Martin Balsam – The Magnificent 60s

After the Fox (1966) ****

There’s a classic MacGuffin in here somewhere, but I can’t make out if it’s the heist serving the satire on movies or the satire on movies serving the heist. Whatever, this is about the funniest picture you’ll watch on the movie business (much better than Paris When It Sizzles two years earlier). You can keep your royalty and your top politicians dropping in from every corner of the globe, but it’s hard to beat Hollywood landing on your doorstep to transform everyone into a sycophant. To facilitate filming, individual streets and solid blocks will be closed and even businessmen whose businesses are threatened will stick their nose out into the road in the hope of being captured by a stray camera. Everyone wants to be in the movies and how brazenly the movies exploit such naked need.

Before we get to the movie part of the story, we find imprisoned top criminal Aldo Vanucci aka “The Fox” (Peter Sellers) escaping from confinement so that he can assist robber Okra (Akim Tamiroff) transport 300 solid gold bars from a heist in Cairo to Italy. Though the heist is deceptively simple (and might even have influenced The Italian Job, 1969), for a time it looks as if this will canter along going nowhere fast while we get bogged down in a subplot concerning the burgeoning acting career of Vanucci’s sister Gina (Britt Ekland). There’s a whole bunch of standard Italian comedy tropes – the dominant Mama, the incompetent crooks and the brother too controlling of his sister.

But once Vanucci hits on a movie shoot as the ideal way to disguise the bringing ashore of the loot into the Italian island of Ischia, he strikes pure comedy gold. The townspeople who might otherwise easily see through a con man are putty in his hands. The local cop comes onside when persuaded he has the cheekbones of actor. Aging vain star Tony Powell (Victor Mature) wearing a trademark trench coat like a latter-day Bogart is an easy catch once you play upon his vanity and even hard-nosed agent Harry (Martin Balsam) is no match for the smooth-talking Vanucci.

Vanucci has mastered the lingo of the film director and can out-lingo everyone in sight. The very idea that he has a hotline to Sophia Loren goes undisputed and Powell is even persuaded that Gina, who has never acted in her life, is the next big thing.

Pick of the marvelous set-pieces is the scene in a restaurant where Vanucci is astonished to find a peach of a girl (Maria Grazia Buccella) speaking in a deep male voice because while she’s opening her mouth the words are being supplied by Okra seated behind her. Not all the best scenes involve Vanucci. Harry tartly batting away Tony’s vanities is priceless while the theft of film equipment while a film director (played by the movie’s director) calls for more dust in a sandstorm is great fun.

Also targeted is the self-indulgence of the arthouse filmmaker determined to add meaning to any picture. Vanucci’s versions of such tropes as lack of communication or a man searching for identity and running away from himself are a joy to behold and one scene of Tony and Gina sitting at opposite ends of a long table at the seashore just about sums the kind of pointless but picturesque sequence likely to be acclaimed in an arthouse “gem.” And you might jump forward to villagers hiding the wine in The Secret of Santa Vittorio (1969) for the sequence where townspeople load up gold into a van, singing jauntily all the time.

Most of all Sellers (A Shot in the Dark, 1964) hits the mark without a pratfall in sight – the only pratfall in the picture is accorded Harry. Unlike The Pink Panther, Sellers doesn’t have to improvise or be funny. He just follows the script and stays true to his character and the one he has just invented of slick director. There’s even a great sting in the tail.

Sellers shows what he can do with drama that skews towards comedy. Though criticized at the time for, effectively, some kind of cultural appropriation – she was a Swede playing an Italian, what a crime! – Britt Ekland (Stiletto, 1969) is perfectly acceptable. Victor Mature (Hannibal, 1960) has a ball sending up the business as do Akim Tamiroff (The Vulture, 1966) and Martin Balsam (The Anderson Tapes, 1971).

Vittorio De Sica (A Place for Lovers, 1969) does pretty well to merge standard Italian broad comedy with several dashes of satire. The big surprise is that Neil Simon (Barefoot in the Park, 1967) wrote the script, helped out by De Sica’s regular collaborator Cesare Zavattini (A Place for Lovers).

I saw this and A Shot in the Dark on successive nights on Amazon Prime. I hadn’t seen either before. They had been received at either ends of the box office spectrum, the Clouseau reprise a big hit, the Hollywood satire a big flop, so I expected my response might reflect that. But, in reality, it was the other way round. I appreciated this one more.

Go figure.

Behind the Scenes: “The Anderson Tapes” (1971) – From Book To Film

Had Sean Connery played the character of Duke Anderson as written, rather than reigniting his career it would have risked killing it off. It was already a significant ask for a star to shift from portraying good guys – even if James Bond had an immoral streak – to essaying a bad guy, though here was precedent – Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (1967) and Steve McQueen in some style in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

However, it would be difficult enough for audiences to accept a star who is two-timing his girlfriend, never mind one who in turn exhibits sadistic and masochistic streaks.

So that was the first problem for Oscar nominated screenwriter Frank Pierson (Cool Hand Luke) and not surprisingly he settles on the elimination route. The character’s sexual tendences are never mentioned. Theoretically, Pierson gets round the two-timing issue by merging the two girlfriends, Ingrid Macht and Agnes Everleigh, into one, Ingrid Everly (Dyan Cannon).

