The awful movie Michael Caine was flattered into making: “A dreadful picture”
In the late 1960s, Michael Caine had just burst onto the scene as one of the most exciting young actors of the ‘Swinging Sixties’. With The Ipcress File and Alfie, he had industry leaders in Hollywood doing a double-take, stunned at the magnetism of this cockney Brit with slightly above-average looks who was taking the box office by storm.
At this stage in his career, Caine was in the enviable position of being the next big thing. Offers were coming in, and he had the pick of any number of exciting projects. He would use this newfound opportunity wisely when he took the lead role in Peter Collinson’s The Italian Job in 1969, but in 1967, he let his admiration get the better of him when he accepted a role in Otto Preminger’s Hurry Sundown.
Based on the bestselling novel by KB Gilden, the film is a Southern gothic melodrama about a racist businessman who tries to buy out his neighbours’ properties and sets off a series of catastrophes when he doesn’t get what he wants. Co-starring Jane Fonda, Faye Dunaway (in her feature debut), and Diahann Carroll, it had all the trappings of a hit, but it was lambasted by critics when it was released. Accused of being racially insensitive and tastelessly vulgar in its portrayal of sexuality, it was the biggest disappointment of Caine’s career to date, and taught him a valuable lesson.
In a 1992 interview with NPR, the actor said that, at that point in his professional development, he tried to follow in the footsteps of his favourite Hollywood performers, hoping that their blueprint would work for him. Preminger was one of the most respected directors in the business at the time. 1944’s Laura, 1953’s Stalag 17, and 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder had all been groundbreaking hits when they were released, so it stood to reason that a young actor like Caine would jump at the chance to work with the man behind them.
“I was so complimented that Otto Preminger had even asked me to do a picture that, I mean, I would’ve almost done it without reading the script,” he said. “I mean, I did read the script. I didn’t understand it.”
Despite that obvious red flag, Caine gave Preminger the benefit of the doubt. “I was just so complimented that this great Hollywood director had asked me to do this film, I went and did it,” he admitted.
Luckily for Caine, most of the ire about the film was directed at Preminger and the script rather than at any of the actors. This allowed him to escape the experience relatively unscathed, and continue to make films at a breakneck pace. As he explained in the interview, his strategy at the time was to two-fold – make as many movies as possible in order to learn how to be an actor on the job, and follow in the footsteps of the stars who went before him.
The latter strategy was “one of the great failings” an actor can make, he explained. The former seemed to work out pretty well, since Caine has only grown better as an actor with age.
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