This proved the impossible sell. And Judy Garland was no help. The star was well past her best and if she wasn’t singing it was difficult to attract audience interest. So beyond her name above the title, United Artists did very ittle to use her presence as a distinct marketing tool.
Just like I Thank a Fool the previous year, the subject matter of A Child is Waiting did not lend itself to cross promotion. That did not prevent marketeers doing their level best. However, it was a rather bold suggestion to assume banks would be a natural port of call even under the guise that every child was waiting for their parents to start a savings account to see them through college.
The title seemed to incite temporary madness in the marketing department. How about this for a tie-in approach to a toy department? “A child is waiting for the most exciting game ever devised – Monopoly.”
Groups most likely to respond were identified as psychiatrists, teachers and PTA members but cinemas were warned to avoid giving the “impression that the film is a clinical or documentary one.”
By far the easiest avenue for promotion was a book tie-in. Popular Library had issued a paperback novelization by Abby Mann of his original screenplay with stars Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland on the cover and at the very least that would receive window displays in bookstores and on the carousels of drugstores.
Also limited were the number of taglines on a poster. In those days a movie could be advertised with as many as a dozen different taglines appealing to different market sectors. United Artists stuck to three main taglines with two subsidiary ones. Sometimes both subsidiaries were on the same poster, other times only one.
“Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland ignite a motion picture that gives so much…goes so far…looks so deep into the feelings of man and woman.” This alternated with “Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland take an untouched theme – and make it touching and unforgettable” and “Only Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland could take this untold story…and make your heart tell it over and over again.”
The subsidiary taglines ran to: “If this were flesh of your flesh – would you hold it close…Protect it…Love it…Or would you turn your back and run” and “A child can be so many things, warmth…love…laughter…and sometimes a child can be heartbreak!”
Mainly what marketeers were asking of Lancaster and Garland was a miracle, as if their names alone could drag audiences into theaters.
Even though the Pressbook was relatively small – eight pages A3 – two-thirds of the space was allocated to repeating the adverts, just in different sizes.
The section normally aimed at getting editors to carry snippets of news about the movie provided scant material. There was little to catch the journalistic eye, nothing new about either of the stars, just a rehash of careers. Usually, cinema managers would scour this section looking for a titbit to offer to a reporter, an unusual hobby, something odd that occurred during filming, details about the location or an element that went wrong during shooting.
If you were relying on this Pressbook to fuel demand from exhibitors, you would be sorely disappointed.
Pressbooks/Marketing Manuals were intended as guides for the better promotion of a picture. At best, they were viewed as suggestive, devised in the spirit of cooperation. Paramount took a different perspective for One-Eyed Jacks. It laid down the law. This was “do as you’re told” under a new guise.
In the first place, it was an uncommonly sumptuous Pressbook, the distinctive cover printed on thick paper. It was larger, too, than the standard A2.
But at the heart of the marketing was almost a command for cinemas to follow a stringent campaign of advertisements running for seven days prior to showing the picture. This was contained in an immeasurably large section, a double fold-out running to 46 inches wide by 19 inches high. In other words so huge it could not help but catch the eye.
Unusually, the campaign was a before-and-after promotion. Of the seven days delineated, five were in advance of opening, the final two post-opening. Cinemas could choose between four sizes of campaign. Size was measured in “lines” – the unit of measurement rather than inches employed by newspapers. The more lines, the bigger the advert. Thus, Campaign AA was intended to run for 2,700-2,800 lines with the biggest advert reserved for opening day. Campaign 1 was set for 1,900-2,100 lines; Campaign 2 for 800-900 lines; and Campaign 3 for 550-650 lines. The last two campaigns were limited to three days.
The tagline for the opening Advert ran: “The motion picture that starts its own tradition of greatness” with the subsidiary “Marlon Brando’s most brilliant performance as Johnny Rio, the wildest one-eyed jack ever flung into the game of life. Here is love and courage, sin and violence – in one of the most explosively dramatic excitement in screen history!” In the AA campaign this was twice as wide (14 inches) as it was high.
The Second Day’s advert was much smaller – 9.5 inches wide and 4.5 inches high – and while keeping the main tagline dispensed entirely with the subsidiary.
Day Three was the opposite – the biggest advert yet – at 36 inches wide by 9 inches high. There was a new tagline: “A new experience in excitement…A new height in greatness!” and the subsidiary was just the first sentence of the original.
Day Four was bigger again – 40 inches wide by 8 inches high. The same tagline and subsidiary as Day Three with the addition of: “In vengeance he taught the enemy’s daughter the ways of love. Now the dawn would come up like gunfire.”
Opening Day (Day Five) was the biggest of them all – 57 inches wide by 9.5 inches high. Same tagline and subsidiary as Day Four but with a different addition: “His enemy’s daughter clinging to him in the night…this was just the beginning of his vengeance.”
Day Six (First Day After Opening) was remarkably small – 4 inches by 2 inches – literally just a reminder and carrying only the main tagline. The Final Day was 11 inches by 5.5 inches and with the same tagline.
Anticipating success, the marketeers had supplied adverts that announced “Held over for a 2nd big week.”
