The gimmick of stars in disguise isn’t enough to spark this routine whodunit and the extended sequences of fox-hunting might deter the contemporary viewer but oddly enough something else of considerable interest is going on and enough to keep you hooked.
Given it’s an actor’s screen persona that tempts you to their movies, how are you going to respond when that’s gone AWOL? Actually, you get a more intriguing performance. Covered in slabs of make-up Kirk Douglas makes out like a latter-day Alec Guinness or Peter Sellers, essaying a number of quite different characters. So the jutting chin, the fierce eyes and the aggressive tone are all gone and in its place he shows he can act. His vicar is especially appealing.
But the same holds true of George C. Scott even though he’s not in disguise. Director John Huston, much as he did with his trio of star names in The Misfits (1961), gets Scott to tone down his screen idiosyncrasies. So the growl is tempered, the flaring eyebrows in cold storage for much of the time, and his jutting chin and aggression set to one side as he depicts a different character to his usual.
The Academy usually hands out Oscars to people who over-act or have some affliction to overcome, and they seem to wilfully ignore it when actors show how well they can act outside their comfort zone.
The story is the usual combination of clever deduction, red herrings and set pieces. Former spy Anthony Gethryn (George C. Scott) is hired by the titular character (John Merivale) to find out if a bunch of people on his list are still alive. Messenger himself is soon bumped off in a plane explosion but not before he leaves a garbled clue with sole survivor of the sabotage Raoul Le Borg (Jacques Roux). Gethryn soon discovers everyone on the list is dead. This may have something to do with the Second World War or it may be that the killer wants to cover up something now before potential scandal can ruin a promising future.
Meanwhile, the killer keeps bumping people off. And just to keep Gethryn from getting distracted by possible romance by Lady Bruttenholm (Dana Wynter) Le Borg pounces on her.
By this point the director was pursuing his dreams of becoming landed gentry with a stately home in Ireland and very keen on all the trimmings including fox-hunting which probably accounts for the length of time accorded the sport.
Kirk Douglas, who’s company produced the picture, thought – either to fire up public interest or to help along a fairly straightforward tale – he would ask a few of his movie star buddies to bury themselves in make-up and play bit parts. Whether audiences spent all their time when they should have been concentrating on Gethryn’s detection on carrying out their own sleuthing trying to detect which of the supporting characters might actually be Tony Curtis, Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum or Burt Lancaster is anybody’s guess. It does have to be pointed out that some of the make-up is unconvincing, some faces looking as though they’ve come out of a box.
Despite all this, I enjoyed seeing George C. Scott (Patton, 1970) and Kirk Douglas (Cast a Giant Shadow, 1966) playing decidedly against type and showing how easy it is to act if you’re not always having to adopt a screen persona.
John Huston looks as if he’s having a ball. Written by Anthony Veiller (Night of the Iguana, 1964) and Alec Coppel (Vertigo, 1958) from the book by Philip MacDonald.
When critics applauded the inspired use of a reaction shot via Omar Sharif to convey the horror of a massacre on the Mocow streets in Doctor Zhivago (1965), they omitted to mention that the technique had been used to similar stunning effect – and twice – in The Longest Day. The first comes when the camera cuts to Red Buttons dangling from a parachute down a building witnessing a massacre in the square below. The second, oddly enough, in virtually the same locale, when John Wayne arrives and views the aftermath.
Emotion was generally not considered a requisite of this epic war picture about the D-Day landings. The general consensus these days is that at best it’s a docudrama or at worst a star-a-minute mess with a dozen storylines vying for supremacy. In fact, it’s neither, but a surefooted and even-handed depiction of a complex battle, concentrating as much on the backroom staff as the soldiers in the line of fire.
Except for German complacency, the Allied forces would have faced fiercer opposition. The German troops had no air cover except for two planes and the Panzers had been pulled back in reserve. High-ranking officers had high-tailed it out of German HQ to enjoy a night on the town. Yes, the Germans expected the invasion to come from Calais rather than Normandy, but once their mistake became obvious, they did little to counter the attack, spending too much time arguing with each other and being too frightened to wake Hitler from his beauty sleep to trigger the tanks and planes.
Producer Darryl F. Zanuck covered his back by enrolling 40 stars for his venture. While most had varying marquee appeal, he had drawn on leading actors and actresses from countries other than Britain and the USA. And there was clearly a calculated decision to make audiences wait for the two major stars, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, to put in an appearance. It’s a good 15 minutes before we spot Wayne, that time spent setting up the event from British, French, German and American perspectives.
Unusually for major stars, Wayne and Mitchum are not averse to carrying exposition, something generally left to the supporting cast, Wayne in particular spelling out the pitfalls of his particular parachute drop situation. Incidentally, two of the best sequences took a good less time to show – as later explained in feature-length detail in A Bridge Too Far – the dangers inherent in parachuting into enemy territory and trying to capture and hold vital bridges.
The picture could easily have been titled A Gamble Too Far because Zanuck was betting the future of Twentieth Century Fox, facing a financial burnout, on its box office outcome.
While covering the planning for the landings in sweeping terms, the movie concentrates on three major actions – Omaha Beach and the scaling of the impenetrable Pointe du Hoc featuring the Americans headed up by Brig General Norman Cota (Robert Mitchum), a British commando raid led by Major John Howard (Richard Todd) on the Pegasus Bridge and the parachute drop led by Lt Col Benjamin Vandervoort (John Wayne).
By today’s standards the bloodletting is non-existent but the brutality of combat hits hard. Flight Officer David Campbell (Richard Burton) heads up the victims, knowing he is going to die but trying to keep up his spirits. French peasant Janine (Irina Demick) distracts German soldiers with her beauty. Lord Lovat (Peter Lawford) goes into battle accompanied by bagpipes and beachmaster Capt Maud (Kenneth More) tries to keep troops moving on the beach.. Comic interludes are provided by Private Flanagan (Sean Connery) and his buddy and German Sgt Kaffekanne (Gert Frobe).
Many of the commanders that would feature in later World War Two pictures – Lt Gene Omar Bradley (Patton, 1970) and Brig General James Gavin and General Sir Bernard Montgomery (A Bridge Too Far, 1977), played respectively by Arthur Hill, Robert Ryan, and Trevor Reid. German General Rommel had already had his shot at Hollywood fame through The Desert Fox (1951) and Desert Rats (1953) and was the American nemesis in Patton.
Given the amount of rubbernecking by the audience, it’s worth noting the number of actor in small parts who eventually made good including Sean Connery (Dr No had just appeared by the time The Longest Day opened in the U.K.), Christian Marquand (The Corrupt Ones/The Peking Medallion, 1967), George Segal (Bridge at Remagen, 1969), Tom Tryon (The Cardinal, 1964) and Robert Wagner (Banning, 1967).
You could do an entire review just listing who played who. But in spreading the field and covering French and German activities alike Zanuck brings a wider understanding of the proceedings.
Five directors were involved and unlike most anthology pictures where individual styles clash, here everyone follows the same playbook. Ken Annakin (Battle of the Bulge, 1965), Andrew Marton (Africa, Texas Style, 1967), Gerd Oswald (Agent for H.A.R.M, 1966), Bernhard Wicki (The Visit, 1964) and Darryl F. Zanuck all took a turn at the helm.
