July 2023 – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: “The Sons of Katie Elder” (1965)

The property had been bouncing around Hollywood for over decade. It had its origins in the true-life tale of the five Marlow brothers involving murder, revenge, and jailbreak, the story making national headlines when the case was heard at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892. Based on the book The Fighting Marlows by Glenn Shirley,William H. Wright (Assignment in Brittany, 1943) shopped around a screenplay, jointly written with Talbot Jennings (Northwest Passage, 1940), that was purchased by Paramount in 1955.

Alan Ladd (Shane, 1953), who owed the studio a movie, was cast in the lead and the script went through rewrites by Frank Burt (The Man from Laramie, 1955) and Noel Langley (Knights of the Round Table, 1953) with shooting scheduled for 1956. John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) was set to direct until Ladd quit, having bought his way out of his contract. Burt Lancaster (The Train, 1966) was brought in as his replacement.

When Lancaster dropped out, producer Hal Wallis took over the movie in 1959 and considered replacing him with James Stewart (Shenandoah, 1965) or Charlton Heston (The Hawaiians, 1970) with Dean Martin (Rio Bravo, 1959) as the second lead. But still the movie stalled for another five years before Wallis settled on John Wayne who signed on for $600,000 plus a one-third share of the profits and one-third ownership of the negative (a bounty that would continue to pay off through reissues and leasing to television). Henry Hathaway was paid a flat $200,000.

Wayne and Hathaway had history dating back to The Shepherd of the Hills (1941) based on the million-copy bestseller by Harold Bell Wright, and groundbreaking in its use of Technicolor, then in its infancy. They didn’t work again until desert treasure hunt Legend of the Lost (1957) which teamed Wayne with Sophia Loren. A few years later came North to Alaska (1960) followed by Circus World / The Magnificent Showman (1964).

Despite this long-term relationship, the most the director could offer about his star was that “Wayne is more particular about the pants he wears than anything in the world…unless he gets the thinnest kind of material it drives him crazy.”

When the script was finally knocked into shape, the Marlow siblings had been trimmed from five to four, and that family had been replaced by the Elders, a nod to western aficionados who would recognize the name Katie Elder (“Big Nose Kate”), occasional companion of Doc Holliday whose story Wallis had previously filmed as Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Even though Elder wasn’t dead enough – she lived till 1940 – to conform to this picture, it seemed an odd decision to choose that name unless resonance was expected.

But it was still far from a done deal because Wayne’s cancer threatened to scupper the picture. Start of shooting scheduled for October 20, 1964, was shuttered when the disease was diagnosed on September 13 following the completion of Otto Preminger WW2 epic In Harm’s Way (1965). Aware surgery might jeopardize the picture, Wayne suggested Wallis replace him with Kirk Douglas (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966).

Hathaway rejected the notion, but while neither star nor producer had any idea whether the operation would be successful, and whether Wayne would be even fit enough to work, or – God forbid, that the actor might already have made his last picture – Wallis took an optimistic approach and announced the picture would be delayed for a month and “even a little later.” Hathaway’s optimism was based on the fact that he had survived colon cancer a decade before.

At least the surgeon moved fast, operating four days after diagnosis, and again five days later. As well as fighting the damage surgery and pain had done to his body, Wayne found himself slipping into depression, convinced the operation would render him unemployable. “I’ll never work again if they find out how sick I am. If they think an actor is sick, they won’t hire him,” he said, a legitimate observation given the cost of shutting down a picture should the actor be unable to play his role.

Wallis’s business partner Joseph Hazen shared Wayne’s pessimism and urged the producer to recast with either William Holder (The 7^th Dawn, 1964) or Robert Mitchum (The Way West, 1967). Paramount, too, fretted about insurance, the studio couldn’t risk hiring an uninsurable actor. Wallis refused to abandon Wayne and the studio finally agreed to tough conditions from the insurance company. So, on January 6, 1965, the principals gathered in Durango to commence the 46-day shoot on a production budgeted at $3.19 million.

The high elevations – 8,500 ft in places – were not conducive to someone recovering from a lung cancer operation and Wayne found it difficult to breathe. It didn’t help that on the fourth day of shooting Wayne was expected to jump into icy water for the sequence where the brothers were ambushed by the villains. It didn’t help, either, that Wayne was too big to wear a rubber suit to stave off the cold like his fellow actors.

Wayne never complained that Hathaway “worked me like a damn dog.” He realized that it “was the best thing ever happened to me. It meant I got no chance to walk around looking for sympathy.” The star put on a brave front, publicly acknowledging his battle with cancer as a way of giving hope to others while privately terrified not so much of dying but of being helpless. “I just couldn’t see myself lying in bed…no damn good to anybody.”

“He had to be the macho man,” commented Earl Holliman (The Power, 1968), a late substitute for original star Tommy Kirk (Swiss Family Robinson, 1960) who was sacked after being caught smoking marijuana, “he had to have more drinks than the next guy.” And despite the severity of his condition, and although publicly pretending he had given up tobacco, he continued smoking cigars.

Recalled Dean Martin (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967), “He’s two loud-speaking guys in one.” George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) asserted, “If you put him in a group with other movie stars, the eye went to him and that is the ultimate marker of respect. He was John Wayne. He was very real. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t Olivier; Olivier wasn’t John Wayne.”

But there were outward signs of the effect the illness had upon him. He was less sure of himself on a horse, riding with a shorter rein out of fear a horse would get away from under him, trying to minimize the chances of falling or being bucked from the animal. And as the film wore on, an oxygen inhaler was set up beside him on set.

Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider, 1969) was wary of working again with Hathaway after a difficult experience with him on From Hell to Texas (1958) starring Don Murray and Diane Varsi where the actor suffered the indignity of endless takes. Hopper quit three times and for good measure the director put the word around and virtually grounded the actor’s career. Hopper only made one movie in six years. In the interim he had married Brooke Hayward, daughter of actress Margaret Sullavan whom Hathaway respected, and peace was brokered.

Although on his best behavior on the shoot, Hopper was no less impressed. “He was a primitive director, he rarely moved his camera, the movement came from the actors.”

