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      The Great ‘West Side Story’ Debate

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      With the Steven Spielberg film coming soon, three critics, a playwright and a theater historian weigh in on whether the musical deserves a new hearing — and how.Since its Broadway premiere in 1957, “West Side Story” — a musical based on “Romeo and Juliet” and created by four white men — has been at once beloved and vexing.The score, featuring such Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim classics as “Somewhere” and “Maria,” is considered one of the best in Broadway history. The cast album was a No. 1 smash. The 1961 movie won best picture and nine other Oscars. The show has been regularly revived, most recently on Broadway last year in a short-lived radical rethinking by the Belgian director Ivo van Hove. And now, this month, a movie remake by none other than Steven Spielberg.And yet, from the beginning, the show (directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, with a book by Arthur Laurents) has discomfited some audience members and critics — for its violence, its mix of tones and, especially, for the way it underscores stereotypes of Puerto Ricans as gang members. Not to mention that the 1961 movie featured the white actress Natalie Wood playing the Latina role of Maria.Why does “West Side Story” continue to have such a large cultural footprint? Should it? Is it possible to be true to such richly emotional material and still be responsive to our moment?The dance-at-the-gym sequence in the new “West Side Story” film.20th Century StudiosWe asked five experts to weigh in: Jesse Green, the chief theater critic at The New York Times; Isabelia Herrera, a Times critic fellow; Carina del Valle Schorske, a contributing writer at the Times Magazine and the author of a 2020 Times Opinion piece challenging the show’s place in the culture; the Tony Award-winning playwright Matthew López (“The Inheritance”); and Misha Berson, the author of “Something’s Coming, Something Good: ‘West Side Story’ and the American Imagination.”They gathered before seeing the new film and just before news broke that Sondheim, the show’s lyricist and the last survivor from its creative team, had died at 91. Scott Heller, the interim editor of Arts & Leisure, kicked off the conversation, and it got going quickly from there.SCOTT HELLER What stays with you about the first time you saw “West Side Story”? Or the most memorable time?JESSE GREEN The first time I saw it was in a high school production featuring extremely clumsy dancing, warbly singing and an all-white (non-Latinx) cast. Memorable, but not in a good way. Luckily, I had already gotten to know it by then — from the music.MATTHEW LÓPEZ My relationship to “West Side Story” is a bit unusual in that my father was in the film as an extra. He’s clearly visible in the opening scene on the playground, just after the prologue. When I was perhaps 7, my parents showed it to me, and it was incredibly exciting to see my father at 14 years old. And it was the first time I’d ever seen any kind of popular entertainment with Puerto Rican characters. It was not until later that my relationship to the show changed. I saw the revival in 2009 (my first time seeing it onstage), and I was shocked at how thinly the Puerto Rican characters were drawn.MISHA BERSON I’m probably the one person here who saw the original — actually a Broadway tour that came through Detroit when I was 9 years old. I went with my dance class, and though it was something of a blur and I didn’t understand it much, I was captivated by the dancing, the music, the energy and excitement of the show. I became obsessed with it, but as an adult didn’t see another vibrant, fully realized production until the 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle did an excellent revival in 2007.ISABELIA HERRERA Unfortunately, my memories are wrapped up in a microaggression that has stayed with me since high school. My family is Dominican, from the city of Santiago de los Caballeros, and I am likely one of the only kids of Dominican descent who attended my high school. I remember when, in English class, a white classmate reprimanded me for not having seen “West Side Story” at the time, saying, “But aren’t you Puerto Rican?!”A scene from “West Side Story” on Broadway, starring Chita Rivera, foreground, as Anita.John Springer Collection/Corbis, via Getty ImagesCARINA DEL VALLE SCHORSKE Ugh, Isabelia, that’s such a familiar story! In a messed-up way, your classmate’s confusion makes sense, because the musical itself might just as well be about Dominicans — it’s that general. I first saw “West Side Story” on a VHS tape my mom and I rented from the public library when I was maybe 9 or 10. I grew up in California, away from my Puerto Rican family in Washington Heights, so I thought I might find something out about my culture that I didn’t know before. But nothing onscreen — beyond the latticework of fire escapes — reminded me of the people or neighborhood I knew from frequent visits to New York. I finished the movie feeling even more confused than I was before about what being Puerto Rican was supposed to mean — to me, and to the “average” American.“I finished the movie feeling even more confused than I was before about what being Puerto Rican was supposed to mean — to me, and to the ‘average’ American.”GREEN I’ve never seen musicals as documentaries. They often rely on stereotypes to make larger points than they could if they focused on specific, actual characteristics. Without the stereotypes, you probably couldn’t have ensembles. The question is whether the stereotypes are vile, destructive. As a white, non-Latinx person, I’m not the right person to judge that. But I would just say that the Jets are stereotyped, too, and, in the source material, so are the Veronese.BERSON Do you trust that everyone knows the source material is Shakespeare’s R&J? I wish I did!DEL VALLE SCHORSKE “The Jets are stereotyped, too,” but white teens are not harmed by such stereotypes because there have always been such a wealth of representations to choose from. And at the time of the musical’s debut, there wasn’t a general suspicion in the air that any white teen might be a gangster, so “West Side Story” wasn’t, for them, reinforcing an expectation of criminality that was already violently shaping the politics of the period.GREEN Would you say the Puerto Rican characters are less well characterized than the white ones: the Poles, Italians and others? My sense is that most characters in most musicals are poorly characterized in terms of their ethnic or racial or other identity because that’s not what those shows are really about. Don’t get me started on gay and Jewish stereotypes in musicals, which I guess I’m especially aware of as a gay Jew.BERSON The creators of the show, though they were all white men, were not simply oblivious to what actual Puerto Ricans were like in New York at the time. For instance, Jerome Robbins visited Puerto Rican youth dances and social gatherings, and tried to incorporate some of the popular dance movements he saw in his choreography. He also tried to recruit as many Latinx performers as possible, which was difficult because there were so few opportunities for them to get the Broadway experience and training the show demanded. Also, Bernstein had always loved and admired Latin music and tried to meld some of the rhythms into his score.