RAY BENNETT | movies • stage • TV • music

When Canadian actress Alberta Watson was just Susan

Posted on March 6, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

LONDON – I knew Canadian actress Alberta Watson, whose birthday was today, a long time ago when she went by her first name, Susan. To meet Susan Watson in 1977 was to fall in love. She was 21, beautiful and a force of nature.

We stalked each other around a CBC party when we first met and went out a few times. Then she took her middle name and was Alberta Watson and became a star.

Sadly, our paths never crossed again but you never forget someone like that. I still have the edition of TV Times from January 22 1977 when we put her on the cover. What’s amazing is that she had no TV show to plug. Colleague Wessely Hicks mentioned her role as Aspasia in something titled “Honour Thy Father” and a bit part part in a CBC drama called “Sara” and that’s about it.

Hicks wrote that she is “still aspiring to be an actress despite the dearth of work in the profession” and Susan said, “Right now, there is nothing. Absolutely nothing – not even auditions.”

In spite of that, such was her charisma that we put her on the cover of a national magazine. She told TV Times: “I catch glimpses of what I want to be as an actress. It has become very serious for me. I’m losing the street urchin in me. It bothers me.”

Fortunately, she always stayed in touch with that street urchin and it was part of what made her such a fine actress.

She starred in movies such as “Spanking the Monkey”, “The Sweet Hereafter”, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and “A Lobster Tale” plus TV shows including “King of Kensington”, “Hill Street Blues”, “The Equalizer”, “Law & Order”, “La Femme Nikita” and “24”.

She died in 2015 aged 60. I wish we had stayed in touch.

Posted in Film, Memory Lane, News, Television | Tagged Alberta Watson | Comments Off

20 David Niven movies you should see

Posted on March 1, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

David Niven, who was born 115 years ago today and died aged 73 in 1983, gave Ron Base and me the best quote of all time.

The Oscar-winning British actor was on a book tour to promote his first memoir, the brilliant “The Moon’s a Balloon”, in 1972. Ron and I, who worked at The Windsor Star across the river, went to a Detroit hotel ballroom for a lunch – a hospital fundraiser – at which Niven was to speak. We were told we could interview him afterwards.

Lunch was great because we sat at a table with actress Constance Towers so we encouraged her to share yarns of her films with John Ford. Niven was a masterful raconteur and he spun hilarious tales from his book.

Ron and I repaired backstage to interview him only to be told that he had to leave immediately as he was due in Denver for another speech that evening. He came out to apologise for the mix up and then gave us the best quote ever: “Write anything you like. I’ll swear I said it.”

Always one of my favourite screen actors, Niven was the definition of suave and debonair from his start in comedies such as “Thank You, Jeeves” (1936), in which he naturally played Bertie Wooster (pictured above with Virginia Field and Arthur Treacher as Jeeves), and war pictures such as “Dawn Patrol” (1938).

He might be best known for his role as Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in Eighty Days”, which won five Academy Awards in 1957 including Best Picture. He is perfect and Shirley MacLaine and Robert Newton (pictured below) have their moments although the film is a bloated travelogue stuffed with odd star cameos.

Here are 20 other David Niven movies worth watching:

“The Sea Wolves” (1980) Great fun based on a true story as Gregory Peck, Niven and Roger Moore play former soldiers who are sent on a secret mission in World War II to destroy a Nazi ship based in neutral Goa. Andrew V. McLaglen directs Reginald Rose’s entertaining script with a cast that includes Trevor Howard and Patrick Macnee.

“Murder by Death” (1976) Neil Simon’s Agatha Christie spoof has some wonderful moments from a cast in which Niven is joined by Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers and Maggie Smith.

“The Extraordinary Seaman” (1969) Bizarre comedy that I’ve always been fond of with Niven as the ghost of a drowned World War I sea captain who fetches up with his boat in World War II, helps some American sailors survive and falls for an American woman in the Phillipines. John Frankenheimer (“The Manchurian Candidate”) directs Faye Dunaway, Alan Alda, Mickey Rooney and Jack Carter.

“Lady L” (1965) Ambitious if flawed comedy directed by Peter Ustinov, who adapated a novel by Romain Gary about an ageing woman played by Sophia Loren who recalls the loves of her life. Niven, Paul Newman, Cecil Parker and Philippe Noiret are among them.

“The Bedtime Story” (1964) Comedy Marlon Brando and Niven as conmen who challenge each other to seduce women on the Côte d’Azur such as an heiress played by Shirley Jones. Bosley Crowther in the New York Times said the two actors hit “a comedy peak” and “it is a very funny picture. It was remade in 1988 as “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” with Steve Martin, Michael Caine and Glenne Headley, and later became a successful stage play.

“The Pink Panther” (1963) Niven and Robert Wagner are the jewel thieves in pursuit of the fabulous gem worn by Claudia Cardinale (pictured above) although Peter Sellers steals every scene as Inspector Clouseau. Blake Edwards directs the first of the “Pink Panther” series, which he co-wrote with Maurice Richlin (“Operation Petticoat”, “Pillow Talk”). Henry Mancini, of course, wrote the infectious score.

“55 Days at Peking” (1963) Nicholas Ray epic about American soldiers and British diplomats in the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900. Niven stars with Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner and a very large cast with cinematography by the great Jack Hildyard (Oscar-winner for “The Bridge on the River Kwai”) and music by Dimitri Tiomkin (Oscar-winner for “High Noon”, “The High and the Mighty” and “The Old Man and the Sea”).

“The Best of Enemies” (1961) Smart and cynical comedy about a square-off in the Abyssinian desert in World War II between an Italian captain (Alberto Sordi) and a British major (Niven). Directed by Guy Hamilton (“Goldfinger”, “Funeral in Berlin”), it co-stars Michael Wilding and Harry Andrews atop a raft of British and Italian character actors.

“The Guns of Navarone” (pictured above, 1961) Grand wartime adventure directed by J. Lee Thompson and based on a novel by Alistair MacLean about a group of Allied soldiers who must destroy a giant Nazi cannon so that convoys at sea might remain safe. Niven stars with Gregory Peck, Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, James Darren, Irene Papas, Gia Scala, Richard Harris and Anthony Quinn, whom Peck told me was the greatest scene-stealer in the movies.

“Ask Any Girl” (1959) Frothy comedy about brothers who fall for the same woman although one doesn’t realise it. Shirley MacLaine stars with Niven and Gig Young (“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They”) with the late Rod Taylor also in the cast.