“Westerns are art,” declared Wayne. “They’ve got simplicity and simplicity is art…There’s simplicity of conflict you can’t beat…Westerns are our folklore and folklore is international…In Europe they understand that better than we do over here. “

Whether it was public sympathy for an ailing star and his resolve to fight cancer, or audience delight that he was back in a western after a gap of a few years, The Sons of Katie Elder was a huge hit with $5 million in initial rentals (what studios were left with after cinemas had taken their share). It earned more later in reissues but that initial sum was enough for thirteenth spot in the annual box office rankings though beaten by both Shenandoah and Cat Ballou. Its foreign earning would probably match domestic, to make it one of Wayne’s biggest earners for the decade.

SOURCES: Scott Eyman, John Wayne: His Life and Legend (Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2014) p111, p387-396 ; Ronald L. Davis, Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998) p266; Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library; Hedda Hopper, “Ladd To Star in Film of Pioneers’ Reunion,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9, 1955, p16; Thomas M. Pryor, “Hecht-Lancaster Obtains 2 Novels,” New York Times, January 12, 1956, p22; Oscar Godbout, “TV Movies Extras Get Salary Rises,” New York Times, July 3, 1956, p17; John Wayne, “Me? I Feel Fine,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1965; James Bacon, “Wayne’s Biggest Bout vs. Killer Cancer,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, March 14, 1965; Roderick Mann, “John Wayne – A Natural as The Shootist, Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1976.

The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) ****

The rocking chair motif in this underrated film is ignored while the door opening and closing in The Searchers (1956) is hailed as one of cinema’s greatest images. Welcome to the world of director Henry Hathaway (Nevada Smith, 1966). Way down the pecking order when it comes to the makers of great westerns, below Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969) who only made four and Howard Hawks (Rio Bravo, 1959) only three.

Closer inspection, too, of The Wild Bunch (1969) might reveal cinematic ideas that turned up here first. Closer inspection of John Wayne (The Commancheros, 1961) might reveal a mighty fine, very touching, performance.

The genre was chock-full of vengeance, but here that is tempered by mystery over the death of their father, a drunken gambler, that has led to the loss of the family ranch, leaving the mother, for whose funeral the titular sons return, living hand-to-mouth, supplementing the usual sewing and mending with giving guitar lessons.

Hastings (James Gregory), a businessman with big ideas, has taken over the ranch and pretty much the local town of Clearwater. And he’s just hired extra muscle, notorious gunslinger Curley (George Kennedy), to swell his already-growing army.

Only the youngest son, Bud (Michael Anderson Jr), a reluctant college student, is clear of the taint of wrong-doing. John Elder (John Wayne) has a reputation as a gunfighter but unlike shifty younger brother Tom (Dean Martin) doesn’t have a wanted poster following him around. The other son Matt (Earl Holliman) takes after John, some shady action but no legal consequence.

This is certainly not a great fraternal union. When they’re not engaged in low-level investigation or trying to prevent themselves being lynched, they’re bickering and fighting. The only thing that unites them, beyond love of the deceased woman, is determination to continue paying for Bud’s education.

Apart from the ranch, one of Hastings’ other lucrative investments is a firearms business, which allows him to tote around a telescopic rifle which, of course, ensures he can bump off those who get in his way from a distance, without fear of discovery. The easiest way to get rid of the brothers is to have them arrested for murder and to kill off the one man, Sheriff Wilson (Paul Fix), who might have the brains and experience to work out something fishy was going on.

John Wayne is more emotional here than in any picture since The Searchers, though, as you’ll be aware, his emotion is registered through his eyes or bits of business rather than a lengthy speech. And given double duty of looking after the youngest while holding back the more tempestuous Tom.

Dean Martin’s (Five Card Stud, 1968) charm runs thin, as is intended, no woman to gull, and no cliché alcoholism a la Rio Bravo to fall back on. It’s a part he plays completely against type, although you can sense he’s bursting out of those confines in the false eye con. He’s pretty much always brought to heel by Wayne. The one time he defies big brother ends in personal calamity. Imagine a marquee name as big as Dean Martin taking on a role where the part sets him up to be walking in the Duke’s shadow, despite his efforts to break loose.

In fact, unusually for a western, until Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) came long, it’s replete with reversals. Hathaway plays with expectations from the outset, the opening sequence of big beast of a train puffing through fabulous scenery doesn’t bring John, instead, unknown to the waiting brothers, Curley disembarks. Katie Elder’s friend Mary (Martha Hayer) cuts off at the pass any idea the audience might have of incipient romance when she gives John both barrels.

Thanks to the screenplay, Michael Anderson Jr.(Major Dundee, 1965) and Earl Holliman (The Power, 1968) are given more bite than their roles might suggest and James Gregory (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) makes his villain meaty though you suspect the presence of George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) is another lure, creating audience expectation that is not fulfilled. Martha Hyer (The Chase, 1966) is more conscience than glamor, spending most of the time on the sidelines.

You’d be surprised just how lean a production this is, and equally how deftly Hathaway avoids cliches. Just because there’s a kid you don’t need to teach him how to be a man. A huge herd of horses doesn’t need to stampede. Beautiful woman in the vicinity doesn’t necessarily call for a heated love affair. Ending up in jail doesn’t necessitate a bust-out. Villainous gunslinger doesn’t set up obligatory shootout in an empty street.

Hathaway’s unusual, too, in the way he anchors his pictures in reality. Here it’s a funeral director washing the wheels of his hearse, a blacksmith applying shackles.

You’d marvel, too, at just who was involved in fashioning the terrific screenplay: veteran William H. Wright, his first in two decades, Harry Essex (Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954) in his first in eight years, and Allan Weiss whose six other movies were all Elvis Presley vehicles. Hardly the pedigree to produce one of the best westerns of the decade. This is the kind of screenplay where no line is wasted, not when a retort can be used to define character.

Most people remember the rousing theme by Elmer Bernstein (The Scalphunters, 1968), but actually there are also some very innovative musical passages worth listening out for.

