Rich and Famous (1981 film)

This article is about the 1981 film. For other uses, see Rich and Famous (disambiguation).

Rich and Famous
Original poster
Directed by	George Cukor
Written by	Gerald Ayres Based on a play by John Van Druten
Produced by	William Allyn Jacqueline Bisset
Starring	Jacqueline Bisset Candice Bergen David Selby Hart Bochner
Cinematography	Donald Peterman
Edited by	John F. Burnett
Music by	Georges Delerue
Production company	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date	September 23, 1981 (1981-09-23)
Running time	117 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10 million
Box office	$14,492,125

Rich and Famous is a 1981 American drama film directed by George Cukor, the final film of his long career. The screenplay by Gerald Ayres is based on the 1941 play Old Acquaintance by John Van Druten, which was filmed with Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins in 1943 under its original title.

Plot

Two women find their friendship is tested when one rises from obscurity to success while the other stagnates in a stalled career. Liz Hamilton, a young woman with literary ambitions, and Merry Noel Blake, an all-American blond beauty from Atlanta, are close friends who met while they were freshmen at Smith College in the 1950s.

Soon after graduation, Liz writes a critically acclaimed book and drifts into unfulfilling relationships and one-night stands, including an empty encounter in an airplane lavatory, a fling with a teenaged hustler and an affair with Chris Adams, a young reporter for Rolling Stone. Meanwhile, Merry fulfills her aspiration to a life of domesticity caring for a husband and child by marrying Doug Blake and moving to a beach house in Malibu.

Although Merry is happy, she can't help but envy Liz for her glamorous career as an author. Merry decides to write a book of her own and, with Liz's assistance, A House by the Sea, a trashy roman à clef about the Malibu colony, finds a publisher and becomes a huge best-seller. Before long Merry is a darling of the media and her fame and fortune surpass those of Liz (who is experiencing a severe case of writer's block), leading to jealousy between the old friends and problems in Merry's marriage.

The film takes place over the course of 22 years, first depicting Merry's and Doug's elopement in 1959, and then picking up during three segments, taking place in 1969, 1975 and 1981, showing changes in the characters' relationships (and society) over the course of two decades.

Production

Robert Mulligan originally was slated to direct, but when members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Screen Actors Guild went on strike four days after filming began, the production shut down. Mulligan was forced to withdraw when previous commitments conflicted with the new schedule. The film proved to be the last directed by George Cukor. It also marked the screen debuts of an 8-year-old Nicole Eggert and also Meg Ryan, who played Merry's daughter in the 1981 segment.

New York City locations seen in the film include the Algonquin Hotel and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Additional locations include Madison, New Jersey (standing in for Northampton, Massachusetts), Los Angeles, and Malibu. Interiors were filmed at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in Culver City.

Nina Foch, Dick Cavett, Ray Bradbury, Merv Griffin, Marsha Hunt, Christopher Isherwood, Gavin Lambert, Roger Vadim, and Paul Morrissey are seen in cameo appearances in the film.

The soundtrack includes "Take Me for a Buggy Ride" performed by Bessie Smith and "On The Sunny Side of the Street" sung by Willie Nelson.

Cast

• Jacqueline Bisset ..... Liz Hamilton
• Candice Bergen ..... Merry Noel Blake
• David Selby ..... Doug Blake
• Hart Bochner ..... Chris Adams
• Steven Hill ..... Jules Levi
• Michael Brandon ..... Max
• Meg Ryan ..... Debby (age 18)
• Nicole Eggert ..... Debby (age 8)

Critical reception

Critics were mixed about the film. Vincent Canby of the New York Times said, "The movie can't make up its mind whether it's about a tumultuously difficult but rewarding friendship or whether it's a sendup of the contemporary literary scene. It fails as both . . . The culprit is Gerald Ayres . . . [who] has spread his talents very thin . . . Though he has written two big roles, he doesn't seem capable of writing either a romantic drama, like The Turning Point, or an informed satire . . . Mr. Ayres can occasionally write good wisecracks . . . But he has no particular insight into the publishing scene. Nor does he ever convince us of the enduring strength of the friendship that lasts through thick and, more often, thin. Though Misses Bisset and Bergen are appealing actresses, Rich and Famous doesn't hold together."

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times observed, "This film is a real curiosity. It's a good-bad movie, like The Other Side of Midnight or The Greek Tycoon. It contains scenes that make you want to squirm because of their awkwardness and awfulness, and yet you don't want to look away and you're not bored. The movie has the courage to go to extremes, and some of those extremes may not be art but are certainly unforgettable . . . It's a slick, trashy, entertaining melodrama, with too many dumb scenes to qualify as successful."

Variety said, "While not without its problems, Rich and Famous is an absorbing drama of some notable qualities, the greatest of which is a gutsy, fascinating and largely magnificent performance by Jacqueline Bisset . . . For a bright, sophisticated piece such as this, particularly one under the guidance of the irrepressibly elegant George Cukor, the somewhat harsh, murky visual style is suprising [sic]."

TV Guide rated the film one out of four stars and commented, "This could have been - and is - a very funny film; unfortunately, most of the laughs are unintentional . . . Although his version of Van Druten's play Old Acquaintance is sexier than the original 1943 screen treatment . . . it also fails to satisfy on many levels . . . This glossy soap opera suffers from Cukor's failure to control his actors. Moreover, the costumes are atrocious. The film simply lacks the sophisticated style that made Cukor famous."

Pauline Kael of The New Yorker stated, "Rich and Famous" isn't camp, exactly: It's more like a homosexual fantasy. Jacqueline Bisset's affairs, with their masochistic overtones, are creepy, because they don't seem like what a woman would get into. And Candice Bergen is used almost as if she were a big, goosey, female impersonator.".

Time Out London said, "Considering neither Bisset nor Bergen had ever shown the slightest acting ability before in movies, their performances in the Bette Davis/Miriam Hopkins roles in this loose reworking of Old Acquaintance are very capable . . . Of course much of the credit must go to Cukor, the veteran 'woman's director'; but the film disappoints in its unconfident handling of the secondary characters."

Awards and nominations

Gerald Ayres won the Writers Guild Award for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium.

External links

• Rich and Famous at IMDb
• Rich and Famous at the TCM Movie Database
• Rich and Famous at Box Office Mojo