Halloween Harvest 2011 --- Black Zoo



If Newspapers Were Like This, I'd Have Chosen a Career in Journalism

I was standing in fourth grade lunch line when classmate Tony Gentry told me he'd seen Black Zoo the previous day. Knowing it had by now left the Liberty, Tony described horrors the rest of us could not verify: There's one part where a man stuck his head in a lion's mouth, and the lion bit it off, he exclaimed, to which I replied, They showed that? Tony swore ... Absolutely! Harmless fibbing it was to his mind, but permanent distrust rose in me for this and similar exaggeration peers engaged when describing shows they knew I'd missed and would likely never see. Some tall tales were easier recognized than others, like when neighbor Babes Lowe told a treehouse full of us that Natalie Wood stripped fully naked in 1963's Gypsy, out the same year as Black Zoo. You needed a lie detector in those days to talk with friends about movies (and yes, I was guilty at times for similar embroideries).



The Best Thing About Black Zoo May Have Been Reynold Brown's Varied and Vivid Poster Art

Tony was right in guessing I'd not see Black Zoo and expose his perfidy. Once a show left town, it was gone, especially in a small berg where management was disinclined toward second runs. It's only in a just past week, and thanks to Warner's Archive, that I've finally caught Black Zoo, forty-eight years not an unreasonable wait to learn once and for all that no such scene as Tony described appears in the film. Is there primal need we all share to watch humans set upon by wild beasts? I admit looking forward to realization of lurid art shown here, even if Black Zoo but fitfully lived up to its promise.






Show Me The Nine-Year-Old Who Doesn't Relish Seeing Men Eaten By Lions

Recent news tells of a private zookeeper who loosed lions, tigers, and bears to panic an Ohio town. Born showman Herman Cohen might have wished for like serendipity to coincide with his promoting tour for Black Zoo, but the sales job Herman did was near as startling, and ranks tall among grassroot promotions headed for a mid-sixties fade. Maybe Cohen knew his kind of bally was last round-up'ing, but he'd been at it since age twelve and beginnings as youngest member of Detroit's theatre usher fraternity. Herman as eventual filmmaker was more for selling than creative ends, being like Bill Castle in that respect, but give him a tingly title and HC knew how to run with it. I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Horrors Of The Black Museum were hard-sold in partnership with AIP's wunderkind Jim Nicholson, these two a Barnum and Bailey at shock-peddling. Cohen produced a dozen for AIP by the time he jumped to Allied Artists for Black Zoo's distribution. AA needed summer chillers same as any industry player, and for 1963 slated Zoo and Brit-lensed Day Of The Triffids to fill exploitation dates.

Broidy Predicts AA Upbeat, said trade headlines reporting '63 plans for the company as optimistically conveyed by topper Steve Broidy, still reaching for glory now in a second decade of eluding Allied Artists. Hopes rested on what he called the keystone of all our plans, 55 Days At Peking, plus deals with John Huston, Samuel Fuller, and Blake Edwards for coming projects. For the meantime, there was sure thing of Black Zoo for May release, to which Herman Cohen lent his wild animal cast for whirlwind touring, this begun with a sixty theatre saturation in New York, Jersey, and Long Island, Zoo's lion and tigers aboard a float driven past venues hosting the pic. Cohen got further ink entering hotel lobbies accompanied by said beasts, one of which, "Zamba," had already distinguished himself by mauling a trainer during Black Zoo's production. This went unreported at the time, but was recounted years later for an interview Herman Cohen did with historian Tom Weaver.

Lions and Tigers In a Cemetary --- Why Didn't Anyone Think Of That Before?

Zoo yielded a whopper $260K for that opener Gotham week, Variety crediting Cohen's intensive push, plus personal appearing, on four legs, by cast members. Herman was flush with the praise, enough as to unload on distributors very undermanned in their advertising and publicity departments. Instead of trimming staff here, he said, they should lop off some of the top executives who are sitting on their backsides and doing nothing. Exhibitors came in for a Cohen blast as well. (They) do nothing either to try to contribute or help. They run for the big grossers or sit and do nothing. Herman felt horror films were an industry's salvation not properly appreciated, but you couldn't just send one out without proper exploitation.

