With the recent death of writer/actor Buck Henry, I have a habit of looking back at a person's work. Henry created the televison series "Get Smart," adapted "The Graduate" and "Catch-22" for the screen. He co-directed and appeared in "Heaven Can Wait." Other screenplay credits include "The Owl" and the "Pussycat," "What's Up Doc?,"" The Day of the Dolphin" and "To Die For."
Then there's "Candy" (1968).
Henry's follow-up to working on "The Graduate" was to adapt Terry Southern's 1958 novel, which satirized pronographic novels. It's the story of a naive-but-stacked high school girl and gaggle of older men who lust after her.
Adapting a novel for the screen is always a task (what stays and what goes?), but apparently Henry took the satire of Mr. Southern's work and whittled it down to one long Little Annie Fanny comic. Little Annie Fanny was a comic strip (pun intended) that appeared in Playboy magazine for over a quarter-century. A buxom blonde who winds up naked and surrounded by R-rated Tex Avery cartoon characters.
That's the film "Candy" in a nushell. A slew of big-name actors of the late '60s figuratively masturbating around a young starlet. The shell of Harvey Weinstein probably thinks this is a documentary.
After a couple minutes of footage from space to Earth (to imply that Candy is not of this world?) Candy Christian (Ewa Aulin) is a high school student whose widower father (John Astin) is a teacher. The school is excited over the appearance of poet MacPhisto (Richard Burton) who will read some of his poems to his adoring public and be the first man to notice Candy.
The only thing missing from this film is the old-fashioned car horn that goes "AAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOGGGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!"
A little bit about our star as Candy. Ewa Aulin was a Miss Teen Sweden in 1965 at age 15. A year later, she represented Sweden in the Miss Teen International pageant in Hollywood, which she won. Then came the old, male film producers. After appearing in a couple Italian films, Candy would mark her Hollywood debut.
Her only other American film was "Start the Revolution Without Me" in 1970. She would get married, be out of show business four years later and become a teacher. She's not asked to do much in Candy besides look pretty and pretty much say things like "What are you doing?" to her male co-stars. This film is not her fault.
I will say this about Richard Burton, who has more than his share of cinematic junk: he brings a couple true laughs to this film as a rock star poet with an open-shirt and billowing scarf. No matter where he goes, wind blows upon on his face and his long-for-him hair. It looks like he hired someone to follow him with a fan at all times.
After leaving his poetry recital and being chased by his adoring high school female fans, he goes up some stairs and the girls literally kiss the steps his stepped on. I'm sure Elizabeth Taylor was thrilled.
The poet gives Candy a ride home. Oh and the poet's driver is played by former boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson. Liquor is poured (it is Burton) and he puts the moves on Candy, spilling his drink. She offers to wash his booze-soaked pants down in her basement. Upon arriving home, Candy's Mexican gardnerner Emmanuel (Ringo Starr, yes, Ringo Starr) helps Candy bring the poet down to the basement. Then Emmanuel helps himself on top of Candy while MacPhisto dry-humps a mannequin which looks a lot like Candy. That's when dad shows up.
What was supposed to be a laugh riot sex farce moment, all I could think of was, "This film has Richard Burton, Ringo Starr, Sugar Ray Robinson, John Astin and Miss Teen Sweden not just in the same film, but in the same scene. How did this get made?"
Candy is sent away by her father from Generic Midwest Town U.S.A. to New York City to live with his twin brother (also John Astin, I'm sure ex-wife Patty Duke was thrilled). Then comes a series of lumbering transitions to get Candy from being the object of lust from one older guy to the next.
An Army general (Walter Matthau), a surgeon with the swagger of a bullfighter (James Coburn, who also made me laugh with his surgical techniques), the hospital administrator (John Huston, six years before Chinatown), a mob boss (Umberto Orsini), an avant-garde filmmaker (Enrico Maria Salerno) and finally a guru living out of the back of a semi-trailer truck. The guru Grindl played by... Marlon Brando.
Brando and director Christian Marquand were close friends. Brando's son Christian was named after Marquand. Apparently, it was Brando's commitment to the project that led to this film being made. I'd love to see a documentary about the making of "Candy."
By the late 60s, Brando was labeled a box office headache and barely got work in the states. Brando said yes and then everyone else hopped on?
(Actor picks up hone) Agent: Got a film for you. Actor: Yeah? Agent: You'll play a (occupation). Brando's already signed on. Actor: OK. Agent: You'll do scenes with a Miss Teen International. Actor: I'm in.
Marquand was a French actor who appeared in Jean Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast," Luchino Visconti's "Sense" and Roger Vadim's "And God Created Woman." In Hollywood, he was the French Naval Commando leader in "The Longest Day" and appeared in "Behold a Pale Horse," "Lord Jim" and "The Flight of the Phoenix." He was also the plantation owner in the deleted scenes of "Apocalypse Now."
"Candy" (the film) clocks in at over two hours. That's a lot of time with men huffing and puffing over a teenager. I'm guessing each star required an allotted amount of time to drool over Candy.
There's also some music of the era (Steppenwolf, The Byrds) and the film ends with Candy walking across a hippie-drenched field, seeing her co-stars one more time. Candy keeps on walking as if she were unscathed by this cinematic mess. Oh, the guru may have been her father, but that's no never mind to this film. One could have easily sliced about 40 minutes out of Candy and still maintained the cinematic dignity of lusting after someone half their age.
"Candy" the film was an uncomfortable mess before the #MeToo movement. It's even worse now. Someday I would like to read Terry Southern's novel and see what happened in the adaptation. "Candy" the film wanted to be a counter-culture sex farce in 1968. While it may have been risque to Suburban America then, Candy the film is the cinematic equivilent of construction guys whistling at a young girl passing by.
Matthew Socey is the host of Film Soceyology for wfyi.org.