Author: Brian Hannan

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.

Behind the Scenes: “For a Few Dollars More” (1965)

The prospective casting was tantalizing. How about Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin, a pairing for the ages, two of the toughest guys in screen history? Failing that, Eastwood and Charles Bronson, The Man With No Name vs The Monosyllabic Man? The role of Colonel Mortimer could also have gone to Henry Fonda or Robert Ryan before in one of the movie business’s oddest tales it ended up with Lee Van Cleef.

In due course Bronson and Fonda would work with Sergio Leone in the director’s best film,  Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). Fonda’s agent had already dodged Leone’s entreaties once, having rejected A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Marvin was, in fact, all set, an oral agreement in place until a few days before shooting began on For a Few Dollars More he suddenly opted instead for Cat Ballou (1965), a decision that won him an Oscar and turned him into an unlikely star.

When none of his first choices proved available or interested, Leone turned to Van Cleef. Or, more correctly, a photo of the actor pulled from an old casting catalog. Although a western buff like Leone remembered Van Cleef from his debut in High Noon (1952) plus Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Tin Star (1957) and a dozen other bit parts and supporting roles in westerns, Van Cleef had not been credited in a movie since The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

He proved virtually impossible to track down. No small surprise there because he earned a living mostly as a painter now, a car accident having left him with a limp. He couldn’t run, much less ride anything but a docile horse. He required a stepladder to get mounted. Leone flew to Los Angeles and his first sight of  Van Cleef, older than his photograph, proved his instincts correct, Van Cleef’s face “so strong, so powerful.” The salary on offer, for a down-on-his-luck actor scarcely able to pay a phone bill, was a fat purse of $10,000. (Eastwood’s salary was $50,000 plus a profit share compared to just $15,000 for the first film).

Leone put him to work right away, the day he arrived in Italy filming reaction shots. It was just as well his input that day was so simple because, as Clint Eastwood had discovered, the language barrier was a problem. Equally disconcerting was that Van Cleef had no idea why he had been chosen, and since A Fistful of Dollars had not been released in the U.S., no inkling of the kind of western the director had in mind. At Eastwood’s urging, he nipped out to a local cinema and returned with the understanding that the script was “definitely second to style.” Van Cleef was easy to work with, and although he could put away a fair amount of liquid refreshment it never interfered with his work. He came ready for direction.

Leone had not wanted to make a sequel. His original plan was a caper picture called Grand Slam or a remake of Fritz Lang’s classic M to star Klaus Kinski or an autobiographical drama – Viale Glorioso – set in the 1930s. Jolly, the producers of A Fistful of Dollars, offered him a 30 per cent profit share on that film if he made a sequel, as they felt he was legally obliged to do. Instead, furious with his treatment at their hands,  the director hit upon the title of a sequel For a Few Dollars More, the actual storyline only coming to fruition when he came across a treatment called The Bounty Killer by Enzo dell’Aquilla and Fernando Di Leo, who in exchange for a large sum, surrendered their screen credits. Luciano Vincenzoni completed the screenplay in nine days, leavening it with humor, after the director and his brother-in-law Fulvio Morsella had produced a revised treatment, Leone also involved in the final screenplay.

Jolly Films, the makers of “A Fistful of Dollars” already had experience of selling its films abroad. But as with Mario Bava’s “Blood and Black Lace” they were usually sold outright with no share of the box office and in turn sold as a supporting feature for a fixed price to an exhibitor.

Leone found a new backer in Alberto Grimaldi, an Italian entertainment lawyer who worked for Columbia and Twentieth Century Fox and had produced seven Spanish westerns. He promised to triple the first film’s budget to $600,000, with the director on a salary and 50 per cent profit share.

Success bred artistic confidence. A Fistful of Dollars had broken all box office records in Italy, grossing $4.6 million, and so Leone sought to improve on his initial offering and develop an “authorial voice.”

Thematically, with two principals, initially rivals who end up as “argumentative children,” it took inspiration from westerns like The Bravados (1958) –  the photo and the chiming watch – and Robert Aldrich’s Vera Cruz which pitched Burt Lancaster against Gary Cooper. While bounty hunters had cropped up in Hollywood, they were not ruthless killers, actions always justified, rather than merely professionals doing their job. So in some sense Leone was drawing upon, and upending, films like Anthony Mann’s The Naked Spur (1953) and The Tin Star, Andre De Toth’s The Bounty Hunter (1954) and Budd Boetticher’s Ride Lonesome (1959). Just as Clint Eastwood’s bounty hunter underwent change, gradually the character played by Gian Maria Volonte evolved from a straightforward outlaw called Tombstone to a stoned, sadistic bandit named El Indio. 

With artistic pretension came attention to detail. Leone required historical exactitude not just relating to weapons used, but their ballistics and range. Lee Van Cleef’s arsenal included a Buntline Special with removable shoulder stock, Colt Lightning pump action shotgun, Winchester ’94 rifle, and a double-barreled Lefaucheux. Carlo Simi’s town, constructed near Almeria, contained a two-storey saloon, undertaker’s parlor, barbershop, telegraph office, jail, hotel and an adobe First City Bank. And there was nothing pretty about it. The saloon was dirty and overcrowded, machines belching so much smoke it “looked as if a man could choke in there.”  Filming took place between mid-April and the end of June 1965.

Perhaps the biggest area for improvement was the music. Ennio Morricone had scored another nine films since A Fistful of Dollars. Both director and composer had ambitious ideas about how to use the music. The score was not recorded in advance, nor was Morricone given a screenplay, instead listening while Leone told him the story and asked for individual themes for characters. Morricone would play short pieces for Leone and if met with his approval compose longer themes. Each character had their own leitmotif, sometimes the same instrument at different registers, the flute brief and high-pitched for Monco (Eastwood) but in a low register for Mortimer, church bells and a guitar representing El Indio. In a very real sense, they were experimenting with form. Bernardo Bertolucci regarded Morricone’s music as “almost a visible element in the film.” Musical ideas regarding El Indio’s watch, however, were developed at the rough cut stage, its repetitive melody becoming “sound effect, musical introduction and concrete element in the story.”

As well as creating music for audiences, Leone’s films are punctured with music that holds particular meaning for characters, here the watch and in Once Upon a Time in the West the harmonica, in both films flashback used to assist understanding.

The myth of why it took so long for either film to reach the United States was based on two misconceptions, firstly that Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, whose Yojimbo (1961) A Fistful of Dollars closely resembled, had blocked its progress, secondly that it relied on screenwriter Vincenzoni to make the breakthrough via a contact working for United Artists.

In fact, there were more obvious reasons for resistance from American distributors. In the first place, you could not discount snobbery.  The notion that the country that had invented the western should now be reliant on importing them from Italy seemed a shade abhorrent. Although For a Few Dollars More was sold to 26 countries in a day at the annual Sorrento trade fair in 1965 – at the same fair a year earlier there had not been a single taker for A Fistful of Dollars – the United States was not among the buyers, distributors perhaps even more daunted by the prospect of introducing so much violence to American audiences reared on the traditional western.

Foreign movies that made the successful transition to the United States arrived weighted down with critical approval and/or awards or garlanded with a sexy actress – Brigitte Bardot, Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren among the favored – and risqué scenes that Hollywood dare not include for fear of offending the all-mighty Production Code.

But sex was a far easier sell in the U.S. than violence. And an actor with no movie marquee such as Clint Eastwood did not fill exhibitors with delight and even the notion that A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961) failed to stir the critics (as with The Magnificent Seven being a remake of Seven Samurai, most viewing the notion as repellent). So both the first and second pictures in the “Dollars” trilogy were stuck in distribution limbo for three and two years, respectively, before being screened in America.

And, initially, it had appeared that Italian audiences shared the same distaste for a cultural intruder such as A Fistful of Dollars. One cinema chain owner refused to book the film on the grounds that there were not enough female characters. A Fistful of Dollars was released in Italy in August, a dead period, since the month is so hot and everyone has abandoned the city for the beach. It opened – only in Florence and with neither publicity nor advertising – on August 27th  1964, a Friday, and did poor business that day and the next. But by Monday, it was a different story, takings had doubled and over the following two days customers were being turned away. New films typically played first-run for 7-10 days in Florence, A Fistful of Dollars ran for three months, triggering a box office story of Cinderella proportions.  

But my research indicated there had been ample opportunity for an American distributor to snap up the rights to A Fistful of Dollars in 1965, two years before it was finally released there. In the first place, the music rights had already been purchased by New York firm South Mountain Music in March 1965 in expectation the film would acquire release that year. In December 1965 Arrigo Colombo, partner in Jolly, flew to the United States for the specific purpose of lining up a major distributor for A Fistful of Dollars. The company had previously secured U.S. distribution for horror product like Castle of Blood (1964) and Blood and Black Lace (1964) but those were outright sales.

With the movie already sold to Spain, West Germany, France and Japan, Colombo aimed to conclude a deal for the English-speaking market, “purposely holding back” from releasing the picture in those countries as he sought an all-encompassing contract. At that point, Kurosawa no longer stood in the way, that issue “now cleared up” settled in the normal fashion by financial inducement, in an “amicable settlement” Toho snagging the Japanese and Korean rights, the deal sweetened with a minimum $100,000 against a share of global profits. But Colombo went home empty-handed, unable to secure any deal and his temerity  ridiculed by trade magazine Variety

Although Sergio Leone had one other legal obstacle to surmount that would not have got in the way of a U.S. distribution deal, the worst that could happen being that a contract might be struck with a different company.  Italian companies Jolly Films/Unidis, which had backed the original, took umbrage at Leone going ahead with the sequel without their financial involvement, cutting them off from the profit pipeline. So in April 1966 they took Leone to court in Rome arguing that For A Few Dollars More “represented a steal as well as unlawful competition for its own Fistful.” Four months later the judge denied the claim on the grounds  that “the character played by Clint Eastwood in each film is not characterized to such a degree that a likeness exists” (even though to all intents and purposes it was the same character, cigar, poncho, gun, bounty hunting!). Ironically, Italian laxity in such matters counted against Eastwood when he failed to prevent the distribution of a film based on two segments of Rawhide stitched together.