But Ingrid Everly has little connection to Agnes beyond that she lives in a luxury apartment. In the book, Agnes is a casual pickup, a woman he meets in a bar. She was separated from her husband and retained possession of the apartment, which was in his name. In order to find the legal grounds on which he could regain the apartment, her husband had bugged the apartment.

In the film, the apartment is still bugged, but by her rich jealous boyfriend Werner (Richard B Shull) so, technically, it’s Ingrid who’s doing the two-timing. Whereas in the book Agnes’s husband is perfectly happy for her to be entertaining other men as he hopes this will enhance his chances in the divorce settlement, in the film Werner is the opposite, and does not embrace the notion of what he views as his “property” being involved with anyone else. Ingrid, who was genuinely Anderson’s ex-girlfriend, in the film comes to realize a sugar daddy is a better bet than a criminal no matter how handsome. The only oddity in the picture that when Anderson is confronted and Werner explains that, via his surveillance, he knows Anderson is planning a robbery, that he doesn’t give two hoots about that.

Other changes are equally sensible. In the book, the robbery is intended to take place in the middle of the night. The ploy the thieves planned to use to get the apartment residents to open their doors was that the building was on fire. This wasn’t by triggering the fire alarm but by running from door to door, shouting “Fire! Fire!”. Pierson gets rid of that cumbersome device.

He also knocks into touch the notion that Tommy (Martin Balsam) would find supposedly legitimate reason to gain access to apartments to scout the premises in advance by pretending to be doing a survey for a civic group. In the book Tommy is a two-bit low-level hood and not involved in the actual robbery but with some knowledge of art and expensive items. In the film he transforms into a smooth-talking antiques dealer and Frank Pierson comes up with the idea that the management of the building is planning a refurbishment and wants to ensure that residents have the opportunity to align their interior décor with what is being planned.

In the book as well as eight luxury apartments, there are, on the ground floor two businesses, a doctor and a psychiatrist, but these are also thrown on the scrap heap, although in the book the doctor turns out to have $10,000 hidden away from the taxman as well as medicines that could be sold on the black market.

The pompous Capt. Delaney (Ralph Meeker) who organizes the offensive on the robbers, is drawn virtually word for word from the book. But there’s not room to incorporate all the criminal slang. I was especially intrigued to discover that what I always believed was called “a big job” was known to the criminal fraternity as “a campaign.” Nor the details of organizing such a robbery.

And there are a couple of interesting snippets in the book that Pierson had no room for in the movie. Firstly, author Lawrence Sanders includes verbatim a newspaper report dated 2^nd July, 1968, to the effect that a new electronic communications office has been opened by the police to help cut down, initially, response times. The report included another fascinating fact. Prior to this date to report a crime the American public had to call a seven-digit number. That was reduced to the ”911” emergency number that operates today.

The second element is the call to unite all the different operations running criminal surveillance. Here, including Werner, there were four separate surveillance teams, none in contact with any of the others.

The book is a terrific read. I devoured it in one sitting. It is Sanders who introduces the flash forwards, interviews or somesuch with victims, while in real time the robbery is under way.

But the screenplay is an ideal example of how to trim a book to the bone without removing any of the essentials.

Sanders was also the author of The First Deadly Sin which was filmed with Frank Sinatra in 1980 and reviewed here earlier.

The Anderson Tapes (1971) ****

Director Sidney Lumet has made more critically acclaimed crime pictures – Serpico (1973) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975) earned eight Oscar nominations between them – but none have been as thrillingly entertaining as this mash-up of the heist and surveillance subgenres. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) has unfairly dominated the conversation regarding surveillance pictures, in large part down to Gene Hackman’s repressed performance, and because it made the ever-popular suggestion that Big Brother ruled the roost and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

These days The Anderson Tapes would hardly get out of the starting gate before everyone was whimpering about civil liberties and the fact that surveillance did the very job the public wanted it to do, which was to prevent crime and catch wrongdoers, would have been largely overlooked in the welter of lawsuits. A very clever device here prevents anyone getting trapped in that moral maze, so that what we’re left with is the inside gen on a superbly-organized and audacious robbery.

There’s a Thomas Crown Affair (1968) feel to this but where Norman Jewison employed split screen to get his various interlinked narratives across, here Lumet relies on speedy flash forwards intercutting the ongoing story.

The incipient danger of star Sean Connery was kept under wraps in the 007 outings, but here audiences get a blast of the full macho man, the take-charge kind of guy, and no bureaucratic buffoons getting in the way, and with no gadgets to rely upon it comes down to the sheer physicality of a magnetic screen personality.

Duke Anderson (Sean Connery) is no sooner out of prison after serving a ten-year stretch than he’s planning an audacious robbery, cleaning out an entire upmarket apartment block in the Manhattan Upper East Side, in which former girlfriend Ingrid (Dyan Cannon) lives in considerable luxury, over the Labor Day Holiday Weekend. After winning initial funding from the Mafia, he enrols, among others, camp antiques dealer Tommy (Martin Balsam), getaway driver Edward (Dick Williams), and “The Kid” (Christopher Walken), a young expert in alarms and electronics. As part of the deal he agrees to bump off another recruit, Rocco (Val Avery), who has fallen foul of the Mafia.

