Tag: box office

Behind the Scenes: “Airport” (1970)

Ross Hunter had been a big wheel  in the production business for the best part of two decades, shepherding home hits like Midnight Lace (1960), remakes of universal weepies like Back St (1961) and Madame X (1966), play adaptations such as The Chalk Garden (1964), the Tammy movie series and Julie Andrews musical Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). He was as close to a sure thing as you could get. Even so, Airport, with a $10 million budget, was the biggest gamble of his career.

He paid $350,000 upfront plus another $100,000 in add-ons for the rights to the runaway Arthur Hailey bestseller. Initially, Hunter was targeting the roadshow audience, filming in 70mm, the first time Universal had employed Todd-AO.

Dean Martin, who had made Texas Across the River (1966) and Rough Night in Jericho (1968) for Universal, was first to sign up for his usual fee plus a percentage. Martin was at a career peak, carried along effortlessly at the box office by the Matt Helm quartet and targeted for westerns.

Hunter was pitching a movie with four major stars in Oscar-winner Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry, 1960), Dean Martin, Jean Seberg (Paint Your Wagon, 1969) and Oscar-winner George Kennedy (Guns of The Magnificent Seven, a1969) and another half-dozen names of varying marquee appeal that included British actress Jacqueline Bisset (Bullitt, 1968), and mature stars in Van Heflin (Once a Thief, 1965), Lloyd Nolan (The Double Man, 1967), Barry Nelson (The Borgia Stick, 1967), TV Perry Mason’s Barbara Hale and Oscar-winner Helen Hayes (Anastasia, 1956).

The picture came at a fortuitous time for Burt Lancaster. A trio of more challenging movies – The Swimmer (1968), Castle Keep (1969) and The Gypsy Moths (1969) – had flopped, so his marquee value was in question, especially at his going rate of £750,000 (plus a percentage). Doubts had set in with The Gypsy Moths, with MGM dithering over the opening date, switching it originally from summer to Xmas and then back again but happy to censor the picture to meet the approval of the Radio City Music Hall where it premiered.

And while he was still clearly in demand in 1968-1969, he had lost out the starring role in Patton (1970) with James Stewart in the Karl Malden role, which would have coupled commercial success with critical approbation. The shooting of Valdez Is Coming (1971) was postponed for a year. Originally it had been set for a January 1969 start date with Sydney Pollack directing. Face in the Dust, a Dino De Laurentiis production, never saw the light of day.

And although Lancaster later described Airport as “the biggest piece of junk ever made” (luckily he didn’t live to see Anora or Mercy), the disaster blockbuster put his career back on track. It was quite a change of pace for him, too. He wasn’t in every scene and at times he had to take whatever Dean Martin’s character threw at him. But what he brought to the picture was his natural electricity, the tension of never knowing what he was going to do. But Airport barely merits a page in Kate Buford’s biography.

Double Oscar-winner George Seaton was set the dual task of condensing Arthur Hailey’s 500-page novel into a lean two-hour movie which he would direct.  In a directing career spanning a quarter of a century, Seaton was well-used to handling big stars of the caliber of William Holden (three pictures including The Counterfeit Traitor, 1962), Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly (The Country Girl, 1953) Kirk Douglas (The Hook, 1962), Montgomery Clift (The Big Lift, 1950) and Clark Gable and Doris Day (Teacher’s Pet, 1958),

Jean Seberg, under investigation by the FBI, had revived an ailing career with Paint Your Wagon (1969).  Producer Ross Hunter initially preferred Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962) or Stella Stevens (Rage, 1966) for the role of Lancaster’s screen lover, but had to go along with Universal with whom Seberg had a two-picture “pay-or-play” deal (she got paid whether she made a picture or not). However, she was considered a marquee name in the international market, especially France where she had remained a cult figure after Breathless (1960).

Disconcerted by being considered unwanted, her natural nervousness increased until Hunter made a point of convincing her that he was “genuinely happy” at her involvement.

She wasn’t the only person to be considered second best. For the part of the elderly stowaway, six-time Oscar nominee Thelma Ritter (Boeing, Boeing, 1965) and Jean Arthur, who hadn’t appeared in a movie since Shane (1953), had been wooed before Hunter settled on Helen Hayes.

For Seberg, it was the biggest pay cheque of her career – $150,000 plus use of a studio car and $1,000 a week expenses for the 16-week schedule, but she lost out on a percentage. She was billed third. High-flying her career might be, but personally she was struggling, her marriage to Romain Gary in trouble and under pressure to help raise funding for the Black Panther movement. She was receiving calls in the middle of the night. “Many nights she’d be so frightened, she’d come and sleep on the couch at my home,” recalled Hunter, “there’s no doubt it was an extremely difficult period for her.”

Helen Hayes reminded Seberg of her grandmother, to whom the stowaway’s exploits would have appealed. As a teenager, Seberg had idolized Hayes. Dean Martin pushed for Petula Clark (Goodbye, Mr Chips, 1969) for the Jacqueline Bisset role and Stella Stevens (Rage, 1966), as well as being considered for the Seberg part, was also in the frame.

Virtually all the bit parts were played by Universal’s contract players. For Airport, the studio rounded up thirty-two of them. Patty Paulsen, who played stewardess Joan, was a genuine stewardess for American Airlines before she won the role on the strength of winning a beauty contest. It was veteran Van Heflin’s final picture, and also for composer Alfred Newman. George Kennedy would reprise his role through three other pictures in the series – though he turned down Airplane! (1980). 

Location filming at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport began in January minus director George Seaton who had come down with pneumonia. Henry Hathaway stepped in, at no cost, to cover. The producer had headed to Minnesota for the snow, but there was none around, and the production team had to import tons of fake stuff made out of whitened sawdust. Filming took place at night in plunging temperatures. Despite wearing face masks, cast and crew suffered and the freezing conditions slowed down the shoot.

Hunter hired a $7.5 million Boeing 707 for $18,000 a day. For studio work in Los Angeles Hunter brought in a damaged Boeing. Ironically, Dean Martin had a fear of flying and travelled to the location by railway. Ditto Maureen Stapleton.

Seberg’s outfits, including calfskin sable-lined coats designed by Edith Head, cost $2,000 apiece, though Seberg was less keen on the airport uniform. With Seberg’s hometown less than a five-hour drive away she was able to head home during breaks in filming.

John Findlater, who played a ticket checker in the film, remembered Seberg as “frail and lonely…very shy…she had a very hard time of it.” It took four days to film the scene where Helen Hayes explains the art of the stowaway and feels the brunt of the wrath of Burt Lancaster and Seberg. Delays always niggled Lancaster, for whom they smacked of unprofessionalism. To raise her spirits, Seaton improvised little comedy skits.

Seberg befriended Maureen Stapleton, playing the bomber’s wife. Seberg was “impressed” that Stapleton could cry on cue and the minute the scene was over be laughing.

In the end Hunter gave up the idea of a prestigious roadshow run, settling instead for a premiere opening at the Radio City Music Hall and first run houses across the country. There had been no shortage of pre-publicity. Any time an airplane hijack hit the headlines or a snowstorm shut down airports or an airplane skidded off the runway, editors were happy to insert a mention of the picture.

And there was an abundance of airports and travel companies willing to sign up for cooperative promotions, helped along by the fact that Edith Head had designed the “Airport Look” launched not just with male and female fashions but a range of travel accessories. A beauty queen competition “International Air Girl” managed to hook a 45-minute television slot in Britain.

Opening at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, a couple of weeks in advance of the national roll-out, Airport plundered a record $235,000, topping that in its second week, and scooping up $1 million before the end of the month. It was gangbusters everywhere, opening in prestigious first run locations, with nary a showcase/multiple run in sight. “Wham” was the description beloved of the Variety box office headline writers, the word preceding its $80,000 opening week tally in Chicago, $28,000 in San Francisco, and $25,000 in Louisville. “Smash” was also brought into play for its $40,000 in Baltimore and $33,000 in Philadelphia. The subject matter allowed the sub-editors who wrote the headlines some license, so it was a “sonic” $40,000 in Boston and a “stratospheric” $45,000 in Detroit. And it had legs. Week-by-week fall-offs were slight. It was still taking in $25,000 in the 24th week in Detroit, for example.

By year’s end it was easily the top film of the year with $37 million in rentals, way ahead of Mash on $22 million and Patton $1 million further back. And it kept going, adding another $8 million the following year as it was dragged back into the major cities for multiple showings (seven in New York) in multiple engagements.

Business was not so robust abroad. Though Airport managed a six-week run at the Odeon Leicester Square, where it received a Royal Premiere on April 22, 1970,  its opening week’s figures were down on both the final week of its  predecessor at the London West End cinema, Anne of the Thousand Days, and its successor Cromwell and the film didn’t make the Annual British Top Ten. But in Australia it led the field, though its returns were one-third down on the previous year’s Paint You Wagon and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

For its television premiere on ABC in 1973, the network demanded a record $140,000 per minute for advertising. Outside of Gone with the Wind, it earned the highest rating of any movie from 1961 to 1977.

But it also set up an industry. Sequels were the name of the game. And though Airport ’75 (1974) headlining Charlton Heston and Airport ’77 (1977) starring Jack Lemmon were cut-price operations, they were huge successes at the box office, the former hauling in $25.8 million in rentals, the latter $16.2 million. A fourth venture, The Concorde…Airport ’79 (1979) with Alain Delon, flopped and put an end to the series.