It would also be highly unusual if United Artists was not aware of both A Fistful of Dollars and For A Few Dollars More since, in keeping tabs on the foreign performance of both Goldfinger (1964) and Thunderball (1965) the studio could scarcely fail to notice the Italian westerns close on their box office tail, the second western outpointing Thunderball in daily averages in Rome.

But the story still, erroneously, goes that it was the intervention of writer Vincenzoni which proved decisive. He had contacts in U.S, namely Ilya Lopert of United Artists. Grimaldi was, meanwhile, trying to sell U.S. and Canada rights relating to the second picture. Vincenzoni arranged for UA’s representatives to view A Fistful of Dollars in Rome and cut himself in for a slice of the profits when the distributor surprisingly purchased the entire series.

Since A Fistful of Dollars had already been sold to most major territories, UA could only acquire the North American rights – for a reported $900,000 –  but for the other two films  gained a considerably larger share of global distribution

United Artists was an unusual company among the Hollywood hierarchy, and not primarily due to recurrent Oscar success, but because it had, completely unexpectedly, hit box office gold with James Bond. There was nothing particularly odd about a series, as Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes etc (still flourishing in the 1960s) testified. What was distinctive about the Bonds was that each picture – the four so far had earned close to $150 million worldwide, not counting merchandising  – had done better than the last, which went against the standard rule of sequels of diminishing returns and higher costs. Given the opportunity to buy into a ready-made series (two films in the can, the third in production) UA made an “attempt to calculatedly duplicate the (Bond) phenomenon” and in so doing “create a trend.” Assuming the movies would follow the Bond formula of increased grosses with each successive picture, the studio was prepared to spend “many hundreds of thousands” of dollars to establish the  first picture.   

United Artists embarked on an unusual sales campaign to the trade. Instead of marketing the pictures one at a time, they started to promote the series with the tagline “A Fistful of Dollars is the first motion picture of its kind, it won’t be the last.” The advertising campaign was unusual in that it was based entirely around introducing the character rather than the story (much in the same way as James Bond had been), three separate slivers of the poster devoted to visual aspects, the cigar, gun and poncho, each carrying mention of “The Man With No Name,” such anonymity one of the talking points of the movies.

Cinema managers were briefed on release dates, A Fistful of Dollars in January 1967, the sequel for April and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for Xmas that year. Like the Bonds, it was expected that box office would progressively, if not explosively, increase. The studio unveiled a “hard-hitting campaign” designed to “intrigue the western or action fan.”

However, the North American premiere was held not in the United States but Canada, at the Odeon-Carlton in Toronto. Having committed to a four-week engagement, a risky prospect for an unknown quantity, the cinema started advertising a teaser campaign three weeks in advance. During the first week, posters were not just focused on the “man with no name” but also “the film with no name” and the “cinema with no name,” all those elements removed from the artwork until the second week of the campaign. UA allocated $20,000 in marketing, up to four times the usual amount spent on a launch there, and was rewarded with strong results – “bullish but not Bondish” Variety’s verdict.

However, the UA gamble did not pay off, especially when taking into account the high cost of buying the rights allied to huge marketing costs. Initial commercial projections proved unrealistic. Despite apparently hitting the box office mark in first-run dates in key cities, the film was pulled up short by its New York experience. Shunted straight into a showcase (wide) release rather than a first-run launch, it brought in a pitiful $153,000 from 75 theaters – even The Quiller Memorandum (1966) in its second week did better ($150,000 from 25). As a consequence when For a Few Dollars More was released in April/May, UA held off boking it into New York until “a suitable arrangement” could be made, which translated into hand-picking a dozen houses famed for appealing to action fans plus 600-seat arthouse the Trans-Lux West.

United Artists predicted $3.5 million in rentals (the amount returned to studios after cinemas take their cut of the gross) for A Fistful of Dollars and $4.5 million with For a Few Dollars More. Neither came close, the latter the marginally better performer with $2.2 million in rentals (enough for a lowly 41st on the annual chart) with the first film earning $2.1 million in rentals (46th) way behind more traditional performers like Hombre ($6.5 million for tenth spot), El Dorado ($5.9 million in 13th) and The War Wagon ($5.5 million in 15th).

The vaunted Bond-style box office explosion never materialized and it might have helped if UA had kept closer watch on the actual revenues posted in Italy for the series. While For a Few Dollars More increased by $2 million the takings of A Fistful of Dollars, the final film in the trilogy, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly produced lower grosses than even the first.

However, it did look as if The Good, the Bad and the Ugly would come good. UA opened it in two first-run cinemas in New York where each house retained it for six weeks. But although the final tally of $4.5 million (24th spot in the annual rankings) was the best of the series, it did not herald returns that made it anywhere near comparable to the Bonds.

It’s possible the movies did better in terms of admissions than the box office figures show. Distributors pushing foreign product into arthouses were generally able to achieve a high share of the rental – 50 per cent the going rate – because they were able to set rival arthouses against each other and movies with a sexy theme/star had inbuilt box office appeal, La Dolce Vita (1960) and And God Created Women (1956) the classic examples. But that would not be possible when trying to interest ordinary cinemas with a film lacking in sex.

When I researched the early Bonds for a previous Blog, I found that United Artists had only managed to achieve bookings for Dr No (1962) by lowering its rental demand. Exhibitors paid the studio just 30 per cent of the gross. And I wondered if perhaps the same occurred with A Fistful of Dollars given the star, like Sean Connery, was completely unknown. Of course, it would not explain why the series did not grow as expected.

Of course, there was a surprising winner and an unexpected loser in the whole ‘Dollars’ saga. Clint Eastwood emerged as the natural successor to John Wayne with a solid box office – and later critical – reputation for American westerns starting off with Hang ‘Em High (1968) which beat The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at the box office, while Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) proved a huge flop in the U.S.

Christopher Frayling, Sergio Leone, Something To Do With Death (Faber & Faber, 2000), p160-162, p165-200; “Italo’s Own Oater Leads Box Office,” Variety, December 2, 1964, p16; “South Mountain Buys Dollar Score,” Variety, March 10, 1965, p58; “Jolly’s Colombo Discovers N.Y.C. Busy at Xmas,” Variety, December 22, 1965, p3; “Tight Race for Box Office Honours in Italy Looms as Thunder Leads Dollars,” Variety, January 65, 1966, p15; “Dollars World Distribution for UA,” Variety, March 22, 1966, p22; “Clint Eastwood Italo Features Face Litigation,” Variety, April 13, 1966, p29; “UA Cautious on Links to Italo Fistful; Faces Slap from Kurosawa,” Variety, July 13, 1966, p7; “Rome Court Rejects Plea for Seizure of Few Dollars Made By Fistful Film,” Variety, August 3, 1966, p28; “Clint Eastwood vs Jolly on 2 Segs of Rawhide ‘Billed’ New Italo Pic,” Variety, September 7, 1966, p15; “Italy Making More Westerns, Spy Films Than Star Vehicles,” Box Office, October 31, 1966, p13; “Hemstitched Feature,” Variety, November 23, 1966, p22; “UA Division Holds Screenings of Westerns,” Box Office, December 12, 1966, pE2; Advertisement, Variety, December 21, 1966, p12-13; “UA Gambles Dollars As Good As Bonds,” Variety, December 28, 1966, p7; “Fred Goldberg Shows Ads on UA ‘Dollar’ Films,” Box Office, January 2, 1967, pE4; “Review,” Box Office, January 9, 1967, pA11; “Fistful of Dollars: Male (and Italo) B.O.,” Variety, January 18, 1967, p7; “Fistful of Dollars: The Glad Reaper,” Variety, February 1, 1967, p5;  “This Week’s N.Y. Showcases,” Variety, February 8, 1967, p9; “Fistful’s Weaker N.Y. B.O. Clench,” Variety, February 8, 1967, p7; “Methodical Campaign Kicks Off Ideal Fistful Ballyhoo in Toronto,” Box Office, May 1, 1967, pA1; “Few Dollars More Runs 30% Ahead of First Dubbed Italo-Made Western, So Bond Analogy Makes Out,” Variety, May 31, 1967, p4; “N.Y. Slow to Fall Into Line,” Variety, May 31, 1967, p4;   “B’way Still Boffo,” Variety, July 12, 1967, p9; “Carefully Picked,” Variety, July 12, 1967, p4; “B’way Biz Still Big,” Variety, July 19, 1967, p9; “Big Rental Films of 1967,” Variety, January 3, 1968, p25; “B’way B.O. Up,” Variety, January 31, 1968, p9; “Big Rental Films of 1968,” Variety, January 8, 1969, p15.

For a Few Dollars More (1965/1967) ****

Sergio Leone played the numbers game – one hero/anti-hero for debut A Fistful of Dollars (1964), doubling down in For a Few Dollars More, bad guys in triplicate for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) and virtually an entire spread – Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards and Claudia Cardinale (not quite fitting the anti-hero mold) – for his masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West (1969), upping the artistic ante with every episode. For a Few Dollars More is part sequel, part caper and part dress rehearsal.

