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GOLAN AND GLOBUS -THE EARLY YEARS
BY MALCOLM HUNTER Link to this page: www.cannon.org.uk/mh1.htm Menahem Golan was
born on With the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, he
changed his last name from Globus to Golan, as a result of hearing David Ben
Gurion’s call that Israelis should take Hebrew names in order to help create
the new nation. So Golan took his surname from the Golan Heights, which were
near his hometown the Galilee seaport of Tiberias. He then went on to serve
his country in the newly established Israeli airforce as one of its first
military pilots. According to his own later account, in between bombing raids
he worked as a junior reporter on an air force magazine. After completing his military service he studied
directing at the Old Vic Theatre School, London, though he would only do the
first year of what was a two-year course. On going back to (1) Golan did get
to direct Chaplin, not Charlie of course, but his daughter Josephine. In 1972 she starred
in the Noah films production, Escape to the Sun , an unfairly neglected film. Golan continues “So I went there and did the movie
with Roger Corman. The budget, I remember, was $90, 000 and we were shooting
at every racetrack in Europe. It was a great experience because of the people
who were making it.” Roger Corman had since 1955 directed or produced 45
films and on at least 20 of them, both. The vast majority were cheap to
ultra-cheap. Titles included such “epics” as Beast with a Million
Eyes (1955), Day the World Ended (1955), It Conquered the World (1956) and Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) and it was a series of
films very loosely based on the works of Edgar Alan Poe and starring Vincent Price
that gained him some respectability. He was also at this stage beginning to
gain a reputation for giving new talent a break. Apart from those already
mentioned others such as Peter Bogdanavich, Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese,
Monte Hellman, Ron Howard, Irvin Kershner, Joe Dante, Robert Vaughn, Jack
Nicholson, Peter Fonda to name but a few would soon have a lot to thank
Corman for. It was while in In 1962, on his return to
Noah Films Globus who had been born in 1941, to cinema owning
parents shared Golan’s passion for all things cinematic. “I was practically
born in the cinema” Globus would say, “I remember, as a child; I used to
correct the photographs hanging in the theatre if there were crooked. I would
give away tickets to my friends. I didn’t realise that the tickets had a
value of money. Then when I was in High School, I gave my father a condition-
I will be in High school if I can be the projectionist at night. I did it,
but it was difficult doing both”. After attending business school, courtesy
of financial help from his cousin, he had eagerly joined the partnership
helping Golan to set up the film. Financing for
Sallah (1964) Now with Noah Films well and truly up and running,
Golan who handled the creative side of the business, whilst Globus, who with
his excellent business skills and quick mind for deals took care of the
financial and sales side decided to make a follow up film. The result was Sallah (1964), produced by Golan and directed by Ephraim Kishon. IMDB review: "A Yemenite Jewish family that was flown to (1) Corman’s deal
for Dementia 13 allowed Coppola to use crew members, three of The
Young Racers cast: William Campbell, Luana Anders and the great Irish
actor Patrick Magee plus the film’s Irish sets if he could shoot around The
Young Racers shooting schedule. Others were less enthusiastic: The Guardian would complain, “Surely not made
for export!” Made in the style of a sort of Yiddish Ealing
comedy. It like In the years to come the duo would certainly prove
to be never the ones to rest on their laurels. Golan and Globus would develop
a fast; low-budget style of film making that would earn them the nickname of The
Go-Go Boys. A label that would stick to them, almost, for the rest of
their careers.
(1973) Future titles from them would include Eagles Attack at Dawn
(1970), The Highway Queen (1969),
My Mother the General (1979),
I Love You Rosa (1972)
and Daughters, Daughters ( 1973). What these films had in common were they were all shot
on miniscule-sized budgets, mainly in black and white and that they were
solely for home consumption. This helped to disguise the fact that even in
the early years of their partnership the cousins’ real ambition was to break
into the international marketplace. The first attempt by them was an action thriller,
designed to cash in on the James Bond films. It was called Trunk to Cairo (1966).
