Three main characters playing against type and a feisty, independent, woman are the main pleasures of this conspiratorial rom-com that takes a while to get going. The main obstacle is the subplot involving the education of a klutz, impoverished French Duke Gaspard (Ricardo Montalban), who needs brought up to speed on the niceties of fine dining, horse-riding and dancing in order to represent a decent catch for American heiress Millie (Hope Lange).
So that keeps ex-racing driver John (Glenn Ford), fallen on such hard times he’ll accept a job as chauffeur, confined to the background for the first third of the movie. That is, until he works out that his employer Etienne (Charles Boyer) is a professional matchmaker who makes a living marrying off poverty-stricken aristocrats to wealthy women. However, he poses as a charmer who happens through his connections to put women in contact with eligible men without letting on that he takes a hefty commission or that his clientele is financially illiterate.
But the cunning Etienne realizes that in order to get close to Millie he has to exploit the weakness of her over-protective uncle Dr Gump (Telly Savalas) for gourmet food. All these complications create delay in getting on with the will-they-won’t-they romance of Millie and John.
Millie, channeling the adventurous spirit of the likes of Amelia Earhart, is car mechanic, wannabe racing driver and neophyte ballet dancer, so not quite the hapless rom-com female. And she’s pretty good at putting John in his place when he lacks the necessary subservience, giving him a tight deadline to wash her family’s huge fleet of cars, and forcing him to wear a despised chauffeur’s cap.
Meanwhile, Gaspard is causing problems of his own, not just by his complete ineptitude, but by falling for Etienne’s secretary Janine (Ulla Jacobson). So it’s hitches all round especially as Millie and John spend all their time upsetting each other, so much so that, determined to get married to please her grandmother, she’s on the brink of marrying the next clod in Etienne’s line-up.
To be honest, the script is a bit of a mess and in sticking to it director David Swift (The Interns, 1962) hasn’t quite been able to play to the movie’s strengths – and making more of them – rather than trying for what amounts to not much more than an ensemble piece. What lifts the movie is watching the usually steadfast and take-charge Glenn Ford (Rage, 1966) being put through the wringer by the heiress and forced to swallow humble pie any time he has had more than enough.
Next up is Telly Savalas (The Scalphunters, 1968) who totally switches his mean if not downright villainous screen persona to portray a character who dithers over epicurean delights and turns into a happy individual as long as his appetite is sated. A Jolly Telly is indeed a sight to be savoured.
Lastly, we have Ricardo Montalban (Sol Madrid, 1968), again an actor who errs on the tough-guy side, another of the take-charge fraternity, who always appears completely in command. It’s a bold career move for him to chuck that persona into the mixer and let it spin round a hundred times a minute till he comes out looking frazzled.
Hope Lange (A Pocketful of Miracles, 1961), who had a sporadic career as a female lead, and was at the time involved in an affair with Ford, is excellent as the adventurous headstrong spirit clad in overalls but less convincing as the glamorous heiress especially when simpering.
The screenplay, based on the novel The Grand Duke and Mr Pimm, looks as if it wanted to head in too many heads directions at once, was by Swift and Frank Waldman (Inspector Clouseau, 1968). Farce, at which Waldmann later excelled (he wrote the trio of 1970s Pink Panther films), seems is not a good fit for rom-com.
Worth seeing for Glenn Ford, Telly Savalas and Ricardo Montalban all thumbing a nose at their screen personas.
If a train strike hadn’t forced me to drive to the Bradford Widescreen Weekend and threat of a storm ensured I set off early in the morning, leaving me an afternoon to kill, and if my hotel wasn’t slap bang next to a multiplex, I might not have been tempted. And I guess you could add to this list of possibilities that if cinemas had not been so strapped for product, it might have gone straight to streaming or DVD. So I’m happy to report that the British B-picture is alive and kicking.
Revenge is the order of the day, no surprise there in a crime flick, but here’s the twist: while ostensibly it’s just Tate (Craig Fairbrass) seeking vengeance for the death of a gangster buddy, in fact he’s also got a target on his back, three figures from his past intent on payback.
Previous entrant to the series.
So, the plot is complicated to say the least, but here’s the other twist: it’s the family element that stands out. Not “family” Mafia-style where omerta rules and only women are allowed to shed a tear. But family as in, tough as they are, these criminals have emotions. One particularly hard-boiled specimen bursts into tears in front of his cellmates on hearing of the death of a loved one. A budding gangster, boxer and drag artist (take your pick at which he shows the most talent) Billy the Kid (Ben Wilson) – who, father foolishly uses the same moniker for his stage act as his boxing – is terrified of coming out to trainer father Fergus (Stephen McCole), relying on his aunt Margo (Tara Fitzgerald) for a shoulder to cry on.
Mental and physical scars are on greater display than normal. Every time it looks like the violence quotient is about to up the ante, in sneaks a moment of humanity, a hood with a baby, the aforementioned reactions.
Set in the 1990s drugs scene, the movie has a Point Blank (1967) sensitivity (if that’s the word), Tate constantly confounded by what’s going on. No matter how many people he kills, the situation just gets murkier. To be honest, I’m not surprised, I was confused.
The low-budget dictates we stay pretty well removed from any period detail. The cars and the gentlemen’s club – the movie’s virtually an advert for the real-life Platinum Lace – and the fact that the bright lights of central London conceal a lot, is as far as we go. Hazy backgrounds and longshot keep the past out of sight.The attractions in the club are such that the punters are not diverted by the entrance of bloodied gun-toting gangsters and the first gunshots pass them by.
