You might be forgiven for wondering why Otto Preminger, a past master at film noir, did not simply adapt the source novel by Francoise Sagan by tilting the material in that direction. After all, Preminger had helped create the genre with Laura (1944) and followed up with noir trilogy Whirlpool (1950), Where the Sidewalk Ends (1951) and Angel Face (1952).
The purported saving grace of the Sagan novel is the main character’s guilt at the disaster she triggers, although, from another perspective that could be viewed as author cunning, employing acceptance of culpability to render her more sympathetic. In other words, she gets away with it, and that’s a completely different twist.
Whereas, in another world, she would be doing jail time or at least undergoing psychiatric care, her action appears to make her even more independent, discarding men at whim, turning into the character whom Jean-Luc Godard would use as the inspiration for Breathless (1960).
The tale is told in flashback, allowing a peppering of grief into what otherwise would be a straightforward story of spoiled little rich girl Cecile (Jean Seberg) plotting to rid herself of interloper Anne (Deborah Kerr) who has disrupted the perfect life she shares with doting father Raymond (David Niven).
In some respects it applies a coming-of-age template to all the main characters, adults as well as young required to adjust to the consequences of love and alter their behavior. It’s not just the teenage Cecile who’s spoiled – nothing to do but laze in the sun, swim in the sea and attend parties and night clubs – but Raymond, a charming philanderer/perfect cad, new girlfriend on tap, the beauty of current one, Elsa (Mylene Demongeot), undercut by her propensity to blister under the sun and despite her overall shallowness a mathematical whiz in the casino, a skill which would probably allow her to dispense with her apparent dependence on an older rich lover.
Into this cosy set-up arrives, by an accident of timing, old flame Anne, a successful couturier, whose mental fragility is disguised by an outwardly strong character. Her presence is accepted until Elsa is sent packing and Raymond proposes marriage. Anne makes the fatal mistake of overdoing the maternal, seeking to rein in Cecile, instructing her to chuck her boyfriend Philippe (Geoffrey Horne) and spend her time studying. It says a lot about Anne’s character that she couldn’t have more seriously miscalculated not just Cecile’s character but that of Philippe, who, intending to become a lawyer, seems a sensible choice for a boyfriend.
So, Cecile hatches a plan to bring Elsa back into Raymond’s orbit knowing that fidelity is scarcely his strong suit. Oddly enough, this kind of plotting, especially given the South of France atmosphere, would play better as a standard rom-com ploy, daughter trying to push father in the direction of preferred lover.
Instead, it exposes the cracks in Anne’s psyche and drives her to suicide. But since no one is aware, and Elsa too dumb ostensibly to recognize the part she plays, of the machinations, Cecile gets off scot-free, and in reality using the guilt to make her appear more sympathetic. This probably worked better in the Sagan novel which, with a first-person narrative, allows the author to form the other characters in a manner that makes Cecile’s actions more understandable or at least acceptable, nudging the reader towards sympathy rather than repulsion.
Whatever way the story is pitched, it doesn’t really work. All the characters, save Elsa, are exposed as inherently fragile, unable to accept change and/or reality. The suicide seems a mundane narrative ploy. Raymond is never presented as the love of Anne’s life and her death seems an incredible over-reaction, intended to give the story a more dramatic climax.
However, the characters are all well-drawn and the vivacity of the French lifestyle brings the picture to life, but hardly suited to Preminger who, by this stage, had a tendency to look for a bigger issue to chew over.
Jean Seberg (Moment to Moment, 1966) never managed a successful Hollywood career but this film was a big hit with emerging French filmmakers, and she was a far bigger box office attraction in France. The iconic short haircut and Givenchy attire seemed to present her as a latter-day Audrey Hepburn, but it was her screen independence that appealed more. Deborah Kerr (Prudence and the Pill, 1968), portraying a complex character, would be the pick of the actors except David Niven (Prudence and the Pill) exerts effortless charm and in terms of screen splash you could scarcely fault the effervescent Mylene Demongeot (The Singer not the Song, 1961).
Preminger, as ever, toys with convention. It’s the present day that’s shot in black-and-white rather than the past. Just as he rid John Wayne of his trick of breaking sentences in two in In Harm’s Way (1965), here Deborah Kerr is revealed without make-up, her freckled face providing her with an innocence. He had some fun with the house servants, apt to glug champagne, literally, behind their employer’s back. Arthur Laurents (Rope, 1948) wrote the screenplay.
Not quite sure how it ended up at the Bradford Widescreen Weekend since although it is in Cinemascope it was not one of that process’s more outstanding champions. Nor why it was introduced as Deborah Kerr’s movie when as far as the public was concerned the star was Jean Seberg. Nor even why Kerr was deemed a “Queen of Scope” since you could apply that term to virtually every female star who appeared in the 1950s in Cinemascope (20th Century Fox), VistaVision (Paramount) or Panavision (MGM).
If this were made now, there would be a scene at the end where Cecile tips the wink to the audience and enjoys rather than feels guilty about her clever ploy.
You might be surprised to learn that by Hollywood standards the recent self-elective dualing of Barbie and Oppenheimer was a perfect double bill. Not because it resuscitated an old distribution ploy but that the two films would have been viewed in the 1960s as an ideal pairing. A program comprising two completely different pictures was seen as the best way to attract an audience.
You might also be under the misapprehension that until the dominance of the single-film program from the 1980s onwards an outing to the movies always involved seeing two movies. But that wasn’t the case at all and studios fought a hard battle against a trend, beginning in the United States in 1930s especially in cities like Chicago, of demanding a program comprising two films rather than one.
Horror films were the most common to end up on a double bill and, in fact, were often made with that purpose in mind.
But by the 1960s, except in their initial publicity-driven outings in the giant seating arenas in the likes of London, Paris, New York, Rome, Chicago etc, films that went out on subsequent release were often accompanied by a supporting feature well above the caliber of the B-pictures that had saturated the previous decades. In the 1940s and 1950s, for example, most double bills, while complying with the three-hour dictat for a reasonable night out, were rarely value-for-money, usually composed of a main feature and a much inferior cheaper B-movie, often a series western or crime movie.
It was only in the 1960s, when B-film production all but vanished, that cinemas began to offer what you might call a decent value-for-money package. Though, if you looked beneath the lines, you might discover that one of the offerings was being offloaded after flopping in initial opening.
