At Long Last Love (1975)

All right, kids; it's time to say a fond "hello" to your friend and mine: the OOP movie.

OOP, as any regular reader will tell you, stands for Out Of Print, as in out-of-print movie, which means any film that has yet to have a studio release on VHS or DVD, or sometimes both. And many times, it's for good reason.

You see, there are different determinants for every OOP movie: sometimes it's a matter of securing rights with studios and/or producers, other times an actor or director will be deceased and their estates won't release those particular films, other times still it's simply a matter of the movie being so bad, so embarrassing and so without merit that no one connected with said project ever wants it to see the light of day.

Which brings me to Peter Bogdanovich.

In the early Seventies, Peter was riding a wave of critical and audience acclaim. He started the decade on the success of The Last Picture Show and wrote and/or directed such well-received offerings as Paper Moon and What's Up, Doc?, both of which were beloved by critics, raked in money and earned Bogdanovich a reputation for taking old styles of film-making and turning them into crowd-pleasing money earners that gave their studio (20th Century Fox in this case) reason to believe in their director and his creative genius.

Just like United Artists did with Michael Cimino. remember?

Anyway, Bogdanovich continued to play his "paying-homage-to-classic-Hollywood" card when he directed/wrote and produced what was to be his first (and to date his ONLY) movie musical.

Nothing wrong with that; musicals were nothing unusual at that time. Thing was, movie musicals already had their day around the same time The Sound of Music had its time in the sun - and yes, that was in the mid-to-late Sixties. Since then, such bad examples trying to ride on TSOM's coat tails came about as Finian's Rainbow, Camelot, Star!, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Man of La Mancha, Song of Norway, Mame and Lisztomania.

It's not Bogdnovich's fault that At Long Last Love came out in the middle of this big plop of opportunism; but it didn't help matters that rather than being an exception, this movie was part of the problem.

Before I get into that, though: the movie takes place in the 1930s with millionaire Michael Oliver Pritchard III (Burt Reynolds) meeting and falling in love with singer Kitty O'Kelly (Madeline Kahn). At the same time, stubborn socialite Brooke Carter (Cybill Shepherd) meets Italian gambler Johnny Spanish (Duilio Del Prete) and they also fall in love. Both couples then meet and become fast friends. Eventually, Brooke's sassy maid Elizabeth (Eileen Brennan) falls in love with Michael's valet Rodney James (John Hillerman). After all this is set up, then things take a decidedly soap opera-ish turn as Michael and Brooke fall in love, Kitty and Johnny fall in love, everyone fights, everyone makes up, there is romantic tension all over the place...

And did I mention the Cole Porter songs?

Yes, this story is just a framework on which to hang 16 Cole Porter songs for the four main stars to sing and dance to. You heard me. Singing and dancing. Two things that no one in their right mind would equate with Cybill Shepherd OR Burt Reynolds OR Madeline Kahn OR Duilio Del Prete...

Okay, I had to stop a minute and look this guy up for the benefit of myself and anyone else who would ask, WHO IN THE HELL IS DUILIO DEL PRETE??? Well, aside from being a successful actor in his native Italy, he had parts in two other non-Italian movies besides this one: one was - surprise - Peter Bogdanovich's adaptation of Daisy Miller (starring Cybill Shepherd again) and Joseph Losey's The Assassination of Trotsky. This triptych accounts for Del Prete never stepping foot out of Italy again for the rest of his career. And to his credit, he didn't try singing again either.

Back to At Long Last Love: speaking of the 1930s, Bogdanovich tried something else in this movie that had not been attempted since the days of musical film-making from the 1930s...he filmed all of the singing scenes live. Live, as in recorded without any post-production dubbing or lip-syncing or masking of the fact that not a one of these people have any singing talent whatsoever.

That was only ONE bad idea, though, especially seeing that there are also dancing scenes wherein no choreographer was in evidence. But when you combine the two ideas, you get this:

Cybill gets tangled up in curtains as she sings "I Get a Kick Out of You", Burt stumbles around the edge of a moving limousine while singing "Poor Young Millionaire", Madeline Kahn wiggles around on a stage full of guys in caveman makeup as she sings "Find Me a Primitive Man" and Duilio simply walks around, wrapping his thick Italian accent around songs like "Tomorrow" and "From Alpha To Omega". Then there are more cluttered, clumsy scenes with the stars struggling their way around other Cole Porter classics as "You're the Top", "Well Did Ya Evah?", "Let's Misbehave", "Friendship" and "It's De-Lovely".

