Bundesrepublik Kino

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Herkunft gefunden / Ancestry discovered

2011-03-06T09:13:00.002Z

Here's another little snippet for the Buchholz files. It turns out that HB was in fact the twice-great-grandson of noted 19th Century German sculptor Ernst Rietschel (1804-1861).

Decendents of Rietschel gather regularly to celebrate his life and work, which includes a number of public sculptures around Germany, such as a double sculpture of poet Goethe and playwright Friedrich Schiller (appropriately enough since HB performed some of his plays), which stands in the city of Weimar. Researchers working for the Rietschel foundation (http://www.ernst-rietschel.com/) have recently traced the link between Rietschel and HB (see article here), in time for the 150th anniversary of Rietschel's death.

Basically, Rietschel's eldest daughter Adelheid married Albert Rhode in 1855 and their grandson Werner Rhode (1909-1945) was HB's natural father. It is unlikely that HB was ever aware of this link, despite his own attempts to trace his father.

PATRICIA NEAL 1926-2010

2010-08-09T09:52:00.000+01:00

American actress who won an Oscar for her appearance in Hud, and battled to recover from a massive stroke which almost killed her at 39. Married for over 20 years to British writer Roald Dahl.

ALEX HIGGINS 1949-2010

2010-07-25T13:54:00.007+01:00

Another piece of my childhood passed away on 24th July, and I still can't believe it.

Book Review: LEWIS GILBERT - ALL MY FLASHBACKS

2010-07-02T18:14:00.001+01:00

The recent death of Ronald Neame means that perhaps the most senior and respected British director left is Lewis Gilbert, now ninety and fresh from a round of public appearances, such as on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago, in connection with his long awaited autobiography, All My Flashbacks.

Always one of the more approachable men in British movie making, Gilbert's style is chatty and relaxed, and goes into as much detail about his life behind the cameras as it does into a glittering career which somehow deserved more recognition than a single BAFTA and one Oscar nomination.

Gilbert was at the helm for some of the most famous and best loved films of the last 60 years. He had no signature theme as such but had a knack for reflecting the social mores of the times in ways that few other directors could make into something entertaining. Three of Gilbert's most celebrated films did this: Alfie (60's playboy), Educating Rita (hairdresser goes to university) and Shirley Valentine (bored middle-aged housewife).

Add to this famous war films such as Reach for the Sky, Carve Her Name with Pride and three Bond movies (You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Love Me and Moonraker) and you have one of the most successful careers of any British film maker of modern times.

Gibert writes frankly that not everything he did was successful, his success with Alfie in 1966 being followed by the disastrous Europudding The Adventurers, and he also doesn't disguise the fact that things didn't always run smoothly on set, such as his difficulties in working with Orson Welles. He also reveals the complications of the way that Hollywood worked at a time when it was going through its major upheaval in the 1960's.

However, as a personal account, it's a moving story in places, from the loss of his father to tuberculosis when he was just seven to the battle fought by his second granddaughter to recover from the viral encephalitis which nearly killed her at three months and left her severely disabled for many years.

It's a quite unpretentious piece of work from a man who has plenty to boast about.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Theater

2010-06-24T21:37:00.008+01:00

Al Hirschfeld's 1959 cartoon of HB with Kim Stanley in "Chéri"

One article that I've been dying to write in the Horst Buchholz series is one about his theatre work, because, I think, his critical success on the stage really overturns all the poison that was ever written about him by critics on the back of his film and TV work.

The fact is that HB began his career on the stage and, while he didn't quite end it there, he was often more successful as a stage actor than he came to be in front of the cameras. The tragedy here is that you really did have to be there to see it, none of it was captured for posterity, except for fragments of silent family movie footage and the little glimmers from critics who did appreciate his talents. Here are just a few highlights.

HB's first acting job of all came in April 1947, at 13, in a production of Erich Kästner's classic children's play Emil and the Detectives. It was a very small role but it began his association with the theatre and, after he'd worked his passage as backstage gopher and scene-shifter, he began starring in bigger and bigger roles as he reached the end of his teens. He had several stints in Shakespeare, in Troilus and Cressida, Julius Caesar, and Richard III, playing Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, in the latter production.

In 1953, HB starred as Peter Pan in an exuberant performance in West Berlin, but shortly before this came a role which many actors who've filled it would describe as extremely challenging. The Playboy of the Western World, by Irish playwright John Synge, was first performed in Dublin in 1907 and, immediately, sparked a series of riots over its portrayal of rural Irish folk. They were infamous enough incidents to be known today as "The Playboy Riots", although the play is now compulsory reading for anyone taking the Leaving Certificate or Ardteist in Irish schools, their equivalent of the British GCSE. Part of the controversy centres on the use of thick Irish vernacular, such as this lengthy passage which Christy Mahon, the main character, delivers at the top of Act 2:-

[Counting jugs on a dresser.] Half a hundred beyond. Ten there. A score that's above. Eighty jugs. Six cups and a broken one. Two plates. A power of glasses. Bottles, a school-master'd be hard set to count, and enough in them, I'm thinking, to drunken all the wealth and wisdom of the County Clare. [He puts down the boot carefully.] There's her boots now, nice and decent for her evening use, and isn't it grand brushes she has? [He puts the brushes down and goes by degrees to the looking-glass.] Well, this'd be a fine place to be my whole life talking out with swearing Christians, in place of my old dogs and cat, and I stalking around, smoking my pipe and drinking my fill, and never a day's work but drawing a cork an odd time, or wiping a glass, or rinsing out a shiny tumbler for a decent man. [He takes the looking-glass from the wall and puts it on the back of a chair; then sits down in front of it and begins washing his face.] Didn't I know rightly I was handsome, though it was the divil's own mirror we had beyond, would twist a squint across an angel's brow; and I'll be growing fine from this day, the way I'll have a soft lovely skin on me and won't be the like of the clumsy young fellows do be ploughing all times in the earth and dung.

The delivery is meant to be fast and furious and how HB would have projected this in German translation is anyone's guess. But, just take a look at the actors who've filled this role down the years: Cyril Cusack, some say the greatest Irish actor ever, made the Christy role his own on the Dublin stages in the 30's and 40's, Burgess Meredith ("The Penguin" in Batman, inter alia) on Broadway in the late 40's, John Hurt (The Naked Civil Servant etc.) on TV in the 70's and Cillian Murphy (The Wind That Shakes The Barley) more recently on stage back in Dublin. One detail, though, is this: they were all anywhere between their late twenties and early forties. HB was 19. Talk about going in at the deep end! It also explains a lot about HB's general style of acting later on.

Before he graduated into movie making, HB tackled a handful of other foreign dramatists' work which gave him exposure to one of the aspects which became a tradmark of his, namely his mastery of foreign languages. During the early to mid 1950's, he would star in plays by France's Jean Anouilh and Jean-Paul Sartre, and Spain's Antonio Buero Vallejo, in a 1954 production of The Glowing Darkness, in which he plays a rebellious young man who loses his sight and who disrupts life at the residential home to which he is sent. This was the "German James Dean" before anyone knew who the American one was!

HB took a break from the stage in 1955 as his movie career got underway, but his first work in America was on the stage, in late 1959, when he starred in Chéri, on Broadway, with Kim Stanley. The play was based on novels by French novelist Colette - of Gigi fame - about a rich Parisian courtesan who takes on the 19-year-old son of a friend and then tries to mould the angry, spoilt young man in to suitable husband material to hand on to some lucky young lady, only for him to fall fatally in love with her. It was a clumsy production with a script widely received as dodgy, but Kim and HB at least got the credit for doing their best with it in the freezing cold, ramshackle Moresco Theatre (which bit the dust in 1982). HB got his fair share of the accolades, perhaps none more glowing than that of Charlie Chaplin's ex-wife, actress, Paulette Goddard. "He takes sex off the analyst's couch," she told the New York Times, "and puts it back in the boudoir."

HB was, of course, in America in order to help Billy Wilder and his chums rescue Hollywood from the aftermath of its first actors' strike and from the onslaught of television. What happened there is another debate entirely but HB delivered another stint on Broadway in January-February 1963 in a Max Frisch play called Andorra. Set in a microcosmic society full of violent political factions, HB plays a young man who is mistakenly thought to be Jewish and becomes the target of anti-Semitic mobs from outside his home town. He was starring opposite Hugh Griffith as his adoptive father, shortly to win an Oscar for Tom Jones, and Clifton James, later to become gum-chewing Sherriff J.W. Pepper in two Bond films. The show closed after just nine performances, but not before this piece appeared from Michael Smith in Village Voice, a popular New York magazine, on 14th February 1963:-

“Horst Buchholz... gives a performance full of grace, charm, wit and intelligence, which in terms of the text makes complete sense.”

Film and, eventually, television, came to dominate HB's work during the 1960's and 1970's, as well as his own two abortive attempts to become a director. In 1977, though, he returned to the stage in Zurich, Switzerland, with a blast in a German translation of British writer Peter Nichols' play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. It's a savage black comedy about a dog-eared schoolteacher who struggles to keep order in the classroom by day and who battles to uphold his sanity by night at home, where he has to cope with a weapons-grade optimist of a wife and oodles of interfering relatives, while caring for a severely disabled daughter.

The play starts with the teacher's monologue, delivered alone on stage but sparking off the audience, who are meant to be his "class":-

"That's enough! (Pause. Almost at once, louder) I said enough! (Pause. Stares at audience.) Another word and you'll all be here till five o'clock. Nothing to me, is it?"

Not to rehearse the whole thing here, but on this goes for a solid five minutes, bringing back your worst memories of the pissed-off teacher from hell, with his scruffy cardigan and tie hung half way down his chest, taking his revenge on you lot flicking your little globs of chewed up paper with the end of your ruler past his head AND THERE'S STILL SOMEBODY TALKING NOW!!!!!!

Michael Early and Philippa Keil, summarising Egg in their 1993 book The Modern Monologue: Men, Volume 2, say this about the role:

"Before long he has the whole audience in a 'Simple Simon' hands-on-head routine... This speech demands acting that is daring, threatening and entertaining."

Now, have a look at some of the other actors who have played "Bri": Albert Finney played him in the West End and on Broadway in the late sixties, and was nominated for a Tony; Alan Bates in the 1970 film version; Kevin Kline was in the role on Broadway almost simultaneously with HB over in Zurich in '77. Eddie Izzard has since played in the role, one version being televised by the BBC, as has Clive Owen (Children of Men).

Now... let them tell you that HB couldn't act...

Egg in Zurich was a sell-out, and so was Cabaret, in which HB appeared at the Theater des Westens in West Berlin in the New Year 1978-1979. He played Emcee, the role filled by Joel Grey in the 1972 film and now being performed by Wayne Sleep on a UK Tour. This is the only part of HB's stage work which exists on film, thanks to the Super 8 footage shot by his wife, Myriam Bru, when she was allowed to film the dress rehearsals from the "one and nines". Part of that footage was used in Christopher Buchholz's film Horst Buchholz... mein Papa.

In the 1980's, in and around his film and TV work, HB diversified back to the stage more and more. He toured in West Germany in a play called A Better Man in 1981, and twice in Arms and the Man, by George Bernard Shaw, in 1985-86, as Count Bluntschli. This was around the time that a British actor of HB's own generation, Richard "The Good Life" Briers, had starred in the role in a Channel 4 production on British TV, and, once again, Kevin Kline was mirroring the role on Broadway. Another stage success for HB in the mid to late 1980's was in Twelve Angry Men, the famous courtroom drama, with HB as the Architect member of the jury, as played by Henry Fonda in the 1957 film.

In 1991, HB teamed up with his son, Christopher, for probably his most successful stage performance of his later career, and one of his key moments of the 1990's, in I Hate Hamlet. The play is about a young TV actor (played here by Christopher) who is offered a stage role as Hamlet but suddenly gets serious doubts about whether he's made a big career mistake. Up steps the ghost of legendary American stage actor and celebrated Broadway Hamlet incarnation John Barrymore (played here by HB) who then goads the young man into the role with a series of hilarious set-pieces and a sword fight which threatens to demolish the whole set. “[A] full-bodied and exuberant performance that transforms a skimpy script into a delightful evening,” is what veteran critic Thomas Quinn Curtiss had to tell the New York Times about HB's performance in Vienna. 1992 saw HB in a good old British bedroom farce, albeit again in German translation, as adulterous Cabinet Minister Richard Willey in Ray Cooney's Out of Order. British theatre goers may, for example, remember Donald Sinden in that role at the Shaftesbury Theatre.

HB's last stage performance came in 1996, in Jean-Paul Sartre's The Respectful Harlot, in Berlin. He was due to star in a touring performance of a play called You Again! in 2000, but collapsed from exhaustion during rehearsals in Düsseldorf.

A slightly lengthier article then, but hopefully another antidote to the rather dismissive tripe that you often read about Germany's most internationally successful actor of the last 70 years.

EGON RONAY 1915-2010

2010-06-21T21:32:00.000+01:00

Hungarian-born foodie most famous as the maker or breaker of many a budding restaurateur from the 1960's onwards, and the inspiration for the ultimate put-down to kids who were picky about their food (as in "Who do you think you are, Egon Ronay?") Widely credited with teaching the British how to appreciate food.

RONALD NEAME 1911-2010

2010-06-21T21:22:00.000+01:00

English director famous for his movies such as The Poseidon Adventure, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and for his early collaboration as a writer producer for David Lean

RAY ALAN 1930-2010

2010-05-31T11:51:00.000+01:00

English ventriloquist best known for his partnership with "Lord Charles", a dummy who always appeared to have had a few before going on stage.

DENNIS HOPPER 1936-2010

2010-05-29T20:34:00.001+01:00

American actor who starred with James Dean and became a blue-chip Hollywood hellraiser in the 1960's and 1970's, before re-emerging in the 1980's. Best remembered for his appearances in Easy Rider in 1969 and Blue Velvet in 1986.

LYNN REDGRAVE O.B.E. 1943-2010

2010-05-03T18:26:00.000+01:00

English actress, the youngest daughter of Sir Michael Redgrave, best known for her Oscar nominated roles in the 1966 film Georgy Girl, and Gods and Monsters in 1999.

MALCOLM McLAREN 1946-2010

2010-04-11T13:39:00.000+01:00

British pop impresario who was the manager of The Sex Pistols and known as the "Godfather of Punk".

CHRISTOPHER CAZENOVE 1943-2010

2010-04-11T13:36:00.001+01:00

British actor best known as Ben Carrington in Dynasty.

CORIN REDGRAVE 1939-2010

2010-04-11T13:33:00.001+01:00

English actor best known for his roles in A Man for All Seasons, Four Weddings and a Funeral, In the Name of the Father, as well as for his political activism. Only son of actor Sir Michael Redgrave and actress Rachel Kempson, and brother of actresses Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave.

Here on TV-am in 1983 with his father Sir Michael Redgrave (1908-1985).

SIR ALEC BEDSER 1918-2010

2010-04-11T13:30:00.000+01:00

(CRICKET - THE 3RD TEST)

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Cyril's Biogs: JOHN FORSYTHE 1918-2010

2010-04-03T10:17:00.001+01:00

For an actor to become an international household name only in his sixties is quite an achievement but that was precisely the fate of American actor John Forsythe when he became Colorado oil tycoon Blake Carrington in the glamour soap Dynasty in the 1980's. It was the ultimate pay-off for an actor who had struggled for over thirty years to find a career-defining role.

Born John Lincoln Freund in New Jersey in 1918, his acting career began while he was serving in the U.S. Army during the second world war and he appeared several times on Broadway before briefly joining the Actors' Studio. Television became his speciality early on with appearances in the very first, genuine "soap" operas, so called because they were sponsored, with the urban myth being that the sponsors were always detergent manufacturers.

Although he tried to forge a movie career, success on the big screen eluded him although he was in two Alfred Hitchcock films, 1955's The Trouble with Harry, and 1969's Topaz. Unfortunately, both movies bombed at the box office. Back on television, Forsythe continued to star in one-off dramas but between 1957 and 1962, he played world weary attorney Bentley Gregg in Bachelor Father, a gentle sitcom about an unmarried uncle and the shenanigans of his orphaned teenage neice. The series survived two changes of channel, from CBS to NBC and then on to ABC.

Forsythe briefly had his own eponymous show on NBC in the mid-sixties and another sitcom, CBS's To Rome With Love, followed between 1969 and 1971.

Forsythe's voice became a star, not only of Michelob beer commercials in the 1970's but also of the title character in Charlie's Angels, the action-packed karate-kicking series about three female detectives working for a boss who exists only as the dulcet tones issuing from a desktop tannoy. The series ran for five seasons from 1976 and was shown in more than thirty countries, although Forsythe's often uncredited involvement went largely unnoticed after his voice had been dubbed out in different languages.

It was towards the end of that series' run that Forsythe became a late replacement for George Peppard in Dynasty, which ran on ABC from 1981 to 1989. He became a worldwide hit for his portrayal of the Carrington patriarch, wedged between the gargantuan shoulder pads of Linda Evans as his second wife Krystle and Joan Collins, who put the "ex" in Alexis, his vindictive first wife. He was nominated three times for an Emmy for the series, and six times for a Golden Globe, winning in 1983 and 1984.

After Dynasty ended, Forsythe largely went into a quiet retirement but experienced personal tragedy in the death of his wife, the actress Julie Warren, who had lapsed into a coma after a severe respiratory illness. Her death in 1994 ended a 51-year marriage from which they'd had two children. He'd been previously married, to another actress, Parker McCormick, by whom he'd had another child. He married a third time in 2002, with businesswoman Nicole Carter, who survives him.

John Forsythe, American actor: born Penn's Grove, NJ, 29th January 1918; died, Santa Ynez, Ca., 1st April 2010.

From the archive (Cyril's Biogs): ROBERT McKENZIE 1917-1981

2010-04-01T21:53:00.008+01:00

We don't "do" politics on BK but, with a General Election likely to be called in the UK after the Easter holiday, we thought we'd pay tribute to one of Britain's enduring but often forgotten political heroes. The only snag was, he wasn't a politician. He was also Canadian...

Nobody seemed to know a great deal about Robert Trelford McKenzie except this: he could probably predict the outcome of a General Election in Britain quicker than anybody else in the country, once the polls had closed. He famously called the 1970 election - correctly - for the Conservatives several hours before anybody else believed that the stiff-backed bachelor Conservative Ted Heath could ever overhaul Labour's iconic Harold Wilson, but the figures on the night proved him right.

On that balmy summer night in '70, he even outdid himself, and his invention, the "Swingometer". A set decorator had to come in and physically paint extra figures onto the cardboard studio pendulum once it was clear that the swing from Labour to Conservative that night was going to send McKenzie's needle off his own scale, which only ran to 5% either way.

McKenzie even made the word "swing" a part of everyday political parlance in Britain.

Elections in Britain are still relatively gentlemanly affairs, fairly free of violence and also still largely immune to any serious large-scale attempt at electoral fraud. However, they universally end in perhaps the hottest, sweatiest night in the life of any mortal, locked into a Town Hall or a school gymnasium into the small hours while row upon row of bank clerks physically sift individual pieces of paper, sort them into piles and count them. Where virtually every other major democracy has resorted to punch-cards, and computers, and gets the whole thing done and dusted on a single Sunday evening, the Brits do it all the hard way on a Thursday night.

The UK also has the simplest of all electoral systems. The country is divided up into 600-odd chunks of land, representing towns, urban suburbs and corners of huge rural counties. The political parties put their candidates up and who gets the most votes on the day from around 70,000 souls living in the neighbourhood wins the seat and goes to Parliament, end of story. There are no quotas, no second preferences, no division tarifs, or any other complication. This is how a result is declared:-

"I, (Name of Returning Officer), hereby declare that the number of votes cast in this election are as follows:-

(Name of Candidate A - in alphabetical order of surname) XXXXX votes

(Name of Candidate B - next in alphabetical order) XXXXX votes

(Name of Candidiate C) .... etc. etc..

I therefore declare that the said (Name of Candidate with most votes) is returned to serve as Member of Parliament for (Name of Constituency)."

There's no obligation even to read out the name of the Candidate's party.

Robert McKenzie was a Canadian mathematician who wound up at Oxford University in and around his war service and realised that Britain's political landscape was the perfect study in applied statistics. While every little pocket of land represented in the Palace of Westminster had its own unique character, he also realised that the mood of the country at a particular election was the single most powerful guiding factor in how people within a particular constituency voted when they went to the polls. Moreover, with the advance of television in Britain in the 1950's, and mass media generally, he realised that this uniformity of behaviour would only become yet greater.

The extension of that theory was that, if, for argument's sake, the sitting MP in a safe Conservative seat like Guildford, in Surrey, came back with an appreciably lower majority than he did at the last election, then it may mean another Tory MP like Humphrey Berkeley in Lancaster, 200 miles away, could be in danger of losing his seat. That's precisely what happened in 1966, Guildford declaring at before midnight, Lancaster much further into the night.

By the same principle, when the Tories held Basildon, in Essex, in 1992, against all expectations, it led to immediate predictions that the Conservatives had won that election, against all expectations.

McKenzie then took his theory further, for the purposes of television, by means of a simple pendulum, swinging between Labour and Conservative, where he could map a single result, from a single seat, at 11.30 at night, and then begin to make progressively more accurate predictions of how other seats would fall for the rest of the night and, therefore, who was likely to get a call from Buckingham Palace the next day to be asked to form a government.

Because of the mechanics of counting 600-odd different sets of ballot papers across the country, it might be the middle of Friday before any one party fell over the winning line of 320 or so seats to secure an overall majority, or as in February 1974, no majority at all.

Of course, the needle on McKenzie's swingometer would waggle about wildly for the first couple of hours, but, before most of the country couldn't stand any more of the overnight TV coverage and wandered off to bed, it would settle down to a narrow, more accurate prediction of who was going to be running the country by the following afternoon. It was the bewildering world of politics broken down to its most digestible form. Everyone from the milkman to the men in suits running futures desks from New York to Tokyo could understand it.

The "Swingometer" has been modified to take care of Britain's complexion of three nationwide parties (it was only invented for two) and its patchwork of regional and single issue parties. It has even been converted into 3-D form because of the more recent strength of the Liberal Democrats. However, the principle is the same, and every politician to come into that industry in the last 50 years at least has learned to understand who is their main threat locally, and who is making the running nationally, by the methods that McKenzie made mainstream.

Bob McKenzie was a regular feature on BBC programmes such as Nationwide in the 1960's and 1970's, but he was never a political interviewer on the same scale as those behemoths such as Robin Day. He would often moderate political programmes, betimes with a cigar or pipe on the go, but his interest was the pure science of an election: how people actually go and vote, not the welter of argument and counter-argument that come before the day itself.

The Basildon moment described above might have been one which proved McKenzie's theories about elections right. Sadly, he never lived to see it, or the "Portillo" moment in 1997 when the then Tory Defence Secretary Michael Portillo lost his own north London seat, in line with predictions being driven out by the national opinion polls.

McKenzie died in 1981 of cancer, aged just 64. However, his simple tool for analysing the mathematical spaghetti that goes with national elections is still alive and well, and still the most fun part of politics, even to those who are otherwise totally uninterested.

