Category: Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes: “Tora! Tora!” Tora!” (1970)

In cinematic terms director Richard Fleischer’s work on a Pearl Harbor project had begun in 1962, for a proposed movie called Zackary, the true story of an American spy living in Japan prior to the infamous attack. Fleischer signed a one-year contract with Dino de Laurantiis, the Italian producer behind the director’s previous movie Barabbas (1962). Italian screenwriters had a crack at the tale, then, in a foretaste of things to come, de Laurentiis turned to a Japanese writer whose idea of a screenplay was restricted to a document less than two pages in length. And so began one of the director’s periods in movie purgatory.

After Zackary was abandoned, Fleischer was put to work on four other concepts, none of which made their way to the screen. Worse, the pay-checks stopped coming and Fleischer sued Dino for a million dollars. Next up was The Nightrunners of Bengal from the bestseller by John Master for Samuel Bronston (El Cid, 1961). That, too, ended up in the courts.

If those rollercoasters weren’t enough, Fleischer revived his career with Fantastic Voyage (1966) and nearly sunk it with the financially disastrous Doctor Dolittle (1967), resuscitated his standing again with The Boston Strangler (1968) and dug another commercial hole with Che! (1969).

But he was the first port of call when producer Elmo Williams and his paymaster Darryl F. Zanuck, for whom Fleischer had made The Big Gamble (1961), decided on the biggest gamble in Hollywood history outside of Gone with the Wind (1939) and Cleopatra (1963).  In some respects Fleischer was on board as makeweight. For the undeniable directorial star of the show was intended to be legendary Japanese helmsman Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai, 1954). Never mind that the vast bulk of the global paying public had never heard of him, let alone pronounce his name, Kurosawa undoubtedly represented a critical coup. American critics responsible for building appreciation of him in academic circles were unlikely to lambast him for working with Hollywood, especially as, in the even-handed manner of this project, Kurosawa would be telling the story of the attack on Pearl Harbor from the Japanese point-of-view.

In fact, it wasn’t so much one epic, as two parallel films, telling the tale from opposing perspective, edited together.

But just getting to the filming stage had required research of Cecil B. DeMille proportions. Dr Gordon Prang of Maryland University had spent years on the subject, interviewing every participant on either side. He broke down the research into a daily accounting of the year prior to December 7, 1961, and a second-by-second analysis of the day before the attack. Every incident used in the film came from this research.

The bigger problem was assembling a Japanese fleet. Only one destroyer remained of the Japanese World War Two taskforce. The rest had been sunk. To do the movie justice, Twentieth Century Fox had to someow conjure up – just from the Japanese side – six aircraft carriers and the 353 aircraft they transported plus another 27 vessels that made up the escort. Whether the U.S. Navy would have been keen on lending a hand, it wouldn’t be much help either in providing the necessary material since most of its fleet from that period had long since been mothballed.

A million dollars was spent on a set that comprised half a battleship that could float and be towed. The rest was miniatures, but given the scale, most of these would come in around the 40-foot mark. There were 19 Japanese miniatures and 10 American.  

There were no Japanese Zero planes either. So 28 Vultee AT-6 aircraft were stretched six feet and adapted to resemble the Japanese plane. The production team raided the country for Flying Fortresses, P-40s and VT-13s that could serve the purpose if reconditioned. Dozens of vehicles from the era period were rescued from junkyards and repaired, restored and repainted.

Coordinating the work of the two directors was always going to be the main problem. How would the styles fit? For the scheme to work did one of Fleischer or Kurosawa have to assume supreme commander status? It didn’t help that neither could speak the other’s language. The few meetings held between the two directors were entirely about the Kurosawa section of the screenplay. To Fleischer’s astonishment, at the rather aggressive nudging of Elmo Williams, Kurosawa made concessions.

Fleischer came up with the practical solution to melding the two separate movies. His suggestion was: don’t do it. He intended showing the Americans as sloppy and overly-relaxed while Kurosawa wanted to emphasize the spit and polish of the Japanese Navy. The contradictory approaches would make each section appear such opposites as to make the entire production seamless.

Surprisingly, the studio won some cooperation from the U.S. government in the shape of the loan of an aircraft carrier. But such goodwill did not go unnoticed and the studio was forced to repay the Defense Department $515,000 for its use. But, in general, the Government was not inclined to cooperate, wanting paid for everything they supplied.  Off-duty soldiers and sailors were received standard Hollywood fees to act as extras. Every piece of machinery had to be rented. Tugs, Elmo Williams soon discovered, were available only at extortionate cost.

Water explosions were not only time-consuming but if the production encountered too much delay they become waterlogged and didn’t explode. Extras found it hard not to react to the explosions all around and just as difficult to wait for cues.

The biggest, most expensive and most spectacular, scene was the one battleship, the USS Nevada, that somehow managed to escape the harbor only to be attacked by dive-bombers. As mentioned, the only battleship constructed was only half-built. Part of what was missing were the engines. So it needed to be towed into position and allowed to drift on the current past five strategically-placed cameras with dozens of waters explosions synchronized to split-second timing. There were explosions on the deck, too, and stuntmen ready to be blown overboard. The planning and choreography required to show all hell breaking loose was staggering. The sequence was so expensive it would be impossible to re-stage.

Disaster on a movie set does not require everything possible to go wrong. Just one thing. In this case the ship got underway sooner than expected. With everyone on set working to sight cues, naturally they just did what was expected. Except it was unexpected. And the worst kind of unexpected. The water was ripped apart by explosions, the stuntmen were diving into the water, bullets and bombs were raining everywhere.

And the cameras had not turned an inch. The battle was half over before anything was photographed.

Fleischer and Williams had no alternative but to send their footage to the labs anyway. It would be processed overnight and screened the next morning to studio bosses. Fleischer expected to be fired. Luckily, they had filmed sufficient action for Zanuck to send a congratulatory telegram.

But the Fleischer experience – his section of the movie came in ahead of time – was nothing as bad as the Japanese one.  Kurosawa hired business tycoons with no acting experience for “all but the leading roles” in the hope they would finance his next picture. He was as obsessive over detail as David Lean, shutting down production to repaint the set or replace a set of books on a wall. Kurosawa’s production also required a fake battleship, at a cost of $1.6 million. He built it wrong. The rate of filming was catastrophically slow. An unhappy atmosphere turned disastrous when the director turned on an assistant. The upshot was the most feted Japanese director of all time was fired.  

Fleischer blamed the studio for forcing Kurosawa to work in the Hollywood manner, interfering with the work of a director who had achieved his fame by being autonomous. The only scene filmed by Kurosawa that ended up in the picture was that of the American ambassador in the US embassy in Tokyo.

Unsurprisingly, many took issue with the notion of making the film at all. In the U.S., Representative John M. Murphy called it “an affront to americans fighting in vietname…every ethical standard is besmisrched by the Hollywood-Pentagon hook-up to produce a film glorifying the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.2  

One of the last 70mm roadshows and erroneously viewed as a financial disaster on account of its performance in the United States, in fact the movie made a reasonable profit from its global release and, of course, a fortune in the course of its lifetime, counting television, DVD and streaming.

SOURCES: Richard Fleischer, Just Tell Me When To Cry, (Carroll and Graf, 1993) p227-233, 273-287; “Controversy Boils Up As Tora! Opens,” Desfret News, September 25, 1970, p8C.

Behind the Scenes: When Box Office Booms, United Artists 1968

Without a James Bond to guarantee a winner, major studio United Artists invested so wisely in production in 1968 that it virtually doubled its investment. From 30 films costing a total of $60 million, the studio hit the target with rentals of $115 million.

This was in large part due to a relative newcomer, a certain Clint Eastwood. UA’s share of the costs of the final film in the Sergio Leone trilogy The Good, The Bad and the Ugly had amounted to just $972,000 and that bought it the distribution rights to most of Europe, the US and the rest of the world. The picture was a hit Stateside with $5.2 million in rentals (the studio share of box office gross once the cinema had taken its cut) and it took in another $5 million at the global ticket wickets. The grand total of $10.2 million was ten times the cost, and this was before Easy Rider the following year made cost-to-profit ratio a significant measure of success.

But UA had also forked out $1.67 million to make Eastwood’s first American western, Hang ‘Em High directed by Ted Post with Inger Stevens as the female lead.  That racked up just over $6 million in the domestic market with another $3 million overseas, totalling $9.04 million.

But whereas those in the know, based on returns for the first two spaghetti westerns, could have predicted a solid audience response to the Clint Eastwood duo, that was hardly the case for a low-budget comedy with two stars whose movie careers had largely derailed.

