Greenbriar Picture Shows

2009-11-23T04:40:00.028-05:00

Boris Karloff Blog-A-Thon --- We Had a Karloff That Swings!

The big cameo in teen-targeted Bikini Beach turned seventy-seven in 1964 when that pic was released, yet few in its audience needed introduction to Boris Karloff. He was youth’s oldest friend and longest standing cool personality. Boris played sinister straight but kept a wry distance. He was for having fun with scares and that made him welcome most everywhere during the sixties. Here was the decade of Karloff’s fullest flowering. No more Broadway (too old finally?) nor pursuit of character work outside spooky type, his was an image firmly entrenched once Thriller made Boris Karloff TV's brand name for gooseflesh. That hosting (and sometimes top-lining) hour program put the actor in a televised hall of mirrors where avuncular host morphed into hours later alter ego from decades before. You could board a Karloff express with afternoon theatre stops (his for American-International), straight on to Thriller in the evening, then midnight arrival with Shock Theatres at all stops (what television market in the 60’s didn’t have one of these?). His was exposure the likes any player might dream on, and it made Karloff’s a face (and voice) so familiar as to be living under our very roofs. I used to scan TV GUIDES to see where he’d be that week. Didn’t matter the vintage. I’d surf his clowning with Red Skelton right to the next wave of Behind The Mask from 1932, all in a same viewing cycle. Oh, and it never mattered if shows or movies were worthy of him. Simply Karloff was enough and closed the deal for whatever they were running.

Pierre Fournier at Frankensteinia anticipates over a hundred participants for his Karloff Blog-A-Thon this week. I’ve pondered just how BK rates such blogging fervor. Would counter-programming on Bela Lugosi’s behalf inspire such participation? We know Boris ran success-wise rings round Bela during their lifetimes. What was it about Karloff that transcended monster ghettos? Yes, he was stuck in the genre most of the time, but embraced nonetheless by entertainers who’d not otherwise venture near horror folk. I just listened to a Bing Crosby radio broadcast from 1947. Karloff was guest and engaged easy repartee with Bing and announcer Ken Carpenter. He did scary movies, but maintained a kind of remove from all that, as though joshing with show biz pals like Crosby was the real Karloff life and menace work mere fooling (and other than infrequent quality work with a Val Lewton, that’s likely how he viewed it). Lugosi could never manage such distance. He came off intense even when laugh lights were flashing. Part of it was Bela’s foreign-ness. Crosby might have invited him before a microphone but for doubt he'd manage outside prepared skits. You could never be sure that Lugosi’s act was just an act. Karloff, on the other hand, readily exited his graveyard to relax among personalities way outside genre boundaries. Curling hair for AIP, but also voicing the Grinch, and doing it playfully enough to relax us and earn good will among folks not given to horror patronage.

Some of you might want to go out and get popcorn now, because this is where I start talking about how I grew up with Boris. Are monster memories getting tired? My generation has been at it now for longer than Universal made all those Frankenstein and Dracula pics, and I’m apprehensive that my look-backs are looking mighty like everyone else’s. Are we getting like those old timers going on and forever about Bob Steele and Captain Marvel? And what of ones in the cemetery still rhapsodizing over Fred Thomson (and come to think of it, Lon Sr.)? I look forward to chatting with them if there’s an eternity, but in the meanwhile, I wonder if it isn’t time to give my monster kid past a rest. Just … not quite yet. Indulge me one more late show in my footie pajamas (which I’d actually like to have had at a time were they available) and chance to relive what it was like seeing The Mummy a first time on August 7, 1964 (like so many others excavating childhood, I went back and confirmed that date). Karloff was one of the first to offer me a sense of continuity in life, supplying as he did an ongoing visual record of the aging process and how increments of a year or ten will change a person’s circumstance and appearance. It fascinated me that a man who’d made movies labeled (1931) in my guide listings was yet turning up in just-out ones I’d caption (1964) for home-compiled records. Remarkable too was the fact he was guesting on pop shows first-running in primetime. The man who was the original Frankenstein monster was now Jim West’s opponent, and next week The Girl From U.N.C.L.E would play host to his villainy. Camped up television timed perfectly with Karloff’s grand old man phase of spookery. He stopped short of outright genre ridiculing Vincent Price and Peter Lorre indulged, disdaining ad-libs they peppered The Raven with, for Karloff maintained dignity and a champion’s defense of horror conventions that brought him fame. For interviews, he’d split hairs over Horror as opposed to Terror as descriptive term for work he did. I don’t think Boris would have sanctioned that Frankenstein model where the pants fell down.

As to my dedication, just a for instance. When Karloff did his Wild, Wild West (9/23/66), I guested (not necessarily by invitation) at neighboring cousins to watch in color, our own household being three months shy of a multi-hued set. Karloff was a maharajah of sorts, resplendent in costume and disgorging lines I still quote (This absurd ape begins to weary me --- just watch it). What disturbed were situations where this elderly man was clearly overtaxed. I didn’t enjoy his being struck down at the WWW finish any more than previous watery struggles in The Terror’s final reel. Both these were well past time when Karloff could easily manage on-set ordeal, yet we knew he was too much actor to permit doubling. It was like seeing one’s grandfather needlessly imperiled. Boris gets pneumonia doing Black Sabbath in Spain and you knew someone’s to blame for not looking out for him properly. How solicitous were ten-year olds of the time for real life seniors they knew?

Boris Karloff is introduced as guest host of Shindig (10/30/65) and teen girls scream as though he were all of the Fab Four … put to-gither. Here’s where we understand best just how contemporary his appeal was. Among other things, he sang The Monster Mash, a song credited to imitator Bobby Pickett, though I suspect most thought it was Karloff himself on that chart buster. It’s a heady thing to watch Boris reciting lyrics of The Peppermint Twist as go-go girls swivel around him. From vantage point of a throne chair, he introduces acts like Jim Doval and the Gauchos (a name not likely to be spoken again until the next siege of Troy) and spars verbally with Ted "Lurch" Cassidy, on hand to lead his own signature dance. Rock n’ Roll was still of two minds in 1965. How else to account for the Wellingtons’ straightforward rendition of Some Enchanted Evening? Surviving prints boast usual ghostly pallor of TV done primitive, the fact Shindig played basement network ABC making it all the more so. That Karloff should thrive here was no surprise, though I’ll declare without closer research that he was the only artist nearing eighty to ever appear on Shindig (or for that matter, Hullabaloo). Trips to the newstand found him aboard mastheads of varied mystery comics, the Karloff name sufficient to relieve us of twelve-cents for purchase. Monster mags celebrated past greatness of the senior Chaney and Lugosi, but Karloff was a here-and-now-working presence they’d visit on sets. Die, Monster, Die! made Castle Of Frankenstein headlines for Karloff playing an actual monster for the first time in years, and look at this herald for that film’s Charlotte first-run where Boris and Channel 3’s Dr. Evil are billed together as WBTV’s Two Favorite Bogeymen. It’s noteworthy too that the Capri was one of that city's premiere hardtops, and here was Die, Monster, Die! booking there as a single for nine days.

It couldn’t last forever. Karloff looked frail on his Red Skelton appearance toward the end, and by the time they reran it in the Spring, he was gone. My cousin was the one who broke the news of that. I wrote a tribute for a local paper that had been printing my scrawls they charitably called movie reviews. Meanwhile, there was indication of Karloff having done a brace of horror films still to be released. We caught up with The Crimson Cult, billed as his last (it wasn’t), and near unwatchable save for an unexpected nude scene out of left field (and BK’s presence). Coincidental was belated appearance of one of what critics referred to as Mexican abortions Karloff did, these being his actual last. The Fear Chamber played our Channel 8’s Shock Theatre in the mid-seventies and rocked viewers for nudity as generous as that afforded most "R" features. Clearly this was a print the station’s editor had failed to vet. Maybe Karloff was as well to exit when he did. Ugly times lay ahead, and these final bows were proof he’d have had no place in horrors to come. Targets in 1968 was all the more valuable for reflecting Karloff’s awareness of that.

2009-11-20T03:59:00.017-05:00

Don't Let Noir Change You!

I have to limit my intake of Film Noir. Maybe it’s weakness of character that makes me particularly susceptible to its dangerous allure. I’m becoming more of a mind that Noir can change a person. When Farewell, My Lovely came out in 1975, I went at least four times. Being twenty-one, it seemed a good idea to try Robert Mitchum’s personality on for size, so I went straight from the theatre to buy a pack of filterless Camels. The trenchcoat was already squared away, my having found a Bogartian corduroy number a few months prior. I must have looked the utter fool swallowed up by that wrap (at least several sizes too large, but why would they carry trenchcoats for the shrimp I was?), and the cigarettes were as ill advised for the fact I’d never inhaled smoke without gagging. Still, my thoughts were hard-boiled, at least for remaining hours on those days I watched Noir. I’ve since realized how easy it is to be seduced. These things can darken one’s view of the world. Treating professionals might prescribe a Jane Powell musical as chaser to excess of Noir. The most persuasive of it will turn one from dulled spectator to Hipster Sage. A good memory for dialogue helps. The other day Ann remarked that money isn’t everything. Yeah, but it comes the closest was my reflexive comeback. She knew right off that the line was too good to be mine. Questioned as to origin, I confessed getting it from Bob, probably when he played Jeff Bailey, or was it Jeff Markham? Wait a minute, they’re the same guy! What we need is capacity to catalogue every line Mitchum spoke in Out Of The Past. Imagine social situations we’d master, arguments we could win. All of the best of noir is like that. Filled with guideposts for a cooler and more knowing life, but a narcotic powerful and one best used in strict moderation.

I risked overdoing it this week with all five of Columbia’s (let others call them Sony --- I won’t) recent Noir Collection. How many pictures fifty years old toss such bracing ice water across decades into our faces? So much in these just took my breath away. Violence shocks best when there’s less of it. A lot of what happens in these five comes unexpected. I speak of them as if all were one movie running over multiple discs. In a sense, they are but a continuing tour past places largely gone now. Most everywhere in these is real location. The Line-Up visits aquariums and ice rinks that are surely parking lots today. I wish I could have lived amidst such environment and at a time when society enabled them, even at risk of sharing space with hit-man Eli Wallach or psycho shooter Arthur Franz. A part of us would like knowing folks who dressed so nattily as Lee Marvin in The Big Heat, even if that meant flirting with disaster he comes to. If only life could run those 50's ways now, minus the getting shot at parts. Said parking lots and condos we've inherited are ugly as characters Lee and Eli played. Something else wonderful about these films are people real and vivid in ways impossible for weekend seminar trained writers to capture today. Syd Field and Robert McKee can’t equip students to think at pavement levels. Experts are all over Columbia’s set to background what we’re seeing (Eddie Muller, James Ellroy, some known directors). They have drunk the potion and are now truly one with noir. Yes, there is attitude you develop from watching these. For my own healthier peace of mind, I’ll opt for Jane Powell this weekend to rinse the grime off (Holiday In Mexico, anyone?).

Columbia’s offering is called Film Noir Classics 1, which suggests there will be a 2. They have, in fact, already indicated titles for a follow-up box, so I hope this one sells in order to cinch the deal. Each of the following represent as good a way to invest ninety minutes as you’re likely to find:

　
The Big Heat --- Once provoked, family man police detective Glenn Ford goes looking for trouble and propels 89 minutes of non-stop confrontation and violence. Noir leads sometimes mope. Never Ford. He walks right into snake dens with holster unsnapped and fists at the ready. Show this to beginners at Noir and they’ll be enraptured. The Big Heat is most recognized of the set and one that Columbia put out years back when they cared a lot less about library stuff on DVD.
　
The Sniper --- Loser at life Arthur Franz gets fed up with everyone else pairing off and begins splitting them up with a rifle. Not always fun going into the skull of deranged characters, but few are better done than this. Adolphe Menjou plays far removed from his Paris playboy image and is believably dogged as investigating detective. Pictures like this ran mostly to drive-in corn-dog munchers and bargain hunters intent on getting a second feature’s worth, so it’s all the more tribute to filmmakers still wanting to deliver something worthwhile. The Sniper earned $597,000 in domestic rentals. Had rewards been greater, these little films might have become as pretentious as neo-imitators are today. Columbia made buckets like them and successor Sony could release annual volumes for as long as I’ll be around to collect them.
　
Five Against The House --- Columbia Stars Of Tomorrow (watch the trailer) plan a casino heist for mostly kicks, and I could believe that better if this group were college-age as opposed to just being in college. GI bills must have paid out for a lot longer than we realized. I kept wondering which war these guys were veterans of. Guy Madison is sold like a newcomer even though he’d top-lined Warner’s The Command just a year before. A happy end strikes us as unsatisfactory, but noir rules weren’t necessarily observed when object was to showcase attractive casts in what I’d call suspense lite. There’s impression of Five Against The House serving wants of youthful patronage, so why upend them with noir’s customary dose of fate served hopeless?

Murder By Contract --- From what I’ve read, Vince Edwards got full of himself doing Ben Casey and proved misery to work with. Was it so as well with this beginner part? Considering such possibility makes Vince more credible as outwardly easygoing, but lethal withal hit man. Different from other Noirs thanks to fact that largely unsupervised writers and directors could experiment more freely with so little at stake. Columbia probably cared as little about these as monster movies they distributed. I wonder how many viewers looked back on cheap thrillers to wonder if they’d intersected on TV or in theatres (I remember Vince Edwards in an episode of that series "Murder By Contract" …). Something like this had to play second feature because it would have seemed a cheat otherwise for people wanting color and wide screens for their admission. Martin Scorsese remembered seeing it with The Journey in 1958, which was both those expensive things. How many other customers hung on with him to watch Murder by Contract?
　
The Line-Up --- Hired assassins go about afternoon killings like housewives finishing up errands before supper, the process of systematic murder being just as rote and perfunctory. This is so much better than you’d imagine it could be, even knowing Don Siegel was director. How did pictures like this slip everyone’s attention in 1958? Siegel must have wondered why he didn’t get more claps on the back for a job so well done. Few crime stories received meaningful attention, unless there was something like The Killers or The Asphalt Jungle where you knew Hollywood was going all out exploring the underworld. Cheaper ones took more liberties, made clearer statements, and so startle us decades on. You begin The Line-Up figuring you’ve seen everything and wind up jolted out of complacence, but quick. I ran several scenes back just to make sure I’d seen what I thought I saw.

2009-11-17T05:01:00.017-05:00

Captain Video Flies Home

That fine nostalgia site Matinee At The Bijou was in touch this week concerning Greenbriar’s July 2006 post on Captain Video. They’d recently come across some You Tube’d episodes of the original 1949-55 DuMont series and planned to incorporate these into an updated version of the GB story. For not keeping up with You Tube, I had no idea these shows had been submitted there, as my info was that virtually all of them were lost. I’ve learned since of thirty or less existing, some offered on DVD by Alpha Video and others scattered about the PD wilderness. What began as a paragraph footnote for a three-year old GB entry about the 1951 serial became what follows after I watched and was thoroughly captivated by television’s Captain Video. Matinee At The Bijou will be featuring one of these vintage episodes on their blog screen this week as our two sites link up for this Captain Video look-back. Be sure to catch Matinee’s CV upload for thirty minutes of retro viewing joy. And while you’re there, check out their archive for much vintage stuff to watch, and a wonderful piece run recently where animation experts and fans were asked to pick their favorite cartoon, a great idea for a post I wish I’d had.

Unlike Columbia’s serial photographed with conventional 35mm cameras, Captain Video was shot using Dumont’s Electronicom, a device that by its very name implies something exotic and futuristic. The Electronicom’s dual capacity allowed for both live transmission and a Kinescope capture, the latter being 16mm film that was sent to stations playing a later broadcast of Captain Video. If DuMont hadn’t junked their Kines, we’d have something other than faint record of this very first science fiction series for television. Maybe limited samplings are enough, though. Much as I enjoyed the one off You Tube, it could be hazardous sitting through a raft of these things, no matter one’s sentiment over afternoons before the Zenith with its porthole screen (all twelve inches as shown in the 1950 model here). That last part was an essential to Video Ranger membership, plus necessity of being around in the late forties/early fifties to properly experience the show. I've never seen a round screened TV in action, having come closest perhaps in front of washing machines running with a full load (and who’s to say that would be any less engaging than much of early television?). To have grown up transfixed by such a contraption seems inconceivable, but viewers younger than myself can't imagine TV sans color, so I guess all of us reach our own level of obsolescence eventually. When did programming lose the zeal of Captain Video and its kin? Every pitch is an impassioned one. Announcers come on like tent preachers. TV lost a lot when it became the so-called cool medium analysts talk about.

Captain Video sponsors included Post cereals and a candy bar called Powerhouse (ever had one? I don’t think I have, and sweets are my lifelong obsession). It would be great seeing all the CV commercials. For two nickel Powerhouse wrappers and ten cents in coin, you got by mail a Captain Video identifying ring. It must have been great living in the summit era of prizes and premiums. Addresses were so simple too. You’d reach the Captain through a bare-bones New York postal box, as if that metropolis were some rural route with letters finding their destination no matter the scrawl on envelopes. I once sent Kellogg’s boxtops for a Great Sounds of 1959 LP, so I have at least some idea of what it was like for kids ten years earlier awaiting delivery of Captain Video gimcracks. In a world gone daffy over cholesterol and carbon footprints, it’s refreshing to visit a time when children were beset with such irresponsible marketing. Longtime CV partner Post Sugar Crisp was a tooth-rotting harbinger of diabetic seizures to come and every bit as lethal as interplanetary tyrants the Captain proposed to dispel. Each little puff of Sugar Crisp is coated with candy, he'd say, inveigling youngsters to consume non-stop. Why weren’t more kids fat back then like they are today?

