Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Saturday, July 28, 2012


20th Fox and Boy On A Dolphin --- Part Two

Trade unions got up in arms over so much overseas lensing. The A.F.L's Hollywood Film Council spread incendiary word, according to The New York Times, that a number of motion pictures being produced by American interests or with American financing are employing Communist union members in preference to members of anti-Communist unions. Dynamite charges these were, but times were desperate (October 1956 saw just over 12,000 US pic industry workers drawing a check, down 1,700 from the previous year).



Loren Sketches at Right by Jean Negulesco


Word got out that Fox planned to roadshow Boy On a Dolphin after producing same in 55mm, this traced to West Coast personnel, but met "with surprise" by New York's home office. The sales department said the plan was news to them, and so did Fox's technical division, reported Variety, one exec adding that it's doubtful many exhibitors would go for the extra cost. 20th had used 55mm for Carousel, 35mm release prints thereby benefiting from greater clarity. Fox tech wizard Earl Sponable acknowledged that 55mm would add somewhat to the quality of the picture, but it would mean really dressing up the house, with special sound presentation, etc. What went unsaid, but appeared clear enough, was that Boy On a Dolphin didn't merit anything like deluxe unveiling such as these rumors promised.


Director Negulesco Offers Up-Close Guidance to Sophia Loren
Jean Negulesco wrote a book wherein he colorfully described Boy On a Dolphin's production. Even from twenty year hindsight, it read as though the director had a distinct crush on Sophia Loren, judging by playful images of them together and drawings he made of the actress. Negulesco handed Loren Boy On a Dolphin with an intro scene where she emerges like a robust Aphrodite from the sea, a bountiful body-slam to US viewers, particularly male ones, who'd word-of-mouth and repeat attend Boy to $2.2 million in domestic rentals. Alan Ladd saw the attraction(s) and boiled, his wife further stoking flames of resentment. Not-knowing-better Loren told interviewers of mirth doing love scenes stood in a trench so as to avoid dwarfing Ladd, relations between the two becoming cool as if on Arctic location.


Ad For Boy On A Dolphin's Hollywood First-Run
Ladd had surprised his crew by showing up ravaged for the wear of travel (he wouldn't fly, so passage was by ship, then train, clothing and other valuables stolen en route). His alcohol excess and weight gain obliged Negulesco, who never wanted Ladd in the first place, to cover with protective set-ups in addition to ones even-ing height vis-à-vis AL and SL. Compensation for all this was worth-the-trip Grecian backdrops that dominate Boy On a Dolphin, interiors kept to a minimum so that even when dialogue's dull, there's something at least to look at. Scenery alone might have justified 55mm and roadshowing had Boy come off a better movie. Still, there was enough to merit a New York Roxy open with on-stage performing by Louis Armstrong for a four week run begun April 19, 1957.


Fox had made what Variety called a "Wallopy" season preview called The Big Show, which among other things, announced fifty-five features for the coming year. The 110-minute trailer cost a quarter million and would run throughout the country to exhibitors, press, radio/TV reps, and "community leaders." 2,500 Fox stockholders attended the Roxy's morning premiere of The Big Show, and were invited to remain as guests for Boy On a Dolphin. 20th's grand gesture was seen as a frontal assault to competing television, but TV would win. Beyond The Big Show's push would come retrenchment and more lay-offs, salary cuts, and reduced production at Fox. Boy On a Dolphin, a hit for the Roxy, drooped elsewhere. From $3.3 million spent on the negative, $2.2 came back in domestic rentals, $2.4 foreign, with a final loss of $1.1 million.








From here came a half-century's (and counting) oblivion for a show that needed every inch of wide screens. Boy On a Dolphin went to NBC for new-minted Monday Night At The Movies, one of sixteen Fox titles leased to the network for two runs at $175,000 for each, the series to premiere February 4, 1963. Later in that decade (1968) came The American Cinema, a book by Andrew Sarris wherein he ranked directors, Boy On a Dolphin's helmsman among "Miscellany." Jean Negulesco's career can be divided into two periods labeled B.C. and A.C., or Before Cinemascope and After Cinemascope ... Everything After Cinemascope is completely worthless, said the critic. Sarris applied a finishing thrust thus: Negulesco's is the most dramatic case of directorial maladjustment in the fifties. Query to Sarris: Had he screened Boy On a Dolphin and others Negulesco wide-directed in their original Cinemascope format? To have done so would be at the least difficult in the late-60's when these films had long vacated theatres and were playing solely pan/scan on television. Boy On a Dolphin remains compromised in a transfer that is wide, but badly in need of remastering. What we occasionally see on TCM and The Fox Movie Channel does little credit to one of the 50's most striking travel folders. Suggestion to Screen Archives' Twilight Time DVD series ... give us Boy On a Dolphin on Blu-Ray with Hugo Friedhofer's fine score on an isolated track. There would be a must-have disc for 2012.

