10 Remakes that Blow Away the Originals*

Love is lovelier the second time around, as Frank Sinatra used to sing, and sometimes that goes for movies as well. Remakes are the rage in Hollywood these days. While they can make money, the new movies are often pale imitations of the originals. However, there have been a few that have bucked the trend, and here are the ten best of that bunch. For this list, I’ve eliminated English-language versions of foreign-language films since it’s subjective to compare the two. For instance, the Swedish vampire film Let The Right One In and its American version Let Me In are both exceptionally creepy horror films. That the one in English might be seen as more accessible does not necessarily make it better. Instead I’ve stuck with films where both versions were in English.

(*Note: with a couple the newer movies the wind is just a mile or two stronger than the original)

Ocean’s Eleven (Original 1960; Remake 2001)

It’s appropriate, considering the lyric quoted above, to start with one of Ol’ Blue Eyes movies. Also, the inspiration to write this post was the passing of Jerry Weintraub, the producer of the remake. The 1960 original was basically the Rat Pack having a fun time together paid for by Warner Brothers. The caper itself was laughably unrealistic, though the movie did do well at the box office. Warner Brothers, though, had the last laugh. The only parts of the original that screenwriter Ted Griffin kept were some character names, that the gang had eleven members, and the heist is set in Las Vegas. Director Steven Soderburgh created one of the most stylish caper movies ever, and populated it with a dream cast. It wasn’t just having Clooney, Pitt, Roberts, and Damon in the same film, but also Don Cheadle, Elliot Gould, Carl Reiner and the rest of the crew that made this a worldwide hit. Unfortunately, the sequels followed the rule of diminishing returns.

Casino Royale (Original 1967: Remake 2006)

This is a case of comparing rotten apples with prized oranges. Albert “Cubby” Broccoli locked up the rights to all the Ian Fleming Bond books except for the first one, which was actually produced on TV in 1954 with Barry Nelson as American spy James Bond. After the Bond movies became hits, Columbia decided to make Casino Royale as a spoof. It was a classic case of Hollywood excess. There were five directors, including John Huston, three screenwriters, seven uncredited contributors to the dialogue including Woody Allen, Billy Wilder, Ben Hecht and novelist Joseph Heller, and an all-star cast including Allen, David Niven, and Peter Sellers. The only success it had was for Herb Albert, who recorded the Burt Bacharach/Hal David theme song. In 2006, for the launch of Daniel Craig as Bond, Cubby’s daughter Barbara finally had the rights and went back to the original story, while giving it an overdose of adrenalin. It gave the over-40-year-old series its biggest hit with a $600 million worldwide box office and cemented Craig as this century’s Bond.

Heaven Can Wait (Original “Here Comes Mr. Jordan” 1941, Remake 1978)

This time it’s a close call. Here Comes Mr. Jordan starred Robert Montgomery as Joe Pendleton, a pugilist who dies too soon, and Claude Rains as the titular Mr. Jordan, a head angel who tries to repair the mistake by placing Joe’s consciousness into the body of a banker who’s just been murdered by his wife and his personal secretary. It was based on a play entitled “Heaven Can Wait,” and the film was a hit. In 1978, Warren Beatty and Buck Henry decided to remake the story under the original title. They changed Joe’s character from a fighter to the quarterback of the L.A. Rams, with Beatty playing Joe, James Mason as Mr. Jordan, and Julie Christie as Joe’s love interest. Also in the cast were Dyan Cannon, Charles Grodin, Jack Warden, as well as Henry as the angel who grabs Joe too fast. They did keep that Joe had a lucky saxophone, though they changed it from an alto sax to a soprano. The soundtrack was done by jazz great Dave Grusin. The film was number five at the box office in 1978 (behind Grease, Superman, Animal House, and Every Which Way but Loose) and was nominated for 9 Oscars including Best Picture, though this was the year that The Deer Hunter and Coming Home dominated the major awards. Note: Just to be confusing, there is a 1943 Don Ameche film entitled Heaven Can Wait, but it’s a completely different story.

