Anjanette Comer – The Magnificent 60s

Lepke (1975) ***

Gangsters are just the same as you and I. They want to be loved, they want a family, they want the kind of respect that isn’t achieved by just pointing a gun at someone. The Godfather (1972) led the way in subtly reminding us that gangsters were human beings even if it was more seductive in making us believe we should excuse their criminal tendencies. Lepke spends as long on romance and trying to win the approval of the bride’s father as it does on the character’s perfidy. The idea that marriage cannot so much absolve you of your sins but provide an oasis of calm inside a murderous world is one only a true romantic would consider pursuing. As is the notion that a wife would forgive you your sins because her love would outweigh your actions, in the same way as the wife-beaten wife (as shown in Love Lies Bleeding) still loves her husband no matter how brutal the treatment meted out.

Lepke has got reason to be sore with the world. He was left out of the gangster chronicles. An important part of the Murder Inc operation, he was ignored when Hollywood passed judgement on such criminal enterprises. And you get the sneaky feeling his life story was only revived because after the Coppola epic his was one of the few tales untold in the gangster chronicles.

“If there’s any good in him, that’s the part I’ve got,” says wife Berenice (Anjanette Comer), “If I was a whore I could leave him.” And you can see the part she adores, not only respectful to the point of being obsequious to her upstanding father Mr Meyer (Milton Berle), but charming and romantic with her and he’s clearly able to separate business from romance, turning into an exemplary family man (but then so, too, did Don Corleone).

Which is just as well because Lepke (Tony Curtis) is a dreaded Mafia enforcer, forming a murder syndicate with Dutch Schulz (John Durren) and Lucky Luciano (Vic Tayback) that takes responsibility for knocking off anyone who steps out of line away from the big bosses. There’s some standard gangster stuff, machine guns in violin cases, bombs in the spaghetti, but also some interesting touches, a shoot-out on a carousel, and of course the last person a gangster can trust is the one he places his truth with. Double-dealing is the order of the day.

Like all the top gangsters, Lepke is an entrepreneur, expanding out of the killing racket into dope, extortion and trade unions. New York D.A. Thomas E. Dewey is on the Murder Inc case and his assassination is only prevented by the intercession of Lepke. But he’s tackled as much by Robert Kane (Michael Callan), friend to Berenice who works in narcotics along with Dewey.

Dewey’s not the only real-life character making an entrance. Legendary journalist Walter Winchell (Vaughn Meader) plays a significant role. Most of the picture involves Lepke being nefarious by day and loving at night and the gang are only tripped up when witnesses need to be eliminated and as the cops work a similar kind of dodge to the one that snared Al Capone. Instead of tax evasion it’s anti-trust issues.

Covering the period from 1923, Lepke’s emergence as a ruthless street rat, and his development of the narcotics business by sourcing product direct for the Far East, to his execution in 1944, it pays only cursory attention to the period. Most of the time, Lepke is fighting for his life one way or other, suspicious of colleagues, walking a knife-edge between actions that could inavertently lead to his demise, and trying to remain the best part of himself that remains appealing to his wife.

That any of this works other than being a standard depiction of the rise and fall of a gangster is down to Tony Curtis (The Boston Strangler, 1968) who delivers one of his best later performances while maintaining a difficult balancing act, clearly believing that he can separate the two sides of his personality, and that the murderous part is really just a performance. The documentary-style rendition helps as this can be complicated stuff, especially with so many disparate traitors.

Anjanette Comer (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) is always watchable. Menahem Golan, of Golan-Globus and Cannon fame, perhaps taking a cue from The Godfather, takes considerable care with the family elements and is rewarded with a better picture than the elements might suggest.

This pretty much rounds out my Hollywood History of the Gangster.

The Loved One (1965) ***

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 Appaloosa/Southwest to Sonora (1966) ****

High expectation can kill a picture. Low expectation can have the opposite result. I came at The Appaloosa with the latter attitude in mind. I knew the picture had been a big flop and that critics had carped – as they had done through most of the 1960s – about the performance of Marlon Brando.

Neither was director Sidney J. Furie’s style to everyone’s taste. And it seemed an odd subject – Texan takes on Mexican warlord to recover a stolen horse. It is surely a slow burn, but it certainly worked well beyond my anticipation. There’s not much more to the story than two guys fighting over a horse.

First of all, Brando’s performance came across as natural, not mannered. Secondly, this was a real character. He was not a John Wayne striding into action to protect the underdog or a woman or out of some goddam principle.

