George Kennedy – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: “Airport” (1970)

Ross Hunter had been a big wheel in the production business for the best part of two decades, shepherding home hits like Midnight Lace (1960), remakes of universal weepies like Back St (1961) and Madame X (1966), play adaptations such as The Chalk Garden (1964), the Tammy movie series and Julie Andrews musical Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967). He was as close to a sure thing as you could get. Even so, Airport, with a $10 million budget, was the biggest gamble of his career.

He paid $350,000 upfront plus another $100,000 in add-ons for the rights to the runaway Arthur Hailey bestseller. Initially, Hunter was targeting the roadshow audience, filming in 70mm, the first time Universal had employed Todd-AO.

Dean Martin, who had made Texas Across the River (1966) and Rough Night in Jericho (1968) for Universal, was first to sign up for his usual fee plus a percentage. Martin was at a career peak, carried along effortlessly at the box office by the Matt Helm quartet and targeted for westerns.

Hunter was pitching a movie with four major stars in Oscar-winner Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry, 1960), Dean Martin, Jean Seberg (Paint Your Wagon, 1969) and Oscar-winner George Kennedy (Guns of The Magnificent Seven, a1969) and another half-dozen names of varying marquee appeal that included British actress Jacqueline Bisset (Bullitt, 1968), and mature stars in Van Heflin (Once a Thief, 1965), Lloyd Nolan (The Double Man, 1967), Barry Nelson (The Borgia Stick, 1967), TV Perry Mason’s Barbara Hale and Oscar-winner Helen Hayes (Anastasia, 1956).

The picture came at a fortuitous time for Burt Lancaster. A trio of more challenging movies – The Swimmer (1968), Castle Keep (1969) and The Gypsy Moths (1969) – had flopped, so his marquee value was in question, especially at his going rate of £750,000 (plus a percentage). Doubts had set in with The Gypsy Moths, with MGM dithering over the opening date, switching it originally from summer to Xmas and then back again but happy to censor the picture to meet the approval of the Radio City Music Hall where it premiered.

And while he was still clearly in demand in 1968-1969, he had lost out the starring role in Patton (1970) with James Stewart in the Karl Malden role, which would have coupled commercial success with critical approbation. The shooting of Valdez Is Coming (1971) was postponed for a year. Originally it had been set for a January 1969 start date with Sydney Pollack directing. Face in the Dust, a Dino De Laurentiis production, never saw the light of day.

And although Lancaster later described Airport as “the biggest piece of junk ever made” (luckily he didn’t live to see Anora or Mercy), the disaster blockbuster put his career back on track. It was quite a change of pace for him, too. He wasn’t in every scene and at times he had to take whatever Dean Martin’s character threw at him. But what he brought to the picture was his natural electricity, the tension of never knowing what he was going to do. But Airport barely merits a page in Kate Buford’s biography.

Double Oscar-winner George Seaton was set the dual task of condensing Arthur Hailey’s 500-page novel into a lean two-hour movie which he would direct. In a directing career spanning a quarter of a century, Seaton was well-used to handling big stars of the caliber of William Holden (three pictures including The Counterfeit Traitor, 1962), Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly (The Country Girl, 1953) Kirk Douglas (The Hook, 1962), Montgomery Clift (The Big Lift, 1950) and Clark Gable and Doris Day (Teacher’s Pet, 1958),

Jean Seberg, under investigation by the FBI, had revived an ailing career with Paint Your Wagon (1969). Producer Ross Hunter initially preferred Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962) or Stella Stevens (Rage, 1966) for the role of Lancaster’s screen lover, but had to go along with Universal with whom Seberg had a two-picture “pay-or-play” deal (she got paid whether she made a picture or not). However, she was considered a marquee name in the international market, especially France where she had remained a cult figure after Breathless (1960).

Disconcerted by being considered unwanted, her natural nervousness increased until Hunter made a point of convincing her that he was “genuinely happy” at her involvement.

She wasn’t the only person to be considered second best. For the part of the elderly stowaway, six-time Oscar nominee Thelma Ritter (Boeing, Boeing, 1965) and Jean Arthur, who hadn’t appeared in a movie since Shane (1953), had been wooed before Hunter settled on Helen Hayes.

For Seberg, it was the biggest pay cheque of her career – $150,000 plus use of a studio car and $1,000 a week expenses for the 16-week schedule, but she lost out on a percentage. She was billed third. High-flying her career might be, but personally she was struggling, her marriage to Romain Gary in trouble and under pressure to help raise funding for the Black Panther movement. She was receiving calls in the middle of the night. “Many nights she’d be so frightened, she’d come and sleep on the couch at my home,” recalled Hunter, “there’s no doubt it was an extremely difficult period for her.”

Helen Hayes reminded Seberg of her grandmother, to whom the stowaway’s exploits would have appealed. As a teenager, Seberg had idolized Hayes. Dean Martin pushed for Petula Clark (Goodbye, Mr Chips, 1969) for the Jacqueline Bisset role and Stella Stevens (Rage, 1966), as well as being considered for the Seberg part, was also in the frame.

Virtually all the bit parts were played by Universal’s contract players. For Airport, the studio rounded up thirty-two of them. Patty Paulsen, who played stewardess Joan, was a genuine stewardess for American Airlines before she won the role on the strength of winning a beauty contest. It was veteran Van Heflin’s final picture, and also for composer Alfred Newman. George Kennedy would reprise his role through three other pictures in the series – though he turned down Airplane! (1980).

Location filming at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport began in January minus director George Seaton who had come down with pneumonia. Henry Hathaway stepped in, at no cost, to cover. The producer had headed to Minnesota for the snow, but there was none around, and the production team had to import tons of fake stuff made out of whitened sawdust. Filming took place at night in plunging temperatures. Despite wearing face masks, cast and crew suffered and the freezing conditions slowed down the shoot.

Hunter hired a $7.5 million Boeing 707 for $18,000 a day. For studio work in Los Angeles Hunter brought in a damaged Boeing. Ironically, Dean Martin had a fear of flying and travelled to the location by railway. Ditto Maureen Stapleton.

Seberg’s outfits, including calfskin sable-lined coats designed by Edith Head, cost $2,000 apiece, though Seberg was less keen on the airport uniform. With Seberg’s hometown less than a five-hour drive away she was able to head home during breaks in filming.

John Findlater, who played a ticket checker in the film, remembered Seberg as “frail and lonely…very shy…she had a very hard time of it.” It took four days to film the scene where Helen Hayes explains the art of the stowaway and feels the brunt of the wrath of Burt Lancaster and Seberg. Delays always niggled Lancaster, for whom they smacked of unprofessionalism. To raise her spirits, Seaton improvised little comedy skits.

Seberg befriended Maureen Stapleton, playing the bomber’s wife. Seberg was “impressed” that Stapleton could cry on cue and the minute the scene was over be laughing.

