Maria Perschy – The Magnificent 60s

633 Squadron (1964) ***

You can keep your current and future Oscar winners, George Chakiris (for West Side Story, 1961) and Cliff Robertson (for Charly, 1968). The stars here are the mechanical birds, the Mosquito bombers, and the Ron Goodwin score, a thundering rehearsal for Where Eagles Dare (1968).

The aerial photography was pretty amazing for the day, though there were no Top Gun: Maverick shenanigans with actors supposedly actually flying the planes, just sitting there with an occasional turn or yank of the controls. Even so, watching the planes take off, land, propellers describing perfect arcs, being attacked on ground or in the air, firing back, and the (apologies) bird’s eye view of dashes along precipitous cliffs takes up a huge amount of the running time.

You’ll know by now there was no actual 633 Squadron – but there was an international squadron (see the current Masters of the Air) to accommodate the various accents on show – and that the mission is also fictional, though the idea that the Germans had chosen the Norwegian fjords to hide a factory making rocket fuel for the V1s currently in production elsewhere wasn’t too far off the mark given (see The Heroes of Telemark, 1965) they were using that country for atomic bomb experiments.

The British know the rockets are inevitable, impossible to completely destroy them, but as long as they don’t interfere with D-Day that will be good enough. Wing Commander Grant (Cliff Robertson), although his squadron is exhausted from flying too many daily missions, has his leave curtailed, and told he’s on a strict deadline to destroy the factory.

Like the factory in The Heroes of Telemark, it’s virtually impossible to hit, buried beneath too much rock, but the Germans ain’t that clever, and it’s the rock that is the weakness. The theory is hit the overhang with sufficient bombs and the mountain will come tumbling down and destroy the factory.

Norwegian Resistance fighter Lt Bergman (George Chakiris) is on hand to explain just how difficult the task is, flying at extremely low altitude along fjords guarded by anti-aricraft guns. To add more tension, or just for the hell of it, Air Vice Marshal Davis (Harry Andrews) keeps on truncating the already tight deadline. The pilots have barely got time for a few practice runs along Scottish glens before it’s M-Day (no idea where that daft moniker came from, presumably a D-Day discard).

But there is just enough time for Grant to make pretty with Bergman’s refugee sister Hilde (Maria Perschy). Although after Bergman returns to help out his mates and is unhelpfully captured by the Nazis, Grant has to bomb the Gestapo building to kill him before he can be tortured and give out vital information.

In another film, Hilde would have been a spy or cut off the burgeoning romance after discovering Grant’s mission, but instead she’s not in the espionage line and she thanks the wing commander for sparing her brother torture. In the only major twist in the picture, it turns out Grant was too late, for there’s a nasty welcome committee awaiting the bombers.

Not quite the Boy’s Own derring-do adventure tale I remember, what with the torture and the climax, but it was still in my day one of the few films that appealed heart-and-soul to the pre-teen and teenage boy, along with The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape, in part, I guess, because it was so thrifty in terms of character development.

No time is wasted giving everyone a character arc, beyond the usual daredevil and someone getting married, the characters are sketchy beyond belief, but who the hell cares, let’s get on with the action. So, it certainly delivers on that score. But watching as an adult, and I’ve probably not seen this in four decades, it’s a good bit tougher than the surface might suggest, eating away at the idealism of war, of the noble sacrifice, and tuning in better than most World War Two pictures to raw finality.

Perhaps it’s emblematic that the best cinematic introduction is given to the arrival of the new-style bombs, although Hilde turning up to a torrent of wolf whistles in the bar runs it close, and she does have a habit of leaning out a window to give the audience a glimpse of cleavage every now and then.

No wonder we all came out humming the Goodwin theme. You can’t escape it. It’s in virtually every scene. Memorable final line uttering by the air vice marshal, “You can’t kill a squadron.”

It would have set the bar high for aerial photography, except that by showing how it could be done, triggered a small flurry of similar pictures, most notably The Blue Max (1966) and The Battle of Britain (1969).

Walter Grauman (A Rage to Live, 1965) clearly adores the machines more than the humans, but the script by James Clavell (The Great Escape, 1963) and Howard Koch (The Fox, 1967) based on the novel by Frederick E. Smith doesn’t give him much option.

Still worth a watch.

Behind the Scenes: “Man’s Favorite Sport” (1963)

Should have been, as you might have guessed, Cary Grant (Charade, 1963) in the lead. Should have featured, which you won’t have guessed, Ursula Andress (She, 1965). Should have run, which you’d be amazed to learn, for 145 minutes, almost as long as your standard epic. Should have appeared, like Hatari! (1962), under the Paramount banner.

