An American Dream (1966) User Reviews

Producers of 'American Dream' Can't Tell Mailer from Robbins

[ascheland · 6/10 · 11 July 2010]

A Norman Mailer novel gets filmed as if it's a Harold Robbins story. I knew I was in for a campy treat from the opening scenes, featuring Eleanor Parker as the rich, alcoholic harpy Deborah, rolling naked on silk sheets (the camera very careful not to show any naughty bits), demanding whiskey refills from her hunky bed partner with impudent hand gestures and burning his hand with a cigarette when he tries to initiate sex. "Later!" she barks, eyes glued to the TV, watching her husband Rojack (Stuart Whitman), the host of a controversial call-in show. Parker's high-rise wallow is so arresting that Rojack's accusations that the LAPD has a protection deal with a notorious Mafia kingpin hardly register. The action ramps up when Rojack visits his estranged wife. Parker, also in the notorious show biz howler "The Oscar" the same year this was released, goes for broke and over the top, hurling cutting insults and highballs at her square-jawed husband. As Rojack, Whitman stoically endures Deborah's rant until she pantomimes castrating him, and then all hell breaks loose. Rojack finally walks out, but barely makes it to the front door before he's confronted by Deborah's sexy maid (Susan Denberg), wrapped only in a towel but willing to drop it for her boss's husband. Rojack sidesteps the seduction, but in this movie that's actually the wrong decision. Returning to his wife's bedroom for his wallet, another mêlée ensues that ends with Deborah falling off the penthouse terrace, where she's immediately run over by a limo transporting the very same Mafia kingpin Rojack accused of being in bed—figuratively, of course—with the police.

Once Parker's out of the picture "An American Dream" becomes a little less interesting, though a few actors try to match her scenery chewing, J.D. Cannon as a hot-tempered cop chief among them. Janet Leigh as Cherry McMahon, Rojack's former flame prior to his marrying Deborah and now a singer/Mafia moll, does a lot of glaring and glowering. As many other reviewers have pointed out, this often looks like a TV movie, with much of the action happening in flatly lit, claustrophobic sets (though lushly photographed). As tacky as this movie is, the novel's story actually has been sanitized for the protection of 1966 audiences. Mailer's misogyny—the one quality he shared with hack Robbins—is left well intact, however. In "An American Dream," women are just bitches and/or hos.

Though not quite in the same league as other trash-tastic movies of the 1960s, fans of "The Carpetbaggers," "Valley of the Dolls," or the aforementioned "The Oscar," will want to be sure to catch "An American Dream." Fans of Norman Mailer are best advised to skip it.

He looks like someone I once saw in the mens-room. Maybe I forgot to leave a tip.

[sol1218 · 5/10 · 8 July 2010]

**SPOILERS** Ridicules and over the top 1960's adult drama involving TV talk show host Steve Rojack, Stuart Whitman, who ends up getting involved with an old flame of his Cherry McMahon, Janet Leigh, who just happens to be the moll of Mafia chieftain Eddie Ganucci, Joe DeSantis, whom he, on his talk show, has it in for!

All these characters come together when Steve's estrange wife the boozed up and out of control Deborah Kelly Rojack, Elenor Parker, either falls or is pushed, by Steve, to her death. That happened during a heated argument with Steve over giving him a divorce at her penthouse apartment on top of the Kelly Building owed by her father billionaire real estate developer Barney Kelly, Llyod Noland.

The movie has Steve go through a life change in his guilt about Deborah's untimely death as well as him trying to prove to the L.A police, who have no use for him at all, that he's innocent and that his wife's death was an accident. There's also the matter of his long lost love Cherry who 's now involved with the Mafia as Mafia boss Ganucci's main squeeze. Cherry is anything but grateful to the two timing Steve in what he did to her by dumping her, when she became pregnant, for Deborah ten years ago!

As the film goes on Steve slowly starts to lose it as he realizes that not only his career and future on TV is about to end but even his very life! That's if Ganucci's, who Steve is trying to put behind bars, hit men get a hold of him.***SPOILERS*** The predictable ending has Steve get away with the murder, even though it looked like it was an accident, of his wife in the LAPD not having enough evidence in bringing him to trial. But Steve does end up getting whacked by Ganucci's boys that includes dead eye hit-man Nicky, played by 1960's TV talk show host Les Crane, at his former lover Cherry McMhaon's hotel suite that he was hiding out in. Worth watching not only for its unintentionally comedy but as well as for actor Stuart Whitman's hysterical straight-jacket like performance! The man, Whitman, at some points in the movie looked like he was suffering from a complete emotional breakdown even though the scenes he was in, while breaking down, didn't even call for it!

