Burt Lancaster – The Magnificent 60s

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 85^th 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 27^th 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 25^th 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 13^th 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.

Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) ****

It always helps a prison picture if your character has been wrongfully convicted (The Shawshank Redemption, 1994) or is incarcerated through an unfortunately set of circumstances including self-destructive tendencies (Cool Hand Luke, 1967). Whatever the case, the malevolence of the wardens or the emergence of his own engaging personality will ensure that your character is sprinkled with enough sympathy to transform into our hero.

But that’s not the case here and it takes a strong chunk of bravura acting from Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry, 1960) to pull this off.

Oddly, this works in the main not because it’s your typical prison picture with endless confrontations with guards and preventing your dignity being sliced and diced by a ton of humiliating actions. Walt Disney couldn’t have done a better job of hooking the audience with its nature true-life approach. I guarantee you will be chuckling to watch a newborn chick trying to shuck off the top half of its egg.

Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster), a pimp, was certainly no innocent, a two-time killer, who only escapes execution through the efforts of his mother (Thelma Ritter) in persuading U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to commute his sentence. However, there is an evil Catch-22 which infuriated prison governor Harvey Shoemaker (Karl Malden) invokes. While awaiting sentence, and assuming execution is inevitable because he murdered a prison guard in front of hundreds of witnesses, the local judge has decreed that Stroud should be kept in solitary confinement.

Shoemaker, nettled by Stroud’s defiance, interprets that as being able to keep the prisoner in solitary confinement for the rest of his term – which amounts, as it happens, to 40 years. None of this bugs Stroud that much. He’s averse to human companionship, as likely to bully a cellmate and cause ructions elsewhere, and certainly not ever going to give in to the prison system with its endless rules.

The marketeers have taken some liberties with the title. But Alcatraz is certainly a bigger lure to moviegoers than Leavenworth. By the time Stroud reaches Alcatraz he’s devoid of birds. All the breeding activity takes place in Leavenworth.

And while there are aspects of Stroud’s character you will never warm to, he’s got us hooked the minute he embarks on the bird breeding, in part because it’s the antithesis of his character to be so humane, and in part because the dedication involved in painstakingly building cages or other toys (a little wooden chariot a bird is taught to drive) from nothing but wooden boxes with rudimentary tools he has fashioned himself is wondrous to behold. That section of the movie is just enthralling.

Although he’s rescued a chick from a broken nest that lands in the prisoner courtyard during a storm, it takes him a while to cotton on that the bird needs fed, which he does with his version of a toothpick. He coaxes the frightened bird to fly and eventually starts breeding the damn things, persuading a new governor to allow him to buy birdseed and encourages his hobby, so much so that after extensive study Stroud becomes a noted ornithologist with a couple of publications to his name. His case became widely known after a bird researcher Stella Johnson (Betty Field) publicizes his activities and eventually marries him.

But when he’s shifted to Alcatraz, he encounters Shoemaker who forbids the birds. So Stroud starts to write a history of the U.S. penal system. Despite being prone to violence, he is instrumental in ending a prisoner uprising. He is never released, despite various petitions.

So while there’s no happy ending it’s an absorbing picture. Burt Lancaster is at the top of his form, winning another Oscar nomination. Telly Savalas (Crooks and Coronets, 1969), playing another prisoner, was also nominated. Karl Malden (One Eyed Jacks, 1961) is an excellent foil and any time Thelma Ritter (A New Kind of Love, 1963) pops up she steals the show.

While it’s on the long side for a prison picture and lacks the epic quality that the 150-minute running time would suggest, director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) takes an almost documentary approach to his subject. You might call it an intimate epic. Screenplay by Guy Trosper (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965) from the book by Thomas E. Gaddis.

Standout show from Lancaster.

The Scalphunters (1968) ****

If ever a film deserves reassessment, this is it. This western, marketed as a vehicle for Burt Lancaster in the wake of hugely successful The Professionals (1966), sees the star playing cussed trapper Joe Bass trying to retrieve furs stolen first by Native Americans and then by outlaws. That the serious race issues tackled here were dressed up in very broad comedy and typical western action ensured it missed out on the kind of recognition that critics would assign a straightforward drama and lost its rightful place as a pivotal picture of the decade.

In theory, a somewhat unusual Burt Lancaster western. In reality something else entirely. For large chunks of the movie Lancaster is absent as the story follows the fortunes of Black slave Joseph Lee (Ossie Davis) as he achieves not just freedom but genuine equality. Joseph is introduced as a slave of the Kiowa, left behind when the Indians steal Joe Bass’s furs. In compensation for his loss, Bass plans to sell Lee in the slave market in St Louis and in the meantime enrols him to help recover his furs.

