Working under his own production banner after hitting the prestige/success jackpot with ON THE WATERFRONT/’54, THE HARDER THEY FALL/’56 and A FACE IN THE CROWD, Budd Schulberg couldn’t have guessed this would mark his early finish, thru at 44. And he didn’t go alone, taking troubled director Nicholas Ray along with him while stalling Christopher Plummer’s fast-rising career for a full six years. (Ray made just one more film in Hollywood before overseas production on his last films.*) So does this fact-inspired turn-of-the-last-century avian holocaust story rate a second chance? Nah. Plummer’s the stranger in town (a yet to develop Miami), recruited by the Audubon Society to paddle into the ‘River of Grass’ to find destructive bird poacher Burl Ives and his clan of merry bird murderers, decimating flocks to supply plumage to society ladies. (A true ecological disaster, BTW.) Not a bad set up for an action adventure with a conservationist slant. But Ray & Schulberg had different ideas and Ray split after shooting his own rewritten script before Schulberg came in to finish directing and restore what he could. The result truly inept.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: *After ankling, Ray made PARTY GIRL/’58, an odd mob drama at M-G-M before leaving Hollywood behind for THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS/‘60, KING OF KINGS/’61 and 55 DAYS AT PEKING/’63, the last a major flop, but a heck of a show. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2013/01/king-of-kings-1961.html OR: Burl Ives Oscar’d the same year for nearly the same perf in William Wyler’s THE BIG COUNTRY/’58. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-big-country-1958.html OR: Schulberg’s ex, Elia Kazan, moving on (and up) to scripter Paul Osborn to cover similar socio-economic/environmental terrain in WILD RIVER/’60. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/10/wild-river-1960.html
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