(1966) The film was partly financed with money from
American financier/producer, Samuel Z. Arkoff, a legendary figure in
Arkoff’s company, American International Pictures,
would end up handling the himself to play a brief
but significant contribution to the Golan and Globus story, would observe,
“Sam Arkoff wasn’t a gambler, he made sure that every step he took had a
reason. A very shrewd man.” (1) Topol would
later say that he’d been in the running to star as the Man with No Name in
Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964), but that he turned it down
in order to do Sallah , so helping to revive
Clint Eastwood’s post Rawhide career. Arkoff and Nicholson very much operated as junior
league versions of the wily old With Golan directing Trunk to Cairo and starring two imported, if over the hill
stars, in Audie Murphy and George Sanders, the cousins properly thought this
would be it. First time lucky, the big breakthrough movie with the
international audience, only to be disappointed when the film disappeared out
of sight on its US release in January 1967. One thing that did come out of it all was the huge
impression made on Golan by Arkoff with his reliance on gut instinct, shown
by the American’s almost instant decision to provide money to the Israeli.
This would stay with Golan for a very long time to come. He would later
assert “It was my first great teaching experience of Hollywood.” Golan and Globus, if they had been lesser men, could
have been discouraged by the failure of Trunk to Cairo, but, no, they still dreamed of their entry
into the big time.
Tevye (1968) Back to Golan, having briefly based himself in the UK,
would, in 1969, try again to conquer the international marketplace. He had
noticed the recent box office success of several British sex comedies such as
Alfie (1966), Here we Go Round the Mulberry Bush
(1967), School For Sex (1968) and Prudence and the Pill (1968).
Golan decided to follow the trend and make his own. Quickly realising that in
order make the project even more appealing to potential backers he needed a
star name to become part of the package. He began to look for such a figure.
Soon settling on the British star comedian Norman Wisdom as a suitable
performer to headline. Wisdom might have seemed an unlikely figure to star in
a sex comedy, having made his name in knockabout slapstick family comedies
but Golan thought otherwise.
(1969) Wisdom had several advantages for Golan, his films
were proven box office successes having giving even the James Bond films a
run for their money. He had also scored a hit in the American movie William
Friedkin’s The Night They Raided
Minskys (1968), a very different sort of film to the ones he had made
his name in. It had related the tale of a vice squad raid on a New York
burlesque theatre. It was not only adults-only but received excellent
reviews. Wisdom on his return to the UK naturally started looking for a
similar script and as if by magic, he met Menahem Golan. Golan had been at
the Cannes film festival when he decided to come back to Britain to approach
Wisdom. Golan remembered what happened “Somehow I tracked down Norman
Wisdom’s address through the British actor’s union. I go to his villa in
central London and his maid comes out, asking if he is expecting me. I say
“Tell him, there’s a director here from the Cannes film festival. He comes
down wearing a silk robe, I tell him my story and he likes it. So I asked if
he could write on a piece of paper that he agrees to do the film and he did,
once we agreed his salary”. With Wisdom’s name attached to the project
Golan returned to Cannes and approached several film companies before he was
able to raise the necessary finance from Laurie Marsh, the 36 year old
Chairman of ambitious independent outfit Tigon British Films. Marsh was a big
fan of Wisdom, so took little persuading. Golan and Wisdom between them soon
penned a screenplay, What’s Good for
the Goose. Golan directed the film in of all places, the not so
glamorous setting of Southport (Southport ?), shooting it back to back with
Tigon’s horror flick The Haunted
House of Horror (1969). On its UK general release in April 1969, the
film’s attempt to change Wisdom’s slapstick style and give it a more adult
approach would result in the most critically slated flop of Wisdom’s career. From the film critic of the News of the World: “The story is
tediously predictable and repetitious”. The Sunday Telegraph: “It’s a vulgar,
inept, graceless anecdote.” Leslie Halliwell’s famous film guide would say: “Embarrassing
attempt to build a sexy vehicle for (this) star…” And from The Daily Express: “It is
monumentally unfunny and rather nasty”. In the In 1972 Golan was ready for another attempt on the
international scene, when, this time through Noah Films, the two cousins put
nearly everything they had into making an expensive thriller Escape to the Sun. Made in Israel
with Golan and Globus producing and Golan directing, the film starred
Laurence Harvey, John Ireland, Clive Revill and Jack Hawkins. It told the
tale of two Jewish teenagers and their attempt to escape from the authorities
in the Soviet Union and get to Israel. Sadly for a film with its heart in the
right place, it sank without trace and was a major setback for Noah Films and
its ambitions. Golan and Globus would have been forgiven at this point for
feeling like a boxer who had just fought Muhammad Ali seven rounds at his
peak and lost every round but the two Israelis would and could not be
stopped. At this point the cousins decided that the most
obvious answer was that they would now have to try a different approach. This
time in Hollywood itself, the hometown of money and art, crudity and
stupidity, magic and lights. So in 1973 – 74, Golan and Globus went to
America and set up a company called “Ameri Europe Films”. Financing for their
new business was on a shoestring, as Golan would later recall, “Israel didn’t
allow you to take money out. So, I swear to you, we came like that – jackets,
trousers, and a little valise. We came to America and we didn’t have a
dollar. We got a two- week visa and somehow we started our little production
company. We had just one secretary and a telephone.” The gamble would pay off
for the daring Israelis when in 1974 they were able to make gangster film Lepke
at David O’Selznick’s old International studios for Hollywood major Warner
Brothers. It starred Tony Curtis, Michael Callan and veteran comic Milton
Berle in the leading roles.