“The creators of the show, though they were all white men, were not simply oblivious to what actual Puerto Ricans were like in New York at the time.”DEL VALLE SCHORSKE That’s interesting, about Robbins. I’m quite familiar with a broad range of Latin rhythms, and I don’t hear or see the influence — unless you’re counting the Spanish paso doble on the rooftop. I do love some of the choreography, especially the anxious, tightly coiled “Cool,” performed by the Jets. It’s good to know that someone was at least trying to do their homework after Sondheim confessed he’d “never even met a Puerto Rican.” In this conversation, I really hope we can move beyond the false binary: “documentary” versus “work of imagination.” Does a work of imagination really have to be so “superficial and sentimental,” which is how the Black Puerto Rican journalist Jesús Colón described West Side Story when it debuted?GREEN In musical theater, that isn’t a false binary. Some shows operate at a granular level, risking larger insignificance, and others work more broadly, risking stereotype. “West Side Story,” as Misha can tell us more definitively, was an idea looking for an ethnicity. And it does seem to me that in landing on Puerto Ricans vs. whites (instead of Jews vs. Catholics as originally imagined), it was taking advantage of a news hook of the time without any deep engagement in Puerto Rican-ness. I guess the question is whether it’s possible for a work to rise above that when it is primarily looking at the eternal paradigm of outsiders and insiders, and the tragedy of love that tries to cross those boundaries.Richard Beymer as Tony and Natalie Wood as Maria in the 1961 film, which won 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture.MGMBERSON That is “Romeo and Juliet,” Jesse, which one could say (as you indicated) had little to do with the actual Verona (which Shakespeare never visited) but still is a potent portrayal of love in the crossfire of hate. I also want to add that though characters in musicals tend not to be deeply complex and contoured, Bernardo and Anita are not portrayed simply as bad kids spoiling for a fight. They are more sympathetic than that, as leaders and lovers, at least to my understanding — in some ways more so than Jets members.And a moment of historical context may be helpful here: At the time of the show’s creation, there was national alarm about the growing “threat” of youth violence during the postwar malaise, and that was true of Black, Irish and other groups of kids. And there was also, among these liberal artists, a real concern about racial/ethnic prejudice and the rising backlash against immigrants of color. These things are still meaningful, and one of the reasons I think young people especially are still very much drawn to the material despite its flaws.DEL VALLE SCHORSKE I would be more sympathetic to the possibility of “West Side Story” rising above that fault if its creators, or re-creators, were not taking advantage of Puerto Ricans as the “news hook” for liberal street cred. If it’s supposed to be some universal and culturally interchangeable narrative, then it doesn’t get to count as a serious exploration of Puerto Rican or so-called Latinx life.GREEN I agree that “West Side Story” is not a serious exploration of those things. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a serious exploration of something else. I say this even though I don’t actually think it’s the greatest musical ever written; it has plenty of aesthetic flaws beyond the political ones we’re discussing. My love for it comes mostly from the way the songs tell the story — though I know that too is a point of contention. For me, Sondheim’s lyrics get at the twitchy excitement (and anger) of youth like nothing else in musical theater ever has — as do Bernstein’s polyrhythms and percussion, whatever their actual sonic origin.HELLER Matthew, I’m going to circle back to you, as a theater artist whose response to the material has changed over time. Among other things, you wrote a play about the play and its impact on a Puerto Rican family. Tell us about it — and was it informed by your new insights into where the original fell short?LÓPEZ The movie did spark my nascent creative brain as a piece of drama — the music, the dancing — and as cinema. Seeing the revival, though, I realized how much the Puerto Rican characters — and thereby the performers playing them — were not invited to the party, so to speak. A meal had been laid out and half the cast seemed left to go hungry. My family loved “West Side Story,” but as I thought about it, I realized their love for the show wasn’t reciprocated by it.All of this led me to begin writing “Somewhere,” which is set in the neighborhood that was ultimately destroyed to build Lincoln Center. A Puerto Rican family of dancers and performers who dream of being cast in “West Side Story” (or anything Jerome Robbins created) but who, by the realities of their situation, are only left dreaming. I think in some ways, I was attempting to tell the offstage story that you don’t see.DEL VALLE SCHORSKE Matthew, it seems like “Somewhere” shows us how to engage with a “canonical” work without reproducing its limitations. I’m interested in the way Puerto Rican artists have creatively navigated the musical’s constraints, but I’m also hungry for … anything else! In her memoir, Rita Moreno wrote about how difficult it was to find substantial roles after “West Side Story”: I’m kind of depressed by the fact that she’s still defined by the show in 2021. I mean, Moreno performed in plays by Lorraine Hansberry, she spent decades in psychoanalysis — doesn’t she deserve to grow?LÓPEZ I do have to cop to a bifurcated mind on this. There’s a part of me that really loves “West Side Story” and a part of me that really hates that I love “West Side Story.” I think Lin-Manuel Miranda once called it “a blessing and a curse,” which is a sentiment I understand.BERSON It makes total sense to have a conflicted opinion of the show, especially if it speaks to you so personally. It’s not equivalent, but as a Jewish woman, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” drives me up the wall! Meanwhile, I can readily imagine Latinx performers might both love and resent “West Side Story” — love the way it has given many employment and its exhilarating use of dancer-actor-singers, but resent it for all the reasons you, Carina and others have stated. Popular culture is often a double-edged sword that way.GREEN New work from new artists is the lifeblood of the theater. Yet engaging with the old ones, which were new once, can also be pleasurable and valuable — unless they have become the equivalent of Confederate statues that need to come down. Is “West Side Story” a Confederate statue? I don’t think so.“Is ‘West Side Story’ a Confederate statue? I don’t think so.”BERSON If we are now designating imperfect musicals as Confederate statues, I think that’s scary. “West Side Story” gets produced a lot because it can accommodate a teenage cast (there have been thousands of high school productions) and because it is a kind of cultural touchstone that still excites people. Confederate statues glorify bigotry and apartheid. There’s a difference.DEL VALLE SCHORSKE Audiences are taught what should resonate with them — nothing becomes a “cultural touchstone” by accident — and the more a certain narrative gets repeated, the more sentimental associations it accrues. “West Side Story” might not be a Confederate monument, but it is a monument to the authority of white Americans to dominate the conversation about who Puerto Ricans are. And each revival renews that authority and co-signs the narrative for a new generation.GREEN All art is political, yes, and deserves to be judged as such. But art is not just political, and deserves to be judged on other grounds, too. If there is no pleasure to be had in “West Side Story” then it cannot possibly overcome the problems we’re discussing. But if it does offer pleasure, then we, as individuals, are free to weigh it against those problems. The balance will be different for different people, not necessarily corresponding with identity.The most recent Broadway revival, directed by Ivo van Hove, featured video projections. It was critically divisive and had a short run, in part because of the pandemic.