Stills That Speak #6

STS: Rudy Resplendent, Preacher Powell Gone Over the Line, and Sacrosanct Strand

RUDY AND HIS BLACK AND WHITE DREAM COAT --- What becomes of clothes when we pass? I’d like mine to tour on mannequins as Rudy’s should have, perhaps did for all I know. Surely this stunning overcoat with fur collar and cuffs went somewhere other than Goodwill. Might a derelict on soup lines have ended up with it? Valentino was done with Natascha by depart time (1926), but who knows but what she claimed content of his closet and spread wardrobe among friends, for a price even. I’d wear a coat like this even in the summer just to be seen in it. Much of dress and deportment is dead and has been since RV’s time. Everything he wore was tailored to fit, despite cash flow often slowed to a drip. He had an image to protect, so couldn’t be seen at less than his best. Fashion had as much to do with Rudy being a star as what he did in movies. I’m noting similarity between outerwear in these two stills. The one with the dog lacks fur on cuffs but is otherwise very similar to the other with fur on cuffs. Could this have been a same garment altered? Rudy looks to be shipboard with Natascha so we’ll assume it was chilly enough to warrant weight of attire. With the dog, he looks more relaxed. Perhaps RV regarded his dog as better company. Impressive is Master not using a choke collar on pooch. No dog should wear a choke collar. No human either, though there is evidence this human did during marriage to Natascha. Stars very often carried pets along on drives. Was this an only time man or beast could speak freely? One of the old screen queens used to dye her dog to match outfits. No wonder so many cracked up when end-of-era reality sank in. Valentino was maybe fortunate to escape all that. I’d not like to have seen him brought humble.

TOO MUCH OF A GRIM THING? --- Am verily astonished by this image. Did someone imagine it would help sell Night of the Hunter? The film famously failed. Such publicity as here may have greased wheels toward wreckage. Are there also stills of Preacher Harry Powell kicking dogs? We of today giddily respond to such, so is it safe to say Mitchum, Laughton, et al consulted crystal balls? Wouldn’t be long before stuff as diseased dug deeper into movies. Step back and reckon Night of the Hunter for impact it surely had on few that paid 1955 ways in. Here’s frightful scenario I’d propose: Kid/teen “scare” shows using Hunter for salt upon stage ghouls, vanilla co-features (Gog? Cult of the Cobra?), maybe materialization of James Dean’s spirit. To slip in Night of the Hunter would be worst sort of child abuse, parents coming with pitchforks a la Evelyn Varden and townfolk determined to hang Harry Powell. If there’s personal parallel so far as trauma visited unexpectedly upon a Saturday matinee, I would say The Conqueror Worm came a closest for unexpected crossing of lines. Roger Ebert wrote of how Night of the Living Dead transgressed weekend boundaries to give youngsters real nightmares rather than safely comforting ones. It’s “fun” to be scared, promised theatre managements, unless we truly scare you. Yet look how quick watchers became inured to explicit horrors. I doubt Dawn of the Dead shocked anybody. Scene depicted by this still does actually happen in Night of the Hunter. Director Charles Laughton softened the show for seeing pitchforks that could come his way, Mitchum speaking to that years later and sorry they didn’t go all the way. Would/did newspapers reject this still? I’m wondering if it was killed before anyone could publish it. No matter … at least we have it now.

HAT OFF, HEADS BOWED, WHEN YOU ENTER THE STRAND --- St. Patrick’s Cathedral was located on Fifth Avenue between 50/51^st Streets (still is), the Strand Theatre close enough to invite comparison. Both sites inspired reverence and drew the devoted, St. Patrick’s a temple for one God, the Strand shrine to multiple others. May-be unfit to term attendance as religious observance, the Strand nevertheless anointed place for blessing from Warners. Did crowds surpass those worshipping elsewhere? Of stars not saints but regarded like ones, James Cagney lured most to Strand entrance, crowd above mostly men but these being matinée hours, we wonder if they were gainfully employed or just vagging at the Strand till home and supper. Frisco Kid cost but $419K to make and who knows but what much of that was got back from the Strand alone. Cagney’s New York following was a most committed. He was local, talked like streets from whence he came, got above his raisings to peril of popularity once tired of entrenched image. Cagney were reliably popular so long as costs were fixed, low that is, Frisco Kid competitive with larger projects like Barbary Coast from Goldwyn, then MGM’s San Francisco which took more in revenue but also needed much more to complete. San Francisco as seat of vice and violence was clear memory to many, Warners setting theirs in 1854, population exploding as of 1849 (gold rushers), this unabated till after the Quake in 1906. Frisco being cleaned up further made look-backs a source of pride for showing how far law/order had come. Frisco Kid has riots, lynchings, much drawn from fact as researched and embroidered by Seton I. Miller, a capable hand at action-oriented star vehicles. Miller was also a history hound who lent verisimilitude to backgrounds he re-created.

