The narration Stephen gives on this trailer is fun to hear. It is most likely taken from the 60 second radio spots he did for the promotion of the film.
The entire movie is also available to view on YouTube now! One of Stephen’s best performances.
It’s so interesting to read some of Stephen’s interviews back in the day. Sometimes he could be too honest when speaking to the likes of journalists Hedda Hooper, Erskine Johnson, Sheilah Graham, Joe Hyams and Louella Parsons. Occasionally Stephen would completely knock down one his own current releases, like in the article below. Stephen had already disappointed Paramount executives by failing to appear at the premiere of “The Fall of the Roman Empire.” In the same summer he told Sheilah Graham that the best movie he had ever done up until then was “Ben-Hur.” This was probably an honest statement, but maybe not the safest path to steer in a sensitive town like Hollywood! Yes, despite his overtly honest comments, Stephen still continued to thrive with a solid career there for several years, even until the early 1970’s when he truly had to seek projects abroad.
Roles Disappoint Stephen Boyd
London- July 3, 1964 (Asbury Park Press) by Sheilah Graham
“The only really good film I’ve made in the past eight years, said Stephen Boyd, complete with heard and ginger mustache, “is Ben Hur.”
Stephen is in London being fitted for his Genghis Khan costumes for “The Golden Horde” which he will film in Yugoslavia for the next three months.
“I’m under contact to 20th Century Fox,” continued the likable actor, “but I haven’t made a film for them (in Hollywood) since 1959 – ‘The Best of Everything’ with Joan Crawford and Suzy Parker. The last picture I made in Hollywood was ‘Jumbo’ in 1961, with Doris Day. It was a poor picture.”
Boyd has the usual Hollywood problem of the past decade. In 1961, he bought a house in the Valley, a charming place, with the idea of living in it, of course.
“Ever since, I have made pictures abroad and spent only a few months in the house. Now I am thinking of selling it for something smaller. With being away so much it would be more practical. The day after I moved in, I left for Egypt, to play Mark Anthony in ‘Cleopatra.’ Every time I see Richard Burton I say, ‘There but for the grace of God, go I.” (On a side note, Boyd is exaggerating here – He was actually sent to Egypt in April of 1961 on a publicity tour for ‘Cleopatra’ to attend the Pyramid Light Inauguration, not for filming ‘Cleopatra’, which was already on the skids since late 1960.)
He sounded somewhat regretful. He likes Elizabeth Taylor.
“I think she’s a dream.”
Stephen also likes Dolores Hart, with whom he made some films when she was a movie star and under contract to Fox. Dolores is in a convent in Connecticut.
“She wrote to me very frequently and I wrote to her. But this stopped on June 29, when she went into complete seclusion – no visitors, no phone calls,no letters for a year. After that she will decide if her future is in a convent, or she can return to the world. She seems very happy in her life. But at the beginning it was not easy for her. She was frank in her letters to me. She was climbing the movie ladder and she wrote to me that she missed the applause, and her life as an actress. But now she had made the adjustment. The chief thing, I imagine, is that you must find love within yourself before you can live with yourself.”
We returned to Stephen’s career, and why he has not cared for most of his films. He’s attractive and a good actor.
“But they won’t let me be myself. I’m always having to play some character. The secret to Gary Cooper’s and Clark Gable’s success is that they always played themselves.”
“I was terribly disappointed,” he laughed, “when they didn’t let me play ‘Jack the Ripper!’”
I was surprised to have caught up with the Irish-born actor earlier this year in Europe. He flew over to star in “The Unknown Battle” in Norway with Elke Sommer.
“But I sat on my rear end in London, waiting for it to start. A major studio was supposed to provide 50 percent of the finance. Two weeks before production, they backed out. Tony Mann, the director, had promised me we will make the picture later this year, then the snows come again to Norway.”
Stephen is sure that pictures are coming back to Hollywood.
“There is a definite upturn, but we won’t see the results until next year. Then maybe I can get to live in Hollywood, as I did when I first went here in 1958. But most of my movies have been abroad, as I told you. I made “The Night Heaven Fell” with Brigitte Bardot in Paris. She was very big then because this was her first movie after her hit in ‘And God Created Woman.’”
“Is it true,” I asked, “that you will never make another movie in Rome?”
“What I said was,” he replied, ”that I would never make a picture in Rome under those circumstances. In the first place this picture will not be shown in America. They can’t get it past the censors. And more important, they didn’t pay me my full salary. They still owe me money. If I make another picture in Rome, the money will have to be in the bank first. Also, what I did receive was taxed in Italy as well as in America. It just isn’t practical to work there.”
One picture Stephen would like to make in Hollywood is the Mildred Crem story, “Forever.” Metro bought it years and years ago with the idea of starring Janet Gaynor.
“I’d like to do it with Audrey Hepburn,” said Boyd.
Another film he wants to make is “Clive of India.”
“Terence Young had written this treatment, and of course this one would have to be made mostly in India.”
This is a happy weekend for Stephen in London. The actor who became an American citizen last December 23 has a birthday on July 4.
“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, and I’m looking forward to the day I can work, as well as live, in America.”
