Arthur - 1981
Directed by Steve Gordon
Written by Steve Gordon
Starring Dudley Moore, Sir John Gielgud
& Liza Minnelli
Listening to "The Best That You Can Do (Arthur's Theme)" puts me in a good mood - a neat thing to have that song to introduce your film. Written by a committee including Burt Bacharach and performed by Christopher Cross, it won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1982, and quite deservingly so - though it was up against Lionel Richie's "Endless Love" among other interesting choices. One of the song's writers, Peter Allen, thought up the main chorus line while his flight circled the airport at New York - and for that thought alone he's an Oscar winner. Peter O'Toole had a storied career lasting over half a century but left this world empty handed - Peter Allen had a thought on an airplane and is an Oscar winner. Funny world. But anyway, what good spirits I was in when introduced to Arthur - Dudley Moore's most enduring character - and the only one he himself was Oscar-nominated for.
Arthur Bach is a happy drunk, and is very often drunk. He drinks not because he's otherwise miserable, but because he believes in wringing every bit of fun and excitement out of life. It helps being rich, and Arthur comes from a very wealthy New York family. He's someone who has never really grown up, much to his father's chagrin - Stanford Bach wants him to marry Susan Johnson (Jill Eikenberry) and settle down. It's with thoughts of marriage and the more suitable goal of marrying the woman you love that he spots Linda Marolla (Liza Minnelli) shoplifting while out with his valet Hobson (Sir John Gielgud). He immediately senses a kindred spirit - but he has been threatened with being cut off from his family funds if he doesn't become engaged to Susan. An impossible choice looms, and conflict seem inevitable. Arthur, however, is not one to come up with grand schemes - he muddles through an engagement to Susan and courtship with Linda in his usual drunken play-it-by-ear style, sadly also having to contend with the imminent demise of his beloved Hobson.
So, after being cheered by Arthur's theme song and ready to accept anything that comes my way I thankfully found that Dudley Moore's performance doesn't irritate - and is in fact somewhat charming. His humour finds a place in the light-hearted appreciation of his own somewhat off-key jokes, and he's introduced picking up a prostitute which wipes any high-minded concept he may have of himself off the map straight from the get-go. Later we're introduced to Hobson, who Sir John Gielgud plays in a rather stiff manner, which suits a stuffy valet (one albeit, who shows very tender affection for Arthur) but never challenges the actor to the point where I'd automatically see why he deserved the Oscar he won for his performance. Liza Minelli I'm really not sure about - she plays her part so straight that you get the sense she's Dudley Moore's foil in this. Just your average every day waitress trying to earn a living (one day hoping to become an actress) - but when she's introduced in a bright yellow and red costume, shoplifting, she seems to promise a character that's much more eccentric and playful than she ends up being.
I've held off from seeing
Arthur for so long simply because I don't find Dudley Moore appealing. He occupied a place as a high-profile leading man for only a short period of time in the late 1970s and early 80s, and after a few successes went on to play parts in dismally average to horrible Hollywood-standard comedies. I'd only seen him in three films before this, and all of those films are pretty bad. I think my curiosity got the best of me when I sought out
Best Defense, which has a reputation for being awful. Eddie Murphy, who is in the film for only a few minutes of it's runtime, was used in previews to try and offset just how lousy the rest of the film is. I have no idea why, but I ended up seeing
Santa Claus: The Movie at a cinema - produced by the Salkinds and directed by
Supergirl's Jeannot Szwarc it misses the mark by a mile. Dudley Moore appears as Elf Patch in that - a leading role. Meanwhile,
Wholly Moses! takes the cake as far as unfunny comedy goes, and in my mind is probably the worst of those three. When you start out lukewarm to cold on an actor, and then see him only in horrible movies, it leaves an impression. When rumours started to spread in the press that he was physically abusive towards his girlfriend, my opinion of him dropped even further.
You can't always blame a lead actor for a film's lack of quality, and you can't always believe what you read in the press - or what is alleged in court. Looking at Dudley Moore today I get a sadder impression - he started out as a musician, and then on television as a comic becoming famous when partnering with Peter Cook. I don't think his sense of comedy was ever really in step with mine, and I'm more drawn to Cook when I see them perform together. Although well-known enough in film as well, it wasn't until he starred in
10 in 1979 that his name became synonymous with big budget features.
Wholly Moses! followed and garnered terrible reviews, but he went on to rectify that and improve on the success of
10 when
Arthur was released in 1981 and he found himself Oscar-nominated and the lead in the 4th most lucrative film of the year. After that, Dudley Moore starred in a string of critically panned box office flops throughout the 80s - his career as a leading man not really living up to the stature he had in those days. Towards the mid-to-late 90s he was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) - his output had fallen away after a few failed sit-coms as he struggled with his health, passing away in 2002.
