The Purple Rose of Cairo is an enchanting masterpiece. It's also one of my favourite Woody Allen movies. One of the two reasons why I'm so fond of it is because of it's inventive plot:
Cecilia is a waitress in Depression era New Jersey, married to an out of work abusive husband. The one thing she loves most in the world is going to the movies. After a bad day, she goes and sees The Purple Rose of Cairo (one of those Thirties comedies about champagne, penthouses and night clubs) several times in a row. The character of Tom Baxter (poet, adventurer, explorer and all round swell fellow) notices her, falls in loves and steps off the screen into the real world. Panic ensues and while Cecilia is teaching Tom about the real world, the theatre manager calls the studio. The producer shows up, worried about his profits and Gil Sheperd (who plays Tom) tags along, worried about his career and a copy of him wandering around New Jersey and then falls in love with Cecilia.
The other reason why I love this movie is because of the ending. With any other film maker, the ending would not be the same and only Woody Allen could have come up with such a simple and interesting plot. While the ending is not the traditional happy ending that one expects from the movies, it is the right ending for the film which is about why we're so fascinated by those flickering images on the screen and why we go to the movies in order to escape from our lives for a moment and imagine how much better we would be if only life were like that.
There are hardly any bright colours in the movie, but the drab furnishings and worn clothes are better at showing how hard the Depression was for everyone and the only light came from the movie theatre, which was affordable then.
One of the pioneers of television comedy was Sid Caesar, who's still rockin' at 88. He was given his own ninety minute variety show in 1950 on Saturday nights called Your Show of Shows, which ran until 1954 and was then followed by an hour long sketch show called Caesar's Hour, which ran until 1957.
What made these two series special was, apart from their obvious influence on the younger generation of writers and performers watching at home, the amount of talent that worked for Sid Caesar.
The cast of players included Carl Reiner, Nanette Fabray, Howard Morris, Bea Arthur and the talented Imogene Coca.
Amongst the dozens of writers that worked for Sid Caesar throughout the years included some of the greatest TV writers, screenwriters and playwrights before branching out on their own included Carl Reiner (father of Rob and creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, which was inspired by Your Show of Shows), Neil Simon and his brother Danny, Larry Gelbart (creator of M*A*S*H the TV show), Mel Tolkin (story editor for All in the Family), Mel Brooks and a fresh out of high school Woody Allen.
What makes these shows amazing to watch compared with the show on the small screen nowadays is that these were filmed completely live, in front of a theatre full of people (who might not even laugh) and without any form of cue cards. Did I mention that these were live shows, done every week and without any form of tape delay or film segments to allow for costume changes. This kind of entertainment will never happen again.
As for the availability of the series, as with most episodes of forties and fifties television shows, (except for I Love Lucy) they were recorded on kinescope and most of these were quickly discarded by the network, without regard for posterity for this new medium. The episodes and sketches that survived are in the UCLA archives and in Sid Caesar's own private collection.
A DVD set of sketches from Mr. Caesar's collection is available on Region 1 and features interviews with the surviving writers and cast members talking about the show and how they came up with the sketches and is most illuminating to watch. Of course, a lot of the sketches are available Region Free on YouTube or your friendly neighbour pirate bay.
This is Sid Caesar's first appearance on network television in 1949 performing a sketch called Five Dollar Date, which he used to perform eight times a week in revues!
Because these were variety shows, they have musical numbers. Here are Jack Cole and Chita Rivera performing "Beale Street Blues" and introduced by Sid Caesar as the character Progress Hornsby, who offers the best explanation of Jazz that I've ever heard.
The cast were famous for performing what they called "double-talk", where they would perform a long or short sketch in gibberish that sounded like a real language, but with the odd English or Yiddish word thrown in so that the audience would understand. I still have no idea how they managed to do it. This is their parody of Pagliacci, complete with operatic singing in double-talk Italian.
They would also parody the entertainment trends of the day. One of the most famous sketches is The Three Haircuts, a pop vocal group.
This is probably the most famous sketch and the best example to show how important timing is to a live show:
"Big Business" is the first Sid Caesar sketch I ever saw when I was about four or five years old and you know that even sixty years on, this is still going on in board rooms around the world:
Sid Caesar and his writers would also parody the popular films and TV shows of the day. If you go to YouTube, you can watch "From Here to Obscurity" in two parts, but the audio goes off in the second part. Here is the fantastically hilarious parody of This is Your Life called "This is Your Story" with Howard Morris playing Uncle Goopy.
This is my favourite sketch:
There are some more sketches available on YouTube, but you really ought to rent or "download" The Sid Caesar Collection for a truly hilarious Saturday night.
Woody Allen is one of my favourite directors. I have seen all of his feature films and I've wanted to do a theme month for a while now, but with over forty movies to choose from, it was hard to decide what angle to go with in keeping with vintage in mind.
I could have gone with the style icon movies, like Annie Hall and Manhattan or the genre homage movies, like Everyone Says I Love You (musical) and Manhattan Murder Mystery (Nick and Nora). Instead I went with four films that he made that are set in the Thirties and Forties with some wonderful sets and fantastic wardrobe inspirations that fit into the theme of Nostalgia with Woody Allen.
Radio Days is from 1987 and is of of Woody Allen's best films. There's no real plot, just Woody narrating a series of memories that he associates with growing up listening to the radio. He presents a fictionalized version of his childhood home in 1940's Queens and some gossip and radio stories about some of his favourite fictionalized radio stars. It must have been wonderful to have grown up listening to the radio.
Radio Days shows why I like Woody Allen's style of film making so much and why I have seen every film. He tells stories about the human condition. Watching one of his movies has the same feeling as reading a novel does. Some of his films are truly terrific and some are only so-so, but each and everyone of them is at least interesting to watch.
Radio Days is one of those rare films that you can watch over and over again and still have that same warm, fuzzy feeling inside when the end credits roll, no matter how many times you see it.
By the way, Julie Kavner plays the Mother in the movie. She's also the voice of Marge Simpson, in case you can't place her voice and you spend the whole movie wondering where you've heard it before.
The Masked Avenger (a.k.a. The Shadow) "Beware evile doers, wherever you are!"
