Category Archives: motion pictures

From Bond to the Bible: Memories of Manchester Cinemas

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Just recently I saw a short video on a social media site, I think it was Instagram, one of those sites where you are constantly scrolling along until you find something slightly interesting and then after a few minutes or even seconds, you carry on scrolling again. After a while you find that an hour of your life has been lost and it’s time to put your phone or tablet down and do something else.

On this occasion the video in question was one of Tom Hanks who was asked to name four pictures he saw at the cinema and to name the actual cinemas where he saw those films.

That short video has gone and I cannot remember the films Tom saw or the picture houses that he visited but well, that’s modern social media for you. You watch, you scroll and move on to something else. Anyway, here are four pictures I saw at the cinema.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Once, many years ago back in the 1960s, my school friends and I were taken on a Christmas school trip to watch the film. We walked it as I remember in crocodile fashion from our junior school, Crossacres, down Wiggins Hill and into Gatley, a small nearby village that boasted a lovely old cinema, the Tatton. That trip to watch this film did more for me than any teacher or RE lesson had ever done before or since and although I cannot claim to be overtly religious, I am certainly not an atheist and my respect for the person of Jesus has never been greater.

The Greatest Story Ever Told was directed by George Stevens who made such classic films as Shane and James Dean’s last film Giant. Stevens was a director who worked the way I would work if I was a director. He shot a great deal of film then sat back, reviewed everything and put his film together one brushstroke – or film clip – at a time. He chose Max von Sydow to star as Jesus as he wanted a performer who was unknown to the general public.

Max was in a way an unusual choice to play Jesus; he was pale and blue eyed and had a faint Swedish accent. Even so, he played a good part, so much so that whenever I see another portrayal of Christ, I always mentally compare it to that of Max. As for being pale and blue eyed, I suppose it is inevitable that people everywhere will envisage their religious icons in their own terms.

He might have been better in choosing unknown actors for the other roles too because the many star appearances seem to stop the viewer in his or her tracks as we spot various top actors and actresses in minor roles.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

This is probably the most stand out Bond film of all time. Sean Connery was the first to play the role of James Bond 007 but eventually he tired of the part and moved on. The producers at Eon productions decided on an unknown actor to take over the Licence To Kill, George Lazenby, a former male model and star of the Big Fry chocolate bar TV ads. My brother and I were taken to see the film by our mother. This must have been 1969 and once again we saw the film at the Tatton cinema. The Tatton was a large cinema with a very grand façade and like many old cinemas there were the stalls downstairs and the balcony upstairs. If I’m not very much mistaken, the film was shown as a double bill with one of The Man From Uncle films which for me and my brother was a very exciting double bill.

Above you can see the Tatton as it is nowadays. No longer a cinema but a Co-op supermarket. How times change.

OHMSS was the very first Bond film I saw at the cinema and to me it was everything I had imagined it would be and what I liked about George Lazenby, the new 007, was that he looked pretty much as I had imagined Bond. He had the authentic ‘comma of black hair’ as Fleming had always described Bond having and not only that, Diana Rigg was probably my favourite Bond girl too.

The Bond films were not then a staple of UK TV but there was always a Bond documentary, usually on TV at Christmas time which built up, as it was supposed to do, the public interest in Bond. It certainly built up mine. There was one documentary I remember which showed the viewer how Ian Fleming suffered with back pain and was sent to recuperate at a rest home where they put him on a back stretching machine which he later incorporated into ‘Thunderball’. Aha, I thought, this is how writers think!

Around the World in Eighty Days

This was a wonderful film based on the book by Jules Verne. In the film David Niven stars as Phileas Fogg who, while playing cards at the Reform gentlemen’s club in London, enters into a wager than he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days. Fogg bets £20,000, a huge sum back in 1872, that he will meet his gentleman friends back in the same club exactly 80 days later after traversing the globe.

The film then takes us on a tour of the globe with Fogg and his new manservant Passepartout played by Mexican actor and comedian Cantinflas.

The film was produced by Mike Todd and stars a mesmerising assortment of guest stars including Frank Sinatra, Noel Coward, John Gielgud, Charles Boyer, Ronald Colman, George Raft, Marlene Deitrich and numerous others. The production was a tour de force by Mike Todd who sadly was later killed in a plane crash in 1958.

The film was released in 1956, the year I was born so I certainly didn’t see it at the time. It was re-released in 1968 which was probably when I saw it at the cinema, again with my mother and brother. We saw it at the Gaumont cinema on Oxford Road in Manchester and I’m pretty sure we bought a very lavish programme with pictures and information about the film.

The Gaumont opened on 21st October 1935 with Robert Donat in The Thirty-Nine Steps. It was a beautiful cinema. There were 1,300 seats in the stalls and 1,000 in the circle, all with good sightlines. There was a Wurlitzer organ which was considered one of the best instruments in the UK which was later moved to the Granada Studios, cared for by the Lancastrian Theatre Organ Trust.

The exterior on Oxford Road was in the Italian Renaissance style and the entrance was dominated by one of the largest neon displays in the city. The Gaumont name alone was four feet high and below this there was a triple bordered panel which could take up to 12 rows of 18 inch letters in red neon announcing the attractions.

When the cinema closed it was turned into a nightclub. First it became Romanoffs and then later Rotters. Rotters closed in 1990 and the building was sadly demolished to make way for a multi storey car park. Why anyone would even attempt to drive into Manchester city centre in 2026 I really don’t know so how long that car park will last is anybody’s guess.

Henry V

I really don’t know much about the plays of William Shakespeare. Despite taking English Literature at school, we never studied Shakespeare, but then again I left school at 16 clutching my 4 O’ levels. Anyway, in later life I began to read some of the Bard’s plays and my first real introduction was the 1989 film by Kenneth Branagh. It’s a really wonderful film with some great supporting players including Paul Scofield, Derek Jacobi, Ian Holm and Emma Thompson. I saw it at the Odeon in Manchester where I saw many other films over the years. I think my mother took myself and my brother to see The Sound of Music there and my brother and I went there to see numerous films. I think I had my very first kebab at a fast-food place next door.

The Odeon all closed up in 2013

The Odeon opened as the Paramount in 1930. It was a massive venue seating nearly 3000 people. It eventually became a seven-screen cinema but closed in 2004. The building sat empty until 2017 when it was demolished.

Those are my four films. The Odeon and the Gaumont have both been demolished and the Tatton is now a supermarket although despite being extensively remodelled, the developers kept the old façade of the cinema. At least those four films are still going strong and finding new audiences on the TV screen.

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Whatever Happened to the DVD?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I still have a DVD collection. Not a particularly impressive one and certainly not one that would make me a fortune on Antiques Roadshow in thirty years’ time but there’s something I like about having a shelf full of films I can actually hold in my hand. These days, of course, you can watch pretty much anything without owning a physical copy. When there are so many new TV channels around and everything can either be downloaded, streamed or watched on catch-up TV, what is even the point of a DVD? They just take up room, fill up cupboards and shelves and generally get in the way.

To a certain extent I sort of agree with that, for instance, if you miss a film on the BBC, you can always go to BBC iPlayer and watch it there. On the other hand, I read somewhere on the internet that DVDs are making a comeback.

Sometimes, when there is absolutely nothing on TV worth watching, I’ll have a scan through my DVD shelf and choose something to watch. These days I get bored pretty easily, so I might watch an hour of something, go to make a cup of tea and find that something interesting has popped up — a documentary or an old TV show — and I’ll save the DVD for later (my DVD player actually remembers where you stopped the disc). Then I’ll settle down with my cuppa, watch the old TV show and finish the DVD later.

Interestingly, last night that exact situation occurred. I was watching an old favourite, the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood, paused the disc to make a cuppa and up popped that old TV show, Man in a Suitcase. (I had set a reminder for it earlier after a quick browse through the on-screen TV guide).

