Fun Finds: Movie Stars Magazine, March 1968

This edition of Fun Finds was made possible by a grant from one of our loyal readers. A surprise care package arrived in the mail with several vintage magazines and this was one of them! On the cover are Miss Nancy Sinatra and the four popular Lennon Sisters. (This is one rare time in which I actually prefer Peggy's hairdo to Kathy's - and look how dark Dianne's is! I wonder if someone colorized it incorrectly...) Let's dig in and see what we find within its covers.

There's nothing at all unusual about a feminine protection advertisement in a magazine of this sort, but usually the models aren't wearing huge sanitary napkins themselves! LOL I hope the poor dear doesn't spill any red wine on this dress at dinner (though it will probably soak right into the "soft impressions" and no one would notice...)

This gossip section, authored by famous columnist Army Archerd, touches on the then-fresh split between Tony Curtis and his second wife Christine Kaufmann (the girl he left Janet Leigh for.) He would wed four more times before his death in 2010. Army refers to Sonny Bono's "high-powered" music! James Coburn's wife Beverly hung in there until 1979. What about the "date" between Lainie Kazan and Richard Chamberlain (in mime makeup)? 

Interesting to note that Frank Sinatra offered Candice Bergen the Mia Farrow role in The Detective (after he fired - and divorced - her for not leaving Rosemary's Baby to report to his movie.) The part was ultimately fulfilled by Jacqueline Bisset. Interesting that Roman Polanski's name is misspelled with a "y" on the end. Susan Hayward actually didn't make another movie until 1972, five years after Dolls. The previous owner of the magazine filled out this contest entry chit, but didn't clip and mail it in!

It's interesting to read the take on Lee Marvin and Michelle Triola's live-in arrangement when you know that six years after they broke up in 1970, she sued him, in a landmark case, for what became known in slang as "palimony." She wanted $1.8 million as well as $104K for "rehabilitation purposes," but wound up with $0.00.  It remains a tough row to hoe for those who pursue it with "cohabitation agreements" a common bit of advice to unmarried couples living together. Marlo Thomas never did marry this man. She wed for the first time in 1980 (at age 43) to Phil Donahue, who she'd met on his talk show three years prior.

This chatty section is far cattier than Archerd's column, picking at celebrity relatives who aren't as successful as their kin and taking Debbie Reynolds to task for her style choices. The wedding referred to in the caption for George Hamilton's photo was that of President Lyndon Johnson's daughter Lynda Bird Johnson, who Hamilton dated for a time.

The column continues onto this page, with another feature "Talk to the Stars" beginning as well. Pics include the kids from Family Affair and a trio of Kings (thus representing but a fraction of The King Family!) The Q&A section kicks off with a couple intended for then-hot Sajid Khan (whose Hollywood career only extended a few years after this, though he continued to act sporadically up to the millennium.) Incidentally, if you're curious about Barbara Bain's answer, she said that they had a pact to always work together and held out for the opportunity. Also, that the difficulty came in trying to keep up with his marvelous talent.

As "Talk to the Stars" continues, there's a question for Roger Ewing, an actor I'd never even heard of. After looking him up, I see he was a recurring cast member on Gunsmoke, appeared on several other shows and in some movies before concentrating on photography from the early-'70s on. He was reportedly a contender for the title role in Midnight Cowboy before Jon Voight won the part.

This periodical is big on slipping the text in-between columns of ads versus the more common method of lumping ads together on whole pages. For those that enjoy the vintage advertisements, this is a plus in your book! This continuation of the earlier gossip column reflects on Miss Dina Merrill's loss of social standing when she married an actor and has a Star Trek era pic of Leonard Nimoy, minus the pointed ears. Interesting that as early as 1968 Newman and McQueen were debating billing should they ever team up (which they memorably did in 1974's The Towering Inferno.) Donna Reed's husband at this time only lasted until 1971. Three years after that, she wed for a third and final time.

