THE FORTUNE COOKIE: Blu-ray (Mirisch Co./UA 1966) Twilight Time
I adore Jack
Lemmon. But the more I see of his earlier ‘magic
time’ actor’s acumen, the more I have come to realize and respect a persona
built almost entirely around one finely honed and utterly brilliant premise; that of the unprepossessing and proverbial ‘little
guy’ – lovably shy, if slightly obtuse, begrudgingly malleable and usually,
if only momentarily, swayed by the cynical world-at-large that does not abide
by the inherent goodness and rules dictating the content of his own character, expecting
him to fall in line. Nowhere is this personality better on display than in the
films Lemmon did for director extraordinaire, Billy Wilder, and perhaps, none
more richly rewarding or genuine than his ‘playing
to type’ in Wilder’s farcical, The
Fortune Cookie (1966): Lemmon’s pure-as-the-driven-snow, Harry Hinkle,
pitted against his riotously perverse brother-in-law/attorney at law, William
H. ‘Whiplash Willie’ Gingrich (Walter
Matthau). The Fortune Cookie is the
movie that sparked an inseparable 34-year friendship between Matthau and
Lemmon, their chemistry, both on and off the screen, so genuine and disarming
they would be frequently reunited for other projects thereafter, from 1968’s
superb The Odd Couple to 1997’s Out to Sea (not one of their finer
efforts).
Perhaps it was kismet
these two should meet on the set of a Wilder picture; the director’s clear-eyed
gemütlich wit wed to Lemmon and Matthau’s keen abilities, as polar opposites on
Wilder’s compass of humanity, dissecting the follies and foibles of the human
condition exposed by Wilder’s collaborative partnership with longtime
writer/friend, I.A.L. Diamond. The other
component to the success of The Fortune
Cookie is undeniably, Walter Matthau; a New York-trained actor, pursuing a
dramatic career and virtual unknown to the métier of light comedy. It’s oft
been said that it takes a truly intelligent actor to play an absolute loon.
Consequently, Matthau brings a decade’s worth of his dramatic integrity and the
skill set honed from it to the role of Willie Gingrich. So easily, Willie could
have devolved into screwball simplicity but under Matthau’s tight control he
emerges as a truly sinister and slimy, yet extremely funny ambulance chaser and
con artist. Initially Wilder, who had worked with Jack Lemmon previously and
adored him ever since, proposed either Frank Sinatra or Jackie Gleason for his
co-star. It was Lemmon who insisted on Matthau in their stead; a decision, nearly
to swamp the picture’s budget when Matthau – a 3-pack-a-day smoker and
notorious gambler – suffered a monumental heart attack, causing a delay of
nearly 5 months in the shooting schedule. Returning to the set full of vim and
‘vinegar’ – and thirty pounds lighter – Matthau’s overcoat had to be padded to
conceal his weight loss.
The Fortune Cookie is Matthau’s foray into comedy and
he brilliantly rises to the occasion in the subtler art of irony, perhaps
beyond even Wilder’s wildest expectations.
It is the brutal sincerely with which Matthau attacks the role that really infuses
the wooly Willie Gingrich with enough ballast – more, the heavy than the fop;
Matthau, applying just enough wiggle room and jiggle to the juice to make us
recognize and respect his performance – if not his alter ego’s unscrupulous
nature as the proverbial ‘fox’ in this ‘hen house’ otherwise populated by a
bunch of clucking capons. I prefer to regard Wilder and Matthau as kindred
spirits, possessing a modicum of cantankerousness and eccentricity; each, a
dark prankster and unregenerate moralist to the last. If Jack Lemmon represents Wilder’s fainter
loyalties to the dwindling hope and promise such ‘good guys’ can do more than
merely survive in this backdraft of the ‘great’ American ‘society’, then
Matthau is undeniably Wilder’s acknowledgement of a more unvarnished, prevalent
and unremittingly vulgar creature who makes America tick, hungering no less for
his piece of the proverbial pie, even as he renders his high stakes in the
‘game of life’ to the charm-free crass mania of a loaded bingo match.
