Peter Viney's Blog

The Carpetbaggers
1964

Directed by Edward Dmytryk
Based on the 1961 novel by Harold Robbins
Produced by Joseph E. Levine
Screenplay by John Michael Hayes
Music by Elmer Bernstein

George Peppard – Jonas Cord
Alan Ladd – Nevada Smith
Carroll Baker – Rina
Bob Cummings – Dan Pierce
Martha Hyer – Jennie Denton
Elizabeth Ashley- Monica Winthrop
Lew Ayres – Mac McAllister
Martin Balsam- Bernard B. Norman
Ralph Taeger – Buzz Dalton
Archie Moore- Jedediah
Leif Erickson – Jonas Cord Senior
Audrey Totter – NYC prostitute
Arthur Franz – Morrisey, airplane designer
John Conte – Ed Ellis, film director

The 60s Retrospective series

 

Released: April 1964 in the USA, October 1964 in the UK

See also my review of the later prequel: Nevada Smith

The Carpetbaggers book and movie opened up viewers for the explicit sex references in Peyton Place (1964-1969) and you can then draw a line on to Dallas and Dynasty. It was on the dirty books list (look at page 217-219) at my grammar school, but fell well short of both Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Ulysses. The salacious element must be high, because I just opened the book at random … at page 217 … and it is indeed an entertaining read for teenage boys. I notice that the movie stills on line are more explicit than the film – more bare flesh is revealed. The censors might have got funny about the film. Stills they could get away with. I rather like the Spanish title Los Insatiables.

My research MA was on Hollywood & The Novel. I dug out my thesis. Rightly, The Carpetbaggers is only mentioned in passing. My subject was writers in Hollywood, and the interface between novelists and playwrights and the industry that recruited them as screen writers. The Carpetbaggers isn’t “about” Hollywood at all even if we do get to see a few hard-nosed business deals and a touch of casting couch.

Back in 1961, the parallels were being drawn between the novel and real people. Howard Hughes, factory owner, aviator and film producer, is the most obvious reference for Jonas Cord.  Rita Marlowe, his stepmother / sex object / film star, is supposed to be inspired by Jean Harlowe. The name’s a clue. Then there are a few actresses who had a dodgy past involving light porn films and even gossip, rumours or lies about once being “professional,” and as the replacement star, Jennie, is also blonde, Marilyn Monroe was probably in Harold Robbins mind. Robbins said in interviews Cord was based on Lear of Lear Jets fame, but no one believed him … and Hughes was alive and powerful. Not many people own a tool manufacturer, then are award winning pilots who start an aviation company and an airline, while buying up rundown Hollywood Studios. Hughes was from Texas, The fictional Jonas Cord is from Reno, Nevada. Both are outsiders in Hollywood … or ‘carpetbaggers.’ Hughes also invented the underwired brassiere for Jane Russell for use in the film The Outlaw, but the film missed that one.

A carpetbagger was an outsider, a Northerner, in the post-bellum South after 1865. They came with just a small holdall (carpetbag) and bought up Southern homes and businesses at knockdown prices, thus profiting from Reconstruction. That’s what Cord is doing in his business deals.

It was filmed at Paramount Studios, late in 1963. There are many luxurious interiors and they don’t have windows with views. I imagine the props department were constantly resetting the same studio space to be different hotel rooms or luxury homes or luxury offices. The large white car Jonas Cord swans around in is, I believe, a Cord, possibly a minor in-joke.

We noted that the dialogue is better than average, and actor articulation admirably clear. Neither are minor virtues.

The story

It is heavily truncated from the book, so much so that they had planned to make the Nevada Smith prequel from the start. In the film, Nevada Smith dies. In the book, he doesn’t and has the last page or so. Alan Ladd plays Nevada Smith and was to have starred in the prequel. He died shortly after filming The Carpetbaggers. I wonder if he was already sick towards the end, necessitating the change.

It’s 1922.

