Flashback Friday: 1969 in Hollywood

For most of the 1960s, Hollywood was the last place you'd go to find the pulse of the pop culture. Movie attendance had reached all-time lows. The studios were crumbling -- most film lots were either up for sale, being rented out or looked like decaying junkyards. The movies were so archaic and out of touch with the times that for a three-year period in the mid-1960s, the Oscars for best picture (supposedly marking the best movies Hollywood could offer) went to a string of cobwebby costume musicals and dramas: "My Fair Lady," "The Sound of Music" and "A Man for All Seasons."

The real excitement was over on the Sunset Strip, where an exciting new generation of bands -- the Byrds, the Doors, Love, the Buffalo Springfield and the Mamas and the Papas, just to name a few -- were popping up on practically every block. 

But in 1969, everything started to change. In that year, between April and December, an amazing swell of groundbreaking films opened in Los Angeles and eventually across the rest of the country. They included "Easy Rider," "Midnight Cowboy," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "The Wild Bunch," "Bob &  Carol & Ted & Alice," "Medium Cool," "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?," "Take the Money and Run" and "Goodbye Columbus."  A host of young unknowns became stars overnight, notably Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda, Robert Redford, Jon Voight, Ali MacGraw, Dyan Cannon and Elliott Gould.

Ten years ago, I spent a few weeks digging through the archives and interviewing a host of stars and filmmakers -- some of whom are now deceased -- to try to capture some of the spirit of the times. As the summer goes on, I'll periodically revisit some of the highlights of what these mavericks and rebels had to say about their efforts to topple the old, established order.

If any one incident captured the Young Turks' attitude toward their elders, it would be "Easy Rider" director Dennis Hopper's encounter with the venerable George Cukor at a swank Beverly Hills dinner party. Unhappy with what he perceived as Cukor's dismissive attitude toward his much-celebrated new film, Hopper poked a finger in Cukor's chest and snarled, "We're gonna bury you. You're finished."

So here, in their own words, are some memories from the people who helped change the face of the movie business. Today we hear about the outrageous goings-on during the making of "Bob & Carol & Ted &  Alice," Paul Mazursky's 1969 film that offered a breezy, satirical look at the new sexual mores of the time:

Paul Mazursky, director: "I'd seen a story in Time magazine about Fritz Perls sitting naked in a hot tub in Esalen, so my wife and I went to a marathon 48-hour encounter group, and after we came back, Larry Tucker and I wrote the movie. The business was very open then. If you were a hot young guy, you could get almost anything made. When we'd have a studio meeting, we'd show up wearing velvet pants, granny glasses and as many beads as possible because we wanted everyone to know we were far-out. Of course, the first guy who read the script said it was too dirty. And I said, 'What if we had Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward?' And he said, 'Well, then it wouldn't be so dirty.' "

Dyan Cannon, actress: "The day we had to do the scene where we all got in bed together, we were all a wreck. Bob Culp was so nervous that he talked a mile a minute; and Natalie Wood -- at first she wouldn't even come out of her trailer. It was my first big movie and I was panicked about having to take my bra off. I kept thinking, 'People are going to see me without my clothes on the really big screen.' "

Elliott Gould, actor: "I was very inhibited. I didn't want to get naked or interact sexually with the other actors. In the scene where I have to take my underwear off under the covers, I was so shy that I put on two pairs of jockey shorts before I got in bed."

Mazursky: "We all smoked pot and did crazy things. We had a New Year's Eve party that year where it was really two different parties -- the 50 people who were straight and the 50 people who were on acid. I think five marriages broke up that night."

Gould: "I thought Bob Culp was this incredibly smooth and sophisticated guy because he'd already been a star on shows like 'I Spy.' So after we'd shot the scene where we all smoke pot together, I asked him after work if he wanted to smoke some real pot with me. And he got so high that he passed out. He'd never actually smoked pot before."

Cannon: "Natalie Wood and I became friends working on the movie. I was in awe of her because she had it in her contract that she got an hour off to see her psychiatrist. I always wondered -- when I'm a star, will I need to see a psychiatrist too?"

Photo of Natalie Wood, Dyan Cannon, Elliott Gould and Robert Culp in "Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice" by Corbis/Bettman

Comments

[What happened?]

Why haven't we been able to make great films and great music ever since then? I was a kid in the 60s and 70s and was promised a different world than what we have now...

[b Crumpacker]

1. Classic touchy feely self delusion: Robert Culp assuring his wife's tennis pro lover that he's NOT angry after catching them in bed.

2. As the four stars undressed for the painfully awkward bed scene, I noted that Natalie Wood and Dyan Cannon were in great shape, even by today's standards; and that hairy, nerdy Elliot Gould was definitely the booby prize.

3. Great theme music by Burt Bacharach.

Overall, a very good time capsule.

[Ken]

"My Fair Lady" was only around 10 years old at the time. I don't think the time setting of a movie is a good criterion for its quality. There's room for all sorts of movies. Some people might say that the hip pop culture movies of the late sixties have actually dated. Thank you for the story on "Bob&Ted&Carol&Alice". I like Paul Mazursky too. "Next Stop In Greenwich Village" is one of my favorite movies. "An Unmarried Woman" was really good too. Thanks for the history lesson about Hollywood forty years ago.

[konsyltacii.com]

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[Rick Mitchell]

Mr. Goldstein and other commentators on the relationship of films and the times of their release either forget or don't know that there is an average two year lag between when a film, especially a big studio film, is greenlit and its release. By law the studios have to announce their planned releases for a given year at the beginning of that period and it takes six months to a year to access the commercial response to those films and make new plans for the future. Thus those films that looked so dated in 1967-68 seemed like valid prospects from the perspective of 1966 when most of them were greenlit. And, as usual, Hollywood was uncertain about how to respond to the social changes of that time and the degree to which they had moved into the world beyond the LA Westside and its New York equivalent. Remember, most of the 1969 films you mention were greenlit and shot in late 1967 and 1968. It should be noted that the smaller independent companies of the time were more in tune with what was going on, though they weren't making the kind of films defind today as "independent." Most notable was American International Pictures, which could get a film in theaters faster than the major studios, as with RIOT ON SUNSET STRIP, which was released five months after the event, even if it really was not an accurate picture of what was happening.

Rick Mitchell
Film Editor/ Film Historian

[Vanessa]

Why is Natalie Wood included in the quotes but not listed as one of the stars? She is younger than Ali MacGraw and Dyan Cannon. But I guess she wasn't considered "unknown" since she had been in movies since age 4.

[Vanessa]

Why is Natalie Wood included in the quotes but not listed as one of the stars? She is younger than Ali MacGraw and Dyan Cannon. But I guess she wasn't considered "unknown" since she had been in movies since age 4.

[Larry sand]

I think Mr. Goldstein must wear rose tinted granny glasses. He speaks glowingly of the sixties and all that went with it. But he glosses over so much that is right under his nose - grown ups undressing in public, marriages breaking up, an actress who needs to see a psychiatrist in the middle of her work day, etc. Where Mr. Goldstein sees excitement, I see cultural decay.

[Vanessa]

Natalie Wood was BY FAR the best looking and most talented of these women. She's younger than Ali Macgraw and Dyan Cannon too.