In the end Hunter gave up the idea of a prestigious roadshow run, settling instead for a premiere opening at the Radio City Music Hall and first run houses across the country. There had been no shortage of pre-publicity. Any time an airplane hijack hit the headlines or a snowstorm shut down airports or an airplane skidded off the runway, editors were happy to insert a mention of the picture.

And there was an abundance of airports and travel companies willing to sign up for cooperative promotions, helped along by the fact that Edith Head had designed the “Airport Look” launched not just with male and female fashions but a range of travel accessories. A beauty queen competition “International Air Girl” managed to hook a 45-minute television slot in Britain.

Opening at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, a couple of weeks in advance of the national roll-out, Airport plundered a record $235,000, topping that in its second week, and scooping up $1 million before the end of the month. It was gangbusters everywhere, opening in prestigious first run locations, with nary a showcase/multiple run in sight. “Wham” was the description beloved of the Variety box office headline writers, the word preceding its $80,000 opening week tally in Chicago, $28,000 in San Francisco, and $25,000 in Louisville. “Smash” was also brought into play for its $40,000 in Baltimore and $33,000 in Philadelphia. The subject matter allowed the sub-editors who wrote the headlines some license, so it was a “sonic” $40,000 in Boston and a “stratospheric” $45,000 in Detroit. And it had legs. Week-by-week fall-offs were slight. It was still taking in $25,000 in the 24^th week in Detroit, for example.

By year’s end it was easily the top film of the year with $37 million in rentals, way ahead of Mash on $22 million and Patton $1 million further back. And it kept going, adding another $8 million the following year as it was dragged back into the major cities for multiple showings (seven in New York) in multiple engagements.

Business was not so robust abroad. Though Airport managed a six-week run at the Odeon Leicester Square, where it received a Royal Premiere on April 22, 1970, its opening week’s figures were down on both the final week of its predecessor at the London West End cinema, Anne of the Thousand Days, and its successor Cromwell and the film didn’t make the Annual British Top Ten. But in Australia it led the field, though its returns were one-third down on the previous year’s Paint You Wagon and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

For its television premiere on ABC in 1973, the network demanded a record $140,000 per minute for advertising. Outside of Gone with the Wind, it earned the highest rating of any movie from 1961 to 1977.

But it also set up an industry. Sequels were the name of the game. And though Airport ’75 (1974) headlining Charlton Heston and Airport ’77 (1977) starring Jack Lemmon were cut-price operations, they were huge successes at the box office, the former hauling in $25.8 million in rentals, the latter $16.2 million. A fourth venture, The Concorde…Airport ’79 (1979) with Alain Delon, flopped and put an end to the series.

SOURCES: Garry McGee, Jean Seberg, Breathless, 2018, p167-171; Kate Buford, Burt Lancaster, An American Life (Aurum Press, 2008) p264-265; “Cast Patton & Bradley,” Variety, September 20, 1967, p13; “Airport Film Deal,” Variety, May 29, 1968, p60; “Steiner at Goldwyn Plant,” Variety, July 24, 1968, p7; “Dean Martin First to Sign for U’s Airport,” Box Office, August 5, 1968, pK4; “Hollywood Happenings,” Box Office, January 6, 1969, pW2; “Airport Will Be U’s First Feature in Todd-AO,” Box Office, January 13, 1969, p12; “Seaton’s Temp Sub at U: H. Hathaway,” Variety, January 22, 1969, p7; “Airport Sequence Follows Real Event,” Box Office, January 27, 1969, pNC3; “17 Inches Snow Brings North East Business To Complete Standstill,” Box Office, February 17, 1969, pE1;“Ross Hunter’s Roadshow,” Box Office, April 28, 1969, pK2; “De Laurentiis Slates 3 Aussie Locationers,” Variety, September 24, 1969, p18; “Put Back Moths Scenes Cut Solely for Radio City,” Variety, October 22, 1969, p5; “Airport Smacks $1-Mil,” Variety, April 1, 1970, p4; “Airport Contest on TV,” Kine Weekly, April 18, 1970, p18; “Big Rental Films of 1970,” Variety, January 6, 1971, p11; “Encore Hits,” Variety, June 16, 1970, p5; “ABC Flying 140G Per Minute for Airport,” Variety, June 27, 1973, p14; “Hit Movies on TV Since ’61,” Variety, Sep 21, 1977, p70; “All-Time Film Rental Champs,” Variety, May 12, 1982, p5. U.S. weekly box office figures – Variety, March-April 1970; U.K. weekly box office figures, Kine Weekly, April-July 1970.

Airport (1970) ****

Thundering entertainment from an era when they made movies to appeal to audiences and not to placate the overweening ego of over-entitled directors. I first saw this in 1970 when it was selected as one of three films (the others being Cromwell and The Virgin and the Gypsy) to open the new Odeon triplex in Glasgow, and, thanks to my own in-built movie snobbery, haven’t seen it since. So this was a revelation.

Let’s start with the running time. Made now this would be an overblown 150 minutes (at least) stuffed full of extraneous scenes. But let’s start with the opening. The screen is dark. Yes, absolutely dark. What? Is this some kind of arthouse venture? And it remains dark for about 20 seconds though by now sound has been added, a general hubbub of commotion. Are you sure this isn’t arthouse? Had this been directed by Scorsese or Coppola (who, in fact, used a similar device to open The Godfather, 1972) critics would have picked it up.

John Frankenheimer for Grand Prix (1966) and Norman Jewison for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) were praised for their use of the split screen, another aspect ignored here by critics. Yet split screen is not only impressively utilized, but, on occasion, it has a humorous quality, as the screen not only splits in two but accommodates other shapes in between or round about. Did anyone mention the use of the wipe? A cinematic technique scarcely employed in the mainstream since Seven Samurai (1954).

Several narrative plates regarding relationships spin in the air while the movie sharpens focus to concentrate on resolving three major incidents involving airplanes. The first is shifting a jet stuck in the snow during a huge snowstorm and blocking off one entire runway. The airport is already under pressure, what with the storm curtailing other flights and forcing others to dive for cover. Then we have a bomber, planning to wreck the plane mid-ocean to claim on the insurance, but when his plan goes awry and he blows out the toilet of the plane, the crew have to bring it down, safety jeopardized by the jet stuck on the ground.

You always know how disaster pictures are going to end, maybe the only guesswork concerns who will actually survive, and it’s an incredible credit to this movie that I felt the tension constantly rippling through me as we hit the various climactic episodes.

On the ground airport manager Mel (Burt Lancaster) is trying to shift the stuck aircraft while dealing with irate wife Cindy (Dana Wynter) and keeping on track his illicit relationship with PR manager Tanya (Jean Seberg). This is on top of a) wrangling with an airport executive who refuses to expand the airport to meet overwhelming demand and whose only reaction to impending crisis is to close the airport down, b) dealing with local citizens furious that plans are rattling their houses, and c) taking flak from brother-in-law and ace pilot Vernon (Dean Martin).

