The Cincinnati Kid

Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], 1965. Two vintage studio still photographs from the 1965 film, one with mimeo snipe on verso.

Sam Peckinpah was the original director on the film, but was fired after producer Martin Ransohoff saw the rushes from the first few days of shooting. Peckinpah's version was in black and white, reportedly with nudity (a very new thing for a mainstream film in 1965). Ransohoff said that Peckinpah's approach "vulgarized" the film, and also had grave concerns about the director's reliability after hearing reports of the ordeal that surrounded the making of Peckinpah's "Major Dundee" the year before. The firing left the director effectively banished from Hollywood for a few years, but he of course returned in the late 1960s and early 1970s, an era much more amenable to his personal style, to make his most classic flms, including "The Wild Bunch" (1969) and "Straw Dogs" (1971).

Peckinpah was replaced by Norman Jewison, who scrapped the black-and-white footage in favor of a muted color scheme, principally the make reds in the playing cards—cards being a decidedly prominent character in the film—discernible from the blacks. Even under the more conventional direction of Jewison, the razor-sharp script, probably the most hyper-specific and literate ever written about high-level poker, resulted in a classic film. Too, it was an important antecedent to the New American Cinema, a cycle that would find its beginnings in 1966 with "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Point Blank," and would, ironically, embrace Peckinpah.

10 x 8 inches. Very Good plus, one with pinholes to corners, one with a faint crease to top right.

[Book #148346]