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.
Jacqueline Bisset is the big draw here. After breaking into the Hollywood bigtime with female leads in The Detective (1968) and Bullitt (1968) she put her newfound marquee weight behind a low-budget French arthouse picture. But ignore the marketeers best efforts to present this as malevolent in the style of The Innocents (1961) or the illicit template of The Nightcomers (1971) or Malena (2000).
No children were corrupted in the making of this picture. Instead, it’s a slow-burn thoughtful exposition of a child coming to terms with loss and a young woman discovering she is more than a mere sexual plaything. Any explosive drama comes from father-son rivalry but mostly it’s a reflective, absorbing movie that follows twin narratives, the attraction of the orphaned introspective 11-year-old Francois (Jean-Francois Vireick) to the English mistress of his uncle Philippe (Pierre Zimmer) and the damage her arrival causes to a fractured household.
The leather glove oveprlays its hand in the poster, suggesting a great deal more sexuality than is actually the case, but nonetheless – and take this as subtle – creates an element of ambiquity about the demure Wendy.
Astonishingly, given its arthouse credentials – long takes, glorious cinematography, brooding close-ups – this was the final film for both directors (no idea why there were two) Paul Feyder (in his debut) and a sophomore effort from Robert Freeman (The Touchables, 1968). Given a screenplay by regular Polanski collaborator Gerard Brach (Wonderwall, 1968) and an intrusive heavy-handed score, you get the impression of two separate movies struggling to fit a single canvas.
On the one hand, you’ve got a perfectly acceptable romantic intrigue, Philippe and son Olivier (Marc Porel) fighting, sometimes metaphorically (games of chess etc), sometimes physically (a punch-up), over the woman, passed off as the daughter of a wartime colleague, and a wife Monique (Chantal Goya) refusing to stand on the sidelines, switching hairstyle to blonde and employing various wiles to prevent the affair. While the male rivalry is overt, the wife’s manipulations are more subtle.
On the other hand, you’ve got the lonely boy, who indulges his imagination, spinning tales of monsters in a lake and spies in the vicinity, mostly ignored by his relatives, hiding out with a pet rabbit in a treehouse, occasionally filching small items, creating a crown out of a stolen brooch and pieces of tree bark. There’s a lot that’s presented without explanation. For example, a couple of months after his parents died in a car crash that he alone survived, he mopes around in a jumper full of holes, either a sign how little his adoptive parents care for him, or perhaps the item of clothing he was wearing the day his mother died.
You can view his behavior – creeping into Wendy’s room at night when she’s asleep – as creepy or just the hankering of a small boy after a substitute mother. But mostly, he lives a life of wistfulness, longing for what he once had, unable to fit into a household split by various emotions. When he snips a lock of Wendy’s hair, or snaffles a bottle of her perfume, it’s to add to his little box of mementoes rather than from any underlying sexual motive. And it’s hard to view his growing feelings for Wendy as early stirrings of sexual attraction. When at one point he falls asleep on her bosom, you couldn’t interpret that as anything more than maternal instinct.
That’s not to say there isn’t tension. But that’s almost entirely played out in the context of father, son and wife. Francois is a welcome gooseberry defusing the unwelcome attentions of Olivier, whose overtures Wendy constantly thwarts. Olivier, well aware of the role Wendy plays in her father’s life, mocks his mother’s attempts to hold onto her errant husband. Wendy, meanwhile, abhors the role she is forced to play, the trophy mistress, and reacts in maternal fashion to the lonely child.
Excepting the intensity of the father-son relationship, the screenplay underplays while still developing character more fully than you might expect.. The child is as manipulative as his aunt in finding ways to spend time with the object of his affection.
Mostly, this has been dismissed as a poor example of the French arthouse picture or as a Bisset vanity number or for illicit elements than never catch fire. But, in reality, it’s a superb character study set in an unromanticised French countryside – rats need shooting, for example, massive tray of cheese served up for dessert rather than the grand wine cellar you might imagine a chateau to contain, or clothes or other ostentatious examples of wealth.
There is so much that is incisively ordinary. Philippe insists on measuring the boy’s height. Monique drops her chilly façade to help the newcomer get rid of a wasp. The arrogant Olivier loses all credibility when he runs away from a gang. The children play out childish rituals. Francois douses the rabbit in Wendy’s perfume so he can keep the smell of her close.
The secret world here is four-fold, the one Philippe foolishly and brazenly attempts to maintain, the one Olivier hopes to possess, the one Francois enjoys and the idyll from which Wendy is shaken out of.
The direction is very confident, none more so, oddly enough, than in the only sex scene, which takes place primarily off-screen, although with the lascivious involvement of a leather-gloved hand.
Rich in detail, supremely atmospheric, well worth a look.
Generation gap comedy driven by unmentionables and the prospect of perplexed father getting more pop-eyed by the minute. By default, probably the last bastion of morality before censorship walls – the U.S. Production Code eliminated the following year – came tumbling down and Hollywood was engulfed in an anything goes mentality. Denial enters its final phase, quite astonishing the mileage achieved by not letting the audience in on what’s actually going on.
Psychiatrist lecturer Jonathan (David Niven) finds his chances of promotion potentially scuppered after lissom teenage daughter Linda (Christine Ferrare) is arrested at a demonstration carrying a banner bearing an unmentionable word. That brings to the boil the notion that Linda may not be quite so sweet as she appears, Jonathan previously willing to overlook minor misdemeanors like smoking and speeding. But it turns out Linda may also have lost her virginity, that word also verboten, and may even be, worse, illegally married.
So the question, beyond just how manic her parents can be driven, is which male is her lover: the main candidates being a trumpet-blowing teenage neighbor and let) or laid-back artist hippie who has painted her in the nude.
Innuendo used to be the copyright of the Brits, in the endlessly smutty Carry On, series, but here the number of words or phrases that can be substituted for “sex” or “virgin” must be approaching a world record, but delivered with gentle obfuscation far removed from the leering approach of the Brits.
It’s a shame this movie appeared in the wake of bolder The Graduate (1967) because it was certainly set in a gentler period and its tone has more in common with Father of the Bride (1950). Setting aside that most of the adults, for fear of offending each other, can’t ever say what they mean, the actual business of a young woman growing up and demanding freedom without ostracising her parents is well done, Linda stuck in the quandary of either being too young or too old to move on in her life.
The scenes where that issue is confronted provide more dramatic and comedic meat than those where everyone is grasping, or gasping like fish, for words that mean the same as the other words they refuse to utter.
Parental issues are complicated in that Jonathan has set himself up as an expert on dealing with the problems growing children present. He views himself as hip when, as you can imagine, to younger eyes, he’s actually square. And he’s also worried his younger daughter Abbey (Darlene Carr) will start to emulate her sibling.
Compared to today, of course, it’s all very innocent and I’m sure contemporary older viewers might pine for those more carefree times. It doesn’t work as social commentary either, given the rebellion that was in the air although it probably does accurately reflect how adults felt at confronted by children growing up too fast in a more liberal age.
David Niven (Prudence and the Pill, 1968) brings a high degree of polish to a movie that would otherwise splutter. He’s playing the equivalent of the stuffy Rock Hudson/Cary Grant role in the Doris Day comedies who always get their comeuppance from the flighty, feisty female. That fact that it’s father-and-daughter rather than mismatched lovers only adds to the fun. And there were few top-ranked Hollywood actors, outside perhaps of Spencer Tracy (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, 1967) who audiences would be interested in seeing play a father.
The unmentionable conceit wears thin at times but Niven and Cristina Ferrare (later better known as the wife of John DeLorean) do nudge it towards a truthful relationship. Former movie hellion Lola Albright (A Cold Wind in August, 1961) is considerably more demure as the Jonathan’s wife. Chad Everett (Claudelle Inglish, 1961) breezes in and out.
Although at times giving off a “beach party” vibe, it manages to examine the mores of the time.
Director Michael Gordon has moved from outwitted controlling mother (For Love or Money, 1963) to undone controlling father without dropping the ball. It’s based on the Broadway play of the same name by Robert Fisher and Arthur Marx.
Lightweight for sure but worth it for David Niven and the sultry Ferrare.
Kirk Douglas (The Brotherhood, 1968) had been so intent on establishing his dramatic credentials as a Hollywood high flier that he hadn’t appeared in a comedy in six years when he was second-billed to Susan Hayward in Top Secret Affair (1957).
So after all the sturm und drang of heavyweight numbers like Strangers When We Meet (1960), Spartacus (1961), and Lonely Are the Brave (1962) it was always going to be interesting to see if he could drop the commanding persona long enough to hit the laugh button. He’s helped by a screenplay that while suggesting he is in control shows him run ragged by a quartet of females.
Millionaire widowed mother Chloe (Thelma Ritter) hires singleton lawyer Deke (Kirk Douglas) for $100,000 – enough to pay off his debts – as some kind of matchmaker, not given the task of finding suitable husbands for her daughters, but to make sure that trio of spoiled women get hitched to men chosen by her.