Whether cinemas signed up for such a promotional exercise they could be in no doubt about the studio’s commitment. Claiming it was the most publicized picture in recent history, Paramount pointed to articles in Life, Look, Coronet, Argosy, McCalls, Newsweek, Pageant, Glamour, Seventeen, Mademoiselle, American Weekly, Parade, Woman’s Day, This Week and the New York Times Magazine.
Music was a better cross-promotion prospect than anything else with both a soundtrack album and a single on the market. In addition, piano duo Ferrante and Teicher had recorded an instrumental. Two songs from the film were published in sheet music format.
Unusually, presumably assuming the movie had received all the editorial coverage it required – some or all of the articles run in the magazines mentioned would have been syndicated to local and national newspapers – the Pressbook was devoid of the usual run of star biography or journalistic snippets.
Should have been a darned-easy sell. After all, Marlon Brando had made global headlines after becoming the first actor to be paid a million bucks for a movie, his fee for The Fugitive Kind outstripping by $250,000 the previous record jointly held by John Wayne and William Holden (see Note below) for The Horse Soldiers (1959). And there was no suggestion – as indeed there is not even now – that audiences held against the stars the wealth their talents accrued.
“The Most Explosive Star Combination of the Year” was how this was generally sold, on the back of the Oscars held by each of the principals, Brando, Italian Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward and the Pulitzer Prize awarded to playwright Tennessee Williams, himself also a two-time Oscar nominee as well as his work providing Oscar wins and nominations by the bucket load for actors and directors.
“Something about the way he looked at a woman, something about the way he handled a guitar” were other notable taglines and marketeers tried to convince the public “the screen is struck by lightning.” And if that was not enough – “their fire…their fever…their desire” was expected to do the trick.
Publicists encouraged exhibitors to make full use of Brando’s accoutrements from the movie, namely his snakeskin jacket, Rolex and Kay Guitar, which in one scene he actually played. Suggestions included auctioning a guitar for charity and running a talent contest. Brando was a reasonably accomplished player, specializing in perennials like “Shenandoah” and “Streets of Laredo.”
How to make a snakeskin jacket was another angle. The Rolex watch his character wore presented opportunities for marketing tie-ups with jewellery stores. No marketing stone was left unturned to the extent of the Necchi sewing machine, seen in the movie, being offered as a prize in a national competition. Novo Greetings Cards were also seen in passing in Lady Torrance’s store and this company was backing the movie.
Unusually, Signet was using the movie tie-in approach to sell a play, the paperback comprising the source material Orpheus Descending, which included an eight-page spread of stills from the picture. Williams’ position as the most popular playwright of his generation – his only rival Arthur Miller had less success in Hollywood – brought potential access to libraries, book clubs and schools. Military bases around the world were targeted through marketing material emphasizing Joanne Woodward.
It would certainly have helped if the movie had been able to set a new fashion trend for the wearing of snakeskin jackets. Or revive a trend that had last occurred in the 1930s, “quite a craze” for shoes, bags, hats and belts. “It wouldn’t surprise me,” said United Artists costume designer Frank Thompson, “if Brando wearing this jacket starts the whole thing again.”
Thompson had quite a task making two identical jackets – in case one was damaged during filming. First of all, he had to locate skins that were found in Mississippi. The choice came down to rattler or python. Opting for python, Thompson went through 200 skins before he found three that matched. “Looking for two snakeskins that match identically is like looking for two fingerprints that are exactly the same.”
The film was based on Battle of Angels, written by Williams in 1939, his first full-length work professionally staged (in Boston). He “never quit working on this one…it never went into the trunk, it always stayed on the work bench.” Rewriting about 75% of the play, it was reprised as Orpheus Descending on Broadway in 1957. Although Williams had Brando and Magnani (star of the film version of The Rose Tattoo, 1955) in mind for the stage play, it went ahead instead with Cliff Robertson and Maureen Stapleton. Williams had written The Rose Tattoo for Magnani but again it was Maureen Stapleton who won the role on stage.
Williams had outstanding success in writing roles that were in tune with Oscar sensibilities. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) won Oscars for Vivien Leigh, Kim Stanley and Karl Malden with Brando nominated. Anna Magnani won for The Rose Tattoo and Marisa Pavan was nominated. Other nominations included Carroll Baker and Mildred Dunnock for Baby Doll (1956), Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), and Katharine Hepburn and Taylor for Suddenly, Last Summer (1959).
Despite its Mississippi location and except for external establishing shots, The Fugitive Kind was shot in the Bronx. Director Sidney Lumet was a notably New York kinda guy, having filmed his first three movies – Twelve Angry Men (1957), Stage Struck (1958) and That Kind of Woman (1959) – in the city.
He argued, “Hollywood’s great attractions have been the technicians and the shooting facilities, With care, men of comparable talent can be found in New York. As for facilities, a sound stage is a sound stage wherever it is. I concede that in California they’re larger and more elaborate, but the same results can be produced elsewhere. And the fabulous back-lots, which counted so heavily in the past, seem to be outmoded today by the sophisticated eye of the audience. You can’t shoot on studio streets and pretend any more. It has to be real.”
NOTE – William Holden pocketed around $3 million in the end as his percentage share of the gross –not the more contentious net – of Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) so he was the decade’s biggest winner until Richard Burton made more on a similar deal from Where Eagles Dare (1968).
