I never wanted to write about society people or something like that. I was interested in the rougher side of life. There’s something about struggling people, poor people, that’s dramatic. Struggle is dramatic. I’ve had friends who wrote pretty good novels about college boys and college professors. I didn’t dislike them. But it’s a matter of drama. For a lot of people, real life is a struggle. Maybe wealthy people suffer, but if you read a book about their suffering—a multimillionaire’s wife is divorcing him or something—it’s just different to me. It’s not as desperate as drama set in poverty.
-Leonard Gardner about Fat City
I’m not sure how I found Bill Ryan’s Substack piece Men in Other Towns but I’m glad I did. It’s terrific.
Ryan’s writing inspired me to watch John Huston’s 1972 film Fat City, adapted from Leonard Gardner’s 1969 novel - surprisingly the only novel he has written. It’s a slice of life in late 1950s skid row America - in this case Stockton, California. According to Ryan, “Fat City is I suppose what you’d call plotless, in that the events of the novel occur with the same sense of understandable randomness as do the events of everyday life.” I like a good plotless film now and again, where the dialog and beauty (in this case stark beauty) of the film itself are enough.
Stacy Keach does a great job as Billy Tully, an ex-boxer drunk. Ryan points out, “Keach plays Tully just right, with hope cut by hopelessness, optimism hand-in-hand with total despair.” Ryan also extolls the leading actress Susan Tyrrell for her Oscar-nominated portrayal of Tully’s new love Oma, who Ryan describes as “…not only always a drunk, but who has always been drunk for many years.” Brilliant.
I noticed during Fat City’s opening credits that the film was produced by Ray Stark, who I remembered also produced the 1960 movie The World of Suzie Wong, adapted from a book written by Richard Mason and starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan in her first film role.
This is a fine film and, like Fat City, tragic in its own way.
The World of Suzie Wong also serves as a valuable historical record of 1960s Hong Kong, in much the same way that Fat City serves as a valuable historical record of early 1970s day-labor farmwork and skid row in Stockton, although most of the original skid row depicted in Gardner’s novel was demolished during the West End Redevelopment program from 1964 to 1969.
Richard Mason was born in Hale, England in 1919. From 1928 through 1933 he was educated at The Downs Malvern, a private boarding school where he studied under novelist W. H. Auden. From 1933 to 1936 Mason received his secondary school education in Dorset, at St Mary’s School and Bryanston School, where he started writing and publishing articles in the local press and a film magazine. After working for the British Council, he entered service in the Royal Air Force from 1939 until 1944. He was attached to the 14th Army as an intelligence officer where he learned to speak Japanese and spent several years in India and Burma interrogating Japanese prisoners of war. While still in the RAF and using the pseudonym Richard Lakin, he wrote his first novel, The Body Fell on Berlin (1943).
In 1957, Mason wrote The World of Suzie Wong. It was quickly adapted into a 1958 Broadway play, starring William Shatner and France Nuyen, who appeared as Liat, the daughter of Bloody Mary in Rodgers and Hammerstein's hit musical South Pacific. Here’s Nuyen on the cover of Playbill:
The World of Suzie Wong is an interesting film with a great score written by George Duning! As American Big Band leader Kay Kyser’s chief arranger throughout the band’s career, Duning was no stranger to jazz. For the film, he came up with an excellent batch of tight jazzy tracks that swing hard and are filled with strong solos. A good example is At The Namkok:
Fat City, on the other hand, has a limited soundtrack with only three songs: Help Me Make It Through the Night composed and performed by Kris Kristofferson; Bread’s If; and Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s The Look of Love performed by Dusty Springfield, played ever so slightly on a car radio during a scene.
This week on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig in our paddles to explore the life of a single song, The Look of Love.
Interestingly, Stan Getz made the first recording of The Look of Love, an instrumental version for his album What the World Needs Now: Stan Getz Plays Burt Bacharach and Hal David:
It was recorded on December 2, 1966 at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
However, the album was not released until 1968, after the song with lyrics sung by Dusty Springfield had been released in the 1967 James Bond spoof film Casino Royale:
Incidentally, William Holden and John Huston make cameos in Casino Royale. Huston also directed the film (one of the film’s five directors - yes, five). Dusty Springfield’s film version of The Look of Love received an Oscar nomination, but lost out to of all things Talk to the Animals from Doctor Doolittle.
Here’s the film’s brilliant slow-motion aquarium scene with Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress while Springfield sings The Look of Love:
Casino Royale is the most bizarre of the Bond series and interestingly did not first appear on film. In 1954 it was released as a 50-minute live teleplay as an episode of Climax! Mystery Theater. It starred Barry Nelson as James Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. Here’s the trailer:
Following the teleplay, the film rights to the novel reverted back to Ian Fleming, who had loaned them temporarily to CBS for $1,000. Fleming subsequently sold them in 1955 to Russian-American film director, actor, and producer Gregory Ratoff for $6,000.
After five years of trying to get the film made, Ratoff died of leukemia in 1960 and his widow sold the rights to producer Charles K. Feldman. Feldman also ran the talent agency Famous Artists, which employed up-and-coming film producer Albert R. “Cubby” Broccoli. Broccoli was interested in the Bond novels early on and even offered to buy the rights to Casino Royale from Feldman, but the offer was declined. Broccoli went on to buy the film rights to all the other books (except Thunderball) and produce the official James Bond film series.
Detroit’s Dorothy Ashby is one of the most underrated jazz greats of the 1950s and 1960s.
She made her debut as a leader in 1957 with Jazz Harpist on the Regent label. This is an excellent album that deserves wider recognition:
In a 1983 interview with W. Royal Stokes, she shared this about her career:
It's been maybe a triple burden in that not a lot of women are becoming known as jazz players. There is also the connection with black women. The audiences I was trying to reach were not interested in the harp, period—classical or otherwise—and they were certainly not interested in seeing a black woman playing the harp.
Over a decade after Jazz Harpist, in 1968 she recorded Afro-Harping with a bunch of unknown musicians for Cadet Records, a jazz subsidiary of Chess Records. The final track on this interesting album is The Look of Love:
Two years later on his 1970 ...To Be Continued, Issac Hayes recorded a groovy version of the song that takes off after Hayes's vocals at the 4:25 minute mark:
I’m pretty sure Michael Toles is on guitar (correct me if I’m wrong) with a solid Wes Montgomery-like sound that reminds me of his shredding on Cafe Regio's from Shaft, released the following year.
Here’s one more for the road. In Fat City, Bill Tully lives in two worlds - the one of his dreams and the down-to-earth world of stark necessity. That’s a world so many of us can identify with.
I think this scene at the end of the film says it all, particularly at the 1:40 mark when Tully turns to look at two tables of older men behind him and, in a brilliant shot, Huston freezes the frame:
That scene reminds me of another Dusty Springfield song that could have easily found its way into Fat City as the fourth song on the soundtrack:
The lyrics from Carole King’s No Easy Way Down tell the story of what Billy Tully must have been thinking:
No, it isn't very easy when you're left on your own
No, it isn't very easy when each road you take
Is one more mistake, there's no one to break your fall
And lead you back home, yeahWe all like to climb to the heights of love
Where our fantasy world can be found
But you must know in the end when it's time to descend
That there is no easy way down
Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig in our paddles to explore the world of Jamaican guitarist Ernst Ranglin.
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Until then, keep on walking….
This article (column? essay? idk) has so much in it—like I’ve come to expect from you. So complex and off in different interesting dimensions. I explored each of those embedded songs/videos, and I’m not even a fan of the song “Look of Love.” (Well. Maybe except the ABC one from the 80s, which is entirely different). Thank you.