Some "Bad" John Waynes On DVD --- Part 2

Jet Pilot’s long been a handy receptacle for critical derision --- the butt of a hundred old movie jokes, forever tied to the whipping post along with The Conqueror. It’s pure reflex that cites these two as John Wayne’s all-time worst. For years, they were impossible to see. During Howard Hughes’ lifetime, he kept them out of circulation. A few prints of Jet Pilot traveled among collectors, but it would be well into the eighties before either would see daylight on TV or video. Having it available on DVD may not rehabilitate its tarnished reputation, but at least we can enjoy what is at times a visually stunning show, featuring one of the most breathtaking glamour turns this tired old viewer has ever seen. Jet Pilot was meant to be the next Hell’s Angels. Howard Hughes wanted to go the old picture one better by staging bigger and better dogfights with jets instead of bi-planes. He started in 1949, and obsessed over it for the next eight years. By the time Universal released Jet Pilot in September 1957, it was an old movie, with older airplanes. Even the biggest campaign in U-I’s history couldn’t save this one from critical drubbing and disastrous word-of-mouth. In the end, Hughes took back the negative and spent most of the next two decades watching it by himself on a tabletop projector. It ended up being the most expensive home movie ever made.



Robert Mitchum was originally set for the lead in Jet Pilot. Wayne stepped in after signing a multi-picture deal with Hughes. They were buddies off-screen. Howard wanted to be Duke, and Wayne couldn’t help being impressed with a man so powerful he could seemingly make clocks stop at will. Shooting began on Halloween 1949 under the direction of cast-off tyro director Josef Von Sternberg, whose comeback was breathlessly reported by lifelong acolyte Herman G. Weinberg in The New York Times. My films were protests against other films at the time, said the master craftsman after eight years in cinematic Siberia, and worship-the-ground-he-walked-on Weinberg was tactful enough to omit satchels full of anecdotes detailing Jo's on-set tyranny and abuses --- but even this Captain Bligh with a megaphone was no match for Hughes’ controlling ways. Sternberg (shown here with Janet Leigh and on the crane directing a dance sequence) wasn’t involved with the flying shots in any case. Multiple second units shot those on a total of fourteen different air bases from Alaska to Florida. Sixteen initial months were given over to the aerial stuff, and there’s reason to believe Hughes continued gathering jet footage beyond even that. MGM head Dore Schary had loaned Janet Leigh to co-star, but he never dreamed this project would drag so far into the next decade. He would later recall Hughes’ request for Janet’s further services --- seems Howard wanted retakes on Jet Pilot --- three years after principal photography had ended. I have had my bellyfull, said Hughes to Schary shortly before the show was finally released, and indeed this would be his final project before the cameras.


Anybody else would have wanted this one wrapped up A.S.A.P. --- seeing as how the jet fad wasn’t going to last forever --- but Hughes dawdled while Chain Lightning, Breaking The Sound Barrier, and other supersonics took to the skies. Despite his occasional updating of the flight footage (which, of course, no one had seen), similar projects flew away with Jet Pilot’s potential audience. Press releases and gossip continued to appear as the fifties wore on, but Hughes wouldn’t let it go. Sternberg had long since been booted off the project --- Wayne oft expressed a desire to "kill the sonofabitch." --- pinch-hit directors Nicholas Ray and Jules Furthman (who’d also been associate producer and writer) were brought aboard for the seemingly endless retakes. When Universal finally took custody (Hughes having sold RKO in the meantime), they wisely opted for saturation release with a whopping 400 prints opening day-and-date (the better to get patron’s money before a stench got out). Commenting on years of press coverage now in the morgues, Jet Pilot's pressbook openly inquired of showmen, How much of this penetration has been retained --- How much of it has faded with time? Harrison’s Reports said Universal was spending unprecedented dollars on a new campaign. I wonder how much of this Hughes footed. Critics were merciless, as expected, commenting on how "youthful" the two stars looked in a now ancient vehicle (must have made Janet feel good reading those reviews). Others observed that the planes were "obsolete and out of date" (as if they’d know the difference between a B-45 and a dill pickle). What may have wounded Hughes most were harsh comparisons between Jet Pilot and Paramount’s recent Strategic Air Command, which had the benefit of up-to-the-minute air technology and Vistavision in the bargain. Panoramic projection had become a must since bygone days when Jet Pilot was in production, but U-I solved that by going with ersatz wide prints that played havoc with Sternberg’s elegant compositions. Later 16mm prints and videos were full-frame as intended, but Universal’s new DVD goes back to 1.85. Too bad. They could have at least offered it both ways.
















Sixties and thereafter critics speak of Jet Pilot in terms of "cold war hysteria." "Piquant Howard Hughes sex farce" is how I prefer to think of it. I’m betting he got together with Howard Hawks on some of the gags and situations in this show. More than once, I was reminded of The Thing (which RKO would have been shooting at the same time). Janet Leigh’s renegade Russian flyer might just as easily have touched down at Captain Hendrys airbase, leaving that titular super-carrot to bedevil John Wayne and Paul Fix. Imagine Kenneth Tobey engaged in saucy repartee with Janet! As it is, there’s a scene in both pictures where guys enter a room from the frigid outside, being admonished by those within to "Close the door!" He may have been the biggest yank-off in town, but Jo Von Sternberg knew a thing or three about photography and direction. Everything he did for Dietrich in the thirties is surpassed here --- only this time it’s in color. Howard and Jo are a great team in Jet Pilot, whatever you may have heard to the contrary. For every blandishment he got about Jane Russell, this is where Hughes really delivered on the sex. Every close-up of Janet Leigh is drop-dead incredible. Never mind cold war hysterics. Buy it just to look at her. Jet Pilot is too stupid and raunchy for most critical sensibilities. The dialogue’s reminiscent of those Playboy Party Jokes we used to read on the back of the centerfolds, and all the more unsettling to hear John Wayne delivering it. He’s a lot like Clark Gable taming Hedy Lamarr in Comrade X, only smuttier and more direct. You’d expect him to eventually chuck the love stuff and get on with mopping up commies, but the sex pursuit remains front and center throughout. Hughes just didn’t find anything else remotely as interesting, and neither did I --- which brings us to those celebrated airborne scenes. Those are the real drag. None of these jets ever get in a fight. They just fly aimlessly about to no good purpose. I never understood what they were supposed to be doing up there, other than looking for fluffy clouds to serve as an arresting backdrop. I kept waiting for them to land so maybe Janet Leigh would take another shower. Have I sold you on this picture yet? Don’t imagine for a moment that it’s "good." Nothing of the kind, but if you’re looking for a warm-up to that big Ford/Wayne box set coming next week, you could do a lot worse than this.

Looking Back At Wartime Lobbies


That first anniversary of Pearl Harbor found theatre lobbies dressed out with every conceivable lure for patrons to aid in the war effort. The "Victory Booth" was a common sight, as showmen were among the most effective bond salesmen. Those patriotic features, shorts, and newsreels didn’t go for naught. Audiences were besieged with solicitations before they even got through the front entrance. This scrap collection display on the sidewalk threatens to overwhelm the rather prosaic marquee in back of it --- the idea of tossing refuse into the open mouths of our enemies seems to have been effective, as one can envision parents lugging the stuff into theatres, then letting their kids have fun playing ring toss with Adolf. Day and night service at these bond counters was no idle promise. Many houses maintained round-the-clock schedules to accommodate third shift war workers anxious to catch the latest Andy Hardy before heading home for some a.m. shuteye. I bet non-participants really got the fish eye whenever giving those booths the go-by. Civilian slackers were no more to be tolerated than able-bodied men out of uniform, and the pressure to buy bonds and kick in on scrap drives must have been enormous. Even the happy prospect of seeing The Boogie Man Will Get You on a giant theatre screen would diminish somewhat in the face of contemptuous looks from expectant managers, ushers, and candy butchers, all of them conveying silent disapproval as you arrive sans scrap and leave minus bonds. I’ll bet they even took names in some of the smaller towns.

The above posting is number 200 for Greenbriar Picture Shows. We’ve been here since December 27, 2005, and the only day we’ve missed was when the server broke down (in the beginning, there were sometimes three posts in a day!). All 200 of these stories are in the archive, and you can link to it anytime from the top of this main page or by going HERE. The drop-down search engine has individual options for names, movie titles, and categories (for instance, our Glamour Starters series has its own section, as does Horror, Comedy, Musical, etc.). Go there sometime if you haven’t already.

Some "Bad" John Waynes On DVD --- Part 1




With all the excitement and anticipation focused on the forthcoming John Ford/John Wayne DVD box from Warners, it’s easy to overlook these runts in the Wayne litter, but what could Universal do? They own but a handful of Wayne titles, so its catch-and-catch-can on their own John Wayne --- An American Icon Collection. I’ve just looked at some of the harsh customer reviews on Amazon. They advise against purchase of these five obscurities. Don’t you listen to these sourpusses!! Go buy this neglected and woebegone group today! They’re the ones that will really educate you about those fabled ups and downs in a career with as many false starts and appalling role selections as any major star ever got away with over fifty long years in the biz. There’s not a one of these five that won’t fascinate you --- they sure did me. Despite my expressed reservations to come, I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them again. Yeah, it’s easy to admire the big guy in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and The Searchers, but after three dozen or so rounds with those acknowledged classics, there’s a real sympathy factor that kicks in for the deer-in-headlights uncertainty he projects in some of these early almost-leads. His near-heroic blending of resignation with a get-it-done determination as displayed in Jet Pilot and The Conqueror makes us admire that indomitable Wayne spirit all the more. I only wish Universal would stupefy those naysayers and give us really obscure John Wayne titles, cause they own several --- Idol Of The Crowds, California Straight Ahead, etc. --- that would truly be something to see!


Seven Sinners is a Code-addled, would-be lampoon of much better shows played straight in the early thirties. It spoofs the Marlene Dietrich of Shanghai Express because it has to --- playing straight would have meant challenging the PCA. Instead of Clive Brook, we get Mischa Auer. Warner Oland becomes Billy Gilbert. Dietrich had to know she was selling out. Her male consorts are feckless eunuchs, seemingly incapable of achieving sexual congress with any woman, let alone Marlene’s siren of the tropics. She’s been run out of every port for "inciting riots" and questionable character, but lunkhead camp follower Broderick Crawford assures us (and the censors) that Bijou is a lady and buys her own dresses (presumably to establish that she’s nobody’s mistress). As with the prototype Dietrich hit of the previous year, Destry Rides Again, everything is pitched decidedly low for comedy. The aforementioned Mischa Auer, Billy Gilbert, Vince Barnett, Brod Crawford --- everyone, it seems, but Shemp Howard. They’re all straining at the bit to be funny and deflect any audience notion that Marlene may intend to have, or has had, sex with anyone. Her romance with youthful John Wayne, besides the usual May/December concerns (she was nearly six years his senior, and looks it), is laughably chaste, so much so that his last reel "sacrifice" on her behalf seems altogether pointless and nonsensical. Wayne had just broken into "A’s" by 1940, and director Tay Garnett clearly lets the relatively inexperienced actor go his own way. He's playing it like one of the Three Mesquiteers, and there are moments when you wish there was a Ford or a Hawks to come in and crack the whip on him. Still, he’s good in a boyish way, and Dietrich’s customary seduction of her leading men seems to have carried on for Wayne’s benefit, though I can’t imagine what these two would have had to talk about (that may not have been an issue in any case, as Wayne referred to Dietrich late in life as "the best lay I ever had").




If Ozarkians were really as anti-social as they appear in Shepherd Of The Hills, you wonder how they managed to reproduce. This first time in Technicolor John Wayne still finds him among a performing ensemble, as in Stagecoach and The Long Voyage Home. Thank heaven he forfeits any attempt at a Southern accent. That’s always death to us real-life cornpones hoping for realistic depictions of our mountain culture. Moonshining is at least an initial narrative focal point, but that gets dumped in favor of some ancient feud palaver I never could quite comprehend. Everybody’s so down in this --- never will you encounter such a morose lot of hillbillies. The only tilt at humor is one of those donnybrooks where John Wayne gets conked in the head and, probably for the first time, does that cross-eyed comic take as he’s going down (boy, did that get overworked later). Big Bear Lake and the San Bernardino Mountains stand in for locations, and this is truly some of the best Technicolor I’ve seen rendered on DVD. Betty Field is way sexy as the only eligible female amongst the clans. She’s reason enough to go buy this, although much of her dialogue is top-heavy with stix-flavored mannerism (there’s nothing more irritating than self-consciously verbose rural philosophers forever clarifying everything they say with some off-putting analogy --- either in movies or real life). I don’t know why these robust mountaineers (Ward Bond among them) aren’t fighting like wildcats over Betty, instead of meekly ceding her to Wayne, and him brooding over a dead mother for most of the running time in any event. You keep wishing he’d just grab her (They’ll be no locks nor bolts between us) and get on with the consummation. As it is, we’re dealing yet with Wayne the juvenile, his screen persona still not firmly in place, so mild audience frustrations along these lines are more keenly felt by us in hindsight than would have been the case for 1941 viewers.




I’m all for comeuppance on the screen when it’s deserved. Gary Cooper filled Karl Malden full of holes at the end of The Hanging Tree, kicked him off the side of a mountain, and that was just fine. Frenchie needed to die. On the other hand, there are shows where the humbling gets a little excessive. John Wayne eats a lot of crow in Pittsburgh, and it’s served up by a gallery of insufferable prigs we tend to like far less than Duke’s overreaching coal tycoon. After awhile, you know they’re just punishing the guy because he’s not a team player, and group effort --- everyone’s shoulder to the common wheel --- is what this wartime preachment is all about. If it won’t help win the war, forget it! reads the banner we see as the picture opens on a rah-rah speech Randy Scott gives at his munitions plant, and that was no doubt hammered into writers con-fabbing daily with military consultants assigned by the Office Of War Information. Never was a movie so compromised by outside dictates and policy. Even reviewers at the time lamented the heavy dollops of propaganda. Any screen character unwilling to tow the line had to be brought to heel. It’s not much fun seeing likeable go-getter John Wayne bow down to the OWI establishment, but there was a war on, and big business freebooters of the Wayne/Pittsburgh/Gable/Boom Town pattern suggested profiteering more than patriotism, and thus needed to be harnessed for the good of all. Duke’s like a forerunner to Jett Rink, minus the whining and sucker punches, and this being Universal, gets Louise Allbritton for a wife, plus Samuel S. Hinds for a father-in-law. The marriage goes kaput in a hurry, though Louise would find happiness the following year with second husband Count Alucard. Old Sam Hinds, his avuncular presence an absolute given in any motion picture featuring a Universal logo, wags a bony, disapproving finger once again, just as he did at poor, misunderstood Dr. Vollin in 1935 (let’s all petition Universal to get started on that nineteen volume Samuel S. Hinds Legacy Collection!). Leading lady Marlene Dietrich looks matronly beside youthful Wayne, and he’s supposed to be gaga over her --- the cumbersome "fashions" don’t help. Was there ever a woman so over-coiffed as Dietrich? One of those fur collars threatens to swallow her head, and she seems to change outfits between one end of a corridor and the other. Methinks Marlene exerted a little too much control in the wardrobe department. Bet Vera West hated her.

