Just ahead of Mark's appearance with Walter Kirn, Kat Timpf and Tyrus on tonight's "Greg Gutfeld Show", here's our Saturday movie date:
This column was prompted by readers of last week's. As you'll recall, we marked the centenary of Donald Pleasence by celebrating his definitive cinematic Blofeld. That of course stirred some comment about his other roles. Chris Hall, everyone's favorite Macedonian Content Farmer, writes:
Donald Pleasence was not only an excellent Blofeld, but he and Jim Garner basically stole The Great Escape from Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough.
To which Calvert Whitehurst, a Steyn Club First Week Founding Member from Virginia, adds:
The male bonding (if I may use that word) between James Garner and Donald Pleasence in The Great Escape. I thought those were the best scenes in the movie when I first saw it as a 14-year-old in 1963.
You were ahead of me there, Calvert. The Great Escape is a great Boy's Own caper, and, when you're a boy, you like it for the boy stuff - the planning, the execution, the improvisation, the daring. It usually takes a few more years to appreciate Pleasence and Garner as the most touching relationship in the picture. But the movie is all the better for it.
Pleasence himself was a former PoW, in Stalag Luft I. The Great Escape is set in Stalag Luft III, and based on a true story, although with the usual compressions and composite characters for the sake of effective movie-making. The biggest change derived from the fact that it was an American film, and therefore its American producers wanted Americans in it. Unfortunately, Stalag Luft III held airmen from the British Commonwealth, which meant English, Scots, Canucks, Aussies, Kiwis, South Africans, plus a few Poles, Czechs, Dutch and Norwegians who'd escaped to Britain and signed on with the Royal Air Force. But no Americans. So the producers cast Charles Bronson as one of the Poles, and James Coburn as an Australian, with an accent that rivals Dick Van Dyke's Mary Poppins turn in its mesmerizing distance from its target. But in the end there's no point to shoehorning in Americans unless they're all-American. So James Garner plays a Yank who volunteered for the RAF's Eagle Squadron at the start of hostilities, and Steve McQueen plays a Yank who's a Yank and that's that.
And everyone else is British. The golden age of war movies was about fifteen years after the war, when almost all except the very youngest actors had had some kind of direct experience of the thing and brought a natural ease to their habitation of the roles. The gold standard here is the stiff upper Brit serving as senior officer at the German PoW camp, Group Captain Ramsey. I don't know whether James Donald is simply the best exemplar of the type, or whether he in fact helped create the type. At any rate, almost from the end of the war he was officer material in war movies and often prisoner-of-war movies (he's in Bridge on the River Kwai). He's the perfect iteration of the wry civilized officer whose quiet authority the Germans tended to mistake for weakness. In The Great Escape he walks with a cane, which shorthand tells us that he himself can never scramble down tunnels and up into woodland, and so will not be among the escapees. But, as he informs Herr Kommandant, it is the duty of every man to escape and, if that is not possible, to tie down as many of his enemies as he can in preventing him from escaping. And Group Captain Ramsey will ensure that his men do not neglect their duty.
As Donald Pleasence well knew from his own wartime experience, the Luftwaffe and the RAF had a certain mutual respect for each other and were inclined to treat each other well when one fell into the other's hands. The camp commandant, von Luger, is an intelligent and not unreasonable man: In a different world, he and Ramsey might well have been friends. But the Group Captain and an ingenious squadron leader played by Richard Attenborough have a plan of surpassing audacity: a mass breakout - not of a handful but of hundreds.
Elmer Bernstein's terrific score takes its cue from the Brits - its signature march is like River Kwai's "Colonel Bogey" sideways, and less dotty. We know how these three-hour sprawling-cast epics go: Characters are sketched out in tics and traits and have to connect with us in just a few minutes apiece of screen time. For whatever reason, three Britons are paired with three Americans who were or would become very big stars. Thus Charles Bronson as the token Pole has to be nursemaided through his claustrophobia (not helpful for a tunnel digger) by John Leyton, a UK pop star who parlayed an almost ludicrously morbid hit - "Johnny, Remember Me" - into steady screen work through the Sixties. Steve McQueen bonds with a diminutive Scotsman because they're both scrappy and pugnacious and so are always being confined to the "cooler" together. Jock and Yank discover they also like riding - albeit one on motorcycles, the other on horses. But one actor is a great charismatic enduring acme of cool who can stand there in a crewneck sweater bouncing a ball and millions will queue for hours. And the other's Angus Lennie, a five-foot-one tartan goofball who's never going to be anything other than an idiosyncratic character player if you happen to have a midget role. And yet it is the love of one character for the other that drives McQueen's "Cooler King" to do something insanely sacrificial: escape from the camp - and then return to it with the necessary information from the outside world that will enable hundreds of others to get out too.
