I am a published author of books about film - over a dozen to my name, the latest being "When Women Ruled Hollywood." As the title of the blog suggests, this is a site devoted to movies of the 1960s but since I go to the movies twice a week - an old-fashioned double-bill of my own choosing - I might occasionally slip in a review of a contemporary picture.
Hubris can only get you so far. Unfortunately, it’s all downhill. Whatever possessed Otto Preminger (In Harms Way, 1965) to believe he could deliver a contemporary satirical comedy beats me. And it beat him, too.
Despite the comedic input of Jackie Gleason (The Hustler, 1962) and Groucho Marx there’s nary a single laugh, except, sadly, at the director’s expense as he attempts to shine a coruscating light on social mores and instead ends up fluffing his lines. The highlights (!!) are gangster Tony Banks (Jackie Gleason) having a bad trip, his daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay) falling in with a bunch of hippies and having her body painted, his wife Flo (Carol Channing) trying to seduce another gangster Angie (Frankie Avalon) and some attempted gags at the expense of technology.
There’s even the old one of kids making out beside a parking meter and when busted complaining they are not getting their allotted time. And there’s an ongoing “joke” of Flo tussling with various men for control of the television set through rival remote controls.
The story, if you can call it that, has Tony infiltrating a prison in order to bump off inmate Packard (Mickey Rooney) who plays the stock market, complete with ticker tape, inside. Flo and Darlene, trying to find his whereabouts, end up at Angie’s hi-tech pad. Then all the hippies go back to the family house where Flo washes their hair.
You can imagine where hippies come into all this, making with the hip talk, and trying to set up an alternative world to the Establishment.
Carol Channing makes her feelings known by donning pirate garb.
In the style of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) the main attraction are the cameos, Peter Lawford (Ocean’s 11, 1960), John Philip Law (Hurry Sundown, 1967), Burgess Meredith (Rocky, 1976), George Raft (Five Golden Dragons, 1967), Mickey Rooney (24 Hours to Kill, 1965) and Frankie Avalon (The Million Eyes of Sumuru, 1967). But they will all cringe at their participation.
Channing, only just Oscar-nominated for Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) makes the worst career choice of her life, Alexandra Hay (Model Shop, 1969) not far behind, though with less marquee value to play around with.
Every acclaimed director has an off day, taking on a project through poor judgement or, more likely, financial necessity. But Preminger was still a Hollywood high-roller and this just looked like a dose of career suicide.
The eponymous reptile is a rather obvious metaphor for characters trapped by quixotic decisions. Regardless of the Rev Dr. T Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) being a defrocked priest, he was always going to lead a dissolute life, alcohol the least of his temptations. This heady drama begins with comedy about a man with ideas above his station ending up as an incompetent tourist guide.
And if his behaviour is not scandalous enough for current coach party, middle-aged Baptist ladies, he leads them to a hotel in Mexico run by former lover Maxine (Ava Gardner) who has two younger lovers on the go. And as is the way with author Tennessee Williams there’s a posse of fascinating characters, led by spinster Hannah (Deborah Kerr) who ekes out an itinerant living selling paintings while her aged grandfather (Cyril Devalanti) recites poetry. Raising the moral stakes is under-age Charlotte (Sue Lyon) who has taken a fancy to Shannon, partly in rebellion against her frosty chaperone Judith (Grayson Hall).
For a movie with no great narrative drive, there’s no shortage of drama, whether it’s the Reverend under constant attack from his charges, Charlotte making advances, Shannon succumbing or trying to fight his addictions, Maxine succumbing then rejecting his advances, and Hannah on the sidelines trying to work out why her entire life has been lived in the shadows.
A simple dramatic fuse has been lit, disparate group with secrets set to explode, and you just sit back and enjoy the ride. Exceptionally daring, even if in discreet fashion, for the time, not just the Lolita-style Charlotte, but the middle-aged Maxine cavorting with not one but two men young enough to be her sons, so effectively a Cougar (before the term was invented) in a threesome, a woman in full command on her sex life not at the whim of a male. There’s as overt a gay woman as you would find in this era. And that’s before we come to Hannah, one of whose two sexual experiences involved averting her eyes while her male companion masturbated on a piece of her clothing. That was taking it way beyond the limits of acceptable on-screen behaviour of the day.
Characters are either engulfed by their passions or weaknesses or trying to come to terms with them, sometimes both. Over everything hangs poignancy at the self-deception practised, redemption scarcely a possibility, communication a minefield, acceptance the best anyone can hope for. Quality acting prevents this disappearing down a sinkhole of self-pity.
Richard Burton (Becket, 1964) was on a roll, one brilliant performance after another either with or without Elizabeth Taylor, essaying a wide range of characters. This is one of his best. You should despise the sham he has become, relying on charm to dig himself out of a hole, relying far too much on the kindness of strangers whose sympathy is exhausted. Yet the loss of the only position, a clergyman, for which he was possibly suited, thrown out for committing unforgiveable sin while preaching sanctity, makes him a very relatable human being. This isn’t Days of Wine and Roses reborn, but someone trying to win the pinch of oxygen required to keep his soul alive, and stir the energy inside. And he would be furious if you ever made the mistake of feeling sorry for him.
Ava Gardner (Mayerling, 1968) is superb, staring age in the face, unrepentant, sex an acceptable substitute for love, underlying sadness admirably restrained. But Deborah Kerr (The Chalk Garden, 1964), brings a refreshing dash to her introspective character, a woman with practical solutions except to her own emotional emptiness. Sue Lyon (Lolita, 1962) is only briefly scandalous and the movie’s conclusion suggests she is capable of settling down and not giving into the base desires that afflict all the others.
Just as with The Misfits (1961), director John Huston allows his characters to breathe. It would have been very easy to allow Shannon to have a more heroic or stoic stature, instead of someone stumbling around. Tinges of comedy and wit lighten the load. Huston and Anthony Veiller (The List of Adrian Messenger, 1963) wrote the screenplay from the Tennessee Williams play.
Here’s a great idea for a movie. A pair of nubile young girls sign on for a yacht trip with a renowned Hollywood lothario. A couple of days in the star dies. Neither of the girls knows anything about sailing. The boat drifts. If this was a Hollywood movie there would be circling sharks and at least a squall. But it’s not, the girls are picked up 10 days later complete with festering corpse. Witness the sad end of Steve Cochran.
He never made it as a big star, Sometime top-billed in B-movies, but mostly supporting roles, so it was somehow ironic that producer Harry Alan Towers, on the look-out for any kind of name who didn’t mind spending a couple of weeks on location in a remote African spot, gave him his first starring role in six years as down-on-his-luck pilot Brad sent to infiltrate a smuggling gang in the eponymous country.
In the German market, the Germans were the stars, Steve Cochran relegated below the title.
And this would have been a fitting send-off because, in among the sleaze, there’s a decent story and some pretty good lines. But it really needed the dry delivery of a Rod Taylor to give those lines the zest they required.
