Peter Glenville's The Comedians Sparked International outrage 50 Years Ago

 Lillian Gish enjoying a cup of tea early in The Comedians.

Lillian Gish after being pushed to the ground.

 Lillian Gish being pushed to the ground.

 Lillian Gish comforting widow after Papa Doc Duvalier ordered the death of the woman's husband.

 Lillian Gish, in nightgown, talking down vicious Tontons.

 Lillian Gish and Paul Ford among singing Haitian children being forced to watch a firing squad murder Duvalier opponents.

Lillian Gish screams out at the barbarity of the public execution.


Lillian Gish, Richard Burton, right, in The Comedians. (1967) 

International outrage on Graham Greene’s “The Comedians” 50 years ago

By Jim Patterson, U.S. diplomat, retired, film historian

In 1967 novelist Graham Greene adapted his 1966 book The Comedians for a film by the same name starring Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011), Richard Burton (1925-1984), Alec Guinness (1914-2000), Peter Ustinov (1921-2004), Lillian Gish (1893-1993) and Paul Ford (1901-1976). Both works shockingly portrayed the brutal and oppressive dictatorial regime of Haitian President Francoise “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his vicious secret police known as the Tonton Macoute.

Greene’s work depicts experiences of Americans and British business people and government officials, witnessing firsthand Duvalier’s butchery. Greene is credited as being the first major author to call world attention to Duvalier and the plight of Haitians. He introduced readers to Duvalier’s human rights abuses.  

Greene was also highly critical of the U.S. for blindly supporting Duvalier for fear of a Castro-inspired Communist takeover of Haiti. Not all of Greene’s geopolitical criticism effectively translates to the film as it was largely forsaken in favor of steamy love scenes between Taylor and Burton. According to Goodreads.com, The Comedians is among 1966’s best books, despite a tepid review from The New York Times. 

Greene and director Peter Glenville (1913-1996) discussed filming in Haiti but considered it too dangerous and settled on Dahomey, West Africa (present day Benin). Cotonou, Dahomey, served as Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Additional scenes, mostly interiors, were filmed in Nice, France. 

Glenville had big plans for The Comedians. It was to be the first major film of a timely political situation, he told the press. Gish and other cast members related this in press interviews at the time and in later published memoirs. To insure the film’s success, Glenville cast some of the biggest stars of the 1960s. Burton and Taylor, who had an Academy Award for Best Actress in Butterfield 8 (1961), meant box office.

The exceptional supporting cast included Guinness who won an Academy Award for Best Actor for The Bridge over the River Kwai (1957), Ustinov who had two Academy Awards for best Supporting Actor in the Roman spectacle Spartacus (1961) and the international heist film Topkapi (1965). Taylor would also win an Academy Award for Best Actress in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1967). Burton, famously, never received an Academy Award though he was nominated seven times between 1953 and 1978. Gish would receive an honorary Academy Award in 1971. 

U.S. relations with Haiti were volatile during filming of The Comedians in 1966/67. During Duvalier’s oppressive and bloody dictatorship, many Haitian professionals fled to the U.S. and Canada. The Haitian dictator disliked the Kennedy administration and its calls for an end to his dictatorial rule. When President Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, the dictator claimed credit. Duvalier explained he had placed a voodoo curse on the American president.  

After the popularity of the novel The Comedians and the highly unfavorable attention it gave to Duvalier and his secret police, the dictator and his Ambassador in Washington DC engaged in a smear campaign against the author and the film. It is surprising Duvalier did not place a voodoo curse on Greene, Glenville and the cast. Given Lillian Gish’s daring and physically demanding silent era roles in Way Down East (1920), where she lay unconscious on an ice floe on a raging river headed toward a waterfall, and The Wind (1928), where she faced a violent windstorm in California’s Mojave Desert induced by airplane propellers, she might have laughed off a voodoo curse. 

Dahomey’s brutal heat might have reminded Gish of the Mojave. In a 20-minute promotional film on the production, which the author viewed at the Library of Congress in Washington DC, Gish complained Dahomey was so hot, estimated one day at 130 degrees Fahrenheit during filming, eggs could have fried on the heads of the actors.

Glenville produced the promo film, something of a Making of The Comedians, to raise awareness among theater owners to his work to bring public awareness to the brutality in Haiti and its tense diplomatic relations with the U.S. This came at a time of increased popular interest among Americans in international affairs, especially in Vietnam and Cuba.

In 1967, the U.S. military was heavily involved in Vietnam with mounting U.S. casualties and growing domestic dissent.  The Comedians, released in 1967, and only four years after the Kennedy assassination in Dallas and many conspiracy theorists still suggested a Fidel Castro link to the presidential shooting by Lee Harvey Oswald. The Comedians might be considered, in hindsight, as a “wake up” call to Americans that involvement in Haiti could escalate into another nuclear standoff with Cuba and this time with greater Russian involvement.