While author Cornelius Ryan (A Bridge Too Far) was credited with the screenplay he received help in the shape of Frenchman Romain Gary (Birds in Peru, 1968) , American novelist James Jones who wrote From Here to Eternity, and British screenwriters David Seddon and Jack Pursall (The Blue Max, 1966). Remains an awesome experience, one I’d just love to see in 70mm
Not cut out for the musicals, comedies, historical adventures (let’s not count The Greatest Story Ever Told, 1965), thrillers, dramas, and spy pictures that dominated that 1960s the western was John Wayne’s default. After his initial battle with lung cancer, he enjoyed an extended period of success in Henry Hathaway’s The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), Howard Hawks’ El Dorado (1967) and Burt Kennedy’s The War Wagon (1967) before diversifying in Vietnam war picture The Green Berets (1968), which he directed and was also a hit, and Andrew V. McLaglen oil drama Hellfighters which did, however, fall short of his high box office standards. So when any big western picture was mooted, it was either Wayne or James Stewart to whom producers first came calling. But when the actor particularly wanted a part, he usually got it.
Charles Portis was a journalist with one modern novel, Norwood published in 1966, to his name when he wrote True Grit, published in 1968, which, unusually for a western, spent 22 weeks in the New York Times bestseller list. The main attraction for a reader was the equally unusual first-person narrator, Mattie Ross, towards the end of her life telling the tale of how as a 14-year-old in Arkansas she sought bloody revenge for the death of her father. The narrative voice was highly individual with colorful phrases, punchy dialogue, and a taut storyline.
Producer Hal Wallis snapped it up for $300,000, beating out Wayne’s Batjac operation. Wallis had been making his own pictures for over two decades, having originally overseen films as varied as swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935) and Casablanca (1942). He also had a western pedigree, having set up John Sturges’ Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Sons of Katie Elder and Five Card Stud (1968) with Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum.
The movie went into speedy production, barely a year from the novel’s publication to the world premiere. From the start Wallis had Wayne in mind for Rooster Cogburn, with Robert Mitchum as back-up. Mia Farrow turned down the role of Mattie Ross when she found out the director was to be Henry Hathaway. Genevieve Bujold turned it down because she didn’t want to work with Wayne. Wayne favored Katharine Ross (The Hellfighters, 1968) or Michele Carey (El Dorado) or his daughter Aissa whom Hathaway ruled out. Sally Field from the television series The Flying Nun was also considered, but the part finally went to 21-year-old Kim Darby.
She had been in the movies since 1963 (an uncredited role in Bye, Bye, Birdie) and, excepting small roles in Bus Riley’s Back in Town (1965) starring Ann-Margret, fourth-billing in both the low-budget The Restless Ones (1965) and Arthur Penn television movie Flesh and Blood (1968), confined to guest roles in routine television series such as The Fugitive, Star Trek, Gunsmoke and Bonanza.
Elvis Presley was touted for the role of Le Boeuf but manager Col. Parker insisted his client receive top billing and the role went to another popular singer Glen Campbell, who had made his movie debut in The Cool Ones (1967). Robert Duvall, filling the boots of Lucky Ned Pepper, was also a refugee from television (The Outer Limits, The Fugitive, Combat) although he had delivered a memorable performance as Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and had risen to third-billing for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rain People (1969).
Henry Hathaway, a former child actor, had directed 60 movies beginning in 1932. But he had learned about direction at the feet of Josef von Sternberg and Victor Fleming, both hard taskmasters, and only made the move into megging at the third attempt. First of all, he had spent nine months touring India with the idea of making a film in the style of silent documentaries Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925) or Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927). He managed to attract the interest of Irving G. Thalberg but the producer died before funding materialized. Next, Paramount planned to hire him when the studio planned an early 1930s investment in color but got cold feet and the idea was dropped. Finally, when Paramount decided it was going to make its own westerns, rather than buying them in, he was hired to direct Heritage of the Desert (1932) starring Randolph Scott but after six more in that genre – being paid $100 a week for the first two and then $65 a week for the next two after the Depression bit – he hit pay dirt with adventure The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) with Gary Cooper and comedy Go WestYoung Man (1936) with Mae West.
When Paramount finally embraced three-color Technicolor they chose Hathaway to direct adventure The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936) starring Sylvia Sidney and Fred MacMurray. “It cannot be merely accidental that he was selected,” commented historian Kingley Canham, arguing that Hathaway had “more than just an aptitude for freshening familiar material through technical resourcefulness.”
And like John Ford he was economical with the camera. “I only shoot what can be used so the producer has no choice…I always cut in the camera, the cutter just has to put the ends together,” he said. Determined to achieve verisimilitude, instead of using studio hand-made locusts for biopic Brigham Young (1940), he travelled to Nevada where had been a big invasion of the insects. Except for this film and The Shepherd of the Hills (1941), starring Wayne, he steered clear of westerns, preferring action and drama. However, he was instrumental in helping Wayne extend his acting style. For Shepherd of the Hills, Hathaway “added new subtleties to the already characteristic western hero persona – the roiling gait and economy of dialog were still very much in evidence but his acting was more mature, more sensitive, and more assured.”
He was called upon to demonstrate further technical mastery in the first of Twentieth Century Fox’s semi-documentary dramas The House on 92nd St (1945) followed by film noir Dark Corner (1946) and Kiss of Death (1947). He made his first western in a decade with Rawhide (1951) toplining Tyrone Power and Susan Hayward and only two other westerns in the 1950s – Garden of Evil (1954), teaming Cooper and Hayward, and Hell to Texas (1958) with Audie Murphy, the twist in this one being the hero rather than the villain subjected to a manhunt. Another technical innovation came with The Desert Fox (1951), where he “did the whole raid before the titles,” the first time any action had been shown prior to the rolling of the opening credits.
He was so impressed with the acting skills of Marilyn Monroe in Niagara (1953) that he purchased Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage intending to team her with Montgomery Clift, but nothing came of the concept. He worked with Wayne again in Legend of the Lost (1957) co-starring Sophia Loren.
But, like Wayne, he returned in triumph to the western in the 1960s, all bar two of his movies in this decade in this genre, the first four of the decade starring Wayne – North to Alaska (1960), How the West Was Won (1962), Circus World (1964) and The Sons of Katie Elder. He had finished up on Five Card Stud when Hal Wallis invited him to direct True Grit. He had only received one Oscar nomination, four decades previously, for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, and no avant garde French film critic was reassessing his work, but he was known to bring movies in on time, and had his own distinct style if anyone could be bothered looking for it.
Certain themes did reappear, revenge for one, which was central to The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, Kiss of Death, historical adventure The Black Rose (1950), Prince Valiant (1954) with James Mason, The Sons of Katie Elder and Nevada Smith (1966) starring Steve McQueen. He also focused on disruption within the family, and situations where an older man aids an impetuous youngster, both instrumental to True Grit. “He is the only director I know,” observed Kingsley Canham, “to have specialized in films about backwoods and mountains.”
Screenwriter Marguerite Roberts was also old-school, born in 1905, with over 30 screen credits. She sold her first script while working as a secretary at Fox, had her first screen credit in 1933 for Sailor’s Luck. By 1939 she was earning $2,500 a week at MGM and turned out Honky Tonk (1941) with Clark Gable and Lana Turner, Sea of Grass (1946) with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Gunga Din remake Soldiers Three (1951) and big-budget historical adventure Ivanhoe (1951) with Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor.
