Samples Of How It Played

Pulling Ambersons Plow Through Exhibition

Here are ads from The Magnificent Ambersons. There are thousands more for whoever might give effort to flush them out. The truest story of public reception to any film is told by ads, not critics or reviews. Showmen had to gauge pulse of their customers and sell accordingly. They knew better than Hollywood what a public would buy, and how preference could change from one week, or day, to the next. The Magnificent Ambersons would have been but vaguely familiar to most theatre men. There was a novel source, but published in 1918. How many busy exhibs read it, or cared to? Radio listeners may have recalled the story from Welles' Campbell Playhouse of several years before (ad for that above). The Magnificent Ambersons would have been part of a season commitment with RKO for independents not part of that company's theatre chain. A pressbook might advise on how to sell, but that help only went so far. Much of management considered pressbooks useless, if not a joke. Putting a man on the street with a sandwich board --- that's as inspired as home offices often got. The Magnificent Ambersons had been shortened to a point where it could play top or bottom of a double feature. Key spots had live performers to back up the doubtful attraction: Bert Wheeler, Ned Sparks, and Buster West in Baltimore, Phil (Laughing Irish Eyes) Ragan for Frisco's first-run, Shirley Ross in Milwaukee. Think anyone was impatient to get past these for The Magnificent Ambersons?

Double feature placement was no more degrading than for any RKO release. Yes, The Magnificent Ambersons did play with Mexican Spitfire Sees A Ghost in Chicago and L.A., at least at the top of the bill, and goodness knows customers could use a laugh after time spent with the Ambersons. The Film Daily saw things that way and called The Magnificent Ambersons "pointlessly depressing." There were holdovers in Syracuse, New Orleans, Washington, other places, but subsequent runs knew these for anomaly you got with urban trade. "Scandal staggered the city" was how best to sell the Ambersons, even if no such thing happens in the movie, but what was that but RKO overlooking a swell spin that local management could now augment? Powder magazine to heat up staid Ambersons was war-driven and often the lead lure for ads, as here for John Ford's The Battle Of Midway topping a three-day stand. Or RKO's Orpheum tendering India At War as March Of Time buttress to The Magnificent Ambersons and crackerjack thriller Kid Glove Killer from MGM. Note outgoing Mrs. Miniver as "The Greatest Picture Ever Made." The Magnificent Ambersons from a start labored under bad timing and worse luck. First a war, then the cuts, and finally an audience disposed toward anything but an Indianapolis family in decline near turn of a century. I'll footnote with more of these ads as I come across them, as nothing shows so vivid the struggle RKO and The Magnificent Ambersons faced.

UPDATE: 3/2/18 --- 7:20 PM --- Got an e-mail from "Griff" wherein he attached the ad below for the Los Angeles first-run of Ambersons. Thanks, Griff!

Universal Heat Seeks a Next Durbin Show

Nice Girl? (1941) Puts The Question Mark To Deanna's Screen Persona

At least from advertising standpoint, Nice Girl? seems to have been an effort to tart up Deanna Durbin, that not apparent from watching the picture today. The title's question mark was a tease, Deanna at nineteen and in receipt of a first screen kiss two years before, so where might she go where faced by moral crossroads? The answer was foregone, there being a public and Universal still vested in her virtue, plus Code authority to prevent a stray. To tweak was to vary a formula that needed freshening. "Deanna Kicks Over The Traces," plus the ? punctuation, was reason to imagine, at least for gullible patronage, that Nice Girl? might "go places and do things" the star had not dared before. Nice Girl? was tentative test as to whether Durbin's public would make the leap, exploitation ready to take a gamble even if the movie wasn't. Durbin was here in protective bosom of a screen family for the last time. Afterward would come career girls and meeting men on as equal terms as then-convention might permit. Nice Girl? was less imitative of past Durbins than brood series Warner made of Four Daughters and as many sequels and follow-ups. Dad Robert Benchley and three daughters Durbin, Anne Gwynne, and Ann Gillis repair to the parlor piano for no reason other than fulfill of audience expectation and to show WB had no lock on musical households.

