RIP, continued

Martin Landau (1928-2017) aged 89. Landau's most impressive movie role must have been as Leonard in Hitch's NORTH BY NORTHWEST, as the gay sidekick of James Mason. He also stands out from the crowd as Ruffio in CLEOPATRA, and had some later good roles in Woody's CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS and as Bela Lugosi in ED WOOD, bringing him a Best Supporting Oscar. He began at the Actors Studio in 1955, sharing classes with Marilyn Monroe and Steve McQueen, and of course also scored big on television in series like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE which I would have missed in Ireland.

George A. Romero (1940-2017)  aged 77. The horror genre is not one I bother with much, but we were all stunned by that original black and white NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD back in 1969 - the early colour versions were stupendous too ... Romero certainly started a trend with those satirical gruesome zombie apocalypse sagas.

Barry Norman (1932-2017), aged 83. Another long standing BBC broadcaster departs - their regular film pundit from FILM 72 right through to 1998, plus presenting other film related programmes like THE HOLLYWOOD GREATS and THE BRITISH GREATS, and until last week writing a weekly film column in "Radio Times" and also publishing books. Whatever one's view of avuncular Norman and his rather middle-of-the-road views, his shows were essential then, for reviews and comments on film in those film-starved years, before internet comment. He really knew his Hollywood and British films, even if not so interested in foreign language movies, but that was not his shows' remit then. 
  
Adam West (1928-2017), aged 88. The original 1960s BATMAN. How we enjoyed those shows then. Kapow!

Anita Pallenberg (1942-2017),  aged 73. The original rock chick is proof indeed that one can live a life of excess and still get to 73. The Italian-German actress and model almost began the Swinging Sixties by herself, being there at the start. We know her best from BARBARELLA and especially PERFORMANCE, but she was also in the now forgotten CANDY, and assorted other movies, as well as being that muse for the Rolling Stones. Her life certainly makes colorful reading, no need to re-hash it here. 

Pallenberg, like Nico, Jim Morrison and her friend Marianne Faithfull, came to represent the dark side of the swinging decade, and played an unusual role in the male-dominated world of rock music in the late 1960s, acting as much more than just a groupie or partner of a band member.  (more on PERFORMANCE at James Fox label). 

Vote for Britain

A crucial week here in the UK, with our election on Thursday and terror attacks escalating - lets return to the glory years of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s and all those British movies we love, part of our current Lists season, and no, I may not be able to stick to 20 each - but then, my blog - my rules. Reviews of lots of these at British label.

1940s:

• Lets start with 7 David Lean, all essential: IN WHICH WE SERVE / THIS HAPPY BREED / BLITHE SPIRIT / BRIEF ENCOUNTER / GREAT EXPECTATIONS / OLIVER TWIST / THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS
  
• 4 Michael Powell, even more essential: A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH / I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING / BLACK NARCISSUS / THE RED SHOES
• 2 Carol Reed: THE FALLEN IDOL / ODD MAN OUT
• 2 Basil Dearden: SARABAND FOR DEAD LOVERS / THE BLUE LAMP
• Asquith; THE WAY TO THE STARS
• Annakin - HOLIDAY CAMP - the post war boom starts with those new holiday camps, 1947.
• Hamer – IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY - the grim side of postwar London / KIND HEARTS & CORONETS
• Crichton – WHISKEY GALORE.

Let's throw in some Gainsborough melodramas which brightened up the war years: THE WICKED LADY, MADONNA OF THE SEVEN MOONS, CARAVAN, BLANCHE FURY, and some Anna Neagle epics: I LIVE IN PARK LANE, MAYTIME IN MAYFAIR. 