The plan is for the Kate (Mitzi Gaynor), the most organized, to marry rich playboy Sonny (Gig Young), health nut Bonnie (Julie Newmar) to take up with child love Harvey (Richard Sargent) and hippie art lover Jan (Leslie Parrish) to be landed with dull taxman Sam (William Windom). Sonny is Deke’s best friend, they share a yacht.
Nothing tuns out the way it should in part because Deke is more attractive than any of the other males on offer and in part because the heiresses are disinclined to do what anyone tells them. Deke spends all his time getting into hot water, dashing into another room to take phone calls that inevitably create further confusion, while manfully trying to ensure that the male suitors present their most attractive sides to their potential brides.
There’s not a great deal to it. It’s not exactly farce, but given the daughters live on top of each other, quite easy for Deke to race from one apartment to another, and say the wrong thing at the wrong time. The juggling act is never going to work out, especially as Kate is love struck by Deke, though if she could see how easily he flirts with her siblings she might be less keen. There’s finale on a boat or, should I say, in falling off a boat.
I wouldn’t say it’s a hoot but it’s an excellent lightweight concoction that comes to life by inspired casting. None of the women is your typical Hollywood fluff, all present interesting characters, leaders in their own ways, and with a lifetime of standing up to their domineering mother unlikely to fall over at the sight of any decent male.
Thelma Ritter (Boeing, Boeing, 1965) is easily the pick. The six-time Oscar nominee, generally seen in dowdy parts as a maid or similar, is dressed to the heavens, all glammed up as the millionairess without losing any of her trademark snippiness or drollery. Mitzi Gaynor (South Pacific, 1958), in her final screen role, has a well-written part as an efficient businesswoman and proves more than a match for Deke.
Julie Newmar (The Maltese Bippy, 1969) is a delight as the health nut whose physical demeanor is proof of her regime while Leslie Parrish (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) bounces along with a coterie of artists. Gig Young (Strange Bedfellows, 1965) can do this kind of role in his sleep but he’s no less effective for having acquired that skill of the guy who never gets the girl. And there’s a rare sighting of Hollywood tough guy William Bendix (The Blue Dahlia, 1946) in a comedy.
But none of this would work without Kirk Douglas. And it works because he plays it straight. He doesn’t give in to the temptation of mugging to the camera, eye-rolling and pratfalls. You could easily get the idea the actor thought he was in a drama, especially as he’s the one in the kind of quandary that we’ve seen him ignore before, when ambition trumps morality or romance, as with Ace in the Hole (1951) or Strangers When We Meet. In some senses, the casting relies on audiences being aware of that sneaky side of his screen persona, the one where he doesn’t always do the right thing. And here, you could easily see him opting for the loot over the girl.
Director Michael Gordon (Texas Across the River, 1966) is adept at winkling out the comedic moments in stories that are played straight. The team of Larry Markes and Michael Morris (Wild and Wonderful, 1964) wrote the screenplay with the emphasis on situation comedy rather than farce.
Let’s start with the Hollywood happy ending. Poet Samson (Sean Connery) slugs pregnant second wife (Joanne Woodward). He’d have punched her lights out before if only she hadn’t been so good at diving out of the way. As it is he manages to throw her down the stairs. The film kicks off with him ill-temperedly whacking her over the head with a pillow.
This is the kind of film where violence against women is treated as a running gag.
Let’s try to sell it as a wacky comedy.
Lydia (Jean Seberg), wife of psychiatrist Dr West (Patrick O’Neal) treating Samson for writer’s block, doesn’t have the courage to make it plain to his creepy colleague Dr Vorbeck (Werner Peters) that she doesn’t fancy him when he endlessly paws her and slaps her rear so he takes this as the green light to attempt to rape her. That’s another running gag.
Surly loud-mouthed bully Samson gets a free pass because he’s an artist, a poet with one poor-selling volume of poetry, and unable to find the time or space to complete his masterpiece. He would have more time if he didn’t spend so much of it chasing women.
At my count, he gets through at least four – Lydia, office secretary Miss Walnicki (Sue Ann Lngdon), a client (he cleans carpets for a living) Evelyn (Zohra Lampert), and Dr Kropotkin (Collen Dewhurst), another colleague of Dr West, not to mention the current wife he drives demented and the previous wife for whom he is being aggressively pursued for alimony.
You can see how director Irvin Kershner was a shoo-in for The Flim-Flam Man/One Born Every Minute (1967) because at every opportunity he tries to turn simple dramatic confrontation that enhance the story into needless chases that divert it and extract slapstick from material that in no way suggests it’s ripe for such an approach.
Trivia lovers note: The John “Redcap” Thaw in the supporting feature “Dead Man’s Chest” is the same John Thaw from “The Sweeney” and “Morse“.
There’s a story in here somewhere and a pretty barmy one at that if you set aside the poor poet’s endless battle against a world that fails to understand his genius and his dodging of the alimony. Rightfully diagnosed as some kind of sociopath by yet another of Dr West’s colleagues, the needle-happy Dr Menken (Clive Revill), he is admitted to a psychiatric hospital initially as a way of dodging his creditors and providing him with space and time to write.
Again, his most creative use of his time is to make out with Lydia and Krokoptin. But since he is spotted in a hydro-bath/ripple bath with naked Lydia, the vengeful husband gives the go-ahead to perform some kind of lobotomy on the poet, on the assumption it will dull his violent tendencies. (It doesn’t work.) The opportunity to satirise the psychiatric profession takes second place to another opportunity for a chase.
Anomalies abound. Samson’s character is clearly drawn on Welsh poet Dylan Thomas who exploited his fame and made his money on recital tours. Performing is against the broke Samson’s principles and he turns viciously on his audience of appreciative women. Despite demanding center stage, when offered it he turns it down. He lambasts middle-aged women but has little against those younger members of the species more susceptible to his charms. He only has to tell Miss Walnicki she has “pouty lips” and she falls into his arms.
All this has going for it are the performances. Sean Connery (Marnie, 1964), it has to be said, certainly exhibits screen charisma though this is not as far removed as he would like from the macho James Bond. Joanne Woodward (From the Terrace, 1960) – switching from her normal brunette to blonde – is excellent as the downtrodden waitress wife, but on the occasions when she is spiky enough to put him in his place soon regrets her temerity.
Jean Seberg (Pendulum, 1969) – switching from blonde to brunette and paid more ($125,000 to Woodward’s $100,000) – is good as the sexually frustrated rich housewife. And Patrick O’Neal (Stiletto, 1969) looks as if he is desperate to throw a punch. Elliott Baker (Luv, 1967) wrote the screenplay based on his own novel.
You do sometimes wonder at the knuckle-headedness of stars. Was this all that was offered to Connery at his James Bond peak? Or was it a pet project? I doubt if it would have been made with another big star – you couldn’t see even the macho Steve McQueen entering this territory and the likes of Paul Newman wouldn’t go near it.
Theoretically, studio head honcho Jack Warner gets the blame for this. He didn’t like Kershner’s cut and ordered it re-edited but I’d be hard put to see how his hand could be any less heavy than that of the director.
That’s two stinkers in a week. If you want proof of just how rampant sexism was in Hollywood check out a double bill of this and A Guide to a Married Man (1967).
Taken on its own merits, George Cukor’s western is a highly enjoyable romp. Hardly your first choice for the genre, Cukor ignores the tenets laid down by John Ford and Howard Hawks and the film is all the better for it. Although there are stagecoach chases, gunfighters and Native Americans, don’t expect upstanding citizens rescuing good folk. Instead of stunning vistas Cukor chooses to spend his budget on lavish costumes and sets.
You can see he knows how to use a colour palette, and there is red or a tinge of it in every scene (to the extent of rather a lot of red-haired folk), and although this might not be your bag – and you may not even notice it – it is what makes a Cukor production so lush. The film might start with comedic overtones but by the end you realise it is serious after all.
Angela (Sophia Loren) is the coquettish leading lady and Tom (Anthony Quinn) the actor-manager of a theatrical company managing to stay one step ahead of its creditors, in the main thanks her propensity for spending money she doesn’t have. Of course, once gunfighter Clint (Steve Forrest) wins Loren in a poker game, things go askew.
Anthony Quinn (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) had never convinced me as a romantic lead, but here there is genuine charisma between the two stars. Sophia Loren (Five Miles to Midnight, 1962) is at her most alluring, in dazzling outfits and occasionally in costumes as skin-tight as censors would allow in those days, but with a tendency to use beauty as a means to an end, with the conviction that a smile (or occasionally more) will see her out of any scrape. There is no doubt she is totally beguiling. But that is not enough for Quinn, as she is inclined to include him in her list of dupes.