The promise writer/director Steve Gordon had with
Arthur could never be realised after he died suddenly on November 27, 1982 from a heart attack. This left
Arthur as the only film he ever directed after a career in television and writing the screenplay for
The One and Only in 1978. His script for
Arthur had also been nominated for an Academy Award. Cinematographer Fred Schuler is notable for being behind the camera on a John Cassavetes favourite of mine,
Gloria and the renowned Scorsese film
The King of Comedy, but he never really found himself at a point of his career where he was in demand for the best productions going around, and after filming
Fletch in the mid 80s was less likely to be involved in good movie-making. Editor Susan E. Morse was a long-time collaborator with Woody Allen and put together most of his work from the late 70s to the late 90s, receiving an Oscar nomination for her work on
Hannah and Her Sisters. It's ironic to note that along with Gordon's direction and screenplay, most of the success for
Arthur can be attributed to Dudley Moore's ad-libbing on set - and perhaps as his career continued he had less of an opportunity to show this side of his talent.
I find
Arthur at times amusing, with enough appeal to at least slightly enjoy it's hour and a half of whimsy and cheerfulness. The character may have never grown up, but he never stoops to childishness or immaturity. We don't become overwhelmed by the trappings of his wealth, and when he goes out with Linda he doesn't hire a theme park for the night but simply goes there with her to enjoy himself - in fact he delights in winning cheap prizes. Arthur even toys with the idea of giving all of his wealth up, if only to be able to date Linda free from all the complications his family is providing him. He has a helpful and caring ally in Hobson, but their relationship isn't fully exploited when it comes time for those two characters to say goodbye. In fact, there are a lot of events in Arthur which are skipped by and which we don't see - Hobson's death and funeral being two of them. Throughout all of this, it's Arthur's drunken mirth and spontaneity which keeps anything from getting too dour. In the face of meeting his potential father-in-law Burt (Stephen Elliott), who obviously hates him despite Susan's love for him, Arthur always breaks the tension by trying to be funny. Moore and Elliott share what is probably the film's best scene in front of a moose-head, which continually distracts Arthur.
Despite all of this, I never found the film to be hilariously funny or dramatically moving. There is no sense of real love shared between Moore's Arthur and Minnelli's Linda - in fact they seem not much more than casual friends. There's not only a lack of sexuality, but a sheer dearth of chemistry between the two of them which made this a love story I could never really buy into. The only two things I could really believe in were Hobson's love for Arthur (perhaps this is a hint to his power in the movie and the acclaim it gained) and Susan's yearning for some kind of intimate connection between them (and also Burt's hatred for Arthur.) A long list of casting choices were thrown around for the role of Linda - and it's interesting to note that Moore's wife at the time - Tuesday Weld, was initially offered the role. It's also interesting to note that not only did Bud Cort turn down the role of Billy in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but he had also signed on to portray Arthur in this before dropping out - Cort's was an entire career of lost opportunity after appearing in
Harold and Maude and
Brewster McCloud in the early 1970s.
The character of Hobson gets the best lines, by far - and these were non-ad-libbed lines, as Sir John Gielgud didn't understand most of the material he was reading. The delight people took in watching him dryly read these lines (me included) give the impression of comic timing and humour that he deserves appreciation for, even if he wasn't always completely in the moment - and the nominations for Best Supporting Actor that particular year were thin if you exclude Jack Nicholson, whose supporting role in
Reds I've yet to see. His Oscar win might still have been a surprise - but he was a popular choice, and is still singled out for praise to this day when the topic of
Arthur comes up. He's a definite asset to the film, and there's much more chemistry between him and Moore than there is between Moore and Minnelli. I'd still contend that this role was hardly a challenge for the experienced actor, but his presence and steadfast and steady line-reading are enjoyable to watch - and carried over into the not-so-great sequel in 1988,
Arthur 2 : On the Rocks, his part in it being the only segments of that film I've yet seen.
Many people love
Arthur and rate it highly. I think it's fine, and it didn't pain me to watch it, but I didn't love it - it joins a large group of 80s comedies which pass the time easily enough but don't become automatic favourites. Despite not being a great fan of Dudley Moore, I found his performance quite good - and perhaps this begins the start of a rehabilitation of his image in my eyes, although there's not much else out there that can further carry that trend along. Watching an interview of him near his death did much to soften my stance, although if he was violent at all towards any woman he deserves condemning for that. It would have been interesting if he'd taken some more dramatic roles to see if he had a greater range as an actor - I think he might have.
Arthur will forever remain the high-point of his career. It's easy to imagine that he would have seen it at the time as the start of great things, but it was in a sense a beginning and an end. In 2011 a senseless remake of
Arthur starring Russell Brand in the title role failed to even come close to the original. It may have taken me a long time to get around to watching the original, but you can bet your bottom dollar I'll never watch that version of
Arthur - not for all the money in the world.
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