Tonight’s AFI Awards
In what has become a tradition in desperation, the American Film Institute is having its yearly Hundred Greatest Somethings. We have had the Hundred Greatest Films, Hundred Greatest Comedies, Hundred Greatest Songs from the Hundred Greatest Films, Hundred Greatest Gaffers, etc. What’s left to award? The Hundred Greatest Studio Catering Services. (The obvious winner would be the New Zealand caterers for The Lord of the Rings; they served 47 different versions of lamb without driving Ian McKellen to suicide.)
I would be more interested if the AFI started awarding the worst in Hollywood. We could have The Hundred Worst Flops, The Hundred Worst Sequels, The Hundred Worst Musicals, The Hundred Most Inexplicable Stars in Hollywood.
I would like to start off with my nomination for The Most Miscast Film: Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis in “The Vikings.” Yes, you can only imagine how two Jews would have terrorized 9th century Britain. It would have been a overwhelming wave of White Collar Crime: a dishonest auditing of The Book of Kells, and Alfred the Great subjected to unnecessary medical tests.
OK. I’ll pick up the gauntlet. Worst casting? “Virginia City” (1940) with Humphrey Bogart playing “Murrell,” an earlier archetype of the Frito Bandito.
IMDB says “as a Mexican bandit (with that good old Mexican name `Murrell’?) he’s about as believable as Clint Eastwood would have been playing the lead in `Torch Song Trilogy’.”
The costume designer also gets a nod, for Bogart’s hat with the ball fringe around it’s brim.
I’ve heard that this movie was actually a punishment for the three principals, Bogart, Erroll Flynn and Randolph Scott, all of whom had recently run afoul of the studio brass at Warner Bros.
It shows.