Up in the air Vernon has his work cut out coming to terms with the pregnancy of girlfriend Gwen (Jacqueline Bisset) – always having used his marriage as an excuse not to get emotionally involved with his string of girlfriends – and with a 70-year-old stowaway Ada (Helen Hayes) and bomber D.O. Guerrero (Van Heflin) and then bringing in the stricken plane.

We’re tossed a few red herrings on the passenger manifest. Spot a nun and a priest in a disaster picture and you’re generally in for cliché overload. Here, instead, they are used for humor, the nun taking a swig of whisky under pressure and the priest whacking a belligerent passenger. And the charming Ada is on land given very sympathetic treatment given the thousands of dollars she’s conned out of airlines over the years, but that’s only to set her up for some harsh treatment on board.

There’s an unexpected twist with the bomber. For a few minutes it looks like the crew are going to win the day but then calamity strikes. Meanwhile, on the ground troubleshooter Joe (George Kennedy), huge cigar constantly in place in the mouth, has taken charge of shifting the stuck plane and in the end has to take drastic action.

And in little telling snippets director George Seaton plays fair with the wives who lose out, Mrs Guerrero (Maureen Stapleton) and Mrs Demerest (Barbara Hale) while allowing Mrs Bakersfield to deliver a come-uppance to her errant husband – she’s been playing away too.

The decision to pack this full of more genuine stars than you ever got in a roadshow – mostly the cast list was padded out with newcomers or stars past their best (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) – reversed this with genuine stars in supporting roles and newcomers in the leading roles) Both Oscar-winning Burt Lancaster (The Professionals, 1966) and Dean Martin after the Matt Helm series and a bunch of westerns were genuine top-notch marquee names. Jean Seberg had just hit a career box office high with Paint your Wagon (1969). After Bullitt (1968) Jacqueline Bisset’s star was on the rise. Oscar-winner George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) was top-billed in Guns of The Magnificent Seven (1969).

And there was a heck of a strong supporting cast: Van Heflin (Once a Thief, 1965), Dana Wynter (Sink the Bismarck!, 1960), Barbara Hale (Perry Mason series, 1957-1966). Oscar-winner Helen Hayes (she won in 1932) and Maureen Stapleton (Bye, Bye, Birdie, 1963) proved the pick, the former here winning a second Oscar, the latter nominated. Apart from Van Heflin, Seaton had gone for character actors rather than stars – Wynter hadn’t made a movie in a decade, for Stapleton it was seven years, for Hayes 14 years and Hale one film in over a decade.

You’d be laughed out of town these days if (outside of sci-fi) you tried to saddle a star with chunks of exposition or technical detail, but here the force of the screen personalities of Lancaster, Martin and Kennedy makes you hang on their every word.

They didn’t have prizes in those days for ensemble acting, but if they had this would surely be in contention, as director George Seaton, in his capacity as screenwriter, ensures that no one is left out and even if it’s only with a look we learn everything we need to know about a character’s emotional life.

Given this was – to use Christopher Nolan’s favorite phrase – “shot in camera” this is a terrific technical achievement in terms of the airplane action especially the stuck plane trying to hirple it way out of trouble.

Director George Seaton (36 Hours, 1964) took ill during production and exterior sequences were filmed by Henry Hathaway (True Grit, 1969). A mention, too, for the driving score by Alfred Newman, in his last screen assignment. It was nominated for 10 Oscars including Best Picture.

More than demands a reassessment.

Mirage (1965) ****

“I owe you some pain,” barks the heavy to hero in one of the memorable lines in this classy thriller with surprisingly contemporary overtones. Underlying this tale of amnesiac David Stillwell (Gregory Peck) recovering his memory are themes of personal commitment, commitment to cause (“if you’re not committed to anything you’re just taking up space”), of individuals taking a stand against powerful forces seeking to thwart democracy, and of malevolent pandemic, the oldest of them all, greed, that infects even the most philanthropic enterprises.

The structure is brilliant. To every question David Stillwell (Gregory Peck) asks in trying to establish his identity, the answers are mystifying. He doubts his sanity and is plunged into a life-threatening conspiracy.

The film opens superbly. The camera pans across a New York skyline at night, every skyscraper lit up. Suddenly, one of the buildings goes dark. Cut to confusion inside as workers deal with the electricity cut-out. Among them Stillwell who is surprised to meet a woman on the stairs, Shela (Diane Baker), who not only recognizes him but seems to know a lot about him that is unfamiliar to him. They end up in the fourth level of the basement and on leaving discover that Charles Colvin (Walter Abel), a name that’s only vaguely familiar to Stilwell, has committed suicide by jumping from the building.

When he gets home to his apartment he is accosted by gunman Lester (Jack Weston) who tells him “The Major” wants to see him. Stillwell escapes but on reporting the incident to the police can’t remember his date of birth. After his amnesia being rejected by a psychiatrist he turns to private eye Ted Caselle (Walter Matthau) who takes up the case. But in Stillwell’s apartment a fridge he recalls as being empty is now full, the same with a dispatch case, the opposite with a closet, and in the building where he thinks he works there is now a wall where his office should be.

Stillwell believes he was employed as a cost accountant without a notion what that job entails. The building has no fourth level. Another gunman Willard (George Kennedy) is also in pursuit. Corpses pop up with increasing regularity. To add to the mystery, nobody actually wants him dead. He is too valuable alive. He has a secret only he doesn’t know what. The police connect him to the suicide.

And so the movie plays out brilliantly, with the audience only knowing what Stillwell knows, as confused as he, until piece by piece the jigsaw comes together although at times with cunning sleight-of-hand the pieces are the wrong shape or, worse, don’t fit the jigsaw in hand. There’s an emotional jigsaw to be put back together too, one that requires proper commitment, Shela’s “togetherness is not enough” could have been a mantra for today’s generation.

All the time Shela bobs in and out, hard to tell whether she is a victim or conspirator, whether to be trusted or merit suspicion, and she has an interesting philosophy of her own in terms of the trapped and caged.

As in the best thrillers we have been given the clues all the time, just not realized them for what they were, and in a series of brilliant scenes you cannot help but applaud the entire mystery is carefully stitched together. You will never in a million years guess the cause of Colvin’s mysterious death.

The ending is satisfying on a variety of levels. Yes, mystery solved, the secret Stillwell holds a good one, but the climax involves characters taking sides, displaying commitment, challenging their consciences, circumstances reflecting very much the world in which we find ourselves now.

One of the beauties of the movie is how it plays with our expectations. Peck has done amnesia before in Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945) but since then his screen persona has been men of upstanding character, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) the personification, confusion not a trait readily identified with him. Equally, the heavies look anything but, Jack Weston small and rotund, George Kennedy bespectacled and slim.