1950s:

Often seen as a bland decade for English movies, but lots of pleasure for those of us growing up then:

• Dearden – POOL OF LONDON / THE GENTLE GUNMAN  / VIOLENT PLAYGROUND
• Crichton – DANCE HALL (by Godfrey Winn - the leisure time of factory girls, as much a social document as SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING would be at the end of the decade)
• Hurst – DANGEROUS EXILE (ditto Belinda Lee in this 1957 costumer about the son of Marie Antoinette..)
• Box – CAMPBELL’S KINGDOM (Dirk and very tough guy Stanley Baker in the Canadian Rockies (actually the Dolomites in Italy), we loved it in 1957.
• Fregonese - SEVEN THUNDERS (Boyd leads a terrific cast in 1957 wartime thriller set in occupied Marseilles - one I enjoyed as a kid)
• J Lee Thompson - NO TREES IN THE STREET / TIGER BAY / NORTH WEST FRONTIER (all 1959)
• NO TIME FOR TEARS - 3 Anna Neagle classics:
• MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER 
• THE LADY IS A SQUARE
• THOSE DANGEROUS YEARS
• WONDERFUL THINGS
• SIMON AND LAURA 
• AN ALLIGATOR NAMED DAISY
• NOR THE MOON BY NIGHT
• OUT OF THE CLOUDS
• JET STORM - Stanley Baker pilots the plane, Richard Attenborough has the bomb, all star cast in 1959. Love it 
• HELL DRIVERS
• ALIVE AND KICKING
• THE WEAK AND THE WICKED. Glynis Johns is sent to prison and shares a cell with Diana Dors, in this delicious 1954 meller, from J Lee Thompson.
• TURN THE KEY SOFTLY. More ex-jailbirds with Yvonne Mitchell and young Joan Collins in 1953
• PASSPORT TO SHAME 
  
• EXPRESSO BONGO
• SERIOUS CHARGE
• ROOM AT THE TOP.

1960s:

The new boys and girls and directors hit town:

• VICTIM
• A TASTE OF HONEY
  
• A KIND OF LOVING (above right)
• THE L-SHAPED ROOM (Leslie Caron joins the seedy Notting Hill bedsit set, 1962)
• WEST 11 (Di Dors also in Notting Hill bedsit land with gay Alfred Lynch, in early Winner 1963)
• TWO LEFT FEET (Young Hemmings and Michael Crawford shine)
• SOME PEOPLE, 1962 charmer about Bristol teenagers, with Hemmings again.
• THE BOYS - fascinating 1962 time capsule
• THE LEATHER BOYS - another early gay British saga, 1964, below)
  
• BILLY LIAR
• THE SERVANT
• DARLING (above right) - Julie and gay pal eye up the waiter .... both get him.
• THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES
• I WAS HAPPY HERE
• THE KNACK
• THE SYSTEM - perfectly 1964 as England began to swing ...
• THE WORLD TEN TIMES OVER - 1963 Soho saga
  
• A HARD DAY'S NIGHT
• HELP!
• THE PLEASURE GIRLS - 1965 Kensington girls, gays too!
• SATURDAY NIGHT OUT
• NOTHING BUT THE BEST
• REPULSION
• ACCIDENT.

SWINGING 60s:

• TOM JONES
• WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT?
• MODESTY BLAISE
• BLOW-UP
• SMASHING TIME
• HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH
• DEEP END
• PERFORMANCE.

All covered in detail at British/London labels. 

Absolute Beginners, 1986

ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS was not quite a success in 1986, but Julien Temple's film is a fizzing delight now, perhaps a proto music-video film. It looks fantastic with all those day-glo colours and is quite impressive with those recreations of Old Compton Street in London's Soho, and the seedy tenements of Notting Hill and Portobello Road. It is 1958, so racial tensions are simmering as the new teenagers discover all that new music .....

A musical adaptation of Colin MacInnes' novel about life in late 1950s London. Nineteen-year-old photographer Colin is hopelessly in love with model Crepe Suzette, but her relationships are strictly connected with her progress in the fashion world. So Colin gets involved with a pop promoter and tries to crack the big time. Meanwhile, racial tension is brewing in Colin's Notting Hill housing estate...

Temple (I loved his documentary LONDON THE MODERN BABYLON a few years ago, and his pop videos include Bowie's JAZZIN' FOR BLUE JEAN and Culture Club's DO YOU REALLY WANT TO HURT ME?) has a great eye for staging numbers, brings in an eclectic cast to support his leads: Eddie O'Connell as the young photographer hero and young Patsy Kensit - a perfect Bardot type here - as the aspiring designer. There's Ray Davies of The Kinks doing a terrific number and none other than Mandy Rice-Davies as his wife. James Fox is the reptilian fashion designer. And then there is David Bowie as the slick ad man. One watches entranced, THEN Sade comes on to deliver that slinky number "Killer Blow". So, whats not to love?  One to re-watch again soon. 

