Poseidon Quickies: A Stop at the "Store"

I recently came upon a listing of movies that supposedly pushed the boundaries of censorship in the wake of the dismantling of the Production Code. Some of them I had seen. Some of them have been delved into here in the past. A few I had never heard of in my life. The Christian Licorice Store (1971) is one that I had, literally, no knowledge of prior to seeing it noted on the list. Filmed in 1969, it was shelved for nearly two years before swiftly coming and going at theaters. Between the odd title, the combination of leads and the promise of something edgy within, I had to check it out. As it was, I could find almost nothing that I found controversial enough to have been included, especially considering that Midnight Cowboy (1969) had come out the year this was filmed and truly pushed things further along with what could be seen on cinema screens. In any case, I took a few snaps from it that I will share below. If you have an interest in watching the movie, a wondrous copy of it is available on YT here. 

The movie opens with a panoramic shot of mountain terrain, followed by this image of a wing-doored car recklessly careening down the road.

In order to illustrate the vast difference that seeing a movie in its intended form can have on the viewing experience, I give you this same shot from an old VHS...! 

Afterwards, we meet fast-rising tennis star Beau Bridges, who is engaged in a fierce battle with a competitor, but emerges victorious. 

Following the match, Bridges is besieged by reporters in the locker room as his reputation is clearly ascending. 

This point is brought home by the fact that his opponent can only look on while he makes his lonesome way down the hall to a shower. 

I really thought (hoped!) that we might be onto something here, but the scene ends as he enters the shower cubicle. 

Enter Maud Adams as a successful photographer. She's on a night shoot for a commercial, taking various shots for use in print. 

Eventually, at a splashy Hollywood party, these two exchange glances across the room.

This is the era of experimental filmmaking and so when the host of the party arranges a screening for his guests, the movie credits on the screen are the ones for the very movie we're watching! Nearly twelve minutes in. How's that for "meta?!"

Bridges and Adams opt out of the party and head to her place where he intends to make guacamole for her. But she gets a glimpse of his bottle of hot sauce and that's that. They're soon kissing and in the sack!

There are brief moments of breast in this movie, and Bridges is also naked occasionally, but in virtually every instance it's in near blackness! I had to augment this shot considerably just to make out the curve of his pale butt cheek as he lies atop Adams. Hardly "shocking," especially by 1971.

Bridges has a strong coach in the form of Gilbert Roland, who advises him on the style and usage of his racket. (Roland prefers a wooden one.) 

This was a casting masterstroke, by the way, since Roland had always been an athletic man and had a tennis court installed on the grounds of his home. 

Gilbert fascinates me in that he'd been acting since the early-1920s and is one of not too many male stars who transitioned easily into sound films and worked until 1982! This was a nice role for him. Yes, sun and cigars had prematurely aged him (he was 64 here), but...

...in his day he was a dreamboat!

Adding to the verisimilitude of the L.A. setting is an extended cameo by famed French movie director Jean Renoir, who appears as himself. In a mostly improvised sequence, he is one of Adams' photographic subjects receiving delivery of some of her recent work. 

Throughout the movie, people of all sorts are spied going about their daily activities. I know some of them were actors/paid extras, but there were also countless people merely being captured on film at a time when it was a bit simpler to get away with such a thing.

Bridges heads to Texas for a match against real life tennis star Butch Bucholz (once a key name in the sport, but now barely remembered outside of tennis aficionados.) This time Bridges faces one of his greatest challenges to date. 

At a party afterwards, he catches the eye of a hungry-looking young lady and before long she's got him back at the ranch for a late-night swim. 

She (sporting the cutest li'l bikini) dives into the pool and begins looking him over. 

He is completely awkward in a pair of her husband's oversized trunks. They'll only stay on if he gathers one side into a clump! 

Few would believe it in today's generation, but it used to be remarkably common for folks who owned a pool to have an array of suits on hand for guests to slip into (or out of, as the case may be!)

