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The Stalking Moon (1968)

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The Magnificent 60s

by Brian Hannan

Behind the Scenes: “The Stalking Moon” (1968)

By all that Hollywood held sacred, The Stalking Moon should never have got off the ground, at least not by National General Cinemas, the latest addition to the burgeoning mini-major roster. For National General, in keeping with the company name, had been set up to run theaters. And operating theaters and making movies ran counter to the Consent Decree of 1948 which had not only forced the major studios to jettison their chains of cinemas but also prevented them in the future from functioning in that manner.

As a legal device, the Consent Decree had more than done its job; it had almost brought the entire industry to its knees since studios could no longer rely on the substantial profits generated from exhibition to bolster their movie-making programs, causing the industry to fall into a decade-long downward spiral. Although revenues had recovered throughout the 1960s as a result of the promulgation of the roadshow, the Bond films and variety of other audience-winning efforts, the underlying effect of the Consent Decree, that of reducing studio output, still had a radical impact on theater owners.

Simply put, there were not enough movies to go round. A smaller number of movies corresponded to higher rentals, putting exhibitors under even more pressure to make a decent buck. In order to make the most of what was available, owners of first run houses, even outwith the standard lengthy contracts for roadshows, took to running ordinary movies for longer than before, resulting in meagre  pickings for theaters further down the food chain. So when National General proposed upending the principles of the Consent Decree, there were few in the industry determined to stand in their way.

National General Corporation owed its inception to the Consent Decree. It had been established in 1951 with the express purpose of taken over the running of the 550 theaters which Twentieth Century Fox was being forced to relinquish. That number of cinemas was considered too high and a court order cut the number in half six years later. By 1963, with earnings of $3.4 million, the organisation ran 217 theaters as well as having real estate holdings and a sideline in renting equipment for mobile concerts, by which time it had already instigated court proceedings in order to annul or bypass the Consent Decree.

It was not the first theater chain to aim to set aside the binding conditions of the Decree.  Howco, owning 60 theaters, began low-budget production in 1954. American Broadcasting-Paramount Theaters had made modest forays in this direction, primarily with program fillers of the sci-fi/horror variety, in the late 1950s, and regional theater owner McLendon Films entered the production arena with My Dog Buddy (1960). But these were viewed as minor aberrations and not considered to breach the stout defences of the Decree.

National General had bigger ambitions that could not be fulfilled without some alteration of the original Decree and in 1963 it went to court to seek a modification of the Decree ruling which, while safeguarding anti-trust measures, would nonetheless help arrest the rapid decline in production, which had seen output tumble from 408 features in 1942 to just 138 movies two decades later. As an “experiment”, the government permitted NGC a three-year window.

NGC’s new enterprise was to be called Carthay Center Productions and nine months later announced its first movie would be What Are Little Girls Made Of , a $2.5 million comedy produced by  the Bud Yorkin-Norman Lear Tandem shingle, and that it was in talks with Stanley Donen ( Singing’ in the Rain , Charade ). ( The Girl in the Turquoise Bikini was also mooted, but never made.) A few months later, the infant outfit projected that it was on course to make four-six pictures a year with budgets in the $2 million-$4 million range, with Divorce-American Style now scheduled as its first offering.

The hopes of expectant exhibitors were kept alive throughout the entire three-year period granted by the government. A three-picture deal was made with director Fielder Cook who lined up prominent British playwright Harold Pinter to write Flight and Pursuit . Two years after receiving the governmental green light, none of these projects had come to fruition and to speed up production Carthay sought to take advantage of the British government’s Eady Levy (which subsidised film production in the UK) by making The Berlin Memorandum (later re-titled The Quiller Memorandum ), based on the spy thriller by Adam Hall (aka Elleston Trevor, Flight of the Phoenix ), on a $2.5 million budget as the first volley in a six-film 18-month production schedule.

The picture would be a joint production with British company Rank, which offered instant distribution in Britain. The other pictures covered in the announcement were: Divorce-American Style , What Are Little Girls Made Of and John Henry Goes to New York (all under the Tandem aegis); plus Flight and Pursuit and Careful, They’re Our Allies from Charles K. Peck Films. By 1966, Tandem’s Divorce-American Style starring Dick van Dyke and Debbie Reynolds had begun shooting as had The Quiller Memorandum, with George Segal and Alec Guinness as the marquee names, but without the involvement of Carthay. There was no great immediate interest in Divorce American Style from distributors and it sat on the shelf until June 1967 when it was distributed by Columbia. It was a surprise hit at the box office, ranking 17th on the annual chart with $5.1 million in rentals – above In Like Flint and just below the John Wayne pair El Dorado and The War Wagon .   

