One of my favorite Otto Preminger films has finally found its way onto DVD and Blu-ray thanks to Olive Films. Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970) was never released on home video so this marks the first time Preminger’s offbeat comedy-drama has been made easily accessible outside of airing on television where it was often edited or given the pan and scan treatment. Hopefully the Olive Films release will help the film find a new audience that appreciates its thought-provoking premise and quirky charm.
Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon was originally based on a 1968 novel by Marjorie Kellogg, who also wrote the film’s screenplay. It tells the story of three misfits who form a makeshift family after leaving the hospital where they had been convalescing. Liza Minelli plays Junie Moon, a quirky and resourceful young woman disfigured in a vicious attack by a psychopath she once dated. Her compatriots include Robert Moore as Warren; a wheelchair bound gay man crippled in a shooting incident and Ken Howard as the childlike Arthur. Arthur is suffering from an undiagnosed form of epilepsy or neurological disorder as well as mental trauma after being involuntarily institutionalized when he was a child. We get to know these three unlikely companions as they move into a dilapidated old house owned by a flamboyant landlady (Kay Thompson), find work with a local fishmonger (James Coco), adopt a neighborhood owl and stray dog and frolic at a seaside resort with an affable beach boy (Fred Williamson). Things don’t end well for the troubled trio but they make the most of their short time together.
On the surface, the premise sounds downbeat and cheerless but the film refuses to turn its disabled characters into victims. They’re all multifaceted individuals who display likable as well as unlikable characteristics and although they suffer, they cope by using humor to withstand the slings and arrows life hurls at them.
Writer Marjorie Kellogg, who worked closely with Preminger during the making of the film, was an outsider herself. As a lesbian woman employed as a hospital social worker, she had experienced some of her character’s predicaments firsthand. Her writing provides insight as well as an understanding of these fringe figures typically forgotten or ignored by society at large.
When the film was released in 1970, Preminger was attacked for injecting the maudlin material with humor. Critics complained about the murky nature of the plot while calling it predictable and sappy. The film was also criticized for its muddled presentation of Warren’s sexual identity and its suggestion that black citizens and disabled citizens suffered similar discrimination and intolerance.
Penelope Gillet of The New Yorker took Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon to task for treating “ . . . bigotry about the afflicted as an easy metaphor for bigotry about race,” which she found “morally and socially misleading.” Mark Goodman at Time magazine maintained that it was “an egregious attempt to exploit both sentimental and kinky appetites” while the Gannett News Service critic Bernard Drew called it “an opportunistic adventure in grotesqueries.” Some of the worst criticism came from Vincent Canby of The New York Times who said, “Preminger displays his characters without ever revealing them, or letting them reveal themselves” adding “Preminger doesn’t direct movies as much as he makes frontal assaults on them. It’s no accident that the most vivid moments in Junie Moon are either the most cruel or the most bizarre.”
Despite these disparaging reviews, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon also had many defenders and the director was nominated for a Palme d’Or at the 1970 Cannes film Festival. Responding directly to Canby’s criticism at the time, the openly gay film critic Richard McGuiness writing for The Village Voice pointed out that Preminger’s film, “. . . describes people whose lives–not just their bodies–have been obviously warped, who bare the mark of the outcast for all to see, the heroes ‘display’ themselves because the only way they can survive is to display themselves without shame.” Roger Ebert also said, “The ending is not convincing . . . But, on balance, the movie works and tells us something about three or four good people who are trying to cope.” The film was also warmly received by many women’s magazines including Woman’s Day, Seventeen and Cosmopolitan, which singled out Liza Minelli calling her “brilliant” in the role of Junie while critics at The New York Daily News suggested her performance was worthy of an Oscar nomination. Contrary to claims that the film’s reception was universally “disastrous,” Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon was actually the best-reviewed film in Preminger’s oeuvre since the release of his exceptional moody thriller, Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965).