There’s a sudden contemporary feel courtesy of former kickboxing champ and influencer Andrew Tate, arrested in Romania for alleged human trafficking, because the underlying story here is white slave trade. Or, put another way, the one-way ticket. The prospect of a job, any job, anywhere, is sometimes enough, no time, or need, to think how you will get back home. Here, a place of dreams for those running out of anything else that might fit the bill, might become home.
Christine (Vivi Bach) is one such dreamer, a singer. What she doesn’t realise is that in the club where she is employed the girls are part of the deal, a commodity. Her one-way ticket is destination human trafficking. What used to be called in those sensationalist times as the “white” slave trade, as if any other type of slave trade was acceptable or less worrisome. She is sold to an Arab sheik (Gert can den Bergh), to form part of his harem.
Luckily for Christine, Brad has taken a shine to her so when the Arab appears on his smuggling radar their paths converge. But trafficking is a sub-plot. Brad has been hired as a pilot for Col Valdez but he has died intestate so his wife Ilona (Hildegarde Knef), in this corrupt country, is also up for grabs and has to (literally) sing for her supper before segueing from black widow to femme fatale. Standing in Ilona’s way are her husband’s associate Da Silva (Martin Benson) and his one-time business rival Henderson (Dietmar Schonherr) and quickly those two guys are in Brad’s way too.
So it’s a solid old-fashioned tale, Brad digging up the dirt, pausing for a bit of romance, chasing the villains. Smashing the human trafficking isn’t part of his brief, so that’s put to one side, but a missing will, which could rescue Ilona from her impoverished situation, runs parallel to the plot.
The exotic locale was typical Harry Alan Towers. But this has a better plot than most of the ones reviewed so far in the Blog, it’s not rammed with cameos (Five Golden Dragons, 1967) or a star out of his depth (Bang! Bang! You’re Dead!, 1966) or a story that takes forever to come to the boil (24 Hours to Kill, 1965).
And, discounting the tribal dancers shaking their booty in a nightclub, it displays some finesse and comedic touches. Stonewalled by Da Silva on arrival, Brad insists on seeing his employer only to be led into a funeral parlor. A waiter knocks back unfinished drinks. “Nobody’s seen her since last night,” is followed by “then, we’d better stop looking for her, hadn’t we?” And did I mention the snake on the plane?
But Towers always got his money’s worth. Although making a (plot) point, there was another reason for Ilona singing. Knef had relaunched her career in the early 1960s as a singer, so her voice was a welcome interlude, and an improvement on that of Vivi Bach, married to Dieter Schonherr, so perhaps hired as a package.
Steve Cochran (The Deadly Companions, 1961) really only requires masculinity to see this through, though has a way with throwaway lines. Hildegard Knef (The Lost Continent, 1968) adds a touch of class but Vivi Bach (Assignment K, 1968) is merely competent.
Robert Lynn (Dr Crippen, 1963) directed from a script by Peter Yeldham (The Liquidator, 1965).
More topical than most Towers’ pictures and in fact one of his best.
When two pictures made in the Cinerama process – Custer of the West (1967) and Krakatoa East of Java (1968) – didn’t make it onto the U.S. roadshow circuit, the industry was in shock.
There were two reasons for the unexpected decision – distribution logjam and cash flow. For a start you needed deep pockets not just to launch a movie in roadshow but to keep it there bearing in mind the ongoing outlay in interest costs for the production and the longer advertising schedule. That is, if you could find enough available cinemas.
Although there was still a production shortage as far as the general cinema marketplace went, that was not the case for first run. By 1967, studios were not dependent on roadshow for hits. In 1966, only one roadshow featured in the box office top ten. In 1967, the number rose to three. But that still meant the vast majority of first run movie theaters never ran short of product, especially when, should all the regular roadshow houses be already taken, they might be called upon to host a roadshow for a month or two.
Some movies – The Blue Max (1966), for example – which had not been made with roadshow in mind, were launched in a handful of cinemas as roadshow for prestige purposes. Conversely, other movies, produced with the express aim of being released in the roadshow format, skipped that element of the distribution chain and went straight into general release. The Great Race (1965) was shown in hard-ticket only in the Pantages in Los Angeles, but first run general release elsewhere. In Harm’s Way (1965) lasted just one day in roadshow.
But neither had been made in Cinerama which was considered the bedrock of the advance-booking separate-performance high-ticket-priced roadshow. There were two problems with that format and that company. The first was that cinemas equipped to show Cinerama were far fewer than those who could accommodate roadshow, so if they were full to capacity with existing pictures, opportunities to open elsewhere were not only limited but undesirable.
The second was that while in the past major studios had lined up to use the Cinerama format for their movies – Warner Brothers for Battle of the Bulge (1965), MGM for Grand Prix (1966), for example – now Cinerama had decided the company was best served by it taking control of output rather than sharing potential profit with anyone else.
Rather than simply licensing its film-making and projection equipment to studios and cinemas, respectively, and taking a small percentage of picture grosses and a fee for every ticket sold, Cinerama embarked on a bolder strategy. It would turn into a major production outfit – the dozen movies in its first tranche included, as well as the two roadshows, Charly, Shalako, The High Commissioner/Nobody Runs Forever, Candy and Stiletto. It also aimed to virtually double the number of cinemas equipped to show Cinerama, so there would be no shortage of roadshow outlets for its most prestigious pictures productions, and set up its own global distribution system.
But since Cinerama no longer had alliances with major studios, and in fact was now hellbent on competing with them, it lost those studios’ relationships with the big roadshow cinemas in New York and Los Angeles. There were only two houses in New York equipped with Cinerama, and Warner owned one and MGM had an almost symbiotic partnership with the other – Loews. That meant no place initially for Custer of the West.
But there was another option. Open it overseas. Roadshows often played for longer in European capitals than they did in New York or Los Angeles and those cities were often inclined, when demand was at its highest, to switch a big first run house into a roadshow theater.
And there was precedent. MGM had opened How the West Was Won (1962) in the Casino Cinerama in London ahead of its Stateside roadshow release. The Cinerama western had cleaned up, record takings, a massive run into the bargain, all serving to heighten expectation across the Atlantic. So, Cinerama opened Custer of the West in that cinema with top seats costing $3.50 and separate performances (two a day, three at the weekend) and to initial public and critical success.
The much-touted “record” opening week disguised the fact that the only record it took down, and then only by $200, was that of How the West Was Won five years previously; Battle of the Bulge’s opening salvo of $41,608 remaining intact. In any case ticket sales soon tailed off and Cinerama had second thoughts about the cost and wisdom of opening it in roadshow in the U.S. especially when the lack of theaters would produce further delay.
So it took another strategic, possibly perilous, route in deciding to miss out New York and Los Angeles – and Boston and Chicago for that matter – from its initial roadshow roll-out. The assumption was that big box office elsewhere would soon have New York and LA houses queuing up. The film’s U.S. premiere took place in Dallas and Houston on January 24 and it managed another 15 roadshow bookings in the months following.