At first it did seem odd that Matt Fletcher (Marlon Brando) placed so much importance on the horse given that said warlord Chuy Meena (John Saxon) had offered him a more than fair price for it. But in one brilliant two-minute scene, expertly directed and with virtually no close-ups – the actor caught mostly with his back to the camera or in silhouette – we discover why. Fletcher has been such a disappointment to his father that bringing home such an animal was proof that he had made something of himself. A buffalo hunter to trade, he was on the verge of starting a new life.

The second aspect of this intriguing picture was that Medena placed so much importance on a horse when he could easily buy any horse he wanted. But he was faced with losing face. His wife Trini (Anjanette Comer) had tried to escape from him on the horse and the only remedy was to persuade the watching federales that Fletcher had previously sold him the horse.

When Fletcher refuses, Medena takes the horse by force. Fletcher, in retaliation, and to save his own sense of pride, tries to take it back. He is not represented as a superhuman John Wayne or savage Clint Eastwood, but an ordinary guy who soon finds himself out of his depth. So ordinary that the first time he aims his rifle he misses the target by a mile.

Nor is he burdened with an over-enlarged empathy gland. He not only refuses to help Trini, but steadfastly refuses to take her with him, not even as far as the border, until in another of the film’s lengthy scenes she explains the reasons for her escape attempt.

Few films have exceeded it for atmosphere. This Mexico is grim, pitiless. Hostility and suspicion are endemic. Women are abused and discarded. The standout scene is Medena and Fletcher arm-wrestling over scorpions, played out against a soundtrack of scraping chairs and the poisonous insects scrabbling on the table.

This is a brooding western featuring the actor with the best eye for brooding in the business. Sidney J Furie (The Ipcress File, 1965) is gifted – or afflicted depending on your point of view – with an eye for the unusual camera angle. Here I think the gift not the affliction is on show.

When you watch this and The Chase (1966) together it’s hard to see what on earth got the critics so rattled about Brando’s mid-decade performances. This is realistic acting at his best. Where John Wayne or Clint Eastwood present a superhuman screen persona, even if for part of a picture they are downtrodden, Brando was happy to play very human characters. In both pictures he is just an ordinary joe – forced into action by circumstance.

Banning (1967) ***

Robert Wagner’s bid for stardom is scuppered by a limp plot set in the overheated world of the country club set where a posse of sexually predatory women operate. It doesn’t help that the main narrative thrust finds trouble just hanging in there.

Ex-professional golfer Banning (Robert Wagner), a “moral diabetic” on the run from a loan shark, pitches up at an upmarket country club where he finds work as the assistant golf pro to Jonathan (Guy Stockwell). His most arduous task appears to be picking his way between the toned bikini-ed bodies lounging around the pool and avoiding the advances of Angela (Jill St John) and Jonathan’s wife Cynthia (Susan Clark) while coming on strong to overpaid secretary Carol (Anjanette Comer).

There’s an element of Life at the Top (1965) here, with Jonathan married to the boss’s daughter, resenting their close relationship while not making the executive advances he would like. Every now and then bits of what sound like a complicated past implicating Jonathan and the alcoholic Tommy Del Gaddo (Gene Hackman) pop up and around the halfway mark a subplot kicks in, involving something called a “Calcutta,” a golf tourney which looks like it’s being rigged.

Given that it’s organised by a club boss (Howard St John) who claims every gimme going and feigns drunkenness to skin members at poker, it’s almost a given that Banning is going to come out worst. I have to tell you you probably couldn’t care less, since most of the action, and all of the fun, is off course, and not so much in the bedroom stakes as the war between women for available men.

“I bought you,” purrs Angela in her most seductive attire after she has made it possible for Banning to find a way to pay off his debts. “I want you,” snaps single mother Carol, making a forthright play after spending most of the picture fending off his advances. Standing on the side-lines, watching Angela making her moves, Cynthia observes, “I’d say Angela’s had at least a dozen husbands,” pause for the punchline, “including mine for all I know.”

Predatory moves are not all one way. Turns out the price Carol pays for a salary five times the going rate and a nice house and private schooling for her daughter is setting aside Thursday afternoons for Jonathan. But in the pragmatic manner that appears inbred in the country club, she states, “No apologies, no excuses.”

And before Carol works out just how attractive Banning actually is she had to cut him dead a couple of times and, in a scene guaranteed to put off the modern audience, prevent him drunkenly raping her. It was almost a throwback to the 1940s and 1950s when, it appeared, a woman just needed a good smack on the chops before she could submit and start billing and cooing.

Robert Wagner (The Biggest Bundle of Them All, 1968), tanned within an inch of his life, doesn’t so much miss the target as not being given a target worth hitting. There’s very little sense danger, of a man on the run from the mob or whichever gangster has picked up the tab for his debt, and he’s not a lounge lizard. Acting-wise, he relies on a raised eyebrow, an eye swivel and that scene-stealing trick, copyright Robert Vaughn, of raising his lowered head to open his closed eyes, a neat device for a supporting star but hardly required when you are top-billed.