Ending on this page, we read about Eve Arden's children who may be pursuing show business careers. Connie doesn't appear to have gone on to much, but her youngest son (Douglas Brooks West) did a fair amount of writing, directing and producing as an adult. On a happy note, Mark Slade did indeed marry Melissa in 1968 and they remain together still today!

Robert Culp's marriage to France Nuyen lasted less than three years. He wed two more times while she remained single after 1970. At the bottom is a pic of Lynda Bird Johnson and her groom Chuck Robb. They remain wed to this day.

Having wed in 1960, Sammy Davis Jr. and Swedish actress May Britt faced a considerable uphill battle. (In fact, interracial marriage was forbidden by law in 31 states, eventually being accepted in 14 of them until 1967 when a Supreme Court ruling allowed for them countrywide.)

Having created one child and adopted two more, one might think they had a chance for enduring happiness, but it all fell apart in 1968 (Davis had become involved with frequent co-performer Lola Falana, though May gets all the blame in this article.) Britt (who had been wed once before him and did marry again after Davis) is still alive today at eighty-three. Davis had a successful third marriage in 1970 which lasted until his death in 1990 at age sixty-four. As for the bottom of the sidebar, Dean Martin rather foolishly ended his marriage to Jeanne in 1973 and married once more directly after, but it was over in three years. Joey Bishop stayed with his wife until her death in 1999.

Most folks, especially those who've read this blog (or as noted above!), know that the biggest fissure in Frank Sinatra & Mia Farrow's marriage came when she failed to report to The Detective because Rosemary's Baby was running over schedule and she (rightly, in retrospect) sensed it was going to be a landmark film while her part in The Detective could have been done by virtually anybody. 

The angle in this piece is that both Frank and Sammy were facing down divorce at virtually the same time. She had actually taken time during Baby to visit him on Detective, trying to keep their union alive, but when she missed the start date for her supporting role, she was served with divorce papers almost immediately after.

Say it isn't so? Cissy from Family Affair a slut?

Of course it's not true. One of the guys was a man she was paired with on The Dating Game and the other two were her brother (!) and his friend. Typical bait & switch headline.

Actor Frank Converse

Converse had been the lead on a failed amnesia-centered series called Coronet Blue before doing the show referenced in this article, N.Y.P.D., which focused on three police detectives: Jack Warden, Converse and Robert Hooks. He arguably became better known from the mid-'70s trucker series Movin' On with Claude Akins, but enjoyed a long career that extended to 2012. He's seventy-nine today.

Who knew that at one point Davy Jones and Sally Field enjoyed a series of dates together!?

The angle on this story is that he was the guest brought in to crown a Miss Teen International during a pageant in which she was taking part (but didn't win) and gave her a kiss then. But later during The Flying Nun they went on some dates. It didn't last terribly long because she wed first husband Steve Craig in 1968. Jones also wed in '68, but it was kept under wraps to avoid upsetting his teen fans from The Monkees. He had been married three times by the time of his death in 2012 at only age sixty-six.

Here's Davy Jones sidled up to two of Dean Martin's daughters!

Dean was proud of all his children, but Dean Paul Martin (who, for a time went by Dino and was in the music act Dino, Desi & Billy) was a particular favorite. Dean Paul had been married and divorced from both Olivia Hussey and Dorothy Hamel when he died in a National Guard-related plane crash at only age thirty-five. His father was never the same after that. Deana Martin had a thriving music/acting career in the 1960s, later turning to live performance (in Branson, MO, for example) and then recordings produced by her husband.

Here we find a splashy, two-page spread of paparazzi photos featuring Peter O'Toole and then-wife Sian Phillips.

The text refers to her as "ex-actress" though she wasn't exactly idle! She was raising their two children, but still worked occasionally and, in fact, had two films released in 1969. In 1976 came her most striking work, likely, as Livia in I, Claudius on the BBC. They divorced in 1979 after two decades of marriage and Ms. Phillips is eighty-four now. (After O'Toole, she was wed for a dozen years to actor Robin Sachs.)

