And let me tell you, it was super fun to see Goldie Hawn in one of her earliest roles, when she was only 23 or 24, depending on when the filming occurred relative to her birthday. I didn't know it at the time, but found out later that she won an Academy Award for this role. Charming as Hawn is -- she was a favorite of mine in the 80s and 90s -- I had no idea she had won an Oscar, and would not have thought her capable of giving a performance that would be received that way. I guess that was that era's equivalent of Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny.
Before I focus exclusively on Hawn for the rest of this piece, I want to make the aside that I thought this was a very strange mode in which to find Ingrid Bergman. This icon of sophistication, playing an assistant to a dentist in a goofy comedy? It was quite the disconnect.
I went on IMDB to see if Cactus Flower was Hawn's debut -- it wasn't, she had appeared in two TV shows and two other movies -- but that didn't end up being my big takeaway about her IMDB page. No, that was saved for her total number of credits.
How many credits would you assume Goldie Hawn had? 75? 100? Even more than that?
Nope. She had 37.
Huh?
Now granted, she did effectively stop working in the early 2000s, around the age of 55. (She's 80 now.) After The Banger Sisters in 2002, she didn't appear in another movie for 15 more years, when she co-starred in the Amy Schumer vehicle Snatched. That same year she was the narrator in a movie I've never heard of called SPF-18, which has only a 3.2 on IMDB so it must be terrible. Other than that, just The Christmas Chronicles and its 2020 sequel. (There was also a random episode of Phineas & Ferb in there.)
Hawn seemed ubiquitous in the 1980s and 1990s. Starting with her iconic role in 1980's Private Benjamin, she had a succession of really popular films, such as Overboard, Bird on a Wire, Housesitter and The First Wives Club. You know, when I started out that sentence, I thought I'd really be offering up more genuine bangers, if you will. Because by then she already starts to wind down, with Everyone Says I Love You, The Out-of-Towners and Town & Country before that period of presumably self-imposed exile.
Could I have missed so badly in my memory of Goldie Hawn and what she meant to those of us growing up in the 1980s?
Maybe it's just that she was a celebrity more than she was an actress. She might have been "around" more than she consistently showed up on our screens. And her relationship with Kurt Russell was always very cute. And she had an enduring legacy in terms of her daughter, Kate Hudson, herself an Oscar nominee just this past year.
The really hard circle for me to square is that I can't figure out what would have even been my iconic Goldie Hawn role back. I know I listed Private Benjamin as iconic just a minute ago, but I remember that I didn't see that until I lived in New York, which was already my mid-20s. Bird on the Wire was similarly a late entry for me, as I only saw that in 2016 -- and really didn't like it very much. And the one that might be my favorite Hawn film, though Cactus Flower is certainly a new contender in that regard? It's probably Overboard, but I only saw that for the first time in 2017.
Is it possible Hawn was a good vibe more than she was a movie star?
But I felt so fondly toward her that I did, indeed, believe her departure from Hollywood was on her own terms, when she just got sick of it. How else to explain someone going out on top of her game, even if she may have been in her 50s at that point? Which might just as well have been her 80s in Hollywood years.
But I wouldn't even know if she'd started to stink at that point because I haven't even seen The Out-of-Towners, Town & Country or The Banger Sisters, so I can't attest to any period of decline that might have showed her the exit.
I have seen two of her last three films, and no, I'm not counting SPF-18 in that group. The only one I didn't catch was the sequel to The Christmas Chronicles. I liked the first Christmas Chronicles and don't remember being either glad to see Hawn again or distracted by her diminished capabilities. I do think I felt she wasn't great in Snatched, but then again, that movie wasn't great.
It's just a funny illustration of the gulf that sometimes exists between our perceptions and reality. To me, Goldie Hawn was a shining beacon of wacky physical comedy and delightful facial expressions. She was just a person who made me smile, wherever she showed up, or even maybe if I only saw her in trailers. Clearly, that wasn't from a boatload of classic movies.
In any case, it was a real treat to fall in love with her all over again in Cactus Flower. Maybe I need to go back through and sweep up some of the titles I've missed. Their number is sadly manageable.
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