While primarily a love story and a tale of theatrical woes set against the backdrop of a western, when it comes to dealing with the tropes of the genre Cukor blows it out of the water. We open with a stagecoach chase but our heroes are only racing away from debt until they reach the safety of a state line. We have a gunfighter, but instead of a shoot-out being built up, minutes ticking by as tension rises, Cukor’s gunman just shoots people in sudden matter-of-fact fashion.
Best of all, George Cukor (Justine, 1969) extracts tremendous comedy from the overbearing actors, each convinced of their own genius, and the petty jealousies and intrigue that are endemic in such a troupe. An everyday story of show-folk contains as much incipient drama as the more angst-ridden A Star Is Born (1954), his previous venture into this arena.
From the guy who gave us The Philadelphia Story (1940) with all its sophisticated comedy, it’s quite astonishing that Cukor extracts so much from a picture where the laughs, mostly from throwaway lines, are derived from less substantial material. Quinn (his third film in a row with Cukor) has never been better, no Oscar-bait this time round, just a genuine guy, pride always to the forefront, king of his domain inside his tiny theatrical kingdom, out of his depth in the big wide world, and unable to contain the “heller.”
I won’t spoil it for you but there are two wonderful character-driven twists that set the world to rights.
There is a tremendous supporting cast with former silent film star Ramon Novarro (Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, 1925) as a duplicitous businessman, former child star Margaret O’Brien, another star from a previous era in Edmund Lowe (Cukor’s Dinner at Eight, 1933), and Eileen Eckhart. Dudley Nichols (Stagecoach, 1939) and Walter Bernstein, who wrote a previous Loren romance That Kind of Women (1959) and had a hand in The MagnificentSeven (1960), do an excellent job of adapting the Louis L’Amour source novel Heller with a Gun, especially considering that contained an entirely different story.
Without a doubt it’s Cukor’s picture but Loren and Quinn combine to make it such a believable delight.
British circuit ABC’s major rival, the Rank Organisation, effectively operated three chains. The main chain was known as the Odeon, but it also ran a subsidiary operating as Gaumont. Since you would often find an Odeon and a Gaumont in the same city or large town, it made sense that they were not in competition.
By and large, Rank put its biggest potential blockbusters on the Odeon circuit with lesser titles doing the rounds of the Gaumonts in what was termed rather confusingly as the “National Release”, with that chain also used to mop up box office excess should a film have done exceptionally well on the major circuit, John Wayne western The Commancheros (1961) and the second James Bond adventure From Russia with Love (1963) moving from one to the other in a short space of time. Rank was also a major player in the roadshow business, the Gaumont in Glasgow, for example, the venue for such long-runners as The Sound of Music (1965).
Clever presentation makes it look as though it’s up to the audience or the cinema to decide which is the main feature – technically, it was “The Ceremony.”
Perhaps because it felt obliged to feed movies into two streams rather than one, the Rank cinemas were less inclined at the start of the decade to go full tilt down the double bill route. You might have thought with so many cinemas to support that the obvious approach would be to limit the number of double bills made available.
In fact, the opposite was true. Perhaps more aware of the need to give the moviegoer value-for-money, Odeon offered far fewer single bills than rival ABC. Whereas ABC programmed in somewhere between 28 and 37 single bills every year during the 1960s, Odeon had less. Its peak was 21 in 1960. But that was followed by a dramatic tail off, the next highest year saw 15 single bills in 1967, quite a few of these being roadshows entering general release for the first time. For the entire decade Odeon averaged around 13 single bills a year.
In other words, while ABC in a busy year for double bills might get through a total of 76 films, Odeon’s output would be 90-100.
However, the kind of double bill you might see at an Odeon was, until later in the decade, an inferior product to what you would watch at an ABC cinema. Odeon was prone to stuffing its programs with filler material, genuine old-fashioned B-movies, often running little over an hour rather than the 90/100-minute picture audiences might expect from a genuine double bill.
Suprised to see “Rage” getting such a wide release as support here. “Georgy Girl” was such a hit in first run it took an age to move into general release.
Whereas there was a decent chance that a movie on the lower part of a double bill shown on the ABC circuit would have a recognizable star, it was almost certain that you would never have heard of any of the stars in films carrying out the same role on the Odeon circuit.
For example, supporting Peter Sellers-Sophia Loren comedy The Millionairess (1960) was the undistinguished Squad Car (1960) starring Vici Raaf. The Magnificent Seven (1960) was accompanied by Police Dog Story (1961) starring James Brown. Womanhunt with Steve Peck was allocated to The Commancheros (1961) and The Deadly Duo with Craig Hill to Dr No (1962).
Alternatively, Odeon would dig into the vaults and team up one new feature with an oldie. So musical State Fair (1962) was stuck with The Desert Rats (1953) starring Richard Burton; Glenn Ford-Lee Remick thriller The Grip of Fear (aka Experiment in Terror, 1962) with Operation Mad Ball (1957) headlining Jack Lemmon; Stephen Boyd psychological thriller The Third Secret (1964) with Frank Sinatra revival Can-Can (1960).
Other times, the double bill was a pair of oldies, Billy Wilder courtroom drama Witness for the Prosecution (1957) teamed up with James Stewart western The Far Country (1954) or the start of the James Bond reissue onslaught beginning with From Russia with Love (1963)/Dr No (1962). Sandra Dee comedy I’d Rather Be Rich (1964) initially on the lower half of a double bill with Send Me No Flowers (1964) was within a few months performing the same function for Gregory Peck amnesia thriller Mirage (1965).
And just like ABC, some of the double bills didn’t work out. Romantic comedy Two and Two Make Six (1962) starring George Chakiris and Janette Scott coupled with heist picture Strongroom (1962) failed to make it past the first few days. Billy Wilder’s Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) and The Sicilians (1964) was yanked off the screens after dire returns. In the case of the Madigan/Games double bill it was the latter that met with audience hostility.
So it took Odeon some time to hit its stride and pitch together the kind of double bill program that might attract a decent audience. Good examples would be: The Ceremony (1963) starring Laurence Harvey dualed with Sidney Poitier in Oscar-winning form in Lilies of the Field (1963); and Oscar fave Georgy Girl (1965) and rabies thriller Rage (1966) featuring Glenn Ford and Stella Stevens..
You might well attract customers for the remake double bill of Beau Geste (1966) and Madame X (1966); and French hit A Man and a Woman (1966) and Sailor from Gibralter (1967) with French star Jeanne Moreau.
I would have made time to see George Peppard-Dean Martin western Rough Night in Jericho (1967) with what was intended as a star-making turn from Robert Wagner in Banning (1967). The St Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) and George C. Scott-Michael Sarrazin One Born Every Minute (aka The Flim-Flam Man, 1967) seemed an interesting program. And you wouldn’t go far wrong with spy thriller Danger Route (1967) and John Sturges western Hour of the Gun (1967).
I remember being highly entertained by a double bill of John Wayne as an oil wildcatter in The Hellfighters (1969) and Doug McClure and Jill St John in swashbuckler The King’s Pirate (1969). Thought went into programming together heist movie Duffy (1968) starring James Coburn and spy thriller Hammerhead (1968); fashion-set drama Joanna (1968) and Pretty Poison (1968); and George Segal war picture The Bridge at Remagen (1969) and Robert Mitchum western Young Billy Young (1969).
But sometimes you got the impression the Odeon circuit was hard put to find relevant product and was happy to stick out in the lower part of the double bill a movie that had been sitting on the shelf such as Ann-Margret small town drama Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965) which went out as support to Rock Hudson and Claudie Cardinale in Blindfold (1966) or Jerry Lewis comedy Way, Way Out (1966) supporting Raquel Welch as Fathom (1967).
The 10th Victim (1965) took an age to be slotted in below The Night of the Big Heat (1967). Claude Chabrol’s The Road to Corinth with Jean Seberg was two years old when packed off with the second Bulldog Drummond adventure Some Girls Do (1969). British sex drama The Touchables (1968) waited a year before emerging in the wake of James Coburn-Lee Remick thriller Hard Contract (1969).
Sometimes, double bills revealed the hard truth about fading marquee pull. Glenn Ford films were often on the lower part of a double bill and so were offerings by Tony Curtis, James Garner, Anthony Perkins, Ann-Margret and Robert Mitchum.
By the end of the next decade, Odeon was still more reliant on double bills than ABC, though often these programmes were made up of reissues of Bond, Pink Panther, Three Musketeers, the Confessions series and Rocky/Network (both 1976) while the likes of early Stallone vehicle The Lord of Flatbush (1974), documentary Let The Good Times Roll (1973) and romance Jeremy (1973) were revived as supporting features.
Britain had some smaller circuits in operation but both Granada and Scottish outfit Caledonian Associated Cinemas tended to cherry-pick from either the Odeon or ABC releases.
