Rip Torn – The Magnificent 60s

Behind the Scenes: “Sweet Bird of Youth” (1962)

Writer-director Richard Brooks had built a reputation adapting heavyweight literary works – ranging from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1958), Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Sinclair Lewis’s evangelism opus Elmer Gantry (1960) – the last two box office and critical hits – and though he had Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim in his sights he had a hankering after more simple fare. He planned to go out on his own and had paid $30,000 to acquire Arthur Woolson’s Goodbye, My Son focusing on mental health and $70,000 on The Streetwalker, written anonymously by a sex worker, and more nitty-gritty than the current stream of high-end good-time-girl pictures. The Streetwalker would take a semi-documentary approach. Brooks aimed for budgets around the $700,000 mark.

But in the end, he fell for the blandishments of producer Pandro S. Berman, for whom he had made Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, one of MGM’s biggest hits, and Paul Newman, who had played the part of Chance in the original Broadway play. It had run for nearly a year and the cast included Geraldine Page, Rip Torn and Madeleine Sherwood who reprised their roles in the film. Ed Begley had worked with Brooks on Deadline USA (1952).

By this point Newman was rid of the shackles of his Warner Bros contract and spread his wings artistically and commercially, following up Exodus (1960) with Martin Ritt’s Paris Blues and the first of his iconic roles in Robert Rossen’s The Hustler. Newman was paid $350,000, half the total sum allocated to the cast. The play cost a total of $600,000 against a budget of $2.8 million. Even so, Newman’s stock was not as high as later in the decade and even with his name attached a film based on John Hersey’s The Wall about the Warsaw Uprising failed to get backing.

Brooks was reluctant to get back into the ring with Tennessee Williams, still smarting from the “repeated sniping” that followed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Brooks recalled that “during filming I talked with Tennessee on the phone a number of times and all was peachy.” But later the author complained Brooks had “butchered” the play. He was especially incandescent because Williams pocketed $1.4 million while the director made do with just $68,000. Brooks demanded “a signed letter written by Williams and published in Variety to the effect that he (Williams) liked the film version” before he agreed to helm Sweet Bird of Youth.

There’s no sign that Williams acquiesced and Brooks proceeded with his version which turned into flashbacks some of the incidents dealt with on stage through dialog.

“Most people go out to Hollywood with a seven-year contract to work,” noted female lead Geraldine Page, wryly, “It looks like I had a seven-year contract to stay away.” A rising star when selected for the female lead for John Wayne 3D western Hondo (1954), she didn’t make another movie for seven years, largely as the result of not being considered photogenic enough. For Hondo, a scene had been added, “in which she was called upon to acknowledge that she was not beautiful,” and that designation, although intended purely to reflect a self-deprecating character, stuck. Although another explanation for her absence was that she was blacklisted for her association with Uta Hagen, but it’s unlikely that noted right-winger Wayne would have employed her in the first place has that been the case.

Despite an Oscar nomination for Hondo, she made her way on the stage instead, to critical approval, New York Drama Critics Award and Tony nomination for Sweet Bird of Youth. After an Oscar nomination for another Williams adaptation Summer and Smoke (1961), her career was revived, after the industry “found out how to employ one of the top performing talents of the last decade.” No surprise, however, that she wasn’t MGM’s first choice. The studio preferred the likes of Ava Gardner, Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth, who would be doing little acting to portray themselves as fading stars.

“When I saw how they fixed me up (for Sweet Bird),” said Page, “I said, look at me I’m gorgeous.” Brooks made her get rid of “those fluttering gestures” that he reckoned “subconsciously were efforts to cover her face.”

Shirley Knight didn’t have to audition. She and Brooks met at the Oscar ceremony. All he asked of her was that she lighten and grow her hair.

“He was a man who really knew what he wanted,” recalled Knight, “He wanted you to do a certain thing and was clear about the look of it.” She was so in thrall to the director that she followed his instruction to the steer a boat in one direction even though she knew it would lead her to smash straight into a dock.

