The Klansman

Last updated
The Klansman
The Klansman poster.jpg
Directed by Terence Young
Written by Millard Kaufman
Samuel Fuller
Based onThe Klansman
by William Bradford Huie
Produced by William D. Alexander
Starring Lee Marvin
Richard Burton
Cameron Mitchell
Lola Falana
Luciana Paluzzi
David Huddleston
Linda Evans
O. J. Simpson
Cinematography Lloyd Ahern
Edited by Gene Milford
Music by Stu Gardner
Dale O. Warren
Distributed by Paramount Pictures [1]
Release date
  • October 25, 1974 (1974-10-25)
Running time
112 minutes
LanguageEnglish
Budget$5 million [2]

The Klansman (also known as Burning Cross) [3] is a 1974 American drama film based on the 1967 book of the same name by William Bradford Huie. It was directed by Terence Young and starred Lee Marvin, Richard Burton, Cameron Mitchell, Lola Falana, Luciana Paluzzi, David Huddleston, Linda Evans and O. J. Simpson in his film debut. [4]

Contents

Plot

In a small town in the South, Sheriff Track Bascomb breaks up a crowd of hillbilly white men molesting a black woman. Owing his election to the racist power structure that runs the community, Bascomb arrests no one. His decision is also based on the fact that he loves the town he grew up in and wants to keep the peace. In addition, his best friend since school days is Breck Stancill: a rich landowner who sympathizes with the Civil Rights movement. Despite their political differences, however, the bond shared by Bascomb and Stencill remains strong.

Later, the town's relative tranquility is threatened when a young white woman, Nancy Poteet, is sexually assaulted and beaten by a black man. Sheriff Bascomb tries to find the guilty party while Ku Klux Klan members – including Bascomb's deputy, Butt Cutt Cates – take matters into their own hands. They board a truck and drive to a rural bar frequented by black people. They chase after two men outside, one of whom is Garth. Garth escapes but his companion is captured, castrated, and shot-gunned by the Klan. Witnessing his friend's torture and death, Garth swears vengeance and embarks on a one-man terror campaign against the Klan and their supporters.

Loretta Sykes, a black woman who grew up in the town, returns home. She is approached by members of the Civil Rights movement. Together, they try to get Breck Stancill involved. One evening, Loretta is abducted by Deputy Cates and his Klan allies. In response to the assault on Nancy Poteet, it is decided that one of them should rape Loretta. So violent is the act that she almost bleeds to death. As a result, what Sheriff Bascomb tried to prevent from the very beginning now boils to the surface, and an all-out race war threatens to rip his town apart.

Cast

Development

The novel was published in 1967. Film rights were purchased by the Robert Leder Company for $100,000. Originally TV director Don Stewart was meant to direct and Chuck Connors was going to star as the sheriff. [5]

Film rights were bought by a black film producer, William D. Alexander, who formed a company, The Movie People, to make the film [6] and reportedly spent a year putting it together. Bill Schiffrin, who sometimes acted as Samuel Fuller's agent, [7] said he put the film together. The first draft of the script was done by Fuller, and it was rewritten by Millard Kaufman. [8] Schiffrin says Kaufman "distorted" much of what the former wrote. "I wanted Fuller", he said. [6]

Schiffrin says Terence Young was hired as director at the insistence of the European investors. [6] Young was best known for his work on the James Bond films. In a bit of stunt casting, he hired Luciana Paluzzi, who had played Bond villain Fiona Volpe in Thunderball , as Trixie in this film. The studio had American Joanna Moore dub in Paluzzi's lines. Schiffrin says he wanted Moore to play Paluzzi's role originally. "I never thought an Italian should play a Southern girl." [6]

"The day Young was hired I should've left the show", said Schiffrin. "Four times during filming I wasn't speaking to Young." [6] Fuller claimed Paramount had a prior commitment with Italian partners as a payback for a prior deal and when Young came on the film Fuller walked off the project [9]

Alexander obtained a $1 million guarantee from Paramount. The rest was raised from various banks and tax shelters in the US and Europe. [6]

