Where the weekly Variety devoted maybe a quarter of its pages in the 1960s to the film industry, the weekly U.S. trade magazine Box Office (it didn’t also run a daily) wrote about nothing but. And not just what we term the “film business” – the making and marketing of films – but also the business of running a cinema with all the detail that entails.
In 1920, aged just 18, Ben Shlyen founded The Reel Journal in Kansas City and changed the title in 1933 to Box Office. Where the front cover of Variety showed you how diverse it was going to be, the front cover of Box Office revealed that it had only one focus. Its covers didn’t feature industry news. Instead it was devoted to significant figures on the exhibition side or to photos of new cinemas or a still from a new film. It operated nine regional offices and one section of the magazine was changed every week to incorporate news from each of those regions.
First page of the 4-page bound insert for “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”
Rather than its news pages driving the industry, it was its editorials. It took a stance on anything affecting the business, censorship, product shortages, exhibitor initiatives, studio flaws and new technological developments.
It had two distinct advantages over Variety in that it was printed on glossy paper and could incorporate full-color inserts which were generally printed on even heavier stock and glossier paper. Sometimes the easiest way for a smaller distributor to get their message across to the exhibitor was to stick a complete Pressbook/Campaign Manual in the middle of an issue – the issue of March 3, 1967 contained 16-page full-color Pressbook for The Devil’s 8 complete with double-page ad.
Box Office was divided into several sections. News came, of course, at the start but as much as it contained information on new movies and studio goings-on, it might also report on a new pension plan for cinema managers or sales taxes or investment in new cinemas (a record $120 million went into new construction in 1967). A page called “Hollywood Report” updated readers on new films and casting.
The regional section would comprise as much as eight or twelve pages. The section known as “C” for example had columns devoted to Kansas City and Chicago with other articles reporting on Denver, Omaha, Massachusetts and so on.
The magazine took a markedly different approach to reporting box office than Variety. Instead of concentrating on gross, the magazine ran a “Boxoffice Barometer” which showed how movies performed in relation to a cinema’s weekly average. This was done in terms of percentages. With the figure of 100 being the norm, After the Fox, for example, was rated as 450 in Cincinnati but only 90 in San Francisco. This helped exhibitors in various towns work out which result most reflected their business.
Another important section was “Showmanship” which celebrated the marketing ideas and stunts dreamed up by exhibitors and studios. These often featured window displays in stores, special marquees or lobbies and tie-ins with media or radio. Its review pages also carried hints on marketing. And there was a weekly chart showing all the films currently available from all studios, major and minor. And once a fortnight exhibitors could let rip over the quality and/or success/failure of films in its “Exhibitor Has His Say” feature.
But it also focused on the nuts and bolts of running a cinema in its “The Modern Theatre” section. This might include articles on new cinemas or major refurbishments; provide tips for projectionists on depth of focus and how to oil projectors; come up with new ideas on concession sales or how to make bigger profits from popcorn; how to plan a drive-in theatre, how new income tax rules could affect your business; and information of the latest pieces of equipment.
Box Office magazine wasn’t as readily available to laymen such as myself. I don’t recall it being available in newsagents in central London. I’m not sure if at that point in its development it was interested in the foreign market. So I was first introduced to the magazine from buying various issues on memorabilia auction sites.
Second page of a 4-page bound insert for “A Man for All Seasons.”
It was the bound inserts that had me hooked. Where posters in the 1960s were printed on paper and Pressbooks were printed on glossier stock, the inserts were phenomenal and unique. You wouldn’t find these appearing in a normal ad campaign in ordinary newspapers. While mostly they were four pages long, I have some in my collection that top 16 pages.
There were two bound inserts in the issue of January 16, 1967. The first for Thoroughly Modern Millie was at least 400 gsm – four times the thickness of ordinary copier paper – full color and glossy as all get out. This was clearly specifically designed for the magazine and promoted the movie’s world premiere on March 22 at the Criterion in New York.
First page of a double-page spread using spot colour.
The other was for A Man for All Seasons, also four pages and also in full color. While the paper stock was as heavy, the design was more stylish, printed on card, the kind you used to get on businesses that wanted to impress you with the quality of their stationery. Pre-dating that year’s Oscars, the advert promoted the film being awarded the New York Film Critics Award and that the film was playing “exclusive reserved seat engagements” in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto.
Most ordinary adverts were in black-and-white or spot color and often promoted movies you or I have never heard of but were doing good business somewhere. However, as if to demonstrate the overall quality of the product, it also carried a full-color advertisement for Kodak’s Eastman Color System with a photo that involved various shades of color in an intricate format.
Because of the inserts I have more cherished copies of this magazine than I do of Variety.
Perhaps the most famous logo in the history of newspapers. Unusually, I had a very slight connection to the magazine. When I was a journalist I worked for Reed Business Publishing which took over Variety in 1987 through its U.S. subsidiary Cahners and much later a colleague of mine Neil Stiles took over as publisher. When I lived in London, I’d make a detour on the way home once a week to pick up a copy of the weekly edition from a newsagent in Charing Cross Road or failing that in Old Compton St. So I’ve been familiar with the magazine for around 40 years. A decade or so back when I was a bit flush I treated myself to an annual subscription to its archive and trawled all the way back to its beginnings in 1905. Anyone who’s read any of my books will see how often I use the magazine for reference.
Obviously, movies weren’t on the editorial agenda when Sime Silverman founded the publication – the iconic logo hasn’t changed much in a century. As the title said, it covered everything within the entertainment industry and when movies grew in importance they acquired their own section with its own front page inside.
The strapline above the logo shows just how wide a market “Variety” tapped into.
From the outset, Variety targeted those actively involved in the business and as the movie section expanded that meant movie executives, financiers, actors and directors. I’ve no idea how Silverman managed to persuade stage theatres to allow him to publish their weekly takes, but when that included cinemas, the idea of box office as news was born.
Generations of film scholars were grateful for a magazine that focused on the bottom line of the rentals rather than the glossier grossses which tended to be misleading in terms of profit.
Initially it was a weekly magazine, but then set up a smaller daily magazine headquartered in Hollywood which primarily reported on movie news. The two eventually ran side by the side, the weekly being the one that ended up at my London newsagent.
Variety was exceptionally unusual for a magazine in that it invented its own language known as “slanguage.” For example, “boffo” and “whammo” related to box office (often truncated to B.O.) that was on the big side; when someone was fired or quit a job they “ankled;” while “Cincinnati” was reduced to “Cincy.” “Hix” would “nix” the “pix” meaning people in the countryside didn’t go much for whatever movies had turned up locally. Projects were “greenlit.” A “hardtop” was an indoor movie theater while an “ozoner” referred to a drive-in. If you “inked a deal” it meant you signed up for something.
Articles tended to be long and sometimes ran over to another page.
It wasn’t very much bothered with the exhibitor side of the business though it was initially most useful to that sector for not just reviewing every picture released but passing judgement on its box office prospects. This saved cinemas, which might require eight or ten movies in a given week, from having to spend so much time in a screening theatre.
But it was very catholic in its coverage. If you look just above the logo on the front page I’ve reproduced from 1967 you’ll notice it sets out quite a substantial stall of interest – films, video (in those days that meant television not VHS), TV films (as opposed to movies made for the cinema), radio, music and stage. So, virtually, the entire field of entertainment. It also had a healthy section on books.
And it made a point of not favoring one particular element of the business. So on its front page, you’d find stories on each of the sectors it covered. However, by the 1960s, the front section of the magazine was devoted to movies and Variety was delighted to trumpet box office figures in news stories rather than just leaving it to the studios to highlight through adverts. Except that the magazine was exceptionally large in terms of page size, it wasn’t a great advertising vehicle. There was no color available unlike some of its competitors. The printing was more grainy than glossy.
