Book review - "Kubrick: An Odyssey" by Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams (2024)

 Fantastic book. Big subject but superbly done, great research (access to archives) very thorough and fair. Deep dives on unmade films such as Napoleon and AI. Discusses Kubrick's interest in sex, often ignored by critics. Covers his arseholeness and eccentricities. The book is really fair.

Full of interesting stuff - his battles to make things, a daughter turning into anti-Semitic neo con, his dreams of moving to Australia, James Brolin was considered for The Shining.

Splendid.  

Movie review - "Hard Contract" (1969) **

 Hitman who has lost zest for life and only sleeps with hookers is given a job which he hopes will fun his retirement but he falls in love... that feels like a very familiar plot and I was expecting a familar film.

But this is a very arty, sixties effort - close in tone to the George Lazenby Bond follow up Universal Soldier in a way. There's a little bit of assassinating but not a lot. Mostly it's chat in European locations.

James Coburn is more effective when chatty but here plays a stoic Alain Delon type - the film feels very influenced by the French. He hooks up with Lee Remick thinking she's a hooker but actually she's a bored housewife. He won't kiss but the film makes sure we know he's great in bed. (Karen Black pops up as another hooker). Lili Palmer is Remick's friend.

The film was written and directed by S Pogostian who was a TV writer and this has the soul of a television play. Lots of chat, mostly dialogues. It would work fine on the small screen. It's directed that way too. Jazzy angles - the John Boorman Point Blank treatment - would have worked. Less bad back projection.

To be fair I think there's also miscasting. Coburn isn't the same as Lee Marvin - far more effusive. He doesn't have chemistry with Lee Remick who is beautiful but aloof, not in a good way. The film is slightly off. The sex isn't that sexy. Imagine, I don't know, Lee Marvin and Angie Dickinson in this. More interesting, yes? Actually Sterling Hayden, who plays an ageing hit man, would've been better in Coburn's part.

No real action. I feel sorry for Fox they would've expected some bang bang as well as philosophy but they just got philosophy.

But look film gets points for trying to be different. Coburn spent his stardom on interesting projects - this, Presidents Analyst, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots, etc.

Movie review - "Nine to Five" (1980) ***

 The opening half hour is brilliant with its classic theme song, incendiary satire that is all too relevant today, terrific leads, star making debut by Dolly Parton, splendid work from Lily Tomlin, adequate work from Jane Fonda. It starts to wobble with some unfunny dream sequences (Tomlin's snow white bit excepted) then gets bogged down in plot with less satire.

It still works, just lacks some shine. Such as maybe a romance for Fonda's character (an end credit refers to her marrying the Xerox man, why not see him). It feels ramshackle and you can see the rewrites.

But the core is so strong it's not surprising that this piece has survived the years.

Book review - "A Girl's Got to Breathe: The Life of Teresa Wright" by Donald Spoto

 Teresa Wright seems a little bland a subject for Spoto until one reads they were good friends. I guess she deserves a book but there wasn't that much drama. She was pretty, nice, a good actor. She had a spectacular start to her career - understudied on Our Town then a part in Life with Father then Goldwyn and Little Foxes, Pride of the Yankees, Mrs Miniver... that's an amazing run. Throw in Best Years of Our Lives... it's a wonder she isn't better remembered.

A few things. She moved out of town at the behest of her husband Niven Busch and also quit her contract with Goldwyn. Both were mistakes. I think Wright would've struggled post war anyway - nice girls tend to have a short life span as stars (eg Jeanne Crain). But Wright could've delayed it - maybe done a Loretta Young/Donna Reed style transition to TV star. She did enjoy some successes later on like Dark at the Top of the Stairs on stage. A lot of stage acting.

The marriage with Busch busted up though he wasn't bad, just liked rooting around and living on ranches. Second husband was Robert Anderson - this book fleshes out him and that was really interesting because not much is known about him. For someone accused of being gay when younger (hence Tea and Sympathy) he had a lively straight love life - flings with Deborah Kerr, Ingrid Bergman and Audrey Hepburn (I guess everyone sleeps with them) then Wright but also cheating on her. She had an emotional fling with Sterling Hayden.

