Precode Picks #6

 Precode: Night Nurse, Heated Up Ads, and Downstairs

NIGHT NURSE (1931) --- Surface-wise hardcore precode, Night Nurse bites into pastry with a sour center, potential for fun nulled by content unpleasant enough in GPS quarters for me to swear off repeat views each time watching, only to come back thinking this time I’ll be made of sterner stuff. Still I want to jump into the screen like Sherlock Jr. and take pizza plus hot dogs to starved children kept prisoner by purveyors of evil that include Clark Gable at early application of brute man support, him socking Barbara Stanwyck just off camera range and rich-deserving last reel disposal by breezy bootlegger Ben Lyon who ends up being cheeriest aspect of 72 minutes not otherwise easy to get through. Precode walked high wires over fun, witty apply of situations just this side of censorable, risk being bridge too far to discomfit viewers and make time sat an ordeal, like here and in horror films judged to have gone overboard like Freaks and Island of Lost Souls. Frustrating for me was Stanwyck, anybody, not taking corrective action on behalf of babies deprived of nourishment, deliberate act of villains chasing an inheritance. Takes awhile as in too long for motive to reveal itself, so for reels we just get kids abused for no apparent reason. Night Nurse is dropped ball surprising for Warners, though yes there is Stanwyck taking lumps in drag-out showdown with a drunken femme, plus she and Joan Blondell in-out of nurse uniforms, some of frankest exhibitionism precode tendered, enough so to be excerpted here/there among sampling of extremes. Gable gets a strong entrance to make it seem Warners is aborning his star rather than MGM that would. Socko, and again oft excerpted, is the camera moving quick and close to CG when he growls, I’m Nick … the chauffeur, a moment still to quicken pulse.

MORE OF SUGGESTIVE ADS --- Suggestive, but suggesting what? I suggest it’s license as in chuck wedlock and let’s try on free love, which works after all for Bette Davis and Gene Raymond. Under cover of humor, wit if you will, but the message is plain, “complete and unprejudiced” where frankly advocating (?) laughter toward wedding bells and yawns at bassinets. Ads could be wisecracky and sometimes radical, as here. A lot of daughters and sisters were drawn to Ex-Lady on titillating promise of “Moratorium on Marriage.” Was this mere fairground pitch or a fundamental challenge to established mores? Depends on how seriously one took theatre ads, or the films they advertised. Feature titles could and did welcome winds of cultural change, Ex-Lady by its name a thumb-to-nose toward tradition. There had to come a reckoning, less provoked by the movies perhaps than salacious ads that promoted them (for more on Ex-Lady, plus further ads and graphics, go here). As any coin has both head and tail, observe RKO Palace promotion for Back Street in 1932. Distress of my clipping reflects that of Irene Dunne as kept woman (for years and years) of John Boles, toll paid for promiscuity as moralists would point out, Back Street backing argument that only sadness comes of sex outside wedlock. This too was precode, as in fallen woman sagas that seldom if ever ended happy for principals, outcome reflected here with Dunne, chin rested on palm, but no rest for having crossed social boundaries. As if to hammer home point, there is center art of what might be any discarded mistress left to contemplate her misery, “For Every Woman who has loved unwisely … and for Every Man who has loved too well” again a titillation, this time with price tag attached. Lock up your daughters, or at least keep them away from precode newspaper ads.

DOWNSTAIRS (1932) --- So how to reconcile Downstairs with John Gilbert as contractual cast-off MGM wanted to see fail, but did they really? Not when he was trusted to write, and star as rotter-in-chief, being male counterpart to Jean Harlow’s amoral Red-Headed Woman and note both getting away scot-free for misdeeds and poised to graze upon fresh victims as end titles usher us out. Villain as rooting interest finds early application in Downstairs --- at no time do we, or at least me, want Gilbert brought to ruin for his perfidy. It’s told that Gilbert’s “Karl Schneider” was initially drowned in a wine vat by Paul Lukas, preview audiences turning thumbs down to that and MGM obliged to reshoot and let Karl live, which shows at least how this character, and Gilbert’s playing of him, appealed to his public. It takes magnetic personality to commit succession of venal acts but keep us captivated, Gilbert an anti-hero to prefigure lots to come, including late model Paul Newman’s Hud, except Hud was meant for us to revile yet emerged as sixties role model instead, the makers surprised as anyone that 1963 would so embrace such a heel. Downstairs differs for Karl conducting life and people on his own altogether selfish terms and writer/actor Gilbert confident we’ll love him for it. Again, maybe just me, but not for a moment do I want to see Karl undone by events, any more than I would care to watch Hud bow down. Even if he framed Downstairs largely for comedy, there is bite enough thanks to precode for Karl to mean business and to Downstairs credit, never repent or make amends. Looks like Gilbert was onto something way ahead of his era, Downstairs perhaps a gamble that only a star on career decline might choose to take. Bet it all, said John Gilbert, double or nothingness from here on.

