NEW YORK JULY 1960: Although summer six decades ago did not have the same hype as summers now it was still a prime time to launch new movies. The big cinemas also were more attractive than smaller ones because they tended to have air conditioning so if it was hot outside audiences did not swelter inside.
But Disney did not yet have a stranglehold on the summer – although the studio had given note of its intentions by launching Pollyanna at the gigantic Radio City Music Hall – so the range on offer was wide. Psycho had just taken New York by storm so newcomers had their work cut out.
The expected big hitters were Richard Brooks’ Elmer Gantry starring Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons in a murky tale of evangelism and the under-rated Richard Quine’s steamy drama Strangers When We Meet with Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak. (Douglas and Simmons would be seen later in the year in Spartacus).
Paul Newman was hoping for a commercial breakthrough with From the Terrace, based on the John O’Hara bestseller, co-starring his wife Joanne Woodward and directed by Mark Robson. At this point Newman’s career had yet to spark, the success of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) in which he was relegated to leading man status behind undoubted star Elizabeth Taylor had been followed by misfires Rally Round the Flag, Boys (1958) and The Young Philadelphians (1959). Plus, Robson with two Oscar nominations and Woodward a winner for The Three Faces of Eve (1957) were more highly-regarded than the star who had but one nomination.
Also hoping for a career uplift was Richard Burton in Ice Palace, adapted from the Edna Ferber bestseller set in Alaska, co-starring Robert Ryan and Martha Hyer and directed by Austrian veteran Vincent Sherman. Targeting a different market entirely were Murder Inc, The Lost World and Battle in Outer Space.
Although Stuart Whitman was the star of the low-budget Murder Inc. set against the background of 1930s gangster Lepke, Peter Falk stole the show with an Oscar-nominated turn. The Lost World had British actor Michael Rennie and Jill St. John in the cast and was more notable for being one of the few directorial outings of Irwin Allen, later the inventor of the 1970s disaster mini-genre. Sci-fi Battle in Outer Space was a dubbed import from Japan.
Three arthouse pictures also made their debuts. The pick of these should have been The Trials of Oscar Wilde with Peter Finch as the eponymous playwright but some of its potential had been sapped by the release a short time before of Oscar Wilde starring Robert Morley. The other two were British comedy School for Scoundrels starring Ian Carmichael and Terry Thomas and the Russian adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot.
Sources: Variety – Jul 6, July 13, Jul 20, Jul 27, 1960.
The Magnificent 60s 