Clint Walker – The Magnificent 60s

None but the Brave (1965) *****

Frank Sinatra’s sole stab at direction is an astonishing piece of work and deserves to be revisited in a more positive frame of mind than it encountered on original release. Maybe critical acclaim depends on your name, and most critics were already tearing into Ol’ Blue Eyes because his acting in the 1960s scarcely matched his work in the 1950s – From Here to Eternity (1953), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), Guys and Dolls (1955), High Society (1956) and Pal Joey (1957).

On the other hand critics were all over themselves when John Boorman and Clint Eastwood went down a similar route in Hell in the Pacific (1968) and the double header Flags of Our Fathers (2006) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), respectively, and American audiences griped about the even-handedness of Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970).

Not only is this primarily presented from the Japanese point-of-view, opening and closing with scenes involving the Japanese, but it is not so much even-handed as presenting the opposing sides in exactly the same manner, so that the “enemy” is never viewed as such but as a rag-tag collection of ordinary men thrust into warfare.

While there’s certainly courage on show, there’s also more than a war movie’s normal share of rashness and stupidity, disobedience, the flouting of orders, the challenging of the line of command and that taboo subject – death from friendly fire. There are clever maneuvers and outwitting the opposition.

The composition of both sides could be echoes of each other. Both have calm leaders in Capt Dennis Bourke (Clint Walker) and Lt Kuroki (Tatsuya Mihashi) who both struggle to keep in line intemperate subordinates, Second Lieut Blair (Tommy Sands) and Sgt Tamuro (Takeshi Kato) who tend to issue orders at a scream and in the latter instance with a slap in the face. Both lieutenant and sergeant, career soldiers, bristle at having to accept orders from less experienced officers.

None of the recruits are worth a button as soldiers. On the Japanese side we have a Buddhist priest, on the American side guys who wouldn’t recognize a trap even when they fell into it. Bourke also has to contend with loudmouth Sgt Bleeker (Brad Dexter), itching to start a fight.

The Americans have one trump card – and it’s not weaponry. They have someone with the medical skill to save a badly wounded Japanese soldier. And although he’s only a pharmacist (Frank Sinatra) he’s got enough knowledge to carry out an amputation. The Japanese have their own trump cards – food and water. And the two leaders effect a truce. You know it won’t last, of course, which leads to a savage ending, though a touching climax.

There’s plenty action, more than you might expect, since generally in this kind of war movie we spend ages getting to know the soldiers long before there’s any reason to fire a shot or explode a bomb. All we know about the Americans is that they shouldn’t be here, they were flying elsewhere when their plane crash-landed on a remote island they believe is unoccupied. All we know about the Japs is that they’re trying to get off the island by building a boat.

Foolish soldiers on either side upset the leader’s strategies so the bullets soon fly. The Japanese on sighting an American warship cruising close by have the cleverest notion, running up a Japanese flag, which the sailors take to mean the island is under Japanese control and begin a bombardment which kills Americans. The Yanks, on the other hand, manage to steal the Japanese boat, but only for a short time before a grenade puts paid to any notions of escape.

In most war movies that pay any attention to the lives of the soldiers, that usually concentrates on sentiment, women left behind, families abandoned and so forth and while this strays into that territory once, the bulk of the time we see character revealed by current action, which is a more difficult thing to achieve, but far more rewarding.

Given his duties behind the camera, Frank Sinatra (Robin and the 7 Hoods, 1964) wisely plays a largely supporting role, restricted to the occasional wisecrack, but allocated one big central scene so that audiences don’t feel they’ve not had their money’s worth. But, actually, he relinquishes the most important scene to someone else. An armed American soldier coming across an unarmed half-naked Japanese who has been catching fish can’t bring himself to shoot him because you shouldn’t shoot a good fisherman.

There’s not much in the way of visuals or composition to write home about, but this film didn’t require such virtuosity, the director more than makes it work by sticking to the knitting, and concentrating on the humanity and refusing to allow the enemy to be portrayed as such.

