Movie review - "Thunder Alley" (1967) **1/2 (re-watching)

 Solid car film. Maybe benefits from having Fabian rather than Frankie Avalon - he's more serious, gritty, chip on his shoulder. He's sleeping with Diane McBain but falls for Annette Funicello who has one of her better roles. She's still the girl but she drives, sings, fights of Warren Berlinger, has a lot of swagger, and there's a nice father-daughter relationship. The film could've done with a little more star power - John Ashley at least. But strong score, pretty good film.

Movie review - "Fireball 500" (1966) ** (warning: spoilers) (re-watching)

 A transitionary film from beach party to stock cars - I've seen this a few times and now I'm used to it and it's more enjoyable. The acting is very good, Fabian helps make it more serious, the conflict between he and Avalon feels real, I like the moonshine stuff, Harvey Lembeck is excellent in a serious role.

I think it was a mistake to resolve "who caused the fatal accident" before the big final race. There should have been some sabotage - Fabian found out but the audience didn't and the baddies tried to kill him or something.  

An odd mishmash but endearing.

Top Ten Beach Party Movies

 Going off the description in Tom Lisanti...

1) Gidget (1959) - feminist (ish), fun, great star turn

2) Where the Boys Are (1960).- light but also serious in a good way

3) Bikini Beach (1964) - Beach Party started it but this is the most pure

4) Ride the Wild Surf (1964) - angst! But also a more serious exploration ofbeach life

5) Beach Ball (1965) - fun, terrific music

6) Girl Happy (1965) - Elvis does beach party, great fun

7) Pajama Party (1964) - underrated musical, bright and poppy, heaps of fun

8) Beach Party (1963) - kicked off the series, often overlooked, but great

9) Ski Party (1965) - a bit smarmy but great snow, and tunes, and the Avalon-Hickman combo works

10) Blue Hawaii (1961) - aww, Elvis... look not really beachy but beach-ish and gorgeous

Movie review - "Rock n Roll" (1959) ***

 Long missing concert film was found in New Zealand, cleaned up and given a nice sheen. It's fun. No Fabian, who was cut out, but in a way that helps the nationalistic aspect - it builds up to the appearance of J O'K, who was inserted into the movie from a later concert. Johnny O'Keefe steals the show, as he should. He's got It. So too as Col Joye but not as much as JOK.

Only one singer plays to the camera. Other bands are more run of the mill like The Graduates. Johnny Devlin does a great Elvis impersonation.

Overlay scream sounds which contrast with the audience sitting down. Some great audience cutaways - girls screaming, kids just sitting there, some old codger nodding off.

The audience of boomers I saw it with talked excitedly through the film and sang along with some of the songs. Cute.

TV review - "The Dick Powell Show - 'Run Til It's Dark' " (1962) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

 Fabian made this after A Lion Walks Among Us - Dick Powell does the intro, not looking too well (he'd be dead within a few months) giving a nice introduction to Tuesday Weld and Fabian . He draws comparison between Fabian and another actor turned singer, I wonder what happened to him, etc. Didn't work out as well for Fabian. Mind you, Fabian didn't die young of cancer, like Powell.

Fabian gives a solid performance as a young man who meets Tuesday Weld in a casino. Weld is electric in a showy part, a wild woman on the run from a mystery man. It's the sort of part where she encourages Fabian to drive faster, standing up in the passenger seat. Fabian is lechy with her several times although she says she's not interested. She reacts strongly - but apparently that's her fault she doesn't know what's wrong with her.

It's a shame they had Fabian's character be so sleazy because otherwise it's a strong drama, and his sleaziness wasn't needed. Fabian believably falls in love and Weld is excellent. I was confused a little by the ending - the guy chases after Weld tries to strangle her, so it seemed to me... but she's still bad is that right?

Movie review - "Get Crazy" (1983) **1/2

 Arkush has been on a journey with this film - based on a personal story, turned into a slapstick comedy, it flopped, he dealt with crooks, but time has been kind and the film has a cult.

It has tremendous energy, memorable music numbers, everyone is having fun. It doesn't have the heart of Rock n Roll High School  - there's no equivalent of the Dey Young-PJ Soles friendship, and the central love story isn't as good. We don't get the sense Daniel Stern loves the venue the way Riff Randell loved the Ramones. The Allen Garfield part seems uneasy - like it should be smaller or bigger. 

Malcolm McDowell is hilarious as is Lee Ving and the girl band. And the guy who plays Garfield's nephew. Lou Reed is fantastic.

Some very funny gags. A genuinely sense of rock n roll.

I just think more time needed to be spent on Stern's character. And give his love interest more to do.

Vale Stuart Whitman

I remember once reading a list of the richest actors in Hollywood - it included names you'd expect like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra... and Stuart Whitman. I thought "what? Stuart Whitman?" But it was true... he did engineering in the army and when he got out and went into acting, he needed a day job like a lot of actors. His day job was he bought a little bulldozer (he learned how to drive one in the army) and would hire it and himself out for the day/week to clear land It was the 1950s and there was a property boom on in LA... Whitman soon figured out where it would be good to pick up some land himself for developing/re-selling. Over time he was worth $80 million. But he kept acting because he loved it. Indeed, he was a compulsive actor and took everything going when maybe a little more choosy-ness might have been ideal (or at least using some of that $80 million to maybe option a decent book or screenwriter).

Anyway here's a top ten:

 

1) Ten North Frederick (1958) - Whitman has a small but shiny role as an abusive musician in this Gary-Cooper-has-a-midlife-crisis melodrama... it helped get Whitman a contract at Fox who tried for a few years to turn him into a star

2) Hound Dog Man (1959) - ostensibly a Fabian movie this film really more belongs to Whitman, who plays a ne'r-do-well... the part really needed the star power of Elvis or even just Tommy Sands but Whitman is effective

3) The Story of Ruth (1960) - part of a sub-genre, Biblical spectacles that no one remembers - interesting to watch. Whitman plays Boaz.