P.S With the Warner Brothers Studio having big plans for the movie "An American Dream" and spending millions in publicity on it the film bombed out in the box office the first week it was released. Trying to salvage what they could on this turkey Warner Brothers Studio later re-released it under the provocative title "See You in Hell Darling" which didn't help much, in getting the public to see it, either.

So ludicrous and grotesque, I expect Batman to cameo

[movieswithgreg · 5/10 · 15 February 2020]

This has every appearance of a mid-1960s contemporary television drama, filmed on 1960s television studio sets, using 1960s television lighting, using 1960s television music, with overskilled movie actors for the roles they're given. I expect an epilogue announcing "this is a quinn-martin production." t Janet Leigh's 1940 noir moll dialogue is ludicrous almost to the point of spoof. Eleanor Parker's portrayal is grotesque, indulgent, and minimally watchable. There are some interesting police procedural tidbits, almost lifted from Dragnet. J.D. Cannon is great as a Joe Friday with anger issues.

The two stars, Whitman and Leigh, seemed to take a mini-vacation from acting. They're both easy to watch, but seem distracted or tired or like they're donating their time for free. I don't know what the norman mailer novel was like, but I hope to god it wasn't like this movie.

If this is the American dream, then wake me when it's over...

[JasparLamarCrabb · 1/10 · 13 March 2010]

An astonishingly melodramatic movie directed by Robert Gist and based on the book by Norman Mailer. Stuart Whitman is a muckraking TV commentator married to harridan Eleanor Parker (giving a performance that has to be seen to be believed) and running afoul of mobsters. It's ridiculous, claustrophobic (there is nary a scene outdoors) and horribly acted. Not only is Whitman awful but so are the usually dependable Lloyd Nolan, Barry Sullivan and JD Cannon. Janet Leigh plays a good time girl from Whitman's past and she gets to (lip sync) belt out a song, cry a lot and get roughed up by gangster Warren Stevens. Gist's direction has absolutely no style and the script by TV-writer Mann Rubin is full of some of the most inane dialog imaginable. People are supposed to be nasty to one another, but they just come across as very hammy actors. Parker's hysterical performance is the only highlight and she exits early from the film, which unfortunately has a good hour left to go.

Absolute Schlock

[hausrathman · 20 June 2011]

Stuart Whitman plays a hard-hitting television journalist intent on taking on the mob with a rich, shrewish wife, Eleanor Parker. After he helps his wife take a nosedive over the balcony of her penthouse suite, she hits the car of the mafioso. Then, this flurry of coincidences continues as he discovers that one of the Mafiosos is dating his long lost love, Janet Leigh. Geez.

The lurid, over-the-top first act of this film caught my interest, but I only stayed with it as a morbid curiosity. The dialog was horrible. Perhaps they lifted it from Mailer's book, but literary dialog often makes for bad screen dialog. Even worse, now one in this film behaves like a real human being would behave. Stuart knows the police believe he murdered his wife, so what does he do? The night he is released from questioning, he immediately hooks up with his ex-girlfriend and sleeps with her! (This, despite the fact that he knows he is being followed the police!) The mafia don literally threatens Stuart in a room of police officers. Janet Leigh stays with him despite him calling her a whore. His father-in-law doesn't really seem to care whether his beloved daughter was murdered or not as long as her death isn't labeled suicide so that he bury her in a Catholic cemetery. I could go on and on.

The film is absurd. It deserves the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. In the end, the most interesting thing was trying to figure out what TV shows from the '60s and '70s the supporting players ended up on.

Absymally written, nihilistic melodrama

[Bob-45 · 3/10 · 4 July 2011]

How did Warner Brothers and producer William Conrad get such a fine "A" cast for this sudser? Keep in mind, Janet Leigh and Eleanor Parker were not that long off their "A" list roles in "Harper" and "The Sound of Music," respectively. Keep in mind that Stuart Whitman had just come off "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines." This is the worst written movie based upon a book by a fine novelist (Norman Mailer) I've seen, except, perhaps, for "Mr. Budwing" (written by Evan Hunter). Interestingly, both films have "A" list actors and both were released in 1966. Perhaps more unfortunate is the lack of chemistry between Whitman and Janet Leigh. In order for this tripe to even begin to work requires a smoldering passion between the leads. Further, Leigh looks at least 10 years older than her 39 years, and she is playing a 29 year old(!). Parker looks more glamorous (and younger, at 44) as the drugged-out wife. Too bad, producer William Conrad didn't hire Israeli actress Ina Balin for the Leigh role. Balin was the right age and provided considerable sexual tension with Whitman in "The Commancheros".