3:10 to Yuma  (Original 1957; Remake 2007)

Based on a story by Elmore Leonard, the original 3:10 starred Glenn Ford as the outlaw and Van Heflin as the farmer who must get him on the titular train to collect a reward. It focused more on the battle of wits and will between Ford and Heflin, and it was one of the better westerns during a time when dozens of them were made every year. The remake was done in a much different atmosphere, when westerns are a rarity, and this time it expands the story so the outlaw’s capture and the journey to the town to meet the train takes up 2/3rds of the movie. The story also makes the farmer’s son a major character. Having Russell Crowe and Christian Bale as the main characters ups the intensity all by itself, though the show is almost stolen by Ben Foster as Crowe’s second-in-command, a role played by Richard Jaeckel in the original.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (Original 1934; Remake 1956)

The only person who can safely remake Alfred Hitchcock is Alfred Hitchcock (see – or rather don’t see – 1998’s remake of Psycho, and you can already discount Michael Bay’s upcoming remake of The Birds). Hitchcock’s original was partly inspired by an actual event in England, the Sidney Street Siege in 1911when Home Secretary Winston Churchill sent in the Scots Guards to clear out an anarchist gang, turning Sidney Street into a battleground. In both movies, a family vacation is interrupted by a dying man giving the husband and wife information about a pending assassination. For 1956, Hitchcock completely eliminated the Sidney Street reference and created a wonderfully suspenseful story that starred Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day.

Cape Fear (Original 1962; Remake 1991)

Once again, this is a close call. Based on a John D. MacDonald story, the original had Gregory Peck as lawyer Sam Bowden and Robert Mitchum as Max Cady, the criminal that Bowden helped convict 8 years earlier and who has now come back for revenge. It’s a good thriller, but then Martin Scorsese decided to remake it with Nick Nolte as Bowden and Robert De Niro as Cady. The new version is much darker and deeper: instead of testifying against Cady, Bowden was Cady’s lawyer and threw the defense to get Cady off the streets. De Niro’s Cady is mesmerizing, and the film benefits from an exceptionally strong supporting cast with Jessica Lange, Juliette Lewis (an amazing performance), and Joe Don Baker. Scorsese also gives honor to the original by having both Peck and Mitchum take supporting roles, and reusing Bernard Herrmann’s iconic original score.

The Thing (Original “The Thing From Another World” 1951; Remake 1982)

Producer Howard Hawks’ original The Thing From Another World is one of the classic 1950s sci-fi films. It benefited from the paranoia about the Soviet Union at that time, with its final warning to “Watch the skies.” In 1982, another time of worry about the Soviet Union, John Carpenter took the story and wrenched up the paranoia. Instead of just doing battle with an alien (played by James Arness in the original film), Carpenter went back to the original novella by John W. Campbell where the alien is able to absorb the image and memories of anyone it consumes.  The body count is much higher, and Carpenter eschews the upbeat ending of the novella and the original movie for a much darker one. Long-time Carpenter collaborator Kurt Russell is excellent as MacReady, the helicopter pilot who leads the fight against the alien.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Original 1956; Remake 1978)

Don Siegel’s original is a great sci-fi film, and can also be viewed as a commentary on McCarthyism with normal people being replaced by emotionless aliens. The final sequence of Kevin McCarthy (no relation to Joe) running down the highway yelling at drivers “You’re next!” rightly freaked out the 1950s movie goer. Philip Kaufman’s remake turns a black-and-white thriller into a richly-colored work of art. The special effects are exceptional, and the cast is excellent (Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy). Kaufman also included a scene with Kevin McCarthy that echoed the end of the first film, and had Don Siegel make a cameo as a taxi driver.

True Grit (Original 1969; Remake 2010)

While the original had John Wayne and Robert Duvall as bad guy Ned Pepper, the Coen Brothers remake stuck closer to the original Charles Portis novel. The Duke may have gotten the Oscar for his role as Rooster Cogburn, but Jeff Bridges out-acted him in the remake and Hailee Steinfeld was more believable as Mattie Ross, in addition to being closer to Mattie’s age in the book. The Coens give the film a more rustic and rough feeling while the scene in the snake pit is the stuff of nightmares. While the 1969 movie had to have an upbeat ending with Wayne triumphant, the Coen’s gave the viewer a more satisfying and poignant one.

