Dorothy...and Toto, too!

So beloved and so vital a part of the national folklore is The Wizard of Oz that it's almost incomprehensible that the 1939 film based on L. Frank Baum's American allegory, the film that made Judy Garland a star and "somewhere over the rainbow" a goal, was not an immediate classic. As this wonderful piece by Emma Brockes (hat tip, moviecitynews.com) reports, the film did not make its $2.7 million investment back until 1956 when CBS leased television syndication rights and the flying monkeys haunted the dreams of a generation of baby boomers and their children.

Brockes delicately teases out the populist references of the source material while celebrating the New Deal lyrics of wordsmith and social activist E.Y. "Yip" Harburg. (As a college literature prof explained to us when I was an undergraduate, the yellow brick road represented the gold standard, the Scarecrow American agriculture, the Tin Man American industry and the Cowardly Lion Wall Street.) And she colorfully describes the atmosphere at the Oz conventions (before Trekkies and Star Warriors there were Oz nuts): "The Baum-ites disdain the Judy-ites; the Oz scholars cut eyes at the collectors. Everyone loves the Munchkins."

My guess is that in the age of DVD and downloads, with the possible exception of The Godfather films, the average American over 30 has seen The Wizard of Oz more times than any other title. I still shudder when I hear the seven-note bar of music that heralds the flying monkeys. My throat constricts and heart enlarges when Judy Garland sings "Over the Rainbow." What pulls me through is the film's devastation-defying hope and, as Brockes infers, the sense that we each have more power than we think we do. You?

Share your Oz stories.

Marilyn Monroe, engineer of the artifice of natural

Nearly 47 years after her 1962 death at the age of 36, Marilyn Monroe continues to bewitch. So the news this week that a brassiere once worn by the beguiling blonde sold at auction for $5,200 shouldn't be a surprise. The undergarment in question is a marvel of engineering, a double-slung sling described by lingerie authorities as an antecedent of the Wonderbra.

Perhaps more than any actress of her generation, Monroe lived the truth behind the Oscar Wilde quip that to be natural is such a difficult pose to keep up. The late Holly Solomon, an art dealer who befriended Monroe when both studied at the Actor's Studio in New York during the 1950s, sometimes shared a cab with her to the Sutton Place apartment where they both lived. Solomon liked to tell the story about how impressed she was that in the era of long-line foundation garments and binding girdles, Monroe seemed  unbound by underwear and the proprieties of the day. "In the elevator one day I screwed up the courage to tell Marilyn that I wished that I could, like her, go braless," Solomon recalled. To her surprise, Marilyn giggled and unbuttoned her blouse to reveal a sheer brassiere that had nipples embroidered on its cups. "It's about illusion," Monroe confided.

Art historians tell us that famous nudes (think of Goya's Naked Maja) are depicted displaying their wares as though corseted in the fashion of the day, but with the foundation garments stripped off. So the figure is both clothed and unclothed, as it were. In this sense, Monroe continued this longstanding visual arts tradition.

Looking at photos of the brassiere sold at auction, I'm guessing that it was worn under the white spangly dress she wore in Some Like it Hot where she sings "I Want to Be Loved By You." That and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes are my two favorite Monroes. Yours?

Ryan Reynolds in "The Proposal"

When did nudity in movies stop being sexy and start being funny? I speak, of course, of scenes in this summer's films The Hangover, The Proposal, Bruno and The Ugly Truth (opening Friday) in which the anti-erotic nudity of Zach Galifianakis, Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Sacha Baron Cohen and Katherine Heigl is played for laughs.

First time I noticed this was about six years ago in Something's Gotta Give in a scene where Jack Nicholson loses his way in Diane Keaton's house and startles his nekkid hostess in the hallway. (This, shortly after a scene where Nicholson, on pain meds, wanders down a hospital hallway with the back of his hospital gown open.) Then there was Sideways where the Naked Guy runs down the street trying to beat up Thomas Haden Church who had his way with Naked Guy's wife. Since then, the naked Greco-Roman wrestling between Borat and his videographer in Borat has been a high of low gross-out comedy.

