I was going to put a small tribute together, but my friend Lee Pfeiffer did such a wonderful job, I’ve reproduced it here. Thanks Lee.
It is with profound sadness that
we must announce the passing of director Brian G. Hutton, a long-time friend of
and contributor to Cinema Retro. Brian was one of the most unique talents in
the film business. Born in New York City, he never lost his hard-scrabble,
irascible attitude which extended to resenting having to take orders from the
studio "suits" who employed him. He walked away from a great and
lucrative career in the industry decades ago and kept out of the public eye,
granting precious few interviews in the intervening decades. He remains primarily
known for his two big budget WWII MGM films, "Where Eagles Dare" and
"Kelly's Heroes", both starring Clint Eastwood. The films were
difficult to make and the latter resulted in a major conflict with Hutton and
Eastwood and MGM when the studio exercised its rights to dramatically cut the
film prior to its release. Hutton also made a number of lesser-known films but
each of them proved to be enduring and worthy of praise.
When Cinema Retro was preparing
its first Movie Classics edition devoted entirely to "Where Eagles
Dare" in 2009, we made every effort to contact Hutton for an interview,
but we were unsuccessful. However, shortly after the issue appeared, I was
startled to receive a phone call from a gentleman named Bill Tasgal who said he
was sitting in a coffee shop in L.A. with his friend Brian Hutton and they were
both perusing the Where Eagles Dare issue. He said Hutton wanted to speak with
me. A few seconds later an unmistakably New York accent growled, “Is this Lee
Pfeiffer?” When I said it was, he said “I’m looking at your magazine and I’m
going to sue you for using such an ugly photo of me!” To which I replied, “As a
director, you should know the camera never lies!” So began a friendship that
saw Brian contribute extensively to our Movie Classics Kelly's Heroes issue as
well as our revised updated edition of the Eagles Dare issue that was published
in 2012.
Last October, Dave Worrall and I travelled
to L.A. to finally meet Brian in the flesh. We managed to arrange a wonderful
lunch date that saw him reunited with his old friend, director John Landis, who
Brian gave a break to when he hired John as a "go for" on Kelly's
Heroes. Brian saw great promise in the young film enthusiast and, of course,
Landis made good on the faith shown in him by becoming an internationally
respected director himself. Over lunch, we were privileged to hear some amazing
and truly hilarious stories about their adventures filming in Yugoslavia (not
all of them are suitable for publication). It was a wonderful day in every respect.
Brian Hutton suffered a heart
attack a couple of weeks ago and struggled valiantly against the odds. An
original tough guy, he managed to hang in there a lot longer than anyone would
have predicted but finally the battle was lost. He is survived by his loving
wife Victoria and his devoted friend and colleague, Bill Tasgal, who was played
a crucial role in making Brian's later years so rewarding and enjoyable. However, Brian had many other
"friends" that he never knew personally- namely, everyone who ever saw
one of his films. Although he was loathe to lavish praise on his own work, he
was very grateful to the loyal fans who kept his films in the spotlight long
after he went into self-imposed retirement. He was particularly moved by the
fact that so many people around the globe held Where Eagles Dare and Kelly's
Heroes in such esteem. He was always lavish in his praise of Clint Eastwood,
with whom he continued to maintain a close friendship over the decades.
Brian G. Hutton remained an
enigma among successful directors who came to prominence in the 1960s. Despite
a promising career, Hutton was to go into self-imposed exile, retiring from the
motion picture business altogether. Hutton started off as an aspiring actor and
landed supporting roles in major TV series such as Rawhide, Wagon Train, Perry
Mason, Have Gun, Will Travel, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Rifleman. He
also had small roles in theatrical features such as The Interns, Gunfight at
the O.K. Corral, Fear Strikes Out, Last Train From Gun Hill and King Creole.
However, by 1965, Hutton was more enamoured of trying his hand at directing.
His first effort was the little-seen Wild Seed which was made for Marlon
Brando’s Pennebaker Productions and released through Universal in 1965. The
film starred Celia Kaye as a 17 year-old runaway in search of her biological
father. She is befriended and protected by a young drifter (Michael Parks) whom
she meets during her journey. Among the top craftsmen who worked on the movie
were cinematographer Conrad Hall and cameraman William A. Fraker. The film
didn’t get much attention from either critics or the public, but Hutton
displayed competence behind the camera and this afforded him other
opportunities..jpg)
Hutton’s follow-up effort, again
for Universal, was far more successful: The Pad (and How to Use It), produced
by Ross Hunter.. This was a hip, sexually provocative comedy about a swinging
bachelor. Starring Brian Bedford, Julie Sommars and James Farantino, the film
boasted a screenplay by Peter Shaffer, who would go on to write the plays Equus
and Amadeus. Released in 1966, the film was a hit with critics and Hutton was
deemed an “up-and-coming” hot property. In 1967, Hutton began a working
relationship with established producer Elliott Kastner when he directed the
thriller Sol Madrid. The film’s marketing campaign
was bungled by MGM and the movie never made much of an impact with audiences or
critics. However, Hutton turned out a reasonably suspenseful, highly
entertaining film that allowed him to work with a cast of big name actors
including David McCallum, Stella Stevens and Telly Savalas. Although the film wasn’t a notable box-office hit, Kastner saw great
potential in Hutton, who had come from the same New York neighbourhood he had
grown up in.
