This movie was directed by Robert Butler, who also directed the pilots for Star Trek, Hogan’s Heroes, Batman and Hill Street Blues as well as four Kurt Russell Disney movies — Guns in the Heather, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, The Barefoot Executive and Now You See Him, Now You Don’t — and also Night of the Juggler and Turbulence. What a career!
It was written by William Bast, who had already written about his five-year relationship with James Dean in his book James Dean: a Biography and The Myth Makers, a drama about what Bast saw as the publicity-mad funeral of Dean and the damage it did to his family and hometown of Fairmount, Indiana. It was a TV movie in England and an episode of NBC’s Dupont Show of the Month as The Movie Star. He also wrote The Legend of Lizzie Borden, The Valley of Gwangi and The Betsy as well as creating The Colbys.
Bast is played by Michael Brandon in this movie. Strangely enough, in the 50s, Butler worked at CBS Television in charge of the studio audience ushers. James Dean got a job there through Bast but was soon fired by Butler. The movie also has someone else who knew Dean. Christine White, who plays a secretary, met Dean when she was his agent’s typist. She was his girlfriend from 1951 to 1954 and the two successfully auditioned for the Actors Studio. In the movie itself, White is played by Candy Clark.
There’s an interesting cast here. Amy Irving is a young Marilyn Monroe, Meg Foster plays another of Dean’s rumored lovers, Dizzy Sheridan (who went on to write Dizzy & Jimmy: My Life with James Dean: A Love Story, play next door neighbor Raquel on ALF and Jerry’s mom on Seinfeld) and strangely in the way that movies are, she was married to Stephen McHattie at the time, the actor who plays Dean.
Plus you get Jayne Meadows as Reva Randall, Katherine Helmond as Dean’s agent Claire Forger, Brooke Adams as Beverly and Julian Burton as Ray.
Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.
Anthony Steffen, born Antonio Luiz de Teffé von Hoonholtz and also known as Antonio Luigi de Teff, was born at the Brazilian embassy in Rome in what is known as the Pamphilj Palace. His noble family came from Prussia, with his great-grandfather being the Great Baron of Teffé and his father Manoel being a Formula One racer and a Brazilian ambassador. His grandaunt, Nair de Teffé von Hoonholtz, was the first female caricaturist of Brazil and wife of Brazilian President Hermes Fonseca. And yet his teen years were filled with war, as he and his family worked with Italian resistance fighters against the Nazis.
From 1965 to 1972, Steffen became the Italian Clint Eastwood, showing up in 27 Italian Westerns like Django the Bastard, Arizona Colt Returns, A Few Dollars for Django and Viva! Django as well as giallo movies such as Crimes of the Black Cat, The Killers Are Our Guests and Play Motel. He retired to a jet set life based out of Brazil.
Shango (Anthony Steffen) has been framed for the death of a telegraph operator. That man just happens to be the only person that can inform a small Mexican town that the American Civil War is over, which allows Major Droster (Eduardo Fajardo) to keep the war going and lording over the people. Shango hangs from a wooden cage until Fernandez (Attilio Dottesio), his daughter Consuelo (Barbara Nelli) and son Pedrito (Giusva Fioravanti) help him to escape. Droster allows his henchman Martinez (Maurice Poli) to attack the people of this small Mexican barrio and this won’t stand. Shango must get his revenge and somehow goes from PTSD POV to avenging killing machine in moments. And it all ends in fire and self-sacrifice.
Giusva Fioravanti went from being a child star to — along with Francesca Mambro — becoming a leading figure in a far-right terrorist group, Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari. His brother Cristiano had joined a far right youth section at the age of 13 and Giusva joined as well to protect him. But even a year in the U.S. didn’t make him any less violent or devoted to the cause. Along with his girlfriend Francesca Mambro, they had no real ideology but still caused plenty of mayhem, including potentially being behind the Bologna Massacre in 1980 that killed 85 people. Today, Fioravanti is a writer for Il Riformista focusing on human rights and the criminal justice system in Iran and the U.S.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn
Chances are if a ‘70s movie was shot in any of The Boroughs of New York City during the 1970s, it will remain relevant and engaging today, if only because it represents a time in the city’s history when the grit, grime, spit and piss on the pavement was matched only by the interesting people standing on it in porn theater doorways and alleys leading to Heaven and Hell .
Hustling (1975) has more going for it than that, but it also contains a few baffling moments. Especially viewing it for the first time in 2023, when there are entire YouTube channels showcasing candid interviews with actual sex workers and pimps.