4) The Mark (1961) - Whitman was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for this movie where he plays a child molesterer... only he doesn't actually molest children he only thinks about it (he does abduct a girl but doesn't go through with it) and then gets "better"... but the film does get points for tackling a big issue in 1960

5) The Comancheros (1961) - a really fun John Wayne western with Whitman as his rival and Ina Balin giving perhaps her best performance

6) Shock Treatment (1964) - mental illness-sploitation with Whitman faking illness to go undercover (not the Sam Fuller movie which used the same idea)

7) Sands of the Kalahari (1965) - Cy Endfield and Stanley Baker's fascinating follow up to Zulu has Whitman stepping in to a role that George Peppard walked out on as one of a group of passengers who crash in the desert and deal with horniness and killer baboons

8) Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965) - really fun, lovely movie, a deserved hit... it's a little odd to see Whitman in it (original choice Dick Van Dyke would have been more at home) but he's fine

9) Night of the Lepus (1972) - a killer bunny rabbit movie, no kidding - the sort of movie where David Del Valle would do a killer commentary - kicked off the horror cycle of Whitman's career, which included films about cannibals (Welcome to Arrow Beach), killer alligators (Eaten Alive), cult leaders (Guyana)

10) Crazy Mama (1975) - part of New World Pictures cycle of films about outlaw women and their trashy daughters (eg Big Bad Mama) this one has Whitman hook up with Cloris Leachman and Linda Purl... directed by Jonathan Demme

Movie review - "Ten Little Indians" (1965) ***

There's not a lot of love for this adaptation but I liked it - alpine setting, solid cast of B listers, crisp script (Peter Yeldham co wrote it), some decent atmosphere, competent handling by George Pollock who did the Margaret Rutherford Marples.

The basic source material is excellent of course and I enjoyed seeing random people like Dennis Price, Shirley Eaton, Wilfred Hyde White, Fabian and Hugh O'Brien wait to be killed off one by one. Fabian plays a pop star and sings a song - the title nursery rhyme- then dies first; he does solid work. His performance was bagged but he's absolutely fine - critics were so bigoted about Fabian.

There's a random fist fight scene. Some of the alpine stuff is iffy. The story is very strong.  I really liked Shirley Eaton - she was great value, very sexy but also ambiguous... you buy that she could be a killer. Hugh O'Brien is too obviously heroic though - I reckon they should have killed him off it would've been a shock. I like Pollock's work.

Movie review - "Disco Fever" (1978) **

Weird sort of movie - a disco film starring Fabian. It's as if the producers wanted to make a disco movie, or could get the finance, then Fabian became available so they decided to shoehorn him in.

The film feels written for him, he's a fading pop star who gets mistaken for Frankie Avalon and Fabian ("were you in North to Alaska?" "no that was Fabian') who hangs around a disco. The film uses footage of Fabian from his hey day - being mobbed and what not - as well as a glimpse of his Playgirl centerfold.

The plot has the manager of a disco see Fabian and decide to orchestrate his comeback. Fabian wants to sing new songs. The manager wants him to sing old songs on a disco plane as a warm up act for new star Michael Blodgett. Fabian decides to stick to his guns and sing his not particularly memorable new songs. The crowd goes wild.

There's something very cute in a movie insisting this would happen. Fabian has a beard and gives a typically relaxed, professional performance - probably too relaxed... more anxiousness and tension would have added to the movie, to give it more stakes.

You never believe for a second that Fabian would be used to launch a disco singer or perform in a disco or that his new songs would go over. The bitchy female manager who wants to bed Fabian and is annoyed is an unpleasant trope. Subplots come and go like the ex of the girl interested in Fabian, and the girl Casey Kasem does coke with.

But I didn't mind this movie. There is lots and lots of disco dancing. There's a fair bit of music - disco and Fabian rock tracks. Casey Kasem plays Fabian's manager who sells him out, tries to pick up women, and does cocaine with a topless starlet. (In some ways this film is for kids with dancing, music, a silly storyline and a motorbike  race just kind of thrown in... but then there's some nudity, swearing and cocaine. It's like, make up your mind, movie!) The idea of a disco plane is camp enough for its own film.

A curio, to be sure. Not appalling just a real mish mash.

Movie review - "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Random thoughts
- Nicholas Hammond of all people knocks it out of the park
- Bruce Dern was fine but that would have been the perfect last role for Burt Reynolds
- like a lot of film buffs I was sitting there going "I love a lot of this but I get the Fabian and Michael Rennie references, I'm weird, what about normal people?"
- the film was about fetishness - movie posters, TV guide, cigarette packets, logos
- the money is well spent - it's a film about movie stars, production design and Tarantino - without those things it would be a hard slog (for some people it will be)
- I get the ending and I liked it
- the final assault ramming head repeatedly thing... that wasn't cool... wasn't cathartic in the way that say killing Nazis in Inglorious Basterds was or slave owners in Django Unchained was or rapist men in Kill Bill was... the women were killers but marginalised members of society... also we just meet them in the film.
- all the acting is excellent
- I wonder if the 8 year old girl on the set of Lancer is some allusion to James Stacy's pedophilia, not accessed in the film
- there is no female role with shade and dimension - Tate dances and is ethereal, the Charlie girls are sex objects/psychos/"other", Ric's Italian wife jabbers and gesticulates even though she takes part in a crucial scene, Brad Pitt's wife is a nagging bitch... in contrast the male roles are given lots of depth... Brad and Leo of course but also Emile Hirsch's pining Jay Sebring, Bruce Dern's George Spahn
- the visit to the Spahn Ranch was v creepy
- Mike Moh is a great Bruce Lee

The Cinema of Fabian

In a recent interview for the Pure Cinema Podcast (https://purecinemapodcast.libsyn.com/new-beverly-calendar-july-2019-with-quentin-tarantino), Quentin Tarantino talked at length about his influences for the Rick Dalton character in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Among such names as Ty Hardin, George Maharis, and Edd Byrnes was the pop star turned actor Fabian, whose talent was admired by the director ("he was very personable"), leading to Tarantino scheduling three Fabian movies at his New Beverly Cinema in July 2019.