Now, the cover story, about Nancy Sinatra and The Lennon Sisters (two acts you typically don't associate with one another!) "leaving the men they love. Though it is carefully done, Nancy was NOT in the middle of the sisters during this photo. She's been sneakily cut and pasted in!

The gist of the story is that The Lennon Sisters were departing The Lawrence Welk Show, where they began, to star on Jimmy Durante Presents The Lennon Sisters. The variety show was marred by the uneasy combination of costars, compounded by the horrifying murder of their father by a deranged fan in 1969. And as it turns out, Nancy wasn't leaving anyone! Her collaborator Lee Hazlewood was striking out on his own and moving to Sweden. After many 1960s hits, they reunited in the early-'70s to less fanfare.

Maureen O'Hara kicks off a two-part feature about her life and beliefs.

I thought it was fascinating that in 1968 she says about too much idle time for young people: "There are many, many conveniences, too. What it used to take hours to do, it now takes only minutes." Good lord, it must be seconds now! I've seen sweeping changes since I came along in 1967! She later goes into how she won a screen test at age sixteen and eventually came to Hollywood.

This feature, a continuing series "Complete Pocket Guide to Hollywood," offers photos and little thumbnail bios of any and all stars of movies and TV at that time. Equal weight is given to people whether they were Oscar-winning legends or regulars on a TV show.

As this installment only goes from Kellerman to Knotts and appeared in a monthly magazine, one assumes it took quite a while to amass the entire "pocket" guide! (They must have had bigger pockets than me...!)

Lynn Loring was a child soap actress (on Search for Tomorrow) who grew up and found much work on television. Thinnes also began on a soap (General Hospital) and later starred in the short-lived shows The Long, Hot Summer and The Invaders. And, of course, had a role in Airport 1975, making him a member of our "Disaster Movie Club."

The couple (who, according to the text met in 1964, though Thinnes was married until 1967 to his first wife!) seemed to have a successful union, working together often in the late-'60s and 1970s, divorced in 1984. She didn't remarry, but he did two more times.

I'm sorta doubting it...

I have to say I've never seen either of the movies featuring these two stars together. Anyway, all the text is just a bunch of gibberish to provide a reason for these press shots taken upon Rock's arrival in Rome for filming.

Wrapping up, I close with a couple of ads and one page that had more writing on it from our magazine's original owner. Again, he didn't clip and send it in, but maybe he was ashamed of his mess-up and scratch-outs. LOL

Kicky, '60s bargain fashions.

Finally, this lunatic ad that promises to increase cleavage to an eye-popping degree with Mark Eden exercises using a clamshell-like device... The company was indicted for mail fraud and these ads (and the "product") were withdrawn by the early-1970s.

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I'm in the midst of learning a new position at work (after 17 years in the same one!), so it's been tough to gather time for posting. I hope that I'll be able to keep everything rolling as 2018 dawns, though it may result in some briefer, less-involved postings. I'll be back as soon as it's feasible!  Thanks.

Delving "Beyond" Again

New Year's Eve was only a while ago and - as is my yearly tradition - I re-watched The Poseidon Adventure (1972) once more. I never fail to do so sometime around every January 1st and rarely watch it in-between, though sometimes I'll stumble upon it and be unable to resist. The far lesser-known and far less-effective sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure (1979) is one that I view with rarer frequency, but this year I happened to watch it only a couple of days after my annual viewing of the parent movie and so it left me itching to discuss it in more detail than I did way back in November of 2009!

You may think I'm crazy to go back into this movie, but I'm certainly no crazier than the characters of the film who opt to descend into an overturned ocean liner, which keeps exploding and which is in imminent danger of sinking at any moment! (Yet none of us is crazier than the characters in the book "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" - Mr. Rogo, Mr. Martin and Mr. Rosen - who, having just barely escaped with their lives, decide to RE-ENTER the belching Poseidon on a reconnaissance mission of sorts. This approach was completely dropped for the film adaptation.)

