Tony Anthony in ALLEN KLEIN by Fred Goodman

 

If you, like me, are mostly interested in Allen Klein because of his association with Tony Anthony, then Fred Goodman's biography can be a bit disappointing. Here's every mention of Anthony in the book:

page 31: "In 1961, when Klein took a job for a few weeks as the accountant on a low-budget independent film being shot in Miami, FORCE OF IMPULSE, he'd already digested the lessons of independent production espoused by Kamber: If you make the product yourself, all you need is a distributor - and you didn't bargain away any rights beyond that! It seemed a straightforward formula, and Allen was eager to try his hand at it.

    "With FORCE OF IMPULSE, Klein believed he'd found a team that could make the product for him. Directed by Saul Swimmer, the film was coproduced by Peter Gayle, whose financing came from a family business in New York's garment district, and Tony Anthony, one of the film's stars. The following year, Klein produced his first film. Originally shot in Florida as PITY ME NOT but released as WITHOUT EACH OTHER, it starred Anthony and was directed by Swimmer. Despite Allen's best efforts - he took the film to Cannes, screened it at his own expense and then placed an ad in Variety claiming it had been selected as the Best American Film at Cannes, a nonexistent honor - the movie never found a distributor and was a nearly total loss. But the relationships it led to proved lifelong, with Allen producing several films, from romantic comedies to Spaghetti Westerns, that starred Anthony, and Swimmer getting the nod to direct both the forgettable MRS. BROWN YOU'VE GOT A LOVELY DAUGHTER starring Herman's Hermits and the historic documentary film for THE CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH.

   "The failure of WITHOUT EACH OTHER didn't dampen Allen's belief in Hecht-Hill-Lancaster's independent model; it simply brought home the fact that to make money, you had to sell something worth buying. He would shortly take the lessons he'd learned from the movies and apply them to the music business in ways no one else had."

p.125: (Stock broker Abbey) "Butler liked Klein and loved his business, and the two were soon spending a lot of time together traveling to London and Italy, where Klein was pursuing film projects. Allen began thinking out loud about finding a public company to buy and use as a vehicle himself. The basic idea was that he would get control of a publicly traded company, fold his own Allen Klein and Company into it, raise the profile and price, and then use the stock to finance other acquisitions and deals. The question was, what company made the most sense to acquire?

    "Klein was going to be making several movies. Allen had remained friendly with Tony Anthony, the actor he'd partnered with on his first picture, and he'd agreed to coproduce a spaghetti Western that Anthony was starring in, A STRANGER IN TOWN. He'd also convinced MGM Records to advance money against Herman's Hermits' future royalties in order to produce a film with them, MRS. BROWN YOU'VE GOT A LOVELY DAUGHTER, while the Rolling Stones had purchased the film rights to a British novel, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, that Oldham wanted to develop into a vehicle for them and for which Klein had cajoled a million dollars in seed money from London Records. With all those projects on the board, Allen believed an existing entertainment company would be the best fit. He asked Butler to take a look at MGM and see whether buying up its stock made sense."

(Klein's effort to acquire MGM failed.)

p. 203 "Klein had lost the Rolling Stones, but he was eager to impress and take care of the three former Beatles who were still taking to him. John had long been his focus; now he sought to improve the fortunes of Ringo and George as well.

    "For Ringo, who wanted to expand his acting career, there was a feature role in BLINDMAN, the first of three spaghetti Westerns Klein produced with his friend and long time associate actor Tony Anthony. In the movie, filmed in Spain, Klein made a tongue-in-cheek cameo as a gruff-looking outlaw dynamited into oblivion in the production's opening sequence."

(Klein would hire FORCE OF IMPULSE director Saul Swimmer to capture THE CONCERT FOR BANGLADESH on film.)

(Allen Klein jokes around with Ringo Starr on the set of BLINDMAN. Klein plays one of the men found in bed with "Skunk" and a woman in the opening scene of the movie. BLINDMAN was not the "first of three Spaghetti Westerns Klein produced with Anthony" - it was the fourth and last. His last credit on a Tony Anthony movie was on the prohibition era film PETE, PEARL AND THE POLE - which Anthony thought had never been finished but appeared on home video as 1931: ONCE UPON A TIME IN NEW YORK.)