Showmen Sell It Hot #2

 

Showmen: Silent Standout, Peggy in Color Print, Mush to See Smith, and Lubitsch Chopped Down

RIDE, HORSEMEN, RIDE (1921) --- Show them this to demonstrate how a silent feature can captivate viewership readily as it did a hundred years back, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse my … anyone’s … best argument against the silent era as hopeless antiquity. Quality has been fine a long time, Kevin Brownlow and team having rescued and refurbished Four Horsemen when to do so with silents was bold stuff (1993). That remains attitude now, though I’d argue restorations of pre-talk have risen in at least niche estimation, judging by online interest when titles emerge from century-long hibernation. Thirty-two years seems eons to those who follow ancient action interrupted by titles with music hopefully to propel both, Warner Archive taking ’93 rehab of ’21 effort to new height the fruit of digital makeover and visuals improved the more. To reiterate: Four Horsemen is not just for those long put to apologizing for film without talk. This is vigorous, fleet-pace epic telling of Great War impact on an Argentinian clan with roots in countries soon to face off on Euro battlefields. We seldom see sweep of this sort by modern tellers, and I wonder not at all that The Four Horsemen was long considered flat out the best not only of silent movies, but movies overall. Above revival ad dates from late 1926, consensus putting Four Horsemen at a top of All-Time lists. Someone asked John Wayne decades later to list his favorites and he included this, as would leagues of others no longer with us perhaps, but evidence of what and why they exulted is here for Blu-ray consumption. Risking contradiction perhaps, I’d say only The Birth of a Nation passed Four Horsemen for pennant that was perfection in filmmaking before voicing commenced. My not mentioning Rudolph Valentino so far is merely to affirm Horsemen would be a same landmark with or without the star born therein, though rest assured, his is the spark to ignite and hold narrative grip. Valentino was a vital if not saving grace of any show he was in, being bonus here to what is remarkable already, Rudy a linchpin among many to keep our attention undivided. Do suspend whatever doubt lingers at prospect of sitting for a silent, let alone at two hour plus length, and give this a try. It’s in all ways a viewing revelation.

ROTOGRAVURE OF OUR DREAMS --- Sometimes a frameable keepsake came no more expensive than whatever a Sunday edition cost in 1941, weekend inserts tendering color portraiture of stars and up-comers Hollywood groomed for top placement. One of these was Peggy Moran, she of lineage that was pinup photographer Earl Moran, raising question in my mind, was Peggy ever a subject for Dad’s camera? She surfaced at a Burbank autograph show I attended during the nineties. None of us forgot Peggy so long as The Mummy’s Hand unspooled somewhere, which it had and relentlessly would from release to TV along with other Universal monsters in 1957. Those who toiled in such then-minor films (in Mummy’s case 1940) had faint grasp of what their work meant to those who came upon their efforts on childhood television. We must all have seemed absurd, if not developmentally blocked, to Peggy and peers who stayed enough years to meet fans for work never figured to last beyond first-runs and likely oblivion after. I threw Peggy a curve by asking not about the Mummy, but instead Deanna Durbin. Don’t recall the specific question or her answer. Peggy Moran like many starlets toiled through minor parts in important films and major parts in unimportant films with a goal same as many a hire at the time … locate a mate with good prospects and settle down in comfort with family to follow. Peggy did that and prospered, director Henry Koster her pick and both living well as he went on directing features into the sixties (The Singing Nun his finale). It was said she had considerable influence over creative decisions Koster made. Pinups of the sort shown here were kept by fans who’d hang them or create scrapbooks. Image quality speaks for itself. I’d mention that no daily around NC had color content like this alongside Sunday funnies, although perhaps a few got round to it in 1941 when Peggy’s image appeared. If they had, and I’d been around with scissors, surely albums would have made by me rather than collecting them decades on from old timers present during glory publishing days.

