Review by Ralph Schiller

Octaman (1972) is an English-language, Mexican-American co-production of Filmer Guild Productions and Heritage Enterprises Inc. It was released in Mexico on November 3, 1971 and to television in the United States by Heritage Enterprises Inc. in 1973. It was filmed in something called HorrorColor, and shot in a widescreen process. The running time is 79 minutes. It was directed by Harry Essex, who wrote the screenplay. The producer was Michael Kraike. The film score was by Post Production Associates. Octaman was filmed entirely in Los Angeles at Griffith Park, and Bronson Canyon with interiors at Universal studios.  Octaman is a wretched, poor man’s version of the classic science-fiction movie Creature Of The Black Lagoon (1954). Surprisingly, a still beautiful and young-looking Pier Angeli gives a good performance in a film unworthy of her great talent. It is her last movie.  Scientists discover that radiation fallout from years of atomic bomb testing has created mutants in the animal kingdom. In Mexico, American scientist Dr. Rick Torres (Kerwin Mathews) and lovely assistant Susan Lowery (Pier Angeli) discover the local waters are contaminated by radiation. Lab technician Mort (Norman Fields) captures a small mutant squid from a local pond that makes whistling sounds like a dolphin. It’s the offspring of a seven-foot tall, half-man, half-octopus, Octaman (the credits claim Octaman plays himself!). The creature walks out of the water onto dry land and rescues its crying infant. Carlos (Wally Rose) is killed and Mort injured. Dr. Torres returns to America seeking funds for a new expedition but is laughed at by the scientific community. Torres then makes a bargain with carnival owner Johhny Caruso (Jerome Giardino) to capture Ocataman alive for his circus.  Dr. Torres, Susan, Johnny and his cowboy wranglers return to Mexico in a large recreational vehicle camper. An Indian boy Davido (David Essex) guides the party to a lake where legend says Octaman lurks. While Torres and his men search the lake, the creature attacks the camp. When Octaman is blind-sided by Susan’s beauty, Johnny fires his pistol and the creature returns to the lake. With the men searching the lake, Octaman returns to carry off Susan in two of his six arms! Rick rescues Susan by using gasoline to create a circle of fire. The creature faint as the flames deprive him of oxygen. The creature escapes and traps the entire party in a cave. Davido leads them out of the cave, but Octaman ambushes them at the RV camper. Susan, remembering the fairy tale Beauty And The Beast, saves Rick’s life, by letting Octaman carry her to the lake. Rick, Johnny, and Davido surround the monster who drops Susan. They open fire with shotguns and pistols to mortally wound the creature. Octaman staggers to the lake where he drops below the surface to a watery grave. Octaman is one of the worst monster movies ever made. The entire budget for this epic misfire was a measly $250,000 when minor American made-for-TV-movies were produced for $400,000! With so little money for special effects the creature’s costume looks ridicules making children who saw this movie die laughing! Octaman had no release to American movie theatres, and went directly to local television channels in 1973 as part of a package of cheap action movies. Harry Essex wrote and directed Octaman, copying from his own magnificent screenplay for Creature From The Black Lagoon. Essex’s writing and direction were crippled by the film’s tiny budget. Essex previously wrote the screenplays for a second science-fiction classic It Came From Outer Space (1953), and an excellent mystery movie I, The Jury (1953), which he expertly directed. He died in 1997. Octaman was not enhanced by a stock musical score from Post Production Associates. Beginner Rick Baker, with no money to work with, did the film’s poor special effects and created the threadbare Octaman costume. Baker later became Hollywood’s finest make-up and special effects artist, and to date has won seven Academy Award Oscars. Kerwin Mathews is the leading man of Octaman, and gives a good performance in this dismal movie as dedicated scientist Dr. Rick Torres. Although both their careers had seen better days, Mathews and co-star Pier Angeli work well together in Octaman. They had co- starred in the excellent OSS 117 espionage film Panic In Bangkok/Shadow Of Evil (1964). Kerwin Mathews won immortal fame starring in three superb, fantasy-adventure films, The 7 th Voyage Of Sinbad (1958), The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver (1960), and Jack The Giant Killer (1962). He played agent OSS 117 twice. Kerwin Mathews retired after a few more films and died in 2007. To her credit, Pier Angeli gives a straight performance in Octaman as Dr. Torres’ lover and assistant Susan Lowry (with her Italian accent). Always the professional screen actress, she gives everything she has to make this disaster believable. Pier Angeli enjoys top billing in Octaman over co-star Kerwin Mathews, and is as beautiful as ever in her last movie looking a good ten years younger than her age. Even the monster Octaman is no fool, carrying off gorgeous Pier Angeli every chance he gets! Neither her or co-star Kerwin Mathews can save this hopeless film but they distinguish themselves in it by making it watchable for audiences. Octaman was Pier Angeli’s first Hollywood film in fifteen years after career exile in European movies. According to Jane Allen’s excellent biography Pier Angeli, A Fragile Life, Anna Maria Pierangeli’s salary for Octaman was just $5000.00, which was her weekly salary at MGM in the 1950’s when she was a top Hollywood film star. Loyal friends Debbie Reynolds and Agnes Moorhead welcomed her back, and helped find her work. Although Octaman is a stinker with her career hitting rock bottom, Pier Angeli proved to Hollywood that her looks had not faded, and that she was ready, willing, and able to work again in the industry professionally. Tragically Octaman is the last Pier Angeli film. By the time the film was released to Mexican movie theatres in November 1971, she was already dead at age thirty-nine. Pier Angeli might well have enjoyed a comeback with guest-starring roles on major television dramas, starring roles in made-for-TV movies, with supporting roles in mini-series, and theatrical movies. In spite of Octaman, Pier Angeli’s legacy of thirty-three motion pictures is a great body of work.

Review by Ralph Schiller

Quell' Amore Particolare (1970), is an Italian-language film produced by Nadimar Productions. It was released in Italy by Compass Film on June 17, 1970. Quell' Amore Particolare was filmed in Eastmancolor and shot in a wide-screen process with a running time of 82 minutes. It was written, produced, and directed by Carlo Martinelli who mysteriously died shortly after filming had begun. The film's star Enrico Maria Salerno unofficially directed and completed the production. Carlo Savino composed a superior musical score for the film. Quell' Amore Particolare (English translation: That Particular Love) is a bizarre and confusing erotic thriller. Beyond the shadow of a doubt it is also the strangest film of Pier Angeli's entire career. In Livorno late at night, beautiful Cecilia (billed with her birth name Anna Maria Pierangeli) enjoys a hot shower. A young man Paolo Santi (Jean Guy Ruff) quietly creeps into the bathroom,Cecilia is terrified and Paolo uses physical force to carry a fighting Cecilia to their bedroom. Cecilia finally gives in to her passion for Paolo for a night of bliss and a relationship begins. Paolo's widower father, Manlio Santi (Enrico Maria Salerno) works many long hours at his successful antique shop.Manlio never stopped grieving for his deceased wife, Paolo's mother. A portrait on the wall reveals that her likeness is identical to Cecilia! One evening Cecilia and Paolo indulge themselves playing violent, sadistic-masochistic sexual games. Manlio wearily returns to the big house he shares with Cecilia and Paolo, only to find his son crying his eyes out. Paolo confesses to accidentally strangling Cecilia while performing the sex act! Instead of reporting the killing to police, Manlio visits a criminal attorney friend (Gustavo D'Arpe) and asks for advice on how to save his sniveling son. The lawyer informs Manlio that, short of his confessing to killing Cecilia himself, there is no legal hope. Manlio then sees his beloved family priest Don Vincenzo (Renato Chiantoni) to ask for guidance. After Don Vicenzo offers him sympathy and nothing else, Manlio goes to a local restaurant where he gets himself drunk. Paolo, wracked with guilt, goes to see a former girlfriend (Sheila Rossin) who offers him sex. Instead he nearly strangles her! Paolo see the owner of a local pool hall (Giuliano Raffaelli) who offers the boy protection if he becomes his lover. Instead Paolo rejects his advances. At the restaurant Manlio is picked-up by a blonde-wigged prostitute (Anna Goel) who takes him home with her. Manlio passes out without touching her but later pays her off when he leaves. Paolo leaves a suicide note for Manlio to prevent him for taking the blame for Cecilia's killing. Before dying, Paolo fantasizes about being reunited with Cecilia in a holy wedding and honeymoon. The film ends. Quell' Amore Particolare is a dark, disturbing, and frequently inexplicable Italian "Giallo" motion picture. Remarkably this curious movie was actually well-produced and shot in beautiful Eastmancolor. It also contains fine performances by the cast especially Enrico Maria Salerno as the sad, tortured father, Manlio. Salerno also capably directed the film when director Carlo Martinelli died early in production. Unfortunately Martinelli's flawed screenplay is so illogical that it confounds the audience. Pier Angeli does very little in Quelle' Amore Particolare except to appear nude or wear scantily-clad lingerie. The still-ravishing Anna Maria (looking ten years younger than her age of 38) is killed off just twenty-eight minutes into the film with only a brief appearance at the conclusion. Quell' Amore Particolare was a major career comedown for a once, big Hollywood movie star. On top of that Enrico Maria Salerno enjoys top billing above the title while Anna Maria Pierangeli is billed second below the title. Remember that actors must eat as well. Thank heavens that Quell' Amore Particolare is not the last Pier Angeli film! Note: Quell' Amore Particolare was never released in the US or overseas. It seems that this obscure film never played in Italian movie theatres. It was telecast only once late-night on an Italian television network.

Review by Ralph Schiller

In the Folds Of The Flesh (original Italian title, Nelle Pieghe Della Carne) is an Italian-Spanish co-production by MGB Cinematografia-Talia Films. It was filmed in widescreen EastmanColor with a running time of 92 minutes. It was produced and directed by Sergio Bergonzelli, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Fabio De Agostini, based on an idea by Mario Cajono and De Agostini. The musical score was composed by Jesus Villa Rojo. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, In The Folds Of The Flesh is by far the most bizarre, and horrifying film starring one-time, top Hollywood movie star Pier Angeli. This "Giallo" epic is plagued with a confusing, convoluted story which confounds the comprehension of movie audiences! The film opens with the title card: "What has been remains imbedded in the brain, nestled in the folds of the flesh, distorted it conditions and subconsciously impels" - Freud After that ambiguous quote this contemporary story is set in a medieval castle on the Italian coast. The housekeeper Lucille (Eleonora Rossi Drago, made-up to look identical to horror/Giallo star Barbara Steele) buries the dead body of her master Andre Gardare on the grounds of the estate. The moonlit burial is witnessed by Pascal (Fernando Sancho) a fugitive on the run from the police. After thirteen years, Pascal is released from prison and returns to blackmail the family. The castle he encounters is an evil house of secrets with pet vultures on the premises. Lucille lives with Andre's daughter Falesse (billed Anna Maria Pierangeli even in the English-language version, and wearing a blonde wig) a violent nymphomaniac who makes passionate love to her own brother Colin (Emilio Gutierrez Caba). At gunpoint Pascal demands a large amount of money or he will show the body to the police. Colin digs for the body and the lecherous Pascal rapes the two women not knowing that Falesse previously had murdered and butchered two men after making love to them because of a traumatic childhood assault. Falesse instead enjoys being violently assaulted by the lusty Pascal and doesn't kill him! When Pascal indulges in a childish bubble bath, Colin kills him by dropping two cyanide pills in the bathtub causing instant death. Lucille and Colin use an elaborate acid bath to dissolve his dead body just like they did all the others. A stranger appears (Alfredo Mayo) at the castle claiming to be Andre, and demanding to see his daughter Falesse. After seeing her he declares that she is not Falesse but an imposter. Andre is a police inspector and says that the real Mr. Gardare died in prison years ago. Lucille admits Falesse is actually her own daughter Ester wearing a blonde wig as a disguise. The real, beautiful, blonde-haired Falesse (Maria Rosa Sclauzero) has been unjustly locked-up in an insane asylum while Lucille and her evil brood spend her inheritance. The police close-in for arrests but Lucille commits suicide by swallowing one of her own cyanide pills. Colin and Ester (without her blonde wig) are taken into custody for a series of gruesome murders. Falesse is now free from the dark evil shadows of her family to enjoy her life of wealth. In The Folds Of The Flesh is for true afficionados of the "Giallo" genre even though the film's many bloody, gruesome, and sadistic killings appalled movies audiences then and now. Three men are slaughtered onscreen, a woman dies in agony from cyanide, an innocent dog and vulture are inexplicably slain for sport, and decapitated human heads are found inside the castle! On top of that In The Folds Of The Flesh also contains shocking black & white flashbacks from World War Two of a young Lucille witnessing the execution of dozens of nude women, including her own mother, in the gas chamber of a Nazi deathcamp! Anna Maria Pierangeli is heartbreaking as the psychotic, nympho Falesse/Ester but her superior performance is wasted in this sick, exploitation film in which she does degrading nude scenes. For nearly the entire film, Pierangeli wears a terrible, ill-fitting, blonde wig that looked better on Harpo Marx! Finally at the end she removes it to show her trademark, lovely, cascading, raven-hair! For the English-language version, the producers were too cheap to pay Anna Maria Pierangeli to return and dub her own voice. Unlike Anna Maria Pierangeli's previous film, the cheaply made Viva America!, In The Folds Of The Flesh, is a major motion picture with a handsome budget distinguished by the first-rate professional direction of Sergio Bergonzelli. The film is enhanced by an eerie, suspenseful film score composed by Jesus Villa Rojo. The cinematography is gorgeous with the interior scenes were shot at the De Paolis Studios in Rome. The screenplay by Bergonzelli and his fellow writers is a disaster, and nothing more than a wretched, incoherent mess used as an excuse for a graphic orgy of violence. This was the last movie for Italian film star Eleonora Rossi Drago. Anna Maria Pierangeli's career hit rock bottom with In The Folds Of The Flesh, her 31st movie. This film was never released to U.S. theaters which spared Anna Maria great humiliation in Hollywood's eyes. Pier Angeli made just two more films before her tragic death. Thankfully both were better than In The Folds Of The Flesh.

