Thumbnails Sep 24

by Tony Medley

ABBA Forever: The Winner Takes it All (10/10): 51 minutes. Ovid.tv. Sept. 6. The music created by the Swedish group ABBA was captivating and fabulous. But it was not an easy road to even get recognized. I saw the stage play “Mamma Mia,” based on their music, in Los Angeles before it appeared on Broadway. While I knew instantly it would be a big hit, I didn’t realize how big a hit it came to be. This is a comprehensive documentary, narrated by Hugh Skinner with the four group members, singers Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog and songwriters Benny Anderson and Bјörn Ulvaeus telling their stories themselves, including the divorces and breakup. It is all interspersed with clips of many of their famous songs like “Fernando” and “Dancing Queen.”  As Paul Gambaccini, radio and TV presenter says, “One of the reasons Bјörn and Benny were such successful songwriters is that they were not stationed in either New York or London and could write their songs oblivious to the latest trends…They were not trying to cater to today’s headlines. They were writing timeless pop songs.”

Modernism: The Eliot Noyes Design Story (9/10): 78 Minutes. This is a documentary about a little-known designer and architect who had a huge impact on all our lives, Eliot Noyes. Written and directed by Jason Cohn, the story is told through narration (Sebastian Roché) and interviews with many people, including Eliot himself, Katrina Alcorn, Head of Design, IBM, his sons Eli and Fred Noyes, and daughter Derry Noyes, and various other colleagues and commentators. It goes into the details of what Noyes designed, like the Selectric typewriter (which greatly outsold all other typewriters combined), and unique homes he designed, which show the impact he had on all our lives.

Sinatra in Palm Springs: The Place He Called Home (9/10): Prime Video. 92 minutes. I was quite young when I became a Sinatra fan, a few years before From Here to Eternity (1953). He was down and out and had a low-rated TV show on CBS from 1950-52, and I liked him and have been a fan ever since. This documentary is filled with stories and anecdotes told by his last wife, Barbara Marx, Trini Lopez, and local people who knew him as a neighbor and is limited to his life in Palm Springs, no music. It’s a view of Sinatra one rarely sees.

JFK’s Women: The Scandals Revealed (9/10): Prime Video. 53 minutes.   A compliant press covered up for JFK, but his sexual activities were immense and threatened the security of the country. This covers some of them (all of them would take a multi-part series), including Judith Exner, who was a Mafia plant, and Marilyn Monroe. Some of the other women are Mimi Alford, a teenage intern in JFK’s White House who wrote a shocking book about her experiences (I read it), Ellen Rometsch, an alleged East German spy, and Gunilla von Post. With telling confirming commentary by sleazy LBJ fixer Bobby Baker, it reveals that JFK feared he would be pulled into involvement with Rometsch. He was also worried about being pulled into the notorious 1963 Profumo Affair in England because of his apparent affair with Mariella Novotny, a spy who was part of Steven Ward’s coterie of women provided to Profumo.

Merchant Ivory (8/10): 110 minutes. From 1961-2007, Merchant Ivory made 43 films, Ismail Merchant produced 42; James Ivory directed 12. They met in New York City in 1961; Jim was 32 and Ismael was 24.

This film is an interesting story told by the late Merchant and Ivory themselves, along with a plethora of actors and crew who worked with them. It’s divided into six “chapters,” the last three of which deal a lot with their gay relationship. Directed by Stephen Soucy, it is an informative look at what goes into, and along with, the production of the movies. Among those telling with illuminating anecdotes are Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter, Hugh Grant, Vanessa Redgrave and many, many more.

Recommended reading: “The Last Thing He Told Me” by Laura Dave, a compelling thriller and “Catch And Kill” by Ronan Farrow about his reporting on Harvey Weinstein and the Matt Lauer revelation.