Although a major star on television thanks to I Love Lucy, and a considerable power in television production – her company Desilu produced Mission Impossible, Star Trek and The Untouchables –  Lucille Ball was a spent force in the movies. She hadn’t made a picture in five years – Critic’s Choice (1963) flopped – and only two in the last decade. While still in demand, Henry Fonda was more likely to play second lead – to Richard Widmark in Madigan (1968) or James Stewart in Firecreek (1968) – or a supporting role in a big budget film and on those rare occasions when he was top-billed, Welcome to Hard Times (1967), the movie flopped.

Yours, Mine and Ours was based on a non-fiction best-seller, a melding of gigantic proportions of two families, totalling a dozen children. The comic opportunities were obvious to writer-director Melville Shavelson, back on home ground after Israeli war epic Cast a Giant Shadow (1966). A feel-good comedy without any sex was what Disney did, not a studio known for breaking boundaries. If nobody expected much, even if Ball could drag in her television fans, Hollywood had forgotten about the forgotten audiences, the older generation left out in the cold by the spate of movies mainlining on sex and violence. It proved the ideal antidote to the previous year’s The Graduate.

Made for just $1.7 million (plus $455,000 deferred, payable only if the movie went into the black) it was outrageously successful, knocking up $13 million in global rentals. Foreign audiences were less taken but by then nobody cared for it had scored over $11 million in rentals in the U.S, placing ninth in the annual box office league.

Although it cost considerably more – $4.3 million – UA pulled out another plum with Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway romantic thriller The Thomas Crown Affair which ransacked the global box office to the tune of $11.2 million in rentals.

Whereas, excepting the latter, all these had been low-budget gambles, UA took an almighty risk with musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the closest it came to James Bond given they shared the same author in Ian Fleming. Dick Van Dyke was in Mary Poppins form, but co-star Shirley Anne Howe was no Julie Andrews. The budget was a whopping $11.9 million, more than double the cost of its next most expensive production, The Charge of the Light Brigade. It just about sneaked home, earning rentals of $14.8 million. While, technically, the studio’s biggest hit at the box office, in terms of profit it lagged way behind.

Another risky venture was war film The Devil’s Brigade starring an out-of-favor William Holden who hadn’t had a hit since the start of the decade. Budgeted at $4.7 million there were some anxious moments at UA HQ when the domestic tally was just $3.85 million but audiences overseas were more welcoming and, in the end, the global tally of $8.6 million made it a certified hit. 

The $3 million spent, respectively, on comedy The Party starring Peter Sellers and western The Scalphunters with Burt Lancaster also hit the profit lode, the former with a global pot of $4.5 million, the latter $4.75 million.

There was also shrewd investment in overseas films. Beatles animated feature Yellow Submarine torpedoed $3.6 million on a budget of $1.1 million. British coming of age sex drama Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush cost just $602,000 but pulled in $2.5 million. A couple of French arties hit home runs. Claude Lelouche’s Vivre Pour Vivre with Yves Montand and Candice Bergen racked up $4.4 million but cost only $561,000 and Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black brought in rentals of just over $2 million on a budget of $747,000.

Out of 30 films, 17 ended up in profit, which was a pretty good result for an industry that was about to hit the financial buffers from overspending. With budgets averaging just $2 million the studio reduced the risk factor. While UA had built a successful business in the 1950s and 1960s by paying top dollar to stars, ceding control and financing vanity projects, now it was less inclined to gamble on unproven marquee value. Only Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Burt Lancaster, Peter Sellers and William Holden had the kind of box office track record that would have studios lining up to match their fees. 

SOURCE: “United Artists Corporation and Subsidiaries Motion Picture Negative Costs for Pictures Released in the Year Ended December 28, 1968,” United Artists Files, University of Wisconsin.

Behind the Scenes: The Roadshow Conundrum

Widescreen – Cinemascope, Vistavision et al – had brought audiences back to the cinema in the 1950s so the next decade, with box office cratering, Hollywood doubled down on an even bigger concept, big-budget 70mm extravaganzas, sometimes with the added benefit of Cinerama, to be shown in separate performances (two shows a day rather than four or five) which challenged the prevalent continuous performance system of exhibition.

From an academic perspective the project appeared – with minor hiccups – a major success as Ben Hur (1959) gave way to West Side Story (1961), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and How the West Was Won (1962)and from there to the solid gold box office of The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago (both 1965). But there were obstacles to overcome.

Firstly, you needed the cinemas. The U.S. had little problem filling that need, exhibition was going through an explosion on a scale unseen since 1950. From 1961 work began on building 170 cinemas and 72 drive-ins and the rate of construction would scarcely abate for the rest of the decade, allowing plenty room for houses to decide to pitch their tent as roadshow cinemas. It was the oppsite situation in the United Kingdom, with hardly any cinemas beng planned. most of what were termed new cinemas little more than the converation of a giant cinema into two or three more screens. In Glasgow, for example, the Coliseum which revamped in a 70mm Cinerama house was nothing more than a redeployment of an existing cinema while the ABC2 towards the end of the decad was built by splitting the existing ABC Regal. In Britain roadshow capacity was constrained compared to the American experience.

Secondly, cinemas had to install the expensive 70mm projection equipment, though the prospect of increased ticket prices generally softened the blow of that outlay.

Thirdly, And then studios had to find enough cinemas willing to fall in with their concept and agree to hand over their houses for the long runs deemed essential to the success of these movie behemoths, often clocking in around the three-hour mark.

Follow the release of the roadshows in the world’s biggest cities like New York, London, Paris and Tokyo and you will find there was no shortage of cinemas willing to accommodate the grand plan. But go further afield, beyond areas where academics and historians usually pitch their tents, and you will find a different story.

Until recently, I had been one of the historians who accepted the notion that roadshow fitted seamlessly into the exhibition business, that 70mm pictures ran for months – if not years – at a time in countless venues worldwide. But when I started to examine the roadshow from the perspective of my home town of Glasgow, in Scotland –  the country’s biggest city and outside of London the one with the biggest appetite for movies – I found a different story. And I wonder if that experience was replicated all over the world rather than the previously accepted model.

At the start of the 1960s Glasgow – whose ten first run cinemas lay along two intersecting streets – boasted just one roadshow house, the Gaumont, which currently, and for the previous 18 months, had been showing South Pacific (1958). The Gaumont only scheduled nine shows a week, one per evening plus matinees on three days, rather than the 12 or 15 shows a week more likely in New York or London. One of the roadshow’s big selling points – films playing until demand ceased – was also its Achilles heel. A movie that performed as well as expected could not be shifted. So there was no room at the cinematic inn for the flurry of roadshows headed Glasgow’s way. There was going to be an unavoidable queue unless distributors did the unthinkable and skipped roadshow in favour of general release.

The situation wasn’t helped by the British deciding that movies not made with roadshow in mind such as The Nun’s Story (1959) should be given the separate performance increased price treatment.

For a time in Glasgow the ABC Regal in Sauchiehall St – along with the Odeon in Renfield St the city’s most dominant picture house – offered temporary relief. In fact it had already stepped into the breach for The Nun’s Story. But since the Regal was the jewel in the crown of the ABC chain’s distribution network in the West of Scotland that caused further release issues. Independent arthouse the Cosmo was also willing to step up to the plate, hosting the two-year-old Gigi (1958).

But it wasn’t until September 19, 1960, that Ben-Hur (1959), considered the hottest picture on the planet, was given an opening at the Regal. That was good news and bad news. It ran for nine months which was great for the Regal but it caused a massive backlog in the ABC circuit which had to offload top product to rival cinemas. The Regal was clearly so crucial to the ABC operation that it didn’t dip its toes into roadshow waters for another year, for King of Kings (1961), but at Xmas rather than Easter which possibly accounted for its poor performance – only five weeks of a run. Before the ABC Coliseum reopened as a roadshow/Cinerama venue in September 1963 with MGM’s How the West Was Won (1962) – almost a year after its London opening – the only roadshow given screen-time at the Regal was Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) which ran for six weeks.

But with the Regal refusing to play ball most of the time, what happened to the rest of the industry’s roadshow releases? The Gaumont took what it could – Lawrence of Arabia (26 weeks), The Longest Day (23), Can-Can (18), Spartacus (15), West Side Story (14), The Alamo (13) and El Cid (13) the standouts, playing for a “season” or more. Exodus and Judgement at Nuremberg were poorly received, just three and two weeks respectively.

And that was the final flaw in the Hollywood grand notion. When these big roadshow movies hit a box office brick wall, the cinemas primed to receive the product had to find other movies to prop up the system. The idea of being just an occasional source for roadshow might work for the likes of the ABC Regal, but provided an unnecessary complication for the Gaumont, the city’s de facto roadshow house. It was helped out by movies made in 70mm  that American distributors quickly shuffled into general release such as Barabbas, which ran in Glasgow for seven weeks at the Gaumont.

