Stills That Speak #7

 

STS: Clark Gable Captures

From files long dormant, here are Gable images some of which may be unfamiliar. Another group will go up for STS #8, whenever that comes round.

IF NOT MARY PHILIPS WITH GABLE, WHO? --- This is a very old still from Gable’s career on the stage. I’m pretty sure he is posed with Mary Philips. She was married to Humphrey Bogart around this time, which I’d judge to be the late twenties. Broadway search sites did not reveal the name of the play wherein Philips and Gable appeared together. It may have been off-Broadway or a traveling performance. Were portraits so carefully composed for plays not done on Broadway? Philips’ name is scrawled on the back, but oddly not Gable’s. No question of course that it’s him. Mary Philips can be readily identified by her nose, which was prominent. She did sound movies and often played mothers. Her age and Bogart’s were close. The two stayed friends after their ten-year marriage. They split because of his emerging career in films and her wanting to stay East where work was. But for that, their union might have lasted. Gable learned his business over years with stock and performing all over. Josephine Dillon taught him lots before and during their marriage. She helped develop the low voice that became his trademark. Would Gable have made it had there not been Josephine Dillon in his life? By the time he entered talking pictures, Gable was well seasoned and ready for anything, being forceful right from a start on screens. A lot of dynamic players crossed country to enter talkies. Gable among these was exceptional but needed luck to crack lock that was stardom. He never kidded himself or anyone to the contrary, stayed humble as to how he got where he was. I looked around for record of any appearance Gable made with Mary Philips but am so far stumped. Maybe someone more versed in stage history can put us straight.

YOUTH MEETS EXPERIENCE AT MGM? --- I caption thus on one hand, then recall these sprites had been in films near as long as Clark Gable, Rooney in fact a star (in shorts anyway) before CG got prominent. No one no matter who was going to teach Mickey and Judy about performing, while Shirley, without realizing it perhaps, was outclassed and would stay so to Leo’s reckoning. Again, what could she do that Garland and Rooney couldn’t, and leagues better. Metro music and dance staff let her know it, not with tact, and if proof was needed, watch Miss Annie Rooney, done after she flaked out at Metro. Selznick’s was a life raft for Shirley, but did he want her mostly for publicity value of owning Shirley Temple? He surely made hay of her wedding, bought John Agar for a chaser. Garland knew all others at song were behind her pace, was intimidated however by glamour sorts as Lana Turner and Lamarr, but that I suspect was more on personal rather than performing level. Rooney could act, and brilliantly, between calls to his bookmaker. He’d have laughed, probably did, at mention of the Method. To be born instinctively brilliant at anything … must be marvelous. Gable is here to fulfill studio expectation. We have some idea how the youngsters viewed him, Temple perhaps excepted. She would have had little opportunity to know the King, being with Leo so short a time. Gable in any case would wing off to war. Rooney saw him as a sartorial model, probably asked Gable where to shop for or order clothes. Garland was less impressed until Gable told her in the late forties how sick he got of her singing to him every birthday. For “leveling” with her, she grew to like him. Shirley was clearly still in “Junior Miss” category, hence the moppet socks, would play an adolescent in Kathleen, her only MGM vehicle, then radio duty as Corliss Archer, where my former band teacher Priscilla Lyon worked with her, later telling me Shirley was OK but no brain trust.

