Brian Hannan

Harlow (1965) ****

In the light of the MeToo movement, this is a salutary tale of tawdry Hollywood. Such a convincing picture of Hollywood abuse was as true now as it is then. However, although presented as a biopic it is more pertinently viewed as a “reimagining” of the life of sex goddess Jean Harlow. While taking a few liberties with the truth where the main character is concerned, the rest of it could easily be realistic since we are now only too familiar with the excesses men in any kind of power in Hollywood believed they were entitled.

Jean Harlow was a hugely popular star in the 1930s before her untimely death at the age of 36. This film depicts her as a virgin (not true) who turns neurotic (not true) after her impotent husband commits suicide (debatable) on their wedding night (not true) leading to her go off the rails and die from pneumonia (not true).

But in terms of the Hollywood system a great deal rings true and if the Me Too movement had existed in the late 1920s and early 1930s the finger would be pointed at a huge number of men.

The film is at its best when dissecting the movie business. A five-minute opening sequence demonstrates its “factory” aspect as extras and bit players clock in, are given parts and shuffle through great barns to be clothed and made up, often to be discarded at the end of the process.

No sooner has this version of Jean Harlow been given a small part than she encounters the casting couch, operated by a lowly assistant director, who bluntly offers five days’ work instead of one if she submits to his advances. When she turns him down, work is hard to come by and she resorts to stealing lunch before being rescued by agent Red Buttons. After tiny parts that mostly consist of her losing her clothing, receiving pies or eggs in the face and displaying her wares in bathtubs, she gets a big break only for that producer to demand his pound of flesh – “I’ve already bought and paid for you.” Here, she has “the body of a woman and the emotions of a child” and ends up choosing the wrong suitor which leads to a calamitous outcome.

However, the pressures of stardom are well-presented: she is the breadwinner for her unemployed mother (Angela Lansbury) and lazy stepfather (Raf Vallone) and soon box office dynamite for a studio chief (Martin Balsam) who sees in her the opportunity to sell good clean sex. The negotiations/bribery/ blackmail involved in fixing salaries are also explored.

But the film earns negative points by mixing the real and the fictional. The agent and husband Paul Bern existed but most of the others are invented or amalgamations of different people. MGM is represented as “Majestic” and among her films there is no Red Dust (1932) or China Seas (1935) but lurid inventions like Sin City.

Director Gordon Douglas was a versatile veteran, with over 90 films to his credit, from comedies Saps at Sea (1940) and Call Me Bwana (1963) to westerns The Iron Mistress (1952) and Rio Conchos (1964) and musicals Follow That Dream (1962) and dramas The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961) and Sylvia (1965) which also starred Baker. The opening scene apart, which is a seamless construction, he is adept at this kind of helter-skelter drama. John Michael Hayes (Rear Window, 1954) has produced a punchy script.

In the title role Carroll Baker has probably never been better, comedian Red Buttons excellent in a straight role while the smarmy Vallone is the stand-out among a supporting cast that also includes Peter Lawford, Leslie Nielsen and Mike Connors.

Despite the fact that virtually none of the movie is true, I have given it four stars for its realistic portrayal of Hollywood.

The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964) ***

Despite the title and Hammer’s penchant for the unholy, there is nothing satanical about this picture. Christopher Lee, less cadaverous than in his better-known incarnation as Dracula, plays the captain of ship called Diablo, part of the defeated Spanish Armada, who lands in 1588 on British shores and by convincing the locals that the British have been defeated imposes an occupation.

Writer (and later director) Jimmy Sangster’s clever premise works, the lord of the manor (Ernest Clark) immediately surrendering and befriending the invaders, most of the villagers succumbing, a few more doughty lads (Andrew Keir and son John Cairney to the fore) rebelling.

