Behind the Scenes – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: Selling “Quality Sleaze,” Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum – Pressbook for “Cape Fear” (1962)

If you’re not Alfred Hitchcock with carte blanche to scare the pants off the audiences every which way but loose and you’re not launching a B-movie sexploitation drama, then you’ve got to take a more sensible path to selling a picture headlined by the world’s greatest hero Gregory Peck elevated to such a position by the extraordinary success of The Guns of Navarone (1961) which topped the annual box rankings in the USA.

So while your taglines can emphasize “shock and suspense” what you’re selling cinema managers is quality. So, in the Pressbook/Marketing Manual, Peck is portrayed as a “celluloid perfectionist” and “four-time Oscar nominee” so multi-talented he’s a triple hyphenate – writer, producer, actor. Such a perfectionist he’s known “to spend a week or more preparing for one small scene.”

He is a class act not some sleazy B-movie bum. “He not only completely absorbed all the dialog, its various nuances and shadings, but also probed the psychological and physiological motivations of the attorney he portrays,” notes the Pressbook.

And it’s not just Peck who’s to be praised. “Seldom has such an outstanding array of talent been so tellingly marshaled for such a dramatic thunderbolt.”

The messianic tone is evident throughout. Headlines claim “Bob Mitchum’s career reaches a new high,” Lori Martin has the “top role” of her career, Barrie Chase is “praised as top talent discovery” and “Telly Savalas termed top talent find by Peck.”

Polly Bergen “emerges as an actress of great sensitivity and insight.” Lori Singer, in her movie debut, “graphically attests to the polish she has achieved through her work as child lead in the video (television) series National Velvet.” Although Martin had another reason for turning up word perfect – so that she could get off early and go ice skating.

And the praise doesn’t stop there. “A whole new career should open for sultry Barrie Chase, one-time dancing partner of Fred Astaire.” She is “sensationally good as the casual pick-up ensnared by Mitchum.” The talent pickers had no doubt she was “destined to become one of the foremost dramatic talents of the industry. The very quality which made her such an outstanding dancer – her tireless attention to even the minutest detail – has helped turn her into a magnificent actress.” The marketeers were convinced her “masterpiece” performance would result in an Oscar nomination.

Peck had appointed himself the “tub-thumper” for Savalas after seeing him play Al Capone” in the television series The Witness (1960-1961) calling him “one of the finest new talents of the last 10 years.”

According to the Pressbook, director J. Lee Thompson “deliberately imparted…a distinctively British touch.” Claimed Thompson, “There emerges in the best of the British pictures a certain warmth and credibility which are looked upon as the English hallmark. Such an impression is achieved, it seems to me, through the simple technique of emphasizing character development.”

For journalistic snippets there’s not much beyond that Peck was so impressed with the location in Georgia that he purchased a plot of land on Sea Island to build a beach house. Plus that he’s turned into a noted photographer, now onto his seventh camera with a fast lens. Polly Bergen was creating a nightclub act. Robert Mitchum was thrown three times on his first film horse.

But it was unlikely that cinema managers would find a way of passing on to audiences the idea that this was a “quality sleaze” picture populated by proven and up-and-coming talent. The public had to make do with posters and taglines to get a feel for what was on offer. And in that respect the marketeers pulled few punches.

As usual, cinema managers were offered a plethora of choice when it came to the posters. Mostly, Peck and Mitchum were shown on opposite sides of the poster with in between an image intended to conjure up menace – the bare-chested Mitchum confronting Bergen, Bergen comforting her daughter, mother and daughter running, Mitchum tangling with the daughter.

Taglines spelled it out in a variety of ways: “A terrifying war of nerves unparalleled in suspense!” with a sub-tag of “A man savagely dedicated to committing a crime shocking beyond belief! A man desperately determined to end his ordeal of terror…even if it meant using the ultimate weapon – murder!”

Exclamation marks were in full flow. “Now, he had only one weapon left – murder…to prevent an even more shocking crime” was backed up by “the drama of an unrelenting war of nerves…and the helpless lives that were caught in its terrifying crossfire!”

Or try this – “The savagely suspenseful story of an unspeakable crime…and the man, the woman, the helpless people it touched with terror. From the moment they meet the tension is explosive. An electrifying war of nerves unrelenting in suspense!”

In case you didn’t get the message, here it is in more subtle form: “What happens to them in an adventure in the unusual!” That understatement is followed up with “So daring in theme…so frank in treatment…that it frightens while it fascinates and gives a terrifying new meaning in suspense!”

And there were variations of the above: “A terrifying war of nerves unparalleled in suspense! The Watched…who can only run so far before coming face-to-face with The Watcher…who waits for the moment when the woman and her daughter will be alone.”

And – “Now the nightmare was about to become a terrifying reality… the whispered threat a crime unspeakable. So daring in theme…so frank in treatment. What happens to them is an adventure in the unusual!”

Plus – “Their ordeal of terror triggers the screen’s most savage war of nerves! Unparalleled suspense…as one becomes a target for nightmare, the other becomes his target for execution.”

Unusually, there were a host of promotional items. As well as a motion picture paperback edition from Fawcett, “hot off the press” was the Prentice-Hall hardback The Polly Bergen Book of Beauty, Fashion and Charm, including stills from Cape Fear. Books were a major source for marketing, given there were over 100,000 outlets in specialist shops, drug stores, railway and bus terminals and carousels on newspaper stands.

Virtually any homely element of the movie was co-opted for promotional purposes. A scene taking place at a United Air Lines terminal counter provided opportunity for tie-ins with travel agents and ticket offices. Bowling “palaces” might be happy to display posters and promotional material given there’s a scene set in a bowling alley. Distributors of a Chris Craft boats, Chrysler station wagons, Larson speed boats and Scott outboard motors – which all appear in the movie – could be targeted.

Behind the Scenes: “Cape Fear” (1962)

Like many an ambitious – not to say greedy – actor, Gregory Peck had decided to go into the production business. In theory, there were two good reasons for this: actors could take control of their careers and they could make vanity projects. In reality, there were other over-riding reasons: after years in the business they thought they knew better than their Hollywood bosses and, more importantly, with a bigger stake in a picture they thought they could make more money. First of all came the tax advantages. As a producer, they could spread income over a number of years rather than just one. And they could take advantage of a loophole in the tax laws by making movies abroad. And then if all went as well as the actor imagined, they would get a bigger share of the spoils. If it proved a flop, then the studio carried the can and the actor walked off scot-free.

In 1956 Peck set up Melville Productions with screenwriter Sy Bartlett, with whom he had worked on Twelve O’Clock High (1950). They signed a two-picture deal with United Artists, the go-to studio for actors wanting to become producers. The first projected ideas fell by the wayside, Affair of Honor based on a Broadway play that subsequently flopped and Thieves Market – with William Wyler on board as director – whose commissioned script didn’t meet Peck’s standards. Also on the agenda was Winged Horse with a script by Bartlett and James R. Webb.

Instead, Peck set up The Big Country (1958) through another production shingle, Anthony Productions, and co-produced it with director William Wyler’s outfit, World Wide Productions. The budget rocketed from $2.5 million to $4.1 million, which limited the potential for profit.

Melville Productions launched with Korean War picture Pork Chop Hill (1959). When that flopped it was the end of the UA deal. Peck moved his shingle to Universal. The production company lay dormant while Peck returned to actor-for-hire for Beloved Infidel (1959) and On the Beach (1959), both flops, before jumping back into the top league with the biggest hit of his career The Guns of Navarone (1961) directed by J. Lee Thompson.

Melville Productions was resuscitated for Cape Fear. Peck and Barlett had purchased in 1958 a piece of pulp fiction (novels that bypassed hardback publication and went straight into paperback) by John D. MacDonald called The Executioners. Bartlett passed on screenwriting duties which were handed to James R. Webb (How the West Was Won, 1962).

Director and star had bonded on The Guns of Navarone. “We were working so well together,” recalled Thompson that when Peck handed him the script of Cape Fear he was intrigued. “I liked the book very much,” said Thompson. “Greg had a script prepared, we signed the contracts, and I came to make my first picture in Hollywood.” (The Guns of Navarone had been filmed in Greece and London).

Though author John D. MacDonald had written a hard-boiled thriller with a merciless killer, screenwriter James R. Webb (Pork Chop Hill) racked up the tension and added a thicker layer of predatory sexuality in the vein of Psycho (1960). The final touch was a Bernard Hermann (Psycho) score brimming with menace.