Robert Trelford McKenzie, Canadian mathematician and broadcaster: born 11th September 1917; died 12th October 1981.

Here's Bob in action, along with BBC anchor Cliff Michelmore and another Oxford politics expert, Professor David Butler:-

Cyril's Biogs: VASILIY SMYSLOV 1921-2010

2010-03-30T21:22:00.005+01:00

One of the most successful chess players of his generation, as well as part of the Soviet tournament winning machine that dominated the game after the Second World War, Vasiliy Smyslov was the first player to break Mikhail Botvinnik's then nine-year grip on the World title in 1957. The second would be 23-year-old Latvian prodigy Mikhail Tal in 1960. Both times, Botvinnik prepared well for his return matches, regaining the title in 1958 and 1961 respectively, before being finally overhauled by Armenia's Tigran Petrosian in 1963.

Nevertheless, a record 17 Chess Olympiad and 10 European Team gold medal victories during his nigh-on fifty year playing career made Smyslov one of the best tournament players in the game's modern history. He was still challenging for the World crown as late as 1983, at 62 years of age, when it took eventual champion, 21-year-old Gary Kasparov, to overhaul him in the final candidate's match.

Born in Moscow in 1921, Smyslov first started playing chess at 6 and was later given a copy of then world champion Alexander Alekhine's book My Best Games of Chess. Although Alekhine had defected to France in 1930, the book became a constant source of reference to Smyslov as he continued playing as an amateur, while training as an engineer.

Smyslov won the USSR Junior Championship in 1938 at the age of 17 and, despite the onset of war, his playing career continued through the early 1940's well enough for him to be named a Grandmaster by FIDE, the game's governing body, in 1941, at just 20.

When Alekhine died as reigning world champion in 1946, Smyslov was one of five players chosen to enter the 1948 World Championship and confounded critics when he finished runner-up in the round-robin format to Botvinnik. He had a near miss in 1954 when, as Botvinnik's challenger for the title, he drew 12-12 in their match in Moscow: a challenger needed a clear win and Botvinnik retained the title by default. However, when they met again in the final in Moscow in 1957, Smyslov won 12½-9½.

As the defeated champion, Botvinnik was entitled to an immediate rematch and beat Smyslov the following Spring, again in Moscow, by 12½-10½.

His tournament play continued into the 1960's and 1970's. Tournament chess often produces joint winners, but Smyslov's outright victories in Olympiad events included 1965 in Havana, Monte Carlo in 1969, Amsterdam in 1971, Reykjavik in 1974 and Graz in 1984.

By the last of those victories, Smyslov had come within one match of another world final, beginning with a stroke of sheer luck. He'd drawn his Candidates' quarter-final match with West Germany's Robert Hübner 7-7, only advancing by the spin of a roulette wheel. From there, he found a second wind in beating Hungary's Zoltán Ribli 6½-4½ but then Kasparov beat him in the Candidates' final 8½-4½.

Kasparov's final challenge to incumbent Anatoly Karpov, initially run on a "first to six wins basis" had to be abandoned after five months and forty drawn games with Karpov only 5-3 up. They were rematched under the old best of 24 format in 1985, which ended with Kasparov's iconic 13-11 victory to end Karpov's eventful ten year reign as champion.

Smyslov went on to become the first World Seniors' Champion in 1991. Smyslov had variations of both the Ruy Lopez opening and the Slav Defence named after him... as well as the character from 2001: A Space Odyssey played by Leonard Rossiter!.

Smyslov was also an accomplished singer and only turned to chess professionally after failing an audition for the Bolshoi Opera in 1950.

Vasiliy Vasiliyevich Smyslov, Russian chess grandmaster: born Moscow, 24th March 1921; died, Moscow, 27th March 2010.

Review: JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN

2010-03-27T13:01:00.005Z

An aspect of war which nobody in their right mind would contemplate unless it happened to them, but that's exactly where Dalton Trumbo's film adaptation of his own novel takes you. Timothy Bottoms lives every mother's and every soldier's worst nightmare as Joe Bonham, a man with a mind... and nothing else. With Jason Robards, Donald Sutherland, Kathy Fields. Dir. Dalton Trumbo, USA, 1971. Colour/Black & White, 106 mins.

OK... This movie is not exactly Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, one of the films which blew it out of the box office tills in 1971, and a copy of which you may wish to have to hand, in order to watch afterwards, because this one will stick in your mind for weeks... and weeks... and weeks.

It's about an American soldier of the Great War who is blown sky high on the last day of that conflict, and winds up in an unidentified hospital. His face has been torn off by the blast, so he's blind, has no mouth with which to speak, no tongue with which to taste, no nose with which to smell. He has also been deafened and his other physical injuries lead to what's left of all four limbs being amputated. On top of this, he has no identity. All he has left is his very active but very confused and frightened mind, but, to cap it all, he is robbed even of the recognition of that fact by the doctors who paw over him as part of a freakish medical experiment.

The film meanders in and out of the black-and-white hospital scenes, where he gradually learns to use the moments where he isn't sedated to try and communicate with a kindly nurse, played by Kathy Fields, by nodding his masked head on the pillow in Morse code. The colour scenes are either flashbacks to his childhood memories of his father, played by Jason Robards, or hallucinations induced by the drugs he is fed, which include a conversation with a Christ figure played by Donald Sutherland.

Clearly there is no happy ending to Johnny Got His Gun. You are left with the feeling that this poor young man was kept alive, deliberately and against his will, potentially into the very year the film itself was made, swinging back and forth between his mere twenty years as an able-bodied human being and his reality as an inconvenience to national morale, locked away from the sight of everyone but those who clear his breathing tube and cater to his other bodily needs.

No wonder no major studio wanted to touch it with a twenty foot barge pole, but this is part of the fascinating back-story to this horrifically moving film. When established Hollywood scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo wrote the original novel in 1938, it was a best seller until about twelve months into the Second World War, when he withdrew it from sale of his own accord for much the same reasons as Stanley Kubrick pulled A Clockwork Orange out of British picture houses 35 years later: it touched too many nerves at the same time.

In 1950, Trumbo was one of a clutch of writers, directors and actors who were blacklisted by the House of Representatives' Committee on Un-American Activities, and Trumbo himself was imprisoned the same year for contempt of the U.S. Congress. While on the blacklist, however, he managed to support himself and his family by writing under various noms de plume, delivering screenplays for Roman Holiday in 1955 and Kubrick's Spartacus five years later.

Johnny Got His Gun was Trumbo's only excursion as a director and the film was made on a shoestring in 1970. Sutherland and Robards were the only major stars of the movie and the lead role was played by 18-year-old Timothy Bottoms, later to become the star of Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show and more recently familiar as a George W. Bush impersonator.

As an "independent" film right down to its typewritten titles and credits, Johnny Got His Gun languished after its premiere run in theatres, like its hero, unheard and unseen by virtually anyone but the hardiest of American local TV station executives until 1989, when American heavy metal group Metallica came to make the video for their song, One.

The song was ostensibly about a Vietnam veteran rendered as horribly disabled as Joe Bonham, but the band purchased the rights to the film and then used footage from it as part of their video (see YouTube). The song and video were a worldwide hit on pay-to-view music channel MTV and inevitably led to a cult following for the film.

The band still own the rights to the movie and it has been beautifully remastered for DVD. Available from AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.CO.UK

Cyril's Biogs: HARRY CARPENTER 1925-2010

2010-03-22T17:37:00.003Z

If British Heavyweight boxing champion Frank Bruno ever ended a sentence with the words "know what I mean, 'Arry?", then the 'Arry in question was BBC commentator Harry Carpenter, who for more than 30 years was the Beeb's "voice of boxing", despite never having donned a pair of gloves himself. But, boxing wasn't his only speciality as he also anchored tennis from Wimbledon for over 25 years and, for ten years, was the presenter of the BBC's midweek sports show Sportsnight.

The fishmonger's son was born in South Norwood, London in 1925. He joined the BBC in 1949 after a short career as a newspaper sub-editor, although he continued as a columnist with the Sporting Record and then the Daily Mail until he became the corporation's full-time boxing commentator in 1962. Among his greatest moments behind the microphone were Henry Cooper's controversial 1971 defeat as British and European Heavyweight champion to Joe Bugner, but undoubtedly the most famous of all was the 1974 World Championship bout between champion George Foreman and challenger Muhammad Ali in Kinshasa, in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, popularly known as the "Rumble in the Jungle".

He took over the chair of Sportsnight in 1975 from David Coleman, and was also the BBC's main golfing anchor from the mid-sixties until his retirement in the early 1990's. Known as one of the calmer commentators on TV, he did let his guard drop a little a couple of times by allowing himself to drop the otherwise customary impartiality of his professions: once with the points decision by which Bugner won his bout with Cooper and then again when Frank Bruno challenged Mike Tyson for the World Heavyweight crown in 1989. "Get in there, Frank," he barked just when Britain's then most popular boxer looked to have frightened "Iron Mike".

His friendship with Frank Bruno, though often lampooned by Spitting Image, was genuine and he famously stood by the boxer as his career waned.

Sky News obituary on YouTube.

Harry Carpenter, British broadcaster and sports journalist: born, London, 17th October 1925; died, London, 20th March 2010.

Cyril's Biogs: PETER GRAVES 1926-2010

2010-03-18T18:40:00.003Z

"Joey... do you hang around gymnasiums?"

It was one of the dodgiest lines any actor can be asked to deliver to a 10-year-old boy but it booked Peter Graves into movie folklore, with his portrayal of bumbling pilot Captain Oveur in the two Airplane disaster spoof films, released in 1980 and 1982, each stuffed full of punchlines to rival Monty Python.

Along with Leslie Nielsen, and William Shatner in the second Airplane film, Graves was a serious actor who was keen to transcend what had been a rather dry reputation with a good spot of comedy. Nielsen would, of course, go onto box-office smashing excursions in the Naked Gun films, but Graves never quite reinvented himself as a funny man.

Born Peter Aurness in Minneapolis in 1926 of Norwegian and German parentage, his acting career began in his mid twenties and he starred in a number of B-movie efforts in the 1950's, although he was also one of the inmates in Billy Wilder's comedy Stalag 17 in 1953 with William Holden.

However, it was in television that Graves made his name, firstly with the now little remembered Fury in 1955-1960 on NBC, which nonetheless ran to 116 episodes. Most famous were his 143 outings as agent Jim Phelps in the CBS show Mission: Impossible, which ran between 1967 and 1973.

With one of the most famous signature tunes in television (see YouTube), every episode would begin with Phelps and his team being read a synopsis of their mission - "should you choose to accept it" - before the announcement that "this message will self destruct in five seconds". The series was much parodied but was sixties American TV at its best. Graves role won him an Emmy nomination in 1969, and two Golden Globe nominations, before he went on to win that award in 1971. The series was exported to over 30 countries.

It was revived, with Graves returning as Phelps, between 1988 and 1990 on ABC but ran to only 35 episodes, although it spawned the much more successful series of films from 1996 onwards with Tom Cruise in the lead role of Ethan Hunt.

Graves married Joan Endress in 1950, who survives him along with their three daughters and six grandchildren. He is also survived by his elder brother, the actor James Arness, who was most famous for his role in western TV series Gunsmoke.

CBS News obituary on YouTube.

Other YouTube material on Peter Graves.

Peter Graves, American actor: born 18th March 1926, Minneapolis, Minn., died Los Angeles, Ca., 14th March 2010.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Vor dem Mikro #1 (Synchronisation/Dubbing)

2010-03-12T21:56:00.002Z

If you go to this link on YouTube, you'll get the trailer for the German dubbed version of Sergio Leone's 1984 gangster classic Once Upon a Time in America. It may seem a little odd to see the likes of Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci yabbering on in German, but keep your eyes skinned on James Woods because, here, he's speaking with the voice of a 50-year-old Horst Buchholz.

This is just one example of something which kept HB in work when everything else in his career was in turmoil. Not only that, this is the business in which he started in the movies in the first place. It may have been inevitable that HB himself would end up in front of a camera somehow, sometime, but he was never too proud to return behind a microphone, away from the limelight, not only to dub his own films but, as here, as the voice of somebody completely different.

A quick note about the dubbing industry

The Dutch, Swedes and other Scandinavians don't do it, most Eastern European countries haven't had the time or money to do it, the Japanese, Chinese and Koreans can take it or leave it, but the French, Italians and Germans swear by it.

Dubbing. Anybody who doesn't dub foreign films into the “home” language has to contend with subtitling. Either way, it's a right sod of a job to do but it's big business in its own right.

Gregory Peck once talked about meeting the man who regularly dubbed him into Italian, when GP was visiting the Cinecittà studios in Rome and happened to spot this gentleman in the throes of dubbing one of his films. GP walked into the dubbing booth and nearly frightened the poor man out of his skin. However, when they got talking, GP's “Italian voice” kept asking him if he was in good health, to the point where GP began asking the reason for his curiosity. “Well”, said the man in slightly broken English, “I raised five children and put them all through college dubbing your movies, and I should like to continue in that work until I can retire. And you're a lot older than me!”

Subtitling isn't easy but dubbing is arguably harder, not only for the people who have to write new scripts with which to dub a foreign language, but also for the voice actors who have to go in front of the mike and deliver it all, co-ordinating lip movements, recreating the tone, timbre and attack of somebody's speech while the original is playing back, either quietly in the background or bawled directly in the dubbing artist's ears over a pair of “cans”. To make it convincing – and this happens rarely, to the delight of many a comedian over the years – you have to have an ear, not for movies, but for the radio.

This was the type of work that HB was doing before he even turned 17. This is proof that he was not “just a pretty face”... He'd also got a pretty neat voice.

Radio

HB first took the stage as a 13-year-old in 1947, but his stage appearances were initially rare as he took acting lessons for the next few years, before bursting back onto the stage as a star in his own right in 1953. What paid for those acting lessons were various stints he did in radio plays which were broadcast on RIAS (Radio in the American Sector), which was the most sophisticated radio station operating in Berlin immediately after the war, and before either East or West Germany were allowed to run their own broadcasting corporations.

However, it was from there that HB was hired in 1950 by a man who became one of his closest friends, Wenzel Lüdecke, who, at the time, was Chief Executive of a company he'd founded in 1949, Berliner Synchron. Now a publicly listed company, it has been responsible for dubbing more than 5,000 foreign (i.e. non-German) films, from The Ladykillers to Shrek the Third.

HB's first dubbing job was simply a handful of lines for the improbably named Flower, the skunk character in Disney's Bambi. But, the same year, 16-year-old HB also dubbed a live film, a 1943 French drama called La valse blanche, in a background role played by Michel de Bonnay.

The following year, HB got a bigger dubbing part in another Disney animation, that of Lampwick, the little street urchin who leads Pinocchio astray. Sadly, the recording has now been lost and a second dubbing of the film was carried out in 1967.

HB himself was to claim to have dubbed more than 1,000 films into German by the end of his career. It has to be said that this is probably pushing it: that would mean 18 or 19 films a year for every year he was active between 1949 and 2002, over and above the films in which he was appearing himself.

However, what we do know for certain is that he dubbed himself in at least 30 of his own screen titles. He wasn't unique in this among Germanic actors working abroad, and contemporary actors like Gert Fröbe, Hardy Krüger and Maximilian Schell also did the same (although, perhaps strangely, Helmut Berger is one who didn't). However, the sheer amount of material that HB laid down, chiefly in English, mean that it was a steady second income to him.

Having already become Germany's most successful actor on home soil, once he went abroad, it only made sense for him to dub himself, and at least it meant that his home audience could still hear his voice after he left Germany.

Only twice is he documented as having been dubbed by someone else, the Italian film Come, quando, perché in 1969 (by Thomas Eckelmann) and the 1976 TV movie The Savage Bees (by Norbert Gerscher).

For one of his films, he also dubbed himself twice, 1997's Italian tearjerker Life is Beautiful. He dubbed himself into English and into German.

Synchrondatenbank.de documents 11 films, other than the ones already mentioned, in which HB dubbed someone else, between 1950 and 1956. These are:-

Domani è troppo tardi (1950, dubbed 1951), as Gino Leurini

Sands of Iwo Jima (1949, dubbed 1952), as James Holden

Just for You (1952, dubbed 1953), as Robert Arthur

Johnny Guitar (1954), as Ben Cooper

Blackboard Jungle (1955), as Dan Terranova

City Across the River (1949, dubbed 1956), as Pedro Fernandez

Hit The Deck (1954, dubbed 1956), as Vic Damone

The Rose Tattoo (1955, dubbed 1956), as Ben Cooper

Rebel Without a Cause (1955, dubbed 1956), as Sal Mineo

Tribute to a Bad Man (1955, dubbed 1956), as Vic Morrow

The Last Hunt (1955, dubbed 1956), as Russ Tamblyn

In 1998, HB provided the German voice of Fa Zhou, the father of the title character in animated Disney epic Mulan. (Wind 3 minutes 52 seconds into the following clip to hear his entrance).

Cyril's Biogs: LIONEL JEFFRIES 1926-2010

2010-02-19T18:48:00.001Z

Having lost most of his hair by his early thirties, it seemed that Lionel Jeffries career might have been restricted to playing stiff authority types but he carved out a stage and screen career which played on his versatility to the full.

Best remembered mostly for co-starring parts rather than his own particular vehicle, he nevertheless had more than 100 screen credits in a career of over 50 years, although will probably be best remembered for something of a feat of cinematic licence in playing Grandpa Potts in the 1968 children's fantasy Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, when the man playing his son, Dick Van Dyke, was in fact six months older.

Lionel Charles Jeffries was born in 1926 in the Forest Hill area of London and, after war service for which he was awarded the Burma Star, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, eventually finding himself with the David Garrick Theatre in Lichfield.

Various minor roles in television came in the 1950's but, towards the end of that decade, he found his feet in British films, such as the drama Bhowani Junction in 1956 and the Norman Wisdom comedy Up in the World the same year. Along with Peter Sellers, he became a regular in British comedy films, his first career defining moment coming in 1960's Two Way Stretch where he played bristling but hapless prison officer Clout. He got to spar again with Sellers in 1963's The Wrong Arm of the Law.

Hollywood beckoned in the 1960's although, again, he would specialise in eccentrics who were mostly supposed to be English, winning a Golden Globe nomination for The Spy with the Cold Nose in 1966.

Jeffries tried his hand as a director, undoubtedly his finest moment coming with his first effort, The Railway Children in 1970, which won BAFTA nominations for both Bernard Cribbins and Sally Thomsett.

Films and television for children became a staple of his career in the latter half of his career. He directed the partly animated The Water Babies in 1978, but he also became the voice of Daily Mail strip-cartoon hound Fred Bassett in 1976 and appeared in successful children's TV series Woof! in 1993.

He married Eileen Walsh in 1951, who survives him along with a son and two daughters.

Lionel Jeffries, English actor: born, London 10th June 1926; died Poole, Dorset, England, 19th February 2010.

Various YouTube clips available here.

Cyril's Biogs: KATHRYN GRAYSON 1922-2010

2010-02-18T20:47:00.004Z

Although one of the biggest screen sirens of the heady days of the MGM musical in the 1940's, Kathryn Grayson was and largely remained the classically trained singer whose talents were spotted by the studio in the very late 1930's. Little wonder, then, that she became the perfect counterpoint to the big male voices of the age in the form of Howard Keel, Mario Lanza and the slightly softer tones of Frank Sinatra.

Born Zelma Kathryn Elizabeth Hedrick in North Carolina, she began her training at 12 but, by 18, had become contracted to MGM and her first film appearance came in Andy Hardy's Private Secretary opposite Mickey Rooney in 1941. From then on, she appeared in 18 musicals for the studio up to 1956, but undoubtedly the most famous of them became Anchors Aweigh in 1945 with Sinatra and Gene Kelly, Show Boat (1951) with Howard Keel and again with him in Kiss Me Kate in 1953.

With the end of the halcyon days of the old studio-system musical in the late 1950's, Grayson returned to musical stage, and, when she replaced the younger Julie Andrews in a Broadway stage production of Camelot in 1962, it was a critical and commercial success. Despite various health problems in the 1960's, she was also a very popular operatic performer, with appearances in La Bohème, Madame Butterfly and La Traviata. Her on-screen appearances were few after the 1950's, her last being three appearances in the late 1980's in Murder, She Wrote with her friend and fellow stage veteran Angela Lansbury.

Grayson was married twice, to B-movie actor John Shelton (1915-1972) between 1941 and 1946, and then to nightclub singer Johnny Johnston (1915-1996), between 1947 and 1951, their daughter Patricia now surviving her. In the 1950's, Grayson was briefly engaged to reclusive entrepreneur Howard Hughes.

Grayson became a successful singing teacher later in life, supervising the Choral Studies program at Idaho State University well into her eighties.

Kathryn Grayson, American singer and actress: born Winston-Salem, N.C., 9th February 1922; died Los Angeles, Ca., 17th February 2010.

Various YouTube clips available here.

Cyril's Biogs: DICK FRANCIS C.B.E. 1920-2010

2010-02-18T20:25:00.003Z

One of Britain's most prolific crime authors of the last fifty years, Dick Francis might, had it not been for his writing, have gone down in history as both protagonist and victim of one of the most mortifying moments in British sporting history. Having been a jockey to both the Queen and the Queen Mother for many years, it was while atop HM the Queen Mother's horse, Devon Loch, that he got within 60 yards of the winning post clearly ahead in the 1956 Grand National at Aintree when his charge suddenly belly-flopped with all four legs splayed flat on the ground, handing victory to Dave Dick on E.S.B.

Speculation abounded as to the cause of the horse suddenly becoming spooked, although Francis himself put it down to the wall of noise from the grandstand as he came into view after the last fence and the crowd sensed a Royal victory in the race.

By then 35, Francis had already broken more bones than took his fancy and retired not long afterwards, to write his autobiography, The Sport of Queens, and to take up a 16 year stint as racing correspondent for the Sunday Express.

However, it was as a novelist that Francis became one of Britain's most successful and popular crime writers, although his writing was never far away from the sport he still loved. His first novel, 1962's Dead Cert, became an instant best seller and was made into a film in 1974 starring a young Judi Dench and her then husband Michael Williams. Odds Against, Flying Finish and Blood Sport won him three Edgar Award nominations between 1965 and 1967 but he won the award for Forfeit in 1968.

Many of Francis' heroes were jockeys, the most famous of them being Kit Fielding from 1985's Break In and its sequel, Bolt, from the following years, when Francis's books were at the height of their popularity, being amongst the most borrowed from British and American fiction libraries.

His most enduring character, however, was investigator Sid Halley, first appearing in Odds Against and then winning Francis a second Edgar Award in 1995 for Come to Grief. Halley's last outing was in 2006's Under Orders, which was the last novel Francis wrote alone.

Having rebuffed accusations that his novels were ghost written by his wife Mary (née Brenchley), Francis did, however, write his final works in collaboration with his son Felix, the last of which, Crossfire, is due to be published this autumn.

Although packed with murderous intrigue and the adrenalin of racing, Francis' novels were famously free of sexual references, although this may have been partly due to the fact that an early and enduring fan of his work was none other than the Queen Mother, to whom he would insist on delivering the first galley proof of all of his novels, and whom he didn't wish to embarrass with such matters of flesh.

