John D MacDonald – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: Selling “Quality Sleaze,” Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum – Pressbook for “Cape Fear” (1962)

If you’re not Alfred Hitchcock with carte blanche to scare the pants off the audiences every which way but loose and you’re not launching a B-movie sexploitation drama, then you’ve got to take a more sensible path to selling a picture headlined by the world’s greatest hero Gregory Peck elevated to such a position by the extraordinary success of The Guns of Navarone (1961) which topped the annual box rankings in the USA.

So while your taglines can emphasize “shock and suspense” what you’re selling cinema managers is quality. So, in the Pressbook/Marketing Manual, Peck is portrayed as a “celluloid perfectionist” and “four-time Oscar nominee” so multi-talented he’s a triple hyphenate – writer, producer, actor. Such a perfectionist he’s known “to spend a week or more preparing for one small scene.”

He is a class act not some sleazy B-movie bum. “He not only completely absorbed all the dialog, its various nuances and shadings, but also probed the psychological and physiological motivations of the attorney he portrays,” notes the Pressbook.

And it’s not just Peck who’s to be praised. “Seldom has such an outstanding array of talent been so tellingly marshaled for such a dramatic thunderbolt.”

The messianic tone is evident throughout. Headlines claim “Bob Mitchum’s career reaches a new high,” Lori Martin has the “top role” of her career, Barrie Chase is “praised as top talent discovery” and “Telly Savalas termed top talent find by Peck.”

Polly Bergen “emerges as an actress of great sensitivity and insight.” Lori Singer, in her movie debut, “graphically attests to the polish she has achieved through her work as child lead in the video (television) series National Velvet.” Although Martin had another reason for turning up word perfect – so that she could get off early and go ice skating.

And the praise doesn’t stop there. “A whole new career should open for sultry Barrie Chase, one-time dancing partner of Fred Astaire.” She is “sensationally good as the casual pick-up ensnared by Mitchum.” The talent pickers had no doubt she was “destined to become one of the foremost dramatic talents of the industry. The very quality which made her such an outstanding dancer – her tireless attention to even the minutest detail – has helped turn her into a magnificent actress.” The marketeers were convinced her “masterpiece” performance would result in an Oscar nomination.

Peck had appointed himself the “tub-thumper” for Savalas after seeing him play Al Capone” in the television series The Witness (1960-1961) calling him “one of the finest new talents of the last 10 years.”

According to the Pressbook, director J. Lee Thompson “deliberately imparted…a distinctively British touch.” Claimed Thompson, “There emerges in the best of the British pictures a certain warmth and credibility which are looked upon as the English hallmark. Such an impression is achieved, it seems to me, through the simple technique of emphasizing character development.”

For journalistic snippets there’s not much beyond that Peck was so impressed with the location in Georgia that he purchased a plot of land on Sea Island to build a beach house. Plus that he’s turned into a noted photographer, now onto his seventh camera with a fast lens. Polly Bergen was creating a nightclub act. Robert Mitchum was thrown three times on his first film horse.

But it was unlikely that cinema managers would find a way of passing on to audiences the idea that this was a “quality sleaze” picture populated by proven and up-and-coming talent. The public had to make do with posters and taglines to get a feel for what was on offer. And in that respect the marketeers pulled few punches.

As usual, cinema managers were offered a plethora of choice when it came to the posters. Mostly, Peck and Mitchum were shown on opposite sides of the poster with in between an image intended to conjure up menace – the bare-chested Mitchum confronting Bergen, Bergen comforting her daughter, mother and daughter running, Mitchum tangling with the daughter.

Taglines spelled it out in a variety of ways: “A terrifying war of nerves unparalleled in suspense!” with a sub-tag of “A man savagely dedicated to committing a crime shocking beyond belief! A man desperately determined to end his ordeal of terror…even if it meant using the ultimate weapon – murder!”

Exclamation marks were in full flow. “Now, he had only one weapon left – murder…to prevent an even more shocking crime” was backed up by “the drama of an unrelenting war of nerves…and the helpless lives that were caught in its terrifying crossfire!”

