Skidoo

Faye Dunaway, under contract to Otto Preminger at the time, refused to appear in Skidoo after she scored a huge success in Bonnie and Clyde (1967). She was sued by Preminger but it was settled out of court. Skidoo screenwriter Doran William Cannon was first hired for the Preminger film Too Far To Walk. Cannon's agent was a former secretary for Preminger and had sent him the Skidoo screenplay as a writing sample to get Cannon hired for Too Far To Walk. The director admired the anti-establishment tone of the Skidoo script and the fact that Cannon pitted the hippies against the mafia so Cannon asked, "Why not just make Skidoo?" And since Preminger thought he would be able to make it cheaply, he agreed to do it. Preminger had already done research on the drug scene for Too Far To Walk. Cannon and Preminger butted heads over how the Mafia would be portrayed in Skidoo. Cannon wanted them to be realistic and played straight; Preminger wanted them to be cartoonish with the comedy played broadly. Cannon remembers, "I told Otto from the start that if he directed Skidoo the way he directed In Harm's Way [1965], it would be funny." Preminger also thought the mafia members should be violent – a suggestion that Cannon was vehemently against, as he claimed his screenplay was about "the powers of nonviolence". Preminger initially asked Mel Brooks to help with the rewrite, although he told Cannon later, "I am not going to hire [Brooks]. Between you and him I would go crazy." Instead Cannon suggested Elliott Baker (author of A Fine Madness). TV screenwriter Stanley Ralph Ross (The Monkees, Batman) was also brought in to rescue the script, although by the time Ross was called in Skidoo was halfway done and all the scenes Ross suggested be cut were already shot and edited into the film. Preminger still paid Ross anyway. Cannon's friend Austin Pendleton (the Professor) tried out for the film by taking a drive with Preminger around San Francisco. They didn't speak of the movie at all during their drive and instead discussed politics. Right as he dropped him off at the airport, Preminger told Pendleton, "I like talking to you; you don't need to do the test because the part is yours." Pendleton sensed that the movie would probably fail and had initially turned him down. After offering him a little more money, Pendleton reluctantly agreed to do Skidoo. After Pendleton's first scene (the jail scene in which the new recruits are asked to strip down naked and answer questions about their lives on a computer), he begged his agent to be released from Skidoo, although Preminger liked Pendleton immensely and wanted to expand his part. Soon after on set, Pendleton missed his marks and Preminger exploded, calling him "an amateur" and claimed he "didn't know how to behave on camera". Pendleton agreed with the director and asked, "Mr. Preminger, can you help me?" and Preminger melted. From that point on he gave Pendleton more coaching than anyone else on set. Jackie Gleason and Preminger reportedly didn't communicate at all on set, and Pendleton observed that Gleason was "not hostile but depressed". Gleason never wanted to rehearse and had no humor offstage. Pendleton said he was a "prima donna who made his wardrobe man kneel down to tie his shoes." Cannon initially wanted Preminger to play the God character but he refused, so instead Cannon suggested Groucho Marx. Preminger claimed Marx was too old but hired him anyway. Reportedly when Groucho showed up on the set, he asked Preminger if he was drunk. Preminger resented the comment and would yell at Marx continuously through the shoot. A person on set claimed that there were "many tense moments with Groucho, who was gross, uncouth, and extremely unpleasant to everyone." Preminger reported picked on Groucho so much during the filming that Gleason physically threatened Preminger to never try the same bully stuff with him. Preminger forced Groucho to wear his trademark mustache for the film. Carol Channing claimed Preminger, "was a wonderful producer but I didn't like working with him. He enjoyed beating me up in front of the company." Preminger's film In Harm's Way is seen during the opening sequence where Tony and Flo are watching television. Preminger always complained that his films were edited after being shown on television, and in the sequence Flo is heard saying, "I never watch films on TV...they always cut them to pieces." Preminger reportedly wanted