Like Abraham Polonsky she fell out of favor with Hollywood for her left-wing sympathies and was blacklisted for nearly a decade until Daniel Petrie’s The Main Attraction (1962) with Pat Boone and Nancy Kwan, Guy Green’s Diamond Head (1962) with Charlton Heston and Rampage (1963) with Robert Mitchum. She, too, had been working for Hal Wallis on Five Card Stud before receiving the commission to adapt the Portis book.
Roberts was familiar with the Old West, since her father had been a lawman in Colorado. Screenwriter Wendell Mayes, who wrote From Hell to Texas, commented that “Henry Hathaway is very easy for a writer to work with.” “When a screenplay is finished,” said Hathaway, “I go through it and work on it. I worked on True Grit with Marguerite Roberts because there was a great deal of repetition in the book and I eliminated a lot of things.” John Wayne felt Hathaway “never got the creative credit I think is due him…He was sort of a story doctor…a fine, instinctive, creator.”
Her first problem was how to translate the book’s distinctive first-person style onto the screen without the entire movie sounding too archaic and although many speeches were lifted verbatim from the book it was Roberts who established Mattie Ross as an authority figure from the outset by introducer the teenager as her father’s “bookkeeper” and inventing the argument about the type of horses he intended to buy.
The result is an unusual composite of tight storyline, exuberant characterization and wonderful dialog. The movie was filmed mainly in Colorado – Ouray, Owl Creek Pass, Ridgway, Canon City, Montrose, Bishop, and Gunnison – as well as Durango in Mexico and Inyo National Park in California where Hot Creek was used for the outlaw’s cabin and also Sherwin Summit.
The critics, who had slaughtered The Green Berets the previous year, and been largely indifferent to many of his previous westerns during the 1960s, virtually gave him a standing ovation. Variety called it a “top adventure drama…Wayne towers over everything in the film – the actors, script and even the magnificent Colorado mountains.”
Vincent Canby of the New York Times called it “a triumph…one of the major movies of the year.” The New York Daily News claimed it was “John Wayne’s finest moment.” The New York Post came closest to defining its appeal: “Few westerns will come along this or any other year that can be as fully enjoyed by as many people of varying ages and sex.” Vernon Scott of United Press was not alone in predicting “Wayne should win the Oscar.”
Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times said, “come Oscar time Wayne will be a leading contender.” Norma Lee Browning of the Chicago Tribune informed readers that “there’s already talk that he may, at long last, get an Oscar nomination.” Charles McHarry of the New York Daily News held the same view. Time opined “a flawless portrait of a flawed man.” International Motion Picture Exhibitor found it “the perfect vehicle for Henry Hathaway’s directorial style. He approached the simple western story in the most straightforward manner…garnished it with a delightful humor that springs right out of the vagaries of the homespun characters…and giving it a rhythm that carries the viewer along despite its lengthy running time.”
Allen Eyles in Focus on Film summed up the film’s appeal: “That True Grit could end up being the best western of the year is a tribute to old Hollywood – to a producer, director, star, cameraman and others who’ve been at the top of the film business for more than three decades. Their solid, unpretentious professionalism enables them to meet the challenge of filming a first-rate novel with pleasing assurance and directness…it is far superior to…the poorly-shaped but occasionally striking The Wild Bunch from Peckinpah…(it) is not innovatory in style but the details are communicated with a freshness that is appealing.”
Unusually, for a film of the period, the movie repeated a single image in all of its advertising, Wayne’s face dominating the composition, with below him Mattie Ross standing gun in hand and Glen Campbell behind him. That Campbell sang the title song over the credits led to the release of a record, and there was a New American Library book tie-in. Ancillary promotional items included a t-shirt embellished with the words “This Man Has True Grit,” and buttons announcing “I Have True Grit” and, alternatively, “Give Me a Man with True Grit.” Stetson created a special hat called “The Duke,” with a special one costing $1,500 to be presented to Johnny Carson on his show, with an advertising campaign that included Playboy and Esquire while Aramis created a special line of “Grit Soap.”
Time magazine had raised expectations for the picture by putting John Wayne on the front cover, on August 8, although this was in part retaliation to Life’s joint cover story on Wayne and Dustin Hoffman which ran in the Jul 11 issue, and Paramount took a gamble opening it in New York at the Radio City Music Hall, partly a ploy to boost European revenues, the first western to be so honored, although the theater covered itself by claiming the movie was an “outdoor adventure” rather than a western per se. The picture broke all sorts of records there and went on to conquer America, shattering Dallas records, for example, and then helped along by the Time cover story. For a few months it looked set to become the best performing western of all time, but was soon overtaken by the release of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Even so, it took $11.5 million in rentals to finish sixth in the annual chart. It was reissued after Wayne’s Oscar triumph the following year in an unlikely double bill with Oscar-nominated The Sterile Cuckoo and grossed $3.7 million in the twelve days. But Paramount, trying to offset calamitous losses, prematurely sold off the western to television so its reissue value was sharply curtailed.
SOURCE: Brian Hannan, The Gunslingers of ’69: Western Movies’ Greatest Year, (McFarland, 2019).
For the first four decades of the Hollywood business, success in markets other than domestic was random. Many countries restricted the number of U.S. films that could be shown, others like Britain prevented American studios for a long time taking out of the country money earned at the box office. There was always the chance it could be less profitable if a dominant foreign cinema chain or distributor demanded a larger slice of the box office. In addition, some genres that worked in America stiffed abroad – musicals and comedies found it hard to translate.
Except in extremely sporadic fashion, foreign box office was not reported in the trade media until the 1990s. So there was no such thing as worldwide grosses available on any real scale. These days for many films overseas receipts bring in more than domestic – Zootropolis a current example with around 70 per cent of takings coming from abroad – but that was virtually never the case until the arrival of the James Bond pictures, which acquired a genuine global brand, in the 1960s.
However, the United Artists archives held by the University of Wisconsin provide some fascinating insights into the growing power of the foreign box office in the 1950s. Movies released into the foreign market would make a percentage of their domestic take. But that varied enormously. Even the star-studded Around the World in 80 Days (1956), the second-biggest blockbuster of the year Stateside, with a colossal $16 million in domestic rentals took in less than a quarter of that abroad, just $3.9 million.
For some films, the percentage was better. Controversial William Holden drama The Moon Is Blue (1953) notched up $1.3 million abroad compared to $3.5 million at home. War picture Beachhead (1954) starring Tony Curtis bundled up $1 million overseas as against $1.4 million in domestic. The Barefoot Contessa (1954), boasting Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner, added $2.2 million in foreign coin to its domestic tally of $3.25 million.
Richard Burton as Alexander the Great proved the breakthrough, domestic’s $2.5 million matched by the exact same amount abroad. Robert Mitchum in Foreign Intrigue (1956) went one further, reversing the usual situation, foreign of $1.14 million ahead of domestic’s $1 million.
But the UA star with the biggest consistent pull overseas was Burt Lancaster. Robert Aldrich’s Apache (1954) knocked up $1.75 million abroad compared to $3.25 million at home. Vera Cruz, (1954) also directed by Aldrich and coupling Lancaster with Gary Cooper, hit a home run – the $3.94 million abroad being just short of the $4.5 million at home. The actor’s first venture into directing The Kentuckian (1955) kept up the pace with $1.97 million overseas versus $2.6 million at home.
