Thoughts on Michael Callan (1935-2022)

 I was thinking of doing a piece on Callan but I'm not sure there's one in me at the moment. Still, I felt I should jot down a few thoughts.

An interesting quasi-star, was Callan. He had looks and the backing of a Hollywood studio but the studio system was in decline. 

He was born "Martin Calinoff" in Philadelphia in 1935 - dad ran restaurants - and was something of a showbiz baby, taking singing and dancing lessons at an early age, and appearing on local radio shows. He was a very good dancer, later saying his idol was Gene Kelly. “I thought unlike Fred Astaire, Mr Kelly has that double whammy of sex appeal… Not that I even knew what sex appeal was, but I liked athletics and he moved like an all-star athlete.”

By the age of fifteen he was dancing professionally in local nightclubs. Two years later, when he graduated from high school, he moved to New York, got work in summer stock in St Louis, performing under the name "Mickey Calin".  Callan/Calin/Calinoff successfully auditioned for a small part on Broadway in The Boyfriend with Julie Andrew (you might've seen the Ken Russell film version), playing various parts over seven months; he was then in Catch a Star. He also danced on television and in nightclubs. 

Then came the big big break - Riff in West Side Story. "“There were a great many kids like me up for that part,” said Callan. “I was told I was too cute! Imagine! But I really wanted it, I was asked if I could backflip, so I did a backflip, and eventually, after a year of rounds, I got it. Riff set me on my way.”

Riff is one of the best parts, if not the best part, in one of the greatest musicals of all time and really established Callan, who was in it for seven months. During the show's run he was spotted by Joyce Selznick a famous casting director (her discoveries included James Darren) and she signed Callan to a seven year contract to Columbia off the back of his appearance. 

The studio system was dying off but there was a bit of a revival of signing young talent in the late 1950s, especially at studios that made a lot of television and continued to make B pictures, like Columbia. The studio also signed Evy Norlund, Glenn Corbett, Carol Douglas, Jo Morrow, Margie Regan, Joby Baker, Rian Garrick, Joe Gallison, and Steve Baylor... not a big list of future stars.

Callan was, however, given what those actors weren't - a nice support part in a big budget film, They Came to Cordura, playing one of several seemingly heroic soldiers escorted through the Mexican desert by Gary Cooper along with Rita Hayworth. The studio put him in a low budget circus picture for Sam Katsman, The Flying Fontanes. They also put him in a Dick Clark teen film, Because They're Young (as a delinquent trying to go good who romances Tuesday Weld) and he danced in Pepe. In Oct 1960 he left Columbia's record arm to sign with Paramount (see here) but he never enjoyed Darren's success as a singer.

Callan had looks, and could move, and act. But I think the main thing holding him back was he gave off a sort of intense swaggering self-love vibe. I'm not saying he was like that in person, not at all - but he lacked the sensitivity of say a Tony Curtis or Rock Hudson. He had charisma and was a potential star but needed careful handling.

Callan auditioned for the film version of West Side Story but didn't get it - possibly due to his Columbia contract, possibly they wanted a fresh slate. But he did dance in the film Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), opposite Deborah Walley as Gidget. He was one of the troops in Mysterious Island .

He was well cast as a thug tormenting a puffy Alan Ladd in 13 West Street and romanced Deborah Walley again in Disney's Bon Voyage! The latter film demonstrates the issue with Callan - he lacked the affability of Tommy Kirk and when he rough houses Deborah Walley it's really scary. As I wrote in a piece on this film "he was a good looking guy, Callan, who could act, and dance, but his performances often had a strand of cruelty about them, he looked like a villain, and I really didn't want him and Walley to wind up together."

However he had a big hit with The Interns as a compromised doctor. Callan was in this alongside a lot of other Columbia contract talent like Cliff Robertson. It was a fun role with some meat in it - Callan plays a super ambitious intern, who dates a rich girl but also sees an older nurse on the side so she'll help his career; this gives him a packed schedule which leads him to take drugs... it's very well done and handled, leading to Callan breaking down at the end. The film was a hit and would have rejuvenated Columbia's faith in him. 

David Merrick offered Callan the lead in a Broadway musical, I Can Get it for You Wholesale, but they couldn't agree over money apparently so Elliot Gould took the part instead - and wound up marrying his co-star Barbra Streisand.    In November 1962 he talked about how he had his own publicist - see this here.

Callan had a showy small part as a pimp in Carl Foreman's cynical war picture The Victors - he's not in the film for very long and the leads went to other new faces (George Hamilton, George Peppard), and Callan presumably thought "hey why not me" but at least the film was a big hit.