“Separate Tables” (1958) Niven was named best actor at the Academy Awards for his performance as a stiff British Army officer with a secret in Delbert Mann’s version of the Terence Rattigan play about a group of off-season residents of a middle-class hotel at the English seaside town of Bournemouth. Deborah Kerr (pictured above), Rita Hayworth, Burt Lancaster and Gladys Cooper co-star with Wendy Hiller, who won the Oscar for best supporting actress.

“Bonjour Tristesse” (1958) Saucy Otto Preminger story of an unconventional playboy (Niven) and his fetching daughter, played by Jean Seberg (pictured above). Deborah Kerr and Mylène Demongeot co-star in a film whose reputation has grown over the years.

“My Man Godfrey” (1957) Niven is a butler with a dubious past to an American family dominated by women played by such as June Allyson, Jessie Royce Landis, Eva Gabor and Martha Hyer. Henry Foster (“Harvey”) directs.

“A Matter of Life and Death” (1946) Highly regarded surrealistic fable written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger about a World War II bomber pilot who falls in love with a radio contact (Kim Hunter, pictured left) after his plane is shot down. Robert Coote and Richard Attenborough co-star.

“The Way Ahead” (1944) Carol Reed (“The Third Man”) directs a morale-building drama written by Eric Ambler and Peter Ustinov about conscripts who learn about battle in North Africa. Niven stars with a raft of British character actors including Stanley Holloway (“My Fair Lady”), James Donald (“The Great Escape” and William Hartnell (the first Doctor Who).

“Spitfire” (1942) British actor Leslie Howard (“The Painted Desert”, “Gone With the Wind”) directs and stars as the airplane designer who created the famous machine flown by “the few” in the Battle of Britain in World War II. Niven, who left Hollywood to return to England for the war, co-stars with Rosamund John.

“Raffles” (left, 1939) Niven stars as the dashing art- and jewelry-thief and first-class cricketer A. J. Raffles in a caper directed by Sam Wood (“Goodbye, Mr. Chips”) that involves the theft of an Old Master from London’s National Gallery. Olivia de Havilland co-stars.

“Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife” (1938) Directed by Ernst Lubitsch from a screenplay by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder adapted from a play by Alfred Savoir. Screwball comedy on the French Riviera with Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper. Niven co-stars along with the incomparable Edward Everett Horton.

“Dodsworth” (1936) William Wyler’s screen version of the Sinclair Lewis novel about a US industrialist (Walter Huston) and his wife (Ruth Chatterton) who drift apart on a European holiday picked up six Oscar nominations. Niven co-stars along with Paul Lukas, Mary Astor and Maria Ouspenskaya.

“The Charge of the Light Brigade” (below, 1936) The famous tale directed by Michael Curtiz, who gave Niven the title of his second memoir along with other very funny English-language clangers, my favourite of which is when the exasperated director told Errol Flynn (who starred opposite Olivia de Havilland) and Niven: “You think I know fuck nothing, but I know fuck all!”

Posted in Books, Comment, Film, Memory Lane, Recalling ... | Tagged 'Around the World in Eighty Days', 'The Moon's a Balloon', Constance Towers, David Niven | Comments Off

Director Robert Altman on building sandcastles

Posted on February 20, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

I love the movies of Robert Altman, who was born 100 years ago today and died on Nov. 20, 2006, because some are masterpieces and the ones that are not invariably have moments of wonderment and magic that occupy the mind.

A new documentary titled “Altman”, to be released in the UK by Soda Pictures on April 3, illustrates the director’s philosophy that filmmaking is like building sandcastles – you make them and then the tide comes in and washes them away but what you made is in everybody’s memory.

I was at BAFTA in November 2001 when producer Stephen Woolley interviewed Altman for the David Lean Lecture and he said something that I think displays his great wisdom about drama. Wooley asked if there might be a sequel to the well-received “Gosford Park” (pictured left) and Altman said: “I don’t think so. I don’t know very much about endings. The only ending I know about is death, so when you say, ‘Oh, this film has a happy ending’ it means that’s a stopping place, so the couple get married and kiss and walk into their honeymoon bungalow and it fades out. And then a week later, she’s caught with the gardener and he’s killed her mother and there’s a long trial and they all get a terrible disease. So endings are just stopping places and I think that wherever these stories are stopped in these films, that’s all I have to say about them.”

I first met Altman in 1976 when the two of us stepped alone into an elevator in the New York hotel where the junket for “Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson” (above) was taking place following a screening the night before.

He asked if I was there for that and then, as if he’d never made “MASH”, “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” (above), “The Long Goodbye” (below) and “Nashville”, he appeared anxious to know if I’d liked it. I assured him that I loved it and he beamed like a new kid on the block.

At the press conference, “The Tonight Show” writer and comic Pat McCormick appeared as President Grover Cleveland, his character in the film, and he was blisteringly funny about US politics at a time when Gerald Ford was in the Oval Office.

Altman and Newman showed their political stripes too but on the subject of filmmaking they stated that their favourite part of the process was in the preparation, devising the story, developing the screenplay and rehearsals. If they could stop then and not actually make the film, that would be perfect, just like a sandcastle.

On March 2, 2006, Altman was at The Old Vic for first night of his production of the Arthur Miller play “Resurrection Blues”. He lingered in the aisles at the intermission, happy to chat with audience members. I thanked him again for making my all-time favourite, “McCabe & Mrs. Miller”, and mentioned that I had seen “Nashville” for the umpteenth time recently. It had struck me this time that the great character actor Keenan Wynn (above right) as the bewildered Mr. Green was the heart and soul of the film. He smiled as if I’d stumbled on a secret and he said, “Keenan invariably was.”

Altman told Woolley at BAFTA: “Somebody came up and said ‘Which is your favorite film of the ones you’ve done?’ I said, ‘Do you have children?’ This woman said, ‘Yes, I have three.’ I said, ‘Which is your favorite child?’ It’s an unanswerable question because you know about ‘MASH’ and ‘Nashville’ and ‘The Player’, and this and that, but I know about ‘Quintet’ (below), and ‘Streamers’ and films you’ve never heard of. You do tend to love your least successful child the most. But that difference, just because of popularity, does not exist in my soul.”

Nor mine.

