One, Two, Three: Buying the world a Coke

In 1961 Berlin, the situation was hopeless but not serious.

James Cagney rolls through One, Two, Three like a human bowling ball – he’s constantly in motion, trying to knock over every obstacle in his path. As the head of Coca-Cola’s operations in West Berlin, Cagney’s C.D. MacNamara has more than a few impediments in his way, including the Iron Curtain. It’s 1961, the dawn of the Kennedy Era, and MacNamara’s dream is to open up the Russian market for Coke. His eyes light up at the idea of millions of new consumers downing the quintessential American beverage. That surely would land him the promotion to London that he craves. “Napoleon blew it. Hitler blew it. But Coca-Cola’s gonna pull it off,” he says.

This was a decade before the “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” campaign (otherwise made famous in “Mad Men”), but it was wrapped in the same dream – that commerce, specifically American-style capitalism, could unite the world. In the 1980s, as the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. lurched closer to war and then fell back again, it was always my assumption things just might work out if a McDonald’s ever opened near Red Square.

Amazingly, that very thing occurred just a few years later, in 1990, after the fall of the Wall. The first McDonald’s – with 900 seats no less – opened its doors in Moscow. Economic interdependence and crass commercialism would save the world after all. We would live united in a junk-food utopia.

Now, 35 years later, McDonald’s has pulled out of Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. So has Starbucks. And the idea that globalization could rescue the world from Armageddon seems quaint. The current US president is more interested in erecting barriers to the flow of goods and services, while Russia has shown itself to be a malevolent force again.

Coke played a singular role in the expansion of American power following World War II. It was viewed suspiciously by friends (in Europe) and foes (Stalin) as an instrument of cultural imperialism, so much so that some experts coined the term “cocacolonization.” By the early 1950s, there were 63 Coca-Cola bottling plants expanding across three continents, with the product associated with advancing American values.

But in Billy Wilder’s One, Two, Three, Cagney’s McNamara is a true capitalist. He’s largely unconcerned with East-West tensions or pushing American interests; he just sees customers. Told that under no circumstances can he put a Coke machine in the Reichstag, he grouses, “Sometimes I wonder who won the war.”

Mac is a schemer at heart, alternating between delight and outrage almost minute-by-minute while often marveling at his own genius. He’s stuck in divided Berlin after losing his cozy perch in the Middle East when an Anti-American mob burned down a bottling plant. “I used to have nine countries, now I've got half a city, and that may blow up any day,” he tells his hyper-efficient, soft-spoken German lieutenant, Schlemmer. (Wherever he is, MacNamara yells “Schlemmer!” and the man comes running.)

Mac taunts a Russian trade delegation by detailing how the Soviets once tried to steal the Coke formula and failing in that, came up with their own version, Kremlin Kola. “Not even the Albanians would drink it!” he chortles. His boss back in Atlanta, however, wants nothing to do with the Soviets. Instead, he asks MacNamara to keep watch over his 17-year-old daughter, Scarlet, who is coming to Berlin for a visit. Naturally, Scarlet (Pamela Tiffin) turns out to be a hellion. In no time, she’s snuck herself through the Brandenburg Gate and become engaged to an East German, a die-hard Communist who says things such as, “Capitalism is like a dead herring in the moonlight. It shines, but it stinks!” Scarlet, of course, defends him. “He’s not a Communist! He’s a Republican. He’s from the Republic of East Germany.”

First, Mac tries to get the marriage annulled. But once he discovers Scarlet is pregnant, the mission becomes turning the young radical Otto into a well-mannered (adopted) member of European royalty before Scarlet’s parents arrive in Berlin. He is aided in his machinations by Schlemmer, who clicks his heels together and stands at attention and may or may not have been a member of the SS during the war. (Mac tries to school Otto on current events, telling him the situation in Berlin “is serious but not hopeless.” When Otto is interviewed by a German reporter, of course he gets that backward.

All of it is the stuff of a 30s screwball farce – and that’s what Wilder was shooting for. He famously set out to make the “fastest” film ever made, with hypersonic dialogue reminiscent of Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday. To that end, Cagney was the ideal lead. He never stops moving and rarely stops talking during the entire movie, barking orders, making calls and delivering rapid-fire commentary on the State of Things Today. It’s a performance very few actors could match, then or now.

