Silver and Clover

There are several kinds of forgotten Oscar movies: true obscurities (CODA), hits that didn’t endure (The Last Emperor), and the hundreds of “prestige pictures” not nominated for Best Picture. 1982’s Frances, starring Jessica Lange as Frances Farmer, follows an established biopic formula that’s still used today: stretch and compress the truth, embellish, focus on the lead performance above all else, and make the title the first name of the subject, whether or not they’re famous enough to deserve it. Was Frances Farmer famous enough? You have to insist that she is.

But sometimes you need an adjective, a verb, or a preposition: Good Will Hunting, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Saving Private Ryan, Finding Forrester, Inside Daisy Clover. The latter was supposed to be Natalie Wood’s first Best Actress performance, but the movie underperformed and disappointed critics. Alton Cook of The New York World-Telegram wrote that Daisy Clover, “conducts a spectacular travesty of some of Hollywood's preposterously lush nooks without stirring any notable amount of mirth. And it follows Hollywood's predatory smothering of an impulsive, endearing Cinderella without stirring much sentiment or sympathy... Oh! This pathetic innocent is hurt, hurt, hurt but no one cares, cares, cares so long as her picture is finished and rolls in dough, dough, dough... The makers of the picture do not care to make themselves altogether clear but there are hints of the depravity of its Hollywood in fleeting insinuations of dope and homosexuality.”

People have been sick of “Oscar bait” for decades. But some of these movies, made to win awards, are good. Inside Daisy Clover, directed by Robert Mulligan and produced by Alan J. Pakula, follows the fictional Daisy Clover (Natalie Wood) as she rises from obscurity to stardom at 15 (“BY 17,” says the poster, “SHE’S WASHED UP!”). Unlike Frances Farmer, she’s never institutionalized and loves her mother (Ruth Gordon) dearly. Only when her mother dies does Daisy go off the deep end, convalescing at home with a private nurse and unable to speak. She cracks during an ADR session for one of many movies within movies she’s contracted to make. The line she’s supposed to re-record—“The circus is a wacky world”—repeats over and over, with and without sound, in and out of the recording booth. It’s a remarkable scene, looping this ridiculous line and then going mute and just showing the screen as Wood mouths the words—we’re still able to hear it.

Natalie Wood is still relatively well-known for long-dead movie stars, but mostly for her mysterious death and tempestuous relationships. Rebel Without a Cause is still watched, but it’s more of an idea than a movie that people actually know and remember (it’s never made it to Blu-Ray). Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was a movie of the moment that’s always being “rediscovered.” Miracle on 34th Street and The Searchers are well-known classics, but she’s a kid (and in the latter, with very little screen time). West Side Story is the only monumental film that Wood starred in, but even still, it’s an ensemble—unlike Inside Daisy Clover.

Loosely based on the life of the then-still-living Judy Garland, Inside Daisy Clover follows all the rules of awards biopics and Hollywood movies: overlong, compromised, punishingly grim but absent any damning details or images (you’ll never see Fatty Arbuckle crossing the line). Even when the subject isn’t real, there’s a sense that something’s been left out, there’s behavior that doesn’t make sense. Why does Frances Farmer keep going home? Why does Daisy Clover blow up her own house? Because they couldn’t pick an ending.

Ruth Gordon won Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars, but Wood wasn’t even nominated. Today, the film is best remembered for an early appearance by Robert Redford. It was his third film, and he was miffed that his character was written as a closet homosexual. He insisted that the character be re-written as bisexual, and while that’s believable in the film, there’s some pretty clear dialogue from Daisy’s agent (Christopher Plummer) about her husband, “who always goes running back to his boys.” Mulligan shot that scene after Redford finished his work, and the whole ordeal inspired the rest of his career, where he managed to maintain independence and control over his work by directing himself or working with people he trusted. Redford, a short man, was as insecure as any other actor—he didn’t like that his first impression on the moviegoing public was as a louche gay guy. He thought harder and longer about the roles he took than Paul Newman, who would do anything, or Steve McQueen, who never read anything but car magazines. Newman and McQueen let the work come to them; Redford was searching his whole life.

Inside Daisy Clover is worth watching today just to see how little these kinds of movies have changed. Babylon may have been slightly cruder, but it’s the same arc, the same parameters, the same sets and the same villains. Because Hollywood is talking about itself, it can’t be totally honest, even half-honest, but the lie often reveals more than books like Hollywood Babylon. Daisy Clover decides not to commit suicide, and instead merely blows up her house as she walks away on the beach, smiling. Isn’t she going to be locked up as soon as the credits are over? It’s funny how indecisive the ending is considering that Daisy Clover never existed—they didn’t have to make the mother a saint, and Christopher Plummer probably could’ve been a little meaner. But Hollywood isn’t going to make some a star up just to kill them in the end. Inside Daisy Clover says that Hollywood doesn’t destroy people; Frances insists that she did it to herself.

—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NickyOtisSmith