The Late Show

Here's a wonderful, offbeat little film directed by Robert Benton, who directed Kramer vs. Kramer, and Nobody's Fool. He also wrote the screenplay, which received an Oscar nomination, so I guess it wasn't ignored entirely when it came out. Critics often dismiss The Late Show with a tart "Well, it's no Chinatown" (which came out three years earlier). That's too bad because it's a sly, engaging, funny detective thriller in its own right that manages to rise above the constraints of the genre and reach some memorable emotional heights along the way.

Art Carney plays Ira Welles, an over-the-hill private eye with a hearing aid, a bad leg, and a bleeding ulcer. It's almost as if Benton said: "hey, what would happen if Phillip Marlowe were still alive and kicking and living in the seedy part of Los Angeles in the mid-'70s?" Making the hero a senior citizen makes even more sense in the noir context than having him be the usual tough guy in the peak of health.

Things start off with a bang, or at least a whimper, when his partner Harry shows up with a bullet hole in his stomach (a la Maltese Falcon). Ira shows us what he's all about right away when tells his soon to be dead colleague: "Sorry you're going off, pal. You've been real good company." Ira is a throwback who spends serious amounts of time at the racetrack, lives in a boarding house, gets everywhere by bus (in LA?), calls women "Dolly," and values notions of honor and loyalty to one's partner above all else.

This world runs smack against the more permissive, loopy, go with-the-flow attitudes of the late-Sixties, early-Seventies, in the guise of Margo (Lily Tomlin). Margo is a laconic blatherskite who burns incense, lives in a room full of batik and macramé, and listens to meditation tapes. She goes to Ira for help when her cat Winston is kidnapped by a disgruntled fence whom she neglected to pay. Ira refuses to get involved with such nonsense until he realizes the catnapper also had something to with the death of his partner.

This kicks off an appropriately convoluted noir plot of epic complexity that involves murderous fences, infidelity, blackmail, and a steadily mounting body count. But the plot takes a backseat to the subtly changing, often touching relationship between the two lead characters. These two seemingly polar opposites actually have a lot in common.

They are both misfits who have constructed elaborate lies that they inhabit. Ira tells Margo that he's always been a loner, yet he spends his evenings playing canasta with his landlady, risks his life to find his partner's killer, and finds himself slowly warming up to Margo despite her air of flaky desperation. Margo flits from one identity to the next. One minute she's an actress, the next a dress designer, and the next a talent agent. In reality, she's mule for a two-bit fence and has to deal grass on the side to make ends meet. "I only do it to get my shrink paid," she tells a disapproving Ira.

Art Carney and Lily Tomlin play the push-me-pull-you dynamic between the two for all they're worth. Carney has a terrific moment when he collapses in pain due to ulcer pain and tells Margo not to take him to the hospital. In Tomlin's hands, Margo is one of the great screen neurotics, yet she's much savvier and sharper than she seems at first, and is able to finally rise to face the challenge of some pretty hairy situations. The Late Show is a real gem from the last truly great decade of American movies.

THE LATE SHOW (1977) ***1/2 Art Carney, Lily Tomlin, Bill Macy, Eugene Roche, Joanna Cassidy, Howard Duff. Hommage to pulp fiction/film noir gumshoe flicks ala "The Big Sleep" with comedy instead of menace with Carney as over-the-hill private dick hired by loony New Age Tomlin wanting her kidnapped kitty back only to find herself neck deep in murder and adultery in the underbelly of sunny LA. Kooky pairing of the two leads is the films' appeal as well as for its affinity for the genre thanks to writer/director Robert Benton's right on the money approach.

Over-the-hill gumshoe in modern day Los Angeles seeks to avenge the killing of an old pal, another older detective who had gotten himself involved in a case concerning a murdered broad, stolen stamps, a nickel-plated handgun, a cheating dolly, and a kidnapped pussycat. Art Carney and Lily Tomlin are amazingly well-matched playing the convincingly mismatched pair of sleuths who unravel the tangled mystery, and Bill Macy is equally fine as a congenial, low-life bartender-cum-talent agent. The plot of this serio-comic paean to the age of Raymond Chandler is perhaps too convoluted to follow in-depth, but that's rather easy to overlook considering it is the least important part of the picture. The begrudging, barb-filled relationship between Carney and Tomlin carries the show, and the friendship that slowly grows between them is thrilling for fans of this type of cinema. All three of the acting principals richly deserved--but did not get--Oscar nominations for their work, though the film did pick up one nomination, for Robert Benton's original screenplay. It's a chatty film, yet one which is charmingly askew and lingers in the memory like warm nostalgia. ***1/2 from ****

In The Late Show Art Carney may have created the most broken down action hero ever on the big screen. In fact his role here is in keeping with the Oscar he won playing irascible old codgers in Harry And Tonto and whom he would continue to play for the rest of his big screen career. The man truly reinvented himself after being so identified as Ed Norton of sewer repair on The Honeymooners.

Probably at the height of the noir era in film post World War II Carney could have done private eye roles like Humphrey Bogart and Alan Ladd. But now he's retired from the business has a bad leg, wears a hearing aid and rents a room from an indulgent landlady Ruth Nelson.

Until his old partner still in the game comes to him with a fatal bullet in his chest. An inside joke if you will because the partner is played by Howard Duff who was Sam Spade for years on radio. And at Duff's funeral he meets quirky former actress Lily Tomlin who was Duff's last client. She hired Duff to find her missing cat.

The cat however is key and before the film ends several of the cast wind up dead. It's a well assembled ensemble who support Carney and Tomlin. Joanna Cassidy as the femme fatale, Eugene Roche as a fence, Bill Macy as a bartender/tipster who tries to play both ends, and John Considine are all at the top of their game.

But Carney is a wonder, he's got great chemistry with Tomlin and he's got great moves as well. Wish I had some of them.

The Late Show is one of the most underrated films of all time. It's somewhat convoluted detective plot has raised comparisons to Chinatown, which is both unfair and unfortunate. This is a film that stands out on its own.

The acting is generally very good, and the performances by the leads are particularly strong. Dialogue which might have seemed forced or corny with less assured actors is believable and often funny here. Art Carney and Lily Tomlin are fun to watch as a bickering detective duo brought together as much by mutual loneliness as by anything the plot throws at them. Both are able to keep their characters interesting without overdoing it. It would have been especially easy for Ms. Tomlin to go over the top with her depiction of the rather flighty Margo, but she manages to balance her character's peculiarities and make it look effortless.

Robert Benton received an academy award nomination for his screenplay, but he really deserved more recognition for directing a film in which he gets the mood just right, and trusts his cast to do their jobs well. This was no mean feat for a work that needs to be film noir with some comic timing.

I saw this film when it first came out nearly 30 years ago, and then watched it again recently. At a time when so many films rely on computer generated images, and plots that seem dreamed up by marketing departments, it was refreshing to rediscover a film that relies on strong direction, and outstanding acting.