Tagged: Richard Benjamin
The Last of Sheila: Richard Benjamin’s Safari Jacket
Richard Benjamin and Joan Hackett in The Last of Sheila (1973)
Vitals
Richard Benjamin as Tom Parkman, spaghetti western screenwriter
French Riviera, Late summer 1972
Film: The Last of Sheila
Release Date: June 14, 1973
Director: Herbert Ross
Costume Designer: Joel Schumacher
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
I’ll bet you haven’t seen the last of Sheila! (Okay, so maybe you have seen this movie, but I can’t resist a pun.)
Released 50 years ago today on Flag Day 1973, The Last of Sheila was penned by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, inspired by the real-life scavenger hunts and murder parties that they used to organize for fellow friends in show business, from actors to agents like Sue Mengers. Director Herbert Ross had been part of the festivities at one point, telling Sondheim and Perkins to collaborate on a screenplay based on their parlor games, and it was Ross who ended up helming The Last of Sheila.
(It’s been reported that Mengers was actually offered a role in The Last of Sheila, but she turned it down as she wasn’t a professional actress and wanted to avoid taking work she felt her clients deserved, and she talked a characteristically effervescent Dyan Cannon into playing the part she inspired.)
The Last of Sheila has been the subject of renewed attention in recent years, thanks in part to Rian Johnson citing it as inspiration for Knives Out and its sequel, Glass Onion, both of which clearly share Sheila‘s DNA with their star-studded casts, plot complexity, and the balance of comic light-heartedness and deadly suspense, as well as specific plot elements like misinterpreted manners of death, a Mediterranean Sea full of red herrings, and an eccentric host welcoming a coterie of famous friends for a mystery party.
The film begins after colorful producer Clinton Greene (James Coburn) lost his wife Sheila in a mysterious hit-and-run accident. To commemorate the one-year anniversary of Sheila’s death, Clinton invites his friends—”six hungry failures”—to spend a week in the Ligurian Sea on the yacht he had named for her, including vivacious talent agent Christine (Dyan Cannon), washed-up director Philip Dexter (James Mason), in-demand actress Alice Wood (Raquel Welch) and her shady husband and promoter Anthony (Ian McShane), and desperate screenwriter Tom Parkman (Richard Benjamin) and his cautious, witty wife Lee (Joan Hackett). Continue reading
Goodbye, Columbus: Neil’s Date Night Seersucker
Richard Benjamin as Neil Klugman in Goodbye, Columbus (1969)
Vitals
Richard Benjamin as Neil Klugman, listless library employee and Army veteran
Westchester, New York, Summer 1968
Film: Goodbye, Columbus
Release Date: April 3, 1969
Director: Larry Peerce
Costume Designer: Gene Coffin
Background
In addition to today being the birthday of star Richard Benjamin—born on this day in 1938—today also marks three years since the death of Philip Roth, who died of congestive heart failure on May 22, 2018. Roth’s novella Goodbye, Columbus provided the source material for Ali MacGraw’s major screen debut acting opposite Benjamin.
Goodbye, Columbus has been favorably compared to The Graduate, inviting parallels with its similar-looking leads: a somewhat awkward, naive, and listless young man romancing a dark-haired “princess” against her parents’ wishes (though for a dramatically different reason than the Robinsons had), scored against the backdrop of a hip band from the late ’60s, in this case The Association as opposed to Simon & Garfunkel’s famous soundtrack for The Graduate.
Goodbye, Columbus: Neil’s Corduroy Blazer
Richard Benjamin as Neil Klugman in Goodbye, Columbus (1969)
Vitals
Richard Benjamin as Neil Klugman, listless library employee and Army veteran
Radcliffe College (Cambridge, Massachusetts), Fall 1968
Film: Goodbye, Columbus
Release Date: April 3, 1969
Director: Larry Peerce
Costume Designer: Gene Coffin
WARNING! Spoilers ahead!
Background
Based on a novella by Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus marked the first major screen appearances for both Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw, who would receive a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer and a Laurel Award for Female New Face.
Goodbye, Columbus was released two years after The Graduate (though Roth’s source novella was published four years before Charles Webb’s The Graduate), and the similarities invited comparison between the two, with some critics like Dennis Schwartz favoring Goodbye, Columbus though it would be far lesser-known in the decades to follow. Continue reading