Bernard Gordon's Western that didn't get made.

From HOLLYWOOD EXILE or How I Learned To Love the Black List by Bernard Gordon

Gordon was hired by Philip Yordan to come up with more projects to make after CAPTAIN APACHE.

He set me up with a desk, a Selectric typewriter, and plenty of paper in a fine apartment he had fixed up above the very spacious garage at one edge of his Beverly Hills property. For source material, he dumped on me a stack of scripts he had acquired at bargain rates. These scripts had all been written by an American, Marc Behm, who lived in Paris. Behm was a compulsive writer who could and did turn out screenplays in a matter of days, and, according to Yordan, had a closet bulging with such scripts. Yordan bought them wholesale for about $1,000 apiece. Then he pawed through them to see, from time to time, if there was anything there he could use. Actually, Behm was a talented writer who had a few respectable credits, such as co-writer on the Beatles' second feature, HELP. But none of the Behm scripts Yordan bought ever made it to the screen.I went to work reading these scripts to try and find at least an idea for basis for a practical production. As once before on KRAKATOA, I had to work on spec, but the genuine prospect of returning to Madrid and of becoming a producer made me willing to gamble.I finally settled on a Western of Behm's that turned me on. It was about a beautiful Indian girl who, having been raped by a gang of scruffy outlaws, for revenge sets out to kill them all. By herself. The script had some of Marc's originality, weirdness, and whimsy, but it was woefully weak in character motivation, story development, theme and the kind of ideas necessary to give it unity and direction. I pounded away at the typewriter, pleased with the way the script was going.
When I finished and gave it to Yordan, he read it swiftly and, for the only time in my experience with him, compared my writing to his own."It's just what I would have written," he said. "Only better."
He put Sidney Harmon to work on casting. It looked as though this would be the next picture on the schedule after CAPTAIN APACHE. I called my version of the script THEY ALL CAME TO KILL...
During these last months of 1970, as I was getting my feet wet in production, I also wanted to schedule my script of THEY ALL CAME TO KILL, but we proceeded instead with another old potboiler of Yordan's, BAD MAN'S RIVER. This was something he or someone had written years ago in Hollywood, one of the many scripts in Yordan's backlog. When I protested that KILL was a good script and ready to go, Yordan agreed that others liked it too, but he told me that Ben Fisz had nixed it because he didn't believe that a Western should be made with a woman lead. End of story - except that not much later another major American film was shot in Spain, a Western with Raquel Welch in the lead. HANNIE CAULDER bore a startling resemblence to THEY ALL CAME TO KILL: a woman raped by an evil gang deals with a bounty hunter, personally exacts revenge on her violators. I was bitter about this and wondered whether it was possible that Yordan felt it necessary to reinforce his position by supplying a script with his own name attached.

How A TOWN CALLED BASTARD?

From HOLLYWOOD EXILE or How I Learned To Love the Blacklist by Bernard Gordon

Bernard Gordon first worked in Spain when Philip Yordan hired him as a writer to work on projects at Samuel Bronston's company and at Yordan's Security Pictures. Both of those concerns ended, but then Yordan made a deal with Cinerama Releasing and he brought Gordon with him. The deal with Cinemara ended with KARAKATOA EAST OF JAVA, so Gordon returned to Hollywood to try to find work. Meanwhile, Yordan set up a new film, ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN, "uncharacteristcally, he was for the first time risking his own money on a production without other financing and without a release deal."

"After I had left Madrid, while Yordan was still in Europe working on ROYAL HUNT OF THE SUN, he had also been developing new contacts and financing sources in England. His new associates were Ben Fisz (pronounced 'Fish'), a shamelessly extravagant promoter with overweening filmmaking ambitions, and Bobby Marmor, a pleasant, low-key man who had made a fortune in London real estate. Fisz interested Marmor in the romance of filmmaking; Yordan plugged into this combo because Marmor had money and excellent financial connections with the London merchant banks. Yordan could provide the Hollywood contacts and expertise plus invaluable Madrid contacts and know-how. With the money he had earned from Bronston, he was also in a position to contribute his share to the creation of a small studio in or around Madrid, the site of their new empire.

