Category: Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes: “Doctor Zhivago” (1965)

That Italian producer Carlo Ponti owned the rights to Boris Pasternak’s worldwide bestseller – beating out a bid by Kirk Douglas and Stanley Kubrick – made it easier for David Lean to sever links with Sam Spiegel, producer of his two previous Oscar-winning blockbusters, Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Ponti lined up a deal with MGM who not only gave Lean carte blanche but the biggest ever salary handed to a director plus a generous profit share. Max von Sydow (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966) was Lean’s first suggestion for the leading role while MGM wanted Paul Newman (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) and Ponti was keen on Burt Lancaster (The Train, 1964).

Peter O’Toole (Lawrence of Arabia), fearing another exhaustive shoot, reportedly turned it down. Michael Caine (The Ipcress File, 1965) read for it. Omar Sharif (Lawrence of Arabia), all set to play the smaller role of Pasha, stepped in. Marlon Brando (The Chase, 1966) and James Mason (North by Northwest, 1959) were considered for Komatovsky – the former not replying to Lean’s offer, the laterr dropping out after accepting the role –  before that went to Rod Steiger (The Pawnbroker, 1964).

Front cover for the roadshow launch in the UK in 1966.

Jeanne Moreau (Viva Maria, 1965), Jane Fonda (Barbarella, 1968, who turned it down, then, recanted, by which time it was too late) Yvette Mimieux (Dark of the Sun, 1968), Sarah Miles (Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter, 1970), and, inevitably Ponti’s wife Sophia Loren (dismissed as “too tall” by Lean), were in the running for Lara until, on the recmmendation of John Ford who had directed Julie Christie in Young Cassidy (1965), the part went to the British actress. Audrey Hepburn (Charade, 1963) was Lean’s choice for Tonya until he was bowled over by the screen test by Geraldine Chaplin, the waif-like daughter of Charlie Chaplin, who, in the run-up to release, received the bulk of the advance publicity. Contrary to received wisdom, this was not her debut, she played opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in Lovely Summer Morning (1965).

So, effectively, Lean was launching MGM’s biggest-ever productions with a cast headed by unknowns, Sharif’s marquee value not up to the mark, every film he had been in since Lawrence of Arabia had flopped and he had never received top billing – and would not here either.

Initially, Lean considered shooting in 70mm in black-and-white but 70mm equipment was deemed too cumbersome and monochrome too risky for such a big film so it was made in 35mm with the intention of blowing it up to the larger format for roadshow release. Ponti reckoned the movie could be made in the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia for $5 million. After switching to the eventual location, Spain, with some sequences filmed in Finland, it cost much more, over $11 million.

The shoot lasted 33 weeks but the production actually took two years and involved 800 craftsmen in three countries. . Original cinematographer Nicolas Roeg dropped out after “creative differences”, replaced by Freddie Young (Lawrence iof Arabia), adding two weeks to the schedule to reshoot Roeg’s scenes.

And for the general release three years later.

Much of what appeared on the screen was illusion. The Red Army charged across an apparently frozen lake at the height of summer, the lake itself non-existent, just a field covered in cement with sheet iron topped with thousands of tons of crushed white marble ironed out by steamrollers so when the horses slid it looked realistic. To complete the picture, a rowing boat was moored at the edge.

Other effects combined direcotrial genius with practicality. Prior to the scne featuring a huge field of daffodils, Lean had filmed three minutes of Zhivago and Lara against a freezing background, everything sprayed gray to remove any hint of color so that the sudden appearance of of the golden flowers cast a spell of spring.  To prevent the flowers  – 4,000 of them imported from the Netherlands – blooming too early, they had been dug up and put in pots to control their growth  and replanted when required. To make snow glisten in another scene, cellophane was spread over wintry bushes and trees.

The sleighs had little wheels fitted to the runners, icicles were made from polystyrene, the balalaika was created by the props team and the interior of the Ice Palace made from cellophane crushed into thousands of creases, paraffin wax and salicylic acid powder creating fantastic shapes. The floor was fashioned from a layer of soap flakes. The train journey went through Spain and in places where there were no railroad tracks, these were built.

Moscow, ten acres of it, rebuilt on a Spanish lot, took 18 months to construct and included 800 yards of cobbled street, the Kremlin, trolley cars and 60 houses and shops. Pasha’s armored train was an authentic replica. Even with the props trickery, Lean wanted to capture the different seasons so that was partly responsible for the long schedule. Sharif has his eyes taped back and his hairline shaved and straightened.

The aftermath of the dragoon charge down the steeets of Moscow was seen through the eyes of Zhivago – Lean’s advice to the actor was to imagine the moment before orgasm –  and it was just as well it worked because Lean had filmed no alternative.

The film intially struggled to attract public attention despite a $3 million publicity budget. Lean was not as marketable as Hitchcock or DeMille. The female leads were unknown, Darling (1965) not yet setting the box office buzzing except in arthouses. Sharif, as I mentioned, had not yet capitalized on Lawrence of Arabia.

“Lara’s Theme” was not yet in the shops – the soundtrack album sold 600,000 copies in a year becoming MGM’s biggest soundtrack seller –  and designer Phyllis Dalton’s furs were a long way from setting a fashion trend. Advance sales for the roadshow openings were poor, only $200,000 compared with $60,000 for Exodus (1961) and $500,000 for Cleopatra (1963). There was even speculation that the Capitol in New York where the film premiered had massaged the opening week’s figures. However, this kind of trickery would have been anathema in the industry, telling the truth about receipts to Variety every week considered the right thing to do, even if they fell short of expectation.

Historical epics had been long out of fashion. Lord Jim (1965) and The Agony and the Ecstasy, also roadshow numbers, were among the year’s box office casualties while a completely different type of movie, bouncy musical The Sound of Music (1965), was cleaning up. It didn’t help that Doctor Zhivago opened at the same time as Thunderball, the fourth Bond, which surpassed expectations with collosal initial box office. Nor did reviewers help. While Variety hailed its “soaring dramatic intensity” and the New York Daily News called it a “haunting emotion-charged drama,” the more influential New York Times slammed its “painfully slow-going and inevitable tedium” and it was condemned by the New York Herald Tribune as a “soap opera.”

In fact, if audiences had been slow to latch on, that was only during the first week, for soon it turned into a phenomenon, ending the decade as the $38.2 million in rentals. Lifetime rentals topped $60 million.  

SOURCES: Kevin Brownlow, David Lean (Faber and Faber, 1996); Eddie Fowlie, David Lean’s Dedicated Maniac (Austin & Macauley, 2010); Pressbook for Doctor Zhivago; “Metro Plots Two Features for Geraldine Chaplin,” Variety, February 24, 1965, p5; “Zhivago LP Soars Over 6000,000 Units,” Variety, August 17, 1966, 43; “All-Time Champs,” Variety, 1993.

Behind the Scenes: The Great 1980s Hitchcock Revival

There was a contract makeweight that studios occasionally ceded, something they viewed as a form of vanity from their opposite number across the negotiating table. That was to be given the copyright to your own films seven years after initial release. Studios didn’t believe the concession was worth much than a few dollars to add to a star or director’s pension, otherwise they wouldn’t have allowed it in the first place. In the 1950s, with remarkably few exceptions, a film was done and dusted on initial release. Should there be any more juice remaining, that would be mopped up by a judicious reissue before the seven-year deadline was up.

Once the studio system collapsed in the late 1940s and long-term contracts became devoid, studios battled each other to win over stars and directors with a proven track record. In his negotiations, Alfred Hitchcock asked for, and received, the copyright for five of the pictures that would later prove to be the ones that formed the cornerstone of his revived critical  reputation.

In 1981, restoration, thanks to Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927), had become big business. But optimism only lasted as long as it took for Warner Brothers to lose a sizeable sum on a restoration of A Star Is Born (1954)  

Fortunately, another reissue poster boy was waiting in the wings. Universal, its classic division now headed by Jim Katz, looking for a follow-up to Napoleon, was in the right place at the right time. Legend has it that Hitchcock movies had gone missing from the circuits. While that was the case regarding the Paramount quartet to which he owned or shared copyright – Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and The Trouble with Harry (1955) – it was not true of the rest of his portfolio.

Critical acclaim for the director had grown faster in Europe than America, one measure of his standing being The 39 Steps (1935) chosen to close the annual Venice Film Festival in 1968.[i] The 39 Steps received a new lease of life in the U.S. in the 1970s as the result of an unusual stimulus. In 1971 PBS television kicked off the year with a five-month weekly series of classic foreign films, including this Hitchcock. Viewers were soon persuaded that there was nothing like seeing old movies on the big screen and following the broadcast the film was reissued in Washington, Pittsburgh and Dayton, in a double bill with The Lady Vanishes (1938), and on its own in Cleveland. [ii]

While exposure in small-capacity arthouses limited earnings, it burnished Hitchcock’s artistic reputation. Both The Lady Vanishes and The 39 Steps continued to entertain new generations of movie lovers and remained popular on repertory programs, for example, in New York and Boston, while The Lady Vanishes, nearly forty years late, made its debut in Japan along with Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Young and Innocent (1937) aka The Girl Was Young.[iii] Remakes of The 39 Steps (1978) starring Robert Powell, best known for the television mini-series Jesus Of Nazareth, and The Lady Vanishes (1980) with Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd only served to remind critics of the vastly superior originals.

After Hitchcock’s death in 1980, Universal bought up the Paramount package and in 1983 reissued four of them plus Warner Brothers’ Rope (1948) with new prints and advertising campaigns. Apart from The Trouble with Harry, none could complain of having been undersold or particularly neglected. But they did fit into the “lost classic” category because they were impossible to see, all withdrawn by Hitchcock from the theatrical market for decades, Rear Window, for example, last seen in 1962.

The films would be released in the following sequence – Rear Window, Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Trouble With Harry and Rope – targeting small-to-medium first run theaters, which could support a lengthier engagement (seven to ten weeks) without feeling the commercial strain, rather than arthouses. Universal was bullish, demanding new film terms. The advertising campaign was uniform, Hitchcock’s name more prominent than any individual star. Drawing on the MGM Fabulous Four and Chaplin retrospectives, theaters were expected to commit to showing the films one after the other, achieving, in effect, a Hitchcock Festival lasting up to twenty or thirty weeks. No director aside from Chaplin had been honored in this fashion. Retrospectives of John Ford, Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks or William Wyler had been confined to arthouses or museums, individual films shown for one performance, not weeks at a time.