The 1978 book tossed in all sorts of things from scavengers removing jewelry from the dead passengers, a pair taking the time to have sex while inside the crippled, fiery liner and even a tiger loose and on the prowl!! Producer-director Irwin Allen eschewed the greater part of the storyline and went with his own rendition (with the aid of screenwriter Nelson Gidding, whose range went from The Haunting, 1963, to The Hindenberg, 1975!)

For a while, in the wake of the first film's unbe- lievable success, Allen considered a sequel in which survivors of the S.S. Poseidon would be called to testify in a hearing concerning the capsizing, but, while en route by train, a tunnel collapse has them stranded all over again and fighting for their lives! I can't say I think much of that idea either. Allen, a great planner, was in a constant state of flux over the storyline for Beyond. Everything from using the tiger idea to having Reverend Scott's (Gene Hackman) twin brother board the overturned ship (!) to having a volcano erupt and destroy the boat (!!) came and went during numerous script revisions. The tunnel collapse idea later formed the basis of the (non-Allen) Daylight (1996.)

The finished product gets off to an illogical and incongruous beginning from the very first frames. It depicts a violently stormy sea, with lightning and waves, as the Poseidon rolls onto its side and eventually upside down from a huge deluge of water. Um... there was no storm at this time in the initial movie. Yes, it opened with a big storm, but that subsided soon after and the sun came out, affording Reverend Scott the chance to give a sermon on deck! An earthquake caused the wave.

So we're already wrong-headed before we even meet the new cast, which includes tugboat captain Michael Caine, his older crewmate and father figure Karl Malden and kooky, nomadic party girl Sally Field, who Malden has befriended and asked aboard, to Caine's dismay. They are jerked around in the storm like a fake boat on a Hollywood soundstage in which water hoses are repeatedly shooting at them (which is precisely what is happening.)

Several tall boxes of freight (fastened by what looks to be a simple strand or two of thick, brown dental floss...) go careening into the ocean to their doom, leaving Caine & Co. without the collateral needed to maintain possession of the beaten up little boat.  The next morning, he spies a rescue helicopter and correctly assumes that it must be transporting passengers from a troubled vessel out at sea, so he sets a course and heads that way. He hopes to claim salvage rights to all the money stored within the ship.

He comes upon the exposed hull of the Poseidon, its propellers in the air and a square hole cut in it where the six survivors from the prior movie were lifted out. The S.S. Poseidon, an old ship on its way to be scrapped according to the original storyline, is shown to have a vibrant red bottom that is all but showroom new!! Not a stain or a barnacle to be found anywhere on it... It's even more spit-polished than in the first film, which was fairly clean itself!

Before Caine can land atop the hull and go after his much- needed loot, another boat pulls up, this one a highly-sleek, contemporary one carrying suavely sinister Telly Savalas and a gaggle of guys. He says he's a doctor, there to rescue or otherwise aid anyone who might be located inside. (God knows the rescue helicopter is OUTTA THERE, never bothering to check within to see who might still be kicking around inside!)

They all enter the original square cut-out of an entrance and begin their descent, though the propeller shaft does seem rather brightly lit and cleaner than it was the last time we saw it. The fiery engine room fares a bit better (and we even see a key corpse from the first film lying amid some flames!), but even it seems more illuminated.

For some reason, Caine doesn't think they can go down the way all the others came up (why??), so he conveniently finds an alternative passage way, just off to the side! This panel was not there in the first film (see below.) It was riveted steel, which has now morphed into a flimsy grate of sorts... ("He didn't get out of the cock-a-doody car!!")

The duct behind it leads to a screen (which he kicks in with his feet, just as Gene Hackman did) and a ladder that leads down towards a pool of bubbling water. (The retreading and rehashing of scenarios from Poseidon has only just begun.)