9 Comments:

Anonymous Jim Cobb said...

I am sure you already know this, but Cinemascope 55 was only used for 2 films. These were CAROUSEL and THE KING AND I. From all accounts neither was ever exhibited in the 55mm format, though the larger negative yielded a higher quality image even on the 35mm reduction prints... and a few theatres used an interlocked 6 channel soundtrack. OKLAHOMA! was shot in 70mm Todd-Ao with six track stereo sound. Since this was the first film shot in this unique process, the producers simultaneously shot a version in standard 35mm Cinemascope. Cinemascope 55 proved to be a bust and eventually Todd-Ao and other 70mm variants became the standard format for the roadshow/special venue movies in the 60's.

9:49 AM  
Blogger James Corry said...

Fabulous article John! I couldn't agree more with your query to would-be critics: "Have you actually SEEN a CinemaScope film in it's CinemaScope format?" Several years ago myself, my Sons, Craig Reardon, his daughter and many other "classic" film fans went to see a screening of "Garden Of Evil" at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). The print was pretty beat-up but it WAS in CinemaScope a 4-channel stereo sound. Now every review I had ever read of "Garden Of Evil" read the same way (with every reviewer trying to out-do the other in creative ways to let "us" all know how TERRIBLE the film was) "boring", "wooden" "leaden"...you know the drill. Well, we were about halfway through it and Craig and I kind of looked at each other and said: "This film is working JUST FINE." The little mannerisms and inflectins that Gary Cooper and the rest of the cast were doing are COMPLETELY lost on television.....You can't take a film such as "Boy On A Dolphin" or "Garden Of Evil" or ANY of the 'Scope pictures and cut them up with commercials and/or pan-and-scan them and have them have anywhere near the impact that they had (or have) on a big screen.....washed-out color (we all know how "Deluxe" color fades)mono sound, 2/3rds of the picture cut off to accomodate the TV aspect ratio.....it just isn't the same film. I'll wager just about everything I have that not ONE of the "reviewers" had EVER seen "Garden Of Evil" (or "Boy On A Dolphin") in a theatrical setting.

And I certainly agree with you: Twilight Time: Bring it ("Boy On A Dolphin") ON!!

Brad

9:55 AM  
Anonymous Joshua said...

In the print ad, the quote from Sarah Hamilton in the Los Angeles Examiner has so many ellipses in it that I wonder if it really represents her opinion. I can't help but be suspicious of a sentence like "Sophia ... even soaking wet ... is ... primitive and dynamic!" which contains only eight words but three ellipses.

2:12 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Dan Mercer shares his usual great observations, this time on Alan Ladd's decline in the 50's:


Alan Ladd does look pretty beat in "Boy on a Dolphin." His eyes are puffy, his face is slack, and if he isn't terribly overweight, his physique has become flabby. His voice is still superb, mellow and well modulated, like whiskey aged in the cask. All the great stars had distinctive voices. His was one of the best. If he'd remained a radio actor, he would have been a star for as long as there were radio shows. Unfortunately, he was appearing before the the CinemaScope camera.

He was 43 years old, middle aged by the standards of the time, but why had he let himself go? Probably the reason was the same as for many men, when they'd lost hope of finding whatever they'd been searching for in their lives. And for many of them, that quest was for romance. Certainly it was for Ladd. A couple years before, he'd made "The McConnell Story" with June Allyson. He'd been married to Sue Carol for over 12 years, but it was really a marriage of convenience: his career and her management of it. With Allyson he'd fallen in love. It was a one-sided infatuation--Allyson decided that they were just friends--but it hadn't escaped the notice of Sue Carol. She confronted Allyson, who denied that any sort of affair was going on. Besides, she said, she was married to Dick Powell, who wouldn't have permitted it. Carol then telephoned Powell, telling him that her husband was madly in love with his wife. Powell was offended by the call, but brushed her off, asking, "Isn't every body?" Ladd, however, had finally had enough. He packed his bags and left the house for a hotel. That was as far as he got. He realized that she wouldn't let him go and that he wasn't strong enough to leave on his own. He'd been kidding himself, that he'd find someone, fall in love, and start over. He'd been kidding himself for a long time. The next year he made "Hell on Frisco Bay" for his own company, Jaguar Productions. It's a good movie and he's excellent in it, with the kind of intensity that seems to bend light around it. It was the last performance he gave as the Alan Ladd who'd won an unlikely stardom. If you look carefully, however, you can see the tricks used by a make-up artist to conceal the softening jaw line and the bags under the eyes. When he wasn't working, he was drinking, and it was taking a toll. By the time he made "Boy on a Dolphin," he was just going through the motions. He pulled himself together later that year to make "The Proud Rebel" with his son David, but that was just about the end. In 1962, he was seriously wounded in what was called a shooting accident, the bullet narrowly missing his heart. He said that he'd been carrying a pistol and stumbled while investigating noises he thought were coming from a burglary. A little over a year later, on the afternoon of January 29, 1964, he was found in his bed, dead, still wearing his robe and pajamas. After an autopsy, the cause was given as "Cerebral Edema due to Synergistic Effects of C.N.D. Chemical Depressants," the results of an overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills. The coroner ruled it another accident. He'd just finished shooting "The Carpetbaggers," playing Nevada Smith, a character role. The picture he never got to see is trashy and entertaining, but he has only a dozen scenes in it, and he's obviously doubled in the climatic fight scene with the star, George Peppard. Still, he brings a sad dignity to his performance, and if the critics overlooked it, there were worse ways to go out.