SOURCE: Allen Eyles, Odeon Cinemas 2: From J. Arthur Rank to the Multiplex (CTA, 2005) p206-214, 219-220.
You might be surprised to learn that by Hollywood standards the recent self-elective dualing of Barbie and Oppenheimer was a perfect double bill. Not because it resuscitated an old distribution ploy but that the two films would have been viewed in the 1960s as an ideal pairing. A program comprising two completely different pictures was seen as the best way to attract an audience.
You might also be under the misapprehension that until the dominance of the single-film program from the 1980s onwards an outing to the movies always involved seeing two movies. But that wasn’t the case at all and studios fought a hard battle against a trend, beginning in the United States in 1930s especially in cities like Chicago, of demanding a program comprising two films rather than one.
Horror films were the most common to end up on a double bill and, in fact, were often made with that purpose in mind.
But by the 1960s, except in their initial publicity-driven outings in the giant seating arenas in the likes of London, Paris, New York, Rome, Chicago etc, films that went out on subsequent release were often accompanied by a supporting feature well above the caliber of the B-pictures that had saturated the previous decades. In the 1940s and 1950s, for example, most double bills, while complying with the three-hour dictat for a reasonable night out, were rarely value-for-money, usually composed of a main feature and a much inferior cheaper B-movie, often a series western or crime movie.
It was only in the 1960s, when B-film production all but vanished, that cinemas began to offer what you might call a decent value-for-money package. Though, if you looked beneath the lines, you might discover that one of the offerings was being offloaded after flopping in initial opening.
Not surprisingly, at the start of the 1960s, with movie production in terminal decline, the last thing studios wanted to do was to use up their scant supplies too soon. Double bills could also limit box office. Shown on its own, a single feature could generate four or five showings a day. Teamed with another movie, exposure was reduced to two, maybe three, complete programmes a day depending on venue and location. The supporting feature generally played for a fixed rental rather than a percentage, so income was further reduced.
U.S. chains tended to be regional rather than national so it’s hard to get an idea from them of the importance double bills played in the national consciousness. On the other hand, Britain boasted two national circuits, ABC and Odeon, and examination the programmes put out there give a better idea of the role double bills had in cinemas.
Considerable thought went into allocating partners, studios, rather than cinemas, responsible for the arriving at the ideal mix. Except for a horror pairing, appealing to a specific adult market, the perfect double bill was deliberately wide in its aim, attempting to scoop up business from different sectors of the population, perhaps on a sexist basis. For example, a drama targeting women might be paired with a western attracting men. This kind of thinking accounted for some of what you might consider oddities of programming.
On the UK’s ABC circuit, for example heist picture They Came To Rob Las Vegas (1969) went out as the main attraction with Sandy Dennis romantic drama Sweet November (1969); Angie Dickinson romance Lovers Must Learn (aka Rome Adventure, 1962) with violent Sam Peckinpah western The Deadly Companions (1961); Faye Dunaway-Rossano Brazzi tragic romance A Place for Lovers (1969) with Glenn Ford western Heaven with a Gun (1969); and the sixth iteration of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series The Karate Killers (1967) with Alexander Mackendrick’s Californian beach comedy Don’t Make Waves (1967) starring Tony Curtis and Claudia Cardinale.
Other times, there was clearly an element of making the best of a bad job, how to otherwise explain thriller David McCallum in non-U.N.C.L.E. thriller The Heroin Gang (aka Sol Madrid, 1968) – the main attraction – being matched with David Niven-Deborah Kerr occult oddity Eye of the Devil, which had been sitting on the shelf for two years; Ann-Margret showcase The Swinger (1966) with Rock Hudson sci fi Seconds (1966) directed by John Frankenheimer; and French sex romp Benjamin (aka Diary of an Innocent Boy, 1968) with the violent prison-set Riot (1969) starring Jim Brown and Gene Hackman.
The only genre, outside of horror, that accommodated the double bill was comedy as seen through the teaming of Who’s Minding the Store (1963) starring Jerry Lewis and Jill St John and Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed (1963) with Dean Martin; Jerry Lewis again in The Patsy (1964) with Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964); and Tony Curtis starrer Drop Dead Darling (aka Arrivederci, Baby, 1966) with Warren Beatty and Leslie Caron in Promise Her Anything (1966).
Some Elvis Presley musicals were considered too lightweight to be released without a support – It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963) was bracketed with swashbuckler Swordsman of Siena (1962) starring Stewart Granger; Kissin’ Cousins (1964) with Pat Boone comedy Never Put It in Writing (1964); Tickle Me (1965) with Soldier in the Rain (1963) – only given a full release two years after completion due to star Steve McQueen’s increasing popularity; California Holiday (aka Spinout, 1966) with sword-and-sandal epic Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (1963); and Double Trouble (1967) with western Hondo and the Apaches (1967), a feature stitched together from two episodes of TV series Hondo. Others Elvis pictures were deemed quite capable of looking after themselves at the box office – Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), Roustabout (1964), and Easy Come, Easy Go (1967), for example, released as single bills.
Some programs seemed terrific value for money, films that individually might struggle to find an audience, but together seemed a worthwhile visit. I would have been quite happy to line up for any of the following: John Ford western Sergeant Rutledge (1960) plus A Tall Story with Anthony Perkins and Jane Fonda; Never Take Sweets (Candy) from a Stranger (1960) and Brigitte Bardot crime drama Come Dance With Me (1959); France Nuyen in John Sturges’ A Girl Named Tamiko (1962) and Debbie Reynolds in My Six Loves (1963); and Rod Taylor and Jane Fonda in romance Sunday in New York (1963) plus Glenn Ford and Stella Stevens in comedy western Company of Cowards (aka Advance to the Rear, 1964).
For that matter I’d be easily tempted into a program comprising Rod Taylor as Young Cassidy (1965) and Glenn Ford-Henry Fonda modern western The Rounders (1965); Sidney Poitier in A Patch of Blue (1965) and Ann-Margret romantic comedy Made in Paris (1966); Robert Stack and Elke Sommer thriller The Peking Medallion (aka The Corrupt Ones, 1967) and Jane Fonda in comedy Bachelor Girl Apartment (aka Any Wednesday, 1966); and Rod Taylor as Chuka (1967) in the Gordon Douglas western and David Janssen in thriller The Warning Shot (1967).
Count me in for the following combos: Charlton Heston in WW2 drama Counterpoint (1967) coupled with James Garner adventure The Pink Jungle (1968); George Segal hunting serial killer Rod Steiger in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) and Sidney Poitier in The Slender Thread (1965) – receiving a full release somewhat late in the day on the back of the star’s recent box office; British home invasion thriller The Penthouse (1967) and heist masterclass Grand Slam (1967); and Burt Lancaster-Deborah Kerr drama The Gypsy Moths (1969) and James Garner as Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe (1969).
Imagining either The Wonders of Aladdin (1961) or Tarzan Goes to India (1962) as single bill fodder would be a stretch, a double bill the best solution. In any case, since Disney pushed all its product through the rival Odeon chain, ABC was short of family-friendly programs for the school holiday periods. Hence the coupling of Son of Spartacus (aka The Slave, 1962) starring Steve Reeves with Flipper (1964) or Tarzan’s Three Challenges (1963) with Flipper and the Pirates (aka Flipper’s New Adventure, 1964).
Equally, you might wonder what had gone so wrong with Kirk Douglas Korean War drama The Hook (1963) that it ended up on the lower end of a double bill with airline stewardess comedy Come Fly with Me (1963). And you might be surprised to discover which films weren’t rated strong enough box office to go out on their own. James Garner and Julie Andrews in cynical WW2 drama The Americanization of Emily (1964) required support from the first The Man from U.N.C.L.E. adventure To Trap a Spy (1964) (Equally odd given the series’ later fame that the latter was merely a support.)
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in The Sandpiper (1965) were given a helping hand by Miss Marple mystery Murder Ahoy! (1964). Sophia Loren as Lady L (1965) plus an all-star cast including Paul Newman required release assistance from Glenn Ford-Rita Hayward film noir The Money Trap (1965). Sizzling London box office and critical adoration didn’t save Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) from being paired with Sandra Dee comedy Doctor, You’ve Got To Be Kidding (1967). Charlton Heston western Will Penny (1968) was bundled up with Tarzan and the Great River (1967).
Nothing pointed to Doris Day’s fading box office prowess more than Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968) being hooked up to Raquel Welch bikini caper The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968). An Oscar nomination for Joanne Woodward in drama Rachel (aka Rachel, Rachel, 1968) wasn’t enough to see it home without the accompaniment of Tony Curtis period comedy The Chastity Belt (aka On the Way to the Crusades, 1967). Goodbye, Columbus might have been a huge hit in the USA and turned Ali McGraw into a star but as an unknown her debut feature went out with Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968).