However, by 1966, NGC was in buoyant mood, underlining its ambitions by announcing a $10 million business-building loan. More importantly, at the beginning of the year it had signed up its first major star. Gregory Peck was to headline The Stalking Moon , with a $3.5 million budget and shooting to begin in spring 1967. There was even talk at this stage that it “may be a hard ticket picture;” there was little more prestigious for a new company than to enter the roadshow field.

Although this was, technically, the eighth movie – A Dream of Kings was the seventh – on the NGC roster (and had previously been announced as such when movie rights to the Theodore V. Olsen western had been acquired pre-publication in December 1965) it now, with Peck’s involvement, shot up the production ladder. Although screenwriter Wendell Mayes ( Von Ryan’s Express , 1965) had been scheduled to act as producer, Peck’s production company Brentwood was also involved. The picture acquired further cachet with the announcement that George Stevens ( Shane , 1953) was to direct as well as produce. 

There were now five co-producers: Stevens, Universal, Peck, NGP, and Mayes. In theory, at least, the arrival of heavyweights such as Peck and Stevens should have speeded up production. Instead, an endless series of delays/ postponements ensued. The April 3, 1967, start date fell by the wayside when Stevens dropped out. Although there was speculation that Stevens’ departure would lead to the movie being shelved, Universal remained on board, at least for the time being, as distributor. Meanwhile, NGP took over production duties and reunited Peck with To Kill a Mockingbird director Robert Mulligan and producer Alan J. Pakula. Before Stevens left, the start date had already been shifted to May 28 and when the dust on that had settled it was set for an October 15 start.

But that proved over-optimistic and when it began rolling on January 5, 1968, the budget had increased to $4 million. However, the movie still failed to meet other deadlines set for summer and autumn and did not finally roll until 1968.

By then, NGP was facing other difficulties. For a start, the battle to remain in the production business precipitated another round of legal and governmental negotiations. The original three-year waiver that had expired in 1966 had been extended by a further three years and although, by this point the second largest movie chain in the country, NGC had clearly failed to fill the production gap that it was set up specifically to do, but its position was bolstered by CBS television launching its Cinema Center movie production arm and ABC television its Cinerama vehicle. 

The Pacific Coast Theater circuit had taken over Cinerama in 1963. ABC had 418 theaters, the largest in the country, and set up Circle Films. In 1967 Cinerama Releasing Corporation was established to distribute the films of both Cinerama and ABC Circle and, in fact, had been, at least in terms of output, more prolific than NGC, releases comprising Custer of the West (1967), Hell in the Pacific (1968), Charly (1968), The Killing of Sister George (1968), They Shoot Horses, Don’t They (1969) and Krakatoa East of Java (1969). ABC Circle closed down in 1973 despite registering its biggest-ever hit Cabaret in 1972. In fact, most CRC releases were flops.

National General was so worried about another government waiver not being forthcoming that it was considering a merger with Warner Brothers as a means of safeguarding production. The Carthay name itself soon became defunct, the company reverting to National General Pictures (NGP) in order to identify, in the words of president Eugene V. Klein, “our picture making activities as a major part of our company program.” In addition, it had fallen far short of its production schedule. Instead of releasing movies at the rate of one per month throughout 1968, only six  films were ready for distribution – and none of them were actually made by NGC. Poor Cow , Twisted Nerve , and All Neat in Black Stockings were British; How Sweet It Is was made by Cinema Center; With Six You Get Eggroll by Doris Day’s production company; and A Quiet Place in the Country was Italian. And none boasted stars of the Gregory Peck caliber. By year end, the company’s entire production fortune was riding on The Stalking Moon .

By the beginning of 1969 Gregory Peck looked a spent force. He had not made a film in three years, a dangerous length of exile in fickle Hollywood. The commercial and artistic peaks of the early 1960s – The Guns of Navarone (1961) and How the West Was Won (1962) both topping the annual box office charts in addition to winning the Oscar for Best Actor, at the fifth attempt, with To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) – were long gone. None of his other pictures came close to matching these in either commercial or artistic terms: Captain Newman M.D . (1963) ranked 21st for the year, and Stanley Donen thriller Arabesque (1966) with Sophia Loren, 16th.

Most performed substantially below expectations. Cape Fear (1962), despite the involvement of Navarone director  J. Lee Thompson and co-star Robert Mitchum fell foul of the Production Code. The censors demanded the word “rape” be excised from the finished film and other changes made to the script. British censors demanded a total of 161 cuts, provoking co-star Polly Bergen to complain there was no point in her promoting the film in the UK since she was now hardly in it. The star was not perturbed. “An adult audience will understand the theme,” he said. The movie ranked 47th in the annual box office race. In Peck’s entire canon only Beloved Infidel had done worse.