However, it did become the market leader in box office figures. In the 1960s it published the weekly box office returns for hundreds of cinemas in the largest cities in the country, adding its own editorial comments on the performances of various films. (This also allowed cinemas further down the food chain to temper or raise expectations).Its headlines in this section often generated excitement, the oxygen any industry needed. When the blockbuster business began in the 1970s it was Variety that led the way in box office reporting, causing other mainstream media to follow suit.
And it was via Variety that studios started pitching their movies for Oscars, taking out advert after advert proclaiming the glories of a particular movie, triggering the marketing tsunami that occurs now in the run-up to the ceremony.
Weekly box was registered as gross, i.e. what the movie took in at each cinema. But Variety had another trump card to play. Once a year, it contacted the studios to ask them to provide not the cumulative gross for each release but the rental, i.e. the amount of dough returned to the studio after the cinema had taken its cut. That provided a more realistic basis for assessing how movies had actually performed in relation to their budgets.
And reporting in general was not PR-driven. Variety was as likely to lambast the industry or its stars for under-performing as much as for setting box office records. It reported on downturns as much as upturns. It saw in advance when and where trouble was looming. You got the impression that the journalists understood the business rather than writing about it as star-struck hacks.
In future years, when Variety became an intrinsic part of the Cannes Film Festival, its issue devoted to that event could top 300 pages, a good chunk of it filled with adverts from smaller companies promoting films seeking a distributor or punting films that had yet to be made. Often, these ads were nothing more than bait-and-switch, promising pictures with bankable stars that were little more than dreams in the imagination of a minor executive.
But the magazine had one significant flaw. In effect, entirely unintentionally because I said it stated it content plans upfront, it was pulling a fast one. When you picked up your copy, it felt like you were in for a hefty read. The weekly edition could often span 100 pages. But if you were in the film industry less than a quarter of the content would be relevant to you, the rest was devoted to the other areas shown on the masthead.
The magazine is still in business today although with the online element more prominent.
It’s impossible to imagine these days the impact of the roadshow. Yes, we’ve got Imax and the premium pricing that goes with it, and yes advance bookings can be awesome – witness Oppenheimer (2023) and the upcoming Dune: Part Three which has sold out signs up eight months in advance. But by 1960s standards these – in terms of length of run – couldn’t hold a candle to roadshow.
Take this week in London’s West End – The Sound of Music at the 1,712-seat Dominion cinema was coming up for its third full year (152 weeks and counting). David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago at the 1330-seat Empire was “rock steady” at £7,781 in its 95th week. Because few people were just turning up on the off chance at the door, box office, thanks to advance booking, tended to hold steady.
Fred Zinnemann’s Oscar-winning A Man for All Seasons reported a “substantial gain” in its 45th week to £4,754 at the 600-seat Odeon Haymarket; musical Camelot starring Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave in its 14th week at the 1,565-seat Warner increased to £6,904 over the previous week and British crooner Tommy Steele in musical Half a Sixpence went up to a “smash” £10,434 in its ninth outing at the 1,350 Astoria. Julie Andrews as Thoroughly Modern Millie at the 735-seat Odeon St Martin’s Lane was also on the up – to £6,675 in the 19th week and Julie Christie in Far From the Madding Crowd “advanced” to £4,984 at the 1,394 Metropole. Holding steady were Robert Shaw as Custer of the West, presented at the 1,127 Casino Cinerama, racking up a total of £6,561, and Joseph Strick’s controversial censor-baiting Ulysses with £1,991 in its 38th week at the 556-seat Academy arthouse .
These days new films expect to show a steady or marked decrease after opening, so the idea of movies improving their box office late in a run might come as a surprise to seasoned observers.
Arthouses often enjoyed long runs. The double bill of Claude Lelouche’s Oscar-winner (Best Foreign Film) A Man and a Woman and Agnes Varda’s Le Bonheur at the 544-seat Berkely was in its 32nd week. Luis Bunuel’s Belle de Jour at the 546-seat Curzon registered its 15th week. Sexploitation also tended to do well at the smaller West End houses – 15th week for Massacre for an Orgy at the 252-seat Cameo Moulin, 11th for Seventeen/Sex Quartet at the 486-seat Continentale, ninth for Her Private Hell at the 399-seat Cameo Royal.
Among the non-roadshow pictures Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn-Sidney Poitier drama Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner was “having a great run” at the 1,750-seat Leicester Sq Theatre with £8,734 in the third week. At the same stage of its run Paul Newman World War Two comedy The Secret War of Harry Frigg was not faring so well at the 1,994-seat Odeon Leicester Sq, “drifting” to £5,856. Lee Marvin in John Boorman’s existential thriller Point Blank had another good week – its ninth – with £1,615 at the 412-seat Ritz while Rod Taylor heading up The Mercenaries “eased” to £5,920 at the 1,186-seat Pavilion.
In its second week surfing bonanza Endless Summer “continued to shine with a handsome” £1,868 at the 660-seat Cameo Victoria while Disney’s The Jungle Book, after 14 weeks, continued to climb to £2,850 at the 556-seat Studio One. While Up the Junction with Suzy Kendall “continued to make a weighty return” with £3,433 in its fourth week at the 595-seat Rialto, Carol White as Poor Cow “moved lower” to £1,217 in its seventh week at the 414-seat Prince Charles. George Peppard as The New Face in Hell enjoyed a “very good” £3,414 in its first four days at the 1,159-seat Carlton.
In the London suburbs both Rank and ABC operated a two-tier general release system with films opening one week in North London and the next week in South London. In the north, ABC reported that Bette Davis chiller The Anniversary had “figures in the upper bracket” while the double bill of espionage endeavor Assignment K with Stephen Boyd and Camilla Sparv teamed with Eli Wallach as The Tiger Makes Out were “just about average.” South of the river, Valley of the Dolls was in a “strong position” in Rank cinemas while Smashing Time with Rita Tushingham “homed in on the right side of par.”
However, the long-runners had an adverse effect on the release cycle. With some of the major roadshow houses out of commission thanks to very extensive and still profitable runs, newcomers often jockeyed for position. Disney musical The Happiest Millionaire starring Tommy Steele had to wait five months after its New York premiere to find a berth in London’s West End. Given it had opened at the biggest cinema in the whole of the USA, smashing records at the 6,000-seat Radio City Music Hall, it was something of a comedown to find the only cinema available was one of London West End’s smallest, the 600-seat Odeon Haymarket where it was scheduled to launch on April 4. Disney softened the blow by pointing out that Mary Poppins had enjoyed a successful run there.
Other new movies due out included David Niven demonic thriller Eye of the Devil opening at the Ritz on March 3 and Burt Lancaster in western The Scalphunters at the Pavilion two weeks later.
SOURCE: Bill Altria, “Box Office Business,” Kine Weekly, March 2, 1968, p10.
There’s no connection between Robert Wise, Mike Nichols and David Lean, responsible for the three biggest movies of the 1960s, respectively The Sound of Music (1965), The Graduate (1967) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). No ostensible link these days between uber directors James Cameron and Christopher Nolan. Yet the three directorial gods of the 1970s – makers of the three biggest films of that decade namely The Godfather (1972), Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) – lived out of each other’s pockets for a considerable period, relied on each other for support, encouragement and even finance, and while aiming to create a new path for the independent director ended up inventing the blockbuster which, ironically, made directors even more dependent on studios.
Paul Fischer’s new book The Last Kings of Hollywood, The Battle for the Soul of American Cinema delves into the background that saw Francis Ford Coppola bankroll George Lucas and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas work together, examining the ruptures, fallouts and lingering resentments that fueled their incredible rise.
All three were the hot kids in the cinematic sense. Coppola and Lucas were held up to generations of film school students for what they had achieved in film school, Spielberg’s juvenile attempts at movie making were incredibly accomplished.
Coppola was “something of a legend” after studying at Hofstra University in New York, “he’d won awards for his directing and all but remodeled the college’s entire drama department after himself. At UCLA film school he’d made all the best films” and then skipped out without graduating to work on Roger Corman pictures, learning by work rather than by attending lectures. Lucas’s student film THX 1138 was hailed as the best student film ever made. As a sophomore in high school, Spielberg made his calling card, Firelight.
