The Group
It begins with shoes. Shots of women’s shoes. Oxfords, pumps, heels. I find this very auspicious. The whole thing is off to a promising start. The theater at the 92nd Y’s annex in Tribeca is small and so it feels a bit like a private screening. Hilton Als gave a charming introduction, and you can bring alcohol in, which Louchette and I have done, so that is nice for the atmosphere as well.
I told Louchette that I’d read The Group a while ago, that I didn’t remember much from Mary McCarthy’s novel, except, of course, that Lakey is a lesbian. Or, rather:
Every now and then [the Baroness] would go over and say something to Lakey; they heard her call her “Darling” with a trilled r. It was Kay who caught on first. Lakey had become a Lesbian.
The other thing I remember is the word “pessary” and the lengths one of the girls (Dottie) goes to get one only to be stood up by the indifferent painter who told her to get it in the first place. She ends up leaving it under a bench in Washington Square Park. Pessaries and Lesbians with capital Ls—enough to make any book a classic.
Sidney Lumet’s movie does not disappoint. As I said, it begins with shoes. And then the bright young women in the shoes, going about their campus lives as the titles roll. They march about the lush grounds, brisk, full of optimism and promise, even though it’s 1933 and the economy is terrible.
I find I am much more tolerant of period pieces shot in other periods. There is something about the telescoping—watching in 2009 a movie shot in 1966 about young women who graduate from Vassar in 1933—that feels both melancholy and multi-historic, collapsing two pasts (real and imagined) onto one screen. There is beautiful 19-year-old Candice Bergen and there is FDR’s first term.
There is young Larry Hagman who marries Joanna Pettet. He is a playwright and you will quickly see that he is also a kind of pretentious hack—or if only he were a hack. That would mean he was making some money. She will end up being the breadwinner, the one who pays for their apartment with the beautiful curved bookcase and the Swedish furniture.
There is young Richard Mulligan, a painter who is hot for icy Candice Bergen but settles for lovely Joan Hackett. This is before Soap, before Empty Nest. I’ve always found him charming in a Jack Buchanan kind of way. Something about the height and gaunt face. Something about being imposing and absurd at the same time.
But young Richard Mulligan is not at all charming. He takes Joan Hackett back to his apartment in Greenwich Village. The walls in the hallway are two-toned, dark green and dirty beige. The floor is tiled and I think of Meghan Daum’s essay about her fantasy of literary life in New York City, the sandbagging credit card debt, and then the relinquishing of that dream. I remember that her fantasy of living in New York included an apartment with hexagonal tiles in the bathroom. She was very specific about the tiles and I could understand the fantasy perfectly because of that.
Joan Hackett walks through the tiny-tiled hallway, following an indifferent Richard Mulligan to his apartment. Later, he tells her to get the pessary, though he doesn’t say “pessary.” He says something like “Go see a doctor and we’ll both be happier.” No one says “pessary” in the film. That is my only complaint.
There is a young Hal Holbrooke before he marries Dixie Carter, before his endless Mark Twain impersonation. In the movie he is an editor and very appealing until you realize he’s obsessed with psychoanalysis and how his treatment is stalling while his wife’s isn’t. I wish Mariah Carey were his therapist.
It’s not until the end credits that I realize there is also a young Jessica Walter, better known as Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development. She is a bitch the entire time and it’s great fun to despise her. (This is fun too.)
There is also madness. The jolly father given to sudden manias divorces his wife, comes to live with his daughter, and starts renovating her apartment. This is taken in stride, but then there is the much darker story of Joanna Pettet, who becomes more and more obsessed with Hitler and the war while Larry Hagman cheats and boozes. At some point in the small movie theater I remember it will end with a funeral.
And when I do see them all in black at the end, back on the campus grounds, no parents, it seems very gay. As in homo. The group you make when you are outside the family. I imagine a double feature with The Boys in the Band.
Back at home, I find my copy of the novel. I didn’t mark it up much. “10/94” on the first page for when I read it, and on the last page, a few scrawled notes:
to the manor born. to the manner born
restive, fealty
drink recipes – cosmopolitan, trolley car
Nancy, Mary, Nelly
