Friday, April 28, 2000

Say hello to youthful Dreyfuss in 'Goodbye Girl'

Richard Dreyfuss' tense, measured performance as a president a few weeks ago in the live TV drama "Fail Safe" showed that he's still an actor to be reckoned with. But, man, did he look old or what?
   Some of us still think of him as he was in "The Goodbye Girl," the bouncy 1977 Neil Simon comedy (available on video) that won Dreyfuss an unexpected Best Actor Oscar. It's the movie that cast him as a most surprising romantic lead, a guy built like a fireplug, with a high, whiny voice and jerky mannerisms.
   Just two years after holding his own onscreen with a mechanical shark in "Jaws," Dreyfuss stole "Goodbye Girl" out from under co-star Marsha Mason (in the title role), playing a down-and-out New York actor forced to share an apartment with Mason and her little girl (Oscar-nominated Quinn Cummings, who disappeared from show biz afterward).
   Determined to resist the actor's quirky charms because she's sure she'll get dumped for the umpteenth time, Mason's character, a former Broadway dancer, lets her precocious kid develop a crush on him instead. Cue the cute scenes over breakfast cereal.
   But Dreyfuss proves to be too charming for Mason to ignore. He's an odd bird, meditating in the mornings and strumming guitar "el buff-o," as he puts it, at night. Demanding too, as demonstrated in a hilarious speech in which Dreyfuss dashes around the apartment criticizing Mason's housekeeping, including her habit of letting her lacy underthings dry on the shower rod. (The way he tosses the lingerie has a rhythm that's pure Neil Simon, like Oscar Madison flinging Felix Unger's linguini against the wall.)
   The guy's also a sweetie, babysitting with the young 'un and chipping in for new living room furniture.
   Then there's the sympathy factor, always a potent aphrodisiac. After rehearsing for weeks to play the lead in "Richard III," Dreyfuss the desperate actor has a disastrous opening night with universally bad reviews.
   Perky little Marsha comes to the rescue, assuring him that he will survive and that his career-making role is right around the corner. They celebrate in cinematic style, waltzing in a rainstorm on the rooftop.
   Later he'll call her from a corner phone booth, in the rain again, more than a decade before John Cusack does something similar in "Say Anything" and two decades before Matt Damon in "Good Will Hunting." (Hollywood loves a rainy phone booth scene.)
   With its tight, terrific script by Neil Simon and graceful directing by Herbert Ross (who also did "The Turning Point" that year), "The Goodbye Girl" is twice as romantic as "Sleepless in Seattle" and several degrees funnier than "When Harry Met Sally."
   Dreyfuss was never again cast in such a lovable role. The same year he did "Goodbye Girl" he also starred as the ET-obsessed Indiana dad in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" - then waited nearly 10 years for another hit with "Down and Out in Beverly Hills."
   How big a shock was it for the actor to pick up his Oscar in '77? When his name was called, the odds-on favorite, Richard Burton (nominated for "Equus"), was half out of his seat before everyone realized Dreyfuss was the winner.
  
  
  

 
Index of Elaine's columns | Arts & Entertainment | Restaurant Reviews | Best Bets: Today - The Week | Columns | Home Page

---

  © 2000 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.