Beau Bridges – The Magnificent 60s

Independent production company Mirisch had enjoyed spectacular success in the 1960s both at the box office and the Oscars. Commercial successes included The Magnificent Seven (1960) and sequels, The Apartment (1960), West Side Story (1961), The Great Escape (1963), Hawaii (1966) despite its huge budget, and In the Heat of the Night (1967). Walter, who did the legwork on the production side – his brothers Harold and Marvin were more backroom boys – picked up the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night and two other films he was involved in won Best Picture. Their films were solely distributed through United Artists, with whom they had a profitable relationship for most of the decade. But cracks were beginning to show in the 1970s and in the final reckoning after a meltdown at the box office Mirisch and UA went their separate ways in 1974. Harold had died in 1968 and Marvin pulled back, leaving Walter to go it alone with Universal, with some success – Midway (1976) and Same Time, Next Year (1978).

The demise of the original Mirisch came as their business was spiralling out of control. With a total loss of $32.6 million covering 13 films made for United Artists between 1966 and 1972, it was small wonder it spelled the end of the road for the independent company. Norman Jewison musical Fiddler on the Roof, an adaptation of the Broadway hit, was one of only three movies to end up in the black, clocking up $6.8 million profit. Return of the Seven (1966) starring Yul Brynner earned a meager $37,000 in profit from cinema exhibition and its overall profitability of $588,000 depended on $1.6 million from sales to television. The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972) with Lee Van Cleef only made a small profit of $236,000 thanks to television and even counting in sales to the small screen Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) didn’t reach that benchmark.

Television played a significant role in keeping losses down to $32.6 million. Fiddler on the Roof went to television for $3 million, The Hawaiians / Master of the Island (1970) starring Charlton Heston, a sequel to Hawaii, and They Call Me Mister Tibbs for $1.3 million and The Organization $1.1 million, respectively, the latter two films relying on Sidney Poitier reprising his role from In the Heat of the Night.

Various deductions, not always obvious to outsiders, come off the top of rentals and television sales. First there are the distribution fees paid to United Artists, then marketing costs, finance, and profit shares – Brynner and Poitier were on percentages as was Jewison (on a whopping 20 per cent), and these were often paid out against overall rentals rather than actual profits.

In an alarming shift from the glory days of the 1960s, Mirisch presided over some out-and-out disasters. Jewison’s rites-of-passage Gaily, Gaily / Chicago, Chicago (1969) starring newcomer Beau Bridges (The Fabulous Baker Boys, 1989) in his first top-billed role and Greek Oscar nominee Melina Mercouri (Topkapi, 1964) went completely down the tubes, racking up a colossal $10.3 million loss. The Hawaiians / Master of the Islands directed by Tom Gries (Will Penny, 1968) wasn’t far behind – $8.3 million in the red.

The Billy Wilder (The Apartment) touch couldn’t save The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) starring Robert Stephens (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, 1969) from plummeting to a $7.5 million deficit. George Peppard western Cannon for Cordoba (1970) co-starring Giovanni Ralli (Deadfall, 1968) haemorrhaged $3.1 million. Heist comedy Some Kind of Nut (1969), directed by the renowned triple Oscar nominee Garson Kanin (Where It’s At, 1969) and toplining Dick Van Dyke (Divorce American Style, 1967) and Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962) faced a shortfall of $3 million.

Beau Bridges was also the luckless star of Hal Ashby’s debut The Landlord (1970) which went down to the tune of $2.5 million. School drama Halls of Anger (1970) starring Calvin Lockhart (Cotton Comes to Harlem, 1970) as a tough teacher was $1.8 million in the red. Jacqueline Bisset (Bullitt, 1968) in her first top-billed role in The First Time (1969) wasn’t a big enough attraction to prevent this tumbling into a $973,000 quagmire.

Even Sidney Poitier at the peak of his fame was no hedge against box office calamity. They Call Me Mister Tibbs was $1 million below breakeven and The Organization $500,000.

It didn’t help the Mirisch bottom line that it had invested $5.1 million in projects that were never made, although half of this was accounted by The Bells of Hell Go Ding-A-Ling-A-Ling, a Gregory Peck (Mackenna’s Gold, 1969) starrer directed by David Miller (Lonely Are the Brave, 1962) that was abandoned in 1966 in the face of extreme weather conditions with $2.7 million already spent. The studio has also lavished $1.2 million on I Do, I Do without a single foot of film shot. John Sturges spent $267,000 unsuccessfully trying to put together The Yards of Essendorf in 1969 that would have, variously, starred Steve McQueen or Warren Beatty (plus Ursula Andress and Jean-Paul Belmondo) in another World War Two venture. Sturges also wasted $68,000 on Richard Sahib to feature Spencer Tracy and Alec Guinness and $15,000 on The Artful Dodger, a sequel to The Great Escape.