HURRY DOGS, SHOW STARTS SOON! --- Exhibitor comments were trade gust of honesty against gale of hyperbole the lot of industry-controlled press. Twas ever thus except where are today's showmen speaking truth to power that controls flow of industry data? What managers wrote and mailed to exhibitor magazines could be took to bank by colleagues hardened by lies via engines run on lies, or to put it kind, gross exaggeration. Gleaned from above commentary was “team-cutter” being a dog sled, oft-means of conveyance for those amidst “rural population” of Sturgis, Saskatchewan. Wish I could access a photo of their Regal Theatre, but would lens freeze where trying to capture such place? Reference is made to temperatures at fifty-nine below, which surprises me that humans survive in cold so severe, let alone could drive dogs ten miles to see Whispering Smith, which we know was/is a swell 1948 western, but this good? Imagine parking the pack outside while seeing Smith in comparative Regal warmth (did they brag of comfort at ten degrees above freezing?). Local friend told me of his uncle and boy-chums in 1943 tying ponies in front of our Allen Theatre for Son of Dracula, a commonplace on local streets at that time. “Everyone was happy as could be” might sum up attendees to hard-earn pleasure of a day out for films. I often walked to the Liberty (apx. a mile) and for it felt righteous, especially where there was snow on the ground and surfaces limited to foot traffic. We saw For a Few Dollars More in such circumstance, not a little spooky where no vehicles were present upon exit onto Main Street. Our Liberty, like the mail, always ran.

GOOD AS BROADWAY FOR A FRACTION OF MONEY --- To beat Broadway’s time was a dream seldom attained by outlier cinemas, but distributors sometimes flattered us by playing specials day-and-date with New York first-runs, venues separated from the Main Stem by a state if not several states here offering The Merry Widow at popular prices while ultimate up-towners were still paying two dollars to see the Astor roadshow. What went unmentioned in these ads was what came with The Merry Widow at the Astor, Major Bowes of amateur hour fame doing his radio broadcast live from the theatre’s lobby. Just entering was splendor enough, arc lights outside giving off a “weird blue mist” to fall upon observers up/down the block (was that stuff toxic?). Special treat Astor patronage got, unwittingly as things turn out, was a complete Merry Widow which late in the engagement got a censor haircut, instruction sent on 10/29/34 to all Metro exchanges that Code-commanded trims, significant ones, were to be made immediately. This played havoc to prints, and integrity, of The Merry Widow, fated henceforth to go in denuded state. Irving Thalberg, who fought the edict vigorously, made sure a complete print survived for posterity’s sake. This fortunately is what we see today, but not what audiences were inflicted by for a remainder of 1934 and into 1935. All general release prints were physically, and hurriedly, cut prior to all engagements in every territory, disrupting the flow of dialogue and music. Surely a public noticed, and resented, damage so severe to an otherwise sparkling Ernst Lubitsch musical comedy. A strict-enforced Production Code would cast its baleful shadow over screens everywhere, viewers crying foul where they saw evidence of vandalism such as was done here. We’re blessed that Irving Thalberg took action to rescue The Merry Widow and preserve it as Lubitsch intended.

Thanks to precode authority Mark Vieira for Production Code info on The Merry Widow.

Further Sci-Fi Sampling ...

 

Ackerman Owed Us All An Apology for Endorsing the Above

Fruit That is Fantasy Ripens With Age

I sort of “collected” genre pictures from television before there was such thing as accumulating them on tape, discs, later 16mm. This was mid-1964 when simply seeing something conferred brag rights, if not to neighbor boys, then at least to my mirror image. There was next door occupant who saw The Killer Shrews theatrically in 1959 and swore it reached a summit of scary. What others saw that I had not seen was an advantage they knew would bedevil me. A cousin clung to The Mysterians as rare artifact I’d never know. Time well spent was any Saturday afternoon that Charlotte’s Channel 9 would offload a previously unseen title, say Monster from the Ocean Floor, which need not be good so long as I saw it and could subsequently say that I’d seen it. Merit was never at issue one way or the other. Channel 9 ran Forbidden Planet flat, B/W, wretched in all ways and cut for ninety minutes besides, but no matter, I was there and could pin on the merit badge. There were no books or listings to tell how long these films were supposed to be. It was in ways like going into jungles to look for lost species, victory the sweeter where one stayed awake longest to achieve a goal, like when The Monster of Piedras Blancas showed up one midnight. Again, who cared how tedious a view it was, as morning would hang another trophy upon my viewing wall. I have in recent weeks raided tombs housing sci-fi, some new to me and joining an ever-expanded list, plus ones not visible for a past sixty years (like Monster from the Ocean Floor). Happy to report they play better than before, even so-called worst ones, especially those, bad or worse a relative term to ones dedicated enough. Science fiction has the built-in advantage of knowing that an alien, or monster, or possessed, thus dangerous, friend or family, will turn up somehow within seventy or so minutes, this alone our basis to stay.