Being 1854 set, there is no earthquake which audiences came to expect of Frisco yarns period set. Cagney kitted out in stovepipe and ruffle shirt could be General Tom Thumb where pitted against bruisers Fred Kohler, Joe Sawyer, Barton MacLaine, Jim punching upward to meet chins always out. He got strength from attitude and energy enough to win any fight, no matter size of the opponent. Frisco Kid at seventy-seven minutes runs wide open, keeping watchers awake a priority to exclusion even of narrative sense. Ultra-shorthand lets new-arrived Cagney announce he’ll run all of S.F. vice, and presto, by a next scene he’s doing it. Evidence indicates speed pills administered, as why does Lili Damita’s presence come largely to nothing? Pace was all at Warners, more so than at any shop I can think of. His having WB over a contract barrel soon after this made Cagney a threat to ironclad industry rule. What other major name was able to break bonds and leave so much egg on management faces? If this Kid could rope Frisco, then why not the enactor lassoing Warner Bros.? 

Ads and Oddities #7

 

Ad/Odds: Winston-Salem as Show Town Supreme

Newspapers.com gifted us over Mother’s Day weekend with free access to their archive, opportunity to dig among microfilmed pages, reminder anew of damage done to precious print when libraries converted their lot to ugly photostat and junked original pages. Sad outcome for much of what had survived but no longer does. I at least was able to sift Winston-Salem Journal pages for what might bring back memory of showgoing in that hour-distant town. Winston was home to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco (get it? Winston and Salem cigarette brands), and you could smell the place from five miles out. I was regular hauled to a children’s dentist in Winston and afterward inveigled rides to attend special stuff at lavisher-than-Liberty theatres and a host of drive-ins. Display ads were a daily passion since we took the Winston-Salem Journal. What envy I felt for residents with access to the Carolina Theatre’s weekly kiddie shows, topic of inquiry whenever meeting anyone who’d grown up in W-S. Dan Austell managed the Carolina, he and I speaking several times long after his retirement from showman grind. Dan’s rival was the down street Winston Theatre, ads as often side-by-side to force choice among potential patronage. Here is 1960 for-instance, Psycho at the Winston and Portrait in Black at the Carolina, both to start Thursday, August 18, 1960. Two peas in a suspense pod these attractions were. Consider respective lure of both, Hitchcock as architect of Psycho, and surely talked about for sensation so far roused, Portrait in Black star powered and the Carolina’s ad looking frankly better. Imagine debate over which to see. Firm policy as applied by Hitchcock said no one seated after start of Psycho. Was this enforced at the Winston? Did management turn down sell of multiple seats in order to accommodate what surely seemed a silly rule? The Carolina meanwhile tried a similar dodge as in no admission during final ten minutes of Portrait in Black. Again, think of impatience where stopped at entry doors. As Hitchcock himself would have said, It’s Only a Movie, and remember that in those days, few cared at what point they showed up for a show, formula plots easy to divine within minutes of seating oneself. Meanwhile under stars was a first run of The Lost World at the Winston-Salem Drive-In, and we could wonder why this dinosaur, or enlarged lizard romp, didn’t rate solid roof play. Maybe it was fact the Winston and Carolina were sole premiere theatres W-S had at that time, which meant a lot of worthy bills ended up outdoors (for instance: Dr. No). Grindhouse presence deeper downtown was the Lincoln, Center, and Lafayette, three houses using old stuff and places I often dreamed of being.

Dan Austell was a hound for the old “Bravest Woman in Winston” gag. He had used it on behalf of Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles in 1959 (a yearly booking for Carolina kiddie shows afterward). Device was simple --- invite women to apply for a midnight sit, all alone to see The Haunted Palace, a latest Poe/Price out of AIP. Jim/Sam would surely have given Dan a ribbon for his initiative. WAIR radio co-conspired with the Carolina, spot calling for “nerves of steel … the courage of a lion.” How much courage did it need to sit 87 minutes and then collect ten dollars in cash? Miss Ida Voss, nurse, was game. Perhaps she could treat her own trauma for having watched The Haunted Palace. Date was Wednesday, November 13, 1963 at midnight (hope Ida, for hers and patients’ sake, had Nov. 14 off). She would sit in ABSOLUTE DARKNESS (with exit lights off? Don’t tell fire or emergency marshals). “Every era has its monsters” said Austell in ad copy wherein he mentions the Golem. Wow. Just how old was Dan? The Haunted Palace would enjoy a three-day run at the Carolina. It was the same for us at the Liberty. Any chiller staying that long was heady stuff. It was like a roadshow beside single Saturday berth as half of a double feature which was customary placement for genre stuff. In fact, the next two Poes, Red Death and Ligeia, got Saturday only treatment in my town, that a tip-off to the series slipping. Still and all, I regarded The Haunted Palace as perhaps the Greatest Motion Picture Ever Made for seeing it in ‘63, then again at our Starlight Drive-In come summer 1965. I sent around a petition in sixth grade for Col. Forehand to bring The Haunted Palace back, but no dice. Love persists however thanks to Blu-Ray access.

