adaptation of bestseller – Page 24

Madison Avenue (1961) ***

Surprisingly effective feminist angle. Unusual for the suave salesman to get his come-uppance from two vulnerable women, but that’s the case here, in an expose of the “build-up” (what we’d call “hype” these days) techniques of the public relations business, an area of advertising generally considered one step below the Mad Men of popular television. Fancy bars and cocktail dresses put in an appearance but, mostly, this deals with the grittier end.

This was pretty much the end of the mainstream Hollywood career for Dana Andrews. Still best-known for Laura (1944) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and for some key film noir titles, this was his last major top-billed role. He wouldn’t make another movie for four years and anyone coming to him in this decade would associate him with supporting roles in the likes of The Satan Bug (1965) and Battle of the Bulge (1965).

So this is, possibly unexpectedly, a performance to savor, for he is hardly the hero, more the kind of character who might turn up in a contemporary movie, with questionable motives to go along with his decided charm (look no further than Leonardo DiCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon). Though hardly murderous, he is ruthless and doesn’t care who he brings down in achieving his objectives.

After losing his job for purportedly (an accusation unproven but going with the territory) trying to steal the major client, Associated Dairies, of his boss, J.D. (Howard St John), top executive Clint (Dana Andrews) plans to get his revenge in rather sneaky fashion, by turning round its poorly-performing subsidiary Cloverleaf. He targets the dowdy owner, Anne Tremain (Eleanor Parker), of its failing advertising firm, promising her client a big editorial splash in a big newspaper courtesy of journalist girlfriend Peggy (Jeanne Crain).

Anne’s the first beneficiary of his PR skills, reinventing her as a glamorous, power-dressing, more confident advocate of the persuasion industry. He inveigles himself into her arms, at the expense of Peggy. He aids the idiotic owner of Cloverleaf, Harvey (Eddie Albert), who spends all his time in the office playing with model airplanes. (From today’s perspective, he’s something of a savant, predicting these machines – think drones – could one day form part of the delivery contingent.)

To show just how damn clever he is, Clint “builds up” Harvey into the kind of self-made-man that has politicians purring, and brings Clint back into the winners circle. Unfortunately, the only way to get right in is through deviousness, a bit of back-stabbing here and there, dropping anyone who’s outlived their usefulness. But he’s not as clever as he thinks, lacks the business acumen of Anne, who’s denied him a share of her growing business, and therefore any real power base.

The women take unkindly to being used, Anne now the one doing the tossing-aside. For her revenge, Peggy writes an article that digs the dirt on him. Neither of these women would fall into the femme fatale category, though once all glammed-up Anne could pass for one had she required violence rather than business dexterity to exact her revenge.

Though both, unusually for the times, hold top positions in their businesses – Peggy’s a high-flying journalist working the Washington beat – they are presented initially as easy meat for a man capable of exploiting their vulnerabilities. Clint keeps Peggy on the back foot by failing to turn up for dates or presenting Anne as a rival for his affections.

This is an era where, purportedly, all women wanted was a ring on their finger, and to hang with being landed with an unsuitable man. But both Anne and Peggy upend that stereotype, seeing through the creature who’s come calling. In a western, audiences would have the satisfaction of seeing this kind of despicable character being shot. Here, they get to see him cringe, and be humiliated by women who have come to their senses. Albeit there’s a “happy” ending, that only occurs after some begging by the predator.

It suffers from too many long sequences, and by its determination to go down the satire route in exposing the seamier side of the public relations business. But there are some classic moments, such as when Harvey, tumbling through a prepared speech, has to suddenly wing it and finds his real voice.

But watching Anne get the measure of Clint and seeing him brought to heel by both women suggests the kind of ahead-of-its-time come-uppance that sets this up as an early feminist venture.

Eleanor Parker (The Sound of Music, 1965) and Jeanne Craine (Queen of the Nile, 1961) are both superb as women coming to their senses and this is a quite superb last top-billed hurrah from Dana Andrews. This was also the final outing for director H. Bruce Humberstone (Desert Song, 1953). Former newspaperman Norman Corwin (The Story of Ruth, 1960) and Richard P. Powell (Follow That Dream, 1962) based the screenplay on the best seller by Jeremy Kirk.

Resonates on the feminist front.

Behind the Scenes: Coming Soon(er) or Later or Not At All

My discovery that Hayley Mills’ career could have taken an entirely different turn had either Deep Freeze Girls or When I Grow Rich entered production in 1965/1966 and therefore prevented the star returning to Britain for The Family Way (1966) – and, as it transpired, love and marriage – made me look again at the huge volume of movies that were either never made at the time initially announced or never made at all.

I’d covered a couple of classic examples previously, 40 Days of Musa Dagh for example taking nearly half a century from initial proposal to some kind of fruition. And, of course, the financial collapse of studios at the end of the 1960s put an end to the prospects of such big budget movies as Man’s Fate, to be directed by Fred Zinnemann.

But sometimes as many as half the movies announced by a studio or independent for their forthcoming schedule never made it to the big screen. Others such as This Property Is Condemned (1966), initially to star Elizabeth Taylor and directed by John Huston, still got over the line but with new players, Natalie Wood as star and Robert Mulligan in the hot seat. On the other hand, of the quartet of movies – Lie Down in Darkness, Guardians, Grass Lovers, and Linda – that producer William Frye (The Trouble with Angels) thought would make his name, none were made.