Looking back on this Leone venture now you can’t help but be influenced by what followed in particular Once Upon a Time in the West, and the way in which themes, ideas and characters introduced here are more fully developed. You could start with the musical motif. Here a fob watch that plays a little tune, as important to its owner, the outlaw El Indio, as Bronson’s harmonica and coming complete with revelatory flashback. Oddly enough, you can find comparison between El Indio and railroad baron Morton from the later film in their almost orgasmic expressions (El Indio is stoned half the time, possibly the first western villain to be hopped up on marijuana) to what they perceive as a dream (water in the case of Morton). As with Once two enemies team up, here Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef, there Bronson and Fonda, and there’s an almost identical sequence when the pair, working in tandem, clear a street of gunmen. Although there’s no revolving camera, the final shoot-out takes space in a space marked out as a circle.

Revenge here is triggered by a murdered sister rather a brother. And Indio is at least as clever as Fonda, matching him in grandiose ambition and treachery. And there’s even an irritating insect, and a railroad, but that’s just a nuisance. Perhaps the most telling moment in Once, the one where Leone took command of his artistry was in the massacre at the ranch, a child brutally dispatched on screen whereas here when a child is murdered it is off-screen.

The story’s an unusual one for a sequel. Having established the Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) – actually given a name here, Monco – as a gunslinger par excellence, the new film pits him against Colonel Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef) not just a rival bounty hunter  but in some senses smarter. If it came to a shootout, the longer range of the Colonel’s weaponry would challenge Monco’s skills. When they discover they are both seeking the same wanted man, El Indio (Gian Maria Volonte), they decide to join forces. Monco, however, is tasked with being the inside man and must join the gang.

Halfway through, the picture switches tack and becomes a caper movie. El Indio plans to knock off the “fortress” of a bank in El Paso to the tune of half a million dollars. So, unexpectedly perhaps for a western, we get the usual heist preparation and logistics. El Indio’s cunning plan pivots on creating a diversion by robbing a bank elsewhere, Monco part of the small group tasked with that job. Turns out El Indio is disinclined to share the spoils, making the job of the bounty hunters easier by arranging for his own bunch to be killed off.

The twists and turns of the plot, El Indio trying to outwit everyone, Colonel Mortimer not easily duped, gives this more zip than you might expect. Sure in the first 20 minutes the body count is exceptionally high, but once it settles down becomes more character-driven.

There’s a surprising amount of humor, a boy huckster ripping off Monco, a trio of gunslingers turning tail after a demonstration of Mortimer’s marksmanship, a rapacious wife lusting after a “tall” man since, in a visual punch line, her husband is revealed as short.

The German poster eliminated Lee Van Cleef in favor of local box office hero Klaus Kinski.

And, of course, there is Leone’s visual splendor, his unrivalled ability to create scenes, build tension, not quite to the baroque levels of Once but getting there, the “hat” shoot-out, Mortimer standing tall nonplussed as bullets zing along the ground coming closer and closer. Supporting characters are well observed, El Indio’s sidekicks Nino (Mario Brega) and Groggy (Luigi Pistilli), though in the scene-stealing stakes nobody can beat the glowering scene-stealer-in-chief, Juan Wild (Klaus Kinski), who scarcely needs to be saddled with a hunchback to steal a scene.

It was a rehearsal for Ennio Morricone too, as he developed individual themes from individual characters. It took a posse of writers to nail this down – Leone, sometime producer Fulvio Morsella (My Name Is Nobody, 1973), Luciano Vincenzoni (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), Sergio Donati (Once Upon a Time in the West), Fernando Di Leo (Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang!, 1966) and Enzo Dell’Aquila (Seven  Guns for the MacGregors, 1966).

Note: although movies could often take a while to work their way round the world, the first two “Dollars” pictures, despite their success in Continental Europe, took forever (in Hollywood terms) to reach the U.S. and Britain, not reaching either country till 1967, hence the oddity of the release date.

The Other Record Tom Cruise Broke – “Maverick: Top Gun” (2022)

Box office performance is really the only measure the concerns Hollywood – Maverick: Top Gun setting a new Memorial Day high – but it’s not the only record studios are interested in breaking. Setting records for highest screen average and numbers of screens utilized is also important because it provides an indication, hopefully of a potential smash, at the very least of studio intent and exhibitor initial response to a movie. So the notion that Maverick: Top Gun received the biggest-ever U.S. release – in terms of screens – would not have gone unremarked by the industry. The more screens, the bigger the prospective pie.

In the run-up to opening when studios had little more than hype to sustain publicity, the number of screens was seen as a marketing tool. If that many exhibitors had signed up, they must be right. Many films in the past did not reach their box office potential simply because they were starved of screens and in failing to involve the necessary number of theaters opened themselves up to piracy.

The new screens mark set by Maverick: Top Gun was 4,732. You might be surprised to learn screen numbers in this range were being targeted as long ago as Shrek 2 (2004) when the animation juggernaut slammed into 4,223 palaces, beating with a vengeance the previous record held by Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) by over 500. See what I mean – the bigger the volume of screens, the more screenings, the screens-plus-screenings equation resulting in bigger box office, usually, as in this case, of the record variety.

But Shrek 2’s record was there to be challenged – and it was. Madagascar (2005) set a new screens record followed by others like Mission: Impossible 3 (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), Spiderman (2007), The Dark Knight (2008), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), Twilight: Eclipse (2010) all the way to Despicable Me 3 which debuted on 4,535 screens. Sequels also had a built-in awareness factor.

The idea of getting a film out on as many screens as possible as soon as possible is not a new idea. Go back almost a century, to the advent of sound, and Warner Brothers employed the same technique for The Jazz Singer (1927), not exactly at launch, but a few months later in March 1928 in 235 theaters and not for the reasons laid out above but to give exhibitors who had installed expensive sound equipment a crack at a proper full-length movie.  Following this was a system that would last from the silent era all the way through to the 1970s-1980s.  

First-run was the key rather than what was initially called “saturation” or “simultaneous release” or “wide release” or “day-and-date” and also fell into the localized subset of “showcase.”  Movies were launched in giant (by today’s standards) theaters seating 1,000-6,000 (Radio City Music Hall) and played there until the first-run juice had been extracted and then moved down a food chain delineated by ticket price down to as many levels as twelve, an automatic delay built into each shift down to ensure that moviegoers who wanted to pay the cheapest prices did not get ahead of the queue. In the silent era, prints were expensive and they were in short supply, so day-and-date was a risky prospect. Movies opened in different cities at different times and the same print went through hundreds of hands until it was unplayable.

Even so wide release – of any number – was viewed very early on as a marketing tool, Carl Laemmle the first to recognize the possibilities when he played Traffic in Souls (1913) in nine houses and by 1921 the idea, driven by phenomenon, had taken off when Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (1921) was shown day-and-date in 300 venues. But such a wide release remained a rarity, most films going down the traditional route. The next stage was signaled by Cecil B. DeMille, wearing his marketing hat, when he invented the local world premiere. The Buccaneer (1938) launched in New Orleans and used the unprecedented nationwide publicity – gained by ferrying hundreds of reporters down from big cities in specially-appointed trains on an all-expenses paid jaunt – to precipitate a simultaneous release in 200 cinemas.

Area saturation was a natural development. The Westerner (1940) opened exclusively in Texas and broke 94 records in its first 94 engagements. Then came marketing genius Terry Turner who created the sequential area release, shifting huge numbers of prints week-by-week state-by-state. By concentrating advertising expenditure on a single area, Turner started “blitz marketing” and not necessarily for star-driven vehicles, Hitler’s Children (1943) the first to benefit.

But with too few movies being made, especially after studios were forced to sell off their lucrative cinemas chains by government decree in the late 1940s, first-run cinemas were inclined to hold onto big hits for weeks and months on end rather than participate in any simultaneous release program whose biggest beneficiaries were always the smaller cinemas. By the end of the 1950s and start of the 1960s, simultaneous release was accorded pictures of the here-today-gone-tomorrow variety, horror, sci-fi, exploitation and other low-budget items. One of the reasons why The Magnificent Seven (1960) did so poorly at the box office on initial release was it was sent out on the area saturation system, meaning in the first place it could not be held over since the prints were due somewhere else the following week, and it was viewed by audiences as a movie that fitted that low-budget criteria.

It was the exhibitor who revived the area saturation plan for pictures with decent marquee values. Wisconsin theatre owner Ben Marcus organised exhibitors into area groupings to assist studios in launching such films as The Great Imposter starring Tony Curtis and The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1961) with Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy. Out of this emerged the “showcase” release pattern whereby in, initially, New York and Los Angeles, movies headed straight into multiple engagements either immediately after first run or bypassing first run entirely. In 1963 a total of 124 movies were shown in Los Angeles using this system resulting in a $21.8 million gross from 3,769 playdates. By 1964 in New York The Carpetbaggers raked in $862,000 from just 25 theaters and with the Bond movies racking up box office records in first run their appearance in showcase proved invaluable.

But just as saturation was booming, demand suddenly slackened, shortage of movies, the collapse of studios, the demise of the roadshow, ensuring that by the early 1970s saturation release, whether national or local, was largely being used by low-budgeters, reissues, blaxploitation, king fu, soft porn or movies that went “four-wall” (i.e. the theaters were rented by a studio rather than the exhibitor doing the renting). Four-wall was largely the remit of nature documentaries, but Warner Brothers used it for Billy Jack (1971) and The Exorcist (1973), United Artists for Last Tango in Paris (1972) and Universal for Breezy (1973) directed by Clint Eastwood.     