BELIEVE THIS OR DON’T --- Back captions were no more arbiters of accuracy than what fan magazines poured out monthly, but here was one that, if fiction, was specific enough to at least seem real, but where was it I read that Gable was faking tonsilitis stay-at-home when actually he was sitting out work to show Metro brass a thing or three. Him being absent obliged bosses to contrive something … that is, something believable … to explain truancy. Tonsil trouble was often a fallback for conditions that needed to be blurry, that or appendix, even removal of same where hospital stay was extended. There were some stars who had their appendix out four or five times. What was in California water to make the things grow back? Jean Harlow is here visiting the patient and Mrs. Gable (Rhea). Jean was said to have brought along “Marie Dressler’s projection machine and a print of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, Tugboat Annie.” Mary Astor although not pictured joined the merry group. Who sent that starburst arrangement of flowers? Imagine how they’ll shed on the floor after a week or so. I’d like knowing if Miss Dressler’s machine was 35mm. If so, they would need an operator from the lot to assure a smooth presentation (or invite Babe Hardy, as he after all was once a projectionist). The date stamped is August 21, 1933. Gable and Harlow had by this time co-starred in Red Dust and Hold Your Man. It was generally understood they’d again be a team whenever suitable material was found, which upcoming China Seas and Wife vs. Secretary proved to be. Gable would also be there for Harlow’s last, Saratoga, a virtual eyewitness to her decline and death. He never much liked reminiscing about past films and co-workers, but I assume more than a few asked him to share impressions of Harlow, as fascination for her never abetted, at least not in what remained of Gable’s lifetime. So far as I know at least, he never spoke publicly about her.

DRIVING TO WORK EVEN AS YOU AND I --- Let us say daily commute through Culver City took you past the entrance to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. You’d have seen same faces shlepping to jobs each morning on the Lion lot, over time enough to render them commonplace. You might in fact know them by their transport. “I saw your car the other day” is not untypical a greeting in my parts, advantage (or not?) of living in a small town. Culver City too was small, in past times nearly rural when compared with beehive that was downtowns elsewhere. I routinely pass places where clocks could be set by who enters and when. Here was case if more so for biggest stars out of Leo’s den, many arriving before cock crow to get made up and costumed for another grueling day. Imagine being put to that to make your living. Picture also an intersection and here you are beside Clark Gable waiting for the signal to change. He’s in a sporty convertible, Jaguar’s 1952 XK120 which he had customized to his liking. Think of it ... your vehicle but feet away from that … and him. Would a cheery Good Morning be returned? Let’s say the stop lasts thirty seconds at least, time enough to lean out and complement “Nice wheels” Mr. Gable is driving. Would he say thanks and yours aren’t so bad either? This or something similar on weekly or more basis. After a while, you feel as though you know the guy. “What’s doing today, Clark … finished Lone Star yet?” Neighbors that happen to be film magnets were common Culver currency from silent times when you’d walk streets and all of sudden Laurel/Hardy come running round a corner with a goat in pursuit. You can stand on same streets today and almost picture it happening. Clark Gable was regular guy enough to disdain being driven to work. Besides, he liked showing off whatever he drove and was handy under the hood. Joe Hyams came to interview him once at the Encino ranch and Gable, recognizing carburetor trouble promptly got his tools and fixed Joe’s ride. Watch To Please a Lady sometime for CG doing what he off-the-clock liked best. Wonder who owns this sport number now. It was rediscovered after years in storage, auctioned in 2020 for $276K, then again 2022 where the hammer fell for $311,111. Gable cars are out there and in fair number, as he had many over the years. Imagine owning one, like the Jag for instance. Wish it were mine, but then I'd finally have to learn to drive a straight gear.

UPDATE 2/2/2025: Ever resourceful and informative Lou Lumenick has sent along the below image to clear up Greenbriar question as to when Clark Gable and Mary Philips worked together on stage. Many thanks to Lou for this rare find:

Ads and Oddities #8

 

Ad/Odds: Promising What The Bride of Frankenstein Won't Deliver

What did the title, Bride of Frankenstein, suggest to its public? Surely a marriage, and then consummation? Did 1935 viewership understand “Frankenstein” to be man or monster? We’d soon enough conflate the two, even Frankenstein’s son Wolf commented on this before detraining at cursed village of his birth. The monster needed a name and so took one … why not his creator’s? “That is my brother?” asked Wolf to Ygor as they gazed upon Karloff’s monster, to which Ygor replied yes, but his mother was the lightning, this mere logical conclusion from 1935 that yes, there would be a bride, and no, she’d not just be for Henry Frankenstein, as who’d care of vow taken by Colin Clive and Valerie Hobson? Latter pair would merely mate, be parents to Wolf and later Ludwig, no especial outcome in itself. What was wanted, intensely so, was pairing off for the monster, as in nuptials followed by nights of monstrous passion, captured hopefully on camera (again cue Jerry Colonna: I can dream, can’t I?). Patrons knew they’d not get this, to which Universal merchandising says perhaps not, but what is imagination but sweeter alternative to reality always a disappointment? At least there was salve of a billboard-sized twenty-four sheet (above), the Bride and her brute in splendid union, this for fevered brains to chew upon through seventy-five minutes of something less than what the poster promised.

