Category: Behind the Scenes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cinerama planned to spend $30 million on five films – John Sturges  western The Hallelujah Trail (1965) budgeted at $5 million, Battle of the Bulge ($.75 million) while $6.5 million had been allocated to an adaptation of James Michener bestseller Caravans, $6 million for Beyond the Stars which became 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and $7 million for Grand Prix (1966). Added to the list was epic William the Conqueror, due to film in England in early 1966 with Robert Shaw taking top billing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winter in Spain was cold which meant it provided the ideal backdrop for the WB version. The chosen location, 4,500ft high in the mountains of Segovia provided identical conditions to the actual battle. Spain had provided 80 tanks including Tigers mounted with 90mm guns and Shermans. Half of the 20-week shoot would be spent in Segovia with interiors filmed at studios in Seville and the Roma facility in Madrid. The WB adviser was General Meinrad von Lauchert, a divisional tank commander during the battle. He hoped the picture would show the German solider “as he was, brave and good” rather than clichéd presentation and not give the “impression that the American Army had nothing to do but walk into Germany.”

He wanted the film to reflect the truth that the “Americans had to pay a high price for every yard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Behind the Scenes: The 20th Century Fox Box Office Conundrum, Part Three – The Bottom Line

Admission: box office analysts like myself rarely get the full picture. Global figures have been available on a regular basis only since the 1990s and commentators these days are only too keen to inform us just how much revenue a movie has to take in before it can break even. Pictures like the latest Fast and Furious, Indiana Jones and Mission Impossible have little chance of turning a profit, it seems, unless they can pile up in excess of $400 million gross.

Back in the day it was a good deal more complicated. Studios were reluctant to reveal just how profitable or unprofitable movies were. But anyone with an inkling of the correlation between cost and rentals could tell that a $17 million movie like Doctor Dolittle (1967) was going to have a hell of a time turning a profit on U.S. rentals of $6.2 million. But throw in overseas rentals of $10.3 million and its position appeared considerably rosier, especially with television revenue still to come.

“The Bible” gets the full promotional treatment in the U.K.

But rentals minus budget did not provide the full picture. Budget reflected negative cost, the amount it took to make a picture. It didn’t take into account all those elements required to ready it for release – advertising, marketing, Pressbook / Campaign Manual, prints, publicity tour, premiere, distribution, studio overhead and interest on the loan necessary to fund the picture. There was a general rule of thumb – to turn a profit you needed to make twice as much in rentals as the movie cost to make.

But that was really only guesswork, an easily-understood equation conjured up to satisfy over-inquisitive journalists. Since the bulk of the journalists in the 1960s covering the business side of Hollywood were American, very often they deemed a movie a success or failure based on domestic receipts and had little understanding or interest in foreign revenues and how they might influence the outcome. In part this was down to distribution patterns. It might take a couple of years to measure a movie’s overall performance once it had completed its entire foreign tour. And that was too long to wait to make the snap decisions journalists favoured.

In any case, there was little prospect of studios in the 1960s opening their books to anyone other than head office to properly divine a movie’s success.

But it turns out there was an internal measure, at least at Twentieth Century Fox. That studio related global rentals to what it termed “estimated rentals required to break even.” That, in turn, provided a guide to the additional costs incurred by movies once filming had been completed but advertising and prints and so on were still to be paid for.

Taking the decade’s best example, The Sound of Music (1965). Initial cost was set at $8.02 million but once everything else had been taken into account the studio needed to generate total rentals of $29.5 million to break even. That was much higher than the 2-to-1 income-to-budget ratio, and more akin to nearly 4-to-1. Luckily, with a global rentals tally approaching $121.5 million there was more than enough in the kitty to meet those costs.

By comparison, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines the same year had a negative cost of $6.5 million. Fox estimated it needed to rake in $17.8 million – a ratio of 3-to-1 – to break even. Again, fortunately, global rentals hit $29.9 million so happy faces all round. Valley of the Dolls (1967), budgeted at $4.69 million, required $9.7 million – just over the supposedly classic 2-to-1 cost-to-profit ratio – and again, by chance, there was another $13 million in rentals to make this venture highly lucrative.

But there was nothing left over from either The Bible (1966) or The Sand Pebbles (1966). Global rentals for the former were $25.3 million and the latter $20.6 million, so you might assume such big hitters had a good chance of turning a profit. Originally budgeted at $15 million, The Bible incurred additional costs of $11.9 million and The Sand Pebbles, costing $12.11 million, was assessed as having an overall cost of $21.2 million. The outcome was that both were deemed financial failures, the former losing nearly $1.6 million, the latter $600,000. But on a cost-to-profit ratio, both came in at under the expected 2-to-1 calculation.

Improved overseas revenue was not necessarily the antidote to a flop. Dr Dolittle (1967) theoretically nearly broke even when foreign brought in $10.1 million in addition to domestic’s $6.2 million. On paper the movie cost $17 million. But additional costs of $14 million scuppered any chance of redemption. Although overseas improved on domestic for Audrey Hepburn’s How to Steal a Million (1966) once all the ancillary costs were added in it still lost $1.55 million and Two for the Road $1.7 million.

And what of stinkers like Justine (1969) and Staircase (1969)? You might imagine in light of their woeful box office performances in the U.S. that the studio saved money by cutting back on advertising and prints. However, in addition to the former being budgeted at $7.87 million and the latter at $6.37 million, they were still loaded down with additional expenditure, another $4.9 million for Justine and $4.23 million for Staircase, in both instances way below the 2-to-1 cost-to-ratio format. Justine was written off to the tune of $10 million and Staircase to $8.5 million.

After all the post-production extras were calculated and global rentals taken into account, Marlon Brando-starrer Morituri (1965) lost $6.4 million, James Stewart in The Flight of the Phoenix (1966) $6 million, Omar Sharif as Che! (1969) $5.3 million, Michael Caine-starrers The Magus (1969) $4.5 million and Deadfall (1968) $2.8 million, The Chairman / The Most Dangerous Man in the World (1969) $4.3 million, Hard Contract (1969) $4 million, and Doris Day-starrers Caprice (1967) $2.7 million and Do Not Disturb (1965) $2 million,

Relatively low cost was no protection against loss. A High Wind in Jamaica (1965) lost $3.7 million, The Visit (1964) $3.5 million, The Flim Flam Man / One Born Every Minute $2.8 million, The Reward (1965) $2.7 million, The Touchables (1969) $2.7 million, Fate Is the Hunter (1964) $2.6 million, Joanna (1969) $1.9 million and Hammer trio The Lost Continent (1968) $900,000, The Viking Queen (1967) $800,000 and The Vengeance of She (1968) $700,000

Even unexpected hit The Blue Max (1966) barely made it into the black. With $16.85 million in global rentals on a budget of $5 million you would have thought there was plenty of fat even with extra post-production costs. Instead, saddled with $9.2 million of additional cost – still below the 2-to-1 projection, it only earned a profit of $2.65 million. The Boston Strangler (1968) cost $4.1 million but with $4.5 million of post-production charges eked out a profit of $2.5 million.

Some pictures were surprisingly profitable. After all costs were met, Zorba the Greek (1965) cleared $6.4 million; Our Man Flint (1966) $5.25 million and In Like Flint (1967) $2.2 million; One Million Years B.C. (1966) $2.17; Dustin Hoffman-Mia Farrow oddball romance John and Mary (1969) $1.8 million; and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) $1.2 million;

Despite poor overseas takings Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) registered a profit of just over $1 million; The Nanny (1965) $800,000; Bedazzled (1967) $725,000; Batman (1966) $700,000; the remake of Stagecoach (1966) with Ann-Margret and Alex Cord $650,000; the low-budget British-made Guns at Batasi (1964) $480,000; and Hammer double bills Dracula: Prince of Darkness / Plague of the Zombies (1966) $800,000 and Rasputin: The Mad Monk / The Reptile (1966) $400,00.

On the profit front from a global perspective Frank Sinatra proved not as safe a pair of hands – The Detective (1968) registered $1.4 million profit and Von Ryan’s Express (1965) $1.3 million but Tony Rome (1967) and its sequel Lady in Cement (1969) ended up in the red, losses of  $600,000 and  $300,000, respectively. It was also touch-and-go for Raquel Welch. As mentioned above One Million Years B.C. brought in $2.17 million and Bedazzled $725,000, respectively. But Bandolero (1968) lost $1.4 million and 100 Rifles $1.3 million with Fantastic Voyage (1966) and Fathom (1967) both down half a million each.

