Boulevard! A Hollywood Story: Nora Desmond returns!

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome - photos courtesy of Bright Iris Film Co

23 Nov 2022 -

Try to resist the ad copy for Boulevard! A Hollywood Story:

The deliciously bizarre true Hollywood story of how Gloria Swanson tried to turn Sunset Boulevard into a stage musical and threatened to become a real-life Norma Desmond with her collaborators - two men in love . . . with each other.

Yes, that is the initial story that director Jeffrey Schwarz sets out to tell, but, as in his previous films on Hollywood royalty like The Fabulous Allan Carr, so much more is delivered. Schwarz spent decades doing interviews and researching, and the saga of the musical that was never produced is only the beginning. Not that anyone would want to skip forward, Boulevard! A Hollywood Story builds inexorably and fascinatingly. Gloria Swanson is now remembered mainly for her camptastic performance in Sunset Boulevard, a staple of drag queens of a certain age. (I would argue that Airport '75 was also a crowning achievement despite Swanson, playing a version of herself, being upstaged by Karen Black.) Schwarz covers Swanson's career, from her ascension to silent film superstardom to her slow decline due to the addition of sound and Hollywood's treatment of women past the age of ingenue.

Running parallel is the romantic tale of the relationship between the handsome duo of Richard Stapley and Dickson Hughes. Stapley was a minor star at MGM. Originally billed as the "British Clark Gable," his remarkable good looks and physique—which Schwarz finds many clips and photos to illustrate—were his main talent. Hughes was a pianist and composer who happened to be playing in a nightclub when Hughes, and Hughes's wife, stopped in. What makes this layer of the film eye-poppingly remarkable is the animation by Maurice Vellekoop (Pin-ups). Besides his exemplary erotic art, Vellekoop is also known for his skill in delineating divas, gently lampooning while greatly admiring. He does Swanson, and her entrances, justice. But his treatment of Stapley and Hughes transcends caricature or cartooning to become achingly romantic, comical, and then heartbreaking. 

The trio form a team to create a Broadway musical based on Sunset Boulevard in order to change the trajectory of Swanson's career. The trio becomes a triangle and, despite samplings of many enticing recordings and even a television clip from the ill-fated musical, there are no Tonys, or even an opening night, in store. But that is not the end, the show is dead but the music plays on. Schwarz follows Stapley's startling reinvention, Hughes's attempts to salvage his compositions and reputation, and Swanson's continuing divahood. Boulevard! delves deeply in what it meant to be a gay man, or a woman, in Hollywood in the golden age. It also is filled with a thematic fascination with appearance, how artists grow into their roles, cannibalize their life for their roles (and their roles for their lives), and lose themselves in the process. While Gloria Swanson does - spoiler alert! - transform into Nora Desmond during the musical writing process (the chicken story is, again assisted by Vellekoop's genius, laugh out loud hilarious), she is not the only one.

Boulevard! is a feast for fans of Broadway, old Hollywood, gossip, fun factoids and those with even a glancing interest in gay history. Thanks to Schwarz's keen eye and ear, always cutting and juxtaposing with dexterity, Boulevard! never for a second loses energy or turns drily academic. A short clip of the official portraits of the nominees for the 23rd Academy Awards tells us more about Swanson than a thousand tomes. Quotes are aligned with clips from Sunset Boulevard to devastating effect. Hughes's offhand remark that "I was all dressed up. She was really dressed up," is both deliriously funny and terrifying in the context that Schwarz gives it. While, alas, we will probably never see a full version of Boulevard!, the madcap horror show of its creation and aftermath is dramatic enough to eclipse Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's take on the classic. And I'm not humming, but am definitely mulling over, the refrain from the first song that Hughes and Stapley wrote for Bouldevard!, "All those wonderful people out there in the dark."