Claudette Juggles Husbands Again

When Wars Collide: Tomorrow Is Forever (1946)

Sometimes in youth I could at least emulate a grown-up by selecting other than monsters and spacemen for a late show. Tomorrow Is Forever had a premise that really intrigued me, a man apparently lost in the war whose wife remarries and lives content until damaged husband #1 returns twenty years later, his identity concealed to her and everyone. Principals are Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles, and George Brent (whom she weds after apparent war loss of Welles). Colbert had been eased into mother parts with Since You Went Away, was now a well-preserved forty-three. She was up on Orson by twelve years, but he could disguise like something out of a mummy case if need be, and bridge age gulf nimbly. Welles was wanted as an actor more than director, maybe even a romantic lead provided he could push far enough back from dining tables. Who'd argue love skills with a man married to Rita Hayworth? Tomorrow Is Forever has a flashback with all-American Orson kitted in uniform to surprise Colbert with news of WWI enlistment. He looms over her, is photographed from slightly below for the clinch, then gives us his back when they kiss, sort of a Laird Cregar had weight loss transitioned him to smooch parts. "I was deeply ashamed but in need of money," was Welles' later explanation (to Peter Bogdanovich) for doing Tomorrow Is Forever. He doesn't look/act to be slumming any more than he often would for radio or something like Follow The Boys. The war had froze individual statements in any case, necessity being to pull together and get a harsh job done. Tomorrow Is Forever let Welles play out tragic consequence of war's cruelty, and thick-applied make-up or no (Blu-Ray lets us see age lines drawn across his forehead like road directions), he is fine in what was no easy part. I'm challenged, frankly, to think of anyone else, let alone Welles' age, who could have brought it off.

"John Andrew MacDonald" as played by Welles becomes "Dr. Erik Kessler," an Austrian refugee employed unknowingly by subsequent husband George Brent. MacDonald had no accent, but Kessler decidedly does. Latter also barely gets around on a cane and has a heavy beard, but still a face just like Orson Welles. We have to get over Colbert not recognizing him, even as common sense suggests anyone would. Kessler is sort of front man for a lot of former enemies let into the US after WWII because they had scientific knowledge we'd need to stay even with Soviets. Tomorrow Is Forever takes place in run-up to the second war, Kessler having in tow little Natalie Wood that he has rescued from Nazi occupation. This all sounds complicated, I know, but Tomorrow Is Forever does play smooth once you sign on to it, and there are parts quite effective, even moving. 40's melodrama should never be underestimated at tugging emotion. I don't think Orson Welles would have been "ashamed" of this film had he taken opportunity to screen it again later in life.

Direction was by the always-interesting Irving Pichel, and Max Steiner does a score that I'd credit at least fifty percent of Tomorrow's voltage to (no slight on the movie, but again a boost to Steiner as baton behind much of joy and tears during the Classic Era). Tomorrow Is Forever was made by "International Pictures," a set-up formed by William Goetz after he tried to snake Zanuck's job at 20th and failed. Goetz was a son-in-law to Louis Mayer, so had establishment strength behind him, but some thought him unfit for creative duty. Has anyone made a list of film producers who should have pursued other lines of work? I bet it would run long. Fullest background on Tomorrow's production can be had by listening to Ray Faiola's audio commentary on the Blu-Ray. Tomorrow Is Forever has wandered between the winds of distribution for years, not being part of larger packages and tending to vanish except from fans most diligent. Its recent release from ClassicFlix settles all that and is a best I've ever seen the picture look.