Ernest Borgnine (Go Naked in the World, 1961) was first choice to play psychopathic killer Max Cady. Rod Steiger (The Pawnbroker, 1964), Jack Palance (Once a Thief, 1965) and Telly Savalas (Birdman of Alcatraz, 1962) were also considered. “We actually tested Savalas and he gave a very good test for the part,” explained Thompson. “But these were character actors or at least secondary actors compared to Greg. At some point discussing it together we began to talk about having the villain played by an actor of equal importance, making it a much stronger match-up from the audience’s point of view and (Robert) Mitchum immediately came to mind.”

But Mitchum had essayed a similar venal character in Night of the Hunter (1955) and didn’t want to repeat himself. However, he liked the way the tale showed just how corrupt law enforcement could be and how easily the cards were stacked. Mitchum understood the character from the outset. “The whole thing with Cady is that snakelike charm. Me, Officer, I never laid a hand on the girl, you must be mistaken.”

“When we heard Mitchum’s thoughts,” noted Thompson, “we were more convinced than ever he would be terrific for the role. And I think by the end of the meeting he now realized that himself.” But he still held back, unsure. The producers sent him a case of bourbon. He drank the bourbon and signed up. There was the additional inducement of sharing in the profits by being made a co-producer which involved nothing more taxing than signing on the dotted line. Universal took it on as the first in two-picture deal with Melville.

Mitchum’s career was following its usual up-and-down course, a couple of flops always seemed to be followed by a big hit. His acclaimed performance in Fred Zinnemann’s The Sundowners (1960) had offset The Night Fighters / A Terrible Beauty (1960) and Home from the Hill (1960). His latest picture, The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961) was filed in the negative column.

Peck and Mitchum had opposite approaches to their profession, the former diligent and serious, the latter not able to get off a set quickly enough, not even bothering to learn his lines because thanks to a photographic memory he could scan his lines just before a scene began and be word perfect.

Locations were scouted in the Carolinas where MacDonald had set the book, but failing to find anything suitable exteriors were switched to Savannah in Georgia. Where Peck rented a house and went home every night, Mitchum took a room in the DeSoto Hotel and when work was finished for the day went out drinking, an assistant director taken along as ballast to keep him out of trouble. The town held bad memories for Mitchum. Last time he had visited he had been arrested for vagrancy and did a stint on a chain gang, which recollection possibly put steely bitterness in his portrayal of the ex-convict. Although he hated the town, he liked the idea that on his return everyone was kowtowing to the big movie star, including a bevy of hairdressers in town for a convention.

Fortunately, the Savanah sojourn was short, bad weather getting in the way, barely two weeks before the unit repaired to Hollywood (some of the boat scenes were filmed around Ventura but the climactic fight took place on the studio lake) where the production overshot its schedule by a month, wrapping on July 5 instead of June 8, and racking up $2.6 million in costs.

Mitchum appeared determined to demonstrate quite how different their approaches were. In one scene, off camera, Mitchum stripped naked to get a reaction from the stolid co-star, who remained immune to such provocation. In reality, Mitchum was very professional. “He would work perfectly,” said Thompson. “He just goes in and does it. He was superb.”

Though far from a Method Actor, Mitchum was chillingly close to the part. “I live character and this character drinks and rapes,” he confessed. During the scenes of violence he worked himself up. “He made people frightened,” acknowledged Thompson.

And that included Peck, especially during the slugfest in the water which took nearly a week of a night shoot to complete. Despite warmers being put in the water, it was freezing. “Sometimes, Mitchum overstepped the line,” said Thompson. “He was meant to be drowning Greg and he really took it to the limit…but Peck never complained.”

The final scene filmed was the rape of Polly Bergen playing Peck’s wife. Bare-chested and sweating, Mitchum built himself up into a fury. “You felt any moment he would explode,” said Thompson. “But there was no rehearsal, so nobody really knew what to expect. Thompson improvised the business with the eggs. But Mitchum was more brutal with the eggs than could ever be shown in a cinema, smearing the yolk over Bergen’s breasts. He cut his arm flailing wildly and he used the actress to break open the cabin door, so she finished the scene with the front of her dress sodden with egg yolk and the back covered in blood.”

While Peck expressed confidence in director J. Lee Thompson and could count on Mitchum’s experience to see him through, female lead Polly Bergen was making her first film in eight years, after a small part in western Escape from Fort Bravo (1953) starring William Holden. She had come to wider attention for winning an Emmy for The Helen Morgan Story (1958).

“Greg spent an enormous amount of time with me,” said a nervous Bergen, “He was wonderful and he was very, very supportive.” She added, “I wouldn’t have let anyone know how insecure and frightened I was. But he, I think, knew that instinctively and was there to set me at ease and be helpful and nurturing.”

Peck had no worries about Thompson, the situation helped by the director appearing to take the line the producer-star wanted. When it came to editing, Peck played fair with Mitchum, resisting the temptation to tone down his co-star’s performance which threatened to overshadow his own.

The censors were livid. They eliminated all mention of the word “rape”, removed most of Mitchum’s ogling of Peck’s daughter and cut to the bone the sexual assault.

While critics tended to agree that Mitchum stole the show, the movie was mauled by the New York Herald-Tribune as a “masochistic exercise” and the New Yorker took Peck to task for becoming involved in “an exercise in sadism.”

Initially, it appeared to be doing well enough. There was a “big” $37,000 in New York, a “giant” $29,000 in Chicago, a “fancy” $14,000 in Cleveland, a “rousing” $18,000 in San Francisco and a “proud” $14,000 in Boston. But the “expectancy of lush performance” did not materialize. Final tally was $1.6 million in rentals, a poor 47^th in the annual box office rankings, so there were no profits for Peck or Mitchum to share.

The British censor demanded five minutes of cuts. Thompson made headlines by claiming that 161 individual cuts, a record, had destroyed the film but censor John Trevelyan argued it was just 15. Despite claiming the movie would not be shelved until the controversy had died down, in fact it lost its May 1962 premiere slot at the Odeon Leicester Square in London’s West End and was held back until the following January when it opened at the less prestigious Odeon Marble Arch, setting a record for a Universal release. Bergen was furious at the cuts in her role. “I really blasted British censorship.”

Ironically, Peck made more money from selling the rights to Martin Scorsese for the 1991 remake, in which he had a small part, and whether it’s the Peck estate or Scorsese who benefits there’s a 10-part mini-series on the way starring Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring: Last Rites, 2025) as the attorney, Amy Adams (Nightbitch, 2024) as his wife and Javier Bardem (Dune, Part Two, 2024) as their tormentor.

SOURCES: Gary Fishgall, Gregory Peck, A Biography (Scribner, 2002) pp197-198, 208, 225-228; Lee Server, Robert Mitchum, Baby, I Don’t Care (Faber & Faber, 2001) p43-437; “Peck-Bartlett Spanish Pic Halts,” Variety, February 13, 1957, p2; “U Gets Melville Pair,” Variety, July 29, 1959, p18; “U Repacts Bartlett,” Variety, September 28, 1960, p4; “Director of Cape Fear Claims British Censor Demands Too Many Cuts,” Variety, May 9, 1962, p26; “Censor Replies to J. Lee Thompson,” Kine Weekly, June 28, 1962, p6; “Classification-Plus-Mutilation,” Variety, December 19, 1962, p5; “Your Films,” Kine Weekly, February 7, 1963, p14. Box Office figures: Variety April-May 1962 and “Big Rental Pictures of 1962,” Variety, January 9, p13,

Behind the Scenes: Reissue Juice

The big news in a slack weekend at the box office is that the re-release of The Lord of the Rings trilogy – each film showing for just one day over Jan 16-Jan 18 – has taken $5 million in advance sales. Sure, the fanboys have been putting down their dollars as you might expect in appreciation of their favorite fantasy threesome, but it’s pretty certain that the trio will put in a far better showing by the end of the weekend. Old films are in the renewal business once again, with revenues showing a steady increase over the past five years and then a remarkable jump from 2024 to 2025.