Everyone knows moviemaking is a dicey business, but you don’t realize just how tricky it is unless you count up just how many pictures, often trumpeted with big stars signed up, just don’t make it to the cinema screen. Not that Hollywood was unwilling to gamble. Studios snapped up anything – novel, Broadway play – that appeared a decent prospect.

In the early 1960s talent agency Famous Artists earned for its clients a grand total of $850,000 (equivalent to $8.5 million now) for a disparate bunch of properties. King Rat by James Clavell went for $160,000 plus a percentage and was made in double quick time. As was Lilith by J.R. Salamaca, costing $100,000, and Sylvia ($20,000 purchase price) by E.V. Cunningham (aka Howard Fast). Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest went for $85,000 to Kirk Douglas’s Bryna outfit, which explained why, a decade later, it ended up being produced by his son, Michael.

But Broadway play The Perfect Set-Up by Jack Sher, sold to Hollywood for $400,000 and with Angie Dickinson signed up for the lead, was never made. You might recall George Peppard in a TV movie Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Murder Case (1975) but that wasn’t based on The Sheppard Murder Case by Paul Holmes that someone shelled out $25,000 for in 1962.

Director Paul Wendkos had planned to follow up Gidget Goes to Rome (1963) with Native Stone, an architectural drama in the vein of The Fountainhead based on the Edwin Gilbert book that cost him $10,000 but that hit the buffers. Two novels by thriller writer John D. MacDonald, hot after Cape Fear (1962) – the aforementioned Linda costing $15,000 and A Child Is Crying $5,000 – were not made either. Nor, out of this batch, were Indian Paint by Glenn Balch or Fish Story by Robert Carson.

Even as powerful a producer as Ross Hunter (Midnight Lace, 1960), couldn’t get onto the starting grid The Public Eye as a vehicle for Julie Andrews, Laurence Olivier and director Mike Nichols (it would have been his movie debut) – when made in 1972 starring Mia Farrow and Topol it was under the aegis of Hal Wallis. Hunter also spent $350,000 on Dark Angel to star Rock Hudson but that fell at the first hurdle as did Broadway play A Very Rich Woman to star Katharine Hepburn.

Tony Curtis was down for a remake of Casablanca (1942) called The Fifth Coin and relocated in Hong Kong and to co-star Nancy Kwan. Shooting on the Seven Arts production had a start date: November 15, 1965. But never went in front of the cameras. Kwan was particularly unlucky. The aforementioned Deep Freeze Girls also had a budget ($1.5 million) and a start date (October 1965) but it didn’t get off the ground either.

And of course Seven Arts had become enmeshed in the long-running John Huston saga of The Man Who Would Be King. This version, to star Richard Burton, had been set a $4 million budget and was due to start in April 1966. No go. At least The Owl and the Pussycat, budgeted then at $1.6 million and due to start on Dec 1965, was worth waiting five years for – when it was eventually filmed, though by Rastar not Seven Arts, it starred Barbra Streisand and George Segal.

In 1964 Columbia had 77 movies on the stocks. Richard Brooks was setting up Catch 22, Peter Sellers was being lined up for the musical Oliver!, and Carl Foreman was prepping Young Churchill. All these projects dropped off the roster, only to pop back up several years later with different stars (Ron Moody in Oliver!) or directors (Mike Nichols for Catch 22) or even studios (Paramount for Catch 22).

But others were simply shunted aside. Whatever happened to The Gay Place to team James Garner and Jean Seberg? Or The Fabulous Showman to be directed by Blake Edwards? Or another long-running saga, Andersonville with Stanley Kramer at the helm? Or Stephen Boyd as Richard the Lionheart? Even though The Ipcress File (1965) proved a big hit the same author’s Horse Under Water stalled at the starting gate, as did Robert Rossen’s Cocoa Beach and Ann-Margret in Strange Story.

When Robert Evans ushered in a new era at Paramount he placed his faith in writers. He doubled production and had over 40 writers working on projects. Some had little or no experience of movies but were big literary names. John Fowles, the adaptation of whose The Magus (1968) was an expensive flop, was hired to write Dr Cook’s Garden, but it was never made. Edna O’Brien had Three into Two Won’t Go on the stocks at Universal so she was set to write Homo Faber. Another casualty.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Edward Anhalt (Becket, 1964) was to make his directorial debut with We Only Kill Each Other. It didn’t happen. Nobody had ever managed to film Thomas Wolfe’s epic novel Look, Homeward Angel, so Paramount took a tilt at that without success. Escape from Colditz went into cold storage and an adaptation of Harold Robbins bestseller 79 Park Avenue ended up as a television mini series in 1977 and at a rival company, Universal.

It’s still standard operating procedure for Hollywood to snap up any big bestseller or Broadway hit without ever knowing whether it will ever see the light of day but willing to take the risk.

SOURCES: “Famous Artists,” Variety, August 8, 1962, p5; “Sanford and Frye of TV To Make Theatrical Films,” Box Office, January 7, 1963, p10; “Col-Frye TV Pact,” Box Office, August 19, 1963, p10; “Columbia Policy,” Variety, May 6, 1964, p13; “Seven Arts Pix Multiply,” Variety, March 31, 1965, p4; “Ross Hunter’s Crowded Future,” Variety, May 12, 1965, p7; “Bob Evans Pays Chip Service To Writer As Star,” Variety, May 1, 1968, p19.

Behind the Scenes: “The Trouble with Angels” (1966)

Miracle this was made at all with so many neophyte producers involved. First up were Kenn Donellen and Jacqueline Babbin. No Hollywood experience. He was the television rep for Ford Motors, she worked for David Susskind’s talent agency. But like everyone else in the business in the early 1960s, when major studios were on the point of collapse, they thought they could do better. Especially after they nabbed the property, Life with Mother Superior by Jane Trahey, from under the noses of Disney and Universal.