From 1964 to 1969, author Stephen M. Silverman records that Fox releases generated $714 million in global rentals and still, after additional costs, made a $13 million loss. In the Appendix to his book in the section devoted to these figures, Silverman came across a handwritten assessment of the studio’s year-to-year operation. That breaks down the movies into three categories – losers, just above breakeven and adequate profit. Of the 106 movies distributed over those six years, 76 were deemed outright losers, seven just topped breakeven and 23 made adequate or good profits.

Note: my two sources shown below, while presumably accessing the same figures, used them in different ways. Solomon employed only domestic rentals while Silverman took a global rental approach so it was down to me to subtract domestic from global to unravel foreign rentals and subtract global from initial budget to arrive at the post-production costs.. Any  mistakes, of course, are mine.

SOURCES: Stephen M. Silverman, The Fox That Got Away, The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at Twentieth Century Fox (Lyle Stuart Inc, 1988) pp323-328; Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century Fox, A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Press, 2002) pp 228-231, 252-256.

Behind the Scenes: The 20th Century Fox Box Office Conundrum, Part Two – Foreign Revenues

Assessing foreign potential was a dicey business. A decent run abroad could save a picture or at least ease the bottom line. But global box office statistics were not as easily generated or understood as now. As in the U.S., television had sapped the cinema-going habit in other countries, variations in exchange rates could cripple revenue expectation, and most countries imposed some limitation on the importation of Hollywood films.

It would have been a very bold industry analyst who predicted exactly how any film – even a big U.S. hit like The Sound of Music (1965) – would perform on foreign screens. In the previous article, I was able to assess the results for 107 movies, but the sources for overseas revenues are more limited and figures, using the Aubrey Solomon digest, are only available for 49 of those

The good news, I would guess, is that 14 pictures released by Twentieth Century Fox improved on their U.S. rentals. One (The Sweet Ride, 1968) did exactly the same business abroad as at home. On the gloomier side, 34 movies did worse. For movies that had already turned a profit on home territory, any extra revenue from overseas would be viewed as icing on the cake. But for movies that had struggled or been outright flops on U.S. release, foreign distribution offered an opportunity to correct the financial imbalance.

And anyone trying to forecast the outcomes would have very little chance of getting any correct. How can you come to terms with a business where Doctor Dolittle (1967) one of the biggest flops of the decade on home soil turned into one of the biggest hits of the decade in foreign cinemas. Or that one of the biggest U.S. hits of the decade, Valley of the Dolls (1967), managed to generate a fraction of the rentals received at home. In terms of failing to match up to expectation you could only categorize its overseas performance as a flop.

No surprises for guessing that the studio’s biggest hit overseas was The Sound of Music. What did take the industry’s breath away was that the move came nowhere near matching its U.S. results. The $37.6 million in rentals was less than a third of the amount taken at home. Valley of the Dolls, a juggernaut at home with $20 million, brought in a paltry $2.92 overseas. Other domestic big hitters to come nowhere near emulating their domestic results were: Planet of the Apes (1968), $5.8 million overseas, $15 million at home; The Sand Pebbles (1966), $7.1 million overseas, $13.5 million at home; The Bible (1966), $8.35 million overseas, $15 million at home; and The Boston Strangler (1968), $3.12 million overseas, $8 million at home.   

Against all expectations given the size of its failure in the U.S., just $6.2 million in rentals on a budget of $17 million, Doctor Dolittle knocked up $10.1 million abroad. World War One picture The Blue Max (1966) also astonished, $8.5 million overseas (where it often qualified as a roadshow) compared to $8.4 million at home.

By comparison another roadshow, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), improved on its U.S. figures, producing $15.9 million overseas against $14 million at home. Audrey Hepburn was a bigger star overseas than in the U.S. which went some way to correcting the disappointing rentals incurred Stateside by How to Steal a Million (1966) and Two for the Road (1967). The former took $6.05 million on foreign screens compared to $4.4 million at home and the latter $4.3 million compared to $3 million at home.

Other films for whom foreign was better than domestic included: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) – $3.65 million vs $3 million; The Chairman / The Most Dangerous Man in the World (1969) – $2.92 million vs $2.5 million; Caprice (1967) – $2.58 million vs $2 million (conversely for Do Not Disturb, 1965, it was $1.27 million vs $4 million); The Flim Flam Man / One Born Every Minute (1967) – $2.32 million vs $1.2 million; Batman (1966) – $2.1 million vs $1.8 million; and The Magus (1968) – $1.45 million vs $1 million.

While not beating their American scores, a number of films achieved quite decent results abroad. For Our Man Flint (1966) foreign attracted rentals of $5.7 million vs $7.2 million in the U.S; In Like Flint (1967) $4.12 million vs $5 million; and The Undefeated (1969) – $4.27 million vs $4.5 million.

Some of the biggest flops on the U.S. domestic scene had no chance of redemption abroad. Possibly their Stateside performances put off distributors in foreign countries. Despite Richard Burton and Rex Harrison, Staircase (1969) earned only $360,000 abroad. George Cukor’s Justine (1969) managed only $570,000. James Stewart comedy Dear Brigitte picked up only $720,000. Tony Curtis-Debbie Reynolds romantic comedy Goodbye Charlie (1964) ended with $800,000. Shirley MacLaine comedy John Goldfarb, Please Come Home was limited to $880,000. Robert Aldrich’s Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte starring Bette Davis and Olivia De Havilland was a complete misfire – $4 million rentals at home, less than $1 million abroad.

Just as at home, Frank Sinatra was a relatively safe bet. Von Ryan’s Express (1965) brought in a further $6.27 million abroad to add to the $7.7 million coughed up in rentals by U.S. cinemas. The Detective (1968) added another $3.77 million from foreign ticket wickets compared to $6.5 million at home. Tony Rome (1967) brought in another $2.25 million to add to the existing $4 million.

Raquel Welch had more admirers abroad than at home. Foreign results for controversial western 100 Rifles (1969) nearly match domestic income, $3.4 million vs $3.5 million. Fathom (1967) out-earned domestic, $2.27 million overseas against $1 million at home. Bandolero (1968) pulled in $3.3 million vs $5.5 million. Fantastic Voyage (1966) slammed home another $3.38 million on top of $5.5 million at home. Bedazzled (1967), which only cost Fox $770,000, brought in $1.32 million abroad and $1.5 million at home.

Note: my two sources shown below, while presumably using the same figures, used them in different ways. Solomon employed only domestic rentals (and excluded I would guess pictures for which Fox acted more as the distributor than the maker) while Silverman took a global rental approach so it was down to me to subtract domestic from global to unravel foreign rentals. Any mistakes, of course, are mine.

SOURCES: Stephen M. Silverman, The Fox That Got Away, The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at Twentieth Century Fox (Lyle Stuart Inc, 1988) pp323-328; Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century Fox, A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Press, 2002) pp 228-231, 252-256.

Behind the Scenes: The 20th Century Fox Box Office, Part One – U.S. Rentals

While I was aware that Hollywood had faced financial catastrophe at the beginning and end of the 1960s, I wasn’t so familiar with just how hard it proved for the studios to actually make a buck. If hadn’t been for the bounty of The Sound of Music (1965) and to a lesser extent Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), a studio as big as Twentieth Century Fox would have posted an overall loss for the decade.

Sure, audiences were in decline and production stultified but there was a fair chance those obstacles could have been overcome through the combination of roadshow, the reinvigoration of the dormant spy genre via James Bond and his imitators, the onset of more liberal material – i.e. sex and violence – thanks to changes to the Production Code and the decade-end “youthquake.”

From 1960-1969, according to the Aubrey Solomon digest of releases, which was my main source for this article, Twentieth Century Fox invested $434 million in 107 movies at an average cost of $4 million. Overall rentals – the amount returned to studios once cinemas had taken their cut of the gross – amounted to $478 million. A total profit of $44 million for the decade was probably, given the various crises, not a bad return. But once you removed The Sound of Music’s  $83 million rentals bonanza from the equation, the result was less convincing.