More supporting cast members included James Earl Jones, as a Haitian doctor, Cicely Tyson, as a pleasure girl, Raymond St. Jacques (1930-1990), superbly cast as vicious Tonton Captain Concasseur, Roscoe Lee Brown (1922-2007), also superbly cast as a journalist who fawns over Duvalier, and Georg Stanford Brown, as a rebel eager to overthrow Duvalier. All are excellent. Tyson, sadly, is relegated to a small thankless role. St. Jacques, is superbly menacing and dominates his scenes. 

Jones, pre-Star Wars, is convincing as a Haitian physician working to expose Duvalier’s atrocities. Spoiler alert: In Jones’ final scene, he is performing surgery in a hospital when a Tonton slits his throat. The scene is memorable, graphic, and gory.

Gish and husband, Paul Ford, are U.S. pacifists who plan a vegetarian center in Port-au-Price to improve Haitian diets. Burton is a businessman man having an adulterous affair with Taylor, wife of Ustinov, a South American ambassador to Haiti. It is inspired casting, for the bearded and portly Ustinov to be married to Elizabeth Taylor. Guinness, is a former British major and a pal of Burton, is also concerned about Duvalier and government change.

In another memorable scene, Gish confronts the ominous St. Jacques as they are stand near a funeral processing to a cemetery. The funeral is for a murdered political opponent of Duvalier whose secret police assassinated the man. When St. Jacque abuses the dead man’s widow, Gish objects to his brutal treatment. St. Jacques pushes Gish in her famously photogenic face and she falls against a wall to the ground. It is a bravura scene for Gish and it is far from the “little old lady” roles she largely fell into in the 1970s and 1980s, with the notable exception of her last film, 1987’s The Whales of August.

In another memorable scene, the Tontons are beating Burton in his hotel when Gish, in night robe and sleeping cap, single-handedly commands the gang of brutes to stop. The scene of Lillian Gish, then in her 70s, courageously facing down an ominous Black gang is surreal especially considering her star making role as a Southern belle fighting off the romantic intentions of a mixed-race man in D.W. Griffith’s 1915 civil war epic The Birth of a Nation. 

Gish’s face off with St. Jacques, and other scenes, worked well for her and earned her a Golden Globe nomination as Best Supporting Actress in 1968. She lost out to Carol Channing for Thoroughly Modern Millie. Paul Ford won the National Board of Review’s Best Supporting Actor Award and Alec Guinness tied with Robert Shaw (A Man for all Seasons) for Best Supporting Actor at the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards.

When confronted with assassinations, police brutality, and firing squads, Gish asks: “Is there no law and order here?” The answer was, at this time in Haitian history, No. Ford and Gish, as the Americans, become disillusioned with Haiti and depart. The US ambassador departed Haiti as well in the 1960s, disillusionment and fearful for his life.

Upon release of The Comedians in 1967, critic Stanley Kaufman wrote: “It’s pleasant to spend two hours again in Greeneland, still well-stocked with bilious minor crucifictions, furtive fornication, cynical politics, and reluctant hope.” 

Variety, October 10, 1967, said: “Producer-director Peter Glenville’s pic, scripted by Greene, is a plodding, low-key, and eventually tedious melodrama.” The Los Angeles Times headlined: “’The Comedians’ is Harsh Indictment of Haiti Dictatorship.”

Glenville’s film, like Greene’s novel, got audiences interested in the plight of Haitians and the barbarism of “Papa Doc” Duvalier. For this reason, The Comedians is a significant and historically important film, if a box office underachiever.

In 1967, Arthur Bonhomme, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, filed a 3-page complaint with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who had a private screening of the film in Washington. Rusk did not have an official response. Bonhomme also complained to MGM that The Comedians was an “utterly distorted picture.” It was an economic assault against Haiti, he charged, aimed to scare tourists away from “one of the most beautiful, peaceful and safe countries in the Caribbean.” 

                                                             Economy Archive. 

The New York Times suggested a racist intent in Glenville’s film. In 1966, as Blacks were winning civil rights victories in the US, the paper questioned why the director made a film about a sinister Black president.

The Comedians premiered on network television on October 28, 1971. Judith Crist, film critic for TV Guide, wrote, Burton, Guinness, Ustinov and Roscoe Lee Brown were “outstanding in an outstanding cast.” 

Crist noted that the film was programmed for 2 and a half hours commencing at 9:00 p.m. on CBS that Thursday night. The network likely cut 30 to 45 minutes to allow for commercials. Crist noted additional editing “can only improve the melodrama, which was a bit sluggish.”

Coincidentally, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, 64, died April 21, 1971, six months before the TV broadcast. Equally brutal “Baby Doc” Duvalier assumed dictatorial reign of Haiti.

When Graham Greene died in 1991, Haitians celebrated his courage in denouncing Duvalier and exposing the abuses of the Tontons. The novel remains intriguing and important reading.   