Richard Burton was to be paid $40,000 a week for ten weeks work plus a percentage. Lee Marvin got 10% of the profits. [6]

Production

Although Simpson appeared in an unreleased 1973 film called Why?, this film marks his acting debut. [10]

Filming took place in Oroville, [11] California, just outside Sacramento. Burton and wife Elizabeth Taylor stayed in a rented house in town. [12] "It's enchanting here", Burton told the press during filming. "It reminds me of my old valley in Wales." [2]

Richard Burton allegedly drank so much alcohol during the making of this film that many of his scenes had to be shot with him seated or lying down, due to his inability to stand. In some scenes, he appears to slur his words or speak incoherently. [13] Burton later said that he could not remember making the film. Simpson said "There would be times when he couldn’t move." [14] Marvin was also a heavy drinker at this time, to the point where Burton claimed in a 1977 interview that when the two men ran into each other at a party years later neither could remember working together. At the time of the film, Burton was suffering from depression and sciatica, both debilitating conditions. His use of alcohol during the film was to kill the pain from those conditions. Later, Burton credited Marvin with saving his life. "I wouldn't have survived without Marvin," he told the actor and writer Michael Munn. Lee Marvin saw that Burton "was drinking not for pleasure of it but because he had a great need, and I doubt he knew what that was himself. Maybe it was for Elizabeth. But whatever it was, he was in pain, and he drank to kill that pain. I used to do it too." [15]

Burton gave a young girl in town, Kim Dinucci, a $450 diamond ring and arranged for her to get a small walk-on part in the film as Lee Marvin's daughter. This made national news. [2] [16]

During Burton's death scene, he was lying on the set when the director said that the make-up artist had prepared him well for the scene, only for the artist to remark that he had not done anything. Terence Young brought a doctor in to examine him when it was determined that he was dying. He was rushed to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica with a temperature of 104 degrees and both kidneys on the point of collapse. He was suffering from influenza and tracheo-bronchitis. He would remain in the hospital for six weeks. [17]

Burton went to the hospital after filming and was treated for bronchitis. [18] While he was staying there it was announced Burton and Taylor would be getting divorced. [19] [20]

Walter Schiffrin later said Burton should not have been paid "at all considering the performance he gave. He was... drinking three quarts a day. He didn't know what town he was in let alone what film". Schiffrin says that, in contrast, Lee Marvin "was highly helpful throughout the shooting". [6] Simpson said that despite being incapacitated, Burton "could change the meaning of a scene with just his voice. I studied that. We used to play a game: try to ignore Richard Burton when he's talking. It's impossible". [14]

Aldo Tonti, the cinematographer who had worked on Reflections in a Golden Eye , was also the cinematographer on this film, though he was not credited.

Post-production difficulties

Lee Marvin later said his character was meant to be a war hero and had a son who did not want to go to West Point. There was a subplot where Burton's character sided with the son. All this was cut from the final film. In addition, Marvin was not paid a final $50,000 owed to him. [6]

While the film was being edited at Sam Goldwyn Studios, the studios caught fire. [21]

At the last minute, one of the investors failed to come up with the money so Marvin and Burton were not paid their full salary and Paramount put a lien on the film. [6]

Fuller said he later met Terence Young when both were members of the Festival du Film Policier de Cognac. Though Fuller originally had a grudge against Young, he was won over by Young's insistence that he had never read the original script and had only accepted the direction of the film to pay debts. Fuller admired his honesty. [9]