The Maltese Falcon (Original 1931; Remake 1941)

This had to be a remake, because there was no other way that Jack Warner would give untried writer/director John Huston a new movie. The 1931 original is entirely forgettable, with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade and Bebe Daniels as Ruth. Warner wanted a B movie, and had cast George Raft as Spade. Raft though considered the production beneath him and pulled out, opening the way for Bogart. Huston did something almost unheard of in the movie industry – his script followed the book almost exactly. Huston had accidentally sent a copy of the completed script to Warner, but he was pleasantly surprised when Warner loved the script and gave him the green light to shoot. The cast was fantastic. Bogie, Sydney Greenstreet (in his first film role), Peter Lorre, Mary Astor, Elisha Cook Jr., Barton MacLane, and Ward Bond were perfect for Hammett’s hard-boiled classic. It made the finished film the stuff that dreams are made of. Interesting note: three of the black bird statuettes from the film still exist, and are the most valuable props in the world, each valued at a cool million. That means each of them could pay for the production of the original film – three times over.

Honorable Mentions: King Kong, Scarface, The Parent Trap, No Way Out

Mockingbird at 50

**This is the 100^th post I’ve published since starting this blog in June of 2011.  In honor of that, I decided to look at To Kill A Mockingbird, which just had its 50^th anniversary this past November.

To Kill A Mockingbird stands out as one of the best adaptations of a book to the screen.  But it almost never made the transition.  All the major studios passed on the book, even though it had won the Pulitzer Prize.  They couldn’t see how it could be made into a movie, since there was hardly any action in the story, nor a love interest.

Then producer Alan J. Pakula stepped in, who was at the beginning of his distinguished career.  Pakula, the son of a Polish immigrant, was a Yale graduate who found a position in the Leyland Hayward Theatrical Agency.  That fueled his desire to work in the film business.  He headed for Hollywood where he became an assistant at Warner Brothers Animation, then moved MGM.  In the late 1950’s, he formed a partnership with television director Robert Mulligan to do their first movie, Fear Strikes Out.  To Kill A Mockingbird was their second collaboration.

They worked together throughout the 1960’s on such films as Inside Daisy Clover and Love With The Proper Stranger.  Then in 1969 Pakula slipped into the directing chair himself for The Sterile Cuckoo, Liza Minnelli’s first movie which brought her an Oscar nomination.  Pakula went on to produce and direct multiple Oscar winners including Klute, All The President’s Men, Sophie’s Choice, and The Pelican Brief.  Sadly, he was killed in a freak car accident in 1998, at age 70.  Mulligan continued directing, doing films such as The Summer Of ’42, Same Time Next Year, and The Man In The Moon, which introduced child actress Reese Witherspoon in 1991 and was his final film.  He passed away at 83 in 2008.

Pakula saw the potential in the book and obtained the movie rights.  He and Mulligan felt Horton Foote would be the writer who could translate the story to the screen.  Foote was born in Wharton, TX, and had first pursued an acting career.  However, choreographer Agnes DeMille, with whom he became life-long friends, suggested he write plays.  That began a long career, first writing for the stage, then television, and finally films.  One of his early television works, in 1953, was “The Trip To Bountiful” which he adapted 32 years later as a movie that won Geraldine Page the Best Actress Oscar.  Foote at first didn’t want to take the assignment because he was afraid he couldn’t do justice to the book, but he eventually gave in to Pakula’s request.  He had a breakthrough with the writing when he decided to keep the story within a period of just over a year.

Pakula convinced Universal to back and release the production.  The studio had some ideas about who should play the lead role.  Their first choice was Rock Hudson, and then James Stewart.  Thankfully they both passed.  Instead, Pakula sent the book to Gregory Peck.  Peck read it in one night, and called Pakula early the next morning.  He said to the producer, “I’m your boy.”

Peck had been a major star ever since his second movie, The Keys of the Kingdom, in 1944.  His résumé leading up to Mockingbird was filled with excellent performances in memorable movies:  Spellbound, The Yearling, Gentleman’s Agreement, Twelve O’clock High, Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N., Roman Holiday, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, On The Beach, The Guns of Navarone, and Cape Fear.  Any actor would be happy with that as a career.  For Gregory Peck, it was all a prelude to the role of a lifetime that remained his personal favorite for the rest of his life.

