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| You Don't Need the Title to Signify What This Art Represents, Which is Why I Don't Include It. |
Among the One Hundred: The Professionals
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| Whatever to Do With Weaponry, Henry Rico Fardan Knows It, So Of Course We Wanted to Be Him |
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| I Knew Marvin Better Than Lancaster in 1966, So Naturally Chose Him to Identify With. |
We see automobiles put to practical use in The Professionals and several
years later The Wild Bunch. They were in fuller abundance for Bandido which filmed
near 100% on Mexican locations. Time set for all these was 1916-17, midst of civil
war in the country that lasted more/less, on-off for ten years (1910-1920). This being
complicated meant movies dealt most with specific aspects or personalities
involved (Villa, Madero, Zapata) or used the background for novel spin upon
westerns, autos plus other modernities to link them closer with life we knew. Why
do men answer a dangerous calling if not for selfish gain? Fact they’ve done so
previous, if often, assures they will be seasoned, wised up enough to stay
clear of causes. None of our four appear to have criminal histories. If they’ve
been militarily trained, it is not emphasized, though we assume from Fardan’s
background and mode of dress that he’s spent considerable time in uniform. To
strike across the desert for a stolen wife seems beneath such a crew. We sense
there is plenty they are unaware of. Such a team seems better suited to a Kwai
or Navarone sort of operation, but this was the mid-sixties, where to fulfill a
patriotic obligation seems naïve for men wised-up as these. Soon enough to
movies would come doubt as to value of even World War Two engagements. Convicted
murderers work wiles upon worse butchers that are the German command in The
Dirty Dozen, Lee Marvin appropriately leading them. All are in it for amnesty,
provided they survive. Kelly’s “heroes” sneak across enemy lines to steal Nazi
gold, personal goals a priority over Allied need. The concept off-put me enough
to skip the movie when it was released in 1970. |
| MAD Magazine Often Flattered It's Readership With "Smartie-Pants" Verbiage Like Above |
The Professionals refreshes for its humor, a “twist” end I still don’t
fully get, and pleasing fact all four of principals get to live, in fact no one
of the cast dies save faceless fall downs among banditry and bystanders
innocent or not. To unsettle is Raza executing one after another of surrendered
Federales, shock imagery checkmated by The Wild Bunch three years later. MAD
magazine took a cleaver to The Professionals, page samples to show mixed results
pretty much as I remember from the time. Do people much go back and read old MAD’s?
I liked it in a sort-of way, though choice of where to dispose of thirty-five
cents saw Castle of Frankenstein the winner rather than MAD. The Professionals
would be overshadowed by the Sergio Leone westerns out of Italy and yes, The
Wild Bunch. Others of US origin, save True Grit and Butch Cassidy, took back
seats and stayed in them, Grit and Butch to better please a mainstream by not rocking
genre boats though seeming to with off-casting (John Wayne) and/or all-in-fun
revisionism (raindrops and bicycles). The Liberty tickled me pink for bringing The
Professionals back one 1970 Saturday, 1975 sojourn to USC brightened when a 35mm
print of The Professionals along with The Happy Ending (Richard Brooks salute) played
to hard back cinema student seating. Whatever got it done. Imagine
watching two such disparate features back-to-back that the same guy directed. Very
scope The Professionals played CBS February 1973 primetime and died there (no letterbox). Eventually got a 16mm scope/IB Tech from a collector so dedicated to The
Professionals that he blew up frames from every single shot to 8X10. Hundreds
of stills fuzzy as the narrow-gauge image itself. And here I was figuring to be
deep in the life. A nice Blu-Ray is out there, 4K too if you’re prepared to
give Netflix $27 per month for privilege to watch. An out-of-print CD of the
Maurice Jarre score goes for plenty more than when first issued in 1992. How
many like me could whistle every theme without missing a note, and often do?
16 Comments:
Thanks for that enjoyable start to Monday! A piece of the hacienda wall was still sitting in a remote area of Nevada's Valley of Fire State Park 25 years ago. Sadly I don't think I'll be making another expedition to it. Think I could pull it off physically but don't relish a solo trek. Mouse's Tank, easily reached from the road, may be the canyon in which Burt hangs upside down.
The tale I keep hearing about the making of The Professionals is of a professional, dedicated, incensed Lancaster picking of a drunken Marvin and holding him over a cliff, threatening to drop him off it if he shows up drunk on the set again. Few were ready to take on a fit, angry Burt Lancaster.
