Big names were rarely immune to box office upset. Top stars like Sean Connery, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Al Pacino and Sylvester Stallone had their fair share of clinkers while the careers of the likes of the much-touted Mickey Rourke fizzled out in the face of audience indifference. Of course, it was the supposed marquee pull of big stars that got them attached to sometimes dodgy projects in the first place, the idea that their presence would be sufficient to generate box office heat.
You’ll probably be surprised to discover that Highlander (1986) – especially given its cult status and the various sequels – was an out-and-out flop in the U.S., rentals of just $2.8 million on a budget of $17 million. But that was a comparative hit compared to other Connery items, Fred Zinnemann’s Five Days One Summer (1982) with only $100,000 in the kitty on a $15 million budget. The Red Tent (1969) was covered in so much red ink it could have qualified as a horror picture, a return of $900,000 on a $10 million cost. Martin Ritt’s mining saga The Molly Maguires (1968) dug out only $1.1 million, around 10 per cent of its budget. Comparatively speaking, Meteor (1979) was a success, $6 million taken in on a $20 million budget.
Connery wasn’t the only big name cashing in on the disaster picture only to encounter disaster at the box office. Income from When Time Ran Out (1980), another in the $20-million range, barely covered Paul Newman’s fee. Other than a big fat check who knows what Jack Nicholson saw in an octet of calamities. The Border (1982) generated just $4.6 million rentals from a $22 million investment, the joke was on Martin Scorsese for King of Comedy with $1.2 million from $19 million, and even the $30 million Midnight Run (1988) failed to cross the line with just $18 million. Prayers and good reviews couldn’t save The Mission (1986) its $8.3 million take barely one-third of its cost, Angel Heart (1987) took about the same level of hit, $6.5 million from an $18 million expenditure.
A dream teaming with Oscar fave Meryl Streep proved a nightmare, not once but twice, Ironweed (1987) smoking out $3.5 million from $27 million, Falling in Love (1984) marginally better with $5.8 million out of $14 million, but all hope dashed on Once Upon a Time in America (1984), $2.5 million retrieved from $30 million spent. Streep on her own, and even with a dark wig, could do little to save A Cry in the Dark (1988) from picking up a paltry $2.5 million from a $15 million undertaking.
When you realize Angel Heart was one of Mickey Rourke’s better performers you can guess at the scale of his problem. The heavily-touted 9½ Weeks (1986) went straight down the plughole, recovering a distant $2.5 million from hot $17 million. Crime didn’t pay either, Michael Cimino’s Year of the Dragon (1985) flamed out at $7.3 million, less than one-third of cost.
Few were exempt. Richard Gere might as well have worn a crown of thorns in King David (1985) – $2.5 million return on $22 million forked out. And he was impotent to revive Sidney Lumet’s Power (1986), $1.7 million from a $14 million handout. Al Pacino served up $200,000 for Revolution (1985), a $28 million turkey. Burt Reynolds was stuck on $3.4 million for his directorial debut the $22 million Stick (1985). Steve Martin billed just $2.3 million for Lonely Guy, a $14 million no-hoper.
Even Clint Eastwood could not always work his box office magic, The Dead Pool (1988), his fifth iteration on Dirty Harry, coming up $1 million shy of its $20 million budget. Bruce Willis in Sunset (1988) lost $17 million. Sylvester Stallone was down $30 million for Rambo III (1988) and $16.7 million for Over the Top (1987).
Michael Keaton in The Squeeze (1987) lost $21 million, Sidney Poitier and River Phoenix in Little Nikita (1988) lost $14.3 million, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) lost a colossal $48 million hit, Heaven’s Gate (1980) $34.5 million, Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) $23.5 million, Bette Midler in the appropriately-named Jinxed (1982) $13.1 million. The Big Town (1987) starring Matt Dillon lost virtually all its $17 million budget, as much as prehistoric drama Clan of the Cave Bear (1986). Sheena (1984) roped a $23.1 million loss, Supergirl (1984) $24 million, the original Dune (1984) $25.4 million
Francis Coppola will be hoping his forthcoming self-financed $120 million Megalopolis doesn’t go the way of The Cotton Club (1984) – $12.9 million in rentals from $51 million – or One from the Heart (1981) – $400,000 back out of $26 million.
Of course, the best stars have longevity, a bad run doesn’t always spell the end. Connery bounced back big style with The Untouchables, The Hunt for Red October, Indiana Jones, Rising Sun and The Rock. Stallone went back to basics and drew on more Rocky and Rambo and flexed his muscles with The Expendables franchise.
SOURCE: “Film Costs vs Rentals,” Variety, February 21, 1990.
Due some unexpected reverence after being chosen by Quentin Tarantino for his inaugural eponymous festival that kicked off at the Dobie theater in Austin, Texas, in 1996. I thought I’d throw that in since my opinion alone may not have swayed you as to this film’s merits. Ken Annakin (Battle of the Bulge, 1965) wasn’t first choice as director. It was initially on the slate of Jack Cardiff (The Girl on a Motorcycle, 1969) and should have also made waves as the first big British-Indian co-production. After his World War Two tank epic, Annakin’s career unexpectedly stalled.
He backed out of a project to make a Las Vegas version of Grand Hotel (1931), another, the $1.5 million The Fifth Coin, written by Francis Coppola and to star George Segal, got snarled up on the starting grid. He balked at Texas Across the River (1966) – when the females leads were going to be Shirley MacLaine and Catherine Deneuve – due to concerns about the schedule. He actually shot half of The Perils of Pauline (1967) with Terry-Thomas, Pat Boone and Pamela Austin, wife of super-agent Guy McIllwhaine, before being fired, for reasons that were unclear. Still, he remained in demand and was immediately off to Italy to shoot Raquel Welch heist picture The Biggest Bundle of Them All – not released until two years later as explained in my Behind the Scenes blog on that movie.
However, before jetting off to Italy, he had been sounded out by British producer Sydney Box who had a commitment from Yul Brynner and Trevor Howard to star in the $3 million The Long Duel being financed fifty-fifty by British studio Rank and fourteen Indian investors taking advantage of a tax-shelter deal. Annakin was in line for his biggest-ever fee. For Rank it was a brave new world. The British studio after years of relative inactivity was back on the production front foot, initially in co-production deals with American majors and British investment outfits like the National Film Corporation. It planned to invest $12 million in eight pictures. Initially, its stake in The Long Duel was limited to 60 per cent at a time when the movie was budgeted at $2.3 million. This was “particularly surprising because it came at a time when Britain was caught in a severe economic freeze” although the surprise success of the Bond pictures suggested the country’s movie industry was, in contrast, riding the crest of a wave.
Things turned sour on the location scouting trip to India. A “bottomless pit” of laborers was on standby to build a rope bridge across as soon as the money came through. Timber had been ordered to build a fort on a plateau with stunning views of snow-capped mountains, but nothing would arrive until money changed hands. While Rank had committed three-fifths of the finance with the rest coming from the release of blocked rupees guaranteed by a Maharajah, without any immediate cash and with the stars on pay-or-play contracts, there was no option but for Rank to pick up the entire cost and seek out alternative locations. That meant it was the single biggest British production financed domestically without a foreign partner.
Matters worsened when producer Sydney Box suffered a heart attack, triggering his departure from the business, in which he had been a mainstay for 33 years, movies ranging from The Seventh Veil (1945) to Accident (1966). In addition, Annakin was negotiating to make a permanent move to France while his wife was at home in England dealing with an adopted new-born baby. Annakin – acting also as producer for the first time – gambled on shifting the movie to Spain.