Early on, the company considered filming on location in Harper Lee’s home town of Monroeville, Alabama.  When they visited there, they found little remained of the town in Lee’s book.  The visit, though, allowed Peck to meet Lee’s father Amasa, the template for Atticus Finch (Finch was Harper’s mother’s maiden name).  Peck noted Mr. Lee had a habit of fiddling with his pocket watch when thinking; the actor used that, particularly in the trial scene in the movie.  Unfortunately Amasa Lee passed away before the movie was released.  As a remembrance, Harper gave Peck her father’s watch.

The decision was made to instead shoot on the Universal lot.  The production designers exactly reproduced the Monroeville courthouse for the trial scenes.  While the set is gone, the actual courthouse is now a museum that you can visit in Monroeville.  The exterior of the courthouse is the “Courthouse Square” that you can see on the Universal Studio Tour (and was later used for Back To The Future.)  They planned to build the town set on the back lot, but the production designers found a number of Southern-style houses in the San Fernando Valley that were scheduled for demolition to make way for a new freeway.  The houses were bought cheap and transferred to the back lot, saving a considerable portion of the budget.

A major hurdle for the production was finding children to play the roles of Scout, Jem and Dil.  The role of Dil is based on Harper Lee’s childhood friend, Truman Capote, who spent his summers in Monroeville when he was a child.  To play him, they cast John Menga, who had done stage work along with television roles.  After Mockingbird, Menga continued to act on TV shows such as Dr. Kildare and Star Trek and in movies (Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, The Cannonball Run), and he founded L.A. Arts, a non-profit theatrical company.  He was one of the many that the artist community has lost to AIDS, dying in 1995 in his early ‘40s.

Thousands of children were auditioned in the south before they found Mary Badham and Philip Alford in Alabama.  Philip wasn’t interested in auditioning until he found out he’d miss a half-day of school.  Mary Badham had acting in her genes, as her English-born mother Mary Hewitt was an actress before marrying Henry Lee Badham Jr., a military aviator who retired as a Brigadier General.  Mary hadn’t prepared anything for the audition and just got up on the stage and did something she thought was silly.  It worked, for she and Philip were called back to audition once more, this time in New York City.

They are both wonderfully natural in the film.  This was helped by Mulligan, who let the children play together while the crew quietly set up shots.  There were problems, though.  In a scene where they were eating, Mary messed up almost every take, usually by mouthing the other actor’s lines.  (A small example of it is in the film.)  Philip got so tired of eating, when it came time for the scene where Jem pushes Scout in a tire, Philip aimed the tire at a utility truck, hoping to do grievous bodily harm to Mary.  Mary was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance, becoming the youngest nominee ever at that time.  Curiously, she lost out to another child actress – Patty Duke for The Miracle Worker.

During the filming, Peck often had Philip and Mary over to his house on off days to play with his own children, who were about the same age.  They formed a close attachment that lasted the rest of Peck’s life.  In a documentary about the making of Mockingbird, Mary slips a couple of times and refers to Peck as Atticus.  Both children continued to act for a while – Philip appeared in Shenandoah – but they gave it up by adulthood.  Philip became a successful businessman in Birmingham.  Mary married a school teacher and did art restoration, though she’ll often do talks about the experience of making Mockingbird.  Her older (by 14 years) brother, though, has had a quite successful career behind the camera: Director John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, War Games, Short Circuit, Stakeout).

The cast included a number of actors making their big screen debuts.  Alice Ghostley became a supporting actress fixture on the small screen for the next four decades, best known as Esmeralda on “Bewitched.”  William Windom had been working in television since the late 1940s.  He remained busy both on the big and little screen into the mid-2000s, and passed away just last August.  There’s one further debut performance, though I’ll mention it later.

As the old, laudanum-addicted Mrs. Dubose from the book, Ruth White endured 4 hours of make-up each day she was filming.  However, most of her scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.  She passed away suddenly from cancer seven years after the film was made, at age 54.

