Seven Things to Know About Robert Goulet

With Julie Andrews in Camelot.

1. Robert Goulet was a virtual unknown when he auditioned for the role of Lancelot in the 1960 Broadway stage musical Camelot. Yet, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe cast him opposite Richard Burton and Julie Andrews. Goulet held his own and crooned one of the showstoppers "If Ever I Would Leave You"--which became his signature song.

2. Goulet didn't even get a Tony nomination for Camelot, while Burton won Best Actor and Andrews was nominated for Best Actress. Six years later, though, Robert Goulet won a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for The Happy Time with music and lyrics by Kander & Ebb. Stage producer David Merrick originally planned to cast Yves Montand in the role. Interestingly, the play was set in Canada, which is where the U.S.-born Goulet was raised.

3. Although Robert Goulet recorded several successful albums, he only scored one pop hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. "My Love, Forgive Me" peaked at #16 in 1964. The original version of the song enjoyed immense popularity in Italy, where it was known as "Amore scusami."

4. In the 1966 TV series Blue Light, Robert Goulet played a double agent posing as an American journalist in Nazi Germany. French actress Christine Carere portrayed another spy, the only person who knows about Goulet's true identity. The series lasted just seventeen episodes. Four of them were written by Larry Cohen (The Invaders, Coronet Blue) edited together and released as the theatrical film I Deal in Danger.

5. Goulet played a cat...or rather, he provided the voice for the animated cat Jaune-Tom in the movie musical Gay Purr-ee (1962). His leading lady was Judy Garland. The songs were written by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, who worked with Garland on an earlier musical: The Wizard of Oz.

6. You can still hear Robert Goulet singing on television five nights a week. He croons the opening song to Jimmy Kimmel Live! The tune was composed by Les Pierce, Jonathan Kimmel and Cleto Escobedo III.


7. Robert Goulet was married three times to: Louise Longmore; singer-actress Carol Lawrence; and the former Vera Chochorovska. After escaping with her mother from Yugoslavia, Vera eventually relocated to the U.S. in 1980, where she became Goulet's manager. She and Robert Goulet married in 1982. Robert Goulet died from pulmonary fibrosis on October 30, 2007.

Dial H for Hitchcock: Torn Curtain (1966)

Under the pretense of attending a conference in Copenhagen, Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman), an American physicist, defects to East Germany. His fiancee and assistant, Sarah (Julie Andrews)--confused by his suspicious activities in Copenhagen--follows Michael behind the Iron Curtain. He tries to persuade her to return to the U.S. It is only when Sarah refuses that Michael reveals his true intent: to steal information about an atomic formula from a Communist scientist and somehow escape.

Hitchcock hatched the idea for Torn Curtain after reading about the defection of two British diplomats. In Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut's superb book of interviews with the Master of Suspense, Hitchcock said that he began to wonder what the wife of one of the diplomats thought of the defection. The premise of a wife questioning her husband's true motives can be seen as a variation of Suspicion. The difference is that Torn Curtain dispenses with this plot in the film's first third. All that is left is the quest for the MacGuffin (the secret formula) and the escape. This is familiar Hitchcock territory, but it comes off as uninspired and weary in Torn Curtain. The result is a suspense film that generates very little suspense.

In Truffaut's book, he writes that "Hitchcock was never the same after Marnie, and that its failure cost him a considerable amount of self-confidence." That lack of confidence is magnified in Torn Curtain, in which the studio influenced Hitchcock's decisions on the cast and music.

Eva Marie Saint in 1966 in The
Russians Are Coming. 

By the mid-1960s, most of Hitchcock's favorite stars--James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Cary Grant--had either retired from show business or moved on to different roles (i.e., instead of romantic leads, James Stewart begin playing fathers). Hitchcock had also failed to create new stars, the most famous example being Tippi Hedren, whom he once envisioned as one of his classic "blondes" (personally, I think Hedren's performance in Marnie is widely under-appreciated). According to some sources, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant and Eve Marie Saint to reunite for Torn Curtain. However, Grant felt he was too old for the part and the studio nixed Saint for the same reason. In the end, the studio convinced Hitch to cast two hot, young talents in Newman and Andrews.

Unfortunately, neither seems comfortable in their roles and, as is apparent in their opening scene in bed, they dearly lack chemistry. Hitchcock implies to Truffaut that Newman's "method acting" approach hindered him in key scenes. Certainly, Newman desperately wants to make us understand Armstrong's motivations, a serious approach at odds with a movie composed of a thin framework (e.g., Armstrong undertakes this incredible mission on his own without the government's sanction). Julie Andrews tries hard as Sarah, but the script makes her character extremely naive (the audience is always ahead of her) and she is relegated to an accessory in the final the final two-thirds of the film.

Sadly, Hitchcock was also convinced to jettison the original soundtrack composed by long-time collaborator Bernard Herrmann for what was considered a more commercial, upbeat one by John Addison. I find Addison's title theme to be almost playful, more appropriate for a black comedy. In contrast, the Herrmann theme is punctuated and more disturbing. 

Trying to kill Gromek.

Yet, despite its flaws, there are flashes of the typical Hitchcock brilliance in Torn Curtain. The film's most famous scene is the death of Gromek, an amusing but dangerous enemy agent played by Wolfgang Kieling. When Gromek confirms that Michael is a spy after following him to a rural farmhouse, Michael and the farmer's wife are forced to murder him. It's a lengthy, brutal struggle involving kitchen utensils and ending with Michael forcing Gromek's head into an oven as the gas is turned on. Earlier in the film, there's a visually stunning scene--reminiscent of Vertigo--in which Gromek trails Michael through the streets and buildings of East Berlin.

Hitchcock left a scene with Gromek's brother on the editing room floor, a decision based solely on the film's running time (a too long 128 minutes). Truffaut's book contains a description of the omitted scene: Michael visits a factory where the dead Gromek's brother (also played by Kieling) is a foreman. Gromek's brother picks a kitchen knife (like the one used in the farmhouse fight), cuts off a piece of sausage, and tells Michael: "My brother loves this kind of sausage. Would you be kind enough to give it to him in Leipzig?" It sounds like a classic Hitchcock gag, similar to one from Young and Innocent.

It's interesting to speculate what Torn Curtain might have been with a better script, more compatible actors, and perhaps a more engaged Hitchcock. Unfortunately, all that remains is a misfire with just enough interest to make one depressed over the reality that it isn't a very good film.