Running alongside its regular horror output, Hammer had a sideline in swashbucklers, the Men of Sherwood Forest (1954), Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960), The Pirates of Blood River (1962) and The Scarlet Blade (1963) – aka The Crimson Blade – preceding this, and all, interestingly, aimed at the general rather than adult market. Australian director Don Sharp, in the first of several teamings with Lee, does extraordinary well with a limited budget. Although the village square was a leftover from The Scarlet Blade, there is a full-size galleon, swamps, fog, floggings, a hanging, fire, chases, a massive explosion, and a number of better-than-average fencing scenes.

In other hands, more time could have been spent exploring the psychology of occupation, but despite that there is enough of a story to keep interest taut. Lee has a high-principled lieutenant who secretly subverts his master’s wishes. Tension is maintained by Lee’s ruthlessness, the efforts of captured women to escape, and attempts to seek outside help. While the intended marketplace meant toning down actual violence, Sharp creates a menacing atmosphere. The final scenes involving sabotage are tremendously well done.

I should acknowledge a vested interest as John Cairney was a distant relative and I do remember as a child being taken to see his previous outing Jason and the Argonauts (19630 but, strangely enough, this one was given a miss by my parents. I wonder if the title put them off.

Masquerade (1965) ***

Made just before director Basil Dearden embarked on Khartoum (1965), this is probably best-known these days for being screenwriter – and ace self-publicist – William Goldman’s first credit. It’s based on Castle Minerva by Victor Canning whose previous filmed books included The Golden Salamander (1950) with Trevor Howard, The Venetian Bird (1952) with Richard Todd, and The House of the Seven Hawks (1959) with Robert Taylor.

I’d like to say this is a self-aware thriller with spy and comedic elements but it veers awful close to either a cult film or a mess. Basic story has Cliff Robertson hired by former wartime commander and now British intelligence agent Jack Hawkins to look after an Arab princeling who has been kidnapped by the British (so much for Brits always being on the side of the angels) to help seal an oil concession in the Gulf.

Theoretically, the kidnapping is for the teenager’s own good, to prevent him being assassinated before he ascends to the throne…see it’s getting awfully complicated already. Anyway, it turns out he actually has been kidnapped by Hawkins who has turned rogue in order to fund his retirement. The boy is held in some kind of fortress/castle in Spain and then another more sinister one.

Robertson, who looks half the time as if wondering how the hell he got into this, meantime falls for the seductive charms of Marisa Mell who he thinks is a smuggler intent on stealing his boat but a) is part of the kidnap gang and b) in love with him enough to help him escape when he in turn is captured.

Did I mention the film also included a circus, a clown act, a gunfight on a dam, characters left dangling on a rope bridge, a lady in red, a balancing act along a perilous ledge, entrapment in a wine tanker (huh?) and an animal cage (double huh?), a vulture, men in bowler hats…

It is enlivened by visual gags – ultra-large footprints (from somebody wearing flippers). The dialogue sparkles as when the prince, with an overactive entitlement gland, says, “I am practically divine,” to which Hawkins deadpans “Your Highness, you are irresistible.” Add to that various cliché-twisting scenes – the double-dealing Marisa Mell now overcome by love, says to Robertson: “Ask me anything you want and I will tell you the truth,” but every question he asks solicits the response, “I don’t know.” Then, imprisoned in a cage, after protracted cobbling together of lengths of bamboo to steal keys they turn out to be the wrong keys.

Throw in British propriety – Robertson’s substantial fee for risking his life is reduced to a miserable sum once tax has been deducted. And a superb Arab charge on horseback with tracking cameras, either a rehearsal for Khartoum or the scene that got Dearden the gig.

Actually, the more I write about it the more fun it sounds and I wish it were, but it does not quite gel. Robertson and Mell don’t convince – Robertson talks through gritted teeth without suggesting he has much inner grit – although Hawkins and other British stalwarts like Charles Gray and Bill Fraser and Frenchman Michel Piccoli deliver the goods. It should have been a straightforward three-star job or – if qualifying as a cult – in the five-star class. It is definitely not an outright stinker. Perhaps best filed under “curiosity.”

