Karl Malden – The Magnificent 60s

Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) ****

It always helps a prison picture if your character has been wrongfully convicted (The Shawshank Redemption, 1994) or is incarcerated through an unfortunately set of circumstances including self-destructive tendencies (Cool Hand Luke, 1967). Whatever the case, the malevolence of the wardens or the emergence of his own engaging personality will ensure that your character is sprinkled with enough sympathy to transform into our hero.

But that’s not the case here and it takes a strong chunk of bravura acting from Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry, 1960) to pull this off.

Oddly, this works in the main not because it’s your typical prison picture with endless confrontations with guards and preventing your dignity being sliced and diced by a ton of humiliating actions. Walt Disney couldn’t have done a better job of hooking the audience with its nature true-life approach. I guarantee you will be chuckling to watch a newborn chick trying to shuck off the top half of its egg.

Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster), a pimp, was certainly no innocent, a two-time killer, who only escapes execution through the efforts of his mother (Thelma Ritter) in persuading U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to commute his sentence. However, there is an evil Catch-22 which infuriated prison governor Harvey Shoemaker (Karl Malden) invokes. While awaiting sentence, and assuming execution is inevitable because he murdered a prison guard in front of hundreds of witnesses, the local judge has decreed that Stroud should be kept in solitary confinement.

Shoemaker, nettled by Stroud’s defiance, interprets that as being able to keep the prisoner in solitary confinement for the rest of his term – which amounts, as it happens, to 40 years. None of this bugs Stroud that much. He’s averse to human companionship, as likely to bully a cellmate and cause ructions elsewhere, and certainly not ever going to give in to the prison system with its endless rules.

The marketeers have taken some liberties with the title. But Alcatraz is certainly a bigger lure to moviegoers than Leavenworth. By the time Stroud reaches Alcatraz he’s devoid of birds. All the breeding activity takes place in Leavenworth.

And while there are aspects of Stroud’s character you will never warm to, he’s got us hooked the minute he embarks on the bird breeding, in part because it’s the antithesis of his character to be so humane, and in part because the dedication involved in painstakingly building cages or other toys (a little wooden chariot a bird is taught to drive) from nothing but wooden boxes with rudimentary tools he has fashioned himself is wondrous to behold. That section of the movie is just enthralling.

Although he’s rescued a chick from a broken nest that lands in the prisoner courtyard during a storm, it takes him a while to cotton on that the bird needs fed, which he does with his version of a toothpick. He coaxes the frightened bird to fly and eventually starts breeding the damn things, persuading a new governor to allow him to buy birdseed and encourages his hobby, so much so that after extensive study Stroud becomes a noted ornithologist with a couple of publications to his name. His case became widely known after a bird researcher Stella Johnson (Betty Field) publicizes his activities and eventually marries him.

But when he’s shifted to Alcatraz, he encounters Shoemaker who forbids the birds. So Stroud starts to write a history of the U.S. penal system. Despite being prone to violence, he is instrumental in ending a prisoner uprising. He is never released, despite various petitions.

So while there’s no happy ending it’s an absorbing picture. Burt Lancaster is at the top of his form, winning another Oscar nomination. Telly Savalas (Crooks and Coronets, 1969), playing another prisoner, was also nominated. Karl Malden (One Eyed Jacks, 1961) is an excellent foil and any time Thelma Ritter (A New Kind of Love, 1963) pops up she steals the show.

While it’s on the long side for a prison picture and lacks the epic quality that the 150-minute running time would suggest, director John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) takes an almost documentary approach to his subject. You might call it an intimate epic. Screenplay by Guy Trosper (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965) from the book by Thomas E. Gaddis.

Standout show from Lancaster.

Behind the Scenes: “One-Eyed Jacks” (1961)

A three-hour western epic directed by Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968), written by Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, 1969) and The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling and starring Spencer Tracy (Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961) and Marlon Brando. What’s not to like? That all of these major players, with the exception of Brando, had nothing to do with the final product was par for the course for a movie that didn’t reach cinema screens until two years after shooting was completed.

Marlon Brando was riding high when the project was first mooted in 1956. The box office and critical sensation of the 1950s, four Oscar nominations in successive years, winner for On the Waterfront (1954), his price was rising by the minute. And he had ambitions to take control of his career, set up his own production shingle, a trend that was beginning to gather pace.

He established Pennebaker (named after his mother) Productions in 1957 with ex-marketeer Walter Seltzer, producer of 711 Ocean Drive (1950), and George Glass, a former partner in Stanley Kramer’s independent production company. Paramount agreed to back the company. A western, A Burst of Vermilion, was intended as the company’s first offering. Soon there were five movies on the schedule including The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones by Charles Neider.

Brando had paid $150,000 for the rights to the book and a script by Sam Peckinpah. The original title was changed to Guns Up. It was going to mark the debut of the new Pennebaker outfit ahead of other projected movies like Shake Hands with the Devil to star James Cagney and Anthony Perkins (he didn’t make it to the final cast), The Raging Man and Ride, Comancheros (no relation to The Comancheros, 1961) and C’Est La Vie to be filmed in Paris.

Paramount paid through the nose, committing to an unprecedented deal. The studio would fund the entire cost of Guns Up and as well as $150,000 upfront Brando would receive 100 per cent of the profits, Paramount relying on its 27% of the gross as a distribution fee to turn a profit. Stanley Kubrick, riding high after Paths of Glory (1957), was hired to direct. While the studio preferred Spencer Tracy as co-star, Brando wanted old buddy Karl Malden who had co-starred with Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront, winning an Oscar for the former and a nomination for the latter.