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHELLER Matthew, you and I had some provocative back-and-forths about critical responses to “The Inheritance” and its depictions of the gay community, and you were good enough to write a piece for us, in which you made this point: “No one piece of writing about our complex, sprawling community will ever tell the entire story, and I believe that is a good thing: It creates an unquenchable thirst for more and more narratives.” Does that hold for “West Side Story” as well?LÓPEZ I don’t think it’s an apt comparison. “The Inheritance” is a gay play written by a gay man whereas “West Side Story” is purported to be about Puerto Ricans and was written by white men. And while there are heterosexual characters in “The Inheritance,” they aren’t serving the same dramatic function in my play that the Puerto Rican characters do in “West Side Story.” And I used the word “function” purposefully, for that is what they feel in the story. I’d love to see a “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”-style rethinking one day.DEL VALLE SCHORSKE I agree that any future engagement with “West Side Story” that actually deepens the material would have to abandon all loyalty to the show as written, the way “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” completely reimagines “Hamlet.” It’s an independent work of art that deconstructs the canonical play. I doubt the creators of “West Side Story” gave a single thought to “new narratives” that might emerge from their musical, let alone new Puerto Rican narratives. And it doesn’t seem like the power brokers of Broadway or Hollywood are really thirsting for them, otherwise the same material wouldn’t get recycled over and over.HELLER So we are getting to the Spielberg movie.HERRERA I’m also skeptical of how much the thirst for new narratives comes from a genuine place, rather than a response to an industry that is clearly grappling with questions of racism and struggling to navigate critiques about representation. Honestly, I think there is something sinister about capitalizing on the nostalgia of a Hollywood artifact, casting an all-Latinx Sharks cast, while still using the liberal language of “inclusion” and “diversity” as armor against critique. The fact that “West Side Story” is being remade with these issues in mind doesn’t necessarily absolve it of its original missteps.BERSON So is there no place for “West Side Story,” even with the best of intentions? Does that mean there’s no place for “Othello” or “Merchant of Venice,” which are problematic but still dramatically vital works? Can we still see the show, or not see it, and have fruitful debate about it?DEL VALLE SCHORSKE I’m not advocating the wholesale erasure of “West Side Story.” I’m saying, let’s stop pouring literally hundreds of millions of dollars into propping up its relevance, and let’s stop minimizing its flaws.HERRERA Misha, I think we can certainly still have a fruitful debate about it! When discussions around colorism mushroomed online surrounding the film adaptation of “In the Heights,” I mentioned in our roundtable that criticism emerges from a place of love — a desire to make art, life and politics better. I don’t see these critiques as mutually exclusive.BERSON That is very well said. And just my awareness of the politics of librettist Arthur Laurents and composer Leonard Bernstein especially — who were both blacklisted in the ’50s for their civil rights and other activism — makes me think they would probably share some of these concerns and find them meaningful. But the show has intrinsic artistic power, and I think will survive. It is encouraging to me that someone with the skill and sensitivity of Tony Kushner is the screenwriter/adapter. I hope it’s great, and I hope it’s the last!HELLER Do others hope the remake is great?HERRERA I don’t know if there is such a thing as a great remake, but I’m certainly hoping this version releases its grip on stereotypes, offers its more underdeveloped characters a bit of autonomy and perhaps provides more texture about the actual life and experiences of Puerto Rican migration at the time. And please, give us at least a few songs with actual Afro-Caribbean rhythms! A plena take on “I Feel Pretty”?GREEN Authenticity isn’t the goal; if “Hamilton” were authentic, it would be mostly minuets. I want the new movie of “West Side Story” to succeed if it’s good, if it manages to move people. But if only white people are moved, it will be a failure.LÓPEZ I’m excited to see what Spielberg, Kushner and [the choreographer Justin] Peck do with the material for a 21st-century audience. It’s a perfect opportunity to honor what’s glorious about the show, and address what is flawed.DEL VALLE SCHORSKE I want it to flop so we can move on. More

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      Mel Brooks Keeps It Very Light in ‘All About Me!’

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      Mel Brooks has been responsible for so much in the American comedic canon, for so long, it sometimes seems he is, if not 2,000 years old like one of his most indelible characters, maybe 200. He’s actually 95. A baby! (Another one of his indelible characters, from “Free to Be…You and Me.”)Your favorite Brooks work might be “The Producers,” which — in a feat of dizzying creative refraction and exponential profit — he made first as a movie about a musical in 1967, then as a musical based on that movie in 2001, and then as another movie based on the musical in 2005. Or you may prefer “Blazing Saddles,” a Western spoof; or “Young Frankenstein,” a horror spoof; or the self-explanatory “Silent Movie,” in which the only character to speak was Marcel Marceau, the famous mime. Personally I most adore “High Anxiety,” an Alfred Hitchcock spoof; and reading Brooks’s new memoir, the product of an extrovert who must have found lockdown torturous, only amplified that affection.When invited to a lunch of roast beef with Yorkshire pudding by Hitchcock, one of his idols, to discuss the film project, Brooks replied, “Yes, sir, I’ll be there with bells on.” Then he showed up with some jangling around his ankles — the kind of broad comic gesture that by then, in midcareer, was his calling card in both art and life. Given the Master of Suspense’s blessing, Brooks went on to re-enact the shower scene from “Psycho,” with newsprint pouring rather presciently down the drain in lieu of blood; and broke character as a nervous psychiatrist to sing his movie’s title song in the manner of Frank Sinatra. But it was his exaggerated enactment of that shrink’s fear of heights, à la Scottie Ferguson in “Vertigo,” that feels most resonant and telling.Brooks himself reads as the opposite of acrophobic: scaling the icy pinnacles of Hollywood without anything more than a pang of self-doubt, using humor as his alpenstock. Fear of heights is closely related to fear of falling; falling (not failing) was a measure of achievement for Brooks and his cohort. Before it was an acronym, they embodied ROFL, forever collapsing to the ground in mirth.The youngest