Gilbert’s was the kind of romantic persona that needed to identify close with his character and circumstance in order to give of his best. So dispiriting was most of his talking vehicles that it was impossible for him to connect, A Gentleman’s Fate being lately watched example, him a gangster's son (but unknowingly) living large off trust money, a premise I doubt Gilbert or anyone bought, so how to apply himself believably? Pace is glacial, as frankly is Gilbert. He was a man of moods wherein up he could reach stars, but down … disaster. I’ve wondered before if he was bipolar. That would explain a lot of what went on, certainly the periods of depression and self-medicating. Downstairs seemed a rescue. Thalberg told Gilbert they’d adapt his story and let him star, Irving lifted off the floor with a bear hug in return. Essence of Gilbert was no neutral setting. His career went back to the teens, and Jack's teens, having written, also directed, in fact done almost everything. There were friends --- who in fact was not his friend? It surely shocked Gilbert when comparative none came forward to lend meaningful help when he needed it. Failure attracts few however, especially in an occupation where fear rules. Mere perception of Gilbert as washed up was what washed him up. Did he ultimately suffer for having become such a white-hot star? Jack was best man at Paul Bern and Jean Harlow’s wedding, doom cleaving to doom. For all I’ve written of Gilbert there is obvious sympathy and fascination. Had he gone out with Downstairs, he’d have gone out a 100% winner, even if the picture lost money, which unhappily it did. Cheers, however, as Downstairs is terrific, among best of still unheralded precodes, and a regular on TCM in HD.

Category Called Comedy #8

 

CCC: Animal Crackers in 1962 Soup, Keaton Back at Shorts, Lubitsch Caught By Code But with Color, and Thrills Challenge Youngson Laughter

HOORAY AGAIN FOR LONGGONE CAPTAIN SPAULDING --- Groucho hosted a Hollywood Palace on August 17, 1965, being up-to-minute with talent and even making income tax reference to mass viewership having just paid theirs. Grouch was at-himself-peak-still, doing stand-up intro and remarks between performers, one of whom is daughter Melinda Marx. Did these two reconcile before he left us in 1977? I must check You Tube if she was interviewed since, guessing that no, she has long been loathe to talk. Groucho introduces Melinda and she sings “The East Side of Town,” which reminded me of Petula Clark hits from around a same time. Dug also into YT and found Melinda as “special guest” on You Bet Your Life and performing Witch Doctor, the 45 of which I just had to have, and indeed got, at age four in 1958. Groucho was surely reminded of vaude past as he unveiled bicycle acts, a nutty pianist, the timeless lot. Highlight held till last is Groucho and more-than-welcome visitor Margaret Dumont reprising Animal Crackers to hooray again for Captain Spaulding, question as to who remembered Animal Crackers by 1965, at least enough to be excited to see it saluted. Animal Crackers had been out of circulation since 1948 when Paramount last revived it, Code-cut with not a lot of playdates. When MCA packaged pre-49 Paramounts for syndication in 1959, they included Animal Crackers, but a flag rose and they pulled the title, making Crackers an only Para with the Marxes we couldn’t see, at least through the sixties and certainly when Groucho was Captain Spaulding again for the Hollywood Palace. Context was needed to enjoy the number, and Grouch/Dumont did it splendidly, a magic moment to truly evoke past times.

KEATON UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT --- From Motion Picture Herald, above is Buster Keaton posed with staff and visitors to Educational Pictures set of Grand Slam Opera, one of comeback comedies Buster made after doors at Metro were shut to him. We (or at least me) underestimated Educational Keaton for their being so elusive. I don’t recall any from television during the sixties-seventies, and when 16, even 35mm prints showed up, they seemed not titles for civilian consumption. Idea of BK gone back to shorts after years of features and attendant major stardom seemed comedown enough to foreclose the films from fair consideration, but then came Blu-ray release and opportunity to reconsider these as worthwhile if far from best of Buster Keaton. Biographer James Curtis revealed solid success the shorts enjoyed when made and circulated during the thirties. Twentieth Century-Fox was the distributor, so bookings were solid, and Curtis shows how well exhibitors and a public responded to them. I looked at one, Jailbait (1937), tried to figure how much of humor was Keaton-created (plenty it seems), his main disadvantage not having luxury of time and plentitude of writing help as was case during twenties and total independence. Still, these Educationals were no pit of lime, the shop having been in comedy business for years and knowing their trade. Jack H. Skirball stands among congenial group here (at left), being “sales chief” for Educational. He’d go far ways in the industry-after, producing two with Hitchcock directing, Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt, among much else. The still here is from The Chemist, another Keaton for Educational. He’s not the fresh-face of silent yore, drink having done its damage, but creatively he was engaged, if not ideally as before. We have to wonder how long Keaton would have stayed at top rungs had he kept keys to kingdom Joe Schenck earlier conferred. All artists know a peak is hard to maintain, harder to get back once lost, past, or suspended. Fact is Keaton never lost his comedic instinct, all the way to 1966 end. Look at industrials he did toward the finish where he was given more-less carte blanche, brilliance short-ordered and fresh delivered as if result of weeks effort. Keaton was the best fun-making bargain an employer ever got.

HEAVEN CAN WAIT (1943) --- Suddenly seems to me that Don Ameche mistakenly came to Hell not for sins committed but for sin he overall perceived for having lived to 1943 when movies (and life?) operated under stricter rules of conduct than in his carefree younger days. At least movies under a rigidly enforced Code made it seem so. Ameche as “Henry Van Cleve” does no real wrong for entire lifetime we observe, few deserving so much as he to enter paradise. Heaven Can Wait is Ernst Lubitsch creating perception of naughtiness there is no real trace of, doing right what Mae West sought to achieve with declining comedies as PCA-shackled. There is possibility Henry strayed off marital confines with Gene Tierney (fuss over a bought bracelet but not for his wife) and yes, that provokes a separation, but evidence of infidelity is less than vague. I bet censors hovered like hawks just for this being a Lubitsch venture, his sly nature known and always cause for increased vigilance. Heaven Can Wait could play to kindergartners and not give offense, though I suppose one could tag Henry for adultery were one given to wishful thinking. This implies I dislike Heaven Can Wait, far from case because like many as great, this grows subtle/sure and must have been ’43 relief against bombast so much comedy had become. Heaven Can Wait’s family is one to enjoy wealth and status instead of losing it all to eventual poverty and despair as what waited upon the Ambersons. Laird Cregar supplies the open plus a coda to remind us that Heaven may after all be a place for more of us than before thought. I figure being half as good as Henry Van Cleve will surely get me in.