“Initially,” explained Jim Katz, “we’ll attract people who saw the films when they (first) came out but we’re counting on them to spread the word to the younger generation.” The studio viewed it as “an example of preservation and restoration that can also make money.” A commercial retrospective focused around one director appealed because Universal had other candidates, namely Preston Sturges and Douglas Sirk, who could benefit from a similar approach. The marketing employed a clever mixture of the artistic and commercial, where possible the individual films launched at film festivals, Rear Window leading the way by re-premiering at the New York Film Festival on September 30, 1983, beginning its New York engagement at four cinemas before rolling out in fifteen cities during October.[iv]  

The results were spectacular. Rear Window’s opening week in New York commanded $120,000 (equivalent to $400,000 today) running neck-and-neck with other big-budget films of the day, and taking $150,000 in one cinema in Chicago over four weeks. More importantly, when widened out to non-arthouses the movie held its own, with $130,000 from 27 in New York. By the end of November, the nationwide haul was $2.1 million and by the end of the year $3.8 million. Records were broken in Washington, Vancouver, San Francisco and Portland.

While Rear Window had been a big hit in its day, Vertigo had fallen some way short and there were question marks over whether the James Stewart-Kim Novak combination could match the James Stewart-Grace Kelly. While not hitting Rear Window peaks, Vertigo did better than expected, opening with $91,000 from four cinemas in New York, $50,000 in four cinemas in Los Angeles, $35,000 in San Francisco and $19,000 in Philadelphia. In America, the marketing strategy did not quite work out, the films, especially the last two in the series, better in arthouses than first run, but the Hitchcock Festival concept proved a winner. The next year, the reissues were themselves reissued, a double bill of Rear Window/Vertigo chalking up $14,200 in its first week in New York and Rear Window continuing to play the arthouses well into 1985.[v]

On its U.S. reissue Rear Window earned $4 million in rentals, Vertigo $2.5 million, The Man Who Knew Too Much $1 million, The Trouble With Harry $750,000 and Rope nearly $600,000.[vi] In addition, North By Northwest (1959) entered the equation.[vii] By the time the quintet had played out, for patrons suffering withdrawal symptoms, a Hitchcock Film Festival, all the films crammed into one week, rolled out among arthouses in 1985, whipping up nearly $250,000 in five weeks.[viii]

As important, in terms of legacy and commercial fulfillment, was the impact on ancillary markets. Priced at $59.98, the videocassette of Rear Window was quickly certified gold, meaning sales of fifty thousand copies, adding another $3 million in gross revenue. In due course, the entire quintet appeared on video followed by thirteen other Hitchcocks on a special video promotion.[ix] Screenings of rarer Hitchcocks were welcomed with delight and the precursor to theatrical or video release.[x] The five Hitchcock oldies were the most important reissues of the 1980s because, although an event, they were more accessible to the general filmgoer than the silent classics or Hollywood’s string of hard-done-by quasi-classics. Crucially, commercially they fitted in perfectly to the new dynamic, huge sums in theatrical followed by big ancillary sales. Hitchcock demonstrated that the reissue machine need never run dry if properly oiled and maintained through each new technological cycle or anniversary. In 1996 Vertigo underwent more rigorous  restoration and a 70mm version, after its presentation at the New York Film Festival, exhibited astounding commercial appeal – $148,000 from two cinemas in eight days and $800,000 from just eight cinemas in four weeks – and while the reissue was not on the scale of the 1983 revival the grand tally (gross, not rental) was $1.86 million (cueing a further ancillary round) and followed by the restoration of Rear Window which collected another $1.57 million (gross, not rental) in 2000. [xi]

SOURCES: Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater near You, A History of the Hollywood Reissue 1914-2014 (McFarland, 2016) pp425-429.

[i] Brian Hannan, Hitchcock at the Box Office (Glasgow: Baroliant Press, 2104). This formed part of a retrospective of the director’s early films ending with The 39 Steps. Festival director Luigi Chiarini commented: “It seems fitting that young directors and film authors should learn from a great master of cinema.” But the homage was dropped after a festival boycott by U.S. producers. When it ran the next year, the closing film became The Lady Vanishes.

[ii] Hannan, Hitchcock at the Box Office. In 1971  The 39 Steps/The Lady Vanishes took $4,000 at the 150-seat Outer Circle Two ($1.75-$2.75) in Washington; in Cleveland The 39 Steps at the 448-seat World East ($2.50) grossed $3,600 while The Lady Vanishes at stablemate  448-seat World West ($2.50) took  $2,100. In 1972, the double bill grossed $2,300 at the 500-seat Guild ($2.50) in Pittsburgh and at the 1,000-seat Cinema East in Dayton, Ohio, clocked up $2,900 and $1,000. In 1973 it was reissued in Paris and also made $3,200 at the 455-seat Severance ($2.50) in Cleveland. Source: “Picture Grosses,” Variety.

[iii] Hannan, Hitchcock at the Box Office. In 1975, The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes were shown on a split week programme (i.e. one shown on three days and the other one four) at the 900-seat New Yorker Theater ($2-$3.50) in New York and made $4,200. The following year at Boston’s 150-seat Orson Welles II ($1.50-$3) the films were shown as a double bill for $4,800. (The week before, a double bill of the original The Man Who Knew Too Much and Young and Innocent had taken $4,900.) In Japan, The Lady Vanishes on a double bill with Casablanca notched up $14,500 in Tokyo, the fourth week of $9,000 an improvement on the $8,300 of the third. Source: “Picture Grosses,” Variety.

[iv] “Out of Circulation Hitchcock Pix to Be Released by UI Classics,” Variety, August 29, 1983, 3.

[v]  Hannan, Hitchcock at the Box Office.

[vi]  “Big Rental Films of 1983,” Variety, January 11, 1984, 11; “Big Rental Films of 1984,” Variety, January 16, 1984, 16.

[vii] Brian Hannan, Darkness Visible: Hitchcock’s Greatest Film, Glasgow: Baroliant Press, 2014). North by Northwest ran for six weeks in a tiny 199-seat theatre in Washington with weekly takings of up to $11,000, as well as Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Cleveland. In Chicago it was on a double bill with Dial M For Murder and in Boston with Fritz Lang’s Fury. Overall, it had added another $800,000 in grosses since its last major reissue in 1966. Source: “Picture Grosses,” Variety.

[viii] Hannan, Darkness Visible. In Boston the Hitchcock Festival took $7,400 in its first week and $10,000 in its second. In Washington second week revenues outgrossed the first, jumping to $18,000 from $13,700.  Source: “Picture Grosses,” Variety.

[ix] “Majors Gold and Platinum Titles Led by Warner,” Variety, January 13, 1984, X).  Cashing in on the reissues, Universal had sent Psycho out on video. 

[x] In Los Angeles a forty-six-film retrospective in Los Angeles saw rare screenings of his first film The Pleasure Garden (1925) as well as the 3D version of Dial M For Murder (1954).

[xi] Hannan, Darkness Visible. North By Northwest (1959) also received the restoration treatment, but was largely ignored by the public.

Behind the Scenes: From Cinerama to Imax

Given I’m on my annual Cinerama binge, it’s interesting to see how current giant-screen format Imax developed from the previous king of the giant screens, Cinerama.

Quiz question: what connects King Kong (1933) to Cinerama? Follow-up quiz question: what connects Lawrence of Arabia (the man not the film) to Cinerama? Tie-breaker: what connects Cinerama, which had its heyday in the 1960s, to the current Imax.

Merian Cooper, the producer behind King Kong, and Lowell Thomas, the broadcaster whose fame was built on the dramatic footage he took of Lawrence of Arabia during World War One, were both vital to the development of the new screen sensation Cinerama, which made its debut two years before Twentieth Century Fox unveiled Cinemascope.

Both Cinerama and Imax began as vehicles for documentaries, the cinematography they involved initially considered too cumbersome for Hollywood directors to use. Initially, also, both formats were presented in cinemas specifically designed for showing films made in the process.

But, effectively, both Cinerama and Imax followed the same business model, one that Hollywood only too readily appreciated. They were premium priced products. Whereas most items you buy are the same price wherever you make the purchase, movies followed an extended version of the way publishers sold books. Readers had to pay extra to be first in the queue for a favorite author’s latest work, the hardback version of a novel appearing about a year in advance of the cheaper hardback.

In the silent era, Paramount instituted a food chain for movie presentation. Pictures opened first in the big city center theaters at top dollar prices ($2 – the equivalent to $35 now – not unusual in the 1920s) before working their way down a dozen different pricing levels until they reached the cheapest cinemas. As the business developed, although the U.S. cinema capacity grew to around 20,000 outlets, Hollywood reckoned that 70 per cent of a movie’s income came from a fraction of those houses, primarily from the more expensive first- or second-run cinemas.

Treatment of audiences is more democratic now. All tickets cost the same and the food chain is long gone, but in the 1950s and 1960s when Hollywood was battling the beast of television it appeared that audiences could be wooed back to the movies by giving them something bigger and better – and they were happy to pay the price. Imax follows the same pricing strategy.

Cinerama was not just the ultimate in widescreen but it offered visceral thrills. Given camera point-of-view audiences raced down a rollercoaster in This Is Cinerama (1952) and were astonished to see different global vistas presented in their full glory rather than as mere backdrops to actors. And while audience response was astonishing even by industry standards, and receipts tumbled in hand over fist, the concept soon lost popularity as audiences moved on to the more dramatically-accessible Cinemascope and its imitators and by the 1960s the format was more or less dependent on the company spinning out its back catalog in endless reissues.

Hence, the move towards dramatic storylines as instanced by How the West Was Won (1962) and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962), both initially presented in the premium-priced roadshow, separate performance, format. In quick fashion, too, Cinerama dispensed with the cumbersome three-lens camera and invented a single-lens alternative which made it much easier for directors.

During the 1960s Cinerama presented another eleven big Hollywood pictures ranging from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World (1963) and Grand Prix (1966) to Ice Station Zebra (1968) and Krakatoa, East of Java (1969). But as the industry hit the financial buffers at the end of the decade, the writing was on the wall, and although Cinerama invested in 35mm movies like Straw Dogs  (1971) the game was over for the format by 1972.