Where dealing with monsters coupling, invention could go amok. Bride was not a little like previous year’s Tarzan and His Mate, which let proper Jane join uninhibitedly with savage that was Tarzan, their meeting and initial seduction settled a season before that, Tarzan and His Mate given to continued consummation over a feature’s length. It gave in short what audiences paid for and were there to see. Frustration for Bride of Frankenstein and those who’d expect payoff on its title was focus on the potential husband for almost all of length and his affianced at tail end only, a ceremony “blown to atoms” by her rebuff not only of him but their audience aroused by promise of this union. At least give the pair a night, if not a honeymoon. I wonder if complaints were aired upon patron exit, one of those manager-in-the-office-with-his-door-closed occasions. Word must have spread that here was a non-starter, or wet fuse of a finisher. By the time Aurora issued its plastic model Bride in the sixties, we were too aware that she/he were not and never were united, so what matter if what we built was the Bride alone on creator Henry’s table, with no one else in attendance. Unlike other of Aurora monsters, the Bride was not an “action” figure, prone and unattended besides. If I’m recalling right, the Bride was priced fifty cents higher than models also offered, and perhaps for that reason, plus popularity presumed less than the others, she is today a most collectible, especially with cellophane wrapped as if still on sixties store shelves.

Bride’s twenty-four sheet seems to me avant garde, ahead-of-its-time, visionary, a thing I’d more expect of modern artist rethink of these characters and their application to pop culture. This Bride in a lowcut wedding gown looks ready to fling her bouquet to a lucky maid of honor (Minnie perhaps?). Colors suggest an electric melding of soul and bodies … note her hair. Such unique depiction reminds me more of European posters to invariably best us at selling, only regret not being told who the painter here was. A Bride who exults in her submission is one we could wish upon the feature itself. Artists often expressed desire pent up also in viewers, both camps knowing their fantasy would not be fulfilled by movies then under ruling thumb of Code and convention. Other ad and poster depictions were as bold … I’m satisfied these interpreters saw barest synopsis of story they’d illustrate, otherwise how did one come up with the Monster crawling on knees to propose to what looks a ferocious future Bride? Were artists guided by memories of tumultuous courtships they had earlier engaged?

Announcements of product, often in advance even of production, loosed every sort of imagining as to what The Bride of Frankenstein would say and show. Almost never would fulfillment satisfy the fantasy. Sort of reminds me of comic books and pulp covers given to sci-fi themes where confines were no more than an active mind could conceive. It was a given that advertising exaggerated, but advance art for Bride proposed narratives wholly unlike intent, let alone execution, to be eventually seen in theatres. The Bride of Frankenstein being baroque by conception loosed all of bats in a belfry that was exploitation and its cork-out anticipation of what marriage for monsters might add up to. These artists weren’t given scripts to abide by. All they knew was that Frankenstein was coming back and this time his creation would do his own procreating. Possibilities emerged endless from basis like this. How could final result however artistic be anything other than anti-climax? Had I in 1935 been lured by that twenty-four sheet, let alone trade ads viewed over previous year’s run-up to release, could the feature be anything other than a letdown?

Who's for Tales Told Quick and Short?

 

Pulp Books, Pulp Movies --- Where's the Difference?