Man in a Suitcase was a series made by Lew Grade’s ITC production company. It’s about a former CIA agent called McGill who was either sacked or forced to resign from the CIA and now makes his living as a private investigator in the UK. Presumably there is an episode that explains all this but I’m not sure I ever remember seeing it. Richard Bradford played McGill in a brooding, laid-back James Dean sort of style.

I had really been looking forward to watching Man in a Suitcase but after about twenty minutes — or probably less — I realised it wasn’t my cup of tea and went back to my film.

Some time ago I was looking up at my Woody Allen DVD collection of about twelve discs and thought I really needed to pick up some of his other films. Sleeper is a great comedy about Miles Monroe, played by Woody of course, a health-food store owner who gets cryogenically frozen in 1973 and wakes up two hundred years in the future. I searched eBay for a copy and found one, although the cheapest was just under £6. A number of Woody Allen DVD bundles came up for a similar price but sadly none of them had Sleeper. Anyway, for £5.20 I bought a collection of five of Woody’s films. Two I already had: the wonderful Manhattan and Bananas, although my copy of the latter was one of those free newspaper DVD versions, so it was good to get a “proper” copy with all the correct packaging. (Yes, I know, I’m a bit weird like that).

I put the first DVD in and got it set up ready to go. Then I sorted out a cup of tea with the mandatory ham sandwich and chocolate digestive and I was ready to press play. After about twenty minutes of Love and Death I was a little underwhelmed and thought, OK, I’ll save that for another day. In went Zelig, which is a sort of spoof documentary. Again, it wasn’t great but I managed to watch it right through to the end. The best thing about it was the way they made a lot of new footage actually look like real documentary film from the 1930s or 40s, whichever decade it was supposed to be set in. Great visual quality Woody, but Zelig was a little lacking in content.

Time for another cuppa and in goes Shadows and Fog. I gave that one fifteen minutes but it wasn’t doing it for me, so it was out with that one and in went Bananas. Just then though, a documentary series popped up on the Yesterday channel: Canal Boat Diaries. It’s a diary of a young man, Robbie Cummings, who journeys along the UK’s canals in his narrowboat. It’s largely self-filmed, although I suspect that at various points he is joined by another cameraman and a drone pilot, because various shots are incorporated from overhead and of him tootling off into the distance on his boat. I may be wrong and perhaps after that last shot he then had to reverse back, pick up his camera and tripod and start off again. When I used to make little YouTube films about our motorhome trips to France, I found myself doing similar things. It can be a little frustrating but sometimes you just need that shot.

Nothing much happens in Canal Boat Diaries but it’s a glimpse of a gentle, relaxing existence, chugging along at 4 mph through various towns. Robbie parks up here and there, makes dinner on his little stove and stops to stock up on supplies and to fuel up, as well as to explore. A few years ago, Liz and I looked at hiring a narrowboat for a weekend but the costs were really shocking. Perhaps we’ll have to try again later in the year when the holiday season has finished and things get (hopefully) cheaper.

Back to Bananas, which is one of my favourite Woody Allen films and it’s a long while since I’ve seen it. The film opens with the shooting of the President of San Marcos, shown as if it were a sporting event, with actual American TV sports commentator Howard Cosell presenting the action. Woody plays Fielding Mellish, who is a product tester and in one of the first sequences he is testing an office set-up with built-in exercise items. It’s actually a lot of fun but later he opens the door to a market researcher played by Louise Lasser, in real life Woody’s former wife. Woody later travels to San Marcos to impress her. Sylvester Stallone makes his film debut as a thug who Woody encounters on an underground train.

I love Bananas, especially the end where Howard Cosell commentates on Woody and Louise’s wedding night. One thing I found disappointing though, is that there are never any extras on a Woody Allen DVD. No interesting ‘making-of’ documentaries or commentary tracks by Woody, which I think are always an interesting addition to a DVD.

If I were to rewind a few years, I used to spend a lot of time in Manchester city centre, browsing music shops for CDs and DVDs. My favourite store was the huge HMV in Manchester city centre. They used to have an in-store DJ who was a really friendly girl, very approachable and very into her music. I always used to go and chat to her and she recommended all sorts of albums to me.

After looking through the CDs I’d pop up to the DVD section and spend more time there. I remember going in one day to find the in-store DJ had been replaced by a radio version: someone, presumably at head office in London, who was broadcasting music to all the HMV stores. Later, in 2013, the store closed down completely after more than twenty years on the same site. Browsing records and videos in HMV and then popping into my favourite bookshops before settling down in some back-street pub for a drink — ah, those were the days. I probably bought the larger part of my Woody Allen DVD collection there. Or was it eBay? Certainly the buying power of the internet may well have played a part in HMV’s demise.

Anyway, where will I find a copy of Sleeper? Ah well, back to eBay again.

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Film Connections #9 (Fairbanks to Brando and Back Again)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Time for another film connections post, in which I link films and cinema personalities together and tell a few interesting stories along the way. This week, I hope to connect Douglas Fairbanks to Marlon Brando — and maybe even back again.

During Hollywood’s silent‑film era, Douglas Fairbanks was arguably its greatest star. In 1922 he released his lavish version of Robin Hood, the first film ever to have a Hollywood premiere, held at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre. The production featured enormous sets, including a castle and an entire town built at Fairbanks’ studio on Santa Monica Boulevard, expanded on screen with hanging models and matte paintings.

Fairbanks, who performed many of his own stunts, famously rode down a huge curtain at Nottingham Castle, made slightly easier by a concealed slide. The film was directed by Allan Dwan, one of early cinema’s great pioneers.

Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Chaplin and DW Griffiths who together created United Artists.

Among the cast was Alan Hale as Little John, a role he reprised years later in the 1938 Technicolor version starring Errol Flynn.

Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood featured Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian and Basil Rathbone as Guy of Gisborne, who serves as the film’s main villain. The Sheriff of Nottingham, the traditional arch enemy of Robin is portrayed in this film as more of a comic figure. Much of the film was shot in California’s Bidwell Park, standing in for Sherwood Forest, with additional scenes filmed at the Warner Ranch in Calabasas.

The film began under director William Keighley, but producer Hal B. Wallis later brought in Michael Curtiz, who had previously made several films with Flynn, including Captain Blood, the film that made Flynn a star.

The highlight of The Adventures of Robin Hood is the climactic duel between Robin and Sir Guy, culminating in the famous moment when their shadows dance along the castle walls.

Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn later admitted they were in love during filming, but Olivia declined to pursue a relationship as Flynn was married to actress Lili Damita. Olivia’s relationship with her sister Joan Fontaine was far less affectionate. Their childhood rivalry carried on into adulthood: when Joan won an Oscar for Suspicion, she rejected Olivia’s congratulations, and when Olivia later won her own Oscar, she returned the favour. They reconciled in later years, only to fall out again over their mother’s medical treatment.

My favourite of Joan’s films, and perhaps her most well‑known, is Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Released in 1940, Rebecca was Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film. In Monte Carlo, a shy young woman (played by Fontaine) meets the English gentleman Maxim de Winter and believes he is about to jump off a cliff. They later fall in love and marry, but the new Mrs de Winter (her name is never revealed) feels overshadowed by Maxim’s late wife, Rebecca. Olivier apparently wanted his own wife, Vivien Leigh, for the role, but Hitchcock chose Fontaine.

In 1956 Laurence Olivier announced he would direct a film version of Terence Rattigan’s The Sleeping Prince, retitled The Prince and the Showgirl. That same year Marilyn Monroe, newly married to Arthur Miller, arrived in England to make the film. Her production company, Marilyn Monroe Productions, had purchased the rights to Rattigan’s play, and she and Olivier would co‑produce.

