Fireball 500 (1966)

Film: Fireball 500 (1966)

Stars: Frankie Avalon, Fabian, Annette Funicello, Harvey Lembeck, Chill Wills, Julie Parrish

Director: William Asher

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Annette Funicello: click here to learn more about Ms. Funicello (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By the mid-1960's, Annette Funicello's career was in a weird spot.  She regularly appeared in the Beach Party movies, and was about to start a different career path (pun intended) by doing race-car driving pictures.  However, her career wasn't really beyond that.  Like many teen idols before her, the roles weren't serious, and as she was entering her late 20's, the Beach Party movies and pretty young ingenue roles weren't going to be an option anymore.  Funicello would make our film today, Fireball 500 at the tail-end of her movie career.  The film was a moderate hit, one to spawn a follow-up called Thunder Alley, but that was basically the end of Funicello's career as a leading woman-she wouldn't star in another film for 20 years.

(Spoilers Ahead) Fireball 500 focuses on Dave "Fireball" Owens (Avalon), a race-car driver trying to get to the Indianapolis speedway, and willing to do whatever it takes to be the best.  He happens upon a small town racing operation, where he rides against Leander Fox (Fabian), beating him in their initial bout.  This results in Leander's girl Jane (Funicello) getting into Dave's sights, but it's actually Martha Brien (Parrish), who is running a liquor-smuggling ring, that ends up getting his heart.  Dave is sucked into two ends of Martha's operation, which is truly run by Charlie Bigg (Lembeck), her smitten partner, both romancing Martha as well as working for the cops, who are investigating not just the moonshine ring, but also a series of fatal car accidents of those involved in the enterprise.  The film culminates in a big rematch race between Leander & Dave, with Leander badly injuring himself (and in the process, winning Jane forever), while Martha & Dave ride off into the sunset when they reveal that Charlie has been the one killing the drivers, in hopes of murdering Dave to win Martha back.

The movie is terrible.  As I said last weekend, I loved Beach Party-I thought it was giddy, silly fun and everyone involved (including Frankie & Annette) were a gas (pun not intended but appreciated).  This, though, has none of that fun.  There are a couple of musical numbers, but none of them pop, and the cast doesn't work.  I have discovered a weird late-in-life crush on Frankie Avalon this month (he's so cute and short...I love it!), and he's the best part of this, but Fabian is a snore, and I have to admit, so is Annette.  They have no chemistry together, and he has the romantic projection of a broom.  This doesn't work, and I get why it didn't spawn more than one sequel.

Annette Funicello spent much of the 1970's raising her three children, and staying out of the lime light, her biggest acting gig being a series of commercials for Skippy's peanut butter.  During a comeback attempt, when she made Back to the Beach (a spoof of the original beach party movies that reunited her with Frankie Avalon), she started to have headaches & dizzy spells, and was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.  She eventually went public with her diagnosis, and caused massive awareness; many people (including me) first heard of the disease in connection with Funicello, who would go on the cover of People Magazine when she revealed it in 1992.  Funicello would die from the disease in 2013, at the age of 70.  Disney CEO Bob Iger would said of her upon her death "She will forever hold a place in our hearts as one of Walt Disney's brightest stars."  Starting on Thursday, we're going to look at a contemporary star of Funicello's one who would have her own moments on the beach, but whose time as America's Sweetheart would belie a deeply tragic & complicated personal life.  

The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

Film: The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)

Stars: Doris Day, Rod Taylor, Arthur Godfrey, John McGiver, Paul Lynde, Dom DeLuise, Dick Martin

Director: Frank Tashlin

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Doris Day: click here to learn more about Ms. Day (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Doris Day's film career ended pretty quickly after she stopped being persistently bankable, which is not the case for most leading actors (where they get at least 5-7 years of grace period before Hollywood quits on them entirely, albeit they do so in lesser and lesser parts).  The Glass Bottom Boat in 1966 was her final major hit (keeping her in the Top 10 most bankable stars in Hollywood despite being a woman of 44, a death knell age at the time), and she would only make movies for another two years.  We're going to talk about this below, but the back half of Day's career, when she would move away from film, was rough, and involved quite a few scandals for the girl who, more than any actress of her generation, inhabited the "girl next door" motif, and many of them involved the men in her life, one of whom was her husband Marty Melcher, a film producer who was one of the producers on The Glass Bottom Boat.

(Spoilers Ahead) Before we get into that, though, we're going to talk about The Glass Bottom Boat, which features Day as widow Jennifer Nelson who spends her time split between helping her dad's tourism company (where she dons mermaid apparel and swims underneath the titular glass bottom boat), and working at an aerospace company in public relations.  There she meets her boss Bruce Templeton (Taylor), whom she already fought with when he hooks the bottom half of her mermaid outfit during her routine in the film's opening scene.  The two start up a friendship, and it's clear that he has access to important government secrets.  While Bruce is falling in love with Jennifer, the rest of the men in the company (including comedians Paul Lynde, Dom DeLuise, & Dick Martin) go about trying to prove that Jennifer is a spy.  They find out that she's not, but instead it's another man posing as a CIA official who is the spy, but Jennifer & Bruce stop him, and end up getting married, driving off in a boat that they quickly crash.

Your patience with The Glass Bottom Boat will depend on two things: how much you like late-1960's slapstick comedy (which is very similar to the sitcom-y style you also would've found on television) and with Day as a performer.  Day is too old to be playing such an idiot this far into her career, and it makes sense that she was starting to become a punchline to audiences at the time.  In a similar fashion to John Wayne (who weirdly never made a movie with Doris Day, and should've as I honestly think they would've been great onscreen together), audiences were tired of the "World's Oldest Virgin" routine and while there was still a market for her (again, much like Wayne), her star power was feeling strong but one-note in 1966.  I liked The Glass Bottom Boat because I've found this month that I'm a sucker for Doris Day even in bad movies (I was already a fan, this solidified it for me, and I plan on seeing more of her as I can), but I will admit it's not a particularly good movie, and doesn't take enough advantage of the strong cast of comedians it has at its disposal until the final thirty minutes of the picture.

As I said above, Day's career ended soon after this.  Her film Caprice was a high-profile flop, and while With Six You Get Eggroll was a hit, it wasn't enough to keep her wanting to make movies, and it would be her final picture.  What soon happened, though, were two major scandals.  The first involved her husband Marty Melcher, who died of an enlarged heart in 1968 at the age of 52.  Melcher had embezzled all of the fortune that Day had made in the previous two decades for her film & music work, and had contracted her to a television show, which she had to do as she was now broke.  She sued Melcher's business partner and got some of her money back, and her television show was a hit that ran for five seasons, but she never made another movie.

Day also had her name in the paper due to her son Terry's association with the Manson Family (you read that right-America's Sweetheart had a direct connection to the most notorious murders of the 1960's).  This is a story that could take up a whole other article, but Melcher had regularly visited the Manson Family at Spahn Ranch, and had lived at one point (with his then-girlfriend Candice Bergen) in the house that Sharon Tate was murdered in (testimony from the Manson Family indicates they knew that Melcher didn't live there anymore, but that they wanted to send a message to him that he might be next).   All of this took a toll on Day, who would largely retreat from the spotlight, only occasionally doing television, despite entreaties to come back to movies (including most famously her refusal to play the Anne Bancroft role in The Graduate), and toward the end of her life, refusals toward the AFI, Kennedy Center, & the Oscars to accept career achievement awards they wanted to bestow on her.  She deemed that to be part of her past life as a movie star, and indeed that was a long time gone when she died in 2019 at the age of 97.