Except for a “big” $15,000 in Detroit, the other opening week results were so soft – “fairish” $8,500 in Cincinnati, “just okay” $7,000 in Kansas City, $4,000 in Portland which was less than the previous week’s run-of-the-mill picture – the studio called for a rethink. “Due to spotty out of town dates thus far it seems an unlikely bet for New York roadshowing,” opined Variety. And so it proved. Cinerama promoted its general release as “direct from reserved-seat engagements” but it fared little better, a “thin” $171,000 from 34 houses in its first New York salvo.
With none of its ambitious slate beyond Charly striking box office gold, Cinerama tore up the rule book for Krakatoa East of Java. In some respects it followed the launch template of Custer of the West with the movie being seen first overseas, world premiere this time in Japan, six months ahead of the May 1969 U.S. opening. But the London launch, at the Astoria – where it ran for nearly six months – came after, on July 31, not before.
But there was clearly an unwillingness to risk all in roadshow. So, Cinerama came up with a clever compromise. While not strictly speaking entering roadshow in that it abandoned advance booking and high ticket prices, it stuck to separate performances but, to compensate for potential loss in box office receipts, operated on four performances daily rather than two. Cinerama called this “scheduled performances” and it was somewhere between roadshow and general release. But it was initially screened in Cinerama in those houses equipped with the projection equipment and only after those semi-hard-ticket bookings were complete did it enter general release.
Even without roadshow, the movie exploded onto screens on opening weeks – a “big” $60,000 in New York (and $55,000 in the second week), a record-breaking $31,764 (and $36,345 in week three) at the Pacific Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles, a “giant” $50,000 in Cleveland, “hotsy” in Detroit with $36,000, $22,000 in Denver and a “mighty” $18,000 in Washington.
Between the Dome (a genuine roadshow with 14 performances a week) in Los Angeles and the Broadway Cinerama (the hybrid with double the performances per week) in New York it grossed $1.2 million. Overall, the various hard-ticket strands kept the movie on screens for most of the summer and into the autumn before a general release targeted for Thanksgiving and Xmas kept up the box office heat.
The studio put an unusually hefty marketing push behind the general release. Having gone round the houses, literally, once with promotional ideas, the company rejigged the best ideas and brought in new suggestions. But, basically, the word to new exhibitors was to learn from successful strategies used in the semi-hard-ticket release. “Rather than rest on its laurels,” the studio packaged the best ideas into a six-page A4 advert and stuck in in Box Office magazine. It knew what worked and just wanted to repeat and expand the process.
One of the marketing coups for the New York launch had been a giant outdoor sign in Times Square, at 265ft long and 62ft high the largest ever designed. The film’s artwork employed in this fashion attracted the attention of thousands of passers-by and served as an example of how the marketing material could work, even if on a smaller scale.
Exhibitors were instructed to target department or chain stores. The launch had found ready cooperation not just from Macy’s but discount store White Front, specially chosen to promote the “price reduction” idea, of a big movie at low prices. It was standard practice for roadshows going into general release to be advertised as “now at regular prices” but the idea of harnessing the mindset of a discount chain, associated with low prices, set a precedent.
There were the obvious routes – tie-ups with record stores and bookshops for the soundtrack and the Signet paperback – but the studio had also made available a reprint of an article on the Krakatoa eruption from Reader’s Digest magazine in 1946, and provided a Teacher’s Guide for schools. Educational avenues were heavily explored, and what teacher would not have an eager audience of young kids to be taught a lesson about volcanoes.
Where the semi-hard-ticket launch had secured the presence of Miss Java, it was suggested that local exhibitors should try and find someone of Indonesian origin, perhaps an exchange student at a local college, to participate in the local screenings. Pearls and balloons, intricate parts of the movie’s narrative, had been used in a big way for the launch, but still lent themselves to simpler exploitation, fake pearls could be given away and colorful balloons if a weather balloon could not be located nearby. The extra effort that went into the general release paid off.
The New York showcase popped a “smash” $430,000 from 31 houses. The company reissued Krakatoa East of Java and Custer of the West in a giant “East Meets West” double bill in 1971 in advance of the television prmeiere of the former two years later.
Overall, while Custer of the West was considered a flop in the U.S., Krakatoa East of Java qualified as a hit of modest proportions, and both movies did well globally. But by 1969, setting aside the $18 million it cost to turn Cinerama into a genuine studio with its own distribution arm, the company had turned a financial corner, and in 1970 income had soared to $46 million – up from $12 million – and there was at last a profit ($3.2 million) instead of a loss ($660,000).
Exactly how much Custer of the West and Krakatoa East of Java contributed to the overall turnaround is impossible to determine because for some arcane reason the studio refused to reveal rental figures even though it had been happy to supply them for other movies which had contributed to the uplift such as Candy, Charly and The Killing of Sister George.
Most film historians point to the flop of several big-budget pictures as the reason for the demise of the roadshow, but just as likely was the move by Cinerama to shift away from the roadshow format in favor of its hybrid, which retained some of the “special event” aspects of the roadshow release while pushing ahead on the more commercial approach of lower prices matched by more daily performances, effectively attempting to bring in revenue at a faster speed, which would be the determined aim of studios in the following decade. The Godfather (1972) might be considered the classic imitator.
SOURCES: Kim R. Holston, Movie Roadshows, A History and Filmography of Reserved-Seat Limited Showings 1911-1973 (McFarland, 2013) p266-267; “Custer Pulls a Record $33,245 in London Bow,” Variety, November 22, 1967, p13; “Cinerama Sanguine on Custer After London; Gets U.S. Roadshowing,” Variety, November 22, 1967, p13; “New York Sound Track,” Variety, February 14, 1968, p18; “N.Y. Roadshow Problem for This & Next Season with Theater Map Torn Apart,” Variety, March 29, 1968, p5; Advert, Box Office, April 29, 1968, p1; “Krakatoa – 3-Site Premiere in Tokyo,” Box Office, January 20, 1969, pE1; “Krakatoa in Paris,” Variety, January 29, 1969, p4; Advert, Variety, May 21, 1969, p35; Advert, Variety, June 11, 1969, p31; “Krakatoa Shuns Roadshow,” Variety, July 9, 1969, p15; “Krakatoa London Bow,” Variety, July 2, 1969, p34; “Picture Grosses,” Variety, July 2-16, 1969; “General Release Set for CRC’s Krakatoa,” Box Office, November 3, 1969, p9; “Merchandising The Picture, ” Box Office, November 17, 1969, p13-18; “New York Showcases,” Variety, December 3, 1969, p9; “West End,” Kine Weekly, January 3, 1970, p9;“Cinerama’s Big Year,” Variety, March 25, 1970, p4.
The first thing you notice about the 1970s disaster cycle is the quality of the cast – Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin in Airport (1970), Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in Towering Inferno (1973) – and Krakatoa, East of Java, which could fairly claim to have set up the disaster movie template, might be the reason. The stars aren’t big enough here to command attention for the duration and the thrills can’t compensate.
