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 Brain" (1967), "Bullet to Beijing" (1995) and "Midnight in Saint Petersburg" (1995). Caine made his first film in Hollywood in 1966, after an invitation from Shirley MacLaine to play opposite her in "Gambit." During the first two weeks, whilst staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel, he met long-term friends John Wayne and agent "Swifty" Lazar. Caine starred in the 1969 comedy caper film "The Italian Job" as the leader of a cockney criminal gang released from prison with the intention of doing a "big job" in Italy to steal gold bullion from an armoured security truck. The line "You're only