Next month we're going to spend time with one more movie queen of the 1950's & 60's who would take on the title of America's Sweetheart alongside Doris Day & Audrey Hepburn, an actress who, like Day, struggled to get the critical respect she wanted during her lifetime (and again like Day, had a husband she shouldn't have let handle her finances).

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Film: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)

Stars: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee van Cleef

Director: Sergio Leone

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Clint Eastwood: click here to learn more about Mr. Eastwood (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

While the "Dollars Trilogy" had done extremely well in Europe, it wasn't released in the United States until 1967, and it was then released in rapid succession (all three in one year).  Keep in mind, despite his time on Rawhide, at this point Eastwood was still an unknown to large swaths of the American audience, certainly when it came to the movies.  That changed with the release of these films.  Though they were greeted poorly by critics, audiences ate them up, and Eastwood was marked as one of the top box office draws of 1967.  The films' success (particularly our picture today) led Eastwood to try to push his stardom, and he was able to with a series of box office successes including Hang Em High, Coogan's Bluff, and Where Eagles Dare.  He also had the noted box office bomb (and to date, his only musical) Paint Your Wagon, which we're sadly not going to have time to watch but I'm desperate to see eventually as we've got a lot of ground to cover with Eastwood in the next two weeks.  But first, let's finish out the "Dollars Trilogy" with the celebrated western The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

(Spoilers Ahead) At nearly three hours, the movie stretches a lot of time, but it's honestly a series of short stories about three men: Blondie (aka the Good, aka Eastwood), Tuco (aka the Ugly, aka Wallach), and Angel Eyes (aka The Bad, aka van Cleef).  The three of them represent honor in the form of Blondie, treachery in the form of Tuco, and evil in the form of Angel Eyes.  All three men cross paths on their way to the same treasure-there is $200,000 in gold buried in a Civil War graveyard.  The only problem is-Tuco is the only person who knows what the name of the cemetery is, and Blondie's the only person who knows the name of the gravestone where it's buried.  They therefore form an uneasy alliance, and cross paths with Angel Eyes.  Tuco, under torture, tells Angel Eyes the name of the cemetery and that Blondie knows the name of the gravestone, but they both escape, and in a moment of trust, Tuco & Blondie tell their secrets...after which Tuco quickly betrays Blondie and runs after the gold by himself.  The problem is, Blondie smartly didn't tell him the actual name of the gravestone.  This leads to a standoff between the three men, where Angel Eyes is killed by Blondie, and Tuco stands there with an unloaded weapon (not realizing Blondie had taken out the bullets).  In the end, Tuco & Blondie find the gold, but before they can part, Tuco (in a callback to the beginning of the film), is strung up on a noose, and from a distance, Blondie shoots him down.  The film ends with Blondie riding into the sunset with his pile of gold, while Tuco runs after him, his hands bound, with no horse, and no way of transporting his riches.

The movie is masterfully-handled by Leone.  I was already a fan of his before I started watching the "Dollars" trilogy, as he made what is certainly my favorite western (and on some days, my go to answer for "what is your favorite movie?") Once Upon a Time in the West.  After watching this, I'm convinced he's the best director to never win an Oscar nomination.  The film is technically marvelous, with expansive, gorgeous cinematography, an impressive recurring score from Ennio Morricone, and marvelous editing, sound work, & art direction (this is admittedly more location scouting than production design, but the scene where Eli Wallach runs through the graveyards, joyfully thinking he's won the gold, is a testament to how important it is to use actual sets or locations rather than CGI it's so awe-inspiring from the sheer size).  The final hour of the movie (it's long, but I didn't feel it), is about as good as a movie can get, with the film working toward the inevitable standoff between these three men, with only one able to win.

In many ways, this would mirror the ending of Once Upon a Time in the West, except this one has more room for comedy than that picture (the ending of that one is grander, which if you've only seen The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly you'll look at me with skeptical eyes, as this is a pretty elevated finale).  The three title actors are all splendid.  We talked a lot about Lee van Cleef last week, but I'm so thankful that he was given a chance at stardom in the Italian cinema, because he's now had two classic turns, here as a villainous baddie who in his opening scenes kills a family out of some sort of warped sense of duty (it's hard not to think that the Coen Brothers had him in mind with Anton Chigurh).  Eastwood continues to impress.  The actor frequently gets criticized for being a relatively limited actor, but, if we're honest-so was Cary Grant, and he still had a laundry list of classic performances.  The main goal of a movie star is to pick roles they'll do well in and sell the movie, and this is splendid, with him playing the man-with-no-name as a snarky, omnipotent being.  But best of the three is Wallach.  His Tuco is funny, scene-stealing, and in some of his best moments (like the running through the graveyard) some of the finest work of Wallach's career.  A triumph, and what a treat to get to watch all three of these movies for the first time.

Django (1966)

Film: Django (1966)

Stars: Franco Nero, Jose Bodalo, Loredana Nusciak, Angel Alvarez, Eduardo Fajardo

Director: Sergio Corbucci

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Franco Nero: click here to learn more about Mr. Nero (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned in our kickoff article for this month, we're moving into the New Hollywood portion of the western, when the genre would undergo a seismic shift before losing its cache by the late 1970's, and so far not becoming a staple again in film since (though the gargantuan success of the Yellowstone franchise clearly indicates there's an appetite for this type of story if anyone wants to pick up the baton).  The transition was helped by the phenomenon of the spaghetti western, which was a trend in the mid-to-late 1960's of westerns, to try to have cheaper production budgets, being filmed in Italy.  Thanks to the success of A Fistful of Dollars in 1964 (which would make Clint Eastwood a movie star), the genre became big business in the United States, spawning a slew of films starring Eastwood, as well as actors who looked like Eastwood.  It also was host to Once Upon a Time in the West in 1968, generally considered to be the greatest spaghetti western of the era and, depending on the day, my favorite movie (of any genre) of all-time.  One of those actors who looked like Eastwood was Franco Nero, who in 1966 starred in one of the most profitable westerns of the era, and in the process became a star in Italian cinema as the titular Django.

(Spoilers Ahead) Most spaghetti westerns have a similar plot if we're being honest, and while we're only going to cover one of Nero's westerns in the spaghetti western format this month, know that when we get to more later this year, this has a formula.  Django (Nero, who is sexy AF in this movie) opens the film by saving Maria (Nusciak), a prostitute, from Major Jackson (Fajardo) crucifying her (the film ain't subtle).  Django is notable to the townspeople for carrying around a coffin, which we soon learn contains not a dead body but a machine gun, when he kills a bunch of Jackson's men in a fight they assume they can easily win against one man.  They use the machine gun by joining forces with General Rodriguez (Bodalo), who is trying to stage a coup against the Mexican government.  Rodriguez betrays Django, who then runs off with his share of the gold, and in the process of getting it back the gold falls into quicksand and both Django & Maria are wounded.  In a final showdown (in a cemetery), though, Django kills Major Jackson in revenge, his hands now broken but him free of the coffin he carried.

The movie's violence is its most noted trait-it was actually banned in the United Kingdom for decades because it couldn't get a certificate to be seen there.  It is jarring to see actual blood in a western of this time period (the American western wouldn't really come-of-age for a few more years with The Wild Bunch), as it's more realistic than even a post-Code Hollywood seemed willing to embrace for its iconic heroes.  The movie's plot isn't original or particularly compelling, but the blood and gore is the calling card, even if it's sometimes unnecessary (genuinely could've done without the guy eating his own sliced-off ear and then getting shot two seconds later).  The cinematography, especially the final scene, is exquisite, and makes up for a rudimentary plot.  It also has maybe the best western theme ever put to movie screens.