Fact or myth? Sure makes for a good story, almost as entertaining as the film itself.
I've never seen The Professionals but feel like I have, since it's so vividly described in Glendon Swarthout's 1970 novel "Bless The Beasts & Children," later adapted into a disappointing film by Stanley Kramer (the films of Swarthout's best-known books, "They Came to Cordura" and "The Shootist," are better but still not up their sources).
"Bless the Beasts" involves a pack of misfit adolescents (labeled the "Bedwetters") confined to a cowboy-themed summer camp for troubled youths in Arizona. At the movie theater they find a bit of solace:
"They were mad for western movies. They doted on tales told with trumpets and ending in a pot of gold, a bucket of blood, or a chorus of the national anthem. The finest movie they had lately seen, the only one that summer in fact, was The Professionals. It had been a buster, a dollar-dreadful, a saga of some men expert with weapons, a handful of colorful, heroic characters who rode into Mexico on a mission of mercy—to rescue a voluptuous babe from the clutches of bandits who had abducted her for foul, they were sure, purposes. It was a fundamental film, they knew it in their souls, a yarn innocent and scabrous, brutal and principled, true and a liar, as old as the hills and as new as the next generation. You did not watch it. You sucked on it. For this is the marrowbone of every American adventure story: some men with guns, going somewhere, to do something dangerous. Whether it be to scout a continent in a covered wagon, to weld the Union in a screaming Wilderness, to save the world for democracy, to vault seas and rip up jungles by the roots and sow our seed and flag and spirit, this has ever been the essence of our melodrama: some men with guns, going somewhere, to do something dangerous."
Equally memorable is Pauline Kael's capsule review:
"The title is accurate. This action-Western, written and directed by Richard Brooks, with Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode, Jack Palance, and Claudia Cardinale, has the expertise of a cold old whore with practiced hands and no thoughts of love. There's something to be said for this kind of professionalism: the moviemakers know how to provide excitement and they work us over. We're not always in the mood for love or for art, and this film makes no demands, raises no questions, doesn't confuse the emotions. It's as modern a product as a new car; it may be no accident that Ryan, the man in this Western who loves horses, is treated as some sort of weakling."
Should I ever visit these locations, it will sure be after checking the air-conditioner in my car to make SURE it works.
Burt presumably made sure Lee was drunk enough to be wrestled into such a helpless position. I personally would not have taken such a risk with Marvin even if he was stone cold passed out.
Great excerpts, IA, thanks.
Colorful remarks from Kael. Sometimes I forget how incisive she could be.
Valued correspondent William M. Drew shares with us further observations regarding colorization and You Tube concerns (Part One):
Dear John,
Many thanks about publishing my comments on your site. You are welcome to do so, but I think I should finally disclose to you why I think my 1987 crystalballism about the future of "colorization" ultimately went way off the rails. I had titled my article published in the long-gone Movie Collectors' World "The Real Peril of 'Colorization.'" What I defined as "the real peril" was the apprehension that the Hollywood studios might "colorize" a relatively small amount of black-and-white films that had remained popular over the years, mainly from the sound era, while leaving the vast majority to gather dust on the grounds that they had little commercial value. This would then render most films from the black and white era as unmarketable as silents became after the arrival of sound.
Of course, as you know, events would move in the opposite direction. Opposition in Hollywood to "colorization," then being energetically promoted by Ted Turner, was so intense that, as I recall, Martin Scorsese made film preservation his lifelong cause while Congress set up the National Film Registry to protect specific works of American cinema from defilement by the colorizers and others who might meddle with the American film heritage. Ultimately, Ted Turner himself, in a remarkable turn-around, became the biggest benefactor of vintage films from the black-and-white era when he launched TCM 32 years ago. As an example of how this continues to work in a positive way, a couple of months ago Time Warner announced the Blu-Ray release of the long-suppressed Joan Crawford-Clarence Brown classic, Letty Lynton. It took me a lot longer to get it from Amazon than usual because of the public demand for this 1932 black-and-white pre-Code classic. In addition, TCM also released it in DVD for the benefit of those who did not have access to the newer Blu-Ray technology. This offered fresh evidence that a 94-year-old film with a powerful, splendidly acted narrative had no need to be "colorized" in order to appeal to a new generation, most of whom had probably never even heard of this film before.
