Reunited: "Invasion" Bodies

Around here, we don't focus on too many movies that are good for the right reasons, preferring to dwell on movies we enjoy for all the wrong ones! One bona-fide science fiction classic that we do adore is Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), in which residents of a small town are gradually being replaced by aliens. (Falling asleep there is one of the biggest dangers, as nearby pods begin developing into spot-on replicas, the chief differences being a subdued level of emotion and practically no sense of humor.) The black & white thriller was brought in for under $400,000, but raked in six times that much at the box office. (It also inspired remakes in 1978, 1993 and 2007.)

Producer Walter Wanger initially wanted Gig Young, Dick Powell or Joseph Cotten as the male lead and Anne Bancroft, Donna Reed, Kim Hunter or Vera Miles as the female. However, when the budget was sliced by almost 25%, he turned to lesser-known performers. Rising actor Kevin McCarthy won the lead while virtual unknown Dana Wynter was cast as the female. Note that the movie's poster flips the performers' images to put McCarthy on the left.

Stage actor McCarthy had done one uncredited role on film when he was cast in Death of a Salesman (1951), the only member of the London company to work in the movie. He received an Oscar nomination for it (the award going to Karl Malden for A Streetcar Named Desire.) Wynter, German-born but raised in England, had done a few small roles in British films as well as some New York-based television along with one prior U.S. movie.

Body Snatchers was filmed in 19 days over the course of a few 6-day weeks. Both performers were required to run, climb and claw for their lives, though McCarthy was called upon for a bit more than Wynter.

The Method actor was bedraggled, frantic and distressed for key segments of the movie and developed charleyhorses in his legs as a result of all the scurrying around for take after take. Not thinking much of the script or the movie at the time, it aggravated him that he was toiling in a movie like this while best friend Montgomery Clift was working on a prestige picture like Raintree County (1957.)

Friends since 1942 when they worked together on stage, some of their peers believed that the newlywed McCarthy and the single Clift went further than friendship. McCarthy was at Michael Wilding and Elizabeth Taylor's house the night Clift suffered his near-fatal car accident. Said accident pushed Raintree County's filming back while its star underwent facial surgeries and healing. In the end, the modest Body Snatchers emerged as the more enduring piece of cinema of the two.

Wynter and McCarthy established an easy, compelling chemistry with one another as two people discovering one another's finer attributes just as an alien race is trying to destroy individuality!

You may be surprised to learn (as I was!) that there is a 17-year age difference between these two. Wynter was 24 years-old while McCarthy was already 42!

They made an attractive, well-suited couple in any case. Their characters in Body Snatchers were merely blossoming love interests. But a dozen years later, these performers would be reunited as spouses in what is practically a forgotten motion picture now.

If He Hollers, Let Him Go! (1968) was one of a raft of movies in the wake of In the Heat of the Night (1967) to explore racial intolerance in the deep south. Others include Hurry Sundown (1967), The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970) and ...tick... tick... tick... (1970), among others. Heat won the Oscar for Best Picture and is still seen regularly. Most of the rest have fallen into virtual black holes, rarely to be aired again. In demonstrating the often hostile environment shown to black people in the 1960s south, these movies contain elements that tend to disturb certain contemporary viewers and thus they lapse into obscurity. It's ironic because not only does this practice erase the opportunity to see how bad things could be (and were!), but it also blots out the interesting work done by performers such as Robert Hooks, Diahann Carroll, Roscoe Lee Browne, Jim Brown and others. In this case, Raymond St. Jacques' performance becomes little-seen. 

Prolific 1960s songbird Barbara McNair made her big-screen debut in If He Hollers, too. She'd dabbled in a few television roles prior to this. Right on the movie's poster is a blurb that reads: "Playboy says this movie makes her 'an instant sex star.'" She did a topless layout in the magazine as part of the promotion for her debut.

In the film, McCarthy - quite deliberately - picks up a hitchhiker (St. Jacques) who is in fact an escaped prisoner from a nearby penitentiary.

The two begin to bond over classical music as they drive along.

