Other Titles • The Carpetbaggers • Die Triebhaften (1965) • Die Unersättlichen (1964)
Synopses for The Carpetbaggers (1964)
1.
The Carpetbaggers is the kind of trash classic most people are too embarrassed to admit they actually enjoy. But this Harold Robbins adaptation is so cheerfully vulgar, it's hard not to have a good time--especially given the thinly veiled portrait of Howard Hughes at its center. George Peppard plays the heel-hero, who founds an airline company in the 1920s and buys a movie studio in the 1930s, crushing friends and mistresses along the way. The high cheese factor is aided by the good-time cast: Carroll Baker as Peppard's hot stepmom, Bob Cummings (quite funny) as a cynical agent, and Elizabeth Ashley, who married Peppard, in her debut--uncharacteristically, as a good girl. The sad note is Alan Ladd, looking and sounding very end-of-the-line in his final role, as a man's man cowboy star. Elmer Bernstein's swaggering score helps goose the action along, but the rest is thick melodrama indeed. --Robert Horton
2.
Power and sex are at the heart of this adaptation of Harold Robbins's soap opera bestseller, set in the 1930s and loosely based on the life of Howard Hughes. George Peppard stars as Jonas, a hard-drinking young aircraft tycoon who starts going off the deep end when his tyrannical father (Leif Erikson) dies. After reclaiming the girl his father stole from him (Carroll Baker), Jonas starts producing movies--at first to help his old friend, a silent-film star struggling to make the transition to sound (Alan Ladd) but eventually to placate his out of control ego. After numerous failed marriages and ever-worsening alcoholism, Jonas finally makes an effort to face the demons of his past, but it may be too late.
Director Edward Dmytryk (THE YOUNG LIONS, RAINTREE COUNTY) enlivens this sprawling film with his sense of character and period detail. Peppard is fine as the lead, and Alan Ladd unusually accessible as the aging cowboy star, Nevada Smith. The women in the cast, though, have little to do except manipulate the men for money and sex. Fans of this sort of thing, however, should find such shallowness merely part of the racy, sudsy fun.
3.
Harold Robbins' best-seller about '30s Hollywood comes to the screen in a torrent of frank, controversial and (for the times) sensational scenes that helped break the Production Codes. George Peppard is the ruthless tycoon who (with amazing parallels to Howard Hughes) builds a multi-million dollar empire. Carroll Baker, who performs a razzle-dazzle striptease atop a glittering chandelier, is the Jean Harlow-type star.
In addition to its depiction of the wild life in Tinseltown's early days, the film also boasts Alan Ladd's terrific final screen performance as the hero's sidekick, Nevada Smith.
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