A huge flop at the time given both Richard Burton and Rex Harrison trousered $1 million. Now, primarily of historical interest, hailing from a time when homosexuals could be jailed. A man dressing up in woman’s clothing, as here, could be summoned in front of the magistrates. It’s the kind of movie that would work better if, as with the American idiom, the dialog of two people of any sex engaged in a long-term relationship was spattered with brilliant one-liners rather than a series of sarcastic putdowns.
Even so, there’s more here than originally met the eye. The fact that the hairdressers Charlie (Rex Harrison) and Harry (Richard Burton) have remained, like a married couple, together for twenty years says a lot about their enduring, if fractious, relationship. While Charlie has a daughter he never sees – and never wants to – Harry pines after a child. And there is some gentle complaint about why, in the eyes of the law, Harry would neither be permitted to adopt a child not to love a man, but those aspects are never in your face except that Charlie is awaiting his summons for the crime outlined above.
There’s not as much mincing and preening as you’d expect. Charlie is the better looking and has retained his good looks with the help of considerable pampering but Harry has lost his hair thanks to alopecia and rather than wearing a wig opts for a bandage.
It’s one of those movies where nothing happens based on a play (by Charles Dyer) where nothing happens, what little tension there is reliant on waiting (for the summons and the threat of an appearance by Charlie’s daughter). But while the stage can get away with two actors at the top of their game (Paul Scofield and Patrick Magee in London’s West End, Eli Wallach and Milo O’Shea on Broadway), that’s a far harder trick to pull off on screen.
So it’s to the credit of both actors than they make it work and we empathize with their immediate and ongoing circumstances. While Charlie sees his role as being the scathing dismissive one, leaving Harry to be supportive and apparently still in love, nonetheless his true feelings come out when he thinks his partner has had a heart attack.
In male-female terms, this would come across as just another middle-aged couple stuck in a humdrum marriage, and indeed there’s nothing elevated about the relationship between Charlie and Harry who live a very working class life in London’s East End, the former’s ambitions to become an actor long since dashed.
There’s not much director Stanley Donen (Surprise Package, 1960) can do to open up the play beyond sticking a few of the scenes outdoors and there’s one sequence that would raise eyebrows these days when Charlie ogles half-naked male teenagers playing in the sun. The worst reason for adapting a play for Hollywood is that, unless farce raises its head or there’s a string of one-liners or hilarious circumstance, the verbosity plays against the possibility of there being outstanding cinematic sequences. Luckily, it ends with one, when Harry takes a frightened Charlie by the arm.
I’m not sure I’d actually recommend it because there’s not much going on and the performances are not in the Oscar league, but it is much better than I thought. Rex Harrison (The Honey Pot, 1967) has the showier role, Richard Burton (Anne of the Thousand Days, 1969) reining himself in.
Commercially, nobody came out of this well. Rex Harrison didn’t make another film for eight years, Burton finding it more difficult to extract a million bucks from producers, and Stanley Donen continuing his run of poor box office. And harder for any British audience to take this seriously once comic pair Morecambe and Wise started sharing a bed in their sketches.
You can keep your Succession dramas with families squabbling over a mere business empire. And even the more woke Snow White (2025) doesn’t remotely tackle the realities of marriage in medieval times when the role of a woman, in an era when more children died in childbirth or soon after than actually survived, was to produce an heir. And not just random in gender. But male.
So, on the one hand, you can sympathize with the dilemma of English King Henry VIII whose Spanish wife Katherine, while eminently fertile – several babies died in childbirth – had managed only one male offspring, who died shortly after birth, and one female, Mary. All the queen had given him, rails Henry (Richard Burton), are “dead sons.” So with the future of one of the biggest kingdoms in the world at stake, Henry isn’t keen to leave it in the hands of a woman. Even if he can arrange a suitable marriage, it would inevitably mean letting the kingdom fall into the hands of someone he doesn’t trust.
But in the twisted world of inheritance, here’s the rub. Henry shouldn’t be king. His elder brother Arthur should have, except he died before he could succeed to the throne. And Katherine, married to Arthur, should have been Queen. But Spain at that point was as powerful, if not more so, than England, so Henry decided to marry his sister-in-law, on the basis that the marriage was never consummated, and the Pope, the authority in such matters, gave the go-ahead, glossing over the technicality of what was considered in those days incest.
So, Henry comes up with a cunning plan. He will go trophy-hunting and marry a younger wife. This isn’t just because he’s fallen in love with Anne Boleyn (Genevieve Bujold). He doesn’t have to marry her to have sex with her. He’s already having sex with her mother (Valerie Gearon) with the tacit approval of her father (Michael Hordern) who receives benefits in kind.
To add complication, Anne is promised in marriage already, and deeply in love. Siring a bastard son would inevitably cause an inheritance battle. So legitimizing the relationship seems the only way forward. This time the Pope isn’t keen, mostly because the Spanish have invaded the Vatican and if he wants to survive he can hardly annoy his captors.
But when the Pope refuses, Henry takes the nuclear option, and splits from the Catholic Church, not just taking advantage of the old church vs state argument, but also made aware by Thomas Cromwell of the sudden increase in wealth acquiring the items of the Catholic Church would bring.
Sorry to bore you with a history lesson but this intriguing backdrop – as well as the dazzling performances – is what twists this away from lush costume confection into riveting drama. This was the peak of a trend in historical movies that shifted the emphasis from heroic action to the down’n’dirty. Camelot (1967) to some extent had begun the trend but only dealt with infidelity and was given something of a free pass because it focused on the iconic Knights of the Round Table and a legendary love affair. The Lion in Winter (1968) primarily concentrated on inheritance.
Depending where your sympathies lay this was either corruption writ large or a battle to free the ordinary man from the yoke of religion.
Primarily, it works because it revolves around the human drive, the king refusing to bow the knee to anyone, Anne Boleyn seduced not just by gifts but by this older man who is much more virile and passionate than her younger somewhat effete fiancé (and who couldn’t be dazzled by a man risking his kingdom for her love?) – and the courtiers looking after number one, always seeking a way of winning the king’s favor, and as importantly, not losing it, for that could lead to banishment or execution.
No one dares stand in Henry’s way – except Sir Thomas More (William Squire) and here he’s merely a small subplot (not center stage as in A Man for All Seasons, 1966) – not even the religious hierarchy, especially Cardinal Wolseley (Anthony Quayle), head of the Catholic Church in England, who keeps a mistress.