Reception

Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "a thoroughly clumsy adaptation of William Bradford Huie's novel", adding that the filmmakers "effectively defuse the very real drama by so lovingly depicting the horrors that one comes to suspect their motives. As the movie progresses, the events comes to seem less and less urgent and particular to a specific time and place, and more and more like the automatic responses to the demands of cheap, easy melodrama." [22] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety declared it "a perfect example of screen trash that almost invites derision ... There's not a shred of quality, dignity, relevance or impact in this yahoo-oriented bunk". [23] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one star out of four and called it "a tawdry rip-off of a half-dozen films: In the Heat of the Night , The Liberation of L.B. Jones , tick ... tick ... tick ... what's amazing about this drivel is that Lee Marvin and Richard Burton lent their talents to it. They must have been offered a very sweet deal, because The Klansman is pure demagogery[ sic?]". [24] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times slammed the film as "one of those sleazy, exploitative, incompetent pieces of motion picture waste which makes you suddenly unsure that film reviewing is a fit occupation for a grown man ... If any frame of the film carried a convincing sense of the real tensions, fears, hatreds and tempers of the rural American South you might be able to forgive some of the rest. But the acting is so amateurish in the lesser roles as to be comical and the dialogue in the major roles is unplayable." [25] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "the sort of film that raises only academic questions. Could the original source, a novel by William Bradford Huie, have been as terrible as the movie? Probably not, but it must have given the screenwriters, Millard Kaufman and Sam Fuller, a few ugly situations to kick around, like a castration and a pair of interracial rapes and a shootout with the Ku Klux Klan, and they've proceeded to kick them around like champion Hollywood hacks, leaning hard on the exploitation elements and reducing characterization and social analysis, if there were any, to a bare minimum". [26]

Alexander, Young and Burton were meant to make a film with Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling called Jackpot but it was never made. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lee Marvin</span> American actor (1924–1987)

Lee Marvin was an American film and television actor. Known for his bass voice and premature white hair, he is best remembered for playing hardboiled "tough guy" characters. Although initially typecast as the "heavy", he later gained prominence for portraying anti-heroes, such as Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger on the television series M Squad (1957–1960). Marvin's notable roles in film included Charlie Strom in The Killers (1964), Rico Fardan in The Professionals (1966), Major John Reisman in The Dirty Dozen (1967), Ben Rumson in Paint Your Wagon (1969), Walker in Point Blank (1967), and the Sergeant in The Big Red One (1980).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oroville, California</span> City in California, United States

Oroville is the county seat of Butte County, California, United States. Its population was 15,506 at the 2010 census, up from 13,004 in the 2000 census. After the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed much of the town of Paradise, Oroville's population increased as many people who lost their homes moved there. The 2020 census recorded Oroville's population as 20,042.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bernard Lee</span> English actor (1908–1981)

John Bernard Lee was an English actor, best known for his role as M in the first eleven Eon-produced James Bond films. Lee's film career spanned the years 1934 to 1979, though he had appeared on stage from the age of six. He was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Lee appeared in over one hundred films, as well as on stage and in television dramatisations. He was known for his roles as authority figures, often playing military characters or policemen in films such as The Third Man, The Blue Lamp, The Battle of the River Plate, and Whistle Down the Wind. He died of stomach cancer in 1981, aged 73.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terence Young (director)</span> British film director and screenwriter (1915–1994)

Stewart Terence Herbert Young was a British film director and screenwriter who worked in the United Kingdom, Europe and Hollywood. He is best known for directing three James Bond films: the first two films in the series, Dr. No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963), and Thunderball (1965). His other films include the Audrey Hepburn thrillers Wait Until Dark (1967) and Bloodline (1979), the historical drama Mayerling (1968), the infamous Korean War epic Inchon (1981), and the Charles Bronson films Cold Sweat (1970), Red Sun (1971), and The Valachi Papers (1972).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asa Earl Carter</span> American activist, speechwriter and novelist (1925–1979)

Asa Earl Carter was a 1950s segregationist political activist, Ku Klux Klan organizer, and later Western novelist. He co-wrote George Wallace's well-known pro-segregation line of 1963, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever", and ran in the Democratic primary for governor of Alabama on a white supremacist ticket. Years later, under the pseudonym of supposedly Cherokee writer Forrest Carter, he wrote The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1972), a Western novel that was adapted into a 1976 film featuring Clint Eastwood that added to the National Film Registry, and The Education of Little Tree (1976), a best-selling, award-winning book which was marketed as a memoir but which turned out to be fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edgar Ray Killen</span> Ku Klux Klan organizer convicted of manslaughter (1925–2018)

Edgar Ray Killen was an American Ku Klux Klan organizer who planned and directed the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights activists participating in the Freedom Summer of 1964. He was found guilty in state court of three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime, and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He appealed the verdict, but the sentence was upheld on April 12, 2007, by the Supreme Court of Mississippi. He died in prison on January 11, 2018, at age 92.