A character they call Lieutenant Cromwell tries seizing a Ranger rocket (upon being disarmed by him, I’d swear one of the Rangers said Damn You, Lt. Cromwell … at least that’s what it sounded like). This guy’s sonorous line readings are better than any of his opponents, so I wanted him to succeed. He also resembled John Dehner, but turned out to be an actor named David Lewis. I looked up Lewis on imdb and it seems Captain Video was the first credit of a career that lasted many years. Here’s more CV trivia: Ernest Borginine got early work as an interstellar heavy, but I’m not sure any of his episodes exist. Captain Video players often trip over dialogue that would tax a Barrymore. Blow up the nucleus of the comet by bombarding it with atom blasts!, this doable thanks to comet interiors being made up of meteoric masses. Everything by way of excitement is talked about rather than shown. It’s like radio with fuzzy pictures. Trips to Pluto are frequent offscreen events. You really had to use imagination to groove with Captain Video. I’d have preferred my science fiction in comic books, frankly. Were others of the same mind? Only 24 stations countrywide ran Captain Video to a viewership estimated at 3.5 million (gee, isn’t that about what network news is drawing nowadays?). I’m surprised so many fans remember the Captain.

There were two Captain Videos. The first resembled a young Rock Hudson and the second was more John Wayne-ish. That was Al Hodge, a name destined for obscurity once his character departed from airwaves in April 1955. You couldn’t syndicate Captain Video for its going out live or on kinescopes, so there was little to remember him by other than scattered toys and merchandise bearing the name. Hodge accommodated our darker expectations as to what became of discarded TV personalities by finishing (1979) in what’s said to have been a tiny apartment surrounded by Captain Video bric-a-brac. Well, if he’d gone out prosperous, would I have mentioned it at all? Lifelong fans are defensive of integrity they ascribe to Captain Video. Sets we call threadbare are (they say) at least equals of what other primitive series were hanging, and maybe I’d agree given access to more televised stuff from that era. Truth is, no one was doing programs so early on that could stand beside features or TV to come. Is it a wonder Hollywood regarded home viewing with such contempt? Captain Video was for filling its daily thirty minutes with anything that could talk or move, never mind what or where. One device (my favorite) was when the Captain activated his Remote Tele-Carrier to monitor progress his "California Agents" were making. These included Ken Maynard, Johnny Mack Brown, Raymond Hatton … whatever buckaroo might be pillaged from B westerns excerpted in eight or so fragmentary minutes. The CV crew would use these breaks to change sets and load ray guns (which never, ever killed or even injured anyone). It didn’t matter where they dropped the needle on a cowboy show. Such was filler and nothing else. Parts I watched made no sense whatever, with Buster Crabbe’s image so poorly rendered as to be recognizable only by his voice. Still it’s wonderful to experience kid programming this audacious. Maybe Captain Video’s episode ending tribute to America’s educational system was a kind of compensation for mind numbing he propagated during evening hours, along with his assurance that in other countries, the school system is ineffectual. Child viewers might well have wondered how the Captain sized up public education on Pluto.

2009-11-13T05:46:00.017-05:00

Somewhere Between Hack and Auteur

Dependable Journeyman. That’s damning with something short of faint praise, being a label applied to directors whose work we’ve enjoyed even if we don’t recognize names credited. I’ve tried championing a few. Norman Taurog and George Marshall come to mind. Neither left memoirs or tooted own horns despite living past our initial discovery of auteurists among their profession. Frank Tuttle was retired as other veterans continued work where they could find it and died (January 1963) before historians dug ways down to him, but as a book recently out from Bear Manor reveals, he’d quietly written a career overview during 1960-62 that no one save family members knew about. Editor and author of They Started Talking’s introduction John Franceschina collaborated with Tuttle’s daughter in bringing the manuscript to light. It’s a Dead Sea scroll of picture history that might have remained attic buried but for efforts these two made. Frank Tuttle had a solid run from silents into the late fifties. Some of his better pics are This Is The Night, The Big Broadcast, Roman Scandals, and This Gun For Hire. Too many of his pre-talkers are lost, and that’s where I suspect best efforts were spent. It’s an event discovering a Golden Age director’s book-length memoir we never knew existed. Made me want to harvest up whatever Tuttle titles I could and start watching. So far it’s been Love Among The Millionaires and several other Clara Bow talkies he helmed. They’re all Paramounts off the gray market. What a shame I have to look at such dilapidated copies of the man’s work. Still, it’s preferable to days when we couldn’t see them at all.

Frank Tuttle had the look and carriage of an Ivy Leaguer. Always a suit and tie to work. Note the tiepin here during Millionaires shooting with Clara Bow. You could have turned cameras around in those days and captured as much style behind them. Tuttle exuded breeding and education. He was like friend Walter Wanger in that respect. They’d both moved up with help from contacts made in school. Wanger gave Tuttle a boost after getting charge of Paramount’s east-coast operation. For having written and staged plays at Yale, Tuttle could knock off screen treatments literally overnight, and did. His book tells of round-the-clock doing of the seeming impossible to meet frenzied production schedules. Paramount ladders reached to star directing and solid grasp of formulas that kept three and four yearly helpings of favorites from getting stale. For a while it worked, but Paramount raked through talent and took not the time to develop staying blueprints for them. Simple formats were devised and pounded into hash. Names including Richard Dix, Bebe Daniels, and Raymond Griffith were overtaxed and toiling on slopes tilted downward. Staff directors like Frank Tuttle could inject but so much individuality into vehicles rushing toward pre-determined release dates. Still, he described himself as a lucky guy who loves what he’s doing, and by all accounts, coworkers liked him for it. Louise Brooks called Tuttle a master of easy, perfectly timed comedy, and hers was not easy approval earned. The director writes glowingly of association with Raymond Griffith and a brace of comedies they did together, but most of these are lost, as is a Brooks called The American Venus for which only a trailer survives. What a bummer to read accounts of 20's era Hollywood with so little extant film to give it life. Is this why some otherwise classic fans ignore silents altogether?

Frank Tuttle directed four of Clara Bow’s talkies. None had much chance amounting to anything. They are precode by definition, but flaccid by result. Paramount sensed Bow slipping and no one was throwing lifelines. David O. Selznick worked there from 1928 and recognized same. He described the place as one big assembly line for program pictures geared to audiences who’d watch anything. An early talkie boom suggested DOS was right. Clara Bow became a problem from the moment she spoke, but who cared about fixing that with ticket dollars rewarding novelty value of hearing her for the first time? Microphones bound Bow to fixed positions. Sets closed in and outdoor shooting was curtailed. Her talking output looked drab after brightness of silents like It where cameras could be as energetic as their subject. Love Among The Millionaires focuses more on working class Bow’s suffocated environs than mansions her character aspires to. MGM invested more to contrast Joan Crawford’s humble shopgirls with deco paradises they repaired to with co-stars Robert Montgomery or Franchot Tone. Metro’s banquet table for Crawford was always fuller than Paramount’s for Bow, and a paying public noted the difference. Our Blushing Brides, for instance, is a far more satisfying meal than Love Among The Millionaires. Release of both close together made comparison cruel and inevitable. Bow was stuck in a talkie poorhouse and had no champions. Selznick suggested a bigger push to rescue her from doldrums. He referred to Bow being on her way out, adding by February 1931 … only a great picture would save her. That Selznick was concerned at all put him in a minority among Paramount executives.

It was some of the final Bows that Frank Tuttle directed. He speaks positively of her in They Started Talking. This was not a scorched earth account of on-set traumas making movies. Maybe if it were, they’d have published years before now. Tuttle was likelier penning a book his grandkids might one day enjoy, and besides, many colleagues of his were still alive in the mid-sixties. Why risk alienating them? The director mostly cited problems Bow had that he caused, reflecting modesty that may explain why Tuttle was so popular around the Paramount lot and lasted so long there. The downfall for Clara Bow lay mostly with inability to protect herself, being no judge or architect of material even as she played it brilliantly. Stars like Mae West and W.C. Fields held artistic reins tighter and preserved long-term careers against Paramount’s natural drift toward mediocrity. Clara Bow’s vehicles became dumping ground for inadequate leading men and comics playing better off each other than with her. Love Among The Millionaires even let Bow tender child support to Mitzi Green, a grizzled nine-year old with talent to suggest she’d trod vaudeville boards a lifetime beyond such tender age. Tuttle says Mitzi even proposed dialogue changes he accepted. Paramount talkies of that jangled period were asylum for every sort of curious act, and most turned up propping Clara Bow. Did she need Harry Green, Skeets Gallagher, and Mitzi Green? Probably not, but she got them all the same, in spades. Variety referred to Millionaire’s comedy as laid out with a trowel for the simple folks, suggesting it would play best for split-weeks with live acts in support. Such remarks among the trade were as helpful as a shiv in the back. By June 1931, Selznick was figuring ways of extracting the last value out of Bow before letting her go (callous is sure a word for this business). Breakdowns she’d have on Kick-In would hasten that. It would be Clara Bow's last for Paramount.

2009-11-09T04:53:00.014-05:00

Filming Over There --- Part Two --- Tokyo Joe

My (very) old copy of Bogey: The Films Of Humphrey Bogart has holes in the dust jacket and star ratings pasted on the inside cover for titles I’d seen. Greenbriar estate liquidators will be fortunate to realize fifty cents from it, but for what time is left, I’ll treasure this 1965 hardback that sat up many a night checking off whatever of Bogart’s seventy-five features turned up on TV. The Bogie bug attached to me around age thirteen. By then, NC stations were swapping old Warner packages for sleeker color models. Larger markets still played Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, but I made do with post-48 Columbias and an occasional Deadline --- USA. Consequently, these late Bogarts became ones I’d remember best. At a time when precious little was published about old film stars, HB turned up on newsstand covers and as subject of pocket bios you could get for sixty or so cents. The Bogart cult they spoke of was one I’d uphold alone, for friends my age had little awareness of who he was. Channel 13 one morning ran Dark Passage while I was home sick from eighth grade. Said thrill was surpassed only by announcement at its conclusion that The Petrified Forest would follow tomorrow. A relapse I staged through the day’s remainder did not convince my mother to keep me home for another, thus delaying by five long years my first encounter with Forest (never take for granted how lucky we now are to have ready DVD access!).

Richard Gehman in a 1965 paperback survey said it would be hard to imagine a worse film than "Tokyo Joe." High as I regarded Gehman’s Bogart-view (he’d known the actor and many comments were said to come from HB), it was for me a matter of taking Tokyo Joe or nothing at all. Imagining a worse Bogart film was at least tempered by having seen so few of them. For that reason, it seemed pretty good. Revisiting on DVD was opportunity to measure Tokyo Joe against really good Bogarts accumulated since. It is bad by standards of a general audience and likely those of HB fans as well, but there’s such a thing as enjoying Bogart beyond his finer achievements and relishing duds where all his actor’s resource is called up to salvage produce gone to rot. There were several of these after he left Warners. More than one was produced by Bogart himself. Tokyo Joe might be the purest distillation of this star’s persona with nothing in support of it. Wholly derivative of better work elsewhere, Tokyo Joe empties good will accounts vested with Casablanca and WB vehicles that consolidated Bogart’s status among post-war leading men. He’d been around awhile, had lately run a streak of hits later to become classics, but like fellow malcontent Jim Cagney, was eager to assume career control. The enterprise he called Santana was financed just north of Bogart’s own generous compensation and monies to eke out an A picture befitting a major name. Knock On Any Door was done for less than a million, rather looked it, but profited ($2.1 million in domestic rentals). Tokyo Joe followed, played safe in virtually remaking Casablanca, but plunged to (for Bogart) a so far record postwar low of $1.6 million domestic.

I like Casablanca, but am jaded enough to enjoy even more a Casablanca done badly. Tokyo Joe amounts to artless plopping down of the Bogart formula minus Warners polish. The recurring device of linking HB and leading lady to song standards continue with Tokyo Joe’s repeated use of These Foolish Things, following up on Too Marvelous For Words from Dark Passage and As Time Goes By via Casablanca. Music cannot animate stiff as board co-stars, however. Florence Marley as love interest amounts to an expressionless mask, the least reactive of any Bogart partner I can think of, while stolid Alexander Knox assumes the Paul Henried role. Silent luminary Sessue Hayakawa might easily have stolen the picture had there been more of him. Better dialogue would also have helped. I’ve read of Bogart moving Heaven and Earth to locate Hayakawa, as he had been years away from Hollywood, which shows HB was at least proactive at casting. Tokyo Joe’s second unit represented the first American company to shoot location footage in Japan since the surrender. Some of Bogey’s onscreen cynicism must have rubbed off on Santana’s boss, for he elected not to join its location crew, thereby cheating fans of opportunity to see Humphrey Bogart walking streets in Tokyo. A double was manipulated to conceal the fact he was (all too obviously) a counterfeit. The star meanwhile stood before process screens back home. Audiences forgave such deceit in the thirties, but Tokyo Joe was released to a late 1949 public just home from Berlin Express, A Foreign Affair, and The Search, all with Euro settings and filmed there with benefit of casts on location. Bogart ducking the trip (were Santana economies to blame?) and relying on a trenchcoat dummy was insult to viewers newly sophisticated with regards authentic backgrounds. A lot of them had served after all, and expected no less of movie stars presuming to dispense lowdown on conditions in occupied territories.

Bogart wanted better things for Santana. The whole set-up had been predicated on Mark Hellinger as lead producer and architect for a new class of Bogey merchandise, but the former died and the latter settled for creative talent less able, but compliant with regards a star’s prerogative. Chief among obstacles was Bogart’s age, weighing now like a piano on his back and best reason for henceforth transitioning toward character parts. Action and quick shot stuff was past credible for one whose diet and fitness habits made him seem lots more fragile than age fifty would otherwise suggest. Bogey’s Tokyo Joe knuckle brawls, judo tumbles, and performs the seeming impossible against odds he vanquished far more believably in Across The Pacific, All Through The Night, and others done in comparative youth. The star’s incapacity really confronts us here as a phalanx of stuntmen (back from Japan?) sub for Bogart in all but the closest-up action. There’s little effort at camouflaging them, as pin-sharp DVD cruelly reveals whole weeks of he-manning Bogart sat out. Judging by the actor’s somewhat ravaged appearance, it’s good he did. One solid punch would have busted this guy like a carton of eggs. You’d expect Bogart to have self-preserved better in real-life clinches, but an incident at New York’s El Morocco Club (he was in Gotham for Tokyo Joe’s open) suggested HB was still believing his own publicity. Nightclub altercating there landed the actor in court. Seems there’d been a misunderstanding over a stuffed panda bear. Not helping was the fact that Bogey’s opponent was a woman ... all this set upon twilight on a two-fisted persona he couldn't maintain much longer. The campaign for Tokyo Joe was notable for basing sales purely upon Bogart’s iconic status (foreign poster art is here as well as US tag lining). It’s by far my favorite aspect of an otherwise woebegone vehicle. At least Warners tried offering something beyond Bogart in vehicles they released, as advertising for previous Treasure Of The Sierra Madre and Key Largo proposed story and co-players along with HB to justify attending. Tokyo Joe is very much Bogart on his own with nothing to sell but himself.

2009-11-06T08:16:00.005-05:00

The Tall Target's Ticket To Ride

I’m being really obscure here, but couldn’t resist posting these just found ads for key city first-runs of The Tall Target. Having shown Warner Archive’s DVD for some friends last week, I was pleased by their good impression of Anthony Mann’s set-on-a-train thriller and comments as to the film’s solid production and period authenticity. You’d like to think a show so fine as The Tall Target was seen by wide audiences in showcase runs, but there was lots of product going through the mill in 1951, and only the strongest survived beyond week or so engagements in populace areas. MGM had bigger fish to fry than 78 minutes of modest black-and-white with Dick Powell. Their sales force handling An American In Paris, Quo Vadis, and The Great Caruso put greater push behind such blockbusters they knew would draw. Smaller pictures necessary to fill pipelines and absorb overhead had little chance to qualify for special handling. A single poor engagement could put the Indian sign on what bookers considered but average merchandise to start with. Those perceived weakest got sliced off at the knees. John Huston’s The Red Badge Of Courage was buried without ceremony after marketers wrote it off. That was but months before The Tall Target plunged to its own negative loss ($594,000). Ads shown here are from Cincinnati (RKO Grand) and Chicago (Roosevelt). The Tall Target led the bill in one and supported in the other. How many patrons watched entire double features in those days? I remember walking out after shows I’d come primarily to see, despite tickets entitling me to remain for a second movie (ditching The Hustler at Tarantula’s conclusion, for instance). Would Chicago customers get their fifty-four cents worth looking at The Secret Of Convict Lake and give The Tall Target a pass? Television and competing recreations were grinding Hollywood to powder during those years. Humble fare like The Tall Target was not long for a marketplace soon to be engulfed by screen processes the antithesis of claustrophobic noir (imagine Cinemascope confining itself to a B/W train). Anthony Mann left MGM after The Tall Target to direct upper-drawer westerns and biopics at Universal and elsewhere, most to be in color. His very next, Bend Of The River, indisputably topped bills in 1952 after a star junket to its Oregon premiere. The Tall Target meanwhile limped off to invisibility and remained there (no reissue) until TV gobbled it up in 1963. The WB Archive DVD, despite being "unrestored," still represents the best this picture has looked since its brief ride through 1951 theatres.

More on The Tall Target here.

2009-11-04T05:19:00.009-05:00

Filming Over There --- Part One --- Berlin Express

Someone had to go first into occupied Germany with movie cameras. Events there were hot news and the US public couldn’t get enough of it. Many had family members still in service with American forces overseeing restoration of European order. There was no little uncertainty that it could be achieved, for underground resistance continued in bombed-out German cities, and many doubted Nazi threats were truly quelled. All this was rich soil on which to cultivate a thriller. Berlin Express led a parade of US location seekers eager to lend authentic background to drama arising from a devastated landscape. For stateside audiences, there was impact just seeing what Allied bombers had done to once mighty urban centers in Germany. Nearly all the majors took a turn. MGM did The Search, Fox had The Big Lift and Decision Before Dawn, and Paramount’s Billy Wilder mined comedy out of ruins with A Foreign Affair. These plus Selznick’s higher-profile The Third Man left Berlin Express behind in a public’s estimate, but revisiting suggests Jacques Tourneur’s 1948 lead-off might be the most vivid and evocative of the lot. For all there is wrong with it, those parts that click trump aforesaid more celebrated samplings, and I’m mighty glad Warners has seen fit to add Berlin Express to its Archive catalog.