"To my surprise, this dream seemed to be evolving credibly. With money supplied by Marmor and Yordan, and with Yordan using his film and legal connections in Madrid, they acquired a property just outside Madrid. Working on and off with my own projects, I was startled to learn that they had developed the lot with a few buildings for offices and dressing rooms. A warehouse was to serve as a sound stage, and they had constructed a modest Western street on top of the hill dominating the property. Yordan, commuting back and forth to London and Madrid, showed me the script of the first film they planned to shoot. Under Ben Fisz's supervision, a writer in London had scripted A TOWN CALLED BASTARD. Yordan was supposed to rewrite and cure its problems. He gave me the script to read. I wasn't asked to participate, so I refrained from any criticism of the work, but since this looked like a 'go' project, I felt left out. I speculated on the meaning of this. Did Yordan feel he could handle the rewrite on his own without my help? Or had he not asked me because Bronston wasn't around to foot the bill for my work? Or did Yordan need to prove to his new partners that he, personally, was the man who could be trusted to deal with all the script problems?

"I kept my mouth shut until Yordan finally asked me, 'What do you think of the script?'

"'It's interesting,' I said, 'though I think it has some problems.'

"Never insensitive, Yordan let it go at that. If I wasn't interested in volunteering comments, he wouldn't ask for them. Actually, the BASTARD script was a bloody, violent, and confusing exercise that, presumably, catered to the booming desire for more and more sensational films. After much travail that didn't involve me, it was eventually made into a film, but Halliwell dismisses it as a 'sadistic Western with an opening massacre followed by twenty-two killings (count 'em). Pretty dull otherwise.'

"Yordan got my attention when he announced, 'They started shooting BASTARD in Madrid.'

"'Who's the director?'

"'Bob Parrish.' Parrish was an American director with many substantial credits who was at the time working principally out of England.

"'Who's the producer?'

"'Ben Fisz is in charge until I get over there.'

"So it was real.

"'You want to go back there with me?'

"'Doing what?'

"'You'll be the producer.'

"I was ready. 'When do we go?'

"'September.' He was unequivocal...

"'How do I get paid?'

"'You won't. Same as me. You'll have a big expense account and own a piece of the pictures along with me. You'll make a lot more than salary that way.' I had my doubts, but the way things were going for me in Hollywood, I couldn't say no. He went on. 'I have to get another script ready to shoot in September.' It was early summer.

"'I'm going to work with Milton [Sperling]. He owns a book.' He was referring to paperback Western, CAPTAIN APACHE, which in fact Yordan did work on full-time with Sperling. 'Meanwhile, I'd like you to start working on some scripts. We'll need a whole program.'"

The director of MESSALINA IMPERIAL VENUS

Vittorio Cottafavi: MESSALINA, VENERE IMPERATRICE (MESSALINA) was a film that I didn't like very much. It was too ornate. The familiar story of Messalina didn't seem to me too interesting. I didn't see how I could change her into a character that had life and variable moods. In her, everything was too deliberate. What interested me instead was the experience that I could have with the Technirama system. The character of Messalina is curious, because we are dealing here with a pathological case, a woman deprived of humanity. She was an abandoned woman from the beginning, who looked inside herself and not out at the World, incapable of love and of hate but doing these two things at the same time. What I did like in this film are a few small scenes that observe the daily life of the Romans with great detail. The sequence of the games in the square, where two actors recite the Miles Gloriosus: people sat on benches or on the ground, and two poor actors without even a theatrical backdrop who recite in front of the houses, as a show for the poor people, for those who could not afford the ticket to the arena.

delli Colli on Leone & Morricone

Tonino delli Colli interviewed by Nighteagle

MM: When you took over the direction of photography, beginning with THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, one revolutionary method was introduced to generate the right mood, or state of mind among the actors during the shooting: the music of Morricone on the set. That was unprecedented on western movie sets.

TDC: Morricone and Leone, what a duo! One cannot be without the other. Yes, with THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY there were first attempts to bring in the "invisible actor", the music , into the scene. In ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST this become a completely developed technique. The music kept going and going, sometimes I had to tell Sergio to turn it down or cut if off, because I couldn´t be heard by my crewmen during a take. Sergio and Ennio had some fierce dabates often, but Ennio was more convincing. Sergio was kind of superstitious. He always selected tunes and melodies that other directors had refused previously. For example, in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, the main theme was a love theme written by Ennio much before, for a movie of director Zeffirelli, a movie that was never realized. This happened quite often, Sergio retrieved pieces of music that Ennio had put away in some drawer...