After the success of Doctor Zhivago (1965), Spain was fast being viewed as an ideal terrain, Custer of the West (1967), Camelot (1967), Fathom (1967) and The Bobo (1966) jostling for space. Having made a couple of movies there, Annakin assured the backers, the terrain was “not dissimilar” to the locations he had viewed in India. “I believe we can make Spain into India, so long as the crowds are dressed as Indians, which will cost quite a lot more because it means providing all the costumes whereas in India they already exist,” he explained. He had three weeks before the actors were due.
Yul Brynner and Trevor Howard would have seemed best buddies by now, having appeared in three films together over the past two years – Morituri (1965), The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966) and Triple Cross (1966). Brynner’s career had revived thanks to Return of the Seven (1966). He was considered poor box office in the U.S. but made up for it with his global marquee appeal. Howard had been on an unexpected box office roll following Father Goose (1964), Operation Crossbow (1965), Von Ryan’s Express (1965) and The Liquidator (1965).
Annakin turned to the Sierra Nevadas to double as the Himalyas, located the rope bridge in a ravine near Ronda, the villages transplanted to the dusty Andalusian plains, and found sufficient horse-riding extras among the gypsies of Dacoit country. The Alhambra was called in to action for part of the Indian palace. A steam train of sufficient vintage was found.
Brynner supplied his own motor home, one of the most luxurious on the market, but required considerable assistance to move it around, especially on narrow country roads linking locations. Over 300 horses were required, with complications when the animals had to be moved in the dark. The major scenes required extensive lighting and nobody had taken into account the fierce winds which nearly blew everything away. The dancing bear was supplied by Chipperfield Zoo near Windsor, England. In the scene where Brynner returns to find his tribe massacred, the bear is also a victim. But, when the bear was knocked out by an injection, it didn’t wake up again. Cast and crew were so shocked that filming was abandoned for the day.
Howard’s alcoholism was another issue, liable to leave the actor so disoriented during the shooting of dangerous scenes that his close-ups were often shot at a later date, though, eventually informed of this accommodation, the veteran sobered up. If you felt when watching the movie that the female stars were out of place, you wouldn’t be far wrong. In the original tale there was no significant female role. But acceding to the demands of studio and distributor required various love interests. Suzanna Leigh (Subterfuge, 1968) turned down the lead, providing Charlotte Rampling (Three, 1969) with a worthy role.
Convinced it was onto a winner, Rank took out adverts in the trades claiming “all signs point to it being…among the greats” and it took the bold step of launching it in roadshow at the Odeon Marble Arch simultaneous with continuous performance at the Odeon Leicester Square in London’s West End.
SOURCES: Ken Annakin, So You Wanna Be a Director (Tomahawk Press, 2001) p186-189, 197-206; “Sydney Box $10-Mil Prod Program,” Variety, January 26, 1966, p14; “Rank Now Measuring Up,” Variety, July 27, 1966, p25; Advert, Variety, August 24, 1966, p27; “$3-Mil Rank Duel May Be Costliest British Film Ever,” Variety, October 26, 1966, p5; Advert, Variety, November 9, 1966, p27; “Sydney Box Quits Film Posts,” Variety, August 7, 1967, p2.
Politics didn’t usually play a part in war films in the 1960s but’s it’s an essential ingredient to Rene Clement’s underrated documentary-style picture. Paris had no strategic importance and after the Normandy landings the Allies intended to bypass the French capital and head straight for Berlin.
Meanwhile, Hitler, in particular vengeful mood after the attempt on his life, ordered the city destroyed. Resistance groups were splintered, out-numbered and lacking the weaponry to achieve an uprising. Followers of General De Gaulle, the French leader in exile, wanted to wait until the Allies sent in the troops, the Communists planned to seize control before British and American soldiers could arrive.
When the Communists begin the fight, seizing public buildings, the Germans plant explosives on the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and other famous buildings and all the bridges across the River Seine. The German commandant Von Choltitz (Gert Frobe), no stranger to slaughter having overseen the destruction of Rotterdam, holds off obeying his orders because he believes Hitler is insane and the war already lost.
The Gaullists despatch a messenger to persuade General Omar Bradley (Glenn Ford) to change his mind and send troops to relieve the city. Sorry for the plot-spoiler but as everyone knows the Germans did not destroy the city and the liberation of Paris provided famous newsreel and photographic footage.
Director Clement (Rider on the Rain, 1970) was also aware he could not extract much tension from the question of whether von Choltitz will press the destruct button, so he takes another route and documents in meticulous detail the political in-fighting and the actual street battles that ensued, German tanks and artillery against Molotov cocktails and mostly old-fashioned weaponry. The wide Parisian boulevards provide a fabulous backdrop for the fighting.
Shooting much of the action from above allows Clement to capture the action in vivid cinematic strokes. Like The Longest Day (1962), the film does not follow one individual but is in essence a vast tapestry. Scenes of the utmost brutality – resistance fighters thrown out of a lorry to be machine-gunned, the public are strafed when they venture out to welcome the Americans – contrast with moments of such gentleness they could almost be parody: a shepherd taking a herd through the fighting, an old lady covered in falling plaster watching as soldiers drop home-made bombs on tanks.
This is not a film about heroism but the sheer raw energy required to carry out dangerous duty and many times a character we just saw winning one sally against the enemy is shot the next. The French have to fight street-by-street, enemy-emplacement-by-enemy-emplacement, tank-by-tank.
And Clement allows as much time for humanity. Francophile Sgt Warren (Anthony Perkins), as an American grunt, spends all his time in the middle of the battle trying to determine the location of the sights he longs to see – before he is abruptly killed. An unnamed café owner (Simone Signoret) helps soldiers phone their loved ones.
Like The Longest Day and In Harm’s Way (1965), the film was shot in black-and-white, but not, as with those movies for the simple reason of incorporating newsreel footage, but because De Gaulle, now the French president, objected to the sight of red swastika. Even so, it permitted the inclusion of newsreel footage, which on the small screen (where most people these days will watch it) appears seamless.
By Hollywood standards this was not an all-star cast, Glenn Ford (as Bradley), Kirk Douglas (General Patton) and Robert Stack (General Sibert) making fleeting glimpses.
But by French standards it was the all-star cast to beat all-star casts – Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless, 1960), Alain Delon (Lost Command, 1966), Yves Montand (Grand Prix, 1966), Charles Boyer (Gaslight, 1944), Leslie Caron (Gigi, 1958), Michel Piccoli (Masquerade, 1965), Simone Signoret (Room at the Top, 1959) and Jean-Louis Trintignant (A Man and a Woman, 1966). Orson Welles, in subdued form, appeared as the Swedish ambassador.
Gore Vidal (The Best Man, 1964) and Francis Coppola (The Godfather, 1962) devised the screenplay based on the bestseller by Larry Collins and Dominic Lapierre
At $6 million, it was the most expensive French film ever made. It had a six-month shooting schedule and was shot on the streets of the city including famous locations like Etoile, Madeleine and the Louvre. It was a big hit in France but flopped in the United States, its box office so poor that Paramount refused to disclose it.
If you ever wondered what kicked off the fad for having live orchestras playing at screenings of older films, you might be even more surprised to discover that Napoleon (1927) was the cause. And, for that matter, created the “event” movie, another contemporary buzzword that appears to indicate a limited-time-only showing. Abel Gance’s picture also set up another template, one that every director and critic ascribed to in their thousands, the restoration. For, in one fell swoop, the revival of this picture in 1981 after over half a century of neglect, turned restoration into an event, worthy of acres of newspaper articles, hi-hat premieres, and subsequent profitable release in both the theatrical and ancillary pipeline.