Fabian is still probably best known for his (relatively) brief heyday as a pop star - specifically the year 1959 when he had three top ten hits - "Turn Me Loose", "Tiger" and "Hound Dog Man". Yet he also had a career as a motion leading man that spanned over a decade. It's one that is worth revisiting.

Early Career

Fabiano Anthony Forte was born in Philadelphia in 1943. His launch into showbusiness was  something out of a Ruby Keeler musical: in 1957 his policeman father had a heart attack at home; Fabian was waiting by the ambulance when spotted by record producer Bob Marcucci. Marcucci was on the hunt for a good looking teen who could be the next Elvis Presley and asked the fourteen year old if he was interested in a singing career. Fabian, wanting to help his family financially, agreed to give it a shot.

Fabian wasn't a natural singer, but he worked hard, looked good and could at least put over a song. Marcucci gave him singing lessons and new clothes, made him lose the crew cut and get an Elvis-style pompadour, and shorted his name to "Fabian". After a few false starts the teenager started appearing at Dick Clark record hops, lip syncing to songs. Girls went wild, Clark put him on American Bandstand and a star was born.

Right from the start Fabian was something of a joke within the industry - his name, inexperience and limited singing ability were all much mocked (for example on the comedy album 2000 Years With Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks there's a interview with the teen idol "Fabiola"). But the baby boomer teens who formed the bulk of his audience didn't care - Elvis was in the army and they needed a new idol. By 1959 Fabian was earning $250,000 a year and Hollywood came calling.

20th Century Fox

Fabian (or, rather, his managers) elected to go with 20th Century Fox, who had a decent teen idol track record: they made the highly successful debut features of Elvia Presley (Love Me Tender) and Pat Boone (Bernandine), albeit also the flop first film of Tommy Sands (Sing Boy Sing).

It was a smart decision - Fox gave Fabian a top producer (Jerry Wald), skilled director (Don Siegel), colour and CinemaScope, plus a decent budget  and source material - Hound Dog Man (1959), based on the novel by Fred Gipson who had written Old Yeller. His co stars included two Fox contract players: Carol Lynley coming off Blue Denim (1959) and Stuart Whitman, an emerging name. There was also Arthur O'Connell who played paterfamilias to pretty much all the teen idols on screen around this time, and an excellent line up of character actors including Royal Dano, Claude Akins and Edgar Buchanan. While Fabian was top billed he really had a supporting role - the protagonist was Blackie Scantling, the "Hound Dog Man", played by Whitman.  This was in line with Love Me Tender where Elvis made his debut supporting a more experienced actor, Richard Egan. 

 The film is set in 1912 Texas and revolves around shiftless Blackie going on a hunting trip over the weekend with young friend Clint (Fabian). It doesn't have the heavy plot of Love Me Tender  - that was a serious Western with brothers betraying brothers, shoot outs, Civil War and so on. Hound Dog Man is a more slice-of-life, coming-of-age piece - a little hunting, some singing, Claude Akins pops around periodically to snarl at Whitman, Lynley pants over Whitman as does Akins' wife. There's a comic doctor, a dog, a barn dance. It's actually a sweet film - well made, with great production values, and a very strong cast.   

Fabian seems to consciously ape Elvis a lot in his debut, playing a yes ma'm type complete with Southern drawl. It's an ideal role for him - a bored young teen on a farm, - occasionally sulky, but a decent kid underneath it all - and he is extremely well protected. Every time he sings, however,  Don Siegel arranges it so the song is interrupted - a dog barks, or Fabian walks off in anger, or something, I'm not joking - this happens four times. Actually some of the tunes are good, notably the title track and 'This Friendly World'.

The film was not a box office success. Maybe it was too "plot lite". Maybe it needed more star power than Whitman - Robert Mitchum was attached to play Blackie in the early 50s and he would have been ideal; an elder singer, like say Pat Boone or Ricky Nelson, could also have worked. Fox didn't lose faith in Fabian, however, and decided instead to shift him to support roles, where he would be teamed with an older star of a different generation.  This was a common device at the time (eg John Wayne and Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo (1959)), the logic being the film would then appeal to two demographics.

Fabian's second film was High Time (1960), directed by Blake Edwards, starring Bing Crosby as a restaurant magnate who decides to go back to college, where his fellow students include Fabian, Richard Beymer and Tuesday Weld. The film is set over four years giving it a surprisingly wistful time-moves-on quality; there are bright colours and some funny jokes though it is badly hurt by the performance of Nicole Maurey as Crosby's love interest. Fabian has a decent role as a jock who struggles at college and winds up with Weld at the end.

Far more enjoyable was North to Alaska (1960), a comedy "northern" set during the Klondike Gold Rush with John Wayne.  It's the sort of movie that could have gone disastrously wrong - battle of the sex comedies with Wayne often had an abusive vibe about them (eg McLintock (1963)); female star Capucine was the producer's mistress, a model who had only made one film before; and filming started without a completed script. But it completely works - it's charming and sweet, director Henry Hathaway keeps the pace fast, and Capucine turned out to be one of the best co-stars Wayne ever had. Fabian has a great little role as the younger brother of Wayne's partner (Stewart Granger!) who tries to seduce Capucine; he sings a song and joins in on a few comic brawls. His performance won him the "Uncrossed Heart" award for least Promising Actor of 1960 in Harvard Lampoon's Annual Movie awards - a completely unfair accolade but typical of the snarkiness with which Fabian was treated at the time. High Time was reasonably popular but North to Alaska turned into a big hit and affirmed Fox's commitment to Fabian; in November 1960 they signed a new contract with the singer, to last for seven years, with an option to make two films a year.