of Kate Kaminsky’s four sons, Melvin grew up poor in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. He was coddled and adored, especially after his father died of tuberculosis. “I was always in the air, hurled up and kissed and thrown in the air again,” he writes. “Until I was 5, I don’t remember my feet touching the ground.” Despite the “brush stroke of depression” that resulted from losing a parent, he appears to glide right over life’s inevitable vicissitudes. When something goes wrong, he wonders “what to do, what to do?” — and then solves the problem. If it goes really wrong? “I’ll spare you the details.”Mel BrooksBrooks started as a drummer, and percussiveness, driving toward the “rim shot,” would become another comedic signature. Enlisted in the Army during World War II, he grabbed a cuff of Bob Hope’s trousers to get an autograph and parodied Cole Porter in a Special Services show at Fort Dix. (“When we begin to clean the latrine….”) After discharge he started writing for Sid Caesar’s variety shows, where the brotherly atmosphere of his youth was reenacted with staff that included Neil “Doc” Simon and Woody Allen. The troubled, intense Caesar once dangled Brooks outside a hotel window in Chicago. “I was very calm,” Brooks writes.In his epic “History of the World, Part I” (Hulu just ordered Part II), he plays Torquemada, a fearsome leader of the Spanish Inquisition, darting down a spiral stone staircase — like “Vertigo” in reverse — and bursting into a song-and-dance number with full chorus. Later in the sketch, nuns strip to bathing suits, synchronize-swim with the devout Jews they’re trying to convert and then rise up — Happy Hanukkah! — balancing on the prongs of a giant menorah, sparklers on their heads. If Porter, another idol, wrote “you’re the top / you’re the Colosseum,” Brooks went over the top and smashed the pillars.Hitler is the villain the author most daringly appropriated, from the work-within-a-work of “The Producers” to the disguise in “To Be or Not to Be,” a remake of the Ernst Lubitsch film, in which Brooks starred with his second wife, Anne Bancroft. This still offends some people. “Blazing Saddles” does, too. Brooks, who gave the now-controversial comedian Dave Chappelle an early break, casting him in “Robin Hood: Men in Tights,” does not concern himself in these pages with changing norms in the industry that has rewarded him so handsomely. Perhaps named for “All About Eve” but less of a bumpy night than a joy ride, “All About Me!” takes humor as an absolute value, something that “brings religious persecutors, dictators and tyrants to their knees faster than any other weapon,” something that can win over a classy lady like Bancroft. Its 460 pages rattle along like an extended one-liner.Humor can also, of course, be a defensive scrim for difficult emotions. Brooks doesn’t name his first wife, Florence Baum, though their marriage lasted nine years and produced three children; he and Bancroft, who died in 2005, had a fourth. He would prefer to kvell over the talents of his frequent collaborators Madeline Kahn, Gene Wilder and Carl Reiner, than linger on, or even mention, their departures from this crazy world. As the old song goes, he accentuates the positive. “Laughter is a protest scream against death, against the long goodbye,” he writes. And there’s probably already a prank planned for his own inevitable ascent to heaven. More

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      Uzo Aduba Adjusts Her Mood With Playlists and ‘The Real Housewives’

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      The actress talks about sports, her latest film and return to the stage, and why a clean, white pair of Converse All Stars is the shoe for almost any occasion.Before she was scooping up Emmys for “Orange Is the New Black” and “Mrs. America,” Uzo Aduba was winning medals as a star sprinter at Boston University. So when the script arrived for “National Champions,” about a battle between the National Collegiate Athletic Association and student football players demanding fair compensation for their talents, Aduba was fast onboard.“I am myself an N.C.A.A. collegiate athlete and recipient of a scholarship and have known, sadly, many people who have been a part of the system and have benefited positively, of course, from the academic element — and who have also had longtime needs they’ve not been able to meet,” she said. “So I understood the complexity of the issue and the conversation.”In “National Champions,” Aduba plays Katherine, a fixer hired to use whatever means necessary to get LeMarcus James (Stephan James) — a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback who incites a players’ strike three days before the national championship — back in the game.But just as nobody is the villain in her own story, Aduba prefers to think of Katherine as a survivor tasked with a thankless job. The same could be said of her title role in the Broadway production of “Clyde’s,” about the ex-con proprietor of a truck-stop diner where all the cooks have done time.Some may call Clyde the devil, but “I think she is really a reflection of every obstacle and aggression that our society holds for women like her,” she said. “She is a direct reflection of the world.”Calling from her dressing room between performances, Aduba discussed her cultural necessities, like getting into character with a playlist, winding down to “The Real Housewives” and curling up in a cozy robe, no matter where she is. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “The Real Housewives” I watch all of them, let me start there. Asking me, “Do I have a favorite?” feels like asking me, quite frankly, if I have a favorite child. They all have different tasks, different stories, different energies. It honestly feels like Grecian-level drama, just so over the top. So big, their troubles. All the emotions are huge. They just announced they’re going to do a “Real Housewives of Dubai,” and, sight unseen, I’m in.2. Sunglasses I love the personality of them, and what you’re choosing both to see and let be seen. I have some that are totally a reflector or super dark and nobody can see my eyes, but I can see out. I have some that are super faint, and we both can see each other. I have some that are really fun with a design on the frame. They’re a subtle way of showing personality. But if I’m out and about, and somebody wants to stop and talk, I usually wind up putting them up on my head so that we can meet eye-to-eye — so that we’re talking to each other, not just like you’re talking to me.3. Live theater I feel like whether you’re onstage or in the audience, you are a part of the show. I think the audience is a huge character in the production who has their own role as well, whether we know it or not. The actors and the designers and everybody, especially when we’re in previews, are informing story based on the audience’s role. That’s that final critical piece. Here in “Clyde’s,” when we were in rehearsal, obviously we could hear the play. But we can’t really know the play until that final actor-character comes into the space. And that’s the part of the audience.4. The New York Times Basic Pesto recipe This was not a New York Times plug. [Laughs] I legit have the screenshot on my phone, and it is a legit household favorite. The only thing that I add to it is a meat because it doesn’t call for any meat in your recipe. So I’ll either add grilled chicken that I’ll cook on the stovetop or a grilled turkey sausage or a vegan sausage. Take your recipe and add meat.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Arlene Dahl, Movie Star Turned Entrepreneur, Is Dead at 96