Break-even might have appeared a good result given the doomsayers predicting complete collapse but it says a lot for the vagaries of the business that only 42 pictures – about 40 per cent of the movies greenlit – generated a profit. You will be familiar with the big loss-makers of course: Cleopatra (1963) $16 million in the red on initial U.S. release (though most of that clawed back from overseas rentals, reissue and television sale), calamitous musical Doctor Dolittle (1967 – only $6 million in domestic rentals) and Star! (1968 – only $4 million). 

You might wonder what possessed the studio to invest $7.87 million in George Cukor’s Justine (1969). When original director Joseph Strick threw in the towel you might have imagined the studio would do the same given the stars – Dirk Bogarde, Anouk Aimee and Michael York – were hardly standout box office figures. Loss on the U.S. rentals was $5.67 million. Staircase (1969) at least had a stellar cast – Richard Burton fresh from worldwide hit Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Rex Harrison whose Oscar-winning success in My Fair Lady (1964) appeared to grant him box office immunity. But U.S. audiences only returned $1.85 million in rentals from a budget of $6.37 million.

Iconic fashion accessories sported by Audrey Hepburn couldn’t save
“Two for the Road”

Another star-laden vehicle – the Paris-set caper picture How To Steal a Million (1966) teaming Audrey Hepburn (My Fair Lady) and Peter O’Toole (Becket, 1964) – came unstuck, losing $2.08 million on a budget of $6.48 million. Hepburn was at fault again the following year, losing, oddly enough, exactly the same amount for Two for the Road with Albert Finney (Tom Jones, 1963) directed by Stanley Donen (Charade, 1963) out of a budget of $5.48 million.

Other casualties were: William Holden in The Lion (1962, $3 million loss), biopic Tender Is the Night (1962 –  $2.65 million), George C. Scott as The Flim-Flam Man / One Born Every Minute (1967, also $2.65 million), Nine Hours to Rama (1963, $2.61 million), Doris Day spy comedy Caprice (1966, $2.59 million), Gregory Peck in Cold War thriller The Chairman / The Most Dangerous Man in the World (1969, $2.41 million), James Stewart in desert drama The Flight of the Phoenix (1965 – $2.33 million) and James Coburn and Lee Remick in Hard Contract (1969 – $2.32 million).

Even John Wayne stiffed. Civil War western The Undefeated (1969), on a budget of $7.1 million only brought in $4.5 million in rentals. Charlton Heston/Rex Harrison roadshow The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), on a similar budget, lost more – $3.17 million. Michael Caine/Anthony Quinn drama The Magus (1968) barely brought in $1 million from a $3.77 million budget.

Unexpected winners included Valley of the Dolls (1967 – $15.31 million profit), Planet of the Apes (1968 – $9.2 million), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965 – $7.5 million), The Boston Strangler (1968 – $3.9 million), Our Man Flint (1966 – $3.87 million) – though only $1.2 million in the black for sequel In Like Flint (1967) – and The Blue Max (1966 – $3.4 million).

Frank Sinatra proved a safe bet. The Detective (1968) turned a profit at the U.S. ticket wickets of just over £2 million and Von Ryan’s Express (1965) just under that figure although Tony Rome (1967) registered a small loss. Raquel Welch just about squeaked home – $1 million profit for Bandolero (1968), $380,000 profit for Fantastic Voyage (1966) balanced out by $420,000 loss for 100 Rifles (1969).

Of course, there was always the possibility that foreign revenues would save the day. And although occasionally the likes of United Artists’ The Magnificent Seven (1960) on initial release had earned considerably more in the overseas market than in the U.S., that was, unfortunately, rarely the case. There was no guarantee that certain genres – comedies, musicals – would travel. Hollywood studios generally received a smaller percentage from movies released abroad while facing increases in distribution costs.

Overseas business was viewed as icing on the cake rather than an essential element of the box office. There was also the problem that foreign cinema owners could check out U.S. box office figures in advance – unlike now there was no instant global release system – and should a movie falter on its U.S. debut would assume they were going to be renting a flop, therefore reduce marketing back-up and renegotiate terms.

SOURCE: Aubrey Solomon, Twentieth Century Fox, A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Press, 2002) pp 228-231, 252-256.

Behind the Scenes: Greta Garbo 1960s Revival Queen

More than two decades after Greta Garbo abandoned acting she was the Queen of London’s West End in one of the most astonishing comebacks in Hollywood history.

Although her Hollywood career was relatively short-lived, lasting only 15 years and ending voluntarily in 1941,  and at one point the highest-paid actor (male or female) in Hollywood, the London experience made her a big star all over again in the 1960s  – and later in the 1970s – when reissues of her most famous films filled holes in a global release system starved of product.

“Masterpiece Reprint” was cleaver ad-speak for getting round exhibitor phobia
regarding the words “reissue” or “revival.” And it also suggested a new print since reissues were infamous for re-using long over-used old prints.

She’d first made an impact in the revival business in the U.S. reissue boom of 1948 in a double bill of San Francisco (1936) and Ninotchka (1939), a program so successful that shortly afterwards both were reissued again separately. The box office draw of pictures like these was such that some cinemas, for example, the State in Lubbock, Texas, re-launched themselves as “first run reissue” houses, the beginnings of the boom in repertory theaters.

But it wasn’t all gravy. Distribution didn’t just rely on old prints. Ninotchka, for example, not only had new prints but a new advertising campaign, campaign manual and accessories. However, apart from the first flush of revival, Ninotchka stumbled at the box office, too ambitious a level of release, quickly withdrawn after costing the studio $150,000.  

The impetus for the 1960s Garbo Revival came from abroad. In the U.S., Garbo films had by this point been viewed as arthouse fare, running, as in the 1950s, on a repertory basis, rented out for a flat fee, cinemas cramming in as many as a dozen films over one week. While they were available to anyone who wanted them, they came without attendant publicity. Given, they had all been screened on U.S. television they were considered a poor bet for a more commercial revival campaign.

But British television companies, of which there were only two – BBC and ITV – were more niggardly in buying Hollywood pictures so the major studios simply refuse to sell pictures, such as those starring Garbo, at what they saw as, compared to U.S. networks, cut-price rates.  

Even so, it was an act of incredible boldness for the Empire cinema in London’s West End, one of the top two theaters (the other being the Odeon Leicester Square) in Britain for movie launches, outside of roadshows,  to decide to take a gamble on reviving her movies following audience response to a brief showing at the Royalty. It was the first time a major commercial house in such a heavily-competitive environment  had devoted any time to what was in effect a retrospective, setting aside two months for a succession of Garbo pictures.

Two-Faced Woman (1941) – Garbo’s last picture – shored up $14,000 – equivalent to $140,000 now – in its first week. Queen Christina (1937) made a debut of $9,000 and Camille (1936) $11,000. In all, over this opening stint and a further season later on, the Empire screened eleven pictures – the others being Grand Hotel (1932), Anna Christie (1930), Mata Hari (1931), Ninotchka, Anna Karenina (1935), Marie Walewska (aka Conquest, 1937), As You Desire Me (1932) and The Painted Veil (1934)

And there was more to come. The Empire was the release showcase for the entire ABC circuit, so anything screening there would be rolled out in the country’s biggest chain.  Since ABC was decidedly not in the arthouse business, sending the movies out into the general mainstream seemed an even bigger risk. But such fears proved unfounded.

Garbo pictures were distributed throughout the country, and not just on the ABC circuit. In Glasgow, for example, the La Scala (owned by Caledonian Associated Cinemas) first-run house – rather than the city’s denoted arthouse the Cosmo – launched a three-week season comprising Ninochka, Queen Christina and Camille, two of the three going out as single bills.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Garbo movies were being unfurled via the MGM Perpetual Product Plan, whereby classics (rented on a percentage basis) were screened for one day a week for a period of eight-to-ten weeks with audiences able to book a discounted ticket for the entire season. Abroad, there was more opportunity. Like Britain, countries like France revered the star and the movies were continually revived in Europe during the 1960s at commercial venues.

But by the end of the decade, the book should have been closed on Garbo. Because, in 1969, MGM, with the exception of perennials like Gone with the Wind (1939) and Doctor Zhivago (1965), pulled out of the reissue business. The studio withdrew from release its core library of around 100 vintage pictures because the operation was now losing money. Flat fee rentals of $100 (as opposed to the earlier percentage deals) for a three-day engagement failed to cover the costs of prints, distribution and advertising. The novelty of the one-day-a-week scheme had worn off.