Bob Dylan to score Skidoo. He invited Dylan and his wife to a screening of the movie in his mansion. After the screening Dylan wanted to see the film again (much to everyone's surprise in the room, who had thought it was terrible) but under one condition: he wanted to see it alone with his wife in the house while it was playing. Dylan ended up not scoring the movie and later admitted the only reason he requested a private second screening was because he was fascinated by the décor in Preminger's house and wanted to use some of the ideas for his own house. The Skidoo wrap party was at The Factory, a hip disco in Los Angeles. Preminger wore a Nehru suit and was seen having a great time. Director Peter Bogdanovich was present when Preminger screened Skidoo for Paramount executives (including head Robert Evans). Bogdanovich said, "There wasn't one laugh or titter the entire film." Preminger arranged for the Skidoo premiere to be in Miami as a fundraiser for the not-yet-built Miami Arts Center. Pendleton recalls it being, "...beautifully orchestrated...a feeling of a big, important premiere – you'd have thought it was the Atlanta opening of Gone with the Wind [1939]...but twenty minutes after the film started there began an ever gathering parade of rich people exiting. I knew then that we were in trouble." Skidoo opened in Los Angeles on December 18th, 1968, to qualify for Academy Award consideration. Skidoo opened in New York on March 5th, 1969. Groucho Marx, who reportedly took LSD at the time of Skidoo, was profiled in an article by Yippie founder and publisher of The Realist, Paul Krassner. It was titled "My Acid Trip With Groucho". Compiled by Millie de Chirico Sources: www.imdb.com www.allmovie.com The Cinema of Otto Preminger by Gerald Pratlow Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King by Foster Hirsch The Worst Movies Of All Time or What Were They Thinking? by Michael Sauter Psychotronic Magazine Number 12 www.rogerebert.com www.variety.com www.filmthreat.com www.channel4.com www.shockcinemamagazine.com www.citypaper.net

Skidoo was filmed in San Francisco, California. Shooting began on March 18th, 1968 and wrapped no less than two months later on May 17th. It was released on December 19th, 1968. The tagline for Skidoo was: "It takes two to Skidoo." Doran William Cannon also wrote the screenplays for Brewster McCloud (1970) and the supernatural thriller Hex (1973) starring Keith and John Carradine. Skidoo was Groucho Marx's last film. John Phillip Law was brought in to play the main hippie, Stash. His brother Tom was also hired, who was at that time a real hippie. Skidoo was referenced in the Rob Zombie movie The Devil's Rejects (2005). LSD guru Timothy Leary appears in the Skidoo trailer. The outside scenes of the prison were filmed at Alcatraz in San Francisco. Most of the other scenes were also filmed in real places, including the house of Gleason and his wife. The only set that appeared in the film was Frankie Avalon's bachelor pad. God (Groucho Marx)'s yacht actually belonged to John Wayne. (Preminger had previously directed him in In Harm's Way, 1965). In the marriage sequence towards the end of the film when God's yacht is overtaken by the hippies, George Raft is holding a book called The Death of God. Singer Harry Nilsson wrote and sang the closing credits to the film, along with some of the other songs in the film such as "Living in a Garbage Can" and "I Will Take You There." John Phillip Law turned down Midnight Cowboy (1969) to be in Skidoo. Preminger played Mr. Freeze in the Batman television series and employed other Batman-regulars such as Frank Gorshin, Cesar Romero, and Burgess Meredith for the film. A young Richard Kiel (Eegah, 1962) also appears as a prisoner in Skidoo. The naked Green Bay Packers that were seen in one of the acid trip sequences were actually members of a local college team dressed in Packers uniforms. Compiled by Millie de Chirico Sources: www.imdb.com www.allmovie.com The Cinema of Otto Preminger by Gerald Pratlow Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King by Foster Hirsch The Worst Movies Of All Time or What Were They Thinking? by Michael Sauter Psychotronic Magazine Number 12 www.rogerebert.com www.variety.com www.filmthreat.com www.channel4.com www.shockcinemamagazine.com www.citypaper.net

