THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE: Road Show Edition Blu-ray (Universal-International, 1967) Kino Lorber

The golden touch of producer, Ross Hunter practically ensured his kitschy take on the 1920’s, Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) would be a smashing success. The Ohio-born, Hunter, whose real name was Martin Fuss, and, perhaps drawing on his Austrian/German-Jewish descent, even found pause to incorporate a lavishly appointed Jewish wedding reception into his heady tale of white slavery and the two not so ‘bright young things’ – Millie Dillmount (Julie Andrews) and Miss Dorothy Brown (Mary Tyler Moore) who inadvertently fit themselves into one awkwardly purposed scenario after the next as they follow their hearts, if only to emerge virtually unscathed and, arguably, none-the-wiser for their deliciously harrowing experiences.  A retired English/drama teacher and ex-WWII U.S. Army Intelligence, Ross Hunter became an actor almost by accident, his aspirations cut short when he was stricken with penicillin poisoning. But alas, his brief return to teaching did not satisfy his need to be, as Hunter later put it, “the man who handed out the jobs”, and thus, he re-entered the movie biz by the back door as a dialogue director. Universal took notice and promoted him to associate producer in 1951. A scant 2-years later, Hunter was solo producing for the studio, his 1954 remake of Magnificent Obsession, directed with high-gloss romantic aplomb by Douglas Sirk, and Hunter’s first sizable hit. By the mid to late fifties, Hunter’s cache in Hollywood was formidable, thanks to a spate of memorable film fare made under his auspices: Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), Imitation of Life, and, Pillow Talk (both in 1959), and, Portrait in Black, and Midnight Lace (both in 1960). Hunter’s first brush with musical comedy came when he elected to transfer Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Asian-themed Flower Drum Song (1961) to the movie screen. By November, 1964, Hunter had a new 7-year contract at Universal and a yearly budget of over $75 million at his disposal, given carte blanche to pursue whatever projects he so desired.

In many ways, Thoroughly Modern Millie marks the end of the line for Hunter’s untouchable status in Tinsel Town – one last gasp of the Ross Hunter touch, typified by splashy production values and the uber-sheen of utterly gorgeous cinematography. Afterward, there would be only one more colossus in his canon; 1970’s Airport (to spawn a franchise in disaster pics). To what extent Hunter’s success was impeded by his migration from Universal to Columbia Pictures is negligible. For certain, his fate as the producer of indestructible entertainments was irrevocably shattered with the costly and embarrassing $7 million musical remake belly flop of Lost Horizon (1973), which sank like a stone at the box office. And although Hunter, moving into television thereafter, would have intermittent successes on the small screen, he was never entirely to live up to his former reputation as that Teflon-coated hit maker, retiring from the fray in 1979 and thereafter living obscurely until his death from cancer in 1996.

Thoroughly Modern Millie fulfilled Hunter’s desire to make a movie with Julie Andrews – in 1967, the #1 box office draw in the nation. Alas, Hunter’s ambitions to star Andrews in a big and glossy movie version of The Boy Friend, itself a 20’s spoof, went nowhere when Hunter proved unsuccessful in wrangling the rights free from MGM. Andrews had starred in the stage version, though arguably, was now too old to play the naïve ingenue. The Boy Friend would eventually be made at Metro in 1971, starring legendary 60’s super model, Twiggy. As for Hunter and Andrews, the producer elected to go it alone on a ‘brand new’ story with Andrews as his muse. And hence, Thoroughly Modern Millie was born, an amiably artificial (but in a good way) slapstick meets classic screwball set to music, in tandem to eulogize the jazz age with a wink/nudge that sent registers ringing around the world. In fact, Thoroughly Modern Millie was Universal’s highest-grossing movie ever, its success obliterated by Hunter’s final nod to all-star spectacle, Airport, three years later. In a decade where the musical/comedy, once perceived as an indestructible box office staple, had gone from fab to drab, Thoroughly Modern Millie sounded the trumpets for one of the most ribald and ridiculously fun, final and flippant burlesques of its generation.