SOURCES: Garry McGee, Jean Seberg, Breathless, 2018, p167-171; Kate Buford, Burt Lancaster, An American Life (Aurum Press, 2008) p264-265; “Cast Patton & Bradley,” Variety, September 20, 1967, p13; “Airport Film Deal,” Variety, May 29, 1968, p60; “Steiner at Goldwyn Plant,” Variety, July 24, 1968, p7; “Dean Martin First to Sign for U’s Airport,” Box Office, August 5, 1968, pK4; “Hollywood Happenings,” Box Office, January 6, 1969, pW2; “Airport Will Be U’s First Feature in Todd-AO,” Box Office, January 13, 1969, p12;  “Seaton’s Temp Sub at U: H. Hathaway,” Variety, January 22, 1969, p7; “Airport Sequence Follows Real Event,” Box Office, January 27, 1969, pNC3; “17 Inches Snow Brings North East Business To Complete Standstill,” Box Office, February 17, 1969, pE1;“Ross Hunter’s Roadshow,” Box Office, April 28, 1969, pK2; “De Laurentiis Slates 3 Aussie Locationers,” Variety, September 24, 1969, p18; “Put Back Moths Scenes Cut Solely for Radio City,” Variety, October 22, 1969, p5; “Airport Smacks $1-Mil,” Variety, April 1, 1970, p4;  “Airport Contest on TV,” Kine Weekly,  April 18, 1970, p18; “Big Rental Films of 1970,” Variety, January 6, 1971, p11; “Encore Hits,” Variety, June 16, 1970, p5; “ABC Flying 140G Per Minute for Airport,” Variety, June 27, 1973, p14; “Hit Movies on TV Since ’61,” Variety, Sep 21, 1977, p70; “All-Time Film Rental Champs,” Variety, May 12, 1982, p5. U.S. weekly box office figures – Variety, March-April 1970; U.K. weekly box office figures, Kine Weekly, April-July 1970.

Behind the Scenes: “Witchfinder General” / “The Conqueror Worm” (1968)

Truth was the first casualty. Matthew Hopkins, the character played in the film by Vincent Price, was 27 when he died in 1647. He had been hunting witches for three years. Price was 57 when the movie appeared. Co-star Ian Ogilvy, aged 25, would have been a better fit, though he lacked the menace. Oliver Reed, who had the swagger and the scowl, would have been the ideal candidate, age-wise, since he was just turning 30. And the movie might well have benefitted from presenting Hopkins as a young grifter who through force of personality and cunning held a country to ransom.

Price wasn’t director Michael Reeves’ (The Sorcerers, 1967) first choice. In fact, he originally wanted buddy Ogilvy, who had played opposite Boris Karloff in The Sorcerers. When that idea failed to float with Tony Tenser – previously head of Compton Films – now boss of British horror outfit Tigon, a challenger to the Hammer crown, Reeves pivoted to Donald Pleasance who, although better known as a supporting actor in the likes of The Great Escape (1963), had headlined Roman Polanski’s chiller Cul de Sac (1966). But when Tenser did a deal with American International Pictures, the U.S. mini-studio insisted on contract player Vincent Price, the mainstay of their Edgar Allan Poe output, with 16 previous films (out of 74) for the company.

Twenty-one-year-old Hilary Dwyer (The Oblong Box, 1969), under contract to Tigon, made her movie debut. Rupert Davies (The Oblong Box) was a seasoned veteran while Nicky Henson (Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, 1967) was a potential breakout star.

Tigon was a relatively new entrant to the horror scene, founded in 1966 by Tenser. Its second picture was The Sorcerers; this would be its fourth. Tenser has bought, pre-publication, the rights to Ronald Bassett’s novel Witchfinder General, published in 1966. Director Reeves faced something of a deadline once Tenser finalized the £83,000 budget. AIP chipped in £32,000 which included a £12,000 fee for Price. While it was Tigon’s biggest film to date, it was pin money for AIP.

The film needed to begin shooting by September 1967 at the latest to avoid the worst of the British cold weather. But the screenplay proved too unpleasant for the taste of the British censor. Reeves had already begun the screenplay with Tom Baker (The Sorcerers) with Donald Pleasance in mind portraying “a ridiculous authority figure” and had to quickly revamp it for Price. The laws of the period required a green light for the script from the British Board of Film Censors, who were repulsed by a “study in sadism” which dwelt too lovingly on “every detail of cruelty and suffering.”

That draft was submitted on August 4, 1967. The second draft, submitted on August 15, proved no more appealing. A third, substantially toned-down version, was approved. This resulted in the elimination of gruesome details of the Battle of Naseby and a change to the ending.

Production began on September 18, 1967. Star and director clashed. Reeves refused to go and meet Price on arrival at Heathrow Airport and told him, “I didn’t want you, and I still don’t want you, but I’m stuck with you.” The star was riled by the director’s inexperience. When told to fire a blank pistol while on horseback, Price was thrown from his horse after the animal reared up in shock at the sound. Price, in real-life a very cultured person, was surprised at Reeves’ attitude because in general he got on with directors.

Price turned up drunk on the last day of shooting, the filming of his character’s death scene. Reeves was planning revenge and told Ogilvy to really lay into the star. But the producer, anticipating trouble, ensured Price was well padded.

Reeves was better known for his technical rather than personal skills. Ogilvy commented: “Mike never directed the actors. He said he knew nothing about acting and preferred to leave it up to us.” That wouldn’t square with him falling out with Price over his interpretation of the character. And Hilary Dwyer saw another side of Reeves. “He was really inspiring to work with,” she said, “And because it was my first film, I didn’t know how lucky I was.” She would work with Price again on The Oblong Box and Cry of the Banshee (1970).

Tony Tenser, egged on by AIP’s head of European Productions, shot additional nude scenes in the pub sequence for the German version, A continuity error was responsible for the freeze-frame ending. There was a short strike when the production fell foul of union rules. Producer Philip Waddilove and his wife Susi were occasionally called upon to act.

Two aircraft hangars near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk were converted for the interiors while a wide variety of locations were utilized for exteriors including Lavenham Square in Suffolk, the coast at Dunwich, also in Suffolk, Black Park in Buckinghamshire, Orford Castle in East Anglia, St John The Evangelist Church in Rushford, Norfolk, and Kentwell Hall in Long Melford on the Essex-Suffolk border. When the operation could not afford a camera crane, the crew improvised with a cherry picker.

Despite the tension on set, Price was pleased with his performance and the overall film. He praised the film in a 10-page letter. Price remarked, “I realized what he wanted was a low-key, very laid-back, menacing performance. He did get it but I was fighting him every inch of the way. Had I known what he wanted I would have cooperated.”

AIP retitled it The Conqueror Worm for U.S. release, hoping to snooker fans into thinking this fell into the Edgar Allan Poe canon, since the title referred to one of the author’s poems, part of which was recited over the credits.

The movie was generally lambasted by critics for its perceived sadistic approach, but is now considered cult. It was a big box office hit, especially considering the paltry budget, gaining a circuit release in the UK – “very good run beating par by a wide margin” – and despite being saddled with the tag of “unlikely box office prospects” by Variety did better than expected business in New York ($159,000 from 28 houses), Los Angeles (a “lusty” $97,000 from 16) and Detroit ($35,000 from one). The final U.S. rental tally was $1.5 million placing it ahead in the annual box office charts of such bigger-budgeted efforts as Villa Rides starring Yul Brynner and Robert Mitchum, Anzio with Mitchum again, James Stewart and Henry Fonda in Firecreek and Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot in Shalako.

SOURCES: Benjamin Halligan, Michael Reeves (Manchester University Press) 2003; Lucy Chase Williams, The Complete Films of Vincent Price (Citadel Press, 1995); “Big Rental Films of 1968,” Variety, January 8, 1969, p15; Steve Biodrowski and David Del Valle, “Vincent Price, Horror’s Crown Prince,” Cinefantastique, Vol 19;  Bill Kelley, “Filming Reeves Masterpiece Witchfinder General,” Cinefantastique, Vol 22; “Box Office Business,” Kine Weekly, June 1, 1968, p8; “Review,” Variety, May 15, 1968, p6. Box office figures – Variety, May-August 1968.

Behind the Scenes: The Overseas Box Office Breakout

For the first four decades of the Hollywood business, success in markets other than domestic was random. Many countries restricted the number of U.S. films that could be shown, others like Britain prevented American studios for a long time taking out of the country money earned at the box office.   There was always the chance it could be less profitable if a dominant foreign cinema chain or distributor demanded a larger slice of the box office. In addition, some genres that worked in America stiffed abroad – musicals and comedies found it hard to translate.

Except in extremely sporadic fashion, foreign box office was not reported in the trade media until the 1990s. So there was no such thing as worldwide grosses available on any real scale. These days for many films overseas receipts bring in more than domestic – Zootropolis a current example with around 70 per cent of takings coming from abroad – but that was virtually never the case until the arrival of the James Bond pictures, which acquired a genuine global brand, in the 1960s.

However, the United Artists archives held by the University of Wisconsin provide some  fascinating insights into the growing power of the foreign box office in the 1950s. Movies released into the foreign market would make a percentage of their domestic take. But that varied enormously. Even the star-studded Around the World in 80 Days (1956), the second-biggest blockbuster of the year Stateside, with a colossal $16 million in domestic  rentals took in less than a quarter of that abroad, just $3.9 million.

For some films, the percentage was better. Controversial William Holden drama The Moon Is Blue (1953) notched up $1.3 million abroad compared to $3.5 million at home. War picture Beachhead (1954) starring Tony Curtis bundled up $1 million overseas as against $1.4 million in domestic. The Barefoot Contessa (1954), boasting Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner, added $2.2 million in foreign coin to its domestic tally of $3.25 million.

Richard Burton as Alexander the Great proved the breakthrough, domestic’s $2.5 million matched by the exact same amount abroad. Robert Mitchum in Foreign Intrigue (1956) went one further, reversing the usual situation, foreign of $1.14 million ahead of domestic’s $1 million.

But the UA star with the biggest consistent pull overseas was Burt Lancaster. Robert Aldrich’s Apache (1954) knocked up $1.75 million abroad compared to $3.25 million at home. Vera Cruz, (1954) also directed by Aldrich and coupling Lancaster with Gary Cooper, hit a home run – the $3.94 million abroad being just short of the $4.5 million at home. The actor’s first venture into directing The Kentuckian (1955) kept up the pace with $1.97 million overseas versus $2.6 million at home.