On the other hand, if a feature was considered too weak to play on its own, it might be withdrawn from the British ABC circuit before the week was over, a fate that befell Maureen O’Hara starrer Battle of the Villa Florita (1965), Jeffrey Hunter thriller Brainstorm (1965) and, unusually given its source, a bestseller by Arthur Hailey, Hotel (1966) starring Rod Taylor.
One of the ways to get round the circuit system that limited showing of a film generally to a single week was to double up two hits for a second tilt at the box office.
The advent of the reissue double bill made studios reassess what constituted a successful combo. James Bond, Clint Eastwood, Pink Panther and cheesecake duos (One Million Years B.C., 1966, starring Raquel Welch paired with She, 1965, headlining Ursula Andress), and speedy revivals of recent hits, such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967)/Bullitt (1968). showed that such programs could do just as well, if not better, by targeting a specific audiences as attempting to spread appeal.
The single-bill was in decline throughout the 1960s. On the ABC circuit in the U.K., for example, the number of single bills shown in an individual year peaked at 37 in 1963 before sharply falling to an average of 28 for the next six years. In other words, while ABC worked its way through a total of 67 movies in 1963, for the rest of the decade it was screening an average of 76 a year.
The following decade it was a different story as the circuit release system crumpled under the weight of long-runners like The Godfather (1972) and Jaws (1975) that sucked up so much juice in first run there was little left at the box office when they hit the suburban/small town circuit. The single bill was back on top by the end of 1970s – only eight double bills shown in 1979.
More typical of the 1970s double bill – two top stars in movies that hadn’t quite hit the box office mark Stateside so were bundled together as a more audience-friendly attraction.
(Of course, I’m ignoring here those independent cinemas – the Scala in London’s King’s Cross or the Prince Charles in Leicester Square – that became famous for making up their own double bills, many of which examples went into legend.)
Gradually, except for very occasional reissues, the double bill was consigned to history until the public this year, of its own accord (though perhaps driven by a clever social media campaign) changed its tune. I’m a perennial supporter of the do-it-yourself double bill. On my weekly jaunt to the cinema I see back-to-back two films of my own choosing. But I’m guessing that cinema buffs regularly make up their own double bills from their own collections or digging out what’s on offer from mainstream networks and the streamers. So I’m not as surprised as some that what appears a one-off phenomenon caught on so fast.
Note: I’d be interested to know if the double bills I’ve mentioned above were shown in the USA or the rest of the world for that matter.
SOURCE: Allen Eyles, ABC, The First Name in Entertainment (Cinema Theatre Association, 1993) p122-127.
Little has dated as badly as this male supremacy sexist hogwash. While Billy Wilder can manage to inject some sophistication and even elegance into the thorny subject of adultery and male philandering (The Apartment, 1960), director Gene Kelly has little to offer but crudity.
Walter Matthau (The Fortune Cookie, 1966), top-billed for the first time, does little more than act as listener to neighbour Ed (Robert Morse), supposed expert on wifely deception and link man to a series of lame unconnected sketches featuring a battalion of cameo stars.
It’s more likely to be remembered for being the final film Jayne Mansfield (Playgirl after Dark/Too Hot to Handle, 1960) made before her premature death. Her episode might well sum up the depths of hilarity this opus stoops to – the compelling issue of what to do when your illicit companion loses her bra in your bedroom.
Perhaps the only amusing note is the notion that this has come from the pen of the Oscar-winning Frank Tarloff (Father Goose, 1964), responsible also for the source novel, drawing on the experiences of a bunch of “swingers” reputedly enjoying to the full the sexual excesses of the decade, a decidedly middle-aged gang intent on not leaving all the fun to the hippies and the liberated young
The women here are straight out of The Stepford Wives template of female docility, existing only to please their men, any passing woman automatically in the stunner bracket intent on demonstrating every wiggle possible. Worse, one is so weak that she can be easily manipulated into believing that she did not, in fact, catch her husband in bed with another woman once the wily man falls back on that old political adage of plausible deniability.
What makes the antics of Paul (Matthau) and Ed so reprehensible is that their wives are trusting knock-outs in the first place. Ruth (Inger Stevens), Paul’s other half, not just a keep-fit fanatic but a fabulous cook, able to present a superb meal on a miniscule budget.
So we are meant, I suppose, to sympathize with Paul’s flawed efforts at beginning an extra-marital affair. Or at the very least laugh at his failures, rather than mock his inadequacies as a husband. Paul’s main target is divorcee Irma (Sue Anne Langdon) but it’s no surprise Ed beats him to the punch. There’s an old-fashioned morality lesson at the end but I was hoping, instead, for a twist whereby smug Paul discovered his wife was playing away from home. Although, admittedly, that would be out of character for Ruth.
You might get through this if cameos are your thing and you want to spent a whole movie waiting for an appearance by It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) alumni Sid Caesar, Jack Benny, Phil Silvers and Terry-Thomas plus the likes of Lucille Ball (Yours, Mine and Ours, 1968), Polly Bergen (Kisses for My President, 1964), Art Carney (Harry and Tonto, 1974), Carl Reiner (The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, 1966), Linda Harrison (Planet of the Apes, 1968) and Jeffrey Hunter (Custer of the West, 1967).
Walter Matthau just about keeps this afloat and lucky for his career he had The Odd Couple (1968) up next. Inger Stevens (Firecreek, 1968) is wasted.
This was a box office riot on initial release, but times have changed. Gene Kelly (Hello, Dolly!, 1969) directs with a leaden hand.
Once you get over the notion of Jason Statham as an eco-warrior, and alternating between grumpy and cuddly step-dad, and that the eco-goodies are actually hypocritical eco-baddies, pillaging the depths of the ocean for the equivalent of Avatar’s unobtainium, and the top scientist who keeps a captive Megaladon in check by what looks like dog-training techniques, and the usual gobbledegook sci-fi anomalies, you are in for a hell of a ride as a trio of Megs start chomping down on the kind of witless holidaymakers who peppered the likes of Piranha 3D.
There are neat references to Jurassic Park and nods to Chinese rather than American culture, especially in veneration of the old, and the action, once it surfaces from the gloomy depths, is breath-taking. Perfect summer popcorn material. You can pretty much ignore the MacGuffin, whose sole purpose is to ensure the Megaladons are freed from climactic imprisonment – the “thermoclime” – in the Mariana Trench.
Given there’s a fair bit of plotty-plot-plot to get through it’s just as well we kick off with action. Jonas (Jason Statham) ingeniously bursts out of a container on a merchant ship dumping hazardous waste and having captured on film the evidence he requires is scooped from the ocean like a drowned rat by a seaplane with giant jaws. Deep-sea exploration company owner Jaining (Wu Jin) has teamed up with billionaire investor Hillary (Sienna Guillory) to make further forays into the aforementioned trench.
On a routine dive in a far-from-routine submersible, Jonas’s teenage step-daughter Meiying (Shuya Sophia Cai) stows away so when the crew discover an illicit mining operation and that the captive Meg has escaped and teamed up two other Megs, the stakes couldn’t be higher. It’s a bit murky down below and despite the various oohs and aahs of the explorers nothing really stunning on view. Still, that’s not what we’re here for, and luckily Avatar-style visuals take second place to more action as Jonas, striding along the trench floor in exosuit, has to save all from the ruthless mercenary Montes (Sergio Peris-Mencheta).
But, really, this a mere prelude to what’s going to happen once everyone, creatures included, surface. The Megs are slick operators, keeping tight formation as they tear through the water. Fancying a tourist snack, the creatures home in on Fun Island. Jonas has his work cut out saving the innocent rich from the quartet of predators and a bunch of nasty prehistoric amphibians while fending off Hillary and her gang of thugs.
It’s certainly inventive enough and occasionally light-hearted and the action is spread out among the various participants, Meiying proving a chip off the old block, and no romance this time getting in the way. Heartless villain Hillary is despatched in the most obvious homage to Jurassic Park and the climax, as you might expect, is Jonas going one-on-one with any alpha male, whether Montes or the gigantic creatures. Explosives taped to harpoons, explosives made out of fertilizer, and helicopter rotors are among the improvised weapons.
While you couldn’t accuse it of being thoughtful, and you might even consider it a shade cynical in its use of eco-activism, it never takes itself seriously, which means it’s just a whole load of fun. Go looking for anything more meaningful or more cinematic (a la Steven Spielberg) and you’re wasting your time. But who, really, would make such a mistake. The popcorn is calling.
Certainly, compared to arthouse cop-put The Dive it’s a work of genius. This purported anti-blockbuster resorts to info-dumps to create any sort of suspense. By the time you’re halfway through you’re desperate for a shark, octopus, manta-ray, demon of the deep, to gobble up this hapless pair of divers, sisters Drew (Sophie Lowe) and May (Louisa Krause). If it had the conviction of its arthouse credentials, there would have been a tragic ending, the incompetent Drew unable to save the resourceful, efficient, May, trapped underwater by an unexplained rockfall.
