The Towering Inferno ««
PG, 165m. 1974
Cast & Credits: Paul Newman (Doug Roberts), Steve McQueen (Chief O’Halloran), William Holden (James Duncan), Richard Chamberlain (Roger Simmons), Fred Astaire (Harlee Claiborne), Robert Wagner (Dan Bigelow), Faye Dunaway (Susan), Robert Vaughn (Senator Gary Parker), Jennifer Jones (Lisalette Muller), Susan Blakely (Patty), O.J. Simpson (Jernigan), Normann Burton (Will Giddings). Screenplay by Stirling Silliphant based on the novels, The Tower by Richard Martin Stern and The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson. Directed by John Guillerman. Action sequences directed by Irwin Allen.
PG, 165m. 1974
Cast & Credits: Paul Newman (Doug Roberts), Steve McQueen (Chief O’Halloran), William Holden (James Duncan), Richard Chamberlain (Roger Simmons), Fred Astaire (Harlee Claiborne), Robert Wagner (Dan Bigelow), Faye Dunaway (Susan), Robert Vaughn (Senator Gary Parker), Jennifer Jones (Lisalette Muller), Susan Blakely (Patty), O.J. Simpson (Jernigan), Normann Burton (Will Giddings). Screenplay by Stirling Silliphant based on the novels, The Tower by Richard Martin Stern and The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson. Directed by John Guillerman. Action sequences directed by Irwin Allen.
In the Sunday editions of The Dallas Morning News is a magazine called Parade. On page two of this publication is a section titled “Personality Parade” written by Walter Scott. Every week, Scott answers questions readers send him about the entertainment industry.
A few months ago, someone wrote Scott expressing their displeasure with the decision often made today by directors and producers to remake classic movies. The complaint was in response to the surprisingly unexpected news that director Gus Van Sant would be remaking the Alfred Hitchcock horror film, Psycho (1960). The reader suggested studios consider remaking lousy movies instead.
Now that I think about it, remaking (or should I say improving) a “bad” movie probably wouldn’t be such a “bad” idea so to speak. It would certainly be worth doing than to simply redo a critically acclaimed film which will reportedly mimic everything Hitchcock did in the original.
If there is ever a movie that cries for a remake today it would be The Towering Inferno, the most popular, not to mention, the longest, drawn-out, disaster epics of the 1970s. The pyrotechnic special effects pale in comparison next to the wonders George Lucas’ technological wizards at Industrial Light and Magic and other imaginative filmmakers conjure up today.
That isn’t to say the film wasn’t a visual achievement at the time. The movie boasts an all-star cast but everyone who has seen the picture knows who the real star was. Even Paul Newman who played architect Doug Roberts whose character conceived the 130 plus story skyscraper that overlooked the San Francisco Bay area. Susan Sackett, author of The Hollywood Reporter’s Book of Box Office Hits, quoted Newman saying, “Hell, we all know who the real star of this movie is-that damned fire.”
The stars were the ones who got engulfed in the movie’s sometimes impressive but eventually tiresome visual effects. The action sequences, directed by Irwin Allen, is like a dramatic comedy of errors. Floors explode blowing glass out all over the city while stairways suffer a barrage of dense smoke and natural gas explosions take out several floors leaving people trapped with nowhere to go. At one point, a rescue helicopter attempts to land on the roof only to crash due to high winds.
The best shot in the whole movie is when the camera focuses on a sign that says, “We build for life” and goes up in flames invoking a clever sense of tragic irony.
The film managed to hold my attention for much of its first hour though. William Holden plays corporate builder Jim Duncan who holds a party in honor of his new creation, wired together by his womanizing electrical genius son-in-law (Richard Chamberlain). The event brings celebrities from all over the state and the country that includes a senator (Robert Vaughn) who is on the verge of ratifying Congress’ urban renewal contract.
If the celebration goes the way Duncan hopes and the hesitant congressman approves the bill, “skyscrapers like this will be built all over the country,” he tells Roberts. “You design them. I’ll build them.”
But things go awry the moment technicians test the skyscraper’s electrical system causing a flare-up in one of the building’s storage rooms. Roberts knows this is a prelude of worse things to come but Duncan will hear nothing of it. Even after being told a huge fire just erupted fifty floors below on the night of his big bash.
It isn’t until the city’s Battalion Chief O’Halloran (Steve McQueen) breaks the grim news to the entrepreneur that everyone from the 138th floor will have to be evacuated which includes the mayor and his wife.