Jonas Cord Jnr. (George Peppard) flies in to his dad’s factory in Reno in his own plane. He gets into a row immediately, and dad (Jonas Cord Snr.) has a heart attack and dies, making Jonas 90% owner of the plant. He immediately wheels and deals to eliminate the 10% shareholders. (Howard Hughes dad died of a heart attack when Hughes was nineteen, placing him at the head of Hughes Tool …)

We need to learn two things about Jonas. Never call him Junior. Never use the word crazy in any context whatsoever in his presence, say ‘Hey! Let’s go dancing. That’s a fun crazy idea!’ This will be explained.

Jonas goes to visit his stepmom, Rina. He brought her home as a girlfriend and Senior took over and married her instead. Junior (whoops!)  has the hots for her in a bad way, but also hates her. They fall onto the bed (This is the start of the trailer):

Rina: Anyway you want me … Love me … love me … love me…
Jonas: What for?
Rina: You know you want me more than anything in the world.
Jonas: I just wanted to see how far you’d go before your late husband was cold!

At one point, he opens a darkened room and gazes sadly, even madly, at child’s toys. The old family retainer, Jedediah (Archie Moore), interrupts. Is this Citizen Kane’s Rosebud moment? Or just a reference to it. The only stock Jonas won’t buy belongs to Nevada Smith, a cowboy who basically was a father-figure to him from age five onward. This will be explained in the prequel.

Lobby card: Jonas (George Peppard) and Buzz Dalton (Ralph Taeger). The men keep their clothes resolutely on in this film.

Jonas is a cold fish. His only interest is the factory and his ideas for building bigger long-distance passenger planes. He employs his old pilot friend, Buzz, and says they’ll start “International Airways” even though none of the planes can fly far enough to get abroad … yet. (Hughes … Trans World Airways was initially merely local.)

Rina: How do you like my widow’s weeds?

This is a film where the women make all the running and the male lead really prefers looking at airplane blueprints. He pays Rina off – buying her shares. She goes off to Paris to live a happy and hedonistic life. This results in her falling off a chandelier and being hospitalized.

Meanwhile, Jonas destroys a business rival, Winthrop, and marries his daughter, Monica  (Elizabeth Ashley). In real life, George Peppard had an affair with Elizabeth Ashley while making the film and married her right after filming. George Peppard was clearly a man attracted to beautiful women then, so needed all his acting ability to play the totally asexual Jonas Cord.

Lobby card: Elizabeth Ashley as Monica, George Peppard as Jonas Cord

Monica gets tired of Jonas’s incessant travelling and living in hotels and wants to settle down and have children. She rents a house and tells him … and he instantly clears off. No children! This will be explained later.

(This is the Hollywood novel bit. I probably should have included it, but in 1970 you couldn’t rent films like this, just extracts from the BFI on 16 mm (which indeed I did) and they leaned more towards Intolerance than The Carpetbaggers.)

Nevada Smith has become a Western movie star. Rina returns, now after Nevada who is quite rich and quite famous, is a sartorial disaster. His idea of cowboy clothes is Hopalong Cassidy or Roy Rogers, white suits with elaborate green embroidery.

Nevada Smith (Alan Ladd) and Rina (Carroll Baker)

Rina wants Jonas to finance a film about Nevada’s past life … Why? … this will be explained in the prequel. Norman Studios had started the film, but it must be 1927 to 1929, because talkies have come in so they need a script and to re-shoot. Jonas takes a 50% share in the studio.  Jonas has suggested they need a female element for a change too. Jonas watches a scene, and the girl is Bernard Norman (studio boss)’s mistress. She’s inept.  So Jonas kicks a studio light over.

Jonas: Get her off this set. She’s fired.
Norman; Miss Randall has a contract. You know that!
Jonas: She must have signed it in your bedroom.

Jonas decides that sex-bomb Rina, who never stops acting in real life, will be perfect for the role. He employs her even though she has never been on screen. Jonas hires Nevada’s agent Dan Pierce (Bob Cummings) to rewrite the script, then tells him to write up Rina’s part and diminish Nevada’s part. In a sensible move, he suggests that Nevada dress in trail-worn real Western clothes and abandon the Rhinestone Cowboy look.