Fox had a lively TV division and assigned Fabian to star in an episode of the anthology series Bus Stop (based on the 1956 Marilyn Monroe film) - "A Lion Walks Among Us", directed by Robert Altman. Fabian plays a drifter who rocks into a small town and soon makes waves: hitting on the middle aged drunken lady who gives him a lift, robbing and killing a grocer, singing without permission at a tavern, starting a brawl and pulling out a switchblade. He's hauled into prison and is arrested but remains cocky, keeps singing to himself a lot and actually gets freed at the trial... whereupon he propositions a blonde groupie, kills his lawyer, then is killed in a murder-suicide by the drunken lady. It's excellent television, superbly directed by Altman, with Fabian giving his best performance.

Unfortunately the episode screened at a time when America was undergoing one of its periodical moral panics about the influence of television violence on children. Part of the problem apparently was Fabian's presence - he's handsome, young, sings a few songs, is shown to be attractive, speaks a lot of groovy early 60s slang, and gets away with it (for the most part). This perceived glamourisation of violence was very confronting for some: Jack Gould of the New York Time wrote not one, not two but three separate columns decrying the episode; several sponsors withdrew their support from the series and and a number of stations would not run it. The episode was criticised in congress, leading to Bus Stop being axed and and the president of ABC being fired.

To be fair, the show was intense, not really suitable for young kids, but it is worthy adult drama. Apparently Fox wanted to turn it into a feature but Fabian refused to shoot the necessary extra scenes - it's a shame, because then this would be better known, and his fine work more widely seen.

The blow back didn't seem to hurt Fabian personally - indeed, he decided to quit singing, buy himself out of his contract with Marcucci, and focus entirely on acting. When Fox's management underwent major restructuring in the wake of the Cleopatra (1963) debacle, numerous people lost their jobs but Fabian held on to his contract.  One possible fall out - Fabian veered away from villainous roles for the next decade. He played anti-heroes, yes, but not out-and-out villains, which I feel in hindsight was a mistake.

Fox loaned him to the producers of Breakfast at Tiffany's who put him in a teen comedy at Paramount: Love in a Goldfish Bowl (1962). Fabian played a coast guard who comes between two platonic friends - newcomer Toby Michaels and fellow pop star Tommy Sands, whose black hair was dyed blonde so he would look different from Fabian. The film has problems of movies of its time - for instance, Fabian basically tries to sexually assault Michaels - but also its pleasures (the cinematography and tunes - Burt Bacharach and Hal David did the title track). It's very possible to do a gay reading of this film, with Sands displaying zero sexual interest in Michaels or any woman throughout the film. Or maybe that's too limiting: because when Fabian puts the hard word on Michaels she is very coy and not keen at all, despite flirting heavily with him until then. So maybe it's more accurate to describe this movie as being about two people with low sex drives who find each other. Sands has the showier role but lacked the chops to pull it off (he's not a believable intellectual). Fabian is far more comfortable in a more straightforward part.

Fabian was one of many Fox contract players who appeared in The Longest Day (1962). He played a US Ranger who stormed Normandy alongside other teen idols like Tommy Sands, Paul Anka, Robert Wagner and George Segal. Okay maybe Segal wasn't a teen idol but the others were - it's like a late 50s pop supergroup put into a war movie. The film was a blockbuster - the most commercially successful movie Fabian appeared in, although his role was brief.

He was one of several names in  Irwin Allen's Jules Verne adaptation Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962). The studio had previously made a terrific film based on Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1959) with Pat Boone, but Five Weeks is not in that class. It has bright colours and solid actors (Cedric Hardwicke, Barbara Eden) but too many of them seem miscast, such as Red Buttons trying to channel Clark Gable. Fabian has relatively little to do though he sings a song - the title track, which did not become a hit. The film was a box office disappointment that helped kill off the Jules Verne cycle.

Fox teamed Fabian with another old star, James Stewart in Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962), a sweet comedy about Mr Hobbs (Stewart) and his family, well, taking a vacation. Fabian's role is not big but he has a lovely scene - Hobbs pays Fabian to dance with his lonely awkward daughter but Fabian has so much fun he refuses the cash. The film, written by Nunnally Johnson and directed by Henry Koster, and was popular, leading to two more comedies from the same team - Take Her She's Mine (1963) and Dear Brigitte (1965).

Fabian was meant to be in Take Her She's Mine alongside Stewart and Sandra Dee but doesn't appear in the final film - presumably because he was meant to play Dee's boyfriend and Fox head Daryl F. Zanuck eventually decided to make that character French. He is in Dear Brigitte (1965) playing the boyfriend of Stewart's daughter (Cindy Carol); it's not a very good movie and flopped at the box office, though Fabian has some decent moments trying to exploit a child genius at the race track -the film would have been better had they done more with this storyline.

In between these films Fabian was borrowed by Columbia Pictures for a surf movie, Ride the Wild Surf (1964). Production on this was difficult - original director Art Napoleon was fired and replaced by Don Taylor; Fabian's original co-stars Jan and Dean (fellow pop artists) got the sack when a good friend of theirs kidnapped Frank Sinatra Jnr and were replaced by Tab Hunter and Pete Brown. The resulting film is, however, one of the best beach movies of the 60s - it actually makes an attempt to understand surf culture, has decent female roles, and features some spectacular surf footage. Fabian has a solid part, accessing his pseudo-Elvis schtick playing a surfer with a chip on his shoulder. He is charming with Shelley Fabares, although yet again there's a scene where he uses rough handling on her - this was very common in 60s cinema.

Fox announced Fabian for several projects which did not happen - adaptations of the novels Beardless Warriors and A Summer World as well as a Western, Custer's Last Stand. He made no more films for the studio after Dear Brigitte but it had been a good  run.

In 1965 he appeared in an adaptation of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians for producer Harry Alan Towers, playing a singer who is the first guest killed. He was also appearing regularly as a guest star on episodes of TV shows such as Wagon Train and The Virginian, always doing professional work - though never under a director as good as Robert Altman and they never came up to the standard of A Lion Walks Amongst Us.

