Movie Movie

Plot

The film is introduced by George "The Burns" Burns, who tells viewers that they are about to see an old-style double feature. In the old days, he explains, movies were in black-and-white except sometimes "when they sang it came out in color."

''Dynamite Hands''

Joey Popchik, a young man from a poor family, dreams of one day becoming a lawyer, even attending night school while selling food on the side. However, his sister is losing her eyesight and the only doctor who could possibly cure her costs around $25,000. This occurs after he encounters a gruff boxing manager in Gloves Malloy, who gave him a business card after he sees Joey pop an arrogant contender. As such, he becomes a boxer to raise the money to have her cured, complete with a handshake deal with Malloy (rather than a contract) with a guy named Peanuts as his second in the ring while a first fight is set up in quick time. Within a couple of months and over two dozen victories but a middling amount of money made, Joey wants to fight at the prominent venue of all in the Madison Square Garden. Vince Marlow, a crooked rival of Malloy, gets him a fight first in Hollywood while Popchik tries to make sure that Malloy never leaves his corner. Along the way, he gets seduced by fame and fortune. He finds that his sister has taken a liking to a gangster in Johnny Danko near to Marlow, and he reacts badly to seeing them together at first. Marlow, rejected by Popchik when he comes back to his senses, advises him to take a dive when it comes to the championship fight. He takes a beating in the first four rounds. Near the start of the fifth round, when he hears about his sister having gotten married in New Jersey and seeming happy with her new husband, decides to go all out for the round in fighting. Joey wins the fight with a tremendous round of blows. Malloy, having put the pieces together, tries to get Joey away from the angry Marlow (who bet all his money against him), but Malloy is shot and dies. Joey, so that "poetic justice could be served," races through law school to become the prosecutor that could prosecute Marlow. The jury, evidently moved with no need for deliberation, find Marlow guilty. After the trial ends, his sister, now cured, announces her pregnancy while Joey credits his friends in his corner as "a man can move mountains with his bare heart."

''Baxter's Beauties of 1933''

Legendary theatrical producer Spats Baxter learns he's dying. To support the child he never knew after he dies, Baxter plans to create one last Broadway smash, Baxter's Beauties of 1933. He has never been able to face his child because his past alcoholism led to the death of his wife in a car crash. Instead of raising her as a single father, he sent her anonymous checks in the mail.

Kitty Simpson, a young ingenue with dreams of performing on Broadway, arrives to audition. Baxter's accountant, Dick Cummings, is at heart a genius songwriter, writes an entirely new show in a couple of days.

Baxter's star, Isobel Stuart, is a spoiled alcoholic actress who almost destroys the entire production with her drunkenness and reckless spending of the show's money. At one point, the production requires $36,000 to save the show from being closed. Miraculously, Baxter receives a check from a mysterious benefactor who wants the show to go on.

Isobel, who has been enticing songwriter Cummings with her feminine wiles, see him kissing young Kitty Simpson backstage. In a jealous rage, Isobel tells Baxter to fire Simpson, or she will not perform in the show. With opening night in a few days, Baxter acquiesces to Isobel's demands.

Despite getting all of her demands met, two hours before the curtain is to rise on opening night, Isobel is found unconscious on her dressing room floor, passed out from drunkenness. Baxter fires her.

Without a leading lady, Baxter's Beauties 1933 appears ready to close before it opens. Luckily, Dick Cummings is there to tell Baxter that Kitty knows all of the songs and choreography, and that after being fired, she returned to New Rochelle. Baxter sends for her.

Trixie, a chorusgirl and Kitty's former roommate, tells Baxter that Kitty is the mysterious benefactor, having saved the $36,000 from checks she received throughout childhood from an unknown source. Baxter realizes that Kitty is his long lost child, and when she arrives, he claims her as his daughter.

Kitty and the company perform joyfully, and Kitty becomes a star. As the curtain falls, a dying Baxter tells her "One minute you're standing in the wings, the next minute you're wearing 'em."