Not surprisingly, at the start of the 1960s, with movie production in terminal decline, the last thing studios wanted to do was to use up their scant supplies too soon. Double bills could also limit box office. Shown on its own, a single feature could generate four or five showings a day. Teamed with another movie, exposure was reduced to two, maybe three, complete programmes a day depending on venue and location. The supporting feature generally played for a fixed rental rather than a percentage, so income was further reduced.
U.S. chains tended to be regional rather than national so it’s hard to get an idea from them of the importance double bills played in the national consciousness. On the other hand, Britain boasted two national circuits, ABC and Odeon, and examination the programmes put out there give a better idea of the role double bills had in cinemas.
Considerable thought went into allocating partners, studios, rather than cinemas, responsible for the arriving at the ideal mix. Except for a horror pairing, appealing to a specific adult market, the perfect double bill was deliberately wide in its aim, attempting to scoop up business from different sectors of the population, perhaps on a sexist basis. For example, a drama targeting women might be paired with a western attracting men. This kind of thinking accounted for some of what you might consider oddities of programming.
On the UK’s ABC circuit, for example heist picture They Came To Rob Las Vegas (1969) went out as the main attraction with Sandy Dennis romantic drama Sweet November (1969); Angie Dickinson romance Lovers Must Learn (aka Rome Adventure, 1962) with violent Sam Peckinpah western The Deadly Companions (1961); Faye Dunaway-Rossano Brazzi tragic romance A Place for Lovers (1969) with Glenn Ford western Heaven with a Gun (1969); and the sixth iteration of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. series The Karate Killers (1967) with Alexander Mackendrick’s Californian beach comedy Don’t Make Waves (1967) starring Tony Curtis and Claudia Cardinale.
Other times, there was clearly an element of making the best of a bad job, how to otherwise explain thriller David McCallum in non-U.N.C.L.E. thriller The Heroin Gang (aka Sol Madrid, 1968) – the main attraction – being matched with David Niven-Deborah Kerr occult oddity Eye of the Devil, which had been sitting on the shelf for two years; Ann-Margret showcase The Swinger (1966) with Rock Hudson sci fi Seconds (1966) directed by John Frankenheimer; and French sex romp Benjamin (aka Diary of an Innocent Boy, 1968) with the violent prison-set Riot (1969) starring Jim Brown and Gene Hackman.
The only genre, outside of horror, that accommodated the double bill was comedy as seen through the teaming of Who’s Minding the Store (1963) starring Jerry Lewis and Jill St John and Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed (1963) with Dean Martin; Jerry Lewis again in The Patsy (1964) with Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964); and Tony Curtis starrer Drop Dead Darling (aka Arrivederci, Baby, 1966) with Warren Beatty and Leslie Caron in Promise Her Anything (1966).
Some Elvis Presley musicals were considered too lightweight to be released without a support – It Happened at the World’s Fair (1963) was bracketed with swashbuckler Swordsman of Siena (1962) starring Stewart Granger; Kissin’ Cousins (1964) with Pat Boone comedy Never Put It in Writing (1964); Tickle Me (1965) with Soldier in the Rain (1963) – only given a full release two years after completion due to star Steve McQueen’s increasing popularity; California Holiday (aka Spinout, 1966) with sword-and-sandal epic Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (1963); and Double Trouble (1967) with western Hondo and the Apaches (1967), a feature stitched together from two episodes of TV series Hondo. Others Elvis pictures were deemed quite capable of looking after themselves at the box office – Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), Roustabout (1964), and Easy Come, Easy Go (1967), for example, released as single bills.
Some programs seemed terrific value for money, films that individually might struggle to find an audience, but together seemed a worthwhile visit. I would have been quite happy to line up for any of the following: John Ford western Sergeant Rutledge (1960) plus A Tall Story with Anthony Perkins and Jane Fonda; Never Take Sweets (Candy) from a Stranger (1960) and Brigitte Bardot crime drama Come Dance With Me (1959); France Nuyen in John Sturges’ A Girl Named Tamiko (1962) and Debbie Reynolds in My Six Loves (1963); and Rod Taylor and Jane Fonda in romance Sunday in New York (1963) plus Glenn Ford and Stella Stevens in comedy western Company of Cowards (aka Advance to the Rear, 1964).
For that matter I’d be easily tempted into a program comprising Rod Taylor as Young Cassidy (1965) and Glenn Ford-Henry Fonda modern western The Rounders (1965); Sidney Poitier in A Patch of Blue (1965) and Ann-Margret romantic comedy Made in Paris (1966); Robert Stack and Elke Sommer thriller The Peking Medallion (aka The Corrupt Ones, 1967) and Jane Fonda in comedy Bachelor Girl Apartment (aka Any Wednesday, 1966); and Rod Taylor as Chuka (1967) in the Gordon Douglas western and David Janssen in thriller The Warning Shot (1967).
Count me in for the following combos: Charlton Heston in WW2 drama Counterpoint (1967) coupled with James Garner adventure The Pink Jungle (1968); George Segal hunting serial killer Rod Steiger in No Way to Treat a Lady (1968) and Sidney Poitier in The Slender Thread (1965) – receiving a full release somewhat late in the day on the back of the star’s recent box office; British home invasion thriller The Penthouse (1967) and heist masterclass Grand Slam (1967); and Burt Lancaster-Deborah Kerr drama The Gypsy Moths (1969) and James Garner as Raymond Chandler’s Marlowe (1969).
Imagining either The Wonders of Aladdin (1961) or Tarzan Goes to India (1962) as single bill fodder would be a stretch, a double bill the best solution. In any case, since Disney pushed all its product through the rival Odeon chain, ABC was short of family-friendly programs for the school holiday periods. Hence the coupling of Son of Spartacus (aka The Slave, 1962) starring Steve Reeves with Flipper (1964) or Tarzan’s Three Challenges (1963) with Flipper and the Pirates (aka Flipper’s New Adventure, 1964).
Equally, you might wonder what had gone so wrong with Kirk Douglas Korean War drama The Hook (1963) that it ended up on the lower end of a double bill with airline stewardess comedy Come Fly with Me (1963). And you might be surprised to discover which films weren’t rated strong enough box office to go out on their own. James Garner and Julie Andrews in cynical WW2 drama The Americanization of Emily (1964) required support from the first The Man from U.N.C.L.E. adventure To Trap a Spy (1964) (Equally odd given the series’ later fame that the latter was merely a support.)
