''A Man Could Get Killed'' is a 1966 American
adventure
An adventure is an exciting experience or undertaking that is typically bold, sometimes risky. Adventures may be activities with danger such as traveling, exploring, skydiving, mountain climbing, scuba diving, river rafting, or other extreme spo ...
comedy film
A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the ol ...
directed by
Ronald Neame
Ronald Neame CBE, BSC (23 April 1911 – 16 June 2010) was an English film producer, director, cinematographer, and screenwriter. Beginning his career as a cinematographer, for his work on the British war film ''One of Our Aircraft Is Missing ...
and
Cliff Owen Cliff Owen (22 April 1919 – November 1993) was a British film and TV director best known for his comedy ''The Wrong Arm of the Law'' which starred Peter Sellers. He also directed two of the three films, made in the mid-1960s, featuring the double ...
, shot on various locations in
Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
and starring
James Garner
James Garner (born James Scott Bumgarner; April 7, 1928 – July 19, 2014) was an American actor. He played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, including '' The Great Escape'' (1963) with Steve McQueen; Paddy Chayefsky's ''The Ameri ...
,
Melina Mercouri
Maria Amalia "Melina" Mercouri (, 18 October 1920 – 6 March 1994) was a Greek actress, singer, activist, and politician. She came from a political family that was prominent over multiple generations. She received an Academy Award nomination a ...
,
Sandra Dee
Sandra Dee (born Alexandra Zuck; April 23, 1942 – February 20, 2005) was an American actress. Dee began her career as a child model, working first in commercials, and then film in her teenage years. Best known for her portrayal of ingénue ...
,
Anthony Franciosa
Anthony George Franciosa (né Papaleo; October 25, 1928 – January 19, 2006) was an American actor most often billed as Tony Franciosa at the height of his career. He began his career on stage and made a breakthrough portraying the brother of t ...
, and
Robert Coote
Robert Coote (4 February 1909 – 26 November 1982) was an English actor. He played aristocrats or British military types in many films, and created the role of Colonel Hugh Pickering in the long-running original Broadway production of ''My Fai ...
. Filmed scenes with
Jenny Agutter
Jennifer Ann Agutter (born 20 December 1952) is a British actress. She began her career as a child actress in 1964, appearing in ''East of Sudan'', '' Star!'', and two adaptations of ''The Railway Children''—the BBC's 1968 television serial ...
, then 14, did not appear in the final cut.
The screenplay was written by
Richard L. Breen
Richard L. Breen (June 26, 1918 – February 1, 1967) was a Hollywood screenwriter and director.
Biography
Breen was born in Chicago of Irish Catholic extraction. He began as a freelance radio writer. After a stint in the U.S. Navy during World ...
, and
T. E. B. Clarke
Thomas Ernest Bennett "Tibby" Clarke, OBE (7 June 1907 – 11 February 1989) was a film screenwriter who wrote several of the Ealing Studios comedies.
Clarke's scripts always feature careful logical development from a slightly absurd premise ...
and David E. Walker based on Walker's novel 'Diamonds for Moscow' (American title 'Diamonds for Danger') published in 1956. The film introduced the melody of "
Strangers in the Night
"Strangers in the Night" is a song composed by Bert Kaempfert with English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder. Kaempfert originally used it under the title "Beddy Bye" as part of the instrumental score for the movie ''A Man Could Get ...
" by German composer
Bert Kaempfert
Bert Kaempfert (born Berthold Heinrich Kämpfert; 16 October 1923 – 21 June 1980) was a German orchestra leader, multi-instrumentalist, music producer, arranger, and composer. He made easy listening and jazz-oriented records and wrote the musi ...
, which won the
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television. Beginning in 2022, there are 105 members of t ...
for "Best Original Song in a Motion Picture" of 1967.
Plot
A search is on for stolen diamonds and a government agent has been killed trying to recover them. When an unsuspecting William Beddoes arrives in
Lisbon
Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...
on behalf of an American bank, he is mistaken for the dead agent's replacement.
Hatton-Jones of the British embassy comes to Beddoes' aid. Also taking an interest is Aurora Celeste, the dead man's lover, as well as Steve Antonio, a smuggler, who is being pursued by Amy Franklin (a woman who, as a young girl, had a crush on him).
