Joseph E. Levine

But things were changing, the audiences were getting older.

Uh, so it took a guy who was in his 70s, [dramatic music] Joseph E. Levine, to say, "This is a pretty interesting story." And this was based on a book by Cornelius Ryan, who wrote The Longest Day, which Steve mentioned a few moments ago.

There it is.

There's his credit.

You know, it's, it, you can appreciate it more today than you did back in the day, and I appreciated it back in the day.

As did I. I mean, um, you know, you sometimes you wonder what it would've been like to be on the set, and I've had a little experience in World War II movies 'cause I was able to produce one in 2002 called Silent Night, where we, where we rented a Sherman tank, a real Sherman tank, and, and we located it in the mud of the Battle of the Bulge, and it was quite a thrill for me.

[laughs] Uh, I don't think Joseph E. Levine could have gotten along with just one Sherman tank, and I was wondering on this movie, since we see a bunch of Shermans later on, whether he borrowed some of them from the set of, um, Kelly's Heroes perhaps in Yugoslavia.

Well, it's funny, Yugoslavia was a l- is a little bit of a player in the story, and we'll talk about that.

But go ahead.

So I asked Joseph E. Levine, whose company distributed the movie, AFCO.

I said, you know, I'd like to see the books, Joe.

I haven't seen them.

Is that true? Joseph E.

Levine.

Joseph E. Levine.

Embassy Pictures kept their books in Fairbanks.

Now, that film would go on to be made a couple years down the road.

But Attenborough basically said yes to doing Magic because A, he liked being in the Anthony Hopkins business, and two, the producer of this film, Joseph E. Levine, promised if he did Magic, he would finance Gandhi.

Put a pin in that because, uh, Hopkins in interviews for Magic told people that he felt guilty for taking the role of Corky away from an American actor.

So one assumes he felt the same way about taking a role away from a Southeast Asian actor for Gandhi as well, which might explain why he does not star in that film.

That being said, producer Joseph E. Levine is also a member here.

He puts this project together.

Levine had a pretty diverse collection of films preceding this and after it, everything from the Americanized versions of Godzilla and Hercules films to, uh, what I would say are some pretty good late '60s cinema, The Lion in Winter, Carnal Knowledge, The Graduate.

That being said, Burgess Meredith, I don't...

Carroll Baker's presence in the film is a product of this particular moment.

A few years earlier, she had been one of Hollywood's biggest names on the strength of The Carpetbaggers, and her producer, Joseph Levine, had positioned her as a kind of successor to Marilyn Monroe, and that ambition culminated in the film Harlow in 1965, which was a lured biopic that failed badly, and Baker subsequently sued Levine and Paramount over the handling of her contract and her image.

She won the case eventually, but by then her standing in Hollywood was finished, so she relocated to Rome in 1967, learned Italian, and began again, and Deborah was among the first films she made once there.

The conspiratorial structure at the heart of The Sweet Body of Deborah didn't originate with this film either.

Double Face a year and a half later, and then there, there's a string of them coming along up until 1971.

So that makes sense that they were actually inspired by this and that you had that kind of turnaround.

These were mostly, if not low budget productions, but at least mid budget productions that you could have a fa- fast turnaround and especially with producers that were looking for a profit from these films.

Certainly.

Vintage Sloth.

yeah vintage slop uh the uh interview from 1966 said we made 15 family type pictures in 18 months but don't let it get around i don't want anybody to know because families don't go to see them they just talk about them but i make them anyway because i have the protection of the television money in the bank the television This is from a Los Angeles Times interview with Joseph E. Levine, who I guess was the distributor at the Michael Meyerberg Studios, it looks like.

Oh, no, I think they were the production company.

I don't know.