear that. I'm afraid I might owe you an apology." When I said that it inspired me to see her other films, told me, "I'm glad of that. But I hope you've forgotten about it...I certainly have."

As much as I wanted to bring the subject up again over the next few months (I wanted to know what everyone wants to know when they see this movie, "What possessed you?"), I nevertheless erred on the side of caution and kept my

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mouth shut on the topic. It felt like the polite and professional thing to do, but it certainly did nothing for satisfying my film-geek curiosity.

The reviews are in!

Copyright Š Ken Anderson

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