THE CARPETSWEEPERS

THE CARPETBAGGERS (1964)
dir: Edward Dymytryk

THE CARPETSWEEPERS
MAD #92, January 1965
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

The genre known as a “potboiler”. Later a staple of made-for-TV movies, these were long soap operas about ruthless rich businessmen and their families, usually based on books by Harold Robbins or Sidney Sheldon, in this case the former.

We open with Jonas Cord (George Peppard), carefree playboy son of a millionaire tycoon, taking the wheel of a plane flying over his father's factory. Hud was a character played by Paul Newman in another movie that was also about the ruthless heir to a business.

Jonas has been called into to the office because he has disgraced the family. His father yells at him and in doing so has a heart attack and dies (here he's already dead when Jonas comes in and he's informed of it by their boss McAllister [Lew Ayres]). Now that his father has died he owns the company, buys out the other stockholders, and buys everything else he can get his hands on.

He goes home to his stepmother, Rina (Carroll Baker), and comes on to her before telling her his father's dead. She is revealed to have been his girlfriend before meeting his father and marrying him.

She still has a crush on Jonas and fools around with him. Jonas dumps her, caring only about business, so she moves to Europe and becomes a party girl.

He marries Monica (Elizabeth Ashley), the daughter of his rival, who he's bought out, and he does nothing but buy companies and live in hotel rooms. She never sees him and his bored with their life. He has affairs that she keeps walking in on, and soon divorces him, but not before finding he has impregnated her.

(The hand-biting was used in the poster. I have no idea if the cut of the film I saw was the “dirty” one or not. What was considered too far in the early 1960s is nothing compared to the genitals in your face you see every day in the 2020s.)


He buys a movie company, fires everybody, and decides to do it all himself. Rina has returned to the country and is gofer for the movie company. Since he's fired everyone, he needs a new female lead, and chooses Rina despite her lack of experience. She becomes the biggest star the studio has right away.

This being a five-page parody of a two and a half hour movie, naturally scenes are not used. I couldn't find any clips so you'll have to imagine what they look like.

Missing is a production assistant sent to Rina to give her a script she has refuses to read, and by doing so, he's unknowingly a gift to get her to do the part, a variation on the casting couch.

Bernard (Martin Balsam), who owns half of the motion picture company, sells his remaining shares. He did this to teach Jonas a lesson for taking over his company. The stock he sold is now worthless because what he didn't tell Jonas was that Rina has just died in a drunk-driving accident. Jonas knows his assistant Bob (Bob Cummings) knew all along and punches him.

Missing: Jonas, grief-stricken by the death of Rina, goes on a drunken bender and wakes up in the room of a hooker.

Also missing: A new actress is groomed. Jennie Denton (Martha Hyer) was the girlfriend of his friend and assistant Bob and becomes the new star and gets engaged to Jonah. His ex-wife comes by so their daughter can meet him, but they walk in on Jennie trying on clothes. They walk out on him again.

Bob, jealous of the engagement, blackmails Jennie by threatening to show a stag reel she had done. She breaks down and confesses everything to Jonas. He says he knew about all this already. He knew about her loose morals and also knew she was barren, and this is exactly why he wanted to marry her. No commitment and no children.

I guess I can understand why MAD skipped that part.

Best friend of the family Nevada (Alan Ladd), who also had a thing for Rina, blames her death on Jonas and fights him. MAD has made fun of violence in other movies for being cartoony but this is even cartoonier. Let me show you.

During the fight Nevada reveals that Jonas's megalomania has to do with his taking over the identity of his twin brother. He decides to give everything up and start life over again with his ex-wife.