And in part to reflect the Asian community in Monterey, location of the main section of the film, he also wanted current squeeze France Nuyen (A Girl Named Tamiko, 1962) to play his lover in the film, but Kubrick was aghast and instead cast Mexican debutante Pina Pellicer (Rogelia, 1962). There were roles for Katy Jurado (Barabbas, 1962) and recognizable western types like Ben Johnson (The Undefeated, 1969), Slim Pickens (Firecreek, 1968) and Elisha Cook Jr (The Great Bank Robbery, 1969).

Shooting was set for June 1958, then it shifted to September and then November. To Brando’s shock, Kubrick pulled out two weeks before production was due to begin, citing pre-production on Lolita (which, ironically, didn’t go ahead for a couple of years). To salvage the situation, Brando decided to direct. He wasn’t the first actor to go down this route, especially if you count Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Orson Welles as actors first and foremost. Laurence Olivier helmed Henry V (1944) and three others, Jose Ferrer The Cockleshell Heroes (1955), hoofer Gene Kelly Singin’ in the Rain (1951) and Charles Laughton Night of the Hunter, 1955. So he was in good company.

Cameras turned on December 2, 1958. It was an auspicious era for westerns, a total of 41 had appeared that year. Although budgeted for three months, it took six months to shoot in locations like Sonora in Mexico and Monterey in California (where the film was set) as well as Pfeiffer Beach on the Big Sur and the Warner Ranch.

Although prior to shooting commencing the title had changed to One-Eyed Jacks, scoring and editing were well in hand and Paramount announced it as one of its 17 pictures set for 1959 release. In the end Shake Hands with the Devil beat it to the punch as Pennebaker’s initial release, in 1959. But it didn’t favor so well, skipping the more lucrative but riskier Broadway first run in favour of hitting the circuits.

Meanwhile, Brando was angling for a three-hour running time. The budget kept increasing. The original $2m budget had doubled. Eventually, Paramount acknowledged it had cost $5 million though other estimates put it closer to $6 million.

Part of the problem in readying it for release was Brando’s other commitments. He was still a working actor and could hardly resist the offer of a record-setting one million bucks to star in The Fugitive Kind (1960). Even so, the bigger problem was not time, but experience and a first-time director being unable to make up his mind, having shot a colossal amount of footage and having tremendous difficulty trimming it down to workable length. Paramount still had it on the release agenda in 1960. It was going to be a “special release,” which most people took, especially given the running time, to be roadshow.

But by December 1960, the studio had waited long enough and just before Xmas the studio took over the editing and after editing out around 40 minutes from Brando’s three hour cut, Paramount scheduled it for a world premiere in New York in March 20, 1961, in a kind of semi-roadshow – moviegoers could buy in advance but the tickets did not come with reserved seats, which was the whole point of roadshow. Nor were prices hiked, which was gave roadshow its prestige.

Already deemed “Brando’s Folly” and coming in the wake of The Alamo (1960), the John Wayne-directed epic which had flopped in roadshow, commercial hopes were not high. In part, because production had been so long ago it had skipped under the journalistic radar which was concentrating on skewering The Alamo and the equally troubled The Misfits (1961). So it didn’t come trailing disaster. Still, it seemed more likely, audiences would not take to the odd tale which didn’t fit so easily into the western genre. Plus Brando’s previous effort The Fugitive Kind had been his first outright flop.

Turned out, though, Brando still was a major attraction. It snaffled a “huge” $81,000 in its opener at the 4,820-seat Capitol in New York. There was a “smasheroo” $21,000 in Detroit, a “big” $14,000 in Buffalo, a “hotsy” $15,000 in Cincinnati. “Giant” was the preferred adjective, covering $60,000 in Chicago, $32,000 in Philadelphia and $15,000 in Boston.

Rentals (what studios make after cinemas have taken their share of the gross) amounted to a very decent $4.3 million, enough to rank seventeenth for the year. And whereas those figures were considered decent enough, it did “substantially better abroad.”

So, more than likely, against all the self-destructive odds, it earned a profit.

SOURCES: Stefan Kanfer, Somebody, The Reckless Life and Remarkable Career of Marlon Brando (Faber & Faber, 2008); “Glass, Seltzer in Brando Co Berths,” Variety, April 17, 1957, p22; “Chatter, Hollywood,” Variety, May 22, 1957, p62; “Marlon Brando Guns Up for Paramount,” Variety, April 30, 1958, p22; “Chatter, Paris,” Variety, July 30, 1958, p126; “Brando Gets 100% of Film Profit!”, Variety, August 6, 1958, p1; “Briefs from Lots,” Variety, September 24, 1958, p15; “Marlon Brando’s Own,” Variety, November 26, 1958, p5; “Shake Hands First with Circuits,” Variety, May 6, 1959, p4; “Brando’s Ugly American,” Variety, July 1, 1959, p3; “Par 17 Pix Set for Release,” Variety, July 15, 1959, p5; “Par Division Eyes Upcoming Product,” Variety, November 25, 1959, p22; “Doubt or Delay re Brando’s Jacks,” Variety, August 10, 1960, p3; “Brando Jacks Editing,” Variety, December 21, 1960, p7; Advert, Variety, January 6, 1960, p32; Box Office Figures, Variety, April 5-Jul 24, 1961; “Hoss Operas in O’Seas Gallop,” Variety, August 23, 1961, p16; “1961 Rentals and Potential,” Variety, January 10, 1962, p13.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961) ****

Sets the tone for the later Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood westerns in which the bad guys are the good guys and we find ourselves rooting for bounty hunters, gunslingers and bank robbers. Except this is more of a drama than a western. Shooting is kept to a minimum and instead it’s a character-driven drama about outlaws. Ostensibly, it’s a simple revenge tale and also totes around that later cliché of the honor code and principles that The Wild Bunch (1969) in particular put so much faith in.