To plug holes left by lack of audience interest in the likes of Exodus or Judgement at Nuremberg, the Gaumont simply improvised. Solomon and Sheba was not made with roadshow in mind but with big stars in Yul Brynner and Gina Lollobrigida, a Biblical setting and healthy running time, it was deemed worthy of roadshow, running for nine weeks.

A less obvious contender for roadshow was The Guns of Navarone, but the excellent cast and British tub-thumping turned it into a contender and it ran for a quite astonishing 21 weeks, especially as that included more performances than usual, a matinee every day rather than three allocated days.

The appearance of Psycho at the Gaumont was a clever trick. Alfred Hitchcock had determined that the film, to maintain its shock value  and for the publicity value of such a move, must be shown out of the standard continuous performance system. To fulfil that obligation it ran as a separate performance number and at the only cinema in town known for regularly taking that exhibition route, so less of a shock to the public, but with three performances a day to meet demand. That as another nine weeks eaten up.

For the rest of the time, when the roadshow well was dry or failed to hit box office targets, Gaumont simply turned general releases into roadshow, 35mm and all. Song without End starring Dirk Bogarde ran for four weeks, Tunes of Glory with Alec Guinness and John Mills locking horns.  Some pictures, deemed too weak for roadshow, like Cimarron, Pepe and Gypsy were simply chucked into general release in Glasgow.

Once the production of roadshows hit its stride in the mid-60s, with both the Gaumont and Coliseum in play, most of the 70mm features found a home, the Regal called in occasionally to help out (as with My Fair Lady and Cheyenne Autumn)  although the British predilection for blowing up 35mm movies given a general release in the U.S. to fit the 70mm roadshow format (The Dirty Dozen and Where Eagles Dare the most notable) meant demand always outstripped supply.

The roadshow business also served to highlight differences between cities. The length of time a roadshow picture ran was never consistent and some of the difference were quite marked, a film that was a huge success in one city not quite as sterling a performer in another.

Behind the Scenes: “Planet of the Apes” (1968)

J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) saw a much-needed boost to a drifting career vanish when he ducked out of this project – he had spent considerable time developing the project – in favor of Mackenna’s Gold (1969). Blake Edwards, first director attached, probably also lamented losing out. This was to have been Edwards last outside film before committing exclusively to Mirisch.

Producer Arthur P. Jacobs, who had bought the rights to Pierre Boulle’s Monkey Planet in 1963, could hardly believe his luck after the calamitous Doctor Dolittle (1967). Unusually, the two films were not cross-collaterized, a standard studio device whereby the losses on one film were played against the profits in the other, which would have almost certainly resulted in no profit payments to Jacobs.

And you could probably say the same for eventual director Franklin J. Schaffner, relegated to television and movie stiffs like The Double Man (1967) after the failure of big-budget historical drama The War Lord (1965) and his abortive attempt to film the Travis McGee novels of John D. MacDonald, whose total sales exceeded 14 million. He wasn’t involved in Darker than Amber (1970), the first McGee title to be filmed. Heston, who Schaffner had directed in The War Lord, pushed for his involvement.

Charlton Heston was also in dire need of career resuscitation, his past five movies – Sam Peckinpah’s Major Dundee (1965), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), The War Lord (1965), Khartoum (1966) and realistic western Will Penny (1967) – had all tanked. “In my view,” he opined, “I haven’t made a commercial film since Ben-Hur,” clearly ignoring the success of El id (1961).

And once it became a success Warner Brothers regretted letting it go. The studio had been involved in the project when Blake Edwards was to direct.  The movie was cancelled due to cost – it was budgeted then at $3-$3.5 million – and script and production problems. The studio might also have shied away after learning of the booming budget and lengthening schedule for MGM’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Twentieth Century Fox ended up forking out $5.8 million to turn the project into reality.

As was often the norm in Twentieth Century Fox pictures, studio head honcho Darryl F. Zanuck found a part for his mistress, in this case Linda Harrison as Nova, the mute love interest. She  was a graduate of the studio’s program of investment in young talent. Others included Jacqueline Bissett (The Detective, 1968) and Edy Williams (The Secret Life of An American Wife, 1968).  Had Raquel Welch (One Million Years B.C, 1966) considered the opportunity to don a fur bikini again, it is doubtful Harrison would have won the role. But she turned it down as did Ursula Andress (The Southern Star, 1969). Angelique Pettyjohn (Heaven with a Gun, 1969) was auditioned

Former child star Roddy McDowall (Lassie Come Home, 1943), Kim Hunter (A Streetcar Names Desire, 1951) and Maurice Evans (The War Lord) fleshed out the ape contingent. Ingrid Bergman (The Visit, 1964), also in much need of a career uplift, turned down the role of Zira. Other stars in the frame for roles included Yul Brynner, Alec Guinness and Laurence Olivier. Edward G. Robinson should have played Zaius, but couldn’t manage with the make-up.

Source material was Monkey Planet by Pierre Boulle, author of Bridge on the River Kwai. Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling took a year and a reported 30 drafts to turn in a viable screenplay and the former blacklisted Michael Wilson, whose name had been removed from the credits of Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962), added the polish.  Wilson had won an Oscar for A Place in the Sun (1951) and another one for Friendly Persuasion (1956) although that was actually awarded to Jessamyn West since Wilson’s involvement was kept secret. If he had not been blacklisted, he would have been in the unusual position of having won four screenplay Oscars, although in the end the others were retrospectively awarded.

If you were looking for a sci-fi picture with dramatic heft, decent action, mysterious outcome and an examination of the human condition this was a more straightforward bet than 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). While Fox reckoned its previous sci-fi venture Fantastic Voyage (1966) had worked out well, it had reservations about the cost of Planet of the Apes and the possibility of making an ape setting believable. In this case the special effects’ conundrum was make-up for the apes. If they just looked like humans wearing monkey suits the movie would not fly. Fox spent $5,000 on a test with Heston in a scene with two apes before it greenlit the movie.

Faces that could not express emotion and were as stiff as a botox overdose would invite audience ridicule. In the end the studio spent a reported million dollars on pioneering ape renditions by John Chambers, who  previously been a surgical technician repairing the faces of wounded soldiers. He had a team of 78 make-up artists There were almost as many scripts as crew and the changes wrought as the picture moved closer to being greenlit were to switch from a futuristic setting to a primeval one (which, incidentally, saved on costs), covering up the breasts of the female prisoners and inventing the stunning ending.

There were three possible endings, the one shot being that favored by the star.. Heston’s hoarse voice was not in the script, but an incidental by-product of him catching the flu. Apart from studio sets, the movie was filmed in blistering heat in Arizona. The rocket ship crashed into Lake Powell in Utah, ape city – modeled on the work of celebrated Spanish architect Gaudi – was constructed in Malibu Creek State Park, and the final scene was filmed on Zuma Beach in Malibu.

Unlike Fantastic Voyage which told audiences what the mission was, but in keeping with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes opens with mystery. Like Rosemary’s Baby, the movie is viewed through the eyes of an innocent, one who cannot quite cotton on to his fall down the evolutionary food chain. Albeit more hirsute and muscular than Mia Farrow, nonetheless the casting of Heston dupes the audience into thinking he is somehow going to win, rather than just escape. He is an experiment who has wandered into the wrong planet. But there are few films that can top that shock ending.  And the movie more than fulfills the “social comment,” on which Heston was very keen, contained in the Boulle novel.

SOURCES: Russo, Joe, Landsman, Larry, and Gross, Edward, Planet of the Apes Revisited, The Behind the Scenes Story of the Classic Science Fiction Saga (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St Martin Griffin, 2001); Hannan, The Making of The Guns of Navarone, 187. “Warners Ape World,” Variety, March 18, 1964, 4; “High Costs Impress Capital,” Variety, March 23, 1964, 3; “Planet of Apes Off for Present,” Variety, March 10, 1965. “Michael Wilson Under His Own Name For A.P. Jacobs,” Variety, December 14, 1966, 7. “MacDonald Novels Cue Major Pictures Corp.,” Variety, May 17, 1967, 5; Austen, David, “It’s All A Matter Of Size,” Films and Filming, April 1968, 5; “Fox’s Talent School,” Variety, June 26, 1968, 13; Film Locations for Planet of the Apes,” www.film-locations.com.

I have to confess this Behind the Scenes article would have been better if I had not loaned out – and never got it back – my copy of The Making of Planet of the Apes by JW Rinzler which was published five years ago.