Guess We'd All Take a Pass On Attacks Like This, Nocturnal Or Otherwise.

"Working Touter" Cohen knew his Black Zoo customer base. It's primarily a weekend audience ranging in age from 12-30, this group, he said, making up 72% of the viewing total. Herman, who was in large part author of teen slant scripts he produced, was careful not to put in anything that would offend or talk down to youth. Cohen added that the teeners in my pictures are basically good, moral youngsters, and never do anything bad except under sinister influences, and nothing that the audience can imitate. A Detroit homecoming found the city's mayor declaring "Herman Cohen Day" at a luncheon attended by HC and tethered Zamba, the latter visiting schools and shopping centers before taking up caged position in the Fox Theatre lobby.





Micheal Gough Enacts Tender Black Zoo Love Scene

Cohen had done "survey work" that identified "the booming community of suspense and terror buffs." He called theirs the biggest single audience movies have today. Herman had long been ahead of the pack for recognizing clubhouses shock fans gathered to, having used TV horror hosts to push Horrors Of The Black Museum in 1959. Now he'd widen the net to include monster magazines well entrenched by 1963. There was forgivable hyperbole in claims of "combined readership that runs into the millions," but little doubt these mags lifted Black Zoo attendance among that very group Cohen targeted, his a visionary outreach to a niche overlooked, if not ignored, by convention-bound merchandisers.



Elisha Cook Gets Comeuppance For Tiger Taunting --- He'd Later Call Black Zoo "A Terrible, Awful, Picture"



How Many Of You Out There Still Have Your Copy?

Possibly the most clever of Herman's tie-ins was the Charlton-published Black Zoo photo magazine, a thirty-five cent start-to-finish telling of the film's narrative in stills and frame blow-ups. Showmen were invited to buy in bulk at reduced wholesale of twenty-one cents per copy. I doubt many small town theatres participated ... for the Liberty it was enough that patrons could buy theirs across the street at Horton's Drug Store (where, in fact, I scored mine after Black Zoo had come and gone). Charlton paying tribute lent Black Zoo status few horrors shared at the time ... I went years thinking the film must be good to have merited such coverage (even as subsequent picture-mags devoted to The Mole People and Horror Of Party Beach should have disabused me of such notion).

Now we at last have Black Zoo on DVD, properly wide and colorfully rendered. It's a handsome show for one done on modest budget. Herman Cohen told Variety in 1963 that Zoo cost a million, which seems hardly likely ... cutting that by two-thirds might get closer to the actual tab. Still, there's nice photography by veteran Floyd Crosby of more recent AIP accomplishment (he made their Poes look like the million Herman aspired to) while hired-for-a-day-or-two faces Elisha Cook, Jerome Cowan (Wilmer Cook and Miles Archer together again!), along with Virginia Grey, made Black Zoo inviting as a curl-up with late, late movies at home, said comfort zone being what Cohen no doubt had in mind when he cast these players.



Michael Gough and Ill-Fated Rod Lauren With Looks-To-Be-Drugged Cub in Black Zoo

Michael Gough is pretty much Black Zoo's whole show, onscreen verbal abuse his specialty in those waning years when horror movies still revolved around personalities rather than blood squibs. Juve support Rod Lauren's March 1963 burglary arrest (he crashed in on a sleeping Black Zoo cast-mate in her apartment) foresaw tragic events to come in that young actor's life. Herman Cohen snuck his own cameo into an extended chimp act that eats up much of Black Zoo's opening reel. As with later Berserk, the producer felt bound to let routines, however unrelated to narratives at hand, play out beginning to end, giving patrons, if nothing else, opportunity to stoke up on concessions before getting down to horrific business.

