Big Hair in the Bible: Samson Meets Cecil B. DeMille

"Samson and Delilah" was painted 1628-1630
by Flemish Baroque artist Anthony van Dyck.

Every so often, here in the Moviehouse, we like to take a look at coming attractions to see if anything worth noting is coming down the pipes. Our eyes fell upon "Samson," based on the tale of the legendary muscleman in the Old Testament who brought down a pagan temple with his bare hands. This isn't a biblical epic on the scale of 2014's "Noah," starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly, or that same year's "Exodus: Gods and Kings," starring Christian Bale and directed by Ridley Scott. This is a modest, low-budget picture produced by Pure Flix Entertainment, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based production company that distributes Christian-oriented and family-friendly films. The biggest names in "Samson," which features Taylor James, a British workaday actor with limited screen experience, in the title role, are "Titanic" snob Billy Zane as a cruel king, '70s and '80s action hero Rutger Hauer as Samson's father, and TV's "Bionic Woman" Lindsay Wagner as Samson's mother.

What immediately comes to mind is the landmark 1949 biblical pageant "Samson and Delilah," directed by the maestro of wide-screen spectacle, Cecil B. DeMille. The important thing to remember about "Samson and Delilah" is that even in 1949, it stood out as the first major Bible movie made by a major American since the silent era. And Cecil B. pretty much had a clinch on the genre even then, with 1923's "The Ten Commandments" (budgeted at $1.5 million dollars, comparable to almost 24.4 million today) and 1927's "The King of Kings" (with a similar budget) to his credit.

Filmed on a budget of $3 million, "Samson and Delilah" became the #1 box office hit of the year with a domestic gross of $28.8 million, compared to the gross of $3.5 million for that year's Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner "All the King's Men."

More importantly, the film opened the floodgate for no less than 18 biblically themed motion pictures through the 1950s up to the mid-1960s, including DeMille's own sweeping remake of "The Ten Commandments" in 1956, starring Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, and Anne Baxter.

Before delving into the cinematic experience that Cecil B. DeMille offered in "Samson and Delilah," we'd be best served by a glance at the scriptural source in the Old Testament. Samson's saga composes the last three chapters in the Book of Judges. Judges follows the Book of Joshua, which ends with the death of Moses' right-hand man, who had become leader of the Israelite tribes following the passing of their patriarch. Despite their conquest of the promised land of Canaan, the Israelites still found themselves in the midst of Canaanites and were prone to worshipping foreign gods instead of Yahweh.

This set up a repeating pattern throughout the Book of Judges wherein Israel commits evil in the eyes of God, and the people are oppressed by their enemies. Yahweh finally hears their cries and produces a leader - a judge - in the time of crisis, who, overcome with the spirit of the Lord, defeats the enemy. Peace is restored and the Israelites receive God's blessing, only to screw up again and set off the cycle anew.

Samson was the last judge of the ancient Israelites before the establishment of monarchy. He came along when the Hebrews again "did evil in the Lord's sight" and "had been handed over to the Philistines, who oppressed them for 40 years." Samson had taken a vow as a Nazirite, which required him to abstain from wine, wine vinegar, grapes, raisins, and intoxicating liquors, to refrain from cutting his hair, and to not become impure by contact with graves or corpses, even those of family members.

Unfortunately, Samson turned out to be a repeatedly flawed individual who personified everything wrong with Israelites. In a mere three rapidly paced chapters, Samson comes across as a petulant, simple-minded bully prone to outbursts of mass homicide. With no mention of "judging," by the way. Oh, he does make a dent in the Philistine populace, slaughtering 1000 of their soldiers with the jawbone of a donkey...

An 1860 wood engraving by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld
illustrates Samson's dispatching of 1000 Philistines with
the jawbone of an ass.