The tragedy is that the cunning plan unravels. While Anne is fertile enough, she gives birth to a girl, Elizabeth (the later Virgin Queen). Convinced she’s not going to present him with the male heir he so desperately desires, he hatches a conspiracy that sees her executed for adultery and treachery, leaving him free to marry again and continue his mad obsession.
So we’ve got all the back-biting and bitching we expect from court, plus regal revelry, costumes, castles, and in the middle of it all a driven king and a feisty woman, not by any means a pushover, and not either going unwillingly into his bed. This would be a match made in heaven except that’s probably the last place, the way things stand, the king would be welcome. He’s very aware of excommunication and it shows the power of the Catholic Church that its teachings are so embedded in his brain that he fears that consequence.
This is rich in performance – Richard Burton (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1965), Canadian Genevieve Bujold (The Thief of Paris, 1967) and Anthony Quayle (East of Sudan, 1964) were Oscar-nominated. The only significant figure in the production not to receive one of the movie’s ten nominations – including for Best Picture – was director Charles Jarrott who pulled the whole thing together. Maybe it was thought he was rusty, not having helmed a picture since Time to Remember seven years previously.
The acting is particularly well-judged by the two principals, Burton could easily have lurched into cliché, and Bujold into passivity. Others worth noting are Irene Papas (The Guns of Navarone, 1961), Michael Hordern (Khartoum, 1966), Valerie Gearon (Invasion, 1966) and Peter Jeffrey (The Fixer, 1968).
Based on the play by Maxwell Anderson (The Bad Seed, 1963), screenwriters John Hale in his movie debut and Bridget Boland (Gaslight, 1940) manage to balance what could be dry subject matter with fragility and tragedy.
There couldn’t be a better demonstration of women used as pawns and collateral damage in male power struggles.
Ode to the male gaze. Once a cult vehicle, this will struggle to find favor these days what with its backward attitudes. Virtually impossible to excuse the rampant self-undulgence. The sexually exploited naïve Ewa Aulin in the title role didn’t even have the benefit of being turned into a star. The satire is executed with all the finesse of a blunderbuss. And while, theoretically, picking off a wild range of targets, if this movie has anything to say it’s to point out how easy it is for men to deify themselves at the slightest opportunity.
Not much of a narrative more a series of sketches slung together with the slightest connecting thread. Most its appeal lies in watching huge marquee names make fools of themselves. Or, if you’re that way inclined, seeing how much nudity will be imposed on the star, intimacy rarely consensual, clothes usually whipped off her.
Teenager Candy (Ewa Aulin) has father issues, daddy (Jack Austin) being a dumb angst-ridden teacher. Randy poet McPhisto (Richard Burton) drives a class of schoolgirls into a frenzy with his lusty reading, inveigles Candy into his chauffeur-driven car, ends up in her basement drunkenly humping a mannequin while Mexican gardener (Ringo Starr) with an accent as coruscating as that of Manuel from Fawlty Towers assaults her on pool table. Scandalized father packs her off to his twin brother in New York, that notoriously safe haven for nymphettes, while on the way to the airport they are almost driven off the road by the gardener’s vengeful biker sisters (Florinda Balkan et al).
For no apparent reason she is hitching a lift on a military plane commanded by randy Brigadier Smight (Walter Matthau) who, on the grounds that he hasn’t had sex for six years, commands her to remove her clothes for the good of the nation. In the Big Apple, rock star surgeon Dr Krankheir (James Coburn), entering the operating theater to the same kind of waves of acclaim as McPhisto, finds an excuse to have her undress and submit to him, this just after she’s managed to avoid the attentions of her randy uncle. It should come as no surprise that Krankheit treats women as his personal property to the extent of branding them like cattle.
In due course, she encounters a gang of mobsters, an underground movie director and a hunchback (Charles Aznavour) who, in return for her showing pity for his condition, proceeds to rape her. She is arrested. Guess who wants to frisk her. Naturally, when she escapes she runs into a bunch of drag queens.
Then she finds sanctuary in a semi-trailer truck, home to guru Grindl (Marlon Brando). He’d be convincing enough as a mystic except he, too, finds an excuse to rip her clothes off. There are more cops to contend with and another guru, facial features obscured by white clay. If they’re going to have sex then naturally it must be in a Hindu temple. Turns out the latest person to take advantage of her is her father but he’s been handed a get-out-of-jail-free card because by now he’s brain damaged.
This might all be a dream/nightmare. Candy might even be an alien. It’s dressed up in enough psychedelia to sink a battleship and its highly likely that any lass as gullible as Candy will find herself at the mercy of any man, so in that context it carries a powerful message. I’m sure many beautiful young girls will attest to the truth that men feel they have the right to paw anyone who comes their way without asking permission. And the other message is just as powerful – how many young actresses have been seduced by thoughts of fame to disport themselves in this fashion only to find that all the industry wants is their nudity not their acting talent.
You might say that the target is so obvious it hardly needs pointing out but the MeToo campaign will beg to differ and you would hope that Hollywood has wised up. It’s just a shame that the satire is so heavy-handed. The military and the medical profession are sorely in need to answering tough questions. Unfortunately, this picture doesn’t ask any. It’s like an endless casting couch.
Directed by Christian Marquand (Of Flesh and Blood, 1963) in, thankfully, his final picture, from a screenplay by Buck Henry (The Graduate, 1967) and Terry Southern (Dr Strangelove, 1962) based on the novel by Southern and Mason Hoffenberg. Nobody comes out of this well and it’s rammed full of cameos from the likes of Elsa Martinelli (The Belle Starr Story, 1968), John Huston (Myra Breckenridge, 1970), Anita Pallenberg (Performance, 1970), Marilu Tolo (Bluebeard, 1972) and boxer Sugar Ray Robinson.
Ewa Aulin (Start the Revolution Without Me, 1971) isn’t given much of chance, her character whimsical, pallid and submissive and she didn’t become a major marquee name.
The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) appeared as part of new British production strategy. In fact, the British had been trying to dominate the global film industry since the silent era when the population of its Commonwealth exceeded that of the United States. At various points, the British had launched various distribution attacks on Hollywood – aligning with U.S. cinema chains, organizing their own distribution system (Gaumont-British in the 1930s for example) and even taking over major Broadway houses as a launch platform for new releases. Come the end of the 1960s , Britain had lost its production grip on the world stage. Though movies were still being made in Britain they were often funded by Hollywood, or were B-movies or genre-specific such as Hammer horror.
