BY HANK REINEKE
In his 2008 memoir My
Word is My Bond, Roger Moore recalls the fortunes that followed his second
turn as James Bond in The Man with the
Golden Gun (1974). “It seemed I was in demand!†he gushed. “Scripts were
coming in to my agent and offers were being made everywhere.†Indeed, the success of his first Bond film Live and Let Die was not guaranteed, so
when audiences turned out in remarkable numbers - the film raked in more than
126 million at the worldwide box office - everyone at United Artists and Eon
Productions could breathe a little easier. It appeared that Moore’s interpret as agent 007 had been embraced by James
Bond fans worldwide. Live and Let Die would premiere in June
of 1973 with a massive press campaign. Throughout the summer of 1973 Moore would
work tirelessly on the promotion of the eighth James Bond film.
By September of 1973 Moore was due to get back to work on
his first post-Bond project. He and
former Bond film editor-director Peter Hunt (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) flew directly to Johannesburg,
South Africa, where a team awaited to begin work on Gold (1974). It was a
difficult production, beset by problems both logistical and political. Not the least of which was an uneasy
disagreement with the actor’s union due to the unit’s shooting the film in
apartheid-era South Africa. Moore would admit
to Hollywood columnist Earl Wilson that while he was duly proud of his work on Gold it was nevertheless an exhausting,
laborious and unglamorous shoot. The
actor rued that he and the film crew were routinely dispatched “6,000 feet
underground in a gold mine in South Africa. It was slightly claustrophobic and acrophobic, and [we] were dropping
4,000 feet in two minutes [into] miles and miles of tunnels.â€
Moore would soon be back in daylight. Piggybacking on his new found James Bond
fame, the years 1973-1985 would prove to be the actor’s most productive as the
principal marquee draw in feature films. Due to the commercial success of Moore’s first James Bond adventure, a
decision was made by UA and Eon to go with the momentum and get the announced
follow-up Bond adventure, The Man with
the Golden Gun into theaters as soon as possible. Their reasoning was sound, at least in
theory. They believed a quick follow-up to
Live and Let Die would even more
firmly establish Moore as the quintessential James Bond of the new decade. So it was on this gamble that principal
photography would commence on The Man
with the Golden Gun in April of 1974. It was, by the standards of the Bond franchise, an unusually rushed
production. Though a handsomely produced
film, the box office receipts and reviews for Moore’s second Bond outing were
less spectacular than for his first. The
film was released, somewhat incredibly, a mere eight months’ following the
start of filming.
If the ninth James Bond film fared less well than its
predecessor, it can partly be attributed to the fact that Moore had little to no
time to promote his second turn as oo7 as vigorously as his first. Filming on his next project, That Lucky Touch (1975), was scheduled to
commence in December of 1974, this date neatly overlapping with The Man with the Golden Gun’s hurried Christmas
holiday release. That Lucky Touch was shot on location in and around Brussels,
Belgium, and at Pinewood Studios. The
film was constructed as a romantic-comedy of sorts, Moore’s arms-dealing
Michael Scott falling in love with contrarian journalist Susannah York. But Moore’s fans certainly wouldn’t have
known the film was a Rom-Com had they trusted the misleading one-sheet posters
issued to promote the film.
Capitalizing on Moore’s success as the new James Bond –
or perhaps in recognition That Lucky
Touch as released was a complete dud - the film’s marketing team had done
their best to pass the film off to unsuspecting filmgoers as a new spy
adventure. The most egregious example of
this promotional shell-game was the poster depicting a tuxedoed Moore standing
center, right arm crossed against his chest and brandishing a pistol in the classic
James Bond fashion. He’s flanked on the
poster by two lovelies, the image of a roulette wheel serving as a suitably Bond-ish
backdrop behind them.
This was marketing at its crassest and most dishonest. This was no James Bond film; in fact it was
not even a terribly successful or interesting romantic-comedy. One critic dismissed the production as “an
inconsequential soufflé, flavored mildly with amusement.†Moore seemed - somewhat reluctantly – to
share agreement with that assessment. While he believed the film offered some “funny moments,†the pacing of the
screenplay was noticeably off and the resulting product disappointing. There would be other disappointing news on
the horizon. Moore learned that it might
be some time before he could again don James Bond’s famed shoulder-holster. The franchise was in temporary hiatus due to
a very public and fractious legal dissolution of the partnership between Bond producers
Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman and United Artists.
Luckily, his association with the James Bond franchise
was enough to keep the scripts and offers coming in. There was plenty of work to keep himself busy
as an army of lawyers moved in to settle Bond’s legal affairs. Moore would appear
in his second film for Peter Hunt, Shout
at the Devil (1976), sharing the starring co-bill with tough-guy Lee
Marvin. Principal photography on that
film would take place from March 1975 through July 1975. Reading through scripts and considering other
offers late into the summer, Moore sat down for an interview with columnist
Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times
in September of ‘75. The actor announced
he had chosen his next project. He was soon
to begin an eight-week shoot in San Francisco for an independent film financed
by Italian money. The working title of
the film was The Sicilian Cross. “It’s about the Mafia and I’m mixed up in it,â€
he explained.