In many ways, The Fortune Cookie is the slightest of
Wilder’s movies, the plot a one-note wonder, greatly enhanced by the
aforementioned stars, and one as yet to be discussed; Ron Rich as the
guilt-ridden fatalist footballer, Luther ‘Boom-Boom’ Jackson. Rich, who all but vanished from movies barely
two years later, is an effective third wheel here; an all-star quarterback with
the Cleveland Browns, stricken with an acute case of conscience after his
split-second timing causes ‘the accident’
that kicks our story into high gear. There is a genuine warmth to Rich’s honest
performance, and, a far more brooding underlay of self-loathing, teetering on
anxiety and fear, lurking from the peripheries of his meteoric success. It’s
all come too fast to Boom-Boom; the fame, the money, a lifetime of adoration
transformed into the mire of jeers from a fickle crowd after his ball-playing
begins to falter, and, an even more debilitating crisis of conscience leads him
to hit the bottle and become, for all intent and purposes, Hinkle’s breezy but
emotionally scarred – and scared – man servant.
The other
notable in the cast hails from as nondescript a career; Judi West as Harry’s
gold-digging ex – Sandy. West is superb as the greedy and heartless chanteuse
who almost manages to fake sincerity and convince Harry she still loves him.
West acquits herself rather nicely too of the Cole Porter standard, ‘You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To’,
interpolated orchestrally by composer/conductor, André Previn (whose melodic
contributions elsewhere in the picture portend both the romantic folly and
farce that is yet to follow). But West’s performance is extraordinary, if only
for the simple fact we begin to believe in her as much as Harry. It is, after all, a Billy Wilder comedy – deliciously
impeded by the opacity of shady characters and their moody motivations at the
start, but ultimately meant to conclude on a note of romantic reconciliation –
right? Wrong! Wilder’s supreme gift to the movies was his ability to draw on a
sense of realism. Life, unlike the movies, is not perfect. ‘Nobody’s is!’ This continues to speak to the realities of life,
questioned rather than contradicted by cinema’s usual pie-eyed optimism, yet
cleverly illustrated in a less than tragic light, ingeniously counterbalancing
humor and pathos. West brings virtually
all of these qualities to her performance. Wilder’s introduction to Sandy
Hinkle immediately reveals her machinations as a supreme mischief maker; sheathed
in a slinky negligee and sprawled in close-up on a bed inside a modest
apartment with the silhouette of a man taking a shower caught in the background.
Yet, these visual signifiers are offset by West’s false notes of what at least
appears to be genuine empathy for her ex-husband, perhaps, even tinged with a
modicum of personal regret for having broken off their marriage in the first
place.
West is arguably
the least offense of the grotesques who populate this picture, including Lurene
Tuttle as Hinkle’s chronically teary and manipulative mother; Marge Redmond as his
sister, Charlotte Gingrich – an even more transparent gargoyle; Cliff Osmond,
as oily insurance fraud investigator, Chester Purkey; Sig Ruman/Professor
Winterhalter, a supposed ‘expert’ in spotting medical fakes; Robert P. Lieb,
Martin Blaine and Ben Wright as a trio of nondescript ‘specialists’ too hastily
to conclude the worst about their patient merely to secure their own
remuneration, and finally, Ned Glass as Doc Schindler, a disgraced dentist Willy
smuggles into the ward to give Harry several injections that will cause temporary
paralysis so he can ‘pass’ the investigators’ probing inquisition. Wilder’s low
opinion of the medical profession is on full view in The Fortune Cookie; whether, exposing the naïveté of Maryesther
Denver’s battle-axe nurse or the insidious ambitions of these various ‘expert’ practitioners,
who conduct their barrage of tests already with the foregone conclusion to find
something inherently ‘wrong’ with him.
Wilder divides
the The Fortune Cookie into a series
of vignettes, punctuated by numbered title cards, beginning with 1. The Accident: as CBS hand-held cameraman,
Harry Hinkle is injured after a forward pass to Cleveland Browns quarterback,
Luther ‘Boom-Boom’ Jackson goes horribly awry, sending Harry ass over tea
kettle to the ground. Left unconscious and carried from the field on a
stretcher, he awakens in the hospital hours later with his conniving
brother-in-law William H. ‘Whiplash Willie’ Gingrich hovering over him. Willie
has a plan. Although Harry’s injuries are slight, Willie intends to claim nerve
damage, concussion and partial paralysis as grounds for a hefty lawsuit.
Although Harry knows he is not this sick he reluctantly goes along with Willie’s
scheme to an even more insidious purpose; to win back his ex-wife, Sandy.
Despite the fact Sandy has left Harry for another man and a career as a singer
in New York (this never panned out), Harry cannot see how unworthy she is of
his enduring love, much to the weepy protestations of his own mother. Suffering
a crisis of conscience, Boom-Boom attends Harry multiple times during his stay
at the hospital, plying him with presents (flowers, a new wheel chair) and
eventually becoming so invested in his rehabilitation he begins to cut
practices, fumbles him games, and, wrecks his own seemingly Teflon-coated
reputation with the fans who boo him off the field. Rather insidiously, Harry
allows Boom-Boom’s spiral into oblivion to happen, despite harboring a genuine
affinity for him as a player. This eventually blossoms into an even more unique
friendship.
