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. 

Rod Taylor at debut of The Man Who had Power over Women

 

Movie review - "The Man Who Had Power Over Women" (1970) **

 An attempt by Rod Taylor to make something different, a mid life crisis story about a man whose wife won't put out but the wife (Carol White) of his best friend will. Phew. Not a good movie at any stage. I did like the stuff between Rod and his dad. Absurd ending with person being killed by toilets. Carol White, who needed special handling, doesn't work. Rod over-acts.

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, Tamblyn 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.

Book review - "Print the Legend: The Life and Times John Ford" by Scott Eyman

 Eyman can be counted on to do a good biography and he does very well by Ford - solid research, entertainingly written. Maybe a little easy on Ford's racism. And also doesn't cover the possibility of his homosexuality - it refers to crushes and possible affairs with women (Katherine Hepburn)... although these seem asexual. His torment, drinking, preference for male company, consistent use of Jeffrey Hunter (who is barely mentioned in the book).

I'm being salacious. The rest is well done. Ford wasn't always admirable but also was a genius. The most moving section is the end, with Ford longing to direct but also scared he'll be able to (there were some options), being feted, estranged from his son, with an alcoholic useless daughter.

Movie review - "The Virgin Queen" (1955) **

 Bette Davis returns to the part of Elizabeth I, this one focusing on her relationship with another handsome young lout, here Sir Walter Raleigh played by Richard Todd.

There's bright colours and set design and it all looks splendid in CinemaScope - I assume that's a big reason why Fox greenlit this project.

Dramatically it's not very interesting. The Private Life of Elizabeth and Essex was stronger because it concerned a great love, built up to Essex leading a rebellion against Elizabeth and being executed..

This has less focus. It's about Walter Raleigh trying to persuade Elizabeth to finance ships and he marries Joan Collins which annoys Davis but not that much and she lets them go. The "baddies", Robert Douglas and Jay Robinson, are bad because they don't like Todd because... it's never really spelt out. I didn't care about Raleigh and Elizabeth because he was just after her cash and she was just a little egotistical but basically decent. There's no stakes.

They should've done the Mary Queen of Scots story with Davis as Elizabeth. That would've been more worthwhile. The one effective moment is when Elizabeth reveals herself to be bald. I guess when Dan O'Herlihy died.

Rod Taylor appears as a Welsh soldier delivering a message from the palace while Dan O'Herlihy is there - he passes on gossip that Collins is pregnant.

It was so hard to care. Todd and Collins were so selfish.

Movie review - "Raintree County" (1957) ** (re-watching)

 A flawed film. A bigger hit in its day than is remembered but it cost so much it lost money. It didn't have to cost a lot - it all could've been shot on the backlot (there was location filming in the US but the scenery isn't exploited). It didn't have to be as poor as it is.

Some good things. Gorgeous photography. Strong cast. And a decent story.

The story is actually simple - Montgomery Clift is an idealistic Northern teacher who falls in love with a Southern girl who goes mad during the Civil War. That's solid. You've got love, insanity, a war.

But the film stuffs it. It's got too much bloat - the version I saw ran at 2 hours 40 minutes and there's a three hour one. The story could've been dealt with in 90 minutes. It actually didn't need battle spectacle sequences. Clift ducks out from his war service to find Taylor and finds his son - that's all cheap.

Too many scenes are talked about rather than dramatised - all the exciting stuff about Taylor's father's relationship with the slave and dying in a fire. (This film might've been better if it had been from Taylor's point of view.)

Clift's character is vague and passive. He gets trapped into marriage by Taylor who fakes a pregnancy. Why doesn't he just love her? Want her? Dump Eva Marie Saint for her? Clift and Taylor's relationship have none of the passion that they showed in A Place in the Sun. Maybe it was Clift's accident. Maybe the actors weren't into it. Maybe it was the director. (It's not very well directed - Edward D lost something when he got out of B pictures.)

Clift's performance is... fine. Not bad. Not great. The accident is distracting - some scenes he seems truthful, others bashed up and tormented. His character doesn't have a drive. He just sort of drifts along. What's his passion? Teaching? Taylor? He doesn't seem to be in to anything. Clift in A Place in the Sun was into Taylor - why didn't they just make it that? A grand passion?

Taylor is beautiful and has her moments but for me she struggled with her voice and the accent and the role. She could deliver the goods but she needed more help.

Rod Taylor's opportunistic townsfriend of Clift has his moments. Nigel Patrick has a flashy character, the sleazy articulate "professor" but Patrick isn't that great. Lee Marvin shines as Clift's friend. He has easily the best scene - defending Clift and Clift's son who are escaping, being taunted by a Confederate soldier who calls out in the dark. I wonder if this came from the novel (which I haven't read) or screenwriter Millard Kaufman, a former marine. 

Eva Marie Saint has a terrible role - she just sits and stares at Clift. Compare it to say Melanie/Olivia de Havilland in Gone with the Wind - she did stuff, had a baby, stuck up for Scarlett. Saint here just hangs around; I guess she scolds Clift towards the end for not wanting to run for office.

The film's also racist. Clift's an abolitionist and Taylor is terrified of being black but there's hardly any black people in it. A few hang around. Only one gets some dialogue.

Simply not very good. A good movie inside, trying to get out.

Interview with Millard Kaufman I did on 3 December 2003 about Raintree County

I did it about Raintree County - we did it via phone. I put it up here just out of interest.

How Kaufman Got Involved

“I was under contract to MGM, they had this thing, this book called Raintree County and it had won a prize which Metro offered for fiction. I was a rare thing I don’t think they’d offered it to anyone before or after... Metro had this novel which ran over 1000 pages… once they got it they didn’t know what to do with it. They gave it to a couple of people who didn’t know what to do with it.”

How come you succeed it? 

“I’m a pain in the ass… I don’t know.”

“I was very taken with it [the novel]… It was very complicated in terms of literary form. It was complex and turned on itself in a number of ways which at that time which was unusual… Followed almost the construct of James Joyce.”

“It’s a very good book.” 

On  Ross Lockridge

"He was an English instructor at the Uni of Indiana, where those two people did v important sexuality in the US, Kinsey and woman he worked with. Kinsey seemed to be very fond of Ross Lockridge. Lockridge was a little strange. He’d spent 19 years writing this book. This is book that won the prize. Kinsey told him that now that he had some money he strongly suggested he try psychoanalysis. Lockridge who was unhappy person along with other difficulties approached his wife about what Kinsey said. She said ‘absolutely not too much of a disgrace for the family’. At that time there was something ungainly about psychoanalysis… Everyone a little goofy. He never did enter analysis. Not long after that killed himself."

