Fantastic Voyage – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: Raquel Welch, Unknown Actress, 1964-September 1966, Gets The “Big Build-Up”

As demonstrated in Madison Avenue (1961), the “big build-up” was code for inflicting on an unsuspecting public an unlikely candidate for acclaim. Of course, for decades, Hollywood hacks had been bombarding fan magazines, weeklies, glossy monthlies and dailies with beefcake and cheesecake photos of promising new talent. But the hook was that these actors were shortly appearing, albeit in a bit part, in a few months’ time in a forthcoming movie.

Modelling was another device to attract the attention necessary to generate a screen career. Sometimes, these (predominantly female) models would be making their first throw of the dice, hoping that some producer in an idle moment might catch a glimpse. Or, they could be women who made a living from selling such snaps to such media.

But, usually, it was one thing or the other: gratis photos handed out by grateful studio marketing teams or photos that an editor paid for in the hope they would increase circulation (in the days when there was no such thing as a giveaway magazine). La Welch appears to have fallen into the latter category.

But it was a heck of a long-term build-up given that with the exception of the virtually unseen Swingin’ Summer (1965), in which she has a bit part, Raquel Welch did not appear in a movie until September 1966. By that point, modelling a skintight number in Fantastic Voyage – it was December before that iconic fur bikini in One Million Years B.C. set male hearts pumping – it seems that magazine editors the world over were prone to giving her space in the years prior covering 1964-1966 when she was effectively an unknown.

Which would go some way to explaining why by the time her first movies hit the screen she was already a familiar face (and body, it has to be said) to many (and not exclusively male) in the audience. The promotional push was supplied by Twentieth Century Fox which had signed her to a five-picture contract, making her, perhaps in their own words, one of the most sought-after actresses in Hollywood.

But deals with studios for new talent were ten a penny, no guarantee the studio would keep its side of the bargain, nor that the contract would run to term, nor that the actress would be handed anything but bit parts. Still, it probably cost relatively little to start pumping out promotional photos with “new rising talent” as the lure. Magazines seemed happy to accept on face value that she was a rising star even though there was no proof that she had the talent to match.

Life magazine proved something of a stepping stone. She was featured in a bikini in its Oct 2, 1964, issue. But you could just as easily have caught her in a leopard-skin dress draped across a cocktail stool, one of several cheesecake pictures taken to promote the starlet. Parade magazine, in Britain, something of a lower-grade male magazine, far removed from the likes of the glossier Playboy, was among the first to take the bait, in December 1964 (see above) handing the young potential star its front cover. (Her surname was misspelled as Welsh – and her Christian name was misspelled as Rachel when she featured again in March 13, 1965.)

Five of the 10 chosen Deb Stars of Tomorrow. See if you can spot our gal.

But the real boost came at the end of December 1964. That month she was one of ten potential female stars featured in the Dec 27 issue of New York Journal-American under the title “TV’s Magic Wand Taps Girls As Stars of Tomorrow.” She had been chosen to appear on ABC TV’s “Debs Stars of 1965” programme. This show claimed an 85 per cent success rate in picking potential stars, with Kim Novak, Tuesday Weld and Yvette Mimieux among previous winners.*

In April 1965, the distinctly more upmarket – and not male-appealing – McCalls in the U.S. came calling, but that front cover dispensed with the sexy look, presenting her wearing spectacles. By September 1965, the Fox marketeers had been hard at work and won for her – a full year before Fantastic Voyage opened – the front cover and an inside spread in the British edition of movie fan magazine Photoplay. The next month brought another iconic photograph, the “nude” spread in U.S. upmarket monthly Esquire, accompanied by a full-page interview that treated her as the next big thing, again on the word of Fox, nobody having as yet seen so much as an inch of the footage of the sci-fi picture.

The same month in trademark bikini she was on the front cover of U.S. Camera and Travel magazine (surname again misspelled), photographed by Don Ornitz and described as “a rising young actress with many screen and TV credits to her name” without specifying that in fact these were mostly uncredited or in bit parts. Also during 1965 she featured in Turkish magazine SES and Portuguese magazine Plateia.