Monday Glamour Starter --- Thelma Todd

If there are any ninety-year old readers prepared to finally confess in the matter of Thelma Todd’s unsolved 1935 murder, we are ready, indeed anxious, to take your statement. Having waited seven decades to get this thing cleared up, I’d like to close the file on this one (not that anyone has access to the original investigation paperwork, it having disappeared generations ago as part of the "cover-up"). Whatever else she may have accomplished, this is what Todd will be best remembered for. Just a body slumped over a car seat in the wake of what Fred MacMurray would call a "monoxide job". People still make pilgrimages to her garage (it’s still there) and there have been wildly differing theories as to what happened to Thelma. I say it was just a grotesque accident --- involuntary manslaughter at best --- with the presumed miscreant, and all his friends and associates, having been dead for so long as to make the possibility of further clarification all but impossible. We might as well go back and try again to unmask Jack The Ripper. The little bit of Thelma Todd that’s left in the public consciousness, once you take away the mystery, is a handful of appearances with comedians whose names have survived, and the woman must have been doing something right, because she worked with some greats. There was even a Thelma Todd starring series at Hal Roach --- two-reel comedies in which she and ZaSu Pitts (later Patsy Kelly) paired off as a kind of distaff Laurel and Hardy. The fact these comedies are all but impossible to see now is courtesy of Hallmark Cards, regrettably still in custody of the Roach library. The Todd/Pitts/Kelly shorts were a real trail mix of mirth and tedium --- some of them are pretty funny, others sheer torture --- all fascinating. Zazu’s easier to take than Patsy. Even a subdued Patsy (and Patsy was never subdued) is akin to root canal without benefit of anesthesia, but at least there’s Thelma, and she’s always a welcome sight, especially on those occasions when she effects costume changes on camera, and there were happily lots of those …








There’s a Thelma Todd celebration coming up in Manchester, New Hampshire on July 27, 2006. You can read about it HERE. Manchester is only thirty miles from Thelma’s birthplace in Lawrence, Massachusetts. She was born a hundred years ago this year, and they’ll be celebrating her birthday on July 29. There was a New England cousin who’d spent her life collecting on Thelma. When she died, they had an auction of all the memorabilia, and some newspaper sent down one of those I’m a well-adjusted writer with a normal life who’s come to interview all these geeks and wierdos at the old movie sale type articles. Very condescending, as is most of mainstream media’s coverage of such events. Always kind of sad when the product of a lifetime’s effort is so callously disposed of, but that’s the bittersweet, if not inevitable, finish for all collectors (and their collections). Thelma herself had cleared out of Lawrence by the time she was twenty, gone to Hollywood with an armload of loving cups from various Lion’s Clubs and the promise of stardom to come. That was slow in arriving, as there were tens of thousands out there just like her, but after an uncertain start with ingenue roles (here’s one of them --- Thelma with a young Gary Cooper and rival William Powell in 1927’s Nevada) she lucked into comedy parts. This was a niche conventional actresses on the rise were less ambitious to fill --- indeed she was typecast from then on, and efforts to drama-tize Thelma, even to the point of giving her a new name (Alison Loyd) were doomed to failure. Corsair with Chester Morris (shown here) was a 1931 experiment, but already Todd was so familiar in comedies that audiences wouldn’t accept her in anything else (her partner ZaSu Pitts had the same problem).



Multiple smash-ups, both on account of drinking and ongoing lack of motoring skills, nearly got Thelma killed (a palm tree jumped out in front of her car on one occasion), but she managed to get into a lot of product before that night in December 1935 when the lights went out. Without going into Byzantine detail, let’s just say that Thelma’s death has never been satisfactorily explained. The maid found her dead in the garage, with no signs of violence (some theorists differ on that point), and evidence indicated she’d perished amidst the fumes of her car engine. Had Thelma gone there during the chilly night to warm up? There’d been a fight with live-in Roland West (former major director down on his luck, but well connected in Hollywood power circles), and he’d banished her from the house. There’s convincing evidence he followed her down to the garage and locked her inside, but no indication she’d struggled to get out. In fact, Todd was found in the front seat. West supposedly went down the next day to check on her and found the grisly result of having sealed that door the night before. From there, it was just a matter of waiting out the discovery by an innocent third party, then feigning surprise when told. Investigators even got a confession out of Roland West, but all that was deep-sixed "for the good of the industry." Shortly before his own death in 1952, West spilled it again to close friend Chester Morris, and Morris eventually passed it along to Alex Gordon and Bill Everson. All this sounds a lot more plausible than another Todd biographer who asserts that Thelma was offed by Lucky Luciano's mob after she’d gotten mixed up with the notorious racketeer and killer. That’s the story that’s gotten the most airplay, and it’s admittedly made to order for the Mysteries and Scandals viewership, but I prefer the West angle. On the other hand, as I posited at the beginning, we may be addressing the (elderly) killer with this very post, and I may indeed be jeopardizing my own life by even exploring the matter!





Thelma was known as the "ice cream blonde" ("… and everyone wanted a lick" must surely have been a refrain on the lips of various Hollywood lotharios). This negligee shot with the phone is from the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon (her part in the remake was played by Gladys George!). Laurel and Hardy benefited from Thelma’s presence in several shorts --- too bad there weren’t more --- this one is Chickens Come Home, and she’s gorgeous in it. Monkey Business was one of two Marx Brothers features in which she participated. The other was Horse Feathers, but that one was code-cut in the late forties, and what’s left of Thelma’s key scene with the Brothers is so mutilated as to be almost incoherent. Too bad Universal hasn’t been able to locate better elements on this 1932 release. Buster Keaton was near a point of no return when Speak Easily found him sharing scenes with Thelma. This office exchange with John Barrymore in Counselor At Law also fell before the Code’s ax for a 1953 re-issue --- what’s left is still fine, but this missing footage appears to be gone forever. That's James Finlayson as a suspicious husband in The Devil’s Brother, and ZaSu Pitts poses with Thelma for a portrait heralding another Hal Roach short comedy. Their two-reelers generally ran ahead of Our Gang and The Boy Friends in terms of rentals, but behind Charley Chase and of course, the Laurel and Hardy series, which was the biggest earner of all. Hard to imagine them beating out Roach’s Rascals, considering how forgotten the Todd/Pitts shorts are today. This final image is something of a rarity --- Thelma Todd in The Bohemian Girl, a feature just completed at the time of her death. Preview audiences apparently saw Thelma, but hasty reshooting in the wake of her mysterious death found the part recast and virtually all her footage removed. This sequence with Antonio Moreno was not seen by the public, and very few stills of Thelma from this film have been published --- in fact, the only other one I’ve seen is in Randy Skretvedt’s excellent book, Laurel and Hardy: The Magic Behind The Movies.

They Drink RC Even As You and I


So many cola choices, but only one wins the taste test hands down, and that’s Royal Crown, the favorite of discerning actresses throughout our great industry. Rita seems the odd one out, having picked the cup labeled "Z" while Paulette and Hedy both went for that "X" container. Could Rita have selected a Pepsi in the belief it was an RC, or did someone switch beverages on the chance that the girls might get together and brief one another as to which they should choose? What if all three cups were filled with Royal Crown, in which case one must challenge the legitimacy of the whole exercise. It’s even possible that none of these three choices actually contained RC, but were instead filled with Coca-Cola (or even dreaded also-ran "Spur" cola) --- a cruel bit of japery on the part of bored and cynical ad agency employees determined to prove once and for all the indiscriminate, plebian tastes of overpaid, undereducated movie stars. We’re sixty years too late to get to the root of what appears at best a suspicious, and possibly corrupt, enterprise. We can only recommend you decide for yourself --- conduct your own cola taste test perhaps, and be sure to let us know the results ...

A Recipe For Destruction


Courtesy among competing showmen was a thing fast disappearing by the sixties, when the decline in attendance, coupled with television’s ongoing encroachment, forced theatres to adopt ruinous booking policies --- an exhibitor’s hara-kiri with first-run features the weapon of choice. NBC had just introduced a Fall lineup of blockbuster post-48 movies on Saturday evenings, and syndicated packages of recent releases gave viewers plenty of reason to stay home nights. Desperate exhibitors retaliated by front-loading their marquees with triple helpings --- drive-ins were particularly at fault. This first ad presents the outdoor theater menu for a weekend in December of 1961. These were big new pictures at the top of the bill --- The Guns Of Navarone was a June release and still a viable attraction for the hardtops. Here it’s lumped with two other features (Bend Of The River must have been nice on that big screen) for a show that tipped the clock at seven hours plus. Five years later, things were worse. Now they were serving four shows, and for only a dollar a car! Trade press editorials fulminated against this eat-or-be-eaten policy. It was no isolated incident, they said. Brand new releases were being burned off day and date between indoor and outdoor venues, only the drive-in mob was enjoying four helpings for the price of the one that downtown patrons were getting. This sample from April 1966 illustrates the bargain awaiting crowds at the Trenton Drive-In, where three of the attractions were less than three months in release. The problem was attributed to "industry-wide chaos and confusion" that resulted from the distributor’s abandonment of long established clearance and playoff patterns. Drive-in operators were "scratching each other’s eyes out", they said. A short-term bargain for the customers, but a long-term disaster for showmen. Few could have anticipated the real disaster, and the eventual near-extinction, that lay in wait for drive-ins, nor the insatiable appetite of television networks gobbling up theatrical hits before theaters could even play them off. Exhibition as we’d known it was headed for oblivion. Reading these anxious editorials can be a little sad when you realize what so many of these guys had to look forward to. At least a few of them saw it coming.

The Curse Of Frankenstein Would Haunt Me Forever!

Kids today aren’t going to levitate over The Curse Of Frankenstein. They’d likely say it’s dull, slow, nothing happening --- the customary branding iron applied to so many old movies, particularly horror ones, where explicit gore has been industry standard for going on, what, forty years? Good luck convincing youthful doubters it was Curse Of Frankenstein that actually led the way toward wide-open charnel houses that are screen horror today. To know Curse's impact, to feel the shudders going through crowded auditoriums that summer in 1957, you really have to will yourself back --- see it through their eyes. Warners distributed this breakout Hammer film from England. They knew they had something special from the day Jack Warner first screened it. Comparisons with WB's previous horror smash, House Of Wax, were inevitable --- but showmen knew this was a radical departure from that buoyant, gay-nineties funhouse so amusing to audiences in 1953. If anything, House Of Wax was a throwback to Gentleman Jim, The Strawberry Blonde, and other nostalgia trips popular in the forties. Curse Of Frankenstein was not built for laughs nor fun. It was dirty lab jackets smeared with blood, heads cleaved off just below the frame line, eyeballs and dismembered hands daintily wrapped in burlap swatches --- all of which genuinely shocked viewers unaccustomed to such clinical laboratory detail, never mind it's being served in color. Some were disappointed by the monster’s appearance. Hammer couldn’t use the familiar Karloff visage, but Universal’s copyrighted Frankenstein conception had been more or less out of circulation for a while anyway. Comparisons would soon be made as originals took their television bow within a few months of Curse openings (July 1957), and cheapjack theatrical knock-offs Frankenstein’s Daughter and I Was A Teenage Frankenstein would follow. Soon home and theatre screens would be fairly inundated with Frankenstein product, though none of these would achieve the startling success enjoyed by Warners with The Curse Of Frankenstein. Domestic rentals totalled $1.4 million, with foreign at $1.0, for a worldwide $2.6 million. Profits for Warners amounted to a bountiful $1.6 --- fantastic money for an exploitation horror show.



Curse Of Frankenstein was a natural for round the clock shows. This shot of opening night at NYC's Paramount theatre delivered on the promise of sock numbers previously counted in London (love those entrances!), and stunt ballys were all over streets in cities across the country, as sampled here. That "monster mask for the kids" doesn’t inspire much confidence, considering it’s just a blown-up paper ad mat presumably ripped to shreds the moment you tried putting it on. This comic version of Curse Of Frankenstein was actually published in 1964 when the feature was re-issued and Warren Publications came on board with a montage of stills and frame blow-ups telling the story and promoting the film. My first real acquaintance with Curse Of Frankenstein came by way of this magazine, stirring determination to see it ASAP. Little did I realize that adolescent odyssey would be at least as strenuous as that of Perseus seeking the head of Medusa...



There used to be a drive-in theatre about six miles out from town. It was nestled on a blind curve just off a two-lane road very much like the one that put Bob Mitchum into a tail-spin toward that power plant. Yes, the devil got Bob first, but our particular Thunder Road snaked along a ribbon of rural desolation few of us had occasion to explore, as it seemed to lead nowhere other than backwoods oblivion. The prospect of opening a theatre amidst such wilderness may have seemed misguided, but the small farmer who erected his movie screen between two chicken houses on an open pasture soon found a ready audience for the odd assemblage of programs he brought to that benighted region. There were "B" westerns, long after they’d disappeared elsewhere, Judy Canova hillbilly laffers, hot car actioners --- and horror shows. I’d never been out there, though I’d been informed that wandering cattle often peeked into patron’s cars during shows. A few times I tried, but how do you attend drive-ins without a driving license? Family outings were all well and good --- for other families. Mine never, ever saw outdoor movies. My father considered that plain foolishness, what with M Squad available within comforts of home. This weighed not so heavily upon me, as Judy Canova was an unknown quantity (still is) and my curiosity was not so intense as to embark upon Herculean efforts of getting someone to take me. All of that changed in August 1968 when The Curse Of Frankenstein finally showed up.





The intensity of my fourteen-year old desire to see Curse Of Frankenstein was a canker festering since 1964 when Liberty management resolutely avoided the combo reissue of Curse with Horror Of Dracula, even as they seemingly played every single other venue in North Carolina. Out-of-town cousins had seen them. Print ads far and wide trumpeted both. Famous Monsters and Castle Of Frankenstein waxed eloquently over the combo (Frankenstein Spills It --- Dracula Drinks It!). For all I knew, boys in reformatories got to see them --- but so far not me. Too young to have enjoyed initial releases in the fifties, now I was determined to at last see Curse Of Frankenstein, no matter what obstacle fate and parental resistance might throw upon my path. The first hurdle was simply getting there --- but how? Do I walk six miles, go in afoot, stand alone in that pasture with a speaker in my hand? No, someone had to take me, and that someone might just as well be my sister’s boyfriend. And why not? He and I got along. What if she had left for college? Richard was a good sport, and no doubt realized there are worse ways to spend a Sunday evening than taking your girlfriend's little brother to a drive-in to see an already fading print of an eleven-year old horror film. To his eternal credit, and my everlasting gratitude, Richard agreed to be my escort. It would seem the mission was accomplished, but wait --- they’d booked Curse Of Frankenstein for one night only --- a Sunday night --- with a new school year beginning the next morning! No way my folks would let me stay out past 10:30. Worse still, Curse Of Frankenstein was the second feature, bringing up the rear for Gamera The Invincible ("A giant, jet-propelled fire-breathing space turtle terrorizes the earth," says Maltin Reviews). Gamera as opener would be my downfall unless I could persuade the owner to bump it in favor of Curse Of Frankenstein. Perhaps the prospect of two paid admissions on an otherwise bleak Sunday night induced him to accommodate me --- or maybe he just felt sorry for a boy whose priorities were dreadfully misaligned. Whatever his reasoning, my thanks were profuse. To this day, I hope his fields are prospering, for it was he, and gallant Richard, who made it possible for me to finally see The Curse Of Frankenstein.