1890's Secret Agent Work

Undercover Robert Taylor Says, This Is My Affair (1937)

Naval officer Robert Taylor goes on secret assignment for President McKinley to flush out bank-robbing Victor McLaglen and Brian Donlevy. 20th Fox was lured by Gay 90's theme like bugs to a light bulb, Affair pursuing trend of The Bowery and ones that would follow right into the 50's when past century dwellers would disappear sure as nickel beer and horse carriages these pics celebrated. What was Betty Grable's career but ongoing evocation of this? Zanuck, or maybe Joseph Schenck, must have been raised by barber shop quartets. This time at least, action is played more for keeps, stakes high for Taylor gone undercover and then having rugs pulled when McKinley is assassinated and there's no one to clear him of complicity in bank jobs. This Is My Affair was bedecked in gloss, a bid to match Metro for such values, that a greater urgency as Taylor was borrowed from Leo for the occasion. Much of selling honed on lead lady Barbara Stanwyck, Bob's real-life inamorata. This Is My Affair turned up lately on TCM, licensed from Fox, and like many of 20th's, could use a remaster.

Precode Perils Of Free Love

Two Live Happier Than One in Ex-Lady (1933)

Another early Bette Davis that she would disparage. BD told Whitney Stine in the 70's that "It was a disaster," but this was when seeing Ex-Lady was challenge of its own, TV having shunned it, with revival housing not to be bothered. Precode as precious metal thanks to TCM and Warner Archive puts Ex-Lady before us for worthy thing it is, a better-than-many programmer you can't blame old-age Davis for overlooking. WB designed Ex-Lady to sizzle, ads warning it was not for children, a tag you could hang on much of movies that came out in 1933. Whole of 67 minute's burning issue is whether BD and paramour Gene Raymond should marry or simply live together, Ex-Lady proposing for at least most of run time that latter card may be the better one to play. This flew full in face of prevailing morality as guarded by opinion-makers and local censorship that could and did freeze Ex-Lady out of theatres. There was calculated risk in precode, loss from small-town bans made up by increased attendance lured by hot sauce of urban marketing. Warners could almost cover the negative cost of Ex-Lady and cheapies like it with a Strand (their NY flagship) run. A thumbed nose to blue noses was well and OK so long as these were hicks in obscure markets, but when an outraged Catholic Church took up cudgels --- well, there was lights out for license WB had enjoyed.

The Bette Davis of Ex-Lady is more appealing than what we got after she became Bette Davis. If there was concerted effort to sex-her-up, here was it, Ex-Lady taking a Davis flyer on standard equipment as sold by Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Glenda Farrell, others of Warner sisterhood. BD couldn't, wouldn't, compete on that basis, and had sense to know there was no winning if she did. This was one actress we would always prefer clothed, which is why, despite many precodes Davis did, it's not an epoch fans associate her with. I don't wonder that she was embarrassed by most of them. Still and all, Ex-Lady can serve as tutorial for those new to precode and wanting to know what fuss is about. Davis makes the case for Woman as Free Agent, not bound to a man thanks to career of her own (commercial artist) and a comfortable crib that live-in Raymond will have to leave should the two of them quarrel. This was heady stuff of fantasy for Depression watchers who could barely, if that, afford digs they had to share with otherwise estranged spouses or family members. Unspoke, or at least less emphasized, aspect of precode was its membership generally able to afford non-conventional ways they lived and loved.

Carolina Cowboy Circus

Sunset At Sundown

Westerns were once a gateway for film collectors. It was the genre that started them down life's journey of enthusiasm. These were people I knew and learned from during 70's chase after 16/35mm and whatever memorabilia old-timers kept since a Front Row era when they were cowboy kids and I wasn't yet born. Life's moral compass spun on what Buck Jones or Fred Thomson or Hopalong Cassidy taught. Each of elder fans, in fact all of them I met, felt our culture took a plunge once westerns and serials ended and left youth to mercy of changed-for-worse times. Moon Mullins, of whom I've spoke before, lived in the town where I went to college. He had a theatre in back of his house, a dedicated frame building, with booth projection and a pulley system to work the curtains. Moon with his "Camera Club" regaled a crowd of at least forty men (some with wives in tolerant accompany) on weekly basis. I was always the youngest person there. We saw nitrate prints that Moon knew no fear of. One night it was a 30's Paramount called Drift Fence that had Buster Crabbe, a name and face known to everyone in the room. They had been there when he was a first-run Flash Gordon. I envied these elders for upbringing they had. Visitors came from far and wide to Moon, for he had a world-class Indian arrowhead collection in addition to the movies. He'd be a first person Sunset Carson would seek out when the old cowpoke landed in Hickory for autumnal round-up.