Neat touches abound. The young girlfriend Charlotte (Emily Wyatt) of chief crook Hexell (Phil Davis) is in reality a safecracker and at the first opportunity heading off to foreign parts with a hefty haul. When Tate makes the mistake of driving into Fergus’s breaker’s yard he has not taken into account how easily his vehicle, shades of Mickey One (1965), can be scooped up and crushed to oblivion. Faulty information results in a heist being a bust. There’s some comedy with an out-of-date grenade and a machine gun firing blanks. In a more horrific echo of The Long Good Friday (1980) a miscreant is trapped in a car and burned alive.
But the best scene, amidst the carnage necessarily for a revenge picture, is a dying man accepting his son’s right to live his own life. And there is some honor among thieves, or at least an old pals act to fall back on.
There’s plenty violence for your buck. Knife, bullet, gas, grenade, fire, the permutations are endless and would need to be because so many people require to be dealt with. In individual combat, of course Tate wins the day, but given he is constantly outfoxed his fists and guns don’t always achieve their long-term purpose.
While Tate is not in the John Wick/Rambo league, he could certainly sit on a second tier that might encompass the movies of Dolph Lundgren, Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, though he’s not as athletic as the last two.
The marketeers were handed an unlikely bonus in the shape of a three-star review from normally morally upright British newspaper The Guardian, and my guess it would be for the same reasons as I was impressed, the refusal to toe the DTV line and invest the picture with some humanity.
This series kicked off in 2007 and this is the sixth. The services of original star Ricci Hartnett were dispensed with after the second film. Fairbrass was top-billed for the next pair but ceded that to Vinnie Jones. The original was based on a true-life memoir but has gradually evolved into a more wide-ranging gangster series. Most have gone straight to streaming/DVD.
Good performances all round. Craig Fairbrass (Villain, 2020) should get a shot at something bigger. Directed with some elan on a tight budget by Nick Nevern (The Hooligan Factory, 2014) and the screenplay by producer Andrew Loveday (involved in two others in the series) and Jason Maza, also incidentally a producer, in his screen debut, has left an opening for a sequel.
This shouldn’t work at all. The episodic structure breaks all the narrative rules. Doris Day fans should be disappointed as she’s not in typical prim rom-com mode (Pillow Talk, That Touch of Mink), but a mother – and with four kids for goodness sake. And, beyond for some reason a sotto voce rendering of “Que Sera Sera,” she doesn’t sing until late on. Worse, she hardly qualifies as the main character. That privilege falls to David Niven.
But it has charm in buckets, it plays around with the rules, breaking all narrative conventions, setting up traps for the viewer, and the four siblings are superbly realistic, little cute or adorable about them, given their main occupation is dropping water bombs on unsuspected passers-by and, even adopting sedentary positions, can’t help but cause mischief.
Initial focus is on academic Laurence (David Niven), promoted to Broadway critic, making mincemeat of a play produced by best friend Alfred (Richard Haydn), in the process savaging its star Deborah (Janis Paige). He quickly becomes front page news when Deborah’s revenge is captured by a photographer. Fame goes to his head and wife Kate (Doris Day) feels she is losing him.
But then suddenly we switch to the countryside after they swap their New York apartment for a huge house. Cue the usual slapstick caused by holes in floors and the inevitable paint. Laurence’s lofty attitudes rile the locals. But before you know it we’re onto the third storyline, Kate reviving her dancing career by putting on a show with the local dramatic society.
By now we’re also knee-deep in sub-plots. Taxi driver Joe (Jack Weston), budding playwright friend of Kate’s mother Suzie (Spring Byington), weaves in and out of the tale. You are led to expect that his Biblical musical script, initially dismissed by Laurence, is going to play a part, perhaps turning up at the dramatic society, or being reworked by Alfred into a hit. You are almost certainly going to be convinced that Laurence will end up in Deborah’s bed. And you are even more certain that Alfred is going to get his revenge by bringing a huge squad of critics and celebrities to the first night of Kate’s play. Unknown to Laurence, Alfred has passed to Kate a rejected early embarrassingly bad effort by her husband when he harboured ambitions to be a playwright.
That all these set-ups are brilliantly confounded turns the entire movie on its head. And the reversals don’t involve cheating. It’s not a question of bait-and-switch, red herrings or sleight-of-hand, but down to the believable reactions of the characters.
In the middle of this, romance would be taking a back seat except both Kate and Laurence are aware of the growing distance between them so it’s more of a middle-aged love story, marriage on the rocks, but both parties making the same type of mistakes in trying to rectify the situation as in the usual will-she-won’t-she romantic template.
The central focus could not be more topical – sudden fame, its impact on the lucky person and on those around. And I suppose the newspaper stunt that kicks off Laurence’s sudden notoriety is even more common today.
And I have to mention the kids. One of them gets his head stuck in a chair because “nobody told me not too.” That’s the kind of infuriating children they are, parents driven bonkers trying to anticipate their next unexpected venture. There’s a marvellous scene that pinpoints exactly why this whole picture works – by taking reality as its benchmark: Kate, trying to get ready to go out, is surrounded by apparently docile kids. But one, lying on the couch, has lifted his feet, unseen by her, so that he can tap the bottom of a painting on the wall, swaying it gently from side to side behind her head, just waiting for it to fall off.
Doris Day (With Six You Get Eggroll, 1968) digs a bit deeper than normal into her characterization. David Niven (Guns of Darkness, 1962) acts as if he is in a drama, not a comedy, never playing a scene for laughs, which is why he gets so many. When he does turn on the charm it’s not to seduce but to defuse a situation.
Janis Paige (Welcome to Hard Times, 1967) has a ball as the over-the-top star, posterior a matter of public interest, who is rewarded as much as the rest of the cast with deeper characterization than her initial shallowness could expect. Jack Weston (Mirage, 1965), too, goes through various shades before discovering that he has something unexpected to offer.
There’s a bunch of belly laughs, a joke dog, high-class bitchiness among the cocktail set, and a raft of reversals, but mostly it gets by on charm.
