Elizabeth and Burton arrive in England to appear in the Oxford University Dramatic Society’s production.
At rehearsals for Doctor Faustus in Oxford
Elizabeth was stunning in the movie but, many thought, out of place.
The movie was released in the U.K. in 1967, but Columbia Pictures, the film’s U.S. distributor, dragged their feet about releasing the movie and it did not make it to theaters stateside until February 1968. For all the high-minded intentions of the entire company, Doctor Faustus was a total failure in reviews and at the box office. Elizabeth’s supreme glamour was appreciated, though not seen by many as appropriate to the production. But the greater criticisms were directed at the manner in which the play had been truncated and liberties taken with the dialogue. Reviews noted that in the scenes representing the Pageant of the Seven Deadly Sins, two sins were missing and in the remaining five Marlowe’s original words were inexplicably interspersed with passages from the author’s other works, including Edward II and Tamburlaine.
Doctor Faustus, Elizabeth and Burton’s sixth film together, was their first that was not a hit. After one film apart they would be back together, removed from classical settings.
REVIEWS
“In spite of Christopher Marlowe’s deplorable failure to provide her with a speaking part, Elizabeth Taylor manages to steal the devil’s own thunder in Doctor Faustus.”
—Newsweek (J. M.)
“Probably one of the most desperately non-commercial enterprises in motion picture history, this Doctor Faustus derives from the Taylor-Burton foray into Oxford last year. The result is a curio unlikely to recover its negative cost.”
—Variety (“Otta”)
“The whole enterprise has the immense vulgarity of a collaboration (almost Faustian, really) in which Academe would sell its soul for a taste of the glamour of Hollywood; and the stars are only too happy to appear awhile in the pretentious friar’s robes from Academe. The Burtons, both of whom act themselves as carried over from The Comedians, are clearly having a lovely time; at moments one has the feeling that Faustus was shot mainly as a home movie for them to enjoy at home. One or the other of them is almost constantly on camera—in various colors, flavors, and shades and lengths of hair. Miss Taylor, who never speaks a word, plays almost all the female parts, from Faustus’s devil wife through Helen of Troy and Alexander’s Paramour. In this last role, she is, for some reason, frosted all over with silver—like a pastry, or a devaluated refugee from Goldfinger.”
—The New York Times (Renata Adler)
Reflections in a Golden Eye
JOHN HUSTON-RAY STARK/WARNER BROS.-SEVEN ARTS
CAST
Elizabeth Taylor Leonora Penderton
Marlon Brando Major Weldon Penderton
Brian Keith Lt. Colonel Morris Langdon
Julie Harris Alison Langdon
Zorro David Anacleto
Gordon Mitchell stables sergeant
Irvin Dugan Captain Murray Weincheck
Fay Sparks Susie
Robert Forster Private L. G. Williams
CREDITS
John Huston, Ray Stark (producers); John Huston (director); C. O. Erickson (associate producer); Chapman Mortimer, Gladys Hill (screenplay), based on novel by Carson McCullers; Aldo Tonti (photography); Toshiro Mayuzumi (music); Stephen Grimes (production design); Bruno Avesani (art director); William Kiernan (set decorations); Vana Caruso, Edward Folger (assistant directors); John Cox, Basil Fenton-Smith, Leslie Hodgson (sound); Russell Lloyd (editor); Dorothy Jeakins, Anna Maria Fea (costumes); Alexandre de Paris (Elizabeth Taylor’s hairstylist); Frank LaRue (makeup)
RELEASE DATE: October 13, 1967
RUN TIME: 108 minutes, color
SUMMARY: Major Weldon Penderton is a strictly disciplined (though occasionally violent) army officer whose latent homosexual desires make him indifferent to his sexy wife, Leonora. Leonora, who is also given to violent displays, is having an affair with the higher-ranking Lt. Colonel Morris Langdon. Langdon, too, is married. His wife Alison’s failure to have a child led to a mental breakdown during which she sliced off her own nipples. While Langdon carries on his affair with Leonora, his wife is comforted only by her effeminate male best friend, Anacleto. Penderton, meanwhile, has taken an interest in young Private Williams, whose unusual habits include riding horseback naked and spying on Leonora. Williams’s continued obsession with the major’s wife ultimately leads to a tragic finale.