Sunset wanted back in the zeitgeist, if there still was one for westerns. Middle-agers were ready to renew hugs from back in the 40's when they grew up and Sunset was hottest. Moon kept a distance for being at least twenty years older and wondering what con the faded cowboy might be working. Sunset, now calling himself "Kit" to further embellish the nickname he already had, was full of ideas as to how Moon's collection might assist his comeback. Moon, whose notion of western heroes was more Bill Hart or Jack Hoxie, was not impressed by Sunset's so-called celebrity. Moon had in-bred suspicion of people, not altogether misplaced considering his Jersey origin. They always wanted something, me being no exception. I had got frost reception as a high-schooler (our first meeting) when I tried to sell Moon a 35mm nitrate George O'Brien western bought out of a long-shuttered theatre in Taylorsville, which was scant forty minutes from Hickory. Moon correctly sized me up as an upstart, said as much, and advised that he had known about this print for years and had rejected it several times. Here's where I learned that among backwoods collectors, everyone knew what everyone had, or wanted to sell/trade. I had lots to learn if I was to run in this pack. Fortunately, Moon was willing to guide me.

Moon being from up north meant he dealt with good old boys the way Yankees would. Most had too much regard for him to try many tricks. Moon wouldn't give more than $50 for a 35mm feature no matter what it was. He turned down The Searchers on 35mm IB Technicolor because the guy had nerve to ask for $100. Stuff cleared off National Screen Service shelves came straight to Moon, trailers in grocery bags, posters rolled or folded, generally unused. I was helping him clean film one day and came across a preview for Dracula, which he peeled off and gave to me. Gave to me. For Moon, this was one of thousands he had, so why care? He never went in search of specifics, it being more a matter of who drove up in the yard, and with what. Moon didn't have to go out to collect, for the collecting came to him. He taught me, or tried to, that film acquisition was a game best played cool. Never let the other man know how much you wanted what he had, for therein lay folly and getting your pockets cleaned.

Among Moon's following were locals, more of these than I imagined, who kept 16mm at home-shrines built to B westerns. They'd gather at various sites on Saturdays now that theatres had gone to a dark side. These were the people Sunset Carson reached out to. There was a UHF station where he hosted westerns in the afternoon. An independent filmmaker in Shelby, NC, about an hour's drive from Hickory, used Sunset in a hark-back oater called Buckstone County Prison (1978), aka Seabo, where Sunset played a sheriff. What the fans wanted was for Sunset and other survivors of the range to bring cowboy values back to movies, and again be shining example for a new generation of youth. Fan clubs were based largely on such philosophy. Societal troubles would end if we'd all adopt the Cowboy Creed. That men like Sunset or fellow traveler Lash LaRue should exemplify this was hopeful thinking not supported by messy facts of their lives, Sunset and Lash having come and gone, then gone again, to dark sides of their own.

I've spoken before of the 1975 MacKintosh and T.J. opening in Hickory to which Roy Rogers arrived in person, and reaction he got from fans bringing their young to see how a for-real screen hero comported himself. What I didn't mention was the lineup of local cowboys flanking Roy on stage, all in western garb and full-armed with holsters. Moon was among these, along with whatever collectors could be suited up for the photo-op. I wish I had the group capture from that day. Moon hung one on the wall of his 35mm film vault. I doubt if Roy Rogers saw such an extensive turnout as he got in Hickory. Funny part was, it didn't occur to most of us to watch MacKintosh and T.J. As soon as Roy quit the stage, we split, as did majority of his acolytes who shouted loudest for old-style westerns to come back.