In 1969, Associated British Picture Corporation, following a takeover by EMI, relaunched as a major production entity, aiming to provide increased programming for its own 270-strong ABC cinema chain as well as hitting the export market. Bernard Delfont, chairman of ABPC, set up two production strategies that he intended to run in parallel. He brought in director Bryan Forbes (King Rat, 1965) as production chief of ABPC while Nat Cohen, head of ABPC subsidiary Anglo-Amalgamated, would augment that effort.
Full page ads (above and below) were taken in “Variety” to promote the MGM-EMI slate. Of the 26 features planned, only 15 were made.
Forbes took on the role after initially signing a three-picture deal with Delfont which developed into “something wider…at a time of real crisis.” Forbes explained his motivation: “I think if you’ve been a critic as I have over the years…you’ve got to put up or shut up. And if the job is offered to you, you can’t turn it down and then go on criticising.”
The initial slate was being made with no guarantee of foreign distribution. Even getting a foothold in Britain was difficult. “We are very dependent…on getting West End outlets. There’s a long queue and we don’t have any particular pull.”
(In Britain at this point, roadshow – which to a large extent was no longer the favoured release device for big budget pictures in the U.S. – still dominated the West End and the type of picture being envisaged was more targeted towards the circuit. But a West End run was always seen as a mark of quality. The downside of the West End release was that it delayed movies reaching the provinces and by the time they did all the initial media interest was long forgotten.)
Budgets were being assessed to meet the prospect that a very successful film could recover its negative costs on a British release alone, with anything else pure profit. Trying to appeal to the international and/or U.S. market at the outset was too complicated and expensive a proposition. And there was always the prospect that with the production well running dry in American, that a distributor, with a hole to fill, would come calling.
ABPC allocated a total budget of £36 million to make 28 pictures, with Forbes’ outfit taking the lion share, leaving Nat Cohen only $7 million to make 13 movies. According to Delfont, it was the “most ambitious” program ever scheduled by a British company. While certainly an overstatement given the investment by Rank, ABPC and Gaumont-British in the past, it nonetheless captured media attention.
The Forbes project didn’t go according to plan. Hoffman (1970) with Peter Sellers, thriller And Soon the Darkness (1970), The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970) starring Roger Moore, The Breaking of Bumbo (1970) and Mr Forbrush and the Penguins (1971) headlining John Hurt and Hayley Mills all flopped, despite costing a lot less than originally expected. The Railway Children (1971) was the only undeniable hit while The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971) made a profit. Raging Moon / Long Ago, Tomorrow (1971), with Forbes directing Malcolm McDowell and Nanette Newman, and Dulcima (1971) with John Mills and Carol White also ended up in the red.
Forbes fared much better heading up MGM-EMI, a co-production unit set up in 1970, which produced hits The Go-Between (1971) and Get Carter (1971). Forbes resigned in 1971.
Nat Cohen, while pandering to a lower common denominator, enjoyed more straightforward success with sex-change comedy Percy (1971), and big screen versions of On the Buses (1971), Up Pompeii (1971) and Steptoe and Son (1972) – and their various sequels – Richard Burton as Villain (1971), Fear Is the Key (1972), and Stardust (1974) while Murder on the Orient Express (1974) with an all-star cast was a huge global hit.
In 1976 Michael Deeley and Barry Spikings became joint managing directors of EMI and aiming for an international audience fronted part of the finance for The Deer Hunter (1978), Sam Peckinpah’s Convoy (1978) and Walter Hill’s The Driver (1978) and had significant investment in Columbia pictures like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The Deep (1977).
But the British invasion amounted to very little in the end, as Hollywood, led by gargantuan hits of The Godfather (1972), Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977) swept all before them and made it impossible for British-made films to compete either on a commercial or artistic basis.
The experiment was a massive flop. EMI failed to break into the American market and, in fact, the box office achieved was on the dismal side. Best performers were Get Carter and The Go-Between both estimated to achieve rentals of just under $2 million. Tales of Beatrix Potter didn’t reach $1 million and Villain not $750,000. The Railway Children couldn’t manage $500,000 nor Percy $250,000 and none of the others even crossed the $100,000 mark. It was considered such a footnote in British movie history that it didn’t merit a mention in Sarah Street’s Transatlantic Crossing, British Feature Films in the USA (Continuum, 2002).
SOURCES: Alexander Walker, Hollywood England, (Orion paperback, 2005) p426-440; Advert, Variety, January 21, 1970, p12-13; Derek Todd, “The Emperor of Elstree’s First 300 Days,” Kine Weekly, March 7, 1970, p6-8, 19; “MGM-EMI In Joint Deal On British Filmmaking,” Box Office, April 27, 1970, p7; “MGM Setting EMI CoProds,” Variety, June 10, 1970, p3; “MGM-EMI To Produce 12 Films Annually,” Box Office, July 6, 1970, p6; “From $10-Mil and Up, Rentals, to $100,000 and Less,” Variety, November 12, 1972, p5.
Get Carter, out the same year, tends to get the critical nod over Villain, but I beg to differ. Not only do we have the most realistic robbery yet depicted on screen, but Richard Burton (Becket, 1964), delivering one of his greatest performances, is nearly matched by Ian McShane, flexing acting muscles that would come to fruition in Deadwood (2004-2006) and John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), and Nigel Davenport’s cop, as cool under pressure as Frank Bullitt.
Where Michael Caine in Get Carter is primarily the avenging angel, Burton’s Vic Dakin is every bit as complex as Michael Corleone. Way ahead of its time in portraying Dakin as a gay gangster in sympathetic fashion, he also has a moral code akin to that of Don Corleone. While the Mafia chieftain drew the line at selling drugs, Dakin despises MP Draycott (Donald Sinden) for his corruption and views with contempt sometime boyfriend Wolfe (Ian McShane) for small-time drugs and girl peddling.
He reveres (as did Don Corleone) family values, bringing his aging mother tea in bed, kissing her affectionately on the forehead, treating her to a day out at the Brighton. But he also rejoices in violence as much as any of Scorsese’s gallery of thugs.
