No problem, EC. I've been terrible in responding to you in a reasonable time period.
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Oh, but you've never gone YEARS. Hah.
I run into trouble when I "open up" to messages on these boards. So I simply have to remember to "cruise" boards other than that motel movie(hah) and look for replies. Perhaps you can tell me on THAT board if you've replied on another? But that might impose. "We shall continue."
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As a director, John Huston peaked early on. Like so many gifted directors he thrived in the old Hollywood, the studio system, and in an interview I saw with him he praised the old studio moguls (whom he detested in his youth) to the skies when compared to the money men of today (probably about thirty years ago). Huston claimed that the studio chiefs were, by comparison, Renaissance princes, patrons of the arts! They loved making movies, loved Hollywood, loved actors, loved the excitement of it all.
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Its the speech of every older director/actor who worked with them(few still exist), usually with this clarification(paraphrased): "They were uneducated vulgarians, but they CARED about movies! They lived movies! Now its just lawyers, agents, CPAS and bean counters."
Well, Huston worked under THOSE corporate bean counter guys from about 1963 on, and there are a lot of mediocre works. But HE worked. All the time.
Still, what's it matter given what he did from 1941 TO 1963?
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As to Orson Welles, he'd become too unreliable to hire even for acting roles by 1970 or thereabouts. What he got later in his career were scraps from the table, charity parts, though he was good and quite funny in the Henry Jaglom film he appeared in (as himself).
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There's a slim volume of Q and As(probably from taped lunches) between Jaglom and Welles that came out this year. I"ve "bookstore browsed it" and Welles comes off as "just this guy" who once towered over Hollywood. By the time he hung with Jaglom, he was really just another man with an opinion about the movies. But a well-informed one.
Some irony: for a few years near the end, Welles lived as the houseguest of Peter Bogdanovich and his girlfriend Cybill Shepard. Welles NEEDED the room and board. And many years later after Welles died, Bogdo's career tanked(Cybill long gone), he went bankrupt, and evidently HE roomed with a movie pal. But Bogdo's career has been "righted" in recent years. He writes books, appears on DVDs occasionally acts.
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He was like royalty surrounded by peasants. There was a dashing quality to him even in his later years. He came to such a sad end, but at least he was remembered when he died. It was a big news story. There always seemed to be a black cloud hanging over Welles, but the cloud was, sadly, Welles himself.
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Yep. Well, I certainly love the few of his directed films I have seen. LOVE them. Great voice. And he's in "The Kremlin Letter." With Richard Boone. Directed by John Huston. (Boone and Welles have one scene together where they don't interact much, Welles is on the phone to Patrick O'Neal, but I wonder: was Richard Boone impressed to be working with Orson Welles in any capacity? I'd like to hope so)
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Richard Boone was a somewhat self-defeating man, too, but not so extreme as Welles.
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The "vanity press biography" book I have about Richard Boone is a great book, but his friends are very frank: he had a drinking problem in that last decade. But then so did William Holden and Lee Marvin and all three men...perservered. They died rather young(63 for all three, I think!), but were all living life well at the end. All of them could clearly still act; its their features that deteriorated.
And I'll be frank: drinking problems are sometimes just a lifestyle thing. Especially at the end. William Holden's son went on a TV documentary and said "Well, we all knew he drank, but he felt that he had to, and he was actually a very happy man when he was drinking."
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He at least handled his financial affairs well and managed to find work, if not work that challenged him artistically.
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Yep. It intrigues me that while he turned down a few major movies, Boone worked regularly in TV movies; two or three a year. Must have paid enough to keep him going. He famously said that HGWT made him "my go to hell money, I never have to work again."
Though -- in that biography -- his son told one of those sad Hollywood stories of Boone "making the rounds" at some studios in the seventies...and the young execs didn't know who he WAS! Boone came back from that trip depressed(but the older guys DID know who he was, tried to hire him.)
Of the TV movies, I promote -- again and again and again -- the delightful "Goodnight My Love," a Raymond Chandler take-off made on the big cheap, but elevated by Boone's great deadpan and Victor Buono as Sydney Greenstreet(plus Michael Dunn as Boone's little man partner.)
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I really think it was the failure of his one season anthology TV series that broke Boone's heart. It was like the love of his life, like a beautiful woman, the girl of his dreams; and he lost her. He even hired the ill and aging Clifford Odets to work with him on the series.
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All word is that Boone was flat-out infuriated by the cancellation of that show. What enraged him was that the networks had BEGGED him to do season after season of HGWT -- but could dump his "labor of love" after one season with no loyalty at all.