Wright seems to have been a decent, hard working nice person. It doesn't always make for a compelling antagonist - the colourful support players like Busch and Anderson steal the show.

But a really interesting book - two biographies really because it goes in depth on Anderson. 

Movie review - "Deadly Strangers" (1975) ** (warning: spoilers)

 One of a few thrillers Hayley Mills made as she tried to reinvent herself. The main issue with this is it doesn't quite have enough plot for a feature and Sidney Hayers, who made a few enjoyable movies, doesn't have the style to cover that up.

Mills has a mumsy haircut that doesn't flatter her. Simon Ward appears as a guy who gives her a lift. Sterling Hayden has this random role where he's in it for about ten minutes as some old codger who gives Mills a lift and falls in love with her then disappears.

The big twist is (spoilers) its Mills who is the psycho when we think it's Ward. This is revealed by a newspaper headline with big photos of Ward and Mills. But hardly anyone seems to recognise them, which feels like a chat. We don't find out Mills is a psycho until the very end. It would have been a better movie had we found out earlier - gotten tension out of the last half hour knowing.

Mills does a bit of nudity here - shows her bum in a bath as she did in The Family Way, goes in lingere in a fantasy sequence, and goes topless. But she's got that unflattering haircut. Her performance is professional rather than inspired.  Ward isn't bad. The visual look is very 70s Britain.

Jimmy Sangster and Hammer simply told this story much better in the sixties.

Movie review - "The Long Goodbye" (1973) **** (re-watching)

 Maybe I'm being peer group pressured into that four stars. I like Elliot Gould as Marlowe, I think that works. I love the use of soundtrack - overlapping dialogue and radio. I love the little quirks like the security guard who impersonates movie stars.

Sterling Hayden and Mark Rydell are stunningly good in their parts. Rydell is terrifying - it's a shame he doesn't get a come uppance/resolution. Nina Van Pallandt and the guy who plays Terry Lennox are more variable.

I didn't mind the finale - I totally got why Gould did it. It's better than being a little sook.

Arnie is in it.

Movie review - "The Golden Hawk" (1952) **

Swashbuckler from Sam Katzman which has a decent budget and strong story but is almost sunk by the miscasting of Sterling Hayden as the hero. I know Hayden was a real life hero into boats and stuff but he just looks too weird as a French privateer. There's something too American and contemporary about his appearance.

The film is notable for having two decent female roles. Rhonda Fleming has the time of her life as a woman who is a pirate and pretends to be a lady and she's doing it for her property - she flashes her bare back, dives in the water, fights with swords, flirts, slaps hands (Hayden is a bit rapey as per the convention of leading men at the time).

There's also Helena Carter in an unconvincing black wig as a Spanish lady who eyes off Hayden and wants him but is engaged to drip John Sutton - Hayden's dad! Part of me wishes Carter had Fleming's role - she's got more spirit, but Fleming is fine.

Still, the film didn't quite work for me. The story didn't build or something - it lacked momentum. I wanted more excitement. Maybe it was Hayden and Sutton who wrecked it. Anyways, it looks good.

Movie review - "Shotgun" (1955) **

The main point of interest for this western is that it was co written by Rory Calhoun. Calhoun was one of the smarter 50s heart throbs, parlaying what could have very short career into a lifetime go at it. He found a decent run with Westerns in particular - he wrote and produced as well as star.

He co wrote this one but doesn't star in it - it was made by Allied Artists and Calhoun was under contract to Universal. The star is Sterling Hayden in a Calhoun-style role. I'm not a big fan of Hayden - love his personal story, but on screen I find he mumbles.

Still he teams well with Yvonne de Carlo, even though De Carlo is dressed more frumpish than usual. It was like she aged overnight on screen.

Both play people with Pasts - De Carlo has been Around, and so has Hayden. They are travelling across country chasing bad people.

A lot of this consists of two or three handers - Zachary Scott comes along well and is smarmy. He's less effective outdoors.