But, in reality, it’s an in-depth look at two fascinating characters, both very human, both sly, self-indulgent, constantly attempting to reinvent themselves, cheat their way to a better life or to get what they want. There’s no sense of redemption, just obsession.

Rio (Marlon Brando) and Ben (Karl Malden) are bank robbers, the former a notorious gunslinger to boot and also partial to stealing pieces of jewellery to assist his practiced seduction routine whereby he claims a ring or necklace was a family heirloom, and he’s a good reader of the reluctant female because that tends to open the bedroom doors. Pursued after pulling off a job in Mexico, down to one exhausted horse and trapped by a posse, Ben is sent to get fresh horses but instead of coming back heads off with the loot. The captured Rio does a five-year prison stretch before escaping and seeking revenge.

Ben, meanwhile, has gone straight. He’s picked up a peach of a job as a lawman, a marshal no less, in Monterey on the California coast, where he’s made no secret of his past so he’s not prey to blackmail. He thinks Rio believes his story that he did all he could to return to aid his friend. We know different.

Rio has alighted on this town by pure accident, hooking up with a band of thieves led by Bob (Ben Johnson) who are set on robbing the bank here. Their plans are put in disarray when Ben takes revenge on Rio seducing his stepdaughter Louisa (Pina Pellicer) by subjecting him to a savage whipping and breaking his gun hand. It takes ages for the hand to heal and for Rio to even manage to whip out the gun let alone fire it with any speed or accuracy. He fesses up to Louisa that he’s not a secret Government agent, his usual cover story, but a bank robber and that the heirloom he gave her did not belong to his mother.

Bob gets fed up waiting, tries to pull off the bank job with one other accomplice, but the robbery goes wrong and a girl is killed. Ben pins the blame on Rio, arrests him and prepares to hang him. Louisa, who has initially rejected Rio after his confession and aware of his revenge plan, helps him escape.

The final shoot-out isn’t built up with the intensity of High Noon (1962) or Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) but with a resigned inevitability. Rio could have skipped out with Louisa and made a new life in Oregon. That would, in some senses, be revenge enough, stealing away the stepdaughter, one of the two main planks of Ben’s newfound respectability.

Don’t come here looking for honesty or upstanding individuals. Respectability is feigned – even Ben’s wife Maria (Katy Jurado) had a child out of wedlock. Everyone lies, even Maria – to protect Louisa from the stepdad’s wrath at losing her virginity.

In other words, a totally human cast of characters, shuffling the truth like it was a deck of cards. You wouldn’t trust any of them an inch. It doesn’t take much for cruelty to creep through the cracks, the cruel whipping, deputy Dedrick (Slim Pickens) handing out a beating to Rio in retaliation for being rejected by Louisa, Bob taking great delight in shooting dead an unarmed accomplice.

Ben isn’t alone about lying about the impossibility of coming to Rio’s aid, Bob does it too. Wife and stepdaughter lie to Ben. Ben lies to Rio. Rio lies to Louisa. Where this fits into one of Dante’s circles of Hell is anyone’s guess.

Cinematically, there’s only really one standout scene, when Ben calls out of hiding all the men who are going to surround Rio. But there are bold visuals. I thought I was watching a dud DVD because the image was so washed out for the opening sequences then I realized it was just the glare of the white desert sand and deliberate. And the backdrop of crashing waves suggests a different sensibility.

You can see the impact of Brando’s direction – he was making his directing debut – more with the leeway he allows actors to carry out little bits of business that only another actor would appreciate. A shoeless Ben dances over the hot sands, when he picks up the coins he has dropped he remains on the ground longer sifting through the sand in case he has missed one, Rio reacts to Dederick sweeping ash in his direction.

This is Marlon Brando (The Nightcomers, 1971) still in his pomp.

Written by Calder Willingham (The Graduate, 1967) and Guy Trosper (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965) from the book by Charles Neider.

An exemplary work from a novice director.

Wild Rovers (1971) ****

An unlikely candidate for redemption. Savaged by studio MGM, thoroughly trashed by critics, and ignored by audiences. MGM, having just called time on Fred Zinneman’s big-budget Man’s Fate and alarmed by the budgetary excesses on Ryan’s Daughter (1970), wasn’t in the mood for a three-hour elegiac western about nothing much. Reputedly, there was a first version that went out at two hours seventeen minutes, but the trade critics reviewed the version that went out on general release and came in 30 minutes shorter.

Scorn was the most common reaction. It seemed excessively indulgent to allow director Blake Edwards (The Great Race, 1965) anywhere near a western when his forte was gentle or slapstick comedy and the one time he had ventured out of his comfort zone – for musical Darling Lili (1970) – he had turned in a commercial and critical disaster. The first poster for Wild Rovers, the stars cuddled up on a single horse, suggesting home-erotic overtones, was widely derided.

Hollywood was fearful of pictures without a female prominent in the cast. And while William Holden had revived his career with The Wild Bunch (1969), there wasn’t exactly a long queue for his services, not after the disaster that was The Christmas Tree (1969). By the time he had another hit, five years later, it was in a supporting role in Towering Inferno (1974).

