Il club degli intrighi

A soaper posing as a sports film. What's to like for this male (besides the final golf contest)? First there are three(!) knock-out gorgeous ladies who could also act, of all things. The male supporting players are excellent. So? So RJWagner shows us how it can be done--acting and explosive chemistry with the ladies. Is this a projection of the real Wagner rather than the suave cool non-superstar apparently undeterred by the fickleness of fame. And he still works and plays and makes a difference with gusto. A comparative case in point is WINNING (almost rhymes with BANNING). This Newman-Woodward vehicle--another sports-soaper--has Wagner as third banana showing the big star what chemistry with the leading lady (and Newman's wife) and with Newman himself is all about. QED.

This banal melodrama tees off with Mike Banning (Robert Wagner) hired as assistant golf pro at an exclusive country club in New Mexico. The film swings into a full course of complications, which includes unrequited love, seduction, blackmail, excessive drinking, gambling, adultery, and extortion. The characters and plot are stock soap opera, but the film is well made. The most interesting part involves a playoff of an illegal golf competition called a Calcutta, which Banning organizes to raise money for a blackmail debt he's forced to pay. The locations and upper middle class trappings are authentic enough, and the petty and/or alcoholic clashes among the golfers reveal characters whose lives are essentially barren off the course. The female characters, especially those played by Jill St. John and Anjanette Comer, are ridiculous but decorative, like the bright wallpaper and overdone Sixties hairdos. The dialogue never rises above such bromides as, "Good, you're greedy," "One romantic fantasy, coming up," and "So, you do have an automatic garbage disposal."

Robert Wagner's expressionless approach to acting is utilized to good effect in this soaper involving a playboy golf-pro from the country club circuit who enters a doubles tournament with prize-booty attached...and shady dealings on the side. Universal drama (still unreleased to any home-viewing market) looks terrific in vivid colors and features a fine music score from Quincy Jones (who received a Best Song Oscar nod for the main theme, "The Eyes of Love"). The characters are not a lively lot (except for sultry-eyed Jill St. John), but the third-act golfing sequences are extremely well done, helping even sports novices to become absorbed by the plotting. Golf is not the most cinematic sport, yet director Ron Winston is straightforward and focused, and he's careful not to let the melodramatics overshadow the nuances of the game. For golfing buffs and aficionados of '60s style, the film can't miss. *** from ****

The extremely elusive and rare BANNING is a 1967 film about former golf pro Robert Wagner as the title character... coolly rolling into an exclusive Arizona golf course like an enigmatic rider from a spaghetti western...

Full of secrets and suave blackmailing that it takes half the movie to figure out, mostly through exposition from characters ranging from Guy Stockwell as the crooked son-in-law (married to Susan Clark) of super-rich Howard St. John, who practically owns the joint while Jill St. John is a rich fatale type with her hooks in Banning... but his own vulnerable heart's aimed at the golf course's seemingly chaste working-girl Anjanette Comer...

Then there's Mike Kellin as a shady mobster, whose purpose isn't clear until the 11th hour high-stakes tournament, where Wagner - unlike many actors playing great golfers - can actually swing a club when not outsmarting those richer, luckier or else hungrier: like climber James Farentino who wants Banning's assistant pro gig or an underused Gene Hackman as the boozing has-been head pro...

Basically, everyone and everything leads to what Banning's been hiding while Wagner plays this particular handsome-guy role (that he could have sleepwalked through) with effective poise and narrowed determination, without being glib or breezy and, no matter how hard those surrounding pretty dames or jealous men try, BANNING... both the person and the movie... never veers into cheap, manipulative melodrama.

I've always had a soft spot for Anjanette Comer. Here, she's one of three beautiful leading ladies, and the one sought by leading man, Robert Wagner (as opposed to leading lady #2, Jill St. John, whom he married in real life). Leading lady #3 is Susan Clark, who doesn't golf in this golf movie, but would go on later to play golf's greatest gal, Babe Didrikson, in the latter's TV biopic.

I watched this tonight on the Golf Channel. It didn't carry a rating, but one supposes it ran uncut, except that save for the titles, its original Techniscope was panned and scanned to TV size. (It did not, of course, run uninterrupted by commercials.)

Wagner is in top form here, taking precise swings, both on and off the course. All the lead actors, as well as a host of recognizable character actors of the day, turn in credible performances. (Gene Hackman has a relatively small, but pivotal, part.)

Speaking of the golf (which actually consumes but a small part of the movie), I kept wondering about the ratio of golf shots to camera shots, i.e., how many takes it took to get the lies the director wanted in order to tell the tale.

What makes this movie interesting are the cast, the photography, a few plot surprises, and a look back at the styles, the cars, and the mannerisms of forty years ago. Slightly above average.