However, a band of outlaws, specializing in collecting Native American scalps (hence the title) and selling them at $25 a time, get to the furs first as a by-product of a raid on the Kiowas. In pursuit with Bass, Lee falls into a river at the outlaw encampment and becomes the slave of Jim Howie (Telly Savalas) who also aims to sell him. Lee plans to escape until discovering Howie’s large troop is headed for Mexico where the slave would automatically become free. With clever talk, beauty-treatment skills and knowledge of astrology and ecology, Lee insinuates himself into the wagon of Howie’s paramour Kate (Shelley Winters).

With Bass still in pursuit, there are several excellent action scenes as the outnumbered trapper seeks to outwit Howie who turns out to be just as devious. But the main question is not whether Bass will recover his stolen property but which side will Lee pick. Will he act as spy to help Bass get back his furs or will he disown Bass and remain with the murderous genocidal gang who could provide a prospct of freedom? Either in the company of Bass or Howie, he is constantly reminded of his status, taking a beating from one of Howie’s thugs, Bass refusing to share his whisky because he views him not just as a slave who “picked his master” but as a coward refusing to fight back when attacked and beaten up.

The film comes to a very surprising ending but by that time through his own actions Lee is accepted as an equal by Bass and the issue of slavery dissolved. In effect, it is a tale of self-determination. Lee effects liberty by taking advantage of situations and standing up for his own cause.

Lee is one of the most interesting characters to appear on the western scene for a long time. Exactly where he acquired his education is unclear and equally hazy are how – and from where – he escaped and how he ended up as slave of the Commanches before they traded him to the Kiowa. However he came to be in the thick of the story, his tale is by far the most original. But he’s not the only original. The fearless Bass was an early ecological warrior with an intimate understanding of living off the wild, not in normal genre fashion of killing anything that moves, but in knowing how to find sustenance from plants. That in itself would endear him to modern lovers of alternative lifestyles.

Normally the derogatory term “scalphunters” would be reference to Native Americans, but here it is American Americans who exploit this market. Despite being the leader of a vicious bunch, Howie turns out to be a bit of a romantic and Kate a bit more interested in the world than your average female sidekick.

Director Sydney Pollack (The Slender Thread, 1965) does a marvelous job not just in fulfilling action expectations and taking widescreen advantage of the locations but in allowing Lee to take center stage when, technically, according to the credits, Ossie Davis was only the fourth most important member of the cast. Burt Lancaster was approaching an acting peak, following this with The Swimmer (1968) and Castle Keep (1969), happy to take risks on all three pictures, especially here where for most of the movie he is outwitted and ends up in a mud bath.

Both Telly Savalas (Sol Madrid, 1968) and Shelley Winters (A House Is Not a Home, 1964) rein in their normal more exuberant personas. Savalas, in particular, cleaves closer to his straightforward work in The Slender Thread than the over-the-top performance of The Dirty Dozen (1967). Winters, usually feisty, is here more winsome and vulnerable, apt to be taken in by sweet-talking men.

But Ossie Davis (The Hill, 1965) is the standout, his repartee spot-on. It is a hugely rounded performance, one minute wheedling, the next sly, boldness and cowardice blood brothers, and while his brainpower gives him the advantage over all the others he is only too aware that such superiority counts for nothing while he remains a slave.

It’s dialog rich and it’s a shame it wasn’t a big hit for that would have surely triggered a sequel – especially in the wake of the following year’s buddy-movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – because the banter between Lee and Bass is priceless. For the dialog thank the original screenplay by future convicted gun-runner William W. Norton (Brannigan, 1975), father of director Bill Norton (Cisco Pike, 1971).

Go see.

Behind the Scenes: “Valdez Is Coming” (1971) – Book Into Film

Elmore Leonard novels were catnip to the movies. From The Tall T (1957) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957) a shelf load of his books have been filmed by Hollywood – some of them (3:10 to Yuma, 52 Pick Up, The Big Bounce, Get Shorty) twice. What he brings to the table is a lean story and an interesting lead character, whether in the western – Hombre (1967), Joe Kidd (1972) – or crime division such as Mr Majestyk (1974) or Get Shorty (1995).

What you probably don’t realize is that pulp fiction (books that made their debut in paperback) were generally short, limited to 50,000-60,000 words rather than the 120,000-150,000 blockbuster “airport” novels, published first in hardcover, that dominated the bestseller lists. The shorter novel led to a leaner narrative, less characters, little in the way of subplot and information drop.