All of the above end up aboard a yacht belonging to Dr. Mathieson, who appears to be the mastermind of the crime but doesn't know where the hidden diamonds are. Beddoes ends up engineering an escape for all and the gems wind up safely in the hands of Hatton-Jones, the dead agent's actual successor.
Beddoes books a flight for home, assuming he will never see any of these people again, but Aurora steals his passport so that he cannot leave.
Cast
*
James Garner
James Garner (born James Scott Bumgarner; April 7, 1928 – July 19, 2014) was an American actor. He played leading roles in more than 50 theatrical films, including '' The Great Escape'' (1963) with Steve McQueen; Paddy Chayefsky's ''The Ameri ...
as William Beddoes
*
Melina Mercouri
Maria Amalia "Melina" Mercouri (, 18 October 1920 – 6 March 1994) was a Greek actress, singer, activist, and politician. She came from a political family that was prominent over multiple generations. She received an Academy Award nomination a ...
as Aurora Celeste
*
Sandra Dee
Sandra Dee (born Alexandra Zuck; April 23, 1942 – February 20, 2005) was an American actress. Dee began her career as a child model, working first in commercials, and then film in her teenage years. Best known for her portrayal of ingénue ...
as Amy Franklin
*
Tony Franciosa
Anthony George Franciosa (né Papaleo; October 25, 1928 – January 19, 2006) was an American actor most often billed as Tony Franciosa at the height of his career. He began his career on stage and made a breakthrough portraying the brother of t ...
as Steve Antonio
*
Robert Coote
Robert Coote (4 February 1909 – 26 November 1982) was an English actor. He played aristocrats or British military types in many films, and created the role of Colonel Hugh Pickering in the long-running original Broadway production of ''My Fai ...
as Hatton-Jones
*
Roland Culver
Roland Joseph Culver, (31 August 1900 – 1 March 1984) was an English stage, film, and television actor.
Life and career
After Highgate School, he joined the Royal Air Force and served as a pilot from 1918 to 1919. After considering other c ...
as Dr. Mathieson
*
Grégoire Aslan
Grégoire Aslan (born Krikor Kaloust Aslanian; 28 March 1908 – 8 January 1982) was a Swiss-Armenian actor and musician.
Early life
Krikor Kaloust Aslanian ( hy, Գրիգոր Գալուստի Ասլանյան) was born in Switzerland or in Cons ...
as Florian
*
Cecil Parker
Cecil Parker (born Cecil Schwabe, 3 September 1897 – 20 April 1971) was an English actor with a distinctively husky voice, who usually played supporting roles, often characters with a supercilious demeanour, in his 91 films made between ...
as Sir Huntley Frazier
*
Dulcie Gray
Dulcie Winifred Catherine Savage Denison, (''née'' Bailey; 20 November 1915 – 15 November 2011), known professionally as Dulcie Gray, was a British actress, mystery writer and lepidopterist.
While at drama school in the late 1930s she met ...
as Mrs. Mathieson
*
Martin Benson as Politanu
*
Peter Illing
Peter Illing (4 March 1899 – 29 October 1966) was an Austrian-born British film and television actor.
Selected TV series
* ''Deadline Midnight'' (1961) as Captain Dnieprovsky
* ''The Saint'' (1962) as Inspector Buono
Filmography
* ''The Silv ...
as Zarik
*
Niall MacGinnis
Patrick Niall MacGinnis (29 March 1913 – 6 January 1977) was an Irish actor who made around 80 screen appearances.
Early life
MacGinnis was born in Dublin in 1913. as Ship's Captain
*
Virgilio Teixeira as Inspector Rodrigues
*
Isabel Dean
Isabel Dean (born Isabel Hodgkinson, 29 May 1918 – 27 July 1997) was an English stage, film and television actress.
