Before I go on to my next posting I just want to say how depressed I am over hearing the death of former MPAA president Jack Valenti; who died last week of a stroke at 86. Depressed because I had him on my list of people that I wanted to interview in my proposed book of the movies of the 1960's. I wanted to ask him that one question and that is: "Do you have any regret for creating the rating system since it was to cause backlash; especially after the success of
Midnight Cowboy and do you think the movies have gotten worse since that time?" Now I may never know unless he has the answer in his upcoming autobiography "This Time, This Place". On that subject, that leads to my next topic (while laying on the bed in the room next to our garage last Friday, I thought about what I should right. Then after about ten minutes I knew what I wanted to write next). The 1960's was a difficult time for the movies and in life. Yet it goes back to one event: The murder of President Kennedy.
src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/192/493043647_48c0d60587_o.jpg" width="202" height="246" alt="johnfkennedy1" />To understand this we must understand that it was the focus of two documentaries: John F. Kennedy:
Years of Lightning, Days of Drums; and
Four Days in November.
src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/231/493043653_eea687f442_m.jpg" width="213" height="240" alt="fourdaysinnovember1" />Both came out in 1964. In "The Dream Life" writer J. Hobermon writes a key chapter in his book in which he theorizes that the seeds of Kennedy's death were planning as far back as 1956 (in the dead of the Eisenhower presidency while JFK himself, as a U.S. Senator, was pushing to become Adlai Stevenson's running mate for vice president) when writer Jules Feiffer began to write a column called "Sick, Sick, Sick". As he writes he points out by the end of the 50's the title that Feiffer wrote gave way to comedians like Lenny Bruce, Mort Stahl, Phyllis Diller, Shelly Berman, Mike Nichols and Elaine May; Bob Newhart, and later on with Bill Cosby and Godfrey Cambridge. He also writes that of all the people that became notable in the 60's Kennedy was the only person that could control the decade because he knew where it was going. During the early 60's politics became the hot entertainment subject in plays such as Gore Vidal's "The Best Man" and novels such as "Seven Days in May" (a movie would follow, more about it later on). But Hollywood was leading the pack with movies such as
Advise and Consent src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/205/493043657_2138b8ad7_o.jpg" width="140" height="105" alt="adviseandconsent1" />and
PT 109, which was about Kennedy saving his crew during World War II.
src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/221/493043665_56ff34dd89_o.jpg" width="120" height="80" alt="PT109#1" />Hobermon also points out when
The Manchurian Candidate was released in 1962 (it just so happened that it was released in the middle of The Cuban Missile Crisis)
src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/212/493043667_e781f4c34b_m.jpg" width="240" height="193" alt="themanchuriancandidate4" />and when the movie version of
Seven Days in May went into production it was JFK that gave final approval (according to press secretary Pierre Salinger in Hobermon's book he believed that Kennedy giving a blessing for "Seven Days in May" never happened) for both movies and unaware to him and America that they were the warning shots (pun intended) for his death. Strangely enough, both movies were directed by John Frankenheimer. And when his murder did occur on that tragic Friday on November 22, 1963; as Hobermon explains, America was put into a group of mourning not seen since either the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865 or the death of President Franklin Roosevelt eighty years later (and almost to the day). But this was different since now television was bringing the horror of the event into the living rooms right down to televising the President's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot by Jack Ruby. As Hobermon continues on it was in that weekend that Hollywood was put into a panic as the studios pull the movies
The Manchurian Candidate and
PT 109 from theatres, the release of
Seven Days in May was pushed from December to March 1964,
src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/493043681_e1b790f186_m.jpg" width="240" height="135" alt="sevendaysinmay1" />filming of such movies as
My Fair Lady was put on hold, while Columbia Pictures had to get rid of words related to Kennedy and Dallas in their Cold War movies
Doctor Strangelove src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/190/493048271_9e357b03f1_o.jpg" width="173" height="118" alt="doctorstrangelove1" />and
Fail Safe src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/197/493048275_011e276f5f_m.jpg" width="240" height="138" alt="failsafe1" />(this would happen again after the World Trade Center disaster but the former is more significant since it came with the studios in control). Hobermon also writes that in the months to follow weird things began to happen beginning with The Beatles
src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/202/493048277_c9253b7d9f_o.jpg" width="200" height="141" alt="aharddaysnight1" />exploding onto pop culture, coming to America, and performing on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (as you know their co-lead singer was John Lennon; who like Kennedy would become a martyr) and believes that they this not to help America's problem without Kennedy but they were a pawn to the country's paranoia. Hobermon even makes a crazy theory by saying not since a meteorite hitting the Earth and killing the dinosaurs 65 million years earlier had there been an event that changed society overnight (one to consider is the assassination of Austrian premier Frans Ferdinand nearly fifty years before Kennedy that started World War I) and was more life-changing as the murder of President Kennedy. Still not convinced? Consider this: In the audio commentary to the John Wayne western
McClintock! film historians Leonard Maltin and Frank Thompson make a point in which the movie was released the very same week of Kennedy's death. They also mention that the Production Code was still intact and they come to the conclusion that it began to crack the exact moment the news broke that JFK was shot and killed. In the audio commentary to the movie
Robin and the Seven Hoods Frank Sinatra Jr. tells a rather eerie story that his famous father told him and that was they were filming the funeral scene (of Edward G. Robinson's character) the day before JFK's death and as Frank Jr. explains, his father took a break by sitting on one of the gravestones and when he looked down at the person's name it said: John Kennedy. He also said that his father thought it was amusing but was unaware that his friend would be dead 24 hours later. As a result as Frank Jr. explains, filming was put on hold for two weeks before resuming, and then on hold again when he was kidnapped and his father had to pay the ransom to give him back. So in short JFK's death not only shook up America and sculpted the 60's it also shook the movies into what it was in the decade and what it is now. Or as what JFK said in his inaugural address: "Let us begin."