While these were all action pictures, it was acrobatic drama Trapeze (1956), with Lancaster and Tony Curtis fighting over Italian sex symbol Gina Lollobrigida, that made Hollywood wake up. In the U.S, it came third on the annual box office charts with $7.5 million in rentals. If that took the industry by surprise that was nothing compared to foreign where the movie racked up $7.4 million.
Lancaster remained potent. Submarine war picture Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), co-starring Clark Gable, did virtually as well abroad as at home – $2.42 million overseas compared to $2.5 million at home.
Perhaps learning from the experience of Trapeze, UA went for broke with historical actioner The Vikings (1958) starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. Domestic of $7 million, enough for fifth place in the annual box office league, was beaten by an overseas count of $7.34 million.
For the first time it appeared that Hollywood could count on overseas to swell the box office in sizeable fashion, thus allowing studios to invest more, especially in historical movies with an action angle, thus opening the door for the spate of 1960s roadshows. Such results also cemented star salaries. If a Burt Lancaster picture could make the same again abroad as at home that put him in a new category of dependable stars and allowed studios to gamble on increasing his salary.
That Charlie Chaplin proved a better draw overseas than in the U.S. was largely by default. The actor-producer-director had fallen foul of American politics with the result that his latest release Limelight (1952) flopped. Abroad it was a different story and Limelight hit a tremendous $5.1 million. With the U.S. reissue market also showing resistance to Chaplin oldies, it was left to overseas audiences to show what cinemas were missing as Modern Times (1936) racked up $2.1 million and The Gold Rush (1925) $1.25 million. For comparison the reissue of Red River (1948) pulled in just $19,000 overseas.
Other notable leaders in the overseas market included: Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant and Sophia Loren in The Pride and the Passion (1957) with $3.17 million ($5.9 million domestic); Billy Wilder’s Agatha Christie adaptation Witness for the Prosecution starring Tyrone Power and Marlene Dietrich on $2.81 million ($3.75 million domestic); and Love in the Afternoon (1957) with $2.7 million ($2 million domestic) starring Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn.
Also making a noise overseas were: Stanley Kramer medical drama Not As a Stranger (1955) toplining Olivia De Havilland, Frank Sinatra and Robert Mitchum on a $2 million haul ($7.1 million domestic): Sinatra again in Otto Preminger’s study of addiction The Man with the Golden Arm (1953) on $1.87 million ($4.35 million domestic); Sinatra in war picture Kings Go Forth (1958) on $1.83 million ($2.8 million domestic) and Kirk Douglas as The Indian Fighter (1955) with $1.84 million ($2.45 million domestic).
Bob Hope went against the grain when his overseas tally for Paris Holiday (1958) at $1.8 million bested the $1.5 million of domestic while John Wayne and Sophia Loren’s foreign engagements for Legend of the Lot (1957) counted as a disappointment with just $1.66 million compared to $2.2million domestic.
Low-budget Oscar-winner Marty (1955), produced by Burt Lancaster’s company, was as big a surprise abroad as at home, sprinting to $1.43 million ($2 million domestic). Others worth noting included: Bandido! starring Robert Mitchum on $1.42 million overseas ($1.65 million domestic); David Lean’s romantic drama Summertime (1955) with Katharine Hepburn on $1.3 million ($2 million domestic); Anthony Mann’s Korean War venture Men in War (1957) on $1.26 million ($1.5 million domestic); and Clark Gable in The King and Four Queens (1956) hauling in $1.24 million ($2.5 million domestic).
Olivia De Havilland as The Ambassador’s Daughter (1956) tabbed $1.1 million overseas ($1.5 million domestic) and Gary Cooper in Mark Robson’s Return to Paradise (1953) tallied $1.1 million ($1.8 million domestic). Slow burners numbered Dale Robertson in Sitting Bull (1954) with $1.1 million ($1.5 million domestic) and Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war picture Paths of Glory (1957) with Kirk Douglas shooting up $1 million ($1.2 million domestic).
SOURCE: “Foreign Distribution Gross Estimates,” United Artists Archives, Box 1, Folder 8, University of Wisconsin. Note that in this case “gross” means “gross rentals” not “box office gross.”
If you’re not Alfred Hitchcock with carte blanche to scare the pants off the audiences every which way but loose and you’re not launching a B-movie sexploitation drama, then you’ve got to take a more sensible path to selling a picture headlined by the world’s greatest hero Gregory Peck elevated to such a position by the extraordinary success of The Guns of Navarone (1961) which topped the annual box rankings in the USA.
So while your taglines can emphasize “shock and suspense” what you’re selling cinema managers is quality. So, in the Pressbook/Marketing Manual, Peck is portrayed as a “celluloid perfectionist” and “four-time Oscar nominee” so multi-talented he’s a triple hyphenate – writer, producer, actor. Such a perfectionist he’s known “to spend a week or more preparing for one small scene.”
He is a class act not some sleazy B-movie bum. “He not only completely absorbed all the dialog, its various nuances and shadings, but also probed the psychological and physiological motivations of the attorney he portrays,” notes the Pressbook.
And it’s not just Peck who’s to be praised. “Seldom has such an outstanding array of talent been so tellingly marshaled for such a dramatic thunderbolt.”
The messianic tone is evident throughout. Headlines claim “Bob Mitchum’s career reaches a new high,” Lori Martin has the “top role” of her career, Barrie Chase is “praised as top talent discovery” and “Telly Savalas termed top talent find by Peck.”
Polly Bergen “emerges as an actress of great sensitivity and insight.” Lori Singer, in her movie debut, “graphically attests to the polish she has achieved through her work as child lead in the video (television) series National Velvet.” Although Martin had another reason for turning up word perfect – so that she could get off early and go ice skating.
And the praise doesn’t stop there. “A whole new career should open for sultry Barrie Chase, one-time dancing partner of Fred Astaire.” She is “sensationally good as the casual pick-up ensnared by Mitchum.” The talent pickers had no doubt she was “destined to become one of the foremost dramatic talents of the industry. The very quality which made her such an outstanding dancer – her tireless attention to even the minutest detail – has helped turn her into a magnificent actress.” The marketeers were convinced her “masterpiece” performance would result in an Oscar nomination.
Peck had appointed himself the “tub-thumper” for Savalas after seeing him play Al Capone” in the television series The Witness (1960-1961) calling him “one of the finest new talents of the last 10 years.”
According to the Pressbook, director J. Lee Thompson “deliberately imparted…a distinctively British touch.” Claimed Thompson, “There emerges in the best of the British pictures a certain warmth and credibility which are looked upon as the English hallmark. Such an impression is achieved, it seems to me, through the simple technique of emphasizing character development.”
For journalistic snippets there’s not much beyond that Peck was so impressed with the location in Georgia that he purchased a plot of land on Sea Island to build a beach house. Plus that he’s turned into a noted photographer, now onto his seventh camera with a fast lens. Polly Bergen was creating a nightclub act. Robert Mitchum was thrown three times on his first film horse.
But it was unlikely that cinema managers would find a way of passing on to audiences the idea that this was a “quality sleaze” picture populated by proven and up-and-coming talent. The public had to make do with posters and taglines to get a feel for what was on offer. And in that respect the marketeers pulled few punches.