Here's a Winston-Salem mosaic, a show page for August 1, 1965 to parse with same eagle eye as applied near-sixty years ago. Where to begin amidst so much? First comes a smallest, the Carolina’s “Summer Vacation Movie Party” featuring the “Oldtime Comedy Classic” Utopia with Laurel and Hardy. This might have been selfsame 35mm print I ended up with in the mid-seventies. There surely was not more than one or two at the Charlotte exchange. Utopia needed all of help it could get from Glenn “Great” Scott of local radio notoriety, him for emcee duty and bingo wrangler plus host to the Teen-Beats Combo, local talent per customary. Seats were thirty-five cents and with that you got a free Dr. Pepper (never cared for the drink ... seemed to me like sucking acid out of a spent battery). Mary Poppins was having a first outdoor run at the Skyview, a family lure. So would be The Sound of Music with reserved seats and two-a-day, to begin August 11 at the Winston. My children’s choir group rode down one Saturday for that, me forced to forfeit War-Gods of the Deep running at the Liberty for that same and only afternoon. I just knew there’d never be another chance to see War-Gods of the Deep, and indeed there was not, at least in theatres. Operation Crossbow ceded to The Sound of Music at the Winston. Seems every war venture wanted to be another Guns of Navarone. This one got plaudits from neighbor town patrons, plus a theatre manager in Concord, NC who testified to its “pulse-pounding.” The Winston pounded to extent of refusing seats during a final ten minutes. Was this device getting tired by 1965? The Sons of Katie Elder gets first-run play at the Flamingo Drive-In. What made the Winston and Carolina pass on one so big as this? "A God-Fearing Mother Whose Four Sons All Turned Out To Be Gunfighters!!!” sounds spun by Flamingo management, and bravo to his enterprise. So many of a show world barely utilized pressbooks and were probably the better for it. Note State Fair as second feature to Beach Blanket Bingo at the Winston-Salem Drive-In, recalling Sam Arkoff’s observation that we’d not need “B” pictures again for fact that older “A’s” could serve as seconds, so few having gone to see them when they were new. Meaningful also was fact that State Fair would TV-premiere October 3, 1965 on ABC, a mere two months off.

A Mightiest (revived) Monster would turn out to be King Kong himself, thirty-eight years young when I experienced the 1933 classic in 35mm and uncut on Friday, April 2, 1971, the Carolina Theatre as host. As is obvious here, they really pushed the Janus reissue which had as primary selling point footage not seen since 30’s yore and shocking now to modern eyes. I saw Kong with a crowd for 5:00’s show, them all there to see something till then forbidden, or so ads promised. There were articles by the Journal’s resident film critic, Jim Shartzer, who promised new sensations way more than television or previous reissues had afforded us. I had seen King Kong on Channel 3-Charlotte in 1965, so was primed for a revisit in any case, plus benefit of a large screen in hopefully better quality than tube transmission allowed. I drove too fast down 421 so as not to miss RKO credits, wanting to verify they were intact and not replaced by Janus titles, or something worse. Such was this event that I stayed over with my law student brother (Wake Forest) so I could experience Kong a total of three times, one of the best cumulative viewing experiences I’d ever have. Clocking reaction was a kick, each time noting how crowds laughed when the Venture crew ran from the bronto attack on Skull Island. To me it seemed viewers were less jeering than seeking moment’s relief after intensity of the beast snacking on sailors in the water, some of that formerly censored. No doubt Kong was well enjoyed at all three shows I saw. Neat how the Carolina pasted the image of Kong beside Winston-Salem’s own Wachovia Building, 30 floors and the city’s tallest structure at that time (superseded later by the 34 story Wells Fargo Center). Janus Kong prints got play around NC, mostly larger towns, the Liberty passing perhaps for lack of interest plus fact Col. Forehand had used it in 1956, which he considered like yesterday. Having seen the Carolina’s Kong, I was more-less satiated, and would wait but two years before acquiring a neat 16mm bootleg off the Janus release.

W.C. Fields for midweek Carolina joy (May 13-14, 1970), You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man and The Bank Dick affording fans rare opportunity to see these ancients on auditoria terms. I caught a parent ride and drop-off out front to see the pair while elder business was attended, this how I saw time-to-time shows in W-S. Fields and other cult names ran constant at colleges and college towns; in fact Wake Forest used these same features roughly round same time the Carolina did, which must have miffed Dan Austell mightily. Also there was Channel 36 out of Charlotte with The Bank Dick the same week it played on paying basis to Carolina patronage, what there was of it. My matinee stay was sparsely attended, an outcome I expected. Cult stuff tended to crumble on NC screens. Remember a Bogart festival the Visulite in Charlotte tried putting on? Fields without a crowd confers but half an education, at least for knowing how he’d be received by modern viewership. I might as well have been watching at home. Still it was thrill to see Honest Man and Bank Dick in 35mm, both features new to me as stations I could pull in never used the Fields-Universals (some of Paramounts yes, but never the U’s). Latter-day marketing of Fields was afoot, a record album of voice excerpts for instance, plus mainstream magazines mentioning him. To collect Fields on 8mm meant buying one or more of his Sennett shorts, and maybe that was as much of him as anyone needed. The Paramount features finally showed up as a syndicated group the same year as I saw these two at the Carolina, and one distant station, Channel 11 in Johnson City, Tennessee, actually had them on Sunday afternoons, a double feature each week and including not only Fields, but the Marx Bros. and Mae West. Why care if reception was fairly faint? Reality of my situation was that nobody around town or at school had heard of W.C. Fields, save handful of old-timers barely recalling the Great Man since he died in 1946. Have we today gone back to that low level of Fields awareness?