Princeton’s definition of austere says severely simple. That’s how I’d describe wrecked buildings and lives on sites we visit in Berlin Express, but there’s nothing simple about visual punch and noir flavorings Tourneur gets out of his real thing landscape. Others treating the occupation hewed closer to "responsible" approaches. The topic was too serious for intrigues Hollywood typically grafted onto Euro-set suspensers. Berlin Express digs into bags Hitchcock and von Sternberg emptied for The 39 Steps and Shanghai Express, plus so many Continental-based forays before the war when dark agencies stalked ambassadors of peace and international order. Were it not for earnest hands-joining Allied do-gooding and over-cooked narration RKO added here, Berlin Express might be pure Tourneur exotic fantasy of Europe gone chaotic with an ending maybe in doubt that order would ever be restored. Could that have been the Berlin Express he brought back from seven weeks filming on German soil? Some late-term grafting looks to have been done. As Dore Schary was in charge of production, I’m wondering how heavily his hand fell upon it. Nobody’s ever cared enough about Berlin Express to ask, but what we have plays suspiciously as though someone wanted to pull in horns too sharp for a public needing reassurance of ongoing success in the victor’s rebuilding mission.

Tourneur makes the complex politics of occupation simple. Really, he just ignores it. Perhaps austere is the right word to describe Berlin Express. RKO should have let it go out without jerked off the headline frills. Schary and RKO likely wanted a newsreel sprung to dramatic life. That’s not unreasonable considering the topical theme. What they got from Tourneur was something more akin to blacked-out chillers he’d directed for Val Lewton’s unit during the early forties. Current event lecturing sits awkwardly beside clown-clad assassins and stranglers reflected on passing train windows. These are what I’d imagine people wanted then as now. Tourneur was showman-minded enough to realize that and give it to them. Schary and his likely eleventh-hour narrator come off as schoolmasters throwing wet blankets on fun we’re there to have. It’s good they only fitfully succeed. Tourneur’s set-pieces are too effective and plentiful for such interference to dissipate what he’s achieved with Berlin Express. The best of it reminds me not only of Hitchcock and Sternberg, but also Fritz Lang still in Germany. I’d submit Tourneur was the director who most successfully explored perils and mystery of that blighted place after the war. Wilder might have run him a photo finish had had he done A Foreign Affair more seriously. As it is, Berlin Express is by far the most Germanic (as we best enjoy that flavor) of the Occupation pieces set there, and the one to beat for fun viewing.

Berlin Express flopped, but so did a lot of other RKO releases in 1948. No one was immune from failure in that dismal year when bottoms fell out of ticket windows. The negative cost was $1.740 million, a lot for merchandise lacking major names. Robert Ryan had gotten notice for Crossfire, but his leading man qualification was as yet unconfirmed. Of male stars at RKO, it seemed only Bob Mitchum caught fire among those cultivated since the war’s winning. Leading lady Merle Oberon represented a dogfall, her name neither hurting nor particularly helping. Berlin Express (at least Schary’s conception and finished version of it) posited optimism that international teamwork could wrest the peace, as its characters are quick (unconvincingly so) to throw in and rescue a German activist working toward same. Coming on the eve of Cold-Warring, Berlin Express included a Soviet among the group who surprisingly does not double-agent on them. High costs borne by location shooting made a final loss of $985,000 perhaps inevitable. Reviews were good as this trade ad attests, but critics went stronger for The Third Man that followed, its zither theme suggesting trends to come. Both these plus others of the cycle were influenced by art films off the ravaged continent so downbeat as to make ours look like fairy stories. Sending crews to Europe was partly effort to beat this suddenly fashionable lot at their own game, and indeed, just pointing American lens at so much devastation was enough to breathe reality into Berlin Express and its kin.

2009-10-31T06:36:00.015-04:00

Chaney Does a Texas Carnival

I thought I was done with Halloween for this year till providence guided me to a trade account of beaten but unbowed Lon Chaney (The Lonster for those who revere him) dragging weary baggage to an El Paso pre-Halloween appearance circa October 1964. Junior’s a cautionary fable for all of us tempted to light up a Lucky or have that second snifter. He’s what happened to those who took career paths better left alone. I understand Lon began at plumbing and excelled at it. Lean times forced him into movies. He could barter Dad’s name for better money than was in fixing commodes. I always felt sorry for young Chaney and might even have taken up fishing had opportunity arisen to join the committed angler lakeside (Lon enjoyed best the simple pleasures in life). Texas hosts found Chaney's a rather sad, sweet face under the make-up as he joined celebrants at the Western Playground Amusement Park that October 17-18. Right now I’m making personal appearances to see where my ego belongs, said easy-to-like (their words) Lon. I want to find out if I’m an egomaniac or an introvert, and how the public feels about me. Yeah, that’s a quote. Chaney was 58 here. Wouldn’t he know by now? Maybe one of the carnys supplied pre-interview libation, for El Paso’s honored guest seized bully pulpit to sound off on what’s wrong with the whole horror movie business. Monsters should be entertaining without being ridiculous, said Chaney. "The Wolf Man" was a highly popular piece of celluloid. We didn’t clown it up. We worked at it sincerely and did it honestly. Perhaps wistfully, he’d add, The good old monster shows are still the most popular.

His "old monsters shows" served Lon best, for recent ones he’d done were little to brag on. 1964 had so far tendered Face Of The Screaming Werewolf and Withcraft (the latter released a month prior to his El Paso visit). I'd seen Werewolf at the Liberty (and remember thinking what a neat title that was to be appended to such a miserable film) with a thing called Curse Of The Stone Hand. Both were out of Mexico and plenty dire. It would be interesting to know how many (or few) bookings this combo managed nationwide. Chaney had last done reasonably classy work in AIP’s The Haunted Palace, from late 1963. Otherwise, features amounted to short weeks with A.C. Lyles’ ongoing outreach to vintage westerns, where cast members likely spent breaks talking of how good movies used to be. Maybe that inspired Lon to look back longingly on days past, even as he claimed to receive twice as much mail from 1964 fans. His manager in tow claimed 467 film credits for the actor and declared it a world’s record. Chaney himself added that that he’d been in show business almost sixty years … which, according to the doubtful trade scribe, means he was wowin’ ‘em in the front rows from his cradle. Still, it was a sympathetic piece. At least Lon was out there pitching, and not too proud to reveal the title of his latest, Cannibal Orgy: The Weirdest Story Ever Told, which emerged finally as Spider Baby in 1968.

All of which reminds me of George Reeves sawdust tours too lightly attended in the late fifties. If only we’d all been there to cheer Lon and tell him how great he’d always been! Reporting from El Paso acknowledged he was the idol of the younger set. They didn’t know the half of it. I’d have flipped had Lon Chaney showed up for one of our mangy carnivals, but all we got were bumper cars and caramel apples good for AM belly aches. Were there fan-snapped fotos made of Chaney that October? I’ll bet a few El Paso attics hold mementos we’d all like to see. For myself, late Lon sightings would be limited to Screaming Werewolves and what was left of him in Witchcraft, and yes, I too was sympathetic. His Larry Talbot became a friend for life thanks to stations close around liberally playing The Wolf Man during the sixties. He was handsome then in a doomed kind of way. What happened to Larry seemed almost to be happening to Lon as well. Something about those sad eyes bespoke hardship on screen and off. His might have been the first movie character that made me want to cry for him. Things start off well for Larry, then go horribly amiss. Sort of like Chaney’s career at Universal. Those Inner Sanctums to come were like one man’s journey through disillusion and beyond. Who’d have expected Chaney to become such a fine character actor in the fifties? You wish he could have held things together a little longer, but Lon was game all the way to a 1973 end, and there’s plenty in that to admire for El Paso fans grown up and the rest of us who missed out on a Halloween treat to surpass any we’ll get in 2009 bags.

2009-10-28T05:48:00.016-04:00

More Halloween Harvest --- You'll Find Out

I’ve got sympathy for casual buyers/renters blundering into the path of Warner’s new Karloff and Lugosi DVD set. The box says they’re Horror Classics, though closer examination puts the lie to that. Between forums and disc reviews, these four titles have been parsed into molecules and fan conclusions are pretty near the same. I’m like others for wanting everything K and L did at Warners/RKO/Allied Artists (those catalogues owned by WB) to be released. Having descended to Zombies On Broadway and You’ll Find Out, it looks as though victory is ours. Best of this pack The Walking Dead plays Judas Goat in leading collector sheep to the slaughter of Frankenstein – 1970 and the aforementioned two. I won’t try reader patience dismembering these when for surprising fact there’s much to like about You’ll Find Out and points of interest in all four. Kay Kyser has always interested me for being a North Carolina native and having returned here after making a clean break from show biz in 1950. The story was that Kyser declared he’d drop out upon realizing a first million from performing. Apparently, that’s just what he did. Unlike bandleaders lured back to spotlights from retirement, Kyser put paid to all aspects of music-making life and had zero desire to revisit his past. Major names having done that number in a handful. I’ve not forgotten one of Richard Lamparski’s books wherein Kay was tracked down to Chapel Hill by NC collector Milo Holt and subjected to an afternoon of old Kyser musicals unspooled in the family’s living room. The former headliner’s daughters had no interest in seeing them and … it seemed Kay and Georgia (his wife Georgia Carroll) watched only out of politeness. That was 1973. Kay Kyser died in 1985. His daughter has subsequently taken up a documentary project with aid from the North Carolina Museum Of Art. I’ll want to see that when it’s done.

The Bad Humor Men that livened up You’ll Find Out in 1940 were Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Bela Lugosi. Their billing played musical chairs according to which credits or poster you consulted. Wide audiences preferred the three laughing at themselves. These were days when Mom, Dad, and kids attended movies together and nothing split tickets like a show too scary for fragile patronage. The Frankensteins and Draculas weren’t worth a risk of sleepless nights for little ones. Horror films served best in isolation and done on small budgets, for they’d never broaden out to audiences so big as those listening weekly to Kay Kyser’s radio program. You’ll Find Out was the richest stage Karloff and Lugosi ever worked on together. Thousands would have been seeing them here for the first time. The likes of You’ll Find Out made K and L safer commodities, paving a way for spook spoofing to come and Karloff’s triumph of self-parody, Arsenic and Old Lace. I’m happy to see the pair amidst luxurious trappings wherein careful photography and elegant costuming display both at peaks of effectiveness (we fans are very protective of K and L’s status and dignity). It may be all in fun, but Lugosi here conducts a whale of a séance that I found creepier than many such episodes played straight amidst cheaper environs. Yes, you could say they’re "wasted," but there’s generally at least one of the three menacing Kyser and band throughout You’ll Find Out’s 97 minutes, so I was not restless.

There’s a big dose of silly with every Kyser serving. Comedy became as much his shtick as music, and jesting band members were favorites with or minus instruments. Smoother than fire engine Spike Jones, the Kyser sound bounced from squirrelly to mellow depending on a given moment’s demand. Kay was immensely likeable and pretty good with dialogue (with a lilting drawl, just like mine). He didn't seem intimidated by powerhouse talent sharing sets and stages (a later co-star would be John Barrymore). You’ll Find Out opens with the band’s radio show in progress, and it’s here we glimpse how well Kyser worked his audience. The act plays at a disadvantage later as YFT repairs to its haunted house, a setting more congenial to triple threat of Karloff, Lugosi, and Lorre. What’s left essentially replays Cat and Canary nonsense with extended slippage through hidden panels and concealed rooms. Nowaday fans have loosed microscopes upon scenes where Kyser comes across King Kong’s spider and dinosaur models inexplicably strewn about cupboards, these being a handy short-cut for RKO set decorators who’d kept the things in storage since 1933. With help of freeze frames, the 2009 Kong brain trust has identified each and all of these miniatures. Working my own pause button was a singular highlight of You’ll Find Out, but the thing I want to know is, what happened to those wonderful artifacts? How long did they survive? It seems someone told me of a Desilu sales reel wherein Desi Arnaz strode amongst props at the RKO lot he and Lucy bought in the fifties, and there were Kong models still in evidence. That would be some fifteen years after You’ll Find Out. Were all these little monsters eventually thrown away, or did little monster offspring of lot personnel wind up taking them home for play toys?

2009-10-24T06:45:00.016-04:00

Halloween Harvest 2009 --- Part One

It’s only natural for collectors to think more in terms of what they’re lacking than what’s been secured. With a hundred horror and sci-fi discs still on my shelves unwatched, why am I so impatient for Universal to get out a promised Mad Doctor Of Market Street along with four others of their backlog we know to be mostly dregs of the "Shock" lot (for the record, these are House Of Horrors, The Strange Case Of Dr. RX, The Mad Ghoul, and a lone Paramount, Murders In The Zoo)? There are plenty of good genre films yet to be accounted for. Universal owes us at least a batch of pre-48 Paramounts they own, including The Uninvited, Supernatural, Murder By The Clock, The Mad Doctor, plus others of their own depleted vault, while Paramount itself goes on ignoring Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors, Crack In The World, and oddities like The Space Children and Blood and Roses that we’d welcome. Trouble with these is profit motive driving negative owners and diminishing sales DVD’s have experienced over the last several years. We like to think money doesn’t matter when it’s art, but costs of generating software won’t be got back when retailers clear shelves of oldies and in some cases, discs altogether. Labors of love are still performed in arenas of publishing, however. I’m mesmerized by private efforts of longtime fans whose magazines abide even in these hard times. There’s an outfit called Diamond Comics Distributors that seemingly has a lock on whatever fan driven efforts make it to stores. Your mag will get scant distribution lest it reaches their sales threshold, and several have lately dipped below that. Direct subscribing will become sole means of survival for publications that used to be on Barnes and Noble racks (I’ll omit reference to "newsstands" as so few of them are left). My favorites Little Shoppe Of Horrors and Monsters From The Vault thrive online, as both maintain convenient sites for back issues and subscriptions. If you have any interest in classic horror, these two are a must. Slickness and class their editors have achieved are fulfillment of dreams we all had in Famous Monsters/Castle Of Frankenstein days, with research and writing of a caliber not to be surpassed elsewhere. Cover art regularly tops itself and each new issue is an event. When the Rod Taylors of a thousand years from now spin their sum of human knowledge tops, these contributor/historians will be recalled for getting history down while data was accessible and participants were still around to be interviewed.

Re that sum of knowledge thing, Greg Mank brings fifty or so years of it to his much expanded edition of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Story of a Haunting Collaboration, just out from McFarland Press and believe me, worth every dime of a $75 cover price. The Jefferson, NC publisher (mere miles from me) has lately gone with larger formats and better photo reproduction (color plates even), so books like this are deluxe in appearance and joys to peruse. Author Mank has been gathering Golden Age survivors and chatting them up since the seventies. His accumulated expertise just staggers me. I used to go around the schoolyard claiming monster mastery, but it’s a good thing this guy wasn’t among classmates, for he’d have whupped me to a frazzle. There’s so much I learned from these 685 (whoa!) pages, and yes, that’s long, but Mank’s a colorful wordsmith and sets a crisp pace throughout. He’s also irreverent and gossipy when situations warrant, as they often do when subjects are K and L. No wait. Make that L and K. Their billing reversal comes as Mank elevates horror’s forever underdog to deserved prominence, yet another bold caprice in a book filled with unexpected delights. It’s also scrupulously researched and accurate to a fault. And the stills! Here is a gallery for fans who think they’ve seen everything. Mank knows what’s been published before and avoids too familiar images we’ve seen over decades of inhaling monster lore. There are 240 black-and-white shots and ten color poster images. You’d want the book for these alone even if the text weren’t so wonderfully accomplished. The author renders no judgment as to which subject he prefers, as it should be. Who’d want to choose between Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff? I’ll always take both, thank you.

From Hell It Came is prominent for being the one (surely there aren’t others) in which a tree uproots itself and goes about killing people. As with other monsters out of Allied Artists, this specimen takes forever making the scene (I’ve not forgotten The Giant Behemoth’s tardy arrival at nearly the end of his story). From Hell It Came is more than two-thirds done before tree walking gets underway. Everything to that point is grinding exposition played largely on a single set with actors I never saw before or would again. I bought the DVD from Warner’s Archive and kept looking for Jim Davis. He used to be on Dallas and was stopped from hanging a sheepherder by Big Jake. Where was Jim Davis? Turns out he headlined Monster From Green Hell, which I’ve always confused with From Hell It Came and probably always will. I even scanned a theatre ad from the former thinking it was the latter. To distinguish between 50’s monster shows done cheap and billed combo-style requires intellect and recall I aspire to, but likely will never have. There’s no good explaining why trees walk in From Hell It Came. Suffice to say some producer thought it was a good idea at the time. What is the lure of these barrel-bottomers? I sat watching From Hell It Came and could not imagine anyone else in the world doing the same, and yet there are kindred (lost) souls, most of whom saw it first at matinees or midnight television, seeking here to recapture innocence for having done so. The long-ago demand for cheap horrors was such that anyone could point a camera at rubber suits and get distributors to handle the finished result. Midwest moguls barely out of teens got Warner Bros. to ship Teenagers From Outer Space in 1959 (Thrill- Crazed Space Kids Blasting The Flesh Off Humans!) and as late as 1965, virtual amateurs sold 20th Fox on a more or less home movie called Horror Of Party Beach. A picture like From Hell It Came has its modern counterpart in 2009’s just-out Paranormal Activity, which proves again you don’t have to spend money to make chillers pay.

