THE CARPETBAGGERS: Blu-ray re-issue (Paramount, 1964) Kino Lorber

When one pauses to regard great smut in paperback, reflections of Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place, Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, and, Harold Robbins’ The Carpetbaggers immediately come to mind. We really must tip our hats to Robbins’ whose novels were the pulpy Jackie Collins’ page-turners of their era. Robbins based a good deal of his characterizations in The Carpetbaggers on real people, unapologetic and certainly transparently represented in his reconstitution on paper. Alas, while Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls were each turned into glossy Hollywoodized product a few years after publication, hardly masterpieces, though nevertheless to find their favor, The Carpetbaggers, as directed by Edward Dmytryk in 1964, instantly became a pinata for virtually every major movie critic sitting within spitting distance of the screen. The Carpetbaggers gets a bad rap, I suspect for two reasons; first, because it can only suggest much of the epicurean malaise afflicting its characters. Robbins’ sinful and scintillating best seller had a lot more to say in print. Second, because unlike Robbins’ unrepentant, vial anti-hero, the filmic incarnation of Jonas Cord (brought to the screen with steely-eyed venom by George Peppard) proves - too late – to actually possess a modicum of remorse and, more importantly, a soul.

While far off the mark as a literal page to screen translation, the movie version of The Carpetbaggers is nevertheless, exquisite and delicious, smut-laden good camp. Nobody, except perhaps Larry Hagman, as Jr. Ewing, could play the despicably arrogant bastard we love to hate better than George Peppard. Peppard, in life, favored some of Jonas’ unflattering character flaws. So, his fictional callous cutthroat is well-preserved beneath his façade of the uber-handsome blonde stud.  There is something highly obnoxious, yet uncannily on point and mesmerizing about Peppard’s rotten-to-his-core industrialist, so eager to transform his father’s (Leif Erikson) middling aviation company into the cookie-cutter brand that ate Hollywood, he cannot help but hasten the old bugger to a lethal heart attack. And the pyres have barely simmered to a respectable cool before Jonas begins cleaning corporate house. It all has to do with Rina Marlowe (Carroll Baker), the tea-dance-twenties platinum sex bomb who threw Jonas over for daddy’s money. Stepmother, indeed! Tragically, even Jonas Cord has his Achilles’ heel, fatally stricken with a bad case of aberrant lust for ‘Mommie Dearest’.

What a diseased lot he is, though arguably not as much as he believes himself to be. It will take the better part of 2 ½ hours for Dmytryk to let the audience in on the novel’s dyed-in-the-wool dirty family secret that has Jonas so utterly distraught he would willfully sabotage virtually every and any chance at happiness to conserve his own sanity – literally. “It’s been a hell of a performance,” his retiring legal counsel, Mac' McAllister (Lew Ayres) cheerily reasons after submitting his resignation, “I’d give a year’s pay to know who you really are underneath. Maybe even the devil himself.”  Harsh words, but well-deserved, considering the artful bloodlust with which Jonas manages to destroy several lives, wreck a handful of careers, and, turn virtually all of his amorous liaisons against him with an embarrassing display of sexual rigor mortis behind closed doors. He orders his latest fiancée, ex-hooker come movie-land glamor queen – and Rina knockoff – Jennie Denton (Martha Hyer) to accept his antiseptic proposal of marriage. This proves more a contract of convenience than a partnership, with Denton keeping her mouth shut and thighs wide open at Jonas’ beckoned call; straight sex, no chaser - and no prospects ever for a happy home with children.

Still, it’s not a bad call for this ex-call girl. If only Jennie was not so downheartedly in love with Jonas. God help her. His ex, Monica Winthrop (Elizabeth Ashley) tried as much and wound up pregnant and friendless, cast aside twice like a ‘cinder’- without the ‘-ella’. Inevitably, she still whimpered back to Jonas whenever he snapped his fingers. Even Rina, as jaundiced and cruel as she is, was no match for Jonas Cord, driving her flaming red Bugatti over a cliff with a devil-may-care resolve to teach Jonas a thing or two about hell having no fury like a shrew ne’er to be tamed. Okay, mixed Shakespearean metaphors aside, and, removed from all its hype as a scathing tell-all about the secret lives of the high, the mighty, and, the superficially desirable, The Carpetbaggers is still undeniably a lot of fun, expertly scripted by John Michael Hayes with oodles of blood-curdling, yet uber-sexy repartee to fill at least six soap operas and still have enough suds left over to polish off a miniseries or two. With its pre-sold title (the novel effectively sold well over 5-million copies), and a nation increasingly disillusioned with the lingering remnants of never to be fulfilled wide-eyed optimism from those Camelot years fast dissipating in their rear-views, The Carpetbaggers could not help but succeed, much to the satisfaction of the film’s indie producer, Joseph E. Levine.

