Rock and Roll In Early Bloom

Go, Johnny Go! (1959) Glows On DVD

Now why would I have gone to the Liberty for Go, Johnny Go! on April 20, 1963? Answer: it played with Rodan, the trailer of which I saw but days before at parent-endorsed (and accompanied) To Kill A Mockingbird, latter satisfactory enough for child-scares sprinkled throughout, but no match for thrill that was glimpse of Rodan. These were days when you'd sit through a bum feature for sake of the good one you paid admission for. Go, Johnny Go!, however, had rock and roll numbers one after another, which was OK if heard off transistor radio, but no visual match for dinosaur birds hatched from mammoth eggs. Still, there was one song that struck lightning, and set me upon neighborhood search for anyone who had the 45 platter. It was Please Mr. Johnson, by the Cadillacs, which I thought the niftiest tune since David Seville and the Chipmunks did Witch Doctor in 1958. That was all I'd remember of Go, Johnny Go! at the theatre until Kit Parker released a widescreen (and stunner) DVD of this 1959 jive-jumper near invisible for the fifty-seven years since. Parker you'll recall gifted us of late with When Comedy Was King, and here is more of much-fun same (seen his site? Great stuff there). Go, Johnny Go! was the sort of show that jammed Saturdays once upon spent times, reliving it as here an especial joy thanks to Parker transferring off the original camera negative and including audio commentary to enhance our sit.

Rock/Roll movies were miser cheap, except where majors took a dip with Elvis or satiric dissect of youth culture like The Girl Can't Help It. Triumvirate of experts Richard M. Roberts, Randy Skretvedt, and Brent Walker tell us that Go, Johnny Go! was shot in five days. Work ethic among low-budget filmmakers must have been immense. We could learn much from them beyond making of fast films. Go, Johnny Go! has oodles of acts on crisp B/W and wide (proper 1.85 for a first time since theatrical). There is Chuck Berry, Jackie Wilson, aforementioned Cadillacs, Eddie Cochran. Ill-fated Richie Valens gets a look-in but months before plane-crashing with Buddy Holly and others, he plus Cochran a remind that R&R often walked tandem with untimely death. Ringmaster of these is Alan Freed, another of short life (d. 1965), but immortal as sandpaper reverse to clean-living Dick Clark, who'd pick up marbles Freed dropped or threw away during mutual climbs to Big Beat summit.

My favorite R&R is better called RR&R, or fuller put, Raffish Rock and Roll, as in all of rough edges there, these performers sprung from the street w/ precious little of handling to sap out talent that made them distinctive. Remember politeness imposed on pop acts from early 60's on? I'd play my hard-acquired single of Please Mr. Johnson, then ponder my sister's latest Bobby Vee album, where he'd exalt orange as a favorite sweater color (and to think, Vee was promoted to ease loss of Buddy Holly). Go, Johnny Go! seems to me a last call for mastodons of music served raw till corporate sent small labels and their artists to extinct-ville. I choose this over what came to displace it, Go, Johnny Go! a museum walk through rock and roll before dread harness was slipped round its throat. Trouble, of course, was corrupting smell of dollars R&R gave off where marketed on big enough scale. A movie like Go, Johnny Go! just couldn't be made once big dogs joined the hunt. A wonder such stomped-out goods, with later-depleted talent (those partings plus Berry jail-bound on morals charge) kept playing at least NC houses right through the mid-60's. Bet Go, Johnny Go! could be had for $10 by time it rode Rodan's back for me and youngsters who'd barely recall rock and roll when it was still a big enough tent for all who first made it vibrate.