Near the top of the gurgling water, they find another screen and kick it in, soon finding themselves in an upside-down gymnasium. Unfortunately, a huge piece of machinery has fallen on the top of the ladder, not only injuring one of Savalas goons, but also blocking their return escape from this new passageway.

The ship suffers a series of explosions and suddenly the steam is kicked on full blast inside the Turkish bath, leading to screams from within! It turns out that three passengers had been idly sitting inside the steam room waiting to be rescued after having become separated from some other passengers. (How far back were they dilly-dallying and why would that lead them to just SIT in an enclosed, tiled room thereafter?) Luscious Veronica Hamel, blustery Peter Boyle and ship's nurse Shirley Jones are the bright bulbs who are now part of the new band of weary travelers.

Jones is supposed to be playing the very same nurse who appeared in the first film (portrayed by Sheila Matthews, who later became Mrs. Irwin Allen.) The stocky Ms. Matthews gained increasingly substantial roles in her husband's films, culminating in When Time Ran Out... (1980) when you were lucky to see anyone else, like William Holden, rather than her! Why she was overlooked in this instance is anyone's guess, but if you compare Matthews with the trim Jones, you can see why many people firmly believe in the benefits of steam as a weight loss tool!

Even though the ship is continually exploding and rocking, everyone takes time to sit around and make formal intro- ductions to one another. Then they belabor which way to go and choose up sides like it's for a dodge ball game (though, at first anyway, they all choose Caine in time.) On their way to the Purser's Office, a gaping hole appears in the floor (ceiling), which they must vault across or plunge to the fiery level below. And the rehashing continues as Jones cheesily informs Caine that she once one a medal in school for the long jump (something we KNOW that Matthews never did!)

In still another crib from the original, Caine informs Hamel that she can't proceed in her long gown. Rather than take it off (and, what, wear Boyle's pink shirt?) Savalas leans down and rips it apart along the front seam until we are almost at the promised land! The first time I saw this - as a kid on TV - I thought we actually saw her pubic region, but it turns out to be the top of her pantyhose. She makes a very dramatic jump, falling into Caine's arms gasping, "Hold me, please..." which prompts Field to exclaim, "Oh, brother..."

Savalas decides to abandon Caine and the passengers and set off in the opposite direction. So the leftover people file into the office when, conveniently, the safe falls from the wall and bursts through the level below (above.) They spy a wealth of gold coins, paper money and who knows what all, eventually climbing down to claim it and fill sacks with the pillage.

Everyone is stunned to suddenly be confronted with the chicken-friend voice of bedazzled Texas drunkard Slim Pickens! He's slurped down as much of the vino as he could handle and offers to pay Caine if he'll rescue him from the overturned ship. He also clings to a rare, prized bottle of wine he wishes to enjoy outside the ship. When Caine defers any more money, Pickens decides to throw in the other two survivors for another $50K. Which other two?!

In an utterly contrived twist of fate, Pickens has been hanging out with elevator operator Mark Harmon and, yep, Peter Boyle's daughter Angela Cartwright! The two share a frantic reconciliation which lasts about a hot second before Boyle notices that Cartwright's dress is torn (imagine that...) and seems to think that Harmon might have either done it or is looking at it too carefully!

While all this hubbub is happening, Hamel is still on the floor above. She heads over to an overturned file cabinet (much like the one shown to the left of her in this photo) and blithely sorts through a couple of papers before somehow coming up the exact thing she is looking for! I can't find anything I want in a properly organized file system, yet this upturned, spilled mess is no challenge at all for her...

Armed with information about some cargo on the ship, she hops back across the gaping hole and proceeds on to the storage sections of the ship where she finds Savalas. Turns out they are old friends and that she'd been on board the Poseidon at his bidding, escorting in a way, property of his. As sadly pitiful as this overlit, overly clean movie is, I can never get enough of damp, lithe, beautiful Hamel (with crazy eyes as a bonus) wandering through the corridors!

She gives Savalas the papers containing the location of the goods and then begs to leave. He'll have none of it, though. Still, she's hell bent on getting out of there (I'm glad someone is!), so she bids him farewell and walks off to go back to Caine and crew. I love the way her tan, oily skin reflects the emergency lights of the ship. She truly is luminous in this movie.

If you recall the original film, the water was forever bubbling up behind the survivors every step of the way. They constantly had to struggle to keep ahead of it. In this dunderheaded sequel, the characters continue heading down, down, DOWN to levels of the ship that ought to be totally submerged by now! While hurtling down some wrong-side-up stairs, Malden collapses. He's suffering from a severe illness he's attempting to keep quiet. He also loses his bags of loot, which Caine idiotically decides to leave one flight up even though there is no clear and present danger (like, for instance, water, which is notably absent for long stretches of the flick!)

Meanwhile, we get a dollop of continuity error as the other passengers come upon a hallway inexplicably filled with furniture, some of which looks as if it would have no place on the ship! case in point this silver stool. Field moves it out of the way, then Caine goes back for Malden, helps him, has a whole conversation with him and then we see Field move the very same stool AGAIN, minutes later...

One true "LOL" moment comes when Cartwright is clearing furniture and a cabin door opens to reveal the delicately glamorous Shirley Knight. Knight doesn't dare wave, clear her throat or make any noise, but opts to lay her hand on Cartwright's back, eliciting a petrified shriek! She then offers, in her best ladylike tones, "Oh, I'm terribly sorry..."

Field acts as if they've come upon an alien from outer space and can do nothing except call for Caine exasp- eratedly (this happens frequently in the script, "Mike... MIKE!") Caine bursts forth and asks who this woman (and her seated companion Jack Warden) is. She tells them they are Harold and Hannah Meredith. I love that name -- Hannah Meredith, for some reason.

Frankly, I love everything about Knight in this movie. Her regal posture and bearing, her softly piled-up blonde curls, her expressions, her voice, her tasteful jewelry, her hands with their perfectly manicured nails. I could go on and on... (didn't I just? Ha ha!) She's stuck in this dreadfully stupid movie, yet will not phone it in under any circumstances. Every glance, gesture and intonation is delivered with utmost commitment.

Another screaming howler is upon us when Knight tries to explain why she and her husband haven't left their compartment. She says she couldn't risk being them separated and how difficult it would be. Warden starts to finish off the explanation, but seemingly cannot tell the other weary travelers that he is in fact blind unless he takes out his dark glasses and puts them on his face simultaneously!! (They weren't going to take his word for it without the visual aid??)

He offers to stay behind (with Knight regally exclaiming, "I'm not going to leave the cabin without my husband.") and grouchy Boyle is of the same mind. He thinks the old coot will slow them down and pushes for them to leave him where they found him! Field hilariously tells him, "You're a creep..." Caine declares that he will muddy his rights to salvage if he leaves anyone behind so off they go, with Warden tapping his white cane against the overturned ceiling.

This movie catches a lot of heat over its sets, how clean and bright they are. It's true that most of them are too clean and that the entire movie is too brightly lit, but it's still quite evident that some work went into constructing the upside down rooms of the Poseidon. This crew's galley offers one example. But then the moment you think there's some quality on hand, the preposterousness takes over again.

That hood vent shown above? Caine and Field climb into it. This ventilation area should be caked with grease, grit and stains from years of cooking (this is the ship's final voyage), yet when they climb in, not only is it gargantuan, but it's squeaky clean (!) and, get this, comes complete with lighting!!! For what reason would a kitchen range hood have lights located up inside it? Field takes this time to have a mini-meltdown over their situation. She goes on and on crying while not one tear ever exits her eyes. Her face is bone dry and the most that is ever evidenced is a little moisture over her corneas. (She should have focused on the critical backlash and box office of this turkey and dredged up some real tears!)