REVIEWS
“Reflections in a Golden Eye, John Huston’s version of the late Carson McCullers’ novel, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Julie Harris, and Brian Keith, is a picture of superlative performance, occasional marvels and psychopathia sexualis. Brando has never been greater. Brian Keith and Elizabeth Taylor are superb. . . . It is the kind of picture that brings bated breath almost to the end.”
New York Post (Archer Winsten)
“[Miss Taylor] is erratic, showing genuine arrogance and cruelty in some scenes, but too often letting her bitchy housewife be merely postured and shrill. . . . The fact that the script of Chapman Mortimer and Gladys Hill follows Mrs. McCuller’s book down to this melodramatic murder may be commendable as fidelity, but it does not do well for the significance and plausibility of the drama itself. Neither does Mr. Huston’s odd and pretentious use of color to convey the notion of reflections in a golden eye.”
—The New York Times (Bosley Crowther)
“Elizabeth Taylor, her beautiful violet eyes glazed by weird photography, plays a hussy, a bold, vulgar woman, belittling and loathing her impotent husband, Marlon Brando, whose face is expressionless in an unearthly glow.”
—New York Daily News (Wanda Hale)
Elizabeth and Brando. The force of their star power alone would have made the film a classic, but the highly unusual drama that unfolds earned it a cult following.
As Leonora Penderton, in one of the most offbeat films of her career
notes
PLAYING THE PART OF AN ARMY OFFICER HARBORING suppressed homosexual tendencies while married to a sadistic, sexually voracious wife, was far from the most coveted role of the year for an actor in 1966. Neither Richard Burton nor Lee Marvin wanted the part, though Elizabeth remained fascinated by the idea of translating Carson McCullers’s Reflections in a Golden Eye to the big screen. McCullers’s story first appeared as a serial in the October–November 1940 issues of Harper’s Bazaar, and was subsequently published as a novel in 1941. The book’s themes of homosexuality and voyeurism, among a host of other explosive topics, made it impossible material on which to base a film at the time. When Ray Stark and John Huston conceived of making it into a film in the more permissive mid-’60s, Elizabeth agreed to do it, with or without Burton. His declining the film made it the first on which she worked without him since BUtterfield 8.
Both Elizabeth and Burton thought Brando a fine choice as costar, though working with him was an interesting experience, to say the least.
Elizabeth lobbied to get former costar and dear friend Montgomery Clift hired for the movie. Clift’s physical frailties were well known, and doors were closed to him in terms of insurance required for him to make the film. Elizabeth wanted him for the role so badly that she was willing to forego a portion of her salary to insure her friend. Clift’s death from a heart condition at age forty-five, in July 1966, shocked Elizabeth and put Reflections in a Golden Eye on hold for the next few months. When production commenced in October 1966, Marlon Brando was in the lead role. Director Huston filmed scenes with some of his cast in Long Island, New York, before the company left for Rome for the balance of the production. Elizabeth’s clout was such that she could ask that the film be made at De Laurentiis studios in Italy, even if the story’s setting was an army post in Georgia.
Still in costume for Reflections, Elizabeth and Brando made a small Italian film to promote blood donation. Each started the drive off by giving a pint.
A film crew at work. Director John Huston stands behind the ca
mera. The scene shows Elizabeth, Brian Keith, and Julie Harris. Brando is hidden by Huston in the background.
Both Elizabeth and Burton thought Brando a fine choice as costar, though working with him was an interesting experience, to say the least. Elizabeth recalled years later, “He was full of rubbish and tried to intimidate you, but I wasn’t scared of him. . . . He’d forget his lines and right at the end of the take, ask [the director] ‘Can we do another one?’ So you start all over again and then he’d get to the end of it and then have to keep doing it again until he was happy.”