This is okay. Director Lesley Selander knew what he was going - but doesn't do it terribly well. There's a bit of action, a name cast, nothing particularly special about it.

Movie review - "El Paso" (1949) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Pine-Thomas were known for their low budget action films but after the war they began to think that you needed to spend money to make money so the budgets rose - this was their first million dollar movie and their first with John Payne, with whom they would often collaborate.

It's not a bad Western, with Payne as a former Confederate officer and lawyer who goes out west after the war to visit a town and discovers it's under the thumb of landowner Sterling Hayden. He falls for Gail Russell whose father Henry Hull is a drunken judge. There's also Gabby Hayes.

The colour is gorgeous, the locations are fine - it's not a spectacle but there's impressive production values. Payne is a strong action hero - sensitive but also virile. Hayden is an effective villain though his part is surprisingly limited - they probably should've given him more to do. Russell brings her fragile beauty - it's not really much of a role, to provide a conscience, but she's fine. Hill hams it up. So does Hayes, Dick Foran is an effective villain.

There's interesting themes and moments here. It's about Payne wanting to bring law and the importance of the rule of law - though he wants to get revenge and so gets to kick arse (having it's cake and eating it too). Payne gets to kill Hayden and spare Dick Foran. Payne kills an innocent person. A kid is orphaned.

There's a fantastic final shoot out in a dust storm.  I like the way Payne is mentored by a Mexican friend - who tells him how to shoot but also urges caution.

The film never quite clicks into top gear. The drama feels muddled somehow - as if the film isn't living up to its potential.  There's a decent running time but I kept wanting to see more Payne-Russell, more fleshed out stuff for Hayden and Foran, more of the thief Mary Beth Hughes.

So it's frustrating.Lots of good things about it though.

Movie review - "The Last Command" (1955) **1/2

Herbert Yates of Republic foolishly wouldn't give John Wayne what he wanted to make his Alamo picture, ending their relationship and thus losing Republic's one big star. Yates pushed ahead with his own Alamo movie - one that focuses on Jim Bowie.

Bowie is played by Sterling Hayden, a tall actor with a deep voice who I've never been that much of a fan of despite his iconic status and colourful personal life. He's quite well cast as Bowie though.

The film itself is choppy and not particularly well handled (it was Frank Lloyd's last movie). It covers a few years, starting when Bowie is trying to keep out of the conflict, not being a big fan of Texians; he loses his family to plague off screen and eventually becomes radicalised I guess you could say. He takes part in a fight or two then winds up at the Alamo.

Too much screen time is spent on a Mexican woman who pants after Bowie, played by Anna Marie Alberghetti. I enjoyed Arthur Hunnicutt's Davy Crockett and wish he'd been given more screen time. Ditto for Ernest Borgnine's settler. Richard Carlson's Travis was so-so.

Things pick up once everyone gets to the Alamo - really I wish the whole film had been set there. Maybe the filmmakers were worried about the female audience, devoting so much time to Alberghetti's character - but they could've just had her meet Bowie there. It was dramatically unsatisfactory.

The movie gets better as it goes along and there's some decent production value for Republic. It's not unsympathetic to Santa Anna.

Sterling Hayden Top Ten

Hayden's an interesting actor. A fascinating personal story - a sailor who was offered a film contract after someone saw his photo, leaping straight to leading roles and marriage to Madeleine Carroll, enlisting in the army and becoming a genuine hero, naming names and forever regretting it, taking off on a yacht and travelling the world. becoming a cult icon.

He never seemed to like acting much - he was more into writing and sailing - but attracted the interest of some big fans like Kubrick. Russell Crowe once said he based his LA Confidential performance on Hayden.