Cast

• George C. Scott as "Gloves" Malloy / "Spats" Baxter
• Trish Van Devere as Betsy McGuire / Isobel Stuart
• Red Buttons as "Peanuts" / "Jinks" Murphy
• Eli Wallach as Vince Marlow / Pop
• Rebecca York as Kitty
• Harry Hamlin as Joey Popchik
• Ann Reinking as "Troubles" Moran
• Jocelyn Brando as Mama Popchik / Mrs. Updike
• Michael Kidd as Pop Popchik
• Kathleen Beller as Angie Popchik
• Barry Bostwick as Johnny Danko / Dick Cummings
• Art Carney as Dr. Blaine / Dr. Bowers
• Clay Hodges as "Sailor" Lawson
• George P. Wilbur as Tony Norton
• Peter Stader as Barney Keegle (as Peter T. Stader)
• Jimmy Lennon as The Announcer (as James Lennon)
• Barbara Harris as Trixie Lane
• Charles Lane as The Judge / Mr. Pennington
• Stanley Donen as Nightclub Emcee / Cab Driver (uncredited)
• George Burns as himself, Introductory Segments (uncredited)

Production

The film originally was called Double Feature and was based on an idea of Larry Gelbart. He pitched the project in 1975 and was successful at Universal. He says it took him and co-writer Sheldon Keller six weeks to write the film and six months to get paid. In June 1976, Universal announced Gelbart would write, direct, and produce the film.

The studio disliked the script and allowed Gelbart to take it elsewhere. Gelbart showed it to Martin Starger, the American representative of Lew Grade. Both Starger and Grade loved the script; Grade had been a backer of Gelbart's Sly Fox and he agreed to finance Double Feature.

The budget was $6 million. Stanley Donen agreed to direct. Filming started in October 1977.

It was decided to shoot the film using color stock that could be printed in black-and-white to give the filmmakers the option of showing the film in black-and-white or color. The title was changed to Movie Movie because it was felt Double Feature might be confusing. There were plans to include a Flash Gordon-type serial, but this was not filmed.

George C. Scott said "Gelbart is such a good writer and the picture was so much fun I was almost ashamed to take the money."

The film was previewed extensively. As a result of the preview, a newsreel used to open the film was dropped, along with a trailer for a fake movie. A new ending was shot for "Dynamite Hands," which took one day. A prologue was added starring George Burns, in which Burns explained what double features were.

Release

The film premiered at the Sutton Theatre in New York City on November 22, 1978. In the theatrical release, as George Burns leads us to expect in the film's prologue, "Dynamite Hands" and the mock film trailer (for Zero Hour, a flying-ace movie set in World War I) were in black-and-white, and the musical "Baxter's Beauties of 1933" was in color.

Critical reception

The film received generally positive reviews upon its release between November 1978 and February 1979. Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called the film "a whizbang and hugely enjoyable exercise in nostalgia for the kind of all-singing, all-talking, all-dancing, all-corny movies that everybody says nobody makes any more. It celebrates, with accuracy, skill and warm affection, the plotty and propulsive film delights a later generation speaks of fervently as real, by God, movie movies, whence the title. The writers, Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller, have concocted a whole double feature: a fight film in period black and white and a musical in all the colors of a hyped-up rainbow, the two digest-sized movies linked by one of those hyperthyroid previews of coming attractions that are still, and they often were, better than the movie itself turns out to be."{{cite news | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date =

Corbin Patrick of The Indianapolis Star said that "the clever scripts as written by Larry Gelbart and Sheldon Keller do not hold these memory gems up to ridicule. They are treated fondly, and in good humor. And the playing by George Scott. Trish Van Devere and others, most of whom appear in both segments, is beautiful."{{cite news | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023

Eleanor Ringel of The Atlanta Constitution called the parodies "dead-on".{{cite news | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023