What Kaufman thought of the film

“The main problem with picture was I kept too much.  I went on various tangents which should have been left out. I did this not because I lacked craft of screenwriter but I included too much of the novel.   I went on too many tangents. The screenplay was over 200 pages.”

On director Edward Dmytryk. 

“This apparently, and I’m not sure of this, was something discussed heads various studios…  Dmytryk one of Hollywood ten. Did six months in gaol, when got out of gaol he rather peculiarly turned on people he went to gaol with and named names. He became an informer. Because of that it was said he was rewarded to direct this picture, biggest picture at that time MGM had ever made.”

“Eddie was an enormously bright guy who wanted to be a mathematician and you know how many mathematicians are successful in this world so he became a cutter then a director… By the time he became an informer, some people would say he ratted on the people who were his friends… I didn’t feel that way. I was then and am now rather far to the left. I was rather contemptuous of people who had informed. That’s how he got that job. He was rewarded  for coming back into the fold…"

"Professionally he was fair, which is very good. He shot the script as it was.  Most of these crazy bastards won’t to that. Unfortunately it would have been better if he hadn’t.”

On Dore Schary

"The idea of making another Gone with the Wind might have been somewhere but only briefly and haphazardly in Dore Schary’s mind.. He thought Gone with the Wind was the best movie ever made… He never saw foreign pictures which I think where the best anywhere at the time.”, like Grand Illusion. " 

“Dore was a wonderful guy. Thoughtful, understanding of writers having been a writer himself, he had a great sense of humour which was rare – unique – amongst heads of studios. He was able to relax at all times.. He was younger than others heads… He had one problem – he was inordinately ambitious. I believe he was a bit preoccupied with his own fame. I think he wanted to increase it. There was a period where he thought he might be a diplomat, the US ambassador to Israel. That was when Adlai Stevenson running for President; he and Dore were great friends. Stevenson promised Dore the ambassadorship if he won. He took this very seriously, even to the point of learning Hebrew. In the Middle East he made a speech to the [didn't get name] in Hebrew. I said to him, ‘This is a pipedream, Eisenhower is going to kick the hell out of Stevenson. I’m not normally a political guru or anything but in this case I was right. Eisenhower was re-elected. Dore remained at MGM for a while, then he was kicked out.”

Dore was not not very involved with Raintree… He was very good with writers… He left them entirely alone. I think because of his experience and his breadth it would have been a better picture if he imposed more than he did.”

On David Lewis

“The producer of his picture didn’t know his ass… He was a guy who’d formerly been a producer and had met Dore’s sister on Elizabeth II coming back from Europe and they became friends. She’d been divorced and was on her own as an agent. She took him under her wing in a rather astonishing way.. I think she foisted him on Dore. He was a very nice rather inept man.”

The production

“I was the force behind the goddam picture and I think I screwed it up. If it was a bad picture the fault wasn’t Eddies, it wasn’t David Lewis and it sure wasn’t Dore. It was mine.”

“It was a big picture. It had a long shooting schedule. It was a costume picture with a large cast.”
 

“At that time it was the most expensive picture MGM had ever made. It cost $11 million. Today you can’t blow you nose for that.”

“The casting informal because of my relationship with Dore. We got along well, I liked him, he liked me. When you write a picture almost invariably characters come to mind. It’s different from a novel, all characters come from novelist’s heroic vision of himself… Film is active characters. Like Monty Clift, which he was. I suggested Clift and Elizabeth Taylor… I talked Eva Marie who’s a good friend of mine into it when she didn’t want to do it. She was going to be playing second fiddle to Elizabeth Taylor.” 

“When I suggested these people… Usually writers not in the position I was in MGM, because Dore thought of me very highly… I had the kind of power most writers never would have had in an American studio. Dore thought I was great.  It was because I’d been in the Marine Corp and been in combat. It had nothing to do with my ability to write. If they needed a combat picture I would write it.”

“Monty Clift accident was most unfortunate… The press all knew he goddam near had his head chopped off, and he was heavily criticised when he should have been applauded for his courage going through with the damn thing. He was a very nice young man, a very decent person.”

“The cast was exceptional. Everyone in it was so decent… Nigel Patrick was great, a wonderful guy - as they say in the New Yorker - as a human being.”

“Elizabeth Taylor - she was great. People constantly underestimated her because she was beautiful… Quickest study I ever knew. She’d come on set two minutes before hand, ask a director what are we doing today, and memorise scenes in two minutes… She was wonderful.”

Clift’s accident. “We shot around him as much as we could, then maybe shut down for a few days…"

 On Lee Marvin 

“Lee and I go back to the Marine corp… his death scene and all the exuberant alive scenes… He swings around the post in the middle of the room. We had a stunt man to do that, he couldn’t do it, so Lee did it… He was a very bright man… The scene of the race he could run maybe ten times faster than Monty Clift and he did it in such a way you could swear both running at full stop.. He was a very good athlete. He got shot up in the Marine Corp.”
 

“I had contract MGM as a writer-director-producer. Of jobs I hated producer, I hired a friend of mine, he could hardly read a script. I found out getting on stage every morning and telling a group of people how to behave… I hated directing.”

What would you do differently? 

“I would have concentrated much more on the relationship between Monty and Elizabeth. I brought in I think too many extraneous relationships”

Thoughts on the American South. 

“It’s been mythologised, not history it’s a sacred text. They’re still refighting that war. What you had and still have with this business of the Confederate flag it’s an insult to black people… They were still fighting that war when we made Raintree County. It was one of few pictures dealing with Civil War which had a hero fighting with Federalists, the north… When word got out we were doing this picture they raised hell. Thought it was placing an unseeming burden on the South. They didn’t want to be involved in situation where they had a film which thought freeing slaves was a good idea… There was something which I didn’t manage to keep in the script… I had Clift going off to fight for the Federalist forces. I had Clift shooting his mouth off in anti-slavery way. People in South didn’t like idea. Dore then had the idea the reason Clift goes into the army was because his wife, Elizabeth, who was a nut had disappeared into the south where she came from, so he has to go looking for her, which was ridiculous. There was nothing I could do. It was a question of finance. They didn’t want to lose the Southern markets. And in movies, greed wins.”

Casting of Rod Taylor

"He did a rather smart thing, a truly Hollywood sense of interaction. He read the script – I don’t know where he got it, he didn’t get it from me, it was around the studio…  He went to Dore Shcary and said he’d like to play that part, Dore gave it to him. He actually got it himself.”

