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

Movie review - "3 Worlds of Gulliver" (1960) **1/2

 This one doesn't seem to get the love of other Harryhausens. I get why - it doesn't have the sense of adventure. Kerwin Matthew' dullness is more annoying here than for Sinbad. 

The film includes a lot of satire from the original with its jaundiced takes on rulers and politics. People have criticised this has been too differnt from Swift. I think the problem is it was too close to it.

Enjoyable effects. Dull support cast - Lee Patterson as some other foreign dignitary. Gulliver doesn't seem very interested in his girlfriend.

Movie review - "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger" (1977) **

 Flat ish Sinbad adventure. Patrick Wayne looks the part but isn't that memorable as Sinbad; mind you, neither was John Phillip Law or Kerwin Matthews. Jane Seymour is utterly perfect as a princess who goes on the journey; she has a nude swim and flashes some bare back which was a bit racy. Tyrone Power's daughter plays another princess who goes along. But it's not terribly feminist both women spend most of their time being scared and/or serving food.

The story involves a quest but there was a lot of set up and talk and it wasn't that gripping. The stakes felt low. I mean, they were high on paper but watching it... I just didn't care. Maybe I saw it in a bad mood.

Some decent effects and action sequences. The end is set in the Arctic, which was at least ifferent. Patrick Troughton has a high old time as does Margaret Whiting as the villain.

Movie review - "Twenty Million Miles to Earth" (1957) **1/2

I enjoyed this more than Earth vs the Flying Saucers because there's no Hugh Marlow and it had a creature running amok. It follows from the King Kong playbook - creature goes berserk, is captured, escapes, military called in - but lacks that film's characters. Is it so hard to create some? There's William Hopper as standard military man and the girl as standard.

The film gets extra points though for being set in Italy and have the monster going crazy among the ruins. Why not have the creature have a personality - fall in love with the girl? Or have some goal? Or give the humans some personality?

I liked Harryhausens effects and the build up was very good. But the writers didn't put flesh on the bones.

Movie review - 'The Valley of Gwangi" (1969) **

Lesser known Ray Harryhausen in part because a lot of it was just plain annoying - to me, at any rate - it's got this irritating opening sequence in turn of the century Mexico (presumably to accommodate filming in Spain), which sets up all this storyline about a rodeo rider (James Franciscus, uncharming here) visiting a rodeo, renewing a relationship with a fellow rider (Gina Golan) and some boring old idiot.

They discover a secret valley where there are dinosaurs running. The film improves with some typically strong Ray Harryhausen creatures but it never hits the top rank for me. In part this is because the humans are so dull - they're not really on a mission to find dinosaurs,Laurence Naismith is a dull professor digging in the area but not on an expedition, and there's all this rodeo storyline, with Franciscus wanting to buy a ranch and not wanting to settle down with Golan then wanting to settle down, and then the cowboys thinking of exploiting the aliens and... urgh.

In King Kong the dramatic lines were clear and the characters vivid - Robert Armstrong wanted to make a movie, Fay Wray wanted to act, Kong fell in love with Wray, Armstrong wanted to exploit him. Here it's all fuzzy. Also Kong was kind of mean, beating up humans on Skull Island and terrifying creatures... here the poor old Gwangi is minding his own business when lassoed, and he doesn't deserve to be captured, he doesn't fall in love with anyone and is killed after understandably going on a rampage.

For some reason the scenes of horses travelling with loud clip-clop dubbed sounds really got on my nerves. It was as if "oh we've got to get these horse sounds right" and they ignored the script.

I'm not sure cowboys plus dinosaurs work but this definitely doesn't.

Movie review - "Earth vs the Flying Saucers" (1956) **

Not a fan despite the involvement of Ray Harryhausen, Charles Schneer, and Sam Katzman. Too many 50s American military men and flying saucers and men standing around being 50s.

There's too much Hugh Marlowe, who I've never liked - smug, dull. For a moment it looked like his brain was taken over by aliens and I was hopeful but alas no he was being heroic. There's unpleasant romantic scenes which seem to feature in too many 50s sci fi. Joan Taylor is a regulation brunette, Donald Curtis returns from It Came from Beneath the Sea, there's lots of narration and scenes of people fleeing.

The effects are decent enough - it was Harryhausen.I liked monuments being blown up. But for me this lacked magic.  It started off promisingly but just got annoying. Maybe it was just the Marlowe factor.