While these were all action pictures, it was acrobatic drama Trapeze (1956), with Lancaster and Tony Curtis fighting over Italian sex symbol Gina Lollobrigida, that made Hollywood wake up. In the U.S, it came third on the annual box office charts with $7.5 million in rentals. If that took the industry by surprise that was nothing compared to foreign where the movie racked up $7.4 million.

Lancaster remained potent. Submarine war picture Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), co-starring Clark Gable, did virtually as well abroad as at home – $2.42 million overseas compared to $2.5 million at home.

Perhaps learning from the experience of Trapeze, UA went for broke with historical actioner The Vikings (1958) starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. Domestic of $7 million, enough for fifth  place in the annual box office league, was beaten by an overseas count of $7.34 million.

For the first time it appeared that Hollywood could count on overseas to swell the box office in sizeable fashion, thus allowing studios to invest more, especially in historical movies with an action angle, thus opening the door for the spate of 1960s roadshows. Such results also cemented star salaries. If a Burt Lancaster picture could make the same again abroad as at home that put him in a new category of dependable stars and allowed studios to gamble on increasing his salary.

That Charlie Chaplin proved  a better draw overseas than in the U.S. was largely by default. The actor-producer-director had fallen foul of American politics with the result that his latest release Limelight (1952) flopped. Abroad it was a different story and Limelight hit a tremendous $5.1 million. With the U.S. reissue market also showing resistance to Chaplin oldies, it was left to overseas audiences to show what cinemas were missing as Modern Times (1936) racked up $2.1 million and The Gold Rush (1925) $1.25 million. For comparison the reissue of Red River (1948) pulled in just $19,000 overseas.

Other notable leaders in the overseas market included: Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant and Sophia Loren in The Pride and the Passion (1957) with $3.17 million ($5.9 million domestic); Billy Wilder’s Agatha Christie adaptation Witness for the Prosecution starring Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich on $2.81 million ($3.75 million domestic); and Love in the Afternoon (1957) with $2.7 million ($2 million domestic) starring Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn.

Also making a noise overseas were: Stanley Kramer medical drama Not As a Stranger (1955) toplining Olivia De Havilland, Frank Sinatra and Robert Mitchum  on a $2 million haul ($7.1 million domestic): Sinatra again in Otto Preminger’s study of addiction The Man with the Golden Arm (1953) on $1.87 million ($4.35 million domestic); Sinatra in war picture Kings Go Forth (1958) on $1.83 million ($2.8 million domestic) and Kirk Douglas as The Indian Fighter (1955) with $1.84 million ($2.45 million domestic).

Bob Hope went against the grain when his overseas tally for Paris Holiday (1958) at $1.8 million bested the $1.5 million of domestic while John Wayne and Sophia Loren’s foreign engagements for Legend of the Lot (1957) counted as a disappointment with just $1.66 million compared to $2.2million domestic.

Low-budget Oscar-winner Marty (1955), produced by Burt Lancaster’s company, was as big a surprise abroad as at home, sprinting to $1.43 million ($2 million domestic). Others worth noting included: Bandido! starring Robert Mitchum on $1.42 million overseas ($1.65 million domestic); David Lean’s romantic drama Summertime (1955) with Katharine Hepburn on $1.3 million ($2 million domestic); Anthony Mann’s Korean War venture Men in War (1957) on $1.26 million ($1.5 million domestic); and Clark Gable in The King and Four Queens (1956) hauling in $1.24 million ($2.5 million domestic).

Olivia De Havilland as The Ambassador’s Daughter (1956) tabbed $1.1 million overseas ($1.5 million domestic) and Gary Cooper in Mark Robson’s Return to Paradise (1953) tallied $1.1 million ($1.8 million domestic). Slow burners numbered Dale Robertson in Sitting Bull (1954) with $1.1 million ($1.5 million domestic) and Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war picture Paths of Glory (1957) with Kirk Douglas shooting up $1 million ($1.2 million domestic).

SOURCE: “Foreign Distribution Gross Estimates,” United Artists Archives, Box 1, Folder 8, University of Wisconsin. Note that in this case “gross” means “gross rentals” not “box office gross.”

Behind the Scenes: “The Learning Tree” (1969)

I am indebted to one of my regular correspondents, who goes by the name of “Fenny100,” for the following “Behind the Scenes” report:

 The working title of the picture was Learn, Baby, Learn. Based on his 1963 autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree, it marked the feature film debut of Gordon Parks, who was the first African American staff photographer for Life magazine. With the making of The Learning Tree, Parks became the first African American to direct a major theatrical motion picture. Parks had previously directed “several short film subjects and two one-hour features for National Education Television” (New York Times, 2 April 1968). The project was five years in the making (Variety, 17 April 1964), the writer-director in talks with producers interested in optioning his book. Two independent producers first acquired film rights (New York Times, 17 August 1969) but they were unable to raise the necessary funds. Another producer allegedly offered Parks $75,000 to adapt the script, with the stipulation that he must rewrite the black characters as white. Parks declined.

At some point, Bob Hope’s daughter, Linda Hope, was interested in producing the adaptation, (Variety, 7 November 1968). Parks’ friend, filmmaker John Cassavetes (Shadows, 1958), introduced his work to Kenneth Hyman, an executive at Warner Bros.—Seven Arts, Inc., which ultimately funded the production, although Cassavetes accidentally gave Hyman a copy of Parks’ 1966 memoir A Choice of Weapons rather than The Learning Tree. Hyman became enthusiastic about working with Parks and reportedly struck a four-picture deal with him within a fifteen-minute meeting. The Warner Bros.—Seven Arts deal (Variety, 1 April 1968) referred to Parks as “the first negro in film history to direct a major feature for a major film company.”

 Also a well-respected musician, Parks was set to write the score, which (Variety, 12 July 1968) entailed a four-movement symphony. The production budget was set at slightly less than $2 million (Variety, 25 June 1969) and Parks was slated to receive twenty-five per cent of any profits (Los Angeles Times, 19 October 1969).


Principal photography was scheduled to begin on 30 September 1968 in Parks’ hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas, (“Production Chart,” Variety, 27 September 1968). Problems arose when the film crew, including six African Americans, began shooting in the town (Variety, 7 November 1968), a report which implied that the difficulties arose from racial tension. A later article (Variety, 25 June 1969) noted that there were twelve black crew members, not six, and blamed the tension between locals and filmmakers on the fact that Fort Scott residents wrongly assumed The Learning Tree was a “dirty film.” Parks said that shooting there eventually worked well, and that the local Elks Club admitted African Americans for the first time at a party thrown for the cast and crew. Parks was given a key to the city by local officials, and “Gordon Parks Day” was declared in early November 1968.


Following five-and-a-half weeks in Fort Scott, cast and crew moved to the Warner Bros.—Seven Arts studio lot in Burbank, California, where another two-and-a-half weeks of principal photography was scheduled, beginning in mid-November 1968. On 11 December 1968, Variety confirmed that filming had been completed.


Although William Conrad acted as executive producer throughout the shoot, his name was removed from the credits (Variety, 19 June 1969), though it was later explained that Conrad had agreed to help but wanted no credit, since The Learning Tree was “Gordon’s story.”


In discussing the small contingent of African Americans on his crew, Parks said (New York Times, 17 August 1969), “I hired 12 Negroes to work on the production. It was a fight, because the Hollywood unions are all white, but I got enormous cooperation from Warners.” The studio hired a black electrician, Gene Simpson, for the first time in its history (Los Angeles Sentinel, 13 March 1969), while publicist Vincent Tubbs – the only black union head as the president of the Hollywood Publicists Guild – worked on the film. Parks’ son, Gordon Parks, Jr., acted as still photographer. Seven African American craftsmen worked on the film (Box Office, 28 October 1968).


The Learning Tree was first screened on 18 Jun 1969 at a Warner Bros.—Seven Arts press junket held in Freeport, in the Bahamas (Variety, 18 June 1969). Following its debut there, Variety (25 June 1969) suggested that Parks’ “viewpoint on America and its racial problems” in the 1920s-set film might be negatively received by “black militants and other radical types.” Parks contended that black militants had been purposely planted in preview screenings, and although they had sometimes laughed at inappropriate times, they had generally congratulated him for his accomplishment. Parks stated, “But actually, I don’t care what they think. This is my story. I believe that in the black revolution there is a need for everyone.”


Despite the film’s perceived innocence, it received an M-rating (suggested for mature audiences) from the Motion Picture Association of America (Variety, 16 July 1969). It was due to have its world premiere on 6 Aug 1969 at the Trans-Lux East and West arthouses in New York City (Variety, 30 July 1969). Early reviews were mixed. Although the studio had initially planned a slow rollout of the film in arthouse theaters, its success at the more commercial Trans-Lux West – and relative failure at the Trans-Lux East – indicated the picture would play better at larger, inner-city theaters (Variety, 10 September 1969). A new “playoff pattern” was devised to take advantage of its box-office potential at theaters known for action films and other commercial fare.

Within seventeen weeks of release,  cumulative box office gross topped $1.327 million from just 27 theaters (Variety, 5 November 1969).

At Los Angeles at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, where The Learning Tree opened on 20 August 1969, a large fiberglass sycamore tree  – which the studio planned to donate to the Crippled Children’s Society of Los Angeles County once the film’s run was complete  – was built around the box office (Variety, 18 August 1969)

The Learning Tree was the U.S. entry at the Edinburgh Film Festival running 24 August – 7 September 1969. It won the Blue Ribbon Award from the National Screen Council in the U.S. for the month of September. The film went on to garner accolades including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Awards for Best Picture (in a tie with Joanna, 1968) Best Director, Best Actress in a Feature (Estelle Evans), and Most Promising Young Actor and Actress (Kyle Johnson and Alex Clarke).