Director Blake Edwards shouldn’t have been anywhere near Wild Rovers in November 1970 when filming of the western kicked off in Arizona. He should have been making a musical – his second successive one following Darling Lili (1970).
Versatility had become something of a watchword for Edwards who had segued apparently effortlessly from the gentle romance of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) to thriller Experiment in Terror/Grip of Fear (1962) to alcoholic drama Days of Wine and Roses (1962) to wild comedy The Pink Panther (1963) to slapstick The Great Race (1965) – in 70mm roadshow no less – to the satirical WhatDid You Do in the War, Daddy (1966). So Hollywood wasn’t enormously surprised when he decided it was time he tackled a musical, Darling Lili, especially when it starred “sure thing” Julie Andrews.
And before the figures for Darling Lili came in, and everyone thought they were onto a winner, small surprise that he was in the front line to direct She Loves Me, the movie adaptation of a 1963 Broadway musical that was the second musical reincarnation – the first being The Good Old Summertime (1949) with Judy Garland – of romantic comedy The Shop around the Corner (1940) starring James Stewart.
But in 1969 – before Darling Lili slumped at the box office – a takeover of MGM by Kirk Kerkorian was imminent and in anticipation of some drastic action studio executives canned its three biggest projects, Fred Zinnemann’s Man’s Fate, the $10m She Loves Me – also to star Julie Andrews (now Edwards’ wife) – and the $12m-$15m Tai Pan. Edwards sued for $4.6 million.
Edwards had other fish to fry – his company Cinema Video Communications had purchased the latest Harold Robbins’ novel The Betsy plus The Peacemaker, the first novel by war historian Cornelius Ryan (The Longest Day). Edwards had plans to film Svengali with Jack Lemmon and Julie Andrews and Kingsley Amis’s novel The Green Man with Richard Burton.
Despite having informed MGM that he would not accept any substitute for She Loves Me, he capitulated when the studio agreed to back his pet project, a buddy western with a serious theme, Wild Rovers. Paul Newman was initially sounded out with the younger character looking a good fit for Michael Witney, expected to be the breakout star of Darling Lili.
William Holden was picky about his projects. He complained that most scripts he received were “aimed at exploitation or titillation.” Though he had not had a hit since the start of the previous decade with The World of Suzie Wong (1960), his global investments had paid off and he was happier spending seven months of the year on his 1,260-acre ranch in Kenya. He was impressed enough with the Blake Edwards script for Wild Rovers and, possibly optimistic about its commercial prospects, to defer part of his salary against a percentage of the gross (he had made a fortune from his percentage on Bridge on the River Kwai). Apart from Wild Rovers, the only movie which had caught his attention was The Revengers co-starring Mary Ure (after it was delayed due to his illness, she pulled out).
Even so, MGM held Edwards on a tight rein financially. While trying to extricate itself from a sticky corner, it had no wish to find itself in the kind of lack of budgetary restraint that had afflicted Darling Lili. And to some extent, Edwards had to prove he was more fiscally responsible. The budget for the below-the-line cast was restricted to $1.5 million. There was considerable physical commitment to the project from the two stars, training for six weeks so the scene taming the wild horse could be completed without stunt men.
MGM had high hopes for the western, backing it with a substantial promotion campaign. In the trades there were three-page ads and a separate advert paying homage to the studio’s “writer cats.” The studio had weathered the Kerkorian storm and the massive write-offs at the end of the previous decade. The mood was buoyant. The first quarter of 1971, bolstered by an unexpectedly good showing by Ryan’s Daughter (1970). While not hitting the highs of Doctor Zhivago (1965) it had done much better than the industry predicted, especially after being savaged by critics. It looked as if MGM had turned a corner. In the first three months of 1971 the studio made $2.5 million profit and was confident that summer offerings Shaft, The Last Run and Wild Rovers would maintain the good run.
After the box office fallouts of recent years, it looked as though the entire industry was on the verge of bouncing back. Released by other studios around the same time as Wild Rovers were the likes of Klute, The Anderson Tapes, Summer of ’42, Willard, and Carnal Knowledge
The reviews weren’t promising. Variety tabbed it “uneven”, only one of the top five New York critics gave it a favorable review. An opportunity to gain some critical headway was spurned when the studio pulled the movie from the annual Atlanta Film Festival in favor of an appearance by the two stars on the Dick Cavett Show.
The version released ran 110 minutes. There was no critical outcry at the film being savagely edited by the studio – nobody cared sufficiently about the picture to be up in arms about it.
Worse, the marketing campaign was widely derided. The image of William Holden and Ryan O’Neal astride the same horse, the youngster grinning, leaning into the older man’s back, gave off, unintentionally, homo-erotic undertones. Audience dismissal of the advert only became clear to MGM at the end of the movie’s first six days at the first run Grauman’s Chinese in Los Angeles which registered less than $20,000 at the box office. Shocked at the low result, MGM “scrapped its entire pre-release and opening campaign” shifting the emphasis from the “man-to-man image” to “guns, horses and adventure” suggesting an old-fashioned shoot-em-‘up.