Our story is set in New York, circa 1922. The pre-title sequence establishes an ominous tone as an unsuspecting young woman is chloroformed in her hotel room and dumped into a laundry basket, smuggled away by white slavers. We then meet the aspiring flapper, Millie Dillmount casting her ambitions on becoming a stenographer for a wealthy businessman she can then seduce into marriage.  Millie befriends the angelic, Miss Dorothy Brown who is just checking into the Priscilla Hotel, run by Mrs. Meers (Beatrice Lilie) who, in fact, is the one responsible for selling her ‘unattached’ tenants into white slavery. Learning of Dorothy’s status as an orphan, Meers marks Dorothy as her next victim. Meanwhile, at a ‘friendship dance’ in the hotel’s dining hall, Millie is introduced to brash and carefree paperclip salesman, Jimmy Smith (James Fox). The two hit things off. But Millie is still steadfast in her original plans – to marry rich, getting a job at Sincere Trust, and thereafter romantically pursuing her boss, the rather cocky, but dull, Trevor Graydon (John Gavin). Jimmy secures an invitation to a Long Island soiree given by the eccentric millionairess madcap, Muzzy Van Hossmere (Carol Channing) and takes Millie and Dorothy along for the show. Alas, just as Millie is practically certain Jimmy is the man for her, she mistakenly reads too much into his summoning Dorothy for a late-night rendezvous.

Becoming even more entrenched now to wed Trevor, Millie puts on her latest fashion and fervently makes a play for her boss. Much to her chagrin, Trevor shows little to zero interest in her obvious affectations. Worse, Trevor becomes immediately smitten with Dorothy, leaving Millie thoroughly heartbroken. Mad for Millie, Jimmy’s repeated attempts to strike a conversation are impeded by head stenographer, Miss Flannary (Cavada Humphrey). Scaling the side of the building, just to talk to Millie, she bitterly informs him she has decided to quit her job. In the meantime, Meers makes several bids to kidnap Dorothy and hand her over to her Chinese henchmen, Bun Foo (Pat Morita) and Ching Ho (Jack Soo).  Mercifully, Millie manages to inadvertently intercept these plans every time. But when Meers finally succeeds, Millie discovers from Trevor, drowning his sorrows at the bar, that Dorothy had a date with him she presumably broke to check out of the hotel in the dead of night. Investigating this claim, Jimmy and Millie soon discover Dorothy's possessions are still in her room. She didn’t check out. She’s disappeared. Playing amateur detective, Millie links Meers to the disappearances of several tenants, including Dorothy, and, with Trevor’s help, and Jimmy’s know how, unearths the dark secrets of their boarding house. Jimmy, disguised as a new tenant, Mary James casually mentions to Mrs. Meers that she is an orphan too.

But Meers is no fool. After spotting Trevor waiting in his car in front of the hotel, she becomes suspicious and shoots him with a tranquilizer dart. Mary James is consequently kidnapped by Meers and her goons, Millie tailing the lot to Chinatown where she finds an unconscious Jimmy, and Dorothy, stashed inside a hidden room at the fireworks factory. Rather idiotically, Millie tosses her lit cigarette through the open window, setting off the colorful explosives. In all the hullabaloo, Millie discovers a consignment of white girls bound and gagged, the latest spate to be exported to Beijing. Freeing the girls and Dorothy, they now rescue Jimmy and depart for the relative safety of Muzzy’s lavish retreat on Long Island. Meers and her gang make chase but are subdue by Muzzy’s quick thinking. Only then does Millie learn Jimmy and Dorothy are actually millionaire siblings. Muzzy is their stepmother. She sent them out into the world to find true love on their own terms. Fulfilling her fantasy to marry rich, Millie weds Jimmy. Dorothy weds Trevor, and Muzzy, having always encouraged her young charges to follow their hearts, now marries one of her hunky instructors.

Thoroughly Modern Millie was a riot in 1967 and has retained much of its joyously obtuse glamor and charm in this decidedly graceless age of crass commercialism that has since followed it. Much of the picture’s success back then was owed Julie Andrews whose name above a marquee all but certified the audience would come rushing back into theaters. And Andrews illustrates even more so herein, that her range as a movie star could handle the break-away from her otherwise ‘squeaky clean’ persona inculcated by those first two mega-hits, Mary Poppins (1964) and The Sound of Music (1965). Between these two box office behemoths, Andrews had acquitted herself rather nicely of her first dramatic role in The Americanization of Emily (1964). In Thoroughly Modern Millie she stretches that envelope of her creative talents even further, plying Millie Dillmount with dollops of joyful cynicism and slinky, sex-grinding farcical charisma. This alone carries much of the weight, especially when the screenplay by Richard Morris veers into vignettes that pointlessly pad out the picture’s run time without actually contributing anything to its plot. So, the overly long and needless Jewish wedding sequence gets a big and boisterous boost from Andrew’s performing ‘Drink La Chaim’ – a real/reel showstopper in both the best and worst sense of that word.

