World of Henry Orient, The (Blu-ray Review)

27 Jul, 2015 By: Mike Clark

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Available via ScreenArchives.com
Twilight Time
Comedy
$29.95 Blu-ray
Not rated.
Stars Peter Sellers, Tippy Walker, Merrie Spaeth, Angela Lansbury.

Veteran screenwriter Nunnally Johnson’s adaptation of daughter Nora’s same-name 1956 novel was probably the best movie specifically centered on teenaged girls until 2001’s Ghost World, and they make compatible dual viewing (I’d double-bill them in a blink were I still programming) because they deal with opposite ends of that age spectrum. They’re also products of vastly different epochs, the second one being much more cynical (with a cause). Set in the ’60s when the decade was at the very tail end of playing like the Eisenhower ’50s, the earlier film finds nary a jaded bone in the Johnsons’ approach or in George Roy Hill’s direction, which constituted a semi-breakthrough for former live-TV director, whose limiting big-screen efforts up to that time had been Period of Adjustment and Toys in the Attic (it something of a stinker, though it did manage to combine the oeuvres of Lillian Hellman and Dean Martin).

In an exhausting flurry of work activity that climaxed with his dropping out of Billy Wilder’s Dino parody Kiss Me, Stupid following a quick series of near-fatal heart attacks allegedly during poppers-enhanced sex, Peter Sellers starred in four high-profile ’64 releases between January and June (December’s Stupid would have been the fifth). Orient differs from the year’s Dr. Strangelove (where he has three roles), The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark because Sellers isn’t front and center, notwithstanding top-billing and his character’s name in the title. As a second-rate concert pianist who has still managed to attain a small but dwindling following, he becomes an object of fascination for two early adolescents (Merrie Spaeth and Tippy Walker), students at an upscale Manhattan school who’ve just met and become instant friends. Supposedly, this plot propeller was based on Nora Johnson’s own from-afar schoolgirl infatuation with Oscar Levant — and given the latter’s publicly displayed neuroses on "The Jack Paar Program," it would be fun to hear a little more about this. In any event, the girls here have a way of crossing paths with Orient in semi-stalking fashion whenever he finds himself compromised — which is most of the time, given his inclination to philander with married women. (the main one played by Paula Prentiss).

The girls occupy somewhat different social strata. Walker’s “Val” is moneyed and more privileged, though her parents (kindly, if work-dominated, Tom Bosley; shrewish Angela Lansbury) are transparently mismatched. Spaeth’s “Gil” has a father who flew the coop and remarried, leaving her with mom (Phyllis Thaxter) and mom’s live-in femme friend in what might be a lesbian relationship before its time in American mainstream comedies — though perhaps only big-city audiences (which had to have been the germane box office demographic here) were likely to have picked up on this at the time during the "Petticoat Junction" era. Val is the more flamboyant and prone to be an issue in class, for which her reward has been a mom-mandated psychiatrist. Lansbury’s isn’t quite as despicable here as the harridan gold standard she’d played a couple years earlier in The Manchurian Candidate, which is not to say that you don’t sit through parts of Orient longing to see her get the Jimmy Hoffa treatment.

In real life, Spaeth eventually became a high-profile consultant with a Right-ward bent — but in terms of major acting showcases, this was the next thing to a one-shot for both actresses, though Walker had a marginally higher profile for a short time. It’s possible that Hill caught lightning in a bottle here and neither would have been as good in anything else, but their interplay is just abut anything one could want for in this simpatico mix of script, performance, production design (the sets and location footage blend expertly) and one of those ’60s Elmer Bernstein scores that gives off an “old friend” sound every time you hear it. This was, by the way, the first feature where the great Marion Dougherty (subject of the eye-opening 2012 documentary Casting By) got her first official screen credit for “casting” a movie — a landmark accomplishment. In terms of matching actor to role, future Munster Al Lewis’s contribution is by itself something to behold when the girls convince him that Val is the daughter of Jayne Mansfield (whereupon he asks about “Mr. Mansfield”).

Twilight Time regulars Nick Redman and Julie Kirgo (with film music expert Jeff Bond) offer a breezy commentary, though it’s amusing to note the friendly tension between Orient-adorer Kirgo (whose age and upbringing make her a dead-on soul sister with the key characters) and Redman (who has little use for Sellers in the movies not directed by Stanley Kubrick and doesn’t mind telling you so). Kirgo is exceptional at picking up on the fashion and other décor fillips that would otherwise be over my head, and I was happy to hear all three giving substantial time to a brief but injurious edit at a key point late in the movie that I hated in ’64 and think is as tonally deaf now. There’s also agreement that as great as the two girls are, this minor classic wouldn’t be what it is without the mammoth acting contributions of Lansbury and Bosley in the climactic scenes. Along with Walker and Spaeth, they put what really isn’t a Peter Sellers comedy (but was sold like one) into another realm altogether.
 

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