The new advertisement was accompanied by anonymous quotes, comparing Holden and O’Neal to Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy – though as Variety acidly noted, without identifying which was which – and describing the shootout as “so electrifying your impulse is…to run for cover.” Phantom quotes had been used before by Avco Embassy for De Sica’s war drama Sunflower (1970) starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. But while Hollywood was fond of editing reviews to find an often-misleading quote, studios generally drew the line at making them up.
The New York release in a trio of first run houses coincided with the showcase outing of Love Story (1970). That movie had played for months in first run and this was the first time it was generally available. Love Story, the hit of the decade so far, would open in 80 suburban cinemas on the same day in June, 1971, as Wild Rovers. In the era before “Barbieheimer”, there was still an expectation of cross-over, that the fans of a new star coming good like Ryan O’Neal would automatically seek out his latest picture. And it may have been that the advertising campaign was specifically designed to ensure his fans did not go to the western expecting another romantic drama.
They weren’t tempted at all. Love Story cleaned up – a gross of $1.25 million from 80 outlets and another $750,000 the following week. Compared to that, Wild Rovers scarcely got out of the gate – a “less than roaring” $20,600 from the three. At the 1,096-seat Astor it was on a par with the fourth week of Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) which had just completed its run there.
There was a little solace elsewhere. Its $15,000 in Baltimore was deemed “tall” and $12,500 in Boston “slick” but more reflective of the general interest was a “dim” $65,000 from eight theaters in Detroit, a “mild” $7,500 in Denver and “moderate” $8,500 in Minneapolis. By the end of the year it had amassed $1.8 million in rentals, languishing in 59th place.
MGM took a different tack in Europe. It wasn’t unusual for movies released in 35mm in America to be shown in 70mm roadshow in Europe – The Dirty Dozen (1967), Where Eagles Dare (1968) and The Wild Bunch (1969) enjoyed up to a year in roadshow before fanning out into general release, getting two substantial bites of the commercial apple. The latter two had done better abroad than at home, in large part due to the roadshow release which turned a movie into an event rather than a routine outing. So MGM sent Wild Rovers out in roadshow. At 110 minutes, even puffed out with a 15-minute interval, it was a mighty slim offering for roadshow.
In London, half the critics came out against it, but only a quarter were favorable, the others having “no opinion.” The consensus was that it would “not survive the rough critical handling.” It opened on October 21, 1971, at the ABC2 in London’s West End. And lasted two weeks, whipped off the screen after generating an opening week of $6,200 and a sophomore of $4,100, replaced by The Last Run starring George C. Scott, another flop. MGM persevered with the roadshow. It played for five weeks at the Coliseum in my home town of Glasgow.
In the U.S. it shifted quickly to television, part of the CBS program, finishing a lowly 85th for the year in the tabulations of the movies attracting the biggest television audiences.
SOURCES: “Metro’s Loves Me As A Substitute for Former Say It With Music,” Variety, August 6, 1969, p3; Army Archerd, “Hollywood Sound Track,” Variety, October 20, 1970, p6; Army Archerd, “Hollywood Cross Cuts,” Variety, August 5, 1970, p23; “Holden Pushes for Conservation,” Variety, August 12, 1970, p25; Army Archerd, “Hollywood Sound Track,” Variety, November 4, 1970, p20; “Hollywood Production Pulse,” Variety, November 18, 1970, p54; Advert, Box Office, March 28, 1971, p3-5; “Profitable Quarter for MGM,” Kine Weekly, April 24, 1971, p3; Advert, Variety, May 17, 1971, p23-25; Advert, Variety, May 19, 1971, p12; Review, Variety, June 23, 1971, p20; “Col Delivers Atlanta Festival,” Variety, June 23, 1971, p6; “New York Critics,” Variety, June 30, 1971, p7; “Metro Scraps Rovers Campaign,” Variety, June 30, 1971, p27; “London Critics,” Variety, November 17, 1971, p62; “Big Rental Films of 1971,” Variety, January 5, 1972, p9. Box office figures from Variety June 30-August 18, 1971, and November 10-17, 1971.
You could come away from the Pressbook/Exhibitors Manual wondering if some of the actors were in the wrong profession, given the number of accomplished pilots on the roster. James Franciscus held a commercial license for multi-engine planes and had logged three thousand flying hours in three years. Gene Hackman not only had a private flying license but was in the process of building his own biplane.
Producer Mike Frankovich had flown with the US Air Force during World War Two, clocking up 7,000 hours flying time and ending up a colonel. Technical expert George Smith had ejected at 6,000 feet from a plane flying at 800 mph.
Another less well-known fact, Natalie Wood (who was appearing in producer Mike Frankovich’s Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, 1969) was fluent in Russian and was brought in to translate for a showing of the movie to visiting Russian spacemen. Nancy Kovack, by the way, was equally talented, speaking Persian and other languages.
As much as the main function of the Pressbook was to provide exhibitors with a range of adverts in every conceivable size that they could cut out and take along to their local newspaper, its secondary function was to provide cinema owners with promotional ideas and to provide snippets and articles that could be passed on to a local friendly reporter. But pickings were slim for jouranlists. Not surprisingly, Gregory Peck didn’t have much say, since whatever he did have to say he’d said already as promotion work for the two other features preceding Marooned this year. And nobody’s spilling the beans on the special effects.