Torn Curtain (1966) ****

I never thought I’d see the day when Paul Newman was out-acted by Julie Andrews. Or spent most of the time wondering how much better it would be with James Stewart or Cary Grant instead. They can both do stillness. For all the wrong reasons you cannot keep your eyes off Newman – he is such a jittery, fidgety commotion.

Which is a shame for all that is wrong with this often wrongly-maligned Hitchcock picture is the set-up. The opening love scene is only necessary to get it out of the way (“Newman! Andrews! Together!” type set-up) though it is something of a riff on Psycho, setting up the possibility of a bad girl (i.e. goody two-shoes Andrews having sex before marriage) being punished. You could have started more economically with Andrews just turning up in Copenhagen for whatever reason (fill in the blanks) and the story pushing on from there, unintentionally Andrews becoming involved in Newman’s plan to infiltrate the East German nuclear programme.

The rest of the picture is classic Hitchcock, and as ever he uses sound brilliantly, just the clacking of feet as a bodyguard pursues Newman through an empty museum. And he riffs on North by Northwest in the tractor scene. The murder, also soundless apart from the noise of human terror, is quite brilliant. And another riff, on The 39 Steps, with the woman who knows their true identity but has her own reasons for not giving them away.

Every time we think they are going to be caught something unexpected prevents it, every time we think they are safe something unexpected prevents that. Clever twists all the way. Hitchcock has a knack of doing the same thing differently every time, he hated repeating himself, so when transport enters the picture, there are unexpected results.

Andrews is very good. Like Doris Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much, she is often the focal point of the story, getting Newman out of a spot. Two scenes in particular stand out: one in a bedroom where she is filmed side-on looking out of a window with Newman at the far back of the screen and the other when she lets a single tear leak out of her eye. Where Newman just looks out of sorts (maybe he was annoyed Andrews was being paid more), she does a nice line in barely contained rage.

Even with the annoying Newman, Torn Curtain is still up there not at the very top of the Hitchcock canon but certainly in the second rank.

Hurry Sundown (1967) *****

Otto Preminger’s drama was the first of a trio of heavyweight films in 1967 – the others being In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – that took African-American issues seriously. In post-war Georgia land-grabbing by ambitious Michael Caine pits him against World War Two vet John Philip Law and African-American farmer Robert Hooks who team up. Throw in a sextet of feisty women – Jane Fonda (Caine’s wife), Faye Dunaway (Law’s wife), schoolteacher Diahann Carroll (Hooks’ love interest), Donnie Banton (Caine’s lover), Beah Richards (Hooks’ mother) and Madeleine Sherwood (Burgess Meredith’s wife) – and you are set for a series of emotional confrontations.

Preminger had spent most of the decade making films about big subjects – Exodus (1960), the politics behind the formation of Israel, Advise and Consent (1962), just politics, and The Cardinal (1964), politics within the Roman Catholic Church

Preminger is both economic and elegant. From opening dialogue to climactic court scene, the picture races along, and continuous use of tracking shots ensures the movie never gets bogged down. While there is no lynching, racist abuse, whether direct or indirect (through patronizing attitude) is never far from the surface. Corrupt judge Burgess Meredith is by far the most vicious, his unrestrained language making you wince. But even those with more measured approaches have to play the game, Law gives a lift to Hooks but has to let him off before they reach town in case anyone spots this, Hooks forbidden, for example, to buy dynamite.

But the racists do not get it all their own way. Jane Fonda, Caine’s wife, stands up to Meredith and her standing in the community is so strong that others boycott Meredith’s daughter’s wedding leading to the judge receiving a tongue-lashing from his wife. Weak sheriff George Kennedy coming to arrest Hooks is bamboozled by his female relatives while Diahann Carroll charms her way past the judge.

