Alfie (Burt Bacharach song) featured on the October 1966 album release entitled "Chér". Despite the relative failure of the version of "Alfie" cut for the US film release, Cilla Black's UK success with the song had attracted sufficient attention in the US for several American singers besides Cher to cover the song by the time the film "Alfie" opened in the US in August 1966. Two of these covers actually predate the Cher recording although neither was released prior to Cher's, the first evident recording of "Alfie" by an American singer being that cut by Jerry Butler in May 1966 which first appeared as
Michael Caine roles as effete-seeming aristocrats were to contrast with his next projects, in which he was to become notable for using a regional accent, rather than the Received Pronunciation then considered proper for film actors. At the time, Caine's working class Cockney, just as with The Beatles' Liverpudlian accents, stood out to American and British audiences alike. "Zulu" was closely followed by two of his best-known roles: the spy Harry Palmer in "The Ipcress File" (1965), and the womanising title character in "Alfie" (1966). He went on to play Palmer in a further four films, "Funeral in Berlin" (1966), "Billion Dollar