Review by Ralph Schiller

Addio Alexandra (AKA Love Me, Love My Wife 1969) is an Italian production from Intercontinental Arts that was filmed entirely in Rotterdam, Holland. It was released in Italy by Paramount Pictures on October 16,1969. It was filmed in Kodakolor, and shot in a wide-screen process with a running time of 89 minutes. It was directed by Enzo Battaglia ,who co-wrote the story and screenplay with Guido Leoni. It was produced by the film's leading man, Glenn Saxson under his true name Roel Bos. Addio Alexandra is enhanced by Piero Piccioni's lush film score. In the United States an English-language, dubbed version with the title Love Me, Love My Wife was released by International Arts, and an Italian-language version by Moonstone Films both in 1971. In Europe, Addio Alexandra was showcased as a prestigious, erotic, 'fine art' film, and was entered into competition at the Venice Film Festival in August 1969. In the United States however, it was released as Love Me, Love My Wife by second-rate distribution companies, who exploited this film as 'soft core" pornography starring faded Hollywood movie star Pier Angeli. Although the Italian-language version played in American 'fine art' theatres that specialized in foreign films, the English-language version, slapped with an 'X' rating by the censors, played only in seedy, grindhouse theatres coast-to-coast. A young and attractive married couple in Rome Italy, handsome Stefano (Glenn Saxson) and his gorgeous wife Elisabetta (Colette Descombes), are separated but continue to share intense, physical, passion for each other. Stefano is a book editor for a major publisher while Elisabetta raises their daughter. Unless they learn to get along outside the bedroom, they are destined to divorce. Elisabetta's wealthy sister Alexandra (billed as Anna Maria Pierangeli) lives in Rotterdam, Holland, and invites them to visit while her husband is away on a business trip. Elisabetta begs Stefano to take her there, and he reluctantly agrees. Alexandra, always dressed in top-of-the-line fashions with expensive hairstyles, meets the bickering couple at the airport and takes them to her country mansion. She gives Elisabetta and Stefano a private room hoping they will reconcile. While Alexandra takes a bath, Stefano and Elisabetta fight violently after a few drinks. When Alexandra checks on them their hateful anger turned into passion! Instead of being happy for them, Alexandra is truly envious because passion has disappeared from her own marriage. The next day an exhausted Elisabetta sleeps into the afternoon while Alexandra shows Stefano the beautiful, Dutch city of Rotterdam. Stefano and Alexandra enjoy each other's company during a fun day of sight-seeing. That evening however, Elisabetta and Stefano emotionally hurt each other. An intoxicated Elisabetta brags to her husband that she has slept with several men over the last few weekends! She then tells heart-broken Stefano to sleep with Alexandra, who in the next room is listening to every word! Later Alexandra dreams of sex with Stefano and being caught by her husband. In the morning Alexandra takes Stefano out for a long drive into the country and parks on an isolated forest road. Without a word spoken between them, Stefano and Alexandra immediately make passionate love inside the car! When they return home Stefano brags to Elisabetta that he made love to her sister! Elisabetta, not angry but aroused, makes erotic love to her husband. Afterward, Stefano and Elisabetta happily ask Alexandra to join them in bed. She first refuses but they pull her into bed with them and disrobe her. Alexandra, Elisabetta, and Stefano enjoy an exciting, highly erotic, "menage a trois"! They dine out that evening and stop for petrol at a gas station. Alexandra borrows the phone, and with great joy calls her husband. His business trip is extended, but she insists she will join him in a day or two. In the car, Alexandra announces that she is going to be with her husband but first they must enjoy all of Sunday together for further sexual Olympics! Stefano asks, "Then it's goodbye Alexandra?" Alexandra says, "No, I prefer to say addio!" All three laugh saying "Addio Alexandra!" The film ends with the hint of more adventures to follow! The modestly budgeted, Addio Alexandra is actually professionally produced and well-mounted. The beautiful Kodakolor cinematography captures the picturesque Dutch countryside, and the handsome city of Rotterdam. Enzo Battaglia directs this sexual drama with fine skill and sensitivity from his masterwork screenplay, which he co-wrote with Guido Leoni. Battaglia would direct just one more film in spite of the good promise he showed here. The great, Italian, screen composer Piero Piccioni wrote a sparkling, enchanting musical film score for Addio Alexandra. Piccioni had previously composed the film score for Pier Angeli's spy movie, M.M.M. 83 (1966). Over a long career Piccioni scored over two hundred films, including The 10th Victim (1966) with Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress, and the Jules Verne adventure classic, The Light At The Edge Of The World (1972) with Yul Brynner, Kirk Douglas, and Samantha Eggar. Piccioni died in 2004 after leaving behind a treasure of movie music. Dutch-born, international action star Glenn Saxson is excellent as the confused but loving husband Stefano and proves as an actor he was far more than just a handsome, pretty face. Saxson, under his real name Roel Bos, was also the film's producer. He wisely sold the film rights for cash up front to Jayne Mansfield's ex-husband Matt Cimber, who produced and distributed cheap, exploitation, and foreign films! Attractive French film actress Collette Descombes, who frequently appears wearing little or no clothing in Addio Alexandra, is beguiling as the sensuous, teasing wife Elisabetta. Pier Angeli turns in a sensitive, and straight forward, dramatic performance as the rich, long-married, sister Alexandra who is approaching middle-age. Alexandra has long-since buried her own passions and sexual desires while raising two children until Stefano and Elisabetta reignite those flames! If Addio Alexandra had won the grand prize at the Venice Film Festival, it might have revived Pier Angeli's career with the fawning, pretentious, film critics declaring it an art film masterpiece. Instead, the film destroyed any chance for her to make a Hollywood comeback. In 1971 Pier Angeli protested that the American distributors (Matt Cimber) had promised the graphic threesome, nude scene would be deleted from the American release. As that promise was never in writing, they simply lied, and then proceeded to sell the film, now retitled Love Me, Love My Wife, as an 'X-rated' porno film starring former MGM movie star Pier Angeli. Every Hollywood studio chief knew this film was playing in disgusting porno theatres, and decided that Pier Angeli was now washed-up, finished, and to be avoided like the plague for any respectful film or TV production. Many wonder why Pier Angeli had not turned down this film but people forget that actors have to eat too. Compared to many of today's films and television shows, Addio Alexandra is very tame but in 1971 it was considered pornography and a kiss of death to a great star. Ironically a year later in 1972 Marlon Brando starred in the even more graphic and vile, X-rated film, Last Tango In Paris ,(which makes Addio Alexandra look like a Disney movie) which international film critics adored as a masterpiece! After the 1971 U.S. release of Addio Alexandra, the only work offered to Pier Angeli was cheapjack, monster movie that was shot mostly in Los Angeles's Griffith Park!

Review by Ralph Schiller

The True Story Of Frank Mannata (1969) was an Italian-Spanish co-production shot in Spain by Copercines, Coopertiva Cinematografica and Nike Cinematografica. It was filmed in widescreen Eastmancolor color with a running time of 90 minutes. It was directed by Javier Seto who also co-wrote the film with the producer Luigi Mondello. The musical score was written by Gianfranco Reverberi who also wrote the song Wait and Dream which is sung in English by Pier Angeli during a nightclub sequence. The True Story Of Frank Mannata is a miserable, cheapjack production that was doomed to fail in recreating the colorful, violent and glamorous 1920’s ‘Gangster /The Untouchables era’ of old Chicago. For Pier Angeli this film marks a further comedown in her acting career because she doesn’t even play the female lead! The True Story Of Frank Mannata is also the last film of Hollywood movie great Jeffrey Hunter. In 1929 Frank Mannata (Jeffrey Hunter looking as handsome as ever) leaves his homeland Sicily and immigrates to Chicago where he joins his brother Salvatore (Guglielmo Spoletini) and sister Rosella (Gogo Rojo). The family business is a swanky nightclub and a high-class brothel. Salvatore is in love with Bambi (billed under her real name as Anna Maria Pierangeli) who is the singing star at their nightclub. Frank, ambitious for himself and for his family, sets out to take over the Chicago mob now run by vicious Irish gangsters led by O’Connor (Eduardo Fajardo) and O’Brien (Miguel del Castillo). Frank also covets O’Connor’s stunning-looking mistress Lucia Barrett (British-born Italian film star Margaret Lee) who is bound to the gangster via blackmail. Frank wins Lucia’s heart by killing O’Connor which triggers a violent gang war between the Irish and the Sicilians. O’Brien’s consigliere Dr. MacDonald (Victor Israel) advises his boss to wipe out the Mannata family once and for all. While Frank and Lucia enjoy their honeymoon, Salvatore, his fiancée Bambi and sister Rossella are all violently slain by O’Brien’s men in a series of ambushes. Frank returns to Chicago with vengeance in his heart and murders O’Brien execution-style in the public street. At their loved ones’ funeral, Frank and Lucia are instantly killed by a bomb placed in their car by Dr. MacDonald who had narrowly escaped his boss’ massacre. The True Story Of Frank Mannata is an outright stinker with a poverty-stricken budget, badly-written screenplay and amateurish direction. The film is packed with many scenes of violence and nudity (including Pier Angeli in her death scene). Even so Jeffrey Hunter, Pier Angeli and Margaret Lee do fine dramatic work in a film that was not worthy of their talents. It was cheaply shot in Spain using standing sets that looked nothing like old Chicago. In fact one big shootout scene between the gangsters and FBI agents was filmed on a Western town movie set! The True Story Of Frank Mannata does have stylish, authentic-looking, period costumes with pin-striped suits and fedora hats for the men, and “Roaring 20’s” dresses and wigs for the ladies. The film was never released to US theatres but it was telecast on late-night American television as Cry Chicago. The version I saw was in Italian with English sub-titles. Pier Angeli has only a half-dozen scenes with very little to do. However she does get to sing the lovely song Wait And Dream on the nightclub stage and looks as enchanting as always in her beautiful costumes. Jeffrey Hunter, the one-time star of The Searchers (1956) with John Wayne for director John Ford, and King Of Kings (1961), hits the absolute rock bottom of his career with this film. In fact during the shooting of the film’s exciting car chase, a special effects window that was supposed to be shot out instead exploded giving Hunter a severe concussion. After several days in the hospital and upon learning that the producer ran out of money, a disgusted Jeffrey Hunter left Spain and returned to Hollywood. Plagued with headaches from the concussion, Hunter fell down the stairs at his home and suffered a deadly skull fracture. Jeffrey Hunter never recovered from the emergency surgery and died at age 42. Pier Angeli made only four more films (all of them better than this one) before her tragic death in 1971. Margaret Lee is still with us. Remember that actors have to eat also.

Review by Ralph Schiller

Every Bastard A King (1968) was produced in Israel by Noah Films. It was shot in widescreen color with a running time of 101 minutes. It was directed by Uri Zohar who also who also co-wrote the film with Eli Tavor. Israeli-born International screen and stage star Topol produced and wrote the musical score. Every Bastard A King is an excellent, exciting Israeli film about the 1967 “Six Day War” in the Middle-East. This ambitious production was rapidly shot and released in 1968 in the aftermath of the lightning war between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Thanks to a good friend I was able to see this hard-to-find film. An arrogant, selfish American newspaper reporter Roy Hemmings (William Berger) visits Israel with his beautiful, neglected wife Eileen (billed under her professional name Pier Angeli) to cover the possible outbreak of war in the Middle-East. Hemmings foolishly predicts to his New York editors that there will be no war, but his local tour guide Yoram (Israeli film star Yehoram Gaon) warns him that the entire nation “where every bastard is king” is mobilizing to be ready. Although Eileen was born in Tel Aviv, she wants to return home to America before the war breaks out. Instead the ever-cynical Hemmings abandons her every chance he gets to get drunk and sleep with prostitutes. Fighting for her husband’s attention, Eileen even sleeps with the handsome Yoram to no avail. Yoram is a reservist in the Israeli paratroopers and falls in love with an attractive Israeli Army Lieutenant (Tami Tsifroni) he gave a ride to on his journeys with Hemmings. When the war erupts, Yoram returns to the army and serves with gallantry in the Sinai Desert and valiantly saves a wounded Israeli soldier. Hemmings, shocked at the brutality of war, realizes he was wrong about everything and comes to love Eileen again as the best thing in his life. After less than a week the war ends with the outnumbered Israeli’s destroying an entire Egyptian army with their tanks in the desert. Yoram, along with Hemmings and Eileen, visit a remote farming kibbutz cooperative to find the lovely Lieutenant where they reunite in love. Two children cry when their pet baby kid goat slips past the barbed wire barrier to a mine field. Taking pity on the children, Hemmings jumps over the barrier to retrieve the goat and steps on a landmine killing him instantly. Eileen bitterly returns to America with her husband’s coffin. Every Bastard A King is an outstanding motion picture with a first-rate screenplay and good performances by the entire cast. Pier Angeli adds her natural beauty and grace to the film while giving a heart-breaking performance as Eileen who loves her husband in spite of his many flaws. Eileen is devastated to lose her husband right after winning his love back again. Pier Angeli, a wonderfully, gifted dramatic actress of the top caliber, dominates the film with her performance. Yehoram Gaon is perfect as the boyish and heroic Yoram. Every Bastard A King is highlighted by an authentic-looking, ferocious and thrilling tank battle in the Sinai showing the death and destruction of conventional war. It was shot in Israel’s Negev Desert which substituted for Egypt’s Sinai Desert. Every Bastard A King was not only a big hit in Israel but was submitted as the Israeli entry to the Motion Picture Academy in 1969 for “Best Foreign Film”. Sadly it was not even nominated. The film was released in the US in 1970 by Walter Reade’s Continental Film Distributers who specialized in releasing foreign films.