Imax was pretty soon positioned as its natural successor, unveiled in 1970 in Japan with Tiger Child, the first purpose-built cinema opening in Toronto in 1971 with North of Superior. The screen was much bigger than anything Cinerama or 70mm had offered. It was over three times the size of Cinerama. But it was of different dimensions; where Cinerama went wider, Imax went taller.

But again, the camera was an obstacle for Hollywood use. And like Cinerama, the format’s attraction was sheer spectacle. All the initial output was documentary-based, often with an educational purpose, though soon progressing to what was termed “entertainment” (Everest, 1998) and the movies were short by Hollywood standards, often less than an hour, which permitted Imax theater operators to present a greater number of daily screenings than an ordinary cinema.

Initially, they were not specifically premium-priced, but potentially more profitable because of the number of daily showings. Theaters typically kept 80 per cent of the box office which limited entrepreneurial interest since budgets for these movies were in the $6 million-$12 million range, not low enough to easily turn a profit. The movies could run for months, but there was the same problem as before – shortage of new product.

By 1990 Imax had largely pulled out of exhibition, ownership limited to nine theaters, and out of production.

Oddly enough, it was reissue that revived Imax. Disney planned a reworked version of its classic Fantasia (1940) as a method of generating more money from a picture that had already grossed $184 million on video. Traditionally, Fantasia got its best results from limited release, its previous revival outing shown in a maximum of 500 houses. Nor did Disney agree to the usual financial terms, demanding a 50 per cent share of the box office, rather than the normal 20 per cent.

Fantasia 2000 (2000) was released in 54 cinemas willing to commit to an 18-week run. While every Imax record was smashed, the picture, at a cost of $90 million, didn’t break even. But it did usher in Imax as a reissue vehicle. Disney used Imax for the 10th anniversary relaunch of Beauty and the Beast (1992), bringing in an extra $25 million in rentals. Two years later The Lion King (1994) in Imax brought in $15.6 million and Apollo 13 (1995) $1.7 million.   

Naturally enough, Disney recognized the potential for Imax for new films and made Treasure Planet (2002) in an Imax version. But the big boost came with The Matrix sequels. Both The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003) were digitally remastered for Imax, the latter the first to be shown simultaneously with the ordinary print.

Nowadays, Imax is part of the release mix, bringing a hefty chunk of premium-priced box office to the overall gross and also, as witness the current Interstellar (2014) a hyped-up reissue vehicle.

SOURCES: Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues (McFarland, 2016) p5, 10, 12, 295, 297-298; Kim R. Holston, Movie Roadshows (McFarland, 2013 )p 112-113; James B. Stewart, Disneywar (Simon and Schuster, 2008), p346-347; “A Decade of Limited Release,” Variety, February 18, 1998, p23; “Eric J. Olson, “Fantasia Signs Up Increase,” Variety, May 24, 1999, p32; Joseph Horowitz, “A Fantasia for the MTV Generation,” New York Times, January 2, 2000; “Fantasia Hits Imax Record,” Variety, January 4, 2000, p7; “Top 125 Worldwide,” Variety, January 15, 2001, p24; “The Top 250 Worldwide,” Variety, January 6, 2003, p26.

Behind the Scenes: “Number One” (1969)

Apart from Ben-Hur and El Cid, most of Charlton Heston’s movies in the 1960s were domestic box office disappointments. Despite this, he was deemed to be still flying high at the marquee, placed seventh in the annual star rankings just as negotiations began in 1967 for Pro (the title changed to Number One just a few months before release). Given there was little interest in American sports in the rest of the world, it was deemed a gamble. That was not just reflected in the budget – a miserly $1.15 million- but in Heston’s salary of $200,000. He and director Tom Gries (Will Penny, 1968) agreed to “work at substantially lower incomes in exchange for a bigger percentage.”

But to make any decent money, of course the movie had to be a big hit. Compare that to the $750,000 he stashed away for The Hawaiians (1970), admittedly after Planet of the Apes (1968) hit the jackpot, but still. From The War Lord, Heston had “learned actors should not put their own money into scripts,” but taking a pay cut appeared a more sensible route.

The movie was a long time coming to fruition. Initially, the idea had been rejected by National General and Martin Ransohoff of Filmways who worked with MGM. By April 1966, Heston was dejected. “Nothing stirring on Pro,” he recorded in his journal. But he understood the need not to “peddle the project” since “it tarnishes my image as an eminently in-demand actor.” Franklin Schaffner (Planet of the Apes) was initially keen, but dropped out after United Artists insisted on smaller fees against a bigger back end, star, director and producer to share 75 per cent of the profits, the kind of deal you get offered “when you want to make a film more than a studio does.” Tom Gries (Will Penny, 1968) was the next directorial target.

By June 1967, the deal was done for Heston, Gries and Selzer. ”I’m damned if know who will write the script,” noted Heston, “No one very expensive, I guess.” In July, he was in San Diego “investigating pro footballers in their natural habitat.” The NFL agreed to allow the New Orleans Saints to participate. David Moessinger had written two screenplays, Daddy-O (1958) and The Caper of the Golden Bulls (1967), but struggled to meet Heston’s expectations.

The actor felt the writer hadn’t “succeeded in dramatizing the most difficult and the most important element of the story. Why Caitlin feels as he does.” His wife, Lydia, agreed. “If women’s can’t relate to the story, then it’s just a picture about a football player and we’re in trouble.” UA had set a deadline and the screenplay would decide whether it was a go or no. Heston planned to get Gries to work on the script, and he subsequently nailed the vital scene.

Even when UA gave the go-ahead there were problems integrating the shooting schedule with that of the Saints which would require filming training camp in summer 1968 and the rest in the fall. Bob Waterfield was teaching Heston how to quarterback. Soon he would have “delusions of adequacy.”  But the training took its toll in the shape of a pulled muscle. In his first proper game, he was “blitzed” 16 times. He ended one day “taped and doped, in the traditional bed of pain.”

Meanwhile, casting proceeded. Heston had “mixed feelings” about Eva Marie Saint (The Stalking Moon, 1968) and Joanne Woodward (Big Hand for a Little Lady, 1966). Suzanne Pleshette (A Rage to Live, 1965) was considered as well as Jean Simmons (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967) – “I think she’d be good for it,” noted Heston. Finally, he pushed for Jessica Walter (Grand Prix, 1966) – “old enough to be plausible as the wife, young enough to manage the flashbacks” – only to find Gries not so keen and preferring Anne Jackson (How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life, 1968). When the situation was resolved in favor of Walter, Heston discovered she was being lined up for a television drama about pro football. The second female lead went to Diana Muldaur.

Meanwhile, Heston was having trouble with Gries. “His attitude towards this film…is very questionable…perhaps it has to do with his recent achievements as a director in theatrical films…he’s finding the wine a bit heady.” Gries fell behind schedule, but finished ahead of it, saving about $30,000. An important scene showing Walters and Heston in bed before the wedding didn’t work and was cut.

Keeping tabs on the budget was producer Walter Selzer, who had worked with the star on The War Lord (1964) and Will Penny, and, would team up with him again for The Omega Man (1971), Skyjacked (1972), Soylent Green (1973) and The Last Hard Men (1976). “You have to be realistic about the subject matter,” said Selzer. “Every story has a certain price and if you try to cheat on your requirements it shows on screen.” That said, he was king of the penny pinchers. “We didn’t use a single piece of new lumber,” he boasted, meaning they didn’t built a single set, instead adapting or re-using old ones.

On location, he negotiated “locked-in” costs, “a flat pre-arranged price” for variety of elements which had a tendency to become variable, increasing costs, such as space on a sound stage, equipment and the editing suite. Cameraman Michel Hugo had to agree to shoot in any weather. “This is very important. Very often a cameraman will refuse to shoot if the weather is questionable, claiming the shots won’t match and then you have the whole company idle for a day when on location.” He nailed down composer Dominic Frontiere (Hang ‘Em High, 1968), paying him a flat fee, with Frontiere left with the task and cost of hiring an orchestra and rehearsal and recording space.

Despite showing his rear end in Planet of the Apes, Heston was touchy about the sex scene. “It’s not really a nudie scene but an intensely sexual scene,” he explained, “There’s not a bare breast seen.” Heston had enough controversy elsewhere. As president of the Screen Actors Guild he appeared not to note the irony that while he was pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars a picture, he could complain that extras were the cause of the “major increase in costs” of movies.

He was also accused of being hypocritical, signing for Eagle at Escombray, directed by Alexander Mackendrick, to be made by CBS while at the same time, as union leader, pressurizing the Department of Justice to prevent television companies such as ABC and CBS entering the movie business. (It was never made.) For that matter, he shouldn’t have been trying to get National General to fund Pro either, since it owned a cinema chain, and that, too, went against previous Department of Justice rulings.

While Heston like the movie – “some of the best contemporary work I’ve done” – UA did not. The title changed to Number One. By the time the movie appeared, in August 1969, Heston couldn’t have been hotter, thanks to the unexpected success of Planet of the Apes. So the world premiere in New Orleans was allocated a full array of razzamatazz – in the parade were the New Orleans football team, its mascot, cheerleaders and a stream of antique cars, but there was a fire in Heston’s hotel.

Box office was less rosy. There was a decent $179,000 from 32 in New York, a “big” $9,000 in Washington, a “hotsy” $24,000 in Baltimore (and $20,000 in the second week), a “neat” $12,000 in San Francisco and a “trim” $27,000 in St Louis but mostly the figures were “mild”, “okay”, or “fair.” Outside of first run it couldn’t run up any juice. Estimated rentals were $1.1 million, so just about break-even, but United Artists, understandably despite Heston’s contention that it was about a man not American football, refused to give it any meaningful release overseas.