Parks received an Annual Achievement Award from the Foundation for Research and Education in Sickle Cell Disease of New York City; an Achievement Award from the city of Cleveland, Ohio, presented by Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes on the 24 September 1969 Cleveland premiere; and a Certificate of Merit from the Southern California Motion Picture Council, which also named the film a “Picture of Outstanding Merit.”

On the commercial front, the picture was a solid hit, raking in $1.5 million in rentals (what the studio earns after cinemas have taken their cut) in the annual box office chart (“Big Rental Films of ’69,” Variety, 7 January 1970).

Parks received  honorary degrees from Boston University and Fairfield University in Connecticut. A week-long Gordon Parks Festival, also featuring Shaft (1971) and Shaft’s Big Score (1972), ran at Kansas State University in 1973.

Twenty years after its release, in 1989, it became one of the first twenty-five films selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress’ newly founded National Film Registry.

Behind the Scenes: “Sweet Bird of Youth” (1962)

Writer-director Richard Brooks had built a reputation adapting heavyweight literary works – ranging from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1958), Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Sinclair Lewis’s evangelism opus Elmer Gantry (1960) – the last two box office and critical hits –  and though he had Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim in his sights he had a hankering after more simple fare. He planned to go out on his own and had paid $30,000 to acquire Arthur Woolson’s Goodbye, My Son focusing on mental health and $70,000 on The Streetwalker, written anonymously by a sex worker, and more nitty-gritty than the current stream of high-end good-time-girl pictures. The Streetwalker would take a semi-documentary approach. Brooks aimed for budgets around the $700,000 mark.

But in the end, he fell for the blandishments of producer Pandro S. Berman, for whom he had made Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, one of MGM’s biggest hits, and Paul Newman, who had played the part of Chance in the original Broadway play. It had run for nearly a year and the cast included Geraldine Page, Rip Torn and Madeleine Sherwood who reprised their roles in the film. Ed Begley had worked with Brooks on Deadline USA (1952).

By this point Newman was rid of the shackles of his Warner Bros contract and spread his wings artistically and commercially, following up Exodus (1960) with Martin Ritt’s Paris Blues and the first of his iconic roles in Robert Rossen’s The Hustler. Newman was paid $350,000, half the total sum allocated to the cast. The play cost a total of $600,000 against a budget of $2.8 million. Even so, Newman’s stock was not as high as later in the decade and even with his name attached a film based on John Hersey’s The Wall about the Warsaw Uprising failed to get backing.

Brooks was reluctant to get back into the ring with Tennessee Williams, still smarting from the “repeated sniping” that followed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Brooks recalled that “during filming I talked with Tennessee on the phone a number of times and all was peachy.” But later the author complained Brooks had “butchered” the play. He was especially incandescent because Williams pocketed $1.4 million while the director made do with just $68,000. Brooks demanded “a signed letter written by Williams and published in Variety to the effect that he (Williams) liked the film version” before he agreed to helm Sweet Bird of Youth.

There’s no sign that Williams acquiesced and Brooks proceeded with his version which turned into flashbacks some of the incidents dealt with on stage through dialog.

“Most people go out to Hollywood with a seven-year contract to work,” noted female lead Geraldine Page, wryly, “It looks like I had a seven-year contract to stay away.”  A rising star when selected for the female lead for John Wayne 3D western  Hondo (1954), she didn’t make another movie for seven years, largely as the result of not being considered photogenic enough. For Hondo, a scene had been added, “in which she was called upon to acknowledge that she was not beautiful,” and that designation, although intended purely to reflect a self-deprecating character, stuck. Although another explanation for her absence was that she was blacklisted for her association with Uta Hagen, but it’s unlikely that noted right-winger Wayne would have employed her in the first place has that been the case.

Despite an Oscar nomination for Hondo, she made her way on the stage instead, to critical approval, New York Drama Critics Award and Tony nomination for Sweet Bird of Youth. After an Oscar nomination for another Williams adaptation Summer and Smoke (1961), her career was revived, after the industry “found out how to employ one of the top performing talents of the last decade.” No surprise, however, that she wasn’t MGM’s first choice. The studio preferred the likes of Ava Gardner, Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth, who would be doing little acting to portray themselves as fading stars.

“When I saw how they fixed me up (for Sweet Bird),” said Page, “I said, look at me I’m gorgeous.” Brooks made her get rid of “those fluttering gestures” that he reckoned “subconsciously were efforts to cover her face.”

Shirley Knight didn’t have to audition. She and Brooks met at the Oscar ceremony. All he asked of her was that she lighten and grow her hair.

“He was a man who really knew what he wanted,” recalled Knight, “He wanted you to do a certain thing and was clear about the look of it.” She was so in thrall to the director that she followed his instruction to the steer a boat in one direction even though she knew it would lead her to smash straight into a dock.

Given the controversial nature of the play, there were concerns the entire project would be blocked by the Production Code, the U.S. censorship body. But Berman was quick with the reassurance. He claimed it would be “the cleanest picture ever made…clean as any Disney film.”  To achieve that would require considerable trimming as the play involved abortion, hysterectomy and castration. Berman ensured these elements were eliminated. Brooks changed the ending.

Commented Williams, “Richard Brooks did a fabulous screenplay of Sweet Bird of Youth but he did the same f…ing thing (as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.) He had a happy ending. He had Heavenly and Chance go on together which is contradictory  to the meaning of the play. It was a brilliant film up to that point.”

Actually, Brooks was undecided about the ending. He wanted to shoot two endings, one as unhappy as the play. “But once the ending was on film – the one the studio wanted – production was shut down.”

Newman was more relaxed about any changes. “You have to make peace with the idea when you make a motion picture version of a play, it’s so difficult and it’s no sense struggling with things that were in the play.” With enough controversy riding on the picture, the studio banned the actors from talking to the media.

Initially, box office expectations were high when the movie hit first run. A $72,000 first week take in New York was considered “boffo.” It scored “a lusty” $28,000 in Chicago, a “bang-up” $15,000 in Buffalo, a “brilliant” $28,000 in Los Angeles, a “lush” $14,000 in Pittsburgh, a “bright” $16,000 in St Louis, and a “wow” $17,000 in Detroit. It generated a “loud” $4,500 in Portland, a “wham” $15,000 in Minneapolis and was “sockeroo” in Washington DC with $21,000.

But once it left the rarified atmosphere of the big cities, it stumbled. There was precent, the touring production of the play had also flopped once it left the environs of Broadway. Variety reckoned the timing was to blame as audiences showed “more aloofness to this type of fare” than they did a couple of years before.

The movie limped to $2.7 million in rentals – and a lowly 30th spot on the annual rankings – at the U.S. box office though foreign was more promising, ninth overall in France and 10th in Italy.

SOURCES: Douglass K. Daniel, Tough as Nails, The Life and Films of Richard Brooks (University of Wisconsin Press). pp146-154; Daniel O’Brien, Paul Newman (Faber and Faber, 2005), pp86-7; Shawn Levy, Paul Newman, A Life  (Aurum Press, 2009), pp169-171; “Folks Don’t Dig That Freud,” Variety, May 9, 1960, p1; “Metro Hot for Brooks,” Variety, June 15, 1960, p2; “Sweet Bird of Youth Will Be Ok for Kiddies,” Variety, September 13, 1961, p5; “Brooks Prostie and Psycho Indies,” Variety, September 13, 1961, p4; Vincent Canby,  “Seven Years After Her Film Discovery, Geraldine Page May Be Accepted,” Variety, November 15, 1961, p2; “Picture Grosses”, March-May 1962, Variety; “Fun-Sex Plays, ‘Sick’ Slowing,” Variety, August 8, 1962, p11; “Big Rental Pictures of 1962,” Variety, Jan 9, 1963, p13; “Yank Films,” January 23, 1963, p18.

Behind the Scenes: “Birdman of Alcatraz” (1962)

It took three attempts by different producers before Birdman of Alcatraz finally hit the screens. After the novel by Thomas E. Gaddis was published in 1955, Ingo Preminger, brother of director Otto Preminger, a year later was first to throw his hat in the ring – on behalf of director Joshua Logan.

Logan was on a roll, Oscar-nominated for Picnic (1955) starring William Holden and lining up Marilyn Monroe for Bus Stop (1956). Explained Preminger, “I knew Joshua Logan was looking for something off the beaten path for a personal project…(and found) exactly what he was looking for in the controversial novel.” Given Ingo’s track record – he wouldn’t produce his first film until Mash (1970), admittedly a smash – it was small wonder he didn’t make it to first base.

Twentieth Century Fox, under the aegis of Buddy Adler, had the movie on its schedule until abruptly dropping the project in 1958 when he failed to secure the cooperation of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. In fact, the Feds actively opposed the production, feeling the oxygen of publicity for the prisoner was undeserved.

Next up was accomplished independent producer Harold Hecht, who had formed a partnership with Burt Lancaster – Apache (1954), Trapeze (1956), The Unforgiven (1960). He was no more successful with the prisoner authorities – denied permission to shoot in Alcatraz or Leavenworth. But at least with Lancaster on board, he had a marketable commodity. Although he had a close relationship with United Artists, Birdman of Alcatraz was initially set up at Columbia and while shot on that studio’s backlot it was released through UA as a part of a 46-film three-year production package promising to be “as diverse, offbeat and box office” as previous offerings.

Lancaster had abandoned the actioners which had made his name and moved on to more challenging pictures. These days you’d call it virtue-signalling as he took on subjects as varied as evangelism (Elmer Gantry, 1960), juvenile delinquency (The Young Savages, 1961) and the Holocaust (Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961).

Neophyte Stuart Millar was brought in as director. He had set up in partnership with former agent Lawrence Turman (The Graduate, 1967) with a deal to make six movies in three years. His tenure at the helm didn’t last long and eventually he moved sideways to take on the role of producer. (He didn’t land a directing gig for another decade).