Everything that occurs is being recorded one way or another. Setting aside the building’s closed circuit television, Ingrid’s sugar daddy Werner (Richard B. Shull) has bugged her apartment and the cops have wiretaps on the Mafia and various others. This being a heist picture headed up by the world’s most popular star, as much as you want the criminals caught you want them to get away with it, Sean Connery having a self-justification scene at the outset to set liberal minds at rest.

So this is part docu-drama and part a whole bunch of cameos from the victims of the robbery as their, often heinous, personalities come into sharp perspective: siblings who rat each other out, the husband willing to allow his wife to be abused rather than give up a single dollar of his vast fortune. Even wealthy Werner couldn’t care less about a robbery as long as Ingrid knows her place, she’s his “property,” and has to choose him rather than Duke Anderson because, as feisty as she is, she relies on his dough for the good things in life.

But it’s driven by the hardnosed Anderson who’s not going to let the fact he’s never killed a man before get in the way of doing so now as the alternative would be the loss of the gig. Despite his macho demeanor and being able to run his gang efficiently, he’s aware he’s a small cog in the organized crime wheel.

When the cops get wind of the robbery, that triggers some superb stunt work as cops abseil across buildings.

After the disappointing box office of Shalako (1968), The Red Tent (1969) and The Molly Maguires (1970), Sean Connery roared back to form here, as the likeable hood while adding more edge to his screen persona. Martin Balsam (Hombre, 1967) is otherwise the pick of the supporting cast, though Christopher Walken, on his debut, makes his mark and you can’t ignore Dyan Cannon (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, 1969).

But this is just terrific stuff from Lumet, who was apt in his more critically-acclaimed pieces to drift into the overly serious, and while he makes a point – at a very early stage, please note – of the ubiquitous power of surveillance, he lets that speak for itself while he concentrates on the more thrilling and more human aspects of the story. Screenplay by Frank Pierson (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) from the best seller by Lawrence Sanders (The First Deadly Sin, 1980). As a bonus, a first class score from Quincy Jones (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice).

Hombre (1967) ****

Shock beginning, shock ending. In between, while a rift on Stagecoach (1939/1966) – disparate bunch of passengers threatened by renegades – takes a revisionist slant on the western, with a tougher look at the corruption and flaws of the American Government’s policy to Native Americans. Helps, of course, if you have an actor as sensitive as Paul Newman making all your points.

The theme of the adopted or indigenous child raised by Native Americans peaked early on with John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) but John Huston made a play for similar territory in The Unforgiven (1960) and, somewhat unexpectedly, Andrew V. McLaglen makes it an important element of The Undefeated (1969).

This begins with a close-up of a very tanned (think George Hamilton) Paul Newman complete with long hair and bedecked in Native American costume. Apache-raised John Russell (Paul Newman) returns to his roots to claim an inheritance – a boarding house – after the death of his white father. That Russell is a pretty smart dude is shown in the opening sequence where he traps a herd of wild horses after tempting them to drink at a pool. He decides to sell the boarding house to buy more wild horses.

That puts him on a stagecoach with six other passengers – Jessie (Diane Cilento), the now out-of-work manager of the boarding house, retired Indian Agent Professor Favor (Fredric March) and haughty wife Audra (Barbara Rush), unhappily married youngsters Billy Lee (Peter Lazer) and Doris (Margaret Blye), and loud-mouthed cowboy Cicero (Richard Boone). Driving the coach is Mexican Henry (Martin Balsam).

Getting wind that outlaws might be on their trail, Henry takes a different route. But the cowboys still catch up and turns out Cicero is their leader. He takes Audra hostage, though she appears quite willing having tired of her much older husband, steals the thousands of dollars that the corrupt Favor has stolen from the Native Americans, and, also taking much of the available water, leaves the stranded passengers to die in the wilderness.

The passengers might have lucked out given Russell is acquainted with the terrain but they’ve upset the Apache by their overt racism, insisting he ride up with the driver rather than contaminate the coach interior. And the outlaws, having snatched the loot, and Cicero his female prize, should have galloped off into the distance and left it to lawmen to chase after them.

But Russell, faster on the uptake than anyone expects, manages to separate the gangsters from the money, forcing them to come after it. Russell wants the cash to alleviate the plight of starving Native Americans as was originally intended, but he has little interest in doing the “decent thing” and shepherding the others to safety. Ruthless to the point of callous, he nonetheless takes time out from surviving to educate the entitled passengers to the plight of his adopted people.

A fair chunk of the dialog is devoted to Russell explaining why he’s not going to do the decent thing and giving chapter and verse on the indignities inflicted on his people, and that alone would have given the picture narrative heft, especially as the corrupt Favor is more interesting in retrieving the money than his wife.

But in true western fashion, Russell is also a natural tactician and manages to pick off the outlaws when they come calling, impervious to the cries of Audra staked out in the blazing sun as bait. Eventually, against his better judgement, Russell gives in to the entreaties of Jessie and attempts to rescue the stricken women only to be cut down by the gunmen. I certainly didn’t expect that.