Just as in Rebecca, Olivier wanted Vivien Leigh for Marilyn’s part, and tensions arose early. Marilyn looked to her acting coach, Paula Strasberg, after every take rather than to Olivier. He banned Strasberg from the set but soon had to readmit her. Marilyn was nervous and frequently late while Olivier and the rest of the cast were punctual. It was not a smooth shoot.

The fundamental clash was their acting styles. Olivier was classically trained and dismissive of the Method, the technique Marilyn had embraced. Yet in the finished film which I watched recently, Marilyn comes across far better than Olivier.

Marilyn studied the Method at the Actors Studio in New York under Lee Strasberg. The technique, rooted in the work of Konstantin Stanislavski, encourages actors to draw on their own emotional experiences to inhabit their characters fully.

Another famous Method actor (perhaps the most famous Method actor ever) was James Dean. His breakthrough came in 1955 with East of Eden, directed by Elia Kazan. Dean had also studied at the Actors Studio and, after theatre work and television roles, was cast in East of Eden while performing in the play See the Jaguar.

Kazan had previously directed Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront. Streetcar, based on Tennessee Williams’ play, was set in the Deep South. Kazan had directed the Broadway production and used the same cast for the film, with one exception: Vivien Leigh, who had played Blanche DuBois in the London stage version, was brought in for the film because of her star status.

In the story, Blanche, a former Southern belle, moves in with her sister Stella and Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski, after losing her home to creditors. Blanche finds Stanley loud and rough, and at one point he explodes in a drunken rage. Blanche and Stella hide from him, only for Stella to return to Stanley’s arms after his famous calls of “Stella!”

Brando was one of the great screen actors, but like Richard Burton, he sometimes questioned whether acting was a suitable profession for a man. Burton nevertheless gave his all to every role, knew his lines, and delivered superb performances. Brando, especially later in life, often did not. He refused to learn his lines and relied on “idiot boards” placed just out of shot.

When The Godfather was being cast, Warner Bros. refused to consider Brando, viewing him as too difficult. Director Francis Ford Coppola, however, was determined to have him as Don Corleone. The studio eventually agreed, but only if Brando accepted a reduced salary, posted a financial bond against potential misbehaviour, and completed a screen test.

Coppola filmed the test at Brando’s Mulholland Drive home. In the footage, which can be found online, Brando stuffed his cheeks with cotton wool, slicked back his hair, and muttered vague Italian‑sounding phrases. The studio was impressed, and Brando was cast.

Filming took place in and around New York in 1971, and the film was released in 1972. Brando won the Oscar for Best Actor but boycotted the ceremony, sending Sacheen Littlefeather to decline the award on behalf of Native Americans.

Earlier I wondered whether I could link back from Brando to Fairbanks. Here’s the admittedly thin connection.

In 1967 Brando starred with Sophia Loren in A Countess from Hong Kong, a romantic comedy written and directed by Charlie Chaplin. The film was a box‑office failure and turned out to be Chaplin’s last.

Chaplin had been heavily criticised after World War II for supposed communist leanings, and in 1952, when he left for a visit to England, the US Attorney General declined to renew his re‑entry permit. Chaplin did not appeal. Instead, he sent his new wife, Oona, to settle his affairs and moved permanently to Switzerland.

In 1972 Chaplin was invited back to Hollywood to receive a special Oscar for his contribution to cinema. It was an emotional return, and he was visibly moved as he accepted the award.

In the film Chaplin, directed by Richard Attenborough, we see Chaplin returning to the USA and taking a sentimental drive past his old studio lot, then the headquarters of A&M Records.

As he drove through Hollywood, I’m sure Chaplin might have thought for a moment about his best friend, Douglas Fairbanks, his partner in United Artists who, back in 1922, made his memorable version of the Robin Hood story.

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4 Classic US Mini Series from the Seventies and Eighties

Posted on by Steve Higgins

The late seventies and early eighties were the heyday of the TV ‘mini series’. What is a mini series I hear you asking? Well, they were short TV series with only a few episodes. You rarely hear the name ‘mini series’ these days but they are still about. I mentioned some time ago about the series ‘Until I Kill You’ about a girl, Delia Dahmer, who unwittingly invited her lover to move in with her, not knowing that he was actually a serial killer. I started off this post as usual writing from memory, firmly convinced that the mini series was an eighties phenomenon. So, imagine my surprise to find that the first series on my list was broadcast back in 1974. OK, hasty change of this week’s blog post title from Mini series of the Eighties to Seventies and Eighties and here we go.

QB VII

Image via listal.com

QB VII was one of those huge television mini series that really felt like a major event when it was broadcast. It was based on Leon Uris’s bestselling novel and came out in 1974, with Ben Gazzara and a young Anthony Hopkins in the starring roles. The story kicks off with a libel case brought by a very respected Polish-born doctor who insists he’s been wrongly accused of being a Nazi collaborator. Anthony Hopkins plays the doctor and Ben Gazzara plays author Abraham Cady who feels it’s time to write about the holocaust. Adam Kelno, the doctor played by Hopkins, is only mentioned in a short segment of Cady’s book but as he has already been cleared of any war crimes by an earlier court, he feels free to sue the author.

The story starts in the courtroom, in Queen’s Bench VII but as things go on, the story keeps slipping back into flashbacks of the Second World War and that’s where the real core of the story is to be found. Anthony Hopkins, still fairly early in his career at that point, is especially good, as is Ben Gazzara.

Ben Gazzara was a graduate of the Actors’ Studio, the New York acting school that taught ‘the method’ to actors like Brando, Dean and Montgomery Clift, although at the time I only knew him from the TV series Run For Your Life about a terminally ill man trying to get the best out of the last years of his life.

Anthony Hopkins went on to star in many classic films and is perhaps most well known for his portrayal of Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs.

QB VII had a big, serious, slightly grand feel that so many 1970s TV series lacked, like here was a  really important story to tell. It was the kind of show you’d settle in to watch properly, knowing you were in for some real epic TV and out of all the mini series here, I think this was my favourite.

Rich Man, Poor Man

Based on Irwin Shaw’s bestselling novel, it followed the very different fortunes of the Jordache brothers, Rudy and Tom, played by Peter Strauss and Nick Nolte. Set against the backdrop of post-war America, it had a bit of everything: ambition, money, family feuds, romance, betrayal and more than its fair share of trouble. Rudy becomes a wealthy, ambitious businessman and politician, while Tom is a rebellious, tough-minded drifter who pursues a career in boxing. Their rivalry, romances, family troubles and contrasting fortunes unfold over several decades, making it as much a story about family as it is about wealth, ambition and class.

Nick Nolte played Tom; rough around the edges, unpredictable and forever getting himself into scrapes while Peter Strauss’s Rudy took a rather more respectable route to success. What made the series so addictive was that it wasn’t simply about getting rich; it was about two brothers taking completely different paths through life and discovering, rather painfully, that money doesn’t necessarily buy happiness. It was classic 1970s television at its most gloriously melodramatic and millions of viewers were hooked. Fifty years later, I can still remember the sad ending which I won’t give away here.

The series was broadcast in nine parts in 1976.

Captains and the Kings

Captains and the Kings is another wonderfully grand example of the television mini series at its most ambitious. Based on Taylor Caldwell’s novel, this 1976 series follows the fortunes of the Armagh family, Irish immigrants who arrive in America with very little and gradually build a huge fortune and political influence. Perry King, Richard Jordan and Jane Seymour were among the impressive cast and the story has all the ingredients you could want from a sprawling family saga; poverty, ambition, romance, betrayal, politics and plenty of money. Like Rich Man, Poor Man, it’s really a story about the American dream, although here the journey from humble beginnings to wealth and power comes with a darker side.

I’m tempted to think the story was based on the Kennedy family or at least inspired by them. The parallels are pretty striking. The Armaghs are Irish immigrants who arrive in America with very little, build a huge fortune and then use their wealth to enter politics. The family eventually produces a charismatic young politician with presidential ambitions. That certainly sounds familiar. There are also elements involving political influence, wealth, family loyalty and the pursuit of the White House that inevitably bring the Kennedys to mind.