Off to Hawaii he went. And then Florida, where he died. He swore he would never buy a house in Hollywood again.
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I think that Boone was influenced by Dick Powell, who'd enjoyed some success with an anthology series for a couple of years prior to his death. Boone even appeared in an episode.
Powell died of cancer in the middle of his show's second season, thus Powell and that series remains a great "what might have been". After thirty years in Hollywood, Powell went out a winner, died at the peak of his career and influence.
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Yes, I understand Powell made all kinds of deals for and with stars and directors. He helped negotiate letting Steve McQueen off his TV show to do The Magnificent Seven, for instance.
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If it hadn't been for Powell it's unlikely that such gifted individuals as Roy Huggins, Blake Edwards or Sam Peckinpah would have succeeded as they did.
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Yes, they ran some Dick Powells in the seventies(hell, they are probably on YOuTUbe now) and one was a funny modern Western directed by Peckinpah and starring Lee Marvin. I saw that years ago.
Also on his anthology, Dick Powell lived long enough to play the lead in ...the pilot for "Burke's Law!" I just remembered this. I saw it in re-runs. Powell played Burke as less of a sexy ladies man than Gene Barry would, but the format was the same: opening murder, all-star whodunit. Whodunnit? -- DEAN JONES(The Love Bug)..as Burke's assistant!
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King of prime time (in his heyday) Aaron Spelling said he owed "everything" to Dick Powell, whom he succeeded as head of Four Star productions when the latter died. But I'm digressing: even Dick Powell could not have changed the course of history. TV anthology series were soon to go into a steep decline, and the ratings failure of Boone's grade A effort was emblematic of that decline.
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Yep. "The problem with anthologies" we are told, is that they generate no audience loyalty for a main character or cast. Oh, well. The Twlight Zone, Hitchcock and Thriller perhaps showed that genre was the way to win.
That vanity bio of Richard Boone has a recap of every episode of his series; some of them sound great. And the author swears that Boone's "Mafia Man" character in one episode was Brando's influence for The Godfather(Brando and Boone were pals.)
I must find it! I will find it!
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As to Boone the actor, he did seem to move away from those more dramatic, rich voiced portrayals characteristic of him through the run of Have Gun Will Travel, as he slipped into a folksier persona; broader, more flamboyant, just as appealing in its way, though lacking the incisiveness of the earlier Boone.
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Yes, I can see where the flamboyant cracker barrel Boone was in some ways a rejection of the more commanding fellow of his early career. But boy was that later guy fun. I could watch his scenes in Kremlin Letter on a continuous loop for two hours.
I'm reminded of two other actors who radically "changed their acting style" like Boone did:
Our friend Anthony Perkins. And in a BAD way. The delicate, measured performance of Perkins as Norman Bates in 1960 yielded, by the 80's and the sequels, to a robotic, stilted, sing-song vocal pattern that Perkins seems to have affected and couldn't shake. Boone and Perkins appear(but not together) in Winter Kills(1979) and the aged Boone's folksiness works -- Perkins robot routine does not.
Al Pacino. The stoic, low-key, brooding, borderline BORING Michael Corleone becomes -- HOO-WAH! -- this yelling, roaring comedy ham in Scarface, Carlito's Way, everything. BUt I love Pacino this way. HE's kind of like Richard Boone became: flamboyant and fun, in love with saying lines "his way."
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I saw one of the weirdest films Boone ever appeared in, I Bury the Living, a couple of years ago, and which he must have made just prior to taking on the role of Paladin. It's a low key horror movie and it co-stars Theodore Bikel as a Scotsman! Spoiler ahead: Boone's use of his voice near the end, as he tries to calm down the agitated Bikel is so authoritative and intelligent if one closed one's eyes one might think it was a psychiatrist speaking.
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Yes, I own that one, can't say I watch it a lot. Great Twilight Zone premise: Boone's a funeral director who puts white pins in a map of gravesites for "live" customers before they die; then he puts black pins in the map when they die. He runs out of white pins for the living, uses the black pins instead -- and those people DIE right after he puts the black pin in! Hey, wow. (Its not supernatural though; I think gravedigger Bikel is killing them; can't remember why.)
But then came HGWT(courtesy of Randolph Scott saying no to it) and history.
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And another thing: look at most of Boone's movies from 1964 on, and he's about 50/50 good guys(The War Lord, The Arrangement) and bad guys(Hombre, Big Jake, Kremin Letter, Night of the Following Day, The SHootist.) Boone had a great career as a bad guy; its lucrative because so few actors of stature will play villains.