Although quintessentially British as a writer and as an aficionado of one of its most popular spectator sports, Francis and his wife spent many years living in either America or the Cayman Islands, owing to the after-effects of the polio which Mary contracted while expecting their first son, Merrick, who became a trainer. Felix became a physics teacher before leaving the job to work with his father on his writing.

Francis was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) in 1984 and elevated to Commander of the Order in 2000.

Richard Stanley Francis C.B.E. O.B.E., Welsh-born English jockey, journalist and author: born Pembrokeshire, Wales, 31st October 1920; died Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, 14th February 2010.

Clip courtesy of ITN on YouTube

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Up next... / Kommt gleich...

2010-02-08T19:49:00.003Z

Having got all of HB's major work out of the way, here's a few bits and pieces coming up soon, and which have been the hardest to research:-

Was nicht durchkam... / The Ones That Got Away
The films HB turned down or had to pull out of, and the reasons why.

Vor dem Mikro: HB as a voice actor
His dubbing work and "audio books"

Im Fernsehen / On TV
He never touched the small screen until he was well into his 30's but it became a major part of his career later on. Here are some of the highlights.

Nebenrollen / Minor Roles
The films in which HB didn't play such a big role, but still cast him opposite some true legends.

Der Fossilrekord
The films and TV work which haven't survived into the home video age... yet.

Im Theater
A look at HB's stage work.

In der Presse
HB wasn't exactly a publicity seeking missile and his press footprint is relatively small. This only adds to his enigmatic reputation but, when he did make it into the papers, he did it in style. From jousting for space on the front page of the Daily Mirror with a "Ban the Bomb" march in the 50's to a handful of "cornflake splutterers" later on, „Hotte” was a man who spoke his mind...

HORST BUCHHOLZ... MEIN PAPA

2010-02-08T19:31:00.008Z

And here's the film which started the Horst Buchholz articles on this blog...

Photos: Say Cheese Productions GmbH from the press pack provided with the film.

Actor and director Christopher Buchholz takes a voyage around his father, German matinee idol Horst Buchholz in a moving account of life with an international superstar struggling to be taken seriously and to maintain the momentum of early success. With Myriam Bru, Simran Kaur Khalsa. Dir. Christopher Buchholz and Sandra Hacker, Germany, 2005. Colour 90 mins.

(See the trailer for this film here).

By the time Christopher Buchholz first sat down with his father in 2001 and began interviewing him on a video camera in an attempt to start talking about his life in a way which might later have formed his memoirs, Horst Buchholz had achieved a great deal. With more than 100 credits from stage and screen, in a career which already spanned seven decades, the then 67-year-old Buchholz Senior had almost never been out of work since first treading the boards in Berlin as a 13-year-old in 1947. Oscars, even a nomination for an Oscar, had eluded him but the German film industry had given him its top prize twice and had continued to remember him at various intervals throughout his career.

However, you have to work back from this film to realise this because Mein Papa is about the man behind the myth of Germany's most consistently successful international film star of the last 60 years. Christopher Buchholz approaches the story of "A Man Called Horst" through the other end of the zoom lens and reveals a man very much shaped by his past.

From his impoverished upbringing in 1930's Berlin and his evacuation during the war, HB struggles through reminiscences of his first faltering steps on the stage of the shattered former German capital, his meteoric rise to nationwide fame in the 1950's, his assault on the north face of Hollywood in the 1960's and the steady plateau onto which he settled in the 1970's, 1980's and 1990's, before advancing ill heath began to eclipse him.

HB appears almost as a ghost in between other conversations Christopher conducts with the rest of the family: Myriam Bru, the French-born actress whom he persuaded at the third attempt to marry him in 1958, daughter Béatrice, who now lives in LA as a practicing Sikh, and HB's half-sister, Heidi. All of them dig as deep as possible emotionally and the result doesn't pull its punches about a man who, as loveable as he was, was no angel.

There's also a hint of a rather tortured soul which would've been unrecognisable to his fans, especially in the 1950's and 1960's. What on earth had he to be depressed about? But, there it is, from his apparent drought of acting ambition in the 1970's to his later escape back to his native Berlin to live an "Inspector Clouseau" existence with a friend who acted as his secretary.

This is no ordinary film star biography and there are no interviews with anyone with whom he worked, apart from an extra on the DVD version with Wim Wenders, who regarded HB as one of his heroes and directed him in his own 1993 film Faraway, So Close.

The only reminder of past glory are little clips from early films such as Marianne, Die Halbstarken, Felix Krull, Monpti, Wet Asphalt and the much later Life is Beautiful. DVD extras include a couple of further short interviews where HB talks about his work on the stage and his war experiences.

Horst Buchholz... mein Papa, is available on its own in DVD with English subtitles on the main feature, but also as part of a two disc pack accompanying Die Halbstarken, although it still includes all the extras. Outlets include AMAZON.DE

A perfect companion to the film is Horst Buchholz - sein Leben in Bildern, a beautiful black-and-white photoessay about HB's life on and off the screen, similarly available from AMAZON.DE and other outlets.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Marco the Magnificent / Im Reich des Kublai Khan

2010-02-08T19:12:00.006Z

The first journey of Venetian explorer Marco Polo to the east. Horst Buchholz stars as the intrepid explorer with Omar Sharif, Orson Welles, Anthony Quinn, Elsa Martinelli, Akim Tamiroff and Massimo Girotti. Dir. Denys de la Patellière and Raoul Lévy, France/Yugoslavia/Italy, 1965. Colour, 112 mins.

This extravaganza was so heavy it took two attempts to launch and was so expensive to make that the independent Yugoslavian outfit Avala Film didn't recoup all its costs until its unexpected success with Kelly's Heroes in 1970.

Initially slated to go into production in 1962, it was to star Alain Delon in the title role but the finance for the ambitious location schedule was pulled at the last minute and the project sank back onto the drawing board. Two years later, HB became Marco and the director's baton passed onto the duo of Patellière and Lévy.

Marco was filmed mostly in Yugoslavia itself but there were location shoots in Egypt and - wait for it - Afghanistan, hence the massive expense.

The storyline is fairly close to the real story of Marco's adventure, which began from Venice in 1271 and passed across land from Egypt through the Middle East and over the Himalayas to get to the empire of Kublai Khan. However, the real Marco was born while his father was away out east the first time, so didn't meet him until his return, when Marco was 17 years old. It's also debatable as to whether the real Marco had dozens of girlfriends all over Venice to whom he was obliged to say goodbye before he left with his father and uncle on his own first journey out there. Finally, the real Polo caravan missed Samarkand altogether.

The film is fast moving and full of action sequences and picture postcard scenery where Marco gets repeatedly separated from his father and uncle, running the gauntlet of a good clutch of big stars in roles for which, rather unfortunately in some cases, they aren't particularly remembered. First of all, there's a brief appearance by Orson Welles as Marco's Jewish tutor Ackerman. Then, Omar Sharif crops up as Ala Hou, the desert sheikh who rescues Marco from captivity at the hands of Akim Tamiroff as the golden masked Old Man of the Mountain.

Once in Samarkand, Marco is tossed into the sack by the Lady with the Whip, played by Elsa Martinelli, before he escapes again and ends up being ferried to the court of Kublai Khan, portrayed by a shaven-headed rat-tail moustachioed Anthony Quinn.

It's a shameless piece of escapism which only stuffs into the final narration the fact that Marco ended his first journey to China as a diplomatic hostage for the next 17 years and, on his return to Venice as an embittered thirty-something, was thrown into jail as a tale-telling charlatan.

It's clear from start to finish that the inherent technical difficulties of the movie were something that even Hollywood would have struggled to pull off well, let alone a crew which spoke three different languages. The editing is all over the place and, although shot in English, the mixture of accents meant that even HB had to dub himself again with a more Americanised twang which the dubbing editors then struggled to match back up to the video track. The budget also didn't extend much beyond the costumes, as witnessed by the massive kink in his dubiously soft metal blade which Marco suffers during a swordfight in the desert.

Marco did well in the various dubbed versions shown in Europe and was another foreign-made hit in West Germany for HB. However, as often happened to HB's films in the 1960's, it was a critical turkey in the US, where its box office only benefited by the fact that it was released there in January 1966 in direct tandem with the more popular That Man in Istanbul.

One sad footnote to this film was the fate of co-director Raoul Lévy. The Belgian-born producer only went in the chair himself for this film and two others: a critically well received but financially disastrous crime movie, Hail Mafia!, with Eddie Constantine and Jack Klugman; and The Defector, another financial bomb which proved to be the last film of Montgomery Clift, released after his death from a heart attack in 1966. The pressure evidently got to 44-year-old Lévy in the end, as he put a gun to his own head and shot himself in his home in the south of France on New Year's Eve 1966.

The only other major sleeve-note to this film is another remarkable coincidence. The real Marco Polo died in 1324, not only a few months after his 69th birthday, but only one month older than HB at his own death in 2003.

HB was credited here again as HORST BUCHOLZ.

How to get hold of Marco Polo? If you search for La fabuleuse aventure de Marco Polo, you may find the French dubbed version on a SECAM VHS, which will play back in Black and White on anything but a French VCR. Kublai Khan may dredge up a repackaged version of the original English audio, which will be PAL format and will play back in Colour. Your best bet in both cases is eBay.

By the way... the guy in the helmet on the right in the second photo down on the left isn't Lenny Henry...

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Herrscher ohne Krone / King in Shadow

2010-02-07T21:56:00.001Z

King Christian VII of Denmark comes to the throne a very disturbed young man. Initially, his new physician seems to be a tower of strength in backing him up in order to gain control of his corrupt court but, secretly, the treacherous Dr. von Struensee is on the make with the estranged Queen. O.W. Fischer stars as the perfidious doctor with Horst Buchholz as the King and Odile Versois as the Queen. Dir. Harald Braun, West Germany, 1956. Colour, 105 mins.

This was HB's very next film after Die Halbstarken and the contrast couldn't have been greater. From Teddy Boy gang leader to 18th Century royal was a transformation which took some extremely expensive costumes all round, and a huge hair extension. When Christopher Buchholz later commented to his mother on HB's intermittently androgynous qualities as a young actor, this is what he was talking about.

Herrscher doesn't take too many cinematic liberties with the basic story. Christian VII was indeed barely 17 when he succeeded his alcoholic father to the Danish throne in 1766 and he also suffered from schizophrenia. He also had a Prussian doctor called von Struensee who wielded far too much power in the Danish court for everyone's liking and then decided to louse up his pitch altogether by having a fling with the Queen, which is now widely accepted to have given rise to the birth of Princess Louise. Christian divorced Caroline after her affair with Struensee came to light and Struensee went to the scaffold in 1772 for lèse majesté, which is where the film ends. Not portrayed is the fact that Christian and Caroline had a son together in 1768 who would eventually reign as Frederick VI, and evidence of the affair is revealed by a matching birthmark on the necks of both the infant Princess and her natural father.

O.W. Fischer (1915-2004) was the big Germanic movie heart-throb when this film went into production but, at 41, had got fed up with his reputation as the "housewife's favourite". With Die Halbstarken still ringing picture house tills when Herrscher was released in January 1957, it was here that the baton of Germany's most popular actor got passed on, but you could be forgiven for thinking it would take a few more years yet, as HB's Christian is nothing short of a rabbit in the headlights. Particularly spooky is the moment where the condemned Struensee rushes to the King's bed chamber to plead for clemency, only to find Christian dancing with an invisible Queen whom he "introduces" to a man he has just been forced by his scheming stepmother (played by Elizabeth Flickenschildt) to send to the headsman's axe.

Herrscher ohne Krone is available on DVD from AMAZON.DE but there are no subtitles. Particularly striking, though, is the DVD transfer. The quality of the original print - which was shot on Agfa - was good to start with but it is sometimes difficult to believe that this, HB's first film in colour, was shot well over 50 years ago.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Robinson soll nicht sterben / The Legend of Robinson Crusoe

2010-02-07T21:12:00.004Z

English writer Daniel Defoe has two problems. First, he's skint. Second, his son is always on the scrounge. When Master Tom pinches the only remaining copy of his father's most famous work, and sells it to clear a bar bill, only the daughter of the old man's landlady can get them all out of trouble. Romy Schneider stars as good girl Maud, who gets her friends to help her teach Horst Buchholz his lesson good and proper. With Erich Ponto, Mathias Wieman, Magda Schneider, Rudolf Vogel, Elizabeth Flickenschildt. Dir. Joseph von Báky, West Germany, 1956. Colour, 97 mins.

This is the one film HB made after Die Halbstarken which comes closest to reinforcing the "German James Dean" label in that, here, too, he's playing the bad boy. On the other hand, you can hardly imagine dear old JD in a tricorn hat and knee breeches. Even Marlon Brando ended up looking a bit of a wuss when he wore that kind of clobber in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962). But, still...

Robinson is a nice, almost Christmassy kind of tale with a big cast, where the grown-ups are all pompous incompetents and the kids sort everything out at the end. Although primarily a family film, like the Friedrich Forster play on which it was based, there's a bit of cussing here and there - like when the kids tie HB to a tree in Hyde Park - but it's really also a kind of pantomime.

Although the real Daniel Defoe (played by Erich Ponto) was ever a thorn in the side of the Hannoverian Kings of England, here, he's an ex-confident of an unspecified King George, from whose court he has been expelled into poverty, for which Tom lays the blame squarely at his father's feet. The involvement of the King (Wieman) in the story is that it's only he who can intervene to reconcile father and son.

The big story behind this film was that, as the first of two films they made together, HB and Romy Schneider became an item.

If you watch closely, there's a brief appearance at the start from Gert Fröbe as a 18th Century cotton mill owner, complete with powdered wig.

Erich Ponto died three days before the premiere of this film in February 1957, aged 72, after several years battling cancer.

You can get Robinson soll nicht sterben on DVD from AMAZON.DE but there are no English subtitles.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Joshua Logan's Production of "Fanny"

2010-02-07T20:40:00.002Z

With a bit of a drought of Buchholz films on TV at the moment, I thought I'd get the rest of his "biggest" movies out of the way. This one has a special place in the hearts of all HB fans, but has only recently been rescued from obscurity after spending years in the vaults at Warner Brothers...

A French girl yearns to be with her childhood sweetheart but he is torn between her and his desire to go to sea. Only when he finally leaves her does she realise that she is carrying his child and, in her desperation for respectability, she marries an elderly widower. But her true lover's dream of the "isles beneath the winds" becomes a cruel disappointment. He has just got to come back... Leslie Caron and Horst Buchholz tug at your heartstrings, with Maurice Chevalier, Charles Boyer, Lionel Jeffries and Georgette Anys. Dir. Joshua Logan, USA/France, 1960. Colour, 134 mins.

When it was released in June 1961, Fanny did very well at the box office in Britain and America and, unsurprisingly, when the 1962 Oscar nominations came out, it got five: Charles Boyer for Best Actor, Jack Cardiff for Best Colour Cinematography, William Reynolds for Best Editing, Moris Stoloff and Harry Sukman for Best Music, and the film itself was nominated for Best Picture. However, what stopped it from sweeping up anything at all was a combination of West Side Story and Judgement at Nuremberg.

The background to the film goes back a long way, as it was based on a suite of three plays by French playwright Marcel Pagnol (1895-1974) written between 1929 and 1936 about the lives of ordinary folk living around the harbour in Marseilles. The plays, Marius, Fanny and César, were made into films in France in the 1930's. However, Joshua Logan, who was already an accomplished Broadway musical director by the 1950's (Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific), condensed the plays into a single musical which began its run on Broadway in 1954. It was for the musical version that Harold Rome first penned the soaring, powerful score which became one of the trademarks of this film, the only difference being that all the songs were removed, leaving only the orchestrals, although the effect of the score was hardly diminished.

HB was signed up in 1959 as part of the promising set of open-ended contracts he signed with Warners and the Mirisch Brothers, although, initially, Audrey Hepburn was intended to be his co-star. She was quickly supplanted by Leslie Caron, who at 29 was slightly nearer the intended age of the character (i.e. 18).

With Leslie, Charles and Maurice already well established in Hollywood, it was actually HB who got the biggest boost to his career out of this film, arguably better than what arose from The Magnificent Seven, which immediately preceded it. That had a lot to do with the largely female target audience which might not have noticed him as a Mexican gunslinger but who certainly did notice him in this movie.

Even the hard-to-please New York Times critic Bosley Crowther was generally more full of praise than usual:-

Whether fan of the Pagnol films or stage show, whether partial to music or no, you can't help but derive joy from this picture if you have a sense of humor and a heart. For Mr. Logan, with the aid of expert craftsmen and a cast of principals that we do not believe an act of divine cooperation could have greatly improved upon, has given the charming Marseilles folk play a stunning pictorial sweep, a deliciously atmospheric flavor and a flesh-touching intimacy. And, embraced by these graphic, sensuous virtues are the rich human, comic elements that flowed out of Pagnol's little pictures and glimmered upon the Broadway stage... The appropriate atmosphere of Marseilles is literally and colorfully conveyed — in excellent color, by the way. Perhaps there will be some prim objection to the lush emotionalism of it all and to the frankness of the musical nudging, but we loved it.

Although it was filmed in the late summer of 1960, on location in Marseilles and at the Studios de Boulogne in Paris, the delay to the release made it a red hot summer smash the following year and made HB the most written about and talked about young actor to hit Hollywood from outside since David Niven, over twenty years before. Just one example of the kind of press coverage he was garnering over the course of the next two months was a LIFE magazine feature on 15th September 1961 in which he headed a clutch of five European men who were beginning to set pulses racing in the movies all over the world: Peter O'Toole, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon and Albert Finney being the others.

However, the best laid plans going oft awry, that article emerged while HB was holed up in a Munich hospital recovering from a major car crash, by which time Fanny itself had hit a couple of stones in the road. Even before its release, 48-year-old producer Ben Kadish had been warned by some of his younger staff of the inadvisability of calling the movie Joshua Logan's Fanny, owing to the more unfortunate slang-related connotations of the term, hence the longer marketing title. The only problem was that, by that time, all the lobby stills had been printed.

More trouble was to follow as the film snaked its way westwards across America after its US premiere at Radio City Hall in New York. Once it hit the Mid-West, some of the more conservative independent picture house owners decided to pull the film from their Saturday schedules because the main theme of the film was, basically, single motherhood, and because Saturday audiences were likely to contain a bigger proportion of children than any other time of the week. The problem there was that Saturdays were the busiest day of the week.

The compound consequence of this was that, although Warners sold the film to the TV networks in the US, they also buried it in their archives for nearly 30 years before it even emerged on VHS. It took another twenty years for a DVD version to emerge and, although digitally remastered, it has only been released on Region 1, in which format it is available from AMAZON.CO.UK or AMAZON.COM

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Nasser Asphalt / Wet Asphalt

2010-02-07T19:19:00.003Z

A young reporter hung out to dry for a botched undercover assignment finds redemption thanks to the apparent kindness of a respected older freelancer, only to find that his new boss is even more corrupt than the guys who landed him in jail. Horst Buchholz stars as a hack who lets the truth get in the way of a good story, with Martin Held, Maria Perschy, Gert Fröbe. Dir. Frank Wisbar, West Germany, 1958. Black & White, 90 mins.

HB's third and final film written by Will Tremper (Die Halbstarken, Endstation Liebe), Asphalt was a slightly grittier piece than many of his previous films, and starts with his character, Greg Bachmann, emerging from the nick. His reason for being in the can in the first place is itself a bit complex: he was sent on an undercover investigative job to interview the inmates of Spandau prison (Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer et al.) about their roles in the Nazi regime but, for some reason, chose to do it posing as a French soldier. When he was caught, he was court-martialled. Once he gets out on parole, waiting for him outside is Jupp (Gert Fröbe) who is a driver for the older journalist, Cesar Boyd (Martin Held), who takes him in and employs him as an extra pair of eyes and ears.

The story then takes a turn when Boyd fears he's going to miss a deadline for Paris' weekend papers, and, in the absence of anything really juicy to give them, concocts a story out of an old anecdote he hears Jupp recounting in the kitchen to his wife about German soldiers left buried in a bunker in the Polish countryside for six years after the end of the war. The tension mounts as this cock-and-bull story begins to run under its own steam, leading the world and his brother to descend on the supposed hideout only to find it crawling with Russian soldiers. However, this doesn't stop more unscrupulous maggots from getting in on the act, even serving up one chap posing as a soldier blinded by six years in pitch darkness whose putative existence Boyd concocted to decorate his story.

There's a slightly moralistic tone to the ending, where old man Boyd is exposed for the lying hound he is in secret, and Greg comes up smelling of roses with his old bosses, but it isn't so much the plot of this film which makes it interesting from HB's point of view. Rather is it what it represents in terms of how it was put together.

HB has another pretty co-star in Maria Perschy (1938-2004), whom English-speakers may remember from later on, in 1964 RAF drama 633 Squadron, opposite George Chakiris and Cliff Robertson, but HB is above the title in this film for the sixth time in his career, and above two much older actors, one of whom was to become an international legend.

Martin Held (1908-1992) had starred with HB on the stage earlier in the 1950's and Sein Leben in Bildern was to identify him as one of HB's role models. Gert Fröbe (1912-1988), of course, was to go onto much greater things himself, winding up as the most famous of all Bond villains, Goldfinger, in 1964.

With this in mind, this is a signal of how big HB had become in West German films by 1958, but that brought with it the implication that he'd run out of space to develop on home soil. Although not as schmaltzy as Endstation, Asphalt was another sign that, unless he ventured abroad, his meteoric rise would stall. This would in fact be the last purely German film HB would make in Germany itself until ...aber Jonny! in 1973.

Having said this, Asphalt is one of the Buchholz films which has been released on DVD since his death, and is available from AMAZON.DE with German audio and German subtitles for the hard of hearing. An English dubbed version is available from AMAZON.COM but is likely only to be Region 1.

In 2009, fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld did a photo shoot entitled Die Halbstarken, with two models, Baptiste Giabiconi and Contance Jablonski, sort-of dressed up as a fifties HB and Karin Baal, although Baptiste's take on HB was really a more smartly dressed version and therefore more a nod in the direction of this film.

Cyril's Biogs: SIR JOHNNY DANKWORTH C.B.E. 1927-2010

2010-02-07T14:15:00.001Z

Modern jazz in Britain owes much of its worldwide reputation to Johnny Dankworth, who not only became an accomplished clarinet and sax player but also one of the first people to give the genre academic respectability.

John Phillip William Dankworth was born in the London suburb of Woodford, Essex in 1927 to a family of musicians, and he began piano and violin lessons as a small child before alighting on the clarinet at 16. After National Service in the army, he attended the Royal Academy of Music but his love of jazz was somewhat derided by his teachers.

It was at the Paris Jazz Festival in 1949, where he played alongside American jazz legend Charlie Parker, that he first rose to attention and, in the 1950's he formed his first group, the Dankworth Seven. Singer (now Dame) Cleo Laine became the group's resident singer, and she and Dankworth married in 1958.