AIP

Samuel Z Arkoff, one of the vice presidents in American International Pictures, wrote in his memoirs that he wanted Fabian to co star alongside Annette Funicello in Beach Party (1963) but was prevented by Fabian's contract with Fox. Even if the story is accurate - Arkoff was notorious for bending the truth  - it was probably lucky for AIP they got Frankie Avalon instead: the amiable actor-singer had a broader, more cartoon-style persona that fitted those movies better.

AIP were still keen on Fabian however and signed him to a seven picture contract in November 1965. By then the studio had made six beach party films and the formula was waning so they took key members of the team - notably Avalon, Funicello, and director William Asher - and put them in a stock car racing movie, Fireball 500 (1966)... co starring Fabian. The film awkwardly straddles the broad surrealistic musical comedy of the Beach Party movies with AIP's more serious works of the late 60s - it has a claymation title sequence, Avalon does a double take at the camera and characters break out into song, but it has more adult themes (characters have sex, people die, 50% of Julie Parrish’s dialogue is sexual innuendo). Fabian brings his pseudo-Elvis snarling to this one and it works well - he was a believable race car driver, angry but good underneath. Funicello winds up with Fabian at the end rather than Frankie, which after all those beach party movies she made with Avalon feels like cheating.

The film was produced by Burt Topper who  put Fabian in another stock car racing film for AIP, Thunder Alley (1967).  It co-stars Funicello and Diane McBain under the direction of later cult favourite Richard Rush (Getting Straight, The Stuntman). Thunder Alley is far more cohesive and successful film than Fireball 500 - a solid drama with a thumping soundtrack (some of which Tarantino appropriated for Deathproof) and Annette Funicello is really good - but then it's a strong role, perhaps her best ever for AIP. Fabian is also strong - cocky, arrogant, but haunted and basically decent; it's one of his best parts.

In between these two movies AIP sent Fabian to Italy to replace Frankie Avalon in Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966), a sequel to Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965) starring Vincent Price. Girl Bombs, directed by Mario Bava of all people, is a nutty comedy that was mashed up between two different styles of films - a Goldfoot sequel (Price reprised his role) and vehicle for the Italian comedy duo Franco and Ciccio. There are two main versions of the film - one for America (with more Vincent Price) one for Italy (with more Franco and Ciccio). Fabian is an amiable straight man but it's a terrible movie, considered among Price's and Bava's worst.

Fabian's third racing film for AIP was very different from the others. The Wild Racers (1968) was shot on location in six different countries throughout Europe. Producer Roger Corman supervised a tight crew who would go from race to race shooting footage (a method he had used earlier on The Young Racers (1963)). It's a very arty avant garde film, directed by Dan Haller - shots rarely go longer than ten seconds, most dialogue is voice over. Fabian is very good as the cocky race driver who is meant to help his more senior partner win but can't help winning himself. That's the gist of the plot - plus a romance with a stunningly beautiful Mimsy Farmer. There are plenty of scenes of cars zipping around, groovy music and credits, great production values and consistently interesting techniques - Nestor Almendros did the cinematography. There's not a lot of drama going on and only Fabian gets a full fleshed character - the way the movie is made causes you to feel distance from it. Still, it's worth seeking out if you're interested in a race car movie that is very "late 60s funky". It's Tarantino's favourite race car movie.

Fabian's fifth film for AIP was a surprisingly conventional drug drama, Maryjane (1968) where he  plays a teacher who uncovers a marijuana racket at his high school. It's bewildering to think that AIP made this the year after The Trip (1967)... but then Sam Arkoff and Jim Nicholson were concerned about the former movie being too pro drug so maybe they churned this out to cover their bases. Maury Dexter's handling is generally quite lively and there is some decent enough acting but this is just silly, with gangs of kids puffing weed and driving off cliffs, like in Reefer Madness (1936). It's a little odd seeing Fabian play a teacher; he's alright, but it's a shame this wasn't made a few years earlier when he could have played the charismatic bad student.

The Devil's Eight (1968), produced and directed by Topper, was an AIP rip off of The Dirty Dozen where agent Chris George recruits a bunch of convicts to take on moonshiner Ralph Meeker. Fabian's role is surprisingly small for someone second billed - he plays a convict with a drinking problem, and he's fine, but his part is not as good as Ross Hagen, who plays a former moonshine driver whose ex is Meeker's mistress. Maybe Fabian didn't seem Southern enough, or they only used him in the movie under suffrance. The film was the first credit script credit for John Milius and Willard Hyuck and was based on a story by Larry Gordon - all would become major players in Hollywood in the 70s but none of them used Fabian again. Neither did other collaborators who went on to bigger things, such as Mario Bava and Richard Rush.

Fabian took time out from AIP to play a Depression era gangster, John Ashley, in a film for Crown International - Little Laura and Big John - a low budget knock off of Bonnie and Clyde (1967). Fabian gives a decent performance as does co star Karen Black but the film, shot in 1968 was not seen until 1973. 

Fabian's seventh and final  movie for AIP was Bullet for a Pretty Boy (1970) another Depression-era biopic of a gangster, in this case Pretty Boy Floyd. It was mostly directed by legendary schlockmeister Larry Buchanan, given his biggest budget ever, with Maury Dexter coming in to shoot some additional scenes. Fabian gives another accomplished performance as a gee-it-isn't-his-fault-kid-forced-to-crime. His physical attractiveness is exploited heavily in the movie - surprisingly few films did this considering Fabian became a pop star mostly by being good looking. Here he's got Jocelyn Lane and Astrid Warner throwing themselves at him, as well as a brothel madam. The film itself is competent rather than inspired - it could have done with more passion - but isn't bad.