Warner Tries a Wartime Horror

The Mysterious Doctor (1943) Is Hour Long Guessing

A wartime Warners horror film (yes, I'd call it that) that should have been put into a dedicated chiller package for TV, but apparently never was. There is a headless ghost decapitating others on swampy ground you'd expect Sherlock Holmes to investigate were this Universal. Shock-folk lend comfort of recognition: John Loder, Lester Matthews (he of The Raven and Werewolf Of London), and Matt Willis, who'd go wolfish for Columbia a same year with Return Of The Vampire. WB overlays the whole with German scheme to exploit a haunted tin mine outside "a tiny Cornish village," further linking The Mysterious Doctor to us v. Axis strategy of the Sherlock series, though by the time they'd gotten around to The Scarlet Claw, which is very similar to this, the war references were dropped from Holmes in favor of straight mystery with horrific overlace. The convenience of a programmer like this was Warners' ability to package it with another of thriller inclination, The Gorilla Man, to have a chill program for 1943 marketing that saw nearly all monster movies sold as B's and in pairs.

Pushing The Cartoon Limit

A Long, Long Animated Ribbon

How many is too many? 21 cartoons in one sitting amounts to, what, two hours forty minutes? It comes down to threshold of each viewing child, I suppose. Such marathons were less about admissions, more about concessions. With the program broken up continually, as in every seven to eight minutes, just imagine same in terms of rush to trough that was snack bars. They could expect deluge times twenty, this for $ way past dimes or quarters it took to get in. A unique feature of this ad is title listing of content, to which I'll leave more specific ID for animation experts. I do recognize a Tom and Jerry (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse), Plutopia and Merbabies from Disney, plus lots to ring fainter bells. By the 50's, age of cartoons mattered not a whit, for what ten-year-old would complain of having seen one of them in mid-forties? Rental was cheap enough to afford 21 of the things and still spend no more than an average feature might cost. I must say 21 is the largest dump I've seen for one program, though you'd have to figure plentiful kids stuck around for Simba, Terror Of Mau Mau!, assuming there wasn't usher clearing of auditoria (but then what were restrooms for if not to hide in?). Proviso that no adult would be admitted without a child might work hardship now that 'toons are more embraced by grown-ups.

A Star Goes Among Her Public

Colleen Moore Comes To Cleveland

See Master Atwill's Progressive Views Below

From strangest anomalies comes this, a traveling comedy-drama with In-Person Colleen Moore and directed by Lionel Atwill. The time was October 1930, the place Cleveland. Perfect Flapper Colleen was lately inactive in pictures and done with husband John McCormick, who'd been credited producer on her output. She would stage-render On The Loose, which sounds like another of jazz age trifles, but that era was gone as mastodons, along with many who defined screen image by it. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer had a woman named Inez Wallace to cover Hollywood and related biz. She'd known industry folk out west long before they migrated from the East, including moguls from humble start as showmen. Wallace refers to thirty-one year old Colleen Moore as "an amazing child" whose stardom defies logic, but stooped to dine at the star's home whenever in the film capital. Here was plain-spoke as daily laid on locals by a columnist who had privileged access, thanks to circulation of Plain-Dealer and sheets like it. Inez Wallace knew value of a common touch and so wore humble hat in dispatches, pleasing Cleveland readership when she took deities like Colleen Moore down a peg or two. Any publicity being good publicity, Moore took such in stride and gave Cleveland its fifty cent to $2.50 worth. For performing nearly half-a-so-far-life (since 1917), Colleen knew the biz in all its permutations. As to Atwill in charge, On The Loose could not have been in firmer reins, him having directed on Broadway as well as starred. Don't know how Colleen Moore would have fared with a man once quoted thus: "All women love the men they fear. All women kiss the hand that rules them ... I do not treat women in such soft fashion. Women are cat creatures. Their preference is for a soft fireside cushion, for delicate bowls of cream, for perfumed leisure, and for a master --- which is where and how they belong."

Stanwyck Meets Stair Banisters

A Good and Overlooked Sirk for Universal

The first of outstanding melodramas that Douglas Sirk directed for Universal, but neglected since because (1) it's period-set, turn of the century, and (2) black-and-white rather than color. Later and even better There's Always Tomorrow gets short shrift for same B/W cause, though at least it peels back 50's malaise that has kept Sirk relevant to auteurists who won't have the era as anything other than mire of repression and hypocrisy. All I Desire attacks some of same social prejudices, but with parasols and porch swings, this a 50's sort of Meet Me In St. Louis minus song. Barbara Stanwyck is the wayward wife returned home years after desertion of husband Richard Carlson and brood of three. She's spent that ditched in low-grade vaudeville, always Hollywood's court of last resort for leftovers off plate of life. I wonder how then-survivors of small-time vaude (many in 1953) felt on seeing themselves played in such acid terms. After all, there were lots more of them than ones who struck big in variety and rode that into other media.

