Les Ambitieux

If you don't know who Alan Ladd is, then disregard the rest of this review. Without Ladd, this is a fun, early 60s splashy scandalous colorful morality tale with pricey production values. With Ladd, it's a study of old hollywood historical roman a clefs surrounding Howard Hughes and the early days of moving pictures. Ladd, a hollywood legend who the fans loved, but who critics usually dismissed, and whose star had faded to a dim glow by now, plays a role he's too old for, but works it beyond his historical acting abilities, and gives this big hit of its time the only soul it has. This movie is doubly good if you love movies and know a bit about hollywood history.

Harold Robbins' door-stopper of a novel "The Carpetbaggers" was a piece of trash and there was no way director Edward Dmytryk was going to make a silk purse out of that sow's ear while John Michael Hayes' screenplay certainly 'honored' Robbins' intentions. The central character of Jonas Cord was said to be based on Howard Hughes and given the material he had to work with, George Peppard is actually not at all bad. Of course, the movie itself is terrible, (how could it not be), but it's still ridiculously entertaining and it has a great cast; Alan Ladd, in what was to be his last role, Carroll Baker, Robert Cummings, Elizabeth Ashley, (both excellent), Martha Hyer, Lew Ayres and Martin Balsam. It may not be quite a laugh a minute but it comes close.

Harold Robbins' potboiler comes to the screen, trying to be something it isn't. Main character Jonas Cord is supposedly based on Howard Hughes, but George Peppard doesn't really convince in this role. Perhaps you need more than just good looks to be a trash fiction hero. Alan Ladd, in his final role, plays Nevada Smith, older friend of Cord and washed-up movie star – the role was played by Steve McQueen in a later film – and is okay, but again, somehow not quite right. Carroll 'Baby Doll' Baker is Cord's predatory step-mother; Elizabeth Ashley, Leif Erickson, Robert Cummings, Lew Ayres, Audrey Totter and Martha Hyer also contribute. Perhaps the problem with 'The Carpetbaggers' is that it is never in danger of progressing beyond a simmer and the film really needs more to do the novel justice. This aside, it is fairly enjoyable as a time-filler and has moments enough not to completely disappoint: it also pointed the way for the glossy US soap operas of the 1970s and 1980s.

I'd heard of this movie, but had never gotten around to watching it... I was impressed by the quality of the script in some scenes and then let down in others... Interesting characters, though stereotypical. The pretty blonds, the cowboy, the drunks, the agents but one character stands out, and that is the wife of power hungry industrialist, Monica Wintrop. You think she'll flake but she keeps on going and in the end well... I won't spoil it for you! I think she has the best line in the movie. Here it goes: When her husband asks if she's pregnant: "It happens, you know, look at all the people in China!... Besides, accidents happen mostly in the home."

Howard Hughes? Not really. George Peppard sketches a character without ever inhabit him. It's all effect. Carroll Baker, the brilliant Baby Doll, surrenders to the marketing demands and she revisits her aggressively sexual creature with more sparkle but less depth. Alan Ladd is the one that touches personal buttons and he is wonderful. Edward Dmytryck doesn't find a real center to Harold Robbins melodrama. Elizabeth Ashley's character exemplifies what I'm trying to say. Her journey is quite simply, absurd. She loves him and she hates him in a surprisingly unpredictable pattern. Absurd to such point that's not even entertaining but irritating. - As a side note, I had the experience to watch this movie on TCM with 5 twentysomethings - They laughed and laughed as if it was a hysterical comedy - I asked them what was so funny and their replay was, everything.

Like Charles Foster Kane, Jonas Cord is far more dashing and virile than the fellow this film carefully avoids claiming he was actually based on. Harold Robbins' trashy 1961 bestseller cashing in on the late fifties fascination with the Roaring Twenties erupted into this Technicolor nonsense with a once in a lifetime cast (it was the debut of Elizabeth Ashley and the posthumous swansong of Alan Ladd). George Peppard is a much more rugged adventurer than the man it's not based on (who's actual story just continued to get weirder and weirder for another ten years after this version abruptly ends).