There were question marks also over co-star Ryan O’Neal. Despite the commercial success of Love Story (1970), and an Oscar nomination to boot, it seemed insane to opt for what was in some regards a buddy picture sorely lacking in the crackling dialog and hip approach to the nascent genre that made Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) such a success.

This is a very small story on a not-much-bigger canvas. Sure the scenery is splendidly shot, but close-ups are scant, most of the movie filmed in long shot, faces covered by beards and hats pulled down. Unless you were familiar with his distinctive voice, you wouldn’t, for example, recognize Karl Malden. We’re back in the cowboy realism of Will Penny (1968) but where that narrative helped Charlton Heston by transforming him into a stand-up good guy coming to the aid of a widow and subtle romance thrown in, this just about has the dumbest plot ever conceived.

What makes this work is that the characters ring true, no matter how dumb they appear. These are generally people at the end of the line, or at the beginning of one and realizing it’s going nowhere, or with their small patch in danger of being overrun.

The local sheriff holes up in the whorehouse, there’s a range war brewing – sheep farmers invading valuable pastures – a cowboy could be killed in a flash, not from a rampant gunfighter, but from a spooked horse trampling him to death, the upstanding turn out to be corrupt.

Fifty-year-old Ross Bodine (William Holden), no wife or family to berth him, has hooked up with Frank Post (Ryan O’Neal), half his age. They live on a ranch, eating and sleeping in a communal bunkhouse, and when one of their colleagues suddenly accidentally dies, they take to brooding on the unachievable future, one that seems to be drifting fast away from the older man, still a brass ring within potential grasp for the younger.

They decide to rob a bank. But not in the normal fashion of bursting in with guns blazing in the middle of the day. Instead, they do it at night, Frank holding bank manager’s wife Sada (Lynn Carlin) hostage while her husband Joe Billings (James Olsen) fills Bodine’s pockets to the tune of $36,000. They should get away with it. By daybreak they should have put an enormous distance between themselves and any pursuers and once over the state line would be out of the jurisdiction of local sheriff or marshal. Probably, they’d throw a chunk of it away in gambling, women and booze but they still reckon on having enough left to stake themselves to a small ranch, hiring a manager to do the dirty work.

Not wanting to leave their employers out of pocket, Bodine hands the bank manager back £3,000 to return to ranch owner Walter Buckman (Karl Malden). But the money is diverted along the way by Sada. So Buckman attaches sons Paul (Joe Don Baker) and John (Tom Skerritt) to the posse with the instructions not to turn back at the state border. Walter remains behind waiting for the sheepmen to trespass.

Except for the elegiac scenery, the tone appears uneven at the start, and you might think this is going down comedy lines, what with our heroes being drenched with buckets of ordure and generally being knocked around slapstick fashion. But it quickly settles and you realize you’re watching a couple of losers every bit as believable as the pair in Midnight Cowboy (1969). They’ve got nowhere to go and in making the most of what they have liable to make a hash of it. They don’t win saloon brawls, are on the wrong end of a shoot-em-up, squeal like a pig, to coin a phrase, when called upon to be manly and stoical when a bullet needs dug out of a wound, stare into space after making love because they can sense the inevitable. I found myself warming to them much more than I expected.

Frank may be a mean shot and a heck of a gambler but he’s a little boy at heart, picking up a stray puppy while on ransom duty. There’s a fabulous scene – and my guess what attracted Holden to the picture – when Ross talks to his friend about their friendship. Hell, you think, that’s sailing close to the wind, don’t tell me these guys are getting all emotional. Until you realize the only time Ross could ever speak so openly is if his pal is beyond hearing. Because he’s dead.

Beautifully shot, as I mentioned, boldly envisioned with the emphasis on long shot, and in the end more moving than I expected. I’ve no idea what kind of masterpiece lurked in the lost three-hour version, but MGM may have done Edwards a service because this edited version hits the mark.

Written and directed by Edwards. Both Holden and O’Neal, who was generally panned, have never been better. Host of new talent in the wings includes Tom Skerritt (Top Gun, 1986), Joe Don Baker (Walking Tall, 1973), James Olsen (The Andromeda Strain, 1971), Moses Gunn (Shaft, 1971), and Victor French (Little House on the Prairie, 1974-1977). Unexpected appearances from British pair Rachel Roberts (Doctors Wives, 1971) and Charles Gray (The Devil Rides Out, 1968).

Check this one out. Reassessment urgently required.

The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1967) ***

All studios believed in their brand name. That the sight of the MGM lion or the Twentieth Century Fox searchlight or the Paramount mountain represented a quality mark that would buffer expectation and reassure an audience they were not going to be rooked. That might have been the case decades before when the Warner Brothers logo might mean gangster pictures or socially aware movies or MGM, with more stars than there are in heaven, pictures with top-notch talent, or Universal determined to scare the pants of you with its horror catalog.

But that was no longer the case, most studios so desperate for survival that they would fork out for whatever trend seemed most likely to make money and the industry lurched from western to musical to adventure and back again whenever a big hit appeared. The only studio which still retained genuine marquee appeal was Disney. As studios dipped into more unsavory fare, according to the older generation, and the prospects of sending your children to the movies without having to check out the picture in advance diminished, a Disney film was a guarantee of fret-free entertainment.