Ten-Year-Olds Need Their Sleep, But I Forfeited Mine to See Monster from Piedras Blancas

Science-fiction paid, but only up to a point.  Spending beyond that was generally a loser proposition. Did wider audiences (that is, grown-ups) look on sci-fi as pulpy, childish, or both? Attitudes would change by the seventies, a point where perhaps we all had arrived at pulpy and childish. One might figure the fifties for summit of interest, which in many ways it was, what with fascination for space travel and other worlds, yet look at tepid reception to War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, and Forbidden Planet. There arose a barrier to budgets across an industry by 1956. Spend at your peril on space themes … leave them instead to scavengers. Ideas were big even as budgets were not. Visionary things could be done with minor money. Want oversize on terms of dinosaurs or moon monsters? Use puppets, animation, or blown-up lizards. Audiences mostly children didn’t mind. Everyone seemed to understand limit of resources and so grooved with them. I prefer cheapies to plusher carpet for artistry applied to them. To begin at beginnings, Roger Corman for instance, there was Monster from the Ocean Floor done with less than peanuts. The monster was absent from nearly whole of length, but given diminished expectation, we didn’t and don’t mind. This was 1954, when such a title and certainly such execution belonged to exploitation bills that teens and their little siblings would alone attend. There was a sweet, if narrow, spot between outlay and receipts that enabled Corman and his kind to move forward and make more monsters. He had help too that displayed real talent, as for sure he did.

Did Folks Paying Their Way To See Creature from the Haunted Sea Really Expect to See This?

A writer named Charles Griffith did horrors, wearied of horrors, then made comedy out of horrors. One he and Corman assembled was Creature from the Haunted Sea, lately out on Blu-Ray from Film Masters, a company to watch for fanta-gems. Creature came of “Filmgroup,” a shingle Roger and brother Gene Corman hung to realize dollars they’d otherwise be rooked out of by partners Jim and Sam at AIP. Roger had a thankfully long life to recount how he stayed just ahead of snakes in gardens that was “Hollywood,” a place he seldom moved in mainstreams of. His and handiwork of others was cheap, but not dumb. Actors weren't for swapping winks as in lame case of moderns inspired by Corman and likes. We note effort lent these projects, pros being pros whatever surface absurdity they’d face. To look back may be to laugh, but also to admire craft if not content, plus commitment to see them through. I met Beverly Garland at an autograph show thirty or so years ago and among other things on her signing table was a still from The Alligator People with her in clutches of titular fiend, Beverly looking scared as though men really could grow gator snouts and rampage accordingly. I held up the photo and asked her what she was thinking where posed thus. “The paycheck” was all she said and all that needed saying.

Just Him Makes It Worth My 70 Minutes To Watch

The Colossus of New York turned up in a Kino box set. Paramount released it with The Space Children in 1958 when black-and-white combos still were viable, the pair having distribution advantage and getting greater trade respect than scratch-penny AIP’s. Like weirdies from Universal, these were steps above what independents might manage, Para and MGM for instance good for one, maybe two, thrill couplings per annum, usually during summer months. With regard rentals, Paramount might wonder if chasing after AIP’s market was worth it, for instance: The Colossus of New York earned $234K in domestic rentals, The Space Children $243K. Considering they ran mostly together, you could credit $477K to the combo, which after factoring foreign receipts, whatever those were, likely came to profit, if modest. Freaky chills done as much for laughs, at least going in, earned better still, Para prospering off The Blob ($711K), plus co-chair I Married a Monster from Outer Space ($283K). I came across The Colossus of New York featured in a FILMFAX (#16) from August 1989, contributing editor Al Taylor scoring an interview with actor Ross Martin in 1981, just months before Martin’s passing, great reminiscences to enhance Colossus viewing, reminder again what a resource FILMFAX is for vintage genre lore. What I notice going over past issues was how fan needles have moved in forty years since #16 was out. FILMFAX has only recently stopped publishing. Its focus was films from the silent era through the fifties, emphasis kept on older players and titles. Seems we now celebrate, at least at You Tube, movies from the eighties forward, latter decade itself forty years back. Everyone is entitled to their own nostalgia, that to naturally revolve around childhood or adolescence. Magazines during the eighties that monitored then-new fantasy/fear topics included Fangoria, Cinefantastique, others. I see by Google that Fangoria still thrives, having started in 1979. Has any genre fan publication lasted so long? Two occur offhand, Midnight Marquee and Little Shoppe of Horrors, former having begun in the sixties, Shoppe productive since the early seventies.