(1975) Based on the true story of 1930’s mobster Louis
Lepke, the film followed the usual formula of gangster movies made in the
wake of the huge success of The
Godfather, with the one difference of it being about a Jewish
gangster rather than a Sicilian. But even this gimmick would not help the
film as it went on to face a barrage of bad reviews. The Hollywood Reporter’s critic would comment: “We have been
reading a lot about the Golan Heights, Consider Lepke a Golan low”. Amidst many similar reviews the film would go on to
do poor business at the US box office and elsewhere. Still Globus was able to
snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The cousins would claim to have done
well out of the picture, thanks to the deal Globus made with Warner’s. As
they would tell it, the film had cost $900,000 to make and it had then been
bought for worldwide release for $1,750,000. Good deal for Golan and Globus,
bad deal for Warner’s and not too good for Tony Curtis either. Curtis would
say in his autobiography many years after the event, that he was still owed
$10,000 of his full salary. He would not be the last person to claim
non-payment of money by the cousins, as one less than loyal employee would
observe when working with Golan and Globus “Get your money in advance. If
they give you a cheque, cash it quick”.
(1975) The duo’s next attempt to hit it big, partly
financed with the money they had made from Lepke ,
was Diamonds (1975),
starring Robert Shaw, Richard Roundtree, Shelley Winters and Barbara Hershey.
An US/Israeli co-production caper movie, filmed on locations in Israel and
London. It failed on nearly every level flopping even in its native Israel,
though it would later gain a small cult following. US critic Roger Ebert commented: “I liked Topkapi
and The Hot Rock. Diamonds just isn’t in the league”.
(1976) Another film, another flop, soon forgotten by most.
In 1976 Golan and Globus unleashed on the world The Jaws of Death starring Richard Jaeckel and Harold
“Oddjob” Sakata. Filmed on a very low budget and shot in the US it would, to
nobody’s surprise, possibly not even Golan and Globus, barely surface on its
cinema release. Back in IMDB review: In this version, Jesus planned for his
crucifixion by taking a drug to simulate death. After his unconscious body
was placed in the tomb, a religious sect known as the zealots would secretly
steal Christ’s body from the tomb, then spread the rumour that he had risen,
thus fulfilling biblical prophecy. Now, The
Passover Plot can be viewed as a sort of interesting precursor to
something like The Da Vinci Code,
with its mild challenge to religious orthodoxy, yet this was not the case in
October 1976. On its very brief North American release, the US showbiz bible
Variety would prove to be less than impressed: “Physically
handsome production. (It) drains the vitality out of the Christ story through
verbiage and overacting. Far from being disrespectful, the film errs on the
side of excessive respect.” The film having, unlike Jesus Christ, failed to set
the world alight, either on a critical or business level, proved to be yet
another flop on Golan and Globus’s CV. The cousins still wanted to make it
big in (1)
Allied Artists was founded in 1945 as an off shoot of poverty row studio,
Monogram. Under producer Walter Mirisch, it moved into big budget productions
such as William Wyler’s Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Billy Wilder’s Love in
the Afternoon (1957). One of its most memorable productions around this
period was Don Siegel’s Invasion of of the Body Snatchers (1956), since
remade several times with various degrees of success. It also continued
making low budget thrillers and horror flicks such as The Strangler (1963)
and Frankenstein-1970 (1958). Into the 1970s, the company struggled with
runaway production costs. Yet it still managed to finance Papillon (1973) and
co-produce Cabaret (1972). In 1975 it produced John Huston’s The Man who
would be King starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. It was the first of a
two picture deal Connery had signed with the company. The film cost $8million
and went on to be a critical hit though a commercial disappointment. Connery’s
second film The Next Man (1976) cost $4 million and on its US release in
November 1976 proved to be a massive flop. Worse was to happen, Connery and
Caine launched a multi million dollar law suit claiming withheld share of
profit. The two actors would win only a token sum, of $250,000 each but legal
costs had cost AA a fortune. Connery would happily tell an interviewer in
2004, “I am happy to say I sued Allied Artists for cosmetic book-keeping and
they’re bankrupt”. In early 1978 it was reported that AA had released only forty-four features between 1970 and 1977 and was struggling to pay its annual overheads of more than $3million. Its staff had
been cut to the bone, to such a fool hardy extent that AA was having trouble collecting owed revenues
from exhibitors. AA decided to gamble all or nothing on a big budget version of Harold Robbins The Betsy (1978) starring Laurence Olivier and Robert Duvall.