There was reason to be optimistic about the project. The screenplay, adapted from an original
story by Gianfranco Bucceri and Roberto Leoni, was touted by Moore as having
been co-written by Ernest Tidyman, the novelist behind the popular John Shaft
series and screenwriter of the Oscar-winning The French Connection. In
Moore’s estimation, Tidyman’s signing on to re-work the existing script was
enough to guarantee “there’ll be lots of action in it.†In truth Tidyman had a lot of tidying to do,
the mosaic screenplay ultimately credited to no fewer than six writers: the
aforementioned Bucceri, Leoni, and Tidyman, as well as director Lucidi, Niccola
Badalucco and another American Randall Kleiser. Kleiser would soon move on to better things when he scored the
directorial job on the pop-culture blockbuster film Grease (1978). But even with
six writers providing dialogue, co-star Stacy Keach later recalled that on
certain scenes he Moore would simply “riff†and no one seemed to mind.
One critic dismissed the film – curiously re-titled Street People for its U.S. release - as
“Grade B gangster fare,†adding the film’s credit roll resembled that of a
“Naples telephone directory.†Street People is not a terrible film by
any mean, but it’s no glossed over classic either. Keach defends the film from its many detractors,
believing the finished product delivers what it promised - a satisfying dose of
pure “escapist entertainment.†He argues the film’s disappointing U.S. box
office was sabotaged by the “highbrow elitism†of American film critics. There were
unkind missives fired at the film by critics. Many wondered aloud in their reviews why Roger Moore had bothered to lend
his talents to this derivative, low-budget Italian action film.
The
Sicilian Cross was directed by Maurizio Luccedi who, a few
years earlier, served as the second unit director on the David Niven-Robert
Vaughn farce The Statue (1971). While Keach admired Lucidi’s “infectious
passion†for filmmaking, the actor admitted there were communication and translation
issues on set. The director’s command of
the English language was nominal at best, so he did his best to overcome this
disadvantage by directing his American and British co-stars through suggestive body
language motions and pantomime. It must
be said that the film hasn’t aged particularly well… though it captures a
moment in time which identifies itself as a product of the 1970s. Both stars are seen wearing their shirts open
nearly to their waist with their bare chest’s exposed ala Burt Reynolds. The lapels on their jackets are ungodly
over-sized, the phones all have rotary dials, and most of the cars seen (and subsequently
destroyed) in several action sequences are the huge gas-guzzlers we all loved back
then: limousine-length Monte Carlos and Lincoln Continentals.
The 1970s are identifiable elsewhere as well. The dramatic rooftop sequences with a stealth
gunman’s scope trained on our heroes remind us of those photographed for Don
Siegel’s Dirty Harry. The high-speed, demolition-derby type car
crashes on the hilly streets of San Francisco conjures instant image
similarities with Bullitt. And the backstories of feuding Mafia families
and of violent, blood-soaked gunplay plainly remind that Street People is merely one more Godfather knock-off. The
screenplay and storyline, as mentioned earlier, is somewhat confusing in its structure,
with the good-buddy alliance of Mafia consolari
Moore and Formula 1 driver Keach never
explained to satisfaction.
Though an Italian production, most of the film was shot
in and around San Francisco and the Bay area. To be fair, Lucidi exploited the pictorial San Francisco locations
better than the Bond producers would nearly a decade later when shooting A View to a Kill (1985). Following the
location shooting in San Francisco, the cast and crew of The Sicilian Cross completed shooting back at Rome’s De Paolis Incir Studios around Christmas
time. This was a welcome turn of events
that made Moore’s Italian wife Luisa very happy. They could vacation together
as family in Italy.
Keach would generously recall Roger Moore as a “wonderful
actor,†but one who chose never to take either his profession or fame too
seriously. He thought it odd that an
actor of Moore’s caliber – one who had already achieved considerable fame on
both television and in motion pictures – would admit he was “terrified of
working in front of an audience on stage.†Keach admired Moore’s “great charm†and “toughness,†and expressed his
delight when asked to play opposite cinema’s reigning James Bond. Despite these platitudes, it must be said
that while Moore turns in a good performance in the film, he is seriously
miscast. Though his character Ulysses is
ostensibly the nephew and counselor of Sicilian crime boss Salvatore Francesco,
his casting belies… well, believability. This must have come up at a least one script meeting as Moore’s ultra-Brit
character is absent of any Italian affects or personage. This is unconvincingly explained away in the
film’s first few minutes. “The smartest
thing I ever did was getting you out of Sicily and into that English law
school,†Francesco tells him.