“I do remember he and I being on location together and spending some time together… I knew he was an Australian and that he had a good sense of humour. He was outgoing, and had a lot of energy, which is always good in an actor.”

“I had heard stories, the fact he’d had some difficulty in Australia something to do with his wife… He was very much still apparently taken by her or so I remember.”

“His character was the antithesis of Clift’s character – aggressive, outgoing he made bad jokes, he was terribly politically ambitious. This made a terribly good character when put against Clift’s character who was sensitive, decent, almost plodding. He was almost a complete characterisation with his job, he was a school teacher… Can’t remember what Rod’s job was but he went into politics…  [His character] He was hardly a villain. He wasn’t vicious or brutal or any of that. He was an antagonist but not a stereotypical American villain.”
 

Was Rod nervous? 

“Not in the least or at least he didn’t show it… He had a great gift of brass. He knew what he wanted and he got it. Became a hell of a movie actor… It was the only picture I had anything to do he was in…”

“I liked him very much. On location we had dinner with him.” 

“The only time [Dore] talked about him [Rod] was to tell me how he got the part… He walked in and got it. Dore was susceptible to that sort of thing - I guess you call it filmic romance. The stand-in goes on for the star who breaks her leg, that sort of thing.”

Movie review - "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" (1959) ** (warning: spoilers)

The sh*tness of this version really gets to me. Why did it have to be so bad? I mean, I guess they tried. But it's bad.

The play was very effective. Simple. Didn't have to cost a lot. Nothing wrong with setting it in Sydney. I get they wanted things like the Harbour and Luna Park.

But they stuffed the structure. They don't set up Bubba and the boys, there's a weird middle section where Roo has a fight with the wrestler and Dowd is all forgiving. And the ending is shocking - Roo makes up with Barney and then Roo and Olive seem to reconcile. The piece loses all its power.

The acting is bad. Burt Lancaster and Rita Hayworth would've been great... if they didn't want to do it then surely it could have been reworked for Peter Finch who did The Shiralee with Leslie Norman. He was a good enough actor to act older.

Ernest Borgnine and John Mills can act but they just feel wrong - they never seem like mates. Anne Baxter and Angela Lansbury are also fine actors but they struggle with their accents. They seem so uncomfortable. Vincent Ball and Janette Craig aren't very good as the young ones - they're fine, but I wished at least Rod Taylor (who had done a movie for HHL) had the role.

"The Americans" copped the blame for this but I think it was more the British.

Book review - McGee #7 - "Darker than Amber" by John D. MacDonald (1966)

One of the best known McGee novels because it was turned into a film with Rod Taylor. I can see why they went with this one - it's exciting and moody for the most part, and has a great beginning with Vangie being thrown off a bridge into the water, and strong emotional currents with McGee kind of falling for her... then she dies. He goes looking for revenge.

His plan is very complicated for what is basically messing with someone's head. The second big female role is the other girl who helped Vangie, who is a bit of a shallow bitch in MacDonald's world and not worth saving - she suggests having sex with him of course as does Vangie. and the girl he talks about at the beginning, who was getting over a bad relationship - McGee really likes to take advantage of vulnerable women (he refers to another woman he took advantage of, one he was holed up in a hotel room with while fleeing her ex). The girl who doubles for Vangie is more enigmatic - from memory she had a bigger part in the movie.
 
There is some good writing here - description of a fight scene, an exciting confrontation with a killer called Griff, the death of Vangie.  MacDonald probably should have had a living client who was being fleeced to complicate things.

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

Five Rod Taylor Connections to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (there are no spoilers in this)

1) The relationship between actor Rick Dalton (Leo di Caprio) and his stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) has parallels to Rod’s super close relationship with stuntman Fred Hakim. Rod met Hakim when the latter was a grip on the set of Do Not Disturb. The two hit it off and Hakim spent the next decade as Rod’s general assistant/stuntman/stand in/driver/whatever… like Cliff was for Rick. Rod was single at the time and Fred and his wife Dolores moved in with the actor for a period. Hakim was credited as an assistant on three productions where Rod was producer: Chuka, Bearcats and Partisan. Hakim died in a car crash in Yugoslavia during the making of Partisan. Taylor subsequently employed stuntman Terry Wilson as an assistant - Terry accompanied Rod to Australia to make The Picture Show Man - but, like Rick, needed him less once he got married, in Rod’s case to Carol Kikumura in 1980.
2) A clip from Partisan aka Hell River is briefly in OUATIH, as part of talking about Rick Dalton’s films. The film was made after 1969 but is passed off as a pre 1969 movie. I recognise how nerdy it is of me to recognise that.
3) The 14 Fists of McCluskey is a fictional World War II/action-adventure film in the OUATIH universe starring Van Johnson, Rod Taylor, Sal Mineo and Rick Dalton
4) Rod Taylor was actually a bigger star than Rick Dalton through the sixties, even though Rod’s TV series (Hong Kong) only lasted one season while Rick’s (Bounty Law) lasted four. This was mainly due to two reasons: Rod was cast in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, and had a strong relationship with major studios, notably MGM and Fox, who cast him in A-grade films through the sixties. However by the early seventies, Rod was making films in Europe, like Rick.
5) A story told me by the late Bill Kerr… He was discussing the Sharon Tate murders with Dudley Moore who mentioned his then wife Suzy Kendall was in town that night. Kendall was making Darker Than Amber with Rod Taylor. Kerr asked Moore was ever worried if his wife was in danger that night. Moore said no as “she was f*cking Rod Taylor”. I have no proof whatsoever this was true.

Unsung Aussie Filmmakers - Grant Taylor: A Top Ten

Grant Taylor (1917-71) should have been the biggest Australian film star in the world. He had it all: looks, talent, charisma, a relaxed masculinity, sex appeal, likeability and a star part in a big fat hit. But while he had a long, distinguished career he never quite made it as a star. Stephen Vagg looks at his career.

1) Dad Rudd MP (1939)

Taylor was a Pom whose family emigrated to Australia when he was young. He drifted around for a bit, working in the merchant career and having a decent career as a boxer, before deciding to try his hand at acting in the late 1930s.

Australia had a small, yet decent industry at the time - but it had a chronic short of male juveniles i.e. handsome lunks who could play the romantic male lead. If they were any good they tended to go overseas (Errol Flynn, Frank Leighton) or they were from overseas and just here on a brief holiday (Billy Rayes, John Longden) or they disappeared mysteriously at sea (Brian Abbott, who no kidding disappeared at sea sailing from Lord Howe Island to Sydney).