The narrative hook is decent enough. A disparate bunch of salvagers searching for a sunken ship containing a fortune in pearls sail too close to the titular volcano. Finding deep-sea divers among the manifest seems appropriate but the Oriental scantily-clad female pearl divers look like titillation and balloonists, ostensibly airborne wreck-spotters, serve the secondary purpose of providing close-ups of the fiery volcano.
But emotional involvement is sadly lacking, Laura (Diane Baker), mistress of Captain Hanson (Maximilian Schell), seeking a son she abandoned, saloon girl Charley (Barbara Werle) sticking by drug-addict diver Connerly (Brian Keith) on his last legs. There’s a claustrophobic bathyscope operator Rigby (John Leyton) and a human powderkeg in the shape of a cargo of prisoners led by the cunning Danzig (J.D. Cannon).
Like any horror picture, you have to line up your ducks and drip-feed the potential terror. Strange incident piled on strange incident raises tension on board. Luckily, Rigby is on hand to explain the increased heat, the fog, the dead fish in the water, and the high-pitched hissing. I’m not sure the science is so accurate, apparently the way to escape a tsunami is to find deep water.
Oddly enough, the movie opens with a striking throwback to the original three-screen Cinerama and a nod to the current split-screen techniques used by the likes of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and the travelog scenario. Where roadshow pictures began with a musical overture running over the credits here is a visual equivalent, snippets from future scenes. Unfortunately, the split-screen is limited to the opening.
But this being Cinerama, director Bernard L.Kowalski has to find room for that format’s tropes, something runaway, in this case the balloon driven through narrow mountain chasms, and something swirling round out of control, no rapids to hand so a man in a wooden crate high above the rigging has to make do.
And there’s a nod to contemporary drug-abuse, Connerly, high on laudanum, has a bad trip and attacks one of the pearl divers. But who knows what precipitated a song-and-dance striptease by Charley. Since the audience already knows the outcome, it’s a question of how many will survive and you suspect the only reason some passengers quit the ship for the shore is for an excuse to show the devastation wreaked by the volcano on islanders.
With no CGI to help and a limited budget, the special effects appear rudimentary, the volcano generally seen in the distance. The ship negotiating around the island is clearly a model but scenes on board are better done, water, fire and rocks raining down on passengers.
Maximilian Schell (Topkapi, 1964) doesn’t invest his character with much beyond staunchness, Brian Keith (Nevada Smith, 1966) seems uncomfortable with having to over-act and Rosanno Brazzi (The Battle of the Villa Fiorita, 1965) has a thankless role and you get the nagging suspicion they were chosen to appeal to different geographic demographics. Diane Baker (Marnie, 1964) can’t convey the guilt of a mother who has chosen her lover over her son nor her fear that her boy’s skeleton might lie in the wreck. Barbara Werle doesn’t quite know how to deliver a beauty of a line, in reference to boyfriend Connerly, “I wouldn’t care if he kicked old ladies in the teeth.” John Leyton isn’t a patch in the claustrophobia stakes to Charles Bronson in The Great Escape (1963).
Bernard L. Kowalski (Stiletto, 1969) keeps the incident coming, and the timing is spot-on, the ship reaching Krakatoa just before the halfway mark. There are occasional directorial touches, cutting from the smoke of the volcano to smoke belching from the funnel of the ship, and a few notes of historical authenticity. There’s a sense that the hi-tech of the time – bathyscape, balloon, powerful ship – cannot compete with nature at its most basic. But basically, he’s pinning his hopes on the fact that come the end of the movie the audience will be so overwhelmed by the eruption and the tsunami that it will have forgiven everything else that went before.
You get the impression it was spectacle first, story and character later.
Far grittier than I expected for a portrayal of one of America’s greatest, if flawed, western heroes. Far darker, with a two-fisted take on the endemic corruption at the highest level that fuelled the Indian Wars. Revisionism with a punch. And bold enough to turn Cinerama tropes on their head.
We should deal with the last first because that reveals the extent of the bitterness that seeps through a biopic in which a soldier’s great skills are put to unwarranted use. You may recall that from its earliest days, Cinerama relied on thrills of a specific nature, one that like 3D put viewers in the driver’s seat, only to scare the pants off them. You were always racing towards danger, whether that be down the rapids in How the West Was Won (1962) or downhill along twisting roads in The Battle of the Bulge (1965). There always seemed a runaway train to hand. Whatever, it was just a thrill ride, occupants escaping unhurt.
Not so here. The men on the runaway wagon have been tied to it. It careens downhill all right, at one point from an upside down point-of-view, but it ends up over the cliff, no escape for the men. A soldier rides a log river to escape Native Americans. He manages that but is killed on dry land by an arrow all the same. A runaway train falls into a burning bridge. The normal thrills, then, with a realistic edge.
The reward for the great hero, Custer (Robert Shaw), gallant leader of sixty dashing cavalry charges during the Civil War, is a commission with the 7th Cavalry in the Dakotas on a mission described by General Sheridan (Lawrence Tierney) as “plain robbery,” the blatant theft of land from Native Americans.
That’s virtually the first scene, a brutal analysis on the American West, greedy land-guzzling settlers requiring protection, a soldier in obeying orders tacitly agreeing to wage an unholy crusade, not a justified war against slavery.
And Custer doesn’t inherit your John Ford cavalry unit, where every drunk has redeeming features, if only to provide some comedy. His second-in-command, Major Reno (Ty Hardin) is an alcoholic, nearly an entire battalion of malingerers on sick parade. Although later spouting chivalrous nonsense about hating machines, it’s the cannon Custer brings to bear on the enemy that provides initial victory, permitting the boast that 255 men conquered the Cheyenne nation. But, of course, such triumphalism proves premature, the Cheyenne and Sioux taking revenge on defenceless towns.
Custer is presented with ambivalence, but granted something of a free pass given his intolerance of alcohol, antipathy to the war and whistleblowing that points the finger at government officials and corrupt businessmen. On the other hand he is the chief marketeer of his own image, vainglorious, not least in his determination to win the Battle of the Little Big Horn on his own, arriving a day ahead of other assigned forces.
He is both ruthless and comforting. Instead of upbraiding a mutinous soldier for stealing water during a trip over the desert, he tells him to wait till sundown when his thirst will be quenched. But, despite repeated broken treaties, he lacks sympathy for Native American chief Dull Knife (Kieron Moore) for failing to comprehend that a superior power will always win. There’s a bit too much crammed into a relatively short running time. A Russian appears to point out that the United States is negotiating to buy Alaska. Railroads enter the equation and an early version of a tank. An anonymous prospector has gold teeth because he likes “the taste of gold.” Robert Ryan makes a cameo appearance as a deserter.
All that is redundant when the venality confronting Custer is dealt with in one brilliant scene when gold prospectors start digging up the fort in the hope of finding the precious mineral.
