Sue Lyon – The Magnificent 60s

The Flim Flam Man / One Born Every Minute (1967) ***

Throwback to It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), prelude to Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and in the middle of the car chases and town wrecking a character study of a pair of grifters, one veteran, the other his pupil.

U.S. Army deserter Curley (Michael Sarrazin) teams up with veteran con man Mordecai (George C Scott) who teaches him the tricks of the trade. There’s nothing particularly innovative about the older man’s techniques – Find the Queen, The Lost Wallet, selling hooch as genuine whiskey – and the rewards are not particularly rewarding unless you are living at scavenger level in whatever run-down habitat you can find.

The dumb cops, Sheriff Slade (Harry Morgan) and Deputy Meshaw (Albert Salmi), aren’t quite so stupid otherwise they wouldn’t occasionally happen upon their quarry. And the larcenous duo offer nothing more clever by way of escape except to hijack vehicles.

So once you get past the aforementioned car chases and town wrecking it settles down into a gentle old-fashioned drama. Luckily all the good ol’ boy shenanigans are limited to the police, and neither main character is afflicted by over-emphatic accents.

Mordecai ain’t no Robin Hood nor a criminal mastermind who might have his eyes on a big- money heist. His ethos is stealing not so much from the gullible but the greedy. All his suckers think they can make an easy killing from a guy who appears a harmless old duffer.

He’s not looking for a big score because he’s got nobody to settle down with and because, although on a wanted list (as “The Flim-Flam Man” of local legend) he’s not going to exercise the authorities except cops with very little otherwise to do. He is as laid-back a drifter as they come.

Curley offers the drama. He starts to have qualms not so much about stealing from the greedy but about the repair bills for the cars they wrecked, especially one belonging to the young innocent Bonnie Lee (Sue Lyon), to whom he takes a fancy. While she reciprocates it’s only up to a point, having the good sense not to hook up with a criminal, so eventually he has to choose between giving himself up and serving time in the hope Bonnie Lee will hang around and severing his links with Mordecai, whom he treats as a father figure.

How he works that out is probably the best scene, especially given his temporary profession. Whether this is the first picture to feature so prominently incompetent cops rather than either the tough or corrupt kind I’m not sure but Slade and Meshaw take some beating.

In his first starring role, Michael Sarrazin (Eye of the Cat, 1969) is the cinematic catch. All the more so because director Irvin Kershner doesn’t take the easy route of focusing on his soulful eyes, permitting the actor to deliver a more rounded performance. He’s certainly more natural here than any future movie where he clearly relied far more on the aforementioned soulful eyes.

While I’m not sure the ageing make-up does much for him, George C. Scott (Petulia, 1968), in his first top-billed role, tones down the usual operatics and makes a convincing loner who can make one good romantic memory last a lifetime. He switches between completely relaxed to, on spotting a likely victim, sharp as a tack. The harmless old man guise falls away once he smells greed, replaced by cunning small-time ruthlessness.

Sue Lyon (Night of the Iguana, 1964) has little to do except not be the sex-pot of her usual screen incarnation and that’s to the good of the picture. By this stage of his career Harry Morgan was more likely to be found in television so it’s a treat to see him make the most of a meaty supporting part. Look out for Strother Martin (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) and Slim Pickens (Rough Night in Jericho, 1967).

Irvin Kershner (A Fine Madness, 1966) appears on firmer ground with the drama than the wild car chase/town wrecking but I suspect it takes more skills to pull off the latter than the former where the actors can help you out. Though I notice Yakima Canutt is down as second unit director so he might be due more of the credit. Screenwriter William Rose had already plundered the greed theme and, to that extent the car chase, for his seminal It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

The outlandish elements, fun though they are, give this an uneven quality that gets in the way of a tidy little picture.

Tony Rome (1967) ***

Effervescent mystery punching a hole in the traditional private eye caper. Look elsewhere for film noir as Frank Sinatra (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) reinvents his screen persona. On the one hand he’s such a cool cat, living on a boat in Miami, you half expect him to burst into song just with joy. On the other hand, you wouldn’t cross him. Corpses tend to pile up in his vicinity.