"Colorization," to be sure, is still with us. But instead of generating a "master race" of popular ex-black and white films to continue while dooming the rest to eternal oblivion, "colorizers" on YouTube are now happy to apply this technology to just about anything from the cinematic past they can find. If you want to see Olive Thomas in living color, you now can. If you want to see color added to Japanese silents, you can view them on YouTube. If you've ever wondered what some of Griffith's lesser known features would look like in color, wonder no more because at least one channel devoted to silents has done that. This does not mean I now favor or endorse "colorization" as I think it distorts the artist's original intent. But it no longer poses a threat to films from the black and white era. And as the recent release of Letty Lynton proves, there remains a substantial audience for films in the original black and white.
Part Two from William M. Drew:
Now for an issue that has been of more recent concern to me. I've been an avid consumer of YouTube for the last decade and a half or so. In particular, it has introduced me to a far wider range of European films, both silent and sound, I've seen there than the more limited group of art house favorites I'd been able to see previously. So I've absorbed them into my consciousness even when they're unsubtitled. Through their magic lens, I've been able to experience first-hand Europe as it was in the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Adding to that vintage films from Asia, Latin America, Australia, the Middle East and, of course, our own United States, it's now possible to time travel virtually the entire world from the first half of the 20th century.
There is one fly in the ointment, however. The YouTube copyright police, as I call them, have proved a plague to lovers of classic film, especially with respect to Europe. This is not so much the case with Hollywood's Golden Age, curiously enough. Except for obvious exceptions like Gone With the Wind or Citizen Kane, the Hollywood studios seem remarkably relaxed about the hundreds of '30s and '40s films from their heyday, a large number I know are still under copyright, uploaded on YouTube. Channels featuring Asian and Latin American films of the '30s and '40s also don't seem to be affected by the recurrent YouTube purges, perhaps because whatever copyrights existed on their cinemas lapsed long ago.
Although it varies from country to country, copyright restrictions are often enforced with considerable rigidity on European films of the '30s and '40s by YouTube when these matters are brought to their attention. I've seen channel after channel offering vintage German and Austrian films yanked off YouTube for copyright violations while the copyright claims of the Nordic or Scandinavian films of the '30s and '40s have tended to limit the number of those films available on YouTube.
A few days ago, I came across a new channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@OldCinema777
I cannot begin to describe to you the richness of this movie channel. Most of the films are European silents along with a number of Hollywood films from the same era. There are also a fair amount of European talkies from the '30s, although the majority of the films are silent. Not only that but in general these films are new to YouTube and are largely unknown in the standard histories. Making them available to the public is thus an excellent development that cinephiles everywhere should applaud.
My fear, though, is that the YouTube copyright police will strike again as they have so often in the past and succeed in pulling the channel off their site. Although most European silents seem to be in the public domain, the talkies are apparently another matter, particularly where Germany is concerned. I can picture a German copyright claimant complaining about the talkies there to the YouTube overlords who would then use this as an excuse to pull the entire channel off. This happens time and time again there and I can see this repeating itself with this wonderful channel.
Where these matters are concerned, I admit I'm a technological retard. But do you know if it's possible to save an entire channel on your computer in the event of it being targeted? Do you know how to download specific films and then make DVD copies of them?
Warmest regards,
William M. Drew
Once films fall into the public domain, people may do with them as they please - alter color schemes, change soundtracks, use bits and pieces for their own projects.
Had the US Congress not retroactively extended film copyrights by a total of forty years, in the late 1970s by 20 years and the early 1990s by another 20 years, films from 1969 (instead of ancient 1930) would already be in the public domain in the USA.
Considering how the technology has changed, people have been ripped off, with aforethought, by their Congress - so it now appears.
Dan Mercer begins with "The Professionals," then gets distracted by "The Happy Ending":
Had I attended that USC course with you, I would have seen “The Professionals” for the first time. Not so “The Happy Ending,” the more personal picture Richard Brooks was able to make after the commercial success of that film and “In Cold Blood” the following year.
Jean Simmons was already a favorite of mine, after seeing her when “Young Bess” was shown on the Late Show of WCAU, Channel 10, the CBS outlet in Philadelphia. The realization that she was appearing in a new movie, however, was a delightful surprise. I was attending Rutgers-Camden then and already knew that the first run movie theaters in center city Philadelphia were just a bus ride away from the Camden, New Jersey plaza of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. So, when “The Happy Ending” opened in March, I neglected my oft-neglected studies once more to take the bus for a late afternoon showing.