So Grant Taylor's complete lack of experience didn't bother Ken G Hall looking for someone to play the juvenile in Dad Rudd MP, the fourth in his Dad and Dave franchise. Taylor had looks, swagger and charm, albeit a hairline that was already receding. He was a man. His performance was well received and he was launched as an actor.

Clip from the film is here - https://aso.gov.au/titles/features/dad-rudd-mp/clip2/

2) Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940)

Taylor was promoted to lead for his second film, Charles Chauvel's look at the 1917 Battle of Beersheba by the Australian Light Horse. It was a great role - Red Gallagher got to brawl Poms, sing in a nightclub, romance a French girl in a towel, get captured by Germans, ride horses and save the day. Because it was an Australian not Hollywood film his character even got to have sex before being married.

The film - joyous, exciting, enthusiastically Australianising Hollywood tropes - was a huge success locally and overseas. It also launched the career of Taylor's co star, Chips Rafferty, but Rafferty was very much a sidekick - the film was Taylor's. There had been other notable leading men in Australian films - Snowy Baker, Errol Flynn - but it was really Taylor who was the first tough Aussie star type, that would be so exemplified by Rod Taylor, Jack Thompson, Mel Gibson and Bryan Brown.

It has been said a Hollywood career beckoned for Taylor - though I've never read of any hard offers. But World War Two intervened. Taylor joined the militia and his career never regained this momentum.

A talky clip from the film is here - https://aso.gov.au/titles/features/forty-thousand-horsemen/clip2/. Some of the best bit, the charge at the end, can be seen here - https://aso.gov.au/titles/features/forty-thousand-horsemen/clip3/.

3) 100,000 Cobbers (1943)

Like most actors in the armed services, Taylor was allowed time out to appear in propaganda shorts. Easily the best one was 100, 000 Cobbers, directed by Ken G Hall, a look at civilians joining the army, which is so slickly made that one wishes it could have been a full length feature. Taylor gets to do scenes with the leading female juvenile of the time, Shirley Ann Richards, and they make a fantastic team. Richards soon afterwards went to Hollywood and had an okay career in American films as "Ann Richards", a sort of back up Greer Garson for MGM. Taylor stayed behind.

A complete copy of the film is here. https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/F01301/

4) The Rats of Tobruk (1944)

Chauvel arranged for Taylor to be released from the army to star in this unofficial follow up to Horsemen, with Rafferty returning as a best friend and Peter Finch thrown in for good measure. I'm not quite sure what Taylor did during his war service but it was having its impact already by the time of this film - Taylor looks puffier, more balder, less enthusiastic. He's still pretty good, just not as good as in Horseman - like the film itself really, which was a commercial disappointment.

The US trailer is here https://archive.org/details/TheRatsOfTobruk-UsTrailer

5) Eureka Stockade (1948)

Taylor got out of the army in 1946 but struggled to recover his career momentum. Admittedly there weren't many films being made around this time but there were some such as Smithy (1946), a biopic of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, for which Taylor would have been an ideal leading role candidate..., but the only serious contenders appear to have been Peter Finch and Ron Randell (who got the gig).

There was also Chauvel's Sons of Matthew (1949), where the lead role again would have been perfect for Taylor (he was attached to the project in 1945 when it was known as Green Mountain), but it went to Michael Pate.

The McCreadie brothers made two melodramas, giving the lead roles in both to Charles Tingwell. Ealing Studios made The Overlanders (1946) but gave the lead role to Chips Rafferty, and the male juvenile part to Peter Pagan. Then they did Eureka Stockade (1949);  Taylor would have been perfect for Peter Lalor but director Harry Watt wanted Peter Finch and was forced to use Rafferty; Taylor has a support role.

What happened? Why did Taylor go from a leading man to support player in such a short period of time? Did he deteriorate physically too much? Look too old? (He was only around 30.) Difficult to deal with? Did he charge too much money? (That may have been a consideration for the very long film shoot of Sons of Matthew.)

Another reason may have been in the late 40s Taylor became in great demand as a stage actor. This meant he would have to go on tour with shows, which made being available for films more difficult.

Nonetheless it feels a great shame that such a charismatic star actor type did not play more leads. In hindight, he should have gone to England around now like Taylor's co star Peter Finch did. But he elected to stay.

6) Inland with Sturt (1951)

The Australian government held a festival to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Federation. Part of this involved a re-enactment of Charles Sturt's row down the Murrumbidgee and Murray Rivers. (Not very well remembered today, mostly because no one died heroically). This was done by a troop of Duntroon graduates and two actors fit enough for the job - Grant Taylor, who played Sturt, and Rod Taylor (no relation) as his off sider. The re-enactment was a huge success, greeted by thousands along the way, and was turned into a short film. Rod Taylor was a similar actor in many ways to Grant - tough, two fisted, "masculine" type, fond of a drink yet capable of sensitivity. It would be Rod Taylor who would have the far greater international career.

A newsreel clip of the trip can be seen here - https://commerce.veritone.com/search/asset/8866998

7) Captain Thunderbolt (1953)

Taylor did play one more lead in a feature film - a biopic of the famous bushranger, Captain Thunderbolt. An action adventure story with a vaguely left wing slant, it struggled to find distribution.

The trailer is herre - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkdFUO7lTfc. Taylor looks to be in good shape so it's a mystery people didn't think of him more for lead roles around this time. Sure only one or two films were made, but there were some done for which Taylor would have been suited like Walk into Paradise (1956) and Dust in the Sun (1958).

8) Long John Silver (1954)

By the mid 50s Taylor mostly worked on stage and radio but he appeared in the occasional film.Hollywood director Byron Haskin hired him and some other Australian actors to play support roles in His Majesty O'Keefe (1953), a Burt Lancaster south seas adventure tale shot in Fiji. Haskin liked Taylor and cast him as a pirate in Long John Silver (1954) a film and TV series that was an unofficial sequel to Treasure Island. Robert Newton played the title role, and Taylor was his sidekick Patch. It was a good chance for Taylor and he's great fun. His son Kit played Jim Hawkins. Rod Taylor was in the film, playing Israel Hands - he used it as a spring board for a Hollywood career but Grant Taylor elected to stay at home.

The complete film is public domain and can be seen here - https://archive.org/details/LongJohnSilver1954. You can also see episodes of the show here - https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22Long+John+Silver%22&and[]=mediatype%3A%22movies%22.

