Michael Anderson Jr – The Magnificent 60s

The Sundowners (1960) ****

I kept waiting for Deborah Kerr to turn up and it was a good 20 minutes before I realized that the actress had so immersed herself in the dowdy Ida Carmody that she was turning in what would be recognized as an Oscar-nominated performance. I was less convinced by Robert Mitchum’s Oirish accent but after a time, he, too, buried his normal screen persona under a feckless wanderer. And I was expecting some meaningful point-making stuff from director Fred Zinnemann given he had nursed home such purposeful features as High Noon (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), A Hatful of Rain (1957) and The Nun’s Story (1959) and would soon be heading back in that virtue-signalling direction with Behold a Pale Horse (1964) and A Man for All Seasons (1966). However, like Day of the Jackal (1973), though for other reasons, this is very much an outlier in the Zinnemann portfolio.

It’s groundbreaking work from the stars. In the first place, Deborah Kerr does the unthinkable for a star of her magnitude – five Oscar nominations so far and a string of hits including From Here to Eternity, The Proud and the Profane (1955) opposite William Holden, The King and I (1956) top-billed ahead of Yul Brynner, An Affair to Remember (1957) opposite Cary Grant and Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1958) leading Robert Mitchum a merry dance. Here, she is shorn of make-up. Her freckles are everywhere and her cheekbones look as if they are there from hunger not for reasons of fashion. These days, that down-to-the-wire approach would suggest an actress desperately trying to revive her career – Demi Moore in The Substance (2024) or Pamela Anderson in The Last Showgirl (2024) – rather than a star at the top of her game.

Robert Mitchum, too, dumps his screen persona, and provides his most relaxed and naturalistic performance.

The story is pretty straightforward. Ida wants to settle down, husband Paddy (Robert Mitchum), a born drifter, does not. Paddy enjoys drinking and gambling and wandering through the Australian Outback and ekes out enough as a drover to keep them solvent. The plot, therefore, is episodic. But what could have been a series of loosely-linked sequences is held together by a concentration of the reality of an existence revolving around sheep – droving, shearing, rearing – and trundling along in a horse-drawn caravan, putting up a tent at night, cooking over an open fire, other aspects bordering on the primitive. You can be sure that every minor triumph will be torpedoed.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Wyler had set out to make a western what with the preponderance of sweeping location. Make it sheep instead of cattle and you have Red River (1948) in a minor key with the usual shenanigans once the drover makes his destination.

Livening up proceedings are equally responsibility-resistant itinerant Rupert Venneker (Peter Ustinov), whose more basic skills including pugilism belie his posh accent, and innkeeper Mrs Firth (Glynis Johns) who makes a good stab at trying to hold onto him.

The bulk of the emotion plays through the eyes of Ida, desperately trying to save up enough money to buy a house. A bushfire that temporarily separates the couple unexpectedly acts to strengthen their relationship. While Ida is helping deliver a baby, Frank is getting roaring drunk. The tension between the pair is also a metaphor for growing civilization out of a wilderness, the men who tamed the land becoming redundant, a new educated class taking over. Ida wants to be settled to provide her ambitious son Sean (Michael Anderson Jr) with an education as much as she doesn’t want to be a traveller in her old age.

Offers much about a civilization in the making still relying on the old-timers to put in the hard yards while the guys doing all the work don’t have the sense to seek greater or more stable reward. What’s life if it doesn’t go wrong once in a while? Freedom is its own reward. As Paddy points out, he has no restrictions, the entirety of Australia is his bailiwick.

Wyler makes much of what he’s got, the tensions between the couple undercutting the strength of their affection for each other, and just when it looks as if Ida has got her way Paddy manages to cut loose and destroy her dreams.

There’s drama a-plenty, not just the terrifying bushfire, but a pretty engrossing horse race or two. Paddy’s idea of heaven is to hold court in a saloon singing old Irish songs. Sometimes Ida has little but heartbreak to nurse her along.

And while the various episodes make it a tidy drama, really it’s what one critic described as “a no-story movie – an observation of life” and in that regard more concerned with fallibility and vulnerability. Had it been made by a European director, it would remain one of the most talked-about movies of the decade.

Wyler keeps up a tidy pace. Deborah Kerr (The Arrangement, 1969) steals the show and her peers agreed, putting her up for an Oscar, but it was a close-run thing because Glynis Johns (The Cabinet of Caligari, 1962) was also nominated. Peter Ustinov (Topkapi, 1964) was equally impressive, as was Robert Mitchum (El Dorado, 1967). Wyler was also nominated as was screenwriter Isobel Lennart (Fitzwilly / Fitzwilly Strikes Back, 1967) adapting the Jon Cleary bestseller.

I caught this on Amazon Prime.

Thoroughly involving.

Dear Heart (1964) ****

Big difference between the manufactured maudlin of a weepie and middle-aged characters so ill-at-ease and discomfited that they are painful to watch, circumstances not redeemed by comedy. Audiences and critics didn’t take too kindly to this because the two stars were way out of their comfort zones. Glenn Ford (Rage, 1966) dropped his take-charge quiet-tough-guy persona, and didn’t even play that for laughs, and Geraldine Page (The Sweet Bird of Youth, 1962) rid herself of the tragic face that sacrificed itself on the altar of Oscar (at this point she was three-eights into her Oscar nominations haul).