Remember when Arthur Mayer booked The Lost Patrol after nobody else wanted to? He knew what they did not … that The Lost Patrol was a Pulp Movie, one made with men, for men, of action. At least ones that dreamt of action. Most limited participation to slump in fleapit seats where exertion by others wash over them, life as lived vicarious through characters living fuller. Pulp reading did that for a sedentary majority, those not actually pearl-diving or private-detecting. Every kind of experience we would never know was put within reach of Pulps, Walter Mitty the character more men actually resembled, like it or don’t. Pulp magazines took you places you wanted to go without really going. None of dreary exposition like mainstream novels. Transport to fantasy got done within a paragraph, or someone else would be writing the next paragraph. Pulps sold way, way more than other books. Damn their eyes for waste upon such rubbish, but pulps were reading too. Did they educate well as anything taught by school or college? What vocabulary we get is got from what we choose to read. I’ll venture fans pulp-enough devoted could write same of their own after minimal exposure to the form. In fact, a lot of them did. How many distinguished scribes emerged in the twentieth century by rolling their own via pulps, “Big Little Books,” or Dime Novels? Radio taught too, like spoken word now. Then came television and everything after that was visual. Comic books especially. What is read anymore but “texts”? I’m awed by past scribes generating five, six thousand words per day for sake not of art but of eating. Penny-a-word was as often pulp’s rate. Raymond Chandler once lived on soup for five days till finally twenty dollars came through for a sold story.

Movie scripters led a largely pulp life, but at pay almost unseemly for its yield. Some felt guilty taking such money for junk they were obliged to write. Dream of any pulper was Hollywood and ease conferred, as told by Frank Gruber in a 1967 memoir, The Pulp Jungle. He had friends who made the jump to live large, like Steve Fisher who sold I Wake Up Screaming to Fox in 1941 for seventy-five hundred, “a very handsome price for a mystery.” This was up from two hundred fifty to five hundred customarily got by free-lancers from picture-makers during the thirties. Chandler took $3,500 from Fox for The High Window because it had been a successful novel, this after RKO gave him $2,000 for Farewell, My Lovely. Screenwriters knew the value of having a prior novel in their kit, status gotten above ones who toiled for flickers or had a pulp past. Best money came of invitation to work with seasoned directors, like Chandler called by Billy Wilder to help with Double Indemnity, a job he hated but for $10,500 Paramount paid. Enough pulp writers slid under Hollywood doors to influence storytelling there. Pulp Movies emerged from the liaison, factory-generated film much the better for speed and expertise these artisans brought to mass production they understood well. In fact, Hollywood was a rest cure for most. Frank Gruber never had life so good as when churning thrillers, westerns … many westerns, at feature-length and the more prolifically for television. A postwar paperback revolution fed genre formula like slop to hogs, spin-rack America insatiable for what cost a quarter and was enjoyed at half-mast attention. We may safely credit paperbacks for much called “noir,” even if smallest percentage of PB’s eventually got to screens.

Genres were fruit of pulpy trees, often disguised by lush production. Best pulp was purest, done cheapest at a least severe length. The fifties was Gold Era to feed off pulp or what was left of it, plus paperbacks taking pulp’s place. To westerns derived from pulp you’d not associate Red River, but Borden Chase wrote it, no one more adept at pulp than he. Series cowboys were pulp for youngsters or youth-at-heart, as were serials, latter an ongoing triumph of pulp sensibility. Lush and for-everybody westerns gave way to pulp depending on star standing and changed overall circumstance. Tom Mix was a nation’s hero in the twenties, came somewhat down with talkies to a series for Universal, his audience understood now to be Pulp Kids, whom he served splendidly with Destry Rides Again (1932), a Max Brand story which had sold a million copies and bought the author an Italian villa. Reality of pulp was ongoing status as Best-Selling American literature, whether intellects liked it or not. Mix rode pulp to the finish, his serial The Miracle Rider a masterpiece of the mindset, then radio where pulp was a guiding light, or voice. “Tom Mix” survived even unto comic books long after the man passed on. Horror was product more of pulps than other media, certainly movies which shied from the style once censorship and complaints became manifest. Still, there were Pulp Chills, if much milder than what magazines with their lurid covers pledged. These were cut-rate like what newsstands sold for dimes, and a dime for most part got you in to see Boris Karloff in his bent science lot for Columbia, then Bela Lugosi roughly the same when not grave despoiling at Monogram or PRC. Class horror was a done deal it seemed, but then came Val Lewton.