Valdez Is Coming made a speedy transition from paperback (published by Fawcett in the US in 1970, though it did achieve a hardcover edition in the UK) to movie (United Artists release 1971) and it’s interesting to see what changes, if any were made by screenwriters Roland Kibbee (The Appaloosa, 1966) and David Rayfiel (Castle Keep, 1969). You could literally transpose Leonard’s dialog and it would easily stand up in a movie. So the basic, very simple, plot is retained.

Mexican sheriff Valdez (Burt Lancaster in the film) gets it into his head that the mistaken killing of an African American requires monetary compensation and determines that cattle baron Frank Tanner whose mistake led to the killing should be the one to cough up. Tanner sees is differently, sends Valdez packing and when the sheriff returns a second time to plead his case exacts brutal punishment in the form a rudimentary crucifixion.

This triggers a personality change in Valdez. He reverts from being the subservient suit-wearing lawman to the feared sharpshooter who previously hunted down Apaches.

So one of the alterations in the book to film is this transition. In the book we know from the outset he has kept buried his older self in order not to attract attention and to live a peaceful life. That is verbalized via internal monologue and a scene with brothel keeper Inez, who is absent from the film. In the movie his past is visualized, as he pulls out from under his bed a hidden armory and a photo of his previous self.

In the film he is introduced riding shotgun on a stagecoach. He works part-time as a “constable” rather than a sheriff. In the book riding shotgun is the bigger job, keeping the peace requiring little of his time.

All the main incidents – initial rebuff by Tanner, the shooting of bullets around Valdez, the crucifixion, the kidnapping of Tanner’s wife Gay (Susan Clark), the involvement of wannabe gunslinger RL Davies (Richard Jordan), the picking off one-by-one of Tanner’s men and the final stand-off (a Mexican stand-off if ever there was one) – come straight from Elmore Leonard.

But the screenwriters make some critical changes. In the film the kidnapping is accidental, Gay snatched as a hostage as Valdez escapes from a gunfight at Tanner’s house. In the book, there’s no shoot-out at the house, Valdez kidnaps Gay in order to have something to trade with.

In the film it’s – rather surprisingly given his role so far – the weaselly gunman Davies who cuts Valdez free of the bonds of the crucifix. But that’s a considerable simplification from the book. For quite a long time in the book, Valdez believes that Gay cut him loose. And until Davies challenges that assertion, she lets Valdez believe it was her.

For the biggest change is the screenwriters’ decision to eliminate the Valdez-Gay romance. After being captured, in the book she makes overtures to him, whether initially out of survival instinct is unclear, and they make love and he begins to fall for her. We learn why she killed her husband – domestic abuse. Also that Tanner is a convicted felon and that he is a gunrunner supplying arms to Mexican rebels.

So by the time we come to the end there’s more riding on it in the book. Tanner is left isolated not just by his gang boss backing off but by his lover siding with Valdez.

One other point, I noted that in the film the guy called El Segundo (Barton Hayman) was referred to as “the segundo” (in lower case letters) in the book. So I looked it up. Literally, “Segundo” means “number two” which made sense either way.

I’ve been so used to comparing blockbuster novels with their movie adaptation and trying to work what they kept in – and why – that it never occurred to me that one of the reasons so many pulp fiction books were purchased by the movies was because screenwriters had to tussle with less plot and fewer characters.

If you’ve never read any Elmore Leonard this is as good a place as any to start.

Valdez Is Coming (1971) *****

Five-star review for a long-forgotten much-maligned western? Let me explain. Let me start with one of the most stunning cinematic images I have ever seen that in the hands of a better director would be considered one of the greatest ever devised. The titular Valdez (Burt Lancaster) appears on the top of a hill arms stretched out back contorted under the weight of a crucifix strapped to his back. Another director, more conscious of the image potential, would probably have had him straighten up at that point and positioned the camera for a close-up so the image could be captured against the sky. Even so, it’s an extraordinary image for a director, Edwin Sherin, making his debut.

But that’s not the only one. We’re familiar with the innocent man being forced to dance as the area around his feet is peppered with bullets from a sadistic gunslinger. Here, the victim of gunman Davis (Richard Jordan) is an old Native American woman. As she walks from a hut to collect water, he assails her with a barrage of shots. Does she dance? Does she dickey! She doesn’t even pause. As though she’s used to worse.