"Skidoo is something only for Preminger-watchers or for people whose minds need pressing by a heavy object...the movie has the form of comedy, but its almost complete lack of humor, its retarded contemporaneousness...its sometimes beautiful and expensive looking San Francisco locations; and its indomitable denial that disaster is at hand (apparent from almost the opening sequence) - all give the film an almost undeniable Preminger stamp." – Vincent Canby, New York Times "Otto Preminger's Skidoo fails mostly because it lacks spirit...Preminger seems unable to invest his film with any lightness or spontaneity." – Roger Ebert, December 27th, 1968 "Skidoo opens and closes in clever fashion, but in between, Otto Preminger's film is a dreary, unfunny attempt at contemporary comedy. Screenplay is a sort of updated Damon Runyon plot, in which allegedly loveable, old-time gangster types are foiled by hippies. Static photography and tame editing compound a weak script." – Variety, January 1st, 1968 "Making Zabriskie Point [1970] look like Easy Rider [1969], Preminger and screenwriter Doran William Cannon (also responsible for Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud, 1970) misconceived a story involving a mob hit man who is recalled from retirement to take out a jailed ex-colleague....With his unerring feel for the taste of stoned teenagers, Preminger loaded up his cast with a bevy of bloated B-list stars, from Carol Channing to Cesar Romero to Frank Gorshin, not to mention a loony Mickey Rooney, whose lysergic dance number is one of the movie's "highlights." The movie's total unavailability has turned it into a cult object, a status it hardly deserves, although its mind-boggling ineptness is impossible to tear your eyes away from. - Sam Adams, Philadelphia City Paper "...in my view, Skidoo offers irrefutable proof that not only was Preminger capable of making a comedy, but that he was years ahead of his time with that wonderfully loopy and much-maligned creation...Skidoo is such a wild assault on the sense that it's hard to imagine the film was ever made. Under Preminger's direction, LSD is a liberating and empowering tool...It also allows an astonishing number of guest stars in the Alcatraz sequences (including Rooney, Peter Lawford, Richard Kiel, Burgess Meredith and Frank Gorshin) to pretend they are tripping on acid. The last two actors are especially fun – imagine the Penguin and Riddler on acid!" - Phil Hall, Film Threat "This is one of my favorite celluloid misfires of all time! A hip, fab, counterculture wannabee, featuring a severely-screwball line-up of Hollywood cronies, all trying to keep their careers afloat by jumping blindly onto the '60s bandwagon of groovy hippies, free love and hallucinogenic chemicals...how can you NOT love a movie that ends with Groucho and Austin toking a roach as all the end credits are SUNG!? I guess it all seemed like a good idea at the time -- and while under the influence, it still is. Truly, this is a movie to be cherished by Badfilm Aficionados for centuries to come. - Steven Puchalski, Shock Cinema "Skidoo is certainly more eccentric than Preminger's more acclaimed, conservative films (Laura [1944], The Man with the Golden Arm [1955], or Anatomy of a Murder [1959]). The narrative is sometimes too 60s, being irritatingly kooky, but as a fine comedic treatment of drug-taking, this is a real treat." - www.channel 4.com "Abysmal mishmash with top talent abused; clearly intended as satirical farce, but in fact one of the most woebegone movies ever made." - Halliwell's Film Guide " Unspeakable..." - Illustrated London News Compiled by Millie de Chirico

The Professor: "Have you ever heard of acid?" Tony: "Acid?" The Professor: "LSD. It's a drug. It's odorless, tasteless, and colorless. And it makes you hallucinate." Tony: "What are you getting at?" The Professor: "Acid is soaked into my stationary." The Professor: "You are going on a trip. If you fight it, it can be a bad trip. If you ride with the waves, it will be a good trip." God: "You're a hippie, ain't you?" Stash: "If labeling is your thing, yes." God: "And what does a hippie want from God?" Tower Guard: (looking at a hot-air balloon) It's a great, big, beautiful blob of nothing! Tower Guard: Yeah! Tower Guard: It wants me. It wants me. It loves me... but why is it going away? Tony (during his acid trip): "I want a flower!" Man (after taking LSD): "I'm an angel! I'm a goddamn angel! Hallelujah!" Tower Guard One (while tripping): "Hey, you look like a flower!" Tower Guard Two (also tripping): "That's funny. I feel like a flower!" God (smoking pot): "Mmm, pumpkin!" Leech (talking about acid): "Hey, maybe if I took some of that stuff I wouldn't have to rape anybody no more!" Tower Guard Two: "I see the Green Bay Packers...and they're all naked!" God: Garbaldo! Garbaldo! What the hell's goin' on up there? Captain Garbaldo: There's a stiff wind from the east, sir. God: I don't care where it's comin' from! Stop it! Compiled by Millie de Chirico