We'll obviously talk about Nero's career the rest of the month, but while he will be associated with Django for the rest of his life (it will undoubtedly be the first line in his obituary), he wasn't part of the many, many (well over thirty) sequels, just coming back for one film, 1987's Django Strikes Again which was ill-regarded by critics and read more like a failed comeback attempt for the actor.  Quentin Tarantino, someone who has been an ardent public fan of the spaghetti western, also used him in his film Django Unchained, where he got a cameo opposite Jamie Foxx as the titular Django in that movie, where he memorably asks him to spell his name, and after Foxx said "the 'D' is silent," Nero says "I know" and saunters off, back to the camera, the same way he did in this picture.  The iconic theme music would serve as the theme of Tarantino's film as well.

El Dorado (1966)

Film: El Dorado (1966)

Stars: John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, James Caan, Charlene Holt, Paul Fix, Arthur Hunnicutt, Michele Carey, Ed Asner

Director: Howard Hawks

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on John Wayne: click here to learn more about Mr. Wayne (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're making a pretty big jump today in Wayne's career (particularly given we have two more Saturday's left this month) going from 1949 to 1966.  During that time frame, Wayne started to see a shift in his career.  The Duke had a work ethic that bordered on manic, and throughout the 1950's and early 1960's he worked constantly, and this resulted occasionally in bad decisions by Wayne, giving up several major westerns that we've covered for other actors this season of "Saturdays with the Stars" like The Gunfighter and Seven Men from Now.  But during this time, Wayne began to star in some of the best films of his career, movies that would define his persona.  These include The Searchers, Rio Bravo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and today's film, El Dorado.  We'll talk a little bit more about Wayne's reputation as an actor next week, but it has to be said that this is a really impressive run of movies, and it sometimes gets forgotten with Wayne (who made a lot of crap in his career during this time like The Conqueror) just how many classics he was able to get out.  Gene Autry & Roy Rogers were in dozens of westerns too...but they were never in movies this good, which is why Wayne is the actor synonymous with the western to modern audiences.

(Spoilers Ahead) El Dorado takes place in two acts, the first being between two renowned gunslingers, Sheriff JP Harrah (Mitchum) and his old buddy, gun-for-hire Cole Thornton (Wayne).  Thornton is working, he soon realizes, for the bad guys, a rich landowner named Bart Jason (Asner), who is trying to run the MacDonald family off of their land.  Thornton chooses to not work for Bart Jason, but during the confusion of which side he's on, one of the MacDonald sons, still pretty green about the way of gunfighting, shoots at Thornton, and Thornton mortally wounds him.  Another of the MacDonald's, their daughter Joey (Carey), shoots him, and lodges a bullet in his back, which causes him to have paralysis.  Months later, he still hasn't had this bullet removed, and we pick up the saga with us realizing that JP Harrah has become a drunk, a laughingstock who has let Jason's men run roughshod over El Dorado.  Thornton, along with his new sidekick Mississippi (Caan) have to not only fend off Bart's men once-and-for-all, they also have to find a way to sober up JP Harrah enough for him to gain back the respect of the town (and his own self-worth).

El Dorado is interesting for a variety of reasons.  At this point in Wayne's career, while he would never be "hip" he had found ways to upend the stereotypes of the western that he had established in Stagecoach by playing a hero-turned-villain in The Searchers and showing the pessimistic side of the western legend in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.  El Dorado is not doing what these films do.  There is a moment in the middle where it feels like it might.  There's a heartbreaking scene where Mitchum realizes that not only is he a drunk, but he's also a laughingstock, a man who prided himself on a rough reputation has become no different than the men whom he used to laugh at at the saloon.  This could've been groundbreaking, but they largely brush it aside even if Mitchum's clearly willing to give it a go in terms of breaking stereotypes.

But El Dorado is instead one of the last classic westerns.  Mitchum & Wayne are in the mold they set in the 1940's, not the mold they would upend in the 1950's.  This isn't meant as an insult-I love the westerns of the 1940's, and El Dorado is extremely well-structured, well-lensed, and while Wayne isn't breaking new mold, Mitchum's giving a strong performance.  At the time it would've been easy to call it old-fashioned, but with the benefit of time, it plays less as out-of-date and more as a swan song for these two men.  Wayne would continue to act, and we'll get to the how's and why's of that in the next two weeks, but this was a good encapsulation of his career at this point-people didn't want anything new from the actor.  He was still a movie star in 1966, frequently a big one (this was a hit), but the brief bit of trailblazing he'd done in the late 1950's & early 1960's in the western was being done by younger, New Hollywood actors.

OVP: Return of the Seven (1966)

Film: Return of the Seven (1966)

Stars: Yul Brynner, Robert Fuller, Julian Mateos, Warren Oates, Claude Akins, Jordan Christopher

Director: Burt Kennedy

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Yul Brynner: click here to learn more about Mr. Brynner (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

During the first few years of Yul Brynner's career, he managed to defy expectations.  While quite good-looking, he didn't have the conventional, prototypical good looks of a Rock Hudson or Paul Newman, but he was a constant box office presence who managed in five years to win an Oscar, star in multiple film classics, and a slew of blockbusters.  But after The Magnificent Seven, Brynner's career took a pretty steep and largely unyielding slide.  Though he continued to star in major studio films opposite big names like Tony Curtis, Marlon Brando, & Kirk Douglas, most of his movies of the 1960's were flops, and as we'll discuss next week when we close our month with him, this continued well into the 1970's.  One of the few exceptions to this rule was Return of the Seven, with Brynner returning to not only the western, but to his character of Chris Adams for his one undisputed hit of the era.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows a very similar plot to The Magnificent Seven.  Here, a group of men in a small Mexican village are forced to join a gang of marauders, leaving the women behind to fend for themselves.  One of the men kidnapped is Chico (Mateos), who was one of the survivors of The Magnificent Seven.  When his wife goes to find Chris (Adams) and Vin (Fuller), they pledge to help her, but first must recruit a group of four other men to replace the deceased members of the original seven (including Sheriff Lobo himself Claude Akins and Jordan Christopher, who was in the band The Wild Ones, who recorded a flop record in 1965 that The Troggs would make legendary a year later called "Wild Thing").  The men go and stop the marauders, and while some live, Chris, Vin, & Chico end their story in the same place, with Chico left behind while Chris & Vin ride off into the sunset.

The movie has almost none of the magic of the original, and part of that starts with the cast.  The only returning member from the original movie is Brynner, and it shows.  Without Steve McQueen, James Coburn, & Charles Bronson, a lot of the movie star charisma is gone, and this feels cheap.  The plot is a ripoff of the original movie, almost more of a remake than a proper sequel, and you spend half of the movie trying to realize that the character played by Robert Fuller is Steve McQueen's character.  It's cheap, and quite frankly a bad movie.

It also weirdly got an Oscar nomination for Best Score.  Elmer Bernstein's original score was a classic, a genius invention & one of the essential tunes of the movie western.  This movie...uses the same score, getting nominated for a re-recording in the Best Scoring category (since it wouldn't have been eligible for Score).  It's indistinguishable from the original's main themes...except the plot is so similar there's not even new themes for the music to interpret.  Honestly, it's a really weird nomination, and while 1966 isn't a year known for musicals, I'm confident they could've found something more inspired.  As a result, this isn't going to fare well for our OVP, even if the music is good on its own.