Due to the bulkiness of their space suits, the three actors playing astronauts couldn’t sit down between takes and instead the production employed “the slanted boards usually leaned against by elaborately-gowned female stars to protect their costumes.” (You learn something new about the business every day!). Never mind the bulkiness, the actors spent a chunk of their time in the air and the one day James Franciscus expected to meet acting hero Gregory Peck (they had no scenes together) it proved impossible as when the star visited the capsule set Franciscus was 60 ft in the air.
Richard Crenna got a better response from his young son, who had little concept of what an actor did. But after seeing his dad floating around in space high above him, he reckoned his father was actually a hero
For such a male-oriented picture, Columbia made a big play for the female audience. “The Ladies Love Marooned,” boasted one advert in the 16-page A2 Pressbook/Campaign Manual aimed at exhibitors. Pulling on quotes from critics nobody had really heard of, it managed to present the notion that the picture was as exciting, fascinating, “ingeniously-devised,” and suspenseful for women as much as men, at the same time as focusing on the feminine aspects of the movie – “Lee Grant is a knockout.”
The Pressbook itself allocated editorial space to the three female stars. For Lee Grant the slant was that her talent had been recognized by a host of awards – Emmy, Obie, Best Actress at Cannes plus an Oscar nomination (she would later win an Oscar for Shampoo, 1975). But you have to wonder how an actress would respond to be called, in print, “an egg-head with sex” as was the case with Nancy Kovack. In between turning out such pictures as Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966) and this, Kovack had been resident in Iran where she made Diamond 33 (1967) and Night of the Angels (1968). By comparison, Mariette Hartley got off lightly, thanks to her Shakespearian training.
A separate 4-page A2 insert promoted the three Oscar nominations for cinematography, sound and visual effects. “Nominated for 3 Academy Awards,” was the slug accompanying the ads. Never mind the reviews from female critics, much bigger space was devoted here to a rave review form Rex Reed, one of the most famous critics of the day (and star, if that’s the right word, of Myra Breckenridge, 1970), who claimed Marooned was “as exciting, spirited and suspenseful as any spy movie or any cops-and-robbers movie ever made.”
As you might expect, the bulk of the promotional ideas were science-based. Exhibitors were told to target the country’s 2,500 science clubs, the armed forces, the industries that supported the space program and, of course, schools and colleges. Tie-ins had been achieved with 4,500 A&P stores, Jane Parker Donuts, and Philco-Ford dealers.
From a contemporary marketing standpoint, the surprising tie-in was with Omega watches, tagged “the first watch on the moon,” the company’s Speedmaster brand not just worn by the astronauts who did land on the moon in July 1969 but seen in the picture on the wrists of Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, Gene Hackman and James Franciscus. Over 4,000 dealers were backing the movie.
Model kit manufacturer Revell was offering space suits as prizes in a competition. It distributed more than 42,000 standees and posters and printed five million entry forms. Bantam books was promoting the original novel by Martin Caidin. That exhibitors would be eager to equip a staff member with an astronaut’s garb and have him/her parade through the streets went without saying. Using lift-off sound effects in a cinema lobby was another idea or turning the entire lobby into a space set.
Rather disconcertingly, the marketing bigwigs thought it would be a clever idea to propose a discussion program on radio or local television on the subject of what would happen if spacemen were marooned, a rather tetchy subject when that became reality.
Unusually, but not surprisingly, the posters stuck with the one tag line: “Three marooned astronauts. And only 55 minutes left to rescue them. While the whole world watches and waits…” and buttressed by some thumbs-up quotes from the likes of reviewers from the New York Times, Redbook, Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Herald Examiner. In fact, the advertising department took such a shine to Charles Champlin of the LA Times that they cut up his review and stuck snippets of it in three separate ads.
You’ll have seen from the variety of adverts I’ve used to support the review and the Behind the Scenes article earlier in the Blog, that there was a wider range, initially, of adverts, some showing the capsule stuck out in the middle of space. By the time it came to printing this Pressbook, the one for the picture’s general release, all of those were jettisoned in favor of the insipid “thumbs-up” poster with faces to the foreground and the launch in the background, attendant quotes and the “3 Academy award Nominations” slug.
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).
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.”
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.
Exhibitors measured a movie’s commercial potential in large part by the size and shape of the Pressbook. There was a correlation between a studio’s marketing budget and box office expectation.
This was the era of the 16-page A3 (twice size of a sheet of A4 paper) Pressbook/Campaign Manual that would contain what a cinema manager required to make the most of the picture through newspaper exploitation. This included snippets that would be passed on as nuggets for the editor of the entertainment section – incidents that occurred on set, details of location, hitherto unknown facts about the stars, interesting quotes – and for the newspaper’s non-editorial section that came in the form of a series of different advertisements, six or seven not unusual.
These adverts were core to what you might see in your local newspaper. The cinema manager simply cut out the preferred size of advert – they were offered a huge range of sizes that often took up to half the Pressbook – and handed that in to the newspaper which duly, with cinema name attached, used it to make up the printed ad.
