Sammy and Peter and Debbie and Cliff

I am just like John Lennon as I type this—no, really—preferring having the television on as background while I write or read or do almost anything, really (I did say almost anything, people)--I am half-watching a Flix channel showing of the 1968 movie Salt and Pepper, starring Sammy Davis, Jr. and Peter Lawford as hipster nightclub owner buddies who somehow--how do these odd things happen?--get mixed up in espionage and murder when all they're trying to do is have a happenin' time in Swinging London at their Studio 54-prototype club and chase dames, I mean chicks, I mean birds.

Davis is Charles Salt and Lawford is Christopher Pepper--cute, no? And the pace is zippy enough--almost too zippy, the plot is more than a little confusing--and Davis energetically sings a couple of forgettable mod-pop songs and is really quite funny (Did he win the toss to get the best scripted jokes or are these ad-libs?) but something is missing here and it's not just plot coherence.

As I say, Sammy Davis is entertaining--Peter Lawford is nearly a wooden plank by comparison--but overall this film seems to me another example of the panicked desperation of sixties era Big Hollywood to produce movies that sixties era big audiences would want to see.

But who precisely were "sixties era audiences" big or otherwise? That must have been the dilemma. There was an older, more conservative, ticket-buying audience that shouldn't be ignored, but by '68 the youth movement was in full roar and studio executives, mindful of this, were apparently caught in the middle of trying to appeal to both groups.

The too-frequent result was studio offerings like Salt and Pepper, which tried too hard to have it both ways, casting older, familiar, established stars in roles that should have gone to 25 year-olds. Lawford particularly, with his graying sideburns, triple chins and tired, pouchy eyes looks faintly ridiculous coming on to all the lithesome, twenty-something "birds" around him; yi-ikes--you wince to watch it.

Also, you simmer. You watch how Davis is being used in this movie and you contemplate all those white studio executives, resplendent in their Nehru jackets, love beads, and peace medallions who were nevertheless too threatened, obviously, by the notion of black males as sexy leading men--even black males like flinty little Rat-Pack mascot and Nixon-hugging Sammy Davis, Jr. Sammy is therefore sweetly dissed by all the lovely dollies he approaches, and relegated to the role of mouthy Court Jester.

Oh, well. We could at least claim the elegant, dignified Sidney “They call me MR. Tibbs!” Poitier—though not in this movie, unfortunately—and Jim Brown, in 100 Rifles, and Richard Roundtree, in Shaft, and Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, in Black Caesar, were just around the corner...

Earlier I was flipping back and forth from this movie to the HBO broadcast of 1963's My Six Loves starring Debbie Reynolds as a "big Broadway star" who finds and adopts six adorable sibling urchins. Yes, well.

I'd noticed this movie in the programming grid earlier in the week and set the reminder function for it, thinking I would enjoy it as a nice bit of Saturday morning nostalgia...

Not so much, as it turns out.

Maybe the problem is that now I'm looking at these films from the perpetually pissed-off and jaded perspective of the grown-up me rather than from the perspective of the wistful, movie-loving adolescent I once was. Because I've seen this movie, or parts of it, before now I’m sure—and I remember liking it a whole lot better.

I guess back then I just took it all at face value--and enjoyed the great Eileen Heckart's wisecracks and deadpan observations. (As witty sidekicks go, Eileen Heckart may be the best time you'll have in any movie that Eve Arden didn't get to first.) Probably I also got a kick out of the pre-Fugitive David Janssen as Debbie’s exasperated manager-suitor. Now, however--though I still adore Heckart--I'm too aware of the film's nastily manipulative message to women everywhere to Stop!! Stop all this independent career and self-reliance nonsense and go get married and have babies like God and them meant you to!

I mean, there's handsome Cliff Robertson as the neighborhood minister and part-time handyman (Uh, what?) who starts off by trying to help a conflicted Debbie cope with her instant orphan family, but by the end of the movie finally barks at her and the blustery Janssen: "It's about time she stopped being a star and started being a woman!" or words to that effect, clearly expressing the viewpoint of the movie's director, producer, writer, production team, Krafts Services crew, every hetero male in the audience, and--I will bet all of you any amount of money--Reynolds's real-life hubby of the time, effectively guilt-tripping our heroine into motherhood, marriage and rock-solid suburban conformity.

And just to reassure Robertson, herself, her husband and the rest of us that she is indeed a "normal" woman with "normal" needs, Debbie Reynolds actually apologizes to him for her epic impertinence in thinking her life actually belonged to her, and then do you know what she does? She shuts up and does as she's told, letting Reverend Robertson be the boss he was meant to be. They kiss. And the wonderfully cynical Heckart, her plain speaking best friend-secretary, a single career gal herself, mind you, rejoins with wry and weary gratitude that "it's about time."

Jesus.

Oh, I know how I sound, but look, it's so complicated! I love sixties movies, even bad sixties movies, sometimes, especially, bad sixties movies--and there were obviously a LOT of bad sixties movies--and yet, increasingly, when I try to relax and enjoy them, knowing full well what I'm in for, I nevertheless keep tripping over the simple-minded sexism, false pieties, and (usually lurking in the background somewhere) racism and smarmy homophobia of the times. Consequently, I often wind up too irritated to stay with a My Six Loves or a Salt and Pepper from start to fin—

Ooh, wait a sec! AMC is showing The Pleasure Seekers! Isn't that... Ann-Margret..?