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University Press of Kentucky Chapter Title: Through a Glass Refracted: The Wild Angles Picture Show Book Title: Sidney J. Furie Book Subtitle: Life and Films Book Author(s): DANIEL KREMER Published by: University Press of Kentucky. (2015) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt17t74zd.9 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University Press of Kentucky is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sidney J. Furie This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:22:52 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Chapter 5 Through a Glass Refracted The Wild Angles Picture Show Insubordinate. Insolent. A trickster. —Harry Palmer’s B-107 profile in The Ipcress File Furie returned from the Canary Islands to discover he was invited to a spe- cial prerelease screening of Joseph Losey’s King and Country, starring Dirk Bogarde. Losey was still riding high from his critical success with The Servant the year before, and his follow-up was hotly anticipated. Furie had shrugged off the two Cliff Richard pictures by that time, feeling they had served their purpose as preliminary name-makers. Although his industry track record was established, his critical reputation had failed to solidify by the outset of 1964, as he begrudgingly struggled to rise above the rank of journeyman. One evening, a call from a reporter at the Evening Standard confirmed Furie’s worst suspicions on the matter. “Nat Cohen recently called you, Sidney Furie, a ‘has-been.’ Would you care to comment on that remark?” Cohen, an eminent producer known mostly for the popular Carry On series, was then the head of the British production company Anglo-Amalgamated (later to dissolve with Associated British Picture Corporation under EMI). Furie, with brio, fired back: “That’s funny. How can I be a ‘has-been’? I haven’t even been a ‘been’ yet!”1 Furie’s angst, however, went deeper. His irritated impatience over the delayed release of The Leather Boys coexisted with a confidence that critical detractors who had yet to be won over by his efforts would soon realize his value as a serious filmmaker. The Losey screening drove thorns further into Furie’s side. At the end 73 This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:22:52 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms SIDNEY J. FURIE of King and Country, the notoriously petulant Losey asked the people pres- ent for their reactions, expecting them to fall in line with praise and syco- phantic choruses. “Well,” Furie began, responding to Losey’s soliciting of reactions, “the direction was great, and the film is really well done, but it was the script that had problems for me, to be honest. The script didn’t quite work for me.” As Furie broke down his specific issues with the writing, Losey, in ill- mannered form, interrupted his young critic. “Who exactly are you?” Losey testily asked Furie. “I’m Sidney Furie, I’m a director.” “Is that so?” Losey responded, now connecting a face with a name he had seen printed in passing. “And what have you directed?” “Why would that matter?” “I’d just like to know,” said Losey. Hesitating slightly, Furie recounted a few of his directing credits and assured Losey that his comments were made with the best of intentions. “A director who has directed nothing is criticizing my film!” Losey exclaimed. At that moment becoming persona non grata, Furie backed down and retreated from the event. As a result, Furie has to this day never held advance screenings for friends or fellow filmmakers. “It always puts everyone in a terrible position, and hardens the pride of filmmakers with too much ego.” His status in the eyes of established filmmakers like Losey, as “a director who hadn’t directed anything,” was about to change in a very big way, with The Leather Boys and especially his next film, The Ipcress File. First serialized in the London Evening Standard before being pub- lished by Hodder & Sloughton Press in July 1962, The Ipcress File was hair- care entrepreneur Charles D. Kasher’s break-in to the movie business. Kasher had, throughout the 1950s, patented and developed Charles Antell’s Formula No. 9 as a lanolin-based cure for baldness. (Antell was Kasher’s mother’s maiden name.) His extended commercials for his product became a prototype for what later became known as the infomercial. When Kasher first took The Ipcress File to the United Artists New York offices to pitch it as a movie property, it was there that he met Harry Saltzman, a producer whose name was firmly associated with both Tony Richardson’s Woodfall Films and the increasingly popular James Bond franchise. Based in London, Saltzman made many such trips to United Artists in New York, because the Bonds and most of the Woodfall projects were set up through them. 74 This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:22:52 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Through a Glass Refracted Saltzman’s attraction to The Ipcress File was spurred by a hunch that he could fashion a separate series of spy films, likewise adapted from popular novels, into products that would be cheaper to finance than the Bonds and just as easy to sell on the international film markets. The spy film had fast become a hot commodity after the lucrative release of Dr. No, and Saltzman felt that resigning himself solely to the 007 franchise was limiting further possible business opportunities centered around the current boom. This was to be a completely different enterprise, independent of his Bond part- ner Albert “Cubby” Broccoli. The seasoned producer would also annex many members of the Bond series technical team to helm this new slate of pictures. When resident Hammer Films screenwriter-producer Jimmy Sangster became aware that Saltzman was on the hunt for an interesting young director who could deliver a quality movie on the cheap, Sangster recom- mended that he have a look at The Leather Boys, which had just received the cover treatment in the January 1964 issue of Films and Filming maga- zine.2 Furie had by now vaguely regretted declining producer Walter Shenson’s offer to direct the first Beatles picture, A Hard Day’s Night (1964). Says Furie, “I know now, and I did know then, that I could not have done what Richard Lester did on that picture. If I made it, sure, it would have been Alun Owen’s script, but it wouldn’t have been anything near that end result.” Regardless, when A Hard Day’s Night became a smash hit that put Richard Lester on the A-list, Furie’s dream to make a picture that would lure Hollywood into making him an offer to direct larger pictures was again renewed. He knew this breakthrough was not to come with Kenneth Rive’s pro- duction of Devil Doll, another film in the illustrious tradition of mad- ventriloquist horror pictures, a la Michael Redgrave’s classic turn in Dead of Night (1945). Nonetheless, when Rive offered Furie the task of directing, he accepted. He had three sons, and his wife was now carrying their fourth child. When The Ipcress File came his way, however, he stepped down dur- ing preproduction, as he had on Summer Holiday, recommending old CBC pal Lindsay Shonteff for the job. Furie remained on much of the pic- ture as an uncredited producer when Rive asked him to supervise Shonteff, whose rookie status in England rendered him an unproven risk. “I had done low-rent horror already, with Doctor Blood’s Coffin and Snake Woman,” says Furie. “Devil Doll didn’t excite me because directors are nat- urally looking to do something they’ve never done before. A spy picture, 75 This content downloaded from 86.9.45.239 on Wed, 19 Feb 2020 15:22:52 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms SIDNEY J. FURIE on the other hand, did excite me.” Harry Saltzman’s name was also a hook. He was a hitmaker, a showman, a marquee name just as prominent or larger than many directors, having produced Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, one of Furie’s favorite films upon his arrival in England. Ken Adam, who had just previously designed the sets for Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) as well as for two of the first three Bond pictures, was hired early in preproduction as production designer. “When Harry decided that he wanted to do The Ipcress File like a ‘Poor Man’s Bond,’ we attacked him on that,” says Adam. “Sidney, Michael Caine and myself, we all ganged up on him and told him that it should be an anti-hero, not a Poor Man’s Bond.”3 The then-unknown actor chosen as the film’s star, Michael Caine, adds, “It was not even to be a com- petition with Bond. It was never another suave spy. It was more like a real spy, the kind of ordinary guy who you wouldn’t look at twice walking down the street.

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