SOURCES: Charlton Heston, The Actor’s Life, Journals 1956-1976 (Penguin, 1980); “All-American Favorites of 1966,” Box Office, March 20, 1967, p19; “Charlton Heston Denies Conflict Between Eagle Role, SAG Policy,” Box Office, January 15, 1968, pW3; “Sports, Flop-Prone Theme Still Dared,” Variety, September 25, 1968, p2; Army Archerd, “Hollywood Cross-Cuts,” Variety, December 18, 1968, p22; Army Archerd, “Hollywood Cross-Cuts,” Variety, February 5, 1969, p34; “Number One Parade To Precede Premiere,” Box Office, August 18, 1969, pSE5; “Falling Stars,” Variety, September 3, 1969, p70; “Critics Wrap Up,” Variety, September 24, 1969, p26; “Variety Box Office Charts Results 1969,” Variety, April 29, 1970, p26.  Weekly box office figures – Variety, 1969 : August 27, September 3, September 10, September 17, September 24

Behind the Scenes: “Viva Maria”(1965)

The shooting of Le Feu Follet in 1963 had proved so depressing for director Louis Malle that halfway through the filming, alone on a Sunday afternoon in his Parisian apartment, he jotted down the two pages that turned into Viva Maria! He had worked with Brigitte Bardot before on A Very Private Affair/ La Vie Privee (1962) but even with her presence it was made in virtual isolation. So he was unprepared for the brouhaha that awaited. The media had created a rivalry between the two stars – Bardot and Jeanne Moreau – which was ironic given it was a film about friendship.

Since this was Brigitte Bardot’s first movie-related trip across the Atlantic, her arrival presaged a media firestorm. Over 250 journalists, most representing international outlets, turned up for the first day of shooting. That media pressure created “an almost unbearable atmosphere.” Days were lost due to publicity commitments, as print journalists, photographers and television crews – including one from France making a 52-minute documentary – descended on the production. Such was the potential for chaos, paparazzi were banned. Bardot was more accustomed to media intrusion than her director, batting back inane questions with practised repartee. The qustion: “What was the happiest day of your life?” brought the response, “It was a night.”

This was only Malle’s sixth film. Unlike other directors who came to the fore in the French New Wave he had not first been a critic, but had attended cinematography school in Paris and his breakthrough came on the Jacques Yves-Cousteau documentary The Silent World (1956). Hired as camera operator, he was promoted to co-director. Both Elevator to the Gallows (1958) and the controversial The Lovers (1960) had starred Moreau. On the back of the critical success of Le Feu Follet/The Fire Within (1963), which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, Malle struck a four-picture deal with United Artists.

He had been attracted to screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere after becoming aware of his work on Diary of a Chambermaid for Luis Bunuel. They worked together on the script of Viva Maria! while Malle was directing the opera Rosenkavalier in Spoleto, where he had shot A Very Private Affair. Like most French filmmakers of his generation the western was “a very cherished genre.” With Viva Maria! he intended a spin on the American notion of two men, “two buddies,” in action together, along the lines of Robert Aldrich’s Vera Cruz (1954) starring Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper.

But in movies like Vera Cruz, Fort Apache (1948) with John Wayne and Henry Fonda or John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in Red River (1948), the two stars, even if eventually settling their differences, were at odds for most of the picture.

“We thought it could be fun to put Bardot and Moreau in the same situation as Cooper and Lancaster,” said Malle. Both director and screenwriter had enjoyed a rich childhood fantasy based on the book editions of magazines like Le Monde illustre, so, in terms of locale, they provided inspiration. The movie aimed “to combine an evocation of childhood fantasies with a pastiche of traditional adventure films…it was never intended to be realistic – more projection of the imagination. Ideally, I was hoping the spectator would see it with the wonderment of the child.”

The notion of “floating between genres” didn’t sit easily with French critics and he was accused of “trying to do too many different things.” As with any big budget picture, problems multiplied, not just the difficult logistics but with the Mexican government, which, as John Sturges had found on The Magnificent Seven (1960) could take a tough line with movie makers. A previous censor Senorita Carmen Baez had stipulated that movies could not mention the 1910 Mexican Revolution, so to comply with that regulation the action was moved to an earlier date, 1904, and in an “unnamed South American country”

A combination of the number of locations – as well as Churabasco studios in Mexico City, the unit travelled to Guautla, Morelia, Tepotzlan, Cuernavaca, Vera Cruz, Puebla, Guanajuota and Hacienda Cocoyoc – and budget meant that the production could not afford to linger at any one locale, scenes had to be finished off within the planned schedule because the entire unit had to be on the move the next day.

In terms of shooting, Malle explained, “I always had to adjust and compromise…the sky was…desperately blue – the very hard light was a problem for the girls.” Ideally, Malle would have preferred shooting in the early morning or late afternoon, but time pressures and the production caravanserai meant the main scene was shot “with the sun at its zenith.”

Malle was later conscious that the film envisioned in the screenplay didn’t make it onto the screen. The irony, for example, of George Hamilton being cast as a Jesus Christ figure was lost on an audience which took him more seriously than intended. “It was comedy,” observed Malle, “but it was easy not to perceive it as comedy.” Similarly, Moreau’s “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech didn’t come across as humorous. “The audience either didn’t get it or took it seriously. That’s the danger of pastiche. It’s a very risky genre.”

He worried that the film’s budget – originally set at $1.6 million – and top-name stars might get in the way of the style of movie he was trying to make. At one point he suggested to UA that they cut the budget, switch to English and hire younger stars like Julie Christie and Sarah Miles, neither of whom at that point had enjoyed career breakthrough roles. The presence of the big stars “transformed the film into something else.”

The shoot was plagued by illness. Bardot and Malle were incapacitated while when Moreau slipped on a stone stairway breaking a shin bone and requiring stitches to a cut under her chin it was the third time she required time off, including suffering an affliction on her first day of shooting. An extra was killed on 24 May 1965 during the filming of the cavalry charge. Whether Malle took time off to get married to Anne Marie Deschodt on April 3 is unclear because, by then, staff were already having to work overtime to make up for lost days. The budget mushroomed to $2.2 million. Four weeks behind schedule, the movie, which had begun shooting on 25 January 1965 finally wrapped in June.

For its opening bookings in New York, at the Astor and Plaza, beginning 20 December 1965, the film was subtitled – by playwright Sandy Wilson of The Boyfriend fame no less – but thereafter was dubbed, Malle unhappy with the outcome, especially with the actress for Bardot. In the run-up to the launch, there was media overkill. Bardot  was mobbed by the media on arrival at JFK airport (and also on departure) and held another press conferences in New York.

Small wonder the press were so hyped. Bardot, considered the sex symbol of the decade, was putting in her first personal appearance in the U.S. While the movie opened to “smash” business at the Astor and Plaza first run, and knocked up a decent $127,000 from 25 houses on New York wide release – not far off A Patch of Blue on $160,000 from 27 but miles behind The Chase with $292,000 from 28 – that level of box office wasn’t repeated elsewhere.

In retrospect, it was obvious Bardot lacked the marquee status the studio anticipated. The bulk of her movies had played at arthouses or seedy joints, and they had all been sold on the kind of sexuality that kept them outside the mainstream. Noted Variety, “Brigitte Bardot has not made a box office dent in more than three years but her popularity with the press doesn’t seem to have flagged.” A not unknown phenomenon, of rampant media coverage not translating into receipts. A battle with the local censor in Dallas didn’t help. So all the hoopla was to no avail – it flopped in the U.S.

Elsewhere, the publicity teams took a more upscale approach. In Paris, the Au Printemps department store, the largest in the city, devoted a series of window and internal displays to the movie promoting different fashionable aspects. It finished third for 1966 at the Parisian box office, with 602,840 admissions not that far behind Thunderball’s 806,110 admissions but had twice the audience of the nearest U.S. competitor Mary Poppins and did three times the business of Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, the next American movie on the list.

In Britain, flamboyant hairdresser Raymond created 24 different hairstyles as a fashion tie-in while Le Rouge Baiser created a different lipstick for each of the two main characters. Overall, it proved “one of the most successful fashion tie-ups ever,” the results seen at the box office.

It opened in London’s West End at the newly-built Curzon Mayfair which specialized not so much in arthouse pictures but upmarket, classy, fare, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) followed it. It ran for eight weeks before embarking on a circuit release and returned to the West End the following year as support to another Moreau vehicle 10.30pm Summer. Bardot and Moreau were nominated for Baftas in the Best Foreign Actress section. It was ranked third out of foreign releases in Switzerland, sixth in Germany and made the top ten in Japan

Oddly enough, in socialist countries “it was very well received” and at Berlin University, according to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, “they were fascinated.” The two women represented different aspects of the struggle against repression, one promoting armed struggle, the other trying to achieve revolution without violence.

Overall it was a profitable venture. The poor $825,000 in U.S. rentals was compensated by an overseas tally of $4.1 million which meant, in the United Artist profit league for 1966, it finished seventh.

Malle only completed two pictures in his four-picture UA slate – Le Voleur / The Thief of Paris (1967) being the other. Another project set in the Amazon in 1850 came to nothing as did a separate deal to direct Choice Cuts for Twentieth Century Fox.

SOURCES: Malle on Malle, edited by Philip French (Faber and Faber, 1993) pp45, 49-54; “Bardot Due in Mexico,” Variety, December 9, 1964, p26; “Louis Malle’s Four for United Artists,” Variety, January 13, 1965, p3; “Bardot Swamped by Mex City Newsmen,” Variety, February 3, 1965, p17; “Filming Viva Maria in Mexico,” Box Office, February 15, 1965, p12; “Arnold Picker Chides Malle’s Pace,” Variety, April 7, 1965, p2; “No Newsmen at Can-Can,” Variety, April 28, 1965, p13; “Jeanne Moreau Injury,” Variety, May 19, 1965, p3; “Complete Viva Maria,” Variety, May 25, 1965, p15; “Extra Killed in Viva Maria Bit,” Variety, June 2, 1965, p5; “UA’s Viva Maria Booked for Astor, Plaza for Xmas,” Box Office, November 8, 1965, pE2; “Paris Window Display,” Box Office, November 22, 1965, pB1; “Malle Dickers UA on Three Films,” Variety, December 15, 1965, p5; “Picture Grosses,” Variety, December 22, 1965, p9; “International Sound Track,” Variety, December 22, 1965, p26; “TV Crafts Greeting to Bardot,” Variety, December 22; “Maria Viva $110,000,” Variety, December 29, 1965, p20; “Curzon Premiere for Viva Maria,” Kine Weekly, February 24, 1966, p3; “Viva Maria,” Kine Weekly, February 24, 1966, p21; “New York Showcase,” Variety, March 23, 1966, p10; “UA’s Location Plans Span Globe,” Kine Weekly, May 26, 1966, p36; “Thunderball As Topper,” Variety, June 1, 1966, p3; “1965-1966 Paris Film Season,” Variety, June 15, 1966, p25; “Story As Before,” Variety, July 13, 1966, p17; “Texas High Court Denies Viva Maria Re-Hearing,” Box Office, October 31, 1966, p7;  “U.S. Majors,” Variety, January 18, 1967, p24.

