Christmas arrives on Friday for fans of classic Hollywood with Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Hail, Caesar!,” which is loaded with (sometimes amusingly scrambled) references to Golden Age actors and their scandals.
For those who don’t watch much Turner Classic Movies — shame on you! — here’s a road map (with some spoilers) to these insider references.
One of several films within the film, “Hail, Caesar! A Tale of the Christ” is referred to as a remake. Since the action takes place at an MGM-like studio in the early 1950s, that would make it “Quo Vadis” (1951), to which “Hail, Caesar!” bears plot similarities. But the film’s subtitle belongs to the silent version of “Ben-Hur” (1925), which was remade by MGM in 1959, with yet another version due this summer — and there’s a line of dialogue referring to the films’ famous chariot race.
Baird Whitlock (George Clooney), the fatuous star of “Hail, Caesar!” who’s kidnapped by Communists and converted to their cause, appears to be the Coens’ joke at the expense of the right-leaning stars of both “Quo Vadis” and the 1959 “Ben-Hur.” The former starred Robert Taylor, who testified on Hollywood’s alleged infiltration by Communists before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
And liberal-turned-conservative Charlton Heston won a Best Actor Oscar for “Ben-Hur.’’ Baird is also linked to Clark Gable by way of gossip about a gay affair early in his career cited as an explanation for why Gable supposedly had George Cukor, who was gay, fired as director of “Gone With the Wind.”
Burt Gurney (Channing Tatum), the singing and dancing star of a homoerotic musical number spoofing the campy naval subtext of both “On the Town’’ (1949) and “Anchors Aweigh’’ (1945), is clearly based on Gene Kelly, who in real life was straight. That Burt is eventually revealed as a Communist agent is another inside joke: Along with other liberal Hollywood stars, including Danny Kaye, Kelly went to Washington as a member of the Committee for the First Amendment to protest the Hollywood blacklist.
Despite an FBI file that linked him to organizations identified as Communist fronts, Kelly was never blacklisted. But his then-wife, Betsy Blair, was, until Kelly used his clout with MGM to get her cast in “Marty” (1955).
DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) is not only based on MGM’s synchronized swimming superstar Esther Williams, but “Hail, Caesar!” contains a scaled-down re-creation of one of Williams’ most famous numbers, which Busby Berkeley directed for “Million Dollar Mermaid” (1952) and which included a 115-foot dive that broke Williams’ neck.
But DeeAnna’s scandal — a plot to secretly adopt the child she had while unmarried — belongs to Loretta Young. Her adopted daughter, Judy Lewis, revealed in a memoir she was conceived as the result of an affair between her mother and Clark Gable, but members of her family recently said that Young claimed before her death that it was actually date rape.
Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich): The singing cowboy who’s thrust into a drawing-room comedy and set up by the studio on a date with a Carmen Miranda-like singer-comedienne seems to be an amalgam of MGM’s Howard Keel, Warner’s Dick Foran and RKO’s James Ellison and Tim Holt.
Ellison, a sidekick in the early episodes of the Hopalong Cassidy western series, sang briefly during the finale of Berkeley’s “The Gang’s All Here,” which starred Miranda.
Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes): Hobie’s flamboyant, exasperated director seems partially a nod to MGM mainstay Vincente Minnelli, father of Liza, who directed his then-wife Judy Garland in “Meet Me in St. Louis” (1944). But the ’30s-style black-and-white comedy Laurentz is directing (whose leading lady resembles Deborah Kerr) seems much more like a mashup of Minnelli and Cukor, who directed Kelly’s last MGM musical, “Les Girls’’ (1957).
Though the director’s gay gossip about Clooney’s character points straight to Cukor, film historians believe he was actually replaced on “Gone With the Wind’’ because producer David O. Selznick was unhappy with his focus on the female stars, and because the film was far behind schedule. Cukor also has an unusual link to one of the other models for Clooney’s character: A building on the former MGM lot that was named for Robert Taylor was renamed for Cukor by current owner Sony because of Taylor’s support for the blacklist. Cukor directed Taylor and Greta Garbo in “Camille’’ (1936), which was edited by longtime MGM editor Margaret Booth — the inspiration for Frances McDormand’s briefly seen character in “Hail, Caesar!”
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