‘Épater le bourgeois!’: Deceased Artiste Bertrand Blier (Part 1 of two)

The films of Bertrand Blier, who died last week at 85, have been “buried” in the releases of foreign features on disc in the U.S. They were well-represented on VHS in the Eighties, but as times have changed, it has been accepted as common wisdom that his films are sexist and misogynist. What is ignored in that calculation is the fact that his farces in the Seventies and Eighties were also social satires and absurdist comedies that blatantly acknowledged that the lead male characters were sexist — and were depicted as idiots.

What has also been ignored — because it’s easier to ignore context than it is to pause one’s ire — is that his films from the 1990s on (actually 1989) featured three-dimensional female characters and offered actresses multi-faceted lead roles. I’ll get into this part of his career in the second part of this piece. First, let’s discuss the Seventies and Eighties work that made his name — and now has been labelled as “inappropriate” and not worth seeking out, when it should have a cult following. (Many lesser European filmmakers have developed cults in the U.S. and have their work available in snazzy box sets that are better designed than many of their films.)

First, my own fascination with Blier. I first saw Going Places at the Alliance Francaise in Manhattan some 40-plus years ago. The Alliance does attract younger, hipper viewers, but it also has always been a place for older ladies who are looking to see “classy” French cinema. Going Places (1974) is the tale of an odyssey taken by two fuck-up hoodlums who are constantly horny.

The young Blier (in a rare photo
without a pipe)

When a scene appeared in which our vulgar antiheroes sniffed a girl’s panties to determine from the “bouquet” how old she was, a group of old ladies abruptly stood up and left the theater. I realized at that moment that this Blier guy was definitely worth further research — anyone who could make me laugh while offending bluenoses deserved my attention.

In 2021, it was noted to me by my friend M. Faust that Blier had released another film, which apparently played in Canada but never in America. I had lost track of Blier’s filmography and thus asked friend Paul G. to see what was dwelling on the Torrents and it turned out that Blier’s entire filmo was up there with English subs (all but the final film, which I’ll get to in the second part of this piece). 

Thus, I did 14 episodes of the Funhouse TV show about Blier from the fall of 2021 to the spring of 2022, covering the four films that are currently available on U.S. DVD and another baker’s dozen of films that had never made it to disc (and in all cases after the late ’90s, save one, hadn’t even been distributed in the U.S. or basically even shown once at a film fest).

Blier with 'Les Valseuses' wine.
(The company mentions the "waltzers" translation,
not the other one...)

I realized Blier was decidedly out of fashion, and it was because his work was classified as un-p.c., anti-“woke,” crude, vulgar, sexist comedy. This didn’t come as a total surprise to me, since his films did walk that line, but they also were immaculately absurdist films with incredible performances by a host of France’s best actors and actresses. I watched or rewatched all of them in a short span of time, going on a Blier “bender,” and looked into the writing about his films and realized that they definitely were being dismissed out of hand and deserved public exposure.

One thing before I discuss his background and influences, and plunge into a discussion of each film: One must remember that in the Sixties and Seventies there were dozens of bad sex comedies being made, mostly in France and Italy. The majority of these were absolute garbage, not even sexy enough to merit a watch. Blier’s films were made on a much higher plane — he basically overturned the sex farce and often played with the tropes one found in them (especially those about lovers’ triangles; one of his most outrageous films was of course titled Ménage).

A big part of Blier’s biography was that his father was the character actor Bernard Blier, who worked in films by many, many great directors. He cast his father in a few of his early films and perhaps his wildest absurdist journey (Buffet Froid). Bernard’s death in 1989 became a linchpin that he returned to in a trio of later films.

Bertrand and Bernard Blier
on the set of Calmos.

As for his influences, he didn’t often mention film directors — although his obit in Liberation began with his praise for David Lynch. Seeing that I’ve used the word “absurdist” three times so far, it makes perfect sense that his stated heroes were playwrights from the Theater of the Absurd. His films often play like the works of Ionesco, Beckett, and Genet, with frequent two- or three-character scenes where the characters spout crazy dialogue at each other in a closed space.

Blier clearly was also a fan of Don Luis Buñuel, whose primary aim was “épater le bourgeois” (to shock the bourgeois) and who let his narratives wander — and his characters, especially in Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), which came out two years before Blier’s breakthrough Les Valseuses.

Blier’s first theatrically released item was the full-length documentary Hitler, connais pas! (Hitler, never heard of him! 1963). It’s a very unique document, in that it’s both an authentic time capsule of its era and it also presents a heavily manipulated reality. A group of young people born after WWII — whom Blier noted in an intro text would all be around 20 years of age in 1963 — speak to the camera, talking about a variety of topics, including their daily routine, their schooling, dancing, dating (in the girls’ case, the experience of getting raped), love, and their future.

The interviews are intercut in such a way that it seems like the young people are reacting to each other’s stories. This could be coy in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, but even early on (he was 24 when the film was released, only slightly older than his interview subjects), Blier was keen to let his audience in on his manipulations. He groups them such that we see the innocents contrasted with the experienced subjects and the “reaction shots” he gathered with editor Michel David range from sympathetic to amused.

Blier’s first fiction feature was If I were a spy (1967). The film is a thriller about a doctor (played by Bernard Blier) who is summoned to make a house call and the patient isn’t there. The doctor soon finds himself being tracked by mysterious people, who just happen to know that he met that particular patient when he was in Poland on vacation (and the doctor just happens to be a Communist politically…).

Blier never made anything this straightforward again. The film shows the influence of Hitchcock and Clouzot (whom Bernard had worked with — and been slapped by!). The film has some stylish b&w visuals, but its main attraction is the score by Funhouse deity Serge Gainsbourg. 

The box set of LPs called “Initiales BO” comprised of select soundtracks by Gainsbourg contains a booklet that finds Serge’s collaborators talking about his scores. Blier admits straightforwardly that “All things considered, I prefer the score to the film.” He later had Gainsbourg score Ménage.

Seven years elapsed between Spy and his next feature, which was his breakthrough as an artist. The title Les valseuses (1974) literally means “The waltzers,” but in the slang of the period it meant “the balls” (testicles). Its American release title was Going Places and it was based on Blier’s novel, which chronicled the misadventures of two 20-something petty thieves. The film was a success around the world, making stars of its three leads: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, and Miou-Miou. All three had come from a cabaret troupe, “the Cafe de la Gare.”

Here Blier delivered a blast of fresh air into French cinema and solidified his brash, non-conformist style of filmmaking, which was as offensive and charming as his lead characters. The novel makes more of the characters’ long hair and the fact that they are hated by the suburbanites that they meet, but there still are a few mentions of it in the film’s script.