Complexity is the order of the day. Every dominant character, whether operating on the legal or illegal side of the street, receives a come-uppance verging on humiliation. Dakin himself is arrested in full view of his mother. The bisexual Wolfe, who otherwise dances unscathed through the mire, is beaten up by Dakin and humiliated when his male lover shows his female lover, the upmarket Venetia (Fiona Lewis), the door. Top gangster Frank (T.P. McKenna), who attempts to lord it over Dakin, ends up whimpering in agony in the back seat of a car.
Maverick cop Mathews (Nigel Davenport) is brought to heel by internal politics and frustrated at home when his wife is indifferent to the late night shenanigans of his son. Even cocky thug Duncan (Tony Selby), with a quip to terrify victims, is reduced to a quivering wreck under the relentless stare of Dakin.
Unlike The Godfather, mothers excepted, wives and girlfriends are complicit. Little chance of a shred of feminism here. Women are chattels, Venetia is traded out as a “favor” to Draycott, terrified gangster’s moll Patti (Elizabeth Knight) also used in that capacity by Wolfe. Draycott professes little interest in whether the women, procured in this fashion, enjoy sex with him.
So, to the story. Tempted by a tasty payroll robbery, Dakin steps out of his usual line of work, a protection racket, and joins up with two other leading hoods, Frank (T.P. McKenna) and his brother-in-law, the belching Edgar (Joss Ackland). But the robbery goes wrong. The tail is spotted by the payroll car and the victims almost evade capture. But stopping the payroll car renders the getaway vehicle virtually useless, a flat tyre soon flies off and they drive for miles on a wheel rim.
The payroll is well-guarded and several of the villains emerge badly scathed. Worse, the cases containing the cash have anti-theft devices, equipped with legs that spring out and red clouds of smoke. And there are ample witnesses. Edgar is quickly apprehended, and the movie enters a vicious endgame.
Contemporary audiences were put off by the obvious references to the Kray Twins and the Profumo Affair and American audiences had long shown an aversion to Cockneys (though that is not so apparent here) and critics gave it a mauling, the general feeling being that after Performance (1970) and Get Carter, the British public was entitled to the more genial criminal as exemplified by The Italian Job (1969), incidentally another U.S. flop.
There are many superb moments: Dakin’s affectionate stroke of Wolfe’s shoulder, Dakin and his sidekick’s nonchalant stroll over a footbridge as they make their escape, Dakin pushing Draycott into a urinal, Wolfe abandoning Venetia at a country house party so that Draycott can avail himself of the “favor,” Dakin’s love for his mother. Throwaways point to deeper issues, a country stricken by strikes and political corruption.
Dakin, unaware he has made a target for his own back by the unnecessary brutal treatment of an associate, comes up against a cool implacable cop, as confident as Dakin without the arrogance or recourse to brutality, easy with the quip.
A modern audience might appreciate the violence more than the acting, given that a la Scorsese we are supposed to revel in criminal behavior, but it’s the performances that lift the film. Burton had entered a career trough, sacked from Laughter in the Dark (1969), involved in a quartet of financial and critical turkeys – Boom! (1968), Candy (1968), Staircase (1969) and Raid on Rommel (1971) – with only another Oscar nomination for Anne of the Thousand Days (1970) to alleviate the gathering gloom that would see him strike out in his next nine pictures before another nomination for Equus (1977) restored some stability.
So this is a superb character, suited and booted he might be, doting on his mother, but underneath stung by insecurity and unable to rein in his sadistic streak. A marvellous addition to the canon of great gangster portrayals.
Ian McShane, too, provides a performance of great depth, in his element when skirting around the small-time world, out of his depth with the big time, the charm that can hook a vulnerable upper-class lass like Venetia as likely to attract a malevolent mobster, the former under his thumb, the latter controlling. To see him go from cheeky chappie with a winning grin to penitent lover forced to dismiss Venetia is quite an achievement.
Nigel Davenport (Sands of the Kalahari, 1965) is on top form and the supporting cast could hardly have been better – T.P. McKenna (Young Cassidy, 1965), plummy-voiced Donald Sinden (Father, Dear Father TV series, 1969-1972) playing against type, Joss Ackland (Rasputin: The Mad Monk, 1966). Throw in a bit of over-acting from Colin Welland (Kes, 1969) plus Fiona Lewis (Where’s Jack?, 1969) at her most accomplished.
Michael Tuchner (Fear Is the Key, 1972) directs with some style from a screenplay by Dick Clement and Ian La Fresnais (Hannibal Brooks, 1969) working from the novel by al Lettieri.
Vanity dies hard. It’s not the first time a top-ranked actor was convinced he could show Hollywood how it should be done. A raft of stars in the 1950s and 1960s – from John Wayne and Burt Lancaster to Gregory Peck and Frank Sinatra – had lost their shirts setting up production companies. The notion of the creative hyphenate only made sense as a tax dodge, being able to spread earnings from a big hit over decades rather than paying all your dues in one year. But you could do that anyway, by means of the initial contract, as William Holden had done with Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
Otherwise, the vanity project was littered with box office and critical disasters. And it’s odd that it took so long for one of the best-known notions in literature – the idea of selling your soul to the Devil in return for earthly reward – to be realized on film. Especially as it had a line – “was this the face that launched a thousand ships?” – to rival “To be or not to be” as the most famous sentence in literature. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare, was published in 1604.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968) was a more diabolical and commercial spin on the same theme but it’s not as if the movies had ignored the idea – The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), Bedazzled (1967) and later Ghost Rider (2007) and Hellblazer (2013) could lay claim to be inspired by the legend, never mind musician Robert Johnson who famously sold his soul to the devil (beware of crossroads).
Presumably, multiple Oscar nominee and theatrical giant Richard Burton believed nobody had done the original play justice. Films made from historical plays were quite the thing in the late 1960s – Romeo and Juliet (1968) might have in retrospect seemed a sure thing, but The Taming of the Shrew (1967), even with Burton and Taylor in tow, was a considerable risk.
Doctor Faustus, Burton’s follow-up to that bawdy Shakespearian romp, was certainly a low-budget affair, with little more than $1 million available, derived from various sources including the pockets of the star and producer Joseph E. Levine (The Carpetbaggers, 1964) , with Columbia on board as distributor to give it the Hollywood seal of approval.