Diane Baker, enigmatic throughout, far from the glamorous thriller female lead (think Audrey Hepburn in Charade or Sophia Loren who partnered Peck on Arabesque or Claudia Cardinale in Blindfold teamed with Rock Hudson), describes herself as a “lonely woman with a low opinion of herself due to many mistakes.” In the middle of the high tension, with Stillwell being pursued by cops, there is a wonderful scene where a little girl lets him hide in her apartment and on making him coffee it turns out to be the pretend coffee little girls make.

Gregory Peck (Arabesque, 1966) is superb, his face absorbing shock at his condition, at once welcoming unravelling mystery at the same time as doubting its source, wending his way through a past he cannot believe is true, a personality that occasionally appears abhorrent, and having to make the same decisions that he feared making in the past. Diane Baker (Marnie, 1964) has a difficult role, introspective where most heroines in this kind of film are more voluble, and frightened of her own vulnerability.

You can see from here how much George Kennedy bulked up for his breakthrough movie Cool Hand Luke (1967). Walter Matthau, too, was a stage away from interesting supporting roles to full-blown star in The Fortune Cookie (1966). Jack Weston might have been rehearsing his role as the stalker in Wait until Dark (1967). I am not going to mention the other sterling supporting players since that will give the game away.

*Diane Baker makes the cover of Films in Review* *magazine*.

Veteran director Edward Dymytryk (Alvarez Kelly, 1966) is on song, stringing the audience along beautifully, extracting wonderful performances, not frightened to give the film deeper meaning. The theme of commitment, of standing up to malevolent forces, seems an odd one for a straightforward thriller but it reflected Dmytryk’s experience as a victim of the anti-Communist witch-hunt of the 1950s.

On the debit side, I can’t see any reason why this was made in black-and-white and it certainly served to put off the public, the film’s box office poor, but I dispute the criticism of what appeared too-frequent flashbacks. Rather than re-emphasizing plot points for the audience, I saw this instead as Stillwell holding up a mirror to a memory he doubted he could trust.

Top-notch screenplay by Peter Stone who knows his way around this genre, having previously written Charade and with Arabesque round the corner, from the novel called Fallen Angel by ,surprisingly, given he is best known for Spartacus, Howard Fast under the pseudonym Walter Ericson. At least a dozen quotable lines included this cracker relating greed to a pandemic: “You’re a carrier, you infected him and he died from it.”

All told, an excellent thriller with modern resonance.

Oddly enough, Mirage was remade a couple of years later as Jigsaw (1968), directed by James Goldstone and starring Harry Guardino.

P.S. I see you that the “I owe you” line was adapted for use by Willow in the Buffy, The Vampire Slayer TV series. There’s even a link to that scene on YouTube. Glad to see it has found some kind of immortality. It’s the kind of line that should be a gimme for t-shirt manufacturers.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) ***

There’s a reason this has largely slipped from view, why it’s rarely included in any examination of the Clint Eastwood canon. For the most part it’s plain dull. When the best thing in it for large periods of time is the screen composition, then you know this is going to be an odd, not to mention tough, watch.

It’s confused as hell. Starts out as a road movie – and a desultory one at that – with a side hustle of a shaggy dog story, straightens out enough to fit into the nascent buddy movie genre before settling down into a heist. And all the time director Michael Cimino, with his use of widescreen and traditional arranging of the sometimes majestic scenery into thirds, thinks he is making a western.

None of the characters seems to be much good at what they do. Thunderbolt (Clint Eastwood), on the run, doesn’t appear capable of evading the pursuing Red (George Kennedy), not a cop or bounty hunter as you’d expect, but an irate member of Thunderbolt’s former gang. And while Red seems excellent at tracking down his quarry, whose shifts of direction are almost whimsical, and even though he’s armed with the modern-day equivalent of a Gatling gun, he makes the basic mistake of not getting close enough to his target to make the bullets count.

The only one who comes out on top in the too-long opening section is Thunderbolt’s happy-go-lucky sidekick Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) who has the knack of pulling the ladies and can drive. But their relationship is desultory, no zap, no funny lines in the vein of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and while clearly like the pair in Midnight Cowboy (1969) inclined to hold onto each other in the absence of anyone else it lacks the emotional power of the latter.

It takes forever to get to the point. Or the three narrative triggers, one of which involves Eastwood committing the most grievous sin a major star can ever commit – to be the one who carries the exposition. And boy does he go on. Anyways, he’s a bank robber and he planked his haul in a small two-room schoolhouse. But, blow me down, someone’s demolished the schoolhouse, without presumably happening upon the cash, and built a brand new one in its place.

Then, just to annoy Thunderbolt, the police, because this is just how cunning they can be, have given out that they recovered the loot. Red hasn’t fallen for this ploy, believing Thunderbolt has duped the gang and made off with the stash. Eventually, Red and Thunderbolt reconcile and Lightfoot suggests they hit the bank that was originally robbed because nobody would expect it.

Thunderbolt has acquired his nickname because his idea of a heist is not to bring on board some clever dick safecracker and employ an ounce of patience but merely to barrel through any obstacle with the help of 20mm cannon.

So now – at last – we have a story, but that’s over halfway through the picture and way too late to save it. So, yes, there’s some decent action and excitement, a double cross, car chase, shoot-out, and just to complete the shaggy dog element one of the robbers is killed by a dog.

Once it gets going it’s within the Eastwood bailiwick. At the time there was a mini-trend, started off by Easy Rider (1969), for road movies so moviegoers back in the day would probably accept this more than a contemporary audience who, like me, is sitting there wondering when the heck are they going to get on with it.

Something of change of pace for Eastwood, in that he plays his age, the older man, one in not so good physical shape at that, and not catnip for the ladies. Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski, 1998) certainly brightens up the screen, but George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) overacts.

Writer-director Michael Cimino, in his debut, exhibits the strengths that would elevate The Deer Hunter (1978) and the self-indulgence that would cripple Heaven’s Gate (1980).

A long haul.

The Ballad of Josie (1967) ***

What was viewed as an oddity by the star’s legion of fans has turned out to have considerable contemporary appeal, situating Doris Day as an unlikely feminist icon. It was almost the opposite of her current template. She didn’t sing and the narrative was not driven by romantic mishap. It didn’t endear director Andrew V. McLaglen to his fans either after the tough-guy heroics of Shenandoah (1965). And you might also ask the question – was the feminism watered down by slapstick in order to make it more acceptable to the general audience.

One issue extremely relevant today is pretty much skated over. Josie (Doris Day) kills her drunken husband after setting about him with a pool cue. His death was largely misadventure, he fell down the stairs escaping her intended blow rather than as the result of it. What’s the world coming to, muse the men of the town, if a woman could get away with defending herself against a brute of a husband in such a fashion, given it’s accepted that a wife needs knocked about once in a while.

That she gets off seems less to do with understanding than narrative convenience. It turns her into a widow, and deprived of her son (removed by the threat of legal action by her father-in-law) that means she will come in handy for married men fancying an affair. Unable to find respectable work, she has one catastrophic shift as a waitress. In narrative terms this is intended to act as the ultimate humiliation but in terms of screen treatment it’s convenient excuse for slapstick.