Dankworth's prowess as a composer was also noticed and he was to provide mood music for films such as The Servant in 1961 and Modesty Blaise in 1966. His best known piece of work for television is undoubtedly the first signature tune for the BBC's Tomorrow's World programme which was used from 1965 to 1979 (clip on YouTube).

During the 1970's up to the 1990's Dankworth's band, with Laine at the microphone, toured extensively all over the world but the couple also turned part of their Buckinghamshire estate over to a specialised jazz theatre, where they would stage concerts, some of which were broadcast on BBC radio.

Dankworth was knighted in 2006 for his services to music. He is survived by his wife and two children, Alec and Jacqui Dankworth, who are both themselves noted jazz musicians.

Various Johnny Dankworth clips on YouTube.

Sir John Dankworth C.B.E., English musician and composer: born, Woodford, England, 20th September 1927; died Wavendon, England, 6th February 2010.

Cyril's Biogs: IAN CARMICHAEL O.B.E. 1920-2010

2010-02-07T14:01:00.001Z

With his toothy grin and a monocle clasped in his right eye, British actor Ian Carmichael became everyone's favourite toff with his portrayal of bumbling but loveable upper-class in various British comedy films and TV series of the 1950's through to the 1970's, although he continued in character roles right up to the "Noughties".

Despite his clipped vowels, he was a committed Yorkshireman, having been born in Hull in 1920, the son of an optician, and it was in the Esk Valley in the North Riding of the county where he saw out his days.

Carmichael began his acting career after attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, although his early work was interrupted by war service, as an officer in the 22nd Dragoons. It was while serving that he lost a finger when it was accidentally shut in a tank door.

He began working in British films in 1948 but it wasn't until 1956, with Private's Progress, alongside Richard Attenborough and Terry-Thomas, that he got his first major role. In some ways, he was the younger partner of a posh double-act with the gap-toothed Thomas, with whom he would star in a further three films, most notably I'm All Right Jack in 1959.

Television beckoned in the 1960's, when he became the reincarnation of P.G. Wodehouse's bounder Bertie Wooster for the BBC, and he made five mini-series for the corporation between 1972 and 1975 as Dorothy L. Sayers' gentleman sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey.

He narrated the animated children's series Wind in the Willows for Cosgrove Hall Films and ITV in the 1980's, and his most recent major work was with the dual "retro-soap" Heartbeat and its hospital spin-off The Royal as retired surgeon T.J. Middleditch.

Another symbol of his Yorkshire roots was his love of cricket, and he was an active member of the Lords Taverners charity, work for which he was rewarded in 2003 when he was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Carmichael was married twice, to Sheila "Pym" McLean from 1943 to her death in 1983, and latterly to Kate Fenton. He is survived by Kate and his two children, a son and a daughter, from his first marriage.

Ian Gillett Carmichael O.B.E., English actor: born, Hull, England, 18th June 1920; died Esk Valley, England, 5th February 2010.

Various clips on YouTube.

Cyril's Biogs: JEAN SIMMONS 1929-2010

2010-01-25T17:27:00.000Z

English born actress Jean Simmons was a prime example of a talented young British performer lured to apparently greater things in Hollywood, only to get caught up in the courtroom politics of the American film industry and, in the meantime, get offered little that utilised her talents.

Already a star in Britain by the end of the 1940's, she shot to fame at just 16 in David Lean's Great Expectations, where she played the ward of Miss Havisham. She would play Miss Havisham herself in a 1989 television adaptation for British channel ITV. Further appearances in Black Narcissus in 1947 and Laurence Olivier's Hamlet in 1948, for which she was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, helped to cement her as one of the Rank Organisation's leading young stars.

The call from Hollywood came in the form of reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes, who then owned the ill fated RKO Studios. She married leading British beau Stewart Granger in 1950 - he was 16 years her senior - and, in the 1950's made no less than 20 Hollywood pictures although this involved having to sue Hughes over a no-loan clause in her contract which would have stifled her career in the USA altogether along with the fate of the studio itself.

Angel Face in 1952 was the first of those films, the most famous of which were to be Young Bess in 1953, opposite her first husband, The Robe the same year, Guys and Dolls in 1955, winning an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and then in two 1960 films, Elmer Gantry with Burt Lancaster and the Stanley Kubrick epic Spartacus.

In the 60's, however, a decade in which she might have been expected to mature, she slowed down and only for 1969's The Happy Ending was she nominated for a Golden Globe. After a battle with alcoholism which allowed her to make only four films in the 1970's, she made a comeback in 1983 TV mini series The Thorn Birds as the matriarch of the Cleary family, winning an Emmy.

Television then became the bulk of her workload, most notably for her appearances in both seasons of huge American Civil War saga North and South in 1985 and 1986, a further Emmy nomination for Murder, She Wrote in 1989 and even an appearance as an Admiral in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Simmons was married twice, latterly to director Richard Brooks between 1960 and 1977. She is survived by two daughters, one from each marriage. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2003, but became a naturalised American citizen.

Jean Merilyn Simmons O.B.E., English-born American actress: born, London, 31th January 1929; died, Santa Monica, Ca., 22nd January 2010.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Monpti

2010-01-18T21:47:00.006Z

A clumsy Hungarian artist and a young French girl fall in love beneath Paris skies, but their sweet-as-candy romance falls foul of his grinding poverty, his inability to sell any paintings and her endless fibs about her background. Romy Schneider and Horst Buchholz star as a fifties Romeo and Juliet, without the Montagus and Capulets at their backs, but with Mara Lane, Boy Gobert, and an annoying landlord baying for the back-rent. Dir. Helmut Käutner, West Germany, 1957. Colour, 96mins.

This was the second film that HB made with Helmut Käutner, who'd directed him in his German Film Prize winning performance in 1955's Sky Without Stars, which had given him his first exposure to foreign film makers by dint of its brief screening at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.

By the time he came to make this movie, HB already had his two huge German hits, Die Halbstarken (Teenage Wolfpack) and The Confessions of Felix Krull in the can and was now Germany's most popular film actor. Monpti (a contraction of the French mon petit) was also HB's second film with Romy Schneider (after having made The Legend of Robinson Crusoe with her in 1956), and was thus the will-they-won't-they moment of late 1957 as the two became, not only an item, but the new prince and princess of the German movie industry.

Although Romy technically carries the film above HB's name in the titles, and despite all the cross-over between their off-screen relationship and the on-screen chemistry of the two main characters, it's also a clever showcase of HB as a purely visual, comic actor in the mould of Buster Keaton, as his penniless painter battles to get through a normal day without tripping over himself or the inanimate objects in his shabby bedsit.

Among HB's mugging is his own take on the classic "glass panelled door" routine which Peter Sellers most famously delivered in A Shot in the Dark, but this was a clear six years after this film was made and the gag in fact dates back to the silent era. His attempts to cure a constantly rumbling stomach also land him with a neighbour's directoire knickers and a huge bill at the posh restaurant to which he repairs on being paid for the first time in weeks.

It's also something of a social satire, with regular appearances from an older, toffee-nosed "Monpti" and his sarcastic girlfriend Nadine, who are clearly nearing the end of their relationship. They are a warning sign to the younger couple of what they may become in later life but Nadine also triggers what must be one of the saddest endings to any movie since the last Wa. The movie plays out with a ghostly white wedding and Helmut Käutner's final on-screen narration, which New York Times chief critic simply called "brutal".

Off-screen, HB and Romy kept the German print media guessing until they finally went their separate ways, largely thanks to the fact that Romy's mother didn't like the working-class HB stepping out with her semi-aristocratic daughter. HB's mother was none too taken with her either, as he revealed in a 1998 interview for the book Romy - Ich verleihe mich zum Träumen. In the event, HB would marry French actress Myriam Bru only 15 months after Monpti was released. Romy would go on to date French actor Alain Delon from 1958 to 1963 and then embark upon her own two marriages, to actor Harry Meyen (1966-1971) and her later manager Daniel Biasini (1976-1981). Throughout she would remain friends with HB but events in her own life took over. Her son David, by Meyen, was killed at 14 in a freak accident when trying to scale the perimeter fence at Biasini's parents' home in 1981. Ten months later, Romy herself was found dead in her Paris apartment, aged just 43. More speculation exists about an alleged suicide but the official cause of her death was a heart attack.

However, a tangible signal of the whole HB-Romy thing in 1957 are the two early examples of peripheral merchandising, of the type which became the staple of many films from the sixties onwards, not least the James Bond movies and the later "range of goods" associated with the Star Wars series. Firstly, Romy released a single, Merci, Monpti, which was never featured in the film itself but was an obvious nod to the general media stir. It's a lovely song which just about forgives the fact that Romy, bless her, pretty as a picture as she was, couldn't carry a tune in a Ford Thames van. Check it out here (courtesy YouTube).

The second spin-off was - wait for it - a pair of dolls. Die Redaktion has a photograph of this charming pair, although a scan would really be taking the p*** with the copyright. However, one example of the HB doll was on sale during 2008 on eBay in the Netherlands with a price tag just under 400 Euros. Die Redaktion doesn't know whether it sold or was withdrawn, but if it crops up again, we'll let you know.

Monpti is available on DVD from AMAZON.DE but the subtitles are German only. A version dubbed in French or with French subtitles over the original German is also available from AMAZON.FR

„Monpti” ist in Deutschland um 2015 Uhr am 25. Januar im Arte zu sehen.

Cyril's Biogs: GARFIELD MORGAN 1931-2009

2009-12-31T11:01:00.002Z

Little is known about the life off screen of British actor Garfield Morgan, but he is remembered by millions of British TV fans as Detective Chief Superintendent Frank Haskins in the ITV series The Sweeney. The series only ran for three years, from 1975 to 1978, but its cult following made him just as much of a household name as the two maverick cops, Regan and Carter, that he tried to manage.

Born in Birmingham in 1931, Morgan began work as a dental technician but was quickly drawn to the stage, touring with the city's Arena Theatre company and then the Manchester Library Theatre. He began getting small, walk-on parts on TV in 1962 but his first break seems to have come with an obscure British and East German co-produced film, The Story of Private Pooley, in which he played the title character, in 1963. One-off parts in British comedy and drama such as The Likely Lads and Dr. Finlay's Casebook followed.

With his 19 episodes as another DCI, Lewis, in the BBC's Softly Softly in 1966, and a further sting in Z Cars in 1971 he was spotted for the role of Haskins in The Sweeney, opposite John Thaw (1942-2002) as DI Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman as DS George Carter.

After the show finished he continued to appear regularly in sitcoms, rather than dramas, his most notable appearances coming in the BBC's You Must Be The Husband in 1987-88 opposite Tim Brooke-Taylor, and as a Welsh Labour MP in the political comedy No Job For A Lady with Penelope Keith in 1990-92.

Morgan also had small roles in some films, the last being 28 Days Later in 2007. He was married to Dilys Laye, who died earlier this year, during the 1960's.

Garfield Morgan, English actor: born Birmingham, 19th April 1931; died London, 5th December 2009.

From the archives (Cyril's Biogs): STANLEY UNWIN 1911-2002

2009-12-22T17:48:00.005Z

For well over forty years it was all fallollop and wordy-ho on the tellybold and radio with plenty of advertisey and regular film roles...

Although not as off the planet as it could be, that's probably how British entertainer "Professor" Stanley Unwin might have summarised his unique career. Although never a professional comedian or actor in the sense of going on tour or being under contract, his talent for deliberately mangling the English language for comic purposes made him a popular, if infrequent, guest star in radio, TV and movies almost right up to his death at the age of 90, from the moment his unusual gift was spotted by a BBC executive in the early 1950's when he was working for the Corporation as a sound engineer.

Born in South Africa in 1911, his father died when he was three and, upon his family's return to England, his mother found difficulties in looking after him and he was sent to the National Children's Home in Cheshire, although he was to speak with some fondness of his time there in a later interview. He initially had a spell in the Navy but couldn't find his sea legs and, instead, landed a job in the sound department at the BBC in 1940.

It was while working in Birmingham in 1950 that Unwin was testing sound equipment with announcer Buck Buckley, by talking about an imaginary sport. As it was the sound that was being tested, rather than what was actually said, Unwin slipped into a vernacular which he'd first developed in order to liven up bedtime stories for his three children. When the tape was played back to BBC executives, they couldn't believe their ears and, when a producer introduced him to legendary radio star Ted Ray, he was hired as a guest star.

From then on, he was in various radio shows on the BBC throughout the 1950's, and even had whole turns displaying his talent in what were effectively mock press conferences. This, for example, is what he had to say about Elvis Presley in 1956:-

With your Elvis Presley and wasp-waist and swivel-hippy show you had, and I must say it showed it first self in pictures with the rhythmic contrapole of the wobbling of the hipper, sideways with the head and tilty, gave him that expression both also with a little doggy-lublike in the eyebold which he conveyed to the smaller femailode of the specie, coupled with his music because he did trittly-how fine on the strims, helped him along the roamer...

He rounded that volley off with...

He's very young, isn't he?

...and there was pandemonium. He went on:-

I heard it first of all on a record in the early mordy: I was doing the shavy-huff with my razor blade, which of course is a safety one, and suddenly, suddenly he did a little syncopole or a drop-it and how, or something he did and caused a jerkit over a pimplode and I've been suffering ever since!

He also "Unwinised" what he called "fairly tales", such as Goldyloppers and the Three Bearloaders. From the 1960's onwards, he would appear in a number of films, such as Carry on Regardless (1961), Press for Time (1966) with Norman Wisdom and, most famously, in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and played the lead character, himself named Father Stanley Unwin, in the Gerry Anderson puppet series Secret Service (1969). Advertising also beckoned, for products ranging from IPA beer ("for the best pickit in a brewflade") to Amstrad word processors ("Just think, no more snarly upwordings!").

In 1968, he narrated the track Happiness Stan, for the Small Faces album Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, and was appearing a handful of times a year on television well into the late 1990's, on the shows of Michael Parkinson to Jim Davidson's Generation Game (he became a friend of Davidson and fellow comedian Freddie Starr after discovering that both could closely imitate his talent).

His appearances enabled him to devote himself to writing and he brought out several of his "fairly tales" in print form as well as other collaborations with writer Roy Dewar.

He only gave one interview entirely in unaltered English, to producer friend and neighbour Paul Foxall in 2001, but the footage was only first broadcast on the BBC in 2008.

He married in 1937 and Frances Unwin predeceased him a few years before his own death. For more than 60 years, they lived in a modest cottage in Long Buckby, Northamptonshire. He is survived by his three children.

Stanley Unwin, South-African born English comedian and writer, born Pretoria, South Africa, 7th June 1911; died, Daventry, Northamptonshire, England, 17th January 2002.

Manifold Stanley Unwin viddy-ho performey and laughit on YouTubers.

From the archives (Cyril's Biogs): GEORGE CARLIN 1937-2008

2009-12-20T18:35:00.006Z

Known by millions in America as the "God Who Cussed", New York-born comedian George Carlin challenged the morality of American broadcasting more than anyone else dared and, while he was constantly under fire for the language in his act and some of his subject matter, there was a deeper meaning running underneath his gruff, anarchic rants that left audiences in stitches and kept them coming back for more for over 40 years.

Born in Manhattan in 1937, the son of Irish-American parents who parted when he was a baby, he was brought up by his strict Roman Catholic mother, with whom he had a tortured relationship. His natural rebellious streak led him, first, to be expelled from school and then discharged from the US Air Force, all by the time he was 19 but it was in radio that he found his first productive calling, first as a DJ on a small station near the Shreveport, Louisiana Air Base, and then at a Texas station where he formed a comedy partnership with Jack Burns.

Both moved to California in 1960 to work further in radio and also tour the state's hippy bars, before Carlin secured a regular slot on The Ed Sullivan Show and also The Tonight Show. However, he came in 1961 under the wing of Lenny Bruce and was even thrown in the back of the police wagon with Bruce the same year when the latter was arrested for the profanity used in his act. Bruce was very much Carlin's role model and, when Bruce died at 41 in 1966, Carlin took his cue to step into the great man's shoes as the enfant terrible of American stand-up comedy. Plugging into the hippy era with his flared jeans, long hair and beard, he became an American mirror of Britain's Billy Connolly.

Carlin's delivery was famously free-flowing and he would launch into long sentences that were basically a word-association game played solitaire, spewing out the favourite buzzwords of the day in a way bound to make them, and those who used them, feel ridiculous. However, his routines, and some in particular, became long-running legends.

One favourite recurring routine was Al Sleet, the hippy-dippy weatherman, a pastiche on a beatnik weather reporter who clearly knew nothing about weather and would groan his useless reports into the microphone. Another, far more famous, eventually left for the end of his act, just grew and grew.

Like Bruce before him, he was arrested in 1972 for public obscenity the first time he delivered The Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television. We won't rehearse them here but Carlin would blurt them out and then start picking apart the reasons why broadcasters found them so difficult to bear in a way which was linguistically sound if unlikely to placate the censors. He was to run foul of the law several times in the mid 1970's because of the routine but, with each new controversy, his fame, and that of his now most famous skit, only increased. What became known as Seven Dirty Words was first included on his 1972 album Class Clown, which established him as America's foremost counter-culture comedian, but with each new airing, it was obvious that members of the public had got in on the act and sent him suggestions for additions to the list. By the time he filled Carnegie Hall in New York in 1982, the routine was half an hour long.

Carlin was avowedly areligious and hugely political although he had little time for any established politicians, mercilessly making fun of people like Dan Quayle and Colin Powell, and George W. Bush was a goldmine of material. On the other side of the political divide, he dismissed Bill Clinton before he even made it to the White House and publicly declared that he'd stopped voting after George McGovern's bid for the Presidency in 1972. By the end of the 1980's, however, he had shifted his focus to all kinds of what struck him as wanton stupidity, from America's shopping mall culture and its addiction to junk food, to "guys called Todd" and other modern boys' names.

He did a number of specials for cable entertainment channel HBO, which became something of a stable for his comedy, although, as late as 2003, there were congressmen queuing up to have the re-broadcast of his Seven Dirty Words skit banned under Federal Law. The law never made it onto the statute book.

A brief spell top of the bill at MGM's Grand Hotel in Las Vegas in 2005 ended when he started insulting the audience for their slavish devotion to making rich men richer, but Carlin and Vegas was never likely to be a stable mix. Having suffered one heart attack at the age of just 38, and another in 2006, his final, fatal, seizure came only days after starting a new tour. He suffered from alcoholism from the early 1980's onwards and his weight ballooned as he hit his 70's, but his delivery was as fast and furious as ever, and his act just as angry.

He had no funeral, or any public memorial service, at his own insistance, although HBO and other networks filled the schedules in tribute. He married Brenda Hosbrook in 1961 and they had a daughter, who survives him, Brenda having died of cancer in 1997. She spent most of their marriage as his manager.

Strangely, he never set foot in the UK, let alone performed there, although he had a big following among British alternative comedians of the late 1970's and early 1980's who could only sample his delights via his albums, which included Toledo Window Box (1974) and A Place For My Stuff (1981). Therefore, he is most famous to British audiences as an actor, most notably as cantankerous mentor Rufus in the two Bill and Ted movies in the late 1980's and early 1990's. He also voiced the character of Fillmore the VW Caravanette in the animated Pixar movie Cars in 2006, and, in the 1990's, he took up the somewhat unlikely role of the American narrator of the adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine.

George Denis Patrick Carlin, American comedian: born, New York, 12th May 1937; died Santa Monica, Ca., 22nd June 2008.

Links to various George Carlin routines on YouTube. Needless to say, they contain strong language.

Cyril's Biogs: JENNIFER JONES 1919-2009

2009-12-20T13:12:00.004Z

Dark-haired American actress Jennifer Jones could have been one of the most famous actresses of her generation and, while she won the Best Actress Oscar for only her fourth film, and was nominated a further four times for that award, she effectively retired at just 38 and only went back in front of a camera four more times until the age of 55.

Born Phylis Lee Isley in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1919, her parents were travelling showpeople and, while she initially walked away from the showbusiness life when she went to university, it was not long before she enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. There, she met fellow student Robert Walker, and they married in 1939. Her first three films, starting with New Frontier in 1939, billed her with her birth name but she was encouraged to adopt her eventual stage name in 1943 for The Song of Bernadette, in which she played visionary 19th Century French nun Sister Bernadette Soubirous. She won the 1944 Oscar over the head of friend Ingrid Bergman although she would present her with the same award, for her role in Gaslight, the following year.

She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 1945 for Since You Went Away, for Love Letters in 1946 and for Duel in the Sun in 1947. Her last nomination came in 1955 for the legendary romance Love is a Many Splendored Thing opposite William Holden, but she took a five-year break after 1957's A Farewell to Arms, returning to carry 1962's Tender is the Night, The Idol in 1966 and Angel, Angel, Down We Go in 1969. Effectively, that was it and her final performance came in the iconic 1974 disaster flick Towering Inferno, where, at 55, she still sported ungreyed black hair and the look of a much younger woman.

Perhaps one explanation for the premature curtailment of her career and the long gaps that preceded it was a battle with depression which seems to have begun in the late 1950's. Her marriage to Robert Walker ended after she began an affair with studio mogul David O. Selznick in 1943, and they divorced two years later. Walker himself was to die of a heart attack at 32 in 1951. In the meantime, in 1949, Jones married Selznick and their marriage lasted until his death in 1965. Her third marriage in 1971 was to industrialist Norton Simon, who died in 1993. Two of her three children predeceased her: Michael, her youngest son with Walker, in 2007 but her daughter by Selznick, Mary, committed suicide in 1976. Jones herself was reported to have attempted suicide in 1967. She later fought and overcame breast cancer. She is survived by her eldest son, Robert Walker Jr.

Jennifer Jones, American actress: born, Tulsa, Ok., USA, 2nd March 1919; died, Malibu, Ca., USA, 17th December 2009.

From the archives (Cyril's Biogs): ANDY KAUFMAN 1949-1984

2009-12-17T20:18:00.009Z

At face value, chubby-cheeked American comic Andy Kaufman was living proof of the notion that the American Dream meant that even losers could win, but, the fact was that virtually everything he did in his tragically short career was a massive hit.

Best remembered as an erstwhile Saturday Night Live host along with John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase in the mid-to-late 1970's, and as squeaky-voiced immigrant cabby Latka Gravas in the sitcom Taxi, with a pre-Hollywood Danny DeVito, Kaufman was a stand-up comedian who nonetheless rejected the label in favour of being termed a "song and dance man".

Born Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman in 1949 to a middle-class New York Jewish family, he began performing professionally from the age of 22, touring clubs on the East Coast of America, although, right from the start, he took a risk in trying to disprove the theory that the biggest laugh comes in the first few seconds of your act.

One of his early routines involved miming to a vinyl recording of the audio from a Mighty Mouse cartoon, with the gramophone playing on a table next to him as he stood ramrod still and stared like a boggle-eyed automaton at the audience, who either sat bemused or tittered quietly at the strange spectacle before them. Another was his first airing of the quirky generic Eastern European that would later become Latka, who would evince groans from an increasingly irritated audience with his "impressions" of people like Jimmy Carter or Archie Bunker - delivered in the same, high-pitched "Foreign Man" voice - before the inevitable heckling appeared to bring the seemingly hapless performer to tears on stage. He would then plead with the audience to let him do one more impression, "Meester Elvis Presley", for which he would turn his back for a few seconds, turn around again with his hair slicked back and then deliver an impersonation of Heartbreak Hotel or some other Elvis hit that was so spot on that even the man himself said it was his favourite. It was all a trick that became a Kaufman trademark and brought the house down.