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      She had already started branching out when her film career was at its height, writing a syndicated column and launching a fashion and cosmetics business.Arlene Dahl, who parlayed success as a movie actress in the 1940s and ’50s into an even more successful career as an author, beauty expert, astrologist, and fashion and cosmetics entrepreneur, died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 96.The death was confirmed by her husband, Marc Rosen.Strikingly beautiful, Ms. Dahl was a model before becoming an actress — “considered one of the world’s loveliest gals,” The Daily News of New York wrote in a profile in 1959, using the parlance of the day.With her fiery red hair, she was a natural for Technicolor; she notably played the seductive sister of another famous redhead, Rhonda Fleming, in the 1956 crime drama “Slightly Scarlet.” But though she demonstrated her range in everything from westerns, like “The Outriders” (1950), to the Red Skelton comedies “A Southern Yankee” (1948) and “Watch the Birdie” (1950), critics tended to focus on her looks more than her acting.“Arlene Dahl is displayed to wondrous advantage,” declared one review of the 1953 adventure “Diamond Queen.”The industry did the same.“Arlene Dahl was another classic case — like Jane Greer and Evelyn Keyes — of a smart, fiercely funny woman being pigeonholed by her beauty,” Eddie Muller, who organizes an annual film noir festival in San Francisco, said in an interview in 2009, when Ms. Dahl was the event’s guest of honor. “It was hard for her to break out of the ‘redheaded bombshell’ mold.“The great thing about Arlene,” he continued, “is that she didn’t let it bother her. She moved easily into other businesses and always seemed to be enjoying herself.”Ms. Dahl in the 1956 crime drama movie “Slightly Scarlet.” With her fiery red hair, she was a natural for Technicolor.RKO, via PhotofestMs. Dahl had already started branching out when her film career was at its height.In 1951, she began writing a beauty column, titled “Let’s Be Beautiful,” for the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate, which she would continue for 20 years. She had personally been recruited by Robert R. McCormick, the publisher of The Tribune, who, she said, “had an idea that if a girl like me would tell women how to be beautiful, they’d believe it.”She soon founded a cosmetics and lingerie company, Arlene Dahl Enterprises, and would later write a syndicated astrology column as well as numerous books on both astrology and beauty.These ventures kept her in the public eye long after she had left Hollywood and settled on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And though acting was no longer her focus after the early 1960s, she was seen into the 1990s on television shows like “The Love Boat,” “Fantasy Island” and “Renegade.” She also appeared on Broadway in 1972, when she took over the lead role in “Applause,” the hit musical based on the 1950 movie “All About Eve.”Ms. Dahl wrote numerous books on astrology and beauty, including this one, which combined them.Arlene Carol Dahl was born on Aug. 11, 1925, in Minneapolis. Her father, Rudolph Dahl, was a car dealer. Her mother, Idelle (Swan) Dahl, died when Arlene was a teenager. With her father’s blessing, she then moved to Chicago, where she modeled for the Marshall Field’s department store, before relocating again, this time to New York City, where she continued to work as a model while pursuing acting.In 1945, she landed a small part in a short-lived Broadway musical, “Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston.” The next year, while appearing in Philadelphia in “Questionable Ladies,” a play that would close before making it to Broadway, she was spotted by the movie mogul Jack Warner, who invited her to Hollywood for a screen test. Ms. Dahl began her movie career with Warner Bros., but soon moved to MGM, the leading studio of the day, where she first attracted notice with supporting roles in movies like “The Bride Goes Wild” (1948) and “Scene of the Crime” (1949). She became a regular presence in the Hollywood gossip columns as well; after dating, among many other men, the young John F. Kennedy, she had two well-publicized marriages to fellow actors.She and Lex Barker, who played Tarzan in the late 1940s and early ’50s — and who, she told People magazine, was the “most handsome man I’d ever seen” — divorced in 1952 after a year and a half of marriage. Two years later, she married the Argentine actor Fernando Lamas.That marriage was tempestuous. The two had many public spats and several reconciliations meant to preserve the union — for the sake, Ms. Dahl said at the time, of their son, Lorenzo Lamas, who would go on to have a successful acting career of his own — but they ended in failure.Ms. Dahl with her son, the actor Lorenzo Lamas, and his wife, Shauna Sand, in 1997. Albert Ortega/Getty ImagesMs. Dahl and Mr. Lamas divorced in 1960. She would marry four more times. She married Mr. Rosen, a perfume bottle designer, in 1984. In addition to him, she is survived by Lorenzo Lamas; a daughter, Carole Delouvrier, from her third marriage, to Chris Holmes; another son, Stephen Schaum, from her fifth marriage, to Rounsville Schaum; nine grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.Many of Ms. Dahl’s ideas about beauty seem quaint at best today, but they were the key to her initial success as a writer. “Women are fast losing femininity, their proudest possession,” she said in a 1963 interview, “and I think it is important to tell them what men think so they will not lose what is most desired.”She had comparable success later when she started writing about astrology.While she was passionate about the subject — one interviewer wrote that she wanted to know his sign before she would agree to sit down with him — Ms. Dahl stopped short of claiming that astrology could predict the future.“I liken astrology to a weatherman who forecasts the weather,” she said in a 2001 CNN interview. “If the weatherman says it’s going to rain tomorrow, you get up in the morning and you look out, and you see that it’s cloudy and it’s likely to rain, so you take an umbrella if you don’t want to get wet. Well, it’s the same thing with astrology.”Alex Traub contributed reporting. More

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      What’s on TV This Week: Willy Wonka and a ‘West Side Story’ Special

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      “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” airs on AMC. And ABC hosts a special on “West Side Story.”Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Nov. 29-Dec. 5. Details and times are subject to change.MondayWILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971) 7 p.m. on AMC. When the reclusive, illusive candy man Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) opens the doors to his chocolate factory, a young, impoverished boy, Charlie (Peter Ostrum), joins four spoiled children for a wild, mysterious ride. Consider this your golden ticket, granting you entry into the world of magical chocolate-coated trinkets and confections of unusual design, where teacups you can sip from and take a bite out of grow from the ground, and where nothing is as it seems — not even the wallpaper.TuesdayCary Grant and Deborah Kerr in “An Affair to Remember.”Fox Home VideoAN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (1957) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. While en route to reunite with their respective partners, Nickie Ferrannte (Cary Grant) and Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) meet, fall passionately in love and devise a plot to rendezvous at the top of the Empire State Building in six months. Will this be time enough to sort out all their current affairs and stay in love? Or will their story of love, like so many others, also be one of heartbreak? (One might notice the parallels between this sentimental classic and the 1993 film “Sleepless in Seattle,” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.)Wednesday89TH ANNUAL CHRISTMAS IN ROCKEFELLER CENTER 8 p.m. on NBC. Join the festivities celebrating the annual lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. This year’s tree is a 79-foot-tall, 46-foot-wide Norway spruce from Elkton, Md., that weighs nearly 12 tons. It will be speckled with over 50,000 lights and topped with a Swarovski star. The NBC anchors Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Al Roker and Craig Melvin will host, with performances by the Radio City Rockettes, Alessia Cara, Norah Jones, Brad Paisley, Rob Thomas, Carrie Underwood and more.ThursdayANNIE LIVE! 8 p.m. on NBC. Taraji P. Henson plays the domineering orphanage matron Miss Hannigan in this live production of the beloved, Tony-winning musical “Annie!” The story follows a spunky little orphan, Annie (Celina Smith), who is determined to find her family. She is taken under the wing of a billionaire, Oliver Warbucks (Harry Connick Jr.), and charms her way around New York City — until her quest to find her parents is interrupted by a wicked plan. In this live production, Tituss Burgess plays Miss Hannigan’s weasel of a brother, Rooster.Jim Carrey in “The Mask.”New Line CinemaTHE MASK (1994) 8 p.m. Syfy. Stuck in a daily routine of humdrum, menial tasks, a bank clerk, Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey), is at his wit’s end. Then a mysterious mask appears, giving him the ability to transform into a zany, devil-may-care alter ego. His world spins out of control. Stanley hopes to win over a nightclub performer, Tina Carlyle (Cameron Diaz). But as he falls deeper into the mask’s allure, he risks forgetting who he really is.FridayMICHAEL JACKSON’S THIS IS IT (2009) 4 p.m. on Showtime. Created from over a hundred hours of footage, this documentary follows Michael Jackson from April 2009 until his death in June of that year, as he rehearsed for a string of shows which had sold out the O2 arena in London. B-roll footage of behind-the-scenes moments and recordings of dress rehearsals capture creativity and determination during the final months of the superstar’s life, though the documentary, released months after Jackson’s death, steers clear of the descriptions of abuse that have become central to his legacy. In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis called the film “weird and watchable, by turns frustrating and entertaining, and predictably a little morbid.”KINGDOMS OF THE SKY: HIMALAYA 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Set aside an hour to trek across the highest mountain range on earth. Yes, it only takes an hour — if you’re watching from home, that is. Follow along as this episode of “Kingdoms of the Sky” brings the wildlife and the people of the Himalayan mountain range into view.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘Encanto’ Reaches No. 1, but Moviegoers Are Tough to Lure Back

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      No simultaneous streaming: “Encanto” or “House of Gucci” could only be seen in theaters this weekend. Even still, some viewers stayed home.Hollywood has stopped running from the pandemic: For the first time since March 2020, movie theaters had a wide array of new films for exclusive screening over the holiday weekend. And studios did not hedge their bets by offering simultaneous streaming options. To see the gloriously reviewed “Encanto,” the campy crime drama “House of Gucci” or the latest installment in the “Resident Evil” science-fiction action franchise, you had to leave the sofa, just like in the old days.But some moviegoers are proving very difficult to lure back.“Encanto,” an original Disney animated musical about a gifted family in Colombia, took in $40.3 million at 3,980 theaters in North America between Wednesday and Sunday. That total, which was enough for No. 1, equated to about 3.7 million patrons, or about 35 percent of the available seats, according to Steve Buck, the chief strategy officer for EntTelligence, a research firm. Ticket buyers gave the film an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls.In wide release outside the United States, with the notable exceptions of China and Australia, “Encanto” collected an additional $29.3 million. “It may take some time for people to discover ‘Encanto’ through word of mouth and reviews,” Disney said in a results email on Sunday, referring to audiences overseas, where the weekend was not a holiday. News of the Omicron variant may have dented European turnout, box office analysts said.Disney had hoped that the family audience was finally ready to return to theaters on a vast scale for “Encanto.” DisneyDisney, which spent roughly $175 million to make “Encanto,” not including tens of millions in marketing costs, had hoped that the family audience was finally ready to return to theaters on a vast scale. Children as young as five became eligible for coronavirus vaccinations in the United States on Nov. 2. For the first time this year, Disney did not send reporters a prerelease advisory about poor market conditions.“This is a fair opening by pandemic standards, and a weak opening by Disney historical standards,” David A. Gross, who runs the film consultancy Franchise Entertainment Research, said in an email on Sunday.“Encanto” features songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose music helped Disney’s animated “Moana” sell $82.1 million in tickets during the five-day Thanksgiving period in 2016. In part because studios have routed animated films away from theaters and toward streaming services — Pixar’s “Luca” played exclusively on Disney+ in the United States over the summer — the genre accounts for one of the bigger pieces of the box office that has been lost during the pandemic. In 2019, animated wide releases collected $4.6 billion worldwide. Mr. Gross estimated that animation will finish this year with about $1.65 billion in ticket sales, a decline of about 64 percent.Lady Gaga in the crime thriller “House of Gucci.”Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures/United ArtistsDomestic ticket sales for “Encanto” nonetheless set a pandemic-era record for an animated film. That glory is somewhat hollow, given that every other major animated film since March 2020 has been released simultaneously in theaters and on streaming services. (They have included “The Boss Baby: Family Business” from Universal and “Paw Patrol: The Movie” from Paramount.) “Encanto” is scheduled to arrive on Disney+ on Dec. 24.The ultimate performance of “Encanto,” both in theaters and on Disney+, is likely to inform Disney’s release plans for animated films well into the coming year. “Most of the franchises that we’ve had at the Walt Disney Company have been built through the theatrical exhibition channel of distribution,” Bob Chapek, Disney’s chief executive, told analysts on an earnings-related conference call on Nov. 10. “At the same time, we’re watching very, very carefully different types of movies to see how the different components of the demographics of that market come back.”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      When Is a Horror Movie Not a Horror Movie?