The point of the A3 Pressbook was to accommodate ads that size (11.7 x 16.5 inches / 297 x 420mm) and encourage the cinema manager to consider paying for such a hefty space in a newspaper. Beginning with the giant size indicated studio confidence, which, it hoped, the cinema manager would match. Of course, should he or she not, then there was a wealth of smaller-sized ads – which might themselves start at roughly A4 (8.3 x 11.7 inches / 210 x 297mm) that the cinema manager might feel more appropriate to the picture house’s marketing budget.
The various ads accommodated a number of different taglines and images, so that a cinema manager could choose the best one for targeting their specific audience – most commonly, for example. an action picture might be sold on the love interest.
The Sorcerers was released in the U.S. by Allied Artists. Once a big name, producing Friendly Persuasion in 1956, it had now fallen on harder times and largely reverting to its Monogram origins except for a financial boost from the unexpected success of the French-made A Man and a Woman (1966). Whatever imapct that had on Allied’s coffers did not translate into expenditure on the Pressbook for The Sorcerers. Cinema mangers would not have been filled with any great confidence. In size and in the advertisement material it did not shout box office winner.
This is an ad from the British campaign which showed more originality than in the U.S.
The Pressbook was 8-pages A4, of which more than half was advertisements, one full-page A4. But there was only, effectively, one ad, though presented over five pages in twelve different sizes, from the aforementioned A4 down to what would be little more than a slug, one inch running the width of one newspaper column (about two inches).
Boris Karloff’s brooding features, intercut with a man knifing a woman, dominate the advert. There is a tagline: “He turns them on…he turns them off…to live…love…die or KILL!” At the foot of the ad is a montage of young things, dancing, kissing, a girl in backless dress the height of the titillation portrayed. The rest of the near-dozen adverts are all exactly the same, with, as the adverts grow smaller, bits of the main ad dropped out.
The problem with marketing any film starring Boris Karloff was the actor himself. Although a legendary name in movies thanks to Frankenstein, that career-making role had been three decades before and anyone who had seen it in the 1960s had done so on television where it was shorn of a lot of its power. Karloff had only intermittently popped up in horror movies during the 1960s, most recently in Die, Monster, Die (1965).
Director Michael reeves (left) with Tony Tenser of Tigon and Karloff.
Karloff was not, to put it mildly, a major marquee attraction. And part of the reason was his determination not to be typecast. So, in the 1940s and 1950s he was more likely to be seen on stage, in Arsenic and Old Lace or The Lark, for example, or on television. He only made eight movies during the 1950s.
There had been some kind of horror comeback in 1963 with The Raven, The Terror, Black Sabbath and The Comedy of Terrors, but since then movie appearances had been sparse. And, of course, for an actor of his age, there was nothing new to say, although perhaps just to remind people that he had been born William Henry Pratt in England.
None of the other performers were remotely well-known. Ian Ogilvy had supporting roles in She Beast (1966) and Stranger in the House / Cop-Out (1967). Elizabeth Ercy had small parts in Doctor in Clover / Carnaby M.D. (1966) and Fathom (1967). Each was given an one-eighth page biography. Despite directing She Beast, Michael Reeves wasn’t mentioned at all.
The company you keep. Tigon’s line-up for 1967.
So you get the distinct impression from the Pressbook that it’s Karloff or nothing and since the actor, as noted, was hardly a major player, nobody was going to much trouble to sell the picture.
The Pressbooks I’ve presented in previous features in the Blog have all had considerably more going for them, but this was the downside of the movie business. When there wasn’t much to sell, the distributor wasn’t going to waste his money trying to achieve the impossible.
The Pressbook, printed in 1967, did not appear to achieve any success. The movie did not win a single first run or showcase booking in any of the major cities whose box office was reported by Variety magazine. However, in July 1968, the film was awarded the Grand Prix at the Trieste Sci Fi Festival, with Elizabeth Ercy named Best Actress. That did not appear to brighten the movie’s prospects.
But in 1969, it turned up at the bottom of two horror triple bills. In Boston in first run at the Center it grossed $7,000 (Variety, February 19, 1969, p8) supporting Island of the Doomed (1967) and Castle of Evil (1966). In Los Angeles in a Karloff triple, it was topped in the billing by The Comedy of Terrors and The Raven, earning a decent $110,000 from 12 houses. (Variety, April 30, 1969, p8), it was top-billed in first run in Chicago taking in a “neat” $5,500 at the Monroe (Variety, October 15, 1969, p8).
But it’s possible these few bookings and doubtless others on the drive-in circuits and in smaller towns might still have helped turn a profit on the picture since it only cost $210,000 to make in the first place.
Easy Rider, more acceptable artistically, stole Night of the Living Dead’s thunder the following year as the poster boy for a low-budget phenomenon that would, temporarily at least, usher in a new way of Hollywood thinking. But Night of the Living Dead – initially entitled Monster Flick and Night of the Flesh-Eaters – was movie-making as fairy tale, virtually a throwback to the old trope of doughty characters putting on a show in a barn.