Mailer's storyline is so stupidly contrived it is impossible to believe. If Mailer's intent was cynicism to the point of nihilism, he only succeeded by making all the characters behave as idiots.

The only really worthwhile elements of the film are the song (Oscar nominated) and the performances of Eleanor Parker and Lloyd Nolan (as Parker's father). They bring luster, albeit briefly to a movie more akin to a cow pie.

I give "An American Dream" a "3".

A Nightmare on Dream Street.

[mark.waltz · 1/10 · 16 March 2013]

This is a film which makes "Valley of the Dolls" look like "The Magnificent Ambersons". I had to really hold my tongue to keep myself from hissing at the screen. I wondered if this was actually meant to take seriously as it seems like it was written by psychology students with the mental capacity of junior high school students. It is a horribly written and badly acted example of what Hollywood at the time assumed would be considered art but is actually a pretentious disaster. This is when professional actors in desperate need of a check are directed to recite their lines as if they are trying to be heard in the back row of the Hollywood Bowl while the front row is holding their ears not only to avoid going deaf but to ignore the hideous dialog being thrown at them.

It all starts off with one of the most abusive examples of an actress loosing her dignity. Poor Eleanor Parker certainly needed something a bit more adult to get away from the sugary taste in her mouth after "The Sound of Music" ("You should have told me to bring my harmonica", her sardonic baroness said in that classic musical film) and here, she plays one of the most hateful socialites ever to get her name in the social register. "Bought and Paid For" is the motto of her marriage to TV host Stuart Whitman who seems to be appearing in a predecessor to reality TV that would fail even today. She reads him the filth about asking for a divorce after demanding him to honor her presence with a meeting with a lover you never see again in her bed as she stares at Whitman on the television screen and shouts obscenities. He's a celebrated war hero who is blamed by her father (Lloyd Nolan), the eighth richest man in the country, for not being invited to their wedding, which he blames on Parker. She gets one of the most vile deaths in film history only 10 minutes into the film, making her the luckiest person in this movie.

Questioned by the police by her alleged suicide (which they try to prove is murder), Whitman runs into an old flame (Janet Leigh) who is a mobster's mistress and they renew their romance. She, too, is just as neurotic as everybody else, yet every inch the spider woman that Parker was, albeit a quieter one. Throughout the entire film, Whitman denies being responsible for his wife's death, and when confronted by his father-in-law, opens up to him. Nolan underplays his role unlike everybody else (especially those unfortunate actors as the police investigators and Leigh's mob friends) who bray their lines as if they were imitating Elizabeth Taylor in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?".

It is Nolan who provides the reason for the film's title, referring to the American dream as a battle between God and the Devil where everybody assumes that God will win and humanity will be safe. You can't believe what is being spread as the theme of this film which ranks as possibly the lowest of the low. If there could be a negative rating for a movie, this one would rank it.

high places

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 8 July 2010]

It's unclear to me, with its TV cast, whether this was a B movie in theaters or a TV movie. It looks for all the world like a '60s TV film, produced by William Conrad, who did occasionally direct second features, notably "Brainstorm" starring Jeffrey Hunter. The timing at 1:45 suggests television.

"An American Dream" stars Stuart Whitman as a TV show host named Rojack who sits in front of rows of different telephones and answers questions. He's vocal about police corruption and the mob. He's separated from his wife (Eleanor Parker), the daughter of the 8th richest man in the world (Lloyd Nolan). She's a vicious drunk who's sleeping around. When Rojack visits her in her over-the-top penthouse, complete with gorgeous maid (Susan Denberg) who attempts to seduce him. His wife attacks him, and at one point, he nearly strangles her to death. Finally, after a lot of caterwauling, she ends up on the terrace railing and starts to slip. Rather than grab her, Rojack lets her go.

The police (including Barry Sullivan) can't prove whether it's an accident or murder, and Rojack takes up with an old girlfriend (Janet Leigh) who is now a mob-connected nightclub singer. Complications ensue.

Based on a novel by Norman Mailer, "An American Dream" is fun to watch because it's so '60s - in fact, it's reminiscent of early Columbo episodes. The furnishings, the color processing and dialogue like "I can't make the scene" are a hoot.