For some reason best known to screenwriter Harold Swanton (Rascal, 1969), she appears best placed to influence the female townspeople on a delicate political point. Whether such influence is due to her getting away with bumping off her husband is never made clear. Turns out that women in Wyoming have the vote and in their battle for statehood the men believe that will count against them and want Josie to get them to agree to drop that right. (History tells us that the good folks didn’t enforce that and allowed women to keep the vote, so three cheers for Josie.)

Those two elements – wife-beating and voting – would make a darn good movie right there but they seem to just dip in and out of proceedings unless in some lame humorous instance. What does take center stage though is Josie’s battle for independence, not wishing to “be taken care of” by some man. She argues that “you can’t kick under the rug that women are also people” and agin the notion that a woman is “a species of idiot kept in the back closet and spoon-fed three times a day.”

So she decides to become a cattle rancher. That inflames the ire in equal measure of suitor Jason (Peter Graves) and deadly enemy Arch (George Kennedy). And pretty much she is setting herself up for failure until she comes up with the notion of raising sheep rather than cows. The sheep vs. cows argument has been surprisingly well covered in the western – witness The Sheepman (1958), Heaven with a Gun (1969) and, in more recent times, 1923 (2022) – and here they decide the two animals are best kept apart by geographical divide. The sheep are really another narrative device, cue for more slapstick-style sequences, and as you know a sheepdog will tear the britches off anyone foolish enough to get in its way.

It’s somewhat astonishing that within this unwieldy set of confounding narratives that this works at all. And mostly that is down to Doris Day (With Six You Get Eggroll, 1968) junking her previous persona of feisty female willing to be wooed by ardent or cunning male. While her anger often comes over as more like petulance and you would never mistake her for an Elizabeth Taylor or Maureen O’Hara as a woman not to cross, she does comes out of this with some credit. Peter Graves (Sergeant Ryker, 1968) and George Kennedy (The Pink Jungle, 1968) are merely adequate. Andrew V. McLaglen doesn’t show much gift for comedy apart from the most obvious but presumably he’s to be thanked for even venturing into such difficult territory.

Whether it was, as I said, a deliberate attempt to bring feminist issues to the fore, or to sneak them in under the guise of comedy, is a moot point. The star always claimed she was duped into the role, finding her husband Martin Melcher had signed her up for it without her knowing.

The Pink Jungle (1968) ***

Near miss rather than the spectacular crash dive the poor box office returns suggested. Though it’s scarcely surfaced in five decades. Espionage adventure-cum-treasure hunt is slightly undone by knowing winks to the camera and it won’t take an eagle eye to spot that most of the action doesn’t take place in the jungle at all, although the title is explained in a clever twist at the end.

Shame the script goes AWOL and you might be left lamenting what might have been had it been a hit and the boost it could have given the careers of George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967), playing ebulliently against type, and Eva Renzi (A Taste of Excitement, 1967) who proved to have lot more screen charisma than her ensuing roles suggested. Not to mention James Garner (Duel at Diablo, 1966), marquee value taking a hit after a string of flops.

However, if you can accept James Garner as a fashion photographer, and a gag that sees all three male principals decked in out varying shades of lipstick, and shut out the noise of Garner’s character offering commentary on what is about to happen, it’s a pleasant, non-demanding ride, with a believable central romance.

And I learned diamond arithmetic: five carats equals one gram, 28 grams is one ounce so you’re talking a phenomenal amount for a diamond weighing a few ounces never mind a 20lb haul which is where the endless MacGuffins lead. And if Ann-Margret can elect to shoot a fashion spread against the backdrop of motocross (C.C. and Company, 1970), choosing the South American jungle as the ideal spot for a lipstick advert is scarcely a stretch.

The long-winded tale begins with photographer Ben (James Garner) having his consignment of lipstick confiscated by police chief Ortega (Michael Ansara) who suspects they conceal hidden microfilm from the C.I.A. for rebel insurgents. When model Alison (Eva Renzi) arrives by helicopter that’s promptly stolen by South African illegal diamond dealer Ryderbeit (George Kennedy). The stranded couple repair to the nearest town, followed by the cops and by a pair of thugs, where Ryderbeit connects them to Englishman Capt Stopes (George Rose) who boasts a map leading to the lost diamond haul.

There’s no great reason for Ben to get involved, and the script offers nothing compelling, but let’s go for the ride, so suitably prepared (cigars and whisky essentials apparently) they set off with mules into the desert (yep, no jungle) where the model demonstrates her rodeo skills. There, they encounter Australian McClune (Nigel Green), the supposed deceased partner of Stopes, but he dupes them, leaving them stranded without water or mules, in the desert and heads off to find the loot himself. Of course, that does mean he has to come back the same way so the inevitable shootout, compounded by villains and cops, ensues.

Though determinedly sluggish in parts and the introduction of McClune adding little to the scenario, for the most part, although treading a thin line between cliches, it’s enjoyable enough. Ben is surprisingly handy with his fists, Alison has unusual depths and Ryderbeit is an engaging conman.

For a time there’s a bit of a tussle over Alison, as she’s clearly at times more attracted to the “masterful” adventurer Ryderbeit, a cool dude especially when he demonstrates his dance moves, than the cynical Ben. McClune takes a more predatory interest in Alison. But the growing romance between Ben and Alison is gentle stuff and almost required acting of the highest caliber given that the two actors hated each other according to the scuttlebutt.

Guilty of over-plotting and trying hard not to take the scenario seriously enough, even when it’s clear it won’t work unless that does occur, and that as a previous Garner episode proved, as in A Man Could Get Killed (1966), you can easily skirt around dense narrative and espionage malarkey without getting too bogged down. Over-populated, though, with characters and accents vary.

I’m used to Garner’s schtick by now, but Eva Renzi and George Kennedy were revelations, as was Nigel Green (Fraulein Doktor, 1969) also having a ball as a duplicitous character far removed from his usual ramrod-straight persona.

Oscar-winning director Delbert Mann (Mister Buddwing / Buddwing, 1966) does his best but he could have moved it on a bit for the pace seriously slackens at times. Charles Williams (Joy House, 1964) contributed the screenplay based on the novel by namesake Alan Williams.

Far more enjoyable than I expected and worth it for Renzi and Kennedy.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED IN THE BLOG: James Garner in Cash McCall (1960), The Wheeler Dealers (1963), Move Over, Darling (1963), The Americanization of Emily (1964), 36 Hours (1965), The Art of Love (1965), A Man Could Get Killed (1966), Duel at Diablo (1966), Buddwing/Mister Buddwing (1966), Grand Prix (1967), Hour of the Gun (1967), Marlowe (1969); Eva Renzi in Taste of Excitement (1969); George Kennedy in Lonely Are the Brave (1962); Charade (1963), In Harm’s Way (1965), Mirage (1965), Shenandoah (1965), The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), Hurry Sundown (1967), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Bandolero! (1968), Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969); Delbert Mann directed A Gathering of Eagles (1963), Buddwing/Mister Buddwing (1966), Fitzwilly/Fitzwilly Strikes Back (1967).