... and finally destroying a Philistine temple and its throng of heathen worshippers, along with himself, but ultimately, Old Testament scholar Daniel I. Block summed up, "He never leads Israel out in battle; he never engages the Philistines in martial combat; he never experiences a military victory. All his accomplishments are personal; all his victories, private." When the writer of Judges related that Samson killed more people in his epic suicidal act (depicted below in an 1866 wood engraving by Gustave Doré) than in all his previous feats combined, it rings less of triumph than regret that Samson had not done more.

Victor Mature fittingly portrays the Hebrew strongman as a cocky but playful, perpetual screw-up with an unlucky attraction to enemy Philistine women and a habit of squandering his divine powers on petty revenge. A few of Samson's more atrocious antics, such as maliciously tying torches to foxes' tails and unleashing them in the grain fields and olive groves of the Philistines, were ignored in the screenplay. And instead of randomly murdering 30 Philistines for their clothes in a lost wager, on-screen, he merely robs them of their robes.

Mature was a darkly handsome, hunky leading man, best known up to that time for his roles as a caveman of the Rock Tribe in Hal Roach's "One Million B.C." (1940), Doc Holliday in John Ford's "My Darling Clementine" (1946), and an ex-con in the film noir classic "Kiss of Death" (1947).

Victor Mature, as a Shakespeare-quoting Doc Holliday, is confronted
by Henry Fonda, as Wyatt Earp, in "My Darling Clementine."

Originally, DeMille wanted Burt Lancaster but searched elsewhere when he was informed that the actor was suffering from a bad back. Some accounts said that the decision to move on may have been motivated by Lancaster's liberal politics clashing with DeMille's decidedly conservative outlook.

A word or two about Cecil B. DeMille's outlook. He was a lifelong conservative and a Republican activist. In the 1950s he served on the board of the anti-communist National Committee for a Free Europe. His father was a lay reader in the Episcopal Church, his mother was of German Jewish descent. DeMille often drew on his Protestant and Jewish lineage to convey messages of tolerance. He maintained that his movies were lofty moral tales produced to nourish spiritual growth, but others usually saw them as spectacles spiced up with sex to titillate audiences - such as 1932's "The Sign of the Cross" and 1934's "Cleopatra" - and then wrapped up with a message of piety to alleviate guilty consciences.

It's difficult to find any spirituality lurking in a scene
from DeMille's "The Sign of the Cross" depicting a
naked Christian girl bound in chains and terrorized
by a gorilla in the Roman arena.

In his 1959 autobiography, DeMille noted, "I am sometimes accused of gingering up the Bible with large and lavish infusions of sex and violence. I can only wonder if my accusers have ever read certain parts of the Bible. If they have, they must have read them through that stained-glass telescope which centuries of tradition and form have put between us and the men and women of flesh who lived and wrote the Bible. Clothing them in what we think is reverence, we have too often stripped the men and women of the Bible of their humanity; and I believe that that same process strips them of much of their religious value, too."

DeMille once boasted, "Give me any two pages of the Bible and I'll give you a picture." Which is, more or less, what he did with "Samson and Delilah." He reportedly spent $100,000 alone in historical research beforehand.

DeMille described the role of Samson as "a combination of Tarzan, Robin Hood, and Superman." Not surprisingly, one of the early considerations for the role was Steve Reeves, then a burgeoning bodybuilder (a year away from flexing his way to the Mr. Universe title), who was criticized for being too bulked up but refused to tone down to remain at a qualified weight for competitions. (A decade later, Reeves would achieve international stardom in "Hercules" and numerous other Italian-produced sword-and-sandal potboilers.) Strangely enough, dashing leading man Cary Grant was another of DeMille's early considerations for the part, as was screen swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

When Victor Mature showed up to play Samson, he was 30 pounds overweight. He underwent a vigorous exercise regimen supervised by actor and costar Henry Wilcoxon, appearing in the film as Prince Ahtur, the regional Philistine governor. Wilcoxon was a London stage actor whose fledgling screen career was bolstered when DeMille cast him as Marc Antony in 1934's "Cleopatra," featuring a saucy, barely clad Claudette Colbert in the title role (pictured below).

