Dorks And Losers

When you think of clas­sic Hol­ly­wood lead­ing men, Burt Lan­caster usu­ally isn’t among the first five names spo­ken, and might not even be among the first ten. It’s a shame because of Burt’s tal­ent and very manly looks, but not sur­pris­ing given the roles he took as he got older.

He’s starred in clas­sic films like From Here To Eter­nity, Judg­ment At Nurem­burg, and Bird­man Of Alca­traz, and Warner Bros. has given the hunky Lan­caster its Sig­na­ture Col­lec­tion status.

Exec­u­tive Action

In a movie that pre­ceded Oliver Stone’s JFK by eigh­teen years, David Miller’s Exec­u­tive Action is a fic­tional but very plau­si­ble con­spir­acy account of John F. Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion on Novem­ber 22, 1963.

There are lit­er­ally hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent the­o­ries as to the iden­tity of the mas­ter­minds behind JFK’s death. Burt Lan­caster (Far­ring­ton) and Robert Ryan (Fos­ter) star in this thriller as the cold and cal­cu­lat­ing lead con­spir­a­tors. They are part of a group of busi­ness­men and polit­i­cal fig­ures who are unhappy with the JFK admin­is­tra­tion, most notably on JFK’s stance on equal rights.

Exec­u­tive Action is told purely through the eyes of the con­spir­a­tors, and sur­pris­ingly doesn’t include any out­side “world views” on the gen­eral national sen­ti­ment and mood. Includ­ing the lat­ter would almost cer­tainly have given sym­pa­thy to the con­spir­a­tors. But to be fair, there men didn’t think much about what Amer­i­cans cared for. They only cared for them­selves and served only their own interests.

The film does include many scenes of actual news footage to help cre­ate authen­tic­ity and con­ti­nu­ity between the back­stage scenes of Lan­caster and Ryan plot­ting their thor­ough scheme and his­tor­i­cal record.

While this film is the work of fic­tion, it does give cre­ative and rea­son­able answers to the many unan­swered ques­tions sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tion. The one aspect of the film that will always cause doubt in audi­ences is the fact that even with the small num­ber of peo­ple involved in the film’s con­spir­acy, there still were more than enough peo­ple to make mis­takes and pro­vide leaks that would have unrav­eled the plot.

Included on the DVD are trail­ers for a few Burt Lan­caster films, and a ten-minute doc­u­men­tary titled “Novem­ber 22, 1963: In Search Of An Answer” that shows (with many inter­views of the cast and crew) how pas­sion­ate the film­mak­ers were toward try­ing to put some per­spec­tive on the non-complete War­ren Report on JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and the cred­i­bil­ity of some con­spir­acy the­o­ries.

Jim Thorpe – All American

Con­sid­ered one of the great­est Amer­i­can ath­letes of the 20th cen­tury, Jim Thorpe (Burt Lan­caster) was a Native Amer­i­can Indian who faced a huge uphill bat­tle try­ing to adjust at the Carlisle Indian Indus­trial School. He strug­gled, but found his release in athletics.

Jim excelled in every sport he tried (track and field, foot­ball, base­ball, bas­ket­ball), and his suc­cess put Carlisle on the col­le­giate map. Head­lines about Carlisle’s vic­to­ries and Jim’s dom­i­nat­ing per­for­mances filled news­pa­pers. Dis­ap­point­ment hit Jim, but he always tried that much harder.

When he was turned down for a coach­ing posi­tion, he sought to com­pete in the 1912 Olympics as the way to get the recog­ni­tion he deserved. He won gold medals in the pen­tathlon and decathlon events, but was stripped of them. Jim’s life started to spi­ral down­ward from there, espe­cially with the death of his son Jim, Jr. and with his bat­tle with alco­holism. After hit­ting rock bot­tom, he finds him­self again by coach­ing kids.

The film is more a tale of Jim’s strug­gles and vic­to­ries in life. Unfor­tu­nately the theme of racism wasn’t addressed as much. There are hints of it through­out the film, includ­ing the men­tion of Jim not get­ting his first coach­ing job was because he was Native Amer­i­can. Like­wise, Native Amer­i­can cul­ture isn’t high­lighted as much either. With many excit­ing sports scenes, the movie could have been much more.

The DVD includes an unfunny Joe McDoakes short (“So You Want To Be A Paper Hanger”) and a Bugs Bunny short (“Here We Go”) about Bugs and his influ­ence on Christo­pher Colum­bus’ dis­cov­ery of Amer­ica.

His Majesty O’Keefe

It really shouldn’t be a sur­prise to any­one how long man has lusted for oil. In the old sea­far­ing days, whale blub­ber was sought for it. And watch­ing His Majesty O’Keefe, I now know that coconut held its secret too, with copra that was as valu­able as gold.