Review by Ralph Schiller

One Step To Hell (AKA King Of Africa 1968) is an American-Italian-Spanish co-production of Copercines, Metheus Films, and Harris Associates. It was released in Italy and Spain on April 14,1968, and in the United States on June 28, 1969. It has a running time of 91 minutes and was filmed in Eastmancolor. It was directed by Sandy Howard, who also produced. The executive producer is Jack O. Lamont, and associate producers are Eduardo Manzanos, and Sven Persson. The screenplay was written by Howard, and Jack DeWitt. The film score was composed by Gianni Marchetti. One Step To Hell is a second-rate, low-budget action film. Pier Angeli has only a thankless supporting role and is not the film's leading lady. Her film career had slipped. In early 1900's South Africa, a colonial police wagon carrying convicted criminals to the colony prison is ambushed by fellow gang members. Six British police officers are killed. Escaped prisoner and gang leader Kruger (Jorge Rigaud) heads northeast to a rich gold mine owned by a former friend. The colonial police chief Captain Walter Phillips (George Sanders) summons his best man Lt. King Edwards (Ty Hardin) from a romantic furlough and informs him about the massacre. King insists that by going alone he will track down the criminals and bring them to justice faster. His first stop is a Zulu village where benevolent, Christian minister, Dr. Hamilton (Rossano Brazzi) has a hospital. The Zulus use jungle drums to locate Kruger and his party. King encounters Arab poachers, who slaughter a herd of majestic, African elephants for their ivory tusks. King wipes out the poachers and travels to a lawless "sin town" on the frontier known as "One Step To Hell". Kruger and his brood kidnap Deborah Vincent (Helga Line) and threaten to kill her dying husband unless she tells them the mine's location. King enters the town saloon where he catches the eye of beautiful prostitute, Ann Peterson (Pier Angeli). Saloon owner Zeke (Dale Cummings) suspects King is a policeman and orders his death. King kills the bushwhackers but is wounded in the shoulder. Ann saves King's life by shooting the last assassin. She hides King and removes the bullet. As King recovers, he and Ann fall passionately in love. Later, Zeke and his stooges torture Ann to reveal where King is. Although Zeke burns her face, she says nothing. King kills Zeke and his men but a stray bullet hits Ann. King takes Ann in his arms and gives her a tender kiss before she dies. Mrs. Vincent guides Kruger and his men to her rich mine which has several veins of pure gold ore. The men celebrate but King arrives and traps them inside the mine. Kruger and his men foolishly attack with dynamite but King mows them down one by one. A mortally wounded Kruger blows himself up in a blaze of glory. Mrs. Vincent, now a widow, has soft eyes for King who silently returns to his police post. One Step To Hell is a cheaply made, adventure film with plenty of action and violence. Intended for second-run movies houses and drive-in theatres, it was filmed entirely in the English language for American television sales. It was not shot in a widescreen process do the producers could use matching stock color footage of African wildlife. One Step To Hell was a tax shelter epic cast with former Hollywood movie stars who needed a paycheck. Location filming was in South Africa with the cooperation of the Zulu nation which gave authenticity to the film. The desert sequences were shot in Spain, and all interior scenes were filmed at a Spanish movie studio. The screenplay of One Step To Hell by Sandy Howard and Jack DeWitt is routine and predictable. One Step To Hell is slow-moving action movie because of producer-director Sandy Howard's weak direction. Howard had greater success as a film producer and is best remembered for three Man Called Horse (1972- 1983) motion pictures starring Richard Harris. Gianni Marchetti composed an excellent film score which enhances One Step To Hell tremendously. The unheralded Gianni Marchetti died in 2012. At six feet, two inches, the broad-shouldered Ty Hardin is the top-billed star of One Step To Hell. Hardin, a poor man's version of John Wayne, is first-rate in the film's many rugged, action scenes. With his blue eyes and million-dollar smile, Hardin's Lieutenant King charms every lovely lady he encounters. Ty Hardin was a popular American television star with his hit Western series Bronco (1958-1962). He previously starred with Pier Angeli in The Battle Of The Bulge (1968) but they had no scenes together. Ty Hardin joined many other American stars making films overseas when their careers faded. Like Lieutenant King, Ty Hardin in real life loved the ladies and was married eight times! Hardin later joined a bizarre religious cult and died in 2017. Rossano Brazzi, king of the Italian film industry, is charming in an extended cameo as King's good-hearted friend, Dr. Hamilton. The still handsome Brazzi, with his suave accent, could give King competition for the ladies. George Sanders is outstanding as police chief Captain Philipps, who treats King like a son. Phillips sends him on his dangerous journey with "Run fast boy, sleep quietly, kill quickly." George Sanders was one of Hollywood's top character actors during the golden era and won an Oscar for his magnificent performance in the blockbuster film All About Eve (1950) starring Bette Davis and Marilyn Monroe. He made over one hundred films often playing villains and cads. He was also Simon Templar in five movies of The Saint series. George Sanders previously co-starred with Pier Angeli and Stewart Granger in the MGM film The Light Touch (1951). After his beloved wife Benita Hume died, George Sanders sank into depression with early signs of dementia. While visiting Spain in 1972 he took his own life. Pier Angeli, in One Step To Hell, has top star billing under her Hollywood name in the American release, and under her real name Anna Maria Pierangeli in the European release. Even so, she is not the film's female star. She doesn't even appear as prostitute Ann Peterson until 32 minutes in the film. She only has five or six scenes before her character is brutally killed off. In One Step To Hell, Pier Angeli gives an intense, heart-breaking performance as the tragic, star-crossed Ann Peterson, who wins King's noble heart. She looks enchanting in the film wearing period costume and hairstyle. Accepting a secondary, supporting role in a low-budget, motion picture was a sad comedown for a great star like Pier Angeli. The actual leading lady of One Step To Hell is German actress Helga Line, who was only a beautiful-looking mannequin. After One Step To Hell, Anna Maria Pierangeli would return to her native Italy to make a better film in a true starring role. For the record Pier Angeli and George Sanders never made the trip to Africa since all of their scenes were shot in a movie studio in Spain. Ty Hardin and Rossano Brazzi did location work in South Africa.

Review by Ralph Schiller

Red Roses For The Fuhrer (AKA Code Name, Red Roses 1968) is an Italian-language production of Dino Films. It was released in Italy on April 24,1968, with a running time of 97 minutes. A dubbed, English-language version was released the following year in the U.S. by Continental Distributing. It was filmed in Kodak Eastmancolor, and shot in the widescreen process Dyliscope. It was directed by Fernando Di Leo, who also co-produced, and co-wrote the screenplay with Enzo Dell' Aquila. The film score was composed by Gino Peguri. Red Roses For The Fuhrer, although well-produced and action-packed, is just a routine, Italian film about World War II. Pier Angeli, as beautiful as ever, stars as the leading lady and romantic interest. In the prelude to the "D-Day Normandy Invasion" in 1944, U.S. Army commando, Major Mike Liston (James Daly) is summoned to Allied headquarters in London by a British Army General (Michael Wilding). A pouch containing a vital "Top Secret" document has fallen into German hands in occupied Belgium. For codename "Operation Red Roses", Major Liston is ordered to parachute in country and bring back the document at all costs before it can be sent to Berlin. Flemish (Belgium) partisans meet his team at the drop zone which was mined because an informer tipped off German S.S. troops. Two British soldiers, and a dozen partisans are killed in an ambush. The partisan commander Vincent (Nino Castelnuovo) and his lover Maria (Anna Maria Pierangeli) locate the Major who was given shelter in the church by Father Louis (Polidor). The hospital hides German Army headquarters because the Allies will not bomb a building marked with a red cross. German army commander Colonel Kerr (Peter Van Eyck) is an honorable soldier, but his nemesis is the fanatic, SS Major Frenke (Ruggero De Daninos) who answers only to Himmler and Hitler. The Colonel keeps the document in his safe and informer Robert (Bill Vanders) tells him every move the partisans make. At first Maria hates the American Major because he does not approve of women partisans. When Robert proposes a dangerous, foolhardy attack on German headquarters, the Major agrees to it. Maria thinks the American is a brave hero and takes him to her bed. A German officer double-agent (Gianni Garko) gives Liston the safe combination before his suicide after his capture by Major Frenke. The partisans attack the hospital and suffer heavy losses but Liston opens the safe and retrieves the document. After putting up a good fight Vincent and Maria are killed in the final attack. Liston kills the traitor Robert before his rendezvous on the beach with a British submarine. Col. Kerr has secretly sent a copy of the document to Hitler in Berlin. Back in London, the General thanks Major Liston for a successful operation. The document gave a false location for the Allied invasion in order to divert German Panzer divisions away from Normandy! After the Allies sacrificed so many lives to get it back, the Germans believed the document is authentic. The General laughs "We sent red roses to the Fuhrer!" Major Liston is furious that so many good heroes died for a ruse. The General says the death of a few justifies saving the lives of tens of thousands. Major Liston requests transfer to a frontline battle unit. The General, alone in his office, lowers his head with remorse for having to fight a dirty war. Red Roses For The Fuhrer is enjoyable with exciting, battle sequences but in spite of a large budget and a good cast, it is strictly a minor film. There is no comparison to Pier Angeli's previous truly great war film, Battle Of The Bulge (1965). Fernado Di Leo directed with skill and kept the action moving at all times with never a dull moment! Di Leo became one of the top directors in the Italian film industry but unfortunately never directed a major Hollywood film. In Italy he directed many Hollywood movie stars, whose careers had seen better days, including Jack Palance, James Mason, Martin Balsam, and Henry Silva. Di Leo also co-wrote the sometimes-unbelievable screenplay with his co-producer Enzo Dell' Aquila. Historically partisans, resistance fighters, and guerillas strike at occupying armies with "hit and run" attacks. They never launch open, frontal assaults on well-fortified, enemy positions like they do in this film because that would be suicide! In one scene the partisans charge across an open field without cover into the face of a lethal machinegun! Also, none of the stunning-looking women in Red Roses For The Fuhrer, including Pier Angeli, have genuine World War II hairstyles! Even the British soldiers and Flemish partisans look suspiciously like Italian actors! Gino Pegori composed a good film score for Red Roses For The Fuhrer, although he copied themes from Elmer Bernstein's unforgettable score for the classic war film, The Great Escape (1963). Di Leo and Dell' Aquila also wrote the lyrics with Pegori's music for the sad, love song Canto Della Liberta, sung over the closing credits by Don Powell. James Daly was only a stage and television character actor, but he gets top starring billing in Red Roses For The Fuhrer over Pier Angeli! He does fine work but is simply much too old for the role of the daring, courageous, commando Major Liston. The silver-haired Daly was fourteen years older than Pier Angeli, who at thirty-five looks ten years younger. In their love scenes together the American looks like her father! Daly became a major star on television with the hit series Medical Center (1969-1976). Handsome, dashing, young Nino Castelnuovo is ideally cast as the brave partisan leader Vincent. Distinguished German film star Peter Van Eyck is superb as Colonel Kerr, a professional soldier who loves Germany but not Hitler. Even though the Colonel's wife and daughter are killed in an Allied air raid on Berlin, he still completes his mission. Peter Van Eyck had a prolific career on both sides of the Atlantic and died the following year in 1969. Ruggero De Daninos is letter-perfect as the evil, sadistic S.S. Major Frenke. In one riveting scene, the S.S. Officers dance with local prostitutes at a party until Major Frenke strides into the room. He removes the dance music record from the phonograph player and calls the room to attention with "Achtung!" He then he plays a record of the infamous, German army march Erika (written by Herms Niel)! Led by the Major, the officers sing proudly with each one stomping his left, highly polished boot in time to the march beat! One-time British leading man Michael Wilding is excellent as the avuncular British general. Wilding had a fine film career, but today he is best known for being young Elizabeth Taylor's second husband. In Red Roes For The Fuhrer, Pier Angeli has second billing, under her real name of Anna Maria Pierangeli, below an American TV actor. Even her voice is completely missing from this film because she was dubbed by an American actress (both Peter Van Eyck and James Daly dubbed their own voices). Although her film career is in decline, Pier Angeli turns in a passionate performance as the partisan Maria, whose father and three brothers were murdered by the Germans. In this often dark and serious film, Pier Angeli's luscious beauty is absolutely refreshing. One inexplicable scene during the final attack on German headquarters has Maria, for no good reason, confessing to Vincent that she slept with the American commando! This film played only in a handful of theatres in the U.S. because the releasing company, Continental Distributing specialized in artistic and pretentious foreign films. Red Roes For The Fuhrer found a larger audience when telecast on local, American television stations! Pier Angeli paid her bills and kept her career alive by making one European film after another. Her next film would be shot in the Middle-East!