Daniel

4:45 PM  
Anonymous Rod Croft said...

Jean Negulesco once commented, "When I make a picture abroad, I always go to the best book store in town and look through every photographic book about that particular country....Photographers have sometimes spent as much as two or three years trying to capture the atmosphere, and we just try to reproduce it."

The scenery in "Boy on a Dolphin" is certainly eye-catching in CinemaScope and colour and Hugo Friedhofer's sound-track music, one of his best. In my opinion "Boy on a Dolphin" is a most enjoyable and well-spent 106 minutes.

I look forward to the release of a Blu-ray edition, hopefully in the near future.

8:59 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Craig Reardon shares some fascinating info on film scoring, and a great composer he once met ... (Part One)


John,


Fascinating info on "Boy on a Dolphin" and its reflections on the wobbly era between---as you state authoritatively---DFZ jumping ship in '56, and--somewhat ironically OR perhaps tellingly--his son, Richard (R.I.P.) taking the helm in the mid-'60s and partly revitalizing the great studio. I've never once seen "Boy..." all the way through, and that may be another thing that reflects on its problems. It never really drew me in! Funny, I recently saw a very enjoyable Bob Hope movie I found on the finally ill-fated Toshiba HD-DVD format: "My Favorite Brunette". It was paired with Frank Tashlin's broad and amusing "Son of Paleface". Anyway, you may or may not be familiar with this one, but Hope plays a baby photographer in San Francisco who's right next door in his building to a private eye. The shamus is played in a brief and effective scene by none other than Alan Ladd, still in his prime. And thence to our subject, "...Dolphin", as the difference between Ladd's looks and charisma in this cameo and the way he appeared in "Boy on a Dolphin" is immense. He was so good-looking at a young man he was almost beautiful---kind of like a blonde counterpoint to Tyrone Power. Funny (as in 'interesting', certainly not as in 'amusing') that both he and Power were clearly fading by the late '50s, as their respective Adonis looks began to congeal into something dough-y and paunchy, really well before one might have expected this to happen, as far as their ages were concerned.

12:04 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Craig Reardon's comments --- Part Two:


It IS amusing---both 'interesting' AND almost 'funny'---that somebody like John Wayne was able to go on and on, audiences loving him as much as they always did even when his face turned into that of almost a friendly old habitue of a neighborhood bar, and his belly became a true bay window. It seemed not to matter. Ernest Borgnine, interviewed several times in his late years, never had a really unkind word to say about anybody, and he recalled working with Ladd on a movie (I can't remember the name), and said that in his opinion Ladd's problems had their root in a kind of self-reviling awareness of his small stature, which Borgnine felt was so exaggerated it drove Ladd to drink. Sad. As always, I have to step outside my own enthusiasm for these old figures and admit I feel self-conscious and even silly, myself, picking them apart in this way, almost 50 years (in Ladd's case) after his death. I guess that's an involuntary reponse, almost, created by the singular quality of these personalities and the symbiotic effect of the way movies once presented them, like gems in a perfect setting. That kind of presentation changed radically even as early as the '50s.


