More Psycho Sightings

Among questions still taboo in celebrity interviews, one has endured and, I suspect, always will. How much were you paid? There’s an impertinence factor there --- the code unwritten. You just don’t ask people what kind of money they earn. Otherwise probing journalists back off in the face of such personal inquiry. Of all the Hitchcock interviews I’ve seen or read, no one broached the topic, yet for me, it’s the most arresting of all the Master’s mysteries. We’re told of his gifts in negotiation, and of those arts he practiced, that of the deal may well have been supreme among them, as we do know Hitchcock cashed checks in the millions for his end of the Psycho pay-out. If I’d been Francois Truffaut, these would have been my avenues of interrogation, though I’ve no doubt a frosty reception, if not a security escort off the Universal lot, would have been my ultimate reward. Still, transcripts of closed door conferences between Hitchcock and super agent Lew Wasserman (shown together here) would at the least offer perspectives undreamt of by writers who never looked, and interviewers that didn’t ask. If more CPA and MBA types were into old movies, maybe one of them would gain access to those estate files, bound to be among the thickest, wherein revenues were divided and negatives reverted. Hitchcock died fantastically rich, more so than any Golden Age director I can think of (excepting possibly Billy Wilder and his art collection), and not knowing details of his business acumen represents a very large gap in our understanding of the man and his career. Commonly accepted is the notion he owned 60% of Psycho after volunteering to finance the show himself in the wake of Paramount’s refusal to back the project. Hitchcock historians can tell you all about how he filmed the shower scene, but information about his deal with Paramount has always been sketchy. In fact, I’m guessing they’re guessing about a lot of what went on with regards ownership and compensation. Has anyone examined the contract? It’s bound to exist, and must be fascinating. There were two occasions wherein Paramount realized at the least distribution fees, for in addition to handling the 1960 release, they managed a 1965 reissue, this after Hitchcock had left the company to join Universal. I’ve read he exchanged ownership of Psycho for MCA stock when he made the switch. That's supposed to have happened in 1962, so Paramount must have maintained some residual rights, at least to the extent of a single re-release from which they’d realize one more handling fee. The 1965 run of Psycho brought back 1.2 million in domestic rentals. This was the biggest grossing reissue Paramount had in the sixties, with the exception of The Ten Commandments in 1966 (8.8 million). Hitchcock participated in new ads emphasizing the now-legendary status of his five-year old thriller. The first time we wouldn’t let you in except at the beginning. Now you can come in and be shocked anytime. Publicity emphasized the shower-bath sequence and other grisly goodies, while Hitchcock’s signature appeared below warnings that Psycho is again on the loose in your fair city. For the first time, Anthony Perkins was shown in advertising holding a knife, an acknowledgement of patrons long since in the know as to the picture’s denouement.

The next major Psycho sighting was an aborted one. Yes, I remember it well, as Maurice Chevalier once sang, for this was an event long looked forward to. September 23, 1966 --- and the CBS Friday Night Movie would be Psycho, making its network television premiere (NBC had passed). Controversy was rife among affiliates. Conservative markets were aghast that CBS would broadcast such a thing. The net paid $800,000 for two runs (but to who? --- was Paramount down for any of this cash? --- I’d sure like to know). Four days before lift-off, Psycho was postponed. CBS released a statement on Monday. Out of deference to the family of Senator Charles Percy of Illinois, they would not be showing the film. An intruder entering Percy’s house during the previous weekend had murdered his daughter in her bed. The horrific crime remains to this day unsolved. I was twelve then and hadn’t read the news, so imagine my chagrin when the Friday Night Movie turned out to be Kings Go Forth! Just me and old Frank in a darkened room at my grandmother’s house, but I hadn’t gone weeks with anxious anticipation just to end up spending my evening with Sinatra (despite the 1943 Phantom Of The Opera as (partial) late show compensation). Network execs lamented an eight hundred grand loss they’d sustain in the event Psycho was cancelled altogether, while press hounds inquired as to an eventual broadcast date. It was summer 1960 all over again, with Psycho at the eye of a public relations hurricane. CBS maintained it would be shown later. Toward that end, they previewed a sanitized version in December for New York Times reporter Peggy Hudson. This viewer timed both versions of the scene in which Janet Leigh is murdered in the shower. The TV version of this grisly scene was cut by 45 seconds. The murder is still shown, but the repeated stabbings have been cut. As if to reassure readers that some vestige remained of Psycho’s impact, Hudson closed with a faint endorsement. Viewers are left with a sense of shock, but perhaps not with the sense of stark horror felt by movie audiences. CBS president William H. Tankersley was chided for his defensive attitude re the topic of rescheduling. Possibly in the spring, he said, while bristling at suggestions those nine minutes he’d cut weren’t enough. To rule out the way we’ve edited it would be to rule out any good murder mystery (huh?). By December 18, he’d surrendered to public and affiliate pressure --- a firm decision was made never to broadcast Psycho. Universal was now free to package the feature among syndicated titles for its upcoming season offering. Psycho would be a crown jewel and assured ratings-getter for local stations with nerve enough to telecast it. Our own Channel 9 out of Charlotte took the plunge in Fall of 1968. Station buyers were furnished with complete prints. The 16mm negatives weren’t cut, so local standards would dictate how much footage to trim. Again I took my place in front of the Zenith, this time at home with both parents (unfortunately) watching. WSOC began with a s-l-o-w text crawl warning of extreme adult content in the film we were about to see --- It may be well to send the children to bed. My now alerted parents let that pass, though I found myself silently cursing Hitchcock for his opening scene with Janet Leigh and John Gavin lolling about half-naked in that hotel room. Sure enough, the lights went out for me. Off to bed, for I had no business looking at such things as this.

Local censors would now have their turn at Psycho. TV stations in those days edited with hacksaws. Movies were cut by thirds, even halves, to accommodate time slots a fraction of intended length. Dollar-an-hour apprentice butchers hovered over dimly lit benches and mutilated Hitchcock’s design until little was left but the title. I finally caught Psycho when Channel 9 ran a late show repeat in 1970. Was it complete? Perhaps --- but how could I know? A subsequent primetime airing on Greenboro’s WFMY was interrupted by a jagged splice occurring just as the darkened figure approached Janet Leigh’s shower. Next thing we know, Janet’s on the floor and her killer has left the building. No stabs, no knife, not a scream --- but at least Channel 2 was spared viewer complaints, and so what if we’d been suckered into watching under false pretences? Was Hitchcock aware of such wholesale abuse? It wasn’t confined to North Carolina broadcasts. Stations everywhere were taking the safe way out and gelding Psycho for dubious benefit of standards and practices. The director was made aware, but was powerless to intervene. These weren’t exhibitors he could dictate to. See It From The Beginning was a grim joke in the face of prints shorn by entire reels so they could fit into ninety-minute slots. Ever resourceful, Hitchcock found a way of turning such carnage to his advantage for Universal’s first theatrical reissue (1969) of Psycho. See It The Way It Was Originally Made!, said new ads, Every Scene Intact! The master’s unsmiling countenance promised The Version TV Didn’t Dare Show!, and a newly introduced ratings system assigned the (now discarded) "M" designation, hopefully confining access to Mature Audiences. The reassertion of 1960’s No One Will Be Admitted To See "Psycho" Except From The Very Beginning policy was likely ignored by showmen catering to patrons at the least familiar with every bump in this show, having seen it several times at home, if not in theatres. To reissue a feature fresh out of heavy TV rotation was near unprecedented in the late sixties, but a complete Psycho still had the lure of forbidden fruit, with fans yet willing to pay an admission to get a bite (Universal realized $262,000 in domestic rentals for this 1969 reissue). Meanwhile, rental houses proudly displayed Psycho in their show windows. Paramount exercised some residual rights here, for early non-theatrical prints bore their logo, and were in fact much superior to muddy 16mm editions Universal would later generate for similar markets. This collector made many an inquiry to dealer contacts before springing for a Psycho liberated from some warehouse or depot. Does it have a Paramount logo? If not, forget it. Those pursuing legitimate rental engagements were confronted with terms in excess of what other Hitchcocks commanded. Swank wanted $125 for a day’s Psycho booking in 1979 --- $200 if you played it between October 5 and November 5 (their listing shown here). The Birds, on the other hand, could be had for $95, up to $125 around the time of All Hallows’ Eve. Universal was meanwhile tying anchors to designated "special" Psycho by placing it among barking dogs in a syndicated group known as Universal 53, where Hitchcock’s classic warded off the stench of bunkmates Angel In My Pocket, The Ballad Of Josie, and The Far Out West (adapted from episodes of Pistols n’ Petticoats). You’d think these would be specimens TV Wouldn’t Dare Show, but most were at least in color, a main criterion for station buyers during those multi-hued besotted days.

Life is much simpler now. When it’s time to watch Psycho, we go to the shelf and take down our pristine DVD. Sometimes you feel like Lewis and Clark after tenderfoots have settled in on tracks you’ve cleared. Hacking through brush to present a definitive (or at least unsullied) Psycho is just another of our Quixotic quests that seem peculiar to armchair archivists today. Are we spoiled now or what? My recent collegiate run of Psycho didn’t scratch, tear, or show lines, and Janet’s shower scene was all there. I call that progress, but what of the movie? Does it still work? Our showing did. Could that be cause there's lots more Normans loose in our culture than in 1960? Hitchcock must have anticipated all those boomerang offspring now besetting retired parents. What is Norman but another 2007 problem child reluctant to leave mother’s nest? He’s almost an identification figure for overgrown adolescents today, minus the cross-dressing and knife murders. I used to encounter one Norman after another in collecting circles (without necessarily discounting the possibility of cross-dressing and knife murders among their numbers!). Had I been Tony Perkins’ agent with a desktop crystal ball in 1960, I would have told him not to take this part. Poor guy was ruined. Did anyone ever regard him with anything other than dread suspicion from then on? Not me. When I caught Pretty Poison at the Liberty in 1968, and he came walking in as Tuesday Weld’s unbalanced paramour, it was like, Of course --- that’s what Anthony Perkins does! No wonder he finished up doing one dreadful Psycho sequel after another. He was an actor cursed. Remember how everyone used to laugh when they saw Ted Knight standing in the hallway toward the end? Not anymore. Kids today don’t know Ted Knight from Dill Pickle, and that’s good, for this was always an unwelcome distraction. And what about the rumor that George Reeves was considered for Martin Balsam’s part (obviously during early stages of pre-production)? Imagine him tumbling backward down those stairs! No worse than what did happen to George, but suppose he’d lived another year? Would we have seen him in the role of Arbogast? I’d love to examine original casting notes on the subject, if for no other reason than to see if this was fact or merely wishful myth. My favorite shot --- that record of Beethoven’s Eroica on Norman’s little phonograph. Somehow that captures his weirdness best. One last thing. Were audiences really that stunned to see Janet Leigh killed off 44 minutes into the picture? She only gets featured billing after all, usually a tip-off they’re not going to make it to the end. Was anyone among first-run audiences in 1960 that can address this?

Psycho Salesmanship --- Part One

What a shame the startling effect of a groundbreaking new film can be only felt by those who come to it first. My initial exposure to Psycho was on television, so I’ll never relate to seismic shocks felt by traumatized viewers wandering out of first-run New York theatres during that summer of 1960. Biggest problem with a life spent in adoration of classic movies is the fact you’ll never get the rocker punch folks received when these things were new. We can read about opening nights of Gone With The Wind, A Star Is Born, or House Of Wax, but never mind feeling what they felt, no matter the restorations placed before us. Chasing a sensation likened to that experienced long ago in crowded and excited auditoriums is pretty much what this site is about, tempered by realization we’ll never come within hailing distance armed with nothing other than yellowed ads, faded photos and a few memories. How many of us grizzled moviegoing vets lucked into seminal shows on the front end? Southeastern venues were first to get Bonnie and Clyde and The Wild Bunch, long before these two were discovered by any sort of critical establishment (and prior to TWB being chopped down for general release length). My sole voyage of discovery, as in being among those truly first in line, took place in the summer of 1975, when our USC class was directed to a screening room on the Universal lot to see a brand new movie about sharks. Beyond that sketchy description, I had no information. Jaws wasn’t set to open for at least another two weeks, so we knew from nothing what lay in wait. I do remember screams among my classmates. Being twenty-one, I thought I’d experienced my last (literal) jolt in a theatre upon seeing The Haunting back in 1963, but this one left all of us gasping. For once in our spoiler-contaminated lives, we’d had no one to prepare (that is, ruin) us for the experience. I remember the film’s mechanical shark parked forlornly on a trailer as we crossed Universal's lot afterward. Just another prop awaiting storage, but quite a kick encountering such a thing only steps from having seen the movie. My digression here is just by way of imagining what a similar Psycho initiation might have been like --- entering those magic portals (and what gorgeous marquees these are!) a mere callow on-the-cusp-of-the-sixties youth, knowing not that your senses are about to be assailed in a manner hitherto unknown among moviegoers. Reliable accounts say many screamed and fled for home. Police were summoned to calm disturbances. I’ve read of such incidents during first-run engagements of Frankenstein in 1931, but weren’t we past this by 1960? May-be, but was this only because there’d been no one like Hitchcock to take up the challenge of upending us anew? Psycho demonstrated it was still possible to shatter senses on a mass scale. Jaws has perhaps come closest since, but what else?

Taking critics off the loop for advance screenings was nothing so radical in 1960, but barring exhibitors from same was a near declaration of war. Who can help launch a film better than an exhibitor who has seen it?, asked Pete Harrison in his June 6, 1960 Reports. Paramount’s excuse can only make theatre-men suspicious of the hidden feature’s merit. Harrison despaired of Psycho’s critical fate as well. Furthermore, it is understood that Paramount will not screen the film for trade reviewers before it opens at a theatre. Under such conditions, even the fairest of critics will have trouble viewing the film objectively. Indeed, Hitchcock had gambled his dollars (Psycho being largely self-financed), reputation, and showman good will in a go-for-broke campaign that might easily have backfired and cost the director everything he’d built up over a twenty-year period in the US. Had grosses not been so extraordinary, would the excesses here have finished Hitchcock’s career, as many predicted after seeing Psycho? It took steel nerve to put your name on the line for product rough as this, and what precedent gave assurance that audiences would sit still for it? If ever a filmmaker read the pulse of his constituency, Hitchcock did that summer, for Psycho lured business vast beyond the wildest expectation of ordinary shockers --- so much so as to suggest he’d invented a whole new genre. You could opt for a simplistic explanation and dismiss the new Hitchcock as merely an upscale William Castle, and indeed, he envisioned Psycho as a riposte to all those Hammer, AIP, and, yes, Bill Castle pics nipping at his Master Of Suspense heels. Summer of 1960’s release schedule is fun for the glimpse it affords of Psycho’s thriller competition. Bowing before and after Hitchcock was American-International’s House Of Usher (June), Universal/Hammer’s Brides Of Dracula (July), and Columbia’s 13 Ghosts (August). Castle (shown at top shilling for 13 Ghosts with moppet "fan club") was a particular thorn in Hitchcock’s side, as their marketing techniques often overlapped, and Hitchcock didn’t enjoy seeing his work confused with the likes of The Tingler and House On Haunted Hill (writer applicants to A.H. faced veto for having worked on previous Castle shows). Was Bill the Hitchcock doppelganger? --- a cut-rate Bruno Anthony to the master’s Guy Haines? Comparisons would end at the ticket window, for neither Castle nor fellow shockmeisters ever realized anything approaching Psycho grosses. This might have proven a mixed blessing for Hitchcock, as adult expectations of star-laden (and more or less civilized) suspense were now supplanted by newly-won youthful acolytes awaiting a topper to horrific thrills he’d furnished with Psycho, and later, The Birds. I distinctly recall the letdown attendant upon my family’s beach vacation outing to see Torn Curtain in August 1966. Owing to the reputation of those last two, this twelve-year old craved stronger meat than Paul Newman and Julie Andrews playing at tepid espionage behind the who-cares iron whatever curtain. Poor Hitchcock was trapped in his own house on a haunted (Psycho) hill, and immature (if exacting) fans such as myself weren’t disposed to let him out.

There was a pair of teaser trailers in addition to the six-minute deluxe wherein Hitchcock hosted a tour of the Bates Motel and environs. The latter attained legendary status and was bootlegged/sold by collectors for years to come. Universal included it among DVD extras, but the teasers have remained unseen. One was a plea urging top secrecy regarding the content of Psycho, while the other set forth policy for all bookings of the feature. See It From The Beginning was a dodge they’d used since movies began, but never was it actually enforced with regards arriving patrons. Embattled showmen happy to get their quarters any way they could were alarmed to find such uncompromising terms written into Psycho contracts. Our opening playdates have proved, beyond the shadow of a showman’s doubt, the success of this required policy, said Hitchcock in a trade appeal to exhibitors. If the word "required" startles you, please try to think of a box office besieged by patrons anxious to purchase tickets. Feel better? Hitchcock forecast theatre owners happily startled all the way to the bank if only they’d comply with his absolute bar against late arrivals to Psycho. For first-run houses with definite start schedules (several shown here), this was well and good, and promotional budgets at metro venues allowed for stunt emphasis on Hitchcock’s edict (Pinkerton guards, off-duty officers, etc.), but what of those grind situations down the line where double and triple billing prevailed and start times were uncertain at best? My guess is the policy was abandoned (or at least enforcement of same) after the first month or so of general release, though scrambling for prints of Psycho aroused the ire of circuit heads denied early run privileges. Here is a black-and-white picture for which Paramount could make up at least 100 more prints for "peanuts" and take advantage of the publicity the picture is now receiving, said Allied Theatre’s North Central president. It could then be booked into the smaller towns and earn thousands of more dollars and help keep the small-town exhibitor alive. The age-old problem of popular titles going stale before less populated areas could get them was an ongoing grievance among rural showmen --- Can the revenue derived from the comparatively few who are lured from their communities to the big cities possibly compensate the film company for the losses resulting from the local theatres’ lessened prestige and the positive manner in which such sales policies date a picture and render it passe in the minds of local theatergoers? The backlash stung as Psycho limped its way into the sticks. Not as good as William Castle’s "Macabre" was manager Chuck Gerard’s dismissal in the wake of patrons’ migration to catch Psycho in Iowa City or St. Louis rather than wait months for Warsaw, Illonois’ modest house to book a date.

Photo Captions

William Castle Hits The Road For 13 Ghosts

Three-Sheet Art for Psycho

Hitchcock Lays Down The Rules

New York crowds greet Psycho's opening

Paramount field men working on the campaign

A little context --- Paramount's Line-Up for Summer 1960

More Marquee Magic

Hitchcock preparing to hang the "O" on Psycho (but how'll he reach that far?)

More anxious crowds at the Arcadia

Check Your Watch! Can't come in if you're late!

Mobs amassing for evening show

Skittish patron cows before uniformed admissions guard

Comedic Jekylls and Hydes

What might Abbott and Costello have accomplished had they used their boxoffice power toward more creative ends? Top ten status on exhibitor polls suggests freedom to experiment and vary the formula, but Bud and Lou cared more about that good life stardom conferred than enhancing their on-screen artistry. Instead of developing material, they played cards. Every distraction was catered to. Ad-libbing tolerated on an Abbott and Costello set would likely have been verboten for Laurel and Hardy at Fox or The Marx Brothers in their later Metros, yet imagine what these comedy teams could have achieved had they enjoyed the latitude Bud and Lou were given. A&C’s single gesture toward creative control seems to have been their insistance upon two offbeat features in which they were more or less split up, Little Giant and The Time Of Their Lives, but was that really an effort toward better picture-making, or just a means of getting a vacation from one another? Lou’s antipathy as regards Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein makes you wonder what he might have preferred in its place. What works in A&C comedy is probably the result of lack of preparedness, and the audience’s sense that much of their stuff is random. According to co-workers, this was a near right assumption. My sense of Abbott and Costello is that they preferred a stage to motion pictures. With early television, the pair very nearly got back what they’d missed since burlesque days in the thirties. Movie slapstick was a commonplace wherein any number of comics surpassed A&C’s experience and expertise, but with regards verbal patter, these two had no peer. Who’s On First is still a miracle of timing and delivery. Skits on The Colgate Comedy Hour were but flimsy preambles to well-honed routines excavated from theatrical trunks, much of it new to home audiences who’d ignored their Universal features over the last six or seven years. Were any adults still going to see Abbott and Costello in the early fifties? The absence of singers/bands suggest a capitulation to the simple market demands of juve matinees, and it seemed the boys were falling down more and talking less. By the time things got round to Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Lou couldn’t even approach a door without plunging through it. I don’t wonder that the team preferred TV work (their own series as well as the Colgate shows --- both running strong by 1953). Universal contract starlets shunned the A&C unit for its perceived kiddie ghetto standing, but worse still was an oversaturation of the team resulting from an ancillary market taking off after the war that promised to have quite an impact on viewing habits among both viewers at home and audiences in non-theatrical environments.

Realart’s heavy schedule of Abbott and Costello re-issues were in direct competition with the team’s new releases in the early fifties (much as would be the case with Jerry Lewis in the sixties), so much so that Universal was obliged to emphasize All New legends they now attached to posters (including the one shown here for A&C Meet J&H). Realart had leased much of Universal’s backlog for a ten-year period beginning in 1946, and exhibitors were happy to pay their minimal rentals as opposed to higher terms imposed by U-I. After all, when it comes to Abbott and Costello, who cares if the show is old or new, since one was virtually indistinguishable from another. United World was a subsidiary of Universal that sold 8 and 16mm movies to home viewers under the name Castle Films. Abbott and Costello were ideally suited to fill these eight-minute souvenir reels, their routines being compatible to shorter lengths and overall plot being of no real consequence. Once you bought a Castle Film, you could do what you liked with it. Ownership was outright. Boomer kids encountered Abbott and Costello at birthday parties, public libraries, church bazaars … wherever someone could plug in a tabletop projector and go to work. All this was just one more stream of revenue Bud and Lou wouldn’t drink from, as they (initially) got nothing from Castle Film sales. A lawsuit filed in 1952 was finally settled in their favor, but by the mid-fifties, a combination of Realart and Castle, plus their own increasingly weak product out of Universal, made Abbott and Costello seem an over-saturated product, if not a quaintly old-fashioned one. Rurals and grindhouses continued using them. Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (that's Lou with director Charles Lamont, by the way) found new glory at a small Vernon, Florida theatre in September, 1958 --- My best grosser in Vernon was not "3:10 To Yuma" nor "Operation Madball"… It was this reissue of an old Abbott and Costello. They laughed long and loud. They whooped and hollered and rolled in the aisles. Well, why would manager I. Roche lie? --- though it’s hard to imagine anyone rolling in the aisles over Bud and Lou’s dispirited antics this time out. Maybe that crowd had something to do with it, as we know from experience how contagious audience laughter can be. Universal was at least considerate enough to withhold their features from television for at least a year or two beyond the dumping date chosen by other studios, for it was 1958 before Screen Gems (U-I’s lessee for most of its pre-48 library) began penetrating markets with A&C oldies. Later comedies with the team (including Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) made it to television via packages from Seven Arts (starting in July 1963), but were split up among mainstream Universal titles. Consequently, your local channel might run Lost In Alaska five times, but Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein not at all (mine did!). It was July 1971 before MCA finally packaged all their Abbott and Costellos into a dedicated group of 29 features, the leases with Screen Gems and Seven Arts having run out. By this time, most exposure for comedies this old (and in black-and-white) would be on independent UHF stations.

Abbott and Costello merely used Jekyll and Hyde as a hook to further their Meet The Monsters series. Boris Karloff reprised a mad science template he’d called upon numerous times (though not so recently as of 1953). That Westmore mask was donned for publicity, as shown here, but I wonder if Karloff ever stood before a camera in the Hyde guise. Why impose upon this man in his sixties when any number of stunt artists could slip the rubber over their face and bound over backlot rooftops (in fact, one of them broke an ankle doing so)? The only authentic spoof on Jekyll and Hyde would come from Jerry Lewis, and his would emerge the masterpiece of such travesties. The Nutty Professor is so good you can’t believe JL made it. That’s been said before, I know, but look at those others he did. How did Jerry all of a sudden wake up to a concept so clever as this, and why hasn’t he managed such an inspiration since? Every writer has one great story in him/her, and the Professor is Jerry’s. Everything right about his staging, direction, and design is here. I was stunned by that Technicolor when it unspooled at the Liberty for a 1966 reissue, a late date for catching up, though neighbor kids had told me how fine this one was. Paramount actually bought the back cover of Famous Monster’s 1964 yearbook for promotion, which I’ve shown here primarily because it’s the only time I ever saw this particular ad style published anywhere (and, correct me if I’m wrong, the only occasion on which a major studio bought space in FM!). With those references to previous J/H enactors (Barrymore, March, Tracy), you’d almost think Paramount marketing customized the page especially for FM readers, which I’m inclined to believe, as I couldn’t locate any mats in the pressbook resembling it. Query --- who’s Buddy Love supposed to be? Another subject flogged to death elsewhere, but I’ll venture he’s a composite of Rat Pack ethos Jerry was said to have deplored (at least then). Though Buddy ended up resembling Jerry himself, I wouldn’t think the man could have harnessed self-awareness to lay bare such a corrosive off-screen persona before an unknowing audience (bearing in mind that 1963 devotees didn’t necessarily know Jerry as we do now). As to speculation Hyde/Love mirrors Lewis’ former partner, he actually seems more Frank than Dean, but just who in Jerry’s show-biz orbit behaved so cruelly as this? Were there multiple Buddy Loves running loose backstage in Vegas or between shots on movie sets? Reading post-mortem bios surfacing over the last decade or so, I’d venture to say yes, there were plenty. Lewis brought them too close for his audience’s comfort. I know fans that grew up with Jerry who draw the line on The Nutty Professor, for Buddy Love’s nastiness has way too much ring of truth about it. All the more credit to him for refusing to soften that alter-ego, for it would have been easy to hone off the edge and still realize the rentals ($3.3 million, his best but for The Bellboy).

They filmed at Arizona State University. Big band Les Brown, once renowned, entertains for a 1963 class of undergrads during a prom night that all but stages a jitterbug rally in its backward retreat toward those 40’s sounds Jerry loved. He was down on a pop culture fast going to hell, and said so to reporters who’d listen. No kid of his would go to the theatre and watch lesbians (was he thinking of Walk On The Wild Side or The Children’s Hour, both in recent release at the time?). Permissive movies were imprisoning families in front of their televisions --- is this what Hollywood wanted? Buddy Love wows ‘em at the Purple Pit when he gives out with That Old Black Magic, a standard with a beard a mile long, but look at the "students" he’s crooning to --- all thirty if they’re a day --- I even glimpsed Dave Willock, Jimmy Ellison’s old army sidekick from 1943’s The Gang’s All Here! Hindsight prefers Les Brown to the spectre of a Duane Eddy backing Jerry, but little of this serves the cause of verisimilitude. Actually, that music is what I like best about The Nutty Professor. Re-using Victor Young’s beautiful Stella By Starlight as a principal motif was inspiration itself. As a kid, I wanted a record of that title theme. Lush scoring was on its way out by 1963. More power to Lewis for keeping the sound alive long after others had abandoned it (and I’m reminded as well of David Raksin’s fine work on The Patsy --- you can forgive Jerry anything for having at least utilized his talent). I can’t speak for others, but the rapturous series of dissolves with Stella Stevens at Kelp’s classroom door is one of the most perfect weddings of music and visuals I’ve ever seen. I always run it back several times during each viewing (thank you, reverse tracking!). Would that Jerry Lewis were still (at least) arranging scores for movies … how much happier I’d be. As to selling his work, this man lived and died with grassroots exhibition. Both of them faded about the same time. Jerry went out with The Nutty Professor on a grueling 25-city tour jammed into a 44-day schedule, doing a live show (with the band he brought along) at every stop. No one stumped for the product like Lewis. Nearing forty when he split with Paramount (amidst lawsuits and recriminations), the once indestructible wickets champ faced an industry stripped of Code protections he’d relied on, and a family audience he’d depended upon. Jerry’s attempt to beat back the tide with a string of "G" rated movie theatres bearing his name was dismissed as reactionary. He’s spent the last four decades cussing the dirty movies he says put him out of business, as though Hollywood itself had fallen under the influence of (now several) generations of Buddy Loves.

More On Jekyll and Hyde

There’s nothing so tantalizing as films that go missing. Truant, uncut versions of shows we revere are all the more enticing. Few send pulses racing like reclaimed pre-codes. Bawdy to begin with, what ecstasies await the retrieval of even more intact prints, such as Library Of Congress staffers discovered when they stumbled across the censor-suppressed Baby Face a few years ago? As I watch Warner’s DVD of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the question taunts me surely as those lingering effects from Fredric March’s potion --- Is there more? Could there be more? Well, first of all, how much is enough? For most of us, nothing less than every moment exposed before that rolling camera will do. What of Hyde trampling that little kid? We’ve seen stills of it. One turned up in Famous Monsters years ago. Bryan Senn published a shot in his book, Golden Horrors. The trade ad showing it here dates from December 1931. So did they shoot this? Did folks see it? A perhaps-embarrassed Rouben Mamoulian (here with cast and crew at an on-set birthday party) claimed the moment was limited to publicity. They never actually filmed such a thing. Or so he says. I suspect it was shot, but made it no further than those sneak previews Paramount conducted in Glendale, West Adams, and Westwood during mid-December. And what of the infamous Miriam Hopkins strip scene? Don’t know about you, but I want more. I suspect there was more. But just when did we lose it? Now that Greg Mank has covered the background and production so thoroughly in his outstanding DVD commentary (and in an excellent book, Hollywood Cauldron), there’s little left for the rest of us but to obsess over details, picayune questions that haunt one’s sleep at night.

First, how long is it supposed to be? The DVD clocks at ninety-five minutes and fifty seconds. Footage count in 1931 amounted to 8,863 feet, or 98 and one-half minutes. This included exit music, which continued beyond the cast of characters following the end title. Past confusion over missing footage may not have taken this into account (there’s no exit music on the DVD, though I know at least two collectors who have it). The official release date was January 2, 1932 (explanation perhaps for an ongoing assumption it opened that year), but there were runs in Los Angeles and Chicago that began during the third week of December 1931, prior to the New York run which started on New Years Eve (that ad shown here). There’s a little over two minutes between what they (presumably) saw then and what we have now. Part of this is the exit music, unlikely to amount to this much footage, so what of the rest? Day of infamy July 5, 1935 found Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde gelded for the sake of a Code Seal Paramount needed in order to re-issue it. 85 minutes was left in the butchery’s wake. Back Issue #18 of indispensable Video Watchdog magazine delineates the cuts. One could cry reading it. 16mm rental house Films, Inc. offered Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in its 1940 catalogue, but none of those prints have thus far surfaced. Based on the description, theirs appears to have been the truncated 1935 version. MGM would buy the negative outright when they decided to remake the property. That purchase took place on May 14, 1940. Variety said they paid $30,000 for both the 1920 and 1931 versions. The Motion Picture Herald claimed it was $125,000. Studio records indicate the latter figure to be the correct one. Metro put both in cold storage so as to avoid distraction while their 1941 adaptation made its rounds. I’d love to know if the 1931 Jekyll and Hyde played anywhere between 1940 and 1966. The only sighting I’m aware of was a partial one, as the 1953 Academy Awards ceremony (which was televised) did feature an excerpt of Fredric March as J/H. The film’s reputation was maintained by way of mouth-watering stills that turned up in late fifties/early sixties publications like Famous Monsters Of Filmland and Castle Of Frankenstein. Few were aware that MGM now owned the negative. I well remember my mother’s vivid account of seeing the March version theatrically in 1932. It seemed I’d never share that thrill, for we all assumed it was a lost film. Controversial pioneer archivist Raymond Rohauer unearthed a print during a search at Metro and cleared a single run for a late 1967 tribute to director Rouben Mamoulian, but his was not the first reclamation of Jekyll and Hyde. Once again, it was collector/scholar William K. Everson who led the way with his showing that took place during a regular gathering of The Theodore Huff Film Society. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was thus reborn among a small group of Manhattan film buffs on March 8, 1966 …

Bill Everson’s program notes read thus --- This long-lost but well-remembered classic hasn’t been screened in the United States for more than twenty-five years. Was he right? Very possibly yes, as I doubt MGM authorized any playdates over that period of time. Everson’s 16mm print likely originated with a Library Of Congress original from which a handful of dupes had been made for in-the-loop collectors (no, I wasn’t one of them --- the best I could manage in 1966 was Castle’s 8mm headline edition of Tarantula). These underground editions were (ironically) far closer to the complete Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than anything MGM would distribute throughout the seventies and much of the eighties. Everson acknowledged still missing scenes --- There is one very minor (probably censor) cut in the last third of the film; it occurs when Hyde is sitting under a tree in the park. The cut is not at all perceptible, but what is missing is a shot of a cat pouncing on a bird (cat and bird are restored to the DVD). As for that Mamoulian tribute screening, the director himself noted multiple cuts (they'd shown the mutilated re-issue version from 1935). Alerted now to possible interest in a long dormant property, MGM launched their own re-release. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Never Shown On TV, says the one-sheet shown here) was packaged in a triple Superstars Of Shock package with Mark Of The Vampire and a similarly cut (racial sensibilities) Mask Of Fu Manchu for 1972 theatrical bookings. The gaudy campaign implied contemporary chills. Exhibitors weren’t fooled. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, at 83 minutes (hey, that’s two more minutes than they cut in 1935!) managed only 355 bookings, a lamentable reception from which only $31,079 in domestic rentals was realized. MGM leased J/H to Films, Inc. for non-theatrical 16mm rental in the early seventies. It was listed among "special" titles in a deluxe catalogue, Rediscovering The American Cinema, published in 1972 by the company. Rates varied on a sliding scale from $50 to $250. The running time was indicated at 90 minutes, a first-time designation for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at that length. Metro did not make it available for domestic television, although foreign TV showings did yield $44,000 through April of 1983. MGM/UA released a laser disc in 1991 that put back much of the footage removed in 1935, but the Paramount logo and some of Miriam Hopkins’ strip was still missing. It would be interesting to know what elements MGM acquired in that 1940 purchase of the negative. Was the 1935 re-issue version all that Paramount delivered to them? Did they have to use the Library Of Congress materials to fill in gaps for their more recent restoration to DVD?

Fredric March owned a 16mm print of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He acquired it from MGM some years before his death in 1975. It was never easy getting prints out of studios. You had to sign all sorts of pledges not to exhibit them publicly, loan them out, etc. Worth noting is the fact that March’s acquisition was the truncated 1935 re-issue version. A collector friend who knew the actor and visited him on several occasions inspected it. The 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had been budgeted at $557,000 with a shooting schedule of 44 days, from August 24 to October 13. It ran seven days over that. Fredric March received $1,480,77 per week to play the lead. Miriam Hopkins got $1250 and Rose Hobart $700. Character support included Holmes Herbert ($750), Edgar Norton ($500), and Halliwell Hobbes ($500). All these were per week salaries. Rouben Mamoulian realized a total of $30,769.20 for directing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a guarantee of eight weeks at $3,846.15 per. Cinematographer Karl Struss was paid $400.00 for each week he was there. The Jekyll and Lanyon home exteriors were shot on the Pathe lot, and that park where March observes the bird and cat was actually Busch Gardens. Latter-day horror fans overwhelmingly prefer the 1931 version over Metro’s 1941 remake. Having watched both this week, I’d say Spencer Tracy’s more believable, but March is more fun. The latter clearly enjoys his opportunity to subvert the kind of performance expected from conventional leads of that period. Distorting a handsome face is something many such men relish (as witness John Barrymore). March's Hyde was one actor’s liberation from what fans and employers expected, while Jekyll, all lip rouge and courtly restraint, represent much of what was stultifying in those Paramount vehicles he sought escape from. Censor correspondence from 1931 indicates a willingness to ease up on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because of its literary pedigree. This is a movie that got away with a lot more than ordinary horror films could have managed, even pre-code ones. We can thank Robert Louis Stevenson for that. Censor revisions would again come to call on a new Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1941, but we wouldn’t realize it until the DVD (and a vigilant Video Watchdog) brought it to our attention in 2004.

Fredric March recalled, in a 1973 interview, running into Spencer Tracy shortly after the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde opened. I haven’t seen your picture yet, but I hear it’s great, said Fred to Spence. Who the hell do you think you’re kidding? When I made that movie, I did you the biggest favor anybody ever did you, replied a disgruntled Tracy. He was never happy with his Jekyll or his Hyde. It embarrassed him to play a monster. Trips to and from the stage were made in a closed car (that's Tracy and Ingrid Bergman on the set with director Victor Fleming). If horror subjects were held in disrepute during the early thirties, they were just that much more so ten years later. Tracy’s J/H was also a projection of dueling screen images. His Jekyll was Edison, The Man by way of Boy’s Town, with Hyde the scruffier Tracy who’d smacked them around in pre-code days at Fox Film Corporation, an image he was anxious to leave behind. Although there were stills issued of Tracy as Hyde, few saw publication (most images we see today are frame captures). Posters de-emphasized the horror, though enterprising showmen often manipulated art to juice up the scare stuff. Metro’s re-issue of October 1954 took it a step further with a one-sheet (shown here) that smacked more of what AIP and Allied Artists would be turning out for later exploitation thrillers. Though banned in Memphis owing to Ingrid Bergman’s ongoing scandal, the show managed $185,901 in re-issue rentals. The 2004 DVD release revealed the presence of two differing versions of this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A review in Video Watchdog (Issue #106) was followed by a letter to the editor in #111 that detailed cuts in Warner’s master. Apparently, there were syndicated TV prints containing a minute and fifty-two seconds of content that had been removed prior to the picture’s release in 1941. This had happened before with Metro titles. The Merry Widow and Manhattan Melodrama, both from 1934, have scenes in old 16mm circulation copies missing from video masters made from 35mm. Did these TV prints have material that even first-run audiences were denied? In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, there were portions of the dream montages missing, along with some dialogue in front of Jekyll’s mirror at the end. Hays Office records reveal that a request was made to remove this footage prior to general release in 1941. How a print containing this material survived to make its way to an eventual TV negative is anyone’s guess, but evidently, it does exist. Beyond all this, there's a discrepancy in running times between the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde released to theatres, and later television (122 minutes) --- and the version available on DVD (113 minutes). This obviously encompasses more than censor trims, but just what scenes remain missing --- and why were they taken out?

Many thanks to Dr. Karl Thiede for assistance and advice on this posting.

Jekylls and Hydes I've Known --- Part One

Who’s to carry the banner for silent films after the present generation of curators is gone? There’s a grip of fear I experience whenever one of them sickens or dies, for it seems there’s so few left that care. Are young people embracing pre-talkies? The names I see on DVD credits and on-line discussion groups have been familiar to me for years, so where are their successors? Graduate programs are said to be training students in film preservation. Maybe I’m too old to notice them in the field, but every time there’s an obit for a longtime silent enthusiast, I can’t help thinking of potential restorations and rediscoveries going with him, and how likely as not there won’t (eventually) be anyone left to champion the cause. Those (few) of us who remember sitting home on a schools-out snow day watching Blackhawk’s 8mm release of Sheldon Lewis as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde while normal kids were out sledding will surely understand the thrill of watching a thing seemingly old as Egyptian papyrus, but I couldn’t realistically expect many others to share such a peculiar enthusiasm. I mean, has anyone actually watched Sheldon Lewis as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? To do so willingly takes you way beyond mere purist status. In fact, all these silent J/H adaptations share an appeal limited to determined (if not obsessive) movie archeologists, yet they provide, as a group, the most potent link to long-past performing styles and thesping technique we’re likely to see. To sit and watch them patiently (and yes, you’ll need plenty of that) is to come tantalizingly near what theatre audiences experienced when these dynamic old barnstormers trod boards a century ago. Yeah, I know acting’s more "realistic" now, but oh, to have seen Jekyll and Hyde on stage! --- and performed by guys willing to pull out all the stops to thrill us. Those must surely have been the days …

Stage lion Richard Mansfield was playing Jekyll/Hyde within a year after Robert Lewis Stevenson’s novella was published (1886), and surviving records indicate his transformation sure enough gave women the vapors. Here at last was a part seemingly designed for matinee idols anxious to walk a wild side and fling shocks out to the gallery. No telling how many actors of varied talent cringed, crawled, and caterwauled after downing that potion. Definitely a money scene to guarantee breathless crowd reactions. Mansfield’s interpretation was legendary. He shunned make-up and used lighting effects to put over Hyde’s entrance. Too bad he died (1907) before movies could immortalize it. Others filled the breach, however, and that initial lab scene remained as foolproof as Eliza on the ice floes. Future director James Cruze mopped the floor with his writhing body in a 1912 single-reeler, while Brit producers whipped up a color version around the same time. For every Jekyll/Hyde that survives from the teens, at least two more are lost. Problem with these primitives is a thin line of demarcation between so-called dual personalities. Hyde’s just Jekyll with mussed-up hair and snaggle teeth. What this property needed was romance combined with menace, brutish Hyde’s total departure from idealized Jekyll. Going on as before would only assure a continuation of one-reel stunts --- indeed, parodies were already beginning to surface. Paramount/Artcraft (the Artcraft tag hung on prestige product) sought legit luminaries to attract carriage trade, and John Barrymore was their man of the moment as of 1919. He’d triumphed as Richard III on Broadway and was likened to Booth, Irving, and yes, Richard Mansfield --- all dead, and memories of each passing surely as their nineteenth century audiences headed toward eternal reward. Barrymore had enough dark side to host two or three Hydes, and separation of personality was something he knew all about (legend maintains JB slept off a drunk in Frisco digs while that 1906 quake opened fissures in the street below). If people were going to regard J/H seriously again, he’d be the natural one to take them there. Better money induced as well. I received five hundred dollars a week in the theatre, and fifteen hundred dollars a week in the movies, said Jack upon completion of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, so whoring out to flickers was pretty much a no-brainer for him. Doing it voiceless rankled. He likened that to pantomiming for someone through moving train windows. Topping Mansfield on a mute screen would be a tall order --- how do you erase rose-tinted recall of the Great Man’s stage changeovers? Barrymore resolved to do opening convultions sans make-up. Those less indulgent may titter over his lurches upon that first swallow, but customers then were mesmerized by a seeming onscreen emergence of fiendish Mr. Hyde from the benignly handsome cocoon of Dr. Jekyll. Truly an acting plateau for movies. This glinty-eyed, purse-lipped alter-ego would revisit Barrymore whenever he needed to pull a face for serious (Don Juan’s torture sequence) or comic effect (recognize Mr. Hyde laffing it up with Bill Fields for a proposed mid-thirties teaming?).

For all his epoch-making on stage and screen, John Barrymore might never have realized he was the very first Famous Monster Of Filmland as well. I’ll not extend those laurels to Charles Ogle of 1910 Frankenstein fame, as his lumbering hulk was no different from Hyde pretenders that had preceded JB. Jack knew how to morph that chiseled profile into a thing splendidly grotesque. What is it we find so arresting about the pinhead look (with Freaks' Schlitze being its primary girl/boy pin-up)? Barrymore sensed our need and convincingly raised his scalp to a point that’s absolutely hypnotic from the moment he tips that similarly customized hat (we need more pinheads in movies!). Elongated fingers are another fun ugly element, and you’d swear the things were long as corn stalks by closing reel time (one spastic moment sees a digit flying off his hand). Barrymore even assumes the role of giant tarantula (with Hyde head!) slithering into Jekyll’s bed during a nightmare sequence. Such details are restored to us by way of Kino’s Collector’s Edition DVD. Quality here is leagues better than what Blackhawk served up in 8mm days, though David Shepherd’s Image version contains five or so minutes denied us on the Kino disc. I got the clearest look yet at Nita Naldi’s pub temptress, a smokin’ antidote for Gish/Pickford overdoses we often got before the twenties started roaring. She was a Barrymore discovery (insert carnal inferences here), and Jack’s exhaustion at filming’s close (for which I’d not altogether blame her) was such that he repaired to sanitarium grounds for R&R. That’s where he drew this self-portrait. Looks to have been pretty hung up on the duality thing, but again let’s admire JB’s facility with sketchpad. Reviews back home were glowing. Had a lesser name played so monstrous, local censors might well have been aroused, but Barrymore’s was a sacrosanct name, so he got away with horrors they’d not have tolerated otherwise (and how about that scene where JB bludgeons the guy, then impliedly drinks his blood?). The actor may have gotten his highest compliment when Robert Louis Stevenson’s stepson declared his performance the superior of legendary Mansfield’s (and note how these trade ads stoke the competition). By the by, another Mansfield participant was ill-fated Martha (shown here as Hyde looms behind) , already a prominent name when she played Jekyll’s fiancée opposite Barrymore. The actress came to a grisly end four years later (at age 24) when a carelessly tossed match caught her period dress on fire (donned for The Warrens Of Virginia). She went up like one of Henry Jarrod’s wax figures. Even the intervention of a close-by leading man went for naught toward saving her.

Scavengers meanwhile laid in wait. One of them got out a catchpenny version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde within weeks of Paramount’s opening. Sheldon Lewis restored those pinwheel transformations audiences missed since nickelodeon days, but this was no advance on the performing arts (a little of Lewis --- and yes, that goes a long way --- is featured among extras on Kino’s DVD). Barrymore’s Jekyll and Hyde went with MGM after they acquired the negative from Paramount in March 1940. Copyrights weren’t renewed, so it quietly lapsed into the public domain within a decade after that. Home movie merchants had J/H on the street soon after. Dupes fermented in numerous bathtubs, and you can imagine the quality of these. Archivist/collector James Card sighted an original soon after WWII in one of those Midas vaults at Rochester’s Eastman House Theatre. I assume that’s the print from which latter-day incarnations derive. Blackhawk had a thirty-minute 8mm abridgement you could get for $21.98 in 1972. I’m told Warners makes it available upon request as well. Could this be the definitive incarnation from surviving Paramount elements? The chain of ownership from Metro’s 1940 buy would place it now with Warners, along with the later Fredric March version. Maybe a DVD from them would give us the definitive Jekyll and Hyde with Barrymore.

The Idol Of Every Boy In The World


Tom Mix might have auditioned for Boris Karloff’s eventual role in Frankenstein. Physically qualified at the least, his body had been scarred, smashed-up, then held together by wiring through much of a fabulous career. Mix played cowboys at a time when movies provided no safe haven for western names looking to occupy that top rung. He got to be Number One by sheer dogged refusal to fake anything, thus week after month after year found him rolling off cliffs, dangling above ravines, leaping horseback over chasms … any and all feats not yet attempted and awaiting only Tom's willingness to jump in the fray and risk his fool neck all over again. For a staggering $17,500 a week, Mix broke legs, shattered shoulders, and bore concussions. All his teeth had been busted out through ill-timed horsefalls and punches various bad guys neglected to pull. The good showman in him required Tom to dress out in a rack of glistening store choppers fully capable of biting through flagpoles, though frequent bar-fights and drunken set-to's obliged him to replace these often. Sometimes, damage was collateral (one leading lady drowned on a Mix show), though rewards for a broken body were plentiful. That salary put Tom in a centrally air-conditioned mansion (in 1925!!), and with over 600 pairs of boots, there wasn’t a better-shod westerner in Hollywood (no, let’s make that the whole country). All this for a man who’d barely finished fifth-grade, but applied himself to reading the complete works of Shakespeare and consulting encyclopedias often so he wouldn’t be lost in conversation with formally educated friends and associates. Truly a self-made (and invented) Renaissance man of the west commanding an audience vast beyond the comprehension of modern-day faux celebrities and their niche followers. Kids loved Tom, but so did parents. They expected each show to be more thrilling than the last, and no one was counting the pounds of flesh Mix was expending to provide just that. The Monarch Of The Plains (so named by his studio) presided over this Roman coliseum through (some say) 336 films, though exact numbers are hard to pin down, so many being re-titled --- then lost --- thus the sketchy record of trails he rode. Tom would have better insured his safety as a lion tamer or bullfighter, for making western movies was for him like Russian Roulette with all six chambers loaded. His last was The Miracle Rider, well named as it was a miracle Tom could still ride, and this final curtain call at age fifty-five was proof if nothing else that he was truly King of those cowboys who knew how to live dangerously, both on and off the screen.



Producer Nat Levine dangled $40,000 before Mix for his pledge to top-line The Miracle Rider over a four-week shooting schedule. Nat’s Mascot Company was the go-to place for low-budget serials peddled on a State’s Rights basis (here’s the sales force posed amidst lobby displays for a 1933 offering, The Lost Jungle). Their doozy of a logo featured a Bengal tiger with paws draped over the world globe, roaring as those words Mascot Pictures encircled from the right. Kids must have cheered plenty when they saw that. Individual franchises would buy exclusive rights in Levine’s chapter-plays and squeeze whatever coin they could in distribution time allowed. Each serial was an individual crapshoot that could make or break Levine, but Tom Mix was the nearest to a sure thing he ever had. The cowboy legend was persuaded not only by Mascot's money (he'd recently bought a circus and needed to prop up those tents), but by Nat’s stealth appeal to his conservative notions regarding social issues. Criminals on the loose. Boys and girls learning Communist propaganda in schools --- these were anathema to Mix and a return to the screen would be his means of combating them. When Mascot Pictures Corporation showed me the story of "The Miracle Rider," I knew I had the kind of rip-snortin’, he-man chapter-play which would thrill every kid in town. Those fifteen installments would also help sustain interest in Tom’s circus, struggling to separate patrons from their hard-earned Depression change during a year when disposable income was at an absolute nadir. Levine spent $80,000 getting The Miracle Rider made (with half that gone to Mix), and hoped to increase bookings that had previously hovered between eight and nine thousand (Rider would end up with over 12,000 engagements). He put three units to work so as to speed production. One would shoot dialogue and interiors, with two more busy staging action and chase segments. Silent villain turned stuntman Cliff Lyons doubled for a star no longer able to withstand the rough tumbles. Tom had retired out of Universal three years earlier figuring his game was up. A burst appendix and near-fatal bout with peritonitis in 1931 was proof enough he might be mortal after all, but then as if to reassure himself otherwise, Mix cleaned out saloons over the Mexican border during re-laxation breaks between circus and vaudeville jobs. Those miles really told on him now. Jet black hair-dye fooled nobody, and dialogue that never came easy stuck in the throat which legend claims lodged a bullet fired during a surly exchange with wife number four (of five). Further investigation suggests she didn’t tag him throat-wise after all, but did put one in an arm that settled near Tom’s spine. It seemed wherever Mix went, lead was flying, with his living room no safer than riding in front of outlaw posses.





I’d respect Tom less if he recited lines better. Mangled words and halting delivery only enhance the man's credibility as far as I’m concerned. He knew elocution was for sissies. When Mix says secretary, it comes out sec-er-tary. He’ll stop in mid-sentence to ponder whatever the hell those words are supposed to be, surrender to faulty memory, then ad-lib something better and more authentic. The need for speed and Tom’s get-it-done impatience meant no retakes, so what we see in The Miracle Rider is fifteen glorious blooper reels where expecting the unexpected is half the fun. Minus that pesky talk, Mix offers a twilight glimpse of what he’d delivered back in the day. Running inserts are plentiful and that’s sure enough Tom riding Tony (Jr.). Charles Middleton plays a character named Zaroff; all we need to tip us off as to sinister intentions. Tame indians are being forced off the reservation so he can harvest X-94, an explosive so powerful you'd think it would come in something other than feed sacks and be tossed about so promiscuously. Texas Ranger and staunch friend to the red man Mix spends much of Chapters One and Two seeking fingerprints from an arrow discovered in the chief’s back, all of which made me wonder how you could get a useful print off an arrow. As with Mascot’s previous The Vanishing Legion, everything takes place in the present day, so there’s limousines parked beside tethered horses, something I always enjoy seeing. The dog heavies mount up in three-piece suits at one point to pass as "townspeople", chasing a western-garbed (and horsebacked) Mix in their business attire, while Tom’s wardrobe includes a ten gallon (times twenty) hat so majestic as to deserve a credit all its own. Sights like this are unique to the Mascot universe, and much to be savored. There’s a rocket glider called The Firebird, with a neat whistling sound to accompany flight, though I was disappointed in seeing it crash to earth after only two chapters. Modernistic, near sci-fi devices are utilized as though they were common household accessories. Cave hideouts have telephone extensions built into rock walls. Messages are received on television screens concealed behind paintings, while Middleton declares (often, and despite near-constant setbacks) he’ll soon be the most powerful man in the world. Apostle of fair play Tom never guns an opponent down. Pistols are shot out of miscreant’s hands, villains either roped or bulldogged, none seriously injured. Cheater endings sent my remote into reverse mode several times. I’d seen Mix blasted by a trap gun while opening a door at the end of Chapter Five, though he neatly sidestepped that same assault at the beginning of Chapter Six. Seems they’d shot the scene twice to mislead us. Twenty minutes later, horses trampled Tom as Chapter Six concluded, but Chapter Seven found him well clear of the stampede. Maybe a week’s passage helped kids forget such niggling details in 1935, though I’m betting a number of them cried Foul even then.





Nat Levine claimed grosses on The Miracle Rider amounted to one million, though his boosted (and boasted) estimate probably inflated the actual number by at least half. Still, no serial had done this well since Universal’s Tim McCoy special, The Indians Are Coming. Mix’s comeback amounted to a nostalgia trip for boys (now dads) who’d grown up with him in the teens and early twenties. Indeed, Tom may have been the first cowboy selling tickets to both kids and an older generation raised on the venerable star. Summer of 1935 found Nat Levine and Universal once again head to head for chapter-play bookings, but Buck Jones and The Roaring West was no match for Tom Mix. Soon after, Levine teamed with his lab supplier, Herbert Yates, along with Monogram and other states-rights small-timers, to form Republic Pictures, but it wouldn’t be long before Yates bought Nat out with a million cash. That would be the last million Levine would ever see, for within a few years, it was all sucked into betting windows at various tracks, leaving Mascot’s founder dead broke. Nat finally sold his negatives to a TV distributor in the late forties, and The Miracle Rider was among those very first serials experienced by home viewers. It fetched a princely $3000 for single runs during the early fifties, while Nat Levine retreated to management of a small theatre in Redondo Beach. He stayed there two decades, changing marquees and pasting ads. Interviewers got to him from time to time, but Nat chilled once he realized there'd be no money in the conversations. He died at the Motion Picture Country Home in 1989. For Tom Mix, The Miracle Rider was a final curtain call. His circus venture was largely dollars down a rathole. He had all the bad luck short of Lyle Bettger wrecking his train. Tom’s own $400,000 was sunk in the tents, and storms blew one of those away in 1936, then he faced assault charges after dusting it up with a heckler. Income from Ralston-Purina kept him out of bankruptcy. They sponsored the radio show featuring Tom’s name and character, but not Tom. 140 premiums (Straight Shooter’s Secret Club Manuals, glow-in-the-dark belts, etc.) were sold to Mix-mad listeners over a near-twenty year period the show lasted (here he is sharing Ralston cereal with a fan). By the end of its run in 1950, Tom himself was gone a decade, having launched his sport convertible into a ravine far less imposing than those he'd effortlessly leaped but a generation before. He was sixty.

Two great books about Mix and Mascot. Robert Birchard's Tom Mix --- King Cowboy is the last word on the western star, and Birchard's about the best researcher in the business. The Vanishing Legion is Jon Tuska's definitive history of Nat Levine and Mascot.

A couple of new images, links, polishes, etc. on Gail Russell and The Lost Patrol in Greenbriar's archives.

Paramount Has A Tough Sell


TCM showed Ace In The Hole last week, which was the cinematic equivalent of raising the Titanic, though this treasure was less lost than unwanted. Satellite customers of Paramount TV Sales have long preferred safer Sabrina /Shane alternatives when it came time to lease features for assorted Encore or Cinemax outlets, and in that sense, Billy Wilder’s caustic masterpiece has maintained the reputation it acquired over fifty years ago and will probably keep forevermore. Leave us face it, Ace is a bummer movie and general audiences have never been crazy about it. Maybe someday there’ll be enough Billy-philes and dyed-in-the-wool cynics to rehabilitate this one, but until then, I wouldn’t expect to see that much exposure for Ace In The Hole. After all, TCM ran it at 2:00 in the morning, and Paramount still ignores collector pleas for a DVD release. Cultists would make a martyr of Wilder’s film. Maurice Zolotow got the ball rolling with his first published bio of the director (1977) --- "Ace In The Hole" was castigated by the critics and shunned by the public. Wilder was called a cynical man. The film was denounced as an untruthful attack on the integrity of American newspapers and on the new medium of television. Subsequent writers picked up that ball and ran with it. A disaster at the boxoffice, said Ed Sikov in his 1998 Wilder book, but in the early 1950’s, with faith in the nation’s ideological institutions assuming fanatical religious proportions, Wilder was offering a vision of Americans and their news media that few Americans themselves wished to confront, let alone applaud. Indeed, the director himself was eventually persuaded. They never gave it a chance, Wilder said. I only hope Billy wasn’t referring to Paramount, because the evidence indicates they gave it every chance, with a campaign as aggressive as any mounted during 1951. As to its boxoffice disaster, Ace In The Hole no doubt took a loss, but no more so than a lot of other features the company was distributing that year. With 1.2 million in domestic rentals, it equaled The Last Outpost and Submarine Command, while outperforming Hal Wallis’ production of Peking Express ($936,000) and a comedy sequel thought to be promising, Dear Brat ($890,000). The thing that was killing Paramount and the other majors was television. By mid-1951, there was a set in millions more homes than even one year previous, and Hollywood movies were beginning to surface there. Republic had announced imminent sales of its backlog, and hundreds of independent features were dumped on airwaves by the week. You had to have something really special to entice people away from all that free entertainment.

Paramount kept a man in the field by the name of Rufus Blair (above reviewing publicity material with an exhibitor contact). He’d been with newspapers and was a crack merchandiser. You might classify him as a Chuck Tatum with ethics. Rufus spent April and May canvassing thirty-four cities on behalf of Ace In The Hole. He had an open door with publishers, having worked with a number of them, and his mission was to target media folk --- be it editors, reviewers, radio personalities, whatever. Armed with a print of the feature, Blair knew it would click with former newshound colleagues. Trade critics were already flipping over Wilder’s trenchant drama, and Paramount was brandishing those raves among the trades at least two months prior to release. They played it up as a tough show in the tradition of The Public Enemy and Kirk Douglas’ previous Champion. News dailies swarmed over it. Here was a journalist rugged and ruthless like Cagney, Bogart, and Ladd. He grabbed a story by the throat and took no guff from women. Rufus Blair knew reporters would dig Chuck Tatum and they sure enough did. The character’s tenacity flattered them and made them feel movie star cool. Further promotion in advance of the playdate found Jan Sterling getting a New York build-up on behalf of Ace In the Hole. Paramount tied in with Royal Desserts for recorded ads with Sterling, all of which concluded with a pitch for the feature, while millions of pudding packs and gelatin boxes went out with her picture emblazoned thereon. The Hallicrafters Corporation, then one of the big three radio/television manufacturers, continued their mutual sales push with Paramount that had begun with The Mating Season earlier that year. Field men for both companies linked up with local dealers, and Hellicrafter’s equipment was featured onscreen during Ace In The Hole. The Albuquerque location premiere followed in mid-June with a simultaneous opening in three theatres, attended by Kirk Douglas and Jan Sterling, who passed out autographs from their vantage point on a chuck wagon (shown here). New York’s opening at the Globe Theatre on June 29 was for the benefit of the Newsdealer Associations welfare fund, and Billy Wilder was in town for TV appearances and con-fabs with home office ad-press-publicity staff. How I’d love to have sat in on one of those meetings!

Eleventh hour title changes were not uncommon prior to release. Such an action post-release was almost unheard of. An embarrassment for marketing, publicity, and distribution, it suggested a botched campaign. Isn’t there somebody in the studio organization who can yell murder when an unshowmanship title comes through the ordinary routine of production?, asked The Motion Picture Herald, after two Metro 1951 offerings sputtered on release. Wouldn’t it be possible to learn these facts a little earlier? Two Weeks With Love and Inside Straight represented good product badly sold. The Herald felt both could have benefited from exhibitor input on the front end. "Inside Straight" fell flat on its title during Easter week on Broadway because people assumed it dealt with card playing, whereas this was actually a period show about the California gold rush. Ace In The Hole was also adjudged misleading. Was it too about gambling? If so, women weren’t interested. Many patrons had no idea as to the meaning of the phrase. Would they wait until after paying an admission to find out? Circuit heads thought not, and these were the men charged with getting pedestrians off the street and into their theatres. By mid-August, it was obvious Paramount had a problem. A picture with Kirk Douglas in the lead and reviews as positive as Ace In The Hole garnered should not be playing to empty houses. Obviously, they needed a new title. Showman (as well as editor-publisher of Motion Picture Exhibitor) Jay Emanuel spoke to the controversy in a letter shown in this trade ad. Latter-day cultists would consign Emanuel to the role of philistine, but I suspect he knew exactly what he was doing --- I personally supervised the campaign in each city to make certain it was proper and adequate. I also checked the comments of our patrons. The results can be summed up briefly. The people who came to see the picture enjoyed it immensely but the picture did not roll up the gross to which I felt it was entitled. This was the sort of grassroots movement on the part of exhibitors from which a newly re-christened The Big Carnival emerged. Prints already in exchanges had to be physically amended with new title footage, though based on what was shown by TCM recently, the 35mm negative remains intact. No doubt a few Ace In The Hole stragglers continued playing under its original name through 1951, much like that last rattlesnake Chuck Tatum described as having gotten away in the feature. Billy Wilder spoke to the topic years later --- Behind my back, because I was making a picture in Paris at the time, Mr. Freeman, head of the studio, changed the title from "Ace In The Hole" to "The Big Carnival" --- like this is going to attract people. Without asking me! It was one of the reasons I left Paramount. All well and good for a director wanting to distance himself from an event well after the fact, but Freeman wasn't the one to call this shot. New York would have made that decision. I’m betting too that Wilder was consulted, and ultimately bowed to sales department wishes. These weren’t the idiots and troglodytes he liked to portray before adoring interviewers taking his anecdotes at face value. They were capable merchandisers who knew how to campaign on behalf of their product. Wilder just handed them sour fruit this time, and neither exhibitors nor customers were sure how to digest it.

So what happened to The Big Carnival when it got into the general release market? It played at least a month as Ace In The Hole before the switch. Business needed a goose, thus the new moniker. For my money, the title would not change boxoffice, was the report from Hollister, California’s State Theatre. The picture is different, but drawing power, in spite of exploitation, is limited --- the second and third day died. Could this have been the result of bad word-of-mouth among locals? The Booth Theatre’s manager in Rich Hill, Missouri spoke to that --- Our patrons thought it a little heavy. Got a bunch of kids who did not know what the show was about. No, it sure wasn’t for kids, but really, was it for anyone? OK picture, but did poor business, was the curt appraisal from the Jackson Theatre in Flomation, Alabama. Well, you couldn’t bring them into the theatre at gunpoint after all, and Wilder’s line in nihilism really wouldn’t come into fashion for at least another twenty years. Paramount couldn’t be bothered with a re-issue, and the death march to television opened with a berth on NBC’s December 4, 1965 broadcast of Saturday Night At The Movies. From there, The Big Carnival was shuffled off to syndication as part of the company’s Portfolio One package, where it would share late show dates with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, I Married A Monster From Outer Space, My Favorite Spy --- some fifty Paramount titles that became available to local TV markets in April, 1967. You could rent it through Films, Inc. during the seventies on a sliding scale. Titles in their catalog were ranked by stars --- anywhere from one, two, three, to "special." ---based on perceived merit. The Big Carnival got a one, which means you could have it for anywhere from $15 a day for schools and convents (!) with less than 100 in your audience (probably a cinch with this one) to a maximum $100 for colleges and film societies with over 1251 heads in the room. Paramount passed on a VHS release, and have remained deaf to pleas for DVD availability. Bootlegs are occasionally intermingled on E-Bay with a 2005 docu-drama entitled Ace In The Hole, wherein it’s Saddam Hussein instead of the film’s Leo Minosa who’s buried. One enterprising VHS peddler offers attractive box art likely to fool the unwary, while the rest of us go on waiting for Paramount to pull the trigger with an authorized release. Let’s hope it won’t be too long (and indeed it wouldn't be, for a Criterion released DVD has appeared since the original date of this posting).

A Small Postscript --- I came across a trade ad for Captain Video and decided to add it to the July, 2006 posting on that serial. This is something I hope to do from time to time as fresh images turn up on films I've previously covered, and I'll try to note them here.

UPDATE (9-18-07): Just got some additional financial info for Ace In The Hole. The negative cost was 1.821,052.78 million.