Duke and Sammy Go Ape! --- Part One

Somewhere during the nineties, Mike Cline and I ventured up to another Meadowlands, New Jersey confab where celebs who'd finished in Gotham exchanged what was left of name recognition plus an autograph for fame's momentary renewal and maybe a ten-spot from middle-agers (like us) who still cared. Into this garden of wilting flora came Sammy Petrillo, late (very late) of a comic team that fifty years earlier photo-finished Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Sammy's partner Duke Mitchell filling club dates in the beyond since 1981. Petrillo got a table because he and Duke once did a movie (in 1952), their only starring movie, with horror icon and off-screen epic tragedian Bela Lugosi. That alone made Sammy's ink and handshake valued currency.

I'm not of those who'd call Mitchell/Petrillo pathetic and no-talented for carving careers from Dean/Jerry stone. Sammy in Meadowlands twilight was among nicest guys I met who'd once known of-a-sort stardom (certainly nicer than I'd expect Jerry Lewis to be). He was proud of what career there'd been and generous with anecdotage. Still working in a coarsened 90's (and in his 70's), Sam handed me flyers for an act he and partner Suzie Perkovic (what a great handle for Jersey marquees --- Petrillo and Perkovic!). There were samples from their joke trunk reminiscent of back pages in Scholastic Readers we'd been issued during fifth grade (Sammy liked his humor clean --- well, good for him). Still a willing mimic of both Jerry and Bela, Sammy was like a time-traveler touching down on hotel ballrooms to give glimpse of what stand-up had long-ago been. I wouldn't trade encountering him with any celebrity alive or gone.

The last survivor of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla might have died a few months ago if you choose to believe Cheetah obits that declared him the genuine article and veteran of endless soundstage safaris. Others of the crew and sideline participating have departed but did leave impressions of a nine-day shoot in May 1952 that cost somewhere north, but not by much, of $50,000 (or was it $100K, as some claimed?). Each were tied to low-budget and exploitation filmmaking. Herman Cohen and Alex Gordon reminiscence was included in last year's published A Sci-Fi Swarm and Horror Horde, a standout interview collection by genre expert Tom Weaver (get this book if you haven't --- it's a fab read).

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla was brainstormed by Jack Broder, whose Realart Pictures began life reissuing Universal vaulties, including many with Bela Lugosi. Jack and his brother got rich mining horrors back to 1931's Dracula, theirs a one-shop for budget bills and drive-ins that didn't care from age of product. Lugosi stayed a name in the Broder household, for groceries he indirectly supplied, if not current value of a faded rep. How badly washed out was Bela by '52? Laughs at his expense via TV comics enabled a title change once Lugosi was set --- April's announced Women Of The Lost Jungle became May's Bela Lugosi Meets The Gorilla Man. Odds are eight to five that Bela wins the decision, jested Variety. At least, it will be easier than meeting Abbott and Costello. Not so, as things turned out ...

Ann ventured to my viewing cave as Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla unspooled and asked, Is that Jerry Lewis? --- a question tens of thousands might have put forward over a past sixty years, in her case followed by, How could Bela Lugosi have done a picture like this? That second I barely answered short of turning to see she'd left (and there I was happy to continue the lecture for what was left of BLMBG's run time). Concern had already risen for my earlier sitting through Attack Of The Crab Monsters and Valley Of The Dragons. So how do we justify time spent with these? My boast of having met Sammy Petrillo wouldn't excuse my watching him now. Must ours be a secret order of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla fans?

I confess liking it more than even before, having firmly switched loyalties from Dean and Jerry to Duke and Sammy. Given acquaintance of real-life guys named Duke, I'd gladly go Hey, Dookie! when approaching one, but alas ... don't know any. Sammy said he was seventeen when the pic was made. I was still waiting for a first shave at that age. He's got Lewis down to a split-hair. No wonder the McCoy blew fuses and tried suing. Dino was more sanguine re Duke. Wish there were CD's of the latter growling Deed I Do and Too Soon from Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. Indeed, platters couldn't be had even in 1952. Ones who'd call BLMBG "So Bad It's Good" doubtless fall short of others who'd just stop at "So Bad" --- but all must admit it's a slick (just over a) week's work. Real pros behind scenes knew how to max out dollars spent. Director William Beaudine had done silents back to 1915 and guided Mary Pickford besides. Image's first-quality DVD gets the most out of nicely photographed sound stage jungles (why do I prefer these over locationing real thing?).