Veteran Charles Walters (Walk Don’t Run, 1966) looks as if he’s having a ball too, pulling the audience in different directions, turning up trumps with every reversal. Isobel Lennart (Fitzwilly / Fitzwilly Strikes Back, 1967) created the cunning screenplay from the book by Jean Kerr.
Highly enjoyable and surprisingly good. Could be viewed as a companion piece to Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), swapping movies for Broadway. I have to confess I had only seen the writing team of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart in the context of movies – Frank Capra’s Oscar-winning You Can’t Take It With You (1938) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). I hadn’t realized these had begun as plays and the movie tells the story of the beginning of their partnership when Kaufman was an established playwright and Hart a neophyte.
Perhaps because this was the only directing gig for Dore Schary, better known as a screenwriter (Boys Town, 1939), producer and head honcho at MGM, there’s none of the melodrama of Two Weeks in Another Town. In fact, except for an occasional appearance by Kaufman’s exasperated wife, there’s hardly a woman in sight and certainly no complicated nuptials or even romance. It’s basically a two-hander, the relationship between the two writers and their struggle to turn the play Once in a Lifetime (1930) into a hit.
It’s helped along by what must be most subdued and subtle performances in the careers of either George Hamilton (Two Weeks in Another Town) or Jason Robards (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969). This is easily Hamilton at his finest and it is one of Robards’ better performances. Rather than gung-ho turns, all sturm and drang, emotions out of control, the two actors inhabit their characters. Once only is Hamilton let off the leash, in an unfair tirade against buddie Joe (Jack Klugman) and is far more effective in a scene where he doesn’t say a word, and Schary has employed a film noir technique of leaving a face, apart from the eyes, in darkness, as he comes to terms with the realization he has a hit on his hands.
The story simple enough. In 1929, cigar-maker father out of work, family struggling to cope with the onset of the Great Depression, Hart is a struggling playwright, first five serious works rejected. But turning to a comedy about Hollywood, he strikes gold. Or at least some gold dust. Because a play on paper is scarcely the finished work. Teamed up with a recalcitrant, grumpy, introspective, monosyllabic Kaufman, Hart finds out the hard way just what it takes to turn prospect into success.
Mostly, it’s rewrites. And more rewrites. What’s wrong with the initial play is everything bar the idea. What’s wrong after that is everything they haven’t been able to fix. Gets to the stage where Kaufman – remember, the more experienced one – is ready to quit.
So once Kaufman appears, it’s mostly two guys in a room or backstage trying to sort out a myriad of problems. There’s some nice interaction. Kaufman never eats, so Hart is constantly famished. Kaufman hates Hart’s cigar smoke. Eventually, they come to an agreement, constant food in exchange for extinguishing the cigars (a pipe deemed an acceptable substitute).
There’s a cast of interesting characters, famous producer (Eli Wallach) and Hart’s support network, talented unsung writers and actors (including Archie Leach before he went Hollywood and became Cary Grant, his attraction to females a constant refrain), and a scene-stealing George Segal (The Quiller Memorandum, 1966). At a party we briefly meet the Alqonquin Round Table set, all insufferable and barely a bon mot between them.
Movies about the stage invariably involve an actor so this makes a refreshing change. And most films about writers concern the literary artist rather than the more overtly commercial variety. But I’m guessing the level of endeavour is much the same.
But it’s the lack of grandstanding that makes this work. Rather than lading down characters with tons of dramatic dialogue much of the piece is carried by small bits of business, the fastidious Hart snipping loose threads from a shirt, pressing his trousers under his mattress, the equally finicky Kaufman constantly washing his hands and the scourge of sentimentality. Sure, it’s showtime, so there’s a measure of bitchiness, a marvellous scene where Kaufman imagines a producer’s positivity is intended to put him off.
Unexpectedly excellent acting lifts this. Not easy to find, Ebay would be the best place.
Until a technological invention first used in Once a Thief (1965) it was impossible to shoot “day for night” without it appearing very obvious. So when director Vincente Minnelli aimed for as much verisimilitude as possible for the Rome-set drama it meant half the shoot took place at night. “Minnelli could sleep easily during the day,” recalled star Kirk Douglas (The Arrangement, 1969), “sometimes till six o’clock in the evening, but I couldn’t so there were three unpleasant weeks of night shooting and not much sleep.”
But the movie suffered, Douglas later complained, by studio interference at the editing stage. When the movie fell foul of the Production Code, change of MGM management vetoed the more salacious aspects of the movie – the worst aspects of “La Dolce Vita” including a sequence in a nightclub where guests watched an unseen sexual act. Fifteen minutes were cut including a scene that showed Cyd Charisse’s character in a more sympathetic light. In an ironic reflection of the film’s narrative, Minnelli played no part in the editing, not due to production deadlines as in the movie, but out of choice.
The actual producer John Houseman – producer of Douglas starrers The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Lust for Life (1956) though later best known as an actor in Rollerball (1975) etc – backed out of any tussle with MGM head honcho Joseph Vogel. Douglas implored Vogel and editor Margaret Booth, to no avail. Consequently, in Douglas’s opinion, the film was “emasculated.” He argued MGM had turned an “adult” picture into a “family” film. Quite how this could be squared with marketing that promised a “shocking intimate view of Rome’s international film set” (see below) was not mentioned.
Following the commercial and artistic success of Spartacus (1960), Douglas was at the peak of his career, though his last three pictures had been flops. After nabbing an Oscar for Gigi (1959), Minnelli also enjoyed a career high, and although best known for musicals like Meet Me in St Louis (1944) and An American in Paris (1951) was equally adept at drama like The Bad and the Beautiful, Lust for Life (1956) and Some Came Running (1958). But he, too, was running empty, his last three serious films – Home from the Hill (1960), All the Fine Young Cannibals (1961) and big-budget roadshow The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962) coming up short at the box office.