But there’s nothing new in putting old movies back to work. They’ve been chucking old films back into the distribution pot since 1914 – at least according to the whopper of a book (now recognized as the authority on the subject) I wrote a decade ago about the history of the Hollywood reissue. After World War One, old films had struck box office gold during periods of marked low production such as post-WW2, the 1970s, and currently; and on the back of the Director’s Cut; or reinvention through a premium vehicle such as IMAX.

Theoretically, reissues should be dead in the water. Fans of any major or cult motion picture are most likely to own a DVD or can catch it easily enough for free on a streaming outlet without paying big bucks to watch it on the big screen. But reissue has also been reinvented on the back of an anniversary and through restriction. Used to be, an old movie would be thrown into the distribution maw in the same way as any other movie, running for any multiple of one week at your local multiplex. But then some smartass decided that restricting opportunity would increase demand. “For One Day Only” became a marketing tool, except in rare instances. Anniversaries – the dates shown below are the giveaway – remain the most common reason for oldies seeing the light of day, but occasionally it’s to cash in on a forthcoming addition to a long-running series.

You might be surprised to learn that the reissue is actually booming in terms of box office. Last year’s overall take of $138.8 million was more than double the previous year’s $58.4 million which was just ahead of the 2023 tally of $56.4 million. And that was also up on the 2022 total of $46.4 million which was light years behind the 2021 figure of $115 million. So in the space of a few years, reissue receipts have remained constant and you can see why cinemas, faced with such low box office figures for Oscar-bait, are turning to oldies.

The biggest hit in 2025 was Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005) on $34 million followed by The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012) with $19.9 million and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011) on $19.7 million. Jaws (1975) came next biting off $16.1 million then James Cameron sequel Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) on $13.8 million, Back to the Future (1985) on $13.1 million, Pixar’s Toy Story (1995) on $11.4 million and Japanese animated classic Princess Mononoke (1997) on $10.8 million.

In 2024 Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) led the way with $15.2 million, chased by Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace (1999) on $13 million, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Xmas (1993) with $6 million, Columbia’s 100^th anniversary bunch on $6 million and animated sequel Shrek 2 (2004) on $3.4 million. The Lord of the Rings trilogy knocked up $8.1 million, cumulatively, Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) was on $2.3 million, Ridley Scott’s unsurpassed space horror Alien (1979) on $2.3 million and Disney’s The Lion King (1994) drumming up $2.1 million.

The top re-release in 2023 was another James Cameron epic Titanic (1997) with $15 million followed by The Nightmare before Xmas clocking up $10.2 million and Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983) with $7.2 million. Henry Selick’s adaptation of the Neil Gaiman dark fantasy novel Coraline (2009) dished up $7.1 million, Bette Midler bewitchment Hocus Pocus (1993) spelled out $4.9 million, Talking Heads live performance film Stop Making Sense (1983) nabbed $4.8 million, Steven Spielberg’s SFX-driven Jurassic Park (1993) chewed up $2.9 million, Bruce Willis in Die Hard (1988) clobbered $2 million, Coen Brothers cult favorite The Big Lebowski (1988) bowled $1.2 million and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (2003) netted $1.1 million.

In 2022 James Cameron again came out on top with Avatar (2009) heading the list on $24.7 million, followed by Jaws – minus any anniversary hullabaloo – on $5.1 million, another Spielberg E.T. – the Extra Terrestrial (1982) on $2 million, perennial revival It’s A Wonderful Life (1946) with $1.4 million, Francis Ford Coppola gangster classic The Godfather (1972) on $1.4 million, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) on $1.3 million and Howl’s Moving Castle $1.2 million.

Avatar again led the way in 2021 with $57.9 million followed by John Carney romance Begin Again (2013) with $21.3 million, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2021) on $15.8 million, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) with $8.9 million and Japanese classic Love Letter (1995) on $7.4 million.

Most of these are reissues are already reissues, the various Star Wars episodes going through a reissue mill over the decades, the Disney cartoons receiving a reissue hoopla when they went out on 3D or Imax. The Lord of the Rings trilogy in an “Extended Edition” should set the target to be matched for this year.

SOURCES: Box Office Mojo “Worldwide Top 200” annual charts; Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues, 1914-2014 (McFarland, 2016)

Behind the Scenes: “Ship of Fools” (1965)

Stanley Kramer was on a roll, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World – an outlier in his portfolio of serious pictures – his biggest-ever hit. Although United Artists, where the director had made his last four pictures, was initially in the frame for Katharine Anne Porter’s 1962 best seller Ship of Fools, the project ended up at Columbia which Kramer had last partnered on The Caine Mutiny in 1951. While the asking price was $450,000 plus a percentage, Kramer secured the rights for $375,000 although he chipped in $25,000 towards the book’s advertising campaign.

Kramer envisioned a character-driven film that would make up for the lack of action. He shifted the timescale to 1933 from 1931 to bring greater overtones of the Hitler threat. “Although we never mention him in the picture,” said Kramer, “his ascendancy is an ever-present factor.” Since there were no seagoing liners available to take over, the movie was shot entirely on the soundstage. “We filmed a ship’s ocean voyage without a ship and without an ocean.” He ransacked old footage for establishing shots of the ship, usually seen in the distance. Decks, staterooms and dining areas were constructed in the studio.

The kind of muted color he would have preferred was not available and since “the theme was just too foreboding for full color” he decided to film in black and white. Shooting in black and white wasn’t yet redundant. Of 27 features going in front of the cameras in 1964, six (including The Disorderly Orderly and Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte) were made in monochrome – down from ten out of 24 the year before.

A thoughtful epic was always going to have trouble finding stars especially as current wisdom was that the industry only had at its disposal 22 genuine box office stars “thinly sprinkled” through the 43 pictures currently in production. While the movie’s marketeers boasted of an all-star cast, the reality was that while overall the actors had “combined heft” they were “minus any individual box office behemoth.”

Spencer Tracy, whom Kramer initially envisioned for the role of the ship’s doctor and who had starred in the director’s last three pictures, would have added definite marquee allure, but he was unavailable due to illness. Greer Garson and Jane Fonda also fell by the wayside.

And unusually, Kramer insisted that many of those actors were not American. Vivien Leigh was born in India, Simone Signoret – who had just quit Zorba the Greek (1964) – was German and Oskar Werner Austrian. Jose Ferrer (who had won the Oscar in Kramer’s production of Cyrano de Bergerac, 1950) hailed from Puerto Rico, Jose Greco from Italy, Charles Korvin from Hungary, Lila Skalia from Austria and Alf Kjellin from Sweden. Signoret and Skala had Jewish ancestry.

His biggest casting coup was luring double Oscar-winner Vivien Leigh (The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, 1961) out of retirement. But that was a double-edged sword. In real-life she led a tortured existence. Her marriage to Laurence Olivier was over and she had only appeared in two films since A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). She suffered from mental illness and tuberculosis. “Happiness or even contentment” eluded her and in that respect she was ideal for the role. “I’m sure she realized that, in the picture, she was playing something like her own life yet she never, by word of gesture, betrayed any such recognition.” She was another gamble, the reason her dance card was so empty down to directors despairing of getting a performance out of her.

Kramer flew to Germany to persuade Oskar Werner to take on the role intended for Spencer Tracy. At the time Werner, while familiar to European audiences and the American arthouse set through Jules and Jim (1962),was a relative unknown and a casting gamble. On set he proved obstinate. For one scene where he was instructed to enter camera right he did the opposite. When the direction was repeated, he stood his ground, insisting he preferred that view of his face. Despite the cost of reversing the set-up Kramer was forced to concede. Despite these trials, Kramer got along with Werner better than the actors. “They just couldn’t stand him.” Notwithstanding such difficulties Kramer later signed him for another film, but the actor died before shooting began.

James MacArthur (The Truth about Spring, 1964) was mooted for a role as was Sabine Sun (The Sicilian Clan, 1969). The most unlikely prospect was German comedian Heinz Ruhmann who was cast as Lowenthal. The Screen Actors Guild complained when Kramer hired five Spaniards instead of Americans for bit parts paying union scale of $350 a week, but their complaints were ignored.

Kramer admitted the ingénue roles played by George Segal (The Bridge at Remagen, 1968) and Elizabeth Ashley (The Third Day, 1965) were too much of a cliché. “As in most pictures,” observed Kramer, “older actors not only had more stature but they were also better armed by the writers. There was no way Segal and Ashley could compete with Werner and Signoret.”