I’m no expert on the historical accuracy but by and large whether this portrayal of the life and times of General Custer is actually true it certainly rings true.
British actor Robert Shaw (Battle of the Bulge), with his mean shifty eyes and trademark tight-lipped side-of-the-mouth delivery, doesn’t quite bring enough shade to the characterisation, but possibly that’s the fault of the screenplay, which has cast him, outside of the final calamitous engagement, as even more heroic in the political arena than on the battlefield. As his wife, Mary Ure (Where Eagles Dare, 1968) appears only fitfully and has little to do. Lawrence Tierney (Reservoir Dogs, 1992) is excellent as the self-serving Sheridan. Just like the later Cinerama epic Krakatoa East of Java (1968) this suffers from lack of recognizable stars.
Director Robert Siodmak (The Crimson Pirate, 1952) creates a literate, revisionist, western that ensures intelligence is not swamped by action. Bernard Gordon (Krakatoa East of Java) and Julian Zimet (Circus World/The Magnificent Showman, 1964) are credited with the screenplay.
A worthy attempt to use a legend to explore the greater issues of the day.
After pulling double worthy duty with Empire of Light and Till as the starting points for my Monday multiplex triple bill it was something of a welcome relief to finish with an unpretentious pretty serviceable actioner that traded on Taken, The Equalizer and The Mechanic.
Ex-con Cuda (Antonio Banderas) has taken up his old job of debt collector/enforcer for bisexual mob boss Estelle (Kate Bosworth). Through happenstance he acquires streetfighter protégé Stray (Mojean Aria). Cuda’s daughter won’t speak to him so he’s partial to coming to the aid of homeless 15-year-old Billie (Zolee Griggs). To get her off the streets he puts her up in a motel. But, of course, no good deed goes un-punished and the motel manager arranges for her kidnap by Freddie (2 Chainz), a rising gangster who threatens Estelle’s dominance.
Meanwhile, Stray falls for dancer/hooker Lexus (Alexis Ren) who works for Estelle and may well be her main squeeze, though the consensuality of that relationship may be in question.
There’s none of the pavement-pounding hard-core detective work or even nascent skill undertaken by the likes of Taken’s Bryan Mills before Cuda tracks down Billie’s whereabouts and it doesn’t take long for the various strands to coalesce, resulting in a variety of fights and shootings. Given it’s a perky 90-minutes long, there’s very little time for subplots anyway or to find deeper meaning. That’s not to say there aren’t patches of clever dialog – Estelle compares the blood in her veins to that of the marauders in ocean depths whose blood has evolved to be extremely able to withstand parts of the sea where the sun never shines. (She says it a bit neater than that).
And there’s no time wasted on sentimentality either. Neither Cuda’s ex-wife or daughter want anything to do with him and thank goodness we’re spared a scene of him emerging from jail with nobody to greet him. The movie touches on the most venal aspects of modern crime, paedophilia, webcam pornography, kidnap, sexual violence, and of course Freddie bemoans the fact that Estelle is so old-fashioned she wants her tribute paid in cash not cryptocurrency.
It’s straight down to brass tacks, Cuda not seeing the betrayal coming. Thanks for bringing me fresh blood, Cuda, says Estelle, would you like one bullet or two with your retiral package. The only element that seems contrived at the time, that the battered and bloodied Stray can fix Cuda’s broken down car, actually turns into a decent plot point. And where Bryan Mills seems to be living on Lazarus-time, here it’s clear that the ageing Cuda is not going survive these endless beatings and shootings, so if there’s going to be a sequel it will be on the head of Stray.
I had half-expected Antonio Banderas (Uncharted, 2022) to sleepwalk through this kind of good guy-tough guy role but in fact his mostly soft-voiced portrayal is very effective, and his occasional stupidity lends considerable depth to the character. Kate Bosworth (Barbarian, 2022) has been undergoing a transition of late and is very convincing as a smooth, if distinctly evil, bisexual gangster.
I’ve never heard of Mojean Aria though if I’d kept my ear closer to the ground I might have ascertained he was a Heath Ledger Scholarship recipient. He had a small role in the misconceived Reminiscence (2021) and took the lead in the arthouse Kapo (2022). Judging on his performance here, I’d say he is one to look out for. He has definite screen presence, action smarts and can act a bit too.
And just to show my ignorance I was unaware that Alexis Ren is one of the biggest influencers in the world. This is her second movie and she doesn’t really have much of a part beyond compromised girlfriend. Zolee Griggs (Archenemy, 2020) is another newcomer. But you remember that old Raymond Chandler saying that when the plot sags have a man come through the door with a gun. Well, here, there’s a different twist – it’s a woman, in fact both these women turn up trumps when it comes to rescuing the guys.
This is the directing debut of Aussie commercials wiz Richard Hughes and, thankfully, there’s none of the flashiness than would have drowned a tight picture like this. He keeps to the script by W. Peter Iliff who’s been out of the game for some time but who you may remember for Point Break (both versions), Patriot Games (1992), Varsity Blues (movie and TV series) and Under Suspicion (2000).
Undemanding action fare, for sure, but still it delivers on what it promises. It doesn’t have a wide enough release or a big enough marketing budget to even qualify as a sleeper but I reckon it will keep most people satisfied. I had thought this might be DTV but that’s not so. Although it’s not been released in the States it’s had a wide cinema release in Europe. However, this looks like it’s already on DVD but been thrown into cinemas to coincide with the launch of Puss in Boots.
Exhibitors measured a movie’s commercial potential in large part by the size and shape of the Pressbook. There was a correlation between a studio’s marketing budget and box office expectation.
This was the era of the 16-page A3 (twice size of a sheet of A4 paper) Pressbook/Campaign Manual that would contain what a cinema manager required to make the most of the picture through newspaper exploitation. This included snippets that would be passed on as nuggets for the editor of the entertainment section – incidents that occurred on set, details of location, hitherto unknown facts about the stars, interesting quotes – and for the newspaper’s non-editorial section that came in the form of a series of different advertisements, six or seven not unusual.
These adverts were core to what you might see in your local newspaper. The cinema manager simply cut out the preferred size of advert – they were offered a huge range of sizes that often took up to half the Pressbook – and handed that in to the newspaper which duly, with cinema name attached, used it to make up the printed ad.
The point of the A3 Pressbook was to accommodate ads that size (11.7 x 16.5 inches / 297 x 420mm) and encourage the cinema manager to consider paying for such a hefty space in a newspaper. Beginning with the giant size indicated studio confidence, which, it hoped, the cinema manager would match. Of course, should he or she not, then there was a wealth of smaller-sized ads – which might themselves start at roughly A4 (8.3 x 11.7 inches / 210 x 297mm) that the cinema manager might feel more appropriate to the picture house’s marketing budget.
The various ads accommodated a number of different taglines and images, so that a cinema manager could choose the best one for targeting their specific audience – most commonly, for example. an action picture might be sold on the love interest.