Oh, my stars … The Birth of a Nation as a theatre attraction at the Winston Theatre, October 8-14, 1970. The Winston had gone to “Ultra-Vision” a couple years before, Barbarella I recall as its debut with the expanded screen. My cousin drove us down in ’68 to snore through 2001, but this time it was dear Mother that sacrificed her peaceful Sunday so I could share in D.W. Griffith’s spectacle. Might this have been moment to consider boarding school placement for me? Birth was distributed by Joseph Brenner. His was the shortened 1930 version with a recorded score. Dig these ads with the cast listed … Gish, Walthall, Mae Marsh, Wallace Reid. Was I dreaming or what? Ad copy is for the ages --- “Today’s young audience will find its mood varying from high camp to tense silence as the plot unfolds.” High camp? Never would have thunk it. And what of “laughter at Victorian romance and melodrama … quickly snuffed out by chases, rescues, battles, fights and sheer narrative drive.” If anything it would be The Birth of a Nation snuffed out at theatres; you’d think that was more/less achieved by 1970, which made this booking the more a stunner for me and undoubted others. The Winston-Salem Journal went to town on op/eds, letters to the editor, etc. during the week Birth ran. I sat the whole time not believing a 1915 feature in an Ultra-Vision theatre in year of Our Lord 1970. None so bizarre a moviegoing moment in my life since. This was in fact my first-time seeing Birth. Never having owned an 8mm print, it was all kinds of terrific to watch it this way, the show packing expected wallop. Suffice to say, The Birth of a Nation never turned up at any other NC theatres around that time, at least to my notice. Next Birth rendezvous would be come-across of an original souvenir book found at a Massachusetts antique shop in 1972. I figured this to be a rarest relic in the world till realizing some years later that many others saved such artifact to make the booklet somewhat common among collectibles from vanished day.

Taming Lion That Was Rockabilly

Outlaws On the Air and Screens --- Part Two

Nice to recall at least tail end of earlier R&R, and there are CD collections with virtual books included to detail history of marvelous movement (real) gone against the grain, “Rockin’ Bones” from Rhino good as gathers get, being four discs with one-hundred songs spread across same. I’ve seen rockabilly referred to as “gloriously primitive,” which beside generic “pop” of the period it easily is. Category, name, whatever whoever called it, melted down from country, rhythm/blues, folk, hillbilly boogie, every sort of styles one could steal, Peter robbed to imitate Paul. Visionaries were rare as genuine talent in any field, example onscreen battle of bands or singers John Ashley and Gene Vincent in AIP’s Hot Rod Gang (1958), Ashley proposed a next big thing making like Elvis, not so bad but neither was score of others. Vincent on the other hand was the real deal, glittering gold aside pyrite, him one of few rockabilly artists to score a major recording contract, with Capitol, his hit Be Bop A-Lula claimed by them to have sold two million copies, stunner number beside 500-1000 pressed for others, and which maybe-maybe not sold. Hot Rod Gang was rigid application of formula, recipe as follows: boys and girls called actors and got cheap, souped-up cars driven through L.A. minus city consent, rock and roll indifferent if not bad apart from blue moon someone like Gene Vincent hired presumably for pennies, plus dancing and a lot of it because that’s thrifty too for staging indoors with a stationary camera to eat up footage, a fist fight or three also on enclosed space, all such and more against flattest lighting.

There are Guitar Collectors Who Regular Cross the Country in Hope to Find Treasure Like This

A thing like Hot Rod Gang can be bad without necessarily being dull, but that will depend on one’s threshold for fisticuffs, rock-roll, and souped-up cars. Hot Rod Gang earned $263,000 in domestic rentals, and I noted among producers Charles “Buddy” Rogers, among other things more a musician than anybody appearing in the film, could play whatever instrument man had so far devised, but belonged to times and trends forever passed. Imagine Mary’s reaction when he came home from work at something called Hot Rod Gang. Among things good about AIP was how they met their target audience on latter’s home ground, no preachment nor condescension, however calculated product was, but so was radio, magazines, television, all targeting teens. Radio was how most received music lots called outlaw, late night play making fruit the more forbidden, plus fact you’d often not locate 45’s even where intent upon it. No store stocked everything. If your choice was a “hit,” OK, otherwise wait and hope a D.J. would spin it. I dug the instrumental theme for Because They’re Young by Duane Eddy and the Rebels in 1960 and recall search at age six to acquire it. Now there is 24/7 access at You Tube. I call that progress. For the record, Eddy played a 1957 Chet Atkins Gretsch 6120 guitar, which admittedly matters to me less than for many whose passion revolve around such instruments. Among reasons to travel back if such was possible: learn the guitar, opportunity long since missed, and too late now. My mother tried taking piano lessons in her sixties and no soap, her realizing too much tide had gone out to master such complex new thing. If ever I thought of picking up a guitar, there’s but her effort to discourage me.

