Of the many adoring obituaries that have been published to commemorate the sad passing of cherished actress Wendy Hughes, very few have detailed the troubled project that would be her American film debut, Happy New Year.
Wendy Hughes had become one of the most beloved screen actresses working in Australia after a run of critically lauded hit films, emerging as a central figure in a period of production referred to as the ‘Australian Film Renaissance’. Having built her reputation on films such as Petersen, Newsfront, My Brilliant Career, Hoodwink, Lonely Hearts, Careful He Might Hear You and An Indecent Obsession and dominated the small-screen during the mini-series boom period (Power Without Glory; Lucinda Brayford; Return to Eden), Hughes secured an LA agent and ventured to Hollywood.
At the height of Hollywood’s obsession with French remakes, journeyman director John G Avildsen (Joe; Save the Tiger; Rocky; Neighbors: pictured, right) was preparing a remake of Claude Lelouch’s delightful 1973 farce, La Bonne Annee. Hoping to tap into the successful trend of hit remakes such as Three Men and a Baby, Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Three Fugitives, Columbia Pictures greenlit the jewelry heist romantic comedy Happy New Year, based on a script by Nancy Dowd (working under the pseudonym ‘Warren Lane’) and starring funnyman Peter Falk, character actor Charles Durning and Brit import Tom Courtenay. Wendy Hughes, with barely a US credit to her name, was cast as the romantic foil, Carolyn.
In a 2007 interview, Hughes recalled the daunting nature of filming a big Hollywood studio comedy after a decade of small Australian films. “It just used to terrify me, because you'd go on and do an intimate little scene and there'd be 200 crew behind the camera, or a hundred people, and that I found intimidating. Normally we have five or something,” she said. “(Projects of) that bigger scale, can be really, um...well, for me, sort of intimidating.”
Despite her reservations, the shoot went relatively smoothly; principal photography wrapped in mid-1985. Falk (pictured, top and left; with Hughes) gives a wonderful comic performance, donning heavy make-up to play both an elderly woman and grumpy old man (the picture would earn a single Oscar nomination for Robert Laden’s prosthetic effects). The chemistry between the cast is strong, with Hughes contributing a sweet but strong-willed turn and matching her more experienced old-school comedy stars stride for stride.
But Avildsen’s comedy soon found itself hog-tied by a dispute between the director and the studio. Delays in post-production forced Avildsen into conflict with his current project, The Karate Kid Part II; contractually bound to finish the martial arts crowd-pleaser for a summer release date, Columbia rode roughshod and shelved Happy New Year until Avildsen delivered the Ralph Macchio sequel.
By the time Avildsen returned to Happy New Year, the studio was involved in one of the most turbulent boardroom power struggles in Hollywood history: after a merry-go-round of executive ‘hires and fires’ following Coca-Cola’s purchase of the studio in 1982 and studio head Frank Price’s departure in 1983, projects that carried the baggage of past administrations were giving little support. By the time British producer David Puttnam assumed the mantle of studio head in 1986 and oversaw production and PR nightmares such as Ishtar and Leonard Part 6, the fate of Happy New Year was sealed.
Wendy Hughes’ US debut had become ‘cinema non grata’ to the new regime. Happy New Year surfaced briefly in the dumping ground that is the late summer theatrical schedule; it debuted August 7, 1987, in a mere 40 theatres and would play out its cinema run in 7 days, grossing US$41,232.00. It found favour on VHS in the rental boom period and is fondly remembered by those that saw it but, to date, has received no studio-backed DVD release (it is currently downloadable via Amazon Prime).
Wendy Hughes (pictured, right; with Falk) was noticed by the handful of analysts who saw the film. Critic John Varley described her as, “a cool Grace Kelly type who should be better known by now”; Carrie Rickey in The Philadelphia Enquirer, declared, “Hughes is, with Judy Davis and Mel Gibson, one of Australia's greatest gifts to the screen.” She would work intermittently in the US (opposite Kevin Kline and Jim Broadbent in the 1994 film, Princess Caraboo; guest stints on TV series Homicide and Star Trek: The Next Generation), but it would be her homeland that truly embraced and benefitted from her extraordinary talent.
Wendy Hughes passed away on March 8 after a battle with cancer. She was 61.