In this regard, the film offers a look at the generation that had to find a direction (and couldn’t) after the politically explosive events of May 1968. The actress-director Josiane Balasko noted of Les Valseuses “… there we were on the screen, characters just like us, who spoke simply but with sophistication and style, in a way that worked.” [1988 quote, cited in Harris, p. 27]

“This was still the aftermath of May ’68 — Les Valseuses was a film against society. At that time, everything came under attack, because it felt good to attack. Everything was fair game: society, family. You had to be able to call your father a prick!” [1986 quote, cited in Harris, p. 73]

The opening scene establishes our antiheroes in a single image — Dewaere pushing Depardieu in a stolen shopping cart down a suburban street. A very short while later they’re being pursued by the men of the town they’re in, to a jubilant score by Stephane Grappelli. The first line of the novel (which was the only one of Blier’s writings to be translated into English, after the great success of the film) is “We’re all fuckheads.”

The dark comedy that was to mark Blier’s work from this point on debuts here. He also introduces vernacular-laced dialogue and the kinds of characters that were to populate his films up until 1989: headstrong, moronic males and the women who have been emotionally numbed by the males’ impulsive, childlike (and very horny) behavior.

Some critics said that the film itself is sexist, but this is belied by the way that Blier makes certain to include moments where the characters betray each other. Depicting sexists as such and commenting on how they operate makes the film far different from the average sex farce, which was sexist in its very essence and never rose above that level of straightforward exploitation. Blier’s humor was often vulgar, but it was also subversive.

In her book-length study titled simply Bertrand Blier (2001), Sue Harris discusses one of the scenes that most offended feminists, where Depardieu and Dewaere accost a woman (Brigitte Fossey) who is nursing her baby, and Depardieu offers her money to suckle Dewaere (who is trying to figure out why he can’t get it up lately); she accepts the money and seems oddly turned on while the act takes place. Buñuel very much liked the scene (see below), but for many feminists it was just too much.

Harris’s take on the scene? “… the eroticism which emerges [from the scene] is, paradoxically for [the two men] and the spectator, located within and for the female subject…. As the action of the scene advances, the mother clearly begins to experience a sexual pleasure that surpasses the arousal of the men. Yet, at the same time she continues to look directly at her aggressors, refusing to see them as such, and challenging them to make sense of her reactions.

“In this way, the female character rejects the abuse of male power that they seek to enact on her, and displaces the centre of narrative attention, against the narrative agents, from the male to the female.” [pp. 123-124]

In a 2010 interview in Telerama, Blier was asked about his reputation as a misogynist. He responded: “In my films, it's the men who always have the dirty roles. I only filmed morons. Cowards. None of them have the key to the world of women: they don’t know how it works. Because they are very macho, like in Les Valseuses. Or because they are too much in love, as in Get Out Your Handkerchiefs. Even in Beau-Père Patrick Dewaere is a dismaying loser... In fact, all the men of my generation started out macho. Me as well…. Do you remember the idiots in Les Valseuses: they are on a dune and Depardieu says to Dewaere: ‘There is definitely an ass waiting for us somewhere.’ All the bullshit from guys, it's right there….”

To further clarify how Blier saw himself, the interviewer asked, “So, you’re not a misogynist, but a misanthrope?” His answer: “Ah, yes, I am! Totally!” [Murat, Telerama]

The most interesting transition that occurs in the film happens when the two leads meet up and then try to seduce an older ex-con, played by the always great Jeanne Moreau. Moreau is only in the film for a few minutes, but her grasp of her character is so perfect that one can sense Depardieu and Dewaere being brought up to a higher level of performance. 

This is especially true when her character kills herself and they are left alone in the hotel room they booked with her. At this point they flee back to Miou-Miou and hug her as two little boys would their mother after a traumatic incident.

The fact that both dolts shortly thereafter go back to being sexist towards Miou-Miou’s character is the perfect example of how irretrievably moronic they are. Blier’s social satire does not offer solutions to the problem of sexism; he just perfectly illustrates how it operates. As for how Miou-Miou herself saw the picture, she said in 1976 that “In films directors take great pleasure in showing working women as miserable, drab types. The stars who play these parts love making themselves ugly, love ‘getting into the part.” [Les Valseuses] was the first time ever that a film showed us just as we were.” [1976 quote, cited in Harris, p. 27]

One of the more interesting changes that Blier made from novel to film script (cowritten with Philippe Dumarçay) is that the novel ends with them dying in a car crash in the very car they rejiggered to get revenge on an enemy earlier on. In the film they get away scot-free, with the Grappelli music adding to the sense of absolute freedom. 

The element that most definitely made critics of the film feel that it was advocating for the behavior of the lead characters was most likely the incredible charisma of Depardieu and Dewaere (who also functioned perfectly as a comedy team). It is their likability that makes the characters somewhat sympathetic, even when they are being complete shits. They and Miou-Miou became stars as a result of the film’s immense popularity.

There were critics and other noted individuals (including Chantal Akerman, who was a master filmmaker, no question, but did she have a sense of humor?) who loathed the piece from beginning to end. Most likely, their negative comments drew even more spectators to the film and it was No. 2 at the French box office in ’74 — right behind Emmanuelle. Yes, my friends, sexuality had a place in moviemaking and movie-consumption in France in the Seventies! Americas in the 2020s, on the other hand, seems embarrassed by sexual topics, unless they are presented in very dour and grim based-on-a-true-story dramas.

Blier remained very proud that a man he considered a great filmmaker, Luis Buñuel, praised the film to him. “I met him one day by chance and he said to me: ‘Ah, the train scene… with the woman giving them her breast… it’s very erotic!’ I was flooded with happiness….” [Murat, Telerama]

Miou-Miou and the young Isabelle Huppert.

Although the critics would often say that Blier was incredibly unsubtle, one can see just how delicate the balance of satire in his films was when one watches the American remake of Les Valseuses, made by John Turturro as The Jesus Rolls (2019). Turturro eliminated the idea that the two characters are young men with long hair moving through backwards conservative small towns and focused on merely recreating each scene.

Turturro did include one major moment from the novel that was absent in Blier’s film — a long speech given by Miou-Miou’s character about how awful her beauty salon job is — but otherwise, he shoehorned his “Jesus” character from The Big Lebowski into the Depardieu role and then just offered up a pretty reverent (but unnecessary) remake of Blier’s original.

The Jesus Rolls.

Sue Harris notes in her book that, from Les Valseuses on, Blier has three dominant themes in his work: the difficulty of male-female relationships, patterns of interdependence, and attacks on bourgeois society. She also cites a very interesting quotation from Blier who noted that he would “prefer the viewer to be an observer rather than be involved.”

This is key to understanding this period in his work: He is not trying to get the audience to identify with the protagonists, nor is he advocating their behavior, but he does want the viewer to recognize the caveman instincts of his sexist males and the utter exhaustion of his seen-it-all women.