Legend of course has it that Universal created the modern wide release with Jaws (1975). That just happens to be myth. Jaws opened day-and-date in just 409 theatres. What Jaws instigated, purely by chance, was a reversal, a different approach to high-end big-budget pictures. “Studios with what they believed were guaranteed winners had consistently used a different scenario. The Exorcist opened in 24 theaters, Earthquake (1974) in 62, Papillon (1973) in 109 and The Godfather Part II (1974) in 157. Movies that opened in the Jaws range and above – Magnum Force (1973) in 418, The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) in 635, The Trial of Billy Jack (1974), Breakout (1975) and The Master Gunfighter (1975) in 1,000-plus were not expected to last as long. Statistics proved that for features with high box office expectation the slower limited roll-out was the more effective approach,” I wrote in 2019. I argued then and still believe that Universal expected Jaws to be a movie, as evidenced by the release strategy, that made a quick buck and the studio was as astonished as anyone when it skyrocketed.   

But as production costs increased it was essential to get revenue in as quickly as possible so, except in rare cases, from the 1980s onwards, wide release became the norm. Even so it was another decade after Jaws before releases on 2,000 screens appeared, Rambo: First Blood II (1985) first there. Four years later – front-loading now the aspiration – the summer of 1989 saw 2,327 screens for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, 2,202 for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, 2,410 for Ghostbusters II and 2,194 for Batman. Crocodile Dundee II (1988) had already upped the ante by opening in 2,837. A new high of 3,012 screens set by Mission Impossible (1996) did not last long, The Lost World (1997) leaving that in the dust with 3,565 screens. Screen records switched from studio to studio until the 4,000-mark was busted.

Maverick: Top Gun is just the latest in a long list of would-be blockbusters to take a similar approach. Any takers for next year’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One to be the first to hit 5,000 screens?  

NOTE: The following week Cruise broke his own record when Maverick: Top Gun added another 19 screens. The new record is 4,751 screens. On top of that it had a record low box office fall of just 33% at a time when blockbuster generally drop 50% or more in their second week.

SOURCE: Brian Hannan, In Theaters Everywhere, A History of the Hollywood Wide Release, 1913-2017 (McFarland, 2019).

Maverick: Top Gun (2022) **** – Seen at the Cinema

And just like that Old Hollywood thumped a nose at super-heroes and jumped back to the top of the tree. Of course, that’s if you discount Tom Cruise as being a super-hero of box office dimensions and one with his own franchise Mission Impossible which at times has single-handedly kept his marquee value alive.

Unusually, for a sequel, this has taken account of the passing of time. No shoe-horning Maverick (Tom Cruise) into the role of current hot-shot pilot and there is a past he has to deal with, two relationships in fact, with Rooster (Miles Teller) the son of Goose, whose death Maverick is accused of causing, and with Penny (Jennifer Connelly), an on-again off-again affair too often too easily fractured. But, of course, the main thrust of the picture is Maverick taking on everybody, the top brass in the shape of Admiral Simpson (Jon Hamm) and Admiral Bates (Charles Parnell), his pupils and the unnamed bad guys.

It’s pretty nifty in using character flaw to justify the plot. That Maverick is anywhere near being recruited as teacher and not gainfully employed as a high-flying Admiral somewhere – as is former-rival-cum-buddy Iceman (Val Kilmer) – is down to the fact that he has resisted well-justified promotion in order to keep flying and because, well, he tends to piss off his superiors. But he still has the juice, in the opening sequence taking an experimental plane way beyond its capabilities (another plot point, by the way).

Somewhat older, not necessarily that much wiser, Maverick’s introduction to the Top Gun base is a tad humiliating, drummed out of Penny’s bar for not being able to pay his tab, watching wistfully as younger guns batter out his favorite tune on the piano, and aware that he has personal bridges to mend, that maybe, just this time, he might have the maturity to manage.

There’s the usual cocky bunch led by Hangman (Glen Powell), Phoenix (Monica Barbaro)  and Payback (Jay Ellis) plus Bob (Lewis Pullman), his call sign apparently a contraction of first name Robert but in reality standing for baby-on-board. In true reality television style there are heats, only four pilots making the cut to fly the desperate mission against the enemy.

And here’s where the picture takes off (pardon the pun). The aeronautics are just breathtaking and if you happen to catch it in Imax or an equivalent you’re going to be rocked by the sound  as well. It’s unbelievable stuff.  If there’s any CGI in there it’s not in the shapes of aliens, and looks distinctly old Hollywood. The kind of epic airplane stunts for which you run out of superlatives. And in best James Bond fashion the clock is ticking.

A resoundingly human story, relationships that looked cut-and-dried proving more fluid, until a band of brothers are properly worked up. Even as you wonder just how they are going to involve Maverick in a finale in which he should be a back-seat driver, a deft screenplay provides the answer. Maverick stands up for older guys everywhere, like an ageing pro brought back to save a football game.

Nostalgia has never been more vividly utilized. In terms of satisfactory denouement this is along the lines of the resolutions in Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens (2015) rather than the desultory reappearance of Decker (Harrison Ford again) in Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Some great scenes from the original have been touchingly reinvented, snippets of the original themes inserted at vital points plus a Lady Gaga offering.

It could easily have sunk not so much from the weight of expectations (and the long Covid-induced delay) but from a clunky re-boot, as producers determined, story be damned, to get all their ducks in line. Instead, there’s enough recycling to catch satisfy the previous generation of fans and sufficient whip-smacking wizardry to pull in the new generation,  which determinedly steers clear of anything non-CGI.  

Cruise is just superb, potentially an Oscar-nominated performance, as the guy who refuses to be jaded, who requires not one wingman but a whole team of them, with still the individuality and self-confidence that manuals cannot deliver. Given a job that set him up not to be a scene-stealer (teachers just ain’t action heroes) Cruise effortlessly steals the show, and its maturity more than double-balls-out cojones that does the trick.

Full marks to Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion, 2103) for fulfilling those weighty expectations, for keeping the movie focused when the temptation must have been to insert more romance, buff up issues facing the rest of the gang, add too much more when what this always needed was so much less, let the action show the way and Cruise carry the story. Much as I like Miles Teller in this I was hoping he would go on to better top-billed parts after Whiplash (2014).  Glen Powell (Everybody Wants Some, 2016) is another one Hollywood should be trying to make more of. I could say the same for the gutsy Monica Barbero (The Cathedral, 2021). This is the kind of movie to make the next generation of stars, especially as it solidified the reputation of the last of the older generation in Tom Cruise.

Incidentally, while I was at the cinema for this I saw a cracking trailer for the next Mission Impossible picture so cruise is going to continue his box office roll for a while.

Behind the Scenes : All-Time Top 20

Regular readers will know that this Blog occasionally turns its attention to stories about the “Behind the Scenes” aspects of movie-making. This has become a surprisingly popular element of the Blog, many of these stories generating as many views as straightforward reviews. So I thought you might like to know which “Behind the Scenes” articles have proved most popular in the two years I’ve been writing the Blog.  

  1. The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968). Cult classic starring Marianne Faithful and Alain Delon had a rocky road to release, especially in the U.S. where the censor was not happy.
  2. The Guns of Navarone (1961). The “making of” could have been a film in itself, from director being fired, screenwriter rewriting the Alistair MacLean classic, audacious casting, and life-threatening injuries.
  3. The Satan Bug (1965). Alistair MacLean again as director John Sturges hit a heap of problems adapting the pandemic classic for the big screen.
  4. Ice Station Zebra (1968).John Sturges second venture into Alistair MacLean territory proved as sticky as the first, but with a bigger budget.
  5. Waterloo (1970).Sergei Bondarchuk faced as many problems trying to bring this Napoleon epic to the screen as the French Emperor had fighting the British and Austrians.
  6. The Wicker Man (1973). Now considered a classic, but not then, as a change of management at the British studio virtually sabotaged the picture.
  7. Genghis Khan (1965). A venture into epic European filmmaking with an all-star cast led by Omar Sharif.
  8. Hour of Gun (1967). More problems mounted for John Sturges as he embarked on an ambitious and thoughtful reinvention of the Wyatt Earp legend.
  9. The Godfather (1972). Francis Coppola might have thought twice about making the Mafia epic had he known just how many problems he would encounter.
  10. The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968). British director Ken Annakin had his hands full on this Italian heist picture starring Raquel Welch.
  11. Valley of the Dolls (1967). Translating the biggest bestseller of the decade into a movie proved calamitous.
  12. The Spy with My Face (1965). How MGM broke the rules and managed to turn an expanded episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. television series into a box office smash.
  13. The Great Escape (1963). How John Sturges created a P.O.W. classic with a little help from Steve McQueen.
  14. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). The story behind Sergio Leone’s masterpiece whose score by Ennio Morricone has conceivably sold more albums than the film sold tickets.
  15. The Cincinnati Kid (1965). What happened after Sam Peckinpah was fired for adding salacious unscripted scenes and filming in black-and-white.
  16. Cast a Giant Shadow (1965). Producer Melville Shavelson faced an uphill struggle bringing an unwieldy biopic starring Kirk Douglas, John Wayne and Frank Sinatra to the screen.
  17. The Secret Ways (1961), Star Richard Widmark turned producer in a bid to improve his box office value but ran afoul of the director.
  18. The Night They Raided Minskys / The Night They Invented Striptease (1968). Convoluted attempt by neophyte director William Friedkin to make a movie celebrating America’s vaudeville past.
  19. The Way West (1965). Long-in-the-works western starring Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum.
  20. The Secret Ceremony (1968). Elizabeth Taylor’s boldest role of the decade was fraught with incident.