MGM intended to try out the old “creating demand” tactic by keeping its oldies out of circulation for at least four years.  But the studio was in severe financial straits at the start of the new decade and not in a position to resist an offer in 1970 from Erwin Lesser of Entertainment Events who proposed taking out a two-year lease on 65 pictures that had “made film buffs out of two generations.” Lesser drew up a package of 26 “Movie Incomparables.” Garbo was the main attraction. Included in the list were As You Desire Me, not seen for 30 years. Lesser returned to rentals based on percentages rather than a flat fee.

While Lesser made the movies available as single features and double bills and as support to new features, the main thrust of his marketing campaign was the “Garbo Festival,” an idea stolen from television which had taken to rewrapping old pictures as week-long events as a means of enticing viewers.

Although the Museum of Modern Arts in New York agreed to run a Garbo retrospective, that hardly produced the kind of box office juice that was required to kickstart a major revival.  So Lesser bided his time, and in the end accepted a nine-day “filler engagement” in March 1971 for the 565-seat Murray Hill arthouse in New York. A “rousing” first week delivered $15,000 – $113,000 in today’s money – while the remaining two days hit a colossal $7,800.

Garbo was back – and in some style. Two months later the Garbo package returned to Murray Hill for a socko one-week $11,000 followed by a move-over to the 533-seat Paramount. And then it was game on.

One of the major elements of the Festival was its flexibility. It became an umbrella term. Exhibitors could decide whether to create a program out of single showings or double bills that could run for consecutive weeks or for an on-off event of single weeks interspersed over a longer period with other features.

In Chicago the double bill of Grand Hotel / Anna Christie romped home at the 505-seat Cinema with $8,500 in the first week and $7,500 – an amazingly low drop-off at the box office considering 40%-50% tumbles in the second week are the norm today – followed by Mata Hari / Ninotchka also on $7,500. In the same city Camille / Anna Karenina racked up $4,800 at the 598-seat Carnegie.

In Philadelphia a four-film package hoisted $19,000 running simultaneously at the 500-seat World and the 855-seat Bryn Mawr. The second week take dropped by just $1,500. Two more packages running each for a week brought in a total of $15,000. In Pittsburgh and Detroit the seasons also ran for three weeks.

But showings were not restricted to arthouses. In Cleveland the package played the 1,500-seat Beachcliff, in Dayton the 1,000-seat  Cinema East and in Kansas City the 1,291-seat Midland.

Garbo’s name was kept alive all through the 1970s as revivals, either in one-week festivals, or shorter bookings, continued to bring in revenue across the USA and around the world, proving the continued box office potency of one of the industry’s greatest stars.  

We’re still a few years away from the centenary of her Hollywood debut in MGM’s Torrent in 1926 so expect major reassessment then. Whether she breaks out of the arthouse confines and fuels new demand in the multiplexes might not be such a long shot. Release patterns for revivals have markedly changed, many now being promoted as “one-day-only” events (miss out at your own peril) rather than running over a week or longer. A major publicity campaign and the assistance of social media could change public perception of a star whose films embraced both the silent era and Hollywood’s Golden Age and who was never short of publicity.

In my opinion it’s always worth watching a Garbo film for one technical reason – the difference between male and female close-ups. Watch a Garbo picture and a close-up  could last for minutes, the end of Queen Christina for example, as her eyes move through a variety of emotions. Male close-ups by comparison are over in a flash. With few exceptions the soul of a male actor is rarely revealed in close-up and even rarer is for expression to so dramatically change.

SOURCES: Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues 1914-2014 (McFarland, 2016) pp 33, 55, 56, 58, 75, 128, 130, 133, 212, 223-225, 232 “Test Garbo Retrospective at Royalty in London,” Variety, June 23, 1963, p11; “Garbo Pic Sets London Record,” Variety, August 15, 1963, p2; “Click of Metro’s Garbo Pix in London’s Empire Cues More Runs,” Variety, August 21, 1963, p19; “British Provinces May Get Metro Garbo Films,” Variety, August 28, 1963, p23; “Metro Classic (Garbo, Marx Bros, Tuners) Withdrawn from Market,” Variety, August 27, 1969, p3; “MGM Leases 65 Pictures for Re-Releasing,” Variety, August 10, 1970, p3; “Picture Grosses,” Variety 1971 – March 31, April 7, May 11, May 25, June 9, June 23, June 30, August 18, November 22, December 8.

Behind the Scenes: “Two Weeks in Another Town” (1962)

Until a technological invention first used in Once a Thief (1965) it was impossible to shoot “day for night” without it appearing very obvious. So when director Vincente Minnelli aimed for as much verisimilitude as possible for the Rome-set drama it meant half the shoot took place at night. “Minnelli could sleep easily during the day,” recalled star Kirk Douglas (The Arrangement, 1969), “sometimes till six o’clock in the evening, but I couldn’t so there were three unpleasant weeks of night shooting and not much sleep.”

But the movie suffered, Douglas later complained, by studio interference at the editing stage. When the movie fell foul of the Production Code, change of MGM management vetoed the more salacious aspects of the movie – the worst aspects of “La Dolce Vita” including a sequence in a nightclub where guests watched an unseen sexual act. Fifteen minutes were cut including a scene that showed Cyd Charisse’s character in a more sympathetic light. In an ironic reflection of the film’s narrative, Minnelli played no part in the editing, not due to production deadlines as in the movie, but out of choice.

The actual producer John Houseman – producer of Douglas starrers The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Lust for Life (1956) though later best known as an actor in Rollerball (1975) etc –  backed out of any tussle with MGM head honcho Joseph Vogel. Douglas implored Vogel and editor Margaret Booth, to no avail. Consequently, in Douglas’s opinion, the film was “emasculated.” He argued MGM had turned an “adult” picture into a “family” film. Quite how this could be squared with marketing that promised a “shocking intimate view of Rome’s international film set” (see below) was not mentioned.

Following the commercial and artistic success of Spartacus (1960), Douglas was at the peak of his career, though his last three pictures had been flops. After nabbing an Oscar for Gigi (1959), Minnelli also enjoyed a career high, and although best known for musicals like Meet Me in St Louis (1944) and An American in Paris (1951) was equally adept at drama like The Bad and the Beautiful,  Lust for Life (1956) and Some Came Running (1958). But he, too, was running empty, his last three serious films – Home from the Hill (1960), All the Fine Young Cannibals (1961) and big-budget roadshow The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962) coming up short at the box office.

Douglas earned $500,000 and a percentage of the profits (though none were forthcoming – it made a loss of $3 million) and top-billing. Although co-star Edward G. Robinson (Seven Thieves, 1960) appeared above the title, Douglas refused to accord female lead Cyd Charisse (Maroc 7, 1967), on one-tenth of his salary, that concession.

Douglas recalled that he build up his acting skills through wrestling. A college wrestling champ, he barnstormed across the country in a carnival, playing the cocky person reputedly from the audience who challenged the giant resident wrestler. “My job was to make the audience think he was going to murder me,” Douglas told the Pressbook/Campaign Manual. “And the way to do this was by expressions on my face. To yell out in pain would seem cowardly. But I learned a hundred and one ways of showing it through use of my eyes and the muscles in my face.”

The actor escaped serious injury when lightning, preceding one of the worst thunderstorms in a  decade,  struck a 200-year-old clock on the top of the church in Santa Maria Square. Four huge iron numerals were torn off and crashed to the ground, one grazing Douglas’s head.

In fact, the movie’s authenticity owed much to being filmed on the streets of Rome rather than reconstructed on the studio lot. In particular, scenes utilizing the Via Veneto, two long blocks of sidewalk cafes where the movie industry socialized, created a realistic atmosphere, especially when a hundred or so of the extra employed were actually people who would naturally populate the location. So, for example, when the script called for an opera star among the extras, casting director Guidarino Guidi used Bostonian Ann English, an opera singer studying in Rome. Among those sitting in the background at café tables were a promising young painter, a poet and a librettist.

George Hamilton (Act One, 1963), who had worked in Home from the Hill and just finished Light in the Piazza (1962) also shot in Rome, reckoned he couldn’t have been more miscast given his role called for a “funky James-Dean type.” He got the role through the influence of Betty Spiegel, wife of producer Sam, and her friend Denise Gigante, the director’s current girlfriend (later wife). Hamilton drove around in a red Ferrari costing $18,000 (ten times that at today’s prices) and, as he put it, “Italians knew how to worship” Hollywood stars.

