Yet another weekend of classic films, this time with a pair from the ‘60s (I’m just in that sort of mood) enjoyed over some beers and dry snacks. This was a Kirk Douglas fest, with two of his pictures from back in the day: John Frankenheimer’s black and white masterpiece Seven Days In May and the coming-of-age post-WWII war Middle Eastern 1966 drama, Cast A Giant Shadow.

Incidentally, if you look closely enough, you realize just how remarkably similarly Michael Douglas resembles his star father. From Kirk’s steely gaze, to his surly grin, to his lady killing ways, all the down to the dead-ringer pugilist’s square jaw, the genes course mightily in the Douglas (ne Danielovich) bloodstream, packaged neatly with the acting chops to boot.

So let’s first talk about Seven Days In May…

As Frankenheimer himself describes it on the DVD’s bonus features – something which he loves to do, in his own words – the picture was an adapted screenplay penned by The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling who was brought onto the picture once Kirk Douglas’ production company –- Bryna Productions — brought the Charles W. Bailey II novel to Frankenheimer’s attention. Story goes that both the vaunted TV director and Douglas shelled out amply from their personal cash stash in order to option the novel from Bailey III, then moving quickly to attach Serling to the script write (given Frankenheimer’s close collaborative relationship with the latter from their television days), then quickly scheduling a 43-day shoot across a handful of California city and desert locations, D.C., and, finally, in Paris, France, for which almost all of the scenes shot there didn’t make final cut.

Seven Days is set in the not-too-distant future, complete with the visionary gadgetry to match (look out for the cool videoconferencing gear, which wasn’t even invented yet). Douglas plays Colonel Jiggs Casey (great name!), a loyal 18-year veteran of the Marine Corps who now serves as adjutant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General William M. Scott, played convincingly by a 50-year old Burt Lancaster, the Republican Party’s Presidential hopeful who is completely disenchanted with the current President Jordan Lyman’s soft diplomatic stance against the Soviets at the height of the Cold War. Scott and his hard-line conservative backers brand Lyman as nothing short of a “weak sister” due to his softball approach towards the mendacious Soviets as a result of his signing a mutual Non-Aggression, Anti-Nuclear Proliferation Pact, which the majority of the US population now opposes, evidenced by Lyman’s shoddy twenty-nine percent approval rating.

The film expertly depicts a cloak and dagger plot against the US President, which comes to Jiggs’ attention in bits and pieces, who then personally delivers his qualms to President Lyman himself at the Oval Office which sets off a chain of events that take place over the course of a tension-filled seven days in a fictitious future May 1970. Frankenheimer articulates in his commentary that the film’s premise was completely unheard of during their 1963 shoot, when a pact with the Russians during the short-lived Kennedy Administration were very a distant, some would say delusional, prospect.

Stacked to the gills with a standout ensemble cast of all-star 1960’s players Douglas, Lancaster, Frederic March as President Lyman, the blacklisted Martin Balsam as Lyman’s Chief of Staff, the hard-to-work-with Ava Gardner as Casey’s love interest, and Academy Award-winner Edmond O’Brien as the boozy Senator Raymond Clark (delivering a deliciously good drunken Southern drawl!), Douglas (as Col. Casey) enmeshes himself in thickening plot that culminates in…well, no spoilers from me. I encourage you to check out the movie if you haven’t seen it yet as one of the classic doomsday films towards the end of the studio era.

Here were some of the standout aspects of Douglas’ performance:

• he held his own against Hollywood heavyweights March and Balsam in the White House scene during an especially grave expository sequence, shot entirely in one fluid take. Notice how Douglas maintains his poise equally well in at least a dozen other characteristic Frankenheimer over the back or low-angle single-takes that most actors in the current era wouldn’t be able to deliver with similar aplomb. Also check out the money shot when Douglas delivers the piece de la resistance line to President Lyman about what he thinks is underway at the Pentagon. Watch his body language.
• Douglas delivers Serling’s idiosyncratic dialogue convincingly. Serling had a particularly acerbic whippersnapper wit that few Hollywood actors could serve up believably. Given that Douglas had a financial stake in this film, his portrayal showed guts in almost every beat he was on-screen. You’ll find yourself giggling in places, if cynical humor is your cup of char.
• catch glimpses of Douglas’ “Midge Kelly” in The Champion as Douglas wears the military uniform well. I note, at this stage in his career he’s already 47-years old, but he doesn’t look at day over 35. Ladies man indeed!

Compare this with Cast A Giant Shadow:

Here, I observed a considerably more sardonic Douglas in a film shot only three years later, this time in color.

Shadow harks back to late 1940s British Mandatory Palestine, when Israel declares statehood on May 15, 1948, only to be quickly attacked by five neighboring Arab armies who have vowed to annihilate the “pipsqueak” would-be Jewish nation hugging the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. Douglas is General David “Mickey” Marcus/Stone, a self-loathing and reluctant Brooklyn lawyer and former WWII “desk soldier” (perhaps mirroring Douglas real life story), a man who had pined for action during the conflict and who conspired, insubordinately, to make his way to the European theatre of battle as part of a parachuting vanguard in advance of the Allied Operation Overlord thrust. Watch as he’s chewed out by no less a personality than The Duke himself for his crafty disobeying of orders.

Over the course of the film General Stone becomes none other than the Jewish Aluf (“leader”) Stone and following several more capricious backs and forths is finally compelled by personal circumstances and a sense of rekindled Jewish self-awareness to coordinate and helm the eventual casualty-heavy Israeli assault on the Latrun salient on the road to Holy Jerusalem against Jordan’s British-financed and better-equipped powerful Arab Legion. Alongside memorable (and smaller) standout roles by Yul Brynner as Asher and Frank Sinatra  as “the Pilot”, the dialogue here strays into hokey territory even though Douglas had me sold on some of his opening lines which showed some initial promise at least. Towards the final act of the film, though, I could hear those violin strings weeping in my ear.

All that being said, Douglas here demonstrates a masterful grasp of his theatre training chops as he acts well opposite Hollywood heavyweights Wayne, Brynner, and Sinatra, even going a clever job intentionally butchering the Hebrew language to convincingly bring out the assimilated aspects of the American Jewish experience.

Excellently done. Douglas put on the clinic.

More Hollywood classics to come this week.

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