Third Act For The Marx Brothers







Post-war independent producers could be a scurvy lot, and their freebooting, one-step-ahead-of-the-sheriff exploits often as not evoke images of real-life Larson E. Whipsnades, forever eluding creditors as they manipulated assorted investing suckers. Lester Cowan was one such artful dodger who managed to ensnare diverse one-time major players, anxious to do business again now that the war was over and there were major profits, and tax advantages, to be gained in speculative, do-it-yourself movie dabbling. It was often a game called on account of darkness, at least for the unwary participants who allowed themselves to be lured into what were generally undercapitalized, if not downright shady, producing ventures. Shutdowns were frequent, bank repossession of negatives was not uncommon, and lawsuits often dogged these projects for years after release. Mary Pickford was experienced enough to know better, but idle afternoons in the estate she'd once shared with Doug were beginning to weigh heavily upon the silent star, and Mary was ready to play at movies again. So were The Marx Brothers, but for differing reasons of their own. The result of this ill-fated collaboration was Love Happy, and it would be the Marx’s final act as a team in features. Groucho and Harpo would largely banish the film from their memoirs, if not memories, and even the hardest core Marx fans would find little worth defending in this slapdash mess of a show.


It started out as a Harpo vehicle written by his friend, Ben Hecht. Groucho always said Harpo had a Chaplin thing going, much as Jerry Lewis would later, and Hecht’s treatment seems to have accommodated the sort of tears of a clown stuff that a now sixty Harpo was angling for. Trouble was, none of the studios wanted in on the rebirth of a post-Capra Harry Langdon, which seems to have been the model for Hecht’s overall concept. The writer saw Harpo as an ageless sprite, an imp of nature, the eternal Puck, and where’s the exit, folks? --- cause this was plainly a Harpo nobody but Harpo (and Ben) wanted. Somewhere along development lines, a debt-ridden Chico hopped the freight, and suddenly it looked as though a real Marx Brothers reunion might be in the offing. Financing carrots were dangled, but only if Groucho could somehow be induced to sign on. He was, and did. Mary Pickford’s participation was assurance of a United Artists distribution deal, and with all three brothers on board, Lester Cowan (who’d had a previous independent hit with The Story Of G.I. Joe) was able to finagle the balance of his start-up money. Initial dealings called for Harpo, Chico, and Ben Hecht to own fifty percent of Love Happy. To no one’s surprise, the money ran out before filming wrapped and a desperate Cowan resorted to a product placement scheme commonplace in today’s synergized industry, but largely unexplored in 40’s Hollywood. The idea was to run Harpo over a series of rooftops for a chase sequence that would cap the movie, and provide comedic backdrop for generous audience views of sponsor billboards. As the villains pursued Harpo, he would utilize oversized advertisements as props for visual gags, and each manufacturer would pay Cowan for the privilege of having their merchandise featured in a Marx Brothers movie. Mutual back scratching would continue upon release as Love Happy received prominent mention in print ads for participating companies. As far as exhibitors were concerned, the whole thing smacked of payola --- only they weren’t in on the gravy --- so United Artists wound up getting the air from a lot of disgruntled showmen after trade mags spread the word, leaving Love Happy to gather dust in UA exchanges.



Domestic rentals for Love Happy were just over a million, which couldn’t have been good news for the burgeoning list of claimants against Artists Alliance, Inc., Lester Cowan’s production company --- even less welcome was an uprising among the billboard sponsors. Cowan had taken $2,000 from the Fisk Tire Company upon his guarantee that Love Happy would garner an audience of fifty million (!), and the Gruen Watch people saw red when the wily producer pulled a last minute switcheroo and replaced their agreed upon billboard with one for rival watchmaker Bulova (here’s Harpo swinging from their sign). Seems Lester was piqued because Gruen refused to advance 25G’s for his Love Happy ad campaign. Presiding judges nixed the timepiece merchant’s bid for a court injunction to halt showings of the film (hey, he was probably looking forward to a new Marx Bros. comedy same as the next guy!). Other matters before the bench included Groucho’s suit against Mary Pickford for his appearance fee of $35,000 (well, after all, he only had a few days’ work on the thing). By 1952, there was $765,000 in judgment liens against Love Happy (this according to Scott Eyman's excellent Mary Pickford bio). Even gentle Harpo took up the gauntlet when he walked up to Cowan, "the vilest man in the whole world", and spit in his face. Recovery beyond all this strife was limited to a 1953 re-issue and television sales. That re-issue, shown here with its co-feature, Africa Screams, brought back $106,000 in domestic rentals, much of that attributable to the minute or so appearance by then-newcomer Marilyn Monroe, who was, by 1953, a very big star indeed. Her name and image would be prominent on all of Love Happy’s re-issue art.



Here’s the problem with Love Happy. The three Marxes are in it. Just not at the same time. In fact, I don’t think there’s one scene where all three appear together. You’d almost think they were feuding, but we have no published data suggesting trouble on the set. There just seems to be a kind of perverse and ongoing determination on the part of filmmakers to keep them apart. Groucho opens the show from behind a desk (with real mustache and thinning hair --- must have been a surprise for fans at the time). He’s a Philip Marlowish narrator who will re-enter the story from time to time, until the final reel when he belatedly joins the action. By then, it’s too late. We’ve had too much Harpo, too little of Chico with Harpo (they appear to have been quarantined from each other as well), and worst of all, little or nothing of Groucho, who would seem ideally suited to come in and disrupt those dreary musical numbers that make ninety minutes seem an eternity. Grouch’s scene with Marilyn Monroe is justly famed, but she’s on and off within a minute or so --- long enough, it seems, to provide grist for UA publicity mills, as you’ll note here in several MM bally suggestions (and these are from the original 1949 pressbook, not the ’53 reissue). The villainy has a nasty edge. That besieged one-time Sheriff Of Nottingham Melville Cooper takes a needlessly brutal beating from thuggish Raymond Burr as humorless Illona Massey looks on (I’ll be the only modern day scribe who’ll resist the impulse to put Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man between Illona’s first and last name). Harpo is systematically tortured in a not altogether amusing manner. This might have worked in Duck Soup, but here we’re concerned for the welfare of a clearly aging clown who can only take so much punishment. Whatever was left of Ben Hecht’s eternal sprite obsession gets disposed of in an awkward park bench exchange between Harpo and Vera-Ellen. If this is supposed to be an expression of unrequited love on Harpo’s part, maybe he should have solicited Chaplin’s guidance, or least availed himself of a City Lights screening. That big chase among neon billboards is by far the highlight. It’s fun to observe all those neat advertisements, and Harpo does make imaginative use of them. A slender Paul Valentine, our old friend Joe Stephanos from Out Of The Past, has the unlikely romantic lead (he and Marilyn are actually "introduced" in the credits, even though he’d done O.O.T.P. in 1947!). There are Marx fans who will defend Love Happy. I can sympathize with them. It would take a stony heart not to admire troupers giving of their best during what they clearly know to be the twilight of long and distinguished careers. In that sense, Love Happy is essential Marx Brothers. Perhaps it's when those odds are greatest that we can really appreciate what made this team great.

Exhibitor Awards For 1950


It’s April 1950, and time to award the top marquee names of the year, as selected by that industry body whose votes count the most ---your motion picture exhibitor. "The Ten Best Money Makers" was a list everyone wanted to be on --- who wouldn’t? This was one occasion when stars always played ball. There’d be neither temperament here --- nor refusal to pose with the citation, as bestowed by Quigley Publications, owner of the industry’s leading trade magazine, Motion Picture Herald. These shots were obviously grabbed during breaks at work, or wherever the stars could be induced to pose with their certificate and (hopefully) smile. Bob Hope was obviously in a good mood that day, as was Betty Grable and Roy Rogers. Bing Crosby looks resigned if not downright surly. Abbott and Costello are beginning to show some age. Is that some gray in Bud’s thinning hair? John Wayne has the good sense to accept the award from the man himself, Hugh Quigley. This star was no fool --- he played a masterful PR game with showmen for nearly five decades, and his career speaks for the fantastic success for having done so. Same for Cary Grant --- he’s looking at that parchment as though it were a Ph.D. from Harvard --- only Cary realizes this sheepskin is a lot more valuable than anything those Ivy Leagurs were handing out. Bogart looks as though he's surprised by the photographer --- this award must have been reassuring for a star heading out the Warner Bros. door for a new career free-lancing. The western winners got their own category. I like George "Gabby" Hayes posed against rows of bound Motion Picture Heralds --- he must have stopped by their office to pick up his certificate. Charlie Starrett was wise enough to know that leading men may come and go, but a kid favorite on horseback rides on forever. No doubt he shared that insight with Bill Boyd, Johnny Mack Brown, Gene Autry, and the rest. These cowboys may have been the smartest ones in the lot. Eight (or less) oaters a year and the rest of the time picking up easy money on the personal appearance trail.

Pre-Code DeMille On DVD

The nastiest pre-code of them all may be Cecil B. DeMille’s Sign Of The Cross, which has just bowed on DVD as part of Universal’s DeMille collection, including six of his Paramount 30’s features --- all worthwhile, some extraordinary --- but none so much so as this 1932 ancient Roman orgy of orgiastic sex and barbaric violence. No code-cuts here as before. This is the absolute complete version --- in fact, I think it may be more complete than what 1932 audiences originally saw. Word is DeMille’s personal nitrate print, rediscovered in the early nineties, was used as source material. It even has an intermission, though the feature only runs a little over two hours. Until this rediscovery, Sign Of The Cross had been available only in a dreadfully truncated re-issue edition that had gone into the PCA butcher shop on at least three occasions between 1934 and 1944. Why Universal hasn’t trumpeted this rediscovery in their publicity for the DVD release is something I’ll not pretend to understand. Nowhere on the box is it mentioned. For a DeMille pageant, Sign Of The Cross may seem a little undernourished. Depression jitters and friction with Paramount bosses dictated a lower budget --- half of it coming out of DeMille’s purse --- amazing how far (less than) $700,000 went in those days. Some would say it’s a bit sluggish at times. True enough --- but when this show lights up, it’s pure incandescence. There’s three wallops --- the milk bath, Fredric March’s at-home sex orgy, and a coliseum bloodbath that’s the all-time grand slam of pre-code excesses --- it took a lot of sick minds working overtime to dream up this stuff, and all of us should be profoundly grateful for their efforts.

Any pre-code feature with Charles Laughton as Nero is automatically one up on the rest, and here he stretches, yawns, undulates, and sucks his thumb in an uninhibited exhibition of all things we love best in Charlie. That appliance they’ve attached to his nose looks like Chaney’s Quasimodo hump in reverse. In profile, it seems to slope from the top of his forehead, but that’s mere visual icing on a rich slice of histrionic cake. Speaking of costume excesses, Freddie March makes his grand entrance in what appears to be a ponytail as fully luxuriant as any Sandra Dee ever wore, and that lip rouge they’ve painted on his mouth must have been borrowed from Mae West’s vanity case. Claudette Colbert is happily naked in her first scene, bathing in "wild asses’ milk." One immediately ponders the distinction, if any, between wild ass milk, and a similar beverage harvested from a tame ass, though chances are you’ll be angling for a glimpse of Claudette’s, be it tame or wild. I promise there'll be no fiddling with the remote or the Frito bag during this sequence (other than the reverse and still frame options!). Every time she bobs around or splashes that water brings us a little closer to Claudette nirvana, and you’ll think you’re seeing the whole package a few times --- this frame was among the many delightful close calls from a segment where the actress was clearly, and delightfully, nude (they say DeMille doubled up on the takes so he could enjoy multiple views of Claudette entering, and emerging from, her bath --- ready when you are, C.B.!). On the violence front, there’s a Christian massacre where, among other things, a woman gets an arrow in the throat. Now I ask you, how necessary was that? Another Christian, this time a teenage boy, gets dragged into a pit where he undergoes unspecified, but impliedly sexual, off-screen torture. Really twisted, but nothing compared to what goes on in that arena during the sock finish.

The eternal dilemma for any movie involving martyrs is the fact that their oppressors are always more colorful and engaging than the ones we’re supposed to root for and sympathize with. Sign Of The Cross is chock-full of cringing, whining, turn-the-other cheek examples of this. The only arresting thing about this bunch are occasional glimpses we have of both screen neophytes (John Carradine) and seasoned favorites (Charles Middleton) among the weeping multitudes. Just back from the massacre Freddie March brings one of them home with him --- insufferable dishrag Elissa Landi, with whom March is now hopelessly smitten, but for reasons I can’t begin to fathom (you know all through the picture he’s never gonna get this gal into bed). Fred’s supposed to chuck the whole Roman excess trip for love of this vapid simp, but what’s the guy thinking? Here he’s ensconced in a pad that makes the Roxy inner lobby look like a single wide, filled to the rafters with "dancing wantons" (to quote a 1932 observer) and voracious lesbian revelers (that’s one of them attempting a seduction of incorruptible Elissa). Audiences no doubt wondered why any sensible Roman prefect would give all this up for the likes of Elissa Landi. What’s wrong with Lili Damita as a Christian martyr? --- or Louise Brooks, maybe? --- Clara Bow would have been nice --- I could easily accept the idea of Fredric March following Joan Blondell into the lion's den. Sorry, Mr. DeMille, but I think you blew it on casting this time.

This shot that looks like an Amazon cutting the head off a pygmy is actually --- an Amazon cutting the head off a pygmy. It’s just one of a myriad of delights in Nero’s coliseum --- we even get Charlie Gemora, dean of all screen gorilla impersonators (shown here), having his way with (another) nude captive. I always thought Charlie’s ape skin was the coolest in the business --- remember him in Bear Shooters, The Chimp, and Murders In The Rue Morgue? --- now this was some right casting, C.B. 1932 critics noted "the entrancingly sadistic passage limning the approach of a herd of hungry crocodiles waddling to an arena feast of edible, white-fleshed Christian girls." Wow! --- we could all take a lesson in hot prose from this guy! --- and yes, that croc scene’s a doozy, though the Motion Picture Herald suggests it was cut after initial New York screenings --- further evidence to my mind that what we’re now seeing is a version more intact than even the 1932 original. Reviewers assured us that audiences would love the film, "provided their sensibilities survive the odors of Lesbos and deSade." Sounds like a ringing endorsement to me!