All-Time Top 40

I started this Blog two years ago this month and to my astonished delight it is now read in over 120 countries. I am now well past over 500 reviews. So I thought you might be interested to know which of these reviews has attracted the most attention. This isn’t my choice of the top films in the Blog, but yours, my loyal readers. The chart covers the films viewed the most times since the Blog began, from June 1, 2020 to May 31, 2022.

  1. The Secret Ways (1961). Richard Widmark exudes menace in this adaptation of an early Alistair MacLean spy thriller set in Hungary during the Cold War. Senta Berger  has a small role.
  2. Jessica (1962). Innocently gorgeous widow Angie Dickinson finds her looks turn so many male heads in a small Italian town that the female population seeks revenge.
  3. Ocean’s 11 (1960). The Rat Pack makes its debut – Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. et al plan an audacious Las Vegas robbery. 
  4. Pharoah (1966). Priests battle kings in Polish epic set in ancient Egypt. Fabulous to look at and thoughtful.
  5. Fraulein Doktor (1969). Suzy Kendall in the best role of her career as a sexy German spy in World War One.
  6. The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl (1968). Cult French movie starring Daniele Gaubert as a sexy cat burglar.
  7. The Swinger (1966). Ann-Margret struts her stuff as a magazine journalist trying to persuade Tony Franciosca she is as sexy as the character she has written about.
  8. It’s Not All Rock’n’Roll (2020).  Ageing rocker Dave Doughman aims to mix a career with being a father in this fascinating documentary
  9. A Place for Lovers (1969). Faye Dunaway and Marcello Mastroianni in doomed love affair directed by Vittorio De Sica.
  10. The Venetian Affair (1966). Robert Vaughn hits his acting stride as a former CIA operative turned journalist investigating suicide bombings in Venice. Great supporting cast includes Elke Sommer and Boris Karloff.
  11. Moment to Moment (1966). Hitchcockian-style thriller with Jean Seberg caught up in  murder plot in the French Riviera. Also features Honor Blackman.
  12. 4 for Texas (1963). Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin face off in a Robert Aldrich western featuring Ursula Andress and Anita Ekberg with Charles Bronson in a smaller part.
  13. Age of Consent (1969). Helen Mirren stars as the nubile muse of jaded painter James Mason returning to his Australian roots.
  14. The Double Man (1967). Yul Brynner chases his doppelganger in the Swiss Alps with Britt Ekland adding a touch of glamour.
  15.  Subterfuge (1968). C.I.A. operative Gene Barry hunts an M.I.5 mole in London. Intrigue all round with Joan Collins supplying the romance and a scene-stealing Suzanna Leigh as a villain.
  16. A House Is Not a Home (1965). Biopic of notorious madam Polly Adler (played by Shelley Winters) who rubbed shoulders with the cream of Prohibition gangsters.
  17. Can Heironymous Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humpe and Find True Happiness? (1969). Off-the-wall musical directed by star Anthony Newley that has to be seen to be believed. Joan Collins pops up. 
  18. Pressure Point (1962). Prison psychiatrist Sidney Poitier must help racist Nazi Bobby Darin.
  19. Deadlier than the Male (1967). Richard Johnson as Bulldog Drummond is led a merry dance by spear-gun-toting Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina in outlandish thriller.
  20. Valley of Gwangi (1969). Special effects genius Ray Harryhausen the star here as James Franciscus and Gila Golen encounter prehistoric monsters in a forbidden valley.
  21. The Naked Runner (1967). With his son held hostage, Frank Sinatra is forced to carry out an assassination in East Germany.
  22. Orgy of the Dead (1965). Bearing the Ed Wood imprint, mad monster mash-up with the naked dead.
  23. Once a Thief (1965). Ann-Margret is a revelation in crime drama with ex-con Alain Delon coerced into a robbery despite trying to go straight. Supporting cast boasts Jack Palance, Van Heflin and Jeff Corey. 
  24. The Sicilian Clan (1969). Stunning caper with thief Alain Delon and Mafia chief Jean Gabin teaming up for audacious jewel heist with cop Lino Ventura on their trail. French thriller directed by Henri Verneuil. Great score by Ennio Morricone.
  25. Dark of the Sun / The Mercenaries (1968). More diamonds at stake as Rod Taylor leads a gang of mercenaries into war-torn Congo.  Jim Brown, Yvette Mimieux and Kenneth More co-star. Based on the Wilbur Smith bestseller
  26. Stiletto (1969). Mafia hitman Alex Cord pursued by tough cop Patrick O’Neal. Britt Ekland as the treacherous girlfriend heads a supporting cast including Roy Scheider, Barbara McNair and Joseph Wiseman.
  27. Maroc 7 (1967). Yet more jewel skullduggery with Gene Barry infiltrating a gang of thieves in Morocco who use the cover of a fashion shoot. Top female cast comprises Elsa Martinelli, Cyd Charisse, Tracy Reed and Alexandra Stewart.
  28. The Rock (1996). Former inmate Sean Connery breaks into Alcatraz with Nicolas Cage to prevent mad general Ed Harris blowing up San Francisco. Michael Bay over-the-top thriller with blistering pace.
  29. The Swimmer (1968). Burt Lancaster’s life falls apart as he swims pool-by-pool across the county. Superlative performance. 
  30. Hour of the Gun (1967). James Garner as a ruthless Wyatt Earp and Jason Robards as Doc Holliday in John Sturges’ realistic re-telling of events after the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
  31. Fade In (1968). Long-lost modern western with Burt Reynolds serenading low-level movie executive Barbara Loden whose company is actually filming Terence Stamp picture Blue.
  32. Dr Syn Alias the Scarecrow (1963). The British movie version of Disney American television mini-series sees Patrick McGoohan as a Robin Hood-type character assisting local smugglers.
  33. P.J./New Face in Hell (1968). Private eye George Peppard is duped by shady millionaire Raymond Burr and mistress Gayle Hunnicutt in murder mystery.
  34. Sol Madrid/The Heroin Gang (1968). In his second top-billed role David MacCallum drags hooker Stella Stevens to Mexico to capture drugs kingpin Telly Savalas.
  35. A Twist of Sand (1968). Diamonds again. Smugglers Richard Johnson and Jeremy Kemp hunt long-lost jewels in Africa. Honor Blackman is along for the voyage.
  36. Genghis Khan (1965). Omar Sharif plays the legendary warlord who unites warring Mongol tribes. Stellar cast includes Stephen Boyd, James Mason, Francoise Dorleac, Eli Wallach, Telly Savalas and Robert Morley.
  37. Interlude (1968). Bittersweet romance between famed conductor Oskar Wener and young reporter Barbara Ferris.
  38. Woman of Straw (1964). Sean Connery tangles with Gina Lollobrigida in lurid tale of murder and inheritance.
  39. Bedtime Story (1964). Marlon Brando and David Niven are rival seducers on the Riviera targeting wealthy women.
  40. Sisters (1969). Intrigue, adultery and incest haunt Nathalie Delon and Susan Strasberg as they try to recapture the innocence of the past.

Behind the Scenes: “Battle of the Bulge” (1965)

It was Hollywood’s worst nightmare. Two major studios – Columbia and Warner Brothers –  were competing to make films about the Battle of the Bulge, one of the most famous episodes of the Second World War. Rival movies on similar or the same subject  – classic examples You Only Live Twice (1967) vs Casino Royale (1967) or Deep Impact (1998) vs.  Armageddon (1998) – risked cannibalizing each other, each entry eating into the prospective audience of the opposition.

At first it seemed like the Columbia entry had the upper hand. Writer-producer Anthony Lazzarino had spent four years preparing The 16th of December: The Story of the Battle of the Bulge (the date referring to the start of the battle). Lazzarino’s project was endorsed by the U.S. Department of Defense which offered exclusive cooperation. Advisors were of the top rank – General Omar Bradley,  General Hasso E. von Manteufel who had commanded the Panzers during the battle, British generals Sir Francis de Guingard and Robert Hasbrouck and Colonel John Eisenhower (son of Ike) plus the cooperation of the legendary Eisenhower himself and Field Marshal Montgomery.

With a budget in the $6 million – $8.4 million range, and shooting set to start in winter 1965, William Holden was lined up to play General Eisenhower and Kirk Douglas for  General Hasso. Although initially intending to film in the Ardennes and Canada, ultimately the producers settled for the cheaper option of  Camp Drum, one of the largest military installations in the U.S, a remote area in upper New York where the buildings could stand in for Bastogne, around which much of the real battle revolved, production there feasible because the Camp closed for winter. .

But that meant it would already be behind the eight-ball since Battle of the Bulge intended opening at Xmas 1965. Richard Fleischer (The Boston Strangler, 1968) was signed to direct. But he had become embroiled in a lawsuit with producer Samuel Bronston (El Cid, 1961, The Fall of the Roman Empire, 1964) whose production outfit had gone bust, killing off a deal for Fleischer to make The Night Runners of Bengal. The director was seeking $910,000 in compensation.