All I Desire bears enough Sirk signature for us to miss credits and still recognize his tropes. The house itself leads among characters. We know every step, landing, and banister by halfway-done. Sirk seldom shoots action head-on (mostly conversation or confrontation), always something in a foreground to sweeten composition. These might be door screens, windows with lace curtain parted, said banisters through which activity is viewed. Characters are watched constantly from other rooms, from inside the house looking out ... there's clandestine feeling through all of All I Desire to befit situation of folks with plenty to hide. Writing is good, Sirk's helming better, and of course, U-I youngsters given chance to shine in something other than westerns or weirdies. All I Desire might be the picture Lori Nelson wishes fans would ask about rather than Revenge of the Creature, as it was by far plumier assignment of the two in 50's context.

Stanwyck really glows in this, giving all to then-modest, now-commanding, output. Other players for Sirk would say he didn't lend much to performance, too busy aiming his camera through scrims, so interpretation would be Stanwyck's alone, a help being dialogue/situations that sidestep the expected. You'd figure Lyle Bettger for all-out heavy, per custom, but there's shading, at least by his measure, and we understand his frustration at being a past lover now shut-out. Sirk wanted to do All I Desire in color, part of his on-going exam of small-town life, but U said no. He also had a preferred downer ending replaced by producer Ross Hunter, who knew from boxoffice if not aesthetics. All I Desire was sold in expected lurid terms, rival television having made necessity of that. Did ads make it look too sleazy for polite consumption? At least art flattered Stanwyck, who looks more 1933 than 1953 for promoting purpose. All I Desire was part of a DVD box devoted to the actress with five other features. A Universal vault disc can also be had. Quality is fine.

A 1983 Battle Of Bonds

Could a Returning Connery Douse Moore's Octopussy Flame?

"Nobody Does Him Better," said the one-sheet, a not-subtle salvo to would-be encroacher Sean Connery, latest and least expected of upstarts who'd compete with branded Bond. Connery was back as 007, but not in Octopussy, nor for principal producer Albert Broccoli. The usurper was Never Say Never Again, a remake of Thunderball being the sole Bond property that Broccoli nemesis Kevin McClory could mount. It's all confusing to a point where books have been written on the conflict. The legal backdrop obscures Octopussy, perhaps unfairly, as it's actually one of the better Roger Moore Bonds. There's more complication than needed, a hazard that would increase as the series dragged to coming decades, but 007 had been doing well enough since The Spy Who Loved Me to tender each as action events. Never Say Never, with its limited, and looking it, budget, could not compete on those terms. Seemed for a while they'd go head-to-head for 1983 play, but delays kept the challenger from crabbing Octopussy's lead. Moore was getting old for further Bonds, but breaking in a new one was risky, George Lazenby having been a downturn, so it made at least fiscal sense to keep RM in the spot for as long as he stayed willing and ambulatory. Grosses were good for Octopussy, though in comparison with what the series nowaday earns, it was a splash in the bucket.

When Garbo Kept Coming Back

Camille (1936) A Surprise 50's Success

Garbo’s “Swedish Sphinx” hung on her like flypaper, even unto decades of retirement. Street-sightings and camera peers under brim of her hat was extent of exposure after she quit movies in 1942 to pursue private life. Movies GG had done meanwhile lay fallow. There was reissue of Ninotchka in the late 40’s that sputtered, balance of hers either too dated to send back out, or a matter of who'd care? What few saw coming was risen star she’s be with mid-50’s bestow of a special Academy Award and LIFE magazine's splash to arouse curiosity of dental patients across the country (we’ll never again see a magazine with LIFE’s kind of mass circulation --- every parlor and waiting room had them). MGM hopped aboard and test-booked Camille to gauge temperatures. What they divined was boiling heat, Camille to surpass even new product sent out by the Lion. Ads boosted the Oscar, LIFE’s bouquet, and of course, eternal mystery that was Garbo herself. It seemed a new-old star was born. Question, then --- could it sustain beyond Camille for continued sale of GG backlog?

Camille clicked because watchers liked the movie plus Garbo. It had romance, Robert Taylor (still mainstream popular), literary snob appeal (catnip for art-housing), plus satisfaction of curiosity as to just what Mom/Dad’s idea of a film idol was all about. Not unlike the late-30’s revive of Valentino, him gone for years prior, but still active in imagination of those who had kneeled at his alter. I looked at Camille again after coming across the above Cleveland ad from 1955. How might we have responded to 1936 romance in that year of Rebel Without A Cause and Kiss Me Deadly? Pleasing was fact that Camille still clicked, at least for me. I had seen it first in 1977 at a month-long theatrical feed of Metros, so there was good impression 35mm left, same as ’55 crowds would have experienced. Presentation as always makes the difference. Camille streams in HD at Vudu, looks a million, and that helps realize how the show meant much to that couple of generations that responded to it in 1936 and again in 1955. Threshold question for us moderns is how to take Garbo, assuming we elect to take her at all. Where does she stand among Favorite Folk on TCM? The network must have rankings, internal ones if not what they share with viewership. DVD sales for her were said to be tepid, so just when did the Garbo mystique wear off?

1955 Variety noted most teens going “Huh?” where Garbo’s name came up. It was thirteen years since her last work after all, an eternity in the lives of youth. For them, much of Camille would be purest hoke, yet there was something modern about Garbo’s performing, a Euro distance from Hollywood artifice as ladled out in the 30’s. Was she precursor to fashionable imports as seen nightly at art houses on 50’s rise? Any talent so otherworldly might extend fascination to a next generation, and maybe ones to come, which seems to have been case for Garbo, as she kept turning up, and on paying basis, to arties and revival houses well into the 70’s. Record checks show festivals beyond Gotham --- Charlotte had a Garbo week during the mid-60’s, and we know MGM’s Perpetual Product Plan from earlier in that decade used at least six of hers in rotation. Critics and not a few plain folks went years referring to her as “Most Beautiful” of all screen stars, or Most Luminous, Hypnotic … take your pick. What’s left to sort out is when and why did that end? Our “One World” finds personalities off the Continent less remote or exotic than Grandparents would have, so there’s partial explanation. For the rest, it may be movies that don't excite like before. William K. Everson once cited Garbo as a great star who never made a really great movie. She falls between cracks of early 30’s stuff we otherwise like, being not of precode milieu as currently understood and enjoyed best. Ones of hers roughly within the category --- Inspiration and Susan Lenox notable --- are in fact undone by heavy laden presence of the star. Norma Shearer or Myrna Loy would have been more fun given the same commission.

Camille is Code-compliant, but tells its adult story effectively. Films by 1936 could achieve this, if done artfully enough. Goldwyn succeeded with Dodsworth in a same year; it, like Camille, does not feel denuded. Garbo as mistress to chilly aristocrat Henry Daniell is understood, not overstated. Assumption can be made that Camille is sleeping with Robert Taylor's Armand, but interpretation to the contrary might also be supported. So much of the Code era was letting individual audience members read things their own way, and giving offense to no one. Camille got by with slightly more thanks to gilt-edged literary antecedent and Metro skill at negotiation with Breen. Camille is as much art direction as drama, period/setting a reward even where narrative flags. This is one that George Cukor’s reputation may rest comfortably on. He pulls what surely is Garbo’s definitive talkie performance, or at least the one she’d be best remembered for. Tricky end of the known character was cough and death rattle that was already topic of spoofs as the pic got made, so wisely, Garbo plays that aspect down. Whatever Carol Burnett lampooned as the character on TV, it surely wasn’t GG.

Notion that Great Novels Make Great Films isn’t much supported anymore, difference being so few reading classic novels, let alone schools and colleges teaching them. Metro adaptations enjoyed built-in attendance, at least awareness, among the educated. Where even high-schoolers knew who Camille was in 1936, and not a few bookworms as late as 1955, now it’s nobody and nowhere, revival marquee with Greta Garbo in Camille likely to draw 100% blank. Maybe that’s why I never hear of it being shown outside of TCM. How is it that a Pride and Prejudice, in fact much of Jane Austin, sustains, and Camille does not? Ones better versed at literature might enlighten me here. MGM really did work a miracle of making content like this accessible to a mass audience, giving succor to a mob that could be entertained as well as enriched. This was one of countless ways old Hollywood flattered its public. You could go see Camille, then impress friends who read books. Everybody won. Smart guys like Thalberg, who produced Camille, understood that nothing commanded respect like awareness of man’s finer achievements, be it art, literature, or dare one suggest, motion pictures. Camille and kin aimed for high targets, and much of the time, hit them. They were good for the industry then, and still rewarding to look at today.

Vets Go Collegiate On G.I. Bill

Apartment For Peggy (1948) A Postwar Time Capsule

Fascinating as a social document, but also as vehicle for sudden-star Edmund Gwenn, who'd lately scored as Santa, and so hauls bulk of Peggy narrative. She's Jeanne Crain and point of sale for the pic despite Gwenn in center spot. Crain had become unexpected Queen Of The Lot, to even Zanuck's astonishment; he'd not built before an ingénue who'd rise so high as this. There were limits to her as an actress, as Joe Mankiewicz loudly said when Crain was forced on his Letter To Three Wives and People Will Talk. The Peggy part was tough to make likeable, she being a chatterbox and frank manipulator. A drag to glamour was the character being pregnant for a first two-thirds, but that might actually have helped, being as how many of Peggy's female audience was similarly so during a postwar baby boom.

The film takes seriously issues of young couples' housing, practical aspect of education vs. jobs that pay right now (should ex-G.I. Bill Holden attend college or sell used cars?). There is also consideration of husbands "outgrowing" wives now that college beckons, a touchy topic mirroring real-life patron concern. There is generation gap acknowledged between Gwenn/teaching colleagues and back-from-combat youth to whom they owe America's freedom, a debt of gratitude that kept a lid on serious conflict before mid-50's focus on juve delinquency and breakdown of old/younger ties. College exteriors were shot in snow, a happy aspect of locationing at the University Of Nevada in Reno. Writer/director George Seaton had teamed with William Perlberg toward assembly of thoughtful pics that were also reliable boxoffice, the team second only to Mankiewicz for blending prestige and popular.

When Movies On TV Went Bottoms Up

It Needed a Stiff Drink To Get Through 85 Minutes That
Channel 8 Allotted to The Lost Weekend in 1966

More Memories Of Television as Butcher Stall

Me at Age 12 After WGHP Chopped My Classic

I used to non-stop whine where it came to movies being abused by TV. Extreme instance: Channel 8 in High Point ran The Lost Weekend one evening from 6:00 to 7:25, wedged between the Bowery Boys and weather preceding ABC news. This was 1966, before "Let's Movie" meant showing them complete and uninterrupted. The Lost Weekend got 8's flit-gun treatment via Milland binge shortened by thirty minutes at least. Mine was righteous rage as only a twelve-year-old could express, choice of words in written complaint to include "butchery" and "senseless chopping," epithets scrawled with Bic pen on Blue Horse paper. Ch. 8 response was lesson in tact a wiser head might have profited by. Broadcasters were cautious with complaints, any of which might CC to the FCC, thus soft pencil applied to reply of viewer mail.

Academy Awards Were No Protection Against Shears of Syndication

Channel 8 patiently explained that movies must often be "carefully edited" for telecast, time limit and "sponsor messages" inescapable facts of programming life. What they knew but didn't express was that films were filler, nothing more nor less. Anyone who'd demand The Lost Weekend intact had to be a crank or a child. It was twenty years since the thing won "Best Picture," and who knew or cared from that? The Lost Weekend was accompany to supper dishes cleared, dog/cats let in/out, the gamut of household necessity to quell focus on flicks that bridged afternoon with primetime. Mere heads of lettuce to chop, they'd make a ninety-minute salad with remnant tossed out. Question we purists must finally ask: Were they so wrong?

