I’m not sure Downton Abbey is a big enough franchise to be allocated a parody, so I came at this with low expectations. However, instead of a leaden spoof, I found it constantly amusing and was chuckling from the get-go. There’s only one cracker of a scene and not the correct number of killer lines for a killer comedy, but, oddly enough, it gets by with a more subtle shade of humor, often of the blind-and-you’ll-miss-it variety, a sign on a wall, a newspaper headline and so forth, almost the ultimate in visual gags.
I’m beginning with the crackerjack scene in part because when I heard that British stand-up comedian Jimmy Carr not only had a hand in the screenplay but was down for a key cameo, I dreaded his appearance. But it was a gem, the best maladroit vicar since Rowan Atkinson in Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). If comedy is all about timing, Carr puts on a masterclass, putting the wrong pronunciation on the first few syllables of every line in order to tip it over into full-blown double entendre snigger material.
As you might expect there’s not much plot and yet what narrative there is keys into the most significant aspect of the aristocracy, namely inheritance. Nobody wants a stately pile to end up in the hands of the undeserved, which is why there was such a preponderance of people marrying cousins or second cousins.
As a result, this is distinctly anti-woke, incest, buggery and masturbation all taking center stage. And perhaps because of playing about with bloodlines, there has never been a better tagline “born to aristocracy, bred for idiocy.” Even the leading lady Rose Davenport (Thomasin McKenzie) – scheduled to marry repulsive cousin Archibald (Tom Felton) as substitute for older sister Poppy (Emma Laird) who ducked out of the chore – is as dumb as a spanner.
Given the genre’s natural spin towards complication Rose has fallen for new employee Eric (Ben Radcliffe) while Poppy makes a beeline for a cast-off from Lady Chatterley’s Lover. When Lord Davenport (Damian Lewis) is murdered and Eric imprisoned as the main suspect, Rose, in order to maintain the family line, is forced to reconsider Archibald.
There’s also a quite clever parody of the standard Agatha Christie murder mystery with Inspector Watt (Tom Goodman-Hill) making all sorts of wrong assumptions – though admittedly it’s a complicated corpse given Lord Davenport has been stabbed, poisoned, shot and strangled – before a quite brilliant denouement. There are secret love affairs and long-lost family.
It only takes a few complications to keep a comedy rolling so there’s no shortage of narrative drive here. There are twists, too, not least the unexpectedly dumb Rose, but the unexpectedly uncouth commoner who takes up with Poppy.
With ineptitude to the fore, none of the actors has much problem with making their characters believable and, as I mentioned, there are plenty visual gags and a couple of other excellent set pieces. Anna Maxwell Martin’s (Ludwig TV series, 2024) atrocious Scottish accent stands out for the wrong reasons, as if she was the only actor who decided to play it as a spoof rather than for real.
Otherwise Damian Lewis (Wolf Hall, 2015-2024), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter series), Thomasin McKenzie (Joy, 2024) and Ben Radcliffe (The Witcher series 2023-2025) are pretty much spot-on. Katherine Waterston (Babylon, 2022) has a small role, and spearheads another superb scene, and Hayley Mills (The Family Way, 1966) acts as narrator.
Directed by Jim O’Hanlon (Your Christmas or Mine, 2022). Written by Steve and Andrew Dawson and Tim Inman (The Bubble, 2022) and Jimmy and Patrick Carr.
Surprisingly, for a very low-budget endeavor, this did very well at the British box office and I suspect word-of-mouth might well gather it a sizeable following when it enters streaming.
Not going to be mistaken as Oscar-bait, but does what it sets out to do.
The nepo is in – resulting in an all-time calamitous vanity project. Not only has director M. Night Shyamalan chosen to devote a good 30 minutes of the running time to showcasing his daughter Saleka’s talents as a singer (and for I know she may be the next big thing) but has also decided that this movie would provide an ideal opportunity for her movie debut. On top of that, star Josh Hartnett has opted for a cartoonish portrayal of his character, all goggle eyes, wiggling eyebrows and over-the-top facial expression.
Having bored us to death for well over an hour, the director then opts to let fly with twist after nonsensical twist. Virtually every law enforcement person has uniform emblazoned with FBI, POLICE, or SWAT, but you might as well have branded them all as DUMBASS for all the sense they show. Despite theoretically having some kind of description of the serial killer known as The Butcher (top marks for originality), the cops proceed to pull out of a concert any number of people who bear no resemblance at all to each other.
The set-up, should you be remotely interested, sees Cooper (Josh Hartnett) taking teenage daughter Riley (Ariel Donoghue) to a sold-out concert by latest pop sensation Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalen) only to discover the venue is crawling with cops and FBI hoping to ensnare said killer by the simple device of stopping all of the 3,000 male attendees as they leave unless in one of their random audience selections they happen upon the villain. Cooper is soon alert to the problem and finds clever ways to avoid detection, including convincing Saleka’s uncle (M. Night Shyamalen) whom he couldn’t know from Adam that his daughter has recovered from leukemia, the kind of sob story that will result in Riley being selected to join the singer on stage for one number.
Cooper then manages to nip out the back door by taking Lady Raven hostage. Though, wait for it, it turns out that the FBI have trained her about what to do in the event of such an occurrence, which is some psychobabble about behaving like his mother and telling him to stop being effectively (shades of Life of Brian) such a naughty boy. Turns out, too, his wife Rachel (Alison Pill) has harbored sufficient doubts about her husband that she’s alerted the police that the killer is going to be attending the concert, hence the manhunt, but not done the sensible thing of fully identifying him which, of course, would stop him killing anyone else and save the police the cost of putting a couple of hundred cops on duty at the concert hall (some people!). Nor with a kettle boiling has she the gumption to pour the boiling water over him.
Just when it looks as if clever Lady Raven has outwitted our thug and called on her social media cohort to track down his latest victim, we’re treated to a whole spree of idiotic twists, mostly of the catch-and-escape-catch-and-escape variety.