Throughout the decade adults as much as kids swarmed to the Disney repertoire. In 1961 the studio scored a box office triple whammy when The Absent-Minded Professor, The Parent Trap and Swiss Family Robinson took three of the top four slots in the annual box office race. In the following years Bon Voyage (1962), Moon Pilot (1962), Son of Flubber (1963), In Search of the Castaways (1963), The Sword in the Stone (1964), The Misadventures of Merlin Jones and especially Mary Poppins (1964) kept the studio buoyant, not to mention the string of pictures starring Hayley Mills and a stack of animated classics it could reissue at the drop of a hat.

Disney ruled the lightweight world, its films often driven by a simple plot device. And as the rest of the industry coveted sex and violence, exhibitors relied on Disney to bring in the kids (and adults) during holiday periods. It would end the decade on a whopping high with The Love Bug (1969).

Here, the ploy is as old as the hills, a fish out of water, in this case an English butler. Disney had rung the changes on that particular sub-genre through the governess in Mary Poppins, steadfastly ignoring a trend towards more sinister servants as demonstrated by The Servant (1963) and The Nanny (1965). But Disney did have the ability to hook name actors for its child-friendly movies, here Roddy McDowall (Lord Love a Duck, 1966), Oscar-winner Karl Malden (Nevada Smith, 1966) and Suzanne Pleshette (A Rage to Live, 1965).

If you are expecting whiplashing escapades of the Indiana Jones variety, you will be in for a disappointment. Eric Griffin (Roddy McDowall) is the aforementioned butler escorting a child Jack (Bryan Russell) on a treasure hunt through the gold fever American West. When his charge runs away, Griffin finds the boy stowing away on a ship. The ever-genteel Griffin has skills that see him through any situation, working as cook on the ship, setting up his stall as barber on the mainland, and occastionally employing a devastating right hook to knock seven bells out of giant bully Mountain Ox (Mike Mazurki).

The plot, such as it is, revolves around recovering a treasure map stolen by swindler Judge Higgins (Karl Malden) and eventually when the movie needs some zap the feisty Arabella Flagg (Suzanne Pleshette), Griffin’s bankrupt employer who as it happens fancies the bulter, turns up.

There’s enough action to keep the picture on a steady keel, a storm at sea, a stagecoach hold-up, prizefight and a climactic town-wrecking fire. There are, perhaps surprisingly, a few choice lines.

But there’s a misinterpretation at the center of the movie so it’s as well its made with kids in mind. The fish-out-of-water notion would play better if historically movies fielded idiot butlers rather than ones who tended to take command when things get tough, though it’s unliklely kids would be aware of previous entries in the sub-genre. So, theoretically, it’s a surprise when Griffin outfights the lummox and outwits the swindler.

If the kid isn’t cute enough there are compensations elsewhere, a decent support in Harry Guardino (The Pigeon That Took Rome, 1962) and Hermione Baddeley (Harlow, 1965). Roddy McDowall at least is in a movie that suits his screen persona and deceptively languid acting style while Suzanne Pleshette takes a feminist slant to the Wild West. Whether British comedian Tony Hancock – he was sacked during filming – would have added much to the proceedings is open to debate.

It’s worth remembering that, outside of Hayley Mills offerings, Disney comedies of this period revolved around adults coping with bizarre situation. This doesn’t quite have the gimmicks that drove Son of Flubber, The Ugly Dachshund (1966, also headlining Pleshette) and Lt Robin Crusoe U.S.N. (1966).

Adequately directed by James Neilson (Dr Syn Alias the Scarecrow, 1963) from a screenplay by Lowell S. Hawley (Swiss Family Robinson) drawn from the novel The Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischmann.

I remember seeing this as a kid and feeling pretty content coming out of the cinema, so since it did what it says on the tin, I’m loathe from an adult perspective to take it to pieces.

A movie that says – lighten up!

Pollyanna (1960) ***

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.

Surprisingly adult for a children’s picture.

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Cheyenne Autumn (1964) ***

Lack of narrative energy and focus sabotages well-meaning atonement epic. John Ford’s final western, made half a decade before Dee Brown’s seminal Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was published, is not the epitaph he might have envisioned. For a start, it’s just not rigorous enough. You might accept there’s no mention of the word “genocide” since until Vietnam the United States was hardly capable of mea culpa.

But that we learn very little about the Native Americans trekking 1500 miles from their Oklahoma reservation to their Wyoming homeland beyond that it’s an exhausting trek. Although the Native Americans are treated in a positive manner, and the U.S. Cavalry and Government are seen as inefficient and corrupt, little has been invested in the Native American characters.

The crux of their story is that the two brothers – Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland) and Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalban) leading the journey – eventually go their separate ways, and that a younger headstrong Native American steals one of the brother’s wives. Instead, more attention is paid to a young do-gooding Quaker teacher Deborah Wright (Carroll Baker) who opts to join them on their quest in order to look after the children attending her classes.

Caustic Captain Archer (Richard Widmark), either in person or through voice-over, is the most notable character, fighting his superiors to allow the wanderers unrestricted passage and eventually winning over Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson) to ease the last stages of their journey.

The plot diverges from the Exodus-style mission for a totally irrelevant sequence set in Dodge City featuring a gambling Wyatt Earp (James Stewart) and Doc Holliday (Arthur Kennedy) and a spurious bunch of townspeople getting over-excited at the prospect of being attacked. More to the point, when Little Wolf splits from Dull Knife and heads for the sanctuary of Fort Robinson in Nebraska they are imprisoned by authoritative Captain Wessels (Karl Malden), gunning for promotion and in an echo of German apology for the Holocaust “only obeying orders,” with savage consequence.