In fact, the most likely studio destination was Columbia. Hawks’s agent Charles Feldman had spent 16 months trying to thrash out a very good deal for his client. Feldman, who owned the rights to Casino Royale, was also keen on Hawks directing a James Bond picture. That got as far as discussing Cary Grant as the handsome spy and Hawks’ enlisting the aid of his favorite screenwriter Leigh Brackett (Hatari!).

But instead of moving studios, Hawks decided to stay put, sitting on a three-picture deal worth a hefty $200,000 plus a 50 per cent profit share. First item on the new agenda could have been reuniting Rio Bravo (1959) alumni John Wayne and Dean Martin for The Yukon Trail. But that was before Hawks expressed interest in a romantic short story, The Girl Who Almost Got Away, published in Cosmopolitan magazine, and an ideal fit for Cary Grant.

But Grant, something of the entrepreneur himself, would only sign up if Hawks in turn agreed to direct one of the actor’s pet projects, The Great Sebastian. But the director didn’t like the idea of being a gun for hire and Grant’s attention meanwhile had wandered in the direction of Charade. Rock Hudson, borrowed from Universal, was seen as an ideal replacement. For the female lead Hawks initially enthused about Joanna Moore (Walk on the Wild Side, 1962) until he chanced upon Paula Prentiss (Where the Boys Are, 1960), an MGM contract player.

Paramount balked at a relative unknown. Hawks balked at anyone balking at his choice and switched the project to Universal. While toying with Casino Royale, Hawks had a sneak preview of Dr No (1962) and espied a natural for the second female lead in Ursula Andress. But her management team reckoned the Bond movie would open bigger doors. Instead, Hawks plumped for Austrian blonde Maria Perschy (The Password Is Courage, 1962). Charlene Holt (If A Man Answers, 1962) made such an impression on Hawks that she not only won the part of Rock Hudson’s fiancée but the role of regular girlfriend to the director and parts in his next two pictures.

Leigh Brackett was brought in to pep up the original script by John Fenton Murray (It’s Only Money, 1962) and Steve McNeil (Red Line 7000, 1965). Unusually, she was rewriting on the hoof, earning $1,000 a week to refashion the lines scene by scene as production unfolded. Everything except the opening scene set in San Francisco was shot on the Universal backlot. Even then, neither Hudson nor Prentiss was transported to San Francisco, their close-ups while driving cars filmed at the studio and inserted as process shots. Hawks didn’t leave the studio either, entrusting that initial footage to associate producer Paul Helmick and cinematographer Russell Harlan.

Like Otto Preminger, Hawks liked a lot of takes. Paula Prentiss didn’t, in part because she felt he was trying to mold her into a screwball comedy heroine of the past, and in part because every take not printed impinged on her confidence. Although Hawks lacked the reputation as a bully of the Otto Preminger variety, nonetheless the inexperienced Prentiss found herself in tears more than once. Cary Grant dropped by one time for a friendly chat. He was made welcome. Angie Dickinson, expecting a similar welcome, received a curt put-down, Hawks making it clear he preferred as a brunette.

While the credit sequence by photographer Don Ornitz was deemed sexist since it comprised 33 models in sports or beach gear, it was actually the opposite because the women were proving how superlative they could be at sports generally considered the preserve of men. But there was no doubt the reaction Hawks expected when he spent $20,000 on black scuba outfits for Prentiss and Perschy, using molds made from their bodies to achieve the skin-tight effect. Hawks was notoriously slow, the picture taking three and a half months.

The initial version of the film attracted at a sneak preview the most positive responses the studio had ever received. The only problem was – it ran 145 minutes, considered an impossible length for a light romantic comedy. Although the next version was shorter, the audience response was decidedly worse. Even so, Universal insisted on further cuts until the movie came in at the two-hour-mark.

Not everyone went along with the official Hawks version of events. Others remembered the response to the various cuts not being so different. The film wasn’t released until six months later and there is no evidence that Hawks fought hard to retain his edit. Although he would later complain that the movie was “sabotaged,” that may have been his automatic default position once the movie proved a relative commercial failure, with only $2.35 million in U.S. rentals

Leigh Brackett had more right to feel disgruntled. She was denied a credit by the Writers Guild of America who contended her work was a polish rather than an original contribution.

