Educational Media Reviews Online

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences regulations regarding the submission of films for Documentary Short Subject category require that they be less than 40 minutes in length, including credits. Curtain Call clocks in at 38 minutes. After watching the DVD and the extra footage that didn’t make it into the final cut, I questioned the decision to cut what I considered rather compelling and important footage. Some of the best moments in the film were deleted, and because of the haste in which these appear to have been made, several individuals interviewed in the film are only identified in the extras because their expository footage had been excised from the final cut. It’s pointless to speculate whether the inclusion of the extra footage to the exclusion of other footage would have made a difference in winning the Academy Award in 2001. It is however clear that the film, as it stands, leaves the viewer wondering whether there was enough footage for a feature length documentary.

The participants in this documentary were residents at the Actors’ Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey in 1999. They lived there because they all wanted to live out their latter years the way they had during their theatrical and filmic careers – in a family of peers. The staff is entertained by their stories and their shtick and the residents continue honing their craft by doing readings, amusing each other with singing performances, throwing a big party for William Shakespeare’s birthday, and being entertained with current Broadway musical performances by working actors who have not forgotten their predecessors on stage.

Bernard Flood performed in orchestras with Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Pamela Duncan worked as an actress at Columbia and appeared in Roger Corman’s Attack of the Crab Monsters. She never became a star but was kept working for many years on numerous films and television shows. “How wonderful to make a living doing something I enjoy” she admitted about her life. Tessie Marino Richner was born in 1907 and by the time she was 18 she had had a brief stint in the Ziegfield Follies and had gone to Paris to appear in the Folies Bergère. There she shared a dressing room with Josephine Baker who was then the toast of Paris. Rosetta Lenoire was taught to tap-dance by Bill “Bojangles” Robinson when he was homeless and unemployed.

The most moving story is that of Gaylord Mason who truly opens up with his personal tale of being gay during a time when most gay men in the theater where closeted. His heart-wrenching memory of vice squad entrapment and arrest ends with a dismissal from an enlightened judge but nevertheless Mason was replaced in a role he had gotten before the arrest. His replacement was Kirk Douglas who, according to Mason, became famous on the basis of the role that had originally been Mason’s.

The comedienne Blanche Collins takes every opportunity to do her hilarious impressions and talk about people she worked with. Her most uproarious material is in the Extras unfortunately. The other section which should not have been relegated to the Extras is the one where Maurice Brenner talked about the blacklisting period in the 1950s. The Extras also include links to the internet which do not work from the DVD because it is impossible to locate the DVD access folder for the downloading and installation of DVD@ccess. However, if the links are to the 4 listed web pages (for the Distributor, Film, Producer and Actors Fund Home) providing URLs, they simply amount to very basic 1-page publicity material on the film itself and are not worth the access time.

Curtain Call could have been a much better film than it ended up being: it could have been an oral history of the entertainment industry. What it ends up being is a visit to a retirement home populated by a few very entertaining individuals willing to share a couple of memories. Recommended for individuals interested in issues of aging since the film discloses how a tightly-knit community of like-minded people can thrive. It is also recommended for lesbian-gay-bi-transgendered studies and to a much lesser degree for theater studies.