The movie opens with another stunning image. Valdez, a local Arizona Territory constable (presumably a less important title than sheriff though he wears the badge), takes time out from riding shotgun to watch a bunch of young bucks blast away at a target. Which appears to be the hut I mentioned. Takes a while for an explanation to be forthcoming. Said hut houses a fugitive from justice.

There’s another startling image when Valdez is used as target practice by the thugs employed by local bigwig Tanner (Jon Cypher). As if he was the equivalent to the target girl in a knife-throwing act, every space around his body is hit by a bullet.

And that’s before we come to the audacious freeze frame ending which, theoretically at least, leaves matters unresolved.

There’s also a post-modern post-whatever feel to this which should very much appeal to the contemporary audience. Very little is explained. Valdez has anglicized his Christian name of Roberto to Bob. He can’t get rid of his Mexican accent but he talks so softly that mostly you don’t notice. From his later demeanor, it’s quite clear that earlier on he is making a huge effort to fit in, not stand out, in a town dominated by white Americans.

But we also never find out why Tanner is hunting a man. He’s responsible for putting the man in the hut under siege. And although that turns out to be case of mistaken identity, we never find out who Tanner is chasing or why.

Tanner’s live-in girlfriend Gay (Susan Clark), a widow, has murdered her husband and we never find out why either. But she’s not the only unusual character. The gunslinger Davies is a misfit, finding out the hard way that intemperance and impulsiveness are not the way to make friends, and even Tanner has little time for a gunslinger too handy with a gun, but despite the callous exterior he has a softer side. And while that softer side turns out to be lucky at one point for Valdez, the lawman still doesn’t trust the capricious youngster.

The tale, such as it is, is one of principle. Valdez has been tricked into killing the man in the hut. Given the man proved innocent, Valdez thinks it right his widow, the Native American victim of the target practice, should receive some compensation. A hundred dollars seems a small price to pay. But Tanner is insulted at the very thought. In his eyes, the dead man was a no-account African American.

When Valdez insists, he is trussed up in the makeshift crucifix and left to make a humiliating walk home. That’s when he reverts, shuffles off his disguise as a soft-spoken relatively harmless lawman in a town where the most he will be called upon to do is ride occasional shotgun and jail an occasional drunk.

It’s vague too – you’d have to be well up on western lore to know the significance of the photograph he keeps under his bed – regarding his past. But hidden under the bed is what was known as a buffalo gun, a long-range rifle, manufactured by Sharps (hence the term “sharpshooter”) and suddenly he’s a different, more threatening, person, kitted out in his old cavalry uniform, hat brim upturned.

He interrupts Tanner and Gay making love to demand his hundred dollars. He only takes Gay hostage to make his escape, minus the cash, and then kidnaps her to provide him with something to trade. Unlike in The Hunting Party (1971), the weapon doesn’t magically ease his path. He doesn’t just take pot-shots from a distance. He spends most of the time rushing up and down hills, using boulders as cover. He can’t afford to use the gun since that would pinpoint his position. So he’s got to knock out Tanner’s advance scouts in other ways.

Meanwhile, Gay, who initially sympathized with Valdez, is less keen on him once she’s a victim, and spends most of her time trying to escape. In due course, Valdez’s marksmanship reduces the pursuing force by eleven.

He just about escapes but in a spectacular piece of stunt work involving horses colliding and people being thrown from the saddle, he is surrounded. Chief thug El Segundo (Barton Heyman) realizes that he and Valdez have something in common. Valdez wasn’t a buffalo hunter at all, but a stalker of Apaches, the enemy of El Segundo.

So El Segundo pulls back his men leaving Tanner to face up to Valdez alone. Or perhaps pay up the hundred dollars. We never find out because the image is frozen on the screen as the camera pulls back.

Edwin Scherin was rewarded for his boldness by only being allowed to make one more movie (My Old Man’s Place, 1971). This was the first of Burt Lancaster’s western trilogy that encompassed Michael Winner’s Lawman (1971) and Robert Aldrich’s Ulzana’s Raid (1972), completing his move into more of the flawed character he first essayed in The Swimmer (1969). Susan Clark (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968) makes the most of a role that permits her to switch from sympathetic to hard-nosed. Richard Jordan (Chato’s Land, 1972) has a peach of a part as the swithering gunman desperate for attention. Screenplay by Roland Kibbee (The Appaloosa, 1966) and David Rayfiel (Castle Keep, 1969) based on the novel by Elmore Leonard (Mr Majestyk, 1974).

So, sure, justified vengeance but exceptionally well done.

Catch this on Amazon Prime.