Warner Brothers had enlisted Cinerama as co-producer, the studio’s first involvement in the stunning widescreen process and the first time war was considered a subject. The process had been utilised in other Hollywood pictures most notably MGM How the West Was Won (1962), but that had been as a supplier of the equipment, and taking a small share of the profits. But now Cinerama planned to enter the production business and had contracted with WB to shoot the film in the single-lens process instead of the more complicated three-camera approach which had led to vertical lines on the giant screen.

Neither company was in great shape. Cinerama had posted a $17.9 million loss in 1964, WB $3.8 million. But whereas WB had My Fair Lady on the horizon, Cinerama was less reasons for optimism. Its income stream relied on sales of its equipment, either for filming or projection, and a levy from every cinema using the process. Expansion was seen as key to renewal. With only 67 cinemas equipped to show Cinerama in the U.S. and only 59 overseas, a major program was underway to reach 230 by 1967. Setting up a production division would ensure there were enough films to feed into Cinerama houses, and since such films were intended as roadshows, they would keep the cinemas product-secure for months on end.

Cinerama planned to spend $30 million on five films – John Sturges  western The Hallelujah Trail (1965) budgeted at $5 million, Battle of the Bulge ($5.75 million) while $6.5 million had been allocated to an adaptation of James Michener bestseller Caravans, $6 million for Beyond the Stars which became 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and $7 million for Grand Prix (1966). Added to the list was epic William the Conqueror, due to film in England in early 1966 with Robert Shaw taking top billing.

The WB-Cinerama project, which had taken a year to negotiate, was to be filmed in Spain under the aegis of producer Philip Yordan, one time associate of Bronston who had built a mini-Hollywood there. Yordan, Bronston’s chief scriptwriter, had written the screenplay along with his co-producer Milton Sperling. Instead of seeking official support or reproduce the battle in documentary detail, Yordan and Sperling aimed for a fictional account that took in the main incidents. The cast would include “ten important stars.”

Barbara Werle seizes her moment – as a courtesan attempting to seduce Robert Shaw.

Just what constituted an “all-star cast,” one of the key ingredients of the roadshow phenomenon of the 1960s, was open to question. While The Longest Day (1962) boasted stars of the pedigree of John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton and Sean Connery, it was also liberally sprinkled with actors of little or no marquee value. David Lean in Lawrence of Arabia (1962) had loaded his film with the likes of Oscar winners Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn and Jose Ferrer to offset unknowns Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif as the leads. While The Great Race (1965) could boast Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) only had Spencer Tracy amid a host of television comedians.

But none of the stars of the hit Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1964) had successfully opened a major picture. Of the Battle of the Bulge contingent only Henry Fonda could truly be called a current star, although his box office star had considerable dimmed since the days of The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and Fort Apache (1948). Former stars Robert Ryan and Dana Andrews were now supporting actors, Ty Hardin best known for television, Charles Bronson (The Great Escape, 1963) not achieved top billing and while James MacArthur had done so that was in youth-oriented movies. Initially, Italian prospect Pier Angeli (Sodom and Gomorrah, 1962) was announced as “the only principal female role” – playing a Frenchwoman – for a touching scene showing the effect of war on innocent women caught up in the conflict.

Just before filming was about to start, Fleischer pulled out, citing differences of opinion with the producers. Yordan turned to British director Ken Annakin, who had helmed the British sequences in The Longest Day and all of Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. There was soon a double whammy from the rival picture. Realizing he was losing ground, and hoping to sabotage the opposition’s progress, Larrazino sued WB for $1 million, claiming that “another film, less accurate, would be confused with his picture.” Just as filming of the Battle of the Bulge got underway in January 1965, it was hit by a temporary restraining order. While failing to shut down the production, it imposed a marketing blockade. WB was prevented from publicizing its picture, a potentially major blow given how dependent big budget roadshows were on advance bookings which could only be generated by advance publicity.

Annakin’s immediate response to the directorial opportunity was delight. He commented that he had a “lot of toys to play with.” He found inspiration for his approach from an unusual source, the Daleks (“an apparently irrevocable onslaught of metal monsters”) from the BBC television series Dr Who. He decided he would use Cinerama as “a kind of 3D, shooting in such a way that the tanks would loom up as monsters against humans whom I would make small and puny.”

Although he had no influence over the casting, Annakin was already familiar with some of the actors, James MacArthur from Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and Werner Peters and Hans Christian Blech from The Longest Day. He did not receive such a warm welcome from Robert Shaw whom he had rejected for a role in The Informers (1963).

He found Fonda “a remarkable professional…always on time, patient, eager to get to work, and always knew his lines.” Fonda confessed to being a reluctant movie actor, preferring the stage, and had not been a big office draw since his work with John Ford in the 1930s and 1940s. Even critical successes like Twelve Angry Men (1957) had lost money, some of it the actor’s own, and prestige movies like The Best Man (1964) and Fail Safe (1964) failed to attract sufficient audiences. “In the theatre,” he said, “the actor achieves fulfilment from beginning to end. But on a picture you create a minute here and a minute there over a twelve-week period. When it’s finished there’s no recollection of what you did…Films are a director’s medium.” Battle of the Bulge was his 59th picture, after completing a supporting role in Otto Preminger’s In Harm’s Way (1965) and taking second billing to Glenn Ford in modern western The Rounders (1965).  

There was a stand-off with Bronson on his first day after the actor kept the crew waiting while fiddling too long with his costume. Ty Hardin (television’s Bronco, 1958-1962) was accident-prone, tumbling into a frozen river in full kit, and whacking the director’s wife in the face with his helmet. Dana Andrews had a drink problem so that in some scenes Fonda and Ryan would be surreptitiously holding him up.

Andrews was enjoying career resurgence. His movie career had been at a standstill, a long way from a peak like Laura (1944), his last significant top-billed parts over a decade past. “I was starting to get nothing for a while but offers came swarming in when I told my agent to go ahead and try for Walter Huston parts.” After only television roles in the four years since Madison Avenue (1961), Battle of the Bulge would mark his eighth role in 1965, including The Satan Bug and In Harm’s Way.

Winter in Spain was cold which meant it provided the ideal backdrop for the WB version. The chosen location, 4,500ft high in the mountains of Segovia, provided identical conditions to the actual battle. Spain had provided 80 tanks including Tigers mounted with 90mm guns and Shermans. Half of the 20-week shoot would be spent in Segovia with interiors filmed at studios in Seville and the Roma facility in Madrid.

The WB adviser was General Meinrad von Lauchert, a divisional tank commander during the battle. He hoped the picture would show the German soldier “as he was, brave and good” rather than clichéd presentation and not give the “impression that the American Army had nothing to do but walk into Germany.” He wanted the film to reflect the truth that the “Americans had to pay a high price for every yard.”

Extras were drawn from the Spanish village of El Molar, with a population of just 2,400, which specialised in that supply. Locals could earn 200 pesetas a day. A pair of tavern owners had established this lucrative side-line, demand so high at this point that “they can play Russian World War One deserters for Doctor Zhivago (1965) one day and shipped to World War Two the next for Battle of the Bulge.” Whenever Annakin found himself in trouble with the script he turned to the senior actors, Fonda, Ryan and Andrews who could improvise their way round scenes and “give me hints and lead me into changes.”

For the first scene, a week’s worth of white marble dust, representing snow, had been spread over the ground before 40 tanks emerged from a pine forest. But just as the cameras begun to turn, unexpectedly, against all weather forecasts, it began to snow. While initially a boon, when it continued to fall for five weeks the snow turned into a liability. Nobody was prepared for snow, not to the extent of snowploughs or even salt and it was a three-mile hike uphill to reach the tank location until army vehicles could be used to transport the crew. The tanks churned up so much mud that three or four cameras were required to catch the action.

“It was a director’s feast,” recalled Annakin, salivating about the prospect of a “vast panoramic” employing the entire array of tanks. To speed production, he had two units one hundred yards apart and jumped from one to the other, thus achieving 30-40 set-ups a day while the effects team exploded tubes and burned rubber tyres to create a fog of black battle smoke. A small town, already wrecked and shelled from the Spanish Civil War, added an air of realism when standing in for Bastogne.

Midway through shooting the producers realised the movie lacked a theme and from then on Annakin was faced with daily rewrites as new scenes were added to bring out the humanity implicit in war. Then Cinerama boss William Foreman arrived and demanded the insertion of the type of shot he believed his audiences were expecting, the equivalent of the runaway train and the ride through the rapids in How the West Was Won. He angled for a jeep racing downhill or a plane spinning and diving and happy to stump up any extra costs.

Such a request was more easily accommodated than his insistence that a role be found for his girlfriend Barbara Werle, a bit part actress Tickle Me (1965). While Yordan, wearing his producer’s hat, was willing to keep one of his main funders happy, the director and Robert Shaw were not. Shaw refused to do the scene until Foreman pleaded with both, explaining that in a vulnerable period of his personal life – when, in fact, he had been imprisoned – Werle had helped him out and he owed her a favour.

In Annakin’s opinion Werle was “willing but completely dumb…as though you had picked a girl straight from the cash desk of a supermarket.” Her one scene, as a courtesan offered to Robert Shaw by a grateful superior, was used to mark out the German commander as a man of honor when he rejected such temptation out of hand.

To overcome problems of matching earlier Panzer footage with the climactic battle to be shot on the rolling hills of Campo – in the earlier shots the ground was covered in snow, but now it was summer and the ground was scorched by the sun – Annakin relied on aerial shots, shooting downwards, “keeping as close as possible so as not to reveal what the terrain actually looked like” while on the ground two units shot close-ups of the action. This was augmented by 30 model shots with miniature explosions.

