Mazursky’s most famous film
Paul Mazursky, the colorful, quintessentially New York writer-director, who had helmed several significant and popular movies, including “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice” and “An Unmarried Woman,” has died at 84.
Mazursky died of cardiac arrest Monday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
While his most relevant films as a director came in the 1970s, he returned to acting on TV in later years, playing Norm on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and appearing on “The Sopranos” and on ABC drama “Once and Again” as Sela Ward’s father.
Zeitgeist Director
Mazursky captured the spirit of the late 1960s and 1970s, when the American moral climate was turned on its head. His films entertainingly and humanistically explored such weighty issues as marital fidelity, the merits of psychological therapy and modern divorce: “Bob and Ted,” starring Robert Culp and Natalie Wood as a “liberated” married couple.
“Blume in Love,” starring George Segal and Susan Anspach, focused on the nature of romantic commitment;
“Harry and Tonto,” starring Art Carney in his oscar-winning turn, dealt with the modern family and old age.
His most personal film was “Next Stop, Greenwich Village,” in 1976, while his most popular work was the 1978 Oscar-nominated “An Unmarried Woman,” starring Jill Clayburgh and Alan Bates, about divorce in the feminist era. Clayburg became an iconic actress as a result of her bravura performance in this picture.
“No screenwriter has probed so deep under the pampered skin of this fascinating, maligned decade,” wrote critic Richard Corliss of Mazursky at the end of the 1970s.
As the Reagan years set in, however, Mazursky’s output was not as consistent. He scored with the comedies “Moscow on the Hudson” and “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” and acquitted himself admirably with a dramatic adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Enemies: A Love Story” and — like “Next Stop, Greenwich Village” a strong period piece set in New York. Though he was never nominated for best director, he did cop four screenplay nominations (three of them shared) for “Bob and Ted,” “Harry and Tonto,” “Enemies” and “An Unmarried Woman,” for which he also shared a best picture nomination.
Mazursky’s best films were delightfully ragtag; his interesting, unorthodox characters went against the commercial formula of the times, yet audiences could still identify with them.
Mazursky was also heavily influenced by top European filmmakers like Fellini, not always successfully (his disastrous homage to “8½,” “Alex in Wonderland”), Truffaut (a reworking of “Jules and Jim” entitled “Willie and Phil”) and an hommage to Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes From a Marriage” called “Scenes From a Mall,” with Woody Allen and Bette Midler.
But his instincts in adapting Jean Renoir’s ’30s classic “Boudou Saved From Drowning” as “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” were right on the money, even if it commercialized the French film’s themes. He also did well by Singer with “Enemies: A Love Story,” which was his last completely successful film, and while it was not a commercial hit, it brought Oscar nominations for two of its actresses, Lena Olin and Anjelica Huston.
Over the years, the former actor coaxed wonderful, Oscar-caliber performances out of such actors as Carney, who was named best actor in 1975 for “Harry and Tonto”; Jill Clayburgh, who was nominated for “An Unmarried Woman”; and Dyan Cannon and Elliot Gould, who were both cited for their work in his satirical comedy “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.”
He was born Irwin Mazursky in Brooklyn and was already working as an actor while attending Brooklyn College. In his early years in New York he studied with Lee Strasberg and had a modest but thriving career in early television and New York theater — and less so in films. He appeared in Stanley Kubrick’s first film, “Fear and Desire,” as well as in Richard Brooks’ 1955 drama “The Blackboard Jungle.”
But in order to get by, he had to wait tables and teach drama for several years. Besides working in stock, he appeared Off Broadway with Dody Goodman in the revue “Shoestring ’57” and also directed a failed sketch play, “Kaleidoscope,” as well as a production of Jean Giraudoux’s “The Madwoman of Chaillot.”
By the late ’50s he was trying his hand at standup comedy: He and Herb Hartig billed themselves as Igor and H. After moving to Los Angeles, he studied film and performed with UCLA’s repertory company while making infrequent TV appearances.
