David O. Selznick produced it. Ben Hecht wrote the script. Victor Fleming directed. Ring any bells? Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh? Margaret Mitchell? “Gone with the Wind?” The film?
Now put yourself in an office on a Hollywood studio lot in 1939 with Selznick, Hecht and Fleming, no script and five days before shooting the film. Bring Ron Hutchinson’s “Moonlight and Magnolias” into play. Turn Phoenix loose, tighten your seat belt and let ‘er rip! This is one wild ride.
Credit MaryBeth Dagg’s brilliant directing. Her handle on the throttle speeds things up and slows them down with Eisenstein’s sense of montage. The set is a madcap circus of outrageous behavior under control all the time. You know where you are, how you got there and where you will end up. Whether you will be a quivering mass of jelly when all is said and done, that’s another matter altogether.
The driving impulse on stage, however, is Buddy Mahoney. It makes you dizzy just thinking about the encyclopedia of lines this guy had to put together with Selznick’s conflicting personality traits. Movie mogul, people charmer, people monster, business genius, hard as nails, a pushover, Mahoney delivers bipolarity with gusto, flamboyance, mischief and vulnerability. Mahoney’s performance is sensational.
Everyone gets the picture of the bedraggled screenwriter. He is peculiar as all get out, buried under deadlines and beaten down by studio heads and directors who want it now. But how man actors put across a screenwriter’s conscience? Paul Custodio’s Hecht is under the gun to write about sympathy for The Old South and Civil War while Hitler is persecuting Jews and mobilizing for war. Hecht has to write sympathy for oppressors and war mongers and can’t. Plaudits and kudos for Custodio, he is funny and serious.
Think camera angles, filming within budget on schedule, baby-sitting actors, coddling screenwriters and catering to producers. That is Jay Jenkins doing director, Victor Fleming. The two blend completely enough to blur the difference.
Melanie Calderwood’s unflappable secretary to Selznick, supports, no more than that. Even so, she makes you laugh. This actress on stage is always theater.
This is an engaging tour de force stirring up legendary movie lore. Intellectual content is limited. The facts it is based on are interesting. The comedy is fast-paced. The take on Tinseltown is pretty much right out of celeb mags at the checkstand.
Reactions? Comments? Email Dale Burrows at entfeatures@heraldnet.com or grayghost7@comcast.net.
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