Alas, for the company it was nothing. In 1979
Allied Artists went into administration and its library of films was sold off to Lorimar
television, the makers of among others Dallas. Noah Films were approached by the Israeli government
with a rather bold proposal. The government asked Golan and Globus to make
the official account of the audacious July 4th 1976 night-time raid on
Entebbe airport in Uganda. The mission had seen Israeli commandos rescue over
100 Jewish hostages from the clutches of both Arab terrorists and the
despotic Idi Amin.
Operation
Thunderbolt (1977) The cousins were more than happy to comply with the
suggestion. It would mean moving fast, as the duo would be taken on two of
the major Hollywood studios (Warner’s, 20th Century Fox), who were
producing two films on the same subject, Warner Brothers a TV production,Victory at Entebbe(1) (Burt Lancaster,
Anthony Hopkins, Kirk Douglas, Elizabeth Taylor) and from Fox, Raid on Entebbe (Peter Finch,
Charles Bronson, Martin Balsam, James Woods). The all star nature of these
films worried the Israeli government. Would they stick to the facts or would
the story be turned into standard cheesy action fodder. The government was
relieved when what became Operation
Thunderbolt was rushed into production. Golan would say with pride “I
did it really, really fast. I mean it took ninety days from beginning to when
my movie was on the screen. Ninety days, exactly three months. It was a
remarkable achievement.” Golan was clearly in his e lement, both directing
and with two other writers penning the screenplay and for once his enthusiasm
paid off. It starred macho Israeli Yeharan Gaon as Col. Yonni Netanyahu the
commander of the rescue force and the wildly erratic and possibly crazy Klaus
Kinski as the lead terrorist Wilfried Boese. Leslie Halliwell would remark: “This home-grown
account of a famous deed is more modest yet more authoritative”. Kinski would say in rather typical fashion: “Menahem Golan
rings me up from Israel and tries to talk me into making the flick. The money
is so insulting that I ought to punch him in the mouth.” David Robinson of The Times agreed: “Certainly the
best of the screen versions of the Israeli raid on Entebbe”. “Thunderbolt” was a very well made and fast
moving film, shot in a “you-are-there” style. It was a great deal more
convincing in its details than either of the rival films. In an attempt at
added realism it featured most of the then Israeli government as themselves
including Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, as well as thirteen of the actual
hostages. Some of the acting was undoubtedly poor but it does not distract
from one basic fact, that this is authentic as anybody could get. “Operation Thunderbolt” would do
only moderate commercial business in the
(1978) Luck struck again when Golan and Globus finally hit
the commercial big time (of sorts), with Lemon Popsicle. Shot within five
weeks in
(1978) Lemon Popsicle was a
very big hit in its home market, selling a million tickets in a 15 cinema
release. This was no easy ride; the population of
Director Boaz Davidson and Menahem Golan
discuss! Lemon Popsicle would spawn
a series of such films all made to the sameformula-three teenage boys, good
looking ladies man, fat randy idiot, bland one-getting into various
sexual/slapstick escapades (3). Further instalments included Going Steady (1979), Hot Bubblegum (1981), Private Popsicle (1982), Baby Love (1983), Private Manoeuvres (1983), Up Your Anchor (1985) and rather
late in the day, Young Love
(1987) and Summertime Blues (1988).