As usual, cinema managers were offered a plethora of choice when it came to the posters. Mostly, Peck and Mitchum were shown on opposite sides of the poster with in between an image intended to conjure up menace – the bare-chested Mitchum confronting Bergen, Bergen comforting her daughter, mother and daughter running, Mitchum tangling with the daughter.
Taglines spelled it out in a variety of ways: “A terrifying war of nerves unparalleled in suspense!” with a sub-tag of “A man savagely dedicated to committing a crime shocking beyond belief! A man desperately determined to end his ordeal of terror…even if it meant using the ultimate weapon – murder!”
Exclamation marks were in full flow. “Now, he had only one weapon left – murder…to prevent an even more shocking crime” was backed up by “the drama of an unrelenting war of nerves…and the helpless lives that were caught in its terrifying crossfire!”
Or try this – “The savagely suspenseful story of an unspeakable crime…and the man, the woman, the helpless people it touched with terror. From the moment they meet the tension is explosive. An electrifying war of nerves unrelenting in suspense!”
In case you didn’t get the message, here it is in more subtle form: “What happens to them in an adventure in the unusual!” That understatement is followed up with “So daring in theme…so frank in treatment…that it frightens while it fascinates and gives a terrifying new meaning in suspense!”
And there were variations of the above: “A terrifying war of nerves unparalleled in suspense! The Watched…who can only run so far before coming face-to-face with The Watcher…who waits for the moment when the woman and her daughter will be alone.”
And – “Now the nightmare was about to become a terrifying reality… the whispered threat a crime unspeakable. So daring in theme…so frank in treatment. What happens to them is an adventure in the unusual!”
Plus – “Their ordeal of terror triggers the screen’s most savage war of nerves! Unparalleled suspense…as one becomes a target for nightmare, the other becomes his target for execution.”
Unusually, there were a host of promotional items. As well as a motion picture paperback edition from Fawcett, “hot off the press” was the Prentice-Hall hardback The Polly Bergen Book of Beauty, Fashion and Charm, including stills from Cape Fear. Books were a major source for marketing, given there were over 100,000 outlets in specialist shops, drug stores, railway and bus terminals and carousels on newspaper stands.
Virtually any homely element of the movie was co-opted for promotional purposes. A scene taking place at a United Air Lines terminal counter provided opportunity for tie-ins with travel agents and ticket offices. Bowling “palaces” might be happy to display posters and promotional material given there’s a scene set in a bowling alley. Distributors of a Chris Craft boats, Chrysler station wagons, Larson speed boats and Scott outboard motors – which all appear in the movie – could be targeted.
Like many an ambitious – not to say greedy – actor, Gregory Peck had decided to go into the production business. In theory, there were two good reasons for this: actors could take control of their careers and they could make vanity projects. In reality, there were other over-riding reasons: after years in the business they thought they knew better than their Hollywood bosses and, more importantly, with a bigger stake in a picture they thought they could make more money. First of all came the tax advantages. As a producer, they could spread income over a number of years rather than just one. And they could take advantage of a loophole in the tax laws by making movies abroad. And then if all went as well as the actor imagined, they would get a bigger share of the spoils. If it proved a flop, then the studio carried the can and the actor walked off scot-free.
In 1956 Peck set up Melville Productions with screenwriter Sy Bartlett, with whom he had worked on Twelve O’Clock High (1950). They signed a two-picture deal with United Artists, the go-to studio for actors wanting to become producers. The first projected ideas fell by the wayside, Affair of Honor based on a Broadway play that subsequently flopped and Thieves Market – with William Wyler on board as director – whose commissioned script didn’t meet Peck’s standards. Also on the agenda was Winged Horse with a script by Bartlett and James R. Webb.
Instead, Peck set up The Big Country (1958) through another production shingle, Anthony Productions, and co-produced it with director William Wyler’s outfit, World Wide Productions. The budget rocketed from $2.5 million to $4.1 million, which limited the potential for profit.
Melville Productions launched with Korean War picture Pork Chop Hill (1959). When that flopped it was the end of the UA deal. Peck moved his shingle to Universal. The production company lay dormant while Peck returned to actor-for-hire for Beloved Infidel (1959) and On the Beach (1959), both flops, before jumping back into the top league with the biggest hit of his career The Guns of Navarone (1961) directed by J. Lee Thompson.
Melville Productions was resuscitated for Cape Fear. Peck and Barlett had purchased in 1958 a piece of pulp fiction (novels that bypassed hardback publication and went straight into paperback) by John D. MacDonald called The Executioners. Bartlett passed on screenwriting duties which were handed to James R. Webb (How the West Was Won, 1962).
Director and star had bonded on The Guns of Navarone. “We were working so well together,” recalled Thompson that when Peck handed him the script of Cape Fear he was intrigued. “I liked the book very much,” said Thompson. “Greg had a script prepared, we signed the contracts, and I came to make my first picture in Hollywood.” (The Guns of Navarone had been filmed in Greece and London).
Though author John D. MacDonald had written a hard-boiled thriller with a merciless killer, screenwriter James R. Webb (Pork Chop Hill) racked up the tension and added a thicker layer of predatory sexuality in the vein of Psycho (1960). The final touch was a Bernard Hermann (Psycho) score brimming with menace.
Ernest Borgnine (Go Naked in the World, 1961) was first choice to play psychopathic killer Max Cady. Rod Steiger (The Pawnbroker, 1964), Jack Palance (Once a Thief, 1965) and Telly Savalas (Birdman of Alcatraz, 1962) were also considered. “We actually tested Savalas and he gave a very good test for the part,” explained Thompson. “But these were character actors or at least secondary actors compared to Greg. At some point discussing it together we began to talk about having the villain played by an actor of equal importance, making it a much stronger match-up from the audience’s point of view and (Robert) Mitchum immediately came to mind.”
But Mitchum had essayed a similar venal character in Night of the Hunter (1955) and didn’t want to repeat himself. However, he liked the way the tale showed just how corrupt law enforcement could be and how easily the cards were stacked. Mitchum understood the character from the outset. “The whole thing with Cady is that snakelike charm. Me, Officer, I never laid a hand on the girl, you must be mistaken.”
“When we heard Mitchum’s thoughts,” noted Thompson, “we were more convinced than ever he would be terrific for the role. And I think by the end of the meeting he now realized that himself.” But he still held back, unsure. The producers sent him a case of bourbon. He drank the bourbon and signed up. There was the additional inducement of sharing in the profits by being made a co-producer which involved nothing more taxing than signing on the dotted line. Universal took it on as the first in two-picture deal with Melville.
Mitchum’s career was following its usual up-and-down course, a couple of flops always seemed to be followed by a big hit. His acclaimed performance in Fred Zinnemann’s The Sundowners (1960) had offset The Night Fighters / A Terrible Beauty (1960) and Home from the Hill (1960). His latest picture, The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961) was filed in the negative column.
Peck and Mitchum had opposite approaches to their profession, the former diligent and serious, the latter not able to get off a set quickly enough, not even bothering to learn his lines because thanks to a photographic memory he could scan his lines just before a scene began and be word perfect.
Locations were scouted in the Carolinas where MacDonald had set the book, but failing to find anything suitable exteriors were switched to Savannah in Georgia. Where Peck rented a house and went home every night, Mitchum took a room in the DeSoto Hotel and when work was finished for the day went out drinking, an assistant director taken along as ballast to keep him out of trouble. The town held bad memories for Mitchum. Last time he had visited he had been arrested for vagrancy and did a stint on a chain gang, which recollection possibly put steely bitterness in his portrayal of the ex-convict. Although he hated the town, he liked the idea that on his return everyone was kowtowing to the big movie star, including a bevy of hairdressers in town for a convention.