Hamilton reckoned part of the problem of the film was that Minnelli was so “besotted with Denise that he had lost his vision.” Jumping to the defence of Cyd Charisse against a tirade from journalist Oriana  Fallaci at the Venice Film Festival won Hamilton, unexpectedly, the cover of Paris-Match.

Daliah Lavi owed her career break to Douglas. As a nine-year-old in Hiffa, Israel, she struck up a friendship with the actor when he was filming The Juggler there in 1952. The actor and other stars attended her birthday party, Douglas presenting her with a ballet dress. Later a dancer and then an actress, this was her Hollywood debut. Erich von Stroheim Jr, making his movie acting debut, had his head shaved to make him appear more like his famed director father. Originally employed as an assistant director on the picture, Minnelli decided he would make a good Ravinski, the “fast-talking press agent.”

Chauvinism reared its ugly head, especially when women had to apologise for being on the receiving end. “What goes on in the minds of beautiful women when they get slapped for the cameras?” mused the editor of the Pressbook/Campaign Manual. Rossano Schiaffino’s response regarding being whacked on the behind by Douglas: “He hits hard so charmingly I didn’t mind standing up for a day of two.”

The actress proved tougher than many of her colleagues. She turned down the offer of a double for a scene in which she jumped into a lake. That might not have been such an undertaking had the sequence been shot in the hot Italian sunshine at the height of summer. But the MGM studio tank on Lot 3 was a different – and much colder – proposition. “She shrugged off her stunt with the remark that heated pools are unknown where she comes from.”

Irwin Shaw, author of the best-selling source novel, wasn’t too upset at the way the movie turned out. “An author who wants complete control of his work on the screen is in something of a cleft stick,” he observed. “He can either go into production himself, which is often neither possible nor desirable, or he can refuse to sell his work to the movies. Minor deviations in screen conception don’t send me reeling back a stricken man. I think I’m sufficiently realistic to know that even in the most enlightened films there must be some compromise if they are to be a success.  What does matter very strongly to me is that the theme of the novel…should come over on the screen.”

Music trivia: Kirk Douglas was the first big Hollywood star to perform “The Twist” on screen and the song “Don’t Blame Me” was reprised from The Bad and the Beautiful, sung here sung by Leslie Uggams and in the older film by Peggy King.

French designer Pierre Balmain created the dresses, allowing a marketing campaign to be built around those stores which supplied his clothes. TWA, which flew directly to Rome, was suggested to cinema owners as an ideal tie-in. Not only did New American Library issue a new movie tie-in paperback/soft cover but cinemas were encouraged to build a campaign around a director, many of whose films would be well-known to audiences. The marketeers also had material to tie in with stores retailing music, women’s sportswear, menswear, men’s sweaters, beauty and hair styling.

The 16-page A3 Pressbook/Campaign Manual offered a selection of advertisements and taglines. The key advert tagline ran “Another town…another kind of love…one he couldn’t resist…the other he couldn’t escape.” But there were alternatives: “Only in Rome could this story be filmed/Every town has women like Carlotta and Veronica and the kind of man they both want!/From Irwin Shaw’s great best seller.”

Or you could opt for: “Irwin Shaw’s shocking intimate view of Rome’s international film set. The world only sees the glamor. This is the drama behind it!.” Or: “Only in Rome could this story happen. Only in Rome could this story be filmed!”

SOURCES: Kirk Douglas, The Ragman’s Son (Simon and Schuster paperback, 2010) p342-344;  George Hamilton, Don’t Mind If I Do (JR Book hardback 2009)pp 155-159; Pressbook/ Campaign Manual, Two Weeks in Another Town (MGM).

Behind the Scenes: Selling Death – The Pressbook for “The Loved One” (1965)

Yep, you hand the promotional department the problem of selling a movie about undertakers and see what they come up with. The tagline “the motion picture with someone to offend everyone” is unlikely to attract the unwary and leaves you only with an audience that enjoys seeing sacred cows slaughtered, which might minimize appeal. Coupled with a montage of outlandish scenes and characters, the main advert had its work cut out to attract anyone.

Just as well, then, the marketing department had some apparent plums up its sleeve. Even more than weddings, funerals are associated with flowers. So, top of “the ticket-selling ideas” was suggesting to cinema owners either to stick a wreath at the front door or get a florist to spell out the title in a lobby display.

If that didn’t work, go for broke and stick a tombstone (easily constructed from plywood or papier mache, apparently) in the lobby. (The Fall of the House of Usher had gone one better, promising a free casket to anyone who dropped ad of fright.) Better still, lay down grass on the pavement outside to achieve a lawn effect.

And if that doesn’t get the media buzzing, why not just hire a hearse. That could sit outside the theater or tour the locality with banners slung along the sides. If the local newspaper was willing, you could arrange to have the print delivered by hearse, photographer on hand to record proceedings.

“Since The Loved One spoofs the undertaking business, most morticians aren’t too happy with the picture. This can be twisted to advantage to get you a newspaper story,” proclaims the Pressbook. Basically, the notion is that undertakers will respond to a reporter nosing around and that somehow that will permit mention in the resulting article of the movie. Another idea is to invite undertakers to the opening night on the assumption that no one will turn up and that somehow that, too, will make a newspaper story.

A simpler alternative was just to hire a model and have her parade around town dressed in white like a mortician and passing out flowers.

Just in case nobody had noted the off-beat nature of the picture, cinema managers were encouraged to browbeat local journalists into spelling this out and putting the movie into the same bracket as Dr Strangelove (1964), What’s New, Pussycat? (1965) and, of course, Tom Jones (1963).

Oddly enough, the movie received a favourable press – or at least a word or two which could be culled from reviews to make it appear so. Thus, one advert was able to rustle up quotes from the New York Times, Cue magazine, Herald Tribune, Holiday magazine, Life and Saturday Review.

Basically, there was as little meat on the advertising bones as in the genuine narrative to the picture itself. There was only one tagline and all the adverts, covering three-quarters of the 12-page A3 Pressbook, were variations on the one ad.

Outside of the cameo appearances, the male and female leads were relative newcomers, both starring in Quick, Before It Melts (1964). Courtesy of his long-running role on Broadway hit How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Morse was marginally the bigger marquee name.

For a comedy, it was a potentially lethal role for Morse. “There was one scene in which a toy rocket blew up in my face and another in which I was dragged 40 feet by an automobile. I came close to being asphyxiated after doing a 60-minute stint in an air-tight embalming room.”

“Fate has been kind to me so far,” averred Comer. “But it didn’t all happen overnight, you know. Actually, I don’t think the quickie successes mean very much. You can be belle of the ball one day and a has-been the next.

“When I decided to go into this business, I made up my mind about one thing. I wouldn’t go into it unprepared. I got the groundwork in workshop plays at the Pasadena Playhouse and I concentrated on acting to the exclusion of everything else. I never even got to see what Hollywood actually looked like.”

After the success of Tom Jones, director Tony Richardson was given carte blanche. He filmed in 21 locations including the California freeway (as yet unopened), pet cemeteries and Beverly Hills mansions (the ground floor of Dohney marble chateau) and never in the studio.  “I feel constricted working anywhere but in the real locales,” he told the Pressbook. “There are inconveniences in working outside a studio but I don’t mind them.”

His quest for realism extended to make-up. For example, he vetoed applying make-up to Jonathan Winters’ hand so that it matched his tanned face. Other attempts at verisimilitude saw lights taped to ceilings and sound equipment strapped to plumbing. Substitutes were found for equipment deemed too bulky or sensitive for location filming.

Future Warner Bros boss John Calley, here working as co-producer, explained some of the problems encountered. “Normally, when a piece of equipment is to be used or something needs to be constructed in Hollywood, it is only a matter of dialling the proper studio telephone extension. But under the Richardson plan every bit of equipment, every prop, every item of construction had to be individually contracted. There is no question that this is the most difficult way to make a picture, but it is the only way Richardson will work.”

Behind the Scenes: Selling that Old-Time Religion – The Pressbook for “Elmer Gantry” (1960)

The one element that every movie requires – advance publicity – was denied Elmer Gantry. Shooting took place on a closed set with all visitors carefully screened. Only six actors were given access to a complete screenplay while a general synopsis was denied distributors and cinema owners.