The pair picked it up pre-publication, three months before it was launched by Farrar Strauss in September 1962 after serialization in McCall’s magazine and turned into a speedy bestseller. They got preference because they struck the kind of deal with the author that only newcomers desperate to get into the business would make. As well as paying a hefty fee upfront they guaranteed the author a percentage, plus, unheard-of for a first-time writer, a “say-so on production.” That clause alone would have alarmed any other studio.

Donellen and Babbin were prepared to put up half the $750,000 budget if the remainder was met by a major studio or independent. Production was scheduled for Spring 1963.

Not surprisingly, it suffered from lack of partners. Briefly, it shifted to the bulging portfolio of Ross Hunter. He envisaged an all-star cast older cast in the style of Disney’s Pollyanna (1960): Barbara Stanwyck (The Night Walker, 1964), Loretta Young (whose last movie It Happens Every Thursday was in 1953) and Jane Wyman (Pollyanna) as nuns, which removed the onus from youngsters Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker, 1962) and Mary Badham (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962). Interestingly, his production of The Chalk Garden (1964) with Hayley Mills was so successful in its New York run it earned back its negative cost.

But that didn’t float Universal’s boat and Columbia stepped in in 1964, handing the production to another neophyte, William Frye. He belonged to a new breed of producers who had cut their teeth in television as writers before moving into overseeing small-screen programs, and attempting the jump to features. Frye had been more successful than most. He had a production deal with Columbia.

But initial attempts to film Guardians from the novel by Helen Tucker, Grass Lovers, thriller Linda by John D. MacDonald and Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron to be directed by John Frankenheimer came to nothing. In the end, Columbia handed him Mother Superior, as the movie was now known.

But this was his first production and either through naiveté, ambition or publicity-seeking genius, Frye had the sensational idea of fielding a million-dollar offer to Greta Garbo to play Mother Superior, in what would have been the comeback to end all comebacks, given she had not made a movie in three decades. That would have made a heck of a dent in a movie budgeted at $2 million. Needless to say, the offer was declined. Eventually, he settled on four-time Oscar nominee Rosalind Russell, for whom this was also something of a comeback, her first picture since Gypsy (1962).

Hayley Mills had parted company with Walt Disney after a run of six films that had turned her into the biggest child star (admittedly, a small pool) in the world. But she was trying to break out from that persona. She was 19 and couldn’t keep playing kids forever. In an attempt to spread her wings, she and her father, actor John Mills (Tunes of Glory, 1960) set up production outfit The Company of Six along with fellow actors Richard Attenborough, Herbert Lom and Curt Jurgens and writer-director Bryan Forbes.

And she faced another dilemma. Her Disney pictures were big box office, but other movies made out-with that brand were less successful. In some respects, this was an ideal halfway house. In this picture she wasn’t saddled with being a tomboy and there was no romance and she was able to infuse the role with more emotional maturity while still developing her comedy chops.

It wasn’t her only choice. She was set for Deep Freeze Girls along with Nancy Kwan and Sue Lyon for Seven Arts. Production was scheduled to begin in October 1965, following on from The Trouble with Angels, but it never got off the ground.

As importantly, Mills fitted the new Columbia talent development strategy. The studio had signed up seven young stars but aimed to have 40-50 on board within a year, partly as a way to reduce costs and partly as a method of courting the younger audience. So, you couldn’t have a better poster girl for that particular scheme than Hayley Mills.

By this point, Ida Lupino, once a big movie star (High Sierra, 1940) and an accomplished director after a string of B-film thrillers in the early 1950s such as Outrage (1950) – one of the first X-certificate films in Britain – and The Bigamist (1953), was now a television gun for hire, reduced to directing episodes of Bewitched, The Twilight Zone, Dr Kildare and The Fugitive. But she had worked for Frye in television when he was in charge of the General Electric Theater and Thriller series Still, it was a brave move to hire a director, never mind a female director, who had been out of the movies for 13 years.

In Hollywood, Lupino was now in a majority of one, the only female director working in the mainstream. Up till then, in the whole of the decade, only two other women had found a directing gig and that was in the independent sector, Shirley Clarke with The Connection (1961) and Joleen Compton with Stranded (1965), though that had been shot in Greece. Although Variety ran a front-page splash in 1964 entitled “Women Directors Multiply,” the situation overseas was little better. Belgian Agnes Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962), Swede Mai Zetterling (Loving Couples, 1964) and Lina Wertmuller (Lizards, 1963) were the only examples the trade magazine could find.

It was Lupino’s decision to limit the use of color, mainlining on “stark black and white and charcoal grey.” When color did appear it was in a “sudden splash” such as a swimming pool or a green meadow or the red of the marching band outfits. “The possibilities of color are fantastic,” opined Lupino.

Columbia was on such a production spree, 77 pictures on its slate, space so tight on its sound stages, that some scenes on The Trouble with Angels were farmed out to Goldwyn Studios. Most of the train scenes were shot at the Santa Fe depot, though the opening train sequence took place at Merion train station in Pennsylvania.

The movie title was changed to The Trouble with Angels due to a surfeit of movies about nuns. Of course, nuns had periodically hit pay dirt at the box office. Look to Heaven Knows Mr Allison (1958) and The Nun’s Story (1959). But their box office had hardly prepared anyone for The Sound of Music (1965). And coming up on the outside was The Singing Nun (1966) starring Debbie Reynolds, though a foreign effort La Religieuse (1965) had been banned in France.