Behind the Scenes: Sherlock Holmes and Other Stories, Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down, United Artists 1966 – Part Two

Although Billy Wilder had written a script based on The Life of Sherlock Holmes, he was not considered as its director. Mirisch was looking at a budget in the region of $2 million, which would rule out any big star. However, there were issues with the Conan Doyle Estate which was in the process of firing up other movies based on Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Terror (1965) being the most recent. That had been the brainchild of Henry Lester and perhaps to general astonishment these days Mirisch had  agreed Lester would be allowed to make more Sherlock Holmes pictures as long as they remained very low-budget, on the assumption, presumably, that the marketplace would treat them as programmers rather than genuine competition.

However, Mirisch and UA retained the upper hand as regards the Conan Doyle Estate and “could cut him (Lester) off at such time as we have made definite plans to proceed.”

There was another proviso to the deal. The Estate would agree to forbid any further television productions unless Mirisch decided it wished to go down the small screen route itself. It was odd that Mirisch had eased Billy Wilder out of the frame given the mini-major had enjoyed considerable success with the director on Some Like it Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960), a commercial partnership that would extend to The Fortune Cookie (1966).

Instead, Mirisch lined up British director Bryan Forbes who would be contracted to write a screenplay based on the Wilder idea. The sum offered – $10,000 – was considered too low, but it was intended as enticement, to bring Forbes into the frame as director. If Forbes refused to bite, “the only other name suggested and agreed upon was that of John Schlesinger.”  Although David Lean was mooted, UA were not in favour. Mirisch didn’t want to risk paying for a screenplay before there was a director in position.

The offer of the Sherlock Holmes picture was seen as a sop to Forbes. At this meeting, Mirisch had canned The Egyptologists, a project which Forbes believed had been greenlit. And why would he not when he was being paid $100,000 for the screenplay. In bringing the project to an untimely close Mirisch hoped to limit its financial exposure to two-thirds of that  fee. Should Forbes balk at Sherlock Holmes, he was to be offered The Mutiny of Madame Yes, whose initial budget was set at $1.5 million, plus half a million for star Shirley Maclaine. Another Eady Plan project, this was aimed to go before the cameras the following year. If Forbes declined, then Mirisch would try Norman Jewison with Clive Donner and Guy Hamilton counted as “additional possibilities.”

As for Billy Wilder he had much bigger fish to fry. He was seeking a budget of $7.5 million to adapt into a film the Franz Lehar play The Count of Luxembourg to pair Walter Matthau and Brigitte Bardot. Should Matthau pass, Wilder would try for Cary Grant (whose retirement had not yet been announced) or Rex Harrison. Both sides played negotiation hardball. UA currently in the hole for $21 million for The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) and Mirisch, having pumped $13 million into the yet-to-be-release Hawaii (1966), didn’t want to commit to another unwieldy expensive project. So Mirisch insisted the project advance on a “step basis” allowing UA to reject the project after seeing the screenplay. Wilder countered by insisting that if it went into turnaround he, rather than the studio, would have the right to hawk it elsewhere (generally, studios tried to recover their costs if a movie was picked up by another studio). But Wilder was also in placatory mood and even if UA rejected this idea he was willing to work with the studio on a Julie Andrews project called My Sister and I.

However, UA and Mirisch were all show. “After Billy left the meeting,” read the minutes, “it was agreed we would not proceed with The Count of Luxembourg since we did not want to give Billy the right to take it elsewhere if United Artists did not agree to proceed.” Harold Mirisch was detailed to give Billy the bad news, but use a different excuse.

Mirisch was also on the brink of severing links with Blake Edwards. Negotiations for a new multiple-picture deal were to be terminated, which would mean the director would only earn his previous fee of $225,000 for What Did You Do in the War Daddy? It was also sayonara for Hollywood agent Irving Swifty Lazar, whose current deal was not working out to the studio’s satisfaction.

Other long-term deals with directors were under discussion. While its previous John Sturges movie, The Hallelujah Trail (1965), had flopped, UA was still keen on the Mirisches pursuing a long-term deal with the director, feeling that he was a “good picture-maker with the right project.” To that end, it was suggested Mirisch reactivate Tombstone’s Epitaph, but emphasising Stuges had to bring the cost down.

At this point nobody knew Norman Jewison was embarking on all almighty box office roll – The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming set to hit the screens, In the Heat of the Night at screenplay stage, so Mirisch was prescient in trying to put together a long-term deal with the director. Wind on Fire and Garden of Cucumbers were seen as tentpoles for a multi-picture deal. Mirisch had already agreed a $50,000 producer’s fee for Wind of Fire, payment of one-third of which was triggered for supervising the screenplay.

The meeting also gave the greenlight to Death, Where Is Thy Sting-A-Ling, a project that would be later mired in controversy with shooting ultimately abandoned. The go-ahead was given with the proviso the Mirisches secured the services of Gregory Peck or an actor of his stature.  Budget, excepting Peck’s fee, was just over $3 million and it was another one hoping to take advantage of the Eady Plan.

This kind of production meeting was probably more typical than you would imagine, studios trying to keep talent sweet while not committing themselves to dodgy product. It’s perhaps salutary to note that of the projects under discussion, only a handful found their way onto cinema screens. Garden of Cucumbers (as Fitzwilly), How To Succeed in Business, having met budget restraints, and Tombstone’s Epitaph (as Hour of the Gun) with James Garner all surfaced in 1967 and Inspector Clouseau the following year. Neither of the Steve McQueen projects survived nor the pair proposed by Billy Wilder. High Citadel, Saddle and Ride, The Narrow Sea, The Great Japanese Train Robbery, and The Cruel Eagle failed to materialize. Billy Wilder eventually made The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes under the Mirisch auspices but not until 1970. 

Behind the Scenes: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down, United Artists 1966 – Part One

Most observers don’t have a clue why some films are made in preference to others, or even of which movies have sat in turnaround hell for years. When I was researching my book The Making of The Magnificent Seven I came across some priceless material that gave some clues regarding the process. An “Inter-Office Memorandum” dated February 3, 1966, provided an insight into how independent producers Mirisch, then allied to studio United Artists, set about giving the thumbs up or thumbs down.

The memo referred to a meeting held at the Beverley Hills Hotel on January 29-30, 1966, attended by the three Mirisch Brothers – Harold, Marvin and the recently-deceased Walter – as well as UA head honcho Arthur Krim, Herb Jaffe and David Picker. On the agenda: Inspector Clouseau, Sherlock Holmes, The Mutiny of Madame Yes, The Egyptologists, Garden of Cucumbers, Wind on Fire, High Citadel, Saddle and Ride, The Narrow Sea, The Great Japanese Train Robbery, Lydia, In the Heat of the Night, The Cruel Eagle, How To Succeed in Business, and Death, Where Is Thy Sting-a-Ling.

Separately, the group examined commitments to various talents including John Sturges, Norman Jewison, Bryan Forbes and Billy Wilder.

Top of the agenda was Inspector Clouseau, a sequel to the successful Pink Panther series, from which Peter Sellers had withdrawn. The budget was set at $3 million including $466,000 for director and star. Alan Arkin was not yet a lock, UA reserving its opinion on Arkin’s marquee’s credentials until it saw how The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), in which he was the star, performed at the box office. Should it bomb, second choice was Zero Mostel. Jonathan Winters, viewed as a “questionable choice,” was also in the running. Clive Donner was the preferred director. If he passed, next up was Guy Hamilton. (In the end both rejected the offer and it was released in 1968 with Bud Yorkin at the helm.)

Two projects on the table were mooted as vehicles for Steve McQueen. The first, Wind of Fire, was intended as “immediately following Sturges’ racing picture.”(This was Day of the Champion but a legal battle with MGM would derail this and McQueen was five years away from releasing Le Mans). Wind of Fire, to be directed by Norman Jewison, suffered from an incomplete script which restricted discussion. John Wayne had shown an interest but UA “was not really interested in Wayne,” possibly as a result of the fall-out from The Alamo (1960). The second McQueen project was the thriller Lydia based on the book by E.V Cunningham (the pseudonym of Howard Fast of Spartacus fame). Here, the script was complete and in the actor’s hands. Doris Day had been touted for female lead but Mirisch had nixed her involvement. When dealing with any major star, greenlighting a picture depended on schedules not clashing. (In the end neither project saw the light of day.)

Mirisch was also juggling two properties to star Dick Van Dyke.  The Great Japanese Train Robbery was due to commence filming in June 1966, although that meant cooperation from Columbia and Disney who had first call at that point on the actor; Disney had excused him, Columbia had not. Virna Lisi, the intended female lead, was dunped for demanding too much money, $300,000 her current asking price. In her place were suggested Claudine Auger, Catherine Deneuve, Stefania Sandrelli or Luciana Paluzzi. Although the budget was approved at around £3.3 million, the movie never went ahead.

