Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
The pretty-boy teen movie idol of the late '70s was uncool, ultra-girly and as sexless as a Ken doll. It's about time he was given more respect.
Nov 12, 2002 | Cultural offerings from the '70s and early '80s that used to seem like schlock, when juxtaposed to the current, even schlockier schlock, don't seem so schlocky anymore. I recently heard "Borderline," the first Madonna hit, on the radio when I was in a video store, and it made me involuntarily dance. It didn't when it came out -- there were far funkier songs going around, and Madonna's music, though infectiously hooky, seemed sort of wannabe-funky and contrived. Now, in the wake of Diane Warren's genocidal takeover of the radio waves and the horrifying success of Poppin' Fresh thongsters like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, the old Madonna/Jellybean Benitez cuts sound newly organic and ingenious.
There are similar resurrections when one re-investigates the world of pop film from the '70s and '80s. John Hughes films that seemed sanitized at the time now look pretty edgy. And Robby Benson, critical whipping boy of the disco era, looks like a respectable actor, at least when compared with the some of the feckless young Hollywood jag-offs of today.
If a young man is a certain kind of teen idol, like David Cassidy, and teenage girls demand soft-focus posters of him oiled and shirtless with feathered hair, nobody will ever take his work seriously -- there is a third dimension, image-wise, that such personae aren't allowed in terms of public perception.
David Cassidy, looking back with new eyes, was actually a very talented teen idol -- and Robby Benson, the David Cassidy of dramatic acting, actually had compelling charm and a wide emotional spectrum, but he got trapped in a sugary pubescent simp rut that kneecapped any respect he might have gotten.
Robin David Segal, aka Robby Benson, was too pretty to be taken seriously, but he was unusual -- more "ethnic" than the average teen idol, also a bit more complex. He is always described as doe-eyed, but his eyes are more eerily religious, like backlit blue marbles. If Benson had been allowed (or had allowed himself) to develop a little more coolness and/or masculine, sexual alertness, his teary-eyed vulnerability would have had more legs. But since his supersensitivity was coupled with a cloying, chaste manner, he was written off as a dickless square. It didn't help that the roles in which he was cast were so unctuously sentimental.
Male critics hated him with a nearly irrational fervor, and the sharper female critics didn't have much use for him either -- grown-ups were put off by the flocculent way Robby carried himself. Compared to other leading young men of the time (e.g., the strutting peacock magnificence of John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever"), Benson moved on tippytoes, like he was carrying a dying baby bunny in a potholder. Benson represented a soft, sexless flavor that called for a taste nobody but grade-school girls and men who were light in the loafers wanted to acquire.
Thumb critic Gene Siskel wrote in 1986 about the uncomfortable experience of running into Robby Benson during a film festival, setting it up by describing Benson as "one actor to whom I have regularly given the most negative reviews in my 17 years as film critic":
"Benson's manner and voice make me squirm as soon as I see him on-screen. He always seems to be saying with every performance, 'Please like me; I'm so helpless.' This is not appropriate behavior for a 30-year-old actor ... "
Siskel was not alone. Most critics of that era were giddy with a fashionable hatred of Robby Benson -- it was a mark of taste and sophistication. It may have been nearly impossible for Benson to get an unbiased review in such an atmosphere.
I first heard of Robby Benson as a very small child when "Ode to Billy Joe" came out in 1976 -- a film based on the Bobbie Gentry song. Robby was 20 at the time, but could have easily passed for 14.
Robby is Billy Joe MacAllister, who jumps off the Tallahatchie Bridge. "Don't seem like no good ever came to nobody on this bridge," one of the characters offers in what is some of the least realistic-sounding dialogue ever to besmirch a screenplay.
Benson is very young, skinny, gawky and oily -- a boy in the fullest wonk of adolescence. But even with screamingly bad lines and a face that looks as if it's covered with margarine, Benson has a disproportionately large amount of sincerity and charisma for a teenage boy, and he projects a likable dignity even when flailing and squeaking through the worst pubescent discomforts.
Glynnis O'Connor, in the role of Bobbie Lee, Billy Joe's love interest, has the worst job in the film, having to conjure a big ol' wad of conviction delivering teenage "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" runoff like this memorable gem:
"I'm a brain, but ah'm a body, too, James, with desires, and somebody better pay attention to that. Mah blood is racin', and mah ample breasts are burstin.'"
Wow, and she ain't but 15. Tennessee Williams, if he hadn't already drunk himself to death, surely had reason to with this kind of tribute.
The teenagers are bored hicks with hot pants on a sticky Mississippi summer. Benson, who is shirtless through a lot of this movie and covered with sweat drops the size of quarters, brings a nicely infectious enthusiasm to even the most mind-blowingly retarded lines, with his voice full of honking and horny teen musk. He successfully epitomizes being a Good Kid without being a total milquetoast and slanting off into abject gooberdom. No boy actor until River Phoenix revealed more sloppy emotion than Robby, especially during the Big Revealing Scene before the suicide.
He's a weepy-eyed mess when he says "I love you" -- what else could teenage girls want? Not much -- this movie revealed the power to make the young girls cry that was to be Robby's ticket as well as his undoing.
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