King of the Turkeys: Michael Caine in America
By Robert Cettl
()
About this ebook
Michael Caine is acclaimed as a great actor. He is an international star and two-time Academy Award Winner (for Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules) whose filmmaking career spans over fifty years and many nations. His classic films spring to mind immediately at the mention of his name - Alfie, The Italian Job, The Ipcress File, The Man Who Would be King, Get Carter, Hannah and her Sisters, Harry Brown. However, although Caine has immense standing as a serious actor, following his move to the USA in the 1970s he accepted work in terrible Hollywood films simply for the money or fringe benefits, occasionally as a favour to a friend.
Some of these “turkeys” are worthy and earnest efforts. Some of them are irredeemable trash cinema. What is astonishing given the reverence accorded Caine is that these indifferent Hollywood flops, which impressed neither critics nor audiences, comprise the bulk of his career between 1972 and 1986: 14 years of Hollywood turkeys and the guy still gets an Academy Award. Two, actually.
Indeed, no other internationally acclaimed actor has made as many terrible, indifferent or mediocre movies as Michael Caine. That is not to malign the actor only to point out that some of his career choices were often influenced by factors beyond the merits of the movie itself. To like Caine’s work, therefore, is to have a begrudging, proverbial “soft spot” for the flops and turkeys - redeemed often solely by Caine’s presence and, for which he always works hard - they are, if nothing else, money well earned. On close examination, some of these flops reveal considerable charms and interest: not perhaps enough to warrant a career retrospective of his American film work, but enough to reward discerning viewing (given the pre-emptive warning to lower expectations).
This e-book celebrates Caine’s worst American movies, his turkeys, the stinkers that only his die-hard fans ether know about or can tolerate: and as is evident, he’s made more of them than most actors would care to remember or include on their CV. But not Caine - with characteristic humour he remembers every one (at least in some part - enough for a small anecdote anyway), its faults, missed opportunities, terrible critical receptions and all. This then is the warts and all e-book of Michael Caine’s American period, where he truly became the King of the Turkeys.
Robert Cettl
A freelance author and former Australian National Film & Sound Archive (NFSA) SAR Research Fellow, Robert Cettl (HBA, GCTESOL, GDIS, MTESOL) is an English lecturer at the University of Jinan, Shandong, China. Robert's non-fiction writing is published through McFarland & Co. Inc. and Bloomsbury Academic in the USA and collected by such as Yale University Library, the British Film Institute and the national libraries of Australia and China. He is also an experimental ethnographic filmmaker whose digital feature films are collected by the NFSA and soon to be released on Video-on-Demand and whose short videos about living and working in China can be found on his YouTube channel.
Read more from Robert Cettl
Sensational Movie Monologues Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Australian Film Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFilm Tales Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFilm Tags Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFilm Talk Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to King of the Turkeys
Related ebooks
Altman (Text-Only Edition) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is Spinal Tap: Music on Film Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ultimate Woody Allen Film Companion Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Kevin Costner Cinema Collection; Volume One: 1982-2000; High Rollers, Heroes & Home Runs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCollected Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGunga Din: From Kipling's Poem to Hollywood's Action-Adventure Classic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Expendables Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Scare Myself: A Memoir Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOne Half of Robertson Davies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Straight Into Darkness: Tom Petty as Rock Mystic Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNaturals Vol. 1: A Pictorial Essay of Filmed Female Intensity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe British Crime and Prison Quiz Book Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Land That Time Forgot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAlice of Old Vincennes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jimmy Page in Brazil Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBoris Karloff: The Man Remembered Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat Christmas Did for Jerusha Grumble Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEyes Wide Open 2012: The Year's 25 Greatest Movies (and 5 Worst) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMajor Barbara Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Armageddon 2419 A.D: Including - The Airlords of Han Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe People that Time Forgot Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Shoppe of Horrors #5 (aka The Hammer Journal #1): Little Shoppe of Horrors Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRight Wingers Duped Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAll or Nothing: The Story of Steve Marriott Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Told You I Wasn't Perfect Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mr. Spaceship: Short Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Thus Said Bryan Adams: Handpicked Quotes from a Pop Star Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Beatles 1963: A Year in the Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Industries For You
Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sleight of Mouth: The Magic of Conversational Belief Change Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5YouTube 101: The Ultimate Guide to Start a Successful YouTube channel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Writing into the Dark: How to Write a Novel Without an Outline: WMG Writer's Guides, #6 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5YouTube Secrets: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your Following and Making Money as a Video I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study of the Federal Reserve and its Secrets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsINSPIRED: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer: The Ultimate Guide to Producing High-Quality Herbs on a Market Scale Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art and Making of the Dark Knight Trilogy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Artpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living From Your Creativity Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Sweet Success: A Simple Recipe to Turn your Passion into Profit Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Market Gardener: A Successful Grower's Handbook for Small-Scale Organic Farming Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet's Rise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House of Gucci: A True Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Time's Up!: The Subscription Business Model for Professional Firms Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business & Beyond Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for King of the Turkeys
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
King of the Turkeys - Robert Cettl
Introduction
Michael Caine is acclaimed as a great actor. He is an international star and two-time Academy Award Winner (for Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules) whose filmmaking career spans over fifty years and many nations. His classic films spring to mind immediately at the mention of his name - Alfie, The Italian Job, The Ipcress File, The Man Who Would be King, Get Carter, Hannah and her Sisters, Harry Brown. However, although Caine has immense standing as a serious actor, following his move to the USA in the 1970s he accepted work in terrible Hollywood films simply for the money or fringe benefits, occasionally as a favour to a friend.