So, it’s both action and character-led drama. Paul Newman (The Prize, 1963) is superb (though not favored by an Oscar nod), especially his clipped diction, and oozing contempt with every glance, and the whiplash of his actions which is countered by shrewd judgement of circumstances. But Diane Cilento (Negatives, 1968) is also better than I’ve seen her, playing the foil to Newman, sassy enough to deal with him on a male-female level, but with sufficient depth to challenge his philosophy. Strike one, too, for Martin Balsam (Tora! Tora! Tora!, 1970) in a lower-keyed performance than was his norm. Richard Boone (Rio Conchos, 1964) and the oily Fredric March (Inherit the Wind, 1960) are too obvious as the bad guys. Representing the more calculating side of the female are Barbara Rush (The Bramble Bush, 1960) and movie debutant Margaret Blye.

The solid acting is matched by the direction of Martin Ritt (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965). Prone to preferring to make picture that make a point, he has his hands full here. But the intelligent screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. (Hud, 1963), adapting the Elmore Leonard novel, make the task easier, offsetting the potentially heavy tone with some salty dialog about sex and married life.

Thought-provoking without skimping on the action.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) ****

Reassessment sixty years on – and on the big screen, too – presents a darker picture bursting to get out of the confines of Hollywood gloss. Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is one of the most iconic characters ever to hit the screen. Her little black dress, hats, English drawl and elongated cigarette often get in the way of accepting the character within, the former hillbilly wild child who refuses to be owned or caged, her demand for independence constrained by her desire to marry into wealth for the supposed freedom that will bring, demands which clearly place a strain on her mental health.

Although only hinted at then, and more obvious now, she is willing to sell her body in a bid to save her soul. Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a gigolo, being kept, in some style I should add, with a walk-in wardrobe full of suits, by the nameless wealthy married woman Emily (Patricia Neal), is her male equivalent, a published writer whose promise does not pay the bills. The constructs both have created to hide from the realities of life are soon exposed.

There is much to adore here, not least Golightly’s ravishing outfits, her kookiness and endearing haplessness faced with an ordinary chore such as cooking, and a central section, where the couple try to buy something at Tiffanys on a budget of $10, introduce Holly to New York public library and boost items from a dime store, which fits neatly into the rom-com tradition.

Golightly’s income, which she can scarcely manage given her extravagant fashion expense, depends on a weekly $100 for delivering coded messages to gangster Sally in Sing Sing prison, and taking $50 for powder room expenses from every male who takes her out to dinner, not to mention the various sundries for which her wide range of companions will foot the bill.

Her sophisticated veneer fails to convince those whom she most needs to convince. Agent O.J. Berman (Martin Balsam) recognizes her as a phoney while potential marriage targets like Rusty Trawler (Stanley Adams) and Jose (Jose da Silva Pereira) either look elsewhere or see danger in association.

The appearance of her former husband Doc (Buddy Ebsen) casts light on a grim past, married at fourteen, expected to look after an existing family and her brother, and underscores the legend of her transformation. But the “mean reds” from which she suffers seem like ongoing depression, as life stubbornly refuses to conform to her dreams. Her inability to adopt to normality is dressed up as an early form of feminism, independence at its core, at a time when the vast bulk of women were dependent on men for financial and emotional security. Her strategy to gain such independence is of course dependent on duping independent unsuitable men into funding her lifestyle.

Of course, you could not get away with a film that concentrated on the coarser elements of her existence and few moviegoers would queue up for such a cinematic experience so it is a tribute to the skill of director Blake Edwards (Operation Petticoat, 1959), at that time primarily known for comedy, to find a way into the Truman Capote bestseller, adapted for the screen by George Axelrod (The Seven Year Itch, 1955), that does not compromise the material just to impose a Hollywood gloss. In other hands, the darker aspects of her relationships might have been completely extinguished in the pursuit of a fabulous character who wears fabulous clothes.

Audrey Hepburn (Two for the Road, 1967) is sensational in the role, truly captivating, endearing and fragile in equal measure, an extrovert suffering from self-doubt, but with manipulation a specialty, her inspired quirks lighting up the screen as much as the Givenchy little black dress. It’s her pivotal role of the decade, her characters thereafter splitting into the two sides of her Golightly persona, kooks with a bent for fashion, or conflicted women dealing with inner turmoil.

It’s a shame to say that, in making his movie debut, George Peppard probably pulled off his best performance, before he succumbed to the surliness that often appeared core to his acting. And there were some fine cameos. Buddy Ebsen revived his career and went on to become a television icon in The Beverley Hillbillies. The same held true for Patricia Neal in her first film in four years, paving the way for an Oscar-winning turn in Hud (1963). Martin Balsam (Psycho, 1960) produced another memorable character while John McGiver (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) possibly stole the supporting cast show with his turn as the Tiffany’s salesman.

On the downside, however, was the racist slant. Never mind that Mickey Rooney was a terrible choice to play a Japanese neighbor, his performance was an insult to the Japanese, the worst kind of stereotype.

The other plus of course was the theme song, “Moon River,” by Henry Mancini and Johnny mercer, which has become a classic, and in the film representing the wistful yearning elements of her character.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) *****

Thankfully devoid of the empty triumphalism that marred In Harm’s Way (1965) and Pearl Harbor (2001) and the gritty backs against the wall heroism and snatching some kind of victory from the jaws of defeat of The Alamo (1960) and Zulu (1964), and with a documentary-style approach much more acceptable these days than then, there is an immense amount to appreciate and absorb in this last-gasp 70mm roadshow from a financially flailing Twentieth Century Fox.