Nice Girl? turned on possibility that Deanna might merge with an older man, in this case Franchot Tone, her senior by sixteen years. Callow if clueless backup Robert Stack is more her-age appropriate, goes shirtless, is handsome in up-and-coming star sense, but so sexually unaware as to raise concern that he'd ever get the hint, let alone be preferable to Tone. Here was further instance of a lead lady making what we (or at least me) feel to be a wrong partner choice. The situation, a strikingly similar one, was handled better in Hot Saturday, but that was 1932 and precode. Shackles were taut in the 40's, but Durbin could and did loosen them by going saucier than safe scripts led, she being tired by the persona and open to challenge it where she could. Suspense of a third act is whether she'll spend a night in Franchot's bachelor mansion, and wearing sexy pajamas besides. Those were basis of Nice Girl? merchandising, though I couldn't figure them for PJ's or lounge wear any girl, nice or otherwise, might relax in at home or out (and even more burning question: would she sleep in the turban?). Anyway, her outfit is referred to as bright red by small-town onlookers, basis for scandal an absurdity by modern measure. Is this part of why Deanna will not again register as anything other than a period curio who sang? Nice Girl? is available from Universal Vault on DVD and TCM has played it but once, happily in HD.

Is There No End To Katzman Cheapies?

Battle Of Rogue River (1954) An Oft-Told Tale

Sam Katzman produced, Bill Castle directs ... which means not a dime will be spent unnecessarily. Whenever there is mass formation of Indians, you can bet it's borrowed footage, "Battles" otherwise small-scale. Personality was needed to prop up tired 50's cowpoking, but major stars could do but a fraction of outdoor action a hungry market needed, thus second stringer George Montgomery and like others busy throughout a decade in shows that couldn't help breaking at least even. Katzman had a profit share with Columbia and office space on the lot, being  independent after a fashion, even though most financing came by way of the Cohns, who had prior approval on whatever projects Sam initiated. By the 50's, he was picking titles out of exploitation's hat, none less than sure things for theatres and mostly drive-ins voracious to fill short dates. Battle Of Rogue River is numbingly commonplace, but if caught HD, and in 1.85 as released, can amuse as was case sixty years ago. Definitely another where presentation is the tipping point.

Choosing Loyalties In Wartime

Menzies Makes Much Of Address Unknown (1944)

Paul Lukas is tempted into a Nazi net while pre-war vacationing in Deutschland. Lukas was the Hungarian import that made Hollywood grade as opposed to countryman Bela Lugosi, who struggled. Was it Lukas' greater proficiency with the language, or was he the better actor? If nothing else, Lucas rang warning bells re Axis menace, what with this Columbia "B," plus higher-profile Watch On The Rhine and Uncertain Glory for Warners. Address Unknown was directed by design maestro William Cameron Menzies, who wrings visual elegance from a very limited budget, this a Menzies signature that would persist into the 50's and Invaders From Mars. More money might have increased scrutiny of script content; as it stands, this is bolder with regard SS persecution of undesirables than even mainstream propaganda engaged. Much of termite art was practiced by B's for their ability to glide under radars. Address Unknown shows up occasionally on TCM, product of their ongoing run of Columbia pics.

Sing A Song Of Drive-Ins

Did The Boys Know A Place Even Better Than The Beach?

Shawn Nagy's Super Oldies is where I set my online dial each morning. They choose beyond rigid playlists of Sirius and whatever radio still plays way-back hits. The Beach Boys came up this week with a 1964 tune called Drive-In, which I don't recall as a single, and barely, if ever, heard anywhere before. Drive-In was written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love. There were plenty of pop songs about moviegoing culture and drive-ins in particular, but few spelled out why young people preferred under-stars viewing, though as Drive-In tells it, "viewing" was a least of reasons to attend. I listened closely to the lyrics and tried plugging my own drive-in concept to what the Beach Boys sang. We differed first and most decidedly on climate and when those outdoor screens were lit. California screenings could go year round, and did. Our drive-ins had a busy season (late spring, through summer), had to take winter months off but for brave sites that offered heaters and sometimes free coffee to patrons willing to brave the cold. Others just closed and took lumps of months without the cash flow. I'd not ventured a drive-in outside of summer before taking a date one January to a banged-up print of Thunderball, and that proved a mistake for myriad of reasons. North Carolina under-stars during winter was scarcely what the Beach Boys knew in the Golden State.