The film cost $3.9 million. Filming began on June 22, 1964. It was initially a long shot for roadshow release but since Columbia was already committed to the more expensive Lord Jim and there were already 15 others lined up from other studios, Columbia nixed the two-a-day release in favour of continuous program.

Boosted by book sales – it was the number one hardback bestseller of 1962 and had sold millions in paperback – the movie carved out a more commercial niche than had been anticipated. Positive reviews helped. It opened to a “mighty” $88,000 in New York breaking records at the 1,003-seat Victoria and the 561-seat Sutton arthouse.

There was a “socko” $25,000 in Chicago, “giant” $23,000 in Philadelphia, “sock” $14,000 in Baltimore, “strong” $13,000 in St Louis, “lively” $12,000 in Detroit, “stout” 12,000 in San Francisco, “sturdy” $11,000 in Pittsburgh, and “slick” $10,000 in Columbus, Ohio. The only first run location where it toiled was Denver where it merited a merely “okay” opening of $8,000.

There was a sense of Columbia letting it run as long as possible in first run in the hope of garnering Oscars to boost its subsequent runs. But the studio was the beneficiary three times over from the Oscars – with Cat Ballou, Ship of Fools and William Wyler’s The Collector in contention for various awards.

The studio had the clever idea of pairing Ship of Fools in reissue with Cat Ballou, for which Marvin had won the Oscar, and although not the star of Ship of Fools the teaming suggested it was a Marvin double bill. In Los Angeles the double bill hoisted $135,000 from 21 houses followed by $121,000 from 28. But in Cleveland Ship of Fools went out first with The Collector and then Cat Ballou. A mix-and-match strategy also saw Ship of Fools double up with, variously, A Patch of Blue, Darling and The Pawnbroker.

The final tally was difficult to compute. In its 1965 end-of-year rankings Variety reckoned it had only pulled in $900,000 in rentals but it was good for $3.5 million in the longer term, a realistic target once you counted in the $1.3 million in rentals generated by the combination with Cat Ballou.

SOURCES: Stanley Kramer with Thomas F. Coffey, It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, A Life in Hollywood (Aurum Press, 1997) pp203-212; “New York Sound Track,” Variety, May 2, 1962, p4; “375G for Fools Novel,” Variety, May 2, 1962, p5; “Publisher’s Big Break,” Variety, May 23, 1962, p4; “Kramer to Produce Ship of Fools for Columbia,” Box Office, June 18, 1962, p9; “Abby Mann to Script Ship of Fools,” Box Office, November 1962, pSE4; “Top German Comic,” Variety, April 15, 1964, p23; “Simone Signoret Exits Zorba,” Variety, April 22, 1964, p11; “Control of Space,” Variety, May 6, 1964, p4; “Five Spaniards on Ship of Fools Irks SAG,” Variety, June 3, 1964, p5;“To Speed MacArthur for Ship of Fools,” Variety, June 10, 1964, p17; “27 Features Shoot in Color, Only Six in Monochrome,” Variety, August 5, 1964, p3; “Perennial Quiz,” Variety, September 2, 1964, p1; “15, Maybe 17, Pix for Roadshowing,” Variety, October 28, 1964, p22; “Too Many Roadshows,” Variety, August 2, 1965, p5. Box office figures, Variety September-November 1965, “Big Rental Pictures of 1965,” Variety, January5, 1966, p6.

Behind the Scenes: All Time Top 30

Since I’ve expanded the All-Time Top Movies to 100 it seems only fair to enlarge the Behind the Scenes section. So this is now a Top 30. The rankings here relate to this time last year.

Includes three Alistair MacLean adaptations. John Wayne and Gregory Peck feature three times and Kirk douglas, Dean Martin, James Stewart, Steve McQueen and Omar sharif twice each. Andrew V. McLaglen leads the directorial charge with three mentions.

(1)Waterloo (1970). No doubting the effect of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon in increasing interest in this famous flop that had Rod Steiger’s French emperor squaring off against Christopher Plummer.
(3) In Harm’s Way (1965). Otto Preminger takes off the gloves to expose problems in the American military around Pearl Harbor. John Wayne and Kirk douglas head an all-star cat.
(2)Man’s Favorite Sport (1964). Howard Hawks back in the gender wars with Rock Hudson being taken down a peg by Paula Prentiss.
(4) The Guns of Navarone (1961). Alistair MacLean created the template for the men-on-a-mission war picture. Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn topline. Nominated for five Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director (J. Lee Thompson) and Screenplay (Carl Foreman) and enough jeopardy throughout the filming to qualify for a movie of its own.
(7) The Satan Bug (1965). The problems facing director John Sturges in adapting the Alistair MacLean pandemic classic for the big screen.
(6) Battle of the Bulge (1965). There were going to be two versions, so the race was on to get this one to the public first. A Cinerama number.
(5) Ice Station Zebra (1968). A complete cast overhaul and ground-breaking special effects are at the core of this filming of another Alistair MacLean tale. Second Alistair MacLean outing for John Sturges.
(New Entry) Barbarella (1968). Jane Fonda was fourth choice after Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren and Ira von Furstenberg. Should never have been directed by Roger Vadim who was out of favor with Paramount. One of the first movies to be given a global simultaneous release.
(8) Cast a Giant Shadow (1965). Producer Melville Shavelson wrote a book about his experiences and this and other material relating the arduous task of bringing the Kirk Douglas-starrer to the screen are told here.
(12) Mackenna’s Gold (1969). Tortuous route to the screen for Carl Foreman-produced roadshow western, filmed in 70mm Cinerama, with an all-star cast including Omar Sharif, Gregory Peck and Telly Savalas.
(9) The Girl on a Motorcycle / Naked under Leather (1968). Cult classic starring Marianne Faithful and Alain Delon had a rocky road to release, especially in the U.S. where the censor was not happy.
(12) The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). First envisioned nearly a decade before, Henry Hathaway western finally hit the screen with John Wayne and Dean Martin.
(11). Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Richard Fleischer dispenses with the all-star cast in favor of even-handed verisimilitude.
(15) The Trouble with Angels (1966). Less than angelic Hayley Mills sparring with convent boss Rosalind Russell. Directed by one-time star Ida Lupino.
(New Entry) The Misfits (1961). Robert Mitchum turned down the male lead. Clark Gable failed the medical, both Montgomery Clift and Marilyn Monroe had drug problems. It went 40 days over schedule and half a million over budget.
(14) The Bridge at Remagen (1969). British director John Guillerman hits trouble filming World War Two picture starring George Segal and Robert Vaughn.
(16) For a Few Dollars More (1965). Sergio Leone sequel to first spaghetti western brings in Lee van Cleef to pair with Clint Eastwood.
(20) The Collector (1963). William Wyler’s creepy adaptation of John Fowles’ creepy bestseller with Terence Stamp and Samatha Eggar.
(13) Sink the Bismarck! (1960). Documentary-style British World War Two classic with Kenneth More exhibiting the stiffest of stiff-upper-lips.
(18) Bandolero! (1968). Director Andrew V. McLaglen teams up with James Stewart, Dean Martin and Raquel Welch to fight Mexican bandits.
(19) The Train (1964). John Frankenheimer replaced Arthur Penn in the directorial chair to steer home unusual over-budget World War Two picture with Burt Lancaster trying to steal art treasures from under the nose of German Paul Schofield.
(17) How The West Was Won (1962). First non-travelog Cinerama picture, all-star cast and all-star team of directors tackling multi-generational western and all sorts of logistical problems.
(New entry) The Way West (1967). Burt Lancaster, James Stewart and Gary Cooper were the original cast. Charlton Heston turned it down. Robert Mitchum couldn’t make up his mind. Director Andrew V. McLaglen claimed it had been savaged by the studio.
(New Entry) The Wicker Man (1973) at the Box Office. A flop on initial release, U.S. release delayed, it took a long long time before the movie achieved both cult status and came out of the red.
(New Entry) The Stalking Moon (1968). Should never have been made, according to existing legislation, even with Gregory Peck’s participation long delayed in part due to original director George Stevens pulling out.
(New Entry) “Barbieheimer” Recalls the Old Double Bill. The perfect double bill aimed to attract different segments of the audience.
(New Entry) Judgement at Nuremberg (1961). Laurence Olivier was first choice to play the role taken by Burt Lancaster. United Artists was not at all keen on the proposition. Innovative use of the camera. Judy Garland and Montgomery Clift overcame personal problems while Marlene Dietrich was acquainted with one of men on trial.
(New Entry) The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Sean Connery, Jack Lemmon and Brigitte Bardot turned it down. Director Norman Jewison thought Steve McQueen “completely wrong” for the part.
(New Entry) The Cincinnati Kid (1965). Sam Peckinpah was fired. Spencer Tracy quit. Sharon Tate declined.
(New Entry) The Appointment (1969). Booed at the Cannes Film Festival. Denied a release in the U.S., even with Omar Sharif as star and after being heavily edited by MGM. Only shown on American TV. The biggest financial flop of Sidney Lumet’s career.