Behind the Scenes: “The Sons of Katie Elder” (1965)

The property had been bouncing around Hollywood for over decade. It had its origins in the true-life tale of the five Marlow brothers involving murder, revenge, and jailbreak, the story making national headlines when the case was heard at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1892. Based on the book The Fighting Marlows by Glenn Shirley,William H. Wright (Assignment in Brittany, 1943) shopped around a screenplay, jointly written with Talbot Jennings (Northwest Passage, 1940), that was purchased by Paramount in 1955.

Alan Ladd (Shane, 1953), who owed the studio a movie, was cast in the lead and the script went through rewrites by Frank Burt (The Man from Laramie, 1955) and Noel Langley (Knights of the Round Table, 1953) with shooting scheduled for 1956. John Sturges (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) was set to direct until Ladd quit, having bought his way out of his contract. Burt Lancaster (The Train, 1966) was brought in as his replacement.

When Lancaster dropped out, producer Hal Wallis took over the movie in 1959 and considered replacing him with James Stewart (Shenandoah, 1965) or Charlton Heston (The Hawaiians, 1970) with Dean Martin (Rio Bravo, 1959) as the second lead. But still the movie stalled for another five years before Wallis settled on John Wayne who signed on for $600,000 plus a one-third share of the profits and one-third ownership of the negative (a bounty that would continue to pay off through reissues and leasing to television). Henry Hathaway was paid a flat $200,000.

Wayne and Hathaway had history dating back to The Shepherd of the Hills (1941) based on the million-copy bestseller by Harold Bell Wright, and groundbreaking in its use of Technicolor, then in its infancy. They didn’t work again until desert treasure hunt Legend of the Lost (1957) which teamed Wayne with Sophia Loren. A few years later came North to Alaska (1960) followed by Circus World / The Magnificent Showman (1964).

Despite this long-term relationship, the most the director could offer about his star was that “Wayne is more particular about the pants he wears than anything in the world…unless he gets the thinnest kind of material it drives him crazy.”

When the script was finally knocked into shape, the Marlow siblings had been trimmed from five to four, and that family had been replaced by the Elders, a nod to western aficionados who would recognize the name Katie Elder (“Big Nose Kate”), occasional companion of Doc Holliday whose story Wallis had previously filmed as Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Even though Elder wasn’t dead enough – she lived till 1940 – to conform to this picture, it seemed an odd decision to choose that name unless resonance was expected.

But it was still far from a done deal because Wayne’s cancer threatened to scupper the picture. Start of shooting scheduled for October 20, 1964, was shuttered when the disease was diagnosed on September 13 following the completion of Otto Preminger WW2 epic In Harm’s Way (1965). Aware surgery might jeopardize the picture, Wayne suggested Wallis replace him with Kirk Douglas (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966).

Hathaway rejected the notion, but while neither star nor producer had any idea whether the operation would be successful, and whether Wayne would be even fit enough to work, or – God forbid, that the actor might already have made his last picture – Wallis took an optimistic approach and announced the picture would be delayed for a month and “even a little later.” Hathaway’s optimism was based on the fact that he had survived colon cancer a decade before.

At least the surgeon moved fast, operating four days after diagnosis, and again five days later. As well as fighting the damage surgery and pain had done to his body, Wayne found himself slipping into depression, convinced the operation would render him unemployable. “I’ll never work again if they find out how sick I am. If they think an actor is sick, they won’t hire him,” he said, a legitimate observation given the cost of shutting down a picture should the actor be unable to play his role.

Wallis’s business partner Joseph Hazen shared Wayne’s pessimism and urged the producer to recast with either William Holder (The 7^th Dawn, 1964) or Robert Mitchum (The Way West, 1967). Paramount, too, fretted about insurance, the studio couldn’t risk hiring an uninsurable actor. Wallis refused to abandon Wayne and the studio finally agreed to tough conditions from the insurance company. So, on January 6, 1965, the principals gathered in Durango to commence the 46-day shoot on a production budgeted at $3.19 million.

The high elevations – 8,500 ft in places – were not conducive to someone recovering from a lung cancer operation and Wayne found it difficult to breathe. It didn’t help that on the fourth day of shooting Wayne was expected to jump into icy water for the sequence where the brothers were ambushed by the villains. It didn’t help, either, that Wayne was too big to wear a rubber suit to stave off the cold like his fellow actors.

Wayne never complained that Hathaway “worked me like a damn dog.” He realized that it “was the best thing ever happened to me. It meant I got no chance to walk around looking for sympathy.” The star put on a brave front, publicly acknowledging his battle with cancer as a way of giving hope to others while privately terrified not so much of dying but of being helpless. “I just couldn’t see myself lying in bed…no damn good to anybody.”

“He had to be the macho man,” commented Earl Holliman (The Power, 1968), a late substitute for original star Tommy Kirk (Swiss Family Robinson, 1960) who was sacked after being caught smoking marijuana, “he had to have more drinks than the next guy.” And despite the severity of his condition, and although publicly pretending he had given up tobacco, he continued smoking cigars.

Recalled Dean Martin (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967), “He’s two loud-speaking guys in one.” George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) asserted, “If you put him in a group with other movie stars, the eye went to him and that is the ultimate marker of respect. He was John Wayne. He was very real. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t Olivier; Olivier wasn’t John Wayne.”

But there were outward signs of the effect the illness had upon him. He was less sure of himself on a horse, riding with a shorter rein out of fear a horse would get away from under him, trying to minimize the chances of falling or being bucked from the animal. And as the film wore on, an oxygen inhaler was set up beside him on set.

Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider, 1969) was wary of working again with Hathaway after a difficult experience with him on From Hell to Texas (1958) starring Don Murray and Diane Varsi where the actor suffered the indignity of endless takes. Hopper quit three times and for good measure the director put the word around and virtually grounded the actor’s career. Hopper only made one movie in six years. In the interim he had married Brooke Hayward, daughter of actress Margaret Sullavan whom Hathaway respected, and peace was brokered.

Although on his best behavior on the shoot, Hopper was no less impressed. “He was a primitive director, he rarely moved his camera, the movement came from the actors.”

“Westerns are art,” declared Wayne. “They’ve got simplicity and simplicity is art…There’s simplicity of conflict you can’t beat…Westerns are our folklore and folklore is international…In Europe they understand that better than we do over here. “

Whether it was public sympathy for an ailing star and his resolve to fight cancer, or audience delight that he was back in a western after a gap of a few years, The Sons of Katie Elder was a huge hit with $5 million in initial rentals (what studios were left with after cinemas had taken their share). It earned more later in reissues but that initial sum was enough for thirteenth spot in the annual box office rankings though beaten by both Shenandoah and Cat Ballou. Its foreign earning would probably match domestic, to make it one of Wayne’s biggest earners for the decade.