Given the controversial nature of the play, there were concerns the entire project would be blocked by the Production Code, the U.S. censorship body. But Berman was quick with the reassurance. He claimed it would be “the cleanest picture ever made…clean as any Disney film.” To achieve that would require considerable trimming as the play involved abortion, hysterectomy and castration. Berman ensured these elements were eliminated. Brooks changed the ending.

Commented Williams, “Richard Brooks did a fabulous screenplay of Sweet Bird of Youth but he did the same f…ing thing (as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.) He had a happy ending. He had Heavenly and Chance go on together which is contradictory to the meaning of the play. It was a brilliant film up to that point.”

Actually, Brooks was undecided about the ending. He wanted to shoot two endings, one as unhappy as the play. “But once the ending was on film – the one the studio wanted – production was shut down.”

Newman was more relaxed about any changes. “You have to make peace with the idea when you make a motion picture version of a play, it’s so difficult and it’s no sense struggling with things that were in the play.” With enough controversy riding on the picture, the studio banned the actors from talking to the media.

Initially, box office expectations were high when the movie hit first run. A $72,000 first week take in New York was considered “boffo.” It scored “a lusty” $28,000 in Chicago, a “bang-up” $15,000 in Buffalo, a “brilliant” $28,000 in Los Angeles, a “lush” $14,000 in Pittsburgh, a “bright” $16,000 in St Louis, and a “wow” $17,000 in Detroit. It generated a “loud” $4,500 in Portland, a “wham” $15,000 in Minneapolis and was “sockeroo” in Washington DC with $21,000.

But once it left the rarified atmosphere of the big cities, it stumbled. There was precent, the touring production of the play had also flopped once it left the environs of Broadway. Variety reckoned the timing was to blame as audiences showed “more aloofness to this type of fare” than they did a couple of years before.

The movie limped to $2.7 million in rentals – and a lowly 30^th spot on the annual rankings – at the U.S. box office though foreign was more promising, ninth overall in France and 10^th in Italy.

SOURCES: Douglass K. Daniel, Tough as Nails, The Life and Films of Richard Brooks (University of Wisconsin Press). pp146-154; Daniel O’Brien, Paul Newman (Faber and Faber, 2005), pp86-7; Shawn Levy, Paul Newman, A Life (Aurum Press, 2009), pp169-171; “Folks Don’t Dig That Freud,” Variety, May 9, 1960, p1; “Metro Hot for Brooks,” Variety, June 15, 1960, p2; “Sweet Bird of Youth Will Be Ok for Kiddies,” Variety, September 13, 1961, p5; “Brooks Prostie and Psycho Indies,” Variety, September 13, 1961, p4; Vincent Canby, “Seven Years After Her Film Discovery, Geraldine Page May Be Accepted,” Variety, November 15, 1961, p2; “Picture Grosses”, March-May 1962, Variety; “Fun-Sex Plays, ‘Sick’ Slowing,” Variety, August 8, 1962, p11; “Big Rental Pictures of 1962,” Variety, Jan 9, 1963, p13; “Yank Films,” January 23, 1963, p18.

Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) ***

Tennessee Williams wrote better parts for women than he did for men. You can start with Vivien Leigh, Oscar-winner for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) – Marlon Brando only nominated – and Anna Magnani Oscar-winner for The Rose Tattoo (1955) with Maria Pavan nominated and star Burt Lancaster left out of gong consideration. Carroll Baker and Mildred Dunnock were nominated for Baby Doll (1956) with star Karl Malden ignored. Paul Newman did receive an Oscar nomination for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) as did Elizabeth Taylor.

Montgomery Clift was frozen out of Oscar consideration for Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) while both Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn scored nominations. Marlon Brando received no Oscar recognition for The Fugitive Kind (1960). Ditto Laurence Harvey for Summer and Smoke (1961) though Geraldine Page and Una Merkel received nominations. Lotte Lenya was recognised with a nomination for The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1961).