It stands to reason when a book is this popular, any movie made from it will most certainly – and grotesquely – be judged, not on its own merits, but by how well it reincarnates the cheap quintessence and sickly soured piquancy of its source material. Judged on these terms, The Carpetbaggers is a wan ghost flower of Robbins’ novel. It is, however, nonetheless fairly appetizing in its highly sanitized depictions of bath-tub gin-soaked prohibition-era stage door Johnnies and hedonistic tarts exercising their liberated libidos in posh, petrified, Parisian hot spots. As with the highlighted orgy in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), everyone in The Carpetbaggers is respectably attired and keeping their frenetic gyrations to a not-so-bare minimum. One such ossified night on the Riviera, Rina, champagne cocktail in hand, swings from a cut-glass chandelier until she dislodges it from the ceiling hanger. Incredibly, both Rina and her pride survive this plummet to earth. Silly me. You can’t kill a bad girl. She has to perform that trick herself, and, only after being pushed too far.

If she were alive, Jonas Cord would sell his own mother for a belt of booze. As it stands, he knows how to get what he wants, even from the people he supposedly respects, like his father’s right- hand, Nevada Smith (Alan Ladd) – alias, Max Sand – a notorious ex-con, gambler, womanizer and desperado, wanted in six states for murder, jumping bail, and, various other sundry crimes of passion and pride. Sand is the only father-figure Jonas Cord has ever really known or looked up to for advice. The last act finale to The Carpetbaggers will negate Jonas’ rather empathetic gift to Nevada of this incriminating dossier, gathered by a team of private investigators on his behalf, a knock-down, drag-out display of fisticuffs with Smith pummeling Cord until he damn near has had enough. In the process, Nevada forces Jonas to come face to face with his dark memories from a buried, though never forgotten past imperfect. Jonas – whose twin brother died at age nine, a raving psychotic – has been living in the shadow of his father’s brutalization of their mother whom the elder Cord blamed for the child and firmly believed Jonas too would one day unravel like a loon to dishonor the family name. The elder Cord might have first reconsidered his peccadilloes: a satyr, seducing his son’s fiancée to satisfy a mid-life crisis. What an emasculating effect this betrayal must have had on young Jonas Cord, left to cope with the psychological complexities of being his own stepmother’s ex-lover.

A lot of The Carpetbaggers plays like a distilled Medea tragedy, updated to satisfy the swingin’ sixties break-out from under the straight-jacketed Eisenhower fifties. Dmytryk is, at times, desperate to skirt the Production Code, yet still function within the boundaries of what was then considered ‘good taste’. It is an awkward disconnect. And yet, for the most part, the picture succeeds and entertains, largely because the cast assembled is quite simply good enough to pull off such over-the-top salacious behavior with absolute doggedness, never to get too stupid or sincere. In some ways, Jonas Cord bears an uncanny resemblance to the ancient world’s Greek hero, zestfully byzantine, yet brutally worn down by his self-made misfortunes. Here is a guy who, for all intent and purpose, might have found exactly what he was clearly after, if not in one woman – Rina. Instead, he dishonestly woos Monica, then Jennie. Rina, the girl who once sold her voluptuous assets to the highest bidder, now offers herself as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Jonas’ unquenchable sexual appetite. Instead, Jonas flings her into a maelstrom of mounting fatalism. Never again will Rina dangle in the depth of Jonas’ desire. But we catch a glimpse of it after Rina kills herself in an off-screen highway wreck. Told the news, Jonas hurls himself into a whiskey-soaked tailspin, only to awaken days later with the empty realization Rina will endure his abuse no more. There is nothing more he can do, either to debase her memory or perhaps, in a more perfect world, win her back.