When shooting was completed, there was a race to get the movie ready for its scheduled launch, on December 16, 1965, the 21st anniversary of the start of the battle. There were ten weeks left to do post-production. Four editors had already been working on the material but Yordan asked Annakin, who had not been near a moviola for two decades, to personally edit the climactic battle scene. The director found the experience exhilarating: “matching my location footage with miniature shots; a four-foot helicopter (i.e. aerial) shot cut with a couple of feet of a U.S tank rounding rocks to face a Panzer; a shot of Telly Savalas at his gun site yelling ‘Fire’ intercut with a miniature tank blowing up.” But all his intricate work never made it into the final cut. Another editor fiddled around with the material and since no one had thought to make a dupe of Annakin’s original it was lost.

Although the challenge from Lazzarino had died away, the Pentagon was unhappy with the amount of time allocated to the German perspective. Yordan had the perfect riposte, pointing  the finger at Annakin and saying “see what happens when you get a limey director.”  

Werle had the last laugh. She was billed sixth in the credits (Angeli came fifth) but in the same typeface as Fonda, Shaw, Ryan and Andrews, and above the likes of Bronson, MacArthur and Hardin who not only all had substantially greater screen experience but had a bigger impact in the movie.

With the smallest part of all the listed stars, nonetheless she managed to turn the experience to her advantage, introduced to the press as part of the marketing campaign and attending the world premiere at the Pacific Cinerama on December 16, 1965 in Los Angeles and the New York premiere the following day, brought forward four days, at the Warner Cinerama. In Los Angeles she arrived in style at the head of a marching brigade of 100 service men.

SOURCES: Ken Annakin, So You Wanna Be A Director (Tomahawk, 2001) p167-181; “Du Pont, Bronston, Co-Defendants,” Variety, July 22, 1964, p4; “Schenck-Rhodes Roll Battle of Bulge at Camp Drum in U.S.” Variety, July 22, 1964, p42; “German Military Sensitivity,” Variety, September 23, 1964, p32;  “Columbia Will Distribute Battle of Bulge Film,” Box Office, September 28, 1964, p18; “Plan Battle of Bulge As Cinerama Film,” Box Office, November 23, 1964, p4; “Tony Lazzarino To Produce The 16th of December,” Box Office, December 16, 1964, p4; “Rival Battles of Bulge; Bill Holden Up for Ike in Lazzarino Version,” Variety, December 16, 1964, p5; “Warner Reports Loss of £3,861,00,” Variety, December 23, 1964, p5; “L.A. Court Has Its Battle of Bulge Hearing, 27th,” Box Office, January 25, 1965, pW-2; “Dana Andrews Strategy: Regain Momentum,” Variety, March 10, 1965, p3; “Battle of Bulge Now Being Lensed in Spain,” Box Office, March 15, 1965, pNE2; “Winter in Spain Cold But Correct for Bulge Pic,” Variety, March 17, 1965, p10; “Cinerama Plans Five Films to Cost $30 Mil,” Box Office, April 19, 1965, p13; “For Actor, Satisfying Legit Still Beats Pix, Reports Henry Fonda,” Variety, May 3, 1965, p2; “London Report,” Box Office, May 3, 1965, p8; “One Girl in WB Bulge,” Variety, May 5, 1965, p20; “Battle of Bulge Pic May Roll Next Winter,” Variety, May 5, 1965, p29; “El Molar, Spain’s Village of Extras,” Variety, May 12, 1965, p126; “Cinerama Report Loss,” Variety, May 13, 1965, p15; Advert, Box Office, July 12, 1965, p22; “WB To Film Cinerama Epic in England,” Box Office, October 11, 1965, p11; “Introduce Barbara Werle,” Box Office, October 18, 1965, pE3; “Battle of Bulge Opens N.Y. Now Dec 21,” Box Office, October 18, 1965, p10; “Actress To Attend Bows of Bulge in L.A., N.Y.,” Box Office, December 6, 1965, pW4.

Battle of the Bulge (1965) *****

Superb even-handed depiction of war, far better than I remembered. Most war films of this era and even beyond showed the action primarily from the view of the Americans/British – even the acclaimed The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979) show nothing of the skills of the Vietnam forces that would prove victorious. And while The Longest Day (1962) shows reaction to the invasion, the Germans are revealed as caught on the hop. Given the basis for this picture is the unexpected German offensive in the Ardennes, France, in December-January 1944-1945, you might expect the Germans to be accorded some attention. But hardly given as much of the picture as this, so that in the early stages the Germans are portrayed as powerful, clever and patriotic while the Americans are slovenly and complacent, their greatest efforts expended on preparing for Xmas.

With tanks the main military focus, Cinerama is deployed brilliantly, the ultra-wide screen especially useful as the unstoppable vehicles rampage through forests and land and allowing true audience involvement when opposing armies meet head-to-head. Of course, it being Cinerama, there are a couple of scenes that play to the strength of this particular process: a car careening round bends and a train racing along twisting tracks, the kind of scenes that previously would have had the audiences out of their seats with excitement, but here mainly used to raise the tension in the battle.

It’s to the film’s benefit that the all-star cast doesn’t feature a single actor who is truly a star in the John Wayne/Gregory Peck/Steve McQueen mould so that prevents the audience rubbernecking to spot-a-star that afflicted The Longest Day. The biggest name, technically, is Henry Fonda, and although he received top billing in many pictures, you would have to go back to The Wrong Man (1956) to find an actual box office hit. The only previous top billing for Robert Shaw (From Russia with Love, 1963) had been in The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964), a flop few had seen. And the top-billing days of Robert Ryan (Horizons West, 1952) and Dana Andrews (Laura, 1944) were long gone. In fact, the actor with the biggest string of hits was Disney protégé James MacArthur (Swiss Family Robinson, 1960). Anybody who had seen The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963) would recognize Charles Bronson in a supporting role. So fair is the movie that it’s the blond-haired Shaw who steals the show with a dynamic performance.

So it helped the almost documentary-style of the film that it was filled with familiar faces rather than dominant stars and the director was not bound to give a star more screen time or provide them with one brilliant scene after another, or establish a redundant love story in order to provide them with more emotional heft. In fact, the only romance goes to a sly black marketeer who views his relationship more as a business asset.

Initially, the role of Lt. Col. Kiley (Henry Fonda), a former cop, seems only to be to rile his superiors General Grey (Robert Ryan) and Colonel Pritchard (Dana Andrews), his pessimistic view contrasting with the accepted notion that the Germans are well and truly defeated and the war would be over soon. On airplane reconnaissance he takes a photograph of an officer later identified as Panzer tank genius Colonel Hessler (Robert Shaw). While Grey and Pritchard over-ride his conclusions, the movie concentrates on the German build-up, their discipline, efficiency, leadership and determination juxtaposed to the American inefficiency and sloppiness.

Where the Americans just want to get home, Hessler – more charismatic than any of the dull Yanks – is in his element, wanting the war to never end, convinced at least that a tank-driven assault would drive a wedge between the Allied forces, and by reaching the target Antwerp in Belgium in the north extend the war by another year by which time Germany’s V2 rockets would give them greater firepower. The Germans also have a clever idea, the type that the British were always coming up with (and likely would have made a film about had it been their idea) of parachuting American-born Germans (i.e. speaking English with American accents and knowing American cultural references) behind enemy lines, dressed in American uniforms, to carry out vital sabotage and hold crucial bridges across the River Meuse.

In one of the best scenes in the film, his tank commanders burst spontaneously into a patriotic song with much stamping of boots. And while Hessler’s immediate superior (Werner Peters) , ensconced in a superior bunker, can enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, no better illustrated by the fact that he has courtesans to hand, one of whom, offered to Hessler, is furiously dismissed. And the clock is ticking, the Germans have limited supplies of fuel and must reach the enemy’s supply dumps before they run out of gas.

The maverick Kiley manages to be everywhere – the River Meuse bridge, in the air in the fog determinedly hunting for the panzers he believes are hidden, is the one who realizes how critical the fuel situation is for the enemy, and at the fuel depot for the movie climax. Otherwise, the picture uses its cast of supporting characters to cover other incidents, the massacre of prisoners-of- war at Malmedy, the chaos  as the Germans over-run American-held towns.

Best of all is the human element. It would be easy on a picture of this scope to lose emotional connection, as you would say was the prime flaw of The Longest Day. Not only is Kiley the outsider trying to beat the system, but we have the cowardly Lt Weaver (James MacArthur) who would rather give up without a fight than lose his life, the weaselly Sgt. Guffy (Telly Savalas) representing the worst instincts of the grunts, the confused General Grey who can’t make up his mind how to respond to the sudden attack, and Hessler’s driver Conrad (Hans Christian Blech) who is fed up with paying the price of war.

The action scenes are outstanding. If you’ve never been up against a tank in full flight, you will soon get the idea how fearsome these metal battering rams are, as they rear up, fell trees, race across open fields, and either with machine gun or shells wreak havoc. As with the best war films, you are given very precise insights into the battles, the tactics involved, the ultimate cost. Wolenski (Charles Bronson) is in the thick of the fighting.  

While Robert Shaw is easily the biggest screen personality, Henry Fonda is solid, and holds the various strands of the picture together, while Charles Bronson enjoys a further scene-stealing role. But the pick of the acting, mostly thanks to bits of improvisation, is Telly Savalas (The Slender Thread, 1965) as the thieving Guffy. In one memorable scene he kicks out in resentment at his collection of hens and in another shakes his body at the tanks. No one else, beyond Shaw, comes close to his infusing his character with elements of individual personality.

