Magazines 1: 'Honey' 1971 hunks calendar

Thanks to Colin for sending me this spread from a vintage magazine - girls' magazine HONEY, popular in the 1970s. I have not seen any of these before, not being a "Honey" kind of guy - I was more TOWN and all those movie magazines.....

Here though is their ad/order form for their calendar for 1971 (click to enlarge) with a hunk a month - its interesting seeing who is on it, and who are still here and still working. 

The surprise here is the inclusion of the young Ian McKellen, who seems an odd choice here, was he on the "Honey" girl's radar then? as in 1970 he had only really done a small part in ALFRED THE GREAT (with my favourites David Hemmings and Michael York, neither chosen here), A TOUCH OF LOVE with Sandy Dennis, and several television roles including a David Copperfield and Hamlet. Not quite in the same league as Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford, Terence Stamp, or the popular boys of the time like Leonard (ROMEO) Whiting, Martin (FELLINI SATYRICON) Potter, or Helmut Berger (Visconti's THE DAMNED and DORIAN GRAY)! Pop boys Marc Bolan, Mick Jagger, Tom Jones and Elvis also made the cut. 

Well, Sir Ian is probably the busiest name here now, Sir Tom now judges the BBC talent show "The Voice", Sir Mick does his thing, Terence looks great in the new VANITY FAIR Hollywood issue, and a weather-beaten Redford was terrific in ALL IS LOST last year. Leonard, Martin and Helmut are still here too having long shed their pretty boy images.... More hunks at Hunks label.

(I've been accused of name-dropping - thank you, Martin in Derry - when I mention I have met people, but I was chatting with Ian when out clubbing over a decade ago (at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern pub and Crash club in London); we used to see Terence around town a lot as his then apartment at The Albany in Piccadilly backed onto my office in Regent Street; Marc Bolan guested at one of the early Elton John shows I saw at Croydon in 1973, and Leonard relieved himself next to me at the Gents urinal at the BFI back in 1970, in a blue crushed velvet suit ... it didn't seem appropriate to speak though! - we were both attending a discussion on nudity in the movies (with Billie Whitelaw among others - oops there I go again), a hot topic then as actresses - and actors (as Leonard had to for Zeffirelli) - had to get their kit off for those daring new movies of the era.).

Actors want to act

A pleasant surprise watching the latest episde (5th of 6) of the superior BBC comedy series REV, this week, when a surprise guest star turned up - Liam Neeson, as God, no less (its already been transmitted, so hardly a spoiler) - to comfort our troubled vicar Adam when everything is going wrong for him, as this third series gets more sombre. 
I hope there will be an uplifting climax next week. Olivia Colman is also superlative of course, again playing Adam's wife who now has a busy career of her own and in fact we see less of her this time around .... It was good to see Liam and Tom together again - they were the original Oscar and Bosie in that play THE JUDAS KISS which was a successful revival last year, with Rupert Everett, as per my posts at the time - theatre label. Joseph Fiennes (right) too is effective in REV as the bishop. [I have been corrected, thanks Mark - its of course Ralph Fiennes!].

It all reminded me of how much actors want to act (Tom Hollander has just finished playing Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in a new drama) and of course Liam is now an action star, his last one set on the airplane seems a must see when on dvd. I was thinking about how even legendary actors like Jack Lemmon (post below), James Stewart, Henry Fonda et al kept working into old age, when they really didn't need to any more, on the stage as well as film. At least they didn't do too much material of lesser value to damage their reputations - unlike say Ray Milland or Joseph Cotten who ended up in all kinds of dreck, and we won't even mention Joan and TROG !  Right: the 1998 JUDAS KISS with Neeson and Hollander which I saw in London before it went to New York.

I am of the opinion that most fortunate actors who come along at the right time get "ten good years" (that delicious song Nancy Wilson sang in her live cabaret act), certainly the likes of Stephen Boyd and Laurence Harvey did - mid-'50s to mid-'60s, or Michael York (mid-'60s to mid-70s), York being one of the fortunate ones who was able to continue in lesser supporting roles, whereas Harvey's and Boyd's careers had died before they did. Fortunate indeed are the likes of Dirk Bogarde or Alain Delon or Jean Sorel who can go on for decades, whereas in the theatre actors like Jeremy Brett or John Stride can transcend their good looks as they get older. Is there the curse of the very good looking actor who starts out well but then fizzles out ? (Whatever did happen to Jeremy Spenser, Leonard Whiting, Graham Faulkner, Martin Potter et al...?). Left: the kind of period movie actors must like appearing in: Michael Redgrave, Richard Warwick, Martin Potter, Tom Baker in NICHOLAS & ALEXANDRA, 1971.

