How Long Will a Cutting Edge Still Cut?

 

Hep As Was and Maybe Still Is

From Mark Vieira’s book, Into the Dark: The Hidden World of Film Noir, 1941-1950, here is thought expressed by critic John T. McManus for PM magazine, circa October 12, 1944: “That ultra-aware modernism, “hep,” is a very handy word to have around for a picture like To Have and Have Not.” So what was it to be hep? Simplest definition suggests awareness of what is fashionable or new. Hep itself is progenitor to things or people we now call “hip,” or more often, “cool,” latter used enough to now be tiresome. Hep as descriptive goes back over a century. Jazz musicians kept it among a slang arsenal. As for application to movies, I would say hep is more knowing not only what will amuse today, but what will amuse for generations to come. Does anyone luck into being hep? Chances are better they are clairvoyant with eyes toward the future for what they and those to come will find funny. Hep then has everything to do with humor, for where are/were hep dramatists? McManus sees the future of To Have and Have Not when he refers to its “ultra-aware modernism,” latter to embody “modern character of quality of thought, expression, or technique.” McManus went on to credit To Have and Have Not for knowing “all the angles,” hepness “all over it.” He cites “healthy, democratic flesh tone, and it is not only skin deep.” Here was a critic eighty years ago who I believe was on to something. He “got” an entertainment that others then and since appreciate on “skin deep” and deeper levels. Does To Have and Have Not for us play ultra-aware modern as McManus proposed? It stays funny in ways we expect from Howard Hawks, and there’s no better “Bogie” to service his cult (assuming one remains), but hold … the Bogart cult at student level is no more. Does that rob To Have and Have Not of hep? We could say no for movies no longer cultish at colleges, for when are movies, any movies, projected to gathered groups on campus? To Have and Have Not nevertheless strikes me still as hep. TCM thrives on it, as do streamers and those who collect Blu-Ray. Question becomes who or what else is hep, long ago plus now? A list I’ll propose is short, coming down, and not surprisingly, to a single name which for me exemplifies not only hep, but exclusive membership to American folklore shared by no one else film-bred. Can anyone else guess who I mean?

As stated, hep in Greenbriar quarter equates with humor. That unfortunately lets out most of those we associate with drama. A hep movie need not be comedy, but must, I’d propose, have aspects of levity. Bonnie and Clyde is funny, more so violent, everything that happens still somehow unexpected. Bonnie and Clyde is in short hep. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is on the other hand un-hep for being self-aware hep, my impression of it since 1969. Film noir as a genre was defined late as such and so is hep by default, even where member titles are not necessarily so. Billy Wilder made hep noir with Double Indemnity but would not commit further, his Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Hole less clever than caustic. Laura is hep for clever plus caustic, and not self-congratulatory as to either. Few from the forties please in such modernist ways as Laura. Robert Mitchum, also of noir incubation, seems hep to a fault in Out of the Past, but less so after his reefer bust and a coming decade where a hipster stance seemed more studied, though I’ll credit him with great hep stand that was His Kind of Woman in 1951. Dick Powell relied on Chandler and Philip Marlowe to seem hep in Murder, My Sweet, being more so in the later Cry Danger, his last feature stand in noir category and a repository of wit as applied to otherwise familiar content. A truest hep of Classic Era stars may have been William Powell, who surprises still those who’d call past personalities irrelevant. I’ve mentioned before a 1973 classroom run of The Thin Man to apx. 30 in attendance expressing delight that any actor as long past could come across so pleasingly modern. I’d not hesitate calling Powell hep for now and whatever future most of us have left.