John Travolta's played a lot of villains lately -- that's how he keeps getting big bucks -- but some years ago, Travolta was rumored for a Have Gun Will Travel movie. Might have worked. Travolta's charismatic in his own way(high voice, though, no Boone there.)
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Yet by the time he took on the role of Cicero Grimes in Hombre Boone's acting style and vocal mannerisms had changed considerably. He had considerable gravitas in that film, and all things considered, probably gave the best performance in the movie.
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He does rather own it...coming in late and taking over. The movie has a great role for Paul Newman, but I always feel Newman "working hard" to capture his taciturn cold cut of a man. Fredric March was a fine actor, but doesn't really get much to BE in Hombre. So, yeah..Boone.
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Yet it was the kind of performance Burt Ives gave in films like The Big Country. Ives could have played the part, and probably have done almost as well as Boone, as it was a role written for a certain kind of actor.
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Yeah, Ives had a big presence, too, and a big voice. One thing he lacked that Boone had in Hombre was...sexuality. There's a somewhat stagey scene in Hombre where a pretty young lass comes on to Boone because he's more macho than her weakling husband...Boone kisses her as if he's raping her, she freaks out, and its hot and heavy stuff. Ives I'm not so sure would have worked there. But he would have worked as a commanding outlaw.
Note in passing: Burl Ives was the first choice for the Bond villain "Largo" in "Thunderball." The part ended up rather unforgettably played by that blond Italian with the eyepatch(Adolfo Celi)...but Celi was unforgettable as a TYPE, not as an actor.
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Five years after Hombre I can imagine Boone playing Big Daddy as well as Ives did in a TV version of Cat On a Hot Tin Roof. But the times were a-changin' again after 1970, and folksy actors (and comedians, such as Red Skelton) were going out of style. Big city ethnic types were in, as Telly Savalas and Peter Falk ruled as TV detectives in much the same way actors like Richard Boone and Ward Bond ruled as westerners ten or fifteen years earlier.
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Yeah...I guess you could say that Boone lucked into a fortune in the TV Western era...and then lucked out when urban came in.
Boone had a good quote about Paladin, btw, though he never acted on it. He claimed when HGWT was at its peak that "if the Western goes out of style, we can just change Paladin to a modern day private eye; or a scuba diver adventurer -- the part travels through time."
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My guess is that Boone sensed this, which is one of the many reasons he drifted away from the mainstream during his last ten years. He could find work if he wanted it, but he didn't need it, had made good investments, was free to do as he pleased.
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That's proven, I think, by how easily Boone turned down The Sting...and then how easily he took "The Shootist" with John Wayne, saying "I'll always come work for John Wayne, he's the only guy who I'd leave Hawaii to work for." I don't think they were big political pals, just old time manly men who knew the times were changing on them.
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Since he knew he couldn't "save" television, there was almost no point in working except to keep busy.
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Yep. But he's really fun in "Goodnight My Love." Its a lifeless, deadpan performance with LIFE to it. I have no idea how he did it.
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I'm guessing, too, that Boone knew he wasn't right for The Sting, Chinatown, Jaws or most other mainstream pictures. In The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three Walter Matthau had the Richard Boone role. Richard Boone as a New York City public transit cop! I can't see that. Charley Varrick, maybe, but he was aging fast and badly by then, as hnis heavy boozing was ruining his looks.
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Hah. You bring in another of my favorites -- Matthau. I suppose here I reveal -- from a young age -- a preference for men with middle-aged gravitas and wryness to the younger moody beauties.
Hey..Boone could have played the Robert Shaw VILLAIN in "Pelham." After all, Shaw took Boone's role in The Sting(and hey, JOHN TRAVOLTA played the villain in the remake.)
It occurs to me that at the movies, Robert Shaw rather did replace Richard Boone as a "type" -- and a bigger, more bankable star. (Shaw died a lot younger than Boone, though.)
---Two miracles that might have saved Boone's flagging career: if either Clint Eastwood or Burt Reynolds had gone out of their way to hire Boone; and of course this assumes admiration on one or the other man's part (I mean Clint or Burt). Richard Boone as a senior villain, mentor or both (he'd have been great as both) might have revived interest in him, made him "hip" again. Boone could have used a boost like that, and it might have brought him back to prominence.
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Well, I tell you what: he had a definite shot at one of them, and the STAR vetoed him.
Get this: Richard Boone was Universal's first choice to play the other role in "Smokey and the Bandit." And that was the second biggest hit of 1977 after Star Wars(Richard Boone -- missed out on The Sting and Smokey and the Bandit).
In his autobiography, Burt Reynolds writes, strangely, "Universal wanted Richard Boone -- who I adore -- as an actor -- but I wanted to lure Jackie Gleason to do it."
