Barbara Bel Geddes – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: From Big Screen Failure to Small Screen Redemption

Despite a heady concept and some excellent acting, Martin Ritt’s Five Branded Women (1960) – reviewed yesterday – was a flop on initial release. So television studios were not exactly lining up to provide it with its small screen premiere. In fact, the length between big screen release and small screen showing had been so truncated by that point (The Magnificent Seven, for example, out the same year was seen on television within two years of release) that it could have been shown on television any time from 1962 to 1966, and probably would have been had initial performance suggested there was a big audience awaiting its small screen premiere.

The other possibility for a flop was that between cinema release and television screening, the stars had gone on to better things so a small screen showing could be promoted off the back of a current big screen success or, better still, series of successes. But that wasn’t the case with Five Branded Women. Star Silvana Mangano had meant little to US moviegoers since Bitter Rice (1949). Jeanne Moreau’s sizzle at the arthouse box office had diminished and the limited success of Viva Maria (1965) was put down to the presence of her compatriot Brigitte Bardot. Vera Miles hadn’t appeared in a movie since The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Barbara Bel Geddes was a long way from career revival in Dallas and all she had to show for the intervening years was a small part in By Love Possessed (1961) and a single episode in television. Italian Carla Gravina had no U.S. imprint at all. As a leading actor, Van Heflin was a busted flush.

So there was some consternation when Five Branded Women took ninth place in the television rankings for movies receiving their television premiere between 1966 and 1968. There was just no accounting for it. The same could be said for Your Cheatin’ Heart (1964) which was one place ahead of Five Branded Women. Star George Hamilton had not made it big, the film was an indifferent performer at the box office and its subject, Hank Williams, was long dead.

But television had a knack of providing unlikely redemption for movies that generally ended up on the wrong side of the box office. Cliff Robertson who headed the cast of PT 109 (1963) was still in the category of rising star with no breakout hits to suggest he was capable of rising to greater things. While 633 Squadron (1964) had done reasonable business, thriller Masquerade (1965) and war picture Up from the Beach (1965) had done so badly he was demoted to second billing in The Honey Pot (1967), incidentally another flop. He did achieve a breakthrough with Charly in 1968 but PT 109 was shown on television the year before. So how did that happen? You could maybe point to the continuing popularity of dead President John F. Kennedy, whose wartime heroism this movie recalled, but he had been dead when the movie first came out and that didn’t send it shooting to the top of the box office charts. On the television charts this came in one place behind Five Branded Women, although 633 Squadron could only manage a distant 92^nd.

There were other surprises. Second Time Around (1961) placed 15^th. But star Debbie Reynolds was still a genuine box office attraction after The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) and the unexpected success of The Singing Nun (1966).

Otherwise, the biggest hitters on television were Alfred Hitchcock, Elvis Presley and Doris Day. Hitchcock topped this particular chart with The Birds (1963), though presumably somewhat censored. His North by Northwest (1959) took 14^th spot, Marnie (1964) placed 26^th and Rear Window (1958) 39^th.

Elvis Presley placed 11^th with Roustabout (1964), 21^st with Blue Hawaii (1961), 25^th with Tickle Me (1965) and 41^st with Fun in Acapulco (1963). Doris Day clocked in at 12^th with That Touch of Mink (1962), 19^th with Send Me No Flowers (1964), 23^rd with The Thrill of It All (1963) and 35^th with Move Over, Darling (1963).

Television had paid record sums to acquire the likes of Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and The Robe (1963), taking second and sixth positions, respectively, and undoubtedly helped by the ongoing success of director David Lean (Doctor Zhivago, 1965) and Richard Burton (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, 1966).

Others in the top then were Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), which had been successfully reissued in cinemas in a double bill with Butterfield 8 (1960), both headlining Elizabeth Taylor, to capitalize on her Oscar-winning turn in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. This came in third followed by The Great Escape (1964) and John Wayne as McLintock (1963) with Maureen O’Hara. Lilies of the Field (1963) was seventh.

The Made-for-TV films were beginning to make an impact. The Doomsday Flight (1966), released theatrically overseas, was 17^th, one spot ahead of The Longest Hundred Miles (1967) with rising stars Doug McClure and Katharine Ross and seven ahead of Fame Is the Name of the Game (1967) with Tony Franciosa (Fathom, 1967) and Jill St John (Tony Rome, 1967).