Certain ordinary men left giant footprints on guitar sound. James Burton backed Rick Nelson, Cliff Gallup was beside Gene Vincent. Then there was Link Wray who was from North Carolina. I said ordinary because these men never pretended to rock star glamor or image molding (possible exception: Link Wray, who adopted “outlaw” image to burnish “dirty” power chords). Guitarists were generally older men who’d adapt themselves to new style that was rockabilly and later rock and roll, their talent such as to make it look easy. Without these artists modestly doing their thing, voicers out front, no matter how teen idol-ish, could as well fold up and go home. Thing I glean from reading about such geniuses (and many of them really were that) is how music while fun and maybe profitable was a thing not to rely on where family had priority past touring grind and younger people’s idea of adventure that these comparative old-timers had seen plenty enough of. For most part, they were admirably focused and grown-up men, dedicated and always improving on their art, leaving spotlights to “front men” who'd sing and seize attention, this more occupation of youth and tendency to believe promoters who promised wealth and fame, latter which singers sometimes got, money mere vapor off transient applause. Instrumentalists, session players, worked on C.O.D. basis and trusted little apart from their own talent and how to get paid for it. Scotty Moore didn’t mind being stared at less than Elvis Presley whom he made look good, Burton of same mind where backing Nelson, such level heads less likely to end up wrapped around phone poles. Many in fact traded road life for mundane pursuits that would reliably pay bills and maintain a solid roof. Joe (“Duck Tail”) Clay recorded over a single month in 1956, left ten “incendiary” tracks before disappearing. Searchers located him thirty years later driving a school bus.

To-Be Mystery Man Cliff Gallup Performs with Gene Vincent

“Mystery men” were those of near supernatural abilities who left their public behind and played to suit themselves and occasional small venues. These were said to be unapproachable, avoiding most who admired them, though plenty were still listed in phone books and living normal among neighbors who’d not know or care of such greatness in their midst. Cliff Gallup was a Houdini of electric strings who spoke with music rather than words, reticent it’s true but only because fervid fans made him self-conscious, and besides, what was all such fuss about? He played rock and roll guitar a few years with Gene Vincent, then hung it up. Reminds me of literary counterparts like J.D. Salinger or H. L. Mencken who lived comfortably among locals who knew but did not worship them. Both so far as locals figured were plain folk, Mencken as member of clubs and lodges, Salinger helping boy scouts sell hot dogs at little league games. That which famed guitarists touched became holy relics, specifically their instruments which were objects of intense search by collectors who might themselves be transformed by mere coming into physical contact with said items of veneration. Deke Dickerson is an outstanding rockabilly performer and historian that also wrote two books where he detailed years-long quest for guitars which had belonged to his idols, surprisingly many found in attics, pawn shops, anywhere but places of honor they deserved to occupy. To touch an instrument as was touched by genius might for all one knows transmit spark of genius into the now possessor. Could it happen … has it happened?

Saturdays at Noon on Charlotte's Channel 9 --- (Jimmy) Kilgo's Kanteen!

“Dirty” guitars provoked in-part hostile response to rockabilly and rock-roll to come, but deliberate distortion of amplified sound had been around longer than either musical movement and besides, everybody save societal watchdogs seemed to like it. There are You Tube histories of equipment turned evil and how we supposedly were corrupted by same. I never knew that a song, an instrumental yet (“Rumble” by Link Wray) was banned from radio play in several regions, this part-why a mainstream took charge of music so as to calm us all down. Sedative was supplied by Bobby Vee generation that was the early to mid-sixties, him plus the Four Seasons, Beach Boys, Gary Lewis and his Playboys, others as moderating. Wilder rockers were ahead as the original crop perished in large part of exhaustion or their own excesses. What mercy of fate allowed Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard to live seeming forever as others went down in road, plane, and narcotic crashes? DJ’s that once pied piped for newest bold songs now were told by management what they could broadcast, management string pulled by senior management, and so on up the line. Wide open traveling hops, revues, all gone as had been big bands of the forties that thrilled towners large and often small, jukeboxes installed everywhere to encourage dance with milk shaking, clubbing of any sort, whatever went on indoors. Local TV outlets had dance shows and invited kids to participate on camera, ours on Charlotte Channel 9 and called “Kilgo’s Kanteen.” People thought different then about music, it being more social than solitary pursuit, idea of ear buds and download listening things of a far future. Some are saying however that live performance is coming back in big ways. True?

Primitive Potions of Song Plus Film

 

Here Came Fifties Trouble --- Part One

Why more joy of late from Hot Rod Gang than The Wild One, Dragstrip Riot over Rebel Without a Cause? Or High School Hellcats preferred to Blackboard Jungle? Answer may be that old devil didacticism, which trio of A’s reek of, each to teach us eager-or-not pupils. Give me straight exploitation or give me nothing. The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause, and Blackboard Jungle were, and remain, “problem” pictures, each to convey concern over social issues and do so “responsibly.” They remind me of lots being made today. I suffered through The Wild One and in fact, pushed accelerator through a final act, understood again why recall for most begins and ends with stills of Marlon Brando perched on a motorcycle with leather like what New York clubs later celebrated, his gang as threats distinctly non-threatening. Where wingmen include Alvy Moore and Jerry Paris, why not Joe Besser to bring up the rear? Brando’s was a delicate star mechanism. Most post-Streetcar saw him distinctly miscast. When was he 50’s bullseye apart from On the Waterfront? Brando, well his double, fist-fights Lee Marvin and Marvin improbably loses. There’s your verisimilitude. Nothing cries process like motorcycles in front of process. Worse though is Stanley Kramer to instruct, fun or potential for it bled out in service to civic betterment. Titles tell us such an incident happened (small town overrun by cycle hoods) but must never be permitted to happen again. Jim and Sam missed the lecture or chose to do opposite, because look at biker cycle they threw up upon sixties patronage, talk about never permitting such to happen again. After seeing Born Losers and The Glory Stompers, I would gladly have signed petition to achieve that.