Back in the kitchen, things are coming undone. Boyle rages at Harmon for paying too much attention to his "daughtah!" They he starts to lash out at the others. He looks at Jones and bellows, "You're readin' a book fer chrissakes!" In the theatrical cut of the movie, this is never explained. WHY is Jones sitting there reading a book? The reason is that Warden and Knight are actually novelists and they've brought along a satchel with their latest manuscript. Jones is a huge fan of theirs, of course. But you only know this if you've seen the expanded TV edition of the movie! Otherwise, it's never once mentioned. Anyway, Knight gets off another of her wonderfully upper crust exclamations when she looks at Boyle and says, "Don't you think we have enough problems without this type of foolishness?"

Since the air duct led nowhere, Caine and Field return and the gang heads off to find another way out. Unfortunately, what they find nearby causes them to believe that a mad killer must be on board! Rather than find the quickest route up and out of this ship, they decide to go find Savalas and warn him!

On their way, they come to another set piece, which might have been impressive had it not been lit to the hilt and also squeaky clean. There is precious little smoke or steam in this flick either. They have to climb up this series of pipes, rails and makeshift ladders, hoping to get through a passageway above. (No one here knows the layout of the ship, yet they proceed on and on...)

Unfortunately, Warden begins to fall off the ladder as he's climbing and Knight is the only one able to grasp his hand. He dangles there for a while, long enough to wrest Knight's arm from its socket (!) until Malden finally grabs him and realigns him on the ladder. Thanks to her shrieks of agony and the way she contorts her arm, YOU WILL BELIEVE that Knight has truly gotten her arm out of joint. You will also titter as Jones earnestly informs her that putting it back into place is "going to hurt a great deal!"

For what seems like the hundredth time in this movie, everyone takes a seat. There were brief rests here and there in The Poseidon Adventure, but here it's like everyone is waiting for a bus and then occasionally feel the need to stir for a little bit. Also, all along, one person or another keeps losing the money they're carrying!

They finally meet up with Savalas, who has located what he truly came for, but there is quite a snag for Caine and his followers. What Savalas has risked life and limb for, he can't let anyone one else in on. This means that he has to kill everyone there who knows about it! (Warden has a hysterical moment here since he doesn't even know who Savalas is. Out in the corridor, he exclaims, "Who is he? What does he want?" in exactly the same manner one might use following a knock at the door only to find a pimple-faced kid selling something for school!)

Savalas opens fire on the others and, though Caine, Boyle and Harmon do manage to grab some guns themselves, they still have to retreat asap down the corridor. They all shimmy down the companionway, occasionally squealing at the sound of gunfire to the sounds of "Flight of the Bumblebee"-ish music, before darting into a storage compartment. For reasons known only to Jones, instead of taking the open way, she guides the sightless Warden into a large set of crates, forcing herself and him to slither in-between them snugly as one-armed Knight struggles to pull them out through the other side. Talk about the blonde leading the blind!!

Now they are all trapped in this storage unit with Savalas and his gunmen outside the door. Spying a porthole near the entrance to the room, he instructs one of his henchmen to toss a grenade towards it and then slam the door shut, forcing them to drown to death in a flood.

The porthole springs a leak (and Field catches some shrapnel in her lower back) and at last we start to see some water in this nearly-bone dry movie! They struggle to find a way out until the surprisingly helpful Warden exclaims that the upside-down car is banging not against a wall, but a door! This allows them to clear away boxes and use it. (What no one associated with this movie ever thinks about is that this room is only shown to have two small, hinged doors to it. No other entrances. So how did these huge CARS get in there???)

I do love this part, in which Caine swings open the door to find a rushing river of water. Grant you, it never rises even an inch. It's just flowing water (?!), but at least there's a bit of a thrill in getting everyone wet for once. Knight, caught up in a sling, is merely flung into the whitecaps without any care or assistance from anyone.

They all clamber over to a ladder and head up. Up and up they go... Field, Jones, Malden, Harmon, Cartwright, Pickens, leaving the injured and exhausted Knight to languish with the water licking at her face as she hangs on, barely...

