Wide Worlds: China vs. Us, Raindrops Fall on Westerns, and Eastwood Deals in Dynamite
THE SAND PEBBLES (1966) --- Was there roadshow fatigue by the
mid-sixties? At least for Fox, there seemed more losing than winning, The
Sound of Music a historic exception, though for every one of that, there were
two like The Bible or The Agony and the Ecstasy, plus barely-eecking-profit
Cleopatra which needed a network sale to get even. Hits when they had them saw less spent or content the public could better enjoy, The Blue Max completed
for $6.2 million, with Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machine fun-for-whole-families
event to which they willingly bought hard tickets for a row-full. The Sand Pebbles was
released at the end of 1966 to run mostly through 1967. Negative cost was $12.1
million and because of that, even worldwide rentals of $17. 3 million would not
offset nearly two million ultimately lost. 70mm prints of The Sand Pebbles were
blown-up from 35mm. We could wonder if our Blu-Rays look sharper than what 1966-67
experienced. None of 70mm presentations happened in North Carolina. Closest we
got was evidently Greenville, SC for 9/28/67 which was non-roadshow, but in
70mm, albeit enlarged. Values otherwise are judged by digital
access which I assume preserve integrity of sound (six-channel stereo) and
picture, if not improving upon them. China conflict during the late twenties is
addressed. We must care much about the characters to last these three hours, sailor Steve McQueen to my mind supplying what there is of that, opposition
to him Communist hordes that win in the end and call to
question our being in Orient water at all. Slap at US Vietnam policy was or
wasn’t noted by reviews, point perhaps better put had the picture finished shorter.
The Sand Pebbles is best watched to catch vibes of roadshow-going and
what the sixties saw for biggest picture-making. Question is how many
three-hour blocks would we set aside for a show we know for flawed, degree of
that a matter of private opinion. Seems certain you’d not seat company down for
The Sand Pebbles lest they tag you for boredom they may
experience.
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| Watch Out ... Here Comes Bill Field's Server Nemesis from Never Give a Sucker ... |
Now thanks to widescreen Blu-Ray comes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid at perhaps a point where I can finally enjoy pleasure it offers. No need wondering what made it so popular
at the time, or since. Writing, performances, direction, all crackerjack. Butch
Cassidy plays modern like Bonnie and Clyde and Bullitt (at least for
me). Was this the first “buddy” western? We could argue Vera Cruz sort of was, and maybe comedy-westerns like The Rounders that predated
Butch. Neither aspired to hep like Butch and Sundance however. Robert Redford
said later that this was the picture that really put him across. You can tell
this 1870’s character will own the 1970’s. Most good parts began with a long
list of casting possibilities. Newman was set from the start to be Butch, but Marlon
Brando, Steve McQueen, or Warren Beatty for Sundance? McQueen I could envision,
except how could he conceal one-up he'd have come at Newman with? (remember
the beating Yul Brynner took) Brando was too old, too fussy, seeming washed up besides by 1969. Beatty I think would have been too
self-conscious and intent on taking control. There was always something odd about his screen countenance,
and frankly about Beatty himself. I keep seeing him swallowed up by that fur
coat in Altman's half-arse western. Redford told of being passed over for
another show because he wasn’t a big enough name, this right after he finished
playing Sundance, but before it was released. Imagine egg on some producer’s
face. Question I’d have asked Newman, Redford, others, had I ever got the chance: Did any speak to or notice Jody Gilbert, who had a
blink-and-you’ll miss-her moment during one of the train robberies? Jody had
long before joined immortals when she was the waitress who parried with W.C.
Fields in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. There had been mostly bits since,
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid her first (and as it turned out, last)
screen part since Houdini in 1953. HUAC trouble saw her out. Good thing I never
crewed for movies, at least movies from the sixties or seventies, for it would
have been never-stopping birddog after veterans in support, even extra,
ranks.
8 Comments:
Surprised that Ted Cassidy had a showy scene in "Butch Cassidy", since he was so familiar from "The Addams Family", conspicuous turns in "Twilight Zone" and "Star Trek", and Saturday morning cartoon voices. He looked different sans spooky makeup, but his size, voice, and name clearly identified him as that guy from TV. I had the impression small-screen familiarity worked against A movie work.
Faintly recall "The Blue Max" at a drive-in, where it included the intermission music under a still image of the titular medal. "Sand Pebbles" I knew only from the MAD satire (McQueen assures Chinese rebels he's on their side while gunning them down). We tended to see the family-friendly comedies and musicals, not the dramatic roadshows.
The theme song from "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" was somehow all over the place back in the day. Remember the movie coming out around the same time as "The Great Race", together feeling like a genre akin to the big period musicals.
I've read a few places that Ted Cassidy was a Dallas newscaster on the day Kennedy died and that he was among the first to break the story. True?
THE BLUE MAX has, for me, played exceptionally well to civilians.
Watched MAGNIFICENT MEN of late and found it to be like a Disney done on a lavish scale and truly a show you could bring a whole family to.