Do the laughs come from the surprise of seeing man and woman parts not in the service of titillation? Or....? Your thoughts?

Everything's ducky!

While previewing Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron's yummy film about blogger Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and her heroine-worship of  jolly French chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep), I whispered to a colleague, "Is Streep the first actor ever to have previously played on screen the director he/she works for in a subsequent film?" (Streep, of course,  played Ephron in Mike Nichols' Heartburn (1986), about the bustup of Ephron's marriage to Washington Post scribe Carl Bernstein.)

The closest example I can come up with is that William Wellman, Jr. played his father in senior's Lafayette Escadrille, (1958), about the elite World War I flying legion -- but that misses the mark by many miles. Can you think of one?

The Streep/Ephron connection goes back to Silkwood (1983), which Ephron co-wrote with Alice Arlen. In Julie & Julia, Streep is a jolly, jolly Julia, nailing the carbonated voice, cheery confidence and irrepressible vivacity of the woman who taught Americans how to bone a duck, set an aspic and embrace butter like a long-lost lover. It also occured to me while watching Streep's masterful embodiment of the master chef, that the actress might have played more real-life figures than any other performer. Let's see: she was Karen Silkwood, Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa, Ephron in Heartburn, Lindy Chamberlain, accused child murderess, in A Cry in the Dark, violin teacher Roberta Guaspari in Music of the Heart, Susan Orlean in Adaptation and now Child in J & J. She played a slightly fictionalized Carrie Fisher in Postcards from the Edge.  That makes eight. Can any other actor top that?

If you don't have answers to these  brainteasers for movie geeks, tell me your favorite Streep performance? (I'd say Sophie's Choice, Defending Your Life and The Devil Wears Prada). By the way, Streep turned 60 last month so here's belated birthday greetings for the dame who started at the top and has surpassed herself ever since. 

Katherine Heigl

Not many actors make the leap from small screen to big screen. Yet Katherine Heigl, that double dip of praline who won a supporting actress Emmy for Grey's Anatomy a few years back but was snubbed today when nominations were announced, is prospering as a movie star. Her first two films as a lead,  Knocked Up and 27 Dresses, were huge successes. And there's every reason to think she'll go three-for-three with The Ugly Truth, the R-rated rom-com co-starring Gerard Butler, opening next Friday. From the looks of the trailers, The Ugly Truth recalls the pleasant Ashley Judd/Hugh Jackman vehicle, Someone Like You.

Your thoughts on Heigl ? On why she may be faring better on the big screen than the small? (On the small screen, gestures have to be a little larger in order to register while on the big screen, which is more microscopic, actors have to dial it down.) Other actors who made the successful transition? Denzel Washington and Johnny Depp. Jennifer Aniston and Kathleen Turner. James Garner and Sally Field. Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood.

Bruno's fashion accessory: An adopted baby from Africa.

UPDATE: Ukraine bans Bruno

Readers ask: How in the Helsinki did Bruno, which includes extreme close-ups of man-parts and prolonged sequences of sex and simulated sex, receive an R rating, which makes it available to those 17 and older? My kneejerk response: That the Motion Picture Association of America generally designates a rating that would most financially benefit its signatories, the studios. (This also explains why the new Harry Potter, which has the threat of violence and terror one would think was PG-13, was rated PG.)

In the UK, Bruno was circumcised by nearly two minutes in order to win the 15 rating that would allow teenagers to see it. (Read link to see what was snipped.) To see the uncut version in the UK, you have to be 18.

But my kneejerk reaction does not take into account the recentish trend in R-rated comedies: Male frontal nudity played for laughs. (See: Sideways, Forgetting Sarah Marshall). Used to be that man-parts earned a film an automatic NC-17 (although The Piano was an exception to the general rule) while woman-parts were R. This of course created a double-standard where female nudity was pervasive and male nudity relatively rare. So the fact that Bruno got an R rating may be interpreted as a sign of a single standard.

Thoughts on the ratings system? On Bruno? Here's my reaction. And here's that of Barbara Walters and the gals on The View. And here's a take from Joe Baltake, who thinks that Bruno owes Dieter royalties.