Other projects sucking the well dry with nothing to show for it were Bandoola with an elephant as an unlikely World War Two hero to be filmed in Pakistan ($208,000 spent), Chinese Detective Story ($82,000) aka The Dragon Master with George Peppard lined up, The Egyptologist ($140,000), The Judgment of Corey ($185,000) with director Peter Yates (Bullitt), The Mutiny of Madame Yes ($110,000) with Ronald Neame (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) attached, Nothing to Lose ($92,000) to be helmed by Franklin Schaffner (Planet of the Apes, 1968), Andrew V. McLaglen (Bandolero! 1968) signed up for Warhorse ($39,000) and Snatch ($239,000).

The poor run continued into 1972 when Billy Wilder’s Avanti (1972) with Jack Lemmon, while not in the dire financial straits of the famous sleuth, still dropped $1.8 million.

SOURCE: William Bernstein, “United Artists Office Rushgram,” July 16 1973 (United Artists Archive, Wisconsin University.)

Red faces all round. Uneasy pirate spoof that misses all its targets, coming close to resembling the kind of movie that gives turkeys a bad name and saved only by a spirited performance by Genevieve Bujold. Uber-producers Jennings Lang (Rollercoaster, 1977) and Elliott Kastner (Where Eagles Dare, 1968) should have known better but were seduced by the tantalizing returns for Richard Donner’s The Three Musketeers (1974) and its sequel which had revived the moribund swashbuckling genre.

Robert Shaw (Custer of the West, 1967) was nailed-on for the leading role since had made his name playing a pirate in British television series The Buccaneers (1956-1957) and was as hot as he was going to get after the double whammy of The Sting (1973) and Jaws (1975). However, the movie takes its cue from one of the chief supporting actors Major Folly (Beau Bridges).

It’s color-coded. In case we can’t tell a good guy from a bad guy, we’ve got the Man in Red, pirate Ned Lynch (Robert Shaw), shaping up against the Man in Black, unscrupulous Jamaican governor Lord Durant (Peter Boyle). Ned is presented as a seagoing Robin Hood, Durant as the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham, his ruthlessness somewhat undermined by his predilection for playing with toy boats in his bath and for getting his hairy back waxed.

Twin narratives quickly unspool. Ned rescues from being hanged shipmate Nick Debrett (James Earl Jones) while Durant jails island chief justice Sir James Barnet (Bernard Behrens) and steals his treasure.

Stolen treasure being fair game, Ned and Nick hijack a coach-load of it, while Sir James’s on-the-run daughter Jane (Genevieve Bujold) ends up in their hands. Not being as black-hearted as his nemesis, Ned puts Jane ashore, but still a bit black-hearted humiliates her in a swordfight, and is disinclined to help her save her imprisoned father.

However, Jane has a trump card. For reasons unknown, Durant is heading back to England with a cargo of 10,000 dubloons, too tempting a target for any pirate. Naturally, nothing goes as planned but, as you might expect, there is a happy ending.

This might have worked, since all the ingredients are there, the laughing cavalier, the spirited woman, the humorous sidekick, the unprincipled villain. You’ve got an historically-accurate pirate ship for once, unlikely romance between high-born woman and charming scallywag, simple rescue-imprisonment-rescue scenario, and ample scope for swordplay.

Except the dialog is awful, the ship too small to accommodate any fighting so the pirates are landlubbers for the most part, and except for the duels between Ned and Jane and Ned and Durant, the swordfights are all kind of bundled together, and every now and then the action stops so we can hear a verse or two of a sea shanty sung by nobody in particular.

Though Ned and Nick trade cringeworthy, and in one case downright offensive, limericks, the best (only) laugh comes when Ned chucks Jane off a roof onto a canopy and follows up with the line “It worked.” It doesn’t help that Durant’s pederastic tendences are played as a joke. Everywhere you look people are turning cartwheels or are “blithering idiots” or “pawns” and as you might expect there’s a cat-fight and a monkey around to relieve a jailer of his keys. You are just praying for a shark to come along to put the cast out of their misery.

In the midst of this feast of over-acting along comes Genevieve Bujold (Anne of the Thousand Days, 1969) who must think she’s in a different picture. She is a feisty one all right, not above putting a knife to a man’s cojones, or kneeing them in that region, and, given the lawless state of the island, branded a criminal for wounding a rapist. At least she takes the whole thing seriously rather than as if being in a Mel Brooks picture.

It’s hard to know who to blame: the stars for acting as if enjoying a holiday from more serious fare; director James Goldstone (Winning, 1969) for failing to get the recipe right and employing a jaunty score that undercut everything, or writers Jeffrey Bloom (11 Harrowhouse, 1974) and Paul Wheeler (Caravan to Vaccares, 1974) for making a mess of the ingredients in the first place.

Of course, I am hardly blameless in drawing your attention to this, a sudden enthusiasm for pirate pictures sending me dashing into the wrong decade.

Watch for: Robert Shaw making a bid for the all-time Golden Raspberry; an unrecognizable Peter Boyle (Taxi Driver, 1976); Beau Bridges (Gaily, Gaily, 1969) doing his best Frankie Howerd impression; James Earl Jones (The Comedians, 1967) sounding normal, minus the deep-throated vocal tic on which he made his name; and so many inanities it falls easily into the So Bad It’s Good category.

Tag: Beau Bridges

Behind the Scenes: The Mirisch Meltdown

Swashbuckler (1976) **