Douglas earned $500,000 and a percentage of the profits (though none were forthcoming – it made a loss of $3 million) and top-billing. Although co-star Edward G. Robinson (Seven Thieves, 1960) appeared above the title, Douglas refused to accord female lead Cyd Charisse (Maroc 7, 1967), on one-tenth of his salary, that concession.
Douglas recalled that he build up his acting skills through wrestling. A college wrestling champ, he barnstormed across the country in a carnival, playing the cocky person reputedly from the audience who challenged the giant resident wrestler. “My job was to make the audience think he was going to murder me,” Douglas told the Pressbook/Campaign Manual. “And the way to do this was by expressions on my face. To yell out in pain would seem cowardly. But I learned a hundred and one ways of showing it through use of my eyes and the muscles in my face.”
The actor escaped serious injury when lightning, preceding one of the worst thunderstorms in a decade, struck a 200-year-old clock on the top of the church in Santa Maria Square. Four huge iron numerals were torn off and crashed to the ground, one grazing Douglas’s head.
In fact, the movie’s authenticity owed much to being filmed on the streets of Rome rather than reconstructed on the studio lot. In particular, scenes utilizing the Via Veneto, two long blocks of sidewalk cafes where the movie industry socialized, created a realistic atmosphere, especially when a hundred or so of the extra employed were actually people who would naturally populate the location. So, for example, when the script called for an opera star among the extras, casting director Guidarino Guidi used Bostonian Ann English, an opera singer studying in Rome. Among those sitting in the background at café tables were a promising young painter, a poet and a librettist.
George Hamilton (Act One, 1963), who had worked in Home from the Hill and just finished Light in the Piazza (1962) also shot in Rome, reckoned he couldn’t have been more miscast given his role called for a “funky James-Dean type.” He got the role through the influence of Betty Spiegel, wife of producer Sam, and her friend Denise Gigante, the director’s current girlfriend (later wife). Hamilton drove around in a red Ferrari costing $18,000 (ten times that at today’s prices) and, as he put it, “Italians knew how to worship” Hollywood stars.
Hamilton reckoned part of the problem of the film was that Minnelli was so “besotted with Denise that he had lost his vision.” Jumping to the defence of Cyd Charisse against a tirade from journalist Oriana Fallaci at the Venice Film Festival won Hamilton, unexpectedly, the cover of Paris-Match.
Daliah Lavi owed her career break to Douglas. As a nine-year-old in Hiffa, Israel, she struck up a friendship with the actor when he was filming The Juggler there in 1952. The actor and other stars attended her birthday party, Douglas presenting her with a ballet dress. Later a dancer and then an actress, this was her Hollywood debut. Erich von Stroheim Jr, making his movie acting debut, had his head shaved to make him appear more like his famed director father. Originally employed as an assistant director on the picture, Minnelli decided he would make a good Ravinski, the “fast-talking press agent.”
Chauvinism reared its ugly head, especially when women had to apologise for being on the receiving end. “What goes on in the minds of beautiful women when they get slapped for the cameras?” mused the editor of the Pressbook/Campaign Manual. Rossano Schiaffino’s response regarding being whacked on the behind by Douglas: “He hits hard so charmingly I didn’t mind standing up for a day of two.”
The actress proved tougher than many of her colleagues. She turned down the offer of a double for a scene in which she jumped into a lake. That might not have been such an undertaking had the sequence been shot in the hot Italian sunshine at the height of summer. But the MGM studio tank on Lot 3 was a different – and much colder – proposition. “She shrugged off her stunt with the remark that heated pools are unknown where she comes from.”
Irwin Shaw, author of the best-selling source novel, wasn’t too upset at the way the movie turned out. “An author who wants complete control of his work on the screen is in something of a cleft stick,” he observed. “He can either go into production himself, which is often neither possible nor desirable, or he can refuse to sell his work to the movies. Minor deviations in screen conception don’t send me reeling back a stricken man. I think I’m sufficiently realistic to know that even in the most enlightened films there must be some compromise if they are to be a success. What does matter very strongly to me is that the theme of the novel…should come over on the screen.”
Music trivia: Kirk Douglas was the first big Hollywood star to perform “The Twist” on screen and the song “Don’t Blame Me” was reprised from The Bad and the Beautiful, sung here sung by Leslie Uggams and in the older film by Peggy King.
French designer Pierre Balmain created the dresses, allowing a marketing campaign to be built around those stores which supplied his clothes. TWA, which flew directly to Rome, was suggested to cinema owners as an ideal tie-in. Not only did New American Library issue a new movie tie-in paperback/soft cover but cinemas were encouraged to build a campaign around a director, many of whose films would be well-known to audiences. The marketeers also had material to tie in with stores retailing music, women’s sportswear, menswear, men’s sweaters, beauty and hair styling.
The 16-page A3 Pressbook/Campaign Manual offered a selection of advertisements and taglines. The key advert tagline ran “Another town…another kind of love…one he couldn’t resist…the other he couldn’t escape.” But there were alternatives: “Only in Rome could this story be filmed/Every town has women like Carlotta and Veronica and the kind of man they both want!/From Irwin Shaw’s great best seller.”
Or you could opt for: “Irwin Shaw’s shocking intimate view of Rome’s international film set. The world only sees the glamor. This is the drama behind it!.” Or: “Only in Rome could this story happen. Only in Rome could this story be filmed!”
SOURCES: Kirk Douglas, The Ragman’s Son (Simon and Schuster paperback, 2010) p342-344; George Hamilton, Don’t Mind If I Do (JR Book hardback 2009)pp 155-159; Pressbook/ Campaign Manual, Two Weeks in Another Town (MGM).