DAYS OF THRILLS AND LAUGHTER (1961) --- Lesser among Youngson grab-bags, no criticism that, for history these served make each a latter-day treasure and continuing source of fascination. Thrills and Laughter scores much on Thrills aspect, 1961 being a first time Youngson used non-comic content to show silents were more than mere clowns clowning. He knew serials were a standout among pre-talk attractions and so served samples bite-size and plenty novel to then children who might have had access to old chapterplays floating about but not produced new since the mid-fifties. Serials out of Republic and/or Columbia were pale pomegranates beside high-fly cliffhanging of old, Youngson indeed a first since talkies arrived to celebrate chapters minus sound, thirty years past this sort of fun being available anywhere. There had been non-theatrical mine courtesy Blackhawk Films plus an independent compilation by collector John E. Allen, but precious few saw these outside committed hobbyists, The Days of Thrills and Laughter on the contrary reaching a wide and mainstream audience for whom ancient serials were a brand-new kick. Youngson’s fifteen or so minutes was proper serve, being flavorful but not exhausting taste of Pearl White (above right with gun), Harry Houdini, Ruth Roland, others. Maybe Grandad would recall these first-hand, anyone else … doubtful. Thrills were real, laughs for exaggeration of it all, but too little survived to do much more with. Youngson let serials alone after this, Blackhawk releasing more where they could find them, and hard to find they were. Current misfortune is serials coldly stored where they exist at all, archives with holdings disinclined to share them. Hard to assign blame as what sliver of population could care, though fun is had yet with extant Pearl, Harry, Ruth, more than mere snips Youngson splayed in 1961. So long as French serials are getting deluxe 4K treatment, how about domestic fruit also a century old, but as ripe to entertain.

UPDATE --- 2/13/2025: Received a till-now unfamiliar photo with a note from Reg Hartt ... showing Buster Keaton on the occasion of his second marriage, taken in Mexico. "Found this by chance. It speaks volumes," says Reg.

"R" You Ready, Viewership?

 

Come the 1969 Revolution

EASY RIDER (1969) --- Jack Nicholson makes a speech where he says among other things, "This used to be a helluva good country. I can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it." What did his “used to be” mean … the fifties, forties? … the nineteenth century? Surely it was idealized time Jack's character recalled firsthand, which would place it most likely in the fifties. But wasn’t that supposed to be a period of paranoia, repression, suffocating conformism? We may assume Jack’s dialogue reflected the viewpoint of Easy Rider writers. Of these, Peter Fonda was born in 1940, Dennis Hopper 1936, and Terry Southern 1924. Was it a “helluva” country at a same time for all three? Who did Jack speak for? Nicholson himself, born 1937? The line strikes me as stock, sort of what you get from everybody eventually when they talk of better life in the past. It even plays cynical in a way, like Nightmare Alley’s Stan Carlisle where everybody had a grey-haired mother and a dog. Stock reading as he puts it, fits everybody. I could write now of how this used to be a helluva good country in 1969. So far as I was concerned at age fifteen, many aspects of it were, save ninth grade P.E. That’s fun of Easy Rider and how it pandered to world-weary teens who could mourn their nation’s lost Eden, and what … wish life could be what it was when they were twelve? Snake in my Eden was The Wild Angels three years before and taking then-pledge not to attend more biker flix. Now I’m older and world-weary enough to groove with Easy Rider’s ninety-five minute ride across helluva country that was five and a half decades back and counting.

I read how Dennis Hopper proposed a four-hour cut, him locked out of editing like a modern-day Von Stroheim, Easy Rider a tarnished gem as result. The boys also fought over profits and writing credit. I enjoy Hopper who is sleazy and greasy as he’d been at villainy since the mid-fifties and would be again for comeback that was Speed in 1994. He was what moderns figured hippies to have always been, as in don’t let him get close enough to smell. Hopper was a climber who drank wine with Selznick and others of old Hollywood, married judiciously (Brooke Hayward) so he could stay in such circles, collected art and was pals with connoisseurs like Vincent Price. Protest becoming the fashion saw Dennis glomming on. He’d straddle old and new Hollywood to run a lavish and long-running con, a truest Stan Carlisle the industry had. I bet without knowing for sure that he grabbed a nice hunk of Easy Rider coin for himself, and spent same for more art, or peyote, or whatever recreation engaged him. Easy Rider is remembered as an “outlaw” movie but was really no more so than a hundred cheapies Roger Corman had done, and he might have herded this one but for seeming sameness of the concept and Roger's professed distaste for Hopper. Easy Rider was trippy and seemingly made by hippies for hippies, this to excite “normies” mostly kids who could but dream of dropping out, loving in, or whatever indistinct conduct these opportunity-driven rebels were up to. Easy Rider gets off to arresting start, Fonda and Hopper buying cocaine south of the border to resell and us in mild suspense as to what will become of them in consequence. Sight of Phil Spector enhances quease factor. What follows is improv amidst commune backdrops, Mardi Gras with the cast in stole takes like blown-up 8mm, echoed by riding in a parade sans permit for which they get busted and meet Jack Nicholson. Him and Luana Anders are here to link them and us with AIP.

