1960s film – Page 63 – The Magnificent 60s

Up the Down Staircase (1966) ****

Impressive impressionistic tale of naïve young teacher and her travails in a rough inner city New York high school, a world away from the preppie hi-jinks of The Group the previous year and a good bit more realistic and less sentimental than To Sir, With Love the same year. If you thought teachers had a tough time these days, it was no better half a century ago.

We get no insight into the home life of idealistic singleton Sylvia (Sandy Dennis) beyond that once a week she gets a phone call from her annoying mother. Outside the school, she is warned to walk slowly in order to show she is not frightened to walk down these mean streets.

The school appears chaotic, hordes of almost-adult kids rampaging along corridors, hellbent on causing anarchy. And it takes some objective observation to realize that the endless rules, sometimes delivered by intercom and very often improvised on the spot, imposed by the tough headmaster McHabe (Roy Poole) have created a semblance of order.

But if the kids are led astray by inherent attitude, the adults are undone by bureaucracy and petty infighting. A list of rules on the wall forbids the school nurse from actually treating any patients. There’s a marvellous librarian whose reaction to an attempted suicide is to demand the return of an overdue book. Teachers squabble about who has precedence to use a particular drawer. Budding novelist and lothario Barrington (Patrick Bedford) spends his mornings in a local café, an adoring secretary covering for his absence.

The end-zone in all movies about schools (excepting If…a couple of years later) focuses on a struggling teacher who doubts her abilities but finds worth in her calling. Although that cliché pops up towards the end, mostly it’s an examination of the terrible home lives, seen in snippets, of the pupils and their parents, possibly who had the same experience, of viewing schools as obstacles to life and nothing more than the existing hierarchy’s way of keeping them in their place, education peeceived as akin to a police force exacting penalty.

With her fragile beauty, posh voice, and ideas of converting teenagers to the joys of Chaucer, Dickens and myriad poets, you would expect Sylvia to be gobbled up by the system. And at times, her quivering lip goes into overdrive, but that masks an inner determination not to fall for any sob stories – no matter that the audience will lap them up – and to extricate herself from dangerous situations with the macho Joe (Jeff Howard) who is convinced she won’t hand in him for carrying a switchblade and that she must be in love with him.

Pupils fall into three categories: those who fall in love with their teachers, those who want to kill them and those who are dying of boredom, living day-to-day in catatonic indifference.

Sylvia’s understated refusal to be intimidated carries the day and, while she encourages, realizes that she can’t resolve the endemic social issues – children battered at home or who have to work at night or who are brought up by a series of neighbors – by inflating a pupil’s mark just to help out. There’s none of the grandstanding of Dead Poets Society (1989) or Mr Holland’s Opus (1995) either, no individual or group who, in dramatic fashion, demonstrates allegiance, sides with the teacher or proves a test case for the teacher’s brilliance.

If Sylvia makes any impact, it’s shown in a small way by awkward pupil Alice (Ellen O’Mara) who believes all literature is about love and is humiliated by Barrington. Sylvia hasn’t the personality to collect a coterie of adoring pupils as in Dead Poet’s Society, nor like Robin Williams there have the confidence to chuck away set texts and do it his own way. But it would be a close run thing as to who would be the better teacher. Williams should win by a neck given his exuberance, but Sylvia, the mouse, is actually the better teacher.

It’s pretty bold of director Robert Mulligan (Inside Daisy Clover, 1965) to actually force the audience to watch Sylvia dissect the opening paragraphs of A Tale of Two Cities in order not just to prove what an insightful teacher she is but to demonstrate her command of her once-rowdy class. The show of hands of pupils desperate to ask questions is testimony to her quiet methods.

Superb performance from Sandy Dennis (The Fox, 1969), showy one from Patrick Bedford, touching one from Ellen O’Mara and with Jeff Howard attempting to channel his inner James Dean, but, for the last three, unusually in a film stuffed with newcomers, their roles did nothing for their careers. You might spot Bud Cort (Harold and Maude, 1971), Eileen Heckart (No Way To Treat a Lady, 1968), and Jean Stapleton (Emmy award winner for All in the Family, 1971-1979) but mostly it’s cameos in an ensemble picture.

Expertly mounted by Robert Mulligan with a screenplay by Tad Mosel (Dear Heart, 1964) from the Bel Kaufman runaway bestseller.

As much as it has you rooting for the little guy, it doesn’t gloss over the calamities schools are left to deal with.

Behind the Scenes: “The Loss of Innocence / The Greengage Summer” (1961)

Director Lewis Gilbert’s career was at an impasse. He had made his name primarily in a string of typically British stiff upper lip World War Two pictures including Reach for the Sky (1956) and Sink the Bismarck! (1960). It will come as a surprise to many British people to learn that virtually no British movie, not even the WW2 films that were big hits domestically, made any impact at the U.S. box office, Sink the Bismarck! a rare exception.

Ferry to Hong Kong (1959) starring Orson Welles had flopped and WW2 comedy Skywatch/ Light Up the Sky (1960) had died the death.

British director Victor Saville, who had made a name for himself in Hollywood with Greer Garson sequel The Miniver Story (1950) and Kim (1950) starring Errol Flynn, had turned producer, purchasing the rights to the bestseller by Rumer Godden (Black Narcissus, 1947).

