with the consent or cooperation
of the Federal Bureau of
Regulations (F.B.R.) or the Central
Enquiries Agency (C.E.A.). An
resemblance to persons living
or dead is purely coincidental.
And so forth and so on.”
James Coburn could do it all, from action-packed westerns (The Magnificent Seven) to war films (The Great Escape), even the occasional hard-hitting drama (he won his only Academy Award for 1997’s Affliction, in which he played Nick Nolte’s alcoholic father).
Writer / director Theodore Flicker’s The President’s Analyst gave Coburn a chance to stretch his talents across multiple genres, including comedy, action, thriller, even sci-fi. In a career brimming with roles in fascinating movies, The President’s Analyst may just be Coburn’s crowning achievement.
Without realizing it, psychiatrist Sidney Schaefer (Coburn) is being considered for a very important job. A recent patient of his, Don Masters (Godfrey Cambridge) is, in reality, an agent for the United States Central Enquiries Agency, and has been tasked with determining whether or not Sidney is the right man to serve as analyst for the President of the United States!
Despite the apprehension of Henry Lux (Walter Burke), director of the Federal Bureau of Regulations, Sidney is recommended for the job, and before long is living in a spacious house in Georgetown with his live-in girlfriend Nan (Joan Delaney).
Sidney quickly discovers, however, that being the analyst of the most important man in the free world has its drawbacks. Because of the President’s busy schedule, Sidney must be available 24-7, and often is called 3-4 times a day. Also, because the F.B.R. has declared him a possible security risk (because he talks in his sleep), Nan is moved out of the house and put up in a nearby hotel, to prevent her from overhearing potentially “sensitive” information about the President.
Alone and deprived of sleep, Sidney’s paranoia grows, and he believes he sees agents following him at every turn.
Anxious to quit but unable to do so, Sidney does the next best thing: posing as a government employee, he convinces a “typical American family” touring the White House that the President is interested in their opinions regarding his performance, and that he should accompany them home to conduct the interview. So, Sidney hops in a car with Wynn Quantrill (William Daniels), his wife Jeff (Joan Darling), and their son Bing (Sheldon Collins), who live in New Jersey!
The minute he is out of town, agents from all around the world, including Soviet spy Kropotkin (Severn Darden), travel to the U.S. with instructions to abduct Sidney and find out everything he knows about the President. To make matters worse, Lux instructs his F.B.R. team that Sidney is now a security threat, and must be killed.
To prevent this from happening, the C.E.A. tasks Agent Masters with finding the good doctor before anyone else and returning him safely to Washington D.C.
The President’s Analyst starts simply enough, with an overjoyed Sidney relishing the news that he has been chosen to help the President work out his personal issues. In these early scenes, Coburn plays it straight, giving the impression he is every bit the professional psychiatrist. Once the paranoia sets in, however, his performance becomes more manic, as does the pace of the movie. X By the time he’s a wanted man, both he and the story take some very sharp turns. While exiting a downtown Chinese restaurant, Sidney is saved from several enemy agents by the Quantrills (Wynn is a self-professed liberal who carries a handgun, Jeff is a karate student).
To escape, Sidney hitches a ride with a band of musical hippies led by the “Old Wrangler” (Barry McGuire). In what might be the film’s funniest moment, Sidney, decked out in hippie attire, is strolling through an open field with Old Wrangler and a pretty brunette known as Snow White (Jill Banner), not realizing he has been tracked to that location by several foreign spies. Lucky for him, these agents spend more time fighting each other than they do trying to apprehend their target. As the camera pulls back, Sidney, Snow White, and Old Wrangler are walking away, the bodies of a handful of spies littering the ground behind them.
Coburn is superb, playing subdued and strung out equally well, while both Godfrey Cambridge and Severn Darden do a fine job as the agents on Sidney’s trail. In an interesting twist, Masters and Kropotkin, despite the hostilities between their two countries, are close friends, and make a friendly wager with one another as to which will find Sidney first.
While the middle act of The President’s Analyst, starting when Sidney runs away, gets kinda crazy, it’s nothing compared to the unbridled chaos of the final third of the movie, when even the Phone Company wants to get their hands on Sidney! A comedy with a touch of James Bond thrown in, The President’s Analyst is inspired lunacy.
Rating: 9 out of 10
Quite a comedic line-up there, right? So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that the star of the movie was... Jim Hutton!
That’s no slam on Hutton’s abilities. He was quite good in Peckinpah’s Major Dundee as well as the 1973 TV horror film Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. But as the headliner for a supporting cast like this? I feared he may have been out of his element.
But I was wrong. Hutton holds his own as Harry Lucas, a selfish “live for today” playboy who works for the U.S. Treasury in Washington D.C., and makes a mistake that, if uncovered, could land him in prison.
While disposing of some terrible fudge that lovestruck co-worker Verna (Provine) made for him, Harry accidentally destroys $50,000 in newly minted bills! His boss, Samson Link (David J. Stewart), already doesn’t trust Harry, and is sure he has been doctoring the books and swiping gobs of cash. But Harry is innocent of any wrongdoing… until now!
Desperate to replace the money, Harry comes up with a scheme to break into the building at night through the sewer system and have his old friend Pop (Brennan), a former printer for the Treasury, run him off $50k in cash so he can replace the money and keep his job.