Too much of mainstream presented youth from a parent’s point of view, as though hall monitors were producing entertainment for truant officers. Rebel Without a Cause might at least have recognized rock and roll as recent phenomenon, or forthcoming one, but did hidebound Hollywood know or care to acknowledge something still below ground? Rebel was heavily scored, effectively by Leonard Rosenman, this accompany to move Mom or Dad, classy crutch to dramatics heavy if not ponderously so (again, great music ... get the soundtrack CD with East of Eden). Of Blackboard Jungle, never mind. Anyone seeking reunion with bullies from school could get fill-up here, and lots evidently did, according to lush rentals. What was wanted, consciously so or not, was trash served same as Goobers from the snack counter or frankfurters at the drive-in, whips with which to antagonize parents who wondered what kids were coming to who'd enjoy these. Youth as worsening problem was fed too by discordant music they liked, rock and rolling a blight seeming to have landed all of a sudden. That wasn’t the case if one paid attention since wartime to styles merging toward a new but not really radical sound. Kids had been swing mad, dance mad, long before this, better behaved movies aimed toward them and their tribal habits. Universal in the early to mid-forties mass-produced teen musicals a world removed from what would come later from AIP and lowdown elsewhere. Gloria Jean, Donald O’ Connor, and Susanna Foster, let alone mass known as the Jivin’ Jacks and Jills, would seem alien had they dropped upon 1957 viewership, which by '57 they did, if only as oldies on television. I looked at, much enjoyed Mister Big (1943), and wondered how a culture embraced this, then devolved within a decade to something called Shake, Rattle, and Roll. Dance as art and spectacle had departed scenes, no more backflipping, lindy-hopping, jitterbugging … pleasure to share as grown-ups in fair enough shape could and often did manage such athletics too.

A lot of boys still boys came back from the war, aged in wood that was combat. They’d express a rebel spirit by dressing more casual than Dad, keeping on flight jackets or leather of whatever military issue to tinker with racer cars and two-wheel hogs. They also brooded and dealt with trauma left over from service, elders less quick to judge for what such seasoned men had been through. Good sampling via film was Guy Madison in Till the End of Time. Both he and Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives return to boyhood bedrooms where pennants still hang and football trophies adorn dresser tables. Neither boy-suddenly-man will be the same again, even though being barely twenty in many instances, few to call them delinquent, not where debt for America’s freedom was payable so clearly to them. More complicated of vets went noirish route, in movies at least, while real life was more at Guy Madison speed, and for many who adjusted OK, at least on surface, speed was essence and expressed on dirt tracks and in garages where aggression could find at least superficially safe outlet. John Ireland has wheels to convey a restless spirit in The Fast and the Furious. Mickey Rooney drove fast, won trophies, and was sucked into a bank job by a wrongest dame in Drive a Crooked Road, a car culture beaut that didn’t need rock or roll or protest mechanisms to show change already here by 1954 when that film was released. Grown men gone wrong over ten or so years after peace could be attributed to what war had wrought, so in many instances at least, sympathy might attach. Offspring entering adolescence however was seen more as spoiled lot untested by service to country, hard times before their time, life lessons to guard against what now seemed bad behavior minus explanation or excuse.

Rebel Without a Cause was titled to a T, seen by some as license to whine, teens a threat to hard-won prosperity their parents would gladly share if only snarly brats would shut up and enjoy postwar bounty. Delinquents where age accurate were the more disturbing, Sal Mineo as Rebel’s crybaby a mystery no parent could divine, while overage bad “boy” Lee Marvin in The Wild One was comedic more than menacing, Marvin himself having been shot up on atolls approaching Japan and better put to grown-up criminality in The Big Heat. Sometimes it seemed Hollywood didn’t fully understand what a teenager was, other than stair-step down from Mom, Dad, family entering a cinema as families, way of life and living about to dead end. Here was reality junk merchants understood and exploited. It wasn’t for homespun brood to enjoy movies or music together. Lose these in terms of attendance, said vet biz observers, and trouble if not downfall of culture would ensue. “Mainstream” as desired state would be challenged on multi-fronts, this a threat to parents who couldn’t understand what had happened over seeming overnight, more so warning to an amusement industry termite infested, a broad and deep underground poised to scratch itchy kids with sound and furies no supplier with conscience would attach corporate name to, until it became a matter of doing so to survive. What seemed nature’s noise by way of music came slow and innocently as music styles converged to make what would be called rock and roll, or by cruder name, “rockabilly,” which was what rock and roll eventually separated itself from in order to be mass consumed. That mass would be tapped only through offices of mainstream manufacture, distributors that could get songs played and records distributed, not just in single cities or states even, but everywhere and all at once. Rockabilly would never cross such moat because large concerns would not permit it, all of like conviction that music must be controlled from the top down to be received by broadest of a US marketplace.