Steve McQueen seems hep until you factor out Bullitt and The Great Escape. Like Paul Newman, McQueen did not appear in enough hep movies to rank hep for the ages. What both did offscreen, racing cars, cycles, and such, helps maintain the image in still-capture sense, as is also a case for one woman I might rank as hep, Louise Brooks, membership more for style and miles-high stack of portraits, which will have to do because so little of her survives in motion. Notice no Clara Bow as hep for her belonging resolute to an era she thrived in, but could not vault beyond. Women who did comedy stay in “screwball” category for a most part, and that dates the whole of them. Women in drama are dealt out surely as men given to same pursuit. Bette Davis, Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, would not have cared to qualify as hep even if extended the laurel, just as Gable, John Wayne, Cooper, certainly Brando and Clift to come … hep crown to set uneasily upon these brows, however others read them (did Brando wish to be cool even where celebrated so?). Cary Grant can delight, even seem modern for being timelessly appealing, but I’d not call him hep. There never was a Cary Grant cult, perhaps for his being so continuously and mainstream popular. There are moments however when Grant plays modern to startling degree --- look at North by Northwest in a crowded house, Grant registering in ways to still surprise, or maybe not, because audiences expect Cary Grant to deliver as if he was doing his act just yesterday. Maybe then we should call him hep/hip. Fred Astaire strikes me as a performer very hep once you get to know him. Anti-heroes might emerge hep even where not expected, let alone intended, like Paul Newman as Hud, James Dean as Jett Rink, others. Among horror icons, there is Vincent Price who was distinctly hep, ultimately cool, for knowing we saw through his act and appreciated his knowing. Was there ever a westerner who was hep? I might nominate The Man With No Name as embodied by Clint Eastwood, but it’s mainly the third one of those (Good, Bad, Ugly) to get that job done. As to hep born of television, and in western guise, could anyone apart from possibly James Garner as Maverick hope to qualify? But then Maverick was long ago, and not much seen today, so however hep he seemed in 1958, that was 1958.

Committed comedians were too often fall guys to be hep. Chaplin disqualified himself for pathos signaling. Harold Lloyd was so twenties entrenched as to seem quaint by the forties, another Clara Bow and then some. Harry Langdon was too strange to be anything other than object of niche devotion and baffled curiosity otherwise. W.C. Fields looked for awhile like a heppest clown around, but something skidded after protest times were passed, and now it seems we can’t give him away. Abbott and Costello, forget it, too forties if seeming wildly fresh upon then-arrival. Laurel and Hardy endure within their fully committed fanship, hepness or not a non-issue for devotees. None of Three Stooges seem hep, Shemp coming closest, Ted Healy too, the more so Ted, maybe a most modernist of long-gone comics. Bob Hope is another to belong too much to then, even as he tried swimming in streams that ran to seeming infinity, but think if Bob had gone down with one of WWII troop carriers he hitched rides on. He’d be a hep legend snatched from us in prime. The Marx Brothers seem obvious choices for hep placement, Groucho to rank prominent, his siblings just odd w/o him. The Marxes seem also to have fallen from current grace, or maybe it isn’t reasonable to insist on their continuing as favorites, like demanding students again swallow goldfish or jam into phone booths. One can go on speculating … argue even for Walter Catlett or Roscoe Karns as somehow hep, indeed make an argument for anybody, but comes now reveal of that name I earlier said was hierarchy of hep, one beyond comedy, beyond approach in fact by any other film personage, the single likeliest figure to sit everlasting upon Olympus that is popular culture, except he’s beyond mere “popular” and more like forever spirit capture of creative man. So who's this at summit of hep and so much else? I say Buster Keaton.

Trade Talk #2

 

What Trades Told: Tempting Hoppy ... and Bing, Where Superman Flew Again, and Kroger Babb's Non-Pursuit of Quality

HOPPY AND HIPPY? --- William Boyd had been around the business long enough to know everybody worth knowing, many social contacts among filmic royalty. Hopalong Cassidy was Boyd’s preferred monicker. He'd stay the character, if henceforth for television, fed by oldies Boyd now owned, plus a fresh-filmed series to augment vaulties. Late forties fad for all things Hoppy stunned a staid industry. Who dreamed a B cowboy could achieve such latter-day glory? C.B. DeMille was a Boyd intimate. Latter’s last appearance in a feature was a cameo for The Greatest Show on Earth. DeMille wanted Bill to play Moses for The Ten Commandments, which come to think of it was a swell idea. Another major project appears to have come close to fruition, “Thataway” proposed teaming of Hopalong and Bing Crosby, to be directed by Leo McCarey. The mind indeed boggles. How close were they to reality? I recall another proposed project at Paramount, a late thirties teaming of John Barrymore with W.C. Fields. Publicity stills were taken for that too. I have a few for which back caption promises the pair in “Everything Happens at Once,” which unfortunately, never did happen. The Hoppy-Bing announcement came in 1950, a point where Crosby needed a hit, his last several having been soft. Would Hoppy have been the stronger draw in event of their co-starring? Would Bing’s singing be drowned out by Hoppy’s hoofbeats? Such notion maybe gave Bob Hope casting ideas for Son of Paleface, where he used Roy Rogers to overall benefit. Roads not taken … and we wonder who backed out. McCarey prospects might have been uncertain, his last with huge result The Bells of St. Mary’s of five seasons before. As to Cassidy-Crosby together, we’ll make do with this still and whatever other print and image might have been generated for “Thataway.”

