NORWOOD (1970)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Jack Haley Jr

SCREENWRITER: Marguerite Roberts

FILM STARS: Glen Campbell, Kim Darby, Joe Namath, Carol Lynley, Pat Hingle, Tisha Sterling, Dom DeLuise, Leigh French, Meredith MacRae, Sammy Jackson, Billy Curtis, Edith Atwater, Jimmy Boyd, Virginia Capers, Cass Daley, Merie Earle, Jack Haley, David Huddleston, Gil Lamb

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Charles Portis

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: Penguin

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1971

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1966

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Humour

WORDS: Hmmm. An odd little comedic novel becomes an odd little comedy film.

I’m not sure what to make of this. Nothing happens, a road movie where great philosophical, or even small philosophical questions are not answered, but both novel and film are diverting.

The film I saw many moons ago and didn’t think much of it, but I had cause to rewatch it after reading Portis’ novel. I get it now though it still doesn’t succeed. The novel was the first novel written (1966) by Arkansas native Charles Portis who would find success with his second novel True Grit (1968).

The book is about Norwood Pratt who leaves small town Ralph, Texas and travels to New York City and back again. Much like Odysseus in The Odyssey by Homer or, perhaps, more appropriately Huckleberry Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain the characters he meets are part of the story. Oddly here, they don’t reveal a bigger picture but just are a slice of life, albeit the whacky and fringe characters in the slice. They are a snapshot in time with no answers. It’s pleasant enough though I’m not sure of the point unless the humorous yakety yak is the point. More oddly, in these stories the journey usually has a climax and destination, which would be NYC here, but Norwood spends a moment there (about a halfway into the book) before heading for home.

Norwood travels to New York on a job to deliver some cars but also to retrieve a $70 loan, before returning home. Along the way he encounters quirky characters including grifters, a ditzy girl, a call girl (?), a philosophical midget, a “college-educated” chicken, depressed city dwellers and various other minor characters. It is a loopy gently comedic American journey set in the late 1950s.

Norwood is the protagonist. A good hearted but minor malcontent but I’m not sure I totally warmed to his character. If I met him on the road I would try to ditch him. The book has a lot of other little events and observations that are dropped from the film even if the film has whole chunks of dialogue taken from the book and remains relatively faithful to the storyline. These little observations and asides that have nothing to do with the story but everything to do with the characters which are quite funning though sometimes disarming. Like, a discussion of how squirrel brains taste — “About like calf brains. They’re not bad if you don’t think about it. The bad part is cracking them little skulls open” or Rita Lee describing boyfriend Wayne, “He would favour Rory Calhoun a lot if his neck was filled out more”. Or Mrs Reese talking about a relative “who ran up an eleven-hundred-dollar candy bill in Memphis and forced the family to sell a slave to pay it, and about the one who drained the swamps and how he agitated unsuccessfully for a public statue of himself in the square, like the one of Popeye in the Texas spinach capital.” And you find out that (actor) Dick Powell is from Arkansas.

The novel has deadpan humour (I love how Norwood gets names wrong) and Portis captures the Southern dialect and vernacular, warts and all (outside Memphian Tav Falco’s song I don’t think I have heard “shade tree mechanic” anywhere).

There are quite a few characters in the book that only have brief appearances which would make the film, if included, even more episodic than it is, and fleetingly so. The whole travel writer living in a dump in NYC, Dave Heineman, is dropped. Heineman introduces Norwood to Marie a speech major “and one night she read aloud from her favourite book, which was The Prophet, and Norwood listened and clipped his fingernails”. In the film, Marie’s character (in her slummy apartment with the ubiquitous W.C. Fields poster on the wall) incorporates some of the Dave’s dialogue with Norwood and serves as the plot device to get Norwood on stage. This does lead to one of the best scenes in the film where Norwood is taken to venue / club where he performs a up tempo country song (“Repo Man”) to a bunch of stoned hippies before being shunted off stage for a psychedelic band. A nice touch is having a table of ”straights” (there was always a table of straights slumming it in NYC Bohemian cafes, bars and clubs in movies) applauding him.

There are other small characters that disappear, but the real difference is the tone. The book is set in the late 1950s, and the film is set when it’s made, 1970. The book alludes to things whereas the film accepts 1970s permissiveness. Nothing wrong with though Norwood as a character might be the outer in the 50s because he is quirky but in 1970, he is anachronistic (though to be fair in 1970 not everyone was “wearing flowers in their hair”). Why 1970 urbanite Marie would take a shine to Norwood I don’t know. In the novel, despite Norwood’s attempts, there is no funny business with Marie. In the film, Norwood beds her. Which, just after before finding true love makes him seem like an opportunistic type. The film also is a little anachronistic with the good old boy bedding the uptight city girl and making her appreciate her womanhood (hey, it was 1970 even if the screenwriter was female).

