The Carpetbaggers

Like Charles Foster Kane, Jonas Cord is far more dashing and virile than the fellow this film carefully avoids claiming he was actually based on.

Harold Robbins' trashy 1961 bestseller cashing in on the late fifties fascination with the Roaring Twenties erupted into this Technicolor nonsense with a once in a lifetime cast (it was the debut of Elizabeth Ashley and the posthumous swansong of Alan Ladd). George Peppard is a much more rugged adventurer than the man it's not based on (who's actual story just continued to get weirder and weirder for another ten years after this version abruptly ends).

If you don't know who Alan Ladd is, then disregard the rest of this review.

Without Ladd, this is a fun, early 60s splashy scandalous colorful morality tale with pricey production values.

With Ladd, it's a study of old hollywood historical roman a clefs surrounding Howard Hughes and the early days of moving pictures. Ladd, a hollywood legend who the fans loved, but who critics usually dismissed, and whose star had faded to a dim glow by now, plays a role he's too old for, but works it beyond his historical acting abilities, and gives this big hit of its time the only soul it has.

This movie is doubly good if you love movies and know a bit about hollywood history.

Adaptation of Harold Robbins' bestseller, about an egomaniacal Howard Hughes-like tycoon into airplanes, making movies and womanizing, comes to the screen without too much timidity; however, this "adult entertainment" is full of grown-ups acting like spoiled children (it isn't so much a Tinsel Town wallow as it is a bubbling cauldron of reckless immaturity), resulting in a camp melodrama that you can't tear yourself away from. George Peppard is the stony-faced tyrant who runs (and sometimes ruins) the lives of everyone in his path, and his plastic-formula panic is nearly funny; Elizabeth Ashley is the good girl he marries; Alan Ladd (in his final bow) is a faded cowboy star; Carroll Baker and Martha Hyer are lookalike starlets; Robert Cummings is a smarmy agent; Martin Balsam is a studio mogul on his way out. The whole tatty enterprise smacks of artificiality, with ugly sets and ridiculous character brawls, and yet one watches nearly hypnotized by the scandal sheet-styled, B-movie glamor. **1/2 from ****

I'd heard of this movie, but had never gotten around to watching it... I was impressed by the quality of the script in some scenes and then let down in others... Interesting characters, though stereotypical. The pretty blonds, the cowboy, the drunks, the agents but one character stands out, and that is the wife of power hungry industrialist, Monica Wintrop. You think she'll flake but she keeps on going and in the end well... I won't spoil it for you! I think she has the best line in the movie. Here it goes: When her husband asks if she's pregnant: "It happens, you know, look at all the people in China!... Besides, accidents happen mostly in the home."

The wealthy family saga has always been an audience's favorite:think "giant" (1956) or "written on the wind"(same year) or "home from the hill"(1960,which featured George Peppard too).The genre became essentially a TV show afterwards,the likes of "Dallas" and "Dynasty".Today,it has almost died down.

"The carpetbaggers" is very unlikely story of a tycoon who pushes the others out of his way and whose heart of stone nobody can break.Add the de rigueur childhood trauma -which,as anyone past infancy should know,explains everything!Around him , a bevy of beautiful women :Caroll Baker,as his attractive mother-in-law(!)Martha Hyer as a would be actress,and Elizabeth Ashley as his deceived wife .Alan Ladd plays a movie star down on his luck ,because of the coming of the talkies.It's his swansong and his last scene with Peppard is impressive.So impressive we could do without the implausible mushy epilogue which follows.

George Peppard is extremely good and it's his performance that saves the movie from tediousness.As for Edward Dmytryk,his best works("the Caine mutiny" "the young lions") were behind him and what came next would be disastrous(notably the western "Shalako" with Brigitte Bardot and Sean Connery)