Posted in Film, Memory Lane, Recalling ... | Tagged 'Altman on Altman' BAFTA, 'Altman', Robert Altman, Soda Pictures | Comments Off

The time I asked Robert Wagner about mortality

Posted on February 10, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

“What the hell kind of question is that?” It’s 1985 and I’m sitting with Robert Wagner, who turns 95 today, in his luxury trailer on the Warner Bros. lot where he was making the shortlived TV series “Lime Street”.

Two years earlier, I’d had lunch with him in that same trailer on the lot in Burbank where “Hart to Hart” was coming to an end. All around are photos of his family with many of his wife Natalie Wood (pictured below), who drowned at sea in November 1981 at the age of 43.

On the way there, in pouring rain, Wagner’s longtime PR man, George, says: “Please don’t ask him about Natalie or Jill. It’s not that he has anything to hide, it’s just that he has nothing he wants to say.” St. John was an old friend of the Wagners and she had been a steady companion since Wood’s death. (They would marry in 1990).

A sign on Wagner’s trailer door declares: Under No Circumstances Disturb Me. George knocks and we enter. Wagner is on the phone but he bids entry and George disappears. Wagner gets off the phone. At 53, he has become a little stout around the middle but he looks fit. His manner is stern until the smile comes and then there are few actors whose features are more appealingly friendly.

Wagner pours wine but not for himself: “Not when I’m working. I get sleepy.” He has seen me looking at the pictures on the wall but he chooses to remark on the trailer itself, which is the most luxurious you can imagine, and the moment is lost.

Two years later, we’re in the same trailer with the same photos of Wood but the mood is different because of the death of Samantha Smith (pictured below on the right), who was a co-star on the show. She had become famous at age 10 when she wrote a letter to then Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov and was invited to visit Moscow, which she did. She perished with her father in a plane crash just a month before I spoke to Wagner.

I choose my words carefully: I ask him if recent events had caused him to change his attitude toward mortality.

Wagner says, “What the hell kind of question is that?” and he ponders for a moment or two. He says, “So many people have had tragedy in their lives. I think you realise that when people that are very close to you are taken. Life constantly causes you to reassess just why you’re here. You realise that there are only a few things that are really important about being here, and that’s to be good to one another and to care for each other because no one has any control over what is going to be dealt to them in life. That little girl had a lot going for her and suddenly she’s gone. Her father, Arthur, was a wonderful man. They were quality people, believe me. So, yeah, it really makes you realise what’s important. My focus is my family. That’s always on top.”

I met Wagner several times and always found him to be a charming, self-deprecating and amusing gent, the kind who would write a note to your editor if he liked something you’d written. At a media event in 1987 for a TV movie titled “Love Among Thieves”, his co-star Audrey Hepburn was surrounded by admirers and it was impossible to get close. Wagner came to my rescue. We were chatting and he said, “Have you met Audrey?”. When I said no, he created a path through the scrum and so I met Holly Golightly, who was as unflustered and gracious you would hope.

The Detroit-born actor is probably known best today for his appearances on TV shows such as “NCIS” (with Mark Harmon, pictured below) and “Two and a Half Men” and the “Austin Powers” comedies and he’s always been easy-going about his career: “I came to Warner Bros. to try to break into movies and was signed to a picture with Jimmy Cagney called ‘The Grey Line’ or something like that. It was 1946-47, around there, but they had a big writers’ strike and it never got made. I went back to school but everything turns out for the best – you never know.”

In those days, all the major studios had scores of young performers under contract. Wagner worked steadily and it seems now that his career just sailed along in a wide range of pictures of varying quality. There was the title role in the period film “Prince Valiant” (1954), mountain-climbing adventure “The Mountain” (1956) with Spencer Tracy, espionage yarn “Stopover Tokyo” (1957) with Joan Collins, and romantic comedy “Say One for Me” (1959) with Debbie Reynolds and Bing Crosby.

He told me, “I always knew that this was what I wanted to do but I never knew if I would make it. I had a lot of people stroking me over the years — a lot of good people like Spencer Tracy and Elia Kazan who boosted me. I could have gone down. I had a lot of enthusiasm but I don’t think I was really so talented. I don’t think I’ve had all that talent within me that was bursting loose, that couldn’t wait to be seen and captured on the screen. I think I was really fortunate.

“I know what that sounds like, but it’s the truth. It’s the truth. I mean, you look back at some of those pictures and you say, ‘Whew!’ But I kept going and in some of the stuff I was good, you know? Some of the stuff, I was O.K. I look back, and some of it wasn’t so bad for the time. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs. It’s not been particularly a case of not getting the parts that you want but of not working at all.”

In the early 1960s, Wagner moved to Europe and made four movies there – World War II epic “The Longest Day” (1962), Philip Leacock’s “The War Lover” (1962) with Steve McQueen, Vittorio De Sica’s “The Condemned of Altona” (1962) with Sophia Loren, Maximillian Schell and Fredric March, and Blake Edwards’s “The Pink Panther” (1963) with David Niven, Peter Sellers and Claudia Cardinale.

Back in the U.S., he found that he had been forgotten: “When I came back from Europe in the early ’60s, I had a soft spot for a while. I was out of work for a long time. The guy who pulled me out of it was Paul Newman in ‘Harper’ (pictured above). I think I loosened up a little bit in that film too. I’ve been really fortunate to have worked with people who have encouraged me, who’ve said, ‘Come on, you know it’s not gonna be that bad. Do it!’ I was sitting around the other day with a guy who started out in the picture business the same time I did and, I don’t know, it’s a real phenomenon: if you’re there and you keep going, if you just keep punching at it, somehow you stick around.”

Later would come blockbusters such as “The Towering Inferno” (1974) with Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and William Holden and “Midway” (1976) with Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn and Robert Mitchum and TV movies including “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1976) with Natalie Wood and Laurence Olivier, “There Must Be a Pony” (1986) with Elizabeth Taylor, and “Love Among the Thieves” (1987) with Audrey Hepburn.

His TV series “It Takes a Thief” ran for just 66 episodes from 1968 to 1970 but was extremely popular and “Switch” ran for 71 episodes from 1975 to 1978. His biggest TV success was in “Hart to Hart” with Stefanie Powers, which had 111 episodes from 1979 to 1984 and returned in 1993 for a series of TV movies.

Wagner made a TV series in the United Kingdom in the 1979s for the BBC and Universal Pictures titled “Colditz”. A prisoner of war drama set during World War II, it costarred Jack Hedley, Richard Heffer and Edward Hardwicke, shown below standing behind Wagner and David McCallum. The series ran for 24 episodes in 1972-74 but the American actor appeared in just 14 of them.