Otto Preminger's least celebrated feature film came and went in a flash in 1968. Hollywood insiders closed their eyes and auteurist film critics politely looked the other way, preferring to laud Preminger classics like Laura, Angel Face and The Man with the Golden Arm. Olive Films rectifies this cultural outrage with a pristine new DVD of Preminger's jaw-dropper. Skidoo is a self-consciously "wild and crazy" comedy farce, a satire of gangsters, hippies, drugs 'n' free love in the anything-goes climate of the late 1960s. For much of his career Preminger had been a leading promoter of filmmaker's rights and an enemy of the Production Code. Several of his '60s movies were serious examinations of Big Subjects: the workings of government (Advise and Consent); the Catholic church (The Cardinal). Skidoo is a radical departure from thematic relevance, a comedy about the victory of flower power, love and zaniness over the Syndicate. Where things went wrong is not entirely clear. Although the director loved the script by Doran William Cannon (Brewster McCloud) his rewrites show little or no understanding of the counterculture. The comedy approach emulates the "wacky" spirit of Campy TV shows like Batman, where Preminger had enjoyed himself immensely playing the villain Mr. Freeze. Writer Cannon wanted the gangsters to be deadpan serious, but Preminger opted for cartoonish villains. Retired hit man "Tough Tony" Banks fights for the TV remote control with his ditzy wife Flo (Carol Channing), his moll from the old days. His sweet daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay) has taken up with the hippie guru Stash (John Philip Law). Mobsters Hechy (Caesar Romero) and Angie (Frankie Avalon) tell Tony that the elusive Syndicate head "God" (Groucho Marx) expects him to murder the talkative associate "Blue Chips" Packard, now rooming in Alcatraz. Tony has no choice but to get himself arrested and sent to The Rock. To find her missing husband Flo goes to Angie's bachelor pad/sex pit to pry information from the young mobster. Tony accidentally takes an LSD trip courtesy of his cellmate, Fred the Professor (Austin Pendleton), and experiences a transcendental spiritual realignment away from violence. Darlene and Stash journey to God's secret yacht to appeal for her father's life, while Flo leads a hippie flotilla to the rescue. By any standard measure Skidoo is a high profile failure, an elaborate but unfocused satire. Director Preminger's out-of-control comic epic is woefully short on laughs, starting with Tough Tony's depressing sitcom lifestyle. Besides discovering that his lackey Harry (Arnold Stang, always good) has been Flo's secret lover for years, Tony sees his daughter cavorting with a longhaired hippie. Straight from Barbarella and Diabolik, John Philip Law spouts appropriate hippie jargon and meditates in a yoga position atop his Rolls-Royce, but nothing particularly funny comes of it. Skidoo features a couple of scenes with nude body painting, just the kind of baloney the media decided was standard hippie behavior. The show also openly endorses experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs. Jackie Gleason's LSD trip is fairly unique in Hollywood history, a succession of bizarre visions rendered via oddball special effects. Groucho Marx's disembodied head floats and spins as the cap of a screw, an image both stupid and revelatory at the same time (see below). A scrimmage line of naked pro football players is a gratuitous throwaway visual gag. A feeble hallucinatory 'garbage can ballet' may be the least inspired fantasy scene ever filmed. Skidoo was filmed by a huge studio crew at great expense. Stash's battered Rolls plays a game of tug o' war with a tow truck in front of a fancy upscale San Francisco apartment building, a location shoot that can't have been cheap. Frankie Avalon's Playboy apartment is one of those automated make-out pads with a bed that sinks into a hole in the floor. Preminger rigs a giant balloon and does