Yet even this unlikely couple is breezily outpaced by the third pairing - between a bald beady-eyed nondescript with a bank manager's voice and a star of surpassing good looks and laconic charm. (The physical contrast between English and American cellmate is most precisely framed in the scene in which Donald Pleasence and James Garner play chess.) By 1963, Garner was a household name, from his telly hit "Maverick" and then the romantic comedies that followed: just before he did Great Escape, he'd starred in Move Over, Darling, as a man who finds himself honeymooning with both Doris Day and Polly Bergen: to be sure, there are worse predicaments to be in, but it nevertheless requires a great escape all of its own. On the other hand, Donald Pleasence was a rising character actor whose ordinary mien could nevertheless conjure memorable performances. When he inquires as to the mode of escape, Attenborough replies, "We're going to tunnel", and Pleasence responds with a single understated word: "Splendid." It is to be his very English catchphrase, augmented when especially enthused: "Splendid. Simply splendid."
But that's the point: For Pleasence's Flight Lieutenant Colin Blythe, "Splendid" is a catchphrase; Garner's flight lieutenant, Donald Hendley, is splendid. In contrast to McQueen's crewneck, Garner has a great turtleneck: it's almost as if their agents negotiated all the best knitwear away from the Brits. Pleasence's Colin is an ornithologist: "I suppose you have birdwatchers in the States..? Tea?" But Garner's Hendley has tasted tea just the once - in hospital in England - and he has no desire to repeat the experience.
These are familiar jokes of Anglo-American difference, but, like every inconsequential exchange in Great Escape, they are purposefully deployed. On Attenborough's team, every man has a skill. Hendley's arises from that lazy, natural Garner charm: He's "the Scrounger", the fellow who can talk anybody into coughing up useful materials (cameras, identity cards) or at least things they can trade for useful materials (chocolate, cigarettes, marmalade). Colin Blythe's expertise arises from those beady Pleasence eyes: He's "the Forger", the man who uses the camera and specimen identity card to create plausible new ID for hundreds of his fellow prisoners.
But Colin has a secret he's hiding from his comrades: He's going blind, fast. And a blind man emerging from a tunnel to stagger sightless through the Third Reich is only going to jeopardize prospects for everyone else. Attenborough's squadron leader, the practical Englishman, orders him to stay; Garner, the optimistic American, wants his friend with him - and seals the unlikely bonding by feigning enthusiasm for a cuppa: "Colin, do you have any tea..? Let's have some."
And so, simply because he's James Garner's buddy, a blind man winds up with all the action sequences - jumping from trains, hijacking planes. The end is moving and tragic and stays with you. When you're fourteen, unless you're Calvert Whitehurst, you think the film ends with Steve McQueen on a motorbike. When you're older, you remember the most effortlessly appealing of American leading men and his unlikely English sidekick, and their final scene together.
A quarter century later there was to be a Great Escape II: The Untold Story, which was in fact the story previously told - the escape - but this time using the actual names of the real escapees. None of the original cast returned - except one. By this time Pleasence was a famous screen villain, and so played one of the baddies.
But I prefer not to think about that.
~Mark will see you on the TV in a couple of hours on "The Greg Gutfeld Show".
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18 Member Comments
Darn. I spent the weekend visiting my 94-year-old dad - a WWII veteran who, as he puts it, was along for the ride as a tail-gunner in bombing missions over Japan in the closing months of the war - so I was away from my laptop and e-mail generally. (As a side note, going with my dad to movies set during the war was a regular father-son bonding experience when I was growing up.) So I feel like I'm coming to the party after everyone's already left. But I want to thank Mark for the shout-out - add that I too was deeply impressed by Steve McQueen's motorcycle finale - and note, as others have in this thread, that I was a big James Garner fan going back to his "Maverick" days, which was why I paid so much attention to his scenes with Donald Pleasence and why those scenes stuck with me from then on. Although I've always liked a fine bromance - with no kisses.
One of my favourite films of all time. Now I like it even more.
The friendships that develop in this film are some of the best things in it. Very inspiring to see that sort of thing happening, with the great loyalty in hardship. Every time I watch it I am hoping that this time they make it to Switzerland in that stolen airplane, even though I know it's not going to work.