Using guerrilla production techniques, the movie took an astonishing six months to make starting July 1967. Bronx-born George A. Romero specialised in advertisements and industrial shorts through his Latent Image company before branching out in Pittsburgh with some work colleagues from Hardman Associates to form a movie production company Image Ten, the name indicative of the initial ten investors.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking Romero and his gang were movie neophytes out of their depth. Technically, they were pretty accomplished, churning out adverts and shorts at a steady pace, the kind of education the likes of Ridley Scott and Adrian Lyne enjoyed on the London advertising scene. According to Variety, Hardman was “the largest producer of record and radio shows in Pittsburgh…(running) the most completely equipped sound and film studio in the area” while Latent Image was the city’s “biggest producer of video and industrial shorts.”
The principals of both companies proved instrumental to the movie. While Romero took on directing, cinematography and editing duties, the screenplay was down to business partner John A. Russo while another partner Russell Streiner took on the role of producer. Hardman provided actors Karl Hardman, a former RKO contract player, and Marilyn Eastman, who also supervised make-up, costumes and special effects, while Kyra Schon, the dying daughter in the film, was Hardman’s real-life daughter. The rest of the cast were unknowns, Duane Jones in the lead had at least some stage experience, female lead Judith O’Dea had worked with the producers before, while Judith Ridley was a receptionist for the production company. Romance blossomed between O’Dea and Streiner.
Romero’s debut was heavily influenced by Powell and Pressburger’s British bizarre fantasy The Tales of Hoffman (1951) but the final film clearly draws on Richard Matheson’s celebrated 1964 sci-fi novel The Last Man on Earth – filmed in 1971 as The Omega Man and in 2007 as I Am Legend. Where Matheson’s book begins at the end, Romero wanted to show the beginning of how the undead came to rule the world. Since Matheson had used vampires, Romero needed an alternative.
Explained Romero: “I couldn’t use vampires because he did, so I wanted something that would be an earth-shaking change. Something that was forever, something that was really at the heart of it. So I said, what if the dead stop staying dead?” That tapped into the attractive notion of living forever – until you realized what that entailed.
Contrary to expectation – and myth – it didn’t exactly stumble at the box office. A month after initial release its opening salvoes were advertised in “Box Office” magazine (November 25, 1968) accompanied by some of the better reviews harvested.
Shockerama pictures would be the easiest way to find a foothold on the distribution ladder. Initially devised as a horror comedy it took several drafts, the first couple involving aliens, before arriving at the concept of flesh-eating re-animated corpses.
Ben was originally envisaged as a blue collar truck driver and evolved into the more educated character as a result of rewriting by Duane Jones who objected to playing such a cliché. But improvisation was very much the order of the day. Recalled O’Dea: “I don’t know if there was an actual working script. We would go over what basically had to be done and then just did it the way we each felt it should be done.”
The initial investors ponied up $600 each but that proved insufficient as production developed, the company eventually raising $114,000. (The average cost of making a movie at that time was $1.6 million.) Budget dictated location be as remote as possible, the main locale a house scheduled for demolition. Chocolate syrup doubled as blood, human flesh was roasted ham and entrails supplied by one of the actors who was also a butcher. Clothing was anything the cast possessed that they didn’t mind being ripped. Color film was too expensive, and the resulting black-and-white footage has the effect of newsreel, almost a documentary rather than a work of fiction.
Although a myth has arisen that the movie struggled to find its way into the distribution food chain, that was not the case. Studios were desperate to find product and happy to hang their shingle on anything that could keep their clients, cinemas starved of movies, happy. Columbia and American International were both interested, but demanded a happy ending. When Romero stuck to his guns, the movie ended up with the Walter Reade organisation, a noted distributor of foreign and cult pictures, better suited to this kind of fare.
Nor was it sneaked out into cinemas as has been usually assumed. Given that by 1968 cinema managers owners were in part reliant on low-budget shockers, the National Association of Theater Owners instigated a nationwide “Exploitation Picture of the Month” campaign of which Night of the Living Dead was one of the early beneficiaries, as a result of its involvement scooping, for example, $117,000 from 26 houses in Philadelphia. and other pretty decent figures shown in the advertisement above.
Nor did it go out below-the-wire in Pittsburgh. A full-scale black-tie premiere was held on October 1, 1968, at the Reade-owned Fulton attended by Mayor Barr and the city’s safety director Norman Craig and various councillors. It rang a heavy box office bell, knocking up $62,000 – over $500,000 at today’s prices – for 11 theaters, outpointing Rosemary’s Baby (1968) which had played the same houses the week before. The distributor came up with a clever marketing ploy of taking out a $50,000 insurance policy with Lloyds of London against adverse audience reaction.
The film attracted controversy for going out un-rated. There was nothing unusual about that either. Only studios aligned with the MPAA Production Code had to submit their movies for the censor’s rating. Reade, which wasn’t involved in the Code, often imported movies from Europe and part of their attraction was that they were unrated, containing levels of nudity or violence that the official censor at the time would find impossible to pass. Lack of the vaunted Production Code Seal of Approval did not prevent a movie being shown, it just meant certain cinemas would not book it.
Chicago critic Roger Ebert made journalistic hay by complaining that kids were being allowed in to watch the movie. That he might be on hand to witness their shock at the images they saw seems hard to believe since critics usually viewed pictures in advance of opening at special screenings. In any case, in Chicago, Night of the Living Dead didn’t slip through the censorship net, but was passed by the local censorship board. His beef was with them, complaining that while the censors drew the line at nudity they had nothing against cannibalism. And it seems pretty odd that the management wasn’t aware of the film’s shocking content – presumably that being the reason it was booked in the first place – and permitted youngsters to troop in.