ATOM MAN VS. SUPERMAN (1950) --- I’m through Chapter One and still waiting for Atom Man, though it is unlikely he will amount to much. How could owners have entrusted such IP as Superman to Sam Katzman? Easy … especially if you consider utter absurdity of anyone referring in the forties to Superman as an “intellectual property,” yet look at him after eighty-five years in flight, beaten perhaps by other heroes, yet unbowed. Atom Man vs. Superman is a scrapbook, more scrappy book, of stock footage, chases where 40’s autos careen suddenly among 30’s autos, this for consorting with trims from whatever Columbia programmer was pillaged. All of characters check in, and that counts for plenty. To consult early serial birth of figures later iconic is to observe buds from which oak grew, us to recognize all greatness must begin somewhere. Superman “flies” with help of cartooning, and someone please inform if children laughed where first seeing this, or did they storm management and demand refunds? I bet Disney could have made these effects look real, at least realer. Imagine if he were licensed Superman, but when was Walt willing to borrow a thing rather than create and thus own it? (a bitter lesson was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit). I find flying in Superman serials a quaint and thus warm thing, also the cheapness, plus “Butch” of Our Gang as Jimmy Olsen, and Noel Neill at cutest. Kirk Alyn is an adequate alter-egoer, would seem better were there not George Reeves to compare with later. Alyn was another of collector convention guests who would morph eventually into a dealer like scratch-after rest of us, and I used to wonder how much he needed modest cash off these shows. Sad too was Kirk talking up chapterplays no one could then see. Now both Columbia serials are on DVD, nobody’s idea of restorations, but being rarities, one takes what one can get.

PROUD TO PEDDLE JUNK --- A reason I like showmanship and exhibition is revisit it affords to films thought favorite or worth visiting again. To proudly push bad merchandise seems an affront to those watching, let alone those who’d pay to watch. Did Kroger Babb’s conscience ever bother him? He seemed to neither know nor care as to good or bad, the good merely what drew money, the bad that which did not. I haven’t seen any of features he cobbled together, and based on what I’ve read as to how he did it, am not inclined to. There certainly were firms that measured purely to formula, the series westerns, short comedies made and sold in bulk. American-International drew posters first, then molded movies out of them. Lots enjoy these because for all of cheapness and rush, talent could and did peek through, plus whatever the defects, most seem at least sincere, as were people who made them like Roger Corman, who despite Babb-ish aspects did not scavenge so brazen as Kroger, nor express as freely contempt for those who’d buy his goods. Ads here for “Hallmark Productions, Inc.” reveal much. Hucksters Hiring Hucksters, none with pretext of pride in product. Hallmark wanted hustlers and never mind niceties past that. “You earn what you get, you get what you earn” sounds to me like code for eighteen-hours as daily expected. “Get Wise, Get Up Early” it says, sleep be hanged if you want in for real money. Babb recruited for men of his own stripe, Over 21 and Under 50 a base requirement, Honest and Clean and Nice Looking a help. Wilmington, Ohio was corporate address. I checked Google and found no record of Hallmark in Wilmington, except the greeter cards. What, no historical marker? Kroger was born in Lee’s Creek, Ohio, which today has a population of forty-two. What, no statue?

Hallmark distributed such things as Mom and Dad (childbirth footage), She Shoulda’ Said No, and Wrestling Jamboree. Hottest merchandise came with a lecture to assure patrons of pure intent behind what otherwise was purest prurient. Hallmark statement of intent sounds like a Boy Scout pledge: “There is no substitute for Honesty … no rule so sound as The Golden Rule … no battle so worthwhile as a Fight for The Right.” Question arises as to whether Kroger Babb lived by such precept. I’ve no reason to think he didn’t. Just handling dishonest films does not make dishonest men, or does it? Kroger and his Hallmark partner were Ohioans. Did not realize until seeing these trade ads that people of that state are called “Buckeyes.” We of North Carolina are sometimes referred to as “Tar Heels.” End of geography lesson. Among Hallmark output, Wrestling Jamboree sounds nifty… for about ten minutes. That sort of sums me up for near-all of exploitation features, one reel in, then time to bail. Babb’s Mom and Dad is said to have earned untold millions, all evidently based on a segment no mainstream release would dare touch. I’ll guess Babb outran more county sheriffs than Larson E. Whipsnade, there being something imminently arrestable about him. I hope he died rich, which surely he did, unless income taxers fell on him. Might have been fun to be one of Babb’s “Elliot Forbes” presenters, traveling with Mom and Dad to lecture patrons and assure all they were seeing it for their own good, though I’d have preferred backstage doors to the alley for a fleet exit where needed.