However, Caldwell’s story is much darker and more conspiratorial than the Kennedy saga.

I remember reading the book which was a very enjoyable read. The book opens with an introduction telling us about a meeting of very important people who get together to decide the political direction the USA is about to take. The members of the group are not politicians but a group of very rich men and the author mentioned they were a real group of people and they clearly inspired the story the author is about to tell.

Richard Jordan plays Rory Armagh, the ambitious Irish immigrant who claws his way from poverty to wealth and political power. The performance won him a Golden Globe and made him a familiar face to TV audiences.

He appeared in many films including Raise the Titanic and the sci-fi classic Logan’s Run. His career was cut short when he developed a brain tumour and he died aged only 39 in 1993.

Kane and Abel

Kane and Abel was another of those sprawling television dramas that seemed to arrive with the promise of several evenings of proper escapism. Based on Jeffrey Archer’s bestselling novel, this 1985 mini series starred Peter Strauss and Sam Neill as two men born on opposite sides of the world and into completely different circumstances, whose lives become increasingly intertwined through ambition, wealth and rivalry. Strauss plays William Kane, the privileged American banker, while Neill is Abel Rosnovski, a Polish immigrant who rises from poverty to build his own business empire. The two were born on the same day and their lives take dramatically different paths but an early encounter sets them on a lifelong collision course. As both men build powerful business empires, their rivalry becomes increasingly bitter, driven by ambition, pride, revenge and a determination to outdo the other.

It’s big, glossy and unabashedly melodramatic story, with fortunes made and lost, family feuds, business battles and enough twists and turns to keep you coming back for the next episode.

There is something wonderfully nostalgic about these old mini series; they knew how to tell a big story and more importantly, how to make you wait until the following week to find out what happened next. In today’s digital age, viewers would probably binge watch the whole series in one go.

Those are my four US mini series. There are probably more but they were the ones which have remained firmly stuck in my memory. All were adaptations of successful novels and perhaps their secret is that they were too long to be made into a film but not long enough for further seasons.

Which one is ripe for a re run on one of today’s many digital TV channels I wonder?

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Snips, Additions and (Directors’) Cuts

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I really do hate it when the TV people decide to cut out a scene from a film, especially one of my favourite films. On the other hand, it’s always interesting to see a director’s cut of a film when previously cut scenes have been added back. I think that explains the premise of this week’s post but stay with me and hopefully it should soon become clear.

I’m going to kick off with the film Young Winston. I’m a great fan of Winston Churchill and I’m not amused about current plans to remove him from UK banknotes, but getting back to the film, Young Winston is a wonderful dramatisation of Churchill’s own book, My Early Life. I read the book many years ago and first saw this film at the cinema where I greatly enjoyed it and I remember it coming to television some years later.

The film details Winston’s early life and we see him at school and later in the army and the rather cool relationship he had with his parents is gradually revealed. The film finishes with a poignant dream sequence which I remember reading somewhere was based on something Churchill either said or wrote. In the dream, a much older Winston meets his father, Randolph but Randolph is not the unwell man of his later years but restored to full health. He asks Winston about great events and Churchill answers telling of the two World Wars. ‘Did Joe Chamberlain ever become Prime Minister?’ asks Randolph. ‘No,’ answers Winston, ‘but one of his sons did, Neville’.

Winston mentions that he has resigned his commission in the army. Randolph looks about at the many paintings and asks Winston if this is what he does. Winston answers that painting occupies much of his time. Randolph thinks for a moment and then tells Winston to ‘do the best you can’ and we see the sleeping Churchill smile at the thought.

I’ve always liked this final sequence but when I bought my VHS copy back in the 1980s the scene was omitted. Likewise, every time in recent years, since I first watched the film on television, this scene has always been removed. I’d love to know why. Perhaps the producers thought the film too long or perhaps preferred the new ending in which Winston talks briefly about his marriage and living ‘happily ever after’. After a search on the internet, I came across a post which claimed that Carl Foreman, who wrote and produced the film, found that US audiences occasioned so little reaction to the scene that he promptly had it cut. What reaction was he expecting to see I wonder?

Another film I’ve always rather enjoyed is Notting Hill. It was written by Richard Curtis and stars Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. Grant plays William Thacker who owns and runs a bookshop in Notting Hill. Enter film star Anna Scott played by Julia Roberts who picks up some books in the bookshop. Not long after this she collides with Thacker in the street and he spills coffee all over her. They return to Thacker’s home only a few doors away where she cleans up and later Anna invites William to her hotel and consequently a romance ensues.

Thacker shares his home with Spike, a slightly oddball Welshman. In fact, Thacker describes Spike to a hotel receptionist by asking him to envisage the stupidest man he has ever met and then double it.

Anyway, I was watching this film not long ago. It was late evening and the film began at 9pm I think which of course is watershed time and we are all aware of things like bad language which of course is something which can be broadcast after 9.

In a really funny sequence Spike asks William to choose which T-shirt he should wear on a date and models about three shirts. William vetos them all due to rude or sexist phrases. He chooses a last one which says ‘LOVE’ on the front. Happy, Spike turns away but as he leaves we see written on the back of the t-shirt  the phrase ‘fancy a f#ck?’ Now I’ve always found that particular sequence rather funny but this time it was cut out. Why? It was after 9 (well, I think it was anyway) and although rude, it kills me every time. Do TV channels cut down films to fit their available time slots? If I was a director and that was my film I would be very upset indeed if some unknown TV editor had randomly chopped up my film just to fit it in a particular broadcast slot.

Let’s go the other way with this next example. I must have first seen Aliens on TV. I’ve always thought that it was as good, if not better than the Ridley Scott’s original Alien. In Aliens, astronaut Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver is adrift in a space lifeboat. I do love the opening of the film: The music gradually fades in as we come across a lifeboat drifting through space. Yes, the lifeboat holds astronaut Ripley, sleeping soundly in suspended animation after her adventures in the previous movie, Alien.

Later we see Ripley facing a committee where it is revealed that the spacecraft Nostromo, which Ripley self-destructed, caused a loss of over 64 million adjusted dollars. Another committee member advises that LV426, the planet where the Nostromo landed was ‘a rock’ with no indigenous life forms. I can feel Ripley’s frustration when she says, “Did IQ levels just drop while I was away?” She tries to tell the group about a derelict alien vessel containing alien eggs but the meeting ends and Ripley’s story is not believed.

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that Ripley joins a motley crew of space commandos on a mission to help the colonists of LV426 with whom all contact has been lost. On the planet the soldiers gain entry to the colonist’s base camp and we meet one of the survivors, a young girl nicknamed Newt, to which Ripley goes to extraordinary lengths to rescue from the aliens.

Why is she so keen to rescue Newt? Well, that is explained in a later director’s cut of the film in which it is revealed that Ripley’s daughter has died of old age. I know that sounds confusing but remember, Ripley has been in suspended animation for 75 years. She is still saddened by the news of her daughter which she has only just been told about and it is this loss that spurs her on to help Newt.

Now for me, this director’s cut is a much better version of the film and in fact, every time I have seen Aliens on TV recently, it is this new version which seems to be the accepted ‘cut’.

Here’s one final example. Spartacus was made in 1960. It was produced by and starred Kirk Douglas and was directed by Stanley Kubrick, whom Douglas brought in to direct after becoming disenchanted with the original director, Anthony Mann. The film is the story of a revolution, or at least a near revolution in ancient Rome. Spartacus, played by Kirk Douglas, is a slave who starts off a rebellion in a gladiator camp; the rebellion gets bigger and bigger until it threatens the entire fabric of ancient Rome. Laurence Olivier played the part of the Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus who uses the rebellion to further his own dreams of dictatorship. Peter Ustinov plays the gladiator school owner and Charles Laughton plays Roman senator Gracchus. Ustinov, Olivier, and Laughton are a wonderful trio, their performances superb, so much so that other actors who share the screen with them seem to pale in comparison.
Tony Curtis plays another slave who calls out famously; ‘I am Spartacus’ towards the end of the film, heralding a chorus of similar calls.