Or try this – “The savagely suspenseful story of an unspeakable crime…and the man, the woman, the helpless people it touched with terror. From the moment they meet the tension is explosive. An electrifying war of nerves unrelenting in suspense!”

In case you didn’t get the message, here it is in more subtle form: “What happens to them in an adventure in the unusual!” That understatement is followed up with “So daring in theme…so frank in treatment…that it frightens while it fascinates and gives a terrifying new meaning in suspense!”

And there were variations of the above: “A terrifying war of nerves unparalleled in suspense! The Watched…who can only run so far before coming face-to-face with The Watcher…who waits for the moment when the woman and her daughter will be alone.”

And – “Now the nightmare was about to become a terrifying reality… the whispered threat a crime unspeakable. So daring in theme…so frank in treatment. What happens to them is an adventure in the unusual!”

Plus – “Their ordeal of terror triggers the screen’s most savage war of nerves! Unparalleled suspense…as one becomes a target for nightmare, the other becomes his target for execution.”

Unusually, there were a host of promotional items. As well as a motion picture paperback edition from Fawcett, “hot off the press” was the Prentice-Hall hardback The Polly Bergen Book of Beauty, Fashion and Charm, including stills from Cape Fear. Books were a major source for marketing, given there were over 100,000 outlets in specialist shops, drug stores, railway and bus terminals and carousels on newspaper stands.

Virtually any homely element of the movie was co-opted for promotional purposes. A scene taking place at a United Air Lines terminal counter provided opportunity for tie-ins with travel agents and ticket offices. Bowling “palaces” might be happy to display posters and promotional material given there’s a scene set in a bowling alley. Distributors of a Chris Craft boats, Chrysler station wagons, Larson speed boats and Scott outboard motors – which all appear in the movie – could be targeted.

Behind the Scenes: “Cape Fear” (1962)

Like many an ambitious – not to say greedy – actor, Gregory Peck had decided to go into the production business. In theory, there were two good reasons for this: actors could take control of their careers and they could make vanity projects. In reality, there were other over-riding reasons: after years in the business they thought they knew better than their Hollywood bosses and, more importantly, with a bigger stake in a picture they thought they could make more money. First of all came the tax advantages. As a producer, they could spread income over a number of years rather than just one. And they could take advantage of a loophole in the tax laws by making movies abroad. And then if all went as well as the actor imagined, they would get a bigger share of the spoils. If it proved a flop, then the studio carried the can and the actor walked off scot-free.

In 1956 Peck set up Melville Productions with screenwriter Sy Bartlett, with whom he had worked on Twelve O’Clock High (1950). They signed a two-picture deal with United Artists, the go-to studio for actors wanting to become producers. The first projected ideas fell by the wayside, Affair of Honor based on a Broadway play that subsequently flopped and Thieves Market – with William Wyler on board as director – whose commissioned script didn’t meet Peck’s standards. Also on the agenda was Winged Horse with a script by Bartlett and James R. Webb.

Instead, Peck set up The Big Country (1958) through another production shingle, Anthony Productions, and co-produced it with director William Wyler’s outfit, World Wide Productions. The budget rocketed from $2.5 million to $4.1 million, which limited the potential for profit.

Melville Productions launched with Korean War picture Pork Chop Hill (1959). When that flopped it was the end of the UA deal. Peck moved his shingle to Universal. The production company lay dormant while Peck returned to actor-for-hire for Beloved Infidel (1959) and On the Beach (1959), both flops, before jumping back into the top league with the biggest hit of his career The Guns of Navarone (1961) directed by J. Lee Thompson.

Melville Productions was resuscitated for Cape Fear. Peck and Barlett had purchased in 1958 a piece of pulp fiction (novels that bypassed hardback publication and went straight into paperback) by John D. MacDonald called The Executioners. Bartlett passed on screenwriting duties which were handed to James R. Webb (How the West Was Won, 1962).

Director and star had bonded on The Guns of Navarone. “We were working so well together,” recalled Thompson that when Peck handed him the script of Cape Fear he was intrigued. “I liked the book very much,” said Thompson. “Greg had a script prepared, we signed the contracts, and I came to make my first picture in Hollywood.” (The Guns of Navarone had been filmed in Greece and London).

