Poseidon Quickies: Fashionably Late

This post isn't actually that much of a "Quickie," as it contains around 70 pics, but it is certainly a little fashionable and VERY late! I do realize it's been over a month since my last post and it must have seemed as if I fell into a black hole.  Life happens... But I haven't given up on ol' P.U. yet. I'm back with a photo essay on some of the costuming and a little of the plot from a movie I had barely even heard of before, much less seen. I recently found it, though, after decades of it never crossing my path, and thought some of its contents were compelling. The film is Crescendo (1970), a Hammer Studios offering, released in the US by Warner Brothers, that borrows liberally from several Alfred Hitchcock tropes while never quite reaching the heights which so many of the Master of Suspense's movies did. 

In the first of a few dream sequences that appear in the movie, we see a man striding towards a woman in a particular dress and with a particular necklace around her neck.

In what will become a familiar pattern, the man (James Olson) wraps his arm around the woman, takes her into his arms and begins to make out with her until... a figure with a double-barreled shotgun appears! 

 

Soon after, Olson is served a breakfast tray by a maid (played by Jane Lapotaire, making her feature film debut.)

The location is remote, and I mean REMOTE. A car is making its way across the vast country (the south of France) along a winding road. 

Inside, manservant/chauffeur Joss Ackland is bringing a young lady to visit. The gal is Stefanie Powers, playing a student on her way to research a recently-deceased composer for her thesis. 

At last she arrives at the isolated house of the dead composer.

Powers apparently didn't learn from prior experience. Ha ha! In 1965, she played a young lady paying a visit to her dead fiance's family home. It was also isolated, had an eccentric mother in charge, a vaguely menacing handyman and a maid who wasn't exactly thrilled to have her on site! That movie, called Fanatic in the UK, was released here as Die! Die! My Darling. 

In Crescendo, there's an elegantly-appointed matriarch on hand to meet Powers.

The rather palatial home has an interior veranda with an in-ground swimming pool. 

Across the pool, Powers' hostess waves a happy welcome to her. 

The lady is played by Margaretta Scott who, though very busy in British fare from the 1930s on, is close to unknown in the US. 

She begins to help the rather nondescript Powers get settled on the premises, where she will be researching and writing about Scott's late husband. 

Powers is given a comfortable room with a view. (And I love the way Scott strides across the floor in her chic ensemble, being sure to aim her feet in elegant positions while doing so.) 

Though she claims to have sent it on ahead two weeks prior, she's dismayed to learn that her trunk full of clothing and other belongings has not made it to the destination. 

Scott reassures her that she can find some things for her to wear in the meantime as they look into what's become of the trunk. She also encourages Powers to let her hair down and not wear it pulled away from her face...

It's patently obvious to me that Scott was coiffed and bejeweled to resemble the matriarchal character that Joan Bennett played in the then-popular (and now, too!) Gothic daytime soap Dark Shadows.

Powers gives the new hairstyle a quick try but seems skeptical. 

Speaking of skeptical, Lapotaire isn't exactly running in circles with sparklers over the arrival of Ms. Powers.

If Scott is channeling Joan Bennett, I also felt that Stef was taking some makeup and hair cues from the then-white-hot Raquel Welch. 

And, soon enough she's in a bikini, something the international sex symbol knew plenty about. Powers was not Welch, but she did have a trim, athletic figure.

Olson, watching Powers from a distance, seems to mightily approve in any case. 

These two meet, with Powers reverting to her pulled-back hairstyle, and we see that Olson is confined to a wheelchair. 

Scott appears in a sunny yellow dress while Powers is wearing an ensemble she was given by her hostess. 

The makers of this film worked hard to create the illusion of a bright, semi-outdoor location, complete with a profusion of foliage, but in fact this is all an indoor set.  

For dinner that evening, Scott dons what is probably my favorite get-up, a vivid pink and orange two-piece confection. 

Long time readers of this blog know how much of a sucker I am for voluminous up-dos and statement earrings! 

Powers, in the middle of receiving a shoulder massage here, has a far more sedate dress on.

Later on, Lapotaire arrives in Olson's room and eventually shows him (and us!) what she wears under her maid's uniform. 

During another dream sequence, we find Olson fully ambulatory and swimming laps in the pool. (Note the studio lights hitting the water, always a giveaway that an outdoor setting like this really isn't.)

As he emerges from the water, we see that he's sporting a skimpy, abbreviated pair of trunks. 

As in the first dream, he spies a woman in a pink dress across the way... 

...and heads towards her.

These out-of-focus shots of him nearing her are, unfortunately, all we ever really get to see of those trunks from the front.

The two of them begin romancin'...

...until, like always, a gunman approaches, ready to blow one or both of the lovers away.  

The next day we see that Scott enjoys a dip in the pool on occasion herself.

Powers, who still doesn't have that trunk-full of her own clothing, is amazed at how all the things on site for her use fit like a glove. 

That night, the ladies dress for dinner and Olson, understandably, is unnerved by the gown and jewelry that Powers has on! 

This unintentional "triggering" has a hint of Hitchcock's Rebecca (1939) wherein Joan Fontaine was misled into wearing a gown that greatly disturbed her new husband. 

Scott's enigmatic face leaves us wondering if she intended for just this situation to occur. 

Powers, who truly looks terrific with this sort of look, goes after Olson to see what's wrong. 

He angrily rips the necklace from her body. But how could she know this is the look he's been hallucinating about over and over?!

Scott attempts to smooth over the upset Powers. Note that for this scene, the focus really needed to be solely on Powers' distinctive gown, so Scott's is far less eye-catching than some of her other selections. 

Here we find Lapotaire out of uniform and sporting a button-up, knit, mini-dress, having just come in from a night out and about. 

And here we find her in nothing but some tiny panties, taking a dip. ("Panties... What else do I need?")