Life and career
Born in Aldridge, Staffordshire, Dean studied painting at Birmingham Art School. In 1937, she joined the Che ...
as Miss Bannister
* Daniele Vargas as Osman
*
Ann Firbank
Ann Firbank (born 9 January 1933) is an actress of film, television, and stage whose career extends from 1956. One of Firbank's more notable roles is her 1971 portrayal of Anne Elliot in the serial ''Persuasion'', an adaptation of Jane Austen's ...
as Miss Nolan
*
John Bartha
János Bartha (6 February 1915 – 1991), better known as John Bartha, was a Hungarian film actor who appeared primarily in Spaghetti Westerns in the 1960s and 1970s. He is probably most recognizable in western cinema for his role as the Sheriff ...
as Ludmar
Production
The cast had a falling out with director
Cliff Owen Cliff Owen (22 April 1919 – November 1993) was a British film and TV director best known for his comedy ''The Wrong Arm of the Law'' which starred Peter Sellers. He also directed two of the three films, made in the mid-1960s, featuring the double ...
who was replaced by
Ronald Neame
Ronald Neame CBE, BSC (23 April 1911 – 16 June 2010) was an English film producer, director, cinematographer, and screenwriter. Beginning his career as a cinematographer, for his work on the British war film ''One of Our Aircraft Is Missing ...
in July 1965. Neame recalled that co-stars James Garner and Tony Franciosa did not get on well and their fight in the film became a real brawl.
Garner calls the film "disappointing" although he says he enjoyed playing backgammon with
Melina Mercouri
Maria Amalia "Melina" Mercouri (, 18 October 1920 – 6 March 1994) was a Greek actress, singer, activist, and politician. She came from a political family that was prominent over multiple generations. She received an Academy Award nomination a ...
and her husband
Jules Dassin
Julius "Jules" Dassin (December 18, 1911 – March 31, 2008) was an American film and theatre director, producer, writer and actor. A subject of the Hollywood blacklist in the McCarthy era, he subsequently moved to France, and later Greece, whe ...
. He did admit to punching Tony Franciosa, claiming it was because he "kept abusing the stunt men" and would not pull his punches in fight scenes.
It was the last film Sandra Dee made under contract to
Universal
Universal is the adjective for universe.
Universal may also refer to:
Companies
* NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company
** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal
** Universal TV, a ...
. According to a 1965 interview with the actress, she "begged
he producers
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
not to make
erdo the picture. So I spent a miserable four months in Lisbon, little fishing villages and in Rome, making a picture that should have taken eight weeks. We had two changes of directors, and I ended up playing ''
Come September
''Come September'' is a 1961 American romantic comedy film directed by Robert Mulligan and starring Rock Hudson, Gina Lollobrigida, Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin.
Plot
Wealthy American businessman Robert Talbot owns a villa on the Ligurian coast, ...
'' all over again."
Soundtrack
The score for ''A Man Could Get Killed'' was composed by the German
Bert Kaempfert
Bert Kaempfert (born Berthold Heinrich Kämpfert; 16 October 1923 – 21 June 1980) was a German orchestra leader, multi-instrumentalist, music producer, arranger, and composer. He made easy listening and jazz-oriented records and wrote the musi ...
, with the assistance of
Herbert Rehbein
Herbert "Herb" Rehbein (15 April 1922 – 28 July 1979) was a German songwriter, composer and arranger of light orchestral music. Together with his friend and collaborator Bert Kaempfert, he was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of F ...
, and recorded under the musical direction of Universal's Joseph Gershenson. It introduced the melody of the song "
Strangers in the Night
"Strangers in the Night" is a song composed by Bert Kaempfert with English lyrics by Charles Singleton and Eddie Snyder. Kaempfert originally used it under the title "Beddy Bye" as part of the instrumental score for the movie ''A Man Could Get ...
", which was initially to be sung by
Melina Mercouri
Maria Amalia "Melina" Mercouri (, 18 October 1920 – 6 March 1994) was a Greek actress, singer, activist, and politician. She came from a political family that was prominent over multiple generations. She received an Academy Award nomination a ...