Torn Curtain (1966)

Film: Torn Curtain (1966)

Stars: Paul Newman, Julie Andrews, Lila Kedrova, Hansjorg Felmy, Tamara Toumanova

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Julie Andrews-click here to learn more about Ms. Andrews (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Yesterday we kicked off our month devoted to Julie Andrews (click the link above for more, you know the drill), but while we usually talk about in our first article how a star became famous, Andrews' origin story might be one of the most well-known in Hollywood history, so this is probably a tale you already recall.  For the unfamiliar, after being a sensation in both television (Cinderella was seen by over 100 million people when it was broadcast by CBS in 1957) and theater (both The Boy Friend and My Fair Lady were absolute smashes), Andrews turned her eyes to Hollywood.  Initially she assumed she'd be cast as Eliza Doolittle in the big-screen adaptation of My Fair Lady, but that didn't happen as Jack Warner wanted a bigger star (Audrey Hepburn) to lead the movie, so instead she made her debut in Mary Poppins, which won her the Best Actress Oscar (Hepburn wasn't even nominated).  There was no sophomore slump for Andrews-the next two years she made the highest-grossing film of both 1965 (The Sound of Music) and 1966 (Hawaii). So at the point Andrews teamed up with Hitchcock (who did not want her initially for the part-he favored Eva Marie Saint) she was basically Hollywood's box office insurance policy, not just having yet to make a flop, but she was basically the monetary guarantee that someone like Dwayne Johnson is today.  As a result, Hitchcock was required by Universal to put Andrews in his picture (coming full circle on the Eliza Doolittle situation), which brings us to Torn Curtain.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in the mid-1960's, where Dr. Michael Armstrong (Newman) is on a secret mission in Copenhagen where he receives covert instructions to contact π if he gets into trouble.  Armstrong is defecting to the Soviet Union, much to the shock of his fiancee Sarah (Andrews), who follows him to the Soviet Union & is then pressured to also defect, except she assumes this to be legitimate.  It turns out that Armstrong is trying to learn secret anti-missile secrets from the Soviets, and when he does he is found out, with the Soviets intending to kill both he & Sarah before they can flee back to the United States with this information.  π ends up being a group of people that use a decoy bus to get people out of the country, and with the help of this organization (and Lila Kedrova in a cameo as an exiled Polish countess), the two flee to America, their romance renewed & America stronger for another day.

The film itself, despite its relatively twisty plot, reads as pretty straightforward when you're watching it. Part of the problem is that it doesn't feel like it has a lot of Hitchcock's best flourishes.  It still looks great (beautiful stars, glamorous hotels...there's definitely a polish there), but it doesn't have the artistry that Hitchcock's films were known for.  I know we're cheating a bit by not featuring more of Hitchcock's greatest films (1954-64 is generally considered to be when he made his best pictures), as the confines of the rules of this series (I only watch "new to me" films) hurts that cause since I've seen virtually all of Hitchcock's films in that era, so we aren't going to focus on him in his glory, but as it's October (the year is winding down) we shouldn't forget that Hitchcock never really stopped making movies, even when the public started to lose interest.  Torn Curtain was not, as some describe it, a flop (it was a minor hit, though nowhere near the success of Psycho or The Birds), but it definitely represents a different era of creativity from Hitchcock.  I have not seen any film he made after this (we'll get to all of the rest of them in December), but I will admit this feels listless in the way some of the "director for hire" work we've been seeing Hitchcock made in Sunday Leftovers did, rather than peak creativity like he had just a few years earlier.

Part of the problem, I'm sorry to say, is the leads.  I love Paul Newman & Julie Andrews-both brilliant actors, I'd give them both Oscars at points in their careers-truly great stars.  But they don't work well together-there's not a lot of chemistry between Andrews' bright-and-bouncy screen aura & Newman's sex-driven, sensitive soul.  Andrews in general is not a great fit for Hitchcock.  I think the logic here must have been "Doris Day made it work, why can't Julie Andrews?" but that doesn't pan out-Andrews onscreen persona did eventually shift, but in the 1960's there was too much money to be had from not breaking it, and the character here doesn't really warrant it.  As a result, Andrews feels tonally out of place, and this is the rare dud for me from our Star of the Month.  Next week, though, we'll be getting into one of Andrews' most successful pictures, and a movie far more in her natural wheelhouse.

OVP: An American Dream (1966)

Film: An American Dream (1966)

Stars: Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Eleanor Parker, Barry Sullivan, Murray Hamilton, Joe De Santis

Director: Robert Gist

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"A Time for Love")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

I watch two channels in my house with such constant abandon they might as well be my roommates: Food Network & TCM.  The latter I know every host, and I know what kinds of films they will like (and what they will & won't say about movies).  Ben Mankiewicz is the biggest name on the channel since Robert Osborne's passing, and while Mankiewicz will never be Osborne (no one will), he has his own charms & I've grown fond of him.  I also can tell when he's introducing a movie that he doesn't like (Osborne this was much harder to deduce), but I've never seen Mankiewicz introduce a movie quite like An American Dream (based on the novel by Norman Mailer) recently, where he essentially called it trippy and quoted a truly terrible review of the film...essentially daring the audience to hate watch what they were about to see.  Doing this at the beginning of the movie is something TCM simply doesn't do, and honestly, I was shocked...but proving their marketing department is onto something, was intrigued enough to stick around.  As a result, I got to see one of the weirdest, straight-up messed up movies I have seen in a long time-a film that fails at both camp & competence, and takes three Oscar nominees on the rides of their careers.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Stephen Rojack (Whitman) who is a TV commentator and former war hero who is married to Deborah (Parker), a drug-addled alcoholic who he likely married for her money, and who won't grant him a divorce even though their marriage is hell.  During a fight, Rojack throws her out a 30-story window to her death.  He claims it was a suicide, and without more proof, the police have nowhere to go, but they do make a point of introducing Rojack to a mobster named Ganucci (De Santis) whom he's badmouthing on TV and he meets Cherry McMahon (Leigh) a nightclub singer & a former flame of Rojack's.  This results in Rojack being hunted down by the mob, trying to stop his television campaign for justice, while he & Cherry rekindle their love.  The film ends with Cherry inexplicably double-crossing Rojack (right after he's gotten away with the murder of his wife as they have no evidence), and as a result he dies, gunned down by the mob as the credits roll.

The film is a mess.  The first fifteen minutes you almost get the sense that it might be a really campy, fun mess, as Eleanor Parker is bonkers as a strung-out, drunk heiress, never more than ten feet away from her bed, and in differing stages of undress.  You almost feel like you're watching a horror film the way she torments Stuart Whitman.  But after she dies, the movie becomes sporadic in a dull way, if that makes sense.  Whitman's character's motives are never clear (some scenes he is begging to confess, others he is trying to cover his tracks), and the treatment of Janet Leigh's character is totally sporadic as well.  Leigh is clearly meant to be a prostitute, but (as written by men) that's meant to mean that she doesn't have any morals, which is why she betrays the man she seems to love in the end.

The film was nominated for one Academy Award, for Best Original Song.  While the song is in the middle of the movie (not an end credits scene), it has little to do with the film.  Leigh lip syncs to it in her nightclub, and it stretches forever, but it's not memorable or catchy, and while the team of Mandel & Webber had just won the year before for The Sandpiper (that's likely why they were so soon on the Academy's radar, even for this stinker), the song itself is a snore & doesn't even have the manic energy of the actual catastrophe of a movie.