Review by Ralph Schiller

Por Mil Dolares Diarios (1966) is a Spanish-Italian co-production of Petruka Films and Tirso Film. It was released by United Artists in the US as Renegade Gunfighter. Por Mil Dolares Diarios was filmed in Technicolor and shot in the Techniscope wide-screen process with a running time of 76 minutes. It was produced and directed by Silvio Amadio who co-wrote the film's story and screenplay with Tito Carpi and Luciano Gregoretti. The film score was composed by Gino Peguri, including the Western ballad My Gun Is Fast sung by Bobby Solo. Por Mil Dolares Diarios (In English: One Thousand Dollars Per Day) is a rugged and fast-paced 'spaghetti' Western shot entirely in Spain. Pier Angeli rides tall-in-the-saddle playing a classic Western romantic lead. In 1870 Texas, the Union Pacific Railroad needs a right-of-way to lay track through Sun Valley to bypass the mountains. However the local ranchers are robbed and swindled of their properties by the evil Clark Brothers (based on the real-life Western outlaws the Younger Brothers). When Hud Baker's (Zachary Hatcher) parents refuse to sell their land, they are gunned down in cold blood by Lon Clark (Manuel Gil), while his brothers Jason (Reuben Rojo) and Wayne (Mirko Ellis) laugh. Hud wants revenge and uses his last gold to hire a famous, but now-crippled gunfighter Carranza (Pepe Callo) for his teacher. A year passes and Hud is now the fastest, deadliest gunfighter in the west. When he leaves for Sun Valley, the paternal Carranza gifts Hud with a pair of his finest Colt .45 six-guns! Hud returns to discover that his girlfriend Betty (billed in the Spanish credits with her Hollywood name Pier Angeli for box office) has married his best pal Steve Benson, (Mimmo Palmara, billed as Steve Palmer) who is now the town sheriff. Betty begs Hud to leave town but lawman Steve warns him not to take the law into his own hands or face the gallows. At the Clark ranch a horse-drawn funeral hearse drops off a paid coffin for Lon with a note saying he will be dead in two days! Lon is terrified and the Clark brothers hire Hud as a bodyguard for one thousand dollars per day. Hud plays cat and mouse with the brothers, and one-by-one slays cowardly bullies Lon and Jason! When Wayne realizes that Hud is the phantom killer, who plays a harmonica just before each killing, he turns himself into Sheriff Steve for protection. Steve secretly takes Wayne for trial in Houston and has his wife Betty make love to Hud, who has been watching the jail like a hawk. Hud again falls in love with Betty until he bitterly realizes she distracted him as Steve and Wayne escaped out the back door. Hud pursues them into the desert and is about to draw on Steve when Apache Indians, appearing out of nowhere, ambush them. After a bloody battle, Hud, Steve and Wayne are about to be massacred but suddenly the U.S. Cavalry rides to the rescue! At the Houston trial, Wayne's crooked, shyster lawyer Sullivan (Corrado Annicelli) pays off the Judge (Tom Felleghy), who dismisses the case on a technicality! A gunman and his gang are hired to kill Hud. Steve, disgusted with justice, sees Hud walk into the gunman's trap on main street and warns him. Hud wipes out the gang but a crazed Wayne runs into the street with both guns blazing. Wayne shoots at him point blank and at close range, but miraculously Hud dodges every bullet! Then Hud uses his last shot to kill Wayne Clark! Back in Sun Valley, the land is returned to the ranchers and Sheriff Steve tells the town that Hud is the real hero. When Hud saddles up, Betty pleads with him to take her. Hud shakes his head and rides off into the sunset like Shane! The End. Por Mil Dolares Diarios is a good 'spaghetti' Western film with plenty of six-gun action, Apache Indian attacks, and bugle-sounding cavalry charges, all jam-packed into a 76 minute running time! Producer-director Silvio Amadio keeps the film moving at break-neck speed with nary a dull moment. He also co-wrote the first-rate, revenge screenplay of Por Mil Dolares Diarios which might have been written by the great Western author Louis L'amour. Silvio Amadio had previously directed Pier Angeli in the excellent sea adventure film, White Slave Ship (1961). Por Mil Dolares Diarios was handsomely produced in widescreen and the gorgeous Technicolor cinematography taking full advantage of the picturesque locations in Almeria, Andalucia, Spain. Gino Peguri composed a rousing Western score that highlights the film's exciting action scenes and wrote the sage, Western ballad My Gun Is Fast with English lyrics sung by Bobby Solo over the opening and closing credits. The villainous Clark Brothers are played with great zest by Mirko Ellis, Reuben Rojo, and Manuel Gil. The broad-shoulder Mimmo Palmara is quite good as the righteous Sheriff Steve who should be as happy as the Clark Brothers to see Hud leave town and stay far away from his beautiful wife! Unfortunately the skinny, baby-faced Zachary Hatcher is barely convincing as the good son seeking vengeance in a role perfect for Charles Bronson or Steve McQueen! Pier Angeli is ideally cast as Hud's former love Betty, who had married his best friend on the rebound. With her dark, raven hair pinned-up, and wearing one colorful, costume, period dress after another, Pier Angeli is simply radiant and gives a sincere, heart-breaking performance of a woman torn between two good men. In the 1960's and 1970's many Hollywood movie stars, desperately in need of work, traveled to Spain to shoot 'spaghetti' Westerns including Henry Fonda, Yul Brynner, James Mason, Gina Lollobrigida, Audie Murphy, Robert Taylor, Van Johnson, Broderick Crawford, Jack Palance, Sean Connery, Claudia Cardinale. Brigitte Bardot, Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, and many others. Minor players like Bronson, Lee Van Cleef and Clint Eastwood actually became movie stars thanks to their 'spaghetti' Western movies. For Pier Angeli, Por Mil Dolares Diarios was released in the U.S. by United Artists as Renegade Gunfighter (1966) on the lower half of a double-feature with little fanfare and no Hollywood comeback. United Artists was too cheap to pay Pier Angeli to dub her own voice in English, and instead used a deep-voiced actress who sounds nothing like her. Sadly, Pier Angeli's next films were not nearly as good. Note: Three years after Por Mil Dolares Diarios, Sergio Leone produced and directed Once Upon A Time In The West (1969) to great acclaim and box office on both sides of the Atlantic with the similar storyline of a young man avenging the death of his parents while haunting their killers by playing a harmonica! Coincidence? That movie made a superstar out of Charles Bronson!

Review by Ralph Schiller

Battle Of The Bulge (1965) is a Sidney/Harmon Production with Cinerama Inc. Productions, and United States Pictures, Inc. for Warner Brothers Pictures. It was released on December16,1965 with a running time of 170 minutes. It was filmed in Technicolor and shot in widescreen Ultra-Panavision. It was directed by Ken Annakin. The screenplay was written by John Melson, with Milton Sperling and Philip Yordan (who both produced). An outstanding film score was composed by Benjamin Frankel. Battle Of The Bulge played in select U.S. theatres in the wide, curved- screen Cinerama process. After the enormous, box office success of The Longest Day (1964), 20th Century Fox's colossal, all-star, World War Two, motion picture about the "D-Day Invasion" of Normandy, Warner Brothers, headed by Jack L. Warner, produced their own epic, Battle Of The Bulge (1965), also on a big budget with an all-star cast. The film's nearly all-male cast was graced by the presence of Pier Angeli in a brief but unforgettably tender role of a doomed Belgian girl. By December 1944 the German army had suffered many defeats and lost ground to the Allies. Over-confident American forces are certain Germany will surrender unconditionally before Christmas. An American intelligence officer Lt. Colonel Kiley (Henry Fonda) warns the division commander General Grey (Robert Ryan) that the German army is massing forces with many tanks for a counter-offensive. The general's aide Colonel Pritchard (Dana Andrews) scoffs at Kiley's prediction. Berlin has in fact recalled their best tank commander from the Russian front, Colonel Kessler (Robert Shaw) to lead a tank brigade of the superior, newly built, double armor-plated, Tiger tanks, which dwarf the medium-sized American tanks. German soldiers, who were raised in America and speak fluent English, led by Lieutenant Schumacher (Ty Hardin), are parachuted behind American lines to disrupt communication and supplies. American army Major Welensky (Charles Bronson) and his front-line troops destroy several tiger tanks before they are captured by the Germans. The well-executed counter-offensive, led by Kessler's tank brigade, is successful. The surprised Americans retreat after suffering heavy casualties. As the Germans advance, General Grey orders the evacuation of Army headquarters in Ambleve. American Army Seargent Guffy (Telly Savalas) runs the black market from a hotel in the city with a lovely Belgian girl, Louise (Pier Angeli). Guffy gives her half the money they made and warns her to leave ahead of the German army. Louise cries "When a woman goes into business with a man, it is forever! I will wait for you" A shocked Sgt. Guffy asks, "How come you feel about me this way when I never laid a hand on you?" She smiles, "That's why. You love me." Louise demands a kiss from Guffy before he leaves. He gives her a fatherly one but Louise grabs Guffy in a tight embrace and kisses him passionately. Back at the front, Sgt. Guffy is horrified when told that Kessler, his tiger tanks and the German army had completely destroyed Ambleve. Louise is among the dead. Sgt. Guffy realizes too late that he lost the only woman he ever loved. The American forces finally fight back and eventually win. Colonel Kessler is killed, and his tiger tanks are destroyed. In truth the battle ended because the German army actually ran out of petroleum fuel! Battle Of The Bulge is a magnificent, motion picture achievement, and one of the finest war films ever made. It was a smash hit at the box office for the Warner Brothers studio. Battle Of The Bulge was lavishly shot in Spain at the extensive Samuel Bronston Studios (since demolished), on what was then an enormous $6,500,000 million dollar budget. Generalissimo Francisco Franco provided Warner Brothers with the Spanish army for extras, plus scores of tanks for the incredibly realistic battle sequences. The screenplay by John Melson, with Milton Sperling and Philip Yordan contained many human-interest stories detailing courage and cowardice on both sides of the war. Jack Warner, himself, chose the director of The Longest Day, Ken Annakin to direct Battle Of The Bulge. Once again, Annakin proved himself to be a great movie director with his brilliant work on this film. The film score by Benjamin Frankel had audiences, on both sides of the Atlantic, jumping in their seats through the exciting battle sequences. Frankel's music also enhanced the heartfelt love scene between Pier Angeli and Telly Savalas. One great scene has Colonel Kessler meeting his new tank officers only to discover to his dismay that they are only young boys, and not veteran soldiers. Suddenly one of the young men stomps his riding boot, which triggers all of them to stomp their polished boots in unison as they proudly sing the German Army Panzer Division song, Panzerlied (written by Kurt Wiehle in 1933). This rousing rendition convinces Colonel Kessler that he can win the war with these young men! Pier Angeli (with her Hollywood billing) does not appear in Battle Of The Bulge until half-way through the film for only a single scene, lasting no more than three and a half minutes! Nevertheless, she gives a wonderful, heart-breaking performance when Louise finally declares her love to a rough, Amercian soldier. She fights back tears to say goodbye, somehow knowing she will never see Guffy again! After making movies for 15 years, Pier Angeli, in the Battle Of The Bulge, was truly a gifted, experienced, dramatic actress, who could do so much with so little. Her delicate, sincere acting on a tragic, star-crossed love adds heart to this big war film. At this point in his career Telly Savalas was a popular character actor seven years away from television stardom as New York Police Lieutenant Kojak. Jane Allen interviewed Telly Savalas for her biography, Pier Angeli: A Fragile Life, where he said, "I know I'm no Rock Hudson, and I was beginning to worry that I was destined to play loveless character roles for the rest of my life. It gives a man spirit and a new look at himself when he can make love to a girl like Pier Angeli." Cast members Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Robert Ryan, Charles Bronson (just four Yeras away from super-stardom), give good performances, one and all, but Robert Shaw is brilliant as the victory-obsessed, German Army Colonel Kessler. Shaw enjoyed a great film career until his sudden death in 1978 at age fifty-one from a heart attack. Appearing in this big budget Hollywood production, and box-office hit, Battle Of The Bulge, was a terrific career move for Pier Angeli. Although only age thirty-two during filming, Pier Angeli looks at least ten years younger, showing Hollywood that she was willing, able, and ready to work in major, motion pictures again. Sadly, there were no offers from the big Hollywood studios. She returned to minor European films, which were poorly distributed in America, if at all. Ironically in Battle Of The Bulge, Pier Angeli had no scenes with future co-stars Dana Andrews (Spy In Your Eye 1965 her next film), and Ty Hardin (King Of Africa 1967).

Review by Ralph Schiller

Berlin, Appointment For A Spy (1966, AKA Spy In Your Eye) Berlin, Appointment For A Spy was produced by Italian International Film and Publi Italia di Lucio Marcuzzo in widescreen Pathecolor with a running time of 85 minutes. It was released in the U.S. by American-International Pictures under the title Spy In Your Eye. It was directed by Vittorio Sala with a screenplay written by Adriano Bolzini, Roman Ferrara, Adriano Baracco, and the film’s producer Lucio Marcuzzo. The musical score was by Riz Ortolani. Made during the height of the secret agent fad in the middle 1960’s, Berlin, Appointment For a Spy is an entertaining but silly, poor step cousin of the ‘007 James Bond’ series! What is remarkable is that three Hollywood stars who had seen better days, Pier Angeli, Dana Andrews and Brett Halsey co-star in this low-budget, foreign quickie and still do fine dramatic work. In fact they deserve medals for keeping a straight face throughout filming! In the ‘Cold War’ era an East German Nobel Prize-winning scientist and his lovely daughter Paula Krauss (Pier Angeli) make a dash for freedom at the border, ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ into West Berlin. The Russian border guards foil the escape, kill the scientist and capture Paula. Unfortunately the trigger-happy Russians realize that the prized formula for a secret invention also went to the grave with Paula’s father. The girl is brutally interrogated by the Russian KGB but insists she knows nothing of her father’s formula. Red Chinese agents also try to assassinate her hoping the Russian get blamed for bungling everything! The American CIA Chief, a battle-scarred, one-eyed, patch-wearing Col. Lancaster (Dana Andrews) sends his best agent, the suave Bert Morris (Brett Halsey) to East Berlin to rescue Paula and bring her safely to the West with the secret formula! Col. Lancaster undergoes surgery for the first successful eye-transplant but doesn’t realize that the Russians had slipped a tiny camera inside the eyeball which is the spy in your eye! Before too many secrets fall into Russian hands, Lancaster with Morris’ help identifies the espionage leak and the TV camera is removed. The U.S. Air Force does a parachute drop over the Russian zone for the intrepid Morris who meets his contact, a hunchback in a three-piece suit! After one amazing and unbelievable adventure after another, Bert Morris rescues Paula from a train bound for Moscow and a Siberian prison camp. Sure they get captured again but Morris, like his British counterpart Bond, whips out another gadget (that has yet to be invented) and escapes to West Germany with Paula. Naturally the good-looking couple fall head over heels in love as the bullets fly and Paula shows Morris the coveted secret formula that was cleverly tattooed into her scalp under the hairline! Berlin, Appointment For A Spy is enjoyable if one doesn’t take the ridicules plot too seriously and goes along for the fun. It follows the James Bond formula of “guns, gals, and gadgets” with location filming in Paris, Beirut, Venice and Berlin. The hunchback’s large hump is actually a radio transmitter with a retractable blade that he uses to kill unsuspecting Russian soldiers on the train to Moscow! No he doesn’t have a telephone in his shoe like secret agent 86 Maxwell Smart, but he has one in his umbrella! Bert Morris uses dehydration pills which induce severe thirst that force enemy agents to talk! The producer also made sure to add a gorgeous femme/fatale enemy agent Madeleine (Tania Beryl) to tempt Morris and included a risqué bathtub scene with Pier Angeli who is stunning to look at in this cheapjack production. Both the direction by Vittorio Sala, who made a career out of cheap, Italian action films and Westerns, and the musical score by Riz Ortolanio, who went onto better things, are routine at best. The screenplay by the producer and his three assistants is right out of a bad comic book! Brett Halsey plays Bert Morris completely straight with effortless charm and wit. Halsey was a rising star in Hollywood before spending over 10 years in Europe cranking out dozens of action films and Westerns, few of which enjoyed American release. Like his character Bert Morris, Brett Halsey had an impeccable eye for drop-dead beauties and married four of the including film stars Luciana Paluzzi and Heidi Bruhl! Halsey continues acting and is also a successful novelist (including a book based on his years in European film-making entitled The Magnificent Strangers). Movie great Dana Andrews is also excellent as CIA Chief Col. Lancaster in Spy In Your Eye. Once a top film star for both Twentieth Century Fox and the Samuel Goldwyn studios during the golden era of Hollywood, Andrews made four Italian action films in a row for which he was highly paid. However he always refused to include them in his resume and movie credits! Unfortunately he shares no scenes with Pier Angeli. Pier Angeli is perfect as the beautiful Paula trapped behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ who wins her freedom and romantic love in the arms of a handsome, fearless American agent and she steals every scene she is in with her luminous, photogenic eyes! At the end, Paula finally flashes her million-dollar smile at the man who saved her and we can almost forgive the film’s nonsense. As Spy In Your Eye, this Italian film was picked-up for American release by a studio American-International Pictures,that specialized in movies for ‘Drive-In Theaters’ with Vincent Price horror films, Annette Funicello/Frankie Avalon ‘Beach Party’ epics, and motorcycle flicks! After Spy In Your Eye, Pier Angeli returned to Hollywood to co-star in her last major American film, for Warner Bros., The Battle Of the Bulge with Henry Fonda, Robert Ryan, Robert Shaw and Dana Andrews. Then sadly she returned to foreign film productions.