Lewton made poetic chillers that were designed as, and sold as, pulp. Pleasant surprise Cat People frustrated expectations but in a flattering way, a parlor, or auditorium, trick Lewton got away with but once. Follow-up titles and merchandising stayed lurid per RKO dictate, Lewton yanking bone from wolf mouths by denying what they came to see, I Walked With a Zombie pulp that proved to be something else, The Leopard Man not about a man becoming a leopard, but wearing the disguise of one. Watchers complained, exhibitors listened, receipts fell off. Ideal Pulp Chillers in concept were being made by a man determined not to supply them, frustrating to a studio wedded since way back to precepts of pulp, two-thirds of yearly output cut from cloth ragged as edge of a ten-cent magazine. Stars who kept prestige address elsewhere took downward drive to RKO, but served well needs of those who chose action rapid and uncomplicated. Richard Dix, Victor McLaglen, Chester Morris … these and more kept sleeves rolled up for a next fight to engage or mutiny to quell. Each would do enough at RKO to be genres in themselves. Maybe McLaglen listened to Arthur Mayer when The Lost Patrol blew into Gotham on Rialto wings, knew thenceforth who his audience was and determined never to let them down. Aforementioned names were combined where fighting pals was the text, two-for-one if second-featured for your single ticket, stories mighty familiar from past issues of Adventure or Argosy. McLaglen took a freak of an Academy Award in midst of brawling but didn’t let that swell his punched-up head. Remarkable what polish vets could apply to humble surface. Look especially at Dix for The Ghost Ship with Lewton, a pulp elevated to eloquent.

Hot off the Film Daily’s August 10, 1938 wire: “House record smashed at the Rialto on Broadway … biggest take in almost three years since Arthur Mayer took the house over … the picture is made to order for the Rialto trade.” And so it was for Smashing the Rackets, game but less gamey than yarns woven into Spicy Detective’s latest number, or other of pulps lining newsstands. RKO lived by limits publishers did not. One was that Chester Morris as a dynamic D.A. must not skirt due process to crack Bruce Cabot’s syndicate. A telling scene has Chet putting suspects behind closed door where it’s implied (by a recording device) that confessions will be beaten out of them, trickery revealed after miscreants outside are scared into owning up truth and enabling arrest by square shooter Morris. Pulp authority would administer torture for real or shoot the lot to hasten justice, difference being what could be done in print vis a vis cops cuffed by a strict screen Code. Film-depicted officers carried guns but were largely estopped from using them. Later noir detectives, private eyes especially, resorted seldom to firearms used willy-nilly in pulps, and certainly law must not be taken into one’s own hand. Constant dialogue warnings emphasized this, strict out-of-bounds to empty all six from your roscoe into thugs that have it coming. Cop-and- robbing toughened up after the war but could not keep pace with what paperbacks were giving, and for cheap. There emerged dividing lines between class noir and independents down-market enough to at least suggest freedoms pulp enjoyed. The Accused for instance from Paramount was flip side of crime coin from T-Men and others of independent origin, latter stripping kid gloves to serve their public rawer meat.

Pulp Noir brings out for many the best of a genre that, like other genres, and more so literature bound in paper and pocket-size, defined much of pastime in terms of cheapness and convenience. Screen noir was given over to independent filmmakers after major studios realized there was too little money in it (Zanuck memo-wondered why Fox should do them at all). RKO continued apace because theirs had been bare threads to begin with, so yes to Armored Car Robbery, The Threat, others B/W and peeping over one hour’s running time. Novels at twenty-five cent cost bred films made for seemingly not much more, The Killing Kubrick’s salute to stripped-down literature half-baked and in a hurry. Celebrated Touch of Evil came from a dog-eared paperback, many saying later on that these and ones like them were perfect wedding between two sorts of disreputable formats. Pretty soon it got to where majors stayed off crime and dark themes, unless stars were cast: Rogue Cop at Metro, Violent Saturday from Twentieth. A gimmick plus hot source material could help something humble seem special, like I, The Jury lately out on 3-D Blu-Ray to help us understand why people paid to see Biff Elliot play Mike Hammer ($1.6 million in worldwide rentals was better than most cheap noirs took). Kid Pulp Westerns would be displaced after the war by Plain Pulp Westerns designed for everybody plus kids, elements of the old left in (George “Gabby” Hayes kept working), and many in color, if otherwise economical. Frank Gruber wrote some, hirers knowing he’d be fast and moderately coherent (Silver City a fair example, his script from a Luke Short story). “Class” westerns stood out like twisted toes, High Noon too rich for posterity’s blood. If westerns must be A and with major stars, let Borden Chase write them, like with Anthony Mann output featuring J. Stewart.