One Million Years BC (1966)

Film: One Million Years BC (1966)
Stars: Raquel Welch, John Richardson, Percy Herbert, Robert Brown
Director: Don Chaffey
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Raquel Welch-click here to learn more about Ms. Welch (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

If you know anything about Raquel Welch, the first thing that comes to mind is her in a deer skin bikini.  Welch's career, as we wind down this series about classic film sex symbols, is fascinating to look at because she didn't have the sort of look that would popularize the careers of Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe (glamorous figures in impossible makeup & ball gowns), instead favoring sportier looks that accentuated her physique in a more obvious way, her career was similar to the sex symbol trope (one that traded on her physicality rather than her acting ability)...but by the 1960's that trajectory had become stale, as we'll find out as Welch's career continues.  But it wasn't dead, and Welch proved that here, by donning the "first bikini" in One Million Years BC, which coupled with Fantastic Voyage from 1966, graduated her into being a household name.

(Spoilers Ahead) A remake of the 1940 film One Million BC, One Million Years BC is a strange film.  For starters, while it's not silent, it's not in English either.  The characters all speak in a made-up language, and are humans living in a time where dinosaurs (not to mention giant turtles & lizards) roam the earth.  There are two tribes, one that Tumak (Richardson) is a member of, and then is exiled from, and then after wandering, he meets the other, where Loana (Welch) is their apparent leader.  The two fall in love, but this causes rifts with both tribes, and they continually fight, sometimes alongside each other against dinosaurs, and most frequently against each other, seemingly to the death until a giant volcano erupts, killing half of each tribe (though sparing Tumak & Loana).  In the end, realizing they are against an impossible challenge in general with such tough terrain, they set out as one tribe, united in their quest for survival.

The movie is, and I cannot stress this enough, impossibly stupid.  Forgetting for a second that humans & dinosaurs never cohabited, the dinosaur species frequently never cohabited, and lived millions of years apart (if they weren't fictional).  Even suspending that belief, it's hard not to laugh at the movie now, its random nods to modern conveniences frequently getting in the way of reality (Welch somehow has access to mousse & mascara in addition to sculpting an impractical bikini for the movie).  It definitely gets to the other side of "it's so bad it's good" without ever being uproariously in that arena, so I'm going with 2-stars, but this is not a film where your brain will be doing heavy-lifting.

Welch's performance here is hard to judge, as it's so focused on her physically.  She gets to play emotions, but they're so basic as to feel washed out in terms of any nuance.  To a modern lens, the film is kind of uncomfortable to watch.  You could try to add in an "action warrior" lens if you wanted, but she spends most of the film trying to appeal to a man, and her performance is grounded entirely on exploiting her body for the camera, with near constant shots of her cleavage & midriff.  This film made her a star, but I hope it isn't an indication of what we're in store for for the rest of the month, as this could get uncomfortable watch directors commodify her like this.

Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN (1966)

Film: Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN (1966)
Stars: Dick van Dyke, Nancy Kwan, Akim Tamiroff
Director: Byron Paul
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Nancy Kwan-click here to learn more about Ms. Kwan (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we mentioned last week, Nancy Kwan's career never really hit the heights of The World of Suzie Wong and Flower Drum Song again.  That should not, however, be confused with the idea that Kwan never made another big hit...because she did.  In 1966, Walt Disney was essentially about to die (he'd die before the end of the year), but he was making a lot of money not on his animated films, but instead on theme parks and live-action films, frequently that blended in some sort of animation, the most famous being Mary Poppins.  Disney actually if you look at his credits made far more live-action films in his lifetime than fully-animated films (though if you add in the shorts, those numbers quickly revert).  One of the films he created at the end of his life was a modern-day comic retelling of the Robinson Crusoe story starring Dick van Dyke, and you guessed it, Nancy Kwan.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is odd at first.  It starts initially with van Dyke's Robin Crusoe writing a letter to his longtime love Jane, and trying to explain why he missed their wedding.  We then flashback to Robin flying and getting in a plane accident over the middle of the ocean, where the narrator shifts briefly to a manual, which sarcastically mocks the scenarios that van Dyke is getting into, namely a shark trying to eat him while he's on a raft no bigger than a couch cushion.  When he washes ashore, the narration stops (he buries the manual in the sand), and we see him interact with a monkey named Floyd (supposedly one of the chimps sent into space by the NASA program), and then by an island woman named Wednesday (Kwan), who speaks English for, well, the script doesn't really explain that one but it feels like it's there for convenience.  Soon a whole group of island girls are coming to be with Robin (who remains faithful to Jane, though not without temptation), and demand equal rights in whom they marry from Wednesday's father, the chief (Tamiroff).  The film ends with Robin pretending to be an island deity to get rights for the women, only to have Wednesday start hunting him down because he won't marry her, as he's loyal to Jane...after which he's rescued just-in-time.

The movie is, and I cannot stress this enough, stupid.  Dick van Dyke would've been one of the biggest stars in America in 1966 not only due to Mary Poppins but also because of his eponymous television series, but his schtick doesn't really hold for modern audiences.  There's a kind of fun with the sarcastic narration of the manual, and I wish the film had stuck to that motif as it was its most charming asset, but absent that, it's really overlong, charmless, and awfully racist toward the end (not only in the provincial way that Wednesday & the island girls are treated, but also in the casting of the white Tamiroff as the brown-skinned island chief...this may also explain why this film is not on Disney+).

That said, Robin Crusoe was a big hit in 1966, making it onto the list of the year's highest-grossing films and affording Kwan an extension on her stardom.  She's not in a lot of the film, and though she's the best part, that's not saying much.  She is asked to be beautiful and vivacious, which she is, but we aren't given any challenge like she got with Suzie Wong and the movie doesn't have fun with her character like we saw in Flower Drum Song.  As a result, this is a crucial (given the box office) chapter in looking at Kwan's stardom, but it's pretty dispiriting that she had to take these kinds of parts so soon after she'd been getting more authentic roles.  Next week we're going to end our month-long look at Nancy Kwan with a movie that created a lasting friendship between Kwan and another screen legend...a film that got an unexpected chapter in its pop culture shelf life when it become a plot point in a blockbuster Best Picture nominee decades later.