Lupino’s picture and The Singing Nun were soon on collision course, vying to become the Easter 1966 attraction at the prestigious Radio City Music Hall in New York (the largest auditorium in the country with over 6,000 seats). The Trouble with Angels lost out and settled for the first run Victoria and the arthouse Beekman (not such an unusual mix as, due to a dearth of screens thanks to roadshow long-runners, arthouses were often drafted in to make up the numbers).

William Frye planned to team up again with Mills and The Trouble with Angels screenwriter Blanche Hanalis for When I Grow Rich, a $3 million romantic drama to be filmed in Turkey for Columbia, but that fell through and after falling in love with her director Roy Boulting on The Family Way (1966), Mills career headed in another direction.

The Trouble with Angels was so successful it spawned a sequel, Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! (1968). Mills spurned an offer to reprise her role. Rosalind Russell returned, her young nemesis played by Stella Stevens (Sol Madrid/The Heroin Gang, 1968).

SOURCES: “Young Producers Not Arty At All,” Variety, June 20, 1962, p4; “Frye Buys Grass Lovers,” Variety, September 12, 1962, p11; “Sanford and Frye of TV To Make Theatrical Films,” Box Office, January 7, 1963, p10; “Col-Frye TV Pact,” Box Office, August 19, 1963, p10; “Women Directors Multiply,” Variety, March 11, 1964, p1; “Columbia Policy,” Variety, May 6, 1964, p13; “Ida Lupino To Direct Col’s Mother Superior,” Variety, February 10, 1965, p15; “Seven Arts Pix Multiply,” Variety, March 31, 1965, p4; “Form Company of Six,” Variety, April 21, 1965, p28; “Ross Hunter’s Crowded Future,” Variety, May 12, 1965, p7; “Production Spills Over,” Variety, September 15, 1965, p22; “One Nun or Another for Music Hall,” Variety, January 12, 1966, p17; Robert B. Frederick, “Sister Act,” Variety, April 20, 1966, p22; “Istanbul Rides Location Boom,” Variety, May 4, 1966, p150.

The Trouble with Angels (1966) ****

Shocking Fact No 1: director Ida Lupino was the only female director working in Hollywood at this time. And she hadn’t worked in features for over a decade. Her previous picture, The Bigamist (1953), was her fifth. And while she had continued to find work in television, the movie business shunned her. What was perhaps more shocking, as I pointed out in my book When Women Ruled Hollywood, was that in the period 1910-1919 more women worked as directors in Hollywood than at any time since and that it was a woman, Alice Guy, rather than Melies, who actually made the first narrative movie. Worst of all, despite being a major box office hit, this was Lupino’s last picture.

Shocking Fact No 2: this didn’t turn Hayley Mills into a major adult star. Oh yes, she made the transition – and how – in The Family Way later that year, a British romantic drama that saw her shed her clothes. Big hit in Britain, not so well-received in the USA. Her career then took an odd turn, into thrillers like Twisted Nerve (1968) and Endless Night (1972).

*Not exactly demure. Marching band outfit takes the grey out of the convent uniform.*

I say an odd turn because if there was any better demonstration that the actress had properly developed her comedy chops I’d yet to see it. Sure, Disney had used her in comedy, but that was mostly routine stuff. Here, she revealed an emotional maturity lacking in her previous work and, to some extent, in her future movies.

And, in part, because Lupino keeps her away from big dramatic moments, relying entirely on her facial expression to reveal character development. I am surprised that, at this point, with Doris Day’s box office allure dimming, that nobody saw Mills as her natural successor. She had the same puckish demeanor and she deftly handled comedy. Give her a few years and she would have been a natural for such polished items as Barefoot in the Park. You get the feeling there was more natural ability that was left untapped.

Anyway, on with the show.

This is just a delight. It shouldn’t work at all, certainly not for a modern audience accustomed to sharply-honed laugh lines. But it’s so cleverly constructed, in covering a three-year period, it could easily have been a string of loosely-connected episodes rather than a picture with an underlying narrative that mostly takes place beneath the surface.

Orphan Mary (Hayley Mills) has been dumped by rich playboy uncle (Kent George) in a convent boarding school that looks more like a medieval fortress than anything else. She teams up with the equally unhappy Rachel (June Harding), whose parents are at least indulgent, and together they torment the life out of the nuns and other kids, pouring detergent into tea-pots, setting off fire alarms, charging their schoolmates for an illicit guided tour of the convent, developing their smoking habits, breaking everything in sight. One scheme goes so badly awry the nuns have to take shears to a face mask.

Throughout all of this, she comes up against a tough Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell) who comes across like Miss Jean Brodie, minus her dangerously progressive side, but ever ready with a quip, able to tackle any emergency, though Mary drives her to distraction. While set in her ways, the nun does sail close to the wind, kitting out the girls in red cheerleader outfits in order to give them an unfair advantage in a marching band competition.

Any other director would have made the marching band competition the climax of the movie. I was fully expecting it to take up the final third, as pupils with little musical ability work hard and discover they can improve enough to win the competition and in so doing find out some platitudes about themselves. Instead, every episode is kept short and sweet, often the pay-off delivered in unexpected manner, for example, that we discover the girls have won when Mother Superior takes the opportunity to gloat over her rival headmaster (Jim Hutton). Or a section where teenage girls sent to buy their first bra go wild trying on all sorts of outrageous outfits that in other hands could easily have been expanded is ended sharply by Mother Superior holding up the plainest item and ordering two dozen of them.

