Andrew Sarris in the Village Voice for 22 June, 1967, on Mankiewicz's "The Honey Pot"
And George Roy Hill's "Thoroughly Modern Millie"
Sarris’s account of being a judge for the 5th Ann Arbor Film Festival, and a letter to the editor about Casino Royale.
So Mary Tyler Moore and John Gavin have "no talent," Edie Adams's "proper niche is a cigar box," and Susan Hayward "has lost much" of her "sensual lustre" from "nearly two decades ago." Plus, in every third review for the past couple of years, Sarris has been telling us how much he hates Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton--especially Taylor--in every way. She's fat; she's crude; she's untalented.
Well I don't know. I don't remember Sarris trashing Gavin like this when he wrote up PSYCHO and all of those Sirk films, and I don't remember Sarris piling on to Edie Adams when he was talking about his favorite film from 1960, maybe his favorite film from the entire decade of the 1960s, THE APARTMENT. (I heard Sarris say words to that effect, later in his life. Specifically, he said that THAT APARTMENT was the best film of its year, meaning that it was better than PSYCHO.)
Personally I find Edie Adams more moving in THE APARTMENT than any other single player, including Shirley MacLaine.
It's cruel, and more importantly incorrect, to say that Susan Hayward was no longer sexy in her late 40s. By then she had absorbed the radiation from THE CONQUEROR that would eventually kill her (in 1975), but she was still Susan Hayward, and whatever made her magical in MY FOOLISH HEART and CANYON PASSAGE was still there.
Some would even argue that Mary Tyler Moore, star of two of the half-dozen best sitcoms in TV history, had talent.
I guess I'm glad that Sarris felt free to be so blunt about individual players. What I am saying here is that he was wrong about some of them. Not about Carol Channing, though.