Curiously, it was Andrew Sarris, hardly a John Wayne fan, who recognized the movie’s attributes, though in niggardly fashion, “The spectacle of people in Hollywood trying to do something different in a western at this late date is reassuring.”

It’s about time those differences and the picture’s excellence were recognized.

Dirty Dingus Magee (1970) ***

The boldest role ever undertaken by a major star of Frank Sinatra’s generation – and little thanks he got for it. Not only was he virtually unrecognisable under a slab of make-up that George Hamilton would have envied but the role was a complete reversal of his screen persona. Admittedly, he had flipped that persona for Tony Rome (1967) and as the cuckolded cop in The Detective (1968), but this was on a completely different level.

Sinatra was no Tom Hanks or Daniel Day-Lewis, known for inhabiting different types of characters, and, while he did have a vulnerability that he put to good use in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), he was best known on screen as the guy in charge.

That was far from the case here. Dumb and dumber might be more apposite. Dingus Magee (Frank Sinatra) is a scamp, an outlaw so useless he is worth only $10 in reward money, who steals the stash of old rival Hoke Birdsill (George Kennedy), triggering a revenge caper that is complicated by a host of unnecessary complications by director Burt Kennedy (Welcome to Hard Times, 1967) who has set his heart on some kind of satirical comedy western with a revisionist slant.

So we get a female mayor, Belle (Anne Jackson), who happens to own the local brothel, whose commercial prospects are endangered when the local Cavalry are called away to fight the Native Americans, an Indian chief Crazy Blanket desperate to trade his daughter for a rifle, and when that looks like not working out calling on any available squaw to seal the deal, predatory schoolteacher Prudence (Lois Nettleton) and a running gag involving a Brown Derby hat that results in a gunfighter (Jack Elam) being mistaken for Magee.

It’s a bit long on complications and short on satire and is rescued by the double act of Magee and Birdsill, who constantly get in each other’s way or try to pull a fast one. Birdsill, as it happens, is appointed sheriff, since that’s in the purview of the mayor, and, on the right side of the law for the first time in his life, makes an ill-fated attempt to do good.

Magee tries to help him along. In exchange for the sheriff turning a blind eye for a period of time to Magee’s nefarious activities, the reward for the outlaw will mushroom, permitting greater kudos for the sheriff on his capture.

The main problem is that Kennedy directs with a very heavy hand, very obvious musical cues for a start, and there’s not enough that’s intrinsically funny. Though there is a reversal of an obvious joke of Birdsall being sent to the brothel to locate the mayor, expecting to find a client not the owner.

But both Sinatra and George Kennedy (The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965) are a delight, the latter also playing against type rather than his usual dominating character. Their dumbness takes some beating. Sinatra just about gets the upper hand, but there’s not much in it.

The best thing about the picture is the sense of reality. The U.S. Cavalry spend more time in the brothel than out hunting Native Americans. Law and order can go to hell as long as everyone is having illicit fun. The respectable schoolmarm proves a skilled seductress. Peace is desirable because it is more profitable than war. And the bulk of the outlaws in the Wild West are far from achieving legendary status, just two-bit punks.

Not surprisingly, this was a massive flop and killed off Sinatra’s movie career for the rest of the decade – not that he was overly concerned, “My Way” having reignited his singing career and he was a Vegas regular. But it’s a shame the acting was so vilified, Roger Ebert blamed Sinatra rather than the director for its failure, in particular taking him to task for the one-take approach that Gena Rowlands previously exalted (but what does she know, she’s just an acclaimed actress and knows how a movie works better than a critic).

Well overdue for a reappraisal and if you go in duly warned you might even enjoy it, or at least the Sinatra-Kennedy double act.

Nine Hours to Rama (1963) **

Double Oscar nominee Mark Robson was a highly respected commercially successful director with hits like Peyton Place (1957) and From the Terrace (1960) behind him and The Prize (1963) and Von Ryan’s Express (1965) still to come. So what went wrong here, in this tale of the assassination of Ghandi, especially as he had successfully negotiated foreign climes in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958)?

You could start with the Indian equivalent of “blackface.” Apart from Ghandi himself all the major roles are played by white actors. Even cutting back on his trademark plumminess, the sight (and sound) of Robert Morley trying to talk the Indian leader out of exposing himself to possible assassination would just be hilarious if it wasn’t such a cringingly bad misstep.

Sure, Hollywood struggled to find anyone in Bollywood who had the box office marquee or critical kudos to provide the necessary confidence for Twentieth Century Fox (a problem that hasn’t really gone away – witness Gandhi and Passage to India). But rising star Horst Buchholz, in the leading role of assassin Godse, was nobody’s idea of the kind of actor with the credentials of a Ben Kingsley or Alec Guinness who might make a decent stab at playing an Indian.

And it’s a bizarre narrative mixture, dragnet film noir hunt led by Supt Das (Jose Ferrer) for a potential assassin (done so well in Day of the Jackal, for example), biopic of the assassin, and providing sufficient room for Ghandi to spread his principles of love and peace as well as plenty of scenes of tourist India.

And even with all these deficiencies it might still have worked except that, in the modern idiom of altering characters, times and places for dramatic effect, this pretty much ignores the known facts about the assassin’s life and in its place presents a barmy mishmash of thwarted ambition and romance.

Set in 1948 after India gained independence from the British and during ongoing violence that followed Partition, the dividing of the country on religious grounds into India and Pakistan, we find Ghandi being blamed for everything that has gone wrong, even though he was never the country’s prime minister and disavowed political office.

According to this version, against his father’s wishes and at a very inconvenient time (he is about to enter an arranged marriage), Godse attempts to fulfil a lifelong ambition to become a soldier but is rejected on the grounds that as a Brahmin he will find it difficult to take orders. He becomes involved with a right-wing organization one of whose stated aims is to take down Ghandi.