One incident that was in the book (by Paul Brickhill), has the prisoners logging the entry and exit times of the german guards who wander around the camp looking for suspicious activity. The commandant (or perhaps a senior officer) asks the prisoner who is writing down the times to show him the list. He looks at it and frowns a bit before handing it back. He compared the prisoners' time log with the time reported by his men, and found that there was some cheating going on, so appropriate punishments were handed out.
I first saw this movie in 1969 in a little beach village near Nantes. Visiting cousins. I had taken one year of French, so I didn't follow much of the dialogue (dubbed in French). My most vivid memory of the movie is of James Garner putting his hands up and shouting, "Ne tirez pas! Ne tirez pas." That, I understood.
Angus Lennie's career may have been limited by his diminutive style but, post Great Escape, he became a household name* in the UK by playing the lugubrious chef Shughie McFee in the long-running so bad that it's somehow good soap opera "Crossroads". Another Great Escapee, Gordon Jackson, found similar TV fame in his later years as the butler Hudson in Upstairs Downstairs (a perfectly decent forerunner to Downton Abbey) and Cowley as the head of CIA in the spy drama The Professionals. In true British fashion although both characters had first names they were never used.
* household face would be more accurate as very few were interested in the actors real name. However Shughie was a magnificent character and the inspiration for a generation of schoolboys with pretensions to being impersonators.
I'll put in a plug for Angus Lennie for his work in a cult classic WWII movie, "633 Squadron". Lennie plays the navigator/bombardier sitting beside pilot Cliff Robertson (yet another American in the RAF).
The story and acting are merely OK, but the star of the movie is the DH98 DeHavilland Mosquito, possibly the most beautiful aircraft ever made and definitely the most innovative and versatile aircraft of WWII. The Germans feared and admired the plane so much that they tried to clone it, calling the prototype "Moskito" and they would give credit for 2 victories for any Mosquito shot down.
The movie is helped by a stirring score by Ron Goodwin and the RAF band likes to play the theme from the movie, treating it almost like an unofficial theme song for the service. There's even a conspiracy theory that George Lucas was so taken with the movie that he modeled the attack sequence on the Death Star after the Mosquitos in 633 Squadron. If you search for 633 Squadron Star Wars, you might find a video showing how Star Wars might have been influenced in this way.
You beat me to it, Chris. Lennie plays the same character in 633 as in the Great Escape, albeit trapped in a Mossie cockpit rather than behind a fence.
I also adore the Mosquito. There was a rather dire movie with David McCallum - Mosquito Squadron. The Mossie was the star, but the flick had some turgid love story stuff thrown in to get in the way.
I believe that Lucas modeled Star Wars' battle scenes using WW1 aircraft - Fokker Triplanes and Sopwith Camels.
Agreed about the horrid "Mosquito Squadron". I think that it was stitched together from 633 Squadron outtakes and stock footage.
If I may have an aside... The Mosquito was modified to carry a 6 pounder cannon and was called the "Tsetes" which proceeded to sink a u-boat. And later an amped up Navy version... the Hornet. The Hornet was a favorite of Eric Brown. Brown landed a Mosquito on a carrier (and also the first jet, and the first catapult launch, etc etc) The German Mosquito version failed as their glue wasn't as good as the British stuff.
The Brits always have good names for ships, planes and such.
Too true. They're the ones who gave the P-51 some gonads (by replacing the Allyson with the Merlin) and called it the Mustang.
The German glue problem was caused by the fact that the the one and only factory that made the glue was bombed. I don't know if it was the US or the UK that did the bombing.
I too am a big James Garner fan. I was just a kid of around 8 or 9 when he was Bret Maverick. My dad and I looked forward to Maverick on, I think, Sunday nights, and were sorely disappointed when the week's episode starred Bart instead of Bret. Nothing against Jack Kelly as Bart, but James Garner was special. I can still sing the Maverick theme song "Natchez to New Orleans, livin' on jacks and queens ...."
15 years or so later Garner emerged in one of the best series of all time, The Rockford Files. I have all six seasons. It took a real toll on his health - twenty-some hour-long episodes per season, with Jim in every scene, and getting beat up frequently (though it always took two or more baddies to do it). The series ended when he just couldn't do it anymore, healthwise.
He was liberal in his politics but, I think, quietly so. He passed before the Age of Trump. It would have been a nightmare for me if one of my favorite actors turned old and crotchety and did a DeNIro act on my second favorite president in my lifetime. It would spoil my pleasure in watching Rockford Files reruns.