Review by Ralph Schiller

Review by Ralph Schiller

OSS 117 Panic In Bangkok is a French-Italian co-production, produced by P.A.C., Compagnie Industrielle et Commerciale Cinematographique (CICC), and DaMa. Cinematographica. It was filmed in EastmanColor and shot in a widescreen process with a running time of 118 minutes. It was directed by Andre Hunebelle and the producer was Paul Cadeac. The screenplay was written by Pierre Foucaud, Andre Hunebelle, Michelle Lebrun, Raymond Borel, Patrice Rohmm, and Richard Caron based on the novel Lila In Calcutta by Jean Bruce. The prolific French author Jean Bruce created the character of daring handsome, secret agent Hubert Bath in his 1949 pulp novel OSS 117, four years before Ian Fleming wrote his first 007 James Bond novel. The French public loved OSS 117 and Bruce cranked out another 87 novels. In 1963 Jean Bruce was killed in a car accident and his wife Josette wrote another 143 OSS 117 novels under the name J. Bruce. After she retired her daughter Martine and her husband Francois picked up the pen to write a further 23 novels. Finally French cinema called and the first film in this series, OSS 117 Is Not Dead was filmed in 1957 with Ivan Desny as the OSS agent. With the international success of the first James Bond film Dr. No (1962), the French studio made OSS 117 Unchained (1963) which was filmed in black & white. They hoped for an American release by casting Hollywood star Kerwin Mathews in the title role. For the next film, OSS 117 Panic In Bangkok the budget was increased to shoot in color with overseas location filming in Bangkok, Thailand and even added American film star Pier Angeli as Mathews’ leading lady. In modern, exotic Bangkok, American OSS agent Christopher Lemmon (Raoul Billerey) is murdered for getting too close to finding the source of cholera vaccines that actually carry bubonic plague. Lemmon discovers that shipments from a legitimate British pharmaceutical company are hijacked and replaced with identical-looking, infected vaccines causing outbreaks all over the globe. Lemmon was betrayed by someone inside the Bangkok OSS branch office. Back at OSS headquarters in Washington D.C., the agency dispatches their best man, OSS 117, Hubert Bath(Kerwin Mathews) to find the source of the plague vaccines and to bring Lemmon’s killer to justice. No sooner does Hubert arrive in Bangkok do assassins try to run his taxi off the highway, break into his fancy hotel room to kill him, and even try kidnapping him. While being briefed at the OSS branch office, Hubert catches the beautiful receptionist Eva Davidson (Dominique Wilms) eavesdropping. OSS 117 learns that agent Lemmon’s primary suspect was the successful hypnotist, magician and mind-reader Dr. Sinn (Robert Hossein) who is also romantic with Eva. Dr. Sinn warns Hubert to return to Washington for his health but the ever-romantic OSS 117 meets the good doctor’s enchanting sister Lila Sinn (our Pier Angeli) and he is instantly smitten. Hubert charms her all over picturesque Bangkok including a romantic dinner on the city’s magical riverfront. Soon Lila falls in love with the American agent. Dr. Sinn is the head of a unilateral, world organization dedicated to wiping out the world’s population with bubonic plague except for a chosen few given his immunizing vaccine. Never the less OSS 117 keeps thwarting all of Dr. Sinn’s plans. A car bomb nearly kills the American agent and a heart-broken Lila thinks her lover is dead. Eva, a traitor to the OSS, murders her station chief with a knife in the back. Lila, who knew nothing of her brother’s grandiose plans for the world, is held prisoner in Dr. Sinn’s secret lair hidden inside an ancient Buddhist monastery outside of Bangkok. The intrepid and courageous OSS 117 breaks into the monastery and is shocked to find a large underground laboratory with hundreds of loyal technicians manufacturing bubonic plague to ship all over the world. Dr. Sinn, wearing Count Dracula’s cape, calls his minions to a meeting and details his plans for world destruction and conquest. In the name of humanity, Eva turns against Dr. Sinn and is quickly executed. Hubert rescues Lila, who is overjoyed to see that he is still alive. OSS 117 detonates incendiary charges that destroy the laboratory and battles Dr. Sinn in a fight to the death. Dr. Sinn dies in the flames while Hubert and Lila depart in a van with fellow OSS agents just as the monastery is wiped off the face of the Earth! OSS 117 stops the van long enough so he and Lila can enjoy a passionate kiss! The End. OSS 117 Panic In Bangkok is exciting, high adventure and is equal to any of the James Bond films of that era with non-stop action and romance! No expense was spared in the making of this lavish production using the French widescreen process Fran Scope. The producers also wisely changed the location of the novel from Calcutta, India to the more colorful intriguing Bangkok, Thailand. Interior scenes were shot at the Studios de Boulogne in Paris but the producers took full advantage of picturesque Bangkok with their gorgeous EastmanColor photography. The film was made with the full cooperation and assistance of the Royal Thailand government which was boosting tourism to their splendid capitol city. It was directed with great skill by Andre Hunbelle who keeps the action, romance and comic touches moving at a fast clip for its nearly two-hour running time. He also directed three films in the series. The music composed by Michel Magne is outstanding and he even composed a short trademark melody for OSS 117 himself, reminiscent of Simon Templar’s melody in The Saint series. Kerwin Mathews is ideally cast as the bold secret agent OSS 117 and seems to be having the time of his life swashbuckling through the film while romancing Pier Angeli. Like his British counterparts James Bond and Simon Templar, OSS 117 goes through rugged action while never wrinkling or staining his impeccable, tailor-made suit! Mathews is best remembered today for starring in three classic fantasy films, The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (1958), The 3 Worlds Of Gulliver (1960), and Jack The Giant Killer (1962). He worked again with Pier Angeli in her last film Octaman (1971). French star Robert Hossein does excellent work as Dr. Sinn under-playing all of his scenes in a quiet tone of voice and thereby making his character that much more frightening. Any other actor would have overacted to the hilt. Pier Angeli co-stars as the beautiful but innocent Lila Sinn, who against her better judgement falls in love with a dangerous American agent, and she does outstanding work. She plays her role with great sincerity and helps make this film a big cut above all the other secret agent movies. In the end OSS 117 wins her heart while saving her life as well as saving the free world! Pier Angeli never looked more stunning than she does in this film while wearing the latest Paris fashion design labels! Incredibly although Pier Angeli and Kerwin Mathews were fluent in French, arcane French film industry union rules at that time, mandated that the voices of all foreign actors be dubbed over by paid French actors! Although OSS 117 Panic In Bangkok was a tremendous box office success in France and Europe, it was virtually unseen in the USA. In 1966 a badly-edited version of the film re-titled Shadow Of Evil (the OSS 117 books were not translated into English and were unknown in the USA) was released by the minor Seven Arts distribution company and sank without a trace. Ironically ten years later the 007 James Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun (1974) was also set in Bangkok, Thailand with many plot elements similar to OSS 117 Panic In Bangkok. Note: OSS stood for the Office Of Strategic Services, America’s first spy agency that was later formed into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1947. In the US, OSS 117 Panic In Bangkok is part of a pristine, five film DVD OSS 117 set from Kino Lorber Video.

Review by Ralph Schiller

Review by Ralph Schiller

Review by Ralph Schiller

Review by Ralph Schiller

Review by Ralph Schiller

SOS Pacific (1959) was released by the Rank Organisation in Great Britain. It was filmed in black and white and shot in a widescreen process. It was directed by Guy Green with a running time of 90 minutes. The screenplay was written by Robert Westerby based on an original story by Gilbert Thomas with additional sequences and dialogue written by Bryan Forbes. The producers were Patrick Filmer-Sankey and John Nasht for Sidney Box Associates. The original film score was composed by George Auric. SOS Pacific is an expertly-made, suspenseful, nail-biting, British-produced thriller that was made during the increasing ‘Atomic’ hysteria of the ‘Cold War’ era with to-notch dramatic performances from the entire ensemble cast especially Pier Angeli. On an island in French Polynesia, British sea-plane Captain Jack Bennett (John Gregson) begins his trans-Pacific flight to Australia. Pilot Bennett is a reckless heavy drinker with an airline consisting of one single plane that is badly in need of repairs and maintenance. Captain Bennett frequently abuses his professional co-pilot Willy (Cec Linder) who warns him about the plane’s bad safety conditions. A beautiful-looking flight stewardess Teresa (Pier Angeli) is also Bennett’s lover but she harbors no illusions about his alcoholic temper. The flight has only a motley group of passengers on board. A tough, waterfront prostitute, Maria (Eva Bartok) expelled by the French police) , an American fishing trawler, sea captain Mark Reisner (Eddie Constantine) under arrest for smuggling and in the custody of a British police officer Petersen (Clifford Evans), a German nuclear physicist Krauss (Gunnar Moller), and a British spinster Miss Shaw (Jean Anderson). Also on the flight is scruffy beach bum and petty thief Whitey Mullen (Richard Attenborough) who was forced on the flight by the police as a material court witness since he informed on Mark Reisner! With his plane short on fuel (his shoestring airline didn’t have enough money for a full tank) Captain Bennett takes a shortcut through an area restricted because of a major hurricane. However the actual reason is that the U.S. Navy is conducting a Hydrogen Bomb test on an island atoll! The faulty wiring in the plane’s radio causes a fire in the cockpit with deadly fumes killing the co-pilot Willy and nearly poisoning Bennett. Everyone on the plane does their part to help except for Whitey who is a craven coward. Mark, a World War Two pilot, ventilates the cockpit and keeps the plane steady until Bennett recovers. As the plane’s engines go out one-by-one, Bennett with Mark’s help glides the plane to a crash sea landing in sight of an island. Yes, it is the very same island as the H-Bomb test! The passengers and crew leave the sinking plane in two rubber life-rafts and row to the desert island. With Captain Bennett suffering from a minor head wound caused by the plane crash, Mark takes command of the castaways and Teresa is impressed with his heroic nature. While Petersen is chopping firewood, the lazy Whitey steals the policeman’s revolver. He destroys one life-raft and escapes with the other. Krauss and Mark find man-made, concrete bunkers on the island. One building contains live sheep and goats but the other contains remote-controlled movie cameras trained on an island key two miles away in the reef. The nuclear scientist is horrified when he sees a steel tower on the key because he knows it contains a Hydrogen bomb. He says the cameras will record the blast and that the U.S. Navy will send a radio-controlled airplane to fly over the tower. An electronic signal from the plane will detonate the bomb and destroy both islands. A countdown clock shows they have exactly five hours before detonation. Krauss insists if they can get to the island and sever the main power line they will prevent the detonation of the H-Bomb! Teresa swims to the wreck of the sunken plane to get the needed tools. On her way back she gets weak and nearly drowns until Mark dives in and saves her. Bennett now sees that Teresa loves the American sailor. Miss Shaw comforts Maria who sobs like a frightened child at the thought of death hours away. Mark takes the tools and swims the two miles to the island key with the tower. Half-way through the bay a pack of sharks head towards Mark. Bennett sees this and realizing that he no longer has anything to live for, sacrifices himself by swimming in the water after ripping off the bandage on his head wound. The sharks smell blood in the water and quickly devour Captain Bennett. Teresa is horrified at the sight but Mark makes it to the island key. Mark climbs the tower but suddenly Whitey appears and shoots at him. Although wounded Mark continues to climb while the U.S. Navy sends out the robot plane. Whitey, out of bullets, climbs the tower to kill Mark. Instead, after a battle to the death, Whitey is killed in a fall from the tower. Mark uses an ax to sever the main power line just in time and the plane passes over harmlessly. The American Navy observes everything and sends a rescue ship. On board a grateful Petersen thanks Mark by saying that he is no longer under arrest with Whitey the material witness dead. Mark and Teresa embrace, kiss and look towards their future together just over the horizon. The End. SOS Pacific is a grand adventure film that kept movie audiences on the edge of their seats for the full 90 minutes thanks to Guy Green’s tight direction, a splendid screenplay and wonderful performances by the entire cast. SOS Pacific is also enhanced by George Auric’s outstanding symphonic film score which highlights the story every step of the way. The desert island sequences of SOS Pacific were beautifully photographed on Las Palmas island of Spain’s Canary Islands which would have looked spectacular in color had the budget permitted. The interiors were filmed at the Rank Organisation’s Pinewood Studios outside London. Pier Angeli is truly the heart and soul of SOS Pacific giving a brilliant, natural performance as disillusioned flight stewardess Teresa who finds love under adverse conditions. SOS Pacific (1959) was Ms. Angeli’s first film after being off the silver screen for a year after finishing her seven-year contract at the famed MGM studios with Merry Andrew (1958). Unfortunately her fine dramatic work was noticed only in Britin where the film was a hit. In the USA, Universal studios finally released SOS Pacific in 1960 on the lower-half of a double-feature with a cheapjack, kiddie-monster movie Dinosaurus! According to Jane Allen’s outstanding biography Pier Angeli: A Fragile Life, when Pier Angeli arrived in London to make the film both Richard Attenborough and John Gregson were instantly smitten with her natural beauty (they ignored the gorgeous Eva Bartok who took it all in stride after being romantically involved with Burt Lancaster while making The Crimson Pirate in 1952 which resulted in a love child). Both Attenborough and the screenwriter Bryan Forbes were also astounded by her acting talent, and decided right then and there to offer her the co-starring role in The Angry Silence (1960) easily one of her finest films. John Gregson, a likable British star, plays against type as a washed-up, rummy airline pilot Jack Bennett. Eddie Constantine is the leading man and does good work as the intrepid sea captain Mark Reisner. Later Constantine became a big European film star in action films, often playing private detective/secret agent Lemmy Caution. With a bigger budget his role would have been offered to major Hollywood stars like John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Gregory Peck, or even Kirk Douglas! Unlike the British cast, Constantine spent the entire shoot with his beloved wife and children. SOS Pacific is a hard to find DVD outside of Great Britain but it is a lost treasure.

