Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story (2015), Review and Trailer (Video)

By N.S.

“Directed by: Daniel Raim Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story Official Trailer 1 (2017) - Documentary Harold and Lillian eloped to Hollywood in 1947, where they became the film industry’s secret weapons. Nobody talked about them, but everybody wanted them. Theirs is the greatest story never told-until now.”

This is one of the most moving, brilliant documentaries I’ve ever seen. It is largely composed of Hal Michelson’s (1920-2007) drawings and Lilly’s (1928-present) interviews. (In four days, God willing, Lilly will celebrate her 94th birthday.)

Everything Lilly experienced and told Hal about, or that they experienced together, he recorded in one or more brilliant drawings. We also see many of his drawings for classic pictures.

And Lilly is a brilliant and irresistible interview subject who was a pretty young lady, who never lost her looks or her sexiness. (She is that rare combination of cute, pretty, and sexy, though she doesn't try to be sexy.) Though she doesn’t talk about it directly, one gets the impression that Lilly had to beat handsome men off with a stick, including young men, when she was no longer young.

Hal became a professional artist when his C.O. during The War was so impressed with his art work that he advised him to try and earn a living as an artist after The War. So, he headed out to Hollywood. He found an apartment for Lilly, and wrote to her to come to L.A., while he stayed with a friend. (He wrote her that he wanted to sleep with her. Then again, he’d already proposed marriage. However, they didn’t sleep together until their wedding night. The notion that they “eloped” just sounds like promotional hype.)

She eventually became a legendary film researcher who was unknown, outside of the business. (Actually, Hal was, too, for most of his career, because storyboard artists didn’t get credits back then. He didn’t get film credits until he graduated to art director.) Initially, she was a volunteer. When the studio that owned the film library she helped run without pay shut it down, the lady who had been its director recommended that Lilly buy it. But with what money? When Lilly told Hal of the librarian’s suggestion, he immediately thought to put their savings into buying the library.

But that didn’t solve the problem of paying for space somewhere. She called someone at Paramount (if memory serves) who told her that space was not free. It took her two tries, but eventually, he gave her the space for free.

She was a very persistent and persuasive lady. However, I am also convinced that the men who helped her all had crushes on her. Heck, I have a crush on her!

Hal and Lilly ultimately worked together on movies, e.g., Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963). She did research on the behavior of birds and, informed by her research, he did drawings which inspired some of Hitch’s most famous scenes.

It’s no wonder that Hal proposed marriage on their first date. (He had met her through his sister, whose friend Lily was.)

I envy Lilly’s resilience. She was an orphan who was raised by relatives in Miami, and who had such a horrible childhood that she simply refused to talk about it. Lily bore Hal three sons, all of whom were still alive, as of the documentary wrapping.

However, they had to create a new life from scratch. The relatives who had raised her had treated her so badly that she wanted nothing to do with them, and his relatives rejected her, so he rejected them. An aunt of his, whom he drew in large, monstrous terms, told her, “You have no money, no nothing!”

Over 60 years after they’d wed, she told in tones of wonder how amazed she had been, when after several years of marriage, she thought of how he had loved her for so long. She had never known anyone like that.

But she was resourceful, and was committed to making her marriage and new family work. When he got laid off after the completion of a picture, she, who must have been seven months pregnant, would push her baby son in his stroller back and forth in front of the studio offices (which we see in one of Hal’s drawings). One of the executives saw her and remarked, “Hal’s wife is pregnant again?!,” and hired him back.

Coppola thought so much of her that in the early 1980s he had a beautiful little stucco building erected, and named the “Lillian Michelson Research Library” at his Zoetrope Studios. Unfortunately, Coppola soon went broke, and so Lily had to move again.

Lilly Michelson did research like a great journalist. She read books, went through old photographs, and talked to people who had enjoyed unique experiences which were essential to her subjects. In one case, I believe for Fiddler on the Roof (i.e., circa 1970), she needed to find out how to make turn-of-the-century bloomers for Jewish girls, so the ones in the picture would be realistic. She found herself talking to some old Jewish ladies on benches in Miami, and one told her, “We had to make them ourselves. I’ve still got the patterns.” And she gave Lily her ancient patterns!

Another time, when she was researching the 1983 remake of Scarface, a friend of a friend of a friend put her in touch with a “retired” (but not really) Bolivian drug kingpin, who offered to fly her down to Bolivia in his private jet, to discuss the business. She was so thrilled that it didn’t occur to her what this trip would entail. (She was about 53 at the time, but hot as a firecracker.)

She told Hal about it, but he was not thrilled. Outraged, he told her, “You have an obligation to stay alive for your children!” She was unable to come up with a counter-argument to that.

Lilly Michelson said, and I’m paraphrasing, We’re in a business that involves lying, but it’s built on the truth.