Why Jimmy Cliff did little acting after iconic big screen debut?
Observer Online presents the fifth story in ‘Jimmy Cliff: Stories Of A Bongo Man’, in tribute to the reggae legend who died on November 24 at age 81. This seven-part series looks at different aspects of the singer-songwriter’s life.
The Harder They Come defined Jimmy Cliff’s career. His starring role as Ivan made that 1972 movie, directed by Perry Henzell, a classic and earned him lasting international fame.
On the other hand, Club Paradise, a 1986 comedy in which he co-starred with Robin Williams, has been widely panned and is considered an embarrassment.
Many wondered how Cliff — who died on November 24 at age 81 — never did more acting after his stunning debut in The Harder They Come. His cousin, filmmaker Lennie Little-White, said the answer is simple.
“I know he refused a lot of offers…either because he did not want to be stereotyped only doing roles like The Harder They Come or the money was not right,” Little-White told Observer Online.
During the 1970s, Cliff released several critically-acclaimed albums and toured the world. He was always identified with Henzell’s movie about a country boy who travels to Kingston looking for a break in the music business.
It would not be until 1986 that he returned to the silver screen, as Ernest Reed, a musician who lives on the fictional Caribbean island, Saint Nicholas. He is befriended by Jack Moniker (played by Williams), an American, and they open a club on the island.
Club Paradise was directed and written by Harold Ramis, who was riding high as one of the stars in Ghostbusters, a mega hit in 1984. He assembled a strong cast that included Peter O’Toole, 1960s it girl Twiggy, Rick Moranis, Eugene Levy and Adolph Caesar.
With a production budget of US$19 million, Club Paradise held high expectations, but it made only US$12.3 million at the box office. The reviews were brutal.
“Ramis’s cast includes a convention of Second City (television comedy) graduates: Eugene Levy, Brian Doyle-Murray, Joe Flaherty, Mary Gross and Bill Curry. They have their moments, especially Levy as an uncle who has brought his nephew along to the island and teaches him the fine points of lechery and voyeurism. But the movie never really comes together, and I think the fault for that begins with Williams. When the star of a movie seems desperate enough to depend on one-liners, can the rest of the cast be blamed for losing confidence in the script?” wrote respected critic Roger Ebert.
Little-White, writer-director of the 1980 movie Children Of Babylon, agrees.
“I think Club Paradise had a weak script in the sense it was half comedy and half farce. It had a lot of brand-name actors, but the director could not make up his mind about where the greatest emphasis should be,” he said.
Four years after Club Paradise, Cliff played himself in Marked For Death, a movie starring Steven Segal. He performs in a club scene.
In 1993, Cliff covered Johnny Nash’s I Can See Clearly Now, for the soundtrack to Cool Runnings. That movie, based on the Jamaican bobsleigh team to the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada, was an international smash. I Can See Clearly Now peaked at number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100, and went number one in France, Iceland and New Zealand.