Have speculated before on how THE GREAT RACE might have turned out if Billy Wilder had been persuaded to direct.
I remember seeing TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA during a Saturday movie marathon. It was very good and an appropriate movie to spend a Saturday afternoon with.
Where did you speculate? Couldn't find in archive.
It was Edwards' baby from the get-go, and probably wouldn't have been made without him pushing for it. But a Wilder version is an interesting thought ... Leslie is a cartoon character, pure as his white wardrobe, outrageously brave, strong, intelligent, and moral, but somehow a lecherous chauvinist (hey, it was the 60s and suffragettes were still joke fodder). Wilder might have given Leslie some depth, perhaps in the form of Curtis's own backstory: a scrappy tenement kid who MADE himself a Big Movie Star, and worked hard at being Tony Curtis. Imagine a self-aware Leslie constantly polishing the facade of a dime novel hero, actually threatened by a suffragette who prods his weak spots. Professor Fate, a genius in his way, is frankly envious of Leslie's glory and is more aggressively targeting him, escalating from sane competitor to obsessed villain. He realizes the suffragette can break Leslie's shell and schemes to keep her in the race, constantly requiring Leslie's rescue. And we have to find a way to get from the Old West to Zenda without the iceberg stuff.
Ted Cassidy also had a significant career in radio commercial production.
While not technically “big screen” roles, Jody Gilbert had consistent television work from Butch Cassidy to her death in 1979. Odd work break from ‘53’s Houdini till a tv return in ‘65, but thereafter she remained busy. And Butch Cassidy was not her last big screen role(s). That distinction goes to her supporting role in Willard ‘71, and her bit part in Lifeguard ‘76.
Nice to know Jody got further work in both features and TV after Butch and Sundance. I looked for any mention she might have made in later years about working with W.C. Fields, but came up empty.
Always welcome Richard M. Roberts considers wide screens, the passing of Phoenix palaces, and this week's column picks:
John,
I always liked THE SAND PEBBLES, which has a really good and underrated performance by Richard Crenna in it. It was Robert Wise's dream project, awarded him by Fox after THE SOUND OF MUSIC's big success, but it apparently was not a happy experience making it for him, thanks as he said mostly to the weather and Steve McQueen, both of which ran up the budget and the film overschedule. Wise never had a bad word to say about most of the actors he worked with, McQueen was an exception, and Wise was far from the only one who felt that way.
Ken Annakin was always a bit chuffed when THE SOUND OF MUSIC got all the credit for saving Twentieth Century-Fox financially, because THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES was a sizeable hit as well at the same time. It is a film that really needs to be seen on a big screen where the flying scenes really do come to life, I was fortunate enough to see both it and THE GREAT RACE in first run at one of our local Cinerama theaters, and again in the zeros at the Egyptian Theater (with Ken Annakin in attendance) with a 70mm print from the BFI, and it was still delightful.
Yes, there was indeed a Cinerama fatigue in the late 60's, the problem being Studios felt obligated to continue to make those big, wide-screen spectaculars to supply all those big-screen theaters that needed product to show, even after audience interest started to wane. It started getting weird in the mid-60's when things like THE GOLDEN HEAD (1964) starring that interesting comedy team of George Sanders and Buddy Hackett were coming out as Cinerama productions when they didn't warrant it. By the late 60's, there were getting to be too many wide-screen road show bombs like CUSTER OF THE WEST or MACKENNA'S GOLD, along with a string of flop big musicals that indicated the handwriting was on the wall. Most of our local big screen Cinerama single houses were in deep trouble by the mid-70's, several were saved by movies like STAR WARS coming along in the late 70's and managed to hang on through the 80's with those type of films, but by the 90's it was over, the multi-plexes were the profitable ones and the big single screen theaters just couldn't fill enough seats to manage the overhead. We lost the Bethany Theater, then the Kachina, and the El Camino in the 90's, and finally, the Cine Capri gave up the ghost in the early 00's. The last big single screen 70mm theater in Phoenix, The Mann Christown, only lasted a little longer because the Mann chain had surrounded it with several multi-plex theaters years before, but then they closed in the late 00's, I remember seeing one of the Harry Potter movies in 70mm there just before the end.
It's sad because most of those films just don't have the same effect even watching them on the biggest home theater screens, they were designed to be seen in a big, cavernous theater with a huge screen and a large audience. I still recall being on a airplane flight once and the guy sitting across from me was watching IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD on his ipad, a little four-inch tall letterbox slit on the screen in his lap! How can that film be any way enjoyable that way? Whatever it's faults, it is helped immensely by being viewed at the Cinerama Dome with a crowd over an Ipad anytime.
Rewatched TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA in the last year, another I saw and enjoyed first run, and it has indeed aged well, as has the Eastwood/Siegel followup THE BEGUILED, which also seems to have slipped into the shadows of DIRTY HARRY, their following followup . Always preferred Clint in westerns over modern-day shoot `em ups.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
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