SOURCES: Scott Eyman, John Wayne: His Life and Legend (Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2014) p111, p387-396 ; Ronald L. Davis, Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998) p266; Hal Wallis Collection, Margaret Herrick Library; Hedda Hopper, “Ladd To Star in Film of Pioneers’ Reunion,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9, 1955, p16; Thomas M. Pryor, “Hecht-Lancaster Obtains 2 Novels,” New York Times, January 12, 1956, p22; Oscar Godbout, “TV Movies Extras Get Salary Rises,” New York Times, July 3, 1956, p17; John Wayne, “Me? I Feel Fine,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1965; James Bacon, “Wayne’s Biggest Bout vs. Killer Cancer,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner, March 14, 1965; Roderick Mann, “John Wayne – A Natural as The Shootist, Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1976.

The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) ****

The rocking chair motif in this underrated film is ignored while the door opening and closing in The Searchers (1956) is hailed as one of cinema’s greatest images. Welcome to the world of director Henry Hathaway (Nevada Smith, 1966). Way down the pecking order when it comes to the makers of great westerns, below Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969) who only made four and Howard Hawks (Rio Bravo, 1959) only three.

Closer inspection, too, of The Wild Bunch (1969) might reveal cinematic ideas that turned up here first. Closer inspection of John Wayne (The Commancheros, 1961) might reveal a mighty fine, very touching, performance.

The genre was chock-full of vengeance, but here that is tempered by mystery over the death of their father, a drunken gambler, that has led to the loss of the family ranch, leaving the mother, for whose funeral the titular sons return, living hand-to-mouth, supplementing the usual sewing and mending with giving guitar lessons.

Hastings (James Gregory), a businessman with big ideas, has taken over the ranch and pretty much the local town of Clearwater. And he’s just hired extra muscle, notorious gunslinger Curley (George Kennedy), to swell his already-growing army.

Only the youngest son, Bud (Michael Anderson Jr), a reluctant college student, is clear of the taint of wrong-doing. John Elder (John Wayne) has a reputation as a gunfighter but unlike shifty younger brother Tom (Dean Martin) doesn’t have a wanted poster following him around. The other son Matt (Earl Holliman) takes after John, some shady action but no legal consequence.

This is certainly not a great fraternal union. When they’re not engaged in low-level investigation or trying to prevent themselves being lynched, they’re bickering and fighting. The only thing that unites them, beyond love of the deceased woman, is determination to continue paying for Bud’s education.

Apart from the ranch, one of Hastings’ other lucrative investments is a firearms business, which allows him to tote around a telescopic rifle which, of course, ensures he can bump off those who get in his way from a distance, without fear of discovery. The easiest way to get rid of the brothers is to have them arrested for murder and to kill off the one man, Sheriff Wilson (Paul Fix), who might have the brains and experience to work out something fishy was going on.

John Wayne is more emotional here than in any picture since The Searchers, though, as you’ll be aware, his emotion is registered through his eyes or bits of business rather than a lengthy speech. And given double duty of looking after the youngest while holding back the more tempestuous Tom.

Dean Martin’s (Five Card Stud, 1968) charm runs thin, as is intended, no woman to gull, and no cliché alcoholism a la Rio Bravo to fall back on. It’s a part he plays completely against type, although you can sense he’s bursting out of those confines in the false eye con. He’s pretty much always brought to heel by Wayne. The one time he defies big brother ends in personal calamity. Imagine a marquee name as big as Dean Martin taking on a role where the part sets him up to be walking in the Duke’s shadow, despite his efforts to break loose.

In fact, unusually for a western, until Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) came long, it’s replete with reversals. Hathaway plays with expectations from the outset, the opening sequence of big beast of a train puffing through fabulous scenery doesn’t bring John, instead, unknown to the waiting brothers, Curley disembarks. Katie Elder’s friend Mary (Martha Hayer) cuts off at the pass any idea the audience might have of incipient romance when she gives John both barrels.

Thanks to the screenplay, Michael Anderson Jr.(Major Dundee, 1965) and Earl Holliman (The Power, 1968) are given more bite than their roles might suggest and James Gregory (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) makes his villain meaty though you suspect the presence of George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) is another lure, creating audience expectation that is not fulfilled. Martha Hyer (The Chase, 1966) is more conscience than glamor, spending most of the time on the sidelines.

You’d be surprised just how lean a production this is, and equally how deftly Hathaway avoids cliches. Just because there’s a kid you don’t need to teach him how to be a man. A huge herd of horses doesn’t need to stampede. Beautiful woman in the vicinity doesn’t necessarily call for a heated love affair. Ending up in jail doesn’t necessitate a bust-out. Villainous gunslinger doesn’t set up obligatory shootout in an empty street.

Hathaway’s unusual, too, in the way he anchors his pictures in reality. Here it’s a funeral director washing the wheels of his hearse, a blacksmith applying shackles.

You’d marvel, too, at just who was involved in fashioning the terrific screenplay: veteran William H. Wright, his first in two decades, Harry Essex (Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954) in his first in eight years, and Allan Weiss whose six other movies were all Elvis Presley vehicles. Hardly the pedigree to produce one of the best westerns of the decade. This is the kind of screenplay where no line is wasted, not when a retort can be used to define character.

Most people remember the rousing theme by Elmer Bernstein (The Scalphunters, 1968), but actually there are also some very innovative musical passages worth listening out for.

Curiously, it was Andrew Sarris, hardly a John Wayne fan, who recognized the movie’s attributes, though in niggardly fashion, “The spectacle of people in Hollywood trying to do something different in a western at this late date is reassuring.”

It’s about time those differences and the picture’s excellence were recognized.

Dirty Dingus Magee (1970) ***

The boldest role ever undertaken by a major star of Frank Sinatra’s generation – and little thanks he got for it. Not only was he virtually unrecognisable under a slab of make-up that George Hamilton would have envied but the role was a complete reversal of his screen persona. Admittedly, he had flipped that persona for Tony Rome (1967) and as the cuckolded cop in The Detective (1968), but this was on a completely different level.

Sinatra was no Tom Hanks or Daniel Day-Lewis, known for inhabiting different types of characters, and, while he did have a vulnerability that he put to good use in The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), he was best known on screen as the guy in charge.

That was far from the case here. Dumb and dumber might be more apposite. Dingus Magee (Frank Sinatra) is a scamp, an outlaw so useless he is worth only $10 in reward money, who steals the stash of old rival Hoke Birdsill (George Kennedy), triggering a revenge caper that is complicated by a host of unnecessary complications by director Burt Kennedy (Welcome to Hard Times, 1967) who has set his heart on some kind of satirical comedy western with a revisionist slant.