"Cleopatra" would be the start of a lifelong friendship and lengthy working relationship between DeMille and Wilcoxon, who appeared in a number of the director's films and worked as an associate producer on DeMille's later pictures. In fact, DeMille had planned to make "Samson and Delilah" as early as 1935, with Wicoxon as Samson. The two men shared a mutual respect for courage and athleticism, despising coworkers who displayed fear or were unwilling to perform hazardous stunts. And this is where Victor Mature came in.

Despite the physique his training with Wilcoxon had given him, Mature was a man of many fears and phobias. When DeMille wanted to film a tussle between Samson and a tame, aging lion owned by Paramount Pictures playfully named Old Jackie, the star flatly refused. Reminded that the cat was toothless, Mature protested, "I don't want to be gummed to death either!" The scene was shot with a stunt double intercut with lame footage of Victor wrestling an obviously stuffed beast. Needless to say, this led to much derision from the macho DeMille and Wilcoxon.

Note the wrinkly puppet-like paw of the "lion."

When it came time to film the climactic showstopper when Samson topples the temple of the Philistine god Dagon, Victor instructed the crew to make the pillars "lightweight," saying, "I don't like expending too much physical energy."

The reasons for Mature's reluctance to throw himself into a role might have had more to do with his lackadaisical attitude about the acting profession than any sense of dread. After he virtually retired from show business at the age of 46, he said, "Actually, I am a golfer. That is my real occupation. I never was an actor. Ask anybody, particularly the critics."

Mature did shine in his on-screen chemistry with leading lady Hedy Lamarr as the seductive but dangerous Delilah, whose name, in Victor's dialogue, "will be an everlasting curse on the lips of men."

In The New York Times review of the movie, critic Bosley Crowther wrote, "Hedy Lamarr as Delilah is a sleek and bejeweled siren whose charms have a...twentieth-century grace and clarity."

For the role of the Philistine femme fatale, DeMille initially considered such actresses as Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Ava Gardner, Jean Simmons, even leggy World War II pin-up favorite Betty Grable before casting Vienna-born Hedy Lamarr. In 1938, Lamarr (her name was changed from Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) was brought to Hollywood from Europe, where she had caused a sensation by appearing nude and simulating an orgasm in the 1933 Czech film "Ecstasy." In America, Louis B. Mayer promoted her as the "world's most beautiful woman."

In her 1967 autobiography, Lamarr recalled being told beforehand on "Samson and Delilah" over cocktails with a less than reputable talent agent she dubbed "Sidney," "C.B.'s a genius at those things. By the time he's through spreading the money and talent around, every man in the world will want to screw the heroine...It's a natural; a guy with muscles, a broad with virginity." He said, "When he sells sex, sister, people buy because he wraps it in fancy paper with pink ribbons." When she asked who plays Samson, Sidney replied, "It's only a body to set you off in the ruins. Muscles and tits sugar-coated with religion. It's for you."

George Sanders, Hollywood's epitome of urbane, aloof cynicism, played the picture's dry-witted, fatalistic antagonist, the Saran of Gaza, a title for the lord of five Philistine cities.

Sporting an anachronistic Van Dyke beard, the Saran (George
Sanders) snidely intones, "No, they're very human; the weak
always bond together to pull down the strong."

The ironic, sarcastic persona Sanders perfected over a 40-year career always seemed ill at ease in costumed period pieces. Try as he might otherwise, he couldn't help but look uneasy, even bored, in ill-fitting chain mail or uncomfortable robes...

...as Knight Templar Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert in "Ivanhoe"...

...as Richard the Lionheart in "King Richard and the Crusaders"...

...or as Solomon's conniving elder brother Adonijah in "Solomon and Sheba"...

No, George needed a tailored suit, evening jacket, or dinner tux to exude haughty self-confidence, as he did in his Oscar-winning role as acerbic theater critic Addison DeWitt in "All About Eve"...

...and as millionaire Benjamin Ballon in "A Shot in the Dark"...

Speaking of wardrobe, one of George Sanders' final film roles was as a cross-dressing secret agent called The Warlock in "The Kremlin Letter," a 1970 Cold War spy thriller directed by John Huston.