Saville had entered into a partnership with veteran independent producer Edward Small (Solomon and Sheba, 1959) who had a deal with United Artists. The duo had three films on their slate, the others being movie version of The Mousetrap (delayed due to the length of a stage run that still prevents it being turned into a movie) and Legacy of a Spy (never made). Cary Grant was initially touted as the lead for Loss of Innocence.

When that deal foundered, it shifted from UA to Columbia after the intervention of British producer John Woolf (The African Queen, 1951), a relation of Saville, who had an ongoing relationship with Columbia. The script found its way to Kenneth More (Sink the Bismarck!) still a highly-rated draw at the British box office. He had to lose weight for the role. Later, Gilbert intimated he was not right for the part and would have preferred Dirk Bogarde.

More’s wife Mabel was friends with Gilbert’s wife Hylda and it was at the former’s suggestion that Lewis was roped in. Gilbert was initially wary of working with Saville who, although highly respected as a director, had a reputation of being difficult to work with. A director turned producer was all too likely to have ideas about the direction rather than sticking to the production side. As it turned out, Savile “didn’t interfere at all.”

Hayley Mills (The Family Way, 1966) was first choice for the female lead. Her Disney contract was not exclusive and at 15 she might have been ideal casting. But such a role would almost certainly impact on her future with Disney.

Mrs Gilbert was instrumental in the casting of Susannah York (aged 21) having called her husband down the stairs to see the young actress in a television production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. As it happened, Saville was on the same page, also having witnessed that performance, calling the director the following day to suggest York. Coincidentally, the Gilberts had been invited to dinner with Sylvia Syms, female lead in Ferry to Hong Kong, only to find York was a guest. Auditioned for the role of Jos, the oldest of the four sisters stranded at a chateau in France after their mother is taken ill, York won the part.

“The hard part to cast,” according to Gilbert, was Hester, Jos’s younger sister, wise beyond her 14 years “who can see trouble where Jos couldn’t.” Contrary to received wisdom, the bulk of children who attended stage schools were working class. “Their parents needed the income. Middle-class parents, preferring their children to be properly educated, discouraged them from going to stage schools.”

In consequence, the bulk of the girls turning up for auditions spoke Cockney whereas the part called for a “nicely-spoken girl.” Just as Gilbert was about to give up on the process, he received a phone call from an agent, promising a new discovery. “Her name was Jane Asher…a pretty 14-year-old with long red hair.”

Other casting gambles didn’t work out so well. Seeking a young man to play a French gardener, Gilbert hit on the notion of hiring a real Frenchman, having found a young lad with curly hair who appeared just right for the part. The only problem was – he couldn’t speak English. But it didn’t seem so insurmountable since he was cast three months before shooting began. But when the cameras rolled “he was unintelligible.”

Gilbert surmised that “someone so chaotic as that curly-haired Frenchman would never amount to anything.” He was wrong. The man was Claude Berri, later the highly successful screenwriter and producer of Jean de Florette (1986).

The movie’s original title – The Greengage Summer – caused a massive problem. Naturally, it was expected that greengages (plums) would feature prominently in the background. But there were no greengages thanks to a blight that had ruined the harvest all across France. As a consequence, British greengages were used, removed from their sacks by the thousands and sewn onto trees by the art department.

Susannah York created another problem when, in her naivety, she decided that the most authentic way to play drunk was to be drunk. Gilbert tried to dissuade her, explaining that the scene would go on all day not just last five minutes and in order to play a drunk you needed your wits about you. York ignored the advice and a day’s filming was ruined. Filming, split between England and France, began in August 1960.

Although it received “extraordinarily good notices” in both Britain and America it failed to light a spark with audiences in either country. Gilbert’s retrospective assessment, citing previous movies like Billy Wilder’s Love in the Afternoon (1957) with Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn and Sabrina (1954) with Bogart and Hepburn, was that “very few films where you get a young girl in love with an older man have ever been successful.”

SOURCES: Lewis Gilbert, All My Flashbacks (Reynolds and Hearn, 2010) p207-210; Kenneth More, More or Less, (Hodder and Stoughton, 1978); Roy Fowler, “Interview with Lewis Gilbert,” British Entertainment History Project; Philip K. Scheuer, “Saville to Resume Producing Career; Godden Novel First of Three,” Los Angeles Times, November 3, 1958, pC13; Richard Nason, “Small and Saville Planning Dear Spy,” New York Times, October 7, 1957, p47; Stephen Vagg, “Movie Star Cold Streaks, Hayley Mills”, Filmink, March 19, 2022.

Loss of Innocence / The Greengage Summer (1961) ***

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.

Rome Adventure / Lovers Must Learn (1962) ***

Angie Dickinson fans would be entitled to cry foul after the top-billed female star appears to be engaged in a bait-and-switch tactic. After a lengthy wait, when she finally does appear it’s only to high-tail it off to Switzerland leaving behind in Rome lover Troy Donohue. Her departure creates romantic opportunity, her return complication.

And is this the same Delmer Daves, you might ask, who made his name in a series of male-dominated westerns such as Broken Arrow (1950) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957)? Yes, it is, but once Daves had finished applying intense pressure to his male coterie, he did the same, in a different genre, to women.