Of course, they’re going to need some help to pull it off, specifically from safecracker and former convict Dugan (Gilford), who is the only one that can open the safe where the currency plates are stored. One slight hitch, however: after 10 years of working a noisy prison metal press, poor Dugan is practically deaf!
So, it's off to a pawn shop owned by Luther (Berle) to pick up a used hearing aid. A natural con man, Luther gets wind of the scheme and demands to be cut in. Also recruited to help are Ralph (Bishop), a compulsive gambler who knows the sewers; a former sea captain (Buono) to build them a boat (the sewers get pretty deep in that area of D.C.); and ice cream truck driver Willie (Denver), who must distract Imogene (Jackie Joseph), a busybody living in an apartment overlooking the manhole where they will enter the sewers.
But just as it all seems to be coming together, Harry’s partners, who initially agreed to help for $2,000 apiece, decide they want more.
How much more? A million each!
His back against the wall, Harry has no choice but to give in, and hopes that Verna, who also agreed to help him out of this pickle, won’t turn them in when Pop starts running off more $100 bills than she was promised.
He may not get as many laughs as his co-stars, but Hutton makes for a likable lead. We want to see Harry get out of this jam, and feel for him when his partners prove greedier than he ever imagined.
That said, he is outshined at almost every turn by the supporting cast. The standouts are Berle as the shifty Luther, the ringleader who convinces the others they deserve more than $2,000; Gilford as the hearing-impaired crook whose loud “whispers” almost give the caper away on more than one occasion; and Buono, whose over-the-top accent should have gotten old after a while, but instead managed to make his character more endearing.
As for the comedy, it is not side-splitting stuff, but the movie has its moments. Most of which are in the final act, when the break-in is in full swing. A subplot involving Pop’s very pregnant dog, who he brings along so he does not miss the birth, results in some tensely funny scenes when the pooch wanders off.
Though not as laugh-out-loud funny as other ‘60s star-studded comedies like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Who’s Minding the Mint? is pleasantly entertaining, and a movie that, even if it doesn’t linger long in your memory, you’ll be happy you watched.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Directed by Gene Saks (the same guy who tackled Simon’s cinematic version of The Odd Couple), Barefoot in the Park stars Jane Fonda and Robert Redford as newlyweds who have very little in common. Fonda is Corie, a free spirit who loves trying new things. Redford (reprising his role from the play) is Paul, an up-and-coming lawyer who loves his new bride, even if she does get a bit out of hand sometimes.
After a 6-day honeymoon at the Plaza, the couple moves into a tiny 5th floor apartment in Greenwich Village. There’s no elevator; everyone has to walk up five flights of stairs to visit them (six if you count the stoop out front). Also, there’s no bathtub (just a shower); a double bed likely won’t fit in the tiny bedroom; the heat doesn’t work; and there’s a hole in the skylight. Still, Corie loves her new home. As for the reserved Paul, he’s too focused on his first big case to pay the poor living conditions much mind.
Their first guest (aside from Harry, played by Herb Edelman, who installed their phone) is Corie’s mother (Mildred Natwick), who, despite the long climb and lack of furniture (it won’t be delivered until the next day), says she likes the place, though she tends to agree with Paul that it’s a bit… cramped!
Later that night (actually, early the next morning), Corie and Paul meet their upstairs neighbor, Victor Velasco (Charles Boyer), an older playboy who, like Corie, gets a kick out of life.
The first hiccup in their very short marriage comes when Corie sets her mother up with Victor, and he treats them to a meal at a very exclusive Albanian restaurant. Paul is none too pleased that Corie tried to hook her poor mother up with their boisterous neighbor, while Corie thinks Paul should loosen up. She chastises him for, among other things, not agreeing to walk barefoot in the park the other night (Paul points out it is February, and it was 17 degrees outside at the time).
All at once, the couple realizes they may be poorly matched. But will love win out in the end?
As with any play, or indeed any screen version of a play, it’s the cast that makes Barefoot in the Park so damned entertaining. Redford is stiff yet likable as the serious-minded Paul, while Charles Boyer lights up the screen as the eccentric neighbor.
That said, it’s the ladies who steal this particular show. Fonda is so bubbly, so wonderfully flighty as Corie that, by the time the film is over, every guy in the audience will have a crush on her; her cheery disposition and unbridled optimism are infectious. Even the guy from the phone company, who was none too pleased to have climbed so many flights of stairs, comes to like Corie before his job is done.
Matching Fonda every step of the way is Mildred Natwick as Corie’s mom, whose sensitive constitution is given a workout during her “date” with Victor (she’s so wiped out from the spicy food and alcohol that Paul has to carry her up the stairs!). Yet while they often don’t see eye-to-eye on some things, Corie and her mom have a genuinely loving relationship, and the scenes in which the two are chatting are among the movie’s best.
This isn’t the first filmed version of Barefoot in the Park I’ve seen. In the early ‘80s, HBO produced a made-for-TV version of a performance at Seattle’s Moore theater, which starred Richard Thomas as Paul and Bess Armstrong as Corie. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I have to say 1967’s rendition is even better. With its strong cast and Simon’s patented wit (the running joke about the number of stairs never gets stale), Barefoot in the Park is a real charmer!
Rating: 9 out of 10