Other notable small screen results were registered by Natalie Wood-Warren Beatty starrer Splendor in the Grass (1961) which took 12^th spot, Shirley MacLaine and an all-star cast in What A Way To Go (1964) in 16th, Susan Hayward Oscar-winning weepie I Want To Live (1958) in 21^st, and Henry Fonda and Maureen O’Hara in Spencer’s Mountain (1963) in 23^rd.

SOURCE: “All Network Prime Time Features” (Seasons 1966-1967 and 1967-1968),” Variety, September 11, 1968, p47.

Five Branded Women (1960) ****

Should have qualified as that rare thing – an all-star female cast. Italian Silvana Mangano had led the arthouse revolution and kickstarted the importing of sexy Italians in international hit Bitter Rice (1949), Jeanne Moreau was a leading light in the French New Wave (and another sexy import to boot) as star of Les Liaisons Dangereuses/Dangerous Liaisons (1959), Vera Miles was hot after Psycho (1960), rising star Barbara Bel Geddes (Vertigo, 1958) another Hitchcock protegee. Never mind that the story was a serious one, the redemption of female collaborators in Yugoslavia in World War Two, there was still time for what had become very much a western genre cliché, the inability of any woman not to strip off at the sight of a waterfall – here all five go skinny dipping.

The narrative should have been clearcut as redemption tales generally are: miscreant finds salvation. But this one is pretty muddled up and the moral confusion gets in the way. While some of the women such as Ljubo (Jeanne Moreau) have sex with the occupying Germans to prevent a brother being sent to a work camp, others such as Jovanka (Silvana Mangano) simply fall in love or like widow Marja (Barbara Bel Geddes) are desperate for a child. All five have been conquests of German lothario Sgt Keller (Steve Forrest) who is castrated by the partisans. The women are humiliated by the partisans who shave their heads and the Germans cast them out of the town, Daniza (Vera Miles) part of the quintet though she denies having sex with Keller.

*Like “Deadly Companions” the marketeers major on the promise of female nudity in a pool.*

But it’s not just the Germans who are apt to have predatory notions about women. A pair of armed collaborators consider them fair game and attempt to rape Jovanka and Ljubo. Partisan Branko (Harry Guardino) – ostensibly in the category of good guy – attempts to rape Jovanka then seduces Daniza. The lovers are later executed by the partisans for breaking the rule not to have sex with each other. And this is where it gets mixed up. The pair were meant to be on guard when they started having sex. In consequence, three Germans sneaked into their camp and nearly caused disaster. Despite that, Jovanka, who believes she was unfairly treated in the first place in being denied love just because there was a war on, still insists that they shouldn’t be condemned for ordinary human desire.

The movie works best when it sticks to straightforward redemption or is character-driven. Given the chance Jovanka turns into an effective partisan, cutting down Germans with a machine gun, preventing rape of herself and Ljubo by shooting the attackers with a captured pistol. But she rejects an attempt at reconciliation by partisan leader Velko (Van Heflin), the one who had cut off her hair, blaming him for her unnecessary humiliation. He later tries to make amends, by trying to keep her out of brutal action.

Despite taking up arms, the women remain vulnerable to smooth-talking men. Ljubo takes prisoner Capt Reinhardt (Richard Basehart), who might fall into the “good German” category since he isn’t like Keller, was a professor of philosophy and generates sympathy because his wife died in an air raid. Taking his word of honor, Ljubo unties him. She thinks he will be exchanged for a partisan prisoner. But he knows the truth – there are no partisan prisoners available for exchange because the Germans kill them. So he tries to escape, and she machine guns him in the back.

By this point Ljubo is far from a soft touch, not likely to prattle on about women being free to love the enemy or their compatriots, and is the one who shoots Daniza as part of a firing squad when it is left to her or Jovanka to do so.

What saves it is the brutal realism of war, this predates the vengeful citizens who at war’s end would take revenge on local women who slept with any occupying Germans (Malena, 2000, showed this repercussion in Italy and it was the same throughout France). There’s certainly an innocence about female desire and Jovanka defending her right to have sex, though, surely, there would have been shame involved in having sex with even a Yugoslavian before marriage in what would still have been a devout country. So a complex defiant woman, refusing to bow down to male-enforced rules. But there’s a male corelative. Branko equally refuses to obey any rules, and his actions cause harm.

In terms of acting, Silvana Mangano and Jeanne Moreau are streets ahead of their American counterparts, and complement each other, Mangano loud and outspoken, Moreau quiet and brooding. Harry Guardino (Madigan, 1968), Richard Basehart (The Satan Bug, 1965) and Van Heflin (Once a Thief, 1965) are the pick of the males.