Shorn, too, of the traditional all-star cast bar Jason Robards (Hour of the Gun, 1967) – who might not count – nor the regiment of rising talent stuffed into such epics in the hope one might catch the eye and float to the top. And there’s no room to ram in a distracting romance such as in the previous and future films focusing on the military disaster. Instead, stuffed with dependable supporting players like Martin Balsam (Harlow, 1965), E.G. Marshall (The Chase, 1966) and James Whitmore (The Split, 1968) stops audience rubber-necking in its tracks, unlike producer Darryl F. Zanuck’s previous The Longest Day (1962), in favor of forensic analysis of what went wrong in the defence and what went so brilliant right in the attack.

Like most of the best war epics – The Longest Day, Battle of the Bulge (1965), taking an even-handed approach in presenting both sides of the battle, except here you could argue considerably more time is spent with the Japanese, beginning with the opening credits where the camera floats in and around a giant battleship. Despite the sudden attack which went against all the traditions of war – a timing error apparently – the Japanese are presented as honorable and even arguing against going to war as well as worrying about the consequences of poking the tiger.

And there is none of the endless owing and scraping and not attempting to rise above your station in the traditional Western-view of the Japanese. Here, from the outset, superior officers are questioned possibly in manner that would be permitted among the opposing forces.

The first half is given up to the superb organisation of the attack, including the bold use of using aerial torpedoes – proven to work by the British in an earlier assault on a harbor without the apparent depth of water required – and contrasting it with the general U.S. ineptness, bureaucracy, interdepartmental battles and overall lack of preparation even though several personnel believed an attack imminent. The Yanks had even broken the Japanese codes so could easily have taken heed of obvious omens, had working radar on site though its employment was handicapped by being limited to three hours a day and initially lacking a means of communicating findings. Someone had even worked out that the Japanese would need six aircraft carriers to mount an attack and that the ideal time would be early morning on a weekend, someone even predicting an attack down to the exact time except a week out.

Of course, the U.S. at this point was not at war and so could be excused switching off in the evening or being uncontactable in the morning because they were still out carousing from the night before or sedately riding a horse. While there is a growing sense of alarm, the chain of command is woefully stretched often in the wrong direction and at one point stops before it reaches the President.

Fearful of sabotage, the Americans shift planes away from the perimeter of airfields smack bang into the runway where they can be more easily destroyed. Perhaps the greatest irony is that in shifting the U.S. fleet from its home base in San Diego, the Americans made such an attack possible.

When it gets under way, the battle scenes are superb, especially given none of the CGI Pearl Harbor could call upon, and yet with the U.S. aircraft carriers by luck still at sea failed to deliver a killer blow for the Japanese.

It’s handled superbly by director Richard Fleischer (The Boston Strangler, 1968), Kinju Fukasaku (Battle Royale, 2000) and Toshio Masuda (The Zero Fighter, 1962). The American flaws are dramatized rather than being dealt with by info-dump. Larry Forester (Fathom, 1967) and long-time Akira Kurosawa confederates Hideo Oguni (Ikiru, 1952) and Ryuzo Kikushima (Yojimbo, 1961) fashioned a sharp screenplay from mountains of material.

Long rumored to be a box office flop it turned out to have made a decent profit, albeit not in the U.S.

The documentary approach adds immensely to the movie and it remains one of the all-time greats precisely because of the lack of artificial drama.

Harlow (1965) ***

Harlow presents such a convincing picture of Hollywood abuse that I was astonished to discover that it was not entirely truthful where the title character was concerned.

Jean Harlow was a hugely popular star in the 1930s before her untimely death at the age of 36. This film depicts her as a virgin (not true) who turns neurotic (not true) after her impotent husband commits suicide (debatable) on their wedding night (not true) leading to her go off the rails and die from pneumonia (not true). But in terms of the Hollywood system a great deal rings true and if the Me Too movement had existed in the late 1920s the finger would be pointed at a huge number of men.

The film is at its best when dissecting the movie business. A five-minute opening sequence demonstrates its “factory” aspect as extras and bit players clock in, are given parts and shuffle through great barns to be clothed and made up, often to be discarded at the end of the process.

No sooner has this version of Jean Harlow (Carroll Baker) been given a small part than she encounters the casting couch, operated by a lowly assistant director, who bluntly offers five days’ work instead of one if she submits to his advances. When she turns him down, work is hard to come by and she resorts to stealing lunch before rescued by agent Arthur Landau (Red Buttons). After tiny parts that mostly consist of her losing her clothing, receiving pies or eggs in the face and displaying her wares in bathtubs, she geta a big break only for that producer to demand his pound of flesh – “I’ve already bought and paid for you.” Here she has “the body of a woman and the emotions of a child” and ends up choosing the wrong suitor which leads to a calamitous outcome.

However, the pressures of stardom are well-presented: she is the breadwinner for her unemployed mother Jean (Angela Lansbury) and lazy stepfather Marino (Raf Vallone) and soon box office dynamite for studio chief Everett (Martin Balsam) who sees in her the opportunity to sell good clean sex. The negotiations/bribery/blackmail involved in fixing salaries are also explored.

But the film earns negative points by mixing the real and the fictional. The agent and husband Paul Bern (Peter Lawford) existed but most of the others are invented or amalgamations of different people. MGM is represented as “Majestic” and among her films there is no Red Dust (1932) or China Seas (1935) but lurid inventions like Sin City.