Mostly, I felt insulted. I’ve been loyal to M. Night Shyamalen over the past quarter of a century, even recently popping back to the cinema to view (and review) his classic The Sixth Sense (1999). After Unbreakable (2000) and Signs (2002), his output became variable, disastrous ventures like The Last Airbender (2010) and After Earth (2013) partly redeemed by Split (2016) and Glass (2019). He’s kept hmself in the game by independent production and low-budgets, his name retaining enough marquee pull to keep his pictures in profit.
But with Trap he’s just showing contempt for his audience. Will Smith I remember going down a similar route, demanding his offspring have major roles in some of his projects, but the whole nepo business is getting out of hand. Sure, you can’t blame kids for being born to parents who are global superstars nor for believing they are entitled tofollow suit. But Hollywood is littered with kids who were showered with praise or given unfair advantage only to find audiences held their efforts in little regard.
This might well have worked if we’d got to the twists quicker, lopped off a good 20 minutes of concert footage and stuck to the narrative. As it was, by the time we get to anything that could remotely be deemed thrilling, the audience has fallen asleep.
Josh Hartnett’s all-time worst performance. M. Night Shyamalan’s worst film. Hopefully, all this effort to build up his daughter’s singing career is worth it because I can’t be the only one who feels duped.
Another rich kid with mental health issues though without Orson Welles to offer expiation. The cause of this character’s illness is undetermined but it’s easy enough to spot the trigger to violence. The lad’s father is dead and his mother’s new husband, a wealthy banker, wants him out of the way, or at least out of the house, or at least, given he’s twenty-one, out working rather than mooning about the house all day.
And this was certainly the year for the movies exploring split personality – if such shallow treatment could be deemed investigation – what with Tony Curtis and Rod Steiger in serial murderous form in, respectively, The Boston Strangler (1968) and No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). And for movie fans it was an unexpecteldy speedy reteaming for Hayley Mills and Hywel Bennett after the humungous success of The Family Way (1967) in which the actress shed her child-star persona in no uncertain manner and the British film industry was, apparently, suddenly blessed with a duo with marquee appeal.
A poster that gives the game away.And an apostrophe issue.
This takes the Rod Steiger route of charming killer rather than a Tony Curtis puzzled and horrified by the demands of his ulterior personality. Given the emphasis on mental illness these days, Twisted Nerve is the hardest of the trio to take, since it’s effectively a play on an old gimmmick, deviousness concealed inside appeal.
Martin (Hywel Bennett) faced with expulsion from his house by overbearing substitute father Henry (Frank Finlay) pretends to scoot off to France but instead inveigles himself into the boarding house run by Joan (Billie Whitelaw) after tricking her librarian daughter Susan (Hayley Mills) into extending a sympathetic hand to his alter ego, the childish Georgie, whose behavior falls only a little way short of sucking his thumb and clutching a teddy bear.
Joan’s initial cynicism gives way to maternal feelings when he clambers into her bed in the middle of the night after a supposed nightmare. (And not with sexual intent.)
Occasionally, Martin cannot control his true feelings, despite Susan rebuffing his romantic overtures. Father is the first victim, substitute mother Joan the second and it’s only a matter of time before Susan becomes a target either for his stifled sexuality or his inner venom.
This would probably work just as well minus the schizophrenic element. In fact, there’s too much of tipping the nod to the audience. Eventually, Susan’s suspicions are aroused but director Roy Boulting (The Family Way) is no Alfred Hitchcock able to manipulate an audience. So, mainly, what we are left with is Hywel Bennett’s ability to pull off a double role rather than his victims’ susceptibility to his charms.
Hayley Mills’ character could do with fattening up, otherwise she’s just the dupe, bright, bubbly, self-confident and attractive though she is, although her mother, in passing, is given more depth, a lonely attractive widow prone to sleeping with her attractive guest Gerry (Barry Foster) and, unnerved to some extent by her daughter’s growing independence, wanting a son to mother.
It’s only un-formulaic in the sense that the director is playing with an audience who were not expecting anything like this as a story fit for their two newest adult stars so hats off especially to Bennett for considering a role that could as easily have typecast him for the rest of his career. As I said, setting aside the mental illness elements, Bennett is good fun, as he toys with both aspects of his character, adeptly dealing with those who would patronise him, and like Leopold and Lowe convinced he can get away with the perfect crime, whose planning and attention to detail is noteworthy.
As with the Chicago killers it’s only accident that gives him away, although the policeman here (Timothy West) is less dominant than his American counterpart.
Clearly filmmakers of the 1960s were beginning to grapple with mental illness but either lurching too far towards romance as a way of instigating tragedy as with Lilith (1964) or to the most violent aspects of the condition as with virtually anything else beginning with Psycho (1960).
Worth a look for Hywel Bennett’s chilling performance – template for Edward Norton’s turn in Primal Fear (1996) – and Hayley Mills fans won’t want to miss it. Strong performances by Billie Whitelaw (The Comedy Man, 1964), Barry Foster (Robbery, 1967) and Frank Finlay (The Shoes of the Fisherman, 1968) help enormously. There was quite an input into the screenplay. Along with Boulting, Leo Marks (Sebastian, 1968) doing the heavy lifting adapting work by Roger Marshall (Theatre of Death, 1967) and, in his only movie credit, Jeremy Scott. Great score by Bernard Herrmann.
The “Behind the Scenes” articles have become increasingly popular in the Blog. As regular readers will know I am fascinated about the problems incurred in making certain movies. Perhaps one of the more interesting aspects of this category is that every now and there is out of nowhere massive interest in the making of a particular movie and it shoots up the all-time tree. Most of the material has come from my own digging, and sources are always quoted at the end of each article, but occasionally I have turned to books written on the subject of the making of a specific film.
As with the All-Time Top Movies section, the top 20 comprises the choices of my readers. Alistair MacLean still exerts an influence, which is reassuring because my next book is about the films made from his books.
While Waterloo remains firmly out in front there are some interesting new entries such as The Cincinnati Kid, The Appointment, Mackenna’s Gold, The Train, The Sons of Katie Elder and The Trouble with Angels while Man’s Favorite Sport has made a steady climb upwards.