It fairly skates along. But every now and then it dramatically slows down. And for what? Pretty much nothing at all. Just Mother Superior taking a quiet moment to herself amid all the hurly burly of running a school and dealing with mischief. But gradually, in those quiet moments, she is joined, at a distance, by a staring Mary, wondering about the nun’s inner calm.

Ida Lupino’s color palette is extraordinary. Sure, it’s nuns, so we can expect a lot of black and white. But Lupino avoids the temptation to compensate with huge swathes of color. Instead, for most of the film, the girls are decked out in grey. So when splashes of yellow or pink or red appear they are distinctive. Only as the girls grow older does more color emerge.

The wry Rosalind Russell (Gypsy, 1962) is on top form. Instead of attempting to dominate, she nips in and steals scenes with her dry delivery. She shifts from indominable to maternal and eventually engages the psychological attention of Mary in a superb scene about her own life.

In that sense Hayley Mills has her work cut out to hold her own against such an accomplished professional, which she achieves through her own delivery, but much more through facial expression. This was June Harding’s only movie. But look out for Camilla Sparv (Assignment K, 1968) in her movie debut and a cameo from Gypsy Rose Lee.

Terrific direction for Ida Lupino – watch for example how the camera closes in on characters – from screenplay by Blanche Hanalis (Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! 1968) from the bestseller by Jane Trahey.

As old-fashioned as they come and a joy to watch.

Catch it on YouTube – the first link is rent or buy, the second one is free but punctuated by adverts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37FnvNp2EYc

Escape from Zahrain (1962) ***

After being attacked by armored cars and strafed by airplanes, stranded in the desert, and overcome various tensions within the small group of escapees, there is still considerable life left in this picture at the end as Jack Warden, making his departure, comes up with a classic last line: “We must do this again sometime.”

In truth, the picture has far more going for it than a mere outline would suggest. In rescuing rebel leader Sharif (Yul Brynner) from a lorry bound for jail, the escapees led by Ahmed (Sal Mineo (Exodus, 1960) in a stolen ambulance also scoop up three convicts including American fraudster and loudmouth Huston (Jack Warden) and all-purpose thug Tahar (Anthony Caruso) plus nurse Laila (Madhlyn Rhue) as a hostage. Like most stranded-in-the-desert films, the storyline is on who will survive and how.

Action is one constant. The threat of failure is another. Supplies are rationed and, of course, someone steals more than their fair share. The members regularly switch allegiance. At various points someone is about to give up Sharif. Their gas tank is punctured so, thanks to Huston’s engineering skills, they just make it to a remote pumping station where they encounter maintenance man (James Mason in an uncredited cameo). Their numbers diminish and despite his recalcitrance Huston’s engineering skills save them again when they reach an oasis.

What makes the film different is that the characters all change. In a country where “half the wealth is stolen by Europeans and half by corruption,” Sharif is the altruistic leader whose ideals are shattered. Laila, a Muslim, drinks alcohol and questions the number of deaths necessary for a revolution but declines to leave when the opportunity arises. Ahmed who thinks “women should be as free as men” reacts badly when Laila enjoys such freedom. Huston, who has embezzled $200,000, and has loyalty to no one stands by the shambolic crew.

I had always believed Brynner had enjoyed a rare case of beginner’s luck when he won the Oscar for his debut in The King and I (1956) and that once Hollywood became wise to his acting schtick he would never be nominated again – as proved the case. But after watching Brynner in The Magnificent Seven (1960) and its sequel and Invitation to a Gunfighter (1964) and Flight to Ashiya (1964) I have become convinced he is under-rated as an actor. He acts with his eyes and his delivery is far more varied than I had supposed. Here, clothed in Arab costume, there is no bald pate to distract.

Sal Mineo (Exodus, 1960) can’t compete in the acting stakes with the canny Jack Warden (Blindfold, 1966). Anthony Caruso (a television regular) is lost in the mix but Madhlyn Rhue (A Majority of One, 1961) certainly looked a good prospect.

British director Ronald Neame (Tunes of Glory, 1960) holds the enterprise together, keeping to a tidy pace but allowing tension and character to emerge. Screenplay was courtesy of Robin Estridge (Eye of the Devil, 1966) based on the Michael Barrat novel and with an injection somewhere along the line by Dudley Nichols (Heller in Pink Tights, 1960).

Tight script, taut direction.

https://amzn.to/3Td6m1d

Is Paris Burning (1966) ****

Politics didn’t usually play a part in war films in the 1960s but’s it’s an essential ingredient to Rene Clement’s underrated documentary-style picture. Paris had no strategic importance and after the Normandy landings the Allies intended to bypass the French capital and head straight for Berlin.

Meanwhile, Hitler, in particular vengeful mood after the attempt on his life, ordered the city destroyed. Resistance groups were splintered, out-numbered and lacking the weaponry to achieve an uprising. Followers of General De Gaulle, the French leader in exile, wanted to wait until the Allies sent in the troops, the Communists planned to seize control before British and American soldiers could arrive.

When the Communists begin the fight, seizing public buildings, the Germans plant explosives on the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and other famous buildings and all the bridges across the River Seine. The German commandant Von Choltitz (Gert Frobe), no stranger to slaughter having overseen the destruction of Rotterdam, holds off obeying his orders because he believes Hitler is insane and the war already lost.

The Gaullists despatch a messenger to persuade General Omar Bradley (Glenn Ford) to change his mind and send troops to relieve the city. Sorry for the plot-spoiler but as everyone knows the Germans did not destroy the city and the liberation of Paris provided famous newsreel and photographic footage.