It’s actually not that hard to attempt to do so and the film conveniently misses out the fact that Godse had previously been fond guilty twice of trying to kill Ghandi, only being spared prison by his target’s clemency. Instead of that grimly ironic touch, we are fed a hotchpotch. It’s hardly surprising that the film skips the potential gender conflict inherent in Godse, since for superstitious reasons he was initially brought up as a girl, including having his nose pierced in the female fashion. And for “dramatic purposes” his father is a priest rather than the postal worker of real life.

He falls in love with a married woman (Valeri Gearon) and is violent to a prostitute Sheila (Diane Baker) who rips him off. Theoretically, Ghandi would not have fallen to this assassin’s bullet if Mrs Gearon had done the decent thing and run off with Godse.

Or if Gandhi had accepted the presence of an armed bodyguard, but the spiritual leader, pacifist to the end, was also a fatalist, and at approaching 80 certainly had cause, should he indulge in such pride, to believe he had made a difference.

Nobody comes out of this well.

The Belle Starr Story (1968) ***

Only spaghetti western directed by a woman. Brings a distinctly feminist feel to that most sexist of the subgenres. You tend to forget that the sexy female Europeans imported to Hollywood as co-stars or to add spice further down the credits were actually top-billed stars in their natïve countries and demonstrated a greater range than the American industry allowed.

Not only do we have Elsa Martinelli (Maroc 7, 1967) as the leather-clad cigar-smoking titular gunslinger, whose watchword is female independence, but it was helmed by arthouse icon Lina Wertmuller (Swept Away, 1974). There’s a thematic consistency lacking in most Italian-made westerns, for example predating Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) in its water imagery. But any potential for lyricism is undercut by the risk attached to being a lone woman. And there’s a Tracy-Hepburn tone to the endless bickering and battle for superiority in her niggling romance with outlaw Blackie (George Eastman).

And, unusually in that decade, a woman who throws caution to the wind and will even bet her body when the money runs out at the poker table, as twisty a meet-cute as a screenwriter could devise. But thereafter it’s a struggle for dominance between the pair. She won’t take orders from a man. He won’t accept female equality even when she shoots the wooden fence he’s sitting on from under him, making him fall to the ground, and for good measure putting a bullet in his heels.

The first act builds up Belle Starr, cool at the poker table, even cooler in the bedroom, and demonstrating the gunplay that attracted her notoriety. The second act take an odd route, a lengthy flashback that digs deep into feminism, the orphaned Belle Starr running away after being sold into marriage by her uncle to an ugly old rich powerful man, traded, effectively, for political favor.

She returns to save a servant condemned to death for the crime of attacking the uncle when he tried to rape her. Sexual humiliation is a theme. Another outlaw Harvey (Robert Woods), who she regards as a platonic friend, steals her clothes as she swims in a lake, and then, having saved her from a posse, forcibly tries to take his reward.

The third act, like the duel between The Man With No Name and The Man in Black, is a case of double- and triple-cross. She refuses to join Blackie’s gang when he plans a million-dollar jewel heist, but hijacks the concept, recruiting her own gang to beat him to the robbery, and teach him a lesson.

But it backfires. Blackie is waiting. She has inadvertently hired his men. In the subsequence shoot-out he is captured. She rides to his rescue. But with their opposing ideas of a woman’s place in the world part on good terms.

The flashback was more subtly observed in Once Upon a Time in the West, and while she shared with Charles Bronson gunslinging skills he was not at any time viewed as a commodity or a piece of property or a candidate for rape. The flashback here fleshes out for the audience the powerlessness of women. But also the kind of camaraderie that is generally also usually only conferred on male characters.

We are pretty conversant with the notion that the gun rules the West. But less conscious of what happens when you are gun-less. Depriving someone of their fundamental weaponry makes them instantly impotent, as humiliating as denying someone water in a desert.

There are some nice directorial touches, blood dripping from a ceiling onto a dinner table, a saloon door opening to cast sudden light onto a corpse, waterfalls suggest sanctuary whereas open water attracts predatory males, and the finale, as they part, of Blackie, desperate to demonstrate his superiority, shooting off her hat from some distance.

Elsa Martinelli is a revelation as a star working to her own beat rather than playing second fiddle to some Hollywood marquee name. This wasn’t Lina Wertmuller’s first film and she had already made an impact with the Rita the Mosquito series, featuring another rebellious woman. Don’t be fooled by the co-directing credit, she replaced debut director Piero Cristofani after a few days.

It’s somewhat ironic that in a contemporary Hollywood attempt to create a female outlaw leader in Cat Ballou (1965), Jane Fonda was upstaged by Lee Marvin, and that in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), despite taking precedence in the title, Faye Dunaway was not the dominant one in the relationship.

By no means a great western but worth a look to see what Elsa Martinelli can achieve when not slotted in to the Hollywood co-star cliche and to get a preview of what Lina Wertmuller could offer.

Decent print on YouTube.

The Fixer (1968) ***

Stunning opening section thrown away by shifting tone and despite excellent performances by the Oscar-nominated Alan Bates and Dirk Bogarde drifts into Kafkaesque virtue-signalling.

But let’s get the title out of the way first. I had assumed a “fixer” was a manipulator, an underworld type of character who could, for a price or future favor, sort out problems or find someone a job or act as an intermediary between politicians or businessmen. Not so. Yakov (Alan Bates) is nothing more than a handyman, who can fix broken windows or railings and turn his hand to anything such as wall-papering or basic accountancy.

In the credit sequence he demonstrates his skills by fashioning with wood, a couple of screws and some steel, a razor, with which to remove the hair and beard that would identify him as a Hassidic Jew. He is, as soon becomes apparent, afflicted by dogs. As he departs his remote cottage in a cart, a vicious dog so disturbs his horse that it bolts, resulting in the loss of a wheel. He continues his travels on horseback, arriving in a small town in time to witness a parade and Cossacks rampaging through the streets.

As it’s set in Czarist Russia, his journey is accompanied by melancholy violin with, for some reason, a disturbing undercurrent of military drum. As the credits end, we cut to the Russian flag and a marching band. He hides in terror as the horsemen drag people along by the ear, slash with sabers, hang others. It’s a pogrom, the type of attack commonly experienced by Jews living in ghettoes.