The women are uniformly strong. Fonda goes from seductive wife to distraught mother, but in between capable of defrauding Hooks’ mother, her childhood nanny, out of her inheritance. Her usual shrill delivery is tempered somewhat by the deeper emotions she is forced to bear. Hooks’ wife Dunaway resents his return after in his absence taking on a full-time job while running the farm and now resisting the idea of selling up to Caine. Hooks’ mother, beholden to white men all her life, now turns against them. Donnie Banton (Burgess’s daughter) makes no bones about the fact that she is marrying her “dull” fiancé for his money. This is no spoiler because you will have guessed some similar outcome but at the end it is Carroll who takes the initiative in her relationship with Hooks and marches into his house with her baggage, declaring she has come to stay.

And although the ruthless Caine is the bad guy, he, too, is afforded insight, soothing himself by playing a musical instrument, a man with talent who had “distracted” himself by pursuit of money. And there is another touching moment when he takes in a runaway child. Acting-wise, Caine is a revelation. Gone is the trademark drawl and the laid- back physical characteristics. Here he talks snappily – and no quibbles with his Southern accent either – and strides quickly. That we can believe he is brutal, gentle, remorseful and ruthless is testament to his performance.

Similarly, this is a massive step forward in Jane Fonda’s career, away from the limp Hollywood comedies and sexed-up French dramas, and her internal conflict springs from being forced to choose between husband and son, between her innate sexiness that oozes out in every intimate scene and maternal longing to comfort her disturbed child. While her attempt to defraud Hooks’ mother comes from a desire to keep her husband, her eyes tell you she knows that is no excuse.

What’s perhaps most surprising of all is the tenderness. There are wonderful, gentle love scenes between Caine and Fonda and Law and Dunaway.

Children, too, also unusually, play a central role. Caine’s callousness is no better demonstrated than in his earlier treatment of his son. Law’s eldest son also resents his father’s return and, viewing Caine as a more suitable adult, betrays his father. Burgess Meredith is obliged to drop one of the worst aspects of his racism in order to appease his daughter.

The acting throughout is uniformly good. Dunaway’s debut won her a six-picture contract with Preminger which she quickly wriggled out of. Singer Diahann Carroll’s role as a confident young woman led to a television series. Robert Hooks would also enjoy small-screen fame. The surprisingly effective John Philip Law would partner Fonda in sci-fi Barbarella (1968) and link up with Preminger again in the ill-fated Skidoo (1969).

Unfairly overlooked by Oscar votes, who preferred the other Poitier films, Hurry Sundown, despite the rawness of the language and the innate brutality meted out to African-Americans, has been vastly under-rated. It is worth another look because at its core is not just racism but big business which scarcely cares about the color of those it exploits. It is as much about the power shift in relationships and ambition.

The DVD below plays in all regions and without subtitles.

Interlude (1968) ****

Kevin Billington’s debut benefitted from a brief fad for classical music soundtracks, Elvira Madigan kicking off the fashion the year before, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which opened at the same time as Interlude trumping everything in sight. And as luck would have it, this was not the only movie about an orchestra conductor, Counterpoint with Charlton Heston released in America a couple of months before this one opened in Britain.

What makes the movie so enjoyable is that overlaying the sumptuous love story is the angst of a mistress. It’s sweetly set in wonderful British locations, riverside inns, olde worlde hotels, trendy restaurants, a few flashes of swinging London, luxurious mansions. The solid backdrop for something as fragile as romance.

There could not be two more opposites to attract, the rich Oskar Werner (Jules and Jim, 1962) in full-on arrogant mode, all dark glasses and leather gloves with enough petulance to sink a barge, and journalist Barbara Ferris (off screens since the lamentable Catch Us If You Can three years before) who lives in a bedsit with a goldfish called Rover. He drives a Rolls-Royce convertible, she a Mini.

There are some very good touches. We first see the characters in mirrors. He plays a “concerto for wine glass and index finger.” There is the very serious British business of whether milk goes in first to a cup of tea.

