All Muscle

Rippling his muscles in a meaty arpeggio, the Strong Man tells the gods: "I want to live like any other mortal. I want children of my own." The dialogue is typical of one of the funniest pictures to reach U.S. screens in years--although the humor is not deliberate. A sort of Homeric Tarzan, heavy on sex and mixed-up mythology, Hercules is also the biggest surprise box-office smash in Hollywood's memory. Starring a onetime (1947) Mr. America named Steve Reeves, Hercules drew $900,000 in its first week when it opened in 145 neighborhood houses last month. This week, with a total of 600 Eastmancolor prints ready to go (largest order Pathe Labs has ever had), Hercules promises to fill 135 houses in New York City alone. By mid-August it may well be the biggest movie moneymaker in the U.S.

The brain behind the big b.o. caper is Joseph E. (for Edward) Levine, 53, a onetime Boston newsboy who beat his way out of the slums by chasing a rapid dollar with indiscriminate energy. Salesman, shopkeeper, restaurantman, driving instructor, art-theater owner--Levine tried them all. Then he drifted into movie distributing, and his talent for what he calls the "big, big sell" began to pay off. It is a talent for recognizing the odd and often awful stuff that the public can stomach, buying it, and then peddling it behind a rolling barrage of ads and publicity gimmicks that have often cost more than half a million dollars.

Sex & Shipwreck. Until Joe Levine came along, Hercules was just another Italian film that several U.S. distributors had seen and sneered at. And Steve Reeves was just another refugee from California's Muscle Beach set who had tried Broadway and TV and even studied a little chiropractic before an Italian producer picked him up for Hercules. On a tip, Levine flew to Rome and looked at the picture. Says he: "It had action and sex, a near shipwreck, gorgeous women on an island and a guy tearing a goddam building apart. And where did you ever see a guy with a body like Reeves has?" Levine bought the picture for $120,000, dubbed in English dialogue, even for Reeves ("Who ain't gonna win no Oscar this year").

Most of the movie is grounded in muddled mythology; the scriptwriter seems to get Hercules mixed up with Samson, the Amazons with the ladies of Lemnos. But no matter. Few Amazons ever looked better, especially in a scene filmed against the background of an obviously modern cemetery, where one of the big, tough gals explains that this is where visiting men are buried "when we kill them after the mating season." The good guys fight the bad; Hercules topples pillars on horses and men, breaks iron chains as if they were Zippers and routs an army singlehanded. "If this picture had a star," says Levine frankly, "it'd be a flop. Nobody could imagine that even Clark Gable or Victor Mature could do such things. But they never heard of Reeves--a year ago he couldn't have got arrested--so they'll believe anything he does."

Logan & Kazan. To make it all even more believable, Joe organized a typical Levine promotion campaign--Hercules comic books, "Herculean Hamburgers," Test-Your-Strength machines strategically spotted in key cities, with Levine making a contribution to charity every time some local muscleman rings the bell. Before he has finished, Levine plans to spend $1,200,000, some $350,000 of it on TV ads alone.

The most impressive statistics about the movie are still those concerning Montana-born Strong Man Reeves--6 ft. 1 in., 200 lbs., chest 48, waist 29, biceps 17 1/2. On the strength of his first picture, he is one of the most sought-after U.S. performers in Europe, has already made a Hercules sequel (says one flack: "We had a few labors left over"), is now in Spain making The Last Days of Pompeii, will go from there to The Battle of Marathon. Reeves's acting is considerably more expressive than King Kong's, and he feels he needs only the right director ("Joshua Logan, Elia Kazan or John Ford") and the right scripts; he would particularly like to do a western, apparently unaware that he is making nothing but westerns already.

As for Joe Levine's big U.S. promotion campaign, Reeves will have no part in that. Says Joe: "I don't want Steve over here for the buildup. With clothes on, he ain't Hercules."

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