I never had the opportunity come up to tell you that I spent an entire afternoon once with Hugo Friedhofer, interviewing him for a book I was planning informally, which did not get beyond being envisioned as a kind of oral history of the life of Bernard Herrmann. But, Herrmann's unquestionable stature not being my subject here, Hugo himself was a huge talent in his own right. He lived at that time (about 1976 or '77) in a modest apartment building on Beachwood Drive (I hope that's right, it's been awhile) in downtown Hollywood. All his many years of good earnings and hard work had not defended him against a difficult divorce and being divested of a lot of his money, thus the reduced circumstances. The living room and kitchenette were hemmed in with an upright piano and bookshelves laden with his bound scores. Friedhofer had orchestrated music for the great Erich Wolfgang Korngold and the much different but also great other Austro-Hungarian born composer Max Steiner, at Warners; and then Alfred Newman got him a job writing his own first film score for the Goldwyn picture "The Adventures of Marco Polo", an enjoyable fantasy starring Gary Cooper as a most unlikely Marco Polo. Friedhofer worked for Newman constantly at Fox, on pictures great and mostly small, but his breakthrough opportunity became Goldwyn's "The Best Years of Our Lives" in '46, which is graced by a beautiful Friedhofer score that, while it partakes of American-sounding qualities redolent in the innovative music of Aaron Copland (who influenced a couple generations of American film composers), also has a romanticism and personality that is Hugo's alone. It didn't hurt Friedhofer's career when it won an Academy Award, either!

12:05 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Part Three from Craig Reardon:


By the '50s, Hugo was getting more and more assignments as a composer on Fox's CinemaScope productions, and continued there after Alfred left and his brother Lionel took over, although often supplying music anonymously to such lumpen backgrounds as the music (e.g.) for "North to Alaska", etc. He also had an 'interesting' relationship with Alfred Newman's other brother, Emil, the arrangement (I think) being that Hugo wrote the music and Emil went in and conducted the recordings. They're credited unusually on some Wayne/Fellows movies, including "Hondo" and "Island in the Sky". I think there was one where Emil only was credited, "Music by...", which I found to be typical Hollywood confusion of self-promotion with real talent and/or creativity, which is business-as-usual in filmmaking to this day. Bernard Herrmann gave one of his typical disenchanted interviews to two young fans in 1970 and referred to 'ghostwriting' as "...the great unsung profession in Hollywood!" He said this in order to separate himself from the process, though he said he'd been approached more than once by colleagues who wanted him to write for them. Hugo was not so lucky and/or discriminating, no doubt out of necessity and realism, and ghost-wrote for many composers. Alfred Newman was capable of composing terrific musical backgrounds, but was often inundated with more than one assignment at a time, or one which required re-writes dictated by others, and had to get in help. Friedhofer helped him bail water on "The Greatest Story Ever Told", to name just one, when Newman was required to replace whole sequences.


Friedhofer's score for "Boy on a Dolphin" was a much sought-after rarity on lp records until CDs were invented and it reappeared on legit reissues (from as far away as Japan, Japanese Victor), and bootlegs. A typically-skillful score, it has a title tune I'm not much impressed with even when sexily crooned by Julie London. However, Friedhofer wrote excellent scores for many films during this period, including "Broken Arrow", "The Rains of Ranchipur", "Seven Cities of Gold", "The Young Lions", "Between Heaven and Hell", etc. His love themes are often beautifully imagined and harmonized, anything but predictable or Muzak-like. His sense of harmony was complex, moreso in some ways than even an impressive composer like Herrmann, as is his use of counterpoint. David Raksin thought his pal Hugo was the best of the best. He was certainly a most amiable and intelligent, friendly and amusing man, and I am very grateful I got to meet this fascinating participant in the golden age of moviemaking.

12:06 PM  
Blogger StevensScope said...

(Here later in 2017). After reading all of the comments posted here some years ago, regarding Alan Ladd, with notes on the Fox scope production OF "BOY ON A DOLPHIN", PLUS a wonderful story on Hugo FRIEDHOFER, THIS PARTICULAR "READ" really stood out FOR ME as ONE of the most INFORMATIVE AND ENTERTAINING times I've ever had 'at the movies'!. Thanks to all concerned! MY FAVORITE HUGO SCORES: "THE YOUNG LIONS" (1958), and "ONE EYED JACKS" (1961) I HIGHLY RECOMMEND A LISTEN to THESE TWO MAGNIFICENT SCORES FROM THESE TWO MAGNIFICENT FILMS--FILMS WHICH REMAINED RARELY SEEN ITEMS BY MOST FOLKS, SINCE THE YEAR THEY WERE MADE-- UNTIL RECENTLY! (2017!)!! WHAT SHAMEFUL NEGLECT BROUGHT UPON THESE TWO GREAT (VIRTUALLY IGNORED) MARLON BRANDO FILMS.. HAPPY FOR ALL THAT BOTH MOVIES- AND BOTH OF HUGO'S SCORES TO THEM WERE FINALLY MADE AVAILABLE ON DVD & CD'S,IN THE TIME SINCE!

1:53 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024