Certain players seemed born to night-set and rain-slick, like Sterling Hayden, Victor Mature. They did Pulp Westerns too, by cartloads. Fellows like Rory Calhoun and Guy Madison hung their own shingles to be Pulp Cowboys and earn more independently than major companies were willing to pay. Pulp sensibility extended to science-fiction after top dogs failed to draw sufficient profit from spaceman themes, War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet dressed in long pants to go out and earn knickers money. Sci-fi would be cut henceforth from pulpwood to better satisfaction of many, then and maybe more so now, as look at love for a Brain from Planet Arous or even Plan 9 from Outer Space. Universities don’t teach pulp or paperbacks … or do they? Films from scurvy source often make our best films, so there is gateway to art for words otherwise printed, then forgot. There have been fads for lowly categories, cast-off-when-new genres. Film noir seems here to stay as idol from the old, where precode hot during the nineties seems less so now. Does old finally become too old? I remember the Rat Pack being celebrated, but that seems to have cooled. Have they become dangerous to like? Serials and series westerns went with generations that processed them new. I couldn’t coax Tom Mix or Rocketman upon anyone with a free meal or cruise tickets. Comedy seems stabilized. If you grew up liking Keaton, Chaplin, the lot, chances are you still do, but are there converts to the cause, and if so, how many per annum might we guess? I expressed surprise before that pulp enthusiasts still exist, let alone meet. Postwar paperbacks sell on eBay, the rarer ones for uncommon money, and I bet they even get read, especially since thank heaven, the things aren’t being freeze-dried into frightful look-but-never-touch slabs as are comic books.

Parkland Picks with Popcorn #6

 

Pop Goes: From Hell It Came, Urban Cowboy, and A Gathering of Eagles

FROM HELL IT CAME (1957) --- “Omnivorous” entered my vocabulary via 1964 TV listing for From Hell It Came, the word used to describe a tree feeding upon those upon whom “It” wishes to revenge itself. Other sci-fi had worse premises, few duller at executing them, though there is sedative effect and capacity to carry one back to sweet sleep of childhood, my daytime summon to Morpheus a mirror to what happened sixty years before when Hell’s omnivore was late night uprooted by Channel 12 out of Winston-Salem. Why endless dialogue to explain circumstance obvious to most childish of minds? An uprooted tree now ambulatory seeks those who oppressed it in life. Why take 71 minutes to explain such so clinically? From Hell It Came seems a cynical enterprise, fraud practiced upon 1957 children’s allowance and those who’d come to a drive-in to actually watch movies. Co-feature was The Disembodied and that wasn’t much better. Ones who care tend to be completist. They want all or nothing of 50’s science-fiction, none too obscure so long as it is sci-fi. I understand such mentality up to point of Reptilicus on multi-disc Blu-Ray with foreign version plus American release as part of package, for which many will rejoice. Merit matters less with sci-fi because what we want is fantastic content, a monster or two preferred, credible monsters optional, in fact the less credible the better. From Hell It Came played TCM in HD, and I see also that Warner Archive has a Blu-Ray. Any and all that is monstrous sells, it seems, and more power to their continuing to do so.