The falling rocks manage to bury their rucksacks, including car keys, but magically miss the jetty yards away. For no earthly reason except it fits the story, May can’t open the car boot to find a tire lever. For no earthly reason, as an experienced diver, and although her life depends on it, she doesn’t know how to properly attach an oxygen tank. And quite how, in her bewilderment, and in murky depths, she manages to find the trapped sister time and again is baffling. And when she does find the solution to releasing her sister it’s one of those daft ideas straight out of Apollo 13 that you sit there questioning. Naturally, there’s a pocket of trapped air underground just when it’s most needed.
But, mostly, Drew’s running around like a headless chicken and for some reason that detracts rather than builds suspense. Half the time we’re getting info dumps, not of the time-running-out variety, but on how far down they are and what you’ve got to do avoid the bends. But you discover less about the characters than in The Meg 2, and care even less. Drew is grumpy, disillusioned for some reason, while May is sparky and enthusiastic and any time the supposed suspense gets too much director Maximilian Erlenwein cuts away to their carefree childhood or to a conversation that is meant to have hidden meaning.
Rotten Tomatoes critics rate The Dive (69%) above Meg 2 (30%) but audiences, who know better, go the other way, 73% for the monster-filled concoction, 50% for the monster-free bore.
By all that Hollywood held sacred, The Stalking Moon should never have got off the ground, at least not by National General Cinemas, the latest addition to the burgeoning mini-major roster. For National General, in keeping with the company name, had been set up to run theaters. And operating theaters and making movies ran counter to the Consent Decree of 1948 which had not only forced the major studios to jettison their chains of cinemas but also prevented them in the future from functioning in that manner.
As a legal device, the Consent Decree had more than done its job; it had almost brought the entire industry to its knees since studios could no longer rely on the substantial profits generated from exhibition to bolster their movie-making programs, causing the industry to fall into a decade-long downward spiral. Although revenues had recovered throughout the 1960s as a result of the promulgation of the roadshow, the Bond films and variety of other audience-winning efforts, the underlying effect of the Consent Decree, that of reducing studio output, still had a radical impact on theater owners.
Simply put, there were not enough movies to go round. A smaller number of movies corresponded to higher rentals, putting exhibitors under even more pressure to make a decent buck. In order to make the most of what was available, owners of first run houses, even outwith the standard lengthy contracts for roadshows, took to running ordinary movies for longer than before, resulting in meagre pickings for theaters further down the food chain. So when National General proposed upending the principles of the Consent Decree, there were few in the industry determined to stand in their way.
National General Corporation owed its inception to the Consent Decree. It had been established in 1951 with the express purpose of taken over the running of the 550 theaters which Twentieth Century Fox was being forced to relinquish. That number of cinemas was considered too high and a court order cut the number in half six years later. By 1963, with earnings of $3.4 million, the organisation ran 217 theaters as well as having real estate holdings and a sideline in renting equipment for mobile concerts, by which time it had already instigated court proceedings in order to annul or bypass the Consent Decree.
It was not the first theater chain to aim to set aside the binding conditions of the Decree. Howco, owning 60 theaters, began low-budget production in 1954. American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters had made modest forays in this direction, primarily with program fillers of the sci-fi/horror variety, in the late 1950s, and regional theater owner McLendon Films entered the production arena with My Dog Buddy (1960). But these were viewed as minor aberrations and not considered to breach the stout defences of the Decree.
National General had bigger ambitions that could not be fulfilled without some alteration of the original Decree and in 1963 it went to court to seek a modification of the Decree ruling which, while safeguarding anti-trust measures, would nonetheless help arrest the rapid decline in production, which had seen output tumble from 408 features in 1942 to just 138 movies two decades later. As an “experiment”, the government permitted NGC a three-year window.
NGC’s new enterprise was to be called Carthay Center Productions and nine months later announced its first movie would be What Are Little Girls Made Of, a $2.5 million comedy produced by the Bud Yorkin-Norman Lear Tandem shingle, and that it was in talks with Stanley Donen (Singing’ in the Rain, Charade). (The Girl in the Turquoise Bikini was also mooted, but never made.) A few months later, the infant outfit projected that it was on course to make four-six pictures a year with budgets in the $2 million-$4 million range, with Divorce-American Style now scheduled as its first offering.
The hopes of expectant exhibitors were kept alive throughout the entire three-year period granted by the government. A three-picture deal was made with director Fielder Cook who lined up prominent British playwright Harold Pinter to write Flight and Pursuit. Two years after receiving the governmental green light, none of these projects had come to fruition and to speed up production Carthay sought to take advantage of the British government’s Eady Levy (which subsidised film production in the UK) by making The Berlin Memorandum (later re-titled The Quiller Memorandum), based on the spy thriller by Adam Hall (aka Elleston Trevor, Flight of the Phoenix), on a $2.5 million budget as the first volley in a six-film 18-month production schedule.
The picture would be a joint production with British company Rank, which offered instant distribution in Britain. The other pictures covered in the announcement were: Divorce-American Style, What Are Little Girls Made Of and John Henry Goes to New York (all under the Tandem aegis); plus Flight and Pursuit and Careful, They’re Our Allies from Charles K. Peck Films. By 1966, Tandem’s Divorce-American Style starring Dick van Dyke and Debbie Reynolds had begun shooting as had The Quiller Memorandum, with George Segal and Alec Guinness as the marquee names, but without the involvement of Carthay. There was no great immediate interest in Divorce American Style from distributors and it sat on the shelf until June 1967 when it was distributed by Columbia. It was a surprise hit at the box office, ranking 17th on the annual chart with $5.1 million in rentals – above In Like Flint and just below the John Wayne pair ElDorado and The War Wagon.
However, by 1966, NGC was in buoyant mood, underlining its ambitions by announcing a $10 million business-building loan. More importantly, at the beginning of the year it had signed up its first major star. Gregory Peck was to headline The Stalking Moon, with a $3.5 million budget and shooting to begin in spring 1967. There was even talk at this stage that it “may be a hard ticket picture;” there was little more prestigious for a new company than to enter the roadshow field.
Although this was, technically, the eighth movie –A Dream of Kings was the seventh – on the NGC roster (and had previously been announced as such when movie rights to the Theodore V. Olsen western had been acquired pre-publication in December 1965) it now, with Peck’s involvement, shot up the production ladder. Although screenwriter Wendell Mayes (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965) had been scheduled to act as producer, Peck’s production company Brentwood was also involved. The picture acquired further cachet with the announcement that George Stevens (Shane, 1953) was to direct as well as produce.
There were now five co-producers: Stevens, Universal, Peck, NGP, and Mayes. In theory, at least, the arrival of heavyweights such as Peck and Stevens should have speeded up production. Instead, an endless series of delays/ postponements ensued. The April 3, 1967, start date fell by the wayside when Stevens dropped out. Although there was speculation that Stevens’ departure would lead to the movie being shelved, Universal remained on board, at least for the time being, as distributor. Meanwhile, NGP took over production duties and reunited Peck with To Kill a Mockingbird director Robert Mulligan and producer Alan J. Pakula. Before Stevens left, the start date had already been shifted to May 28 and when the dust on that had settled it was set for an October 15 start.
But that proved over-optimistic and when it began rolling on January 5, 1968, the budget had increased to $4 million. However, the movie still failed to meet other deadlines set for summer and autumn and did not finally roll until 1968.
By then, NGP was facing other difficulties. For a start, the battle to remain in the production business precipitated another round of legal and governmental negotiations. The original three-year waiver that had expired in 1966 had been extended by a further three years and although, by this point the second largest movie chain in the country, NGC had clearly failed to fill the production gap that it was set up specifically to do, but its position was bolstered by CBS television launching its Cinema Center movie production arm and ABC television its Cinerama vehicle.
The Pacific Coast Theater circuit had taken over Cinerama in 1963. ABC had 418 theaters, the largest in the country, and set up Circle Films. In 1967 Cinerama Releasing Corporation was established to distribute the films of both Cinerama and ABC Circle and, in fact, had been, at least in terms of output, more prolific than NGC, releases comprising Custer of the West (1967), Hell in the Pacific (1968), Charly (1968), The Killing of Sister George (1968), They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969) and Krakatoa East of Java (1969). ABC Circle closed down in 1973 despite registering its biggest-ever hit Cabaret in 1972. In fact, most CRC releases were flops.
National General was so worried about another government waiver not being forthcoming that it was considering a merger with Warner Brothers as a means of safeguarding production. The Carthay name itself soon became defunct, the company reverting to National General Pictures (NGP) in order to identify, in the words of president Eugene V. Klein, “our picture making activities as a major part of our company program.” In addition, it had fallen far short of its production schedule. Instead of releasing movies at the rate of one per month throughout 1968, only six films were ready for distribution – and none of them were actually made by NGC. Poor Cow, Twisted Nerve, and All Neat in Black Stockings were British; How Sweet It Is was made by Cinema Center; With Six You Get Eggroll by Doris Day’s production company; and A Quiet Place in the Country was Italian. And none boasted stars of the Gregory Peck caliber. By year end, the company’s entire production fortune was riding on The Stalking Moon.