Well worth checking it out.

Behind the Scenes: Selling Judy Garland – “A Child Is Waiting” (1963) Pressbook

This proved the impossible sell. And Judy Garland was no help. The star was well past her best and if she wasn’t singing it was difficult to attract audience interest. So beyond her name above the title, United Artists did very ittle to use her presence as a distinct marketing tool.

Just like I Thank a Fool the previous year, the subject matter of A Child is Waiting did not lend itself to cross promotion. That did not prevent marketeers doing their level best. However, it was a rather bold suggestion to assume banks would be a natural port of call even under the guise that every child was waiting for their parents to start a savings account to see them through college.

The title seemed to incite temporary madness in the marketing department. How about this for a tie-in approach to a toy department? “A child is waiting for the most exciting game ever devised – Monopoly.”

Groups most likely to respond were identified as psychiatrists, teachers and PTA members but cinemas were warned to avoid giving the “impression that the film is a clinical or documentary one.”

By far the easiest avenue for promotion was a book tie-in. Popular Library had issued a paperback novelization by Abby Mann of his original screenplay with stars Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland on the cover and at the very least that would receive window displays in bookstores and on the carousels of drugstores.

Also limited were the number of taglines on a poster. In those days a movie could be advertised with as many as a dozen different taglines appealing to different market sectors. United Artists stuck to three main taglines with two subsidiary ones. Sometimes both subsidiaries were on the same poster, other times only one.

“Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland ignite a motion picture that gives so much…goes so far…looks so deep into the feelings of man and woman.” This alternated with “Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland take an untouched theme – and make it touching and unforgettable” and “Only Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland could take this untold story…and make your heart tell it over and over again.”

The subsidiary taglines ran to: “If this were flesh of your flesh – would you hold it close…Protect it…Love it…Or would you turn your back and run” and “A child can be so many things, warmth…love…laughter…and sometimes a child can be heartbreak!”

Mainly what marketeers were asking of Lancaster and Garland was a miracle, as if their names alone could drag audiences into theaters.

Even though the Pressbook was relatively small – eight pages A3 – two-thirds of the space was allocated to repeating the adverts, just in different sizes.

The section normally aimed at getting editors to carry snippets of news about the movie provided scant material. There was little to catch the journalistic eye, nothing new about either of the stars, just a rehash of careers. Usually, cinema managers would scour this section looking for a titbit to offer to a reporter, an unusual hobby, something odd that occurred during filming, details about the location or an element that went wrong during shooting.

If you were relying on this Pressbook to fuel demand from exhibitors, you would be sorely disappointed.

A Child Is Waiting (1963) ****

While once the main interest in this piece would have come from fans of Judy Garland, lapping up her penultimate movie appearance, the prevalence of mental illness these days especially among the young, in part due to Covid and the scourge of social media, should switch audience attention – especially among contemporary viewers – back to the subject matter.

Garland’s stock had risen somewhat after her performance in Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), her first movie in seven years, but, given the travails of her private life, would most likely have been sympathetic to anything that cast a light on mental illness. The bulk of movies covering this ground tended towards the lurid, as exemplified by Shock Corridor (1963) and Shock Treatment, (1964) rather than the more tragic Lilith (1962). Whatever the approach, they focused on adult conditions. Here it’s the treatment of children.

Appreciation of the social conscience of star Burt Lancaster has largely gone unnoticed but this was the era when his movies touched upon crooked evangelism (Elmer Gantry, 1960), teenage gangs (The Young Savages, 1961), the Holocaust (Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961) and the effects of long-term imprisonment (The Birdman of Alcatraz, 1962). He was even an animal rights protester in The List of Adrian Messenger (1963).

Parental attitude to offspring with mental conditions is encapsulated in the opening sequence. Outside a hospital a young boy is tempted out of an automobile. Once out, the driver (the father) races off so fast the car door is still swinging open. Mentally or emotionally disturbed children were dumped, ostracized or abandoned by society, sometimes shut up in institutions along with adults, with treatment belonging to the Dark Ages.

Drawing on the ground-breaking approach of Vineland Training School in New Jersey and the Pacific Hospital in Pomona, California (pupils from the latter played the students in the film), the movie attempts to cast a light on the forgotten and to show that, with proper care and education, they need not be such victims of their circumstances.