Equally, as luck would have it, Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927), truly was an event, a silent epic, the last section projected across three screens (the famed triptych, precursor of Cinerama and 70mm), road-shown with a full orchestra and ticket prices as high as $20. It became the “must-see” cultural happening of the year. American journalists gave director Francis Coppola virtually all the credit and he was certainly due everything that went with the bold showmanship and the financial risk, underwritten by his Zoetrope company, of launching the film in America’s largest cinema, the Radio City Music Hall in New York, with a complete score (incorporating classical music) by his father Carmine and the aforementioned full orchestra.
But in fact, the actual restoration had been carried out in Britain by silent film expert Kevin Brownlow – author of The Parade’s Gone By and director of It Happened Here (1965), the documentary Abel Gance, The Charm of Dynamite (1969) and Winstanley (1976) – who had compiled his version from eleven different sources including the Cinematheque in Paris, an MGM print and a seventeen-reel version from a private collector.
Thanks to Brownlow, Napoleon became “The Greatest Reissue Story Ever Told.”
Why? Because it was the result of obsession and passion, emotions every artist shares with every cinephile. Brownlow first came across Napoleon as a fifteen-year-old, and although he only glimpsed a few fragments, it was enough to trigger a quest that was to last nearly thirty years. Ironically, it was thanks to a quirky French invention that Brownlow encountered the Gance masterpiece. Where other countries adapted the 8mm format for showing abridged features at home, the French projected these films on a 9.5mm gauge.
After being gifted such a projector for his eleventh birthday, Brownlow started hunting down and purchasing silent films. In 1954, at the age of fifteen, disappointed by Jean Epstein’s Lion des Mongols (1924) he asked for a replacement and was offered two reels of a movie of which he had never heard – Napoleon vu par Abel Gance. It proved a revelation. He was “converted as surely as Paul on the road to Damascus.” He found exhilarating the “rapid cutting and swirling camera movement…and the magic of the visuals were exceptional.” From scouring junk shops and advertising in magazines, he assembled other reels and began showing a 90-minute version to family, friends and other film lovers. Even when the British National Film Archive turned down the opportunity to view the picture Brownlow, undeterred, wrote to Gance and, by happy coincidence in 1955, was invited to meet the director at the British Film Institute.
The accepted version of the Gance story was that Napoleon was a neglected masterpiece, but that was not strictly true. If the parade had passed him by, it was not for want of trying. Napoleon was revived (although primarily in France) as Napoleon Bonaparte in 1935 and in 1953-1955 on the back of his original technological innovations and other films about the French Emperor. In directing the silent picture, Gance had anticipated the arrival of sound and made his actors speak actual dialogue which later facilitated dubbing. The 1935 sound reissue (140 minutes including new footage), partly piggybacked on a new film about Napoleon written by Mussolini.
The next revival owed everything to recognition of his part in creating the first wide screen. Another French inventor Henri Chretien, inspired by Gance’s triptych, had invented what Twentieth Century Fox marketed as CinemaScope. While delighting in Chretien’s process, French journalists recognized Gance’s contribution. In 1953, when Twentieth Century Fox toured Cinemascope throughout Europe one port of call was the Venice Film Festival where the organizers “planned to surprise those who think widescreen is a new thing” by showing Napoleon on the CinemaScope screen.
Gance timed public demonstrations of his process (called Polyvision) to coincide with the launch of The Robe. The arrival of Cinerama also sent journalists delving into the past. However, Gance’s film had to wait until 1955 for another commercial outing, when it rode in on the heels of Sacha Guitry’s phenomenally successful Napoleon (the most expensive French film ever made and a box office smash) and enjoyed a two-year run at the Studio 28 arthouse in Montmartre aided by the releases of Desiree (1954) starring Marlon Brando and King Vidor’s War and Peace (1956). Independent distributor Tomas J. Brand acquired the U.S. rights in 1954, hoping to interest Cinerama in showing the movie as a “spectacle.” Gance toured his process, renamed Magirama, through France in 1956 but his comeback venture Austerlitz (1960) with an all-star cast of Orson Welles, Claudia Cardinale, Maurice Chevalier, Leslie Caron and Vittorio de Sica flopped in the U.S.
And there, pretty much, the matter lay, the parade now racing past Gance, until 1969 when, separately, Brownlow, using the facilities of the British Film Institute, began work on restoring the silent picture, while French film director Claude Lelouch (A Man and a Woman), who owned a cinema devoted to classics, purchased the rights and with funding from the French government released in 1971 (the 150th anniversary of Napoleon’s death) the 235-minute sound version Bonaparteand the Revolution, with some new scenes shot by Gance, who had reworked other scenes and added a color preface. Outside of France, it was destined for the rarified atmosphere of the film festival circuit, turning up in Rotterdam in 1972, Boulogne in 1972, the University of California in 1973, Paris again in 1973, not reaching New York till 1976.
Brownlow was aghast at this version, which had, in effect, been butchered by its maker, but after running out of money to complete his version turned in 1975 to the British National Film Archive which made a master print. The U.S. rights were purchased by Image Film Archive in 1975, which, with the New York Museum of Modern Art, purchased the rights to the MGM negative which contained several sections never seen before and working with Brownlow produced the five-and-a-half hour silent shown at the Telluride Film Festival in late summer 1979 in the presence of the director on a giant exterior screen erected by mountaineers for a screening beginning at nine o’clock at night. This edition, with music by Carl Davis, was the highlight of the London Film Festival in November 1980.
Interesting though all this was to the film buff, it was not going to make headlines across America. That was where Coppola’s marketing genius came in. He saw the necessity of creating an event that would match Gance’s ambitious scope and in one fell swoop remove restoration from the discreet chambers of museums and arthouses and push it out in the full public spotlight. For commercial reasons, Image Film Archive trimmed an hour, achieved by projecting the film at a faster speed and, at Brownlow’s suggestion, cutting scenes from the Toulon battle and a subplot concerning the secret passion of an innkeeper’s daughter for Napoleon.
Hiring Radio City Music Hall was an act of unsurpassed faith. The premiere on January 23, 1981, and two other performances cost $150,000, break-even set at ten thousand admissions (at $10-$15 a ticket) and the days when the Music Hall commonly did that were long gone. Bookings were sluggish until an article in the New York Times stimulated interest.
Napoleon at the Radio City Music Hall counted as three days that shook the reissue world. A gross of $297,000 spurred further showings. Image Film archive envisaged a 70mm version to avoid the necessity of projecting across three screens. If New York was a marketing coup, it was just the start. Coppola and Image Film Archive conceived an even bolder strategy. The movie would embark on an old-fashioned roadshow, harking back to the days of Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, when print and orchestra traveled from city to city. The touring schedule took in Columbus, Chicago and Los Angeles (in time for Bastille Day). Tickets would cost $10-$20. The 3,890-seat Chicago theater racked up $195,000 for the first four performances, $199,000 for the second four and $173,000 for the third. The 2,750-seat Midland in Kansas City pulled in $150,000, in New Orleans at the 2,800-seat Saenger Performing Arts Center it was $232,000, in Syracuse $93,000 at the Area Landmark.
By July the gross from just forty-five performances was over $2.5 million and for cinemas that could not afford the expense of a live orchestra the score was married to the print. Two more weekends at the Radio City Music Hall in October added $834,000. By year end that had more than doubled, an unbelievable sum for a silent movie revival. The way the film was presented was seen as the reissue catalyst to fight the twin onslaught of video cassettes and cable, since it could not be mounted anywhere but a cinema.