The years weren’t kind to Sign Of The Cross. Rigid Code enforcement from 1934 on meant re-issues had to be edited to conform with censorship edicts. Before the decade was out, Sign Of The Cross, still very much an audience favorite, was shorn of everything that made it so much fun to begin with. No crocs, nor beheadings --- lesbians out --- nix on milk bath nipple flashes. Might as well go see an Andy Hardy or stay home and play with the crystal set. By 1944, it got worse. DeMille modestly suggested that a revival of Sign Of The Cross might help bring down the Third Reich (comparisons between Nero and Hitler, you know), so Paramount gave him 125K to shoot a whole new prologue wherein bomber pilots flying over Rome reflect upon its decadent past, thus segueing into the old footage, now mutilated beyond the point of recognition, though exhibitors did report boffo attendance. The "modernized version" went out with a new campaign that emphasized Claudette Colbert --- notice her elevated billing for the new ads as compared with her 1932 placement behind Elissa Landi, whose career was pretty well done and over by 1944. DeMille promised that Claudette’s milk bath would remain intact for the re-issue, and no doubt moments of it did, but only viewers with stout memories could detect the judicious trimming imposed by anxious wartime censors. This 1944 edition, with new intro and outro, was the one that remained in circulation for decades thereafter, and this was what many of us saw on television --- until 1994 when the lost original was discovered. Now it’s the 1944 version that’s lost. I’d actually like to see it again for the sake of comparison, but I wouldn’t have expected Universal to include it as an extra. We should be grateful enough just to have Sign Of The Cross back in (possibly more than) complete form.

Monday Glamour Starter --- Gloria Jean

Quick --- can anyone name a Gloria Jean film they’ve seen other than Never Give A Sucker An Even Break? For that matter, how many people have even heard of Gloria Jean outside a select, aging group of hardened buffs? Notice I said "buffs", a term I’ve always hated, but those who call themselves "historians" have never bothered much with the Gloria Jeans of the business, and that’s too bad, because the Gloria Jeans are what the business has always been about. They’re the unsung reliables. The ones people liked to see and paid to see. Gloria’s misfortune lay in the fact that her movies reflected popular fads of the day --- jitterbug, high school (before it became a Blackboard Jungle), summer camp --- so many artifacts of popular culture that seem very remote now. Gloria didn’t get into any big pictures, other than the one with Fields, and what’s worse, most of her stuff was done for Universal, so it’s presently locked away in storage same as for the last forty years. Scott and Jan MacGillivray are historians --- yes, historians --- who decided to write a book --- no, the book --- on Gloria Jean, and it’s one of the best up-and-down the stardom ladder sagas I’ve ever read. Finally, someone takes an actress who’s been ignored too long and tells her story with insight and affection. Gloria participated through the whole thing. She’s eighty this year and lays it on the line about her star years and the ones that followed. For a while during the late thirties/early forties, it looked as though she’d be the next Deanna Durbin. Ten years later, she couldn’t get one-time show-biz pals to return her calls. Once the brightest light among Universal's musical teens, she wound up a receptionist for a laboratory that sold hair products. If you go to e-bay right now, you’ll find her auctions for stills and autographs. Gloria and her sister manage the sales. The MacGillivrays set up a website for Gloria as well. You can go THERE and e-mail her. Go HERE and you can get the book. I’d strongly recommend both.



Deanna Durbin couldn’t have been happy to see thirteen year old Gloria Jean coming through the Universal gates in 1939 to star in an "A" musical designed very much along Durbin formula lines, with Deanna’s own ace producer, Joe Pasternak, at the helm. The Under-Pup was indeed what the title suggested, a diminutive soprano nipping at Durbin’s heels, and a ready substitute should Deanna become recalcitrant. The older actress doesn’t seem altogether into the spirit of this otherwise happy celebration of Gloria’s contract signing. In fact, Deanna reminds me a little of Daffy that time his master brought the duckling home and decided it "could have the old duck’s room." There was little cause for worry, however, because Gloria was reassigned to the B unit soon enough, where teenage musicals were turned out like so many link sausages. Co-stars included the likes of Donald O’ Connor, Mel Torme, and Peggy Ryan. There were also players I couldn’t pick in a line-up, even though they were recognized in their day --- Ray Malone? Betty McCabe? Never heard of ‘em till I read this book, but they sang and danced right alongside Gloria. Universal "B" headliners also included Susanna (Phantom Of The Opera) Foster and Ann (Mildred Pierce) Blyth. Reading about these little musicals makes me want to see them --- but how? Maybe there’s occasional bootlegs on e-bay, but otherwise these things are nowhere. As far as I know, the last time anybody had any access to them was maybe the seventies, and I suspect they were largely off television even then. It’s frustrating when whole blocks of interesting movies simply disappear, but that seems to have been what happened here. I doubt if anyone at Universal today has ever heard of them, so you can imagine the chances of a DVD release.


Much as I enjoyed reading the MacGillivray’s account of Gloria Jean’s early days at Universal, it’s those post-war struggle years that put the big transfix on me. I’ve always been a sucker for lowdown show biz at its cruelest stories, and this book has some doozies. Those Hollywood predators Gloria warded off during the fifties are like a tag-team of Stephen Boyd in The Oscar and George Peppard in The Carpetbaggers. No wonder she finally got out! Fans of Jerry Lewis will find the star living down to his reputation in Gloria’s riveting story of how he screwed her over on a hoped-for comeback in 1961’s The Ladies Man. The authors even put the finished movie under a microscope and revealed the scenes wherein Gloria is fleetingly visible --- that's Gloria walking toward a bathtub here in a blink and you’ll miss it moment from the show. Jerry had promised GJ a singing part and ended up making her a glorified extra. His (mis) treatment of Gloria and others are recounted in detail, providing one more justification for my ongoing disinterest in ever meeting the guy (would have been great shaking hands with Dean, though!). The sickly sweet smell of institutionalized Hollywood corruption is revealed in Gloria’s account of the four thousand dollar application fee that was paid for her star on the Walk Of Fame (it was a gift from co-workers upon her retirement from the lab), which was then deep-sixed and the money kept. Remember that the next time you tread those fabled boulevards. It was probably her strong family relationships that assured happy endings for Gloria. Throughout the book, she comes across as very sensible and grounded, something we seldom get here at the Glamour Starter, where desperation, despair, and old-age isolation often as not make up the third act for personalities featured. Nice to have one where it doesn’t. Certainly she's the first we’ve profiled that you can e-mail today and likely receive a personal reply.






Bill Fields was a benign presence on the set of Never Give A Sucker An Even Break, according to Gloria. The MacGillivrays give us the best and most detailed account of its filming that we could hope for, and the insights into Fields, both personally and professionally, are outstanding. This trade ad illustrates how Gloria was getting a studio boost almost the equal of Bill’s --- fact is he wanted to work with her again, characterizing GJ as the daughter he’d never had. Must have been lonely at times for The Great Man. This tea party is one hosted by GJ’s idol, Basil Rathbone (that’s cool, Gloria --- he’s mine too!). They’re on the set of The Black Cat (wish they’d invited Bela). Do you suppose that’s really tea in Brod Crawford’s cup? Probably so --- he doesn’t look too enthusiastic about it. The swimsuit poses began in earnest when Gloria turned eighteen in 1944. They never pushed the cheesecake stuff too hard at Universal, but here’s evidence they certainly could have. Hey, I’d take Gloria over a lot of what did get pasted on barrack walls during that war. She also had nice things to say about Groucho Marx, her Copacabana co-star (ad shown here). The MacGillivray book has a raft of stills from Gloria Jean’s personal collection, including a lot of really obscure appearances that were totally unknown until research for the book revealed their existence.

A Gathering Of Laughton Admirers


If you’re a regular visitor to Greenbriar Picture Shows, this group will need no introduction. I suspect Charles Laughton was working on The Caine Mutiny Court Martial at the time this group photo was made, and these backstage well wishers are gathered with Laughton and two of his Broadway cast members, Lloyd Nolan and Henry Fonda. That was 1953. Tyrone Power, Ann Baxter, and Raymond Massey would work with Laughton the same year in his stage adaptation of John Brown’s Body. A year later, The Caine Mutiny on screen would feature Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg (Nolan’s part in the play) and Fred MacMurray in Fonda’s role. Two years after this photo was taken, John Hodiak would die suddenly (in October 1955). Dick Powell undoubtedly worked with several of these players in his capacity as a television producer of dramatic anthologies. Charles Laughton’s talents as a director were such that every one wanted to work with him. His own stage appearances and dramatic readings were generally recognized as works of genius. He did movies like Abbott and Costello Meets Captain Kidd in order to finance these ventures. He would go on to direct Night Of The Hunter in 1955. Laughton would say at the end of his life that his chief regret in dying was the fact that he would no longer be able to enjoy the arts, and there was still so much he hadn’t seen or read. What a talent.

A Little 1934 Reminder For Patrons

Heralds were small inserts that used to come in newspapers or go in grocery bags. Sometimes they went out in the mail. Theatres used to order heralds by the thousands and spread them all over town. If you were shopping during the week of April 15-21, 1934 in Sidney, N.Y., chances are exhibitor W.T. Webb somehow got this flyer into your basket. Check out his reference to the magazine saturation for It Happened One Night, as well as a radio broadcast two months earlier in which the film was featured. I like the local high school teacher’s endorsement of Eskimo --- note how they refer to him as "professor" --- none of my H.S. instructors were ever accorded such respect! Finally, we have the assurance of a "clean and well ventilated" theatre, at a time when Spring and Summer months could mean suffocating heat for audiences.

The Popeye Specials

There were 234 Popeye cartoons released to theatres between 1933 and 1957. Back then, you got them once a month, if that. Most of us that grew up with Popeye on television saw them in big dollops of an hour or more. That’s a minimum of six spinach helpings and goodness knows how many fistic exchanges between Popeye and Bluto. Some stations would play them on a kind of endless loop where it felt as though you were watching a single, never-ending cartoon. Even as a youngster, I would sometimes find myself yelling out to the hapless sailor, "Eat your damn spinach, and let’s get on with it!" Ship doors opening and closing in the credits meant a good one --- anything else, watch out. Those with King Features titles were to be avoided. Original Paramount logos were unheard of. For all we knew, these were made by "AAP", just like pre-48 Warner cartoons (or at the very least, they participated). The idea of a two-reel "Popeye Special" was quite unheard of when our stations played the package. Being 16-17 minutes in length, these three odd specimens were sometimes shelved altogether by stations disinclined to amend schedules accustomed to the conventional running time of six to seven minutes for cartoons. I once knew a UHF program director who purchased the complete Popeye group, only to extract Sindbad, Ali Baba, and Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp --- consigning them to a remote shelf where viewers would never see them. Indifference toward these remarkable subjects even extended itself to the owner’s failure to renew copyrights, and all three wound up in the public domain. Who at Paramount during the 1930’s would have dreamed these prestigious, and immensely popular, cartoon specials would come to such an ignominious finish?


This theatre marquee will give you an idea of Popeye’s considerable following during that first decade after his introduction in 1933. He was a pure sensation from the moment of entering the scene with that soon-to-be-heard-in-every-schoolyard theme song, and the proliferation of Saturday morning "Popeye Clubs" in movie houses across the nation would confirm his almost deified status. Not since Mickey Mouse had a cartoon character done this. Exhibitors were beginning to express a preference for the Paramount series over Disney's beloved mouse as Popeye-crazed kids stormed the boxoffice for each new subject. This was beyond a mere fad, as adults loved him too. Even Disney had never attempted an extended length cartoon, but in 1936, Max Fleischer would. The creator of Popeye had invented a three-dimensional platform with a patented turntable process that would allow you to shoot cartoons in a way that would suggest depth and detail unheard of in animated films (the device shown here). While characters moved in the foreground, objects behind them occupied multiple levels of placement that made you feel as though the cartoon itself were being projected in 3-D. Fleischer used the process with black-and-white cartoons for a couple of years, but it was the 1936 special, Popeye Meets Sindbad The Sailor, that really blew audiences away. Clocking in at sixteen plus minutes, Sindbad also featured a peppy score, more than lavish Technicolor animation (Popeye’s first in color), and the usual wit that made these subjects a crowd favorite. Paramount expressed its confidence with the sort of elaborate trade ads seldom bestowed upon short subjects, and Sindbad was to be regarded in every way as something very special.



Max Fleischer was producing the Popeyes at a studio facility in New York. A lot of animation historians credit that setting with the gritty "street" feel these rough-and-tumble cartoons share. There's a nice grungy flavor about NY Popeyes you can’t help but notice when you watch a string of them. Anyway, the rough-and-tumble intruded upon Max by way of serious union trouble that threatened to shut down the whole operation, so Fleischer decamped to sunny Florida where unions were discouraged and slave wages were the order of the day. Much of the quality now suffered by a combination of Disney’s continued pillaging of Max’s best animators, and an overall dearth of talented artists. The relocated studio (its comfortable digs shown here) was forced to hire local art students, who got a crash course in cartooning when years of careful training was ongoing order of the day at rival Disney’s. Was it any wonder Max’s stuff suffered so in comparison to Walt’s? The second two-reel special, Popeye Meets Ali Baba, was another bell-ringer with the public (check out these exhibitor announcements), but the third and last of them, Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp, was a step down, having been done on Floridian premises. The amazing success of Disney’s Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs inspired a flurry of Paramount memos directing Max Fleischer to quick- manufacture a facsimile of same, and Gulliver’s Travels was the unhappy result. Even if Fleischer hadn’t set out so brazenly to copy the Disney model, he’d still have run them a hopeless second in terms of technical proficiency, thanks to that largely amateur staff he’d been forced to utilize. A Gulliver’s Travels at 65 or so minutes with Popeye in the lead might have been fun, if the two-reelers were any indication, but Paramount wanted prestige first-run bookings, and their directives to Fleischer were non-negotiable. Sad to say, there would be no more Popeye specials. Indeed, Paramount would take over the animation unit altogether within a couple more years, and the Fleischers would be out. They’d never see a dime of residuals from all the cartoons they’d sweated to make.



You can’t really see those three Popeye specials in anything like their original beauty nowadays. The usual ownership turf wars have put them all neatly on ice --- something about a squawk between Warners and King Features. If you just want to look at and hear these subjects, it’s easy enough to do that, and at no charge, on any one of a dozen free internet downloads where dreadful P.D. prints have been stored for an uncertain posterity. VCI has a nice DVD double-disc of public domain Popeye cartoons, including the three specials. They look as good there as I’ve ever seen them. Jerry Beck reported on Cartoon Brew the other day that MOMA was running Aladdin’s Lamp in a brand-new Warners restoration that promised to be wonderful. Too bad WB can’t get all of the Popeyes out in their own box set. As good as these things are, it’s a shame that the business of restoring and presenting them has to fall to private collectors and enthusiasts when all those original elements (or what’s left of them) are just evaporating on studio shelves. Bravo to VCI and others who have made the effort of preserving and sharing those Popeyes that have fallen into the public domain (and a surprising number of them have).

Update: Well, here's an old posting now happily obsolete as to unavailability of quality Popeye on DVD. Since May 18, 2006 when I wrote this, we've seen all the early Popeye shorts, including the color specials, released by Warners, with the promise of more to come.

