Coming up soon on TCM is an interesting political thriller by John Frankenheimer that usually gets lost in the shuffle. Seven Days in May (1964) is based on the novel by Fletcher Knebel and was co-authored by Charles W. Bailey II, with a script by Rod Serling. Knebel’s career in writing was sparked by a chapter he wrote on John F. Kennedy in the book Candidates (1960). Bailey was a journalist, newspaper editor, and novelist. The book was on the New York Times bestseller list for almost a year and was a personal favorite of J.F.K. – which was no surprise, given that the subject matter was inspired by an interview Knebel did of Kennedy’s Navy Secretary, John Connally, at the Pentagon. As director/writer/professor Alex Cox points out in the book he published last year, The President and the Provocateur, in Knebel’s interview: “Connally spoke of ‘the frustrations of his admirals, who bridled under the restraints of civilian leadership, and felt muzzled in their political expression.’ Connally, as Knebel understood him, seemed to be musing that possession of nuclear weapons might lead the United States to become a military dictatorship.”
To understand the complexities behind the politics of who, or what, has had the authority to launch a nuclear strike over the years, I’d highly recommend Eric Schlosser’s book Command and Control (2013) – a gripping read that leaves one with the impression that the military and political characters in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (released the same year as Seven Days in May: 1964) were relatively accurate representations of the personalities pulling at the levers of power. Especially General Buck Turgidson’s inspiration, Curtis LeMay (also interviewed by Knebel), or the man behind General Jack D. Ripper; General Edwin Walker. The bottom line is this: most folks living in the U.S. would like to think of military coups as something that happens in foreign countries, but people in positions of great power, including Kennedy, thought otherwise. And look what happened to him.
For Kennedy, the Seven Days in May novel described a credible scenario, one he felt was important to take beyond the cultural impact it had on the New York Time‘s best-seller list. He wanted it made into a movie and told his Press Secretary, Pierre Salinger, to nudge John Frankenheimer to direct. Frankenheimer, fresh on the success of another conspiracy-to-destroy-the-government film, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), was a good fit, and Kirk Douglas thought so too. From Douglas’ autobiography (The Ragman’s Son, 1988), there’s this from page 349:
I read the book Seven Days in May, by Fletcher Knebel and Charles Bailey, and thought it would make a wonderful movie. Many people strongly advised me to stay away from it. The subject – an attempted military takeover of the United States government – was risky. How would the government react? Of course, this was years before Ollie North and his entourage would take up shop.
I went to Washington to talk with the writers. Before I did, I attended a fancy buffet dinner. I was standing with a plate full of hot food, ill at ease. A voice next to mine said, “Do you intend to make a movie out of Seven Days in May?”
I turned. President Kennedy! “Yes, Mr. President.”
“Good.” He spent the next twenty minutes, while our dinner got cold, telling me that he thought it would make an excellent movie. If I had had any doubts, this one strong “yea” drowned out all the other “nays.”
Douglas then flirted with the idea of playing General James Mattoon Scott (the bad guy behind the takeover), or Colonel Jiggs Casey (the good guy who blows the whistle on the pending coup attempt). As Douglas recounts in his book, he sent the script to Burt Lancaster and said “I’ll play either part. You choose.” Lancaster took the heavy. Douglas also recalls Frankenheimer almost bailing on directing the pic when Lancaster was attached because of a recent altercation between the two on Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). At one point they disagreed as to how to shoot a particular scene on that film, and when Frankenheimer instructed his film crew to move the camera, Burt said “What are you doing?” To which Frankenheimer replied “The camera goes here.” And then, “Burt picked Frankenheimer up, carried him across the room, plunked him down. ‘That’s where the camera goes.’” Sit back and imagine that for a bit.
Nonetheless, Douglas was able to smooth things out, got the two to play nice, and then – ironically – they became best of pals. So much so that right after shooting Seven Days in May Lancaster went off to France to do The Train, and when he got in a bind with the director he asked Frankenheimer, “who hadn’t even finished editing Seven Days in May,” according to Douglas, to helm the picture, “and then the two of them go off, great buddies.”
Douglas goes off on many of the other actors who populated Seven Days of May: Fredric March as the President of the United States (“…an excellent, professional actor. I consider him in a class with Laurence Olivier.”) Edmund O’Brien as a boozy southern senator (“one of my favorites”), Martin Balsam, John Houseman, George Macready, Hugh Marlowe, and Andrew Duggan (“Everybody was good.”) His only caveat: “He did have problems with Ava Gardner.” The dust-ups couldn’t have been too serious if the director was willing to take his lashes. Frankenheimer told Douglas that every night Gardner would get “a few drinks in her, and then I have to go in there and she chews my ass out. She complains about what’s going on. Nobody is doing anything right. She’s even accused you and me of having a homosexual relationship.” But the next day, she’d hit her marks – and at least she wasn’t picking him up like a rag doll and telling him where to put the camera.
The trials and tribulations of making a movie are many, but they pale in comparison to the dramas that unfold on a political level. Seven Days in May was inspired by a deep foreboding of the machinations that take place behind the curtain of political theater. Douglas remembers the night he heard the news: “Friday afternoon, November 22, 1963. I hailed a cab. The driver swerved to the curb. As I bent my head to get in, he said, ‘Isn’t it terrible about President Kennedy?’ ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘He’s been shot.’” A few months after that was when Douglas would host “the first sneak peak preview of Seven Days in May” on January 25, 1964. Frankenheimer’s own deep unease was surely deepened four years later in 1968 when he drove his friend, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, to the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night he was assassinated.