In a move that would have far-reaching implications for the reissue business, Universal’s new classics division was emboldened to buy the worldwide rights from Image. “This will be the kind of event that will be the mainstay for exhibitors over the next five to ten years as we come to grips with home entertainment,” prophesied Ben Commack Jr., the unit’s boss. “If all we get are film buffs, we’ve failed,” he added, “There’s no reason why this film can’t be accessible to mainstream audiences.” A second release wave in 1982-1983, minus the orchestra, targeted smaller first run emporiums in eleven key cities, following a more traditional roadshow pattern of two performances a day and three on Saturdays, an intermission and sales of posters and records in the lobby.
The 70mm six-track stereo version, utilizing the Carmine Coppola score, was tested at the 915-seat Cinerama Dome ($7.50) in Los Angeles. Brochures were distributed to high schools, colleges, hospitals, corporations and museums. The concept almost fell at the first hurdle, first week only $18,400. The second week rose by $100, and fell, but not by much, over the next three weeks. When a final week was announced, takings soared to $19,900. Universal need not have worried. Seattle opened “big” on two small theaters, Philadelphia figures were excellent, Pittsburgh was “wow,” San Francisco “dandy,” Denver “impressive” and Cleveland took in a “sensational” $40,000 opener. Returning to New York, it scored $9,000 at the 549-seat Sutton (at $5 a ticket) arthouse. Although the French premiere of the revival had taken place in Le Havre in 1982, the film did not open commercially until July 1983. Running at five-and-a-quarter hours and with top tickets priced at $20, the three shows at the 3,700-seat Palais de Congress saw twelve thousand admissions.
All in all Napoleon was a triumph, grossing $7.5 million worldwide, certainly the most unexpected reissue of all time, and one that changed attitudes to revivals for the next three decades.
SOURCES: Brian Hannan, Coming Back to a Theater Near You, A History of Hollywood Reissues, 1914-2014 (McFarland, 2016) p275-279; Kevin Brownlow, Napoleon, Abel Gance’s Classic Film, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1983); “Il Duce’s World Try on Napoleon Pic,” Variety, April 3, 1935, 19; “20th Fox Adaptation of Chretien System Stirs Paris Interest in 3D,” Variety, August 19, 1953, 13; “27 Pix from 16 Lands Incl Russia in Venice Festival Race This Week,” Variety, August 19, 1953, 3; “More 3D Systems Flooding Paris,” Variety, September 2, 1953, 10; “The New Always Has a Past,” Variety, November 3, 1954, 20; “Gance Preps Polyvision Prod. like Cinerama,” Variety, August 17, 1955, 14; “Gance Takes His Screen Process on Road Tour,” Variety, November 21, 1956, 14; “Abel Gance, at Age 90, Hit of Telluride; Napoleon on 3 Screens Runs Till 3am,” Variety, September 12, 1979, 28; “Gance’s Napoleon to be Shown at Nuart,” October 23, 1979, 17; “Zoetrope Mulls Symphonic Music for Gance’s Napoleon at Radio City,” Variety, March 19, 1980, 6; “British Slighted on Napoleon,” Variety, November 4, 1980, 1; “1926 Napoleon to Play Music Hall,” Variety, November 5, 1980, 1; Vincent Canby, “Gance’s Silent Napoleon is Reconstituted,” New York Times, January 24, 1981; “1927 Napoleon Makes Strong Showing,” Variety, January 27, 1981, 3; “Napoleon Sellout Prompts Added Screenings,” Variety, January 28, 1981, 2; “Picture Grosses,” Variety, 1981 – Chicago (April 29), Kansas City (May 27); “Napoleon Wow B.O. with 232G, 4 Shows; Syracuse is also Happy,” Variety, July 8, 1981, 5; “Napoleon Grosses $2.6-Mil to Date,” Variety, July 21, 1981, 4; Kevin Brownlow, “Napoleon a Triumph,” New York Times, October 11, 1981; “U’s new deal for Napoleon,” Variety, December 4, 1981, 2; “Big Rental Films of 1981,” Variety, January 13, 1982, 42; “Napoleon Retakes Paris,” Variety, July 27, 1983, 7.
It’s worth remembering that Britain, led by roughly the same type of commander lampooned here, won the Crimean War and that initially this particular engagement, despite the deaths, was celebrated for its valour by poet Lord Tennyson, in much the same way as famous defeats like Dunkirk and The Alamo somehow managed to achieve the status of some kind of victory in the public perception. It’s also worth noting that the documentary-style realisation of Dunkirk, (2017) and to that extent Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) owe much to Tony Richardson’s approach, both films more interested in the bigger picture than individual acts of heroism.
And our conscience here, dashing cavalry officer Nolan (David Hemmings), is not quite saintly, engaged in an affair with the wife Clarissa (Vanessa Redgrave) of a friend. Despite the director’s rush to judgement, his approach displays a refreshing change to a genre where acts of selfless courage were the norm. Setting aside the occasional self-reverential artistic lapse, it’s an excellent depiction of class-ridden Britain at war in 1854, an era when military advancement was purchased without any consideration to the leadership skills such high-ranking officers required. I’m never sure if John Ford invented the camaraderie of his Cavalry in westerns, where at dances the officers mixed with the ordinary soldiers, but here the two classes are kept apart.
And while Richardson clearly wants to blame the class system for the military calamity, the outcome is a no-holds-barred ultra-realistic portrayal of war in in all its sordid glory. At its heart are the machinations of senior commanders jostling for position and control and, much as with Field Marshal Montgomery and General Patton in World War Two, allowing personal enmity to affect decisions.
The two biggest culprits are Lord Cardigan (Trevor Howard) and brother-in-law Lord Lucan (Harry Andrews) in charge of the ill-fated charge who openly spout bile at each other, remain deliberately obtuse, and are, nonetheless, a joy to watch. Cardigan is irascible to the point of apoplexy, incredibly brave, vainglorious, a vindictive sex-mad peacock, with an odd selection of principles (refuses to deal with spies, for example). Nothing can beat a quite marvellous spat between the pair over how to pitch tents. Both, however, are a vast improvement on the ineffectual commander-in-chief Lord Raglan (John Gielgud) whose idea of tactics is to “form the infantry nicely” and another commander who refuses to let the simple matter of being under attack ruin his breakfast.
At the other end of the scale are the poor recruits, drawn from the lower classes, so ill-educated they don’t know their left foot from their right (something of a necessity in obeying orders in the field), lured by the promise of glory and a job, and find themselves turned into horsemen in the most brutal fashion.
In the middle is the effete Nolan, initially introduced as the good guy, who believes horses should be treated with kindness and stands up to Cardigan. His romance with Clarissa is a masterpiece of nuance, all furtive glances, hardly a word spoken. And he has a pivotal role in sending the cavalry in the wrong direction at the Battle of Balaclava, causing the fatal charge.
It’s episodic in structure, characters bobbing in and out, some for comedic purposes, and without the battle it’s doubtful the picture would have been made for, excepting the high-level squabbling, there’s little inherently dramatic. And possibly that’s to the movie’s benefit for it clears the way to concentrate on how an army operates and goes to war, the focus, unlike most war or historical pictures, being as much on what goes wrong as goes right. So the horses dying during the voyage and callously dumped overboard and the men marching through Crimean heat and afflicted by cholera take centre stage rather than lavish sequences of soldiers on splendid parade.