Later Career

Without a contract to a studio, Fabian found himself in considerably less demand for feature film work in the 1970s. He made a few career missteps this decade - he posed nude for Playgirl and regretted it, was involved in a car accident.  He had the lead in some low budget features that few people saw - Soul Hustler (1973), directed by Burt Topper, where Fabian plays a drifted who becomes a Christian rock star; and Disco Fever (1978), disco-splotatoin effort with Casey Kasem.

Fabian returned to singing and hit the nostalgia circuit, notably in places like Las Vegas; he was well received and still remains in demand for this in 2019, sometimes teaming up with fellow idols like Avalon and Bobby Rydell. On a personal front, he had two unsuccessful marriages but struck gold with the third, marrying magazine editor Andrea Patrick in 1998. A son from his first marriage, Christian, wrote the film Albino Alligator (1996).

Fabian continued to act through the 70s, 80s and 90s, mostly guest shots on TV shows - Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, and so on. Perhaps his best performance from this period was the George Peppard TV movie Crisis in Mid Air (1979) where Fabian plays an airport worker who kills taxi drivers. He was a cop in the zombie film Kiss Daddy Goodbye (1981), Joe Dante gave him a small role in Runaway Daughters (1994) and he had a cameo as himself in Up Close and Personal (1996).

He wasn't forgotten as a cultural touchstone. The leads in Laverne and Shirley were obsessed with Fabian, as was the Nicolas Cage character in Peggy Sue Got Married (1986). "Turn Me Loose" was used in Ralph Bakshi's American Pop (1981) and Fabian provided the inspiration for the character of Cesare (Peter Gallagher) in The Idolmaker (1980) a thinly disguised account of the rise of Bob Marcucci directed by Taylor Hackford (Fabian sued the filmmakers and won an out of court settlement.)

Conclusion

What to make of the cinematic career of Fabian Forte? He was no Elvis Presley, or even Pat Boone, but he certainly did better as an actor than, say, Tommy Sands or Bobby Rydell. His career was more analogous with his fellow Philadelphian Frankie Avalon. He was mainly called upon to play basically nice young men, sometimes with a chip on his shoulder. When offered a meaty role he usually rose to the occasion - Hound Dog Man, A Lion Walks Among Us, Thunder Alley - when he had to support he did it effectively s - North to Alaska, Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation. He wasn't a great actor but he was good one, and should be better remembered.

TV review - "The Rat Patrol - The B Negative Raid" (1966) **1/2

Watched this because Fabian was in it. It's a TV show about a long range patrol unit in the desert during World War Two - these were more British and German though its been made American... albeit with a British soldier and star Chris George, a good TV star, as an Aussie slouch hat.

It's not bad, at 30 minutes. The plot has them needing some blood for a transfusion. They come across a deserter, played by Fabian. It loves its non Nazi German, which was very of the 60s. Fabian gives a solid accomplished performance.

Movie review - "North to Alaska" (1960) **** (re-viewing)

Maybe four stars is too much but re-watching this film - I've seen it several times - I was struck by how much I like it. So many of the pleasures you simply don't get any more - John Wayne in the lead, Charles Feldman's mistress Capucine knocking it out of the park as his co star, Fabian in support, a jaunty ballad-pop theme tune.

Apparently the movie was greatly rewritten as it went along by Henry Hathaway supervising. Someone knew writing though because it does hang together in part because there is decent central conflict - Wayne and Stewart Granger are partners in Alaska circa 1906 who've struck it rich, Wayne goes to Seattle to collect Granger's fiance, finds she's gotten married to someone else so he brings back a prostitute, Capucine. Capucine thinks Wayne wants her and by the time she finds out the truth she's fallen for her - but Wayne doesn't want to be tied down.

So you've got good central conflict and decent characters - a miner who won't be married, and a prostitute who wants him. That's a juicy central dramatic situation. They complicate it in decent ways - there are claim jumpers after Wayne's mine, Granger falls for Capucine, so does Granger's kid brother Fabian, a conman Ernic Kovacs is after the mine, drunken Mickey Shaugnessy used to own the minr. Stories dovetail neatly - for instance Capucine is an ex of Kovacs.

It goes for two hours and really could have been cut - the last half hour the conflict is contrived as they struggle to find ways to keep Wayne and Capucine apart. I also think the sequence where Granger and Capucine are trying to make Wayne jealous drags. They probably wanted to give Granger something to do - it's not much of a part. However, he is a believable miner and it's nice that this role was played by someone with charisma and presence, he gives it heft.

Kovacs is a strong antagonist - he's clever and sly. Wayne is in wonderful form - big, warm, charismatic, doing an amusing slow burn, jealous, charming It's one of his likeable performances.

It's also one of Fabian's best efforts. The role suits him like a glove - not too much pressure, but still with a little meat. It's not very convincing that he and Granger are brothers, and his haircut feels 1960 rather than 1906 but he gets to play a 17 year old and has a definite character - kid who wants to be an adult, who falls for Capucine and tries to seduce her (a long scene and he holds his own). He sings a song "If You Only Knew", which is a soft ballad - he wasn't bad at these eg "This Friendly World" from Hound Dog Man. He's very likeable.

The real surprise packet though is Capucine. A bit of a joke at the time because she was am oderl turned actress and mistress of Charles Feldman, she's a delight - perfectly cast (as a French prostitute), elegant, beautiful, lovely. She believably falls in love with Wayne, is very sweet - the first third of the film, their courtship in Seattle, is among the best bit of the movie. She's good at comedy - very funny being seduced by Fabian and later taking part in the brawl at the end. This is important too because the movie is her character's story as much as Wayne's - she drives the second half of the movie, pursuing Wayne.

The scenary is spectacular and the production design a delight - beaches, steamers, muddy roads, bordellos, lumberjack lunches, mines. I have a soft spot for "Northerns" set during the Alaskan gold rush and this film really goes for it.

It's a charming, sweet movie  with a jaunty title track. I recognise I may be biased because I saw this film as a kid when highly formative.

(I could have done without the wacky sound effects during the fight scenes eg birds tweeting when someone gets punched.)

