An American Dream

Stuart Whitman plays a hard-hitting television journalist intent on taking on the mob with a rich, shrewish wife, Eleanor Parker. After he helps his wife take a nosedive over the balcony of her penthouse suite, she hits the car of the mafioso. Then, this flurry of coincidences continues as he discovers that one of the Mafiosos is dating his long lost love, Janet Leigh. Geez.

The lurid, over-the-top first act of this film caught my interest, but I only stayed with it as a morbid curiosity. The dialog was horrible. Perhaps they lifted it from Mailer's book, but literary dialog often makes for bad screen dialog. Even worse, now one in this film behaves like a real human being would behave. Stuart knows the police believe he murdered his wife, so what does he do? The night he is released from questioning, he immediately hooks up with his ex-girlfriend and sleeps with her! (This, despite the fact that he knows he is being followed the police!) The mafia don literally threatens Stuart in a room of police officers. Janet Leigh stays with him despite him calling her a whore. His father-in-law doesn't really seem to care whether his beloved daughter was murdered or not as long as her death isn't labeled suicide so that he bury her in a Catholic cemetery. I could go on and on.

The film is absurd. It deserves the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. In the end, the most interesting thing was trying to figure out what TV shows from the '60s and '70s the supporting players ended up on.

Watching this on TCM. I've taken to the channel as a window on style and design from eras past. Janet Leigh was a total fashion plate throughout the movie. Got a kick out of seeing George Takei pre-Star Trek. This one is rich with mid-century elements from the architecture...to the lush interiors...to the gorgeous mid 60s automobiles. Janet's 1964 Thunderbird and the mobster's Lincoln Continental along with the Mercury Monterey was literally all I watched it for. Elinore Parker delivers an over-the-top fight scene in the early going...and I found myself thinking: "Go easy on the interior...try not to make a mess of the place on the way to the ledge".

How did Warner Brothers and producer William Conrad get such a fine "A" cast for this sudser? Keep in mind, Janet Leigh and Eleanor Parker were not that long off their "A" list roles in "Harper" and "The Sound of Music," respectively. Keep in mind that Stuart Whitman had just come off "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines." This is the worst written movie based upon a book by a fine novelist (Norman Mailer) I've seen, except, perhaps, for "Mr. Budwing" (written by Evan Hunter). Interestingly, both films have "A" list actors and both were released in 1966. Perhaps more unfortunate is the lack of chemistry between Whitman and Janet Leigh. In order for this tripe to even begin to work requires a smoldering passion between the leads. Further, Leigh looks at least 10 years older than her 39 years, and she is playing a 29 year old(!). Parker looks more glamorous (and younger, at 44) as the drugged-out wife. Too bad, producer William Conrad didn't hire Israeli actress Ina Balin for the Leigh role. Balin was the right age and provided considerable sexual tension with Whitman in "The Commancheros".

Mailer's storyline is so stupidly contrived it is impossible to believe. If Mailer's intent was cynicism to the point of nihilism, he only succeeded by making all the characters behave as idiots.

The only really worthwhile elements of the film are the song (Oscar nominated) and the performances of Eleanor Parker and Lloyd Nolan (as Parker's father). They bring luster, albeit briefly to a movie more akin to a cow pie.

I give "An American Dream" a "3".

The film was ridiculous but that theme song will live forever. A Time for Love, by Johnny Mandel, has an unforgettable melody and Mandel's arrangement, playing over the opening credits, was the best part of the movie. Vidal Sassoon also gets special mention for Janet Leigh's chic hairstyle. The pacing and direction were so weak, I lost interest early on. I was hoping the movie would be good but it wasn't. The five stars go to Johnny Mandel. The rest of the movie deserves a big fat zero.

A Norman Mailer novel gets filmed as if it's a Harold Robbins story. I knew I was in for a campy treat from the opening scenes, featuring Eleanor Parker as the rich, alcoholic harpy Deborah, rolling naked on silk sheets (the camera very careful not to show any naughty bits), demanding whiskey refills from her hunky bed partner with impudent hand gestures and burning his hand with a cigarette when he tries to initiate sex. "Later!" she barks, eyes glued to the TV, watching her husband Rojack (Stuart Whitman), the host of a controversial call-in show. Parker's high-rise wallow is so arresting that Rojack's accusations that the LAPD has a protection deal with a notorious Mafia kingpin hardly register. The action ramps up when Rojack visits his estranged wife. Parker, also in the notorious show biz howler "The Oscar" the same year this was released, goes for broke and over the top, hurling cutting insults and highballs at her square-jawed husband. As Rojack, Whitman stoically endures Deborah's rant until she pantomimes castrating him, and then all hell breaks loose. Rojack finally walks out, but barely makes it to the front door before he's confronted by Deborah's sexy maid (Susan Denberg), wrapped only in a towel but willing to drop it for her boss's husband. Rojack sidesteps the seduction, but in this movie that's actually the wrong decision. Returning to his wife's bedroom for his wallet, another mêlée ensues that ends with Deborah falling off the penthouse terrace, where she's immediately run over by a limo transporting the very same Mafia kingpin Rojack accused of being in bed—figuratively, of course—with the police.

Once Parker's out of the picture "An American Dream" becomes a little less interesting, though a few actors try to match her scenery chewing, J.D. Cannon as a hot-tempered cop chief among them. Janet Leigh as Cherry McMahon, Rojack's former flame prior to his marrying Deborah and now a singer/Mafia moll, does a lot of glaring and glowering. As many other reviewers have pointed out, this often looks like a TV movie, with much of the action happening in flatly lit, claustrophobic sets (though lushly photographed). As tacky as this movie is, the novel's story actually has been sanitized for the protection of 1966 audiences. Mailer's misogyny—the one quality he shared with hack Robbins—is left well intact, however. In "An American Dream," women are just bitches and/or hos.

Though not quite in the same league as other trash-tastic movies of the 1960s, fans of "The Carpetbaggers," "Valley of the Dolls," or the aforementioned "The Oscar," will want to be sure to catch "An American Dream." Fans of Norman Mailer are best advised to skip it.