Blier’s follow-up to Les Valseuses was the very bizarre farce Calmos (aka Femmes Fatales, 1976). It’s rarely seen in the U.S., but that was true decades before the notion of political correctness dictated what certain viewers would pay to see. It is Blier’s craziest statement on the “war between the sexes” and he later decided it was a misstep. Still, it has some great insane plot twists and introduces the notion of fantasy (even sci-fi) into Blier’s “universe.”

The plot is overtly ridiculous from beginning to end. Here we find two refined French gentlemen, played by Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean Rochefort, who decide they must run away because their ladies are simply demanding too much sex. The film grows in absurdity when they return to the city and then exit once more, only to encounter a female army (run by the wonderfully named German actress Dora Doll).

Again, the men here are acknowledged to be idiots with giant egos. They are cartoonlike, as are the women. In her book Sue Harris discusses Blier’s tendency to play with gender roles; here the horniness is attributed to the women (who are not numb in this instance) and Blier takes his characters through a series of ridiculous situations that ends in a journey “inside” a woman.

The film was distributed by New Line in America but it never showed up on VHS, never mind DVD or Blu-ray. Blier was surely fine with this, as his final summation of the picture was as a “youthful error” and “the greatest mess in my life. The script was good, but I had neither the money nor the actors to shoot it.” [Murat, Telerama]

Blier bounced back from the failure of Calmos to craft the film that netted him a Best Foreign Film Oscar, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978). The film is suitably dark and absurd, but it struck a chord somehow with American viewers who presumably responded to the three leads: Depardieu, Dewaere, and Carole Laure. In France, Blier was thought of as, per the Cahiers, “the father and spiritual adviser of this family of comics,” meaning the Cafe de la Gare generation of comic actors. [1996 quote, quoted in Harris, p. 26.]

Handkerchiefs is not as exuberant and nonconformist as Les Valseuses; here the two male leads are clearly “adults,” but they remain men who can’t satisfy a woman sexually or emotionally. (True to men’s nature, they’re very concerned about the former and don’t think about the latter.)

Gérard invites Patrick to sleep with his wife because he (Gérard) can’t make her happy. Patrick quickly becomes part of a threesome with the couple, but he also cannot satisfy Laure. The film is best when exploring this weird triangle. In one of those plot twists that could be used in the liberated Seventies but never now, Laure becomes close to a 13-year-old math scholar who she finds is sympathetic to her. The proceedings move in a more unexpected directions when the boy impregnates her.

This is done with a tender, sympathetic tone, but, yes, most likely it could never be done today unless it was made by Gaspar Noe or a gay independent director. (One does feel that Blier opened up a lane for auteurs like the great Francois Ozon and Gaspar Noe, whose work Blier praised — but said he needed better dialogue!)

Blier with his Oscar.

With its winning the Best Foreign Film Oscar, Handkerchiefs has been considered the high water mark of Blier’s career, at least in America. The truth of the matter is that, while it is a delight to see Depardieu and Dewaere as a comedy team once again (it was their second and last outing together), the film is lacking the crazy energy of Blier’s best pictures.

Perhaps the scenes with the teen protagonist being bullied make it play more like a Truffaut film. Blier dealt with childish behavior as seen in adults — seeing teens in one of his films does very much change the tone, making it temporarily have a “realistic” feel, whereas Blier’s farces from the Seventies and Eighties clearly took place on the fringes of society with darkly humorous developments around every corner.

Carole Laure’s Solange was also viewed by some critics as being a repetition of the Marie-Ange (Miou-Miou) character in Les Valseuses. Sue Harris commented on the similar frigidity/numbness of the two characters: “[The characters’ frigidity] can be alternately read as an expression of their fatigue or ennui at the cultural sexual expectations of them both as women and as modes of representation, as well as of that very emotional apathy that [Molly] Haskell sees as the lot of the cinematic female in the early 1970s, the woman who has been so many (but frequently the same) things to so many men… that she has arrived ‘anaesthetized, at an emotional and cultural “stasis,” a death.’ (Haskell, From Reverence to Rape, 1974, Holt, Rinehart & Winston). For a male director to explore this, specifically in performance, and to anticipate so much of what is of concern to feminist commentators may surely be argued to be progressive?” [Harris, p. 128]

Speaking of a completely non-realistic film, the next Blier film was Buffet Froid (aka Cold Cuts, 1979), which is pretty much a Theater of the Absurd play transformed into a film. Depardieu has a discussion with a man (Michel Serrault) on a subway platform about a knife he has and the idea of murder — then he sees that man laying in a subway tunnel fatally stabbed with the same knife (but still talking!).

Shortly thereafter his wife is killed. He speaks with a police detective (Bernard Blier) who lives in his apartment complex. The gallows humor and urban paranoia ratchet up until suddenly — we’re in the country and see that Depardieu is now on vacation with the police detective and the murderer of his wife (Jean Carmet). The three men each suspect that they will be killed, and so on until the darkly comic end.

What links this to the preceding films is that, once again, the male characters are all acknowledged to be idiots. What is a new departure starting in this film is a layer of visual complexity that enters Blier’s work. He began here to offer both frames-within-the-frame, usually in the form of a doorway, a window or a mirror. This form of imagery was used by all the great Expressionist directors and in the Seventies was a hallmark of Fassbinder’s work.

Also, the film has elements from the thriller world, but also the “otherness” of the Theater of the Absurd. The opening discussion between Depardieu and Serrault on the empty Metro platform is both amusing and creepy. Said Blier in 1986: “There’s never anyone in my films. Go in the street, it’s empty. The underground is empty. There maybe a train, but there’s no one in it.” [cited in Harris, p. 59]

 And why not introduce one more film “that couldn’t be made today”? In 1981 Blier’s Beau-Père was released, based on his novel. Blier wanted to explore the notion of a man making a very bad decision (because, of course, “We’re all fuckheads”). He also clearly did not want to rewrite or remake Lolita, so his fuck-up hero, played by Patrick Dewaere, spends the first half of the film caring for his teen stepdaughter (Ariel Besse) but rejecting her romantic advances.

As the film goes on, he does give in — and it is indeed seen as both something that happened out of sheer loneliness on the part of both characters and a very bad decision by a very confused man. The film has elements of humor, but it is one of the most serious of his films in his “first career” — he later stated his early films constituted a “first career” and said “his second career” began with Merci La Vie.

Here, the screw-up nature of Dewaere’s character is seen as a tragic flaw, and the girl’s decision is one that develops when she loses her mother (Nicole Garcia, whose death in the film starts off the actual plot) and is horribly lonely. The “framed” visuals and slow zooms into and away from the characters illustrate the way in which the characters feel trapped by their situation.

What is also significant, in light of the fact that Blier’s critics decried him as a misogynist, is that the stepdaughter is depicted throughout as the emotionally mature half of the relationship. Sue Harris puts it in a more formal way when discussing women in general in Blier’s films (with her “unfinished” label here seeming to harken to younger female characters like the stepdaughter here).

She states that “Woman in Blier’s films… is an essentially transgressive figure whose powerful regenerative presence acts as a constant check to an otherwise phallocentric discourse. Her presence is disturbing to patriarchal society insofar as her ‘unfinished’ body represents both the destruction of imposed social boundaries and taboos, and the ultimate permeability of the human character. Moreover, in cinematic terms, her consistently ambiguous narrative function and unconventional image also pose a threat to the established gender hierarchy with which spectators are familiar.” [Harris, p. 115]

The finale in fact indicates that Dewaere’s character may potentially make other stupid moves in his later life. It’s a rather surprising ending that does find Blier condemning the character’s choice to get involved with a minor; Blier rarely didn’t start presenting “right” and “wrong” options for his characters until the brilliant Too Beautiful for You in 1989.

Dewaere and Blier.

Blier had planned other films for the Depardieu-Dewaere team but it was not to be — Patrick Dewaere fatally shot himself on July 16, 1982, ending what was a short but triumphant career. His suicide left a void in French cinema that remained for many years.

The next two films directed by Blier play like works for hire, because they were packaged for certain stars to appear in. They still do have wonderful scenes, though, and the first has the current finest actress in France, Isabelle Huppert, camping it up as an obscure object of sexual desire.

My Best Friend’s Girl (1983), cowritten by Blier and Polanski collaborator Gerard Brach, was devised originally for the very popular screen comedian Coluche and Patrick Dewaere to star in as friends who are both in love with the same woman. This casting was intentional, as Blier was aware that both actors had dated the same woman. (Dewaere being with her before Coluche stole her away.) Blier wanted Miou-Miou to be in the female lead, but she turned it down because she too had dated both men, having had a long relationship with Dewaere that produced one child.

Thus, Coluche was cast with Thierry Lhermitte playing his best friend and rival. The film is the nearest that Blier came to making a conventional French sex farce, and that impulse seems to be the driving factor in a lot of the scenes, in which we are taken through a variety of the situations that would occur in a standard-issue sex farce or screwball comedy about a threesome, with the difference here being Blier’s dark humor inserted at various points and the fact that almost all the action takes place in a rented suite at a ski lodge, thus making the film play like both a sex comedy and an absurdist farce.

The film is of interest primarily to fans of the three leads, but it did notably create the scenario that became the backbone of the later Too Beautiful for You, in which a character chooses a dowdier-looking as a romantic/sex partner (here, Coluche; there, Josiane Balasko) over an idyllic-looking alternative (here, Lhermitte; there, Carole Bouquet.)

Notre Histoire (aka Our Story, 1984) was conceived of as a vehicle for superstar Alain Delon. It begins in a classic fashion for Blier, with Delon and Nathalie Baye on a train telling each other stories. Delon becomes utterly obsessed with Baye, and things move on from there. It turns out that Delon’s character is an utter alcoholic (it’s amusing that Delon still looks pretty handsome as a chronic drunk) and that Baye is playing games with him, avoiding his overtures as the two live in houses that are mirror images of each other.

Delon produced the film, and so it has the single most “normal” ending of any film Blier ever directed. In many of Blier’s best films there is a “sting in the tail,” but here one of the most normal “explanations” for the absurdist happenings is supplied. Despite this letdown of an ending, the film does have some great scenes and, moving toward Blier’s big shift in 1989, the men here are all depicted as well-intentioned but utterly moronic, while the women are stronger and more certain of their actions.

A number of stories are told by the characters to the other characters (and directly to the camera in most cases). The notion of reliable storytelling is also teased here — is anything we’re hearing actually true in this world of constant fiction? Blier said that “What interested me in Notre Histoire was to get spectators to ask themselves questions about how stories are told in film.” [1986 quote, cited in Harris, p. 42]

This picture had no U.S. distribution and has never appeared on U.S. home entertainment formats. If you want a subtitled copy of the film on disc, you need to buy the Korean region-free disc, which is the only version of the film to have English subs. 

Ménage (originally Tenue de Soiree/Evening Wear, 1986) was a high point for Blier, in that it contains a number of his themes and tropes and was quite before its time in its depiction of an individual, played by Gérard Depardieu, who is bisexual and very happy to be so.

At this point, it probably needs to be mentioned that, yes, Depardieu was one of the most prominent “faces” of Blier’s humor (and later, his emotion). The charges that have emerged against Depardieu by his female costars and some journalists are indeed very serious, but again, we crash up against the notion of separating the art from the artist. (As one of the best summations on this situation, I refer you to Nick Cave’s statement on this way of viewing great art by people who are objectionable in private life.)

Depardieu has been one of the finest actors that France ever produced; that much is inarguable. He also is a man of multiple addictions (liquor and food for sure; most likely drugs in the Seventies when he was at his thinnest) and obsessive behavior. He has also been a sensitive performer who has given extraordinary performances; one of the many directors who elicited these terrific performances was Blier.

I believe that the respect for Depardieu the actor is what occasioned the petition that was signed by 50 of his acting peers and major French artists (including an ample amounts of actresses, and Blier). They were not saying he was innocent of the charges against him, but rather that he deserved a fair trial and that these charges needed to be decided in France’s justice system and not in the media.

Those who cannot at all distinguish the artist’s private life from their work will thus already have an axe to grind with the Blier films that Depardieu starred in (six of those; he was a guest star in three others). All I can impart about this is that films themselves remain excellent and his performances in them remain top-notch. I know that a request for viewers to keep historical context in mind falls on deaf ears, so I will simply say that these films are quite special and reflect a unique sensibility that still should be experienced by viewers who have a taste for dark and absurdist humor. 

Back to Ménage, which did quite well on the arthouse circuit in America and was released on VHS with English subs. (No DVD or Blu-ray in the U.S. to date.) It’s Blier’s best revamp of the sex farce and, as Sue Harris points out in her book, is a perfect example of how he played with gender roles in his comedy. The plot can best be summarized this way: Depardieu’s big but elegant seducer is taken when he meets a couple who are about to break up. He is attracted to the woman (Miou-Miou) but is even more attracted to the small, schlemiel male (Michel Blanc). It is noted in the film that both women and men come on to Depardieu and he could have his pick of the litter; his choice of Blanc as a lover seems willfully perverse and related to his desire to see Blanc “transformed.” For his part, Blanc resists heavily but eventually gives in to Depardieu’s wishes and starts dressing and acting female, which turns the film into a celebration of polymorphous sexuality. 

Add to the above the twin joys of Blier continuing his “obstructed” and frame-within-a-frame visuals and a terrifically catchy score by Gainsbourg, and you have one of Blier’s most “complete” comedies.