The real long-suffering doormat and punching bag here is Jonas’ wife, Monica Winthrop. In all other regards, Monica appears a wise young thing with a good solid head on her shoulders. Too bad her grey matter turns to helium-filled mush whenever Jonas is in the room. Monica is the gal Jonas needs – if only he would come to realize as much. But when will Jonas learn? Will he? The novel’s ending did not permit for such assertive reconnoiters to take place. For the movie, John Michael Hayes concocts a rather perfunctory pledge of good faith. Jonas, inexplicably sets aside vengeance and comes to his senses after having had all the piss and vinegar knocked out of him by Nevada Smith. Their seriously brutal hotel brawl might have left either in a coma. At the very least, Smith’s elder statesman defiance, staying the course, head bloodied but unbowed, has given Jonas Cord’s a fairly good shake.  The result: a badly mangled reconciliation. Monica casts aside her forsworn contempt for this man who misled her up to his suite, only to discover a naked Jennie Denton, sheathed only in mink fur. Bitch! Bastard! – words never uttered in The Carpetbaggers, but willfully implied as the momentarily assertive Monica, looking like a fashion plate cutout from Modern Businesswoman, with their astute pre-teen daughter, Jo Ann (Victoria Jean) in tow, storms out, adding, “Do us both a favor, don’t ever come near me again!”     

She doesn’t mean it, however. Women in Jonas’ circle never quite get around to avowing their feminist ideals, more doe-eyed deer caught unawares in the headlamps of an oncoming freight train or moths drawn detrimentally closer to his red-hot fame and fortune. Jonas Cord can have the world brought to his knees if it pleases him. Generally speaking, it pleases absolutely no one and Jonas would not have it any other way. Even when he blunders into the picture-making biz, allowing oily press agent, Dan Pierce (Bob Cummings) and studio mogul, Bernard B. Norman (Martin Balsam) to momentarily pull the wool over his eyes, buying up the beleaguered Norman Studios before realizing their one salvageable asset – Rina – has already returned to room temperature at the morgue – Jonas will not be beaten as he transforms this proverbial sow’s ear into a mink-lined Cadillac coup de Ville. The miraculous metamorphosis of rent-by-the-hour Jennie Denton into Hollywood’s toniest glamor queen is a coup only Jonas Cord could pull off, chiefly because he does not care how many thorns he has to first impale himself on to discover the rose. Pierce believes he can discredit Jennie and ruin Jonas by exposing a little known ‘snuff film’ made when Jennie was still a girl of the streets.

The best thing in The Carpetbaggers is its bracing dialogue. John Michael Hayes is the master of double entendre and verily illustrates no need for flashes of flesh and four-letter insults bandied about to make steamy – even distasteful – sex crackle like the embers of a four-alarm blaze. “You had the right lighting but the wrong director,” Jonas coolly insists when Jennie nobly attempts to turn down his proposal of marriage because she truly loves him too much to drag his reputation through the mire of her former life. But Jonas is already two steps ahead of Pierce’s backstabber’s revenge, informing Jennie, “I know everything about everybody who works for me. You were attacked – successfully – by three boys in a public park at the age of fifteen, worked as a student nurse but liked better things – turned pro at twenty. I can name you dollars, dates or anything else you want. You were no good. That’s why I wanted you. You were beautiful and no good…that made it better. Why do you think I spent two million in publicity to cram your face and figure down everyone’s throat and make you the biggest star in Hollywood? Why? Because I wanted to make you important enough to marry Jonas Cord. And when you do – and you will – no one will dare raise his voice against you or I’ll step on them like an ant! This is the best sale you ever made. All I ask for is your beauty and your sex.  I don’t want love or children or home-baked cookies. I just want a woman who’s there when I need her. In return you’ll live like a queen. Now pick up that ring!”   It’s a scintillating great ‘bad’ moment, one immediately conjuring to mind the embittered showdown between George Sanders’ venomous Addison DeWitt, lopping off the viperous head of Ann Baxter’s hydra-headed ingénue in All About Eve (1950), a movie otherwise to bear no earthly comparison to The Carpetbaggers.

It is never flattering to have your whole life flashed before your eyes, especially when the particulars read more like headlines ripped from the cover of Confidential Magazine. Even so, Jennie has enough guts to turn Jonas down. After all, he is not offering her Teflon-coated security from the wolves hungrily scratching at the locked back door for a taste. Rather, it is a sort of gold-plated prison cell with no time off for good behavior or ever a chance at parole. Even for a dime-a-dozen whore, this will not do. And so, contrition becomes the order of the day, though only after Nevada takes a wild and wooly crack at Jonas, dragging him across a dining room table, bloodying his nose and blackening an eye with his bare fists. It is a last-ditch effort to beat some straight sense into that irredeemable black heart. Also, to get a little of his own back for thrice being betrayed by this runaway petulant boy who once regarded him as a father figure. Right up until the end, there is no chivalrous reprieve for any of these amoral characters, least of all Jonas Cord – except, suddenly we have a complete about face, contrary to the conclusion of the novel.