"Every time I have a date, there's only one place to go. That's to the drive-in," begins the song. Families sought drive-ins for a cheap night-out, grill meals for all, with kids within reach and likely to fall asleep. Teens conversely went to be with other teens, loose from constriction that was home, and assured privacy that was closed cars. To take a date was reason aplenty for going. "It's such a groovy place to talk and maybe watch a show," maybe being operative word, for did it ever matter what was on the bill? (exceptions, yes, like NC lure that was Thunder Road) The drive-in was about community and freedom to move about, socialize, enjoy like playgrounds, train rides, full-service food, that hardtops could not supply. Theatre seats were confining, and management didn't like us jumping in/out of them, except to go buy concessions. To talk at an indoor site meant disturbing others, never an issue in open air that was drive-ins. "Forget about the plot," say the Beach Boys, and indeed, who took time to divine that, with so much else to distract us? Drive-ins saw their height in tandem with television's rise at home. Both used movies more/less for wallpaper, or white noise at best. Concentration patrons applied from bolted-down seats was no more. People who went to drive-ins for the film were figured to need their heads examined.

"Don't sneak your buddies in the trunk, 'cause they might get caught ..." was the BB's bid for social responsibility, and makes me wonder if anyone ever suffocated for sake of free admission. And what's a record for how many sneaks could fit in a trunk? Maybe this is part-why so many venues charged by the carload. "If you say you watch the movie, you're a couple o' liars, and remember, only you can prevent forest fires" was saucy wink the band didn't generally go in for, but everyone knew the purpose drive-ins served for youth, which is why parents saw less comfort in offspring viewing outdoors rather that in. Much eventuality traced back nine months to stolen time at the Starlight. For myself, our own Starlight was site for oldies and second-runs not likely to play again within four walls. But for the Starlight, there would have been no Brides of Dracula or The Curse of Frankenstein in my young life, but short of a driving license (rare among those age 11), who could see such treasure long discarded by downtown first-runners? Drive-ins went away for most part, demise explained to me as result of the 70's gas crisis. Was that it, or did folks simply lose the habit? Where then, do young people go to gather, or do they gather at all, other than online? For modern relevancy, the Beach Boys song could as readily be celebration for spinning bees, barn raisings, or vaudeville. Nothing renders a lyric so quaint as mention of drive-in way of life so long past.

Noir Stepping Closer To The Line

The Big Combo Is A Bracing 50's Slap

Getting goods on the "Organization" is mission for bitter cop Cornel Wilde, who's hobbled by love interest in moll Jean Wallace, she having begun as a good girl corrupted by Richard Conte's untouchable hood. Conte was a last minute substitution for Jack Palance, the latter dropped when he insisted that his wife be given a top female spot. There is violence bracketed by talk (lots) staged in dark spots like RKO once used for economy. Trade ads promised shock along lines of recent Dragnet and On The Waterfront, both hits, and positive reviews looked back further to Scarface and Public Enemy. Cornel Wilde's independent Theodora Productions teamed with producer Sidney Harmon and writer Phillip Yordan's Security Pictures to do The Big Combo, set for tee-off on 9/10/54 in color/widescreen (later down-sized to black-and-white), Allied Artists aboard as of 7/54 with commit to distribute. The latter's Steve Broidy was busy upgrading AA product from humbler Monogram origin, The Big Combo to open February, 1955 with two others of crime-thrilling category, Murder Is My Beat and Dial 116.

Combo got bumped a month on AA's decide to up its advertising budget and saturation-book the thriller for March '55. Cornel Wilde and wife/co-star Jean Wallace guested on NBC-TV's Colgate Comedy Hour and reenacted seven-minutes from The Big Combo to hypo its imminent release. That same month, Broidy hectored an exhibitor conference re over-reliance on blockbusters that left his smaller pics in the cold, warning them that if product like AA's dried up, they'd be at the mercy of big companies who would then ratchet up terms. For guys like Broidy, it was non-stop war for playdates, his outfit obliged to crowbar The Big Combo and others of AA label into theatres.  Combo's director Joseph H. Lewis and cameraman John Alton drove later interest among noir fanciers who might have embraced the pic tighter had decent prints been in circulation. You'd think it was a lost film for ugliness of DVD's, but these were rotted fruit of Combo's Public Domain status. Now there is, at long last, a Blu-Ray of excellent quality from Olive.