The couple of action sequences show the fighting skills and tactical ability of the Native Americans but this is undermined by also showing them as sly and cunning, hiding weaponry under campfires and in baby’s clothing.

You might also be asking just how big is Monument Valley for it seems to be the location for about half the picture. Sure, it’s a terrific backdrop and possibly never been better utilized but it’s an example of the creative lethargy not to follow in more authentic manner the actual route of the Cheyenne. Adding to that disgruntlement you might also note the omission of any Native Americans in the leading roles, those parts being taken by Mexicans or dark-skinned Americans.

While John Ford clearly had his heart in the right place, his fans weren’t ready for this kind of revisionist approach – the movie, a 70mm roadshow, was a big flop at the box office – and the result just doesn’t do the subject justice. And in fact a corrective correlative to How the West Was Won (1962) perhaps entitled How the West Was Stolen has yet to be made.

For a long time Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee was considered the landmark historical work depicting the ruthless conquering of the Native Americans but the more recent The Earth Is Weeping by Peter Cozzens, which I read a couple of months back, offers a more authoritative look at the sorry saga, but, without, I hasten to add, a mention of the scary word “genocide.”

I wouldn’t normally be in favor of editing the work of a director as legendary as John Ford but the omission of the Dodge City sequence would have considerably shortened the movie and retained the focus and perhaps improved the picture.

As it stands, a valiant effort. None of the stars is provided with sufficient narrative to make their acting stand out and it feels like they have all stumbled into a documentary.

How the West Was Won (1962) ***** – Seen at the Cinerama

I’ve got Alfred Newman’s toe-tapping theme music in my head. In fact, every time I think of this music I get an earworm full of it. Not that I’m complaining. The score – almost a greatest hits of spiritual and traditional songs – is one of the best things about it. But then you’re struggling to find anything that isn’t good about it. But, for some reason, this western never seems to be given its due among the very best westerns.

Not only is it a rip-roaring picture featuring the all-star cast to end all-star casts it’s a very satisfying drama to boot and it follows an arc that goes from enterprise to consequence, pretty much the definition of all exploration.

Given it covers virtually a half-century – from 1839 to 1889 – and could easily have been a sprawling mess dotted by cameos, it is astonishingly clever in knowing when to drop characters and when to take them up again, and there’s very little of the maudlin. For every pioneer there’s a predator or hustler whether river pirates, gamblers or outlaws and even a country as big as the United States can’t get any peace with itself, the Civil War coming plumb in the middle of the narrative.

Some enterprising character has built the Erie Canal, making it much easier for families to head west by river. Mountain man fur trader Linus Rawlings (James Stewart) on meeting prospective pioneers the Prescotts has a hankering after the young Eve (Carroll Baker) but as a self-confessed sinner and valuing his freedom has no intention of settling down. But he is bushwhacked by river pirates headed by Jeb Hawkins (Walter Brennan) and left for dead, but after saving the Prescotts from the gang changes his mind about settling down and sets up a homesteading with Eve.

We have already been introduced to Eve’s sister Lilith (Debbie Reynolds) who has attracted the attention of huckster Cleve Van Valen (Gregory Peck) and they meet again in St Louis where she is a music hall turn and widow. Her physical attraction pales in comparison with the fact she has inherited a gold mine. He follows her, unwelcome, in a wagon train which survives attack by Cheyenne, but still she resists him, not falling for him until a third meeting on a riverboat.

Zeb Rawlings (George Peppard) wants to follow his father to fight in the Civil War. Linus dies there, but there’s no great drama about it, he’s just another casualty, and the death is in the passing. In probably the only section that feels squeezed in, following the Battle of Shiloh a disillusioned Zeb saves General Sherman (John Wayne) and Ulysses S. Grant (Harry Morgan) from an assassin.

Returning home to find Eve dead, Zeb hands over his share of the farm to his brother and heads west to join the U.S. Cavalry at a time when the Army is required to keep the peace with Native Americans enraged by railroad expansion. Zeb links up with buffalo hunter Jethro Stuart (Henry Fonda), who appeared at the beginning as a friend of his father.

Eve, a widow again, meets up in Arizona with family man and lawman Zeb who uncovers a plot by outlaw Charlie Gant (Eli Wallach) to hijack a train. Zeb turns rancher once again, looking after her farm.

But the drama is peppered throughout by the kind of vivid action required of the Cinerama format, all such sections filmed from the audience point-of-view. So the Prescotts are caught in thundering rapids, there’s a wagon train attack and buffalo stampede, and a speeding train heading to spectacular wreck. There’s plenty other conflict and not so many winsome moments.

Interestingly, in the first half it’s the women who drive the narrative, Eve taming Linus, Lilith constantly fending off Cleve. And there’s no shortage of exposing the weaknesses and greed of the explorers, the railroad barons and buffalo hunters and outlaws, and few of the characters are aloof from some version of that greed, whether it be to own land or a gold mine or even in an incipient version of the rampaging buffalo hunters to pick off enough to make a healthy living.

And here’s the kicker. Virtually all the all-star cast play against type. John Wayne (Circus World, 1964) reveals tremendous insecurity, Gregory Peck (Mirage, 1965) is an unscrupulous though charming renegade, the otherwise sassy Debbie Reynolds (My Six Loves, 1963) is as dumb as they come to fall for him, and for all the glimpses of the aw-shucks persona James Stewart (Shenandoah, 1965) plays a much meaner hard-drinking hard-whoring version of his mean cowboy. Carroll Baker (Station Six Sahara, 1963) is an innocent not her usual temptress while George Peppard (The Blue Max, 1966) who usually depends on charm gets no opportunity to use it. .

