08.29.04
Movie Review: De-Lovely

In the 1940’s and 50’s, Hollywood indulged its compulsion to make biographies of as many popular composers are possible. At the time, it was a good gamble- attach a love story to a few dozen production numbers featuring the best-known musical stars of the day.

The first (and one of the best) was 1938’s Alexander’s Ragtime Band. While not the official Irving Berlin Story, it created the formula all of the others would follow: for plot you had 20th Century Fox’s eternal triangle of Alice Faye, Tyrone Power and Don Ameche; Faye and Ethel Merman doing musical duties on 30 Berlin songs; and characters who endure 30 years and two World Wars without aging a day.

Following its success, studios started grinding out more biographies: George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rogers and Hart… and eventually such lesser-lights as Burt Kalmar and Harry Ruby, Sig Romberg, and Jack Norworth and Nora Bayes.

Of course, as biographies, these movies are mostly worthless. The subjects are generally too complicated to shoehorn into something that’s wholesome enough for the entire family. It was especially troublesome to apply heterosexual love stories to homosexual subjects. MGM condensed Lorenz Hart’s depression, alcoholism, and homosexuality into angst about his height- at the end of Words and Music (1948) he slumps over dead in front of an advertisement for elevator shoes. Warner Brothers took a different tact for 1946 Night and Day and presented Cary Grant as a strappingly heterosexual Cole Porter.

And now, 60 years later, with the taboos on portraying homosexuality lifted, MGM presents the allegedly “real” Cole Porter Story. And boy, is he gay! Unfortunately, as acted by Kevin Kline, he’s also a lout and a bore- a performance that feels wrong by at least half.

And the entire movie feels wholly wrong. Somebody-didn’t-do-their-research wrong, starting with the early musical number (set, presumably, in 1919 at the future Mr. and Mrs. Porters initial meeting) when the ensemble performs “Well, Did you Evah?”, a song written for the 1956 film High Society.

The gimmick is, on his deathbed, Porter imagines his life story as a musical revue featuring his catalog of songs. The story of his marriage to older divorcee Linda Lee Thomas (played by an obviously much younger Ashley Judd) and their gentleman’s agreement regarding his affairs with men as they travel from Paris to New York to Hollywood make up the plot. Musical interludes are provided by “guest stars” such as Alanis Morissette, Natalie Cole and Elvis Costello, all of whom sound all wrong. Not too “modern” (Mary Martin, Ella Fitzgerald, even Judy Garland sounded and will continue to sound modern) Alanis, Natalie and company sound thudingly, leadenly, contemporary. (They also look all wrong for the period- the ladies’ biceps bulge out of the top of their opera gloves.)

Near the end of the movie, the Porters go to a private screening of Night and Day and, on the ending he muses “Why did Linda come back to Cole?” She replies “Because he was Cary Grant.” As if it need to be pointed out: Kevin Kline, you are no Cary Grant. Kline’s portrayal of Porter is so dull, the viewer not only wonders why Linda keeps coming back to him, but why anybody at all would want to hang out with him.

But, it is a good point: Porter’s wit, talent and works have survived one bad biopic. They’ll survive this one as well.

The Tin Pan-tithesis of melody: Ashley Judd and Kevin Kline in De-Lovely
© 2004 United Artists.