Is it possible to do a top ten? In no particular order:
1) Dr Strangelove (1964) - Hayden great fun as a lunatic general
2) The Asphalt Jungle (1950) - I'm surprised Hayden's career didn't get more of a boost after this Huston work... but I guess he was never out of work after it and this really established him in the fifties. Shame he never worked with Huston again - he could've easily fitted into Moby Dick or Roots of Heaven.
3) The Killing (1956) - more Kubrick, Hayden very effective.
4) The Last Command (1955) - Hayden as Jim Bowie in an enjoyable version of the Alamo.
5) The Long Goodbye (1973) - superb Hayden cameo as a drunk. I wish he'd worked more with Altman.
6) The Godfather (1972) - is it cheating to have this in here? I would argue Hayden's work still impresses.
7) The Star (1952) - Hayden was masculine and limited - I'm surprised he wasn't used more as a leading man in melodramas like this.
8) Johnny Guitar (1954) - it's really a Joan Crawford-Mercedes McCambridge film but Hayden impresses.
9) Prince Valiant (1954) - now I'm starting to strain! I put this in because it's so random.
10) King of the Gypsies (1978) - Hayden wild and weird.

Book review - "Yvonne" by Yvonne De Carlo (1987)

The cinematic work of Yvonne De Carlo deserves re-appraisal - for a time there in the late 40s and early 50s she was a genuine lower level star at Universal, playing a succession of slinky Eastern dancing girls and tough Western dames in some unpretentious technicolor films. She and Maureen O'Hara were these quasi-feminist adventure stars, until the 50s took hold and both wound up staring admiringly at the heroes.

De Carlo was an old pro in the best sense of the world. She started quite young, with a pushy mother and absent father (very common elements in biographies of female star). She did a lot of dancing when younger and moved to the US from Canada; her looks saw her win beauty contests which resulted in a dancing gig at the Florentine Gardens. She worked hard at her dancing and was eventually picked up for the movies, doing a stint at Paramount.

In the 1940s girls with "exotic looks" were not discriminated against; de Carlo played a series of dancing girls and natives; she was going to step in for Dorothy Lamour in Rainbow Island but Lamour changed her mind. She also just missed out on good parts in For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Story of Dr Wassell. Her career was stagnating there but got a huge boost when Walter Wagner cast her in the lead of Salome Where She Danced which turned her into a star.

Salome was made by Universal who put her to work in lots of Easterns and Westerns, and wanted someone easier to deal with than Maria Montez (and De Carlo could sing and dance which Montez couldn't). Occasionally she got the chance in something more prestigious like Criss Cross. De Carlo eventually branched out into comedy, notably in England, and got a few parts in "A" pictures, like The Ten Commandments and Band of Angels. But she never made the full transition to "A" stardom - it's harder for women, especially in the macho late 50s. And to be fair De Carlo didn't have the individuality of great stars - or even great icons like Maureen O'Hara; she lacked spark and life-sometimes she blended into the scenery. But she could act and sing and dance, often better than she was given credit for.

De Carlo found things harder  from the late 50s onwards, but she kept at it - working regularly in TV and having a career boost when starring in The Munsters. She also achieved fame on Broadway in Follies. She expresses regret her agents didn't push her for Broadway roles earlier; I'm surprised she didn't appear in more musical films - Universal did make them, though not as often as they did in the 40s.

As a good looking girl De Carlo spent a lot of time fending off lecherous Hollywood wolves/sex pests - Errol Flynn, Franchot Tone, Orson Welles. She was keen on Sterling Hayden but he didn't do anything. Ditto James Stewart. She had amiable dates with Red Skelton and knew Burgess Meredith, a romance with Ray Milland before finally losing her virginity to someone called Carl Anthony. She says Billy Wilder was the first great love of her life. She later had serious romances with Howard Hughes (who made love like an engineer which made me laugh), Robert Stack, Howard Duff and Jock Mahoney (she fell pregnant to him but lost the baby), flings with Burt Lancaster, Carlos Thompson, Tony Curtis and Robert Taylor. There was Aly Khan, of course, who was a great lover - it isn't a very discrete book!

The book gets harder going as once De Carlo marries stuntman Bob Morgan. A sexy man's man, he was overly fond of a drink, and not a particularly devoted husband. She was going to leave him but then he had an accident which resulted in him losing his leg. From then on it was work, work, work as she took every gig going - night club acts, crummy roles in films. She was perennially unlucky in love - she had a taste for love rats (married men, pricks), which never improved.