Rockabilly was just too scattered and strange to be acceptable. Most of what issued was from independent labels not likely to exist by same time a following year. They’d have less longevity than pterodactyls, but fresh wind blew through their sails, no corporate dictates to slow them or societal constructs to obey. Record producing was also font of opportunity, for near anyone could swing at it. A Lion’s Club member in your hometown that ran a furniture store might also be a music mogul … well at least a marginal mogul. Risk lay in recording and pressing platters, 500 to a thousand depending on plank you chose to walk and hope you’d not fall off. Faith in product came of instinct, yours and nobody else’s. Small businessmen produced from way back, jazz tunes captured in the twenties thanks to individuals who saw the coming trend and so rolled dice. A kid could walk off a street and get himself recorded and on local radio within a matter of weeks, days if he/she was lucky. Elvis got a break like this, others by hundreds following suit. Music makers could pursue their dream and independent impulse to at least regional success, the country still sectioned so that what did nothing in Detroit might rock solid in Milwaukee, difference often D. J’s pushing the platter or teens in one berg bopping contrary to counterparts in another. Rockabilly as synthesis of many styles meant no adhere to formula, however you’d define that in such wide-open time and circumstance. So much was so original that you knew it couldn’t last, not after big sharks sniffed gold in what they called kid stuff, but hold, kids now had money to fold. Rockabilly got its big lick through a second half of fifties busy with music vogues of every sort, adherents of each calling this or those years their “Golden Age.” Most have it easier just calling time they grew up a worthiest of all times (don't we all?), never mind what’s older and nix the new. Greenbriar gravitating to old could wish to have been there for initial burst of rockabilly and scratchy discs, scratchier voices, coming over radios, transistor or otherwise.

Heralds for rock and teen movie shows in Parts One and Two were creative product of West Jefferson, NC exhibitor extraordinaire Dale Baldwin and assorted showman manpower in my state. Imagine being on hand for such marathons as these.

Thanks ever so to Scott MacGillivray for making it possible for me to see Mister Big.

Part Two re Rockabilly HERE.

Parkland Picks with Popcorn #5

 

Pop Goes: Houdini, Mirage, Frankenstein's Daughter, and The Greene Murder Case

HOUDINI (1953) --- Paramount does a Tony/Janet, borrowed from U-I and Metro, respectively, if not respectfully, as Curtis was known mostly as bubble-gum merchant for kids still buying fan magazines in otherwise decline, Hollywood being still Hollywood (as in old Hollywood). Who then figured TC for fine and earnest performance he gave for producing George Pal, who had but little to make Houdini appear big? Negative cost was $1.3 million, and two million was collected in domestic rentals. I’ll assume that was mostly youngsters showing up, plus olders who'd remember the real Houdini, himself having made movies in silent times. Houdini was a favorite when NBC took custody for 1965 broadcasts, as in much begging to stay up late and watch, at least on my part. Houdini tells a complicated life and suggests supernatural gift the title character had for sleight-of-hand and body. Curtis was a convert, him doing tricks for remain of a lifetime thanks to what he learned here. Houdini longed to commune with the dead, made conscientious effort to do so, but wound up mostly exposing fakes, a highlight of Pal and Para’s brisk ride through times not so long past in 1953. Curtis nicely conveys near-suicidal impulse that took real-life Houdini eventually down. Do magic experts respect this show? For viewership that is me and hopeful others, it’s always been a click, producer Pal ideal to indicate a man truly uncanny, but not enough so to scare off or otherwise alienate Tony’s then-mob. Was the Houdini wife alive enough in 1953 to vet or try blocking this? Pal assures fantasy overlay most welcome, us invited to conclude Houdini made escapes by means beyond mere magic. Has anyone since mastered his techniques, figured out how he did his so-called tricks? I begin to wonder if some of secrets were never meant for man to know, at least would like to think Houdini had an in with spiritual voids, and may yet show up to school us re next world mysteries.