Unholy triumvirate of director Vincente Minelli, star Kirk Douglas and screenwriter Charles Schnee had been here before, eviscerating Hollywood in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). Now, while the locale has shifted to Rome, Hollywood-on-the-Tiber, the behind-the-scenes battles are, if anything, even more fraught since careers are on the slide.
Burnt-out washed-up star Jack (Kirk Douglas) is duped by washed-up director Maurice (Edward G. Robinson) into thinking he is going to revive his career with a supporting role in a low-budget movie made at Cinecitta. In reality, Maurice wants Jack to oversee the dubbing, time restraints preventing the director doing this. Jack and Maurice have history, good and bad, making some fine pictures together, but inveterate womanizer Maurice bedding Jack’s wife Carlotta (Cyd Charisse).
Carlotta, divorced from Jack, now living in Rome and married to a shipping magnate, wants Jack back, if only to keep her bed warm while her husband is away. Young beauty Veronica (Daliah Lavi) dumps temperamental boyfriend and fading star Davie (George Hamilton), in favour of Jack. Maurice is having an affair with his latest find, the tempestuous Barzelli (Rosanno Schiaffino), so brazen she strokes his legs while he toasts his wife Clara (Claire Trevor) at a dinner to celebrate their tenth anniversary. Clara is prone to attempting suicide.
So far, so melodramatic. But instead of explosive melodrama, it’s more about insecurity and the honing of the cutting line. We know enough about vicious Hollywood in-fighting so none of this will come as a surprise, but it’s still astonishing the depth of self-deception on display that occasionally flowers into genuine insight. Maurice may be ducking and diving in the last chance saloon but he still knows how to disarm a young man with a knife. Not sure Jack giving Barzelli a kick in the pants would be deemed an acceptable method of calming down a screeching star. And you won’t get much kudos for a line like “all women are monster.”
But there are nuggets of Hollywood lore. Barzelli being forced to keep her arms in a certain position for a shot, for example, that actors doing the dubbing require direction, the shifting around of scenes, the producer already guaranteed profit through pre-sales before the movie is released, the endless rewrites, and of course that career rejuvenation brings actors a sudden jolt of power. And there’s a car ride that matches Hitchcock for sheer terror, regardless of the fact it is shot with back projection.
Fame as we all know is an illusion, but so is success. The famous are notoriously lonely. What’s hardest to get your head round is failing to notice when your career is on the slide. Being so wrapped up in your notion of invincible self, to which, while you are successful, all pander. There’s some lovely stuff about the collusion of audience and moviemaker, both hiding from reality.
But it’s a true adult drama, far superior in many ways to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) or Babylon (2022), avoiding the excesses of both, while homing in on character fragility, weakness exacerbated under pressure. In the end all make concession, some beating a tune of self-awareness. Even Maurice accepts he needs his wife to provide him with grounding and self-belief. The aloof arrogant Davie has to beg Jack not to steal his girl. Jack learns to ignore adulation.
If you like long speeches and elegant camerawork and confident direction this is for you. There’s plenty attendant glamor, but mostly it’s characters coming apart and putting themselves back together again, with or without a side order of bitchiness.
The acting is uniformly top-notch. Kirk Douglas might be auditioning for The Arrangement (1969), in which he essays a similar ambitious talent coming unstuck, but here he underplays, to the picture’s benefit, the early scenes when he’s still working out why he has fallen out of favor, and who he now is, just outstanding. But Edward G. Robinson’s (Seven Thieves, 1960) callous insecure monster runs him close. And the petulant performance by George Hamilton (Angel Baby, 1961) had critics purring and the industry predicting great things.
But it wouldn’t be anything without the believable women, all convinced their version of themselves will win favor. Cyd Charisse (Maroc 7, 1967), the female equivalent of the predatory Maurice, Claire Trevor (The Cape Town Affair, 1967) with suicide the preferred option to divorce, and especially Daliah Lavi (Some Girls Do, 1967) who gives Hollywood splendid notice of what she can do away from the sex symbol persona she was later lumbered with. Rossano Schiaffino has a ball as the sex symbol who views powerful men as playthings.
This was Vincente Minnelli’s fourth film with Kirk Douglas and just like Anthony Mann with James Stewart and John Ford with John Wayne or, more recently, Antoine Fuqua with Denzel Washington, draws a greater maturity from the actor. Charles Schnee wrote the screenplay based on the Irwin Shaw bestseller.
Sure-footed, bitchy as hell, hard-hitting, honest and unmissable.
What appears a routine conspiracy thriller fleshed out with contemporary hooks about body shaming, victim shaming and the dark web suddenly explodes in the third act as consequence gets personal. If you’re of an arthouse bent you’ll equate Polish cinema with Andrzej Wadja (Man of Marble, 1977), Roman Polanski (Knife in the Water, 1962), Jerzy Kawalerowicz (Pharaoh, 1966) Krysztof Kieslowski (Three Colours Trilogy, 1993-1994) or Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida, 2013) and you’ve probably turned a blind eye to the boom in commercial Polish cinema of recent years, mostly concentrating on corrupt cops, gangsters, the Mafia, and strong-minded women.
Luckily, my local multiplex, which lacks arthouse inclination, has been running the biggest hits from Poland on a regular basis. The latest arrival lacks the bombast and outlandish narrative of previous entries and while following a standard investigative narrative eventually twists into a more personal reflection on crime.
Adapted from this Polish bestseller.
Journalist Julita (Magdalena Kolesnik) investigating the suicide of well-known television presenter Gustaw (Mariusz Czajka) finds evidence of a murder plot. After publishing her story, she becomes an even bigger story when her sex video is made public. Her outraged editor demands she apologise for embarrassing the news website. When she refuses, she is fired. Widowed father Henryk (Andrzej Sweeryn) – wife committed suicide way back – disowns her, older sister Magda (Wiktoria Gordecka) chucks her out of her flat.
