We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
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We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
Now on to Stuart Whitman’s video, and I see that Bob has left a lot of interesting thoughts on this one. Whitman always reminded me a bit of James Garner, but more rugged and without the sense of humour. Though he never became a major star, his heyday was during his contract with 20th Century Fox between 1958 and 1966, particularly after he raised notice courting Gary Cooper’s daughter (Diane Varsi) in Ten North Frederick. In the late 60s, after his contract with Fox ended, Whitman had some success on TV with the Cimarron Strip western series. It’s a shame that after that he began appearing in increasingly mediocre B-films and TV movies (though I also liked City Beneath the Sea when I first saw it) . Whitman was a personable and capable leading man who made a good action hero and could be a fine dramatic actor when given the chance, as suggested with performance in The Mark, which was already pointed out by Bob (I have unfortunately never been able to actually see The Mark, a British production, which is rather hard to get a hold of in North America, but I’m aware that Whitman received strong reviews on that one, as evidenced by his Best Actor Oscar nomination).
Of the Stuart Whitman films that I have seen (not counting The Longest Day where he had a small role), my favorites are Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and Sands of the Kalahari, in which I found Whitman was very effective as a ruthless survivalist (you don’t feel bad when the baboons get him in the end). Whitman also looked impressive next to the Duke in The Comancheros and next to Richard Boone in Rio Conchos. Also interesting were the psychological thrillers, Shock Treatment and Signpost to Murder. Favorite stills in Steve’s video: Whitman fighting the baboons in Sands of Kalahari, Shock Treatment, The Mark, and apparently taking some time off to play chess with Wayne and Steve Forrest in The Longest Day.
HI PHIL Excellent take on the careers of Whitman, Johnson and Boone – very well-articulated. You seem to have a great overview of a great number of important movie careers. Please keep providing them for us.
I HAVE seen The Mark but I don’t know how well it fared with audiences generally as The Work Horse doesn’t include it on his Rod Steiger page, possibly because it’s a British movie [which I hadn’t realised before – thanks for that info] and often even Bruce can’t pick up Brit box office stats, though to his credit he gives us many more of them than you will find on other sites if the are listed at all.
All reviews that I have seen of The Mark are positive. For example Steve gives it a healthy 76.5 rating and IMDB has a similar rating of 75%. Better yet! – in his profile of Rod Steiger Joel Hirschhorn gives it 4 stars and as you may know to followers of this site that is equivalent to The Royal Seal of Approval!
Stuart was not an important star in 1961 [to the extent that he ultimately was] so although he has the lead in the film he was 2nd billed to Maria Schell as Steve’s poster shows, though following Whitman’s rise to prominence some later posters did give him top billing. Richard Burton and Jean Simmons were originally scheduled for those two parts.
Thanks Bob, much appreciated. I did at some point enjoy writing mini-bios as a hobby.
I assume The Mark would have made at least a modest impact in the US, given Whitman’s Oscar nomination, but obviously the subject matter was not a commercial one in 1961. I have tried to purchase the DVD from Canada, but the only copies available were incredibly expensive, except the ones from Britain which do not play on a North American player…not sure what’s up with that movie, so consider yourself lucky to have seen it!
HI PHIL
Hard luck about The Mark. I have never seen it getting a re-run on TV either, though there are so many repeat-movie channels nowadays that it is easy to miss one particular re-run.
I find it interesting that you wrote mini-bios at one stage. I hope you weren’t as scathing and vitriolic as that awful Joel Hirschhorn fella. I think that Bruce and Flora currently do some review work on other sites. You know our Work Horse – even OVERWORK doesn’t satisfy him!
Take care.
Hey Bob and Phil….just dug a little deeper…..I would say the movie got a very limited release….maybe played in only the big cities of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. Enough to get the critics excited about the movie while not even showing the movie to the public. IMDb only has about 750 votes on the movie….that is a very very small number. So I am thinking the subject matter has people shying away. That makes me sad for Stuart Whitman…..he gets an Oscar nomination for the movie….and almost nobody actually saw the movie. Good stuff.