Movie review - "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963) ****

The leads are not memorable - I'm not surprised that Todd Armstrong failed to have much of a career - and it lacks star power. But it's easy to see why this would have gripped imaginations of its youthful audience so. It has a smart script - literate, not playing down to its audience, full of Classical references. The characters of the Gods are entertaining complex and human, and while Jason is dull a few other humans are allowed to shine eg Nigel Green's Hercules.

Some fantastic moments like the boat going through the cliffs and the final battle with skeleton soldiers. It's got an impressively heavy tone too - all these kids are wiped out at the beginning.

Movie review - "First Men in the Moon" (1964) ***1/2 (re-viewing)

I liked this even more the second time I watched it - period pieces have charm and I think make the "dynamtion" of Ray Harryhausen more believable.  Lionel Jeffries is fun as the professor running his own space program in 1899 - the two who go up there with him are Edward Judd and Martha Hyer, both fine.

They needed another character or two though because when they get to the moon the creatures they meet don't really have a personality - they are creepy, and it's great, and there's wonderful atmosphere. The film needed a subplot - a traitor on board, or people going mad in space, or something. Or to give more to Martha Hyer who is a competent game actor but she has to spend most of her time whingeing about Judd not wanting to marry her.

But the colour is lovely, the opening sequence is a delight, is has a feel of Victoriana and adventure, the moon is mysterious and strange, Harryhausen's effects are charming. I just really liked it.

Movie review - "It Came from Beneath the Sea" (1955) **1/2

Early collaboration of Ray Harryhausen and producer Charles Schneer. It's not as good as their later works being a bit too 50s Eisenhower Era military for me. There's too much romance between Kenneth Tobey and Faith Domergue - I don't mind romance but this one is unpleasant because Tobey is this lecherous fool who is always putting Domergue down and groping her and making sexist cracks. And he's not even good looking.

Domergue isn't bad - beautiful, smart and spirited - she deserves better than Tobey. She'd be better off with fellow scientist Donald Curtis who swam out to kill the octopus.

Oh, that's right - the story is about an octopus going on a rampage after busting out of the ocean, and winding up wrapping around the Golden Gate bright. It plods along in the first section, then takes off in the second half.

There's some decent-for-the-time Ray Harryhausen effects but something about the atmosphere of this put me off. No doubt it would be different if I'd seen it as a child.

Movie review - "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" (1973) ***

Seventies fantasy films that aren't sci fi don't have the high reputation of say the 50s and 60s ones but this is grand fun - family entertainment in the best sense. Jon Phillip Law isn't terribly charismatic as Sinbad - he could do a bland-off with Kerwin Matthews. He ads a beard and an accent but it doesn't help.

However Caroline Munro is fun as the slave girl with a shapely figure and perennial pout and Tom Baker was born to play the villain in this sort of movie (presumably he liked the fact so many of his scenes were shot in one room, conjuring spells and sending evil things off to do his bidding... but he does join in the action at the end.) Martin Shaw is Sinbad's BFF.

I wish Munro had been given more to do - after an introduction which seems to promise she'll be prominent, she drops out of the action - and less screen time had been devoted to Takis Emmanuel who is meant to be wacky cowardly comic relief but doesn't quite pull it off, at least not to me.

Strong production value, fun effects and like most of these Harryhausen movies they cleverly stack the action at the end so the last third is almost pure action. Memorable stuff too including a fight with multi-armed Kali.

Movie review - "Clash of the Titans' (1981) ****

I know I'm biased because I loved this as a kid but for me this has such magic about it. It helps that producer Schneer got top British actors to play the Greek Gods, as well as Burgess Meredith in the Obi Wan role. Harry Hamlin and Judi Bowker are engaging leads - he's handsome and polished and should have done more of this stuff. Bowker is pretty; she doesn't get too much to do except stare either vacantly or wistfully but she has a look perfect for the part.

There's a surprisingly amount of nudity - Perseus' mother breast feeds him and walks nude along the beach. Judy Bowker's bare bum coming out of the bath.

The momentum suffers in the middle when Hamlin and Bowker get engaged, but it recovers for a tremendous second half which has some amazing action sequences - particularly the raid on Medusa's lair. Then this it followed by more exciting battles including taking on Calibos and scorpions and a race against time to stop a sacrifice.

There's so much good stuff - the mechanical owl (much whinged about but I liked), the depth of characterisations (the villains - Maggie Smith and Calibos - have complex, three dimensional motivations), the all too human Gods, a magical sword and helmet, "release the Kracken" (I did think about people taking a shit when this was mentioned), giant vultures,the three witches,  Medusa's two headed dogs, the Kraken (actually he's a little too much like Godzilla).

It's a very strong script with a marvellous sense of adventure. No wonder people love Harryhausen seeing this again took me back to childhood.