Behind the Scenes: Edward Zwick Uncensored

“I will never forget how casually Maria (Schneider of Last Tango in Paris fame) unbuttoned Joey’s shirt to hold her breast in one hand while eating a bagel with the other,” is just one of the memorable lines in director Ed Zwick’s (of Glory fame) memoir,  a very candid portrait of working in Hollywood. Glamor and grit ride side by side as he goes from being a celebrity-struck newcomer to dragging tears out of Harvey Weinstein, hearing all about Julia Roberts’s love life, endless battles on set with Brad Pitt, being offered a beer by Paul Newman in the star’s house and digging into the untapped emotional reservoir of Tom Cruise.

His mentor, director Sydney Pollack, allowed Zwick to observe as he prepped Out of Africa (1985). Pollack had a complicated relationship with Robert Redford. The star “was infallibly late.” Opposite personalities. Pollack was “voluble, excitable and punctilious” while Redford was “taciturn, laconic and laid-back.” Dealing with a proper star can be disconcerting. Asked what it was like to direct Barbra Streisand in A Star Is Born (1976), Frank Pierson said, “I wouldn’t know.”

Pollack offered Zwick sound advice about screenwriting. “Plot is the rotting meat the burglar throws to the dogs so he can climb over the fence and get the jewels, which are the characters.” Zwick’s first script, with writing partner Marshall Herskowitz, for Tri-Star, was a drama, Drawing Fire, about a Secret Service agent’s relationship with a corrupt cop. Dustin Hoffman wanted to play the lead. In conversation, Hoffman took “damn long to get to the point.” His involvement collapsed over his fee.

Jonathan Demme was originally slated for About Last Night (1986), an adaptation of David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago. When he pulled out, Zwick got the gig. If stars Rob Lowe and Demi Moore seemed very comfortable with the intimate scenes, that was because they had previously been an item. The movie did surprisingly well.

For a follow-up, Zwick passed on Thelma and Louise (1991) in favor of a different road picture, Leaving Normal (1992), originally set to star Cher and Holly Hunter. Jessica Lange entered the frame when Cher dropped out. After Hunter quit, Zwick signed up Christine Lahti and Meg Tilly. The picture bombed.

Next up was Shakespeare in Love with a script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard to star Julia Roberts who, as it happened, couldn’t help falling in love with her co-stars, that included by now Kiefer Sutherland, Dylan McDermott and Liam Neeson. To play William Shakespeare, she wanted Daniel Day-Lewis, sending him a card that said, “Be My Romeo,” but he was already committed to My Left Foot. Casting for her co-star was cancelled while she maintained that, actually, Day-Lewis had agreed. Only, when Zwick contacted him, that turned out to be fantasy.

With casting renewed, Zwick and Roberts saw, among others, Ralph Fiennes, Russell Crowe. Hugh Grant, Colin Firth and Sean Bean. But none clicked with the star, although oddly enough she later teamed with Grant in Notting Hill (1999). It could conceivably have gone ahead with Paul McGann. A full screen test was arranged. However, it was obvious at that point that Roberts hadn’t nailed her English accent. She quit, leaving Universal $6 million out of pocket.

The movie remained in cold storage for two years. Then Harvey Weinstein came calling. But not at the price Universal demanded. For the next few years, Zwick kept trying to interest actors with the requisite marquee heft such as Kenneth Branagh, Winona Ryder, Jude Law, even Mel Gibson and Johnny Depp. By coincidence, Ryder was best buds with Gwyneth Paltrow and showed her the script. Since Paltrow was Weinstein’s go-to actress, she convinced the producer to come back in. But the consequence of that was that Zwick was pushed out. Or so Weinstein believed, until he was sued. Which meant that when the movie was awarded Best Picture at the Oscars Zwick was on the stage.

Comments Zwick wryly, “ As I stand there…listening to Harvey’s prepared, saccharine, self-serving acceptance, it occurs to me to shove him over the edge of the stage into the orchestra pit. Faced with the choice of committing an act of violence before a worldwide audience of 100 million movie fans or false modesty, I make the wrong choice.”

Alvin Sargent (Paper Moon, 1973) signed up for a “hefty fee” to adapt Jim Harrison’s novella Legends of the Fall (1994). Not only was he “maddeningly slow” but after a year’s work he “hadn’t been able to figure out how to do it.” William D. Wittliff (Country, 1984) was next to take a crack before Zwick called on Marshall Hershowitz’s wife Susan Shilliday – who had been story consultant and story editor on Zwick’s television show thirtysomething – to do a rewrite. Tom Cruise and Robert Duvall were briefly interested. Brad Pitt rode to the rescue.

“It’s not enough,” muses Zwick, “that a movie star be handsome; good-looking actors are a dime a dozen. And it’s not just the way the light and shadow plays on someone’s bone structure. It’s the unmistakeable thing behind their eyes, suggesting a fascinating inner life. We don’t know what’s going on inside their heads, but we definitely want to and that’s enough.”

Pre-production Tri-Star got cold feet and demanded Zwick knock $2 million off the budget. Instead, the director and Pitt halved their fees in exchange for a bigger backend. Four weeks before shooting was due to commence, they were short of a female lead, though Paltrow, among others, had read for the part, ending up with relative newcomer Julia Ormond (The Baby of Macon, 1993). Days before shooting, Pitt quit. Or tried to. He could go as long as he paid all the costs of preparation. So Pitt remained. After two weeks of shooting, Zwick was $1 million over budget, largely due to costume issues.

“There are all sorts of reasons an actor will pick a fight,” notes Zwick, and he had more than his fair share of them with Pitt. Although the movie’s resultant commercial success doubled both their salaries, they didn’t talk for a year – and never worked together again.

Denzel Washington didn’t want to do Courage under Fire (1996) until Zwick introduced the idea of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a new idea at the time. Matt Damon really did almost fall out of a helicopter. As Washington and Damon did a scene together “it was as if a spell had been cast over the set,” all watching the birth of new screen great. Screen improvisation isn’t all about fashioning new lines. It’s about an actor finding “emotion in an authentic way.” For the scene where Washington returns home, Zwick placed a bike along the walkway. Washington’s reaction to this unexpected obstacle was to pick it up and set it upright.

Tom Cruise originally passed on the John Logan script for The Last Samurai (2003) that Zwick felt was “still uncooked.” Uncooked or not, Russell Crowe, incidentally, was interested  in the Japanese lead. Zwick did a rewrite. Cruise liked the rewrite. “What struck me most as I got to know him was his insatiable appetite to keep improving.” Cruise was one of the actors whose involvement was an automatic green light for a studio. After completing another draft with  Hershowitz, Zwick got a call to go see Robert Towne (Chinatown, 1973). He went in dread. Towne “had an informal arrangement with Tom whereby he sometimes quietly rewrote his movies.” Instead of confrontation, Towne was encouraging. “Apparently, he just wanted to take my measure.”

There’s an animatronic horse – costing a million bucks – that appears for a few seconds in The Last Samurai in order for it to appear to the audience that in fact a horse was falling on Tom Cruise for a scene that would not have been possible, in the days before CGI, just with a stuntman. Zwick’s biggest problem on the picture was how to puncture Cruise’s self-assurance, get him to the “right emotional place…to touch some vulnerable part in him.” Zwick realized that simply asking the actor to go deeper wouldn’t work. It would look forced.

So just before shooting the critical scene, Zwick asked Cruise about his eight-year-old son, Connor. “I watched as he looked inward, and a window seemed to open and his eyes softened.” Zwick gently nudged him into position. “Go.”

Movie fans often wonder how a director gets into the movies. Usually, each tale is as odd as the last, a lucky break, meeting the right studio executive at the right time, coming across a studio hungry for your type of picture just at the ideal moment. Zwick has an odd an introduction. Living in Paris on a fellowship to observe experimental theater, he managed to creep onto the set of Love and Death (1975) and pepper Woody Allen with questions and he had a sneak preview of the Annie Hall (1977) script.

On returning to the U.S., he was accepted onto the American Film Institute’s director program. There were 26 pupils in the class, Zwick was one of six invited back for a second year. There, he struck up a lifelong friendship with Marshall Hershowitz. While studying, he read 10 scripts a week for United Artists, fell in with a merry band of more experienced Hollywood hands including Paul Schrader, Michael and Julia Phillips and Oliver Stone. After an improbable series of coincidences, he got  was employed as story editor for the tv series Family (1976-1980). Still aiming for a movie slot, he watched in horror as David Puttnam (Chariots of Fire, 1981) lasted for only six minutes of a private screening of Zwick’s 30-minute student film.

There’s not one of Zwick’s movies where he doesn’t regale you with an interesting anecdote about a star. More importantly, he provides insights into how movies are made, often touching on details that would not be obvious to anyone outside the business.

Ed Zwick, Hits, Flops and Other Illusions, My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood (Gallery Books) is available in print and kindle.

Behind the Scenes: “Glory” (1989)

Want to hire Matthew Broderick? Then you better be prepared for his mother. Worse, there was no get-out clause. Tri-Star Pictures, an offshoot of Columbia, was only making the movie because of Broderick, whose marquee value was based solely on a completely different type of picture, namely Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). Yes, he had won a Tony aged 21, and this was his sixth picture, of which only War Games (1983) hit the box office mark.

But the actor had a great deal to contend with in his personal life, grief and guilt as a result of driving his car into the wrong lane, crashing into an oncoming vehicle, killing two and seriously injuring himself and his passenger Jennifer Grey. His mother had been seriously ill, also. Glory proved another ordeal. “Nothing I might have done could possibly rival Matthew’s role in the theater of cruelty that was about to begin,” wrote director Ed Zwick in his memoir, Hits, Flops and Other Illusions (2024).

