SHIRLEY MACLAINE
SHIRLEY MACLAINE as Aururo Greenway in TERMSOF ENDEARMENT. (1983)
My childhood friends have been asking me when I’m going to write about Shirley MacLaine or Debra Winger in TERMS. Now that I’m older I probably would choose two different signature roles for both these actors. The movie just doesn’t hold up for me anymore. But, at the time, in 1983, and I had a very mature level of film-making and an adult taste, in terms of achievement, in acting and in quality films. I would have movies parties and friends would have movies parties and I would make all my seventh and eigth grade friends watch TERMS OF ENDEARMENT before watching anything else. At that point I had never seen anything like it – a movie that resembles life and the characters in my life. The people in this film were like the characters my world. The women in this movie were like the woman who raised me. It was my signature movie as a young teen. I was all about TERMS OF ENDEARMENT and I guess I have to honor that time. So now that I’m traveling back – I wanna talk about Shirley MacLaine. Even though the film oozes emotionality and a big score and result oriented moments without any real build up I still think the performances are incredible. Absolutely incredible, especially Shirley MacLaine. Shirley had always been an old school talent and played very well her APARTMENT and TURNING POINT leading lady roles. But I could feel the acting underneath. I could see the lines on the page. With TERMS OF ENDEARMENT she commits to the character on deeper level and becomes Aurora Greenway. The little looks off the tip of her nose, her breathe, the sounds she made, the eye roll, the squints... She just feels this woman like no one character before. It hits you in the middle of the chest – right in your heart. She’s my Aunt Linda. The leader of the family. She can’t help it.
When families get together to remember their times together, the conversation has a way of moving easily from tragedy to comedy.
You’ll mention a story from the past, one of those stories your cousin tells at the beginning of every Thanksgiving and it’s funny but laughter turns into anger and resentment by pumpkin pie. It’s layered in your own perspective and hurt but the smile on top remains, then you get home and say, “Never again, that’s our last Thanksgiving with those people”. But next Holiday you return like a faithful masochist. Or at a funeral of a loved one, possibly a loved one you have mixed emotions about and you get ‘the church giggles’ and can’t stop laughing. Life always has a way of turning up unhappy endings, but with family you can have a lot of fun along the way, and makes this life bearable. It doesn’t always have to be dripping in deep emotional pain and significance. The great thing about TERMS OF ENDEARMENT is that it finds the real balance between the happy moments in life and then the sad. The truth and the ridiculous, the unbearable with the acceptance and the love that remains to the troops: the family.
The movie begins with anxious, ferocious Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) clambering up over the side of her baby's crib and hurling herself on the tot, hysterically convinced that she has only seconds to administer the kiss of life to her darling Emma and save her from crib death. Naturally, all she does is disturb a healthy infant's sleep. From this scene it is obvious that TERMS OF ENDEARMENT is a a different kind of comedy.
As Brooks sees them, his movie's mother and daughter are actually sisters under the skin, connected not just by kinship but by subtle parallels of emotions and experience. Aurora appears initially to be no more than that familiar figure of satire, the American Mom as American Nightmare, all coy snarls and fierce demureness, while Emma, protected only by a thin skin of perkiness, seems to be her victim. "You aren't special enough to overcome a bad marriage," Aurora snaps on the eve of Emma's wedding, voicing her own fears about what might happen if she ventured outside her perfectly tended Texas house and garden. "I am totally convinced that if you marry Flap Morton tomorrow you will ruin your life and make wretched your destiny," she adds. As always with Brooks, locution is character.
A lesser movie would have had trouble moving between the extremes that are visited by this film, TERMS understands its characters and loves them, we never have a moment's doubt: What happens next is supposed to happen. Because life's like that.
The film feels as much like life as any movie I can think of. At the same time, it's a triumph of show business, with its high comic style, its flair for bittersweet melodrama and its star turns for the actors. Maybe the best thing about this movie is the way it combines those two different kinds of film-making. This is a movie with bold emotional scenes and big laughs, and at the same time it's so firmly in control of its tone that we believe we are seeing real people.
The movie's about two remarkable women and their relationships with each other and with the men in their lives.
Shirley MacLaine is Aurora, a widow who lives in Houston and hasn't dated a man since her husband died. Maybe she's redirected her sexual desires into the backyard, where her garden has grown so large and elaborate that she either will have to find a man pretty quickly or move to a house with a bigger yard. Her daughter, played by Debra Winger, Emma is one of those people who seems to have been blessed with a sense of life and joy. She marries a guy named Flap who teaches English in a series of Midwestern colleges; she rears three kids and puts up with Flap, who has an eye for coeds.
Back in Houston, her mother finally goes out on a date with the swinging bachelor – Jack Nicholson, mellow and ultra cool as ever, who has lived next door for years. He's a hard-drinking, girl-chasing former astronaut with a grin that hints of unspeakable lusts. MacLaine, a lady who surrounds herself with frills and flowers, is appalled by this animalistic man and then touched by him. There are a couple of other bittersweet relationships in the film. Both mother and daughter have timid, mild-mannered male admirers: MacLaine is followed everywhere by Vernon, who asks only to be allowed to gaze upon her, and Winger has a tender, little affair with a banker. The years pass. Children grow up into adolescence, Flap gets a job as head of the department in Nebraska, the astronaut turns out to have genuine human possibilities of becoming quasi-civilized, and mother and daughter grow into a warmer and deeper relationship. All of this is told in a series of perfectly written, acted and directed scenes that flow as effortlessly as a perfect day, and then something happens that is totally unexpected, and changes everything.
Could these two find it in themselves to reverse this role reversal one more time and arrive at a balanced acceptance of each other? Emma's illness provides the occasion for that final adjustment. Inevitably her growing weakness draws the young woman back toward childish dependency, and the need to defend her daughter against suffering summons forth Aurora's old ferocity. Whether she is questioning empty medical practices or keeping poor Flap shaped up ("One of the nicest qualities about you is that you always recognized your weaknesses; don't lose that quality when you need it most") or bullying the nurse into administering a delayed sedative, MacLaine achieves a kind of cracked greatness, climax to a brave, bravura performance. Her entire body gives way to the anguish of her daughters situation and despair. The scene in at the airport when she’s tired and tells Bredlove she loves him and makes that big circle back to get his answer. It’s just so full of tragedy and comedy – love and pain and bare bones rawness that you give way to the obvious emotional turns of the film-maker. She’s so ‘in it’ and full and emotional that by the time Debra looks at her mom for the last time – you are in that connection whether you want to be or not. You are outside of your body, flowing somewhere in-between that loving connection of mother and daughter. I used this movie as a barometer of whether or not my friends had a heart or not – And they all did. The movie parties always ended in tears and I was a very happy seventh grader.
Aurora Greenway is a character that become part of America’s family after everything is finished. Augora, like my Aunt Linda is someone we all want in our lives and someone that anchors the love – even though it comes out in a loud bark, belly laugh, jab or critique. Well done Shirly MacLaine and great OSCAR speech. My brother just realized that Warren Beatty is her little brother. Yes bro, they’re related.
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