But, critically, Burton also shouldered directorial duties along with academic Nevill Coghill who had no experience either in that arena. It looks good in an old-fashioned costumed-to-the-hilt fashion but all the actor does is speak the lines. Burdened at times with a wig or thick-framed black glasses he comes across more like smutty British comedian Benny Hill than a classical actor, that comparison not helped by the occasional emergence of naked women with conveniently very long hair to hide most of their nudity.
Beyond an occasional scene filmed through the eye of a skull, there’s no discernible style and since Burton is surrounded by amateur actors no detectable drama, except, theoretically, the battle for his soul. There are some woeful images, Faustus, victorious in battle, prancing around with swords sticking out of his body, and even an appearance of Elizabeth Taylor as Helen of Troy, at one point like a silver version of the gold-painted Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger (1964), offers mere diversion rather than dramatic focus.
So, unlike Ice Palace (1960), we’ve got the sonorous growling whisky-sodden voice but not even a whisper of true drama. A touch of melodrama here would certainly not have gone amiss. Just Faustus sauntering around speaking lines in the iambic pentameter of the period to make the tale even harder to understand.
Even sold under the Burton-Taylor brand, it made little headway with audiences, even those turning up at their local arthouse, which was its default destination. Proof, judging from the poster, that you can always find a laudatory critic when you need one.
Theoretically, it should have gained a lease of life in the So Bad It’s Good cult category but for that to occur you needed an audience to watch it the whole way through and that’s a pretty big ask.
Adaptations of sprawling novels require a firm hand at screenplay stage. Exodus (1960), for example, excised the first couple of hundred pages depicting the first two millennia relating the history of the Jews in the Leon Uris bestseller. Hawaii (1966) sliced the James Michener epic in two, the sequel The Hawaiians (1970) taking up the slack. Otherwise, like here, you end up with a multi-generational sprawl.
The producers clearly felt that the endzone – two grandfathers warring over a grand-daughter that was also somehow a metaphor for the battle for Alaskan statehood – was too good to miss. Except author Edna Ferber (Giant, 1956) had already dealt with that problem, in her book beginning at the end, where feminist icon Christine Storm is given a voice and the story unfolds in flashback. Instead, it’s Christine who has to wait ages to make an appearance and scarcely in the manner outlined by the novelist.
Initially, ex-World War One soldier Zeb (Richard Burton) and Alaskan fisherman Thor (Robert Ryan) become friends after the latter saves the former from drowning, Zeb having lost his job in a cannery for fancying boss’s daughter Dorothy (Martha Hyer). The pair then decide to go into business together, Thor catching the salmon, Zeb canning them. But illicit love tears the incipient partnership apart, Thor’s fiancée Bridie (Carolyn Jones) falling for Zeb.
Finding banks are against funding a nobody, Zeb hits the mother lode in capitalizing his business by marrying the wealthy Dorothy, while a distraught Thor hits the snowy wastes and returns with an Eskimo son. Bridie hangs around long enough to sew the seeds of suspicion and take a hand in bringing up the baby, though holding back on the marriage that might seal the deal.
So then we are quickly onto the second generation. Thor’s son Einer (Barry Kelley) and Zeb’s daughter Grace (Shirley Knight) elope to the snowy wastes where, guess what, she gets pregnant, but, guess what, he is killed by a bear and she dies giving birth to Christine (Diane McBain).
So that takes us to the final act, Dorothy now also conveniently dead, grandfathers sharing custody, and the metaphor for the birth of Alaska in full swing. Zeb, now a greying ruthless industrialist who finds it easier to feed his multiple canneries by catching fish in traps as they exit the Alaskan rivers, opposes statehood, fearing legislation will curb his entrepreneurial tendencies and that, more to the point, he will be hardest hit by the taxation required to fund the government apparatus. Thor, meanwhile, has turned greying politician, fighting Zeb every inch of the way, Christine now mere collateral damage.
An Australian daybill hence the date “1961” rather than “1960” the date it appeared in the U.S.
It’s certainly a full-throated melodrama, and might have worked better if it had skipped a generation and got to the warring grandparents sooner, or worked the love triangle up to a higher pitch, but that might have felt like the bloodbath required to kill off Dorothy, Einer and Grace would have looked even more calculated. And it could have done with more actual high drama, fishermen battling mighty waves on the high seas, for example, as in The Perfect Storm (2000), and to be honest watching caught salmon shooting along cannery travelators is no substitute.
The other problem is that neither Richard Burton (Becket, 1964) nor Robert Ryan (The Wild Bunch, 1969) has settled into their screen persona. In the former’s case it’s the voice. Except in fleeting instances, we are deprived of his whisky-sodden sonorous tones. In the latter it’s the stillness, all the work done with the eyes or a grimace instead of an overworked marionette, body jumping, arms pumping. In both cases, and with the entire cast for that matter, there’s over-reliance on flashing eyes, a mainstay of overwrought melodrama.
If you’re searching out subtlety you’d have to watch the women, the look on Dorothy’s face on first meeting Bridie and recognizing a rival, the various expressions on Bridie’s face – for virtually the whole picture – as she observes the unobtainable Zeb grow even more distant, and Grace as she realizes she is being duped into a marriage of political convenience. And with so much story to pack in, the best scene in the picture just whizzes by, when, in the absence of the town doctor, Bridie is called upon to be midwife to Zeb’s child, knowing that it should, if only she had the courage at the time, be hers.
The Alaskan statehood element was, I imagine, lost on non-American audiences, the statehood metaphor probably lost on everyone except discerning critics, and as far as I can work out from the box office nobody anywhere gave two hoots for the picture. Bear in mind Richard Burton was far from a major star, having burned his boats after star-making roles in The Robe (1953) and Alexander the Great (1956) failed to provide the necessary glue to bind actor and moviegoer. In fact, Burton was so little in demand he was scarcely making a movie a year – and only The Robe entered positively in the box office balance sheet – until Cleopatra (1963) revived his career.
So with a cut-price Burton and an over-extended Robert Ryan there’s little the women can do to rescue the picture, though Carolyn Jones (How the West Was Won, 1962), Martha Hyer (The Sons of Katie Elder, 1965), the debuting Diane McBain (Claudelle Inglish, 1961) and Shirley Knight (The Group, 1966) put in more heartfelt performances.
Vincent Sherman (A Fever in the Blood, 1961) directed from a screenplay by Harry Kleiner (Bullitt, 1968). One look at the gem George Stevens created from Giant and all you can see here is missed opportunity.