Prestige offering Behold A Pale Horse (1964) directed by Fred Zinnemann ( From Here To Eternity ) and co-starring Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif, proved an unexpected flop, 63rd for the year, while thriller Mirage (1965),  directed by veteran Edward Dymytryk, was 74th. With his commercial status in question, the actor shuttered his production company Brentwood, although in an image-conscious industry, he came up with a more respectable reason: “We are far better holding ourselves available for acting jobs, and then producing only when the right elements happen to be there.”

From 1964 onwards, he was more commonly associated with films that did not get made. That year, Cinerama announced with considerable fanfare that he was going to star in grand sci-fi project The Martian Chronicles , directed by Robert Mulligan,  adapted from the Ray Bradbury bestseller, with a $10 million budget. Also failing to get off the ground was The Night of the Short Knives , planned as a co-production with veteran Walter Wanger ( Cleopatra , 1963). At one point Steve McQueen was mooted as a co-star until MGM’s rival production 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) killed the idea stone dead.

In 1965 MGM signed Peck up, along with David Niven (another Navarone alumnus), James Stewart, James Coburn and George Segal for Ice Station Zebra , based on another Alistair MacLean thriller, with a screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky; but when the movie finally appeared several years later none of these names were involved. In 1965, he also lost out on They’re a Weird Mob when the rights which he had held since 1959 elapsed. Across the River and into the Trees , based on the Ernest Hemingway novel, with Virna Lisi did not get beyond the development stage.

It was hard to say what was worse, movies shelved before a foot of film was exposed, or pictures halted in mid-production, as was the case in 1966 when filming in Switzerland of The Bells of Hell Go Ting A Ling A Ling was suspended after five weeks due to unexpectedly harsh weather conditions in Europe. It was indicative of doubts about Peck’s commercial standing that the movie did not continue shooting, despite a budget outlay by this point of over $2 million, once the weather had cleared.

A total of 12 minutes were completed before filming ended. Peck played a British Army colonel charged in World War One with leading a team to ferry aircraft parts across Switzerland to Lake Constance and then reassemble them to bomb a Zeppelin base. Ian McKellen ( Lord Of The Rings ), making his movie debut, began to correct Peck’s American pronunciation of “lieutenant” only to be told by director David Miller that Peck could pronounce it any way he liked because “Britain was only five per cent of the world market.”

In 1967 it was the turn of After Navarone , The Mudskipper and Strangers on the Bridge with Alec Guinness to stall on the starting grid. Although the reissue in 1966 of The Guns of Navarone (1961) kept him in public view, during this period of enforced idleness Peck was more likely to be heard rather than seen, taking on narration duties for an ABC television documentary on Africa, and the John F. Kennedy documentary, although he enjoyed considerable publicity as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and as the inaugural chairman of the American Film Institute, taking up both roles in 1967.

Although Peck was still a big marquee name when initially signed up for The Stalking Moon , there remained a massive question mark, given nearly three years cinematic inactivity, over his ability to open a picture. In addition, the more obvious problem was whether a marketplace still existed for the Gregory Peck western given that, with the exception of How the West Was Won (1962), he had not been in the saddle since The Bravados and The Big Country in 1958, neither of which had turned a profit at the U.S. ticket wickets, and prior to those, The Gunfighter in 1950 another box office disappointment. He was hardly in the league of John Wayne or James Stewart, for whom the western was the default setting, both of whom had recently turned in strong commercial returns in the genre.

What the cast and crew for The Stalking Moon had in common was Oscars. Director Robert Mulligan had been nominated for an Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird . A graduate of live television, he was comfortable in a variety of fields, comedy in The Rat Race (1960), romance in Come September (1961), and dramas like Love with the Proper Stranger (1963) and Inside Daisy Clover (1965).  Under his watch, Peck had won the Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird , Natalie Wood had been Oscar nominated for Love with the Proper Stranger and Ruth Gordon for Inside Daisy Clover .

Producing partner Alan J. Pakula had also been nominated for To Kill a Mockingbird . The Stalking Moon was their seventh film together. Eva Marie Saint, who played Sarah Carver, the white woman on the run from her Apache husband, won an Oscar in her first movie role opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954) after seven years in television. Over the following dozen years, she appeared in only 13 more pictures, but they were a diverse bunch including the female leads in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), Otto Preminger’s Exodus (1960), comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966) and John Frankenheimer’s epic Grand Prix (1966). 

Her apparent fragility concealed inner strength, although her deft comedic touch and passionate clinch with Cary Grant in North by Northwest , and her frantic reaction to the death of racing driver Yves Montand in Grand Prix belied her reputation for onscreen coolness. In the Oscar stakes, cinematographer Charles Lang (aka Charles Lang Jr.) eclipsed them all with one win for A Farewell to Arms (1934) and 15 further nominations including Some like It Hot (1959) and One Eyed Jacks (1961).