So the omens were not particularly good for Paul Newman when he repeated the role he had essayed on Broadway of Chance Wayne in Sweet Bird of Youth. In the stage version, while he received respectable notices, it was Geraldine Page who picked up the glory, winning the New York Drama Critics Award and nominated for a Tony.

So it was going to be a long shot that Newman could outshine her in the film version, even though he received considerably more screen time – Page and Shirley Knight were nominated, Newman was not.

The flaws in the tale are more obvious in the screen version. On stage, sheer force of personality can win over an audience, on screen that’s more difficult. And in truth Chance was another of Williams’ male losers. The main difference between Williams’ male and female characters is that not only are the women more reflective and aware of their shortcomings while the men simply bulldoze ahead but they are more able to express their feelings without dialog.

Chance is a failed actor turned gigolo taking advantage of alcoholic over-the-hill movie actress Alexandra Del Lago (Geraldine Page), running away from what she believes will be her final and calamitous movie, who half the time doesn’t know where she is or who he is. Chance has dreams of using her to hustle his way into the movie business, blackmailing Del Lago over her drugs abuse to front a new picture, and begins knocking on doors, but long-distance, since he’s returned to his home town in the hope of winning back his childhood sweetheart Heavenly Finley (Shirley Knight), planning to set her up as a movie star.

Expectations that there might be a welcome for a young man made good are dashed when everybody continues to treat him as the waitperson he once was or wants to run him out of town. To protect his daughter from such an unworthy suitor, the town’s most prominent citizen and political heavyweight Tom Finley (Ed Begley) had previously managed to pay Chance to leave town. His son Tom Jr (Rip Torn) shares his father’s aspirations.

Despite the odds Chance determines to woo Heavenly but his Hollywood dream is scuppered when Del Lago realizes that her last picture looks like becoming an unexpected success and she can once again write her own ticket rather than rely on a con man like Chance.

It doesn’t end well though, for reasons best known to him, writer-director Richard Brooks tacked on a happy ending – the play had an unhappy ending – that doesn’t ring true.

There’s nothing wrong with Paul Newman’s acting even if it didn’t attract the attention of the Oscar voters, but there’s not enough meat on the character. On the other hand, Geraldine Page and Shirley Knight (The Group, 1966) in part excel because their characters are better written. Rip Torn (Beach Red, 1967) develops his screen menace. Ed Begley’s (Warning Shot, 1966) over-the-top performance snagged him an Oscar.

The story’s just too thin and the hard edges of the play have been trimmed back so it was less appealing to an audience.

Lacks the usual Tennessee Williams bite but the female performances are well worth a watch.

I’m doing a Behind the Scenes article tomorrow so look out for that.

Sol Madrid / The Heroin Gang (1968) ***

Was it David MacCallum’s floppy-haired blondness that prevented him making the jump to movie action hero because, with the ruthlessness of a Dirty Harry, he certainly makes a good stab at it in this slightly convoluted drugs thriller? Never mind being saddled with an odd moniker, the name devised surely only in the hope it would linger in the memory, Sol Madrid (David MacCallum) is an undercover cop on the trail of the equally blonde, though somewhat more statuesque, Stacey Woodward (Stella Stevens) and Harry Mitchell (Pat Hingle) who have scarpered with a half a million Mafia dollars. Mitchell is the Mafia “human computer” who knows everything about the Cosa Nostra’s dealings, Woodward the girlfriend of Mafia don Villanova (Rip Torn).

Sol tracks down Woodward easy enough and embarks on the audacious plan of using her share of the loot, a cool quarter of a million, to fund a heroin deal in Mexico with the intention of bringing down both Mexican kingpin Emil Dietrich (Telly Savalas) and, using the on-the-run pair as bait, Villanova. A couple of neat sequences light this up. When Sol and Woodward are set upon by two knife-wielding hoods in a car park, he employs a car aerial as a weapon while she taking refuge in a car watches in terror as an assailant batters down the window. Sol has hit on a neat method of transferring the heroin from Tijuana to San Diego and that is filled with genuine tension as is the hand-over where Sol with an unexpected whipcrack slap puts his opposite number in his place.