The Bitter Tea Of Errol Flynn

Never a candidate for top echelon standing among Errol Flynn vehicles, Northern Pursuit will no doubt maintain it’s two-and-a-half-star status (if that) in the rating books, while the Robin Hoods and Sea Hawks continue to gather well-earned plaudits --- yet if I were obliged to confine my future Flynn viewing to only one of his movies, Northern Pursuit would be it for me. The why of this lies in what I consider to be the most extraordinary performance of this actor’s career --- one that revealed the scars of a humiliating, and very public, trial for statutory rape in which he narrowly averted an active prison sentence. Errol Flynn was another of those actors who thankfully played themselves. Sparing us phony accents and putty noses, this generation of leading men stood before the mirror of their own sometimes complicated and always dramatic personal lives, revealing more of themselves to their audience than actors of succeeding generations would ever dare. My own advancing age increases my respect for these guys --- soldiering on despite career declines, tumultuous marriages, alcohol abuse --- all of it’s right up there on the screen. Sure, Errol Flynn’s great when he’s riding high in Dodge City or Charge Of The Light Brigade (or here with Olivia DeHavilland in a publicity pose for Captain Blood), but greater for me when he lets go the reins of conventional star deportment and allows the id to run loose. Northern Pursuit works best if you’ve read the Flynn bio. Thomas McNulty has written a good one recently. TCM shows the movie quite a lot. If things had gone differently with that L.A. jury, Northern Pursuit might never have been made at all ….




Errol Flynn’s father was the professorial type. In fact, he was a well-respected scholar and instructor in his day. When he wasn’t raising hell and bagging starlets, Errol wanted to be scholarly too. His pre-war image was that of a real-life adventurer --- Olympic boxing (total B.S.), veteran of the classical stage (but where?), private school education (and thrown out of several). All of that suited his soldier of fortune image, but Flynn liked best those earnest young man profiles that found him home with pipe and book, typing away at his latest novel or magazine article. Much of this was actually on the level, and there was a published chronicle of his sea-going adventures, Beam Ends, which appeared in 1937 to generally good reception. Playing truant from Warners that same year, Errol went to Spain as a "war correspondent" to check out the civil war there, and was reported killed at least twice. This was authentic Robin Hood stuff as far as fans were concerned, and it did much to enhance Flynn’s reputation as a thinking man of action. Temptation came by way of sometimes bad company he kept and the compromising situations he fairly hurled himself into. By the war’s opener, Errol Flynn could scarcely boast the constitution of a man twice his age, having weathered, but barely, the recurring assaults of malaria, tuberculosis, and heart disease (here he is training for Gentleman Jim --- he would suffer a mild coronary during the shoot). There was no way this guy was going into uniform, even if he’d wanted to, and my impression of Errol is that he felt some ambivalence about the whole patriotic thing anyway, owing perhaps to citizen-of-the-world status he’d been enjoying for a number of years. With democracy’s future hanging in the balance, he picked a hell of a time to go weekend sailing with underage girls, for this was where his positive off-screen image would have its burial at sea.



The statutory rape charge was almost certainly a frame. Warners had supported the wrong candidate in a recent election for district attorney, and now the winning team was poised to exact revenge. Errol Flynn was the softest target on the lot (here he is in the courtroom with noted attorney Jerry Geisler on the left). The two girls offered by the prosecution weren’t exactly finishing school types. One look at their clownish demeanor and the predominately female jury members were more than ready to check the acquittal box on their verdict sheet. Flynn was off the hook for three felonies, and the look of exhausted relief is there for all to see as he pauses to shake hands with a well wisher while leaving the courthouse. That was February 6, 1943. The Errol Flynn of yore was gone now, and he’d not be back. Audiences viewed him not as a hero, but a rascal. No longer laughing with him, now they’d laugh at him. The actor who’d once shared the viewing stand at a horse show with President Roosevelt (shown here with Flynn) was now at a crossroads. Would he make a sincere effort to rehabilitate and restore his image, or submit to the public’s mockery of him? Unfortunately, Flynn chose the latter. Linda Christian, his live-in during the trial (that’s her in the bathing suit) would later tell of how he’d party it up with jokers on the night club circuit (the jokes at his expense, of course), then suddenly retreat back home to sit out the brooding night in alcohol-fueled despair. He was a social pariah among the better Hollywood folk, and it wasn’t long before bitterness set in.




Desperate Journey and Gentleman Jim went into release during that black autumn. Flynn was buoyant and full of life in both. The unintended laughter that rose up among audience members began shortly after his arrest in November of 1942. By Spring the following year, Warners was reassured that Errol’s public still wanted him, but did Errol necessarily want them? One look at Northern Pursuit provided the answer. Gone was the effortless charm, the sense of fun and belief in romance. The hero of Sherwood Forest and Little Big Horn was edgy, intense beyond the demands of an otherwise formulaic part he’d have played in a restful sleep the year before. Now there was hardness and a temper bent toward violent expression that must have shocked fans of the previously relaxed Flynn they thought they knew. He seldom smiles in Northern Pursuit (note these stills and even the poster art). When he stands there and denounces Tom Tully (Flynn’s a Canadian mountie and Tully doubts his loyalty), Flynn's not just playing a scene---he's back on the witness stand in downtown L.A., only this time he doesn't have to be humble and subdued as he was for the jurors---it's a riveting moment. And there's more. Watch how Flynn kicks the camera out of that reporter's hand after he's been disgraced from the service---that's no act---Flynn looks like he wants to kill the guy for real. Northern Pursuit is truly where Errol Flynn’s life merged with his art. Uncertain Glory, The Adventures Of Don Juan, Silver River, The Master Of Ballantrae, Too Much --- Too Soon --- all these would track the personal, but not professional, decline from there. For all the drink, drugs, and failed relationships, Errol Flynn never failed his audience. For those who knew where to look, he offered nothing less than a wide-open window into an often tormented soul.

Home Theatre In The Thirties


This is a private screening room in the home of RKO star Ann Harding. The picture was taken in 1934. Just in case anyone thinks home theatres are a recent phenomenon, I’ll repeat that date --- 1934. For all I know, Miss Harding might have just ordered up a double-feature of brand new releases for this evening’s show --- The Black Cat and Tarzan and His Mate perhaps? How about The Thin Man and It Happened One Night? Either of those combos would suit me. They say big stars had their pick of studio product to bring home for private shows. Check out the stats on Ann’s personal Bijou --- two 35mm projectors at $10,000 each --- a viewing area twenty feet wide with a sixty foot throw from the booth to the screen --- electronically operated, hand-painted stage curtain. How could the woman drag herself away from all this to report to work, let alone eat or sleep? Others in Hollywood no doubt had their own miniature picture palaces, but the caption here suggests that Ann Harding’s was "the finest privately owned theater in the United States." Those chairs look substantial enough to have survived to this day. Could they possibly be adorning some latter-day screening nook?

Walt Disney's Babes In Toyland

Walking the Greenway last week, I ran into a woman I’ve known most of my life, and she asked me where she could find a copy of Disney’s Babes In Toyland. I told her they were all over Amazon, and we parted upon her vow to have one of these. A few steps distant, I turned and called after her --- "When did you first see Babes In Toyland?" She didn’t have to answer. I knew. "Back when it came out and I was eight years old…" was her immediate reply, "… and I’ve always loved it!" Well, how can you argue with that? Never mind that it’s critically reviled. Star Tommy Sands told me once at a Courts Autograph Show that he fell asleep at the premiere. Even Walt himself was aghast when they first screened it for him --- but there’s no arguing with the cherished memories of one who once was eight and found him/herself entranced with this Christmas 1961 musical event. Any of us alive at that time are certain to remember the massive campaign that heralded its forthcoming release. Babes In Toyland is the first movie I remember being bombarded with. Indeed, I think it was the most extensive promotion of a live-action feature Disney had attempted up to that time, and I’m not forgetting his 1954 juggernaut, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. By 1961, the studio had evolved into a model of marketing efficiency --- which makes all the more sobering the fact that this time they were peddling bad merchandise --- and knew it.



There’s a scene in The Bad and The Beautiful where the movie producer anti-hero, played by Kirk Douglas, watches his just completed (and dreadful) latest effort in a private projection room with his staff. At the end, there’s utter silence. Kirk finally announces he’ll shelve the million-dollar disaster rather than release such a thing with his name on it. His minions raise spirited protest, but Kirk is determined to stand the loss rather than sacrifice his integrity. According to staffers, this is almost precisely the scene that played out for real at the Disney studios when Babes In Toyland was first shown to Walt --- minus the talk of shelving and discussions about integrity. With millions sunk into this fetid well, there was no way he could deep-six Babes In Toyland. "Well, I guess Disney just doesn’t know how to make musicals" was Walt’s crisp summation as he quietly left the screening and its abashed audience of company employees. It was now their unpleasant duty to mount an unprecedented nationwide push for a movie that all but required the services of a fumigator to clear the air of its stench. The final receipts added up to roughly half of what the company had realized for The Shaggy Dog, a black-and-white comedy that had gone out with far less expectations, but the ultimate failure of Babes In Toyland, both commercial and artistic, need not deter us. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the campaign for this movie that enshrines it among the immortals …


Walt Disney’s Wonderful World Of Color had just premiered in the Fall of 1961 on NBC. Television saturation for Babes In Toyland began on November 13 for a December 14 release date. This would be Disney’s big Christmas release. One entire episode of the NBC series was dedicated to it. Backstage Party featured an avuncular Walt hosting a wrap gathering for Babes In Toyland with most of the cast (including Tommy Sands brazenly enjoying a cigarette!) and liberal samplings from the movie. Broadcast on December 17, 1961, Backstage Party was the first Disney program on the peacock network to specifically hawk a new theatrical release. Needless to say, the audience for a color NBC telecast was considerably larger than the lesser numbers previously delivered by ABC (television programmers today can only dream of the mass audience networks used to routinely attract in those days). Merchandising tie-ups for Babes In Toyland were staggering both in number and variety. The samples I’ve illustrated are mere drops in an ocean of bric-a-brac. The biggest coup for Disney had to be their alliance with Sears for its Christmas Wishbook. Those of you around back then no doubt remember the Wishbook. For every kid with a Santa list, this was where you went to fill it. Babes In Toyland had four pages of coverage. As you can see, every conceivable toy and accessory is there for the asking. Beyond the Sears line, there were books, multiple records, both albums and singles, Viewmaster reels, clothing, board games --- I checked ebay and there’s lots of Babes In Toyland stuff up for auction even as we speak. I guess those landfills could only hold so much at any given time. Has forty-five years been long enough to get rid of all this stuff?



Critics called it Babes In Disneyland. One review said it was all frosting with no cake underneath. They complained that it had no heart --- too mechanical --- there was no danger, no tension, no threat. I read all this before watching Disney's austere DVD (presented in full-frame despite the company’s 1961 directive to showmen that it be presented in 1:75 to 1 --- and no extras). It was tough sledding at times, but putting myself in the place of a child going with family and friends on an outing to the movies in 1961, I can understand how the color and pageantry of the thing would make quite an impression. The fact it panders in such an antiseptic and non-threatening way to the target "family" audience is at least partial explanation for its being so despised today. You really had to be there to stomach this one, and even little kids might go into a hyper-active exit dance after sitting through yet another production number that looks like something that might have opened a typical Jackie Gleason Show. Annette Funicello is plenty fine to look at, but a singer she’s not, and the "double-tracking" they did on her thin voice makes her sound like one of those space aliens addressing Hugh Marlowe in Earth vs. The Flying Saucers. The love scenes between she and Tommy Sands are so chaste as to be ludicrous, and Tom’s standard issue teen idol model, by way of Fabian, Frankie, and a dozen other sexless ciphers, is evidence Disney had no idea how to handle this kind of personality. Ed Wynn, with a neutered Tommy Kirk as his assistant, doesn’t get on until the second half, and a little of him, even in the best of circumstances, will get you to that saturation point quick. Principal villain Ray Bolger is anything but --- if he were any less menacing, he’d be taking pratfalls with woeful comics Henry Calvin and Gene Sheldon (come to think of it, he does). These two guys do nothing other than evoke far more agreeable memories of Laurel and Hardy in the 1934 Babes In Toyland --- as for Calvin, he’d remain our most brazen, and ineffective, Oliver Hardy imitator until Alan Hale, Jr. came along to steal those honors with Gilligan’s Island. That "haunted forest" is about as scary as a petting zoo, and the wrap-up, with toy soldiers attacking a laughing Ray Bolger, amounts to a tepid climax. For all of this, I can still sympathize with my friend Jenny and her fond memories of Babes In Toyland. I only hope seeing it again won’t prove too disillusioning for her. Some childhood memories are best left undisturbed.

Monday Glamour Starter --- Doris Day

I could be very much mistaken, but it would seem to me that Doris Day was the biggest and longest running above-the-title female star in all of talking pictures. I’d add the "talking" qualifier as it would be a bit reckless to place Doris above Mary Pickford, who’s probably the all-time champ of the lot, but it’s interesting that two personalities with somewhat overlapping images appear to share that upper berth. I’ve tried to think of a candidate that outranks Doris. If we’re talking post-war names, I don’t think anyone comes close. Betty Grable was as big when she was big --- trouble is, she wasn’t as big for as long, and besides, Grable was effectively finished by 1955. Doris Day was still carrying features in 1968. Elizabeth Taylor was around for at least as many decades, but how many of them had her playing leads, and how many pictures actually revolved around her, as opposed to the leading men playing opposite her? There were major female attractions along the lines of Marilyn Monroe, Susan Hayward, Audrey Hepburn --- but they were never the kind of money stars to rank with Day. Even pre-war titans like Davis, Crawford, and Hepburn were far less reliable at the ticket window. They all experienced slumps, and none enjoyed the boxoffice consistency of Doris Day. Her near unbroken string of hits from her debut in 1948 until her retirement from features two decades later appears to be a record. Did anyone equal, or surpass it? Possibly I’m forgetting a major name that one of you will surprise me with, so by all means, surprise me.




There’s something kinda cool about a big star who walks away while she’s still on top and never comes back again. You have to respect a move like that. Deanna Durbin did it. She sang too. So did Betty Hutton, and she walked. Could it be they just got tired of having to stop the show? Sick of being perky and effervescent? Doris Day has spent the last thirty-five years pampering dogs. She fixes them gourmet dinners --- with her own hands. Her last husband bailed because she preferred sleeping with the hounds (no, it wasn’t like that). She runs a hotel that’s furnished with dog and cat beds in every room. Must be a bitch having to pull maid service in that joint. I checked the fan sites and got the feeling none of them ever hear from Doris. Has anyone out there sent her a fan letter --- and gotten a reply? She’s 82 or so now. If I ever visited Carmel, California (her residence), I’d probably be checking that (dog) hotel lobby for Doris, or hoping to run into her at the super market. When stars retire to small towns, we tend to assume that if we ever went there, we’d certainly encounter them on the street. Wonder why that is. They say Doris’ love of animals came about as a result of her disillusionment with men. The ones she married seem to have been a dreadful lot. The first of these rotters was a band musician, and part-time "schizophrenic sadist", that beat her up on the honeymoon. If they’d filmed The Doris Day Story in the fifties, Ray Danton or Steve Cochran would have played him. One night after they split, the guy pulled up to a stoplight, took out a pistol, and blew his brains out. Imagine sitting behind him waiting for that light to change and seeing a thing like that. Two hubbies later, it was Marty Melcher, who systematically robbed Doris over the twenty plus they were together and left her impoverished. He also made her do lousy pictures, like Julie and It Happened To Jane. He’d make the deals, then tell her about it. After Marty died, there was the guy that didn’t like dogs in the bed, then Xanadu --- just Doris and her menagerie behind secured walls and guarded entrances. As you and I sleep in the early mornings, the star of Pillow Talk and Love Me Or Leave Me is up fixing breakfast for dozens, if not hundreds, of dogs. Do you suppose during those years of stardom she could have seen this coming?