Young teacher Prudence (Suzanne Pleshette) exerts her independence by quitting her job after being hauled over the coals in Small Town U.S.A. for teaching her pupils a controversial novel. On the boat to Rome she encounters Italian lothario Roberto (Rossano Brazzi), who holds the lofty sexist opinion that only a man can turn a girl into a woman, and the nerdy Albert (Hampton Fincher), both of whom come a-courting, the youngster’s diffidence ruling him out of serious contention.

Roberto is friends with student Don (Troy Donohue) but the minute he is introduced to Prudence he has to rush off to try to persuade artist Lyda (Angie Dickinson) not to leave. Roberto turns gracefully aside after Prudence denies him sex (put more subtly than that of course) and she, finding employment in an American bookshop (speaking the language no deterrent there), embarks on romance with Don, fluent in Italian, who teaches her how to drink strega, takes her to jazz clubs and acts as tour guide.

A good chunk of the picture, it has to be said, is a travelogue, and when neither Roberto nor Don are on hand to point out this or that monument or embark on a potted history, suddenly she discovers an interior monologue to do the job. And at one point it turns into If It’s Tuesday It Must Be Pisa as the couple take off on a longer trip, bouncing from one tourist city to another, the route only complicated by some slight comedy over whether they should share a bed.

*Re-titled in the U.K. and sent out with the most curious support.*

Another decade and sex would most definitely be on the cards and the story would sink under an unplanned pregnancy or a fit of pique and scenes in a bedroom where they are separated by an open suitcase as one or other makes an effort to leave. But it’s the virginal aspects that makes this so sweet and for sure no director has managed to clear entire streets in usually heavily-congested tourist spots to deliver beautiful scenes in such scenic spots.

Actual drama might be light on the ground, but there’s no denying Delmer Daves knows how to apply pressure, this time on the woman, who can either treat romance as a fleeting youthful episode or use it to launch big time into marriage and womanhood. Without a chaperone, unlike the hapless Albert, Prudence has only the example of her predatory employer who takes a male every season.

Just when the romance looks all set, back in Rome she catches Lyda and Don in a clinch and this sparks some good old verbal sparring between the two women as Lyda makes it very clear that Don is no virgin and that Prudence is out of her league.

You can guess how it will end. It’s as lightweight a confection as you will ever watch and yet it is worth watching because the director, close-up at the ready, scarcely gives Prudence a moment’s peace and if ever a director know how to gauge female intent and rely on eyes to express emotion it’s Daves.

Look beneath the façade of the travelogue and you find a woman trapped on the brink, that spark of independence misleading men into thinking she will surrender her virginity, and the woman not wanting to be another notch on a bedpost no matter if that fulfils the dual purpose of achieving womanhood. Daves’ name on the picture should be warning enough this isn’t quite your normal fluffy romance.

If you can ignore the sexism that dictates that a woman’s role is to “anchor” a man, turn his flightiness to one side and by some alchemy make him the best he can be, the narrative edges towards the independence of women, both Lyda and the bookshop owner pick and choose and sometimes abuse their men, and Prudence rejects romance on the rebound with Roberto.

But, of course, if that’s all you want, and you don’t want to hover near consequence, then writer-director Daves delivers a seamless concoction. If there’s an old-fashioned conceit to the whole thing, it’s perhaps because the source material, Lovers Must Learn, was written three decades before and preceded the likes of The Group in presenting a young woman as independent rather than merely yearning for marriage and motherhood.

It seems odd for Angie Dickinson to be relegated to the supporting cast but possibly having already done her Vespa-riding number in Jessica (1962) she preferred a stab at a more mature role, though she had already gone down that route in The Sins of Rachel Cade (1962). Maybe she upset someone in the studio. Maybe her role was bigger but ended up on the cutting room floor when Daves realized the talent he had uncovered in Suzanne Pleshette (A Rage To Live, 1965).

Daves worked again with Rossano Brazzi on the director’s final picture The Battle of the Villa Florita (1965) and Pleshette had a short-lived marriage with Troy Donohue.

Behind the Scenes: “The Sons of Katie Elder” (1965)

The property had been bouncing around Hollywood for over decade. It had its origins in the true-life tale of the five Marlow brothers involving murder, revenge, and jailbreak, the story making national headlines when the case was heard at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892. Based on the book The Fighting Marlows by Glenn Shirley,William H. Wright (Assignment in Brittany, 1943) shopped around a screenplay, jointly written with Talbot Jennings (Northwest Passage, 1940), that was purchased by Paramount in 1955.

Alan Ladd (Shane, 1953), who owed the studio a movie, was cast in the lead and the script went through rewrites by Frank Burt (The Man from Laramie, 1955) and Noel Langley (Knights of the Round Table, 1953) with shooting scheduled for 1956. John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) was set to direct until Ladd quit, having bought his way out of his contract. Burt Lancaster (The Train, 1966) was brought in as his replacement.

When Lancaster dropped out, producer Hal Wallis took over the movie in 1959 and considered replacing him with James Stewart (Shenandoah, 1965) or Charlton Heston (The Hawaiians, 1970) with Dean Martin (Rio Bravo, 1959) as the second lead. But still the movie stalled for another five years before Wallis settled on John Wayne who signed on for $600,000 plus a one-third share of the profits and one-third ownership of the negative (a bounty that would continue to pay off through reissues and leasing to television). Henry Hathaway was paid a flat $200,000.