Meanwhile, the insurance
company lawyers at O'Brien, Thompson and Kincaid (Harry Holcombe, Les Tremayne,
and Lauren Gilbert) have begun to circle their wagons for an entrenched
counteroffensive. They have good reason to suspect fraud. Willie’s track record
is hardly that of an upstanding lawyer. In fact, he is a cold-hearted and not
altogether successful con whose clientele are just as sleazy and/or misguided.
Willie’s sharp shoot-from-the-hip philosophies play fast and loose with the art
of the swindle. What he might have been if only he had channeled all of his
energies and cleverness into a legitimate career. After getting Doc Schindler
to inject Harry with a numbing agent, Willie allows the insurance company to
subject his client to their own roster of ‘medical experts’ for another barrage
of evasive tests. All but Professor Winterhalter concur on Harry’s legitimacy,
citing a compressed vertebra as the likely culprit. But Hinkle has suffered
from this condition since childhood. Miraculously, it has not worsened due to
his most recent injury.
As Boom-Boom
ratchets up his commitments to Harry’s recovery his own future with the Browns
is thrown into jeopardy. Once their star player, Boom-Boom has since become the
team’s number one liability, skipping practices, throwing games and losing the
respect of his teammates, coaches and, worst of all, his most ardent fans. Despite
having set his father – a recovering alcoholic – up as the manager of a
lucrative bowling alley, Boom-Boom now follows in his footsteps by taking to
the bottle to conceal his own anxieties and assuage his guilt. This culminates
in a drunk and disorderly confrontation at the alley’s adjacent bar over Elvira
(Judy Pace), a flirtatious peroxide blonde. With no medical evidence to prove a fraud,
O'Brien, Thompson and Kincaid hire private eye, Chester Purkey to keep Harry’s
apartment under constant surveillance. However, Gingrich sees Purkey entering
the apartment building across the street and lets Harry know they are being scrutinized
and recorded.
Momentarily,
Harry’s mood becomes euphoric after Sandy, learning of his injury, agrees to
help nurse him back to health. Perhaps she really does love him after all.
Curiously, Sandy’s return leads to a minor rift in Harry’s friendship with Boom-Boom,
the latter ever more adrift from both his past and future plans. Willie informs
Sandy the apartment is bugged and she agrees to do everything she can to carry
on with the ruse to help Harry collect on the settlement sure to be coming his
way. Willie presses O’Brien, Thompson and Kincaid for a manageable figure. Yet,
even as the two sides continue to dicker over money, Willie, Charlotte and
Harry’s mom have embarked upon spending the ill-gotten gains yet to
materialize; Willie, buying a new Mustang, Charlotte – a fur coat, and mother
Hinkle gets shipped off to a glorious Florida vacation. To expedite the payoff,
Willie now orchestrates his most devious deception; a plan to make Harry a
truly pathetic figure from coast-to-coast. He will appear at the Browns’
invitation, to give a speech at their season opener and make the announcement he
plans to use all of the insurance money above and beyond his own ‘medical
expenses’ to start a non-profit charity – the Harry Hinkle Foundation. Realistically,
this too is just a scam – yet another way to high-pressure the insurance
company to pay out sooner rather than later.
Alas, by now Harry
has faced his own guilt over the effect his ‘fake illness’ has had on
Boom-Boom; their bro-mantic chemistry superseding any chances he might have had
to go on with the scam and aim for any reconciliation with Sandy. When
Boom-Boom becomes incarcerated for engaging in the barroom brawl, Harry
implores Willie to help him out. But Willie absolutely refuses to lift a
finger. He is far too busy sewing up his enterprising negotiations with
O'Brien, Thompson and Kincaid. Harry also unearths the real reason for Sandy’s
return: to skim enough off the top, leaving again to kick start her
non-existent singing career with an engagement at the high-fashioned Persian
Room. Willie jauntily turns up at Harry’s apartment, shouting victory to Purkey
and waving a check for $200,000 – a far cry from the million-dollar payout he
was asking for, but infinitely more satisfying than the $10,000 kiss-off the
insurance company initially offered him.
Purkey decides
to play a vicious end game. Presumably, he arrives to debug Harry’s apartment.