Hayes would have not wanted it so, forced to satisfy some idiotic executive logic for the proverbial ‘happy ending’ - the repentant sadist awakens from the nightmare that is his life’s work and boldly goes where all good men traditionally have gone far too often before: right back into that atypically unsatisfactory reunion with the ‘good girl’ they traded in long ago for a hot time in the old town tonight. Having sworn off Jonas, presumably for good, Monica now inexplicably gives him the benefit of the doubt. Why? Who can say where true love – even combustible heat – is concerned? But the denouement to The Carpetbaggers is woefully out of step with the rest of the movie, and a real last-minute tack-on - utterly ridiculous. Monica throws her arms desperately around Jonas after he concedes to an all-out liquidation of his assets to pursue a quiet life, even going so far as to set up housekeeping in the country. Jonas Cord – domestic?!? It’s a stretch to see just how any of this will work once the sobering bruises inflicted by Nevada have sufficiently healed, and, old habits – as ingrained in Jonas’ DNA – return to haunt, rustling through the bucolic breezes with another ‘come hither’ glimmer at the big time. Jonas’ transformation, from arrogant monster to humbled heel, is about as convincing as a centipede attempting to mimic the frog that will never grow into a prince – however much petting, cooing and kissing is applied for good measure.

The Carpetbaggers went on to earn a worldwide whopping $40 million on a budget of only $3 million. What can I tell you? Sex, even diluted to the point of naughty and titillating insinuation, sells – period. Repressed middle-class audiences could take their comforts in recognizing men of vision often live severely flawed private lives where the power of wealth proves a weighty vice than a winner’s virtue. Even so, The Carpetbaggers skews to an anti-capitalist sentiment while stopping just shy of suggesting it really is money that is the root of all evil. Blessedly, we are left some fantasy to aspire – divine decadence, and sanitized debaucheries and sins committed for the all-mighty buck along the way that really don’t seem all that bad at second glance. The finale to The Carpetbaggers asks the audience to forgive Jonas Cord his trespasses, even as he has trespassed against everyone who ever had the misfortune to loosely befriend him. In life, this would be a tough sell. On celluloid – not so much. Because, it’s really Peppard we forgive. Why? Because pretty boys can get away with an awful lot of gutter depravity if they smile enough between grimaces. Pretty girls too.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray re-issue of The Carpetbaggers bests ViaVision’s Imprint label’s early bite at the same apple. ViaVision’s edition was ‘region free’. Kino’s is ‘region A’ locked. While ViaVision’s Blu sported bold colors and a fairly detailed image, Kino’s remastered edition, reportedly sourced from a new 4K scan off an original camera negative, is brighter, bolder and more vibrant at every turn, and, with the added benefit of having expunged the digital artifacts that occasionally plagued the ViaVision disc, creating ringing halos around background information. Image stability is also marginally improved. Certain scenes on the ViaVision had minor gate weave. Kino’s is rock-solid throughout. Contrast is uniformly excellent.  Grain that appeared slightly scrubbed on the ViaVision now looks indigenous to its source. The audio is a DTS 5.1 uptick from a 3-channel Perspecta mix. It sounds great.

We lose the audio commentary by Kat Ellinger, but get two new commentary tracks; the first, to feature historian, Julie Kirgo, and the second, from David Del Valle. Have to say, I favor Del Valle. He has a way to make film history sound ‘off the cuff’ fascinating. And Ellinger’s absence isn’t really a loss. She reads facts like a recitation of the telephone directory. Kirgo’s crack is good, but occasionally dull. Oh yes, there’s also a badly worn trailer to consider. Bottom line: a decidedly shallow, but gorgeous-looking film, loosely based on a Howard Hughes-styled rags to riches romp in the hay - from chemical plants to commercial airlines, to running rampant through one’s own movie studio - the sky is the limit in The Carpetbaggers. Elmer Bernstein’s classy/brassy score is capped off by a main title sequence, shot through billowy clouds at ten thousand feet, with crimson text flying into the camera lens, a big and bold foray into all the slick and stylized fun to follow. Highly recommended for cheap thrills and some good solid writing/acting along the way.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

2