URBAN COWBOY (1980) --- Were there discarded mechanical bulls for sale after vogue for them passed in the early eighties? I recall a few let go after bars learnt their lesson a hard surface way, folks thrown, more than a few intoxicated, heads conked, shoulders broke. You had to sign a release to ride, but many sued anyhow. Hard truth to all: Don’t try imitating movies, no matter how popular. Urban Cowboy was made forty-five years ago. Seemed at the time it would rinse off by-then stink of disco and give us back to nature that was country/western, music of the people if show-bizzed out of natural state. “Gilly’s” of filming location fame went south when the site went Hollywood, doom assured by Andy Warhol and like metropolitans slumming by to profane the sawdust. John Travolta of Jersey origin seemed on surface wrong but proved just right and got the Texas spirit plus dance he adapted from Saturday Night Fever and Grease prior, a star after fashion of his idol James Cagney, who Travolta palled with and regarded his role model in addition to boyhood idol. Urban Cowboy stands among outstanding modern Texas treatments Giant, Hud, maybe others I’ve forgot or haven’t seen so far. Robert Evans of Godfather and Chinatown fame produced. I wish shelf life for such talent were longer then, H’wood set so on self-destruct to coke out generations of talent. Mickey Gilly looked back on Paramount trucks filling up his honky tonk lot when work started, the place never to be the same again. Initially an average size, Gilley and shadowy partner Sherwood Cryer added on till environ was five acres big, capacity three to four thousand at post-Cowboy peak.

Everyone wanted to experience Gilley’s and would drive from states away to do so. Gilley and Cryer “turned sideways” as former later put it, sued one another, followed by fire to swallow whole of the business, Cryer figured to have struck the match, or arranged for blaze. He and Gilley are both gone, Cryer’s name besmirched by suspicion re fire loss, though some defend him at You Tube comments and elsewhere. Seems to me based on Cryer’s legend and repute that he was sort of a Longhorn Moe Green. I’ve sometimes wondered what it would have been like to be raised in Texas, or Arizona, places like that. One could speculate as much of New York or Jersey after seeing Saturday Night Fever, but by my reckon you could keep Gotham other than for access to Automats, picture palaces, or closer proximity to 16mm collectors and memorabilia shows (and even Automats are years gone now --- so are poster shows for that matter). Point is culture of both NY and Texas are so distinct as to stamp anyone hailing from them, but then one could say a same of any distinct point of origin. Are there states regarded as plain vanilla and therefore unworthy of movies set within them? Drifting off subject I realize, but Urban Cowboy does make me sort of wish to have known Texas for more than just a couple of visits there. Like Saturday Night Fever, Urban Cowboy has compelling conflicts beside the music, dance, and Gilley glitz. Travolta vs. Scott Glenn over Debra Winger has real tension for Glenn being wiry and dangerous, this the actor’s breakout part. Industry today would be bleak ground for a Scott Glenn equivalent, him and certainly his “Wes Hightower” character the very definition of “problematic.” There was a soundtrack for Urban Cowboy to bode for country among biggest waves music ever rode, though some said purity of the form was watered by west (and east) coast finagling. No style was ever “pure” to begin with, but Cowboy at least helped give country/western urban appeal, and so far has kept it that way.

A GATHERING OF EAGLES (1963) --- Was A Gathering of Eagles a last hurrah for US military preparedness? Well, maybe not if you consider the Top Gun movies of much later. Eagles is sober/serious in showing sacrifice men made to keep us safe from enemy attack. Would we have been eventual targets had these guardians stood down? Cold war protection policies would be called into question because of course nothing actually happened during their watch, that being whole idea of standing watch of course. Rock Hudson, Rod Taylor, and guarding crew make message clear with aid of Air Force hardware made available when films did not disparage them, a relationship not to last much longer. In fact, A Gathering of Eagles soon seemed a relic in terms of attitude if not execution, off radars since 1963 save a Universal By-Demand disc from old elements, but at least they are intended scope and not “adapted,” so on a good enough screen or wall mount, it will do. A Gathering of Eagles is essentially Rock Hudson doing what Gregory Peck did in Twelve O’Clock High, only these aren’t combat missions, but test alerts where tension comes of speed getting aloft and preventing errors that would queer a real response if one were needed. Stress on personal lives is focal, Hudson’s marriage in jeopardy, Barry Sullivan drinking too much, ousted because of it, then attempting suicide, Rod Taylor too right a guy to drive junior officers ruthlessly as he should. Strategic Air Command is no place to be soft says Rock, relationships be hanged where performance must come first. Enforcer to that is Kevin McCarthy, counting seconds upon which rank and authority hang. Procedure is the show here, A Gathering of Eagles all-systems go to maintain attention and interest.