Martin Ritt (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965), who liked to back a cause, has chosen an odd one here, and after a slow start it picks up. Written by Ivo Perilli (Pontius Pilate, 1962) from the book by Ugo Pirro.

Easily leads the pack of the women-in-wartime subgenre and despite, or bcause of, the moral confusion still well worth a look.

By Love Possessed (1961) ***

You couldn’t get further away from The Magnificent Seven (1960) than this buttoned-up –Peyton Place melodrama but director John Sturges, struggling to put together a more favored project, ended up here. It’s not that he didn’t have experience in this genre, having helmed Spencer Tracy legal drama The People Against O’Hara (1952) and June Allyson in The Girl in White (1952) but it was only when you turned to this field that you realized how much more freedom there was in a western.

There’s no shortage of pithy dialog courtesy of Charles Schnee (Butterfield 8, 1960). The marriage of Arthur Winner (Efrez Zimbalist Jr) and wife Clarissa (Barbara Bel Geddes) is more “merger” than romance. Opposing lawyers are “friendly enemies.” Arthur’s son Warren (George Hamilton) balks at a “smug career.”

There a couple of marvellous scenes and the characters are well-drawn, too well-drawn perhaps, audience constantly being reminded of personality defects, and it reeks of the formulaic, wealthy lives coming apart in Mansionworld. The biggest problem is there’s way too many characters that suffocate the life out of the picture. The heat the director clearly expected to generate is missing, hardly surprising in a world where duty dominates.

We’re pretty much nearly halfway through the picture before adultery crops up, bitter alcoholic wife Marjorie (Lana Turner) falling for Arthur, the business partner of her husband Julius (Jason Robards). Just around the same time Warren avails himself of a one-night stand with local “tramp” Veronica (Yvonne Craig) because he wouldn’t dare lay a hand on fiancee Helen (Susan Kohner), the town’s richest gal.

Simmering in the background is what today we might recognize as early onset dementia, which in those days was just treated as the frailties of old age, when Arthur discovers his boss Noah (Thomas Mitchell) has been stealing from a client. So, as you can imagine, the whole set-up is all set to explode as characters rebel against self-imposed restraint.

First to crack in the bigger sense is Helen who commits suicide when a spurned Veronica accuses Warren of rape. Then you can take your pick of various other outcomes. And that’s a shame because there’s interesting material here, mostly left unexplored because we’re wrapped up in a game of consequences.

Ace Harvard law student Warren falls out with his father over the case, just discussed but never played out, of a young mother who has killed her baby. The woman, with a mental age of eight, believed her newborn was dead and so buried it. Warren argues his father should offer a plea of insanity, which Arthur rejects as a legal dodge. The question of how the pregnancy occurred is never discussed, but you can guess it could as easily be incest or at the very least someone taking advantage of an incapacitated youngster.

There’s a great scene – the Majorie A and Marjorie B sequence – where Julius explains how on the one hand his wife runs a great house and is a terrific social adjunct and on the other hand is wild, impulsive, demanding and it’s the second one he fell in love with and, although currently rejected, refuses to give a divorce. And it’s Julius again who has the best character defining scene, when he acknowledges that pity is “a dirty word.”

Some surprisingly raw language is used when it comes to the question of rape. “The law assumes a common tramp like Veronica can still be raped” and the question of consent carries a contemporary sting.

Perhaps the biggest issue is the unspoken. It’s not love the main characters are after, it’s sex. Julius is lame after an auto accident and that appears to hinder his activities in the marital bed. Warren is too scared of Helen’s reaction to engage in the normal fumblings of youth.

The top-billed Lana Turner (who headlined the original Peyton Place, 1957) is kept at bay for too long as the other factors are brought into play and to be honest she is way out of the league of the likes of Efrem Zimbalist Jr (A Fever in the Blood, 1961). He would scarcely come up to scratch for a woman like her unless she was desperate. And perhaps she is. Turner steals every scene she’s in. The only character who shows screen spark is the vengeful Veronica who refers to herself in the third person – “nobody treats Veronica like a tramp but Veronica.”

George Hamilton (A Time for Killing, 1967) has some moments, but not enough. The same goes for Yvonne Craig (Batgirl in the Batman TV series 1966-1968). Jason Robards (A Big Hand for the Little Lady / Big Deal in Dodge City, 1966) takes an early stab at the simmering tense persona he would make his screen template. Charles Schnee was so annoyed with what happened to his original script, adapted from the James Gould Cozzens bestseller, that he insisted on using the pseudonym John Dennis.

A well turned-out potboiler.