James Fox does his best here, but does a colossal belly flop in two prolonged sequences; his Harold Lloyd-esque scaling of the skyscraper where Millie works, and, when unconvincingly he dons a dress a la Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot, but in what is, arguably, the most tasteless moment in the picture – not crude, just dumb. Beatrice Lilie is a formidable baddie here, exuding appropriate menace as the thoroughly creepy Asian-proprietress. Mary Tyler Moore makes no splash at all. Miss Dorothy is, in fact, a pretty thankless part. Ditto for John Gavin’s rather gutless, though good-looking eye-candy stud. Gavin, born Juan Vincent Apablasa, who later adopted his stepfather’s name, John Anthony Golenor is at the height of his Uni-International streak of matinee idol he-hunks, with his chiseled body the only genuine selling feature to carry through from picture to picture. Beefcake sells. But its staying power is fleeting. If he is remembered at all today, Gavin is at his best as the sexy playmate turned amateur sleuth to Janet Leigh’s ill-fated Marianne Crane in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). But Carol Channing – whose thoroughly unique magnetism always translated to its best effect on the stage, not film – is wonderfully bizarre as the pants-wearing princess of the monied sect. When she performs, ‘I’m a Jazz Baby’, with that spectacular garage-door-sized mouth writ large across the screen in blood-red lipstick, those bulging eyes and crooked chin, to make her appear even more so like one of ventriloquist/comedian, Señor Wences’ sock puppets, we nevertheless, believe her. So, kudos here…and “Raspberries!”

Deliberately antiquated, Thoroughly Modern Millie carries the Ross Hunter brand and imprint that, arguably, is the real star of our show. Rewriting the gin-soaked jazz age in caricatures that seem to have been cleaved from some such reality gone utterly – if pleasantly – mad, Hunter’s recreation of this bygone decade easily bests its own ‘go to hell’ tea dance twenties atmosphere, plying his uber-gloss to the hedonism and, for the most part, coming up with a real humdinger of a good show besides. Thoroughly Modern Millie is pure camp, yet done up with such affecting vivaciousness for a good time had by all, it is virtually impossible not to be swept up in its toe-tapping razzamatazz.  They may indeed say “it’s criminal, what women’ll do” but alas, we ought never forget, “…this is (or rather, might have been) 1922!”  And as the picture marches past its 50^th anniversary, the period in which it was conceived becomes all the more irrelevant, to have transgressed from timely into timelessness. Altogether, then, “Everything today is thoroughly modern…isn’t it delectable?” And it is!  

Thoroughly Modern Millie has been long overdue for its hi-def debut. And arguably, the wait has been worth it. Every once in a long while Universal Home Video, not exactly known for its proactive stance on asset management of their deep catalog, sets aside its skinflint attitude and places the proper respect owed its library on a hi-def transfer worthy of inclusion in the best efforts thus far put forth in 1080p. Their decision-making process here is likely predicated on two criteria; first, viable assets in a state of not-so-delicate disrepair, requiring less time, effort and money to will them back into shape, and second, the feasibility of doing the work when proportionately compared to the profits likely to be derived from such efforts. Properly framed in its 1.85:1 OAR, Kino Lorber’s new-to-Blu has been afforded some solid bells and whistles from Universal Home Video, mastered with a renewed crisp and colorful palette, and grain appearing very indigenous to its source. Better still, Uni has gone the extra mile to properly preserve these elements, eradicating age-related anomalies that were often quite glaring on the now decades’ old DVD release. Contrast here is singularly excellent and there ought to be virtually no complaints on how this one looks in 1080p. It’s dazzling. The 2.0 DTS is limited by its source, though much improved. The songs always had a tinny echo. However, this now sounds more accurate to sound recording tech of its day, rather than tired, old and artificially boosted, as it did on the DVD. Dialogue remains front and center. We get the roadshow overture, entr’acte and exit music too.  Film historians, Lee Gambin and Ian McAnally weigh in with an expert audio commentary, much of it cribbing from Julie Andrews’ memoir, Home Work, with other tidbits gleaned from the book, Road Show. The only other extra: two theatrical trailers. Bottom line: Thoroughly Modern Millie is joyous if ever so slightly drawn out. In an age where girth equated to stature, the picture now plays like a luminous time capsule from another bygone era in American musical theater. Around my house, we sincerely miss those days, folks. Perhaps you do too. But the Blu-ray brings them rushing back again, and, as only Ross Hunter and the roaring twenties could. Enjoy this one for what it is: panache plus, on a lark and spree. Very highly recommended!

FILM RATING: out of 5 – 5 being the best

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

5

EXTRAS

1