Tony Bennett: The Music Never Ends
Produced by Clint Eastwood and Bruce Ricker
Directed by Bruce Ricker
American Masters
PBS
Wednesday, 9/12/07
9-10:30 p.m.
This is a fairly interesting documentary disguised as a bland one about a fairly interesting singer disguised as a bland one.
It is typically hagiographic fare. But that's a particularly apt approach with regard to a singer whose whole career has been a frothy homage to the great American songwriters and the musicians whose repertoire and styles he's borrowed from. In a generous mood, one hears him as a brilliant stylistic blender; in a cynical mood, as the Zelig of crooners, Sinatra Lite. Either way you look at it, he's a survivor, having parlayed a postwar gig with Pearl Bailey into a Grammy-guzzling spree up through the iPod-generation with the status of senior statesman of song.
But the program is trickier than that, and so is Bennett. Editor Joel Cox cleverly cross-cuts between years of Bennett's film, TV, and live performances and the '30s and '40s film musicals that his every fiber reflexively refers to. Bennett's stage essence is the node of a vast network of American showbiz history, so that an over the top finish elicits the aura of Garland, a little impish turn brings to mind Gene Kelly, and a hand gesture telegraphs Astaire suavely flipping a cane. The film clips make that constant production of symbolic echoes explicit.
The program is too flattering by half, of course, but Bennett comes across as such a sweet guy that you can't mind that anymore than you would warm toasts to a founding partner at an office party. So you swallow the tired generalizations about the clannishness of the Italian-American stars like Bennett (born Anthony Benedetto), Sinatra, and Dean Martin. You grin at Anthony Hopkins's pretentious narration on the bel-canto legacy. You cringe that Eastwood can be such a presence in his dramatic films and such a stiff (as he also was in his blues documentary) when serving as hybrid host/interviewer. (Someone give that man some coffee!)
You yawn through the absurd accolades of Bennett's brown-nosing buddies over his visual art, which is very nice but nothing you wouldn't find on the walls of an upscale hotel. (Yes, I know, the Smithsonian shows his work--but do you think they would if he weren't a 50-million-album-selling singer?) You perk up as Times critic Stephen Holden, pianist Bill Charlap, and filmmaker Martin Scorcese talk about the inspirations for and from Bennett's music. And you marvel that the octogenarian Bennett, after sounding a little iffy in the mid-range, finds second and third wind for those high notes.
But it's those durned clips that really grab you and make sense of what Bennett does. He takes a bit of Satchmo hipster-buffoonishness, a trace of Sinatra sympathetic sad sack, a pinch of Crosby aloof amiability, a sprinkle of Bill Evans cool, and a dozen similar elements, and whips them into cream. Much is made of how Sinatra handed Bennett the scepter as king of song. But it's always seemed to me that their relationship was more yin-yang than that. Sinatra, in his surly way, drew you into his world; Bennett happily runs out to meet you in yours. As Alec Baldwin--who imitated Bennett in a fun SNL bit--puts it, Bennett reminds you that showbiz is supposed to be fun. He looks, when he performs, like there's absolutely no where else on earth he'd rather be. That in contrast to Ol' Blue Eyes, who looked more like there were any number of places he could be, he'd be a little melancholy in any of them, and just happened to run into you at this one.
Then there's the living history angle to Bennett, and, better yet, the fact that he was on the correct side of that history. Son of a New York sweatshop dressmaker, he started performing in earnest in Europe in the Army during World War II and the postwar occupation. He was demoted for being too friendly with an African-American soldier buddy.
Back stateside, having been dipped in the theater scene by a hoofer uncle, he got his first gig with Bailey, was scooped up by Bob Hope, and went on to a couple sterling professional decades, whose highlights included a mammoth 1962 show at Carnegie Hall and the recording that same year of his signature "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." He allied himself with the Civil Rights movement through his friendship with Harry Belafonte, complementing Pete Seeger roots music with an urbane rendition of "Just in Time." The same everyman that had dared in the 50s to sing a Hank Williams tune at the Grand Ole Opry in a swank New York suit suggested, through his very presence with the Rev. King, that you didn't have to be a straw-gnawing denim-clad communist to be a white man marching in Selma, just a good guy.
By the late '70s, rock-music competition, cocaine, and overspending had ruined Bennett; but his son Danny became his manager and revived him and his career. Danny, a failed musician with a head for business, did some brilliant marketing jujitsu for his pop, a failed businessman with a head for music. He kept dad doing what he always had, but in front of kids who'd never seen it before and who had a permanent headache from overamped club punk and coliseum rock. From then on, it was smartly concocted theme and duet albums for Bennett. Moral of the story, I guess: Sometimes even a survivor needs a reviver.
A winning guy found his winning formula, and, more remarkable yet in the entertainment industry, managed not to piss off everyone he met along the way. That--apologies to the Bergmans and Michel Legrand--is how you keep the music playing.
-Alexander C. Kafka
Photo © Mark Seliger; courtesy, PBS
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