The movie focuses on Dr Clark (Burt Lancaster), head of the Crawthorne State Training School, whose pioneering work combines tender encouragement with firm application, and the new music teacher Jean (Judy Garland) who challenges his approach. Instigating this crisis is 12-year-old Reuben, the child we see offloaded at the start, for whom Jean develops an unhealthy bond. She thinks Dr Clark is too strict and that his methods don’t work with someone as vulnerable as Reuben. Clark’s aim is to make the children so self-sufficient they are not condemned to a life in an adult institution.

Jean’s intervention creates a crisis in the child’s life but also brings home the unwelcome truth of the difficulties parents have of dealing with their children.

And while the tale is essentially confected to make the necessary points and Dr Clark and Jean epitomize opposite attitudes to handling the treatment of children, the story is really a documentary in disguise, bringing to light advances in care, and with the children not played by actors, brings a greater reality to the work.

Burt Lancaster, as ever, is good value and Judy Garland steps up to the plate. Gena Rowlands (Machine Gun McCain, 1969) and John Marley (Istanbul Express, 1968) also feature.

While this fits neatly into Lancaster’s portfolio, it stands out for the wrong reasons in the pantheon of critically-acclaimed actor-turned-director John Cassavetes (Faces, 1968). In fact, what he produced went against what producer Stanley Kramer (better known as a director – Judgment at Nuremberg, for example) wanted and the version we see is the one Kramer recut. Written by Abby Mann (Judgment at Nuremberg) from his original teleplay.

You might expect this to be awash with sentimentality but that’s far from the case.

The Young Savages (1961) ****

You have to put out of your mind any thoughts about West Side Story, released the same year and also dealing with teenage gangs in New York. But whereas the musical tapped into Shakespeare and tugged at audience heartstrings with a tragic love story, The Young Savages is what used to be called an “issue picture,” a realistic portrayal of a growing problem in society.

Rather than the sullen relatively harmless rebels of Rebel without a Cause (1955) or this decade’s Easy Rider (1969), the question of youth disenfranchisement and the growth of a culture, here majoring in violence, at an opposite extreme to social norms, was beginning to take hold. Where earlier immigrants emerging from New York housing hellholes had tended to graduate to straightforward crime, which occasionally spilled over into the main street, now youths were engaging in turf wars, knives rather than machine guns the weapon of choice, which took place in full view of a terrified population.

Oddly enough the movie opens with the same motif as West Side Story, the feet of a gang, but rather than expressing their frustration through dancing, these feet, belonging to three members of the Italian-American Thunderbirds mob, are marching through the streets of New York, brushing aside passersby, knocking over toy prams, on their way to kill a member of the rival Puerto Rican Horseman gang.

When arrested, they claim self-defense. The only flaw in that argument is the victim Roberto Escalante (Jose Perez) is blind. Naturally, there is a public outcry and calls for the death penalty. Prosecutor Hank Bell (Burt Lancaster), who had grown up in the same streets as the gangs but managed to make a life for himself outside its confines, is hellbent on extracting the maximum punishment. Bell was born Bellini but changed his name to hide his background, make it easier for him to serenade Vassar graduates and advance his career.

That leads to complications, and it’s hard to say which is the more compelling. His more liberal wife Karin (Dina Merrill), the Vassar item, is appalled. District attorney Dan Cole (Edward Andrews), who fancies his chances as a politician, faces public backlash if he doesn’t take tough action. And Hank had a romantic fling in the past with the mother Mary DiPace (Shelley Winters) of one of the accused.

But Hank hasn’t quite thrown off the shackles of his upbringing, and though currently an upstanding member of society, he finds his principles taking a battering when he is himself attacked and discovers just how easy it is to resort to violence. Karin, too, finds her liberal attitude shot to pieces when she is also attacked.

Even without personal involvement of the husband and wife in being forced to face up individually to the violence pervading the city, the focus is on the exploration of how such violence becomes endemic in those parts of society left behind in the pursuit of the Great American Dream.

There’s plenty issues to deal with: poverty for a start, lack of ethnic tolerance, hatred of one immigrant group to another, politicians making capital out of the situation, parents powerless to prevent their children growing up as hoodlums, youngsters seeking identity and respect from joining a gang, and the growth of the gangs themselves as a social dynamic.

As you might expect, there are no easy answers. In fact, there are no answers at all. A movie like this can only lift the stone without being able to effect what’s happening underneath. But in some respects, that’s the aim of the issue picture, an early type of virtue-signaling. None of the issues raised have gone away, more likely they’ve just got worse.

But that’s not to downplay the film’s impact. There’s an inherent honesty here in the decision of debutant director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) not to take sides.