The titular Sicilian Cross at the center of the film is one
used by the Mafia to bring in one million dollars of heroin (with an assessed
street value of three to four million dollars) into the United States through
the port of San Francisco. No one is
quite sure which crime family was irresponsible and irreligious enough to
desecrate the holy totem with secreted opium, but Francesco assures everyone it
wasn’t him. He had, after all, gifted
the giant and ornate cross to a Sicilian church back home in an earlier
goodwill gesture. Regardless, every
interested party in the matter, including Moore and Keach, express concern when
the drugs go missing.
The
Sicilian Cross did not perform terribly well in the
U.S. It enjoyed somewhat better box
office success in Europe where Moore’s star burned brighter. The film was sent out internationally under
any number of differing titles, some more-pulse racing than others: The Executioners, The Man from the Organization, and Opium Road. The lamest of
all titles was, without question, the one chosen for the U.S. market: Street People. It was a positively non-descriptive and anemic
title; certainly far less exploitative than one might have expected from the
usually savvy marketers at Samuel Arkoff’s A.I.P.
It had been announced in the trades as early as April
1976 that American-International had acquired the U.S. and Canadian film rights
to this Italian indie. For whatever
reason the distributor didn’t seem to put much time or effort into the film’s
promotion upon its release in late September/early October 1976. The advertising campaign-book hook was that Street People “Takes You Where Taxi
Driver Didn’t Dare… the Story of the Naked City Today!†That all sounded well
and good, but ultimately the film fails to deliver the Mafioso goods. It was, more often than not, advertised blandly
and distributed in the U.S. as the top-bill of a mixed-bag action double-feature. In some secondary markets Moore’s name wasn’t
even included in the advertising. The
film was supported during its brief U.S. run by the second theatrical go-rounds
of the Telly Savalas vehicle Killer Force
(aka The Diamond Mercenaries, 1976) or
alongside the Rod Steiger/Lee Remick suspense thriller Hennessy (1975).
Though Street
People did not fare well at the box office, Moore’s career was hardly
floundering. He had barely signed off on
the film when he was cast as one of Britain’s most prestigious fictional crime
fighters. No, not James Bond, but Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Production
on Sherlock Holmes in New York was
scheduled to begin on February 9, 1976, the film’s interiors shot in Hollywood
on the famed Holly, Dolly! stage of
the Twentieth-Century Fox lot. The crew
and talent were later to go on location and shoot exteriors on the streets of
New York City. Shortly prior to filming,
Moore sat down with Hollywood wag Vernon Scott. The columnist noted that Moore’s donning of the Sherlock Holmes
deerstalker put him in a rarefied position: he was the only actor who could claim temporary ownership roles of two
of Great Britain’s greatest literary heroes: Sherlock Holmes and James
Bond. As was his custom, Moore tried to
downplay his good fortune. He also likely
annoyed the literary crowd comprising The Baker Street Irregulars by too-lightly
referring to Doyle’s eccentric detective as “Sherlie.â€
When asked by Scott which character he felt more
comfortable portraying, Moore’s answer was firm. “There is no doubt that I’d prefer to be a
James Bond than a Sherlie Holmes as far as ladies are concerned,†he
answered. “Bond has scores of conquests
in the Fleming books and apparently enjoyed them all. But poor old Sherlie was made to be a
celibate by Conan Doyle. How
regrettable.†He admitted that he was
doing his best not to voice in the style of James Bond in the new Holmes film. His intention was to adjust his vocal
delivery to replicate the British idiom of Conan Doyle’s time. Unfortunately, Moore sighed, “I think I sound
like a strangulated Ronald Coleman.†Shooting
of Sherlock Holmes in New York was completed
in July of 1976 and premiered in the U.S. by NBC-TV in October of 1976. The film was issued theatrically in the
international market.
Then, with the legal matters now settled, Eon Productions
and United Artists announced the resumption of the James Bond franchise. Albert
R. Broccoli would be going it alone as producer for The Spy Who Loved Me. Moore’s moonlighting outside of the Bond franchise would be drastically
reduced in succeeding years, with Ffolkes
(aka North Sea Hijack) arguably being
the best of his non-Bond films in the 80s. There’s a fun moment of prescient divination in Street People when Moore and Keach find themselves on the losing
end of an aggressive car chase on the cliffs of the Pacific coastline. Their car, with both men inside, plummets
from the side of a mountain and plunges into the waters below. Following their survival swim ashore, Moore
makes a snarky comment to Keach that perhaps he should invest in an “amphibious
vehicle.†In The Spy Who Loved Me, Roger Moore would famously get to pilot just such
a vehicle… and all would be right with the world again.
This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray of Street People features a 1920x1080p 1:85:1
transfer and DTS audio. The set features
eight chapter selections, as well as a featurette Stacy Keach: Back to the Streets, a short but illuminating interview
with the actor. Also included with the
set is an original radio spot for Street
People as well as the film’s original theatrical trailer. There are also an assortment of five
additional trailers, all available from Kino Lorber: four of Moore’s (The Man Who Haunted Himself, Gold, Ffolkes, and The Naked Face)
and one of Keach’s (The Long Riders).
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON