by Stephen Vagg
Michael Callan was a dancer who Columbia Studios tried to build into a name. He never quite got there, but anyone who starred in both Gidget Goes Hawaiian and a Ray Harryhausen monster movie within the same year deserves respect.
Callan was born “Martin Calinoff” in Philadelphia in 1935 – dad ran restaurants – and was something of a showbiz baby, taking singing and dancing lessons at an early age, and appearing on local radio shows. Young Martin/Michael was a very good dancer, later saying that his idol was Gene Kelly. “I thought unlike Fred Astaire, Mr Kelly has that double whammy of sex appeal,” he said later. “Not that I even knew what sex appeal was, but I liked athletics and he moved like an all-star athlete.”
By the age of fifteen, Callan was dancing professionally in local nightclubs. Two years later, he moved to New York, got work in summer stock in St Louis, performing under the name “Mickey Calin”. Callan/Calin/Calinoff successfully auditioned for a small part on Broadway in the musical The Boyfriend with Julie Andrews (you might’ve seen the Ken Russell film version), playing various parts over seven months; he was then in Catch a Star and danced on television and in nightclubs.
Then came the big break – Riff in the original Broadway version of West Side Story. “There were a great many kids like me up for that part,” said Callan. “I was told I was too cute! Imagine! But I really wanted it, I was asked if I could backflip, so I did a backflip, and eventually, after a year of rounds, I got it. Riff set me on my way.”
Riff is one of the best parts, if not the best part, in one of the greatest musicals of all time and West Side Story’s success established Callan. He was in the show for seven months. During that time, he was spotted by Joyce Selznick, a famous casting director, who signed Callan to a seven year contract with Columbia Studios.
By the late 1950s, the studio system was in decline, but there was, conversely, a bit of a revival in signing young talent, especially at studios that made a lot of television and continued to make B pictures, like Warner Bros, Fox and Columbia. Joyce Selznick had previously discovered James Darren, but around this time, the studio also signed Evy Norlund, Glenn Corbett, Carol Douglas, Jo Morrow, Margie Regan, Joby Baker, Rian Garrick, Joe Gallison, and Steve Baylor… so, their star making program was a little bit “buy as many scratchies as you can and see how you go.”
To be fair, Callan was given what those aforementioned actors weren’t – a nice support part in a big budget film: Robert Rossen’s They Came to Cordura (1959), playing one of several seemingly heroic soldiers escorted through the Mexican desert during World War One by Gary Cooper along with Rita Hayworth. It’s not much of a movie – it’s slow, and Cooper is clearly ill – but it was an ambitious and classy project to be associated with.
Callan’s next film for Columbia was a lead, although a “B” picture made by Sam Kaztman’s unit – The Flying Fontaines (1959). Callan played a bitter trapeze artist involved in a not very interesting love triangle, and easily outshone the other new Columbia contract players who were in it. The studio put him in a Dick Clark teen film, Because They’re Young (1960), playing a delinquent trying to go good, who romances Tuesday Weld. He had a cameo in Pepe (1960), Columbia’s weird all-star Cantiflas vehicle, dancing superbly in one scene in a West Side Story style number.
Incidentally, Callan auditioned for the film version of West Side Story made at United Artists but didn’t get it – possibly due to his Columbia contract, possibly because the filmmakers wanted a fresh cast. But he did dance in Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961), competing with James Darren’s Moondoggie for Deborah Walley’s Gidget. This movie was a big hit. Also popular was Mysterious Island (1961), where he was second male lead (to Michael Craig). This was a Ray Harryhausen/Jules Verne adventure tale that, like Gidget Goes Hawaiian, was always on television in the 1970s and ‘80s.
Callan was well cast as a thug tormenting a puffy Alan Ladd in a thriller, 13 West Street (1962), then he romanced Deborah Walley again in Disney’s family vacation comedy Bon Voyage! (1962) Callan had a strand of cruelty about his screen persona, which ensured that he was an excellent villain, but could be unsettling in more sympathetic roles such as this one – for instance, when he rough houses Deborah Walley, it’s really scary. He gave off a sort of intense swaggering self-love vibe, lacking the sensitivity of a Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson or Jack Lemmon (with whom he was sometimes compared, since Lemmon also started at Columbia).
Having said all that, if used well, Callan would be terrifically effective as a performer and this happened in The Interns (1962). He was given one of his best roles as a super ambitious intern, who dates a rich girl, but also sees an older nurse on the side, so that she’ll help his career; this gives him a packed schedule, which leads him to take drugs… It’s very well done and handled, leading to Callan breaking down at the end. The film was a hit and would have rejuvenated Columbia’s faith in the actor.
David Merrick offered Callan the lead in a Broadway musical, I Can Get it for You Wholesale, but they couldn’t agree over money apparently, so Elliot Gould took the part instead – and he wound up marrying his co-star Barbra Streisand.
Callan had a showy small part as a pimp in Carl Foreman’s cynical war picture The Victors (1963). He’s not in the film for very long – the leads went to other new faces (George Hamilton, George Peppard) – but he’s very effective and the film was a big hit.
