In the early fall of 1971, the brother-sister pop duo The Carpenters released one of their biggest hits, "Superstar." The B side of that single, while not nearly as ubiquitous on the radio, was heard frequently enough to become a modest hit on its own, going to #67 on the Billboard Top 100 and #28 on the adult contemporary charts. Owing largely to the popularity of The Carpenters, the song, "Bless the Beasts & Children," was far more successful than its namesake movie, released around the same time, which featured, throughout the picture, instrumental versions of the song as well as Karen Carpenter's vocals on the soundtrack.

Producer-director Stanley Kramer later said he thought the reason for the film's lackluster box office was that it had "no name stars and it supports a principle for which Americans of the 60s and 70s may not have been ready." Contrary to Kramer's assessment, the film's theme and plot actually seem like a good fit for the times. The story concerns a group of adolescent boys dumped in summer camps by busy and neglectful parents. Unable to fit in, they are stigmatized as social misfits and decide to run away from camp on a crusade to save a herd of bison from being used as targets by a local rifle club. Social misfits with a mission to preserve nature should have been resonant enough for the period, even coming at the tail end of the '60s counterculture, but Bless the Beasts & Children (1971) still could not find a suitable audience.

Kramer was probably more on target when he said one problem was the lack of stars. The biggest name in the cast was 17-year-old Bill Mumy, although he hadn't really been on the public radar for a few years before this, having completed his three-year run in the hit television sci-fi series Lost in Space in 1968. For those who may not recall, Mumy was the cute, precocious red-haired kid on the show who was frequently told by the space family's robot, "Danger, Will Robinson," one of the more recognizable phrases from American pop culture of the decade.

The problem might have been Kramer himself. For many years, he had been the creator of movies that drove home - with a sledgehammer, some critics said - social themes and examinations of society's great ills, among them racism (The Defiant Ones, 1958), nuclear holocaust (On the Beach, 1959), war crimes (Judgment at Nuremberg, 1961), and greed and materialism (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, 1963), all commercial successes, even if critics found them a tad heavy-handed and intellectually unsophisticated. Kramer's last real hit had been another racism-themed story, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), more notable as the last pairing of one of Hollywood's greatest screen teams, Tracy and Hepburn, than for any kind of astute analysis of a real societal problem. By the time he made R.P.M. (1970), a movie about student revolt, both audiences and critics found him hopelessly out of touch with the leftist ideologies he purported to espouse, and the picture was practically laughed off the screen.

Kramer had high hopes, however, for Bless the Beasts & Children, entering into and ultimately winning a fierce bidding war for the film rights to Glendon Swarthout's 1970 novel, the biggest best-seller of the author's long and eclectic career. A Michigan native, Swarthout (1918-1992) wrote six novellas for young readers and 16 novels, ranging in genre from mystery to romance to comedy to Western. Among his other books made into movies were They Came to Cordura (1959), Where the Boys Are (1960), and The Shootist (1976).

"I still take a certain pride in the picture, but I must admit it failed to accomplish its purpose," Kramer wrote in his autobiography, noting that Bless the Beasts & Children still receives honors from conservationists. "I had imagined it as a saga of constructive youthful rebellion and an attempt by young people to grasp the bewildering society in which they live, but somehow it just didn't jell." As the director's remarks indicate, Bless the Beasts & Children tried to cover a lot of ground, resorting to individual flashbacks for each outcast boy to show how a dysfunctional home life led to his current situation, and then throwing all the young people together into the bison-saving mission. Film critic Roger Ebert admitted to feeling confused about the movie's message and intent and downright angry over its big statement ending, although he wasn't quite sure what that statement was meant to be.

Bless the Beasts & Children actually did better overseas than in the U.S. It made its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in August, 1971 as the official U.S. entry in the international competition. Responding to the reception given to the film in the Soviet Union, Kramer noted that audiences there "viewed it as a preachment against Kent State and My Lai," even though he meant it to be more of a statement about America's "gun cult" and the higher possibility of violence in a society where weapons are so easily available.

Getting back to the music in Bless the Beasts & Children, the score was composed by Barry De Vorzon and Perry Botkin, Jr., who received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song and the Grammy Award for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television Special. Their score included an instrumental selection titled "Cotton's Dream," named for the troubled youth played by Barry Robins. The motif was later reworked to become "Nadia's Theme," the title song of the soap opera The Young and the Restless and a top radio hit in late 1976.

Bless the Beasts & Children was filmed on location in Arizona, including a locale near Prescott named Hidden Valley Ranch --no relation to the famous salad dressing.

Director: Stanley Kramer
Producer: Stanley Kramer
Screenplay: Mac Benoff, based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout
Cinematography: Michel Hugo
Editing: William A. Lyon
Art Direction: Lyle R. Wheeler
Original Music: Perry Botkin, Jr. & Barry De Vorzon
Cast: Bill Mumy (Teft), Barry Robins (Cotton), Miles Chapin (Shecker), Darell Glaser (Goodenow), Bob Kramer (Lally I), Marc Vahanian (Lally II).
C-109m.

by Rob Nixon