On the downside, you have to accept the director’s version of the war’s causes, British imperialism don’t you know, rather than Russian aggression as a result of religious conflict in the Middle East. And there’s narrative indecision, various characters permitted interior monologue for no particular reason except artistic impulse. Mrs Duberley (Jill Bennett) wife of the paymaster (Peter Bowles) is permitted to accompany the expedition for the sole purpose it would appear of being shagged by Cardigan.
The detail of what exactly went wrong on the battlefield is obscured by the fact that Nolan, who hand-delivered the famous order to attack, itself unclear, died in battle, so it’s like one of those Netflix documentaries about unsolved murders, fascinating but ultimately annoying. If incompetence is measured in casualties, apart from this one charge the British came out better than the other participants, 40,000 dead compared to three times as many among their French allies and more than ten times as many among the Russian enemy.
The acting is of a very high quality, David Hemmings (Alfred the Great, 1968) as good as I’ve ever seen him, Vanessa Redgrave (Blow-Up, 1966), except for her deception a Stepford Wife Victorian-style, Trevor Howard (Von Ryan’s Express, 1965) brilliantly outrageous and John Gielgud (Sebastian, 1968) who turns befuddlement into a high art.
Tony Richardson (Tom Jones, 1963) makes some bold choices, not least in what is included and what is left out, the battle of the tents, fake news (from The Times!), soldiers facing the lash, the dashing charge and its terrible aftermath, the animated sequences, and his revolutionary soundtrack. Sergio Leone might have claimed the artistic high ground with the buzzing fly at the start of Once Upon a Time in the West (1969) but there’s little in film music of the time – beyond Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho score – to compare with the sound of a fly playing over the end credits or its inclusion during the march when men are literally dropping like flies. This is a very different kind of curate’s egg, absolutely brilliant in parts, and never dull.
Unfortunately, there’s a topical parallel, Crimea having been invaded several years back by Russia and now the whole region aflame.
This was the first home-grown excursion into the all-star-cast business – other British movies in that ilk, originating from these shores, previously headlined by a Hollywood star like Gregory Peck (The Guns of Navarone, 1961), Kirk Douglas (The Heroes of Telemark, 1965) or George Peppard (The Blue Max, 1966). And I can see why the new box office stars David Hemmings and Vanessa Redgrave, repeating their Blow-Up (1966) teaming, would have, in the narrative sense, occupied center stage. But given nobody knew for certain what caused the disastrous charge and that it would taken place anyway in the picture, the far more entertaining approach would be to concentrate entirely on the likes of the feuding Cardigan and Lucan, two characters who leapt off the screen. Outside of the battle itself, Nolan’s sole purpose, it would seem, was to point out that the army treated its horses badly, a point the audience would have easily picked up without Nolan’s display of alternative horsemanship. Still, all told, at the risk of repeating myself, an excellent watch.
It was the heist of the century – the biggest steal in Hollywood history. Movie rights to The Godfather should have cost in the region of $1 million – i.e. boosting the original budget by around 20 per cent – given that Twentieth Century Fox shelled out a million bucks plus add-ons for The Love Machine published the same year and even Portnoy’s Complaint, a difficult book to transfer to the screen, went for $400,000. It was quite extraordinary that the movie rights to a bestseller which outsold the Jacqueline Susann novel and virtually everything in sight arrived at Paramount for the measly sum of $85,000. In other words, the greatest film of all time, according to the current 50th anniversary publicity splurge and notwithstanding Vertigo, had one of the cheapest starts.
Initially, around 1966, the studio had optioned a 20-page treatment entitled Mafia and paid small sums in the region of $5,000 and $7,500 and then $25,000 on publication and another $25,000 when hardback sales reached 150,000 copies, but its maximum exposure was $85,000. Had there been a Hollywood bidding war at the time of publication or shortly after it would easily have overtaken the sum paid for Portnoy’s Complaint or more likely that matched or bettered The Love Machine.
The movie tie-in edition appeared after the paperback had already shifted eight million copies. interestingly, it had already reached saturation point, only another couple of million sales added after the release of the film, though future instalments of the series brought in further sales. So you could easily argue that the book benefitted the movie far more than the other way round.
To add fuel to the fire, Puzo was paid only $100,000 for the screenplay at a time when William Goldman had received $400,000 for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Godfather was an hour longer than the western. And as if that wasn’t enough it was quite clear by the time the movie appeared that the tail was wagging the dog. Puzo had laid the groundwork for public hysteria about the movie by his book selling a staggering eight million copies.
In theory, Puzo enjoyed some largesse when Fawcett paid a record $410,000 for the paperback rights. However, paperback rights were split with the publisher of the hardback and were essentially an advance on sales. And in any case that sum was easily topped by the amount paid for Papillon published the same year. Paperbacks would bring in a royalty of about 15 cents a copy whereas the author’s share of hardback revenues would be five times that amount. So in some respects it was better for Puzo that the book remained in hardback, especially as, one year on from publication in March 1969, it was still topping the New York Times hardback bestseller chart. The Putnam hardback had sold close on one million copies split between bookshop sales and book club deals, netting the author around $700,000.
The problem with such a big hardback sale was that it invariably ate into the paperback revenues so it was in the author’s financial interest, especially for a novel still flying so high, to keep it in hardback for as long as possible. Conversely, for Fawcett, the paperback house, the longer it remained in hardback, the greater the risk of not getting its money back. So Fawcett enforced its contract and insisted the paperback appear one year after hardback publication. Although Fawcett’s initial print run for the paperback was a record 3.5 million copies that would bring Puzo less in royalties than he had accumulated from the hardback. Luckily, it didn’t work out that way.
Two years later the paperback, priced at $1.50 had sold eight million copies. In February 1972, Fawcett upped the price of the paperback to $1.65 and brought out a movie tie-in edition with 32 pages of stills. In addition, Mario Puzo, who had been paid $100,000 for The Godfather screenplay, and felt, overall, that he had been chiseled, was publishing The Godfather Papers, which was less than fulsome about his employers Paramount. But it was still extraordinary, even by Hollywood standards, that the biggest beneficiary of this publishing fairy story was the studio itself.
When the rumor mill started working overtime about who would play Don Corleone, it was reported that Puzo was dining with Ernest Borgnine and that studio production chief Robert Evans favored John Marley from Love Story. The situation at all studios towards the end of the 1960s was dicey and it was symptomatic of the continuing financial crisis that when Robert Evans passed the five-year mark as head of production at Paramount in September 1971 he was the industry’s longest-running production chief. Even so, the glory days of huge roadshow budgets were long gone. The Godfather was the most expensive project, topping out eventually at $6 million. But given its length and complexity – 102 New York locations for a start – it was surprisingly inexpensive given that Love Story had cost £2.1 million and less prestigious projects like Plaza Suite and Such Good Friends came in at $2 million.
The film was initially set to be released at Xmas 1971 – publication of The Godfather Papers was to coincide with that. But in summer 1971 Paramount changed its mind. It already had 85-100 cinemas lined up for the movie in its first big release splash. And now it was considering holding back the picture until May-June 1972. Despite perceived pressure on the director, the message Paramount’s Frank Yablans gave to the media was one of total support. “We will not sacrifice one-tenth of one per cent of quality just to hit a release date…(we are) not locked into any kind of release pattern.” And despite later reported concerns about Coppola’s production, in July 1971, while filming was not complete, Yablans commented: “the rushes have a fantastic look.”