Sometimes one sees an actor who started out well and seems reduced to nothing parts some years later, like John Philip Law - so promising in the mid-60s as the angel in BARBARELLA, in HURRY SUNDOWN, DANGER DIABOLIK etc, having literally nothing to do in the all star CASSANDRA CROSSING in 1976, as an aide to Burt Lancaster, right, with Ingrid Thulin. Well I dare say JPL (who died aged 70 in 2008) had that 10 good years.

Ditto Barry Coe, left, who was a promising 20th Century Fox contract player in the '50s and early '60s - Rodney Harrington in the 1957 PEYTON PLACE, the hero in 300 SPARTANS (looking fetching in a mini toga) etc. 
but in 1966 he is an un-named "communications aide" repeating commands in FANTASTIC VOYAGE - an amusing watch last week. He was also Carroll Baker's boyfriend in the 1959 comedy BUT NOT FOR ME with Clark Gable and Lilli Palmer. Coe went into television in shows like GENERAL HOSPITAL and continued acting to 1978. Other tv actors like George Maharis or Gardner McKay fared less well in the movies.

Barry, centre, in FANTASTIC VOYAGE

Brett Halsey (left) was another of the Fox pretty boys (RETURN TO PEYTON PLACE, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING etc) as was future producer/tycoon Robert Evans (one of the cads in THE BEST OF EVERYTHING), though Robert Wagner and Jeff Hunter were the main Fox contract players, Joanne Woodward and Stuart Whitman too of course. Ditto Fabian - see HOUND DOG MAN post below.
A Fox film like NO DOWN PAYMENT (Jeff Hunter label) is stuffed with their contract players. Jeff Hunter unfortunately died too young too, in 1969, but found his imperishable role as Martin Pawley in THE SEARCHERS, which is always on view somewhere (as it was here yesterday). Robert Wagner was the most successful of all, with some good movies in Europe (THE PINK PANTHER) and successful in television. The Universal-International pretty boys like Rock and Tony Curtis worked hard through supporting parts to build careers and achieve A-list movie status, as before them did Guy Madison and Jeff Chandler and ...while Warners had those blondes Troy and Tab, and Tony Perkins (Tab and Tony tried singing too with some success - see labels), and Kerwin Matthews over at Columbia ... 

One has to feel sorry though for Richard Davalos, over at Warner Bros: the role of Aaron, the other brother in Kazan's EAST OF EDEN must have been a plum role, but with James Dean as Cal, Davalos was completely over-shadowed. At least the DVD contains those screen tests with Dean and Davalos and young Paul Newman who also tested, and was soon doing Dean roles. Davalos's other credit that year (apart from a bit part in a Jack Palance film) was a small part in Warners THE SEA CHASE, a John Wayne-Lana Turner starrer, where sailors Davalos and Tab Hunter go for a swim in shark-infested waters - guess which one the shark heads for.... ?  He contined acting until 2008 with small parts in films like Newman's COOL HAND LUKE, and lots of television. Right: Davalos, Dean & Julie Harris in EAST OF EDEN.

Heavyweight stuff coming up: Finney in Huston's UNDER THE VOLCANO, Frears' PRETTY DIRTY THINGS with this year's best actor nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, LOVE IS THE DEVIL with Derek Jacobi as Francis Bacon and Daniel Craig as his criminal lover .... more impersonations with the Liberace film BEHIND THE CANDELABRA and Helena Bonham-Carter a surprisingly effective Elizabeth Taylor in BURTON AND TAYLOR ....  
Left: Jeffrey Hunter / right: Jean Sorel.