Janet Leigh, with a short Carnaby Street haircut, blue eyeshadow, dark eye makeup and light lipstick is the epitome of the '60s look. All she needed was white go-go boots. Strangely, the gown she wears in the nightclub scene (not the one picture on IMDb) is back in style, minus the cheesy material.

The high places - the wife's penthouse, Leigh's rooftop, suggest the heights and the only place you go once you get there. With none of the characters being particularly likable and an okay story, this is mainly something to watch if you were alive and cognizant in the '60s or just to get a look at some of the styles of the day. A lot flashier than Mad Men.

Cheap imitation of (1958) A CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

[Ed-Shullivan · 3/10 · 21 February 2020]

Eleanor Parker is an embarrassment to acting. Her ugly and obnoxious portrayal of rich and spoiled socialite Deborah Kelly Rojack who goads her war hero husband Stephen Richard Rojack (Stuart Whitman) into a bedroom tussle that lands them both overhanging their penthouse balcony until she falls to her annoying death was pitiful.

Talk about overacting and a crummy screenplay that includes a jilted lover and dance hall singer to the mob, a girl named Cherry McMahon (Janet Leigh) and the murdered daughter's wealthy father Barney Kelly (Lloyd Nolan) all making our war hero turned TV broadcaster Stephen Richard Rojack a target for everyone including the mob.

The film tries in vain to build suspense with a penetrating music score and continued non-stop hurried dialogue between Stuart Whitman and EVERYONE and ANYONE else who shares screen time with him. Well it just does not work.

A most forgettable film worthy of a 3 out of 10 rating and nothing more.

Wonderfully dated...

[evehands · 6/10 · 30 October 2014]

• transport yourself to a stylish, faux mid-Sixties Los Angelean world, where adults say things such as 'It's not my Scene' to each other with perfectly straight faces, and Janet Leigh (sporting a simply fab Vidal Sassoon bob) almost outshines an absolutely ghastly, stereotypically awful Poor Little Rich Girl played with all the power of a snake-charmer by the superb ueber-diva Eleanor Parker. Everyone is somehow affluent and healthy, yet bitter and twisted…ah, those were the days! (?!); what sublime self-indulgence we wish we could all afford! Doubt whether a world like this really ever existed, but sure dig the groovy music, baby! (Oh, and the original title is significantly more apt than presumably Mailer's cynical 'An American Dream'? Sheesh..!)

NOT FOR THE ACTING

[thebengals · 4/10 · 6 July 2023]

Watching this on TCM. I've taken to the channel as a window on style and design from eras past. Janet Leigh was a total fashion plate throughout the movie. Got a kick out of seeing George Takei pre-Star Trek. This one is rich with mid-century elements from the architecture...to the lush interiors...to the gorgeous mid 60s automobiles. Janet's 1964 Thunderbird and the mobster's Lincoln Continental along with the Mercury Monterey was literally all I watched it for. Elinore Parker delivers an over-the-top fight scene in the early going...and I found myself thinking: "Go easy on the interior...try not to make a mess of the place on the way to the ledge".

A nest of vipers

[hildacrane · 8/10 · 31 January 2006]

I don't know if this is a good movie, but it certainly is riveting. Everyone in it is either cowardly or despicable, and the atmosphere is venomous with cynicism. Stuart Whitman's Rojack is a combative blowhard. Eleanor Parker's Deborah is monstrous in her cruelty (prefigured some 20 years earlier in her Mildred in Of Human Bondage). Everyone looks pallid in the film's harsh lighting, and the movie could be called "Fear and Loathing in L.A.--Cherry's rooftop "garden" is surrounded by elevated freeways and is an apt metaphor for the pervasive aridity. The movie is like a car accident that one can't resist gawking at. A remarkably lovely song was written for one of the film's characters to sing: "A Time for Love" (dubbed by Jackie Ward, who also dubbed for Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover).

Are you kidding?

[sijoe22 · 1/10 · 28 June 2011]

First of all, American mafioso are not even permitted to wear MUSTACHES, let alone full beards. Who's in charge of authenticity around here? Anyway, movie starts out dull, and remains that way till closing credits. Only fun was when cops were screaming at Whitman's character. I saw this movie about four hours ago, and forgotten virtually everything about it. I swear, this could not have made a single episode of "Mannix" or "Columbo" back in the day. I've never felt more cheated out of ninety minutes in my life. Absolute crap, with no emotion whatsoever, start to finish. Was this movie released, or did it ESCAPE?

