ATHENA: Blu-ray (MGM, 1954) Warner Archive

Billed as 'the MGM musical with young ideas' Richard Thorpe's Athena (1954) is a bit of a mutt. Endeavoring to tap into the ‘fitness’ craze with a ‘healthy’ nod to the ‘then’ obscure sport of bodybuilding, it’s not quite a musical, sort of a comedy, and occasionally, something of a hot mess. Through it all, we get chirpy performances from Jane Powell (as Athena Mulvain) and Debbie Reynolds (as Minerva, just one of her seven sisters). Esther Williams has gone on record, claiming to have developed the project one year earlier with writer, Leo Pogostin and director, Chuck Walters. Actually, with Williams at the helm, the whole clap-trappy premise sort of makes sense; Williams’ then, billed as America’s mermaid, and the benefactress of some truly odd and splashy big screen spectacles, advertising her body beautiful. And quite the bod’ it was in 1953. But then, Williams became pregnant. In the old days, this would not have been an earth-shattering event. L.B. Mayer would have simply shelved the project until his star was in tip-top shape again. Alas, his successor, Dore Schary did not. Instead, he recast and rewrote the part himself to accommodate a singer rather than a swimmer. Williams never quite forgave Schary his trespasses. Likely, Schary didn’t care, either about hurt feelings or Williams in general. Indeed, Schary’s first order of business at Metro was to systematically shrink what he perceived to be the studio’s top-heavy roster of gold star talent – a measure, then perceived to appease the New York office as a counterbalance in the cost-cutting fifties. But actually, Schary was not a proponent of the studio’s caste system, in which a good many of its ‘untouchables’ ran their own show. Williams, always a team player, drew the line at passing the ball to someone else’s team. And thus, when her contract was up for renewal in 1956, she and Schary mutually agreed to part company after 26 features of which, from 1945 to 1949, Williams ranked as the #1 movie star in the world and consecutively had the #1 box office hit on the screens to prove it.  

It is unlikely, even with Williams at its helm, Athena would have restored the aquacade beauty to such an exalted ranking. Times had changed. More apropos, MGM’s philosophy – especially where movie musicals were concerned – had not. Viewed today, Athena is more of a creaky B-flick than an A-list dazzler, despite its fetching talent. The plot, scripted by William Ludwig and Leonard Spigelgass, revolves around conservative lawyer, Adam Calhorn Shaw (Edmund Purdon) who hopes to be elected to Congress as his father and his father's father before him. Adam certainly has the right temperament for the job. He's officious to a fault. Aside: Purdon really doesn’t manage to pull this off. He comes across as more petulant than perturbed and something of an overgrown spoiled brat in need of a good woman to give his head a shake…both of them! But Adam is also engaged to stuffy socialite, Beth Hallson (Linda Christian – a.k.a. Mrs. Tyrone Power). It's all just too perfect in an uppity milquetoast meets Suzy Cream Cheese sort of way.  That is, until Athena Mulvain enters the picture - a plucky, no nonsense and very outspoken 'health nut.' Adam and Athena accidentally meet while he is complaining about his dying peach trees at a local nursery. Athena tells Adam to mulch his trees, then offers to do the deed herself to prove the point.

Athena believes in the stars and numerology. After figuring out Adam's number, she is convinced they will be married. Meanwhile, Adam's friend, nightclub and TV crooner Johnny Nyle (Vic Damone) meets Athena and erroneously assumes she is Adam's girl. Athena sets Johnny up with her sister, Minerva (Debbie Reynolds) who quickly puts him on a vegetable diet and introduces him to her grandfather, Ulysses (Louis Calhern). Grandpa runs a new age retreat for buff bodybuilders. Aside again: it’s really rather hilarious to see the cultured Metro class of male leading men, slender and immaculately coiffed, go toe to toe with the rugged, bicep-building brood at grandfather’s resort. Frankly, why either Athena or Minerva have remained single for this long, surrounded by all that Grade-A bulging beef, is a mystery never entirely explained away. Knowing how stuck on Adam and Johnny his girls are, grandpa encourages the boys to adopt a more athletic lifestyle. Johnny embraces the fitness craze - sore muscles and all. But Adam rebels and comes into direct conflict with Ed Perkins (Steve Reeves, already having attained such enviable, pro-bodybuilder titles as Mr. Pacific Coast, Mr. America, Mr. World, and Mr. Universe, but still two years away from his breakout movie appearance in Hercules, 1956). Ed is sweet on Athena too. And Athena – the movie – ought to have pursued this angle more generously, instead of rather simplistically employing Reeves as mere decorative eye-candy. Actually, the script’s exploitation of Reeves feeds into that unflattering stereotype about all men of athletic superiority being dumbbells, to be treated like furniture.

But no, from this point forward, the Ludwig/Spigelgass scenario becomes rather hopelessly mired in virtually every cliché in the musical mélange. During a catered affair staged to bolster Adam's public image for his political future, Beth attempts to embarrass Athena by poking fun at her family's 'quaint' ideas on health and diet. Athena tolerates these insults at first, but eventually it gets the better of her and she admonishes Beth for her arrogance. She also belts out a killer aria that draws the cultured sect to her side. Still, to appease Beth, Adam swears he will never see Athena again, but then suddenly realizes he cannot dismiss her memory entirely from his mind. Instead, he attends the Mr. Universe competition with Athena. Ed wins the coveted trophy. But Adam lands the newly inaugurated champ on his muscled assets with a bit of purposely-timed Judo. Grandpa is outraged and humiliated. The entire family retreats to their new age compound to recapitulate. Although Adam is told in no uncertain terms his relationship with Athena will never work out, the next day, Athena comes to his home to confess she has decided to meet him half way and be his wife. Thus, ends the film, Athena - a bizarre and very rare duck indeed.