London boys and spies ...

LONDON SPY is a new BBC series (5 parts - the first aired last night) about spies in London, and the selling point is they are all gay - even Jim Broadbent as our hero Danny's sort of sugar-daddy. There has been a lot of buzz about this one, and it may be too early to review it yet, lets see how the drama unfolds, as last night's opener had a terrific first half hour, and then a baffling, oblique second half, with a brooding sense of dread. Just who led Danny to the keys to Alex's apartment, the keys he was led to in that creepy warehouse where he works, and then that weird sequence as he finds the secrets in the loft of Alex's apartment .... It is all very similar to the 'body in the bag' case which was a sensation here in the UK in recent years, that also dealt with spies and possibly gays.

LONDON SPY is the story of a chance romance between two people from very different worlds, one from the headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service, the other from a world of clubbing and youthful excess. Whishaw plays Danny – gregarious, hedonistic, romantic and adrift, who falls for the anti-social enigmatic and brilliant Alex, played by Edward Holcroft. Just as the two of them realise that they’re perfect for each other, Alex is found dead. Danny, utterly ill-equipped to take on the complex and codified world of British espionage, must decide whether he’s prepared to fight for the truth.

LONDON SPY has attracted a top notch cast: Ben Whishaw plays Danny, a lonely hedonist who bumps into a handsome jogger the morning after another night in clubland, and experiences something of a coup de foudre. (I too remember those Vauxhall dawns as one, sometimes worse for wear, left the clubs and made one's way along the river back to Victoria - good to see the London one knows depicted accurately).The series is billed as an espionage thriller, but most of this first episode is about the unfolding, in heartbreakingly slow and tender fashion, of their love story. Alex is a mystery man, he says he works for an investment bank and his parents are dead and he has never had a relationhip of any kind before ... for a while the two are blissfully happy but then Alex suddenly disappears and when someone mysteriously furnishes him with the keys to Alex’s flat Danny finds in the loft an array of S&M equipment, a laptop and a trunk, the last of which contains a dead body which may or may not be Alex. He smuggles a key hidden in the laptop out after calling the police (by swallowing it, cue scene at toilet ...) who discover that Alex is not Alex but a man called Alistair whose parents are definitely not dead and who is definitely not an investment banker.

The modern gay scene is nicely depicted without sensationalism, and it will be interesting to see where the story goes, particuarly as Charlotte Rampling turns up in the next episode, along with Harriet Walter, Adrian Lester, Mark Gatiss and James Fox, and the ever-terrific Broadbent. This could be a slow-burn thriller, like the hit BROADCHURCH, but with extra gay added. Written by Tom Rob Smith and directed by Jakob Verbruggen (THE FALL). Could this be a British HOMELAND? We will see ... 
We did see - and what a load of, baffling, pretentious piffle, crawling at a snail's pace. what did the cast see in it?

Here is the trailer:  

https://youtu.be/d5CWWaF06uM

By Royal command ...

I have written about those Royal Film Performances here before, but here's a recap for those who missed them. The British Royal Film Performance was a big event each year during those key 1950s and 1960s years, when an usually important film was chosen for the Royals to see at the Odeon in Leicester Square in London, when a motley round-up of players were lined up to meet the Queen. Everyone it seems turned up ...

I was fascinated by this photo of Julie Christie, Catherine Deneuve and Ursula Andress at some mid-60s event, and sure enough it was at the 1966 Royal Film Perf. , the girls seem engrossed in their fashions and dig those long white gloves - in 1966. It seems the gloves were de rigeur. The film that year was BORN FREE and also present were Warren Beatty with consort Leslie Caron - maybe this was where Warren and Julie first met? - plus Dirk and Deborah, Rex Harrison and Rachel Roberts, and Raquel Welch and Woody Allen, James Fox and the stars of the film Virgina McKenna and Bill Travers. They also had to do rehearsals that afternoon ....  before the Royal party arrived. These events were covered by the newsreels of the time and the snippets make fascinating viewing now, a glimpse into a long gone movie world.