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in The Sandpiper (1965) were given a helping hand by Miss Marple mystery Murder Ahoy! (1964). Sophia Loren as Lady L (1965) plus an all-star cast including Paul Newman required release assistance from Glenn Ford-Rita Hayward film noir The Money Trap (1965). Sizzling London box office and critical adoration didn’t save Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) from being paired with Sandra Dee comedy Doctor, You’ve Got To Be Kidding (1967). Charlton Heston western Will Penny (1968) was bundled up with Tarzan and the Great River (1967).
Nothing pointed to Doris Day’s fading box office prowess more than Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (1968) being hooked up to Raquel Welch bikini caper The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968). An Oscar nomination for Joanne Woodward in drama Rachel (aka Rachel, Rachel, 1968) wasn’t enough to see it home without the accompaniment of Tony Curtis period comedy The Chastity Belt (aka On the Way to the Crusades, 1967). Goodbye, Columbus might have been a huge hit in the USA and turned Ali McGraw into a star but as an unknown her debut feature went out with Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968).
On the other hand, if a feature was considered too weak to play on its own, it might be withdrawn from the British ABC circuit before the week was over, a fate that befell Maureen O’Hara starrer Battle of the Villa Florita (1965), Jeffrey Hunter thriller Brainstorm (1965) and, unusually given its source, a bestseller by Arthur Hailey, Hotel (1966) starring Rod Taylor.
One of the ways to get round the circuit system that limited showing of a film generally to a single week was to double up two hits for a second tilt at the box office.
The advent of the reissue double bill made studios reassess what constituted a successful combo. James Bond, Clint Eastwood, Pink Panther and cheesecake duos (One Million Years B.C., 1966, starring Raquel Welch paired with She, 1965, headlining Ursula Andress), and speedy revivals of recent hits, such as Bonnie and Clyde (1967)/Bullitt (1968). showed that such programs could do just as well, if not better, by targeting a specific audiences as attempting to spread appeal.
The single-bill was in decline throughout the 1960s. On the ABC circuit in the U.K., for example, the number of single bills shown in an individual year peaked at 37 in 1963 before sharply falling to an average of 28 for the next six years. In other words, while ABC worked its way through a total of 67 movies in 1963, for the rest of the decade it was screening an average of 76 a year.
The following decade it was a different story as the circuit release system crumpled under the weight of long-runners like The Godfather (1972) and Jaws (1975) that sucked up so much juice in first run there was little left at the box office when they hit the suburban/small town circuit. The single bill was back on top by the end of 1970s – only eight double bills shown in 1979.
More typical of the 1970s double bill – two top stars in movies that hadn’t quite hit the box office mark Stateside so were bundled together as a more audience-friendly attraction.
(Of course, I’m ignoring here those independent cinemas – the Scala in London’s King’s Cross or the Prince Charles in Leicester Square – that became famous for making up their own double bills, many of which examples went into legend.)
Gradually, except for very occasional reissues, the double bill was consigned to history until the public this year, of its own accord (though perhaps driven by a clever social media campaign) changed its tune. I’m a perennial supporter of the do-it-yourself double bill. On my weekly jaunt to the cinema I see back-to-back two films of my own choosing. But I’m guessing that cinema buffs regularly make up their own double bills from their own collections or digging out what’s on offer from mainstream networks and the streamers. So I’m not as surprised as some that what appears a one-off phenomenon caught on so fast.
Note: I’d be interested to know if the double bills I’ve mentioned above were shown in the USA or the rest of the world for that matter.
SOURCE: Allen Eyles, ABC, The First Name in Entertainment (Cinema Theatre Association, 1993) p122-127.
The alternative title assumed nobody in America knew what a greengage was – it’s a type of plum – but the new title was actually pretty apposite. Until then director Lewis Gilbert had been known mostly for Second World War pictures like Reach for the Sky (1954) and Carve Her Name with Pride (1955) so this was a considerable change of pace, and filmed on location in France.
Joss (Susannah York) takes center stage as a girl on the brink of womanhood who experiences powerful emotions for the first time – love and its perpetual bedfellow jealousy – as well as rite-of-passage experiences like getting hammered on champagne. She is the oldest of four siblings stranded in a French chateau when their mother takes ill.
Left to her own devices, she promptly falls for the suave and much older Eliot (Kenneth More) who has interceded on their behalf when the hotel owner is against putting up with a bunch of motherless children. Matters are complicated because Eliot is having an affair with chateau owner Zizi (Danielle Darrieux) and by Joss attracting the attention of Paul (David Saire), a hotel worker closer to her own age. In short time, the situation is brimming over with suppressed emotion.
Hester (Jane Asher), suddenly aware of the romantic havoc being wreaked by her older sister, is going through her own transformation, jealous that the unrequited love of Paul is not directed towards her, her emotions flying off the handle when she triggers a violent altercation with a local lad.
Despite the distributor’s best efforts – the tagline promises “A Summer of Evil” – by modern standards this is a gentle tale, but not without a harsh undercurrent. York is superb as she undergoes a transformation from uncertain schoolgirl to a woman realizing the power her beauty can exert. She flares from child to adult and back again in seconds.
The main U.S. poster and this one seem determined to add seediness to the tale.
Susannah York (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) had won her big break after a sparkling performance in a small role in Tunes of Glory (1960) and she floats effortlessly between chalet school pranks and more serious misdemeanors including drunkenness.
Sometime child actor Jane Asher (still better known as Paul McCartney’s girlfriend or for her cakes rather than stunning turns like Deep End, 1970) also achieves a career breakthrough and you could argue that she edges out York in a role that calls for more balance.
Kenneth More (Sink the Bismarck!, 1960) was at his charming best in the kind of affable role he had generally moved away from, but his character has a darker side. More importantly, as an older adult infatuated with a young girl, he manages to steer well clear of any inherent creepiness. There is no sense of him exploiting the situation, rather trying to guide the young woman in the art of love.
The dialogue is surprisingly good and Danielle Darrieux (better known as one of Darryl F. Zanuck’s girlfriends rather than for the likes of Romain Gary’s The Birds Go To Die in Peru, 1968) is convincing as an aging beauty willing to do anything to hold onto her man. There is an interesting under-developed subplot too dangerous to explore at this point in the decade of the hotel manager Madame Corbet (Claude Nollier) clearly being in love with Zizi.