There’s a surprising self-awareness that’s dealt with through considerable subtlety, not with the usual angst of film noir where flaws not only tend to be magnified but spill over and drench the plot. Addicted to gambling, Rome steers clear of marriage and any long-term relationship, knowing such a move would be disastrous for the other party. A former cop, he is touchy though about his father, also a cop, who blew his brains out when some murky deal went wrong.

High on the glamorous side, houses the sizes of small cities, women parading in either next to nothing or with the current year’s hot fashion items. You’d be surprised there wasn’t a horse-riding scene, or one set at a hi-hat ball. But this is pretty much a procedural as the canny detective probes the low life as much as the high, bars where go-go dancing is the least of the illicit activities, jewellers who act as fences, and plumbs the life of millionaire Rudolph (Simon Oakland), tough on the business side, dumb as donuts when it comes to romance with former cocktail waitress (a profession often bracketed with quote marks) wife Rita (Gena Rowlands).

And oddly enough, romance here turns out to be touching, sex coming with responsibility rather than a free-for-all as you are initially led to believe. A lesbian scene for once is not exploitative.

Begins with one of the humdrum cases that must consume the bulk of a gumshoe’s time – the hunt for a valuable diamond brooch, lost from the dress of married drunken heiress Diana (Sue Lyon). Turns out he’s not the only one, inexplicably, looking. He takes a beating from a couple of hoods.

When his ex-partner meets his maker in a bathtub, it’s a cinch Tony Rome is next, which means he has a lot of explaining to do to his endlessly frustrated ex-colleague Lt Santini (Richard Conte). If it was a question of whiling away the time, Rome could spend it in the arms of Diana or multiple divorcee Anne (Jill St John).

As you might expect, everyone has secrets they prefer to keep hidden, and happy to do so with violence. Otherwise, they’re going to be knocked sideways by the past. There’s no shortage of suspects including the elusive Nimmo.

I’m assuming the censor enjoyed a chuckle when Mrs Schuyler (Templeton Fox) appeared rather than pursing their lips in disapproval at the way Sinatra wrapped his lips around the word “pussy.” There’s a certain amount of light-hearted sexual jousting but if you were looking for predatory behavior it’s women you’d point the finger at, though given a free pass since in Miami, apparently, men were vastly outnumbered by men and lasses who had not developed a come-hither would be left on the sidelines.

To properly appreciate the picture, you’d have to cast your mind back to a time before there was a surfeit of television detectives and when the general mystery picture (also encompassing spy movies) had gone AWOL or awry with balderdash plot and outsize villains whose only satisfaction in life was holding the world to ransom. In fact, in retrospect, it’s refreshing to find a picture where the director doesn’t pull the wool over your eyes and your hero isn’t an arrogant preening bantam.

So what you’ve got is a properly-plotted plot, clues aplenty that only our clever private eye can unravel, and, inevitably, in the Raymond Chandler tradition some heavy bursting through a door with a gun, and, in this case, also a shovel. This private dick doesn’t fall into the hard-working category of legend, often favors a Bud over the harder stuff, and though he can knock out the cynical one-liners they often come with a tinge of truth or melancholy.

And for once the MacGuffin (Maltese falcon might be a more apt reference) bears significance to the plot.

One of the interminable pot-shots critics took at Sinatra was his preference for working in a single take, the impression given that he was a lazy sod and a bit more effort would have resulted in a better performance. On the other hand, you could just be in awe of an actor who can hit the button stone dead in a single take.

Co-star Gena Rowlands, with something of a hard-boiled reputation herself, found him to be a “wonderful actor; he could do a whole complicated scene in one take…there was nothing pretentious about him, he was just awfully nice.”

Sinatra is no Bogart but for a time afterwards audience were saying of other pretenders to the shamus crown “he’s no Sinatra.” Jill St John (The King’s Pirate, 1967) makes the most of a more interesting part, including delivering the stinger in the tale. Gena Rowlands (Machine Gun McCain, 1969) reveals the little girl under the glam, Richard Conte (The Lady in Cement, 1969) tones down his typical belligerence, Sue Lyon (Night of the Iguana, 1964) good as a young woman confused by sudden wealth.

