Tu che le vanita project
La Cieca must first of all express how startled she is that this particular item didn’t appear first on NYC Opera Fanatic — after all, Lana Turner as Elisabetta in Don Carlo? Well, in fact, Miss Turner never did sing any Verdi, on- or off-stage (unlike her precursor Joan Crawford), but my goodness, doesn’t she just look the part?
It is only with slight disappointment that La Cieca notes that La Turner is not even pretending to be an opera singer here. It’s a moment from the beginning of the 1969 film The Big Cube, portraying Lana’s character, the celebrated stage actress Adriana Roman, performing one of her celebrated stage roles. (Now, that does seem like a missed opportunity, doesn’t it? I mean, with a name like “Adriana Roman,” why waste your time in legitimate theater?) Well, anyway, this little scena is only the beginning of a dramatic roller-coaster for Adriana/Lana. Before you know it, her stepdaughter’s skuzzy gigolo boyfriend (George Chakiris) will be spiking poor Lana’s sleeping pills with LSD in a sinister plot to drive the poor diva mad, mad I tell you.
Now, let’s see if La Cieca can remember why she brought all this up just at this particular moment. Oh, yes, now she has it. The Big Cube has just been released on DVD in a boxed set (like Proust!) fetchingly entitled Cult Camp Classics 2 – Women in Peril. The collection also includes our Joan’s theatrical swan song Trog and the echt women’s prison movie Caged.
Which reminds La Cieca: did you realize that an operatic version of Caged could be cast easily with the singers from Dialogues des Carmélites? (Mignon Dunn as Warden Ruth Benton? Lucine Amara as Matron Evelyn Harper? Régine Crespin as “Vice Queen” Elvira Powell?)
Campy movies: sometime in the 60′s there was a spoken dialogue movie of Don Carlos, probably the Schiller play, with Paul Scofield as a dreary King Phil. It had a goofy title, something like “Who Was that Lady?” Anybody remember seeing it? And would Gertrude Bindernagel make a good subject for an opera?
Well, this is copied from Internet Movie Database. Yes, Scofield is King Philip. Olivia de Havilland is Princess Eboli !
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“That Lady” (1955)
Ana, the Princess of Eboli, wears a black patch over her right eye, where she was blinded as a youth when fighting a duel in defense of her king, the despotic Philip. Thereafter she and the monarch were close friends, although his passion for her was never consummated. She marries one of Philip’s ministers, bore him a son, and soon became a widow. Now Philip calls upon her to assist in coaching a commoner, Antonio Perez, for the office of first secretary to the crown.The result is more than Philip bargained for as Ana and Antonio become lovers and create a scandal in court, always the scene of perpetual intrigue. Philip has Antonio arrested on a drummed-up charge of murder, and when Ana refuses to leave Madrid, she too is arrested. After spending time in jail, she is transferred to her home and held in check. Antonio escapes and makes his way to Ana, who persuades him to leave the country and take her son.
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Call me old-fashioned, but I think I prefer the Verdi opera.
I’m sorry, but as a member of the Los Angeles Terrible Movies Society, I am contractually obligated to do this:
TROG! TROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG!
Actually, I think “Caged” would make a fantastic opera. Our babysitter let my sister and I stay up late and watch the movie on TV in the early 1960s at a ridiculously impressionable age, and neither one of us has quite gotten over the experience.
I can just see the musicalization of the scene where they kill Eleanor Parker’s Kitten! The musical climax, of course, would be when the Butch Prisoner who’s been sent to Solitary One Too Many Times finally murders the Evil Matron by stabbing her with a fork, with an entire chorus of female prisoners singing, “Kill her! Kill her! Kill her!” It would make Prokofiev’s “Fiery Angel” look like child’s play.
Here’s CAGED’s immortal Hope Emerson, who played Evelyn Harper:
http://www.tyrone-power.com/hopeemerson.jpg
I am thinking Hildegard Behrens…
Krunoslav:
Behrens perhaps a little underwhelming physically. Perhaps Eva Marton or Astrid Varnay? (Though to tell the truth I still say it’s Lucine’s part.)
Here’s a YouTube clip from Caged showing Harper (Hope Emerson) all dolled up for a date with her “boyfriend.”
Thanks J.Jo for the Lana heads-up. I had always heard the Big Cube was a big stinkeroo, so my Lana goes from Madame X to Falcon Crest without interruption. If anyone wants more Lana than they can shake a big cube at — check out Lana Turner Online @ http://www.lanaturneronline.com/ (and don’t miss the transcript of Lana at Town Hall. The doyenne of Lana-Online says of Big Cube: The Big Cube is so insane and over the top that you’ll need to take a hit of acid just to watch it.” Well, J.Jo, what IS acid like?
Thanks J.Jo for the Lana heads-up. I had always heard the Big Cube was a big stinkeroo, so my Lana goes from Madame X to Falcon Crest without interruption. If anyone wants more Lana than they can shake a big cube at — check out Lana Turner Online @ http://www.lanaturneronline.com/ (and don’t miss the transcript of Lana at Town Hall. The doyenne of Lana-Online says of Big Cube: The Big Cube is so insane and over the top that you’ll need to take a hit of acid just to watch it.” Well, J.Jo, what IS acid like?
NYCOF:
“The Big Cube” would probably be more fun on acid, true. Probably the best parts of the movie are a) the central “freakout” scene in which the lavishly peignoired Lana wears a long platinum pageboy fall that makes her look eerily like Dame Gwyneth Jones in “La Voix Humaine,” and b) the “revisiting” of that same scene in the play-within-the-play which of course leads to Adriana Roman’s triumphant return as First Lady of the Theater.
Well, yes, there is also the scene where a tripping George Chakiris has a conversation with an ant. Oh, yes, “The Big Cube” is a definite must-see.