The same accusation of being a lightweight could as easily been levelled at Zwick, his only movie being About Last Night (1986), which though with serious undertones, was basically a modernized rom-com. He was best known for television, as writer-producer on thirtysomething (1987-1991), that “despite its success was an intimate, whiny talkfest.”

Broderick’s mother, Patsy, made her presence felt almost immediately. Before shooting commenced, the actor quit. Patsy didn’t like the script. By this point, Zwick hadn’t even met Broderick. Zwick received the news while on holiday in a cabin in the mountains. Communication was primitive, virtually walkie-talkie style. Eventually, Zwick agreed to look at the actor’s notes on the screenplay.

The script issues should have warned Zwick what he was taking on. At that time the film was called Lay This Laurel, the title of a monograph by Lincoln Kirstein, about the assault on Morris Island by the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, the project initially on the slate of Bruce Beresford, Oscar nominated director of Tender Mercies (1983). Kevin Jarre, with just a ‘story by’ screen credit, for Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), to his name, had written the screenplay. “The script is perfect,” averred Jarre when Zwick demanded a rewrite. Beyond a slight polish and a shifting around of some scenes, Jarre wouldn’t budge. So Zwick took on the rewrite.

Broderick’s notes were within the realm of expectation, mostly to do with his character. But then he sent the script to Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962), whose daughter he was dating. Then to Bo Goldman (One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1975). Neither writer took on the script and Goldman assured Zwick the script was fine. Then, the final bombshell. At her son’s insistence, Patsy was to work on the script. “I’m sure she was capable of warmth,” noted Zwick, “but I was never treated to that side of her, from the moment we met,” going through the script page by page, “she was contemptuous, demeaning and volatile,” her son sitting in silence. Amendments suggested by Patsy were readings from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and a scene where Broderick’s character was persuaded to take command of the regiment by his screen mother, to be played by his real mother.

As it happened, long before Broderick turned up, Zwick had been shooting footage from the 125th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg where 20,000 men in full uniform and weapons re-enacted the conflict. On a $25,000 budget, Zwick shot 30,000 feet including a cavalry charge, and created what was known in Hollywood parlance as a “sizzle reel.” Many of the re-enactors turned up as extras.

Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride, 1987) took a salary cut for his role. Zwick had been impressed by Denzel Washington in A Soldier’s Story (1984) and Cry Freedom (1987) but couldn’t afford him until producer Freddie Fields chipped in some of his fee. Morgan Freeman’s career was on an upward turn after an Oscar nomination for Street Smart (1987). Zwick found acting chemistry between this pair and Jihmi Kennedy and Andre Braugher. The actors “were hearing music I couldn’t even imagine,” wrote Zwick, “yet during each session, a transcendent moment, usually unwritten, could occur.”

Initially, however, Zwick felt he was making a disaster, “the lighting was too bright, the costumes were too new, and Matthew (Broderick) seemed uncomfortable in his role.” Luckily, a storm intervened. Not to provide rest or for Zwick to regroup. A mere storm wasn’t sufficient cause to postpone the scene of the regiment’s arrival in Readville. In the attendant fog, they were bedraggled, ankle-deep in mud, shoulders hunched against the lashing rain. Zwick realized that was the look he was after. He approached cinematographer Freddie Francis to shoot “without lights” in order to capture a similar mood. “Why didn’t you say so, dear boy?” was Francis’s encouraging response.

The next day, the first tent scene, provided another surprise. “I stared open-mouthed at the utter transformation that had taken place. Overnight he (Denzel Washington) has become Trip. Volatile. Funny. Mesmeric…it was impossible to take your eyes off Denzel…I had been in the presence of greatness. I’d never seen an actor command the focus by doing so little.”

Andre Braugher, in his debut, was also a revelation, after he’d mastered the art of hitting his marks. Once, during rehearsal for a scene, Zwick noticed that Morgan Freeman never looked Broderick in the eye. “Just as I was just about to move the camera to catch his look, I realized he was making a point of not looking at him…as a black man who had lived a lifetime wary of being punished.” Despite the traumas over the script, Broderick’s performance was “pitch perfect.”

The most emotionally powerful scene is the whipping. Twice, Zwick filmed Washington receiving three lashes. “But there was something more to be mined.” Making an excuse, Zwick asked Washington to re-do the scene, but then told John Finn, applying the whip, not to stop until Zwick called “cut.” Finn had delivered eight strokes before Zwick found what he was looking for. “The shame and mortification were real now… and in the magic of movies…a single tear appeared, catching the light at the perfect moment.”

Directorial sleight of hand in the battle scene compensated for limited budget and insufficient extras. Taking note of Kurosawa’s Ran (1985), Zwick filmed one “big image of each significant moment of the battle using the entire contingent.” The trick was to go back and shoot it all over again with a smaller group but each time filling the frame top to bottom with soldiers fighting. “When it’s cut together, the larger image stays in the audience’s mind as long as they’re never allowed to see blank space at the peripheries of the frame.”

To add to the battle, they let loose rockets and explosions on the night sky, almost losing a $300,000 camera car in the process. Much of the exposition, including the Patsy Broderick scenes, ended up on the cutting room floor. While Kevin Jarre had become a “cheerleader” for the film, Broderick and his mother walked out of a preview with the actor demanding to do his own cut of the movie. Zwick refused.

Released in December 1985, Glory was nominated for four Oscars including best director. Washington won Best Supporting Actor, Freddie Francis for Cinematography and Donald O. Mitchell, Greg Rudloff, Elliot Tyson and Russell Williams II for sound. Tri-Star refused to advertize in Black media. Zwick considered any “pushback” of Broderick’s character being perceived as a “white-savior narrative” as a “left-wing canard.”

SOURCE: Ed Zwick, Hits, Flops and Other Illusions, My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood (Gallery Books) 2024, pp69-105.

Behind the Scenes: The Rise and Fall of the Mini-Majors

Commonwealth United, the makers of A Black Veil for Lisa (1968) reviewed yesterday, was one of a flood of new entrants to the movie business in the middle to late 1960s. Variety, which always liked to put an easy label on things, tabbed them “mini-majors,” “near majors” or “instant majors” in the belief that any outfit that could string together a substantial annual output was worthy of being considered a contender to become a major player in the great movie game.

A caste system had operated in Hollywood since the 1930s. The “Little Three” of United Artists, Universal and Columbia were considered inferior to the likes of the “Big Five” of MGM, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, RKO and Warner Bros. By the  1960s the smaller units had been promoted and Disney had taken the place of RKO. But with product at an all-time low, the U.S. Government was inclined to rethink its stance on monopoly and permit cinema chains to enter the business – the Paramount Decree of 1948 having expressly forbidden the opposite, of studios owning cinema circuits.

National General was the first to challenge the government dictat. The Government in the 1940s had prevented Hollywood studios from becoming involved in television but now did something of a U-turn in permitting television giants ABC and CBS to invest in movies made under the aegis of ABC-Cinerama and Cinema Center, respectively.  More legitimate operations, by original Government standards, were the likes of Commonwealth United, American International (AIP), Embassy Pictures, and smaller units like Sigma 3 (in which producer Marty Ransohoff had a stake), Independent-International, Continental (backed by the Walter Reade arthouse chain) and Cinema 5.  

The mini-majors could make movies much faster than the established studios which had millions of bucks tied up in projects, books and plays, paid for and never made, deals with talent that didn’t work out, as well as bigger overheads and interest on loans running at $2 million a year per studio. For a short period the newcomers did well in the box office sweepstakes, in 1970, for example, Cinema Center beat Warner Bros in market share. And with the product well running dry and big studios being more selective about release dates, that still left considerable “playing time unused by big companies” that could be filled by “low-voltage commercial product.”

I’ve covered the National General tale before so suffice to say it did most of the heavy lifting in challenging the Paramount Decree and made such pictures as The Stalking Moon (1968) with Gregory Peck and Eva Marie Saint, Elvis in Charro! (1969), El Condor (1970), and James Stewart and Henry Fonda in The Cheyenne Social Club (1970) and was influential in the distribution of films made by other mini-majors.

Commonwealth United began as a real estate company formed in 1961 that took over the Landau-Unger movie production company in 1967 and began the serious business of creating a large enough movie roster that would make it welcome to the distributor. In these product-famine  times, anybody who could produce a movie could get a distributor, but the terms of the deal, if you were a one-off, favored the distributor. To achieve any kind of box office parity, you needed to show substantial intended output. Its initial entry into the business was as a distributor, in 1968 handling the U.S. release of spy thriller Subterfuge (1968) with Gene Barry, jungle picture Eve (1968), The Angry Breed (1968) mixing bikers and the movies, and heist picture Dayton’s Devils (1968), before biting the bullet with Italian-made A Black Veil for Lisa with British star John Mills top-billed.   

Commonwealth United couldn’t quite make up its mind whether to go down the A-movie or B-movie route. Its follow-ups to A Black Veil for Lisa were women-in-prison epic 99 Women (1969) and erotic thriller Venus in Furs (1969). But when it headed into the mainstream, it hit a box office barrier. Yugoslavian epic The Battle of Neretva (1969) with Yul Brynner flopped. Peter Sellers and Raquel Welch – snookered into fronting its lavish brochure, see photo above – couldn’t save The Magic Christian (1969). Robert Altman’s That Cold Day in the Park (1969) with Sandy Dennis, Julius Caesar (1970) starring Charlton Heston and The Ballad of Tam Lin (1970) with Ava Gardener all went down the tubes. The company closed down in 1971.

The bigger hitters, at least initially, promised more. Cinema Center, set up in 1967 using National General for distribution, and headed up by ex-Fox chief Gordon T. Stulberg, snagged deals with the likes of Doris Day, Jack Lemmon and Steve McQueen. Launch item  With Six You Get Eggroll (1968) starring Day and Brian Keith was followed by some potential box office bonanzas – The Reivers (1969) and Le Mans (1971) with McQueen, John Wayne in  Rio Lobo (1970) directed by Howard Hawks and Big Jake (1971), Richard Harris as A Man Called Horse (1970), Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (1970) with Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway, William Holden in The Revengers (1971) and Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman in Prime Cut (1971).