Bridges never does get into the water and soon the two are frolicking on a trampoline. 

And before long the inevitable begins. 

In a shot from below, he's seen (easily) flinging off those trunks. The black space is part of an applique on the trampoline in the shape of Texas.

The one thing that struck me as perhaps being a boundary pusher for the time was when the camera looks up at the shape of Texas as Bridges is on top of his gal pal. The trampoline undulates back and forth as he undulates back and forth on the tramp. LOL 

Back home in L.A., Bridges is still involved with Adams, though she's the one who is pursuing it the most. I must not have been the only one wondering how and why these two are together because soon a couple of rough-mouthed sailors accost the couple to ask the same thing. Bridges gets them off his back with a certain amount of skill.

Things just aren't great though. The truth is, he's a pretty shallow, callow person to begin with and she's more emotionally invested in developing a relationship than he is.

This is ultimately illustrated in a sequence in which she would like to connect with him, including showering together, but he makes it clear that she's not welcome to join him. 

True, he's in the midst of some turmoil because even though he has been offered not only some product endorsements, but also a role in a Hollywood movie, he's been dealt a personal blow which has sent him into a state of desolation. 

He just cannot allow her "in." 

Barely able to properly communicate, he can only offer the fact that he's got the water warmed up for her as it's her turn. 

Even though he generally keeps his clothes on, this movie nonetheless offers up glimpses of a Beau Bridges that are rather uncommon. 

See what I mean, Vern?

This shot is from Bridges' character's advertising gig. Note how golden, bright and colorful this is compared to the reality seen in practically all the rest of the film. 

One of the movie's montages is set to the music of Tim Buckley. It's a lyric from this song from which the title "Christian Licorice" is derived. (This, however, doesn't make for an easy marketing job for box office returns...!) 

Some music fans (and fans of The Monkees) will recall Buckley as he performed one of his most notable compositions on the final episode of that series. The director of The Christian Licorice Store was James Frawley, who'd been at the helm of 28 episodes of The Monkees and proceeded to a long career as a (primarily television) director. Buckley, on the other hand, was gone at 28 in 1975 of a heroin and morphine overdose; one of countless others like him who have trod a similar path... 

Bridges, having "gone Hollywood" and outfitted in new mod duds, no longer skips out on the parties, but actively participates. He is seduced by the woman shown here and there's a second one on hand as well, which is one other thing (a threesome!?) which might have come off as edgy in its day. 

Bridges exemplifies something that even today (with "perfect" social media lifestyles often obscuring decaying rot beneath) that what might appear golden...

...may only be window dressing on a bleak reality. That alone made this "dated" movie surprisingly relevant now!

The End.

PRE-United: From "Rivers" to the "Island."

Longtime readers here know of my basically lifelong love of Eleanor Parker. She was one of the movie stars who led me into the once-unknown-to-me realm of "classic movies" (i.e. - anything made before I was a teen!) I made it a goal to see everything she did and, thanks to old cable channels like TNT and AMC, etc... I came very close. The first time I saw Many Rivers to Cross (1955) was in the early-1990s and I didn't care much for it. I don't think I was ready for the glamorous Baroness Schraeder to be cavorting around in buckskin. On a whim, I checked it out last night and found it more accessible.  

The stars, Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker, had been paired in 1952's Above and Beyond. It was financially successful and was Oscar-nominated for Best Original Story and Score.

They were re-teamed in 1954 for Valley of the Kings, made at a time when Hollywood was catering to an Egypt-crazed public. Although it was filmed partly on location, it often felt studio bound and didn't make all of its cost back. Nonetheless, Taylor and Parker had developed chemistry and, at least on Parker's part, a strong affection. 

Thus, MGM went to the well one more time with this 1955 release. As I say, I had no use for it the first time I viewed it, but that was so long ago, with the Cinemascope picture cropped and blurry. So I gave it a go once more. One thing that struck me this time was noting how many names I now recognize in the supporting cast, some of who went on to success with television.