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      When “The Humans” and other new dramas use jump scares and other genre staples, it’s a fair question to ask.A few days before Halloween, the @NetflixFilm Twitter account put out a call: “What movie isn’t technically a horror movie but feels like a horror movie to you?” Included was a photo of a freaky-eyed Gene Wilder in “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.”Twitter being Twitter, some of the responses were flip, like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Cats.” But there were also heavy hitters like “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Parasite.” Children’s films, including “Pinocchio” and “Bambi,” made the cut. It just goes to show, horror is what scares you, not me.Horror has always been an elastic and regenerative genre. It lifts from and melds with just about every type of cinema: comedy, sci-fi, action, romance, fantasy, documentary. Its flexibility extends as far back as the monstrous love story in “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935) and as current as the blood-drenched melodrama of “Malignant.”But how do you know if you’re watching a horror movie when there’s no killer or monster, exorcism or blood? It’s a decades-old question that’s being asked about new films that blur the line between a movie with horror and a horror movie.Among them are “The Humans,” Stephen Karam’s darkly comic family drama set during a Thanksgiving dinner; “The Lost Daughter,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s forthcoming eerie character study of a college professor at a Greek resort who becomes obsessed with a fellow vacationer and her daughter; and perhaps unexpectedly, “Spencer,” Pablo Larraín’s speculative, dream-logic psychodrama about Princess Diana.The film follows an unsettled Princess of Wales (Kristen Stewart) as she spends a Christmas holiday on the precipice of a madness that may not be real. In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott called it a Christmas movie, psychological thriller, romance and “a horror movie about a fragile woman held captive in a spooky mansion, tormented by sadistic monsters and their treacherous minions.”Read reviews and these films sound like Shudder originals. In the Times, the critic Jeannette Catsoulis used the words “monstrous,” “despairing,” “eerie,” “sinister” to describe “The Humans,” concluding that the family was stuck in a haunted house. IndieWire said the drama “blurs the line between Chekhov and Polanski — Broadway and Blumhouse,” and is “the first real horror movie about 9/11.” (Two of the family members were at ground zero that morning.) The Guardian said “The Lost Daughter” tells the story of a woman who “haunts the resort like a ghost while other ghosts are haunting her.”For some directors, positioning the word “horror” anywhere near a film they don’t consider a horror movie would be erroneous or provocation. Not Karam. He was riveted by horror movies as a child in Scranton, Pa.; his gateway drug was the Disney ghost story “The Watcher in the Woods” (1980), with Bette Davis as the owner of an English mansion who’s mourning her missing daughter.Now 42, Karam remains a devout horror fan, citing Kubrick and Polanski as inspirations for “The Humans,” which he directed and adapted for the screen from his 2016 Tony-winning play. Karam takes pride in the film’s horror elements because they help viewers visualize “how people are conquering or coping with their fears in a story that’s scary.”“It’s important for me to think of a film or a play or any story I’m telling as having a strong, confident personality,” Karam said in a video interview. “I don’t get bogged down by whether it’s a horror film or family drama because the definitions can upset people who take ownership of what a horror film is.”“The Humans” takes place in a seen-better-days duplex newly occupied by Brigid (Beanie Feldstein) and her boyfriend, Richard (Steven Yeun). Visiting from Scranton are Brigid’s working-class parents, Erik and Deirdre (Richard Jenkins and Jayne Houdyshell); and Momo, Erik’s mother (June Squibb), who has dementia. Also joining is Brigid’s sister, Aimee (Amy Schumer), who lives in Philadelphia and is fresh off a breakup with her girlfriend.At the family table there’s turkey and good-natured ribbing, but also difficult conversations about work, love and depression. This is a family filled with love, but also resentment and heartache. Typical Thanksgiving drama stuff.But from the start, there’s an uneasy feeling, as if something terrible is on its way. Parts of the walls ooze and bubble with pustules like growths on a David Cronenberg mutant. There are eerie portraits of spooky people, like the art from a possessed castle in a Hammer Film. Jump scares, loud sounds, darkness, stillness: They’re all heart-pounding. Horror movie stuff.So what is a horror movie? It comes down to intent, said Wickham Clayton, a film scholar and the editor of “Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film.” Horror movies, he said, are about audiences “being uncomfortable, unsettled and disturbed.”Sometimes all it takes is a terrifying antagonist or mood, not an entire movie. Think of Robert Mitchum as a scoundrel preacher in the nightmare fairy tale “The Night of the Hunter” (1955); Faye Dunaway as a toxic Joan Crawford in the darkly camp “Mommie Dearest” (1981); or Robert De Niro as the time-bomb Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver” (1976).Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      Wakefield Poole, Pioneer in Gay Pornography, Dies at 85

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      He gave up a dance career to create a crossover, and now classic, hit film in 1971 that had both gay and straight audiences, and celebrities, lining up to see it.One New York night in the early 1970s, a dancer and budding filmmaker named Wakefield Poole went to see a gay porn flick called “Highway Hustler” at a run-down theater in Times Square with his friends. As he settled into a tattered seat, he prepared to spend the next 45 minutes or so enjoyably aroused.But as the film rolled, he experienced nothing of the kind. He thought that the movie was sleazy, that its sex scenes were unnecessarily degrading. He started laughing out loud, and one of his companions fell asleep.