UPDATE (11/11/2024 --- 7:47PM) --- Scott MacGillivray checks in with further data on Kroger Babb.

Hi, John — I thought you might be interested in these Kroger Babb trade clippings. First, we have Kroger Babb and his partner Jack Jossey heralding their triple-threat company H. P. Inc. (comprising Hallmark Productions, Hygienic Productions, and Hollywood Productions), with four offices in America and in another six in other countries: “We’re still just those same two country showmen with fresh shoeshines." This trade ad dates from 1948 and highlights THE LAWTON STORY, an Easter pageant filmed in Lawton, Oklahoma with local talent. The exhibitor comment I’ve seen is mostly from small-town and rural theaters, which reported favorably on the homespun content and the unusually high grosses.

Babb reissued THE LAWTON STORY as (THE LAWTON STORY OF) THE PRINCE OF PEACE, and mopped up.

Next we have a clipping from Boxoffice magazine (1961) in which Kroger Babb himself describes his methods:

Here is one more peek into the world of Kroger Babb. It develops that WRESTLING JAMBOREE was really his expansion of a five-reel streamliner of 1953 called THE FALL GUYS. I was surprised to see Clyde Elliott credited as producer — this is the guy who directed BRING ’EM BACK ALIVE two decades before.

Nice to see Kroger Babb still in the game in the sixties!

Best wishes — Scott

Watch List for 11/4/2024

 

Watched: The Iron Horse, The Johnstown Flood, The Virgin Queen, and Desire

THE IRON HORSE (1924) and THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD (1926) --- What made people migrate west, leave homes and hearth and better still, comparative safety, to venture into unknown where privation and perhaps sudden death await? The Iron Horse explains via men of few words who made up pioneer stock, Abraham Lincoln in recurring cameo to speak for history and why it was necessary to move and keep moving all the way to a next ocean. The Iron Horse seems more and more like found footage off the real thing, which it sort of was for being made not so long after facts portrayed. Think of 1924 viewers who experienced trek west that could speak to authenticity on screens, this part-why it was vital to get details right and make events so vivid they’d hurt. Knowing eyes were watching, plus younger generations schooled on noble mission that was breaking trails, for among other things, there'd be no Hollywood if not for brave souls who got there first. The Iron Horse and The Johnstown Flood pair well for bringing past periods alive, melodrama to salt sagas and instill interest other than this-and-that having happened on that-or-those dates. Who’s to say there were not men like George O’Brien, plenty of men like George O’Brien, all beef and ready to guide us across, quell savages, the daunting rest. Is there even one George O’Brien left to headline narrative like this? The Iron Horse is all over You Tube in surprisingly crisp editions, some off DVD’s no doubt, others derived from Killiam version which once was an only way enthusiasts could experience The Iron Horse. One of these has William Perry’s fine piano score from, what, fifty years ago?, his my pick of horses to YT ride, afterward perusing John Ford books on how the director did it. Seems making The Iron Horse came near ordeal of decade spent laying rails over thousands of treacherous miles.