Burt Lancaster (The Swimmer, 1969) delivers another excellent performance. Dina Merill (Butterfield 8, 1960) thrives in a solid role and Shelley Winters (A House Is Not a Home, 1964) is effective. Watch out for the debut also of Telly Savalas (The Assassination Bureau, 1969). Written by Edward Anhalt (Becket, 1964) and J.P. Miller (Days of Wine and Roses, 1962) from the bestseller by Evan Hunter, who had explored similar youth issues in The Blackboard Jungle filmed in 1955.

Still powerful stuff.

Ulzana’s Raid (1972) ****

Still stands up as an allegory for the Vietnam War, superior American forces almost decimated by a small band of Apaches engaging in guerilla warfare. After the consecutive flops of Castle Keep (1969) and The Swimmer (1969), Burt Lancaster had unexpectedly shot to the top of Hollywood tree on the back of disaster movie Airport (1970) and consolidated his position with a string of westerns, which had global appeal, of which this was the third. After the commercial high of The Dirty Dozen (1967), director Robert Aldrich had lost his way, in part through an ambitious attempt to set up a mini-studio, his last four pictures including The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) and The Killing of Sister George (1969) all registering in the red.

Riding a wave of critical acclaim was Scottish screenwriter Alan Sharp whose debut The Last Run (1971) turned on its head the gangster’s last job trope, and its lyrical successor The Hired Hand (1971) had stars and directors queuing up. Here he delivers the intelligent work for which he would become famous, melding Native American lore with a much tougher take on the Indian Wars and the cruelty from both sides.

The narrative follows two threads, the duel between Ulzana (Joaquin Martinez), who has escaped from the reservation, and Army scout MacIntosh (Burt Lancaster); and the novice commander Lt DeBuin (Bruce Davison) earning his stripes. In between ruminations on Apache culture, their apparent cruelty given greater understanding, and some conflict within the troops, bristling at having to obey an inexperienced officer, most of the film is devoted to the battle of minds, as soldiers and Native Americans try to out-think each other.

Shock is a main weapon of Aldrich’s armory. There’s none of the camaraderie or “twilight of the west” stylistic flourishes that distinguished Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) or The Wild Bunch (1969). This is a savage land where a trooper will shoot dead the female homesteader he is escorting back to the fort rather than see her fall into the hands of the Apaches, following this up by blowing his own brains out so that he doesn’t suffer the same fate.

What such fate entails is soon outlined when another homesteader is tortured to death and another woman raped within an inch of her life, the fact that she survives such an ordeal merely a ploy to encourage the Christian commander to detach some of his troops to escort her safely home and so diminish his strength. Instead, in both pragmatic and ruthless fashion, she is used as bait, to tempt the Apaches out of hiding.

The Apaches have other clever tools, using a bugle to persuade a homesteader to venture out of his retreat, and are apt to slaughter a horse so that its blood can contaminate the only drinking water within several miles.

Key to the whole story is transport. The Apaches need horses. These they can acquire from homesteaders. Once acquired, they are used to fox the enemy, the animals led across terrain minus their riders, to mislead the pursuing cavalry and set up a trap. MacIntosh and his Native American guide, Ke-Ni-Tay (Jorge Luke), uncover the trickery and set up a trap of their own. However, the plan backfires. Having scattered the Apache horses, the Apaches redouble their determination to wipe out the soldiers in order to have transport.

There’s a remarkable moment in the final shootout where the soldiers hide behind their horses on the assumption that the Apaches will not shoot the horses they so desperately need. But that notion backfires, too, when they are ambushed from both sides of a canyon.

The twists along the way are not the usual narrative sleight-of-hand but matter-of-fact reversals. The soldiers do not race on to try and overtake their quarry. To do so would over-tire the horses, and contrary to the usual sequences of horsemen dashing through inhospitable terrain, we are more likely to see the soldiers sitting around taking a break. Ulzana is not captured in traditional Hollywood fashion either, no gunfight or fistfight involving either MacIntosh or the lieutenant. Instead, it’s the cunning of Ke-Ni-Tay that does the trick.

There are fine performances all round. Burt Lancaster is in low-key mode, Bruce Davison (Last Summer, 1969) holds onto his Christian principles so far as to bury the Apache dead rather than mutilate them, as was deemed suitable revenge by his corps, but his ideas of extending a hand of friendship to the enemy are killed off. Richard Jaeckel (The Dirty Dozen) communicates more with looks exchanged with MacIntosh than any dialog. Robert Aldrich is back on song, but owes a great deal to the literate screenplay.

Quentin Tarantino acclaimed this and I can’t disagree.

