Island of Love (Warner Bros.) (1963)

-Vhe Billing— Warner Bros. 25% ROBERT PRESTON Pictures Presents 5% ISLAND OF LOVE 100% TON Starring 90% | | GEORGIA MOLL ROBERT PRESTON 90% TONY RANDALL 90% WALTER MATTHAU Co-Starring GEORGIA MOLL geen ty Pruce WALTER MATTHAU ora Vassili Lambrinos with BETTY BRUCE 20% Michael Constantine Technicolor® 15% Panavision® 15% Titos Vandis Music : Miranda Murat George Duning 5% Screenplay by David R. Schwartz 35% Produced and Directed by Morton DaCosta 35% The Synopsis The Credits Produced and Directed by........ Morton DaCosta Steve Blair Seren eer at ar i 3 t Paul Ferris Screenplay by David R. Schwartz REVI icyp ccs dens osha cater otaeas ook oak Leo Katcher Elena Harakas Director of Photography Harry Stradling, Sr., A.S.C. Art Director .......... caisson Edward Carrere PUT NOE ohcassnctveseseacssanvcuede William Ziegler ares pairan nF Stanley Jones Tony Dallas Cha Cha Miller Set Decorator .............. George James Hopkins Be soe ads pnsa bunngscondcneadare George Duning Songs by ...... Sammy Fain and Harold Adamson Costumes Designed by ...................... Don Feld Orchestrations by .................... Arthur Morton Makeup Supervisor .......... Gordon Bau, S.M.A. Supervising Hair Stylist Jean Burt Reilly, C.H.S. Assistant Director .....................00. Floyd Joyer (Not For Publication) Steve Blair (ROBERT PRESTON), a resourceful chap who has produced horror movies, dabbled in underwater real estate and achieved other memorable masterpieces of consmanship, finds another "'live one" in a Greek restaurant in New York. This is Tony Dallas (WALTER MATTHAU), a sleek, hard hoodlum surrounded by a Greek chorus of Madison Avenue subhoods (NICK DIMITRI, TONY ROLLINS, VIC LUNDIN, GREG BENEDICT). Tony also has a girl friend named Cha Cha (BETTY BRUCE), a veteran of the runways. Steve, with the help of the forbidden juice—in this case, whiskey—persuades his buddy Paul (TONY RANDALL), to write a script, and they take it to the gangster Tony who puts up money for a motion picture to be called ''Genesis'' because it's about Adam and Eve and the beginning of the world, starring Cha Cha. It's a bomb, and having lost his two million bucks, Tony is out for the respective necks of Steve and Paul. They, however, are on a slow boat to nowhere, with Steve flipping through pages of his black book, trying to come up with another scheme. The third passenger on the freighter is Prof. Krumwitz (OLIVER JOHNSTONE), who is reading a book on the myth of the Island of Paradeisos. Having spent 18 months on the island during the war, Steve is interested. Krumwitz explains that a pipsqueak Professor Pappas has written this book, repudiating the story that Paradeisos is an island of love because no one has ever found a temple nor offerings. The book has thus destroyed the island as an archaelogical and tourist attraction. Now we're in Athens. Steve and Paul are buying up Greek antiquities. Steve is going to turn Paradeisos into a island of love and take a few crumbs for his trouble—like the hotels, restaurants, night clubs, guided tours and exclusive rights to all commercial tie-ins. In the midst of dickering for a Dodona Goat, Steve meets a beautiful young girl named Elena (GEORGIA MOLL) who just happens to be the grownup version of the Elena whose family protected Steve from the Nazis when he was on Paradeisos during the war. The fact that Elena is a museum assistant and engaged to marry the pipsqueak professor (VASSILI LAMBRINOS) who wrote the book debunking Paradeisos doesn't matter to Steve. Although Steve doesn't know it, Elena's uncle is Tony the gangster, and he's coming to Paradeisos with Cha Cha, whom he is about to marry since she's expecting a baby. With the connivance of the island's tavern keeper Andy (MICHAEL CONSTANTINE), Steve fills the waters surrounding Paradeisos with his Athens purchases, and a few days later Paul starts ''recovering'’ them from the ocean depths. Now the world headlines the sensational discoveries at Paradeisos. And the island booms, it is athrong with lovers and archaelogists and the bands play and tourists arrive and Professor Pappas is disconsolate. Not for long, though, because he blows the whistle on the island of love fakery and brings in the cops. Steve is in a hurry to escape with Elena, but Mama won't hear of it until they are married, which they attempt to do but are stopped at the altar by the police who throw Steve and Paul into jail for committing fraud against the Greek government. The jailer releases Steve to the custody of Father Anaxagoras (TITOS VANDIS), who leads him to a remote part of the island and through an aperture, the Father shows him an honest-to-goodness Shrine of Love. So that's settled, but with the arrival of Tony and the four hoods, Steve and Paul are about to be blasted until Elena shows her engagement ring. A gangster can't very well kill his own nephew. RUNNING TIME: 101 MINUTES PAGE 2