Though author John D. MacDonald had written a hard-boiled thriller with a merciless killer, screenwriter James R. Webb (Pork Chop Hill) racked up the tension and added a thicker layer of predatory sexuality in the vein of Psycho (1960). The final touch was a Bernard Hermann (Psycho) score brimming with menace.

Ernest Borgnine (Go Naked in the World, 1961) was first choice to play psychopathic killer Max Cady. Rod Steiger (The Pawnbroker, 1964), Jack Palance (Once a Thief, 1965) and Telly Savalas (Birdman of Alcatraz, 1962) were also considered. “We actually tested Savalas and he gave a very good test for the part,” explained Thompson. “But these were character actors or at least secondary actors compared to Greg. At some point discussing it together we began to talk about having the villain played by an actor of equal importance, making it a much stronger match-up from the audience’s point of view and (Robert) Mitchum immediately came to mind.”

But Mitchum had essayed a similar venal character in Night of the Hunter (1955) and didn’t want to repeat himself. However, he liked the way the tale showed just how corrupt law enforcement could be and how easily the cards were stacked. Mitchum understood the character from the outset. “The whole thing with Cady is that snakelike charm. Me, Officer, I never laid a hand on the girl, you must be mistaken.”

“When we heard Mitchum’s thoughts,” noted Thompson, “we were more convinced than ever he would be terrific for the role. And I think by the end of the meeting he now realized that himself.” But he still held back, unsure. The producers sent him a case of bourbon. He drank the bourbon and signed up. There was the additional inducement of sharing in the profits by being made a co-producer which involved nothing more taxing than signing on the dotted line. Universal took it on as the first in two-picture deal with Melville.

Mitchum’s career was following its usual up-and-down course, a couple of flops always seemed to be followed by a big hit. His acclaimed performance in Fred Zinnemann’s The Sundowners (1960) had offset The Night Fighters / A Terrible Beauty (1960) and Home from the Hill (1960). His latest picture, The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961) was filed in the negative column.

Peck and Mitchum had opposite approaches to their profession, the former diligent and serious, the latter not able to get off a set quickly enough, not even bothering to learn his lines because thanks to a photographic memory he could scan his lines just before a scene began and be word perfect.

Locations were scouted in the Carolinas where MacDonald had set the book, but failing to find anything suitable exteriors were switched to Savannah in Georgia. Where Peck rented a house and went home every night, Mitchum took a room in the DeSoto Hotel and when work was finished for the day went out drinking, an assistant director taken along as ballast to keep him out of trouble. The town held bad memories for Mitchum. Last time he had visited he had been arrested for vagrancy and did a stint on a chain gang, which recollection possibly put steely bitterness in his portrayal of the ex-convict. Although he hated the town, he liked the idea that on his return everyone was kowtowing to the big movie star, including a bevy of hairdressers in town for a convention.

Fortunately, the Savanah sojourn was short, bad weather getting in the way, barely two weeks before the unit repaired to Hollywood (some of the boat scenes were filmed around Ventura but the climactic fight took place on the studio lake) where the production overshot its schedule by a month, wrapping on July 5 instead of June 8, and racking up $2.6 million in costs.

Mitchum appeared determined to demonstrate quite how different their approaches were. In one scene, off camera, Mitchum stripped naked to get a reaction from the stolid co-star, who remained immune to such provocation. In reality, Mitchum was very professional. “He would work perfectly,” said Thompson. “He just goes in and does it. He was superb.”

Though far from a Method Actor, Mitchum was chillingly close to the part. “I live character and this character drinks and rapes,” he confessed. During the scenes of violence he worked himself up. “He made people frightened,” acknowledged Thompson.

And that included Peck, especially during the slugfest in the water which took nearly a week of a night shoot to complete. Despite warmers being put in the water, it was freezing. “Sometimes, Mitchum overstepped the line,” said Thompson. “He was meant to be drowning Greg and he really took it to the limit…but Peck never complained.”