MIRAGE (1965) --- What hath Charade wrought, at least so far as Universal during the mid-sixties when imitators seized stars, mostly veterans, who needed glam vehicles both fresh and time-honored like Charade which was Hitchcock-ish with humor increased and sprightly scores oft-work of Mancini, though in Mirage case Quincy Jones. Latter helped the pictures lure, plus sold albums, which led to Hitchcock losing Bernard Herrmann, Uni wanting something other than Marnie’s funerial accompany and Torn Curtain threatening to do the same. Proof of Uni intent as serious came with Herrmann playback of so-far score to an indignant Hitchcock. Would this composer not simply do as ordered? ---answer No plain to anyone who knew Bernard Herrmann. Mirage was first of two for Gregory Peck off Charade model, Mirage serious, Arabesque more frolicky. Mirage was shot largely on Manhattan streets that in high-contrast B/W look post-apoco-tripping, a '65 Gotham I would have been uneasy visiting, reason alone to watch and like Mirage, for nothing of the era gets over quite a same, never mind story struggle. In fact, I prefer Mirage to Charade, if not to Hitchcock himself at low gear, and aver it should be counted better, especially now that we have Blu-Ray widescreen to point up visual value, standard DVD’s and earlier TV never equal to the task. Power mongers take over a peace movement and it is for amnesiac Peck to unfurl truth with help of Diane Baker. I like watching Peck utterly confused by events uncannier as narrative rolls toward “unexpected” finish, his help (Walter Matthau) not so helpful and could-be furtherance of threat, while George Kennedy engages fist play with Peck that works for both being big guys who make fights credible (GP takes tumbles well). Action was default direction for Peck by the sixties, notwithstanding Mockingbird, him struggling like the rest for worthwhile properties, which Mirage was/is despite underserved obscurity.

FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER (1958) --- To define “risible” is to define Frankenstein’s Daughter: “such as to provoke laughter,” but then again, maybe not, for here was a thing to invite more derision than mirth we expect from sci-fi off basement floors. I never laughed at cheap genre expression anyhow, that too much the thing of camp following which is no fair way to sum Frankenstein’s Daughter or its kind. A feature shot in six days for $60K or less commands respect, at least mine, for as many might ridicule, others touched by empathy will ask, Yes, but could you do it? A man named Richard E. Cunha built Frankenstein’s Daughter from dust up, a monster maker all his own and mirror to drama he so badly portrays. Astor enabled Frankenstein’s Daughter, a deal believably made on bar stools, Cunha in this for nothing other than hoped-for profit. He would finish up running a video store, amiable to master scribe Tom Weaver who ran him to ground. One could generate a Frankenstein movie, as many as one pleased, because the name and everything but Universal-controlled face design (for their monster) was PD and thus free range. Same with Dracula by 1958. It is for this reason a market was saturated with makes and remakes and finally shamble that was Frankenstein’s Daughter. How much audience blundered to this when good word-of-mouth was instead for The Curse of Frankenstein, or to Blood of Dracula when Horror of Dracula was the one to see? Frankenstein’s Daughter opens with a girl (not the title girl) dashing about streets in a nightgown and fright face. Monster of title’s promise was mistakenly cast with a pug ugly male to which they applied lipstick, us reminded of same cosmetic put on pigs, or however that expression goes. Being now the fifties, it is a grandson of Dr. Frankenstein who fashions fiends, so who was Dad, Wolf or Ludwig? Fun would have been a “ghost” cameo by Rathbone or Cedric Hardwicke, both which could have been had for a price, but not so low as Cunha could pay. There is instead Sandra Knight and John Ashley as familiars, her a pin-up also for Thunder Road and later The Terror, so for sure I’m interested, plus Ashley an already overaged teen who’d go far places doing penny Pilipino scare shows in the 60/70’s. We best know genre product by company they keep, familiar faces a balm against heavy weather that is cheapness or boredom, which Frankenstein’s Daughter has less of thanks to recent and first-rate Blu-Ray treatment from Film Masters, and look you, there are extras here to beat any majors’ band.

THE GREENE MURDER CASE (1930) --- You may need smelling salt with popcorn, soda, what not, to keep slumber at bay while watching The Greene Murder Case, one of three Paramount Philo Vance mysteries released of late, and on Blu-Ray, by Kino. Greene like Canary is of 1929 vintage, so bar door against stately pace and dialogue dealt deliberate, but oh how we’ve wanted these, and for myself, over much of so-far lifetime. Best seen in solitary confine, the Vances are very definition of “For Dedicated Only,” that is, to ancient talking. You could wonder if Egypt or Babylonia of old spoke as here, so remote does much of it seem. And yet there are spasms of the unexpected, a lively pay-off and unmasking of the killer, an inherited madness theme that for me spiked interest. I’m guessing 1929 audiences stayed still as tombs so as not to miss William Powell’s unravel of mayhem and who’s committing it. Lots of us fans dote on mystery, sameness and formula a relaxant little else in life supplies. Think of Charlie Chan, Sherlock Holmes, others of detecting fraternity. One of streaming’s most popular categories is who done or is doing it. Britain has made cottage, no empire, industry of such, Miss Marple hanging shingle all about the Isles. How many Marples have we had just in our present generation? I dare say Vance no matter how old will sell as if new to mystery’s fan base so dedicated. I got a tingle watching Greene, that is except for ten or so minutes when sleep stole me away. Vance is more studied and serious than sleuths Powell otherwise played, so venture not with expectation he’ll be like Nick Charles. Fact is, Powell wearied of being Vance and said no to further ones after The Kennel Murder Case from Warners in 1934, arguably best of the lot. It’s sure enough a lucky corner wherever one can sit for 1929 shows on High-Def, and here I was still pinching myself for luck getting Oland Fu Manchus last year. Is there no end to boutique Blu-Ray miracles? Please Kino --- enter into another contract with Universal so you can release more rarities from them and pre-49 Paramounts they own (like for instance Clara Bow talkies).