But there was a high end price to pay. As with United Artists in the 1950s, Carolco in the 1980s and streamers today, big stars and directors took advantage of ambitious smaller companies. The price of even playing the game was high. Sure, there was reward. Little Big Man took in $15 million in rentals, The Reivers $8 million, Big Jake $7.5 million, A Man Called Horse $6 million. But that couldn’t stop the flow of red ink on calamities like early Michael Douglas vehicle Hail Hero (1969), Rod Taylor as a private eye in Darker than Amber (1970), Who Is Harry Kellerman (1971), Joseph Losey’s existential thriller Figures in a Landscape (1971) and a over a dozen more. Twenty out of 27 movies made a loss, the cumulative total running at £30 million. By 1972 CBS had had enough and closed shop.

ABC released its pictures through an offshoot of Cinerama called Cinerama Releasing Corporation. It, too, struck occasional gold. Charly (1968) won an unexpected Oscar for Cliff Robertson. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969) did the same for Gig Young and helped Jane Fonda be recognized as a serious actress. And big names signed on: Ingmar Bergman for The Touch (1971), Sam Peckinpah and Dustin Hoffman for Straw Dogs (1971). Robert Aldrich made three – The Killing of Sister George (1969), Too Late the Hero (1970) and The Grissom Gang (1971). With its biggest hit They Shoot Horses only picking up $5.5 million in U.S. rentals and For Love of Ivy (1968) with Sidney Poitier $5 million and the bulk of the others striking out, ABC pulled out of the movie business in 1971.

Cinema owner-turned-distributor Joe Levine had been a thorn in the side of Hollywood for many years especially after his imported Hercules (1958) showed you could sell anything to the American public if you put enough advertising dough behind it – a notion he signally undercut when all the money in the world couldn’t turn Jack the Ripper (1959) into a hit. He turned more legit, in Hollywood eyes at least, by teaming up with Paramount for The Carpetbaggers (1964) and Nevada Smith (1966) and funded Zulu (1964) – a hit most places except the U.S. After the critical and financial success of The Graduate (1968) and The Lion in Winter (1968) he sold Embassy to one of those conglomerates that had started sniffing around the business, Textron, and the company was renamed Avco Embassy. Kept on as president, he quit in 1974 and Avco Embassy pulled out of movies a year later only to re-enter the fold in 1977 and under Robert Rehme shift into lower-budgeted numbers like The Fog (1980) and Time Bandits (1981). He increased turnover fourfold. In later years, the company changed owners and names several times.

Some of the less well-publicized orgaizations lasted longer. Independent-International, set up by Sam Sherman, Dan Kennis and Al Adamson in 1968, kept budgets down to an average $200,000 a picture and reckoned that even with limited opportunity could pull in rentals of $300,000. After the success of biker picture Satan’s Sadists (1968), the company put 13 movies in circulation without troubling the New York first runs. Typically, a movie would garner 4,000-6,000 playdates. That company is still in existence.

Going back to where we started with Commonwealth United, you’re probably very familiar with American International for its Edgar Allan Poe, beach party and biker pictures. But in 1969 after co-founder James Nicholson quit and the company went public with the aim of entering the Hollywood mainstream, it relied on Commonwealth for distribution, releasing 31 pictures in this fashion. Beginning with adaptations of classics like Wuthering Heights (1971) and Kidnapped (1971) and moving onto big-budgeters like Force 10 from Navarone (1978) and still dipping into horror and exploitation AIP coninued in one guise or another until 1980.

SOURCES: “Nat Gen Readying 7th Film,” Variety, November 16, 1966, p4; “Instant Majors: A Short Cut,” Variety, October 25, 1967, p5; “Same Upper Uppers,” Variety, October 30, 1968, p12; “Commonwealth: Near Major,” Variety, February 19, 1969, p5; “Commonwealth Full Sell,” Variety, May 7, 1969, p7; “Nat Gen Rolling Six,” Variety,  October 8, 1969, p6; “Topheavy Film Studios Fade,” Variety, October 29, 1969, p1;  “Nat Gen Denies Phase-Out,” Variety, August 12, 1970, p5; “1970 Domestic Theaters Sweepstakes,” Variety, January 13, 1971, p38; “Today’s Majors As Instant,” Variety, July 21, 1971, p7; “American Int Expected Inheritor of Cinerama Releasing,” Variety, July 31, 1974, p3.

Behind the Scenes: “The Chairman / The Most Dangerous Man in the World” (1969)

Had things run according to the original plan, we could have seen Frank Sinatra return to a Communist country for the first time since The Manchurian Candidate (1962). But if you had wanted to write a script about the guy who wrote The Chairman, you couldn’t have invented a more interesting character than Samuel Richard Solomonick. He was one of those guy who held every job under the sun before reinventing himself as an anticommunist going by the name of Jay Richard Kennedy and subsequently entering the fields of real estate, radio and brokerage, then landing a gig managing Harry Belafonte and writing the screenplay for I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955).

By the time he ended up as an executive at Sinatra Enterprises he had a couple of ideas to sell. Forming Jade Productions in 1966 with director Richard Quine (How To Murder Your Wife, 1965), the pair hooked Sinatra’s interest in two projects, Follow the Runner (which would have co-starred Sammy Davis Jr) and The Chairman plus William Holden eyeing the lead in The Wordlings about the population explosion.

That’s Gregory Peck trapped on the wrong side of the Russian border with Chinese soldiers closing in.

Sinatra was known for falling out with directors, shunting Mark Robson off The Detective (1968), so whether Quine would have lasted the pace is anybody’s guess. After success with Tony Rome (1967), Twentieth Century Fox briefly toyed with the prospect of pairing Sinatra and new wife Mia Farrow in The Chairman. Originally scheduled to begin shooting on January 1967, that later shifted to early 1968. The notion that the movie also had parts for Spencer Tracy and Yul Brynner was one of those puff pieces that some journalists swallowed.

Despite some enticing projects – he was first name down to direct Catch 22, after Columbia had spent $150,000 buying the novel, and to helm the screen translation of Broadway hit The Owl and the Pussycat – Richard Quine’s career teetered after the flop of Hotel (1967). Making no headway with Sinatra he made instead another flop, Oh Dad Poor Dad (1967) and was effectively put on furlough for three years after failing to finance a movie to star Alex Guinness and Lee Radziwill.

Quine exited The Chairman in May 1967 when former PR bigwig Arthur P. Jacobs took over the production and with Sinatra in absentia turned to British director  J. Lee Thompson who had helmed the producer’s debut picture What a Way to Go (1964).  And that proved a lucky break for Thompson who had yet to match the success of The Guns of Navarone (1961).  

The book cover.

After successive flops – Return from the Ashes (1965) and Eye of the Devil (1966) – Thompson had plenty projects on the boil including a musical remake of Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) with a score by Richard Rodgers and Peter Ustinov playing the lead. Also on his slate was High Citadel based on the Desmond Bagley bestseller; The Harp That Once for Columbia; an adaptation of James Clavell bestseller Tai Pan; a sequel to The Guns of Navarone called After Navarone that would reunite the director with star Gregory Peck and writer-producer Carl Foreman; and Planet of the Apes (1968) to which he and Jacobs held the rights.

While none of these projects – except Planet of the Apes and minus Thompson – came to fruition, the Navarone connection would lead to Mackenna’s Gold for Foreman. In the meantime he had helmed a modest drama, Before Winter Comes (1968) starring Broadway star Topol. When Arthur P. Jacobs greenlit The Chairman, he hired Thompson who looked no further than Peck, connection re-established via the Navarone sequel.  They were a four-time pairing – Cape Fear (1962) and Mackenna’s Gold and The Guns of Navarone. Peck was a controversial choice from the Twentieth Century Fox perpsective given he had broken a contract with the studio in 1960 to star in Let’s Make Love. But Jacobs smoothed ruffled studio feathers and paid his star $500,000 plus a percentage. With Jacobs on hands-on duty with Planet of the Apes (1968) –  Mort Abrahams oversaw the production of The Chairman  and immediately engaged in a budget dispute with the director. Jacobs had initially stipulated $4 million, Thompson believed he required another million. They didn’t quite split the difference, Fox had the film come in at $4.9 million.

Thompson recognized the problems of the script, pointing out that “the hardest thing for Americans about the film’s concept is accepting that China has some competent scientists.” Rather ingenuously, he averred that the movie would have “no political overtones,” while Abrahams retorted that it might have “some political overtones.” It would been obvious to anyone that a picture featuring Mao was bound to have political repercussions, his Little Red Book a massive bestseller on the campus, an album cut of recitations from the book and Edward Albee in 1968 premiering a play called Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.

Denied access to China, the production team spent four months “reading everything we could get our hands on.” At one point they considered dropping the scene featuring Chairman Mao and lengthening the sequence relating to Peck’s arrival in Hong Kong. In any case, different versions of the Hong Kong environs were shot, some with nude shots of girls in a house of pleasure.

The British Colonial Office in Hong Kong blocked filming there after fears of riots due to the production daring to portray Mao Tse-Tung on screen. Taiwan substituted for China although the locals there were also incensed, so much so they burned an effigy of Peck. Wales, funnily enough, was another location as was London University. Filming began on August 28 and finished on December 3.

Although it might appear that Ben Maddow (The Way West, 1967) wrote his script based on Jay Richard Kennedy’s novel, in fact the novel appeared after the screenplay with Kennedy writing the novelizaton, and it’s more likely that what Maddow adapted was the original Kennedy screenplay. Interestingly enough, around this time Maddow had first crack at the Edward Naughton western novel that became McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971).

It wasn’t the first time Variety got a prediction wrong: “powerful box office attaction” fell far short of the actual results. This proved an annus miserabilis for Gregory Peck. In fact, he had four films, not three, released in 1969. By release date The Stalking Moon technically belonged to the previous year, but it only played a handful of cinemas in 1968, its general release taking place in 1969.

Despite pocketing a total of over $2 million, Peck’s marquee value was in clear decline. Of the Peck quartet, Marooned did best, placing 33rd on the annual box office chart, with $4.1 million. Mackenna’s Gold (31st) took $3.1 million in rentals (the amount returned from the gross once a cinema has taken its cut), The Stalking Moon (38th) on $2.6 million, and The Chairman (41st) with $2.5 million.

