The Mercurial Nature Of A Hollywood CareerI'm currently watching
Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. And I can't help but reflect on what a harsh master Hollywood is...
1965 was a big year for films: We had
The Sound of Music ($174m gross),
Doctor Zhivago ($103m gross),
Thunderball ($62m gross), and, in fourth place, was
Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes. It grossed about $31m, a huge success, considering its $5.6m production budget. (#5 was
That Darn Cat, at $28m.)
But what happened from there, for the show's stars? Of course, biggies Robert Morley, Red Skelton, Terry-Thomas, and Benny Hill, performed admirably in their secondary roles, and continued their successful careers thereafter. But Stuart Whitman was a constantly employed, but little-known character actor (mostly in westerns) going into this, and that's the life he returned to after. James Fox went on to a long string of second-billings, in second-rate films, like
King Rat,
Thoroughly Modern Millie, and
A Passage to India.
A Passage to India is important here, as it was the swan song of one of cinema's greatest directors, David Lean - who also did
Doctor Zhivago. But then he did
Ryan's Daughter, starring the lovely Sarah Miles (Patricia Rawnsley from
Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines).
Ryan's Daughter had to be the biggest disappointment in Hollywood history - well, until
Ishtar. And if it wasn't the professional death of Sarah Miles, one of Hollywood's most promising young starlets,
The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing surely was.
Well, it is what it is, it was what it was.
Update: I can't let this post go without noting why, at least for me, this film still has magic - four decades later: Most of those flying shots are of
actual aircraft - very liberal reproductions of their 1910 originals. It might be astounding to today's generation, but they didn't have CGI back in 1965.