His appearance in Taxi led to two Golden Globe nominations in 1979 and 1980 and to Latka's own cult status which nonetheless began to irritate Kaufman himself when people came to his shows begging him to fall into the character. His put down to the hecklers involved reading a lengthy passage from F. Scott Fitzgerald novel The Great Gatsby. Once enough seats had emptied, he would then turn to the remaining audience and give them the choice of either hearing him go on reading or put on a record. When the audience almost always shouted "Record!", he would cue up the gramophone, which turned out to be a recording of Kaufman going on reading the book.

Kaufman was a comedian who very much made the audience part of his act, most notably when he ended a sell-out performance at Carnegie Hall in 1979 by inviting the entire gathering out for milk and cookies, an operation which involved at least 20 buses and the virtual hijacking of the Staten Island Ferry. Often identified as one of the most eccentric men on American TV, he was involved in a live skit on ABC variety show Fridays in 1981 which ended in an on-stage brawl between him and the other performers: it was actually a practical joke which went horrendously wrong. An avid fan of professional wrestling, Kaufman also introduced ridiculously staged bouts into his act, and one of his characters, leery lounge singer Tony Clifton, even became an alter-ego which threatened to meld all too convincingly with Kaufman himself.

Although bearing all the hallmarks of America's answer to Spike Milligan, Kaufman isn't thought to have suffered from the kind of depression that plagued many of his contemporaries in the world of comedy, although his career was cut short when, within the space of only four months after diagnosis, he died of lung cancer aged 35 in May 1984, after rejecting conventional medicine in favour of meditation and an all fruit and vegetable diet. The irony is that he never smoked.

He was survived by a daughter whom he never met, fathered during a 1969 relationship with a high-school girlfriend and then given up for adoption, discovering her paternity only in 1992.

Kaufman's life was the subject of Milos Forman biopic Man in the Moon in 1999, in which he was portrayed by Jim Carrey.

The suddenness of his death and the fact that he kept his illness a secret until only days before his death led to speculation that he'd faked it, a rumour which was only reinforced when "Tony Clifton" began appearing clubs in 1985. It transpired that these "resurrections" were staged by some of Kaufman's fans.

Andy Kaufman, American actor and comedian. Born New York, 17th January 1949; died, Los Angeles, 16th May 1984.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: The Magnificent Seven / Die glorreichen Sieben

2009-12-15T21:08:00.008Z

The elders of a Mexican border village hire a desperado gunslinger and his hotch-potch band of accomplices to get rid of a three-dozen strong gang of bandidos who keep plundering their crops and money. Yul Brynner stars as the leader of seven men who fight like seven hundred, with Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, Horst Buchholz, Eli Wallach, Vladimir Sokoloff, Rosenda Monteros. Dir. John Sturges, USA/Mexico, 1960. Colour, 128mins.

This film is part of cinema folklore: easily one of the most famous westerns ever made; with a basic format that has been copied many a time since but has rarely been emulated, in films from Battle Beyond the Stars to Ant Story; and a score which could afterwards be heard anywhere from American TV adverts for Marlboro cigarettes - before they got banned - to the opening seconds of Chris Evans' drive-time show on BBC Radio 2. For HB, it's therefore far and away the most famous film he was ever in.

However, what isn't often remembered is that it started out as a fairly low-key, low-budget B-movie. It was also based on a Japanese film which, admittedly, was itself heavily inspired by the Western genre. Thirdly, it nearly never made it to the screen; and finally, where HB's concerned, not only was it the first film in which he evinced a somewhat mixed reaction from critics and audiences, along with Brad Dexter, he's also one of the two members of the band of seven whose name often fails to make it onto the answer sheet in pub quizzes, frequently getting jumbled up with Rio Bravo's Ricky Nelson. On top of that, it was only a mediocre success on its initial run and in fact took a second run in the USA on General Release and a fair number of re-runs on TV to make it really popular.

In 1956, Yul Brynner bought rights from Japanese director Akira Kurosawa to remake his 1954 movie Seven Samurai in a purely New World setting. His partner for making the film at the time was Anthony Quinn, whom Brynner initially envisaged as the director of the film, with Brynner himself in the lead role. However, the two quickly fell out over who to hire to write the screenplay and they both ended up in the courts when Quinn tried to sue for half of the package. $100,000 later, he lost, and left the project altogether.

Walter Bernstein was the first writer to get hired but he found the original Japanese script impossible to convert to its new setting without major changes to the storyline, and Walter Newman was hired in his place, only to fall out with the Mirisch Brothers and get replaced, in turn, by William Roberts, who ended up as the only one of the three to be credited in the film.

By the end of 1959, Brynner had struggled to find another director and the Mirisch Brothers assigned him John Sturges, who had directed various westerns such as Gunfight at the OK Coral (1957) and Last Train from Gun Hill (1959). However, casting the rest of the film was going to prove difficult because, that autumn, the Screen Actors' Guild was busily rattling sabres with the Studios in the first shots fired in the war of attrition which would eventually lead to the demise of the "studio system", where studio bosses basically owned their performers and could tell them what films to make, what cigarettes to advertise and who to marry. This would result in the first major Hollywood actors' strike being called for 1st March 1960. Anybody hired to star with Brynner, would have to be not only available but either non-union members or would have to sign up for the film before the strike deadline.

So, when Mirisch company resident director Billy Wilder approached Sturges and persuaded him to make use of a 26-year-old German actor whose English was OK, but just needed to practice an American accent, Sturges slotted him in as an amalgam of two characters from the original Japanese film, the farmer played by Toshiro Mifune, and a young hothead who only gets recruited by the other Samurai as a final resort. That is basically how HB ended up in this film as "Chico": no messing about, no strings pulled, and he was the second actor to be cast.

However, filling the other roles proved to be a case of trawling theatreland and then trying to lure people away from the TV networks. The stage provided him with a villain in the form of 45-year-old Eli Wallach, but four of the other five good guys, Coburn, Bronson, Vaughn and McQueen while they had worked on the big screen, were mostly television actors.

McQueen in particular had worked for sturges on the 1959 war film Never So Few with Frank Sinatra, as had Bronson, but McQueen had then gone onto star in a TV series, Wanted, Dead or Alive, which was about to enter its second season when the offer of this film came through. Seeing a clash between the two, he staged a deliberate car accident to get out of the TV series and then sneak down to Mexico to film with Sturges. However, on reading the script, with Sturges promising him a key part in the film, he immediately concluded that he would be cast as the young buck who gets the girl in the end. When he actually turned up on location in Cuernavaca, in Mexico's Morelos State, he found that "Chico" had already been cast, and even though McQueen ended up third in the cast, it was to be HB that became the target of some of the enraged McQueen's nitpicking.

In fact, he became increasingly jealous of HB as filming wore on, especially as Sturges was rather generous with the amount of air time he gave to "Chico". Nowhere was this more evident than in the now famous "bullfighter" scene where "Chico" attempts to goad a live cow into charging at him across a stream in the seconds before he finds one of the mysteriously absent townswomen skulking in the forest. McQueen chuntered that HB was going to steal the film until Brynner told him that he was talking out of the top of his hat. "How do you know?" asked McQueen. "Because I read the script" came the abrupt reply.

Brynner, despite his fearsome appearance, was actually well known to be one of the most placid stars in Hollywood history, although, here, his patience was to be sorely tested by McQueen fiddling around with his gun and hat while Brynner was delivering lines. In the end, Brynner told McQueen that if he did it again, that all he would have to do is take his own hat off and not only would he block McQueen out of the shot, but the sunlight bouncing off his twice-daily shaven crown would probably blind him into the bargain.

"Chico" is a key character in the film because he's the only one of the seven who isn't damaged goods before the outset, the only one whose outlook changes for the better between start and end, the only one to consciously abandon his vague dream of becoming a gunslinger in favour of returning to the land, and, of course, the one who falls in love. Or rather, it's a besotted Petra (played by Mexican actress Rosenda Monteros) who falls in love with him, after initially belting him in the kisser when she believes he's about to take advantage of her after capturing her in the forest. By the time he overcomes his bashfulness and moves in for the inevitable last-half-hour kiss as she gazes wistfully into his eyes, McQueen's little green-eyed monster was reputed to be spewing red-hot chilli-flavoured crowbars.

In a September 1961 interview, HB told Hedda Hopper:-

He always went around with a chip on his shoulder. He’d tell me how he came from a poor family and had to fight to get where he was and how he was always ready to punch someone in the nose.

I got his goat by telling him I was wealthy, that my father had castles and lots of servants.

Although HB wasn't prepared to put up with any unsolicited crap of this kind, and didn't need any lectures about hard times, this was hardly calculated to soothe McQueen's mood, or to make for a more favourable rapport between the two. "I couldn't take his guts", said HB in 2000.

In the meantime, McQueen also chuntered about the size of Brynner's gun, even though they were, obviously, only firing blanks. Nonetheless, this didn't spare HB an impromptu trip to hospital when he was trying to spin-and-holster his pistol and the gun accidentally went off. If it had been a live round it would have probably taken his foot off but it still singed his beige denims and delivered a nasty bruise on the thigh which lasted several weeks. However, he wasn't the only one to have gun trouble: Eli Wallach, if you pay attention, somewhat ruins his own image as the main villain, Calvera, whenever he tries to holster his revolver in the movie because, try as he might, he can't do it without peering down at his leg.

Apart from the famously introverted Bronson, who kept himself to himself, and Wallach, who basically got taken off to swig at the tequila by the Mexican co-stars playing his bandidos, the boys spent their evenings boozing and playing cards, although there had to be a measure of restraint as a few of them had wives and girlfriends waiting in the wings. In fact HB was to set something of a precedent for his own career in the 1960's, especially, in hiring a villa for himself and Myriam, who was now retired from her own career in order to become a full-time wife and, subsequently, mother, and this was the first film on which she accompanied him. McQueen's then wife, Neale Adams, who'd also suffered the makeshift car accident with her husband, was also present, as was Brynner's girlfriend, Doris Kleiner. His divorce from first wife Virginia Gilmore came through towards the end of filming, upon which he and Doris married on the back lot.

The whole filming exercise, however, came under very close scrutiny from Mexican censors, who were watching for any signs of a repeat of various American westerns set in Mexico made during the 1950's which portrayed the locals in a less than pristine light. The slightest blemish of dirt on their predominantly white clothing caused a cut and a change of clothes.

In any case, The Magnificent Seven was first released in the USA in October 1960, but it was only when it began its European run throughout 1961 that it began to ring any major bells, either with critics or with the movie house tills. Obviously, the presence of Eines unseren made it a major hit in West Germany, especially as HB dubbed himself and was therefore the only familiar voice in the version of the picture shown there.

On the other hand, some critics, fans of the film and fans of the other actors sometimes get very prickly about HB. He is on screen, relatively speaking, quite a lot - compared to the mere 27 lines that Jimmy Coburn and Bob Vaughn get between them in the whole film - but, then, as above, "Chico" is a key element of the plot, although HB sometimes gets booed offstage for having been in the movie at all. However, one complaint, about a Mexican being played by somebody who was literally as Hispanic as Franz Beckenbauer, serenely overlooks the fact that six of the nine biggest characters were played by actors (Brynner, Wallach, Bronson, HB, Dexter - born Boris Sosovic - and Vladimir Sokoloff, who played the main village elder) who were either Eastern European born or could trace their origins back there within two generations.

But, then, they also hear about McQueen taking a dislike to HB and, in deference to their super-macho all-American hero, immediately jump to the conclusion that it was HB's fault, in spite of plenty of evidence to the exact contrary.

The Magnificent Seven is available from AMAZON.CO.UK and AMAZON.COM on DVD, which also carries a 2000 documentary made by the UK's Channel 4, Guns for Hire: The Making of the Magnificent Seven, which includes what may well be the only surviving interview with HB in English.

Three sequels were made, Return of the Seven (1966), Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) and The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972) but the second and third films were both filmed in Spain and none of them were well received. Yul Brynner was the only cast member to return, in Return, but then his character mysteriously morphed into George Kennedy and then Lee van Cleef. "Chico", as a character, also came back in Return, in the guise of Spanish actor Julian Matéos, but becomes a somewhat passive character after getting shot in the back. There is one coincidence, though, in that, while HB went on to play Miguel Cervantes, in the 1966 film, Matéos followed suit in a 1980 series for Spanish network TVE. He died in 1996 aged 58.

Robert Vaughn starred in Battle Beyond the Stars, which was basically The Magnificent Seven with spacesuits, and also appeared as Judge Oren Travis in six of the 22 episodes of the 1998 TV series based on the film, which starred Michael Biehn as Chris. Along with Eli Wallach and Rosenda Monteros, he is, as of Charles Bronson's death in August 2003, one of only three survivors out of the main cast, and is, of course, still to be seen in the BBC's crime-drama Hustle.

Elmer Bernstein wrote the famous score, and was nominated for an Oscar.

In the USA and Canada, The Magnificent Seven can be seen on TCM at 4pm ET on December 17.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Le Sauveur / The Saviour / Der Retter

2009-12-08T18:45:00.007Z

BK has learned that former French film critic Michel Mardore died on 18th November at the age of 74. In 1971, he made the first of just two films as a director, and this our tribute to him, as well as the next article in the Horst Buchholz series.

A young farm girl finds a parachutist who hurts his foot dropping into wartime France, and nurses him back to fitness in the belief that he's a British officer on a secret mission against the Nazis. She's half right: he's on a secret mission all right but he's flying a different flag altogether. Horst Buchholz stars as the mysterious "Claude" with Muriel Catalá as a naïve young lady who's in for a big, nasty shock, along with the rest of her village. Dir. Michel Mardore, France, 1971. Colour, 105 mins.

The fact that this film is available on DVD (AMAZON.FR) runs somewhat counter to the idea that the reason many other of HB's films from between 1962 and about 1990 are not available on any kind of home video format is because they were box office failures or are obscurities on some other level. This film actually wasn't a huge success on its release in September 1971, even in France. This, then, is probably the nearest answer HB has to Sir Michael Caine's Get Carter, as it has enjoyed quite a following since re-emerging on the new technology in 2004. Therefore, if they can bring this one out... where the bloody hell is all the rest?

It's an unusual film for a number of reasons, first of which is that, although most of the supporting cast either already had or went on to have fairly decent careers in French films or TV either side of this movie, director Michel Mardore was originally a film critic, returning to the day job after this and another film, Mariage à la Mode in 1973, and main co-star, 18-year-old Muriel Catalá, the daughter of a dentist from Nice who was a last minute replacement for Isabelle Adjani, was here in her first film, and would step before a camera only another 13 times before basically retiring in 1979.

Secondly, there's no score... There are some abstract instrumentals but the film is mostly sans musique, but that adds to the chilling atmosphere of what is a haunting psychological tale.

You've probably deduced by now that HB's character turns out to be a Nazi war criminal. As such, his performance also blows various other accusations he gets thrown at him - overacting, scene stealing, yada, yada, yada - into outer space because "Claude", though irresistibly charming, is as cold as ice, a ruthless killer and a shameless manipulator of his adoring friend, Nanette. While Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List is utterly without humour, Claude carries a faint smirk all the way through and, while this doesn't endear him to the audience - in fact, you're meant to hate his guts - it is another example of where HB wasn't too precious about his image to portray this kind of character. This was the first time he'd played a WWII German military figure, decked out with swastikas, something, he confessed years later, made him really uncomfortable.

There's a gripping and vengeful end to the film, where the tale fast-forwards to the present day (i.e. 1971) and an adult Nanette appears to recognise a middle-aged businessman who wants to buy property in the deserted village as an older Claude - who executed everyone living there except her but made her give the order to fire - and she takes her husband's double-barreled shotgun to him in the courtyard of her lonely farm. The twist in the tale, however, may only come when you're queuing for the last bus home... is it really him?

There's a rather eery coincidence involved in this film. In 1973, British TV station ITV screened what is arguably the most thorough examination of the Second World War ever made for television, the documentary series The World at War, narrated by Laurence Olivier. The series both started and ended with a ghostly walk-through of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, in the Limousin region of France. In June 1944, with the D-Day landings only having taken place four days before, a detachment of the Waffen SS razed the village to the ground, and killed all but three of its 600 or so inhabitants. The parallels of the story with the plot of Le Sauveur are unmistakable.

The village was rebuilt nearby but the original Oradour still stands today in ruins as a memorial to the massacre. What is most interesting about this is the fact that The World at War actually began production as early as 1969, and took three years to make at a cost of nearly £1 million (an unprecedented budget in British television at the time). Thames Television, who made the series, even won their contract to supply programmes for the ITV network with the promise of this ground-breaking documentary series as part of their bid in 1968, and the series, though parts of it are now 40 years old in the production, is still shown all over the world. So, the question is: did Mardore take his cue from the production stages of this series?

For anyone who is a real HB fan, Le Sauveur is a must-see, and the DVD even comes with an English dubbed track in which HB dubs himself into English. The original track is, of course, French, and this was the second of the two films which HB delivered entirely in that language.

HB is credited again as HORST BUCHOLZ.

The slightly unexplained mystery of this film, however, is its title. Who is Le Sauveur, the "Saviour"? It can't be Nanette, because that should be La Sauveuse. Answers on a postcard welcome...

Cyril's Biogs: RICHARD TODD 1919-2009

2009-12-04T19:21:00.004Z

Anglo-Irish actor Richard Todd not only looked the "real deal" when he played dashing heroes in many a British film of the 1950's, he was the "real deal", having staked his life as a Captain in the British 6th Airborne Division when he flew a perilous mission to land on the now famous Pegasus bridge near the Normandy town of Caen on D-Day in 1944. Waiting for him on that day was Major John Howard, with whom he held off several German offensives. 18 years later, Todd would play Howard in a reenactment of that landing as part of the 1962 war epic, The Longest Day.

Undoubtedly his most famous film was The Dam Busters (1955), in which he played Wing Co. Guy Gibson who was in charge of the business end of Barnes Wallis' bouncing bomb, but he was also Ian Fleming's initial suggestion to play James Bond and he became one of Hollywood's reincarnations of Robin Hood.

Richard Andrew Palethorpe-Todd was born in Dublin in 1919, the son of an Irish doctor who later served as an officer in the British Army in India. On the family's return to England, Todd was sent to Shrewsbury School from where he initially went to Sandhurst College, before being lured by the stage through the prestigious Italia Conti School in London. He toured on the stage in the late 1930's and even had a couple of uncredited film roles before the war broke out and he took a commission with the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and subsequently the Parachute Regiment.

His acting career took off after the war and, for only his third major film, 1949's The Hasty Heart, he was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar and won a Golden Globe as Best Male Newcomer. His co-star in that film, who became a lifelong friend, was none other than Ronald Reagan.

He wasn't restricted to military roles, although he seemed to carry the air of a uniformed man with conviction, and he starred in Hollywood thigh-slappers like The Story of Robin Hood and His Merry Men in the title role, as Rob Roy, The Highland Rogue (1953) and Sir Walter Raleigh in The Virgin Queen (1955). His military excursions included D-Day, the Sixth of June (1956), Yangtse Incident (1957), Danger Within (1959) and Operation Crossbow (1965) and, although he mostly played officers, he turned into a bad tempered Sergeant in 1961's The Long and the Short and the Tall.

His film career waned somewhat as the 1960's moved on and the 1970's ensued, although he would turn to odd TV projects, most notably in Doctor Who for the BBC in 1982, and he became a popular reader of Radio 4's Morning Story in the 1970's.

However, as he became less active as an actor, he began to take a more active interest in military history and became one of the few celebrities who could genuinely claim to be a beacon for those who had played an active part in the war. He was a regular participant in the BBC's annual Remembrance Day programming.

He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (O.B.E.) in 1993 for his services both to acting and to ex-service charities.

He was married twice, firstly to actress Catharine Grant-Bogle from 1949 to 1970 with whom he had two children, and to former fashion model Virginia Mailer from 1970 to 1992, with whom he had a further two children. However, tragedy ensued in 1997 when his son Seamus (by Mailer) committed suicide after apparently suffering a bad reaction to a skincare treatment and his son Peter (by Grant-Bogle) shot himself eight years later after the failure of his marriage.

Todd's own death came after a long battle with cancer. He published his autobiography, Caught in the Act, in 1986.

Richard Todd O.B.E., Irish-born English actor; born, Dublin, Ireland, 11th June 1919; died, Grantham, Lincolnshire, England, 3rd December 2009.

SIR PAUL McCARTNEY: Zurück in der BRD

2009-12-04T18:38:00.002Z

It's often forgotten that The Beatles, like many British bands of the 1960's, spent some time developing their act, not in the UK, but in what was then West Germany and, in particular, the "German Liverpool (or Manchester)", Hamburg. In fact, John (Lennon), Paul and George (Harrison) only met drummer Richard Starkey (alias Ringo Starr) for the first time in the city's Kaiserkelle. Sir Paul McCartney has started his European tour there and this is the link to the Guardian article about this.

Deutsche Übersetzung:-

Artikel von Esther Addley

PAUL McCARTNEY IN EINEM „GET BACK” NACH HAMBURG, EIN HALBES JAHRHUNDERT SPÄTER

Es ist nur 2110 Uhr, aber es ist heute nacht bitterkalt und, warum auch immer, sind die Türen der Hamburger Color-Line-Arena ein bisschen spät geöffnet, und zwingen dabei, das Publikum draußen eine Warteschlange zu bilden. Das fröstelnde Gedränge, endlich in ihren Sitzplätzen, sind störrisch. Es fängt als ein Murren an, das zu einem betonten Handschlag wird, aber binnen kurzem macht die Sammlung kahle Stellen und zweckmäßige Pullover auf dem Fußboden der Arena ein Geräusch, das unmissverständlich ein Buhruf ist.

Paul McCartney, der 10 Minuten später auftritt, sieht ungläubig und völlig gereizt aus, und das kann man verstehen. "Na, wirklich?" gestikuliert er zum Gedränge.

"Buhen Sie mir aus?" Das Startlokal der ersten Europatour McCartneys seit fünf Jahren, gestern abend, hat er es gesagt, wurde wegen der Liebe des „Trainingsplatzes” seiner ehemaligen Band gewählt, die Stadt wo die Baby-Beatles spielen gelernt haben, Sex und Amphetamine entdeckt haben, sich die Haare schneiden gelassen haben, einen neuen Schlagzeuger bekommen haben, und ihres fünftes Mitglied, den Bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, verloren haben, nämlich zu einer Kunstakademie und, später, einer Hirnblutung.

Sie sind in die Stadt Augustus 1960 angekommen, als eine Gruppe unerfahrener 18-jahriger (George Harrison war 17), die kaum in irgendeiner Proffi-Show gespielt haben. Achtundzwanzig Monaten und 281 taffe Gigs später, haben sie ihren letzten Hamburg-Auftritt am Altjahrabend 1962 gemacht. Bloß zwei Wochen danach, wurde die 45er „Please Please Me” in Großbritannien freigegeben, und die Welt wurde ganz verändert.