The young Elizabeth Dear (The Battle of the Villa Florita, 1965), making her debut, also enhances her career and British character actor Maurice Denham (Danger Route, 1967) has a small role.
Lewis Gilbert’s subtle direction set his career on a new course that would ultimately deliver an Oscar nomination for Alfie (1966). The Howard Koch (The Fox, 1967) screenplay draws heavily on the source novel by Rumer Godden, an expert in the suppressed complexities of female life, best displayed in Black Narcissus (1947) and The Battle of the Villa Florita
The scenery is a bonus as are the snatches of provincial French life. All in all, an engaging piece of work, with Susannah York delivering a star-is-born kind of turn.
Just like the All-Time Top 40, this is based on views on the Blog. I realized I didn’t do a catch-up last year and haven’t done one in two years so it kind of feels redundant to do a previous-year’s-position in brackets number.
All of these movies incurred problems – budget, changes of director or star, censorship issues, studio indifference – and for some it’s a surprise they ever made it onto the big screen.
Waterloo (1970). Sergei Bondarchuk’s roadshow epic with Rod Steiger and Christopher Plummer.
The Satan Bug (1965). John Sturges adaptation of Alistair MacLean pandemic thriller, striking a stronger note now than when originally release.
The Girl on a Motorcycle / Naked Under Leather (1968). Marianne Faithful in leathers, what more can you say, except the U.S. censors took umbrage and cut out most of what Europe went crazy for.
Ice Station Zebra (1968). John Sturges again. Alistair MacLean again. Big budget roadshow set mostly under the polar ice cap.
The Guns of Navarone (1961). All-star cast for J. Lee Thompson WW2 epic.
Cast a Giant Shadow (1966). Comedy director Melville Shavelson goes straight with Israeli action picture starring Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, John Wayne and Senta Berger.
In Harm’s Way (1965). John Wayne and Kirk Douglas (again) in Otto Preminger’s examination of Army politics pre- and post-Pearl Harbor.
Spartacus (1961). Battle between the Kirk Douglas vehicle and a rival production from Yul Brynner.
Battle of the Bulge (1965). Cinerama to the fore in the battle of the tanks in WW2.
The Cincinnati Kid (1965). Sam Peckinpah fired, Norman Jewison takes over, Steve McQueen perfects his iconic loner in poker drama.
Secret Ceremony (1969). Elizabeth Taylor, Mia Farrow and a creepy Robert Mitchum in odd Joseph Losey drama.
The Ipcress File (1965). The spy picture that attempted to upend the Bond applecart. Michael Caine’s most iconic role.
Genghis Khan (1965). Though way down the credits, Omar Sharif in the title role.
Sink the Bismarck! (1962). British war film starring Kenneth More that does what it says on the tin.
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969). Decades in the making, finally surfacing with a dream cast of Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin and Susannah York.
Doctor Zhivago (1965). Selling the David Lean epic.
The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968). Whoever imagined this would work as a roadshow? Anthony Quinn headlines.
The Biggest Bundle of Them All (1968). Raquel Welch effortlessly steals the show in Italian caper.
Night of the Living Dead (1968). Horror was never the same after George A. Romero went to work on zombies.
The Way West (1967). Underrated Andrew V. McLaglen western with top-notch cast in Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum and Richard Widmark.
Valley of the Dolls (1967). Would have been Judy Garland’s last hurrah except she was fired.
When Alistair MacLean Quit: Part Two. Not content with serving up concepts that were turned into some of the best films of the decade, the bestselling author had his own demons to battle.
The Wicker Man (1973). The trap is sprung on naïve Scottish cop in movie that was flop on release but is now considered one of the best horror films ever made.
The Secret Ways (1961). Richard Widmark hunted in Hungary in adaptation of Alistair MacLean thriller. The star finished off the picture when Phil Karlson quit/was fired.
Humphrey Bogart: 1960s Revival Champ. The reason Bogart became so iconic for a new generation: his reissued movies proved box office dynamite.
Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). The inside story of the Sergio Leone classic.
100 Rifles (1969). Raquel Welch, need I say more…well, yes, because Jim Brown brings a helluva lot to the action.
The Bridge at Remagen (1969). Producer David Wolper didn’t count on Russia invading Czechoslovakia when he scheduled his shoot.
The Man in the Middle / The Winston Affair (1964). Robert Mitchum defends an apparently guilty man.
When Box Office Went Worldwide. In the 1960s nobody reported foreign box office so you had to dig deep like I did to find the information all hidden away. Fascinating reading especially as it shows what films touted as successes were actually flops.
Otto Preminger was beaten to the punch on this one, the scandalous Henry Morton Robinson bestseller snapped up in 1955 by producer Louis de Rochemont (The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone, 1961) who had a tie-up with Columbia. Due to interference from the Catholic Church, de Rochemont dropped his option which Preminger picked up in 1961 while working on Advise and Consent (1962).
The last section of the novel, set in Austria during the Anschluss, reverberated with the director who was born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire and although a Jew was well acquainted with Catholic society. One of his most significant changes to the book was introducing the Austrian cardinal who endorsed Hitler.
The first two screenwriters James Lee (Banning, 1967) and Daniel Taradash (Castle Keep, 1969) failed to whittle down the complex novel to cinematic proportions. So Preminger brought in Robert Dozier (The Big Bounce, 1969) and began working with him in summer 1962 making other alterations to heighten the drama. The incident involving the unborn child of the sister of Fr Fermoyle (Tom Tryon) acquires greater emotional power in the film, touching on the ambiguities inherent in any institution and provoking the priest’s guilt.
Gore Vidal (The Best Man, 1964) also worked on the script, swapping the novel’s Italian countess for the Viennese Annemarie (Romy Scheider) who, abandoned by the priest had married and was reunited with him prior to the Anschluss, and is sympathetic to Hitler until her husband’s faith endangers them both. Ring Lardner, who had satirized the Catholic church in a recent novel, was the final screenwriter added, his main task to rewrite scenes “to achieve what he (Preminger) wanted,” and, more importantly, to introduce the flashback structure. Ironically, both Vidal and Lardner were atheists.
Tom Tryon and Romy Scheider meet again in Vienna.