The film was restored in 1991 and 37 minutes of cuts were restored to the film including a scene where Anthony Hopkins had to dub the sound for a sequence involving Laurence Olivier who had died two years previously.

Which film cuts do you love, or hate?

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Film Connections #8

Posted on by Steve Higgins

As regular readers will know, I am a great fan of classic cinema and I do love making these posts in which I try to tell a story by linking together various films, actors and directors. My last connections post ran a lateral course linking the film Pygmalion to Star Trek; The Motion Picture. This week I’ve worked out a very roundabout connection from Greta Garbo via Frederick March, James Mason, Alfred Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman, right back to Garbo again.

At first glance, Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman seem to belong to different emotional climates; Garbo, distant and enigmatic, Bergman, luminous and searching, her humanity worn closer to the surface. The threads run from the migration of talent across studios and continents and in the way both women, in very different ways, redefined what it meant to be a star of the cinema.

Greta Garbo was one of the first stars of the silver screen. She was born in Stockholm, Sweden on the 18th September 1905. She is best known for her beautiful but melancholy screen persona. In 1924 she was spotted in a Swedish film by Louis B Mayer the head of MGM and the following year he brought her over to Hollywood.

Greta Garbo

In 1930 she made the successful transition from silent pictures to the ‘talkies’ with her first sound picture Anna Christie which was promoted with the phrase ‘Garbo Talks!” The film was a great success and her career in the cinema continued until her last film in 1941, Two Faced Woman. She signed for various pictures afterwards but all the projects either never came to fruition or she dropped out for one reason or another. Billy Wilder asked her to star in Sunset Boulevard in 1949 but she declined.

In one of David Niven’s books, Bring on the Empty Horses, the author relates how he asked Garbo why she stopped making films and she thought for a moment and then replied “I had made enough faces”.

In 1935 Garbo starred in the screen version of Anna Karenina directed by Clarence Brown. Among her co-stars was Fredric March.

March began his career as an extra in silent movies. He made his stage debut in 1929 and not long afterwards signed a contract with Paramount Pictures. He made numerous films but in 1937 he played the part of drunken movie star Norman Maine in the film A Star is Born. Maine helps aspiring star Esther Blodgett, played by Janet Gaynor up the ladder to movie stardom. The film was shot in Technicolor and became one of the first colour films to be nominated for an Academy Award.

A Star is Born is a film that has been remade a number of times and all the remakes have been musicals, including the most recent one produced in 2018 which starred Lady Gaga. My favourite though was the 1954 version with James Mason and Judy Garland. Judy Garland plays the part of Esther Blodgett who is heard singing by the boozy Norman Maine, this time played by Mason. He takes her along to the studios and after introducing her singing voice to the studio boss, gets her a breakthrough role in a new film.

Esther, now known as Vicki Lester, becomes a big star and of course falls for Norman Maine. The two marry but will their marriage survive Maine’s alcoholism and failing career?

James Mason was born in Huddersfield in 1909. He became a stage actor and was later hugely successful in British films. In 1949 he moved to Hollywood and after the success of his starring role in the film The Desert Fox about German General Rommell, he was given a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox.

It was in 1954 that Mason was asked to be Judy Garland’s leading man in A Star is Born. Cary Grant had been offered the part but turned it down.

Both Cary Grant and James Mason starred in the 1959 picture North by Northwest directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Mason stars as a suave but ruthless secret agent who mistakes Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) for a man known as George Kaplan who Mason suspects is a government agent tailing him across the USA. As the film unfolds, we see that George Kaplan is actually a fake identity created as a decoy.

After a murder in which Thornhill is wrongly supposed to be the murderer, he escapes on board a train to Chicago where he meets Eve Kendall played by Eva Marie Saint who helps him get away.

North by Northwest is one of my personal favourite films. Apparently, Hitchcock had engaged screenwriter Ernest Lehman to work on a story adaption but he couldn’t work out what to do and offered to quit. Hitchcock replied that he enjoyed working with Lehman and that the two should just work out an entirely new story. North by Northwest was the result.

Cary Grant appeared in four of Hitchcock’s films. Suspicion (1941), To Catch a Thief (1955), North by Northwest (1959) and most importantly for this post, Notorious (1946).

I’m sure I’ve seen Notorious but it’s not a film I can really remember even though when I looked it up many people say it’s one of Hitchcock’s best ever films. Cary Grant plays a government agent who is on the trail of Nazi Claude Rains. Grant enlists the help of Ingrid Bergman who plays the daughter of a war criminal. Grant and Bergman fall for each other but Ingrid Bergman’s character has to seduce Nazi Alexander Sebastian played by Rains.

Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca

Ingrid Bergman came to Hollywood in 1939. She was invited by Hollywood producer David O Selznick to star in an English language remake of one of her earlier Swedish films Intermezzo. Bergman expected to be in Hollywood for this one film and then return to Sweden but the huge success of Intermezzo made her a star and more Hollywood films followed. Her husband and daughter came to Hollywood to join her and later they both applied for American citizenship.

Ingrid made a number of classic films in Hollywood including Casablanca, Spellbound and Notorious.

In 1949 she wrote to the Italian director Roberto Rossellini telling him how much she admired his films and expressing her wish to work with him. Rossellini cast her in Stromboli and she flew to Italy to begin work. While she was there, she fell for Rossellini and began an affair with him, becoming pregnant with his child.

This caused a huge scandal back in the USA. Bergman herself thought that because she had played a nun in The Bells of St Mary and a saint in Joan of Arc these roles seemed to make what she had done appear much worse. Ingrid went through a much publicised divorce and custody battle before marrying Rossellini in 1950.

Ingrid was born in August 1915 in Stockholm which brings us back full circle to Greta Garbo who was born ten years earlier also in Stockholm. Two wonderful actresses separated by only a decade.

(All pictures reproduced via creative commons.)

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More Film Connections (Part 7)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Usually in these Film Connections posts, I tell a sort of circular story starting with an actor or director and then find a link to another film or personality and then another until I work back to whoever I started with. This week I decided to be a little more lateral and try and link Pygmalion, the 1938 film to the first Star Trek film from 1979. I like to be different now and again but not only that (confession alert) I struggled to find a link back to Pygmalion. (Actually I did find a very tenuous link and I’m not sure as I write this that I’m going to share it but we’ll see how things go).

Pygmalion

Pygmalion is a famous play by George Bernard Shaw which was made into a film in 1938 with a script adapted by Shaw himself. Leslie Howard starred in the film as Professor Higgins. Higgins is a linguist who boasts that he can make Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower seller, into a lady. Doolittle was played by Wendy Hiller.

Professor Henry Higgins actually makes a bet that he can take Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower seller with a seriously strong accent, and pass her off as a refined lady just by teaching her how to speak “properly”. What starts as a kind of experiment turns into a full-on transformation, with Eliza learning manners, speech, and confidence, but she also begins to question how she’s being treated. Is she a person or just Higgins’ project? Things get tense after her big high-society debut goes off without a hitch, because suddenly the question isn’t whether she can fit in, but where she actually belongs and whether Higgins deserves any credit (or forgiveness) at all. It’s witty, a bit biting and surprisingly emotional under all the clever dialogue.

Interesting fact #1: Wendy Hiller speaks a controversial line in the film – “not bloody likely” making her the first person to swear in a British film. It’s a controversy that’s almost laughable today considering the language used in modern films. Have you ever wondered who the first person to use the F word in a British film was? (Answer at the end of the post).

Interesting fact #2: The film was edited by future director David Lean.