Although it was intended as a wide release – a fraction of the 3,000 theaters that would constitute a wide release these days – Yablans was careful to distinguish the release from “saturation.” He defined saturation, wrongly as it happened, as a concentrated release in one specific area, the 50 or 100 houses in a “Showcase” strand in New York for example. He explained the difference – two or three cinemas per city across the entire country. There was nothing revolutionary about this apparently revolutionary approach. Hollywood had a habit of playing fast and loose with its own history and day-and-date releases of movies into 500-plus theaters all at once had been going on for decades. In fact the 300-odd cinemas making up the first run of The Godfather was about the same as for Billy Jack a year earlier.
What in fact was more significant was the length of the run. A really successful Showcase saturation might run four or five weeks but that was dependent on the week-by-week performance of the picture at the box office. A film that was “retained by public demand” was effectively that, it had punched so high that it was foolish to let it go. Paramount effectively fell back on the roadshow device of insisting on a cinema agreeing a specific length of run before the movie opened. Paramount specified this as twelve weeks – the original roadshow “season” was 13-15 weeks. In other words this was the “Box Office Un-Equalizer,” everything in revenue terms favoring the studio.
Then Paramount pulled the film forward from its projected May-June slot to Easter 1972 – which meant effectively Good Friday, March 31. Three months before opening, the studio had a trio of Loew’s first run theaters lined up – Loew’s State 1 and 2 and Loews’ Orpheum, all in Manhattan. Finally, it opened a fortnight before Easter, on March 15, in five top houses in New York. The first five days brought in a record $410,000 and it was another two weeks before the picture opened anywhere else. Limiting release proved highly successful in profit terms. Out of an initial gross of $101 million, Paramount received $64 million, an exceptionally high ratio for the times.
I hope you got the chance like I did this week to marvel all over again at The Godfather on the big screen. I can hardly add anything to the critical tsunami that greeted this picture 50 years ago and again in the last week so I’m not going to try. instead, I’ve rummaged through my files to uncover these few nuggets of information and look forward to next week’s episode of the saga.
SOURCES: Brian Hannan, In Theaters Everywhere, A History of the Hollywood Wide Release, 1913-2017 (McFarland, 2019), p179, 187-188; “Puzo’s Jackpot,” Variety, February 26, 1969, p76; “Paramount’s Bargain Price (80G) for Godfather Rights,” Variety, September 17, 1969, p1; “Record Paperback Order,” Variety, February 11, 1970, p58; “As To That Godfather,” Variety, May 20, 1970, p30; “Peak 600G Paperback deal,” Variety, August 26, 1970, p53; “Paramount’s Bargain on Godfather,” Variety, October 7, 1970, p21; “Godfather Not on Paramount Christmas Tree,” Variety, July 21, 1971, p3; “Bestsellers As Trailers,” Variety, Jul 21, 1971, p5; “Egomania Equals Fiscal Lunacy,” Variety, July 28, 1971, p18; “Record 451G Paperback Deal,” Variety, August 4, 1971, p54; “Five Years in Hot Seat Makes Bob Evans Coast’s Longest Running Production Chief,” Variety, September 29, 1971, p2; “Yablans Strategy on Godfather,” Variety, November 17, 1971, p4; Puzo Books Tells About Godfather Experiences,” Variety, December 15, 1971, p2; “Godfather at Easter,” Variety, December 22, 1971, p65; “Godfather at $1.65,” Variety, February 2, 1972, p70; Advert, Variety, February 2, 1972, p13; Advert, Box Office, March 27, 1972, p4.
Films that reach the screen two years after filming was completed are generally stinkers. Ken Annakin caper movie The Biggest Bundle of Them All wrapped production in summer 1966 and was not released until January 1968. But the reason was not the usual.
The cause of the unseemly delay was a temper tantrum by Oscar-winning uber-producer Sam Spiegel (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) who had been working on a similar project about incompetent amateurs kidnapping a gangster kingpin – The Happening (1967) starring Anthony Quinn (previously reviewed in the Blog). After bringing a charge of blatant plagiarism, Spiegel was mollified by being permitted to bring his movie out first, with an inbuilt eight-month gap between both releases, the deal sweetened by a 15% cut of The Biggest Bundle’s profits and the right to vet the script.
Despite success with Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965) and Battle of the Bulge (1965) British director Annakin was at a career impasse. The Fifth Coin written by Francis Ford Coppola and starring George Segal failed to get off the ground. He turned down western Texas Across the River (1966) at a time when Catherine Deneuve and Shirley Maclaine were slotted in for the female roles and was fired from The Perils of Pauline (1967). The Italian Caper as it was then known, recalled Annakin, “did not seem a world-shattering movie but I found the caper fascinating and the cast irresistible.”
Let them eat cheesecake.
It marked the movie debut for producer Josef Shaftel of The Untouchables television fame and for screenwriter Rod Amateau (The Wilby Conspiracy, 1975), also then a television regular although the final script was attributed to another neophyte Sy Salkowitz. The film made the most of Italian locations, Naples and Rome, as well as the South of France and Provence. Annakin caught pneumonia just as shooting was to commence. Shaftel took over for five days only for his material to prove unusable.
Both veteran actors proved easy to direct. “Robinson was like putty in my hands, completely trusting.” And while Vittorio De Sica was every bit as amenable he was inclined to fall asleep on the set as the result of entertaining his mistress the night before. Di Sica was also a compulsive gambler and at one point lost half his salary in a casino.
Raquel Welch, in only her second picture after One Million Years B.C. (1966) – which contained minimal dialogue – was initially a handful. Primarily, this was due to inexperience and her desire to present herself in as alluring a fashion as possible, with impeccable hairstyles and make-up. After she had kept the crew waiting once too often Annakin threatened to eliminate her close-ups unless she respected the shooting schedule.
“On the whole I was quite pleased with the results because she really applied herself and so long as one broke up the scenes into a couple of lines at a time she became able to handle them quite adequately…I was getting along excellently with Raquel – even to the extent of trying to find another picture with her,” Annakin noted in his autobiography. Since this was written three decades after the movie was made, it would have given him ample time to get rid of any latent hostility to the actress. This reaction, it has to be said, is contrary to much of what has been written about Welch’s behavior on the picture. At the time of filming he reported that “she has a marvelous flair for comedy.”
But it appeared that Annakin was the only one who spotted her star potential. “The rest of the cast, especially Bob (Robert Wagner), regarded her as a pin-up girl on the make…none of them thought she was particularly sexy at this time.”
Otherwise, the only other trouble came from Godfrey Cambridge who “had a chip on his shoulder” and from Robert Wagner’s insistence on wearing false eyelashes. Problems arose over the cinematographer’s determination to employ powerful lights even at the height of a Mediterranean summer and a massive dust storm interrupted filming of the final scenes. Annakin also benefitted from the locations and using his experience was able to shift 35 pages of script from interiors to outdoors, completely altering the look of the picture. This made the $2 million movie “look like it cost three or four million,” according to Annakin.
At this point Welch, best known for having been sued by her publicist, was in the process of turning herself into a star in demand. In 1966 Welch was something of a Hollywood secret. She had three pictures in the bank, was working on a fourth and had signed up for a fifth before any of her movies had been released. On the other hand, she was fast becoming one of the most famous faces (and bodies) in the world, on the cover of of hundreds of magazines in Europe, many for the fourth or fifth time.
Having set up a company, Curtwel, managed by husband Patrick Curtis, she would earn $15,570 a week on loan to MGM for a second film Italian movie Shoot, Loud…Louder, I Don’t Understand (1966), considerably more than through her contract with Twentieth Century Fox. A year later she collected £100,000 for two weeks on portmanteau picture The Oldest Profession (1967).