Columbia brought him back for The New Interns (1964), one of the few original cast to return (along with Stefanie Powers and Telly Savalas with Dean Jones playing James MacArthur’s role). He didn’t have as much to do in this one, which hurt the film – in the original, his character was comical, romantic and serious; in the sequel he’s just comical (in drag for one sequence) and romantic (Barbara Eden); the film hints that it’s going to deal with his character’s past as a druggie, which would’ve been great, but throws it away. 1964’s Interns was far inferior to the original – it doesn’t have the storylines or sense of camaraderie – but still made some money and Columbia signed Callan to a new six-picture contract.
The studio announced Callan for a musical remake of Cover Girl, which would’ve been a terrific opportunity, but the project was never made. The producers of the Broadway musical Kelly were also in discussions with Callan – he didn’t get (or take) the job, but considering that show only lasted one night on Broadway, it was probably a good thing.
Then came the biggest missed opportunity of Callan’s career.
Columbia had bought the rights to James Clavell’s novel King Rat, about an entrepreneurial American POW in Changi during World War Two. The role was utterly perfect for Callan – smooth talking, smart, ruthless – and various articles linked his name with the project immediately. However, the part eventually went to George Segal, who at the time was not much better known than Callan (he’d also been in The New Interns) but had a stronger resume on Broadway and television. This must have haunted Callan for the rest of his career, because the resulting film, while considered something of a commercial and critical disappointment, kicked up Segal to a higher plane in Hollywood – he would soon go on to Who’s Afraid of Virigina Woolf? – that he never really left.
It wasn’t over yet for Callan. He had guest stints on television in Breaking Point and Twelve O’Clock High, then had his biggest hit to date as Jane Fonda’s love interest in Cat Ballou (1965). Even if most of the attention for that movie went to Fonda and Lee Marvin, Callan was very winning, and it’s a shame that he didn’t play the love interest for more female stars.
He was sent to England for You Must Be Joking (1965), a farcical army comedy for Michael Winner – Callan was cast at Columbia’s insistence, but didn’t do much for the film’s box office. He doesn’t fit in the movie, which feels like a trial run for Winner’s much better The Jokers (1967).
In August 1965, Callan signed a four-picture deal with Columbia and Jackie Cooper, former actor turned executive at Columbia’s TV arm, Screen Gems, offered the actor the lead in a pilot for a sitcom, Occasional Wife. Callan asked Cooper what he needed TV for: Cooper replied, “This year, we’re asking you to do the series. In three years, you may be asking us?” The deal was a good one – $100,000 a year plus a percentage. TV Guide did a profile on Callan, which refers to his partying lifestyle, “a reputation along the Sunset Strip-Vegas axis as one of the great new swingers. He had a Sinatra-like coterie of hangers on and regularly made the columns.”
Occasional Wife marked a major shift in Callan’s private life as he left his wife for his co-star, Patricia Harty. The two of them made an engaging team on screen, incidentally, but the show only lasted a season.
Callan might’ve been expected to return to movies or television, but instead he appeared in a musical in Las Vegas, That Certain Girl. In 1968, he was in a TV version of Kiss Me Kate with Robert Goulet, but the star roles dried up. He was out of fashion, Ric Dalton style – even worse than Ric, who at least starred in Italian action films.
It was a very very quick fall, especially considering The Interns and Cat Ballou had been so popular and not that long ago. Were there behavioural/temperament issues? Just conjecture. But it does seem odd that a good looking, charismatic performer, who could act and move, didn’t get any more leads.
Callan was probably best suited for two types of roles – the love interest for a female star (Gidget Goes Hawaiian, Cat Ballou) or musicals. And from the late sixties onwards, Hollywood made less musicals and/or vehicles for female stars. Still, this was the time of spaghetti Westerns, war films in Yugoslavia, Australian thrillers, Europudding spy epics, and telemovies – there were star parts going for white male actors with some sort of profile. But Callan didn’t get any.
Not that he was unemployed. Callan kept busy on episodic TV like The Mary Tyler More Show, That Girl, The Name of the Game, Ironside, Marcus Welby, M.D., Griff, McMillan & Wife, Barnaby Jones, 12 O’Clock High, Quincy, M.E., Charlie’s Angels, Simon & Simon, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, The Bionic Woman, four episodes of Murder, She Wrote, and eight episodes of Love, American Style. Callan also made the occasional feature like Frasier the Sensuous Lion, The Magnificent Seven Ride, Lepke and The Cat and the Canary (from porn filmmaker Radley Metzger). He did have the lead in 1974’s The Photographer and its kind of remake, 1982’s Double Exposure – in both, Callan plays a psychotic photographer.
He appeared in theatre around the country – a lot of musicals like Anything Goes, The Music Man, George M, Bar Mitzvah Boy plus plays like Absurd Person Singular. He produced some musicals.
So, it was a rich, varied career full of adventure. But he must have wondered how things might have turned out had he been cast in the film of West Side Story or King Rat. The tide went out really quickly for him; to go from a sitcom to being a permanent guest? Did something else happen?
Callan appears as a character, in a way, in the novel version of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Agent Marv (played in the film by Al Pacino) talks to Ric Dalton about Dalton’s Western, Tanner, directed by Jerry Hopper, in which Dalton appeared alongside Ralph Meeker and Callan, and Dalton criticised Callan for “sounding like a Malibu surfer”. So, he lingers on in a way. That, and Gidget Goes Hawaiian of course.
