The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming (1966)
The Russians are coming.
Do you remember Dr. Strangelove, a comedy about nuclear holocaust? Well, The Russians are Coming the Russians are Coming also riffs on that topic, but with the slapstick dial turned to eleven. A Soviet sub runs aground off an American island and Yuri Rozanov (Alan Arkin) leads a team in search of a boat to pull them to safety.
The Russians are discovered by milquetoast Walt Whittaker (Carl Reiner) and his wife Elspeth (Eva Marie Saint). Yuri enlists them into helping the Russians, arguing that the couple should “help us get boat quickly, otherwise there is World War III and everybody is blaming you!”
Eventually the whole town gets wind of the “invading” Russian force. Fendall Hawkins (Paul Ford) forms a citizen militia while police chief Link Mattocks (Brian Keith) tries to keep everyone cool. But it’s the submarine’s captain (Theodore Bikel) who loses his head: he surfaces the sub and declares that he’s going to destroy the island.
Then, a deus ex machina: a child watching the confrontation slips off a church steeple and hangs perilously above the ground. The Russians and Americans work together to save the child and realize that they don’t, in fact, want to viciously murder each other.
Rating: 7/10, I’m pretty sure this is also how the Cold War ended.
Cast and Crew
Carl Reiner is top-billed in this ensemble cast and he’s a comedy legend. He got his start writing for Sid Caesar on TV with “Your Show of Shows” and “Caesar’s Hour,”1 but his major claim to fame is creating “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”2 That’s already enough to get you into the comedy Hall of Fame, but Carl Reiner had more highlights up his sleeve:
An autobiography, “Enter Laughing,” which he turned into a stage play and a film.
The two thousand year old man bit with Mel Brooks.
Siring Rob Reiner, an actor/director we’ll be seeing in this column.
Directing many of Steve Martin’s classic films, including The Jerk (1979).
Playing Saul Bloom, the old con man in the Ocean’s trilogy.
He also won the third Mark Twain Prize for American Humor (because of all of that aforementioned humor). The Russians Are Coming 2x must have been pretty funny, then, since it also featured the guy who won the second of those prizes…
…Jonathan Winters. Winters was apparently one of the funniest guys of his time, but perhaps he’s not as well-remembered because he didn’t have one single iconic role. His most noteworthy part was probably on “Mork & Mindy,” where he played Mearth, the title couple’s child. Winters was renowned for his comedy albums, but I guess we don’t really listen to those anymore, do we. Here’s seven minutes of him pitching Hefty trash bags.
Alan Arkin is the guy nominated for Best Actor from this film, probably because of the thick Russian accent he put on for his role. Arkin’s a guy who had a long career in the entertainment biz, but since we’ll see him again in this column, let’s just discuss some of his early roles.
He won a Tony for “Enter Laughing” (1963). Remember, that was based on the autobiography of Carl Reiner!
He was in a band called the Tarriers that recorded “The Banana Boat Song.” Their version came out the same year as Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)” and had similar success on the pop charts, though it’s Belafonte’s that’s remembered today.
I watched TRACx2 with my mom and, every time Brian Keith was on the screen, she excitedly hollered, “that’s Brian Keith!!” I didn’t really understand why she was so excited about Mr. Keith, and a visit to his Wikipedia page didn’t make it any more obvious. Is my mother a fan of “Family Affair” (1966–1971) or “Hardcastle and McCormick” (1983–1986), two shows with titles that sound AI-generated? Impossible to say.
Let’s speedrun a few more of the folks associated with this film:
Nathaniel Benchley was the author of “The Off-Islanders,” on which this film was based. His son Peter Benchley might be a more familiar name since he wrote “Jaws.”
Theodore Bikel: this is the fifth movie we’ve seen this dude in, and he’s mostly had small parts. But on Broadway, he originated the role of Captain von Trapp in “The Sound of Music.” “Edelweiss” was written for him!
Eva Marie Saint was wildly overqualified for her thankless role as “Carl Reiner’s wife” in this film. We’ve discussed her in our posts on On the Waterfront and A Hatful of Rain, but we haven’t mentioned one of her greatest roles: as the femme fatale in North by Northwest.3
Paul Ford got the “and” credit in this film. He was best-known for playing Sgt. Bilko’s superior on “The Phil Silvers Show” (1955–1959).4
We’ll see three more of director Norman Jewison’s films in this column, including one next year, so we’ll discuss him later.
The Trivia
The film’s fictional location of Gloucester Island is suspiciously like Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket, so today let’s discuss those two Massachusetts islands.
Nantucket’s where a man was once from. It takes its name from a Wampanoag5 word meaning “far away island” or “sandy, sterile soil tempting no one.” It was once the whaling capital of the world, and befitting that, it was where both Melville’s “Moby-Dick” and Poe’s “Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” began. More modern depictions of Nantucket can be found in the TV show “Wings” (1990–1997) or in the novels of chick lit extraordinaire Elin Hilderbrand. A famous daughter of Nantucket is Maria Mitchell, comet-discoverer and first female professional astronomer; Nantucket has an observatory dedicated to her.
Martha’s Vineyard6 is the largest island in Massachusetts. It’s named for a daughter of a 17th century colonist, but it’s a bit of a misnomer since it doesn’t actually have any wineries. Its biggest city is Edgartown, which is where Chappaquiddick is. Jaws (1975) was filmed there (though note that that film’s fictional setting is Amity, New York). The Vineyard is also known for its “gingerbread houses.”
Let’s discuss the peninsula of Cape Cod as well. Two noteworthy spots are Hyannis Port, which is where the Kennedy Compound is, and Woods Hole, location of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (the guys that found the Titanic). The Mayflower initially landed at Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, in 1620.7 Cape Cod lends its name to the “Cape Codder,” a sad cocktail of cranberry juice and vodka, as well as a style of house.
Odds and Ends
The police chief sarcastically refers to Hawkins as “Old Blood and Guts Hawkins,” repurposing Gen. Patton’s nickname…this was one of the few American films of the time to portray Russians in a positive light…the title alludes to Paul Revere’s midnight ride—the one where he declared “the British are coming,” ad nauseam.
Sid Caesar also employed Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Woody Allen.
“The Dick Van Dyke Show” was about comedy writer Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke), who wrote for the fictional “Alan Brady Show.” Carl Reiner played Alan Brady.
She was in other films too: two Elizabeth Taylor joints, Raintree County (1957) and The Sandpiper (1965); Exodus (1960); and Grand Prix (1966), the film Patrick Willems says invented the modern car movie. But mostly “Jeopardy!” just asks about North by Northwest and On the Waterfront.
AKA “Sgt. Bilko.” Neil Simon, who we mentioned earlier as a writer for Sid Caesar, also wrote many episodes of “Sgt. Bilko.”
Sometimes we pretend like the history of America began when Europeans showed up, but the Wampanoag have inhabited Massachusetts and Rhode Island for the last 12,000 years.
Though it had already been visited by Samuel de Champlain—and, as mentioned, was inhabited by native peoples for thousands of years before that.
I don't remember being THAT excited by Brian Keith...was alcohol possibly involved?
Nathaniel Benchley was four years old when the Algonquin Round Table was founded. You're thinking of his father, Robert Benchley.