Something Tells Me Mr. Vargas Did Not Base His Art on Characters Seen in World Without End

We get but so much from far-fetch stories. Balance of narratives must rely upon conflict per usual for melodrama, be it family, romantic, whatever common threads weave through yarns set then, now, or fanciful future in this world or another. The Colossus of New York engages for its dead brought back to mechanical life, but also for brother rivals seeking scientist dad’s approval, one sibling intent to skip interval for mourning to claim the other’s widow, something Zachary Scott might do to Dane Clark so as to access Joan Crawford were this Warners of a previous decade. Point here is that however robot or brain transplanting goes, we still are dealing with conflicts basic to all, if exaggerated per custom of movies. I enjoy Colossus a lot for playing straight against science gone reliably amok and veteran Otto Kruger, his customary splendid, called upon to exchange dialogue with a seven foot metal man voiced just offscreen by Ross Martin, latter giving account of this to FILMFAX and boy, did it ratchet up my attention. Of sci-fi lensed in color there were fewer instances, all-a-more noteworthy when scope plus color was the lure. How many besides World Without End served such heaping fifties plate? WWE bore Allied Artists label and might have achieved greater grandeur if not for spending confined to color and wide but with settings confined, astronauts traveled through time not able to go outdoors because mutants are everywhere (couldn’t similar conditions keep all of us in the house nowadays?). Pinup artist Alberto Vagas came aboard to do pin-ups for poster use, these alluring but no way what the movie tendered. World Without End sat among AA fanta-science and horror titles for syndication purpose, thus us getting the lot on Saturday mornings via High Point’s Channel 8, visual values of WWE lost thanks to black-and-white broadcast and merciless cropping, lately corrected by Warner Archive with its very fine Blu-Ray.

Cuss Their System All You Like, But This Commie Crew Had It All Over Us for Special-Effects

Extras Choose: Play Dead Here, or Be Dead in Siberian Salt Mines

Rehab for begotten sci-fi takes in ones obscure that for years seemed altogether gone, like previous topic Battle of the Worlds. These per usual need not have merit to those who seek them. Latest along such line is First Spaceship on Venus, for which Col. Forehand gave me a pressbook with a full-color cover, novelty in itself. Despite having and tendering the PB, he had no plan to play the feature, thus I’d wait till now to catch up on what Eastern Bloc filmmakers were doing re space themes while we worried about them teaming up against free nations including our own. One thing potential aggressors did have was expertise with special fx, our interplanetary screen travels way short of theirs for conviction. Happy solution was to either buy iron-curtain work outright for domestic release or pull footage from them to sweeten our cheaper efforts. First Spaceship on Venus had (again) color plus scope, here a bushel barrel to leave US rivals at starting gates. With Soviets and their satellites so capably depicting orbits beyond our own, how soon before they’d cross Atlantic water to enslave us all? I recall stunned reaction friends had when Moon Mullins ran off his 35mm trailer for Sword and the Dragon with its seeming millions of extras doing battle and leaving corpses piled up mountain-high. To my own gee-whizz over extras falling en masse, a fellow watcher noted that hapless players had no choice but to show up and work. Did our defense system keep an eye on Russian-and-kin fantasy output? If so, they’d have plenty basis to be Red-scared, considering skill of Soviet efforts. Talk about stolen valor, borrowed valor, or whatever that term is, how's about our buying up such impressive work by unknowns (who’d stay that way) for mere morsel, Americanzing names for changed credits, then slapping on AIP or Crown-International or whatever logos hardly deserved the association with such stellar effort.

There Was Something Distinctly "Other" About Euro Sci-Fi ... Recent Blu-Rays All the More Revelatory 

Another lately watched was same sort of porridge, Ikarie XB-1, released here, and by Jim/Sam, as Voyage to the End of the Universe in 1963, another that the Liberty tossed onto bier that was Saturday night “late show” at 9:30 pm only so I could not possibly attend. Again the wait for seeming eternity, though at least now there is the original Czech version, with subtitles, improved visuals, pretty much an art film, but who wants to know beyond hardest core fans of a genre on most obscure setting. Back round to Creature from the Haunted Sea mentioned earlier, but worth lauding again for comedic departure from norm that was serious, at least intended so, sci-fi. Here was hipster fun poked at a genre on by-then fumes (1961), even hipsters tired of laffing at themes their juniors long since jeered and heaved popcorn boxes at. This time the monster being silly (“ping-pong ball eyes”) was a given and Creature’s cast could slum. Was it OK now to take brakes off irony? Writers (like Charles Griffith here) were out-loud spoofing late shows old as they were (Antony Carbone pleasingly summons spirit of Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not), fun for all except ones who came expecting to be scared by monsters. These would feel ripped-off and bitch loudly to managers, who’d then carry complaints to trades. Fun was fun, as in Creature from the Haunted Sea, A Bucket of Blood, and Little Shoppe of Horrors, etcetera, but business tended light toward thrillers viewership preferred straight. Customers chose when to laugh, generally at rather than with, action on the screen. They didn't like being prompted along such lines. As familiarity bred contempt, science-fiction, let alone ongoing black-and-white sci-fi, showed up less at theatres, largely shunned when they did. Wish I knew how many paid way to the Liberty in ’64 to see The Earth Dies Screaming alongside me. Were they there specifically to see the feature or was it just another Saturday and here we all were riding ennui express from habit rather than enthusiasm.