Reflecting on Athena today, one can definitely see why MGM continued to lose ground at the box office throughout the mid-fifties. The picture’s musical program is a lumbering assemblage of pop tunes and operatic arias – the resuscitation of a tried-and-true formula dating all the way back to the early 1930’s, but especially popular, and even more typical of mid-40’s Jane Powell musicals. That worked well when Janie was just a pert and plucky teenager. Here, however, she is well on her way to becoming a vivacious sophisticate. So, the results, alas, are only partly successful. Curiously, the title song is only featured with a choral cooing over the main titles. Vic Damone opens the musical repertoire with a deadly dull rendition of 'The Girl Next Door' (the gender-modified Boy Next Door from 1944’s infinitely superior, Meet Me in St. Louis). From these decidedly flat notes, the catalog of songs has nowhere to go but up. Mercifully, it does. Debbie Reynolds and Vic Damone warble 'Imagine' - a charming little ditty about the possibilities of their burgeoning romance. Later Damone is given a rather flashy production number 'Venezia' flanked by a cavalcade of oddly attired MGM dancers, cavorting through a rather obscene Neapolitan fantasia. Reynolds and Powell engage other alumni in the spirited 'I Never Felt Better' as they extol the virtues of clean living, transforming Adam's front parlor into a new age meditation lounge. Powell also gets the plum operatic aria 'Chacun le sait'. The one regret is she and Edmund Purdon share no romantic pas deux, either in song or dance. Originally, the couple were supposed to sing 'Love Can Change The Stars', but in the final edit Powell sings this song alone, later, to be very briefly reprised by Damone and Reynolds. There was also supposed to be an 'athletic ballet' featuring Powell and Reynolds. This too was eventually dropped in favor of an extended faux Mr. Universe competition where some of the day's best sculpted male bodies are given their beefcake due.

In the final analysis, Athena is a curiosity rather than a cohesive movie musical. Regrettably, its parts do not add up to a total entertainment. Although some moments truly extol MGM’s old time/big time panache, the story sets up its basic ‘boy meets girl’ scenario, but then completely implodes under the weight of too many half-baked ideas clumsily thrown together. Reportedly director, Thorpe would toss script pages already shot onto the floor in an act of bitter defiance, a move Jane Powell recollects to have cast a disparaging pall over the entire production. “He didn’t want to do it,” Powell admits, “Didn’t want to be there. It made for a tough shoot because you sensed you were somehow letting everyone else down. But actually, Debbie and I did some really good stuff there. It isn’t a great movie. But it’s a solid ‘B’.” Alas, MGM was not in the market for solid ‘B’s’ in 1954. What they desperately needed was a dynamite ‘A’ picture in their hopper. For Dore Schary, Athena’s disappointing box office reaffirmed the need to revamp Metro’s line-up, further to cut the budgets on other costly musicals or simply deny such stalwart producers of the genre, like Arthur Freed, their passion to pursue more like-minded fare. To some extent, Schary’s logic was – arguably – in line with the public’s shifting tastes. Nevertheless, throughout the 50’s and, indeed, the 60’s, other studios proved the movie musical still had a lot of life in it – especially when time, money and effort was correctly spent to bring this most escapist of all the genres to glorious life.  

Athena gets its hi-def new-to-Blu via the Warner Archive (WAC) and the results here are far more pleasing than those exhibited on WAC’s ‘remastered’ DVD from 2010. Athena was photographed by the great Robert H. Planck on 1:75.1 Eastmancolor, with prints made by Technicolor. At the time, this monopack process was considered, if hardly superior to Technicolor’s own, then decidedly, much more cost effective. It also miserably failed to yield the levels of uber-saturation and richness vintage 3-strip Technicolor achieved. On DVD, Athena’s shortcomings were amplified by a decidedly flat image, infrequently marred by slight color fading and vinegar syndrome, to intermittently create ruddy/orange flesh tones and otherwise ‘dirty up’ the color spectrum. On Blu-ray, WAC has gone back to the drawing board. Interestingly, this release isn’t being cited as a 4K remaster. But the results, nevertheless, are frequently pleasing. Shortcomings in the original Eastman stock have been lovingly preserved. There is a residual softness that creeps in from the peripheries of the screen, though never entirely to distract. The image is also grainier than we are used to seeing for a ‘color’ release. This is, as it should be. Best of all, the anemic contrast that plagued the DVD has been corrected herein and colors have obviously had some digital adjustment/balancing applied to lend them a more natural and vintage appearance, minus the aforementioned age-related shortcomings. No age-related artifacts to speak of either. So, overall – top marks. The 2.0 DTS audio is, frankly, miraculous. Songs burst forth with true stereophonic clarity, at times, to overshadow the otherwise flat dialogue sequences with limited SFX or background underscore. But the score sounds fabulous, handling the mature ‘high notes’ Powell frequently hits into the rafters. Extras include 3 excised numbers, the Competition Dance, a second reprise of Imagine with Vic Damone and Debbie Reynolds and Love Can Change the Stars – alas, reprise only, with Jane Powell and Edmund Purdon. There is also a careworn theatrical trailer. Bottom line: I love movie musicals. But even I found Athena a bit of a slog. It begins rather disappointingly, picks up steam and improves during its middle act, but then rushes to its prerequisite finale – over before you know it, and leaving no instant big-hearted memories behind. This Blu-ray is yet another above grade offering from WAC. Well done. Now please, some better ‘color’ movies to bestow such time and efforts upon. I can think of 3 to start: National Velvet, High Society and Scaramouche. Takers? Anyone?

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

2