In Piers Paul Read’s unauthorized biography of Alec Guinness, published in 2003, the actor had little good to say about the film and stars Taylor and Burton. “Drink has taken a bit of a toll” on Burton, Guinness wrote to his son. He found Taylor “not frightfully intelligent” in a letter to his wife. 

On a more sinister note, Guinness wrote that “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his Tonton Macoute had placed a curse on The Comedians. It was only a modest financial and critical success at the time. In a review published in Films and Filming, Michael Armstrong wrote The Comedians “a bore … an insult to your theme and the many talented people who expressed it.” The Comedians originally ran three hours but 30 minutes was cut before release. Glenville intended the film an epic expose on Duvalier and an epic failure of U.S. policy.

The film should have had the 1967 impact that The Last King of Scotland, a film based on the brutal reign of Idi Amin in Uganda, had in 2006.  The latter film was a British film based on a 1998 novel of the same name. The Last King of Scotland was a huge financial and critical success winning Forest Whittaker an Academy Award for Best Actor as the diabolical Amin. Still, The Last King of Scotland owes much to Glenville’s The Comedians. Perhaps, it is also significant that Amin was many years dead when the film was made and was unable to murder the producers.  

Director Glenville wrote a three-page appreciation of Miss Gish in her autobiography. He mentioned Gish’s stamina in the oppressive West African heat.  He said everything but: Stamina thy name is Gish! Gish had difficult scenes and arrived early for filming and socialized with cast until late in the night, according to Glenville. She also studied African politics and the literary works of Greene while in Africa. This was Gish’s legendary role preparation.

Gish recalled: “The government of Dahomey treated us graciously, housing us in three comfortable cottages that had been built for officials who come to the country for conferences. Fortunately, we had air conditioning in our rooms.” Richard Burton was not so kind in his remembrances.

The Richard Burton Diaries, edited by Chris Williams and published 2012, contains 6 pages of the actor’s entries from filming of The Comedians. Of Dahomey, Burton wrote, “I’ve never been to Black Africa. I shall be interested. I hated Egyptian and Arabian North Africa.”

On Jan 9, 1967, Burton’s diary entry is of cocktails at director Peter Glenville’s party. Of his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, he wrote, “E. is looking gorgeous – she blooms in hot climates,” adding, “It must be that Italian blood.”

On January 10 Burton described the cast was formerly received by Dahomey President Christophe Soglo (1909-1983), a former military strongman. The actor noted Soglo’s staff called him “Mon General.”

Adding a bit of realism to the situation, Burton wrote, “I understand that coups d’etats are the thing here, as in most of the new African states, so that he (Soglo) may not be the boss for long.” The West African leader did have an interest in the film project. According to Burton,  “He (Soglo) obviously likes women and was forever taking E. (Elizabeth Taylor) by the arm.”

Burton wrote Elizabeth “adores” Soglo. Burton did not. “He looks to me like my brother Verdun after a hard day in the pits and before he’s washed.” Adding more international intrigue to The Comedians, the film was released in October 1967 and Soglo was overthrown in a military coup in December. The former West African president then retired from politics.

One day, Burton wrote, President Soglo, his wife and entourage arrived at the set for socializing. Burton found Soglo “wicked.” Soglo’s purpose for visiting was to see beautiful Elizabeth Taylor. “At one time, after a particularly salacious remark he (Soglo) kissed his wife (white) and was given a round of applause by the assembled hangers-on.”

Despite the film’s clichés, excessive length and its focus on the Taylor/Burton love affair, The Comedians is a historically intriguing film.  The film’s timeliness and depiction of the brutal Duvalier are striking and Glenville had a great idea to make a realistic film. The realism was, however, overcome by Hollywood clichés galore which diminished the film’s important message.

It is important to recall the era’s complicated geopolitics. The United States largely turned a blind eye to Duvalier’s brutality and effectively condoned it for fear of Communist takeover of Haiti by Cuban President Fidel Castro.  Duvalier hated Castro. In the 1960s U.S. foreign policy toward Haiti was a cruel comedy as American policymakers. Greene’s comedians, chose to support a savage killer but non-Communist Duvalier over the equally savage killer Communist Fidel Castro. Why? Domestic politics, the Vietnam war, the U.S. civil rights struggle, another Cuban embarrassment, etcetera.     

The brilliant Graham Greene, who wrote the screenplay, may have had the last laugh on Hollywood, U.S. foreign policy, Duvalier and Castro.  The Comedians was to have been a suspenseful international drama and instead the film version of The Comedians turned out be perhaps as big a comedy as U.S. foreign policy of the era.

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Jim Patterson is a life member of the American Foreign Service Association, a retired U.S. diplomat and a silent film historian with an emphasis on the career of Lillian Gish. For speaking engagements, he travels internationally from Washington DC.  JEPDiplomat@gmail.com