Richard Burton was first choice. Sean Connery second. Jack Lemmon a distinct possibility. A suave Frenchman such as Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless, 1960) was briefly entertained. Brigitte Bardot a certainty for the female lead. Thoughts of entertaining Steve McQueen for the male lead were so far beyond left field as to have entered the outer limits. He played down’n’dirty working characters clad in nothing more sophisticated than denim. Faye Dunaway’s screen persona – violent slutty bitch – was the opposite of the character depicted.
Producer Walter Mirisch was well versed than most about McQueen, having hired him for The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963). But when Burton rejected the part, “we determined to try to interest Sean Connery in the role.” The Scottish actor was receptive to any movies that would instantly take him away from the typecasting of the James Bond series. Lunch at the Regency Hotel was followed by further conversation “for most of a Saturday afternoon.”
But to no avail. “We were crestfallen when we failed to convince Sean Connery,” who was, after all, the biggest star in the world, and looked immaculate in a suit.
Even Steve McQueen acknowledged he was an odd choice. He told a film school class in January 1967 that he was a “limited actor, I mean my range isn’t very great.” But after the possibility of crowning his acting career with Oscar glory for The Sand Pebbles (1966) had faded and with motor racing epic Day of the Champion in cold storage but with a six-picture with Warner brothers promising a hefty $700,000 per, he had the pick of projects.
Maybe too many came his way, over 100 in a few months. He took a meeting with Twentieth Century Fox over a proposal to star with Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road (1967). He was mooted, along with Paul Newman, for In Cold Blood (1967) and was wooed by John Huston for The Kremlin Letter (not made till 1970).
Eventually, director Norman Jewison, who had worked with McQueen on The Cincinnati Kid (1965), another change to the actor’s screen persona, after much badgering, agreed to let him see the script. “Norman and I both felt that Steve was completely wrong to play Thomas Crown,” commented Mirisch, especially over the demand that “he should to wear a necktie on the screen.”
Although Jewison and McQueen shared the same agency, William Morris, the notion of the actor being tapped up for the role didn’t come from there. McQueen heard about it from a friend Steve Ferry who had seen the screenplay. Jewison came straight to the point when he took a telephone call from McQueen: “If it’s Thomas Crown, forget it. You’re not right. I love you and respect you as an actor. But I’ll never tell you lies. You can’t have the part.”
Jewison went further, listing the actor’s shortcomings, explaining McQueen was prone to “looking down at the ground or squinting up into the sun…What’s going to happen when you have to look people in the eye?” Only after three hours on the director’s back lawn did Jewison’s obstinacy relent. “The more he talked, the more I saw him as Thomas Crown. Now we had the problem of turning him physically into Thomas Crown.”
“He’s a rebel like me,” surmised McQueen, “Sure, a high society rebel, but my kinda cat.” Jewison kept telling him he “wasn’t right for it.” It was “unlike anything Steve had ever done” and casting him still seemed a risk. McQueen was aware of the damage miscasting could do to this career. “I don’t have any illusions on that score…If people laugh at me, my ass is gone.”
McQueen explained his enthusiasm for the role. “I had thought of changing my screen image for more than a year. I felt it was time to get past those tough upright types. When Norman showed me the Crown part I grabbed it.”
It was an odd movie from the beginning, not churned out by a seasoned professional. An experienced Hollywood type would never have considered writing a heist picture where the mastermind was a slick millionaire with a string of successful businesses behind him, who, rather than being a professional criminal, was drawn to crime from sheer boredom.
Alan R. Trustman was a legal eagle, partner at the law firm of Nutter, McClennen and Fish. “I had never written a line, except for law briefs. One Sunday afternoon I got bored watching TV and suddenly, for no apparent reason, I thought it would be fun to write a screen story…in two months The Crown Caper was done.” But it was nothing like the polished movie that ended up on screen. “It had a lot of dialogue, a lot of description and a lot of prose,” recalled Mirisch, and at thirty pages long was more of a treatment than a script. “But it had a great germ of an idea.”
Mirisch was an early advocate of Faye Dunaway, having seen her on stage in a play, Hogan’s Goat (1965), recognized her potential and “always had in mind that, one day, a role would come along.”
Mirisch had McQueen on some sort of a financial string. Their multiple-picture deal with him dated back to The Magnificent Seven (1960), at a time when he was a rising rather than established star. In the way of such pacts, initial remuneration was pretty low, rising with each successive picture, and relying on the actor having become, somehow, a success.
“His agent and manager made a big fuss about the nominal salary provided for in our second option. To settle the argument,” stated Mirisch, “I agreed to pay him the salary called for in the third option as well as to cancel that last option. I recognized that we really should be paying him more than the price stipulated in the option. Also I felt that trying to enforce the third option would be difficult if not impossible.”
If Walter Mirisch thought he was getting a bargain, it wasn’t much of one. McQueen still pulled in $650,000 plus $1,000 a week living expenses and a ton of perks – including it later transpired the dune buggy (worth about $50,000 at today’s prices), all the tailor-made suits, and the shoes and a swag-bag of props. The actor called on his Beverley Hills tailor Ron Postal to deck him out in $400 suits (over $3,500 now), had his hair transformed by celebrity stylist Jay Sebring (later murdered along with his girlfriend Sharon Tate by the Manson gang) and learned to play polo “until his hands literally bled.”
Dunaway, by contrast, with Bonnie and Clyde (1967) in the bank and wanted by every studio in town, was paid a larger salary (though McQueen made up for it by his profit share). Out of the $4.3 million budget around a third was spent on the salaries of the two principals.
Dunaway proved terrific casting for another reason. She was as tough, single-minded and independent as the character she played. She had an inner strength McQueen’s previous leading ladies and contemporary amours lacked. In person “she threw him off-balance” and she “did the same thing on camera” which provided the anchor of their relationship. She was far from the typical Hollywood “love interest.”
Mirisch’s pact with Jewison had proved wildly successful, among the best financial deals the company had ever achieved, the hot box office of The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966) exceeded by In the Heat of the Night (1967). Jewison rehired many of the crew from his previous picture, including two budding directors, cinematographer Haskell Wexler (Medium Cool, 1969) and editor Hal Ashby (Shampoo, 1975).
