Tribute today to Goldie Hawn (b. 1945). That is actually her real name!
A lot of people make the erroneous assumption (at least I did) that Hawn was just a go-go dancer who was hired to be on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in and became a comedy star and actor as a sort of fluke. In reality she was a go-go dancer who was hired for Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in who was also a trained, professional ballerina since age 10, and a professional actress at least since 1961 when she played Juliet in a Virginia Shakespeare Company production of Romeo and Juliet. A Washington DC native, she later majored in drama at American University, from which she dropped out in order to teach dance and perform professionally. Then, she was cast as a dumb blonde in the sit-com 1967 Good Morning World with Ronnie Schell, and THIS is what got her cast on Laugh-In a year later.
Hawn’s first few movies were adaptations of of popular Broadway stage hits: Cactus Flower (1969) with Walter Matthau, There’s a Girl in My Soup (1970) with Peter Sellers, and Butterflies Are Free (1971) with Eddie Albert Jr. The success of Sugarland Express (1974) helped put director Stephen Spielberg on track to make Jaws. Hal Ashby’s Shampoo (1975) was her second team-up with Warren Beatty, following the satire $ (1971). Then she was teamed with George Segal in The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox (1976); Chevy Chase in Foul Play (1978) and Seems Like Old Times (1980); and Burt Reynolds in Best Friends (1982). Meanwhile, she’d starred in her best and most successful solo outing, the military comedy Private Benjamin (1980). She followed up that movie’s fish-out-of-water formula in Herbert Ross’s Protocol (1984) and Michael Ritchie’s Wildcats (1986)
Having previously been married to dancer/actor Gus Trikonis and Bill Hudson of The Hudson Brothers, in 1983 Hawn became the romantic partner (and occasional screen partner) of Kurt Russell. The pair co-starred in Jonathan Demme’s Swing Shift (1984) and Garry Marshall’s Overboard (1987). In 1990 she teamed with Mel Gibson in the action-comedy Bird on a Wire. With Steve Martin she appeared in Frank Oz’s Housesitter (1992) and the 1999 remake of Neil Simon’s The Out of Towners (her second Simon script after Seems Like Old Times). She held her own opposite Meryl Streep in Robert Zemeckis’s Death Becomes Her (1992) and Bette Midler and and Diane Keaton in The First Wives Club (1996). That same year she was in the all-star ensemble of Woody Allen’s Everyone Says I Love You.
Town and Country (2001) reunited Hawn with Beatty and Keaton, but was one of Hollywood history’s biggest financial flops, grossing only 10% of its over $100 million budget. Beatty retired after this film, and Hawn made but one more, The Banger Sisters (2002) with Susan Sarandon. This film fared tolerably well, but (like most of her films) inspired lukewarm reviews. By this point her daughter Kate Hudson was also a movie star, and Hawn herself was approaching 60, so she retired. Although she later returned for Snatched (2017), which teamed her with Amy Schumer, and The Christmas Chronicles (2018 and 2020), in which she played Mrs. Claus to Russell’s Santa.
Now: perhaps it is obnoxious of me (and I certainly don’t condone the perpetuation of stereotypes) but I vastly prefer her Laugh-In character to anything (and I mean ANYTHING) she’s ever done in movies. Early Goldie was big and silly and funny and made a forceful impression — she really stole the show when she was around. Her more subdued “real” film persona leaves virtually no impression on me. Even in light comedy, I find her at best likable, but for the most part bland and forgettable. Give me Goldie Classic!
(P.S., November 2023: Good news spacy Goldie classic returned recently, when she claimed that was visited by aliens who touched her face!)
To find out more about the variety arts past and present, including tv variety, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
(Travalanche) 