Janie's The Girl We've Forgotten

There's a scene late in Yankee Doodle Dandy where a retired George M. Cohan encounters jive-talking teens who've never heard of him or his music. Spokes-girl for the kids is Joyce Reynolds, a fresh face whose Warners audition this clearly was. She would become, for a wartime's instant, America's ingénue sweetheart, differing from Joan Leslie only for misfortune of not appearing in WB classics like High Sierra, Sergeant York, and aforementioned Yankee Doodle as did Leslie. Reynolds also ducked out of the business (marriage) and couldn't retrieve her career upon trying again afterward. There's no trace of whereabouts on the world's wide Web ... we could wonder who's even looking. Still, there's a 1944 movie called Janie in which Joyce Reynolds was showcased, and it's a topical treasure, one I wish Warners would re-master (looks a little muddy TCM-wise) and get out on DVD.

Janie came off what WB called a Seventy-Seven Week Stage Sensation. The title character was sweet sixteen and itching to be kissed, preferably by a man in uniform. Selling of Janie was what we'd call uneasy and along lines of Get Ready To Howl, You Wolves! No wonder Errol Flynn hung about high-schoolyards. Underage girls were scrubbed cleaner on then-radio faves like Corliss Archer, Junior Miss and A Date With Judy, thanks in part to vigilant sponsors not wanting protective parents up in arms. Hard to imagine the movies' Code being looser, but to some extent it was, as tender-aged Janie dons two-piece swimwear and playfully eludes soldier advances. She and friends dress grown-up and double down on cusp-of-womanhood dialogue only just removed from darker implication of juve delinquent exploiters like Youth Runs Wild and Where Are Your Children? playing just across streets from Janie.

Too many think teen pics began with the fifties, understandable considering that's when such was first customized and marketed to  youth with spending empowered by a postwar's economic boom. The Janies and Andy Hardys were more about reassuring grown-ups than servicing offspring, object being to convince us high-spirited teens were manageable after all, and that parental forbearance would be rewarded with hugs and youth's promise to hereafter behave. It would have been unpatriotic to present kids as anything like a threat --- didn't the war give us enough to worry about? Revealing is fact that most wayward youth exploitation came off poverty rows, with rare exception of a Youth Runs Wild from RKO. I'm guessing the majors entered tacit agreement to chill troubled-teen themes, at least until we polished off Axis delinquents.

Delights of Janie are so myriad as to make me regret waiting years to check in. I knew it for (seeming) incongruity of Michael Curtiz behind cameras after twin events Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy. Doesn't the fact we've forgotten Janie make it an unimportant property? The answer goes to modern unawareness of what a popular show this was. Success on the stage pre-sold Janie. Mr. and Mrs. Average Moviegoers that razzed a Magnificent Ambersons at previews would reliably toss hats in the air for entertainment like this, calibrated as it was to deliver precisely what a wartime public wanted. I don't know how close Janie comes to reflecting middle-America family life during that decade (probably not very), but compare the avalanche of domestic TV sitcoms a decade later with far fewer 40's features covering the same ground, and Janie's value increases all the more.

What would become stock characters are early introduced here. The harried father, saintly mother, a kid sister more insufferable than irrepressible. Phones ring, doors slam, and misunderstandings are rife. Kids talk a language no adult (or we) can translate, slang finding its 40's level --- Janie begs her dad not to be such a "tin-type" and engages something like staccato Pig Latin with in-the-know friends. Radio's penetration into then-psyches is nicely conveyed by little sister's obsession with radio; she carries one along for a bus ride so she won't miss The Lone Ranger. It's easy to forget the hold listening had on a younger generation just ahead of television's advent. Was radio more fun than tubes that would hypnotize the rest of us?




Happy Feet On a Warners' Wartime Stage and a 40's Magical Music Highlight



Joan Leslie Assumes Janie Role For The 1946 Sequel

Lest one think Janie a mere big-screen sitcom, I'd mention transcendence of a musical set-piece during the second half --- a soldier's party dazzlingly staged by Curtiz with song, dance, personalities-to-be (Keefe Brasselle, Jimmie Dodd, Julie London, Andy Williams, plus brief vocalizing by not yet christened Sunset Carson), and the dynamic finish of a conga line snaking through a night-lit sound stage exterior. Were music highlights ever so joyous as ones staged during that uncertain period of a World War? If Warners had done their own That's Entertainment, this would have been my choice for center-placement. Janie was sold as 1944's National Joy Show. It raked three million in worldwide rentals on a $1.3 million negative cost. Janie's domestic haul topped most of the Bogart, Davis, and Flynn pictures of that year, so WB's anxiety to get out a sequel made sense. That would be Janie Gets Married, with the same cast save Joyce Reynolds, shot during waning days of the war, but delay-released in mid-1946. Hopes for the sequel were reflected in its trailer to which Humphrey Bogart (!) contributed a brief appearance.