Aside from the sensational screen charisma of the leading actors, the screenplay’s originality was enhanced by a huge step forward in the use of technology, the innovative split-screen process, executed by visual designer Pablo Ferro, who had devised the credit sequence for The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.
Multiple image was used in three principal area – to introduce six characters and establish their relationship during the initial robbery, for the polo game, and in the final caper. The polo game employed “not only out-of-focus and soft effect panels but also at some point involved over fifty separate panels on the screen simultaneously,” said Jewison. For the second robbery “the amount of film used in relationship to the amount of screen time was probably in the ratio of four-to-one.”
In other words, not only was it incredibly stylish, but it vastly compressed screen time, reducing the running length by fifteen or twenty minutes, ensuring that the audiences concentrated on the evolving relationship between McQueen and Dunaway.
McQueen could ride, of course, what Hollywood star, with westerns in high demand, could not. “But he hated horses and he hated polo, but he wasn’t about to give up.” Thanks to his dedication, he proved a worthy competitor. Jewison only believed in McQueen once he witnessed him in action playing polo. “That’s when I realized how much he was giving for the film. Polo was symbolic of all the reasons why he wanted to play Thomas Crown.” The snobs at the club might sneer but they could not ignore “his sensational back hand.”
McQueen had never used the English saddle, a prerequisite for polo. He trained at the Myopia hunt club from morning till night until he mastered the art of riding using his knees not his arms (essential to be kept as free as possible to swing the mallet) as well as becoming such a “proficient player” he received a standing ovation from the members.
The F.B.I. refused to cooperate. Rejecting a request to film in its Boston office, the crime buster operation complained about what it perceived as “an outrageous portrayal of the Bureau” especially as the film ended with Thomas Crown outwitting the organization.
McQueen turned up for shooting as if he had swallowed the Method. “Call me Tommy,” he told the crew. But there was limited time to knock the character into shape, the actor having only signed up for a week of pre-production.
The twelve-week shoot was marred for McQueen by “some letters of a threatening nature that he had received.” That meant posting a security guard on his rented house to ensure the safety of his children. “It preyed on his mind a great deal during the shooting,” said Mirisch.
According to Jewison, McQueen’s security concerns evolved into paranoia, itself driven by his drug-taking. As well as a 24-hour security detail and surveillance on the front of his house, he demanded the same facility for the back of his house which between him and the Atlantic Ocean consisted only of a private beach. “Who the hell did he think was going to get in from there?” mused the director. Off-screen McQueen never exhibited his on-screen confidence. Jewison observed, “He was tortured.”
Filming was, as Jewison put it, best described as “bittersweet.” Producer Robert Relyea recalled “refereeing” a few incidents between actor and director. McQueen’s unease or the eternal power battle between director and actor resulted in one opportunity missed. For the dune buggy scene, said Jewison, “we had everything lined up for a scene on the beach at Magic Hour just as the sun was going down. Beautiful… conditions were perfect, everyone was ready except Thomas Crown Esq who was out in the surf in his dune buggy not answering his radio.”
Oddly enough, McQueen objected to the director speaking to him snippily when the actor returned and after that their relationship wasn’t the same, McQueen nibbling away at the director’s confidence, objecting to scenes or lines, until Jewison at one point ended up in tears. McQueen became a consummate actor, expressing emotion with the slightest lift of an eyebrow, or tightening a facial muscle, because “he couldn’t get his tongue around a lot of words.”
The producer was delighted to return to Boston, the movie’s main location, because he had attended college there a quarter of a century previously. Locations used included Old Copp’s Hill Cemetery, the Boston commons, the Little Italy outdoor markets, Anthony’s Pier 4 restaurant, and the sand dunes near Crane’s Beach and Provincetown. The St James Ballroom of the Jordan Marsh mansion provided the setting for the ballroom while the chess game was shot at the Goldwyn Studio. The initial bank robbery was filmed using hidden cameras at the National Shawmut Bank.
For the chess game “ we were hoping to get inspired moments that could give us more than dialog could.” Inspiration didn’t stop there, the fashionable outfits adorning Dunaway helped enormously and, of course, the movie hit pay dirt with the Oscar-winning theme song, “The Windmills of Your Mind” composed by Michel Legrand with lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman, a huge success in the global singles charts.
The original title of The Crown Caper was changed for a time to Thomas Crown and Company before setting finally on The Thomas Crown Affair.
Although initially criticized as being primary style over substance, and now recognized as a work of inspired genius, one of the few times when everything falls into place on a movie, according to Mirisch, it was more “an exhibition of style…we hoped to dazzle the audience with the multiple panels and the chess game, the photography and the music.”
It proved a smash at the box office, rentals of $6.25 million in the U.S, nearly matched by $5 million abroad.
SOURCES: Walter Mirisch, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008) p265-270; Penina Spiegel, Steve McQueen, The Untold Story of the Bad Boy of Hollywood (Collins, 1968) p201-209; Christopher Sandford, McQueen, The Biography (HarperCollins Entertainment, 2002) p196-198, 202-206.
The eponymous reptile is a rather obvious metaphor for characters trapped by quixotic decisions. Regardless of the Rev Dr. T Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) being a defrocked priest, he was always going to lead a dissolute life, alcohol the least of his temptations. This heady drama begins with comedy about a man with ideas above his station ending up as an incompetent tourist guide.
And if his behaviour is not scandalous enough for current coach party, middle-aged Baptist ladies, he leads them to a hotel in Mexico run by former lover Maxine (Ava Gardner) who has two younger lovers on the go. And as is the way with author Tennessee Williams there’s a posse of fascinating characters, led by spinster Hannah (Deborah Kerr) who ekes out an itinerant living selling paintings while her aged grandfather (Cyril Devalanti) recites poetry. Raising the moral stakes is under-age Charlotte (Sue Lyon) who has taken a fancy to Shannon, partly in rebellion against her frosty chaperone Judith (Grayson Hall).
For a movie with no great narrative drive, there’s no shortage of drama, whether it’s the Reverend under constant attack from his charges, Charlotte making advances, Shannon succumbing or trying to fight his addictions, Maxine succumbing then rejecting his advances, and Hannah on the sidelines trying to work out why her entire life has been lived in the shadows.