By the beginning of 1969 Gregory Peck looked a spent force. He had not made a film in three years, a dangerous length of exile in fickle Hollywood. The commercial and artistic peaks of the early 1960s – The Guns of Navarone (1961) and How the West Was Won (1962) both topping the annual box office charts in addition to winning the Oscar for Best Actor, at the fifth attempt, with To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) – were long gone. None of his other pictures came close to matching these in either commercial or artistic terms: Captain NewmanM.D. (1963) ranked 21st for the year, and Stanley Donen thriller Arabesque (1966) with Sophia Loren, 16th.
Most performed substantially below expectations. Cape Fear (1962), despite the involvement of Navarone director J. Lee Thompson and co-star Robert Mitchum fell foul of the Production Code. The censors demanded the word “rape” be excised from the finished film and other changes made to the script. British censors demanded a total of 161 cuts, provoking co-star Polly Bergen to complain there was no point in her promoting the film in the UK since she was now hardly in it. The star was not perturbed. “An adult audience will understand the theme,” he said. The movie ranked 47th in the annual box office race. In Peck’s entire canon only Beloved Infidel had done worse.
Prestige offering Behold A Pale Horse (1964) directed by Fred Zinnemann (From Here To Eternity) and co-starring Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif, proved an unexpected flop, 63rd for the year, while thriller Mirage (1965), directed by veteran Edward Dymytryk, was 74th. With his commercial status in question, the actor shuttered his production company Brentwood, although in an image-conscious industry, he came up with a more respectable reason: “We are far better holding ourselves available for acting jobs, and then producing only when the right elements happen to be there.”
From 1964 onwards, he was more commonly associated with films that did not get made. That year, Cinerama announced with considerable fanfare that he was going to star in grand sci-fi project The Martian Chronicles, directed by Robert Mulligan, adapted from the Ray Bradbury bestseller, with a $10 million budget. Also failing to get off the ground was The Night of the Short Knives, planned as a co-production with veteran Walter Wanger (Cleopatra, 1963). At one point Steve McQueen was mooted as a co-star until MGM’s rival production 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) killed the idea stone dead.
In 1965 MGM signed Peck up, along with David Niven (another Navarone alumnus), James Stewart, James Coburn and George Segal for Ice Station Zebra, based on another Alistair MacLean thriller, with a screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky; but when the movie finally appeared several years later none of these names were involved. In 1965, he also lost out on They’re a Weird Mob when the rights which he had held since 1959 elapsed. Across the River and into the Trees, based on the Ernest Hemingway novel, with Virna Lisi did not get beyond the development stage.
It was hard to say what was worse, movies shelved before a foot of film was exposed, or pictures halted in mid-production, as was the case in 1966 when filming in Switzerland of The Bells of Hell Go Ting A Ling A Ling was suspended after five weeks due to unexpectedly harsh weather conditions in Europe. It was indicative of doubts about Peck’s commercial standing that the movie did not continue shooting, despite a budget outlay by this point of over $2 million, once the weather had cleared.
A total of 12 minutes were completed before filming ended. Peck played a British Army colonel charged in World War One with leading a team to ferry aircraft parts across Switzerland to Lake Constance and then reassemble them to bomb a Zeppelin base. Ian McKellen (Lord Of The Rings), making his movie debut, began to correct Peck’s American pronunciation of “lieutenant” only to be told by director David Miller that Peck could pronounce it any way he liked because “Britain was only five per cent of the world market.”
In 1967 it was the turn of After Navarone, The Mudskipper and Strangers on the Bridge with Alec Guinness to stall on the starting grid. Although the reissue in 1966 of The Guns of Navarone (1961) kept him in public view, during this period of enforced idleness Peck was more likely to be heard rather than seen, taking on narration duties for an ABC television documentary on Africa, and the John F. Kennedy documentary, although he enjoyed considerable publicity as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and as the inaugural chairman of the American Film Institute, taking up both roles in 1967.
Although Peck was still a big marquee name when initially signed up for The Stalking Moon, there remained a massive question mark, given nearly three years cinematic inactivity, over his ability to open a picture. In addition, the more obvious problem was whether a marketplace still existed for the Gregory Peck western given that, with the exception of How the West Was Won (1962), he had not been in the saddle since The Bravados and The Big Country in 1958, neither of which had turned a profit at the U.S. ticket wickets, and prior to those, The Gunfighter in 1950 another box office disappointment. He was hardly in the league of John Wayne or James Stewart, for whom the western was the default setting, both of whom had recently turned in strong commercial returns in the genre.
What the cast and crew for The Stalking Moon had in common was Oscars. Director Robert Mulligan had been nominated for an Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird. A graduate of live television, he was comfortable in a variety of fields, comedy in The Rat Race (1960), romance in Come September (1961), and dramas like Love with the Proper Stranger (1963) and Inside Daisy Clover (1965). Under his watch, Peck had won the Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird, Natalie Wood had been Oscar nominated for Love with the Proper Stranger and Ruth Gordon for Inside Daisy Clover.
Producing partner Alan J. Pakula had also been nominated for To Kill a Mockingbird. The Stalking Moon was their seventh film together. Eva Marie Saint, who played Sarah Carver, the white woman on the run from her Apache husband, won an Oscar in her first movie role opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954) after seven years in television. Over the following dozen years, she appeared in only 13 more pictures, but they were a diverse bunch including the female leads in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), Otto Preminger’s Exodus (1960), comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966) and John Frankenheimer’s epic Grand Prix (1966).
Her apparent fragility concealed inner strength, although her deft comedic touch and passionate clinch with Cary Grant in North by Northwest, and her frantic reaction to the death of racing driver Yves Montand in Grand Prix belied her reputation for onscreen coolness. In the Oscar stakes, cinematographer Charles Lang (aka Charles Lang Jr.) eclipsed them all with one win for A Farewell to Arms (1934) and 15 further nominations including Some like It Hot (1959) and One Eyed Jacks (1961).
Although this represented a western debut for director, producer and leading actress, Lang had been the cinematographer for The Man from Laramie (1955), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960) and How the West Was Won. Sound editor Jack Solomon had been nominated in 1960 and editor Aaron Steel twice, in 1962 and 1965. Screenwriter Wendell Mayes had been nominated for Otto Preminger’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Horton Foote, who worked on The Stalking Moon without receiving a credit, had won the Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird.
However, the final screenplay credit went to Alvin Sargent, in television since 1957. Gambit (1966) had marked his movie debut, The Stalking Moon his second picture. Actor Robert Forster had made his debut in John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and followed up with the role of Nick Tana in The Stalking Moon. Forster had a keen idea of his abilities, telling Variety that he only took roles that “would not compromise me or my wife or my agent. I don’t know how an actor can agree to play a role that he doesn’t feel he can do something special with.” His principles led him to turning down a four-picture deal with Universal.
The Stalking Moon was the first and only picture for Noland Clay, who played Eva Marie Saint’s son, as it was for Nathaniel Narcisco in the role of her husband Salvaje. This was composer Fred Karlin’s third movie score after Up the Down Staircase (1967) and Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) and the music alternated between a lilting motif for the more idyllic sections and an urgent repetitive sound for the thrilling elements. Most of the picture was shot on location in Arizona (Wolf Hole, Wolf Hole Valley, Moccasin Mountains and the Pauite Wilderness Area), Nevada (Red Rock Canyon and Valley of Fire State Park) and Bavispe in Mexico with interiors at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios.
The Theodore V. Olsen book is quite different to the film. In the novel Sam Vatch (not Varner) has married Sarah without knowing that she has once been Salvaje’s woman. Sarah Carver has two children not one, the other being an ill younger brother. In the book, she talks lot. On the other hand, Sam Varner is looking for a home and, in any other kind of picture, her loquaciousness coupled with his need for domestic security, would have brought them together emotionally. In the Olsen version, it is Salvaje not Sarah who is the sole survivor of a massacre. But the film takes an entirely different approach.
In the movie version, instead of presenting the audience with a dialogue-heavy picture where emotional need is clearly stated, Mulligan is more interested in people who kept their feelings to themselves, who scarcely had a word to say, who lacked the dexterity to build up any lasting relationship. As much as the film is about the silences that can swamp individuals, it is also about characters watching each other for any sign of impending change, the kind that would normally be signaled by more vocal means. Such behavior is normally designated as brooding.