The Goldman Theater where the film was playing was an art deco palace from the 1920s, a trifle shabby but still magnificent. Somehow, though, its large auditorium was almost empty. Between the time of day and, apparently, the appeal of this film, scarcely anyone was there. Not that this especially bothered me. It only meant that I would have her all to myself.
My infatuation with Jean Simmons was like so many I had then, found in some odd moment in which the character played by the actress was vulnerable and in need. Possibly this appeal found its seeding many years before, when I was a boy sitting in the crook of a willow tree in the backyard of my home, reading novels about knights and their ladies faire written and illustrated by Howard Pyle. Seeing a Merle Oberon or Audrey Hepburn—or Jean Simmons in “Young Bess”—in such a situation thrilled me with the fantasy of interposing myself between them and whatever was the source of their distress. My life was not too great a price to pay for their safety, as though this was the only thing of sufficient worth I possessed.
The film, however, was a good deal more serious than that. The idea of romance was something I had just discovered, hence those infatuations, which were more intense for my innocence. Watching the film, however, I understood that the allure of romance might fade, even when its object was someone as stunning as Jean Simmons, and that obligations I scarcely understood might order lives towards routines and activities that seemingly had little to do with love. Here was a peril less idealized than might be found in Arthurian romances but perhaps more dangerous, for being commonplace. Given my interest in the lady, my attention was rapt.
I was thoughtful and reflective on the bus ride back, my heart deepened by the experience. Later in the week, I returned to see the film again. Still later, I would attempt to rig the Academy Awards postcard poll of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin in favor of Jean Simmons as Best Actress, but that is a story for another day.
I'm surprised they haven't tried again to extend copyrights ... and succeeded.
Dan Mercer back with more of what he calls his "vignettes" (Part One):
“Steamboat Bill, Jr.” Falling Façade Sequence
A gag he developed and refined over his career, until it reached its epitome of risk and danger here, as perhaps the ultimate thrill sequence, but one requiring that it be executed with utter precision.
Newspaper Clippings About Barbara Payton
Yellowing newspaper clippings are an appropriate metaphor for most lives, the details of which are preserved mostly in memory--those of the person or others--which degrades and then is extinguished, with death. It's different for those who assumed a certain celebrity--the span of memory is greater, with the greater number of people interested in the celebrity--and yet different as well, when one has left a separate, tangible record. Barbara Payton died many years ago, so have most of those who knew her, and the newspaper articles about her life--usually the more sensational aspects of it-- are falling to dust. What remains are the movies, with their glimpse of an enigmatic beauty seemingly on the threshold of some greater revelation, the stills and photographs intended to market or exploit that beauty or illustrate those sensational stories, and the stories themselves, oft repeated and acquiring a peculiar emphasis, depending on the writer and the audience. There are also [John O'Dowd's] books, however, which regard her as more than a talent or beauty gone astray, but a human being whose life stopped short of the fullness that might have been hers, when happiness proved elusive and the pathways towards it often misleading. The poet said that the death of anyone diminished him, yet the identity of such a one as her, recovered from memory or the stills or movies, might also let us better understand what was lost. Thus, in the losing, something is found.
“Der Verlorene”
I saw "Der Verlorene" just once, many years ago, at a showing of the Temple University Cinemateque. We in the audience knew that it was rare, hence, the small theater was filled that evening. The film before us was dark and grim, the scientist emotionally isolated, like an animal in a cage in his laboratory. He was overseen by the state, which was using him, as he oversaw the animals. The distance between him and other people was immense, but he could not reach out to them, except to increase the distance by that much. The resolution had a certain inevitability, given its moral basis. Thus, the film was not one to enjoy, then, but to be understood.
Alice Terry
An actress luminous with an inner beauty, one which was displayed in such marvelous films as "The Conquering Power," "Mare Nostrum," and "The Magician," when she was the muse for Rex Ingraham. In life, she was somewhat bohemian, refreshingly pragmatic, but aware of a certain elusive transcendence. The films remain as an expression of what she sought and obtained, artistically.