Though Lancaster had his eye on Jules Dassin (Never on Sunday, 1960), next in line was Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob, 1951) but he didn’t last long either. A decidedly odd choice, he fell foul of Lancaster’s impatience and was quickly replaced by John Frankenheimer (Seconds, 1966), one the new breed of directors emerging from live television, and who had made his debut on The Young Savages. Frankenheimer, going through a divorce, was reluctant to set foot in Los Angeles, and was lured there on another pretext by the actor who announced that, having just seen a cut of Young Savages, he was ideal for Birdman.

Not only was Frankenheimer he intent on revolutionizing the movie business, but he had the notion that he could reinvent television. After the demise of television’s Playhouse 90, he planned to set up a “creative stock company” of his former television colleagues and make two-hour programs for the small screen with the aim of helping “the medium out of its degradation.” He expected to win the backing of the likes of Arthur Penn, George Roy Hill, Delbert Mann, Ralph Nelson, Robert Mulligan and Sidney Lumet, who would all become major figures in Hollywood, as well as significant writers like Rod Serling and Horton Foote.

More pertinently to the project at hand, he intended to transition from mere director (i.e. gun for hire) to producer (in charge of his own career) and learn to function at “the business end of production” and to that extent was seeking overseas finance and lining up a $1 million adaptation of William Styron’s 1951 novel Lie Down in Darkness (never made) and Flowers of Hiroshima (never made). “Frankenheimer meant a new voice just at the time Lancaster needed it.”

Lancaster embarked on the picture as a campaign to free Stroud, who by now had served 40 years of a 50-year sentence in solitary confinement (a record). Obsessive by nature, the actor excelled himself, immersing himself in a study of Stroud’s books, letters, coverage of the case and penal law. Despite the enormity of the obstacles, Lancaster thought the movie and its attendant publicity would persuade the authorities to release the prisoner. Nor was Stroud much  help. “Stroud will not kowtow,” said Lancaster, “He will not make polite amends for what he has done.” He was impressed by the fact that “Stroud took a miserable unnatural existence and yet made it a meaningful thing.”

While the actor saw Stroud as rehabilitated through his ornithology, the Feds begged to differ, viewing him as a double murderer who was a danger to society. Lancaster turned down other more lucrative work – though still managing to squeeze in a $750,000 payday for Judgement at Nuremberg – in order to “tinker and groom this very uncommercial” picture.

Writer Guy Trosper (One Eyed Jacks, 1961) was hired to make the character, within a realistic framework, as appealing as possible.

The film was budgeted at $2.65 million though that included some of the losses incurred on The Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and The Bachelor Party (1957)  It proved a major collaboration between actor and director. “We blocked scenes,” explained Frankenheimer, “We decided to do the whole business of building the birdcage, of finding the first bird, of working with the birds – everything.” The movie was made in sequence to aid the ageing of the character. Lancaster didn’t wear a bald cap. His head was shaved halfway to the back and each gray and white hair was added individually

Lancaster spent two weeks rehearsing with 2,000 canaries imported from Japan as well as sparrows, until he could persuade the birds to hop onto his hand and peck at birdseed. To assist the recalcitrant birds, feathers were clipped so they couldn’t fly away. The method of achieving the scenes where the birds got sick and dropped from their perches was achieved by pouring lighter fuel down their throats.

The original cut ran four-and-a-half hours. The first half of the picture was rewritten and reshot. Editing would last another three months. Prior to release, Lancaster began his campaign to win Stroud a release, touring the country, addressing groups and journalists. He walked out of a television interview with Mike Wallace. Issues arose about Stroud’s homosexuality and the public opposition to Lancaster’s campaign soon derailed it.

United Artists planned an experimental release for the movie. Instead of going down the tried-and-tested route of the movie opening in big cinemas in big cities and working its way down stage by stage to the fleapits, A wanted to open the picture in as many houses as possible in new York in what it dubbed a “Premiere Showcase” (I’ve written about this elsewhere).

In one of those quirks that trade journalists pick up, it was noted that there was an ornithological cycle – on the path to release or in production were Bye, Bye, Birdie, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Sweet Bird of Youth, The Birds and Birdman of Alcatraz. The movie managed to see the inside of a jailhouse but only for a screening at Wayne County Jail in Detroit. Relations with the prison authorities otherwise remained frosty – Stroud was denied gifts and cards sent to him by stars and crew of the film.

Simultaneous with screenings at the 1094-seat Astor on Broadway and the 550-seat Trans-Lux 85th arthouse, UA opened the movie in eight other New York theaters (a process known then as daydating). The haul was $490,000 over three weeks. Stage two was an immediate moveover to 54 houses which locked up $196,000 in five days. Elsewhere it attracted the type of business expected of a prestige drama, not a prison movie as such. It finished the year with $2.2 million in rentals (the studio share of the box office gross) – enough for 27th spot on the annual chart – though observers reckoned it might be good for another $1 million or so once the effect of the ~Oscars (it was nominated for four and Lancaster was named Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival) kicked in.

It was successful overseas, ranked 25th of all the movies released in Italy over a two-year period. (Interestingly, in the same list poorer performer at the domestic box office The Notorious Landlady and The Counterfeit Traitor came eighth and 13th respectively, It was televised in October 1964.

SOURCES: Kate Buford, Burt Lancaster, An American Life, (Aurum,2008) pp 207-210; “Clips from Lots,” Variety, June 13, 1956, p24; “Banks Read Titles,” Variety, June 20, 956, p13; “Feds Veto Alcatraz,” Variety,  October 19, 12958, p3; “Stuart Millar,” Variety, October 12, 1960, p17; “New York Sound Track,” Variety, November 23, 1960, p4; “Feds Not Helpful,” Variety, December 7, 1960, p19; “Cruel and Unusual Punishment,” Variety, February 15, 1961, p2; “Playhouse 90 Alumni Band Together,” Variety, March 8, 1961, p25; “If Changes in UA Plans Due,” Variety, October 18, 1971, p7; “To Be Creative Not Enough,” Variety, February 11, 1962, p11; “Homosexual Question Raised at Birdman Feed,” Variety, May 2, 1962, p2; “Audubon Influence,” Variety, May 2, 1965, p3; “Birdman Jail Screening,” Variety, July 4, 1962, p64; “Frankenheimer Thinks Out Loud,” Variety, July 18, 1962, p13; “Premiere Showcase,” Variety, August 22, 1962, p7; “Big Rental Pictures of 1962,” Variety, January 9, 1963, p13.

Behind the Scenes: “Bus Riley’s Back in Town” (1965)

Small wonder that Bus Riley’s Back in Town found scant appreciation on producer’s Elliott Kastner’s dance card. He preferred to have people believe that his career began with box office smash Harper / The Moving Target (1966) rather than the two flops – Kaleidoscope (1966) and Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965) – that preceded it. As his son Dillon Kastner pointed out: “He always preferred to forget his first film. He liked to think his first film was Harper so he never put that title (Bus Riley) on his list of credits for investors.”

After jockeying in the Hollywood trenches for three years, Kastner should have been delighted to finally get his name on a picture after so many potential movies had slipped through his grasp. But he had good reason to want to forget the experience of working on Bus Riley. It sat on the shelf for a year and, minus the involvement of the producer, was “butchered” by the studio.

By the time the movie appeared it was the latest in a long line of failed attempts by former agent Elliott Kastner to get onto the Hollywood starting grid. He had previously been involved in a pair to star Warren Beatty – Honeybear, I Love You with a screenplay by Charles Eastman and Boys and Girls Together adapted from the William Goldman bestseller with Joseph Losey (Accident, 1966) lined up as director. Also on his scorecard were 1963 William Inge play Natural Affection, Tropic of Cancer from the controversial Henry Miller novel and The Crows of Edwina Hill. At the time of the Bus Riley opening, he had acquired a further seven properties.

Bus Riley was never intended as a major picture, the budget limited to $550,000 – at a time when a decent-sized budget was well over $1 million. Shot in Spring 1964, and in post-production in July, release was delayed until Universal re-edited it and added new scenes because Ann-Margret had  achieved surprising movie stardom between her recruitment and the film’s completion. Along with Raquel Welch, she became one of the most glamorous stars of the decade and in building up her own career Welch clearly followed the Ann-Margret template of taking on a bucket of roles and signing deals with competing studios.

After making just three movies – A Pocketful of Miracles (1962), State Fair (1962) and Bye, Bye Birdie (1963) – Ann-Margret shot into the fast lane, contracted for three movies with MGM at an average $200,000 per plus an average 12% of the profit, substantial sums for a neophyte. On top of that she had four far less remunerative pictures for Twentieth Century Fox, three for Columbia, Marriage on the Rocks with Frank Sinatra and a couple of others. By the time Bus Riley finally appeared, she had expanded her appeal through Viva Las Vegas (1964) opposite Elvis and top-billed roles in Kitten with a Whip (1964) and The Pleasure Seekers (1964).

Universal also had another property to protect. Michael Parks was one of small contingent of novice actors in whom the studio had invested considerable sums, using them in television roles before placing them in major movies. Others in this group – at a time when most studios had abandoned the idea of developing new talent – included Katharine Ross and Tom Simcox who both appeared in Shenandoah (1965), James Farentino (The War Lord, 1965), Don Galloway (The Rare Breed, 1965), Doug McClure (The Lively Set, 1964) and Robert Fuller and Jocelyn Lane in Incident at Phantom Hill (1965).

However, the introduction of Parks had not gone to plan. He was set to make his debut in The Wild Seed (1965) – originally titled Daffy and going through several other titles besides – but that was also delayed until after Bus Riley, riding on Ann-Margret’s coat-tails, offered greater potential. Kastner had been instrumental in the casting of Parks – whom he tabbed as “a wonderful up-and-coming actor” – in The Wild Seed.

