Showmen Sell It Hot #6

 

Showmen: For a Few Dollars More and The Valley of Decision

FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965/1967) --- Nearly a year and a half elapsed between Italian release of For a Few Dollars More and its American open. Did this bespeak a lack of confidence? Turns out United Artists, as US distributor and financier on the second and third “Dollars” westerns, wanted to release all three over four-month intervals beginning in January 1967, like episodes of a TV program offered close enough together so patrons could recall each as they ate through the lot. For a Few Dollars was the middle one that improved upon the first, wickets-wise and artistically, while third and epic last (with Clint Eastwood) surpassed formers all-wise. Foreign grosses drove them, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly getting twice as much overseas ($12.3 million) as it realized stateside ($6.097). These pictures were not made so much for us as for other markets that responded more to a Yank vid actor suddenly an international sensation, but was it Eastwood or style Sergio Leone brought to the trio of new-fangled westerns? Brutal after fashion of James Bond, the Man with No Name was seen as period variation on 007. The Dollar man as embodied by Eastwood killed not only in cold blood but in bunches. Should the star weary as a lone act, there came Lee Van Cleef as even better recognized refugee off American frontiers, and from features, having menaced back to Gary Cooper in High Noon. Van Cleef swaps all that past for Dollars authority, so much for Eastwood to recognize and refer to Lee’s “Colonel Douglas Mortimer” as the “Old Man” whose greater experience he'll rely upon for planning next moves. They make a felicitous team and we like seeing both survive the end title. Col. Mortimer to my approval identifies his home state as “Carolina,” not which Carolina, though I’ll assume it’s North Carolina, the Colonel having fought honorably at Fredericksburg, Bull Run, other sites of Confederate victory.

Eastwood was identified on posters as “The Man with No Name,” but unless I’m mistaken, he had a name in all three Leones where he figured, even the last where Tuco dubs him “Blondie” for near-entirety of G,B,&U. To that last, we assume the “Bad” is Van Cleef and the “Ugly” Eli Wallach, for Van Cleef was never ugly in maturity, his hawk features distinct, ennobled, by maturity. There’s good reason we saw Van Cleef back, and back again, in a string of starring westerns extending well into the seventies. Was he a first among American players to become a bonafide star as ongoing anti-hero? Even Eastwood had to modify his act to get by in creamy-centered US westerns that fed off imports (see, or rather don’t see, Hang Em’ High). Amusing is the actor telling in offscreen chats how every ounce of sound for the Leones had to be post-dubbed, so frequent was distraction from unplanned noise on locations, plus most if not all support actors not knowing but one language, these movies meant to play in all markets worldwide, but wasn’t this every film’s reality by the sixties, and before? To my eye if not ears, For a Few Dollars plays smooth considering undoubted chaos to shoot it, let alone to apply dialogue. Faultless is structure, pace, these took for granted in stateside actioners, then comes Sergio Leone (who co-wrote) to surpass models he consulted, borrowed freely from. I place For a Few Dollars among fleetest 132-minute views I’ve lately had, one fun confrontation and/or killing(s) after another. We knew spaghettis for noses thumbed at convention plus punches too long pulled by American cowboys. Tuco’s deathless line in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly comes to mind, If you’re gonna shoot … shoot!

THE VALLEY OF DECISION (1945) --- Another for quick delivery to Radio City Music Hall. Certain shows were made for that address, being plush, lush, long, and star-studded. Greer Garson dominance of the Hall was known and an ongoing circumstance. House nut was high or MGM could just about have got their $2.1 million negative cost back from this one engagement. The Valley of Decision came from a novel by Alice Davenport, a music critic whose prior work was a Mozart biography before showing better aptitude for multi-generational family sagas, which this was and which readers wanted for way to spend leisure and share with bookish friends. Literary agent Maxwell Perkins is remembered best for backing Hemingway, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, but it was Davenports like Alice his company sat most comfortably on, sales she pulled topping novels critic-embraced, latter admittedly better regarded than Alice, but what mattered more than selling well there and then? Legacy as ever meant less than current cash. The Valley of Decision took 800 pages to finish. Who among us ever read a book that long? Not me so far, at least not a novel, maybe thick books of famed quotations which is like having a massive jar of M&M’s alongside to also savor. The Valley of Decision made for ideal movie to adapt so far as two hours took you, pick of most engaging generation from three (or was it four?) that Alice Davenport covered but most of which old hands at Metro would discard. I bet credited scribe John Lee Mahin never read a fraction of Davenport’s massive book, his job not to reason why it went so long, but to do or die at pulling ripest fruit from it, a job as efficiently done for somebody else having summarized the epic read for him. “The book was better” many would say, but even they knew impossibility of putting a thing so sprawling to film, a night out at the movies never meant to be all night out at the movies.

The Valley of Decision ran one minute under two hours. I watched Warner Archive’s Blu-Ray and liked there being no misunderstanding as to what the experience will be, us taking these best for knowing what we’ve got into, “Greer Garson” medicine we don’t expect to blanch on, as it’s gummy plus cherry-flavored in the bargain. Garson, MGM too, is for those who have stood duty in old movie trenches for most of viewing life. I rue the day when none such fanship is left, but know well it's coming. To Greer Garson followers: Ever feel you might end up the last of your kind standing? That sometimes comes to me with regards Deanna. Among Valley joys: Leo buying talent and spreading same like butter on toast. They pressbook-brag of “Hollywood’s Meanest Juvenile in (a) Big Role,” juvenile being Dan Duryea who probably hadn’t thought of himself quite that way, nor expected a part small and supporting as here, but bets are on his having got more money than Universal dreamed of giving for him having been even meaner. Gladys Cooper was a presumed free agent, she and her agent not having things so good since she, according to Metro blurb, stumbled by chance into movies. Contractees get colorful look-ins: Lionel Barrymore, Marsha Hunt, Marshall Thompson, Dean Stockwell, each able to “act” more here than for stock parts given with weekly checks for predictable effort. To that last, did G. Garson feel too much defined by Metro plow she had been pulling? I wrote her once in the eighties, address in Texas, to ask a series of questions about working with Gable on Adventure in 1945. She went down my list writing Yes, No, an occasional Maybe or Sometimes, to my inquiries. Single word replies to everything I asked. How does one but admire such brevity? Here’s last to speculate upon: The Valley of Decision was shipped by the War Department to service personnel throughout the world. Imagine sitting through it in undoubted valleys of death where every movie you saw might be a last you’d ever see. They say that for some of deepest jungle shows, the enemy would climb trees so they could watch too.