Cops and robbers - English style, from the '40s onward

SLEEPING CAR TO TRIESTE, 1948. This is a delicious treat now, a 1940s train movie stuffed with players of the era, one to rank with THE LADY VANISHES or NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH. Here we have spies Albert Lieven (hissably evil as usual) and Jean Kent and a notebook that could change the face of the war, which they must get their hands on, but which is now hidden on that Orient Express to Trieste. Add in Finlay Currie as a pompous windbag, Bonar Colleano as another annoying Yank, Gregoire Aslan as a chef, plus Rona Anderson, David Tomlinson as a crashing bore, among that supporting cast. The plot twists and turns until we happily reach our destination.

BOYS IN BROWN, 1949. Juvenile delinquents, British style. How did I miss this one? Well I was too young then for a start. This is an even more delirious look at late-40s England (one that is never revived now) as we join those borstal boys in their short trousers in that institution presided over by well-meaning Jack Warner. Our two main ‘boys’ are Richard Attenborough and the rather more mature Jack Hanley. Chief inmate is scheming Dirk Bogarde, playing here with a camp, Welsh accent – Dirk would have been 29 at the time, so these are rather mature teenagers.
 Attenborough and Hanley are both decent chaps who have had misfortune and gone off the rails, but surely with Warner’s help they can be turned into decent citizens? Michael Medwin, Alfie Bass, Graham Payn, John Blyth, Patrick Holt are among the other ‘boys’ with Thora Hird as mother and Barbara Murry as love interest. Directed by Montgomery Tully, it must have paved the way for THE BLUE LAMP in 1950.
[A postscript: in 1970 when we were waiting to enter the auditorium for Dirk Bogarde’s discussion at the BFI (see Bogarde label for more on that), I got talking to the Attenboroughs who were next to me, Dickie was like an old friend and insisted on signing my programme. What a dear chap.].

THE BLUE LAMP. Despite being a great Dirk Bogarde admirer, I had not seen many of his early films – they simply never appear here, but are now on reasonable mid-price dvds by the enterprising StudioCanal. THE BLUE LAMP was a key British film of the time, 1950, and is an authentic postwar British classic, directed by the ever-watchable Basil Dearden. We focus on several policemen at a London station, Paddington Green. Jack Warner is Dixon, a veteran bobby on the beat, Jimmy Hanley is the new recruit who looks on Dixon as a father figure (he lodges with Dixon and his wife, Gladys Henson). Dirk Bogarde and Patrick Doonan are the two cheap hoods, who plan a robbery during a cinema visit and Dirk shoots Dixon when he gets in the way.
The cheap hood is finally cornered at the crowded White City Stadium, where police and the underworld come together to catch him - great location shooting. Bogarde is simply electrifying here, one could see he was going places. It is a marvellous look at the London of the time, with the post-war bombsites and the different way of life then, people looking up to and trusting the policemen on the street, keeping an eye on everybody. Shot in an influential semi-documentary style, it paved the way for the later tv cop shows like Z-CARS and Dixon himself was resurrected by the BBC for the long-running series DIXON OF DOCK GREEN. Dirk's spiv period was followed by his war heroes in the early 50s (see reviews of THE SEA SHALL NOT HAVE THEM, APPOINTMENT IN LONDON, ILL MET BY MOONLIGHT etc, and then his popular DOCTOR films which made him the 'Idol of the Odeons' before his later more serious films, like those Loseys and others ...

HUNTED, 1952. Another Bogarde spiv role, this is a fascinating Charles Crichton film which never lets up, as it teams a man on the run with a lonely young boy Robbie (little John Whiteley, about 7 here) who, afraid of his stepfather, flees home after setting  the kitchen curtains on fire. He runs into Chris Lloyd (Dirk Bogarde), who's just murdered a man. Chris abducts Robbie and the two go on the run as Lloyd cannot shake the boy off. 
They journey around the country, and a touching and sensitive bond forms between the two fugitives. They end up in Scotland as Lloyd realises he cannot continue with the ill child, so gives himself up. Crichton nicely catches working class life in postwar England, and it’s a gritty but pleasing drama. With Kay Walsh, Elizabeth Sellars, Geoffrey Keen. 
Bogarde and Whiteley were teamed again in the popular THE SPANISH GARDENER in 1956 (Bogarde label). Whiteley is a perfect little boy here in '52, and also starred in that costume favourite, MOONFLEET in 1955. HUNTED could almost be the template for the later TIGER BAY in 1959. 
Right: THE SPANISH GARDENER, 1956.