Wayne and Hathaway had history dating back to The Shepherd of the Hills (1941) based on the million-copy bestseller by Harold Bell Wright, and groundbreaking in its use of Technicolor, then in its infancy. They didn’t work again until desert treasure hunt Legend of the Lost (1957) which teamed Wayne with Sophia Loren. A few years later came North to Alaska (1960) followed by Circus World / The Magnificent Showman (1964).

Despite this long-term relationship, the most the director could offer about his star was that “Wayne is more particular about the pants he wears than anything in the world…unless he gets the thinnest kind of material it drives him crazy.”

When the script was finally knocked into shape, the Marlow siblings had been trimmed from five to four, and that family had been replaced by the Elders, a nod to western aficionados who would recognize the name Katie Elder (“Big Nose Kate”), occasional companion of Doc Holliday whose story Wallis had previously filmed as Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Even though Elder wasn’t dead enough – she lived till 1940 – to conform to this picture, it seemed an odd decision to choose that name unless resonance was expected.

But it was still far from a done deal because Wayne’s cancer threatened to scupper the picture. Start of shooting scheduled for October 20, 1964, was shuttered when the disease was diagnosed on September 13 following the completion of Otto Preminger WW2 epic In Harm’s Way (1965). Aware surgery might jeopardize the picture, Wayne suggested Wallis replace him with Kirk Douglas (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966).

Hathaway rejected the notion, but while neither star nor producer had any idea whether the operation would be successful, and whether Wayne would be even fit enough to work, or – God forbid, that the actor might already have made his last picture – Wallis took an optimistic approach and announced the picture would be delayed for a month and “even a little later.” Hathaway’s optimism was based on the fact that he had survived colon cancer a decade before.

At least the surgeon moved fast, operating four days after diagnosis, and again five days later. As well as fighting the damage surgery and pain had done to his body, Wayne found himself slipping into depression, convinced the operation would render him unemployable. “I’ll never work again if they find out how sick I am. If they think an actor is sick, they won’t hire him,” he said, a legitimate observation given the cost of shutting down a picture should the actor be unable to play his role.

Wallis’s business partner Joseph Hazen shared Wayne’s pessimism and urged the producer to recast with either William Holder (The 7^th Dawn, 1964) or Robert Mitchum (The Way West, 1967). Paramount, too, fretted about insurance, the studio couldn’t risk hiring an uninsurable actor. Wallis refused to abandon Wayne and the studio finally agreed to tough conditions from the insurance company. So, on January 6, 1965, the principals gathered in Durango to commence the 46-day shoot on a production budgeted at $3.19 million.

The high elevations – 8,500 ft in places – were not conducive to someone recovering from a lung cancer operation and Wayne found it difficult to breathe. It didn’t help that on the fourth day of shooting Wayne was expected to jump into icy water for the sequence where the brothers were ambushed by the villains. It didn’t help, either, that Wayne was too big to wear a rubber suit to stave off the cold like his fellow actors.

Wayne never complained that Hathaway “worked me like a damn dog.” He realized that it “was the best thing ever happened to me. It meant I got no chance to walk around looking for sympathy.” The star put on a brave front, publicly acknowledging his battle with cancer as a way of giving hope to others while privately terrified not so much of dying but of being helpless. “I just couldn’t see myself lying in bed…no damn good to anybody.”

“He had to be the macho man,” commented Earl Holliman (The Power, 1968), a late substitute for original star Tommy Kirk (Swiss Family Robinson, 1960) who was sacked after being caught smoking marijuana, “he had to have more drinks than the next guy.” And despite the severity of his condition, and although publicly pretending he had given up tobacco, he continued smoking cigars.

Recalled Dean Martin (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967), “He’s two loud-speaking guys in one.” George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) asserted, “If you put him in a group with other movie stars, the eye went to him and that is the ultimate marker of respect. He was John Wayne. He was very real. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t Olivier; Olivier wasn’t John Wayne.”

But there were outward signs of the effect the illness had upon him. He was less sure of himself on a horse, riding with a shorter rein out of fear a horse would get away from under him, trying to minimize the chances of falling or being bucked from the animal. And as the film wore on, an oxygen inhaler was set up beside him on set.

Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider, 1969) was wary of working again with Hathaway after a difficult experience with him on From Hell to Texas (1958) starring Don Murray and Diane Varsi where the actor suffered the indignity of endless takes. Hopper quit three times and for good measure the director put the word around and virtually grounded the actor’s career. Hopper only made one movie in six years. In the interim he had married Brooke Hayward, daughter of actress Margaret Sullavan whom Hathaway respected, and peace was brokered.

Although on his best behavior on the shoot, Hopper was no less impressed. “He was a primitive director, he rarely moved his camera, the movement came from the actors.”

“Westerns are art,” declared Wayne. “They’ve got simplicity and simplicity is art…There’s simplicity of conflict you can’t beat…Westerns are our folklore and folklore is international…In Europe they understand that better than we do over here. “

Whether it was public sympathy for an ailing star and his resolve to fight cancer, or audience delight that he was back in a western after a gap of a few years, The Sons of Katie Elder was a huge hit with $5 million in initial rentals (what studios were left with after cinemas had taken their share). It earned more later in reissues but that initial sum was enough for thirteenth spot in the annual box office rankings though beaten by both Shenandoah and Cat Ballou. Its foreign earning would probably match domestic, to make it one of Wayne’s biggest earners for the decade.