Most television then was white noise. Many a household left sets running all day, as had been case with radio. Lots listened more than watched, screens on as backdrop to conversation or a phonograph playing. Attention paid was little, I suspect. Too many distractions around the house, if not the room. And how does one concentrate on a movie broken up by non-stop ads? Sensible folk wanted the story shortened, as who in a busy family had two hours or more for focus on narrative off a tiny box (25" regarded a big screen then). I don't think people noticed movies being cut. They were too well schooled at catching drift of a story even where it was gutted of first or middle sections. It was like walking into a theatre part ways into the show. You'd need but moments to understand everything that happened to that point. What movies were on television was a souvenir of what they had once been at cinemas. Those who'd remember The Lost Weekend would be satisfied by morsels caught before Junior flipped over to The Jetsons.

To "showcase" an old movie was to risk losing restless viewers. Having lights on in a room meant they'd be up and down constantly. Others of the household were in/out of the viewing space, phones jangling, adjourn to the kitchen for prep of snacks or TV-tray ... how would even a reverently presented Lost Weekend compete with that? Station directors understood such reality. They knew that movies weren't meant to be fully consumed and understood on the tube, unless maybe it was event of a Bridge On the River Kwai or The Robe unveiling for first broadcast time. Families might clear schedule for these, as in plan ahead, get grass mowed, then settle in for the haul. Mid-sixties forward became burial ground for B/W oldies now that color sets were getting into record number of homes. Choice for purists was simple: Take The Lost Weekend and ones like it on their terms, or don't watch. We had to stop worrying and love cut movies.

Of course, I kept writing letters. Management surely dreaded my scrawl on envelopes, knowing they'd have to answer what points I raised. My error was assuming everyone else felt as I did. Integrity of classic film was priority of precious few, at least in NC markets with late shows sole berth where features might be seen complete. It took cable and then satellite to rehab the backlogs. A service like AMC and later TCM had luxury of time and no need to amend vaulties. A generation that came up in the 80/90's saw classics way different from those that bore scar of editor knives. I've long thought there were, and are, far more serious buffs today than in blighted era gone before. Attendance at TCM's Festival bears it out, and look at all of blogs, Twitters, and Facebooking these fans do, plus books they continue to write. Imagine if TCM, or any network, did a chop-job on The Lost Weekend today. On-line fury would deafen us all. We had our Good Old Days with classic movies, but again I say, these are the Better New Days.

Where CK Had Its Biggest Nights

Kane Is 58's Comeback Kid

Here's another reckless assertion which I invite any or all to refute: Citizen Kane had its largest-ever viewing audience during the week of January 6, 1958 in and around Los Angeles (on station KHJ), this surpassed only by ten months later New York City broadcast through Thanksgiving week, twelve free Gotham runs to whoever could pick up WOR, Channel 9. Kane never drew such a crowd, not in initial release, certainly not from revivals. Wish I knew how many millions watched over those bi-coastal weeks. Was this when Citizen Kane truly achieved modern classic standing? Never mind its being truncated and riddled with commercials. At least hint of greatness broke through, whatever abuse was heaped upon it. I'm back on Kane jag thanks to Scott MacQueen pointing my way to the TV ad at left, which appeared in support of November runs on WOR. Other promos for Channel 9 can be seen at previous (6/19/16) GPS posting on Kane's TV premiere(s). WOR pushed the run with multiple print promos (this latest my favorite), each a salvo to whatever sought paid admissions that NYC week. No wonder theatres despised television. Surely Orson Welles noted the showcase his seventeen-year-oldie got over multiple nights with much of Gotham tuned in. Might Kane have been a (re)freshed calling card to help him get further jobs? Industry execs on both coasts would certainly have been watching, what with Citizen Kane playing every night over respective weeks. I'd say the only larger TV audience Welles had during the 50's was his guesting on I Love Lucy (10-15-56), unless I've overlooked another, and higher profile, appearance (but then, was anything more watched than I Love Lucy that decade?).