Easy Rider was rated R and cunningly sold. The one-sheet read “A man went looking for American and couldn’t find it anywhere.” Oh brother… that again, but great salesmanship, and Easy Rider didn't chicken out on what its bleak outlook foretold. The ending was Deliverance come early, guys in the pickup unknowns who would stay that way, Easy Rider their only film appearance, at least credited. “We gotta go back” is a best and most chilling line in the picture. So who called or calls Easy Rider a modern masterpiece? Those selling it surely, then and now, fact for sure it’s a masterpiece at digging dollars that so eluded most theatrical releases in 1969, youthquake as result with disasters to follow not unlike scurry after elephantine musicals to re-strike lightning that was The Sound of Music. Peter Biskind’s 1998 survey of Babylon that was late-sixties-seventies Hollywood assesses Easy Rider on frankest terms. His is an ugly saga (try putting this book down), not a time or place I’d want to have been part of, except I was for being part of the hoped-for audience. Counter-culturals were empowered, but as Peter Fonda’s Captain America admitted, “we blew it.” In fact it was blow that would blow it for much of the seventies and into the eighties. Lots claim the early to mid-seventies as last gasp of a Golden Age, which beats me as to basis for such, though like everything, it’s a matter of taste and at what time films made their biggest impression on a person. Easy Rider seems more so a relic than much we like from the thirties or forties, and maybe that’s because it was and remains so representative of a gone and, to large extent discredited, day. Are there still easy riders back and forthing across America and not able to find it?

One Side, Doctor Dolittle --- Midnight Cowboy is In the Works

MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) --- Once rated X. Hard to see why now. Jon Voight is a Texas “hustler” who comes to New York and gets trimmed as anyone would expect for going to New York. A good thing about pictures like this and Shaft and others is characters moving about streets, especially walking past theatre marquees, the city decaying sure, but neon is still afire and there are oceans of it. Voight walks by (repeatedly) a nicely dressed front for Frankenstein Conquers the World and Tarzan and the Valley of Gold, one of AIP’s last combo bids for kid admissions. Midnight Cowboy was among last “daring” ventures before its kind became common for being imitated. The X rating hypoed attendance and that surprised most. More so when the film won “Best Picture.” The rating was dialed back to R when the MPAA realized there were pictures far dirtier in Cowboy’s wake. Funny thing was no cuts required. They just sort of admitted they’d been wrong. Midnight Cowboy deals with the sex trade without having a lot of sex. Just lots of talk about sex. Dustin Hoffman shows up well into narrative and is fun in ways you’d not expect from an intense Method player. His humor is there and consciously applied, so we can’t say Hoffman immersed his self too deep. He knew the audience wanted fun from his freak part and so gives it. I enjoyed him a lot. Hoffman could do “Old Hollywood” and be a man of a hundred, if not thousand, faces. Watch him in Agatha be a suave and romantic leading man, several inches shorter than partner Vanessa Redgrave, but what did he care? There aren’t drugs in Midnight Cowboy. Hoffman’s Rizzo wants coffee and Voight puts ketchup on crackers. This might be Gotham in the early sixties rather than late.

New Erasing the Old ... Joe Buck Passes Tarzan and Frankenstein

Relationship between the two is key. They could have been another Newman-Redford in less seedy circumstance. I don’t know if people watch Midnight Cowboy anymore because it is sort of dated. For that matter, how much from 1969 is palatable? They were breaking barriers long enough to make most wonder what all of fuss was about to begin with. Lots weaned on screen freedom since then assume movies did not exist prior to the MPAA. In a sense they are right. Show them a Code picture and they’ll ask what hell is wrong here? The city as utterly bleak gets early workout. Watch Cowboy beside Barefoot in the Park, only two years difference! I remember movies taking leaps like this, being almost afraid to go see some of them. It was more comfortable to stay home and watch Vera Cruz on television again. I had become too tentative a filmgoer, skipping forward marchers like Midnight Cowboy, but willing to try on Five Easy Pieces, later get snakebit by Straw Dogs. Even beloved horrors upset my too-tender sensibilities (The Conqueror Worm), so why did I heart The Wild Bunch so? Movies they were a-changin’ even if big deals seem small now. Fifty-six years to toughen up enough for Midnight Cowboy seems long, getting grown up coming slower to some of us. Criterion has a Blu-Ray, customary revelation with movies murky in memory, print and presentation wise, as though they were deliberately shot that way. Not so as evidenced here. That alone is reward for revisiting much from the late sixties and seventies. Theatres by that time had gone to seed surely as streets in Midnight Cowboy.

UPDATE --- 2/3/2025 --- 8:10pm. Donald Benson sends a note with a most welcome comic strip.

A 70s strip by the late Jules Feiffer. As time goes on many people recall their MGM past (or postwar equivalent) as real, either personally experienced or just out of reach due to bad luck.

Stills That Speak #7

 

STS: Clark Gable Captures

From files long dormant, here are Gable images some of which may be unfamiliar. Another group will go up for STS #8, whenever that comes round.