Director Clement (Rider on the Rain, 1970) was also aware he could not extract much tension from the question of whether von Choltitz will press the destruct button, so he takes another route and documents in meticulous detail the political in-fighting and the actual street battles that ensued, German tanks and artillery against Molotov cocktails and mostly old-fashioned weaponry. The wide Parisian boulevards provide a fabulous backdrop for the fighting.

Shooting much of the action from above allows Clement to capture the action in vivid cinematic strokes. Like The Longest Day (1962), the film does not follow one individual but is in essence a vast tapestry. Scenes of the utmost brutality – resistance fighters thrown out of a lorry to be machine-gunned, the public are strafed when they venture out to welcome the Americans – contrast with moments of such gentleness they could almost be parody: a shepherd taking a herd through the fighting, an old lady covered in falling plaster watching as soldiers drop home-made bombs on tanks.

This is not a film about heroism but the sheer raw energy required to carry out dangerous duty and many times a character we just saw winning one sally against the enemy is shot the next. The French have to fight street-by-street, enemy-emplacement-by-enemy-emplacement, tank-by-tank.

And Clement allows as much time for humanity. Francophile Sgt Warren (Anthony Perkins), as an American grunt, spends all his time in the middle of the battle trying to determine the location of the sights he longs to see – before he is abruptly killed. An unnamed café owner (Simone Signoret) helps soldiers phone their loved ones.

Like The Longest Day and In Harm’s Way (1965), the film was shot in black-and-white, but not, as with those movies for the simple reason of incorporating newsreel footage, but because De Gaulle, now the French president, objected to the sight of red swastika. Even so, it permitted the inclusion of newsreel footage, which on the small screen (where most people these days will watch it) appears seamless.

By Hollywood standards this was not an all-star cast, Glenn Ford (as Bradley), Kirk Douglas (General Patton) and Robert Stack (General Sibert) making fleeting glimpses.

But by French standards it was the all-star cast to beat all-star casts – Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless, 1960), Alain Delon (Lost Command, 1966), Yves Montand (Grand Prix, 1966), Charles Boyer (Gaslight, 1944), Leslie Caron (Gigi, 1958), Michel Piccoli (Masquerade, 1965), Simone Signoret (Room at the Top, 1959) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (A Man and a Woman, 1966). Orson Welles, in subdued form, appeared as the Swedish ambassador.

Gore Vidal (The Best Man, 1964) and Francis Coppola (The Godfather, 1962) devised the screenplay based on the bestseller by Larry Collins and Dominic Lapierre

At $6 million, it was the most expensive French film ever made. It had a six-month shooting schedule and was shot on the streets of the city including famous locations like Etoile, Madeleine and the Louvre. It was a big hit in France but flopped in the United States, its box office so poor that Paramount refused to disclose it.

Gripping.

The Assassination Bureau (1969) ****

A couple of decades before “high concept” was invented came this high concept picture – a killer is hired to kill himself. Ivan Dragomiloff (Oliver Reed) is the assassin in question and Sonya Winter (Diana Rigg) the journalist doing the hiring. So Ivan challenges the other members of his murderous outfit to kill him before he despatches them. The odds are about ten to one. Initially involved in shadowing Ivan, Sonya becomes drawn to his aid when it transpires there is a bigger conspiracy afoot.

Set just before World War One, the action cuts a swathe through Europe’s glamor cities – London, Paris, Vienna, Venice – while stopping off for a bit of slapstick, some decent sight gags and a nod now and then to James Bond (gadgets) and The Pink Panther (exploding sausages).

Odd a mixture as it is, mostly it works, thanks to the intuitive partnership of director Basil Dearden and producer (and sometime writer and designer) Michael Relph, previously responsible this decade for League of Gentlemen (1960), Victim (1961), Masquerade (1965) and Khartoum (1966).

Playing mustachioed media magnate Lord Bostwick, Telly Savalas (The Scalphunters, 1968) has a decent chomp at an upper-class British action. It’s easy to forget was one of the things that marked him out was his clear diction and he always had an air about him, so this was possibly less of a stretch.

Ramping up the fun is a multi-cultural melange in supporting roles: Frenchman Phillipe Noiret (Night of the Generals, 1967), everyone’s favourite German Curt Jurgens (Psyche ’59, 1964) playing another general, Italian Annabella Contrera (The Ambushers, 1967) and Greek George Coulouris (Arabesque, 1966) plus British stalwarts Beryl Reid (The Killing of Sister George, 1969) as a brothel madam, television’s Warren Mitchell (Till Death Do Us Part), Kenneth Griffith and Clive Revill (Fathom, 1967).

The action flits between sudden danger and elaborate set pieces. When Ivan announces his proposal to his board he promptly fells a colleague with a gavel just as that man throws a knife. Apart from folderols in a Parisian brothel, we are treated to a Viennese waltz and malarkey in Venice. There are disguises aplenty, donned by our hero and his enemies. Lighters are turned into flame throwers.

And there is a lovely sly sense of humour, an Italian countess, wanting rid of her husband, does so under the pretext of Ivan gone rogue. Oliver Reed (Hannibal Brooks, 1969) and Diana Rigg (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1970), adopting her best Julie Andrews impression, are in excellent form and strike sparks off each other. Their verbal duels are a joy to watch. Basil Dearden, in his second-last picture, invested the movie with considerable panache. It takes more skill to carry off this kind of movie, as much satire and spoof as anything else, than a straightforward action or crime picture.