A decade earlier the 1956 one was the famous one when Marilyn was presented to Her Majesty - but also in the lineup was the young Brigitte Bardot and Anita Ekberg.... while the 1957 Royal film was LES GIRLS but its star Kay Kendall was detained in America, but here we have Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield (along with Michael Craig, Yvonne Mitchell, William Holden etc.) presumably before their famous encounter at Romanoffs in Hollywood in April that year.

The 1954 junket for the London premiere of A STAR IS BORN is fascinating too with Olivier as master of ceremonies, and Kay Kendall makes it to this one, as does Diana Dors and the Attenboroughs who like Kenny More and Jack Hawkins must have been regulars at these events, This is 14 minutes but worth watching - how movies where marketed and shown then ...

Another odd line-up is this 1970s one (FUNNY LADY?) where Barbra Streisand (with James Caan) broke with convention when being presented to the Queen asked why they had to wear the long gloves. Lee Remick and James Stewart (reunited from 1959's ANATOMY OF A MURDER are also in the lineup here). 

Susannah in Trafalgar Square ... 1967

Nice photo of Susannah York - one of our Sixties favourites - in Trafalgar Square, London, 1967. Thanks again to Colin ... Yes Martin, I will namedrop - I saw Susannah (1939-2011) on the stage (THE MAIDS with Glenda) and she and a friend were standing next to me once at the London 'theatrical' Salisbury pub ...


Above: Susannah and James Fox in the 1968 caper film DUFFY - one to re-evaluate again soon, perfectly 60s beautiful people in beautiful Morocco .... stoned or what ! 
(review at Susannah/James labels).

Dirk pleads: stop calling me a 'film' star!

An interesting feature by Dirk Bogarde in the January 1957 issue of "Films and Filming" - penned in 1956, where the popular actor writes on acting .... Here are some highlights:

Dirk Bogarde, who has gained international recognition for his performances in THE DOCTOR series, explains in this article why he prefers to be known as an actor.

"Last year I was acclaimed in this country as the most popular film star in Great Britain. Naturally I was very proud and rather flattered. Also I was amused at the phrase – film star. This is one of the most misused phrased by the press and public alike.

I consider that there are only about 40 genuine film stars in the whole world, most of whom are in America or on the Continent. It is difficult to define the word “star” – but I would have said that stars are the people with the extrovert personalities and the sparkling quality that puts the glamour, the glitter and the “stardust” into a very tough work-a-day job. All of these people are highly talented and highly accomplished performers. They are the ones who, if you like, put the show into business. They are also larger than life in every possible way.

The rest of us – and I include myself – are what I would choose to call star film actors. We are the people who manage to hold a strong position at the box office, but who have also been trained in the craft of acting. People who have studied their job for several years and who can claim, after 10 or 12 films, to be sound knowledgeable technicians.

The term “film star” is applied in the press to a small child of five who is bullied or cajoled into giving some sort of performance with the aid of distraught adult actors, a patient director and an expert cutter. It also applies to a large collie dog commonly known as Lassie.

The film star tag can be a serious handicap during an actor’s essential excursions into the theatre. Even being known as a film actor is difficult. In a stage play one’s fellow players sometimes feel resentful because they assume the film actor’s name is being used to boost the box-office takings. This is possibly true, sometimes. The critics of course delight in referring to “brave Mr Bogarde unwisely attempts the stage” or “Mr Bogarde sacrifices the safety of the studio and the luxury of retaking bad performances to challenge the immediacy of the cold, hostile footlights”.

It is conveniently forgotten that I have spent more time in the theatre than in films. I started my career in repertory  at the age of 16, boiling the glue, stretching the canvas and generally getting pushed around. I played, I suppose, in repertory and the small theatres around London in probably 40 or 50 plays and during the past 10 years I have appeared in over 10 plays, 4 of which have had reasonable runs in the West End of London.

I openly confess, and I do this with humility, that I dislike the boredom of the theatre. I find the repetitious presentation of one single creation madly monotonous after the studio routine, where practically every day has some little moment which has the equivalent excitement and panic of a first night.