IF NOT MARY PHILIPS WITH GABLE, WHO? --- This is a very old still from Gable’s career on the stage. I’m pretty sure he is posed with Mary Philips. She was married to Humphrey Bogart around this time, which I’d judge to be the late twenties. Broadway search sites did not reveal the name of the play wherein Philips and Gable appeared together. It may have been off-Broadway or a traveling performance. Were portraits so carefully composed for plays not done on Broadway? Philips’ name is scrawled on the back, but oddly not Gable’s. No question of course that it’s him. Mary Philips can be readily identified by her nose, which was prominent. She did sound movies and often played mothers. Her age and Bogart’s were close. The two stayed friends after their ten-year marriage. They split because of his emerging career in films and her wanting to stay East where work was. But for that, their union might have lasted. Gable learned his business over years with stock and performing all over. Josephine Dillon taught him lots before and during their marriage. She helped develop the low voice that became his trademark. Would Gable have made it had there not been Josephine Dillon in his life? By the time he entered talking pictures, Gable was well seasoned and ready for anything, being forceful right from a start on screens. A lot of dynamic players crossed country to enter talkies. Gable among these was exceptional but needed luck to crack lock that was stardom. He never kidded himself or anyone to the contrary, stayed humble as to how he got where he was. I looked around for record of any appearance Gable made with Mary Philips but am so far stumped. Maybe someone more versed in stage history can put us straight.

YOUTH MEETS EXPERIENCE AT MGM? --- I caption thus on one hand, then recall these sprites had been in films near as long as Clark Gable, Rooney in fact a star (in shorts anyway) before CG got prominent. No one no matter who was going to teach Mickey and Judy about performing, while Shirley, without realizing it perhaps, was outclassed and would stay so to Leo’s reckoning. Again, what could she do that Garland and Rooney couldn’t, and leagues better. Metro music and dance staff let her know it, not with tact, and if proof was needed, watch Miss Annie Rooney, done after she flaked out at Metro. Selznick’s was a life raft for Shirley, but did he want her mostly for publicity value of owning Shirley Temple? He surely made hay of her wedding, bought John Agar for a chaser. Garland knew all others at song were behind her pace, was intimidated however by glamour sorts as Lana Turner and Lamarr, but that I suspect was more on personal rather than performing level. Rooney could act, and brilliantly, between calls to his bookmaker. He’d have laughed, probably did, at mention of the Method. To be born instinctively brilliant at anything … must be marvelous. Gable is here to fulfill studio expectation. We have some idea how the youngsters viewed him, Temple perhaps excepted. She would have had little opportunity to know the King, being with Leo so short a time. Gable in any case would wing off to war. Rooney saw him as a sartorial model, probably asked Gable where to shop for or order clothes. Garland was less impressed until Gable told her in the late forties how sick he got of her singing to him every birthday. For “leveling” with her, she grew to like him. Shirley was clearly still in “Junior Miss” category, hence the moppet socks, would play an adolescent in Kathleen, her only MGM vehicle, then radio duty as Corliss Archer, where my former band teacher Priscilla Lyon worked with her, later telling me Shirley was OK but no brain trust.

BELIEVE THIS OR DON’T --- Back captions were no more arbiters of accuracy than what fan magazines poured out monthly, but here was one that, if fiction, was specific enough to at least seem real, but where was it I read that Gable was faking tonsilitis stay-at-home when actually he was sitting out work to show Metro brass a thing or three. Him being absent obliged bosses to contrive something … that is, something believable … to explain truancy. Tonsil trouble was often a fallback for conditions that needed to be blurry, that or appendix, even removal of same where hospital stay was extended. There were some stars who had their appendix out four or five times. What was in California water to make the things grow back? Jean Harlow is here visiting the patient and Mrs. Gable (Rhea). Jean was said to have brought along “Marie Dressler’s projection machine and a print of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, Tugboat Annie.” Mary Astor although not pictured joined the merry group. Who sent that starburst arrangement of flowers? Imagine how they’ll shed on the floor after a week or so. I’d like knowing if Miss Dressler’s machine was 35mm. If so, they would need an operator from the lot to assure a smooth presentation (or invite Babe Hardy, as he after all was once a projectionist). The date stamped is August 21, 1933. Gable and Harlow had by this time co-starred in Red Dust and Hold Your Man. It was generally understood they’d again be a team whenever suitable material was found, which upcoming China Seas and Wife vs. Secretary proved to be. Gable would also be there for Harlow’s last, Saratoga, a virtual eyewitness to her decline and death. He never much liked reminiscing about past films and co-workers, but I assume more than a few asked him to share impressions of Harlow, as fascination for her never abetted, at least not in what remained of Gable’s lifetime. So far as I know at least, he never spoke publicly about her.

DRIVING TO WORK EVEN AS YOU AND I --- Let us say daily commute through Culver City took you past the entrance to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. You’d have seen same faces shlepping to jobs each morning on the Lion lot, over time enough to render them commonplace. You might in fact know them by their transport. “I saw your car the other day” is not untypical a greeting in my parts, advantage (or not?) of living in a small town. Culver City too was small, in past times nearly rural when compared with beehive that was downtowns elsewhere. I routinely pass places where clocks could be set by who enters and when. Here was case if more so for biggest stars out of Leo’s den, many arriving before cock crow to get made up and costumed for another grueling day. Imagine being put to that to make your living. Picture also an intersection and here you are beside Clark Gable waiting for the signal to change. He’s in a sporty convertible, Jaguar’s 1952 XK120 which he had customized to his liking. Think of it ... your vehicle but feet away from that … and him. Would a cheery Good Morning be returned? Let’s say the stop lasts thirty seconds at least, time enough to lean out and complement “Nice wheels” Mr. Gable is driving. Would he say thanks and yours aren’t so bad either? This or something similar on weekly or more basis. After a while, you feel as though you know the guy. “What’s doing today, Clark … finished Lone Star yet?” Neighbors that happen to be film magnets were common Culver currency from silent times when you’d walk streets and all of sudden Laurel/Hardy come running round a corner with a goat in pursuit. You can stand on same streets today and almost picture it happening. Clark Gable was regular guy enough to disdain being driven to work. Besides, he liked showing off whatever he drove and was handy under the hood. Joe Hyams came to interview him once at the Encino ranch and Gable, recognizing carburetor trouble promptly got his tools and fixed Joe’s ride. Watch To Please a Lady sometime for CG doing what he off-the-clock liked best. Wonder who owns this sport number now. It was rediscovered after years in storage, auctioned in 2020 for $276K, then again 2022 where the hammer fell for $311,111. Gable cars are out there and in fair number, as he had many over the years. Imagine owning one, like the Jag for instance. Wish it were mine, but then I'd finally have to learn to drive a straight gear.