SOURCES: Scott Eyman, John Wayne: His Life and Legend (Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2014) p111, p387-396 ; Ronald L. Davis, Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998) p266; Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library; Hedda Hopper, “Ladd To Star in Film of Pioneers’ Reunion,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9, 1955, p16; Thomas M. Pryor, “Hecht-Lancaster Obtains 2 Novels,” New York Times, January 12, 1956, p22; Oscar Godbout, “TV Movies Extras Get Salary Rises,” New York Times, July 3, 1956, p17; John Wayne, “Me? I Feel Fine,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1965; James Bacon, “Wayne’s Biggest Bout vs. Killer Cancer,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, March 14, 1965; Roderick Mann, “John Wayne – A Natural as The Shootist, Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1976.

The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) ****

The rocking chair motif in this underrated film is ignored while the door opening and closing in The Searchers (1956) is hailed as one of cinema’s greatest images. Welcome to the world of director Henry Hathaway (Nevada Smith, 1966). Way down the pecking order when it comes to the makers of great westerns, below Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969) who only made four and Howard Hawks (Rio Bravo, 1959) only three.

Closer inspection, too, of The Wild Bunch (1969) might reveal cinematic ideas that turned up here first. Closer inspection of John Wayne (The Commancheros, 1961) might reveal a mighty fine, very touching, performance.

The genre was chock-full of vengeance, but here that is tempered by mystery over the death of their father, a drunken gambler, that has led to the loss of the family ranch, leaving the mother, for whose funeral the titular sons return, living hand-to-mouth, supplementing the usual sewing and mending with giving guitar lessons.

Hastings (James Gregory), a businessman with big ideas, has taken over the ranch and pretty much the local town of Clearwater. And he’s just hired extra muscle, notorious gunslinger Curley (George Kennedy), to swell his already-growing army.

Only the youngest son, Bud (Michael Anderson Jr), a reluctant college student, is clear of the taint of wrong-doing. John Elder (John Wayne) has a reputation as a gunfighter but unlike shifty younger brother Tom (Dean Martin) doesn’t have a wanted poster following him around. The other son Matt (Earl Holliman) takes after John, some shady action but no legal consequence.

This is certainly not a great fraternal union. When they’re not engaged in low-level investigation or trying to prevent themselves being lynched, they’re bickering and fighting. The only thing that unites them, beyond love of the deceased woman, is determination to continue paying for Bud’s education.

Apart from the ranch, one of Hastings’ other lucrative investments is a firearms business, which allows him to tote around a telescopic rifle which, of course, ensures he can bump off those who get in his way from a distance, without fear of discovery. The easiest way to get rid of the brothers is to have them arrested for murder and to kill off the one man, Sheriff Wilson (Paul Fix), who might have the brains and experience to work out something fishy was going on.

John Wayne is more emotional here than in any picture since The Searchers, though, as you’ll be aware, his emotion is registered through his eyes or bits of business rather than a lengthy speech. And given double duty of looking after the youngest while holding back the more tempestuous Tom.

Dean Martin’s (Five Card Stud, 1968) charm runs thin, as is intended, no woman to gull, and no cliché alcoholism a la Rio Bravo to fall back on. It’s a part he plays completely against type, although you can sense he’s bursting out of those confines in the false eye con. He’s pretty much always brought to heel by Wayne. The one time he defies big brother ends in personal calamity. Imagine a marquee name as big as Dean Martin taking on a role where the part sets him up to be walking in the Duke’s shadow, despite his efforts to break loose.

In fact, unusually for a western, until Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) came long, it’s replete with reversals. Hathaway plays with expectations from the outset, the opening sequence of big beast of a train puffing through fabulous scenery doesn’t bring John, instead, unknown to the waiting brothers, Curley disembarks. Katie Elder’s friend Mary (Martha Hayer) cuts off at the pass any idea the audience might have of incipient romance when she gives John both barrels.

Thanks to the screenplay, Michael Anderson Jr.(Major Dundee, 1965) and Earl Holliman (The Power, 1968) are given more bite than their roles might suggest and James Gregory (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) makes his villain meaty though you suspect the presence of George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) is another lure, creating audience expectation that is not fulfilled. Martha Hyer (The Chase, 1966) is more conscience than glamor, spending most of the time on the sidelines.

You’d be surprised just how lean a production this is, and equally how deftly Hathaway avoids cliches. Just because there’s a kid you don’t need to teach him how to be a man. A huge herd of horses doesn’t need to stampede. Beautiful woman in the vicinity doesn’t necessarily call for a heated love affair. Ending up in jail doesn’t necessitate a bust-out. Villainous gunslinger doesn’t set up obligatory shootout in an empty street.

Hathaway’s unusual, too, in the way he anchors his pictures in reality. Here it’s a funeral director washing the wheels of his hearse, a blacksmith applying shackles.

You’d marvel, too, at just who was involved in fashioning the terrific screenplay: veteran William H. Wright, his first in two decades, Harry Essex (Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954) in his first in eight years, and Allan Weiss whose six other movies were all Elvis Presley vehicles. Hardly the pedigree to produce one of the best westerns of the decade. This is the kind of screenplay where no line is wasted, not when a retort can be used to define character.

Most people remember the rousing theme by Elmer Bernstein (The Scalphunters, 1968), but actually there are also some very innovative musical passages worth listening out for.