Peopled by a cast of characters that were intriguing, though far from likable, while playing out an altogether sordid story, Reflections in a Golden Eye did not find a huge audience. Further alienating viewers upon its initial release was a colorization technique that gave the film a sepia, or “golden,” hue, emphasizing certain objects within the frame in another color. This stylized approach was not well-received and was abandoned in favor of straightforward Technicolor for general release. Time has worn well on the offbeat film though, and it has become a cult classic and favorite among fans of Taylor and Brando.
Richard Burton, who was on the set often during production said, “Marlon and Elizabeth’s personalities, to say nothing of their physical beauty, are so vast that they have got away with murder.” But he was a fan of Brando’s work. Long before the making of Reflections in a Golden Eye, Burton said in an interview, “Elizabeth is terribly like Marlon Brando, who I think is the best actor America has ever had. She has the same qualities I would use to describe Marlon—slow-moving, quiet, with a suggestion of infinite power. Both of them never move directly toward an object. An actor like myself lunges right at it. Instead, they circumlocute the object, sort of meander around it. They are evasive, and you can’t quite catch them. That’s why they are such remarkable stars.” Undeniably, the movie is worth viewing, if only for the pairing of Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.
With Marlon Brando, playing her homosexual husband
The Comedians
MAXIMILLIAN/TRIANON FILMS/METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER
CAST
Richard Burton Brown
Elizabeth Taylor Martha Pineda
Alec Guinness Major H. O. Jones
Peter Ustinov Ambassador Manuel Pineda
Paul Ford Smith
Lillian Gish Mrs. Smith
Georg Stanford Brown Henri Philipot
Roscoe Leigh Browne Petit Pierre
Gloria Foster Mrs. Philipot
James Earl Jones Dr. Magiot
CREDITS
Peter Glenville (producer/director); Graham Greene (screenplay); Henri Decaë (photography); Laurence Rosenthal (music); François de Lamothe (art director); Robert Christidès (set decorations); Jean-Michel Lacor (assistant director); Jonathan Bates, Jacques Carrère (sound); Françoise Javet (editor); Alexandre de Paris (Elizabeth Taylor’s hairstylist); Frank La Rue (makeup)
RELEASE DATE: October 31, 1967
RUN TIME: 150 minutes, color
SUMMARY: The oppressive political climate of Haiti under the rule of despotic “Papa Doc” Duvalier comes to light in the stories of a group of travelers inhabiting a once first-class hotel run by Brown. While trying to maintain appearances at his establishment, Brown enters into an affair with Martha, the rigid but amorous German-born wife of oafish Ambassador Manuel Pineda. The jovial Major Jones conceals a double life as an arms dealer helping the dictatorship. The Smiths act as missionaries hoping to bring solace to the people until the certain danger they are in dawns on them with its deadly grip. As unrest encroaches, the cynical Brown begins to suspect there is more to life than his own selfish existence and he joins the Haitian rebels.
Peter Ustinov played her boorish husband in the movie.
With Richard Burton, as lovers Brown and German-accented Martha
REVIEWS
“The Comedians, skillfully adapted by Grahame Greene from his own recent novel, is a thoughtful, thought-provoking work.”
—Saturday Review (Arthur Knight)
“Burton does a workmanlike job of playing Brown, however uninspiring, since he has little to do to inspire an audience and therefore elicits no sympathy for his pains to right some political matters. Miss Taylor is, of course, beautiful and as always is good as a bad woman, a very unsympathetic woman in this case.”
—New York Daily News (Wanda Hale)
“The tired and disgusted hotel owner is played with fine acerbity and bristling boredom by Richard Burton, [but] he’s a fellow we’ve all endured many times. Likewise, the lady is another familiar and predictable type. Elizabeth Taylor simply plays her so cruelly and confidently that she appears more ferocious than usual, especially in the kissing scenes. The husband is the customary cuckold as played politely by Peter Ustinov. And Alec Guinness comes on bright and breezy as the British boaster who turns out to be a fraud. All together, these characters contribute only a moderately interesting account of apathy and personal self-indulgence in the midst of a nation undergoing terrible trial. . . . But what is arresting and disturbing is the atmosphere that surrounds this curious island of mechanical people. Mr. Glenville has crowded his picture with a vivid and convincing mise-en-scène of a hot country boiling with anger and frustration under an unseen dictator (he is glimpsed just once from the side) and with characters and cultural indications that reek of menace and mystery.”