Meanwhile, Villanova has sent a hitman to Mexico and when that fails turns up himself, kidnapping Woodward and planning a degrading revenge. Most of the movie is Sol duelling with Dietrich, suspicion of the other’s motives getting in the way of the trust required to seal a deal, with Mitchell, who has taken refuge in Dietrich’s fortified lair, soon being deemed surplus to requirements. Various complications heighten the tension in their flimsy relationship.

Sol Madrid is Dirty Harry in embryo, determined to bring down the gangsters by whatever means even if that involves going outside the law he is supposed to uphold, incipient romance with Woodward merely a means to an end.

David MacCallum (The Great Escape, 1963) certainly holds his own in the tough guy stakes, whether trading punches or coolly gunning down or ruthlessly drowning enemies he is meant to just capture, and trading steely-eyed looks with his nemesis.

It’s a decent enough effort from director Brian G. Hutton (Where Eagles Dare, 1968), but is let down by the film’s structure, the expected confrontation with Villanova taking far too long, too much time spent on his revenge with Woodward, for whom audience sympathy is slight. Just at the time when Hollywood was exploring the fun side of drug taking – Easy Rider just a year away – this was a more realistic portrayal of the evil of narcotics.

It is also quite prescient, foreshadowing both The Godfather Part II (1974) in the way Villanova has modernised the organisation, achieving respectability through money laundering, and the all-out police battles with the Narcos. And there is a bullet-through-the-glasses moment that will be very familiar to fans of The Godfather (1972), and you will also notice a similarity between the feared Luca Brasi and the Mafia hitman Scarpi (Michael Conrad) here.

The action sequences are excellent and fresh. Think Madeleine cowering in terror as the car window is battered in No Time to Die (2021) and you get an idea of the power Hutton brings to the scene of a terrified Woodward hiding in the car. Incidentally, you might think MacCallum was more of a secret agent than a cop with the cold-blooded ruthlessness with which he dispatches his enemies.

Stella Stevens (Rage, 1966) is the weak link, too shrill and not willing to sully her make-up or hair when her role requires degradation. Her role is better written (“I never met a man who didn’t want to use me”) than Stevens can deliver and she gets a clincher of final one. Telly Savalas (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) surprises by delivering a playful villain, though the trademark laugh is in occasional evidence whereas Rip Torn is all villain. Ricardo Montalban (Madame X, 1966) is Sol’s Mexican sidekick and Paul Lukas, a star of the Hollywood “golden age”, puts in a fleeting appearance. Written by David Karp (Che!, 1969) and Robert Wilder (The Big Country, 1958).

Proved a winner for Brian G. Hutton – next gig Where Eagles Dare. Less so for David MacCallum – next outing The Mosquito Squadron (1969).

Has its moments.

Hero’s Island (1962) ***

There’s a good reason you’ve never even heard of this famous lost film. A fabnulous cast – cult character actors (and occasionally stars) Warren Oates, Harry Dean Stanton, Rip Torn plus a top-billed James Mason – can’t prevent this relatively short film coming over as long drawn out. Proof, too, that cult television producers – in this case Leslie Stevens of The Outer Limits (1963-1965) and Stoney Burke (1962-1963) – shouldn’t always risk stepping into the director’s chair.

But let’s stick for the time being to the good bits. It’s a historical Lord of the Flies, an almost primitive battle over territory, a small apparently uninhabited island off the coast of the Carolinas in the United States. There’s recognition of the British version of slavery, when, driven off their lands, or to escape dire poverty, people in the eighteenth century went willingly into indentured service in North America. After seven years, you could gain freedom – a contract torn up and rejoined at the indent the legal definition – and wives could equally be bought and if they were very lucky the husband might even agree to marry them in a church. You could buy children in similar fashion. There were other legal niceties, ownership could be challenged, since only a “full working family” could take command of land.