Italian Western camera operator

Oberdan Troiani: Luigi Capuana was a Neapolitan who had a good technical background. During the war he'd been a fighter pilot, and had reached the rank of Commander. He was the classic Neapolitan who worked as little as possible. He'd arrive in the morning: "Hey Troiani, I've got to be at the dentist at one." He'd have twenty pages of script to shoot, he would call for his crane, and in one single sweeping movement he'd cover every single one of his cues. We'd finish earlier than projected. When the troupes for the other films would arrive at Cinecitta to begin filming on the same day, they'd find we were already well under way, that we'd finished for the day! I filmed a Western with him that was really rather well made (he was awfully good with those crane shots), a Spanish co-production that came out with a pseudonym attached (Lewis King), even though it was all filmed in Rome or nearby. I think it was called IL MAGNIFICO TEXANO (THE MAGNIFICENT TEXAN). Because of contractual reasons it often happened on these co-productions that the director had to be Spanish and the cameraman Italian (or vice verse). On this one we needed a Spanish camera operator, but the producer didn't want to take risks so I shot it all myself, while the Spaniard stood and watched. John Saxon was the star, an American who later became a producer, I believe. By this time, we Italians had got the feel for this sort of production and we could make these films with incredible speed, and at a third of the price of what they would have cost elsewhere in Europe.
RAMON IL MESSICANO (RAMON THE MEXICAN) was a film directed by Maurizio Pradeaux. He'd been the chauffeur for Emimmo Salvi, a producer during the period of mythological films. Salvi had written the script himself, and had found Pradeaux a financial backer from Bologna. He then wanted to make a 007 type film, Ventotto minuti per tre millioni di dollari, with Pradeaux, but gave up on the project: it wasn't the kind of film you could do on a tight budget. The only way to make budget Westerns was to consistently follow the same well-worn path. Beginning with the horses, always the same horses put through exactly the same paces. And there was always the same saloon, the usual Western village constructed De Paolis-style. The most you could spend for a film like this back then was 120 million. Pradeaux got his start this way, and went on later to direct numerous adventure films.

Duccio Tessari on MESSALINA, VENERE IMPERATRICE

Duccio Tessari: For MESSALINA, VENERE IMPERATRICE, not to be confused with the 1951 version (THE AFFAIRS OF MESSALINA with Maria Felix) but this time by Cottafavi, a friend recommended a very young girl to me who had been at the Academy, saying that she needed some work experience. I needed a Roman slave-girl for a scene of torture; her dress is lacerated with whips and a red-hot iron used to 5brand her flesh. Naturally her skin was protected by a layer of rubber, on which was placed a steel plate, tricked out with a thin strip of veal in such a way that it looked like it was the real skin of the actress. Then this young thing arrived on the set, for her debut in the cinema: she was called Paola Pitagora. The crescendo of the scene was an agonizing scream that she was supposed to utter at the moment in which the iron branded her flesh. Poor Paola, she wasn't from the World of Film, and knew nothing of it. She had come from the Academy with all the baggage of Chekov, Moliere and Goldoni and therefore, despite the direction she was given, continued to give out a very subdued cry, modulated and beautifully enunciated, but that was all. Take after take, it always remained a tiny cry and Cottafavi became angry because he wanted a desperate scream, he needed a desperate scream, and the scene wouldn't work without a desperate scream. This called for a wickedly extreme remedy, and with the next take, I told the two Praetorians to inflict the torture with great force because this time the scene would be perfect. At the desired moment, La Pitagora uttered an anguished cry that came from the torment of her flesh because I, from under the camera, had hammered on her bare foot with all the strength I had. The maximum sadism in these films came from scenes of this type. And the maximum eroticism came from the kiss which was the first stage in the action that indicated that the girl was going to undress, followed immediately by a shot of the actor in whose eyes were to register the excitement of the girl's nudity. Those actors had to have a quality of expression that simulated the eroticism, because in their shot, they saw absolutely nothing, or in the more fortunate cases, a hairy assistant director who continued to intone from the script: "Here, now she undresses, you think that you see her breast, think, think." However, some of these actors just didn't have what it takes, and they appeared on the screen with expressions of total stupidity.

Which Westerns does Giuliano Gemma best remember?

Giuliano Gemma: Besides Tessari's...Ringo, I recall PER POCHI DOLLARI ANCORA by Ferroni (FORT YUMA GOLD), and then two films I made with Michele Lupo: ARIZONA COLT and BEN AND CHARLIE, which was later renamed AMICO STAMMO LONTANO ALMENO UN PALMO (approximately: ‘Let’s keep our distance’)...It was a good story about two friends who are can never agree on anything, but are miserable when separated. We shot part in Spain, part in Italy, and it was a well-made film. I found Lupo well suited to this sort of pop-adventure movie. He has the right rhythm; the right feel for this sort of thing.