The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) was on this morning, so I just had to stay in bed, “in recovery” from my Covid and flu shots, and so, being in bed, I just had to watch it.
Michelle Pfeiffer was 31 when she took on the role of the call girl-turned torch singer. The Bridges brothers, the Baker boys, a brother-brother act, are her accompanists. The elder Baker (Beau Bridges, the elder brother in real life) decides they need a female singer to rejuvenate their jaded performances, and her becoming part of their act makes things complicated.
A critic called the film “Romantic Noir” and that’s just about right. It’s an absorbing movie, not a happy one, because the romance doesn’t work itself out to our satisfaction. And the exterior scenes are filmed in a Seattle that looks as it if it could be the Great Depression: weedy vacant lots, boarded-up buildings, walkup apartments just beginning to go to seed, cheap hotels and cheap ballrooms with dirty back offices.
Pfeiffer, then thirty-one, was not sure she could bring this scene off because she didn’t consider herself “sexy.” A choreographer was assigned her and walked her through the song and the moves until, finally, the scene belongs to Pfeiffer.
At this point in the plot, that Pfeiffer has decided to declare her intentions to Jeff Bridges, a cynical man who, fortunately, loves his black Lab, Eddie, and the lonely little girl who comes through his apartment window to visit them.
Here’s the song’s opening, and I would submit that the head snap at the end, the direct gaze suggest that it’s all over for you, Mr. Jeff Bridges.
I think that if a movie scene is authentic, it reminds you of something else you’ve seen, even if it’s seemingly irrelevant. Pfeiffer’s head swivel reminded me of Diana Ross and the Supremes. Here they are on the Ed Sullivan Show, and watch for the hip move and then Ross’s head swivel. For us poor dumb men, the littlest things women do fascinate us, if “fascinate” is anywhere close to being the right word.
Speaking of “poor dumb men,” by the time Pfeiffer climbs down from the piano at the end of “Makin’ Whoopee,” you know that Jeff Bridges is doomed. That’s okay. He can take it. Or he thinks he can. The movie will decide how it wants to work this relationship out.
P.S. I decided it would be unfair not to add the entire scene. So, in the interest of fairness…
A Work in Progress 