Coppola was the visionary entrepreneur, persuading Warner Brothers to cough up the best part of $7 million for the director to set up his own independent operation American Zoetrope in San Francisco, distant from the prying and interfering eyes of Hollywood. All he had to show for the dough for the feature film version of THX 1138 (1971), which was a flop.
At USC, Lucas befriended John Milius and encouraged him to adapt Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness into a Vietnam film that became Apocalypse Now and originally was being written for Lucas to direct. Lucas and Coppola fell out when the latter took over the film, even after Lucas had made a deal with Columbia. Screenwriter Robert Towne watched four hours of dailies from The Godfather and not only told the beleaguered director “this is without question the best footage I’ve ever seen” but suggested the film needed another scene between Brando and Pacino, the one where the father tells the son “Barzini will move against you first.”
After American Graffiti (1973) was rejected by United Artists, Universal was interested but only if Coppola lent his name to it. After The Godfather, Coppola could have afford to finance it himself – the budget was only $777,000. But his wife Eleanor didn’t like the script so he passed and lost out on a fortune. Harrison Ford, who legend says was making a living as a carpenter, was actually doing better dealing dope.
Coppola had an affair with his babysitter Melissa Matheson, who turned into a screenwriter though after the failure of The Black Stallion (1979) had given up until Spielberg approached her to write E.T. (1982), having rejected John Sayles original script except for two ideas, the tip of the alien’s finger glowing and the notion of the alien left behind.
Other figures like Martin Scorsese and Brian DePalma are brought into the compelling narrative that touches upon every major creative player of the era. Many of the gang were present for the first showing of Star Wars, in Lucas’s plush screening room – Spielberg, Milius, DePalma, Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck who’d written American Graffiti, Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins who’d written The Sugarland Express (1974). Scorsese had an excuse not to attend perhaps out of fear of “hating the film and having to break George’s heart.” The communal response was not what Lucas expected.
“The silence afterward made George uneasy.” DePalma was the most vocal, not just making fun of the movie but of its essential ingredients such as the concept of The Force and the stormtroopers. But his tirade did spur Lucas into introducing the film with the same kind of text that used to crawl up the screen at the start of a Flash Gordon episode. Spielberg was encouraging, but not in public, only after taking Lucas aside.
As well as the special effects making the film and conjuring up a script that worked, Star Wars triggered huge rows between Lucas and his wife Marcia over the editing. This is probably the first book about the making of the movies where time is spent on editing, and its importance to the finished film. “Marcia shaped scenes around the characters’ emotions…George, on the other hand, was motivated by a mixture of cerebral logic and a subject sense of rhythm.”
Fischer covers the making of every important film in the early careers of the trio plus Scorsese and DePalma and a few others in a way that’s totally absorbing by mixing together the behind-the-scenes information and technical aspects with gossip about their love lives, drug habits and creative development. We get Spielberg laughing out loud when he first hears John Williams’ idea for the score of Jaws, that Coppola hid his affair with Matheson for a decade, how Spielberg turned his original ideas for what eventually became E.T. into Poltergeist (1982), whose idea it was to add the climactic twist to Carrie (1976), how Kathleen Kennedy became a dominant producer in a misogynistic business, at the Oscars we see The Godfather producer Robert Evans and Coppola standing side by side “hating each other’s guts.”
While you may have read dozens of articles or books about all movies like The Godfather, Jaws, Taxi Driver (1976), Carrie, Star Wars and Apocalypse Now (1979), what they lack is context. These movies did not appear out of nowhere. As well as camaraderie there was creative rivalry, peer pressure and its partner peer acceptance. Although everyone made big bucks, money was never the driving force. Film was. They ate and slept movies and all they wanted to do was make another, better, one.
The only part of Fischer’s argument I disagree with is the notion that somehow these directors were bucking the system when, in fact, in displacing the old system they replaced it with a new one that didn’t necessarily mean a better one. The blockbuster, the idea of the summer “tent-pole” grew out of not just what profits these movies made but set up the concept of sequels – two for The Godfather, three for Jaws, four for Raiders of the Lost Ark, ten for Star Wars, not to mention side hustles like computer games and television series. While Lucas has cashed in his lucrative chips, Coppola and Spielberg are still making movies.
It’s a long time since I’ve enjoyed a book as much.
The Last Kings of Hollywood, The Battle for the Soul of American Cinema by Paul Fischer is out now, from Faber & Faber in the U.K. and Celador in the U.S.
Independent production company Mirisch had enjoyed spectacular success in the 1960s both at the box office and the Oscars. Commercial successes included The Magnificent Seven (1960) and sequels, The Apartment (1960), West Side Story (1961), The Great Escape (1963), Hawaii (1966) despite its huge budget, and In the Heat of the Night (1967). Walter, who did the legwork on the production side – his brothers Harold and Marvin were more backroom boys – picked up the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night and two other films he was involved in won Best Picture. Their films were solely distributed through United Artists, with whom they had a profitable relationship for most of the decade. But cracks were beginning to show in the 1970s and in the final reckoning after a meltdown at the box office Mirisch and UA went their separate ways in 1974. Harold had died in 1968 and Marvin pulled back, leaving Walter to go it alone with Universal, with some success – Midway (1976) and Same Time, Next Year (1978).
The demise of the original Mirisch came as their business was spiralling out of control. With a total loss of $32.6 million covering 13 films made for United Artists between 1966 and 1972, it was small wonder it spelled the end of the road for the independent company. Norman Jewison musical Fiddler on the Roof, an adaptation of the Broadway hit, was one of only three movies to end up in the black, clocking up $6.8 million profit. Return of the Seven (1966) starring Yul Brynner earned a meager $37,000 in profit from cinema exhibition and its overall profitability of $588,000 depended on $1.6 million from sales to television. The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972) with Lee Van Cleef only made a small profit of $236,000 thanks to television and even counting in sales to the small screen Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) didn’t reach that benchmark.
Television played a significant role in keeping losses down to $32.6 million. Fiddler on the Roof went to television for $3 million, The Hawaiians / Master of the Island (1970) starring Charlton Heston, a sequel to Hawaii, and They Call Me Mister Tibbs for $1.3 million and The Organization $1.1 million, respectively, the latter two films relying on Sidney Poitier reprising his role from In the Heat of the Night.
Various deductions, not always obvious to outsiders, come off the top of rentals and television sales. First there are the distribution fees paid to United Artists, then marketing costs, finance, and profit shares – Brynner and Poitier were on percentages as was Jewison (on a whopping 20 per cent), and these were often paid out against overall rentals rather than actual profits.
In an alarming shift from the glory days of the 1960s, Mirisch presided over some out-and-out disasters. Jewison’s rites-of-passage Gaily, Gaily / Chicago, Chicago (1969) starring newcomer Beau Bridges (The Fabulous Baker Boys, 1989) in his first top-billed role and Greek Oscar nominee Melina Mercouri (Topkapi, 1964) went completely down the tubes, racking up a colossal $10.3 million loss. The Hawaiians / Master of the Islands directed by Tom Gries (Will Penny, 1968) wasn’t far behind – $8.3 million in the red.
The Billy Wilder (The Apartment) touch couldn’t save The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) starring Robert Stephens (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969) from plummeting to a $7.5 million deficit. George Peppard western Cannon for Cordoba (1970) co-starring Giovanni Ralli (Deadfall, 1968) haemorrhaged $3.1 million. Heist comedy Some Kind of Nut (1969), directed by the renowned triple Oscar nominee Garson Kanin (Where It’s At, 1969) and toplining Dick Van Dyke (Divorce American Style, 1967) and Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962) faced a shortfall of $3 million.