I liked reading about her encounters with Maria Montez - de Carlo came to Universal as a Montez back up taking her role in Frontier Gal but Montez and she got along; Montez would talk about her being reincarnated, warn her off Howard Hughes and recommend de Carlo and Jean Pierre Aumont (her love interest in one film) play more love scenes because you got more close ups that way.

De Carlo admits to being a right winger - I would've been interested to hear more about this. (I imagine a lot of actors who slogged their way up from the chorus were right wing eg Ginger Rogers.) The book was written before her son died.

It's an entertaining book - a little harrowing (all the sexual harassment), and sad (the career and financial battles). De Carlo had a pretty good life - fame, some good parts, sex with handsome men - but struggled to hang on to money and a good relationship. Still, the world was a better place for her being in it.

Movie review - "The Final Programme" (1973) **1/2

Remember when Jon Finch was a movie star? It wasn't for long but in the early 1970s he got to play leads for Polanski, Hitchcock and here Robert Fuest, coming off The Abominable Dr Phibes. This was not a box office success, but has developed a cult, as a long of ambitious-but-not-very-well-executed-sci-fi tends to do.

It's based on a novel by Michael Moorcock, which I've never read - he's done a bunch of them about a secret agent/adventurer Jerry Cornelius. The film opens with the funeral of Cornelius' father who was a scientist working on some top secret program. Other scientists want to get their hands on it and enlist Cornelius to help.

That brief synopsis makes the movie sound easier to follow than it actually is : for the most part this is very confusing, and I kept having to refer to websites to get my head around what I was watching. There's a bisexual scientist, some other scientists, Finch's sweeter-than-thou sister and dirtbag brother,  and Finch and Runacre combining into a caveman. The look of the film is fascinating - it's slightly futuristic a la Clockwork Orange, with some way out sets and costumes: there's mud wrestling, wacky nightclubs.

Jenny Runacre is a lot of fun as Miss Brunner, Finch is a lot more lively here than in many of his other films, and there's some choice support from the likes of Patrick Magee, Sterling Hayden and Hugh Griffith. And while it's confusion at least it tries to be smart. I found it more interesting than I thought it would be if only because it was so insane. David Puttnam was executive producer and this is completely unlike anything else he ever made.

Movie review - "Valerie" (1957) **1/2

My expectation couldn't have been lower for this Western - it's obscurity, the fact it was the only film made during Anthony Steel's Hollywood sojourn that produced all those drink driving arrests, its the only teaming of Steel and then wife Anita Ekberg. It's also shot very much like an episode of a TV show. But I found it surprisingly engrossing.

It starts with a bang, literally: Sterling Hayden entering a homestead, a shoot out eventuates; later on it turns out his ex wife Ekberg is gravely wounded and her parents are dead. We hear about events leading up to it: Anthony Steel is a local reverend fresh off the boat who may or may not have been having an affair with Ekberg who may or may not be a slut and Hayden may or may not have been a devoted husband and/or tortured people in the Civil War. Plus there's Hayden's dodgy brother and assistant.

It's not a classic: any movie which ends with a convenient confession-by-taking-someone-hostage loses points (a device used a lot in Westerns); the acting is a bit iffy (they don't give Steel too much to do - he was the perennial "second male lead", Ekberg is beautiful but simply wasn't much of an actor, Sterling Hayden glowers); it looks cheap. But it had ambition and at least tries.

Movie review – “Suddenly” (1954) **

After the death of JFK, Frank Sinatra apparently arranged for The Manchurian Candidate to be pulled from screens because it dealt with an assassination – he also played an assassin ten years before in this United Artists cheapie (which is now in the public domain and thus is easily available).

This starts off quite well – it’s in a quiet town, the president is going to visit, the local cop is Sterling Hayden so you can guess he’s going to save the day. There’s an unpleasant subplot where Hayden’s girlfriend, a widow, won’t let her young son own a gun – Hayden thinks this is a bad idea because everyone has to learn how to operate guns sooner or later. (Of course by the end of the film the widow has come around to this way of thinking.) But it is brisk and is exciting when secret service arrive, and then Sinatra and his goons turn up.

