How to take a bandleader and news columnist and
make them movie attractions, a cooked-up "feud" driving tissue
narrative against backdrop of song. Itworks, and how, as barometer of what
pleased in days when a public paid real attention to stuff press and radio fed
them daily. There was no better demo of media power than Walter Winchell giving/taking
licks from yowsah-man Ben Bernie, their contretemps profitable in a long run
for both. To that slim frame add 20th Fox funmakers Jack Haley, Patsy Kelly, Ned
Sparks ... well, the list goes on. Beyond these, Joan Davis just has to show up,
and so does in specialty slapstick. Wake Up and Live is what we'd
accurately call "escapism" in a best sense of old Hollywood. Being unfamiliar with pop culture
of the day would make it seem like foreign language. When a thing like this
surfaces on DVD, I'm amazed, but gratifyingly so. Wake woke 1937 trade to rave
response, a "bulls-eye" and single day record holder for a past five
years at Broadway's Roxy. It was understood that Jack Haley was a feature star
born with this. Winchell and the cast guested on Ben Bernie's radio program to
stir interest, the home box holding thrall over a wider public than even movies
by '37. The only rub for such synergy was its failing to translate overseas.
Wake Up and Live took a lofty $1.2 million in domestic rentals, but foreign was
meager with $358K. Still, there was $190K profit at the end, and indication
that a cycle of such musicals would click, which they did over a next several
seasons until the real breakthrough that came withFox's Betty Grable series.
Wake Up from Fox DVD Archive looks fine.
Am I the only one who finds it impossible to square Winchell's 30s image, peddling amusing star gossip, with the monster Burt Lancaster plays in The Sweet Smell of Success?
Maybe I need to finally read the Neil Gabler bio to understand how those are the same person. I get that Winchell was peddling HUAC-era redbaiting, but... so was everybody else.
Had a beat up 16mm print of this one for years. Had a hard time dragooning anyone, even film buff type buddies, into a viewing. The sort of situation where the more thoroughly I described it, the faster friends and relatives ran ("and then Joan Davis does this dance... wait, where are you going?") Me? I loved it!
It is too obvious which such a film would flop overseas, which I will take it as Europe. These personalities meant nothing to them.
Not overseas, but down the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, this kind of film was probably a commercial disaster.
20th Century-Fox had recently cancelled their profitable Spanish language series of films and that market at this time was taken over by Argentine films.
"Am I the only one who finds it impossible to square Winchell's 30s image, peddling amusing star gossip, with the monster Burt Lancaster plays in The Sweet Smell of Success?"
Winchell covered the same beat from the 30s onwards. Not just showbiz, Broadway, Hollywood, high society, 'blessed events', etc but gangsters, spies, commies, Nazis, it was all grist to his mill and very early om he forged a close relationship with J Edgar Hoover, staging the Hoover arrest of Alvin Karpis. (Karpis' tale of the arrest in Gabler's book is hilarious).
Jack Benny, early in his vaudeville career, used the name Ben K. Benny, but changed it because he was being confused with Ben Bernie. And the Bernie-Winchell feud probably inspired Benny's mock-war with Fred Allen.
If Winchell was feuding in real life it was probably with his rival at the Daily News, Ed Sullivan.
5 Comments:
Am I the only one who finds it impossible to square Winchell's 30s image, peddling amusing star gossip, with the monster Burt Lancaster plays in The Sweet Smell of Success?
Maybe I need to finally read the Neil Gabler bio to understand how those are the same person. I get that Winchell was peddling HUAC-era redbaiting, but... so was everybody else.
Had a beat up 16mm print of this one for years. Had a hard time dragooning anyone, even film buff type buddies, into a viewing. The sort of situation where the more thoroughly I described it, the faster friends and relatives ran ("and then Joan Davis does this dance... wait, where are you going?") Me? I loved it!
It is too obvious which such a film would flop overseas, which I will take it as Europe. These personalities meant nothing to them.
Not overseas, but down the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego, this kind of film was probably a commercial disaster.
20th Century-Fox had recently cancelled their profitable Spanish language series of films and that market at this time was taken over by Argentine films.
"Am I the only one who finds it impossible to square Winchell's 30s image, peddling amusing star gossip, with the monster Burt Lancaster plays in The Sweet Smell of Success?"
Winchell covered the same beat from the 30s onwards. Not just showbiz, Broadway, Hollywood, high society, 'blessed events', etc but gangsters, spies, commies, Nazis, it was all grist to his mill and very early om he forged a close relationship with J Edgar Hoover, staging the Hoover arrest of Alvin Karpis. (Karpis' tale of the arrest in Gabler's book is hilarious).
Jack Benny, early in his vaudeville career, used the name Ben K. Benny, but changed it because he was being confused with Ben Bernie. And the Bernie-Winchell feud probably inspired Benny's mock-war with Fred Allen.
If Winchell was feuding in real life it was probably with his rival at the Daily News, Ed Sullivan.
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