Sunset tied in with a clothing maker in nearby Valdese. They'd offer a line in Sunset fashions ... men's polyester suits, shirts, sport coats, slacks, plus "Trailblazer" T-shirts. You could go dawn to dusk feeling ants in your pants, polyester being what it was in the 70's. All of illustrations here came from a fifty-cent "color book" that went with "Sunset's Circus," an event that presumably happened someplace in NC, but where, or how often, we're not likely to know. Assuming there were such performances as indicated here, it must have been a once-in-an-alternate universe experience for both viewers and performers. Were I more committed to Sunset lore, I'd beat bushes along Hickory-Valdese byways to find anyone who'd recall this Bizarrest Show On Earth. Was there a son of Sunset who did sharpshooting under dad's Big Top? Did "Miss Cinderella Of Country Music" Lisa Adams exist outside this coloring book? Adolescents in the mid-70's who would wear Sunset Carson T-shirts sounds like middle-age wishful thinking, especially in view of Rules To Live By as imparted by SC, ten tall orders for man or boy to observe (though I'm part-way there for pouring milk over daily oatmeal). Sunset Carson lived till 1990, did lots of collector shows, and was unfailingly gracious to fans. Like a lot of B west survivors, he'd ride trails closing fast behind him by a changed culture.

Where The Stage Is The Show

Greetings Gate --- Here Comes Colonna!

The Chicago Theatre had variously 3,500 to 3,880 seats. It is still there and a supreme monument for picture houses the way they used to be. The place would open early (9 AM as here) and run late into the night. Bills were loaded with live entertainers to which a movie was often incidental. Most of patronage went to see the headliner and got impatient with screen fare they'd have to sit through two or three times in order to see the live entertainment over and over. Some would plant themselves in a seat and stay all day. Balaban and Katz owned the Chicago and other "Wonder Theatres." Both partners ended up running film companies, most notably Barney Balaban as longtime Paramount chief. Nobody knew the business like former exhibitors. The program here is Jerry Colonna ("You Crazy Or Sumpin?"), stooge-run-wild for Bob Hope and 40's definition of "zany." Colonna introduced more catchphrases into culture than we'll ever document, at least one I still use ("Greetings Gate") to nonplussed response. Whatever fat money Jerry earned was not from Bob (did anybody get into chips with Bob?), but from half-of-house terms he and other big names would exact for filling such vast caverns. Premises nut could be ruinous lest you load seats, as in all of them, overhead a monster to haunt sleep of management. A lure the stature of Colonna was essential to maintain lines at the door. They'd sure not come by this many thousands to see An Innocent Affair over three-weeks between late November 1948 and mid-December.

Continuous shows through days that continued into weeks was tax upon any artist's endurance, the unspooling feature an only opportunity to eat, lie down, tend to personal business. Coal miners had it easier than Colonna when he did stints like this, however sweet the pay-off. Hosting theatres often went with flow of audience demand. Bandman Tex Beneke, who traveled with the wildly popular Glenn Miller group,  would recall doing "six to eight shows a day" at presentation houses. "They were ... cutting out the feature movies and were just running short subjects in between our shows." Glenn Miller felt sorry for kids who sat in the theatre all day and "wouldn't leave." He'd arrange for box lunches to be distributed among them at his own expense. Fans grew to hate dull movies they had to sit through repeatedly for further dose of favorite performers. Many showmen would not take a feature on percentage basis because of split made with the live artists. For as much as the screen program mattered, even flat rates, low ones, were no bargain. We could wonder how many patrons left these Colonna shows singing praise for An Innocent Affair, or even a recall of having seen it.