Also worth mentioning: Henry Fonda (Madigan, 1968), Lee J. Cobb (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968), Carolyn Jones (Morticia in The Addams Family, 1964-1966), Eli Wallach (The Moon-Spinners, 1964), Richard Widmark (Madigan), Karl Malden (Nevada Smith, 1966) and Robert Preston (The Music Man, 1962).

Though John Ford (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, 1962) had a hand in directing the picture, it was a small one (the short Civil War episode), and virtually all the credit belongs to Henry Hathaway (Circus World) who helmed three of the five sections with George Marshall (The Sheepman, 1958) taking up the slack for the railroad section.

And though you might balk at the idea of trying to cover such a lengthy period, there’s no doubting the skill of screenwriter James R. Webb (Alfred the Great, 1969) to mesh together so many strands, bring so many characters alive and write such good dialog. Bear in mind this was based on a series of non-fiction articles in Life magazine, not a novel, so events not characters had been to the forefront. Webb populated this with interesting people and built an excellent structure.

I’m still tapping my toe as I write this and I was tapping my toe big-style to be able to see this courtesy of the Bradford Widescreen Weekend on the giant Cinerama screen with an old print where the vertical lines occasionally showed up. Superlatives are superfluous.

Nevada Smith (1966) ****

Half breed Max Sand (Steve McQueen) has little truck with the notion that revenge is a dish best served cold. But he’s too young and raw, far from Lee Marvin’s callous killer in Point Blank (1969), to properly avenge the slaughter of his family by three outlaws.

This is a coming-of-age tale with a distinct difference. Max’s development includes, apart from initiation into sex of course, learning to read and write so he can make sense of signposts in order to track down the murderers and receiving tuition from gunsmith Jonas Cord (Brian Keith) so that he can at least loose off some shots without doing himself damage. Vengeance burns so deep that he even stages a bumbled robbery so he can be sent to the prison where the second of his targets is incarcerated. Now that’s dedication for you. And along the way he learns the most important lesson of all, how to live, and not destroy himself through vengeance.

Even so, all Cord’s tuition counts for nought when Max needs a knife to dispatch his first victim Coe (Martin Landau). And he’s not yet so slick with a weapon to avoid serious injury himself. Kiowa saloon girl Neesa (Janet Margolin) nurses him back to health at her tribe’s camp. They become lovers but he rejects the wisdom of the elders and the opportunity to make a life with her.

Unfortunately, Bowdre (Arthur Kennedy) is a jailbird. And worse, held prisoner in a swamp. Probably the worst bank robbery ever committed sends Nevada there. Max enrols another woman, Cajun Pilar (Suzanne Pleshette) working in nearby rice fields – fraternisation between the jailbirds and these women permitted – to steal a boat to help him and Bowdre escape. Bowdre gets his and this time it’s Pilar who is the collateral damage.

A genuine outlaw now, Max has no trouble joining a band of robbers headed by Fitch (Karl Malden), the final prey. By now calling himself Nevada Smith, Max’s plans are thrown into confusion when it becomes apparent Fitch is aware of his true identity. A surprise ending is on the cards whichever way you cut it, and especially thrilling since it occurs during a well-planned gold bullion robbery.

It’s a film of two parts but divided into three if you like, the unusual swamp setting fitting in between two sections of more straightforward western. Though in the hands of director Henry Hathaway (True Grit, 1969), there is little that’s so straightforward given his mastery of the widescreen and his hallmark extreme long shot. He’s capable of moving from the extreme violence of the vicious murder and rape of Max’s mother to the son’s discovery of the bodies shown just through Max’s physical reaction. And there’s some irony at play, too: gold triggers slaughter and climax; mental dereliction not as feared as its physical counterpart.

Although Hathaway was a true veteran, he was not best known for westerns in the manner of John Ford, more at home with film noir (Kiss of Death, 1947), war (The Desert Fox, 1951) and big-budget pictures like Niagara (1954) with Marilyn Monroe and Legend of the Lost (1957) teaming John Wayne and Sophia Loren. In a 30-year career he had only made three westerns of note – The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), Rawhide (1951) and Garden of Evil (1954). So it was something of a surprise that in the 1960s over half his output was in the western genre. And unlike Ford and Howard Hawks who stuck to the formula of action within a defined community, Hathaway tended towards films of adventure, where the main character, often of a somewhat shady disposition, wandered far and wide.

Steve McQueen (The Cincinnati Kid, 1965) carries the picture with some aplomb, moving deftly from the wet-behind-the-ears youngster to a clever and calculated killer and still retaining enough humanity to enjoy a romantic dalliance. There’s enough action here to satisfy McQueen’s fans spoiled by The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963) and for those who had come to appreciate his acting plenty to enjoy. This and The Cincinnati Kid, where perforce as a poker player, he had to do a great deal of brooding, solidified his screen persona, a star you can’t keep your eyes off, wondering what on earth is going on in his mind. As much as he’s playing a character finding his feet, this is McQueen at very nearly the top of his game.