Director Gordon Douglas was a versatile veteran, with over 90 films to his credit, from comedies Saps at Sea (1940) and Call Me Bwana (1963) to westerns The Iron Mistress (1952) and Rio Conchos (1964) and musicals Follow That Dream (1962) and dramas The Sins of Rachel Cade (1961) and Sylvia (1965) which also starred Baker. The opening scene apart, which is a seamless construction, he is adept at this kind of helter-skelter drama. John Michael Hayes (Rear Window, 1954) has produced a punchy script based on the book by Arthur Landau and Irving Shulman.

In the title role Carroll Baker (Sylvia) has probably never been better, comedian Red Buttons (Stagecoach, 1966) excellent in a straight role while the smarmy Raf Vallone (Nevada Smith, 1966) is the stand-out among an excellent supporting cast that also includes Angela Lansbury (In the Cool of the Day, 1963), Peter Lawford (Sylvia), Leslie Nielsen (Beau Geste, 1966), Martin Balsam (Seven Days in May, 1964) and Mike Connors (Stagecoach, 1966).

Except that virtually none of the movie is true, I would have given it four stars for its portrayal of Hollywood but I have come to expect that biopics, while moving facts around for dramatic purposes, are required to be good more faithful to their subjects than this.

The Bedford Incident (1965) ****

A belated entry into the Cold War thriller genre that appeared to have peaked with Dr Strangelove (1964), Fail Safe (1964) and Seven Days in May (1964). The Bedford Incident, filmed in black-and-white with a less-than-stellar cast nonetheless holds its own as an examination of men under pressure, a cat-and-mouse actioner, as well as a stark warning of the dangers of nuclear war. Perhaps you could not find a more contemporary theme,

Capt Eric Finlander (Richard Widmark) is a maverick U.S. Navy destroyer commander hunting down Russian submarines should they stray into territorial waters. He has been passed over for promotion, despite having previously successfully forced a Russian sub to the surface. Into his meticulously-run ship are dropped photo journalist Ben Munceford (Sidney Poitier) – re-teamed with Widmark after The Long Ships – and Lt. Commander Chester Potter (Martin Balsam), a ship’s doctor. In effect, their presence is a simple device to put Widmark under the spotlight, in some respects to challenge his operational methods, and, as a narrative device, to provide an excuse to tell the audience everything they need to know. Among the ship’s crew are young ensign Ralston (James MacArthur) and former German former U-boat commander Commodore Wolfgang Schrepke (Eric Portman) who acts as an advisor.

The newcomers are afforded insight into how this ship is run and into its hunting methods, for example, dredging up waste from the sea in order to examine it for evidence of a Russian presence. There is a bundle of interesting technical data – a submarine has to surface for air, as another example – and the soundtrack mostly consists of endless sonar. Apart from the German, who appears to subsist on Schnapps, the crew is unusually top-quality, the sick bay deserted, the enterprise run under wartime conditions, every person on board dedicated to fulfilling the captain’s every wish.

The tension is in triplicate. First of all, there is the obsessive captain who could at any time just explode; secondly, there is the hunt for the submarine replete with tactical maneuvers and hunches; and finally, always in the background, there is the nuclear element and the fear that untoward action could trigger a holocaust. And there’s also time to take down a peg or two the holier-than-thou visitors, Dr Potter revealed as a civilian medic returning to the service as a refuge, Munceford as a rather spoiled individual who complains when dangerous maneuvers interrupt his shower. Schrepke has the unenviable task of trying to rein in his boss, Ralston one of the few on board finding the pressure hard to handle.

But Widmark steals the show. His over-acting often stole the show when he had a supporting role, but this is a finely nuanced performance. An admirable, instinctive commander, he is loved by his men (such adoration not easily won) with a gift for battle and outfoxing an opponent, often barely containing his own tension. It would have been easy to ramp up the pressures he felt in the way of Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny (1954) but there’s a big difference between a man about to crack and one who loves battle and is desperate to score victory.

Sidney Poitier (Duel at Diablo, 1966) is excellent in a more relaxed role, combative only in matters of intelligence, and probably benefitting from not having to carry the picture. James MacArthur (The Truth about Spring, 1964) shows acting maturity is moving away from the easier Disney roles in which he came to prominence. Character actor Martin Balsam (Harlow, 1965) excels as always in this kind of role, a man with hidden weakness. Eric Portman (The Man Who Finally Died, 1963), somewhat typecast as a German officer, is given a deeper role where villainy is not his only ace. If you keep your eyes peeled you might spot a fleeting glimpse of The Dirty Dozen (1967) alumni Donald Sutherland, as part of the medical crew, and Colin Maitland as a seaman.

The top-billed Richard Widmark turned producer on this one, as he had done for The Secret Ways (1961), not so much as to greenlight a pet project but to keep a place at Hollywood’s high table just when that seemed to be slipping out of his grasp after the commercially disastrous John Ford roadshow Cheyenne Autumn (1964). In truth, Widmark’s position as an outright star appeared questionable. He seemed to transition all too easily between top billing (Warlock, 1959, The Long Ships, 1964) and second billing (Two Rode Together, 1961, Judgement at Nuremberg, 1961, and Flight from Ashiya 1964).