(1)Waterloo(1970). No doubting the effect of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon in racketing up interest in this famous flop.
(2) Ice Station Zebra(1968). A complete cast overhaul and ground-breaking special effects are at the core of this filming of an Alistair MacLean tale.
(3)In Harm’s Way(1965). Otto Preminger black-and-white epic about Pearl Harbor and after.
(7) The Guns of Navarone (1961). Alistair MacLean again, setting up the template for the men-on-a-mission war picture with an all-star cast and enough production jeopardy to qualify for a movie of its own.
(6)The Satan Bug(1965). The problems facing director John Sturges in adapting the Alistair MacLean pandemic classic for the big screen.
(9) Man’s Favorite Sport (1964). Howard Hawks back in the gender wars with Rock Hudson and Paul Prentiss squaring off.
(4)Battle of the Bulge (1965). There were going to be two versions, so the race was on to get this one to the public first.
(5) Cast a Giant Shadow (1965). Producer Melville Shavelson wrote a book about his experiences and this and other material relating the arduous task of bringing the Kirk Douglas-starrer to the screen are told here.
(10) The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968). Cult classic starring Marianne Faithful and Alain Delon had a rocky road to release, especially in the U.S. where the censor was not happy.
(8) Sink the Bismarck! (1962). Documentary-style British WW2 classic with Kenneth More with the stiffest of stiff-upper-lips.
(11). Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Richard Fleischer dispenses with the all-star cast in favor of even-handed verisimilitude.
(New Entry) The Cincinnati Kid (1965). Once Sam Peckinpah was fired from the poker epic, Norman Jewison took over. Steve McQueen, Ann-Margret and Edward G. Robinson are top-billed.
(New Entry) The Trouble with Angels (1966). Hayley Mills causes trouble at a convent school where Rosalind Russell tries to rein her in.
(13). The Bridge at Remagen (1969). John Guillerman WW2 classic with George Segal and Robert Vaughn
(17). The Collector (1963). William Wyler’s creepy adaptation of John Fowles’ creepy bestseller with Terence Stamp and Samatha Eggar.
(New Entry) The Train (1964). Another director fired, this time Arthur Penn, with John Frankenheimer taking over in this cat-and-mouse WW2 struggle between Burt Lancaster and Paul Schofield.
(New Entry) The Appointment (1969). Sidney Lumet has his hands tied in Italian drama with Omar Sharif and Anouk Aimee.
(20) The Way West (1967). Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum face off in pioneer western.
(New entry) Mackenna’s Gold (1969). Producer Carl Foreman has his work cut out bringing home western Cinerama epic starring Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif.
(New entry) The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). Long-gestating Henry Hathaway western with John Wayne and Dean Martin as brawling brothers.
Traditionally, this is an opportunity for me to blow the trumpet on behalf of my loyal and growing band of readers. But this time out I’m also taking the opportunity to blow my own trumpet or in the patois of my home city “bum ma load.” I began this blog in June 2020 and my monthly viewing figures scarcely topped a few hundred in the first year. Now I’m hitting 10,000 views a month. Being a self-effacing kind of guy, I thought the world should know.
Now, back to the main task in hand. It’s been a major aspect of the Blog to see which films are most favored by my readers. As regular readers will know, I run this feature every six months.
It’s worth pointing out that for such a testosterone-driven decade the Top Ten is dominated by female stars with Ann-Marget and Angie Dickinson in the ascendancy. Raquel Welch, Hayley Mills and Jean Seberg also make a splash. As well as top male figures like Frank Sinatra, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and Dean Martin readers have been highly appreciative of underdogs like Alain Delon, Richard Johnson and Alex Cord.
Surprisingly high number of new entries include Young Cassidy, Fathom, The Appointment, Diamond Head, The Family Way and The Venetian Affair.
The figures in brackets represent the previous year’s position.
(1) The Swinger (1966). Queen of the Blog Ann-Margret in bouncy sex comedy that manages a sprinkling of innocence.
(2) Stagecoach (1966). Double whammy from Ann-Margret in this more than acceptable remake of the John Ford western with the male lead taken by Alex Cord, another star in need of reassessment.
(4) Fraulein Doktor (1969). German spy Suzy Kendall out-foxes Kenneth More in this World War One adventure with surprisingly grisly battle scenes and a superb score from Ennio Morricone.
(3) Jessica(1962). Angie Dickinson as a young widow incurring the wrath of wives in a small Italian town.
(7) Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). For many, including myself, the greatest western ever made. Sergio Leone fashions a masterpiece from a stunning cast of Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson and that fabulous Morricone score.
(6) Fireball XL5. (1962) The height of a television cult. Famous British series from Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, now colorized. “My heart will be a fireball…”
(5) The Sins of Rachel Cade. (1961) Angie Dickinson (again) as African missionary falling foul of the natives and commissioner Peter Finch. Roger Moore in an early role.
(10) Vendetta for the Saint. (1968) More television cultism. Movie made by combining two episodes of the series featuring the immortal Simon Templar. Roger Moore tackles the Mafia.
(12) TheSisters (1969). Complicated French love triangle featuring Nathalie Delon and Susan Strasberg.
(11) Baby Love (1969). Controversy was the initial selling point but now it’s morphed into a morality tale as orphaned Linda Hayden tries to fit into an upper-class London household.
(13) Pharoah (1966). Sensational Polish epic set in Ancient Egypt centering on the battle between the country’s ruler and the religious hierarchy.
(9) Moment to Moment (1966). Hitchcockian-style thriller set in the south of France with Jean Seberg caught out in illicit love affair. Co-starring Honor Blackman.
(21) Go Naked in the World (1961). Steamy drama with Gina Lollobrigida discovering that her profession (the oldest) and true love (with rich Anthony Franciosa) don’t mix. Great turn from Ernest Borgnine as a doting father.
(8) The Secret Ways (1961). The first of the Alistair MacLean adaptations to hit the big screen features Richard Widmark trapped in Hungary during the Cold War. Senta Berger has a small role.