Warners has been slowly parceling out Allied Artists titles they own. Frankenstein –1970 showed up in their Karloff-Lugosi set to satisfy long-standing desires for access to Boris in a Cinemascope horror film, not a minor occasion as he did precious few in wide format. You’d think an expanded screen would confer stature upon Frankenstein –1970, but alas, it occupies basement quarters among what fans regard as King Karloff’s worst. They even cite his own performance as lazy and perfunctory. The actor undoubtedly knew by 1958 that a Body Snatcher emerges one out of a hundred such endeavors and that focus might better be aimed toward whether AA’s check would clear. Was Broadway and versatility of television a balm for time served on the likes of this, Voodoo Island, and others such? Theatres along lines as one in Bluefield, WV (above) traded on name recognition Karloff got for a past year’s constant exposure on Shock Theatres across the land, his old Universals now a TV late show mainstay. Implying he’s returned as The Original Monster in the First All-New Story of Frankenstein was mirrored by sleight-of-hand used in televised spots barking Karloff Is Back! (one of those is on the DVD). I won’t say I’ve waited since 1962 to see Frankenstein –1970 again, but it’s nice renewing contact, even with memories of Channel 13’s broadcast being snowy as reception we had from that distant (Asheville) channel. An exemplar of cut-rate shockers as folks outside fandom imagine them, Frankenstein ---1970 strikes a homer. Should I be asked to assemble the next chiller clip parade, it would play center ring. Karloff’s science goes atomic mad in observance of changing times. I’d bet he pulled out stops here in deference to 1958 kids dumber than ones his Universal and Columbia experiments used to engage. BK pulls up (just) short of outright spoofing, with crooked nose and back, plus legs so bowed as to occupy adjoining rooms he shuffles between. No way did he unwittingly overplay this. I’ll go detractors one better by saying it’s not acting at all, for Karloff hustling his patented menace in Frankenstein ---1970 shoots straight for balconies to give four-bit ticket buyers every cent of their allowance’s worth. "Bad" as it is, this may be his definitive stand as barnstorming purveyor of low-rent scares and proof Karloff knew well what his following was there to see.

Coming Next: More Halloween Harvest and You'll Find Out.

2009-10-20T06:18:00.012-04:00

Fox Finishing The Unfinished

Just a few notes about Something’s Got To Give before I leave poor Marilyn alone. This may be the most famous unfinished movie ever not quite made, with public awareness going all the back to when Fox cobbled a feature tribute called Marilyn in 1962, hosted by Rock Hudson, which included pieces of SGTG. There was hunger for Monroe footage right from her death. A lot of odd stuff was preserved that would have otherwise gone into dumpsters. A DVD documentary produced by 20th shows a vault bulging with hours of Something’s Got To Give. They’d kept this even as three-strip negatives from the studio’s Technicolor inventory were being dumped. Film history would better have been served had it been the other way around. The DVD has a first-ever assembly of those scenes more or less completed in 1962. What survives is tired comedy anticipating a Dark Age of Doris Day vehicles to come. Something’s Got To Give was in fact revisited and ultimately completed with Day in Marilyn’s part. The remnants landed in 1963 and was called Move Over, Darling. Fox would lose $$ on that one after Doris Day’s participation money came off. Some projects are just doomed no matter what. Monroe’s apparent refusal to finish Something’s Got To Give might have been a matter of knowing what a poor specimen it was and misbehaving in hopes Fox would give up and shut down. She always was perceptive enough to know good comedy from bad. Billy Wilder acknowledged Monroe’s instinct for spotting laughs in given scenes and playing to a best realization of same. Based on the forty or so minutes we have of Something’s Got To Give, there was no mirth there to mine. Dean Martin famously refused to complete the shoot after Marilyn dropped out and Fox signed Lee Remick to pinch-hit. He probably realized that without Monroe, SGTG had no chance.

Of Marilyn’s truancies during production, the worst was cutting out for Washington and Jack Kennedy’s birthday party. She could always manage miraculous recovery for events like this. A surviving kinescope is among the spookiest chunks of film ever recorded, almost like a warm-up for the Zapruder footage. The ballroom looks stadium sized. What faces we detect are ghostly blurs, and there are oceans of them. Laughter is distant as if summoned from beyond. Host Peter Lawford might be death itself holding a sickle. Marilyn enters (late) in wrath-like white and barely manages her rendition of Happy Birthday. The miserable kine quality makes it seem lots longer ago than forty-seven years. Wasn’t this close around the time of the Cuban Missle Crisis? Watching makes you think a bomb’s already been dropped and these celebrants are what’s left. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that everybody in that room came to bad ends.

Would Monroe have been happier just being a model? According to histories, she came brightest to life when posing for stills. MM may have been the century’s most accomplished exhibitionist. Going into Something’s Got To Give minus added pounds she’d carried during Some Like It Hot, Marilyn flaunted improvements and got huge publicity for a nude swimming scene that was featured on LIFE’s cover. This was hot potatoes for a yet Code-restricted 1962 and set observers were getting word out that she’d really done the scene naked. It’s naturally a focal point when watching Fox’s DVD construction. Lots of still proofs were tucked away from those shooting days and have dribbled out since. You wonder what more might be tucked in drawers and safe deposit boxes. The disc documentary, Marilyn: The Final Days, includes interviews with those few left to be consulted. Funny how doctors on camera are never among those that prescribed hazardous drugs. One with an open collar and skin like a lizard handbag says MM must have gotten all her lethal stuff from somewhere over the border. That’s probably true enough. Or maybe Wally Reid’s primary care still had a shingle out. Monroe supposedly made a deal with Fox to come back and finish Something’s Got To Give just days ahead of fateful 8/5/62, with director Jean Negulesco to replace George Cukor. Negulesco’s results could not have been any more dispirited than what Cukor had been getting. Something’s Got To Give was really better off not finishing. It serves us well enough as a forlorn document of a studio and star breaking last straws together.

2009-10-16T14:09:00.017-04:00

Part Two of Marilyn Monroe and Niagara

I guess Marilyn and Elvis are the two biggest legend names we have. You could add James Dean, though he’s down the line from them and getting more so with passage of time. Will Monroe ever wear out? Elvis won’t as long as there are devices to play his music. Even devoted fans of Marilyn are watching less of her movies now, I suspect, but still images will likely survive civilization itself. Like a lot of female icons, Garbo, Louise Brooks, etc., we think of MM more as an infinite line of photos than a moving and speaking presence. When followers had her alive and vocal, it mattered more what feature she’d turn up doing next, or which marriage she’d be in or out of. Now it’s just reams of frozen imagery selling product not necessarily related to movies. We know she was a real person because of much tragic stuff and the fadeout. Everybody has their opinion about that. Mine is that she thoughtlessly downed sleep tablets much as I used to chug nickel bags of M&M’s, only she chased hers with alcohol. Probably not a suicide, or at least not one she meant to see through (there'd been several attempts she knew would be thwarted by friends and caretakers). Could have been murder, but how would a perpetrator have gotten in and managed that with a housekeeper standing by? I do believe Peter Lawford was sent to vacuum the place before authorities took over. Imagine what that was like for him. Stepping over a corpse in search of a diary and whatever might compromise his/her masters. What if these were clutched in Marilyn's hand? Too bad Lawford took all that truth with him, for he probably knew the score better than any of the rest. They’re all gone now, and it’s not even been fifty years. Was there a curse on everyone in Monroe’s orbit? My family happened to be in Los Angeles the day Marilyn died. I’ve sometimes imagined looking her up at age eight to warn of impending disaster. Would I have met a Kennedy at the door? It's said she was getting ready to call a press conference and spill it all. Maybe somebody did get rid of her. High stakes rode on this woman who was unpredictable at best and capable of taking careers, entertainment and political, down with her if she went. I’m surprised no one has offered up a fake Marilyn diary … or, maybe they have, and no one showed me a copy.

Early photos of Monroe are disturbing. You can tell bad things were being done to her. They're a lot like sad adolescent Clara Bow poses I’ve seen. One magazine even published a shot of Marilyn’s mother sitting on a park bench, during the seventies I believe. Anyway, it was years after MM died. The face was spooky and vacant, as though this woman had no idea who her daughter had been, or even if she had a daughter. Does anyone know when she died? You see, there are experts on Marilyn far beyond levels I could hope to achieve. They collect dust particles of her life and could tell you what Monroe did from hour-to-hour on any day out of that final decade. They know her movies inside out but could care less about anyone else’s movies. My MM knowledge is mere flyspecks beside theirs, but there are bits I do remember. One was grubby chapters in columnist James Bacon’s paperbacks (one was called Hollywood Is A Four Letter Town) about how he bedded Marliyn when she was young and struggling. Seems Bacon was sharing her with aged producer Joseph Schenck, who would call whenever varied potions kicked in and he was, for an hour or so, able to perform. Again I ask … was it worth it being a star? Good thing I wasn’t Marilyn, for in that event, randy old Joe would have had gratification delayed by endless queries about the flame-out of Roscoe Arbuckle’s career, independent producing with John Barrymore, and the formation of Twentieth-Century Fox. Oh, and I’d have chastised him severely for selling Buster out to MGM. Coitus interruptus, indeed!

Fans would shoot home movies around New York in hope of sighting Marilyn. They staked her morning to night and knew where she’d turn up. The candid captures often found a distinctly un-Marilyn-ish Monroe, her scarf wrapped tightly round, an expression distracted or confused. Such 8mm glimpses of MM’s off-guard world include coffee shops, automats, and theatres open all night as backdrop to her retreats. You almost expect J.J. Hunsecker to pass by and say Hi. Everything about Marilyn is bound up in 50’s iconography (wonder who the first writer was to observe that … certainly not me). So many books present Monroe with a startling glamour grin and lipstick that looks like freshly sucked blood. Much of Marilyn’s posing seems too much, at least for me. She looked prettier and more natural in pre-stardom sessions and ones done, interestingly, toward the end. 20th had its own twisted notion of allure and Monroe had to abide with it. Their subsequent build-up for Jayne Mansfield might beat MM’s for crass, but not by much. You can’t help sensing the cloud of cigarettes and sneaked bottles that accompanied campaign strategy meetings for a picture like Niagara, Fox’s first to exploit her as an all-out sex trap. Everybody but Marilyn got a laugh over the fact she was getting only $750 a week for being so exhibited. The price of her fame would be cheap so long as she remained with that company.

Niagara is the best Monroe to show for those with simple and pre-conceived notions of what she was about, as it fulfills civilian expectations for melodrama with switches turned up, a prime sampling of what we’ll call scenic noir. That’s a (sub) sub-genre requiring color for full effect, and included but a handful of titles. Leave Her To Heaven and Desert Fury came earlier and were set in places where you wouldn’t mind living but for so many murders. I was blind to how good Niagara is for sub-par Eastman 16mm prints and black-and-white TV broadcasts that were my former lot. Its pace is quick and they don’t waste time with subtleties. Neither did Fox cheat with locations. All exteriors appear to have been shot at the Falls, making me want to visit even more than when Gilbert Roland did a tightrope walk over them in The Big Circus. Technicolor still had picture postcard quality in 1953, and Niagara is gorgeous on Fox’s DVD. Henry Hathaway (with Marilyn above) directs as he did for Louis De Rochemont where-it-happened thrillers, only this one happens at a place more engaging to look at. As we’ll never have auto courts again in real life, it’s instructive seeing one here. Did vacationers at such places really intermingle as freely as in Niagara? The essential debate passed down these fifty-six years comes to choice between Marilyn Monroe and second lead Jean Peters. Which did/do viewers prefer? I wonder if 1953 males gravitated toward Marilyn in simple observance of billing and poster placement. One writer said that Monroe’s character was for the hoi polloi, while Peters appealed to thinking men. Looks like I’ve finally gotten affirmation, for to me, there’s no contest. These girls might be the Ginger and Mary Ann for barroom discussion of what was sexy in 1953. Niagara supplies money’s worth just for opportunity to ponder the two. A friend who was a service projectionist back then told me that his soldier audience chose Jean Peters to a man. Maybe it’s time for someone to take Niagara out on the road and do the definitive national survey. Any volunteers?

2009-10-12T11:14:00.030-04:00

Monday Glamour Starter --- Marilyn Monroe --- Part One

Let’s suppose I’m a director back in the fifties, and they’ve asked me to helm Some Like It Hot instead of Billy Wilder (yikes!). Here would be my strategy for handling Marilyn: We’d start work, and for the first few days, maybe a week, she’d show. Then troubles start. Ailments real or mostly imagined, Paula Strasberg horning in, MM locked in her dressing room, etc. What’s my next move? Having read several Monroe bios plus Tony Curtis and Mark Vieira’s outstanding new The Making Of Some Like It Hot (above), I’d be armed with twenty-twenty hindsight and a sure plan. First, I do nothing. Let several days pass without calling MM or begging outside her locked sanctum. She’d wonder what was amiss. Then I’d quietly tell everyone to just stay home for a day. UA would lose money, but no more than’s wasted trying to reason with an actress mad as a March hare. Next would come my capper. I’d bring in Mitzi Gaynor, having intended her for the part to start with, then go forward on Some Like It Hot as if she were the final choice. Would Marilyn emerge from the impasse like Judy Garland when Ginger Rogers suddenly turned up to do The Barkeleys Of Broadway? It would all be a bluff of course (my publicist would call it A Bold Stroke for the benefit of Variety subscribers), but here the MM of my imagination relents, is ready to work, apologetic, and properly chastened (in real life, of course, she’d grind me to powder and the Mirisches would pick up my Guild card). Crazy as she was, Monroe was watchful of those who’d undermine her position. Even on Something’s Got To Give, she had spies reporting from the set to her alleged sickbed. I can’t go back and fix what was broken in 1958, but dreaming how I might, inspired by this book, confirms fascination the saga holds for me and serves too as solid endorsement of Mark Vieira’s day-to-day account of Some Like It Hot’s production, enhanced by star Tony Curtis’ vivid recollections. Plus Tony drops a now-that-Arthur Miller’s dead-it-can-be-told bombshell that makes for lively reading. All this for me was like being on the set. Small wonder I’d fantasize at running Billy Wilder’s show and rewriting movie history. You might too after reading this just published marvel of scholarship, on-set intrigues, and hotcha celebrity gossip.

What makes my meandering so foolish is excellence of Some Like It Hot as completed, even if Monroe’s behavior made it seem at times they’d never finish. What if this had gone shut-down ways of Something’s Got To Give? According to Curtis/Vieira’s book, that might have happened. Surely it chilled producer blood to have millions dangling upon the whims of an unstable leading lady. That she was worth it just made the siege more unbearable. I’d think that by the late fifties, budget estimates on Monroe pictures would have been routinely bumped by several hundred thousand to take into account her tardiness, endless retakes, and outright no-shows. What right thinker could have imagined smooth sailing with MM by this point? That she justified enduring such horrors was what made so many lie down on railroad tracks over and over. Directors were forever swearing they’d never work with Monroe again … only to work with her again. Wilder did twice. He’d have probably used MM on Kiss Me, Stupid had she lived. I can see that 1964 disaster playing and profiting like a dream given Monroe’s magic in place of a sullen Kim Novak. I’m no particular fan of Marilyn’s, but I’ve got eyes to see that she was an absolute one-of-a-kind talent. No actress save Judy Garland was so tolerated for conduct that would consign anyone else to unemployment rolls. Producers seemed willing to put up with anything just to get a picture out of personalities like these. How many fell into such a rarified category? I’d propose Garland and Monroe among the women, Marlon Brando perhaps among males. Were there others I’ve overlooked? You don’t have to worship at Marilyn Monroe’s altar to realize no one could do Some Like It Hot so well as her. Imagine Mitzi Gaynor in it, or rather … let’s not. Vieira says they wanted MM for Some Came Running, info new to me. Now it’s going to be hard accepting Shirley MacLaine for knowing how much better that part might have been cast. Wait a minute, maybe I am a Marilyn Monroe fan after all …

Sooner or later you have to ask, just how funny is Some Like It Hot? Tony Curtis likes reminding us that the American Film Institute called it the Number One laugh-getter of all time. I missed SLIH in 1959, but am told it convulsed packed houses. Wilder actually had Jack Lemmon shake maracas during one dialogue scene to bridge between laughs that would otherwise drown out lines. Some Like It Hot probably seemed funnier fifty years ago because it was lots naughtier to patrons then. Conventions were easier outraged in those waning days when at least some of them were left. It’s still unconventional in terms of gender bending. When was the last time leading men wore dresses? Some Like It Hot doesn’t seem to have initiated a trend toward that, although Bing Crosby did assume femme disguise in 1960’s High Time, and that was likely enabled by the Wilder film’s notoriety. Some comedies are great even when you take away the laughs. Some Like It Hot is so well structured and entertaining as to get along without guffaws an initial viewing evokes. It’s fun for me, but was never funny-funny. Guys in skirts are inherently delightful to some people, leave others cold, and make a few uncomfortable. The appeal of this show is way subjective, more so than with most classics. I saw it the first time on NBC Saturday Night At The Movies (never mind UCLA or NYU --- this was my film school). The striking thing then was suspense and danger Wilder achieved right from opening bell (and note we hear just that at the end of the credits). Some Like It Hot was a better gangster picture than most others of that kind played straight. I still consider Wilder’s the most chilling depiction of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. He was brilliantly right upping the stakes to life and death for his two leads. It’s what makes 129 minutes go by minus fatigue, that being the sad lot of so many comedies wearing out welcomes in half as much time.