The screenplay by Lee Langley and Irish playwright Hugh Leonard is sharp and often witty. “I want to marry you,” says Ferris, before conceding, “I just don’t want to be your wife.” There is clear realization of the nature of his personality in her remark, “Instead of being what you want, I’ll be what you’ve got.”

Even when emotion is expressed there is a feeling that a lot is still suppressed. Ferris goes from high excitement to high dudgeon and carries within the seed of fear, a character who spends as much time in terror as in love. This is exacerbated when she spots of Werner’s wife, stoically played by Virginia Maskell, at the hairdressers and “all of the sudden” the wife who has existed in her imagination “has a face.”

John Cleese and Donald Sutherland have decent cameos, the former in a bit of an in-joke as a PR man wanting to get into comedy (“satire – that’s my field”), the latter as the womanizing brother of Werner’s wife.

Oddly enough, the music – Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, Dvorak, Brahms and Rachmaninov – acts in the same manner as Easy Rider the following year, as extensive interludes to the developing drama. Perhaps it is where Dennis Hopper got the idea.

It is very rounded for a romance, the acting excellent and the undernote of despair well-wrought.

I caught it for free on Talking Pictures TV, but I’m not sure how often it is being scheduled. Otherwise, here’s the DVD link.

Marketing The Chase (1966)

Oscar-winning film producers like Sam Spiegel – The African Queen (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Suddenly Last Summer (1959) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) – tended to abhor gimmicky promotions and depended on more classic marketing strategies to sell their pictures.

in this case, Spiegel relied on a 16-page A3 Pressbook (plus a slightly smaller four-page supplement) which in the main concentrated on a series of advertisements. Having said that, it was quite clear that Speigel considred his own name one of the movie’s biggest selling tools since his accomplishments were splashed over many ads and he took second billing to Marlon Brando. His name was above the title whereas that of director Arthur Penn was in a typeface smaller than all the leading players. Of the 20 pages available for original pressbook and supplement, a total of 14 were given over to the advertisements.

However, efforts were made to secure promotional partners. Harper’s Bazaar blocked out an eight-page section of its January 1966 issue for a fashion merchandising spread involving four top manufacturers – Ben Zuckerman, Originals, Larry Aldrich and Patullo-Jo Copeland – and 20 major retailers including Joseph Magnin in Los Angeles, De Pinna in New York and Couture Ltd in Chicago. New York exhibitors also benefited from marketing tie-ins from Horn & Hadart Co in its 88 restaurants and and Kinney System Inc. in 96 parking lots.

There was a big push in radio stations and record stores for the soundtrack by John Barry and in bookstores for the novel by Horton Foote published by New England Library with photos from the film on front and back covers. The closest Spiegel came to a gimmick was a tie-in with Barb-Q-Matic which sponsored barbecues for press previews and special screenings. The company had 1,500 distributors lined up to provide the necessary equipment and food.

A more violent image from the Pressbook supplement which also included reviews.

Otherwise, the producer expected the movie’s various talking points to provide fuel for media discussion. The way in which a community deteriorates “from a group of average people into a mob of hatefilled manhunters” would be ideal fodder for newspaper columnists, radio discussion and screenings for law enforcement agencies.

Among the attempts to provide filler material for newspapers was the notion that those involved were global citizens – Brando flying in from Tahiti, Spiegel and Jane Fonda from France, James Fox from London, while screenwriter Llllian Hellman was living at the time in Mexico. This was also the first pairing of Brando with his sister Jocelyn and a return to the screen for 1930s star Miriam Hopkins.

A measure of the film’s scope was that it required five sound stages at Columbia studios in Hollywood. In order to achieve authenticity art director Richard Day traveled 3,000 miles to photograph southwestern towns, rice fields, junkyards and sugar mills. There was an unusually high proportion of night shooting – 50 days in total – and 500 extras were on call for some critical scenes.