Unfortunately after a while the film bogs down into another Desperate Hours/Petrified Forest retread, with Sinatra and his gang holding Hayden, the widow, the kid and James Gleason hostage. Which isn’t a bad premise but here it isn’t very imaginatively handled, with lots of talking, and Hayden being a smart alek to Sinatra, and the audience unable to help wondering why Sinatra doesn’t just shoot Hayden dead. Then the bug bear of many a 50s thriller – the exploration of the psychology of a killer – comes in to play and we get a lot of talk about Sinatra’s past, and power and blah blah blah. This would have made a neat, taunt hour long anthology drama but it’s too padded out to really work.

Movie review - "Top Gun" (1955) **

An original Western feature from producer Edward Small, a prolific filmmaker then making low-budget features under a deal with United Artists. “B” movies – movies made to support a larger budgeted feature on a double bill - were being phased out by major studios during the 1950s as television made inroads into their traditional market, but there was still enough demand at that stage to ensure some filmmakers such as Small could make a living from them.

Sterling Hayden stars here as a gunslinger who returns to his old home town to warn them of an impending attack by a gang of outlaws. Rod Taylor has a small but showy part as a cocky young cowboy who repeatedly challenges Hayden to a shoot out. His performance is a bit amateurish, with the actor clearly grappling with his cowboy accent and a tendency to over-act, but his enthusiasm is sweet to see and the film - which seems to owe more than a little to High Noon (1951) – quite watchable.

Movie review - "Johnny Guitar" (1954) ****

Cult film fave which like many cult films is probably more enjoyable if you discover it by accident. But this is still pleasingly odd, full of weird and off key touches - the slightly garish colour, Joan Crawford in the lead role in a Western, Mercedes McCambridge's scary intensity as the hysterical baddy, Sterling Hayden's macho yet still second lead title character, constantly quirky dialogue.

The McCarthyism parallels are fairly hammered in even to the point at the end McCambridge and her fellow mobsters are dressed in black (from a funeral) and she coerces a robber into pointing the finger at Crawford.

An irritating plot point though - Crawford is a bit passive when this happens surely she would put up a fight for her life instead of merely saying "save yourself!" And Crawford is responsible for a lot of her own problems by not turning injured criminals over to the law officers. Scott Brady is the desperado (leader of a memorable gang including Royal Dano and Ernest Borgnine), the "communist" (i.e. blamed for things he didn't do but still bad), with Crawford as the liberal, I guess you would call her(capitalist but sexually liberated, a feminist, and looks after her little gang of odd workers), pushed into the arms of the commies due to the manic actions of McCambridge and her men, the law officer who tries to do the right thing but struggles in the face of hysteria.

One point -the bloke who backs McCambridge is as bad as McCambridge in my book when it comes to baseless accusations but he doesn't get any come-uppance.

Movie review - "The Long Goodbye" (1973) ***1/2

Robert Altman's films aren't to everyone's taste (mine included) but he always tries to do things freshly and originally. Sometimes he goes off the rails especially when he's written the script but here he works from Leigh' Brackett's adaptation of a Raymond Chandler novel - terrific source material. Everything is fresh: Elliot Gould (in good form) as Marlowe, chain smoking in his suit, looking for cat food, sticking up for an old friend. Mike Rydell is electric as a thug looking for Marlowe's mate; Sterling Hayden impresses as a boozy writer. I even liked Nina van Pallandt as the femme fetale.

Some of Altman's tactics tend to distance the viewer emotionally from the film - me at any rate - so maybe it doesn't have the power it could have. But then it would be less interesting to watch. The story is easy to follow - with all the sexy adaptations of classics we have today it's hard to see what all the fuss was about when this came out, but I guess it was too new back then. Many memorable moments: Gould and his perenially nude neighbours, Rydell and the coke bottle, Hayden and Gould getting drunk together, the climax.