Claw To Depression's Top

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Wants Success At Any Price (1934)

Released just ahead of strengthened PCA enforcement, Success At Any Price took aim at shifty business practice, and thanks to writer and committed communist John Howard Lawson, delivered its haymaker to far greater effect than later films where Lawson and other Hollywood Reds could but salt scripts lightly with political content. Success was based on a play of Lawson's that was well received, denuded of Anti-Semite theme, but otherwise laying timber to amoral Wall Streeters. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. starts off a rotter and pretty much ends that way; the picture doesn't pull punches like you'd expect even of pre-coding where romantic leads are involved. Finality of Fairbanks with darkened and hollow eyes must have given pause to those who came, but this being RKO in doldrums, fewer did (a mere $150K in domestic rentals). Much of what this studio generated was like Warner programmers with life sucked out of them, Success having no music, other than source, and playing dead serious all the way. Much of that was Lawson getting in his licks; a print of Success At Any Price was what HUAC members needed when he and other Unfriendly Tenners took the stand during postwar investigations. Still, there is good writing and dialogue here, Lawson full bore at bead on system soured. Frank Morgan's remark at one point that he still believes in America comes across as hopeless naïveté, if not outright idiocy. Such a line, and indeed much of Price's points, would have been expunged had the picture been submitted later in 1934. Ancillary victim is Colleen Moore, fourth-billed and a doormat for all of 75 minutes Success lasts. It's tough reconciling her character here with the Flaming Youth of ten years back. No comeback could come of casting like this, but wasn't that case in the previous season's The Power and The Glory, where she played a same sort of drab part? Success At Any Price turns up on TCM and should eventually on Warner Archive as well, though elements will need a scrubbing for DVD release.

Elvis Out Of Fatigues, Does Fatiguing Movie

G.I. Blues (1960) Has Edges Polished Off Presley

The Pelvis in uniform, being comeback error if we're to regard Elvis as iconoclast or rebel figure, which he'd been to varying degree in a first four before his country called. To tame the beast was Hal Wallis' aim. Presley needed to be industrialized, a consumer good minus potholes that controversy or poor press might impose. His knowing fans would protest (the Beatles maintained Elvis was essentially through after his service hitch), but how much of this singer's public caught merchandising drift? Wallis was experienced, perhaps cynical enough, to know fads could be sustained but for so long. If Presley was to last, it would have to be in safe vehicles recycled on two-or-so a year basis like contract stars Wallis herded at Warners and for his independent set-up with Paramount, for which distribution all his Elvis output was made. 

Et, Tu, Caricaturist? Squares In Selling Maintain Bungle Of The Pic

Just as other rock and roll acts were corporate neutralized, so would be Presley. His having served made the rebel pose unsustainable. An Elvis mustered out of uniform might wonder if this was moment to try wings at straight performing along action lines, perhaps a combat story as was engaged by other up-and-comers, or a western (picture him as one of The Magnificent Seven). But wait, the music element had to be served, this more lucrative in long runs than films that came and went. For Presley of the 60's, a film, any film, was there largely to sell records.  G.I. Blues is post-Army Presley formula in vitro, an awkward start. Weren't Elvis pics supposed to be just about Elvis? G.I. Blues has its star share focus with "pals" in his unit, two principally, each so dull as to evaporate off the screen. One romances the roommate of Presley's love interest (Juliet Prowse), to which '60 youth must have chanted "Who Cares?" The other has sired an illigit kid with a German townie (!), a plot element both soft-peddled (post-production edits?) and of no use toward making G.I.'s 104 minutes easier to withstand.

Here too, was where soundtrack marketing took center, RCA's LP pushed in both ads and the trailer. Trouble was the songs. They weren't much good, not a meaningful hit in the lot, nor a patch on singles Elvis had been getting out before, during, and after, his Army stay. G.I. Blues takes place in Germany, though all of Presley footage was done on Para's backlot. What scenics there were came of a second unit Wallis sent over, then projected behind Elvis and others doubled in the German shots. The singer's filmgoer base had been teenaged --- now it seemed Wallis was throwing nets over children, a puppet act Elvis shares being painful barometer. This, and interminable business with a crying infant, was what disillusioned fans held up as proof that Presley had been gelded. They were right as to that and more, but Wallis was vindicated by grosses, the best he'd seen so far for an association with Presley. G.I. Blues brought $3.8 million in domestic rentals, a gain on $2.7 million King Creole had earned, and $3.3 million Loving You took. This, of course, was all Wallis needed to prove he'd been right, and so dye was cast (if a Technicolor one) for future Elvis output.

Lewton Back In Fang and Claws

The Leopard Man (1943) Brings Out The Beast In Showmen

Two Lewton Thrillers Combine For Chicago First-Run

Horror films were considered as good as means used to exploit them, a title the most critical element, thus B units told by memo that their next would be called Cat People, or I Walked With A Zombie, or The Leopard Man. Arthur Mayer could decorate his Rialto front before seeing the product or receiving the print, provided a title said it all. Art supplied to Mayer, from which he scissored best images and then enlarged the lot, told all that was necessary for sidewalk passers to know, in this case a leopard man preying on women “For A First Time On Any Screen.” Such had been good enough selling for stage melodramas and freak shows, the product stripped-down to barest essentials so a Rialto premiere could prosper, and venues down the line would know better how to promote product labelled The Leopard Man. Chillers by the 40’s looked more urgently toward novelty, as in what your fiend does that no fiend has done before. The Leopard Man played many situations with Captive Wild Woman, which was Universal’s idea of a captivating title at least, and no matter if the picture was good, fair, or stank. Critics singling out any horror film for praise seemed perverse to extreme, which was why Val Lewton stood out like a rose in a thorn patch. Signing mainstream pics would not have done him half so good as single-handed uplift of this lowliest genre. Trouble was Rialto’s mob and others of simple appetite being left behind as Lewton’s product fell short, then shorter, of what lurid displays promised.

The Lewton series for RKO was stair-steps that went down, each new one earning less than the last. Trouble too was cost creeping up as the series went along. B pictures could not sustain like this, being a category where you needed to know close to a penny what your merchandise would bring back. Cat People would be the only true sleeper of the Lewton lot, that is in terms of being an unexpected critical and commercial success. Next to The Body Snatcher, it would be the largest grosser of the group. There was profit, if less of it, for The Leopard Man, thanks most likely to exploitable elements. There was no supernatural card in the deck, as here was horror more psycho-sexual than where monsters loomed large, so yes, you could say this was a “First Time On Any Screen.” Ads argued that a leopard man, serially killing helpless women, was a force driven not by bloodlust, but plain lust. I’m a little surprised The Leopard Man didn’t gross better than it did. Maybe word-of-mouth hobbled it. The Motion Picture Herald’s reviewer (5-8-43) saw clouds gather at a preview screening, “There were perhaps a half-dozen or more walkouts during the unreeling. Noticeably lacking to this reviewer was the tenseness among the audience that generally pervades the screening of a horror thriller.” Scare pics almost never met heights of breathless advertising, customers accustomed enough to that, but there were creep goals that had to be met for value in your quarter, those walkouts certain to tell friends that The Leopard Man dropped its ball.

Censorship was what took juice out of gothic fruit. The Code was just pitiless where horror films were submitted, and why would studios spend chips arguing on monster behalf considering low priority the stuff had to begin with? The Leopard Man was a mystery draped in horror’s cloak. Val Lewton and director Jacques Tournear devised stalk scenes to justify a chiller label, whole of The Leopard Man hanging on one/two segments to haunt dreaming even of  those otherwise let down. Whatever the limits of what he showed, Lewton could always fall back on all colors of his dark, which a PCA couldn’t very well ink out. Most Lewton payoffs occur where we don’t see, or barely can, as in long walk for an adolescent girl who gets home only for the door to be locked against her, helpless pounding no good to gain entry and prolonged enough so the leopard behind will catch up. It’s a classic sequence for which The Leopard Man is best remembered today. What happens after is more conventional business (though not necessarily so in 1943) of human agency behind “leopard” murders and ultimate unmasking of the killer.

The Leopard Man would enjoy the most extensive revival of any Val Lewton film thanks to service as a second feature for 1952 engagements of King Kong. The combo was a summer phenomenon driven by TV saturation. King Kong was, of course, what customers came to see, but The Leopard Man went with it in virtually all situations, and like Kong would earn more than in its original release. Many a moppet sat through The Leopard Man for no reason other than to gorge on Kong a second time. Example of the pair filling seats was a June 1952 week, plus four holdover days, at the RKO Palace in Cleveland, Ohio (ad at right), where Kong/Leopard "did a better business than any first-run film the Grand has played in the last few months." Lines down a city block brought complaint from merchants that youngsters (60% of attendance, said Variety) were blocking entrance to neighboring shops. Ads like the RKO Palace's told the story ... The Leopard Man was mostly there to clear seats for a next run of the show crowds came for, but Lewton's thriller got massive trickle-down, as did others of his backlog that returned during the 50's. A meaningful boost lay in fact that RKO made safety prints of The Leopard Man for a first time on this occasion, hundreds of them to service saturation dates for the double bill. Many of these prints would stay in circulation for years to come. Afterlife of The Leopard Man was further enhanced by release to television in 1956, its reputation burnished the more when historians took it up with other Lewtons from the early 70's forward (Joel Siegel's 1973 book, Val Lewton: The Reality Of Terror a major step toward that direction).