Movie review - "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" (1958) *** (re-watching)

It's not hard to see how this captured the hearts and minds of baby boomers who saw it as children - I think if you didn't see it then you'll be less impressed but it has plenty of charm, gorgeous colour and the Harryhausen effects are great fun.

Kerwin Matthews is a little bland as the hero but he's fine. Kathryn Grant is a cutey as his love interest - she gets to be more involved, going along on the trip, although it's because she's shrunk. Torin Thatcher is a glowering magician - he's not very nice!

The film starts off like a sequel - Sinbad is with his love, he's engaged, he's respected. Then he gets sidetracked with monsters. The film doesn't really get going for me until Grant is shrunk and the stakes shoot up.  The stuff hanging around the palace was dull but once the expedition started this was solid.

It has a serious, adult tone at times - several of Sinbad's men are killed, they mutiny, people are roasted on a spit, you're constantly expecting Thatcher to betray Sinbad, the men kill a bird by roasting it and are killed by the bird's mother.

There's always something happening - Cyclops, a sword fight with a skeleton, a boy genie, an egg with a creature inside, fights between creatures, caverns, dragons, magic lamps, huge crossbows. It's a lot of fun.

Movie review- "Jack the Giant Killer" (1961) **1/2

Edward Small saw the grosses for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and thought "I'll have me some of that" so he hired that movie's star, head villain and director. He didn't hire Ray Harryhausen so the effects aren't as good but this is a sweet, fun movie, impossible to dislike if you've got a soft spot for this sort of film.

Kerwin Mathews is handsome and a bit bland but not bad as the hero; Judi Meredith has spunk and life as the heroine. Torin Thatcher plays the villain to the manor born and Anna Lee is great fun as a witch.

There's some repetition - Meredith is captured twice in the first half hour and some of the effects are wonky; but it hits a lot of the beats you want - there's a leprechaun who's a genie, and escapes and sword fighting and possession, and a surprisingly shocking moment where a boy's father is killed in front of the boy's eyes.

Cheerful and bright. Nathan Juran directed and co-wrote.

Movie review - "Mysterious Island" (1961) **1/2

Part of the late 50s-early 60s Jules Verne craze, this time with help from Ray Harryhausen and several Brits pretending to be Americans. Michael Craig is the lead - he's butched himself up with some three day growth but still can't quite carry a film as star; Michael Callan is the handsome juvenile in the Pat Boone/Fabian mode, and Gary Merrill, Percy Herbert and Joan Greenwood add some support; there is also a starlet called Beth Rogan who I got confused with Janet Munro and who looks fetching in a fur bikini. (For variety the guys walk around in tight shorts).

There is some nice colour photography and decent enough Ray Harryhausen effects but this movie seemed to lack flair and energy. Maybe its the fact Captain Nemo's appearance is held off so long - until then it's just a bunch of people arriving on an island, then another bunch of people (two overly convenient women) arriving, then a few encounters, then Nemo. There are some wacky creatures and a large comic geese and castaway antics - surely the filmmakers had seen Disney's Swiss Family Robinson. I had trouble telling the characters apart and never felt that excited or thrilled. Kids may like it though.

Movie review - "The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad" (1957) ***

Good fun Ray Harryhausen adventure which plunges straight into it and has no nonsense about it (i.e. its not tongue in cheek). Kathryn Grant and Kerwin Matthews are a bit 50s juvenile but they suit the film and there is fine support from Torin Thatcher. A bright sense of adventure,plenty of colour.

Movie review – “The First Men in the Moon” (1964) **1/2

Films which imagined the moon landing before it happened seem to have become a bit obscure, eg Countdown, this one. It starts with a UN mission landing on the moon – where they discover to their surprise a Union Jack. It turns out a trio of Britons made the journey in 1899. 

It is a bright idea and in the film is hard to dislike, with its Victorian era setting and Ray Harryhausen special effects, not to mention fact that it is a medium budget 60s English sci fi film with an American lead female actor (what can I say? I like the genre).

Lionel Jeffries’ mad scientist character is a little over the top at times, and I didn’t quite warm to Edward Judd’s hero – a bit of a thug, which is true to Wells’ original intentions but doesn’t really make him sympathetic.. I kind of wish they’d had a different ending, which didn’t imply the humans wiped out the aliens with their cold. The script seemed to need a sub plot when they arrive on the moon – another character, a love triangle, or something. It sort of goes interesting-encounter-then-another-interesting-encounter-then-another-interesting-encounter. The special effects are charming. 

Peter Finch has a cameo as the bailiff – I didn’t recognize him first time I saw the film.