Fortunately, the Savanah sojourn was short, bad weather getting in the way, barely two weeks before the unit repaired to Hollywood (some of the boat scenes were filmed around Ventura but the climactic fight took place on the studio lake) where the production overshot its schedule by a month, wrapping on July 5 instead of June 8, and racking up $2.6 million in costs.
Mitchum appeared determined to demonstrate quite how different their approaches were. In one scene, off camera, Mitchum stripped naked to get a reaction from the stolid co-star, who remained immune to such provocation. In reality, Mitchum was very professional. “He would work perfectly,” said Thompson. “He just goes in and does it. He was superb.”
Though far from a Method Actor, Mitchum was chillingly close to the part. “I live character and this character drinks and rapes,” he confessed. During the scenes of violence he worked himself up. “He made people frightened,” acknowledged Thompson.
And that included Peck, especially during the slugfest in the water which took nearly a week of a night shoot to complete. Despite warmers being put in the water, it was freezing. “Sometimes, Mitchum overstepped the line,” said Thompson. “He was meant to be drowning Greg and he really took it to the limit…but Peck never complained.”
The final scene filmed was the rape of Polly Bergen playing Peck’s wife. Bare-chested and sweating, Mitchum built himself up into a fury. “You felt any moment he would explode,” said Thompson. “But there was no rehearsal, so nobody really knew what to expect. Thompson improvised the business with the eggs. But Mitchum was more brutal with the eggs than could ever be shown in a cinema, smearing the yolk over Bergen’s breasts. He cut his arm flailing wildly and he used the actress to break open the cabin door, so she finished the scene with the front of her dress sodden with egg yolk and the back covered in blood.”
While Peck expressed confidence in director J. Lee Thompson and could count on Mitchum’s experience to see him through, female lead Polly Bergen was making her first film in eight years, after a small part in western Escape from Fort Bravo (1953) starring William Holden. She had come to wider attention for winning an Emmy for The Helen MorganStory (1958).
“Greg spent an enormous amount of time with me,” said a nervous Bergen, “He was wonderful and he was very, very supportive.” She added, “I wouldn’t have let anyone know how insecure and frightened I was. But he, I think, knew that instinctively and was there to set me at ease and be helpful and nurturing.”
Peck had no worries about Thompson, the situation helped by the director appearing to take the line the producer-star wanted. When it came to editing, Peck played fair with Mitchum, resisting the temptation to tone down his co-star’s performance which threatened to overshadow his own.
The censors were livid. They eliminated all mention of the word “rape”, removed most of Mitchum’s ogling of Peck’s daughter and cut to the bone the sexual assault.
While critics tended to agree that Mitchum stole the show, the movie was mauled by the New York Herald-Tribune as a “masochistic exercise” and the New Yorker took Peck to task for becoming involved in “an exercise in sadism.”
Initially, it appeared to be doing well enough. There was a “big” $37,000 in New York, a “giant” $29,000 in Chicago, a “fancy” $14,000 in Cleveland, a “rousing” $18,000 in San Francisco and a “proud” $14,000 in Boston. But the “expectancy of lush performance” did not materialize. Final tally was $1.6 million in rentals, a poor 47th in the annual box office rankings, so there were no profits for Peck or Mitchum to share.
The British censor demanded five minutes of cuts. Thompson made headlines by claiming that 161 individual cuts, a record, had destroyed the film but censor John Trevelyan argued it was just 15. Despite claiming the movie would not be shelved until the controversy had died down, in fact it lost its May 1962 premiere slot at the Odeon Leicester Square in London’s West End and was held back until the following January when it opened at the less prestigious Odeon Marble Arch, setting a record for a Universal release. Bergen was furious at the cuts in her role. “I really blasted British censorship.”
Ironically, Peck made more money from selling the rights to Martin Scorsese for the 1991 remake, in which he had a small part, and whether it’s the Peck estate or Scorsese who benefits there’s a 10-part mini-series on the way starring Patrick Wilson (The Conjuring: Last Rites, 2025) as the attorney, Amy Adams (Nightbitch, 2024) as his wife and Javier Bardem (Dune, Part Two, 2024) as their tormentor.
SOURCES: Gary Fishgall, Gregory Peck, A Biography (Scribner, 2002) pp197-198, 208, 225-228; Lee Server, Robert Mitchum, Baby, I Don’t Care (Faber & Faber, 2001) p43-437; “Peck-Bartlett Spanish Pic Halts,” Variety, February 13, 1957, p2; “U Gets Melville Pair,” Variety, July 29, 1959, p18; “U Repacts Bartlett,” Variety, September 28, 1960, p4; “Director of Cape Fear Claims British Censor Demands Too Many Cuts,” Variety, May 9, 1962, p26; “Censor Replies to J. Lee Thompson,” Kine Weekly, June 28, 1962, p6; “Classification-Plus-Mutilation,” Variety, December 19, 1962, p5; “Your Films,” Kine Weekly, February 7, 1963, p14. Box Office figures: Variety April-May 1962 and “Big Rental Pictures of 1962,” Variety, January 9, p13,
Portraying legal poster boy Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) might well have been an act of redemption for Gregory Peck after his portrayal, a few months earlier, of this attorney who has little compunction in walking down the same mean streets as the criminals he wishes to see put away. And it just goes to show how thin the line is between upstanding façade and killer, no matter the excuse or provocation.
Attorney Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) isn’t permitted as much leeway as you might expect when ex-con Max Cody (Robert Mitchum) turns up in his small town. This could as easily have played out as the virtuously good guy and family being hounded by a thug who would have spent most of his life being prosecuted for crimes except his victims usually failed to bring charges on account of their fear of retribution. Trigger the animal in him for sexual purposes and you’re lighting a fuse that leads directly to violence.
From the audience perspective, the cards should have been stacked against the villain, but that’s not the case here, not when the good guy begins to act more and more like a bad guy, persecuting him, through his police connections, with a string of arrests for crimes of which he is innocent, unable to put the finger on him for the vicious assault he does commit and generally been outwitted by a fella who knows the law a damn sight more than the lawyer.
Bowden isn’t your usual harassed victim, standing up stoutly against criminality, but a man crumbling under pressure and the frustration of being out-thought by the enemy and itching to get it over with the easiest way possible by finding an excuse to kill the perpetrator.
So, yes, if you’re that way inclined, you can view it as an attack on the American justice system that allows villains with criminal intent not to be incarcerated for considering committing a crime. But that’s not the way it plays out, not when Bowden uses every sleazy trick in the legal book to head off Cody, eventually attempting bribery, and when that doesn’t work hiring a gang of thugs to beat him up and when that also fails planning how to draw him into the kind of trap that would allow legal assassination.
So, now Bowden’s every bit as devious as his pursuer and much worse because he’s willing to stake out wife and daughter as bait for a known sexual predator. He seems to have no inkling of the fate that could be in store for his family should his clever plan go wrong and little compunction or remorse about the criminal intent in his own mind.