Among the characters caught in the middle of all the mayhem is an elderly con artist (Fred Astaire in his only Oscar nominated performance) who is trying to sell off some phony stock certificates to his girlfriend (Jennifer Jones). Faye Dunaway plays Newman’s love acquaintance who is having to choose whether to move to Colorado with her boyfriend or stay in California to pursue a writing career. We also meet Duncan’s unhappily married daughter (Susan Blakely) and an overworked security chief (O.J. Simpson in his first starring role) who’s responsible for evacuating the building’s tenants. This includes any cats or dogs whose owners left them alone for the night to attend the party.
The Towering Inferno is supposed to be dedicated to “the firefighters of the world” leaving us with the impression how these brave men do their job. What the film really focuses on are the heroics McQueen’s O’Halloran performs from leading a few of his men down an elevator shaft to hanging from a helicopter trying to latch onto a scenic elevator that dangles from a cable and carries 11 survivors.
The role was a personal, triumphant feat for McQueen who starred with Newman almost twenty years before in the 1956 movie, Somebody Up There Likes Me. Newman, who played a boxer in the film, had already begun to establish himself as a major star, but the picture was McQueen’s first role and it was just a brief appearance as a young street punk.
Now, not only do the two have an equal amount of screen time but their star billings appear together in the opening credits with McQueen’s name positioned slightly higher over Newman’s. Though both characters eventually work alongside one another, they argue briefly about why architects shouldn’t design buildings that go over the 14th floor that ends with Roberts asking the fire chief if he is there to fight him or the fire.
There is no doubt this is a talented cast assembled here but you won’t be able to tell that watching this film. A lot of the supporting players, with the exception of the two leads, seem to be going through the motions. There were over a dozen disaster movies released in the 1970s but The Towering Inferno, along with Airport (1970) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972), was officially the last unique film where Hollywood stars didn’t look as though they were being typecast. Like the first two catastrophic epics before it, everyone delivers at least one major line of dialogue that tells the viewer how each person feels.
It is McQueen and Newman, though, who have the most memorable lines. Halloran says things like “For what it was worth architect, this is one building, I figured wouldn’t burn.” While Roberts utters emotional one liners like “What do you call it when you kill people” that reek of blunt sarcasm and disgust.
On the other hand, the most predictable, underwritten role in the entire movie is Holden’s whose character exhibits a variety of different emotions in every scene he is in. One moment he stands in the center of the dining room looking helpless as horrified guests gasp at a pile of burning bodies inside an elevator.
In another scene, he is arguing with Roberts offering senseless explanations on why he cut building costs. Holden’s Duncan goes from being ambitiously excited and stubborn in the movie’s first 90 minutes to becoming fearful and repentant in the last 75 minutes.
If you think some of the cast members throughout the picture die of only smoke inhalation, guess again. In one of the most macabre scenes, Robert Wagner becomes a human torch trying to outrun the raging inferno that destroys his office penthouse and traps his secretary in the bedroom. And when an explosion blows the scenic elevator off its tracks, Jones loses her balance and falls to her death; her body bouncing off a couple floors on the way down.
All of this leads up to the big finish where the two heroes blow up the skyscraper’s water tanks located on the top floor that not only drowns out the fire but rubs out a majority of the partygoers as well. How the battalion chief got those explosives to the top floor walking through flaming helicopter wreckage without having it go off is one of the movie’s most baffling questions.
Can a picture like this be remade today? When you take into account how much stars get paid these days to do a movie and the high production costs, it would probably rival James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) which was budgeted at $200 million and was produced by two studios, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox. By comparison, according to Sackett’s book, The Towering Inferno cost $14 million to make in 1974 and was also produced by two studios, Fox and Warner Brothers, who split the price.
On a technical level, a remake would likely be an improvement in special effects since most action/adventure and science fiction films are being done now using computerized digital imaging.
And the new cast would be impressive just in names alone. I can see Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise in the Newman role and someone older to play the Holden character, maybe Anthony Hopkins or even Gene Hackman. While Michael Douglas, who’s always good at playing despicable villains can take the part of Chamberlain’s cowardly electrician. As for actresses, any top star will do from Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, and maybe even Gloria Stuart.
Most of all, I can see The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’s (1990-1996) Will Smith as the brave, battle weary take charge fire chief. I can picture him giving the same speech to Roberts at the end of the movie the way McQueen’s O’Halloran whose statement sounds like a deterrent against building high rise apartments.
