BEFORE: OK, if last week was about rock radio, rock song composition and production, drumming and then ended with Alanis Morissette and Neil Young going out on tour, this week is perhaps "old fogeys" week. Neil Young's getting up there, Gordon Lightfoot is 83 and there are documentaries made about old people coming right up.
Alec Baldwin carries over from "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Always at the Carlyle" (Movie #3,349)
THE PLOT: The uncompromising Tony and Emmy Award-winner is showcased both on and off stage via rare archival footage and intimate cinema verité.
AFTER: Elaine Stritch was 87 when this movie was made, as she was preparing for a series of shows where she performed Sondheim, "One Song at a Time". That sorts of seems like it would go without saying, like a performer couldn't do ALL the Sondheim songs at the same time, or even two at once, that would be madness. Perhaps it was just a catchy rhyming title. Stritch had a couple of medical issues during the making of the film, related to her diabetes, but at one point she was in the hospital and clearly thought her time had come - maybe everybody in the hospital has to come to terms with that - but she was OK with it. She'd lived a long life, fell in and out of love a few times, got married, got widowed, but never stopped performing and had some of her biggest stage successes in her 80's. But she did die at age 89, a little over a year after this film played at the Tribeca Film Festival in April 2013.
It's sort of a Sondheim-centric Movie Year, the famous composer was played by Bradley Whitford in "Tick, Tick...Boom!" a couple months ago, and I've got the remake of "West Side Story" scheduled for August, shortly after the Doc Bloc is over. My wife's also got tickets for "Into the Woods" on Broadway, we're going to see that in the last week of July. There are probably some documentaries out there focused on him, but they just weren't on my radar when I put this chain together - and the chain's already too long, I don't want to make it any longer right now. (Yep, there's one, "Six by Sondheim", on HBO Max. It doesn't connect with my plans at the moment, but I'll consider it for the future...)
Stritch was featured prominently in that documentary about the Carlyle Hotel, where she lived from 2005 to 2013 - I'm still not sure how all that worked, if certain celebrities were able to buy condo or co-op spaces there, or if they just paid full hotel rates and were allowed to decorate their hotel rooms any way they wanted. For sure it was full service treatment, just replace the normal NYC apartment building staff with hotel staff - and when she moved out they named the suite after her. She moved back to Michigan, but I'm not sure what sort of real estate she bought or rented there, the film doesn't say. But while she stayed at the Carlyle, she did a (semi-?) regular cabaret act in the Cafe Carlyle - it's a great gig if you live upstairs, no travel was involved.
There's not much here about her life in London, she relocated there in the 1970's and starred in West End productions of some Neil Simon and Tennessee Williams plays, and when in London she lived at the Savoy Hotel (spotting a theme here...) with her husband, John Bay, from the family that owned the Bay's English Muffins company. I guess if you're not a Thomas' English Muffins person, maybe you're a Bay's person, Elaine gave them out frequently as gifts. But when her husband died in 1982, she moved back to the U.S. and tried for a movie career (Woody Allen's "September", "Cocoon: The Return" and "Out to Sea") but my favorite Elaine Stritch movie is the film "Screwed", co-starring Norm MacDonald.
Then, of course, there was "30 Rock", in which she played the mother of Alec Baldwin's network executive character. I know, I know, she was also on "Law & Order", but who hasn't been? And also "Oz" and "3rd Rock from the Sun", but most people probably remember her as the irascible mother from "30 Rock". Still, after all that she was mostly known for her theater work, everything from "Pal Joey" to "Mame" to "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf", and then all the Sondheim stuff - "Follies" and "Company" and the revival of "A Little Night Music", which kind of explaines why she was so interested in doing all those Sondheim songs, solo cabaret-style.
At the time of the documentary production, the Public Theater (home of her one-woman show, "Elaine Stritch at Liberty") was looking to turn one of its rehearsal rooms into some kind of Elaine Stritch archive, so this presented a great chance for her to go through all of her saved photographs, posters and show memorabilia, why not do all that in front of the camera? This helps make this a fascinating look at a performer who was also a powerful force of nature, but still, there's a reminder that the strongest people can be laid low by things like alcoholism or diabetes, so once again,we see that everything has an expiration date.
Also starring Elaine Stritch (last seen in "Romance & Cigarettes"), James Gandolfini (ditto), Ellen Adler, Bella Botier, Rob Bowman, Maeve Butler, Allen Davison, Tina Fey (last heard in "Free Guy"), Hunter Ryan Herdlicka, Paul Iacono, Cherry Jones (last seen in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye"), Julie Keyes, Nathan Lane (last seen in "Carrie Pilby"), Ramona Mallory, Josh Marquette, Marjorie McDonald, Tracy Morgan (last heard in "Scoob!"), Harold Prince, Piet Sinthuchai, John Turturro (last seen in "The Batman"), George C. Wolfe
with archive footage of Woody Allen (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Billy Crystal (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Ellen DeGeneres (last seen in "The Love Letter"), Mia Farrow, Ben Gazzara (last seen in "Paris, Je t'Aime"), Rock Hudson, Bela Lugosi (last seen in "A Kiss Before Dying"), Bill Maher (last seen in "The Amazing Johnathan Documentary"), Sarah Jessica Parker (last seen in "Smart People"), Bernadette Peters (last seen in "Tick, Tick...BOOM!"), Donald Trump (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Melania Trump (last seen in "Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump"), Tracey Ullman (last seen in "The Prom")
RATING: 6 out of 10 blown auditions
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