Review by Ralph Schiller

Merry Andrew (1958) was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and released in the United States on April 4, 1958. It was filmed in CinemaScope and MetroColor with a running time of 103 minutes It was directed by Michael Kidd, who also choreographed the musical numbers. The producer was Sol C. Siegal and the screenplay was written by Isobel Lennart and I.A.L. Diamond based on a story by Paul Gallico. Music and lyrics were composed by Saul Chaplin and Johnny Mercer with music arranged by Nelson Riddle. Merry Andrew is a delightful musical-comedy starring red-headed comedian Danny Kaye, but captivating co-star and leading lady Pier Angeli steals the movie. The British expression for a funny clown is “Merry Andrew”. In England, the prestigious Larabee Academy for boys is ruled by tyrannical headmaster Matthew Larabee (Noel Purcell). Andrew Larabee (Danny Kaye) is his weak son who will inherit the Academy that has been in the family’s hands for over a century. Engaged to beautiful, upper-class Letitia Fairchild (Patricia Cutts), Andrew patiently waits for Matthew to set the wedding date. During summer break Andrew bicycles to a nearby meadow to search Roman ruins for a missing statue of Pan. Andrew is astonished to see the meadow occupied by the Gallini Circus from Italy! Ringmaster Papa Gallini (Salvatore Baccaloni) owns the circus with five, acrobatic sons and attractive daughter Selena Gallini (Pier Angeli). Andrew’s heart jumps when he sees Selena’s head and shoulders bathing outside behind a canvas shower! Papa Gallini permits Andrew to dig around the circus with Selena intrigued by the shy, polite English gentleman. Selena’s over-protective, five brothers spy on Andrew, ready to kill him if he touches her! Andrew excavates up into the big top, inside the lion’s cage! Mistaking Andrew for a clown, the circus audience roars with laughter. When Papa is sick, Selena makes Andrew ringmaster and the audience howls at his bumbling antics! Selena visits Andrew in the Roman caves and declares her love for him. The cave entrance suddenly collapses trapping them overnight! Papa Gallini and her five brothers find Andrew and Selena together, but instead of killing the Englishman, they call him brother! With Andrew and Selena marrying Saturday, the entire circus joyfully celebrates under the big top to a spectacular musical number Salud (Italian for good luck and happiness)! Andrew returns to the Academy to break his engagement with Letitia, but his headstrong father Matthew says they marry Saturday, the same day he weds Selena. When her pet chimpanzee finds the statue of Pan, Selena returns it to Andrew at the Academy. Confronted by Matthew, his two brothers Dudley Larabee (Robert Coote) and Gregory Larabee (Rex Evans), and Letitia, Andrew confesses he loves Selena and will join the circus as a clown! On Saturday, Dudley marries Letitia, whom he always loved, as circus wagons come for Andrew. Matthew proudly declares that a Larabee ancestor was court jester to the King of England, “So Andrew, be a great clown!” Andrew hops onto Selena’s wagon and the circus caravan departs with everyone singing Salud. Merry Andrew is an enchanting motion picture for children of all ages. With a colorful circus background, six glorious songs, expert comedy from Danny Kaye, plus a charming, beautiful-looking Pier Angeli to fall in love with, Merry Andrew is a comic gem that’s aged like fine wine. The film only falters with obvious use of stunt doubles on the trapeze for Pier Angeli and Danny Kaye. Merry Andrew was a profitable money-maker for MGM, but not the blockbuster hit the studio hoped for. It was the end of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s golden era and Merry Andrew was the studio’s last, big-budget musical. The previous year, MGM had a box office bonanza with the modestly-budgeted, black & white, “rock ‘n roll” musical, Jailhouse Rock (1957) starring Elvis Presley. According to Jane Allen’s biography Pier Angeli: A Fragile Life, Merry Andrew was the only musical filming on the MGM lot, and the studio rushed production to save money. Isobel Lennart and I.A.L. Diamond wrote the happy screenplay based on a story by novelist, Paul Gallico, who wrote the novel/screenplay for the hit movie The Poseidon Adventure (1972). Diamond won an Academy Award Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for The Apartment (1960). Hollywood choreographer/actor Michael Kidd does fine work directing Merry Andrew especially in the glorious musical numbers. Kidd’s staging of the show-stopping, breath-taking, song-and-dance number Salud is magnificent! Bitter about MGM’s cost-cutting, Kidd returned to choreography, and never directed another motion picture. Michael Kidd was awarded an honorary Oscar for his dancing contributions to the silver screen in 1997. Merry Andrew was produced by Sol C. Siegel, who somehow finished the movie with MGM slashing costs left and right. Siegel was a top Hollywood producer of major motion pictures including the Oscar-nominated Three Coins In A Fountain (1954), and the splendid comedy-mystery, No Way To Treat A Lady (1968) starring Rod Steiger. Saul Chaplin and Johnny Mercer composed six joyful songs for Merry Andrew, including the hilarious Chin up, Stout Fellow sung by Danny Kaye, Robert Coote, Rex Evans as Andrew faces his stern father! Chaplin won three Academy Award Oscars for his scores for An American In Paris (1952) with Gene Kelly, and Leslie Caron, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1955) with Howard Keel and Jane Powell, and West Side Story (1961) with Natalie Wood. Johnny Mercer won four Oscars for his scores and songs for The Harvey Girls (1947) with Judy Garland, Here Comes The Groom (1952) with Bing Crosby and Jane Wyman, Breakfast At Tifanny’s (1962) with Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard, and Days Of Wine And Roses (1963) with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. Billed above the title, Danny Kaye is the star of Merry Andrew, and the entire film is built around his versatile talent of singing, dancing, and comedy. Kaye (with an American accent) is appealing as the lovable, browbeaten, British schoolteacher Andrew Larabee, under the thumb of his commanding, no-nonsense father. Andrew is a dutiful son, content to inherit the academy, and marry lovely Leticia, until the circus comes to town like a breath of fresh air with Pier Angeli’s loving Selena. According to Jane Allen’s book while making Merry Andrew, Pier Angeli neither admired or understood Kaye’s manic-style comedy. The great comedian was deeply insecure about himself, and Pier Angeli was annoyed he remained in character even when cameras were not rolling. Pier Angeli resented that Danny Kaye did not think of her as an accomplished dramatic actress but just another pretty leading lady! Born in Brooklyn, New York, Danny Kaye worked his way up through show business and became a Broadway sensation in the musical smash Lady In The Dark in 1941. When Hollywood called, Danny Kaye starred in big Technicolor movies to great acclaim for the Samuel Goldwyn studios, including The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty (1947), Hans Christian Anderson (1952), and comedy classics at other studios, The Inspector General (1949) and The Court Jester (1955). Although he’s best remembered for co-starring with Bing Crosby in the beloved holiday movie White Christmas (1954), Kaye was a last-minute replacement for an ill Donald O’ Connor! When his movie career waned, he starred on television in The Danny Kaye Show (1963-1967). Danny Kaye made only nineteen movies before his death in 1987. Pier Angeli made thirty-three films. Billed second, below the title after Danny Kaye, Pier Angeli is charismatic as vivacious, romantic, Italian circus performer Selena Gallini. Although she doesn’t appear in the film for nearly twenty minutes, Pier Angeli lights up Merry Andrew with her sparkling performance! Andrew, immediately starstruck by her natural beauty (in curve-hugging circus tights), discovers a sincere caring woman who listens to him. Of all the people in Andrew’s life, his father, his brothers, his fiancée, only Selena sees a gifted man born to be a clown, not a dry schoolteacher! Merry Andrew is definitely a Danny Kaye comedy but Pier Angeli’s great talent made it successful. Jane Allen writes Pier Angeli was happily reunited on Merry Andrew with ex-boyfriend Tommy Ralls, who plays one of the Gallini brothers! After seven years at MGM, Pier Angeli’s studio contract expired. According Jane Allen’s book, the studio wanted to renew her contract for another seven years through 1965. In the 1950’s, MGM dropped from their stables Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Lana Turner, Robert Taylor, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Ava Gardner, all of them bigger movie stars than Pier Angeli. MGM offered Pier Angeli a non-exclusive contract to make two films for the studio over three years. She refused because MGM never gave her another director as great as Fred Zinnemann, who directed her first film at the studio. By turning her back on Hollywood to make foreign films overseas, Pier Angeli sabotaged her career. Her European films, like her 1954 French film Mam’zelle Nitouche, had virtually no American distribution. Pier Angeli began her European exile with her next film, a British thriller. A major Hollywood studio released the film in the U.S. to second-run theatres. Pier Angeli was no longer a top-rank movie star. Note: Italian opera singer Salvatore Baccaloni is wonderful as circus owner Papa Gallini in Merry Andrew. Baccaloni co-starred in a few Italian and Hollywood films including Fanny (1961) with Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, and Leslie Caron, The Pidgeon That Took Rome (1962) with Charlton Heston and Rock-A-Bye Baby (1958) with another wacky American comedian Jerry Lewis!