Ein halbes Jahrhundert später ist der McCartney zurück, mal wiede mit einem kragenlosen Hemd und mittelhackigen Chelseastiefeln, und mit einer Hofman-Bassgitarre zu seinem linksseitigen Hand geschlungen - und der erste Gedanke der Deutschen ist zur Püntlichkeit. Seine Band brechen in „Magical Mystery Tour” aus; es ist ein ziemlich effektiver Gegenschlag.

Die Nichtachtung des Publikums ist all verblüffender, weil die Stadt verspätet anfängt, auf ihrer Verbindung zu den Beatles stolz zu sein, nach Jahrzehnten wo nur die eingeweihte durch dem Rotlichtviertel sich zurechtfinden konnten, nach dem Indra, die Stelle ihrer ersten Vertragseinstellung in der Stadt, oder dem Kaiserkeller, wo John, Paul und George erstmals Ringo kennen gelernt haben, oder dem Top Ten Club, wo die Beatles die längste Residenz ihrer Karriere gespielt haben, 98 Abende in Folge, jeweilig über 12 Stunden, von März bis Juli 1961. Wie John Lennon einmals angemerkt hat, wenn die Beatles in Liverpool geboren sind, sind sie in Hamburg aufgewächsen.

Das Zögern der reichsten Stadt in Deutchland, gegen das Vertreiben der Verbindung, ist zweifellos aus der Verlegenheit ausgekommen. Das Hamburg, das die Beatles kannten, war eine schäbige Welt mit Dirnen, Matrosen, Gangstern und Faustkämpfen - und sehr wenig ist geändert.

Taxifahrer trumpfen es auf, daß die Bargeldswirtschaft auf der Reeperbahn, der primäre Rotlichtsteg, rundum dem die Beatles spielten, ist so wirksam, daß die mit dem meistverwendeten Geldautomat Europas prahlt; es gibt hier eine Straße in den der Eintritt physisch verboten ist, zu Frauen, die nicht Sex verkaufen, aus Furcht, daß die Kunden abziehen. Das Stratford des William Shakespeare, darüber redet man nicht!

Ein halbes Jahrhundert der Nachlässigkeit hat aber einen große Vorteil gemacht: die Mehrheit der mit der Band verbundenen Stellen stehen immer noch, und meistens ungeändert - eine Mehrzahl der alten Clubs sind allerdings immer noch Lokale für Livemusik. Sogar der Friseurlade, wo sie angeblich eine Kopie des affigen neuen Moptops des Sutcliffe gebeten haben, ist immer noch in Geschäft.

Mit der Öffnung, früher in diesem Jahr, eines bestimmten Museum, „Beatlemania”, und der Erschaffung eines ziemlich hässlichen wenn fotofreundlichen „Beatlesplatzes”, hat die Stadt endlich irgendwo ihren Turisten zu schicken.

Der „Macca”, kann man wohl sagen, ist auch nicht schlecht in Form, und prallt herum auf der Bühne mit einer Tatkraft, die merkwürdig ist, für einen Mann, der gegen seinen achte Jahrzehnt sprengt.

Obwohl es ist ein ungeniert nostalgischer Set, auf einer Bühne mit einem Hintergrund mit alten Zeitungsschnitten und Fotos, ist er kein Mann, der nur so tut.

Mit der Unterstützung der Band, mit der er unter einem Jahrzeht auf Tournee gegangen ist, spielt er nicht weniger als sechs Instrumenten unter dem Set, aber es ist seine 67-jahrige Stimme, die eindrücklichest ist.

Wenige Musiker seiner Generation können immer noch „Woo!” wie ein Teenager machen; Der McCartney macht es einfach aussiehen.

Die anfängliche Frostigkeit schmelzt wie der Gig weitegeht, und es sieht aus, wie der ehemalige Beatle hat sich ein bisschen Empfindung über seinem Zurückker nach der Stadt geleistet; er brecht mit halberinnerten Ausschnitten Hamburger Slang aus ("Wir haben ein bisschen hummel hummel moss moss heute abend?") und scherzt mit einem Zwischenrufer, der fragt, wenn er seine alte Umgebung wieder besuchen soll.

"Die Reeperbahn? Nein, nicht heute abend."

Zweiundhalb Stunden nach dem er angefangen hat, geht der McCartney immer noch wieder gut in Form, und das Publikum heulen endlich um mehr zu hören.

„Live and Let Die”, „Hey Jude”, „Day Tripper”, „Lady Madonna”, „Get Back”, „Yesterday”, „Helter Skelter” - man hat das Gefühl, daß er für immer weitergehen könnte.

Hamburg, das verzweifelt, den McCartney zu überzutragen, im nächstem Jahr zurück zu kommen und das 50. Jubiläum seiner Ankunft zu feiern, kann nur es hoffen, daß er es tun soll.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: ...aber Jonny! / But... Jonny!

2009-12-03T17:37:00.002Z

A trainee teacher flunks his final exams but his long-suffering girlfriend has had enough of bailing him out and leaves him. When his best friend suggests he becomes an "odd job man" to the ladies of Hamburg, he puts an advert in the local press but his customers soon misinterpret what "services" he's offering. Horst Buchholz stars as the unwitting gigolo with Herbert Fleischmann as his mate who dreamed up this crackpot idea in the first place. Also starring Hannelore Elsner. Dir. Alfred Weidenmann, West Germany, 1973. Colour, 96 mins.

In releasing his moving documentary film about his father, Christopher Buchholz regularly commented that HB didn't like talking about himself and, certainly, research for these articles has only uncovered a handful of interviews he gave to the press over the course of his 47 years in front of the cameras. However, when he did volunteer to talk to journalists, the results could sometimes give rise to a few readers spluttering over their morning cornflakes. One such example was this interview from May 1972:-

"The film industries are coming back in Italy, in France, in England. Not in Germany. It's unfortunate that the Germans aren't able to produce films of quality. A few years ago, a producer made millions on a picture called Helga, and ever since then the Germans have concentrated on pornography. It is sad."

It's with particular irony, therefore, that he would shortly be marking his return to the West German film industry after a 13-year absence with this saucy comedy about a male prostitute. However, this slight nod to Benny Hill - who'd been seen by many a West German TV executive although not the general public there quite yet - was perhaps also an oblique reference to one of HB's other favourite lines: "We actors," he said in 1964, "are like whores. And, for a good film, I'm the world's best whore."

The period from 1968 to 1973 was a time when HB tried very hard finally to shake off his "boy next door" image as he approached the age of forty, something over which he threw a big bucket of custard with this film. Shot in Hamburg in the autumn of 1972, it isn't an out-and-out side-splitter but it does contain a handful of big laughs: his various escape attempts from either an unexpectedly returning husband or a middle-aged nymphomaniac and her butler's awful violin-playing land him stark naked in a next door garden while the neighbours are having breakfast on the patio, or force him to flee via a window in the gent's toilet of a hotel, but, even when he returns to his flat, he ends up in a fight with an extremely large and jealous husband who shows up one morning to give him a thick ear.

As with many of HB's films from after his early peak in the late 1950's, Jonny wasn't a massive box office success but it was popular enough to open the door back up to him to make a steady return to working in West Germany as the 1970's wore on. It came before his 1974-1975 attempt to become a director but he would begin appearing more regularly on West German TV and eventually scored a real hit on home soil with 1984's Fear of Falling.

However, this is yet another one from the "fossil record". I found a fairly new (1980's) VHS copy on eBay and this is really your best bet for finding another although I haven't seen it there since I bought my copy.

O.H.M.S.S. @ 40

2009-12-02T21:47:00.001Z

It's still the most hotly debated film in the James Bond series and 007 afficionados remain divided as to whether it's the worst of the lot, or one of the best, but On Her Majesty's Secret Service celebrates it's 40th anniversary in December.

British masterspy 007 picks up the trail of Ernst Stavro Blofeld and finds him holed up in a snowbound mountain-top mansion, but has to battle with his feelings for the daughter of a Corsican crime boss who "hand picks" him to become her second husband. George Lazenby takes over the iconic role of the man with the Licence to Kill, with Telly Savalas as Blofeld and Diana Rigg as the beguiling but prickly Tracy. Also starring Gabrielle Ferzetti and Ilse Steppat. Dir. Peter Hunt, USA/GB, 1969. 140 mins.

By the time the last cut and print went on 1967's You Only Live Twice, Sean Connery had become sick to the back teeth of his association with Ian Fleming's tuxedo-sporting superhero. Although his five films for the franchise since 1962 had transformed him from an obscure former Edinburgh milkman and sometime male model into the most bankable male actor on the planet, this had come at the inevitable cost of that eternal pitfall of movie fame, typecasting. Despite making some of his best films outside the Bond cannon (e.g. The Hill and Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie), the role had stuck to him, so, when Cubby and Co. came to make the sixth film in the series, Connery's answer was more No No Seven than Oh Oh Seven. He was, of course, to eat his words, not once, but twice, but, for now, EON Productions Ltd. had to find another man to front the Bond brand.

Various versions exist of the nightmare that followed in trying to fill the 6 foot 2 inch frame left behind by Connery, but two details are actually kosher. Producer Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli (1909-1996) was already a well known movie talent scout, and he had alighted on a ruggedly handsome young Welsh actor who had played King Philip of France in the 1968 film The Lion in Winter with Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn. His name? Dalton... Timothy Dalton. However, when Cubby actually offered Dalton the role of Bond, the 24-year-old baulked at the idea and proceeded to excuse himself with 15 years' worth of Shakespeare and a few period costume dramas before stepping into the dinner jacket in 1986 when Pierce Brosnan got tangled up in a contract row over his passport to fame, Remington Steele.

The other Bond co-producer, Harry Saltzman (1915-1994), had a perhaps more immediately obvious choice in mind, Roger Moore. Although nearly three years older than Connery, and with a cut glass but slightly Americanised English accent in contrast to Sean's lowland Scottish burr, he had the reputation as The Saint to step into the role. However, he also still had a contract for the latest series of Leslie Charteris' gentleman sleuth to fulfil, or, to put it more bluntly, Sir Lew Grade had him by the short-and-curlies for the time being.

Several other names have been mentioned - none of which anyone has ever heard of again - but the day was saved by a chocolate bar advert (see clip on YouTube - it's about the fourth or fifth insert into this clip and you'll miss it if you blink). The man in this advert dishing out Turkish Delight from a large crate was 26-year-old former car salesman and male model, George Lazenby.

Born in Australia in 1939, Lazenby had spent much of the 60's in London and, perhaps, a route into some kind of showbusiness role was perhaps inevitable for the strapping square-jawed six-footer, but when he got the phone call which told him that the most successful movie-making outfit of the decade wanted him to be the next James Bond, he initially thought somebody was, to use a time honoured Australianism, "coming the raw prawn."

However, Lazenby tested for the role, and acquitted himself enough with the fight scenes to get the final nod. Other casting was relatively easy. After initially considering Brigitte Bardot for the role of Tracy, Cubby and Harry quickly opted for Mrs. Emma Peel from British TV hit The Avengers, alias 28-year-old Diana Rigg. The role of Blofeld went immediately to 46-year-old Greek-American actor Telly Savalas, who had booked his place in the film with unexpected keynote performances in The Bird Man of Alcatraz (1962), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) as a shaven-headed Pontius Pilate, and The Dirty Dozen (1967).

Shooting occupied most of the first half of 1969 and took the crew to Lisbon, Swiss capital Bern and another Swiss location which centred on the now famous Piz Gloria sports club.

However, as filming progressed, tensions began to mount between an increasingly uncomfortable Lazenby and Diana Rigg, and with the rest of the crew. By the time the film was heading for release, he announced that he had handed in his notice. In November 1969 he gave an interview to British news station ITN - having grown a full beard in the meantime - explaining his decision (clip on YouTube).

OHMSS was premiered on 18th December 1969 and grossed over $87m worldwide on its initial run - over $20m short of its predecessor in the series. Generally, critical response was fairly muted although there was recognition that Lazenby wasn't meant to be a simple shoo-in to replace Connery but, like all subsequent Bonds, tried to do something different with the character.

This was, of course, the only film in the franchise until 2006's Casino Royale where 007 genuinely falls in love, and the only one which ends in personal tragedy for Bond when Tracy, by then his new wife, is gunned down in a drive-by shooting by Blofeld's sidekick Irma Bunt.

Initially, Bond fans shunned the film but, forty years down the line, true Bond afficionados have been largely prepared to give it, and Lazenby, a second hearing, and the now 70-year-old Australian has been a regular at Bond conventions in recent years.

Lazenby's film career did not take off after OHMSS although he did form an alliance with Bruce Lee in the 1970's which led him to make a number of martial-arts inspired films, such as The Man from Hong Kong in 1975. He was due to have dinner with Lee on the night when the Kung Fu hero was found dead in his apartment in 1973. He became a property developer after settling in California in the 1980's and was married for several years in the "Noughties" to former tennis player Pam Shriver, but they have now divorced.

Diana Rigg went onto a successful stage career on both sides of the Atlantic, and classic British films such as 1973's Theatre of Blood.

Telly Savalas became the most successful and popular former Bond villain - eclipsing even Gert Fröbe - when, in 1973, he became lollipop-sucking New York cop Kojak, as well as a somewhat unlikely sex symbol owing to his shaven head and his deep basso profundo voice.

There was something of a tragedy in the immediate aftermath of the film's release when German actress Ilse Steppat, who played Irma Bunt in her only English-language film, died at her home in West Berlin three days after the premiere of a heart attack, aged just 52.

OHMSS is a distinctive inclusion in the Bond series, not least for its soundtrack. Unlike the previous three films, the opening titles feature an instrumental piece, rather than a big vocal blow-out. It was the first major film ever to use a Moog synthesizer in its soundtrack and contributes to the somewhat anachronistically "80's" sound of the initial "gunbarrel sequence" and a bass line over the actual titles which tends to set some people's teeth on edge (clip on YouTube). British techno-composer David Arnold, who went on to compose music for the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies, re-adapted the main OHMSS theme in 1997 (YouTube again).

Danish singer Nina van Pallandt (formerly of Nina and Frederik fame) provided one of the two songs, Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?, but the most famous song from the film was the only "love" theme from a Bond movie, Louis Armstrong's We Have All the Time in the World, which was a top ten hit in the UK in early 1970 but rocketed back to No.3 in the UK Singles charts in 1994 after it was used in a TV advertisement for Guinness (YouTube).

OHMSS was the only Bond movie directed by Peter Hunt (1925-2002) who had worked as Editor on the previous five films, but who left the Bond crew afterwards. OHMSS remains his most famous film. John Glen was Second Unit Director and would go on to direct all five 1980's Bond movies.

OHMSS is available on DVD from AMAZON.CO.UK and AMAZON.COM.

From the archives (Cyril's Biogs): JILL IRELAND 1936-1990

2009-12-01T19:54:00.002Z

Living proof that gamin prettiness wasn't a European preserve, British-born actress Jill Ireland appeared to limit herself to supporting roles while devoting herself as a wife and mother but nonetheless won lasting if quietly spoken popularity on both sides of the Atlantic.

Born Jill Dorothy Ireland in London in 1936, the daughter of a wine merchant, she originally trained as a dancer but began to win roles in British films of the 1950's, such as Three Men in a Boat opposite Lawrence Harvey and also her single appearance in a Carry On film, Nurse, in 1959, with another British favourite, Shirley Eaton as one of her colleagues.

However, she shot to fame in 1957 with her marriage to emerging British movie idol David McCallum, with whom she formed one the more fashionable showbusiness couples of the day. They had two children together and also adopted a son.

As McCallum's career transferred to the USA and took off with appearance in The Man from UNCLE in the mid 1960's, her own career faltered somewhat although she starred in 16 episodes of western TV spin-off Shane in the mid 1960's. In the meantime, McCallum's appearance in 1963 war epic The Great Escape had introduced the couple to Charles Bronson and, as the McCallums' marriage faltered with their 1967 divorce, the following year, she married Bronson. They eventually had two children together and became one of the great love affairs of American showbusiness.

Ireland's career then shadowed Bronson's and she eventually starred in no less than 16 of his films between 1968 and 1987, including The Valachi Papers (1972), Hard Times (1975) and (perhaps inevitably) Death Wish 2 in 1982.

However, she was first diagnosed with cancer in 1987 and, despite going into remission, fell ill again after the death of her adopted son with McCallum from an accidental drug overdose in 1989.

Jill Ireland, English actress, born London, 24th April 1936, died Malibu, Ca., 18th May 1990.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Tiger Bay

2009-11-29T15:05:00.018Z

A Polish sailor returning from the sea accidentally shoots his unfaithful girlfriend after a row, but the incident is witnessed by a little girl who lives in the same block of Cardiff flats. An unlikely alliance between the two ensues but the long arm of the law is after him. John Mills stars as the wily Superintendent Graham with Horst Buchholz as the hapless Bronisław "Bronik" Korczyński and Hayley Mills as his willing hostage. Dir. J. Lee Thompson, UK, 1959. Black and White, 105 mins.

When Rank Films producers Julian Wintle and Leslie Parkyn bought the film rights to Bulgarian-born French writer Noël Calef's short story, Rudolphe and the Revolver, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to cast Dirk Bogarde as the lorry driver who murders his girlfriend in a crime of passion, and a Scottish child actor called Jon Whiteley in the role of the boy who witnesses the whole sorry deed through the letter box of their dingy tenement in Edinburgh.

However, two things loused all that up: firstly, that basic idea had been done before, in 1952's Hunted, with Dirk as a... lorry driver who abducts a boy who witnesses his crime of passion played by... Jon Whiteley; secondly, six years down the line, the then 13-year-old Whiteley's voice had broken and he had shot up in height so that he was nearly as tall as Dirk.

By the time the film was finally slated to start production towards the back end of 1958, there had, though, been a couple of developments. On one hand, Cardiff, and, in particular, the docklands area of the city, was chosen as the location, hence the working title of the film, Tiger Bay, which ended up being its release title almost by default.

The other development was that Julian Wintle had used foreign or foreign-born actors like Akim Tamiroff and Anton Diffring for major roles in previous films, and had even managed to break what was something of a taboo at the time in British cinema in using a German actor to carry a film: Hardy Krüger in 1957's The One that Got Away, to great critical and commercial success. His trip to the 1956 Cannes Film Festival had also uncovered another young German actor from political drama Sky without Stars. No prizes for guessing who that was...

By the start of 1958, Wintle had heard on the grapevine that Billy Wilder was also after HB and, so, figured on trying to attract him to Britain first. By this time, he also had a director, Jack Thompson, and an actor to carry the film, John Mills, both of whom had just worked on the now classic war film, Ice Cold in Alex and who were up for doing another film together.

Casting the little boy, however, was proving problematic. With the choice of Jon Whiteley out of the window - he was to leave the business in his adolescence and ended up as Curator of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford - Thompson only solved this problem when he visited John Mills at his Buckinghamshire home and spotted John's 12-year-old daughter Hayley playing on a swing in the garden.

The light that went on in Thompson's head that afternoon was initially dismissed by an incredulous John Mills but, as shooting was due to begin in less than a fortnight, John eventually picked up the phone and agreed that they could run with the idea of changing the gender of the little witness and casting Hayley in the role. French lorry driver had now changed into a Polish sailor and they all went off to Cardiff.

The result was an unexpected piece of British movie magic and one of the best ever performances by a child actor, not least because Hayley basically delivered the whole thing ad lib. For HB, it's by far his best received performance in an English-language film - his first - and one of those instances where it's the bad guy that sees his fan mail, which was already the bane of many a Berlin postman, double overnight.

You almost forget that HB is playing a bloke who's just knocked off his other half and then abducted the nosey little girl who saw him do it... or is it the other way round? It's actually Hayley's character, Gillie, who tries to plot his escape in return for the tenuous promise that Bronik will take her to sea. Also, despite the inherent controversy in the plot, it's the chemistry between these two unlikely friends which everyone remembers. John Mills carries the film but it really belongs to Hayley and HB.

Not that the film didn't run into some trouble before it was released in March 1959. Tiger Bay, already well known as the birthplace of singer (now Dame) Shirley Bassey, was home to one of Britain's oldest Afro-Caribbean and Asian communities, and the film made extensive use of ordinary people from the area as extras. However, the Bay area and neighbouring Butetown were also among the poorest areas of the City and, although bathed in its own romance seen retrospectively, at the time, the City Council were very itchy over a film about a murder being made in an area that they were desperate to redevelop. Having just hosted the 1958 Commonwealth Games, they reasoned, the boost to Cardiff's image was about to take a knock in being plastered all over the cinema screens with the depiction of run-down tenements.

There were dark mutterings in the South Wales Echo from the Clerk to the City Council, one S. Tapper-Jones Esq:-

“I am glad of the opportunity to stress the profound concern of the city council collectively at the gross manner in which the impression of the type of life in this neighbourhood has been misrepresented merely for the depraved taste of people who like sensational pictures.”

The row even escalated as far as the Shadow Cabinet when the Member of Parliament for the area, none other than later Prime Minister James Callaghan, wrote to Rank asking them to change the title of the film. By that time, however, the titles had been printed and it was too late.

Tiger Bay was premiered at Cardiff's Gaumont Cinema on the first weekend in March 1959 and, while local dignitaries still wrinkled their noses, the corridors of the Rank Organisation jingled to the sound of ringing tills. It was one of the highest grossing British films of 1959, in the UK, USA, Australia, Japan and all over Western Europe. It has been either dubbed or subtitled into at least ten languages, including German, in which version HB set a precedent for the rest of his career in dubbing himself.

All round, nobody had anything to worry about in the event. The developers still came to town and, now, fifty years later, the Tiger Bay area is still as vibrant as ever but now with smart apartments and office buildings dominating the skyline. The Welsh Assembly building also lies nearby.

As for HB, any lingering anxieties about casting a German actor were blown out of the water to judge by the short promotional film which accompanied the main feature, with HB signing autographs surrounded by fascinated locals.

One person for whom HB was a particular hit was a lot closer to the action. In what rarely gets heard above the cacophony of the more extreme Jimmy Cagney or Steve McQueen fans who took an instant and enduring dislike to him, on the DVD version of the film, the first 45 seconds of Hayley Mills' commentary, although a little tongue in cheek, starts to paint a different picture:-

"Horst Buchholz... was my first love... and you can see why.

...

He'd always got a lot going on in his face. Quite apart from the fact it was a beautiful face. So sensitive... I just thought he was the coolest thing. You just want to know more about that man."

Her only slight gripe - which probably goes some way to explaining Jimmy Cagney's major allergic reaction - was that HB tended to stand off camera and tried to make her laugh, but that all added to his charm in her eyes, and then again, there are those who would have got pretty hacked off with Jimmy's constant tap-dancing between takes.

Hayley actually got a little bit tearful one day towards the end of filming, when she arrived on the set at Beaconsfield Studios to film the scene where Bronik rescues Gillie from the sea in a large swimming pool to find the place bedecked with banners proclaiming "Congratulations Horst and Myriam".