He then sacks the director, Ed Ellis, and takes over directing himself. Bernard Norman vows to revenge himself. He refuses to sell his share of the company to Jonas.

Jonas invites Monica to his hotel, knowing she is hoping for a reconciliation. He invites Rina fifteen minutes earlier and starts kissing her as Monica walks through the door. It is a deliberate humiliation. He is forcing her to divorce him. She agrees, only to discover she is pregnant. In the maternity hospital, Jonas demands to know if he’s the father. She tells him to go. This will be explained later. At some point Monica contacts Jedediah and asks him how Jonas became so cold and cruel. This will be explained later.

Several years pass. Rina is now a huge star. Nevada is on the way down, though he and Rina are now married.

Dan Pierce gets the news that Rina has been killed in a car crash. He tells Bernard Norman, who offers him 20% of the deal if Pierce helps him. Norman, feigning heart problems, goes to Jonas and offers to sell his half. Jonas buys, then they tell him that their major asset, Rina is dead.

The distraught Jonas hits the bottle and wakes up in a New York room where an older prostitute has been caring for him for seven days.

Several years later (again)

War is on the horizon. There’s discussion about building bombers instead of passenger planes. Jonas contacts Monica. Her father used to run an aviation factory. He wants to find him.

Back in Hollywood, Pierce is seeing his call girl, Jennie Denton. He suggests she screen tests for Jonas.

Trailer: JennieDenton. Nice looking in furs. Better looking without them! Nice girl … until she was fifteen.

He sees at once that she is a sex symbol. We recycle the previous set up. Monica plus their daughter arrive to speak to Jonas.

Martha Hyer as Jennie Denton

Jennie walks out of the bedroom clad only in a fur stole (the movie ad at the time). Exit Monica because of a bare.

People are leaving Jonas, fed up of his cruelty and tyranny. He sets up Jennie to marry him. Ah, but Pierce then blackmails Jennie with an old porn film. He has many copies. She races to confess to Jonas. He doesn’t care. He’s researched her past anyway. He knows she was raped by three boys in a park when she was fifteen. He knows she was a prostitute, he’s seen the porn film twice. He doesn’t care … Jennie leaves, distraught (in the book she becomes a nun, but not in the film).

Nevada comes to see Jonas  and tells him he’s … wait for it … CRAZY. There is a huge, spectacular, brilliantly choreographed fist fight that wrecks the room. Nevada confronts him with his past …

HERE IS THAT EXPLANATION!

Yes, it’s all cod psychiatry. Think back to that child’s room. That was Jonas’s twin brother, locked away because he was CRAZY. He hated his father, Jonas Senior, for locking up the crazy brother who died aged eleven. He fears women and commitment because he fears a child will inherit this craziness gene.  This is why he was frantic to do things before he lapsed into craziness too.

He contacts Monica. He has bought a house for them. He has to explain BUT … Jedediah had told her about the locked up crazy twin years ago. (They miss a nice potential twist and double twist from the novel). The child they have is healthy and normal. “I need you, I love you” is exchanged in an incredibly unconvincing ending.

THE DVD

I wish I’d seen it on DVD. We recorded Talking Pictures and spent ages fast forwarding through adverts!

THE SOUNDTRACK

 

Elmer Bernstein soundtrack. The expected cool jazzy meets film theme style. I’ve never seen one on sale nor heard it separately. It’s not worth much either.

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

See also my review of the later prequel: Nevada Smith

A Taste of Honey (1961)
The Young Ones (1962
Some People (1962)
Play It Cool (1962)
Summer Holiday (1963)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
What A Crazy World (1963)
Live It Up! (1963)
Just For You (1964)
The Carpetbaggers (1964)
The Chalk Garden (1964)
Wonderful Life (1964)
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1965)
Gonks Go Beat (1965)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Catch Us If You Can (1965)
Help! (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Nevada Smith (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
Girl On A Motorcycle (1968)
The Bofors Gun (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
Medium Cool (1969)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)
Performance (1970)