He told me, “I liked the opening, the first year, but then we had a very difficult time. It started out as a kind of documentary but in the end they had the prisoners out sitting on deck chairs and they’d be singing away. The guys in Colditz never sang; they were starving to death. I said, ‘What is this, a bloody musical?’ I turned my back on the camera and walked out because they took something that could really have been great and put it in the toilet. The reason I reacted so strongly was because I really loved doing it, and I hated to see it wasted.”

Wagner said he had no great roles that he was dying to play, or the book that he wanted to make into a film: “There is no ‘Gandhi’ in my life. I think actors have to take what is dealt to them. You can spend an awful lot of time worrying about what you’d like to do but there’s a lot of good stuff just lying around on the ground if you peck at it long enough and make it happen.”

He was particularly proud of working with Olivier and Wood in the TV version of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (pictured below): “I’ve often said I never thought something like that would happen to me in my whole life. A telephone call comes. I say, ‘What? Tennessee Williams? Larry Olivier?’ I mean, jeez! You never know what’s gonna come down the road.”

Posted in Film, Interviews, Memory Lane, Recalling ..., Television | Tagged 'Colditz', 'Hart to Hart', 'To Catch a Thief', Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood, Robert Wagner | Comments Off

Stuart Margolin and James Garner: ‘a perfect friendship’

Posted on January 31, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

Stuart Margolin, born on this day in 1940, was one of the great screen sidekicks working regularly with James Garner. Traditionally, in film and on TV, there have been two kinds of heroes – loners and those with sidekicks, There also have been two kinds of sidekick. Some sre there only to keep the hero from talking to himself. Others, the great ones, are there to drive the hero to distraction.

Stuart Margolin established himself as James Garner’s sidekick in the great tradition of exasperating sidekicks such as John Wayne’s Gabby Hayes in fifteen films.

‘That’s how I like to think of myself,’ Margolin told me in 1982 for a cover story in Canadian TVGuide. ‘Some guys can take a sidekick, others can’t. Jim didn’t have a sidekick for many years and he doesn’t need one but somehow this has evolved snd I think we work well together.’

Garner did exasperation very well and that’s where Margolin, who knew exactly what a sidekick was for, came in. ‘I have to be eccentric to the point that it gives Jim something to react to,’ he said. ‘He is the probably the best reactor in the business. I can be out there doing all manner of mad behaviour and it’s Jim’s reactions that will give the audience not only his character but my character too.’

Their partnership began when Margolin played a none-too-bright deputy named Mitch Mitchell on ‘Nichols’, Garner’s 1971 western series. Margolin had arrived in Hollywood in 1960 in a road company doing the play ‘End as a Man’ and decided to stay. He was born by the Mississippi River near Davenport, Iowa, but was raised mostly in Dallas, Texas, where his father owned and operated an appliance store.

At 8, he played Puck in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ with a professional company but he thought no more more about acting until he went to New York to live with his older brother Arnold,who was acting on Broadway un ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’.

Taking voice lessons to lose his Texas accent, Margolin gradually won small stage roles leading to the road company that took him to Los Angeles in 1960. There, he dound steady work on TV series such as ‘My World and Welcome to It’ and ‘The Partridge Family’ and acting in movies including ‘Death Wish’ and ‘Kelly’s Heroes’.

In 1970, he appeared in a series of blackout sketches on ‘Love American Style’, a TV series co-produced by his brother Arnold. When Garner’s manager Meta Rosenberg and Frank Pierson, creator of ‘Nichols’, were casting that series, they saw a clip from ‘Love American Style’ starring John Astin, whom they were considering for the role of a deputy.

‘In the scene, there was an actor who was unknown to us,’ Rosenberg told mee. ‘It was Stuart and we both said, let’s see him, he’s terrific.’

When Garner saw the clip, he agreed. ‘It was a sketch in which they ended up slamming a jail door in Stuart’s face and he made me laugh,’ he told me. ‘Anybody who could do that, have a door slammed in his face and make me laugh is doing pretty good.’

The show lasted for just one season but when Garner returned to television as a private eye in ‘The Rockford Files’, Margolin became a regular as Evelyn Martin, a chronic liar and reprobate known as Angel. Rockford had met Angel when he was wrongfully serving a prison sentence for a crime he did not commit and for which he was pardoned. Rockford has a soft spot for his former cell-mate despite his criminal nature. That series ran for seven seasons with Garner winning an Emmy Award as best actor and Margolin two Emmy Awards as best supporting actor.

His Emmy Awards took Margolin by surprise. ‘It sure caught me off-guard,’ he said. ‘You always think that the people who win these things must know people or are well-liked. I don’t hang around Hollywood so it came as a real shock to me.’

Margolin’s sidekick eccentricity found its purest expression in Garner’s reprise of his western show, ‘Breat Maverick’. He played Philo Sandeen, a Yugoslavian who came to the New World, decided that he preferred to live the way the Indians lived and preferred to go by the name Great Scout Standing Bear. Philo Sandeen was much more capable than Angel and more dangerous. Margolin said, ‘After a while, as Angel, it became incumbent to get a laugh on everything I did and I didn’t want to fall into that.’

Margolin, of course, was much more than just a screen sidekick. He was a writer, director, composer and singer. He began directing TV shows in 1975 doing several episodes of ‘Rockford’ and a short-lived TV MTM comedy series, ‘The Texas Wheelers’. He wrote the script and the song ‘The Ballad of Andy Crocker’ for a Lee Majors TV-movie snd he scored seven TV-movies including ‘Evil Roy Slade’. In 1980, he released a country-rock album titled ‘And the Angel Sings’.

He directed the two-hour opening episode of ‘Bret Maverick’, which was the NBC’s highest rated new show of that season. He also directred Garner’s NBC TV-movie, ‘The Long Summer of George Adams’. It was well-received but Garner thought Margolin did not get the credit he deserved. ‘It had the feel of a great European film,’ he said.

Garner was Margolin’s biggest fan. ‘If I had to work with just one actor every day for the rest of my life, it would be Stuart,’ he told me. ‘I just think he’s such a creative and talented actor and I want him around me.’

Margolin died on Dec. 12 2022. Garner died on July 19 2014 aged 86.