Review by Ralph Schiller

Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and released in the United States on July 4, 1956. It was filmed in widescreen black & white with a running time of 113 minutes It was directed by Robert Wise and produced by Charles Schnee. The screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman based on Rocky Graziano’s (with Rowland Barber) autobiography with the same title. Bronislau Kaper composed the film score and title song, with lyrics by Sammy Cahn, sung by Perry Como. Somebody Up There Likes Me is a true, rags-to-riches story about a boxer. Co-star Pier Angeli give a tender, heart-tugging performance as the boxer’s wife. On screen we see “This is the way I remember it… definitely, Rocky Graziano” In 1930’s New York City’s poor Eastside, juvenile delinquent Rocky Barbella (Paul Newman) and his pal Romolo (Sal Mineo) lead a gang of violent thieves (including future movie star Steve McQueen). Growing up, Rocky was slapped around by his father Nick (Harold J. Stone), a drunken ex-boxer. New York Police arrest Rocky, and a judge sends him to reform school and later to state prison. Rocky is released from prison during World War Two, and is drafted into the army. Rocky deserts the army, returns to New York, and uses the name of Graziano (an Italian wine) to fight as a boxer for easy money. With manager Irving Cohen (Everett Sloane), Rocky Graziano wins six fights in a row before being arrested by FBI agents. Rocky is kicked out of the army dishonorably after serving a year in a military prison. Rocky returns to New York and boxing, winning one fight after another. In the Eastside, the Italian-American Rocky is introduced to a nice, pretty Jewish girl Norma (Pier Angeli) with love at first sight for both. They marry, but Rocky’s mother Ma Barbella (Eileen Heckart) warns Norma that boxing is in Rocky’s blood, like it was for his father. Norma must never make him quit or he’ll become a drunk like Nick after Ma Barbella made him leave the sport he loved. Rocky and Norma have a daughter Audrey (Angela Cartwright) who screams every time her father comes home from a boxing match with his face covered in bandages! Norma calms her, “Don’t worry, it’s only Daddy!” Rocky loses his first fight to the middle-weight champion but a rematch is a few months away. Gangsters order Rocky to deliberately lose, or they will tell the press and public about his record as a prison convict and wartime army deserter. Rocky refuses and newspaper headlines call him a cowardly deserter. When Rocky doesn’t name the gangsters, the New York boxing commission revokes his boxing license. Norma loyally stands by Rocky and Irving says the Chicago boxing commission gave him a license for the rematch there. The night before the championship fight, a nervous Rocky flies home to New York to see his parents. Ma Barbella is away with a sick cousin leaving his bitter father alone. Rocky tells Nick he understands that boxing was his life and asks if there is anything he can for him. Nick proudly answers, “Be a champ. Like I never was!” Rocky sees pal Romolo, who’s dying from consumption, and kind candystore owner Benny (Joseph Buloff). They tell Rocky the entire Eastside is praying he wins the title! Rocky confidently flies back to Chicago and is joyful when Norma says she is pregnant! At the fight, the middleweight champion gives Rocky a terrible beating in the ring. The streets of New York’s Eastside are empty and silent except for radios blaring the fight coverage from every single window! Rocky falls down several times, before getting up and delivering a knockout punch! Rocky Graziano is the “Middle-Weight Champion Of The World” and everyone in his old neighborhood dances in the street! The next day Rocky is honored with a ticker tape parade in the Eastside, with Norma next to him, and Ma and a proud, sober Nick Barbella sitting behind them! The crowd cheers as Rocky tells Norma, “You know I’ve been lucky! [points to the sky] Somebody up there likes me!” Norma says “Somebody down here, too!” Rocky and Norma kiss. Somebody Up There Likes Me is not only a great motion picture but one of the best films ever made about the sport of boxing. At the film’s heart is a wonderful love story about a tough boxer from lower Eastside, New York City and the gentle girl who saves him from himself. The flawless and timeless Somebody Up There Likes Me was a blockbuster smash at the box office for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. It won two Academy Award Oscars for Best Cinematography, Black & White, and Best Art Direction And Set Decoration, Black & White. Gifted screenwriter Ernest Lehman took Rocky Graziano’s life story, and wrote a magnificent, uplifting, screenplay. Lehman’s screenplays include Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant, and West Side Story (1961). He won an honorary Oscar by the Motion Picture Academy for his lifetime achievements as screenwriter. Somebody Up There Likes Me was superbly directed by Robert Wise, one of Hollywood’s greatest film directors. His exciting direction makes the film’s 113-minute running time seem like three minutes. Wise shot daylight street scenes on location in New York City for authenticity, and the crisp black & white cinematography looks like a newsreel. Interiors were shot at MGM studios in Hollywood, and night-time street scenes on the studio backlot. Robert Wise enjoyed a long career as a top Hollywood film director. His movies include, West Side Story (1961), The Haunting (1962), and The Sound Of Music (1965). Wise, who died in 2005 at age 91, won four Academy Award Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture producer for both West Side Story and The Sound Of Music. Charles Schnee expertly produced Somebody Up There Likes Me. He won an Academy Award Oscar for Best Screenplay of The Bad And The Beautiful (1952). Somebody Up There Likes Me has a winning film score by Bronislau Kaper which not only highlights the fight sequences, with banner newspaper headlines, but also comical domestic scenes. Bronislau Kaper won an Academy Award Oscar for Best Score of Lili (1953). Kaper composed the uplifting title song, Somebody Up There Likes Me with lyrics by Sammy Cahn. Great, Italian-American recording star Perry Como sings it beautifully with his soaring voice over the film’s opening and closing credits. Below the title, Paul Newman shares top billing with Pier Angeli for Somebody Up The Likes Me. The entire film rises and falls on Newman’s shoulders, and he delivers a knockout performance as boxing champ Rocky Graziano. He not only trained hard for the role, but also perfected Rocky’s illiterate speech patterns with a genuine New York accent! Newman shows the boxer’s kind, generous heart which Rocky Graziano kept buried deep inside as a New York street thug. After his film debut flop in The Silver Chalice with Pier Angeli, Somebody Up There Likes Me made Paul Newman a major, durable Hollywood movie star. Ironically, the role of Rocky Graziano was intended for James Dean until his sudden death in a 1955 car crash. The supporting cast of Somebody Up There Likes Me, Everett Sloane as Rocky’s manager Irving Cohen, Harold J. Stone as Nick Barbella, Joseph Buloff as Benny, and Eileen Heckart (future Best Supporting Oscar winner for Butterflies Are Free, 1972), as Ma Barbella is outstanding. Sal Mineo, as Rocky’s pal Romolo, steals every scene he appears in! Mineo was a rising, young, powerhouse actor who won Oscar nominations for Rebel Without A Cause (1955) with James Dean, and Exodus (1960) with Paul Newman. On the comeback trail in 1976, Sal Mineo was mysteriously murdered at age thirty-seven. Pier Angeli anchors Somebody Up There Likes Me with her brilliant, subtle performance as nice Jewish girl Norma. Taming the violent boxer Rocky into a loving husband and father is more important in Norma’s eyes than winning the championship title. Pier Angeli’s gentle, under-stated work turns Somebody Up There into a great love story. Jane Allen’s excellent biography, Pier Angeli: A Fragile Life, states Robert Wise had trouble finding the right actress to play the Jewish Norma. When MGM suggested Pier Angeli, Wise was stunned because she looked very Italian! After a screen test she won the role, and Wise said “I think it’s one of her best performances. There’s a lot of strength and femininity in it.” During the making of Somebody Up There Likes Me, Pier Angeli was frightened every day on the set by a strange lady staring daggers at her! Blonde actress Joanne Woodward, who later married Paul Newman, was insecure over the beauty of the raven-haired Pier Angeli, and stood watch (not without reason). Allen quotes Paul Newman about Pier Angeli, “She was an extremely complex, and gifted woman…unfortunate that the roles she was asked to play, rarely demanded what I know she had to offer.” Pity Newman, one Hollywood’s top five movie stars of the 1960’s and 1970’s, never asked to work again with Pier Angeli. Somebody Up There Likes Me was the high-water mark of Pier Angeli’s film career. She would never again reach these lofty heights. Nor would she have a film director of the great caliber of Fred Zinneman and Robert Wise. After this acclaimed movie, Pier Angeli’s next film for MGM was a minor one. Note: In 1948, less than a year after winning the Middle-Weight Championship Of The World, Rocky Graziano lost the crown in a second rematch with the former champ. Another actor became a movie star in 1976 by writing a screenplay which “copied” every single event in Rocky Graziano’s life story. He even used Graziano’s first name with a similar family name, Balboa instead of Barbella. He starred in the film to great acclaim, and then made the same film over and over again!

Review by Ralph Schiller

Port Afrique (1954) was produced by Columbia Pictures Corporation and Coronado Productions, released in the United States on September 7, 1956. It was filmed in Technicolor with a running time of 92 minutes. It was directed by Rudolph Mate and produced by David E. Rose. The screenplay was written by Frank Partos and John Cresswell, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernard Victor Dryer. The film score was composed by Malcolm Arnold. Port Afrique is an exotic, mystery movie gem set in the tropics. A glamorous Pier Angeli shines in this adventure film. In the post-war French Morocco city of Port Afrique, beautiful Spanish singer Ynez (Pier Angeli) performs a show-stopping number at La Badinage nightclub. The club owner Nino (James Hayter) propositions her but she rebuffs him. At the docks chief of police Colonel Moussac (Eugene Deckers) welcomes the return of his friend Rip Reardon (Philip Carey) just discharged from an army hospital. Rip, wounded and walking with a limp, wants to return to his plantation and his beautiful wife Georgette (Marie Hanson). To keep the plantation running during the war, Rip gave half-ownership to partner Robert Blackton (Dennis Price) and his wife Diane (Rachel Gurney). Moussac heard rumors about Georgette, and discreetly advises Rip to call home before arriving unannounced. No one answers. On the way, Rip sees an old friend Pedro (Anthony Newley) who owns an airplane service. Pedro takes Rip to La Badinage for a cognac while they watch the seductive Ynez do her number. Nino, who profited during the war, demands Rip sell him his plantation. The American punches him out. Rip arrives home to find Georgette dead from a gunshot wound. Colonel Moussac rounds up the suspects. One is Ynez, a houseguest because Georgette asked her to movie in during the war. Another is artist Franz Vermes (Christopher Lee), Georgette’s former lover. Vermes is angry Georgette dumped him for a new lover. Rip learns his partner Robert was deliberately bankrupting the plantation to help Nino. Moussac declares Georgette’s death a suicide, and orders Ynez, a former nurse without passport, to remain in the house to take care of Rip’s injury. Although Rip believes Georgette was murdered, he falls in love with Ynez. She tells Rip that Georgette became unhappy after she received his letter from the army hospital saying he was coming home. At the bank Rip opens his safe deposit box and discovers Georgette’s diamond necklace is missing. Rip confronts Nino but he legally bought the necklace from Robert for cash. Robert and Diane flee Port Afrique for the Spanish border. Rip hires Pedro to pursue them by air. After a rough landing Rip confronts Robert and Diane at their campsite. Colonel Moussac arrives to make an arrest for Georgette’s murder. Diane confesses to murdering Georgette because she was running away with her husband Robert. Back at Port Afrique, a broken-hearted Ynez sings at La Badinage. She finishes her song and sees Rip holding her suitcase which he retrieved from upstairs! With a kiss, Rip and Ynez start their life together. Colonel Moussac watches silently from a distance, happy for his friend. He returns to police headquarters to write a report on the murder for the Governor-General! Port Afrique is a fun, mystery-adventure film with an intriguing story, a fine cast, beautiful Technicolor cinematography, and three songs sung by Pier Angeli! Port Afrique is based on the Bernard Victor Dryer’s best-selling mystery novel, published 1949 in hardcover and 1950 in paperback. When Columbia Pictures purchased the film rights in 1956, it was re-published in paperback as Murder In Port Afrique with color photographs of Pier Angeli on the front and back covers! The first-rate screenplay by Frank Partos and John Cresswell is close to the novel except the setting was changed from French West Africa, Senegal to French North Africa, Morocco. No such place named Port Afrique ever existed! Exterior scenes for Port Afrique were shot on location in Tangier, in Tetuan, Spanish Morocco, and Cueta (still a Spanish enclave). Interiors were filmed entirely at the MGM British Studios (since demolished) in Borehamwood, outside London. In the 1950’s the British government under the Labor Party froze funds earned by American movies at the box office. The Hollywood studios could only spend the money to make films in Britain. The lavish-looking Port Afrique benefitted greatly from Columbia studio’s frozen funds. Producer David E. Rose, who produced several British-American co-productions, made sure every frozen dollar was there on the big screen! Movie craftsman Rudolph Mate flawlessly directed Port Afrique without a single dull moment for the film’s ninety-two minutes. Mate was a Hollywood cinematographer before becoming a director. Mate, who died in 1964, directed the mystery classic, D.O. A. (1949) with Edmond O’Brien, a Tyrone Power swashbuckler, Mississippi Gambler (1953), and a Western, The Violent Men (1955) with Glenn Ford, Edward G. Robinson, and Barbara Stanwick. Port Afrique is enhanced by Malcolm Arnold’s outstanding film score. Arnold, perhaps the British film industry’s finest composer, won an Academy Award Oscar for his unforgettable score of The Bridge Over The River Kwai (1957). He composed magnificent film scores for another Pier Angeli movie, The Angry Silence (1960) and Solomon And Sheba (1959) starring Yul Brynner and Pier Angeli’s sister Marisa Pavan. Philip Carey shares top-billing with Pier Angeli in Port Afrique, giving a powerful performance as battle-scarred war hero Rip Reardon, who returns home from the war to chaos and murder! A painting of Carey’s likeness decorates the paperback front cover of Murder In Port Afrique. Phil Carey was a gifted actor who should have been a bigger star. He later starred in the Western TV series Laredo (1965-1967) and died in 2009. British singer, composer, and actor Anthony Newley comically plays the boyish rogue Pedro in Port Afrique. Newley, who died in 1999, was married to beautiful Joan Collins. They had two children before divorcing. Christopher Lee is perfect as the “Red Herring”, French artist Franz Hermes, a spurned lover with murder in his eyes! Lee makes the most of his one outstanding scene in Port Afrique. Christopher Lee had a great career in horror films playing Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, Count Dracula (thirteen tines), Dr. Fu Manchu (five times), as countless major films. In the book The Films Of Christopher Lee by Robert W. Pohle, Jr. and Douglas C. Hart, Lee said Morocco was tense with demands for full independence from France and Spain. At the same time in Tetuan, Columbia Pictures was shooting another ‘frozen funds” epic, Zarak (1957) starring Victor Mature and gorgeous Anita Ekberg. A scandal erupted when the Scandinavian star sunbathed nude on the hotel roof! Moslem men were deeply offended, once they stopped peeping! Lee died in 2015. Belgian actor Eugene Deckers steals Port Afrique with his subtle performance as the patient, relentless police chief, Colonel Moussac. Deckers, who died in 1977, was worth his weight in gold as a character actor. His many films include The Prince Of Foxes (1949) with Tyrone Power, Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) with Gregory Peck, and Forbidden (1959) with Robert Mitchum. Pier Angeli, shares top-billing in Port Afrique with Phil Carey, delivers a wonderful sensitive performance as Ynez, the fallen Spanish singer with a heart of gold. Ynez, stranded in Port Afrique without passport, is at the mercy of her lecherous boss Nino. She cannot help falling in love with the tall, handsome, broad-shouldered American who is unkind to her because he was betrayed by his wife and best friend. In the novel Port Afrique, Ynez is a not a singer but a Spanish flamenco dancer. Jane Allen’s great book, Pier Angeli: A fragile Life, states she was a last-minute replacement for MGM star Kathyrn Grayson. Pier Angeli’s husband, singing star Vic Damone, coached her through recording and performing three songs for Port Afrique. Damone said of her seductive nightclub costumes, “Her dress was so tight she could hardly move in it. But how she moved!” Pier Angeli’s home studio MGM never let her sing in films. Only when she was loaned out to Paris to make the French comedy, Mam’zelle Nitouche (1954) did Pier Angeli sing with Fernandel. After showcasing her talent as actress and singer in Port Afrique, MGM gave Pier Angeli a cameo in a big musical production starring another actress. Note: After Port Afrique, Pier Angeli made a record album which was unsuccessful. The three songs sung by Pier Angeli are, In Port Afrique (also sung by the Ken-Tones group over the opening credits) Melody From Heaven, I Could Kiss You.

