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Peck’s last Western
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Gregory Peck’s last excursion in our noble genre was a ‘matzo-ball western’. Or it was filmed in Israel anyway. But this is no cheap Eurotrash; it’s a classy, gritty, tight tale written by the excellent Alan Sharp (Ulzana’s Raid) but this time with Peck in the aging toughie role instead of Burt Lancaster.
Perhaps because Sharp was a Scot, Peck had to play one. This was unfortunate, as it always is when Hollywood actors try foreign accents. Gregory makes a good stab at it but it never really works. Even when specialists like Meryl Streep do it, it still sounds phony. It’s a pity because Peck is after all Peck and was always splendid in Westerns.
The setting is the same as that of Ulzana, Arizona, and we have desert and Apaches. There is almost something Elmore Leonardish about the tale. It’s spare, convincing, realistic.
Mediocre bank robber Arch Deans (Peck) rescues his friend and partner, Billy (Desi Arnaz Jr., very good) from the clutches of Sheriff Gifford (Jack Warden, excellent) and his friend Copeland (David Huddleston, also top class), owner of a ratty saloon in the middle of nowhere. I also liked Copeland’s stout Indian wife (Dawn Little Sky), stoic and imperturbable. The sheriff has his prejudices but tries to be a decent man. Copeland is old but still hoping for better things.
It’s a pursuit drama. The law chases the fugitives through the desert as they try to cross over into Sonora. They pay a farmer (John Pearce, solid) to carry broken-legged Deans to San Carlos in a wagon. Billy meanwhile stays with the farmer’s young stuttering wife Esther (Sian Barbara Allen, good). The Apaches intervene. One has a parasol.
The Israeli scenery is fine – arid and hostile – and very well photographed by Brian West. The music (John Scott) is dark and modern and rather good. The costumes and production design (Anthony Pratt) are very convincing and the look of the thing is right. The Apaches’ teeth are rotting. It was directed by one Ted Kotcheff, not the first name that springs to your mind when you think of Western directors but he did a good job. Pursuit tales can move very slowly and seem long. This one has enough tension and pace to keep us gripped. Kotcheff elicited good performances from the cast. Of course he had Peck, but the others shine too.
This is a good little Western. It’s not Peck’s best (after all, it would be very hard to better The Gunfighter or The Bravados) but it’s rather like The Stalking Moon of five or six years previously: it’s a tense, well-written, exciting drama with fine performances. Pity about that accent.
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5 Responses
Probably didn’t like it as much as Jeff but it was OK. Wish the rest of the film was as good as the first 30 min. Peck’s accent didn’t bother me, but then I’m not from Great Britain.
To British (and Irish) ears, unfortunately Peck’s accent can only be heard as awful, despite his performance otherwise being good. If only he’d been asked to speak in his own accent it would have been a great performance. I’m not sure why – presumably a dialect coach could explain – but I’ve heard American actors manage decent English and Irish accents but for some reason have never heard any do a convincing Scottish one. Despite this, I quite like this film! It has enough bleakness of atmosphere, tension of plot and intriguing enough character dynamics to make it a solid, if strictly grade B, oater, at a time when few of quality were being made…
In fairness, Sean Connery performed all his ‘American’ roles in his Edinburgh brogue…
Billy Two Hats remains the only american western shot entirely in Israel, hence its Matzah Western nickname, and one of the few films made in Israel with no actual plot connection to the region itself.
During the filming of Jesus Christ Superstar, Norman Jewison, the film’s director and producer, discovered Israel’s potential as a desert setting. It was exactly what he needed for another film he would end up producing at the same time, Billy Two Hats.
It was filmed around Eilat, in the Timna Valley known for its old copper mines, nicknamed “King Solomon’s Mines”, providing the distinct, rugged rock formations of the wagon’s “siege”.
The homestead scenes were shot the in Negev Desert (between Ashkelon and Beer-Sheba)
A western town with a 250-yard street, where begins the film, designed by Fernando Carrere was built by Harry Arbour, who worked on the bridge for The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
on the outskirts of Tel Aviv by the Chicago-based Sarco Westerns International Ltd. for $250,000, and instantly dubbed Sarcoville.
Sarco’s costs were a quarter of what they would have been with an American crew…
Magazine Variety noted that the Israeli locations sparked antagonism with American film unions, who identified the film as a “runaway” production. As described in the news item, there had been increasing concern among unions that Hollywood studios were filming abroad to exploit inexpensive labor.
The unions’ objection to Israeli locations was compounded because the film was a Western. According to a union leader, it was not necessary to move the production to Israel because the film’s sites were representative of places on American soil…
Jewison’s friend and fellow Canadian, Ted Kotcheff, brought on to direct the film because of his proclivity for shooting on location in natural settings, said he appreciated the opportunity to film Billy Two Hats in Israel but he was not pleased with his foreign crew and noted that they “don’t know the meaning of the word Hurry.”…
Its production took two months and involved an extensive Israeli staff, including two actors: Zeev Berlinsky (The Apache killed by Peck on the wagon) and Nathan Cogan. Berlinsky was an experienced theater and film actor who was among the founders of the Cameri and Sambation theaters. On set, Berlinsky told a reporter: “I was killed dozens of times by Gregory Peck. It was an unusual pleasure to be killed by this great actor.”
Peck’s double, Gadi Katz, was also Israeli.
He was hired at first to be a local guide for the production and did not even dream of actually taking part in the film, but due to his clear physical similarity to the star of the movie, he was immediately chosen to be Peck’s double. This didn’t surprise him at all: “When I was in the United States, where I met my wife, a few girls stopped me and asked for an autograph.”
Peck explained to the press during the filming of BTH: “Eilat is a wonderful place for the film industry. There is a combination here of Colorado, Arizona, Wyoming, and California. Who could ask for more?”.
A documentary telling the story of the filming of Billy Two Hats, meant to attract more production companies to the Holy Land, was narrated by Peck himself. Unfortunately, I have not found it.
Filming in Israel was part of an ambitious, yet ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to establish the Eilat region as a global hub for Hollywood-level film productions.
One of the world’s most famous celebrities also arrived in Israel to support her partner, who was acting in the film: Liza Minnelli came to spend time with her young fiancé, Desi Arnaz Jr. bringing more coverage to the entreprise…
Several films were shot such as Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One and orhers produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus brothers and their Cannon company. They brought many Hollywood productions such as Brooke Shields’ Sahara, Stallone’s Over the Top, and Chuck Norris’ Delta Force. The movies were not particularly high quality, to say the least, but they were very successful and brought a lot of money into the country.
The Intifada that broke out in the late 1980s and all that came after brought the saga of Hollywood movies in Israel to an end: the high costs of production, which certainly increased after the inflation of the mid-eighties, combined with the security situation, made Israel an unattractive destination fir the international film industry. And insurance companies simply refused to insure the actors.
This text comes partly from an article written by Reut Gawiser in June 2024 in The Librarians Web site, according to several 1970s Israeli newspapers articles and Variety’s extracts.
The Stalking Moon (1968) is far superior in my opinion. Nevertheless, Billy Two Hats (or The Lady and the Outlaw as it was retitled when aired on TV because it had been a flop in theaters) is a good film if you accept it can drag here and there especially the last 30 minutes – but without the tension of the Mulligan’s movie – AND Peck’s accent (they should have picked up Sean Connery’s instead if they wanted this accent so desperately… or spend the money hiring a coach for Mr Peck, excellent notwithstanding, in his “end of the Trail” role along with outstanding Jack Warden (juror #7 in 12 Angry Men, who wants a quick decision and does not care about justice) playing a racist very convincingly.