The Leopard (1963) *****

Masterpiece. No other word for the way director Luchino Visconti commands his material with fluid camera and three terrific performances (four, if you count the wily priest). An epic in the old-fashioned sense, combining intelligence, action and romance, though all three underlaid by national or domestic politics. And if you’re going to show crumbling authority you can’t get a better conduit than Burt Lancaster (check out The Swimmer, 1969, for another version of this), physical prowess still to the fore but something missing in the eyes. And all this on sumptuous widescreen.

Only a director of Visconti’s caliber can set the entire tone of the film through what doesn’t happen. We open with a religious service, not a full-scale Mass but recitations of the Rosary, for which the family is gathered in the massive villa of Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (Burt Lancaster). There is an almighty disturbance outside. But nobody dare leave or even react, children silently chided for being distracted, because all eyes are on the Prince and he has not batted an eyelid, worship more important than domestic matters.

Turns out there’s a dead soldier in the garden, indication of trouble brewing. Italy has been beset with trouble brewing from time immemorial so the Prince isn’t particularly perturbed, even if the worst comes to the worst an accommodation is always reached between the wannabes and the wealthy ruling elite.

There’s a fair bit of political sparring throughout but this is handled with such intelligence it’s involving rather than off-putting. Rebel Garibaldi is on the march, it’s the 1860s and revolution is on the way. But it’s not like the French Revolution with aristocrats executed in their thousands and when Garibaldi’s General (Guiliano Gemma) comes calling he addresses the Prince as “Excellency.”

The Prince is a bit of a hypocrite, not as devout as he’d like everyone to believe. He’s got a mistress stashed away for one thing and for another he blames his wife for the need to satisfy his urges elsewhere, complaining that she’s “the sinner” and that despite him fathering seven children with her he’s never seen her navel. Furthermore, the person he makes this argument to is the priest Fr Pirrone (Romolo Valli), who, knowing which side his bread is buttered on, doesn’t offer much of a challenge.

If you’re not going down the more perilous route of taking up arms, advancement in this society is still best achieved through marriage and the Prince’s ambitious nephew Don Tanacredi (Alain Delon), more politically astute, does this through marriage to Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), daughter of Don Calogeo Sedara (Paolo Stoppa).

Brutality and elegance sit side by side. You’re not going to forget the mob of women hunting down and hanging a Government police spy nor, equally, the astonishing ball that virtually concludes proceedings, showing that, whatever changes in society take place, those with money and privilege will still hold their own. But that’s only if they do a little bit of bending the knee to the new powers-that-be, something that Tancredi, by now a rebel hero wounded in battle, is more than happy to do, since that procures him even further advancement, but a step too far for the Prince, who at the end retreats into his study, as if this will provide sanctuary from the impending future.

Don’t expect battle on the scale of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), this action is a more scrappy affair, undisciplined red-shirted hordes sweeping through a town and eventually overwhelming cavalry and ranks of infantry.

But if you’re aiming to hold an audience for three hours, a decent script, romantic entanglement and camerawork isn’t enough. You need the actors to step up. Luckily, they do, in spades. Burt Lancaster is easily the pick, towering head and shoulders, and not just in physicality, above the rest, a man who sees his absolute authority draining away in front of his eyes. Alain Delon (Once a Thief, 1965) comes pretty close, though, not afraid to challenge his uncle’s beliefs nor point out his hypocrisy, and adept at picking his way through the new emerging society, his potential ascension to newfound power demonstrated by wearing a war wound bandage wrapped piratically around one eye, as though keeping a foot in both camps. Though American audiences never quite warmed to Delon, he was catnip for the arthouse brigade, courtesy of being anointed by Visconti and Antonioni in, respectively, Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and L’Eclisse (1962).

Far more than U.S. cinemagoers could imagine, Claudia Cardinale (The Professionals, 1966) also easily straddled commercial and arthouse – Rocco and His Brothers, Fellini’s 8½ (1963) – and on her luminous performance here you can see why. You might also spot future Italian stars Terence Hill (My Name Is Nobody, 1970) and Giuliano Gemma (Day of Anger, 1967). Adapted from the bestseller by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa by the director and his Rocco and his Brothers team of future director Pasquale Festa Campanile (The Libertine, 1968), Suso Cecchi D’Amico, Enrico Medioli and Massimo Franciosa.

I can’t quite get my head round the audacity of Netflix in attempting a mini-series remake. I’m assuming they’ve had the sense to buy up the rights to the Visconti to prevent anyone comparing the two.

One of the decade’s greatest cinematic achievements.