#anna moffo

Candice Bergen during production of the Paramount Pictures/Lewis Gilbert lusty potboiler The Adventurers in Rome, Italy, photos by Ron Galella, September 3rd, 1968. Adapted from a bestselling 1966 Harold Robbins novel loosely based on the life of infamous Dominican diplomat and playboy Porfirio Rubirosa (who dumped Zsa Zsa Gabor to marry Woolworth's heiress Barbara Hutton in 1953), the movie featured an all-star cast which included Candice, Olivia de Havilland, Rossano Brazzi, Charles Aznavour, Ernest Borgnine, and Leigh Taylor-Young. Clocking in at a laborious three hours, the movie had a gimmicky premiere staged by actor-turned-Paramount Pictures studio head Robert Evans on February 23rd, 1970 during a TWA 747 Superjet flight traveling from New York to Los Angeles with Evans, some of the films stars, and members of the press onboard (Bergen and de Havilland wisely stayed home). The jet was also making its debut, marking the first time a film and an airplane were introduced simultaneously. Cast-member Leigh Taylor-Young later told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020: "The thing I most remember was that there was no way to walk out. If you didn't like the movie, you were stuck." Chicago Tribune reviewer Gene Siskel stated: "The carpet was so thick, it swallowed my loafers." The film's director, Lewis Gilbert, thoroughly loathed the experience, commenting to reporters afterward: "Seeing it on the plane was ghastly! It's not meant to be shown on a plane." Guests on the flight were served champagne and duck à l'orange, and the event (which cost Paramount $250,000 and was described in the press at the time as "a debacle") started 45 minutes late after a phoned-in bomb threat delayed take-off and ended badly with the passengers stuck on board circling LAX for an additional hour until the in-flight movie finally ended. Savaged by critics on the flight, The Adventurers was released in earthbound cinemas on March 25th, 1970 and despite the film's star-studded cast, a massive budget, international production locales and lengthy filming schedule, it promptly bombed at the box office with The Monthly Film Reviewer commenting: "This might be described as the film with everything; trouble is, it is difficult to imagine anybody wanting any of it." After Paramount hastily re-cut the movie to try to salvage some of their production costs, The New Yorker's critic Pauline Kael and Newsweek's Joe Morgenstern, among others, pointedly avoided watching it a second time after being trapped on the plane for hours during the celluloid clinker's mid-air premiere.