October 7, 1971: "The French Connection" Premieres

October 7, 1971: The French Connection premieres, based on the 1969 book by Robin Moore, itself based on a real break-up of a drug-smuggling operation in New York in 1962.

Moore (1925-2008) had served in the U.S. Army Special Forces, and not only co-wrote the lyrics to "The Ballad of the Green Berets" with Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, but wrote the novel The Green Berets, which became a 1968 John Wayne film. In 1971, he collaborated with Dutch call girl Xaviera Hollander on her memoir The Happy Hooker: My Own Story, which was made into a series of 3 films, each starring a different actress. In 1986, Moore was convicted of tax fraud.

The real case, with heroin going from Indonesia, where the poppies were grown; to Turkey, where it was processed; to Marseille on the south coast of France, where it was distributed throughout the world; to New York, and then distributed throughout America, was cracked by Detectives Eddie Egan (1930-1995) and Sonny Grosso (1930-2020).

The French drug kingpin they sabotaged, but never arrested, was Jean Jehan. Jehan used French television personality Jacques Angelvin (1914-1978) to make contacts in America. Angelvin apparently never knew what was really going on until he was arrested. Jehan was arrested by French authorities in 1967, because he was given immunity due to being an anti-Nazi Resistance fighter in World War II. He was seen alive in Nice, on the French Riviera, as late as 1977, and is believed to have died of old age in his native Corsica. But Angelvin served 4 years in an American prison.

In the movie, directed by William Friedkin, Egan became Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, played by Gene Hackman; Grosso became Buddy "Cloudy" Russo ("Cloudy" being the opposite of "Sunny," or "Sonny"), played by Roy Scheider; Jehan became Alan Charnier, played by Fernando Rey. Angelvin became actor Henri Devereaux, played by Frédéric de Pasquale. And Angelvin's 1960 Buick Invicta, with 112 pounds of bagged heroin hidden in the rocker panels, became a 1970 Lincoln Continental Mark III.

Friedkin, who had previously directed The Thin Blue Line, The Night They Raided Minsky's and The Boys In the Band; and would go on to direct The Exorcist, The Brink's Job, Cruising, To Live and Die In L.A. and Blue Chips, knew who he wanted to play Charnier, but couldn't remember the man's name: All he remembered was that he was a Spanish actor who had worked with Spanish director Luis Buñuel in a French-language movie.

Someone told him it was Rey, and he invited Rey to come to New York to discuss the movie. Then he found out that the actor he really wanted was Francisco Rabal -- and that Rey hadn't even appeared in the movie that Friedkin was thinking of, Belle du Jour. Rabal was able to meet with Friedkin first, but, as it turned out, he could speak neither English nor French. Rey, as it turned out, could speak both of those languages just well enough to pull the role off.

The film made a star of Hackman, but he wasn't even close to the first choice to play Doyle. Friedkin wanted Paul Newman. If not him, then Steve McQueen. Both were superstar actors and experienced drivers, which was integral for the chase scene. But both would have demanded paychecks too big for the producers, so they never asked Newman. They did ask McQueen, but he had made Bullitt in 1968, with its famous chase scene over the hills of San Francisco, and he didn't want to do another cop film.

They considered Jackie Gleason, who was already too old for the role (he was 54 when it was filmed in 1970; Newman was 45, while McQueen and Hackman were both 40), and hadn't done a film since his comedy Gigot flopped in 1962. (Gleason later played a cop in chase scenes in the Smokey and the Bandit films.) They asked Peter Boyle (who was 35), who thought the idea for the film was too violent.

They asked a real New Yorker, but not a real actor: New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin (who was 42). Breslin, who had covered the original story, was intrigued with the idea of playing a detective. But he had never driven a car before -- living your whole life in New York City, that is possible -- and didn't want to start with such an important scene. He wanted the movie to succeed enough to admit that he was the wrong guy.

They asked Lee Marvin (46) and Robert Mitchum (53, nearly as old as Gleason), already veteran tough guys; and James Caan (30), who'd just finished Brian's Song, and was already in line to play Sonny Corleone in The Godfather. All of them turned it down. Rod Taylor (40), star of the 1960 version of The Time Machine, wanted it, but Friedkin didn't want him. So he cast Hackman, then known for a supporting role in Bonnie and Clyde and starring in I Never Sang for My Father.

What everyone remembers from the film is the chase: After Pierre Nicoli, played by Marcel Bozzuffi, escapes from Doyle, he boards an elevated train in New York's Subway system. So Doyle commandeers a 1971 Pontiac Le Mans (a brand-new car at the time), and drives under the elevated line, hitting other cars but staying on the chase, until he sees Nicoli disembark, and finally shoots him. The line was the old BMT West End Line in Brooklyn, at the time running as the B Train, now the D Train. The chase lasts from the 86th Street station to the 62nd Street station.

Some of the cops who acted as advisors on the film told Friedkin that a cop would not have shot a suspect in the back, because that would be murder, not self-defense. Friedkin told them, "I am secure in my conviction that that's exactly what Eddie Egan would have done, and Eddie was on the set while all of this was being shot."

The ending of the film matches the reality: While the big deal is busted, and the heroin is confiscated, Charnier gets away. This inspired one of the earliest film sequels, The French Connection II, in which Doyle gives up the home-field advantage to try to bust Charnier on his own turf, in Marseille, with results that, at first, prove disastrous. (That film has no connection to real life: Egan did not pursue Jehan any further.)

The French Connection was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, and won 5, including Best Picture, Best Actor for Hackman, and Best Director for Friedkin. Over 50 years later, it has a 96 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 94 percent rating on Metacritic. Akira Kurosawa called it one of his favorite films, David Fincher called it one of the five films that "had a profound impact on my life," Brad Pitt called it one of the reasons he took the lead role in Fincher's film Se7en, and Steven Spielberg said he studied it in preparation for his film Munich.

Bozzuffi died in 1988, Rey in 1994, de Pasquale in 2001, Scheider in 2008. As of October 7, 2022, Friedkin and Hackman are still alive. (UPDATE: Friedkin died in 2023.)

One more thing: For a stakeout, Hackman as Doyle plays a "sidewalk Santa," ringing a bell and raising money for the Salvation Army. And the scene takes place on a very cold day in New York, with some snow on the ground. If Die Hard, which has no snow at all, is a "Christmas movie," then so is The French Connection, which is a much better movie.

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October 7, 1971 was a Thursday. Football was in midweek. The NHL season started the next day; the NBA season, 4 days after that; the American Basketball Association season, the night after that. And baseball was between its League Championship Series and its World Series, which the Pittsburgh Pirates would win over the Baltimore Orioles in 7 games. So there were no scores on this historic day.