Marion Davies Rehab Goes On

TCM all-nighted Marion Davies this month to remind us how slammed this actress/comedienne was by the second Mrs. Kane and lasting impressions from said 1941 caricature. Was W.R. Hearst defending Davies' honor as much as his own by applying hammer and tong to Orson Welles? There must be record of how Marion Davies felt over RKO's grim impersonation, but I guess for then-obvious reasons, she kept quiet. Writers have since defended this one-time movie star among Welles' collateral damage. They'll cite Show People and The Patsy as silent proof of Davies' talent. I'd at least add talking Blondie Of The Follies, equal delight The Floradora Girl, and precode time capsule Five and Ten to ones doing her credit, each an obscurity and all better than you'd expect.



Wealthy Partygoers Make Their Own Movie In a Sequence Deleted From Five and Ten's Final Print.

Five and Ten was based on a Fannie Hurst novel. That name resonates for 30's hits derived from her output. Around a same time and also based on Hurst was Back Street, Imitation Of Life --- later came Four Daughters. Was it quality of this author's yarns or pizzazz contract dialoguers added? She lived to 1968 and age 78, past relevance her novels once had, but for at least a decade's time and place, they spoke well to readers, and later, picture-goers. Five and Ten lacks pavement grit of Warner precodes, conflict here arising from snobbery directed at nouveau riche by older money, neither likely to evoke sympathy in a then or present economy. Davies was more effective on light setting, this apparent in Gay-90's The Floradora Girl, maybe the first (1930) talkie to celebrate simpler times of a century (more recently) past. There's better evocation here of a vanished era than all Fox's decade-later Betty Grable/Alice Fayes could muster. Not a musical per se, The Floradora Girl was for me among happier vintage discoveries lately made.

Among Blondie's Many Virtues ... Vivid Depiction of Backstage Life

Blondie Of The Follies is also less about music, being hung over from a 1932 public's exhaustion with All-Sing, Dance, Etc. Just-off Grand Hotel director Edmund Goulding goes near-Euro-vérité with backstage reveals to show he'd thoroughly known settings depicted. So had Davies for that matter. She'd been a Follies girl Hearst picked up, then set down in luxury for what was left of his life. Goulding's camera is adventurous as anyone's covering 30's theatrical life --- Metro really turned him loose here, maybe as reward for how well Grand Hotel came out. I wondered why he didn't vault higher and sooner before reading Mark Vieira's tattle of orgy stagings at chez Goulding that surpassed even sock the director put before cameras. Blacklist placement must have calmed him, for when EG resurfaced a couple years later (for Riptide), he'd calmed down to a career's balance of tasteful megging.



It's Less a Game of Backgammon Than Mistress Trading Between
 Precode Rogues Bob and Doug 


Robert Montgomery engages Precode's art of gentle predation after Metro pattern set by Adolphe Menjou, Gable, Franchot Tone, innumerable others, all seducers so expert as to make present-day impressionables wonder if such technique might still work. Blondie's Montgomery and membership of the roué brotherhood swap mistresses and compromise innocents without our once getting a cue to disapprove, such behavior in Post-Codes would have set off seat buzzers and put moral compensation into resolute third-act play. Marion Davies' pairing off with oily oil baron Douglas Dumbrille in exchange for deco-ed digs isn't emphasized, but lying down is clearly what sets her up in luxury, Blondie honest enough not to side-step price-tags on said lifestyle.



Another Precode Delicacy --- Girl Fights That Were Really Fights



A Precode Dropout That Might Have Become One Of The Era's
Brightest Lights --- Billie Dove

 Good as everyone is, Billie Dove takes honors doing the Anita Page (misguided) part better than Page, or Joan Crawford, for that matter,  themselves achieved. Dove was a looker too, scorching in fact, and I don't wonder at Hearst demanding her part be denuded upon seeing rushes that left Marion in the shade. Did Dove complain? Certainly not where anyone could hear, she didn't. To buck Hearst and Metro would amount to a livelihood forfeit. She'd step off the carousel instead and marry ... 1932's loss, and ours since. Gal-pal themes were rife in precode, Davies and Dove a scrappy pair raising dukes as coda to every argument. It's fun watching love rivals go to the mat as opposed to civilized exchange Code-compliant Bette Davis, Mary Astor, Miriam Hopkins, et al confined themselves to in 40's bouts. Those latter were verbal at best, whereas Davies/Dove slug each other silly, few quarrels between them ending short of physical combat.



1932 Patrons Looked Longingly at Davies,
 But What I Covet Is That Deco Stair Bannister!



Is Billie Dove Putting Marion On Notice That Blondie
 Is Her Movie To Steal?