Anjanette Comer (Guns for San Sebastian, 1968) doesn’t snatch the brass ring either, relying on a tremulous lower lip to evoke emotion. In fact, it’s a toss-up between the classier Jill St John (The King’s Pirate, 1967) and Susan Clark (Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, 1969) as to who steals the most scenes, both winging it with striking dialog, emanating power, regarding men as weak and playthings.

Gene Hackman (Lilith, 1964), generally a prime contender for scene stealing, especially with trademark chuckle now in full swing, unfortunately does himself no favors by over-acting. You might also spot James Farentino (Rosie, 1967) and Sean Garrison (Moment to Moment, 1966).

Ron Winston (Ambush Bay, 1966) directed from a screenplay by James Lee (Counterpoint, 1967). It would have worked better to concentrate more on the bitchy women than the sub-plots.

I’m sorry to say you’ll have a hard job finding this since I purchased my DVD on the second-hand market. Worth the hunt if you’re a fan of St John and Clark or to discover why Wagner’s promising screen career never took off.

Guns for San Sebastian (1968) ****

Pre-Stagecoach (1939) Hollywood used to differentiate between historical adventure pictures and westerns. Given it’s set in 1746, before there was such a thing as a revolver or repeater rifle, so a complete absence of gunslingers, this falls squarely into the former camp though its format displays western credentials. A tad top-heavy with religious allegory, “miracles,” peasant piety and an Ennio Morricone score mainlining on the celestial, nonetheless it manages to achieve a character-driven narrative and some powerful action sequences.

However, it’s a lengthy set-up. Outlaw Leon (Anthony Quinn), on the run from Mexican troops, takes refuge in a church. As punishment for giving him sanctuary Fr Joseph (Sam Jaffe) is expelled to the abandoned church of San Sebastian in an equally abandoned village. Ringing the bell to attract parishioners only alerts bandits who kill him. Donning his garb, Leon is mistaken for a priest by Yaqui leader Teclo (Charles Bronson) and strung up crucifixion style. But he’s rescued by villagers who almost elevate him to sainthood courtesy of a couple of accidental “miracles.”

Enjoying his newfound status, but still attracted to peasant Kinita (Anjanette Comer), he directs the parishioners to build a dam to flood the fields to assist in corn-growing. Teclo objects to challenges to his authority and burns down the village. The villagers turn against Leon, and although initially intending to vanish, he decides instead to blackmail his mistress, the wife of the local governor (Fernard Gravey) who agrees to supply him with weapons. Leon builds a fortress to withstand the expected attack setting up a very engaging climax in which the dam plays a critical role.

A modern audience might expect a sturdier narrative rather than one that seems to shift at whim, not helped by Leon’s indecision. And it’s too slight a vehicle to carry the political points, the state of Mexico at the time, the settlers vs. original occupants (i.e. Native Indians) scenario, the problems facing half-breeds (Leon and Teclo both), but it’s better at exploring the power of the church, the worship bestowed on any priest who turns up, regardless of how ill-suited he appears. The occasional comic sequence, banter with an architect, negotiation with a Mexican colonel, seems out of place.

On the other hand there is a truly mesmerizing performance from Anthony Quinn (Lost Command, 1966) as a womanizing low-life who happens upon redemption, so deep does his impersonation of a priest go that he can’t bring himself to touch the compliant Kinita, who is aware of his true identity. Switching between shiftiness and godliness at the drop of a hat and deriding villagers for their lack of character his turning point comes when he realizes he has fallen into the same trap. That he emerges as a wily man of conscience is no mean feat.

The other big bonus is to see someone at last recognize Charles Bronson (Once upon a Time in the West, 1969). Here he is given cinematic status, camera pitched up at his face, and allowed to eliminate the growl and monosyllabic delivery that has been his wont in lesser roles. He’s a rather decent villain at the end.

There are a couple of inconsistencies. Teclo wants villagers to take to the hills but on the other hand somehow to spend enough time tending the corn that come harvest time he can steal. And it’s a bit too neat how he falls into the dam trap.

All in all, enjoyable and very under-rated primarily, i suspect, because people come at it expecting a western rather than a historical film in the adventure vein. But it’s elevated by the intriguing narrative, the questionable hero, Quinn’s performance and the introduction to a new-look Bronson.

Frenchman Henri Verneuil (The Sicilian Clan, 1969) does well to probe so many issues for an audience probably expecting something more straightforward. James Webb (Alfred the Great, 1969) wrote the screenplay based on novel by a William Faherty, a Jesuit priest. In the book, the hero was a soldier who became a priest rather than an atheist opportunistic outlaw.