Although this represented a western debut for director, producer and leading actress, Lang had been the cinematographer for The Man from Laramie (1955), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960) and How the West Was Won . Sound editor Jack Solomon had been nominated in 1960 and editor Aaron Steel twice, in 1962 and 1965. Screenwriter Wendell Mayes had been nominated for Otto Preminger’s courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Horton Foote, who worked on The Stalking Moon without receiving a credit, had won the Oscar for To Kill a Mockingbird .

However, the final screenplay credit went to Alvin Sargent, in television since 1957. Gambit (1966) had marked his movie debut, The Stalking Moon his second picture. Actor Robert Forster had made his debut in John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and followed up with the role of Nick Tana in The Stalking Moon . Forster had a keen idea of his abilities, telling Variety that he only took roles that “would not compromise me or my wife or my agent. I don’t know how an actor can agree to play a role that he doesn’t feel he can do something special with.” His principles led him to turning down a four-picture deal with Universal.

The Stalking Moon was the first and only picture for Noland Clay, who played Eva Marie Saint’s son, as it was for Nathaniel Narcisco in the role of her husband Salvaje. This was composer Fred Karlin’s third movie score after Up the Down Staircase (1967) and Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) and the music alternated between a lilting motif for the more idyllic sections and an urgent repetitive sound for the thrilling elements. Most of the picture was shot on location in Arizona (Wolf Hole, Wolf Hole Valley, Moccasin Mountains and the Pauite Wilderness Area), Nevada (Red Rock Canyon and Valley of Fire State Park) and Bavispe in Mexico with interiors at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios.

The Theodore V. Olsen book is quite different to the film. In the novel Sam Vatch (not Varner) has married Sarah without knowing that she has once been Salvaje’s woman. Sarah Carver has two children not one, the other being an ill younger brother. In the book, she talks lot. On the other hand, Sam Varner is looking for a home and, in any other kind of picture, her loquaciousness coupled with his need for domestic security, would have brought them together emotionally. In the Olsen version, it is Salvaje not Sarah who is the sole survivor of a massacre. But the film takes an entirely different approach.

In the movie version, instead of presenting the audience with a dialogue-heavy picture where emotional need is clearly stated, Mulligan is more interested in people who kept their feelings to themselves, who scarcely had a word to say, who lacked the dexterity to build up any lasting relationship. As much as the film is about the silences that can swamp individuals, it is also about characters watching each other for any sign of impending change, the kind that would normally be signaled by more vocal means. Such behavior is normally designated as brooding.

Varney broods on what he should do, whether to help the woman or not, and just how far should he help, and when will helping her intrude on his privacy. Sarah Carver broods on the inevitability of her capture and while that is temporarily postponed by the presence of Varney it does not prevent her watching him for any sign that his attitude to her will change in a positive or, more likely, negative fashion. It is a revolutionary western indeed where the main characters do not exchange a kiss. Here, they hardly exchange a look. The one time they do come together could scarcely be termed a hug, more a gentle enfolding in his chest, minus his big manly arms around her.

Reviews of The Stalking Moon were decidedly mixed, although initially it looked to have got off to a critical flyer. From the outset, NGC considered it a major Oscar contender, rather a risky proposition for a western, and one whose temerity was likely to inflame the critics since only five in the last 20 years had been nominated – How the West Was Won (1962), The Alamo (1960), Friendly Persuasion (1955), Shane (1953), and High Noon (1952).

The trades were divided: International Motion Picture Exhibitor called the movie “excellent” overall. Variety took the opposite view, complaining about the slow development and poor pacing, “clumsy plot structuring and dialog, limp Robert Mulligan direction” and “ineffective” stars, arriving at the conclusion that the movie was “109 numbing minutes.” Motion Picture Daily deemed it a “rewarding experience” and Film Daily called it “exceptionally fine.” Life declared it “transcends the externals of the western genre to become one of the great scare films of all time”; Playboy asserted it was “a tingle all the way,” and Parents Magazine termed it a “gripping melodrama.” “Western in character, universal in theme,” was the summation in The Showmen’s Servisection . But Roger Ebert complained the movie “doesn’t work as a thriller…and doesn’t hold together as a western, either” while Vincent Canby in the New York Times complained it was “pious” and “unimaginative.”

Strangely, nobody commented on the other link between Sarah Carver and her pursuer. In turning the heroine into the prey, in making the woman helpless, never knowing when the invisible hand would strike, Mulligan drew a clear parallel with the experience of the Indians, hunting down by the U.S. Cavalry, harried off their lands, for no reason that could be understood.

The Stalking Moon has not exactly been subject to critical reappraisal in the intervening years since its release, but French director Betrand Tavernier in 50 Years of American Cinema called it Mulligan’s masterpiece. Writing in the March/April issue of Film Comment in 2009, Kent Jones cast more light on what the director was trying to achieve, thus putting the movie in more perspective, and aligning it closer than anyone thought at the time to the period in which the movie was made. Jones believed that the western aptly reflected the bewilderment of the times when, according to Mulligan: “We were in the process of a nightmare that I didn’t understand. I mean the riots were going on, the campuses were being burnt, the ghettos were being burnt, the marches that were going on, people were getting killed. It just didn’t make any sense.”