The First Couple In A Movie Together

Reagan Bows Out Of Starring Features with Hellcats Of The Navy (1957)

Recalled, if at all, as Ronald Reagan's only feature appearance with wife Nancy. It looks like a war movie made during the war itself that got dredged up to release in 1957, as if someone had misplaced it for fifteen years. Cheapness is byword, this a second of properties Charles Schneer developed for Columbia release under his "Morningside" banner. Schneer had done sci-fi/fantasy (The Giant Ymir, which became Twenty Million Miles To Earth), but didn't want himself typed by the genre. Product needed to be cheap so as to play double features, often at lower position. You couldn't spend a million dollars and expect to get it back booking flat. Hellcats Of The Navy had every cooperation from that branch; Pacific Fleet Commander Chester Nimitz even did a prologue and participated by way of actor portrayal. A bigger star than Reagan and expanded budget might have gotten a good picture out of this ...

Sub dramas were popular; there'd been Submarine Command with William Holden, Run Silent, Run Deep and Torpedo Run to come ... all had, and needed, a strong name to lead. Reagan earlier cast lot with TV, folks understandably of opinion they should get him for free. In fact, this was a first lead he had in quite a while (also his last). Hellcats Of The Navy mooched off previous sailings, Crash Dive (1943) among recognizable oldies pillaged. Simple math dictated that if action highlights couldn't be got elsewhere, Hellcats would do without. There simply wasn't time or money to stage combat beyond most modest of scale. Music, too, was borrowed, main titles reusing The Caine Mutiny's principal theme by Max Steiner. A decade toward forgiveness put chill on "Jap" epithets --- they'd be "Japanese" in all but one line of dialogue, and that was probably a slip where resource was lacked to reshoot. Hellcats Of The Navy turns up on Sony's HD Movie Channel, looking better than you'd imagine it could, so, of course, that helps for getting through it. Toward satisfaction of curiosity and closure of Reagan watch lists, Hellcats Of The Navy gets by.

Literary Classic Put On Paying Basis

Greenbriar Posting #2000: David Copperfield (1935) Is Evergreen For Metro

MGM had a “World Heritage” series they launched in 1962. Designed as outreach to schools and sop to group attendance, the oldies group generally booked on off days (Tuesday was choice for venues near me), and would play matinee-only at many sites. Cousin to the Heritage lot was “Enrichment” titles, which were literary-based and ripe for higher-brow approval. All of selections had played TV or were about to, but freshness wasn’t the point of Heritage and Enrichment, content based after all on history, or musty books ordinarily the bane of youth bundled aboard buses to see impossibly old movies adapted from even older text. MGM kept prints at their Charlotte exchange for as long as there was a Charlotte exchange. A friend who worked there told me that upstairs storage fairly groaned with 35mm and tons of accessories for Heritage/Enrichment, plus long-beard musicals brought back to pleasure middle-agers. Sad day was when all this got junked with closure of the address, though a few stragglers continued to be booked right into the early 80’s. Enrichment was the bundle that held David Copperfield, which I was jubilant to see at Gastonia, NC’s Webb Theatre in 1969, just me alone with a like-new 35mm print that I’m sure management regretted booking in view of non-attendance to the 1935 relic. Heaven on earth was seeing W.C. Fields, Basil Rathbone, more of favorites, up on the big screen and in a show altogether new to me (no close-by TV station ran Copperfield by the late 60’s) and hugely entertaining.

To adapt David Copperfield was longtime goal of David Selznick, him quartered at MGM from 1933 with his own autonomous unit and access to contract stars. Selznick had read the Dickens novel over and again from youth, had a dog-eared copy with red binding that his father had given him which DOS carried throughout research and production on David Copperfield. Selznick knew Dickens so well that he could spot misplaced commas or punctuation in later editions. The novel could not have been placed in more responsible hands than his. Whatever changes or abridgements he made were to the ultimate good of the project, as evidenced by popular embrace of the film and fact it sustains even unto present day. Selznick had demonstrated how to make classic novels pay with his Little Women a couple of seasons earlier, that one a rare instance of major gain for struggling RKO. Maybe success of Little Women induced a doubting Metro to go forward on David Copperfield despite built-in complication of a story cleaved in two by its half-and-half focus on David the boy, then David the man. Greater interest was vested in the child portion, that agreed by most readers, some suggesting the movie end with its title character at cusp of maturity.

