Cary Grant romanced and cracked-wise with Mae West |
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It's Yours Truly wishing you love, romance, and great Match-Flicking on this Valentine's Day Weekend.
And so, this time, we cast our focus upon the long-term relationship between Romance and the Box Office.
For many years, this relationship was close, harmonious, and cloaked in innocence. Romance loved the box office and Match-Flickers reflected the love by lining up for tickets. There was a long-lasting Golden Age for Cupid and the movies.
During the 1930's, the first full decade of the talking romantic comedy, the lovers might be Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, or Cary Grant with any number of leading ladies, from Mae West and Rosalind Russell to Katharine Hepburn and Carole Lombard. When fancy footwork and singing were required to spark Cupid's amorous arrow, the lovebirds were usually Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, or even Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler.
The players changed frequently, but the recipe remained the same: Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. She protests too loudly: "I'm not at all in love!" Chaos and hilarity ensue. By the last reel, overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds, the couple fall in love and live happily ever after.
While Mae West was cracking wise and otherwise with Cary Grant, the 
Box Office romance, Esther Williams' style, was animated and wet. |
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romantic drama also enjoyed a widespread box office vogue. Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes gave love a good name in 1932's A FAREWELL TO ARMS, the first film version of the Ernest Hemingway novel. In 1938, Match-Flickers were head over heels in love with ALGIERS, an exotic romantic drama starring Charles Boyer and Hedy LaMarr. In 1939, GONE WITH THE WIND became the apex of the motion picture romantic drama. The worldwide frenzy created by this motion picture version of Margaret Mitchell's Civil War saga would not be equaled until 1997's TITANTIC sailed onto the scene, and into the box office record book.
As the 1930s faded to the 1940s, the romantic musical motion picture became more popular than ever. Stars including Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Betty Grable, Alice Faye, and Carmen Miranda, among many others, did their song-and-dance best to keep Match-Flickers' minds off of that crazy little thing called World War II.
Frequently these musical pastiches were set in colorful locales that made it into the flick's title. There was WEEKEND IN HAVANA and THAT NIGHT IN RIO. And what romantic of the time would dare to miss DOWN ARGENTINE WAY or SPRINGTIME IN THE ROCKIES?
As Hollywood faded into the 1950s', romantic motion pictures were still 
Romantic Comedy, and Marilyn Monroe, peaked with SOME LIKE IT HOT |
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alive, well, and largely innocent. More and more, they were also Cinemascopic and Stereophonic.
Esther Williams swam her way to box office romance and super-stardom in aquatic epics such as MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID and DANGEROUS WHEN WET. Over at 20th Century-Fox, Marilyn Monroe replaced Betty Grable as the studio's Queen of Romance (Sex) in the hilarious romantic romp HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, and in that studio's romantic musical comedy hit, GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES. At M-G-M, Doris Day scored an Oscar nomination as real-life diva Ruth Etting in the romantic musical drama LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME.
Another romantic genre star: the Sci-Fi Romance, was born in the 1950s. The unintentionally funny QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE (1958), starring Hungary's most popular export since goulash, Zsa Zsa Gabor, literally defines this sub-genre.
Romance has never been funnier, sharper, or more clever at the movies than in the 1958 comedy milestone SOME LIKE IT HOT, starring Marilyn Monroe, with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in drag as Josephine and Geraldine, in order to escape the murderous perpetuators of the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.
By 1960, romance at the box office had lost its innocence and gained an edge. When the Oscars for that year were 
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN Is Our New Century's Most-Honored Box Office Romance. |
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handed out in 1961, the Best Picture Winner was THE APARTMENT, a cynical romantic drama about a youthful corporate rat racer who loans his apartment to his company's executives for adulteress "Whoopie!".
1963's biggest romantic comedy hit was IRMA LA DOUCE, the sexy saga of a Parisian prostitute with a heart of platinum and a policeman boyfriend who vows to clean up the streets.
Innocence, like virginity, once lost, can never be regained. Neither Britney Spears, nor the Box Office, can really go to the Virgin Islands for re-cycling. Like America in general, romance at the box-office came of age in the 1960s, and it has never looked back.
In the 21st Century, few would argue that the box office's most brilliant romantic epic, is also its most-honored and controversial. Winner of dozens of critics,' film festival, and film societies' awards worldwide, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005), Ang Lee's landmark Cowboy Meets Cowboy epic stands alone as the new century's best romantic motion picture.
Whether they are "coming up to see Mae West," taking the plunge with Esther Williams, or wishing they could quit Ennis Del Mar, MatchFlickers can be certain of this: Although the relationship between romance and the Box Office changes frequently - it always endures.
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| The Business of Show |
Every other Friday
Does advertising, public taste, or overindulged stars determine a movie's box office fate? Christoper Stone explores what's going on behind the box office.
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| Christopher Stone |
Christopher Stone is the author of the international best seller Re-Creating Your Self. With Mary Sheldon, he co-authored three highly successful hardcover books of guided meditations.
He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, West.
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