The whole unremittingly sad enterprise would have been made for today’s generations, more acceptable of the sour ending and the clunkiness of romance that fails to gell.

Harry (Glenn Ford), a greetings card salesman who falls back on his own profession in his chat-up lines, thinks he has achieved his goal of settling down with widow Phyllis (Angela Lansbury) and becoming father to her young son, enjoying domesticity, extended family round for dinner, playing baseball and larking about with the boy. Evie (Geraldine Page) is too much and not enough, too big in her personality, not enough of whatever it takes to make her a long-term proposition for the opposite sex. They meet at a convention, hers, she’s a postmaster, he’s just staying at the same hotel.

She’s at least the more self-aware, wants more than the one-night stand of convention life, reluctant to take her place among the singletons, can’t work out why if she’s the life and soul of the party that at party’s end she’s still sitting on the shelf. But she also wants recognition – of some kind – makes fictitious calls to hotel reception so that a bellboy will troop round the lobby calling out her name. She brings her own lightbulbs, to replace the low-wattage ones in a bedroom, forever trying to adjust the world o her own vision, teasing bedroom curtains out in a different fashion, mild invention that keeps her sane regardless of how insane some actions are, charging ahead to open every door in the expectation that she shouldn’t count on male gallantry (this is the 1960s after all).

Harry’s the guy who does open doors for women, but cursed with loneliness, caught in embarrassing gaffes, chatting up the dumb kiosk blonde who’s a good bit more savvy. Most of the comedy hurts. He’s late to meet his boss because he stopped off for a martini at the apartment of an occasional lover and when he trips out too many excuses is told, tartly, that while one excuse is acceptable, three or four (train late, weather, can’t get a taxi, taxi stuck in traffic etc) is the sign of a liar. He does the whole unnecessary explanation routine when booking a hotel room for a tryst with the blonde whom he pretends is his wife not noticing the receptionist’s cynical eyebrows, and brought down to earth when said blonde breezes in and calls out a greeting to the receptionist.

Evie works out how to get a table in a packed restaurant, passing onto Harry the clever trick of saying you are waiting for a date and then apologising when they don’t turn up. When he tries this out, the waitress upends him with, “Why not join this lady (Evie), she can’t imagine either what happened to her date.”

There’s nothing cute about either of them so no chance of a meet-cute. She’s continually awkward, independent, and he doesn’t know how to spell out his troubles or work out why he’s walking into an unsuitable marriage. The only room this movie has for comedy is the sudden appearance in Harry’s life of a bearded teenager who usurps his bedroom (girlfriend constantly in the bath). This lad is Phyllis’s grown-up son Patrick (Michael Anderson Jr.) yet Harry’s been led to believe, or thinks he has, that the boy would be much younger, judging by the treasured photo given him by his fiancée. On the one side is a slab of situation comedy, on the other an out-of-his-depth Harry not knowing if he’s been duped and realizing how little he knows of genuine fatherhood. He’s awkwardness grown ten feet tall.

It’s not as if Harry and Evie actually conduct a romance, there’s some kind of attraction that neither can fully recognize, every time it sparks up as likely to wilt, and he’s prone to letting her down, sudden arrangement with son taking precedence over pre-arranged dinner with her, except, she’s mollified because he left her a note at the desk, and she doesn’t get those unless she manufactures them herself and then in her ungainly way lets everyone know someone has tried to contact her, as if that’s a sign of importance, or explanation for her feeling of being so let-down.

Phyllis turns out not to be the smalltown housewife of whom Harry dreams. She’s had enough of being a housewife. She wants what she sees as the high life, living out of hotels, “From now on I just want to pick up the telephone” and order food, cocktails, laundry, newspapers, whatever. Just what different paths they are on is detailed in a killer of a line. When he complains – it would be an accusatory tone if he could muster up the courage – about why she gave him this particular photo of the boy, as a kid not a man, comes the rejoinder, “Because that’s the best picture of me that’s ever been taken.”

You’d be lucky to find romance in this sullen snarky version of New York, filled with uncivil, unhelpful staff, bursting with indifference, nary a touch of sympathy for any customer, whether they are seeking a room in a city jam-packed with conventions or just a cup of coffee.

If you believe in the tagged-on happy ending, you’ll believe in anything. This pair are so discordant, so jarring, that they are probably the most realistic couple to ever grace the screen. Ignored as their performances are, they are probably the best of their careers, in part because neither is central to the bigger story that a high-end drama or western or thriller might entail., in part because they go out on an acting limb, light years away from their established screen persona. They are just so darned realistic your heart bleeds because you just know they are doomed into making relationship mistakes, most likely with each other, and will remain among the jittery unfulfilled, wondering how everyone else manages it.

Director Delbert Mann’s been here before – Oscar-winner for Marty (1955), drawing an Oscar-winning performance from David Niven in Separate Tables (1958) and James Garner’s best performance in Buddwing (1966) – and makes acceptable viewing out of what in the hands of a Harold Pinter would be an impossible watch. But even so, it comes close. Tad Mosel (Up the Down Staircase, 1967) wrote the screenplay.