My Fair Lady

The musical version of Pygmalion was created by Alan Jay Learner and Frederick Lowe. They worked for a long time on the musical, even while trying to get permission from GB Shaw’s estate for the musical rights to the play. Eventually they succeeded and the production opened on Broadway after a four week try out in Philadelphia. Rex Harrison played Higgins with newcomer Julie Andrews as Eliza. The play used many scenes written by Shaw especially for the 1938 film version. When Jack Warner acquired the rights to the film, he decided he wanted a famous name to play the part of Eliza and Julie Andrews was dropped in favour of Audrey Hepburn. Audrey played a good part but personally, I’ve always thought it was a tragedy that audiences never got to see and hear Julie Andrews in such a wonderful role.

Interesting fact #3: Hepburn’s singing voice was dubbed for the film by Marni Nixon.

The Sound of Music

The Sound of Music was based on the stage musical version with music by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. The story was based on the real-life story of the Von Trapp family singers which was originally written in book form by Maria Von Trapp. Maria was a nun who takes a job as a governess with the Von Trapp family and later falls for their widowed father, Captain Von Trapp.

In the film version Christopher Plummer played the part of the captain and Julie Andrews starred as Maria. It was Julie’s second film after her film debut in Mary Poppins in 1964. The screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman and he particularly wanted Robert Wise to direct. At first William Wyler was assigned to direct but when he wanted a delay to complete another film, Lehman was able to get Wise to join the film. He and Lehman worked closely together to bring the story to the screen.

Personally, I’m not a great fan of musicals but I’ve always loved this film, in fact I watched it only the other day to prepare for this post. The songs are really wonderful and the story of the family and their later escape from the Nazis in Austria is really well told. Julie Andrews plays a great part but then so do all the actors including Christopher Plummer. I’ve heard both of them in interviews making a little fun of the film but I’m sure they must have been proud of it really. Four weeks after its release, the film became the number one box office hit in the USA. According to Wikipedia, by November 1966 The Sound of Music was the highest grossing film in history up to that time.

Interesting fact #4: Marni Nixon, the woman who dubbed Audrey Hepburn’s singing in My Fair Lady plays the part of a nun in The Sound of Music.

Star Trek

The director of The Sound of Music was Robert Wise who, like David Lean, was originally a film editor before turning his hand to film direction. In fact, he was an editor on that great film classic Citizen Kane. Another film he directed, one radically different to The Sound of Music, was Star Trek; The Motion Picture.

Star Trek was a TV series that lasted three seasons from 1966 to 1969 before its cancellation. It had a huge fan base and producer Gene Roddenberry tried to get the series resurrected. A cinema version was planned for the mid 70s but this was cancelled in favour of a new TV series to be known as Star Trek Phase Two. After the huge success of Star Wars, Paramount decided to change tack again and focus on a film. The basis for the film was apparently the pilot episode of the planned TV series, expanded for a cinematic film. The resulting film was good and I have always enjoyed it but it moves along at a very slow pace and does not have that something that made the TV shows tick over so well. The crew from the original show are gradually introduced. Kirk is given command of the enterprise once again, Doctor McCoy refuses to have his atoms scrambled in the transporter, Mr Scott once again takes over control of the engines and Mr Spock leaves the planet Vulcan to have his science officer status renewed. I can sum up the story by quoting Admiral Kirk; “Scotty, an object of unbelievable size is heading towards earth. Enterprise is the only starship in the area. Ready or not, she launches in 12 hours!” Or something like that.

Interesting fact #5: William Shatner who played Captain James T Kirk was great friends with Christopher Plummer and the two appeared together in Star Trek VI in which Plummer played a one-eyed Klingon general. I’ve always thought it was the absolute worst of the Trek films but having said that, it apparently won an award for the best science fiction film of the year.

Linking back to Pygmalion

If you do a search on Google for a possible link to Star Trek, the results come up for an episode of Star Trek Voyager (episode 22, season 5, Someone to Watch Over Me) in which the Doctor (the holographic Doctor who is not a real person but a computer program) decides to nurture Seven of Nine in the ways of human relations and love. Seven, in case you have never watched Voyager, is actually Annika Hansen who was captured by the Borg as a young girl and assimilated into the Borg Collective. (The Borg are an alien race by the way). Now the Voyager crew have freed Seven from the Borg, she’s not very good at person-to-person general relationships (neither would you if you had been trapped in the Borg Collective for years) so the Doctor becomes a sort of Professor Higgins to Seven’s Eliza.

That’s such a thin link back to Pygmalion I might as well not have mentioned it!

Just to finish with, I wondered earlier about the first person to use the ‘F’ word in a British film. According to Google, it was Marianne Faithful in that unforgettable (sarcasm alert) 1967 film ‘I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Isname’ directed by Michael Winner.

1967? I wasn’t expecting that!

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5 British Rom-Coms

Posted on by Steve Higgins

My original idea for this post was to write about 90s British films but then I realised some of those 90’s films were actually from the 2000’s. I then changed tack to a blog about films written by Richard Curtis but that meant cutting out a few films that I really wanted to include. Then I thought what about films with Hugh Grant? Great but although many of the films below feature Hugh, I’ve got a personal favourite in which he doesn’t star. That of course has led to the final incarnation of this post, 5 British Rom-Coms.

4 Weddings and a Funeral 1994

I’ve always rather loved this film. In a way I tend to think of it as a sort of modern Ealing Comedy, or at least the sort of film that Ealing would be making were they still in business. The only difficulty in that respect is the rather liberal use of the ‘f’ word that the film can really do without. In the USA, or so I have read, the version screened over there has the ‘f’ word substituted by the slightly less alarming word bugger.

The plot is pretty simple. It’s about a group of friends who only seem to meet regularly at weddings. At the first wedding Charles, played by Hugh Grant, meets Carrie and falls for her only to find she is about to return to the USA. Happily he meets her again at another wedding and, sadly for Charles, he meets her again at yet another wedding, this time one in which she is the bride.

The happiness of constant weddings is shattered by the death of one of Charles’ friends but this being a rom-com, things all work out in the end. Carrie is played by Andie McDowell and the supporting actors who appear at each wedding are all well known to fans of British film and TV.

Four Weddings and a Funeral is the movie that brought fame to writer Richard Curtis and actor Hugh Grant, as the announcer mentioned last time I saw this film on the television. Strangely, he didn’t mention Mike Newell, who directed the film. Funny how the credit from a successful film doesn’t always get spread equally around.

Notting Hill 1999

Written again by Richard Curtis and starring Hugh Grant, Grant this time plays William Thacker, the owner of a bookshop in London’s Notting Hill. One afternoon at the bookshop, Hollywood film star Anna Scott played by Julia Roberts comes into the shop to browse. Not long afterwards William accidentally walks into her and spills takeaway drinks all over her. He invites her back to his place just across the road where she cleans herself up.

On another occasion the two go out for a date but William’s oddball flatmate Spike played by Rhys Ifans, happens to mention the film star’s presence to his mates at the pub and the flat is soon swamped by reporters. Anna is not amused and the two fall out and seem to go their separate ways.

There is a really lovely sequence here in which William walks along the Portabello Road and the scene transforms into winter, then autumn and finally summer showing the passage of time in a really unique way. Later, the two manage to sort things out just before Anna leaves for the USA.

Over on Wikipedia it was interesting to find that according to a 2018 interview High Grant gave to GQ magazine, the idea came to Richard Curtis after one of his friends became involved with an unnamed ‘big star’. The film was shot on location in Notting Hill and the blue door to William Thacker’s place in the film was actually a property owned by Richard Curtis.

Julia Roberts was the producer’s only choice for Anna Scott although personally, just like Andie McDowell in 4 weddings, I’ve never found her remotely attractive.

The film won a Brit Award for its soundtrack.