Count Your Blessings #3

 

CYB: Fairbanks, Kongo King Karloff, Minty Cartoons, and Lubitsch Doing Drama

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924) --- Blu-Ray to buy is Masters of Cinema Region Two from Eureka Entertainment, a stablest rendition I’ve seen from anybody. The Thief of Bagdad already a most amazing of silent spectacles now is among most luminous offered on disc. Look back to 1970 reveals Thief among offerings from “Griggs-Moviedrome,” home-based business of lifelong collector John Griggs. You needed $250 to acquire his 16mm print, $59 on 8mm, such money beyond reckoning in 1970. You could buy a television for as much, albeit used and certainly B/W. Those who remembered twenties filmgoing saw The Thief of Bagdad as apex of art. I more than get that watching today. Fairbanks was an only man  at the time who’d mount such pageantry, sets astounding, special effects good as could be conceived in 1924. Length at two- and one-half hours declared importance of the project. Fairbanks ought to be better remembered, but don’t we say a same about most of our favorites? Doug Jr. tried reviving his father’s work in the early fifties to cricket response, plus the films played awkward on TV. Thief is a must for theatres or at least home screens of size as available now. Kevin Brownlow ran Thief and other silents on 35mm to audiences during the early eighties, his a committed effort to stop parades from entirely going by. To have The Thief of Bagdad on such definitive terms is to get visual impact viewers felt when the show was new and setting new standard for spectacular. There really is nothing remotely like it, not even among Fairbanks’ own gallery of entertainments. He would himself protect the legacy by donating prints-negatives to the Museum of Modern Art in the late thirties, so thankfully we have quality access to this, his best and biggest, Blu-Ray ribbon-round to make The Thief of Bagdad a vanished era must.

KING OF THE KONGO (1929) --- Serial history made when Mascot brought sound to cliffhanging and shot at least backgrounds in far-away Cambodia (ancient temple ruins) to lend surface grandeur to chapters combining music/effects, some dialogue, and lots of beasts both real and faked, lizards enlarged, man/men kitted out in gorilla skins. I’m for low-crouched apes in what looks to be layers of fur overcoat, whoever inside sure to suffocate if crew doesn’t get his act in the can but quick. Producer/historian Eric Grayson climbed Matterhorn that was finding, restoring, compiling, mountain of prints, sound discs, disparate nips/tuck to pull ten chapters together and emerge with product a best we’ve seen this seminal serial look since 1929, saying plenty for here is not just jungle chasing, for who’s that chasing but first significant speaking on screen Boris Karloff, rapacious as we like him and never far from action. Dan Mercer and I once visited Richard Bojarski and he proudly showed off a Brownie shot from 1964 when he and NY boroughs pals gathered to watch a stack of Kongo reels just to see Boris in till-then elusive performance. We’d heard about King of the Kongo but till this point had not known anyone who saw it. Now of course we have it all and on Blu-Ray, this thanks to Grayson and age of miracles we live in. A chunk of King can be seen in Youngson’s Days of Thrills and Laughter under heading of wild/ wooly chapterplays, and there are glimpses too at You Tube, but see instead this Blu-Ray, it enabled by far-flung collectors plus the Library of Congress and for all I know bit/pieces dug from that Cambodian temple. Bravo to Eric Grayson for fruit borne of this ambitious project.

