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 movies, where explicit gore has been industry standard for going on, what, forty years? And what if you told these youthful malcontents that it was Curse Of Frankenstein that actually led the way toward the wide-open charnel house that is screen horror today? They’d never believe it. To know the impact of Curse Of Frankenstein, to feel the shudders that went through those crowded auditoriums in that summer of 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 that first day Jack Warner screened it. Comparisons with their previous horror smash, House Of Wax, were inevitable --- but showmen knew this was a radical departure from the buoyant, gay-nineties funhouse that had amused audiences in 1953. If anything, House Of Wax was a throwback to Gentleman Jim, The Strawberry Blonde, and other nostalgia trips that had been so 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, let alone having it all depicted in color. Some may have been 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, however, as the originals took their television bow within a few months of the Curse Of Frankenstein openings (July 1957), and cheapjack theatrical knock-offs Frankenstein’s Daughter and I Was A Teenage Frankenstein would follow in the wake of Curse. 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. With domestic rentals of $1.4 million, foreign at $1.0, the worldwide was a handsome $1.6 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 the opening at the Paramount theatre delivered on the promise of sock numbers previously counted in London (love those entrances!), and stunt ballys were all over the streets in cities across the country --- some of them sampled here. That "monster mask for the kids" doesn’t inspire much confidence, considering it’s just a blown-up paper ad mat that would presumably rip to shreds the moment you tried to put 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 which told the story and promoted the movie. My first real acquaintance with Curse Of Frankenstein came by way of this magazine, and my determination to see it was born here. Little did I realize then that my adolescent odyssey toward that goal would be at least as strenuous as that of Perseus when he sought the head of the Medusa --- it would begin with a drive-in newspaper ad in 1968.


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 just before he spiraled off into that power plant. Yes, the devil got Bob first, but our particular Thunder Road snaked along a ribbon of rural desolation that 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 wanted to go, but how do you attend a drive-in theatre when you don’t have a license? Family outings were all well and good --- for other families. Mine never, ever went to a drive-in. My father would have considered that plain foolishness, what with M Squad available in the comfort of our own 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 the Herculean effort of getting someone to take me. All of that was about to change in August 1968 when they announced that The Curse Of Frankenstein was coming.



The intensity of my fourteen-year old desire to see Curse Of Frankenstein was a canker upon my soul that had festered since 1964, when our beloved Liberty management resolutely avoided the combo re-issue of Curse with Horror Of Dracula, even though they seemed to be playing at every single other venue in North Carolina. Out-of-town cousins had seen them. Print ads far and wide trumpeted them. Famous Monsters and Castle Of Frankenstein waxed eloquently over them. For all I knew, even boys in reformatories got to see them --- but not me. Too young to have enjoyed their original release 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 holding 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 watch 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 --- and the new school year was starting the following morning! There was no way in hell 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). With that unprecedented star combination of Albert Dekker and Brian Donlevy, Gamera was the real "Big One With The Big Two" (imagine Dekker rousing a somnambulant Donlevy with "I’m lookin’ at a tin star with a --- drunk pinned on it!"). Anyway, Gamera as an 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 who clearly had his priorities 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, and 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 back in 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 promised 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 her 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 the happy ending 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 the 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 the filming that we could hope for, and the insights into Fields, both personally and professionally, are the best I’ve seen anywhere. 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, as he characterized her as the daughter he’d never had. Must have been lonely at times for The Great Man. The tea party is one hosted by G.J.’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.