'I
JUST CAN'T GET AWAY FROM MISS BROOKS'
 That's
what Eve Arden told me in 1977 when I interviewed her for The New
York Times. But, wonderful as she was in the role of the super-cool
teacher on TV and the 1956 film (at right), I remember her most
for her impeccable performances as sassy sidekick to the likes of
Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Ann Sheridan, Jane Wyman, Alexis
Smith and Doris Day. I wonder if those illustrious leading ladies
realized at the time that entire scenes were being swiped from them
by the one of the classiest "supporting" actresses ever
to hit Hollywood. --Guy Flatley
At long
last, Our Miss Brooks has been promoted. Eve Arden, the sublimely
caustic, but never cruel, English teacher on one of the more cheerfully
remembered shows of a bygone television era, will portray a perplexed
high school principal in “Grease,” the movie version
of Broadway’s long-running musical homage to those nearly
other-planetary teenagers of the 1950’s. In keeping with her
elevated station in life, Miss Arden is to be assigned a private
secretary, to be played by the ever-efficient Dody Goodman. Among
her other strictly-adult colleagues will be Sid Caesar as a gung-ho
football coach, Alice Ghostley as a gregarious auto-mechanics instructor,
and Ed “Kookie” Byrnes as a hyper-humble disk-spinner
who may remind some viewers of the immortally modest Dick Clark.
 The
younger set will be represented by John
Travolta, in the starring role of the leader of a quaintly uncouth
gang called The Greasers, and Dinah Manoff, in real life the daughter
of actress Lee Grant. According to Allan Carr and Robert Stigwood
– a producing team of legendary persistence – negotiations
are under way with Olivia Newton John to play the sensitive newcomer
who is thrown to the mercy of the rock-and-rolling wolves. Patricia
Birch will repeat her choreographic chores on “Grease,”
which is expected to slide before the cameras in Hollywood on June
27, under the direction of the 28-year-old Randal Klieser.
 Moviegoers
with memories are pleasantly aware that before Miss Arden was Miss
Brooks, she was the wise-cracking, man-chasing, man-losing confidant
of the star in such films of the 30’s and 40’s as “Stage
Door,” “Having Wonderful Time,” “Ziegfeld
Girl,” “Cover Girl,” "The Doughgirls,"
a World War II comedy in which she played a gun-toting Russian (shown
above) who befriends Jane Wyman, Alexis
Smith and Ann Sheridan), “Voice of the Turtle”
and “Mildred Pierce,” for which she received an Oscar
nomination as best supporting actress of 1945. Still, every time
she hits the road in such suburban-pleasing fluff as “The
Most Marvelous News” – a comedy in which she and her
husband, Brooks West, will soon star in just beyond the fringe of
Chicago – she is fondly greeted on the street as Miss Brooks.
“It’s amazing to me that I just can’t get away
from Miss Brooks,” said Miss Arden the other day, with no
trace of genuine bitterness. “I don’t mind anymore.
After all, I did enjoy playing her very much – there was a
lot of me in that character. I think part of the show’s appeal
was that I managed to make Miss Brooks a human being. I had none
of that frightened awe so many people have of teachers, and the
reason for this was that my aunt used to have a lot of young teachers
as friends. So when I was growing up, I knew teachers on a social
basis and I was fond of them – I even combed their hair.
“At first, though, it did bother me to be so strongly pinned
to one series,” Miss Arden admitted, “because the height
of my ambition was always to create a role on Broadway, something
that was all mine, the way Judy Holliday did in ‘Born Yesterday.’
But, gradually, I came to realize that Miss Brooks was it, so I
might as well relax and enjoy it.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE INTERVIEWS WITH PROMINENT MOVIE PERSONALITIES BY GUY FLATLEY AND DIANE BARONI.
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