Cap­tain David Dion O’Keefe (Burt Lan­caster) lost his ship to mutiny with his ambi­tions to find copra. He mirac­u­lously washes up on Yap, an island par­adise full of coconuts and muscle-bound natives able but not will­ing to har­vest the copra.

O’Keefe leaves the island with the intent of com­ing back for copra. His biggest obsta­cle is try­ing to find a dent in the area’s monop­oly by a Ger­man trad­ing com­pany. Dur­ing his quest, he finds his fair share of friend­lies and ene­mies, but more impor­tantly he finds the path to his fortune.

Shot on loca­tion on the gor­geous Fiji Islands, His Majesty O’Keefe isn’t your aver­age straight­for­ward sea adven­ture, but a tale of the his­tor­i­cal harm that cul­tural interference/invasion (there’s prob­a­bly a sci­en­tific word for it) and mod­ern­iza­tion had on non-Western/non-industrial societies.

Included on the DVD are a the­atri­cal trailer and two more shorts, includ­ing another Joe McDoakes com­edy “So You Want To Know Your Rel­a­tives” (which again isn’t that funny) and another car­toon “I Gopher You” about two gophers trapped in a food pro­cess­ing plant.

The Flame And The Arrow

Despite the suc­cess of the Pirates of the Caribbean tril­ogy, pirate tales and swash­buck­ling movies have not been able to stage a come­back. It’s a shame because the old light­hearted tales were always a breath of fresh air.

Burt Lan­caster plays Dardo the Arrow with the kind of charisma that would make any father betroth their daugh­ters to him. Dardo’s wife left him for Count Ulrich (The Hawk). Dardo refused to take action despite the insis­tence of the town of Lom­bardy. It isn’t until The Hawk takes Dardo’s son that Dardo leads a revolt over the Ger­man conquerors.

Of course, a tale like this isn’t com­plete with­out a love story, with Dardo falling for Anne de Hesse (Vir­ginia Mayo). And of course, it wouldn’t be the same with­out Anne falling for Dardo as well.

In the clas­sic days of ‘50s film­mak­ing, it’s again refresh­ing to see so many of the actors per­form their own stunts. His side­kick Pic­colo (Nick Cra­vat) doing a front flip from a sec­ond story onto Dardo and onto his feet makes your heart skip a beat when think­ing about how eas­ily Lan­caster could have got­ten hurt.

The flip side to this style of film­mak­ing is the fact that these films sug­ar­coat medieval times. Were war­lords really oppres­sive? Def­i­nitely. Were those times dire enough to pro­voke cit­i­zen revolts? Of course. Did brave souls sneak into cas­tles, insult the count, fight guards, and actu­ally get away? Prob­a­bly not.

But there are other films that deal more in his­tor­i­cal accu­racy. Films like these are for pure enter­tain­ment with their out­ra­geous stunts and wild fights.

Included on the DVD are a cou­ple of the­atri­cal trail­ers and a cou­ple of vin­tage shorts. One of the shorts is titled “So You’re Going To Have An Oper­a­tion” from come­dian Joe McDoakes. It’s sur­pris­ingly unfunny. The other short is the car­toon “Strife With Father” about a bird cou­ple try­ing to take care of a stork.

South Sea Woman

Burt Lan­caster stars as Marine Sgt. James O’Hearn who is being court mar­tialed for a laun­dry list of charges, the most notably being deser­tion, which pos­si­bly car­ries the penalty of death. The cir­cum­stances were even more seri­ous con­sid­er­ing O’Hearn and his friend Pri­vate Davey White (Chuck Con­ners) went AWOL before the Japan­ese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Sgt. O’Hearn is the only one on trial, and he refuses to pro­nounce his guilt or inno­cence. The only per­son to come to his defense is Gin­ger Mar­tin (Vir­ginia Mayo) who also hap­pens to be Pvt. White’s fiancé. Despite Sgt. O’Hearn’s refusal to plea, the trial starts as if he had pled not guilty.

Wit­nesses tes­tify, and through flash­backs the real story unrav­els. The flash­backs bal­ance between drama and com­edy, from the love tri­an­gle between Sgt. O’Hearn, Pvt. White, and Ms. Mar­tin to the free­ing of French pris­on­ers to O’Hearn’s never-ending firm patriotism.

Lan­caster unleashes his charis­matic, macho star power as a brave com­mand­ing offi­cer always try­ing to serve his coun­try, while Con­ners is the young, brash, and also brave sol­dier will­ing to do what­ever it takes for his coun­try. And Mayo is her cute self.

Spe­cial fea­tures include a the­atri­cal trailer, yet another unfunny Joe McDoakes short titled “So You Want To Be An Heir” and another car­toon “Much Ado About Nut­ting,” about a squir­rel and his nuts.

It’s unfor­tu­nate that WB decided to include four films that Lan­caster made between 1950 and 1954, with Exec­u­tive Action being the only film made after Bird­man in 1963. It would have been nice to have a col­lec­tion with some of his lesser known works, but of course, there’s always a vol­ume two.

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