With another comedy partner, Larry Tucker, he transferred the magic of Second City to the West Coast, which landed them a highly paid writing job on “The Danny Kaye Show” in 1963 and scored them other TV assignments, most significantly, helping to write the pilot for the popular series “The Monkees.” As an actor he appeared in a low-budget film version of Jean Genet’s “Deathwatch.”
After several aborted attempts at breaking into movies, he and Tucker scored with the swinging 1967 L.A. comedy “I Love You, Alice B. Toklas,” starring Peter Sellers, but Mazursky was not allowed to direct — the job went to Hy Averback instead.
Mazursky made his directorial debut with the short “Last Year in Malibu,” a spoof of Alain Resnais’ New Wave art film “Last Year at Marienbad.” His feature first was the sexual revolution comedy “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice,” which proved to be a big hit. It led to “Alex in Wonderland,” about a director who has made a hit film and can’t decide what to do next; the answer should not have been “Alex in Wonderland.” Devastated by the film’s hostile reception, Mazursky headed for Europe. When he returned, he severed his partnership with Tucker and began work on “Harry and Tonto.”
But in between he made “Blume in Love,” a sweet romantic piece that put Mazursky back in the winner’s column and allowed him to get “Harry and Tonto” made. And a good thing, too, since it brought Art Carney the Oscar for best actor. The undervalued “Next Stop, Greenwich Village,” a charming autobiographical tale, arrived in 1976, and his next film, “An Unmarried Woman,” proved to be his biggest hit ever and was nominated for best picture of 1978 (though Mazursky did not get a directing nomination).
However, neither “Willie and Phil” in 1980 nor his contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” in 1982 won audiences over. It wasn’t until 1984’s “Moscow on the Hudson,” starring Robin Williams, and 1986’s “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” with Nick Nolte, that Mazursky’s comedic efforts scored with auds.
In between he had done some acting in films including “A Star Is Born,” “The History of the World: Part I” and “Into the Night.”
The comedy “Moon Over Parador,” starring Richard Dreyfuss, proved to be a weak effort in 1988, but Mazursky redeemed himself with “Enemies, A Love Story,” a bittersweet comedy from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s tale of three Holocaust survivors trying to pick up their lives in post-war New York. It was by far his most delicately balanced film and brought him a shared Oscar nomination as screenwriter.
Thereafter, his directorial efforts such as “Scenes From a Mall,” the almost-unreleasable “The Pickle” and Cher’s comeback that wasn’t, “Faithful,” did not restore his former luster.
He more luck in his later years as an actor scoring supporting roles in such films such as “Punchline,” “Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills,” “Carlito’s Way,” “Love Affair,” “Two Days in the Valley,” “Touch,” “Miami Rhapsody” and TV’s “Weapons of Mass Distraction.”
Mazursky directed the 1998 HBO biopic “Winchell,” starring Stanley Tucci as the power-mad gossip columnist, and the 2003 Showtime telepic “Coast to Coast,” a road movie starring Richard Dreyfuss and Judy Davis. His last helming effort was the 2006 documentary “Yippee: A Journey to Jewish Joy,” which documented the annual three-day pilgrimage of Hasidic Jews to a leader’s gravesite in the Ukraine.
“Yippee” made its New York premiere in May 2007 as part of a Film Society of Lincoln Center retrospective.
On the bigscreen in the 2000s, Mazursky voiced characters in animated pics “Antz” and “Kung Fu Panda 2,” played studio executives in “The Majestic” and “Big Shot’s Funeral” and appeared in Jeff Garlin’s “I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With.”
One of his last public appearances came in February when he accepted the Writers Guild’s lifetime achievement awards at the guild’s awards ceremony. In 2010, Mazursky received a career achievement award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.
Mazursky’s elder daughter Meg, who had a substantial role in “Alex in Wonderland,” died in 2009.
He is survived by his wife Betsy, who had bits parts in several of his films, and daughter Jill, a writer-producer who also appeared in several Mazursky films.