(36) In Harm’s Way (1965). Otto Preminger’s Pearl Harbor epic sets John Wayne and Kirk Douglas at each other’s throats.
(20) The Golden Claws of the Cat Girl (1968). Genuine French cult film with Daniele Gaubert as a sexy cat burglar.
(14)Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humpe and Find True Happiness? (1969) Self-indulgence reaches new heights as singer Anthony Newley invokes his inner Fellini that somehow involves bedding lots of women. Then-current wife Joan Collins co-stars.
(New Entry) Young Cassidy (1965). Rod Taylor and Julie Christie in Jack Cardiff’s Irish drama. He took over from an ill John Ford.
(22) Pressure Point (1962). No escape for racist patient Bobby Darin when psychiatrist Sidney Poitier is around.
(New Entry) The Appointment (1969). Complete change of pace for Omar Sharif in unusual Italian drama directed by Sidney Lumet. Anouk Aimee is the tantalizing female lead.
(New Entry) Fathom (1967) Raquel Welch swaps her skydiving kit for the more comfortable environs of a bikini in thriller. Anthony Franciosa co-stars.
(22) Pendulum (1969). Cop George Peppard accused of murdering unfaithful wife Jean Seberg.
(New Entry) The Family Way (1966). Hayley Mills grows up – and how – in marital drama with new British star Hywel Bennett.
(New Entry) Diamond Head (1962). Ruthless hypocritical land baron Charlton Heston causes chaos in Hawaii. With Yvette Mimieux and George Chakiris.
(26) A Dandy in Aspic (1968). Cold War thriller with Laurence Harvey as a double agent who wants out. Mia Farrow co-stars.
(New Entry) The Venetian Affair (1966). Robert Vaughn turns in a terrific performance as an ex-alcoholic spy dealing with former lover Elke Sommer in slippery Venice-set thriller.
(21) The Best House in London (1969). That’s a euphemism for a brothel, let’s get that straight. David Hemmings tries to do right by the sex workers.
(25) Lady in Cement (1969). Frank Sinatra reprises private eye Tony Rome with mobster’s moll Raquel Welch as his client.
(31) The Girl on a Motorcycle / Naked under Leather (1968). Heavily-censored in the U.S., erotic drama with singer Marianne Faithfull as the titular fantasizing heroine. Alain Delon co-stars.
(New Entry) Genghis Khan (1965). Omar Sharif as the all-conquering Mongol chieftain. Stephen Boyd, James Mason, Eli Wallach, Telly Savalas and Francoise Dorleac lend support.
(New Entry) The Chalk Garden (1964). Hayley Mills again, being brought to heel by governess Deborah Kerr with a hidden secret.
(New Entry) Plane (2023). Gerard Butler channels his inner Bruce Willis as he attempts to avoid dying hard on an island inhabited by rebels.
(23) Oceans 11. Frank Sinatra heads the Rat Pack line-up, inspiring an industry of remakes and with everyone starting with Tarantino ripping off one scene.
(New Entry) Five Card Stud (1968). Surprising mix of feminism and noir in revenge western. Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum and Inger Stevens topline.
(34) The Misfits (1960). Last hurrah for Clark Gable, fabulous turns from Montgomery Clift and Marilyn Monroe in John Huston tale of losers.
(28) Once a Thief (1965). Change of pace for Ann-Margret as working mother whose ex-jailbird husband Alain Delon is forced into another job.
(27) Deadlier than the Male (1967). Espionage with a sting in the tale as venomous female villains including Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina target Bulldog Drummond
(35) Rage (1966). Glenn Ford and Stella Stevens combat pandemic in Mexican town.
(New Entry) Blonde (2022). Ana de Armas in stylized biopic of Marilyn Monroe
(33) She Died with Her Boots On / Whirlpool (1969). Sleazy British film from cult Spanish director Jose Ramon Larraz sees kinky photographer Karl Lanchbury seduce real-life MTA Vivien Neves.
My discovery that Hayley Mills’ career could have taken an entirely different turn had either Deep Freeze Girls or When I Grow Rich entered production in 1965/1966 and therefore prevented the star returning to Britain for The Family Way (1966) – and, as it transpired, love and marriage – made me look again at the huge volume of movies that were either never made at the time initially announced or never made at all.
I’d covered a couple of classic examples previously, 40 Days of Musa Dagh for example taking nearly half a century from initial proposal to some kind of fruition. And, of course, the financial collapse of studios at the end of the 1960s put an end to the prospects of such big budget movies as Man’s Fate, to be directed by Fred Zinnemann.
But sometimes as many as half the movies announced by a studio or independent for their forthcoming schedule never made it to the big screen. Others such as This Property Is Condemned (1966), initially to star Elizabeth Taylor and directed by John Huston, still got over the line but with new players, Natalie Wood as star and Robert Mulligan in the hot seat. On the other hand, of the quartet of movies – Lie Down in Darkness, Guardians, Grass Lovers, and Linda – that producer William Frye (The Trouble with Angels) thought would make his name, none were made.
Everyone knows moviemaking is a dicey business, but you don’t realize just how tricky it is unless you count up just how many pictures, often trumpeted with big stars signed up, just don’t make it to the cinema screen. Not that Hollywood was unwilling to gamble. Studios snapped up anything – novel, Broadway play – that appeared a decent prospect.
In the early 1960s talent agency Famous Artists earned for its clients a grand total of $850,000 (equivalent to $8.5 million now) for a disparate bunch of properties. King Rat by James Clavell went for $160,000 plus a percentage and was made in double quick time. As was Lilith by J.R. Salamaca, costing $100,000, and Sylvia ($20,000 purchase price) by E.V. Cunningham (aka Howard Fast). Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest went for $85,000 to Kirk Douglas’s Bryna outfit, which explained why, a decade later, it ended up being produced by his son, Michael.
But Broadway play The Perfect Set-Up by Jack Sher, sold to Hollywood for $400,000 and with Angie Dickinson signed up for the lead, was never made. You might recall George Peppard in a TV movie Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Murder Case (1975) but that wasn’t based on The Sheppard Murder Case by Paul Holmes that someone shelled out $25,000 for in 1962.