A simple dramatic fuse has been lit, disparate group with secrets set to explode, and you just sit back and enjoy the ride. Exceptionally daring, even if in discreet fashion, for the time, not just the Lolita-style Charlotte, but the middle-aged Maxine cavorting with not one but two men young enough to be her sons, so effectively a Cougar (before the term was invented) in a threesome, a woman in full command on her sex life not at the whim of a male. There’s as overt a gay woman as you would find in this era. And that’s before we come to Hannah, one of whose two sexual experiences involved averting her eyes while her male companion masturbated on a piece of her clothing. That was taking it way beyond the limits of acceptable on-screen behaviour of the day.
Characters are either engulfed by their passions or weaknesses or trying to come to terms with them, sometimes both. Over everything hangs poignancy at the self-deception practised, redemption scarcely a possibility, communication a minefield, acceptance the best anyone can hope for. Quality acting prevents this disappearing down a sinkhole of self-pity.
Richard Burton (Becket, 1964) was on a roll, one brilliant performance after another either with or without Elizabeth Taylor, essaying a wide range of characters. This is one of his best. You should despise the sham he has become, relying on charm to dig himself out of a hole, relying far too much on the kindness of strangers whose sympathy is exhausted. Yet the loss of the only position, a clergyman, for which he was possibly suited, thrown out for committing unforgiveable sin while preaching sanctity, makes him a very relatable human being. This isn’t Days of Wine and Roses reborn, but someone trying to win the pinch of oxygen required to keep his soul alive, and stir the energy inside. And he would be furious if you ever made the mistake of feeling sorry for him.
Ava Gardner (Mayerling, 1968) is superb, staring age in the face, unrepentant, sex an acceptable substitute for love, underlying sadness admirably restrained. But Deborah Kerr (The Chalk Garden, 1964), brings a refreshing dash to her introspective character, a woman with practical solutions except to her own emotional emptiness. Sue Lyon (Lolita, 1962) is only briefly scandalous and the movie’s conclusion suggests she is capable of settling down and not giving into the base desires that afflict all the others.
Just as with The Misfits (1961), director John Huston allows his characters to breathe. It would have been very easy to allow Shannon to have a more heroic or stoic stature, instead of someone stumbling around. Tinges of comedy and wit lighten the load. Huston and Anthony Veiller (The List of Adrian Messenger, 1963) wrote the screenplay from the Tennessee Williams play.
Two stars in impeccable form, an intriguing tale of betrayal and redemption, and a sharp reminder that Britain was once a conquered nation. Given the original play was written by a Frenchman, Jean Anouilh, I wondered how much of the experience of France being occupied by Germany during World War Two informed the work.
Becket (Richard Burton) is dabbed a collaborator for having anything to do with King Henry II (Peter O’Toole), not just in his gainful employ and rising to positions of enormous power, but in accepting his friendship being viewed as a traitor to his countryman. England then, 100 years after the invasion of William the Conqueror, was divided into Normans, who ruled, and Saxons, the indigenous population, who obeyed. The only source of rebellion was through the Catholic Church which could claim, in its prime allegiance to God, to place religion above ruler.
Initially, it’s the story of two unprincipled men, who drink and lust to their heart’s content, until Henry, misreading his friend’s personality, appoints him Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important religious leader in the country, assuming that Becket would continue in his hypocritical ways and bring the clergy to heel. Unfortunately, in taking on the position, Becket takes to heart everything it stands for and instead of extending his power Henry finds it challenged.
It’s classic narrative, fast friends turned bitter enemies, the American Civil War in a nutshell. The more Becket sticks to his guns, the more his life is imperilled. Since the story is based on historical actuality, anyone who saw it at the time would be aware of the famous outcome, but the teaching of history and English history at that, either having fallen in abeyance or being given the revisionist treatment, viewers coming at afresh will be surprised at the political and moral twists and turns.
Nor is it of the “thee” and “thou” school of historical drama. The language is modernised, it is filled with humor, and spiced through with irony. Caught in a downpour during a hunt and sheltering, wet and bedraggled, in a peasant hut in a wood, Becket explains to the king that anyone who dared light him a fire would be hanged for taking precious wood out of the forest, a law laid down by Henry to make more money from his forests.
Likeable though Henry is, full of energy and fun, he is also sly and mean. On the basis of what’s mine is yours, he passes on a peasant lass to Becket, but in demanding the favour returned insists that Becket allow him to have sex with his fiancee, who promptly commits suicide rather than submit.
Henry wheedles as much as he demands, needing to keep his nobles in line if they are to fund his lifestyle and wars. There is always the tricky business of making alliances with untrustworthy rivals. This almost a template for Game of Thrones, the business of ruling as much about the velvet glove as the iron fist, negotiation and concession as important as outright demonstrations of strength.
Even when in an inferior position, there is always diplomatic recourse. The French king (John Gielgud), deliberately keeping waiting a British contingent, explains that the delay will allow them time to be measured for some fashionable French clothing. Now that is a barb served in silk.
It’s possibly as big a surprise to Becket, as indulgent in drinking and whoring as the king, to discover that he has principles. The clergy was known for abusing its power and, despite taking a vow of poverty, living high on the hog. So he stuns both his fellow priests and bishops as much as the king when he gives away all his possessions to fulfil that basic vow. There’s almost an element of naivety. Having played the game so far, suddenly he refuses, to the consternation of everyone in power.
For a time it becomes a battle of wills and that eternal question of who is more important, the invisible God or the human king, and Becket to some extent becomes a pawn.
And it’s brilliantly acted. In his first role since coming to global attention with Lawrence of Arabia (1964) Peter O’Toole creates a more down-to-earth conniving ruthless character. Richard Burton (Cleopatra, 1963), trying to prove he can attract an audience without the help of Elizabeth Taylor, matches him every step of the way. The fiery oratory is replaced by introspection.
Director Peter Glenville (The Comedians, 1967) resists the temptation to open up the stage play, which he also helmed on Broadway (where it won the Tony for Best Play), and for a historical picture set in warring times it’s surprisingly lacking in battles. But it’s easily one of the best historical pictures ever made and it’s a travesty that the Oscar for Best Actor went to neither O’Toole nor Burton, both nominated who split the vote, but to Rex Harrison for My Fair Lady. John Gielgud (The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1968) was a whimsical quirky delight, so different to his normal screen persona.
Out of 12 Oscar nominations, it won only for screenplay, by Edward Anhalt (The Satan Bug, 1965).
Does what historical movies so rarely accomplish: thoughtful, stylish, brilliantly structured with superb acting and direction.
The Magnificent 60s 