You may notice that one of these songs is NOT a Cole Porter song, even though this is supposed to be a Cole Porter-influenced movie. Seems that Bogdanovich, auteur that he was, couldn't resist creating a new song just for the movie itself, with the help of music supervisor for the film Artie Butler. Which one? Oh no; if you're a Cole Porter fan, you already know. I've said too much about the music already....

So this was a bad movie idea. And a bad musical idea. And even worse still that Bogdanovich populated the cast with comic talent and not singing-and-dancing talent. Oh, there are plenty of funny moments in this movie; Bogdanovich was always good at being funny, no question. And there are a lot of small moments throughout this film that are very good as far as laughs go. And Burt and Madeline have proven themselves as past masters at making audiences laugh.

Cybill...well, to tell the truth, she got her start in movies by being the paramour (that's girlfriend, for anyone who's familiar with William F. Buckley-speak) of Bogdanovich, and he at least cast her in some good films...for the most part. Here, she just seems to be distracted and annoyed most of time, like she can't wait to get off-screen.

And did you know she recorded an album full of Cole Porter songs prior to this movie's attack...I mean, release? What; you didn't know she had an album because you didn't know she could sing? Well, she did...though she couldn't...and she can't. In album form OR movie form.

In fact, the best performances belong to Hillerman and Brennan, as the respective personal aides of the piece - they certainly provide the most dependable humor in At Long Last Love and even do moderately well in terms of singing. Their contributions to "Friendship" and "But In The Morning, No" are palpable to their extended talent. Not to mention the fact that the screen brightens immeasurably when they share time together on it.

Oh yeah; Mildred Natwick's in this thing, too. Yeah, Mildred Natwick. Why, you may ask? For all I can gather...she was available.

The look of At Long Last Love is impeccable; and why not - seeing as how the cinematographer was none other than the legendary Laszlo Kovacs, a man who had worked with Bogdanovich in the past and had an enviable career despite having provided a sleek, professional sheen to films like The Last Movie and the Sylvester Stallone ego trip Paradise Alley (another review for another time...).

As far as everything else goes, however.... This film did so badly that it barely earned back less than a third of its $6 million budget, garnered scathing reviews by every living reviewer in 1975 and prompted Bogdanovich to release a nation-wide newspaper apology to reviewers, movie-goers and the world in general. I mean, when Ethel Merman bad-mouths your film, maybe you should have gone back and paid the extra money for real singers.

In the end, almost everybody got out of At Long Last Love alive; Burt had a successful career, Cybill left Bogdanovich and went on to triumphs big and small, Madeline spent most of her career associated with Mel Brooks and fared far better for it, Duilio stayed in Italy and enjoyed a prosperous career, Hillerman and Brennan enjoyed extended careers in small roles in movies and television.... In fact, the only one who really suffered the most for At Long Last Love was Peter Bogdanovich himself.

Never again would he have a financially-successful movie, nor a movie as heavily-promoted as this one - most of his work lately has been regulated to TV movies and an episode of "The Sopranos". Even a sequel to The Last Picture Show (Texasville) came and went with only moderate fanfare and is now largely forgotten, a far cry from his heyday when a Peter Bogdanovich film was a major event in Hollywood.

See what one bad film can do to you?

As far as my opinion on the film; At Long Last Love was cute, the badly-sung songs had a kind of charm like a bunch of rich socialites getting drunk on karaoke night and doing foolish things they won't remember the next morning.

The whole movie ends up like a really expensive goof on Thirties musicals put on by people who THOUGHT they could sing and dance but really can't - a lot like watching the first round of eliminations on "Dancing With The Stars", only the stars didn't have a chance to train first.

That probably wasn't the kind of reaction Bogdanovich and company were looking for but hey, Pete - take what you can get, man.

Cybill sure did.