The director considered five actors for the leading role – Hugh O’Brian (Africa – Texas Style, 1967), Stuart Whitman (The Commancheros, 1961), Cliff Robertson (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968), Bradford Dillman (Circle of Deception, 1960) and Tom Tryon (In Harm’s Way, 1965), the latter three advancing to the screen-testing stage. The 34-year-old Tryon won the role and a five-picture contract he would later regret. Carol Lynley (Bunny Lake Is Missing, 1965) who plays the priest’s sister also pacted for five movies.
Romy Scheider’s (Triple Cross, 1966) part was enhanced by the work of cinematographer Leon Shamroy who “fell madly in love with her,” resulting in the actress virtually shimmering on screen, never before “looking as beautiful.” Held in warm regard by the director, she was exempt from his tirades.
It took considerable persuasion on the part of Preminger for John Huston to participate. Curd Jurgens, initially cast as the Austrian cardinal, pulled out and was replaced by character actor Josef Meinrad whose lack of English meant he had to learn his lines phonetically.
Tom Tryon described Preminger as “tyrant who ruled by terror.” He was fired on the first day and probably wished the director had not rescinded the decision, for thereafter the actor was tabbed “lazy…a fool…stupid and unprofessional.” Commented Tryon, “I was so frightened he was going to scream that…I (just) wanted the experience to end.”
One scene with John Huston took 78 takes because Tryon could not deliver what the director wanted. And at one point first assistant director Gerry O’Hara (later director of The Bitch, 1979) found the star in tears and refusing to return unless the director agreed not to shout at him. Eventually, during the Italian section of the shoot, Tryon collapsed from nervous exhaustion, and was prescribed two days rest, and after this incident Preminger let up on his demands of the actor.
Explained Preminger, “I probably chose him without deliberation because he is weak.” He felt than an ordinary person would not side with the Church against a family member in a predicament, and that only a person “with weakness in his character” would be believable in the role. The character “fails because when you become a priest you substitute your own judgement and your own feelings for the law of the Church…The big decisions are made for him.” (Quite why he never chose an actor who could portray such weakness is not known.)
Tryon admitted that he owed a brief let-up in the bullying to “Schneider’s benign presence.” He commented, “The only fun I ever had on The Cardinal was a (ballroom) scene I did with Romy.” Prior to turning the cameras, Prior called both over, appeared ready to issue instructions, but instead waved them away “you know what to do.”
Added Schneider, “Preminger taught me an important thing: work fast. It’s true that it greatly helps our acting. Each of his directions, whether of gesture or of intonation, is precise and correct. Even better, it’s the only one possible…Each phrase, each world, each syllable are minutely weighed.” That dexterity applied to his positioning of the camera. He made decisions immediately, never hesitating “over the placement of the camera and each time…it was the simplest, the most natural and, dramatically, the best.”
Ossie Davis (The Scalphunters, 1968), who professed to have enjoyed a marvellous relationship with the director, observed: “I met actors whom Otto liked, I met actors that had no relationship or feelings one way or the other and I met actors who were almost absolutely destroyed, almost literally in panic because of Otto Preminger (who) was always looking for a spark…whether you had the spark or not, he was going to find it and even put it in you.”
But Patrick O’Neal stood his ground. “I woiuld not take it from him.” And they became friends.
The unit shot for five weeks in New England before heading to Vienna, Preminger choosing to stay in the same suite in the Hotel Imperial as appropriated by Hitler when visiting the city. Permission to shoot in the National Library, “one of the most beautiful monuments in the city” was attacked by the current minister of education who wanted the Hitler era erased from memory. And he was barred from using other government buildings for spurious reasons.
After four and a half months in Austria, the unit shifted to Rome, locations including St Peter’s Square and inside St Peter’s Cathedral and the Santa Maria sopra Minerva church, with priests and monks hired as extras for the various ceremonies. The Georgia scenes were shot in Hollywood on the Universal back lot.
Although generally dismissed by the critics and given a hard time as you might expect from the Catholic Church, The Cardinal hit a chord with audiences, who turned it into Premigner’s second-biggest hit of the decade.
The ensemble picture provided a showcase for new talent. But consider the gender imbalance at work. Only Candice Bergen proved a breakout star of any longevity compared to a flop like The Magnificent Seven (1960) from which six relative newcomers – Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Eli Wallach (only his fourth movie) and Horst Buchholz – became top-billed material.
Part of the problem was Hollywood itself, not enough good roles for actresses who weren’t destined for spy movies or to become a decorative supporting player, and who could not headline a western, war picture or (with the exception of Bonnie and Clyde) a hardnosed crime movie. But part of the problem was the structure of The Group. Yes, there’s a 150-minute running time, but there are eight main characters to contend with.
And the story doesn’t have a central focus like The Magnificent Seven where characters are built in asides to the main action but has to meander in eight different directions. Luckily, it still remains a powerful confection, tackling, as if setting out to shock audiences, contentious issues like mental illness, leftwing politics, birth control and lesbianism. What could easily have descended into a chick flick or a glorified soap opera instead pushes in the direction of feminism.
A bunch of wealthy privileged university female graduate friends sets out in the 1930s to change the world only discover, to their amazement, that the male-dominated dominion chews them up and spits them out.
Only Lakey (Candice Bergen), who prefers the company of women, appears to find fulfilment but that’s mostly from running off to the more liberated Paris at the earliest opportunity to study art history though the Second World War puts an end to that.
Kay (Joanna Pettet) seems to have made the best marriage, with a wannabe alcoholic writer (Larry Hagman), but she ends up in a mental asylum. Dottie (Joan Hackett) also views life in the art world, marrying a painter, as the best option only to later prefer a more mundane husband. Priss (Elizabeth Hartmann), the strongest-minded of the octet, lands a man of a stronger, controlling, character.
Polly (Shirley Knight) is the most sexually adventurous. Ostensibly, Helena (Kathleen Widdoes), a renowned traveller, and Libby (Jessica Walter), a successful novelist, appear to achieve the greatest independence and success but come up short in that most important of endeavors, romance. The men, you should be warned, are all one-dimensional scumbags.
The movie focuses mainly on Kay, Polly and Libby. Lakey shows up at the beginning and the end.
At its best, it’s an insight into the world of women, on a grander scale than any of the tear-jerkers of previous decades. But it suffers from too many characters and too little time. It might have been better as a mini-series, though that, obviously, was not an option at the time. The Sidney Buchman (Cleopatra, 1963) screenplay fails to match the intensity of the critically-acclaimed source novel by Mary McCarthy, a huge bestseller.