Over 30 years after publication of the source novel by Sinclair Lewis, its contents were considered so volatile and contentious that, rather than be pre-judged by the industry on expectations of what the movie may contain, director Richard Brooks took to issuing baffling statements such as describing Elmer Gantry as “The All-American Boy.”

Even the 12-page A3 Pressbook/Campaign Book, the prime source of marketing contact between studio and theater owner, was niggardly in the extreme. Narrative detail was limited to “the story of a spellbinding evangelist” rather anything approaching a synopsis.

Stuck with how to woo an audience in advance, United Artists fell back on a teaser campaign comprising six separate ads. The sequence was as follows: “Elmer Gantry Is Coming!” / “Sinners! Elmer Gantry Is Coming!” / “Sinners! Elmer Gantry Is Coming! starring Burt Lancaster”/ “Sinners! Elmer Gantry Is Coming! Starring Jean Simmons” / “Sinners! Elmer Gantry Is Coming! starring Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons”. The last advert was coupled with a quote from the New York Times with the final salvo the same ad repeated but with a different quote from the New York Post.

The New York campaign – in those days a movie might take a few months to spread out from initial opening locale to other cities allowing promotional ideas that worked in one area to be publicized – relied on the first two teasers. But they went out in saturation – in railroad stations, subways, buses and race tracks with additional displays on poles, stilts and drums.

The major print advertising onslaught was led by two bold large-sized adverts intended to run facing each other on the same page. “Bless Him! Tens of thousands of believers shouted his praises!” was accompanied by the iconic illustration, Bible in hand, of Burt Lancaster. “Damn Him! Three women damned his soul” showed Lancaster grappling with Jean Simmons with Shirley Jones and Patti Paige in the background in more revealing clothing. But these two elements could also be fitted into the one ad, as shown above.

There were nearly a dozen full-size advertisements with a range of taglines. In all Lancaster is shown in the same pose with the Bible while Simmons is presented clutching a Bible and gazing heavenward. Shirley Jones appears in even skimpier outfits.

As was standard at the time, taglines could stand on their own or mix and match. Snippets for other ads were edited from this main ad: “Nobel Prize Winner Sinclair Lewis’ Bold Novel Of Passion And Damnation Bursts Full-Life Across The Screen! If there was a dollar to be made – Gantry would make it…If there was a soul to save -Gantry would save it…”

“Sinner! Elmer Gantry Wants You!” ran another ad backed up by “Are you ready, sinner? He wants you to know all about heaven…but not about his whiskey and his women!” Other adverts were fashioned from taglines like: “You’re all sinners…you’ll all burn in Hell! Tell ‘em Gantry…save ‘em from sin…lead ‘em to salvation…tell ‘em about everything…but not about your whiskey and your women!” Or included: “From the book that shook a nation with its sledgehammer theme…from a Nobel Prize-winning author…comes the raging story of a man who used the Holy Bible and broke every rule in it!”

Rarely have so many exclamation marks been employed in so short a space, but equally, rarely has a marketing team encapsulated so vividly a movie with a difficult subject matter, all tease and no substance.

Out-with the usual marketing routes, the marketing team were able to take advantage of various ancillary promotional opportunities. Dell organized a massive paperback book tie-in in thousands of bookstores and newsstands, Burt Lancaster dominating the front cover with Simmons and Jones pictured on the back. Music retailers also played their part, United Artists Records launching the Andre Previn soundtrack album while Mercury released an album of revival tuness sung by Patti Paige, who made her movie debut in the film. With record sales exceeding 35 million, Paige’s host of fan clubs were a natural target for contact and if there was none in the local vicinity cinema managers were encouraged to start one by the simple device of setting up “a giant postcard in the lobby” and inviting fans to attach their signatures.

Department stores were called upon to run 1920s Fashion Shows.

Anniversaries, so important today, helped out. It was 30 years since Sinclair Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize, the first American author so recognized, and 1960 was the 75th anniversary of his birth. But the promoters also played upon the book’s initial controversy, hoping to re-ignite the debate as a promotional tool.

With the bulk of the Pressbook given over to advertising and promotional ideas, barely little more than a single page was devoted to the stars, but even then there was little of the usual soft-focus puff pieces. The kind of  journalistic nuggets that might help an editor fill a vacant space were limited. All we learned of Burt Lancaster, who had worked with Richard Brooks before on Brute Force (1947), was that – as if this was a mark of respect – he agreed to read the screenplay twice. Of Jean Simmons it was pointed out she had played an evangelist in Guys and Dolls (1955) but the Pressbook erroneously states that she played a nun in Black Narcissus (1947); in fact, she was a beggar girl. Arthur Kennedy is mentioned in relation to his Oscar nominations.

Shirley Jones was the most likely to attract column inches as a result of explaining how she made the transition from more demure roles in Oklahoma (1955) and April Love (1957). “It feels just fine – now,” she told the Pressbook interviewer. “At first, well, I really don’t wear much except what you see. A slip, these shoes with the green frills, and slinky black silk wrap-around that’s transparent.

“Usually, I walk into a movie set wearing my bustle and petticoats and some of the boys turn round as I go by and say, ‘Hiya, Shirl.’ But when I walked in dressed like this the fellows all just turned round and didn’t say anything. They never turned round like that before. Well, not really. It did take some getting used to after provoking the big brother reactions for so long.

“But I guess every girl dreams of being a conversation stopper some day. This is my chance. Of course, I am embarrassed sometimes…or maybe it’s inhibited.”

Brooks rewrote the script eight times before “he felt he had captured the essence” of Gantry. Most of the scenes were filmed on sound stages or adapted from an assortment of 1920s vintage streets from the backlots of other studios. The tabernacle was constructed out of an ice skating rink on a beach pier in Santa Monica.

Art director Edward Carerre spent $6,500 erecting and furnishing a genuine evangelist tent rented from Canvas Specialty. It was slightly trimmed to fit onto two combined sound stages on the Columbia lot. A total of 400 benches each measuring eight- or ten-feet were constructed by studio carpenters to provide seating for 1,000 – the tent accommodated another 2,000 standing. The stage required 500lb of imported sawdust and banners 30ft long were specially made to incorporate Biblical quotations. Where most movies required a maximum of 15-20 sets, Elmer Gantry boasted 62.

The climactic scene, conflagration in a tent, took five days to film. Soaking the set in kerosene would not supply the instant flash of flame the director demanded. So, instead, he turned to old film footage, including some frames from It Happened One Night (1934). “We’re burning film to make film,” quipped Brooks.

Behind the Scenes: The Old Double Bill Business – Part Two

British circuit ABC’s major rival, the Rank Organisation, effectively operated three chains. The main chain was known as the Odeon, but it also ran a subsidiary operating as Gaumont. Since you would often find an Odeon and a Gaumont in the same city or large town, it made sense that they were not in competition.

By and large, Rank put its biggest potential blockbusters on the Odeon circuit with lesser titles doing the rounds of the Gaumonts in what was termed rather confusingly as the “National Release”, with that chain also used to mop up box office excess should a film have done exceptionally well on the major circuit, John Wayne western The Commancheros (1961) and the second James Bond adventure From Russia with Love (1963) moving from one to the other in a short space of time. Rank was also a major player in the roadshow business, the Gaumont in Glasgow, for example, the venue for such long-runners as The Sound of Music (1965).

Clever presentation makes it look as though it’s up to the audience or the cinema to decide which is the main feature – technically, it was “The Ceremony.”

Perhaps because it felt obliged to feed movies into two streams rather than one, the Rank cinemas were less inclined at the start of the decade to go full tilt down the double bill route. You might have thought with so many cinemas to support that the obvious approach would be to limit the number of double bills made available.

In fact, the opposite was true. Perhaps more aware of the need to give the moviegoer value-for-money, Odeon offered far fewer single bills than rival ABC. Whereas ABC programmed in somewhere between 28 and 37 single bills every year during the 1960s, Odeon had less. Its peak was 21 in 1960. But that was followed by a dramatic tail off, the next highest year saw 15 single bills in 1967, quite a few of these being roadshows entering general release for the first time. For the entire decade Odeon averaged around 13 single bills a year.

In other words, while ABC in a busy year for double bills might get through a total of 76 films, Odeon’s output would be 90-100.