Freed from indenture, Thomas Mainwaring (Brendan Dillon), wife Devon (Kate Manx), two young sons and servant Wayte (Warren Oates) arrive on Bull Island, intending to live off the land, growing crops, fishing, building a house, and honoring God. But brothers – fishermen – Nicolas (Rip Torn), Dixey (Harry Dean Stanton) and Enoch (Robert Sampson) resent the intrusion, murder the husband and attempt to drive the others away, first invoking the law and then threatening violence.

The situation becomes more balanced when Jacob (James Mason) washes up on the shore, tied hands and legs to a raft, though claiming to be the subject of a shipwreck. Gradually, he sides with the widow although he doesn’t take kindly to her giving orders, refusing to bear arms, and believing that faith in God will see them through. He’s so disenchanted that when pirates descend on the island, he stands back, refusing to help when the widow and then her children are kidnapped.

But eventually, thank goodness, he springs into action, revealing hmself handy with a cutlass, and a pirate, having sailed with Blackbeard, though his captaincy did not go so well, mutiny the true reason for ending up on a raft. Still, he wades into the pirates, retrieves the situation and the fisherman accept the widow’s rights to the island.

So, some interesting historical information, and a touch of swashbuckling. But that hardly makes up for the acres of time when nothing much occurs and the characters jaw about God, the law and life in general. A tinderbox of a set-up barely crawls along, scarcely catching fire.

And that’s despite the all-round good acting, Rip Torn (Sol Madrid, 1968), Harry Dean Stanton (Paris, Texas, 1984) and Warren Oates (The Wild Bunch, 1969) all at the beginning of their careers, their trademark acting styles not yet developed, so talent revealed as fresh, while James Mason (The Deadly Affair, 1967) acts very much against type. In her sophomore screen role, Kate Manx (Private Property, 1960), Leslie Stevens’ second wife (of five), only holds sway until Mason appears to blow her off the screen.

Writer-director Leslie Stevens (Private Property) has way too much to say but not the directorial skill to properly dramatize the material, which is crying out for greater tension, fiercer argument and more action.

Now that I’ve brought this movie to your attention you may be wondering why, with this knock-out cast, you’ve never heard of it. And the reason is, as I’ve explained, it just doesn’t take off. More like a filmed play than a movie, the camera hardly ever moving. I’m not sure either why James Mason was tempted into becoming joint producer. He had just come off Tiara Tahiti (1962) and Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita (1962) so I would be guessing his career was in decent shape. Though sometimes it’s marquee power that pushes actors into the producing field. Whatever the plan, it backfired, the movie was a financial disaster and he wasn’t top-billed again for four years.

Worth a look for the cast but mostly just to see how even with the best cast a movie can miss the spot.

Beach Red (1967) ****

Strangely neglected in part I guess because the violence is countered by humanity. Despite the visceral images it lacks the narrative drive of a World War Two picture like The Dirty Dozen (1967), Cross of Iron (1977), Saving Private Ryan (1998) or Inglorious Bastards (2009). But the violence removes it from arthouse consideration when, in fact, the unusual combination and the cinematic techniques involved suggest it is ripe for reassessment.

There’s nothing particularly different about the storyline. Bunch of U.S. grunts land on a Philippine island occupied by the Japanese. The rookies are caught between caring commander Capt MacDonald (Cornel Wilde) and the uncaring tough Sgt Honeywell (Rip Torn). Some live, some die.

What was unusual for the time was the intensity of war. You can just imagine Steven Spielberg watching this to see how to out-do its 30-minute opening sequence when he came to film the D-Day section of his film. Where Spielberg placed more emphasis on sound and had the budget for more gruesome special effects, nonetheless director Cornel Wilde serves up the most brutal conflict of the decade.