The did The The New Interns, one of the few to return (along with Stefanie Powers and Telly Savalas with Dean Jones playing James MacArthur's role). He didn't have as much to do in this one, which hurt the film - in the original his character was comic and romantic but also serious, here he's just comic (in drag for one sequence) and romantic (Barbara Eden); the film hints it's going to deal with his character's past as a druggie, which would've been great, but throws it away. It's a NAGOATO sequel (not as good as the original).  Still it encouraged Columbia to sign him to a new six picture contract. Jack Lemmon had started his film career at Columbia and many pieces from this time would refer to Callan being a new Jack Lemmon.

Callan was announced for a film musical remake of Cover Girl which was never made and a Broadway musical Kelly. See here. But Callan was lucky to miss out on the Broadway Kelly which shut after one night

There was talk of Callan starring in King Rat from the novel by James  Cavell about a smooth operator in Changi during World War Two.He would've been perfect. But he lost out to George Segal who was also in The New Interns which must have really really hurt. Because that film, while considered something of a commercial and critical disappointment, kicked up Segal to a higher plane that he never really left. In fairness, Segal had more acting chops than Callan - he'd done heaps of Broadway and TV.

 It wasn't over yet - He did guest stints on television, Breaking Point and Twelve O'Clock High, then had his biggest hit to date as Jane Fonda's love interest in Cat Ballou but most of the attention for that movie went to Fonda and Lee Marvin. 

He was sent to England for You Must Be Joking, a farcical army comedy for Michael Winner - Callan was cast at Columbia's insistence but didn't do much for the film's box office. He doesn't fit in the movie, he sticks out - the whole film is like a trial run for Winner's better The Jokers.

In August 1965, Callan signed a four-picture deal with Columbia. Jackie Cooper, former actor turned exec at Columbia's TV arm, Screen Gems, offered Callan the lead in a pilot for a sitcom Occasional Wife. Callan asked Cooper what he needed TV for: Cooper replied, "This year we're asking you to do the series. In three years you may be asking us?" The deal was a good one -  $100,000 a year plus a percentage according to this. This didn't last long.  TV Guide did a profile on him here which refers to a partying lifestyle, "a reputation along the Sunset Strip-Vegas axis as one of the great new swingers. He had a Sinatra-like coterie of hangers on and regularly made the columns."

A1967 interview with him is here. Occasional Wife only lasted a season but marked a major shift in Callan's private life as he left his wife for his co star, Patricia Harty. 

After the sitcom was axed Callan might've been expected to return to movies or television but instead he appeared in a musical in Las Vegas, That Certain Girl. See here

In 1968 he was in a TV version of Kiss Me Kate with Robert Goulet.

By the late 60s Callan was out of fashion, Ric Dalton style - he no longer had the film offers or television lead offers. It was a very very quick fall, especially considering The Interns and Cat Ballou had been so popoular and not that long ago. I wonder if there were behaviourial/temperament issues. I have no proof of that - it's just conjecture.  But it does seem odd that a good looking, charismatic performer, who could act and move, didn't get any more leads. This was the time of spaghetti Westerns, war films in Yugoslavia, and telemovies. There were star parts going for former contract stars. But Callan didn't get any.

Not that he was unemployed. Callan kept busy on episodic TV like The Mary Tyler More Show ,That Girl, The Name of the Game, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Ironside, Marcus Welby, M.D., Griff, McMillan & Wife, Barnaby Jones, 12 O’Clock High, Quincy, M.E., Charlie’s Angels, Simon & Simon, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, The Bionic Woman, four episodes of Murder, She Wrote, and eight episodes of Love, American Style.. Callan also made the occasional feature like Frasier the Sensuous Lion, The Magnificent Seven Ride, Lepke and the Cat and the Canary. He did have the lead in 1974's The Photographer which was kind of remade as 1982's Double Exposure - in both Callan plays a psychotic photographer. See trailer here.  

He appeared in theatre around the country - a lot of musicals like Anything Goes, The Music Man (program here), George M, Bar Mitzvah Boy plus plays like Absurd Person Singular. He produced some musicals.

I don't think Callan was a great lost star. He was unlucky in that Hollywood made less musicals when he hit down  - at least less dancing musicals. He would've been fantastic as Riff in West Side Story  - too cruel to be Tony though.  The tide went out really quickly for him though. I mean, to go from a sitcom to being a permanent guest? I wonder if something else happened.

Callan appears as a character, in a way, in the novel version of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Agent Marv talks to Ric Dalton about Dalton's Western, Tanner, directed by Jerry Hopper, in which Dalton appeared alongside Ralph Meeker and Callan, and Dalton criticised Callan for "sounding like  a Malibu surfer".

TV Guide