Clint Walker (Sam Whiskey, 1969) and Tatsuya Mihashi (Tora! Tora! Tora!) carry the picture effortlessly while their rebellious underlings, singer Tommy Sands (Ensign Pulver, 1964) and Takeshi Kato (Yojimbo, 1961) do their best to steal the picture. Look out for Brad Dexter (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) and future producer Tony Bill (The Sting, 1973).

Written by John Twist (A Distant Trumpet, 1964), Katsuya Susaki (Way Out, Way In, 1970) and the film’s producer Kikumaru Okuda.

Not to be missed. A war classic.

Sam Whiskey (1969) ***

You don’t realize the importance of treatment until you see an interesting story mangled. Taking the comedic approach to a heist picture is tricky. You can’t just make it happen because that’s what the script says, you’ve got to prove to an audience that whatever takes place is believeable. And frankly, asking three inexperienced dudes to smelt down a ton of gold and sneak it into a government building in the shape of a bust (the statue kind, not the other) and then smelt it back down again while inside and turn it into gold bars is a stretch too far.

This is amiable enough as far as it goes, and Burt Reynolds gives his good-ol’-boy routine a try-out, Angie Dickinson strays from her usual screen persona, and it does present some interesting screen equality – a Yaqui Indian shown as someone you would pay a debt to, Ossie Davis making a pitch for the African American acting crown.

*I saw this double bill at the time of original release.*

But it’s bogged down in a cumbersome plot that I guess many in the audience, like me, would have been begging for a switcheroo at the end that made more sense for the genre.

So, bear with me, Laura (Angie Dickinson) hires ex-gambler Sam Whiskey (Burt Reynolds) to retrieve $250,000 worth of gold ingots lying inside a sunken riverboat at the bottom of a river. Fair enough, you think, it’s the nineteenth century, nobody would be able to hold their breath that long to attempt to retrieve it even one gold bar at a time.

But she only wants the gold back to satisfy family honor. You see, her dead husband was in charge of transporting the gold to the local mint and to cover up his calmaity he replaced the gold with ingots made of lead. And hold on, there’s more, a Government inspector is due at the mint.

So, Sam and his buddies, blacksmith Jed (Ossie Davis) and strongman turned inventor O.W. Bandy (Clint Walker) have not just to recover the gold, and resist the temptation to simply spirit it away over the border, but find a method of getting it back inside the mint without anyone knowing and at the same time smuggle out the false ingots.

Of course, Laura has a blueprint of the plans of the mint so that’s okay then. And there’s a bust of her dead husband in the hallway of the mint and if Sam can just find the right excuse to take it away – and bearing in mind he has no obvious mold to use to re-cast it – he can re-make it in gold, return it, sneak it down into the smelting room and turn it back into gold bars.

Yes, the story is that complicated. Sam is only prevented from stealing the haul for himself by the seductive presence of Laura, who also has to act femme fatale enough to waylay the real inspector, whose identity Sam steals. I was praying that Laura, who seemed to be too good to be true what with all that family honor, was actually playing Sam for a patsy and that what was being removed from the mint was the real gold and what was being substituted was the fake.

No such luck. And this might well have worked if it had been treated seriously, if Sam was a famous robber, and if the director hadn’t interrupted proceedings every few minutes with some woeful comedy music and littered it with non-sequiturs or even provided a decent villain apart from Fat Henry (Rick Davis) and his motley crew who suspect something is up and attempt to hijack the gold before it reaches the mint.

And it’s a shame because the leading players are all an interesting watch. Burt Reynolds (Fade In, 1968), still a few years short of stardom, takes a risk in playing his character in light comedy fashion, coming off second best in his opening encounter with Jed. Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962) is far too genteel to play the femme fatale and it’s clear she only goes down the seduction route when Sam balks at the barminess of the idea, but it’s equally clear she’s the brains of the operation, and that’s pretty much a first in the western robbing business, and her character is so deftly acted that it’s only later, when you add everything up, you realize the depths of the character and that’s she only allowed audiences a glimpse of the surface.

Ossie Davis (The Scalphunters, 1968) doesn’t attempt the obvious either. He’s not after the Jim Brown action crown. He can look after himself with his fists, but he’s got the intelligence to avoid getting trapped by violence. And Clint Walker (The Great Bank Robbery, 1969), also primarily playing against type, is a muscular version of the crackpot inventor you usually found in a British comedy, but who is capable of coming up with an early version of diving equipment. And he has a great line that despite endless rehearsal he muffs up, “Aha!” he proclaims, battering in a bedroom door, in best Victorian melodrama fashion, “I caught you trifling with my wife.”

So it’s worth it for the performances and if you ever hankered after the seminal shot of a squirrel overhearing a conversation or wondered how many shots in one movie a director could contrive to make through a small space then this is for you. Screenwiter William Norton (The Scalphunters) had better luck with other directors but here Arnold Laven (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967) takes a wrong turning. Amiable is not enough, certainly not for a complicated heist picture.

Angie Dickinson and Burt Reynolds completists, though, will not want to miss this.

Send Me No Flowers (1964) ***

Doris Day (With Six You Get Eggroll, 1968) is such a whiz at physical comedy you wonder why it is ever rationed, as it appears to be here, limited to a fabulous sequence where her coat is caught in the door while collecting supplies from the milkman and a shorter one where she loses control of her golf cart. And until the relevant misunderstandings kick in, this slightly limps along on the tale of hypochondriac George (Rock Hudson) believing he has only a few weeks to live and determining to make provision for his wife Judy (Doris Day) once he is dead.

Unfortunately, he confesses to his neighbor Arnold (Tony Randall) who is overcome with grief, even writing an eulogy along the lines of “when they wanted a good sport in Heaven they called on George Kimble.” Into the misunderstanding mix are innocent Dr Morrissey (Edward Andrews), Bert (Clint Walker), Judy’s college sweetheart, and lecherous bachelor Winston (Hal March) who preys on women with marital issues.

The fun only really starts when Judy, on discovering George kissing a woman in a cloakroom, believes he is having an affair and discovers that he is being more of a hypochondriac than usual in assuming early mortality. And that’s when we come to Doris Day’s other priceless (rather under-rated ) asset – her range of expressions, not just the expected outrage at deception, but the look in her eye that tells you she is planning revenge.

Most of the supporting characters are well-drawn. Dr Morissey, endlessly envious of colleagues making a killing in one speciality or another, is the kind of man who has a ring of white atop his tanned face indicating where he has kept his hat on when out fishing in hot weather. The predatory Winston demonstrates his talents for picking up vulnerable women. The undertaker is ridiculously jolly. And Bert acts as if Judy made a big mistake in throwing him over. For that matter, Judy seems unable to resist his romantic arm around her shoulder.

It’s not until the complications mount up in that Rock Hudson (Seconds, 1966) comes into his own – an excellent scene sharing Tony Randall’s bed when kicked out by Judy during which his neighbor revises the eulogy downwards, and a cracker of a sequence where, taking his neighbor’s advice, he has to invent a lover in order to confess an affair to his wife in the hope of speedy forgiveness.

It’s all effortless fluff but you do wonder how well it would have worked in other hands. You often don’t appreciate the skill of actors at this kind of light-hearted comedy, creating highly believable characters and at the same time leaving themselves open to be ridiculed by the script. The narrative skips through three arcs. First we focus on the hypochondriac, then the “good sport” trying to ensure that his wife is so well looked after following his death that he buys his own burial plot and attempts to find her a second husband, and it’s only in the third act that the engineered complications kick in.

I was surprised to find Norman Jewison’s hand on this particular wheel, having associated him with more serious pictures like The Cincinnati Kid (1965) and In the Heat of the Night (1967) while even The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966) fits more the category of satire. But comedy was very much his forte in his initial foray in Hollywood.

Of course, you could argue that the Rock Hudson-Doris Day cavalcade needed little steering, the two principals pretty capable of making the whole enterprise run smoothly, so I’m assuming the attention he paid to the supporting cast was where his effort was most noticeable. And, also, given this was based on a short-lived Broadway play, he does an excellent job of widening it out, so that it rarely feels stage-bound. Although maybe that credit should go to screenwriter Julius J. Epstein (Return from the Ashes, 1965) who adapted the play by Norman Barasch and Carroll Moore.

Nothing to exert you here, just sit back and enjoy the fun.