Varney broods on what he should do, whether to help the woman or not, and just how far should he help, and when will helping her intrude on his privacy. Sarah Carver broods on the inevitability of her capture and while that is temporarily postponed by the presence of Varney it does not prevent her watching him for any sign that his attitude to her will change in a positive or, more likely, negative fashion. It is a revolutionary western indeed where the main characters do not exchange a kiss. Here, they hardly exchange a look. The one time they do come together could scarcely be termed a hug, more a gentle enfolding in his chest, minus his big manly arms around her.
Reviews of The Stalking Moon were decidedly mixed, although initially it looked to have got off to a critical flyer. From the outset, NGC considered it a major Oscar contender, rather a risky proposition for a western, and one whose temerity was likely to inflame the critics since only five in the last 20 years had been nominated – How the West Was Won (1962), The Alamo (1960), Friendly Persuasion (1955), Shane (1953), and High Noon (1952).
The trades were divided: International Motion Picture Exhibitor called the movie “excellent” overall. Variety took the opposite view, complaining about the slow development and poor pacing, “clumsy plot structuring and dialog, limp Robert Mulligan direction” and “ineffective” stars, arriving at the conclusion that the movie was “109 numbing minutes.” Motion Picture Daily deemed it a “rewarding experience” and Film Daily called it “exceptionally fine.” Life declared it “transcends the externals of the western genre to become one of the great scare films of all time”; Playboy asserted it was “a tingle all the way,” and Parents Magazine termed it a “gripping melodrama.” “Western in character, universal in theme,” was the summation in The Showmen’s Servisection. But Roger Ebert complained the movie “doesn’t work as a thriller…and doesn’t hold together as a western, either” while Vincent Canby in the New York Times complained it was “pious” and “unimaginative.”
Strangely, nobody commented on the other link between Sarah Carver and her pursuer. In turning the heroine into the prey, in making the woman helpless, never knowing when the invisible hand would strike, Mulligan drew a clear parallel with the experience of the Indians, hunting down by the U.S. Cavalry, harried off their lands, for no reason that could be understood.
The Stalking Moon has not exactly been subject to critical reappraisal in the intervening years since its release, but French director Betrand Tavernier in 50 Years of American Cinema called it Mulligan’s masterpiece. Writing in the March/April issue of Film Comment in 2009, Kent Jones cast more light on what the director was trying to achieve, thus putting the movie in more perspective, and aligning it closer than anyone thought at the time to the period in which the movie was made. Jones believed that the western aptly reflected the bewilderment of the times when, according to Mulligan: “We were in the process of a nightmare that I didn’t understand. I mean the riots were going on, the campuses were being burnt, the ghettos were being burnt, the marches that were going on, people were getting killed. It just didn’t make any sense.”
Mulligan took a pessimistic view of the outcome. “It just didn’t work,” he opined, “and a lot of that may have had to do with the basic silence of the movie.” But what Mulligan actually means is that the movie did not connect sufficiently with either audience nor critics at the time. In fact, in my opinion, it is precisely because of the silences and the unwillingness of the director to tone down its emotional aspects and his refusal to play around with typical genre ploys that make The Stalking Moon, on second viewing today, such a rewarding experience. Reflecting on the movie’s connection to Vietnam and the late 1960s riots, Kent Jones summed up his experience of the movie thus: “Robert Mulligan was the only filmmaker to wade into such painfully vexing and frightfully bourgeois territory and come out with a truly great film.”
The release date for The Stalking Moon had already been set for its general release January in 1969, but, figuring it had a critical winner on its hands, NGC, having put winning an Oscar at the top of its promotional agenda, was faced with the problem of getting it out into a couple of theaters (one would have been enough, as long as it was in Los Angeles, according to the rules) in order to qualify for Academy Award consideration, and so it was deposited in a couple of first-run theaters (New York as well as Los Angeles, so that the New York market would not think it was being overlooked) just before Xmas 1968.
The film ranked 47th in the annual chart with $2.6 million in rentals – “no better than fair, considering its cost” grumbled Variety – above Once Upon a Time in the West, but below other rivals in the genre. It was reissued the following year as support for Universal’s Hellfighters (1968) and NGC’s The Cheyenne Social Club (1970). It received a warmer reception in Paris, where, for the 1968-1969 season, it outgrossed Mackenna’s Gold (1969) and The Undefeated (1969) as well as Hang ‘Em High (1968) and Five Card Stud (1968), and did surprisingly well in Switzerland where its grosses were seen as indicative of a “box office upsurge.”
NOTE: This is an edited version of a chapter devoted to the film which appeared in my book The Gunslingers of ’69, Western Movies’ Greatest Year (McFarland, 2019.
SOURCES: Brian Hannan, The Gunslingers of ’69, Western Movies’ Greatest Year (McFarland, 2019); Brian Hannan, The Making of The Guns of Navarone (Baroliant Press, 2015); Cook, David A., Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979. (University of California Press, 2000), 400; Kevin Hefferman, Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business, (Duke University Press: 2004), 72; “See Three-Year OK for Nat’l General To Produce and Distribute Films under Trust Decree Modification,” Variety, June 19, 1963, 3; “National General Earnings Up 31%,” Variety, December 18, 1963, 11; “Peck for Cinerama,” Variety, February 19, 1964, 6; “National Circuit (217 Theaters) Readying to Produce Features,” Variety, March 4, 1964, 5; “Walter Wanger’s Return To Producer Activity,” Variety, April 19, 1964, 4; “Nat’l General Producing Features Shuns Hazards of Live Concerts,” Variety, Jun 30, 1964, 20; “Colony on Mars as U’s Top Costing Feature To Date,” Variety, Jul 22, 1964, 3; “Metro’s 27 Finished Features Give It Exceptionally Long Market Slotting,” Variety, Jun 16, 1965, 5; “Virna Lisi Signatured To Star in Germi’s New Pic But Sans Glamour,” Variety, July 7, 1965, 22; “Carthay (Nat’l General) in 3-Film Deal with Fielder Cook’s Eden Prods,” Variety, July 28, 1965, 3; “Aussie Film Cameras To Turn Again This Month After Lengthy Layoff,” Variety, October 13, 1965, 28; “1st Feature Rolls Under Eady Plan for Carthay (Nat’l General-Rank),” Variety, October 20, 1965, 7; “Circuit’s Prod’n Arm Acquires 8th Story with Olsen’s Stalking Moon,” Variety, December 8, 1965, 11; “NGC’s $10m Loan,” Variety, January 12, 1966, 21; “Greg Peck and His Corporate Shadow Comprise Nat’l General’s 3d Feature,” Variety, January 22, 1966, 5; “Wendell Mayes Hotel Then Stalking Moon,” Variety, Apr 13, 1966, 17; “Drop Carthay Center Tag for NGC Films,” Variety, May 25, 1966, 13; “Swiss Dewdrops O. O. The Bells of Hell,” Variety, August 10, 1966, 7; “Mirisch’s Bells Won’t Peal Till 1967,” Variety, August 24, 1966, 22; “George Stevens to U for 3 Features,” Variety, November 16, 1966, 11; “Peck in Africa,” Variety, January 25, 1967, 27; “16 of U’s 24 in ’67 Get Shooting Dates,” Variety, February 1, 1967, 28; “Inside Stuff – Pictures,” Variety, March 29, 1967, p21; “Nat’l Gen’l Prod, Again Party To Peck’s Moon Which U Will Release,” Variety, April 5, 1967, 15; “After Navarone,” Variety, April 19, 1967, 9; Advert, Years of Lightning, Day of Drums, Variety, April 19, 1967, 42; “Off-&-Ballyhooing at NGC,” Variety, November 27, 1967, 3; “Cinerama Rolls 1st Int’l Sales Meet In Link With London Bow of Custer,” Variety, November 8, 1967, 2; “Cinerama Revs Up,” Variety, December 6, 1967 18; “NG Not Up To Intended Pic Per Month Release Rate for ’68,” Variety, March 20, 1968, 214; “National’s Chain: 263,” Variety, May 27, 1968, 7; Lee Beaupre, “Today’s Independent Actor,” Variety, Jul 17, 1968, 3; “NGC, WB-7 Merger Plans Unveiled; Industry Waiting For Details,” International Motion PictureExhibitor, August 21, 1968, 5; Review, International Motion Picture Exhibitor, December 18, 1968, 6; Review, Variety, December 18, 1968, 26.“NGC Will Tailor Deal to Fit Merger with WB,” Variety, December 25, 1968, 3; Review, New York Times, January 23, 1969; Review, Chicago Sun Times, February 11, 1969; “NGC Pleas for Tenure in Its Film Production Calculations,” Variety, February 19, 1969, 15; Review, The Showmen’s Servisection, November 19, 1969, 2; “Year’s Surprise: Family Films Did Best,” Variety, January 7, 1970, 15; “Swiss Pix May Top ’68 Biz,” Variety, January 7, 1970, 112; “Paris First Runs: Recent Months, ‘68-‘69 Estimate,” Variety, April 29, 1970, 76.
The Magnificent 60s 