Interestingly, there was no great promotional push for Robert Redford. Brando, Fonda, Janice Rule and Hellman were the first stars mentioned in the first page of the editorial section of Pressbook, followed on the next page by Angie Dickinson, E.G. Marshall and Miriam Hopkins. Redford did not appear until the final editorial page, allocated space along with Katharine Walsh and Diana Hyland.

There were ten separate adverts, some of which were altered in minor ways to create another half-dozen. One of the unusual aspects of the advertising was the thematic design of the title and the image of a running man. The main advert had Brando center stage in casual mode smoking a cigarette surrounded by a montage of characters and incidents with the tagline “The Chase Is On” and a list of the producer’s credits. The second advert was identical except for an extra tagline – “He was the right man in the right place…the day everything went wrong.” A third ad used the running man theme around Brando and split the montage which now showed some characters in different ways with a new tagline “A breathless explosive story of today” plus the Spiegel credits.

The fourth ad also split the montage but this time Brando was more aligned with the characters on one side and the Spiegel credit reduced to “the man who has brought the screen its most exciting productions.” The running man logo took pride of place on advert number six with six main characters featured at the edges each with a quote – e.g. Fonda: “I never asked for anything because I knew I wouldn’t get it.” A seventh advert used a montage in criss-cross fashion. Violence and sex were the keys to the eighth advert while the ninth featured “the women”, “the men” and “the excitement” of The Chase. The final ad was more suggestive, just the thematic typeface, the logo of the running man and the names of star and producer.

The Chase (1966) *****

Arthur Penn’s movie came with a lot of baggage. Notwithstanding that he was in need of redemption – he was fired from The Train (1964) and Mickey One (1965) had flopped – he virtually disowned The Chase a week before it opened, denouncing Hollywood in the media, complaining that films were being made by committee. Producer Sam Spiegel was desperate to prove he could make big pictures without David Lean, who had decamped to Carlo Ponti and MGM for Doctor Zhivago (1965) and the knives were out, as always by this point, for Marlon Brando.

So it’s quite astonishing that the finished picture carries such visceral power. It’s a rich, meaty movie, part drama, part thriller, part social comment. Thematically it covers racism, power, adultery, civic apathy, injustice and integrity. At the same time it’s action-driven and the acting from a stunning cast is uniformly excellent. Theoretically, covering so much ground, it should be all over the place.

But three elements keep it grounded. The first is Lillian Hellman’s screenplay. Only using the bare bones of the source material (Horton Foote’s novel and play), she creates a fabulous intermeshed canvas wherein every character no matter how small has an integral part to play. As Coppola would do later with The Godfather she employs the device of large gatherings (two parties, in fact, one for the rich and one for the lower classes) to expose frailties. The second is Brando, in a thoughtful performance, as an ex-farmer who despises the people he represents and battles to maintain bis integrity. And third is Penn’s classical direction. Regardless of the interference he detected, nobody told him where to point the camera. It is noticeable that characters are often centered on the screen, rather than the more arty off-center compositions gaining in popularity. This creates an onscreen equality.

Basically, the narrative revolves around a small Texan town’s reaction to the return of escaped prisoner Robert Redford, now wanted for a murder he did not commit, which both brings the past to light and exposes existing tensions within the community. That Redford takes a good while to return allows those tensions to gently simmer. By the time he does the town is at fever pitch.

Redford’s wife Jane Fonda fears her affair with millionaire’s son James Fox will be discovered. Timid banker Robert Duvall fears Redford discovering that he was initially imprisoned for a crime Duvall committed. Duvall’s sexy wife Janice Rule taunts him with her adultery. Redford’s mother Miriam Hopkins fears further humiliation.

Adding further bile to the proceedings are Bruce Cabot as Fonda’s venomous stepfather, real estate manager and gossip-monger Henry Hull who preys on adversity, and Rule’s lover Richard Bradford who drums up racial hatred against Redford’s friend African-American Joel Flueller.

The incorruptible Brando is faced with keeping the lid on a number of potential explosions.