The next morning, Powers has gone all the way into town to check on her missing trunk and they assure her that it was delivered. 

Now pressed about it, Scott confesses that she has located it on the premises in an unexpected location. 

That evening, Powers is back in clothing of her own, decidedly more simple and laid back as in this black shirt and slacks with a chain belt. 

Though we don't see him for long or close up at all in then, Ackland wears some briefs for a moment, too, as he is cleaning out the recently-drained pool. I probably know less than nothing about pool maintenance, but I expected him to be brandishing a mop rather than a broom. Maybe it was far enough along that he's just sweeping up any now-dry debris.

Scott wears this oh-so-'60s housecoat when she's awakened in the middle of the night by Powers and Olson. 

He's in dreamland again, this time seen nude from behind in a sequence so dark and far away that it's practically pointless. 

This time, though, in the dream it's not any mystery woman, but clearly Powers who is making love with him. Here we have what is likely the only, or one of the very, very few, topless scenes that Powers ever did. It's quick, but it's her. 

The next day, the pool is refilled and Powers (in her own bikini now) enjoys another swim. 

But that evening, things go way wrong. 

The suspenseful plot line begins to reach a crescendo. (See what I did there?)

The finale is pretty creepy and partially involves a set of mannequins who bear a bit of a resemblance to Powers. 

Though in some respects, this is a bit of a retread of her earlier Hammer film, Die! Die! My Darling!, she is no less game and gives good face. I watched Crescendo in an English language version with Arabic subtitles here, but the caps in this post are from a French-dubbed rendition here. Many versions of the movie eliminate Powers' fleeting topless scene, but there prints do not. 

You may read all about Stefanie Powers right here in a 2011 tribute I did to her. She has worked on screen here and there since that post was composed and is currently 83 years of age. 

Stage actor Olson was spotted by Sam Goldwyn Jr and utilized in his movie The Sharkfighters (1956), which led to the more prestigious offering The Strange One (1957), though an outright film career was not to immediately follow. Though he worked on plenty of television, it was Paul Newman's Rachel, Rachel (1968) that helped ignite further work in features, including Moon Two Zero (1969), which figured into a recent post here. Surely his most notable movie is Robert Wise's The Andromeda Strain (1971), though Olson went on to countless other projects as a sought after character actor. He died in 2022 from undisclosed causes at age 91, having never married nor had children. 

 

Miss Scott began very young on the stage as a Shakespearean performer. She also performed The Bard on radio and later was one of the first women to perform such works on television as well. her work in British films came to be through Alexander Korda who gave her small parts prior to more substantial ones in Things to Come (1936) and Return of the Pimpernel (1937.) During WWII, she toured with ENSA (the English counterpart to the USO) and then balanced work on the stage with occasional movies. As you can see, in her younger years, her looks were somewhat akin to Kay Francis. Married in 1948 to composer John Wooldridge, they had a son and a daughter before he was killed in a car accident at age 39. Her role in Crescendo as the widow of a composer must have come rather naturally to her...! Her most widespread visibility actually came after this when she worked in Upstairs, Downstairs and enacted the role of Mrs. Pumphrey for thirteen years on the BBC series All Creatures Great and Small. Breast cancer claimed her in 2005 when she was 93. 

The real mind-blower here is that this movie was earlier intended as a project for Joan Crawford. Prolific producer and Hammer Films co-founder James Carreras tried to put the deal together in the late-'60s, but for whatever reason couldn't work out the financial backing. I actually really love Shakespearean Scott's inherently regal, elegant underplaying, but it would have been a real doozy with Crawford. It might not have been a "better" movie, because she'd have gone for it with both barrels throughout and infused a lot more visible emotion but, like anything she did, it would have been a must-see! 

Raised by foster parents (though later reunited with her mother with part-time visits), Lapotaire attended RADA and honed her acting skills on the stage. This was her movie debut and it was followed by roles in Anthony and Cleopatra (1972) and The Asphyx (1973) - and also Disney's One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing (1975!) After this, her TV work (as Marie Curie in a miniseries) and stage work (as Edith Piaf) came to prominence. In fact, she took home a Tony Aware as "Piaf." Not content to have played Charmian the first time, she played the Egyptian queen in the 1981 TV-movie Anthony and Cleopatra. Long a busy character actress on stage and in many TV programs and movies, she suffered a debilitating cerebral hemorrhage in 2000, but recovered sufficiently to work again and also to pen a book about the experience (one of three memoirs she has written.) Married twice, once to director Roland Joffe, she has one son, screenwriter Rowan Joffe and is currently 80 years old. 

Ackland overcame a quite poor childhood to seek a career in acting at only age 15. After a period of training, he appeared at the Old Vic at age 17. Many stage roles followed and in time a plethora of TV parts as well, though his movie career began with mostly unbilled bits. Blessed, so to speak, with height and a menacing visage, he began to land more movie roles in the wake of Crescendo (The House That Dripped Blood, 1970, Villain, 1971, Penny Gold, 1973, and The Three Musketeers, 1973, in which he played Michael York's father.) He himself enjoyed a 51 year-long marriage and was the father of 7 children. More and more work in movies continued including One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing (1975), Silver Bears (1978), Saint Jack (1979), The Apple (1980) and Lady Jane (1986), but it was White Mischief (1987) that lent him some of his most notable acclaim along with a BAFTA nomination (losing to Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda.) He continued to show up in many acting roles before retiring in 2014. In 2023, he passed away at age 95.

I had to smile at this Italian poster, which depicts Kirsten Lindholm in the topless scene which was most definitely Stefanie Powers in the movie. Lindholm does contribute to the movie, but not in the manner shown here. 

Which brings us to The End, though you still can't really see anything. How 'bout this runner up...

The End!