honesty, decency, and integrity
by Douglas
Messerli
William Link and Richard Levinson (screenplay), Lamont Johnson (director) That Certain Summer / 1972
Over the brief period of the last days of 2020 and first month of 2021 we lost two major creative figures, William Link, a writer and producer who, through his involvement with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, was an acquaintance, and Hal Holbrook, who in his role of Mark Twain was everybody’s friend. Holbrook played on Broadway and films in many roles including in Lincoln and All the President’s Men but was most noted for his many portrayals throughout his career of Twain.
With his longtime collaborator, Richard
Levinson, Link wrote and produced the series Columbo, Murder, She
Wrote, and Mannix along with other TV and cinematic productions. But
these two came together most notably in 1972 in one of the most important of
early TV LGBTQ productions, That Certain Summer, written by Link and Levinson
and starring Holbrook as a divorced man, Doug Salter living in San Francisco with
his gay lover Gary McClain (Martin Sheen). It was the very first sympathetic TV
portrayal of homosexuality. in fact one the first to mention the word on the
small screen that lit up so many American homes. Holbrook notes that the gay
characters represented people of “honesty, decency, and integrity,” and recalls
that many years after people would stop him on the street and remark, “it [the
movie] meant a lot.”
Holbrook at first turned down the role,
feeling that, perusing the script, nothing really happened in the story. In
some senses he’s right, which is partly what makes this film so absolutely
groundbreaking; no truly calamitous events occur to the loving couple at the
center of this work and there were no gay bodies littered upon the stage by the
time the credits scrolled down after the ABC production of November 1, 1972—although
it was the day that US poet Ezra Pound died. After describing the work to his
wife, however, she responded: "You're going to get on the phone and call
Hollywood and tell them you want to do this part before they give it to somebody
else."
Martin Sheen was immediately enthusiastic
upon reading his script. "I thought it was wonderful. There was a great
deal of freedom in it because it wasn't about advocating a lifestyle or a
sexuality. It was about two people who adored each other, and they weren't
allowed to have a relationship that involved their sexuality"—although I’d
argue with him that the couple was certainly “allowed” to have a sexual
relationship and indeed had one, they simply weren’t permitted to openly reveal
it to others. But I love Sheen’s reaction to the now tiresome question about
whether he wasn’t afraid that in playing such a role it might affect his
career: "I'd robbed banks and kidnapped children and raped women and murdered
people, you know, in any number of shows. Now I was going to play a gay guy and
that was like considered a career ender. Oh, for Christ’s sake! What kind of
culture do we live in?" We should remind ourselves that Sheen later went
on to play the President of the United States in The West Wing, in
which Holbrook also played a minor role.
Link describes it as one of two of his
favorite contributions to cinema literature, but also describes the
difficulties of getting such a movie on TV. This was a time when gays were
still being horribly prosecuted with police still regularly raiding gay bars—although
he have to remind ourselves this was after Stonewall, and certainly I never
feared for the police once during my late 1960s stay in New York. But the TV
studios were still not interested. NBC, so he reports, wouldn’t touch the work
with the proverbial “pole”—apparently no matter how long its length. But at ABC
Barry Diller, who was rumored to be gay, took it under his wing and fought hard
for it, even having to sit through visits by psychiatrists pummeling him with
their horrific evaluations of homosexuals, who they still argued were mentally ill.
The always dreaded Standards and Practices Committee required Link and Levinson
to add an “everyday” character, Gary’s brother-in-law who stood up for family
values and patronizingly invited Gary to visit them with his “friend” (the
Holbrook character) any time. They also required the speech late in the film
where Doug confesses to his son that if he could have made a choice we would
never have desired to be gay, which brought an outcry in the gay community; but
as Link reminds us, that statement represents, in fact, the feelings still of
some gay individuals; perhaps it is a small price to pay for such an otherwise
intelligently informed film. And by this time in the work, we know that Doug
and his companion Gary have a loving and enjoyable relationship, even if, as a
divorced man, he may still have some regrets.
The work begins, under the excellent
direction of Lamont Johnson, with Doug reviewing some old home films with quick
glimpses of his former wife, Janet (Hope Lange), but mostly of his toddler son,
Nick (Scott Jacoby), who soon, we discover, is about to fly up from Los Angeles
for what evidently is a annual visit since his father left them three years
earlier. A doting father, Doug, as Gary later describes it to Nick, has “practically
been checking off the days” on the calendar until the boy’s visit.
Their fears appear to have been right
when Nick seems to give a cold shoulder to Gary’s appearance at their
father-son dinner, refusing to even take a bite of the special celebratory cake
Gary has purchased for the occasion. Nick keeps repeating that it’s not his
birthday, despite Gary’s insistence that everybody should have a second
birthday each year, and his father’s attempts to get him to at least thank Gary
for the gesture—all without success. They can’t determine whether or not he
resents Gary for the intrusion in their familial relationship or that Nick perhaps
suspects something about the other man so openly sharing his father’s company.
What is clear from the moment they come
together is the deep relationship between Doug and Nick, particularly as they humorously
enact scenes from The Maltese Falcon with Nick playing the Peter Lorre
role and Doug tackling the Humphrey Bogart part. Nick has even brought his
father a special present of a gift-store black falcon. Their rapport, in fact, reminds
us of the wonderful interactions of Murray Burns (Jason Robards Jr.) with his
nephew, another Nick (Barry Gordon) in the 1965 comic film-version of Herb Gardner’s
A Thousand Clowns.