Beau Bridges was also the luckless star of Hal Ashby’s debut The Landlord (1970) which went down to the tune of $2.5 million. School drama Halls of Anger (1970) starring Calvin Lockhart (Cotton Comes to Harlem, 1970) as a tough teacher was $1.8 million in the red. Jacqueline Bisset (Bullitt, 1968) in her first top-billed role in The First Time (1969) wasn’t a big enough attraction to prevent this tumbling into a $973,000 quagmire.
Even Sidney Poitier at the peak of his fame was no hedge against box office calamity. They Call Me Mister Tibbs was $1 million below breakeven and The Organization $500,000.
It didn’t help the Mirisch bottom line that it had invested $5.1 million in projects that were never made, although half of this was accounted by The Bells of Hell Go Ding-A-Ling-A-Ling, a Gregory Peck (Mackenna’s Gold, 1969) starrer directed by David Miller (Lonely Are the Brave, 1962) that was abandoned in 1966 in the face of extreme weather conditions with $2.7 million already spent. The studio has also lavished $1.2 million on I Do, I Do without a single foot of film shot. John Sturges spent $267,000 unsuccessfully trying to put together The Yards of Essendorf in 1969 that would have, variously, starred Steve McQueen or Warren Beatty (plus Ursula Andress and Jean-Paul Belmondo) in another World War Two venture. Sturges also wasted $68,000 on Richard Sahib to feature Spencer Tracy and Alec Guinness and $15,000 on The Artful Dodger, a sequel to The Great Escape.
Other projects sucking the well dry with nothing to show for it were Bandoola with an elephant as an unlikely World War Two hero to be filmed in Pakistan ($208,000 spent), Chinese Detective Story ($82,000) aka The Dragon Master with George Peppard lined up, The Egyptologist ($140,000), The Judgment of Corey ($185,000) with director Peter Yates (Bullitt), The Mutiny of Madame Yes ($110,000) with Ronald Neame (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) attached, Nothing to Lose ($92,000) to be helmed by Franklin Schaffner (Planet of the Apes, 1968), Andrew V. McLaglen (Bandolero! 1968) signed up for Warhorse ($39,000) and Snatch ($239,000).
The poor run continued into 1972 when Billy Wilder’s Avanti (1972) with Jack Lemmon, while not in the dire financial straits of the famous sleuth, still dropped $1.8 million.
SOURCE: William Bernstein, “United Artists Office Rushgram,” July 16 1973 (United Artists Archive, Wisconsin University.)
Producer Walter Mirisch could have afforded to rest on his laurels – he’d won the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night and been responsible for classics like The Magnificent Seven (1960) – and three sequels – and The Great Escape (1963). The 1970s had proved tougher, resulting initially in a string of pot boilers before hitting a home run with Mr Majestyk (1974) with Charles Bronson and knocking the ball out of the box office park with war picture Battle of Midway (1976), the former pulling in $20 million in rentals on a $2 million budget, the latter $50 million in rentals on a $7 million budget.
He had parted company with United Artists after nearly two decades in partnership and tied up a five-year deal with Universal. With Midway under his belt, he was the go-to producer for pictures on a naval theme. He had been sent a screenplay by James Whittaker about a submarine stranded at the bottom of the ocean. However, it turned out there was already a novel on the same subject, Event 1000 by David Lavallee, which result in various negotiations to determine the screenwriter credit, especially after playwright Howard Sackler (The Great White Hope, 1970) had completed a rewrite.
Charlton Heston, on a box office roll after Airport 1975 (1974), Earthquake (1974), Battle of Midway and Two Minute Warning (1976), was the obvious choice for the lead. But Mirisch had originally contemplated teaming Heston with Sidney Poitier (In the Heat of the Night). “He’s now backing away” from the idea, noted Heston in his diary in February 1976, “though I’m not sure why, save the cost of having us both in the film.” Heston was in strong demand, and turned down The Omen (1976) and The Pack (1977).
The film was slow coming together, “not much progress on the script…casting still slow” and there was the possibility of further delay to “mull” over the project. No director had been assigned by the end of February 1976. Following the Battle of Midway, the U.S. Navy was only too delighted to be involved. As well as following a disaster picture template, the movie was also tech heavy, featuring up-to-date ideas on rescue at sea.
The interior of the submarine, the main set, was constructed on a gimbal so that it could be tilted to achieve the effect of the sailors being thrown about as the sub sunk to the bottom and rolled over on a deep sea trench. Howard Anderson oversaw special effects work with models in a 44ft deep water tank which was filmed at CBS. Exteriors were shot at Universal with some work aboard a Navy escort vessel. Some material was also repurposed from Ice Station Zebra (1978).
To soak up the atmosphere of a real nuclear sub, Heston spent the day on USS Gurnard under the Pacific off San Diego. “I got a lot of useful little stuff,” commented Heston, “about the look and sound of submarine officers at work…the kind of thing nobody could tell you.” The sub contained a “vast array” of disparate and complex technology. “It was a very strange feeling to spend hours charging about under the ocean running mock torpedo attacks on surface vessels.” The experience also included drills for fire and flooding.
As shooting approached, Mirisch still had not done a deal for second lead Stacy Keach (Fat City, 1972). He was, however, “anxious” to recruit Ronny Cox (Deliverance, 1972). Ned Beatty, also form that film, came on board. David Carradine (Bound for Glory, 1976) and future Superman Christopher Reeve were added. Michael O’Keefe (The Great Santini, 1979) also made his movie debut.
Filming began on September 11, 1976. “I had very little to do,” noted Heston, “which was just as well, breaking in on a new film.” He played his only scene with Keach, “the tag of the picture and a key scene.” British director David Greene (Sebastian, 1968) was applauded for being as meticulous as William Wyler. More importantly, “he gives the actors a great deal and I find myself stimulated by almost all the suggestions he makes,” commented Heston. At one point, Greene decided to reshoot a major scene, bringing back offstage actors Heston thought he could do without. On the minus side, “he runs a rather loose ship.” Of his own contribution, the actor said, “I became preoccupied with giving an efficient performance rather than a creative one. The pressures I feel to be a consummate professional make me focus on getting it right.”
Filmed on a budget of just $5.25 million, it proved a huge hit, pulling in $19 million in rentals.
SOURCES: Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008) p339-341; Charlton Heston, The Actor’s Life (Penguin, 1980) pp464-481.
Not cut out for the musicals, comedies, historical adventures (let’s not count The Greatest Story Ever Told, 1965), thrillers, dramas, and spy pictures that dominated that 1960s the western was John Wayne’s default. After his initial battle with lung cancer, he enjoyed an extended period of success in Henry Hathaway’s The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Howard Hawks’ El Dorado (1967) and Burt Kennedy’s The War Wagon (1967) before diversifying in Vietnam war picture The Green Berets (1968), which he directed and was also a hit, and Andrew V. McLaglen oil drama Hellfighters which did, however, fall short of his high box office standards. So when any big western picture was mooted, it was either Wayne or James Stewart to whom producers first came calling. But when the actor particularly wanted a part, he usually got it.
Charles Portis was a journalist with one modern novel, Norwood published in 1966, to his name when he wrote True Grit, published in 1968, which, unusually for a western, spent 22 weeks in the New York Times bestseller list. The main attraction for a reader was the equally unusual first-person narrator, Mattie Ross, towards the end of her life telling the tale of how as a 14-year-old in Arkansas she sought bloody revenge for the death of her father. The narrative voice was highly individual with colorful phrases, punchy dialogue, and a taut storyline.
Producer Hal Wallis snapped it up for $300,000, beating out Wayne’s Batjac operation. Wallis had been making his own pictures for over two decades, having originally overseen films as varied as swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935) and Casablanca (1942). He also had a western pedigree, having set up John Sturges’ Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Sons of Katie Elder and Five Card Stud (1968) with Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum.
