There is another Robert Downey.
This really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone — it’s right there in Iron Man’s name, after all. But the younger Downey has been so ubiquitous for so long that many probably don’t even think of the significance of that suffix. And even if they do, few, it seems, take the time to explore the original Downey’s accomplishments. Which is a shame, because if they did, they’d find a cinematic artist every bit as talented, entertaining, and deeply, deeply weird as his prodigal son.
Robert Downey — who I will refer to as such, as there’s obviously no “Sr.” in the credits of his films from the ‘60s and ‘70s — was a typically disaffected youth in the 1960s. Following an army discharge (from his accounts, not terribly honorable), Downey found his way to the experimental theater scene of Greenwich Village as a playwright. At that time, and in that place, it wasn’t a huge leap to the Warholian world of underground film. A typical example of Downey’s early work is Pound, adapted from one of his own plays; the film concerns a pack of anthropomorphic dogs, all of whom are played by human actors without costumes (including, in his film debut as a puppy, the director’s son). His best-known film, Putney Swope, is an acid-fried satire about a black militant placed in charge of a Madison Avenue advertising firm.
Downey’s definitive work, however, might just be 1972’s Greaser’s Palace. Shot on location with Downey’s highest budget to date, Greaser’s tells the story of Christ, through an off-kilter, vaudevillian, wild west lens. Our messiah here is Jessy, a nattily dressed wanderer played by M*A*S*H’s Allan Arbus, on his way to Jerusalem “to become an actor-singer-dancer.” In his travels to “the agent Morris,” Jessy stumbles across a town run by Seaweedhead Greaser, played with John Huston-ish scowl by Albert Henderson. From there, the plot is episodic at best, with Jessy performing casual miracles (“If ya feel, yer healed!”), demonstrating his dance moves in razzle-dazzle musical numbers, and fending off the advances of Fantasy Island’s Herve Villechaize.
As you might have guessed by now, Greaser’s Palace is very much a movie of its time; its free-flowing psychedelia and politically incorrect humor (as well as its setting) make it seem like a crackpot hippie version of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo, which came out two years earlier. But Downey’s ramshackle aesthetic is very much his own, and should be appreciated as such. Some of the gags rival Mel Brooks for inspired silliness (a crippled man, healed by Jessy’s touch, throws his crutches aside, falls to the ground, and exclaims “I can crawl again!”), and some scenes, such as the woman who spends much of the film silently mourning her dead son (Junior again) have a peculiar sort of beauty. In truth, we’ll never have another Robert Downey — I mean, except for that other one.
Greaser’s Palace
1972
dir. Robert Downey
91 min.
Part of the ongoing series: Furious and Furiouser