I have to say I’m out of step with some of the critical opinion. Molly Haskell reckoned the film was actually some kind of Adam and Eve deal with Hudson “a virgin who has written a how-to book on sex while harbouring a deep fastidious horror of it.” The Haskin critique allows that fish are phallic symbols, therefore giving sexual credence to the scene about learning to handle a fish.

It might just be more straightforward to say that, of course, this isn’t as good as Bringing Up Baby but then, nothing ever was, and just enjoy what Hawks did manage to conjure up with very likeable leads.

SOURCES: Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks, The Grey Fox of Hollywood (Grove Press, 1997), p595-603; Joseph McBride (editor), Focus on Howard Hawks (Englewood Cliffs); Molly Haskell, “Howard Hawks: Masculine Feminine,” Film Comment, March-April 1974.

Man’s Favorite Sport (1964) ****

Wow! From an academic/critical perspective this is veteran director Howard Hawks (Hatari!, 1962) taking the mickey out of his famed style, where women are always competing to enter the sacrosanct male world. But, shades of his earlier Bringing Up Baby (1938), a fast-talking assured sassy woman takes command of a hapless male. Sure, Rock Hudson and newcomer Paul Prentiss aren’t in the Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn league but they make darned good substitutes. And there’s a big difference to the earlier picture. There, Grant was an accepted expert, and it’s not his knowledge that’s in question but here Hudson is a phoney and relies on the woman.

But fiddlesticks to academe and critics, this is just helluva good fun. Built on a brilliant premise, it just rolls along from one set-piece to another to fashion as daft a screwball comedy as you could imagine. Maybe Rock Hudson left all the physical comedy in Send Me No Flowers (1964) to Doris Day because he was plumb tuckered out by his exertions on this one.

So, Roger Willoughby (Rock Hudson) is a fishing expert employed as a salesperson by Abercrombie & Fitch. When, in a public relations wheeze, Abigail Page (Paula Prentiss) invites him to participate in a competition, she uncovers his terrible secret. He’s never fished before in his life, he’s just a clever listener, passing on fishing lore from one customer to another. She agrees to help him out. But, of course, he’s an idiot and it’s not long before he’s upside down in a car that’s way too small for him, walking around with rubber buckets for shoes and upside down (again) in a lake trapped by inflatable waders.

There’s a marvellous meet-cute where they get off on the wrong foot because she steals his reserved parking spot and his first encounter with her dexterity with language should have warned him what he’s letting himself in for. The situation is complicated by, natch, Abigail falling in love with him, not to mention her buddy Easy (Maria Perschy) not unattracted either, and his fiancée Tex (Charlene Holt) about to appear any second.

So when Roger’s not tying himself in knots, he’s allowing himself to be persuaded to pretend to have a broken arm, which to make it realistic must be encased in plaster, which Abigail and Easy concoct. The fact you know full well this is only the first step to major complication doesn’t make it any the less funny. Then there’s the problem of the zip in a sleeping bag. And the fiancée turning up at the wrong time.

I could have done without the fake Native American (Norman Alden), but the rest is top-notch. Any other director would have kept the wig gag going for ages, but here it’s dumped early on because the wearer, Roger’s boss Cadwalader (John McGivern), needs little excuse to stop wearing it.

You’d be hard put to find sexuality as cleverly dealt with as here, Abigail and Easy provided with good reason to swan around in skin-tight clothing and later prattling on fifteen to the dozen as pouring rain renders their shirts see-through much to the discomfort of Roger. While Roger might be a typical male, the trio of women are far from typical of the period with a streak of independence that allows little room for the notion of men as the superior species. Not only is Abigail as competent as any male in this type of sport, she far exceeds the capabilities of the supposed expert. Furthermore, Abigail is the antithesis of the scatter-brained Susan Vance from Bringing Up Baby. She knows exactly what she’s doing even if shifted slightly off kilter by the unexpected impact of love.

As the male coming unstuck outside of his comfort zone, Rock Hudson is excellent especially in the physical comedy but the real gem is Paula Prentiss, as effervescent a star as you would ever find. You only have to see her in The Parallax View (1974) to understand what a terrific character she has succeeded in creating. Never mind that she handles the script deftly, she virtually bursts off the screen.

The general critical consensus is that Howard Hawks went downhill after Rio Bravo (1959), and that outside his final pair of westerns El Dorado (1966) and Rio Lobo (1971) was very much at the tail end of his career. Most critics seemed to have simply ignored that Man’s Favorite Sport took a different approach to the male-female dynamic or that, setting academia aside, this is just a very enjoyable romantic comedy.