Relph conjured up the screenplay based on an unfinished Jack London novel published posthumously in 1963 with the assistance of crime writer Robert L. Fish.

Shouldn’t work as well as it does. Surprisingly enjoyable.

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Flight from Ashiya (1964) ***

A post-WW2 operation to save a handful of Japanese adrift at sea in a storm is endangered when three members of the U.S. Air Force Air Rescue Service confront conflicts from their past. Despite tense rescue action, this is basically a three-hander about guilt and how men deal – or fail to deal – with emotions. Extended flashbacks illuminate the tangled relationships between Sgt Takashima (Yul Brynner), Lt Col Stevenson (Richard Widmark) and Second Lieut Gregg (George Chakiris). Unusually, for the period, tough guys actually emote.

So really it’s like one of those portmanteau films that are occasionally popular – like Trio (1950) made up of Somerset Maugham short stories or similar to something like the Oscar-winning Crash (2004) where characters interconnect after an accident. While each of the episodes stands up in its own right, the thrust of the narrative revolves around actions taken in the past having a direct bearing on the present situation.

Gregg is haunted by causing an avalanche after flying his helicopter too close to a mountain and, as a result, by having to leave behind many of the victims, due to restricted capacity on board, and now he is terrified of flying solo. As a consequence Stevenson has no faith in abilities as a pilot.

Stevenson also has an abiding hatred of Japanese – colleague Takashima of Japanese ancestry also bears his wrath – because his ill wife Caroline (Shirley Knight) and child died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp because medical supplies were reserved only for the Japanese. Faced with rescuing Japanese, he is enraged.

For his part, Takashima, a paratrooper during the war, inadvertently caused the death of his Algerian girlfriend Leila (Daniele Gaubert). It’s not so much an examination of tough guys under pressure as about their inability to deal with the consequences of action. There’s certainly a sense that the only way men like these have of dealing with trauma is to throw themselves into dangerous action.

Yul Brynner (The Double Man, 1967) gives a more thoughtful performance than you might expect while Richard Widmark (The Secret Ways, 1961), himself dabbling in production elsewhere, was good value. Goerge Chakiris (The Young Girls of Rochefort, 1967) was a weaker link. The presence of Suzy Parker (Circle of Deception, 1960) and especially Daniele Gaubert (The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl, 1968) strengthen the film.

Unusually, at a time when product was in short supply and for a film boasting a strong cast, the picture was shelved for two years after completion. Presumably explained by the demise of Harold Hecht’s production company after he split with Burt Lancaster. Michael Anderson (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) directed from a screenplay by Waldo Salt (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) based on the novel by Elliot Arnold (Kings of the Sun, 1963).

The title’s a bit of a misnomer, suggesting someone is trying to escape from Ashiya when, in fact, that is just the name of the air base where the rescue team are located.

Critics complained it was neither one thing nor the other, but in fact I found it a perfectly satisfactory combination of action and drama, especially as it dealt with rarely-recognized male emotions.

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The Truth about Spring (1965) ***

Although a truly innocent movie about young love, wrapped up in a sunken treasure scenario, the marketeers then and now could not resist trying to inject elements of sexuality, the poster for the original movie highlighting what would be Hayley Mills’ second screen kiss (following a smacker from Peter McEnery in The Moon-Spinners the year before), the poster for the DVD sticking the star in a bikini that she does not wear in the film.

The film was based on the 1921 novel Satan: A Romance of the Bahamas (filmed as Satan’s Sister in 1925 with Betty Balfour) by Henry de Vere Stacpoole, who had previously dallied with young love in The Blue Lagoon. Despite the title, there was a complete absence of the demonic. In the book, she is sailing with her brother. That character was eliminated in favour of a father.

The 1960s teen movie that could as easily morph into angst (Splendor in the Grass, 1961), blackmail (Kitten with a Whip, 1964) or madness (Lilith, 1964) was generally more at home with innocence. The beach party movies and series like Gidget rarely involved more than a stolen kiss, the characters all clearly virgins, and certainly did not go down the brazen sexuality route that would mark the second half of the decade.

Hayley Mills is on charming form as tomboy Spring Tyler (hence the title) sailing the Caribbean as mate to her conman father Tommy (played by her real-life father John Mills). Their idyllic life is heading for the rocks since the father didn’t “figure on the little girl growing up.” With one eye on providing a suitor for his daughter, the skipper takes on board a Harvard Law School graduate William (James MacArthur) ostensibly to give him experience of fishing.

True love takes its time since the girl has no intention of growing up and prefers a life of independence. Initially, they are sparring partners – she mocks the fact that he wears pyjamas. But once the story kicks off, they find they have more in common.

The sunken treasure element, while slim, is enlivened by some over-the-top acting by Jose (Lionel Jeffries) and Judd (Harry Andrews). The three leads are actually quite good, John Mills (Tunes of Glory, 1960) totally convincing as a effectively a spiv on the high seas with Hayley Mills (The Family Way, 1966) as the independent woman (“I’m me so don’t expect anything else”) and the confident sailor becoming entangled in unexpected emotions.

Surprisingly, James MacArthur, also a graduate from the Disney acting school, though a decade older than Hayley Mills, shows unexpected subtlety, and this would be a springboard to more demanding roles in cold war thriller The Bedford Incident (1965) and WW2 epic Battle of the Bulge (1965). Cocky and rich, he is quickly brought down earth when she proves a faster swimmer and plays tricks on him. But he soon proves his worth.

