Jim and Sam Present Paget and Pagans!

1960 was finally time for American-International to live up to its name. No more would Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff rely on a domestic market for the bulk of receipts. Henceforth they'd branch past US shores to sell and buy. Foreign rentals accounted for 30% of AIP's 1959 take, with 1960 projecting at 50%, this the 9/30 forecast Jim shared with Variety's Vincent Canby. A hands across seas policy had given Nicholson/Arkoff their biggest so-far hit, Goliath and The Barbarians, to be followed with economy models Euro-shot, but adorned with production values hard got in the US short of spending a million AIP didn't have. Jim and Sam wanted desperately into A's, and so charted 1960's mission of making imports and upgraded domestic product look expensive at least. Here then, was crossroads where an industry's hungriest upstart made a meal of Fritz Lang's farewell to epic filmmaking.



Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff Display Wares of a Boffo 1960 Season To Come



Herr Lang still had a reputation, if not many takers for directing service. US companies had cooled on him, but this was still the man who'd once done Metropolis and M, two revered if not often revived in a 50's market allergic to by-gone pics. Fritz Lang and ten cents might buy a cup of coffee in Hollywood, but native Germany held his banner high, and one producer there, Arthur Brauner, had means to make Lang's comeback a reality. Upwards of a million (way more in the end, thanks to overruns) would be sunk in costumed exotica filmed partly on India location and running a whopper 203 minutes, these divided by half so patrons could tender admission times two to see the whole thing.

The pair translated to The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb. Despite deadly reviews (some of the most unfortunate German postwar productions, one said), they did well on the continent, thanks in part to Brauner's casting a known Hollywood lure, Debra Paget, as star and promoting ornament. Germany's most expensive baubles Euro-played from January 1959 (nothing Deutsch-made had cost so much, not even Lang's silent extravagances) and would not escape notice by pleasure/business traveling Jim and Sam, always on the lookout for exploitable product AIP could retrofit for home consumption.

Arkoff wrote colorfully of he and Nicholson's screening agenda when in Rome (and elsewhere continental). The two would encamp among whatever complete or unfinished Euro-flix were available for cheap purchase, watching sometimes a dozen prospects hour after exhausting hour. It got to where they had two projectors running at once, side by side, eagle eyes darting back and fro in quest of saleable content. Unless there was promise in a first reel, they'd not move on to the next. We were looking for production value, Sam said, and it often didn't take long to figure out which pictures had it and which didn't. AIP's pragmatic pair set radar for adventurous scenes, scary moments, and pretty girls (Sam's criteria --- he knew his public). Thus was discovered Goliath and his Barbarians, a standout chiller they'd rename Black Sunday, and eventually, The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb. There was potential aplenty in these, diamonds amidst Lang and Brauner's three-plus-hour molasses serving.

Jim Nicholson spent much of August 1960 checking progress of AIP co-productions shooting overseas. There was Konga in London, Goliath and The Dragon in Rome, and Reptilicus in Copenhagen. Bounty brought home were German buys The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb, which Jim spent Labor Day week paring down to a single feature he'd call Journey To The Lost City. Editing/dubbing was done in New York --- a complete AIP overhaul of what Fritz Lang had shot two years before. Set for October 12 release, Journey To The Lost City would become the highest-profile and most profitable German film exhibited in the US during 1960, indication if nothing else of how shut-out pics from that country were on domestic shores.



The Debra Paget Dance That Adorned US Lobby Cards for Journey To The Lost City ...




... and the Dance Euro Patrons Saw.

 Nicholson/Arkoff bought Tiger/Tomb for visual splendors and what vitality could be distilled from Lang's handiwork. What attracted AIP was clear enough --- breathtaking locations, many not captured before on camera, along with action highlights that would translate well to poster art. Most saleable, as in Europe's play-off, was known quantity Debra Paget, late of pairing with Elvis, plus The Ten Commandments, performing a snake dance that became focal point for selling Journey To The Lost City. What Nicholson could not retain from Tiger/Tomb was Paget's near-nude encore of said dance that could no way have passed US censors. Adolescent boys in 1960 would surely have come away from such an exhibition transformed, as did more than one DVD collector when the complete Lang assembly finally surfaced stateside in 2001.

Jim Nicholson cut Journey To The Lost City to 94 minutes, Lang's length split pretty much down the middle. That didn't leave much time for dull explanations of various plot details, said Variety. Reviews hinted Journey might still be too long. The "sex-and-sand spectacle" had nice scenics, but dialogue was "ali-babble all the way." Still, there were kids enough to finesse $494,000 in domestic rentals, a nice take in an AIP year that saw House Of Usher and Goliath grossing highest for the firm. Fritz Lang didn't go on record as to Nicholson's cleave-by-half of his Indian epic, but the two did meet for discussion of AIP remaking Metropolis, rights to which Jim and Sam acquired shortly after the Tiger/Tomb buy. According to Variety, Nicholson prevailed upon Lang to direct AIP's update, but the director has declined, understandably says Nicholson, on the grounds that the new version would certainly be compared with the old, and probably in an unflattering way, no matter how good he could make it.