Harold Robbins

(On Cable TV, June 2022) For modern audience, it can be surprising to go back in Hollywood history and uncover the long list of movies that were considered audacious for their times, pushing the envelope of acceptable content in ways both crass and artistic. Not many of them are quite as shocking today, but even twenty-first century viewers can often detect an air of daring and provocation. In The Carpetbaggers’ case, the film was designed from the get-go to push a bit harder on melodramatic salaciousness – adapted from a novel by once-well-known sensationalist Harold Robbins. It features a strikingly unpleasant protagonist that draws heavily from Howard Hughes in combining the world of aerospace and filmmaking but then goes the extra mile in making him as unpleasant as possible. (The film begins by showing him carrying an affair with his stepmother.)  So it goes for the rest of the film, with terrible and exciting things happening to and between very rich and powerful people in the style of those page-turning naughty bestsellers meant to wow the crowds. George Peppard is convincingly slimy here, with some supporting work from Alan Ladd (in his last performance) and Carroll Baker. Director Edward Dmytryk has his hands full keeping the circus going through 150 minutes densely packed with deliberate melodrama and histrionics. (Some of the dialogue is admittedly pretty good.)  The Carpetbaggers is worth a curious look for those fans of how American culture has been in apparently constant and irremediable decline for decades. Alas, even by those standards, it’s often too unpleasant and dull to be truly fascinating – you can point to other moral-panic films such as Written on the Wind as something far more perverse and enjoyable.