Marion Davies' Blondie gets off a stinging impersonation of Garbo during a specialty with Jimmy Durante. He's Jack Barrymore and they're spoofing Grand Hotel, only she clamps deep into GG's Achilles with make-up, expression, and voice to reveal baseline absurdity of the Swedish sphinx's act. Was Marion first to nail lampoon potential of I Vant To Be Alone? Don't know, but I'm guessing Garbo was not amused at send-up so close to the bone. Davies had done these caricatures before --- in 1928's The Patsy, she laid several dramatic divas to rest, most devastatingly Lillian Gish. I'd love to have observed commissary meets between Davies and less-than-good-sport targets of her spot-on satiring. Did her own impressions prepare MD for the cruel jape Citizen Kane later played on her?

UA Makes Crime Pay

Like a lot of obscurities from MGM's On-Demand label, Vice Squad has crept on cat's feet to Screen Archives and lately, Warner Archive listings. Viewers know it, if at all, from late PM slots, then infrequent TCM play, VS having otherwise pulled 1953 duty filling cop/robber dates between adrenalin shot of 3-D and grenade burst of Cinemascope, square in that summer of hope's renewal for a beat-down industry. United Artists distributed and was part investor in this venture thought promising thanks to tyro trio Arthur Gardner, Jules Levy, and Arnold Laven, whose first (so far only) feature, Without Warning, had been bought by vet producer Sol Lesser, then sold to UA, everyone coming out rosy. G,L&L, plus Vice Squad's exploitable title and micro-budgeting, looked to be safe bets for hot weather exploitation.

Trade sources pegged Gardner as administrator, Levy a point-man for deals, with Laven pulling much of creative duty. Whatever sold was catnip to this team. All were young and a two of three vote guided policy. They'd tried getting Invaders From Mars off the ground, but lack of funds saw rival Ed Alperson grabbing those marbles. Profit G,L&L made off Without Warning enabled Vice Squad. Edward G. Robinson was had for comparative pittance ($50K according to co-star Paulette Goddard's biographer Julie Gilbert), his stock HUAC-diminished to what Robinson later called "a B picture phase of my career." Fallen name Goddard, says Gilbert, received $15,000 for three day's work on Vice Squad. Hard times weren't theirs alone --- many off contract payrolls took work where it could be had for whatever they could get.

Gardner, Levy, and Laven understood the value they'd gotten in Edward G. Robinson. Life has shaped Eddie, the three told Variety. People who really know him, love him for what he is. He doesn't have to ham it up any longer. That's for kids practicing to be mimics. So we asked him to play himself. Much to their credit and Vice Squad's good was said recognition of Robinson's icon status and how to make a most of it. Walk through this, Eddie, G,L,&L were quoted as saying, and you'll be great. Vice Squad does show a relaxed star, Robinson doing what we most enjoy, whatever his own appreciation of reduced circumstances. This was an actor incapable of a poor or indifferent performance. Mature players, said the producing team, are not types. Their years of experience have made them into believable people, which was, added Variety, what these documentary mellers need more than anything else.

Shooting of Vice Squad was like camera conducted tour of Los Angeles circa '53, always a best feature of budget thrillers set on streets. Gardner, Levy, and Laven even scored access to the new Hollywood Freeway just days before it opened to traffic, a fifty-five million dollar set, according to trades. Vice Squad was less noir than police procedural, an insider peek at law enforcement wheels on the grind. Civil liberties take a hike under detective Robinson's command. He's for rousting suspect/civilians alike, ordering frame-ups and illegal arrests like black coffee. Those fed up with soft on crime must have rocked balconies cheering. Being it's vice we're examining, there's B-girl round-upping and inventory of underthings gathered during raids. That last, plus Paulette Goddard's winking maintenance of an "escort service," amounted to spice denied home viewers of tamer Racket Squad and closer-quartered precincts at home. Even cheap fare like Vice Squad paced way ahead of TV competition by getting outdoors more and clearer spelling out of blotter content, this being fresh meat to a 50's audience, and not a little titillating.

Trade reviews were good, with emphasis on "exploitation facets." One of these was television spotting, United Artists committed now to spend largely (Variety) after ad-fueled success of Moulin Rouge, High Noon, and The Moon Is Blue ($600K was sunk in Moulin promotion alone). Trailers for TV had become a must-do since rapturous response to 1952's Sudden Fear and a King Kong reissue the same season, but it does not fit all products, said the trade. Best results seem to come where actual scenes from the negative have a high "teaser' appeal. Melodrama and horror subjects make up into potent come-on, but lush musicals in Technicolor are not advantageously sold on a tiny black-and-white parlor receiver. Vice Squad was singled out by Variety for its title which was a lulu for home shock value (as were "gruesome scenes" in another TV-spot-made hit, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms).

