...All the Marbles

The point of departure would appear to be Nora's delightful response to the wrestling match in Shadow of the Thin Man.

The girls are beautiful in the Newmar fashion. Aldrich films their tag team matches at a certain remove, as filled with awe in his way as Burt Young stared down by the World Champion, a giantess named Big Mama, sipping her Budweisers. Peter Falk, their manager, keeps a baseball bat handy for dealing with hoods and their cars.

The tag team travels West from match to match through the industrial heartland, allowing Aldrich to record the landscape with a purely expressive eye. Their dusty Cadillac (with a California personalized license plate, "TAG TEAM") saunters along the lakeshore and into Chicago, the inhabitable city. The matches are characterized by enjoyment, until the rock 'em sock 'em Tag Team Championship at the MGM Grand verges on blood sport. It pits our California Dolls vs. the Toledo Tigers, and lasts 29:29 on the arena clock (Chick Hearn concludes it on a note of sublimity). The referee (Richard Jaeckel) is greased, our girls are getting pounded, only the most expert of moves can win the day.

Aldrich checks his field with an overhead shot every so often throughout the film.

...All the Marbles is akin more or less to Slap Shot, Harry and Tonto, Diggstown, Hal Needham's Body Slam, and (finally) John Huston's Victory. The Toledo Tigers enter the Grand wearing stylized cat costumes with long tails they throw to the crowd as souvenirs. After a suspenseful delay, the California Dolls are carried in wearing great silver-winged ensembles on the shoulders of bronzed he-men to the sound of an ad hoc children's chorus singing, "Oh, You Beautiful Doll".

Afterward, at a signal from Falk, the bear flag is unfurled to the tune of "California, Here I Come".

                                                                 © FILM JOURNAL 2002