Today it’s understandable if modern critics find Robert Moore’s campy portrayal of Warren outdated, but the depiction of a gay crippled man attracted to a musclebound bisexual black beach boy was daring stuff in 1970. Throughout Preminger’s career he had often challenged the production code by exploring taboo subjects including homosexuality in Laura (1944) and more blatantly in Advise & Consent (1962), which was one of the first Hollywood films to include a scene shot in a gay bar. Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon takes even more risks, but it’s also burdened by the era’s stereotypes of gay characters and Preminger often plays these up for laughs. Despite that, Robert Moore provides us with a very funny, charming and sensitive character study of a gay man at a time when few films dared to touch on the topic of homosexuality and interracial romance.
It’s worth remembering that Moore was an accomplished stage director himself. Today’s he’s probably best known for directing the first off-Broadway production of the groundbreaking play The Boys in the Band (1968) starring Leonard Frey who also appears briefly in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. Moore asked Preminger if he could be in the film in order to learn more about the director’s methods and after a successful screen test, Preminger agreed. Most of the main cast, besides the film’s star Liza Minelli and Kay Thompson who was Minelli’s real-life godmother, were also fresh from the New York stage including James Coco and young Ken Howard making his screen depute here.
The cast reportedly got along well and enjoyed working with Preminger, who had a reputation for being temperamental and difficult to deal with. The only complaints came from Liza Minelli. The aspiring actress thought the director wasn’t very supportive and didn’t offer her much guidance. Despite any on set conflicts, Preminger only had kind words for Minelli and praised her performance in a number of interviews citing her “Chaplinesque humor that comes through her body and eyes.” He also confessed to newspapers, “I am not the easiest man in the world to work for and I do not praise people promiscuously, but I tell you Liza Minelli is a professional actress who has more natural acting talent than almost any other young actress I can think of . . . obviously acting is in her blood.” According to Chris Fujiwara, the author The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger, the director liked working with Minelli so much that he wanted her to sign a long-term contract with his production company but she resisted.
Original newspaper ad from 1970 & photos of Preminger
on the set directing (or terrorizing?) his cast.
I was first exposed to Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon as a child and as someone with a disability who has always felt like an outsider, I was drawn to the characters in the film and sympathized with their predicament. Despite any sentimental attachments, I appreciate the way Preminger used diverse cinematic styles to illustrate the characters different personalities during flashback sequences (including horror for Junie Moon, comedy for Warren and surrealism for Author) that weave in and out of the film’s narrative. Preminger also boldly uses comedy much in the way the characters themselves do, to lighten their load. To quote one of my favorite poets, “Always laugh when you can. It’s cheap medicine.” (Lord Byron). Jokes roll off everyone’s tongue effortlessly but they can’t disguise the profound melancholy that courses through the film.
Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon began shooting shortly after Liza’s famous mother, Judy Garland, had passed away suddenly at the young age of 47. The event must have been on everyone’s mind during filming and all the characters seem to reflect this. Forced to bury their pain, Junie, Warren and Arthur are all mourning what they’ve lost but they can’t let go of the past because they’re being defined by their scars.
In the late sixties and early seventies, Hollywood was flooded with films about eccentrics living outside the bounds of ‘normal’ society. In large part, these films were rebelling against Hollywood standards that had prevailed for decades. Harold and Maude (1971), Bless the Beasts and Children (1971) and Butterflies Are Free (1972) are some similar examples that address the general unrest of the period while linking the drama to individuals or outcasts trying to find their place in a world that didn’t want much to do with them. The counterculture element of Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon is undeniable and hammered home by Preminger’s decision to bookend it with folk singer Pete Seeger wandering through the majestic California redwoods singing “Old Devil Time.” In this regard, it’s a more sincere and powerful protest against the establishment than Skidoo (1968), Preminger’s previous attempt to address the shifting political and social climate.
You can purchase Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon directly from the Olive Films website along with other late-period Preminger films that the boutique label has released including Hurry Sundown (1967), Skidoo (1968) and Such Good Friends (1971). It’s also available in the TCM Shop.