Up to now, it’s just outstanding. Then it tips into the picaresque. Yakov helps an old drunk Lebedev (Hugh Griffiths) who’s fallen down in the snow in the street. As reward he is offered work wall-papering a room. He has a prick of conscience when he realises that Lebedev is an anti-Semite. Lebedev’s daughter Zinaida (Elizabeth Hartman) seduces him. But, on spotting some blood on a cloth, he refuses to go through with the act.

Luckily, my reading of crime novelist Faye Kellerman has alerted me to the fact that it is an act of faith for Jews not to make love when a woman is menstruating. Luckly, Zinaida isn’t so up on her Bible (Leiticus 15: 19-23 in case you were interested) that she catches on to this revealing fact, for, as has been pointed out earlier, minus the distinctive curl, Yakov doesn’t have the physical characteristics associated in those times with a Jew. In fact, you would say Lebedev would more easily pass for one.

Anyway, Lebedev gives him another job, of counting the loads leaving his brickworks because he suspects he is being swindled. But the foreman, who has been rumbled, and suspects Yakov of being a Jew, calls in the Secret Police, it being a crime for Jews to leave the ghetto.

Now we tip into Kafka. The initial charge against Yakov is that he harbored another Jew during Passover. But then things spiral out of control. He is accused of passing himself off as a Gentile (non-jew), attempted rape of Zinaida and then of ritual murder, killing a small child.

Investigating magistrate Bibikov (Dirk Bogarde) is sympathetic and manages to avoid the rape charge much to the fury of prosecutor Grubeshov (Ian Holm) but once the other charges mount, he is nailed, everyone determined to prove an innocent man guilty.

This is based on a true case and clearly was a case of persecution and Yakov’s transition from worker happy to hide his ethnicity to gain work to a man who rediscovers his religion is a piece of great acting from Alan Bates. But the points are hammered home endlessly and where director John Frankenheimer (The Train, 1964) so deftly dispensed with dialogue in the superb opening sequence, now he more than makes up for it with leaden speeches, and a film that would worked better for being considerably shorter.

It feels like Hollywood is hard at work. After some moments of mild happiness Yakov’s cinematic chore is to invoke sympathy for an entire nation rather than taking on the Holocaust directly. Dalton Trumbo’s (Lonely Are the Brave, 1962) screenplay is filled with brooding lines. But providing Yakov with an interior monologue when he dithers over having sex doesn’t work at all, certainly not next to the more effective use of that technique in John and Mary (1969).

At the outset, Frankenheimer treats violence with discretion. We don’t see the dog being impaled on a saber, just its corpse thrown at Yakov. We witness a rope being wound round a man’s neck, as innocent of any crime as Yakov, but not the actual hanging. So what begins as highly-nuanced turned into a battering ram of a picture and characters forced into lines like “the law will protect you unless you are guilty” and “I am man who although not much is still more than nothing.”

Alan Bates (The Running Man, 1963) certainly deserves his Oscar nomination and Dirk Bogarde (Modesty Blaise, 1966) might feel aggrieved he missed out on a Supporting Actor nomination. But too many of the rest of the cast over-act. It’s an all-star cast only if you’re British. But check it out if you’re a fan of Hugh Griffith (The Counterfeit Traitor, 1962), Elizabeth Hartman (The Group, 1966), David Warner (Perfect Friday, 1970), Ian Holm (in his sophomore movie outing), Carol White (Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, 1969) and Georgia Brown (Lock Up Your Daughters!, 1969).

Frankenheimer at his best when he lets the action play without the overload and there’s one almost Biblical scene, lit only by candlelight, that demonstrates his cinematic virtuosity. But otherwise it’s drowned in the verbal rather than the visual. Trumbo based his screenplay on the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestseller by Bernard Malamud.

Some effective moments, but too long drawn-out to make the impact expected.

Tony Rome (1967) ***

Effervescent mystery punching a hole in the traditional private eye caper. Look elsewhere for film noir as Frank Sinatra (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) reinvents his screen persona. On the one hand he’s such a cool cat, living on a boat in Miami, you half expect him to burst into song just with joy. On the other hand, you wouldn’t cross him. Corpses tend to pile up in his vicinity.

There’s a surprising self-awareness that’s dealt with through considerable subtlety, not with the usual angst of film noir where flaws not only tend to be magnified but spill over and drench the plot. Addicted to gambling, Rome steers clear of marriage and any long-term relationship, knowing such a move would be disastrous for the other party. A former cop, he is touchy though about his father, also a cop, who blew his brains out when some murky deal went wrong.

High on the glamorous side, houses the sizes of small cities, women parading in either next to nothing or with the current year’s hot fashion items. You’d be surprised there wasn’t a horse-riding scene, or one set at a hi-hat ball. But this is pretty much a procedural as the canny detective probes the low life as much as the high, bars where go-go dancing is the least of the illicit activities, jewellers who act as fences, and plumbs the life of millionaire Rudolph (Simon Oakland), tough on the business side, dumb as donuts when it comes to romance with former cocktail waitress (a profession often bracketed with quote marks) wife Rita (Gena Rowlands).

And oddly enough, romance here turns out to be touching, sex coming with responsibility rather than a free-for-all as you are initially led to believe. A lesbian scene for once is not exploitative.

Begins with one of the humdrum cases that must consume the bulk of a gumshoe’s time – the hunt for a valuable diamond brooch, lost from the dress of married drunken heiress Diana (Sue Lyon). Turns out he’s not the only one, inexplicably, looking. He takes a beating from a couple of hoods.

When his ex-partner meets his maker in a bathtub, it’s a cinch Tony Rome is next, which means he has a lot of explaining to do to his endlessly frustrated ex-colleague Lt Santini (Richard Conte). If it was a question of whiling away the time, Rome could spend it in the arms of Diana or multiple divorcee Anne (Jill St John).

As you might expect, everyone has secrets they prefer to keep hidden, and happy to do so with violence. Otherwise, they’re going to be knocked sideways by the past. There’s no shortage of suspects including the elusive Nimmo.

I’m assuming the censor enjoyed a chuckle when Mrs Schuyler (Templeton Fox) appeared rather than pursing their lips in disapproval at the way Sinatra wrapped his lips around the word “pussy.” There’s a certain amount of light-hearted sexual jousting but if you were looking for predatory behavior it’s women you’d point the finger at, though given a free pass since in Miami, apparently, men were vastly outnumbered by men and lasses who had not developed a come-hither would be left on the sidelines.

To properly appreciate the picture, you’d have to cast your mind back to a time before there was a surfeit of television detectives and when the general mystery picture (also encompassing spy movies) had gone AWOL or awry with balderdash plot and outsize villains whose only satisfaction in life was holding the world to ransom. In fact, in retrospect, it’s refreshing to find a picture where the director doesn’t pull the wool over your eyes and your hero isn’t an arrogant preening bantam.

So what you’ve got is a properly-plotted plot, clues aplenty that only our clever private eye can unravel, and, inevitably, in the Raymond Chandler tradition some heavy bursting through a door with a gun, and, in this case, also a shovel. This private dick doesn’t fall into the hard-working category of legend, often favors a Bud over the harder stuff, and though he can knock out the cynical one-liners they often come with a tinge of truth or melancholy.

And for once the MacGuffin (Maltese falcon might be a more apt reference) bears significance to the plot.

One of the interminable pot-shots critics took at Sinatra was his preference for working in a single take, the impression given that he was a lazy sod and a bit more effort would have resulted in a better performance. On the other hand, you could just be in awe of an actor who can hit the button stone dead in a single take.

Co-star Gena Rowlands, with something of a hard-boiled reputation herself, found him to be a “wonderful actor; he could do a whole complicated scene in one take…there was nothing pretentious about him, he was just awfully nice.”

Sinatra is no Bogart but for a time afterwards audience were saying of other pretenders to the shamus crown “he’s no Sinatra.” Jill St John (The King’s Pirate, 1967) makes the most of a more interesting part, including delivering the stinger in the tale. Gena Rowlands (Machine Gun McCain, 1969) reveals the little girl under the glam, Richard Conte (The Lady in Cement, 1969) tones down his typical belligerence, Sue Lyon (Night of the Iguana, 1964) good as a young woman confused by sudden wealth.

The under-rated Gordon Douglas (Stagecoach, 1966) directed from a script by Richard L. Breen (A Man Could Get Killed, 1966) and Marvin H. Albert (Duel at Diablo, 1966), also author of the source novel.

The poster designer pulled a fat one. In typical titillating fashion, you think Sinatra is staring down at a half-naked corpse. But, in fact, no female was harmed in this picture.

Takes a little while to get going but once it hots up it’s perfect entertainment.

Behind the Scenes: “The Cardinal” (1963)

Otto Preminger was beaten to the punch on this one, the scandalous Henry Morton Robinson bestseller snapped up in 1955 by producer Louis de Rochemont (The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, 1961) who had a tie-up with Columbia. Due to interference from the Catholic Church, de Rochemont dropped his option which Preminger picked up in 1961 while working on Advise and Consent (1962).

The last section of the novel, set in Austria during the Anschluss, reverberated with the director who was born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and although a Jew was well acquainted with Catholic society. One of his most significant changes to the book was introducing the Austrian cardinal who endorsed Hitler.

The first two screenwriters James Lee (Banning, 1967) and Daniel Taradash (Castle Keep, 1969) failed to whittle down the complex novel to cinematic proportions. So Preminger brought in Robert Dozier (The Big Bounce, 1969) and began working with him in summer 1962 making other alterations to heighten the drama. The incident involving the unborn child of the sister of Fr Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) acquires greater emotional power in the film, touching on the ambiguities inherent in any institution and provoking the priest’s guilt.

Gore Vidal (The Best Man, 1964) also worked on the script, swapping the novel’s Italian countess for the Viennese Annemarie (Romy Scheider) who, abandoned by the priest had married and was reunited with him prior to the Anschluss, and is sympathetic to Hitler until her husband’s faith endangers them both. Ring Lardner, who had satirized the Catholic church in a recent novel, was the final screenwriter added, his main task to rewrite scenes “to achieve what he (Preminger) wanted,” and, more importantly, to introduce the flashback structure. Ironically, both Vidal and Lardner were atheists.

*Tom Tryon and Romy Scheider meet again in Vienna.*

The director considered five actors for the leading role – Hugh O’Brian (Africa – Texas Style, 1967), Stuart Whitman (The Commancheros, 1961), Cliff Robertson (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968), Bradford Dillman (Circle of Deception, 1960) and Tom Tryon (In Harm’s Way, 1965), the latter three advancing to the screen-testing stage. The 34-year-old Tryon won the role and a five-picture contract he would later regret. Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) who plays the priest’s sister also pacted for five movies.

Romy Scheider’s (Triple Cross, 1966) part was enhanced by the work of cinematographer Leon Shamroy who “fell madly in love with her,” resulting in the actress virtually shimmering on screen, never before “looking as beautiful.” Held in warm regard by the director, she was exempt from his tirades.

It took considerable persuasion on the part of Preminger for John Huston to participate. Curd Jurgens, initially cast as the Austrian cardinal, pulled out and was replaced by character actor Josef Meinrad whose lack of English meant he had to learn his lines phonetically.

Tom Tryon described Preminger as “tyrant who ruled by terror.” He was fired on the first day and probably wished the director had not rescinded the decision, for thereafter the actor was tabbed “lazy…a fool…stupid and unprofessional.” Commented Tryon, “I was so frightened he was going to scream that…I (just) wanted the experience to end.”

One scene with John Huston took 78 takes because Tryon could not deliver what the director wanted. And at one point first assistant director Gerry O’Hara (later director of The Bitch, 1979) found the star in tears and refusing to return unless the director agreed not to shout at him. Eventually, during the Italian section of the shoot, Tryon collapsed from nervous exhaustion, and was prescribed two days rest, and after this incident Preminger let up on his demands of the actor.

Explained Preminger, “I probably chose him without deliberation because he is weak.” He felt than an ordinary person would not side with the Church against a family member in a predicament, and that only a person “with weakness in his character” would be believable in the role. The character “fails because when you become a priest you substitute your own judgement and your own feelings for the law of the Church…The big decisions are made for him.” (Quite why he never chose an actor who could portray such weakness is not known.)

Tryon admitted that he owed a brief let-up in the bullying to “Schneider’s benign presence.” He commented, “The only fun I ever had on The Cardinal was a (ballroom) scene I did with Romy.” Prior to turning the cameras, Prior called both over, appeared ready to issue instructions, but instead waved them away “you know what to do.”

Added Schneider, “Preminger taught me an important thing: work fast. It’s true that it greatly helps our acting. Each of his directions, whether of gesture or of intonation, is precise and correct. Even better, it’s the only one possible…Each phrase, each world, each syllable are minutely weighed.” That dexterity applied to his positioning of the camera. He made decisions immediately, never hesitating “over the placement of the camera and each time…it was the simplest, the most natural and, dramatically, the best.”

Ossie Davis (The Scalphunters, 1968), who professed to have enjoyed a marvellous relationship with the director, observed: “I met actors whom Otto liked, I met actors that had no relationship or feelings one way or the other and I met actors who were almost absolutely destroyed, almost literally in panic because of Otto Preminger (who) was always looking for a spark…whether you had the spark or not, he was going to find it and even put it in you.”

But Patrick O’Neal stood his ground. “I woiuld not take it from him.” And they became friends.

The unit shot for five weeks in New England before heading to Vienna, Preminger choosing to stay in the same suite in the Hotel Imperial as appropriated by Hitler when visiting the city. Permission to shoot in the National Library, “one of the most beautiful monuments in the city” was attacked by the current minister of education who wanted the Hitler era erased from memory. And he was barred from using other government buildings for spurious reasons.

After four and a half months in Austria, the unit shifted to Rome, locations including St Peter’s Square and inside St Peter’s Cathedral and the Santa Maria sopra Minerva church, with priests and monks hired as extras for the various ceremonies. The Georgia scenes were shot in Hollywood on the Universal back lot.

Although generally dismissed by the critics and given a hard time as you might expect from the Catholic Church, The Cardinal hit a chord with audiences, who turned it into Premigner’s second-biggest hit of the decade.

The Cardinal (1963) ****

Would appear resolutely old-fashioned except for Forrest Gump (1994) adopting same premise of the main character present at major events. Here it’s issues affecting the Catholic Church between last century’s two world wars and the protagonist is an American priest, Father Stephen Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) of Irish stock, who rises to the position of Cardinal.

So we move at a relatively stately pace through abortion, inter-denominational marriage, racism, a miracle, challenging church philosophy, and Hitler’s annexation of Austria on the eve of the Second World War, in which the church played an inglorious part. Along the way Fr Fermoyle is afflicted so badly by doubt that he takes a sabbatical only for his flesh to be sorely tempted.

Astonishingly, I saw this on YouTube (it’s still there) in a beautiful 70mm print preserved by the National Film and Television Archive. The roadshow print, to be exact, which begins with a marvellous five-minute overture. Oddly enough there’s something very settling about sitting in the darkness with the curtains drawn watching a blank (black) screen and listening to the majestic score by Jerome Moross (The Big Country, 1958).

And then it’s another few minutes of a stunning credit sequence, all sunlight and shadow, before the movie begins. The movie itself is over three hours long, so if you are put off by this kind of epic now’s the time to check out. But if you do, you will miss something genuinely to be savored.

For Otto Preminger (Hurry Sundown, 1967) certainly knows how to tell a story, even one as sweeping as this. For all its pomp, he manages to retain intimacy.

Immediately after his ordination just as America enters the First World War, Fr Fermoyle faces a crisis. His sister Mona (Carol Lynley) wants to marry a Jewish dentist (John Saxon) who refuses to convert to Catholicism. Fermoyle’s advice, in keeping with the church’s stringent rules: give him up.

A noted intellectual, Fermoyle is astonished to be sent by the worldly piano-playing cigar-chomping Archbishop Glennon (John Huston) to an impoverished parish to learn humility. There, he encounters the blind faith of parishioners and a pastor, Fr Halley (Burgess Meredith), so inclined to put others first that he will not seek help for a debilitating disease.

Meanwhile Mona, now a dancer and drinker, has become pregnant, and not by the dentist. But complications arise and she is forced to choose between herself and the unborn child. According to Church doctrine, as Fermoyle, advises, abortion being illegal, the mother must die to save the baby. Mona, not the sacrificial kind, does the opposite. Fermoyle, racked with guilt, wants to quit the church. Instead, he is promoted to Monsignor, and given a two-year timeout which he spends lecturing in Vienna.

There he falls in love with Annemarie (Romy Scheider). In the nick of time, he is recalled to the States and sent to the Deep South to help the black Fr Gillis (Ossie Davis) who is being harassed by the Ku Klux Klan. In standing by his colleague, Fermoyle undergoes a brutal whipping. Promoted to bishop, he is despatched to Austria “to instruct the princes of the church in the realities of the modern world.” Unfortunately, the clergy, siding with the Nazis, presides over the marriage of Germany and Austria.

Meanwhile, he is reacquainted with Annemarie, who has married a Jewish banker, and witnesses at first-hand Nazi treatment of the Jews, her husband so fearful of his future he jumps out a window. When a mob ransacks a church, Fermoyle isn’t so intent on facing up to them and instead, with Annemarie, manages to escape.

At its best and its worst by the narrative being forced through the prism of an individual. His reactions to issues are regulated by his employers, the Church, which exerts as much control over personal thought as the Communist Party, so, in effect, it becomes a tale of a person initially bristling against authority until, it turns out, the Church shares the same antipathy to the worst of the century’s scandals, the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis.

Father Fermoyle hardly seems suited to high office, given he is so often inclined to temptation, either in a sexual sense, or in taking the opposite view of the Church. And it’s almost as though the splendid backdrop as represented by the immense wealth of the Church has only been achieving by subjugation of the individual. That the worldly Glennon appears as the poster boy for the Church hierarchy is almost Preminger playing with the audience.

It might be sumptuously mounted, but once again Preminger takes no prisoners, showing up an institution that while purportedly set up for the benefit of mankind so often sabotages noble endeavor.

Tom Tryon (In Harm’s Way, 1965) is excellent in the leading role, personal conviction getting in the way of the easy path to the top. But the pick of the performers are the supporting stars, especially John Huston, more famous as a director (The Night of the Iguana, 1964) and here making his acting debut, and Romy Scheider (Triple Cross, 1966). Look out for Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965), silent film star Dorothy Gish in her final movie appearance, Maggie McNamara (The Moon Is Blue, 1953) in her first picture in eight years, and John Saxon (The Appaloosa, 1966) before he was typecast as a heavy.

Otto Preminger (In Harm’s Way) directs in stately fashion from a screenplay by Robert Dozier (The Big Bounce, 1969) and Ring Lardner Jr. (The Cincinnati Kid, 1965).

Thoughtful and striking.

John and Mary (1969) ****

Woefully underrated. Remove the weight of expectation and you’re left with a bittersweet romance. This just wasn’t what critics anticipated from stars Dustin Hoffman, coming off the back of Midnight Cowboy (1969), and Mia Farrow, previous film the coruscating Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and certainly it seemed there was resentment at the audacity of British director Peter Yates attempting to switch from his action roots, best shown in Bullitt (1968). Worse, that Yates was trying to introduce a New Wave vibe.

In the end-up it’s sweet, but getting there is a prickly affair and it’s precisely this unique approach that creates its appeal. Where the standard set-up comprises meet-cute, break-up, back together, for the most part this looks as if actual romance, as opposed to sex, will never get off the ground, the pair smothered by doubt expressed in internal monologue.

Whereas, in The Fixer (1969), for example, hearing a character speak of their feelings outside of dialogue almost torpedoes the picture, here it works a treat, because it’s dealt with as if it was dialogue of the unspoken variety. Past experience that forces both characters to make suppositions about the other’s intent creates a very amusing and essentially true barrier to progress.

Back in the day, at the dawn of the singles generation, the idea of two young people hooking up for one-night stands filled the moral majority with shock, not just that widespread use of the Pill in avoiding pregnancy invoked promiscuity, but that random encounters immediately ended up in the bedroom rather than the becoming the start of a wooing (and discovery) process. These days, of course, Tinder and other such social media inventions, create umpteen opportunities for attraction to translate into instant sex.

But it doesn’t reduce the type of anxieties that are so well addressed here.

You can start with the basic morning-after notion of “how do I get rid of her?” all the way through to assuming such easy attitudes to sex on either side would destroy an ongoing relationship, and along the way dipping into such minefields as how to get to know another person, does he/she even like me or would they fall into bed with the first person to ask them, are they even as attractive in the cold light of day than when perceptions are muddied by alcohol and excitement, and, of course, the ultimate, was performance up to scratch.

The Carlton was one of the smaller London West End cinemas and often used for prestigious openings to create the hold-overs that would build audience awareness and, such as here with box office increasing week-on-week, encourage cinema bookings.

This takes the unusual route of being peppered with flashback while the pair engage in spikier dialogue than you would find in the standard Hepburn-Tracy Hudson-Day romcom. And often what they say is the opposite of what they feel. Setting off in several directions at once – back a year or so, taking in the activity of the previous night and ploughing through the current day – could be off-putting but I found it worked a treat.

Anal retentive domesticated furniture designer John (Dustin Hoffman) hooks up in a singles bar with untidy politically-motivated sometime-actress Mary (Mia Farrow). His first reaction on waking up is to explore the apartment (rather large for New York), wonder when his wife will return, and think of all the deceptions he could pull. His first reaction borders on pure fear: she’s already planning to move in.

That neither has a genuine idea of the other person’s feeling provides the movie’s dynamic and the entire movie consists of them adjusting their expectations against a very contemporary backdrop of protests, politics, cinema verite and sex. Though primarily non-sexist and quite gender-equal, she isn’t looking to become a kept woman, for example, it does touch upon the notion that an easily-available woman is not far short of a whore, whereas, naturally, a promiscuous male is entitled to a free pass.

Her last relationship was with a married man (Michael Tolan), but she dropped him once he started talking about divorcing his wife. For John, girlfriend Ruth (Sunny Griffin) dramatically upped the stakes, arriving at his apartment with luggage, items of furniture and a rampant dog, enforcing on John responsibilities he did not want. Unusually, for the era, he is not politically involved and can cook, both of which attributes/skills we discover are the result of a mother so committed to politics that she neglected her children, never stocked her fridge and left her children to fend for themselves.

Each could press the nuclear button at any time. They’re attractive singles so more sex is just round the corner, going their separate ways the easier option, building a relationship far more difficult.

Dustin Hoffman shakes off a lot of the tics that were already showing and would inhibit later performances in a character far removed in sexual confidence from The Graduate (1967), but in some ways still touchingly naïve, and delivers a very believable performance. That it doesn’t fall into the usual Tracy-Hepburn battle of the sexes with witty put-downs owes much to the highly-nuanced performance of Mia Farrow who isn’t, as you might expect, in the least fragile and expresses her independence and challenges his views in a non-aggressive fashion.

Completely ignored by the Oscars, technically it won plaudits from Bafta, bracketed with Midnight Cowboy for Dustin Hoffman picking up the Best Actor Award, and with Rosemary’s Baby and Secret Ceremony for Mia Farrow in being nominated for Best Actress – such arcane rules later changed.

In small parts look out for Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles, 1974), Tyne Daly (Cagney and Lacey TV series 1981-1988), Don Siegel’s son Kristoffer Tabori (Journey through Rosebud, 1972) and Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck, 1987). John Mortimer (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) wrote the screenplay from the Mervyn Jones bestseller.

Cinematically and narratively refreshing, manages to be entertaining and thoughtful at the same time.