Curiously, it was Andrew Sarris, hardly a John Wayne fan, who recognized the movie’s attributes, though in niggardly fashion, “The spectacle of people in Hollywood trying to do something different in a western at this late date is reassuring.”

It’s about time those differences and the picture’s excellence were recognized.

Dirty Dingus Magee (1970) ***

The boldest role ever undertaken by a major star of Frank Sinatra’s generation – and little thanks he got for it. Not only was he virtually unrecognisable under a slab of make-up that George Hamilton would have envied but the role was a complete reversal of his screen persona. Admittedly, he had flipped that persona for Tony Rome (1967) and as the cuckolded cop in The Detective (1968), but this was on a completely different level.

Sinatra was no Tom Hanks or Daniel Day-Lewis, known for inhabiting different types of characters, and, while he did have a vulnerability that he put to good use in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), he was best known on screen as the guy in charge.

That was far from the case here. Dumb and dumber might be more apposite. Dingus Magee (Frank Sinatra) is a scamp, an outlaw so useless he is worth only $10 in reward money, who steals the stash of old rival Hoke Birdsill (George Kennedy), triggering a revenge caper that is complicated by a host of unnecessary complications by director Burt Kennedy (Welcome to Hard Times, 1967) who has set his heart on some kind of satirical comedy western with a revisionist slant.

So we get a female mayor, Belle (Anne Jackson), who happens to own the local brothel, whose commercial prospects are endangered when the local Cavalry are called away to fight the Native Americans, an Indian chief Crazy Blanket desperate to trade his daughter for a rifle, and when that looks like not working out calling on any available squaw to seal the deal, predatory schoolteacher Prudence (Lois Nettleton) and a running gag involving a Brown Derby hat that results in a gunfighter (Jack Elam) being mistaken for Magee.

It’s a bit long on complications and short on satire and is rescued by the double act of Magee and Birdsill, who constantly get in each other’s way or try to pull a fast one. Birdsill, as it happens, is appointed sheriff, since that’s in the purview of the mayor, and, on the right side of the law for the first time in his life, makes an ill-fated attempt to do good.

Magee tries to help him along. In exchange for the sheriff turning a blind eye for a period of time to Magee’s nefarious activities, the reward for the outlaw will mushroom, permitting greater kudos for the sheriff on his capture.

The main problem is that Kennedy directs with a very heavy hand, very obvious musical cues for a start, and there’s not enough that’s intrinsically funny. Though there is a reversal of an obvious joke of Birdsall being sent to the brothel to locate the mayor, expecting to find a client not the owner.

But both Sinatra and George Kennedy (The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965) are a delight, the latter also playing against type rather than his usual dominating character. Their dumbness takes some beating. Sinatra just about gets the upper hand, but there’s not much in it.

The best thing about the picture is the sense of reality. The U.S. Cavalry spend more time in the brothel than out hunting Native Americans. Law and order can go to hell as long as everyone is having illicit fun. The respectable schoolmarm proves a skilled seductress. Peace is desirable because it is more profitable than war. And the bulk of the outlaws in the Wild West are far from achieving legendary status, just two-bit punks.

Not surprisingly, this was a massive flop and killed off Sinatra’s movie career for the rest of the decade – not that he was overly concerned, “My Way” having reignited his singing career and he was a Vegas regular. But it’s a shame the acting was so vilified, Roger Ebert blamed Sinatra rather than the director for its failure, in particular taking him to task for the one-take approach that Gena Rowlands previously exalted (but what does she know, she’s just an acclaimed actress and knows how a movie works better than a critic).

Well overdue for a reappraisal and if you go in duly warned you might even enjoy it, or at least the Sinatra-Kennedy double act.

Nine Hours to Rama (1963) **

Double Oscar nominee Mark Robson was a highly respected commercially successful director with hits like Peyton Place (1957) and From the Terrace (1960) behind him and The Prize (1963) and Von Ryan’s Express (1965) still to come. So what went wrong here, in this tale of the assassination of Ghandi, especially as he had successfully negotiated foreign climes in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958)?

You could start with the Indian equivalent of “blackface.” Apart from Ghandi himself all the major roles are played by white actors. Even cutting back on his trademark plumminess, the sight (and sound) of Robert Morley trying to talk the Indian leader out of exposing himself to possible assassination would just be hilarious if it wasn’t such a cringingly bad misstep.

Sure, Hollywood struggled to find anyone in Bollywood who had the box office marquee or critical kudos to provide the necessary confidence for Twentieth Century Fox (a problem that hasn’t really gone away – witness Gandhi and Passage to India). But rising star Horst Buchholz, in the leading role of assassin Godse, was nobody’s idea of the kind of actor with the credentials of a Ben Kingsley or Alec Guinness who might make a decent stab at playing an Indian.

And it’s a bizarre narrative mixture, dragnet film noir hunt led by Supt Das (Jose Ferrer) for a potential assassin (done so well in Day of the Jackal, for example), biopic of the assassin, and providing sufficient room for Ghandi to spread his principles of love and peace as well as plenty of scenes of tourist India.

And even with all these deficiencies it might still have worked except that, in the modern idiom of altering characters, times and places for dramatic effect, this pretty much ignores the known facts about the assassin’s life and in its place presents a barmy mishmash of thwarted ambition and romance.

