THE FILM
DIRECTOR: J. Lee Thompson
SCREENWRITER: Carl Foreman
FILM STARS: Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas, Camilla Sparv, Keenan Wynn, Julie Newmar, Ted Cassidy, Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Massey, Burgess Meredith, Anthony Quayle, Edward G. Robinson, Eli Wallach, Eduardo Ciannelli, Rudy Diaz, Victor Jory
COUNTRY: USA
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Will Henry
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Corgi
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1969
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1964
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Western
WORDS: A big, sprawling, ripe film. A semi international big name cast (Americans, Egyptian Sharif, Swede Sparv, Englishman Quayle), a big budget and a lot of action (some absurd) about various obsessives looking for the fabled “Mackennas Gold”.
Producer / screenwriter Carl Foreman teams up again with director J. Lee Thompson (they did “Guns of Navarone” together with Peck in 1961). Westerns weren’t Thompson’s strength though he did the strange but appealing “The White Buffalo” in 1977. What Foreman can do is “big” ((Guns of Navarone (1961), Taras Bulba (1962), Kings of the Sun (1963)) and one on one violent “action” (he worked with Bronson a lot in the 70s and 80s). This film has big images, and big locations, this would have been visually stunning on the big screen, though no less ripe.
The cast is great and treating it with fun. Telly Savalas, Keenan Wynn, Burgess Meredith, and Eli Wallach have to be watched, normally, to make sure they don’t trip over into excess. Here, they aren’t. And it works, as long as you don’t take it seriously.
Quincy Jones did the soundtrack with, as to be expected, jazz side notes. It is “big” and very 1969. The title song (“Old Turkey Buzzard”) was sung by José Feliciano and (composed by Quincy Jones with lyrics by Freddie Douglas (a pseudonym for Carl Foreman)). José Feliciano did a Spanish version of the theme song “Viejo Butre” for the Spanish-language version of the movie.
Will Henry churned out many western novels, all readable and above the pulp level. His skill was in telling a story quickly and adding flavour and detail amongst the gunplay. I assume, in part, because he was a screenwriter. Henry was born “Henry Wilson Allen” and wrote, as Heck Allen, many Tex Avery MGM cartoon shorts in the 30s and 40s before turning to writing. The novel was based on the legend of the Lost Adams Diggings (a legend about a teamster named Adams and some prospectors in Arizona who were approached by a Mexican Native American named Gotch Ear, who offered to show them a canyon filled with gold) and is similar to “Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver” (1939) by J. Frank Dobie, a collection of tales about the fabulous treasures of the Southwest, based on the same legend.
The film made a lot on money in the US but not enough to cover its cost. It was however a smash internationally. Apparently, in India (allegedly) it was the highest grossing Hollywood film ever until the 1990s and was re-run in cinemas often, and in the Soviet Union (where it was first shown in 1973) it stands fourth in the all-time rankings of foreign film distribution. I can see why it would be popular in India – it is Bollywood ripe and the Russians love an epic.
It may be a simple story but have I mentioned the film is “big”.
LINKS
TRAILER
Title song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A7dxZiSZjw
Title song in Spanish (which I prefer)
I never understood how the same director also directed Cape Fear.
True … though he did “big action” spectacle a lot.
I look forward to your post on “Taras Bulba”. A cracking movie.
Yup … we all have positive 1970s TV movie memories of “Taras Bulba”. A film I watched no so long ago, again, and it still hold up. I think I may have the novel.