The film’s emphasis on sexuality made some critics speak out against it, including feminist writers who condemned it as sexist. Miou-Miou answered this charge in a very eloquent (and quite pithy) way. Her take? “What is a misogynist film anyway? At the moment, all you see are films with men in them. Les ripoux, Marche a la ombre, Les specialistes, Trois Hommes et un couffin, Rambo, and that kind of thing. Bertrand at least creates parts for women, terrific parts. To call him a misogynist woulds simply be masochistic.” (The last sentence being a lot catchier in French: “C’est cera maso de dire qu’il est miso.”)[1986 quote, cited in Harris, p. 113]

I will end this first part of the piece with the film that was a complete turnaround for Blier. Too Beautiful for You (1989) was a worldwide hit that won the Grand Prix special at Cannes, made the most money of any of his films, and was critically lauded around the globe. It also was the film where he dropped his studies of sexist men and polymorphous perversity and started telling stories with fully developed female characters who were not only smarter than the men (they always were that) but were now sympathetic and able to be identified with.

Said Blier, “I even shot a 100% sentimental film, Trop belle pour toi. My only classy movie. Proper. Awarded at Cannes. This one was not loved by Buñuel but by Claude Sautet (Cesar & Rosalie): he wrote me a rave letter...” [Predal, jeune cinema]

In the second part of this piece I’ll be discussing the three films he made after Too Beautiful with actress Anouk Grinberg that he claimed started a “second career” for him. I would argue that Too Beautiful actually began that part of his filmography because it’s a particularly sober-minded comedy that does have very funny scenes but is not a farce in the usual sense (despite its premise, which would seem classically farcical).

This is because one genuinely feels for the characters, which is not something that can be said for the earlier phase of Blier’s work, as funny and imaginative as it was. (Only Beau-Père and Notre Histoire had previously contained a serious undertone.)

The “second career” he did admit “came from” Too Beautiful. “In fact, after Tenue de soiree, I had the impression of having finished my career: from Valseuses to Tenue de soiree, it was a beautiful journey with a beginning and an end, and I was sincerely tempted to stop there. But you don't stop when you're successful. Yet, Tenue had worked very well.” [Predal, jeune cinema]

Too Beautiful was indeed a major turnaround, which brings Blier out of the world of so-called “misogynist cinema” (although it did star Depardieu, who is now considered an “inappropriate” presence but has indeed been one of the finest actors France ever produced, and this was 1989!). The absurdism is still very much in place and Blier made certain that this more serious story (as with Beau-Père) emphasizes the frame-within-a-frame visual style and the slow, graceful pans and zooms around and into the characters.

The premise is a simple one, so simple that I’m amazed it wasn’t remade as a terrible American comedy, as so many French farces were in the Eighties. A business man (Depardieu) has a drop-dead gorgeous wife (Carole Bouquet) but begins cheating on her with his secretary, who is a plainer, slightly chubby woman (Josiane Balasko).

The businessman works through his problems, feeling that his wife is too perfect (and, as the title says, too beautiful for him), but we also are treated to (via direct-address to the camera) the feelings of the secretary, who comes across as the most intriguing character in the film, if only because of her complete normalcy. We also feel for the wife, who delivers very poignant monologues about feeling lesser than others because her looks have kept men thinking about her in only one way. 

The wonderfully stylized visuals emphasized the “trapped” feelings the characters have — as when the secretary talks on the phone to her boss and they are each in their own little glass cubicle. Harris comments on the direct-address in Blier’s work in a section she calls “Techniques of disruption”: “Blier’s films are therefore conceived of not as objective creations, designed to remain on the screen and be viewed passively at a safe distance, but rather as exchanges with the spectator, where he or she is cajoled into a critical exchange, appealed to as a complicit participant in the ongoing action.” [Harris, p. 38]

Colette, the character played by Balasko, was truly a new character for Blier’s filmic world. She is at first taken aback by her boss’s seduction, then surrenders to it, but is always a bit wary of his intentions, until she realizes that she, too, wants to have a “covert” affair (she has a very staid boyfriend). Then the two do fall in love. 

Harris’s book (written after the three Grinberg films had also comes out) also offers a contextualization of the Colette character by noting that Blier creates “complex” female characters. “Blier’s characteristic representation of women refuses the commonplace simplicity and covert eroticism of conventional cinematic portrayals of the female.”[p. 116] It’s also clear that Blier found the free flow of male sexuality had reached its absurdist peak in Ménage and he wanted to move on to more complicated subject matter.

And just in case one might’ve thought that Blier had left behind his Theater of the Absurd penchant for self-reflexive (these days called “meta”) jokes, throughout the film the music of Schubert is played at intensely emotional moments. The character of Depardieu’s son plays a recording of Schubert while the family is eating dinner and Depardieu proclaims his loathing of it.

So, at the very end of the film, when what had to happen does happen with Depardieu’s two relationships, Blier introduces Schubert on the soundtrack to underscore the emotion of the moment. And Depardieu walks off slowly — only to return to the camera and shout, “Il fait chier Schubert, vous comprenez? Il fait chier!”/“It pisses me off, your Schubert, understand? It pisses me off!” (Translated rather loosely as “Your Schubert’s a pain in the ass! A goddamned pain!”)

His characters might have undergone a transformation into three-dimensional beings, but there was no way Blier’s films were going to become cute and cuddly…. 

Note: Thanks to friends Paul Gallagher and M. Faust for copies of the films. Thanks also to J-M Gregoire for references and translation, and Leonard Stoehr for inspiration. 

Bibliography: Blier, Bertrand, Going Places, J.B. Lippincott Company, 1974
Blier Bertrand, Pensées et répliques, le cherche midi, 2001, 2015
Harris, Sue, Bertrand Blier, Manchester University Press, 2001
Murat, Pierre, “Bertrand Blier en 2010 dans “Télérama” : “Pour moi, il n’y a plus de cinéma.” Telerama.
Predal, Rene, “Rencontre avec Bertrand Blier.” jeune cinéma, n°281, avril 2003

Show Business Their Way: Catching the last “Vegas singers”

I’ve had the pleasure over the past 10 months of seeing a quintet of performers who could easily be called “Vegas’s old men.” Each one of the shows was uniquely entertaining; each one had an aspect of humor about it. For one thing that remains with the Vegas entertainers of yesteryear is the ability to not only entertain with music but also to celebrate one’s own achievements while also maintaining a sense of humor about having been a “sex symbol” of the Sixties or the Seventies. 

The shows in question began with a marathon of a celebration, namely Tony Orlando’s Farewell Concert on March 22 at Mohegan Sun.

First, the bizarre situation surrounding my attending the show: the Mohegan Sun casino decided after the pandemic was over to not resume bus service from NYC and Philly to/from their casino in Connecticut; they decided that people with cars are their only desired audience. I found this out after I had purchased tickets, so I had to resell the tix bought for friends (for much less than face value) and had to book a stayover at a hotel two towns over, plus Amtrak trips to/from the town with the hotel. Thanks, Mohegan Sun — never again!