9) Funnel Web (1962)

By the late 50s and early 60s Taylor was a big name in Australian theatre, notably for JC Williamsons. He would play the occasional support role in a film like Smiley Gets a Gun (1958), The Siege of Pinchgut (1959) and On the Beach (1959). By now he looked tubby and overweight - the years had not been kind to his looks. He experienced personal tragedy in 1956 when his wife died after a fall. His acting had gotten richer and deeper though, as demonstrated by the reviews for his appearances in some of the (rare) live TV dramas that aired on Australia in the early 1960s. The most notable of these was Funnel Web, a Dial M for Murder type take where Taylor played a murderous businessman. It s frustratingly hard to get copies of these - why can't they just be put on line?

A review of the play is here - https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1301&dat=19620426&id=EX5WAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9uUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5526,6215957

10) Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Eventually Taylor, like pretty much every Australian actor from the 40s to 60s, decided to give it a crack overseas, and he headed to England in 1964. He had some decent roles on TV - including a production of Summer of the Seventeenth Doll and a part in Gerry Anderson's UFO.

His last feature film performance was as a policeman in the super smart Hammer sci-fi horror classic, Quatermass and the Pit (1967), looking chubby and unwell, as if he was about to have a heart attack.

A Trailers from Hell on the film is here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jEO5oHg1sM.

Taylor died of cancer in 1971, aged only 54, looking older than his years. Ironically that year saw Jack Thompson reach TV screens in Spyforce playing a character very much in the Grant Taylor mode - swaggering, cocky, humorous, tough, brave. Thompson would go on to be Australia's leading star of the 70s until, ironically also like Taylor, he prematurely shifted into character roles, in part because he put on weight. Someone like Peter Finch or Bryan Brown, who kept the weight off, remained a leading man for much longer.

It was tough for Australian actors to make it in movies in the 40s, 50s and 60s, but many of Taylor's contemporaries did it - Ron Randell, Chips Rafferty, Peter Finch, Charles Tingwell, Rod Taylor. Was it a lack of ambition? Something else?

Nonetheless  he left behind one great star performance, and for that Australian film fans should be grateful.

Movie review - "Dark of the Sun" (1968) ****1/2

Have seen this film a bunch of times but it was a pleasure to view it again. Some thoughts:
* How stunning does it look? The photography, the location work in Jamaica, the sets...
* It has an intense atmosphere. Even the "settled" city at the beginning is a war zone, with cars overturned and armed soldiers everywhere. Every corner has danger. A night or two alone and you risk desk.
* I think the fact director Jack Cardiff was British helped him have more a feel for Africa - he gets the rough nuances of say Belgian administration in the way that an American director mightn't. It's a very colonial view though - the local Africans are very savage. (There are two nice black characters, Jim Brown and Bloke Modisane)
* The script is first rate. For the most part. It sets up brilliantly and efficiently - the lead characters, the mission, the ticking clock. The characters are distinctive and richly drawn. There are good twists, like the safe having a time, and the train rolling back to the Simbas.
* There are some script flaws. The girl part (Yvette Mimieux) is nothing. She starts of memorably, running from a massacre, but then just sort of hangs around. She's not even kidnapped at the end. I think she's mostly in the film to prove Taylor is straight even though the crux of the film is his love for Brown.
* The Bloke Modisane character becomes all important at the end but isn't in it much at the start. His part could've been beefed up more - or had his stuff given to the Olivier Despax character.
* The theme is muddled. The big fight between Taylor and Brown feels confusing. Like, Taylor is cynical and Brown scolds him for not thinking that Kenneth More was brave for dying, but Brown trusts Taylor with the diamonds and... um...? I get what they were going for - Brown's concern that Taylor stood for nothing - but it feels as though these scenes had been "worked" on and didn't quite fit in with the whole.
* It's a bleak film. They're going the mission for a black guy, admittedly, but Calvin Lockhart seems pretty ruthless. Two kids talk to the mercenaries then are shot by Peter Carsten. The nicest character, Jim Brown, is stabbed in the back. Nuns are raped. Kenneth More stays to help a mother give birth and they're all killed - so it was for nothing. Taylor kills Carsten, on entirely reasonable grounds (the guy deserves to die) but then he turns himself in. (It's a different ending - I always assume he'll change his mind).
* The acting is very good. Kenneth More, Brown, Taylor - it's perhaps Taylor's best performance.
* The action is great. There's two Taylor-Carsten fights - one with chain saws one on rivers which ends with Taylor breaking Carten's arms and stabbing him. The Simba attack is exciting, as is the final raid. It's one of the great sixties action films.

Movie review - "King of the Coral Sea" (1954) ***

One of the rare Australian films of the 1950s this holds up pretty well, helped considerably by some stunning location filming at Thursday Island - even now, an under-filmed part of Australia.

The plot is perfectly serviceable - a dead body is plucked out of the ocean by pearler Chips Rafferty, who goes on to investigate a people smuggling racket. Really, Rafferty should have had more of a connection to the dead man -he could've been someone that Rafferty knew, or had fired. Or he should have been suspected of the man's death - so he had a stake in the investigation. As it is, the local authorities ask him to help out and he does... which didn't feel right. I mean, Rafferty does have a business to run.

There's lots of good ideas which aren't developed. Charles Tingwell is the playboy owner of the company run by Rafferty - that's good conflict, as is Rafferty's underling Rod Taylor (playing an American) instinctively not liking him, and giving Rafferty a good looking daughter (Ilma Adey). You're set to watch a love triangle between Adey, Taylor and Tingwell but it never happens. You're also set to watch Taylor turn out to be a baddy but that doesn't happen either.

In actual fact, Taylor is wasted in the film - you could cut him out and nothing would change. Indeed the film would be better because Tingwell and Adey would have more to do. Nothing wrong with Rod Taylor's performance, he totally suits the world of the film - rugged, tough, drinking beer and punching out Lloyd Berrell. It's just his character is superfluous - they should have made him a baddy or at least a rival for Adey.

The cast is strong. Rafferty's role is ideal for him and Tingwell and Taylor are a handsome pair of louts, while Adey is gorgeous. Adey and Tingwell make a cute couple - frequently running around in their swimmers. Lloyd Berrell is excellent in support. Adey is inexperienced but is a relaxed presence.

The visuals are the main attraction - native dances, jettys, beautiful seas, luggers, turtles, swamps, pearls, old houses. The photography is beautiful. I loved old style Aussie things like the way Rafferty smoked a cigarette.

The scene where Rafferty is trapped underwater and rescued by Tingwell isn't that exciting - sequences under water often aren't.  But I did like Rafferty and Tingwell rescuing Adey and spearing baddies.

