John Goldfarb, Please Come Home
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John Goldfarb, Please Come Home is a 1963 novel by William Peter Blatty.
The comic spoof of the Cold War was inspired by a May 1960 incident involving American Francis Gary Powers, a CIA operative whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, sparking an international diplomatic incident. Blatty's tale concerns John "Wrong-Way" Goldfarb, a former college football star who once ran 95 yards for a touchdown in the wrong direction. Now a U-2 pilot, his plane malfunctions and crashes in the mythical Arab kingdom of Fawzia. The country's leader threatens to turn him over to the Soviets unless he agrees to coach a football team. Jenny Ericson, the magazine journalist who made Goldfarb famous, is on an undercover assignment as a member of the King's harem, and when she discovers she was wrong in thinking the King is no longer romantically interested in his wives, she seeks help from Goldfarb. The King blackmails the U.S. Department of State into arranging an exhibition football game between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and his own team. Jenny becomes a cheerleader and then the quarterback who scores the winning touchdown for Fawz University.
Blatty's book originally was written as a screenplay, but when no studios expressed interest in it, he reworked it as a novel, which was published by Doubleday (ISBN 0553142518). Its success led Twentieth Century-Fox to acquire the film rights, and Blatty submitted his original script for a feature film directed by J. Lee Thompson. The cast includes Shirley Maclaine as Jenny, Richard Crenna as Goldfarb, Peter Ustinov as the King, and Jim Backus, Fred Clark, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Harry Morgan, Richard Deacon, Teri Garr, Jackie Coogan, Patrick Adiarte, and Jerry Orbach in supporting roles.
Fox expected the film to be its Christmas 1964 release, but Notre Dame filed a defamation lawsuit that wasn't settled until the following year, when the studio finally won its case.[1]
The film was a critical failure and earned back only $3,880,000 of its $4 million budget.[2]