UPDATE 2/2/2025: Ever resourceful and informative Lou Lumenick has sent along the below image to clear up Greenbriar question as to when Clark Gable and Mary Philips worked together on stage. Many thanks to Lou for this rare find:

Ads and Oddities #8

 

Ad/Odds: Promising What The Bride of Frankenstein Won't Deliver

What did the title, Bride of Frankenstein, suggest to its public? Surely a marriage, and then consummation? Did 1935 viewership understand “Frankenstein” to be man or monster? We’d soon enough conflate the two, even Frankenstein’s son Wolf commented on this before detraining at cursed village of his birth. The monster needed a name and so took one … why not his creator’s? “That is my brother?” asked Wolf to Ygor as they gazed upon Karloff’s monster, to which Ygor replied yes, but his mother was the lightning, this mere logical conclusion from 1935 that yes, there would be a bride, and no, she’d not just be for Henry Frankenstein, as who’d care of vow taken by Colin Clive and Valerie Hobson? Latter pair would merely mate, be parents to Wolf and later Ludwig, no especial outcome in itself. What was wanted, intensely so, was pairing off for the monster, as in nuptials followed by nights of monstrous passion, captured hopefully on camera (again cue Jerry Colonna: I can dream, can’t I?). Patrons knew they’d not get this, to which Universal merchandising says perhaps not, but what is imagination but sweeter alternative to reality always a disappointment? At least there was salve of a billboard-sized twenty-four sheet (above), the Bride and her brute in splendid union, this for fevered brains to chew upon through seventy-five minutes of something less than what the poster promised.

Where dealing with monsters coupling, invention could go amok. Bride was not a little like previous year’s Tarzan and His Mate, which let proper Jane join uninhibitedly with savage that was Tarzan, their meeting and initial seduction settled a season before that, Tarzan and His Mate given to continued consummation over a feature’s length. It gave in short what audiences paid for and were there to see. Frustration for Bride of Frankenstein and those who’d expect payoff on its title was focus on the potential husband for almost all of length and his affianced at tail end only, a ceremony “blown to atoms” by her rebuff not only of him but their audience aroused by promise of this union. At least give the pair a night, if not a honeymoon. I wonder if complaints were aired upon patron exit, one of those manager-in-the-office-with-his-door-closed occasions. Word must have spread that here was a non-starter, or wet fuse of a finisher. By the time Aurora issued its plastic model Bride in the sixties, we were too aware that she/he were not and never were united, so what matter if what we built was the Bride alone on creator Henry’s table, with no one else in attendance. Unlike other of Aurora monsters, the Bride was not an “action” figure, prone and unattended besides. If I’m recalling right, the Bride was priced fifty cents higher than models also offered, and perhaps for that reason, plus popularity presumed less than the others, she is today a most collectible, especially with cellophane wrapped as if still on sixties store shelves.

Bride’s twenty-four sheet seems to me avant garde, ahead-of-its-time, visionary, a thing I’d more expect of modern artist rethink of these characters and their application to pop culture. This Bride in a lowcut wedding gown looks ready to fling her bouquet to a lucky maid of honor (Minnie perhaps?). Colors suggest an electric melding of soul and bodies … note her hair. Such unique depiction reminds me more of European posters to invariably best us at selling, only regret not being told who the painter here was. A Bride who exults in her submission is one we could wish upon the feature itself. Artists often expressed desire pent up also in viewers, both camps knowing their fantasy would not be fulfilled by movies then under ruling thumb of Code and convention. Other ad and poster depictions were as bold … I’m satisfied these interpreters saw barest synopsis of story they’d illustrate, otherwise how did one come up with the Monster crawling on knees to propose to what looks a ferocious future Bride? Were artists guided by memories of tumultuous courtships they had earlier engaged?

Announcements of product, often in advance even of production, loosed every sort of imagining as to what The Bride of Frankenstein would say and show. Almost never would fulfillment satisfy the fantasy. Sort of reminds me of comic books and pulp covers given to sci-fi themes where confines were no more than an active mind could conceive. It was a given that advertising exaggerated, but advance art for Bride proposed narratives wholly unlike intent, let alone execution, to be eventually seen in theatres. The Bride of Frankenstein being baroque by conception loosed all of bats in a belfry that was exploitation and its cork-out anticipation of what marriage for monsters might add up to. These artists weren’t given scripts to abide by. All they knew was that Frankenstein was coming back and this time his creation would do his own procreating. Possibilities emerged endless from basis like this. How could final result however artistic be anything other than anti-climax? Had I in 1935 been lured by that twenty-four sheet, let alone trade ads viewed over previous year’s run-up to release, could the feature be anything other than a letdown?