PAYROLL. A tough, tense thriller which I had not seen since its release in 1961, PAYROLL is a real treat now. Sidney Hayers film shows the exciting robbery and its aftermath as thieves fall out. Ever since THE ASPHALT JUNGLE and RIFFIFI this is the standard gangster robbery drama and it works again here. Nicely set around Newcastle, Johnny Mellor’s band of ruthless criminals plot and carry out a payroll robbery, with the help of crooked company employee Pearson (William Lucas) whose dissatisfied French wife Francoise Prevost soon realises what he is up to. She and Mellor (Michael Craig) are soon plotting to escape together, but had not reckoned on the grieving wife (Billie Whitelaw, excellent as ever) of the van driver who got killed in the robbery. She begins to track them down herself …. With Tom Bell and Kenneth Griffith as other gang members who soon fall out over the money and come to sticky ends. As the police close in, the gang begins to fall apart, with each desperately seeking a way out, and in their panic no one realises there is one adversary they have all overlooked. Pearson’s wife thinks she has the money, but is in for a surprise …. Mellor escapes to his boat but nemesis in the shape of Whitelaw waits for him.

ROBBERY. Peter Yates’ 1967 film is another perfect gangster bank robbery movie, only its not a bank this time, but the mail train our ambitious band of criminals want to rob. Yes, it is a fictional re-creation of the 1963 Great Train Robbery. This is an uncomprising portrayal of Swinging London’s criminal underworld. In an almost documentary style ROBBERY mixes meticulously constructed, high octane action sequences (including one of the best car chases seen on film – before Yates’s next, BULLITT) with taut suspense and gritty realism, making it the template for future thrillers. Stanley Baker is the lead, coolly plotting the robbery, Frank Finlay has to be sprung from prison to oversee the money, then there is Barry Foster, William Marlowe, James Booth as the detective; Joanna Pettet is rather wasted as Baker’s wife but good to see this 60s actress again. 
The robbery is carried out and our gang start counting out the money in their underground hideaway under that deserted airfield. But soon that helicopeter is hovering overhead …. As Finlay made the mistake of calling his wife from a nearby phonebox, alarting the police to activity nearby. It was ever so …. Baker though escapes, as we see in that closing coda in New York.

The Trash item (see Labels) here is ALL COPPERS ARE. Were the '70s really this tacky? A 1970s twist on British cops and robbers, this is now a deliciously sleazy addition to those grubby early ‘70s movies that the British film industry was reduced to. It pits a young policeman Martin Potter against a small-time crook Nicky Henson, as both fall for the same girl, Julia Foster. The cop though is already married … 
Shot around Battersea and Victoria it is a fascinating look at the city then, and the fashions and interior decors of the era are all here too, to laugh at now. Potter – so right in FELLINI SATYRICON is quite ordinary (and a long way from Fellini) here. 
Supporting cast includes young David Essex, Robin Askwith, Sandra Dorne, Queenie Watts and more, and lets not forget Ian Hendry as that gay gangster with his camp boyfriend in tow .... It is an amusing timewaster now, one pities people who paid to see it at the time. Produced by Peter Rogers it has the cheap look of his '70s CARRY ONs; directed by the prolific Sidney Heyers, who did better with PAYROLL (above), CIRCUS OF HORRORS, THE TRAP etc.  

Henson was quite the lad then - those tight trousers are so '70s - as per his randy guest at FAWLTY TOWERS; uncrecognisbably older he was in the last series of DOWNTON ABBEY. He was once married to Una Stubbs, and is the grandson of veteran Gladys Henson, a favourite here. 
Martin Potter is married to Susie Blake, comedienne from the Victoria Wood shows, she was Bev in CORONATION STREET and recently the bitch mother-in-law in MRS BROWN'S BOYS - one of the more surprising show-business unions. 
Julia Foster of course married vet Bruce Fogle and is the mother of Ben Fogle.

These are also interesting London films, as per London label, fitting in with the likes of POOL OF LONDON, IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY, DANCE HALL, SAPPHIRE, VICTIM, WEST 11 and the like ...