Thanks Bruce for looking into the release of The Mark. and the additional info. Yeah, it’s probable the film was not widely distributed in the US due to its taboo subject. 750 votes on IMDB is small, but for 1961, not THAT small I think. Maybe the film will come back at some stage. The Children’s Hour, which was released the same year and dealt with the social reaction to a possible lesbian relationship was not a a commercial success upon its release, but I see it now has 12,800 votes on IMDB.
Hey PhilHoF17…..you might be right about The Mark getting some more attention in the future. Though the star power of Steiger and Whitman is it as strong as Garner, Hepburn and MacLaine.
Thanks again Phil. It’s a crying shame The Longest Day didn’t look as colorful as some of the production stills I’ve seen. The decision to make it in monochrome was so they could seamlessly incorporate actual WWII footage. I briefly had a colorised edition of the film on video tape but it was in the wrong ratio (full screen) and I take my film ratios quite seriously. For years I hated pan and scan TV transfers. Luckily movies on DVD and Blu-ray are in their correct aspect ratios, and on TV too now, most of the time.
Hi Steve, I have seen the colorized version of the Longest Day, but having grown up on the B&W version, it didn’t look quite right to me. But I know what you mean about the film ratios. For years, I did not realize the parts of the shots I was missing in some movies until I saw them in their actual ratios on DVD!
Hey Steve and PhilHoF17….The Longest Day in color? This is the first that I have ever heard of that…..now that would something I would like to see….even if it looks slightly “off:. Good breakdown on Stuart Whitman’s movie career by Mr. Phil. Good stuff.
I’m following up on my Richard Boone comment with a few words on Don Murray….though I have to be careful now that I know that Bruce hated Murray in Bus Stop, he may decide to delete my comment ;). I thought Murray did pretty well in that role and deserved his Oscar nomination though of course Marilyn Monroe is the real star of that film. After his promising debut in Bus Stop, Don Murray went on to start in some interesting, social dramas and westerns between the late 1950s and early 1960s, notably as a drug addict in A Hatful of Rain, a student getting mixed up in with the IRA in Shake Hands with the Devil, and a socially active man of the church in The Hoodlum Priest. After peaking in 1962’s Advise and Consent (my favorite Murray film – good job on the rating!), his popularity and quality of his films slipped rapidly, perhaps because he became too mature to play the earnest, somewhat innocent young man he initially became famous for. However, as he became harder with age, his role in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was perfect for him, and the shot of Murray surrounded by the apes is the best still in Steve’s video in my view.
Other interesting shots: with Brooke Shields in Endless Love, in The Viking Queen, The Plainsman, The Bachelors Party and with Cagney in Shake Hands with the Devil. Favorite films: Advise and Consent, A Hatful of Rain, The Hoodlum’s Priest, Bus Stop (sorry Bruce :)), These Thousand Hills, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Shake Hands with the Devil. All in all, the video provides a brief but excellent representation of Murray’s film work.
Ahoy Phil! You’re the Don Murray fan! I knew I had a chat with someone here about him a few months ago. I remember wondering why you were a fan of this actor and here I am creating a video tribute to Murray, life is full of surprises. 😉
Happy you liked the video, much appreciated.
Hi Steve,
Between your video on Richard Boone and Cogerson’s new page on Ben Johnson, iconic, tough western character actors are having a good run this week! Though, as compared to Johnson, Boone also had many roles outside of the western genre. Ultimately, Boone was more successful as a TV star, in Medic and especially as Paladin in the Have Gun Will Travel. Afterwards, he did have a number of important film roles, usually playing second lead or as co-star of a bigger star, but his success on the big screen was more limited.