OVP: The Sand Pebbles (1966)

Film: The Sand Pebbles (1966)
Stars: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, Candice Bergen, Marayat Andriane, Mako
Director: Robert Wise
Oscar History: 8 nominations (Best Picture, Actor-Steve McQueen, Supporting Actor-Mako, Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, Score, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This week we've covered four screen legends for the Best Actor field (John Travolta, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, & Cary Grant), but today as we wind down our Best Actor tribute, we're going to pick a fifth legend, but one with two distinctions from this group.  The first is that despite a pretty robust film career before his early death, Steve McQueen only scored one Oscar nomination.  McQueen had other films that might have popped with Oscar if they'd been a bit more smitten with him (Love with a Proper Stranger, The Reivers, Papillon), but this was the only time Oscar went with the cinematic rebel, and they did it in (second distinction from this week's movies) a Best Picture nominee.  The Sand Pebbles is probably best-remembered in terms of Oscar for its Best Picture nomination, and that it is the rare film to win eight citations from AMPAS and not win a single one in the year where A Man for All Seasons and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were scooping up most of the trophies.  However, we'll try to frame it at least slightly from the Best Actor front today to go with our theme.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Sand Pebbles is a long movie, a proper three-hour epic, and thus we've got a plot to slice through, but I'll try to boil it down.  Essentially we have Jake Holman (McQueen) who is a rebellious maintenance officer in the United States Navy.  He is assigned to the USS San Pablo, nicknamed the "Sand Pebble" and thus the men on the ship are called the "Sand Pebbles."  The boat is  stationed in China in the 1920's, and they hire Chinese men as laborers on the ship to run the ship and do most of the manual work.  This doesn't fly with Holman, who takes over the engine room and instantly causes friction with the other men aboard the ship as a result, with the exception of Frenchy (Attenborough).  This continues as one of the Chinese men who had run the ship prior to Holman is killed in an accident due to Holman wanting to implement better maintenance onboard, and Holman has to hire an additional Chinese laborer Po-Han (Mako), whom he befriends, but their association costs Po-Han his life.  We continue to see increased tension between the Chinese and the Americans as the National Revolutionary Army begins to gain power, and in the end, it's obvious that the Americans are in over-their-head, as one-by-one pretty much every major Sand Pebble is killed as a result of the increasing tension with the Chinese.

There's a lot more to the plot than that, but I don't want to spend this whole article recapping rather than reviewing.  Let's start out with the acting, particularly McQueen's.  McQueen had an effortless cool onscreen in all of his roles (also, he was sexy as hell), which translates here, but in terms of heavy-lifting for his character, it kind of gets lost.  McQueen is watchable, but is a weird counter to the rest of the cast, ranging from the "ACTING!" being done by Richard Attenborough to the distinguished work of Richard Crenna's lieutenant (for my money, best in the cast) to Candice Bergen's "I'm going to under-emote as much as possible which you hopefully won't notice because I am so beautiful" role as the girlfriend (Bergen's role, in particular feels like exactly the kind that Oscar notices for some reason with pretty young actresses even when they don't really do much onscreen, and I'm kind of floored she wasn't nominated as a result).  As a result, McQueen's performance feels too strained, doesn't get enough background, and is out-of-kilter with the rest of the movie.

The movie itself is grand, and I'm a sucker for such things (I love a long movie if it gets a big enough payoff, which this movie does in the final moments), but it never really justifies its length.  The love story between McQueen & Bergen has zilch chemistry (I swear, I like Bergen as a rule, but this movie does nothing with her tenacity), and Attenborough seems to be more in love with his girlfriend's (Maily, a virgin who is wading into prostitution) situation than with herself.  The movie is good, but it never goes for great, and when you get a cast & crew that looks like this, great is what you should be expecting.

The other six nominations need their due before we close.  Mako's turn as Supporting Actor is instantly sympathetic, and one of the rare circumstances where an Asian actor was nominated by Oscar, but it's a misdirect as he has very little to do other than be sympathetic & someone to show a shift in McQueen's character.  His work here is unusual as Attenborough & Crenna both have bigger parts (Attenborough even won the Golden Globe), so it's cool such a small role won an Oscar nod, but it's pretty one-note even if it's physically demanding.  Mako's biggest scene in the movie is an intense boxing match that lasts a while, and while it's riveting/exhausting, it's also lensed in an unusual way that felt disjointed, which I can't decide to blame on either the editor (who could have trimmed half an hour from this movie & made everything sharper) or the cinematographer (who otherwise does brilliant work in the waters, especially as the San Pueblo attempts to fjord enemy lines late in the movie).  The Sound is strong, and does great things with quiet (rare for a war picture), especially the thrilling final showdown between McQueen and the NRA soldiers, and the Art Direction was fine, though occasionally feels too "filmy" (the bar/brothel looks so much like a blank movie set you half expect the men to start singing on the tables).  The best nomination, though, was the Score-which is breathtaking.  Jerry Goldsmith (one of my favorites) gives the film a haunting romance with his horns & strings that, quite frankly, the story never earns, but it's radiant stuff.

The Las Vegas Hillbillys (1966)

Film: The Las Vegas Hillbillys (1966)
Stars: Ferlin Husky, Jayne Mansfield, Mamie van Doren, Don Bowman, Billie Bird
Director: Arthur C. Pierce
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Jayne Mansfield-click here to learn more about Ms. Mansfield (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are going to end our look at the career of Jayne Mansfield in a place that she'd probably prefer we forget.  As we mentioned last week, Mansfield's turn in Promises! Promises! gave the actress something rare in Hollywood: a second chance.  She'd had a big hit, and after years of being "passé," offers were starting to come in.  Mansfield was even given a role once intended for Marilyn Monroe, the lead in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid, but once again Mansfield was pregnant (this time with future Law & Order star Mariska Hargitay), once again the part went to Kim Novak, and once again it was a big hit, the kind that might have cemented Mansfield's comeback, but instead, Jayne quickly was relegated back to Grade Z pictures, which led to today's film The Las Vegas Hillbillys, most noted today for being the only onscreen meeting of two of the "Three M's," as the picture features both Mansfield and her off-screen nemesis Mamie van Doren.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Woody (Husky), a bumpkin who inherits his uncle's Las Vegas bar, as well as the beautiful woman who sings at it Boots Malone (van Doren), who is under contract to sing at the establishment.  While driving there with his buddy Jeepers (Bowman), they come across another beautiful blonde Tawny (Mansfield), who is a big headliner in Vegas, and gives them some breaks throughout the film, as they are at risk of losing the bar.  In the end, Tawny and Woody's aunt (Bird) save the bar from going down by recruiting a bunch of big-name country singers (vocalists like Connie Smith, Bill Anderson, and Roy Drusky play themselves throughout the movie's many extended country songs), to perform, and the money & crowds get them enough money to pay off the creditors.  Oh, and Boots & Woody end up together because, well, why not (this is really out of the blue in the film)?

The movie is really bad, and not quite in a campy enough way, though there are times it comes close.  Probably the best pop culture reference here is not The Beverly Hillbillies (though that was clearly who they were trying to piggyback on with the title), but Hee Haw, which wouldn't come out for a few years after the film came out.  The best performance in the film comes from van Doren, who can sing (even if she's a bit more rock-and-roll than country), and seems to get that this is a paycheck, but at least you get to be in a movie.  Mansfield's part is pretty slim-she's in maybe three scenes in the movie despite her high billing, and she's in the background of one of them.  It's also not clear exactly what the point of her character is-she plays her like a vamp who is smitten with Woody, but she never makes a move on Woody or tries to double-cross him.  The movie is, well, low stakes in that regard.

Mansfield refused to appear onscreen with van Doren.  The actresses only have one scene together, but they were filmed apart, and it shows.  Thus, this kind of ruins the camp factor of the picture-any modern film fan would be watching to see what it's like when these two actresses face off, and deprived of that, this isn't worth the time.  It is, however, a good portrait of what might have happened with Mansfield's career since both she & van Doren were in the same place professionally at this point.  Van Doren has said in interviews that after Marilyn's death, the public didn't want to look at women who looked like Monroe, as it made them sad, and so it was harder to get work.  She did, however, continue making these kinds of campy films for the rest of the 1960's, before becoming a successful nightclub performer & regular USO Tour performer during Vietnam, writing a celebrated memoir (she's supposedly working on a followup), getting a star on the Walk of Fame, becoming a Pulp Fiction punchline, and posing for a famed photo with a future generation's sex symbol.  All-in-all, while Las Vegas Hillbillys wasn't a high point in her career, Mamie van Doren, now age 89, has had a full and solidly successful life.