Behind the Scenes: Becoming a Producer, Part One – The Walter Mirisch Story

You don’t just waltz into Hollywood and start churning out classics like Some Like it Hot (1959), The Magnificent Seven (1960), West Side Story (1961) and The Great Escape (1963). Usually, there’s a long apprenticeship, especially for a producer. Walter Mirisch spent nearly a decade at the B-picture coalface. And before that a year as a gofer, working his way up in the business, but on one of the smallest rungs of all, at Monogram.

Born in 1921, the of a Polish immigrant tailor specializing in custom-made garments, one of whose customers was George Skouras, owner of a cinema chain, Walter, not surprisingly in the Hollywood Golden Age, started out an even lower rung, as an usher in the State Theater in Jersey City, owned by Skouras, an hour’s commute from his home in the Bronx, earning 25 cents an hour. He was quickly promoted to ticket checker.

His older brother Harold was a film booker, receiving an education in negotiation, and then as a cinema manager in Milwaukee flexed his entrepreneurial muscles by starting a concession company. After the family moved to Milwaukee, Walter attended the University of Wisconsin and then Harvard Business School. Physically unfit for active duty during the war, he worked for Lockheed in Los Angeles on its aircraft program in an administrative capacity.

While Harold was a highflyer at RKO, acting as chief buyer and then managing its cinema chain, Walter entered at a lower level in 1946 as a general assistant to Steve Broidy, boss of Monogram, maker of B-pictures of the series variety – Charlie Chan, The Bowery Boys, Joe Palooka, shot within eight days and at budgets under $100,000.

After badgering Broidy for a bigger opportunity, he was granted permission to hunt for a property he could produce. For $500 he found a Ring Lardner short story about a boxer, but Broidy felt the main character was unsympathetic. Stanley Kramer did not and snapped it up to make Champion (1949).

Walter’s first ventures were in film noir. Fall Guy (1947), based on a story by Cornell Woolrich, made for $83,000, broke even. I Wouldn’t Be In Your Shoes (1948) followed, from a Woolrich novel but there was a drawback to being a producer. He was taken off the payroll and his $2,500 producer’s fee didn’t compensate for the loss of a $75 weekly salary. The answer was to invent his own series, ripping off the Tarzan pictures for Bomba the Jungle Boy (1949), starring Johnny Sheffield who had played Tarzan’s son and utilizing stock footage from Africa Speaks. Apart from his fee, Walter had a 50 per cent profit share.

For six years, these appeared at the rate of two a year, earning Walter a minimum of $5,000 and he soon branched out into other genres, sci fi like Flight to Mars (1951) and westerns such as Cavalry Scout (1951) and Fort Osage (1951), both starring B-movie stalwart Rod Cameron.

Monogram had decided to move upmarket with the introduction in 1951 of Allied Artists, its sales division run by Walter’s brother Harold, with Walter acting as an executive producer and other brother Marvin as treasurer, turning out solid B-picture-plus hits like Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954).

When the threat from television hit the B-picture market Allied went properly upscale, investing in William Wyler western Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon (1957), both starring Gary Cooper. Their failure at the box office sent Monogram back to basics.

But the Mirisches wanted more of the big time. The three brothers turned to United Artists and negotiated a deal for that studio to finance four pictures a year, cover the brothers’ overhead and salaries and throw in a profit share. The Mirisch Company was born and their creative credit within the industry was so high – and the deals they offered, it has to be said, so advantageous to their creative partners – that soon they were scooping up big names like Wilder (he made his next eight pictures for Mirisch), William Wyler, Gary Cooper, Tony Curtis, Doris Day, Audrey Hepburn and Lana Turner. One of the first pictures announced was a remake of King Kong (1933). Wilder planned My Sister and I with Hepburn. John Sturges was attached to 633 Squadron. Doris Day would star in Roar Like A Dove and there were two-picture deals with Alan Ladd and Audie Murphy.

Their first two efforts didn’t break the budget bank, Fort Massacre (1958) starring Joel McCrea, and Man of the West (1958) headlined by Cooper, but neither were they hits. Hoping to provide ongoing financial sustenance, Walter turned to television, turning Wichita (1955) into the series Wichita Town (1959), and further television contributions were mooted for UA Playhouse but that and Peter Loves Mary and The Iron Horseman failed.

Movies proved a better bet and Walter struck gold with the third picture in the Mirisch-UA deal, Some Like it Hot (1959), costing $2.5 million, an enormous financial and critical success and tied down a triumvirate of top talent in John Wayne, William Holden and John Ford for western The Horse Soldiers (1959), the actors pulling down $750,000 apiece.

Such salaries sent the nascent company on a collision course with traditional Hollywood. The majors “screamed” that independents were overpaying the talent, hefty profit shares accompanying the salaries.

On top of that in 1959 in the space of two weeks Mirisch spent a record $600,000 pre-publication on James Michener blockbuster Hawaii and tied up a deal to film Broadway hit West Side Story. Within two years of setting up, Walter Mirisch announced a $34.5 million production slate, earning the company the tag of “mini-major,” as part of a shift in attitude to a “go for broke” policy. By the start of the new decade it was by far the biggest independent the industry had ever seen, handling $50 million worth of product, including The Magnificent Seven and The Apartment (1960). Average budgets had risen from $1.5 million to $3.5 million.

To outsiders, assuming the Mirisch venture was Walter’s first, it might look as if Walter had knocked the ball out of the park in a very short space of time, but, in reality, by the time he produced Some Like it Hot, he had been responsible for thirty-three pictures. Not bad for a “beginner.”

Explained Walter Mirisch, “Producing films is a chancy business. To produce a really fine film requires the confluence of a large number of elements, all combined in the exactly correct proportions. It’s very difficult and that’s why it happens so infrequently. It takes great attention to detail, the right instincts, the right combinations of talents and the heavens deciding to smile down on the enterprise. Timing is often critical.”

What would have happened to Allied Artists, for example, had Wilder made Some Like it Hot there instead of Love in the Afternoon?

Added Walter, “Where is the country’s or the world’s interest at that time? What is the audience looking for? Asking them won’t help because they themselves will tell you they don’t know what they’re looking for. They don’t know what it is until they’ve seen it. All the elements must come together at exactly the right time. So to say one embarks with great certainty on such an endeavor is an exaggeration.”

After 33 films Mirisch hit a home run with Some Like It Hot and continued to do so throughout the 1960s chalking up further critical and commercials hits like The Pink Panther (1964), In the Heat of the Night (1967) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and vacuuming up a stack of Oscars.

SOURCES: Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (University of Wisconsin, 2008); “Mirisch Freres Features Outlet Via United Artists,” Variety, August 7, 1957, p16; “3 Mirisch Bros Set Up Indie Co for 12 UA Films,” Variety, September 11, 1957, p7; “RKO vs Mirisch Kong,” Variety, September 11, 1957, p7; Advertisement, “United Artists Welcomes The Mirisch Company,” Variety, November, 13, 1957, p13; “Brynner, Mirisch Pledge UA TV Tie,” Variety, January 1, 1958, p23; “Mirisch Freres 6 By Year-End,” Variety, March 19, 1958, p3; “Majors Originated Outrageous Wages,” Variety, December 10, 1958, p4; “UA-Mirisch’s $600,000 For Michener’s Hawaii,” Variety, August 26, 1959, p5; “Mirisch West Side Story,” Variety, September 2, 1959, p4; “Mirisch Takes on ‘Major’ Mantle With 2-Yr $34,500,000 Production Slate,” Variety, October 21, 1959, 21; “Mirisch Sets $50,000,000 14-Pic Slate; Biggest for Single Indie,” Variety, August 17, 1960, p7.

