Doncha just love a quickie every once in a while? Ha ha! I have decided that since life is simply too crazy for me to compose/ compile the sort of looonnng, microscopic posts I am known for, I'm going to occasionally pop in with a short one with less to say and show. This first one is concerning disaster staple
George Kennedy, famous around here for his roles in the
Airport movies as well as
Earthquake (1974.) The year
Airport - the biggest blockbuster of 1970 - was released, he actually had three other films hitting movie screens as well. Having won an Oscar for
Cool Hand Luke (1967), he was riding a wave of success with a mixture of supporting parts and co-leads. But for
Zigzag (1970), he was granted a rare chance to be practically the whole show... and I sort of mean that in more way than one. Few people have probably ever even heard of this movie, but - thanks to COVID19 - I have been catching all sorts of obscure and oddball movies that I ordinarily might not take time to invest in.
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Zigzag is a somewhat convoluted movie which doesn't tell it's story in a linear fashion. It begins in the middle and flashes back, then picks up again. Modern audiences can probably grapple with this a bit easier than the ones who were either baffled or annoyed with it in 1970. Kennedy starts off the movie being carted off to prison, undergoing a thorough procedure of entrance examinations and processes. (I wonder if L.A. County still gives incoming inmates a sandwich and an orange upon entry!)
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Kennedy (sporting some very fake 5 o'clock shadow that would make Bluto jealous) is put through all the rigamarole you've come to expect from decades of prison flicks.
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I always think of George as quite huge, but he was really just burly/brawny at this point. He was almost trim in Luke, but seemed to get stockier with each passing year.
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As he is forced to disrobe along with the others, there are convenient heads in the way. But it's clear that he's getting down to his birthday suit... Some of you are just gonna hate me for this, but... wait for it... wait for it...
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We are faced with the specter of George Kennedy's rippled mid-section along with confirmation that the carpet does not match the famous blond drapes! Ha ha! Now I'm not really picking on him. He's just an ordinary 45 year-old man of the time. But it might have been just a skosh more tantalizing if, say, his old Luke costar Paul Newman was in the part.
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Poor thing even has to have the extensive body (and cavity) search...
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Then it's off to the shower and eventual disinfecting.
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As you can see, he's really not that big, but oh the humanity of that prior camera angle and body positioning... And, you know, there are legions of folks out there who enjoy a bigger guy. (What is it they say? "There's a key to every lock" or something like that? It just apparently doesn't ever seem to work in my own case....!)
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Next, the new postulate prisoner is taken to the robing room. There's a "No Smoking" sign. Um, where was a person supposed to have stowed his cigarettes after all of this?! Then, just when we're assured that there will always be a guard in the way...
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...the full moon arises!
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Kennedy's attorney is played by a zesty Eli Wallach, who adds no small amount of energy and charisma to the film.
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Kennedy's wife is played by Anne Jackson. It gets a little confusing for those viewers who are in the know because in real life, Wallach and Jackson were married from 1948 up until Wallach's death in 2014, a (rare) 66-year union!
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In Zigzag, it is Kennedy who shares marital bliss with Ms. Jackson, not Wallach.
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Presumably they got on well because they re-teamed in one of Kennedy's other 1970 movies, Dirty Dingus Magee, which starred Frank Sinatra. She was a combination mayor-madame and he was her town's sheriff. (For you completists out there, Kennedy's fourth movie of that year was the first of them to hit theaters, tick... tick... tick..., a racially-charged drama costarring Jim Brown.)
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Fans of his ought to like this movie (which is just unusual enough, and filled with enough familiar faces, to be intriguing in its own right.)
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At one point, he's poured into an old army uniform that tends to show what we didn't see in the prison sequence.
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Service with a smile! Other than his TV-series Sarge and The Blue Knight, I'm not aware of any other starring vehicles for George, though there may be some more. Zig Zag still has a lot of that late-'60s vibe I enjoy so much (including a groovy title number heard by Roy Orbison, heard during a graduation party scene!) I wasn't even able to figure out the mystery very easily, which says something when you've slogged through as many movies as I have!
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I just had to share this lunatic eBay listing I came across while looking into the movie... Shit like this drives me up a tree! Actually pictured are Charlene Holt and Stewart Moss.
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The End!
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