Brian Keith (The Rare Breed, 1966) is the pick of the support, adding a little softness to his usual more hard-nosed screen characters. The villains – Karl Malden (The Cincinnati Kid), Martin Landau (The Hallelujah Trail, 1965) and Arthur Kennedy (Claudelle Inglish, 1961) – are all good in their own different ways, and in the hands of excellent actors, easily differentiated. Suzanne Pleshette (Fate is the Hunter, 1964) shines in a too-brief role.

The sterling supporting cast includes Janet Margolin (Bus Riley’s Back in Town, 1965), Pat Hingle (Sol Madrid, 1968) and Raf Vallone (The Secret Invasion, 1964). John Michael Hayes (Harlow, 1965) fashioned the screenplay from The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins.

Although Hollywood had been prone to sequels – Father’s Little Dividend (1951) following Father of the Bride (1950), Return to Peyton Place (1961), Return of the Seven (1966) etc – there had been no perceived market for prequels, so this was something of a first, Alan Ladd having essayed an older and considerably more sophisticated Nevada Smith in the 1964 film of Harold Robbins bestseller.

Book into Film – “The Cincinnati Kid” (1965)

Richard Jessup’s brilliant 1963 novel was so short – barely 150 pages – it was almost custom-made for the movies. While it built up the tension to the confrontation between young stud poker contender The Cincinnati Kid (Steve McQueen in the film) and the reigning world champ Lancey Hodges (Edward G. Robinson) and covered the on-off relationship between the Kid and Christian (Tuesday Weld), a large chunk of the novel was in effect an insider’s guide to the world of poker and its unwritten rules.

As appeared always to be the case in translating novels to films, there were some incidental changes. The Kid was 26 in the book, but clearly in his 30s in the film. Lancey’s surname became Howard. In the book he was thin, in the film well-upholstered. Melba (Ann-Margret), the girlfriend of Shooter (Karl Malden) is not given a name in the book. The book is set in St Louis, the film in New Orleans.

But the book lacks sub-plots. It’s a straightforward narrative. The Kid decides to take on Lancey and while waiting for the game to be fixed up, having effectively broken up with Christian, he takes a 20-hour bus journey out to see her at her farm, returns on his own and for the rest of the book is involved in the poker duel with Lancey. Incidental characters make an appearance, Shooter as the dealer, some others including Pig (Jack Weston) making up the poker table.

The book doesn’t open with the Kid hustling, playing in a run-down part of town against inferior players, being accused of cheating, getting involved in a punch-up and being chased across a railroad yard. That’s all the invention of the scriptwriters Terry Southern (Barbarella, 1968) and Ring Lardner Jr. (Mash, 1970). The young shoeshine boy who interacts with the Kid several times throughout the movie doesn’t appear in the book either. And there was no cockfight in the book, that was also added by the screenwriters.

These were small devices to develop screen character. The punch-up showed that the Kid could take care of himself. The scenes with the shoeshine boy suggested that the Kid had begun early as a compulsive gambler, always measuring himself against an older player. And those scenes also demonstrated that gambling was not a sport for the kind-hearted. An actor with less confidence in his screen persona than McQueen might have insisted that he did not take the boy’s losing bet. (Such considerations are not rare – Robert Redford, for example, refused to play lawyer Frank Galvin in The Verdict unless the character was changed from being an alcoholic). The cockfight revealed that the characters mostly lived in an illegal world – the cops might turn a blind eye to a poker game in a private room in a hotel but would frown upon a bloody and brutal sport like cockfighting.

Sometimes, the screenwriters had to embellish certain scenes to bring them alive. The sequence where the Kid won over Christian’s parents with his card tricks is nothing more than a sentence in the book and characters like Pig are fleshed out.

But the most significant alterations to the book were the additions of two sub-plots. The first had Shooter, while acting as dealer, risk his reputation by agreeing to flip the Kid an occasional good card. This comes from being blackmailed by wealthy businessman Slade (Rip Torn) who threatens to call in Shooter’s marker, his gambling debt. Not only is this idea a screenwriter creation, but the character of Slade does not exist in the book. In fact, the whole idea runs against the unwritten code of honor among big-time poker players. And it would be extremely unlikely that Shooter would stoop so low. Even if broke, he would be able to eventually win back a stake. But if caught facilitating cheating his name would be mud and he would never play poker again in his life.

The second sub-plot concerns Melba (Ann-Margret). She exists on the periphery in the book. But she is something of a character, a genuine class act among the women who follow the game or are in relationships with the players. In the book, she was believed to have had a college education because “she read thick books and she dressed New York” and she attended arthouse cinemas. She was also admired for sticking with Shooter when his luck turned bad.

That’s not the character in the film. While not a gambler per se, she has a competitive streak and cheats at ordinary games – solitaire, jigsaw puzzles – where it makes no sense to cheat. In the book she is merely “beautiful;” in the film she turns into a man-eater, seducing the Kid, an action that went against her character in the book.

You would harldy argue that these sub-plots impaired enjoyment of the film. Perhaps those who read the book first might object. But, as ever, in examining what happens to books once they are bought up for the movies, each film examined is an example of the difference between a book and a film and how screenwriters compensate for perceived flaws. Some books, Blindfold, for example, required wholesale changes. Here, while the key storyline works like a charm, what was missing were the extra beats to ramp up the tension, otherwise there would be too long a wait in hanging around for the poker game to start. As a result of the sub-plots, what is put in jeopardy is the Kid’s relationship with Christian and his purity of involvement in the game itself, not just that any hint of cheating would bar him from the game, but that he wanted to beat Lancey fair and square so that, should he achieve that ambition, he would never have cause to doubt how he managed it.