Memorable shots of Boone in your video: with John Wayne in Big Jake, with Richard Widmark in Halls of Montezuma, with George Hamilton in A Thunder of Drums, and the very last shot by himself. The Garment Jungle is an interesting poster for the time. While there is not one film that particularly stands out for me, among the ones I have enjoyed are The Alamo (with Boone have a brief but notable role), Rio Conchos, The War Lord, Hombre, and The Shootist.
Great work as always. Will follow up tomorrow on Don Murray and Stuart Whitman, two actors that I wish would have attracted more attention.
Hey PhilHoF17…I won’t hold your liking of Murray’s performance against you. Obviously….many people agree with you. Besides…it would not be any fun if we agreed all the time like Bob and I do…lol.
Hi Phil, many thanks for checking out my Richard Boone video, glad you liked it.
I love that last shot of craggy-faced Boone on the video. 🙂
Commendably as your lead-in reveals Stuart is still around at the age of 91 though his last acting performance was around 71/72 in the year 2000 when he had a supporting role in the Chuck Norris made-for-TV actioner The President’s Man.
Best POSTERS in your Whitman video – FL = foreign language. (1) Night of the Lepus, co-starring Stu with my Rory (2) FL for Shatter (3) Last Escape (4) Eaten Alive! (5) Captain Apache (6) China Doll [“This is the first time in ages that Victor Mature has given ANY kind of good performance.” 1950s critical review] (7) White Buffalo (8) 2nd one for Strange Shadows (9) The Mark (10) Shock Treatment (11) Story of Ruth (12) Signpost to Murder and (13) FL for Longest Day.
I thought that you gave us an exceptionally strong run of STILLS in this video, my personal pick being (1) Night of Lepus (2) Strange Shadows (3) lobby card These Thousand Hills (4) Shock Treatment (5) lobby card for Story of Ruth (6) lobby card for Rio Conchos (7) Sands of the Kalahari (8) lobby card for Comancheros (9) The Mark and (10) with The Duke again in Longest Day.
A solid 97.5% rating in my book. “Voted Up”
From about 1961 until 1971 Stuart Whitman had I think his most solid run of leading man roles but he never made the real Big Time and as things stand he is ignored in the 1983 book that terrifies guys like me on this site and sadly Stu has so far has earned no WH love.
Stuart won an award for 5th Best Movie Newcomer in 1959 and overall is credited with 3 awards and 3 noms. One of the noms was for the 1961 Comancheros but his co-star The Duke actually WON the award for Top ACTION star of the year for his own performance in that movie.
Another of Stuart’s nominations was for an Oscar for 1961’s The Mark in which he played a convicted child molester. That role which was probably his most artistically prestigious was originally meant for Richard Burton.
I think though that I will most remember Stuart for the Wayne movie and with Sir Stanley Baker in 1965’s Sands of the Kalahari. In that one he plays a rather unpleasant big game hunter character whom the lovely Susannah York at first despises but then yields to his preliminary advances against her will, after which she says to him “In future you can have me,” to which he replies “I’ve ALREADY GOT you!”
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia and quote, much appreciated.
Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
Like you I remember Stuart Whitman best from The Comancheros and Sands of the Kalahari, in the latter a group of plane crash survivors are terrorized by vicious baboons, it was produced by Stanley Baker.
Whitman was the star of the TV movie City Beneath the Sea which had a theatrical release here in the UK on a double bill with one of my favorite Heston movies The Omega Man, so I ended up watching One Hour to Doomsday, as it was retitled, a number of times in the early 70s.
Only one Whitman movie scored 10 out of 10 from my sources – The Longest Day. One more scored 9 out of 10 – The Mark. Six movies scored 8.
According to IMDB – thanks to good financial investing, Whitman had amassed a personal fortune of $100 million as of 1998. Which probably explains why he says he doesn’t need to act to make a living in the opening quote on the video, but has a passion for acting.
Two top 40’s and a top 36 next week. 116 movies. The oldest film from 1929.
HI Steve\
Thanks for the feedback and loads of additional information.
I look forward to next week’s offerings.
Meanwhile have a good weekend and keep safe.