It’s a surprising choice for Sidney Lumet (The Pawnbroker, 1964), more mainstream than his general output, but while he clearly presents the characters in sympathetic fashion, his hallmark tension is missing.
Mostly, it works as a time-capsule of a time-capsule, a movie about the 1960s optimism of 1930s optimism, and the obstacles faced by both.
Only Candice Bergen (Soldier Blue, 1970) approached the level of success achieved by The Magnificent Seven motley crew, achieving top-billed status in a number of films and her screen persona, possibly as a result of this movie, was often independence. Leading lady in Will Penny (1968) and Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) was the height of success for Joan Hackett.
Already twice Oscar-nominated as a Supporting Actress, Shirley Knight was the best-known of The Group, but was only thereafter top-billed once, in the low-budget Dutchman (1966) although she won critical plaudits for The Rain People (1969).
An Oscar nominee for her debut A Patch of Blue (1965), Elizabeth Hartmann was top-billed in You’re A Big Boy Now (1967) and then fell into the supporting player bracket. Never top-billed, Joanna Pettet was a strong co-star for the rest of the decade but that was marked by flops like Blue (1968) and The Best House in London (1968) and she drifted into television.
Best known for Number One (1969) and Play Misty for Me (1971) Jessica Walter failed to achieve top-billing. Though, as a result of this review, it has been pointed out to me (thanks Mr Film-Authority) that I glossed over her brilliant performance in television show Arrested Development (2003-2019); in fact, if your search for her on imdb that TV series is the one that pops up first.
Most of the actresses did have long careers, sustained by leading roles in television or bit parts in movies but when you consider the success visited upon the group known as The Magnificent Seven you can’t help thinking this was a whole generation of talent going to waste because they could not be accommodated by the Hollywood machine and did not fit the industry prototype.
For another example of gender disparity you could compare the consequent comparative success of the stars of Valley of the Dolls and The Dirty Dozen, both out the following year.
Key name here is Jay Presson Allen. You may remember her for giving theatrical and then cinematic shape to Muriel Spark’s novel The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). The clarity she brought to both stage and movie productions resulting in critical kudos and box office. She would do the same with Cabaret (1972). And, undeniably, in Wives and Lovers she was also prophetic. Had it been filmed under the title of the play from which it was adapted, Allen’s The First Wife, we would not have been acknowledging the insight so much of The First Wives Club nearly three decades later.
By shape of course we mean structure and there’s not much you can do when the source is a Broadway hit other than expanding it out away from the inherent staginess. And here nobody makes the mistake of trying. This belongs to the tag end of the Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedy when innocents are not too badly punished for their errant ways and generally see the light at the end.
Here, struggling writer Bill (Van Johnson), financially supported by dental hygienist wife Bertie (Janet Leigh), hits the jackpot when his novel is published, becomes a Book-of-the-Month-Club (extra loot), is purchased by Hollywood (more loot) and is turned into a play (even more loot) by the author. As if he has swallowed a lorryload of steroids, the quiet spoken somewhat child-pecked Bill ups sticks to more fashionable Connecticut and charges headfirst into temptation. this appears in the form of cocktail parties, Hollywood stars, sexy agent Lucinda (Martha Hyer) and every excuse to spend endless nights on the town rather than cuddling up at home with Bertie and working out how to make the new-fangled stereo work.
There’s not much to this other than your standard three-act play: initial enjoyment of success, the aforementioned temptation, and coming to the kind of understanding that couples in the early 1960s were still permitted before divorce appeared the more convenient and adult option.
On hand to warn against that option is disillusioned divorced first wife neighbot Fran (Shelley Winters) whose “companion” (his position is left comfortably vague) Wylie (Ray Walston) spends most of his time belittling their interior décor. Also on hand to show how difficult it is to fit into the upmarket set is snippy housemaid (Lee Patrick). With neighbors and maid on hand to put her in her place, and husband rarely around to help her explore their newfound status, it’s hardly surprising that Bertie, assuming Bill’s late nights include some illicit romance, tries to find solace with predatory Hollywood star Gar (Jeremy Slate), neatly fitting into this jigsaw as the proposed leading man of the stage adaptation and as Fran’s ex-.
So, basically, it’s the usual comedy of errors, though for a time Bill does seem hellbent on making the most of a mid-life crisis. While it’s strewn with good and often funny lines, the timing of the actors often fails to accommodate them, so it’s kind of helter-skelter at some points. It’s pretty easy to move in high-falutin’ circles because everyone you meet goes by the moniker of “Sweetie.” On reaching a marital crisis, the couple resolve the situation in a clever, humorous manner.
Certainly, it’s the gentlest of comedies, but no worse for that and although former MGM matinee idol Van Johnson (Divorce American Style, 1967) takes a sledgehammer to his role, not least from trying to stop Jeremy Slate (The Devil’s Brigade, 1968) from stealing the picture, in fact it’s the more subtle performance of Janet Leigh (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) that keeps the movie ticking over, assisted by, in less combustible form than usual, Shelley Winters (A House Is Not a Home, 1965). The most worldly-wise character on show is daughter Julie (Claire Wilcox).
In one of those bizarre Hollywood anomalies, since Allen at this time was not a screenwriter figure of any importance, the more experienced Edward Anhalt (Becket, 1964) was handed the job, but with already such a cleverly contrived structure it’s hard to see what he brought to the party. Television director John Rich (The New Interns, 1964) doesn’t bring much more than the innate skill of knowing when to leave well alone.
Likeable enough, especially to see Janet Leigh in one of her rare starring roles in the decade. No intellectual exertion required.
A sheer delight, a twisty thriller with a standout sexy burglar. It might put you immediately in mind of To Catch a Thief (1955) but this takes the Hitchcock embryo and molds it in something effortlessly stylish and not just to keep the audience on the hop. A second viewing has raised it in my estimation.
Unless you were a fan of the more permissive pictures at the end of the 1960s or kept a close eye on the gossip columns – or for that matter Playboy magazine – you were unlikely to have come across slinky blonde Daniele Gaubert. A former teen model and supporting actress in a number of French and Italian films at the start of the 1960s, she had a brief brush with Hollywood as Yul Brynner’s girlfriend in United Artists’ Flight from Ashiya (1964) but then married Rhadames Trujillo, son of the Dominican Republic dictator.