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In that vanity biography, Richard Boone's son(an only,beloved child) says that his father died too young at 63 of a cancer that the son believed could have been cured if caught sooner. The son goes on to say that at age 63, his dad had a good ten more years as a character guy, but didn't get them.
One wonders what roles would have worked? But the variables of drink and facial decay and weight...
...its good we've got Boone as we have him.
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telegonus
10 years ago
I remember that TV movie with Boone being heavily advertized at the time it was first broadcast, missed it then, have never seen it. It got good reviews. They were doing a lot of high quality made fors in those days. 1969-74 was the golden age of the TV movie (or have we discussed this before?). They were like the B units of the major studios of old, and at their best some of those made fors were as good as many if not most movies you'd see in the theaters. Some were shown in the theater elsewhere (such as Spielberg's Duel). A few of them, such as Crowhaven Farm, have cult followings. I saw that when it was first broadcast. They did horror and sci-fi very well in that format, and they even did a few westerns and detective stories. Nor were they retro in the least. They were very up to date, state of the art. Some, more so than what was raking in the dough at the box-office (Airport, Love Story), the disaster flicks. They were both the elephant's graveyard and salvation for many over the hill TV and movie stars, a great place to tread water, a TV movie, especially for guys like Robert Stack, David Janssen and yes, Richard Boone. I've always thought it was a pity the TV movie got upgraded started with I believe QB Something, from a Leon Uris novel; and then, the deluge, first, Rich Man, Poor Man, then Roots, and it was pretty much over for the small scale "quality" TV movie.
In a way those movies of the week replaced the anthology shows, which were dying off just as the first made fors were coming out (1964). The first one I saw, The Hanged Man, was directed by not yet cult favorite Don Siegel. It starred Robert Culp, Edmond O'Brien, Brenda Scott, J. Carrol Naish and our old friend Vera Miles, who did her share of television, often picking choice roles. This was one of them. The film was a remake of the Robert Mongomery-directed Ride the Pink Horse (1947), which is a cult classic (for some,--I'm cool on it), and it's far superior in my opinuion. The pace, the narrative drive of the TV remake just rocks. I usually hate remakes on principle, especially of black and white films "of a certain age" (I couldn't care less if they remade The Godvfather or Rocky ) . Then there's the Siegel remake of The Killers, made around the same time, which has a cult reputation all its own despite its being a remake of one of the best noirs of all time. I so love the 1946 version I find the one with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Clu Gulager and Ronald Reagan, flat. I like Reagan's performance, though. Good exit line for that one, but the Siodmak is sublime. To return to anthologies, I think that the later ones needed a "hook" to succeed (Hitchcock, Serling, the weird opening of The Outer Limits). Earlier, before Hollywood had totally taken over the production end of television, live anthologies abounded, and many got high ratings, including the one hosted by the aforementioned Robert Montgomery. I saw a few when I was very young, remember how impressive they were,--they played like real events, and held up on videotape in reruns early on--but they were largely gone by 1960. Mary Martin's yearly Peter Pan was an exception; and I believe she did it live every year, and that it was broadcast in color long before color became the norm. Ah, those were the days !
There much more to say on these and other topics but I'm not at home, am using a public computer...
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ecarle
10 years ago
I remember that TV movie with Boone being heavily advertized at the time it was first broadcast, missed it then, have never seen it. It got good reviews.
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It can be found on the internet. I've watched it a time or two. It is very small, but exceedingly stylish and well written. Boone and Victor Buono demonstrate how to turn a "little movie" into a big one simply by reading their pages of dialogue with relish. There's not much action in "Goodnight My Love"(there was no budget for it), so the whole thing runs on lines, acting charisma and some visual style(the movie got Peter Hyams his oddball "major" movie career -- Capricorn One, Outland, The Star Chamber...)
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They were doing a lot of high quality made fors in those days. 1969-74 was the golden age of the TV movie (or have we discussed this before?).
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Probably. But why not again?
My memory about the "ABC Movie of the Week" is a memory of how, when I was young and easily excited and hormonal, etc -- those damn TV movies played like MOVIES to me. The opener was called "Seven In Darkness" and it was a cheap, tiny "disaster movie"(Seven blind people in a plane crash walk out of the wildnerness...and onto a rickety bridge with a hole in the middle.) But it felt like The Towering Inferno to me the first time I saw it. I was young.
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They were like the B units of the major studios of old, and at their best some of those made fors were as good as many if not most movies you'd see in the theaters. Some were shown in the theater elsewhere (such as Spielberg's Duel). A few of them, such as Crowhaven Farm, have cult followings. I saw that when it was first broadcast.