Garden of Cucumbers with Van Dyke, though minus a female lead, was already scheduled to start shooting in August-September 1966. Proposed director, in order of preference, was Norman Jewison, Arthur Hiller or Elliott Silverstein. This project did make it over the line though the title, changed to Fitzwilly, was helmed by Delbert Mann and co-starred Barbara Feldon in her biggest role to date.

A budget of $1.89 million had been set for High Citadel, based on the Desmond Bagley thriller. UA was locked into a pay-or-play deal, which meant star James Garner would receive his salary whether or not the picture was made. However, there was a get-out clause. The studio could use Garner for another picture as long as it slotted into the same timeframe. The other options were Saddle and Ride and The Narrow Sea. Of these Mirisch preferred the former, UA the latter. But there was a directorial issue with The Narrow Sea. Mirisch had a moral commitment though not a legal contract with producer Robert Relyea to make this his directorial debut and UA didn’t want him. (In the event neither film was made.)

There were budget issues on How To Succeed in Business. UA had given the go-ahead on the basis that it would cost no more than $3.25 million but the budget had since soared by over half a million. To meet the May 1 start date, the budget had to be trimmed back to the original amout. (This was presumably done, since the movie appeared the following year). In the Heat of the Night was in the early stages of development, the production company still to see the Stirling Silliphant script, but at this stage no objections were raised. Fred Zinnemann was being considered as the director of The Cruel Eagle by Frederick E. Smith, author of 633 Squadron. (It was never greenlit).

Making movies in Britain – in order to take advantage of the tax advantages of the Eady Plan – was central to the Mirisch strategy. While Inspector Clouseau, Death, Where Is Thy Sting-a-Ling,  and The Mutiny of Madame Yes– budgets totalling around the $10 million mark – were already committed to the Eady Scheme, Mirisch was also seeking backing to set up a low-budget unit in Britain to maximize the government’s largesse. Budgets per picture would be limited to $1 million or less. In the memo they were described as “disciplined” or “service” pictures to be “produced in color.” In essence that meant basic programmers that could be sold to drive-ins and cinemas with a high movie turnover, on a rental basis if they topped the bill, for a flat fee if they were supports. This would have the added benefit, for those houses whose customers demanded a double bill, of being able to offer a program where all the revenue would end up in the Mirisch pocket.

Behind the Scenes: Top of the Flops, United Artists 1965-1969, Global Box Office – Part Two

United Artists took an unholy bath on George Stevens’ all-star The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), shouldering a colossal loss of $9.1 million in global rentals (not gross), one of the biggest financial disasters of the decade. In second place, by a long margin, was Blake Edwards’ anti-war comedy What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966). The presence of James Coburn at  a career-high thanks to the Flint spy pictures couldn’t prevent this ending up $2.75 million in the red.

Another all-star prestige war movie, though this time set in the Crimea, Tony Richardson’s The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) ran it close, registering a deficit of $2.59 million. This was not the first time the studio’s faith in Richardson proved unfounded. He had lost $1.17 million on Sailor from Gibralter (1967) and another $1 million Mademoiselle (1966), both starring French actress Jeanne Moreau, cited in divorce proceedings brought by his wife Vanessa Redgrave.

History was also unkind to John Huston, coming unstuck with romp Sinful Davey (1969), also set in Britain, and starring newcomer John Hurt. With only $250,000 in rentals in the U.S. market it dropped a total of $2.4 million. Richard Lester was also well off the mark with anti-nuke comedy The Bedsitting Room (1969) which imploded to the tune of $1.42 million.

Although Dick Van Dyke justified his fee for the studio’s Chitty,Chitty Bang Bang, his marquee status proved decidedly unjustified in two other pictures. Some Kind of Nut (1969) lost $1.36 million while Fitzwilly (1967) was $312,000 short of break-even.

British star Michael Caine also fell into the questionable category. Billion Dollar Brain (1968), his third outing as spy Harry Palmer, proved a dud, $1.18 million down while Second World War picture  Play Dirty (1968) lost out at the box office wickets to the tune of $350,000.

Others in the million-dollar-loser class were: The Honey Pot (1967) despite the presence of Rex Harrison and Cliff Robertson; Alan Arkin’s ill-fated attempt to emulate Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau (1968); Jules Dassin’s 10.30pm Summer (1966); and A Twist of Sand (1967) with Richard Johnson and Honor Blackman.  And Peter Sellers himself misjudged the material for After the Fox (1966) for it came home $432,000 short of the target.

The Witches (1967) failed to coast home on the back of new sensation Clint Eastwood in the cast plus an all-star directing team including Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti and Pier Paolo Pasolino and lost $880,000.

World War Two pictures proved too often problematic in registering global appeal. Michael Winner’s Hannibal Brooks (1969) starring Oliver Reed shed $650,000, John Guillermin’s The Bridge at Remagen (1969) was on the downside of $526,000, Richard Lester’s How I Won the War (1967) was $257,000 shy of budget and even low-budget numbers that were expected to at least break even failed to do so, The 1,000 Plane Raid (1969) missing out by $316,000 and Submarine X-1 starring James Caan by $156,000.

The notion that westerns had universal appeal turned out to be a dodgy proposition for some products. Whereas foreign made a distinctive impact in the box office for a film like Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) it did not always play out that way. Though John Sturges’ Hour of the Gun (1967) toplining  James Garner and Jason Robards did better aboard than at home that still wasn’t enough to offset losses of $627,000. Overseas rentals matched domestic for Young Billy Young (1969) starring Robert Mitchum but that still kept it out in the cold with another half a million needed to get over the line.

You would think minimal budgets would be a guarantee against outright failure, but too often promise remained unfulfilled. Charlotte Rampling and Sam Waterston were touted as rising talents when cast in Three (1969). The budget was a miserly $355,000. Yet it still lost $305,000, generating rentals of just $25,000 both at home and abroad. Bryan Forbes’ The Whisperers (1967), with Edith Evans winning an Oscar nomination, lost $180,000 on a budget of just under $400,000. The Russian version of Hamlet (1966) dropped $55,000 on a $75,000 budget.  Don’t Worry We’ll Think of a Title (1966) starring Morey Amsterdam only earned back $50,000 on its $181,000 cost.

Some movies came pretty close to break-even – another $16,000 would have seen Danger Route (1968) also with Richard Johnson reach the magic mark, American football drama Number One (1969) with Charlton Heston required another $40,000.  

SOURCE: “United Artists Corporation and Subsidiaries Motion Picture Negative Costs for Pictures Released in the Year Ended 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1969,” United Artists Files, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, University of Wisconsin.

Behind the Scenes: “The Deadly Companions / Trigger Happy” (1961)

There was enough controversy surrounding the launch of this picture without even invoking the behavior of director Sam Peckinpah. For a start its production heralded a revolution in exhibition. Cinema owners were intent on breaking the industry’s one sacrosanct law.

Since 1948 and the Paramount Decree which forced studios to shed their cinemas, it had been forbidden for a studio to operate as an exibitor and vice-versa. But the financial tsumani that hit the business at the end of the 1950s resulted in a shortfall of new releases and left exhibitors scratching around for product.

Taking the view that the situation was so dire that studios could not resolve it and imagining that the government would not look unkindly on the idea, exhibitors set up a company called Motion Pictures Investment Inc. Initially, the outfit was not so confrontational. The plan was simply to repackage old movies and send them out as reissues. There was no law against that since the exhibitors were not acting as production companies.

It was ambitious scheme, calling in 1958 for $25 million to be raised to fund a whole stream of old movies, sending them into reissue achieving the double aim of filling release gaps and preventing them from falling into the maw of television – Twentieth Century Fox in the process of selling 50 pictures dating from 1950-1955 to television for $10 million. 

The Actors’ Strike of  1960 halved production, making a dire situation intolerable. MPI bought the rights to Gary Cooper western Friendly Persuasion (1957) and put together a hefty marketing campaign to get that picture back on the market. Recognising that studios were likely to prevent their gems from being reissued when they could be sold so easily to television, MPI bit the bullet and moved into production. Pathe-America was the vehicle, “a production-distribution-exhibition project predicated on the theory that exhibitors can sense better than anybody what the pubic want on the screens.”

First film on the agenda – The Deadly Companions.

The driving force behind that picture was a female star intent on a bit of revolution of her own – Maureen O’Hara. The flame-haired actress – a star for over two decades, as comfortable in westerns like Rio Grande (1950) as dramas (The Quiet Man, 1952) and swashbucklers (The Spanish Main, 1945) had  decided her career was in need of a rejig. Demand for her services was slowing down – only four movies in the second half of the 1950s compared to 14 in the first half. 