Director Paul Wendkos had planned to follow up Gidget Goes to Rome (1963) with Native Stone, an architectural drama in the vein of The Fountainhead based on the Edwin Gilbert book that cost him $10,000 but that hit the buffers. Two novels by thriller writer John D. MacDonald, hot after Cape Fear (1962) – the aforementioned Linda costing $15,000 and A Child Is Crying $5,000 – were not made either. Nor, out of this batch, were Indian Paint by Glenn Balch or Fish Story by Robert Carson.
Even as powerful a producer as Ross Hunter (Midnight Lace, 1960), couldn’t get onto the starting grid The Public Eye as a vehicle for Julie Andrews, Laurence Olivier and director Mike Nichols (it would have been his movie debut) – when made in 1972 starring Mia Farrow and Topol it was under the aegis of Hal Wallis. Hunter also spent $350,000 on Dark Angel to star Rock Hudson but that fell at the first hurdle as did Broadway play A Very Rich Woman to star Katharine Hepburn.
Tony Curtis was down for a remake of Casablanca (1942) called The Fifth Coin and relocated in Hong Kong and to co-star Nancy Kwan. Shooting on the Seven Arts production had a start date: November 15, 1965. But never went in front of the cameras. Kwan was particularly unlucky. The aforementioned Deep Freeze Girls also had a budget ($1.5 million) and a start date (October 1965) but it didn’t get off the ground either.
And of course Seven Arts had become enmeshed in the long-running John Huston saga of The Man Who Would Be King. This version, to star Richard Burton, had been set a $4 million budget and was due to start in April 1966. No go. At least The Owl and the Pussycat, budgeted then at $1.6 million and due to start on Dec 1965, was worth waiting five years for – when it was eventually filmed, though by Rastar not Seven Arts, it starred Barbra Streisand and George Segal.
In 1964 Columbia had 77 movies on the stocks. Richard Brooks was setting up Catch 22, Peter Sellers was being lined up for the musical Oliver!, and Carl Foreman was prepping Young Churchill. All these projects dropped off the roster, only to pop back up several years later with different stars (Ron Moody in Oliver!) or directors (Mike Nichols for Catch 22) or even studios (Paramount for Catch 22).
But others were simply shunted aside. Whatever happened to The Gay Place to team James Garner and Jean Seberg? Or The Fabulous Showman to be directed by Blake Edwards? Or another long-running saga, Andersonville with Stanley Kramer at the helm? Or Stephen Boyd as Richard the Lionheart? Even though The Ipcress File (1965) proved a big hit the same author’s Horse Under Water stalled at the starting gate, as did Robert Rossen’s Cocoa Beach and Ann-Margret in Strange Story.
When Robert Evans ushered in a new era at Paramount he placed his faith in writers. He doubled production and had over 40 writers working on projects. Some had little or no experience of movies but were big literary names. John Fowles, the adaptation of whose The Magus (1968) was an expensive flop, was hired to write Dr Cook’s Garden, but it was never made. Edna O’Brien had Three into Two Won’t Go on the stocks at Universal so she was set to write Homo Faber. Another casualty.
Oscar-winning screenwriter Edward Anhalt (Becket, 1964) was to make his directorial debut with We Only Kill Each Other. It didn’t happen. Nobody had ever managed to film Thomas Wolfe’s epic novel Look, Homeward Angel, so Paramount took a tilt at that without success. Escape from Colditz went into cold storage and an adaptation of Harold Robbins bestseller 79 Park Avenue ended up as a television mini series in 1977 and at a rival company, Universal.
It’s still standard operating procedure for Hollywood to snap up any big bestseller or Broadway hit without ever knowing whether it will ever see the light of day but willing to take the risk.
SOURCES: “Famous Artists,” Variety, August 8, 1962, p5; “Sanford and Frye of TV To Make Theatrical Films,” Box Office, January 7, 1963, p10; “Col-Frye TV Pact,” Box Office, August 19, 1963, p10; “Columbia Policy,” Variety, May 6, 1964, p13; “Seven Arts Pix Multiply,” Variety, March 31, 1965, p4; “Ross Hunter’s Crowded Future,” Variety, May 12, 1965, p7; “Bob Evans Pays Chip Service To Writer As Star,” Variety, May 1, 1968, p19.
Miracle this was made at all with so many neophyte producers involved. First up were Kenn Donellen and Jacqueline Babbin. No Hollywood experience. He was the television rep for Ford Motors, she worked for David Susskind’s talent agency. But like everyone else in the business in the early 1960s, when major studios were on the point of collapse, they thought they could do better. Especially after they nabbed the property, Life with Mother Superior by Jane Trahey, from under the noses of Disney and Universal.
The pair picked it up pre-publication, three months before it was launched by Farrar Strauss in September 1962 after serialization in McCall’s magazine and turned into a speedy bestseller. They got preference because they struck the kind of deal with the author that only newcomers desperate to get into the business would make. As well as paying a hefty fee upfront they guaranteed the author a percentage, plus, unheard-of for a first-time writer, a “say-so on production.” That clause alone would have alarmed any other studio.
Donellen and Babbin were prepared to put up half the $750,000 budget if the remainder was met by a major studio or independent. Production was scheduled for Spring 1963.
Not surprisingly, it suffered from lack of partners. Briefly, it shifted to the bulging portfolio of Ross Hunter. He envisaged an all-star cast older cast in the style of Disney’s Pollyanna (1960): Barbara Stanwyck (The Night Walker, 1964), Loretta Young (whose last movie It Happens Every Thursday was in 1953) and Jane Wyman (Pollyanna) as nuns, which removed the onus from youngsters Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker, 1962) and Mary Badham (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962). Interestingly, his production of The Chalk Garden (1964) with Hayley Mills was so successful in its New York run it earned back its negative cost.
