The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) | |
Plot Synopsis (continued)
Second
Flashback: Actress Georgia Lorrison Georgia's flashback begins with a zoom-in to the cartoon drawing of the devil (a caricature of Jonathan's father drawn by her own father), and a dissolve to a film set. Her voice-over bemoans the fact that she is only a "bit player" who is unable to "get into a major producer's office":
Jonathan first met her in her father's home as a teenager. (He also had noticed her in a screen test for The Faraway Mountain.) In their second encounter in his production office, she is chosen from a lineup of five girls for a small role - a "drug-store bit." As Georgia recalls: "My call came two days later. By then, I'd memorized my one line." In the first take of her only scene, Georgia provocatively asks a well-dressed man (Gilbert Roland) in a drug-store: "Read any good books lately?" Grooming her to be a more effective actress, Shields advises her to be more coy and not look up from her pulp fiction book (My Memories of Mexico) that she is reading - this time, the take is printed. He visits her, unannounced, in her sordid, tawdry apartment in the middle of the night, where she lives as a trampish alcoholic:
She has set up her place as a morbid memorial to her late father - a famous but dissolute Shakespearean actor/star, with news clippings and pictures from his career, phonograph recordings of his readings, and his pipes. As she changes into a masculine pair of pajamas and pulls down her hideaway Murphy bed, she reveals her self-deprecating, vulnerable nature by calling herself "another cluck" for a movie studio. He asks the bit actress if she has ever played "a real part in a picture" - but she has really only played "straight man to a chimpanzee" in Jungle Tigress. When he proposes that she make a screen test for him - she promiscuously sits on his lap. Mocking his stereotypical role as a wolfish producer, she plays out the screen test amorously in front of him:
He plays one of her phonograph records of her father performing a famous soliloquy from Macbeth (voice by Louis Calhern) [Act 5, Scene 5 after the suicidal death of Lady Macbeth], a reverie about our inconsequential lives without point or purpose, as the camera pans over her collection of sketches and photographs (many in profile) of her father [paralleling the relationship of John Barrymore to his daughter Diana]:
He brutally yells at the fledgling actress when she shouts for him to turn it off and vows: "I'm one girl who doesn't want to be a star." He criticizes her self-pity, her alcoholism, her suicidal tendencies (on two occasions), her love affair with the memory of her father, her loose living, and her obsessive wallowing in the past:
She is uninterested in following her drunken father's career, while adopting his worst bad habits - drinking and whoring:
He believes her salvation and curse is that she was "born to live by make-believe" as the offspring of a famous Hollywood actor. Then he challenges her to "pull herself" out of her "cheap" noirish, drunken and sordid lifestyle and make a "star" performance on a real film set rather than hidden away in her private residence:
He smashes the phonograph record that is playing. She retaliates by throwing her liquor bottle at him and attacking him with raised fists. But she is profoundly affected by his challenge. In voice-over, Georgia describes how she was prepped for a screen test in a make-up room, where she practices her lines:
After the film test, she watches her own projected image in a viewing room where Jonathan also watches the clip with British director Henry Whitfield (Leo G. Carroll) [an impersonation of Alfred Hitchcock] and others from the production office. In the poorly-acted scene, she insults her caddish male co-star and douses his face with her drink: "They told me about you. I didn't believe them but you're everything they said. You hear evil, you see evil, you speak evil. You are evil!" Whitfield (reinforced by Miss March (Kathleen Freeman)) is critical of Georgia's acting style ("She's wooden, gauche, artificial. Completely out of the question"). Assistant Syd Murphy (Paul Stewart) adds, "She stinks," and penny-pinching Pebbel denounces her awful screen test:
In Shields' office, Georgia confirms how lousy her acting really is: "I told you not to waste your film." Jonathan gambles on her future stardom, however, as an unknown in his new film that will begin shooting in six weeks. He believes in her potential star quality as part of the Lorrison dynasty:
He reforms her and grooms her for a glamorous lead role in his war epic:
In order to elicit the best performance possible from his "star," he exploits her infatuation for him and bestows his love on her during the pre-production planning of the film. He charms her, restores her confidence in herself and her acting career, rewards her with a trip to Palm Springs before shooting begins ("You've worked very hard. You've been a good girl...), and shares a bottle of champagne with her for a toast (and a kiss): "To Georgia, my star." Georgia apprehensively describes what happened after her return during a lonely backstage visit to the set the night before her stellar debut - and before filming is to begin:
She enters her dressing room where she finds a wrapped present from Jonathan - a necklace with a card, reading: "To my new star who will make me very proud of her." She leaves the dark shadowy set for a drink:
The next day, the director, his assistant, Shields, and Pebbel wait patiently when Georgia fails to show up on the set. When Pebbel suggests crossing her off the cast list, Shields reluctantly agrees to replace her with another star. They have searched everywhere for Georgia - "the waterfront, jails, hospitals...the main street booze parlor" and other rat holes: "Either she's found a new one, or she's far, far away." On a hunch that she is dozing off her drunken hangover in her own apartment, Jonathan breaks down her door and finds her slouched in her chair in her disheveled place. He carries her limp in his arms to his mansion and sobers her up by dropping her in his pool. Afterwards, while she is snuggled in his oversized coat, he threatens her like a reprimanding father. She is sorry and repentant and explains why she ran away:
As she adoringly sits in his lap (as he latches the necklace around her neck), and after she proposes marriage, he bluntly tells her that he is too old for love and has no time for it. He needs a "star," not a "wife." He wishes to keep her emotionally distant and longing for more:
By the fire, she promises him that if married to him, she "wouldn't take up much room." During a phone call from Harry Pebbel, Jonathan assures him that Georgia will play the role - knowing that she is eavesdropping on their conversation from the bedroom extension: "Georgia's in. We'll shoot her first scene in the morning...Don't worry. Everything's gonna be all right. I know just how to handle her now." When she appears in his blue pajamas and white bathrobe, he kisses her in front of the fire. She swoons into his arms and falls in love with him, but is ultimately the victim of Shields' manipulative love, seductiveness and unfaithfulness. During the film's production, Jonathan attends to Georgia every minute, treating her like a star, instructing her in the nuances of effective acting (e.g., how to "make love" while lighting and smoking a cigarette) and coaxing the right expressions from her - she becomes a perfect product of the Hollywood movie-factory. ("Gaucho" later tells her that her performance glows due to her love, between takes, for Jonathan: "Every day, I watch you grow more and more an actress. To give truth to a performance, there's nothing like love"):
Exasperated by repeated takes, Lila (Elaine Stewart), one of the vampy, impatient, and cynical starlet-extras who is being romanced on the side by "Gaucho," jealously complains about her non-star treatment: "Oh brother, this is amateur night in Dixie. Well, they'd better make up their minds soon or they're gonna lose Baby...You were going to get me into pictures...This is experience! Ha! By the time they get me a speaking part, they're gonna have to carry me off and on the set." Experienced in the ways of Hollywood, she knows the truth about show business when she delivers a famous line when Jonathan is referred to as a great man:
During the last two weeks of the filming of the historical costume-drama, Georgia neurotically recalls being in "a bad dream" - she is sick, frightened, and exhausted: "I keep feeling like I'm gonna scream but I can't help myself." The last scene was finished "a little before dawn" - a death-bed scene with Georgia kneeling before her dying officer/lover and espousing her love for him. As the emotional scene is played, [in homage to Citizen Kane's famous shot that moves up into the rafters of the Opera House], the camera pans up and away across the set. It captures the glowing admiration and intensity on the absorbed faces of the director, producer, and technical crew regarding her acting. Wearing a torn dress, and clasping her hands prayerfully in front of her, she sobs:
The spotlight next to the lighting technician dissolves into another spotlight at the opening-night cast party after the film's premiere, as Georgia is escorted into the festivities, sought after by autograph-seeking fans, and toasted: (voice-over)
Shields doesn't attend the celebration, so Georgia, still wearing her white mink and a white, rhinestone-encrusted dress, goes to his home with a giant bottle of champagne to celebrate alone with him - her lover and producer. She is an unexpected guest after being allowed in - after repeated rings of the doorbell. Descending the staircase, he must cover up the reason that he didn't attend by explaining his post-premiere slump:
Then, the shadow of the slatternly, ambitious starlet Lila, who makes no claim on his feelings, crosses over them. She appears from upstairs in a strapless gown, crassly demanding Jonathan's attention after displacing Georgia as the latest starlet. As she undulates her way upstairs again on her way to the bedroom, she critiques Georgia's picture:
When his ugly deception is uncovered, an enraged, two-timing Shields lashes out at the stunned and disbelieving Georgia that he is not pleased to see her. He vehemently spits his words at her and bluntly discards her in the film's most powerful and melodramatic scene:
Crying hysterically and uninhibited in her anguished despair, a shocked, spurned and rejected Georgia stumbles from his front door. She realizes that his tender affection during the film had all been an artificial and empty ploy to make her act more persuasively. Suicidal again, she recklessly speeds away in a raging downpour, driving faster and faster as headlights flash past her from oncoming traffic. In one miraculous take, the camera rocks uncontrollably back and forth, swirling next to her in small concentric arcs as she becomes disoriented and flails about. As a truck horn blasts at her car, she spins out of control when she releases her grip on the wheel (the steering wheel rotates wildly as she lets go). She slams on the brakes (an inset close-up of her high-heeled shoe) and screams, as her automobile lurches and hurtles around and finally comes to rest on the side of the road. Emotionally broken and in agony, she bends her head into the steering wheel where she dissolves into tears - and the car is cleansed by the deluge. [As a postscript to Georgia's story, learned in the next flashback, she becomes a box-office smash, but not for Shields: "Georgia is the best - the best actress, the best box-office. Her last three pictures for Fred Amiel grossed...seven million, six hundred thousand domestic."] Returning to the present a second time, the film dissolves into the face of Georgia in Pebbel's office, where she is now well-dressed in a black mink stole, black hat, and veil and vowing:
The executive comments upon the influence Jonathan had on launching her successful acting career:
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