The movie went into speedy production, barely a year from the novel’s publication to the world premiere. From the start Wallis had Wayne in mind for Rooster Cogburn, with Robert Mitchum as back-up. Mia Farrow turned down the role of Mattie Ross when she found out the director was to be Henry Hathaway. Genevieve Bujold turned it down because she didn’t want to work with Wayne. Wayne favored Katharine Ross (The Hellfighters, 1968) or Michele Carey (El Dorado) or his daughter Aissa whom Hathaway ruled out. Sally Field from the television series The Flying Nun was also considered, but the part finally went to 21-year-old Kim Darby.
She had been in the movies since 1963 (an uncredited role in Bye, Bye, Birdie) and, excepting small roles in Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965) starring Ann-Margret, fourth-billing in both the low-budget The Restless Ones (1965) and Arthur Penn television movie Flesh and Blood (1968), confined to guest roles in routine television series such as The Fugitive, Star Trek, Gunsmoke and Bonanza.
Elvis Presley was touted for the role of Le Boeuf but manager Col. Parker insisted his client receive top billing and the role went to another popular singer Glen Campbell, who had made his movie debut in The Cool Ones (1967). Robert Duvall, filling the boots of Lucky Ned Pepper, was also a refugee from television (The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, Combat) although he had delivered a memorable performance as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and had risen to third-billing for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People (1969).
Henry Hathaway, a former child actor, had directed 60 movies beginning in 1932. But he had learned about direction at the feet of Josef von Sternberg and Victor Fleming, both hard taskmasters, and only made the move into megging at the third attempt. First of all, he had spent nine months touring India with the idea of making a film in the style of silent documentaries Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925) or Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927). He managed to attract the interest of Irving G. Thalberg but the producer died before funding materialized. Next, Paramount planned to hire him when the studio planned an early 1930s investment in color but got cold feet and the idea was dropped. Finally, when Paramount decided it was going to make its own westerns, rather than buying them in, he was hired to direct Heritage of the Desert (1932) starring Randolph Scott but after six more in that genre – being paid $100 a week for the first two and then $65 a week for the next two after the Depression bit – he hit pay dirt with adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) with Gary Cooper and comedy Go WestYoung Man (1936) with Mae West.
When Paramount finally embraced three-color Technicolor they chose Hathaway to direct adventure The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936) starring Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray. “It cannot be merely accidental that he was selected,” commented historian Kingley Canham, arguing that Hathaway had “more than just an aptitude for freshening familiar material through technical resourcefulness.”
And like John Ford he was economical with the camera. “I only shoot what can be used so the producer has no choice…I always cut in the camera, the cutter just has to put the ends together,” he said. Determined to achieve verisimilitude, instead of using studio hand-made locusts for biopic Brigham Young (1940), he travelled to Nevada where had been a big invasion of the insects. Except for this film and The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), starring Wayne, he steered clear of westerns, preferring action and drama. However, he was instrumental in helping Wayne extend his acting style. For Shepherd of the Hills, Hathaway “added new subtleties to the already characteristic western hero persona – the roiling gait and economy of dialog were still very much in evidence but his acting was more mature, more sensitive, and more assured.”
He was called upon to demonstrate further technical mastery in the first of Twentieth Century Fox’s semi-documentary dramas The House on 92nd St (1945) followed by film noir Dark Corner (1946) and Kiss of Death (1947). He made his first western in a decade with Rawhide (1951) toplining Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward and only two other westerns in the 1950s – Garden of Evil (1954), teaming Cooper and Hayward, and Hell to Texas (1958) with Audie Murphy, the twist in this one being the hero rather than the villain subjected to a manhunt. Another technical innovation came with The Desert Fox (1951), where he “did the whole raid before the titles,” the first time any action had been shown prior to the rolling of the opening credits.
He was so impressed with the acting skills of Marilyn Monroe in Niagara (1953) that he purchased Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage intending to team her with Montgomery Clift, but nothing came of the concept. He worked with Wayne again in Legend of the Lost (1957) co-starring Sophia Loren.
But, like Wayne, he returned in triumph to the western in the 1960s, all bar two of his movies in this decade in this genre, the first four of the decade starring Wayne – North to Alaska (1960), How the West Was Won (1962), Circus World (1964) and The Sons of Katie Elder. He had finished up on Five Card Stud when Hal Wallis invited him to direct True Grit. He had only received one Oscar nomination, four decades previously, for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and no avant garde French film critic was reassessing his work, but he was known to bring movies in on time, and had his own distinct style if anyone could be bothered looking for it.
Certain themes did reappear, revenge for one, which was central to The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Kiss of Death, historical adventure The Black Rose (1950), Prince Valiant (1954) with James Mason, The Sons of Katie Elder and Nevada Smith (1966) starring Steve McQueen. He also focused on disruption within the family, and situations where an older man aids an impetuous youngster, both instrumental to True Grit. “He is the only director I know,” observed Kingsley Canham, “to have specialized in films about backwoods and mountains.”
Screenwriter Marguerite Roberts was also old-school, born in 1905, with over 30 screen credits. She sold her first script while working as a secretary at Fox, had her first screen credit in 1933 for Sailor’s Luck. By 1939 she was earning $2,500 a week at MGM and turned out Honky Tonk (1941) with Clark Gable and Lana Turner, Sea of Grass (1946) with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Gunga Din remake Soldiers Three (1951) and big-budget historical adventure Ivanhoe (1951) with Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor.
Like Abraham Polonsky she fell out of favor with Hollywood for her left-wing sympathies and was blacklisted for nearly a decade until Daniel Petrie’s The Main Attraction (1962) with Pat Boone and Nancy Kwan, Guy Green’s Diamond Head (1962) with Charlton Heston and Rampage (1963) with Robert Mitchum. She, too, had been working for Hal Wallis on Five Card Stud before receiving the commission to adapt the Portis book.
Roberts was familiar with the Old West, since her father had been a lawman in Colorado. Screenwriter Wendell Mayes, who wrote From Hell to Texas, commented that “Henry Hathaway is very easy for a writer to work with.” “When a screenplay is finished,” said Hathaway, “I go through it and work on it. I worked on True Grit with Marguerite Roberts because there was a great deal of repetition in the book and I eliminated a lot of things.” John Wayne felt Hathaway “never got the creative credit I think is due him…He was sort of a story doctor…a fine, instinctive, creator.”
Her first problem was how to translate the book’s distinctive first-person style onto the screen without the entire movie sounding too archaic and although many speeches were lifted verbatim from the book it was Roberts who established Mattie Ross as an authority figure from the outset by introducer the teenager as her father’s “bookkeeper” and inventing the argument about the type of horses he intended to buy.
The result is an unusual composite of tight storyline, exuberant characterization and wonderful dialog. The movie was filmed mainly in Colorado – Ouray, Owl Creek Pass, Ridgway, Canon City, Montrose, Bishop, and Gunnison – as well as Durango in Mexico and Inyo National Park in California where Hot Creek was used for the outlaw’s cabin and also Sherwin Summit.
The critics, who had slaughtered The Green Berets the previous year, and been largely indifferent to many of his previous westerns during the 1960s, virtually gave him a standing ovation. Variety called it a “top adventure drama…Wayne towers over everything in the film – the actors, script and even the magnificent Colorado mountains.”
Vincent Canby of the New York Times called it “a triumph…one of the major movies of the year.” The New York Daily News claimed it was “John Wayne’s finest moment.” The New York Post came closest to defining its appeal: “Few westerns will come along this or any other year that can be as fully enjoyed by as many people of varying ages and sex.” Vernon Scott of United Press was not alone in predicting “Wayne should win the Oscar.”
Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times said, “come Oscar time Wayne will be a leading contender.” Norma Lee Browning of the Chicago Tribune informed readers that “there’s already talk that he may, at long last, get an Oscar nomination.” Charles McHarry of the New York Daily News held the same view. Time opined “a flawless portrait of a flawed man.” International Motion Picture Exhibitor found it “the perfect vehicle for Henry Hathaway’s directorial style. He approached the simple western story in the most straightforward manner…garnished it with a delightful humor that springs right out of the vagaries of the homespun characters…and giving it a rhythm that carries the viewer along despite its lengthy running time.”