And much like the 12-year Nick of that
film, Doug’s son is clearly precocious—as Gary keeps reminding his lover—spending
much of the film picking up signals about his father’s sexuality that he finds
confusing and even frightening.
There’s the moment in the car when,
after Doug has admittedly pumped Nick for information on his ex-wife’s new
sexual life, Nick suggests to his father “I guess you’ll be getting married
again to someone.”
Doug’s answer reveals more than he intends
to the curious kid: “Nick, if it means anything I don’t think I’ll be marrying
again.”
Nick innocently asks “Why?” But the
answer, “A lot of reasons. It’s very complicated. We’ll talk about it sometime,”
clues in the boy that it is an adult situation: “That means when I’m older,”
which all children know means that it is something adults aren’t yet ready to
talk about, which further hints at danger.
Later, he finds shaving cream in the bathroom
cabinet, knowing that his father uses an electric razor. When he asks his
father about it, Doug becomes somewhat flustered and spirits his son off to
bed.
When they visit Gary the next day at
his job, he’s a sound engineer, for a moment when Nick discovers that his
father’s friend has worked with several famous pop performers like the
Jefferson Airplane, it appears he might almost take a liking to him,
particularly when Gary suggests, since they both play the guitar, they might
want to play as a duo later that night; but again Nick pulls away.
As they move on to lunch nearby, we also
see tensions rising between the lovers, Gary insisting that Doug should talk his
bright son about the facts, and even suggesting that Doug himself has not
completely come out, particularly since he still fears any obvious public
display of male-on-male love. Nick picks up any stray comments and their body
language.
And the next afternoon when Doug throws
a party with his neighbors and other mostly heterosexual friends, he further
discovers that they all know and speak of his father’s friendship
The next morning Nick is missing, with
Doug and Gary immediately going on the search, unable to find the boy who has
taken the ferry from Sausalito to the city, there to ride the trolley cars
endlessly back and forth in contemplation.
Finally, Doug sees the errors of his
way: “I should have talked to him. I ignored him, too damn busy telling myself
everything was so nice and normal.”
Meanwhile, since Nick has called his
mother to suggest he might want to return home early, she, worried as she might
be by his state of mind, gets on a plane and turns up at her ex-husband’s door
to encounter, evidently for the first time, her husband’s gay lover. The
encounter, at first, is not a pleasant one as she righteously inquires about
who they invited to the party they threw of Nick and how involved Gary might
have been in Nick’s visit. Attempting to explain to her that he has been
temporarily staying at his sisters does no good in calming her wrath. And he
lashes back with the truism that if she had simply encountered another woman in
her husband’s house the stranger would be perfectly accepted, but as a gay
lover.... Her answer hints, just for a moment, about how much the two have
digressed from the real subject at hand, her and Doug’s missing son. “If you
were a woman,” Janet hisses in her best Joan Crawford imitation, “I’d know how
to compete with you.”
Fortunately Link and Levinson go no further down
this avenue, and while waiting for Doug to return the two eventually make
friends. The three of them, soon after, as she comments, making up “quite a
threesome.”
Upon Nick’s return they all race forward
to embrace him, Doug determining to take him for a walk to have the open
conversation that he should have had all along.
With all the time that Nick has spent in
deep thought over what he has learned, we might hope that the boy has finally
found some way to come to terms with his father’s “difference.” A Chinese
fortune a couple of days earlier had hinted “Be true and trust each other and
all will be well.”
But Johnson’s film does not have a Chinese
fortune-like script, and despite Doug’s attempts to explain to his son that he
loves Gary and lives with him in a kind of marriage, Nick attempts once more bolt from the truth. When finally
Doug struggles to tell him that a homosexual is something other than one hears
about in the schoolroom hallways and alleys, Nick turns away in tears, being
held by his father in the hopes of making him comprehend that what some see is
a sickness, a thing to be put down with jokes, is something worth his love particularly
since it represents the father who still loves him.
Nick leaves soon after with his mother,
unable to even look at Gary and resenting even the touch of his father’s hand. “Give
him a little time,” Janet attempts to assure Doug moments before she and her
son pull away in a taxi.
We believe her. Nick is a bright
kid, and we feel he will come through the dilemma stronger with a new comprehension
of what it means to love.
But that does not salve the tears that
roll down Doug’s eyes as he sits on the stairway awaiting his lover’s return
from retrieving the clothes he has left at his sisters.
And the tears say everything, Doug and
Gary still hold love for not only one another but for those who momentarily
cannot even accept it or may never be able to lay down their prejudice. As Rosa
von Praunheim might put it—and did, a year earlier— “It is not the homosexual
who is the perverse but the society in which he lives.”
The script for That Certain Summer was
nominated for an Emmy. The New York Times Critic Marilyn Beck described
it as “one of the finest pieces of drama you’ll see this year on large or small
screen.” Judith Crist proclaimed that was “a giant step for television,” the Los
Angeles Times critic Charles Champlin championed it as “the best movie for
TV I have yet seen.” A script for the Kojak series won the Emmy, but in
fact the entire LGBTQ community won far more in its honest depiction of how
difficult it is to live within a society than cannot accept all expressions of
love while embracing nearly every form of hate and mayhem. Today lots of kids
have two mothers or two dads or a father who lives in another city with another
man, a mother with a woman friend. But the bigotry still exists, and movies
such as That Certain Summer help to heal that hurt.
Los Angeles, February 13, 2021
Reprinted
from My Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (February
2021).
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