Also making their movie debuts in Bus Riley were Kim Darby (True Grit, 1969) and Canadian director  Harvey Hart (Dark Intruder, 1965), an established television name. Hart joined David Lowell Rich and Jack Smight as the next generation of television directors making the transition. Universal was on a roll, in 1964 greenlighting 25 pictures, double the number of productions in any year since 1957.

Falling just behind Tennessee Williams league in terms of marquee clout, playwright William Inge had won an Oscar for Splendor in the Grass (1961) and been responsible for a string of hits including Come Back Little Sheba (1952) – Oscar for Shirley Booth – the Oscar-nominated Picnic (1955) starring William Holden and Kim Novak and Bus Stop (1956) with Marilyn Monroe.

Kastner had persuaded him to turn his little-known 1958 one-act play All Kinds of People into a movie-length screenplay. Inge was initially keen to work on a low-budget picture, anticipating “more freedom with an abbreviated budget.” He asserted, “You don’t have the front office calling you up all the time.” Since the movie was not initially envisaged as a star vehicle for Ann-Margret (and, in fact, she plays the supporting role) he saw it as a “way of breaking up that old Hollywood method of selling pictures before they were made” on the back of a big star and hefty promotional budget.

Unfortunately for him, once Universal realized they had, after all, a star vehicle, the studio concluded that her image was more important than the “dramatic impact” of the film. “When we signed Ann-Margret she wasn’t a big star but in six months she was and Universal became very frightened of her public image. They wanted a more refined image.”

Kastner and Inge were elbowed aside as Universal ordered a rewrite and reshoots. Inge took his name off the picture. The credited screenwriter Walter Gage did not exist, he was created to get round a Writer’s Guild dictat that no movie could be shown without a writer’s name on the credits.

Despite her supposed growing power, Ann-Margret had little say in preventing the changes either. She expressed her disappointment to Gordon Gow of Films and Filming: “You should have seen the film we shot originally. William Inge’s screenplay…had been so wonderful. So brutally honest, And the woman, Laurel, as he wrote her, was mean and he made that very sad. But the studio at the time didn’t want me to have that image for the young people of America. They thought it was too brutal a portrayal. They wanted me to re-do five key scenes. And those scenes completely changed the story. There were two of these scenes that I just refused to do. The other three I did, but I was upset and angry.”

Film historian James Robert Parish refuted Ann-Margret’s recollection of events. He claimed the changes were made at her insistence because she wanted to be the focal point of the narrative rather than Bus Riley (Michael Parks).

Harvey Hart reckoned Universal got cold feet after the audience attending a sneak preview made “idiotic” comments on the questionnaire. Recalled Kastner, “I had nothing but heavy fiddling and interference from Universal.” Even so, given it was his debut production, he wasn’t likely to disown then and didn’t follow Inge in removing his name.

Despite the changes, the movie received a cool reception at the box office. It turned in opening weeks of a “modest” $7,000 in Columbus, “slow” $9,000 in Boston, “modest” $9,000 in Washington, “lightweight” $10,000 at the 1642-seat Palace in New York, “mild” $4,000 in Provident, “so-so” $4,000 in Portland, “not so good” $7,000 in Pittsburgh, “okay” $7,000 in Philadelphia, and $98,000 from 22 houses in Los Angeles with the only upticks being a “good” $7,000 in Cincinnati and a “fast” $7,000 in Minneapolis. The movie didn’t register in Variety’s Annual Box Office Chart which meant it earned less than $1 million in U.S. rentals and was listed as a flop.

SOURCES: Elliott Kastner Memoir, courtesy of Dillon Kastner; “Elliott Kastner’s Partner on Honeybear Is Warren Beatty,” Variety, January 23, 1963, p4; “Elliott Kastner Will Helm Crows for U,” Variety, May 1, 1963, p21; “Escalating Actress,” Variety, May 22, 1963, page 4; “Raid Canadian Director,” Variety, March 4, 1964, p24; “Inge Thinks Writer Contentment May Lie in Creative Scope of Cheaper Pix,” Variety, May 6, 1964, p2; “Ann-Margret Into the Cash Splash,” Variety, July 22, 1964, p5; “Universal Puts 9 Novices Into Pix,” Variety, March 3, 1965, p25; “ A Collective Byline,” Variety, March 17, 1965, p2; “U Stable of Promising Thespians,” Variety, March 17, 9965, p2; “Fear Ann-Margret Going Wrongo in Her Screen Image,” Variety, March 24, 1965, p5; “Radical Kastner-Gershwin Policy: Get Scripts in Shape Way Ahead,” Variety, May 19, 1965, p19; “Warren Beatty Partner and Star of Goldman Tale Via Elliott Kastner,” March 31, 1965, p7; “Picture Grosses,” Variety – March-May 1965.

Behind the Scenes: United Artists Goes to War on a Low Budget – “Submarine X-1” (1968) and Five Others

With the contraction of Hollywood production in the 1960s, cinemas worldwide were always crying for pictures – any pictures – that could take up a weekly slot or pad out a double bill. (The single-bill programming that is standard these days was not welcome in most cinemas, except a prestigious few, and audiences expected to see two movies for the price of their ticket). Indie unit Mirisch had scored such a big hit with aerial war number 633 Squadron (1964) – it recouped its entire cost from British distribution so was in profit for the rest of its global run – that Walter Mirisch persuaded distribution partner United Artists to attempt to capitalize on the idea and thus set in progress a series of war pictures to be made in Britain.

There would be cost savings through the Eady Plan. Each film would have a “recognizable American personality in the lead” and have American directors. Budgets would be held under $1 million. Half a dozen movies were planned, the first appearing in 1967, the last in 1970.

Quite whether James Caan (Red Line 7000, 1965) passed muster as a well-known enough star to qualify as a “personality” at the time he headlined Submarine X-1 (1968) is debatable, as was the presence of James Franciscus (The Valley of Gwangi, 1969) in Hell Boats (1970) and Christopher George (Massacre Harbor, 1968)  in The Thousand Plane Raid (1969) though Stuart Whitman (Rio Conchos, 1964)  exerted a higher marquee appeal for The Last Escape (1970). Veteran Lloyd Bridges (Around the World under the Sea, 1966) who headlined Attack on the Iron Coast (1968) was probably the best known, but these days that was mostly through television. And David McCallum owed whatever fame he had to television as part of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. double act and the idea that would still be enough to attract an audience for Mosquito Squadron (1969) seemed dubious.

Beyond setting up the project, Walter Mirisch had little to do with the actual production, putting that in the hands of Oakmont Production, which beefed up the action with judicious use of footage from other pictures. Invariably, reasons had to be given to explain why actors with American accents were members of the British fighting forces – most commonly they were represented as Canadian volunteers or might have British nationality by dint of having a British mother.

Storylines followed a similar template. At its heart was a dangerous mission. Leaders were invariably hated for some previous misdemeanor or because they were ruthless and drove the men too hard. If there was romance – not a given – it would border on the illicit. And someone required redemption.

And while none of the stars chose – or were chosen to – repeat the experience, Oakmont established something of a repertory company behind the scenes, writers, directors and producers involved in more than one movie.

Italian poster (photobusta) for “Hell Boats”. I found Japanese and Australian posters
for most of the films in the series.

Boris Sagal (Made in Paris, 1966) directed both The Thousand Plane Raid and Mosquito Squadron and then made his name with The Omega Man (1971). Paul Wendkos (Angel Baby, 1961) helmed Attack on the Iron Coast and Hell Boats. Walter Grauman who had kicked off the whole shebang with 633 Squadron returned for The Last Escape. William Graham (Waterhole #3, 1967) as the only outlier with just Submarine X-1 to his name.

Veteran producer Lewis Rachmil (A Rage to Live, 1965) oversaw three in the series – Hell Boats, Mosquito Squadron and The Thousand Plane Raid. Another veteran John C. Champion, younger brother of celebrated Broadway choreographer Gower Champion, was involved in a variety of categories. Champion is almost an asterisk these days, best known these days for producing the film Zero Hour! (1957) that inspired disaster parody Airplane! (1980). He was only 25 when he produced his first picture, low-budget western Panhandle (1948). He was behind another four low-budget westerns pictures before Zero Hour!, which had a decent cast in Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell. But that was his last movie for nine years as he switched to television and Laramie (1959-1963), barely reviving his movie career with The Texican (1966) starring Audie Murphy.

He produced Attack on the Iron Coast and Submarine X-1 and was credited with the story for both plus The Last Escape. Irving Temaner produced The Last Escape and received an executive producer credit on Attack on the Iron Coast and Submarine X-1.  Donald Sanford (Battle of Midway, 1976) was the most prolific of the writers, gaining screenplay credits for Submarine X-1, The Thousand Plane Raid and Mosquito Squadron. Herman Hoffman (Guns of the Magnificent Seven) wrote Attack on the Iron Coast and The Last Escape.

Cinema managers were not, it transpired, queuing up for the product. Most commonly, when reviewed in the British trade press, their release date was stated as “not fixed” which generally meant that United Artists was hoping the review would do the trick and alert cinema owners.

In the United States, they rarely featured in the weekly box office reports, though Portland in Oregon appeared partial to the product, Attack on the Iron Coast appearing there as support to Hang ‘Em High (1968), Mosquito Squadron supported The Christine Jorgensen Story (1970), Hell Boats supported Lee Van Cleef western Barquero (1970) while The Last Escape supported Mick Jagger as Ned Kelly (1970). To everyone’s astonishment a double bill of Hell Boats / The Last Escape reported a “big” $10,000 in San Francisco, but that proved an anomaly.

In Britain, the movies fulfilled their purpose as programmers, not good enough to qualify as a proper double bill, but accepted as supporting feature for a circuit release on the Odeon chain. Since UA supplied Odeon with its main features, it proved relatively easy to persuade the circuit to take the war films to fill out a program. This kind of second feature would be sold for a fixed price not sharing in the box office gross. However, they were given the kind of all-action poster they hardly deserved.