But there was also the grind. She advertised Wate-On slimming in Screen Stories in 1965, was the cover model for True Love in September 1965 while for Midnight magazine – and surely this was a story dreamed up by a publicity hound – her front cover picture was accompanied by the heading “Adultery Can Save Your Marriage” and inside she was quoted as saying “A Wife Should Let Her Husband Cheat.”

The big build-up went into overdrive in 1966. She modelled bikinis in two more front covers in Parade (all name errors corrected) in January and July. Australians preferred a more demure – or at least non-bikini – look. In Australian Post (June front cover) she was photographed wearing a “dress of ten thousand beads” from her unnamed next picture (neither Fantastic Voyage nor One Million Years B.C. obviously). There was a slinky pink number for the Australian edition of Photoplay (August, front cover and full-page photo inside) and a quote “I think its important for a girl to exploit her physical attractions – but with restraint.”

She also graced Hungarian magazine Filmvilag and Showtime, both in August. Perhaps the most prescient feature ran in Woman’s Mirror in April 1966. For once she was not granted the cover, but featured on a two-page spread inside under the heading “A Star Nobody Has Seen But Everybody Is Looking For.”

Most of her figure was hidden on the front cover of Pageant (July). SES had something of a scoop in its April edition with some behind-the-scenes photos of Welch in her fur bikini for One Million Years B.C. and she made the cover of German magazine Bunte (June).

Exactly how busy and successful Welch – and her promoters – had been could be gauged from the photo that appeared in the Aug 26, 1966, issue of Life, in which she was pictured in front of a wall of over 40 of front covers she had adorned in the previous two years. Pictorial proof that she was in demand and that magazine editors, long before the public had the chance to witness her screen performance, could recognize a certain kind of charisma. (She was featured in Life again in Dec 1966, in a bikini, but seen sideways, bent over and with her hair in pigtails – and on the cover of its Spanish edition on Nov 21.)

And there was another kind of accolade coming her way in Britain. She was chosen as the first cover model for the first issue of men’s magazine Mayfair in August 1966, the same month as she was positioned in the same prominent spot on Adam, another men’s magazine, and in the more sedate British magazine Weekend, in which she was promoting Fantastic Voyage.

But she would soon be forever associated with the fur bikini, posters of which were soon plastered over the walls of teenage boys. The fur bikini more than anything else broke the mold in the presentation of a new star, and luckily for Welch, the ground work had been done courtesy of the long-range big build-up.

*The other nine Deb Stars of Tomorrow were Barbara Parkins (Valley of the Dolls, 1967), Mary Ann Mobley (Istanbul Express, 1968), Margaret Mason (no movies but some television), Wendy Stuart (couple of bit parts), Beverley Washburn (Pit Stop, 1969), Tracy McHale (nothing), Laurie Sibbald ( a few television episodes), Janet Landgard (The Swimmer, 1968) and Donna Loren (a few television episodes). No prizes for guessing who won that particular Deb Star competition.

Bestseller Hollywood, Part Three – Novelizations

Novelizations were the hidden secret of 1960s Hollywood. While the decade is better known for widescreen 70mm roadshows, James Bond and the spy deluge, the musical and western revival and the start of the American New Wave, the novelization revolutionized the way films were marketed. By the end of the decade virtually every film released was accompanied by a book tie-in, either a bestseller sold to Hollywood, or a film script turned into a paperback / soft cover book.

At the start of this boom, around 1960, studios virtually gave away screenplays to publishers and allowed them to turn them into novels in return for the marketing angle they could provide. “Producers looked at tie-in books primarily as an exploitation aid not a source of income,” explained Patricia Johnson of paperback specialist Gold Medal Books in 1962. “Motion picture companies with no more – and often much less – than a rough script are being besieged by droves of publishers vying for the right to novelize original scenarios.”

The novelizations were usually short – about 60,000 words – and therefore attractively priced for the reading public but they could sell as many as half a million copies. But except in particular circumstances, studios allowed the rights to go to publishers for minute amounts of money. And for one simple reason – marketing. Half a century before social media, there was little advance promotion of movies. The week they were about to be released would see a flurry of advertising, but in general little promotion before that. Even journalists who had attended the press junkets I mentioned in a previous Blog would concentrate their articles into the week of release.