Jayne Mansfield, of course, did not achieve that.  She never had another leading role during her lifetime, and would die just over a year after the film's release.  Mansfield, unlike Marilyn, doesn't have a lot of mystery surrounding her demise, but it was just as brutal & sudden.  She died on June 29th, 1967, after the car she was driving in ran into a tractor-trailer outside of New Orleans, and died instantly, her skull crushing upon impact (she was not, as stated in urban legend, decapitated).  As a result, the 34-year-old actress who spent her entire career trying to be Marilyn Monroe, ended up mirroring her in the most horrific way imaginable.  Next month, we will move on to one last blonde sex symbol of the 1950's whose career would last well past Marilyn & Jayne's, sometimes to great success, and more often, infamy.

Madame X (1966)

Film: Madame X (1966)
Stars: Lana Turner, John Forsythe, Ricardo Montalban, Burgess Meredith, Constance Bennet, Keir Dullea
Director: David Lowell Rich
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Lana Turner-click here to learn more about Ms. Turner (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Most discussions of the career of Lana Turner end where we left it last week, with the three-part punch of Peyton Place (and her sole Oscar nomination), the trial of her daughter Cheryl Crane for the death of Johnny Stompanato, and then her seismic return-to-glory with the blockbuster Imitation of Life.  But Turner lived for over thirty years after Imitation of Life, and a lot of that time she was acting, albeit in smaller and less-memorable roles.  So we're going to end our discussion of her career not in 1959, but instead in the 1960's, with Turner's last starring role in a major Hollywood production, Madame X.  By this time, Turner was in her mid-forties, still gloriously beautiful but clearly a woman whose hard life (and smoking & drinking) had started to wear on her once porcelain demeanor.  She'd picked up two more husbands since Imitation of Life, and her daughter Cheryl was no longer living with her.  She'd had several hits, none as big as Imitation of Life, but she was hardly hurting for work, when Ross Hunter came along and brought her this script.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film unfolds in three acts.  The first is a romance between Holly Parker (Turner), a woman who has recently married Clay Anderson (Forsyth), the crown jewel of a very 'old school money' American family, managed by her disapproving mother-in-law Estelle (Bennett, in her final screen role-she'd die of a brain hemorrhage before this movie was released).  As Clay is constantly away, Holly becomes involved with a local playboy (Montalban), whose death she inadvertently causes when she pushes him in self-defense after she wants to end the affair.  Estelle finds out, and blackmails her daughter-in-law into faking her own death in exchange for covering up the "crime."  Holly does this, moves to Europe, and essentially becomes a wonton woman (there's strong insinuations that she's making money as a prostitute, though it's never fully confirmed), and is` blackmailed by a local drunk Dan Sullivan (Meredith) when he finds out her real identity.  In a twist-of-fate you'd only find in a movie, her attorney ends up being the son she left behind, now played by Keir Dullea, who begins to love this woman not realizing she's his mother.  She dies before the verdict is known to the audience, but not before her husband realizes who she is (she has gone in the press simply as "Madame X," hence the title), not telling his son that he has just tried to save the life of his own mother.

Madame X is kind of a bizarre crossroads of two major trends, one of the 1960's and another of the 1980's.  In the 1960's, the concept of the Grand Dame Guignol films were all the rage, with former beauty queens like Joan Crawford & Bette Davis forced to debase themselves in less glamorous roles, essentially showing that they had in fact aged, and the public could look at them and gawk that youth doesn't last forever.  This certainly happens in Madame X.  Initially it feels like Turner isn't willing to show that she's in fact in her mid-40's, but as the film progresses, vanity goes aside as we see caked on makeup being used to show the passage of time, aging not only in the way she does her hair, but instead by having the gaul to exhibit crow's feet.

This might confuse Madame X with some other films of the era like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with Elizabeth Taylor throwing her vanity to the wind, but Madame X is not Virginia Woolf.  This is a pretty heavy melodrama with little to advise it other than if you love voyeuristically looking into the world of the rich-and-damned and a particular type of intense scenery-chewing (this is a genre that's a guilty pleasure for me, hence why it's getting a 3-star rating when it easily could be lower).  Turner is so good at this sort of thing though.  This isn't great acting, but man is it great star-performing.  She sinks into her Holly, and all of the nasty turns her life takes, with aplomb.  Few actresses of her generation would have taken on such a role, their vanity potentially being at stake, but Turner had already had her dirty laundry aired so fervently in real life, what could a fictionalized character do to her legacy?

In a lot of ways, this film is a fore-bearer to the nighttime soap operas of the 1980's, when screen stars of Turner's era such as Barbara bel Geddes and Joan Collins would be forced into continually ridiculous dialogue & chicanery, albeit with the backdrop of obscene wealth & glamour.  Turner would be a part of this world, in fact.  After Madame X, Turner never made a movie of this sort of pedigree again, working in lesser-and-lesser films from smaller studios, trying (and struggling) to establish herself in TV and theater in a way that would be comparable to her time in movies.  The closest she came was a brief stint on Falcon Crest where she went to toe-to-toe with Jane Wyman.  Turner died of throat cancer at the age of 74, with her daughter Cheryl by her side.  She had a hard life, but it was at least a relatively full one.  Next month, we're going to talk about a different Hollywood sex symbol whose life was comparatively brief, but whose death made her immortal.

OVP: Morgan! (1966)

Film: Morgan-A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966)
Stars: David Warner, Vanessa Redgrave, Robert Stephens, Irene Handl
Director: Karel Reisz
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Costume Design, Best Actress-Vanessa Redgrave)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

If there's any period of Film History that makes me feel like a Philistine, it's probably British New Wave.  While I will admit that, say, the 1980's Action-Hero movies aren't really my cup of tea, on paper the quirky movies of the 1950's and 1960's that came out of that lovely island north of France should appeal to me, but they don't.  This is a problem when I am asked to grade a movie of the era, since I start out with a bit of a resentment against the picture and in particular it's weirdly-specific comedy.

(Spoilers Ahead) And I have to admit that I wasn't able to rise above it all with Morgan!, the 1966 double-Oscar nominee.  The film is about a man who is clearly suffering from a nervous breakdown of sorts, or perhaps has always been mentally-unhinged (we see little in the way to counter this argument), and the film continues on with David Warner (yes, the guy from Titanic) as the title character, frequently devolving into flights of delusion (including most memorably a scene involving King Kong), and occasionally skipping into psychotic episodes that today would be played more for pity or fear than for comedy, but this is the 1960's and it's Britain, so it's all a merry lark.

That may be my biggest issue with movies of this era-they are extremely specific to their time-and-place in a way that's not really relatable today.  Admittedly this is true for the movies of Woody Allen, which I generally enjoy, but the reality is that Woody's films are about love at the end of the day, and I can't really say the same for Morgan!, a movie that sort of exists in its own little world without really inviting us into it.  The film starts in such a way as we are in the middle of the throes of a conversation; don't you have friends like that occasionally?  Ones who start a conversation as if they have already been talking for a minute (my grandmother is famous for this)?  This is what appears to be happening at the beginning of Morgan!, and while it's relatively easy to catch-up, the movie frequently does this throughout the film, assuming the audience will get there eventually when in reality it feels like we're getting cinematic whiplash.