Allen Eyles in Focus on Film summed up the film’s appeal: “That True Grit could end up being the best western of the year is a tribute to old Hollywood – to a producer, director, star, cameraman and others who’ve been at the top of the film business for more than three decades. Their solid, unpretentious professionalism enables them to meet the challenge of filming a first-rate novel with pleasing assurance and directness…it is far superior to…the poorly-shaped but occasionally striking The Wild Bunch from Peckinpah…(it) is not innovatory in style but the details are communicated with a freshness that is appealing.”
Unusually, for a film of the period, the movie repeated a single image in all of its advertising, Wayne’s face dominating the composition, with below him Mattie Ross standing gun in hand and Glen Campbell behind him. That Campbell sang the title song over the credits led to the release of a record, and there was a New American Library book tie-in. Ancillary promotional items included a t-shirt embellished with the words “This Man Has True Grit,” and buttons announcing “I Have True Grit” and, alternatively, “Give Me a Man with True Grit.” Stetson created a special hat called “The Duke,” with a special one costing $1,500 to be presented to Johnny Carson on his show, with an advertising campaign that included Playboy and Esquire while Aramis created a special line of “Grit Soap.”
Time magazine had raised expectations for the picture by putting John Wayne on the front cover, on August 8, although this was in part retaliation to Life’s joint cover story on Wayne and Dustin Hoffman which ran in the Jul 11 issue, and Paramount took a gamble opening it in New York at the Radio City Music Hall, partly a ploy to boost European revenues, the first western to be so honored, although the theater covered itself by claiming the movie was an “outdoor adventure” rather than a western per se. The picture broke all sorts of records there and went on to conquer America, shattering Dallas records, for example, and then helped along by the Time cover story. For a few months it looked set to become the best performing western of all time, but was soon overtaken by the release of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Even so, it took $11.5 million in rentals to finish sixth in the annual chart. It was reissued after Wayne’s Oscar triumph the following year in an unlikely double bill with Oscar-nominated The Sterile Cuckoo and grossed $3.7 million in the twelve days. But Paramount, trying to offset calamitous losses, prematurely sold off the western to television so its reissue value was sharply curtailed.
SOURCE: Brian Hannan, The Gunslingers of ’69: Western Movies’ Greatest Year, (McFarland, 2019).
You might think director George Seaton wearing his screenwriter’s hat had his work cut out adapting Arthur Hailey’s 500-page tome for a lean two-hour picture. But Hailey’s book was anything but lean and the fat was easily trimmed away. The author had little idea of dramatic tension and there’s a clear example here that what plays in a novel won’t at all work on screen.
Had Seaton slavishly followed the Hailey template the tension-filled climax of the bomb exploding on the plane and the pilot having to land the stricken plane on an icebound runway would have been interrupted by numb-boring back-and-forth between airport executives and people complaining about planes flying overhead disrupting their lives and the author holding forth on the future of air travel.
A huge chunk of the book is politics one way or another and with the exception of a brief tussle between airport boss Burt Lancaster and his bosses that focuses, unlike the book, on Lancaster’s attempts to keep the runway open, Seaton chucks out all that stuff about townspeople, literally, on the march. Audiences won’t be much interested either in much of what Hailey, in investigative fashion, turns up about cargo loading and the problems facing shoe-shiners and skims over the question of why airports permit insurance agents to so freely operate in an airport, making a healthy living (from which the airport takes a cut) from selling fear to travelers.
It’s interesting, as always, to see what, apart from the obvious as I’ve outlined, a screenwriter doesn’t believe essential. So in the movie Dean Martin’s beef with Burt Lancaster is over the airport’s supposed inefficiency in keeping the runways clear in the face of a snowstorm. But in the book that’s the least of Martin’s concerns, since he’s taken umbrage at this dialing up of the fear factor by selling insurance policies to people about to board a plane.
When you see all those guys and all that heavy-duty equipment trying to clear a path for the airplane grounded in the snow, you think what the heck’s the problem, it’s only a big mound of snow. In the book, the real problem is explained. The plane isn’t stuck in the snow – it’s stuck in the mud underneath the snow, so actually the ground staff have to dig it out of a pretty big hole.
Hailey also takes a detour with the George Kennedy troubleshooter. Instead of getting a police escort to the airport he takes time out to sort out a traffic tangle, demonstrating, for the reader, his unique set of skills, which, sensibly, Seaton reckons will be amply shown when he is doing his job on the runway.
Fourth time unlucky – the series runs out of runway.
There’s a subplot that Seaton eliminates. As well as having a troublesome brother-in-law in Dean Martin, Burt Lancaster has a troublesome brother, so burned out by his job as an air traffic controller that he’s on the verge of committing suicide. But again, Seaton reckons there’s enough going on without over-egging the pudding.
Seaton really comes into his own on the emotional front, having a better notion than Hailey of how to heighten emotion. So there’s no mention that the apparently childless Dean Martin had a previous child from a previous affair – the baby was adopted (a policy airlines encouraged to get stewardesses back to the front line as soon as possible) so the question remains – does he want to be a father? Seaton also brings forward his idea about an abortion. In the book, Burt Lancaster and Jean Seberg have not consummated their affair, but Seaton makes it implicit in the film that they have. Also Hailey reveals from the start that Lancaster’s wife is already playing away from home but Seaton holds that knowledge back so there’s an emotional twist in the film.
What Seaton adds is just as demonstrative of the screenwriter’s skill. Not in the book: the nun, the priest, the bolshie passenger and the know-it-all teenager. These are Seaton inventions. Seaton also builds up Lancaster’s wife as coming from a wealthy family rather than being a failed actress. And he brings to the fore the women who are the casualties of male weakness, Dean Martin’s wife discovering his girlfriend is pregnant, the bomber’s wife realizing what he has done, Lancaster’s wife confronting him.
Although Hailey spends acres of print going on about the problems low-flying planes cause he doesn’t actually show their impact. Seaton cuts right to the chase, opening with a scene of plates and stuff crashing to the floor in a house as a plane flies overhead. And in scenes of the snowplows sending snow wafting through the air the director in Seaton turns what Hailey described as a “conga line” into a ballet
One other element – in the book the Burt Lancaster character has a limp. Movie heroes don’t limp.
Ross Hunter had been a big wheel in the production business for the best part of two decades, shepherding home hits like Midnight Lace (1960), remakes of universal weepies like Back St (1961) and Madame X (1966), play adaptations such as The Chalk Garden (1964), the Tammy movie series and Julie Andrews musical Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). He was as close to a sure thing as you could get. Even so, Airport, with a $10 million budget, was the biggest gamble of his career.
He paid $350,000 upfront plus another $100,000 in add-ons for the rights to the runaway Arthur Hailey bestseller. Initially, Hunter was targeting the roadshow audience, filming in 70mm, the first time Universal had employed Todd-AO.
Dean Martin, who had made Texas Across the River (1966) and Rough Night in Jericho (1968) for Universal, was first to sign up for his usual fee plus a percentage. Martin was at a career peak, carried along effortlessly at the box office by the Matt Helm quartet and targeted for westerns.
Hunter was pitching a movie with four major stars in Oscar-winner Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry, 1960), Dean Martin, Jean Seberg (Paint Your Wagon, 1969) and Oscar-winner George Kennedy (Guns of The Magnificent Seven, a1969) and another half-dozen names of varying marquee appeal that included British actress Jacqueline Bisset (Bullitt, 1968), and mature stars in Van Heflin (Once a Thief, 1965), Lloyd Nolan (The Double Man, 1967), Barry Nelson (The Borgia Stick, 1967), TV Perry Mason’s Barbara Hale and Oscar-winner Helen Hayes (Anastasia, 1956).