Set in 1948 after India gained independence from the British and during ongoing violence that followed Partition, the dividing of the country on religious grounds into India and Pakistan, we find Ghandi being blamed for everything that has gone wrong, even though he was never the country’s prime minister and disavowed political office.

According to this version, against his father’s wishes and at a very inconvenient time (he is about to enter an arranged marriage), Godse attempts to fulfil a lifelong ambition to become a soldier but is rejected on the grounds that as a Brahmin he will find it difficult to take orders. He becomes involved with a right-wing organization one of whose stated aims is to take down Ghandi.

It’s actually not that hard to attempt to do so and the film conveniently misses out the fact that Godse had previously been fond guilty twice of trying to kill Ghandi, only being spared prison by his target’s clemency. Instead of that grimly ironic touch, we are fed a hotchpotch. It’s hardly surprising that the film skips the potential gender conflict inherent in Godse, since for superstitious reasons he was initially brought up as a girl, including having his nose pierced in the female fashion. And for “dramatic purposes” his father is a priest rather than the postal worker of real life.

He falls in love with a married woman (Valeri Gearon) and is violent to a prostitute Sheila (Diane Baker) who rips him off. Theoretically, Ghandi would not have fallen to this assassin’s bullet if Mrs Gearon had done the decent thing and run off with Godse.

Or if Gandhi had accepted the presence of an armed bodyguard, but the spiritual leader, pacifist to the end, was also a fatalist, and at approaching 80 certainly had cause, should he indulge in such pride, to believe he had made a difference.

Nobody comes out of this well.

The Belle Starr Story (1968) ***

Only spaghetti western directed by a woman. Brings a distinctly feminist feel to that most sexist of the subgenres. You tend to forget that the sexy female Europeans imported to Hollywood as co-stars or to add spice further down the credits were actually top-billed stars in their natïve countries and demonstrated a greater range than the American industry allowed.

Not only do we have Elsa Martinelli (Maroc 7, 1967) as the leather-clad cigar-smoking titular gunslinger, whose watchword is female independence, but it was helmed by arthouse icon Lina Wertmuller (Swept Away, 1974). There’s a thematic consistency lacking in most Italian-made westerns, for example predating Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) in its water imagery. But any potential for lyricism is undercut by the risk attached to being a lone woman. And there’s a Tracy-Hepburn tone to the endless bickering and battle for superiority in her niggling romance with outlaw Blackie (George Eastman).

And, unusually in that decade, a woman who throws caution to the wind and will even bet her body when the money runs out at the poker table, as twisty a meet-cute as a screenwriter could devise. But thereafter it’s a struggle for dominance between the pair. She won’t take orders from a man. He won’t accept female equality even when she shoots the wooden fence he’s sitting on from under him, making him fall to the ground, and for good measure putting a bullet in his heels.

The first act builds up Belle Starr, cool at the poker table, even cooler in the bedroom, and demonstrating the gunplay that attracted her notoriety. The second act take an odd route, a lengthy flashback that digs deep into feminism, the orphaned Belle Starr running away after being sold into marriage by her uncle to an ugly old rich powerful man, traded, effectively, for political favor.

She returns to save a servant condemned to death for the crime of attacking the uncle when he tried to rape her. Sexual humiliation is a theme. Another outlaw Harvey (Robert Woods), who she regards as a platonic friend, steals her clothes as she swims in a lake, and then, having saved her from a posse, forcibly tries to take his reward.

The third act, like the duel between The Man With No Name and The Man in Black, is a case of double- and triple-cross. She refuses to join Blackie’s gang when he plans a million-dollar jewel heist, but hijacks the concept, recruiting her own gang to beat him to the robbery, and teach him a lesson.

But it backfires. Blackie is waiting. She has inadvertently hired his men. In the subsequence shoot-out he is captured. She rides to his rescue. But with their opposing ideas of a woman’s place in the world part on good terms.

The flashback was more subtly observed in Once Upon a Time in the West, and while she shared with Charles Bronson gunslinging skills he was not at any time viewed as a commodity or a piece of property or a candidate for rape. The flashback here fleshes out for the audience the powerlessness of women. But also the kind of camaraderie that is generally also usually only conferred on male characters.

We are pretty conversant with the notion that the gun rules the West. But less conscious of what happens when you are gun-less. Depriving someone of their fundamental weaponry makes them instantly impotent, as humiliating as denying someone water in a desert.

There are some nice directorial touches, blood dripping from a ceiling onto a dinner table, a saloon door opening to cast sudden light onto a corpse, waterfalls suggest sanctuary whereas open water attracts predatory males, and the finale, as they part, of Blackie, desperate to demonstrate his superiority, shooting off her hat from some distance.

Elsa Martinelli is a revelation as a star working to her own beat rather than playing second fiddle to some Hollywood marquee name. This wasn’t Lina Wertmuller’s first film and she had already made an impact with the Rita the Mosquito series, featuring another rebellious woman. Don’t be fooled by the co-directing credit, she replaced debut director Piero Cristofani after a few days.

It’s somewhat ironic that in a contemporary Hollywood attempt to create a female outlaw leader in Cat Ballou (1965), Jane Fonda was upstaged by Lee Marvin, and that in Bonnie and Clyde (1967), despite taking precedence in the title, Faye Dunaway was not the dominant one in the relationship.