To refresh my memory of Doris, I watched a few of the movies. My favorites are the early ones she did for Mike Curtiz . That’s him directing Doris in her first at Warners, Romance On The High Seas. If I were Doris, I’d be very much afraid of that leviathan of a Technicolor camera hovering over me, cause if that thing falls, she’s powder. Really good show though, as is another one, My Dream Is Yours, which found her romantically paired with Jack Carson for the second time straight (what is it about Jack that makes him so unlikely a leading man?). It’s A Great Feeling was a "Two Guys" comedy with Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson, trying to do for WB what Bing and Bob were doing for Paramount. It isn’t likely we’ll get any Two Guys box sets from Warner Home Video, but these are still good shows, and Great Feeling is loaded with in-joke attitude and big-name cameos. Young Man With A Horn surprisingly put Doris in third position behind Kirk Douglas and Lauren Bacall. I have the same complaint about this one as I do with every genius-who’s-also-an-alcoholic movie. You get all the good music during the first half rise-to-the-top, followed by a sit through agonizing gutter wallows with a hero too dissipated to play anymore, waiting for someone to rehabilitate him/her, so we can hear good music once more before the end (a senario repeated of late with the Johnny Cash bio --- I thought they’d never get him straightened out!). Lullaby Of Broadway is a lesser Doris Day, thanks largely to S.Z. Sakall in "Cuddles" mode whose every entrance and exit is punctuated by irritating tuba themes, comic "stinger" puncuation cueing us to laugh where we otherwise wouldn’t. Well-meaning David Butler was no Vincente Minnelli either. Doris raised Jack Warner’s dander by telling Bob Thomas how she longed to do classy MGM musicals rather than formula clap-trap as assigned by WB. Calamity Jane shows you what she meant. Some good songs, and she’s great, but this and the others suffer in comparison to rival Metros budget-wise, hobbled by recycled sets and overly familiar locations. When Doris approached a backlot theatre front, I expected to see Henry Jarrod’s paddle-ball man come up from behind (that’s Doris on the set with Butler and a visiting Governor and party).




On Moonlight Bay had echoes of Meet Me In St.Louis, even down to casting Leon Ames in yet another flustered patriarch role. Doris referred to Warner make-up artists as "embalmers" --- and they do cake it on thick --- she’s actually more attractive playing against the glamour in tomboy attire (as seen here with Ames) or as pre-transformation Calamity Jane. Whenever they tried to doll her up, she looked waxen and starchy perfect. Note that soundstage backdrop for Young At Heart with Frank Sinatra, a would-be Currier and Ives setting that must have seemed as dated in 1954 as it does today. Her emergence in a class musical, Love Me Or Leave Me, came not a moment too soon. It’s almost a shock to see Doris Day so glum here --- almost bitter at times, but that’s what the not altogether sympathetic part called for, and she’s to be admired for leaving off the glad-girl shtick for what might be her best performance. The Pajama Game was back at Warners, but it was a big step up from the David Butler/Gordon Douglas projects. Major career rejuvenation came with the sex comedies that began with Pillow Talk (although Teacher’s Pet certainly pointed the way), and these kept her going right up to the retirement party. Rock Hudson was so good in ones he did with Doris that even Cary Grant had a hard time measuring up as romantic dueling partner in That Touch Of Mink (here they are with cameo guests Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris). A television series she did for five years in the late sixties was all smiling moppets and sweet old Grandpas. For a kid fourteen into Hammer Films and The Wild Bunch, these things were anathema to me, but Doris must have been doing something right, for here they are announced for release on DVD this summer.

Your Favorite Cowboys In Person!


As you might imagine, cowboys were always a big deal down here where I live, so a live appearance by one or more of them was cause for much jubilation --- and crowded parking lots. Gene Autry was all done with westerns by 1956, theatrical and TV, but hoss-opera fans have long memories, and this live Autry show at the Memorial Coliseum in Winston-Salem was major news, especially with Gail (Annie Oakley) Davis sharing the bill. Whip Wilson was a marginal name at best, but hey, for nine cents, I might watch my next-door neighbor do a stage turn if there’s a screen show to go with it (but who ever heard of Missing Women? --- that’s a new one on me!). The Gunsmoke cast, minus Matt, must have lured a lot of first-timers to that horse show. Personally, I never cared for them (horse shows, I mean, not Chester, Kitty, and Doc), but I’d even risk getting my shoes ruined if I could corner old Milburn Stone and ask him what it was like working with Lon Chaney, Jr. in The Frozen Ghost. Bet they were sick of looking at (and smelling) those steeds after three days, but I guess it was no worse than sharing an asphyxiating Hollywood sound stage with them.

Here In Person!


It’s a balmy New York summer in 1932, and we’ve come to the station to greet visiting Warner celebs Bette Davis and Warren William as they arrive for a personal appearance at the Strand. Talk about workhorses! These two never get a rest. Between six-day a week schedules, overlapping film assignments, and non-stop stills and publicity, now they’re clocking 3000 miles on the Chief. Just thinking about it makes me want to reach for the Valium. Maybe the engine that kept these two running was shared memories of what it was like to be hungry --- I mean hungry for food, not stardom --- I suspect that’s what drove all those Warner contractees. So what if you collapse with exhaustion from time to time? At least the audience got their money’s worth. Hey, I’d part with thirty-five cents to watch Warren William and Bette Davis live on stage introducing Bill Powell and Kay Francis in Jewel Robbery anyday! Wonder what kind of skit Bette and Warren performed … you suppose they took questions from the audience? I remember Bette saying once how unnerving it was to go on the 42nd Street junket (same year as this). Every time they stopped that cross-country train, she and the rest of the glamorous movie stars came face to face with poverty-stricken depression-wrought faces looking up at the platform. Even after all those decades had passed, the recollection of it creeped her out.

The Elusive Charley Chase

Charley Chase was never an easy comedian to track down. Television exposure of his short subjects was virtually non-existent from the beginning. They were syndicated in the early fifties, but I’ve never spoken to anyone who saw any of them. We certainly never had them down here when I was growing up. About the only way you could see Charley was in one of those Robert Youngson comedy compilations, or on 8mm home movies from Blackhawk Films. Youngson devoted a third of his Four Clowns in 1970 to Chase, but by then it was really too little and too late. To this day, Charley Chase languishes in a no-man’s-land of stored and forgotten negatives --- his talkie output and a number of silents are presently hoarded by the Hallmark Card company, and they’ve got about as much interest in Charley Chase as I have in Britney Spears (did I spell that right?). The only ones you can lay your hands on are public domain shorts originally released by Pathe in the mid-twenties, and Kino Video has done nicely by these in two volumes they've so far released on DVD. To be sure, Chase’s output is a mixed bag. Some of the comedies are gems, some are pretty appalling. Like a lot of other technicians in those days, Charley had deadlines to meet. Sometimes the work met standards, and sometimes it didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t Chaplin, Lloyd, or Keaton (damn those unfair comparisons again!), but Chase deserves a lot better than the obscurity he’s got, and even though I fear he’ll never get the recognition he has coming, there’s still a lot to like for those of us willing to claim membership among a particularly rarified viewing niche.




Like a lot of up-from-nothing performers in those days, Charlie Chase played hometown street corners before small-time vaudeville took him out on the road. Ever notice how easy it was for people to leave home and strike out on their own in those days (well, I'm sure it wasn't easy)? Not like now where guys in their thirties still live in their parent’s basement. Anyway, Charley ends up with Al Christie, then Mack Sennett, and finally Hal Roach. He works with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd at the very beginnings of their careers. You can see him in some of those frenzied Chaplin Keystones where he’s a dapper young man always getting splattered with something gooey and repulsive. It must have been depressing for these young guys to have nice suits ruined like that. When I watch Charley take a pie, or go head-first off a pier, I always wonder if his wardrobe was provided to him, or if that’s his personal attire getting drenched. Hard for me to picture Mack Sennett picking up a dry-cleaning bill for a struggling beginner. Chase finally gets to wear dry clothes when he goes to Roach as a director. Walrus-mustachioed types like Snub Pollard get the benefit of Charley’s seasoned way with gags. Chase would say later that a good man with comedy was the one with a good memory, for even the clammiest routines could be re-cycled every seven years as new generations entered the viewing marketplace. Is it coincidence then that Disney would later re-issue its animated classics on approximately the same schedule? Chase clearly observed that rule throughout his career, as much of his talkie stuff was reworked from the silents. But for the departure of Harold Lloyd from Roach, Charley might have stayed behind the camera, but they needed a Lloyd type to cover the loss, so he got a starring series beginning in 1923.




It always seemed to me that Charley got a bit of a screwing at Roach. Every time he’d hit a stride with talented writers and/or directors, Roach would "promote" them up to another series he was pushing, and Chase would be left to start all over again with green beginners he’d have to train and develop. Not that he wasn’t up to it. Leo McCarey credited Chase with teaching him everything he learned in the business, but even McCarey got yanked away from the Chase unit when Roach recognized his extraordinary supervisory and directing abilities. Charley was essentially providing traction for a lot of talent that would go on to have bigger careers than he ever would, and that’s kind of sad when you consider that it happened over and over. Meanwhile, his own comedies were building a solid audience, and when he peaked around the 1926-27 season, Charley Chase was the biggest comedy name at Roach, but that would not last long. Laurel and Hardy were just then getting together, and their astounding success would forever eclipse Chase at his home studio. Personal issues, including a major drinking problem, made it that much worse. His voice was ideally suited to the new talkies, but Charlie still got the short end where supporting talent was concerned. No sooner had he established a felicitous teaming with Thelma Todd than Roach withdrew her for a starring series with ZaZu Pitts, and by the by, that $1,750 per week Charlie was getting at Roach was not nearly what he was worth. Even Charley’s own brother, James Parrott, was pulled off his team to go work with Laurel and Hardy. Pretty demoralizing, particularly when it was all Chase could do to show up for work in the morning, his health being what it was.





These trade ads from 1926 represent Charley’s season in the sun with Roach. Within a year, Laurel and Hardy would break out and dominate publicity materials from that point on. His Wooden Wedding is one of the notable Chase silents --- there’s comedy here they’d never dare in today’s restrictive marketplace. It’s available on one of the Kino DVD’s. These rare newspaper ad mats were typical of the stock materials provided to exhibitors playing a Chase short. All they had to do was insert the appropriate title. In this case, it’s The Nickel Nurser. That’s Tommy "Butch" Bond with ice-cream man Charley in I’ll Take Vanilla, and off-screen squeeze Muriel Evans in Young Ironsides. His weakness for blondes had Charley in hot water at home, and that hand-carved Meerschaum pipe he kept filled with marijuana was the source of much studio gossip. The wild life has clearly caught up in these later shots. The graying temples on view here in Neighborhood House (his last short for Roach) was nothing new in 1936, but Hal had made him black his hair almost from the beginning, and Charley was only now letting it go natural. The new look couldn’t help but emphasize the age (yet he was only 43!). The little girl on stage with Chase is Our Gang’s Darla Hood. With double features crowding out short subjects, Roach let Charley go soon after this. The Columbia comedies that would wind up his career were a generally inferior lot, but as with Buster Keaton at the same company (and at the same time), there were moments to treasure. Chase did a lot of writing and directing here, and some of the best Three Stooges shorts from this period are his. This final shot from 1938 (with Ann Doran) was nobody’s idea of flattering, but it does offer a game comedian still giving it his all despite worsening health concerns that would allow him only two more years beyond the date of this pose (he died in 1940).

MGM's Perpetual Product Plan
There’s nothing an exhibitor likes more than prestige --- except money. When you combine prestige and money, you’ve got the showman’s equivalent of a royal flush --- that rarest of happy circumstances wherein you’ve succeeded in separating coin from customer and maintained patron good will at the same time. MGM sold That’s Entertainment in 1974 with a brilliant tagline --- Boy, Do We Need It Now! --- well, here’s a campaign they desperately needed back in 1962, and it was every bit the triumph of that later musical compilation. Unlike That’s Entertainment, however, it’s been forgotten, only because there’s no particular artifact to mark its place in exhibition history. MGM’s Perpetual Product Plan never revolved around new releases --- it was all about re-issues --- and nobody got the mileage out of those like Metro in the sixties. My only regret is that I can’t congratulate the showmen responsible for this ingenious plan, but forty plus years is a long time, and chances are most of them are gone now. The scheme got its launch when MGM went into partnership with a network of independent exchanges throughout the country in early 1962. The idea was to exploit Metro's extensive library of old features, save distribution costs by splitting bounties with local franchisees, and throw the dice with limited engagements at flat rentals smaller houses and drive-ins could live with. The result was an immediate mop-up. Veteran observers predicted a seven-year release cycle for hits like Ivanhoe and Knights Of The Round Table, a combo of which seemed to indicate Disney-like evergreen status for the two costume actioners. New trailers, fresh paper, streamlined pressbooks --- this could go on forever!




The real seismic shock came on May 8, 1962, when Danbury, Connecticut’s Stanley Theatre opened MGM’s series of Golden Operettas. Taking its bow before a packed house representing five to ten times normal level of patronage, the venerable songfests played one day a week (Wednesdays) for six weeks, and titles included Naughty Marietta, Rose Marie, The Great Waltz, and The Chocolate Soldier. Attendance is, and always has been, notoriously slow during mid-week, but these things shook the roof, and customers who’d shunned the house for years were now seeking out management (clad in black tie for the event) to thank him personally for bringing such clean and wholesome family entertainment back to the people. Heaven knows, the guy could use a pat on the back around this time, as disgruntled parents and civic minded busybodies continued to maintain that movie theatres were taking us all down a path toward perdition. Stanching the flow of such criticism was a bargain at thirty-five or forty dollars flat per booking. Metro ledger-keepers must have thought they were dreaming in the face of profits like these, and here’s the kicker --- much of it was for shows that had been playing free on television since 1956! The MacDonald/Eddy chestnuts and others like them were more than familiar to home viewers, yet here they were, paying an admission, and doing so in droves. Families That Go To The Movies Together --- Stay Together became Metro’s mantra. Little did they realize that these Operettas were only the locomotive that would drive a veritable money train.