Behind the Scenes: Selling the New-Look Paul Newman – Pressbook for “The Hustler” (1961)

While Twentieth Century Fox head honcho Spyros Skouras initially balked at the title, with its connotations of prostitution, by the time the movie appeared that subject matter was less contentious thanks to critical and commercial big hitters Butterfield 8 (1960) and Never on Sunday (1960). Given that the idea of a movie set in a poolroom was going to be a hard sell to a female audience, despite the marquee lure of Paul Newman, the studio gave marketeers free rein to pitch it as a raw, sex-oriented drama.

There’s little sign of a pool cue in some of the artwork. Instead, we have Paul Newman lustily nuzzling Piper Laurie’s neck or bosom. The taglines promise something far removed from a sports picture.

“It probes the stranger…the pick up…the savage realities,” screamed the main tagline. Another tempted with: “It delves without compromise into the inner loneliness and hunger that lie deep within us all!” In other words we’re talking about sex, not love, and casual sex at that, the world of the one-night stand between consenting adults for whom marriage is the last thing on their minds. “The word for Robert Rossen’s The Hustler is prim-i-tive” suggested out of control lust.

Fast Eddie Felson (Newman) has “the animal instinct.” Sarah (Piper Laurie) has a “bottle, two glasses and a man’s razor always in her room.” Bert (George C. Scott) is on the look-out for the “sucker to skin alive.”

Those images which did show a cue and pool balls did not suggest an august sport like football or baseball, not with a tagline like “he was a winner, he was a loser, he was a hustler.”

With such talented actors to hand, the Pressbook wasn’t short of good stories relating to the actual movie rather than the kind of snippets that might appeal to an editor on a slow news day. So we learn that Piper Laurie continually limped, Method-style, around on the set. “When I limp in the picture, I don’t want to act it. It’s something that has to be a part of me, something of which I am no longer conscious, apart from its being a physical defect. I must be able to limp as if I had a bad foot from birth.”

Laurie had made so few pictures that her name wouldn’t be on any director’s wanted list and what she was best known for – ingénue roles when a contract player for Universal (who gave out that she bathed in milk to keep her skin soft) opposite the likes of Tony Curtis – wouldn’t have inspired confidence. Robert Rossen might well have spotted her in two Emmy-nominated performances in successive years including Days of Wine and Roses (1958), but instead said he remembered her for “a sensitive characterization” from a stage production of Rosemary.

Ames Billiards Academy had once been a Chinese restaurant so boasted a balcony. This was unseen in the picture but allowed director Robert Rossen to shoot from widely varied overhead angles. The crew took over the Manhattan Bus Terminal for a day and a night. A row of lunch booths was constructed in front of the existing lunch counter. “It looked so real,” we are told, “that passers-by sat down and waited for their orders to be taken.” A nice story, and the kind often furnished by Pressbook journos, but rather fanciful, since it would be obvious what with the crew milling around and the lights and cameras and miles of cable that this was a movie set with security posted to prevent trespassing.

Just how good a pool player was Jackie Gleason, who came to the picture with a reputation for handling a cue? Well, at one point, the affable television comedian with a top-rated show, potted 96 consecutive balls.

Paul Newman plays the iconic hero as a “figure cut from the fabric of our time.” He had a firm grasp of the character. “With him it’s a question of commitment. He is so wrapped up in his drive to win and be somebody that he has no time to give of himself that which others need. It is a disease of our time, both the ambition and the isolation. I want him to be understood.”

Needless to say there was no mention of author Walter Tevis. That wasn’t so unusual in the make-up of Pressbooks, but if the marketeers these days were looking for something to write about the eclectic Tevis would be prime. He followed up The Hustler, published in 1959, four years later with sci fi The Man Who Fell to Earth, filmed in 1976 with David Bowie. A sequel to The Hustler, The Color of Money, was directed in 1986 by Martin Scorsese with Newman reprising his role and managing Tom Cruise. Tevis also wrote The Queen’s Gambit, turned into an acclaimed television mini-series in 2020 with Anya Taylor-Joy.

Behind the Scenes: “The Hustler” (1961)

It should have been Frank Sinatra in the leading role, not Newman. Sinatra acquired the rights to the Walter Tevis semi-biographical novel published in 1959. When Sinatra moved onto something else and director Robert Rossen took up the slack still Newman should have been ruled out courtesy of a planned re-teaming with Elizabeth Taylor – they had worked together on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1959) – for the screen adaptation of Broadway hit Two for a Seesaw. Bobby Darin (Pressure Point, 1962) was being lined up instead. When illness put paid to Taylor’s involvement, Newman would have remained tied to Two for the Seesaw except he had co-star approval and none of the actresses suggested measured up.

Based on reading half the script, Newman, calling his agent at six o’clock in the morning to confirm interest, jumped at the role. Though Exodus (1960) had been a success, and he had managed to ease himself out of his contract with Warner Bros, he was not considered hot box office and he needed a part not just to consolidate his commercial standing but to provide a professional springboard that would shape his career. His previous outing, Paris Blues (1961), hadn’t carved out a clear path. As well as his salary, the actor was in line for ten per cent of the profits.

Initially, the picture was backed by United Artists and it featured in their adverts in the trade magazines in 1959. The studio had shelled out an advance to Rossen to option the rights. But when the director couldn’t find a “box office star as insurance” UA pulled out. By this point, the end of 1959, there was at least a screenplay, Rossen having called upon the services of Sydney Carroll (Big Deal at Dodge City, 1966).

Rossen shopped the package to Twentieth Century Fox which, somewhat surprisingly, signed up to the project when no major star was attached, especially as, according to Rossen, the picture “pulled no punches” with its “frank approach to people and life.” UA had promoted itself as the go-to studio for independents but by Rossen’s reckoning Fox was superior in that department because backing the movie “took some guts.”

Fox chief Spyros Skouras wasn’t keen on the title, believing, understandably, that The Hustler might signal to audiences that it was a story about prostitution. It was changed first of all to A Stroke of Luck and then to Sin of Angels. However, UA objected to the latter title on the grounds it had already registered a similar title The Side of the Angels and with some reluctance Skouras agreed to go with the original title.

It was a critical picture for Rossen, who hadn’t had a solid hit in a decade and hadn’t made a picture that could be mentioned in the same breath as All the King’s Men (1949). In part his low output was due to being blacklisted during the anti-Communist witch hunt of the early 1950s, although finally cleared. But it was as much due to his unusual method of working. “You gamble time which is money,” he said, “because you may work for six months or a year then realize the property is not quite right and your drop the while idea.” That ran counter to the general Hollywood practice where studios would press ahead with inferior product precisely because so much time and money had been spent on it. Rossen’s office was littered with abandoned projects.

Female lead Piper Laurie was also in the market for a comeback. She had bowed out of the business after Until They Sail (1958) – also starring Newman – fed up with ingénue parts, although the director had initially favored daughter Carole Rossen (The Arrangement, 1969) for the role. At one point Rossen identified Yves Montand for a top supporting role. Co-star Jackie Gleason (Soldier in the Rain, 1963), known at this time as a television comedy actor, was already a decent pool player and Newman was coached by Willie Mosconi, a fourteen-time world billiards champ. Except for one maneuver the two actors managed to achieve all the shots caught on camera. Newman believed he was good enough to beat Gleason and it cost him $50 to be proved wrong.

George C. Scott, primarily known for his work on the stage, had attracted attention with an Oscar-nominated turn in Otto Preminger courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959).

The film, budgeted at $2.1 million, was shot on location in New York City in the winter and spring of 1961. “You get certain values,” noted Rossen, “ in New York that you can’t get on the Coast (Hollywood).” The pool scenes were filmed at Ames Billiard Academy, established in 1946, near Times Square and McGirr’s. Other locations included a townhouse on East 82^nd St which doubled as the Louisville home of the billiard player Findley and the Greyhound Bus Station in Manhattan even though it lacked a dining area and the one built on the premises confused regular customers.

Rossen spent five weeks of the 10-week schedule on the pool action. Sarah’s apartment, however, was located on a sound stage. The director, under pressure to revive his career and suffering from diabetes, was tough on the crew but went easy on the cast. He hired street thugs as extras to add authenticity. He fell foul of electricians and they fell foul of him after he exposed a blackmail scam whereby the electricians responsible for inspecting the unit complained of code violations when it was the same inspectors who should have ensured everything complied with regulations. .