Showing signs of dementia and dealing with failing health, including suffering a minor stroke, the 65-year-old Sanders downed five bottles of the barbiturate Nembutal and succumbed to cardiac arrest in 1972. A sophisticate to the end, he wrote, "Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck."

Interestingly, Victor Mature had opened a television retail store the year after TV broadcasting had begun, and he shocked his "Samson and Delilah" costars by selling marked-down sets out of his dressing room. George Sanders bought a couple dozen TVs and gave them as gifts to friends.

Angela Lansbury, at 23, had already been in a dozen pictures (including her Best Supporting Actress Oscar-nominated debut in 1944's "Gaslight") when she was cast in "Samson and Delilah" as Delilah's older sister and short-lived (literally) fiancée of Samson, Semadar (pictured below). In a derogatorily sexist manner (remember, this was the 1940s) Times critic Bosley Crowther remarked, "Angela Lansbury is a plump and pouting doll."

Rounding out the principal cast of "Samson and Delilah," more or less, was teenaged Russ Tamblyn as Samson's youthful sidekick Saul, as in the future first king of Israel and Judah (pictured below). Samson and Saul were never mentioned in the same Old Testament verse or even linked in any remote reference to the 11th century BC historicity of Judea, but that didn't stop screenwriters from providing Saul with the life lesson that Samson's "strength will never die...Men will tell his story for a thousand years".

The biblical Saul came from the tribe of Benjamin, but the movie ties
him in with Samson's tribe of Dan. The film gave Saul characteristics
associated with young David, Saul's eventual successor as king of the
Israelites, including wearing a slingshot as a headband.

Perhaps it was a post-World War II thirst for spectacle and spirituality that drove viewers in unprecedented throngs to the theaters to see "Samson and Delilah" in 1949. The themes of oppression, heroism, and freedom were doubtlessly vital to its original appeal. The picture premiered simultaneously at two Manhattan movie palaces, with a combined audience of 5500, in lines three abreast.

DeMille initiated a wave of biblical pictures and
religious-inspired epics through the 1950s - among
them "David and Bathsheba," "Quo Vadis," "Ben-Hur,"
"The Robe," with Victor Mature and Richard Burton) -
up to the mid '60s, with "King of Kings," "The Greatest
Story Ever Told," and "The Bible: In the Beginning."

The premiere prompted a long-standing Hollywood tale, apocryphal or not. Cecil B. DeMille allegedly asked Groucho Marx what he thought of the film. Groucho replied that he couldn't enjoy "a picture where the leading man's tits are bigger than the leading lady's."

Writing in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther, referring to Cecil B. DeMille, called "the film "the vast manufacture of a spectacle that out-Babels anything he's done. There are more flowing garments in this picture, more chariots, more temples, more peacock plumes, more pillows, more spear-carriers, more beards and more sex than ever before. At least, that's the sizable impression which Mr. DeMille has achieved by bringing together the Old Testament and Technicolor for the first time."

Poet and international newswoman Elliseva Sayers remarked in the British magazine Picturegoer, "All the overworked adjectives - spectacular, terrific, awesome, breathtaking - will need to be given a new lease of life to describe this picture. And then they'll miss the mark."

Bosley Crowther commented, "If you'll settle for gold-plated pageants, for muscular episodes and for graphic inducements to wolf-whistling, then 'Samson and Delilah' is for you." He added, "If ever there was a movie for DeMillions, here it is."


Postscript: Life After the Old Testament

Glancing at what became of the cast, from the smallest roles to the starring leads, we start, literally, with the smallest, Angelo Rossitto, a dwarf actor who first appeared in silent pictures with John Barrymore and Lon Chaney Sr. He had a supporting role in the controversial cult classic "Freaks" in 1932, the same year Cecil B. DeMille cast him as a pygmy in "The Sign of the Cross." In "Samson and Delilah," Rossitto played a Philistine army's mascot who ill-advisedly taunts Samson with the skull of a donkey.