Although New York critics gave it the thumbs-down at least the New York Times (Vincent Canby no less), Post and Daily News took the trouble to see it, so it would at least benefit from editorial exposure. The trade press were mixed. While Variety railed that it “set a new low in box office opportunism,” its trade press competitor Box Office reckoned there was “an audience for this particular brand of sadism especially in drive-ins.”
Perhaps surprisingly given critical disapproval Night of the Living Dead enjoyed first-run outings in a variety of cities, though its main target was showcase (wide local release) and drive-ins. In Los Angeles it picked up a “hip” $10,500 at the 1,757-seat first-run Warren. (Multiply by ten to get an idea of how inflation would treat the gross and bear in mind this is pre-multiplex when cinema capacity could reach 5,000 and most city center emporiums seated 500-plus). In Boston it registered a “cool” $8,000 at the 1,250-seat Center. New York’s Broadway had to wait a year when the prestigious roadshow house the DeMille, in the week before it hosted 70mm extravaganza The Battle of Britain (1969), booked Slaves (1969)/Night of the Living Dead, grossing $21,000 in an eight-day fill-in run.
In its first New York showcase, when Night of the Living Dead was the main attraction with Dr Who and the Daleks in support, it scorched through $286,000 from 39 cinemas, the joint top result for the week. Returning a year later, as the support to Slaves put another $125,000 in the kitty from 26 plantations, again the top showcase performer for the week. Among notable wider releases were $14,300 from three in Dayton where it was “weekends at capacity in ozoners” (industry jargon for drive-ins). There was $10,000 from three houses in Minnesota.
Not being a contender for sale to television extended its screen life at a time when even big hits landed on small screens within a few years. As well as Slaves it was revived as the supporting feature to newer items Brotherhood of Satan (1971), Lust for a Vampire (1971) and The Nightcomers (1971). The teaming with Slaves racked up a “rousing” $82,000 in Detroit at the 5,000-seat Fox, and $55,000 the following week. The double bill with Brotherhood of Satan beat the previous week’s pairing of the reissued Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid/Mash. It formed part of an interesting triple bill at the 500-seat Plaza arthouse in Boston where it was teamed with Dutchman (1966) and Ulysses (1967).
But it was also building up a head of steam on the midnight screening circuit and began a record year’s run in that slot at the Plaza in Boston. Gradually, as it acquired more artistic credibility it turned up at prestigious New York 538-seat arthouse the Beekman with Invasion of the Body Snatchers in support (gross $5,000), ironically acting as trailer for a six-week programme of revivals based on “Ten Best” selections from critics which had avowedly spurned the movie. And it was chosen as the ideal companion for the once-banned Freaks (1932). Perhaps proof of the breakthrough into respectable cult territory, six years after initial release, was a New York showcase pairing with Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972), drumming up $63,500 from 29 bandstands.
By the end of December 1970, rentals (the amount the studio collects from cinemas as opposed to overall gross) stood at $1 million – which probably indicated a gross of around $3 million. It found a British distributor in Crispin and eventually rolled out successfully around the world with an estimated $18 million in global gross.
SOURCES: John Russo, The Complete Night of the Living Dead Filmbook (Imagine, 1985), p6,7, 31, 61, 70; Joe Kane, Night of the Living Dead (Citadel Press, 2010) p23; Jason Paul Collum, Attack of the Killer B’s (McFarland, 2004) p3; Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, January 5, 1969; Brian Hannan, In Theaters Everywhere, A History of the Hollywood Wide Release, 1913-2017 (McFarland 2019), p161; “Pittsburgh Premiere Held for Walter Reade Thriller,” Box Office, October 8,1968, p8; “Pittsburgh’s Hometown Horror to Reade: Surprise Boff BO,” Variety, October 9, 1968, p17; “Review,” Variety, October 16, 1968, p6; “Big Success Claimed for Image Ten Film,” Box Office, October 21, 1968, pE1; Advert, Box Office, November 25, 1968, p7; “N.Y. Critics: A Shooting Gallery,” Variety, December 11, 1968, p19; “Sun-Times Wants Chicago ‘Absurd’ Censorship Brought to Halt,” Box Office, March 14, 1969, p10; “Pittsburgh’s Latent Image Make 2nd Film,” Variety, December 3, 1969, p4; “Pittsburgh’s Cannibal Film Big Box Office,” Variety, April 8, 1970, p13; Advertisement, Kine Weekly, June 16, 1970, p61; “Big Rental Films of 1970,” Variety, January 6, 1971, p11; “Year of Friday Midnight Showings,” Variety, August 16, 1972, p6.
Box Office Figures from Variety: December 4, 1968, p13; December 11, 1968, p10-p11; December 18, 1968, p8-p13; July 9, 1969, p8; March 4, 1970, p12; October 13, 1971, p8-p12; October 20, 1969, p9; October 27, 1971, p16; Mar 17, 1972, p10; April 12, 1972, p10; May 12, 1971, p8; July 19, 1972, p12; August 9, 1972, p8; September 25, 1974, p8.
The Magnificent 60s 