The made-for-TV movie, based on the book by Gail Sheehy, for whom Lee Remick’s character Fran Morrison acts as the author’s avatar, tells the story of a journalist covering the story of several sex workers in midtown Manhattan. In real life, Sheehy wrote the piece for The New Yorker. Here, it’s called New York Magazine. That piece was expanded into book form and the book was adapted for television.
Jill Clayburgh, in her breakout role, plays Wanda, a sex worker with a Brooklyn accent despite having grown up in Cleveland, Ohio. We follow her and her friend Dee Dee (Melanie Mayron) in their day-to-day existence, earning large amounts of cash they willingly hand over to their pimps lest they suffer the physical consequences. The women spend a lot of time in and out of jail. That’s where Fran meets Wanda, who at first refuses to speak with her on the record, and later changes her mind for $50 per hour. A tidy sum even today.
As Fran grows more attached to her subjects, she begins to feel pangs of guilt for exploiting them for content, but she never crosses the line into developing a full-blown savior complex. A refreshingly honest portrayal of parasitic journalists like Gail Sheehy, who earned a ton of money and won awards for the project while the subjects’ lives remained unchanged. Misery porn has always sold well with the bourgeoisie and sadly, continues to do so today.
Hustling portrays Sheehy as a typical example of a writer, who, regardless of their sex, lived such a privileged life that she misses the desperation that drove these women to sex work in the first place. Then, in turn, the two female screenwriters created street characters that are well-fed, free of drug and alcohol addictions and “bravely” living the lives that bored suburban stay-at-home parent of the day fantasized about.
It’s a good script overall, but some of the dialogue was way off base for the female experience, even in ’75 when the script was still so new it still smelled of typewriter ink. Take, for example, Fran’s bold statement, “There isn’t a woman alive who hasn’t had the fantasy of going into a room with a stranger and selling herself for money…or the nightmare.” Holy shit.
Because it’s a TV movie, it only shows a small portion of the spit, piss and grit of ‘70s. I’d love to see a harder-hitting theatrical adaptation of this book. One that allows audiences to smell the scenes as well as feel them. A movie that shows Dee Dee pissing in alleyways with her baby screaming in hunger in its stroller next to her. One that shows and the track marks on Wanda’s arms and that doesn’t wimp out on showing her getting beaten up by her pimp. One where the characters discuss their genital herpes and follows one of the main characters to a trick an hour after an abortion high on Ketamine.
Instead, we get a romanticized scene where Morrison looks on in amazement as Wanda berates the younger Dee Dee after social services take Dee Dee’s baby away and then pivots to cheering her up by making her dance to a song on the jukebox. Remick plays the scene well with eyes full of wonder, but I wonder…did Sheehy really need to get close to real life sex workers to fully grasp their humanity? Did she think they were animals before?
The success of this movie lies in the performances. Remick and Clayburgh excel. They filled the supporting cast with recognizable working actors from the day including Alex Rocco (The Godfather) and Jeffrey Kramer (Jaws, Halloween II) playing jaded cops and a pre-Rocky Burt Young as a sleazebag hotel proprietor who steals a stolen ring from Dee Dee.
The scenes at the police station are among the grittiest and best in the film, with the hopelessness of cleaning up the city’s corruption on full display. Of course there are untouchable politicians and businessmen bankrolling the sex trade and it’s the women made to suffer! Another big shock for Fran that further explores her naivety.
In the end, none of the powerful guys are held accountable, of course. Wanda goes back to her hometown to live with her brother but it’s not clear at all that she will succeed. For ‘70s New York City, nothing changes and the world rolls on.
Overall, it’s a good movie, but it’s also infuriating. It’s a view of street life as interpreted through the eyes of a journalist with a kink for what she thinks is a “brave” lifestyle but has no fucking clue the level of desperation required to enter the sex trade and the ferociousness required to survive it.
The film is available from Mill Creek or on YouTube here:
Along with What’s the Matter With Helen?, this movie is one of the two collaborations between writer Henry Farrell and director Curtis Harrington. It was the ABC Movie of the Week on September 22, 1970 and has stood the test of time as one of the better TV movies. And there’s some stiff competition for that.
Shot in just 12 days, it stars Anthony Perkins as Allan Colleigh, who has psychosomatic blindness after an accident — he left paint cans too close to a fire — that killed his abusive father and scarred his sister Katharine (Julie Harris from the 1963 version of The Haunting).
After Allan returns to their home after time in a mental hospital, he’s convinced that everyone is out to get him, including a new boarder with speaks in a hoarse whisper and one of his sister’s ex-boyfriends on the phone.