In reality, her career was sinking fast and it felt like panic to imagine she could reconfigure herself at this late stage as a singer, signing a contract for an album first with RCA Victor in 1958 and then CBS in 1960 and starring in the Broadway musical Christine in 1960, a flop despite her “good singing voice and assured stage presence.”

But a bigger measure of her fall was that she ended up in television, spurred on initially by her brother, Charles B. Fitzsimons, who thought he could help better manage her career. Initially an actor, he had segued into production via independent producer Edward L. Alperson but without particular distinction.

They set up Tarafilm in 1958 with the aim of co-producing a series Women In the Case with CBS, profits to be evenly split. But that never surfaced and instead she was an actress for hire and at modest fees at that for, even for bigger stars, the small screen did not pay fees comparable with the movies. For the first time in her career a year passed without a single movie. In 1960 only television beckoned – Open Window, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Mrs Miniver and the DuPont Show of the Month. And there was something plaintive when O’Hara, who had espoused the freelance approach to her career, advised young stars to take a studio contracts if offered.

But Fitzsimons was feverishly working behind the scenes, trying to raise money for their Carousel movie production shingle, even going so far as applying to the U.S. Government’s Small Business Loan scheme. Without exhibitors determined to break the law, it’s doubtful they would have sourced the funding for The Deadly Companions. MPI put up nearly half the $390,000 budget for The Deadly Companions after Fitzsimons had commissioned a screenplay from novelist A.S. Fleischman.

Brian Keith was available because the television series The Westerner (1960) that had made him temporarily a star was cancelled after not even lasting a season.  He came cheap – a steal even for a low-budget picture – at $30,000. Sam Peckinpah, who had originated The Westerner, was primarily a television writer and director thirsting for an opportunity to make his mark on the big screen. So, also out of work after The Westerner was canned, he came cheap too, earning half Keith’s salary.

Peckinpah later complained about script problems, but that was par for the course with the director; if a movie failed it was someone else’s fault. O’Hara, who had worked with the best including Hitchcock and Ford, and like most top stars knew a fair bit about how and where to point a camera, later complained that Peckinpah was out of his depth. But that, too, was par for the course. Her autobiography Tis Herself was almost a litany of complaints.

The problem for O’Hara was more financial. While Peckinpah was guaranteed payment, she was not. As producer, she would be working for a fraction of her normal fee of $150,000, expecting to make that back – and more – when the movie went into profit. There was no reason to assume it would not make a decent sum, low-budget westerns having a habit of making money.

The movie was filmed on location in Arizona. The picture’s Gila City, where the bank robbery took place, was based on the Tucson of a hundred years before. Seeking authenticity, the set was constructed following artist drawings culled from the early 1860s. Props were also authentic – the doctor’s chair was from the period, the surgical instruments remnants from the era and even the apothecary jars had come from an early pharmacist shop.

Extras were genuine cowboys or Native Americans. Apaches and Papagos were hired as Native Americans. At a casting call at the Ramada Inn, producer Fitzsimons found the genuine cowboy article in the in the lobby “their Stetsons stained by sweat and faded by the sun and most of them wore working jeans and multi-colored shirts that had been washed but not ironed…leathery-faced men…speaking in low voices of how bum the cattle business was from all this drought and how fine it was a man could pick up a few dollars riding with the movie company.” Even the cactus was authentic, the director favoring scenes which featured the giant Sauaro species.

The cave for one scene was also genuine, not a stage set,  the result of an earthquake fault, 50-foot high and 40-foot across at the opening, spiralling hundreds of feet into the mountain. The roof, made up of boulders, was particularly precarious as any rumble could send it tumbling to the ground. Only essential crew were permitted for the scene which saw O’Hara firing a shotgun at an Apache. Fearing the sound of detonation might affect the roof, flash powder was used instead of cartridges.

Stunts involved included overturning a stagecoach and falling 35-feet. Stuntman Chuck Hayward nearly died during rehearsal when the horse bolted and the stagecoach struck a tree. He was married to Ellen Hayward, daughter of Joan Blondell and Dick Powell.

Perhaps the most immediately unusual aspect of the movie was the score. Among instruments used by composer Marlin Skiles were a toy trumpet, xylophone, vibraphone, kettle drum and cracked belt.

To help promote the picture the screenplay was novelized and went on to sell half a million copies, though it went out under the title Yellowleg and was not noticeably a movie tie-in.

The movie received good reviews. Box Office, which might be expected to back any exhibitor initiative, deemed it a “well above average western” with “superb performances” and “exacting direction.” Variety, which sided more with studios than exhibitors, nonetheless was mostly positive, except for “lapses and weaknesses” finding it “fairly engrossing” with O’Hara’s performance “one of her best for some time.”

As you might expect, exhibitors, too, got behind the picture. There was double “Gala World Premiere” in Tucson and Phoenix, on June 6 for the former the following night for the latter, attended by the stars. Surprisingly, given it was a target for saturation (i.e. multiple release region-by-region) and a low-budget number, it was shown in some major houses, in Detroit the 5,000-seater Fox, in Pittsburgh the 3,700-seater Stanley, a 3,600-seater in St Louis, in Buffalo the 3,000-eater Lafayette, in Cleveland the 2,739-seater Palace and in Seattle the 2,200-seater Music Hall. But bookings were scattered between June and September 1961.

But giving a  movie a helping hand would not necessarily translate into decent box office. Takings were poor – the best result a “good” $15,000 in Detroit. Cleveland produced a “fair” $9,000, St Louis a “fair” $10,000, Pittsburgh a “drab” $8,500, Buffalo a “thin” $5,000 and there was but $2,500 in Seattle. No major first run theaters signed up in Los Angeles or Kansas City, in each location going out in small multiple release, edging a “dim” $8,5000 from three cinemas in the former and a “moderate” $15,000 from three in Kansas City. Nor did first run line up to host it in New York and by the time it reached Portland it was playing on the lower half of a double bill.

In an attempt to recover some of its $60,000 loss, MPI changed the title in 1962 to Trigger Happy, altered the poster to focus on action rather than sex, and programmed it in a double bill with its second production The Checkered Flag. That proved a failure and MPI was wound up.

Buoyed by the unexpected success of The Parent Trap (1961), O’Hara’s career recovered and she was paired with James Stewart in Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962) and reunited with John Wayne for McLintock (1963). Brian Keith never became a major star but still had a very decent career toplining smaller-budgeted films and in supporting roles. Charles B. Fitzsimons made a success of production, though mainly in television. We all know what happened to Sam Peckinpah.  

SOURCES: Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues 1914-2014 (McFarland, 2016) p117-120;  Pressbook, The Deadly Companions; “Maureen O’Hara As Disker,” Variety, May 7, 1958, p59; “Maureen O’Hara Bagged for Series,” Variety, August 27, 1958, p27; “Christine Gives Columbia 3 On Showtime Shelf,” Variety, March 23, 1960, p45; Review, Christine, Variety, May 4, 1960, p56; “Longplay Shorts,” Variety, September 28, 1960, p58; “Family Classics,” Variety, November 2, 1960, p27; “MP Investment Trust Puts Coin into Pathe America Release,” Variety, January 25, 1961, p5; “Pathe America’s First Star: Maureen O’Hara,” Variety, November 9, 1960, p4; “Pathe Companions into Saturation Playoff,” Variety, June 7, 1961, p5; Review, Variety, June 10, 1961, p10; Review, Box Office, Jun 12, 1961, pA11; “Gala World Premiere for Deadly Companions,” Box Office, June 12, 1961, p10; “Don’t Do As I Do,” Variety, August 2, 1961, p4; “Fitzsimons Switches Pitch,” Variety, August 29, 1962, p16; “Motion Pic Investors Draws Criticism for Faltering Achievement,” Variety, December 12, 1962, p3; “Missouri-Made Feature in Second Round,” Variety, June 5, 1963, p18. Box office results: “Picture Grosses,” Variety – June 14 and 28, July 19, August 16 and 23, September 6, 13 and 20.

Behind the Scenes: When “Worldwide” Didn’t Exist – Global Box Office Part One

Box office fans, excited no doubt at how Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), is charging up the all-time charts, might be surprised to discover that the concept of “worldwide” box office figures didn’t exist in the 1960s. Although foreign markets had proved important to Hollywood since the 1940s, there was no accepted way of measuring their impact.