But the billing oddity from today’s perspective if to find Sidney Poitier – coming off an Oscar win for Lilies of the Field (1963) and later a box office smash in his annus mirabilis of To Sir, With Love (1967), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) and In the Heat of the Night (1967) – subordinate to Widmark in the credits department. The Long Ships featured the same billing arrangement.

Also putting his neck on the line was James B. Harris who was making the jump to director from producer of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957) and Lolita (1962). Screenplay honors go to James Poe (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, 1969) who adapted the bestseller by Mark Rascovich.

Harris makes a sound debut, the decision to film in black-and-white paying off, and enough going on through personality clash and the sub hunt to keep the pace taut. Authenticity was added by filming aboard naval vessels (although British in this case) and what little model work there is does not look out of place. A bigger budget would have made better use of the actual hunt (as The Hunt for Red October, 1990, later proved) but sound effects rather than visual effects suffice. I had not at all expected the shock ending. Another point in this film’s favor is that the threat of nuclear apocalypse has not gone away and the fact remains that the world as we know could disappear at the touch of a button.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) **** – Back on the Big Screen

Reassessment sixty years on – and on the big screen, too – presents a darker picture bursting to escape the confines of Hollywood gloss. Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is one of the most iconic characters ever to hit the screen. Her little black dress, hats, English drawl and elongated cigarette holder often get in the way of accepting the character within, the former hillbilly wild child who refuses to be owned or caged, her demand for independence constrained by her desire to marry into wealth for the supposed freedom that will bring, contradictory demands which clearly place a strain on her mental health.

Although only hinted at then, and more obvious now, she is willing to sell her body in a bid to save her soul. Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a gigolo, being kept, in some style I should add with a walk-in wardrobe full of suits, by wealthy married Emily (Patricia Neal), is her male equivalent, a published author whose promise does not pay the bills. The constructs both have created to hide from the realities of life are soon exposed.

There is much to adore here, not least Golightly’s ravishing outfits, her kookiness and endearing haplessness faced with an ordinary chore such as cooking. the central section, where the couple try to buy something at Tiffanys on a budget of $10, introduce Holly to the New York public library and boost items from a dime store, fits neatly into the rom-com tradition.

Golightly’s income, which she can scarcely manage given her extravagant fashion expenditure, depends on a weekly $100 for delivering coded messages to gangster Sally in Sing Sing prison, and taking $50 for powder room expenses from every male who takes her out to dinner, not to mention the various sundries for which her wide range of companions will foot the bill.

The appearance of former husband Doc (Buddy Ebsen) casts light on a grim past, married at fourteen, expected to look after an existing family and her brother, and underscores the legend of her transformation. But the “mean reds” from which she suffers seem like ongoing depression, as life stubbornly refuses to conform to her dreams. Her inability to adopt to normality is dressed up as an early form of feminism, independence at its core, at a time when the vast bulk of women were dependent on men for financial and emotional security. Her strategy to gain such independence is dependent on duping independent unsuitable men into funding her lifestyle.

Of course, you could not get away in those days with a film that concentrated on the coarser elements of her existence and few moviegoers would queue up for such a cinematic experience so it is a tribute to the skill of director Blake Edwards (Operation Petticoat, 1959), at that time primarily known for comedy, to find a way into the Truman Capote bestseller, adapted for the screen by George Axelrod (The Seven Year Itch, 1955), that does not compromise the material just to impose Hollywood confection. In other hands, the darker aspects of her relationships might have been completely extinguished in the pursuit of a fabulous character who wears fabulous clothes.

Audrey Hepburn is sensational in the role, truly captivating, endearing and fragile in equal measure, an extrovert suffering from self-doubt, but with manipulation a specialty, her inspired quirks lighting up the screen as much as the Givenchy little black dress. It’s her pivotal role of the decade, her characters thereafter splitting into the two sides of her Golightly persona, kooks with a bent for fashion, or conflicted women dealing with inner turmoil.

It’s a shame to say that, in making his movie debut, George Peppard probably pulled off his best-ever performance, before he succumbed to the surliness that often appeared core to his later acting. And there were some fine cameos. Buddy Ebsen revived his career and went on to become a television icon in The Beverley Hillbillies. The same held true for Patricia Neal in her first film in four years, paving the way for an Oscar-winning turn in Hud (1963). Martin Balsam (Psycho, 1960) produced another memorable character while John McGiver (Midnight Cowboy, 1969) possibly stole the show among the supporting cast with his turn as the Tiffany’s salesman.

The other plus of course was the theme song, “Moon River,” by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, which has become a classic, and in the film representing the wistful yearning elements of her character.

CATCH IT ON THE BIG SCREEN: This is a restoration of the classic. The Showcase chain is showing it all this week in various cinemas throughout the United Kingdom (I caught it last week at my local Showcase). It is also showing in Barcelona on July 26; Amsterdam on July 31-August 3; Stockholm on August 5; and Gent, Belgium, on August 6.