Who's for Tales Told Quick and Short?

 

Pulp Books, Pulp Movies --- Where's the Difference?

Remember when Arthur Mayer booked The Lost Patrol after nobody else wanted to? He knew what they did not … that The Lost Patrol was a Pulp Movie, one made with men, for men, of action. At least ones that dreamt of action. Most limited participation to slump in fleapit seats where exertion by others wash over them, life as lived vicarious through characters living fuller. Pulp reading did that for a sedentary majority, those not actually pearl-diving or private-detecting. Every kind of experience we would never know was put within reach of Pulps, Walter Mitty the character more men actually resembled, like it or don’t. Pulp magazines took you places you wanted to go without really going. None of dreary exposition like mainstream novels. Transport to fantasy got done within a paragraph, or someone else would be writing the next paragraph. Pulps sold way, way more than other books. Damn their eyes for waste upon such rubbish, but pulps were reading too. Did they educate well as anything taught by school or college? What vocabulary we get is got from what we choose to read. I’ll venture fans pulp-enough devoted could write same of their own after minimal exposure to the form. In fact, a lot of them did. How many distinguished scribes emerged in the twentieth century by rolling their own via pulps, “Big Little Books,” or Dime Novels? Radio taught too, like spoken word now. Then came television and everything after that was visual. Comic books especially. What is read anymore but “texts”? I’m awed by past scribes generating five, six thousand words per day for sake not of art but of eating. Penny-a-word was as often pulp’s rate. Raymond Chandler once lived on soup for five days till finally twenty dollars came through for a sold story.

Movie scripters led a largely pulp life, but at pay almost unseemly for its yield. Some felt guilty taking such money for junk they were obliged to write. Dream of any pulper was Hollywood and ease conferred, as told by Frank Gruber in a 1967 memoir, The Pulp Jungle. He had friends who made the jump to live large, like Steve Fisher who sold I Wake Up Screaming to Fox in 1941 for seventy-five hundred, “a very handsome price for a mystery.” This was up from two hundred fifty to five hundred customarily got by free-lancers from picture-makers during the thirties. Chandler took $3,500 from Fox for The High Window because it had been a successful novel, this after RKO gave him $2,000 for Farewell, My Lovely. Screenwriters knew the value of having a prior novel in their kit, status gotten above ones who toiled for flickers or had a pulp past. Best money came of invitation to work with seasoned directors, like Chandler called by Billy Wilder to help with Double Indemnity, a job he hated but for $10,500 Paramount paid. Enough pulp writers slid under Hollywood doors to influence storytelling there. Pulp Movies emerged from the liaison, factory-generated film much the better for speed and expertise these artisans brought to mass production they understood well. In fact, Hollywood was a rest cure for most. Frank Gruber never had life so good as when churning thrillers, westerns … many westerns, at feature-length and the more prolifically for television. A postwar paperback revolution fed genre formula like slop to hogs, spin-rack America insatiable for what cost a quarter and was enjoyed at half-mast attention. We may safely credit paperbacks for much called “noir,” even if smallest percentage of PB’s eventually got to screens.

Genres were fruit of pulpy trees, often disguised by lush production. Best pulp was purest, done cheapest at a least severe length. The fifties was Gold Era to feed off pulp or what was left of it, plus paperbacks taking pulp’s place. To westerns derived from pulp you’d not associate Red River, but Borden Chase wrote it, no one more adept at pulp than he. Series cowboys were pulp for youngsters or youth-at-heart, as were serials, latter an ongoing triumph of pulp sensibility. Lush and for-everybody westerns gave way to pulp depending on star standing and changed overall circumstance. Tom Mix was a nation’s hero in the twenties, came somewhat down with talkies to a series for Universal, his audience understood now to be Pulp Kids, whom he served splendidly with Destry Rides Again (1932), a Max Brand story which had sold a million copies and bought the author an Italian villa. Reality of pulp was ongoing status as Best-Selling American literature, whether intellects liked it or not. Mix rode pulp to the finish, his serial The Miracle Rider a masterpiece of the mindset, then radio where pulp was a guiding light, or voice. “Tom Mix” survived even unto comic books long after the man passed on. Horror was product more of pulps than other media, certainly movies which shied from the style once censorship and complaints became manifest. Still, there were Pulp Chills, if much milder than what magazines with their lurid covers pledged. These were cut-rate like what newsstands sold for dimes, and a dime for most part got you in to see Boris Karloff in his bent science lot for Columbia, then Bela Lugosi roughly the same when not grave despoiling at Monogram or PRC. Class horror was a done deal it seemed, but then came Val Lewton.