Posted in Film, Interviews, Memory Lane, Music, News, Recalling ..., Television | Tagged 'Bret Maverick', 'Nichols', 'The Rockford Files', 'The Summer of George Adams', James Garner, Stuart Margolin | Comments Off

The astonishing range of Gene Hackman

Posted on January 30, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

With most movie stars it’s not very difficult to sort out a Top 10 of your favourite films but Gene Hackman’s exceptional 40-year career has included so many terrific performances in such a wide range of films that it’s impossible. As the retired actor turns 95 today, here’s an extended list of Hackman films from his 99 acting credits that are even more watchable than most.

Obviously there are his Oscar-winning appearances in “The French Connection” (1971) and “Unforgiven” (1992) and his nominated roles in “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), “I Never Sang for My Father” (1970) and “Mississippi Burning” (1989) plus the sequel “The French Connection II” (1975) and pleasing turns in “Superman” (1978) and “Superman II” (1980). But there are so very many more.

I met him once at the Long Beach Grand Prix in 1980 when he was the celebrity winner of the Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race with Parnelli Jones the pro winner. Not known for his patience with reporters, I approached him gingerly as he stood quietly by himself but he turned out to be completely relaxed and happy to chat.

Hackman retired in 2004 after “Welcome to Mooseport” and director Alexander Payne said at a Bafta Q&A last year that he had declined repeated attempts to get him to play what became Bruce Dern’s Oscar-nominated role in “Nebraska”.

It was a great disappointment when he retired but a great pleasure to learn from William Friedkin, who directed the actor in the “French Connection” films, at dinner at the Locarno International Film Festival a few years back, that Hackman was hale and hearty and enjoyed his family and his painting in his retirement home in Santa Fe.

Here’s my list of 20 other must-see Gene Hackman films.

Scarecrow (above, 1973)

My favourite Gene Hackman movie in which he displays his extraordinary ability to be dangerous, sympathetic, vulnerable, and remarkably funny. He plays an ex-convict on his way back east where he aims to open a laundromat but his plans are diverted when he encounters a forlorn ex-sailor (Al Pacino) on the highway and decides to help him find his former sweetheart and their child. Directed by Jerry Schatzberg (“The Panic in Needle Park”), it co-stars Dorothy Tristan, Ann Wedgeworth and Eileen Brennan. Hackman’s striptease in a bar is a joy to see.

The Royal Tenenbaums (above, 2001)

Splendidly enjoyable Wes Anderson saga about the weird and wonderful Tenenbaum family whose estranged patriarch (Hackman) returns to announce that he is soon to die. Anjelica Huston plays his former spouse with Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow and Luke Wilson as their offspring. The cast includes Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Danny Glover, Seymour Cassel, Kumar Pallana and Alec Baldwin. Hackman is marvellous and the entire cast raise their game delightfully.

The Conversation (1974)

Superb and highly praised study of a surveillance expert who comes to suspect that the subjects of one of his assignments will become murder victims. Paced deliberately by writer/director Francis Ford Coppola as the tension mounts, it shows Hackman at his quiet and observant best. John Cazale, Allen Garfield, Federic Forrest and Cindy Williams co-star.

Under Fire (above, 1983)

One of the best films about dirty dealings by the United States in Central America directed by Roger Spottiswoode. Hackman, Joanna Cassidy and Nick Nolte play journalists covering the final days of the corrupt reign of dictator Somoza in Nicaragua in the 1970s. Ed Harris co-stars.

Bite the Bullet (above, 1975)

Richard Brooks writes and directs an epic and hugely entertaining western about a grand horserace across plains and deserts with Hackman as an ex-Rough Rider and a fine cast that includes Candice Bergen, James Coburn, Ben Johnson, Ian Bannen, Jan-Michael Vincent and Dabney Coleman.

Hoosiers (1986)

Hackman plays a basketball coach tarnished by scandal who goes to work at a small town highschool and inspires the team to go for the championships despite local whispers and naysaying. Directed by former “Hill Street Blues” producer David Anspaugh, it’s a gentle and emotional film that co-stars Oscar nominated Dennis Hopper with Barbara Hershey and Sheb Wooley. Jerry Goldsmith also had an Oscar nomination for his evocative score.

Cisco Pike (1972)

Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll set in Venice, CA, with Kris Kristofferson as a faded star whose attempt to go straight after a jail term for dealing drugs is threatened by a crooked cop (Hackman) who blackmails him into another drug deal. Karen Black, Harry Dean Stanton, Roscoe Lee Browne co-star with Viva and Joy Bang.

Prime Cut (above, 1972)

Gritty crime story about a tough Chicago hoodlum (Lee Marvin) who is sent to a cattle ranch in Kansas City run by a flamboyant criminal who uses his mincing machine to deal with miscreants and trades in women (including Sissy Spacek in her debut) that he keeps in his cattle pens. Seedy, sordid and hugely entertaining

Heist (2001)

Tense and inventive story with Hackman as a veteran jewel thief mixed up in a job with people he has no reason to trust. Written and directed by David Mamet, it co-stars Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo, Sam Rockwell, Ricky Jay and Patti LuPone.

Marooned (1969)

Hackman is one of three US astronauts stranded in space in an exciting John Sturges picture that also stars Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen, James Franciscus, Lee Grant and Mariette Hartley. It won the Oscar for best effects that year.

Downhill Racer (1969)

Engaging sports yarn directed by Michael Ritchie about a US ski team led by Robert Redford, who won the Bafta for best actor, with Hackman as the coach.

The Gypsy Moths (1969)

John Frankenheimer’s film of James Drought’s 1955 novel about a July 4 weekend show in a small American town put on by a team of barnstoming skydivers. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr are reunited 16 years after “From Here to Eternity” and the strong cast includes Bonnie Bedelia, Shree North and Scott Wilson.

Twilight (1998)

Hackman, Paul Newman and James Garner star in an elegant and elegiac tale about oldtimers mixed up in a 20-year old murder case directed by Robert Benton, who scripted with Richard Russo. Susan Sarandon co-stars along with Reese Witherspoon, Stockard Channing, Giancarlo Esposito, Liev Schreiber, Margo Martindale and M. Emmet Walsh.

The Firm (1993)

David Rabe, Robert Towne and David Rayfiel make cracking improvements to John Grisham’s thriller about a corrupt Memphis law firm and Sydney Pollack keeps a furious pace. Hackman plays a weak and vulnerable crooked lawyer as newcomer Tom Cruise and his wife Jeane Tripplehorn attempt to bring justice to bear along with David Strathairn and Oscar-nominated Holly Hunter. Hal Holbrook and Wilford Brimley are among the bad guys with Ed Harris as a determined lawman. Terrific Oscar-nominated piano score by Dave Grusin.