A company called Park Circus – which has offices in London, Paris, Los Angeles and Glasgow – has the rights to the reissue and if you want to find out if the picture will be showing in your neck of the woods at a later date you can contact them on info@parkcircus.com

Seven Days in May (1964) ****

Donald Trump and the recent insurrection bring this picture bang up to date. Democracy is a dangerous weapon in the hands of the people. Can they be trusted to make the correct decision? That’s in part the thematic thrust of this high-octane political thriller that pits two of the greatest actors of their generation in a battle to decide the fate of the world. This was the era of the nuke picture – Dr Strangelove (1962), Fail Safe (1964), The Bedford Incident (1965) – all primed by the real-life Cuban Missile Crisis and the growing threat of the Cold War. But since that threat has never gone away – if anything it has worsened – the movie is as relevant today.

Promoting a male-oriented film about politics was always going to be a hard sell despite the distinguished cast. One route Paramount marketeers went down was a massive tie-in with publisher Bantam’s bestseller paperback . Over 1.5 million copies of the book had been rolled out and Bantam had arranged cross-over publicity in supermarkets, five-and-dime stores, booksellers and wholesalers stocking the book. “Look” magazine ran a six-page article by one of the book’s authors Fletcher Knebel.

Just as the President (Fredric March) is about to sign a nuclear treaty with the USSR, much to the fury of the majority of Americans judging by opinion polls, Colonel Jiggs Casey (Kirk Douglas) uncovers signs of a military coup headed by hawk General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster).

The movie divides into the classic three acts. In the first, Douglas investigates the existence of a secret army unit in El Paso comprising 3,600 men trained to overthrow the government and needs to persuade the President the country is in danger. The second act sees the President hunting for proof of the imminent coup and identifying the conspirators. The third act witnesses showdowns between March and Lancaster and Lancaster and Douglas.

About $65 million out of the U.S. national budget of $90 million was allocated to the military, according to director John Frankenheimer writing in the above magazine. Frankenheimer combined with Kirk Douglas’s company to purchase the book and hire writer Rod Serling. The original script was too long so, without losing a scene, the director went through it cutting phrases and sentences here and there till it was down to the required two-hour length. Paramount put up extra money to get Ava Gardner join the cast.

At the heart of the story is betrayal – Lancaster of his country’s constitution, Douglas of his friend when he takes on the “thankless job of informer.” Douglas proves rather too ruthless, willing to seduce and then betray Ava Gardner, Lancaster’s one-time mistress. Both Gardner and March prove to have higher principles than Douglas. For both Douglas and Lancaster who operate at a high threshold of intensity and could easily have turned in high-octane performances the tension is even better maintained by their apparently initial low-key confrontations. Douglas has a trick here of standing ramrod straight and then turning his head but not his body towards the camera.

As a pure thriller, it works a treat, investigation to prove there is a conspiracy followed by the the vital element to conspiracy theory – the deaths and disappearances of vital people – and finally the need to resolve the crisis without creating public outcry. The only flaw in the movie’s structure is that Douglas cannot carry out all the investigations and when presidential sidekicks Martin Balsam and Edmond O’Brien are dispatched, respectively, to Gibralter and El Paso the movie loses some of its intensity. But the third act is a stunner as March refuses to take the easy way out by blackmailing Lancaster over his previous relationship with Gardner.

Of course, there is a ton of political infighting and philosophizing in equal measure and speeches about democracy (“ask for a mandate at the ballot box, don’t steal it”), the American Constitution and the impact of nuclear weapons on humanity. But these verbal volleys are far from long-winded and pack a surefire punch. The coup has been set up with military precision and must be dismantled by political precision.

A hint of the future: one unusual aspect of the picture was the use of closed-circuit television which was seen as being used as method of general communication between politicians and the Pentagon.

The film is awash with Oscar talent – Burt Lancaster, Best Actor for Elmer Gantry (1960) and, at that point, twice nominated; thrice-nominated Kirk Douglas; Fredric March, twice Best Actor for Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) plus three other nominations besides; Ava Gardner nominated for Best Actress (Mogambo, 1953); and Edmond O’Brien named Best Supporting Actor for The Barefoot Contessa (1954).

None disappoint. March is especially impressive as a weak President tumbling in the polls who has to reach deep to fight a heavyweight adversary. Lancaster and Douglas both bristle with authority. Although Lancaster’s delusional self-belief appears to give him the edge in the acting stakes, Douglas’s ruthless manipulation of a vulnerable Ava Gardner provides him with the better material. Edmond O’Brien as an old soak whose alcoholism marks him out as an easy target is also memorable and Ava Gardner in recognizing her frailties delivers a sympathetic performance.

Fashion might have seemed to offer limited marketing opportunities for such a picture but that did not stop Paramount’s publicists. On the back of one of the subsidiary characters being seen combing her hair with an Ajax comb the manufacturer was inveigled into a nationwide campaign. Director John Frankenheimer was pictured wearing a custom-made Cardinal suit in an advert in “Gentlemen’s Quarterly” and designer Mollie Parnis created a suit for women which could be simply altered every day to provide enough outfits for seven days.

Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone) does a terrific job of distilling a door-stopper of a book by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. But the greatest kudos must go to director John Frankenheimer – acquainted with political opportunism through The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and with Burt Lancaster through The Birdman of Alcatraz (1962) – for keeping tension to the forefront and resisting the temptation to slide into political ideology.

Many of the films from the 1960s are to be found free of charge on TCM and Sony Movies and the British Talking Pictures as well as mainstream television channels. But if this film is not available through these routes, then here is the link to the DVD and/or streaming service.