The picture came at a fortuitous time for Burt Lancaster. A trio of more challenging movies – The Swimmer (1968), Castle Keep (1969) and The Gypsy Moths (1969) – had flopped, so his marquee value was in question, especially at his going rate of £750,000 (plus a percentage). Doubts had set in with The Gypsy Moths, with MGM dithering over the opening date, switching it originally from summer to Xmas and then back again but happy to censor the picture to meet the approval of the Radio City Music Hall where it premiered.
And while he was still clearly in demand in 1968-1969, he had lost out the starring role in Patton (1970) with James Stewart in the Karl Malden role, which would have coupled commercial success with critical approbation. The shooting of Valdez Is Coming (1971) was postponed for a year. Originally it had been set for a January 1969 start date with Sydney Pollack directing. Face in the Dust, a Dino De Laurentiis production, never saw the light of day.
And although Lancaster later described Airport as “the biggest piece of junk ever made” (luckily he didn’t live to see Anora or Mercy), the disaster blockbuster put his career back on track. It was quite a change of pace for him, too. He wasn’t in every scene and at times he had to take whatever Dean Martin’s character threw at him. But what he brought to the picture was his natural electricity, the tension of never knowing what he was going to do. But Airport barely merits a page in Kate Buford’s biography.
Double Oscar-winner George Seaton was set the dual task of condensing Arthur Hailey’s 500-page novel into a lean two-hour movie which he would direct. In a directing career spanning a quarter of a century, Seaton was well-used to handling big stars of the caliber of William Holden (three pictures including The Counterfeit Traitor, 1962), Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly (The Country Girl, 1953) Kirk Douglas (The Hook, 1962), Montgomery Clift (The Big Lift, 1950) and Clark Gable and Doris Day (Teacher’s Pet, 1958),
Jean Seberg, under investigation by the FBI, had revived an ailing career with Paint Your Wagon (1969). Producer Ross Hunter initially preferred Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962) or Stella Stevens (Rage, 1966) for the role of Lancaster’s screen lover, but had to go along with Universal with whom Seberg had a two-picture “pay-or-play” deal (she got paid whether she made a picture or not). However, she was considered a marquee name in the international market, especially France where she had remained a cult figure after Breathless (1960).
Disconcerted by being considered unwanted, her natural nervousness increased until Hunter made a point of convincing her that he was “genuinely happy” at her involvement.
She wasn’t the only person to be considered second best. For the part of the elderly stowaway, six-time Oscar nominee Thelma Ritter (Boeing, Boeing, 1965) and Jean Arthur, who hadn’t appeared in a movie since Shane (1953), had been wooed before Hunter settled on Helen Hayes.
For Seberg, it was the biggest pay cheque of her career – $150,000 plus use of a studio car and $1,000 a week expenses for the 16-week schedule, but she lost out on a percentage. She was billed third. High-flying her career might be, but personally she was struggling, her marriage to Romain Gary in trouble and under pressure to help raise funding for the Black Panther movement. She was receiving calls in the middle of the night. “Many nights she’d be so frightened, she’d come and sleep on the couch at my home,” recalled Hunter, “there’s no doubt it was an extremely difficult period for her.”
Helen Hayes reminded Seberg of her grandmother, to whom the stowaway’s exploits would have appealed. As a teenager, Seberg had idolized Hayes. Dean Martin pushed for Petula Clark (Goodbye, Mr Chips, 1969) for the Jacqueline Bisset role and Stella Stevens (Rage, 1966), as well as being considered for the Seberg part, was also in the frame.
Virtually all the bit parts were played by Universal’s contract players. For Airport, the studio rounded up thirty-two of them. Patty Paulsen, who played stewardess Joan, was a genuine stewardess for American Airlines before she won the role on the strength of winning a beauty contest. It was veteran Van Heflin’s final picture, and also for composer Alfred Newman. George Kennedy would reprise his role through three other pictures in the series – though he turned down Airplane! (1980).
Location filming at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport began in January minus director George Seaton who had come down with pneumonia. Henry Hathaway stepped in, at no cost, to cover. The producer had headed to Minnesota for the snow, but there was none around, and the production team had to import tons of fake stuff made out of whitened sawdust. Filming took place at night in plunging temperatures. Despite wearing face masks, cast and crew suffered and the freezing conditions slowed down the shoot.
Hunter hired a $7.5 million Boeing 707 for $18,000 a day. For studio work in Los Angeles Hunter brought in a damaged Boeing. Ironically, Dean Martin had a fear of flying and travelled to the location by railway. Ditto Maureen Stapleton.
Seberg’s outfits, including calfskin sable-lined coats designed by Edith Head, cost $2,000 apiece, though Seberg was less keen on the airport uniform. With Seberg’s hometown less than a five-hour drive away she was able to head home during breaks in filming.
John Findlater, who played a ticket checker in the film, remembered Seberg as “frail and lonely…very shy…she had a very hard time of it.” It took four days to film the scene where Helen Hayes explains the art of the stowaway and feels the brunt of the wrath of Burt Lancaster and Seberg. Delays always niggled Lancaster, for whom they smacked of unprofessionalism. To raise her spirits, Seaton improvised little comedy skits.
Seberg befriended Maureen Stapleton, playing the bomber’s wife. Seberg was “impressed” that Stapleton could cry on cue and the minute the scene was over be laughing.
In the end Hunter gave up the idea of a prestigious roadshow run, settling instead for a premiere opening at the Radio City Music Hall and first run houses across the country. There had been no shortage of pre-publicity. Any time an airplane hijack hit the headlines or a snowstorm shut down airports or an airplane skidded off the runway, editors were happy to insert a mention of the picture.
And there was an abundance of airports and travel companies willing to sign up for cooperative promotions, helped along by the fact that Edith Head had designed the “Airport Look” launched not just with male and female fashions but a range of travel accessories. A beauty queen competition “International Air Girl” managed to hook a 45-minute television slot in Britain.
Opening at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, a couple of weeks in advance of the national roll-out, Airport plundered a record $235,000, topping that in its second week, and scooping up $1 million before the end of the month. It was gangbusters everywhere, opening in prestigious first run locations, with nary a showcase/multiple run in sight. “Wham” was the description beloved of the Variety box office headline writers, the word preceding its $80,000 opening week tally in Chicago, $28,000 in San Francisco, and $25,000 in Louisville. “Smash” was also brought into play for its $40,000 in Baltimore and $33,000 in Philadelphia. The subject matter allowed the sub-editors who wrote the headlines some license, so it was a “sonic” $40,000 in Boston and a “stratospheric” $45,000 in Detroit. And it had legs. Week-by-week fall-offs were slight. It was still taking in $25,000 in the 24th week in Detroit, for example.
By year’s end it was easily the top film of the year with $37 million in rentals, way ahead of Mash on $22 million and Patton $1 million further back. And it kept going, adding another $8 million the following year as it was dragged back into the major cities for multiple showings (seven in New York) in multiple engagements.
Business was not so robust abroad. Though Airport managed a six-week run at the Odeon Leicester Square, where it received a Royal Premiere on April 22, 1970, its opening week’s figures were down on both the final week of its predecessor at the London West End cinema, Anne of the Thousand Days, and its successor Cromwell and the film didn’t make the Annual British Top Ten. But in Australia it led the field, though its returns were one-third down on the previous year’s Paint You Wagon and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
For its television premiere on ABC in 1973, the network demanded a record $140,000 per minute for advertising. Outside of Gone with the Wind, it earned the highest rating of any movie from 1961 to 1977.
But it also set up an industry. Sequels were the name of the game. And though Airport ’75 (1974) headlining Charlton Heston and Airport ’77 (1977) starring Jack Lemmon were cut-price operations, they were huge successes at the box office, the former hauling in $25.8 million in rentals, the latter $16.2 million. A fourth venture, The Concorde…Airport ’79 (1979) with Alain Delon, flopped and put an end to the series.