The under-rated Gordon Douglas (Stagecoach, 1966) directed from a script by Richard L. Breen (A Man Could Get Killed, 1966) and Marvin H. Albert (Duel at Diablo, 1966), also author of the source novel.

The poster designer pulled a fat one. In typical titillating fashion, you think Sinatra is staring down at a half-naked corpse. But, in fact, no female was harmed in this picture.

Takes a little while to get going but once it hots up it’s perfect entertainment.

The Night of the Iguana (1964) ****

The eponymous reptile is a rather obvious metaphor for characters trapped by quixotic decisions. Regardless of the Rev Dr. T Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton) being a defrocked priest, he was always going to lead a dissolute life, alcohol the least of his temptations. This heady drama begins with comedy about a man with ideas above his station ending up as an incompetent tourist guide.

And if his behaviour is not scandalous enough for current coach party, middle-aged Baptist ladies, he leads them to a hotel in Mexico run by former lover Maxine (Ava Gardner) who has two younger lovers on the go. And as is the way with author Tennessee Williams there’s a posse of fascinating characters, led by spinster Hannah (Deborah Kerr) who ekes out an itinerant living selling paintings while her aged grandfather (Cyril Devalanti) recites poetry. Raising the moral stakes is under-age Charlotte (Sue Lyon) who has taken a fancy to Shannon, partly in rebellion against her frosty chaperone Judith (Grayson Hall).

For a movie with no great narrative drive, there’s no shortage of drama, whether it’s the Reverend under constant attack from his charges, Charlotte making advances, Shannon succumbing or trying to fight his addictions, Maxine succumbing then rejecting his advances, and Hannah on the sidelines trying to work out why her entire life has been lived in the shadows.

A simple dramatic fuse has been lit, disparate group with secrets set to explode, and you just sit back and enjoy the ride. Exceptionally daring, even if in discreet fashion, for the time, not just the Lolita-style Charlotte, but the middle-aged Maxine cavorting with not one but two men young enough to be her sons, so effectively a Cougar (before the term was invented) in a threesome, a woman in full command on her sex life not at the whim of a male. There’s as overt a gay woman as you would find in this era. And that’s before we come to Hannah, one of whose two sexual experiences involved averting her eyes while her male companion masturbated on a piece of her clothing. That was taking it way beyond the limits of acceptable on-screen behaviour of the day.

Characters are either engulfed by their passions or weaknesses or trying to come to terms with them, sometimes both. Over everything hangs poignancy at the self-deception practised, redemption scarcely a possibility, communication a minefield, acceptance the best anyone can hope for. Quality acting prevents this disappearing down a sinkhole of self-pity.

Richard Burton (Becket, 1964) was on a roll, one brilliant performance after another either with or without Elizabeth Taylor, essaying a wide range of characters. This is one of his best. You should despise the sham he has become, relying on charm to dig himself out of a hole, relying far too much on the kindness of strangers whose sympathy is exhausted. Yet the loss of the only position, a clergyman, for which he was possibly suited, thrown out for committing unforgiveable sin while preaching sanctity, makes him a very relatable human being. This isn’t Days of Wine and Roses reborn, but someone trying to win the pinch of oxygen required to keep his soul alive, and stir the energy inside. And he would be furious if you ever made the mistake of feeling sorry for him.

Ava Gardner (Mayerling, 1968) is superb, staring age in the face, unrepentant, sex an acceptable substitute for love, underlying sadness admirably restrained. But Deborah Kerr (The Chalk Garden, 1964), brings a refreshing dash to her introspective character, a woman with practical solutions except to her own emotional emptiness. Sue Lyon (Lolita, 1962) is only briefly scandalous and the movie’s conclusion suggests she is capable of settling down and not giving into the base desires that afflict all the others.

Just as with The Misfits (1961), director John Huston allows his characters to breathe. It would have been very easy to allow Shannon to have a more heroic or stoic stature, instead of someone stumbling around. Tinges of comedy and wit lighten the load. Huston and Anthony Veiller (The List of Adrian Messenger, 1963) wrote the screenplay from the Tennessee Williams play.