Anybody seeing James Cruze' early talkie operetta-revue melodrama nightmare THE GREAT GABBO, must immediately despair of ever finding a partner-film, a companion piece with which it might be paired. Some films, it seems, are destined to live alone. GABBO, the tale of a horribly arrogant ventriloquist free-falling into insanity, played with barely-suppressed inertia by Erich Von Stroheim, is based on a story by the great Ben Hecht, who ran away before actually writing it, leaving script duties to Hugh Herbert, which is quite a come-down. The IMDb suggests that the H.H. in question is THIS GUY, the infamous "woo-woo" man, whose presence disgraces so many golden age movie romps, but I think the likely culprit is F. Hugh Herbert, prolific author of appalling comedies like Otto Preminger's THE MOON IS BLUE. The same incessant smug goddamn quipping is in evidence.

So, althought the idea may have originated in the brain that powered the hand that held one-half of the pen that wrote The Front Page, what we get is at best echt Hecht. But it is 100% GENUINE HERBERT, as anyone who has struggled through its unpleasantly lengthy, static dialogue scenes can attest.

At any rate, the casting of Erich Von Stroheim as a cross-talking comedian vent act is something that must have been dreamed up on the dipso ward, and the idea of playing out Gabbo's tragedy against the backdrop of a musical revue featuring singing insects and dancing poultry suggests a story department recruited from bedlam.

But do not despair! A worthy counterpart to THE GREAT GABBO exists, and with supreme symmetry the movie gods named it THE GREAT FLAMARION and cast Erich Von S once more as the Great One.

FLAMARION is a much better movie, since it has Anthony Mann behind the camera. It's fascinating to watch him at work, enlivening his dubious material within a tight B-movie schedule, with tension-packed compositions and electrifying camera moves -- except even he can't really get the thing up on its feet, no matter what he does. THE GREAT FLAMARION staggers along, burdened with a script so predictable it's perversely surprising. Von plays a variety act sharp-shooter. Mary Beth Hughes and Dan Duryea are the married stooges who stand still while he blasts cigarettes from their mouths. Hughes seduces Von, but it's nakedly obvious she doesn't love him. Never was a femme so fatale. We wait for her to suggest he bump off her troublesome hubby by cunningly FAILING TO MISS during the act. She does. He does. The deed done and passed off as an accident, he arranges to meet her in a Chicago hotel. We wait for her to not show up.

At this point, we get a surprise! No, she doesn't show up. But Von does a little dance! We weren't expecting THAT. It's like a big hand reaching out of the screen and offering us a cupcake.

Then Von realises he's been had and seeks revenge. He gets it, and dies.

So far, so predictable, but what puts the tin lid on it is the FRAMING STRUCTURE, which makes the outcome clear before the story has even started -- Von lies dying, perforated with his own slugs, having throttled the cheating vixen. Which means the entire movie is a playing out of storylines that have already been tied up. Orson Welles begins OTHELLO with Desdemona and Othello dead and Iago in chains, but he has the benefit of more involved plotting and characterisation, plus he may have assumed the audience would have some familiarity with the story he was telling anyway. The title THE TRAGEDY OF OTHELLO provides a strong hint. The book-ends of THE GREAT FLAMARION constitute a different and much dumber kind of design. They testify to the faint hope of starting the movie with a bang, since if it simply played out chronologically the opening would be unbearably flat and suspenseless. Promise them murder then hope they're too listless to leave their seats.

Mann-fans will nevertheless find much to enjoy in the sharp framing and dynamic camera moves. Von's general absurdity as romantic lead makes him diverting, and like Bela Lugosi he can provide unexpected hilarity with sudden moments of naturalism. And, uniting the film with GABBO once more, there's the thrill of BICKERING -- both films feature prolonged, depressing scenes of married couples sniping horribly at each other, apparently a staple of entertainment in the eyes of the screenwriters.