Jim and Sam Present Paget and Pagans!

1960 was finally time for American-International to live up to its name. No more would Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff rely on a domestic market for the bulk of receipts. Henceforth they'd branch past US shores to sell and buy. Foreign rentals accounted for 30% of AIP's 1959 take, with 1960 projecting at 50%, this the 9/30 forecast Jim shared with Variety's Vincent Canby. A hands across seas policy had given Nicholson/Arkoff their biggest so-far hit, Goliath and The Barbarians, to be followed with economy models Euro-shot, but adorned with production values hard got in the US short of spending a million AIP didn't have. Jim and Sam wanted desperately into A's, and so charted 1960's mission of making imports and upgraded domestic product look expensive at least. Here then, was crossroads where an industry's hungriest upstart made a meal of Fritz Lang's farewell to epic filmmaking.



Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff Display Wares of a Boffo 1960 Season To Come



Herr Lang still had a reputation, if not many takers for directing service. US companies had cooled on him, but this was still the man who'd once done Metropolis and M, two revered if not often revived in a 50's market allergic to by-gone pics. Fritz Lang and ten cents might buy a cup of coffee in Hollywood, but native Germany held his banner high, and one producer there, Arthur Brauner, had means to make Lang's comeback a reality. Upwards of a million (way more in the end, thanks to overruns) would be sunk in costumed exotica filmed partly on India location and running a whopper 203 minutes, these divided by half so patrons could tender admission times two to see the whole thing.

The pair translated to The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb. Despite deadly reviews (some of the most unfortunate German postwar productions, one said), they did well on the continent, thanks in part to Brauner's casting a known Hollywood lure, Debra Paget, as star and promoting ornament. Germany's most expensive baubles Euro-played from January 1959 (nothing Deutsch-made had cost so much, not even Lang's silent extravagances) and would not escape notice by pleasure/business traveling Jim and Sam, always on the lookout for exploitable product AIP could retrofit for home consumption.

Arkoff wrote colorfully of he and Nicholson's screening agenda when in Rome (and elsewhere continental). The two would encamp among whatever complete or unfinished Euro-flix were available for cheap purchase, watching sometimes a dozen prospects hour after exhausting hour. It got to where they had two projectors running at once, side by side, eagle eyes darting back and fro in quest of saleable content. Unless there was promise in a first reel, they'd not move on to the next. We were looking for production value, Sam said, and it often didn't take long to figure out which pictures had it and which didn't. AIP's pragmatic pair set radar for adventurous scenes, scary moments, and pretty girls (Sam's criteria --- he knew his public). Thus was discovered Goliath and his Barbarians, a standout chiller they'd rename Black Sunday, and eventually, The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb. There was potential aplenty in these, diamonds amidst Lang and Brauner's three-plus-hour molasses serving.

Jim Nicholson spent much of August 1960 checking progress of AIP co-productions shooting overseas. There was Konga in London, Goliath and The Dragon in Rome, and Reptilicus in Copenhagen. Bounty brought home were German buys The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb, which Jim spent Labor Day week paring down to a single feature he'd call Journey To The Lost City. Editing/dubbing was done in New York --- a complete AIP overhaul of what Fritz Lang had shot two years before. Set for October 12 release, Journey To The Lost City would become the highest-profile and most profitable German film exhibited in the US during 1960, indication if nothing else of how shut-out pics from that country were on domestic shores.



The Debra Paget Dance That Adorned US Lobby Cards for Journey To The Lost City ...




... and the Dance Euro Patrons Saw.