Hellman’s script and Penn’s empathetic direction prevent it from falling to a swamp of melodrama. All of Miriam Hopkins’ maternal despair is captured in one shot of her sitting on a stool. Millionaire E.G. Marshall is building a local college so “young men do not have to leave here like my son.” The poor Fonda and rich Fox are genuinely in love but she holds it against him that he married someone else (of his own class) first while she waited “all those bad years.” When Brando imprisons Flueller for his own protection, he lets him find his own way to the cell and trusts him to lock himself up.

And there is an ample wit. A drunk confronts Brando with “the taxpayers of this town pay your salary to protect this place.” Brando’s response: “If anything happens to you, we’ll give you a refund.”

And I’ve not even mentioned Redford. While relegated to dipping in and out of the story to keep tension high, this is a memorable turn. Martha Hyer is estimable an alcoholic wife while Angie Dickinson extends her acting credentials with an untypical role as a domesticated wife.

John Barry’s score, dismissed by the Variety critic as having “no particular theme that lingers in the ear,” is in fact it is a triumphant piece of work, with a central melody that is in turn jarring and romantic.

But it is Penn who brings home the bacon, bringing together a disparate tale in fine style, drawn tight to a stunning conclusion, and proving he had a mastery of both style and material that would stand him in good stead for his next picture Bonnie and Clyde.

I was lucky enough to catch this for free on Talking Pictures. It might come round again on this free channel. If not, or if you can’t wait, it’s well worth investing in a DVD.

Pressbook – Alvarez Kelly (1966)

Sometimes the obvious ideas are the best. A main plank of the marketing for Edward Dmytryk’s Civil War western Alvarez Kelly was via the name of the tital character. The 12-page (plus two-page fold-out) A3 Pressbook – the exhibitors’ main marketing tool – urged theater cinema owners to give discounts to anyone called Kelly. Better still, get them to attend the show en masse. Another plum would be getting hold of the ancestor of anyone called Kelly (hardly a long shot) who fought in the Civil War and putting them on local radio or television, especially if they had uniforms or weapons dating back to the conflict.

Promotional tie-in from the Louisiana Tourist Commission

Although set in Virginia, the movie was shot in Louisiana, a fact that the Louisiana Tourist Commission was taken full advantage of, with a massive marketing splurge. The world premiere was held in Baton Rouge and over 30,000 posters were distributed nationwide through a tie-up with the Humble-Esso service stations. Stars and crew were put up in Baton Rouge which meant an 80/120-mile round trip to the main locations. That meant a 5.30am start and a six-day week. Filming was interrupted by a hurricane and an invasion by swarms of yellow-jacketed wasps. A 209-foot bridge was built across the Amite River in order to be blown up during the action finale. The locations were so remote the nearest telephone was 18 miles away. Details of such inconveniences were channeled as a matter of course to exhibitors in the hope that they would be picked by local newspapers looking for a story about how un-pampered movie stars were.

Fashion had always been a strong movie marketing tool and here exhibitors were urged to contact local museums for Civil War costumes and to work with local department stores to create window displays featuring Southern belles.

Given that cows were central to the movie, another element of the campaign focused on meat with tie-ins with the Louisiana Cattlemen’s Association and the Hasty-Bake barbecue range. Slightly more offbeat was an idea to contact quartermasters working in the current U.S. Army to give their views on the problems of feeding the troops. And, of course, there was ample opportunity for a horseman dressed in either a Union or Confederate uniform to lead a cow or small herd through a town in order to promote the picture.

There was a paperback tie-up with Gold Medal books, a novelization of the screenplay, complete with photos and credits. Window and shelf displays in bookshops offered free promotion. The educational angle could also be exploited since schools were always interested in historical pictures and this was based on a true episode in the Civil War.

The Columbia advertising department prepared a number of different posters in a variety of shapes and sizes (exhibitors would cut out the one they considered most relevant and take it down to their local newspaper which would use it to devise the ad). Sometimes the two protagonists – William Holden and Richard Widmark – were positioned at opposite ends of the adsheets, other times they were placed centrally above or within a montage of scenes and characters.