It has the racial sensitivity of the time - the baddies are foreign whites or half castes; there's a native girl who is meant to clean Tingwell's house who "always has her boyfriends around" (she has a crisis of conscience at church like a good noble savage).

Script review - "Giant" by Ivan Moffatt and Frank Guignol

This apparently was George W Bush's favourite film and many other Texans love it which bewildered Larry McMurtry who thought it showed them in an unflattering light. But I get why he'd love it - it's a film about family, and proud men struggling with changing times, and sons in the shadow of their father, and race.

The writers know how to focus the story - making it about Bick and Leslie the mismatched couple who fall in love and go to Texas, and their marriage over the years, as Leslie tries to soften Bick. These two are the heart and soul of the piece - and while Bick has the bigger journey Leslie is still a decent role. There are some showy support parts - the sister Link, Jett the surly ranch hand who becomes super rich, the trashy daughter and sensitive son. There's also a dull daughter but she doesn't matter.

The script is solid. Many scenes end with a visual flourish that were surely written with the input of George Stevens the director.

It's a very human story - about family, and changing times. Texans come across as idiots it's true - boorish, stupid, self centered - but you can see why so many of them relate to it.

You wonder why adapters of Edna Ferber novels which followed - Cimarron, Ice Palace - didn't follow this more closely.

My Top Ten Depictions of Australians in Hollywood films

1 - “Donovan’s Reef” (1963)

The last feature film teaming of John Wayne and John Ford which I’d always thought was a buddy film between Wayne and Lee Marvin is actually more a “Quiet Man”/“McClintock”/“Taming of the Shrew” Rom com between Wayne and the (surprisingly good but little known) Elizabeth Allan - which ends like many Wayne rom coms with him spanking her on his knee for comedy.

It’s set In French Polynesia and Aussies appear at the end - a visiting ship from the Australian navy turns up, resulting in the crew chasing the local women down the Main Street in a pack (not making that up) and a couple of lower ranks starting a brawl with Wayne and Marvin. They all have Irish accents - the playing is v typical of the sort of comic drunken sergeants played by Victor McLaglen who turned up in Ford movies (McLaglen was dead by this stage and Chips Rafferty off making Mutiny on the Bounty so Ford got Dick Foran to play the main Aussie) Wayne’s son Patrick turns up as an Australian officer. They all sing Waltzing Matilda and Wayne snr brings up the fact we were all on the same side during the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Well at least we were in it (at a time when v few films were made in Australia)

Nb Ford later agreed to the casting of Australian Rod Taylor as Irish playwright Sean O’Casey in Young Cassidy in part bc he figured as an Aussie Rod might be part Irish.

 2.. "Botany Bay" (1953)

Starring Alan Ladd as an American who , in the 18th century is unjustly convicted of a crime in England and sentenced to the brand new penal colony of Botany Bay... on a ship that just follows the first fleet. The director (John Farrow) was Australian and one or two bit players were as well as a few imported koalas but that's it. Some African Americans play indigenous Australians who pop up at the end to spear baddies ("they're like our Indians," says Ladd, "if we don't bother them they won't both us"). James Mason is a sadistic captain and Cedric Harwicke is Governor Phillip. Based on a novel by Nordhoff and Hall, who wrote the novel on which "Mutiny on the Bounty" was based - like that, this has sadistic captains and heroic sailors and a mutiny.

Judged by the standards of its day it's not that a great movie (the Farrow/Ladd sailing film "Two Years Before the Mast" is more interesting) but it remains the only First Fleet movie ever (I think) and it's got Dr Smith from Lost in Space in it!

3 - Captain Fury (1939).

Hal Roach, best known for comedies, occasionally made other films like this bushranger epic. Brian Aherne, a sort of poor man's Errol Flynn, the actor you'd cast when you couldn't get George Brent, Pat Knowles or Ian Hunter, plays the title role, an Irish convict sent to Australia who escapes to become a good bushranger who helps the local settlers fight against a villainous land owner (George Zucco). The Australian setting is not really emphasised, it's just the usual immigrant settlers and evil land baron that you'd see in the old West. The cast includes Victor McLaglen, John Carradine, Paul Lukas and Douglas Dumbrille, which is cool. It's awkwardly directed but interesting - bushranger films were absurdly banned in NSW for several decades so its interesting to see Hollywood's take.

Part 4  - Million Dollar Mermaid (1953) and Interrupted Melody (1955)

I grouped these together because they're both biopics of Aussies made at MGM within years at each other, both had opening scenes in Australia but drop the country pretty quick into the story after depicting it as a kind of version of England (to be fair, the films are set in MGM land rather than anywhere else), both ended up being among the best movies their stars ever made - Esther Williams plays Annette Kellerman in Mermaid, with Walter Pigeon as her dad and a cameo from a boxing kangaroo... In Melody, Eleanor Parker plays singer Marjorie Lawrence with Cecil Kellaway as her dad and Roger Moore as her brother (!).... Both are superior to other biopics of Aussies around this time made by foreigners -to wit, Sister Kenny (1946) and Melba (1952)

5- "The Man from Down Under" (1943)

To understand why this film was made, you need to know that Wallace Beery was once a film star: Beery was a beefy, big actor who specialised in playing lovable lunks who got up to comic antics with character actors and cute kids; often there was a woman who wanted to marry him. He had the vibe of James Gandolfini . Anyway for a long time his act was very popular and he was often ranked in the top ten box office stars in the US and MGM originally developed this story as a vehicle for Beery.

It's an original story but I'd love to know where the writers got their inspiration - I have a theory it might be the tale of Digger Tovell, a French orphan adopted by diggers during WW1 who was smuggled to Australia and grew up to be a young man (tragically dying in a car accident). If it wasn't that exactly it probably was a similar real life tale.

This is about Jocko Wilson, an Aussie digger who at the end of the war decides to smuggle to Belgian orphans back to Australia and raise them as his own. Then the film leaps forward twenty years or so and the kids are grown up - the girl is sent to finishing school, the boy is a boxer.