Box office results in certain countries – Italy, France, Brazil, Australia etc – were reported only on an occasional basis and were never considered front page news. Global box office figures were more likely to appear courtesy of one of the profit participants. Star William Holden’s share of Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and producer Sam Spiegel’s earnings on Doctor Zhivago (1965), for example, were widely reported. Or a studio might want to defray rising investor discontent by pointing how well a Stateside flop such as The Magnificent Seven (1960) had performed overseas.

But these were one-offs and it was impossible to get a handle on the worldwide results for an entire year of Hollywood output. The kind of global box office reporting we take for granted did not appear until the 1990s and often even then, for many pictures, it was only as a year-end figure.

However, during my digging into hordes of records for my book The Making of “The Magnificent Seven” I came upon a tranche of reports on foreign box office figures relating to United Artists for the years 1965 to 1969. And they make for fascinating reading, not least to discover which Stateside hits did poorly abroad and, conversely, what flops in the domestic market made up for it in foreign countries.

Volume of production at UA more than doubled over the period, from 17 pictures in 1965 to 38 in 1969, but the average budget came down from $3.68 million per movie to $2.14 million. 

You won’t be surprised to learn that James Bond pretty much reigned supreme, taking three of the top four spots. But you might be taken aback to discover just how profitable this series was – over $100 million in rentals (the studio share of box office once cinemas have taken their cut) for three movies mentioned here – more than four times what they cost to make, and that would not take into account the colossal revenues accruing from merchandising.

The 1965-1969 worldwide winner by some margin was Thunderball (1965), clocking up $48 million in worldwide rentals. In second place was You Only Live Twice (1967) on $36 million. but the prospect of a cosy one-two-three was nipped in the bud by Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy (1969) on $26 million with On her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969,) hampered by losing the services of Sean Connery, settling for fourth after pulling in $23 million.

Fifth spot went to big-budget roadshow Hawaii (1966) starring Julie Andrews and Max von Sydow which sank $18.8 million worldwide followed by Norman Jewison’s low-budget crime story In the Heat of the Night (1967) on $16 million helped by Sidney Poitier at a box office peak and Rod Steiger, courtesy of an Oscar, at a career one. Placing seventh was big-budget all-star British World War Two epic The Battle of Britain (1969) which soared, largely on foreign grosses, to $15.5 million. Next, on $14.8 million, came roadshow musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) starring Dick Van Dyke. 

Biggest surprise of the year was the performance of family melding comedy Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) with out-of-favor stars Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda which closed in on $13 million. Rounding out the Top Ten was George Stevens’ Biblical roadshow The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). However, its global figures of $12.1 million were a disappointment given its budget topped $21.2 million.

Just behind, on $12 million worldwide, setting another comedic hot pace, was Clive Donner’s What’s New Pussycat (1965). Despite having no roadshow credentials it boasted an all-star cast consisting of Peter O’Toole, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen, Ursula Andress, Romy Scheider and Paula Prentiss. Comedy also accounted for twelfth – the unfancied, though timely, Norman Jewison effort The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966) starring Alan Arkin and Eva Marie Saint which coasted in with $11.8 million.

Thirteenth was Steve McQueen-Faye Dunaway romantic thriller The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) directed with considerable elan also by Norman Jewison. That flew in with $11.25 million, a cool million ahead of the second picture, Help!, by British pop sensation The Beatles.

Fifteenth place went to the final picture in the Sergio Leone trilogy The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1968) starring Clint Eastwood which crested $10.2 million. John Frankenheimer’s World War Two thriller The Train (1965) with Burt Lancaster trying to outfox Paul Schofield tracked $9.75 million. But, as if to emphasize Clint Eastwood’s growing box office power, his first American western Hang ‘Em High came next on $9 million worldwide.

Second World War mission picture The Devil’s Brigade (1968) starring William Holden and Cliff Robertson in a Dirty Dozen-style knock-off paraded $8.6 million for eighteenth position. Comedy filled out the final two places in the Top 20. Jack Lemmon scored a suprise hit in Richard Quine’s How To Murder Your Wife (1965). Co-starring Virna Lisi and Englishman Terry-Thomas it romped away with $8.4 million. Although The Graduate (1967) had been a massive global success, United Artists only held the rights to certain territories but that was enough to pull in $7.7 million worldwide.

There wasn’t actually an informal Top 20 reported by United Artists over this five-year period. I’ve concocted it out of the reports below.

SOURCE: “United Artists Corporation and Subsidiaries Motion Picture Negative Costs for Pictures Released in the Year Ended 1965;” “United Artists Corporation and Subsidiaries Motion Picture Negative Costs for Pictures Released in the Year Ended 1966;” “United Artists Corporation and Subsidiaries Motion Picture Negative Costs for Pictures Released in the Year Ended 1967;” “United Artists Corporation and Subsidiaries Motion Picture Negative Costs for Pictures Released in the Year Ended 1968;” “United Artists Corporation and Subsidiaries Motion Picture Negative Costs for Pictures Released in the Year Ended 1969,” United Artists Files, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, University of Wisconsin.

Behind the Scenes: “100 Rifles” (1969)

100 Rifles was easily the most underrated film of the year. Even if the sum of all its parts did not add up to greatness, it had a lot more going for it than has generally been attributed. For a start, there was the attempt to build Jim Brown into a mainstream African American star. Secondly: the return of the bold female character that had largely disappeared since the heyday of Barbara Stanwyck, and Joan Crawford. Thirdly: the conjunction of these first two elements in a sex scene raised the issue of miscegenation that Hollywood had otherwise sought to avoid.

Fourthly, and perhaps most hard- hitting of all: the issue of genocide, the mass slaughter of the Yaqui Indian population providing an uneasy parallel not just to the United States treatment of its own indigenous Native American population but also to its actions in Vietnam.

But there was a danger that, without both incisive direction and potent performances, the movie would spiral downwards into another simple case of “When Beefcake (Jim Brown) Met Cheesecake (Raquel Welch).” Since nobody had expected Sidney Poitier to ascend the Hollywood ladder so fast, and in so doing set a trend, the industry had nobody lined up to ride in his wake and exploit what now appeared to be, at the very least, acceptance of African Africans as stars in their own right, with an audience ready to embrace a new kind of hero. Although MPAA president Jack Valenti called for more African Americans in more African American films, the number of highly touted big- budget African American–oriented pictures that offered stardom potential rarely made it out of the starting blocks.

But there was one potential crossover star waiting in the wings: Jim Brown. While lacking Poitier’s acting chops, he had the physique, looks and charisma. Cleveland Browns football legend with strong supporting roles in The Dirty Dozen (1967), Dark of the Sun (1968) and Ice Station Zebra (1968), top-billing had been limited to low-budgeters like Kenner (1968), The Split (1968) and Riot (1969).

But Variety had singled him out at the start of 1969 as one of its “new stars of the year” and judged him “the strongest contender to inherit some of Sidney Poitier’s earning power.” 100 Rifles had double the budget of any of his previous pictures.

Raquel Welch was in a similar situation to Jim Brown regarding Hollywood acceptance. However, she was not in a minority as far as female stars were concerned. The 1960s had been dominated by the likes of drama queen (in more ways than one) Elizabeth Taylor,  comedy queen Doris Day and musical queen Julie Andrews, not to mention Audrey Hepburn, (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961), Italian import Sophia Loren (El Cid, 1961), Jane Fonda (Cat Ballou, 1965), Natalie Wood (Sex and the Single Girl, 1964) and Shirley MacLaine (Sweet Charity, 1968). There was also an overabundance of new talent in Julie Christie (Doctor Zhivago, 1965), Vanessa Redgrave (Blow Up, 1966), Lynn Redgrave (Georgy Girl, 1965), Mia Farrow (Rosemary’s Baby, 1968) and Faye Dunaway (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967).

But those stars had more to offer than mere beauty, whereas Welch, having made her name primarily as a pin- up and as eye candy in movies like One Million Years B.C. (1966) and Fantastic Voyage (1966), had trouble shaking off the idea that she won more parts on the basis of her body than for the acting skills, appearing in a dry bikini in Fathom (1967) and a wet one in Lady in Cement (1968).

However, like Jim Brown, she was actively looking to fill a niche, and set out her stall as a player of dramatic intensity, and she found it in the most unlikely of places: the western. That she chose 100 Rifles was interesting given her other choices. She was offered the Katharine Ross part in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid when the lead roles had been offered to Steve McQueen and Warren Beatty and again when Paul Newman came into the frame. She was also up for the Faye Dunaway role for The Crown Caper (title later changed to The Thomas Crown Affair), again with McQueen, and a film with Terence Stamp (which was never made). But she clearly felt those roles were more decorative.