So in 1968 Attack on the Iron Coast went out with The Beatles Yellow Submarine. In 1969, Submarine X-1 supported slick heist picture The Thomas Crown Affair, which with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in top form scarcely needed any help securing an audience. Hell Boats was supporting feature in 1970 to Master of the Islands (as The Hawaiians starring Charlton Heston was known). As well as accompanying it on the circuit Mosquito Squadron in 1970 made a very brief foray into London’s West End with thriller I Start Counting and then reappeared a few months later as an alternative choice of support for Billy Wilder flop The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. If you went to see Burt Lancaster western Lawman in 1971 you might have caught The Last Escape – equally it could have been If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium (cinema managers could choose either).

United Artists, under the financial cost in the early 1970s, pulled the plug on “programmers” such as these. Walter Mirisch in his biography, disingenuously suggested that the six movies had done relatively well. But that wasn’t supported by the studio’s own figures.

Collectively, they made a loss of $1.7 million. Only Attack on the Iron Coast made it into the black and then by only $59,000. Hell Boats lost $700,000. None of the movies earned more than $200,000 in rentals in the United States.

Although Mirisch managed to keep budgets down to around the million-dollar mark, they would have had to be much smaller to see a profit. Ironically, it was the cheapest, Attack on the Iron Coast costing $901,000,  that made the most. Submarine X-1 lost $150,000 on a $1 million budget, Mosquito Squadron lost $253,000 on a $1.1 million budget while The Thousand Plane Raid lost $50,000 more on the same budget. The longer the series went on, the worse the losses – The Last Escape lost $449,000 on a $995,000 budget while for Hell Boats the budget was $1.36 million.

SOURCES: United Artists Archives, University of Wisconsin; Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008) p204; Reviews, Kine Weekly – Feb 9 1968, Aug 31 1969, January 1970, April 18 1970; “Flops Loss-Cutting,” Variety, August 26, 1970, p6; “Picture Grosses,” Variety – March 13 1968, May 8 1968, April 24 1968, October 2 1968, June 10 1970, July 1 1970, July 8, 1970, August 12 1970, August 26 1970.

Behind the Scenes: Exploding the Myth of “Jaws” (1975)

Just to follow on yesterday’s reissue of an article of mine regarding the box office of Jaws, I thought it might be timely to ressurect an older article which sets the record straight on some aspects of the movie’s release.

This was in response to the publication of movie critic Richard Schickel’ s Spielberg: A Retrospective which continues to perpetuate the Jaws release myth. I can hardly expect Mr Schickel’s due diligence to cover my own modest tome, In Theaters Everywhere, A History of the Hollywood Wide Release, 1913-2017 (McFarland, 2019), which is now (apparently) the standard text (in case you didn’t know) for all questions relating to wide release, saturation, call it what you will.

Jaws was not a phenomenon in the normal sense. It did not belong to the realm of the unexplained. In fact, mystery was the least part. It was eminently explainable, despite realms of academics and observers regarding its explosion at the box office in tones of wonder. Hollywood loves a legend, especially one of its own making, and the movie did conform to two attractive narratives, that of the tyro director Steven Spielberg coming good and of  the movie overcoming a massive budget over-run (from $3.5 million to $8 million) that could have sunk the enterprise at the outset.

Jaws did not not invent the wide release, summer release or the event movie.

To start with the biggest myth – the wide release – that had been around since the 1930s. The Wizard of Oz (1939) debuted on 400-plus. Warner Brothers signed up 400 for This is the Army in 1943. David O. Selznick created a new phrase for wide release, “blitz exhibitionism,” for Duel in the Sun (1946). In 1948 Twentieth Century Fox opened Iron Curtain, Republic Bill and Coo and Allied Artists The Babe Ruth Story at over 500 cinemas. Fast forward to 1960 and The Magnificent Seven’s initial theater haul was 750. Earlier in 1975, studios had gone for saturation broke with The Master Gunfighter opening on 1,000-plus with Breakout starring Charles Bronson claiming the record of 1,400 houses for the opening week.

In fact, far from inventing saturation or the summer blockbuster or even the event movie, the Steven Spielberg picture, was merely an extension, albeit a wildly successful one, of what had gone before. The problem with the scenario of “Jaws the Legend” is that too few people, academics and journalists alike, placed it against the backdrop of not just the previous few years but the prior decades during which  saturation/wide release had flourished.

Long before Jaws came onto the scene, the 1970s had changed and the two conditions that had marked out the previous decade, the reduction in studio output and the increase in saturation, were the prime movers. Jaws was not the beginning of a new era, but very much the opposite, the triumphant culmination of an old one.

It owed a great deal to the other 1970s box office phenomena – Airport, Love Story, The Godfather, Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure and The Exorcist.  Their most obvious common thread was that they were based on bestsellers and successful books enjoyed a publicity life and after-life all of their own, as well as providing marketing tie-up benefits and journalistic opportunity.

But turning bestsellers into films was not unusual, Gone with the Wind in 1939 the most obvious example. The top three movies of 1953 – The Robe, From Here to Eternity and Shane – were based on bestsellers as were 1958’s leading trio, Bridge on the River Kwai, Peyton Place and Sayonara. The Guns of Navarone (first in 1961), Spartacus (first in 1962), The Carpetbaggers (first in 1964), Thunderball (first in 1966), The Dirty Dozen (first in 1967), and The Graduate (first in 1968) were all taken from bestsellers. Airport, Love Story, The Godfather and The Poseidon Adventure were the number one films of their respective years, The Exorcist second in its. 

The subject matter of The Godfather and The Exorcist attracted a mass of newspaper headlines, Love Story because it was such an unexpected hit, while Jaws afforded endless journalistic opportunity. The Godfather, The Exorcist and Jaws all had in common budget and shooting problems. Like Jaws, the theme tunes to Love Story, The Godfather and The Exorcist were million-sellers. Airport apart, none of the biggies boasted established stars, Marlon Brando, although a giant of the 1950s, no longer a box office attraction while Gene Hackman was a potential one-hit wonder prior to The Poseidon Adventure. Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw (Love Story), James Caan and Al Pacino (The Godfather), Ellen Burstyn (The Exorcist) and Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss (Jaws) were virtually unknowns.

The idea that summer was a release desert had not been true for more than a decade, Paramount launching ‘a powerhouse of important product’ – a total of eight pictures – in 1970 – Norwood had 1,400 bookings between May 27 and July 8 in four waves of 450 theaters – more, incidentally, than the number of theaters showing Jaws in its opening week – each running the picture for two weeks. In 1973 Twentieth Century Fox, MGM and Columbia opened a total of 19 movies during the season. 

The Twentieth Century Fox schedule comprised the long-awaited reissue of The Sound of Music, Robert Aldrich’s The Emperor of the North, Battle for the Planet of the Apes (the fifth in the series), Jeff Bridges as The Last American Hero (with a tie-up with over 16,000 gas stations) based on articles by Tom Wolfe, and The Legend of Hell House, the whole shebang kicked off in late June by a featurettes on ABC and an eight-day television campaign.

Columbia reckoned it would need a company record 3,150 prints to meet demand for George C. Scott and Faye Dunaway in Oklahoma Crude, Burt Reynolds as Shamus, Charles Bronson in The Valachi Papers, romantic comedy Forty Carats, remake Lost Horizon, and concert documentaries Let the Good Times Roll and Wattstax.

The MGM septet included Yul Brynner in Westworld, Burt Reynolds in The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing and Shaft in Africa. In 1974, Twentieth Century Fox  targeted summer with ten movies including Richard Lester period romp The Three Musketeers, heist drama 11 Harrowhouse, chase picture Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Spys, and the ‘Ape-athon’, a quintuple bill of all the Planet of the Apes pictures, plus another outing for The Sound of Music. Substantial radio advertising was added to usual television/newspaper marketing mix, with stations in 30 key cities running an eight-week campaign.

The studio cleared $35 million over 13 weeks, up $5 million on its previous best summer in 1970. Paramount’s high voltage program included The Longest Yard and Chinatown. But it was not just the majors who recognized the importance of summer, Crown International and American International both reported record business for summer 1974.

The $1.8 million Universal spent marketing Jaws was both a large and modest amount. In proportion to production costs, it was less than Joe Levine devoted to Hercules or to the promotional budgets for four-wallers, and a lot less, than was allocated The Culpepper Cattle Company or Breakout. That television accounted for 38percent was not astonishing either since research proved that newspaper advertising was more effective.

Although claiming to be the largest amount spent in television spot advertising, compressed into the three days prior to opening and opening day (June 20) itself, it was rather last-minute compared to the selling of The Man with the Golden Gun for which United Artists ran 700 prints of a teaser trailer in theaters six months prior to launch and 30-second advertisements on the ten top-rated television shows well in advance of opening.

The tactic of specifying which television slots of movie would advertise on, as Jaws did, was far from rare, four-wallers specializing in this, and Breakout had done the same. In fact, the record that Universal claimed for Jaws, too, was questionable since Breakout had 42 30-second spots compared to 23 for Jaws. Disney, overall, spent a lot more. Nor did Universal knowingly aim for a summer launch – only shooting delays prevented it opening at Xmas 1974.  Nor did publisher and studio jointly adopt the same visual for Jaws from the start – a March 1974 trade advertisement in Box Office differed substantially from the iconic poster.

The marketing device of reporting grosses week-by-week was not novel either. Most the big hitters of the 1960s did not pull in money at top speed. Love Story changed all that. Paramount kept the industry and the wider newspaper planet up-to-date on a weekly basis of the movie’s unprecedented progress. Its $2.46million (actually $2.36million) in three days from 165 was the biggest in history and it set the seal on the industry reporting the weekend rather than weekly gross. The second weekend was $2.49million, the third $2.4million, the fourth $2million and the fifth $2.3million. That the second and third weekends both out-grossed the first, and the fifth weekend out-grossed the fourth, were publicity bonuses. The first five weeks topped $17.5million. Four weeks later, theater count risen to 231, it totaled $28.4million and two weeks further on, on 282 theaters, the gross stood at $35.4million.