Dave Chenowith of the Montreal Gazette wrote his review of the film under the pseudonym of Louella Hopper, saying that "it's so good to see a movie that knows what entertainment is all about—good, clean fun like we used to see when Jack Warner and that nice Mr. Goldfish were still alive—not like so much of the so-called 'hard-hitting' violence and dirt the studios shovel out today. (Remember what that poor Sen. McCarthy once told me in the MGM cafeteria: 'A cynic is just a Commie who wants to be rich.' Wasn't that the truth. . .) Well, Movie Movie is something different. Director Stanley Donen (I remember him when he was still in flannels, directing Singin' in the Rain) has made two movies in one and they're both beautiful takeoffs on those terrific Grade-B films of the 1930s. That's why The Gazette has asked me to come out of retirement and tell you all about it."{{cite news | access-date = November 15, 2023

Internationally, Alexander Walker of the London Evening Standard called it "the happiest package deal on the current screen"{{cite news | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023

Not everyone praised it, however. Rex Reed said it was "the latest in a long and boring series of remakes", and added that "all they've proved is that they can make old movies that are just as dumb as they made them 40 years ago; in their attempts at parody, they've ended up creating the same thing they're sending up."{{cite news | access-date = November 15, 2023 | access-date = November 15, 2023

Four reviews of the film are listed on Rotten Tomatoes, which does not have a sufficient score on the film as of 2023.

Proposed sequel

Lew Grade liked the movie so much that he commissioned a sequel. In October 1978, he said this would be called Movie Movie Two and would be written by Gelbart and Keller and once more directed by Donen. Gelbart wrote a script which is among his papers at UCLA, but it went unproduced.

The movie failed at the box office. Grade blamed poor distribution from Warner Bros. This contributed to Grade deciding to help set up his own distribution company, Associated Film Distribution, with ultimately disastrous financial consequences for him and his company.

Home media

Some home video editions (like the 1980 Magnetic Video Corporation edition) featured the original color version of "Dynamite Hands" that was printed on black-and-white film stock during its theatrical release.

The film was released on Blu-ray by Scorpion Releasing June 28, 2016.

Awards and honors

References

References

1. {{AFI film. 56949
2. [https://www.timeout.com/movies/movie-movie Time Out]
3. [https://playbill.com/article/playbill-viewing-ann-reinking-barry-bostwick-barbara-harris-and-more-spoofed-1930s-double-features-in-movie-movie Playbill Viewing: Ann Reinking, Barry Bostwick, Barbara Harris, and More Spoofed 1930s Double Features in Movie Movie. Playbill]
4. MOVIE CALL SHEET: 'Far From the Eyes, Near to Heart', Lee, Grant. Los Angeles Times 30 June 1976: g10.
5. 'Movie Movie' --Why? Why?: 'Movie Movie' --Why? Why?, By LARRY GELBART. New York Times ]19 Nov 1978: D1.
6. Gelbart, Larry. (1978-11-19). "'Movie Movie' —Why? Why?". The New York Times.
7. FILM CLIPS: Food to the Fore in 'Great Chefs', Kilday, Gregg. Los Angeles Times 12 Sep 1977: f12.
8. FILM CLIPS: Lew Grade's $97 Million Projects, Kilday, Gregg. Los Angeles Times 15 Oct 1977: b9.
9. Scott Still Foxing the Establishment, Warga, Wayne. Los Angeles Times 18 June 1978: o62
10. {{Rotten Tomatoes. movie_movie. Movie Movie
11. FILM CLIPS: A New Dimension for a Brother Act, Kilday, Gregg. Los Angeles Times 28 Oct 1978: b11.
12. UCLA Library Special Collections, Larry Gelbart papers
13. Lew Grade, ''Still Dancing: My Story'', William Collins & Sons 1987 p 251
14. [https://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/review/70780 DVD Talk]
15. [https://www.goldenglobes.com/film/movie-movie Golden Globes]
16. [https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c82j6g15/entire_text/ Sheldon Keller Collection]