 Nicholson/Arkoff bought Tiger/Tomb for visual splendors and what vitality could be distilled from Lang's handiwork. What attracted AIP was clear enough --- breathtaking locations, many not captured before on camera, along with action highlights that would translate well to poster art. Most saleable, as in Europe's play-off, was known quantity Debra Paget, late of pairing with Elvis, plus The Ten Commandments, performing a snake dance that became focal point for selling Journey To The Lost City. What Nicholson could not retain from Tiger/Tomb was Paget's near-nude encore of said dance that could no way have passed US censors. Adolescent boys in 1960 would surely have come away from such an exhibition transformed, as did more than one DVD collector when the complete Lang assembly finally surfaced stateside in 2001.

Jim Nicholson cut Journey To The Lost City to 94 minutes, Lang's length split pretty much down the middle. That didn't leave much time for dull explanations of various plot details, said Variety. Reviews hinted Journey might still be too long. The "sex-and-sand spectacle" had nice scenics, but dialogue was "ali-babble all the way." Still, there were kids enough to finesse $494,000 in domestic rentals, a nice take in an AIP year that saw House Of Usher and Goliath grossing highest for the firm. Fritz Lang didn't go on record as to Nicholson's cleave-by-half of his Indian epic, but the two did meet for discussion of AIP remaking Metropolis, rights to which Jim and Sam acquired shortly after the Tiger/Tomb buy. According to Variety, Nicholson prevailed upon Lang to direct AIP's update, but the director has declined, understandably says Nicholson, on the grounds that the new version would certainly be compared with the old, and probably in an unflattering way, no matter how good he could make it.

Killer's + Killing + Kubrick --- Part Two

Fortune smiled on Stanley Kubrick in 1955 by way of a producing partner who knew enough industry ropes to help SK get a real movie off the ground. James B. Harris was a distributing entrepreneur still in his twenties with five years experience hustling vid series and fossil features via Flamingo Films, a concern which, according to Variety, began with capitalization of $6,000 and was now grossing three million a year off the likes of Superman, Wild Bill Hickok, The Life Of Riley, and recently acquired jewel, Stars Of The Grand Old Opry. Harris had instinct for biz talent, having nurtured producers-to-be David Wolper (of later documentary fame) and Sy Weintraub (who'd shortly revive a moribund Tarzan series). There was no one better equipped than Harris to make good things happen for Stanley Kubrick.



Sleazy Cover Art and a Jack Webb Endorsement Make For '56 Must-Reading



Having Harris in the mix was probably what got United Artists off the dime for The Killing's front money. UA is backing them (Harris and Kubrick) up with 100% financing, which amounts to about $600,000, for their first film, "Day Of Violence," based on the Lionel White novel, "The Clean Break," said Variety. James Harris' 2011 interview for Criterion's Blu-Ray release gave the lie to said reportage ... the distrib, he said, ponied $200G's and not a penny more. Harris, who believed in The Killing and Kubrick, sank personal savings of $180,000 plus another $50,000 borrowed from his father to invest $130,000 in The Killing's negative. The neophyte producer knew it would take meaningful $ to elevate he and Kubrick's project beyond shambles of exploitation then flooding markets.




Over twenty years since Scarface and Little Caesar Were Made, But Bear In Mind Both Had Been Recently Back In Theatres When The Killing Opened.

 Kubrick's Killing cast looked like a precinct line-up, the director having pillaged players off every crime pic he'd sat through since starting to shave. All these, even putative star Sterling Hayden, were second-tier names, though I'd suspect Kubrick preferred them over a Gielgud ... well, when it's likes of Elisha Cook, Marie Windsor, and Joe Sawyer, wouldn't we all? As to selling a finished product, UA was for more sin-smearing. Like No Other Picture Since "Scarface" and "Little Caesar," promised ads, and this time, buildups weren't far off the beam. Wrinkle was, The Killing came decidedly not off convention's blotter, despite thrill and mayhem Kubrick dutifully supplied. Thanks to a squirrelly structure with labyrinth flashbacks, the director had given his distributor what looked like a bullet-riddled art movie.