The film knowing that nothing happens in a rambling road story injects some (1970 era) drama in the last act or so. Norwood’s new love Rita Lee, the ditz he meets on the bus, is travelling to an army base to compel her boyfriend, Wayne, to marry her, for no other reason than he promised to. In the film the journey is because she is three months pregnant. Wayne turns up later and bests Norwood in a fight, but she decides to stay with Norwood who likewise wants her. None of that is in the book, she doesn’t see Wayne who has already shipped out. Character motivations are not necessary, and they detract from the “it is what it is” slightly surreal loopy-ness of the book.

Likewise, Norwood’s singing and guitar playing career amounts to a couple of unfinished tunes but a determination to appear on the Louisiana Hayride and radio show. With what exactly I don’t know. That won’t do for Glen Campbell …. he sings and plays and ultimately in a happy ending beyond Ralph Texas he appears on the Louisiana Hayride with Rita Lee watching from the audience.

Campbell is natural and quite good if occasionally a little awkward. I suspect the role was one designed for Elvis by producer Hal Wallis (though both are too old for the Norwood role).

Hear me out.

The film was clearly designed to follow up on the success of Hal Wallis’ western with John Wayne, True Grit (1969), based on Portis’ novel. Norwood has him producing, with the same screenwriter, and the same second leads (Glen Campbell and Kim Darby). But, it seems that Wallis (who had produced nine Elvis films) had wanted Elvis for True Grit but the Colonel (Elvis’ manager) would not have Elvis playing second banana to anyone, not even John Wayne. I could see Elvis in the role, both True Grit and Norwood. He had done serious westerns Flaming Star (1960), Charro (1969) and he could do drama King Creole (1958), Wild in the Country (1961) and he could do quirky comedy Follow that Dream (1962), Stay Away Joe (1968). Variety picked up on this and called the film “little more than the perpetuation of the Elvis Presley format for Glen Campbell, complete with a parade of pretty faces and uninspired countryish rhythm by Presley tunesmith Mac Davis.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwood_(film)

In 1970 Glen’s career was riding high with hit country records, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour (1969-1972) on TV and a co-starring role in a hit John Wayne film. The film career would splutter but the hit songs kept rolling. As if Glen was not going to sing. And sing he does, about eight songs as part of the story or as background to montage on transitioning scenes. I have no dramas with that … I love Glen and have the soundtrack. He is quite natural, if occasionally awkward but he looks good next to superstar footballer Joe Namath who was embarking on a movie career (well if Jim Brown could do it, why not Joe?) which was none too distinguished but led to some trash cultish kitsch with biker film C.C. and Company (1970) and western The Last Rebel (1971).

Kim Darby as Rita Lee is to prim and proper. Film pregnancy aside she is riffing on her prudish Mattie Ross role from True Grit. Dom DeLuise as the obnoxious brother-in-law is a hoot. His role is to small, but he is certainly more endearing than the book chaacter. Leigh French (a regular on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour) as Norwood’s sister, Vernell Bird, likewise is more likeable than the book version. Singers Sammy Jackson and Jimmy Boyd have small roles, and the female eye candy roles are supplied by Carol Lynley (whose career had stalled), Tisha Sterling, and Meredith MacRae (Petticoat Junction’s Billie Jo Bradley).

Screenwriter Marguerite Roberts had worked a bit for Hal Wallis around this time … Five Card Stud (1968), True Grit (1969), Red Sky at Morning (1971), Shoot Out (1971). (Though not all successful) they are thoughtful entertainments which don’t indicate her background. After she and her husband John Sanford refused to testify in 1951 before the House Un-American Activities Committee, she was blacklisted for nine years and unable to get work in Hollywood. She was hired again in 1962 by Columbia Pictures (for Diamond Head).

Director Jack Haley Jr (the son of actor Jack Haley (the tin man from Wizard of Oz (1939) and who has a small role here as Mr. Reese) mainly directed (and wrote) documentaries, and mainly Hollywood ones (like That’s Entertainment! (1974)) as well as producing Academy Awards presentation shows. Norwood and The Love Machine (1971) based on a novel by Jacqueline Susann are his feature films and they are, not surprisingly, quite TV like in look.

The film was not a success.

You have to have your head in the right space (a love of time capsules is needed) and not have any lofty expectations but there is enough here to keep you entertained. Perhaps substitute “me” for “you” in the last line.

LINKS

TRAILER

Glen Campbell singing “Repo Man”

a making of: