Jim Hutton top ten

 Can we get there? Let's see...

1) And When the Sky Was Opened (1959) - Twilight Zone so maybe cheating but I'll do it

2) Ellery Queen (1975)

3) Where the Boys Are (1960)

4) Who's Minding the Mint? (1967)

5) The Horizontal Lieutenant (1961)

6) Time to Love and a Time to die (1958)

7) Period of Adjustment (1962)

8) The Hallelujah Trail (1965)

9) The Green Berets (1968) - don't yell at me! His performance is fine

10) Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)

There I go - did it! I haven't seen a lot of his TV work. 

Book review - "Space Odyssey: The Making of a Masterpiece" by Michael Benson

 Exhaustive, detailed, surely definitive. Kubrick comes out of this very well but the movie shows him at his best - all the attention to detail paid off. The critics come out of it badly most missed the point.

I like the human touches - Keir Dullea's contributions, William Sylvester stuffing his lines take after take, Arthur C Clarke having to pay off the debts of his dodgy married boyfriend caused by a Sri Lankan James Bond spoof. I like the tribute to the fighting qualities of Robert O'Brien at MGM too. 

Movie review - "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) ****1/2

 Much of it wonderful. Sorry, but I don't like the ending. Love the acting - that tight wound up style. Visually incredible. Great violence - abrupt, silent, quick. Stunning looking. A wonderful haunted house story.

Movie review - "Far from the Madding Crowd" (1967) ***

 Darling made so much money that MGM pulled out the cheque book for Joseph Janni, John Schlesinger, Fred Raphael and Julie Christie and went "take our money". So they did Thomas Hardy, presumably to give Christie a big fat lead role.

The film looks gorgeous - Nic Roeg shot it and it's full of his wonderful colour. It's made with taste and skill. Everyone can act. Peter Finch is superb.

But it's almost three hours, a Roadshow, and I didn't care about anyone. Julie Christie is beautiful and a fine actress but I just didn't care. Terence Stamp livens things up as a love rat but this could've been told in 90 minutes. Peter FInch is a drip for hanging around and so is Alan Bates. Schlesinger didn't connect with the material.

Honestly I would've prepared a sexed up Gainsborough melodrama version of this with Stewart Granger and James Mason.

Prunella Ransome has a showy role as Fanny.

Movie review - "Ride the High Country" (1962) ****1/2 (warning spoilers)

 Terrific film. It just works from its opening credits, beautifully shot and haunting melacholic theme tune. Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott are perfectly cast in the leads (did this inspire Larry McMutry's Lonesome Dove), Mariette Hartley is a different female heroine (still pretty but smart, unconventional), the brothers are a terrific rogues gallery: handsome but sketchy James Drury, LQ Jones, Warren Oates, etc. Ron Starr is a little more stock as the kid but that's fine.

The location work looks gorgeous (mines, snow, towns with cars). It's got these old 1950s trappings with Peckinpah's freshness (brothel scene, end of West). The story is simple but effective - great jolt when Hartley's father is killed - and the ending is guy cry nirvana.

Movie review - "Drums of Africa" (1963) **

 Producer Al Zimbalist re-used Kong Solomons Mines footage for Watusi and does it again here, to even less effective results. To give him his due, the script does try  - Robin Estridge did it and there's lots of chat between Lloyd Bochner and Mariette Hartley about love and stuff, which implies ambition. But it lacks decent exploitation - pace, sex, twists. Foreigners are dodgy, whites know best, the black Africans try. The action is unexciting. A comic evidence is underutilised. Hartley's nude swum is lively.

Michael Pate is in it as a dodgy Portugese and Ron Whlenis in it as a ship's captain. Frankie Avalon is professional, charming and can sing but sorry he just looks weird in Africa. His part could've been cut out. Bochner has a deep voice but that's it, really.

Torin Thatcher plays a version of Allan Quatermain who is given a different name for some reason. Hartley does her best.

Films MGM could’ve remade in the early 60s instead of the ones they did

 After Ben Hur MGM went on a remake kick. Not surprising considering the success of Ben Hur.

Their choices sunk the studio
- Cimarron
- Mutiny on the Bounty
- Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

Also throw in Jumbo.
 

Okay trying not to be too wise in hindsight but... all the remakes made sense. Big screen and colour worked on all.

Mutiny on the Bounty especially. Shot in Tahiti. Gorgeous.

Where the studio really stuffed up with that one? They went into production without a fixed script and a star who overpowered the director. They really just needed to shoot the 1935 script. Update it a little. But it was involving water and going to Tahiti. They needed calm heads. People good on location. Not to make a masterpiece. Just to get spectacle. They should’ve cast Charlton Heston or Burt Lancaster or Kirk Douglas. A little bit of a diva but basically pros.

Cimarron had the right male star and director. But problem - it’s a woman’s story. They gave the female lead to Maria Schell - but then geared the film to Glenn Ford. They needed to have a matching female star, Elizabeth Taylor would’ve been ideal but if not her then I don’t know Debbie Reynolds. Make it more about her. Tell the story of her falling for Ford and so on.

Four Horsemen was the most obvious misfire. Update to WW2 - why? That not fatal but... Glenn Ford killed it. And female stars. Needed to be sexy. Sexless director. Incidentally, this didn’t need to be a big spectacle.

Other flops.
- Wonderful World of Brothers Grimm. Charming film. But dull, dull brothers. Just needed to tell fairytales. Not the dull brothers. Just too much money spent. Blown up too much.
- Billy Rose’s Jumbo. Great star and ideal director. Lost heaps. Musical possibly too old.
 

What else could they have remade from the MGM library? As in, a big budget spectacle
- Tale of Two Cities? Yes but the Brits did it in 1958.
- Marie Antoinette? Yes, but only if right star... Elizabeth Taylor or nothing.
- Gone with the Wind? No point. Same with Wizard of Oz.
- San Francisco? Yes!! Colour, better effects. No Gable but... you could do Glenn Ford.
- The Good Earth? No. Too problematic. Needed genuine Chinese actors by the 960s.
- The Big Parade? Interesting. A big hit. But public more war weary in 1925 than 1960?
- The Birth of a Nation? No!
- The Thief of Badgad? Yes. If they’d gotten the rights. They could’ve done big Robin Hood too.
- The Scarlet Letter? Too depressing.

Movie review - "Sweet Bird of Youth" (1962) **1/2

 Tennessee Williams play had plenty of familiar characters - the male drifter failed actor (a type that was in Picnic), the ageing film star - but was very well done with solid drama, such as the drifter Chance giving his ex the clap, and her foul family castrasting Chance at the end.

MGM cleaned it up. The piece is robbed of its doom and tragedy. It retains much that is very effective - Paul Newman is terrific (as you'd hope so considering he played it on Broadway), ditto Geraldine Page. It think Richard Brooks, with his yelly style, suited Tennessee Williams. He makes sure there's a sexual charge.

This lost money though. Maybe the Williams tide was running out. Maybe it would've been a bigger hit with say Ava Gardner in the lead - but their scenes wouldn't have had the same charge.

Shirley Knight isn't bad but doesn't have the heavy aura of tragedy that role really should have. She doesn't seem like someone who's lost a child. Rip Torn and Ed Begley are electric. Knight was always pretty and fine but her performances seemed to lack an extra gear - just imagine what, say, Joanne Woodward or Gena Rowlands could have done with it.

The ending is dumb. So dumb. That awful pompous bland newspaper editor. Them beating up Chance. But then Chance/Newman and Heavenly/Knight going off together. It's really abrupt too like Brooks was embarassed.

I think the film needed a tragic ending for it to have power. He didn't need to be castrated - he comes back and heroically dies trying to protect Heavely, gets shot by Rip Torn., dies in her arms... that works. Because as it is too much of the play is kept for that ending to work. Newman begs Page for a scren test only a few minutes before the final scene. So there's no redemption. No heroism. He's taking what he can.

MGM 1961 ad

 In Variety here:

Look not a bad slate... I understand the desire to remake their old films. Nothing wrong with doing Mutiny and Four Horsemen in colour.

But - costs got away for both. And Four Horsemen was spectacularly misconceived.

Movie review - "Night of the Iguana" (1964) ****

 Tennessee Williams' last hit on Broadway was also his last hit in the cinemas. He's helped by gorgeous casting: Richard Burton as a defrocked priest (apparently the original choice was James Garner who wouldn't have been anywhere near as perfect), Ava Gardner as a lusty woman running a hotel in Mexco, Deborah Kerr as the seemingly prim woman with fire underneath.

I love its naughtiness - Sue Lyons is so keen to bonk Burton who's fighting her off, and Burton is this boozy loser who is still charismatic, and Gardner has these beach boys with maracas. A big role goes to Grayson Hall who is the antagonist, crucial to the story. John Huston clearly adores his characters and he's obviously loving working in Mexico.