quite a bit of filming out on the water. The hallucination scenes involve elaborate optical work that must have cost a pretty penny. Preminger's star cast makes Skidoo resemble Stanley Kramer's It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in miniature. The all-pro lineup looks ready for anything but the script has them bumbling around in unfocused skit humor. Groucho Marx and Mickey Rooney are almost entirely isolated from the rest of the cast, and do much of their acting by talking to people on the phone or through TV screens. Most of the cameo casting only gets in the way of the story -- Burgess Meredith, Fred Clark, Peter Lawford, Slim Pickens and George Raft don't even interact with the main players. "Main player" John Philip Law is in plenty of scenes but projects little personality. Atop the summit of the comic pyramid is Groucho Marx's God, pulling the mob strings from his yacht-hideout. Not only are the jokes not there, Groucho's concentration seems to be on reading his cue cards. His attention seems to be somewhere else, even when "God's" oversexed playgirl companion (Luna) is writhing in his lap. Jackie Gleason pulls some funny faces but is basically a melancholy character. Undernourished and under-motivated, Skidoo is full of manic action but never builds to a comic high. Unlike other unheralded comedy epics (The Hallelujah Trail, Casino Royale (1967), 1941) we really can't see what attracted Otto Preminger to the project in the first place. Then again, asking "What was he thinking?" is a rewarding way to approach this unique comedy. When something funny or clever does happen, we notice it right away. The bravest and brightest performer on view is Carol Channing, a trouper who goes for broke in all of her scenes. She's amusing when dealing with the hippies but her wildest material comes when she storm's Frankie Avalon's bachelor pad, stripping down to some fairly revealing undies and throwing herself onto his bed. Channing lost her two Broadway triumphs to other actresses when Hollywood made the movie versions, and she seems intent on showing that there's nothing she won't do. The other standout is young comic actor Austin Pendleton. Pendleton's anti-war 'professor' is a perfect sidekick for Jackie Gleason, and his various inventions keep the picture moving forward. On a slightly lesser plane, Frank Gorshin and Richard Kiel flesh out the "big house" prison roster with some good turns. Again, locking Mickey Rooney up in a single jail cell and letting him share only one short scene with Gleason, seems a waste. According to Preminger's Biographer Foster Hirsch, the director did not have the confidence of his actors. Jackie Gleason was depressed and Carol Channing felt unhappy but did her best. Young stage actor Austin Pendleton wished he could quit after one day on the job. With the entire prison population including the guards high on LSD, Tough Tony makes good his escape via hot-air balloon. The corpulent Tough Tony pushes a relatively thin inmate out of the balloon's basket, with the breezy line, "You weigh too much!" Preminger then throws away what might have been a socko finish, by muffing the concluding musical number. Dressed like George Washington crossing the Delaware, Carol Channing leads the hippie assault on God's yacht. Harry Nilsson's novelty title song is a bouncy trifle but Channing gives it everything she's got. Just as this musical surprise is developing into a winner, Preminger cuts it up into little pieces, pulling the rug out from under the enthusiastic Ms. Channing. She alone attains the Al Capp-like cartoon silliness the show needs, but Preminger keeps insisting on dragging the movie down with his unfocused direction. When compared to the cynical gross-out humor of many of today's comedies the notorious bomb Skidoo now seems fresh and endearing. Otto Preminger doesn't have a clue as to how to direct this kind of comedy, but it's fun to watch some of our favorite comic actors struggling to make it all work. The roster of smaller cameo parts is less rewarding -- George Raft, Slim Pickens. But the glorious Miss Channing and the talented Austin Pendleton shine. It's Pendleton's first movie and Groucho's last, and they're last seen in a little sailboat together smoking dope. Our main reaction to this eccentric circus of dubious taste is to marvel that it exists at all. Think of it -- the film ends with the entire cast high on LSD, partying on a yacht rented from John Wayne! Olive Films' DVD of Skidoo will thrill the cult film vultures that have waited for years for this ultimate 'Bad Movie'. The clean and colorful enhanced widescreen transfer shows off Otto Preminger's expensive locations and painful flower power art direction -- hippies like primary colors, see? The disc is an excellent opportunity to separate viewers with a legitimate claim to sanity from those that think the film is a misunderstood masterpiece. To add to Skidoo's inexhaustible supply of quirks, Harry Nilsson sings the entire closing title sequence, including all the technical credits. That puts Nilsson on a par with Domenico Modugno, who two years before sang the entire title sequence for Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Hawks and the Sparrows (Uccellacci e uccellini). It's not easy to fit a credit for "production manager" into a song lyric! Research: Otto Preminger The Man Who Would Be King. Knopf, New York 2007 For more information about Skidoo, visit Olive Films. To order Skidoo, go to TCM Shopping. by Glenn Erickson

Frank Gorshin, a skilled comedian, impressionist and character actor who will forever be indentified with his role as "The Riddler" on the cult series from the '60s Batman lost his battle with lung cancer on May 17 at the Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California. He was 72. He was born on April 5, 1933, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania into a family of modest means, his father was a railroad worker and mother a homemaker. His childhood impressions of Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney paid off when he won a local talent contest at 17, and that led to his first gig at 17 at a the prize was a one week engagement at Jackie Heller's Carousel night club, Pittsburgh's hottest downtown spot in the day. The taste was there, and after high school Frank enrolled in the Carnegie-Mellon Tech School of Drama did hone his craft. His career was interrupted briefly when he entered the US Army in 1953. He spent two years in Special Services as an entertainer. Once he got out, Frank tried his luck in Hollywood. He made his film debut in a forgettable William Holden vehicle The Proud and Profane, but his fortunes picked up soon when he and when he hooked up with American Internation Pictures (AIP). With his charasmatic sneer and cocky bravado that belied his slender, 5' 7" frame, Frank made a great punk villian in a series of entertaining "drive-in" fare: Hot Rod Girl (1956), Dragstrip Girl, Invasion of the Saucer Men, and of course the classic Portland Expose (all 1957). By the '60s, he graduated to supporting roles in bigger Hollywood fare: Where the Boys Are, Bells Are Ringing (both 1960), Ring of Fire, and his biggest tole to date, that of Iggy the bank robber in Disney's hugely popular That Darn Cat (1965). Better still, Frank found some parts on television: Naked City, Combat!, The Untouchables, and this would be the medium where he found his greatest success. Little did he realize that when his skeletal physique donned those green nylon tights and cackled his high pitch laugh that Frank Gorshin would be forever identified as "the Riddler," one of Batman's main nemisis. For two years (1966-68), he was a semi-regular on the show and it brought him deserved national attention. By the '70s, Frank made his Broadway debut, as the star of Jimmy, a musical based on the life of former New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker. He spent the next two decades alternating between the stage, where he appeared regularly in national touring productions of such popular shows as: Promises, Promises, Prisoner of Second Street, and Guys and Dolls; and nightclub work in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He recently found himself in demand for character roles on televison: Murder, She Wrote, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and film: Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys (1995), and the quirky comedy Man of the Century (1999). Yet his biggest triumph was his two year stint (2002-2004) as George Burns in the Broadway smash, Say Goodnight Gracie. It ran for 364 performances and he received critical raves from even the toughest New York theater critics, proving undoubtly that he was a performer for all mediums. He is survived by his wife Christina; a son, Mitchell; grandson Brandon and sister Dottie. by Michael T. Toole