From the outset, however, Wilde gets inside the head of the terrified soldiers. Some are just so scared they collapse on the sand and are unable to move. Told to fix bayonets, Cliff (Patrick Wolfe) is traumatised at the fear of being bayoneted himself. But, intriguingly, most of what we learn about the soldiers comes not from dialogue but internal monologue, as their minds are bombarded with memories of better times, wives, girlfriends and children left behind.

There’s also the stupidity of the inexperienced. The hapless Cliff shoots a Jap without realizing he had just been captured by Sgt Honeywell who had been sent on a mission to secure an enemy soldier for Capt MacDonald, with the aid of a Japanese-speaking soldier, to interrogate.

The captured soldier’s arms have been broken by Honeywell, not simply to incapacitate him, but out of brutal intent. The sergeant has no struck with MacDonald’s humanity, it’s kill or be killed, “It’s him or you, baby,” is his mantra.

But for director Wilde, the enemy is not faceless. And he spends far more time than any other even-handed director of the era in ensuring the Japanese are seen as first and foremost as human beings with the same feelings as the Americans, staring at photos of their beloved, or accorded brief flashbacks where they are shown laughing with their children, loving their wives, one caught in such a reverie being humiliated by a furious commanding officer.

What in a more ordinary war picture would be deemed a piece of flagrant sentimentality, wounded rival soldiers sharing water and cigarettes, here takes on another dimension, as each recognizes in the other their common humanity.

Nor are the women window dressing. Cliff desperate to lose his virginity before going off to war has to contend with a frightened girlfriend. MacDonald recalling an intimate moment with wife Julie (Jean Wallace) remembers mostly her fear that she will be left a widow.

And the director is not above irony. The Japanese, initiating a clever rearguard maneuver to catch the Americans off-guard, are slaughtered on the same beach as had originally been taken by the landing troops.

In some respects, the director’s vision is compromised by critical reaction. Less of the violence, concentrating more on the thoughts and memories of the soldiers on both sides, and it would have been hailed as visionary. But the violence was viewed in many quarters as driven by commercial imperative, this being the year when screen violence (the spaghetti westerns, The Dirty Dozen, Bonnie and Clyde) ignited controversial debate.

Because of that, Wilde’s many stylistic innovations went unnoticed. He makes superb use of stills, flashbacks detailed in a series of photographic montages rather than moving images. And there’s a technique I’ve never seen before where the director focuses on a face only for it to dissolve within the frame, rather than the whole frame dissolve as would be the norm to indicate transition. And life goes on even as soldiers rampage, every now and then insects are shown in close-up going about their ordinary business regardless of the conflagration all around, their worlds too tiny to be overly disturbed.

In his directorial capacity Wilde (Sword of Lancelot / Lancelot and Guinevere, 1963) indicates intention with the theme song. Rather than the stirring music to which we are usually accustomed, this is a lament (sung, incidentally by his wife, Jean Wallace).

As well as acting and directing, Wilde had a hand in the screenplay along with previous collaborators Clint Johnson and Don Peters who both worked on Wilde’s earlier The Naked Prey (1965)

As much as we are struck by the intensity of the performances by the thoughtful and often glum Wilde, the rapacious Rip Torn (Sol Madrid, 1968) and the bewildered Patrick Wolfe (his only movie appearance and, incidentally, son to Jean Wallace from her first marriage to Franchot Tone), this is a director’s picture and easily stands comparison with the quartet of classics mentioned above.

The title, while indicative of slaughter, had in reality a much more prosaic meaning. The U.S. Army had the habit of assigning colors to differentiate between certain sections of beaches scheduled for invasion. This could as easily have been entitled Beach Blue or Beach Yellow but you have to concede Beach Red has a certain ring to it.

Definitely worth watching.