In the good old days of Classic Hollywood, famous actors and actresses lending their name to products wasn't a big deal. If anything, it was the standard. Unlike today's actors who go overseas to do commercials because they don't want you to know they're doing them, you could flip through any popular magazine from the 40's and see Barbara Stanwyck recommending Chesterfield cigarettes to her friends and fans. Imagine her doing that in today's PC age! She'd be hit with lawsuit after lawsuit by fans who claimed that she encouraged them to smoke and since they're dying of cancer, she should foot their bills. Complete and total madness.

One more interesting thing I've noticed is that in the majority of the cigarette ads, there's also a promotional line for whatever movie they're appearing in at the time. So of course, it begs the question--were these stars really smoking Chesterfields, or were they just sold out to the company by their home studio or agent? Look at Claudette Colbert--she's practically Chesterfield's poster girl, appearing in no less than 4 ads during a span of 6 years! Either agent must have been getting good money from the Chesterfield people or Claudette really loved her smokes.

And of course, look how glamorous they look while smoking and drinking! Honestly, I haven't smoked in about...ten years and I could kill someone from a cigarette right now. For some reason, I'm thinking if I lit up a Chesterfield, I'd somehow look like Rita Hayworth. Yeah, if I had a face lift maybe. And even that's pretty suspect.

But on a personal note, my mother told me that my grandfather's favorite brand of smokes were Chesterfields and he lived well into his 90's, the miserable old coot.

Enjoy!

Chesterfield ads (click on thumbnail for larger version):

Rosalind Russell, Ethel Merman, Tyrone Power, Rita Hayworth

Virgina Mayo, Jane Wyman

Beer (click on thumbnail for larger version):

Edward G. Robinson and wife, Arthur Kennedy, Dan Duryea

Smirnoff Vodka and Jim Beam (click on thumbnail for larger version):

Joan Fontaine and Collier Young, Tony Randall, Harpo Marx, Robert Wagner and Bette Davis

For those of who abstain from vice - Cola and Gum! (click on thumbnail for larger version)

Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford for RC COLA (she's rolling over in her grave), Van Heflin

Note: I collected all these ads over the years off ebay, where you can find many of them for sale. The only thing I did was straighten them out and color correct them

*According to this article, that advertisement of Joseph Cotten is supposed to be aimed at the 1950's gay market. Uh, I really didn't get that. I just thought there was two Joseph Cotten's in one ad. I wonder if he would have posed if he knew that. Hmmmm.

The premise is simple: A plane filled with passengers from different walks of life, crashes in the Sahara. After a few deaths and no rescue attempts, the remaining survivors attempt to rebuild the plane from the wreckage and fly themselves to safety.

I saw the original version last year on the Fox Movie Channel and I expected a good movie--what I got instead was a great movie, filled with interesting characters and a plot twist near the end that will either make you laugh or gasp in horror. For weeks after my initial viewing, I became obsessed with this movie. I must have watched it six times in two weeks. I just couldn't stop. I loved the characters, their problems and the way they banded together despite some serious personality clashes. The story unfolds beautifully, leading to an ending that you won't forget. Some people say The Flight of the Phoenix is a bit too long, but I don't know what you could cut out to make it shorter. All the parts are important.

The majority of the film is mostly dialogue-based and while you might expect a movie of that nature that to be boring, it's not. It's exciting because of the top notch performances put in by Jimmy Stewart, Hardy Kruger, Peter Finch, Ernest Borgnine and Ian Bannen. My personal favorite of the bunch is Dan Duryea, who portrays a meek, religious businessman (a far cry from his villainous days opposite Stewart in many Anthony Mann westerns). This film was also my introduction to Richard Attenborough, an actor I've really come to enjoy over the past year of my ravenous movie consumption. And as always, Aldrich keeps the energy of the film afloat with many different subplots that focus on the personalities of each character. I love Robert Aldrich. Very rarely am I ever disappointed with one of his movies.