Pier Angeli (Sodom and Gomorrah, 1962) as Guffy’s mistress and Barbara Werle (Krakatoa, East of Java, 1968) as the courtesan are inexplicably billed above Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas and James MacArthur perhaps in a ploy to deceive audiences into thinking there was more female involvement.

Full marks to British director Ken Annakin (The Biggest Bundle of Them All, 1968) for visual acumen and for simplifying a complicated story and peppering it with human detail. His battles scenes are among the best ever filmed. Credit for whittling down the story into a manageable chunk goes to Philip Yordan (The Fall of the Roman Empire, 1964), Milton Sperling (The Bramble Bush, 1960) and John Melson (Four Nights of the Full Moon, 1963).

A genuine classic, still somewhat under-rated I feel. There are a variety of versions around – make sure you get the 163-minute cut such as shown below. And it will help if you watch it in widescreen.

Marathon Man (1976) ****

Over-complicated occasionally thoughtful thriller studded with contemporary nods to ecology and keeping fit pits history student Babe (Dustin Hoffman) against war criminal Szell (Laurence Olivier) in latter-day version of a hunt of Nazi ‘gold.’ Although obsessed with clearing the name of his dead father from charges trumped up during the Communist witch hunt, Babe is not the nerd of The Graduate, his persistence resulting in a romantic tryst with out-of-his-league Swiss blonde Elsa (Marthe Keller). The existence of a secretive government agency tilts this towards the paranoia thriller mini-genre.

It takes a while for all the pieces of the jigsaw to fall into place as we try to absorb the importance of a freak accident in New York that kills a German whose diamonds end up in the hands of Babe’s brother Doc (Roy Scheider), a rich businessman who appears to double up as a courier of some kind. Delivering the jewellery to connection LeClerc (Jacques Marin) in Paris, Babe’s suspicions that something is awry are confirmed when he realizes a bomb planted in the street was intended for him, later finds LeClerc dead and is attacked in his hotel room.

Didn’t take long for the British newspapers to cotton on to the punning possibilities of the title.

Meanwhile, the mysterious Szell emerges from his South American hideout and heads for New York. Doc blows up Babe’s romance by revealing his girlfriend is lying about her origins. Doc then keeps an appointment with Szell who proceeds to knife him although he manages to survive long enough to die in Babe’s apartment, shadowy government agent Janeway (William Devane) among others convinced Doc told Babe something important before he died.

That notion paints Babe as the target especially as Szell is of the same opinion. Soon Babe, literally on the run, is enmeshed in lethal game of double-cross but not before he makes the acquaintance of Szell who puts his dentistry skills to work in a still wince-inducing torture scene. It takes another fair while to work out not just who is who, but who Babe can trust, and what’s going on, the true nature of his brother’s employment and what exactly is the role of the government “special division that does what the F.B.I. and C.I.A. can’t handle.”  

By the time it becomes a straightforward thriller, the tension has ratcheted up to eleven and Babe is fighting for his life not just against a killing machine but a sadistic one at that. It’s not just the hint of the government black ops lurking in the background that gives this picture an extra dimension, but it presents an eerie prediction of contemporary concerns with its  acknowledgement of ecological activists, the interest in running that was just a sneered-at fad at the time, and a world that could at any time be disrupted by strike action.

There are some terrific set pieces and bold directorial choices, one murderous assault mostly seen from the point of view of an elderly invalid across the street who can scarcely see what is going on for curtains in the way. Trapped in the bathroom Babe can only watch as assailants prise the door off, especially terrifying as the bath has been previously signalled as Babe’s refuge, slumped in the water with a cloth masking his face. There’s a clever meet-cute and any number of incidentals in the passers-by caught on camera.

Dustin Hoffman (wearing the baseball cap in case you couldn’t guess) with director John Schlesinger on set. Hoffman’s ‘method’ acting riled Laurence Olivier, who, exasperated at yet another delay as the younger actor sought his motivation for a scene, beseeched him to ‘just act.’

This was as slick an A-list picture as Hollywood could muster in the 1970s with Dustin Hoffman on an Oscar- (three nominations so far) and commercial-streak – Papillon (1973) and All the President’s Men (1976) solidifying his box office marquee. Laurence Olivier (Sleuth, 1972) cemented his position as the world’s best actor heading a top-notch cast that included Roy Scheider (The French Connection, 1971) and the teeth-baring William Devane (Rolling Thunder, 1977),  directed by British Oscar-winner John Schlesinger (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) and written by the legendary William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969) from his own bestselling novel. Marthe Keller was at the start of a Hollywood roll with Black Sunday (1977), Bobby Deerfield (1977) and Billy Wilder’s Fedora (1978) to come.

Echoing Alan J. Pakula in The Parallax View (1974), Schlesinger lets many tense scenes roll minus music and the score, when it does appear, is by the king of the eerie score, Michael Small (The Parallax View).  Pick of the images, though, is the football bouncing from nowhere into a scene that triggers Doc’s panic. It’s not a paranoia thriller in quite the same vein as The Parallax View or Three Days of the Condor, but the existence of a secret government agency willing for its own reasons to do a deal with the most horrific people strikes another contemporary note.

The Title Jungle: The A.K.A. Business 1960s Style

We’ve all been there. You are scrolling through a movie website and you come across a new Audrey Hepburn picture called The Loudest Whisper (1961) and you get all excited and wonder how on earth you could have missed it. You check it out. Something about the other credits sounds familiar – directed by William Wyler, co-starring Shirley Maclaine. Wait a minute, isn’t that The Children’s Hour? Yep, you got it. Welcome to the title jungle, the constant changing of the names of movies from country to country.

You could see how this was necessary, possibly even essential, as different languages and cultures struggled to make sense of Hollywood titles. There could be other reasons. What actually does To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) mean and is it translatable into Greek or Italian? What happens if the publisher of the bestseller-cum-movie has already changed the title? Or  if an American bestseller sank like a stone in other countries and the whimsical title means nothing to nobody.

But The Loudest Whisper was the British title for the William Wyler picture. And Britain, it turns out,  was not shy about changing titles. Elia Kazan’s America, America (1964), a straightforward title you might think, suggesting longing, was changed into the incomprehensible The Anatolian Smile, assuming the ordinary public knew where (or what) Anatolia was. Burt Kennedy western Mail Order Bride (1964), an idea too obvious for the sensitive Brits, became the meaningless West of Montana.

Glenn Ford-Stella Stevens western comedy Advance to the Rear (1964), a simple joke in any language unless your mind ran in cruder directions, turned into Company of Cowards. Glenn Ford again, Experiment in Terror (1962) was translated for British audiences as The Grip of Fear. Rene Clement French thriller Joy House, perhaps suggestive of a house of ill-repute, with Alain Delon and Jane Fonda became the no-less risqué Love Cage. And any notions that The Stripper would prove impossible to resist for any red-blooded male were scuppered by renaming it Woman of Summer.   

In any case, the Italians had already co-opted the whole stripping thing, Warner Brothers musical Gypsy (1962) was translated as The Woman Who Invented Striptease, which was actually what Gypsy Rose Lee was famed for even if Hollywood did not want to admit it upfront. In fact, the people in charge of foreign titling often came up with a better choice than the original. Two Seducers was the Italian title for Bedtime Story (1964) starring Marlon Brando and David as, guess what, rival seducers.

In case you had no idea what The Prize (1963) referred to, what could be better than renaming it, as in Italy, Intrigue in Stockholm or, in accepting some knowledge of the Nobel Prize, the Greek version No Laurels for Murderers, both revamped titles a bit more persuasive above a marquee than the bland original, especially if the Irving Wallace bestseller on which it was based had not been a success in the respective countries.

Cape Fear (1962) – based on a book with the straightforward title of The Executioner – was improved upon in several countries, all taking a similar approach to the problem. In Switzerland it was known as Bait for a Beast, in West Germany Decoy for a Beast, both of which actually touched more succinctly on the main plot than the Hollywood version. And some countries believed in saying it as they saw it, Irma La Douce (1963) shown in Greece as The Streetwalker.

Clearly, some Hollywood titles provoked much head-scratching as titling experts tried to work out if they had, perhaps, a hidden meaning. Frank Sinatra comedy Come Blow Your Horn (1963) was variously called I’ll Take Care of the Women (Italy), If My Sleeping Room Could Talk (West Germany), If My Bed Could Talk (Greece) and the more straightforward Bachelor’s Apartment (Israel).

Some titles came with inbuilt bafflement. Italy had an interesting take on MGM musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), tabbing it I Want To Be Loved in a Brass Bed. Move Over Darling (1963) emerged as One Too Many in Bed (West Germany) and Her Husband Is Mine (Greece) while another Doris Day vehicle Lover Come Back (1961) became A Pajama for Two (Switzerland), and A Pair of Pajamas for Two (West Germany). But some essential facet of the character of Hud (1962) was captured in Wildest Among a Thousand (West Germany) and Wild as a Storm (Greece).

And back to that To Kill a Mockingbird problem. Italian audiences were treated to Darkness Beyond the Hedge and Greek moviegoers to Shadows and Silence. Incidentally, in Israel The Stripper was known as Lost Rose while Advance to the Rear in West Germany appeared as Heroes without Pants.  

SOURCE: “How U.S. Titles Are Retitled in Foreign Lands,” Variety, May 12, 1965, p108 and examination of movies on Imdb.

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