“Someday, we are going to lose a thousand in one of these fire traps,” he says. “And I’m going to keep eating smoke and bringing out bodies until someone asks us, how to build them.”
I just know that kind of heroic dialogue is probably something John Wayne would have said in some, if not all his movies.
People would flock to the theaters just to see the visual effects and its new all-star cast and that alone would pay for the film’s budget.
I suppose in doing so, the screenwriters might come up with a much more engaging, maybe even believable premise. But there wasn’t much of a story in The Towering Inferno to begin with, despite being based on not one but two different novels.
Unlike “the Tower” which became a smoldering smokestack in the end, the film’s plot went out long before the fire was even put out.
©11/30/98
A few months ago, someone wrote Scott expressing their displeasure with the decision often made today by directors and producers to remake classic movies. The complaint was in response to the surprisingly unexpected news that director Gus Van Sant would be remaking the Alfred Hitchcock horror film, Psycho (1960). The reader suggested studios consider remaking lousy movies instead.
Now that I think about it, remaking (or should I say improving) a “bad” movie probably wouldn’t be such a “bad” idea so to speak. It would certainly be worth doing than to simply redo a critically acclaimed film which will reportedly mimic everything Hitchcock did in the original.
If there is ever a movie that cries for a remake today it would be The Towering Inferno, the most popular, not to mention, the longest, drawn-out, disaster epics of the 1970s. The pyrotechnic special effects pale in comparison next to the wonders George Lucas’ technological wizards at Industrial Light and Magic and other imaginative filmmakers conjure up today.
That isn’t to say the film wasn’t a visual achievement at the time. The movie boasts an all-star cast but everyone who has seen the picture knows who the real star was. Even Paul Newman who played architect Doug Roberts whose character conceived the 130 plus story skyscraper that overlooked the San Francisco Bay area. Susan Sackett, author of The Hollywood Reporter’s Book of Box Office Hits, quoted Newman saying, “Hell, we all know who the real star of this movie is-that damned fire.”
The stars were the ones who got engulfed in the movie’s sometimes impressive but eventually tiresome visual effects. The action sequences, directed by Irwin Allen, is like a dramatic comedy of errors. Floors explode blowing glass out all over the city while stairways suffer a barrage of dense smoke and natural gas explosions take out several floors leaving people trapped with nowhere to go. At one point, a rescue helicopter attempts to land on the roof only to crash due to high winds.
The best shot in the whole movie is when the camera focuses on a sign that says, “We build for life” and goes up in flames invoking a clever sense of tragic irony.
The film managed to hold my attention for much of its first hour though. William Holden plays corporate builder Jim Duncan who holds a party in honor of his new creation, wired together by his womanizing electrical genius son-in-law (Richard Chamberlain). The event brings celebrities from all over the state and the country that includes a senator (Robert Vaughn) who is on the verge of ratifying Congress’ urban renewal contract.
If the celebration goes the way Duncan hopes and the hesitant congressman approves the bill, “skyscrapers like this will be built all over the country,” he tells Roberts. “You design them. I’ll build them.”
But things go awry the moment technicians test the skyscraper’s electrical system causing a flare-up in one of the building’s storage rooms. Roberts knows this is a prelude of worse things to come but Duncan will hear nothing of it. Even after being told a huge fire just erupted fifty floors below on the night of his big bash.
It isn’t until the city’s Battalion Chief O’Halloran (Steve McQueen) breaks the grim news to the entrepreneur that everyone from the 138th floor will have to be evacuated which includes the mayor and his wife.
Among the characters caught in the middle of all the mayhem is an elderly con artist (Fred Astaire in his only Oscar nominated performance) who is trying to sell off some phony stock certificates to his girlfriend (Jennifer Jones). Faye Dunaway plays Newman’s love acquaintance who is having to choose whether to move to Colorado with her boyfriend or stay in California to pursue a writing career. We also meet Duncan’s unhappily married daughter (Susan Blakely) and an overworked security chief (O.J. Simpson in his first starring role) who’s responsible for evacuating the building’s tenants. This includes any cats or dogs whose owners left them alone for the night to attend the party.