Sadly, stunt pilot Paul Mantz lost his life during the filming of this movie and if that weren't disheartening enough, The Flight of the Phoenix bombed at the box office when it was released in December of 1965. In a 1974 interview, Aldrich lamented about it's misfortune: "There are failures you never think are right or justifiable or understandable. For example I put Too Late the Hero, Flight of the Phoenix, and The Grissom Gang in a category that says these are all fine movies, very well made. People understood what they were about, what they aimed to say. They were entertaining and exciting and should have been a success. That they weren't means that something else was wrong besides the way the picture was made. Maybe in another five years Phoenix will break even. I think it deserved to do infinitely better than it did."**

I saw the 2004 remake a few weeks ago and was disheartened by how it lacked in comparison. There are (of course) CGI effects for the plane crash and the PC casting adds a woman to the crew. There's a "music video" sequence to Outkast's "Hey Ya" and somehow, the crew has working power tools in the middle of a desert. But mainly Dennis Quaid is no Jimmy Stewart. The one reason why I loved the original Phoenix so much was because Stewart wasn't a very likable guy. In fact, his Captain Frank Towns is a stubborn jerk whose old methods are being replaced by modern ones and I liked that, mainly because Stewart is always the hero. I love when actors are cast against type because they're fun to watch. Aldrich had plans to use him and John Wayne in a comedy called ...All The Way to the Bank***, but that fell through when Phoenix bombed and Aldrich went on to making The Dirty Dozen instead. A good twist of fate!

One of the highlights (in a film of many highlights) is during the scene where everyone is stuck inside the plane during a sandstorm and Trucker Cobb (Ernest Borgnine) is playing around with his radio. And as he fiddles with the knobs, a faint love song comes across the airwaves. The injured Gabriel (Gabriele Tinti) hears it and perks up; he's desperately missing his sick wife. With a bit of prodding from Towns, Cobb begrudgingly hands the radio over to Gabriel, but smiles as soon as he sees how much happiness it brings to him. See the You Tube Clip here.

The ballad in question is called "Senza Fine." It's sung by perky 60's singer and actress Connie Francis and it has an absolutely gorgeous and haunting melody. The snippet used in the movie doesn't do the song justice. While she's best known for songs like "Who's Sorry Now" and "Where the Boys Are", "Senza Fine" is one of those lost treasures that seem to be forgotten by record companies today. A search on Amazon brings up only one item, an out-of-print cd that includes the soundtrack to both Phoenix and Patton (one copy is selling for almost $160!).

This site discusses it a bit:

"The English version of the LP "Movie Greats" has the song Senza Fine (means Without End) from the movie Flight of the Phoenix. Senza Fine was only done in two versions that is known. There is a single version which is a beautiful release from England on a single and also released on CD there a few years ago. The other is on the LP "Movie Greats of the 60s." Connie did one whole version in English and one in Italian and they spliced in and out different versions."

I found my copy through a file sharing service. This is the version that combines both the Italian and English verses and it has a running time of 3:12 (the version on the Patton soundtrack runs at 2:14 seconds). It took me a long time to find, but when I did, I was beyond thrilled. It's a gorgeous song, one of my favorites and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did when I first heard it:

Download MP3: "Senza Fine (Love Song From The Flight of the Phoenix)" - Connie Francis

Do not direct-link download. Page will open in another window and follow the link from there.

* The picture is scanned in from the book, What Ever Happened to Robert Aldrich: His Life and His Films by Alan Silver and James Ursini. Much of this information comes from this book as well. It's a great read.

** From the book, Robert Aldrich Interviews edited by Eugene L. Miller Jr. and Edwin T. Arnold.

*** ...All The Way to the Bank centered around "two retired safecrackers who steal money from a mob boss's safe deposit box to benefit an old folks home." Aldrich attempted to sell this project to 20th Century Fox, but fell through when he decided to make The Dirty Dozen instead.