Vice Squad sold beyond even optimist outlook. Bookings finessed in "A" houses more than returned bacon, and holdovers were rife. Patronage voted at ticket windows for Eddie back in holsters. To hammer the point, ad design even borrowed key art of Robinson from 1937's Bullets Or Ballots to let everyone know he'd conduct business-as-usual. Trade trumpets by late August pegged Vice Squad as a sleeper, and major studio heads keep asking to see the picture, according to columnist Frank Scully. The William Morris agency put together a Vice Squad pilot with Edward G. Robinson for hopeful vid placement, but showing that around got no bites. The feature returned $918K in domestic rentals and $722K more foreign, one of United Artists' best performers among small budget titles that year (only I, The Jury in 3-D topped it). For their profit-making effort, Gardner, Levy, and Laven got another UA ticket punched with Code File: FBI, released in September 1954 as Down Three Dark Streets, also a crackerjack police job available from MGM On Demand DVD.

Wings Over Hooterville



In The Wake of Wings, Fans Received This When They Wrote
for Clara Bow's Autograph

 I've got this swell idea for a sitcom episode. A rinky-dink town down South (my own perhaps) stages a forty-years late premiere of The Godfather, with guest stars Jimmy Caan and Al Pacino joining in nostalgic fun. We could recreate the kooky fashions and silly music like they had in 1972! Jim and Al could show up as if they were still big stars, but turn out to be nice guys and good sports. Everybody would get a laugh over this old movie Dad and Grand-folks thought was so great. We could all be glad too that movies have progressed so far as they have since The Godfather. We've even got 3-D now, something they never dreamed of!



Kinda Slow Uncle Joe's In Fast Company When Dick and Buddy Touch Down For 1968 Pixley Wings Premiere




A Picture So Big, The Ad Didn't Even
Have To Mention Clara Bow 

 Some of you will remember the November 9, 1968 episode of Petticoat Junction simply called Wings. If not, go to You Tube and watch (in three parts) before Paramount legal pulls it down. This is the most remarkable souvenir of Wings that ever was, and would have made a fab extra on the just-released Blu-Ray. A lot of Wings' following have no idea this thing is out there. I'm aware because it was a big deal that CBS (school) night when otherwise labored Petticoat Junction followed up on Beverly Hillbillies conceit that backwood South theatres were still back of conversion to sound and hopelessly stuck with relic movies the culture had grown out of. If only reality had been so! I could have sat in the Liberty watching London After Midnight and Heart Trouble while the rest of you had Angel In My Pocket and She-Devils On Wheels.

Dick and Buddy must have dined many a night on memories of Wings, but how many among Petticoat Junction viewers actually saw the 1927 (first) Best Picture winner past those around for initial release? For me at the time, there'd be no more exposure than seconds flashed on Pixley's Bijou screen. Better it was thought in 1968 to acknowledge "great old" silent pictures than sit through one, let alone offer up a Wings for network broadcast. I wonder how many runs Paramount licensed during the sixties (Films, Inc. had it available on 16mm non-theatrical by 1977). VHS and laser disc were years off, these formats a first modern (home) exposure for Wings, and now after a decade begging, fans are in receipt of Blu-Ray and likely a best presentation the air-epic will ever get. That's waiting longer than Pixley did, but for quality got here, a rewarding one.

I Went By Radio Shack and Asked For a Kolsterphone, But They Were Out

Could Paramount  piggy-back Wings into theatres  just off successful play of The Artist? Would satisfied patrons for that homage to silents come back for the real goods? I'd not call Wings silent, though. For music and effects Paramount has added, it's more of a sound movie than most talkies. My one-word review of this Blu-Ray is stunning, and that's 'nuff anyone need say for colossal result Para achieved. Just when you're ready to give up on these big congloms, along comes a job like this, distressed residue of Wings now within reach of digital healers to mend. Progress moves so fast in today's tech realm to keep us continually amazed. What Paramount did puts rise to speculation as to when other pre-talkers might roar back, trouble being sad fact few of them have the cache of Wings. It being Academy-anointed Best Picture of that first awarding year is primary reason we've got Blu-Ray possession now.