In making his previous film, Resurrection, he'd fallen for his leading lady, French actress, Myriam Bru. Although she was to turn him down twice, when he called her in Rome from his hotel room during a bout of homesickness and begged her to come to London for his 25th birthday, his third proposal of marriage when she arrived was backed up with an emergency marriage licence. On 7th December 1958 with most of the Tiger Bay crew in attendance and John and Mary Mills as witnesses, they were wed at Caxton Hall Registry Office, Westminster. During the ceremony, Myriam inadvertently brought the house down with a slight Freudian slip when she vowed to take HB as her "awful" wedded husband.

Initially, due to the suddenness of their betrothal, neither bride nor groom were all that bothered about a reception, but the publicity for Rank Films was priceless and J. Arthur whipped out his cheque-book for a big bash at the Dorchester. Not even HB's parents or Myriam's mother had time to make it to London in time, and when news filtered back to Germany that her most eligible bachelor was no longer a bachelor, it wiped coverage of Willy Brandt's landslide victory in the West Berlin State elections the same day straight off the front of the Berliner Zeitung and a fair few other papers. It was the start of a highly durable partnership which would last over 44 years. Myriam was to curtail her own career shortly after their marriage and really became his full time manager and mentor, as well as a wife and mother. HB was a man who needed quite a bit of looking after.

Legend has it that John Mills coached HB with his lines - in early scenes, he does seem to trail off at the end of the odd sentence, here and there - and did such a good job that some later scenes had to be shot again when it was pointed out that he was supposed to be a Polish sailor.

Yvonne Mitchell played Bronik's two-timing girlfriend at the start of the film. She would later star with HB again in 1972 in The Great Waltz, but there played his mother. She died of cancer in 1979 at the age of 54.

This was the first of three films HB made with Marne Maitland, who plays the Indian doctor and landlord of the house from which Bronik's girlfriend has absconded. Marne would appear with HB again in 1962's Nine Hours to Rama and then in 1988 in And the Violins Stopped Playing, as the father of HB's character.

Although they had no common scenes in the film, HB would also star again with John Mills in 1983's Sahara. He never worked with Hayley again although she indicated in 1966 that she would still jump at the chance if it arose.

Kenneth Griffith, who played the church organist who gives Gillie a rowlocking after she turns up late for the choir during the Caribbean wedding, had no common scenes with HB in Tiger Bay but was one of the five excavators in Berlin Tunnel 21 in 1981.

Jack Thompson began preparation for a film entitled The Fires of Etna in around 1961, for which he offered HB the lead role. However, various contractual obligations on both sides prevented the film getting off the drawing board.

Tiger Bay was nominated for three BAFTA's, for Best British Film, Best Film (all comers) and Best Screenplay. Hayley herself won the Best Newcomer BAFTA and a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, where Jack Thompson was also nominated for a Gold award.

The DVD version of Tiger Bay (Region 2) is available from AMAZON.CO.UK but the film will be shown on BBC2 in the UK on 6th December 2009 at 12.15pm.

Various clips from Tiger Bay available on YouTube.

From the archive (Cyril's Biogs): DILYS LAYE 1934-2009

2009-11-28T14:54:00.002Z

It's an iconic moment in British movie history, but it would be a pity if the only enduring memory of Dilys Laye were to be her turn (if you'll pardon the pun) as Bernard Bresslaw's permanently travel-sick girlfriend, trying desperately not to throw up in the back of Sid James' car in 1969's Carry on Camping.

She only appeared in four Carry On films, Camping being the last of them but they were her most memorable appearances in a career which started as a 15 year old in Trottie True in 1949 and only ended in 2008 when she played the mother to David Walliams' Frankie Howerd in the BBC biopic Rather You Than Me. In between, Laye appeared in more than 60 films and TV dramas or comedies and her stage work, which ranged from Shakespeare to Bertold Brecht, took her across the Atlantic, where she briefly dated a young James Garner while appearing on Broadway.

Born Dilys Lay (she added the "e" later) in Muswell Hill, London in 1934, she began her training for the stage at the celebrated Aida Foster School, where, at 16, she first met Joan Sims, who became a lifelong friend. She was mostly on the stage during the 1950's, which included her Broadway run in The Boy Friend in 1954, but her first major film role came as a would-be seducer of Dirk Bogarde in Doctor at Large in 1957.

Her first Carry On was Cruising in 1962 and she later appeared in Spying in 1964 and then 1967's Doctor, where she first played Bernie Bresslaw's love interest. Stage and TV dominated her career from the 1970's, onwards, and she became a respected theatre actress with a huge range, touring Britain as late as 2005 with Roald Dahl's The Witches.

Laye was married three times, firstly to stunt man Frank Maher and then to actor Garfield Morgan (best known as DCI Haskins in The Sweeney). She had a son by her third husband, actor Alan Downer, whom she married in 1972. She nursed him through his final illness in 1995 but later succumbed herself to cancer.

Dilys Laye, English actress, born London, 11th March 1934, died London, 13th February 2009.

Various clips on YouTube.

From the archives (Cyril's Biogs): CURD JÜRGENS 1915-1982

2009-11-26T19:51:00.009Z

While I'm blogging about Horst Buchholz, I thought I'd get Cyril to dig in the archives for other actors and actresses from the German-speaking world who made a name for themselves internationally. Here's one who was actually spotted by Hollywood at around the same time as HB but who was just a bit older. Curiously, though, they never worked together.

The above is the correct spelling of a name which was credited variously as Curt or Kurt Jürgens, or without the umlaut over the "u" in his surname. Although Curd Jürgens had a film and stage career stretching back into the 1930's, he is best remembered as sea-loving villain Karl Stromberg from the 1977 James Bond film, The Spy who Loved Me.

Curd Gustav Andres Gottlieb Franz Jürgens was born near Munich in 1915, the son of a salesman originally from Hamburg, although his mother was French. His initial ambition was to become a journalist, but when he met actress Louise Basler in the early 1930's, she persuaded the strapping 6 foot 4 inch blond that he was ideal leading man material for the movies and his first film, The Royal Waltz came in 1935 at just 19. He churned out films as a UFA contract player at the rate of two a year until 1944 when he was caught up in the purge of suspected anti-Nazi revisionists and interred in the wake of the attempt on Hitler's life. It was 1948 before he emerged again, by which time he had taken Austrian citizenship.

More staple films followed in which he specialised in aristocrats or other men of station until he was chosen by French director Roger Vadim to star in his 1956 masterpiece, And God Created Woman opposite Vadim's then wife Brigitte Bardot, who dubbed Jürgens "The Norman Hulk", although he would also sometimes be termed "the German John Wayne" owing to his deep, rasping voice and his uncanny resemblence to "the Duke".

His English language credits were relatively few, but memorable, starting with U-boat thriller The Enemy Below in 1957, and Mark Robson drama The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) opposite Ingrid Bergman, in which he played a half-Dutch Chinese army officer. Both films won him a BAFTA nomination. J. Lee Thompson cast him as German-born rocket scientist Wernher von Braun in his 1960 biopic I Aim for the Stars in 1960 and he was also part of the massive all-star cast of D-Day epic The Longest Day in 1962. He returned to making German and French films during the 1960's and 1970's but Cubby Broccoli had already pencilled him in as a potential Bond villain.

By the time he came round to playing his maniac industrialist in The Spy who Loved Me, he was 61 and was therefore the oldest man to play the main Bond villain until Louis Jourdan six years later. He was also already in poor health and Stromberg was therefore only the second adversary, after Donald Pleasance's Blofeld ten years earlier, on whom 007 never actually lays a finger (Roger Moore's Bond shoots him in the crotch at his own dinner table). Nonetheless, TSWLM turned out to be the highest-grossing Bond movie to date on its release in the summer of 1977.

He had a small role in the BBC's 1982 spy drama Smiley's People but he had already died, aged 66, of a heart attack, before his two appearances were broadcast.

Jürgens was married five times. He'd married Lulu Basler in 1937 but they divorced after ten years, whereupon he married another actress, Judith Holzmeister. Their marriage lasted eight years. His third marriage, to Hungarian actress Eva Bartok, lasted only two years, despite appearing to produce his only child, daughter Deana Bartok-Jürgens.

The reasons for his 1957 divorce from Bartok only became apparent after Jürgens' death. He'd suffered a car accident at 18 which had rendered him infertile. He knew, therefore, that Deana couldn't be his child and Bartok claimed that Frank Sinatra had been the father during their 1956 affair. His longest marriage, 19 years, was to French socialite Simone Bicheron. He was married to Margie Schmitz for the four years before his death.

Curd Jürgens, German-born Austrian actor, born Solln, Germany, 13th December 1915; died Vienna, Austria, 18th June 1982.

Various clips available on YouTube (with different spellings): Curd Jürgens, Curt Jürgens, Curt Jurgens.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: La vita è bella / Life is Beautiful / Das Leben ist schön

2009-11-25T21:47:00.013Z

A Jewish bookstore owner and part-time waiter finds his unshakable madcap sense of humour stretched to the limits in wartime Italy when his life is consumed by the Holocaust. Roberto Benigni stars and directs his Oscar-winning performance as a man who has to prove to his wife and young son that life, whatever it throws at you, is really one big, beautiful game. Also starring Nicoletta Braschi, Giorgio Cantarini and Horst Buchholz. Dir. Roberto Benigni, Italy, 1997. Colour, 118 mins.

This is one of the most talked about films of the last twenty years and the reasons are not just to do with the fact that it became the dark horse of the 1999 Oscars when it won three trophies: Best Score (Nicola Piovani), Best Foreign Language Film and Best Actor for Roberto Benigni, the first man to win the award for a role played in a language other than English. Neither has it anything to do with Roberto's acceptance speech, delivered in his inimitably broken English after he'd climbed over eight rows of seating to get to the podium (the clip's on YouTube).

Its subject matter and how Benigni dealt with the whole issue of the Holocaust has won both great acclaim and scathing criticism in equal measure. The film doesn't duck away from any of the horrific facts of that series of events but, where it abstains from portraying those horrors in graphic detail it concentrates on how a fairly ordinary man - albeit an out-and-out clown - conducts himself, mainly for the benefit of shielding his little boy from the awful facts facing them both. It's that aspect which makes it so moving for those who enjoy it, and his ramped up silliness which invites darker responses to how this film deals with the underlying atrocity.

Some critics tend to overplay the symbolism of the film, among which one device is the role of the scatter-brained German doctor portrayed by HB. Guido (Benigni's character) first meets Dr. Lessing when he's a guest staying at the hotel in Arrezzo where the first half of the film is set in the months before the war starts in 1939 and where Guido works evenings as a waiter. Lessing, like Guido, is fascinated by word play and riddles and we first see Lessing in the dining room, just as Guido solves the first of the four riddles which appear in the film: The more there is, the less you see. Answer: Darkness.

Guido gets to set the second riddle: How long does it take Snow White to serve dinner to the Seven Dwarves? However, this one had to be changed in the English-dubbed version because it only really works in Italian: the answer is Sette minuti.

Lessing's parting shot, when he's summoned back to Berlin (we can but speculate as to the reasons), is the third riddle: Say my name, and I no longer exist. After Lessing disappears through the revolving doors, Guido solves it immediately - Silence - but he only gets to deliver his answer years later when he winds up in a concentration camp, standing in line at a medical examination and Lessing turns out to be the prison's M.O.

Lessing recognises his old sparring partner when he blurts out the answer and gets him a job waiting tables in the Officers' mess, where Lessing has gradually begun to withdraw into himself as he carries out his horrific duties as a conscripted reservist physician. When Guido tries to get him to rescue his wife from the women's section of the camp, all Lessing is interested in is solving another riddle: Fat, fat, ugly, ugly, all yellow inside; when you ask me my name, I say 'quack quack'; what am I? The answer may or may not be a duckling but we never get to find this out. Lessing has become a signpost for the fact that it's time for Guido to stop messing about with playing games with his son - trying to kid him that they're all in the camp to play in some kind of competition where you can score points to win a tank - and that he has to do the ground work himself of getting his family to safety.

HB - who hated wearing the Schwarz und Silber of the World War II German military - was reluctant to take on this role when Benigni hand picked him to play Lessing but, this time, it was son Christopher, who knew Benigni from his own time in Italy working as an actor in the 1980's, who persuaded him to accept it. Benigni had very obviously seen HB's previous film about the Holocaust, And the Violins Stopped Playing, from 1988. Despite the fact that he's only on screen for something under seven out of the 118 minutes of the film, due to the attention that the picture got, it's one of the two films whose titles regularly get shoved into brackets after his name, along with that of The Magnificent Seven, whenever HB is mentioned in any kind of writing about films in general, and can therefore be said to be one of the two most famous films he was actually in.

However, at 63, a lot of people who'd last seen him having a stand-up row with Jimmy Cagney in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three 36 years earlier may not immediately have recognised him, with his usually towsled - and, by then, greying - hair plastered down with half a bottle of Brilliantine and, here, he's very slightly reminiscent of a later James Mason. Then, there's the most obvious detail of all: he's speaking Italian. This was the only film in which he spoke Italian to camera and is one of only two - 1971's The Saviour being the other - in which he dubbed himself, not once, but twice, once into English and then again into German, but that means that he effectively got paid three times for the same film.

Even though it's one of his smallest roles, it is one which helpfully illustrates that, whatever criticisms he attracted through his career, and however much the general public is encouraged to think that that career disappeared up its own exhaust pipe before he was 30, HB was a proper character actor who was in the business for quite a long time: 47 years in films, 55 as an actor in total; not the longest in history but longer than John Wayne, longer than Dirk Bogarde and longer than perhaps the most famous German actor of all time, Gert Fröbe.

In what may have been an in-joke between HB and Benigni - who were both blessed with a somewhat "Pythonesque" sense of humour - this is the last film in which HB is credited with one aitch as HORST BUCHOLZ, albeit only in the opening titles: he's BUCHHOLZ in the end credits.

The first two "riddle" clips from the film feature in Horst Buchholz... mein Papa.

La vita è bella is available with a whole range of subtitles and dubbing tracks on DVD from AMAZON.COM or AMAZON.CO.UK

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Endstation Liebe / Last Stop Love

2009-11-25T20:14:00.014Z

"Wetten, dass..." The Spandau Light Bulb Company's resident Romeo accepts a Friday afternoon 5 DM bet that he can't win the heart of that new girl in Personnel by Monday morning. Horst Buchholz stars as "Mecky" Berger, with Barbara Frey, Franz Nicklisch. Dir. Georg Tressler, West Germany, 1957. Black and White, 85 mins.

For anybody only familiar with the parts of HB's iceberg-like career in movies that seem to float above the water, then this one goes some way to confirming his status as the Teutonic "Zac Efron" of the late 1950's. Ironically, though, it's probably the one film which persuaded him that his career had gone as far as it could on home soil and that, if he was going to mature as an actor, beckoning foreign film makers were worth a second look.

It's a nice film: unthreatening, shamelessly romantic and very clearly aimed at teenage girls. Lads, on the other hand, would be either bored stiff, be sticking a couple of fingers down the backs of their throats or would be having a few beers in the nearest bar, waiting for this to finish before something like The Young Lions or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof started.

It was HB's second film for director Georg Tressler after his meteoric success with Teenage Wolfpack in 1956 and was therefore also his second film with a script penned by Will Tremper. However, there's quite a contrast with the earlier film. Mecky fancies himself just a bit but he's much slicker and a lot less aggressive than Wolfpack's Freddy Borchert, if more soberly dressed and, again, this exposes the often-alleged reasons for HB's "German James Dean" label for the right load of old cobblers they actually are. There are two punch-ups in the movie but Mecky only gets involved in one of them, near the end and, after Mecky gets booted out of a pub into the car park, he wanders off to his favourite haunt, a darkened lorry yard, to a somewhat predictable reunion with his new girlfriend and an unadulteratedly happy ending.

The only similarity with Wolfpack, apart from the writing and directing credits and a score by Martin Böttcher, was the fact that main co-star Barbara Frey, like Karin Baal in the earlier film, was cast after a competition advertised in the press. Once again, thousands of young women applied for the chance to star with HB and the 16-year-old Barbara (born Freyde) began filming the day after being announced the winner. Bear in mind, though, that HB was 23-going-24 by this time and, after the commercial success of Wolfpack and the critical and commercial success of The Confessions of Felix Krull, this movie was really a sign that his career might start to go backwards if he couldn't grow out of this kind of role.

His next movie after this was a step in the right direction, based on another Will Tremper script, but that was a political drama called Wet Asphalt. After that, his international film career began to get underway.

As a result of its limitations Endstation is rarely now shown on even German TV networks and is absent from the range of early HB films brought out on DVD since his death. However, finding a VHS copy is fairly easy through AMAZON.DE.

Again, a sweet film but this wasn't the sum total of what HB was really capable of.

From the Archives (Cyril's Biogs): DAVID LODGE 1921-2003

2009-11-24T18:50:00.004Z

With nothing much doing for the past few days that I feel like featuring on the blog I thought I'd get Cyril to dig out one of his old biogs (he's been doing it for years as he thinks a lot of what appears in the papers is rubbish), so, from time to time, you'll see a piece on an entertainer whose face may be familiar but you can't quite put a name to them. Here's a classic example.

British actor David Lodge never had a starring role in his nigh-on 35-year career but he appeared, credited or uncredited, in nearly 170 movies and TV shows until ill health forced his retirement in the early 1990's and his solid 6-foot frame and tight-lipped countenance made him an ideal background heavy or sometimes, a man in uniform.

While he often played it straight on TV, most of his films were comedies and he had the knack of cropping up virtually anywhere, from seven Carry On films to episodes of The Avengers. Off stage, he has the distinction of being a close friend of both Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, something which not even the other two Goons, Michael Bentine and Harry Secombe, could always boast. He was particularly close to Sellers and was not only Best Man at his 1964 wedding to Swedish actress Britt Ekland, but also mounted a vigorous defence of his friend when Sellers' son Michael wrote in his memoirs about his father in less than flattering terms.

David William Frederick Lodge was born in the Kent town of Strood in 1921, the son of a Royal Navy rating who was away at sea for most of the boy's early childhood. With his father demobbed the family moved to London and, on leaving school, he began working for the Post Office until the war broke out and he was drafted into the RAF. It was here, in 1944, that he was heard singing while peeling potatoes and was invited to join an RAF concert party where he first met the then barely 19-year-old Sellers who was then doing a turn as a comedy drummer in a disastrously funny dance band. Also in the set was Dick Emery.

While Sellers' post war career drew him inextricably into his first dose of fame in BBC radio, Lodge took a much longer route which saw him join a circus as both clown and ringmaster, until his first film offer alongside Sellers, in Orders are Orders in 1954, although his scenes were cut, but he then appeared as one of the hero canoeists in The Cockleshell Heroes the following year with José Ferrer, Trevor Howard and a young Anthony Newley.

He was to star - in the final cut of the film - a total of 16 times alongside Sellers, beginning with another comedy, The Naked Truth, in 1957, but their most famous, and equal, pairing was in the 1960 comedy Two Way Stretch where they played cellmates under the bristling ire of a chief prison warder played by Lionel Jeffries. For Lodge, personally, it was his biggest moment as a leading actor although he accepted that he was never going to be a superstar. "This ugly mug of mine," he said, "gets me the meaty parts." Three of his later common credits with Sellers were A Shot in the Dark (1964), Casino Royale (1967) and The Return of the Pink Panther (1975).

He also starred six times with (now Sir) Norman Wisdom, between The Bulldog Breed in 1960 and 1969's What's Good for the Goose. Among his television credits were several reappearances in Spike Milligan's Q series, and There's A Lot of it About.

A bachelor until his forties, he lived in London with his parents, but proposed on the set of 1963 epic drama The Vikings to a French journalist known only as Marilyn and they married in 1963, although she predeceased him.

David Lodge, English actor, born Strood, England, 19th August 1921; died Northwood, England, 18th October 2003.

HORST BUCHHOLZ: Women In Hospital (A Doctor's Dilemma) / Frauenstation

2009-11-22T14:40:00.014Z

A couple of glum gynaecologists wrestle with human life on the operating table and at home, where one's wife has died and his teenage daughter struggles to cheer him up, and the other's wife has an advancing drug problem. Horst Buchholz and Stephen Boyd star as the two fed-up surgeons, with Karin Dor and Lillian Müller. Dir. Rolf Thiele, West Germany, 1977. Colour 85 mins.

This kitchen-sink hospital drama isn't a complicated affair but it's so seventies it's got a crush on Linda Lovelace. That isn't all that gratuitous a joke in that Lillian Müller was a Norwegian fashion model who came to this movie fresh from being crowned Playboy "Playmate of the Year" for 1976. In the meantime, HB's roll-neck sweaters get another good airing and dear old Stephen Boyd's got a moustache that's almost as wide as his face.

Stephen's looking a little bit gaunt here, especially compared to his heyday years in the late 1950's, when he won a Golden Globe for Ben-Hur (1959), and the early 1960's. He had a similar career to HB in that he was rarely tied to any major studio and just went about picking and choosing his films as he wished as a purely self-employed actor at a time when this was still fairly unusual. Unfortunately, just two months after this film was released, the Northern Irishman, who was born William Millar, died of a massive heart attack while playing golf near his home in California. He was just 45, and this was his last-but-one film (before British gangster movie The Squeeze).

Karin Dor, who, despite being four years younger than HB, played his mother-in-law, is probably best known as Helga Brandt, the undercover Blofeld henchwoman who falls foul of her boss's demands and ends up getting fed to a pool full of piranhas in the 1967 Bond movie You Only Live Twice, although she also starred in 1969 Hitchcock movie Topaz.

Frauenstation was filmed at the Bavaria studios and also at a genuine local hospital in early 1977, which was a particularly cold winter in Europe, so there's a fair bit of snow on the ground. It all adds up to a fairly bleak ambiance, punctuated with a hallucination sequence when Lillian's character drops another handful of pills with which she has secretly stuffed a large collection of dolls which adorn her marital bed.

The film had interchangeable titles in English (see above) and was also shot in English. However, it was only ever released in West Germany and the only VHS transfer was of the dubbed version. As usual, HB dubbed himself but I'm still trying to find out who dubbed Stephen.

Trying to find this film on VHS (I don't think it's ever appeared on DVD), well, this one really is like trying to find hen's teeth. I got my copy off eBay but it's one of those early VHS bricks with metal tape, so it weighs a ton, and I had to wind the tracking on my wuss of a VCR right back to the other end of the dial so it would pick up the signal properly. You're also more likely to find copies of the Marie-Louise Fischer novel on which the film was based.

If you do find a copy, it might be an idea to let your dinner go down before you watch it as it contains what is possibly the only cinematic representation of a Caesarian section (although I will defer to any further advice on that point). Not having actually witnessed such a procedure, I'm no judge as to whether it's realistic or not, but, not to put too fine a point to it, it looks pretty credible...

BOOK REVIEW: James Robertson Justice - "What's the Bleeding Time?"

2009-11-21T21:26:00.011Z

This book has been out for nearly two years now but I'm posting a review of it now because it was not only the funniest read I've had in years, it also inspired my own writing on this blog. It absolutely split my sides although there are a few hanky moments.

What else could you call the biography of a man like James Robertson Justice (1907-1975)? To the unitiated, it's this man's most famous line from a relatively brief but memorable film career which made him an inadvertent comic icon between the 1950's and the 1970's.