SOURCES: Garry McGee, Jean Seberg, Breathless, 2018, p167-171; Kate Buford, Burt Lancaster, An American Life (Aurum Press, 2008) p264-265; “Cast Patton & Bradley,” Variety, September 20, 1967, p13; “Airport Film Deal,” Variety, May 29, 1968, p60; “Steiner at Goldwyn Plant,” Variety, July 24, 1968, p7; “Dean Martin First to Sign for U’s Airport,” Box Office, August 5, 1968, pK4; “Hollywood Happenings,” Box Office, January 6, 1969, pW2; “Airport Will Be U’s First Feature in Todd-AO,” Box Office, January 13, 1969, p12; “Seaton’s Temp Sub at U: H. Hathaway,” Variety, January 22, 1969, p7; “Airport Sequence Follows Real Event,” Box Office, January 27, 1969, pNC3; “17 Inches Snow Brings North East Business To Complete Standstill,” Box Office, February 17, 1969, pE1;“Ross Hunter’s Roadshow,” Box Office, April 28, 1969, pK2; “De Laurentiis Slates 3 Aussie Locationers,” Variety, September 24, 1969, p18; “Put Back Moths Scenes Cut Solely for Radio City,” Variety, October 22, 1969, p5; “Airport Smacks $1-Mil,” Variety, April 1, 1970, p4; “Airport Contest on TV,” Kine Weekly, April 18, 1970, p18; “Big Rental Films of 1970,” Variety, January 6, 1971, p11; “Encore Hits,” Variety, June 16, 1970, p5; “ABC Flying 140G Per Minute for Airport,” Variety, June 27, 1973, p14; “Hit Movies on TV Since ’61,” Variety, Sep 21, 1977, p70; “All-Time Film Rental Champs,” Variety, May 12, 1982, p5. U.S. weekly box office figures – Variety, March-April 1970; U.K. weekly box office figures, Kine Weekly, April-July 1970.
Truth was the first casualty. Matthew Hopkins, the character played in the film by Vincent Price, was 27 when he died in 1647. He had been hunting witches for three years. Price was 57 when the movie appeared. Co-star Ian Ogilvy, aged 25, would have been a better fit, though he lacked the menace. Oliver Reed, who had the swagger and the scowl, would have been the ideal candidate, age-wise, since he was just turning 30. And the movie might well have benefitted from presenting Hopkins as a young grifter who through force of personality and cunning held a country to ransom.
Price wasn’t director Michael Reeves’ (The Sorcerers, 1967) first choice. In fact, he originally wanted buddy Ogilvy, who had played opposite Boris Karloff in The Sorcerers. When that idea failed to float with Tony Tenser – previously head of Compton Films – now boss of British horror outfit Tigon, a challenger to the Hammer crown, Reeves pivoted to Donald Pleasance who, although better known as a supporting actor in the likes of The Great Escape (1963), had headlined Roman Polanski’s chiller Cul de Sac (1966). But when Tenser did a deal with American International Pictures, the U.S. mini-studio insisted on contract player Vincent Price, the mainstay of their Edgar Allan Poe output, with 16 previous films (out of 74) for the company.
Twenty-one-year-old Hilary Dwyer (The Oblong Box, 1969), under contract to Tigon, made her movie debut. Rupert Davies (The Oblong Box) was a seasoned veteran while Nicky Henson (Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, 1967) was a potential breakout star.
Tigon was a relatively new entrant to the horror scene, founded in 1966 by Tenser. Its second picture was The Sorcerers; this would be its fourth. Tenser has bought, pre-publication, the rights to Ronald Bassett’s novel Witchfinder General, published in 1966. Director Reeves faced something of a deadline once Tenser finalized the £83,000 budget. AIP chipped in £32,000 which included a £12,000 fee for Price. While it was Tigon’s biggest film to date, it was pin money for AIP.
The film needed to begin shooting by September 1967 at the latest to avoid the worst of the British cold weather. But the screenplay proved too unpleasant for the taste of the British censor. Reeves had already begun the screenplay with Tom Baker (The Sorcerers) with Donald Pleasance in mind portraying “a ridiculous authority figure” and had to quickly revamp it for Price. The laws of the period required a green light for the script from the British Board of Film Censors, who were repulsed by a “study in sadism” which dwelt too lovingly on “every detail of cruelty and suffering.”
That draft was submitted on August 4, 1967. The second draft, submitted on August 15, proved no more appealing. A third, substantially toned-down version, was approved. This resulted in the elimination of gruesome details of the Battle of Naseby and a change to the ending.
Production began on September 18, 1967. Star and director clashed. Reeves refused to go and meet Price on arrival at Heathrow Airport and told him, “I didn’t want you, and I still don’t want you, but I’m stuck with you.” The star was riled by the director’s inexperience. When told to fire a blank pistol while on horseback, Price was thrown from his horse after the animal reared up in shock at the sound. Price, in real-life a very cultured person, was surprised at Reeves’ attitude because in general he got on with directors.
Price turned up drunk on the last day of shooting, the filming of his character’s death scene. Reeves was planning revenge and told Ogilvy to really lay into the star. But the producer, anticipating trouble, ensured Price was well padded.
Reeves was better known for his technical rather than personal skills. Ogilvy commented: “Mike never directed the actors. He said he knew nothing about acting and preferred to leave it up to us.” That wouldn’t square with him falling out with Price over his interpretation of the character. And Hilary Dwyer saw another side of Reeves. “He was really inspiring to work with,” she said, “And because it was my first film, I didn’t know how lucky I was.” She would work with Price again on The Oblong Box and Cry of the Banshee (1970).
Tony Tenser, egged on by AIP’s head of European Productions, shot additional nude scenes in the pub sequence for the German version, A continuity error was responsible for the freeze-frame ending. There was a short strike when the production fell foul of union rules. Producer Philip Waddilove and his wife Susi were occasionally called upon to act.
Two aircraft hangars near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk were converted for the interiors while a wide variety of locations were utilized for exteriors including Lavenham Square in Suffolk, the coast at Dunwich, also in Suffolk, Black Park in Buckinghamshire, Orford Castle in East Anglia, St John The Evangelist Church in Rushford, Norfolk, and Kentwell Hall in Long Melford on the Essex-Suffolk border. When the operation could not afford a camera crane, the crew improvised with a cherry picker.
Despite the tension on set, Price was pleased with his performance and the overall film. He praised the film in a 10-page letter. Price remarked, “I realized what he wanted was a low-key, very laid-back, menacing performance. He did get it but I was fighting him every inch of the way. Had I known what he wanted I would have cooperated.”
AIP retitled it The Conqueror Worm for U.S. release, hoping to snooker fans into thinking this fell into the Edgar Allan Poe canon, since the title referred to one of the author’s poems, part of which was recited over the credits.
The movie was generally lambasted by critics for its perceived sadistic approach, but is now considered cult. It was a big box office hit, especially considering the paltry budget, gaining a circuit release in the UK – “very good run beating par by a wide margin” – and despite being saddled with the tag of “unlikely box office prospects” by Variety did better than expected business in New York ($159,000 from 28 houses), Los Angeles (a “lusty” $97,000 from 16) and Detroit ($35,000 from one). The final U.S. rental tally was $1.5 million placing it ahead in the annual box office charts of such bigger-budgeted efforts as Villa Rides starring Yul Brynner and Robert Mitchum, Anzio with Mitchum again, James Stewart and Henry Fonda in Firecreek and Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot in Shalako.
SOURCES: Benjamin Halligan, Michael Reeves (Manchester University Press) 2003; Lucy Chase Williams, The Complete Films of Vincent Price (Citadel Press, 1995); “Big Rental Films of 1968,” Variety, January 8, 1969, p15; Steve Biodrowski and David Del Valle, “Vincent Price, Horror’s Crown Prince,” Cinefantastique, Vol 19; Bill Kelley, “Filming Reeves Masterpiece Witchfinder General,” Cinefantastique, Vol 22; “Box Office Business,” Kine Weekly, June 1, 1968, p8; “Review,” Variety, May 15, 1968, p6. Box office figures – Variety, May-August 1968.
The Magnificent 60s 