All but Going Steady were
co- produced with German company, Kino Films. Kino, in return for its share
of production costs would keep the German rights and have a share of the
profits. One condition it would make was the casting of several highly
attractive German models who would feature heavily
in some of the publicity material, if not so much in the actual films
themselves. The series would bring no critical plaudits but would earn Golan
and Globus a lot of money in the decade ahead. It would also help create a
genre of its own, something acknowledged by Davidson: “Well a lot of people
told me that Porky’s is definitely a movie that was influenced byPopsicleand
some people say even American Pie
is a distant relative of Lemon
Popsicle”. (1) The haphazard
dubbing of the English language versions of the series, see various accents
used: American, stereotypical Persian Jewish and even North of (2) Lemon
Popsicle was very much later giving a US video release under the title “Going
All the Way”. (3) Jonathan
Sagall, who played ladies man Bobby was only sixteen when cast in the first
of the series. Zachi Noy cast as fat boy Huey was twenty four and Yftach
Katzur as the bland sensitive Benji was nineteen. All the characters were
seventeen and stayed that age in the remaining films.
Hot
Bubblegum: Bobby (Jonathan Sagall) meets overjoyed piano teacher Fritzi
(Christiane Schmidtmer) for a lesson to remember In 1978 Golan and Globus produced not so much a
spaghetti western as a “Matzo ball” one, Kid Vengeance starring Lee Van Cleef, Jim Brown and John Marley.
It was shot on location in
(1979) In 1979 came the next big attempt to crack the world
market, Golan’s own The Magician of
Lublin starring Alan Arkin, Shelley Winters,Valerie
Perrine and Louise Fletcher. Shot in Berlin and Munich, it was co-financed by
the German tax shelter company Geria. Additional money came from the West
German government, who were keen to encourage film production there. A long
term project for Golan, having heard about it from Laurence Harvey during the
shooting of Escape to the Sun.
Harvey who had seen it as a suitable vehicle for himself was looking for
finance. He previously had teamed up with producer Walter Reade and director
Milos Forman and commissioned a screenplay by Wolf Mankowitz but the project
was on hold. Golan was interested from the start. He wanted to be involved.
However Harvey became ill and died of stomach cancer. Not long after Walter
Reade also died. It would take Golan two years to acquire the rights and
another two years to rework the script. Golan, who became the film’s director
after Milos Forman dropped out, kept his fingers crossed and hoped for the
best. It proved yet another colossal misfire. The Spectator declared: “It takes an
interesting theme and proceeds to ruin it with a combination of woodenness
and sentimentality. The direction is so rudimentary; the script is so banal…” David Castell in The Sunday Telegraph wrote: “The picture is
yet another indiscriminate product of tax shelter money.” The cousins remained in
The Apple (1980) IMBD synopsis: Musical set in the “future”, e.g.
1994. A young couple enters the world of the music industry, but also the
world of drugs. Based, unbelievably on an Israeli stage musical, it was cast
with a mix of British, German and American actors, which does nothing to
convince that the story actually takes place in its American setting. As one
critic would say “The movie never shakes (the) feeling of being out of place
and alien.” Like Golan’s previous effort the film was bankrolled by tax
shelter funds and was just as hammered by film reviewers: Monthly Film
Bulletin stuck the knife in: “This cut-price
extravaganza plummets to a new low in opportunistic inanity”
Not long after production completed Golan and Globus
announced plans for two more musicals,The King and the Cobbler, billed as a “Biblical rock musical”
and Discomania, but these were scrapped after the failure of “The Apple”. The Israelis must have
been relieved when the Noah films release “It’s a Funny Funny World”
finished production. Almost immediately re-titled “Lemon Popsicle 11: Going Steady”, it made a very healthy sum
of cash for the company in its home market and like the first film proved
itself a success internationally. Then Golan and Globus went back to the US.
First they tried again to buy the now bankrupt Allied Artists. The cousins
changed their minds, deciding that in Golan’s words it was “too much trouble,
too much in debt”. Then they found another company to try and buy, a more
likely proposition, a New York based concern, Cannon. Malcom Hunter July 2009 ©2009 Malcolm
Hunter Tevye and his Seven Daughters (1968) has been
restored and re-released www.jhp-productions.com/films/tevye-flv.html |
Enormous thanks to Malcolm Hunter for very kindly allowing his article to appear on
cannon.org.uk
Malcolm Hunter also wrote: MR. TOWERS OF LONDON
This article ©2009 Malcolm Hunter.
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