Where Eagles Dare, a big budget WWII film was a
project initiated by Richard Burton, who had promised his sons that he would
star in an old-fashioned, rip-roaring action movie. Getting Burton to approve
of the relatively young director with a thin resume was not easy but Elliott
Kastner was undeterred. He would later say, “I persevered. I said ‘Brian Hutton
had a lamp in his gut like a beacon: just put him in a room and Flash! Sparks
on the screen!’”. Hutton recalled that key selling point in getting Burton to
approve him was his ethnic background. In a 1994 phone interview with writer
Phil Masheter: “I was brought into it because I am of Welsh descent – my
parents were Welsh – and he was a Welshman. I speak a little Welsh. He and I
used to sing Welsh songs together; he used to laugh because my Welsh was
actually very bad!” It was Hutton who suggested that Clint Eastwood be signed
as Burton’s co-star. Considering the major logistics of making the film, Burton
and MGM had every reason to be concerned whether the young director could
handle the challenge. Yet, Hutton came through with flying colours, managing
not only the action on screen, but keeping Burton disciplined enough to not
allow his drinking habits to negatively affect the production – something that
had occurred a few years before on The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. On that
film, even veteran director Martin Ritt could not keep Burton’s excesses in
check and the two ended up not speaking to one another off the set. The film
proved to be a smash hit and Hutton was suddenly as in-demand as any other hot
director.
His next film, Kelly’s Heroes
(shot under the title The Warriors) reunited him with Clint Eastwood in another
big budget, large-scale WWII film. Hutton would later tell Phil Masheter, ““I
did that [Kelly’s Heroes] with Clint too, who I must say was very gracious.
They wanted Clint for the picture and since I brought him into Eagles he
brought me into Kelly’s. And that was all nice.” Hutton brought some of his
crew from Where Eagles Dare onto the new film, including Alf Joint, Dennis
Fraser, H.A.R. Thomson, Jonathan Bates, and John Jympson. He also hired a young
aspiring director named John Landis to handle the second unit. However, the
film’s post-production period was a nightmare.. Eastwood and Hutton protested
against MGM chief James Aubrey’s decision to drastically cut the film, thus
removing many pivotal expository scenes that were deemed essential to character
development. Although the film was a major hit, Eastwood protested by never
making another film for the studio again.
Hutton recalled where his career went
after this, telling Masheter, “And then I did a couple of pictures with
Elizabeth Taylor ( X,Y and Zee (aka Zee and Co) and Nightwatch) and then I
quit. It wasn’t something I wanted to do to begin with – not my life’s work. I
just fell into the whole thing like birdshit out of the sky hits your fucking
hand. And in 1972, when I finished the second Elizabeth Taylor picture, I
thought, ‘Well, what am I wasting my life doing this for?’ I mean, a gorilla
could have made those movies: Elizabeth Taylor does what she’s got to do and
Laurence Harvey does what he’s got to do. It was good fun, but all I had to do
was yell ‘Action’ and ‘Cut-Print’ because everybody was doing what they had to
do anyway. It was a play and I’m a fucking gorilla sitting there saying, ‘How
was that for everybody? Fine, okay, let’s go somewhere else and do something
else.’ So I stopped at that time.”
Indeed, Hutton would not make
another film for seven years. In 1980, he reunited with Elliott Kastner to
bring author Lawrence Sanders’ best-selling thriller The First Deadly Sin to
the screen. The film was primarily distinguished by providing Frank Sinatra
with his final leading role in a motion picture, though it was not a box-office
hit. His final film to date was the 1983 Tom Selleck adventure High Road to China,
which was a moderate success. By this
point, he was happy being far removed from the motion picture industry.
Recalling his experience on Where
Eagles Dare, Hutton told Phil Masheter, “I’ve got to tell you, I look at it and
I think to myself, ‘Gee, I wonder who did that?’ It’s so far removed now that I
can’t remember doing it and I’ve seen it so many times and there are so many
cock-ups in the picture – it’s always enjoyable. And then after that, of
course, I got offers to make fifty other action pictures, but I didn’t want to
make any. I made two, and that was enough.”
Despite Hutton’s penchant for
self-deprecation, his work on Where Eagles Dare and Kelly’s Heroes has earned
him a place in Hollywood history. He proved that a young, relatively untested
director could meet the challenge of bringing major action epics to the screen
– and seeing their popularity only increase over the decades. Brian G. Hutton
did not miss the motion picture industry, but the industry certainly missed
him.