The part was custom-made for Newman. “I spent the first thirty years of my life looking for a way to explode,” recalled the actor. He found an outlet for that problem through acting and he reckoned for Fast Eddie Felson it was pool. “It was one of those movies when you woke every day and could hardly wait to get to work because you knew it was so good that nobody was going to be able to louse it up.”

Though studio 20^th Century Fox did its best to louse it up, originally objecting to the location shoot, looking to cut down the running time, especially telescoping the pool sequences it felt might bore the female audience. Desperate to hold onto his vision, Rossen hired Arthur P. Jacobs, then a top-flight PR honcho (and later producer of Planet of the Apes, 1968), who contrived to set up a celebrity screening where the positive response stopped Fox in its interfering tracks. Due to the Actors Strike the previous year, product was in short supply, so although The Hustler was one of 19 pictures opening in September 1961 it didn’t face tough competition, the biggest movies it contended with were Rock Hudson-Gina Lollobrigida comedy Come September and upscale horror The Innocents with Deborah Kerr.

Reviews were positive although in an editorial Box Office magazine railed against a picture which cinemas could not sell to a family audience for a matinee performance.

A surprise box office hit, at least initially, in first run in the big cities, The Hustler creamed a “wow” $64,000 in opening week at the 3,665-seat Paramount in New York. There was a “boffo” $36,000 in Chicago, a “fast” $20,000 in Detroit, a “hotsy” $15,000 in Cleveland, a “wow” $14,000 in Pittsburgh and a “smash” $11,000 in Providence. The poster which effectively showed Paul Newman thrusting his head into Piper Laurie’s bosom attracted adverse criticism and caused Chicago newspapers to take a stronger line on movie ads.

It was nominated for nine Oscars with Newman, Laurie, Gleason and Scott all earning acting nods, and Rossen up for two gongs in his capacity as director and producer, as well as potentially sharing one with Sydney Carroll for the screenplay. In the event the only winners were for Eugen Schufftan for Cinematography and Harry Horner and Gene Callahan for Art Direction. At the Baftas it was named Best Film while Newman won Best Foreign Actor and Piper Laurie was also nominated.

Oscar nominations ensured the picture went out on speedy reissue in February and March 1962 resulting in domestic rentals of $2.8 million and a decent run abroad.

Robert Rossen only made one more picture. Paul Newman reconfigured his career and George C. Scott added to his lustre. Jackie Gleason got a shot at top billing with Gigot (1962) but Piper Laurie didn’t make another movie until Carrie (1976).

SOURCES: Daniel O’Brien, Paul Newman (Faber & Faber, 2005) pp79-85; Shawn Levy, Paul Newman, A Life (Aurum, 2009) pp 175-182; Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century Fox, (Scarecrow Press, 2002) p229 and p253; Advertisement, United Artists, Variety, June 24, 1959, p21; “New York Sound Track,” Variety, August 12, 1959, p17; “Gleaned on a Gondola,” Variety, August 26, 1959, p20; “New York Sound Track,” Variety, November 16, 1960, p17; “Fox Nicer to Indies than UA,” Variety, March 8, 1961, p3; “New York Electrical Inspectors,” Variety, March 29, 1961, p5; “Sins of Angels Tag disputed,” Variety, March 29, 1961, p7; “Artistic Comeback,” Variety, May 24, 1961, p4; “Skinpix Can’t See,” Variety, October 18, 1961, p17; “Hustler Re-Release,” Box Office, January 22, 1962, pSW8. Box office figures: Variety October-November 1961.

Behind the Scenes: Selling William Holden and Audrey Hepburn – Pressbook for “Paris When It Sizzles” (1964)

One of the main aims of the Pressbook/Marketing Manual ws to provide cinema managers with material for local journalists, which might result in the movie getting a mention outside the entertainment pages. Mostly, these consisted of bizarre snippets that you might imagine editors would instantly reject, notions that an actor had previously had an arcane profession, or something quite random such as that Audrey Hepburn demanding Dressing Room No 55 in a studio. However, marketeers on this picture struck gold.

Having made three pictures in Paris, Audrey Hepburn offered useful tips for prospective travellers. She named five offbeat haunts. “One is a tiny shop near the Madeleine where old and proud workmen are busy all day on all kinds of things from miniature Eiffel Towers to chessmen,” she advised. “Another is a flower stall on the Ile de Cite where an old grandmother whose three sons died in World War I looks after what she has brought from her own garden to sell.

“Another is an ancient Left Bank restaurant, the Procope, which dates from 1686 but few persons except students know about. Robespierre, Danton, Napoleon, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Verlaine and many other famous persons ate there regularly.”

Another favorite is a “small grove” in the Bois du Boulogne near where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor lived. “The combination of the sun filtering through the elms, spruces and chestnut trees against the loveliest beds of blooms with a little waterfall on one side makes an exquisite ‘real life’ painting.” Her final recommendation was the Little Trianon, favored by Marie Antoinette, at Versailles.

On the fashion front we discover that Hubert de Givenchy worked for six months on designing her clothes for the picture. A hundred sketches “were discarded” before the final selection was whittled down to eight dresses.

Having acted the part of a secretary, Hepburn also felt qualified to pass on tips to those occupying such a position. Don’t ask about your boss’s personal life, she emphasised. Also, make sure you wear the kind of make-up he likes, don’t dress better than the rest of the staff and be prepared to give up your coffee break to pound your typewriter.

Not to be outdone, and possibly encouraged by working alongside a fashion icon, William Holden let rip on male fashion. “Who says that a man has to wear a coat in a fashionable restaurant?” he rages. “And this business of the extra-heavy coat lapel. That’s got to go along with those stupid folded-handkerchief pockets. Also, I can’t understand why men have that extra bottom button on their coat, you know, the one they never button.”

He rails against trouser cuffs and objects to the fashion that “dictates” he has to wear cuff links inside his jacket sleeve.” He and director Richard Quine once fashioned their own suits during the filming of The World of Suzie Wong (1960).

Quine was discounted as having any publicity value in the 10-page A3 Pressbook, but screenwriter George Axelrod was deemed worthy of an article about the “wacky” concept. He argues, “Pictures today must be unconventional. Stories that old-time editors might tell you are the safest may lead to disaster.”

Unasked, he also sprung to the defence of the principals, claiming “They are never late, are spark plugs of enthusiasm and ask to spend extra time rehearsing.” This would have come as something of a surprise to studio executives enduring Holden’s alcoholism – at one point during filming he had to go and dry out.

Perhaps believing that the names of the stars would automatically sell the picture, the advertising team stinted on poster variety, relying on two simple designs and taglines.

Otherwise there was a wealth of marketing ideas, the pick of which was a “gigantic national contest” to win an escorted tour of Europe, including a trip to Paris (natch!) run by Gateway Holidays.

As well as record retailers stocking Nelson Riddle’s soundtrack and bookshops selling a novelization of the script – both of which could offer vital window displays, there was also a tie-in with Givenchy. The fashionista’s dresses weren’t being turned into a line, which the vast majority of the audience couldn’t afford in any case. Instead, Givenchy had created a special perfume for Hepburn called “L’Interdit Perfume.” Its launch was accompanied by half-page ads in the likes of Vogue, the New Yorker and Women’s Wear Daily, each carrying mention of the movie.

Behind the Scenes: “Battle of Midway” (1976)

Mirisch could easily lay claim to be the top independent production outfit of the 1960s generating hits like The Magnificent Seven (1960), West Side Story (1961), The Great Escape (1963), The Pink Panther (1964) and its sequel A Shot in the Dark (1964), The Russians Are Coming, Russians Are Coming (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) plus a shelf load of Oscars and Oscar nominations. But dependence on a partnership with Billy Wilder in the 1970s and a more lackluster performance at the box office – with the noted exception of Fiddler on the Roof (1971) – spelled the end of its 17-year relationship with United Artists, which was reeling from financial losses and under new management.

The company found a new partner in Universal which had a series of deals with other major producers like Alfred Hitchcock, Zanuck and Brown (Jaws, 1975) and George Seaton (Airport, 1970). Mirisch was not in any financial trouble, having severed ties with UA after Mr Majestyk (1974), a major success abroad, and recovered its development costs for Wheels, based on the Arthur Hailey novel but the script rejected by UA, from Universal which turned it into a mini-series.

The Universal deal was initially not as good as that enjoyed at UA. Universal charged a twenty-five per cent overhead whereas UA had charged nothing and Universal was now doing direct deals with directors rather than relying on the likes of Mirisch to tie up the talent.

Many years before, Mirisch had commissioned a script on the Battle of Midway from Donald S. Sanford who specialized in war pictures but of the distinctly low-budget variety – Submarine X-1 (1968), The Thousand Plane Raid (1969) and Mosquito Squadron (1969), none of which had enjoyed any success.

Though all of the Mirisch war pictures had concentrated on Europe, Walter Mirisch, generally the creative driving force for the production company, in his previous incarnation with Allied Artists had some experience of the Pacific War, having produced Flat Top / Eagles of the Fleet (1952), set around an aircraft carrier during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and was an avid reader of books about the Second World War.

John Ford and Louis de Rochmont had made documentaries about the Pacific naval battles. UA rejected the script twice, a shrewd move in the end because Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) lost a packet for Twentieth Century Fox. The Sanford screenplay had initially taken more of a documentary approach but after gaining the interest of Charlton Heston, who had starred in Mirisch’s The Hawaiians (1970), the script was tweaked.

Programming a war picture was a risk for the studio. There hadn’t been a big-budget war picture in five years. And while Patton (1970) and Kelly’s Heroes (1970) ended up on the right sight of the ledger book, Tora!, Tora! Tora! and Too Late the Hero (1970) were stiffs.

Mirisch signed a two-picture deal with Universal, for Midway and Wild Card with a screenplay by Elmore Leonard (Mr Majestyk). Mirisch proposed to reduce costs by using footage from naval archives, converting the original 16mm film to 35mm. The producer also took footage from Japanese film Storm over the Pacific / I Bombed Pearl Harbor (1960) – the rights cost him $96,000. Footage of the Pearl Harbor attack in Tora! Tora! Tora! doubled for shots of the attack on Midway Island. A clip of the Dolittle raid on Tokyo from Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944) was used in the credit sequence after “subjecting it to a sepia bath.”

After the success of Earthquake (1975), Heston was back in the top ranks of box office stars and his involvement guaranteed the green light. The U.S. Navy offered its support, not surprising since Midway was considered its greatest success.

John Guillermin (The Towering Inferno, 1974) was hired to direct and Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night) signed up for a screenplay rewrite. Mirisch had determined to employ the all-star-cast device that had been an essential ingredient of many of the 1960s roadshow pictures, kicking off with Henry Fonda (The Boston Strangler, 1968), by now pretty much a spent force at the box office – he hadn’t made a picture in three years – but still a well-known name.

The amount of work involved for the other stars was minimal – mostly just one day – and, astutely, Mirisch called on stars who had worked for him in the past and who, like James Coburn (The Great Escape), Cliff Robertson (633 Squadron, 1964) and Christopher George (The Thousand Plane Raid) owed him something in terms of a career leg-up. Others included Robert Mitchum (The Sundowners, 1960), Robert Wagner (The Biggest Bundle of Them All, 1968) and Tom Selleck in an early role. Mitchum was the first of these stars to sign up, in March 1975, six weeks before the scheduled start date of April 27, followed two days later by Coburn.

Toshiro Mifune (Red Sun, 1971) headed up the Japanese cast and proved so meticulous in his preparations that he had his uniform made by Japanese tailors. The white gloves he wore had a finger shortened on the left hand because his character Admiral Yamamoto was missing a pinky. However, despite coaching in English by actress Miko Taka (Walk, Don’t Run, 1966), his dialog was revoiced by Paul Frees.

Guillermin demanded a bigger budget to accommodate more airplanes and equipment and a longer shooting period. Two months before filming was due to start, Mirisch put his foot down and told the director he couldn’t accommodate his requests as Universal had only provided funding on the basis of Mirisch’s original idea. Guillermin walked. As far as the public was concerned, the parting of the ways was due to a “conflict of schedules.” Jack Smight, who had directed Airport ’75 (1974), a box office success and also starring Heston, was his replacement.

The Navy lent aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lexington – the last remaining World War Two carrier – while it was at sea training pilots as long as the shoot didn’t interfere with those exercises. A limited number of World War Two vintage planes – in great condition having been cared for by their owners – were permitted on board. The Navy charged the crew for accommodation – Mirisch was housed in Admiral Strean’s quarters – and meals. “We had a detailed contract with the Navy,” recalled Mirisch, “in which we agreed to stay out of their way when asked.”

On board, the crew filmed scenes, some silent and others with dialog, and “made plates for rearview projection and aerial shots of our vintage planes so positioned that we could print them into flights of six or nine.” Charlton Heston, Glenn Ford (Rage, 1966) and Hal Holbrook (The Group, 1966) were aboard and the shoot went well. A scene involving Henry Fonda was shot at Pensacola. The Florida coast stood in for the Pacific. Additional exteriors were filmed in Los Angeles at Long Beach and Point Dune with interiors at Universal.

The construction of the interiors for the Japanese aircraft carriers was so authentic Mirisch was later asked to reassemble the set for the Smithsonian Institute for a presentation there. The interpolation of the old footage was crucial and it was planned in advance where such shots would appear. The old footage was precut and scenes were shot with actors with “scene missing” in those sequences into which the old footage could be dropped. Other devices were used to ensure the background in the old footage was more lively.

The final element was in cinematic presentation. Sensurround, a precursor of Imax, had been introduced with great success by Universal to Earthquake and this added greater realism to the battle scenes. While limited to those theaters which had installed the expensive equipment, and although the roadshow was long gone, it created an “event” aspect to those viewing it in that system. In his autobiography Mirisch suggested the addition of Sensurround was last minute and sparked by the success of Earthquake. But, in fact, Universal had announced a year in advance of opening that Battle of Midway would utilize Sensurround.

Some cinema owners were outraged at the stock footage, whose proposed inclusion had been kept from them when they went into the blind-bidding process at the start of the year. Mirisch countered that there was no alternative. “A great many aircraft,” he argued, “used in the battle no longer exist.” Universal’s terms were stiff – a minimum nine-week run starting at a 70/30 split for the first three weeks in the studio’s favor, a $75,000 advance guarantee from cinemas and 5% of the gross for use of Sensurround.

With the budget kept as low as a reported $4 million it was a massive hit, picking up $20.3 million in rentals (what the studio retains of the box office gross) – sixth in the annual box office league beaten only by Oscar-winner One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, All the President’s Men with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, demonic The Omen, Walter Matthau baseball comedy The Bad News Bears and Mel Brooks’ Silent Movie and just ahead of such offerings as Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon with Al Pacino, and comedy Murder by Death but nearly doubling the take of the more critically-acclaimed Taxi Driver, Clint Eastwood western The Outlaw Josey Wales and thriller Marathon Man also starring Hoffman. The final domestic figure amounted to $21.8 million.

Foreign figures were astonishing, especially in Japan, where its gross exceeded $4 million. The benefits of the promotional tour undertaken by Heston in the Far East were soon obvious – in Manila it beat both Jaws and Earthquake. In the annual box office league there and Hong Kong, it ranked third. In Italy it proved a “big surprise”, coming in fourth behind King Kong, Taxi Driver and a local offering.

While a successful movie could expect to benefit from television viewings – this was before the video revolution – the movie had an unusual afterlife. NBC, which had bought the rights, wanted the film to be longer, so it could be shown over two nights, thus increasing advertising and setting it up as a more prestigious event. Largely by adding plotlines to the Heston character, the running time increased by nearly an hour, which proved a bonus for the future home screening revolution.

“Of all the films that I have made,” noted Mirisch, “it produced the greatest amount of profit.”

SOURCES: Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies Not History (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008) pp324-339; “Readying Midway,” Variety, February 5, 1975, p6; “Universal in New Shake,” Variety, July 23, 1975, p3; “Admiral Mitchum,” Variety, March 12, 1975, p18; ”Jap Feature Footage Inserted into Midway,” Variety, June 6, 1976, p7; “Midway Big in Manila,” Variety, August 11, 1976, p24; “Big Rental Films of 1976,” Variety, January 5, 1977, p14; “Jaws Led Bangkok,” Variety, February 9, 1977, p39; “International,” Variety, June 29, 1977, p35.