The year after The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl she starred in Radley Metzger’s provocative Camille 2000 which set pulses racing especially at the censor’s office. Then marriage beckoned again, this time to French Olympic triple gold medallist skier Jean-Claude Killy with whom she made her last picture The Snow Job (1972) also known, depending on where you lived, as The Ski Raiders and The Great Ski Caper.
She only made eighteen movies but The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl is by far the standout. A taut thriller with plenty of twists and stylish action scenes, the French-Italian co-production was the only film of documentary film maker Edouard Logerau and that background helps shape the movie with many of the most thrilling sequences lacking musical accompaniment.
Female empowerment is not normally associated with crime, given that organized crime is generally organized by men. But burglary is a different matter, lending itself to non-gender-specific individual enterprise. Though there are safes to break, there’s no glass ceiling in this brand of thievery.
Gaubert plays a cat burglar ironically known as “the lone wolf” (as in the original title) who is forced to trade her freedom by stealing a cache of drugs for the police in order to apprehend a criminal mastermind (Sacha Pitoeff). (Maybe this notion inspired Luc Besson’s Nikita.) Her sidekick is Michael Duchaussoy, seconded from his usual job as an embassy press attache, on the grounds that he can lip-read (which proves more than a gimmick as the plot unfolds).
Given that this was all shot “in camera” – Christopher Nolan’s favourite phrase – without the benefit of CGI or, so it would appear, much in the way of bluescreen, the burglary scenes are pretty impressive. For a kick-off, Gaubert is a sexy as you can get in a skin-tight cat-suit. Furthermore, her character calls on skills from her previous occupation as a trapeze artist. While the director doesn’t match Hitchcock’s in the tension-racking stakes, the sheer verve of the burglary takes the breath away.
The first burglary – before she is caught – takes place at a fancy chateau where a party is in full swing (owners in residence less likely to take extra precautions to hide their valuables), Gaubert nips over a wall, slips up a tree, uses a line thrower (a type of harpoon) to connect tree to building, and then proceeds to walk along the tightrope. Mission accomplished, she zooms off in a sports car, only stopping to remove false tyre treads and strip out of her costume before hiding her ill-gotten gains in a secret compartment at the back of the fridge.
The police burglary is in an office block. She and the lip-reader are holed up in an apartment opposite watching via a telescope. Although they pass the time in gentle flirtation, especially as she favours revealing outfits, she is not quite as imprisoned as it might seem and is already hatching her own plans to outwit her captors. This burglary is even more dangerous, in the pouring rain for a start, across Parisian rooftops, and involving a trapeze and ropes.
Thereafter, plot twists come thick and fast after this. She escapes to Switzerland, pursued by lip-reader (to whom she has clearly formed an attachment), cops and furious drug runners. Eventually re-captured she agree to another official burglary as a way of finally trapping Mr Big.
The tone is lightened by repartee and some interesting characterization. The lone wolf turns out to have very strong principles that prevent her just running off. Mr Big is a stamp aficionado. A lava lamp is turned into a weapon. Instead of counting to five before killing someone, a bad guy does the countdown according to the number of people diving into a swimming pool. Gaubert fools her captors into thinking they have a flat tyre by dangling her handbag over the edge of the door until it bumps into the tyre and makes the thwock-thwock of a burst tyre. “Survivors give me goose flesh,” quips a thug.
The closest comparison is not Hitchcock but Danger: Diabolik (1968) featuring John Philip Law which has a definite comic book riff. And you might also point to Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise (1966) or even, for a self-contained independent woman, to Raquel Welch’s Fathom (1967. But this lone wolf is ice-cold. Blonde is not enough. She is one step ahead of the law and the criminals. There are hints of a tragic past – a trapeze artists requires a partner, for example.
The last shot has Genault triumphant on a Paris rooftop. There is a nod to Hitchcock (think Rear Window) in the use of a telescopic framing device for many scenes, giving them a voyeuristic aspect. Sure, a bigger budget and a better supporting cast – and perhaps a more obvious romance – might have lifted the picture but Genault’s presence ensures that the film does not lack style. Gaubert dominates so much you could imagine she harldy needed direction but it is the cleverness of Edourd Logerau (Paris Secret, 1965) that makes it appear seamless.
The single take has been the Holy Grail of directors ever since Alfred Hitchcock just about managed to use it for the entirety of Rope (1948). A quarter of a century on critics were raving about the complete one-take circle Michelangelo Antonioni achieved in The Passenger (1975) and half a century later for Sam Mendes’s 1917 (2019). Every now and then an audacious director tries to earn kudos by employing the single take for long periods or editing a film in such a way as to get the same effect.
Oscar-winning British director Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave, 2013) has jumped to the top of that particular technical tree by shooting all of Grenfell in one single mostly silent aerial take. I happen to be a big fan of the single take, much as I thoroughly enjoy reading long sentences in books. And for the same reason: the result is often hypnotic.
The movie opens in the sky a good distance from London to which the camera moves in stately progression. Below is traditional English countryside cut up by long avenues of trees. As we approach the city of London, all that divides the close-packed houses are other houses, although, it being England, there are still swathes of green.
We take a right as we fly over Wembley Station, the soccer fan’s Holy Grail, home of the F.A. Cup Final, international football matches and countless rock concerts including the legendary Live Aid (most recently replicated in Bohemian Rhapsody, 2018). Gradually, in the distance appears something untoward. We are not close enough to the ground to see when buildings have lost their sheen, but high enough so that they still seem solid. But up ahead, coming slowly into view, is a jarring spectacle.
A charred skyscraper. Grenfell Tower. The remains of a devastating fire that in June 2017 killed 72 inhabitants. Some of the lower floors are white, which makes the upper floors stand out in sharper contrast. What work is going on is hard to determine – there’s a crane and men working on scaffolding. Maybe they are just adding more white panels to cover up the ruin, some kind of PR exercise to rid the city of the monstrosity and the memory of what happens when money talks and warnings are ignored.
The building is a rarity for such a devastating fire. After blazes with such a high death toll, there’s not much left of a structure, usually an empty shell, or as with the 9/11 Twin Towers nothing at all. This was a different kind of fire. Faulty easily-combustible plastic “cladding” – “siding” to use the American term as in the ubiquitous “aluminum siding” that Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito sold in Tin Men (1987) – caused the catastrophe, allowing flames to race up the sides, emanating toxic smoke, too quickly for those inside to escape.
