Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Tueday's Forgotten Movie: TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON
Otto Preminger directed this tale of three misfits who forge a life together. Liza Minelli plays Junie, who has been disfigured in an acid attack by a former boyfriend. Ken Howard has seizures and Robert Moore is a gay paraplegic. This is not quite the film that the STERILE CUCKOO was earlier, but it was very emblematic of films of that time. Preminger gives it a comic touch, which makes it bearable. It is based on a novel by Marjorie Kellogg. With these films and CABARET and NEW YORK, NEW YORK, a film career seemed like a sure thing for Minelli. But things don't always work out.
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8 comments:
What a strange mood Hollywood was in back then. Today it would be a TV sitcom, something like MODERN FAMILY meets UGLY BETTY.
I confess I'm not a fan of Liza Minnelli. Ron's right: this movie would never be made in the current Hollywood environment.
Liza did have a successful career for a few years. After all she won the Best Actress Oscar and an Emmy the same year. Unfortunately, she may have peaked at 26. The stage was always her natural place, it seems to me.
Jeff M.
She wanted to be bigger than life and the days of that were past. We liked smaller, quieter roles.
Perhaps Ms. Minelli's personal life and genetics were cards stacked against her. I speak with some experience that theater people are often (not always) drawn into performance as a way of exorcising some demons. Ms. Minelli's demons, of course, have been fodder for the media. Finally, I think she has had a less than joyful life overall. Sad.
My husband knew her briefly in her young days. She was in a play for the summer in his hometown. Even then she could never resist belting out a song at local taverns.
Yes, she made bad marital choices, I think. And with that history of substance abuse....
I remember the early parts of the film very vivdly, especially the battery acid attack which is still upsetting frankly, but find it hard to remember the rest - must look it up, thanks Patti.
The paperback of the novel was reasonably ineluctable when I was about 10...it apparently did some business as a play before the film version. There are only so many highly-strung victim roles in major films at a given time, and all the ones with some vituperative aspect were being snatched up by Sandy Dennis...
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