Had this been an an arthouse picture, it would be drenched in awards.

Fabulous performances, heartfelt situation.

The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) ****

The rocking chair motif in this underrated film is ignored while the door opening and closing in The Searchers (1956) is hailed as one of cinema’s greatest images. Welcome to the world of director Henry Hathaway (Nevada Smith, 1966). Way down the pecking order when it comes to the makers of great westerns, below Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1969) who only made four and Howard Hawks (Rio Bravo, 1959) only three.

Closer inspection, too, of The Wild Bunch (1969) might reveal cinematic ideas that turned up here first. Closer inspection of John Wayne (The Commancheros, 1961) might reveal a mighty fine, very touching, performance.

The genre was chock-full of vengeance, but here that is tempered by mystery over the death of their father, a drunken gambler, that has led to the loss of the family ranch, leaving the mother, for whose funeral the titular sons return, living hand-to-mouth, supplementing the usual sewing and mending with giving guitar lessons.

Hastings (James Gregory), a businessman with big ideas, has taken over the ranch and pretty much the local town of Clearwater. And he’s just hired extra muscle, notorious gunslinger Curley (George Kennedy), to swell his already-growing army.

Only the youngest son, Bud (Michael Anderson Jr), a reluctant college student, is clear of the taint of wrong-doing. John Elder (John Wayne) has a reputation as a gunfighter but unlike shifty younger brother Tom (Dean Martin) doesn’t have a wanted poster following him around. The other son Matt (Earl Holliman) takes after John, some shady action but no legal consequence.

This is certainly not a great fraternal union. When they’re not engaged in low-level investigation or trying to prevent themselves being lynched, they’re bickering and fighting. The only thing that unites them, beyond love of the deceased woman, is determination to continue paying for Bud’s education.

Apart from the ranch, one of Hastings’ other lucrative investments is a firearms business, which allows him to tote around a telescopic rifle which, of course, ensures he can bump off those who get in his way from a distance, without fear of discovery. The easiest way to get rid of the brothers is to have them arrested for murder and to kill off the one man, Sheriff Wilson (Paul Fix), who might have the brains and experience to work out something fishy was going on.

John Wayne is more emotional here than in any picture since The Searchers, though, as you’ll be aware, his emotion is registered through his eyes or bits of business rather than a lengthy speech. And given double duty of looking after the youngest while holding back the more tempestuous Tom.

Dean Martin’s (Five Card Stud, 1968) charm runs thin, as is intended, no woman to gull, and no cliché alcoholism a la Rio Bravo to fall back on. It’s a part he plays completely against type, although you can sense he’s bursting out of those confines in the false eye con. He’s pretty much always brought to heel by Wayne. The one time he defies big brother ends in personal calamity. Imagine a marquee name as big as Dean Martin taking on a role where the part sets him up to be walking in the Duke’s shadow, despite his efforts to break loose.

In fact, unusually for a western, until Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) came long, it’s replete with reversals. Hathaway plays with expectations from the outset, the opening sequence of big beast of a train puffing through fabulous scenery doesn’t bring John, instead, unknown to the waiting brothers, Curley disembarks. Katie Elder’s friend Mary (Martha Hayer) cuts off at the pass any idea the audience might have of incipient romance when she gives John both barrels.

Thanks to the screenplay, Michael Anderson Jr.(Major Dundee, 1965) and Earl Holliman (The Power, 1968) are given more bite than their roles might suggest and James Gregory (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) makes his villain meaty though you suspect the presence of George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) is another lure, creating audience expectation that is not fulfilled. Martha Hyer (The Chase, 1966) is more conscience than glamor, spending most of the time on the sidelines.

You’d be surprised just how lean a production this is, and equally how deftly Hathaway avoids cliches. Just because there’s a kid you don’t need to teach him how to be a man. A huge herd of horses doesn’t need to stampede. Beautiful woman in the vicinity doesn’t necessarily call for a heated love affair. Ending up in jail doesn’t necessitate a bust-out. Villainous gunslinger doesn’t set up obligatory shootout in an empty street.

Hathaway’s unusual, too, in the way he anchors his pictures in reality. Here it’s a funeral director washing the wheels of his hearse, a blacksmith applying shackles.

You’d marvel, too, at just who was involved in fashioning the terrific screenplay: veteran William H. Wright, his first in two decades, Harry Essex (Creature from the Black Lagoon, 1954) in his first in eight years, and Allan Weiss whose six other movies were all Elvis Presley vehicles. Hardly the pedigree to produce one of the best westerns of the decade. This is the kind of screenplay where no line is wasted, not when a retort can be used to define character.

Most people remember the rousing theme by Elmer Bernstein (The Scalphunters, 1968), but actually there are also some very innovative musical passages worth listening out for.

Curiously, it was Andrew Sarris, hardly a John Wayne fan, who recognized the movie’s attributes, though in niggardly fashion, “The spectacle of people in Hollywood trying to do something different in a western at this late date is reassuring.”

It’s about time those differences and the picture’s excellence were recognized.