Sol Madrid / The Heroin Gang (1968) ***

Was it David McCallum’s floppy-haired blondness that prevented him making the jump to movie action hero because, with the ruthlessness of a Dirty Harry, he certainly makes a good stab at it in this slightly convoluted drugs thriller. Never mind being saddled with an odd moniker, the name devised surely only in the hope it would linger in the memory, Sol Madrid (McCallum) is an undercover cop on the trail of the equally blonde, though somewhat more statuesque, Stacey Woodward (Stella Stevens) and Harry Mitchell (Pat Hingle) who have scarpered with a half a million Mafia dollars. Hingle is the Mafia “human computer” who knows everything about the Cosa Nostra’s dealings, Woodward the girlfriend of Mafia don Villanova (Rip Torn).

Sol tracks down Stella easy enough and embarks on the audacious plan of using her share of the loot, a cool quarter of a million, to fund a heroin deal in Mexico with the intention of bringing down both Mexican kingpin Emil Dietrich (Telly Savalas) and, using the on-the-run pair as bait, Villanova. A couple of neat action sequences light this picture up. When Sol and Stella are set upon by two knife-wielding hoods in a car park, he employs a car aerial as a weapon while she taking refuge in a car watches in terror as an assailant batters down the window. Sol has hit on a neat method of transferring the heroin from Tijuana to San Diego and that is filled with genuine tension as is the hand-over where Sol with an unexpected whipcrack slap puts his opposite number in his place.

Meanwhile, Villanova has sent a hitman to Mexico and when that fails turns up himself, kidnapping Stella and planning a degrading revenge. Most of the movie is Sol duelling with Dietrich, suspicion of the other’s motives getting in the way of the trust required to seal a deal, with Mitchell, hiding out in Dietrich’s fortified lair, soon being deemed surplus to requirements. Various complications heighten the tension in their flimsy relationship.

Madrid is Dirty Harry in embryo, determined to bring down the gangsters by whatever means even if that involves going outside the law he is supposed to uphold, incipient romance with Woodward merely a means to an end. McCallum certainly holds his own in the tough guy stakes, whether trading punches or coolly gunning down or ruthlessly drowning enemies he is meant to just capture, and trading steely-eyed looks with his nemesis.

It is also quite prescient, foreshadowing both The Godfather Part II (1974) in the way Villanova has modernised the Mafia, achieving respectability through money laundering, and this century’s television obsession with South American drug cartels with all-out police battles with the Narcos. And there is a bullet-through-the-glasses composition that will be very familiar to fans of The Godfather (1972), and you will also notice a similarity between the feared Luca Brasi and the Mafia hitman Scarpi (Michael Conrad) here. And why we’re at it, Woodward’s predicament is close to Gene Hackman’s in French Connction II (1975).

The action sequences are excellent and fresh. Think Madeleine cowering in terror as the car window is battered in No Time to Die (2021) and you get an idea of the power Hutton brings to the scene of a terrified Woodward hiding in the car. Incidentally, you might think McCallum was more of a secret agent than a cop with the cold-blooded ruthlessness with which he dispatches his enemies.

Stella Stevens (The Silencers, 1966) is the weak link, too shrill and not willing to sully her make-up or hair when her role requires degradation. Her part is better written (“I never met a man who didn’t want to use me”) than Stevens can act and she gets a clincher of the film’s final line. Telly Savalas (The Dirty Dozen, 1967) with his playful villain, though the trademark laugh is in occasional evidence, is in sharp contrast to Rip Torn who is all snarling bad guy. Ricardo Montalban (Madame X, 1966) is Sol’s Mexican sidekick and Paul Lukas, a star of the Hollywood “golden age”, puts in a fleeting appearance.

The Cincinnati Kid (1965) *****

Steve McQueen had little trouble identifying with this role. He was the Hollywood contender, trying to knock current kingpin Paul Newman off his perch, and in Norman Jewison’s tense, often heart-stopping, drama he has the ideal vehicle. For the most part this is a winner-take-all face-off, as much a showdown as any western shootout, in darkened rooms under the harsh light of a New Orleans poker table between a rising star always referred to as The Kid (Steve McQueen) and the unofficial world champion, the urbane cigar-smoking Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson).