—The New York Times (Bosley Crowther)
On location in the West African nation of Benin
notes
GRAHAME GREENE, THE ACCLAIMED AUTHOR BEST KNOWN for brilliantly bringing to life the atmosphere of displaced souls and political uncertainty of post–World War II Europe in his novel The Third Man, published The Comedians in 1966. It was an insider’s view of the political unrest and oppression that the citizens of Haiti endured under the rule of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his feared paramilitary force, the Tontons Macoutes. Greene teamed with producer-director Peter Glenville to commit his tale to film, and wrote the screenplay himself.
Though the title and story on the surface of The Comedians was somewhat glossy and contrived, the backdrop of turmoil was straightforward and genuinely chilling.
An illustrious cast was rounded up for the production, including Alec Guinness, Peter Ustinov, silent-screen legend Lillian Gish, and a young James Earl Jones. Richard Burton, who had previously acted under Glenville in Becket, was at the center of the story, with Elizabeth at his side providing a romantic subplot and an air of beauty amidst a sinister setting. These “comedians,” all acting out their own agendas in the proceedings, were played up as the perfect ensemble in the film’s publicity tagline: “They lie, they cheat, they destroy . . . they even try to love.”
On location with director Peter Glenville
Given the subject matter, the story’s true location of Haiti was out of the question as the place to film. Some footage was shot in France, but primarily, a believable background was provided by Dahomey, Benin. The company arrived to begin production in January 1967, and the West African country proved more than inviting to its visiting celebrities and film crew. The stars got to visit the palace of Beninese leader Christophe Soglo, who was said to be quite taken with Elizabeth. It was a brief moment in history as Soglo’s rule was overthrown by a new regime later the same year. During production, a short film was made called “The Comedians in Africa,” featuring all of the stars in behind-the-scenes footage and discussing the troubles they faced during filming. The documentary short is included as a special feature on the DVD release of the film.
The Comedians premiered in October 1967 and the of-the-moment drama immediately caused a firestorm of publicity caused by the indignant reaction of the Haitian government, which called the movie “an inflammatory libel against . . . one of the most beautiful, peaceful, and safest countries in the Caribbean.” History can speak for the accuracy of Greene’s work. Though the title and story on the surface of The Comedians was somewhat glossy and contrived, the bac
kdrop of turmoil was straightforward and genuinely chilling. Lillian Gish fared best among the cast, earning a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Elizabeth was pleased to be back working with Burton after making one film apart from him. In this, their seventh screen partnership, she again proved she was content to be working with her husband and did not need to shine solo in the spotlight.
Outside of a restaurant in the south of France, where portions of the film were shot
A magazine depicting the jet-setting superstar during the making of The Comedians. Fans loved her adventures, even if Motion Picture saw fit to dig up a photo of an impossibly angelic Elizabeth in the 1940s for comparison.
The crew sets up to film Elizabeth and Burton in the bed scene.
Boom!
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
CAST
Elizabeth Taylor Flora “Sissy” Goforth
Richard Burton Chris Flanders
Noël Coward the Witch of Capri
Joanna Shimkus Miss Black
Michael Dunn Rudi
Romolo Valli Doctor Luilo
Fernando Piazza Etti
Veronica Wells Simonetta
Howard Taylor journalist
CREDITS
John Heyman, Norman Priggen (producers); Joseph Losey (director); Lester Persky (associate producer); Tennessee Williams (screenplay), based on play The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore by Tennessee Williams; Douglas Slocombe (photography); John Barry (music); Don Black, John Dankworth (song: “Hideaway”); Richard MacDonald (production design); Les Hammond, Gerry Humphreys (sound); Carlo Lastricati (assistant director); Reginald Beck (editor); Annalisa Nasalli Rocca, Tiziani of Rome (costumes); Frank La Rue, Ron Berkeley (makeup); Alexandre de Paris (as Claude Ettori) (Elizabeth Taylor’s hairstylist)
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