The Sorcerers was released in the U.S. by Allied Artists. Once a big name, producing Friendly Persuasion in 1956, it had now fallen on harder times and largely reverting to its Monogram origins except for a financial boost from the unexpected success of the French-made A Man and a Woman (1966). Whatever imapct that had on Allied’s coffers did not translate into expenditure on the Pressbook for The Sorcerers. Cinema mangers would not have been filled with any great confidence. In size and in the advertisement material it did not shout box office winner.
This is an ad from the British campaign which showed more originality than in the U.S.
The Pressbook was 8-pages A4, of which more than half was advertisements, one full-page A4. But there was only, effectively, one ad, though presented over five pages in twelve different sizes, from the aforementioned A4 down to what would be little more than a slug, one inch running the width of one newspaper column (about two inches).
Boris Karloff’s brooding features, intercut with a man knifing a woman, dominate the advert. There is a tagline: “He turns them on…he turns them off…to live…love…die or KILL!” At the foot of the ad is a montage of young things, dancing, kissing, a girl in backless dress the height of the titillation portrayed. The rest of the near-dozen adverts are all exactly the same, with, as the adverts grow smaller, bits of the main ad dropped out.
The problem with marketing any film starring Boris Karloff was the actor himself. Although a legendary name in movies thanks to Frankenstein, that career-making role had been three decades before and anyone who had seen it in the 1960s had done so on television where it was shorn of a lot of its power. Karloff had only intermittently popped up in horror movies during the 1960s, most recently in Die, Monster, Die (1965).
Director Michael reeves (left) with Tony Tenser of Tigon and Karloff.
Karloff was not, to put it mildly, a major marquee attraction. And part of the reason was his determination not to be typecast. So, in the 1940s and 1950s he was more likely to be seen on stage, in Arsenic and Old Lace or The Lark, for example, or on television. He only made eight movies during the 1950s.
There had been some kind of horror comeback in 1963 with The Raven, The Terror, Black Sabbath and The Comedy of Terrors, but since then movie appearances had been sparse. And, of course, for an actor of his age, there was nothing new to say, although perhaps just to remind people that he had been born William Henry Pratt in England.
None of the other performers were remotely well-known. Ian Ogilvy had supporting roles in She Beast (1966) and Stranger in the House / Cop-Out (1967). Elizabeth Ercy had small parts in Doctor in Clover / Carnaby M.D. (1966) and Fathom (1967). Each was given an one-eighth page biography. Despite directing She Beast, Michael Reeves wasn’t mentioned at all.
The company you keep. Tigon’s line-up for 1967.
So you get the distinct impression from the Pressbook that it’s Karloff or nothing and since the actor, as noted, was hardly a major player, nobody was going to much trouble to sell the picture.
The Pressbooks I’ve presented in previous features in the Blog have all had considerably more going for them, but this was the downside of the movie business. When there wasn’t much to sell, the distributor wasn’t going to waste his money trying to achieve the impossible.
The Pressbook, printed in 1967, did not appear to achieve any success. The movie did not win a single first run or showcase booking in any of the major cities whose box office was reported by Variety magazine. However, in July 1968, the film was awarded the Grand Prix at the Trieste Sci Fi Festival, with Elizabeth Ercy named Best Actress. That did not appear to brighten the movie’s prospects.
But in 1969, it turned up at the bottom of two horror triple bills. In Boston in first run at the Center it grossed $7,000 (Variety, February 19, 1969, p8) supporting Island of the Doomed (1967) and Castle of Evil (1966). In Los Angeles in a Karloff triple, it was topped in the billing by The Comedy of Terrors and The Raven, earning a decent $110,000 from 12 houses. (Variety, April 30, 1969, p8), it was top-billed in first run in Chicago taking in a “neat” $5,500 at the Monroe (Variety, October 15, 1969, p8).
But it’s possible these few bookings and doubtless others on the drive-in circuits and in smaller towns might still have helped turn a profit on the picture since it only cost $210,000 to make in the first place.
Two stars in impeccable form, an intriguing tale of betrayal and redemption, and a sharp reminder that Britain was once a conquered nation. Given the original play was written by a Frenchman, Jean Anouilh, I wondered how much of the experience of France being occupied by Germany during World War Two informed the work.
Becket (Richard Burton) is dabbed a collaborator for having anything to do with King Henry II (Peter O’Toole), not just in his gainful employ and rising to positions of enormous power, but in accepting his friendship being viewed as a traitor to his countryman. England then, 100 years after the invasion of William the Conqueror, was divided into Normans, who ruled, and Saxons, the indigenous population, who obeyed. The only source of rebellion was through the Catholic Church which could claim, in its prime allegiance to God, to place religion above ruler.
Initially, it’s the story of two unprincipled men, who drink and lust to their heart’s content, until Henry, misreading his friend’s personality, appoints him Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important religious leader in the country, assuming that Becket would continue in his hypocritical ways and bring the clergy to heel. Unfortunately, in taking on the position, Becket takes to heart everything it stands for and instead of extending his power Henry finds it challenged.
It’s classic narrative, fast friends turned bitter enemies, the American Civil War in a nutshell. The more Becket sticks to his guns, the more his life is imperilled. Since the story is based on historical actuality, anyone who saw it at the time would be aware of the famous outcome, but the teaching of history and English history at that, either having fallen in abeyance or being given the revisionist treatment, viewers coming at afresh will be surprised at the political and moral twists and turns.
Nor is it of the “thee” and “thou” school of historical drama. The language is modernised, it is filled with humor, and spiced through with irony. Caught in a downpour during a hunt and sheltering, wet and bedraggled, in a peasant hut in a wood, Becket explains to the king that anyone who dared light him a fire would be hanged for taking precious wood out of the forest, a law laid down by Henry to make more money from his forests.
Likeable though Henry is, full of energy and fun, he is also sly and mean. On the basis of what’s mine is yours, he passes on a peasant lass to Becket, but in demanding the favour returned insists that Becket allow him to have sex with his fiancee, who promptly commits suicide rather than submit.
Henry wheedles as much as he demands, needing to keep his nobles in line if they are to fund his lifestyle and wars. There is always the tricky business of making alliances with untrustworthy rivals. This almost a template for Game of Thrones, the business of ruling as much about the velvet glove as the iron fist, negotiation and concession as important as outright demonstrations of strength.
Even when in an inferior position, there is always diplomatic recourse. The French king (John Gielgud), deliberately keeping waiting a British contingent, explains that the delay will allow them time to be measured for some fashionable French clothing. Now that is a barb served in silk.
It’s possibly as big a surprise to Becket, as indulgent in drinking and whoring as the king, to discover that he has principles. The clergy was known for abusing its power and, despite taking a vow of poverty, living high on the hog. So he stuns both his fellow priests and bishops as much as the king when he gives away all his possessions to fulfil that basic vow. There’s almost an element of naivety. Having played the game so far, suddenly he refuses, to the consternation of everyone in power.