Re-creation stuff is stunningly done, commercial concession O’Brien avenging a father’s death and linking back with childhood love Madge Bellamy, these a western trope before and long after The Iron Horse, drama always reliable to backdrop march of happenings and lend structure to them. We must after all tell a story to anyone sat two hours in front of a screen, save if it's documentary, which The Iron House comes close at times to being. Silent features now that they're all Public Domain are turning up en masse at You Tube, which I call a good and progressive thing. There would be more but for archives adhering to donor restrictions. Good thing I don’t administer these places, as I’d be shoveling stuff out front and back doors so fans could see them, just like collector days when rules were meant to be bent. Of authorized content, and on Blu-Ray, there is lately released The Johnston Flood, restored off a single surviving print at the George Eastman House, and multi-tinted, nicely scored by the Mont Alto Orchestra. The actual flood happened in 1889, me struck by how modern life was way back then. They had telephones and even a primitive kinetoscope to amuse bar patrons. Developing story shadows, or rather overshadows, the disaster which won’t come till a final ten minutes, but tension builds toward it like with the Titanic, constant worry, warnings, and the like, that we know dire things lay ahead for safety measures not observed and business interests ignoring threat that is rising waters and constant rain. Flood differs from earthquake in that we don’t see latter coming, thus surprise in a film like San Francisco where being absorbed in the story makes one forget a quake awaits. Fact the Johnstown flood actually happened enhances the sit, plus ensnare by lovely locations and image to boost them, presto sixty-eight minutes pleasurably passed plus peruse of extras which include 3-D images of real-life Johnstown in horrific aftermath of the flood. Robert A. Harris and James Mockoski restored and put this splendid show together. I’m for supporting labor of love and fullest dedication as here. Pre-talk film yet thrives so long as champions like these are around to nurture it.

THE VIRGIN QUEEN (1955) ---Characters stood at opposite poles of the wide, wide screen and me seated comfortably center, perfect vantage from which to see fifties Fox Cinemascope, but how we suffered for long years before these were properly encoded for home screen play. There is joy in ping-pong voices, addressing one another from wings as if surrounding us, a fifties marvel to make movie houses resemble live theatre at its liveliest. NBC in 1964 broadcast The Virgin Queen as their Monday primetime movie, undoubted agony for those who submitted. What we are heir to is wide and HD at Vudu/Fandango, which I saw last night and noted how expanse exposes economies, The Virgin Queen done for modest at the time $1.6 million, much of décor, maybe costumes too, borrowed from Fox storage back to Forever Amber and no telling how earlier. Release was mid-1955 and that was late enough for Cinemascope to have run through sure-thing juice, result a million lost. Being ninety minutes makes for energy more than when Bette Davis last played Elizabeth, then opposite Errol Flynn, here tilting with Richard Todd, whose touch is light in accordance with décor at minimum and perhaps his embarrassment at being so extensively doubled for a cramped fight scene with Robert Douglas where it’s clear both actors were elsewhere while doubles did their dueling. Chicanery at court plays mostly for fun, The Virgin Queen sample of how well a fifties thing can register if you’re seeing to full advantage what watchers got in 1955. This like all of Fox from that period was hobbled enough by broadcast abuse to make us assume the pictures were as bad as all of them looked, time ideal to sift lesser of the lot, like The Virgin Queen, and realize how enjoyable it and others as obscure can be given accurate representation. Unless I’m wrong, Vudu is sole place to make that happen, though there is a Region Two Blu-Ray from off-shores.

DESIRE (1936) --- Crime committed by a role model movie star during the Code era was not just discouraged, it was for most part forbidden. To emulate a popular film figure was common currency. If they smoked, which most did, then likely so would we, especially ones of us most impressionable. Marlene Dietrich’s was glamour largely unattainable. To copy her look or mannerisms was to risk ridicule. Like with Garbo, imitators were largely for comedies or cartoons, yet audiences took the genuine article seriously in melodrama, as they would Dietrich up to a point of … was it boredom or exhaustion? Desire began her ramp down, The Garden of Allah hastening the slide. Dietrich however could reinvent herself and survive. Desire shows a sort of beginning for that with her humorous much of time, an opening reel jewel theft depicted in detail with MD putting one, actually much more, over on a series of suckers. Crime mustn’t pay said Code authorities, but Desire makes it seem to, Dietrich not acknowledging wrong of her act till a tail end and then spanked but barely for tie-up where loot is returned, her having received an offscreen “parole.” We don’t even see arresting authorities. Studios could slip like eels past barriers where negotiation with Code reps was friendly enough, sleights-of-hand not uncommon depending on individual relationships. I suspect producing Ernst Lubitsch and director Frank Borzage had panache and social skill enough to finesse Breen or associates to give Desire leeway, not to large degree, but by subtle means a knowing viewer could recognize and feel for once he/she was not being addressed as a child. Desire isn’t Jewel Robbery or Trouble in Paradise, but it will do for its year and offers insight to how artists could temper, if not overcome, a thicket of regulations that lesser talent was too often overwhelmed by. Kino has a nice Blu-Ray.