Mulligan took a pessimistic view of the outcome. “It just didn’t work,” he opined, “and a lot of that may have had to do with the basic silence of the movie.” But what Mulligan actually means is that the movie did not connect sufficiently with either audience nor critics at the time. In fact, in my opinion, it is precisely because of the silences and the unwillingness of the director to tone down its emotional aspects and his refusal to play around with typical genre ploys that make The Stalking Moon, on second viewing today, such a rewarding experience. Reflecting on the movie’s connection to Vietnam and the late 1960s riots, Kent Jones summed up his experience of the movie thus: “Robert Mulligan was the only filmmaker to wade into such painfully vexing and frightfully bourgeois territory and come out with a truly great film.”

The release date for The Stalking Moon had already been set for its general release January in 1969, but, figuring it had a critical winner on its hands, NGC, having put winning an Oscar at the top of its promotional agenda, was faced with the problem of getting it out into a couple of theaters (one would have been enough, as long as it was in Los Angeles, according to the rules) in order to qualify for Academy Award consideration, and so it was deposited in a couple of first-run theaters (New York as well as Los Angeles, so that the New York market would not think it was being overlooked) just before Xmas 1968.

The film ranked 47th in the annual chart with $2.6 million in rentals – “no better than fair, considering its cost” grumbled Variety – above Once Upon a Time in the West , but below other rivals in the genre. It was reissued the following year as support for Universal’s Hellfighters (1968) and NGC’s The Cheyenne Social Club (1970). It received a warmer reception in Paris, where, for the 1968-1969 season,  it outgrossed Mackenna’s Gold (1969) and The Undefeated (1969) as well as Hang ‘Em High (1968) and Five Card Stud (1968), and did surprisingly well in Switzerland where its grosses were seen as indicative of a “box office upsurge.”

NOTE : This is an edited version of a chapter devoted to the film which appeared in my book The Gunslingers of ’69, Western Movies’ Greatest Year (McFarland, 2019.

SOURCES : Brian Hannan, The Gunslingers of ’69, Western Movies’ Greatest Year (McFarland, 2019); Brian Hannan, The Making of The Guns of Navarone (Baroliant Press, 2015);  Cook, David A.,   Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam, 1970-1979 . (University of California Press, 2000), 400; Kevin Hefferman, Ghouls, Gimmicks and Gold: Horror Films and the American Movie Business , (Duke University Press: 2004), 72; “See Three-Year OK for Nat’l General To Produce and Distribute Films under Trust Decree Modification,” Variety, June 19, 1963, 3; “National General Earnings Up 31%,” Variety , December 18, 1963, 11; “Peck for Cinerama,” Variety , February 19, 1964, 6; “National Circuit (217 Theaters) Readying to Produce Features,” Variety, March 4, 1964, 5; “Walter Wanger’s Return To Producer Activity,” Variety , April 19, 1964, 4; “Nat’l General Producing Features Shuns Hazards of Live Concerts,” Variety , Jun 30, 1964, 20; “Colony on Mars as U’s Top Costing Feature To Date,” Variety , Jul 22, 1964, 3; “Metro’s 27 Finished Features Give It Exceptionally Long Market Slotting,” Variety , Jun 16, 1965, 5; “Virna Lisi Signatured To Star in Germi’s New Pic But Sans Glamour,” Variety , July 7, 1965, 22; “Carthay (Nat’l General) in 3-Film Deal with Fielder Cook’s Eden Prods,” Variety , July 28, 1965, 3; “Aussie Film Cameras To Turn Again This Month After Lengthy Layoff,” Variety , October 13, 1965, 28; “1 st Feature Rolls Under Eady Plan for Carthay (Nat’l General-Rank),” Variety , October 20, 1965, 7; “Circuit’s Prod’n Arm Acquires 8 th Story with Olsen’s Stalking Moon ,” Variety , December 8, 1965, 11; “NGC’s $10m Loan,” Variety , January 12, 1966, 21; “Greg Peck and His Corporate Shadow Comprise Nat’l General’s 3d Feature,” Variety , January 22, 1966, 5; “Wendell Mayes Hotel Then Stalking Moon ,” Variety , Apr 13, 1966, 17; “Drop Carthay Center Tag for NGC Films,” Variety , May 25, 1966, 13; “Swiss Dewdrops O. O. The Bells of Hell ,” Variety, August 10, 1966, 7; “Mirisch’s Bells Won’t Peal Till 1967,” Variety , August 24, 1966, 22;  “George Stevens to U for 3 Features,” Variety , November 16, 1966, 11;  “Peck in Africa,” Variety , January 25, 1967, 27; “16 of U’s 24 in ’67 Get Shooting Dates,” Variety , February 1, 1967, 28; “Inside Stuff – Pictures,” Variety , March 29, 1967, p21; “Nat’l Gen’l Prod, Again Party To Peck’s Moon Which U Will Release,” Variety , April 5, 1967, 15; “ After Navarone ,” Variety , April 19, 1967, 9; Advert, Years of Lightning, Day of Drums , Variety , April 19, 1967, 42; “Off-&-Ballyhooing at NGC,” Variety , November 27, 1967, 3; “Cinerama Rolls 1 st Int’l Sales Meet In Link With London Bow of Custer ,” Variety , November 8, 1967,  2; “Cinerama Revs Up,” Variety , December 6, 1967 18; “NG Not Up To Intended Pic Per Month Release Rate for ’68,” Variety , March 20, 1968, 214;  “National’s Chain: 263,” Variety , May 27, 1968, 7; Lee Beaupre, “Today’s Independent Actor,” Variety, Jul 17, 1968, 3; “NGC, WB-7 Merger Plans Unveiled; Industry Waiting For Details,” International Motion Picture Exhibitor , August 21, 1968, 5; Review, International Motion Picture Exhibitor , December 18, 1968, 6; Review, Variety , December 18, 1968, 26.“NGC Will Tailor Deal to Fit Merger with WB,” Variety , December 25, 1968, 3; Review, New York Times , January 23, 1969; Review, Chicago Sun Times , February 11, 1969; “NGC Pleas for Tenure in Its Film Production Calculations,” Variety , February 19, 1969, 15; Review, The Showmen’s Servisection, November 19, 1969, 2; “Year’s Surprise: Family Films Did Best,” Variety , January 7, 1970, 15; “Swiss Pix May Top ’68 Biz,” Variety , January 7, 1970, 112;  “Paris First Runs: Recent Months, ‘68-‘69 Estimate,” Variety , April 29, 1970, 76.