Curtwel was also moving into the production arena, in 1965 attempting to set up No Place for the Dead and the following year optioning the musical comedy The Opposite Sides of the Fence and taking a quarter share in the mooted The Devil’s Discord to star Peter Cushing and Edd Byrnes under the direction of Michael Reeves (Witchfinder General, 1968). None of these ventures materialzed.
As well as having to contend with audience disinterest in the clumsy crook scenario as witnessed by the flop of The Happening, the enforced time gap allowed a second picture featuring bungling criminals called Too Many Crooks (1967) to reach cinemas prior to The Biggest Bundle. However, by January 1968, Welch was a much bigger name on movie marquees, having appeared on 400 international magazine covers and selected by U.S. exhibitors for the International Star of the Year Award while The Biggest Bundle had been preceded by another seven pictures including hits One Million Years B.C. and Fantastic Voyage (1966).
SOURCES: Ken Annakin, So You Wanna Be a Director, (Tomahawk Press, Sheffield 2001), pages 187-194; “Raquel Welch and Manager Form Curtwel Co,” Box Office, May 3, 1965, pW3; “Raquel Welch, Pat Curtis Form Curtwel Prods,” Box Office, October 5, 1965, pSE6; “Toutmasters Sue for 5% of Raquel Welch,” Variety, October 6, 1965, p14; “Raquel Welch in Rome,” Box Office, April 25, 1966, page SE1; “MGM’s Bundle Wrapping at Nice, Orders On Set in 3 Languages,” Variety, July 6, 1966, p7; “8 Pix for 2 Unseen Actresses,” Variety, August 17, 1966, p5; “Businesswoman Side of Raquel Welch,” Variety, November 2, 1966, p20; “Oldest Profession Gets New Locale in West Berlin, Raquel Welch’s 100G Job,” Variety, January 18, 1967, p24; “Columbia-Spiegel Holds 25% Share of MGM’s Bundle,” Variety, December 6, 1967, p3.
With the 50th anniversary imminent it’s no surprise to see a further addition to the already weighty library of works on The Godfather. What is surprising is just how good it is, wrapping up all previous research as well as adding copious new information about the making of the Mafia saga, in particular relationships between the filmmakers and the Cosa Nostra itself. A battle of egos as much as anything else with a budget that lay in tatters, quite how such a masterpiece emerged could have been a film in itself. Journalist Robert Seal has delivered a riveting book, replete with fascinating anecdotes, and with an insider’s knowledge of how a movie gets put together.
Some of the drama is certainly overplayed, the financial threats to Paramount at the end of the 1960s, the presence on the set of an auditor (hardly unusual with a director who had never handled such a big budget before), and the conflict with legendary producer Robert Evans who, after the event, claimed a greater share of the glory than he was entitled to. Evans at least had a track record – Rosemary’s Baby (1968), True Grit (1969) and Love Story (1970) among his successes during his tenure at the studio – compared to official producer Albert Ruddy with three flops to his name including Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970) and best known for television hit Hogan’s Heroes. But Ruddy was known as a producer who could bring a project in under budget. As an indication of the kind of penny pinching that Evans expected, he made Ruddy buy his own copy of the novel.
Australian distributors took a different approach to advertising the movie.
Paramount had little interest in Mafia movies after the under-rated The Brotherhood (1968) – reviewed in the Blog – had flopped at the box office and Burt Lancaster was waiting in the wings ready to take the project off the studio’s hands. Compulsive gambler and impoverished author Mario Puzo had no screenwriting credits when brought in to work on the picture. And no idea how to write a screenplay. So he mostly played tennis. His biggest contribution when he was sitting in meetings with little to show for his efforts was to suggest Marlon Brando as star. A suggestion that met with complete silence because Brando was box office poison.
Francis Coppola – himself the creator of three flops and as impoverished as Puzo had once been – was hired as director in part because Paramount got the notion that the reason The Brotherhood had failed was lack of cultural assimilation, director Martin Ritt having no Italian heritage. Coppola was pushed as having an insider’s knowledge of Italians even though as Paramount executive Peter Bart pointed out that he “may have had pasta now and then but I don’t think their family is any more Italian than my family.”
Paramount took out an eight-page ad in “Variety” (March 29, 1972) to publicize the colossal initial gross and listed the receipts from every cinema where it had been playing for mostly three or five days.
As the makers of Succession have realised, there is a classic story to be told about business inheritance. Coppola wanted to make a movie that was about “more than guns and goons and sex and spaghetti.” He envisaged a “classic succession concerning a great king who had three sons, each of whom had a single element of what made the king great.” Prior to Coppola making his presentation to the studio, Ruddy told him to play up the low budget. Instead, the director gave “one of the great sales jobs of all time” convincing executives to at least give him a shot at doing it his way. He was hired for $175,000 and six per cent of the profits. “I had two kids, a pregnant wife, and no money. I was terrified,” said Coppola.
As well he should have been. Not only did he have mobsters knocking on his door complaining on the one hand about how the film could adversely present Italian Americans and on the other hand determined to land a role in the picture to the extent of paying for their own screen tests. So many talent schools charged $100 to shoot screen tests for any gullible schmuck that Paramount had to take out restraining orders. But made man Gianni Russo did land the role of Carlo Rizzi. Al Lettieri’s brother was involved in the business. Ex-wrestler Lenny Montana with no acting experience was picked out of a crowd watching the shooting to play hitman Luca Brasi.
Not the ideal balladeer to sing about the Mafia.
Although Frank Sinatra, Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine, Laurence Olivier and Rod Steiger were among the stars pitched for the Brando role, Puzo had sent a handwritten letter to Brando imploring him to consider the role. The Brando test, with the star improvising his own make-up, was electric. But the greatest actor of his generation had to accept a pitiful deal – $50,000 for six weeks’ work – though, thankfully, a percentage had been tagged on.
Robert Evans wanted Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty or Ryan O’Neal for Michael. “One of the reasons I got the job,” said Coppola, “was because they thought they could push me around.” He stuck to his guns, holding out for his dream team of James Caan, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall and Diane Keaton, “eccentric and kind of weird in a way…to enliven the straight boring character” of Kay Adams.
But the casting was just the beginning of a momentous battle to keep Coppola’s vision intact. He came close to getting fired several times (“I was getting fired every other week,” recalled Coppola), especially as the budget, initially figured at $2 million, headed towards $6 million. The story of the shoot is told here in forensic detail. Come post-production, Evans wanted Henry Mancini to do the score so Coppola threatened to take his name off the picture unless the Nino Rota music was kept.
Finally, when the film was ready it was met with – deafening silence. Paris premiere – silence. New York premiere – silence. When Albert Ruddy and Al Pacino watched it in an ordinary cinema with an ordinary audience the result was the same – silence. But the lines around the block indicated something else – a phenomenon.
The only area where author Seal gets it wrong is in his understanding of release strategy. “Its distribution was a revolution,” claimed Mark Seal. Only it wasn’t. I know because I wrote a book on the subject (In Theaters Everywhere if you’re interested) and there was nothing at all novel in releasing a movie in New York in 26 cinemas all at once.
But apart from that glitch, Seal has produced a brilliant, incredibly readable book, that covers the saga of the making of the film in as much detail as an aficionado would want. Drawing on the dozen other books written previously about the film and adding his own fulsome research, Seal has created a book that will be as much a monument to this film as the film is to Hollywood cinema in the 1970s.