“I said to my friend, ‘This is the worst, ugliest movie I’ve ever seen!’” Mr. Poole, who died on Oct. 27 at 85, recalled in 2002. “Somebody ought to be able to do something better.”The Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village had occurred two years earlier, and Mr. Poole, like countless gay men of his generation, was empowered in its aftermath. What he had witnessed onscreen that night didn’t resemble the sexual liberation he was experiencing as a proud gay man in New York.Thus, armed with a 16-millimeter Bolex camera, Mr. Poole decided to do something about it. He headed to Fire Island Pines, the secluded summer Eden for gay men just off Long Island, and there began filming experimental movies with his friends, capturing them making love on beaches and in shady groves.And he did so with an auteur’s touch, as if he were some horny version of D.A. Pennebaker, striving to portray artful realism in the male intimacy he was documenting.The adult film star Casey Donovan in a scene from “Boys in the Sand,” which was shot in the beach community of Fire Island Pines, off Long Island.Wakefield PooleMr. Poole soon made a feature-length, surrealistic movie called “Boys in the Sand” (the title a spoof on “The Boys in the Band,” the groundbreaking 1968 play and 1970 film adaptation about gay men in New York), and its release in 1971 proved revelatory. He was hailed as a pioneer of gay porn, and the film became a crossover hit that changed attitudes about pornography among both the gay and straight audiences that lined up to see it.The movie, with the adult film star Casey Donovan, was composed of three steamy vignettes: First, Mr. Donovan materializes from the ocean Venus-like to ravage a young man lying on the sand; then, at a beach house, he tosses a dissolving magic pill into a swimming pool, causing a hunk to emerge from the water; lastly, he pleasures himself while admiring a telephone line repairman working outside his window.When “Boys in the Sand” opened at the now gone 55th Street Playhouse in Manhattan, it became the talk of the town. The sex it portrayed between Adonic men frolicking in the Pines came across to viewers as blissful and guilt-free. Soon, celebrities like Liza Minnelli, Rudolf Nureyev and Halston were also lining up to see it.“I wanted a film,” Mr. Poole said at the time, “that gay people could look at and say, ‘I don’t mind being gay — it’s beautiful to see those people do what they’re doing.’”In a memoir, “Dirty Poole,” published in 2000, he related how, during the film’s release, its producer sneakily bought an ad for the film in The New York Times, leading Mr. Poole to speculate that the paper’s advertising department may not have looked at it too closely. Variety reviewed the movie, a rare instance of critical coverage of hard-core gay pornography by a mainstream publication (though it took a dim view of the movie). Even the film’s marquee billing challenged precedent: It displayed Mr. Poole’s real name.Mr. Poole in the early 1970s. He said of “Boys in the Sand,” “I wanted a film that gay people could look at and say, ‘I don’t mind being gay — it’s beautiful to see those people do what they’re doing.’”via Jim TushiskiWhile “Boys in the Sand” marked Mr. Poole’s official debut as a filmmaker (he had made some experimental short films earlier), his first passion was dance: He had led an impressive career performing in the New York-based company Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo and helping with the choreography of Broadway shows involving the likes of Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim and Noël Coward.“There weren’t a lot of people who were out,” Mr. Poole told South Florida Gay News in 2014. “Just seeing my name above the title on a theater made its impact. Hundreds of people saw ‘Boys in the Sand’ and came out after seeing the film.”The year after “Boys” appeared, the landmark film “Deep Throat” was released, commencing a golden age of American pornography. “Wakefield was determined to elevate the gay porn genre,” Michael Musto, the longtime Village Voice writer, said in a phone interview. “This was a time when you had to leave your home to see pornography. It was a communal experience by necessity, and you had to be seen in your seat. He removed the shame of it.”Mr. Poole’s next hit, “Bijou,” followed a construction worker who stumbles on an invitation to a private club, where he joins a psychedelic bathhouse-style orgy. Then came “Wakefield Poole’s Bible!,” a creatively ambitious soft-porn movie that reimagined tales from the Old Testament, but it flopped.Frustrated with its failure, Mr. Poole started afresh in San Francisco, which had become an epicenter of the gay rights movement, although his troubles only worsened there: He broke up with his longtime partner, and he became addicted to freebasing cocaine.He soon directed a documentary-like film, “Take One,” in which he interviewed men about their carnal fantasies and had them act them out on camera, in one notorious moment engaging two brothers.Mr. Poole eventually moved back to New York, holing himself up in a cold-water flat in Chelsea to break his cocaine addiction. Trying for a comeback, he released “Boys in the Sand II” in 1984, but it didn’t make a splash.The AIDS crisis had begun, and the carefree gay paradise depicted in his original movie suddenly felt a world away.“The reason I stopped making films was the AIDS situation,” Mr. Poole told an interviewer. “I lost my fan base to AIDS. I saw them all die. It’s a miracle I’m not dead. Cocaine saved my life. I did so much coke, I couldn’t have sex.”Mr. Poole in an undated photo. “The reason I stopped making films was the AIDS situation,” he said. “I lost my fan base to AIDS. I saw them all die.”via Jim TushinskiWalter Wakefield Poole III was born on Feb. 24, 1936, in Salisbury, N.C. His father was a police officer and later a car salesman. His mother, Hazel (Melton) Poole, was a homemaker.Growing up, Walter fell in love with a boyhood friend, and they would crawl through each other’s window to be together. But their romance ended when Walter’s family moved to Florida, settling in Jacksonville. Years later, he said, after his friend had married a woman and started a family, they rekindled their passion one night.Walter caught the dance bug in Jacksonville and started studying ballet seriously. When he was 18, he headed to New York to pursue dance further and joined the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo when he was 21.He turned to moviemaking in the 1960s, captivated by the experimental films of Andy Warhol.As he pulled away from pornography in the mid-1980s, Mr. Poole needed to find a new way to make a paycheck in New York, so he studied at the French Culinary Institute and later landed a job in food services for Calvin Klein.He retired in his 60s and moved back to Jacksonville, where he died in a nursing home, a niece, Terry Waters, said. He left no immediate survivors.As Mr. Poole grew older, enthusiasts of gay history and vintage pornography collectors began revisiting his work. A documentary, “I Always Said Yes: The Many Lives of Wakefield Poole,” directed by Jim Tushinski, came out in 2016. New York art house theaters like Metrograph and Quad Cinema screened “Boys in the Sand.”In 2010, Mr. Poole, then 74, was invited to the Pines for a screening of his classic, although some gay residents there weren’t thrilled about it.A local film festival, responding to their complaints about the X-rated content, had declined to show the movie, so an opposing faction of residents organized their own event. Their group included a man who lived in a summer house that had been used in the film.That night, Mr. Poole was introduced to a packed auditorium as an unsung hero who had helped transform the Pines into an international destination. (“Boys in the Sand” was seen widely overseas.) He took the stage to applause.“What has happened here with the controversy is why I made this film,” he told the crowd. “It’s the ultimate of what I wanted this film to do, and that’s to not only make controversy, but to overcome controversy.”He added: “When I first came to Fire Island, I felt free for the first time in my life. I didn’t feel like a minority and I wanted everybody to suddenly feel that. So I said, ‘I can make a movie that no one will be ashamed to watch.’” More