The centerpiece of the book and the movie, the trial of Tom Robinson, was based on Amasa Lee’s defense of a black man in 1923.  The heavy of the piece is Bob Ewell, played by James Anderson.  Anderson performed in over 140 films in his career that spanned from Sergeant York to Little Big Man, even though he was felled by a heart attack when only 48.  His hate-filled performance as the father of Mayella (Collin Wilcox) is indelible, even as you wish you could wash it away.  Wilcox purposely chose the unwashed look of Mayella’s hair, wanting to appear like a woman who didn’t have time to take care of herself.  While Mayella’s physical abuse by Ewell is clearly stated, there’s also a subtext of incest to the story, leading to her attempted seduction of Tom.

As Tom, Brock Peters communicates incredible nobility.  Peck found he couldn’t look directly at Peters when Robinson is on the witness stand for fear of being overcome by the emotion Peters was projecting.  Instead Peck used a stage trick of looking past the actor.  It is telling for those times that Robinson is convicted because he had the temerity to feel pity for a white woman.  In the segregated South, that wouldn’t do.  Mulligan filmed Atticus’s final address to the jury in one single nine-minute take.

But the movie is truly a story of childhood, and the awakening of the children to their father’s identity.  There are moments when they suddenly see him in a new light.  Some are small, such as when Atticus meets with Robinson’s family, treating them with respect.  Others are surprising, as when Atticus shoots the rabid dog.  It leads up to the encounter in the middle of the night at the jail, when the children see Atticus standing up to the mob of men bent on lynching Tom Robinson.  When the children rush forward to stand with Atticus, it is Jem’s first step to adulthood, refusing to obey his father.  But it’s Scout’s guileless conversation with the farmer that breaks the will of the mob.  At the conclusion of the trial, they see their father through the eyes of the black spectators.  It still is the same goosebump moment today as it was in 1962 when the black pastor tells Scout to stand up because her father’s passing.

All children like to be scared, and in Mockingbird they’re scared of Boo Radley.  The character is based on a real person in Monroeville whose name was Alfred “Son” Bouleware.  He did live with his parents in a dilapidated, boarded-up house only a few houses down from the Lees.  It’s likely that he was an albino, which explains his staying out of the sun and working in the garden at night.

Playing the role was Robert Duvall in his big screen debut after six years working in television.  Duvall bleached his hair and stayed out of the sun in preparation for performing Boo.  He has no lines, but his face conveys so much that lines are superfluous.  Duvall’s career has been stellar, with 130 credits, from the original True Grit, The Godfather I & II, The Natural and Apocalypse Now through the recent Jack Reacher, where he was one of the best parts of the movie.  He won his Best Actor Oscar for 1983’s Tender Mercies, which was written by Mockingbird scribe Horton Foote.

The movie was helped by an excellent score by Elmer Bernstein.  In his long career, Bernstein scored over 200 productions, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, True Grit, Animal House, and Ghostbusters.  His only Academy Award, though, came for composing the music for Thoroughly Modern Millie.  For Mockingbird, he began the theme with an approximation of how a child will randomly plunk notes on a piano, and went from there.  Actually, the person playing the piano on the score would eclipse Bernstein and become one of the greatest composers the film world has ever seen: John Williams.

The film was a success, making nearly $14 million at a time when it still cost less than a dollar to see a movie, off of a budget of $2 million.  It picked up 8 Oscar nominations, including Picture, Black & White Cinematography (they had a separate award for color at that time), Direction, and Music Score, along with Mary Badham’s Supporting Actress nod.  It won for Art Direction, and for Best Adapted Screenplay.  Gregory Peck assumed that Jack Lemmon would win the Best Actor award that year for The Days Of Wine And Roses, so he was surprised when Sophia Loren called out his name.  Mockingbird lost the Best Picture award to another classic movie, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia.

To Kill A Mockingbird occupies a place in the pantheon of movie excellence, up there with Gone With The Wind, Citizen Kane, and other examples of the best of the silver screen.  It’s ranked as the best inspirational movie ever made.

To view the movie in its glory, there’s now a 50^th anniversary DVD that includes a beautiful digital restoration of the film.  The two-disc set also has two full-length documentaries: A Conversation With Gregory Peck, which was made by Peck’s daughter Cecilia (Mary Badham’s childhood playmate) and includes footage from Peck’s tour in the late 1990’s where he talked about his career, five years before his death, as well as the 1998 documentary on the making of the movie, Fearful Symmetry, which includes interviews with most of the principal players in the movie’s creation.  It’s a must have for any lover of this movie.