GREENBRIAR'S FIFTH ANNIVERSARY

I'll admit to not preparing this as I ordinarily would a Greenbriar post. A weekend normally occasion for that was taken up with Christmas and snow, snow, snow, which among other things knocked my power (temporarily) for a row of pins. Such panic that ensues when computers go down! Twelve years ago, I didn't even own one. Well, five years back of this date, there wasn't Greenbriar Picture Shows either. Latter was an idea that came of reading other bloggers and wondering what my stills might look like online. Seemed simple enough to publish a few Black Cat images with offhand commentary. Maybe that and a couple more posts would be extent of it ...

Greenbriar has been up 710 times since December 27, 2005. I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much to talk about. Health permitting, 710 more should come down the line, for maybe surprisingly, I've not burned out on GPS yet. Heaviest Greenbriar traffic tends toward the archive. That's a separate site with links, index, and search options that's a lot handier than archive and search features provided by Google/Blogger. Click on a past month at the bottom of this page, for instance, and you'll only get half or so of the posts that went up that month, a bugaboo I have not means of correcting. There is a page at Greenbriar Archives that lists every post by date with links to all. That's the surest place to find whatever's wanted, in addition to the names and titles index.



What I need to do now is shut up and put up some (hopefully) unfamiliar images to decorate this anniversary post. These I've saved over a period of time, but had no place to display 'till now. Call today's a hodgepodge then, but one I hope will be fun looking at:

EC COMIX FOR DUCATS: Let's call this a portrait of kids trading hundred dollar bills for admission to wily Warren "Bud" Patton's playhouse back in 1954. Read the caption and imagine what these comic books would be worth today. Did Bud really sell them for waste paper or have heirs cashed in on fantastically accelerated value of EC horror mags since? The idea of this civic-minded promotion was to liberate youth from mind-rotting Vaults of Horror thought to be leading a generation down perdition's tunnel. These comics were, after all, far more explicit than content you could put on '54 screens, so maybe exhibs like Bud wanted much as anything to rid themselves of published incubi and put moppets back in theatre seats for spook subsidy. Patton's Tulsa, Oklahoma scheme was tried elsewhere, and in fact, backfired Miami-ways where small fry queued up to swap over 8,000 horror comics for theatre admission and so-called "approved" mags which were distributed with tickets. Trouble was the promotion actually stimulated interest among Miami's young in shock graphics once they got ganders at contraband gathered for the drive (Miami had an ordinance forbidding sale of chill and crime comics to anyone under seventeen years of age).

CLARA ON THE BEACH: Someone better informed re Clara Bow needs to clue me on wherefores (and whereabouts) behind this Paramount Pictorial short. Your audience swims and romps with Clara in an intimate way ... now does this have possibilities or what? So many single-reel subjects wait to be unearthed. I've spoken to no one who's come across the treasure referenced in this 1930 trade ad. Maybe it's buried in same sand Clara romped upon.

HAROLD LLOYD with GARY COOPER: This was taken at Paramount in the early thirties. Note Cooper holding eyeglasses ... Harold wears fake ones and Coop needs the real thing. I like those novel belts they're sporting. Why can't men's fashions today be remotely like this? Wonder if GC ever visited Greenacres. Assuming he did, it must have astounded Cooper how much money could be realized out of the picture business, though very few saw so much as to equal Harold Lloyd.

GLIMPSE OF A SET: This one is a "spaghetti joint" as envisioned for The Roaring Twenties. Such a thing looks modest put against a sound stage corner. Remarkable how it comes to life in the final movie. I like the cars parked outside the windows. You could still fool people into thinking they shot this outdoors. Warner pics were amazing for bringing exteriors inside. They even shot Sea Hawk ship battles in a sound stage tank.

SNEEZIN' FOOLS: Celebrities were wisest who played to each other's strengths. Billy Gilbert's was a sneezing routine indelible as his signature. Gilbert would perform it to the end of a long life. Here a late 30's Universal gathering with Mischa Auer and letting-hair-down Basil Rathbone, perhaps on break from Son Of Frankenstein doings. Would Basil have maybe preferred clowning to so much screen villainy?

LUNCH IN COLOR: Looks like Bette Davis is having chicken salad with her cigarette between Elizabeth and Essex set-ups. I'll bet actual eating found a blanket-sized bib in the star's lap so as not to stain that period costume. How distracting was it to have still photographers trailing you to lunch? For work days like Davis put in, you'd think fuller course meals would be in order, but stars then as now lived on crumbs (and nicotine) so as to keep weight gain at bay. Given a choice between celebrity and food, which would you select?

LEAVE HER TO FASHION: Here is Gene Tierney in another of those fab fotos in color out of fan mags that promoted she and newly arrived Leave Her To Heaven, a Fox 40's hit of cosmic proportion ($8.2 million in worldwide rentals --- Fox's biggest of that decade). Word-of-mouth was intense, especially for that scene where she let the kid drown. Truly a must-see picture in 1945, and probably better-remembered by its first-viewing generation than Laura.

MUMMIES IN LOVE: Uh, I don't think this scene is in the picture ... but what a stopper it would have made! Selling in those days was pursued with whatever it took. The mummy exiting his sarcophagus into the arms of ... just who is this gal? ... doubtless separated many a twenty-five, then forty cents, from patron purses. So what if the film was something else entirely?

LOCAL PALACES: Finally, here is rare glimpse of our own Liberty and Allen Theatres, both referenced many times over five years of Greenbriar endeavor. The Liberty is circa 1935, way before my time and unlike the Liberty I grew up attending. Among other things, its boxoffice was moved and the marquee replaced. The lady in the window looks almost like a wax figure you'd see in one of those arcade fortune-telling devices. For all I know, however, she might be kin to me. The Allen is a snapshot one of Ann's friends recently came up with. Could you pick a better attraction for that marquee? And how many small town venues put Howard Hawks' name among featured lettering? Yes, he was somebody to average patrons long before auteurists (think they) discovered him. The building is still there with four upper windows intact, but alas, no more Allen.