The Life of Reilly (2007 - Frank Anderson & Barry Poltermann)
As in Charles Nelson Reilly. Those born after 1980 may have little to no recognition of that name or the tall, over-the-top comedic actor it belongs to, but for a couple of decades in the '60s and '70s Charles was a fixture on American television. Much of it came from over a hundred appearances on Johnny Carson's
"Tonight Show" and the time capsuled Game Show
"Match Game", usually adorned in pastel-colored leisure suits and ascot, sometimes in a yacht cap, oversized square-framed glasses and ubiquitously smoking a pipe. But he was a serious trained actor of the stage, and while his legacy is not full of Oscars and Emmys, he surely made millions laugh over the years.
Life of Reilly is mostly a filmed record of the autobiographical one-man show he traveled with in the late 1990s, "Save it for the Stage", and it's great that it was captured for posterity's sake.
Charles tells of his troubled childhood, his yearning for the theatrical arts, and the building of a career against the odds. As the promotional material for this documentary asks, "If, in 1940, you had a lobotomized aunt, an institutionalized father, a racist mother, and were the only gay kid on the block, what do you think the odds would be that you'd end up a Tony winner, a staple of television, and a generational icon?" And that's the journey he verbally leads us on. He's a good storyteller, and though there are a couple historic events to be chronicled (for example, as a boy he was in the tent the afternoon of the infamous 1944 Barnum & Bailey fire in Hartford, Connecticut that killed hundreds of people and his father had a job offer from Walt Disney that almost changed the course of their lives) and plenty of famous names to be dropped (Burt Reynolds, Hal Holbrook, Geraldine Chaplin, Jack Lemmon and Steve McQueen, among them), he isn't concerned with Hollywood Babylon or the dirty laundry of others. This is his story, and it is engaging and resounding one.
He hits all of his career highs and lows, from his acting classes with Uta Hagen absolutely full of stars to be to Broadway success in
Bye Bye, Birdie and
Hello, Dolly! to television success on
"The Ghost & Mrs. Muir" and the talk shows and game shows to becoming a director and acting teacher himself. But it is the stories of his twisted family and how it shaped and continued to effect him that are most resonant, and even the most dire circumstances and events are told in his comedic, witty voice, self-deprecating demeanor and supreme confidence. He does mention his homosexuality, which like another stage and TV icon of the day, Paul Lynde, was a kind of unspoken open secret, but it isn't really about that. It's about how an emotionally abused child can thrive with just the right amount of outside encouragement, luck, dogged determination and an uncanny self-confidence despite some of the strikes against him.
Charles Nelson Reilly died earlier this year at the age of seventy-six, and this documentary is a perfect tribute to a showbiz survivor who's silly public demeanor covered and triumphed over the darker demons that could have easily overtaken him.
GRADE: B+
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Nice to see you 
wondering when will be the next.. 