The final scene filmed was the rape of Polly Bergen playing Peck’s wife. Bare-chested and sweating, Mitchum built himself up into a fury. “You felt any moment he would explode,” said Thompson. “But there was no rehearsal, so nobody really knew what to expect. Thompson improvised the business with the eggs. But Mitchum was more brutal with the eggs than could ever be shown in a cinema, smearing the yolk over Bergen’s breasts. He cut his arm flailing wildly and he used the actress to break open the cabin door, so she finished the scene with the front of her dress sodden with egg yolk and the back covered in blood.”

While Peck expressed confidence in director J. Lee Thompson and could count on Mitchum’s experience to see him through, female lead Polly Bergen was making her first film in eight years, after a small part in western Escape from Fort Bravo (1953) starring William Holden. She had come to wider attention for winning an Emmy for The Helen Morgan Story (1958).

“Greg spent an enormous amount of time with me,” said a nervous Bergen, “He was wonderful and he was very, very supportive.” She added, “I wouldn’t have let anyone know how insecure and frightened I was. But he, I think, knew that instinctively and was there to set me at ease and be helpful and nurturing.”

Peck had no worries about Thompson, the situation helped by the director appearing to take the line the producer-star wanted. When it came to editing, Peck played fair with Mitchum, resisting the temptation to tone down his co-star’s performance which threatened to overshadow his own.

The censors were livid. They eliminated all mention of the word “rape”, removed most of Mitchum’s ogling of Peck’s daughter and cut to the bone the sexual assault.

While critics tended to agree that Mitchum stole the show, the movie was mauled by the New York Herald-Tribune as a “masochistic exercise” and the New Yorker took Peck to task for becoming involved in “an exercise in sadism.”

Initially, it appeared to be doing well enough. There was a “big” $37,000 in New York, a “giant” $29,000 in Chicago, a “fancy” $14,000 in Cleveland, a “rousing” $18,000 in San Francisco and a “proud” $14,000 in Boston. But the “expectancy of lush performance” did not materialize. Final tally was $1.6 million in rentals, a poor 47^th in the annual box office rankings, so there were no profits for Peck or Mitchum to share.

The British censor demanded five minutes of cuts. Thompson made headlines by claiming that 161 individual cuts, a record, had destroyed the film but censor John Trevelyan argued it was just 15. Despite claiming the movie would not be shelved until the controversy had died down, in fact it lost its May 1962 premiere slot at the Odeon Leicester Square in London’s West End and was held back until the following January when it opened at the less prestigious Odeon Marble Arch, setting a record for a Universal release. Bergen was furious at the cuts in her role. “I really blasted British censorship.”

Ironically, Peck made more money from selling the rights to Martin Scorsese for the 1991 remake, in which he had a small part, and whether it’s the Peck estate or Scorsese who benefits there’s a 10-part mini-series on the way starring Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring: Last Rites, 2025) as the attorney, Amy Adams (Nightbitch, 2024) as his wife and Javier Bardem (Dune, Part Two, 2024) as their tormentor.

SOURCES: Gary Fishgall, Gregory Peck, A Biography (Scribner, 2002) pp197-198, 208, 225-228; Lee Server, Robert Mitchum, Baby, I Don’t Care (Faber & Faber, 2001) p43-437; “Peck-Bartlett Spanish Pic Halts,” Variety, February 13, 1957, p2; “U Gets Melville Pair,” Variety, July 29, 1959, p18; “U Repacts Bartlett,” Variety, September 28, 1960, p4; “Director of Cape Fear Claims British Censor Demands Too Many Cuts,” Variety, May 9, 1962, p26; “Censor Replies to J. Lee Thompson,” Kine Weekly, June 28, 1962, p6; “Classification-Plus-Mutilation,” Variety, December 19, 1962, p5; “Your Films,” Kine Weekly, February 7, 1963, p14. Box Office figures: Variety April-May 1962 and “Big Rental Pictures of 1962,” Variety, January 9, p13,

Cape Fear (1962) ****

Portraying legal poster boy Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) might well have been an act of redemption for Gregory Peck after his portrayal, a few months earlier, of this attorney who has little compunction in walking down the same mean streets as the criminals he wishes to see put away. And it just goes to show how thin the line is between upstanding façade and killer, no matter the excuse or provocation.