However, the kind of double bill you might see at an Odeon was, until later in the decade, an inferior product to what you would watch at an ABC cinema. Odeon was prone to stuffing its programs with filler material, genuine old-fashioned B-movies, often running little over an hour rather than the 90/100-minute picture audiences might expect from a genuine double bill.

Suprised to see “Rage” getting such a wide release as support here. “Georgy Girl” was such a hit in first run it took an age to move into general release.

Whereas there was a decent chance that a movie on the lower part of a double bill shown on the ABC circuit would have a recognizable star, it was almost certain that you would never have heard of any of the stars in films carrying out the same role on the Odeon circuit.

For example, supporting Peter Sellers-Sophia Loren comedy The Millionairess (1960) was the undistinguished Squad Car (1960) starring Vici Raaf. The Magnificent Seven (1960) was accompanied by Police Dog Story (1961) starring James Brown. Womanhunt with Steve Peck was allocated to The Commancheros (1961) and The Deadly Duo with Craig Hill to Dr No (1962).

Alternatively, Odeon would dig into the vaults and team up one new feature with an oldie. So musical State Fair (1962) was stuck with The Desert Rats (1953) starring Richard Burton; Glenn Ford-Lee Remick thriller The Grip of Fear (aka Experiment in Terror, 1962) with Operation Mad Ball (1957) headlining Jack Lemmon; Stephen Boyd psychological thriller The Third Secret (1964) with Frank Sinatra revival Can-Can (1960).

Other times, the double bill was a pair of oldies, Billy Wilder courtroom drama Witness for the Prosecution (1957) teamed up with James Stewart western The Far Country (1954) or the start of the James Bond reissue onslaught beginning with From Russia with Love (1963)/Dr No (1962).  Sandra Dee comedy I’d Rather Be Rich (1964) initially on the lower half of a double bill with Send Me No Flowers (1964) was within a few months performing the same function for Gregory Peck amnesia thriller Mirage (1965).

And just like ABC, some of the double bills didn’t work out. Romantic comedy Two and Two Make Six (1962) starring George Chakiris and Janette Scott coupled with heist picture Strongroom (1962) failed to make it past the first few days. Billy Wilder’s Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) and The Sicilians (1964) was yanked off the screens after dire returns. In the case of the Madigan/Games double bill it was the latter that met with audience hostility.

So it took Odeon some time to hit its stride and pitch together the kind of double bill program that might attract a decent audience. Good examples would be: The Ceremony (1963) starring Laurence Harvey dualed with Sidney Poitier in Oscar-winning form in Lilies of the Field (1963); and Oscar fave Georgy Girl (1965) and rabies thriller Rage (1966) featuring Glenn Ford and Stella Stevens..

You might well attract customers for the remake double bill of Beau Geste (1966) and Madame X (1966); and French hit A Man and a Woman (1966) and Sailor from Gibralter (1967) with French star Jeanne Moreau.

I would have made time to see George Peppard-Dean Martin western Rough Night in Jericho (1967) with what was intended as a star-making turn from Robert Wagner in Banning (1967). The St Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) and George C. Scott-Michael Sarrazin One Born Every Minute (aka The Flim-Flam Man, 1967) seemed an interesting program. And you wouldn’t go far wrong with spy thriller Danger Route (1967) and John Sturges western Hour of the Gun (1967).

I remember being highly entertained by a double bill of John Wayne as an oil wildcatter in The Hellfighters (1969) and Doug McClure and Jill St John in swashbuckler The King’s Pirate (1969). Thought went into programming together heist movie Duffy (1968) starring James Coburn and spy thriller Hammerhead (1968); fashion-set drama Joanna (1968) and Pretty Poison (1968); and George Segal war picture The Bridge at Remagen (1969) and Robert Mitchum western Young Billy Young (1969).

But sometimes you got the impression the Odeon circuit was hard put to find relevant product and was happy to stick out in the lower part of the double bill a movie that had been sitting on the shelf such as Ann-Margret small town drama Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965) which went out as support to Rock Hudson and Claudie Cardinale in Blindfold (1966) or Jerry Lewis comedy Way, Way Out (1966) supporting Raquel Welch as Fathom (1967).

The 10th Victim (1965) took an age to be slotted in below The Night of the Big Heat (1967).  Claude Chabrol’s The Road to Corinth with Jean Seberg was two years old when packed off  with the second Bulldog Drummond adventure Some Girls Do (1969). British sex drama The Touchables (1968) waited a year before emerging in the wake of James Coburn-Lee Remick thriller Hard Contract (1969).

Sometimes, double bills revealed the hard truth about fading marquee pull. Glenn Ford films were often on the lower part of a double bill and so were offerings by Tony Curtis, James Garner, Anthony Perkins, Ann-Margret and Robert Mitchum.

By the end of the next decade, Odeon was still more reliant on double bills than ABC, though often these programmes were made up of reissues of Bond, Pink Panther, Three Musketeers, the Confessions series and Rocky/Network (both 1976) while the likes of early Stallone vehicle The Lord of Flatbush (1974), documentary Let The Good Times Roll (1973) and romance Jeremy (1973) were revived as supporting features.

Britain had some smaller circuits in operation but both Granada and Scottish outfit Caledonian Associated Cinemas tended to cherry-pick from either the Odeon or ABC releases.

SOURCE: Allen Eyles, Odeon Cinemas 2: From J. Arthur Rank to the Multiplex (CTA, 2005) p206-214, 219-220.

Behind the Scenes: “Barbieheimer” Recalls The Old Double Bill Business

You might be surprised to learn that by Hollywood standards the recent self-elective dualing of Barbie and Oppenheimer was a perfect double bill. Not because it resuscitated an old distribution ploy but that the two films would have been viewed in the 1960s as an ideal pairing. A program comprising two completely different pictures was seen as the best way to attract an audience.

You might also be under the misapprehension that until the dominance of the single-film program from the 1980s onwards an outing to the movies always involved seeing two movies. But that wasn’t the case at all and studios fought a hard battle against a trend, beginning in the United States in 1930s especially in cities like Chicago, of demanding a program comprising  two films rather than one.

Horror films were the most common to end up on a double bill and, in fact,
were often made with that purpose in mind.

But by the 1960s, except in their initial publicity-driven outings in the giant seating arenas in the likes of London, Paris, New York, Rome, Chicago etc, films that went out on subsequent release were often accompanied by a supporting feature well above the caliber of the B-pictures that had saturated the previous decades. In the 1940s and 1950s, for example, most double bills, while complying with the three-hour dictat for a reasonable night out, were rarely value-for-money, usually composed of a main feature and a  much inferior cheaper B-movie, often a series western or crime movie.

It was only in the 1960s, when B-film production all but vanished, that cinemas began to offer what you might call a decent value-for-money package. Though, if you looked beneath the lines, you might discover that one of the offerings was being offloaded after flopping in initial opening.

Not surprisingly, at the start of the 1960s, with movie production in terminal decline, the last thing studios wanted to do was to use up their scant supplies too soon. Double bills could also limit box office. Shown on its own, a single feature could generate four or five showings a day. Teamed with another movie, exposure was reduced to two, maybe three, complete programmes a day depending on venue and location. The supporting feature generally played for a fixed rental rather than a percentage, so income was further reduced.

U.S. chains tended to be regional rather than national so it’s hard to get an idea from them of the importance double bills played in the national consciousness. On the other hand, Britain boasted two national circuits, ABC and Odeon, and examination the programmes put out there give a better idea of the role double bills had in cinemas.

Considerable thought went into allocating partners, studios, rather than cinemas, responsible for the arriving at the ideal mix. Except for a horror pairing, appealing to a specific adult market, the perfect double bill was deliberately wide in its aim, attempting to scoop up business from different sectors of the population, perhaps on a sexist basis. For example, a drama targeting women might be paired with a western attracting men. This kind of thinking accounted for some of what you might consider oddities of programming.

On the UK’s ABC circuit, for example heist picture They Came To Rob Las Vegas (1969) went out as the main attraction with Sandy Dennis romantic drama Sweet November (1969); Angie Dickinson romance Lovers Must Learn (aka Rome Adventure, 1962) with violent Sam Peckinpah western The Deadly Companions (1961); Faye Dunaway-Rossano Brazzi tragic romance A Place for Lovers (1969) with Glenn Ford western Heaven with a Gun (1969); and the sixth iteration of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series The Karate Killers (1967) with Alexander Mackendrick’s Californian beach comedy Don’t Make Waves (1967) starring Tony Curtis and Claudia Cardinale.