Broadened out in the initial stages to include scenic diversions – the Mississippi at dawn, a cockfight, some jazz – plus romance and intrigue, this is essentially pure sport, a game of stares, where bluff holds the ace and women exist on the perimeter only to fill in the time before the next hyped-up encounter. There’s no trophy to be won, not even glory, just the right to call yourself “The Man.” The Kid feels the pressure of punching above his weight, Lancey of getting old.

Farmer’s daughter and arty-wannabe Christian (Tuesday Weld) is the Kid’s main squeeze until she gets between him and his game. When she takes off, he makes do with Melba (Ann-Margret), girlfriend of dealer Shooter (Karl Malden) who was somewhat preoccupied with giving the Kid more than a helping hand to satisfy the vengeful Slade (Rip Torn), a rich businessman.

Although it finally comes down to a confrontation between the Kid and Lancey, subordinate characters like sweating poker player Pig (Jack Weston) and stand-in dealer Ladyfingers (Joan Blondell) help dissipate the tension. But in fact anything that occurs only seems to increase the tension as it comes down to the one big final hand.

This is McQueen (The Magnificent Seven, 1960) in transition, from the loner in The Great Escape (1963) to an actor exuding charisma and on top of his acting game. While on the face of it little more than a sporting lug, the Kid is an appealing character, engaging with a little shoeshine boy, winning over Christian’s truculent parents with what appears a card trick but is actually a demonstration of the phenomenal memory necessary to excel in his chosen field. There’s a winsome child in there among the macho persona. The poker face that McQueen developed would become one of his acting traits over the years.

Edward G. Robinson (Seven Thieves, 1960) gives a rounded performance as the reigning poker champ accepting emotional loss as the price for all his financial gains. Tuesday Weld is an appealing waif. Karl Malden (Pollyanna, 1960) essays another tormented soul and Rip Torn (Judas in King of Kings, 1961) a sleazy one. Also look out for a host of great character actors including Jack Weston (Mirage, 1965), Oscar nominee Joan Blondell (Advance to the Rear, 1964) and Jeff Corey (Once a Thief, 1965) plus composer and bandleader Cab Calloway.

Ann-Margret, all eye-shadow and cleavage, is in her best man-eater form. But, thankfully, there is more to her character than that. It is unclear whether she simply latches on to a potential winner or is pimped out by Shooter, but just hooking up with that older man (i.e. Shooter) makes her interesting, since looks are far from his attraction. Her ruthlessness is spelled out in simple fashion. She is determined to win, cheating at solitaire and she slams the wrong pieces into a jigsaw just for the satisfaction of making it look complete. You can sense a depth in this character which the film does not have time to fully explore.

Although often compared to The Hustler (1962), and in many eyes considered both its inferior and a crude rip-off, this is in some respects a greater achievement. At least in The Hustler, there actually was action, players moving around a pool table, clacking balls racing across the surface. Poker is all about stillness. Any gesture could give away your thoughts. Unlike any other sport, poker requires silence. There is no roaring crowd, just people dotted round the room, some with vested interest if only through a wager, some wanting to say they were there when a champion was toppled.

So the ability to maintain audience interest with two guys just staring at each other, interspersed with minimal dialog, takes some skill. Building that to a crescendo of sheer tension is incredible.

The first four pictures of Canadian director Norman Jewison (Send Me No Flowers, 1964) did not hint at the dramatic chops, confidence, composure and understanding of pacing required, especially as he was a last-minute replacement for Sam Peckinpah, to pull this off. That he does so with style demonstrated a keen and versatile talent that would come to the boil in his next three films: The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967) and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

The former blacklisted Ring Lardner Jr. (Tracy-Hepburn comedy Woman of the Year, 1942) was credited with his first screenplay since The Forbidden Street in 1949 and he shared the chore with another iconic figure, Terry Southern (Dr Strangelove, 1964), basing their work on the original novel by Richard Jessup. Not sure who contributed the classic line: “Read ’em and weep.” Mention should be made of a terrific score by Lao Schifrin.