However I maintain theatre is an essential experience which every actor in films must have at first. If he does not seek it, he is stunting his own talent. The theatre teaches an actor practically all the basic essentials of a film actor’s job and, most important it gives him confidence and shows him how to project himself.

Certainly the theatre presents the finest, if not the only way of learning the highly difficult art of comedy, since audience reaction is imperative in developing and cultivating style, pace and, most essential, timing. This brings me back to the cinema and THE DOCTOR films, the third of which I have just completed. I know these are not great works of art, but they are enormous fun to make and have vast family audience appeal. They are entertaining, which, after all, is the essence of my job. If it were not for Dr Sparrow I probably would not be where I am today. For that, and the foresight of producer Betty Box, who practically forced me to play in the first of the series, I shall be forever grateful.

Today in the cinema I am fortunate enough to pursue exactly the kind of acting pattern I want. It has taken me 9 years to achieve this. I can now contrast comedy, such as DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE (a form of high comedy) with off-beat dramas like CAST A DARK SHADOW or THE SEA SHALL NOT HAVE THEM (in which I played whimpering, neurotic young men).

It is essential to play as many varied roles as possible. This keeps an actor’s audience-interest alive. A leading actor who specialises in one part only or one character only seems to me to be strapping himself into an artistic strait-jacket. This also applies to the unfortunate stage actor who has to play one part every night of his life for three years.

I have been a so-called popular film actor for 10 years. Normally that is a long run. I may be living on borrowed time. I may have to seek wider fields – Hollywood, if the right script turns up and if it satisfies me and my bosses.

We have not enough writers who write for films. The good novelist and the good playwright is not necessarily a good film writer. In all my career, I can honestly claim that there have been only a handful of scripts with which I have not been forced to “muck about” a bit. I cannot use the phrase “rewrite” because that is far too pompous and indeed is not what I do; but I do spend many hours rewriting dialogue to make it possible for me to say. Film dialogue which looks good on paper is often difficult to speak; and that film dialogue which looks awful in print, is often wonderful to play. This has been borne out again and again. I suggest that some script writers should read their scripts alound to themselves. Doubtless they will point out that the actor is the one paid to do that.

It is because I am inordinately proud of, and passionately believe in, our film industry, that I make what are meant to be constructive comments."

We tend to forget that Bogarde did a lot of stage work initially, and had to give it up when the "fans" began to spoil the performances as they had turned up to see their "Idol of the Odeons" - though he certainly did enough fan stuff for them with all the posed stills and fan magazines, as per the selection here, and his record album ! No wonder he wanted to be taken seriously by the likes of Losey and Visconti etc. 
Good too to get a repeat of Dirk's various television interviews in the BBC Talking Pictures series, which I had recorded last year and lost on the hard disk, along with several others. I wrote about this at the time - Bogarde label - so hopefully they will also repeat the Bette Davis and Jame Mason programmes, where I am visible in the audience, all of 40+ years ago ...

How time moves on: Interesting to see James Fox - Dirk's co-star in THE SERVANT, 1963, left, and now in his 70s, is appearing on stage with another of his actor sons, Jack (another son Laurence is a busy television detective here) in a new play DEAR LUPIN, which is touring at the moment before playing in the West End. I saw James two years ago now at that special screening of the Losey classic to launch its Blu-ray release, it was fascinating to see it on the big screen again, along with co-stars Sarah Miles and Wendy Craig. As I had seen Dirk and Losey at separate events in 1970, I just couldn't miss this. 

End of summer repeats: Millie, Pulp Fiction, Aviator ...