“What a publisher does for a film concern,” said Johnson, “is it creates a nationwide market, a popular anticipation of a film before it would ordinarily be more than a vague glimmer in the public consciousness.” The 125,000 outlets for books included not just bookstores but locations that targeted passing trade with extensive foot traffic. Newsstands in the street, hotel lobbies, railroad stations, department stores, airports and drugstores all boasted racks of paperback books with glossy covers, informing potential moviegoers of forthcoming films. Studios wanted to take advantage of the promotional device that bestsellers turned into movies could generate. For studios they represented an early marketing tool. Incorporating the movie advert or photos of the stars raised awareness of a forthcoming picture long before the first advert had appeared in a newspaper or billboard.

*Robert Bloch cashed in on his “Psycho” fame to turn his original screenplay for The Couch into a novel*.

One of the earliest novelizations was for Rat Pack heist picture Ocean’s 11 (1960) – pictured at the top of this page – and it showed the format to which publishers readily adhered. As you might expect, the cover featured a still from the movie incorporating the main stars, but there was also, by dictat of the Writers Guild of America (the screenwriters union), mention of the original scriptwriters in the same size of typeface as the authors who had carried out the novelisation.

Very rarely did the original screenwriter undertake this task. For a start, most considered it beneath their dignity. But, secondly, they got paid anyway. The screenwriter automatically received one-third of the fee a publisher paid the studio and the same share of royalties. By the mid-1960s the WGA was negotiating for a set fee of $6,000 (about $50,000 equivalent now) so a nice amount for no work but less appetising for a full-time screenwriter to do the whole job.

*Bellah’s novel “The Valiant Virginian” was the inspiration for the TV series “The Virginian.”*

But there were exceptions. Robert Bloch decided to turn his original screenplay The Couch (1961) into a novel. But then he had the experience of Psycho (1960) behind him. Prior to the 1960 Hitchcock film, his novel had only sold only 4,000 copies in hardback. The success of the film shifted 500,000 copies in paperback. Bloch must have reckoned his name emblazoned on the cover – and gaining sole credit, fee and royalties – would be more financially beneficial. Western author James Warner Bellah undertook the novelizations of his screenplays for Sergeant Rutledge (1960), A Thunder of Drums (1961) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).

But neither would have been as assiduously wooed by publishers as the team of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick who were jointly credited for the novelization of 2001: A Space Odyssey. An extremely unusual aspect of this deal was that the novelization appeared first as a hardback. Although based on a Clarke short story, and despite the fact that Clarke was considered one of the greatest names in science fiction, on the writing side movie and book were promoted as joint efforts. Delacorte-Dell forked out a $150,000 advance for the hardback with a 15% royalty rate. Clarke/Kubrick refused to allow the hardback publisher a share of the paperback spoils for which they negotiated a 12-15% royalty, way above the norm.

*Note how many credits for the original musical were carried on the cover.*

Occasionally the novelization would be undertaken by an author famous in their own right, such as when another sci fi giant Isaac Asimov took on the task of writing the book based on the script of Fantastic Voyage (1966). Famed western writer Louis L’Amour was handed the novelization of James Webb’s script for How the West Was Won (1963). Irving Shulman was a well-known novelist when called upon to turn West Side Story (1961) and The Notorious Landlady (1962) into novels. Screenwriter Adela Rogers St John (The Girl Who Had Everything, 1953) novelized King of Kings (1961). Sci fi writer Robert W. Krepps churned out novelizations for historical epics El Cid (1961) and Taras Bulba (1963), comedy Boys Night Out (1962) and westerns Stagecoach (1966) and Hour of the Gun (1967). Crime writer Jim Thompson novelized James Lee Barrett’s script of western The Undefeated (1969).

Some who took the novelization coin later made their name as bestselling authors in the own right. Marvin H. Albert – later known for the “Tony Rome” private eye novels that were filmed starring Frank Sinatra – was a relatively unknown journeyman writer when he became the go-to author for comedy novelizations, lending his name to the books of Come September (1961), Lover Come Back (1962), Move Over Darling (1963), The Pink Panther (1963), The Great Race (1965) and Strange Bedfellows (1965). Similarly, David Westheimer, a year before he published the bestselling Von Ryan’s Express, knocked out the book of Days of Wine and Roses (1962) from the J P Miller screenplay.