Crimson Tide (above, 1995)

Tony Scott directs a version of “Mutiny on the Bounty” underwater in a sturdy and suspenseful drama that pits an old-school taskmaster submarine captain (Hackman) against a formidable younger officer (Denzel Washington) who fears that his boss has lost his judgment. Matt Craven George Dzundza, Viggo Mortensen and James Gandolfini co-star.

Get Shorty (1995)

Savvy Elmore Leonard yarn directed wittily by Barry Sonnefeld about an East-coast hoodlum (John Travolta) who is beguiled by the easy takings on hand in greedy and gullible Hollywood. Hackman plays a not-very-bright producer and the cast includes Danny DeVito, Rene Russo and Dennis Farina. Terrific soundtrack with score by John Lurie.

No Way Out (1987)

Hackman’s on the dark side as a weak politician in Roger Donaldson’s tense little thriller in which a navy officer (Kevin Costner) must beat the clock in the hunt for the real villain after the politico’s mistress is killed. Sean Young co-stars with George Dzundza, Howard Duff and Will Patton in a gripping turn as the politician’s devious but increasingly desperate aide.

The Package (1989)

Andrew Davis, who went on to make “Under Siege” and “The Fugitive”, directs a snappy little thriller in which Hackman plays a veteran Green Beret sergeant whose Airborne Ranger prisoner (Tommy Lee Jones) escapes as he escorts him back to the US. Joanna Cassidy, John Heard, Dannis Franz and Pam Grier co-star.

Full Moon in Blue Water (1988)

A sweet and moving story with Hackman as a widower named Floyd who owns a bar in a small Texas town on the Gulf of Mexico and struggles with a failing business, depression from his grief, and an aging father-in-law (Burgess Meredith) who suffers from dementia. Teri Garr and Elias Koteas play sympathetic workers at the bar with Kevin Cooney as a businesman who aims to take advantage of Floyd’s dilemma.

Night Moves (1975)

Hackman plays a former football player turned private detective who is hired to find the wayward teenaged daughter of a faded Hollywood starlet. Directed by Arthur Penn, it co-stars Jennifer Warren, Susan Clark, Edward Binns, Harris Yulin and Kenneth Mars with a provocative debut by the then 18-year-old Melanie Griffith.

Posted in Comment, Film, Memory Lane, Recalling ... | Tagged Al Pacino, Denzel Washington, Francus Forc Coppola, Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy, Nick Nolte, Wes Anderson, William Friedkin | 2 Comments

John Hurt on the importance to acting of imagination

Posted on January 22, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

At his elegant home in Chiswick in west London, John Hurt, who was born 85 years ago today, smoked cigarettes contentedly and over a long, relaxed conversation, spoke candidly to me about many things including the art of acting.

Michael Radford’s screen version of George Orwell’s ‘1984’, in which he stars, was about to be released and Richard Burton, who plays Inner Party member O’Brien in ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, had died aged 58 that August, so naturally I asked how they got along.

‘I think Richard found that without alcohol privacy was probably an easier way to pass his time but he was still very good with people,’ Hurt said. ‘He always had his arms outwards even when he wasn’t drinking at all, which he wasn’t. In a sense, it was a bit like a wounded bull but then it wasn’t just that, there was the operation on his neck and things that aggravated him insofar as he didn’t have the power just to be who he is. We got on very well. It was almost as if we were contemporaries. It was a very good feeling.’

Hurt said that he and Burton also worked in a very similar way. ‘We switch on and off quite easily,’ he said. ‘Obviously, when you’re doing a very heavy film, you develop a rather unique sense of humour. When you’re not shooting, there are quite a lot of jokes going around, which Richard and I and Michael all enjoyed along with the rest of the cast and crew. I don’t think you’d find that with some of the heavy American stars because they tend to wear it on their sleeve and make you understand that it is damned hard work. I’ve always been of the opinion that it is the imagination that flies. That’s how you take an audience, with your imagination. That, presumably, is what talent is. It’s not endless observation, which of course is page one. Of course you observe, every artist observes whatever they are – painters, writers, musicians. To wear it on your sleeve … I don’t know, it seems to me the justifying something in a kind of way. I don’t quite know what.’

Hurt went on to ruminate about certain Hollywood stars: ‘Robert De Niro makes extraordinary announcements when asked by the press – you never quite know how well it’s reported – but quite clearly when asked about acting he has said, “I want it to be real.” At the time, he was doing “Raging Bull”. This is either a very naive or stupid remark insofar as Jake LaMotta was still walking about. It can’t be real. Jake LaMotta was the real thing and there was no question about it. What you can do is imaginatively create a reality that the audience believes. Then you get Al Pacino saying things like “My constant search is to reach that point where you do not have to act.” Acting all the way, I thought, when he said it. To me, that is page one. Of course that is the impression you wish to give so I know what he means. He means to be able to walk straight into it in a way that it has such a point of reality that you cannot distinguish. But that is the art and it is only the imagination that will get you there.’

He said he didn’t mean that therefore actors should be lazy about observation and research but those things, to him, were the technicalities of being a performer on a high level. ‘These are things you take for granted, it seems to me,’ he said. ‘When Stanislavsky basically invented The Method, it was at a time when the Moscow Arts Theatre was pretty well at a low ebb. It was resting on its ancient laurels and along came a particularly good playwright named Chekhov so something had to be done because on the first reading of “The Cherry Orchard”, they all sat around and said, well, there are no parts in it. Stanislavsky was much too serious for Chekhov anyway, as an aid to imagination. But it was an aid. Imagination in any artist must be the quality that is the envy of the human race, is it not? It must be, because otherwise I don’t think we’d be sitting here talking. It’s not my research that anyone’s interested in. The question always comes down to how do you act? And, of course, there is no answer.’

Hurt died aged 77 on January 25, 2017.

Posted in Film, Interviews, Memory Lane, Recalling ... | Tagged Al Pacino, Chekhov, John Hurt, Michael Radford, Richard Burton, Robert De Niro, Stanislavsky, ‘1984’, ‘Nineteen, ‘Nineteen Eighty-four’ | Comments Off

Martin Shaw hasn’t always been a TV copper

Posted on January 21, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

Martin Shaw, who turns 80 today, is known best for playing TV coppers in “The Professionals” and “Inspector George Gently” but he also has had a long stage career in roles from Stanley Kowalski to Lord Goring to Elvis Presley, and he loves to fly.