The subsequent plot goes all over the shop, in a manner reminiscent of more than a few MGM star vehicles with it's feel of a producer going "oh we should add this... and that... and I saw this movie last night and it was great and we should put that in as well." The boy/man, called Nipper, participates in a big fight and wins but is injured; his winnings enable Jocko to buy a pub in the country... really Australia's north, thus enabling it to be bombed by the Japanese when the Pacific War starts; the girl and boy have hots for each other but can't do anything about it because they think they're related; an American journalist sniffs around the girl but her "brother" jealously punches him out; there are some Catholic Priests near the pub ("quick, Catholic priests are popular, put that in"); a barmaid abandoned by Jocko in France turns up to torment him; World War Two starts and Jocko tries to enlist but is too old and unhealthy, so joins the Land Army; then the Pacific War starts and the pub is turned into an orphanage (I think) which is bombed by Japanese and the Japanese crash and some pilots attack the orphanage ("quick Mrs Miniver had them fight off enemy pilots put that in") but luckily Jocko and Nipper turn up and help fight off the Japanese (along with their friend Ginger who machine guns one to death!); Nipper and the girl discover they're not blood relatives and hook up; Jocko gets a commission in the army thanks to the intervention of the former barmaid.

It's a complete mess really, with the film never settling on what it wants to be about. I felt the real focus should have been on Jocko smuggling the kids back into Australia - there's a movie in just that - but that was only the starting point. There's all this narrative, the big romance plot being yucky because most of the time Nipper and the girl believe they're related but still want to hump each other. I so didn't want them to get together.

Still it is a perfect role for Wallace Beery - ex boxer, brave, rowdy, tough, prone to brawling, irreverent, running away from a woman who wants to marry him (the Marie Dressler part), doing lots of schtick with kids and dodgy mates, gambling, running pubs, mugging.

The only problem is Charles Laughton plays the role. Now Laughton was a brilliant actor, and his Aussie accent attempt here isn't bad, and he makes a decent rogue. But he's never convincing as an ex boxer, or successful former soldier (I know Laughton was one in real life but he doesn't look like the tough two fisted hero described here). Throughout the whole movie he feels like a superb performer who is miscast.

No one has a decent Aussie accent though people do try - mostly people sound cockney, though the priests are Irish. For Aussies this is fascinating because of it's depiction of Australia and Australians - most of the movie is set in Australia: Melbourne at first, where Jocko has a pub, then where Nipper fights his bout, then somewhere in north Australia. We get to see some pubs, a boxing venue, the country, lots of priests.

Dramatically it's a mess. There are lots of good actors and decent production values so it's easy to watch. Historically its fascinating. (And you know something, at least Hollywood made a film set in Australia during the war - Australians hardly ever did).


6 - Random Australians Who Pop Up in War Films

Mark Hartley would never forgive me if I didn't bring up Richard Harris' accent-strangling performance as the RAAF pilot at the beginning of "Guns of Navarone" but he was only one of a series of Aussie characters who popped up in war films of the 50s and 60s... a little reminder of our contribution. Most of you have probably seen James Coburn in "The Great Escape" (1963) (accent wrong but dialogue and attitude first rate... maybe the contribution of Aussie Paul Brickhill who wrote the book?) there was also John Gregson in "Above Us the Waves" (1955)... sometimes real Aussies would play them too like John Meillon in "Guns at Batasi" (1964)... and we get a whole film about an Australian platoon in "The Desert Rats" (1953) (although it focuses on two Poms, Richard Burton and Robert Newton), Chips Rafferty in "The Wackiest Ship in the Army" (1960), Peter Finch in "The Wooden Horse" (1950), Michael Pate as the coastwatcher who rescued a young JFK in PT 109 (1963)

It wasn't much of an acknowledgement, but then that's why we need our own industry - and it was a lot more recognition than that given to say, African or Indian troops who fought for the Allies

7 - Australia as a place to escape to

In the mid 1940s there was a subgenre of American war film called "stories of glorious defeat" - for the one time in Hollywood history it made a series of movies about a bunch of battles that America lost, mostly because during the early days of the war America lost all its battles (something the film constantly puts down to "treachery"). And in the bulk of these movies you had the characters trying to escape to Australia - "So Proudly We Hail" (1943) (which has Allied nurses as suicide bombers), "Air Force" (1943), "The Story of Dr Wassell" (1944). Australia does feature at the end but pretty much just as a back drop.

(A flip side to this - "The Sea Chase" (1955) which features John Wayne as a German sea captain (!) fleeing Sydney in 1939 to escape the allies.)

8 - Famous Australian Stars

Prior to Mel Gibson, the biggest Australian film star was probably Errol Flynn who only played an Australian twice on screen in his career - "Desperate Journey" (1942) a war film, where he plays an Australian pilot shot down in occupied Europe. He whistles "Waltzing Matilda" and at the end of the film says "now for Australia and a crack at those Japs". That's about as Australian as it gets. In "Montana" (1950), a Western, he plays a sheep farmer who grew up in Australia. In his one Australian film, "In the Wake of the Bounty" (1933), he played the British Fletcher Christian.

The biggest star after him was Rod Taylor who only played an Australian on screen four times in his entire career (which went for over fifty years) - "The VIPs" (1963), "The High Commissioner" (1968), "On the Run" (1982) and "Welcome to Woop Woop" (1996). He made three Australian films where he played foreigners - "King of the Coral Sea" (1954), "Long John Silver" (1954), "The Picture Show Man" (1977) (I write about this at length in my book on him).

The big star after him was Peter Finch, who got to play Aussies a bunch of times, in Australian movies and overseas - notably "A Town Like Alice" (1956) and "The Shiralee" (1957)... I think because he was based in Britain, which cared a little more about Australia than the US.

Of course along with other Aussie stars at the time (eg Judith Anderson, Mary Maguire, Ron Randell) it's still fun to hear the Aussie accent slip in no matter what role they're playing.

9 - Unfilmed Australian stories.

Very very occasionally an Australian novel/play will get the Hollywood treatment - "Stingaree" (1934), "On the Beach" (1959), "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" (1959), "The Sundowners" (1960)... (I'm talking stories set in Australia, not films based on novels by Australians which are a separate thing, eg The Great Escape, The 7th Dawn, The Shoes of the Fisherman)

But several novels were contemplated back in the day. 

"The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney" by H H Richardson, that classic novel a lot of Australians feel guilty about not having read yet, was bought by MGM who wanted to turn it into a Greer Garson vehicle in the late 1940s. The film never happened (though MGM did turn another Richardson novel into the Elizabeth Taylor film "Rhapsody" in 1954.) 

Diane Cilento bought the rights to Darcy Niland's novel "Call Me When the Cross Turns Over" in 1962 and Fox were going to film it with her then husband Sean Connery but it didn't happen. 

Neither did a proposed version of "Careful He Might Hear You" which Josh Logan wanted to make with Elizabeth Taylor in the 1960s (it was later filmed in the 1980s). 