Quentin Tarantino from the August issue of GQ. Photo credit � Mark Seliger / GQ FOR GATECRASHER ONE-TIME USE ONLY; DO NOT ARCHIVE Original Filename: tarantino.jpg.JPG

When he has a movie to flog, Quentin Tarantino inevitably forgets the cardinal rule of publicity: Let the film speak for itself. With Inglourious Basterds (sic), his forthcoming World War II-era film starring Brad Pitt, Mr. QT is the opposite of on the QT, yammering to GQ why directors get worse with age. While this might be true of Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, who peaked early (as has Tarantino, in my opinion), the list of filmmakers whose mature work surpasses their early efforts is quite a long one. Pedro Almodovar. Robert Altman. Kathryn Bigelow. David Cronenberg. Clint Eastwood. John Ford. Mira Nair...

Add to this list. Or consider this post an open thread to discuss the films of Tarantino. I admire the fluidity of his filmmaking (Pulp Fiction) and am frequently astonished by his set pieces (Kill Bill), but must admit that except for Jackie Brown, I find his movies are style without substance. You? Looking forward to Basterds?

We don't know what Pope Benedict XVI personally thinks, but according to the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince got two thumbs up from the reviewer, who approved of the film's message that it requires "costs and sacrifice" for good to triumph over evil.

Why is this news? Because many religious observers here and abroad, most recently the Rev. Gerhard Maria Wagner of Austria, have denounced the Harry Potter novels and movies as advocating Satanism.

(Most mystifying line in the review: "The spastic search for immortality epitomized by Voldemort is stigmatized." Which, translated from the Italian, probably means "Voldemort is foiled").

My feeling is that we project our beliefs onto movies rather than vice-versa. But I'll ask the question: Has a film ever shaken your religious belief? Exalted it? For the agnostic, favorite Harry Potter flick? Why? (Mine: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (director, Alfonso Cuaron) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (director, Mike Newell) because rather than regurgitating the novels, they told the stories, dramatically and cinematically.

Doris as torch singer Ruth Etting in "Love Me or Leave Me."

On Sunday Philadelphia Qfest (formerly the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival) celebrates Doris Day with a screening of the documentary What a Difference a Day Made: Doris Day Superstar, followed by a showing of her best known film, Pillow Talk, a mistaken sexual-identity comedy famously co-starring Rock Hudson, a closeted gay actor, as a studly Romeo pretending to be a gay man in order to get the virginal Day into the sack.

While I love Day, she's a more interesting actress than she is in this popular comedy that made her a national joke. (Of this chirpy confection, funnyman Oscar Levant quipped, "I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." ) Those who want to understand why Day, four times married and the mother of the late music producer Terry Melcher, is a gay icon should rent Calamity Jane, the 1953 musical about the mannish pistol-packin' gal in buckskins surprised to find herself attracted to... a man (Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickock).  In this gender-confusion comedy, Calamity trades her britches in for a girly dress and tenderly sings the ballad, "Secret Love," which became a gay and lesbian anthem. A key component to the charm of the film and its lead is in how Calamity learns to honor her masculinity and femininity.

A hugely popular band singer of the 1940s, Day (born Doris van Kappelhoff in 1924) recorded the torchy World War II ballad "Sentimental Journey" before reluctantly transitioning into a screen career. Cashing in on her tomboy charm, Warner Brothers cast her in a number of sunny musicals in which she played a wholesome Ginger Rogers type, corn-tasseled hair and cornflower-blue eyes.  Day established her acting bona fides by wedding sunshine and stormy weather  in the films Young at Heart, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Love Me or Leave Me, three extraordinary performances where her singing deepens the drama. She was also terrific opposite John Raitt in the screen version of The Pajama Game, as the sexiest shop steward in union history. Day, an animal activist who lives in Carmel, is a national treasure who deserves to be celebrated for her breadth and depth, and not only her camp appeal. The late novelist John Updike spoke of her as his favorite actress and lifelong crush object. He interpolated her biography into his underknown novel, In the Beauty of the Lilies.

Are you a Day fan? Favorite performance? Recording?