For a time it becomes a battle of wills and that eternal question of who is more important, the invisible God or the human king, and Becket to some extent becomes a pawn.
And it’s brilliantly acted. In his first role since coming to global attention with Lawrence of Arabia (1964) Peter O’Toole creates a more down-to-earth conniving ruthless character. Richard Burton (Cleopatra, 1963), trying to prove he can attract an audience without the help of Elizabeth Taylor, matches him every step of the way. The fiery oratory is replaced by introspection.
Director Peter Glenville (The Comedians, 1967) resists the temptation to open up the stage play, which he also helmed on Broadway (where it won the Tony for Best Play), and for a historical picture set in warring times it’s surprisingly lacking in battles. But it’s easily one of the best historical pictures ever made and it’s a travesty that the Oscar for Best Actor went to neither O’Toole nor Burton, both nominated who split the vote, but to Rex Harrison for My Fair Lady. John Gielgud (The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1968) was a whimsical quirky delight, so different to his normal screen persona.
Out of 12 Oscar nominations, it won only for screenplay, by Edward Anhalt (The Satan Bug, 1965).
Does what historical movies so rarely accomplish: thoughtful, stylish, brilliantly structured with superb acting and direction.
It was a gamble all round. Reputations could be made or seriously dented. Male lead Don Murray had been trying to get Hollywood to pay serious attention since nabbing an Oscar nomination for Bus Stop a decade before. Female lead Inger Stevens had been a wannabe for just as long, named as a “youngster to watch” in the mid-1950s alongside the likes of Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Anthony Perkins who had all more than made the grade. Director David Lowell Rich had only one feature, Madame X (1966), a remake of the 1930s classic, to his name. Studio Universal was not so much risking its financial shirt as its prestige.
For all four were embarking on a new kind of enterprise – the made-for-television movie. That notion in itself had been born out of crisis. If exhibitors were claiming that with the mid-60s production crisis there weren’t enough movies to go round, the situation was worse for the television networks which had begun to rely heavily on movies to fill out their programs.
Television had “drained the vaults of Hollywood studios” by using up “the ready supply of motion pictures faster than a grind house.” With too few new motion pictures coming down the pipeline the networks, facing being drawn into a costly rights battle, might welcome a new source of product as easily as they could be exploited by someone savvy enough to come up with a new idea.
In theory, the mini-genre that would become known as “made-for-television” had begun a few years before with Don Siegel’s The Killers (1964), but that had been considered too violent for television and released in cinemas instead. So, although in one sense it was a success it was also deemed a failure since it showed the difficulty of trying to make original movies for television. Instead, anything made-for-television would have to find a format that fitted tighter parameters. See How They Run (1964), also from Universal and starring John Forsythe (The Trouble with Harry, 1955) and rising European star Senta Berger (The Secret Ways, 1961), proved a better template.
Although considered one of the biggest studios in Hollywood at the start of the decade, what with Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Alfred Hitchcock on the payroll and willing to spend $12 million on a roadshow like Spartacus (1961), Universal had since pulled in its financial horns, balking at splashing out on bestsellers and Broadway material. But it perceived the television movie drought as a gap to be exploited, believing that a modestly-budgeted picture would make a decent profit from a network showing (and repeat showing), syndication and overseas theatrical sale.
Quality was the watchword. This would not be like the “quickly-made ersatz segments of a TV series…not going backwards in time to make cheapies.” Originally entitled “Project 120” and based in New York, the movies, “something of a stepchild” to the main film-making operation, would run 97-100 minutes allowing space within a two-hour time frame for advertisements.
While still not in the big bucks book market, which in themselves tended to require a major star to guarantee a return on heavy literary investment, Universal hired William Darrid to find less expensive works, beginning with snapping up the novel House of Cards for $70,000. That proved too expensive for television and ended up as a movie. Darrid believed it simpler and less risky to find original screenplays such as The Borgia Stick, embarking on an “intensive program to purchase…original stories for screen production.”
Universal had another aim – to develop a television segment, a movie series if you like – rather than a one-off, creating an identifiable programmer that could last a season and attract sponsors and advertisers to a recognised brand. There were nine films on the original slate and they would be sold under the generic title of “World Premiere.”
But to make a host of smaller films in a relatively short space of time, Universal needed to find talent that could be marketed to a television audience. Established movie stars were out of the question and in any case such talent would consider it below their dignity. There was no shortage of television stars but this was seen as an opportunity to showcase talent, rising stars and actors who already had some movie marquee value.
Breaking out of television into Hollywood was virtually impossible. But it had always been that way. Stars emerging from the small screen like James Garner (Maverick) or Steve McQueen (Wanted: Dead or Alive ) were few and far between. Clint Eastwood (Rawhide) had to reinvent himself in Italy. “A television star rarely makes a successful transition to pictures,” was the general observation.
Even Gene Barry, with Bat Masterson (1958-1961) and Burke’s Law (1963-1966) behind him, had to head for Europe and Maroc 7 (1967) to catch an even break, something denied him in television where the profit shares he had in both series had amounted to little once sharp practice and high production costs were taken into account.
For Inger Stevens and Barry Nelson it was a potential step up. For Don Murray a definite step down. As mentioned, Swedish-born Stevens had been a genuine ingenue, but despite nabbing the leading female billing opposite Rod Steiger in Cry Terror! (1958) and Harry Belafonte in The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959), her career didn’t take off and she ended up a television regular, guest star in series like The Aquanauts and Route 66. But in 1963, despite an initial flaying by critics, she was top-billed in half-hour television comedy series The Farmer’s Daughter. It ran four seasons, and 101 episodes later she was a better known quantity, enough to be able to front a documentary about her homeland.
On the face of it, she was not an obvious fit for The Borgia Stick unless you were simply looking someone whose glamor might add a sad touch to a character who was nothing more than a pawn in a sordid business. The idea of such a beautiful woman going from fashionable housewife to tawdry hooker would be enough to tug at audience heartstrings whether or not she could supply a deeper emotional pull.
Don Murray was so quickly disenchanted with Hollywood that he turned producer on The Hoodlum Priest (1961) but that gamble didn’t pay off and he was relegated to top-billing in small pictures like Escape from East Berlin (1962) and biopic One Man’s Way (1964). There was a hint of potential redemption when Universal, reviewing the footage for The Plainsman (1966) originally intended to form part of the initial “World Premiere” made-for-tv strand, gave it a cinematic release.
But that didn’t hit the ground running either and he stepped into The Borgia Stick as a makeweight while he attempted to advance his career his own way, once again back in the producer’s seat, with the independent Tale of the Cock, whose title alone caused an earthquake at the offices of the Production Code (the industry censor).
With budgets so tight, Universal often hired moonlighting Broadway actors who were generally free during the day – Barry Nelson, currently starring in Cactus Flower with Lauren Bacall, was one such, with Fritz Weaver, Marc Connelly (better known as a playwright) and Sudie Bond (making her movie debut) drawn from the stage.