Sliding Doors 1998

This was a film written and directed by Peter Howitt. Howitt is probably best known for playing the part of Joey Boswell in the TV comedy series Bread. This is a really super film which is about a girl, Helen Quilley, who gets fired from her PR job. Helen, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, heads off for home. She goes to the tube station but is only seconds too late and misses her train. The film then rewinds a few minutes and when it replays, Helen manages to catch the train. The film then sets off in two separate directions with two differing storylines. In one she arrives home to find her boyfriend in bed with another woman. In the second she arrives home later and the boyfriend manages to cover up his two timing activities.

The film was made in 1998 but still looks fresh and contemporary. The only jarring things -from a 2026 point of view- are people still smoking in pubs and offices filled with huge computer monitors. It’s a lovely film and one I tend to watch quite a lot on DVD.

Bridget Jones Diary 2001

This film was based on the book by Helen Fielding and had a script written by Fielding, Andrew Davies and once again, Richard Curtis. American actress Renee Zellweger played Bridget with a very impressive British accent with her love interests played by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.

Bridget works in publicity for a publishing company. She is 32 and worried about her weight and confides all her worries as well as her fantasies to her diary. At her mother’s Christmas party, she meets barrister Mark Darcy, a neighbour from her childhood, who she finds arrogant and rude. At work she flirts a lot with her boss Daniel Cleaver played by Grant and begins an affair with him only to find that he is a serial cheater.

Who will Bridget end up with, the slimy but nice Daniel or the boring but nice Mark? One of the film’s highlights is a drunken street fight between Daniel and Mark which plays out pretty much how two upper/middle class twits would be expected to behave.

Three sequels were made to the film, the last one was Mad About the Boy in 2025 but personally, I think the original was the best.

About a Boy 2002

This is still a rom-com but considerably darker than the other films on this list. Hugh Grant plays someone slightly different to his usual film persona. Will Freeman is a young man in his 30s who lives a rather aimless life. He does not go out to work, instead he has ample funds because of regular royalties due from a popular tune which was written by his late father. His one aim in life is to meet women and he happens to come across a young mother and feels that young single parent females would be good for him because they are mostly on the lookout for a new man. To achieve this aim he joins a group for single parents where he is the only man and after spinning a yarn about being deserted by the mother of his only child, ‘Ned’, he feels warmed by the sympathy vote of the whole group and quickly gets involved with an attractive young mother called Suzie.

Through various circumstances, this leads him to meet Marcus, the son of one of Suzie’s friends and the two begin a friendship of sorts which begins to bring a new meaning to Will’s life.

Overall, the film is perhaps a little slow and rather dark in a way but still a great film based on a book by Nick Hornby.

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5 Crime Fighting Duos

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Crime Fighting Duos? What’s that about you might be thinking? Well I thought I’d write about TV investigative couples so let’s go back to the 1960s and start with one of my favourite TV pairings, Steed and Mrs Peel.

Steed and Emma

Steed and Emma featured in The Avengers, no, not the Marvel comic book heroes but the TV sci-fi/espionage series. John Steed and Emma Peel were two secret agents working for an unnamed agency in a very quirky version of 1960s England. The series was first broadcast in 1961 and starred Patrick Macnee and Ian Hendry. Macnee played the debonair John Steed and when Ian Hendry left after the first series, Steed became the focus of the show with his new assistant Cathy Gale played by Honor Blackman.

Honor Blackman became a TV star with her portrayal of Cathy Gale as a leather wearing judo expert. She and Macnee even recorded a hit single together called ‘Kinky Boots’ which became a minor hit.

When Honor left to become a Bond girl in the film Goldfinger the TV production had something of a makeover. The series was sold to the US TV network ABC and moved from videotape to 35mm film. A new character was added, Mrs Emma Peel. The producers chose actress Elizabeth Shepherd to play the part. Shepherd shot the pilot film episode and part of the next one, but the producers decided to drop her, feeling she was not right for the role. With a two-million-dollar deal with the US network ABC hanging in the balance, they began searching for a new Emma Peel and chose unknown actress Diana Rigg.

Diana Rigg was perfect for the new crime fighter/agent Mrs Peel and wowed TV audiences with her intelligence, her judo and karate skills, her avant-garde fashion sense and her witty banter with Steed.

Diana Rigg became famous as Mrs Peel and played the part until 1967 when, like Honor Blackman before her, she left the to become a Bond girl in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’. Patrick Macnee continued to play the bowler hatted John Steed and Linda Thorson was recruited to star as Steed’s partner. The series was rebooted in the 1970s as The New Avengers starring Macnee with Joanna Lumley and Gareth Hunt as his new colleagues.

Steed and Mrs Peel are surely the most fondly remembered characters in the series. My favourite episode is one called The House That Jack Built which was about a mad inventor who is fired from a company run by Mrs Peel’s father. He builds an electronically operated house in which to trap and kill Mrs Peel. She eventually escapes just as Steed arrives to save her!

A film version was made with Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman in 1998 but it was a resounding flop.

Napoleon and Illya

Robert Vaughn and David McCallum played two secret agents working for UNCLE (the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) who try to foil the evil organisation THRUSH. (What that stood for I’ve never known.) Vaughn starred as Napoleon Solo and McCallum played Russian born Illya Kuryakin. UNCLE headquarters was in New York, accessed through a fake dry-cleaning store. Inside UNCLE HQ was a very hi-tech environment with steel corridors and sliding doors.

Head of UNCLE was Mr Waverly played by Leo G Carroll who every week gave his two agents their assignments and off they went into the world, armed with an array of secret gadgets like explosives hidden in their shoes and a communicator built into a pen. ‘Open channel D’ was something regular viewers like me would hear every week as well as the wonderful theme music by Jerry Goldsmith.

David McCallum had a big fan following especially with the ladies but Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo was my favourite.

Starsky and Hutch

I used to watch this show many years ago and to be honest, I liked it but I was never a firm fan. Starsky and Hutch were two California plain clothes cops played by Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul. They drove around Bay City, a fictional California town in a Ford Gran Torino in bright red with a white vector flash down the sides. Looking up the series on Wikipedia, I see that Paul Glaser actually hated the car, pointing out that a bright red car with a distinctive paint job was not the best idea for a pair of undercover cops. Oh well, the car was pretty popular with viewers and especially with a certain type of late seventies boy racers. (You know the type, young guys who painted or stuck white flashes on the sides of their souped up old bangers and tried to burn you off at traffic lights).

To sum up then, Starsky and Hutch is about two somewhat scruffy wisecracking cops, tearing around the city in a bright red car like they’ve got somewhere very important to be, even if half the time they’re just chasing some dodgy lead or getting into trouble. The whole vibe is full on ’70s; big collars and big flairs but then again, it was made in the mid 70s so you can’t get more 70s than that.

Starsky and Hutch was remade as a not particularly serious big screen film in 2004 starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Glaser and Soul made a brief appearance at the end of the picture but I can’t help thinking the film might have worked out better if things were the other way round and Stiller and Wilson were the ones who only appeared at the end.

Randall and Hopkirk

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) is one of those offbeat late 60s TV shows where the premise sounds completely ridiculous and yet somehow works perfectly: two private detectives, but one is a ghost. Marty Hopkirk gets run over and killed in episode one but returns as a ghost to help Jeff Randall solve his murder. After that, Marty decides to stay on and help out with other cases too. On one side you’ve got a fairly standard detective story unfolding, the next minute poor Jeff Randall is trying to explain clues that only he can see because his dead partner Marty Hopkirk is hovering nearby in an unmistakable white suit but invisible to anyone except Jeff. It’s quirky, a bit spooky, very tongue in cheek and exactly the sort of inventive television that the late sixties seemed to produce with effortless confidence.

In later years the show was rebooted with comedy duo Reeves and Mortimer. Personally, I’ve always found the 60s version starring Mike Pratt and Kenneth Cope with Annette Andre as Marty’s widow to be far superior.