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"The Night Stalker"(vampire stalks Las Vegas) was another hit in horror. And our pal Joseph Stefano survived by writing a few. "HOme for the HOlidays" was one -- Walter Brennan, Sally Field...horror?
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They did horror and sci-fi very well in that format, and they even did a few westerns and detective stories. Nor were they retro in the least. They were very up to date, state of the art.
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They even managed to generate some "new Golden age of television" controversy and relevance: "That Certain Summer"(Hal Holbrook reveals he's gay to wife and son); "Tribes"(hippie Jan Michael Vincent faces Army DI Darren McGavin) "Someone I Touched"(a husband brings home venereal disease from a hooker, to his wife.)
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Some, more so than what was raking in the dough at the box-office (Airport, Love Story), the disaster flicks. They were both the elephant's graveyard and salvation for many over the hill TV and movie stars, a great place to tread water, a TV movie, especially for guys like Robert Stack, David Janssen and yes, Richard Boone.
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And there was an actor " a bit below" those guys who seemed to be in every tV movie ever made: William Windom.
I suppose as long as royalties were coming in and investments were made, doing one or two TV movies a year was all that a Richard Boone or David Janssen really needed to "stay in the game." I have no idea what a "name" TV star was paid for one of those. $100,000 maybe? Though Boone did character parts in movies around the same time(The Kremlin Letter, Big Jake.)
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I've always thought it was a pity the TV movie got upgraded started with I believe QB Something, from a Leon Uris novel; and then, the deluge, first, Rich Man, Poor Man, then Roots, and it was pretty much over for the small scale "quality" TV movie.
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Well, that was the start of the mini-series and frankly -- with the coming of HBO and cable, suddenly "movies of the week" were passé: REAL movies could be viewed on TV shortly after theatrical release.
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In a way those movies of the week replaced the anthology shows, which were dying off just as the first made fors were coming out (1964). The first one I saw, The Hanged Man, was directed by not yet cult favorite Don Siegel.
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Yes, NBC(and Lew Wasserman's Universal) began the movie of the week idea well ahead of ABC...but they didn't run one every WEEK. (That's the difference.)
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(The Hanged Man) starred Robert Culp, Edmond O'Brien, Brenda Scott, J. Carrol Naish and our old friend Vera Miles, who did her share of television, often picking choice roles.
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Look at Vera Miles imdb list and behold: she moved effortlessly from some big movies like Psycho and The FBI Story right into a SLEW of TV work, didn't matter to her. I think she made a lot of money, lived in Malibu.
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This was one of them. The film was a remake of the Robert Mongomery-directed Ride the Pink Horse (1947), which is a cult classic (for some,--I'm cool on it), and it's far superior in my opinuion. The pace, the narrative drive of the TV remake just rocks. I usually hate remakes on principle, especially of black and white films "of a certain age" (I couldn't care less if they remade The Godvfather or Rocky ) .
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I must take a look at this. I vaguely remember the broadcast, as a kid.
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Then there's the Siegel remake of The Killers, made around the same time, which has a cult reputation all its own despite its being a remake of one of the best noirs of all time. I so love the 1946 version I find the one with Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Clu Gulager and Ronald Reagan, flat. I like Reagan's performance, though. Good exit line for that one, but the Siodmak is sublime.
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The Killers was intended as the first TV movie, with Lee Marvin as a hit man, Angie Dickinson as a moll, and RONALD REAGAN as a crime boss -- that was deemed too violent for TV and shipped to theaters. It was a hit. I love it, small though IT is. On the other hand, it DOES smack of "flat" Universal backlot production and has little noir feel to it. (Tarantino, it DOES emulate a bit.)
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To return to anthologies, I think that the later ones needed a "hook" to succeed (Hitchcock, Serling, the weird opening of The Outer Limits). Earlier, before Hollywood had totally taken over the production end of television, live anthologies abounded, and many got high ratings, including the one hosted by the aforementioned Robert Montgomery. I saw a few when I was very young, remember how impressive they were,--they played like real events, and held up on videotape in reruns early on--but they were largely gone by 1960. Mary Martin's yearly Peter Pan was an exception; and I believe she did it live every year, and that it was broadcast in color long before color became the norm. Ah, those were the days !
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Those were the days. But they are back. A lot of film is on the internet, or kinescopes of live broadcasts. Its amazing how the past is present -- I just know I'll find "The Richard Boone Show" soon.
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There much more to say on these and other topics but I'm not at home, am using a public computer...
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OK, looking forward. Look how fast I found your post THIS time!
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