As timely as ever with America seemingly always on the brink of dictating what freedoms people can enjoy. At the time the target was the oppression engndered by McCarthysim, rather than the more basic tale of whether State law could forbid its citizens to talk about evolution. It was set almost a century ago, based on a real-life case, and even now fundamentalists reject Darwin’s theories. Setting aside the context, the principle contested is still the same – not just free speech but the right to be different. You could even argue that scientists and fundamentalists are all agreed these days, that out of nothing came the universe, whether created by a Deity or someone operating a contraption called the Big Bang.
Setting aside the various arguments for and against Darwin’s theory, what we have, nonetheless, is an acting highpoint, a fabulous courtroom battle, of the kind adored by audiences, full of objections sustained, attorneys being warned by the judge, inadmissible evidence, smart remarks and witty rejoinders. This all takes place in a sweltering courtroom, temperature so high that the judge agrees to depart from court procedure and permit the verbal duellists to shed their jackets.
Given further depth because the antagonists, Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) and Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March), were once the best of pals, political allies, on the same side in the latter’s failed bid for the Presidency, and willing to accept the other’s personal foibles. Probably the first legal drama to accept that outside the courtroom the participants could be friends.
Luckily, most of it isn’t long speeches, but sharp comebacks, plus the detours, twists and turns that come about from concentrating more on the court than on any surrounding action, though there is forbidden romance, pastor’s daughter Rachel (Donna Anderson) defying her father over her love for the accused, schoolteacher Bertram (Dick York) whose teaching is in conflict with the Bible.
The most outraged denizens of the town get into a right tizzy, marches, religious songs, protest, but that’s leavened by commercial interests, a bank manager worrying that the town being ridiculed by those cleverer folks back east will harm his business, hoteliers, sideshow operators licking their lips at the financial bounty of reporters and gawkers descending on the town.
This is as you’d like to see Spencer Tracy, not the silent judge of Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), personality reined in by the weight of his decisions and the need to do right by those accused of even the most heinous of crimes, but the exuberant character, confident, up for battle, able to fend off any criticism and come back to any witticism at his expense with stinging repartee.
Fredric March, too, has a ball with a loudmouth character, convinced of his infallibility (except of course in terms of the Presidential Race), apt to stuff his face at dinner, but still with an intellectual thrust capable of parrying anything Tracy can throw at him. Tucked somewhere in between is weaselly reporter E.K. Hornbeck (Gene Kelly) whose newspaper has hired Drummond to defend Bertram in the hope of filling the front pages for days with the Trial of the Century (taking the prize from Leopold and Loeb the year before – both cases in real-life handled by Clarence Darrow).
Harry Morgan (The Flim-Flam Man/One Born Every Minute, 1967) plays the snipppy judge trying to maintain order while Claude Akins (Claudelle Inglish, 1961) the hellfire preacher. With so many interesting characters on parade, there’s never a dull moment, especially with each actor trying to wring every ounce of drama and/or pathos from their part.
Director Stanley Kramer (Judgment at Nuremberg) looks as if early on he made up his mind to give the actors their sway. There’s no reining in, even in the early scenes, with the populace up in arms and carrying very professionally-made signs and banners (no handwritten scrawls here, no sirree). And once Tracy and March hit their stride, it’s all an audience can do to sit back and admire. Sentiments expressed will still strike a chord, but, mostly it’s a testament to two great actors at the top of their game.
If you only remember March from the likes of The Condemned of Altona (1962) or Seven Days in May (1964) you should know he was a huge marquee attaction in his day, double Oscar-winner (and three nominations besides), as at home in swashbucklers like The Buccaneer (1938) as drama and comedies, leading man who could more than hold his own against top female stars – Greta Garbo (Anna Karenina, 1935), Katharine Hepburn (Mary of Scotland, 1936), Merle Oberon (Dark Angel, 1935) and Janet Gaynor (A Star Is Born, 1937).
Written by Nedrick Young (The Train, 1964) and Harold Jacob Smith (The McMasters, 1970) from the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee.
Surprisingly frank, for the times, exploration of a failing marriage that tackles sexuality, racism, bullying, teenage angst. In those days there was no such concept as midlife crisis, so the general attitude of grin-and-bear-it results in a melancholy that suffuses the picture. Adapted from the Broadway hit by William Inge (Splendor in the Grass, 1961), provides more insight into American family life than the more souped-up soap operas of the Peyton Place variety. Except for crisis escalating action, could well have been misery memoir.
Opens with a surprisingly tender scene that’s again pretty raw for the period. In the morning, salesman husband Rubin (Robert Preston) strokes the arms and face of waking wife Cora (Dorothy McGuire), clearly hoping to initiate sex, when she abruptly rebuffs him. Before he sets off on a week-long business trip he tries to toughen up bullied friendless overly-mothered son Sonny (Robert Eyer), afraid of the dark, and bolster the flagging confidence of inhibited teenage daughter Reenie (Shirley Knight), only succeeding in inadvertedly punching his son in the face and triggering a row with his wife.
But, without warning, he’s fired from his job and not equipped to compete in the employment arena with a flood of younger people with college degrees and greater stamina. Pride prevents him owning up to Cora, rejection sends him to the bottle and a lady friend, hairdresser Mavis Pruitt (Angela Lansbury) who scandalizes the town by (and this dates it) always leaving the top button of her blouse open. Cora plans escape, hoping to go and live, temporarily until she can find a job, with bossy sister Lottie (Eve Arden) in Oklahoma City.
Meanwhile, following an accidental meeting, the hesitant shy Reenie strikes up a rapport with the more outgoing confident Sammy (Lee Kinsolving). Lottie isn’t so keen to help out her beleaguered sister. When Rubin finally returns after a four-day absence it’s to a welter of home truths.
He still can’t bear to admit the loss of his job. The uneasy truce is shattered when Sammy is chucked out of a party he attends as Reenie’s escort at the country club for being a Jew. Subsequently, he attempts suicide and dies, leaving Reenie in shock. Cora determines to find out for herself the rumors concerning Rubin’s affair. But it turns out, although Mavis is deeply in love with Rubin, they’ve never slept together, providing Cora with a second chance to make her marriage work.
What distinguishes the movie is the revelatory dialog you’d expect from an award-winning playwright like Inge. Characters reveal their inner selves, not always with prompting, and not always in argument, and such lines often bring characters to life. Included in that are some of the subsidiary characters.
For example, Ralston (Ken Lynch) whom Rubin openly dislikes because he successfully got away with an insurance scam that turned him into a millionaire, hides away in the back room of a pharmacy, drinking away his guilt. “I know what I am. Who I am,” says Ralston, “the town scandal.” And you think this is maybe just a passing character, but this is the guy, guilt or no guilt, who enforces the country club ban on admitting Jews.
The controlling Lottie suspects her husband’s need for a long walk in the evening is to get away from the sound of her voice. Unusually, the sisters broach the subject of intimacy. Lottie confesses, “I never enjoyed it the way most women say they do.”
What’s keeping Cora and Rubin apart is their lack of intimacy, caused by their battles over money, the husband refusing to get into debt to satisfy his wife’s yearnings not necessarily for the finer things of life, but to avoid the endless scrimping and saving, getting maximum wear from a dress for the growing Reenie by turning it into a skirt.
Rudin laments, “Was a time you liked what I had…If you can’t remember sowing all those wild oats with me, I just plain give up.” Finally, they get to the crux of the matter (again bold language for the times). Rubin asks, plaintively, “How come you don’t enjoy sleeping with me any more?” Retorts Cora, “I can’t fight with you all day and then go to bed with you at night.”
If there is a flaw it’s some attitudes that will jibe with contemporary audiences. “If I had a real wife,” argues Rubin, “I wouldn’t have to go high-tailing it to Mavis Pruit.” And I winced at this particular line: “I wished someone loved me enough to hit me,” says a wistful Lottie hearing that, for the first time in his life, Rubin slapped his wife. Lottie clearly equates manliness and ardor with such violence.
But on the whole, the dialog is a cut above. I’m not sure how much came directly from the play itself and how much was added by screenwriters Harriet Frank Jr and Irving Ravetch (Hud, 1963). The opening certainly, such a situation might be mentioned in the play but a bedroom scene like that would never be staged.
More at home in the theater than on screen Robert Preston (he only appeared in five pictures the whole decade including The Music Man, 1962) exudes such energy as the salesman that you can see how denial of sex would destroy his self-confidence. Dorothy McGuire (Swiss Family Robinson, 1960) is excellent as the wife trying her best not to end up as a put-upon stereotype. Shirley Knight (Petulia, 1968) was Oscar-nominated, Angela Lansbury (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) came across as too wise to be a loose woman, and Eve Arden (in her only movie of the decade) impresses as the bossy sister.
With such terrific material and an excellent cast, Oscar-winning director Delbert Mann (Buddwing/Mr Buddwing, 1966) doesn’t need to do much to guide this one home.
Falling into the unusual category of Saturday afternoon matinee with a message, American cowboy Jim Sinclair (Hugh O’Brian) and sidekick Jim Henry (Tom Nardini) hightail it across the Atlantic to help the wildlife conservation efforts of game rancher Wing Commander Hayes (John Mills) who faces sabotage at every turn by another rancher Karl Bekker (Nigel Green). It combines Hatari!-style action and interesting storylines with Disney-animal-cuteness (a domesticated zebra called Pyjama Tops).
To get the conservation element out of the way – Hayes is concerned that letting animals roam free will result in overgrazing, turning the countryside into a dustbowl and endangering a variety of species. That Hayes is already talking about animals becoming extinct is way ahead of the common perception of Africa at the time. His plan is to round up the wild animals and fence them in, this kind of ranching preventing foodstocks becoming depleted. Bekker’s objection is that wild animals could carry infections such as East Coast Fever that will endanger his herd.
Romantic interest is supplied by the already-engaged nurse Fay Carter (Adrienne Corri) while orphan Sampson (Charles Malinda) tugs at the heart strings. There is a fair measure of authenticity, glorious aerial shots of elephants and buffalo and other species, tribal dances by the Masai while the Sinclair/Henry rodeo-style method of catching the wild animals, with lasso rather than giants nets as in Hatari!, ramps up the excitement quotient, not least when Sinclair goes one-on-one with an enraged rhino. As you might expect, there is also ample opportunity for Sinclair to encounter a deadly snake and crocodile and it wouldn’t be an African picture without a stampede.
Although villainous, Bekker is not without logical argument, not just the fear of infection which would decimate wildlife as much as soil erosion, but his own fears that taming wild animals would upset the balance of nature, and, on a personal level, the lack of respect for territorial rights. Of course, when push comes to shove, he resorts to rifle and fist to settle arguments.
Atmospheric, well-made, engaging and at times exciting, there is enough going on here to keep the picture ticking along – a hunt for a lost and bewildered Sinclair, questions about home, and the spectacular wildlife rodeo show. Unlike Born Free (1966) and any other animal picture for that matter although wildlife takes narrative center stage we are not subjected to countless cute four-legged specimens.
Hugh O’Brian (Ambush Bay, 1966) could be a latter-day Tarzan (or more correctly Jungle Jim since he is never in loincloth) but Scottish actress Adrienne Corri (The Viking Queen, 1967) is not a jungle adventuress but a principled counter to his easy manner. With every chance to rely on the stiff-upper-lip of an English war hero, John Mills (A Black Veil for Lisa, 1968) does anything but and turns in another engaging performance and if you are looking for a decent chap to deliver a conservation message he is definitely your man without being obsessively annoying. Nigel Green (The Skull, 1965) adds to his portfolio of interesting characters as a smooth-talking rough-edged bad guy while Tom Nardini (Cat Ballou, 1965) impresses. Look out for a fleeting glimpse of Hayley Mills at the start.
Director Andrew Marton, who had been involved in helming The Longest Day (1962) and second unit director of Ben-Hur (1959) and Cleopatra (1963), was something of a wild animal specialist with Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion (1965) in the kitty as well as a dozen episodes in total of television series Flipper (1965) and Daktari (1966). But he is at home as much with the human aspects of the story as with the animal. Producer Ivan Tors was a sometime rival to Walt Disney in the family film market with Flipper (1963) and Zebra in the Kitchen (1965) as well as small-screen Flipper and Daktari.
Mistakenly described on imdb as a TV pilot, this was a genuine feature film that happened to produce a television spin-off series Cowboy in Africa. It was screened for the trade on May 5, 1967, reviewed in the feature film section of Variety on May 17, and its box office figures can be tracked through Variety – opening in San Francisco and Kansas City in June, for example, Baltimore in July, Detroit in August and Boston and Louisville in September. In some situations it was double-billed with El Dorado (1967).
Indulge me. Perhaps the quirkiness that runs through The Long Goodbye is infectious. Here’s my question: can you buy matches loose in America? Do they sell them in bags and not boxes? If boxes, I’m assuming there’s no striking surface on one side of the box. Because here’s the niggling thought that was running through my mind all during the picture. I imagined the pockets of private eye Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) bulging with loose matches. Because if they were in a carton, like the cigarettes he appears to chain-smoke, wouldn’t he have to take them out of the box and empty them into his pockets or take them out one at a time from the box but not use the striking edge because, apparently, it’s just a lot easier to strike the match off any solid surface that’s handy – walls, tables, floors. Just asking.
I’m also asking; is he a lush? Or is the celebrated chasing after cat food opening just an attempt to find something as quirky as the credit sequence in Harper (1966) where a hungover Paul Newman re-uses his coffee grounds. Because Marlowe wakes up at half past three in the morning fully dressed and I’m guessing that’s not because he fell asleep reading a book.
It’s rammed full of “characters,” Dr Verringer (Henry Gibson) has a very curious running gait, there’s a gateman who can’t let a car pass without lapsing into an impression of a movie star and for neighbors Marlowe has the “Goodbye Girls” – as they’d be marketed in a Bond or spy film – a bevy of stoned topless yoga-loving females whose friendly overtures Marlowe has clearly resisted, providing him with some kind of moral rectitude.
Of course, this isn’t noir and you could argue this updated version doesn’t come close to the character author Raymond Chandler envisioned. There’s no mean streets here, not unless they’ve been tucked away somewhere between the very sunny side of Los Angeles and the upscale Malibu beach houses.
What is it is – is original. Set aside Marlowe’s mumbling and the menagerie of animals assembled, not just the cat but a fierce guard dog that scares Marlowe to death and mutts trained, presumably, to walk into the middle of a highway and ignore the honking horns, or to shag each other as if auditioning for porn.
Once the movie gets going, Marlowe is a proper detective in an immoral world where corruption doesn’t even have the decency to slink under the surface and self-indulgence is all. He’s got a case to crack – initially tracing missing Hemingwayesque alcoholic writer Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden) – but he’s not on the clock when he decides to investigate the supposed suicide of old buddy Terry Lennox (Joe Boulton) accused of the murder of his wife.
He’s a pretty clever snoop, finding ways into places he’s barred from entering, following suspicious people he’s not being paid to follow and, in the end, delivering his own kind of justice. There’s betrayal a-plenty, misbehaving wives and husbands, cops inventing their own rules. But mostly he’s a good guy adrift in a different wealthy immoral world. And there’s more humor than you’d expect. Some pretty good lines and sight gags. The hood who’s meant to be keeping his eyes on Marlowe fetching the binoculars so he can spy on the topless girls, a gangster whose preferred mode of apology is to strip stark naked.
And there’s a restless camera. It can’t stop moving, prowling around the characters who are mostly static, as if everyone has something to hide And just when you think, missing man found, this is all too aimless for words, there’s an exceptionally sharp crack of violence as gangster Marty (Mark Rydell) smashes a bottle across the face of his girlfriend (Jo Ann Brody) in the hunt for his missing loot. Contrapuntal is the suicide of Roger Wade, sucked into the surf, wife (Nina van Pallandt) and Marlowe not just helpless, but in trying to save him, in danger of drowning themselves.
If it wasn’t for people roughing him up, cops and gangsters alike, Marlowe might well have spent his time hunting for cat food. As it is, his antenna are up, he’s sniffing around, and pretty capable, as a solid private dick should be, of putting two and three together and working out what the hell has been going on. There’s a noir twist. Usually it’s the dame pulling a fast one on the hero, he’s it’s an old buddy.
There’s enough quirkiness to get you hooked and keep you thinking you’re watching an offbeat detective story, when, really, the quirkiness is some kind of stylistic MacGuffin to lure you into a more straightforward and very satisfying sleuth picture. You could be fooled into thinking director Robert Altman (M*A*S*H, 1970) had tossed away the detective story rule book, but he’s not, he’s just reframing the character for a different era.
There was a trend for movie directors to act – John Huston (The Cardinal, 1963) a repeat offender, Roman Polanski going in for a bit of nose-slitting in the same year’s equally stylistic Chinatown, and here we have Mark Rydell (The Reivers, 1969) who had been an actor in the 1950s.
But he doesn’t build his character from the inside as neatly as Sterling Hayden (The Godfather, 1972), adrift on a sea of booze, and one-time folk singer Nina van Pallandt who keeps her femme fatale credentials close to her chest. Admittedly, Elliott Gould (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1969) can sometimes be an acquired taste, but here he fits the groove perfectly. Don’t let the exterior, the mumbling, the self-absorption, fool you, this is the classic detective re-born.
Leigh Brackett (Hatari!, 1962), who had a hand in the original The Big Sleep (1946), wrote the script with an occasional improv. But this is very much a director’s picture.
These days, this would be called a re-boot, and it set a standard for the re-boot that’s never been matched, taking a much-loved screen character and refashioning him in a way that not only works but makes you think Humphrey Bogart could have done a better job.
A flop at the time – a paltry $1 million in rentals at the U.S. box office, less (barely $800,0000) abroad with the $1.5 million from television not enough to keep the red ink at bay – this has now, rightly, has come into its own as a majestic directorial triumph. Some credit due , too, to producer Elliott Kastner who made Harper and backed Altman’s singularly alternative vision.
I saw this at the cinema not for some kind of anni reissue (it’s year late for that) but just because reviving old pictures is what arthouses do.
A bit more action and this could have been a John Wick-style winner because C.I.A. agent Dan Slater (Yul Brynner) is a big-time bad ass, all steely stare and resolve, and no time for anyone who gets in his way as he investigates the unexpected death of his son in the Austrian Alps.
It’s probably not this picture’s fault that any time a cable car hovers into view I expect to see Clint Eastwood or Richard Burton clambering atop all set to cause chaos, or any time a skier takes off down the slopes anticipate some James Bond malarkey. Luckily, director Franklin J. Schaffner (Planet of the Apes, 1968) avoids inviting comparison in those areas but rather too much reliance on the tourist elements of the ski world puffs out what would otherwise be a tighter storyline. And he also sets too much store by loud music to warn the audience of impending danger.
Slater is out of the ruthless espionage mold and, convinced on paltry evidence that his son has been murdered, determines to track down the perpetrators. There is a reversal of the usual plot in that those he asks for help are unwilling to give it, retired agent Frank Wheatly (Clive Revill) and chalet girl deluxe Gina (Britt Ekland) who initially views him as an older man to be fended off but turns out to have the vital information he seeks.
There’s a lot of tension but not much action and today’s modern vigilante would have beaten the information out of anybody who crossed his path rather than taking Slater’s rather docile approach. Despite this, the relentless tone set by Slater ensures violent explosion is imminent. To be sure, you will probably guess early on, from the appearance at the outset of some Russians, that Slater is heading into a trap, but the reasons are kept hidden long enough.
There are some excellent touches. Slater’s boss (Lloyd Nolan) has a nice line in keeping his office underling in check, chalet hostess (Moira Lister) is all style and snip, the Russian Col. Berthold (Anton Diffring) clipped and menacing. And the skiing sequences that relate to the picture are well done while the others are decently scenic.
It’s a shame that Yul Brynner (Villa Rides, 1968) is in brusque form for it gives Britt Ekland (Stiletto, 1969) in a switch from her comedy breakthroughs not enough to do. Brynner mines a good bit more emotion than is normally the case. Clive Revill is excellent as the former agent who has had his fill of espionage and dreads being pulled back into this murky world.
Producer Hal E. Chester clearly spent more on this than on The Comedy Man (1964) but with varying results, top-notch aerial photography but dodgy rear projection. And there are some screenwriting irregularities, such as why conduct the son’s funeral before the father is present. Frank Tarloff (Father Goose, 1964) and Alfred Hayes (Joy in the Morning, 1965) would be the ones to question on this issue since they wrote the screenplay based on the Henry Maxfield novel.
“I will never forget how casually Maria (Schneider of Last Tango in Paris fame) unbuttoned Joey’s shirt to hold her breast in one hand while eating a bagel with the other,” is just one of the memorable lines in director Ed Zwick’s (of Glory fame) memoir, a very candid portrait of working in Hollywood. Glamor and grit ride side by side as he goes from being a celebrity-struck newcomer to dragging tears out of Harvey Weinstein, hearing all about Julia Roberts’s love life, endless battles on set with Brad Pitt, being offered a beer by Paul Newman in the star’s house and digging into the untapped emotional reservoir of Tom Cruise.
His mentor, director Sydney Pollack, allowed Zwick to observe as he prepped Out of Africa (1985). Pollack had a complicated relationship with Robert Redford. The star “was infallibly late.” Opposite personalities. Pollack was “voluble, excitable and punctilious” while Redford was “taciturn, laconic and laid-back.” Dealing with a proper star can be disconcerting. Asked what it was like to direct Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born (1976), Frank Pierson said, “I wouldn’t know.”
Pollack offered Zwick sound advice about screenwriting. “Plot is the rotting meat the burglar throws to the dogs so he can climb over the fence and get the jewels, which are the characters.” Zwick’s first script, with writing partner Marshall Herskowitz, for Tri-Star, was a drama, Drawing Fire, about a Secret Service agent’s relationship with a corrupt cop. Dustin Hoffman wanted to play the lead. In conversation, Hoffman took “damn long to get to the point.” His involvement collapsed over his fee.
Jonathan Demme was originally slated for About Last Night (1986), an adaptation of David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago. When he pulled out, Zwick got the gig. If stars Rob Lowe and Demi Moore seemed very comfortable with the intimate scenes, that was because they had previously been an item. The movie did surprisingly well.
For a follow-up, Zwick passed on Thelma and Louise (1991) in favor of a different road picture, Leaving Normal (1992), originally set to star Cher and Holly Hunter. Jessica Lange entered the frame when Cher dropped out. After Hunter quit, Zwick signed up Christine Lahti and Meg Tilly. The picture bombed.
Next up was Shakespeare in Love with a script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard to star Julia Roberts who, as it happened, couldn’t help falling in love with her co-stars, that included by now Kiefer Sutherland, Dylan McDermott and Liam Neeson. To play William Shakespeare, she wanted Daniel Day-Lewis, sending him a card that said, “Be My Romeo,” but he was already committed to My Left Foot. Casting for her co-star was cancelled while she maintained that, actually, Day-Lewis had agreed. Only, when Zwick contacted him, that turned out to be fantasy.
With casting renewed, Zwick and Roberts saw, among others, Ralph Fiennes, Russell Crowe. Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Sean Bean. But none clicked with the star, although oddly enough she later teamed with Grant in Notting Hill (1999). It could conceivably have gone ahead with Paul McGann. A full screen test was arranged. However, it was obvious at that point that Roberts hadn’t nailed her English accent. She quit, leaving Universal $6 million out of pocket.
The movie remained in cold storage for two years. Then Harvey Weinstein came calling. But not at the price Universal demanded. For the next few years, Zwick kept trying to interest actors with the requisite marquee heft such as Kenneth Branagh, Winona Ryder, Jude Law, even Mel Gibson and Johnny Depp. By coincidence, Ryder was best buds with Gwyneth Paltrow and showed her the script. Since Paltrow was Weinstein’s go-to actress, she convinced the producer to come back in. But the consequence of that was that Zwick was pushed out. Or so Weinstein believed, until he was sued. Which meant that when the movie was awarded Best Picture at the Oscars Zwick was on the stage.
Comments Zwick wryly, “ As I stand there…listening to Harvey’s prepared, saccharine, self-serving acceptance, it occurs to me to shove him over the edge of the stage into the orchestra pit. Faced with the choice of committing an act of violence before a worldwide audience of 100 million movie fans or false modesty, I make the wrong choice.”
Alvin Sargent (Paper Moon, 1973) signed up for a “hefty fee” to adapt Jim Harrison’s novella Legends of the Fall (1994). Not only was he “maddeningly slow” but after a year’s work he “hadn’t been able to figure out how to do it.” William D. Wittliff (Country, 1984) was next to take a crack before Zwick called on Marshall Hershowitz’s wife Susan Shilliday – who had been story consultant and story editor on Zwick’s television show thirtysomething – to do a rewrite. Tom Cruise and Robert Duvall were briefly interested. Brad Pitt rode to the rescue.
“It’s not enough,” muses Zwick, “that a movie star be handsome; good-looking actors are a dime a dozen. And it’s not just the way the light and shadow plays on someone’s bone structure. It’s the unmistakeable thing behind their eyes, suggesting a fascinating inner life. We don’t know what’s going on inside their heads, but we definitely want to and that’s enough.”
Pre-production Tri-Star got cold feet and demanded Zwick knock $2 million off the budget. Instead, the director and Pitt halved their fees in exchange for a bigger backend. Four weeks before shooting was due to commence, they were short of a female lead, though Paltrow, among others, had read for the part, ending up with relative newcomer Julia Ormond (The Baby of Macon, 1993). Days before shooting, Pitt quit. Or tried to. He could go as long as he paid all the costs of preparation. So Pitt remained. After two weeks of shooting, Zwick was $1 million over budget, largely due to costume issues.
“There are all sorts of reasons an actor will pick a fight,” notes Zwick, and he had more than his fair share of them with Pitt. Although the movie’s resultant commercial success doubled both their salaries, they didn’t talk for a year – and never worked together again.
Denzel Washington didn’t want to do Courage under Fire (1996) until Zwick introduced the idea of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a new idea at the time. Matt Damon really did almost fall out of a helicopter. As Washington and Damon did a scene together “it was as if a spell had been cast over the set,” all watching the birth of new screen great. Screen improvisation isn’t all about fashioning new lines. It’s about an actor finding “emotion in an authentic way.” For the scene where Washington returns home, Zwick placed a bike along the walkway. Washington’s reaction to this unexpected obstacle was to pick it up and set it upright.
Tom Cruise originally passed on the John Logan script for The Last Samurai (2003) that Zwick felt was “still uncooked.” Uncooked or not, Russell Crowe, incidentally, was interested in the Japanese lead. Zwick did a rewrite. Cruise liked the rewrite. “What struck me most as I got to know him was his insatiable appetite to keep improving.” Cruise was one of the actors whose involvement was an automatic green light for a studio. After completing another draft with Hershowitz, Zwick got a call to go see Robert Towne (Chinatown, 1973). He went in dread. Towne “had an informal arrangement with Tom whereby he sometimes quietly rewrote his movies.” Instead of confrontation, Towne was encouraging. “Apparently, he just wanted to take my measure.”
There’s an animatronic horse – costing a million bucks – that appears for a few seconds in The Last Samurai in order for it to appear to the audience that in fact a horse was falling on Tom Cruise for a scene that would not have been possible, in the days before CGI, just with a stuntman. Zwick’s biggest problem on the picture was how to puncture Cruise’s self-assurance, get him to the “right emotional place…to touch some vulnerable part in him.” Zwick realized that simply asking the actor to go deeper wouldn’t work. It would look forced.
So just before shooting the critical scene, Zwick asked Cruise about his eight-year-old son, Connor. “I watched as he looked inward, and a window seemed to open and his eyes softened.” Zwick gently nudged him into position. “Go.”
Movie fans often wonder how a director gets into the movies. Usually, each tale is as odd as the last, a lucky break, meeting the right studio executive at the right time, coming across a studio hungry for your type of picture just at the ideal moment. Zwick has an odd an introduction. Living in Paris on a fellowship to observe experimental theater, he managed to creep onto the set of Love and Death (1975) and pepper Woody Allen with questions and he had a sneak preview of the Annie Hall (1977) script.
On returning to the U.S., he was accepted onto the American Film Institute’s director program. There were 26 pupils in the class, Zwick was one of six invited back for a second year. There, he struck up a lifelong friendship with Marshall Hershowitz. While studying, he read 10 scripts a week for United Artists, fell in with a merry band of more experienced Hollywood hands including Paul Schrader, Michael and Julia Phillips and Oliver Stone. After an improbable series of coincidences, he got was employed as story editor for the tv series Family (1976-1980). Still aiming for a movie slot, he watched in horror as David Puttnam (Chariots of Fire, 1981) lasted for only six minutes of a private screening of Zwick’s 30-minute student film.
There’s not one of Zwick’s movies where he doesn’t regale you with an interesting anecdote about a star. More importantly, he provides insights into how movies are made, often touching on details that would not be obvious to anyone outside the business.
Ed Zwick, Hits, Flops and Other Illusions, My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood (Gallery Books) is available in print and kindle.
Want to hire Matthew Broderick? Then you better be prepared for his mother. Worse, there was no get-out clause. Tri-Star Pictures, an offshoot of Columbia, was only making the movie because of Broderick, whose marquee value was based solely on a completely different type of picture, namely Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). Yes, he had won a Tony aged 21, and this was his sixth picture, of which only War Games (1983) hit the box office mark.
But the actor had a great deal to contend with in his personal life, grief and guilt as a result of driving his car into the wrong lane, crashing into an oncoming vehicle, killing two and seriously injuring himself and his passenger Jennifer Grey. His mother had been seriously ill, also. Glory proved another ordeal. “Nothing I might have done could possibly rival Matthew’s role in the theater of cruelty that was about to begin,” wrote director Ed Zwick in his memoir, Hits, Flops and Other Illusions (2024).
The same accusation of being a lightweight could as easily been levelled at Zwick, his only movie being About Last Night (1986), which though with serious undertones, was basically a modernized rom-com. He was best known for television, as writer-producer on thirtysomething (1987-1991), that “despite its success was an intimate, whiny talkfest.”
Broderick’s mother, Patsy, made her presence felt almost immediately. Before shooting commenced, the actor quit. Patsy didn’t like the script. By this point, Zwick hadn’t even met Broderick. Zwick received the news while on holiday in a cabin in the mountains. Communication was primitive, virtually walkie-talkie style. Eventually, Zwick agreed to look at the actor’s notes on the screenplay.
The script issues should have warned Zwick what he was taking on. At that time the film was called Lay This Laurel, the title of a monograph by Lincoln Kirstein, about the assault on Morris Island by the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the project initially on the slate of Bruce Beresford, Oscar nominated director of Tender Mercies (1983). Kevin Jarre, with just a ‘story by’ screen credit, for Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), to his name, had written the screenplay. “The script is perfect,” averred Jarre when Zwick demanded a rewrite. Beyond a slight polish and a shifting around of some scenes, Jarre wouldn’t budge. So Zwick took on the rewrite.
Broderick’s notes were within the realm of expectation, mostly to do with his character. But then he sent the script to Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962), whose daughter he was dating. Then to Bo Goldman (One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975). Neither writer took on the script and Goldman assured Zwick the script was fine. Then, the final bombshell. At her son’s insistence, Patsy was to work on the script. “I’m sure she was capable of warmth,” noted Zwick, “but I was never treated to that side of her, from the moment we met,” going through the script page by page, “she was contemptuous, demeaning and volatile,” her son sitting in silence. Amendments suggested by Patsy were readings from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and a scene where Broderick’s character was persuaded to take command of the regiment by his screen mother, to be played by his real mother.
As it happened, long before Broderick turned up, Zwick had been shooting footage from the 125th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg where 20,000 men in full uniform and weapons re-enacted the conflict. On a $25,000 budget, Zwick shot 30,000 feet including a cavalry charge, and created what was known in Hollywood parlance as a “sizzle reel.” Many of the re-enactors turned up as extras.
Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, 1987) took a salary cut for his role. Zwick had been impressed by Denzel Washington in A Soldier’s Story (1984) and Cry Freedom (1987) but couldn’t afford him until producer Freddie Fields chipped in some of his fee. Morgan Freeman’s career was on an upward turn after an Oscar nomination for Street Smart (1987). Zwick found acting chemistry between this pair and Jihmi Kennedy and Andre Braugher. The actors “were hearing music I couldn’t even imagine,” wrote Zwick, “yet during each session, a transcendent moment, usually unwritten, could occur.”
Initially, however, Zwick felt he was making a disaster, “the lighting was too bright, the costumes were too new, and Matthew (Broderick) seemed uncomfortable in his role.” Luckily, a storm intervened. Not to provide rest or for Zwick to regroup. A mere storm wasn’t sufficient cause to postpone the scene of the regiment’s arrival in Readville. In the attendant fog, they were bedraggled, ankle-deep in mud, shoulders hunched against the lashing rain. Zwick realized that was the look he was after. He approached cinematographer Freddie Francis to shoot “without lights” in order to capture a similar mood. “Why didn’t you say so, dear boy?” was Francis’s encouraging response.
The next day, the first tent scene, provided another surprise. “I stared open-mouthed at the utter transformation that had taken place. Overnight he (Denzel Washington) has become Trip. Volatile. Funny. Mesmeric…it was impossible to take your eyes off Denzel…I had been in the presence of greatness. I’d never seen an actor command the focus by doing so little.”
Andre Braugher, in his debut, was also a revelation, after he’d mastered the art of hitting his marks. Once, during rehearsal for a scene, Zwick noticed that Morgan Freeman never looked Broderick in the eye. “Just as I was just about to move the camera to catch his look, I realized he was making a point of not looking at him…as a black man who had lived a lifetime wary of being punished.” Despite the traumas over the script, Broderick’s performance was “pitch perfect.”
The most emotionally powerful scene is the whipping. Twice, Zwick filmed Washington receiving three lashes. “But there was something more to be mined.” Making an excuse, Zwick asked Washington to re-do the scene, but then told John Finn, applying the whip, not to stop until Zwick called “cut.” Finn had delivered eight strokes before Zwick found what he was looking for. “The shame and mortification were real now… and in the magic of movies…a single tear appeared, catching the light at the perfect moment.”
Directorial sleight of hand in the battle scene compensated for limited budget and insufficient extras. Taking note of Kurosawa’s Ran (1985), Zwick filmed one “big image of each significant moment of the battle using the entire contingent.” The trick was to go back and shoot it all over again with a smaller group but each time filling the frame top to bottom with soldiers fighting. “When it’s cut together, the larger image stays in the audience’s mind as long as they’re never allowed to see blank space at the peripheries of the frame.”
To add to the battle, they let loose rockets and explosions on the night sky, almost losing a $300,000 camera car in the process. Much of the exposition, including the Patsy Broderick scenes, ended up on the cutting room floor. While Kevin Jarre had become a “cheerleader” for the film, Broderick and his mother walked out of a preview with the actor demanding to do his own cut of the movie. Zwick refused.
Released in December 1985, Glory was nominated for four Oscars including best director. Washington won Best Supporting Actor, Freddie Francis for Cinematography and Donald O. Mitchell, Greg Rudloff, Elliot Tyson and Russell Williams II for sound. Tri-Star refused to advertize in Black media. Zwick considered any “pushback” of Broderick’s character being perceived as a “white-savior narrative” as a “left-wing canard.”
SOURCE: Ed Zwick, Hits, Flops and Other Illusions, My Fortysomething Years inHollywood (Gallery Books) 2024, pp69-105.
The mania for anniversary reissue seems to have passed this one by and, in the light of other campaigns such as Black Lives Matter, seems odd that nobody could take advantage of the 35th anni opportunity, not least Columbia, on a revival bandwagon, under whose aegis it was made. Equally, nor does it appear to have struck a chord among those studio executives keen on remakes.
Certainly, if re-done it would rectify the nagging flaw of a picture about the black experience viewed primarily through the white prism. The passing of years would have made Denzel Washington ideal for the part of the older man while his son John David Washington might have collected sufficient marquee approval to qualify for the showier part of the younger man. Remade from the perspective of the freed black slaves, with the white contingent as subsidiary, surely it would carry even more power than the original especially over the issues raised, not just slavery but, as important, the institutional racism that saw the black man, even when freed, as inferior.
The initial crux of this tale of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment formed in the American Civil War comprising freed slaves was that it was originally little more than a PR exercise, the black soldiers kept destitute of footwear, uniforms and weaponry on the assumption that they would make poor soldiers. The other important factor was whether freedom would make any difference post-war if the black soldiers, having risked their lives, did not return to an improved situation in society.
This isn’t the kind of army picture where the raw recruits come to greatly admire, however grudgingly, their superiors along the lines of Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and The Dirty Dozen (1967). It is much more complex than that. The white man (in this case Matthew Broderick) remains top-billed over Denzel Washington (then a rising star) and Morgan Freeman (whose career zoomed thereafter). And promotion, as with every Army of the period, was synonymous with wealth and/or status.
So relatively inexperienced Capt. Shaw (Matthew Broderick) is promoted to Colonel and given command of the black regiment, aided by the more obviously self-serving Major Forbes (Cary Elwes). Much of the early sections revolve around Shaw establishing his credentials, stamping his authority on his own officers, in particular Forbes who treats him as a buddy rather than a superior, and later having the confidence to challenge (and blackmail) the corrupt vested interests denying his troops the equipment they need and insisting they receive the same wage as their white compatriots.
Tucked in around that narrative are the freed slaves, the younger Pvt Trip (Denzel Washington), who refuses to kowtow and rejects the offer of carrying the regimental flag into battle, and the older grizzled Rawlins (Morgan Freeman) who is promoted to Sgt Major, gaining respect and revelling, eventually, in his authority. But there’s also the already free Searles (Andre Braugher), educated and literate, who joins up out of solidarity only to discover he has little aptitude for soldiering and no amount of appeal to former pal Shaw can spare him from the attentions of the brutal white Sgt Maj Mulcahy.
The training stretches Shaw’s innate benevolence to the extreme, having experienced battle himself, aware of how tough his men need to become to endure warfare.
The battle scenes are tremendous, the scenes of desperate hand-to-hand fighting, the slaughter from cannons and serried musketry, highlighting the courage it takes to stand and not turn and run. The first battle brings victory but the second is infinitely more dangerous, an assault doomed to result in mass casualties and little glory.
Although Matthew Broderick is certainly overshadowed by Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman, I don’t fall into the camp that’s critical of his performance. In a sense it’s obvious he’s trying to shy away from the bravado exuded in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) but my guess is that his character’s diffidence, fear of command, awareness that he lacks the personal authority were true of a man raised way above his station for all the wrong reasons. Denzel Washington (Cry Freedom, 1987) won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but, surprisingly, Morgan Freeman wasn’t nominated.
Director Ed Zwick (About Last Night, 1986) had to content himself with a Golden Globe nomination, though he’d reunite with Washington twice more and his handling of the battle scenes was recommendation enough for later big-budget pictures like The Last Samurai (2003). Screenplay by Kevin Jarre (Tombstone, 1993).
Very stylish caper picture that dispenses with the recruitment section, the ingenious hi-tech robbery accounting for the first half, escape and double-cross the second, a slinky Rosanna Podesta an added attraction/distraction. The Professor (Phillippe Leroy), in bowler hat and umbrella, orchestrates the gold bullion theft from an uber-secure bank using hidden microphones and cameras and a host of electronic equipment, the inch-perfect heist organized to mathematical perfection and timed to the second.
His team, disguised as manual workers, dig under the road, don scuba gear to negotiate a sewer, drill up into the gigantic vault and then suck out the gold bars using travelators and hoists. Giorgia (Podesta), sometimes wearing cat-shaped spectacles, a body stocking and other times not very much, causes the necessary diversions and plants a homing device in a safety deposit box adjacent to the vault. Occasionally her attractiveness causes problems, priests in the neighboring block complaining she is putting too much on show.
It’s not all plain sailing. A cop complains about the workmen working during the sacrosanct siesta, a bureaucrat insists on paperwork, a radio ham picks up communication suggesting a robbery in progress, the police appear on the point of sabotaging the plan.
But the whole thing is brilliantly done, the calm professor congratulating himself on his brilliance, Giorgia seduction on legs. The getaway is superbly handled, the loot smuggled out in exemplary fashion, its destination designed to confuse. Then it is double-cross, triple-cross and whatever-cross comes after that, with every reversal no idea what is going to happen next. It is twist after twist after twist. Some of the criminals are slick and some are dumb. As well as the high drama there are moments of exquisite comedy.
Italian writer-director Mario Vicario (The Naked Hours, 1964) handles this European co-production with considerable verve and although, minus the normal recruitment section, we don’t get to know the team very well except for the professor and Giorgia, each is still given some little identity marker and in any case by the time they come to split the proceeds we are already hooked.
Frenchman Phillippe Leroy (Castle of the Living Dead, 1964) is the standout as a mastermind in the British mold, stickler for accuracy, calm under pressure, working with military precision. Podesta (also The Naked Hours) has no problem catching the camera’s attention or playing with the emotions of the gang to fulfill her own agenda. The gang is multi-national – German, French, Italian, Spanish Portuguese, Irish – with only Gabriel Tinti likely to be recognized by modern audiences.
And there is a terrific score by Armando Trovajoli (Marriage Italian Style, 1964) that changes mood instantly scene by scene. One minute it is hip and cool jazz, the next jaunty, and then tense.
Touching low-budget B-movie shot in black-and-white of a young man receiving his sexual education from an older woman. Motherless Vito (Scott Maxwell), the son of an apartment block super, is seduced by the older Iris (Lola Albright), three-time divorcee, looking for a son to mother.
This is not the transactional sex of The Graduate, and seduction is too strong a description for the yearning Iris whose advances are sensual and romantic, stroking Vito’s head, trapping his hand with her foot, and there is nothing clandestine about their affair either, no false names on a hotel register. They dally in the park, eat hotdogs, and he buys her flowers.
But as he experiences love for the first time, he also experiences more difficult emotions like jealousy and finds it difficult not just to cope with what seems like another man in her life, the wholesaler Juley (Herschel Bernardi), but the fact that she treats him with such contempt. Spoiler alert – well, not really, because you know from the off this is not going to turn out well – the affair ends when he discovers she is a stripper. And while she is left bereft, he now appears more attractive to girls his own age.
In contrast to the powerful emotions stoked up when the pair are together, director Alexander Singer (Psyche ‘59) fills us in on the rest of Vito’s humdrum life, working for his father during the school holidays, goofing off with his pals, and generally failing to make headway with girls his own age. But Iris’s life is not humdrum. Although she has a rule not to work in her own area, she breaks that to accommodate her estranged husband, whom she seems to tolerate, while at the same time drinking herself into oblivion to avoid any moves from Juley. Nor is she ashamed of her profession. It is an act, a job like any other, and provides her with a nice apartment.
Small wonder she treats men with contempt. Perhaps what she falls in love with is untainted innocence. In some senses she is adrift, at other times in full command. And her love for Vito is convincing.
It is full of incidentals. He gulps down ice-cream, she teaches him to drink one sip at a time, without being patronizing the father (Joe De Santis) tries to educate him to honor his inner feelings.
Lola Albright (Peter Gunn television series) carries off a difficult role very well indeed. Without laughs to help him out as it did Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, Scott Maxwell is believable both as the youth growing into adulthood and the youth wanting to remain a youth with no adult responsibilities. The low-key performance of Joe De Santis is worth a mention.
While the picture no doubt attracted attention for the risqué material, which would have certainly given the Production Code pause for thoughts, it provided a more rounded picture than was normal at the time of a woman working in the sex industry, even if only in the stripping department. Iris did not fall into any of the cliches. She is presented as a woman first and foremost rather than a stripper.
Alexander Singer sticks to the knitting and doesn’t come unstuck. John Hayes (Shell Shock, 1964) wrote the screenplay based on the Burton Wohl bestseller.
The Magnificent 60s 