What always thrills me in Some Like It Hot is that moment going into the third act when we’re looking at the floor of the hotel entrance and here comes Raft, identifiable by a close-shot of spats we align with carnage in Act One. Imagine shared intakes of breath among audiences seeing it first-run. Wilder had his firmest grip on a public at that deathless and showmanlike bump. He must have looked back often from a late sixties and seventies decline to wish he had such mojo back. Was it accidental that BW chose 1959 to reacquaint us with so many movie faces we were seeing nightly on the Late Show? Wilder likely knew this was the apex of a country’s awareness of old movies, thanks to television’s pre-48 avalanche. George Raft, Pat O’Brien, and all those character faces were practically living in homes from 1956 when all the old Warner crime and gangster shows fell like pianos into America’s after-hours consciousness. The bucket of Joe E. Brown comedies on TV made his face again familiar, it’s being done monochrome hot-wired Some Like It Hot viewers to comfort of their living room chairs. What a shame Edward G. Robinson bailed out. Accounts say he refused to work again with George Raft after their dust-up on the set of WB’s Manpower back in 1941, but weren’t they together in A Bullet For Joey just a few years back of Some Like It Hot? Hard to imagine Robinson turning down work during the hard-times (for him) fifties. There must have been some other reason we’ll never know about. Wilder’s period remove to the twenties worked fine because folks felt at home there, thanks to his brilliantly chosen cast. The thirty-year back references were less impenetrable for first-runners who’d at least heard of Valentino and Fairbanks/Pickford from elders. Today such names bandied in Some Like It Hot flatline with nearly everyone watching. The music will never fade, though. Wilder had an ear for standards that worked like charms with his characters. Where’s the book about this director’s tuning brilliance? His selections were proof that Wilder was at heart a romantic. He always knew what themes worked best. I was with a girl once who had no particular interest in movies, but hearing me absent-mindedly hum a song, she immediately chirped up, Hey --- that’s from "Sabrina"!, and sure enough, it was. There were three albums issued for Some Like It Hot by United Artists’ platter branch. That must have been some kind of record (no pun intended), and surely bolstered rentals. Domestic and import reprints are still kicking around on CD. I wish I were listening to one of them now.

More Some Like It Hot imagining here --- this time at a UA marketing meet.

Coming in Part Two on Marilyn Monroe --- Niagara and Something's Got To Give.

2009-10-08T15:02:00.016-04:00

Not A Curve They Wouldn't Take!

Intending to dispose of Fireball 500 with a single paragraph after seeing it on the MGM-HD channel, I was drawn like moths to a flame when trade mags informed me of its having World Premiered in Charlotte. There was sense in that, of course, as Fireball 500 addresses stock car racing and moonshining, both well-known North Carolina obsessions. Plus it’s an American-International picture. Which means I can write about Jim and Sam and what they were up to that Summer of 1966 when big things were (as always!) on the horizon for AIP. Motion Picture Exhibitor suggested, perhaps indelicately, that Fireball 500 was an obvious attempt to add melodramatics to the somewhat tired "Beach" films. Well, the fun and sun cycle was winding down, as rentals on that Spring’s Ghost In The Invisible Bikini (a disappointing $745,000) convinced Nicholson and Arkoff to retire surfboards and seek new direction for beach-nuts under contract. Problem was where to place Frankie, Annette, and others with Malibu sands no longer burning. Sergeant Deadhead proposed wacky in khakis Avalon as 1965’s incarnation of service clowning with roots back to silents, but 60’s teens weren’t much interested (a weak $679,000 in domestic rentals), while Funicello’s continuing service in Disney comedies attracted lots more youth money than her stuff for AIP, thanks to aggressive Buena Vista marketing and appeal to younger children and parents who brought them. Trends and changing of them were never so convulsive as in the mid-sixties. A seeming brilliant idea at conception might be yesterday’s spent fish by release time. Nicholson and Arkoff were still wiping egg off faces over a recent scheme hatched, as it turned out, about three years too late. They’d announced in January 1966 that live variety troupes made up of youth players from AIP’s "Beach and Bikini" series were set to appear nationwide. The shows would be booked into all phases of the personal appearance field, including concerts, fairs, theatres, industrials, and one-nighters, according to press releases. Initial reaction to the announcement of the forthcoming live shows is so enthusiastic that several units will be on the road at one time, said AIP spokesmen. Each show would be self-contained, carrying its own lighting and stage equipment. It was to be the first time a major motion picture company has developed and produced a stage attraction featuring its contract players "live" on a show tour. First buses were scheduled to depart in early Spring, just as Ghost In The Invisible Bikini was going into release. Did passengers realize they were headed toward an already changed cultural landscape?

I’d love knowing what happened to the caravans. Maybe they were scuttled before launch. I asked Milton Moritz, who was AIP's head of advertising and publicity for 25 years, and he recalled that there was some thought to tour them in conjunction with "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine," based upon the reaction we received when we did a presentation at the Theatre Owners of America convention, but that nothing much came of the idea other than some good press. Fireball 500 was meanwhile in production during March 1966. That moved fast and was ready for release by June. Some of AIP’s best money came out of the Southwest. Fireball 500 was customized for us. Hot cars and cycles were shaping up as the in thing for summer. Nicholson and Arkoff threw a New York luncheon for showmen in mid-June and brought along a print of The Wild Angels (set for July release). They figured on at least 12,000 bookings for it and Fireball 500 (pretty accurate estimate on the latter, as Fireball got 11,559, while Angels scored a wow 15,383 dates). Sam said he wanted to do bigger pictures because the small ones were treated like programmers. He and Jim smelled cash among disaffected youth and were planning what Nicholson called a "Protest Series" to begin with an unspecified LSD project. For two pictures so closely aligned and out of the same company, Fireball 500 and The Wild Angels could not have been more different. Fireball was tentative and played safe, casting Frankie Avalon and Annette superficially against type, but hedging bets with upbeat songs from both and AIP’s customary brakes on sex and violent content. Angels, however, was something new and disturbing, a seeming refutation of ethos that guided AIP over its past twelve years. An era really was closing at that luncheon, even if it didn’t seem apparent to those in attendance. An incident thought minor at the time speaks volumes from hindsight. Peter Fonda was there to help pump The Wild Angels. Joining circuit vets at one of the tables, he was taken aback when they jokingly suggested that a haircut might be in order (Fonda’s locks were near-shoulder length). The young actor, soon enough to revolutionize the biz (if briefly) with Easy Rider, stalked off in a huff.

North Carolina’s esteemed governor Daniel K. Moore kicked off Fireball 500’s saturation booking into 108 regional houses with an appearance at Raleigh’s North Hills Steak House, where he issued a proclamation commending AIP for recognizing the intense spectator interest in stockcar racing … through the production of this motion picture. Starlets Mary Hughes and Salli Sachse (shown here on arrival) were also on hand. They’d come from Charlotte’s World Premiere the previous day (June 7), that city’s track being used for Fireball 500’s background racing footage. Governor Moore gauged aforesaid intensity right, for Summer 1966 represented a summit of patron demand for souped-up shows. My scrapbooks for those months are brim-full of all-night super-charger ads, some stacked one atop the other as in these Charlotte drive-in bookings. I’d hate to have shared roads with patrons roaring out of such poor example setters for driving youth. Our local Starlight was always good for triple dash-and-crash marathons throughout most of warmer months. Sometimes they’d park racing heaps at the entrance for added stimulus. I don’t know about others of you, but our moviegoing rituals were dominated by this stuff. For all its emphasis on stock cars and moonshine, Fireball 500 lacked essential verisimilitude of ozoner classics Thunder Road and Thunder In Carolina, Frankie Avalon being no Robert Mitchum (nor even a Rory Calhoun). So-called mountain roads he traveled were, I suspect, closer situated to California coastlines, and co-star Fabian is at one point transported from a Dixie speedway crack-up to treatment facilities clearly marked Cedars-Sinai, a 3000 mile ambulance ride that would seem unnecessary if not hazardous. Fireball 500 aimed to toughen up the boy idols, with Avalon and Fabian scrapping in way meaner fistic encounters than any engaged with Eric von Zipper’s gang. The picture wound up supporting far more profitable The Wild Angels at drive-ins through remaining months of 1966, with Fireball 500 collecting domestic rentals of $1.572 million to Angel’s $4.290.

Every movie has an afterlife. For Fireball 500, there is the enduring fascination of its title vehicle. I never appreciated how celebrated that car was among motor buffs. Turns out the Fireball was designed by "King of the Kustomizers" George Barris, who also created, among (many) other things, the Batmobile, The Munster’s Koach, and The Monkee-mobile. There was also a plastic Fireball model kit (you might have guessed) that Barris still sells at his website (though at the moment his Fireball 500 is out of stock). Somebody out there is looking for everything, it seems. I found a video of a Canadian collector who traced the whereabouts of Barris’ original car built for Fireball 500. He followed its trail via fellow enthusiasts from Kansas into Washington state, intent from childhood on someday owning the unique speedster. Finally, he landed it. A reunion of Frankie Avalon, Fabian, and the car took place in London, Ontario, some forty years after Fireball 500 was released. To see the enthusiasm of these people makes me almost want to take up collecting cars. As it is, my Fireball 500 hangover led also to Frankie Avalon’s website, where his busy concert schedule (with Fabian!) has them appearing, this very weekend, in Newport News, VA, a five and a half hour drive from me. Tempting. Could I reason Ann into going? Probably not. Wonder if Frankie would remember me from the time we met in a Disneyworld hotel lobby and I asked him about working with Buster Keaton on the beach films. No? It was just 1981 … seems like yesterday to me. He turned seventy less than a month ago, by the way.

Many Thanks to Milton Moritz for info on AIP's proposed Star Tours

2009-10-04T11:48:00.007-04:00

Unexpected Pleasures --- Dressler and Moran

I’ve lately become one with the huge audience that went crazy for Marie Dressler back in the early thirties. Those patrons made her Number One boxoffice and knew from funny. I swear this woman is fast becoming my favorite actress; so step aside Norma and Deanna, Greenbriar has a new sweetheart. The discovery came courtesy of Warner Archives. They discounted a package of Dressler shows that included one I knew and wanted, Let Us Be Gay, along with several I’d never seen, including Politics and Reducing, a couple of team comedies with Marie and Polly Moran. Both were revelations for me. I laughed like a hyena at their antics. These two are in a way like a distaff Laurel and Hardy. Or maybe Dressler’s a Bill Fields in voluminous skirts. Anyway, the laughs come thick and fast. Veteran Charles Riesner directed Politics and Reducing. He’d been Chaplin’s right hand during the twenties and Keaton extended him reins for Steamboat Bill, Jr. The Dressler/Morans borrow from the best of silent clown routines. Reducing rollicks in a train sleeper recently vacated by Laurel and Hardy's 1929 Berth Marks, just preceded by Marie pulling verbal (and visual) gymnastics with stuttering Roscoe Ates. She later wrecks Polly’s art-deco beauty salon and does a telephone pantomime with Moran that had me rolling. Dressler’s unruly kids anticipate Harold Bissonette’s It’s A Gift offspring. They never pass by on bicycles without crushing her toes. Marie plays all of this wide open, mugging and sputtering like no other comedienne would before or again. This woman was comic inspiration itself. She’d plied big laughs on stage since the century began, was mentor to so many starting out in the biz (youthful beginner Mack Sennett sought her counsel). It must have wrecked a 1934 viewing public when she died at an absolute peak of their affections.

Metro conventions are observed. There’s always a place for appealing ingenues in the Dressler/Morans, their being family-set comedies. Anita Page is ravishing as Marie’s unlikely daughter in Reducing. She’s nearly seduced by seeming cad Buster Collier, Jr. until mother intervenes. Both Politics and Reducing are schizo unpredictable in ways I loved. You never know when comedy’s mask will drop for stark tragedy’s intrusion. Politics’ story is set in motion by the gangland murder of Polly’s daughter, a moment played utterly straight (and well) by Moran. Plots seem to generally turn on small town virtue versus big city artifice and corruption. Had I but been born during flapper days, I'd have lined up with hard-earned nickels for this team. The Lord only knows how many actually did. I looked at figures for the Dressler/Morans and they were all socko. TCM is soon running another on my not-seen list, Prosperity, and it’s for sure the DVR will stand at alert. It occurs to me that these modest features would play nicely to any audience. All are of a piece with comedies we’ve known and enjoyed so repeatedly through movie buffing lives. Why didn’t I notice Dressler/Moran before? Maybe because they were rarely shown. Strike that. Make it never shown prior to TCM, at least where I’d have had access. It wouldn’t do to dismiss these as mere dumb slapsticks. Dressler was too human and sensitive an actress for that. Hoary gags as interpreted by her taste of ambrosia. To think that were it not for Warner Archives, I might never have bothered, but here’s the kicker: Both Politics and Reducing are excellent transfers. They look as good to me as any pressed DVD to come out of WB. That Dressler sale package includes six features for $59.95, including Politics, Reducing, Emma, Let Us Be Gay, Tugboat Annie, and Min and Bill. All are worth seeing (and having).

Check this previous Greenbriar post for a nutty 1931 Reducing promotional.

2009-09-30T09:43:00.017-04:00

Hip To Flip On 8mm

I’m looking at 8mm again. There’s no good reason really. Could it be the lingering allure of its abysmal low tech-ness? Nostalgia surely factors in. Or maybe it’s rebellion against digitally scrubbed pictures looking too good. I collected the tiny gauge (all the more so as my vision clouds with age) from 1964 to 1973. Those who stayed with film will assert tactile quality it possesses and hands-on projector operation as sole avenues toward a purer viewing experience. I’d not argue with that. Some also favor vinyl as opposed to CD’s. Digital formats are impersonal. They’ve deprived us of physical contact between collectors and what they collect. DVD looks and sounds better, but there’s a sensation one gets from threading up a show and finessing it to completion. Will your lamp blow? What if a bad splice or torn sprocket trips up the works? These were stresses that once factored into shows I gave. Now it’s an effort staying awake through DVD’s once started. To revive 8mm means going in search of artifacts others stopped caring about long ago. Equipment you’ll use is no longer being manufactured. Even the replacement bulbs are middle-aged. There are forums for 8mm enthusiasts online. Some identify themselves as Master Film Handlers. They can take apart and put together an Elmo in a dark room using a flashlight. I’ve wished lately for such skill, as projectors off Ebay are invariably fixer-uppers (even ones they call Brand New). Veterans warned me. Any 8mm machine is at least thirty years old. Rubber drive belts, gears dormant since Nixon’s presidency, and sound hopelessly muffled … these are hallmarks of a gauge forever gone. Don’t expect 8mm to fire up and run just for plugging it in. Wiser heads would say forget the whole thing. Enjoy your memories and never mind recapturing them. Has the effort been worth it for me? Yes, and then some. It’s fun having toys again I can really play with. Beaten remnants of projectors I once used include the Bell and Howell Regent my father brought home in the late forties (there must have been a million sold, as Ebay is never without dozens), and the Eumig Dual 8 sound model I longed for and received in 1969. Neither work, and won’t again. They are mantle pieces now, broken on the wheel of rust and parts worn out. Am I so corroded as my Eumig for the passage of forty years?

There were guys in Syracuse and Columbus who could repair 8mm junkers I bought off Ebay. For their having applied work bench magic, my recently acquired projectors run like tops. I’d kept some Blackhawk and Castle Films from adolescence and was anxious to play them again. Of course, that led to more Ebay bidding for subjects I’d disposed of before and ones that looked to be fun now. Best so far have been cartoons Blackhawk once sold featuring Flip The Frog. I looked at 1930’s Puddle Pranks and reveled in its scratches and lines, having frankly missed those too long for living in my cocoon of flawless digital resolution. Distressed film has integrity. It’s been places. If only 8mm prints could tell their stories, other than ones they project on a screen. Maybe some of these I’m buying now once belonged to me, and somehow made the trek back, like Lassie the time he got locked into a fruit truck and went on his odyssey. Cartoons especially should be viewed on film. Their drawings move, after all, from frame to frame. You could hold one up to a light and examine the artist’s work. Try doing that with a DVD. Flip The Frog is my ideal of an 8mm subject. He’s primitive and extinct just like machinery I watch him on. Ub Iwerks was the pioneering genius that produced the Flips and lots of other independent cartoons besides. Somehow Blackhawk ended up with surviving negatives in 1974. They needed something to compete with the Walter Lantz subjects Castle Films was selling to armchair showmen. Major companies wouldn’t lease (Disney in fact offered their own home movies), so Iwerks’ backlog, many out of circulation since theatres last ran them, filled a void for collectors who wanted animation to play with Chaplin and Laurel/Hardy shorts. These were waning days for black-and-white cartoons as viable inventory for any seller. Soon enough such ancient fare would be exiled from television, other than as objects of bemusement and ridicule on kid programs like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.

The problem for anyone that worked with Walt Disney is shade they'd forever occupy afterward. He was the biggest noise in cartooning and no one else in the organization stood a prayer of getting recognition. Ub Iwerks had started with Walt in Kansas City when both were boys. It looked for a while like they’d stay equal partners, but Disney worked easier with people and thus forged ahead. Iwerks was like so many geniuses who functioned best when left alone. He designed Mickey Mouse and drew the early cartoons single-handed, turning out seven hundred sheets a day when release push came to shove. Walt paid Ub more than he himself drew from the till. Sneak in the grass Pat Powers, who distributed Disney shorts mostly to the extent of skimming what profits he could off the latter’s share, sensed Iwerk’s frustrated ambition and lured him with promises of independence and status to equal Walt’s. The resulting series (begun in 1930) got a flying start when MGM agreed to handle Flip, a sort of poster frog for precode abandon and vessel through which Ub Iwerks explored darker animating impulses. Of all cartoons I’ve watched from the early thirties, these may be the nastiest. Had television played them (did they?), there might well have been parent complaints. Flip morphed from excessively froggish, almost grotesquely so, to a more palatable bow-tie look and near human Betty Boop-ish femme accompaniment as Iwerks (and Metro) slow pushed his character to a short-lived peak around 1932. There were even efforts to merchandise Flip in ways evoking runaway success of Mickey Mouse toys and doo-dads. Children’s books (like one below) and figurines based on the Frog must surely be hot pursued collectibles today, for how many would have sold at depression whacked counters with Mickey items displayed alongside?

The Flips are currently among those sold on DVD as Cartoons That Time Forgot. A little sad when you consider the hopes invested in Iwerk’s creation and others he imagined would lift him to Disney’s pantheon. There was also Willie Whopper and a series called ComicColor, the latter relegated to State’s Rights distribution after Metro bailed on further Iwerks/Powers output. Not that any of these cartoons were/are bad. Like everyone who tried competing head-on with Walt, Iwerks went down in defeat. He eventually wound to Disney’s as a salaried employee. Men like Ub Iwerks strike me as Magnificent Failures for having reached toward a sky with room for but one King Of Cartoons (other companies competed successfully with Disney, but no individual could). There was something heroic going on there. Historians tend to characterize 30’s independent animation as unconventional, even bizarre. That just shows how thoroughly Disney’s model defined the art even as men like Iwerks, Van Beuren, and Fleischer struggled to challenge it. In the end, of course, Disney won. No wonder we view these competitors as outlaws. It’s somehow fitting that on-the-margins Blackhawk Films would acquire the Iwerks library in 1974, then sell them to eccentrics bent upon showing movies on hanging sheets. As long as there is appetite for cartoons put adrift, Flip will endure. His thirty-eight cartoons (wow --- they did that many?) are presently owned by Film Preservation Associates. Search me as to what if any rights the Iwerks family might maintain in the character. A better question might be … who’d bother infringing? I’ve seen time-warped Ebay listings for Flip toys and even a set of buttons like ones shown above, but no one’s likely to get rich selling these. There are two volumes on Image DVD that contain many Flips and others of what Iwerks produced, all with best surviving quality. I’ve avoided going into too much depth about individual Iwerks cartoons in deference to really superb and definitive liner notes provided by Greg Ford for the disc release. A wonderful documentary written and produced by Ub Iwerk’s granddaughter is an extra on Disney’s Oswald The Rabbit DVD from the company’s Treasures series. It is essential viewing for anyone interested in this great animator’s life and work.

2009-09-26T13:27:00.014-04:00

There Was Nitrate In Them Thar Hills

Movie buffs up north had it so made. I’d see them gathered in pages of The Classic Film Collector doing confabs where likely as not you’d have a silent star or two to spice proceedings. New York/Jersey turnpikes seemed paved with collectors and enthusiasts getting together for rare screenings. It seemed I’d never make a Cinecon for being far off and without a driving license (let alone wherewithal to fly). Getting away to college in 1972 was less opportunity for higher education than freedom at last to scour North Carolina backwoods for like-minded film folk. My base of operation was a four-year Lutheran school called Lenoir-Rhyne. I confess, and should be ashamed for doing so, that my primary reason for going there was access it provided to jim-dandy independent UHF channels out of Charlotte running non-stop pre-48 Warner, Fox, and Paramount packages. Hickory, NC was also home to collecting mentor Moon Mullins, confidante to shadowy figures with 35mm tucked away in tool sheds, chicken houses, and barns throughout North /South Carolina. He and I made epic drives to root these out, raising sky-fulls of dust along gravel and dirt roads better fit for herding goats. Moon proved most fearless on snow days atop mountain precipices, and expected me to be so. Boy, If you want this stuff, you’d better be willing to go deep in the woods to find it. He was the seasoned product of years digging after indian relics as well as film, having constructed a backyard museum that schoolkids frequently toured through, Indiana Jones minus a pistol and bullwhip, though I sometimes felt driven by both as we forged along routes I’d not dream of traversing again.

Bolder by Sophomore year, having been initiated by deals closed with (always) rural collectors, I began venturing on my own to acquire, for instance, George O’Brien and Monte Montana westerns found in a closed theatre next to its owner’s house, a handful of Buster Keaton nitrate Educational shorts back of a hayloft, and Warner’s Isle Of Lost Ships, sans Vitaphone discs, flanked by odd reels from Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. A few times I asked Moon about Tom Osteen, the latter known to have possessed various lost films (including the Fred Thomsons). Of course, Moon knew him, probably since shots were fired on Fort Sumter. A sidenote here: All these guys seemed primeval to me. Being nineteen, it was as though anyone with first-hand memory of Birth Of A Nation had to be pushing hundreds. For reasons I don’t recall, Moon chose not to go on the proposed Brevard trip with me. Maybe he and Tom had quarreled once over an uncut print of Greed. Anyway, I was determined to know Mr. Osteen and see that flooded basement for myself. Two years was passed since the Sylvan Films controversy. Sam Rubin’s Collector’s Court was either dismissed or in recess, for I’d not seen further mention of Osteen in then-recent issues of The Classic Film Collector. Moon recommended calling the Co-Ed Theatre in Brevard. That’s where Tom would likely be, day and night. Using a dorm pay phone one Friday around 9 PM, I reached the Co-Ed and was switched to the booth. Osteen was running their show, his voice just audible over a grinding Simplex. I identified myself as a film collector about eighty-five miles away wondering if maybe I could drop by. He said come ahead. By the time you get here, I’ll be finishing up. As was custom, I loaded up with trade goods after the fashion of Randy Scott in Comanche Station (B western lobby cards I’d gotten out of the Liberty several years before) and struck out for Brevard with friend (still is) John Setzer in his powder blue Ford Pinto (the kind they later warned might explode on rear impact).

John had lived in Brevard for awhile during the fifties, so the mountains leading there were at least familiar to him. So was the Co-Ed, but he remembered better the old Clemson Theatre next door, closed since 1959. He’d seen Darby O’Gill and The Little People there when he was five. We showed up in Tom’s booth at the Co-Ed a little after 11. The night’s show was over (precious few patrons). I noticed shelves piled high with memorabilia. Figuring it was current stuff, a first (of many) surprises came when these turned out to be complete lobby sets for all sorts of biggies dating back to the early forties, none of which was a big deal to Tom, as things like Singin’ In The Rain were for him contemporary titles (and you know what, as this was 1974, he was near right). The Co-Ed being dark for the night, we figured Tom would head home. Turns out the Co-Ed was his home. He couldn’t have been more thoroughly absorbed by that theatre if he’d walked into the screen. Here was a man through whose hands thousands of miles of film had passed (having projected for over fifty years). Much of that celluloid was evidently still there, for Tom salted prints in not only the Co-Ed, but a boarded-up Clemson as well. His catacombs were not unlike those of the Phantom, but above the opera house(s), rather than below. For that matter, Tom himself had a distinct Chaney unmasked quality as he led us through narrow corridors from a barely open theatre into one long closed. Along these passages were big cracker barrels, each filled with rolled-up one-sheets. I chanced unfurling a few. My Darling Clementine came first. My acquisitive nature, an obnoxious trait all the more so given my immaturity, went into overdrive. This place was King Solomon’s Mines and I was Stewart Granger! The Clemson boxoffice and front was still decorated for its last operating day in 1959. They had simply closed the place without taking down any of the posters. Setzer flipped when he saw what their final show had been --- Darby O’Gill and The Little People.

I had to measure my curiosity over the fabled Fred Thomson prints with opportunity now to trade for a building full of amazing collectibles. It wouldn’t do to alienate Tom with a lot of questions about a controversy now passed. Still, was there a chance he’d still have that nitrate? Storage rooms we entered were well above ground and dry as bleached bones. Film was everywhere. A 35mm They Died With Their Boots On here, Fox Technicolor musical trailers there. Yet I had a sense that the really rare stuff was put deeper away, as these buildings were honeycombed with passages we never entered (Nothing in there, Tom would say whenever I approached one of them). Finally I mentioned the Thomsons, casually so as to avoid the appearance of an undercover G-Man acting on behalf of The Classic Film Collector. Lost in a flood, Tom said, none of it left. Fair enough, I thought, but had he at least been able to watch them before the deluge? Oh yeah, and they were really great. I guessed they sure enough were … back in 1928. As to his having seen them since, I had increasing doubts, but again, I wasn’t going to rock a fragile boat, for here was Tom giving me access to posters and film to hasten the beat of my greedy collector’s heart. The Clemson’s auditorium, dark for so many years, was a landfill for 35mm trailers Osteen discarded. His idea of expendable was mine of a gold field. Those little rolls of film were lying about like Easter eggs, and we gathered baskets of them. El Dorado, The Left Hand Of God, For Whom The Bells Toll, Wilson (those last two on Technicolored nitrate), and yes, Darby O’Gill and The Little People, among hordes of others. We left that morning about 4:30 AM. Tom had cleaned me of what Tim McCoy and Hoppy paper I’d brought to trade, and my arms were loaded with bounty I’d treasure from there on. We were both happy, and Osteen invited me to come back anytime (and I did --- on several occasions). Like a lot of veteran collectors I dealt with in those days, Tom was probably amused, if not a little incredulous, that someone young as me was out chasing this ancient stuff. Maybe my childish enthusiasm reminded him of the boy he was when Fred Thomson rode tall on the Clemson’s screen. In any case, I found Tom Osteen to be an unfailingly nice guy wholly supportive of collecting passions we shared. Looking back on encounters with old-timers like him, Moon, and lots of others, I realize now they were passing the torch to a new generation that loved their kind of movies. Certainly they were generous toward me with both time and extraordinary archives they’d accumulated. I’m only sorry Tom’s not still in Brevard so I could go visit again.

POSTSCRIPT: Tom Osteen died in 1983. He’d been an occasional attendee at cowboy fan gatherings in Charlotte, Siler City, and other such campgrounds for western enthusiasts. Raleigh, NC resident Ed Wyatt got a lot of help from Tom when he wrote a definitive history of Fred Thomson entitled More Than A Cowboy, published privately in 1988. The book was a marvelous labor of love by a generation of men (several dedicated Thomson fans assisted Wyatt) who’d started out spending penny allowance on vending machine cards of Fred and his horse, Silver King. My last contact to Brevard came after Tom Osteen died and I called his family upon hearing some of his collection was being sold. I wound up with, oddly enough, a 16mm print of Horror Of Dracula (now what was Tom doing with that?). The Fred Thomson nitrates of persisting legend were never accounted for. I’d like to think that somewhere in that still-standing Co-Ed Theatre (here it is … neighboring Clemson was leveled long ago), they are safely tucked into a hiding place of Tom Osteen’s invention, waiting for a future generation of archeologists to rescue Fred and Silver King and set them riding once again.

2009-09-22T17:57:00.015-04:00

1970 Collector Hopes Raised and Dashed

I’ve spent this week mining my way into the hearts and minds of Fred Thomson followers who once carried banners for the long departed cowboy star and have for the most part joined him on the trail beyond. Members of Fred’s adoring legion were mostly around my age when they looked back from the early seventies, a time when silent moviegoers were still out there in abundance and publications like The Classic Film Collector served as community forums, much like online boards and discussion groups enable twenty-first century fans to compare notes. Big happenings for us include rediscovery of a complete Metropolis and whatever’s forthcoming on DVD. Sometimes announcements are too good to be true. Think of last year when some prankster claimed to have seen a print of F.W. Murnau’s Four Devils in a collector’s trove. There are sightings of London After Midnight as frequent as seasons change, all (so far) bogus. Back in Fall of 1970, it was a trio of thought lost Fred Thomson westerns that lit up silent enthusiasm’s world, their having allegedly surfaced in the archive of a North Carolina collector who’d soon make them available on 8 and 16mm. This was news of seismic import to readers for whom long ago Saturday walks to see Thomson in action were among happiest days of youth. Other silent cowboys had been accessible since respective 20’s peaks. You could still buy or rent Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, and Ken Maynard, or even watch them on television. Thomson was different for having died before talkies gathered him up, and being his output was silent, virtually all of it was consigned to bonfires and silver reclamation. I got a lowdown on the fate of Fred’s FBO output (Film Booking Office, then controlled by Joseph P. Kennedy) from author Cari Beauchamp, who kindly got in touch by e-mail following Greenbriar’s post about her fine book, Without Lying Down. She passed along the following from recently published Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years, which recounts correspondence between two key FBO employees soon after Fred Thomson’s death. Here, according to Beauchamp, was final stop for that star’s nitrate legacy:

Charlie Sullivan was still at his Gower Street office, but now on the RKO payroll and Pat Scollard was at the Pathe office in New York. Whatever their titles or, for that matter, whoever was paying their salaries, their first and foremost loyalty was to Kennedy. For weeks following Fred Thomson’s death, both men, from their respective perches, made time to collect Thomson’s insurance as well as press Paramount for a full accounting of the films still in distribution.
Scollard and Sullivan exchanged dozens of letters and, as necessary, sent updates to Kennedy. In the process, Sullivan told Scollard that there were over one hundred cans of Thomson’s FBO movies left in what were now the RKO vaults. "We are shortly going to need all of our vault space," Sullivan reported and he needed to know what Kennedy wanted done with the films. Pat Scollard, trained over the years to look at the next quarter’s balance sheet, instructed Sullivan that "unless there are some shots there that you could sell and get some money for, I think it would be the best plan to junk it all and send me a check for the scrap film." After all, that could bring as much as a penny per foot. In doing so, they destroyed 2200 pounds of "scrap film" or, in other words, Fred Thomson’s life work.

Tom Osteen was the Brevard, NC projectionist and collector who claimed to possess three of Fred Thomson’s Paramount features. A Sensational Announcement, he called it, with long lost Jesse James, Kit Carson, and The Sunset Legion slated for release through Osteen’s Sylvan Films. Classic Film Collector Publisher/Editor Samuel K. Rubin had visited Tom in Brevard and saw film boxes clearly labeled. He took Osteen’s word as to contents inside and began promoting the Fred Thomson westerns to come. Readers sent advance payments for Jesse James, its early 1971 delivery assured by Sylvan (with Kit Carson to follow in mid-1971 and The Sunset Legion set for 1972 availability, per Osteen). Outstanding artist Anthony Phillips again demonstrated uncanny ability to duplicate the look of silent film ads when he drew a full-page display for Osteen’s forthcoming slate (above). Orders (with checks) began pouring into Brevard. I well remember the breathless articles in CFC about Thomson’s westerns and their miraculous rediscovery. Being sixteen and well short of the needed $50 to buy an 8mm Jesse James ($160 for 16mm), I could only dream as to what awaited better-heeled collectors (there would even be glossy photo sets and poster reproductions available for Jesse James). Sam and Tom posed together before Osteen’s original one-sheet, as shown above, and the latter was making noises as to other thought-lost westerns he’d scoped out via collector friends with stashes of their own. Was North Carolina shaping up to become the great-untapped well of nitrate treasures? The months to follow would answer a resounding … no.

Sam Rubin put out calls for Fred Thomson articles to further trumpet pending release of his westerns. Classic Film Collector readership sallied forth with affectionate tributes able yet to bring tears to my eyes. Longtime fan William Barton contributed Fred Thomson Rides Again, and that writer’s pal James Pierce (erstwhile silent era Tarzan!) lent commentary re his then forty year ago friendship and professional association with Thomson. So many old timers were still around in 1970, access to them as simple as picking up a telephone. I’m astounded by resourcefulness of pioneering historians who got researching jobs done even as they worked unrelated jobs and juggled family obligations (Sam Rubin ran a furniture store while moonlighting as CFC publisher/editor). Another who related a very personal account of boyhood devotion was Tom Brennen, whose I Can’t Forget Fred Thomson in CFC Issue 30 was a moving recollection of that bleak Christmas Day in 1928 when a local news extra informed him, at age 11, of the cowboy star’s death. I don’t know if Brennen is still alive. He’d be 92 if he were. In whatever case, his article is a masterly evocation of a screen idol passing and the shattering effect it had on at least one youngster who I’m sure spoke for others mostly gone now.

Joyful contemplation of Fred Thomson collector prints to come was shattered when Sam Rubin headlined bad news in CFC #2. Lost Films Lost Again! preceded an account of massive flooding in Tom Osteen’s basement that washed away all the Fred Thomson reels, plus an FBO Tom Mix, "Son Of The Golden West," he (Osteen) was going to release (as if readers needed further salt in wounds). It was the local gas company what done it. They were digging in front of Tom’s home and struck a water line. Nearly 100% of the collection was destroyed. Osteen claimed possible recourse to another print of Jesse James he’d borrow from a fellow enthusiast, but reader disappointment over the announcement was acute. Cannot understand why he had not decided to have prints made up after having them for all this time, said one letter. One negative should be kept in a bank vault, and a spare negative elsewhere, remarked another. Refunds would be forthcoming, according to Osteen, and maybe one or two Thomson fragments could be printed from what little footage was salvageable. Doubters began speculating that Osteen never had the nitrate to begin with. And even if he did, weren’t copyrights renewed by Paramount on the Thomson westerns and thus protected? Maybe it was all just a sham. Months would pass in silence from Brevard. Checks sent had been cashed, but those refunds weren’t happening. Osteen ran an ad looking to dispose of printing equipment, so clearly Sylvan had tossed in the towel with regard generating film. A year plus six months went by before Tom landed in the CFC’s Collector’s Court, a one-man tribunal Sam Rubin established to keep dealers honest. But there was no luck bringing Tom to earth. Well, maybe those NC mountains had swallowed him up. Brevard was (is!), after all, about as remote as wilderness that once gave Alvin York refuge. Was fifty dollars tossed at phantom 8mm prints worth venturing into such a benighted region?

Many Thanks to Cari Beauchamp for information regarding the fate of Fred Thomson's westerns.

Coming in Part Three: My Brevard Trip at Age 19 to find Tom Osteen and Whatever Became of his Mythical Fred Thomson films.

2009-09-18T13:15:00.017-04:00

Choice Book --- Without Lying Down

I’ve been reading Cari Beauchamp’s book, Without Lying Down, about screenwriter Frances Marion and the Hollywood she knew. Marion was among that group of women who thrived during the silent era (and partly into sound) before, says Beauchamp, studios became rigidly corporatized and male dominated. Some lived long enough to bear witness from decades out as to filmic gamesmanship as they experienced it. Anita Loos and Adela Rogers St. John were contemporaries of Frances Marion and both spun embellished accounts of incidents in which all other participants had long passed on. St. John lost sight altogether of where truth and her embroideries parted company. Frances Marion's reflections are more reliable for being culled from private diaries and journals she kept, and which Beauchamp had access to. Marion got an early break writing for Mary Pickford. For several years, they were professionally inseparable. I’m fascinated by Beauchamp’s account, but can’t for the life of me shine up to Pickford. Amarilly Of Clothes-Line Alley is supposed to be one of the better ones Pickford and Marion teamed on, but was tough sledding for me. Maybe I need to commit to a week or so of Pickford, with stops at eight or ten of her features (at least that many are on DVD) before attempting an informed opinion. The problem is she just doesn’t intrigue me on screen. If they’d made films about Pickford's climb up stardom’s ladder (more like a catapult) or the marriage to Fairbanks and its collapse, I’d be more receptive. Further data about her reclusing years at Pickfair would also be welcome, as those stories of withdrawl with Buddy Rogers as gatekeeper are pearls of filmland Gothica. How many fans are out there who still watch Mary Pickford movies? I actually wish I were one, because a lot of them survive (thanks to the star’s own conservation efforts) and you can’t say that about most silent-era legacies.

Without Lying Down is a terrific book, well-researched and full of insight into lives of that vanished period. Among those (many) invisible now is Frances Marion’s tragic husband Fred Thomson, otherwise a screen cowboy that some claim out-performed Tom Mix as king-sized boyhood idol to fit all. Every western Fred made, save one, is lost today and he did over two dozen. It’s like his stardom was wiped off the cultural map. Pretty tough reviving a name when there’s so little film to back your argument. Thomson is mostly just stills now, like so many silent lights gone dark. He fascinates me for two reasons. One is how he died. Beauchamp gives the best account of that in Without Lying Down. Fred had been a crack athlete, WWI vet, and Presbyterian minister who got into movies somewhat reluctantly. This perfect specimen died at 38 of tetanus. I don’t know about others of you, but that word always gave me chills. How many times was I warned growing up to wear shoes so as not to step on a nail and get tetanus? It’s said to be the most horrific of deaths and always hopeless once you’re infected. Then there’s lockjaw for a chaser, just to assure an agonizing exit. The story I’d heard about Thomson through the years was that, indeed, he stepped on a nail. Beauchamp questions that, and says doctors found no evidence of an open wound. Medicine being what it was in 1928, you could enter a hospital with seemingly minor problems and never come out. Fred was being treated for kidney stones as well as tetanus. Both were potential killers then. Maybe, as was the case with Valentino a couple of years before, they could have saved Thomson had he access to modern medicines we know. Succeeding generations merely finished the job of erasing Fred by letting his films go to dust.

Frances Marion silent partnered her husband in terms of writing most of his westerns along with helping out on edit work. Her contributions were quiet, as neither wanted focus on the town’s highest-paid scribe steering program westerns gratis. Would the Thomson oaters stand tallest for her more than capable participation? Imagine them all turning up and proving to be the very best outdoor series of the whole silent era. That notion intrigues me. On the other hand, who’s likely to care much about ancient cowboy shows in any rediscovered capacity? The twenty-first century is a pretty big echo chamber for remaining adherents of silent film, let alone those who’d thump for Fred Thomson. Frances Marion kept working after her husband died. Her peak came during early sound, with Irving Thalberg a head champion. Projects she delivered in ribbons gave Metro star-based cycles they’d ride for decades after. Reading Beauchamp’s account convinces me that Marion’s genius was what created Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery, for it was she that majorly penned Anna Christie, Min and Bill, The Big House and The Champ. The latter two were stories Marion created from ground up. Dressler was the absolute high priestess of America’s boxoffice for those few star years she had before early death intervened at a peak. I watched Min and Bill for the first time recently. It’s short and funny and moving. Why folks loved it is no mystery. Dressler acts from the heart and is so authentic as to merge as one with viewers. There wouldn’t be anything so honest and natural as her again. Beery had a slobbery realness as well, so long as vehicles were as finely written as ones Frances Marion turned in. If she’d acted upon invitations to direct (rather than bowing out early on after a few stressful tries), Marion could have been the feminine auteur to lead a 30’s charge. As it is, they squeezed her typewriter dry after Thalberg died and took front-office protection with him. Marion disdained Louis Mayer and he returned the sentiment. Metro committees wanted her to reheat the Beery formula she’d invented, but now the star was hung with braying Marjorie Main for a partner who could never replace long-gone Dressler, and lesser talents were freely rewriting Marion. The latter toiled along margins and finally drifted out of movies in favor of art and sculpture at which she also excelled. Her whole story is splendidly told in Cari Beauchamp’s book. Read it and learn lots about the Hollywood Frances Marion’s talent enhanced (there are used hardcovers on Amazon starting at $1.90).

Coming in Part Two: Fred Thomson Rediscovered --- Or Not? A North Carolina Collecting Story

2009-09-14T15:56:00.010-04:00

Can't Like List --- Suspicion

I’ve revisited a couple of pictures lately that I’ve so far never been able to enjoy, thinking maybe this time would be different. One was Where Danger Lives of a recent post, redeemed somewhat by passage of time and my softening attitude toward it. Suspicion, however, is something else. It has the promise of another good Hitchcock from beginnings of a rich new-to America period (preceded by Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent), and for the first time, AH had access to a really major star name in Cary Grant. He claimed never to have wanted the title, but surely Hitchcock would have got round to using it eventually (another seeming natural, Deceit, was a shooting title for Family Plot, but not used by him otherwise). Suspicion remains a frustration for me and I don’t think that’s ever going to change. It attests to Hitchcock’s dependence upon writers, and how hopelessly he’d flounder on occasions when they let him down. I've read often the axiom that you can ruin a good script by poor direction, but that even a brilliant director cannot uplift a bad script. Like it or not, our story driven industry continues to operate on said rule, never so rigid as in 1941 when Hitchcock was obliged to sign his name to the mess that was Suspicion. Here was a writing dilemma gone unresolved. I’ve read that RKO leadership changed during production, the bane of not only Hitchcock, but others like Orson Welles and Val Lewton who toiled there and faced similar interference. There was fuss over Cary Grant being a would-be murderer of wife Joan Fontaine. Hitchcock supposedly wanted him to poison her at the end (and she to knowingly drink it). I’m thinking they all knew better than to imagine such a thing could ever pass. Never mind the Code. I don’t think Grant would have played it. Besides which there’d be a downer finish to wreck whatever boxoffice Suspicion might have had. The ending as it is cheats, but for me, the whole murder set-up seems arbitrary. Nearly an hour passes before we’re asked to consider Grant as potential killer. I wondered why Fontaine didn’t rid herself of him for lying and thievery that makes for Suspicion’s distinctly unappealing first half. She’s a doormat for this cad and the fact he’s Cary Grant doesn’t mitigate it. Maybe Hitchcock was trying to show us how inherently untrustworthy such charmers are. Grant is almost too good enacting a rotter we might suspect lies at the core of his screen persona. It’s one of the riskiest parts the actor ever took, lots more off-putting, I think, than his Devlin in Notorious, which is more generally credited as the darkest of Grant’s Hitchcock gallery. For his Suspicion character to have turned out an unrepentant killer might have left a disagreeable taste audiences would never have forgiven, and more disastrously, could have ended CG’s association with Hitchcock.

Suspicion was a hit. Against a negative cost of $1.1 million, there were domestic rentals of $1.3 million and foreign brought $919,000. Profits amounted to $440,000, an unaccustomed windfall to RKO where triple digit gains were less common than at competing majors. Hitchcock techniques were freshest then and it was exciting to discover novel ways he put over a thrill. Audiences talked about creeps they got when Cary Grant ascended dark stairs with a seemingly radioactive glass of milk, a scene so visually compelling that it didn’t matter whether it paid off or if that milk device ultimately curdled. What patrons remembered too was Joan Fontaine spelling Murder among her puzzle pieces. Both scenes dazzle when standing alone or as highlights in Hitchcock compilations, but neither survive greater scrutiny applied to Suspicion in its entirety. Hitchcock was known to chuck narrative logic in favor of set-pieces he knew would distract us, and generally that worked in stories resilient enough to bear such strain, but Suspicion was from its outset built on sand. In better Hitchcocks, like Rear Window especially, there was a basis for your protagonist suspecting foul play. They didn't let us down at the end by saying there was nothing to his/her fear. If the expected villain turns out to have been a misunderstood red herring, what was the point of watching? So "The Threat Of Murder" promised by Suspicion’s one-sheet proves a non-existent one and a betrayal of viewer expectation sustained over 99 minutes of running time (the cheat not being apparent until the very finish). Lesser filmmakers might fall back on such machination, never (except here) Hitchcock. Still, there are fans that like Suspicion. From the standpoint of movie star glamour Hitchcock manipulated so well, it is irresistible. You look at posters, plus that title, and figure surely it must deliver. I never chanced Suspicion with student groups to whom I ran many other Hitchcocks, for fear they’d turn on the picture, AH, then me. Maybe I assumed too much, was guided to excess by my own prefigured lights, and deprived them of something they’d have enjoyed. That’s always a risk when programming films based on personal preference (but if not guided by your own tastes, then whose?). Every audience is full of surprises, especially at Hitchcock revivals. I’d love to know how Suspicion plays to a modern crowd. Anyone tried it out lately?

2009-09-11T15:20:00.011-04:00

Enter The Master Of Suspense

Maybe it’s not a big deal, but I need to know when Alfred Hitchcock became The Master Of Suspense. That was a question I’d intended to touch on briefly in a post about recently watched Suspicion, but became itself the focal point of interest as pressbooks and trades were consulted. Yes, he was a name in England and had become one over here, but what was the wide American public’s image of Hitchcock when he arrived on our shores? Ads I’ve found for The Lady Vanishes, The 39 Steps, and other UK thrillers found them mostly on art house screens, or "little theatres", as they were mostly known then. The first US assignment was Rebecca, and that yielded an avalanche of publicity for the English director, but there were bigger names behind the camera, first that of producer David O. Selznick, just off Gone With The Wind and hugely prominent for having shepherded that blockbuster. Then there was novelist Daphne Du Maurier, a name very much to be reckoned with for having written the enormous best seller Selznick and Hitchcock were now adapting. Rebecca’s prior exposure included hardback publication, magazine serialization, and multiple radio dramatizations (one of these presented by Orson Welles). As source material for a high-profile film, Rebecca enjoyed nearly the popularity of GWTW. Hitchcock was merely one of many elements to promote, being lauded for his eerie touch achieved through understatement, evidence of this being the British imports recognized by a critical and Hollywood establishment if not by a wider American public not so receptive to movies from offshore. Still, there were publicity mats available to remind readers of Hitchcock’s UK output (as above), along with assurance that with unmatched resources of Hollywood at his command, (Hitchcock) leaves his past history-making achievements far behind. There were references to the director’s humorous personality going hand-in-hand with his corpulence and eating habits that led to it. As uncertain indicator of labels to come, Hitchcock was called The Master Of Melodrama in articles to serve as newspaper plants for Rebecca. Ads for the film, however, put greater emphasis on the source novel, with virtually all of them featuring art of either the book’s cover or pages opened within. None was without endorsement of David O. Selznick as the producer Who Made "Gone With The Wind." These were Rebecca’s selling priorities, and Hitchcock would have to wait for his second American feature, Foreign Correspondent, to put a brighter light upon his directorial contribution.

Foreign Correspondent was where bricks began laying, where Hitchcock was anointed Master Of Suspense in America. There was less for him to compete with in that film's campaign. Producer Walter Wanger was an important name, but not half so as Selznick, and certainly there was no Gone With The Wind on Wanger’s resume. Now it was Hitchcock who’d be linked to a just recent US hit: The Man Who Directed "Rebecca." For the first time, he had a possessory credit, Alfred Hitchcock’s Masterful Production of "Foreign Correspondent," which placed AH first and foremost among names to sell the 1940 release. It helped having a cast that wouldn’t overshadow him. Joel McCrea and Laraine Day were stars of a second-tier and not foremost in ads and poster art. Topicality was what United Artists pushed. This was a story ripped from wire services, and Hitchcock with credits now on both sides of the Atlantic was an ideal interpreter of tumultuous international events. He’d introduce a greater sophistication to upend hackneyed technique of melodramatists gone before. But Hitchcock wouldn’t be stuffy about it. He was called the customer’s director, one who shared a patron’s disdain for cliches we’d all grown tired of. AH would demolish these and replace them with action lots more fun and surprising. Foreign Correspondent’s spectacular plane crash at sea was proof of that, being another of those Hitchcock Moments unique to his sensibility and excitingly fresh to ours. Ads for the first time included the director’s image over a caption reading The Master Of Suspense (as here). Standees were available with Hitchcock’s name and the same legend displayed prominently. As of this second only film he made in the United States, AH would become a filmmaker celebrity of the first rank.

The next of Hitchcock’s thrillers, Suspicion, consolidated his position. Now he was sufficiently well known as to be recognized in caricature. National magazine coverage had seen to that. Hitch was colorful and made good copy. Readers found his look arresting and manner even more so. Comments he’d made led columns across America. AH said actors were cattle, or should be treated like cattle … whatever … it was enough to put him on entertainment pages nationwide. Star Carole Lombard brought livestock onto the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith to pay off the gag everyone was talking about, and Hitchcock was showman enough to laugh with an increasingly adoring public. By the time Suspicion rolled in for Thanksgiving 1941 release, he was as familiar as any movie star and likely more welcome than most. RKO’s trade ads got it said with Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, and a cartoon Hitchcock pointing authoritatively with cigar in hand. Two Great Stars and A Great Director conferred equal standing to this trio of hit-makers. Even smaller Suspicion ads found placement for Hitchcock’s caricature. The Screen’s Master Of Suspenseful Romance was among several variations on the director’s brand. Suspicion used this and The Master Of Insidious Surprise to describe him. Hitchcock’s image and the direction he’d follow had grown clearer with each project. It was an imprint fully formed to last for a career of thirty-five plus years to come and posterity beyond.

2009-09-07T11:09:00.017-04:00

The Hammer World I Live In

To watch Hammer’s 1959 Hound Of The Baskervilles twice within days made me ponder reasons for going back when so many interesting things remain unwatched. I think it’s mostly the welcoming house and grounds at Bray, which is odd for the fact they’re 4000 miles off and I’ve never once visited except in US theatres and more lately DVD. Still, there’s familiarity in those environs that’s just like coming home. Bray was the place where Hammer operated, shot their movies, and served meals. Every room, corner, and shed turned up eventually as background or was dressed for a set. I like going on Hammer holidays, exploring upstairs and down in castles (really just one) that designer Bernard Robinson modified time and again to suit purposes of whatever monster claimed residence. Every crypt and fireplace is like the handshake of an old friend. Those who wonder at the allure of Hammer just haven’t seen enough of it. Their films have a better sense of community than output from any other company. Personnel who spent careers there have confirmed as much. A comforting and familial place it was. Where else do horror films give off such a warm glow? There’s toasty rooms where you can sit before a crackling hearth like Jonathon Harker to enjoy your host’s wine and a baked loaf, then retire upstairs where bed chambers maintain crispness of Autumn air. We see their breath when John Van Eyssen and Christopher Lee speak in Horror Of Dracula, a reality of chilly Bray stages I’d not trade for anything. The Little Shoppe Of Horrors is a terrific magazine devoted to Hammer Films. They’ve published photos of Bray both inside and out that show just how economical those settings were. How they managed to make them look so majestic in finished product is tribute to genius and ingenuity of artists on staff. Surely Bray was a magical place when Hammer thrived there, for seeing films they made, especially when properly presented, is like bed and breakfast at --- take your pick --- Castle Dracula, Frankenstein’s chateau, or Baskerville Hall. No wonder I keep going back.

MGM’s High-Definition network has been running Hound Of The Baskervilles. I wonder if they realize what joy they’ve given fans who’ve waited years to see it so gloriously rendered. The DVD was a bust for being non-anamorphic. Prior to that was television’s ritual abuse. Hound was not the world-beater Hammer and United Artists counted on when released in Summer 1959. There was $450,000 in domestic rentals, a figure cleaved by half of what Universal-International realized off the previous year’s school vacation release of Horror Of Dracula. The novelty of Hammer was wearing off even as quality maintained. Hound had to compete with another from the company that Paramount was handling, The Man Who Could Cheat Death, which drew a punier $238,000 in domestic rentals. Hound did much better in foreign markets, with rentals from those territories coming to an impressive $1.4 million, so it was by no means a failure overall. Chinks in the armor of its US campaign might be spotted in awkward effort to sell Hound as a blood-dripping horror fest along lines of prior hits Curse Of Frankenstein and Horror Of Dracula. Totally ignored in all ads was the fact that this was a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Of what commercial value was Conan Doyle’s character in an exploitation-driven late-50’s market? Holmes hadn’t been around since infrequently revived Basil Rathbone thrillers, which by the mid-fifties were being shown on television. The big push for 1959’s Hound revolved around the title beast, made to look so ferocious as to imply a werewolf’s not-so-distant cousin. What Hammer put on the screen was a distinct letdown from that, and I wonder if disappointed word-of-mouth among kid patrons did damage to second/third days and subsequent runs (anyone recall their initial impression?). Something about a Bone Chilling Howl made ad copy for most engagements, perhaps not enough to close many sales.

Still, there were showmen who persevered. One was Dan Austell of Winston-Salem’s Carolina Theatre. He utilized the deathless wheeze of inducing a local woman to sit alone in his auditorium for a midnight showing of Hound, a fresh ten-dollar bill her reward for making it through the show (WANTED! --- The Bravest Woman In Winston). WTOB was King of the Hill among local AM Top 40 stations and often tied in with theatres for stunts like this. The Carolina shared first-run product with the Winston, located just down a block. Neither gravitated to horror films as a rule, and runs were brief when they did (I remember Masque Of The Red Death being in and out of the Carolina after two days, contrary to their usual three-or-more policy for new pics). United Artists must have sent up a crack salesman to get a mid-week booking and such aggressive campaigning on Hound’s behalf. The Thalhimers referred to in the ad was Winston-Salem’s ritziest department store, located across the street and more or less between the Carolina and the Winston. I was bored silly the few times my mother took me in there. They did indeed have a beauty salon on the third floor. The women wore uniforms just like Mrs. Maxine (Bare) Morrison’s here and looked like nurses. It’s sobering to think that the young woman in her undoubted twenties here is now in her (at least) mid-seventies. I wish I could talk to Mrs. Morrison, for I’ll bet if she’s still with us, she’d well remember that midnight show of Hound Of The Baskervilles at the Carolina (well, wouldn’t you?).

Many of the Hammer films owned or partly so by Seven Arts were kept off television until the seventies and thus enjoyed extended lives on theatre screens, while others, like Hound Of The Baskervilles, shuttled off to the tube much earlier. Hound’s syndicated availability was announced in July 1962 as part of a thirty-one title package including UA features just off ABC network runs. Being the lone horror film in the group (other than sci-fi chiller, Invisible Invaders), Hound would share late-night berths with highly regarded Witness For The Prosecution, Sweet Smell Of Success, and others. The following 1963-64 season saw Hound joining a group of sixty UA/RKO/pre-48 horrors in a syndicated package that was probably the best one available outside of Screen Gems’ two Universal "Shock" groups, as it boasted Doctor X, the Val Lewtons, King Kong, and many more favorites.

There’d been talk of Hammer launching a series of Sherlock Holmes thrillers beginning with Hound Of The Baskervilles. UK audiences might well have embraced it (note the above British quad’s reference to S.H.), but United Artists’ domestic sales force had no such confidence in the Holmes name as potential draw. The film itself juiced up creepy elements not to be found in Doyle’s source novel. Hammer had its own brand name and reputation to uphold. There’s flamboyance here to erase memories of staid sleuthing done by previous Holmes enactors. Peter Cushing’s exuberance freshens up plot machinations less energetic during a long middle section when he’s offscreen, and Christopher Lee enjoys the sort of dashingly romantic part I wish he’d played more often. As with so many Hammers, color is a Godsend. Theirs had a look peculiar to British Technicolor processing that upped tension levels in ways almost subliminal. Ones I saw theatrically are memory stored yet as unique encountering with reds, greens, and blues rendered like nowhere in US chillers, which beside Hammer output, always seemed more conventional. Martin Scorsese once recalled that Hammer films were events growing up, chillers he and friends knew were something special. The best of Hammer made Anglophiles of a generation of American youth, well before James Bond and the Beatles took credit for leading Britian’s cultural invasion.

2009-09-03T12:11:00.016-04:00

RKO's Sleeper Hunt

The Hitch-Hiker is among stripped-down noirs so modest as to invite comparison with backyard movies friends of mine used to make and I sometimes acted in. Ida Lupino and an ex-husband did it for kernels and everything about the finished product suggests they seldom broke for lunch. Independent producing then was shorthand for hanging by your thumbs. Those that prospered at it were in a distinct minority. From what I’ve read, Ida’s team lost games even when they slid into home, thanks to distributors siphoning off would-be profit and calling it a distribution fee. Sharks in this instance swam at RKO. Their burden was at least as heavy as Lupino and company’s for having to merchandise a B/W hard-tack thriller without stars. Succeeding at that was possible as evidenced by the previous year’s The Narrow Margin, a critical establishment’s darling and one the customers embraced as well. Any low-budget thriller was a potential sleeper. You just had to get it to the right people early and hope word-of-mouth would haul bags from there. Of course, that required commitment as well … and money. The Hitch-Hiker was sold less on marquee strength (which Frank Lovejoy and Edmund O’Brien had not an abundance of) than on emphasis upon true-life fear anyone with a driver’s license might connect with. What if the guy you picked up by the road turned out to be a psycho killer? Hitch-Hiking was commoner then, and more drivers did offer lifts. Now, of course, we assume everyone on the highway is a potential threat, in or out of vehicles. In 1953, however, this was a new hook (at least for movies) and a good one.

Women directors, less of a novelty today, were so much so in 1953 as to demand explanation and maybe apology for presuming to claim such authority on sets. Ida Lupino had supposedly been obliged by force of unforeseen circumstance (an assigned director bugged out) to assume double duties as means toward getting self-produced pics done cheaper. You’d think experience by the time of The Hitch-Hiker would alleviate press nattering over her qualification to direct, but any attention was welcome, especially for such an otherwise minor programmer. A then-wiser course was to go along with patronizing coverage of oddities inherent in a woman "manning" the helm. Everybody was presumed to get fun out of sex roles gone topsy-turvy in Hollywood, and Lupino’s name was still one to conjure with for stardom she appeared to forsake for adventuring into a man’s exclusive preserve. Publicity for The Hitch-Hiker bent backward to reassure that femininity would survive despite such masculine pursuit. I retain every feminine trait. Men prefer it that way, Lupino said. They’re more cooperative if they see that fundamentally you are of the weaker sex even though in a position to give orders, which normally is the male’s prerogative, or so he likes to think, anyway. Such press seemed designed to ease disagreeable thoughts of a woman bossing men on location, especially cast-as tough guys in action mode. Lupino acknowledged as to how she was intruding into their world, while renouncing masculine characteristics that might rub off on her … which can often be a fault of career women rubbing shoulders with their male counterparts who become merely arrogant instead of authoritative. I’m guessing Lupino had to be a lot more defensive of her job with the press and its public than with co-workers who were probably relieved to have someone running a set that knew what she was doing. For appearance’s sake, however, rugged Edmond (Sock Em’) O’Brien was obliged (for publicity’s sake) to claim a dominant male’s advantage when he gallantly returned a handbag Lupino had dropped, after taking silent inventory of its contents. You may be a motion picture director who knows exactly what she wants, but fundamentally, you’re just another dame, read quotes attributed to O’Brien. Typical of your sex, you carry all sorts of junk around with you in your pocketbook. It’s likelier no such conversation took place between star and director, as O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy had been guided by women on previous legit occasions, but for purposes of soothing a perceived threat to filmmaking status-quo (even if a mild one), stories like this dominated much of printed discourse on The Hitch-Hiker (and probably most of 50’s films Lupino directed).

The real career frustration must have been William Talman’s. His was sold as the most startling performance since Richard Widmark’s debut in Kiss Of Death (and look what that did for Widmark). Star machinery was gone to rust by 1953 at RKO, however. Talman had proved himself there in any case with outstanding work as lead heavy in 1950’s Armored Car Robbery, another crime meller too unimportant for a wider audience to heed. It was lots easier to get noticed in a big picture, which Kiss Of Death certainly was in comparison to The Hitch-Hiker. Talman’s really the whole show here. He’s cold and cruel and makes no bid for sympathy. The actor liked telling a story of how some ding-a-ling motorist pulled beside his convertible and asked if he wasn’t The Hitch-Hiker. Upon Talman’s acknowledgment, the guy put in park, walked over, and punched him in the face. Better than an Academy Award, said the bloodied thesp, but small compensation for a career flattening out afterward, though regular paychecks off Perry Mason was better security than most actors enjoyed gypsying around in the 50’s and 60’s. The shame of it is that Talman, like Mason colleague Raymond Burr, was so adroit at playing richly sinister feature parts, yet both would be permanently rerouted into sameness of weekly confrontation in TV courtrooms where outcomes were foregone to nine season's infinity. However great a series Perry Mason was (is!), we missed out on a lot forfeiting these two to television.

Like so many small shows with breakout potential, The Hitch-Hiker got initial support via its Boston opening and RKO making hay of trade reviews unanimous in their praise. Television and print personalities like Art Linkletter and Jack Webb (as shown here) supplied testimonials, which were doubtless on the level. Webb’s stamp of approval on any crime thriller that year would have had much persuasive force. Maybe the subject matter was just too grim, for The Hitch-Hiker ended up a picture showmen either dumped in accordance with its "B" status, as here with Chicago’s first-run bottom placement beneath Pickup On South Street (Talman Meets Widmark!), or could pick up and run with as a single with offbeat allure. My exhibitor friend Dale Baldwin remembers liking the exploitable theme and deciding to make a project of it (he'd routinely select a P.O.W. --- Picture Of The Week). Little West Jefferson, North Carolina (800-900 residents within city limits in 1953) was car-conscious to start with. Action on wheels especially perked their interest. Committing promotional time and dollars to The Hitch-Hiker was like playing poker, according to Dale. You’d gamble about ten percent of your anticipated gross for advertising. Booking expense for The Hitch-Hiker was low. He recalled it as a "little picture" got for a flat rate (probably $15-$20), playing HH as a Late Show on Saturday night, July 25, 1953 at 10:30 only. That week’s ad for the local newspaper reflects scheduling policy at Baldwin’s Parkway Theatre. Few of his attractions ran longer than a day. He and I checked booking sheets from the previous week. Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd merited a Monday run and Scaramouche played Tuesday only (The Mississippi Gambler was alone in getting a two-day berth on Thurs.-Fri.). You had to act fast to see anything at the Parkway. Dale routinely ground eight to nine features through his house per week, plus innumerable shorts. There were 735 seats. Admission was thirty-five cents for all. The Parkway stood to realize $257.25 for a packed house. Concession sales, always brisk (Dale used extra salt in the popcorn to stimulate beverage sales) were just that much more for the till. Corn makings sold cheap as topsoil. A fifty-pound bag cost $8.50. From that, you could pop individual servings into a next millennium. Baldwin’s relationship with the local paper was such that they’d sometimes print stories about an upcoming show and call it news (as here for The Hitch-Hiker). Teaser ads (above) dotted pages besides. That single Saturday, July 25 was a remarkably crowded one at the Parkway. Imagine this bill of fare: Laramie Mountains with Charles Starrett, plus Chapter 11 of Columbia’s 1942 serial The Secret Code, buttressed by an Our Gang from 1938, Feed Em’ and Weep. There were two cartoons as well, Universal’s The Dog That Cried Wolf and Don’s Fountain Of Youth out of Disney. All of this ran through the day and ceded to The Hitch-Hiker for a separate admission at 10:30. Yet another cartoon, Frightday The 13th, a Paramount Casper the Ghost, ran with RKO’s thriller. I’d guess The Hitch-Hiker pleased that night, for it’s tense and unnerving still (don't ask me to watch again anytime soon!). There was doubt as to the film’s very survival for a period of years when no one could seem to locate a print (ownership did not remain with distributor RKO). Television feature sourcebooks were silent as to syndicated availability (does anyone recall seeing it on TV?). Kino finally released The Hitch-Hiker on video and their DVD element looks to be rather murky 16mm. I’d be curious to know the fate of its original negative.

2009-08-30T05:28:00.010-04:00

Gray Market DVD --- Le Roi des Champs-Elysees

Discredited as he was in Hollywood by 1934, there was still enough residual fame in Buster Keaton’s name to interest producers outside industry mainstreams. Europe was mad for our sight-gagging comedians and spent more to look at them than domestic audiences. Chaplin’s foreign revenues were often leagues ahead of what he realized stateside, and Keaton was revered by French audiences whatever the reduced circumstances he’d come to on US shores. Euro producers came calling after ignominious dismissal from MGM left Buster unemployed but for a season of low-budget shorts at Educational. American majors might shun him, but starring feature work was but an ocean away (and here’s Buster shipboard with second wife Mae). Le Roi des Champs-Elysees was for Nero Films in France. It never had a United States release. There is no English language or dubbed version. There was a 16mm print that Bill Everson used to run for his class and occasionally loan to film cons. My seeing it initially was upon one of those rare occasions. Le Roi is a must for Keaton purists. His voice is substituted by an inexpressive double, but there’s so little dialogue as to make the switch unimportant. Buster was experienced with at least phonetic readings of varied tongues in Metro foreign versions he’d done previously, so it’s likely the comedian took a whirl at speaking French for Le Roi (lip readers say yes to that). Maybe producers decided as after-thought not to use his tracks, which is too bad because it would have enhanced the finished product. Le Roi floats among fans on DVD-R and each of them roll dice (or a ten-dollar bill) hoping copies scored off E-Bay or dealer tables will be watchable. The one I found turned out to be unusually nice, with overture and exit music (!). The feature runs not much over an hour. Buster performs routines traceable back to his silent shorts. He’s bound to have given plenty in a creative capacity, for much of the humor is unmistakably Keaton’s own. There’s plenty of street shooting as well with pedestrians reacting to a prominent American clown in their midst. I'd like to think Buster was accorded respect by Le Roi's French producers, as Von Stroheim would be when he traveled there to do Grande Illusion. Keaton looks healthy and from all appearance seems to have bucked up from the Metro descent. Perhaps he was energized by co-workers who recognized his genius long before we would. I’d say Le Roi surpasses then-recent Keaton features just for being his vehicle and not one to be shared with Jimmy Durante or other MGM comics (Polly Moran, Cliff Edwards) nibbling at margins. It was made for a price, but doesn’t look so cheap as Educational shorts coming before and after. Effort and energy is clearly put forth here, not only on Buster's part, but also by those in support both behind and in front of the camera. There’s a music score throughout that really helps, and a nice payoff to what’s actually a well-constructed little story. For lack of Hollywood polish, Le Roi’s a bit raggedy at times, but it’s no disgrace to Keaton and he acquits himself nicely throughout. Too bad a US release couldn’t be managed. Paramount seems to have handled it in at least some foreign territories, and doubtless considered distribution for here. Being they'd pass on Harold Lloyd’s The Cat’s Paw the same year, I guess the studio figured visual comedy was, at least for 1934, a dead issue.

2009-08-28T10:50:00.012-04:00

When Noir Hurts

Of all film noir, Where Danger Lives delivers the sharpest kick in the head. Or should that be poker to the head? Either way, keep a Valtrex on hand for the migraine you’ll get watching. Never have I so felt an actor’s pain as when Robert Mitchum takes a blunt blow from cuckolded husband Claude Rains at the RKO thriller's first act crisis point. They’re fighting over sultry Faith Domergue. Bob clutches his presumably caved-in skull and goes the torturous rest of the picture half-comatose. My own head jangled for seeing Where Danger Lives the first time some years back. I took it out this week in hopes of time hardening me for a rematch (some movies are like tribulations we look to overcome). There’s such a thing as noir getting too uncomfortable. It’s tough staying with any film where your lead gets seriously injured and presses on despite it, especially with tormentors unrelenting, plus homicidal Domergue to impede. The posters said Mitchum In Action!, but for once that’s misleading, as he’s effectively sidelined early on and that’s harrowing for viewers looking to his character for a way out of the jam. Should there be a sub-genre called Handicap Noir? If so, Where Danger Lives is its very definition. I so wanted Mitchum to find an elixir, but as his intern character explains, this is a concussion and will only get worse (nice how the below lobby card captures it). A happy ending comes more unexpected here than in any noir I can recall. Were it not for that upbeat fade, Where Danger Lives would be well nigh unbearable for me.

RKO’s were the inkiest noirs, unseemly in fact beside creamy gray scales with which Metro and Paramount moistened their dark puzzles. Dreadful things always seem likelier to happen at RKO. Was it because Howard Hughes had taken charge, or did jailbird Mitchum increase our anxiety? Patrons walked a wilder side when buying tickets to Where Danger Lives and others like it. WDL is nasty, intense, and throws off vibes I don’t get from the competition’s noirs. Does that make RKO’s better? Some fans say yes. They often tread a narrow ridge between fun and bummer noir. Hughes laid paw prints on everything once he closed the buy. You could go bug-eyed reading print accounts of his kooky ways. Maybe that’s too whimsical a term, for Hughes to my impression seemed dangerous as sociopaths gumming up works for Mitchum and kindred noir folk. He was in fact a cobra not to be crossed (I’ve sometimes wondered if Hughes ever had a man killed). Actresses who claimed to have dodged his lure (and that’s just about every one in HH’s orbit) were for saving face and reputation before interviewers and autobio readers, but my guess is, if Hughes wanted you, he got you. That much money and power would have been hard to resist for anyone hoping to advance or preserve a career. Mitchum appreciated Hughes for standing by him in the marijuana bust. Both were lepers in a way after Bob got out of stir. Maybe that was license for Hughes to throw caution aside and make his kind of noirs (including the unforgettable His Kind Of Woman). Mitchum now drew customers tantalized by his convict persona and all the more believable casting as marginal types. It was like he was telling us, Sure, man, I’ve been in jail. Hasn’t everyone? Mitchum may have been the first star to make incarceration seem cool, but how long could he have maintained stardom on such a disreputable treadmill? Even Holiday Affair seems noirish for its drab and black-etched look (which is maybe in part why I like it so much). Mitchum’s rerouting into color and then wide vehicles didn’t come a moment too soon.

Mitchum wore the same gray suit like cowboys donned Stetsons. It was his look and a simple one that needed not change or variation. His noir characters seemed never defined by what they wore. Costume changes would probably have been an unwelcome distraction. Faith Domergue is the sole focal point in terms of dress. I imagine her being personally clad by Hughes to his very particular specifications. Here was one producer who shaped actresses not to expectations the public had, but to ones that were his alone. With money being Hughes’ to burn, what did it matter if audiences embraced his ideals of female presentation? Domergue is so carefully handled as to achieve at least a good seeming performance, sort of like singers to come being juiced up with stagecraft and audio enhancements. She seems more confused than wicked, but for all that, Domergue’s is ideal casting, especially as partner to Mitchum’s eternal dunce with regards wiles of women. Every decision he makes in Where Danger Lives is a wrong one. He’s like the coyote returning for another go at the Road Runner. You spend all the film wishing someone could smarten him up. Mitchum and Domergue lam it for Mexico after Bob thinks he’s killed Claude Rains. They turn on the radio and it’s always right when announcers report progress in manhunting them. John Farrow directs all this artfully and goes for remarkably long and unbroken takes. There’s drawn out tension in and around a getaway car that shows Farrow knew plenty about desperate straits and those plunged into them. I’ve read of the director’s own roustabout and uncertain background, that suggesting a man ideally suited to random happenstance of noir. Can film-schooled, experience-deprived modern pretenders ever hope to properly direct this kind of subject? If you like coffee table noir that meets every desire historians arouse, here is one made to order. Do the stills shown here entice? For me, they're aesthetic equals of the film itself. Its three-sheet (above) would hang nicely in any rec room hip to noir, reflecting well upon tastes of the owner. This one sold for $6,325 (not to me!). That’s buying a lot of cool. Are high-end collectors disappointed when they finally get around to seeing movies such stunning graphics represent? Where Danger Lives may have been a letdown for audiences zoning out on doom-laden crime thrillers, as Summer 1950 was a crowded marketplace for noir (Overall outlook is spotty, said Variety). WDL’s negative cost of $948,000 ended up overshooting anemic domestic rentals of $840,000, with scant relief of $450,000 foreign. The final loss was $450,000.