William Bradford Huie was an American writer, investigative reporter, editor, national lecturer, and television host. His credits include 21 books that sold over 30 million copies worldwide. In addition to writing 14 bestsellers, he wrote hundreds of articles that appeared in all of the major magazines and newspapers of the day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terence Blanchard</span> American trumpeter and composer

Terence Oliver Blanchard is an American jazz trumpeter and composer. He has also written two operas and more than 80 film and television scores. Blanchard has been nominated for two Academy Awards for Original Score for BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da 5 Bloods, both directed by Spike Lee, a frequent collaborator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luciana Paluzzi</span> Italian actress (born 1937)

Luciana Paluzzi is an Italian actress. She is perhaps best known for playing SPECTRE assassin Fiona Volpe in the fourth James Bond film, Thunderball, but she had important roles in notable films of the 1960s and 1970s in both the Italian film industry and Hollywood, including Chuka, The Green Slime, 99 Women, Black Gunn, The Klansman and The Sensuous Nurse.

<i>Fletch Lives</i> 1989 film by Michael Ritchie

Fletch Lives is a 1989 American comedy mystery film starring Chevy Chase and the sequel to Fletch (1985), directed by Michael Ritchie from a screenplay by Leon Capetanos, and based on the character created by Gregory Mcdonald.

<i>The Chamber</i> (1996 film) 1996 American film

The Chamber is a 1996 American legal thriller film directed by James Foley. It is based on John Grisham's 1994 novel of the same name. The film stars Chris O'Donnell, Gene Hackman, Faye Dunaway, Lela Rochon, Robert Prosky, Raymond J. Barry, and David Marshall Grant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Ford Seale</span> American Ku Klux Klan member and convict

James Ford Seale was a Ku Klux Klan member charged by the U.S. Justice Department on January 24, 2007, and subsequently convicted on June 14, 2007, for the May 1964 kidnapping and murder of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, two African-American young men in Meadville, Mississippi. At the time of his arrest, Seale worked at a lumber plant in Roxie, Mississippi. He also worked as a crop duster and was a police officer in Louisiana briefly in the 1970s. He was a member of the militant Klan organization known as the Silver Dollar Group, whose members were identified with a silver dollar; occasionally minted the year of the member's birth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Russell Simpson (actor)</span> American actor (1880–1959)

Russell McCaskill Simpson was an American character actor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William D. Alexander</span> American film producer (1916–1991)

William D. Alexander was an American filmmaker. He made U.S. government-sponsored newsreels for African American audiences. He later established his own production company, Alexander Productions, in New York City and became a film producer.

Although the Ku Klux Klan is most often associated with white supremacy, the revived Klan of the 1920s was also anti-Catholic. In the U.S. state of Maine, with a small African-American population but a burgeoning number of Acadian, French-Canadian and Irish immigrants, the Klan revival of the 1920s was a Protestant nativist movement directed against the Catholic minority as well as African-Americans. For a period in the mid-1920s, the Klan captured elements of the Maine Republican Party, even helping to elect a governor, Ralph Owen Brewster.

Lee de Broux is an American character actor of film and television who is best known for his roles in such films and television series as Chinatown, RoboCop, The Gun, Geronimo: An American Legend, Norma Rae, Cannon and Gunsmoke.

Jackpot is an unfinished film that began shooting in 1974 and shut down in 1975. Terence Young directed Millard Kaufman's screenplay. William D. Alexander produced for Paramount Pictures. Richard Burton, James Coburn, and Charlotte Rampling starred.