Rossitto appeared in over 70 films and numerous TV programs. One of the last major roles for Rossitto, who was in failing health and nearly blind, was as Master, Bartertown's engineering boss, in 1985's "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome."

Angelo Rossitto poses on-location with Helen Buday and Mel Gibson
in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome."

Some accounts claim George Reeves, future star of the series "The Adventures of Superman" was interested in the role of Samson. This wasn't the case, but it is true that he and Victor Mature were fellow acting students at the Pasadena Community Playhouse, and Victor, who was well-known for his loyalty to friends, recommended George for the role of a wounded survivor of Samson's rampage with the jawbone of an ass (pictured below).

Reeves, who enjoyed an early screen role as one of the Tarleton twins wooing Scarlett O'Hara in 1939's "Gone with the Wind," worked steadily after "Samson and Delilah" in low-budget films and on television, until starring in the Superman series in the 1950s. His role, which lasted over 100 episodes, would be his last before his mysterious shooting death in 1959, which was officially ruled a suicide, although questions remained.

George Reeves appeared in an A-list movie, playing Sgt. Maylon
Stark in 1953's "From Here to Eternity," with Frank Sinatra.

Although he never trained as a dancer, Russ Tamblyn's high school training as a gymnast and a natural ability as an acrobat prepared him for his breakout role as Gideon in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," followed later by his high-stepping performance as Riff, leader of the Jets street gang in "West Side Story" (pictured below). He always considered himself an actor who danced instead of a dancer who acted.

In the late 1960s and early '70s, he appeared in a number of low-budget exploitation flicks like "Satan's Sadists" (pictured below), "Scream Free!" (aka "Free Grass"), "The Female Bunch," and "Dracula vs. Frankenstein."

On several episodes of the cult TV series "Twin Peaks," Russ Tamblyn played Dr. Jacoby, an oddball psychiatrist with a peculiar Hawaii fixation (pictured below). He reprised the role in the 2017 reboot of the series.

On a side note, Russ Tamblyn's daughter is an actress with several movies to her credit, including "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants," "127 Hours," and "Spring Breakdown," with Amy Poehler, Parker Posey, and Rachel Dratch (pictured below). In Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained," Amber appeared with Russ as daughter and father.

But we digress. As mentioned earlier, Henry Wilcoxon, who portrayed the Philistine Saran's right-hand man, Ahtur (pictured below, with Hedy Lamarr and George Sanders), was a close friend and confidant of director Cecil B. DeMille.

Wilcoxon played Marc Antony in DeMille's "Cleopatra" (1934) and King Richard the Lionheart in DeMille's 1935 production "The Crusades" (pictured below, with Loretta Young as Richard's wife Berengaria of Navarre and Ian Keith as sultan Saladin).

In DeMille's "The Ten Commandments" (1956), Wilcoxon gave a stalwart performance as Pentaur, the faithful general of Pharaoh Rameses II, played by Yul Brynner (pictured below).

When Cecil B. DeMille made "The Buccaneer" in 1938 with Frederic March as Jean Lafitte, the French privateer who aided American troops against the British in the Battle of Britain during the War of 1812, Anthony Quinn had a supporting role as a pirate. Before the movie premiered, Quinn had married Cecil's daughter, Katharine DeMille. DeMille wanted to remake "The Buccaneer" 20 years later, with Yul Brynner and Charlton Heston, but was seriously ill, so he handed directing chores to son-in-law Anthony (in the only directing assignment in his career), with Henry Wilcoxon credited as the picture's producer.

Perhaps it was his chiseled features but later in his career, Wilcoxon frequently found himself cast as a Native American. He played the Indian Chief in 1971's period survival saga "Man in the Wilderness" (pictured above), starring Richard Harris and John Huston. Scripted by Jack DeWitt (who wrote the screenplay for Richard Harris' "A Man Called Horse"), the film was loosely based on the life of frontiersman Hugh Glass, who was also the inspiration for the acclaimed 2015 movie "The Revenant."