This is a funny, fun joyous film. The constrant references to Burton sleeping with young girls is maybe a little dubious if you think about it too much. And like a lot of these William adaptations it's half an hour too long. But one of the best adaptations of the work - if you get the cating right there's a lot of fun to be had.

Movie review - "Period of Adjustment" (1962) **1/2

 Little remembered though it was a hit at the time - well, profitable for MGM at a time when everything from that studio was constantly flopping. Also it was from Tennessee Williams, an early role from Jane Fonda and the first feature from George Roy Hill.

It's a more comic take from Williams - no one's life is destroyed or goes mad, although as in many plays it has men reluctant to have sex with women. Jim Hutton and Jane Fonda get married  but squabble and she winds up at the house of Anthony Franciosa, Hutton's old army buddy who's just had a fight with his wife, Lois Nettleton.

Williams' film adaptations had a good chance it it was about a hot, beautiful female star who was horny - here they were lucky enough to get Jane Fonda. Hutton was a dab hand at comedy, which helps. She and Jim Hutton are sweet. Their plot is Huddon is scared to have sex - he didn't even do it with the gals during the Korean War.

I don't really like Franciosa, he gives off too much of a wife beating vibe (I'm not saying he did it, just that's the sense he gives) even if he's a good actor. I didn't care that much for Lois Nettleton or that plot - she's "homey", he married her for dad's money. It feels 50s TV. Maybe if Nettleton had been more heartbreaking or Franciosa more empathetic. Or more Southern. (John McGiver as her dad isn't very southern). I'm being mean, maybe I just didn't really care about either compared to the others. It's also long.

But it's fine.

Book review - "Dancing on the Edge" by Russ Tamblyn

 I spoke with Tamblyn in 2004 and he said he wanted to write a book so it took him a bit of time but I think Tamblyn likes to go his own way in life. A genuine name in Hollywood in the 1950s - not a big star, but a regular lead player in studio films with a long term contract to MGM - he dropped out very quickly, via choice really (he moved to Topenga Canyon to pursue art). He never got his groove back, could never quite re-consolidate despite a stint in Twin Peaks but hung in there. Found love third time round.

I liked the book. Listened to audio version. Tamblyn did it. He sounds amiable, a bit spacey. The third section is mostly about his daughter and Neil Young - like many in Hollywood people try to stay relevant where they can.

Interesting vignettes. Jeff Richards was a boozehead and smashed up Tamblyn's place, Dean Stockwell was a good friend but eventually alcoholism destroyed him while Dennis Hopper of all people got over it, Tamblyn was a polyamorist in like 1960 at Malibu, his second wife was a boozer (she's a tragic figure), his first wife an interesting character (Anna Lee's daughter), Glenn Ford tried to get Tamblyn's dance removed from Fastest Gun in the West, Tamblyn and Yvette Mimieux went for a skinny dip and had sex one night making Brothers Grimm, Tambly had a fling with Regina Carroll making Satan's Sadists.

If you like that period and these movies this book is hard to resist, even if it does need an edit.

Movie review - "Follow the Boys" (1963) ** (warning spoilers)

 MGM tried to repeat the success of Where the Boys Are but never quite did - I think because they went too light, while Boys had an aspect of reality about it with the Yvette Mimieux plot.

This has an interesting idea - the story of women who follow their naval men from base to base around the Riviera. Yes they chase the men but also... it is the Riviera. It wouldn't be a bad life if you were into it.

The women are: Janis Paige, getting sick of chasing hubby Ron Randell; Paula Prentiss, determined to nab lothatio Richard Long, Dany Robins, who is French and with Russ Tamblyn, and Connie Francis, desperate to be rooted by her new husband.

There's pleasing views of the south of France and Italy. Richard Long is made for this sort of thing and Randell acquits himself well. 

The film is geared heavily towards Francis, who gets several songs - she's fine but her character is depressing and the storyline is sad. Because she wants to have sex and it's difficult. I think she should've just had a good old fashioned stalking storyline eg "you said you loved me I want you" - something fun.

Depressing endings - Randell gives up his dream of a command for Paige, Francis decides to stick it out with her guy but he's still carted off arrested i.e. they still haven't had sex, Prentiss is with Tamblyn but they haven't resolved the fact she doesn't want to marry a naval guy and he wants to go career, Long is with Dany Robin but she's a debt collector and he's got no money... Literally no one's relationship looks like it has a future! 

No sense of camraderie or even funny set pieces.

Movie review - "Gold for the Caesars" (1963) **

Jeffrey Hunter and Ron Randell from King of Kings star in this peplum allegedly directed by Andre de Toth but apparently more by the second unit director. There's a gorgeous French girl and the setting and story aren't bad, a little like The Land of the Pharoahs - Hunter is a slave architect helping build a gold mine for his Roman overlords, Randell is a centurion but he's not the main villain the proconsul is (Randell should've played that role). Randell has a fight with Hunter's BFF while Hunter takes on the proconsul. Decent action and production values. Set just before Trajan came to power, and in Spain. They fight the Celts.

Movie review - "The Loved One" (1965) **

 The success of Tom Jones made MGM open its chequebook for Tony Richardson who decided to film Evelyn Waugh's late 1940s novel. It's zany satire, kind of peak gay Hollywood at the time - along with Richardson there's Roddy McDowall, Charles Isherwood, Tab Hunter, John Gielgud. Liberace...  Look there's plenty of straights too. Heaps of people are in it and behind the camera - Hal Ashby was a director, Haskell Wexler shot it and co produced, John Calley co produced.

The plot has Robert Morse, going for stardom after How to Succeed in Business, arrive from England (James Coburn as immigation officer) to Los Angeles to visit his Uncle John Gielgud. Gielgud words for a Hollywood studio along with Jonathan Winters, Rod Steiger and Roddy McDowall.

Members of the British expat community include Robert Morley and Alan Napier. Funderl workers include Anajette Comer (big part), Liberace, Tab Hunter (one scene as  a funeral guide), Milton Berle and Margaret Leighton (customers).

Then the last act switches to become a film about military and launching rockets with people like Dana Andrews (officer), Winters (dual role) and a young Paul Williams.

The gears switch, the film has its head up its ass and it got more annoying as it went on. Too much screen time is devoted to people who aren't up to it, like Comer and Jonathan Winters (who plays multiple roles Peter Sellars style as Quentin Tarantino pointed out).

It's beautifully shot and I can see why it's a cult but I can also see why no one wanted to see it. Some people are spot on like Morse, Hunter, Gielgud.

Movie review - "The Golden Arrow" (1962) **

 The axing of his TV show saw Tab Hunter make his inevitable way to Italy, like so many faded stars of his era. He never got his groove back but he stayed in leads for the next decade.

This has great production values and gorgeous colour. The story is in fits and starts, never quite gets its tone - part fantasy, part Robin Hood. There's some comic genies, one would've done. Rosanna Podessta is pretty as the girl the rest of the cast is indistinguished.

It looks fantastic. Hunter is alright but not quite comfortable in this world. It's weird - Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson suited it more. In his defence he's dubbed. But also he was looking like an ageing juvenile now.

Book review - "Killin' Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen, the Most Iconic WW II Movie of All Time" by Dwayne Epstein

 I love the movie and enjoyed the book though I'm not sure there's enough material here for a whole book. The film wasn't too complicated - man heard rumour from Russ Meyer, wrote book, book sold to MGM, book was turned into script and then film quite quickly, made relatively easy. It was a guys on a mission WW2 action movie, they weren't inventing the wheel. The film was fortunate in its timing and stars - got it cresting at the right time. There's an interview with Ken Hyman which is a coup - a book on his career would've been better. The film had some colourful actors but under Robert Aldrich everyone was kept in line. I enjoyed it, just think maybe this was better as an article.

Movie review - "Doctor Zhivago" (1965) ****

 A film that broke many rules for a blockbuster - it was set in Russia, about Russians, had a passive hero who just mopes around for three hours (compared to Lawrence, Ben Hur and company who got out and did stuff). Zhivago is always swept up in events - mum dies, World War One, Russian Revolution, bands of partisans. He's bailed out of trouble twice by Alec Guinness,  once by Rod Steiger, his wife and mistress seem to make decisions. The only decision he really makes is to cheat on his wife.

Of course it also had David Lean and his stunning compositions. And watching it again, Lara carries as much action as the real hero is Lara - she's the one who is loved by Tom Courtney's revolutionary, is raped by Rod Steiger, shoots Steiger, becomes a nurse, goes looking for Courtney.

And the film has real emotional sweep. I mean, it's full of nice people - Omar Sharif, Geraldine Chaplin, Julie Christie. Even tough Alec Guinness loves his half brother and tries to help him. Tom Courtney becomes ruthless but starts off idealistic. Rod Steiger is nasty, raping Christie, but saves her in the end.  Then there's this horrible war and revolution. The pettiness and meanness of the Bolshevieks is well depicted. You can't help feel sorry for Sharif being whisked away for two years by those partisans, and then separated from Christie, and dying of a heart attack calling out to her. Of course his life has compensations - doting wife and mistress, people looking out for him, a house to hide out with cool ice all over it.

Acting is consistently excellent - Guinness is terrific as a creepy commie, so too Courtney (I wish we'd seen his death scene instead of it being described), a restrained Rod Steiger, Geraldine Chaplin and Sharif moon. Klaus Kinski is electric in a brief appearance.

The X factor was Julie Christie - beautiful, smart, capable, fresh. Sharif's youthful romantic looks suit the part very well - he's better I think than original choice Peter O'Toole would have been. The Brits make good Russians.

It ticks the boxes of a successful epic. It has a simple storyline to follow - will Sharif root Julie Christie despite being married, will everyone avoid being killed - but all sorts of complexities around it. Plus cool stuff like the compositions - cavalry charges, cuddling in sleds, ice on the window, flowers.

Movie review - "Boys Night Out" (1962) **

 One of the last of the New York set sex comedies - though they continued a little longer on Broadway, I think, where you could be more risque. It has a decent central idea with plenty of potential - four businessmen who commute to Manhattan from Greenwich decide to pool resources and get a bachelor pad, and come into contact with Kim Novak, a sociology student who is studying them.

The movie has gloss, Michael Gordon directing, some star power, including Tony Randall who plays it the right tone. I'm not sure the stars are right - James Garner and Kim Novak channelling Rock Hudson and Doris Day, I guess. Garner, as someone noted, always makes films feel like TV. He doesn't have the affability of Hudson or Jack Lemmon. Novak is beautiful and has that "quality" but the role needed someone with more spark like Marilyn, Natalie Wood, Doris Day. 

Howard Duff and that other guy aren't really funny. I think they wanted Gig Young for Duff's part - he would've been better (so might Jim Backus who has a small role). The wives, who include Patti Paige, are colourless. I had trouble telling the married guys apart - that's a basic error. They don't play different types of roles. The annoying boomer kids made me laugh.

Billy Wilder would've gone for it, and Sidney Sheldon or Norman Krasna could've made it funny. But it never seems sure of its tone. Once you know Garner is a divorcee you know he will wind up with Novak - and the script never seems to know how sleazy to make him (he has no love life, he's boringly reluctant to go along with the plan()

You know what would've been better? Had Garner been a player - all the others were jealous of him. They want to imitate his life. He falls for her.

The ending farcical situations when all the wives collide with the husbands feels sluggish and dull because you can't tell them apart.

This would be worth remaking.

Movie review - "All Fall Down" (1962) ***

 A film that has much in common with Hud - Brandon de Wilde hero worshipping a no good womaniser pants man played by an Actors Studio superstar (Warren Beatty here instead of Paul Newman), a woman who's been around but is still attracted to the lout (Eva Marie Saint instead of Patricia Neal), small town setting (mid west as opposed to Texas), director who came up via TV (John Frankenheimer rather than Martin Ritt), black and white photography, gruff paterfamilias (Karl Malden rather than Melvyn Douglas).

There are key differences. This was mostly shot in studio not location so doesn't have Hud's excellent sense of place, which it needs (it was Frankenheimer's one big regret for making the movie and he was right). There's a mother here, Angela Lansbury. It also feels more, well, gay, as written by William Inge, with everyone panting heavily over Beatty - not one but two middle aged women meet him and go off with him after a few minutes, and so does Eva Marie Saint. Does that actually happen in the straight world? Maybe it does. There's also the domineering mother, a weak drunk father, a beautiful young boy.

Warren Beatty is very charismatic and pretty. He didn't often play such cads - helpless man children were more his stock in trade. Maybe he should've played more cads.

Brandon de Wilde is bland. He was in a lot of good movies for a bland actor - I think the eyes were useful.

The film doesn't really get going until Beatty arrives and it's one hour in. The story is simple - basically he knocks up Saint and flips out, she flips out and crashes and that's it. The film doesn't quite nail de Wilde's love for Beatty of fix its point of view.