And to make my attendance a bit more colorful: I saw the concert while trying to control a persistent cough. What it turned out to be was that lovely lab-leaked COVID, the one and only time I contracted it after having avoided it for the “miseri annos” (’20-’22). Thus, what was truly a fever dream of a lengthy concert (three hours and twenty minutes) was seen by me with… a fever. 

That was no big deal when the show was on. I’ve been seeing Tony O over the last few decades every few years doing his solo stage thing, and once with Dawn at an Xmas show at Westbury Music Fair. He always put on a great show (now in the past tense) and has in recent years taken the pulpit he has on NYC AM radio (on WABC, Sat nights at 10:00 p.m.; mp3s available here) to celebrate the other gentlemen mentioned in this article.

Tony performed his farewell at the “tender” age of 79, but he soon turned 80 after it and has done entire episodes of his radio show saluting his colleagues who still are on the road performing after 80. The rockers I already knew about, but it was more interesting to hear him sing the praises of his ex-Vegas chums (of course, one of them is still playing Vegas and perhaps will until he is no longer on this mortal plane), putting them in the company of the very “big dogs” who have been gone for decades (Frank, Dean, Sammy, and, of course, Elvis).

Back to the farewell show. I’ve seen Tony perform in different venues, ranging from the much-missed Bottom Line to the casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario. This farewell show — he has quit touring and live performance, but remains on the radio and in public life — was quite different, though, since it was planned as an extravaganza with other acts being given stage time by Tony. 

As a fan of his Seventies “ragtime follies” hits (and even solo music), I’d, of course, rather have seen a full show of just Tony singing. But Tony can’t resist shining a light on his friends, and so he pretty much ceded centerstage to them after the first half of the show, singing a scant few songs after that point. 

The best part of the non-Tony section of the concert was when he had on his pals Andy Kim and Jay Siegel singing their Sixties hits; I was much less enthused about a young TikTok performer from Australia (who had covered “Yellow Ribbon”) who was flown to Connecticut to sing at the show. It was a Tony Orlando show, though, so I expected him to host other performers; over the years he’s given solos to his band members and certain guests who were in attendance. (At these points Tony went back to his mid-Seventies persona as a variety show host.) 

But enough carping about the non-Tony section of the show — suffice it to say that Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless the U.S.A.” is not my personal groove and never will be. The Tony portion of the evening was generally all that I’d looked forward to (and gone through all the flaming hoops that Mohegan Sun presented — again, will *never* return to that venue). 

Tony in general has avoided singing his earliest hits, “Halfway to Paradise” (Carole King and Gerry Goffin, 1961) and “Bless You” (Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, 1961), in concert, but he always made good on performing his hits with Dawn. For this particular show, the trio were reunited, as Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson were present to do and Tony & Dawn reunion. The trio sang five of their big hits from the Seventies, as well as “Abraham, Martin, and John,” with a story about the last-mentioned — how they sang it on their variety show to respond to hate mail that CBS received upon them hitting the air. (Their show was the first hosted by an interracial act.) 

This part of the show was exactly what the doctor ordered (before I even knew I was suffering from the pesky Omicron). Tony and Dawn have a nice little dynamic going not only musically but comedically, as Telma (who has starred in countless sitcoms since her days as half of Dawn) comes equipped with put-down lines for Tony; it’s part of their shtick, like Sonny and Cher (and Louie and Keely).

The first half of the show was indeed the reason to attend. Tony did his favorite songs from the past five decades, including Neil Diamond’s "America.” Having seen Diamond do the song (at MSG, no less) I can say that Tony’s version lacks only the flag being unfurled at the time it’s mentioned in the lyrics. (Neil had a giant one come down from the MSG ceiling.) 

Otherwise, in terms of showmanship, Tony gave us his usual high-energy act. His voice has turned raspy over the years, but he has all the moves and, especially since this was his final concert performance (and he’s seemingly in good health), the audience ate it up with a spoon (with many ladies cheering on Tony, the heartthrob of their youths). 

Although a bunch of celebs were in the audience (including a number of present and former Fox News people), the biggest name who got the biggest audience reaction was Priscilla Presley, who declined to say anything to the audience (and didn’t come up and perform). There were many other friends of Tony seen on video. Since I have the room here, I will herewith present Paul Anka’s rewrite of “My Way” for Tony. (Mind you, he already did a full rewrite of the song for Tony back when Tony was returning to performing after having kicked his drug problem many years ago.)

This pretty much says it all, in terms of both Anka and Tony’s devotion to performing after so many decades. This version is more free-form with the rhymes than Paul’s first rewrite was, but it's definitely up there with Sammy Cahn's "special material" for the Rat Pack and Lil Mattis' similar lyric-smithing for Jerry Lewis. (Best rhyme by far comes in the "panache"/"mustache" verse.)

“Why stall

Tony, it’s Paul

I can’t be with you all

You understand, though.

Cause we, we often must be

where the marquee

says Anka

or Orlando.

And so, although you know

That you’re loved so

In no unsure way

For all you do

This one’s for you

Here’s “My Way” your way.

Onstage, you’re all the rage

A musical sage

You’re so admired

Among the greats

Who have sung,

You’re way too young

To be retired.

I must fawn

The list goes on

Tony Orlando and Dawn

Was yet one more way

Big screen or small,

You did it all

Uniquely your way. 

A New York boy

You never quit

Spreading your joy

With hit after hit

For pure entertainment

It’s well known

says Mohegan Sun’s genius,

Our buddy Tom Cantone,

Shows with panache

And that great mustache 

The fans love you

Their way.

Some strife, in this journey called life
But with Francine, your wife
Fate saw you through

Heaven knows

The Dad path you chose

Kids John and Jenny Rose

No need to cue them.

With pride, they’re quick to confide

With you and Fran as their guide

Hope is the sure way

They learned that’s true

By watching you two

You taught them your way.

Part of your loving legacy

Tie that yellow ribbon ’round

The old oak tree

Unending kindness, you display

There to remind us, every day

Each well-earned bow

has shown us how

You bless us, your way.”

What more can I add to that? Except that this particular concert led to my journey this year to see as many of “Vegas’s finest” before they stop touring, or possibly leave this mortal coil.

I shot some videos from the show on a digital camera I have, but certain YT posters put up more pristine footage of the show. Here is Tony’s take on Neil Diamond’s “America,” which is geared toward saluting veterans.

Here is the moment that he was joined by Dawn, and they sang “Yellow Ribbon” for the last time.

 

“He Don’t Love You” with Dawn.

 

“Abraham, Martin and John.”