Other times, there was clearly an element of making the best of a bad job, how to otherwise explain thriller David McCallum in non-U.N.C.L.E. thriller The Heroin Gang (aka Sol Madrid, 1968) – the main attraction – being matched with David Niven-Deborah Kerr occult oddity Eye of the Devil, which had been sitting on the shelf for two years; Ann-Margret showcase The Swinger (1966) with Rock Hudson sci fi Seconds (1966) directed by John Frankenheimer; and French sex romp Benjamin (aka Diary of an Innocent Boy, 1968) with the violent prison-set Riot (1969) starring Jim Brown and Gene Hackman.

The only genre, outside of horror, that accommodated the double bill was comedy as seen through the teaming of Who’s Minding the Store (1963) starring Jerry Lewis and Jill St John and Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed (1963) with Dean Martin; Jerry Lewis again in The Patsy (1964) with Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964); and Tony Curtis starrer Drop Dead Darling (aka Arrivederci, Baby, 1966) with Warren Beatty and Leslie Caron in Promise Her Anything (1966).

Some Elvis Presley musicals were considered too lightweight to be released without a support –  It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963) was bracketed with swashbuckler Swordsman of Siena (1962) starring Stewart Granger; Kissin’ Cousins (1964) with Pat Boone comedy Never Put It in Writing (1964); Tickle Me (1965) with Soldier in the Rain (1963) – only given a full release two years after completion due to star Steve McQueen’s increasing popularity;  California Holiday (aka Spinout, 1966) with sword-and-sandal epic Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (1963); and Double Trouble (1967) with western Hondo and the Apaches (1967), a feature stitched together from two episodes of TV series Hondo. Others Elvis pictures were deemed quite capable of looking after themselves at the box office – Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), Roustabout (1964), and Easy Come, Easy Go (1967), for example, released as single bills.

Some programs seemed terrific value for money, films that individually might struggle to find an audience, but together seemed a worthwhile visit. I would have been quite happy to line up for any of the following:  John Ford western Sergeant Rutledge (1960) plus A Tall Story with Anthony Perkins and Jane Fonda; Never Take Sweets (Candy) from a Stranger (1960) and Brigitte Bardot  crime drama Come Dance With Me (1959); France Nuyen in John Sturges’ A Girl Named Tamiko (1962) and Debbie Reynolds in My Six Loves (1963); and Rod Taylor and Jane Fonda in romance Sunday in New York (1963) plus Glenn Ford and Stella Stevens in comedy western Company of Cowards (aka Advance to the Rear, 1964).

For that matter I’d be easily tempted into a program comprising Rod Taylor as Young Cassidy (1965) and Glenn Ford-Henry Fonda modern western The Rounders (1965); Sidney Poitier in A Patch of Blue (1965) and Ann-Margret romantic comedy Made in Paris (1966); Robert Stack and Elke Sommer thriller The Peking Medallion (aka The Corrupt Ones, 1967) and Jane Fonda in comedy Bachelor Girl Apartment (aka Any Wednesday, 1966); and Rod Taylor as Chuka (1967) in the Gordon Douglas western and David Janssen in thriller The Warning Shot (1967).

Count me in for the following combos: Charlton Heston in WW2 drama Counterpoint (1967) coupled with James Garner adventure The Pink Jungle (1968); George Segal hunting serial killer Rod Steiger in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) and Sidney Poitier in The Slender Thread (1965) – receiving a full release somewhat late in the day on the back of the star’s recent box office; British home invasion thriller The Penthouse (1967) and heist masterclass Grand Slam (1967); and Burt Lancaster-Deborah Kerr drama The Gypsy Moths (1969) and James Garner as Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe (1969).

Imagining either The Wonders of Aladdin (1961) or Tarzan Goes to India (1962) as single bill fodder would be a stretch, a double bill the best solution. In any case, since Disney pushed all its product through the rival Odeon chain, ABC was short of family-friendly programs for the school holiday periods. Hence the coupling of Son of Spartacus (aka The Slave, 1962) starring Steve Reeves with Flipper (1964) or Tarzan’s Three Challenges (1963) with Flipper and the Pirates (aka Flipper’s New Adventure, 1964).

Equally, you might wonder what had gone so wrong with Kirk Douglas Korean War drama The Hook (1963) that it ended up on the lower end of a double bill with airline stewardess comedy Come Fly with Me (1963). And you might be surprised to discover which films weren’t rated strong enough box office to go out on their own. James Garner and Julie Andrews in cynical WW2 drama The Americanization of Emily (1964) required support from the first The Man from U.N.C.L.E. adventure To Trap a Spy (1964) (Equally odd given the series’ later fame that the latter was merely a support.)

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in The Sandpiper (1965) were given a helping hand by Miss Marple mystery Murder Ahoy! (1964). Sophia Loren as Lady L (1965) plus an all-star cast including Paul Newman required release assistance from Glenn Ford-Rita Hayward film noir The Money Trap (1965). Sizzling London box office and critical adoration didn’t save Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) from being paired with Sandra Dee comedy Doctor, You’ve Got To Be Kidding (1967). Charlton Heston western Will Penny (1968) was bundled up with Tarzan and the Great River (1967).

Nothing pointed to Doris Day’s fading box office prowess more than Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968) being hooked up to Raquel Welch bikini caper The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968). An Oscar nomination for Joanne Woodward in drama Rachel (aka Rachel, Rachel, 1968) wasn’t enough to see it home without the accompaniment of Tony Curtis period comedy The Chastity Belt (aka On the Way to the Crusades, 1967). Goodbye, Columbus might have been a huge hit in the USA and turned Ali McGraw into a star but as an unknown her debut feature went out with Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968).

On the other hand, if a feature was considered too weak to play on its own, it might be withdrawn from the British ABC circuit before the week was over, a fate that befell Maureen O’Hara starrer Battle of the Villa Florita (1965), Jeffrey Hunter thriller Brainstorm (1965) and, unusually given its source, a bestseller by Arthur Hailey, Hotel (1966) starring Rod Taylor.

One of the ways to get round the circuit system that limited showing of a film generally to a single week was to double up two hits for a second tilt at the box office.

The advent of the reissue double bill made studios reassess what constituted a successful combo.  James Bond, Clint Eastwood, Pink Panther and cheesecake duos (One Million Years B.C., 1966,  starring Raquel Welch paired with She, 1965, headlining Ursula Andress), and speedy revivals of recent hits, such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967)/Bullitt (1968). showed that such programs could do just as well, if not better, by targeting a specific audiences as attempting to spread appeal.

The single-bill was in decline throughout the 1960s. On the ABC circuit in the U.K., for example, the number of single bills shown in an individual year peaked at 37 in 1963 before sharply falling to an average of 28 for the next six years. In other words, while ABC worked its way through a total of 67 movies in 1963, for the rest of the decade it was screening an average of 76 a year.

The following decade it was a different story as the circuit release system crumpled under the weight of long-runners like The Godfather (1972) and Jaws (1975) that sucked up so much juice in first run there was little left at the box office when they hit the suburban/small town circuit. The single bill was back on top by the end of 1970s – only eight double bills shown in 1979.

More typical of the 1970s double bill – two top stars in movies that hadn’t quite hit the box office mark Stateside so were bundled together as a more audience-friendly attraction.

(Of course, I’m ignoring here those independent cinemas – the Scala in London’s King’s Cross or the Prince Charles in Leicester Square – that became famous for making up their own double bills, many of which examples went into legend.)

Gradually, except for very occasional reissues, the double bill was consigned to history until the public this year, of its own accord (though perhaps driven by a clever social media campaign) changed its tune. I’m a perennial supporter of the do-it-yourself double bill. On my weekly jaunt to the cinema I see back-to-back two films of my own choosing. But I’m guessing that cinema buffs regularly make up their own double bills from their own collections or digging out what’s on offer from mainstream networks and the streamers. So I’m not as surprised as some that what appears a one-off phenomenon caught on so fast.

Note: I’d be interested to know if the double bills I’ve mentioned above were shown in the USA or the rest of the world for that matter.

SOURCE: Allen Eyles, ABC, The First Name in Entertainment (Cinema Theatre Association, 1993) p122-127.

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