But that didn’t float Universal’s boat and Columbia stepped in in 1964, handing the production to another neophyte, William Frye. He belonged to a new breed of producers who had cut their teeth in television as writers before moving into overseeing small-screen programs, and attempting the jump to features. Frye had been more successful than most. He had a production deal with Columbia.
But initial attempts to film Guardians from the novel by Helen Tucker, Grass Lovers, thriller Linda by John D. MacDonald and Lie Down in Darkness by William Styron to be directed by John Frankenheimer came to nothing. In the end, Columbia handed him Mother Superior, as the movie was now known.
But this was his first production and either through naiveté, ambition or publicity-seeking genius, Frye had the sensational idea of fielding a million-dollar offer to Greta Garbo to play Mother Superior, in what would have been the comeback to end all comebacks, given she had not made a movie in three decades. That would have made a heck of a dent in a movie budgeted at $2 million. Needless to say, the offer was declined. Eventually, he settled on four-time Oscar nominee Rosalind Russell, for whom this was also something of a comeback, her first picture since Gypsy (1962).
Hayley Mills had parted company with Walt Disney after a run of six films that had turned her into the biggest child star (admittedly, a small pool) in the world. But she was trying to break out from that persona. She was 19 and couldn’t keep playing kids forever. In an attempt to spread her wings, she and her father, actor John Mills (Tunes of Glory, 1960) set up production outfit The Company of Six along with fellow actors Richard Attenborough, Herbert Lom and Curt Jurgens and writer-director Bryan Forbes.
And she faced another dilemma. Her Disney pictures were big box office, but other movies made out-with that brand were less successful. In some respects, this was an ideal halfway house. In this picture she wasn’t saddled with being a tomboy and there was no romance and she was able to infuse the role with more emotional maturity while still developing her comedy chops.
It wasn’t her only choice. She was set for Deep Freeze Girls along with Nancy Kwan and Sue Lyon for Seven Arts. Production was scheduled to begin in October 1965, following on from The Trouble with Angels, but it never got off the ground.
As importantly, Mills fitted the new Columbia talent development strategy. The studio had signed up seven young stars but aimed to have 40-50 on board within a year, partly as a way to reduce costs and partly as a method of courting the younger audience. So, you couldn’t have a better poster girl for that particular scheme than Hayley Mills.
By this point, Ida Lupino, once a big movie star (High Sierra, 1940) and an accomplished director after a string of B-film thrillers in the early 1950s such as Outrage (1950) – one of the first X-certificate films in Britain – and The Bigamist (1953), was now a television gun for hire, reduced to directing episodes of Bewitched, The Twilight Zone, Dr Kildare and The Fugitive. But she had worked for Frye in television when he was in charge of the General Electric Theater and Thriller series Still, it was a brave move to hire a director, never mind a female director, who had been out of the movies for 13 years.
In Hollywood, Lupino was now in a majority of one, the only female director working in the mainstream. Up till then, in the whole of the decade, only two other women had found a directing gig and that was in the independent sector, Shirley Clarke with The Connection (1961) and Joleen Compton with Stranded (1965), though that had been shot in Greece. Although Variety ran a front-page splash in 1964 entitled “Women Directors Multiply,” the situation overseas was little better. Belgian Agnes Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962), Swede Mai Zetterling (Loving Couples, 1964) and Lina Wertmuller (Lizards, 1963) were the only examples the trade magazine could find.
It was Lupino’s decision to limit the use of color, mainlining on “stark black and white and charcoal grey.” When color did appear it was in a “sudden splash” such as a swimming pool or a green meadow or the red of the marching band outfits. “The possibilities of color are fantastic,” opined Lupino.
Columbia was on such a production spree, 77 pictures on its slate, space so tight on its sound stages, that some scenes on The Trouble with Angels were farmed out to Goldwyn Studios. Most of the train scenes were shot at the Santa Fe depot, though the opening train sequence took place at Merion train station in Pennsylvania.
The movie title was changed to The Trouble with Angels due to a surfeit of movies about nuns. Of course, nuns had periodically hit pay dirt at the box office. Look to Heaven Knows Mr Allison (1958) and The Nun’s Story (1959). But their box office had hardly prepared anyone for The Sound of Music (1965). And coming up on the outside was The Singing Nun (1966) starring Debbie Reynolds, though a foreign effort La Religieuse (1965) had been banned in France.
Lupino’s picture and The Singing Nun were soon on collision course, vying to become the Easter 1966 attraction at the prestigious Radio City Music Hall in New York (the largest auditorium in the country with over 6,000 seats). The Trouble with Angels lost out and settled for the first run Victoria and the arthouse Beekman (not such an unusual mix as, due to a dearth of screens thanks to roadshow long-runners, arthouses were often drafted in to make up the numbers).
William Frye planned to team up again with Mills and The Trouble with Angels screenwriter Blanche Hanalis for When I Grow Rich, a $3 million romantic drama to be filmed in Turkey for Columbia, but that fell through and after falling in love with her director Roy Boulting on The Family Way (1966), Mills career headed in another direction.
The Trouble with Angels was so successful it spawned a sequel, Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! (1968). Mills spurned an offer to reprise her role. Rosalind Russell returned, her young nemesis played by Stella Stevens (Sol Madrid/The Heroin Gang, 1968).
SOURCES: “Young Producers Not Arty At All,” Variety, June 20, 1962, p4; “Frye Buys Grass Lovers,” Variety, September 12, 1962, p11; “Sanford and Frye of TV To Make Theatrical Films,” Box Office, January 7, 1963, p10; “Col-Frye TV Pact,” Box Office, August 19, 1963, p10; “Women Directors Multiply,” Variety, March 11, 1964, p1; “Columbia Policy,” Variety, May 6, 1964, p13; “Ida Lupino To Direct Col’s Mother Superior,” Variety, February 10, 1965, p15; “Seven Arts Pix Multiply,” Variety, March 31, 1965, p4; “Form Company of Six,” Variety, April 21, 1965, p28; “Ross Hunter’s Crowded Future,” Variety, May 12, 1965, p7; “Production Spills Over,” Variety, September 15, 1965, p22; “One Nun or Another for Music Hall,” Variety, January 12, 1966, p17; Robert B. Frederick, “Sister Act,” Variety, April 20, 1966, p22; “Istanbul Rides Location Boom,” Variety, May 4, 1966, p150.