 

This was in the second half of the show where Tony sang once again, sections of a Beatles medley:

 

Wayne Newton on June 17 at the Flamingo, Las Vegas. The furthest I traveled to see a show this year — sparking a trip with friends to celebrate a certain-numbered birthday of mine, as well as see the other sites of Vegas (including numerous specialty museums, incl. the Punk Museum, the Atomic Museum, the Mob Museum, and the two hands-down faves, the Liberace Garage and the Neon Boneyard).

Wayne was 82 at the time of the show, which took place in the smaller “Bugsy’s Cabaret” at the Flamingo. I figured I needed to see him before he books that big showroom in the sky, and so was very glad to check out his show to usher in my being another year older (“...and deeper in debt”).

Wayne’s show is called “Up Close and Personal,” and it’s more of a storytelling show than a musical experience. I’d estimate that more than 50% of the show consists of Wayne providing stories of his rise in show biz and reminiscences of his famous friends, with around 10 songs being sung in the 105-minute running time. 

Ordinarily this might be a problem, but since I was seeing Wayne to get whatever “Vegas energy” I could, his visits to the past were very welcome. The show in fact began with tapes of Jack Benny and Bobby Darin (read about my piece about his acting career here) endorsing Wayne as a fine young talent. Considering that Jack and Bobby left us around a half-century ago, this was an auspicious beginning for someone wanting to hear about the Ghosts of Vegas Past.

First off, Wayne is not a performer who ignores his audience. In fact, he looks at all quadrants of the room throughout the show. And while his singing voice is not what it once was, he has seemingly boundless energy and continually jokes about the viewers’ reaction to him.

His wife is his cohost for the show, and she also serves as his interviewer. She asks questions that were seemingly asked by the audience (how one gets a question to Wayne, I have no idea). One suspects these are all prepared questions but, again, this is show biz, folks, and one doesn’t have qualms when one is asking to be dazzled. 

Wayne talks about how he began as part of a double act with his brother and how he made subsequent connections with Jackie Gleason and the aforementioned Benny and Darin, which moved him up the ladder. He dotes on his appearance as himself in Vegas Vacation (1997) and runs footage from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) while singing his biggest hit, “Danke Schoen.” 

As noted above, Wayne sings only a finite number of songs, but they are carefully chosen for maximum Vegas-ocity. His opening medley includes “Viva Las Vegas,” and he closes with “My Way.” He does a medley of his hits and also plays pedal steel guitar at one point. Photos and videos of him with his departed superstar friends are also interspersed. Glenn Campbell gets a very nice lengthy tribute, and we hear stories of Wayne’s friendships with Elvis and the Rat Pack as well. 

Your humble narrator
and the very image of Vegas.

Probably the most Vegas thing he did in the show is his tribute to the late, great Sammy Davis Jr. This is a rather interesting choice, as Wayne talks about Sammy, and then does a “duet” with him, by showing video of the two of them together at what looks to be the turn of the ’70s and replacing his own voice back then with his voice now.

This is a brave move, as Wayne’s voice now is very different from what it was back then, and Sammy in the clip is at his wildest, doing his customary “howls” toward the end of the song. (Sam was in his mid-40s when the clip was shot.) The song they’re performing? “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You,” a ubiquitous number among the Vegas performers of the Sixties and early Seventies.

Most of Wayne’s current act is present for posterity below. I’m pretty surprised that his management are okay with the bulk of the show (which runs 1:45) being placed on YT. But, in the meantime, feast!

 

And, with a (very) little bit of searching on YT, I found the conclusion to his show posted here:

 

After seeing Wayne, I was ripe for more Vegas glitz. My friend Jim noted that both Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck still tour; I also saw that Paul Anka is still heavily in the game, doing gigs across the U.S. Over the following months I saw all three of them, so for the moment I have fulfilled my Vegas mission. But there might be another stray Vegas figure out there touring – and from what I saw in the last three shows, I’m pretty sure those gentlemen will be back around in some months. (These guys will surely keep performing as long as they’re able to stand on a stage.) 

The third show I saw in this unofficial “series” was Tom Jones on September 17 at the Brooklyn Paramount. Jones had, hands-down, the most interesting repertoire, as the numbers he did moved from his Sixties hits to a bunch of newer numbers by singer-songwriters and bands. 

First, his appearance. At 84, he has aged quite well, sporting a beard and only betraying his age when he had to walk from one side of the stage to the other. (The legs and the knees in particular are the first to go.) Aside from the shuffle-steps he took from place to place, he was tightly focused and still has a terrific singing voice.

That we found out as he moved from “It’s Not Unusual” and “What’s New Pussycat?” to songs by Dylan, Randy Newman, Prince (all but the “Think I better dance now...” part), Ry Cooder, Michel Legrand, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and others. He sang one song about age (“I’m Growing Old”) and another about death (“One Hell of a Life” by Katell Keineg). 

He expressed enthusiasm for the songs, making it clear that he enjoyed challenging himself, whether it be with an old tune he didn’t have a hit with (“The Windmills of Your Mind”) or something new ("Talking Reality Television Blues”), as well as other, surprisingly darker items.

Two other items about the concert: first, whoever was programming the video “wall” behind Jones was working overtime, as prepared images were interspersed, along with images of Tom singing live, resulting in familiar images (a jukebox) and just plain trippy compositions on the screen above Jones singing live. Secondly, yes, the ladies screamed for Tom and at least one pair of panties was indeed thrown at him.

Inspired by my friend Steve Korn’s recording live performances, I started doing so myself with the Tom Jones concert (thus, the “beginner’s” jitters here during the instrumental passage). Here, one of Tom’s finest latter-day covers, Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song.” Leonard’s joke line about his own singing voice works un-ironically for Jones.

Bonus clip: Steve’s great posting of Tom doing Todd Snider’s “Talking Reality Television Blues.”

Second bonus: Tom’s current update of his classic dramatic hit “Delilah,” as shot by my friend Steve. Steve's account for music performance clips is here. 

Paul Anka on November 15 at Westbury Music Fair. I wasn’t sure whether I would enjoy Paul Anka, but enjoy I did, as he is a sprightly guy onstage (at 83!) and while he stays rooted in the past, he does move around enough genre-wise to supply surprises.

This is best illustrated by the fact that he sings his initial spate of teen-idol hits (had when he was an early teenager) but also performs his “comeback” hits from the Seventies, hauls out evergreens like “More” from Mondo Cane (which is a personal fave and is pretty much ignored in the pantheon of Popular Standard reprises), and covers a pop classic he wrote for Buddy Holly.

It must be stressed that Anka is in incredible shape for his age. Of the five figures covered here, Anka was the only one to almost plunge himself into the audience, where he is nearly swarmed on by older ladies who have been fans of his since his teen idol days. He’s a svelte little dude in a tailored suit who has a very tight setlist and a very open way with the audience, allowing his female fans to shout out song titles and even the names of other entertainers. (He answered one older lady's request for a song in Italian and even sang it directly to her; I noticed he wasn’t as forthcoming when a male fan yelled out a song title, though….)