, but she insisted that her voice would not fit to the melody and it should be given to a man. Eventually, the version by
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular ...
became a global number one hit and by now is considered a standard of
easy listening
Easy listening (including mood music) is a popular music genre and radio format that was most popular during the 1950s to 1970s. It is related to middle-of-the-road (MOR) music and encompasses instrumental recordings of standards, hit songs, n ...
music. The tune, listed in the original sound track as "Beddy Bye", permeates the movie and won the
Golden Globe Award
The Golden Globe Awards are accolades bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association beginning in January 1944, recognizing excellence in both American and international film and television. Beginning in 2022, there are 105 members of t ...
for "Best Original Song in a Motion Picture" of 1967, beating the other nominated compositions "
Un homme et une femme
''A Man and a Woman'' (french: Un homme et une femme) is a 1966 French film written and directed by Claude Lelouch and starring Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant. Written by Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven, the film concerns a young widow a ...
" by French orchestra leader
Francis Lai
Francis Albert Lai (; 26 April 19327 November 2018) was a French composer, noted for his film scores. He won the 1970 Oscar for Best Music, Original Score and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for the film '' Love Story''. The s ...
, "
Born Free
''Born Free'' is a 1966 British drama film starring the real-life couple Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers as Joy and George Adamson, another real-life couple who raised Elsa the Lioness, an orphaned lion cub, to adulthood, and released her in ...
" by
John Barry, which won the 1966
Academy Award for Best Original Song
The Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is presented to the ''songwriters'' who have composed th ...
, "
Alfie
Alfie may refer to:
Theatre and film
* ''Alfie'' (play), a 1963 play by Bill Naughton
* ''Alfie'' (1966 film), a film based on the play starring Michael Caine
* ''Alfie'' (2004 film), a remake of the 1966 film
* ''Alfie'' (2013 film), an Indi ...
" by
Burt Bacharach
Burt Freeman Bacharach ( ; born May 12, 1928) is an American composer, songwriter, record producer and pianist who composed hundreds of pop songs from the late 1950s through the 1980s, many in collaboration with lyricist Hal David. A six-time Gra ...
, and "
Georgy Girl
''Georgy Girl'' is a 1966 British romantic comedy-drama, starring Lynn Redgrave in the titular role, with Charlotte Rampling, Alan Bates, and James Mason. Directed by Silvio Narizzano, the film was based on the 1965 novel by Margaret Forster.
...
" by
Tom Springfield
Tom Springfield (born Dionysius Patrick O'Brien, 2 July 1934 – 27 July 2022) was an English musician, songwriter and record producer who was prominent in the 1960s folk and pop music scene. He was the older brother of singer Dusty Springfield ...
, from the eponymous movies, the latter two also having been Oscar nominees in 1966.
The overall score to the movie, often resorting to Latin and even seemingly Greek influenced imagery, had a more mixed reception.
[''Film and television scores, 1950–1979: a critical survey by genre'', Kristopher Spencer, McFarland, 2008] The soundtrack LP - in fact a rerecording of the score - was produced by
Milt Gabler
Milton Gabler (May 20, 1911 – July 20, 2001) was an American record producer, responsible for many innovations in the recording industry of the 20th century. These included being the first person to deal in record reissues, the first to sel ...
and recorded at
Polydor
Polydor Records Ltd. is a German-British record label that operates as part of Universal Music Group. It has a close relationship with Universal's Interscope Geffen A&M Records label, which distributes Polydor's releases in the United States. ...
Studios, Hamburg, Germany. It was originally released on an LP by
Decca Decca may refer to:
Music
* Decca Records or Decca Music Group, a record label
* Decca Gold, a classical music record label owned by Universal Music Group
* Decca Broadway, a musical theater record label
* Decca Studios, a recording facility in W ...
(Decca DL 74750) and on a CD in 1999 by Taragon Records, then combined with Bert Kaempfert's LP ''Strangers in the Night'' (original release 1966, Decca DL 74795).
References
External links
*
*
James Garner interview on the ''Charlie Rose Show''
James Garnerinterview at
Archive of American Television
The Interviews: An Oral History of Television (formerly titled the Archive of American Television) is a project of the nonprofit Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, that records interviews with notable ...
Could Get Killed, A
1966 films
Films directed by Ronald Neame
Films set in Portugal
Films shot in Portugal
1960s spy comedy films
1966 comedy films