Word: mackendrick
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...Lehman was quickly replaced as director by Alexander Mackendrick, a Scotsman just off a prime Alec Guinness comedy, "The Ladykillers." And soon the writer had departed; all the jawing about script changes had given him a spastic colon, and his doctor told him to scram to Tahiti. Per Buford, "Lancaster said, 'Gee, Ernie, I hope we're not the cause of this,' his big arm around the much smaller Lehman's shoulder as he left." (In the movie, J.J. would tell his sister, "Say exactly what's on your mind, dear," his big hand on her upper back like...
...Odets, was a New York boy; Manhattan had been his boot camp, and the dialogue - spit with verbs - "came out of his mouth," Buford writes, "like his own words punched black and blue." He was also the producer and, according to Curtis "wanted to direct that movie." He challenged Mackendrick during the shooting and planned to fire him before the film was edited. Nobody could agree on the final confrontation; Odets was ordered to rewrite it three times. Lancaster wanted this verbal shootout to be between the two male stars; Mackendrick insisted it be with J.J. and his sister...
...collision of the scurrying nebbish (Sidney) and the soaring predator (falcon)! Sidney is the protagonist of "Sweet Smell of Success," originally a novelette by Ernest Lehman, published in 1950 in Cosmopolitan. Seven years later, the story, rewritten by playwright Clifford Odets, was made into a film directed by Alexander Mackendrick and starring Curtis as Sidney and Lancaster as the Winchellesque columnist J.J. Hunsecker - another fabulous name, for an Attila who sucks the honey out of his minions and spits it into print. Last week, transformed into a John Lithgow musical, "Sweet Smell" opened on Broadway, that tatty, irresistible tenderloin where...
...Cahn served his time, then emigrated to Israel. He never again saw Walda; she never again spoke to her father. But the old hustler had wreaked his revenge, if only post-mortem. As Gabler writes: "Walter had ruined Cahn's life. Now, by inspiring Lehman's novella and Mackendrick's movie, Cahn had helped sully Walter Winchell's name forever...
Young Actress Baxter, adroitly steered by Mackendrick through a delicate and provocative role, manages to project both tomboyish pluck and the elusive boldness of a child grown prematurely wise. In a fit of terror, the girl murders a Dutch hostage taken by the pirates, thus setting the stage for the film's incisive postlude. Safely delivered to England, her former captors gone to the gallows charged with her crime, Emily, like any pretty English schoolgirl, stands by a pretty English pond watching a toy sailboat drift away. Only the eyes reveal that within her child's body dwells...