Archeological dig: Susan Oliver … Susan who?

I didn’t grow up in the U.S., but we did watch a lot of American TV shows in Buenos Aires:  our favorites in the 60s were El hombre del rifle, Randall el justiciero, Bonanza, Los Beverly ricos,  La ley del revolver, Bat Masterson, Annie Oakley, Rin Tin Tin, Father Knows Best, El Zorro, Aventuras en el paraiso, all of them shown in the afternoon.  We were too young to watch the evening series: Los defensores, El fugitivo, Perry Mason, Ben Casey, Dr. Kildaire, Los intocables, La dimension desconocida, Ruta 66, 77 Sunset Strip, La caldera del Diablo.  We only knew their titles in Spanish, and since they were dubbed in Spanish too, we could not practice the English learned in school every morning.  My sisters and I have fond recollections of these shows; we can still hum their catchy tunes: “Tombstone territory …” was a favorite, as was the music imitating galloping horses in .

Bonanza

All this to say that we did not know the names, lives and gossip associated with these American television stars.  So it’s not a surprise that I have no recollection of the name and beautiful features of one interesting lady, Susan Oliver.  Her IMDb credits run several pages –127 entries listing guest roles in these and many other series, from the 1960s to the 80s.   You can quickly sketch a familiar story: one of those young actresses coming from New York to Los Angeles; a contract with Warner Bros; a few roles in features (she’s the cohort of Yvette Mimieux, Angie Dickinson and Eva-Marie Saint), a passage through the directing workshop a the AFI, some TV directing and death of cancer at 58.  The jump into stardom – at the tail end of the studio system in the fifties - never materialized.  One is reminded of her story watching the recent and ultimately heart-breaking Academy-award documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, a beautiful portrait of back-up singers whose solo careers never pan out.

Susan Oliver, the stage name of Charlotte Gercke (1932-1990), is the subject of a fascinating documentary by George A. Pappy Jr., one of my students in the MA in Screenwriting at Cal State Northridge a few years ago.  This is George’s third feature-length film, and his first documentary.  It deserves the best of luck, including a theatrical release and a solid cable life, besides DVD and VOD releases.  It makes you laugh and cry, and ponder the price life exacts on your dreams and aspirations, and how a good or bad choice (its nature becoming obvious in hindsight) can change one’s course. 

A triumph of research, clip choices and editing, the documentary combines two threads, the biographic and the historic, involving thirty years of film and television, from the 50s to the 80s.     Utilizing archival materials, including family photos and memorabilia found on E-Bay, and well chosen talking heads, ranging from family, friends and experts, the director – who also wrote and produced the documentary – structures the story in  Kane narrative around a mystery: who was Susan Oliver? (I asked some friends, very knowledgeable about American popular culture, and they couldn’t quite place her.  They did recall the sexy Green Girl of the title, the character Vina in a two-part episode of the first season of Star Trek (1966-69).  

The audience builds an image of this classy blue-eyed blonde, with a raspy voice, by combining multiple perspectives, all of them with something interesting to comment.   Each case is nicely – and sometimes very cleverly – illustrated by a myriad film and TV clips – from Butterfield 8 (1960) and The Disorderly Orderly (1964) to series everybody my age watched in American television growing up.  

The ‘Rosebud’ of this film is a poignant line from a friend: “She was a square that did not fit into the circle”. The wisely placed emotional climax of the film is the actress’ last phone message, a tacit and elegant farewell to life, acknowledging its joys and sorrows.  (I may not have been the only one wiping off  a tear …)

The Green Girl is also a case study on how to handle a film biography, sifting through massive materials – in this case 80 hours of television series, some better preserved than others – and looking for thematic tie-ins. Even though there is no narrator, the way the film has been edited allows for a clear understanding of Oliver’s life and times, with the best lines from the interviewees pushing the story forward.  Editor Amy Glickman Brown, a graduate from the Tisch School of the Arts, should take all the credit, the director noted in the Q&A after the film, shown in the Royal Laemmle, West Los Angeles, on Saturday March 15.  She handled vast materials, with various sound and visual quality issues, creatively and in a mere ten-week period.  The music is by Lyle Workman, an accomplished musician and a relative of Susan Oliver; it showcases the dramatic essence of the story, that of an actress born ten years too late – she arrives in Hollywood when the studio system is collapsing – or ten years too early – before women started to be more visible behind the camera.

George Pappy, who financed The Green Girl with Kickstarter and Indigogo campaigns, joins the ranks of directors/producers who become their own distributors in the digital age. He plans to attend the market at the Canadian International Documentary Festival next month in Toronto, and is working on a VOD release by the summer. 

In the cyber world, the way to know more about this film is by clicking on the following links:        http://www.thegreengirlmovie.com/

http://www.facebook.com/GreenGirlMovie

Someone in HBO documentaries should be paying attention to a work that could smartly complement their recent showing of Love, Marilyn, a well-known story unconventionally told by Liz Garbus.