"In the Ritz elevator you just go up and down"

It seems like the end of summer here in the UK, as we face our second day of incessant rain, washing out a bank holiday yesterday, and much cooler weather - we were moaning about the heatwave the other week, but the nice thing about UK weather is that it changes all the time .... it may be a warm September and late autumn ... meanwhile, those tv repeats keep coming. It was bliss to chillax once again yesterday, with THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, 

a favourite musical ever since my best friend Stanley and I saw it during its first run, at the old (then new) Odeon in St Martins Lane, London, in 1967 - as per my other reports on it here .... its certainly my favourite Julie Andrews film, I love the look of it, the great pastiche of the 1920s, Julie, Mary Tyler Moore, Bea Lillie as Mrs Meers with all those great lines we loved and repeated all the time ("Just a restless girl", "sad to be all along in the world", "please go, enjoy yourself", "I bet its juicy" etc). and then there is Carol Channing as jazz-baby Muzzy etc. The guys are fun too - John Gavin as Trevor Graydon guying himself and cute young James Fox's Jimmy (now a senior actor here, good to see him last year at the 50th anniversary screening of THE SERVANT - as per my posts on that - Fox label) as he launches the friendship dance into doing "The Tapioca" or in drag to trap white slaver Mrs Meers who thinks he will be alright for "a dark corner of the late shift" ..... George Roy Hill directs it all with a sure touch, its produced by Ross Hunter, and lensed by the great Russell Metty (THE MISFITS etc) and then theres Elmer Bernstein and Andre Previn sorting out the score and the songs ... whats not to love?

All I need to say about PULP FICTION is: was it really 20 years ago it blew us away - still does now, as does INGLORIOUS BASTERDS and KILL BILL .... they repay frequent (or at least annual) re-visits. 

THE AVIATOR, 2004. I liked Scorsese’s Howard Hughes film a lot more now than I did back in 2004. One is bowled over by so many things, not least Cate Blanchett’s vivid cartoon portrayal of Katharine Hepburn – its audacious, but it works (Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner certainly doesn’t). Add in Jude Law for a minute or two as Errol Flynn and the film soars, just like Hughes does in his plane as takes Hepburn airborne in his plane and lets her fly it. Scorsese only shows us Hughes from the 1920s to the 1940s, with all that HELLS ANGELS movie-making, with Jean Harlow (Gwen Stefani). Leonardo Di Caprio captures the spendthrift madness of Hughes in his early prime, as he spends, spends and spends more to get his vision on screen. 

Nobody it seems can say no to him, as we watch his staff and companions like Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly), and later his deadly foes like Alec Baldwin as Juan Trippe, CEO of Pan-American Airways, and Alan Alda as that very devious, corrupt politician. 
The basic facts about Hughes are present and correct, his unstoppable will and inner demons, including that Spruce Goose saga, and having starlets squirreled away all over town, as we see his growing obsession and OCD about health and germs and how he cannot open that washroom door … It is all vivid film-making, as the running time flies by, with Scorsese in his element, and all those fantastic planes and amazing set-pieces, and it has set me up to finally put on THE WOLF OF WALL STREET. It makes one wonder what Scorsese’s proposed Sinatra biopic would be like. 

Sexplosion !

"Sexplosion: From Andy Warhol to A Clockwork Orange - how a generation of pop rebels broke all the taboos" - this fascinating tome by Robert Hofler is an easy read, particularly for those of us who lived through those heady years. Let's see: "Rich, funny, and comprehensive SEXPLOSION takes you inside the tumultous, energizing years of 1968 to 1973, when artists, film-makers, and writers defied authority and challenged every taboo to create a sexual revolution that reverbates to this day. This is a superb evocation of an era" Patricia Bosworth says. or "Hofler pays tribute to the trailblazing artists who paved the way for the freedom on screen that we take for granted today", according to Jeffrey Schwarz.

It is a different world now looking back to those late 60s when censorship was still in full force - how much society can change over 40 years! Gay liberation and Women's Lib were still in their infancy - equality seemed a long way off then; unlike now, the newspapers were virulently anti-gay - in England the tabloids hounded closeted gay celebrities like Kenny Everett and Russell Harty to their deathbeds, and then the Aids crisis began .... Back in the '60s in America homosexuals were routinely called 'fags' or 'faggots' (it was 'poofs' here in England) even by the likes of liberals like Billy Wilder or John Huston (and in films like VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, THE LOVE MACHINE) - lots of straight men hated women whom they saw as castrating, dominating tyrants. 
Philip Roth certainly felt so - he refused to complete his manuscript for PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT as his hated ex-wife was getting half of what he earned, after tricking him into marriage with a fake pregnancy, as she had bought the urine sample from a pregnant woman, so he was not going to hand her another fortune - then, conveniently for him, not so for her, she was killed in a car crash, so heigh ho, and off to the printers !!! and that very funny book became one of the defining texts of the era, along with John Updike's COUPLES and Gore Vidal's MYRA BRECKINRIDGE, which we loved with a passion. Even the trash-but-fun movie did not dent our affection for it. How we howled at Mae West's line as she arrived at her office crowded with studs: "one of those guys will have to go..!"and poor Rusty gets it in the end, we had seen nothing like it !

