L'uomo che non sapeva amare

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).

When a film is based on a Harold Robbin's novel, it's pretty clear that the story isn't going to be about Amish furniture building or love among the hollyhocks. His brand of fiction is usually racy, tawdry and more than a little tasteless, yet readers lap it up, page after page, book after book and moviegoers have lapped at several films based on his work. Unfortunately, since it was 1964, not all the dirt hits the screen this time around. Peppard is the ne'er do well son of a chemical company president who, when his father drops dead in mid tongue-lashing, proceeds to boss everyone around and acquire, acquire, acquire! He doesn't just accumulate businesses and wealth, he also likes to collect women, starting with his own step-mother (Baker) a girl he dated prior to her defection to his father. He marries a sassy young flapper (Ashley), but soon enough is neglecting her, turning her into a clinging nag. He becomes involved in the aeronautics industry and the movie business as well, all the time burning out the men and women around him who do most of the dirty work. Eventually, it takes a wake up call or two to make him see what he's become, but it may be too late for him to change. Peppard gives a very one-note performance. He is great at the forceful, demanding and cold-hearted aspects of the character, but offers no warmth or buried kindness that can allow the audience to care what happens to him. (As the film progresses, he is outfitted with ridiculously made up eyebrows that give him an extra-fiendish look!) Ashley is extremely attractive in a variety of Edith Head concoctions and is the epitome of patience as she lives through Peppard's humiliations. Baker also looks smashing in a wide array of Head's silk robes and slinky evening dresses. Both women have incredibly distinct voices and deliver quite a few amusing and/or suggestive lines of dialogue in their own special way. Several solid and professional actors give decent portrayals as well. Erickson is appropriately tough and overbearing as Peppard's father, Ayres is low-key, but effective, as Peppard's put-upon attorney and Cummings is deliciously slick and sneaky as an opportunistic talent agent. Other good work comes from Ladd as a friendly father figure with a past, Balsam as a cocky studio head, Hyer as a hooker-turned-movie star and Totter as a kindly prostitute. The whole film is lavishly appointed, beautifully scored and full of eye-popping sets, costumes, cars and furnishings. What's ostensibly bad about the film (the tacky storyline, the tart, suggestive dialogue, the unbelievability of the situations) now makes it that much better for an audience that delights in flashy, showy Hollywood cheese. If it had been made only a couple of years later, it could have really been a whopping piece of sexploitation. As it stands, it's more of a tease than anything, but it holds definite rewards for those in the mood. Ladd (who clearly shows the ravages of drink and drugs in this film) would be dead of an overdose within a year. Ashley (who later married Peppard in real life) soon gave up her promising start for about 5 years and never really regained her momentum entirely.

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 ****

On one of the Star Trek feature films Spock refers to Jacqueline Susann and Harold Robbins from his vantage point in the future as the 'old masters' of 20th century earth literature. Is that a frightening prospect or what?

One of the earliest of master Robbins works to get to the silver screen was The Carpetbaggers. It's a novel about a young industrialist whose like a tornado in his business and personal life, destroying everything in the path of Jonas Cord, Jr.

George Peppard is the younger Cord, based on Howard Hughes as you will know within the first 15 minutes of the film. Peppard is singlemindedly determined to outdo his father, Leif Erickson in every way conceivable. Erickson dies at the beginning of the film leaving an industrial empire to Peppard who rules it 24/7.

There's also a young wife Erickson left, Rina Marlowe played by Carroll Baker. Think of Baby Doll grown up a bit and you have Carroll as Rina.

The novel was an immense bestseller in its day and had a pre-existing audience so there was no way it was going to flop commercially. Knowing that is what attracted a very good cast of players to support Peppard and Baker who give some really good performances. My favorite is Robert Cummings as the sly actor's agent who doublebangs Peppard in a business deal and then attempts some blackmail. He is truly a slimeball.

Of course you can't talk about The Carpetbaggers without talking about Alan Ladd. He plays Peppard's friend and confidante Nevada Smith, a cowboy who Erickson takes on to mentor young Peppard. And he does very well in the part.

Alan Ladd's wife Sue Carol was his agent and managed his career. Or mismanaged it in one sense. She never let him gracefully transition into good character parts like Nevada Smith as so many of his contemporaries did. She insisted that he had to be the leading man as he was in his big box office days at Paramount. It's too bad Ladd didn't live to see the good reviews he got even from critics who trashed The Carpetbaggers.

How good was it? Well if it was bad, I doubt a Nevada Smith movie would have ever been made.

Ironically Ladd was also in a cast with Robert Cummings and Lew Ayres both of whom transitioned into character roles and got work the rest of their lives.

The Carpetbaggers is trashy, no doubt about it. But it gets a good production from a good cast, a mixture of old and new Hollywood of the period.

Harold Robbins' potboiler comes to the screen, trying to be something it isn't. Main character Jonas Cord is supposedly based on Howard Hughes, but George Peppard doesn't really convince in this role. Perhaps you need more than just good looks to be a trash fiction hero. Alan Ladd, in his final role, plays Nevada Smith, older friend of Cord and washed-up movie star – the role was played by Steve McQueen in a later film – and is okay, but again, somehow not quite right. Carroll 'Baby Doll' Baker is Cord's predatory step-mother; Elizabeth Ashley, Leif Erickson, Robert Cummings, Lew Ayres, Audrey Totter and Martha Hyer also contribute.

Perhaps the problem with 'The Carpetbaggers' is that it is never in danger of progressing beyond a simmer and the film really needs more to do the novel justice. This aside, it is fairly enjoyable as a time-filler and has moments enough not to completely disappoint: it also pointed the way for the glossy US soap operas of the 1970s and 1980s.