Soon: more early Bogarde in PENNY PRINCESS and SO LONG AT THE FAIR, plus late '50s: LIBEL and THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA / 4 more Bakers: SEA FURY, VIOLENT PLAYGROUND, HELL IS A CITY, THE CRIMINAL and another look at Losey/'s BLIND DATE, 1959. 

Fellini Satyricon

FELLINI SATYRICON. It is rather odd returning to FELLINI SATYRICON after 40 or so years, as I had not seen it since 1970. It plays like a dream – or a nightmare, with some of the most vivid images one can imagine, as we wander through that pansexual vision of Ancient Rome with Encolpio (blond Martin Potter) and Ascilto (dark Hiram Keller, 1944-1997), friends who were enemies over their infatuation with Giton (Max Born) a coquette who preferred Ascilto. 

The boys have their comic adventures as they take in that decadent feast filled with grotesques presided over by a former slave, Trimalcione, now filthy rich; then are kidnapped by pirates on that very odd ship where Encolpio has to “marry” pirate leader Alain Cuny (who is soon decapitated as a new regime takes over) …. A silent Capucine presides over the ceremony. Later the boys encounter that hermaphrodite god whom they kidnap, witness the wealthy couple freeing their servants before committing suicide, frolic with each other and that slave girl ….

On and on it goes until Enclopio is left alone, after the death of Ascilto, and after fighting that Minotaur, as he goes off with another band of sailors to have more adventures. All one can say is that it looks staggering, Fellini fills the screen with the oddest oddballs (mysterious whores, hedonists, gluttons) and amazing sets (Danilo Donati) conjuring up frightful visions of a corrupt ancient world. Martin Potter looks perfect here and had some other roles, but nothing to equal this (see review of GOODBYE GEMINI at Potter, Trash labels, and we will be seeing his ALL COPPERS ARE... from 1972 shortly).

Federico described it as "Science fiction of the past" - and its certainly one of the more vivid views of the ancient world.

Others involved are Lucia Bose, fashion model Donyale Luna, Magali Noel, Salvo Randone. It is all very fragmented, in the style of Petronius, but it certainly one to keep and return to, from that great 1969-70 era when cinema was getting very adventurous. In that pre-internet world (and only 3 tv channels here in the UK) movies were very important to us, as we (in our early 20s) rushed to see Visconti’s THE DAMNED, this Fellini, Antonioni blowing up America in ZABRISKIE POINT, Ken Russell sexing up D H Lawrence and Tchaikovsky and that version of Gore Vidal’s MYRA BRECKINRIDGE ….no wonder it was a time of experiemental oddball movies and great music as young people forged their own entertainments without being derailed by social networks, cellphones, computer games and all the rest of today's distractions ...

Summer re-runs: Utter Trash

In the age of Aquarius, the deranged Gemini twins share everything - teddy bears, lovers and murder! Judy Geeson (TO SIR WITH LOVE) and Martin Potter (FELLINI'S SATYRICON) play 20-year-old siblings with an unusually close relationship. Their bizarre fantasy world is shattered by the arrival of Clive (Alexis Kanner) a flamboyant London criminal with a massive gambling debt. As the twins become exposed to the sleazy underbelly of swinging London nightlife, they tumble into a bubbling cauldron of kinky sex, blackmail and sickening violence.

Directed by Alan Gibson (DRACULA AD 1972) with cameos from Freddie Jones and the legendary Sir Michael Redgrave, GOODBYE GEMINI is an unsettling tale of incest, obsessive jealousy and death. Unseen since the early '70s, the movie is one of the most controversial, and taboo-busting, British exploitation pictures ever made. - That's how the dvd cover bigs it up!

Well, there is Trash and there is Utter Trash. I think this qualifies for the latter, or as Pauline Kael used to say "the higher trash" and "the lower trash". This is another key exhibit in how crazy movies went circa 1970 - I coverered the 1970 DORIAN GRAY a week or so ago (Trash label) - here we are back re-visiting the very same drag pub watching the same drag queen as Dorian (Helmut Berger) and pals - this is presumably "the sleazy underbelly of swinging London nightlife" mentioned in the new dvd blurb, above. 