The Birmingham-born actor is regarded as a prickly interview subject but when we chatted in 2011 for a story in Cue Entertainment, we got along fine, possibly because we’re about the same age.

Shaw won international fame as Doyle, a young action hero in tight jeans with his hair in a huge perm alongside Lewis Collins as Bodie in the action series “The Professionals”, which ran from 1977 to 1983. The actor made clear at the time his displeasure with “The Professionals” and he had no desire to talk about it now.

Shaw, left, with the late Lewis Collins in ‘The Professionals’

But when I asked him if Doyle might have grown up to be George Gently, the shrewd senior officer with short steely hair and a manner to match, he said: “Good question. It’s hard to answer because Gently is a real person, a real character, and Ray Doyle wasn’t.”

It couldn’t have happened because “The Professionals” was very much a 1970s show while “George Gently”, which commences its eighth season on BBC One this year, is set in the 1960s. Shaw said he was drawn to the role because of the way he was created by writer Peter Flannery in the pilot script.

Gently is a policeman who has been hardened by war and his wife’s murder: “George is an old-time copper. He fought in World War Two and he’s a very tough, seasoned fighter. He knows about hardship and has seen tough times.”

It was intended to be much darker than the series has become, Shaw said executives saw potential in the relationship between Gently and the younger policeman played by Lee Ingleby so it was “softened” for broader appeal: “The pilot ended with the baddie, a very mad man played by Phil Davis, being hanged. The priest said, ‘‘Do you have any last words?’ And he said, ‘Yeah. Make it fucking slow.’ Blackout. That was how dark the pilot was, but it became a different show.”

Shaw as Elvis onstage

Shaw said the 1960s setting has allowed the show to delve into social and cultural issues of the time such as police brutality, capital punishment, racism, wife beating and abortion: “In the UK, it seems to me that necessarily everything stopped during World War Two. From 1939 to 1945, everything stopped. Then, from ’45 to ’60, everything was still at a standstill because we were in recovery. And then, suddenly, there was more than 20 years of movement and progress that developed in about 18 months.”

Before “George Gently”, Shaw had the title role in the legal series “Judge John Deed” for six seasons from 2001 and played writer P.D. James’s forensic detective Adam Dalgleish in “Death in Holy Orders” in 2003 and “The Murder Room” in 2005: “Interestingly, I’ve played more homosexuals than I have cops. But we make a lot of cop shows. It’s just what gets noticed. It’s either an observation or an indictment; it depends on your point of view. You’re either gonna be a copper, a lawyer or a doctor. That’s it.”

As a young man, he was at drama school with innovative artists such as French director Michel St. Denis, British director Peter Brook, and playwright Charles Marowitz. His early work was at the Royal Court Theatre, and with leading theatrical directors William Gaskill and Peter Hall and future filmmakers Roman Polanski and Lindsay Anderson (“O Lucky Man”): “My start, long before ‘The Professionals,’ was with all these people and it was such an exciting time to be an actor.”

He credited a 1974 run in London’s West End as Stanley Kowalsky in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” as a major breakthrough and in 1985 he played Elvis Presley in the long-running play “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” by Alan Bleasdale. Shaw was an Elvis fan but he said the show was a challenge: “I used to sit up until 3 in the morning watching the documentaries … stop … freeze frame … play bits back … and then learn my lines … get up at 6 to learn more lines. It was hard bloody work. There were so many expectations but I was constantly reassured both by [writer Alan] Bleasedale and [producer Bill] Kenwright, and the director Robin Lefebvre, who said, ‘We don’t want an impersonation. This is a performance. Get on the inside.’ It sort of evolved by osmosis and I got to be like him anyway. Then we got the Evening Standard Award, so it was obviously well received and well respected.”

Shaw onstage with Jenny Seagrove in ‘The Country Girl’

Among his greatest stage successes was his appearance as Lord Goring in Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband,” which was directed by Peter Hall and ran on Broadway for 307 performances from April 1996. Shaw was nominated for a best actor Tony Award and won the Drama Desk Award for outstanding featured actor in a play. I saw him on the West End stage at the Apollo Theatre on Oct. 11 2010 in Clifford Odets 1951 “The Country Girl” and he and co-star Jenny Seagrove were outstanding in roles played in the 1954 movie by Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly, who won an Oscar.

A keen aviator who gained his pilot’s licence more than 20 years ago, Shaw has made several documentaries for the BBC about military exploits involving planes such as “Aviators” (2006), “Dambusters Declassified” (2010), and “Jericho” in 2014.

His interest in flying started with his father as far back as he can recall: “I was born and raised in Birmingham no more than a mile or two from Castle Bromwich, which was where they made and assembled and tested Spitfires and Lancasters. From my earliest memories, the sky was always full of aeroplanes. We went flying in an old biplane from Castle Bromwich for 5 bob each (5 shillings in old English money). It just started from that.”

A thoughtful man who prefers country solitude to city life, he reflected on the passage of time. For the “Dambusters” documentary, he navigated a plane as it flew at low level toward the dam of the Möhne reservoire, which was the target of the May 1943 raid by RAF personnel from Australia, Canada and New Zealand. When they landed, he did some pieces to camera and interviewed people at the dam: “I found that incredibly moving; far more moving and disturbing than I’d expected because it was such a peaceful and a pretty place. To imagine that I had been born at the end of a conflict with all of these lovely people around – pushing prams, and having picnics in this beautiful place – and I was part of a race that had triumphantly destroyed this area and killed thousands of people … we all talk very glibly about the futility of war but it’s never been more powerfully brought home to me than being underneath the Möhne Dam and surrounded by lovely people on a beautiful spring day. Time just makes it utterly and completely nonsensical.”

He said he is glad, though, to have lived when he did: “We’ve got the vocal memory; we’ve got the word of mouth. I think we’re possibly the last generation to have that because people after us have got these things (points at my digital devices). My grandmother used to tell me about the Wild West Show. She saw the Wild West Show in Birmingham at Bingley Hall. She saw Buffalo Bill and Chief Sitting Bull. She used to tell me when I was a little boy: ‘He rode up on a big white horse and he had a big white hat and a long pointy yellow beard and long yellow hair, and he reared up on the horse and said, ‘Look over there, ladies and gentlemen, and all the Indians came out led by Chief Sitting Bull.’ And I’ve heard that. It’s living.