Shocking Fact No 1: director Ida Lupino was the only female director working in Hollywood at this time. And she hadn’t worked in features for over a decade. Her previous picture, The Bigamist (1953), was her fifth. And while she had continued to find work in television, the movie business shunned her. What was perhaps more shocking, as I pointed out in my book When Women Ruled Hollywood, was that in the period 1910-1919 more women worked as directors in Hollywood than at any time since and that it was a woman, Alice Guy, rather than Melies, who actually made the first narrative movie. Worst of all, despite being a major box office hit, this was Lupino’s last picture.
Shocking Fact No 2: this didn’t turn Hayley Mills into a major adult star. Oh yes, she made the transition – and how – in The Family Way later that year, a British romantic drama that saw her shed her clothes. Big hit in Britain, not so well-received in the USA. Her career then took an odd turn, into thrillers like Twisted Nerve (1968) and Endless Night (1972).
Not exactly demure. Marching band outfit takes the grey out of the convent uniform.
I say an odd turn because if there was any better demonstration that the actress had properly developed her comedy chops I’d yet to see it. Sure, Disney had used her in comedy, but that was mostly routine stuff. Here, she revealed an emotional maturity lacking in her previous work and, to some extent, in her future movies.
And, in part, because Lupino keeps her away from big dramatic moments, relying entirely on her facial expression to reveal character development. I am surprised that, at this point, with Doris Day’s box office allure dimming, that nobody saw Mills as her natural successor. She had the same puckish demeanor and she deftly handled comedy. Give her a few years and she would have been a natural for such polished items as Barefoot in the Park. You get the feeling there was more natural ability that was left untapped.
Anyway, on with the show.
This is just a delight. It shouldn’t work at all, certainly not for a modern audience accustomed to sharply-honed laugh lines. But it’s so cleverly constructed, in covering a three-year period, it could easily have been a string of loosely-connected episodes rather than a picture with an underlying narrative that mostly takes place beneath the surface.
Orphan Mary (Hayley Mills) has been dumped by rich playboy uncle (Kent George) in a convent boarding school that looks more like a medieval fortress than anything else. She teams up with the equally unhappy Rachel (June Harding), whose parents are at least indulgent, and together they torment the life out of the nuns and other kids, pouring detergent into tea-pots, setting off fire alarms, charging their schoolmates for an illicit guided tour of the convent, developing their smoking habits, breaking everything in sight. One scheme goes so badly awry the nuns have to take shears to a face mask.
Throughout all of this, she comes up against a tough Mother Superior (Rosalind Russell) who comes across like Miss Jean Brodie, minus her dangerously progressive side, but ever ready with a quip, able to tackle any emergency, though Mary drives her to distraction. While set in her ways, the nun does sail close to the wind, kitting out the girls in red cheerleader outfits in order to give them an unfair advantage in a marching band competition.
Any other director would have made the marching band competition the climax of the movie. I was fully expecting it to take up the final third, as pupils with little musical ability work hard and discover they can improve enough to win the competition and in so doing find out some platitudes about themselves. Instead, every episode is kept short and sweet, often the pay-off delivered in unexpected manner, for example, that we discover the girls have won when Mother Superior takes the opportunity to gloat over her rival headmaster (Jim Hutton). Or a section where teenage girls sent to buy their first bra go wild trying on all sorts of outrageous outfits that in other hands could easily have been expanded is ended sharply by Mother Superior holding up the plainest item and ordering two dozen of them.
It fairly skates along. But every now and then it dramatically slows down. And for what? Pretty much nothing at all. Just Mother Superior taking a quiet moment to herself amid all the hurly burly of running a school and dealing with mischief. But gradually, in those quiet moments, she is joined, at a distance, by a staring Mary, wondering about the nun’s inner calm.
Ida Lupino’s color palette is extraordinary. Sure, it’s nuns, so we can expect a lot of black and white. But Lupino avoids the temptation to compensate with huge swathes of color. Instead, for most of the film, the girls are decked out in grey. So when splashes of yellow or pink or red appear they are distinctive. Only as the girls grow older does more color emerge.
The wry Rosalind Russell (Gypsy, 1962) is on top form. Instead of attempting to dominate, she nips in and steals scenes with her dry delivery. She shifts from indominable to maternal and eventually engages the psychological attention of Mary in a superb scene about her own life.
In that sense Hayley Mills has her work cut out to hold her own against such an accomplished professional, which she achieves through her own delivery, but much more through facial expression. This was June Harding’s only movie. But look out for Camilla Sparv (Assignment K, 1968) in her movie debut and a cameo from Gypsy Rose Lee.
Terrific direction for Ida Lupino – watch for example how the camera closes in on characters – from screenplay by Blanche Hanalis (Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! 1968) from the bestseller by Jane Trahey.
As old-fashioned as they come and a joy to watch.
Catch it on YouTube – the first link is rent or buy, the second one is free but punctuated by adverts.
Although a truly innocent movie about young love, wrapped up in a sunken treasure scenario, the marketeers then and now could not resist trying to inject elements of sexuality, the poster for the original movie highlighting what would be Hayley Mills’ second screen kiss (following a smacker from Peter McEnery in The Moon-Spinners the year before), the poster for the DVD sticking the star in a bikini that she does not wear in the film.
The film was based on the 1921 novel Satan: A Romance of the Bahamas (filmed as Satan’s Sister in 1925 with Betty Balfour) by Henry de Vere Stacpoole, who had previously dallied with young love in The Blue Lagoon. Despite the title, there was a complete absence of the demonic. In the book, she is sailing with her brother. That character was eliminated in favour of a father.
The 1960s teen movie that could as easily morph into angst (Splendor in the Grass, 1961), blackmail (Kitten with a Whip, 1964) or madness (Lilith, 1964) was generally more at home with innocence. The beach party movies and series like Gidget rarely involved more than a stolen kiss, the characters all clearly virgins, and certainly did not go down the brazen sexuality route that would mark the second half of the decade.