I might have said I yield to no one in my love for The Rockford Files, Rich, but I'll yield to you. Trivia question: what do Jim Rockford and Tony Soprano have in common? (Answer below.) When I got mono in college, the only things that got me through it were gallons of apple cider (for the calories and hydration, I guess) and daily re-runs of The Rockford Files. The Rockford character (largely Garner's character) deserves honorable mention in the pantheon of great detective characters.
Trivia answer: David Chase. He had a long history in TV writing and producing before creating The Sopranos. One stop along the way was The Rockford Files, where he wrote, among many others, two episodes, "The Jersey Bounce" and "Just a Coupla Guys", featuring New Jersey toughs transplanted to sunny SoCal. Not my favorite episodes (the genres don't mix well), but they're watchable in the way that knowing an ugly duckling will grow up to be a beautiful swan.
Thanks, Josh. If you're into James Garner, and have 3 hours to spare, catch his long interview on emmytvlegends.org. It's pretty much his whole life story up his age at interview, which was 71.
When the Rockford Files come up, for some reason I flash on Jim driving his gold Pontiac Firebird in the Jack in the Box drive through and ordering two Jack Tacos. Jack Tacos could take a terrible toll on your health. He had bad knees too.
In re Bart showing up instead of Bret, how about Beau (Roger Moore) showing up instead of either of the other two. Even though Moore always played his amiable and charming self, could they have found a more unlikely Maverick?
I was particularly struck by a subtle bit of acting when James Donald, as the SBO, is being interviewed for the first time by von Luger. The commandant offers Group Captain Ramsey a cigarette. The British officer looks up at the German and hesitates for a second. He then smiles and accepts the cigarette. I've always been impressed with that attention to detail in the movie.
As for James Garner, I'm an enormous fan and he really perfected the suave, slightly cynical Yank who nevertheless knew who he was and could see the world as it is and not as how some would make it. This is very clear in the delightful screwball comedy "The Wheeler Dealers", which costars the lovely Lee Remick. But probably Garner's greatest tour de force is Paddy Chayefsky's WWII dark comedy "The Americanization of Emily". Garner is a charming, cynical, and cowardly American officer who is a "gofer" for an aging Admiral played by Melvin Douglas. Garner's love interest is a "stiff upper lip" British war widow played by Julie Andrews. As with all of Chayefsky's films, the script's tight and essentially the star of the film. In my opinion, the movie is not only Garner's best, but Andrew's as well.
Anyone in the mood for a little-known gem of a WW2 movie with James Garner, check out "36 Hours" (1965):
"During an American intelligence assignment in Lisbon, Pike is drugged and captured by the Germans on the verge of D-Day. In an elaborately executed ruse [that is, [Nazis disguised as American doctors] tell him the war is OVER, and gee, wasn't that invasion something else, what was it called again, and what was the name of that beach...?], the Nazis attempt to trick him into revealing the details of the Allies' impending attack plan. The outcome of the war rests squarely on Pike's shoulders in an edge-of-your-seat race against time. Rod Taylor co-stars as the psychiatrist assigned to extract the information from Garner, and Eva Marie Saint plays the complicated Anna, a concentration camp survivor forced to play a part in the Germans' scheme.
Agreed about 36 Hours. It's a basic plot line that has been used several times since that I'm aware of. I recall the first season of Mission Impossible (with Stephen Hill as Dan Briggs, the MI force leader) where Fritz Weaver plays an enemy agent who they try to fool into revealing where he had planted some poisonous vials designed to contaminate the water system. Another case was in Star Trek the Next Generation where Cmdr Ryker is made to believe by Romulans that he is now an admiral, but has lost all memory of the past few years.
In both cases, it's some little detail that gives the game up. In Mission Impossible, its a furniture rental sticker on the bottom a chair.
An excellent film with a great premise and a fine cast. Eva Marie Saint was teriffic as the conflicted nurse, transferred from the horror of a concentration camp to lend verisimilitude to the Potemkin hospital that is "treating" Garner. Werner Peters (who had a lock on pompous Nazi characters in the sixties) is evil personified as the ambitions SS overseer of the project. Definitely a guy who, with a little makeup, would have made an excellent Blofeld. And John "Sergeant Schultz" Banner as a pragmatic German home guardsman with a nice line in shaking down escaping prisoners. A really suspenseful and intelligent flick.