The campaign manuals said The Best Music Is The Cash Register, and MGM’s next trip to the well was its so-called World Heritage Pictures, two sets of six "movie masterpieces", again most of them pre-48 titles that had been wrung dry on TV, though you’d never know it from these crowds. This time, they went after the school kids. Public libraries and local opinion-makers were pressed into shilling service on behalf of Captains Courageous, The Good Earth, David Copperfield, and the like. Busloads of students rolled up for Julius Caesar, and since this was adjudged quality fare, the field trips were school sanctioned and took place during what would have otherwise been classroom hours. The resulting windfall to exhibitors both guaranteed pre-arranged full houses and a booming traffic in concessions, since kids often bored with twenty and thirty year old black and white movies were easily lured by the sweet aroma of fresh popcorn and sweets. What a culture shock for teens accustomed to the Troy Donahues and Sandra Dees to suddenly be confronted with Ronald Colman and Luise Rainer on their neighborhood theatre screen! There was even a National Advisory Committee Of Educators Of "World Heritage Film and Book Program." Now there’s a mouthful for someone’s resume. High school teachers, collegiate profs, even parish priests got in on the action. There was plenty of good citizenship to go around. Third and last of the series was the World Famous Musical Hits group, which may well have been the most popular of all, as it included show-stoppers along the lines of Singin’ In The Rain and The Bandwagon. Radio deejays proved effective allies in spreading the word, and soundtrack album giveaways were the order of the day, as rock n’ roll inundated youth discovered vintage Fred Astaire and Judy Garland. Astaire’s dance studio namesake cashed in as well, and merchandising tie-ins offered near-limitless possibilities.




That Bonneville convertible bearing "Miss MGM Musicals Of Columbia, S.C." may as well have been on its way to the bank, judging by the look of satisfaction on the driver/exhibitor’s face. Here it is parked in front of Columbia’s Five Points Theatre for the gala opening of Till The Clouds Roll By, and bear in mind, this is 1963, not 1946! Read The Books --- See The Pictures was the magic phrase that forged the unholy alliance between schools and movie houses during that brief truce they enjoyed as the result of Metro’s World Heritage series, and on-the-ball exhibitors got further incentive with this cash contest for salesmanship brainstorms. That audience survey was very much the real thing, and I wonder if Mrs. Bert A. Swanson, assuming she’s still with us, remembers her happy hours with Rose Marie back in 1962. The Della Theatre in Flint, Michigan was boffo for Till The Clouds Roll By as well. Love their front, by the way. Wonder if those folks realized the movie had been playing the tube for seven years prior to their surrender of a ticket price? The Uptown in Pasadena, CA saw attendance jump when they paired The Merry Widow (1934!) with The Great Waltz in May 1964. Management was gratified by the respective conduct of moppets in the audience. Could it have been a hovering teacher presence in the auditorium that quelled youthful hijinks? The Wellmont in Montclair, NJ had been servicing the "action" market when they switched policy and went over to Julius Caesar and the Heritage group. It’s just possible manager Harry A. Weiner got tired of chasing drunks and hop-heads out of their fifth viewing of Hercules and The Captive Women before cleaning their waste, bodily and otherwise, off the floors. How could these MGM classics be anything other than a step up for Harry?

Once again, we thank Dr. Karl Thiede for sharing his knowledge and expertise in the area of distribution and exhibition, very much specialties of his. Couldn't do it without ya, Karl!

More Fox Team Players

When it comes to selling a movie, everybody’s expected to pitch in. Sometimes it’s a matter of friends calling in favors, or studio employers calling in obligations. Either way it leads to some pretty strange campaigns and combinations. Here are two examples from 20th Fox that I particularly like. There must be some rational explanation for all those star endorsements for Wake Me When It’s Over, but I can’t imagine what it is. Were they all buddies with Mervyn LeRoy? He’d been around a long time, after all, and no doubt had a lot of friends. Bing Crosby’s bouquet is my favorite --- It’s like sailing to outer space on a Laugh Rocket! Next time somebody asks me what I thought of a movie, I’m going to give them that line --- even if I’ve just been to see Munich or Traffic (that’ll be the day). Joan Crawford may have been a holy terror at home, but there was no better sport in the biz when it came to hawking the product. Here she is giving National Screen a boost with their fortieth anniversary trailer celebration. It’s great seeing big names helping out in an area of the industry that too often goes ignored. Trailers really are --- The Best Of Everything!

Elvis --- You Had To Be There

I can’t recall anyone liking Elvis movies that didn’t grow up seeing them in the theatre. Anybody that came across them for the first time on television or video seems to have the same reaction. They’re lame --- they’re stupid --- the music’s bad, and Elvis worse. The only ones they'll recognize are the two concert features, and maybe a couple of numbers from Jailhouse Rock. That’s it. Those of us willing to confess an affection, or even tolerance, for a Fun In Acapulco or Spinout immediately reveal our age, or rather, our middle-age. Actually, fifty or so is more like it --- maybe more. How could we otherwise enjoy such dreck? I’ll never convince a post-boomer of the worthiness of these musicals, and I’m years past the point of trying. To do is to adopt an untenable position. How do you convey in words a chilly autumn afternoon when you came home from seeing Roustabout and jumped headlong into a pile of raked leaves in your parent’s yard? --- or the time you rushed out of school one Spring day to catch the 3:00 show of Girl Happy, knowing you’d miss at least the previews unless you hurried? Elvis movies are all about memories, not merit. None of them stand today without a happy childhood moment coming before, after, or during to prop them up. To confess that I once owned the RCA Victor soundtrack album of Harum Scarum and played it repeatedly in excited anticipation of seeing the feature is perhaps a shameful admission to those of a subsequent generation, but I’d like to think my contemporaries will understand. A lot of us grew up in a world of Elvis. If you went to the show a lot in the sixties, you saw Elvis. Maybe you don’t have to look at him now, and I suspect most of us seldom, if ever, do, but let’s at least acknowledge for a moment what he meant to us once upon a long time ago, and revisit a Presley show I personally consider his best, and I didn’t even see it until I was an adult ---




Loving You was the second Elvis Presley movie. It was in Technicolor and Vistavision. The first one, Love Me Tender, was Cinemascope, but black-and-white. Unlike Loving You, it had a bummer ending, and Dick Egan was the star. Elvis didn’t sing that much in it either. In Loving You, he sings constantly (and sometimes looks directly into the camera when doing so). He also fights and kisses girls. Producer Hal Wallis made it his business to deliver precisely what the fans wanted. This was the man who’d helped package Al Jolson. He was the mastermind behind Casablanca and Adventures Of Robin Hood. More recently, he’d developed the Martin and Lewis formula. Wallis was a flat-out genius as far as I’m concerned. You could argue that Loving You was a little bit old-fashioned, even then, but who can blame Hal for using contract players Lizabeth Scott and Wendell Corey to work off their final obligations to him in support of the boy singer? Those kids in line to see Elvis wouldn’t have known Scott and Corey from John Bunny and Flora Finch, but someone had to play in support of their idol. Might just as well be these two has-beens. Wallis puts all the Presley ingredients in place right from the opener. Elvis makes his entrance in a hot-rod. It’s understood he digs nice cars. Pretty girls too, but he’s diffident toward them. Never lustful, but fists at the ready when others are. The big punch-up in a diner reveals a hearty Presley appetite for brawling. One of the most noticeable things about Elvis is how viciously he lays into his opponents. This boy really knew how to make a fight look like something. Check out the fisticuffs in any of his movies and see what I mean. Sometimes the surly Elvis can be a little too menacing. There’s a scene in Loving You where Wendell Corey casually mentions the possibility of changing the Elvis character’s name, to which Presley responds with an alarming show of temper. That sweet Elvis countenance could take on a frightening edge when provoked. Sometimes you didn’t even have to provoke him to get a glimpse of it. That must have shook up some of those 1957 teen girls in the audience. Of course, there’s always dumbbell sidekicks to relieve the tension, and Loving You has at least two of them. This was a fraternity whose membership would increase over those near thirty Elvis pictures that would follow this one.



Here’s some of the merchandising that accompanied Loving You. A few of these knick-knacks are undoubtedly worth money today --- you might even find this stuff on ebay if you care to search the thousands of Elvis items available at any given time. Paramount had begun issuing very nice color still sets for their major releases when Loving You came out in July 1957. Some of those are shown here. Our own Liberty and Allen Theatres staged an Elvis stand-off in August of that year when the Allen tried to steal Loving You’s thunder at the Liberty by bringing back Love Me Tender "by popular demand." Wonder how those two exhibitors greeted each other at the drug store sundry counter that week. Loving You grabbed a nifty $3.3 million in domestic rentals (against Love Me Tender’s much better $4.2) --- then added another $85,000 during a 1959 re-issue which found Loving You playing tandem in many situations with Paramount’s King Creole. Note the combo exhibitor ad here, and the "letter to Elvis" lobby stunt that accompanied the re-issues in 1959. I’d be willing to bet not one of those letters actually got mailed, despite management’s promise to do so. Stunts like the one here with the girls and the motorcycle were commonplace for bookings in the larger towns. Elvis photo giveaways were also a sure way to draw the kids. Showmen couldn’t miss when buying them by the gross. Hefty concession sales were a cinch when restless teens came out for refreshment between Elvis numbers, their cue usually arriving with the cutaway to Lizabeth Scott and/or Wendell Corey. Hope those two never attended a public screening of Loving You. Might have been pretty demoralizing if they had.

Monday Glamour Starter --- Ava Gardner

There’s a scene in The Bandwagon where Fred Astaire, as washed-up movie star Tony Hunter, encounters a group of reporters and photographers waiting for his train. Thinking they’ve come to interview him, Tony is chagrined to discover it’s really Ava Gardner who’s causing all the stir, and after a perfunctory greeting from her, Tony has to stand by as Ava graciously accommodates the press (as shown here). "Honestly, isn’t all this stuff an awful bore?" says a long-suffering, but still game Gardner, as she submits to yet another picture. That Bandwagon cameo, a priceless moment, acknowledges the public’s by now (1953) awareness that stars are often mildly (but only mildly, mind you) annoyed with the demands of their profession, but always willing to pose for one more shot, sign one last autograph. Metro still had Ava Gardner and a lot of others under contract at this time, and all employees were expected to maintain an egalitarian attitude toward their public, which meant, among other things, being nice as they got off trains. So what happened to Ava? Within a couple of years, a cameo like this would have been greeted with laughter or rueful disbelief, based on the reputation she would earn with press (and eventual) public. Nightclub brawls, airborne champagne bottles, "chairs flyin’ around like rockets" (to quote Daffy in Nasty Quacks) --- all these became synonymous with Ava Gardner and her retinue of drunkards and hotheads as they lurched from bar to brothel to bacchanal all around the world and back again. Was Frank Sinatra to blame? How did a nice, simple country girl from Smithfield, or Grabtown, or Tobacco Juice, or wherever the hell it was in North Carolina, end up like this?





There’s an Ava Gardner museum in Smithfield, but I haven’t been there. Sixteen years after her death, I wonder how many visit of late. Yes, we share the same home state, and having just read the excellent new biography by Lee Server (Ava Gardner – Love Is Nothing, and you should read it), I honestly wish I could be a little more impressed with this actress, but hang it all, her life just sounds like a near total mess to me. She apparently never wanted the stardom, yelled from the rooftops that she couldn’t act, and behaved pretty wretchedly toward a lot of people. Ava seems to have been okay every now and then as long as she wasn’t drinking. Problem is she was drinking most of the time, especially after the aging thing got hold of her and the bad pictures kept getting badder. Now I’m no judge of acting. Never was. I could watch The Pleasure Seekers, and happily split an Academy Award between Ann-Margret, Carol Lynley, and Pamela Tiffen. If one hasn’t acted him/herself, who is one to judge? As to Ava, I think she’s plenty OK in her thesping. Frankly, I got tired of reading all those quotes where she’s so down on herself for not being an actress. After a while, it just seemed like whining, and all that pabulum about being the most beautiful woman in the world. Well, isn’t that pretty subjective, after all? For all we know, there may be guys who think Nancy Kulp was hotter than Ava. Are they wrong, just because they’re in a presumed minority? And what difference does it make anyhow, since Ava’s long gone, and all we’ve really got left of her is the movie output and a lot of neat stills, so what’s the verdict on them?




I have to say, I think the people Ava worked with are, for the most part, more interesting than Ava. Quite a distinguished group, as you’ll see here. She went years saying none of her pictures were any good, but according to Server’s book, Ava reconsidered when she started catching some of them on television during old age. Sometimes she’d even call up her old co-stars to let them know how good the work was, even though it had been decades since doing it. This first one is The Killers, and it’s too bad homebase Metro couldn’t deliver better upon the promise indicated in this breakthrough role for Gardner. Noirs would have seemed a natural, but MGM didn’t care to do a lot of "A’s" along those lines, so they wasted Ava in things like The Great Sinner and East Side, West Side (though The Bribe is a happy exception). Did she have an affair with Hucksters co-star Clark Gable? Either way, it's a tribute to their enduring mystique that after nearly sixty years, we still care. Pandora and The Flying Dutchman is best seen in its original three-strip Technicolor, but who’s got a print? Anyway, Ava (impliedly) swims naked in it, and titillated audiences no doubt reflected upon the fact that she was often known to do the same thing offscreen (in hotel pools, no less!). Slumming at RKO in My Forbidden Past, she took up with scamp-in-residence Bob Mitchum --- Ava proved to be the one bedmate willing to call Mrs. Mitchum for permission to steal her husband (Mrs. M chose not to comply). Mogambo, for which she got an Academy Award nomination, may well represent her summit, and judging by all that winged dialogue and improvised slapstick, it looks as though infatuated director John Ford pretty much gave Ava a free hand --- much as Howard Hawks would later do for Angie Dickinson in Rio Bravo. As to whether these were good ideas or not is a matter of viewer opinion.





Not sure when this posed nightclub/cocktail pose was taken, but it looks like they’re beginning to trade on Ava’s party girl spiral toward dissolution period that really got its launch when she went to Europe to do a couple of Metro frozen-fund specials. So what was it about bullfighters that got this woman so stirred up? The answer may well lie on a more explicit site than we care to host, but I wonder if she ever got as bored hanging out with them as I did reading about them? Humphrey Bogart looks unimpressed in this candid glimpse of a private party during the Barefoot Contessa shoot. He thought she was a lousy actress and didn’t mind saying so. Coming from a pro like Bogie, that one had to sting. Bhowani Junction was mutilated in post-production --- even an Oscar-worthy performance would have drowned in that sea of red ink and studio indifference. This grass skirt for The Little Hut showed she still had it in 1957, but hard-living was starting to catch up, and what better companion to bear this out than Errol Flynn in The Sun Also Rises? By the new decade, Gardner was expatriating all over Europe, with occasional layovers elsewhere --- in Cuba, she got into a slap-fest with Fidel Castro’s teenaged mistress over his affections --- and poor Sinatra seems to have been enslaved by her fickle charms over a near-lifetime. There are phone books with less names than the list of her (known) lovers. Her best performances (at least the loudest and most actionful) seem to have been given in hotel lobbies, sidewalk cafes, and the like. Unfortunately, those weren’t captured on film. Neither were her boudoir exploits, which must have been, as Barry Fitzgerald once put it, "impetuous … Homeric." If she’d just let them follow her around with a camera, Ava would no doubt have left us with a far more compelling drama than any of those she play-acted for movies.

Original Art From A Greenbriar Reader

Frank Rocco is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. He’s also worked in animation and anything and everything else that relates to the field of art. He has a gorgeous website HERE that you should visit (really like your design on that site, Frank!). In the meantime, he’s surprised and delighted us with some original art inspired by our postings here at Greenbriar Picture Shows. I think he’s captured the subjects brilliantly. You’ll recognize these faces from stories we’ve published in the last month, but just for reference, you might want to go back in our archive search page HERE to look up the images Frank’s depicted --- including Bill Wolfe, W.C.Fields, C.Aubrey Smith, William Powell, and Vincent Price (you can go to the name search for all of them). We’re thrilled that an artist of Frank’s talent has chosen Greenbriar for a subject!