SOURCES: Gary Fishgall, Gregory Peck (Scribners, 2002) p267; James Caplan, Sinatra: The Chairman, (Doubleday, 2015), p724;  “7 from 7 Arts,” Variety, March 3, 1965, p4; “Richard Quine,” Variety, July 7, 1965, p20; “Return of Advances,” Variety, October 6, 1965, p7; “Form Jade Prods,” Variety, December 15, 1965, p4; “J Lee Thompson Nearly Finished on 13,” Variety, February 2, 1966, p28; “Catch As Catch 22 Can,” Variety, February 23, 1966, p4; “Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Musical Henry VIII,” Variety, Mar 16, 1966, p1; “Inside Stuff – Pictures,” Variety, March 30, 1966, p22; “Lee Thompson Busily Blueprints His Musical Version of Henry VIII,” Variety, April 27, 1966, p17; “Jay Kennedy Script,” Variety, July 6, 1966, p5; “After Navarone,” Variety, April 19, 1967, p14; “Scripting Red Chinese,” Variety, May 21, 1967, p4; “”Personality Chemistry,” Variety, May 24, 1967, p4; New York Soundtrack,” Variety, Sep 20, 1967, p27; “Pat Hall Noel to Col,” Variety, December 27, 1967, p5; “N.Y. Indie Label Grooves Chairman Mao’s Thoughts,” Variety, April 10, 1968, p56; “Man About Town,” Variety, July 17, 1968, p68; “Jas Clavell to Roll Siege,” Variety, August 21, 1968, p7; “Thompson Wraps Up,” Variety, August 28, 1968, p29; “New York Soundtrack,” Variety, October 23, 1968, p18; “British Bar Fox’s Chairman,” Variety, December 4, 1968, p17; Big Rental Films of 1969,” Variety, January 7, 1970, p15; “Big Rental Films of 1970,” Variety, January 6, 1971, p11.

Behind the Scenes: Top 40 Movies at the 1950s Box Office

One of my pet peeves is how film history (what audiences wanted) has been hijacked by movie academics who rearrange history according to their favorite theories and directors. Film stars generally play little part in academic circles and box office is swept under the carpet as though the most popular of the artistic mediums has no right to discuss anything so base as popularity. The public doesn’t know what’s good for them and needs to be told what is,  was the pervasive mantra.

Even since Andrew Sarris with his “pantheon” dismissed the vast majority of directors, critics, tumbling down even worse rabbit holes, have attempted to turn film history on his head. To find out what movies were all about there’s no surer measure than box office. In one of my random explorations of Variety magazine (“All-Time Film Rental Champs,” Variety, January 5, 1977, p16) I happened across its list of box office topper from the 1950s and thought I’d share it with you to provide a better perspective on that decade’s moviegoing.

A four-year run at the Dominion in London’s West End delayed the movie’s general release in the U.K.

Note how much Hollywood relies on Broadway and hit novels for source material. Several big stars were very big indeed judging by their repeat success at the box office.

  1. The Ten Commandments (1956). Cecil B. DeMille’s immaculately research homage to sin and religion was far and away the decade’s biggest hit, with Charlton Heston hitting his Biblical stride and newcomer Yul Brynner in the first of a trio of hits that year. Based on the biggest bestseller of all time.
  2. Ben-Hur (1959). William Wyler’s multiple Oscar-winning epic heralded the roadshow era, set new standards for thrilling action with the chariot race and the battle at sea, while still maintaining Biblical sobriety. Charlton Heston was again the star. Based on an all-time bestseller by Lew Wallace.
  3. Around the World in 80 Days (1956). The most star-studded venture into the all-star-cast fraternity, much imitated in roadshows in the following decade, had a suprisingly British flavor with David Niven as star and directed by Michael Anderson. The premature death of producer Mike Todd, husband to Elizabeth Taylor, may have contributed to a sympathy vote to win the movie the Best Picture Oscar. Cemented  Jules Verne cinematic reputation.
  4. The Robe (1953). Audiences got their first view of Cinemascope, the process which would dominate the 1950s, in another Biblical epic based on a massive bestseller and again Brit-heavy in the casting – Richard Burton and Jean Simmons. From Lloyd C. Douglas bestseller.
  5. South Pacific (1958). The influence of Broadway on Hollywood should not be underestimated. You wouldn’t need Scope to attract an audience to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s long-running musical with many classic tunes. Directed by Joshua Logan, starring Italian export Rosanna Brazzi and Mitzi Gaynor. Ran a record four years in London. Adapted from James Michener novel.
  6. Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). William Holden top bills but Brits steal the glory, Oscars for director David Lean and star Alec Guinness, in World War Two drama. Snagged a record $3 million when sold to U.S. television. Based on Pierre Boulle novel.
  7. This Is Cinerama (1952). A whirligig of technology took audiences on a dazzling heart-pounding triple-screen experience and ushered in the less expensive Cinemascope. Merian C. Cooper of King Kong fame, Lowell Thomas of Lawrence of Arabia fame and Mike Todd were involved.
  8. The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Cecil B. DeMille (again), Charlton Heston (again) and star-studded cast including James Stewart, Dorothy Lamour and Betty Hutton in circus drama. Won Best Picture Oscar.
  9. The Lady and the Tramp (1955). Disney animated feature that would be reissued time and again.
  10. Quo Vadis (1951). Historical Roman drama with biblical undertones and spectacular scenes starring Robert Taylor and Brits Deborah Kerr and Peter Ustinov. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy and Anthony Mann. 
  11. Seven Wonders of the World (1956). Cinerama travelogue takes another huge bite out of the box office. Given the limited of screens able to show this, an amazing achievement.
  12. The Shaggy Dog (1959). Fred MacMurray reinvented his darker screen persona in the first of the Disney live action comedies to strike gold at the box office.
  13. From Here to Eternity (1953). Massive James Jones bestseller set during Pearl Harbor in World War Two. Multiple Oscar-winner. Terrific cast included Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra (reviving a defunct movie career) and Ernest Borgnine. Directed by Fred Zinnemann.
  14. Samson and Delilah (1949). Cecil B. DeMille (again) fillets the Bible (again). Man mountain Victor Mature tempted by sensual Hedy Lamarr. Released in the last two weeks of the previous decade but included here because it made the vast bulk of its money in 1950.
  15. 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (1954). Disney gives warning of mainstream live-action intent. Kirk Douglas battles mysterious Captain Nemo and convincing giant squid. Action spectacular from Richard Fleischer. Jules Verne rules.
  16. Sayonara (1957). Marlon Brando in doomed Japanese-set romance dealing with racism and prejudice. Joshua Logan directs from James Michener novel. 
  17. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman spar in marital drama directed  by Richard Brooks. Based on Tennessee Williams Broadway smash.
  18. Old Yeller (1957). Disney (again) minting gold from cutesy canine tale. Brit Robert Stevenson directs. Based on novel by Fred Gipson.
  19. Auntie Mame (1958). Rosalind Russell reprises her Broadway role. Based on bestseller by Patrick Denis that was turned into a hot Broadway play and in the following decade a hit musical.
  20. Shane (1953). Iconic George Stevens western starring Alan Ladd. Jack Palance won the Oscar for his eye-catching supporting role. From the Jack Schaefer bestseller.
  21. The Caine Mutiny (1954). Oscar nomination for Humphrey Bogart as wayward ship’s captain. Directed by Edward Dmytryk from Herman Wouk bestseller.
  22. Mister Roberts (1955). Might come as a shock to academics to learn that this was far and away John Ford’s most successful picture. Name of a ship rather than a character. Henry Fonda reprises Broadway role. Also stars James Cagney and Jack Lemmon. Novel and subsequent play by Thomas Heggen.
  23. The King and I (1956). Rodgers and Hammerstein (again) Broadway hit won Oscar for Yul Brynner (again) although Deborah Kerr (again) was top-billed. Directed by Walter Lang.
  24. Sleeping Beauty (1959). Disney mines another fairy tale for box office gold.
  25. Battle Cry (1955). Surprise hit for Raoul Walsh. World War Two drama starring Ven Heflin. From Leon Uris bestseller.
  26. Some Like it Hot (1959). Marilyn Monroe and cross-dressing Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder’s classic comedy.
  27. The Glenn Miller Story (1954). James Stewart (again) in Anthony Mann (again) biopic about bandleader who vanished in World War Two.
  28. No Time for Sergeants (1958). The power of Broadway. Screen unknown Andy Griffiths reprises Broadway role as recruit who causes chaos in the US Air Force.  Originally a novel by Mac Hyman turned into a hit play by Ira Levin. Directed by (again) Mervyn LeRoy.
  29. Pillow Talk (1959). Launches the Rock Hudson-Day comedy partnership. Original screenplay directed by Michael Gordon.
  30. How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). Intended as showcase for new Cinemascope process, Marilyn Monroe (again) stole the show from Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall. Another original screenplay. Directed by Jean Negulesco.
  31. Gigi (1958). Multiple Oscar-winning musical starring French duo Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier. The Lerner and Loewe hit Broadway show adapted a novel by Colette. Directed by Vincente Minnelli.
  32. Trapeze (1956). Burt Lancaster (again), Tony Curtis (again) and Italian export Gina Lollobrigida in another circus drama. Directed by Brit Carol Reed from the Max Catto novel.
  33. Oklahoma (1955). Another Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway hit brought to the screen by Fred Zinnemann (again). Adapted from an original straight play by Lyn Riggs.
  34. Gone with the Wind (1939). Legendary Civil War epic makes this list purely on the strength of its 1954 reissue. (Did even better in its 1967 revival).
  35. The Country Girl (1954). Grace Kelly won the Oscar in movie drama co-starring Bing Crosby and William Holden (again). Directed by George Seaton and based on Broadway play.
  36. Imitation of Life (1959). Douglas Sirk weepie starring Lana Turner, remake of 1934 picture.
  37. North by Northwest (1959). Alfred Hitchcock classic. Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint find romance among the crop-spraying plane and Mount Rushmore.
  38. Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Top-heavy Tennessee Williams (again) drama starring Elizabeth Taylor (again), Montgomery Clift (again) and Katharine Hepburn. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. From Williams’ Broadway hit.
  39. Picnic (1955). William Holden (again) and Kim Novak in adaptation of Broadway play. Directed by Joshua Logan (again).
  40. The Vikings (1958) Richard Fleischer reteams with Kirk Douglas for action adventure also starring Tony Curtis and then-wife Janet Leigh.
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