A Better Question in 1956 Might Have Been --- Can You Follow The Killing's Mixed-Up Narrative?

 James Harris realized The Killing would need plenty of TLC, that being industry-speak for a tough sell. Trade reviews acknowledged it was good, but many were confused by Kubrick's puzzle. Where was precedent for story-telling this loopy? United Artists had little choice but to book and promote The Killing in old-fashioned ways ... maybe crowds would get it once they plunked admission and sat down. Harris interview-recalled disappointment at the film's NY run --- some big barn, a theatre on Broadway ... They had to put speed bumps in the aisles to keep people from walking out too fast. The engagement opened and closed so abruptly, it formed a suction. I like Mr. Harris' wit, but fifty-five years is a long time, and 1956 trade reportage reveals The Killing, on Broadway and elsewhere, to have been not quite the disaster he recalls, but far be it for me to rain on such a colorful and certainly accurate to the spirit account of how Harris and Kubrick's innovative film was received.

That Broadway "barn" where The Killing opened in May 1956 was the Mayfair, previous home for Johnny Guitar and future host to Horror Of Dracula. Harris says the theatre booked it as hasty substitution for a flop, which trades reveal to have been Columbia's Glenn Ford western, Jubal. The latter had underperformed, as would The Killing, the Harris/Kubrick film's (just short of) four week stay at the Mayfair called disappointing by Variety; even a bonus preview feature added for the final frame saw ticket sales dragging bottom. To play a Broadway house as a single (for a first three weeks of its engagement anyway) didn't reflect The Killing being dumped by distribution, but James Harris maintained UA's push was nevertheless a bungle: The picture needed special handling, he'd say: It should play a small theatre. It should build.



A Hopeful Summer '56 Trade Ad Emphasizes Critic Kudos For Kubrick

 The breakout, too isolated to help much, was several months off. A meantime June-July saw The Killing as second feature support to UA's Bandido in Los Angeles saturation, while Chicago's Esquire actually sweetened ads and marquees to read The $2,000,000 Killing, which awarded the theatre with a "plump" two weeks of revenue. Local selling could make a difference in those days before nationwide rollouts and do-or-die first weekends. Initiative on a local showman's part often turned tides and made a local hit of an overall marketplace's flop. Clearest 8/56 instance of this came via gamble by a Minneapolis art houser who put chips on The Killing and won.

Kubrick's film had played a downtown Minneapolis theatre early in August and died, stuck at a double-feature's bottom for a split-week filmgoers were barely aware of. The Killing thus went unnoticed and didn't even merit a review in Minneapolis newspapers. Morrie Kotz guessed his Campus Theatre patronage from nearby University Of Minnesota might go for something off beaten paths of foreign and art pics he'd been presenting, so terms (favorable to Morrie) were met with United Artists bookers for The Killing to play the Campus (a save for UA, as local hardtops and even drive-ins had passed up the pic since its flop downtown). Kotz was even able to pass off The Killing as an "exclusive engagement" to his venue.

The Campus offered a double money-back guarantee as insurance that patrons would find The Killing "one of the most suspenseful and exciting pictures you have ever seen." No refunds were claimed during the theatre's first of many holdover weeks. Kotz proved you could wake up a sleeper with deft marketing, his example one to follow by what Variety called Smartie Arties that fed off terrific word-of-mouth generated by The Killing. Pittsburgh's 500-seat Guild Theatre grabbed the show after first-run houses passed altogether, then enjoyed biz way over and above average takes. This went on for five weeks and could have remained on, said Variety, but for fact that the Guild had a locked-in booking date on Lust For Life and had to let The Killing go to accomodate it. Pleasing as such isolated instances were, they'd not push The Killing to mainstream success. UA gave belated tribute with Oscar ads for November trade placement, but the film had by then played out in the keys. Final figures saw The Killing with domestic rentals of $373,272, with foreign better at $591,812. Against the negative's cost of $330,000, that would presumably amount to moderate cakes and ale for Harris/Kubrick (and we can hope Harris' dad at least got his investment back).