“The Cat’s Paw”
I saw "The Cat's Paw" for the first time on television and wasn't especially impressed by it. It seemed to anticipate "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” but hadn’t the emotional appeal, I thought. When I saw it again, it was at a film convention. With an audience watching, it took fire. People laughed freely and seemed to enjoy themselves immensely. I've seen it since, always on my own, but now I regard it not only a good movie, but probably the best of Lloyd's sound films: witty script, deft plotting, and a clever character performance by Lloyd. I may like it even better than "Deeds."
Camilla Horn
Horn's success in "Faust" brought her delicate blonde beauty to Hollywood, where she appeared in "Tempest," directed by Sam Taylor, and Ernest Lubitsch's "Eternal Love." There was no call for the emotional rawness of her performance in "Faust," but there was sufficient authority in her playing to complement that of John Barrymore, her co-star in both pictures. Though a melodrama, "Eternal Love" has a truly stunning ending that redeems all that had gone before.
Part Two from Dan Mercer:
Nazimova
Nazimova was an exotic Russian beauty whose films were no less adventurous in style than was her private life. A product of the Moscow Art Theater, she brought passion and intensity to her acting, which made her a celebrated interpreter of Ibsen on the Broadway stage but was somewhat misplaced when the subject was a melodramatic one. Her films of "Camille" and "Salome" were much celebrated in certain circles but did not find the audience that would have made them commercial successes. A portrait of her for "Camille," however, which was taken when she was 42 years old, suggests how well she preserved the illusion of her beauty and youthful grace.
“Othello” (Welles)
What amazes me is that a film composed of bits and snatches--stolen moments, as it were--should have resulted in such an artistically consistent and brilliant composition.
Colleen Moore in “Why Be Good?”
I think Colleen Moore achieved everything in these few moments that the young Joan Crawford was striving for in all her Jazz baby movies. She’s wild, effervescent, and, knowing her as we do, just as good as she could be.
Louise Brooks in “Diary of a Lost Girl”
There was a transparency to that marvelous face, as to what she was thinking or feeling at any moment. The change in expression would be subtle but sudden, like quicksilver catching the light of day.
Barbara Payton
In many ways, she was a marvelous woman as well as a beautiful and talented actress. Something was broken inside of her, however, something which released appetites she couldn't control, least of all in the Hollywood environment. The predators there fed on human frailty.
“The Best Years of Their Lives”
There are several films that need to be seen, to appreciate "the greatest generation." "The Story of G.I. Joe" and "They Were Expendable" are two of them. "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" is another. But this film may be the best of them, in capturing what that generation yearned for and sought, when they returned home.
Carl Laemmle
He was among those who invented Hollywood, but the remnants of the wonder factory they created is now the province of lesser men, whose memories are short.
“Camille” (1921)
A film extraordinarily stylish yet not without heart for all its artifice, given Valentino's investment in it of his own. Nazimova becomes an affecting Camille for the passion of his Armand.
Cary Grant
Well, I thought Grant had lost perhaps an ounce of two of his charm in "Arsenic and Old Lace," but maybe I was distracted by the absence of Karloff.
Orson Welles
Odd, but even when his reputation had been largely restored as a director, he was still reduced to making films like "Chimes at Midnight" or "F is for Fake" on nickels and dimes scrounged from dubious sources. Somehow, the possibility of losing even a modest investment with such a self-described "renegade" froze the hand of Hollywood types midway between the vest and the pocket.
Elizabeth Short
Not an ordinary woman, even in a city that attracted beauty as though it was a commodity to be marketed. But it attracted predators as well, for whom beauty was fodder.
Thelma Todd
A blonde, Rubenesque beauty with charm and comedic ability, somehow sidetracked from a promising career by personal associations that may have led to her untimely death.
A text interview with Anita Garvin. She bristles when the interviewer asks if Stan and Babe ever disagreed, and then rips into the book "Hot Toddy" for its portrait of Thelma:
https://benny-drinnon.blogspot.com/2012/09/anita-garvin.html
Thanks for that link, Donald. I just read the interview, particularly liked Anita's recall of working with Mabel Normand. She must have been one of the last people alive who had first hand memory of being in a film alongside Mabel. Great stuff.
Holy cow, I'd forgotten that I watched The Professionals on TCM at least a decade ago, maybe more. My wife and I were impressed, just as we were with Point-Blank. I miss the time when homely actors were the leads.
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