In 1967, 50 years ago this July, Stephen Boyd happily returned to the stage again. Of course Stephen had started on the stage, but after coming to Hollywood in 1958, movies had obviously taken priority. After completing his Twentieth Century Fox obligation, Stephen was excited to look for new projects, and “The Bashful Genius” soon followed. In the spring of 1967, Boyd started to grow a beard for the role and dyed his hair red. “With his two-month growth of beard for his role as George Bernard Shaw in the Broadway play, “The Bashful Genius,” Stephen Boyd made the mistake of walking along the hippie Sunset Blvd. section. One of the hippies asked Boyd to help sell their underground newspaper for three hours a day.” (Honolulu Star Bulletin June 28, 1967)
This play ran for a short time in the summer of 1967, being featured at the well known Playhouse in the Park in Philadelphia from July 31- August 5th, in Denver, Colorado (my hometown!) from August 7-12th at the renowned Elitch Theatre Company, and ending at the Fallmouth, Massachusetts Playhouse in mid-August. Unfortunately it didn’t make the cut to appear on Broadway. It was a comedy about Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw written by Harold Callen. The fact that Boyd would be portraying a famous Irishman certainly must have appealed to him! The play had originally debuted in London at the John Neville Nottingham Playhouse in 1964, with John Neville in the title role. On a side note, a young Ian McKellen had acted a minor role in one of the original performances in London (http://www.mckellen.com/stage/00025.htm). The play was now revamped for Boyd as an American production.
As with all his projects, Stephen studied very thoroughly for the role.
“I play Shaw at the age of 40. At that time he had four flops on stage, five failures as an author, was a complete washout as a painter and a failure as a councilman. Then he met Charlotte Payne-Townsend, the woman who was to organize his life and remain his wife for 40 years.”
The film star recently completed a picture in London – “Assignment K.” “I decided to come back to Los Angeles the long way. The play was sent to me on my holiday in Hong Kong. By the time I reached Tokyo there was a cable: “You have to say Yes or No.” I said “No!”” (Philadelphia Daily News, July 27, 1967)
Boyd did, however, eventually say “Yes!”
Stephen was interviewed by the PhiladelphiaEnquirer and had this to say:
“Even if the play is a flop I don’t care. Success for me is within me. Audience reaction is only an ego thing. I have had more personal satisfaction from this in the last 10 days than I’ve had in the last 11 years. There’s not much room for personal satisfaction in movies because you’re not really in control of your own performance.
“What appeals to me about this play is said in the title, ‘The Bashful Genius.’ Inside, Shaw was really the Marchbanks of ‘Candida’, not the Dick Dudgeon as he would have like everyone to believe. The role is a complete alphabet of emotion and range.”
Extremely rare picture of Boyd rehearsing on stage as Shaw, with Nancy Wickwire as Charlotte. (Philadelphia Daily News, July 29, 1967)
The comedy mostly involves Bernard Shaw’s fear of marriage to a woman called Charlotte Payne-Townshend. I’m sure Boyd could relate to this aspect of the story as well, considering his own caution about wedding bells! It sounds like it was a fun play from the review in PhiladelphiaEnquirer as well. Boyd himself received great reviews.
“Britain’s Stephen Boyd, in his American stage debut, scores solidly in the title role. His is a carefully drawn portrait, retaining an air of spontaneity in making Shaw a believable human being. He is matched by the performance of Nancy Wickwire (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wickwire) as the faithful Charlotte, who loses her cool only when their engagement of a few minutes seems to be broken.” (Philadelphia Enquirer, August 1, 1967)
“A red-haired Irishman, Stephen Boyd, is cast as another redheaded Irishman, George Bernard Shaw, in “The Bashful Genius,” which opens tonight…Boyd wears a flowering beard grown especially for the production, stands 6-foot-1, which was Shaw’s exact height, weighs five pounds less than the master playwright when he was 35, the period in the Irish dramatist’s life with which the play is concerned.”
“The time is the 1890’s in London, and the story concerns the fulminating but shy writer and the wealthy and clever woman who persuaded him that, with her money and his talent, they could break into Britain’s literary establishment.”
“The comedy’s idea is the persuasive one that only Miss Payne-Townsend recognized the bashful, even timid, poet that was hidden beneath all the red-headed one’s buffoonery and opinionated intimidation.” (Philadelphia Daily News, July 31, 1967)
A review by critic-at-large Otto Dekom from at the time criticized the play itself and the amateur cast, but had high praise for Boyd’s portrayal.
“This is English drawing room comedy and requires a very special kind of production and cast. There must be the charm and quality of the English, their gentility and particular quality of speech. Without these essentials, the play makes no significant impression…indeed, amateur night at the Playhouse.”
“The one significant exception is Stephen Boyd, the well-known movie star, who plays Shaw.”
“Despite the phony Irish brogue (Phony?I wonder if this critic knew Boyd was Irish!), he comes through with a great deal of fire and authenticity. That grin and wide-eyed look of self satisfaction are typical of Shaw. They are to be found in most photographs and motion pictures of him.”
“One cannot help but enjoy Boyd’s characterization, all the more because it comes as a surprise. Some of his pretty-boy movie roles were not intended to inspire confidence in his acting ability. Boyd appeared on Sunday evening on television on a replay of a motion picture with Doris Day. It was not possible to endure much of it.” (The Morning News, Delaware, Aug 2, 1967)
The News Journal, Wilmington Delaware, July 29, 1967(Philadelphia Enquirer, August 1, 1967)
I just came across this as well recently. This is 25 minute overview of Stephen Boyd’s career from the early 90’s available on Amazon Video. It is mostly a series of movie trailers, but there are some very short candid shots of Stephen at “The Oscar” premiere in 1966 with Marilyn Hanold, and also behind the scenes of “Genghis Khan.”
I came across this short documentary on YouTube featuring Darryl Zanuck, Stephen Boyd, Joan Collins, Harry Belafonte, James Mason and Dorothy Dandridge from “Island in the Sun.”