Like Wayne, Anka also places “My Way” near the end of his show. Anka has the home-field advantage of having written the song’s lyrics and intro’s it with memories of pitching it to Frank himself. 

The Westbury Music Fair stage used to revolve but no longer does, so the performer has to basically turn to all four corners while onstage. Anka had this covered, making sure that each quadrant got part of a song. Like Wayne and Tom, he also has a video component to his act that presented the young Anka and his encounters with the people he told anecdotes about.

It is this last aspect that introduced a rather fascinating part in the last third of the show where he, like Wayne, “duetted” with Sammy Davis Jr. Wayne may have muted the audio on a vintage video and sung live in those sections, but Anka took a video of Sammy singing a song he wrote for the 1973 “Sammy” TV special and interspersed his own current interpretation of some of the lyrics in between the sections of Sammy singing (during which photographs were shown instead of the original video of Sam).

Both of these duets were mind-benders. I got into “the wham of Sam” for real after he had died, so I never saw him live. Seeing his former colleagues salute him in this devoted a manner was quite heartening and also emphasized just how much of an impact he made on his fellows during his years onstage. I wonder if there is a third older performer out there who does a "duet" with Sammy — both of these current tributes to him are a helluva lot more involving than the various Rat Pack cover acts that play in Vegas and Atlantic City.

My video of the clip, which would be muted if I embedded it in this blog (copyright!), is located here on Facebook. 

My friend Steve Korn shot this video of Anka doing a country medley centered around “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore,” the very memorable song he wrote for Buddy Holly. (The other songs are “Oh, Lonesome Me” and “Bye Bye Love.”) At moments like this, Anka’s “Vegas guy” mask descended, and we got a glimpse of his songwriter/musician guise, which explained how he’s remained a big name in the biz for 67 (!) years.

.

Here is the most unusual song he sang at the show, his theme for the 1962 war film The Longest Day (in which he appeared as an actor). Before he sang it, he told a story about Daryl F. Zanuck initially saying that he didn’t want music for the film but then relenting and calling him to see if he would write something for it.

 

And it wouldn’t be an Anka show if he didn’t do his big “comeback” hit of 1974, “Havin’ My Baby.” The song was controversial at the time it came out, as is documented on the full “Midnight Special” episodes that are being uploaded on that YT channel — feminists objected to the lyrics declaring that the woman having the baby is doing it to show her love for the man.

In any case, however his lyrics may be received, Anka does have the gift of crafting catchy melodies and so “Havin’ My Baby” remains a song that can’t be forgotten. In this case, he had the conductor of his band play the woman in the song (a part played by the singer Odia Coates on the original single).

 

 

Bonus clips: One that Tom Jones left out of the old-hits portion of his show, and one that Anka wrote, “She’s a Lady.” This can be found on my Instagram account, @mediafunhousetv. (I couldn't embed these IG clips without getting a whited-out thumbnail that demanded the user sign in to Instagram, which looks awful.) Performed here with the ladies in the audience going wild over Paul.

One of the more unusual moments in the show happened when Anka took to the piano. First,  he performed “Do I Love You?” a song of his that was a moderate hit for Peter Lemongello (!). Suddenly, Paul switched from that to… “Purple Rain”!

I have to admit that I was immediately put in mind of Tony Orlando’s cover of the same song at his concerts in the 2000s and 2010s. His version rates a notch higher on my imaginary scale of covers if only because Tony put the song into a medley with “Fire and Rain.” (Consistency counts!) The video is here. 

The last, but certainly not least, of the “Vegas singers” that I saw in 2024 was Engelbert Humperdinck on December 8 at the Westbury Music Fair. As with Anka, this was a lot more fun than I had anticipated. I have clear memories of hearing Engelbert’s ballads on AM radio in the Seventies and never would’ve thought I’d check him out in concert. I’m glad I did, though, since he is a very endearing performer and has a good sense of humor about himself. 

This sense of humor came out when he referenced his age — he is 88, making him the oldest of the singers discussed here. He made repeated references to his age, all in good humor and most with him nearly halving his age (“I can’t do that anymore, I’m 49!”). He’s the opposite of Anka when it comes to the female audience members (security staff were posted at four corners of the stage), but he did make references to his days as a heartthrob (and one pair of panties was thrown at him, but the woman leading his band claimed they were hers).

One of the most enjoyable bits of business Engelbert indulges in is to have different chairs and stools brought out on stage for him to sit in. I saw a show that was half his greatest hits and half Xmas music, so he decided that he’d pretty much stand and shuffle around for the hits and sit during the carols and wintry music (he did have a bit of stiffness when moving around during certain numbers, but engaged in small dances on others).

This bit of shtick reached its peak during the Xmas half of the show, when an office chair was brought out so that Engelbert could recline in comfort — and also use his feet to turn the chair around so he was facing each side of the audience.

My favorite tune in the show hands down was “Quando Quando Quando,” the Italian pop classic that is heard in the great 1962 film Il Sorpasso. I know it’s not his “signature song,” but this for me was the highlight of seeing EH in concert. (As with Anka singing “More,” where else are you going to see older performers singing songs from Sixties Italian films?) 

 

Engelbert’s biggest hit, “Release Me,” is still his big dramatic moment. At various points he let us know how long he’s been doing certain songs. With this one he noted, more than once, “57 years!”

 

From the Xmas half of the show. His tribute to Elvis with “Blue Xmas.” 

 

Bonus clips: It may not be “Quando Quando Quando,” this tune is also pretty damned catchy, the 1967 hit “The Last Waltz.” It can be seen on Instagram here.

Engelbert in his office chair moving 360 degrees while singing the Eagles’ “Come Home for Christmas.” How can you not like an older performer copping to wanting to sit down but doing it in such a stylish way? See it on Instagram here.

And a final bonus, EH paying tribute to a sexy singer long gone, as he does Barry White's "You're the First, the Last, My Everything." To haul out the stats, Barry died in 2003 at the age of 58; Engelbert is currently 88. The link for this video on Instagram is here.

I should mention in closing that not one of these gents did a lip sync to a recording. (There are few things sadder and more bizarre-looking than the vids of Frankie Valli miming to a pre-recorded song.) All five of them give their all in concert and had the right amount of inter-song patter to engage the audience, whether or not they used video as an additional supplement.

Each one of the “Vegas singers” had/has (gotta put the past tense in there for Tony O) his own specialty in concert. While Wayne Newton is still the ultimate act to catch in Las Vegas (and the most glitzy), Tom Jones has the best repertoire (and definitely the strongest voice, post-80), Anka the best musicianship (and the only songwriter in the bunch), and Engelbert the most charming laidback demeanor. And Tony O gave me a bunch of very pleasant memories with his shows over the years. (His WABC radio show links to all things Vegas probably better than anything else out there, even when he’s not touching on the topic of Vegas per se.)