Reflections on ... A Cold Wind in August (1961)

A Cold Wind in August (1961). Taglines: " If you care about love, you'll talk about a teenage boy and a woman who is all allure, all tenderness... all tragedy.” “Strange and sensual … a teenage boy and a mature woman, each searching for a special kind of love in the most exciting yet tender picture in your “best picture” experience!” Or as Variety put it: “a short course in the seduction, care and feeding of a healthy 17-year-old boy by a nymphomaniacal 28-year-old stripper.” I’m using this period of enforced social isolation to explore the weirder corners of YouTube for long forgotten and obscure movies. (My boyfriend Pal is accompanying me only semi-willingly). This installment: A Cold Wind in August. 

From the 1983 book Crackpot: The Obsessions of John Waters: "The very first cult film I remember, A Cold Wind in August may not have been a cult film anywhere else in the United States, but it played forever in Baltimore. Every time an art house would book a flop, they’d yank it and bring back Cold Wind in much the same way Harold and Maude is used today. Since I saw the film twenty years ago and never again, my memory of it is quite hazy. Lola Albright (in a smashing performance) plays an over-the-hill stripper who seduces a teenage boy – a sort of poor man’s Marlon Brando, played by Scott Marlowe (what a great name). Lola really gets turned on. Natch, he eventually leaves her for girls his own age and poor Lola becomes an anxiety-ridden chicken queen. It’s a very Method actor-type film, but what I remember most are Lola Albright’s gold lamé Spring-o-later high heels, which I copied and stole for Divine to wear in many of my films."

This underrated, genuinely bold and erotic older woman / younger man melodrama is considerably more nuanced and sensitive than Waters’ outline implies and – although modestly-budgeted and independently-made - most definitely not a salacious exploitation film as sometimes described. I’d argue that Cold Wind hails from that interesting fifties and early sixties period when American filmmakers were increasingly mindful that European art cinema depicting sexually frank “adult situations” was cleaning-up at the box office and winning critical kudos and decided to play catch-up. (You could comfortably slot Cold Wind alongside the likes of Baby Doll, Lolita, Kitten with a Whip and Who Killed Teddy Bear?). It also possesses a definite Tennessee Williams vibe. Iris Hartford (Lola Albright) is an outwardly tough and independent exotic dancer and divorcée in her mid-thirties. (Note: in the original source novel Iris was meant to be 28. Albright was 36 when she played her. The character's age is never specified in the film). One torrid summer, the air-conditioning in her New York city apartment conks out. When Iris asks the superintendent to fix it, he sends up his lanky 17-year old son Vito Pellegrino (Scott Marlowe) instead. The instant frisson between them is palpable and – assisted with a dab of cologne between her cleavage and some freshly-applied lipstick – Iris effortlessly seduces Vito, Mrs Robinson-style. (On their second encounter she serves him a Bloody Mary for breakfast – his first!). Their May-December romance thaws Iris’ hard-boiled boozy façade, revealing concealed hints of emotional fragility. (If Cold Wind was a French movie, Iris would totally be played by Jeanne Moreau). Unfortunately, when Vito belatedly learns what Iris does for a living … let’s just say he doesn’t respond well (think combination of immaturity, blue-collar Italian American machismo and a Roman Catholic Madonna / whore complex).

Alexander Singer directs with real verve (he’d go on to helm the ultra-camp 1965 Lana Turner melodrama Love Has Many Faces with a significantly bigger budget; Cold Wind is better). The film is refreshingly judgement-free about the “age inappropriate” relationship and Iris’ cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof moist womanly needs. Gerald Fried’s noir-ish musical score - with its hints of exotica and finger snappin’ cool jazz - is deeply seductive. The images of Vito hanging out with his teenage buddies in their jeans and t-shirts on the stoop of their building evoke photographer Bruce Davidson’s shots of fifties Brooklyn juvenile delinquents or Danny Fitzgerald. Actor Scott Marlowe is frequently singled-out as Cold Wind’s weakest link, possibly because he was 28-years old at the time playing a teenager (he was in fact only eight years younger than Albright). And his performance is twitchy, mumbling and mannered in the then-fashionable Actors’ Studio / Method acting convention, which hasn’t aged well. But to his credit, Marlowe is undeniably cute and his chemistry with Albright convincing. (Off-screen Marlowe was reportedly bisexual and enjoyed flings with Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood).

It’s impossible to describe smoky-voiced actress and singer Lola Albright’s sultry, sensual, bruised-by-life portrayal of Iris without gushing superlatives. Her performance is soulful, brave and gutsy. What a woman, what an actress. Why wasn’t Albright a bigger star? (She was also memorable as Tuesday Weld’s mother in the strange Lord Love a Duck (1966)). Iris’ climactic striptease number is sensational. For some reason, she is caped, gloved and hooded like Batgirl! Singer films the sequence with darting, teasing cuts, only showing us isolated fetishistic fragments of her body intercut with shots of the lecherous and perspiring voyeurs in the audience. The in-house burlesque band musicians backing her are tight as fuck – very Las Vegas Grind - and seem to be conducted by Iris’ undulations. Iris also wears a killer wardrobe offstage, too: in addition to the Spring-o-later heels that Waters fondly recalls, she also has a penchant for form-fitting cigarette pants. At one point, Iris sports a sensational pair of Jayne Mansfield-worthy gold lamé cigarette pants – which may well have inspired the gold lame outfit worn by Divine in Mondo Trasho (1969)!

Watch A Cold Wind in August here:

Further reading:

I swiped some of these screen grabs from here.

In August 2018 I spoke my brains to To Do List magazine about the wild, wild world of Lobotomy Room, the monthly cinema club – and my lonely one-man mission to return a bit of raunch, sleaze and “adult situations” to London’s nightlife! Read it - if you must - here. 

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