Hofler goes into the genesis of all these, and in the theatre the problems with getting Mart Crowley's BOYS IN THE BAND, Tynan's OH! CALCUTTA! and Rado & Ragni's HAIR on stage with their nudity and depiction of gay life and those new freedoms. It seems critic Kenneth Tynan was more an unmitigated shit than one had realised. We knew about his S&M fetishes and caning women, but he was also rabidly anti-fag, and wanted nothing gay in his revue, and even wanted to hire only heterosexual actors! 

Also in the cinema, John Schlesinger was pushing boundaries with MIDNIGHT COWBOY, which featured some of the Warhol crowd, like Viva, also busy in Warhol products like LONESOME COWBOYS. Warhol's own films, as created by Paul Morrisey - FLESH, HEAT, TRASH - also raked in the money, though they would not pay for Holly Woodlawn to get bail from prison to attend her film opening!  Ken Russell meanwhile was getting the British film censor John Trevelyan (who was a regular on tv and in discussions on censorship I attended at the BFI), to pass his WOMEN IN LOVE (Olly and Alan had their own problems with that nude wrestling scene...) and the even more notorious THE DEVILS, while Visconti ran into problems with Warner Bros over his Nazi orgy in THE DAMNED and DEATH IN VENICE .....  which to the Warner Bros executives was about a middle-aged man chasing but never quite getting his hands on a knowing thirteen year old boy who seems to be leading him on. No wonder they wanted Tadzio changed to a girl called Tadzia !

Hofler though does not mention Fellini's SATYRICON or Antonioni's ZABRISKIE POINT, two other hits of the counterculture era, as we zoon on to BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE (which earned Natalie Wood more than any other film she made, as she had a percentage deal) and CARNAL KNOWLEDGE, DEEP THROAT and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (right). Amusing story about that - arch-manipulator Kubrick stayed at home in England but persuased Malcolm McDowell and Anthony Burgess, the book's author, to go to America and handle the interviews for ORANGE. Then Burgess realised he was not making anything from the film's success as he had earlier sold the rights for a few hundred dollars ....

Schlesinger ran into more trouble with his next one, SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY, but was now an Oscar-winning director, so got his way, having to replace his initial choices Ian Bannen and Hiram Keller which was not working out, with the more laid back Peter Finch and Murray Head. Princess Margaret though hated the film with its depiction of "men in bed kissing" - surely she knew enough gays! The kinky sex and violence of PERFORMANCE (left) also frazzled Warner Brothers who did not know what to do with it. STRAW DOGS with its brutal rape was also causing lots of problems. Then there was the notorious making of LAST TANGO IN PARIS ....

A fascinating era in all, as the new freedoms slowly became commonplace- as covered by "Films & Filming" and other magazines.  Another discussion I attended in 1970, when 24, at the BFI was on the topic of 'Actors & Nudity' - a hot topic then with more and more actresses and actors too, having to get their kit off. 
I remember Billie Whitelaw being vocal at this, and Zeffirelli's naked Romeo, Leonard Whiting, in a crushed velvet blue suit. He was standing next to me afterwards at the gents urinal  ... not a suitable moment to chat though.
Censorship still raged in Ireland then, a look at WOMEN IN LOVE at the local cinema I grew up in, in 1970 or so reduced us to helpless laughter - the wrestling scene had been reduced to a few shots of them panting on the carpet, making it even more suggestive. They were running MIDNIGHT COWBOY the following week - I wondered how much of that was left ...
How times change: Finland is now issuing quite explicit Tom of Finland stamps!