Director Bill Wellman Shuts Down For Wet Ground, But It Must Have Been Plenty Cold Too, If Dick Arlen's Fur Mittens Are Any Indication

Was a next generation of silent enthusiasts conceived by The Artist and theatres it filled? Should this one win 2011's Best Picture, there surely will be renewed interest in things non-talking, maybe not wide-encompassing, but well beyond closets the so-far micro-niche has been confined to. Before retreat into Greenbriar's shell, I ran silents to college attendance ... voluntary, not class-compulsory ... and these were among best-received of respective seasons (all within a last ten years). Again I cite a simplest rule: never, Never call them silent movies. Music and Effects is selling's most effective label. I'd challenge anyone to walk out of Wings calling it a silent movie. The next time I play the Blu-Ray will be as much to listen as watch (especially with the disc's two score option).



Buddy Rogers and The Guy Everyone Knew Would Be The Next Big Thing



How sales go on the Blu should be interesting. Will media support it now that The Artist makes pre-talk fashionable? This could be occasion for sheep leading us in a good direction. What if enthusiasm for (really) old movies suddenly became cool? To paraphrase Jerry Colonna, we can dream, can't we? Wings has lots to generate interest. Ancient aircraft (there are buffs for these nuttier than our community), battles fought by men instead of microchips (realism here is almost startling beside phony-baloney CGI), plus revelation for many of spellbinding Clara Bow. I loved Paramount's showman-like retrieve of the Handschiegl color effect (practiced writing that word down several times and bet I still got it wrong) used for dog-fight guns and spiraling planes. Here's a tip for whenever you play Wings or any WW1 aerial pic to a crowd: Just whisper "Guys got killed making this" before each combat. Never mind whether it's true so long as it perks 'em up, which it invariably does for my shows.

Fox Plants Roots In Roadshow

The First RKO Palace Ad For Their Roadshow Roots Premiere

Twilight Time is out with The Roots Of Heaven on limited edition Blu-Ray ("3000 units"). This 1958 Fox show in Cinemascope/Stereo might as well have been silent-era nitrate for access we've had to decent presentation these fifty-four years since release. How could anyone fairly judge Roots till now? Last night was my first view, having avoided pan/scans and red print survivors from the hoped-for blockbuster on which 20th spent three million  (independent producing Darryl Zanuck said at the time it was closer to four), then saw grievous loss of $2.6 million during a year when all Fox output seemed snake-bit. How many big-studio pics began as roadshows and ended with less than a million in domestic rentals? Roots' failure was 1958's most horrific for Fox, even worse than The Barbarian and The Geisha, and both were directed by John Huston. You'd think such a one-two would have all but run him out of the industry.

Darryl Zanuck had been exec in production charge at 20th since the outfit was mid-30's formed. He left in '56 to produce a Tiffany line of literary adaptations to beat back junk on TV. DFZ was for giving the lost adult audience a reason to dress up and attend movies. The Roots of Heaven dramatized a zealot's effort to rescue African elephants from poachers, and colonial government enablers of same. With initially cast William Holden, it might have worked, but Holden couldn't get Paramount's consent to appear, so Zanuck went with Trevor Howard, scuttling romance needed to juice a long narrative. The second male lead was Errol Flynn, well past screen heroics and re-positioned as a character man for what work was left (Roots his last feature of worth). Flynn's more sad than affecting, the performance a one-note drunk act some critics and many fans figured for a glimpse of real-life Errol.



Laid-Back Errol Flynn Took Africa In Stride --- He'd Visited Rough Corners Of The World Before




"All Seats Reserved" --- But The Policy Wouldn't Last

 Fox proposed to swing for the fence by opening The Roots Of Heaven on two-a-day basis with mail-order tickets. Exhibition hated roadshow policy and told Fox so. The company had wanted same season's Barbarian and The Geisha to play thus, but New York was talked out of it by powerful circuits that could spank hard should distributors persist (showmen argued that John Wayne was too much "a mass audience star" to sell on anything other than a grind basis). The Roots Of Heaven charity-premiered at Broadway's RKO Palace on October 15, 1958, taking the place of long-run The Bridge On The River Kwai, a high-adventure Roots sought to emulate, at least for promoting purposes. The first week was good, advance publicity having lured curiosity seekers, but attendance tumbled quick as word got round of a sluggish first half and overall paucity of action.