When in 1972 The Godfather so quickly gunned down Love Story, it set in motion an ongoing marketing story, and the question facing each new hit, from The Poseidon Adventure to The Exorcist and The Sting, was box office speed and whether it could topple the reigning champion.

By 1975 accelerated grossing had become common: The Trial of Billy Jack hoisted $9 million in five days, The Man with the Golden Gun $5.1 million in a week, The Sting $7 million in two weeks, Papillon $11.25 million in three weeks, Airport ’75 $10 million in a month, Earthquake $7.3 million in a month, The Godfather Part II $22.1 million in under five weeks, Magnum Force $18 million in five weeks.

So when Jaws showed the potential to reach the very top, Paramount raced out of the traps with a series of advertisements showing the gap closing between the new movie and the title holder. This tack in itself was nothing new – The Robe, hoping to catch up on Gone with the Wind, had made a big hullabaloo of reporting opening week’s grosses day-by-day in the trade press and Twentieth Century Fox had capitalized on The Sound of Music’s overhauling of Gone with the Wind.

Jaws simply took advantage of a media ready-and-waiting for an accelerated box office story. Since money was made faster than ever before, box office records fell faster than ever before. It made news precisely because it was sustainable – week after week – an ‘immediate stampede’ at the box office – $14.3 million ($34,900 per theater average) in the first week, $33.8 million in two weeks and three days, $69.7 million in five weeks and three days, $100 million in eight weeks and three days, $150 million in twenty-three weeks. (It did not venture overseas until November, first stop Australia, and then it was a major Xmas release in seven hundred theaters in forty-four countries.)

Substantial questions remain about the Jaws saturation. Although history proved the Universal strategy to be a success, I am not convinced it was as deliberate as suggested nor that Universal had any idea of the winner it had on its hands.

There had been much larger saturations going back two decades and both Trial of Billy Jack in 1974 and Breakout in 1975 had debuted in over 1,000. The number of theaters involved in the Jaws launch was, I shall argue, proof of the studio’s lack of confidence not the opposite.

Studios with what they believed were guaranteed winners had consistently used a different scenario. The Exorcist opened in 24 theaters, Earthquake in 62, Papillon in 109 and The Godfather Part II in 157. Movies that opened in the Jaws range and above – Magnum Force in 418, The Man with the Golden Gun in 635, The Trial of Billy Jack, Breakout and The Master Gunfighter in 1,000-plus – were not expected to last as long. Statistics proved that for features with high box office expectation the slower limited roll-out was the more effective approach. The question really to be asked is whether Universal realistically expected Jaws to bring in rentals in the region of The Exorcist ($66million), The Sting ($68million) and The Godfather Part II ($128.9million) or whether its expectations were more in the Magnum Force ($18.3million) ballpark. I would argue that circumstantial evidence pointed to the latter. No other studio would throw away a prospective gold-plated opportunity on a saturation of the Magnum Force variety unless it reckoned grosses around the Dirty Harry sequel mark would count as a good return on its investment.

I would also challenge whether Universal actually deliberately limited the number of original theater participants. I would suggest it is much more likely that the studio encountered considerable resistance from exhibitors to being asked to hand over 90percent of the gross, agree a 12-week run and contribute to the national television campaign for a movie with an unknown director and no stars. Also, the movie did not, like The Exorcist or The Godfather, open in engagements exclusive to one city, but went multiple from the start, 46 in New York, 25 in Los Angeles; even Airport 1975 only opened in five theaters in New York.

More likely, I would venture, is that the original theater count declined over the blind-bidding controversy and/or when Universal and exhibitors reached a negotiating impasse. Negativity could also have been sparked by the recent experience of Breakout which fell short of box office targets. It certainly strikes of wisdom-after-the-event for Universal to claim this was a deliberate strategy. Nobody spends $1.8million on launch advertising in the hope that it would carry the picture all through summer since that would suggest a paltry $225,000 per week over an eight-week season.

Universal spent nearly two-fifths of the film’s production budget on that kind of launch because they wanted big opening grosses. For the first month, Jaws was restricted to 409 theaters in the U.S., the number increasing to 700 after five weeks and then to 900 after another three weeks, suggesting that exclusivity was part of the deal for initial exhibitors.

A tougher business take on the limited opening was that Universal shot itself in the foot.

With an 800-theater launch, grosses would have been stratospheric, even higher than the movie actually achieved. Ironically, it was roadshow precedent and practice that created the opportunity for Jaws to break all box office records. Without the guaranteed run that roadshows traditionally enjoyed, theaters would have dumped the movie, regardless of grosses, because they were already committed to another feature. Longevity, not opening week grosses, was the key to the Jaws record-breaking.

So if it was not a unique development in saturation that precipitated the Jaws success, or a new way of latching onto summer as an unrealized opportunity, or a breakthrough in publishing or record sales, or a novel approach to television advertising, to what else can you ascribe the movie’s unprecedented success?

Well, the answer is the simplest, the oldest, of all. The public just liked it. It hit a chord the way a raft of movies as different as Gone with the Wind, The Sound of Music and The Godfather before it. And it also benefitted from the public reappraisal of reissues, the idea that you could go back to see a movie you enjoyed again and again. Jaws broke no saturation rules and did not set new saturation boundaries. All the hard work on that had already been done. But it certainly reaped the reward. 

SOURCE: Brian Hannan, In Theaters Everywhere, A History of the Hollywood Wide Release, 1913-2017 (McFarland, 2019) p192-195.

Behind the Scenes: The “Jaws” Juggernaut

Given the surprising success of the reissue of Jaws this weekend – it came in second at the U.S. ticket wickets ahead of such new films as The Roses and Caught Stealing – I thought you might like a second look (or a first one) at exactly how Universal created box office history. And it was not the way you would expect. It did not follow the template set out by previous juggernauts.

Naturally, the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of Jaws concentrates on the budget overruns, director Steven Spielberg’s problems and the mechanical shark, and no one gives a hoot about the most important aspect of the picture – the box office. Sure, it’s always mentioned in passing, because otherwise the movie would have had little impact on pop culture, the driving force of the water cooler effect when so many people see the same movie at the same time it drives word-of-mouth into the stellar regions.

What is little known is how Jaws changed the release system forever. Even The Godfather (1972), its predecessor in topping the box office firmament, while spreading the goodies amongst nabes and the showcase houses did not ignore first run. In fact, for The Godfather Paramount used five New York first run houses – the 1025-seat Orpheum, 1175-seat State I, 1174-seat State II, 599-seat Cine and 588-seat Tower East – to create a pre-emptive strike. This quintet screened the movie exclusively for the first week, permitting the studio to trumpet the record-breaking results.

The other 350-odd cinemas had to wait a further week to get their hands on the gangster saga.

For Jaws, on the other hand, Universal completely froze out New York first run. Not a single first run house was given access to the picture on its initial release on this weekend 50 years ago.

Instead, in New York, Universal went down the showcase route and clocked up just over $1 million in the first three days at 46 cinemas. Prior to Jaws, the only pictures that would open first in showcase in New York and ignore that city’s vibrant first run were those that first run would most likely have declined to show.

With Jaws, across the country Universal was as ruthless in squeezing out first run if it could make a better deal in the nabes and drive-ins. So while Jaws set house records at all the first run houses that were deemed up to standard, it also creamed the nabes and drive ins. Significantly, not all the first run houses chosen would have been the first choice of most studios for a major picture. You wouldn’t have expected this behemoth to end up at the 925-seat Gopher in Minneapolis where it took in $47,000. Similarly, the 900-seat Charles in Boston ($55,000 take) would not have been your first choice (and it’s worth noting that it was only in this city that the movie did not top the week, beaten into second place by Woody Allen’s Love and Death at the 525-seat Cheri Three).

By and large, Universal picked off those first run cinemas that were so delighted to be asked they agreed to the tough terms – a 90/10 split in the studio’s favor and a 12-week run.

Other first run destinations included the 800-seat Cooper in Denver ($53,000 for openers), the 1670-seat Coliseum in San Francisco ($68,000), the 900-seat Southgate I and 550-seat Town Center II in Portland ($55,000 total), the 1836-seat Gateway in Pittsburgh ($70,000) and the 1287-seat Midland in Kansas City ($55,000). In these cities, the premiere outing was restricted to first run.

But while in Chicago the 1126-seat United Artists hauled in $116,000 in the opener, Universal played it canny by screening it simultaneously at four other nabes which brought in another $260,000. It was the same in Cleveland where the 455-seat Severance II was the only first run house among the five cinemas that hoovered up a total of $84,000. The first run 500-seat Goldman in Philadelphia was the only first run location among the total of 15 cinemas that knocked up $312,000.

Elsewhere, echoing the New York approach, first run cinemas were frozen out in Detroit, Buffalo and San Francisco. In Detroit seven nabes gobbled up $350,000, in Buffalo a deuce of nabes snatched $50,000, in San Francisco a trio set about $75,000.

We’ve all seen movies driven to opening weekend box office heights on the back of heavy advertising or hyperbole only to take a dive in the second week. And the fact that Universal was not making an “event” out of its movie by restricting it to first run meant that the sophomore weekend could easily have brought disaster.

Instead, receipts at virtually all the cinemas either beat the first week or fell only fractionally below. The opening weekend appeared to set the tone, every successive day better than the previous one.

Universal immediately set its sights on taking down The Godfather and began posting weekly advertisements in the trade papers hyping its performance at the box office. But in nudging first run out of the equation, it triggered the slow decline of first run houses.

Tomorrow, you can catch on my article that sunk many of the other myths surrounding Jaws, “Behind the Scenes: Exploding The Myth of Jaws.”

SOURCE: Variety.

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