In Doctor in the House (1954), for the first time, he plays the bellowing surgeon Sir Lancelot Spratt and is shepherding a group of nervous young student doctors around on his morning rounds. Stopping at one poor patient to talk over him and his rumbling appendix, he begins explaining that, within the first few moments after the scalpel goes in, the patient will inevitably bleed for a while before the forces of nature take their course and form a clot.

"This interval," he says, "is known scientifically as the bleeding time."

However, one young medic, the eternally boyish Dirk Bogarde (1921-1999) is too busy chatting up one of his female colleagues to listen. Spratt's eye alights on him.

"You!" he bawls. "What's the bleeding time?"

Ashen faced, Dirk inspects his watch and says, "Ten past ten, sir."

As James Hogg and his two co-writers, Robert Sellers and Howard Watson, tell us, priceless. Absolutely priceless.

It's Dirk who delivers the punchline of that gag but JRJ's line, while not becoming a catchphrase as such, became a must-see moment from a well-loved British movie of the 1950's. He would play Spratt six times up to 1970 but it's not his only film role, comic or otherwise, by a long chalk, and, in fact, acting was not the only string to his substantial bow.

WTBT? is a heartily researched document on a man who left a lot of very large footprints in the film industry but has become one of its lost souls. His death at 68 from the after effects of several strokes in 1975 was a quiet and impecunious end to a life well lived. During his life, he'd played professional ice hockey, been a budding racing driver, fought in the Spanish Civil War and had become an afficionado of what is known as "punt-gunning", which basically involves mounting a small cannon on the end of a long rowing boat in order to shoot water fowl. Now departed director Ken Annakin provided the Afterword.

However, the reason why it took 33 years after his death to bring out the first definitive biography becomes tragically clear. His marriage to first wife Dilys Hayden produced a son, James Jr. but the little boy drowned in a pool at their Hampshire home in 1949 and their marriage, already on the rocks by that time, foundered as he conducted a series of affairs, latterly with the Countess Irene von Meyerdorff, whom he married on his deathbed.

You probably wouldn't think of a man who stood 6 feet 2 inches tall with a 52-inch waist being a hit with the ladies, but that is precisely what he was. Where the 19-year old Brigitte Bardot found Dirk Bogarde a bit of a cold fish, she positively giggled with delight when JRJ spoke to her in impeccable French when they were filming Doctor at Sea (where he played not Spratt himself but a Spratt-like figure, the equally terrifying Captain Hogg). Later fashion columnist and agony aunt Molly Parkin also talks quite candidly about her days as JRJ's not-so-secret girlfriend, whom he would take to lavish gentleman's club lunches in the same packed room as Prince Philip and the Aga Khan and spend the whole of the proceedings with his hand on, shall we say, a strategic though rather intimate area of her anatomy.

In case you're wondering whether I'm going to have the Yeoman of the Guard at the door at this reference to our Prince Consort, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh positively jumped at the request to provide the Foreword to this book. JRJ was a man whom both Princes Philip and Charles revered with some fascination, not least for his love of wildlife.

This was all part of a man of many contrasts. Although a star of classic but, at the time, pretty low-brow British comedies, he was a man of great reading and not for nothing was he twice Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. Although he bathed himself in his Scotsmanhood, the "Robertson" in his name was a deliberate fib and a protest at his somewhat abusive father, who hated Scots. JRJ himself was born in London and, actually, apart from his father's distant ancestry, was about as Scottish as Nicolas Sarkozy. Not as blatant as the five years in the case of Yul Brynner, he actually added two years to his age. Finally, he lived in Scotland for many years before bankruptcy forced him to move southwards again and knitted himself enough into the fabric of his adopted nation in order to stand for Parliament at the 1950 General Election for the North Angus & Mearns constituency. He lost, and, here's another perhaps surprising detail, that's because it was a safe Conservative seat in those days and he was standing for Labour.

For a man who was perhaps the embodiment of a stiff-backed member of the British establishment, JRJ had a remarkable egalitarian streak. He was no fool when it came to the changing social mores of his times and, when one minor crewman started joking lewdly about Dirk Bogarde on the basis of commonly held perceptions about his sexuality, JRJ rose up to his full height and threatened, in his ground-shaking baritone, that if he ever heard the man talking again in such terms about one of his best friends, as well as one of the finest actors his country had ever produced, then he wouldn't be fathering any children afterwards, and that's the polite version of what he actually said. Whatever was going on in Dirk's life, JRJ was close enough to know about it, how much everyone else knew, that any revelations could have hurt him badly and that his friend didn't deserve such treatment from a mere strapling from the crew.

WTBT? is available from AMAZON.CO.UK and from the website which James Hogg initially set up in tribute to JRJ, and which gave rise to the book.

Here's a few clips of JRJ on YouTube.

NORTH BY NORTHWEST @ 50

2009-11-21T12:31:00.005Z

Tomorrow sees the 50th anniversary of the UK release of one of the most celebrated films ever made, Alfred Hitchcock's dark espionage thriller North by Northwest. Here's BK's tribute.

A bored businessman finds his life turned upside down when he becomes the victim of a case of mistaken identity, the problem being that who he is thought to be is some kind of fugitive spy. And the spooks don't let up easy... Cary Grant stars as Roger Thornhill - or is it George Kaplan? - in Alfred Hitchcock's iconic masterpiece, with Eva-Marie Saint, James Mason and Martin Landau. Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 1959. Colour, 131 mins.

On paper, there was nothing particularly unusual about what started out with the rather anaemic title Breathless when Alfred Hitchcock came to make this film in 1957. In fact, by that time, Hitch and his films had begun to look a little "same old, same old".

For one thing, it was his fourth film with Cary Grant after Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946) and To Catch a Thief (1956) and the 53-year-old former matinee idol had himself begun to go a little stale. For another, the basic plot of Hitch's latest project - mistaken identity - was something he'd explored before, not least in the rather obviously titled The Wrong Man (1956) starring Henry Fonda.

However, in the event, Hitch served up a film which not only provided cinema with some of its most famous moments, but became an inspiration.

The most familiar scene is the "Cropduster" sequence, where Cary Grant's character finds himself pursued across a field by a maniac aeroplane which is trying to mow him down. Scenes like that are now bread and butter to any kind of thriller, including the Bond movies, but perhaps less well remembered is the adventurous way in which the scene ends, with Thornhill escaping while the plane slams into the side of a gasoline tanker.

The finale, shot on a full-scale replica of the Presidential Memorial at Mount Rushmore, was another piece of classic Hitchcock edge-of-seat mastery, where the architecture holds the stage just as much as the characters, if not more so. Earlier scenes shot at what was then the ultra-modern setting of the United Nations building in New York - without permission, incidentally - and an equally avant-garde hillside bungalow leave the cast looking like dolls, which is effectively what any performer became when starring in a Hitchcock movie.

Thornhill, a high-ranking business executive, becomes utterly powerless and passive to what is happening to him until desperation brings out his devious side. He becomes exactly the type of crook for which he is being mistaken, another strong Hitchcock device. Eva-Marie Saint, as both potential love interest and honey trap, plays the part of Eve Kendall intelligently but Hitch was not exactly a favourite with feminists and her ultimate fate as the third Mrs. Thornhill after he galantly stops her from cascading down the mountainside is the only thing which really dates this movie.

Otherwise, with a digital remaster, the DVD version of this film could've been shot yesterday. James Mason oozes quiet menace as Vandamm, Thornhill's chief poursuivant, while Martin Landau, in one of his first big screen roles, pushed the envelope as far as the censors were concerned with his portrayal of Vandamm's fawning, elegant and rather effeminate lacky, Leonard.

As another Hitch signature, the great man himself has a tiny cameo in the film, right at the start, when he runs for a bus but is too late before the doors close.

North by Northwest is available on DVD or Blu-Ray, with plenty of bonus features, including a "Making Of" documentary, presented by Eva-Marie Saint. Outlets include AMAZON.CO.UK and AMAZON.COM.

Various clips on YouTube.

LED ZEPPELIN: Stairway to Heaven

2009-11-20T11:28:00.002Z

It's one of the most famous tracks in the pantheon of Rock, but now Led Zeppelin's biographer reveals that the beauty of Stairway to Heaven lies in its perfect length, just enough time to allow gagging DJ's to nip outside for a ciggie. Read the article in the Guardian here.

Deutsche Übersetzung:-

War die Geheimnis des Erfolges des „Stairway to Heaven”, daß der zu DJ's die Gelegenheit gab, um für eine Zigarette rauszugehen? So heißt die Theorie des Biografes der Led Zeppelin, Charles R. Cross, der aussagt, daß 100 Radiomoderator "buchstäblich... schworen", daß sie das heutig klassische Lied ausstrahlten, weil es für eine Zigarettenpause "die perfekte Länge" hätte.

"Das Lied ist aus Versehen erfolgreich geworden," hat der Cross der „New York Post" gesagt. "[Ich] habe 100 DJ's mir es schwören gemacht, daß sie das Lied gespielt haben, nur weil sie eine lange Pause brauchten, um rauszugehen und eine Zigarette zu rauchen. Wenn es eine Minute kürzer gewesen wäre, könnte man keine Zigarette ganz geraucht haben. Wenn es eine Minute länger gewesen wäre, wäre es zu lang gewesen."

Obgleich es nie als 45er freigegeben ist, ist „Stairway to Heaven” heute einer der öftest ausgestrahlten Lieder im Rundfunk. Das ist, bringt Cross es vor, ein Segen und ein Fluch für die heute erloschene Band. Während der Gitarrist, Jimmy Page, ganz gern das Creschendo der Ballade spielt, sagt der Sänger Robert Plant heute, daß er die "hasst". "Pages Liebe zum Lied erscheinte, im umgekehrten Verhältnis zum Haß des Plant zu stehen," hat der Cross gesagt.

Eigentlich ist das Missfallen des Plant zum „Stairway to Heaven” vielleicht einer der größten Hindernisse im Wege einer Wiedervereinigung der Led Zeppelin. Der Cross sagt, daß der Plant bloß nicht allnächtlich es singen will. Bevor sie bei Madison Square in New York 1988 wieder vereinigt hat, hat die Band gezofft, um ob es auf der Setlist ankommen sollte. Beinahe zwei Jahrzehnte später, unter dem Konzert der Led Zeppelin bei der Londoner O2-Arena, hat „Stairway to Heaven” den Cut gemacht - aber der Plant hat angeblich bestehen, daß es in der Mitte des Sets ankäme, und nicht als Finale; und, daß der Page sich beschränke, von das Lied zu einem sogar epischer sologefüllten Zuckerwerk zu machen.

Das neue Buch des Cross, „ Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls”, wurde im Oktober freigegeben.

FORBES' HOLLYWOOD EARNINGS LIST

2009-11-19T18:26:00.002Z

À propos of actors not always having the glittering careers predicted for them, US business magazine Forbes has done a few sums and come up with what they call the most overpaid film stars in Hollywood. They listed the ten stars whose ratio of their recent films' box office receipts to their estimated earnings for those films was the lowest. Just check out this little lot...

1. Will Ferrell: $3.29 box office per $1 paid
2. Ewan McGregor: $3.75
3. Billy Bob Thornton: $4.00
4. Eddie Murphy: $4.43
5. Ice Cube: $4.47
6. Tom Cruise: $7.18
7. Drew Barrymore: $7.43
8. Leonardo DiCaprio: $7.52
9. Samuel L. Jackson: $8.59
10. Jim Carrey: $8.62

On the other end of the scale, this line up were calculated to be the best value for money:-

1. Shia LaBoeuf: $160 box office per $1 paid
2. James McAvoy: $114
3. Michael Cera: $102
4. Daniel Radcliffe: $93
5. Robert Downey Jr.: $78
6. Javier Bardem: $73
7. Ryan Reynolds: $61
8. Christian Bale: $55
9. Aaron Eckhart: $45
10. Dennis Quaid: $43

YUSUF ISLAM @ O2, DUBLIN

2009-11-19T12:49:00.005Z

British pop icon Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stevens (although he was born Stephen Demetre Georghiou) got a bit of a mixed reception when he took the stage in Dublin for his first tour since 1976. Read the review in The Daily Telegraph here.

Deutsche Übersetzung:-

von Brian Boyd

Mensch, was für eine Show. Man hat einen Stehapplaus gemacht, in Verstimmung hinausgegangen, etwas undurchführbar schöner Musik gehört, „wir sind gelangweilt”-lich langsam geklatscht, und einen unerwarteten Auftritt des Ronan Keating gesehen. Yusuf Islam, ehamals als Cat Stevens gekennt, muß heute morgen sich sehr verwirrt fühlen.

Auf der Bühne beim Dubliner O2-Stadium für seiner ersten Showserie seit 1976, musste Yusuf mit einigen sehr derben und engherzigen Buhrufe aus einigen Teile des Publikums vorlieb nehmen. Draußen stand es auf den Plakaten „Yusuf Islam”, wie auf den kostbaren Billetten, aber ungefähr drittelwegs unter der Show, hat Yusuf sich entschieden, einen Vorschau zu präsentieren, des auf seinen Lieden basierten weiterkommenden Musicals. Mit dem Name „Moonshadow” und im nächsten Sommer beim West End zu anzufangen geplant, man würde es glauben, daß es würde als ein hübsches „Bonus-Feature” empfangen werden, aber das unruhige Publikum war nicht zu erfreut.

Eine Zehnmannbesetzung aufweisend, haben die Schauspieler sich die Socken abgearbeitet, um die Menge zu einzudrücken und, während eine Mehrheit des Publikums hat dieses unerwarteten Angebot genossen, haben laute Buhrufe aus einigen Teilen der Menge das Moment besudelt. Fairerweise haben diese Menschen bezahlt, um Yusuf Islam zu hören, wie er diese Lieder gesungen hätte, nicht eine Menge Schauspieler, und man hat hier und da ärgerlich hinausgegangen. Aber was wir gesehen hat, des „Moonshadow” - sieht es aus, daß eine augezeichnete Show im Werden sei.

Die Unzufriedenheit des Publikums auffangend, hat Yusuf - der vielleicht im Wesen der ruhigste Frontmann ist - es erklärt, daß er bloß versuchte, „eineinhalbe Show” zu anzubieten. Dann hat er auf der Bühne seine gut erfahrene Sechsmannband wiedergebracht, und der Normaleinsatz wurde wiederaufgenommen. Um alles in der Welt wie ein Essexer Willie Nelson lautend, hat er um eine Serie seiner größten Hits und einige neueres Material seine immer noch merkwürdige Stimme geschlagen. „Moonshadow” und eine stapfende Version des „Peace Train” wurden rictige Höhepunkte und es wurde eine spezielle Bewirtung zum Dubliner Publikum, wie Ronan Keating ihm sich angeschließen hat, zu einem Duett des „Father and Son” - Boyzone hat nämlich 1995 ein riesiges Hit gehabt, mit einer blutarmen Neueinspielung des Liedes. Es war der ersten Auftritt des Keating seit dem Tod seines Bandkolleges, Stephen Gately, der bei einer Straße ganz in der Nähe des O2-Stadions aufgewachsen war.

Während diese Show auf Tournee in Großbritannien geht, kann man nur es hoffen, daß Yusuf den „Moonshadow”-Ausschnitt halten werde, weil der eine sehr gut ausgearbeitete (und kostenlose) geheime Vorschau eines erfolgversprechenden Musicals ist. Am Ende der Show - in einem scheinmelodramatischen Einverständnis zu wie ein weitere großartige Songschreiber was anderes anbietend sein Publikum einmals berühmt beunruhigt hat - hat Yusuf ironisch gesagt: "Nun weiß ich, wie Bob Dylan sich gefühlen haben musste."

HORST BUCHHOLZ: The Great Waltz / Der große Walzer

2009-11-18T14:29:00.048Z

The life, loves and career of Johann Strauss the Younger told through music and dance. Horst Buchholz stars as the king of the Viennese Waltz in this sumptuous musical drama, with Mary Costa as the greatest love of his life, singer Jetty Treffz. Also starring Rossano Brazzi, Yvonne Mitchell, Nigel Patrick, James Faulkner. Dir. Andrew L. Stone, USA/UK/Austria, 1972. Colour, 133 mins.

Although a remake of MGM's 1938 version of the film, this movie looks expensive, sounds expensive, has some of the grandest indoor and outdoor locations of any film from this period, and song and dance routines that make My Fair Lady look a little timid in places. Everything including the gold-plated kitchen sink was thrown at it.

Unfortunately, when it was released in November 1972, apart from in Japan, to coin a phrase, it went straight down the kermit. Overall, it was a financial disaster, and was only really overtaken in the red column when Heaven's Gate nearly did for United Artists eight years later. The critics also gave it a resolute thumbs-down. It turned out to be 70-year-old Andrew L. Stone's last film: as producer and director, it cleaned him out.

So what on earth went wrong?

As a concept, it was inspired by the massive reawakening of interest in Strauss' music that came off the back of its use in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), another MGM film. However, as a remake of the 1938 version starring Fernand Garvey and Luise Rainer, TGW was always going to be compared to its forerunner and, although it was hardly a comparison in terms of production values as the previous version was shot in black and white, that version hadn't been all that well received, either. Right from the start, it was a case of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Secondly, 1972 turned out to be one of the most successful years in Hollywood since the early 1960's, and certainly the year when news of California's demise as the capital of world film-making was proven to have been greatly exaggerated. As such, it was up against immortal classics such as The Godfather, Deliverance, Last Tango in Paris, The Poseidon Adventure, What's up, Doc?, und so weiter, und so weiter... and promptly sank without trace.

Thirdly, as a musical, it came three years after Joshua Logan had signalled the end of the age of the big budget musical with Paint Your Wagon, and came well after such barnstorming gems like My Fair Lady, Oliver! and South Pacific. There was only room for one musical movie that year - Cabaret - and, despite its instant allure for some, others found it a bit too risqué to rank alongside The Sound of Music et al. As for "clean" musicals, the genre was as out of fashion in 1972 as drainpipe trousers, as another film of the period, 1973's Lost Horizon, was shortly to find out. Not for the first time, HB had turned up at the party a little too late although there was a big irony in that, in 1979, HB would not only play "Emcee" in a sell-out West Berlin stage production of Cabaret, but claimed years later that he'd turned down an offer to star in the film as his favoured part had already gone to Helmut Griem.

Just as unfortunately, though, whenever someone writes about this film (again, have they watched the bloody thing is the question) it seems to be HB who, as with a few other films, is saddled with the brunt of the blame. It's rather a scant reward when you consider that he actually took violin lessons in preparation for the film, wrenching half of his back muscles in the process, although his playing was largely overdubbed by Carlos Villa. However, one possible reason for HB's own poor reception dates back to a November 1965 interview with Kevin Thomas for the Los Angeles Times, where he said:-

Critics are really useless because it is the public which decides whether a picture is successful or not.

On one level, he had a point. Veteran New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, whose notices often read like he'd had his typewriter ribbon dipped in battery acid, found this out to his cost in 1967, when he pilloried Bonnie and Clyde for the more violent parts of its content. When it turned out to be a worldwide hit, such was the damage to Crowther's credibility that it was part of the reason why he was sacked as the NYT chief film critic only a few months later, after 27 years at the helm. On the other hand, those critics who were left behind, and who caught wind of HB's comment, never forgave him for it, as they virtually never had a good word to say about him between them afterwards. TGW was a prime example: the general tone was that "anybody but Buchholz" could have rescued this film in the lead role. And, with the best will in the world, the public do tend to listen to critics. On that score, HB could often be as unlucky as Crowther, for the opposite reason, although at least it didn't completely bring his career to a halt. He had a thicker skin than that.

TGW is an outstandingly well-made film. The cinematography and the setting are dazzling, the choreography is adventurous - if beyond some of the dancers if you watch closely enough - and the costumes are deliciously over-the-top, with HB turning the rather austere composer into an all-out 19th Century Viennese dandy. Although the script and plot are a tad contrived, this is a musical story given something approaching the "Rogers and Hammerstein" treatment. There are some delightful song-and-dance routines, with the best of them surely the Bierkeller sequence, with a number called Six Drinks in which HB even joins in with the Mike Sammes Singers, although his singing was dubbed by Ken Barrie, who, of all things, was later to become the voice of Postman Pat. Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar, who'd represented the UK at the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest, provided the sung narration to the film.

The film's score, which faced accusations of being far too loud - and it is very loud in places - was written by long time musical partnership George Forrest (1915-1999) and Robert Craig Wright (1914-2005) who had also written the stage musical Kismet.

38-year-old HB plays Johann Strauss II (he's still the only German-speaking actor to do so in the talkie era) from the age of 19 until the aftermath of his stint at the Paris Exposition of 1867 when he was 42, and although his only cosmetic alteration is the reappearance of Felix Krull's shoebrush moustache (try saying that when you've had a few), the film follows him through his wild womanising days until he is captured by Mary Costa in the role of his first wife, singer Jetty Treffz. Mary was, of course, better known as one of America's leading opera singers, the voice of Disney's Cinderella, and who proved, in this film if in no other, that she could also act, doing well enough to be nominated, at 42, for a Golden Globe as best newcomer.

Rossano Brazzi's Italian accent is a little hard to follow in his role as Baron Tedesco, who loses Jetty to "Schani" half way through the film, but that all added to his lingering charm.

TGW was filmed largely on location in and around Vienna in the spring of 1972 with studio scenes filmed at Borehamwood. The Austrian scenery, both in town and country, is as crisp as in The Sound of Music and is an absolute belter in widescreen.

There are a few "small world" sleeve notes to this movie, one of which involves Rossano. In 1955, fresh from his roaring success in David Lean's Summertime opposite Katharine Hepburn, he was interviewed in Rome by Parade magazine. The interviewer asked him to demonstrate his legendary kissing technique, with a French actress who was living and working in Italy at the time. The young lady in question was Myriam Bru, later to become HB's wife.

The second coincidence is that the 1938 version of TGW was directed by Julien Duvivier, who, 16 years later, would give HB his first real break in movies with Marianne of my Youth.

Thirdly, the film reunited HB with Yvonne Mitchell, who had played the unfaithful girlfriend that his merchant sailor character murders at the beginning of Tiger Bay (1959). Here, though, she plays Johann's mother.

Finally, you may well come across another Horst Buchholz in any web searches. In fact, you may well come across several, but one in particular is alive and well, and a bit famous in his own right, Dr. Horst Buchholz, late of the University of Colorado, who happens to be a successful conductor and specialist in religious music. He is absolutely no relation to his actor namesake, for whom "Buchholz" was an adopted surname which he only got when his mother married an east Berlin shoemaker when he was five. Anybody with that surname, apart from his own decendents, is therefore pretty unlikely to be related to him.

This was another film where HB is credited on screen as HORST BUCHOLZ, although some posters and merchandising credited him as BUCHHOLZ.

TGW is probably the biggest entry in the Buchholz "fossil record", and I can give you a few pointers on how to get hold of it if you e-mail me at biowolf73@googlemail.com, but after that you're on your own.

If you can get it, though, sod what the boo-sayers say, it's well worth watching and really quite enjoyable.