Back in the day it would have been easier to accept this kind of narrative, that you can step outside the law to protect your family (a trope that would burn through the 1970s once the vigilante was represented by the likes of Charles Bronson and others), but a contemporary audience is more likely to take a more jaundiced view of the good guy “forced” into bad action. Instead of hiring a private detective (Telly Savalas) to keep tabs on Cody, Bowden could as easily invest – and he has more than enough money – in a security guard to watch over the house and family.
So, even as we’re fearing for wife Peggy (Polly Bergen0 and teenage daughter Nancy (Lori Martin) we’re beginning to put the blame for their plight plumb on the shoulders of the upstanding lawyer who thinks he’s smarter than the most dangerous villain this side of Hannibal Lecter.
If there’s a happy ending, you’re left with wondering just what the heck that’s going to look like. Bowden has allowed his wife to be raped and his daughter scared so witless she’ll be mentally scarred for life, and him unemployable, courtesy of being struck off for breaking the law.
And this is all filmed in classic noir style, moody lighting, shadows and darkness squeezing out what little light there is, emphasizing the danger that lurks on the dark side. And a terrific showdown on a boat. But director J Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) does just as well without going down the obvious noir route. Robert Mitchum never just strolls. He walks with intent, combining panther walk and erect carriage. So, the tracking shots of him approaching the camera, and therefore some potential victim, are enough to give the audience the message.
Robert Mitchum (The Sundowners, 1960) steals the show with his quiet menace and soft drawl. This appeared before How the West Was Won (1962) where Gregory Peck played a con man and after The Guns of Navarone (1961) where he played the action hero’s hero, so this would be the first audience had seen of a switch in the actor’s screen persona. Usually, he’s the guy who can handle pressure.
Polly Bergen (Kisses for My President, 1964) is excellent as is Lori Martin (The Chase, 1966) whose default early on, for narrative purposes, is fear. Look out for Martin Balsam (The Anderson Tapes, 1971) as a complicit cop and Telly Savalas (The Assassination Bureau, 1969).
Superbly directed by J. Lee Thompson. Written by James R. Webb (How the West Was Won) from the novel by John D. MacDonald (Darker than Amber, 1970).
Daftest picture I’ve ever seen. Not the funniest, not by a long chalk, but highly enjoyable if you go with the flow and let wash over you the deluge of costume changes, the satire-a-go-go, a smattering of slo-mo and fast-mo, the worst fake beards and moustaches, and sanctimonious Hollywood rubbish that money isn’t everything and we should all be hankering after the Henry Thoreau approach to life. So wacky and far-out that if it had been made today J. Lee Thompson (The Guns of Navarone, 1961) would be in with a shout of being hailed as a “visionary” director.
The all-star cast snookers you in. Everyone acts – or should that be over-acts – against type, even Shirley MacLaine (Gambit, 1966), casting aside her ditzy screen persona in favor of sense and sensibility. The generally hapless Dick Van Dyke (Divorce American Style, 1967) demonstrates what happens when his manic energy is put to purpose. Add more or less top hat and tails to the commanding stride and imposing figure of Robert Mitchum (The Way West, 1965) and he could grace boardrooms with a venom the participants in Succession would envy. Dean Martin (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967) explores his villainous side. and you do wonder what would have happened to these stars’ careers had studios taken note of these side hustles, only Dean Martin would have the opportunity to tackle a similar character, though less cartoonish, again.
And it’s loaded with visual gems. J. Lee Thompson’s version of The Incredible Shrinking Man/Honey, I Shrunk the Boss is a treat. Watch out for the rows of secretaries slumped over their typewriters, Dick Van Dyke swamped by money, a drunken farmer trying to milk a bull, and contemporary sci-fi fans would dig the machines going crazy. That’s not to forget the monkey not just painting masterpieces but expecting applause on completion. There are spoofs galore – the contemporary (1960s) art scene, the musical, the wealth that opens doors and cannot ever be shut down no matter how hard you try.
Essentially a portmanteau as perennial widow Louisa (Shirley MacLaine) explains to a psychiatrist Dr Stephanson (Bob Cummings) how her four husbands met their demise. Louisa, daughter of a grasping greedy mother and ineffectual father, yearns for the simple life, far removed from the trappings and temptations of money. Ruthless businessman Leonard (Dean Martin) wants to marry her for the simple reason that she’s the only lass in town who doesn’t want to marry him.
Instead she marries financially-challenged Edgar (Dick Van Dyke) who discovers, much to his surprise and her annoyance, that he has a good business brain, enough to drive Leonard into the ground and ignore his new wife, until he drops dead due to the pressures of wealth. Next up is Parisian artist Larry (Paul Newman) whose biggest attraction is his poverty and simple lifestyle. Unfortunately, he could be Dick Van Dyke in disguise having invented a wacky machine that will do all the painting for him. Unfortunately, that makes him rich and leaves Louisa home alone once again until the machines take revenge on their creator.
Billionaire Rod (Robert Mitchum) is so taken with Louisa that he determines to get rid of his fortune only to discover that even when left unattended money just grows. Eventually, he sells up and becomes a happy, if inebriated farmer, but, unfortunately, can’t tell a cow from a bull and ends up dead.
Last up is another impoverished character clown Pinky (Gene Kelly) whose nightclub act is a stinker until he discovers his dancing feet. Once he passes, it’s full circle as Louisa again encounters Leonard, now impoverished and repentant, and marries him and they settle down. There’s a fine twist at the end when wealth once again beckons.
Shirley Maclaine doesn’t have to do a great deal except hold it together and wear a hundred costumes. Robert Mitchum is the pick but Paul Newman (The Hustler, 1961) is to be applauded for sending up so riotously his screen persona. And it could easily have degenerated into a lazy spoof, the actors giving nothing at all. Instead, once it gets going it’s just huge fun.
J. Lee Thompson displays an inventiveness not seen before. This works because it is so indulgent. Written by the team of Betty Comden and Adolph Green (Bells Are Ringing, 1960) from the bestseller by Gwen Davis.
Critics slammed it but audiences lapped it out. I was in both camps. Started out hating it, ended up adoring it.
How this crispy-told beautifully-mounted character-driven western ever languished among the also-rans is beyond me. I suspect the specter of John Ford hung heavily over it in the eyes of critics at the time but it more correctly belongs to the cycle of Cecil B. DeMille westerns that told stories with a true historical bent. Often detrimentally compared to How the West Was Won (1963), which told a similar tale of endeavor, this movie deliberately lacks that movie’s inflated drama in which every incident was built up, not least influenced by the need for Cinerama effect, rather than seeking an authentic truth.
Plainly put, the difference is here there are no charges, no races, no fording of rivers in the wrong places. Native Americans are treated with respect. Above all, an epic crossing of the continent with fully-loaded wagons is necessarily going to be slow, risk avoided at all costs, and yet this is not without incident or character arc. In fact, the script is terrific, not just dialog that rings true, but among the elements brought into play are male rivalry, clash with authority, guilt, young love, revenge, vision, justice, America in embryo. That the movie maintains a stately pace, no fistfights descending into brawls, and a shock ending indicate a director in charge of his material.
Based on A.B. Guthrie’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel set in 1843, the first wagon train heads for Oregon under the iron rule of Senator William Tadlock (Kirk Douglas) and guided by a scout with failing eyesight in Dick Summers (Robert Mitchum), both men widowed and in emotional limbo, and in the cantankerous company of Lije Evans (Richard Widmark) and his glamorous wife Rebecca (Lola Albright). There’s a stowaway (Jack Elam), a preacher who can’t afford the price of transportation, an illicit love affair between the vibrant and lusty Mercy (Sally Field) who “hankers after any three-legged boy” but makes eyes at married man Johnnie Mack (Michael Witney), and enough obstacles to keep less determined settlers from reaching their promised land.