Wilcoxon portrayed "Chief Charlie" on a 1982 episode of the sitcom "Private Benjamin" and his final performance was as a Native American named Greyfeather in the 1983 low-budget horror flick "Sweet Sixteen" (pictured above). However, one of the actor's most memorable later roles was a rare comedic turn as Bishop ("Excellency? My name is Fred...") Pickering in 1980's "Caddyshack." Wilcoxon even got to spoof Charlton Heston as Moses in a sly goof on "The Ten Commandments."

"The good Lord would never disrupt the best game of my life!"
Bishop Pickering (Henry Wilcoxon) confers with his caddy,
greenskeeper Carl (Bill Murray), in "Caddyshack."

In 1962, Angela Lansbury received an Academy Award nomination for her performance as the icy communist agent married to a U.S. senator in "The Manchurian Candidate" (pictured below), starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Janet Leigh.

Past middle age and with 45 movies, over 35 television appearances, and more than a dozen stage roles to her credit, Angela Lansbury found renewed fame as mystery writer and amateur sleuth Jessica Fletcher on 12 seasons of "Murder, She Wrote." But truth be told, one of our favorite turns in the Moviehouse by Angela was her title role in 1979's "The Lady Vanishes," a frothy remake of Hitchcock's 1938 mystery as a screwball romp, featuring Elliott Gould and Cybill Shepherd (pictured below).

"The Lady Vanishes" was scripted by "The Seven Year Itch"
playwright George Axelrod, who also wrote the screenplay
for the aforementioned "The Manchurian Candidate."

After costarring with Bob Hope in the 1951 comedy "My Favorite Spy" (similarly titled to Hope's earlier films "My Favorite Blonde" and "My Favorite Brunette"), the screen career of Hedy Lamarr suddenly declined, and she appeared only occasionally in films.

One of her last pictures was the laughably inept, star-studded historical epic "The Story of Mankind," made in 1957 by producer-director Irwin Allen (best known as the "Master of Disaster" for producing "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno"). In a film that featured Groucho Marx as the 17th-century Dutch colonist who purchased Manhattan from Native Americans for $24, Harpo Marx as Isaac Newton, Peter Lorre as Nero, Dennis Hopper as Napoleon Bonaparte, and Vincent Price as Satan, the 43-year-old Lamarr was cast as 19-year-old Joan of Arc (pictured below).

After portraying a faded movie star in the turgid 1958 soap opera "The Female Animal," Lamarr, bored with the lack of acting opportunities, put an end to her 30-year career. She was 44. She subsequently turned her attention to inventing.

At the beginning of World War II, Lamarr found out that radio-controlled torpedoes could be easily  jammed and directed off-course. With the knowledge about torpedoes she had learned from her brief first marriage to an Austrian arms merchant and munitions manufacturer, she collaborated with a friend, composer-pianist George Antheil, on developing a device that would create a frequency-hopping signal that couldn't be tracked or jammed. They patented the frequency-hopping system, but the Navy wouldn't consider inventions from outside the military. Finally, in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, an updated version of their device was implemented on U.S. Navy ships. Lamarr and Antheil's work with spread spectrum technology led to such developments as GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.

In 2014, Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil were posthumously
inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame...We figured
a pose by Delilah was more interesting than a hall of fame plaque.

Lamarr's other inventions included an improved traffic light and a tablet that dissolved in water to create a carbonated drink. For Howard Hughes, she produced sketches on how to make aircraft wings less square and more efficient, prompting the aviation tycoon to praise her as "a genius."

In 1974, Hedy Lamarr had her name in the news again, after the Mel Brooks comedy "Blazing Saddles" featured Harvey Korman as a villainous territorial district attorney named Hedley Lamarr who constantly suffers the indignity of being addressed as "Hedy." At one point, Governor Lepetomane (Brooks) consoles Lamarr by telling him, "This is 1874, you'll be able to sue her!"

Comic actor Harvey Corman, co-writer-director Mel Brooks, and
Twin Falls, Idaho-native Robyn Hilton act in "Blazing Saddles."