The Towering Inferno is supposed to be dedicated to “the firefighters of the world” leaving us with the impression how these brave men do their job. What the film really focuses on are the heroics McQueen’s O’Halloran performs from leading a few of his men down an elevator shaft to hanging from a helicopter trying to latch onto a scenic elevator that dangles from a cable and carries 11 survivors.
The role was a personal, triumphant feat for McQueen who starred with Newman almost twenty years before in the 1956 movie, Somebody Up There Likes Me. Newman, who played a boxer in the film, had already begun to establish himself as a major star, but the picture was McQueen’s first role and it was just a brief appearance as a young street punk.
Now, not only do the two have an equal amount of screen time but their star billings appear together in the opening credits with McQueen’s name positioned slightly higher over Newman’s. Though both characters eventually work alongside one another, they argue briefly about why architects shouldn’t design buildings that go over the 14th floor that ends with Roberts asking the fire chief if he is there to fight him or the fire.
There is no doubt this is a talented cast assembled here but you won’t be able to tell that watching this film. A lot of the supporting players, with the exception of the two leads, seem to be going through the motions. There were over a dozen disaster movies released in the 1970s but The Towering Inferno, along with Airport (1970) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972), was officially the last unique film where Hollywood stars didn’t look as though they were being typecast. Like the first two catastrophic epics before it, everyone delivers at least one major line of dialogue that tells the viewer how each person feels.
It is McQueen and Newman, though, who have the most memorable lines. Halloran says things like “For what it was worth architect, this is one building, I figured wouldn’t burn.” While Roberts utters emotional one liners like “What do you call it when you kill people” that reek of blunt sarcasm and disgust.
On the other hand, the most predictable, underwritten role in the entire movie is Holden’s whose character exhibits a variety of different emotions in every scene he is in. One moment he stands in the center of the dining room looking helpless as horrified guests gasp at a pile of burning bodies inside an elevator.
In another scene, he is arguing with Roberts offering senseless explanations on why he cut building costs. Holden’s Duncan goes from being ambitiously excited and stubborn in the movie’s first 90 minutes to becoming fearful and repentant in the last 75 minutes.
If you think some of the cast members throughout the picture die of only smoke inhalation, guess again. In one of the most macabre scenes, Robert Wagner becomes a human torch trying to outrun the raging inferno that destroys his office penthouse and traps his secretary in the bedroom. And when an explosion blows the scenic elevator off its tracks, Jones loses her balance and falls to her death; her body bouncing off a couple floors on the way down.
All of this leads up to the big finish where the two heroes blow up the skyscraper’s water tanks located on the top floor that not only drowns out the fire but rubs out a majority of the partygoers as well. How the battalion chief got those explosives to the top floor walking through flaming helicopter wreckage without having it go off is one of the movie’s most baffling questions.
Can a picture like this be remade today? When you take into account how much stars get paid these days to do a movie and the high production costs, it would probably rival James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) which was budgeted at $200 million and was produced by two studios, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox. By comparison, according to Sackett’s book, The Towering Inferno cost $14 million to make in 1974 and was also produced by two studios, Fox and Warner Brothers, who split the price.
On a technical level, a remake would likely be an improvement in special effects since most action/adventure and science fiction films are being done now using computerized digital imaging.
And the new cast would be impressive just in names alone. I can see Harrison Ford or Tom Cruise in the Newman role and someone older to play the Holden character, maybe Anthony Hopkins or even Gene Hackman. While Michael Douglas, who’s always good at playing despicable villains can take the part of Chamberlain’s cowardly electrician. As for actresses, any top star will do from Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, and maybe even Gloria Stuart.
Most of all, I can see The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’s (1990-1996) Will Smith as the brave, battle weary take charge fire chief. I can picture him giving the same speech to Roberts at the end of the movie the way McQueen’s O’Halloran whose statement sounds like a deterrent against building high rise apartments.
“Someday, we are going to lose a thousand in one of these fire traps,” he says. “And I’m going to keep eating smoke and bringing out bodies until someone asks us, how to build them.”
I just know that kind of heroic dialogue is probably something John Wayne would have said in some, if not all his movies.
People would flock to the theaters just to see the visual effects and its new all-star cast and that alone would pay for the film’s budget.
I suppose in doing so, the screenwriters might come up with a much more engaging, maybe even believable premise. But there wasn’t much of a story in The Towering Inferno to begin with, despite being based on not one but two different novels.
Unlike “the Tower” which became a smoldering smokestack in the end, the film’s plot went out long before the fire was even put out.
©11/30/98
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