Some floated possibility of a film done in two parts, as in a pair based on the novel, but final vote opted for 130 minutes to tell the narrative, or what finished product could contain of it, with a first 70 or so minutes given over to kid narrative, and remaining hour to the grown-up lead. Casting had benefit of bigger-than-life personas duplicating larger-than-reality figures as envisioned by Dickens, the cast based, at least visually, on “Phiz” (Hablot Browne) engravings that appeared in earliest printings of David Copperfield. A personality-driven 30’s star system could mirror perfectly the flamboyant illustrations so familiar to readers whose image of Dickens’ universe was based on these. Certainly W.C. Fields had a face and carriage straight out of Dickens, as did Edna May Oliver, Herbert Mundin, Una O’ Connor --- you could argue the whole lot belonged more to a nineteenth century than to the twentieth. I wonder how these players might function in today's entertainment setting, or could they function at all? Changes in performance style make ours a tough stage to fit Edna May Oliver into, but then, how many current names could have risen to a level equal with such a colorful cast in 1935?

Struggle at the time was to find a Brit boy adequate to play David. That would be Freddie Bartholomew, a mannerly child who could weep copious through Dickensian ordeal. Tougher and less noted quest was finding an adult as effective to essay grown David. Borrow of Frank Lawton from Universal was likely surrender to fact no one could be found so ideal as the child. What was needed, and not got, was 30’s equivalent to John Mills as mature Pip in David Lean’s Great Expectations of 1946. Lawton seems weak to have emerged from struggle we’ve seen Freddie engage, and drama of a first half of David Copperfield is not altogether sustained for a second. Most memorable of Copperfield cast couldn’t help being W.C. Fields as Micawber. Of clips excerpted since, his drop from roof ledge into family hovel is the comic highlight, Fieldsian enough to find use in 1964’s Big Parade Of Comedy or other occasion where MGM needed footage of the comedian. In fact, David Copperfield was all they owned featuring him. Fields’ would be the face of Copperfield advertising from 1935 onward, his image certainly a point of emphasis for those occasions when the film was revived during the 60’s and afterward.

Holiday Gift From NYC's Channel 2 --- A Less Mutilated Copperfield

David Selznick made friends among directors, and they’d stay loyal to him. He also kept ties with MGM so that he could borrow helmsmen in their employ when need arose. W.S. Van Dyke, for instance, came over to stage a sword brawl between Ronald Colman and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in The Prisoner Of Zenda (credited director was John Cromwell). George Cukor had been a DOS loyalist since doing What Price Hollywood? and Little Women at RKO, both these produced by Selznick when he was with the beeping tower. Cukor must have been open to, or tolerant of, Selznick’s non-stop outpour of suggestions. The director signed a contract with DOS after the producer went independent in 1935. A lot of what recommended Cukor was how he handled literary adaptations entrusted to him by Selznick. David Copperfield was auteurist in the sense of auteurs being Selznick-Cukor, the team as decision-makers immune to Metro oversight. Shared success had given them such leeway by 1934 when David Copperfield was made. Even so revered a writer as Hugh Walpole, brought over England to help adapt Dickens, would break on the wheel that was Selznick-Cukor driven. Screenwriter Sidney Buchman recalled Walpole working under “strict tutelage” of the pair, “struggling to be a carpenter” for a David Copperfield built to mass-market blueprint. Buchman said Walpole ended up “like some beaten schoolboy, totally intimidated, utterly miserable.” Perhaps not altogether miserable though, as Walpole would stay on to work with Selznick on Little Lord Fauntleroy the following year.