The journalist ploughs on, but hunting down her own hacker puts her back on target to uncover a man who could conceivably possess the computing skills – that once upon a time could have only existed in the fictional James Bond/Fast and Furious universe but now with the driverless car upon us less a figment of the imagination – to force the television presenter’s vehicle over a bridge. She’s more determined than resourceful, tempting a security guard out of his office by setting off a smoke alarm, escaping from another security guard by ramming his hands with a car door.
She is assisted by Chinese chef Emil (Piotr Trojan), a part-time computer whiz, whose Army background makes him a suspect. Eventually, with more digging and a good deal of luck, she finds the hacker. Instead of turning him in, she agrees to give him a stay of execution.
For why? He has evidence Gustaw was part of a child sex abuse ring of which the hacker was an early victim. He wants to employ more computer wizardry vigilante style to knock off another member of the abuse ring. He promises to stop after that, leaving it to Julita to make a decision on whether to go to the police.
I’m going to have to issue a spoiler otherwise this will just seem too routine a thriller. This is where it gets emotionally harrowing and spins completely on its axis, away from standard investigative journalism and into another realm entirely. The twist is that the hacker’s next victim, murdered by tampering with a dialysis machine, is her father. He was another legendary television figure. Now her mother’s suicide makes sense as does her sister’s reluctance to let her son anywhere near her grandfather.
Now what? Not enough to be the already humiliated daughter of a sex offender, but to realize the hidden role this has played in her family, and to decide whether further exposure would be in anybody’s interest.
Despite a car chase and being hounded, this doesn’t quite get to the boil in terms of conspiracy thriller as though director Piotr Adamski (Eastern, 2019) knew that the final act would blow everything that went before out of the water. But given this is the director’s sophomore outing and he didn’t want to go the all-out violence-ridden crime route, it’s tense enough and with some interesting news-room background, sniping colleagues, an editor pumping breast-milk at her desk, electronic scorecard ranking journos by the minute. Surprised, to be honest, some of the images that the censor passed.
But Magdalena Kolesnik (Sweat, 2020) plays this just right. Too self-reliant to be out of her box with fear, too independent to let her emotions get the better of her, meaning that when the big reveal hits she can dive into all that repressed emotion.
If you’ve not dipped into modern commercial Polish cinema, this is as good a place to start as any. If you’re already a fan, you’ll know what to expect, and come up somewhat shaken at how this pans out.
Yep, you hand the promotional department the problem of selling a movie about undertakers and see what they come up with. The tagline “the motion picture with someone to offend everyone” is unlikely to attract the unwary and leaves you only with an audience that enjoys seeing sacred cows slaughtered, which might minimize appeal. Coupled with a montage of outlandish scenes and characters, the main advert had its work cut out to attract anyone.
Just as well, then, the marketing department had some apparent plums up its sleeve. Even more than weddings, funerals are associated with flowers. So, top of “the ticket-selling ideas” was suggesting to cinema owners either to stick a wreath at the front door or get a florist to spell out the title in a lobby display.
If that didn’t work, go for broke and stick a tombstone (easily constructed from plywood or papier mache, apparently) in the lobby. (The Fall of the House of Usher had gone one better, promising a free casket to anyone who dropped ad of fright.) Better still, lay down grass on the pavement outside to achieve a lawn effect.
And if that doesn’t get the media buzzing, why not just hire a hearse. That could sit outside the theater or tour the locality with banners slung along the sides. If the local newspaper was willing, you could arrange to have the print delivered by hearse, photographer on hand to record proceedings.
“Since The Loved One spoofs the undertaking business, most morticians aren’t too happy with the picture. This can be twisted to advantage to get you a newspaper story,” proclaims the Pressbook. Basically, the notion is that undertakers will respond to a reporter nosing around and that somehow that will permit mention in the resulting article of the movie. Another idea is to invite undertakers to the opening night on the assumption that no one will turn up and that somehow that, too, will make a newspaper story.
A simpler alternative was just to hire a model and have her parade around town dressed in white like a mortician and passing out flowers.
Just in case nobody had noted the off-beat nature of the picture, cinema managers were encouraged to browbeat local journalists into spelling this out and putting the movie into the same bracket as Dr Strangelove (1964), What’s New, Pussycat? (1965) and, of course, Tom Jones (1963).
Oddly enough, the movie received a favourable press – or at least a word or two which could be culled from reviews to make it appear so. Thus, one advert was able to rustle up quotes from the New York Times, Cue magazine, Herald Tribune, Holiday magazine, Life and Saturday Review.
Basically, there was as little meat on the advertising bones as in the genuine narrative to the picture itself. There was only one tagline and all the adverts, covering three-quarters of the 12-page A3 Pressbook, were variations on the one ad.
Outside of the cameo appearances, the male and female leads were relative newcomers, both starring in Quick, Before It Melts (1964). Courtesy of his long-running role on Broadway hit How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Morse was marginally the bigger marquee name.
For a comedy, it was a potentially lethal role for Morse. “There was one scene in which a toy rocket blew up in my face and another in which I was dragged 40 feet by an automobile. I came close to being asphyxiated after doing a 60-minute stint in an air-tight embalming room.”
“Fate has been kind to me so far,” averred Comer. “But it didn’t all happen overnight, you know. Actually, I don’t think the quickie successes mean very much. You can be belle of the ball one day and a has-been the next.
“When I decided to go into this business, I made up my mind about one thing. I wouldn’t go into it unprepared. I got the groundwork in workshop plays at the Pasadena Playhouse and I concentrated on acting to the exclusion of everything else. I never even got to see what Hollywood actually looked like.”
