Big Screen, Little Screen

1971, first edition, from MacMillan
Rex Reed
Big Screen, Little Screen
Original and purchase price both $7.95
Hardcover with stains and worn dust-jacket
B

Not only is this a first edition, but the original "cash register validation" and sales slip from Pickwick Bookshops of the Del Amo Fashion Fair, dated the day after my fourth birthday, have been tucked inside all these years.  The Pickwick chain of California was bought by B. Dalton in 1976, and it looks like the Del Amo Fashion Fair has changed from "Fair" to "Center."  More poignant than this though is the mention of "Roger Ebert, the bright, sassy young film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times."  Ebert is only 3 1/3 years younger than Reed, although the latter's memories of 1940s movies, as well as his dislike of most rock & roll, makes him seem much older.

The greatest mind-melt though comes from how Reed is disgusted by all the homosexuality in the movies of the time.  Perhaps it was much more prominent than before (his reviews here cover 1966-70), but he seems to notice it in every other movie.  And I kept thinking But, Rex, you're gay!  At least I assumed so, and had assumed so for about 30 years.  I finally had to Google him, and yes he's out and gay, nowadays.  Forty, forty-five years ago, not so much.  Yet, while he loathed Warhol among others, he does offer positive reviews for The Killing of Sister George and The Boys in the Band.  Perhaps it's more that he doesn't like movies that cheapen sex, gay or straight.

Out or not, Reed is delightfully bitchy and catty about everyone from Otto Preminger to Doris Day.  In some ways, I enjoyed his TV reviews more than the ones for films, simply because I'd seen more of the shows than the movies, but the "big screen" section is bigger than the "little screen."  At the end of the television section, he puts in a plug for "a wonderfully imaginative, hilarious, and highly recommended new book," none other than Seven Glorious Days, Seven Fun-Filled Nights.  Reed shares Sopkin's New York sophistication and a similar sense of humor, so that I thought until this project that the question "Do psychedelic teenagers still pet?" came from Sopkin rather than Reed.

Covering a time period just before my memories start, this book calls forth a sort of pre-nostalgia for me.  There are too many ironic moments to list, but to choose one more, how about the girl in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter who "is played by a creamy, dreamy-eyed girl from Shelbyville, Tennessee"?  After that movie, Sondra Locke got nominations for the Oscar and Golden Globe, but didn't play any other notable role till 1976's The Outlaw Josey Wales. 

Reed talks briefly about the chaos in the making of Myra Breckinridge, in which he's the male identity, Myron, of the title character, played by Raquel Welch.  He chose the film as the worst of 1970, tying with Catch-22.  And next on the list?  Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, written by that sassy young critic from the Sun-Times.