In fact, Hedy (not Hedley) Lamarr filed a $10 million lawsuit against Warner Bros. for infringement of her right to privacy. The studio settled out of court for an undisclosed sum and issued an apology for "almost using her name." Mel Brooks, who said Lamarr "never got the joke," admitted he was actually flattered by the attention.

Around the same time she sued Warner Bros., Hedy Lamarr
was photographed at a fashion show in New York City in 1974.

In his review, The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther noted, "Victor Mature as Samson is a dashing and dauntless hunk of a man," while Look magazine stated, "Victor Mature is the only actor in the world who could make Samson's strong-man exploits so believable."

In the late 1950s and early '60s, Mature, after starring in three costume adventures shot overseas - "The Bandit of Zhobe," playing an outlaw in India; "Hannibal" (pictured below), as the legendary Carthaginian general who invaded the Roman Empire by using elephants to cross the Alps; and "The Tartars," as Oleg the Viking - announced his retirement from acting at the age of 46.

"I was never that crazy about acting," he admitted in 1971, a sentiment he echoed a few years later when he said acting "wasn't fun anymore. I was OK financially so I thought what the hell -I'll become a professional loafer." He explained, "I wanted to quit while I could still enjoy life...I like to loaf."

"I thought it would be a good idea to sort of enjoy what I had worked so hard for and see how the other half of the world lived...Everyone told me I would go crazy or die if I quit working. Yeah? Well, what a lovely way to die."

He enjoyed relating his experience of being rejected for membership at the Los Angles Country Club because he was an actor, to which he responded, "I'm not an actor and I've got 28 pictures and a scrapbook of reviews to prove it!" When he wasn't invited to leave his footprints in cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, he dropped trou and lowered his rear end into wet concrete in front of his studio dressing room.

After a few years of loafing, Mature was lured back to films with the opportunity to parody his screen persona in the role of an aging vain movie star in "After the Fox," a 1966 heist comedy co-written by Neil Simon and starring Peter Sellers as a master criminal who masquerades as an Italian film director.

In 1968, he portrayed himself as a giant called The Big Victor in "Head," a spaced-out potpourri comedy featuring The Monkees. Mature enjoyed the script (co-written by Jack Nicholson) while confessing it made no sense to him. He said, "All I know is it makes me laugh."

Mature poses in a publicity photo for "Head" with The Monkees.
The Monkees fall out of The Big Victor's head as dandruff.

Mature was talked into appearing in two more motion pictures. "They caught me when I felt like saying yeah," he explained. "Every Little Crook and Nanny" (1971) was another caper comedy, costarring Lynn Redgrave, Paul Sand, Austin Pendleton, John Astin, Dom DeLuise, Pat Morita, Phil Foster, and Pat Harrington Jr. Mature had a cameo as a millionaire in 1979's "Firepower," an action melodrama directed by Michael Winner ("Death Wish") and featuring James Coburn, Sophia Loren, O.J. Simpson, Eli Wallach, and Tony Franciosa.

Victor Mature's final acting role, at age 71, was in the 1984 made-for-television film "Samson and Delilah" as, appropriately,  Samson's father, Manoah (pictured below).

The TV movie featured Belinda Bauer as Delilah and, as Samson, Australian model-actor Anthony Hamilton, whose biggest claim to fame was replacing American model-actor Jon-Erik Hexum on the 1984 spy series "Cover Up" after Hexum died from a self-inflicted blank-cartridge gunshot to his temple on the  set of the program. (The series lasted a single season, and Hamilton himself died a decade later of AIDS-related pneumonia.) The distinguished Swedish-born actor Max von Sydow top-lined the cast in the George Sanders-type role as the Philistine governor, while "Home Alone" burglar Daniel Stern looked rather lost in Bible times as a new character, Micah, a friend of Samson and the leader of a band of Hebrew soldiers.

"I loaf very gracefully. There's a lot to be said about loafing if you know how to do it gracefully."