After the success of Tom Jones, director Tony Richardson was given carte blanche. He filmed in 21 locations including the California freeway (as yet unopened), pet cemeteries and Beverly Hills mansions (the ground floor of Dohney marble chateau) and never in the studio. “I feel constricted working anywhere but in the real locales,” he told the Pressbook. “There are inconveniences in working outside a studio but I don’t mind them.”
His quest for realism extended to make-up. For example, he vetoed applying make-up to Jonathan Winters’ hand so that it matched his tanned face. Other attempts at verisimilitude saw lights taped to ceilings and sound equipment strapped to plumbing. Substitutes were found for equipment deemed too bulky or sensitive for location filming.
Future Warner Bros boss John Calley, here working as co-producer, explained some of the problems encountered. “Normally, when a piece of equipment is to be used or something needs to be constructed in Hollywood, it is only a matter of dialling the proper studio telephone extension. But under the Richardson plan every bit of equipment, every prop, every item of construction had to be individually contracted. There is no question that this is the most difficult way to make a picture, but it is the only way Richardson will work.”
If only British director Tony Richardson had seen fit to add some meat to the bones, this satirical look at the American funeral business might have emulated the dramatic impact of Elmer Gantry (1960). As it is, the director is so preoccupied with the funereal inanities that it doesn’t so much lose sight of the plot as pretty much ignore it.
So, yes, the burying of a loved is big business and just like weddings some of the trimmings would make your toe curl. But even when reality intrudes, feet swell after death so require larger shoes and the only way to fit a suit on a corpse is to slit open the back, these are treated in humorous fashion.
And that would all be fine if this was the laff-fest Richardson intended but even with a puffed-out roster of cameos – Liberace as a salesman and James Coburn (Hard Contract, 1969) as a truculent customs officer the pick – this ends up as more documentary than movie. And that’s it’s main attraction for a contemporary audience who might be less concerned about the director’s almighty fall from grace after the stunning critical and commercial success of Tom Jones (1963).
In fact, it’s a shame the story goes anywhere near internment because the initial section concentrating on Hollywood is more successful in achieving a modicum of gentle satire. Wannabe poet Dennis (Robert Morse) has won a trip to America as a prize and lands on upper crust uncle Sir Francis, a Hollywood veteran, tasked with improving the elocution of cowboy Dusty (Robert Easton) so that he can play a British spy akin to James Bond.
That section entails gorillas turning up outside telephone booths, all sorts of monsters dawdling through the studio canteen, and head honcho (Roddy McDowell) running his father’s studio by the seat of his pants until he comes unstuck, resulting in Sir Francis being fired after 31 years. There’s some interesting, almost British, issue-dodging and Sir Francis in true British style, unable to deal the embarrassment of being sacked, commits suicide, leading the nephew into the arms of Whispering Glades funeral operative Aimee (Anjanette Comer). She’s in love with the creepy Joyboy (Rod Steiger) leaving Dennis to woo her using other people’s poems.
There’s another nutcase dropping out of the woodwork every two minutes, and occasionally there’s a mild piece of slapstick or physical comedy. Of course, using rampant sex as the basis for comedy, as with Tom Jones, works far better than death. In the absence of a decent narrative or interesting characters, once the initial heavy-handed points have been made there’s nowhere else to go except be more heavy-handed.
Until Brideshead Revisited (1981) was turned into a triumphant mini-series, the works of British author Evelyn Waugh had difficulty being transferred to the screen. In part, this was due to his idiosyncratic style and in part that, even at his most serious, he was viewed as a comedy writer.
Screenwriter Terry Southern (Candy, 1968) wouldn’t have been my first choice to translate the Waugh essence for the big screen, but co-writer Christopher Isherwood (Cabaret, 1968) was no more successful.
Robert Morse (Guide for the Married Man, 1967) offers little beyond mild buffoonery. While Anjanette Comer (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) is surprisingly good as the angelic ditzy object of his affections, she can’t carry the entire picture. Robert Morley (Genghis Khan, 1965) manages to keep a straight face while delivering his lines.
Without doubt hits the immediate target but somehow misses the bulls-eye.
Even so, there’s one element of the picture that would have contemporary Hollywood salivating. And that is a producer not frightened of taking risks, willing to go outside the envelope in a bid to deliver the different kind of movie that audiences obsessed over with Barbie and Oppenheimer.
Martin Ransohoff had an enviable track record in the 1960s. For MGM, he was the mastermind behind movies as offbeat as The Americanization of Emily (1964), The Cincinnati Kid (1965) Eye of the Devil (1966) and Castle Keep (1969) as well as big-budget offerings The Sandpiper (1965) and Ice Station Zebra (1968). His name was on such later diverse titles as The Wanderers (1979) and Jagged Edge (1985). As you can see from this random selection, his movies didn’t always come off, but at least they were different.
The one element that every movie requires – advance publicity – was denied Elmer Gantry. Shooting took place on a closed set with all visitors carefully screened. Only six actors were given access to a complete screenplay while a general synopsis was denied distributors and cinema owners.
Over 30 years after publication of the source novel by Sinclair Lewis, its contents were considered so volatile and contentious that, rather than be pre-judged by the industry on expectations of what the movie may contain, director Richard Brooks took to issuing baffling statements such as describing Elmer Gantry as “The All-American Boy.”
Even the 12-page A3 Pressbook/Campaign Book, the prime source of marketing contact between studio and theater owner, was niggardly in the extreme. Narrative detail was limited to “the story of a spellbinding evangelist” rather anything approaching a synopsis.
Stuck with how to woo an audience in advance, United Artists fell back on a teaser campaign comprising six separate ads. The sequence was as follows: “Elmer Gantry Is Coming!” / “Sinners! Elmer Gantry Is Coming!” / “Sinners! Elmer Gantry Is Coming! starring Burt Lancaster”/ “Sinners! Elmer Gantry Is Coming! Starring Jean Simmons” / “Sinners! Elmer Gantry Is Coming! starring Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons”. The last advert was coupled with a quote from the New York Times with the final salvo the same ad repeated but with a different quote from the New York Post.