Joseph Kaufman wanted to make a film of "Come in Spinner" in the 1950s (it was filmed in the 1980s).

Its fascinating to wonder what these films would have been like and how they would have depicted Australia - in the hands of a good director, as in "The Sundowners" it probably would have been good - I'm more inclined though to think they would have grabled it... which is why its important to have our own industry, etc etc

10 - Point Break

There's a lot I could have chosen (the Aussies in "Pacific Rim") but I thought I'd end with my favourite... the bit part actor at the end of Point Break (1991 of course) when it goes to Bells Beach Australia... No not Peter Phelps but the cop at the end who goes "What the f*ck, Utah? You let him go!" Gary Roberts and Owen Rutledge are listed in the credits as cops. I don't know who said what line but honestly these two should be household names.

Movie review - "Shamus" (1973) **1/2

As he so often was, Burt Reynolds is better than his material here. He's ideal as a private eye, sleeping on a pool table with a phone handing from a basket, confident but amiable so he doesn't seem like a lech, which his character is.

The script isn't up to the models of Raymond Chandler its aping - some scenes are direct steals of The Big Sleep including meeting a tycoon in a weird climate (here it's cold instead of hot) and where the shamus flirts with a librarian.

Burt gets beaten up a lot but comes through. The support cast isn't up to something like Harper. It's okay. Dyan Cannon is great with Burt and I wish they'd have made more movies together.

Rod Taylor played the same role in a TV movie which was a pilot for a proposed series.

Book review - "Charles Walters: The Director Who Made Hollywood Dance" by Brett Phillips

Charles Walters really should be better known - his CV includes several classic musicals (Easter Parade, High Society, Lil, Unsinkable Molly Brown) and a bunch of skilled comedies (Ask Any Girl, The Tender Trap). He probably doesn't get the credit he deserves.

I wonder why? A relatively skinny filmography? An unexciting name? A lack of films that touch on queer themes despite the director being queer? Being associated with MGM?

Walters was a dancer and actor who became a name on Broadway, eventually moving into choreography. He was a good looking guy who might've had a chance at being a movie star himself but stayed behind the camera, got a job at MGM as choreographer and dance director. He established himself as one of their best in part because he would look at dances in the context of the whole story and eventually became a director.

His directing career started with a bang: Good News, Easter Parade, The Barkleys of Broadway. He was one of the big directors at MGM, though interestingly lost some key assignments to George Sidney (another not very well known director). He found the going a little harder in the late 50s as musicals became less popular but segued neatly into comedies. He occasionally tried drama (eg Torch Song) but his heart didn't seem to be in it - he walked out on I'll Cry Tomorrow, for instance, and disliked Dore Schary. He hated Vera Ellen.

He had the chance to do a dream project with Billy Rose's Jumbo which lost a pile of money but bounced back with The Unsinkeable Molly Brown.

His career ended rather abruptly - he left MGM in the mid 60s and made the popular Walk Don't Run but that was about it, apart for some TV work for Lucille Ball. I think he was too much of a company man to make the adjustment to freelance life.

Walters lived a long life and hung on to a lot of his money. He had a long term relationship with one guy, an agent - and then later with a younger guy who he adopted (so he would inherit Walters' money). He lived as a gay man - discretely but he actually lived with someone. He worked with Garland on Easter Parade and Summer Stock but even he found her hard going and asked not to do it again. However he did direct her on Broadway.

This is an excellent book, well researched and written. Sometimes I did wish I could click on a switch to watch bits from the film that the writer describes. But a very good book.

A top ten for Walters:
1) High Society (1956) - his favourite film, a jaunty fun musical
2) Ask Any Girl (1959) - a film very much of it's time, with rape treated comically, but some excellent comic performances including Rod Taylor
3) Easter Parade (1948) - top line talent and then some
4) Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962) - I actually haven't seen it - but it's a passion project so I put it in
5) The Unsinkeable Molly Brown (1964) - Walters says his greatest achievement was directing Debbie Reynolds to an Oscar nom
6) Easy to Love (1953) - Esther Williams bagged a lot of directors in her memoirs but not Walters
7) Summer Stock (1951) - decent musical with the classic Garland "nervous breakdown" number "Get Happy"
8) The Tender Trap (1955) - classic swinging bachelor comedy
9) Lili (1953) - random fairytale film which became a big hit - Walters couldn't make lightning strike twice with The Glass Slipper
10) Don't Go Near the Water (1957) -amiable service comedy with Glenn Ford.

Dorothy Malone RIP - And a Top Ten

1) The Big Sleep (1946) - Malone is only in this for two scenes but does them with Humphrey Bogart and is sensational (aspiring actresses could do worse than to study these scenes of how to make a big impact in a short space of time).

2)The Fast and the Furious (1955) - not the Vin Diesel classic but a 1955 car chase flick which was the first feature Roger Corman ever produced - Malone is v likekable (Malone also appeared in Corman's directorial debut, Five Guns West).

3) Battle Cry (1955) - a melodrama about WW2 based on a best seller which New Zealand audiences will especially find interesting (part of the film is set there) - Malone has a surprisingly sexually frank fling with a young soldier played by Tab Hunter.

4) Sincerely Yours (1955) - Liberace's attempt at big screen stardom with Malone as his love interest (in the space of three years Malone steamed up the screen opposite Liberace, Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson...) - a fairly terrible movie but fascinating to see Liberace act in a melodrama (he took the blame for this film's failure but the script was as much at fault).

5) Artists and Models (1955) - for me the best Martin and Lewis film a really terrific fun comedy with Malone well matched with Martin and Shirley MacLaine perfect for Lewis.

6) Written on the Wind (1956) - Malone won the Oscar for this but I rewatched it recently and felt her performance did not hold up that well - check out her stroking the oil rig at the end (the same team then made The Tarnished Angels)

7) Too Much Too Soon (1958) - Malone mostly played "the girl" in films but her Oscar saw her get a real chance here, as Diana Barrymore, in what I feel is a pretty decent film - stolen by Errol Flynn as John Barrymore.

8) The Last Voyage (1960) - Malone's role isn't much (something you could say about a lot of her career) but they actually sunk a real ship for this film which is cool.

9) Fate is the Hunter (1964) - a Rod Taylor film where Malone has a one scene unbilled cameo - for years I thought it was a mirage but then later on confirmed it that yes it was her - this is a pretty good movie.

10) Beach Party (1963) - most film fans remember Frankie and Annette and forget or don't realise Robert Cummings and Dorothy Malone had quite big parts in this film, the first in the series.
Oh and she's in Basic Instinct (1992) too