Director Richard Thorpe’s career was winding down after four decades in the business and this was a far cry from MGM spectaculars Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953) and even Jailhouse Rock (1957) but he keeps a tight rein on the narrative, makes good use of the scenery (Spain doubling for the Caribbean) and walks the delicate line of allowing the adolescents to explore their feelings with tipping over into anything more overt.

He was a better director than the material deserved, but then so was writer James Lee Barrett who the same year would receive screen credit for The Greatest Story Ever Told and western Shenandoah. However, their involvement made it an accomplished little picture and gave audiences a taste of what Hayley Mills could do in a film that did not tether her to child star mode.

The New York Times second-string reviewer Howard Thompson, in tagging the star “this delectable miss, now all of 18” opined (review, June 17, 1965) that the “two young people are the most winning advertisement for young love in a long time.”

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Ada (1961) ****

Oddly enough, this shares some elements with Killers of the Flower Moon. For a start Sylvester (Wilfrid Hyde-White), the political fixer, comes over as Robert DeNiro’s benign uncle, both so low-key, charming and persuasive you’d never believe them capable of wicked manipulation. In the second place Bo (Dean Martin) is every bit as charming and baffled as Leonardo DiCaprio.

And just as the latter’s role is to worm his way into wealth and power via marriage, so too that’s the route taken by Ada (Susan Hayward), who would be euphemistically known in those days as a “good-time girl.”

You’d figure this for a mild political satire except for the fact that stooges/buffoons have consistently made their way to the highest political office. As Ada pointedly points out, public appeal is the greatest qualification of any candidate, opportunism a close second. Bizarre as it seems, Bo is a popular local guitar-playing-singer of the Hank Williams variety, a well-meaning dumb-as-they-come sort, whom Sylvester persuades to run for Governor. In the course of the campaign, as “a present in a back-room saloon,” he is served up Ada with whom he unexpectedly falls in love and marries.

His campaign path is smoothed when one of Sylvester’s hacks leaks news that his rival’s wife is an addict, the woman conveniently shooting her brains out. Naturally, Bo soon realizes he’s the sap, his only job to sign hundreds of legal documents every day, pieces of legislation that as it happens fill the pockets of Sylvester and his buddies.

When Bo’s long-time chum Ronnie (Frank Maxwell) threatens to expose the river of sleaze he is quickly eased out. That leaves an interesting vacancy for Ronnie was Lieutenant-Governor, Bo’s deputy. So, Ada, with a good bit more between the ears than her husband, throws her hat into the ring.

She’s to politics born, a particularly wily creature, able to bring into line the society dames who look down their nose on her, and keep tabs on Sylvester. What she doesn’t realise of course is that once you’ve got a very amenable deputy, that person becomes Acting Governor, and in effect Governor, should anything happen to the incumbent. And should she then decide she’s had enough of the sleaze, then a little poking around in her background should bring her to heel.

So, all the corruption you ever dreamt of, all the smart back-slappers ponying up thousands in campaign contributions in order to seek future reward, all that tax-payers money heading in the rich man’s pocket. Not a lot that’s new there.

What makes this stand out are the performances and the narrative arc. Wilfrid Hyde-White (The Liquidator, 1965) is a sensational casting coup. The British actor specialized in characters oozing wry charm, sometimes verging on the dotty, sometimes a tad idiotic, but never an outright swine. There are a couple of scenes where those mellifluous tones turn in an instant into a sharp crack, the avuncular replaced by the sinister.

And I’m not saying DeNiro copies his aging trick, you know the bit later on in Killers of the Flower Moon, when body no longer as sharp as the mind, the actor begins to drag his leg, and with no reference to that impairment. Well, here, similarly, the fit-as-a-fiddle Sylvester later on, still at the height of his mental powers, is seen being transported in a wheelchair.

The performance of Dean Martin (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967) was oddly dismissed at the time. And yet it was bold playing. He goes from ebullient star, enjoying being feted by all, lousy speeches lapped up by an adoring crowd, to withdrawing into himself as he realizes he has been duped. That doesn’t just take some acting skill, but considerable self-belief, to play a character who undergoes the wrong kind of transformation, not the general redemptive kind, nor sinking into some Oscar-worthy illness, but coming to terms with your own lack of ability.

Of course, Susan Hayward (Stolen Hours, 1963) delivers, as always, her screen wattage burns brighter than virtually any other female star of the period. You know the character expects her past to be exposed at any time, but she dives straight in, determined to tackle the sleaze. There’s a wonderful scene where, her background challenged by the hoity-toity society dames, she puts them in their place with a clever piece of political maneuvering.

Ada totally turns on its head the idea of the political do-gooder. She has none of the usual innocence, nor the ability to capture the crowd by seizing upon an ideal, but she’s more at home by dealing with the sleaze-merchants straight-on, taking apart their schemes in the comfort of the government’s back rooms where until now such deals have been dreamt up.

Director Daniel Mann (Judith, 1966) was known as a woman’s director. Under his direction in the Oscar stakes, Elizabeth Taylor had won for Butterfield 8 (1960), likewise both Anna Magnani for The Rose Tattoo (1955) and Shirley Booth for Come Back, Little Sheba (1953), while Hayward was nominated for I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955). He not only chose grittier dramas but had the knack of encouraging actresses to let loose, without going overboard, on a part.

Considerably overlooked and substantially under-rated, but not only prescient regarding future political candidates and the kind of corruption they got involved in (land deals ring a bell?) but elevated by the role of his career by Wilfrid Hyde-White, an unexpectedly good one from Dean Martin and Susan Hayward in top form.

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