The film received two Oscar nominations, neither of which I'd call particularly adventurous.  This was the final year that the Costume category was split between Black & White and Color films, and you can tell the Academy was scrounging to find viable nominees-the category features two foreign-language films, a James Garner movie no one has ever heard of, Morgan!, and the reason that they clung to B&W that year, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (which easily won despite there being relatively few costumes to trumpet in the picture).  This film features occasionally interesting costume-work (the fitted dresses and flapper hats of Vanessa Redgrave, and of course the famed monkey suit), but there's nothing particularly elegant or extraordinary about what's going on in this department, and it feels like this was nominated more out of a dearth of B&W films than for any other reason.

The film also was nominated for Best Actress, and with all due respect to 1966 and its leading ladies, this may also have been because of the lack of contenders.  Everyone on the planet knew that Elizabeth Taylor would be winning for her career-defining work in Virginia Woolf, and that Lynn Redgrave would be in second place for Georgy Girl (always a bridesmaid, Lynn Redgrave), but they clearly had to struggle to fill up the rest of the category, and I suppose Vanessa Redgrave made the most sense for what was clearly the fifth slot (Ida Kaminska and Anouk Aimee, both starring in major foreign films from the year, probably took the bronze and pewter positions).  After all, Redgrave was having a major moment in her career, appearing in a cameo within Best Picture-winner A Man for All Seasons and was in a highly memorable supporting role in the brilliant (one of my absolute favorite movies) Blow-Up.  Plus, there was the added delight of having her compete against her sister for the trophy (we all know how that turned out with the de Havillands), so she made sense, despite being a pretty mundane role by Academy standards, and really not too extraordinary.  Her work here is almost always overshadowed by the showier Warner and while I like the way that she sometimes seems entirely smitten with him (you can see in her work what the script doesn't give you-that she clearly loved this man once, and usually still does) the work itself seems too light and some of the touches (when she delves into madness so quickly from being disgusted with Warner) don't seem in balance with the work.  All-in-all a seemingly throwaway nomination that we wouldn't really dissect further except that Redgrave would go on to become an acting legend (how strange this citation would look in hindsight if she wasn't insanely famous now).  Plus, there wasn't much else to give an award to that year (surely in sixth place was Virginia McKenna in Born Free, someone more known as an activist today than an actor), so no one's probably going to complain too hard here, even if it's probably going to end up at the bottom of the OVP heap.

Those were my thoughts on this trivial curiosity from Oscar's 1960's obsession with British comedy.  What are yours?  Have you seen Morgan!, and if not, what other famed siblings do you wish had competed against each other?  And between Liz, Anouk, Ida, Lynn, and Vanessa, who is your favorite Best Actress of 1966?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Gambit (1966)

Film: Gambit (1966)
Stars: Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine, Herbert Lom, Roger C. Carmel, Arnold Moss, John Abbott
Director: Ronald Neame
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Art Direction, Costume, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

My DVR is starting to look a teensy bit full (you know you've hit a new level when you can record 130 hours of television and you still only have 8% available), so I will be hitting quite a few older OVP movies in the coming weeks in addition to our regularly-scheduled programming, many of which may not be available easily to everyone out there (as I detailed here), but hopefully they will compel you to check them out the next time they are on Turner Classic Movies or at least inspire you to head over to AMPAS or the studio's websites and ask them to release more of their films on DVD.

(Spoilers Ahead) Anyway, I adore caper films and both of the lead actors in this film, so it was an easy choice for me on which film to start this conquer the DVR campaign with.  Gambit is a story that is very of its time-it's hard to imagine even the most cunning of con-men could assume a mistaken identity would work on a billionaire today (which makes the inexplicable remake with Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz all the more puzzling, and I would have imagined they would have had solid chemistry in a better film, so it's also a pity).  The film is about Harry Dean (Caine), a small-time crook who is trying to steal a priceless Chinese statuette from an eccentric and reclusive Arab billionaire (Lom, who was enjoying the peak success of his career at the time playing Inspector Dreyfus of the Pink Panther films for the first time two years earlier in A Shot in the Dark).  Dean sees an old magazine article where the love of Lom's life is featured, and he finds a woman named Nicole (MacLaine) who looks exactly like the billionaire's dead wife.  Harry hatches a plan to use Nicole to distract the billionaire while he steals the statuette.

Like all great caper films, of course, things are never that simple, though you'd think they were at least from the beginning half hour.  In the boldest move in the film, Neame pulls a misdirect on the audience for the first thirty minutes of the picture, having the caper go off without a hitch.  We see Harry's plan work perfectly, with MacLaine silent and mysterious throughout the entire first 29 minutes of the picture (to the point where the audience is stunned that the most famous actor, especially at the time, hasn't said a word!), only to realize that this is all just a dream-style sequence of Harry saying how he's sure the plan will work, only to realize that Nicole isn't as receptive to crime and staying quiet as he had hoped.

The film works well because of MacLaine and her chemistry with Caine.  Michael Caine, who was making his first American film with this picture and had just scored a massive hit in Alfie earlier that year (it would result in his first of many Oscar nominations-he's one of those rare actors who has been nominated the last five decades in a row), is fine in the lead role, though he doesn't quite have his cinematic bearings down.  For those who frequently picture a charming old butler when they think of Caine, it might be off-putting to see a handsome and charming younger version of Alfred the Butler in this role.  However, he's a bid stiff in the performance and probably could have enjoyed some loosening up in this role that only experience brings.  He's far better when he's opposite MacLaine (who selected him for the part, as she was a huge star at the time), who has an ease with the camera that comes with experience.  MacLaine gives her Nicole a flare, but also has the actorly sensibility to make her seem very grounded in reality-she knows the importance of the money she's getting, but also clearly wants more from her life than money or crime.  She's the one who sells the inevitable love story between the two, and gives a sense of vulnerability to the role.

The film received three Oscar nominations in 1966 (the last year where they separated Black/White and Color pictures for the technical categories, meaning lots more nominations and a lot more OVP for me): Sound Mixing, Costume, and Art Direction.  Considering it will probably be a few years before we get to the 1966 OVP (sorry-maybe if I win the lottery or something I can speed up my output), I feel I can say my opinions of these categories without too many spoilers.  Costume designs were by Jean Louis, one of the most iconic pop culture designers of his era (he designed not only for starlets like MacLaine, Vivien Leigh, Joan Crawford, and his wife Loretta Young, but also for Marilyn Monroe in her famous "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" dress, as well as later the Duchess of Windsor and former First Lady Nancy Reagan), and you can see the sophistication in the elegant evening wear worn by MacLaine.  In particular, the white one-shoulder dress worn in the climactic heist scenes toward the end is particularly striking and modern compared to some of the chic but traditional Chinese dresses worn earlier by MacLaine (the men's outfits are less inspired, as menswear wasn't supposed to be the focus to the same degree in that era).  The Art Direction seems to be mostly hotels, though there is a cool sequence with a rising room/elevator (ahh, the wonders of wealth) which is impressive and the hotels don't have that stodgy "staged" aspect that you usually see with films of this era.  The sound work is the only element of the film I was a little flummoxed by the nomination, though I find the further back in the pre-Jaws/blockbuster era, the more likely it is that a caper film or simply a well-regarded film gets a citation for sound.  Still, there is some strong balance between the quiet and the pinpoints of noise in the heist sequences, so perhaps it's a nomination with some merit.

And those are my thoughts on Gambit-have any of you seen it?  If so, do you share my assessment that this is all about the Shirley, or are you more supportive of Caine?  Where does its three Oscar nominations rank in your personal assessment of that year?  And why isn't this on Netflix?!?