By no means a great western but worth a look to see what Elsa Martinelli can achieve when not slotted in to the Hollywood co-star cliche and to get a preview of what Lina Wertmuller could offer.

Decent print on YouTube.

The Fixer (1968) ***

Stunning opening section thrown away by shifting tone and despite excellent performances by the Oscar-nominated Alan Bates and Dirk Bogarde drifts into Kafkaesque virtue-signalling.

But let’s get the title out of the way first. I had assumed a “fixer” was a manipulator, an underworld type of character who could, for a price or future favor, sort out problems or find someone a job or act as an intermediary between politicians or businessmen. Not so. Yakov (Alan Bates) is nothing more than a handyman, who can fix broken windows or railings and turn his hand to anything such as wall-papering or basic accountancy.

In the credit sequence he demonstrates his skills by fashioning with wood, a couple of screws and some steel, a razor, with which to remove the hair and beard that would identify him as a Hassidic Jew. He is, as soon becomes apparent, afflicted by dogs. As he departs his remote cottage in a cart, a vicious dog so disturbs his horse that it bolts, resulting in the loss of a wheel. He continues his travels on horseback, arriving in a small town in time to witness a parade and Cossacks rampaging through the streets.

As it’s set in Czarist Russia, his journey is accompanied by melancholy violin with, for some reason, a disturbing undercurrent of military drum. As the credits end, we cut to the Russian flag and a marching band. He hides in terror as the horsemen drag people along by the ear, slash with sabers, hang others. It’s a pogrom, the type of attack commonly experienced by Jews living in ghettoes.

Up to now, it’s just outstanding. Then it tips into the picaresque. Yakov helps an old drunk Lebedev (Hugh Griffiths) who’s fallen down in the snow in the street. As reward he is offered work wall-papering a room. He has a prick of conscience when he realises that Lebedev is an anti-Semite. Lebedev’s daughter Zinaida (Elizabeth Hartman) seduces him. But, on spotting some blood on a cloth, he refuses to go through with the act.

Luckily, my reading of crime novelist Faye Kellerman has alerted me to the fact that it is an act of faith for Jews not to make love when a woman is menstruating. Luckly, Zinaida isn’t so up on her Bible (Leiticus 15: 19-23 in case you were interested) that she catches on to this revealing fact, for, as has been pointed out earlier, minus the distinctive curl, Yakov doesn’t have the physical characteristics associated in those times with a Jew. In fact, you would say Lebedev would more easily pass for one.

Anyway, Lebedev gives him another job, of counting the loads leaving his brickworks because he suspects he is being swindled. But the foreman, who has been rumbled, and suspects Yakov of being a Jew, calls in the Secret Police, it being a crime for Jews to leave the ghetto.

Now we tip into Kafka. The initial charge against Yakov is that he harbored another Jew during Passover. But then things spiral out of control. He is accused of passing himself off as a Gentile (non-jew), attempted rape of Zinaida and then of ritual murder, killing a small child.

Investigating magistrate Bibikov (Dirk Bogarde) is sympathetic and manages to avoid the rape charge much to the fury of prosecutor Grubeshov (Ian Holm) but once the other charges mount, he is nailed, everyone determined to prove an innocent man guilty.

This is based on a true case and clearly was a case of persecution and Yakov’s transition from worker happy to hide his ethnicity to gain work to a man who rediscovers his religion is a piece of great acting from Alan Bates. But the points are hammered home endlessly and where director John Frankenheimer (The Train, 1964) so deftly dispensed with dialogue in the superb opening sequence, now he more than makes up for it with leaden speeches, and a film that would worked better for being considerably shorter.

It feels like Hollywood is hard at work. After some moments of mild happiness Yakov’s cinematic chore is to invoke sympathy for an entire nation rather than taking on the Holocaust directly. Dalton Trumbo’s (Lonely Are the Brave, 1962) screenplay is filled with brooding lines. But providing Yakov with an interior monologue when he dithers over having sex doesn’t work at all, certainly not next to the more effective use of that technique in John and Mary (1969).

At the outset, Frankenheimer treats violence with discretion. We don’t see the dog being impaled on a saber, just its corpse thrown at Yakov. We witness a rope being wound round a man’s neck, as innocent of any crime as Yakov, but not the actual hanging. So what begins as highly-nuanced turned into a battering ram of a picture and characters forced into lines like “the law will protect you unless you are guilty” and “I am man who although not much is still more than nothing.”

Alan Bates (The Running Man, 1963) certainly deserves his Oscar nomination and Dirk Bogarde (Modesty Blaise, 1966) might feel aggrieved he missed out on a Supporting Actor nomination. But too many of the rest of the cast over-act. It’s an all-star cast only if you’re British. But check it out if you’re a fan of Hugh Griffith (The Counterfeit Traitor, 1962), Elizabeth Hartman (The Group, 1966), David Warner (Perfect Friday, 1970), Ian Holm (in his sophomore movie outing), Carol White (Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, 1969) and Georgia Brown (Lock Up Your Daughters!, 1969).

Frankenheimer at his best when he lets the action play without the overload and there’s one almost Biblical scene, lit only by candlelight, that demonstrates his cinematic virtuosity. But otherwise it’s drowned in the verbal rather than the visual. Trumbo based his screenplay on the Pulitzer Prize winner and bestseller by Bernard Malamud.

Some effective moments, but too long drawn-out to make the impact expected.