Lewton made poetic chillers that were designed as, and sold as, pulp. Pleasant surprise Cat People frustrated expectations but in a flattering way, a parlor, or auditorium, trick Lewton got away with but once. Follow-up titles and merchandising stayed lurid per RKO dictate, Lewton yanking bone from wolf mouths by denying what they came to see, I Walked With a Zombie pulp that proved to be something else, The Leopard Man not about a man becoming a leopard, but wearing the disguise of one. Watchers complained, exhibitors listened, receipts fell off. Ideal Pulp Chillers in concept were being made by a man determined not to supply them, frustrating to a studio wedded since way back to precepts of pulp, two-thirds of yearly output cut from cloth ragged as edge of a ten-cent magazine. Stars who kept prestige address elsewhere took downward drive to RKO, but served well needs of those who chose action rapid and uncomplicated. Richard Dix, Victor McLaglen, Chester Morris … these and more kept sleeves rolled up for a next fight to engage or mutiny to quell. Each would do enough at RKO to be genres in themselves. Maybe McLaglen listened to Arthur Mayer when The Lost Patrol blew into Gotham on Rialto wings, knew thenceforth who his audience was and determined never to let them down. Aforementioned names were combined where fighting pals was the text, two-for-one if second-featured for your single ticket, stories mighty familiar from past issues of Adventure or Argosy. McLaglen took a freak of an Academy Award in midst of brawling but didn’t let that swell his punched-up head. Remarkable what polish vets could apply to humble surface. Look especially at Dix for The Ghost Ship with Lewton, a pulp elevated to eloquent.

Hot off the Film Daily’s August 10, 1938 wire: “House record smashed at the Rialto on Broadway … biggest take in almost three years since Arthur Mayer took the house over … the picture is made to order for the Rialto trade.” And so it was for Smashing the Rackets, game but less gamey than yarns woven into Spicy Detective’s latest number, or other of pulps lining newsstands. RKO lived by limits publishers did not. One was that Chester Morris as a dynamic D.A. must not skirt due process to crack Bruce Cabot’s syndicate. A telling scene has Chet putting suspects behind closed door where it’s implied (by a recording device) that confessions will be beaten out of them, trickery revealed after miscreants outside are scared into owning up truth and enabling arrest by square shooter Morris. Pulp authority would administer torture for real or shoot the lot to hasten justice, difference being what could be done in print vis a vis cops cuffed by a strict screen Code. Film-depicted officers carried guns but were largely estopped from using them. Later noir detectives, private eyes especially, resorted seldom to firearms used willy-nilly in pulps, and certainly law must not be taken into one’s own hand. Constant dialogue warnings emphasized this, strict out-of-bounds to empty all six from your roscoe into thugs that have it coming. Cop-and- robbing toughened up after the war but could not keep pace with what paperbacks were giving, and for cheap. There emerged dividing lines between class noir and independents down-market enough to at least suggest freedoms pulp enjoyed. The Accused for instance from Paramount was flip side of crime coin from T-Men and others of independent origin, latter stripping kid gloves to serve their public rawer meat.

Pulp Noir brings out for many the best of a genre that, like other genres, and more so literature bound in paper and pocket-size, defined much of pastime in terms of cheapness and convenience. Screen noir was given over to independent filmmakers after major studios realized there was too little money in it (Zanuck memo-wondered why Fox should do them at all). RKO continued apace because theirs had been bare threads to begin with, so yes to Armored Car Robbery, The Threat, others B/W and peeping over one hour’s running time. Novels at twenty-five cent cost bred films made for seemingly not much more, The Killing Kubrick’s salute to stripped-down literature half-baked and in a hurry. Celebrated Touch of Evil came from a dog-eared paperback, many saying later on that these and ones like them were perfect wedding between two sorts of disreputable formats. Pretty soon it got to where majors stayed off crime and dark themes, unless stars were cast: Rogue Cop at Metro, Violent Saturday from Twentieth. A gimmick plus hot source material could help something humble seem special, like I, The Jury lately out on 3-D Blu-Ray to help us understand why people paid to see Biff Elliot play Mike Hammer ($1.6 million in worldwide rentals was better than most cheap noirs took). Kid Pulp Westerns would be displaced after the war by Plain Pulp Westerns designed for everybody plus kids, elements of the old left in (George “Gabby” Hayes kept working), and many in color, if otherwise economical. Frank Gruber wrote some, hirers knowing he’d be fast and moderately coherent (Silver City a fair example, his script from a Luke Short story). “Class” westerns stood out like twisted toes, High Noon too rich for posterity’s blood. If westerns must be A and with major stars, let Borden Chase write them, like with Anthony Mann output featuring J. Stewart.

Certain players seemed born to night-set and rain-slick, like Sterling Hayden, Victor Mature. They did Pulp Westerns too, by cartloads. Fellows like Rory Calhoun and Guy Madison hung their own shingles to be Pulp Cowboys and earn more independently than major companies were willing to pay. Pulp sensibility extended to science-fiction after top dogs failed to draw sufficient profit from spaceman themes, War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet dressed in long pants to go out and earn knickers money. Sci-fi would be cut henceforth from pulpwood to better satisfaction of many, then and maybe more so now, as look at love for a Brain from Planet Arous or even Plan 9 from Outer Space. Universities don’t teach pulp or paperbacks … or do they? Films from scurvy source often make our best films, so there is gateway to art for words otherwise printed, then forgot. There have been fads for lowly categories, cast-off-when-new genres. Film noir seems here to stay as idol from the old, where precode hot during the nineties seems less so now. Does old finally become too old? I remember the Rat Pack being celebrated, but that seems to have cooled. Have they become dangerous to like? Serials and series westerns went with generations that processed them new. I couldn’t coax Tom Mix or Rocketman upon anyone with a free meal or cruise tickets. Comedy seems stabilized. If you grew up liking Keaton, Chaplin, the lot, chances are you still do, but are there converts to the cause, and if so, how many per annum might we guess? I expressed surprise before that pulp enthusiasts still exist, let alone meet. Postwar paperbacks sell on eBay, the rarer ones for uncommon money, and I bet they even get read, especially since thank heaven, the things aren’t being freeze-dried into frightful look-but-never-touch slabs as are comic books.