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Author: Brian Hannan

I am a published author of books about film - over a dozen to my name, the latest being "When Women Ruled Hollywood." As the title of the blog suggests, this is a site devoted to movies of the 1960s but since I go to the movies twice a week - an old-fashioned double-bill of my own choosing - I might occasionally slip in a review of a contemporary picture. View all posts by Brian Hannan

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Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews

• Top Ten Lists

STALKING MOON, THE

• Post author: eenableadmin
• Post published: August 5, 2019
• Post category: Uncategorized

THE STALKING MOON

(director: Robert Mulligan; screenwriters: Alvin Sargent, Wendell Mayes; cinematographer: Charles Lang; editor: Aaron Stell; music: Fred Karlin; cast: Gregory Peck (Sam Varner), Eva Marie Saint ( Sarah Carver ), Robert Forster ( Nick Tana), Noland Clay (Boy), Frank Silvera (Major), Russell Thorson (Ned), Nathaniel Narcisco ( Salvaje ); Runtime: 109; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Alan J. Pakula;Warner Home Video ( National General Pictures); 1968)

“ Talkative and thoughtful Western.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Talkative and thoughtful Western set in the Old West of 1881, but despite an adequate Gregory Peck performance the film falls flat. The major blame for pic bombing is director Robert Mulligan (“Up The Down Staircase”/” Summer of ’42 “/” To Kill a Mockingbird “) is good at the psychological parts when shooting indoors but is out of his element in the outdoor action sequences. The dull screenplay by Alvin Sargent and adaptation by Wendell Mayes is of no help, as things move too slowly for this genre. The film’s redeeming feature is the beautiful Panavision landscape by Charles Lang.

Gregory Peck is the stalwart army scout Sam Varner, nearing retirement, who agrees to escort the white woman Sarah Carver (Eva Marie Saint) to the railroad station after his army patrol rescues her from captivity by a rogue group of Apaches in Arizona. Sarah plans on returning to New Mexico. Sam also plans to live in New Mexico on his small ranch he bought for retirement. She also takes along her 10-year-old halfbreed son ( Noland Clay ) she had while held captive. Unfortunately the boy’s father, Salvaje ( Nathaniel Narcisco ), refuses to let the boy go peacefully and we got a situation whereby Sam volunteers to take Sarah all the way to New Mexico. They travel by train and wagon to his ranch. Later when he discovers Sarah was kidnapped from his ranch, Sam and his hired hand ( Russell Thorson ) go after Sarah and Salvaje. They find her unconscious on the trail . It concludes with a life-and-death fight between the chief and the army vet.