Joan Hackett — who was in two great TV movies, Dead of Night and The Possessed— appears as Allan’s former girlfriend. She gets caught up in his mania as rooms of the house explode into flames and he’s kidnapped by that mysterious ex.
How Awful About Allan has plenty of actors as comfortable on the stage as they were on the big or small screen. Perkins agreed to wear special contacts that completely made him blind so that his performance would be more realistic.
This didn’t get great reviews when it came out, but do the movie we love ever do?
Don’t have the box set? You can download this on the Internet Archive.
James Devlin (Steve Forrest, Mommie Dearest) survives his own hanging and decides to become a hero, defending Carrie Gault (Sharon Acker) from Lew Halleck (Cameron Mitchell). There are some fun supernatural elements in this, as this is nearly the TV version of High Plains Drifter and was intended to be a series that would follow Devlin across the West as he tried to make up for his past sins.
Director Michael Caffey had a long career directing TV and even did an episode of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Writer Andrew J. Fenady wrote Black Noon, Terror In the Wax Museum and Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus, which has Charles Bronson play Francis Church, the publisher who wrote to a young girl named Virginia to explain Santa Claus. He also developed the TV shows Hondo and The Rebel.
Based on the book The Fastest Gun in the Pulpit by Jack Ehrlich, this ABC TV movie has Ernie Parsons (Marjoe Gortner) escaping the noose and taking the identity of a murderer holy man. He heads off to take over that man’s church, a job he really knows nothing about, but it’ll keep him alive hiding out for a while.
While there, he finds himself standing up to the man who has taken over the town, Mr. Ross (David Huddleston). It’s not totally noble, as he falls for the daughter of a man Ross has murdered, Sally Underwood (Pamela Sue Martin).
Jeff Corey is in the lynch mob at the beginning and Slim Pickens plays Billy One-Eye, who helps Ernie. Plus, Geoffrey Lewis is a hired killer named Jason McCoy who comes in to take out Ernie and they end up missing each other at close range and then decide to just go their own way.
Directed by Daniel Petrie (Moon of the Wolf, A Howling In the Woods) and written by William Bowers (Support Your Local Sheriff!), this isn’t the finest ride into the West you’ve seen, but it’s pleasant and I always love Gortner.
A celebration of the wildest and weirdest that action cinema has to offer, the hosts of the Really Awful Movies podcast take you on a fun-filled pilgrimage through the nuttiest movies in the genre.
There are a hundred movies in this book and I love that the creators didn’t just go for the expected but got some of my favorite action films in here. If you love Cannon or Italian action, you’ll love this.
Jesse & Lester – Due fratelli in un posto chiamato Trinità (Jesse & Lester – Two Brothers In a Place Called Trinity) starts Richard Harrison as woman-loving, gun shooting Jesse Smith and Donald O’Brien as Lester O’Hara, a God-fearing Mormon. They’re also half brothers who have inherited land from their uncle and must kick gold prospectors off the land. Not just other people who want the gold but rustlers using slaves to get the gold. They also get involved in gambling on boxing, which means that Jesse has to fight in the ring to get their gold back.
Jesse is running from a series of fathers angry that he’s impregnated the daughters and has the dream of opening his own bordello while Lester wants to open a church. These are not mutual goals, but they must work together. Anne Zimmerman also plays Elena Von Schaffer, the love interest of Jesse. She’s also in The Sister of Ursula, Camorra and The Bloodstained Butterfly.
Director Renzo Genta worked with Harrison to write and direct this movie. He’s better known as the writer of movies such as Concorde Affaire ’79, Last Cannibal World and Day of Anger.
This is episodic and, as you can imagine, trying to be a Trinity movie. Harrison and O’Brien are good, but they don’t reach their inspirations.
The Art of the Classic Western Movie Poster presents poster art created for several hundred classic Westerns produced from 1903 to 1978. More than 800 images — many reproduced as full page — make this the most comprehensive book of Western movie poster art ever published — or so the press release says.
The book attempts to explain America’s fascination with the Wild West from dime novels and pulp-fiction magazines to radio and finally movies. Each chapter devotes a special feature to a specific Western star, writer, director, stuntman or leading lady. The book also has firsthand interviews conducted from as far back as the mid-1970s.
Obviously, if you read this site, you know how great a book like this will be for your collection or to display. I can’t wait to get it and look through these full page posters.
This hardcover book will be available from Schiffer Publishing in March of next year. You can get more information and preorder here.
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