At one time, the female western star had been a staple. Claire Trevor was the star of Stagecoach (1939) and Texas (1941). Gene Tierney made her name with The Return of Frank James (1940) and Belle Starr (1941). Barbara Stanwyck carved out her own niche as a western icon after taking top billing in Union Pacific (1939), California (1947), The Furies (1950), Cattle Queen of Montana (1954), The Maverick Queen (1956) and Forty Guns (1957). While Maureen O’Hara took second billing in Rio Grande (1950), McLintock! (1963) and The Rare Breed (1965), she was the star of Comanche Territory (1950), The Redhead from Wyoming (1953) and The Deadly Companions (1961). Yvonne De Carlo headlined Black Bart (1948), The Gal Who Took the West (1949) and Calamity Jane and Sam Bass (1949). Rhonda Fleming had the female lead in The Redhead and the Cowboy (1951), The Last Outpost (1951), Pony Express (1953) and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Johnny Guitar (1954) achieved classic status largely on the performance of Joan Crawford.

There had even been modern precedent: Inger Stevens had nearly cornered the recent market after A Time for Killing (1967), Firecreek (1968), Hang ’Em High (1968) and 5 Card Stud (1968) while Claudia Cardinale went from a supporting role in The Professionals (1966) to top billing in the forthcoming Once Upon a Time in the West.

Raquel Welch set out to follow suit. In Bandolero (1968) she proved capable not only of holding her own against veterans James Stewart and Dean Martin but as adept on the pistol- packing side of things. While Welch professed herself “no Anne Bancroft,” she was pleased that she was not “running around half- naked all the time.” After that punched a hole in the  box office, she was offered the female lead in 100 Rifles to be directed by Tom Gries who had made his name as a director with his unflinching portrayal of the cowboy in Will Penny (1968).

The basis of the film was Robert MacLeod’s The Californio, published in 1966, and the essence of the story concerned a “reckless stranger” who refused to turn the other cheek while innocent people were being killed. After Clair Huffaker turned in his screenplay, Gries wrote two further drafts. It is safe to assume that the casting of Jim Brown came after the Huffaker script had been handed in. When Huffaker did not like the way his work had ended up on screen, he insisted on using the pseudonym Cecil Dan Hansen, as he had done on The Second Time Around.

For 100 Rifles, he was so upset at the end result that he demanded either his name removed or the pseudonym installed, complaining that the finished product “bears absolutely no resemblance to my script.”

The story of The Californio bears little resemblance to 100 Rifles. Not only is the hero of the book, Steve McCall, white, he is a rawboned young man and not a lawman in his 30s. He is not a gunman either, being more proficient with the lasso. In fact, when forced into bloody action, he discovers that he abhors violence. The book could more aptly be described as a “rite of passage” novel where a young man, sent south “on legitimate business in the interests of the (U.S.) Federal Government,” leaves home for the first time, becomes a man, loses his virginity and kills his first man.

Nor is Yaqui Joe a bank robber in the book, and after meeting up with McCall, they embark on further legitimate business. Maria, named Sarita in the film, is most like her feisty movie counterpart, and although in the MacLeod version she is married, that does not prevent her taking Steve’s virginity. Of the villains, Verdugo (the name means “Hangman”), while not elevated to general, is still as ruthless, but the foreign adviser is not.

Most of the film’s action was invented by the screenwriters, including the concept of the 100 Rifles, Sarita’s sexy shower as a way of stopping the troop train, and the children being taken hostage (although in one episode in the book, children are shot). Trying to reshape the book to suit the new requirements of the characters makes the picture unnecessarily complicated. Burt Reynold’s solution was simpler: “Keep his shirt off and her [Raquel Welch’s] shirt off and give me all the lines,” he reportedly advised producer Marvin Schwartz.

The movie was shot over a ten- week period in Spain beginning in July 1968. Although that country had become a viable alternative for westerns looking to keep budgets low, in part in 1968 due to the devaluing of the peseta against the dollar, the volume of films shot there had declined by nearly a third compared to the previous year.

Despite the popularity of the location, Almeria, the actual area of countryside where most spaghetti westerns were shot, was very small. This resulted in a limited variety of available landscapes compared with films shot in the U.S. such as The Stalking Moon. The actors had to contend with extreme heat, and Gries was laid low for three days after contracting typhus. Gries decided to get the sex scene out of the way on the first day of shooting, probably to ensure that tension about the content was not allowed to linger until later in the shoot. However, it had the opposite effect. Neither Brown nor Welch had been given time to get to know one another nor to adjust to different styles of acting and to understand the perspectives of each other’s characters. Welch was not happy with the scene and tensions between the two stars continued throughout the film, some press reports putting this down to squabbles over close- ups, others to unresolved sexual tension. Welch later complained that scenes edited out of the picture had reduced audience understanding of her motivations. The MPAA also did some judicial trimming, axing Welch’s shrieks during lovemaking.

Critical reception ranged from sniffy to downright hostile. Perhaps like The Stalking Moon, advance publicity, although not this time pointing in the direction of the Oscars, had served to put critics off what sounded like an exploitative film. For the western traditionalist, sex scenes were off- putting, and although naked breasts had started appearing in a handful of movies, there were precious few full- on sex scenes, never mind one that featured miscegenation. Variety judged it a “routine Spanish- made western with a questionable sex scene as a possible exploitation hook.” On the plus side, Welch’s performance was “spirited” as was the Jerry Goldsmith score; Brown and Reynolds were just “okay.” The Showmen’s Servisection took a different view: “Fast pace, fine performances lift western several notches above the ordinary.” Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun- Times called it “pretty dreary.” Howard Thompson, the New York Times’ second- string reviewer, said it was a “triumphantly empty exercise.”

Twentieth Century–Fox had been affected by recent financial disasters such as Doctor Dolittle (1967) and Star! (1968); the former collecting $6.2 million in domestic rentals on a budget of $17 million, the latter $4.2 million in rentals after costing $14.5 million. To counter mounting exhibitor panic about production being slashed, Fox had drawn up an ambitious program for 1969, promising one new movie every month. The program kicked off with a $7.7 million adaptation of the Lawrence Durrell classic Justine with Dirk Bogarde (January), followed by Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn in the $3.77 million film of the John Fowles bestseller The Magus (February) and the trendy $1.1 million Joanna from new director Mike Sarne (March). British star Maggie Smith in the $2.7 million The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (April) came next with 100 Rifles (May) and another Marvin Schwarz production, Hard Contract starring James Coburn, costing $4 million (June). Summer highlights were Omar Sharif in the $5.1 million biopic of Che! directed by Richard Fleischer (July) and Gregory Peck in the $4.9 million Cold War thriller The Chairman (August). Come fall it was the turn of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid coming in at $6.8 million (September), Richard Burton and Rex Harrison as aging homosexuals in The Staircase costing $6.3 million (October) and Warren Beatty and Elizabeth Taylor in George Stevens’ $10 million The Only Game in Town (November). The year ended with John Wayne and Rock Hudson in the $7.1 million Civil War western The Undefeated (December).

The studio needed several box office home runs because the following year it was already committed to three roadshows—Tora! Tora ! Tora!, Hello, Dolly and Patton—costing over $60 million. By spring it was clear that the first two movies in the schedule had been major flops, Justine bringing in only $2.2 million in rentals, The Magus $1 million. Income from Joanna and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie barely exceeded costs.

By the time 100 Rifles swung into action with two largely untried leads and a director making only his second major picture, the pressure was on. “

At the box office 100 Rifles got off to a great start and Twentieth Century–Fox reported with delight that it had outgrossed Bandolero! by 40 percent in Washington (and by 500 percent in the ghetto areas), and by 300 percent in Philadelphia. In Baltimore it grossed $50,000 from a single theater compared to $80,000 from eight for Bandolero! and in Atlanta first run it had been $61,000 for the new film compared to $38,000 for the previous one. However, while Brown and Welch fans were out in force in certain areas, that did not make up for less interest in regions where westerns were associated with bigger or more traditional names. Ultimately, 100 Rifles fell short of expectations given the budget. U.S. rentals amounted to $3.5 million, and it registered in 29th position on the annual chart— the sixth highest- grossing western of the year and ahead of Mackenna’s Gold, The Stalking Moon, Paint Your Wagon and Once Upon a Time in the West.

But, of course, the domestic performance did not take into account the popularity of westerns overseas and the distinct following Raquel Welch had accumulated. So where some of the studio’s major dramas stumbled in the global market, 100 Rifles hit the ground running.

SOURCES: This is an abbreviated version of much longer chapter devoted to the film that ran in The Gunslingers of ’69: Western Movies’ Greatest Year (McFarland, 2019) by Brian Hannan (that’s me). All the references mentioned can be found in the Notes section of that book.

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