Movie review - "A Bullet for Pretty Boy" (1970) **

Fabian was a half decent actor, best suited for delinquent types, so he's well cast as the gangster Pretty Boy Floyd. It's a sympathetic account - Floyd only goes into gangster-ism after bullies shoot down his Paw - an he's surrounded by crooks and cops who are worse than him.

This was shot by Larry Buchanan, who has a bigger budget than we normally see - the period detail isn't lavish, but it's not bad, there's some old cars, and a robbery in the main street. There's a fair amount of action which is reasonably handled - I'm not sure if this was Buchanan, or Maury Dexter, who took over filming.

Jocelyn Lane is touching as the prostitute who loves Fabian. Adam Roarke is effective as a preacher who joins Fabian's gang - I kept wishing his part was bigger than it was. The film could have done with deeper, richer relationships.

Fabian gives a solid performance. His attractiveness is exploited - surprisingly few films did this considering he became a pop star mostly by being good looking. Here he's got Lane and Astrid Warner (his wife) throwing themselves at him, as well as a brothel madam.

The film is competent rather than inspired - it could have done with more passion - but isn't bad.

Movie review - "Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs" (1966) **

I used to loathe this film and I'm a fan of the first one. I'm used to it now, in particular I'm prepared for the Italian comic duo who are in it, Franci and Ciccio. It's not a very good movie but it is bright and colourful and Price is always fun.

The plot is serviceable - Goldfoot is making girl who are bombs to kill NATO generals. I missed Susan Hart as the robot but there is Laura Antonelli who is very fetching as the girl who helps and is sexually harassed by Fabian.

Fabian isn't as good a light comedian as Frankie Avalon, who brought a cartoony quality totally appropriate to the genre, but he's a solid straight man. He actually provides a good "normal" centre for the action.

I really missed Dwayne Hickman and Jack Mullaley - not only were they solid comic actors their characters gave the earlier film heart. Avalon and Hickman had a solid relationship - there's none of that here, because Fabian doesn't have much to do with the Italian duo (I'm reviewing the US version - the Italian one has more of the duo, apparently). And instead of the lovely Price-Mullaley by play there's just Price and some random Chinese dude. Why not give Price a decent sidekick? If not a comic a sexy dame?

It's helter skelter, very stupid. Honestly maybe two stars is too many but I like the period and the colour and Price, Fabian and Antonelli.

Movie review - "Ride the Wild Surf" (1964) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

This is a beach movie which is a bit more critically respectable because it has some excellent real life footage of surfing in Hawaii. It is flawed - Tom Lisanti thinks its the best surf movie from Hollywood. I don't really like it - maybe I prefer  my beach movies more junky.

Some random observations:
 * great Jan and Dean title track - but they should have played it over the opening credits to get the movie off to a brighter start
* there's a lot of three girls beach movies but this is one of the few "three guys" movies
* some excellent surfing footage but its intercut terribly with footage of the stars on the backlot
* the film gets points for being more multicultural - there's a Hawaiian surfer, and an Aussie (Murray Rose) - and also for incorporating some slang and attitudes, however badly
* Jim Mitchum is meant to be the baddy but actually the nastiest character is some random surfer called Frank ( played by Anthony Hayes) who keeps baiting Fabian - I kept expecting him to die or something but he doesn't - some undercooked drama there
* Fabian is fine, though not terribly believable as a surfer - well not a top surfer - and he has to glower and be bitter a bit too much - also there's a yuck moment where he tries to force himself on Fabares
* there's three nice romances but badly constructed scenes - Fabian goes from "I hate college" to "okay I'll go back to college" in one scene (admittedly Shelley Fabares is looking hot in the scene but still), Hunter and Hart's mother is clunk too - all the stories have good potential but the writing isn't good
* actually dramatically the whole flow of the film feels a bit wonky
* the women have nice camaraderie but the guys don't - they don't feel like friends - in part because Tab Hunter is so clearly older than the others
* Barbara Eden is a lot of fun as a kook and is even allowed to beat up Brown - though she spends most of the film watching him on a towel
* Fabares and Hart are very sweet - Fabares is more professional but Hart does have a great shimmy dance (she'd repeat in Pajama Party)

Movie review - "High Time" (1960) **1/2

The story about a mature age person returning to college to get an education is evergreen - Hollywood does it every twenty years or so (Rodney Dangerfield in Back to School, Melissa McCarthy in Life of the Party, etc). This one has Bing Crosby giving it a go - he looks old, so that helps, and he is charming enough, I guess, though I've never been a big Crosby fan.

I like this film more than I did on first viewing. It has a bright colourful palate, and is about nice people - the only brats are Bing's selfish kids (who seem very real... though you can't help wondering he's probably a terrible dad), a pompous lecturer played by Gavin McLeod, and the odd heckling student.

Bing has a pleasant camaraderie with fellow students - Tuesday Weld, Fabian, Richard Beymer, and Patrick Adiarte  as his close friends, but also Yvonne Craig as a journalism student he has a nice rapport with. He has a slow burn romance with French teacher Nicole Maurey.

The film goes for four years - freshman, sophomore, junior and senior - which is a long time span for a feature film. But it does give the movie a "passing of time" quality. The kids get to grow up and mature - well, Fabian learns to study and Weld settles down with one guy (because, marriage).

I didn't like Maurey much - she seems bored and she and Crosby don't have an over abundance of chemistry. The young kids are good though, and all have some character to play - Adiarte is an Indian, meaning this is surprisingly multicultural (to keep things in perspective, the actor was Filipino and the character wears a turban), Beymer as a hipster, Fabian as a jock, Weld as a groovy chick who changes her personality every year to fall for one of the guy (she starts with Beymer, briefly goes Indian, has a crush on Crosby then becomes engaged to Fabian), Craig as a journalism student. I actually wanted more of Crosby and the kids - Beymer starts off as this funny strong presence but is backgrounded; Weld, as ever in her early films, feels under-used; Craig and Crosby strike sparks and you expect it to pay off somehow but it doesn't really; Adiarte wears a turban and that's it; Crosby's relationship with his kids doesn't evolve.