Review by Ralph Schiller

Meet Me In Las Vegas (1956) was produced and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on March 9, 1956.  It was filmed in Eastmancolor and shot in widescreen CinemaScope with a running time of 112 minutes.  It was produced by Joe Pasternak and directed by Roy Rowland. Isobel Lennart wrote the screenplay. The film score was composed and arranged by George Stoll with additional songs by Sammy Cahn, and Nicholas Brodszky. The elaborate Cyd Charise dance numbers were directed by Hermes Pan. The overlong but enjoyable Meet Me In Las Vegas is one of the last, glorious, big- budget musicals produced by MGM studios. Hollywood’s golden era was over because of television, and the major studios ballyhooed movies shot in widescreen, and 3-D to lure people back into the theaters! For box office insurance, MGM added cameos from their stable of movie stars to Meet Me In Las Vegas, including a brief appearance by Pier Angeli.           In between countless musical numbers, the story is: Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl! Cowboy Chuck Rodwell (Dan Dailey) gambles in Las Vegas but always loses. At the Sands Casino, he bumps into Maria Corvier (Cyd Charisse), a temperamental prima ballerina performing there. If Chuck holds her hand while gambling, he wins! Maria hates Chuck but by the movie’s end falls head-over-heels in love with the cowboy. Meet Me In Las Vegas is a beautiful, colorful travel commercial for Las Vegas, which boomed in the post-war years. MGM did very little location filming in the desert city with Meet Me In Las Vegas mostly shot at their studios in Culver City, California. This big, expensive production was built around the superb dancing talents of stars Cyd Charrise and Dan Dailey. Movie audiences loved Meet Me In Las Vegas, and it was a box office hit for MGM. The film’s musical score was nominated for an Academy Award Oscar but lost that year to The King And I. The producer Joe Pasternak, who made top Hollywood musicals and discovered movie star Deanna Durbin, previously produced the post-war drama, Flame And The Flesh (1954) with Lana Turner and Pier Angeli. Dependable film director Roy Royland directed MGM crime movies including, Scene Of The Crime (1949) with Van Johnson and Arlene Dahl, and Rogue Cop (1954) with Robert Taylor and George Raft. MGM rewarded his hard work with Meet Me In Las Vegas and he delivered a moneymaker! Meet Me In Las Vegas has unbilled cameos of Pier Angeli, Tony Martin, Frank Sinatra, Vic Damone, Debbie Reynolds, Peter Lorre, and MGM contract stars Dewey Martin, and Jeff Richards. Tony Martin, Cyd Charise’s real-life husband, has a funny cameo. Gorgeous Maria Corvier passes Martin the casino entrance and he’s warned that he doesn’t stand a chance with her! Vic Damone’s cameo is not with Pier Angeli but with Debbie Reynolds. At the time of the film’s 1954 shooting Damone and Angeli were not married, plus she was still seeing James Dean Thirty minutes into the film Lena Horne finishes her musical number while Pier Angeli and her date Dewey Martin sit at a table applauding. Pier Angeli has no dialogue and is onscreen for less than three seconds. By far the best cameo in Meet Me In Las Vegas is movie villain Peter Lorre playing blackjack in the casino. Lorre stares bug-eyed at the dealer and says “Hit me you creep!” (asking for another card). Pier Angeli and Cyd Charise previously worked together in the MGM Technicolor musical comedy, Sombrero (1952). Although they both left MGM in 1958, Cyd Charise returned several times to her old studio. While doing cameo duty for MGM in Meet Me In Las Vegas, Pier Angeli was at the highest point of her film career

Review by Ralph Schiller

The Silver Chalice (1954) was produced by Warner Brothers and Victor Saville Productions, released in the United States on December 20,1954. It was shot in widescreen CinemaScope and filmed in WarnerColor with a running time of 132 minutes. It was directed and co-produced by Victor Saville. Co-producer Lessor Samuels wrote the screenplay with Thomas B. Costain, based on Costain’s best-selling novel of the same name. The film score was composed by Franz Waxman. The Silver Chalice is an overlong, dreary film with little to recommend it. Even a radiant-looking Pier Angeli is lifeless in this dismal motion picture. After the crucifixion of Christ, his disciples approach gifted silversmith Basil (Paul Newman) with the plain, metal cup Jesus drank from on the last supper. He is asked to mold around the cup, an ornate, silver chalice containing images of the twelve disciples with Jesus in the center. Joseph of Arimathea (Walter Hampden) purchases Basil’s freedom. Joseph’s granddaughter Deborra (Pier Angeli) soon loves Basil, but he loves a runaway slave girl Helena (Virginia Mayo) he met as a boy. He forges an exquisite silver chalice missing the image of Jesus. Without Christian faith, Basil cannot see the face of Christ. Helena matures into the Roman Empire’s most desired young woman, and is the concubine of magician Simon (Jack Palance). The ambitious illusionist, a favorite of Emperor Nero (Jacques Aubuchon), claims he can duplicate and exceed any miracle performed by the charlatan Jesus. The immoral Helena has passion for Basil. He rejects her to marry Deborra, who opens his heart to Christianity. With faith Basil creates the true image of Jesus of Nazareth for the silver chalice. Simon tells Nero he can fly and has Christian slaves build a six-hundred-foot tower. Unseen from the ground below the top has a crane and mechanical harness attached to Simon’s wings. When the crane cranks around the tower, everyone will think Simon is flying. The Roman multitudes cheer Simon as the new “Messiah”. With delusions of immortality, Simon tells Helena he is a god and rejects the false wings. She tries to stop him but Simon leaps from the tower to his death. Emperor Nero, weeping like a child over a broken toy, orders Helena tossed from the tower. The Romans riot and while Rome burns, the silver chalice is lost. Basil and Deborra sail for Jerusalem as Jesus’ disciple Peter (Lorne Greene) preaches that one day the cup will be found when “It will be needed more than it is needed now.” Note: The cup remains lost. Even the crusaders failed in their quest to the holy land to find “The Holy Grail” and return it to the church. The Silver Chalice is an endless, boring film, almost without any action whatsoever. Thomas Costain’s magnificent, inspiring, best-selling novel The Silver Chalice could have made a great motion picture. His previous novel The Black Rose was adapted into an exciting 1950 swashbuckler starring Tyrone Power. The film version of The Silver Chalice was loathed by critics and a complete flop at the box office. Movie audiences expecting the colossal spectacles of Cecil B. DeMille’s bible epics, Sign Of The Cross (1932) and Samson And Delilah (1949), were disappointed with this talky epic. Victor Saville bought the film rights to Costain’s novel, and interested Jack L. Warner, who saw Twentieth Century Fox’s recent box office bonanza with Lloyd C. Douglas’ biblical novel, The Robe (1954), and its moneymaking sequel, Demetrious And The Gladiators (1954). Warner even had The Silver Chalice shot in expensive widescreen CinemaScope widescreen just like The Robe. However, The Silver Chalice was doomed by Victor Saville’s snail-paced direction, and a bad screenplay co-written by novel’s author Thomas Costain! Even worse, the “stylistic sets” for The Silver Chalice look cheap and threadbare like a high school play. Saville blamed the film’s failure on Jack Warner who thankfully cut the running time. Victor Saville was a dependable director for major studio films like The Miniver Story (1950), and an Errol Flynn adventure epic, Kim (1950) before he stumbled with The Silver Chalice. His career never recovered, directing just one minor film before his 1979 death. Franz Waxman composed an outstanding film score for The Silver Chalice, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Waxman died in 1967, and won two Academy Award “Best Film Score” Oscars for Sunset Boulevard (1950), and A Place In The Sun (1952). The Silver Chalice was Oscar-nominated for William V. Skall’s color cinematography. Blonde bombshell Viriginia Mayo enjoys top billing in The Silver Chalice and is perfect as the beguiling, curvaceous Helena who sleeps her way into the court of Emperor Nero. Mayo, originally a Goldwyn girl, was comedian Danny Kaye’s leading lady in five hit movies including The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty (1947). Virginia Mayo made fifty-plus movies and her co-stars included Kirk Douglas, Bob Hope, Ronald Reagan, Dana Andrews in Best Years Of Our Lives (1946), Randolph Scott, Burt Lancaster, James Cagney, Gregory Peck, Alan Ladd, and George Raft. Mayo said she did not enjoy working with the intense Jack Palance in The Silver Chalice. Happily married to ‘B’ movie actor Michael O’Shea, Virginia Mayo died in 2005. The adolescent Helena was played by fifteen-year-old Natalie Wood, twenty-seven years before her suspicious 1981 death. The Silver Chalice is stolen lock, stock, and barrel by Jack Palance’s mesmerizing performance as deluded magician Simon. The tall, wide-shouldered Palance (billed fourth) towers over pint-sized Paul Newman, and blows almost everyone right off the screen. Only Virginia Mayo goes toe-to-toe with this movie legend. Palance had a long career playing one sneering villain after another including Jack the Ripper in Man In The Attic (1953), Attila the Hun in Sign Of The Pagan (1954), and the title role in Dracula (1974). He was Oscar-nominated for his unforgettable gunslinger in the Western classic Shane (1953) and won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award Oscar for City Slickers (1991). Jack Palance made over ninety films and died in 2006. In his film debut, third-billed Paul Newman gives an awkward, stiff performance as the slave Basil in The Silver Chalice. With his New York accent and ill-fitting toga, Newman looks uncomfortable throughout the film including his love scenes with beautiful co-stars Virginia Mayo and Pier Angeli! Newman despised this movie. When it played on television, he invited friends to his home for a dinner party to laugh at it. Paul Newman, married to film star Joanne Woodward, became one of Hollywood’s biggest, and popular movie stars for the next thirty years. He was nominated nine times for Academy Awards, and won the Best Starring Actor Oscar for The Color Of Money (1987). Paul Newman made over fifty films before his 2008 death. Pier Angeli, second-billed in The Silver Chalice, gives perhaps the weakest performance of her career. Unlike miscast Paul Newman’s poor work for his first movie, this was Pier Angeli’s tenth film after delivering strong performances in all of her previous movies. As the virtuous, pure-hearted Deborrah, Pier Angeli conveys the emotions of a beautiful stone statue. Even her Italian accent is out of place in a bible film where everyone else speaks modern American English! She did star in a great bible film, Sodom And Gomorra (1962), which overshadows this elephantine stinker! In Jane Wagner’s biography, Pier Angeli: A Fragile Life, the actress met James Dean for the first time on the Warner lot while filming The Silver Chalice. She wandered over to the set of his film East Of Eden. MGM previously loaned Pier Angeli to a Paris film studio for a French-language movie Mam’zelle Nitouche (1954). The Silver Chalice was her first loan-out to a Hollywood studio. MGM would again farm out Pier Angeli to make a mystery film in England for Columbia Pictures. Note: Two years later Pier Angeli and Paul Newman co-starred in the first-rate drama Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956).

Review by Ralph Schiller

Mam'zelle Nitouche (1954) is a French-Italian co-production of Paris Film Productions, Rizzoli Films, and Panitalia. This French language film has a running time of 90 minutes, and was shot in Eastmancolor. It was directed by Yves Allgret who co-wrote the screenplay with Albert Milaud from an original story by Milaud, Ernest Blum and Henry Meilhac. It was based on composer Herve's comic opera of the same name with the libretto written by Milaud and Meilac. Raymond and Robert Hakim were the producers and Georges Van Parys wrote the fine musical score. Mam'zelle Nitouche is a remake of the French-language film Mamselle Nitouche (1931). Mam'zelle Nitouche is beautifully filmed, charming romantic fluff built around the comic talents of French movie comedian Fernandel with film star Pier Angeli imported from Hollywood as his leading lady. In 1883 Paris with it's gaslight, cobblestone streets, a church organist Celestin (Fernadel) at the convent Sainte-Eustache, leads a double life. After playing religious hymns all day at the convent and its school for proper young girls, the shy browbeaten Celestin changes clothes to become the dashing Floridor, composer and conductor of the Comique Opera at the Lyric Theatre! He even makes passionate love to the opera's beautiful, young star Corine (Michele Courdoue) who is also the mistress of the aging commander of the local regiment Major de Lonueville (Jean Debucourt). The Major's sister is the convent's Mother Superior (Renee Devilers). One girl at the convent, Denise de Flavigny (Pier Angeli billed under her Hollywood stage name) sees through Celestin's charade and joins in on the fun! She quickly memorizes his entire opera/ballet, La Belle De Robinson. The Mother Superior foolishly allows Celestin to escort Denise to meet her betrothed for the first time, a Lieutenant La Vauzelle (Francoise Guerin). Instead Celestin locks her in a hotel room so he can pursue Corine but an angry Major is quick on his heels! By pure happenstance Denise gets into mischief at the hotel and meets the young, handsome Lieutenant. Although it's love at first sight for both, she claims to be the opera star Mam'zelle Nitouche! Then Corine loses patience with her two fools, and leaves the opera mid-performance. Denise steps up and effortlessly performs the star's role to the audience's delight. After further amusing mix-ups Denise admits her charade to the Lieutenant who loves her more than ever! Corine returns to the opera while keeping both the Major and Celestin in her pocket! Mam'zelle Nitouche is pleasant entertainment with no less than six musical numbers and songs shot in beautiful Eastmancolor. This handsome production has lavish sets and the entire cast is dressed in colorful, authentic period costumes . Even so at ninety minutes, the film is simply a shade too long. Beloved French comedian movie Fernadel is a comic delight as Celestin but he doesn't have enough good comedy material to work with. Although he made a few Hollywood films, Fernandel's humor did not translate well into English for American movie audiences. The great Fernandel remained a top star in France and starred in over 140 films until his death in 1971 at age 67. Pier Angeli, now a major Hollywood movie star on loan from the famed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, shines in Mam'zelle Nitouche giving a vivacious, and sparkling performance as the innocent Denise who finds first love, and true love. While speaking perfectly flawless French, Angeli in one gorgeous costume after another sings and dances her way into the hearts of the audience. Her enchanting, lovely voice is showcased in both a solo number and a captivating comic duet with Fernandel. Yves Allgret routinely directs Mam'zelle Nitouche like a pedestrian stage play rather than a vibrant motion picture of a popular French farce. He also co-wrote the overlong screenplay with Albert Milhaud which needed another re-write. Discerning viewers will see rising French movie comedian Louis de Funes making the most of a small role as a cynical, regimental sergeant who catches Fernandel hiding from the Major among the recruits and drags him into the Army! Unfortunately for Pier Angeli, Mam'zelle Nitouche did absolutely nothing for her Hollywood career as this French-language film with an American movie star was never released in the U.S. When she returned to Hollywood, MGM loaned her out to Warner Brothers to make the dull, lackluster bible epic The Silver Chalice (1954) with Paul Newman. Pier Angeli would not make another outstanding motion picture until Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), again with Paul Newman. Note: The original comic opera Mam'zelle Nitouche is actually based on the composer Herve's private life. Like Fernadel's Celestin, during the day Herve worked in a Paris convent as a church organist and by night as a bon vivant composer and conductor of light operas with an amorous interest in beautiful showgirls! As they say, fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong!

Review by Ralph Schiller

Review by Ralph Schiller

Review by Ralph Schiller

Review by Ralph Schiller

Review by Ralph Schiller

Review by Ralph Schiller