October 12, 2001 | Twenty years after its brief theatrical run, Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed remains a featherweight romantic comedy best remembered for a horrifying off-screen tragedy. Indeed, the advertising copywriters acknowledged as much when the movie was released on home video. If you can still find a copy of the original VHS edition, you’ll see the bad news blurbed on its packaging: “Starring Dorothy Stratten in her last film role.” How true. How sad.
For the benefit of those who tuned in late: Bogdanovich, the erstwhile wunderkind who triumphed with The Last Picture Show (1971) and Paper Moon (1973), then crashed to earth with the under-rated Daisy Miller (1974) and the unwatchable At Long Last Love (1975), made the first of his many comeback bids when he filmed They All Laughed in 1980. He assembled an ensemble cast of seasoned professionals (Ben Gazzara, Audrey Hepburn) and attractive up-and-comers (John Ritter, Colleen Camp) for the project. And he offered a key supporting part to his real-life ladylove, Stratten, a budding actress and former Playboy centerfold.
For Bogdanovich, who had fallen in love with Cybill Shepherd while launching her acting career in Last Picture Show, the casting of another beautiful blonde newcomer seemed like a great way to make lightning strike twice. But shortly after she completed her role, Stratten was murdered by her unstable estranged husband, who subsequently committed suicide. Devastated, Bogdanovich channeled his energies into completing his comedy as a tribute to his slain beloved. (Just before the opening credits, the movie pays tribute to its fallen star: “The company dedicates this picture to Dorothy Stratten.”)
Unfortunately, They All Laughed opened in 1981 to mixed reviews and audience indifference, and was shelved by its original distributor. Even more unfortunately, Bogdanovich suffered additional heartbreak, and a serious financial setback, when he lost millions on a failed attempt at releasing Stratten’s last picture show on his own. He went on to direct other movies – most notably, Texasville (1990) and Noises Off (1992) — and to make some kind of peace with himself. To be sure, he has never quite managed to regain the luster of his glory days. But there are worse things that can happen to a person. After all, it’s better to be a has-been than a never-was.
They All Laughed opens Friday in San Francisco at the Roxie for a one-week revival, offering audiences a chance to view the movie on its own merits, two decades after the unfortunate events that clouded many first impressions. But don’t expect to rediscover a forgotten masterpiece. The movie is wildly uneven, equal parts low-key romance and off-key farce, a screwball comedy played, unaccountably, at three-quarters speed. Bogdanovich, who started out as a film critic and essayist, obviously intended to evoke the freewheeling spirit of classic works by Howard Hawks. (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday and – no kidding! — The Big Sleep are among the more obvious influences.) Trouble is, Bogdanovich tends to stroll where Hawks liked to sprint, then overcompensates by pushing too hard in scenes where John Ritter repeatedly pratfalls for cheap laughs.
At its occasional best, though, They All Laughed is a tasty slice of whimsy with a melancholy aftertaste, enjoyable as a deeply felt ode to the possibilities for romance in a fancifully romanticized early ‘80s Manhattan.
Ritter, Ben Gazzara and co-star Blaine Novak play operatives for the Odyssey Detective Agency, a New York firm that specializes in spying on unfaithful spouses. (“We Never Sleep” is the company motto.) John (Gazzara) is assigned to watch over a beautiful New York visitor, Angela (Audrey Hepburn), while her husband is out of town on business. Meanwhile, Charles (Ritter) keeps his private eye on Dolores (Stratten) whenever the fetching beauty slips away from her husband to rendezvous with a young neighbor (Sean Ferrer). Not surprisingly, two love affairs blossom. Only one, however, is destined to last.
Directing from his own screenplay, Bogdanovich takes a casual approach to plot development, leaving it up to audience to connect all the dots and untangle a few dangling threads. This doesn’t always work to the movie’s benefit. Hepburn is gloriously radiant, as always, but her character isn’t fully developed, and it’s too easy to assume that Angela is – gee, how can I put this politely? – a serial adulterer. (“Now you know why my husband has me followed,” she tells John as they begin their fling. “I’m a brazen woman who can’t be trusted.”) A few other characters – Novak’s rollerskating private eye, for instance – remain annoying sketchy because we don’t learn enough about them.
On the other hand, we get rather too much of Colleen Camp as a country music singer who pursues John, and then Charles, before finding Mr. Right. Camp, usually a first-rate comic actress, is jarringly bizarre here, delivering her lines in an affectless tone that, 20 years later, audiences usually associate with David Mamet’s favorite leading lady, Rebecca Pidgeon.
And what about Stratten? She’s very pretty, no doubt about it, but I’m afraid I can’t discern anything like unfulfilled promise in her blandly competent performance. (Patti Hansen radiates more star potential as a saucy, sassy cabdriver, but she quit acting to become Mrs. Keith Richards.) Worse, if you know the specifics of Stratten’s untimely demise, it’s difficult to watch scenes in which Dolores’ husband (played by an unbilled actor who’s always viewed from a distance, through a window) screams unintelligible threats to his unfaithful wife. It’s even more difficult to restrain a shudder when Charles offers to read Dolores’ palm, and predicts that her marriage will come to a quick end.
Even so, hopeless romantics may treasure bits and pieces of They All Laughed. And some of the scraps are even more affecting in the wake of Sept. 11. At one point, Gazzara and Hepburn wander down a New York street, brightening the screen with the glow of two people who are falling in love, who feel they have all the time in the world. Just behind them: The twin towers of the World Trade Center.