REVIEWED ON 12/19/2015 GRADE: C+

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Screen: 'Stalking Moon':Gregory Peck Western Begins Run at Forum

By Vincent Canby

• Jan. 23, 1969

"THE STALKING MOON," the new Western movie that opened yesterday at the Forum and Loew's Tower East Theaters, is classically pure and simple in outline.A retired Army scout (Gregory Peck) befriends a young white woman (Eva Marie Saint) who, with her half-caste son, is escaping from the renegade Apache warrior who has kept her prisoner for 10 years. Their flight across Arizona to New Mexico, and the final shootout at Peck's small, lonely cattle ranch, set in a magnificent mountain valley, make for a beautiful movie—and one that just may be too tasteful for its own good.It's the natural condition of Western movies to be somewhat excessive, which may lead to vulgarity, violence and outrageous sentimentality. Robert Mulligan, who directed "The Stalking Moon," has avoided these excesses and made, instead, a rather pious, unimaginative suspense film.There are some lovely individual things in "The Stalking Moon"—broad, Western landscapes, a moment in which Miss Saint suddenly catches her haggard look reflected in a train window, a scene in which Peck buys a railroad ticket at a desert crossing that explains the awful, dislocating distances on the frontier. Those, however, are random touches.Like Peck, the film moves stolidly forward with more dignity than excitement. The climactic gun battle — in which Peck, two friends, Miss Saint and the boy are besieged in the ranch house — is so oddly staged that the first time I saw the film (I made a point of seeing it twice) I assumed they were fighting a whole Indian tribe.Not so. Their antagonist is simply the lone renegade who, like the monster in Howard Hawkes's "The Thing," remains unseen until the very end of the movie. Inevitably his appearance is something of a disappointment. The terrifying, legendary renegade turns out to be a rather plump Indian you couldn't possibly imagine as being capable of all the dreadful things ascribed to him.Quite consciously, Mulligan and Alvin Sargent, who wrote the screenplay, have kept their focus on the poor whites, but unfortunately, none of them is especially interesting. They remain outlines for characters — the lonely frontiersman, the woman who has gone through horrors that are unspeakable (at least unspeakable in this film) to survive Indian captivity, and the small boy torn between two cultures.Miss Saint still looks great, with high, indestructible cheekbones and wide, frightened eyes, but all she does in the movie is clutch her son as if he were a shopping bag. The boy, Noland Clay, is an authentic Indian but he comes off acting like a dutiful kid from Central Casting. He's not cute, just a quiet cipher. Peck is so grave and earnest it seems he must be thinking about his duties on the board of the American Film Institute, rather than on survival.The ads say that no one can escape "The Stalking Moon." You can if you stay home.

The CastTHE STALKING MOON, screenplay by Alvin Sargent, adapted by Wendell Mayes from the novel by Theodore V. Olsen; directed by Robert Mulligan; produced by Alan J. Pakula for release by National General Pictures. At the Forum, Broadway at 47th Street, and Loew's Tower East Third Ave. at 72d Street. Running time: 111 minutes.Sam Varner . . . . . Gregroy PeckSarah Carver . . . . . Eva Marie SaintNick Tana . . . . . Robert ForsterBoy . . . . . Naland ClayMajor . . . . . Frank SilveraSalvaje . . . . . Nathaniel Narcisco

The Stalking Moon

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The Stalking Moon

• U.S. Army soldiers round up a group of Apache, mostly women and children. Surprisingly, they find among them a white woman and her half-Apache son.
• When an army scout retires to a ranch in New Mexico he takes pity on a white woman and her "half-breed" son recently rescued from Apaches and invites them to join him. He does this even knowing the child's father is a feared and murderous Apache and that sooner or later a showdown is almost inevitable. — Jeremy Perkins {J-26}
• The US Army scout Sam Varner finds a group of Apache while hunting down the feared and violent Salvaje with the army. The soldiers realize that most of them are women and children and among them, there is a white woman, Sarah Carver, and her half-breed son. Sam will retire and the half-breed Nick Tana, who was raised and trained by him, will replace him. Sarah begs Sam to travel with him and he accepts to escort them until the stagecoach stop. During the night, the boy flees, and Sam and Sarah look for him in the morning. There is a sandstorm, but they find the boy and look for shelter at the rocks. When they return to the post, they find everybody murdered by Salvage. Sam buries them and decides to escort the stagecoach until Silverton, where there is a train station. He learns that Sarah lied and does not have any relative alive. Sam feels pity for Sarah and the boy and invites her to cook in the ranch he has bought, and his friend Ned is taking care. She accepts the invitation and soon Sam learns that the boy is Salvaje's son. Out of the blue, his friend Nick comes to the ranch and tells that Salvaje has begun a crime spree looking for the boy and is coming to the ranch. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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The Stalking Moon Reviews

• 1 hr 49 mins
• Drama, Action & Adventure
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Gregory Peck and Eva Marie Saint are pursued by an unseen killer in late 19th-century Arizona.