The “Dambusters Declassified” and “Jericho” documentaries are available on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAlaPEfcX2Q and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35qsu9HsYos

Posted in Interviews, Television, Theatre | Tagged 'Inspector George Gently', 'The Professionals', Martin Shaw | 1 Comment

Kevin Costner in praise of ‘Cool Hand Luke’

Posted on January 18, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

I’ve been a fan of Kevin Costner, who turns 70 today, since ‘Silverado’ and I’ve liked most of his movies since then even ‘Waterworld’. I was pleased to find that he’s good company back in 2003. He took time out from shooting Mike Binder’s ‘The Upside of Anger’ in London to pay tribute to Paul Newman and his 1967 film ‘Cool Hand Luke’ (pictured below) at an Indyssey Entertainment’s Grand Classics charity screening.

The monthly movie tributes at the Electric Cinema on Portobello Road in Notting Hill, co-sponsored by Sky Movies, benefitted the British Film Institute and featured filmmakers speaking about films they treasured.

Mike Binder, a friend of my good L.A. pal John De Simio, introduced me to Costner at the event. “It’s very difficult trying to occupy the place that Newman, and people like Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy and Steve McQueen filled,” Costner told me. “These are the men whose shoulders we stand on.”

He joked that today test-screen audiences would insist that Newman’s character had to live at the end of “Cool Hand Luke” – “Studios used to be run by entrepreneurs. They made movies they loved and they didn’t change endings. They don’t love their movies today the way they used to.”

Speaking of his about-to-be released western ‘Open Range”, Costner said: ‘It’s not in fashion, especially if you’re trying to make a “comeback”. I don’t feel that way but I’ve heard it said. I’ve had very high and very low moments trying to make original movies. Trying to make an original movie is really hard and whenever I watch a classic movie, I realise that I have to do better.’

Posted in Film, Memory Lane, News | Tagged 'Cool Hand Luke', 'The Upside of Anger', British Film Institute, Electric Cinema, Grand Classics, Indyssey Entertainment, Kevin Costner, Mike Binder, Paul Newman, Sky Movies | Comments Off

Elvis: The man who fell to earth and changed the world

Posted on January 8, 2025 by admin

By Ray Bennett

Little more than 10 years after the end of World War II, Great Britain was a cold, grey place in 1956 when Elvis Presley, who was born 90 years ago today, dropped from the sky. He changed everything.

Recorded music was very rare on BBC Radio in those days and we had to rely on the erratic signal of Radio Luxembourg on our tinny transistors. When 45rpm singles were introduced, pocket money was stretched with each Elvis release.

It was a dark day when he went into the US Army in 1958 and his words on the EP “Elvis Sails” signalled more than departure for Germany. For many of us he was never the same afterwards.

Presley’s descent into dizzyingly awful Hollywood movies in the 1960s was overshadowed by the emergence of British rock and only when he made the NBC special (top picture) in 1968 did we think he’d been saved.

Two years later, I was working at The Windsor Star, in Southwest Ontario across the river from Detroit when it reported that after more than a decade of “splendid isolation”, Elvis Presley was on tour again and would be in Detroit to perform at the Olympia Stadium on Sept. 11: “Even before the show was advertised, the promoters had a two-foot high stack of letters requesting tickets. Although Presley can demand astronomical prices, he has insisted that the top ticket price can be only $10, less than Tom Jones.”

Other tickets were $7:50 and $5. Newspaper colleague (and now the “Sanibel Sunset Detective” crime novelist) Ron Base and another friend snapped up $10 seats and we were among the 17,000 crowd that saw Elvis perform his hits for 45 minutes. At every swivel of his pelvis, a bank of cameras would flash and the screams were relentless. Still, it was an accomplished and exciting show.

On April 6, 1972, Ron and I were back at the Olympia with more friends to join 16,000 even more hysterical fans who went wild with every Presley move. As John Weisman said in his review in the Detroit Free Press, “he didn’t have to sing … all the crowd needed was to see him”.

Still, he looked heavier than he had two years earlier and Las Vegas Elvis was not far off. They played “Thus Sprach Zarathustra” before he entered and when he was done, when the announcer said, “Elvis has left the building”, it sounded foreboding.

Many years later, I visited Graceland with my brother-in-law Charlie Rich Jr. and while it is kitsch, there also is something profound and moving there. As Paul Simon sang, ‘For reasons I cannot explain, there’s some part of me wants to see Graceland’, and I’m glad I went there. I also visited the Sun Records studio in Memphis and stood on the spot where Elvis caught record owner Sam Phillips eye when he recorded a song for his mother.

My ex-wife, Renee Rich, was friends with Knox Phillips, Sam’s son, and they helped me to land an interview with Sam Phillips at his home in Memphis in 1998 for a story for The Hollywood Reporter about Elvis’s belated entry into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Nashville feared that rock ’n’ roll would kill country music in the 1950s and the early fear bred resentment so that for years whenever Presley’s name came up as a candidate for the Hall of Fame, the idea was shot down.” I was always pleased with my headline for that story: “Elvis has entered the building.”

Phillips told me that Elvis always liked country music as he liked rhythm-and-blues and big bands: “He was a person that loved music, period. Elvis, deep down in his heart, wanted to be recognised by country music authorities. He never said to me, ‘Why ain’t I in the Country Music Hall of Fame?’ He didn’t have to ask me that. I knew that it hurt him but he would never tell one person. He did not tell me, and Elvis told me a lot.”

Phillips said they would have “the damnedest conversations” in his office with none of the performer’s “mafia” around: “He just wanted to sit down and talk. Sometimes, we wouldn’t even talk about the damned music business. We’d talk about women, talk about God, talk about what we’d seen and what we felt, and what was going on in the world. Just the greatest conversations. We didn’t pretend to be an authority on any of it. Well, I accused Elvis of being an authority on a woman every now and then, but not too often.”

Posted in Film, Memory Lane, Music | Tagged 'The Sanibel Sunset Detective', Charlie Rich Jr., Elvis Presley, Graceland, Ron Base, Sam Phillips | Comments Off

RAY BENNETT | movies • stage • TV • music

When Canadian actress Alberta Watson was just Susan

20 David Niven movies you should see

Director Robert Altman on building sandcastles

The time I asked Robert Wagner about mortality

Stuart Margolin and James Garner: ‘a perfect friendship’

The astonishing range of Gene Hackman

John Hurt on the importance to acting of imagination

Martin Shaw hasn’t always been a TV copper

Kevin Costner in praise of ‘Cool Hand Luke’

Elvis: The man who fell to earth and changed the world

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