<i>BlacKkKlansman</i> 2018 American film by Spike Lee

BlacKkKlansman is a 2018 American biographical crime comedy-drama film directed by Spike Lee and written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Lee, loosely based on the 2014 memoir Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth. It stars John David Washington as Stallworth, along with Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, and Topher Grace. It was Harry Belafonte's last feature film before his death in April 2023. Set in the 1970s in Colorado Springs, Colorado, it follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local Ku Klux Klan chapter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ron Stallworth</span> American police officer (born 1953)

Ron Stallworth is an American retired police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in the late 1970s. He was the first African-American detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Burton (actor)</span> American film and television actor

Robert George Burton was an American film and television actor.

References

  1. ↑ "The Klansman (1974) - Terence Young | Synopsis, Characteristics, Moods, Themes and Related | AllMovie" – via www.allmovie.com.
  2. 1 2 3 "Burton: Bringing Gold to Oroville: The Observer". The Washington Post. 11 Apr 1974. p. D17.
  3. ↑ "BFI". Archived from the original on 2017-11-06.
  4. ↑ "The Klansman (1974)" – via www.filmaffinity.com.
  5. ↑ Weiler, A.H. (31 Dec 1967). "The Klan Rides Again". New York Times. p. 57.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Forget the Credit; They'll Take Cash". Los Angeles Times. 9 Dec 1974. p. f16.
  7. ↑ Fuller, Samuel (2002). A Third Face. Borzoi Books. p.  471. ISBN   0-375-40165-2.
  8. ↑ Weiler, A.H. (13 Jan 1974). "News of the Screen: Lumet Directing A Christie Story Selected Shorts: 'Bugsy' Coming". New York Times. p. 61.
  9. 1 2 Fuller, Samuel (2002). A Third Face. Borzoi Books. p.  473. ISBN   0-375-40165-2.
  10. ↑ "AFI|Catalog". catalog.afi.com.
  11. ↑ O.J. Simpson – Tonight Show – 1979 (YouTube). NBC. 2017-12-23 [1979]. Archived from the original on 2021-12-13.
  12. ↑ Effron, Lauren (November 28, 2013). "Elizabeth Taylor Confesses 'Pure Animal Pleasure' for Richard Burton in Steamy Love Letter". ABC News. Retrieved May 1, 2023.
  13. ↑ Lentz, Robert J. (2000). Lee Marvin: His Films and Career. McFarland. p. 148. ISBN   0-7864-2606-3.
  14. 1 2 Cahill, Tim (1977-09-08). "O.J. Simpson: A Man for Offseason". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 2017-12-05. Retrieved 2020-07-24.
  15. ↑ Kashner, Sam; Schoenberger, Nancy (2010). Furious Love. Harper-Collins. p. 383.
  16. ↑ "Burton's Ring of Fans Grows in Oroville". Los Angeles Times. Mar 24, 1974. p. 2.
  17. ↑ Kashner, Sam; Schoenberger, Nancy (2010). Furious Love. Harper-Collins. p. 384.
  18. ↑ "THE SOUTHLAND: End to Pasadena Fund Cutoff Seen". Los Angeles Times. Apr 8, 1974. p. a2.
  19. ↑ "Reconciliation Fails, Divorce Planned: Liz, Burton to End 10-Year Marriage---Again". Los Angeles Times. 26 Apr 1974. p. a3.
  20. ↑ Kerwin, Robert (29 Sep 1974). "Alas, poor Burton". Chicago Tribune. p. h25.
  21. ↑ "3 Sound Stages Will Be Rebuilt, Executive Says: Studio to Carry On With Production in Spite of Major Fire". Los Angeles Times. May 7, 1974. p. 3.
  22. ↑ Canby, Vincent (November 21, 1974). "Screen: 'The Klansman', a Deep South Melodrama". The New York Times. p. 54.
  23. ↑ Murphy, Arthur D. (November 6, 1974). "Film Reviews: The Klansman". Variety . p. 20.
  24. ↑ Siskel, Gene (November 20, 1974). "The Klansman". Chicago Tribune . section 3, p. 6.
  25. ↑ Champlin, Charles (November 13, 1974). "'Klansman': Film Without a Clue". Los Angeles Times . Part IV, p. 20.
  26. ↑ Arnold, Gary (November 26, 1974). "Questioning 'The Klansman'". The Washington Post . p. B7.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.