Marquee Magic

Folks, this is Christmas 1953. As you can see, Santa has delivered his load on theatregoers with a line-up of king-sized attractions the likes of which had never been seen before, or since. I’m not necessarily referring to the movies --- they’re a mixed bag, to be sure, but look at these stunning marquees! --- and imagine, if you will, the revolutionary new screen miracles waiting on the inside for these anxious patrons. Cinemascope, 3-D, stereophonic sound. WOW! A lot of folks are going to need smelling salts before this night is through. I dare say the harried management and staff could use some serious medicating after having garlanded their houses with these incredible fronts. They sure gave you a show in those days. Even Beneath The Twelve-Mile Reef would look like Citizen Kane against a background like this!

Columbia's Bat-Flash In The Pan

Long before all this "dark knight" nonsense, when Batman was just a comic book character, there was a cultural pestilence which came to call around 1965. "Camp" was the invention of a "with-it" generation discovering what social capital could be earned by ridiculing vintage movies. Not that any such pretenders understood what they were talking about, or laughing at, but condescending attitudes toward much of our film heritage is a burden we bear yet, as witness tittering audiences disrupting public runs of varied classics. Serials had been around since the birth of movies, being industry staples from silent days, and well respected as any of product out of Hollywood. Talkies found chapter plays diminished if still reliable audience pleasers (for by now primarily children), and it was only television's encroachment, with its cheaply produced (and free) kid programming that finally brought serials to a halt. The last one of them was released in 1956, but a lot of houses still wanted chapter plays, so reissues were commonplace right into the sixties. My own perusing of NC theatre ads revealed ongoing popularity for serials as late as 1967 --- our own Liberty Theatre played Panther Girl Of The Kongo that year. Perversion of the serial form, and the consequent ridicule of same, had its beginnings in art houses and college theatres catering to the camp movement, with opening guns aimed toward Columbia’s old Batman properties --- easy targets to be sure, as these were not particularly good serials to begin with.

There’s a really interesting talk with producer/collector/historian Sam Sherman in one of those terrific Tom Weaver interview books (It Came From The Weaver Five) in which Sherman talks about his own efforts to arrange serial bookings in a Manhattan art house in 1965. The exhibitor listened patiently to Sam’s ideas, got all the resource info from him, then put on the show without further input from Sherman. A raw deal for Sam, but the smash business indicated a big demand for serials, and it wasn’t long before other art/revival venues began looking for similar product. This was when Columbia stepped into the arena. Their serials had been in constant circulation anyway. Republic was closed. Universal hadn’t listed a serial on its release chart in years. Without any meaningful competition, Columbia could use old prints already in exchanges and service theatres willing to pony up a minimal film rental. The new twist was that every chapter of the serial would play back-to-back in marathon shows lasting upwards of four hours. If twenty minutes of camp was fun (the maximum length of most individual chapters), imagine what a riot fifteen installments would be! Initial bookings, called An Evening With Batman and Robin, were unexpected bonanzas for art theatres in Cleveland, Champaign, Illonois, and at Chicago's Playboy Theatre. Fall of 1965 looked as though it was going to be the dawn of a new era for old-time serial popularity…

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This optimistic report from the exhibition field, dated December 20, 1965, suggests cakes and ale for any showman willing to take a flyer on a Batman serial. Several dozen cities had booked the marathon, and San Francisco's Presidio Theatre actually committed its Christmas week to Batman. Virtually every situation reported holdovers. Curious crowds were plentiful, with concession sales unusually brisk (you get pretty hungry sitting through fifteen largely repetitious chapters in one gulp). Creative selling was order of the day at New Orleans' Peacock Theatre , as shown in this cool shot of Batman impersonator Roy Frumkes regaling youthful fans lined up at the Peacock entrance. When I saw this article, now forty years and counting since publication, I thought I recognized Roy Frumkes as the latter-day owner/editor of the Films In Review periodical. He’d also edited The Perfect Vision magazine during its glory days in the nineties. Could this be the same Roy Frumkes? I took a chance and e-mailed him (including a scan of R.F. in the Batman suit). All he could do was respond, ignore me, or turn me over to the district attorney’s office for further investigation. Fortunately, Roy responded (by phone!) and he couldn’t have been nicer. We had a great chat about his Batman experience, and he gave me some terrific dope about the New Orleans booking, along with permission to share it here (by the way, Films In Review is on line, and it’s fantastic --- go to this LINK and enjoy).

Roy was a senior at Tulane University when he volunteered to don cape and cowl for a Batman "personal appearance" in Dec. 1965. He’d served as assistant manager for Peacock exhibitor Bob Woodford, and it was Bob’s wife who made the bitchin’ costume Roy’s wearing in this photo (a real forties-era quality in that workmanship, don’t you think?). Anyway, they put Roy on a motorcycle and had him tooling around the Tulane campus and surrounding environs, waving to fans and generally spreading Bat-cheer among the locals. Only problem was, Roy hadn’t driven a motorized two-wheeler before --- and wouldn’t you know it? --- he couldn’t work the brakes on this one. First thing Roy knew, the Bat-cape got tangled up in the spokes of the tire (shades of Isadora Duncan) and Roy found himself being pulled backward off the seat. That upcoming hedge didn’t look so good either, and the wall behind it was even more daunting. Nevertheless, Roy and his cycle forcefully greeted them both, and as the Ventures might have put it, there was a total wipeout for the Peacock’s Caped Crusader. By way of further insight, Roy said weekend audiences were stout for the Batman show (especially matinees) and the place was fairly littered with hipsters, drama students, and bohemian types from Tulane. A couple of college chicks invited Roy to party, but he declined (in the belief they were just making fun of him in the costume --- typical camp philistines!). He freely acknowledges that he was too sensitive in those days, and could kick himself now for having turned them down (I feel your pain, Roy!). The Batman show was a success overall, but not enough so to inspire further serial bookings. Weekends were fine, but during the week it was a snooze, and the district manager put the kibosh on any more chapter plays for the Peacock. Leaving Bat-suits with unruly capes and motorcycles behind him, Roy went on to become a film producer, screenwriter, and editor (you can check out his bio information HERE).

The gravy really started flowing for Columbia in January 1966 when ABC premiered the Batman TV series. Those art-house marathons had been a fairly isolated phenomenon --- now the company was ready to go wide with pressbooks, trailers, and accessories for a nationwide push, which began a few months later in April. The "new" release plan called for the serial to be split into two shows, with eight chapters running the first weekend, and the remaining seven the next. Almost as unwieldy a schedule as those previous marathons, but they’d caught a wave with Batman, and were determined to ride him as far as public interest (and patience) would permit. Funny thing, there were actually two Columbia Batman serials, one released in 1943, and a second following six years later in 1949 (here’s some stills from both). The company was sufficiently capricious with these re-issues as to send out one when the other was promised, mixing up still images for press materials, all sorts of confusing signals for anyone trying to determine just which Batman serial they were going to see. One can only hope they didn’t mix up chapters within serials! There was no lack of merchandising tie-ins once the Batman TV craze took off. It must have really rankled Fox to see Columbia hauling all that coin, riding the coat tails of their video sensation. By the time Fox got a theatrical Batman feature ready for theatres in July 1966, their rival distributor had already taken much of the Bat-money and run. As you’ll note from the magazine cover shown here, Super Heroes were all the rage that year. This Warren publication was merely a reprint of articles that had appeared in the now-defunct Screen Thrills Illustrated, which was edited by Sam Sherman, the visionary to whom much of the credit should go for the whole super hero revival thing. The ad for 8mm home movies of the first Batman serial was a further attempt on Columbia’s part to exploit the old property. The aggregate cost of all six chapters was way out of my twelve-year old league, but a neighborhood friend did swing the $5.49 cost of the first chapter, though I found the reel itself fairly uneventful. As history has a way of repeating itself, I’ll note here that Columbia has yet again released the two Batman serials, this time on DVD. True to form, they were cashing in on the wake of another producer’s success --- this time it was Warners and the interest generated by their Batman Begins. Good old Columbia. Scavengers to the last!

1952 Hollywood Eats It's Own

The Bad and The Beautiful was MGM’s black-and-white melodrama counterpart to the joyous musical celebration of old Hollywood that is Singin’ In The Rain. And it is indeed "old" Hollywood that both these films seek to commemorate, as they were made by technicians who had themselves given decades of service to the studio establishment. Everyone’s favorite movieland myth seems to have made its way into The Bad and The Beautiful. Historically speaking, that porridge doesn’t always jell, but why leave anything out? No one was checking dates and events that closely in 1952. "Hollywood History" seemed like an oxymoron. Why research a subject that was so ephemeral to begin with? Would Metro have dug into back issues of Photoplay to insure accuracy? I doubt it. Seems more likely that a handful of old-time industry vets, probably sitting around a card table (much as they do in the party scene during the movie) or walking down the fairway at Lakeside Country Club, came up with most of the anecdotes that resulted in the three dramatic episodes of The Bad and The Beautiful. The movie actually has a casual, scrapbook quality that makes for great repeat viewing. It’s very much like Singin’ In The Rain in that respect. The tortured adherence to historical verisimilitude that would come years later with things like The Aviator is thankfully missing here. It’s the spirit of Hollywood they wanted to capture, and at that, The Bad and The Beautiful succeeds brilliantly.








I wonder how the town’s aging charter membership felt whenever they saw one of the silent era’s discarded relics getting a sympathy (if that) cameo in these fifties movies. It was not an uncommon thing. Ford and DeMille used to decorate their sets with fallen idols, and Metro kept a roster of once celebrated day players, now reduced to crowd scenes and walk-ons. It wasn’t just old actors in the waste bin. John Ford took joy in pointing out one-time big shot director King Baggot, now an extra, to upstart beginner Robert Wagner when they were doing What Price Glory --- this happened the same year The Bad and The Beautiful was made. That minister with an affected, booming testimonial for Kirk Douglas’ father in the opening reel of T.B.A.T.B. is Francis X. Bushman, well-known hard luck case who’d even run print ads seeking a wife (any wife!) to save him from poverty. Bushman was typical of the cast-off generation --- good for occasional press (which he, and Metro, got for having appeared here), but strictly hands-off when it came to substantive work. His feature finish would be in 1966 with The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini (notice how the title itself implies end-of-career degradation?). Deserted mansion motifs come into play several times in The Bad and The Beautiful. One serves as baleful home of deceased, and debt-ridden "Hugo Shields", father of the Kirk Douglas character, referred to as "not a heel … he was the heel." That was inspired by Lewis J. Selznick, and son David threatened to sue when he got wind of it (never did, of course). The Shields/Selznick parallels were pretty cheeky in view of the fact that DOS was still an active producer at the time --- could it be the town already knew he was slipping and decided to have a little fun at his expense? The other crumbling ediface belongs to a dead Hollywood martyr modeled after John Barrymore. Kirk Douglas and Barry Sullivan are able to walk right through the front door. I found myself wondering if deserted Hollywood residences were really so accessible after their owners went broke or passed on. Were these old homes so unattended at that time? If I’d been around in 1952, could I have toured Barrymore’s former digs, or Valentino’s legendary Falcon’s Lair without a pass, as it were? Somehow that scene in The Bad and The Beautiful does have a ring of truth about it, as if it were based on repeated, actual incident.






Vincente Minnelli’s essential snobbery comes through in those scenes wherein he depicts the filming of a western and a horror movie, two genres he clearly knew nothing about, and cared less. The staged cowboy stunt looks patently phony, even when we know it’s supposed to look phony. It’s as though Minnelli were saying, "See? This is the way all westerns look." Very condescending, Vince. His biggest sneer is reserved for horror movies, presented here as the bottom-scraping start of Kirk’s career as a movie producer. It’s a Cat People-inspired "B" that Val Lewton-esque Douglas lifts out of the doldrums by suggesting scare scenes instead of showing the monsters. Minnelli and his writer’s general disdain for horror themes is amusingly portrayed by a costume shop scene where tatty cat suits are modeled by run-down-at-heels prop assistants --- truly a low-rent district of the industry Minnelli wants no part of. The "Gaucho" character played by Gilbert Roland is a real anachronism. This had to have been noticed even in 1952. He’s presented as a "Great Latin Lover", which is fair enough if we’re dealing with the silent era, but Gaucho’s bestriding the top rungs of stardom in what is implied to be thirties/forties Hollywood, a time when Latin types were relegated to B’s and supporting roles (with Gilbert Roland chief among them). The only serious push for a latter-day Valentino seems to have been Paramount’s disastrous wartime efforts on behalf of one Arturo De Cordova, a real stiff that blighted a handful of expensive productions (Frenchman’s Creek, A Medal For Benny) before fading into obscurity (though he did go back home to Mexico where he enjoyed greater success). The "Von Ellstein" character, based on guess who, is presented as an autocratic untouchable all Hollywood is dying to work with … at a time when his real-life inspiration, Erich Von Stroheim, literally went begging for jobs (a group of sympathetic Metro employees actually got together a food and gift basket for the Stroheim family one Christmas during the mid-thirties, so dire were his circumstances at the time). Leo G. Carroll’s Hitchcockian director is priggish and vain. You wonder what Hitchcock said to Carroll after he got a squint at that portrayal. Chances are he laughed along with everyone else. It’s really Selznick that comes in for the drubbing, as more or less played by Kirk Douglas here. His later movies are presented as grotesque overproduced monstrosities. It’s like watching Selznick behind the scenes on Duel In The Sun, The Paradine Case, and Portrait Of Jennie. Very insulting to DOS. I don’t blame him for being annoyed.



Maybe 1952 audiences didn’t get all the references in The Bad and The Beautiful, but they did go to see it. In a year when most of MGM’s product lost money, this one brought back a $534,000 profit against a negative cost of $1.5 million, with domestic rentals of $2.3, foreign at $1.0, for a worldwide total of $3.4 million. As you can see from these ads, it was sold for glamour, sex, and melodrama. The fashion tie-ins were a natural for a period movie that never went to undue pains in evoking a period, so all the clothing and sets looked more or less contemporary. You may not want to score yourself on that Bad and The Beautiful "friendship and romance" quiz, as it’s pretty much spelled out that if you total below 40, you’ll come to a bad end. The very interesting on-the-set candid shows Minnelli directing (on the boom) as Leo G. Carroll "directs" on the stage below, as though two films were in production at once. Boredom inherent in sitting around waiting on a sound stage is captured by this shot of Carroll and Walter Pidgeon listlessly playing checkers as a barely interested Kirk Douglas looks on. A dreary business, this moviemaking. That’s Vincente Minnelli touching up Lana Turner’s non-existent eyebrow (she’d shaved them off for a thirties role and they never grew back). This had to be for publicity, as I imagine the union would have frowned upon Vince invading their fiefdom. Once again, the Germans give us a powerful image for a movie poster --- Kirk looks almost maniacal here.