Hayley Mills is on charming form as tomboy Spring Tyler (hence the title) sailing the Caribbean as mate to her conman father Tommy (played by her real-life father John Mills). Their idyllic life is heading for the rocks since the father didn’t “figure on the little girl growing up.” With one eye on providing a suitor for his daughter, the skipper takes on board a Harvard Law School graduate William (James MacArthur) ostensibly to give him experience of fishing.
True love takes its time since the girl has no intention of growing up and prefers a life of independence. Initially, they are sparring partners – she mocks the fact that he wears pyjamas. But once the story kicks off, they find they have more in common.
The sunken treasure element, while slim, is enlivened by some over-the-top acting by Jose (Lionel Jeffries) and Judd (Harry Andrews). The three leads are actually quite good, John Mills (Tunes of Glory, 1960) totally convincing as a effectively a spiv on the high seas with Hayley Mills (The Family Way, 1966) as the independent woman (“I’m me so don’t expect anything else”) and the confident sailor becoming entangled in unexpected emotions.
Surprisingly, James MacArthur, also a graduate from the Disney acting school, though a decade older than Hayley Mills, shows unexpected subtlety, and this would be a springboard to more demanding roles in cold war thriller The Bedford Incident (1965) and WW2 epic Battle of the Bulge (1965). Cocky and rich, he is quickly brought down earth when she proves a faster swimmer and plays tricks on him. But he soon proves his worth.
Director Richard Thorpe’s career was winding down after four decades in the business and this was a far cry from MGM spectaculars Ivanhoe (1952) and Knights of the Round Table (1953) and even Jailhouse Rock (1957) but he keeps a tight rein on the narrative, makes good use of the scenery (Spain doubling for the Caribbean) and walks the delicate line of allowing the adolescents to explore their feelings with tipping over into anything more overt.
He was a better director than the material deserved, but then so was writer James Lee Barrett who the same year would receive screen credit for The Greatest Story Ever Told and western Shenandoah. However, their involvement made it an accomplished little picture and gave audiences a taste of what Hayley Mills could do in a film that did not tether her to child star mode.
The New York Times second-string reviewer Howard Thompson, in tagging the star “this delectable miss, now all of 18” opined (review, June 17, 1965) that the “two young people are the most winning advertisement for young love in a long time.”
Walt Disney discarded much of Eleanor H. Porter’s original best seller not to mention a great deal of the tear-jerking section that played to superstar Mary Pickford’s strengths in the silent 1920 adaptation. Pickford was in her late 20s at the time and a movie mogul to boot (having launched United Artists) so had a depth of emotion Hayley Mills (aged 13 during filming) could not hope to match.
The screenplay, by David Swift (Love Is A Ball, 1963) is an object lesson in how to retain the essential element of a story – a positive-thinking orphan alleviates the gloom in an embittered town – while providing enough worthwhile for adult audiences. Disney assembled an awesome cast with three Oscar-winners – Jane Wyman (Best Actress, Johnny Belinda, 1948), Karl Malden (Best Supporting Actor, A Streetcar Named Desire, 1952) and Donald Crisp (Best Supporting Actor, How Green Was My Valley, 1942) – plus four-time nominee Agnes Moorehead and Adolph Menjou.
Despite no Oscar recognition Nancy Olsen had been leading lady to the likes of Bing Crosby (Mr Music, 1950), John Wayne (Big Jim McLain, 1952) and William Holden (Force of Arms, 1951). In effect, parents would be very familiar with the stellar supporting cast.
Orphan Pollyanna (Hayley Mills) – British accent explained by parents being missionaries – , majoring on optimism, tries to enliven a town torn apart by dissent and petty feuds and in thrall to her intimidating aunt and fading spinster Polly Harrington (Jane Wyman). While she tries to see the good in everyone, the rest of the population is forever pointing out the bad. The main source of contention is a derelict orphanage. The townspeople want it demolished and a new one erected. Polly Harrington wishes it preserved in its dilapidated state as a monument to her father who had built it. It’s the kind of attitude someone would take who was just plain determined to get their own way. Pollyanna tries to sway opinion against her aunt, resulting in no end of trouble.
Various sub-plots include stifled romance, Harrington has driven away boyfriend Dr Chilton (Richard Egan), fire-and-brimstone preacher Rev Ford (Karl Malden),another orphan Jimmy (Kevin Corcoran), the reclusive Mr Prendergast (Adolphe Menjou) coaxed back into communal life, and the mayor (Donald Crisp) trying to repair the rifts.
Unusually for a kid’s picture, Wyman, Malden and Crisp each are given a reflective moment to prove they are doing more than taking an easy salary cheque, bearing some of the weight of the narrative, Malden especially allocated more screen time than would be normal in a movie aimed at kids.
I have never read the book nor (to my shame) seen the Pickford version, so I came to the movie with low expectations, anticipating a lazy, maudlin effort. So I was quite surprised to discover how much I enjoyed it and was shocked by the final piece of action which turned the movie on its head. Sure, it relies on a feelgood drive but there is some decent stuff here – Pollyanna’s determination to find goodness in every event and every person takes her into some strange avenues, the rainbow playing on the walls, the “good parts” of the Bible – that these days makes for an entertaining matinee.
At least in Hollywood terms (Mills made her debut the year before in the British Tiger Bay, 1959) Pollyanna falls into the a-star-is-born category. The actress acquits herself well, with her expressive face, while hearing the emotion she packs into the word “gorgeous” is word admission alone. Being older than the usual child star, she was one of the few who made the transition into adult roles. Karl Malden is the pick of the supporting cast but he is given a good run for his money by Jane Wyman. Disney’s trick of peppering a children’s film with actors well-known to the adult audiences was one he would use again.
Swift, in dual capacity as director (and making his movie debut) played down the saccharine nature, making the main character less just automatically bouncing with happiness and more striving to make the best of difficult situations.
The Magnificent 60s 