The camera takes a few turns around the building and you can glimpse the dead interior and imagine the lives once lived.
It’s not a long film. Only 24 minutes, and a chunk of that taken up with just getting there. Now it stands as a monument to injustice. Though the building lies within a prosperous London borough, only the poor lived here, and possibly might have only done so until they could be kicked out and the building demolished by a more normal means so that upmarket apartments could be sold to richer people.
As the camera rotates round the building, coming at it from slightly different angles, and without music to infuse it with deceptive grandeur, the result is less hypnotic than disorientating and your mind has to work hard to snatch at the images being shown, taking a while to realize that there’s going to be no coup de theatre, no grandstand finish, no sigh of relief – none of the “oh, that’s what it’s all about” that accompanies some opaque arthouse picture.
It ends as it begins with a blank screen, no credits.
It’s something of a cult film. There’s only one print and it’s only showing in one cinema, and not the kind you find in a multiplex, just a space within the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park in London. Admission is free and there are several showings at day. It was self-funded by McQueen, who had links to the Grenfell community, went to art school nearby and ran a stall at a market not far away. But it’s not intended for commercial purpose. There might not even be a DVD or end up on a streaming channel as I guess part of the experience is to see it with a group of people and all come out shell-shocked to the foyer and stare at the list of the names of the victims.
It’s running in London till May 10 so maybe if you’re over for the Coronation of King Charles you might just happen upon it. I was in London on Sunday past visiting my son and he had arranged the tickets. He’s pretty good at this sort of thing, one other time I saw him he had got tickets to see that eternally-long film about clocks (whose name I forget) at the Tate. I doubt if anyone’s going to fly thousands of miles just to see it, but my guess is it will eventually go on tour and be shown in one museum after another.
Unlike the Twin Towers, there’s no one group to blame, but like the worst of ordinary disasters it’s a combination of various corporations and community officials whose watchword is greed or disinterest rather than common humanity.
If audiences rallied to the sight of Raquel Welch wearing nothing more than a fur bikini for the entirety of One Million Years B.C. (1966) and a skin-tight suit in Fantastic Voyage (1966) Twentieth Century Fox must have reasoned they would surely return in droves were the star to spend most of Fathom in a succession of brightly-colored bikinis.
Given such a premise who would care that a sky-diving expert was named after a nautical measurement? Or that Fathom (Raquel Welch) came nowhere near the height indicated by her name? Or that the character as described in the source material (a novel by Scottish screenwriter Larry Forester) had a distinctly harder edge; murder, sex and drugs among her proclivities.
With Our Man Flint (1966), the studio had successfully gatecrashed the burgeoning spy genre and spotted a gap in the market for a female of the species, hoping to turn Modesty Blaise (1966) starring Monica Vitti and Fathom into money-spinning series. The Fathom project was handed to Batman, The Movie (1966) co-conspirators, director Leslie H. Martinson and screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr. (Flash Gordon, 1980).
Female independence was hard-won in the 1960s and there were few jobs where a woman was automatically at the top of the tree. Burglary was one option for the independent entrepreneur (see The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl) and sport was another.
Welch plays an innocent bystander recruited for her top-notch sky-diving skills (her aptitude demonstrated in the opening sequences) to help Colonel Campbell (Ronald Fraser) of British intelligence recover the “Fire Dragon,” a trigger that could explode a nuclear bomb. Her sky-diving skills are required to land in the courtyard of playboy Peter Merriwether (Anthony Franciosa).
That turns out to be baloney, of course, a MacGuffin to point her in the direction of a valuable Chinese heirloom. And then it’s case of double-cross, triple-cross and whatever cross comes next.
There’s an intriguing mystery at the heart of this picture and a couple of top-class hair-raising moments. In one she is trapped in a bull ring and stunt double Donna Garrett had a few very definite close calls trying to avoid the maddened beast. In another she is stalked at sea by a circling motor boat while being peppered with harpoons. There is also an airplane duel and a ton of great aerial work. A couple of comic sequences are well wrung – Campbell pins his business card to one of the prongs of a pitchfork being brandished with menace by Fathom while Peter delivers a classic line: “The only game I ever lost was spin the bottle and that was on purpose.”
The biggest problem is that the film veers too far away from the source material which posited the heroine as a much tougher character, one who can despatch bad guys with aplomb. Instead, Fathom is presented almost as an innocent, bundled from one situation to another, never taking charge until the very end. Minus karate kicks or a decent left hook, she is left to evade her predators by less dramatic means. She has a decent line in repartee and by no means lets the show down. However, the idea, no matter how satisfactory to fans of the actress, that Fathom has to swap bikinis every few minutes or failing that don some other curve-clinging item, gets in the way of the story – and her character. Into the eccentric mix also come a millionaire (Clive Revill) and a bartender (Tom Adams).
There’s no doubt Welch had single-handedly revived the relatively harmless pin-up business (not for her overt nudity of the Playboy/Penthouse variety) and had a massive following in Europe where she often plied her trade (the Italian-made Shoot Loud, Louder…I Don’t Understand in 1966 and the British Bedazzled in 1967) but she was clearly desperate for more meaty roles. Those finally came her way with Bandolero (1966) and 100 Rifles (1969) and Fathom feels like a lost opportunity to provide her with that harder edge.
She’s not helped by the odd tone. As I mentioned she gets into plenty of scrapes and proves her mettle with her diving skills. In the hands of a better director and with a few tweaks here and there it could have been a whole lot better and perhaps launched a spy series instead of languishing at the foot of the studio’s box office charts for that year.
Anthony Franciosa (Rio Conchos, 1964), still a rising star after a decade in the business, who receives top billing, doesn’t appear for the first twenty minutes. And then he behaves like a walking advert for dentistry, as though his teeth can challenge Welch’s curves. But some of the supporting cast look like they’ve signed up for a completely different movie. Richard Briers (A Home of Your Own, 1965) – Ronald Fraser’s intelligence sidekick – looks like a goggle-eyed fan next to Ms Welch and Clive Revill (The Double Man, 1967) thinks it’s a joke to play a Russian as a joke. Ronald Fraser (Sebastian, 1968) provides decent support.
But it is certainly entertaining enough and you are unlikely to get bored.
The Magnificent 60s 