Some of these turkeys
are worthy and earnest efforts. Some of them are irredeemable trash cinema. What is astonishing given the reverence accorded Caine is that these indifferent Hollywood flops, which impressed neither critics nor audiences, comprise the bulk of his career between 1972 and 1986: 14 years of Hollywood turkeys and the guy still gets an Academy Award. Two, actually.
Indeed, no other internationally acclaimed actor has made as many terrible, indifferent or mediocre movies as Michael Caine. That is not to malign the actor only to point out that some of his career choices were often influenced by factors beyond the merits of the movie itself. To like Caine’s work, therefore, is to have a begrudging, proverbial soft spot
for the flops and turkeys - redeemed often solely by Caine’s presence and, for which he always works hard - they are, if nothing else, money well earned. On close examination, some of these flops reveal considerable charms and interest: not perhaps enough to warrant a career retrospective of his American film work, but enough to reward discerning viewing (given the pre-emptive warning to lower expectations).
This e-book celebrates Caine’s worst American movies, his turkeys, the stinkers that only his die-hard fans ether know about or can tolerate: and as is evident, he’s made more of them than most actors would care to remember or include on their CV. But not Caine - with characteristic humour he remembers every one (at least in some part - enough for a small anecdote anyway), its faults, missed opportunities, terrible critical receptions and all. This then is the warts and all e-book of Michael Caine’s American period, where he truly became the King of the Turkeys.
Internationalism - Courting the American Directors: Hurry Sundown, Play Dirty, Too Late the Hero, Zee & Company, The Black Windmill, The Marseilles Contract
Michael Caine’s direct flirtation with American cinema began after his stardom was well established in Britain with Zulu, The Ipcress File and Alfie, the latter casting him as an unrepentant Cockney womanizer and a role with which he would for a long time be identified, much to his chagrin. Caine thus first went to the USA as part of the publicity campaign for Alfie, while The Ipcress File was also screening there on general release. The process of cementing stardom began as Caine was interviewed by influential New York film critic Judith Crist on the Today show and on The Tonight Show as one of Johnny Carson’s first interviews (Caine, 1992, p. 401).
Caine later commented that Gloria Steinem, in her contemporary interview for The New York Times confused him with his Alfie persona, something that led to later hostilities. Indeed, several years later Steinem would insult both Caine and his wife when she insinuated that Caine only liked submissive women and that in Shakira he had found one - Caine was incensed by this untrue accusation and lamented that much feminism
by that time was hypocritical as it posited only specifically emancipated
women as worthy of recognition and sought to implement and regulate how women defined themselves, their choices and their roles. But at this early point, all was well and Caine let the confusion over the Alfie persona slide.
Superstar Shirley Maclaine was looking for a director for her new film, Gambit, when the name of Sidney J. Furie was suggested. When a screening of The Ipcress File was arranged for Maclaine and Furie proved unavailable, Maclaine exercised her contractual right to select the film’s male lead and chose Caine to be her co-star. Caine was back in England when he heard the news that Maclaine wanted him for Gambit. The actor eagerly agreed, later recounting that this was Hollywood, and I would have done anything to make a movie there
(Caine, 2010, p. 281) and you see, at that time I had no sense of career moves or structure in my life; I was like a man just doing anything once that he had dreamed of before he died
(Caine, 1992, p. 408). Caine thus got his first taste of Hollywood following a