Geeson and Potter don't even look like twins and they don't even look marvellous here. She was just right in HERE WE GO ROUND THE MULBERRY BUSH and THREE INTO TWO WON'T GO, and had just been in Joan Crawford's BERSERK,  but has lost her glow here and that lank hair doesn't help - he was stunning in FELLINI SATYRICON but has nothing to play with here and is just a fairly pretty pout. Michael Redgrave is certainly slumming as a concerned probably bisexual MP who stumbles on the "stunning" twins at a Chelsea houseboat party. Those houseboats also featured in that other dotty incest drama from 1969 MY LOVER MY SON (also written by the writer of this) which I was interested to get last year as it was a missing Romy Schneider title (review at Romy label).

Romy in MY LOVER MY SON

This one is equally dotty. Our twins Jacki and Julian arrive in London by coach (couldn't they afford the train fare?) with their giant teddybear, and take over a mansion in Cheyne Walk; they soon dispose of the housekeeper who is meant to keep an eye on them - they don't have to bother with work of course - and soon Clive (the odd Alexis Kanner) has them in his sights. Why is he wearing those awful side-whiskers? His massive gambling debt is all of £400! He blackmails Julian by getting those decadent drag queens to assault him at that grubby hotel room while Clive gets his camera out ... he gets more than he bargained for though when the twins cover themselves in white sheets so he cannot tell them apart, then Julian kills him with a sword. Jacki runs away - into the arms of the MP (who has a time capsule '70s apartment all in browns and oranges with lots of white gloss trimmings) while the now deranged Julian hides out at that grubby hotel, where Jacki finally finds him. Do you want to know how this absurd farrago ends? Ok - here we go: he strangles her and then puts a shilling in the meter of the quaint old gas fire so he sits there fondling her hair as he gasses himself .....  (those big houses were similarly effective in those other oddities of that era: Losey's SECRET CEREMONY and of course PERFORMANCE.

Its the actors I feel sorry for - surely this kind of tosh is not what they envisaged when they started out? How do they try to make this rubbish playable or try to find some motivation for what they are doing? Its a mystery. There is another lost one Redgrave did that year, for the same producers: CONNECTING ROOMS, another drab drama which teams him with Bette Davis (her career was on a downturn then) and the same Alexis Kanner, perhaps it had better stay lost. GOODBYE GEMINI could be an entry in the British horror series, but Hammer were doing it so much better. I must also mention that deliriously awful title song "Tell the world we are not in" played over the credits by a group called The Peddlers. It is simply AWFUL. It is fascinating though in one respect - that look into the gay underworld before the gay liberation movement took off in the '70s and then the arrival of that superclub Heaven in 1979 bringing a whole new culture of gay clubbing for the '80s onwards ... back here though people had to be content with these tatty drag pubs.

A shilling in the gas meter

THE NIGHT DIGGER from 1971 is more of the same but a whole lot better featuring Patricia Neal and her mother Pamela Brown sharing their huge dilapitated mansion with Nicholas Clay who may be that murderer on the loose (I shall have to review it....)  Nicholas gets out of his clothes once more, but it is all a lot more dignified than GOODBYE GEMINI ! but British exploitation cinema was going to get a whole lot worse in those early '70s, with those Confessions of Window Cleaners and Taxi Drivers and even more softcore porn, with PERCY (about a penis operation) and THE STATUE (a David Niven disaster) and anything with Hywel Bennett. GOODBYE GEMINI and DORIAN GRAY and THE NIGHT DIGGER were just the tip ....Then of course there were those Amicus horror compendiums, amusing trash to see at this remove, but back in the early '70s respected thespians (Glynis Johns, Terry Thomas, Richard Todd, Sylvia Syms, Daniel and Anna Massey, Michael Craig, Joan Collins, even Raplh Richardson) a decade or so past their prime were queueing up to play in these, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, VAULT OF HORROR, ASYLUM etc.
The dvd of GEMINI though features a booklet, a 'making of' featurette and a commentary by Judy Geeson, as though its some lost masterpiece - and some amusing trailers: another horrorshow of that era MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY & GIRLY (don't ask...), and that Jean Simmons-Leonard Whiting romance SAY HELLO TO YESTERDAY - what no BABY LOVE or UNMAN, WITTERING AND ZIGO ?