For some reason the guy who created the best movie of the year wasn’t good enough to be named Best Director at the Oscars- that went to Bob Fosse for “Cabaret.”
In 1972, there was no such thing as a global wide release. Although it was shown in the U.S. in March that year, in Glasgow, Scotland, where I lived, The Godfather did not get its first showing until the end of August. It opened at the ABC 1 in Sauchiehall St in the city centre as well as over the River Clyde at the ABC Coliseum. It was competing with two roadshows, Young Winston and Mary, Queen of Scots at the Odeon 1 and Odeon 3, respectively, Robert Redford in heist picture How to Steal a Diamond at the Odeon 2 and What’s Up Doc? at the ABC 2. Western The Hired Hand was playing the arthouse Cosmo and the arty Made for Each Other at the gigantic Green’s Playhouse. The La Scala had the double bill of Dr No/Thunderball and the Regent was in the second week of Dirty Harry, somewhat unusual in that this was a second run house where pictures were rarely retained.
There were three performances a day for The Godfather but no advance booking – as would have been the case if it had gone into roadshow – so the queues outside both cinemas were huge. It had such an impact on me I saw it twice in the same day. When I moved to London I used to take regular advantage of the double bill The Godfather / The Godfather Part II when it used to play a cinema in Regent St on occasional Sundays, so I have no idea how many times I have seen both. Never enough, I would guess.
Where were you when you first saw The Godfather?
And where will I be on February 26 when The Godfather will be reissued in cinemas all over Britain (and possibly worldwide for all I know)? I leave it to you to guess.
To cash in on the 50th anniversary, cinemas all around the world are planning to screen all three parts of the trilogy. So watch out for them.
Watching King of the Roaring 20s (1961) and Murder Inc (1960) and struck by the number of similarities to The Brotherhood (1968) that could be found in The Godfather (1972) induced me to examine how well the original novel by Mario Puzo survived the often dangerous transition onto the screen.
There could not be a more textbook example of how to turn a big bestseller into a compelling motion picture. Although director Francis Coppola added texture and style to the bestseller, the film owes far more to the memorable characters created by author Mario Puzo. Apart from some slight structural changes and the elimination of a couple of subplots, the movie follows Puzo’s brilliant structure almost to the letter. And except for a few lines, virtually all the dialogue and many of the most unforgettable lines come directly from the book.
The opening wedding feast is an excellent example of the screenplay approach. The order of the action occasionally alters but the novel’s structure is strictly adhered to. The film’s striking opening line “I love America” by the undertaker is a slight but significant adaptation of that character’s line “I believe in America” in the book. But the screenwriters junk the book’s actual opening section which gives the background to the issues the three characters appealing to Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) for intervention against perceived injustice from Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) and goes straight to the book’s wedding. Here, too, the various elements are taken directly from the book with slight changes. For example, to the FBI men taking down car number plates in the novel the screenplay adds in photographers so that, to demonstrate his temper at an early stage, Sonny Corleone (James Caan) can smash a camera.
Straight from the book: fat Clemenza (Richard S. Castellano) dancing, wiping his brow and calling for wine from Paulie (John Martino); Sonny whispering in the ear of bridesmaid Lucy (Jeannie Linero); the frightened undertaker being told off by Vito; the Luca Brasi story Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) tells Kay Adams (Diane Keaton); Sonny and Lucy having sex and being interrupted by Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall); and the screams that greet singer Johnny Fontane (Al Fontane) and the subsequent scene where Vito shouts at the singer to act “like a man.” Additions are slight: in the book Sonny’s wife is in the kitchen not at a wedding table in dumbshow making jokes about her husband’s manhood, and Luca Brasi rehearsing his speech.
Indicative of the ruthlessness with which the screenplay treats the book is the elimination of a moving scene at the tail end of the wedding where Vito goes to see his dying partner Genco. As indicative of the author’s brilliance is that he invented degenerate film producer Jack Woltz (John Marley) and the decapitated horse in his bed. But the storyline, the film’s core, from the attempted murder of Vito, Michael’s assassination of the Turk Solozzo (Al Lettieri) and corrupt cop McCluskey (Sterling Hayden), the exiled Michael struck by the “thunderbolt” falling in love, the ambush of Sonny and the stricken Vito suing for peace, is pretty much exactly that of the book. In some case, it’s clear that actors have drawn from Puzo’s characterizations, the chilling way Michael takes control of the Family, how Fredo goes from useless gangster to hotel dandy.
There are occasional additions. In the book Enzo’s hand outside the hospital is shaking but Michael lighting his cigarette is the movie shorthand to demonstrate his icy calm, Sonny’s “bada-bing” isn’t in the book nor is Luca Brasi sleeping with the fishes, though there is something similar “Luca Brasi is sleeping on the bottom of the ocean.”
Occasionally, in the novel, for technical reasons, Puzo drifts away from the central characters to provide some more background or detail about a subsidiary person and in this manner we enter into the minds of Paulie, Carlo (Gianni Russo), Kay, Clemenza, McCluskey and Albert Neri just as they are about to play a significant role in forthcoming action. Other subsidiary characters featured more prominently in the novel, in particular Johnny Fontane whom the book reveals develops from Oscar-winning actor to successful movie producer and from manic seducer to more considerate male.
Fontane also helps revitalize the career of another singer Nino who does not appear in the movie at all and plays a role in developing the Family’s interests in Las Vegas. Lucy, who disappears entirely from the film after the wedding, is more significant in the book, finding romance after Sonny’s death with a surgeon and there’s a part of their relationship that would only now be permissible to film. Sicilian shepherd Fabrizio, instrumental in the attempted assassination of Michael, also reappears in the book. The book also devotes more attention to Michael’s new breed, Alberto (Richard Bright) and Rocco (Tom Rosqui).
The death of Vito in the garden is almost identical to the book with the grandson present except for Marlon Brando’s improvisation of stuffing his cheeks with orange to frighten the boy. And Michael’s betrayal by Tessio and the subsequent mass murder of all his enemies is also drawn from the book except for Moe Green having been killed earlier (Fabrizio the shepherd slotting into his place in the book’s action). Some slight detail is changed – Barzini (Richard Conte) killed beside his waiting car not on the steps, Tattaglia (Tony Giorgio) murdered in a chalet not an apartment block. Somewhat surprisingly the image of acolytes paying homage to Michael as briefly viewed by Kay has its origins in the book. The two final scenes in the book, both concerning Kay, are excluded from the film, in the first, having run away, she is challenged by Hagen and in the second she prays for Michael’s soul in church just as (in the book) Michael’s mother had prayed for his father
A lengthy chapter on Vito’s beginnings, explaining his early relationships with Clemenza, Tessio (Abe Vigoda) and Luca Brasi, was wisely held over for The Godfather Part II.
Having by now read a number of books that were subsequently filmed, my over-riding impression was that in many cases (The Secret Ways, Arabesque) little survived of the original tale or that characters, locations and timescales (The Detective) were substantially altered. In some instances the book’s length precluded a straightforward adaptation. Occasionally, subjects easily dealt with on the printed page were not so welcome on the screen. But, for whatever reason, change appeared inevitable for a bestseller being translated into a movie.
The Godfather almost stands alone as a novel that made the transition with virtually no alterations. All the main characters are present as described by Puzo and the storyline entirely reflects the book. The bulk of the dialogue was originally written by Puzo. While there is no doubting the Coppola’s achievement in putting the book on film, there is equally no doubt that the book leant itself to easier adaptation than most bestsellers.
The Magnificent 60s 