Attorney Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) isn’t permitted as much leeway as you might expect when ex-con Max Cody (Robert Mitchum) turns up in his small town. This could as easily have played out as the virtuously good guy and family being hounded by a thug who would have spent most of his life being prosecuted for crimes except his victims usually failed to bring charges on account of their fear of retribution. Trigger the animal in him for sexual purposes and you’re lighting a fuse that leads directly to violence.

From the audience perspective, the cards should have been stacked against the villain, but that’s not the case here, not when the good guy begins to act more and more like a bad guy, persecuting him, through his police connections, with a string of arrests for crimes of which he is innocent, unable to put the finger on him for the vicious assault he does commit and generally been outwitted by a fella who knows the law a damn sight more than the lawyer.

Bowden isn’t your usual harassed victim, standing up stoutly against criminality, but a man crumbling under pressure and the frustration of being out-thought by the enemy and itching to get it over with the easiest way possible by finding an excuse to kill the perpetrator.

So, yes, if you’re that way inclined, you can view it as an attack on the American justice system that allows villains with criminal intent not to be incarcerated for considering committing a crime. But that’s not the way it plays out, not when Bowden uses every sleazy trick in the legal book to head off Cody, eventually attempting bribery, and when that doesn’t work hiring a gang of thugs to beat him up and when that also fails planning how to draw him into the kind of trap that would allow legal assassination.

So, now Bowden’s every bit as devious as his pursuer and much worse because he’s willing to stake out wife and daughter as bait for a known sexual predator. He seems to have no inkling of the fate that could be in store for his family should his clever plan go wrong and little compunction or remorse about the criminal intent in his own mind.

Back in the day it would have been easier to accept this kind of narrative, that you can step outside the law to protect your family (a trope that would burn through the 1970s once the vigilante was represented by the likes of Charles Bronson and others), but a contemporary audience is more likely to take a more jaundiced view of the good guy “forced” into bad action. Instead of hiring a private detective (Telly Savalas) to keep tabs on Cody, Bowden could as easily invest – and he has more than enough money – in a security guard to watch over the house and family.

So, even as we’re fearing for wife Peggy (Polly Bergen0 and teenage daughter Nancy (Lori Martin) we’re beginning to put the blame for their plight plumb on the shoulders of the upstanding lawyer who thinks he’s smarter than the most dangerous villain this side of Hannibal Lecter.

If there’s a happy ending, you’re left with wondering just what the heck that’s going to look like. Bowden has allowed his wife to be raped and his daughter scared so witless she’ll be mentally scarred for life, and him unemployable, courtesy of being struck off for breaking the law.

And this is all filmed in classic noir style, moody lighting, shadows and darkness squeezing out what little light there is, emphasizing the danger that lurks on the dark side. And a terrific showdown on a boat. But director J Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) does just as well without going down the obvious noir route. Robert Mitchum never just strolls. He walks with intent, combining panther walk and erect carriage. So, the tracking shots of him approaching the camera, and therefore some potential victim, are enough to give the audience the message.

Robert Mitchum (The Sundowners, 1960) steals the show with his quiet menace and soft drawl. This appeared before How the West Was Won (1962) where Gregory Peck played a con man and after The Guns of Navarone (1961) where he played the action hero’s hero, so this would be the first audience had seen of a switch in the actor’s screen persona. Usually, he’s the guy who can handle pressure.

Polly Bergen (Kisses for My President, 1964) is excellent as is Lori Martin (The Chase, 1966) whose default early on, for narrative purposes, is fear. Look out for Martin Balsam (The Anderson Tapes, 1971) as a complicit cop and Telly Savalas (The Assassination Bureau, 1969).

Superbly directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by James R. Webb (How the West Was Won) from the novel by John D. MacDonald (Darker than Amber, 1970).

Gripping and asks hard questions.