Instead, he makes casual racist remarks about Boom-Boom that stir Harry’s
honorable intensions. Without a thought
for Purkey’s cohort, still be filming from across the street, Harry discards
his medical corset and other paraphernalia and assaults Purkey in front of
Sandy and Willie. To make certain the incident is caught on film, he pummels
Purkey again, this time with relish, before embarking upon a jaunt about the
apartment, performing tumbles on his bed and swinging from the rafters. Having
lost a contact lens, Sandy scrounges on the floor for its recovery. Crushing
the invisible lens, Harry abruptly pushes Sandy to the ground with his foot,
adding “I don’t want to find you here
when I get back!” To save face, Willie feigns ignorance and disgust for his
client’s fake. Arriving at the football stadium hours after the game, Harry
finds Boom-Boom already packed and ready to quit the team for good – perhaps,
to embark upon a new career as a wrestler named ‘The Dark Angel’. Harry reveals
the truth to Boom-Boom and helps to renew his faith in himself. The two engage
in a spirited exchange of the pigskin as several of the stadium’s caretaking
crew affectionately look on.
Although The Fortune Cookie concludes on this
modest note of optimism, it is arguably Wilder’s darkest comedy. Immediately
following its release, Wilder would take an almost four-year hiatus from picture-making,
returning to form, but with decidedly disappointing reviews on The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
(1970). Today, this picture is justly regarded as one of the best Holmesian
yarns of all time and a genuine Wilder masterpiece. Regrettably, at the time of
its release it was all but demonized by the critics as a hopelessly
old-fashioned throwback, untrue to Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary sleuth. Wilder
would never again regain his popularity, either amongst his peers or with his
fans; a tragedy indeed, since he still had at least three solid movies to make:
1972’s Avanti, 1974’s The Front Page (both with Jack Lemmon)
and, 1978’s Fedora – perhaps the
wickedest indictment of Hollywood’s self-destructing crass commercialism and
the fallout it inflicts on those unwilling, and more directly, unable to escape
the specter of perpetual youth the movie industry insidiously demand from its
stars. Upon his death in 2002, Billy Wilder was interred at Westwood Village
Memorial Park, his tombstone inscribed thus: “I’m a writer, but then, nobody’s perfect!”
Indeed, in his
own time, Wilder increasingly met with criticism, his body of work endless
re-evaluated as the creator of some brilliant movies and yet, some as equally
pedestrian to outright flops. And yet the merit of his work, as well as the
body of his legacy, has only continued to ripen with age. Like a fine Madeira,
afforded its proper allotment of years to be aged to perfection, a goodly
number of Wilder’s pictures – including The
Fortune Cookie – have withstood the litmus test of changing times and
tastes. After all, a good vintage is still a good vintage – whatever the hour
of its uncorking. And Wilder’s cinematic legacy is truly that of a master
storyteller and craftsman, unapologetic in his views and unafraid to be as
outspoken in life as he was on the screen. As example, of the infamous
Hollywood Ten – the blacklisted writers who suffered the slings and arrows of
the McCarthy witch hunts, Wilder reported commented, “Of the ten, two had talent, and the rest were just unfriendly.” Oh,
Billy – dear Billy…how I miss him today.
Twilight Time’s
Blu-ray of The Fortune Cookie is
another solid offering that will surely delight. It is gratifying to see MGM,
the custodians of the Mirisch Bros. catalog, finally taking an interest in
properly remastering at least some of it for hi-def. This 1080p B&W
Panavision image reveals a startling amount of clarity, tonality and over-all
fine details that sparkle with renewed luster. Age-related artifacts are kept
to a bare minimum. Save the briefest of white speckles here and there, and one
momentary instance of a hair caught in the upper right corner of the frame,
this is wonderful looking transfer with much to recommend it. The image is
razor sharp without appearing to have suffered any untoward DNR or other
digital manipulations. There is no edge-enhancement either, allowing the purity
of Joseph LaShelle’s gorgeous B&W cinematography to shine through. So,
bravo, props and kudos to everyone responsible for this release. The 1.0 DTS
mono is adequately rendered for this presentation with clean, crisp dialogue.
TT affords us the opportunity to indulge in Andre Previn’s score on an isolated
track. What a superb orchestral offering it is! The only other extra is a
theatrical trailer and liner notes from Julie Kirgo – always much appreciated.
Bottom line: The Fortune Cookie may
not be a A-list Billy Wilder. Actually, more like A- or B+, but it remains
highly enjoyable. This release is practically perfect. As Wilder astutely
pointed out, “Nobody ever is…entirely.”
Very highly recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
4
VIDEO/AUDIO
4.5
EXTRAS
1
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