An early scene in Snatchers had McCarthy, a doctor, driving while getting the latest news from his nurse Jean Willes. (FYI - I will be inserting some Snatchers photos hereafter for comparison's sake.)

It becomes clear after a while that crafty McCarthy may be up to something. St. Jacques resists the instinct to bail, though, and heads into his newfound chum's mansion-like house.

Soon after entering, McCarthy's wife Wynter returns home from an event at their country club.

She's understandably confused by the unexplained appearance of this stranger in their home.

She isn't aware of it yet, but soon will be, that McCarthy has picked up St. Jacques in order to coerce him into killing her!

This escapade does not go according to plan and soon McCarthy is left having to explain his version of what's happened to the local sheriff John Russell.

Unaware of what McCarthy previously had on his mind, Wynter goes to bed with her husband.

Already having gone further than their prior teaming ever dreamed, this movie kicks it up a notch when, just after this shot, Wynter turns over and allows the camera to catch her left breast in closeup!

Meanwhile, St. Jacques has a series of flashbacks in which he recalls his romance with nightclub entertainer McNair.

After a somewhat bumpy start, they find themselves alone in his apartment, where he drwas the drapes.

He removes her robe and McNair goes bare (everything except frontal.) Ms. McNair only acted on occasion after this, but did play a nun (!) in Elvis Presley's Change of Habit (1969) and was Sidney Poitier's wife in the two sequels to In the Heat of the Night. She passed away of throat cancer in 2007 at age 72.

For his own part, St. Jacques was a Yale-educated stage actor who soon landed in films, including The Pawnbroker (1964) with Rod Steiger and Mister Moses (1965), seen here with Robert Mitchum. In 1965, he made history as the first black actor cast in a regular role when he joined Rawhide, though the show was canceled soon thereafter. He proceeded to many more movies, TV guest roles, stage appearances and activism. He passed away in 1990 at age 60 of AIDS complications. (A younger lover who'd taken his last name as an unofficial adopted son - model and Studio 54 regular Sterling St. Jacques - passed away two years later of the same disease. He was 34.)

In another flashback, St. Jacques recalls a young lady (Susan Seaforth) who performs a suggestive dance in her stepfather's bar and whose interaction with him at a service station leads to his arrest for her murder! Seaforth went from this into the daytime soap Days of Our Lives where she has appeared on and off for many decades. In 2018, she and her husband Bill Hayes were given Lifetime Achievement Emmy Awards. She is currently 80.

In a movie peppered with familiar performers (Arthur O'Connell, James Craig, Steve Sandor and Gregg Palmer), there is also this gal. Seem familiar? I can tell you it is not Paula Prentiss, despite a marked resemblance. It's her younger sister Ann Prentiss. In her late-50s, her acting career over, she was jailed for assault on her own father and then convicted of conspiracy to commit murder (including her brother-in-law, Richard Benjamin!) She died in prison in 2010 at age 70.

Unfortunately for them, Wynter and McCarthy are far from done with their association with St. Jacques. He reappears at their home just as they're about to go away for a little jaunt.

Wynter and McCarthy are compelled to drive to a small nearby airport.

Before all is said and done, they're reunited with the sheriff as well.

And along the way Wynter is forced to face some unpleasant truths about her husband.

Half the fun of watching any McCarthy performance (and he's quite hammy in If He Hollers) is wondering what on earth he's going to do with his mouth next. It is nearly always in some state of contortion.

I've deliberately left out a ton of details about If He Hollers. Made during my very favorite period, I thoroughly enjoyed getting to watch it, at last, in a really good print. It's so rarely shown that I wanted to keep the bulk of the story line under wraps so that anyone interested can come to it relatively fresh. Also note that in the interim between 1956 and 1968, Wynter has been elevated to top-billing while McCarthy is third!

Watching this was also, of course, a chance to see two stars whose work I've enjoyed over the years be reunited in a film. McCarthy kept working for years and years, up until 2009. He died of pneumonia in 2010 at age 96! You may read all about Ms. Wynter right here in her very own Poseidon's Underworld tribute. 

That about wraps it up.