Poorly conceived western that offers little action and an overabundance of talk has Peck as an Indian scout ready to retire to his New Mexico ranch when Saint pops into his life. The woman has been held captive by Apaches for the past 10 years and has given birth to a half-breed son now 9 years old. Peck agrees to escort mother and son to safety but soon finds himself the prey of Narcisco, Apache father of the boy, who wants his son back. The Indian goes on a killing spree until Peck finally overpowers him in a cunning battle. Peck and Saint can't do much with their roles because the material sheds little light on the characters they are supposed to portray. Camera work fails to take advantage of the outdoor scenery.

• Movie Reviews

‘The Stalking Moon’ Blu-Ray Review – Gregory Peck Heads West!

• By Dillon Gonzales
• March 18, 2020
• No Comments

Six years after adapting the classic To Kill A Mockingbird into an Oscar-winning feature film, director Robert Mulligan and producer Alan J. Pakula reunited with Gregory Peck on another literary adaptation. This time, they were tackling author T.V. Olsen ’s western tale, The Stalking Moon . While all the right ingredients were there to score another homerun for this creative team, this project ended up being more of a mixed bag creatively and financially.

The Stalking Moon tells the story of Sam Varner (Gregory Peck), an experienced Indian tracker for the Army who is on the verge of retiring to his ranch. During his last mission, he finds Sarah Carver ( Eva Marie Saint ), a white woman who was captured and held prisoner by the Apache a decade ago. During this time, she has given birth to a half-Indian son (Nolan Clay) whose father, Salvaje, is hell-bent on getting him back no matter who stands in his way. Sam agrees to escort the two to safety away from Salvaje, and eventually invites them to stay on his ranch as his cook and housekeeper. Sarah and her son are not quick to be put at ease, as they know that violence from their past could be right around the corner.

Gregory Peck brings his noble charm and demeanor to Sam, which elevates this movie quite a bit in spite of a mostly uninspired script. Eva Marie Saint is not given a lot to do narratively besides look frightened and gradually soften, but she does her best with what she is given. The film refreshingly does not wade into any sort of romantic territory between Sam and Sarah, allowing the narrative to side step some of the more problematic scenarios that classic Westerns tend to wade through. Although there are issues with the narrative, the film is technically admirable with an enjoyable score and striking visuals. A good portion of the film was filmed on location, which was beautifully shot by Director of Photography Charles Lang .

The pacing of the film is very deliberate with very little action before the climax of the movie, which a little bit of script polishing and editing could have tightened up into something a lot more dramatically satisfying. The attention given to the characters allows you to invest a bit more emotionally, but the lack of urgency they felt to prepare for the incoming danger felt a little unbelievable. As it stands, the movie has a lot of elements to enjoy, but altogether it does not add up to a movie that stands tall in the genre.

Video Quality

Warner Archive presents the film’s 2.35:1 aspect ratio in a new 1080p HD transfer using the AVC codec. Unsurprisingly, Warner Archive once again knocks it out of the park with this stunning presentation that showcases the film’s beautiful landscapes. The transfer is clean throughout with strong black levels, natural film grain and excellent color. The amount of love that this studio puts into their releases is always admired.  

Audio Quality

The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono sound mix is lively and represents the film as it was intended to be heard. There are no instances of damage or hissing in the track and the dialogue is balanced perfectly with the background effects and original score. English subtitles are also provided on this disc. This is a great sounding release that should please fans of the movie.

Special Features

• Theatrical Trailer : The nearly 3-minute spoiler-filled theatrical trailer is presented here in HD. Avoid until after you have seen the movie for maximum enjoyment.

Final Thoughts

The Stalking Moon has a lot of strong elements going for it including a great performance from Gregory Peck and beautiful cinematography. The script unfortunately keeps this one from being an all-time classic, but it nonetheless proves to be an entertaining experience. Warner Archive provides the film with an excellent Blu-Ray with top-notch audio and video quality. Recommended for fans for of the genre or talent involved.

The Stalking Moon can be purchased directly through  Warner Archive  or various other online retailers.

Note: Images presented in this review are not reflective of the image quality of the Blu-Ray.

Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.

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• Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews Dennis Schwartz Talkative and thoughtful Western.
• The Film Yap Christopher Lloyd A well-made but cautious early attempt at a revisionist Western that seems more like a sketch for a grander, grimmer tale the filmmakers weren't ready to tell.
• Film Frenzy Matt Brunson The Stalking Moon is a film in which (with apologies to Aristotle) the sum of its parts is greater than the whole, as a few noteworthy sequences aren't enough to rescue the overall movie.
• Film Comment Magazine Kent Jones Robert Mulligan was the only American filmmaker to wade into such painfully vexing and frightfully bourgeois territory, and come out with a truly great film.

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The Stalking

Cast & crew.

Mark Polonia

Jeff Kirkendall

Justin Gordon

Jada Sanchez

Cody Losinger

Stephen Pflug