Orson Welles Contributed a Colorful Extended Cameo, For Free He Said, "As a Favor" To Pal Darryl Zanuck




Sometimes Even Bad Decisions Can Still Be "Important" Ones

 Darryl Zanuck noted complaints and trimmed The Roots Of Heaven (extant prints are less by a few minutes from what trade reviewers saw). The RKO Palace hung on for five weeks of roadshowing, each frame down from ones before, then went to continuous runs for a sixth, and saw business pick up, if slightly. The change was made to accommodate the holiday crowds who do a great deal of their entertainment buying on impulse, said RKO theatres chief Sol A. Schwartz. By reverting to a continuous policy (and at "popular prices"), we are providing this audience with a flexible time schedule and an opportunity to see "Roots Of Heaven" at the time they want to see it. Trouble was, as word-of-mouth got round, fewer people chose The Roots Of Heaven over competing hits like Gigi and Cinerama's South Seas Adventure (both Broadway two-a-days as well).



Lead Lady Jeanette Greco Gets a Kiss From Trevor Howard as Errol Flynn and Darryl Zanuck Look On Approvingly at RKO Palace Charity Premiere



Fox aimed for Christmas general release and abandonment of hard-ticket policy. The roadshow experiment, what Fox called "a trial balloon," failed for blunt reason that The Roots Of Heaven was not an attraction to justify inflated pricing on reserve seats. Neither was The Barbarian and The Geisha, reason good as any why 20th bent to the will of exhibition and offered both these John Huston letdowns to wider distribution without strings. For himself, Huston pitched in where possible, giving trade interviews amounting to travel lectures minus slides. Hazard of Africa filming enlivened sit-downs --- a few suggested drama behind cameras was far more compelling than what Huston put in front of them. Anyone who went to Africa to make such a movie in the future would be very foolish, said the director. The risks are far too great. Zanuck frankly wished they'd never made the trip, a punk finished movie being small compensation for hellish location ordeal (DFZ: I would never do it again).



Juliette Greco --- By All Accounts, A Good Singer, and in The Roots Of Heaven, Not At All a Bad Actress, Remembered Now as One Of Zanuck's Mistress/Discoveries



Zanuck had been bullish going in. It has majesty written all over it, said he prior to the Palace opening. While it runs two hours, twenty minutes, it is over before you know it. Others disagreed, thus the reel-or-so haircut DFZ gave The Roots Of Heaven. Distributors Complaining About Length Of "Big" Pix, observed Variety about shows which run around two hours and drag in the doing. Age old conflicts between East and West Coasts (selling vs. production)were nothing new, the former pointing up fact that an extra 15 or 20 minutes can add up to a tidy sum when a company puts out 300 or more prints. Maybe it was time to reign in creative indulgence gone overboard. Directors of renown are being given more leeway on the (West) Coast today under the independent setups, and are reluctant to cut their footage, particularly if a lot of work was involved getting it. The trade referred specifically to offenders then on view, including Inn Of The Sixth Happiness, The Big Country, and The Buccaneer, as well as The Roots Of Heaven.

From a roadshow that tanked, Fox let air out of promoting tires with a general release pressbook of only twelve pages and fairly dispirited ones at that. Did they really expect small venues to hold their own "Red Carpet Premieres" as suggested? And it wasn't news that "prestige" meant little in the hinterlands. There was a half-hour production film Zanuck had done in Africa that was network-run by ABC in November, then made available gratis to showmen who could place it on local stations (how many bothered, I don't know --- are there prints of this subject around?). Roots was, not unexpectedly, nixed in the stix. Small towns wanted Tarzan or Bomba pacing jungles, not Trevor Howard on elephant guard duty, and the film's pretentious title gave action fans little to conjure with. Distributors concentrated more and more on urban centers for grosses by 1958, but rural situations were essential to drag product into profit, and The Roots Of Heaven was distinctly not their preferred bill of fare.

Trades by mid-1959 revealed Roots' struggle to crack its first million in domestic rentals, a humiliating figure Fox confirmed, though everyone by then knew it was their biggest loss from what had been a rotten year (The Roots Of Heaven crept over a foreign rentals threshold to $1.1 million). 1963 brought network premiering on NBC --- they'd broadcast nearly the whole of Fox's 50's backlog on Saturday, and later Monday, primetime movies. The Roots Of Heaven was syndicated by September of the same year with forty-five other 20th features just off NBC rotation. Whatever values Huston derived from Africa filming was utterly lost here --- it's no wonder The Roots Of Heaven got so little respect among modern critics. Twilight Time changes all that with a stunner Blu-Ray that merits critical rehab for this neglected show, being but one of a choice series of Fox and Columbia titles they've put back in the spotlight.