The film is set in the South I think - they go to a college where a dean has a tribute to the old South ball. Oh those loveable old racists.

Henry Mancini wrote a catchy theme song. I did laugh at Bing in drag.

Movie review - "Hound Dog Man" (1959) ***

20th Century Fox had success launching Elvis Presley and Pat Boone as film stars, though less so with Tommy Sands, but they gave it another red hot go with Fabian, who was briefly a hot sensation amongst teens.

He is given a lot of support - the producer was Jerry Wald (who liked to make movies with young contract stars), the director was Don Siegel, the source novel and co writer was Fred Gipson (who also wrote Old Yeller), his co stars include Carole Lynley coming off Blue Denim and Stuart Whitman, a growing name at the time. There's also Arthur O'Connell who often played paterfamilias to teen idols around this time, and an excellent line up of character actors: Royal Dano, Claude Akins, Edgar Buchanan.

Fabian seems to consciously ape Elvis a lot in this one - the Southern drawl, playing a "yes ma'm" type. It's a good role for him - a bored young teen on a farm who wants to go off hunting with his younger brother and rascally friend Stuart Whitman. The movie is actually Whitman's more than Fabian's - he's the Hound Dog Man, and the story is about his character's search for responsibility.

I get the feeling Fox were inspired by the success of Love Me Tender where Elvis was introduced supporting an older contract star Richard Egan. That's not like this though - that was a big Western with brothers betraying brothers, and shoot outs. This is more slice of life, coming of age. It's not heavy with plot - a little hunting, some singing, Claude Akins pops around periodically to snarl at Whitman. Lynley pants over Whitman as does Akins' wife. There's a comic doctor, a dog, a barn dance.

It's actually a sweet film - well made, with great production values (in colour, CinemaScope), and a very strong cast. It's closer to Old Yeller than Love Me Tender.

Fabian is extremely well protected - he has a little romance with Dodie Stevens but the scenes are only short. He works well with Whitman and the kid who plays his younger brother, as well as O'Connell. The most touching moment is at the end where Fabian tells O'Connell he admires him for standing up to Claude Akins.
 
Carole Lynley feels a bit too young for Whitman but that does suit the film - she's determined to marry this guy, she's in over her head, and it feels real. When he proposes at the end you can't help going "she's signed up for a life of cheating".

Fabian was famously not a particularly good singer. Every time he sings, Don Siegel arranges it so the song is interrupted - a dog barks, or Fabian walks off in a jealous sulk seeing Stevens flirt with another guy. Actually some of the tunes are good, notably the title track and 'This Friendly World'.

You can see in hindsight why the film wasn't a success. I would have greenlit this, but Fabian didn't really take off as a singer with the popularity of Elvis or even Pat Boone.  It's a charm piece - but adding some heavy duty plot would have thrown it off. I think it needed more star power - Whitman is good but was a character actor and leading man rather than star. I feel this role needed to be played by Sands or Boone or Elvis - another singer.

Book review - "Screewriter, the Life and Times of Nunnally Johnson" by Thomas Stempel

A biography of Nunnally Johnson? Sure, why not? It helps that Stempel is a pleasant writer, who has done a number of illuminating book on screenwriting.

Johnson occupies a curious place in American film history - I'm not sure how well he is remembered. Possibly he was better known say 40 years ago when his films would have been more widely seen on television.

He was a journalist and short story writer who went to Hollywood, as so many of them did at that time (Charle Brackett, Ben Hecht etc). Like many of them he sometimes had a reputation of someone who sold out their talent - a trope which Stempel rightly mocks. Did we really lose so much from Johnson giving up his stories of small town life in Georgia for Hollywood screenplays?

It took him a little while to get going, but what made him thrive was working for Darryl F. Zanuck at the new Twentieth Century Pictures, which became 20th Century Fox. Johnson became one of Zanuck's gun screenwriters, along with Philip Dunne and Lamar Trotti. Like he eventually moved his way up to producing, more out of boredom than anything else. Like Dunne he became a director as well who isn't remembered particularly fondly - though I feel his reputation is slightly higher than Dunne's because he made Three Faces of Eve with Joanne Woodward.

He did leave Zanuck for a period, working for Bill Goetz at International Pictures, but didn't do particularly well and returned to Zanuck. He eventually retired in 1970.

It was an extremely good career, a lot of classics: House of Rothschild, Jesse James, The Grapes of Wrath, Roxie Hart, The Gunfighter, The Desert Fox, How to Marry a Millionaire. He kept relevant up until the end - in the 1960s his credits included popular James Stewart comedies like Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation (with Fabian), as well as The Dirty Dozen and Flaming Star. He tried Broadway a few times and it didn't work but there's no shame in that.

He seems to have been a nice man, gentlemanly, perhaps a little fond of the bottle, very dedicated to work. The book hints his third wife - the marriage that lasted - wasn't perhaps entirely happy giving up her acting career.

Stempel doesn't touch on some of the more racist aspects of Johnson's work such as the depiction of blacks in The Prisoner of Shark Island. He is very strong otherwise on analysing Johnson's scripts, particularly the man's interest in writing about marriage and having married heroes.

A very interesting book.

Book review - "Five Weeks in a Balloon" by Jules Verne (1863)

Verne's first hit novel hasn't aged as well as his other classics, though it has some good bits. There's three characters - Dr Ferguson, Dick Kennedy and Kennedy's black servant Joe... who is admittedly a "yes massa" type but also gets to be heroic.

The basic plot is travelling over Africa in a balloon - but there are some lively set pieces: rescuing a missionary, Joe getting sucked down by quicksand, a missionary is rescued, Joe is rescued. There's lots of description of the places they travel and the balloon - this quasi-documentary approach (for lac of a better term) I think sold the piece as more realistic to viewers.

So some good bits but not that good.