So we get a female mayor, Belle (Anne Jackson), who happens to own the local brothel, whose commercial prospects are endangered when the local Cavalry are called away to fight the Native Americans, an Indian chief Crazy Blanket desperate to trade his daughter for a rifle, and when that looks like not working out calling on any available squaw to seal the deal, predatory schoolteacher Prudence (Lois Nettleton) and a running gag involving a Brown Derby hat that results in a gunfighter (Jack Elam) being mistaken for Magee.

It’s a bit long on complications and short on satire and is rescued by the double act of Magee and Birdsill, who constantly get in each other’s way or try to pull a fast one. Birdsill, as it happens, is appointed sheriff, since that’s in the purview of the mayor, and, on the right side of the law for the first time in his life, makes an ill-fated attempt to do good.

Magee tries to help him along. In exchange for the sheriff turning a blind eye for a period of time to Magee’s nefarious activities, the reward for the outlaw will mushroom, permitting greater kudos for the sheriff on his capture.

The main problem is that Kennedy directs with a very heavy hand, very obvious musical cues for a start, and there’s not enough that’s intrinsically funny. Though there is a reversal of an obvious joke of Birdsall being sent to the brothel to locate the mayor, expecting to find a client not the owner.

But both Sinatra and George Kennedy (The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965) are a delight, the latter also playing against type rather than his usual dominating character. Their dumbness takes some beating. Sinatra just about gets the upper hand, but there’s not much in it.

The best thing about the picture is the sense of reality. The U.S. Cavalry spend more time in the brothel than out hunting Native Americans. Law and order can go to hell as long as everyone is having illicit fun. The respectable schoolmarm proves a skilled seductress. Peace is desirable because it is more profitable than war. And the bulk of the outlaws in the Wild West are far from achieving legendary status, just two-bit punks.

Not surprisingly, this was a massive flop and killed off Sinatra’s movie career for the rest of the decade – not that he was overly concerned, “My Way” having reignited his singing career and he was a Vegas regular. But it’s a shame the acting was so vilified, Roger Ebert blamed Sinatra rather than the director for its failure, in particular taking him to task for the one-take approach that Gena Rowlands previously exalted (but what does she know, she’s just an acclaimed actress and knows how a movie works better than a critic).

Well overdue for a reappraisal and if you go in duly warned you might even enjoy it, or at least the Sinatra-Kennedy double act.

Hurry Sundown (1967) *****

Otto Preminger’s drama was the first of a trio of heavyweight films in 1967 – the others being In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – that took African American issues seriously. In post-war Georgia land-grabbing by ambitious Henry Warren (Michael Caine) pits him against World War Two vet Rod (John Philip Law) and African American farmer Reeve (Robert Hooks) who team up. Throw in a quintet of feisty women – Henry’s wife Julie Ann (Jane Fonda), Rod’s wife Lou (Faye Dunaway), schoolteacher Vivian (Diahann Carroll) – Reeve’s love interest – Henry’s lover Sukie (Donnie Banton) and Rod’s mother (Beah Richards) – and emotional confrontation comes thick and fast.

Preminger had spent most of the decade making films about big subjects – Exodus (1960), the politics behind the formation of Israel; Advise and Consent (1962), just politics; The Cardinal (1963), politics within the Roman Catholic Church; and In Harm’s Way (1965), Army politics and bluster around Pearl Harbor

Preminger is both economic and elegant. From opening dialogue to climactic court scene, the picture races along, and continuous use of tracking shots ensures the movie never gets bogged down. While there is no lynching, racist abuse, whether direct or indirect (through patronizing attitude) is never far from the surface. Corrupt Judge Purcell (Burgess Meredith) is by far the most vicious, his unrestrained language making you wince. But even those with more measured approaches have to play the game, Reeve gives a lift to Rod but has to let him off before they reach town in case anyone spots this, Rod forbidden, for example, to buy dynamite.

But the racists do not get it all their own way. Julie Ann stands up to the judge and her position in the community is so strong that others boycott the judge’s daughter’s wedding leading to the judge receiving a tongue-lashing from his wife. Weak Sheriff Coombs (George Kennedy) coming to arrest Rod is bamboozled by his female relatives while Vivian charms her way past the judge.

The women are uniformly strong. Julia Ann goes from seductive wife to distraught mother, but in between capable of defrauding Rod’s mother, her childhood nanny, out of her inheritance. Lou resents her husband’s return after in his absence taking on a full-time job while running the farm and now resisting the idea of selling up to Henry. Rod’s mother, beholden to white men all her life, now turns against them. The judge’s daughter (Donnie Banton) makes no bones about the fact that she is marrying her “dull” fiancé for his money. This is no spoiler because you will have guessed some similar outcome but at the end it is Vivian who takes the initiative in her relationship with Rod and marches into his house with her baggage, declaring she has come to stay.

And although the ruthless Henry is the bad guy, he, too, is afforded insight, soothing himself by playing a musical instrument, a man with talent who had “distracted” himself by pursuit of money. And there is another touching moment when he takes in a runaway child. Acting-wise, Michael Caine (Gambit, 1966) is a revelation. Gone is the trademark drawl and the laid- back physical characteristics. Here he talks snappily – and no quibbles with his Southern accent either – and strides quickly. That we can believe he is brutal, gentle, remorseful and ruthless is testament to his performance.

Similarly, this is a massive step forward in Jane Fonda’s (Cat Ballou, 1965) career, away from Hollywood comedies and sexed-up French dramas, and her internal conflict springs from being forced to choose between husband and son, between her innate sexiness that oozes out in every intimate scene and maternal longing to comfort her disturbed child. Her usual shrill delivery is tempered somewhat by the deeper emotions she is forced to bear. While her attempt to defraud Rod’s mother comes from a desire to keep her husband, her eyes tell you she knows that is no excuse.

What’s perhaps most surprising of all is the tenderness. There are wonderful, gentle love scenes between Caine and Fonda and Law and Dunaway.

Children, too, also unusually, play a central role. Henry’s callousness is no better demonstrated than in his earlier treatment of his son. Reeve’s eldest son also resents his father’s return and, viewing Henry as a more suitable adult, betrays his father. The Judge is obliged to drop one of the worst aspects of his racism in order to appease his daughter.

The acting throughout is uniformly good. Dunaway’s debut won her a six-picture contract with Preminger. Singer Diahann Carroll’s role as a confident young woman led to a television series. Robert Hooks would also enjoy small-screen fame. The surprisingly effective John Philip Law would partner Fonda in sci-fi Barbarella (1968) and link up with Preminger again in the ill-fated Skidoo (1969). Horton Foote (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962) and Thomas C. Ryan (The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter, 1968) wrote the screenplay based on the bestseller by K.B. Gilden.

Unfairly overlooked by Oscar votes, who preferred the other Poitier films, Hurry Sundown, despite the rawness of the language and the innate brutality meted out to African-Americans, has been vastly under-rated. It is worth another look because at its core is not just racism but big business which scarcely cares about the color of those it exploits. It is as much about the power shift in relationships and ambition.