Mulder and Scully

Mulder and Scully are the two FBI agents at the centre of the X Files, secret FBI files profiling unexplained and unsolved mysteries. Fox Mulder is convinced of the existence of the paranormal while Dana Scully is a practical scientist assigned to take a technical and analytic view of Mulder’s work.

The two argue and debate their way through various bizarre cases. One minute it’s some weird creature lurking in the woods, the next it’s shadowy government plots and secret labs. Somehow, despite all the paranoia and eerie moments, there’s a lot of dry humour and a really strong partnership between them that makes the whole thing strangely cosy to watch, even when the lights are off and the theme music is giving you goosebumps.

In my absolute favourite episode, the pair are monitoring a secret installation in area 51 and are confronted by government officers when a flying saucer flies overhead. When it passes over, it’s energy or radiation morphs Mulder’s mind into the mind of one of the area 51 staff and his mind into Mulder’s body. The other guy, the area 51 guy is quite happy at this incredible transformation. He and his wife are not getting on and suddenly finding himself in the body of a single man is clearly ok with him. Mulder on the other hand has to convince Scully that this incredible incident has actually happened.

The X Files was first shown in the late 1990’s and ran until 2002 spanning 9 seasons. The series returned in 2016 and then again in 2018. Plans are afoot, or so I have read, for another revival with new actors.

Remember, the truth is out there.

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5 Screen Portrayals of Real People

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I did a post on this subject a while ago and I thought it’s time for a follow up post. My original highlighted 8 screen portrayals but this time I thought I’d focus on just 5.

Glenn Miller

The Glenn Miller Story was a film that I first saw on TV back in the 1960’s. Sadly, as much as I loved it then, when I see it these days it is a little disappointing. James Stewart was far too old to play Glenn Miller, at least in my view.

June Alyson played Glenn’s wife and she elevated the use of the word ‘annoying’ to a new level with her constant beginning or ending of a phrase with ‘Honestly!’ I imagine the scriptwriter was fairly pleased with himself, coming up with a cute bit of business like that. Wrong! If I had been Glenn Miller and June Alyson my wife, I would have been sorely tempted to employ some appropriately placed Gaffer tape to remedy that situation.

One odd moment in the film comes when Glenn comes home from work and his wife takes him upstairs and says, ‘look what just arrived’ and guess what had arrived: two children who seemed to have arrived in time honoured fashion via the unseen stork. Of course, they may have been adopted, I really don’t know because it wasn’t really explained very well but it was a little bit like one of those moments in old episodes of Blue Peter, the children’s TV show, where Valerie Singleton or John Noakes would say, ‘and here’s one I made earlier!’

I must have mentioned in previous posts about how I used to have a cassette tape recorder and how many times I used to drag my poor brother into performing the skits and plays I used to write. One time we did a skit on the Glenn Miller story and there was me in my best American accent drawling, James Stewart style, ‘that sound, that certain sound, I need to find that certain sound and I’m gonna keep on looking till I find it.’ Throw in my brother blowing a fart down a cardboard tube and cue me as James Stewart: ‘That sound, that certain sound: That’s it! I’ve found it!’

I feel a little mean trashing a film I’ve always loved but it’s like a lot of things that I used to love years ago, they don’t always hold up when you see them again years later. James Stewart was, as I mentioned earlier, a little too old to play Miller and to be honest, Stewart just played Miller like he played every other character in every other film he was ever in.

The Glenn Miller Story pops up on TV every now and again and despite me not appreciating various elements of the film, I still love the music and it’s nice to see the guest stars in the film, people like Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa the fabulous drummer, bandleader Ben Pollack and the Modernaires, a vocal group who worked with Miller’s band as well as many others.

David Frost and Richard Nixon

In the film Frost/Nixon, Michael Sheen plays the part of David Frost and Frank Langella portrays Nixon. Sheen is perfect as Frost and Langella is pretty good too as Nixon. The film is about Nixon in his later years as he seeks to defend his legacy as President of the USA. Back then, Frost was a jet setting TV interviewer and personality and he sets up a deal to make a series of interviews with Nixon. Unable to find financial backing, Frost is forced to broker the deal with money from various backers and is worried that the project will fail financially.

Frost’s team are worried about something different; they feel that Frost is not serious enough to actually challenge Nixon about his actions as President and are concerned that the broadcasts will actually vindicate Nixon of any wrongdoing during Watergate.

In the final interview though, Frost manages to pressure Nixon into making the famous admission that he acted illegally when he famously says “when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal!”

I’ve always been fascinated by Nixon and Watergate and for me this was a wonderful film. I love the moment when Nixon, just as he and Frost are about to go on air, turns to Frost and asks “did you do any fornicating last night?”

Douglas Bader

Kenneth Moore played the part of World War II flying ace Douglas Bader in the film Reach For The Sky. Bader was a famous figure from the battle of Britain who rose to the rank of Group Captain despite losing both his legs in a flying accident in 1931.

His story was told in the 1956 film which was based on a biography of Bader by author Paul Brickhill.

The film is one of those that I first saw as a child and like The Glenn Miller Story, I’m not sure if it really works today. Moore plays a good part as Bader. As a young cadet he and his colleagues are told not to do low level aerobatics as it is too dangerous. Bader however disregards this after a passing remark from a civilian pilot. He takes off, gives the civilians something of a show but his wing tags the ground and his plane flips over and crashes. Doctors have no choice but to amputate his legs, one below the knee and one above.

The narrative then shows Bader’s determination to walk using his metal legs. Despite this however he is discharged from the RAF.

When the war breaks out though, the air force is desperate for pilots and Bader is able to return to the cockpit. Even so, he still displays something of a cavalier attitude, dumping his admin in a rubbish bin and once again performing low level flying, this time to convince his junior pilots that he knows how to fly.

I remember reading something about Bader years ago which was not complimentary at all so I decided to ask Google what the real Bader was like. The results that came back were not good. He clearly wasn’t anything like Kenneth Moore and many of his contemporaries found him abrasive and unpleasant and he was known to be harsh, particularly towards non officers.

I read once, and I think it was in racing driver Graham Hill’s autobiography, Hill tells the story of playing golf with Bader and just as Hill was about to take his shot, Bader started knocking his pipe on his metal legs!

He was however a courageous man and fought bravely for his country, in fact he was shot down and imprisoned in a POW camp which is shown at the end of Reach For the Sky.

Despite his disability Bader still managed various escapes and ended up finishing the war in Colditz Castle.

Winston Churchill

A while ago I stayed up late watching the film Darkest Hour which is about Winston Churchill and the beginning of his Prime Ministership in World War II. It paints a rather bleak picture of Winston’s premiership, with the Conservative party apparently holding back from supporting him and a growing clique actually wanting to replace him with Lord Halifax. When France fell to the Nazis, Halifax wanted to explore peace talks with Hitler which Churchill was violently opposed to. I’m not sure how true to life the film was and although I can imagine not everyone was 100% behind Churchill, I found some of this film a little hard to believe. There was a vote of no confidence in the Commons in 1942 although Churchill won this by a resounding 475 votes to 25. In the film, Conservatives still will not support Churchill in the Commons until outgoing premier Neville Chamberlain signalled them to do so by placing a white handkerchief on his knee. By then Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement were totally discredited so would he really have had such sway over his fellow MPs? I doubt it.

The film shows Churchill in various situations, in bed and in the bath, all the time dictating to his secretaries. We see him with his cigars and brandy, as well as in the House of Commons giving those famous speeches which united the country in those dark times. Gary Oldman played the part of Churchill and aided by some impressive make up he gave a really excellent performance.

I suppose actors playing the part of real people have a choice; either to try, to a certain extent, to impersonate the real person or like James Stewart and Kenneth Moore, just to represent the idea of the person in their own way. I like all the portrayals I talk about above but I think my favourite was Michael Sheen’s version of David Frost.

Do you have a favourite?

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