An early scene examines the relationship between young Darryl Hickman (older brother of Dwayne) and Betty Lynn. Lynn later became known for playing Deputy Barney Fife's girlfriend Thelma Lou on The Andy Griffith Show. 

Set in late-1700s Kentucky, the principle story line involves lone-wolf trapper Taylor running into trouble in the wilderness with some Indians and being rescued by tomboy Parker. In time, she'll create as much or more trouble for him than the natives who just tried to kill him!

She takes him home to rest up with her sizeable family; her parents and her four brothers. 

One brother is played by Russell Johnson while her Scottish father is enacted by Voctor McLaglen. 

The eldest brother is played by John Hudson (WHO?!), an actor who enjoyed a reasonably long career spent mostly under the radar. 

The other two brothers are played by young Russ Tamblyn and Jeff Richards. 

These two had just portrayed close siblings in the 1954 musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. So this was something of a reunion for them. 

Parker's mother was played by stage actress and longtime movie character performer Josephine Hutchinson. 

Things take an interesting turn when Parker's brother Tamblyn is brought home one evening with a split lip by a local man who has his eye on her. 

The brawny, unrefined would-be fiancee is played by Alan Hale Jr. Why is that interesting? 

Because Russell Johnson (top-left) and Hale would find themselves placed together nine years later in roles that would utterly define their careers. 

Yes, it's Skipper and The Professor, working alongside one another in the same film nearly a decade prior to Gilligan's Island. 

These seven castaways (I LOVE this portrait of them, by the way) would hit the network airwaves in 1964 and, thanks to reruns, never leave them again. The indelible roles made it difficult for viewers to ever see them as anything other than the parts they played on the broadly comic show. 

Johnson is given a couple of closeups during a shooting competition.

Hale, despite a featured (and colorful) role never warrants such treatment. He's mostly seen in profile and in medium or group shots. 

At one point, he and Taylor square off and you can see the body language emerging which would later become stock in trade for Skipper. 

This skirmish becomes a public brawl. 

At far-right you can see Johnson egging the two men on. 

They don't really share dialogue together, but they are occasionally in the same shots with one another. Little did they know that within a decade they would be sharing countless hours on set together. 

Another soon-to-be TV icon shows up late in the proceedings and that is towering James Arness, who became a household name playing Marshal Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke. 

I can imagine all sorts of pearl-clutching amongst today's audiences if they should happen upon this film for a variety of reasons. There's Parker desperately wanting/needing a man. 

The two of them (in a wild and woolly climax) basically prove to each other how worthy they are by showing who is best at doing away with Indians!

If you can think of these as elements of the time and "teachable moments," then you may take to the rollicking romance more easily. (It took the comments of another viewer to make me realize that it's something of a pioneer western rip-off of The Quiet Man!)

The two did have strong chemistry and though Taylor was with Ursula Thiess the entire time he and Parker worked on their three movies. In fact, he and Thiess were together on their honeymoon during the location shooting of Many Rivers.  

Whatever the case might be between them, I don't think it took much for Parker to enact longing towards her costar. And there were sly little bits along the way, such as having her churn butter rhythmically while looking him up and down as he chats with her father. Oh, and if you think I have glossed over that shirtless artwork of Taylor in one of the promotional cards above, I didn't!

Early in the movie, in what had to be some chilly waters, Taylor is taking a bath when he realizes he's not alone...!

He asks her how long she's been up there watching and she happily replies, in a phrase that can be considered a double entendre, "Long enough!'

Taylor, who was surely wearing some flesh-toned briefs, keeps the water swirling in front of him to ensure we can never see too much. 

Somehow it struck me funny and made me recall the infamous opening that was crafted for 1977's The Richard Pryor Show. 

See what I mean, Vern?

Till Next Time!