Tadlock is the visionary, a politician suffering from an overblown estimation of his self-worth, who “might have been President except for a woman,” ruthless, valuing only his own ideas. “Point the way,” he tells Summers, “don’t gall me with opinions.” For fear it might interfere with his role as commander, he hides his vulnerability. There’s a plaintive moment when he shares his vision of a city with Rebecca, on the one hand full of his own importance, on the other clearly needing the pat on the back. Later, an occasion of death sees him falling prostate with grief on a grave and on breaking his own laws demands to whipped. The over confident blustering individual is by the end almost suicidal. What is a leader if there is no one to lead?
Summers stoically accepts his infirmity, constantly dropping his head so his eyes are hidden from sight under his hat as if his ailment could be easily detected, mourning the loss of his Native American wife, and while full of Western lore as easily passing on gentle wisdom about love, and his “lucky necklace” to an unrequited lover, but still accused of unworldliness, “for a smart man you ain’t got a lick of sense.” Evans bristles at any authority, believing independence means he goes his own way, especially if that permits the freedom to get drunk at a time of his choosing, and especially once he realizes such lack of inhibition riles the repressed Tadlock. But his fondness for alcohol triggers an incident that almost costs his son his life.
Celebrations he started catch the attention of the nearby Sioux and in the communal drunkenness a Native American child is accidentally killed. In the best scene in the film battle Sioux seeking justice and intent on attack are thwarted only by the “sacrifice” of the killer.
The picture is packed full of incident, many characters coming alive in a single shot or with one line of dialog. A woman tramps on her husband’s foot to prevent him challenging Tadlock’s authority. A woman with a baby retorts that she is afraid when bolder settlers facing potential Native American attack assert the opposite. The bravest man in the camp, the first volunteer to be lowered down a canyon, dies when his rope snaps.
There are any number of reversals. Buffalo, instead of being a danger and prone to stampede, create a dust cloud to hide behind. Rivers are crossed at sensible points, rapids avoided. An African American whips a white man. A boy becomes a man through honor rather than violence. Stories, large and small, play out in a succinct script.
Kirk Douglas (The Arrangement, 1969) is superb as a man whose iron core deserts him. Robert Mitchum (Secret Ceremony, 1969), in almost a supporting role, excellent in full awareness that the sight on which his reputation and job depend will vanish, brings a subtlety to his performance that would be recognized as ideal for Ryan’s Daughter (1970). Richard Widmark (The Bedford Incident, 1965), who is generally simmering, gets to mix in a bit of fun in with the simmering.
Lola Albright (A Cold Wind in August, 1961) swaps seductiveness for sense. In her debut Sally Field (Smokey and the Bandit, 1977), filled with zip and zest, sparkles as the lusty young woman and it’s astonishing to realize she would not make another movie for nearly a decade while another debutante Katherine Justice (Five Card Stud, 1968) finds her inner fire when it’s too late. There’s supporting talent a plenty – Jack Elam (Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968), Stubby Kaye (Cat Ballou, 1965), Harry Carey Jr. (The Undefeated, 1969) and William Lundigan (The Underwater City, 1962) in only his second film of the decade.
Director Andrew V. McLaglen (The Rare Breed, 1966) captures the correct tone for the film, making up for the essential slow pace with brilliant use of widescreen, coaxing great performances from all concerned. Screenwriters Ben Maddow (The Chairman, 1969) and Mitch Lindemann (The Careless Years, 1957) compress Guthrie’s tome with considerable skill.
Woefully underrated at the time and since, this deserves reassessment. This is a truer version of how the west was won. And I surely can’t be alone in demanding that McLaglen’s talent be more properly recognized.
You might be interested to know there are two other articles on this film – a “Behind the Scenes” and a “Book into Film.”
Few stars were as willing to trade their glamorous screen persona for a decent role as Elizabeth Taylor, here eschewing the trademark hip swivel, low cut dresses and elegant costumes for a clumping walk, frumpy look and eating with her mouth full. After a chance meeting on top of a bus with rich waif Cenci (Mia Farrow) middle-aged prostitute Leonora (Elizabeth Taylor) swaps a dingy bedsit for life in a massive mansion, cupboards stuffed full of furs, all her needs met. Cenci seeks a mother; Leonora, whose daughter drowned aged ten, seeks a child substitute.
Soon Leonora is prisoner to a fantasist, her own identity swamped by Cenci’s needs, accepting the role of “mummy” as the price of a life of luxury until she learns that what appears so freely given can be as easily taken away. This cloistered life is creepy. Cenci has rape fantasies. To a pair of interfering and thieving aunts, Leonora pretends to be Cenci’s dead mother’s cousin.
The fantasy conjured is threatened by the presence of Cenci’s poet stepfather Albert (Robert Mitchum) who intends to become the girl’s legal guardian. He talks like a child molester, “the extraordinary purity of my longings,” but given the depth of Cenci’s fantasies Leonora initially discounts inappropriate behavior on his part especially when Cenci wishes to become inappropriate with her. If Leonora stands in Albert’s way it is only to have the girl – and her wealth – to herself.
A psychological drama that appears more like a stage play in structure, skirting around core issues in favor of later revelation, and in essence making a good effort at dealing with behavioral problems which would find greater currency today – inherited mental illness, PTSD, low self-esteem, abuse, and incest. Though the last area is hard to specify, on the basis that, technically, Albert is a stepfather rather than a father, underage sex would appear to be more likely.
In an era when permissiveness virtually ensured audience shock, director Joseph Losey makes a decent stab at presenting the impact of sex on the vulnerable, despite her apparent steely exterior Leonora damaged by life as a sex worker, Cenci pretending to be younger as if that can sustain her innocence, not realizing how appealing that would be to a predator.
At once hypnotic and impenetrable, this is director Joseph Losey (The Servant, 1964) at his best, a story that by its subject matter must remain obscure, a mother-daughter relationship that should be twisted but reveals nothing but tenderness, ending for a time the torment of the emotionally unfulfilled, but when bonds appear to be strengthened they are fragmenting. However, the film is let down by the script and the somewhat grand guignol setting. Losey is wonderful at times with nothing to say just a prowling camera, only two lines of dialog exchanged in the first 15 minutes. You would certainly file it under “eclectic.”
The two main performances are electric. This is Taylor at her powerhouse best, her profession not glamorized as in Butterfield 8 (1968) and no male to bring to heel, and her last scene with Cenci is extremely touching. This was a bold role, too, for Mia Farrow after the success of Rosemary’s Baby (1967) turned her into a box office star. She brings believability to a difficult role, especially as she is far from the spoiled child one might expect.
Robert Mitchum fans must have received the fright of their life to see their hero not just with uncomely beard but portraying a sinister character, not an out-and-out villain which would have been acceptable, but fast forward a couple of years and you can see evidence here of the kind of portrayal he would evince in Ryan’s Daughter (1970). Look out for Peggy Ashcroft (The Nun’s Story, 1959) in a smaller role, her first film in nearly a decade.
Check out the “Behind the Scenes” article for this film.
The Magnificent 60s 