Music by Johnny Mandel

[kathytexan-12585 · 5/10 · 21 July 2020]

The film was ridiculous but that theme song will live forever. A Time for Love, by Johnny Mandel, has an unforgettable melody and Mandel's arrangement, playing over the opening credits, was the best part of the movie. Vidal Sassoon also gets special mention for Janet Leigh's chic hairstyle. The pacing and direction were so weak, I lost interest early on. I was hoping the movie would be good but it wasn't. The five stars go to Johnny Mandel. The rest of the movie deserves a big fat zero.

contrivance ruins the movie

[SnoopyStyle · 5/10 · 15 February 2020]

War hero Stephen Richard Rojack (Stuart Whitman) is a call-in TV show host. He's on a rampage against mob boss Ganucci. He's separated from his violent drunk wife. She comes at him with a bottle and he almost chokes her. She falls off the balcony to her death. Only the sexy maid Ruta is in the apartment and he is taken in by the police. It just so happens that Uncle Ganucci's car run over the wife after her fall. Rojack's former lover Cherry McMahon (Janet Leigh) happens to be in the car also.

I'm mostly interested in this for being a Norman Mailer novel. It starts with an interesting premise until the story conveniently has Ganucci's car run over the body. It's a bad contrivance that takes me out of the movie. This could have been a tense crime drama. Instead, it's stuck in melodrama. Even the acting is stuck. There is a lack of action after the incident. Even the ledge scenes lack the intensity of normal vertigo. There are loads of turns but non of it is compelling. It's hard to care about Rojack's life or his dilemma.

A movie about a man that you don't care about

[windfactor · 3/10 · 7 July 2023]

Stuart Whitman fights with his drunken wife(Eleanor Parker who is totally awful in this picture) in a high rise and makes her fall from the building. At first it is not clear if it was an accident as Stuart runs down the stairs to see his wife who not only fell down the building but who was also ran over by a car who has a criminal as a passenger and Janet Leigh, a lady who knew Stuart in the past.but later on we learn that he has no remorse about the death of his wife. The cops then question Stuart who claims he is innocent but the cops don't believe his story. Stuart and Janet go out together and then at the end Stuart is killed by many bullets. Basicly there are two things that are interesting here. The cops trying to get the truth out of Stuart and explaining why they don't believe him and a few minutes with Susan Dunberg the maid just because she's sexy. I never liked Janet Leigh(with short hair she even looks more awful)so every scene with her was boring. Stuart plays somebody that is very unlikable so when he dies we really don't care at all. We're just glad that the film is over at last.

Enough plot for several much better films

[fredit-43004 · 4/10 · 2 August 2023]

I watched this film for the first time today, having avoided it since its release. Mailer wrote the book, Janet Leigh is in it, so can it REALLY be as bad as all that? Oh gee . . . Eleanor Parker opens the "action" with a performance that beggars description. She acts demented, if not possessed. In the context of the film, it is impossible to believe she did not manifest bizarre behavior, such that suicide would be deemed unthinkable. Then there's the unexpected involvement of the mob boss as the film veers away from a police procedural into film noir. And then comes the whole religious prohibition against abortion and suicide, but by that point . . . Who cares? This is not one of those films which are so bad they are good. This is just bad.

Praise for Elinore Parker and Johnny Mandel - Hisses for everything else

[pacificgroove-315-494931 · 3/10 · 3 November 2022]

Starting to watch this movie, which someone uploaded to YouTube, I was mightily impressed with Elinore Parker's acting chops, as she goes full throtle, yet is believable, as a sadistic, masocistic drunk. One more proof that she was one of the best and most versitile actresses of her era. She also looks impressively younger than her forty something age. Unfortunately, she's only in the first 10 minutes of the movie, and after that it's pretty awful.

I can't compete writing-wise with several of the funny, creative, and dead on IMDB reviews of the film, so I'm not going to try.

I'll just note that the Johnny Mandel title song is a classic, beautiful and moving.

All Eight Stars for Eleanor Parker

[mls4182 · 8/10 · 29 June 2022]

This was just bad. Its production values look like 1960s TV. Stuart Whitman was no leading man and Janet Leigh was past her shelf life as an innocuous leading lady.

However, Eleanor Parker is eye poppingly beotchy in her supporting role. Your jaw will pop open in shock at what she says and does and then you will burst out laughing.