There were four taglines. One of the chief taglines focused on the title character – “the man and story that spell gallantry from A-Z” – which somewhat misled the public about Kelly’s true nature, but then, of course, you could hardly straight-out tell the audience that screen idol William Holden was a shady character. The other main tagline outlined the story in more realistic terms – “Renegade adventurer and reckless colonel…a war made them allies…a woman made them enemies…a battle made them legend!.” The two subsidiary taglines ran: “A herd of cattle against a herd of canon…the battle-adventure that carved a legend around one man’s name” and “Carving a legend in greatness from the Blue Ridge to the Rio Grande.” As was usual in these adverts, a couple of taglines could be merged in the same ad.

A review of Alvarez Kelly (1966) is published in tandem with this article.

Alvarez Kelly (1966) ***

It says a lot about stardom that Oscar-winner William Holden virtually single-handedly redeems Edward Dmytryk’s Civil War western. And this was at a time when the actor’s career was in freefall, not having had a hit since The World of Suzie Wong (1960). Although his good looks personified him as a matinee idol, many of his best performances came when he was playing against type, as a shady character, such as in this instance.

Dmytryk whose career encompassed The Caine Mutiny (1954) and The Young Lions (1958) was on an opposite career trajectory after box office hits The Carpetbaggers (1964) and Gregory Peck thriller Mirage (1965). Between them, Holden and Dmytryk just about save what was a misconceived project, an original screenplay by Franklin Coen (The Train, 1965). That it was based on a true story did not make it any better an idea.

The essential narrative is that Holden has driven a couple thousand head of cattle from Mexico to deliver to Union troops. Holden plays an “Irish senor” (as defined in the title song) whose Mexican origins provides an excuse to consider the United States an enemy, positioning him as a neutral in the conflict, allowing him to justify his profiteering. Confederate colonel Richard Widmark plans to steal the herd. Had Holden been a patriot the story would have knuckled down to him trying to thwart such plans, but since he’s a free agent with no allegiance except to himself the film has to take another route. So this involves Holden being captured by Widmark in a bid to turn the Confederate soldiers into cowboys capable of driving the stolen herd.

That would set the film down a fairly standard narrative route of training raw recruits such as Holden would follow in The Devil’s Brigade (1968). But this film evades such a simple format. All we ever learn about the intricacies of handling cattle is that you need a hat and have to be able to sing. Instead, this is a more thoughtful picture about honor versus self-interest, about the human casualties of war. Unlike most westerns it’s not about shoot-outs and fairly obvious good guys and bad guys. In the main it’s a drama about conflicting interests and often how good guys will do bad things in the name their beliefs.

The film doesn’t take sides. Do we root for the Union soldiers fighting to free slaves or the romantic version of the Confederacy? Do we root for the immoral selfish Holden because he’s had a finger shot off as a way of bringing him to heel or do our sympathies lie with the upstanding one-eyed Widmark who has given so much for his cause?

Holden is excellent, easing into the world-weary character he would project more fully in The Wild Bunch (1969). And I like his delivery, the pauses between words as if they are occurring to him for the first time rather than rattling them off as is the way of so many stars. Janice Rule is good as the errant girlfriend who feels let down by Widmark’s honor – and who is open to seduction by Holden – and has her own ideas about what she deserves from the war. Although it’s tempting to say we’ve seen this craggy Widmark characterization too many times before, here he adds a further emotional layer as a man who eventually faces up to the personal sacrifices he has been forced to make.

Action fans will be amply rewarded by the ending as Holden attempts to outwit Widmark.

You might also be interested in how this movie was marketed – see the Pressbook/Marketing section article published in tandem with this.

There’s a fair chance you can catch up with this movie for free on one of the Sony Movie channels but if you don’t want to wait or want to enjoy it at its best check out the DVD.