Finally, it's up to Caine (as always) to try to get her up the damn thing now that she's almost completely wiped out. Apparently, a force field prevents anyone already topside from coming down even a skosh to help her the way she did when she hurt her arm in the first place! They just sit and watch the struggle through a grating, missing only popcorn for the show.

As the movie finally crawls to it climax, we at last get a shot of underwater swimming. Caine has found a way out and gives it a little test run.

He comes back to find - what else? - everyone sitting down and carrying on various in-depth conversations. The lack of urgency running throughout this movie is unbelievable!

Caine takes the pack over to the hole in the floor/ceiling, which is filled with politely clean and clear water and never threatens to overrun its little square opening. Then he has Malden and Field bring in some scuba gear for everyone to wear as they exit the side of the ship.

I won't go into all the details of the finale, but I do have to point out a glaring gaffe that takes place near the end. As the scuba-clad survivors are swimming up and out of the overturned ship, instead of a rock hard hull, they are seen swimming next to a wafting, fabric TARP! Apparently all the material used to fabricate the bottom of the ship was used up and so someone just hung some material under it to simulate the side of a cruise liner?!

At the very end of the film, We find that Field and Caine have at least one thing to celebrate as they head off into the sunset. In the expanded TV edition (as seen here), we do get to hear from a couple other people as to what their plans are. These moments are not contained on the DVD. I don't know what it would take for there to be a DVD release that includes these the way The Towering Inferno (1974) deluxe package did. You see, that movie was a major hit...

Look at this oddball foreign release poster, which almost, but not quite, gets an aspect or two right with regards to the setting, plot, characters and motivations...

This being the period when Michael Caine said yes to practically any movie, good or bad, his output was highly-varied to say the least! For every California Suite (1978) or Dressed to Kill (1980), there would be two of something like this or The Swarm (1978), Ashanti (1979), The Island (1980) or The Hand (1981.) Only Nostradamus could have predicted that in the wake of Beyond the Poseidon Adventure he would win two Oscars, one for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and the other for The Cider House Rules (1999.) He's still hard at it today with three movies in the can for release this year.

Field had finally, finally established some legitimacy as a serious actress with her Emmy-winning turn in the harrowing Sybil (1976) and was progressing even further with the biting drama Norma Rae (1979) when she took this role. Burt Reynolds, her then-lover, turned down Caine's role, but suggested (along with her agent) that she take this one for "commercial" reasons. It wound up as a terrible move since she wound up winning an Oscar for Norma Rae and then having this gurgler as a follow-up! Fortunately, movies like Absence of Malice (1981) put her back on track to where she was another two-time Academy Award winner with Places in the Heart (1984) and could exclaim that this time they really liked her.

Caine and Field reunited on-screen in 1987 for the (all but forgotten now) comedy Surrender.  Even Peter Boyle was along for the ride again in that one. It must stick in their craw that even Beyond is probably recalled by more people that Surrender is and Beyond was an unmitigated flop!

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure couldn't begin to compete on any level with its prede- cessor, though Allen did try to stack the deck with, if not Oscar-winners, then at least Oscar bridesmaids. Going in, it did have Malden, a winner for A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) - also a nominee for On the Waterfront (1954) - and Jones, a winner for Elmer Gantry (1960.) Savalas had been nominated for Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), Warden was nominated twice, for Shampoo (1975) and Heaven Can Wait (1978) and Knight twice as well, for The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1962.) Yet this remains the only Irwin Allen '70s disaster film to receive no nominations whatsoever come Oscar time.

This is an inept movie on so many levels, but said fact doesn't diminish my enjoyment of it. I love disaster, I love water, I love bad movies, I love famous actors and I love practical special effects versus computer-generated ones. And since I am so deeply enamored of both Hamel and Knight, they serve as a sort of relay-race tag-team with one taking an early departure as the other shows up, so that helps get me through. I would LOVE to see a DVD with the extra 20 minutes reinstated. I just doubt that enough people give a hoot for there to be a demand for it.