Wilder is one of the great directors in American history, a master who helmed such works as Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like it Hot and The Apartment. All of those pictures strike a different tone. So does One, Two, Three, which falls a bit short of his Wilder’s finest pictures but deserved a better fate than it got. As Wilder was shooting the film in Berlin, the East Germans closed the border and threw up the Wall. The crew relocated to Munich.

Even worse for Wilder, by the time the movie was released in December 1961, global tensions had risen to the point where audiences were not in the mood to chuckle about the Cold War. A comedy that made light of refugees fleeing Communism didn’t quite land once those who tried to cross started to be killed. The film was such a disappointment and Cagney had expended so much energy in making it that he retired from acting. Wilder would go on to make several more films but would never again reach the heights of his glory days in the 40s and 50s.

That’s a shame, because One, Two, Three should rank among the top film comedies of all time given how difficult it can be to make a political comedy work at all. The manic pace and the broad tone of the movie may not suit everybody – this is a film after all that features a German-language version of “Yes We Have No Bananas” along with car chases and a bushelful of jokes about life in the USSR – but it holds its own with other raucous comedies such as The Palm Beach Story or Blazing Saddles. It’s not even listed among the American Film Institute’s Top 100 comedies (Some Like it Hot is No. 1). That would undoubtedly make C.D. MacNamara sputter in outrage and vow to make things right. Schlemmer!

WHERE CAN I WATCH IT: Given its reputation as a failure, One, Two, Three is a difficult movie to find. It doesn’t appear to be available to rent at the moment. But the DVD on Amazon is going for $9.99. (C’mon, get that player out of the closet!)

HEY ISN’T THAT: Horst Buchholz, a German actor, plays Otto, and unfortunately, he’s the worst thing in the picture, consistently overacting and yelling his lines. He’s no match for Cagney, who loathed him and accused him of trying to steal scenes. Buchholz was also the worst thing in his previous movie, The Magnificent Seven, where he starred alongside the likes of Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner. Undaunted, Buchholz went on to a long career in German cinema.

ARMAGEDDON INDEX: (2/10) These Russians like Coke, vodka and tall blondes and seem uninterested in blowing up the world.

DUST CLOUDS: Between 1949 and 1961, some 2.7 million East Germans, many of them professionals, engineers and scholars, emigrated to West Berlin, sparking fears of a “brain drain” and putting pressure on the East German government to close the border. Construction of the Wall began in August 1961. Some historians have argued that President John F. Kennedy’s subpar performance at a summit in Vienna earlier that year with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave the Eastern Bloc the confidence to challenge the West with such a provocative act. By his own admission, Kennedy, newly elected and reeling from the failed Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba, was unprepared for Khrushchev’s aggression in their talks and was chewed up by his more experienced opponent. At the same time, building the Wall effectively ended the long-running Berlin question, solidifying the balance of power between the sides and making the lines of the conflict clear.

TOP OF THE POPS: According to Billboard, the no. 1 song in America when One, Two, Three was released was “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes.

WHAT ELSE I’M WATCHING: TV: Rake (S5, Tubi), Daredevil: Born Again (S1, Tubi), Bosch: Legacy (S3, Amazon). Movies: Stillwater (McCarthy, 2021), Tombstone (Cosmatos, 1993).

CLASSIC MOVIE CORNER: A new feature on Nuclear Theater — a capsule synopsis of a film I appreciate that has nothing to do with the Cold War.

This week, it’s Tombstone from 1993, a Western starring Kurt Russell and a thousand fairly recognizable dudes in fancy moustaches. Russell has claimed to have rescued the troubled production by rewriting the screenplay and directing some scenes. You can see the problems. I have a deep affection for the movie — it’s a great popcorn film — but its flaws are abundant. The story strives so hard to make Russell’s Wyatt Earp a reclutant hero that once he flips the switch at the end of the second act (“And Hell’s coming with me!”), the movie simply becomes an exercise in vengeance, with Earp and his “irregulars” slaughtering every member of Clanton’s gang they can find. That doesn’t make for much tension. Fortunately, the late Val Kilmer’s standout performance as Doc Holliday is what most viewers remember from the movie. And despite its weaknesses, it’s endlessly rewatchable.

See you next time!

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