BY FRED BLOSSER
In
George Axelrod’s “Lord Love a Duck†(1966), Roddy McDowall and Tuesday Weld
play high school seniors in Los Angeles. McDowall was 38 at the time, Weld 23. Such casting, where actors in their twenties or older play teenagers, is
typical for Hollywood, then and now. In
“Lord Love a Duck,†which Axelrod produced, co-wrote, and directed from a novel
by Al Hine, neither McDowall nor Weld exactly looks like an 18-year-old, nor do
the actresses who play their classmates. They include Jo Collins, 21, then a recent Playmate of the Year. But here the disconnect doesn’t really
detract from the film. It simply
underscores its overall cartoonish surrealism. McDowall plays Alan, the genius-level valedictorian of his class, who
fixates on his classmate, pretty but vacuous Barbara Ann (Weld). “Her deepest and most heartfelt yearnings
express with a kind of touching lyricism the total vulgarity of our time,†he
marvels. The daughter of divorced
parents, living with her mother, a minimum-wage cocktail waitress (Lola
Albright), she’s lonely and adrift. She’s especially insecure since she’s been transferred to a brand new
school through a consolidation, and now she’s largely surrounded by kids she
hadn’t known before. (A sign that we’re
in 1966 and not 2020, Consolidated High’s student body and staff all appear to
be white.) When Alan approaches her, she
initially takes for granted that his interest is sexual. “I don’t do bad things with boys,†she
says. “You don’t have to do anything,â€
he responds. Instead, he just wants to
help her obtain the things she thinks will make her happy in life.
Alan
is so enterprising that other industrious movie and TV teens like Ferris
Bueller and Alex P. Keaton look like slackers in comparison. Barbara Ann’s wish list encompasses things
that will bring her instant gratification, and the first ones are simple. When she needs to buy twelve cashmere
sweaters to join the other girls‘ Cashmere Sweater Club, Alan advises that she
wheedle her father Howard (Max Showalter), playing on his guilt that he’s been
mostly absent from her life. When
Barbara Ann wishes she could go on a vacation, he suggests that she join the
youth group from her church on its weekend retreat to Malibu. Her next ambitions require a little more
work. The minister’s nephew Bob (Martin
West) is the chaperone for the trip, and when Barbara Ann decides “I want himâ€
(“Like the sweaters and the vacation?†Alan asks), Alan contrives to engineer a
wedding. What does Alan get out of
helping her, Barbara Ann asks. He
suggests it’s the joy of manipulation, “I think of things,†although the
expression on his face says he’s not altogether sure. Or maybe he realizes that even his ingenuity
is starting to get taxed. On the Malibu
trip, they encounter a B-movie producer, T. Harrison Belmont (Martin Gabel,
unbilled), who’s on the lookout for a fresh face to star in his next “bikiniâ€
film. When Barbara Ann quickly sours on
her marriage, she yearns for freedom to pursue her next desire, fame. Belmont offers an avenue for achieving that
goal, but first Alan has to remove the obstacle that now stands in the way,
Bob.
The
first half of “Lord Love a Duck†is outrageous and striking. Axelrod splashes his disdain for trendy,
materialistic culture with broad, gleeful strokes. When Barbara Ann’s father picks her up for
the trip to the sweater shop, they first stop at a curbside diner for lunch and
scarf down on hot dogs like gluttonous kids on a date. The camera puts us in the front seat with
them, uncomfortably close. At the store,
the shopping trip turns into a symbolic orgy of consumerism and sex. Barbara Ann seems to become erotically
aroused by trying on a succession of sweaters labeled “Grape Yum Yum,â€
“Periwinkle Pussycat,†and “Turquoise Trouble.†Watching in extreme closeup, Dad leers, pops his eyes, and shivers like
a lecher brought to life from a dirty cartoon. Seemingly sated, they finally sprawl on the pile of tried-on
garments. Barbara Ann’s place of
worship, the “First Drive-In Church of Southern California†and its unctuously
cheery pastor, Dr. Neuhauser (Donald Murphy), kid the mega-church movement that
had begun to emerge in the ‘60s. Moderating the church’s youth group, Dr. Neuhauser focuses the
discussion on sex rather than scripture. It seemed like a wacky concept then. Now, the real-life Dr. Neuhausers are formidable power-brokers in
national politics, still more absorbed in other people’s sex lives than in spiritual matters. The buffoonish principal at the new high
school (Harvey Korman) is happy because he now has a public address
system. He’s as easily manipulated by
Alan as everyone else is.
The
second half of the movie flags as it falls back on familiar situations, like
the interruptions that frustrate Bob’s and Barbara Ann’s attempts to consummate
their marriage, courtesy of Bob’s abrasive mother (Ruth Gordon). Axelrod tries to recharge the picture with a
couple of scenes in speeded-up Keystone Kops style. In one, a character careens down the street
in a sabotaged car that begins dangerously to fall apart. In the other, one character chases another
with a steam-shovel. Sped-up bits had become
popular again after Richard Lester used them in “A Hard Day’s Nightâ€
(1964). Like most such scenes, though,
they aren’t very funny.
The Kino Lorber
Blu-ray of “Lord Loves a Duck†presents a handsome transfer of the movie’s
black-and-white cinematography by the accomplished Daniel L. Fapp. The image subversively recalls the old TV
sitcoms in which Robert Young, Donna Reed, and the Cleavers presided over a
placid, monochromatic universe. Axelrod
turns that illusion inside-out. Neal
Hefti’s score includes a title song by “The Wild Ones†whose jarring refrain of
“Hey Hey Hey†recurs throughout the movie. It will continue to bang around in your mind for days after you watch
the picture. The Blu-ray includes the
film’s theatrical trailer as a bonus feature, but there’s no bonus commentary
track that might have answered the question otherwise left a mystery, “What
does ‘lord love a duck’ mean?â€
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(Fred Blosser is the author of "Sons of Ringo: The Great Spaghetti Western Heroes". Click here to order from Amazon)