In-house producer Richard Lewis, who handled The Borgia Stick, took a different approach to writers and directors. He saw them, especially the writers, as “necessary” collaborators, not as mere employees to be replaced at whim. Writers were on hand during production rather than banished from the studio floor. “It’s a lot better to have him (the writer) around if a line of dialog has to be switched than let anyone else tamper with his work which was excellent enough originally for us to do it.”
The way The Borgia Stick was acquired was typical of the operation. Lewis kept in touch with most of the literary agents, finding out what kind of work their clients were considering, almost looking for a pitch. A.J. Russell’s agent thought his client had come up with “a good story.” Lewis arranged a meeting with the author and “that’s how it (The Borgia Stick) started.” Russell was a television veteran, credits going back to 1950, so this represented a major opportunity. “I gained identity as a writer with a show such as this,” explained Russell, “which is impossible to get in a regular series. The script is wholly mine…it’s something that belongs to me.”
At a time when most directors were freelance or struck non-exclusive short-term deals with studios, David Lowell Rich was an anomaly. He was a contract director, having signed a six-year deal with Universal, replacing Norman Jewison. It was a very old-fashioned deal, harking back to the Hollywood “golden age” when actors and directors were hired for seven-year stints. They worked on whatever the studio saw fit or could be loaned out to other studios if need be. That scenario would not have suited an Otto Preminger or a John Sturges. But for a television director not in the league of Martin Ritt or John Frankenheimer, whose television work had provided Hollywood calling cards, it was a big step up. “At the time Universal offered me a pact I thought it the best thing to happen and a wonderful opportunity and I still do.”
And small wonder. He, too, was a television regular, starting out in the business in 1950, and eventually entrusted with episodes of Wagon Train, Peter Gunn, Route 66, The Twilight Zone and Dr Kildare. Earlier attempts at a movie career had disintegrated after the likes of No Time to Be Young (1957) and Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959) featuring The Three Stooges stiffed at the box office.
So the prospect of regular work at Universal as the in-house director, potentially handed prestige projects if predecessor Norman Jewison’s career was anything to go by, was too big an opportunity to ignore. He was only too happy to make what he was told to make. But he was far from just a hired hand. He was considered “a New York director” with a distinctive style, revealing the Big Apple as “a surfaced, multi-layered, steely place.”
As if the made-for-television arm was a mini-studio, Universal did not, as one might expect, make one picture and wait for industry reaction before embarking on another. It started off with a complete slate, and before the nine movies in the first wave had even been televised – The Name of the Game launched the “World Premiere” format on November 26, 1966 – a second tranche, including The Borgia Stick, was already underway.
Initially, the picture was due to start shooting in New York on a five-week schedule in July 1966, but that shifted to August with production complete by early October. According to the critics The Borgia Stick exceeded expectations. Variety called it “an achievement,” and considered A.J. Russell an “exceptional story-teller” and the bold decision to shoot on location in New York working to “striking advantage.” The public tended to agree. It was ranked third among the first tranche in the ratings battle according to Nielsen.
More importantly, when up against all the Hollywood movies screened on television that year, it came in at number eight when measured by “total audience appeal” beaten only by major motion pictures making their network premieres such as The Robe (1953), Lilies of the Field (1963) with Sidney Poitier’s Oscar-winning performance, Doris Day comedy Move Over Darling (1963), The Longest Hundred Miles (another made-for-tv film), Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and Marlon Brando in The Young Lions (1958) – screened over two nights it counted as two entries. Perhaps more vital, when the results were broken down by demographics, The Borgia Stick took pole position in both the 18-34 age ground and the 35-49 and was “generally considered to be the best made-for-tver to date.”
The Borgia Stick was sold to some television networks – the BBC screened it in Britain on September 9, 1969 – around the world but the Mafia theme made it a straightforward sell for cinema distribution in other areas where it went out under titles such as FBI vs Gangsters, Murder Syndicate or Gangster Syndicate.
The Borgia Stick proved to be the ace in the pack for Inger Stevens. She was snapped up immediately for the movies and over the next three years was leading lady to Clint Eastwood (Hang ‘Em High, 1968), Dean Martin (5 Card Stud, 1968), Henry Fonda (Firecreek, 1968), George Peppard (House of Cards, 1968) and Anthony Quinn (A Dream of Kings, 1969). But she had mental health issues, probably exacerbated by being forced to keep secret her marriage in 1961 to black musician Ike Jones in case it adversely affected her career, and in 1970 she committed suicide.
Don Murray’s Tale of the Cock (1966) sat on the shelf for three years before being released, minus a censor rating, as These Childish Things to neither critical acclaim nor box office interest. David Lowell Rich made three feature films on the trot – Rosie! (1967) with Rosalind Russell and Sandra Dee, Kirk Douglas/Sylva Koscina thriller A Lovely Way to Die (1968) and Eye of the Cat (1969) before subsiding back into television only emerging for an occasional movie like That Man Bolt (1974) starring Fred Williamson and The Concorde…Airport ’79 (1979). A.J. Russell also achieved breakout success, going on to write A Lovely Way to Die (1968) and Stiletto (1969).
Made-for-television movies became a regular feature of network programming and from time to time threw up a genuine success – Steven Spielberg’s Duel (1971), Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) starring Robert De Niro and The Jericho Mile (1979) with Peter Strauss among the most notable. And you could argue that the genre is currently booming on streaming giants like Netflix and Apple, making movies to win audience share and expand their subscription base.
SOURCES: “Youngsters With Star Potential,” Variety, July 24, 1957, p13; “Competitive Spirit Moves MCA (& U),” Variety, May 4, 1966, p3; “Wm Darrid Is MCA’s Literary Head,” Box Office, May 23, 1966, pE6; “Gotham Draws More Film Prod,” Variety, July 6, 1966, p1; “Broadway,” Box Office, August 29, 1966, pE4; “Universal Sets 11 Features For NBC-TV,” Box Office, September 5, 1966, pE4; “Broadway,” Box Office, October 3, 1966, pE4; “U and Metro Favor Features Made-For-TV,” Variety, October 19, 1966, p4; “Gene Barry Seeks To Prove A TV Star Can Make It Theatrically,” Variety, October 19, 1966, p4; “First U’s Film Made-For-TV Due Nov 26,” Box Office, November 21, 1966, p20; “Review,” Variety, March 1, 1967, p31; “NBC’s Ersatz Pix Hottest Package,” Variety, April 26, 1967, p165; “Last Season’s Most Appealing Pix,” Variety, July 5, 1967, p18; Stuart Byron, “Economics Can Work Out Okay For House Director – D.L. Rich,” Variety, July 5, 1967, p18; “U’s Premiere Status In TV,” Variety, August 16, 1967, p33; “Survivors, U-Pix Bought by BBC,” Variety, September 10, 1969, p59; “15 New MOTW Titles Packaged for O’Seas,” Variety, August 26, 1970, p39.
The Magnificent 60s 