The New York campaign – in those days a movie might take a few months to spread out from initial opening locale to other cities allowing promotional ideas that worked in one area to be publicized – relied on the first two teasers. But they went out in saturation – in railroad stations, subways, buses and race tracks with additional displays on poles, stilts and drums.
The major print advertising onslaught was led by two bold large-sized adverts intended to run facing each other on the same page. “Bless Him! Tens of thousands of believers shouted his praises!” was accompanied by the iconic illustration, Bible in hand, of Burt Lancaster. “Damn Him! Three women damned his soul” showed Lancaster grappling with Jean Simmons with Shirley Jones and Patti Paige in the background in more revealing clothing. But these two elements could also be fitted into the one ad, as shown above.
There were nearly a dozen full-size advertisements with a range of taglines. In all Lancaster is shown in the same pose with the Bible while Simmons is presented clutching a Bible and gazing heavenward. Shirley Jones appears in even skimpier outfits.
As was standard at the time, taglines could stand on their own or mix and match. Snippets for other ads were edited from this main ad: “Nobel Prize Winner Sinclair Lewis’ Bold Novel Of Passion And Damnation Bursts Full-Life Across The Screen! If there was a dollar to be made – Gantry would make it…If there was a soul to save -Gantry would save it…”
“Sinner! Elmer Gantry Wants You!” ran another ad backed up by “Are you ready, sinner? He wants you to know all about heaven…but not about his whiskey and his women!” Other adverts were fashioned from taglines like: “You’re all sinners…you’ll all burn in Hell! Tell ‘em Gantry…save ‘em from sin…lead ‘em to salvation…tell ‘em about everything…but not about your whiskey and your women!” Or included: “From the book that shook a nation with its sledgehammer theme…from a Nobel Prize-winning author…comes the raging story of a man who used the Holy Bible and broke every rule in it!”
Rarely have so many exclamation marks been employed in so short a space, but equally, rarely has a marketing team encapsulated so vividly a movie with a difficult subject matter, all tease and no substance.
Out-with the usual marketing routes, the marketing team were able to take advantage of various ancillary promotional opportunities. Dell organized a massive paperback book tie-in in thousands of bookstores and newsstands, Burt Lancaster dominating the front cover with Simmons and Jones pictured on the back. Music retailers also played their part, United Artists Records launching the Andre Previn soundtrack album while Mercury released an album of revival tuness sung by Patti Paige, who made her movie debut in the film. With record sales exceeding 35 million, Paige’s host of fan clubs were a natural target for contact and if there was none in the local vicinity cinema managers were encouraged to start one by the simple device of setting up “a giant postcard in the lobby” and inviting fans to attach their signatures.
Department stores were called upon to run 1920s Fashion Shows.
Anniversaries, so important today, helped out. It was 30 years since Sinclair Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize, the first American author so recognized, and 1960 was the 75th anniversary of his birth. But the promoters also played upon the book’s initial controversy, hoping to re-ignite the debate as a promotional tool.
With the bulk of the Pressbook given over to advertising and promotional ideas, barely little more than a single page was devoted to the stars, but even then there was little of the usual soft-focus puff pieces. The kind of journalistic nuggets that might help an editor fill a vacant space were limited. All we learned of Burt Lancaster, who had worked with Richard Brooks before on Brute Force (1947), was that – as if this was a mark of respect – he agreed to read the screenplay twice. Of Jean Simmons it was pointed out she had played an evangelist in Guys and Dolls (1955) but the Pressbook erroneously states that she played a nun in Black Narcissus (1947); in fact, she was a beggar girl. Arthur Kennedy is mentioned in relation to his Oscar nominations.
Shirley Jones was the most likely to attract column inches as a result of explaining how she made the transition from more demure roles in Oklahoma (1955) and April Love (1957). “It feels just fine – now,” she told the Pressbook interviewer. “At first, well, I really don’t wear much except what you see. A slip, these shoes with the green frills, and slinky black silk wrap-around that’s transparent.
“Usually, I walk into a movie set wearing my bustle and petticoats and some of the boys turn round as I go by and say, ‘Hiya, Shirl.’ But when I walked in dressed like this the fellows all just turned round and didn’t say anything. They never turned round like that before. Well, not really. It did take some getting used to after provoking the big brother reactions for so long.
“But I guess every girl dreams of being a conversation stopper some day. This is my chance. Of course, I am embarrassed sometimes…or maybe it’s inhibited.”
Brooks rewrote the script eight times before “he felt he had captured the essence” of Gantry. Most of the scenes were filmed on sound stages or adapted from an assortment of 1920s vintage streets from the backlots of other studios. The tabernacle was constructed out of an ice skating rink on a beach pier in Santa Monica.
Art director Edward Carerre spent $6,500 erecting and furnishing a genuine evangelist tent rented from Canvas Specialty. It was slightly trimmed to fit onto two combined sound stages on the Columbia lot. A total of 400 benches each measuring eight- or ten-feet were constructed by studio carpenters to provide seating for 1,000 – the tent accommodated another 2,000 standing. The stage required 500lb of imported sawdust and banners 30ft long were specially made to incorporate Biblical quotations. Where most movies required a maximum of 15-20 sets, Elmer Gantry boasted 62.
The climactic scene, conflagration in a tent, took five days to film. Soaking the set in kerosene would not supply the instant flash of flame the director demanded. So, instead, he turned to old film footage, including some frames from It Happened One Night (1934). “We’re burning film to make film,” quipped Brooks.
The Magnificent 60s 