DVD Beaver‘s Gary W. Tooze has posted an interesting screen capture within a review of an upcoming Bluray of Arthur Penn‘s Mickey One. It’s a shot of Warren Beatty walking in front of Chicago’s Wood theatre while Otto Preminger‘s The Cardinal was playing there. Preminger’s low-tide drama opened on 12.12.63 so you’d have to figure this was captured in February of ’64. (Or maybe a bit later to judge by the Woods’ “nominated for 6 Academy Awards” proclamation. As The Cardinal began playing on a reserved-seat basis and was therefore regarded as a high-prestige film, it wouldn’t have been unusual to linger at the Woods for a few months.) But Mickey One didn’t open until 9.27.65, which obviously indicates a prolonged and difficult post-production period. Under routine circumstances it would have opened in late ’64 or at the latest in early ’65.
![](/images/column/mayday17/beattycardinal640.jpg)
Warren Beatty, 26 at the time, striding under the Woods marquee, mostly likely in early ’64.
![](/images/column/mayday17/mickeyblu.jpg)
![](/images/column/mayday17/cardinalsquare.jpg)
The Cardinal billboard in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, 1964 — the arrival of the Beatles and the beginning of the general turning of the culture was only a month and a half away.
“Prefer Bass Art To Fit,” posted on 4.25.14: “There’s an allegedly cruddy-looking German Bluray available of Otto Preminger‘s The Cardinal (’63), which I have no interest in seeing. The Cardinal was one of Preminger’s plodding auto-pilot films. But I’ve always loved Saul Bass‘s poster art.
“Bass presumably hated the rote, dreary sound of the title. How do you make a film called The Cardinal seem interesting or exciting? So Bass created a new film called THE Cardinal. I never want to see this mediocrity again (N.Y. Times critic Bosley Crowther wasn’t the only one to feel this way) which turned out to be a kind of simultaneous summit-and-death blow to Tom Tryon‘s career, but I’ll always love that big THE.
![](/images/column/aprile/cardinal.jpg.jpg)
![](/images/column/mayday17/beattycardinalWIDE.jpg)
![](https://hollywood-elsewhere.com/wp-content/themes/amory/patreon-banner.jpg)