But mostly the novelizations were produced by journeymen such as Richard Wormer (Operation Crossbow, 1965), Alan Caillou (Khartoum, 1966), Ed Friend (Alvarez Kelly, 1966), John Burke (Privilege, 1967), Richard Meade (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967), Ray Gaulden (Five Card Stud, 1967), Jackson Donahue (Divorce American Style, 1967), Michael Avallone (Krakatoa-East of Java, 1968) and Joseph Landon (Stagecoach, 1966).

Publishers were not above picking over the spoils of decades-old scripts. Borden Deal was hired to novelize an un-made 1933 script written by Theodore Dreiser, author of An American Tragedy; Johnny Belinda (1948) was novelized in 1961. There were other departures. When writer-director S.Lee Pogostin received a $10,000 advance to novelize his own Hard Contract (1969) the book that appeared comprised the original script with stage directions and filmic addenda, in part due to the success of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance (1969) which was published as a screenplay rather than being novelized.

No genre was safe. Even musicals were plundered for their appeal to the book-reading public or for moviegoers wanting another way of reliving the film they had seen or getting a flavor of a picture they might consider seeing. As well as West Side Story and The Music Man (1962), there were novelizations of My Fair Lady (1964), Funny Girl (1968) and Paint Your Wagon (1969), an unexpected bestseller thanks to Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin on the cover.

It wasn’t all plain sailing. Hollywood was notoriously lax when it came to release dates, the opposite of the publishing industry for whom such dates were sacrosanct. So a publisher could have put a great deal into organizing the delivery of hundreds of thousands of copies of a novelized title into over a hundred thousand outlets only for the book to molder away on the shelves waiting for a movie which arrived months late – or never at all. Or the movie might undergo a last-minute title change leaving publishers trying to flog a picture nobody had heard of.

SOURCES: “3-Yr Advance Campaign for King of Kings,” Hollywood Reporter, July 5,1961, p2; “Book Notes,” Hollywood Reporter, October 27, 1961, p9; “Book Notes,” Hollywood Reporter, December 5, 1961, p11; Patricia Johnson, “Ego, Yes, Indecision Often, But Love That Hollywood,” Variety, January 10, 1962, p42; “How the West Was Won with L’Amour,” Hollywood Reporter, January 26, 1962, p10; “Book Notes,” Hollywood Reporter, December 5, 1961, p11 “Book Notes,” Hollywood Reporter, January 17, 1962, p7; ; “Willson Novelizing Script,” Hollywood Reporter, February 5, 1962, p3; “Book Notes,” Hollywood Reporter, April 3, 1962, p8; “Book Notes,” Hollywood Reporter, August 15, 1962, p7; “Roger Lewis, Phil Langner and Corp Ready Garrick Production Slate,” Variety, November 13, 1963, p19; “Crossbow Books Tie In with Picture Release,” Box Office, May 31, 1965, pA2; “Stagecoach Screenplay To Become Paperback,” Box Office, March 14, 1966, pA1; “Signet Print Paperback of Cinerama Khartoum,” Box Office, June 13, 1966, pA1; “Divorce American Style Film and Book Tie-Up,” Box Office, June 20, 1966, p12; “Inside Stuff – Pictures,” Variety, August 10, 1966, p24; “Anti-Brush-Off of Writers,” Variety, November 16, 1966, p11; “Gold Medal Books to Print Alvarez Kelly Paperback,” Box Office, September 12, 1966, pA1; “Four Paperbacks Are Set On New Universal Films,” Box Office, September 19, 1967, pA2; “Sci Fi Award Goes To 20^th-Fox for Voyage,” Box Office, September 26, 1966, pSW2; “Paint Your Wagon Set for Novelization,” Box Office, October 6, 1969, pA2; “The Undefeated Is Now Available in Paperback,” Box Office, November 3, 1969, pA2; “Inside Stuff – Pictures,” Variety, January 1, 1969, p23; “Advertisement, Krakatoa East of Java,” Box Office, November 17, 1969, p13-18; “Wagon Tie-In into Second Printing,” Box Office, December 1, 1969, pA2; “Marooned Printed in Paperback,” Box Office, December 15, 1969, pA1.