NEW LIFE FOR OLD CARTOONS --- Ignored for sixty years and for reasons understandable, three from 1937 emerge as extras with Warners’ Blu-Ray of The Prince and the Pauper, none I recall specific from Saturday mornings, but surely I saw them as Channel 12-Winston-Salem had bulk of the pre-49 WB’s and used same for ninety minutes per program, enough to numb the most dedicated plus all black-and-white we were limited to, Channel 12 sans Sat morning color during the early sixties. I’d trod through cat, dog, mice subjects hoping for Daffy or Bugs to show back up, me a cartoon devotee up to a point, but not like nascent historians that wrote down all of dates and credits they read off broadcast screens. Point today is how remarkable these play with color so splendidly restored. Did they really look like this in 1937? I bet not. What wizardry has been done with elements, digital it’s true, but how could even 35mm newly rendered improve upon it? Subject matter is not the object or even the point. What difference if Plenty of Money and You, Streamlined Greta Green, and A Sunbonnet Blue are “good” cartoons? They are made good, in fact spectacular, by what Warners has done with them here. Cartoons by the mid-thirties was for showing off color as much as animation, funny a lesser if not least priority. Warners by these examples seem still to be reaching for Disney’s crown. Even Tex Avery supervising A Sunbonnet Blue pulls punch to favor cute, effort saved for moments plus overall impact of color. I watch these and it’s like being born again to cartoon love. John Griggs of earlier mentioned Griggs-Moviedrome 8 and 16mm declared “Quality is Everything,” and I’m learning daily that he was right, only Griggs never dreamed there’d come times like now when film nearing ninety would astound viewers so. Never mind whether you want The Prince and the Pauper. Buy Warners’ Blu-Ray just for these extras.

THREE WOMEN (1924) --- Really more about two women, being Pauline Frederick and May McAvoy, with Marie Prevost later for siren duty. Three Women looks Lubitsch- promising for comedy till Lew Cody goes fortune hunting after vain and aging Frederick, us sudden to realize this all should be taken serious, what we least want from Ernst Lubitsch. I waited for him to tip hat toward humor, but no, this is melodrama and he’s for seeing it straight to trial and jury application of the “unwritten law,” this time woman’s work which is refreshing and I’m always game to see characters in movies get away with murder, especially where it’s so irredeemable a rotter as Lew Cody taking the fall. A wild opener party at the “Waldorf ballroom” sees fun seekers on a sliding board plus a carousel built full scale, which I’d wonder if the real Waldorf ever accommodated frivolity like this. Such is distraction for neglectful mother Frederick who values gigolo love over that of needy daughter McAvoy, herself lying down to unwed bed with selfsame gigolo, outcome of such muddle my dread. Lubitsch should have been ridiculing such stuff, but I grant pardon for this property being imposed rather than chosen by the master maker. Still beautifully crafted, subtleties as expected, performances excellent per habit from Lubitsch. I understand he played scenes for actors and told them to perform exactly as he did, am surprised they don’t light a Lubitschian cigar to accent mimicry. Key is a scene where middle-age Frederick is adjusting lamps in the room, shutting curtains, etc., to keep wrinkles in twilight, then here comes her oblivious date to switch all back on again. Such is what made Lubitsch a dean among directors. Three Women is available on Blu-Ray from Kino. They used 35mm from the George Eastman House for source material and it looks terrific. “Count Your Blessings” applies well here. Seeing silents delivered so gets us tantalizingly close to joy viewers knew when pictures like Three Women were new.

Trade Talk #3

 

What Trades Told: Harlow, Sinatra, Sherlock, and Shirley

SO WHO NEEDS A “BROWNETTE”? --- To present a “New” Jean Harlow was to admit the old Jean Harlow needed newness, old still good so long as old still paid. How successful were film companies at manipulating their public? Harlow reinvented was for sake of rules rebooted, as why would it be necessary to change Harlow so long as she kept delivering saucy goods as before? Trouble was she couldn’t, as neither could Mae West, Kay Francis, others who supped at precode table. Once known as edgy, you could not switch sides to serve convention. Old Harlow had to go. They couldn’t even put early stuff with her back on markets, at least intact. Maybe too it was time to soften hard bark she and certainly her platinum hair represented, that by mid-thirties a bent wheel that needed fixing. Modified vehicle would be Riffraff, a “new thrill” that “really makes her just about the most provocative girl on the screen!” Who, however, was kidding whom? A wide public knew by 1935 that pictures had been gelded, this expressed by boos greeting PCA seals to appear in front of features. I wonder if MGM was surprised when Riffraff lost money, which it did. Harlow like or not was a sex figure, ideal for the early thirties, not so useful now. Could browning her hair change public perception, if not rinse Harlow post-Code clean? Better pictures than Riffraff might help, Wife vs. Secretary pointing ways. Her as brownette would suit Wife’s more conservative part. Harlow grip of stardom was no more tenuous than others what with change forced upon the industry, self-censorship a ruinous thing for so many who spoke plainer back when one could. We think best of Harlow on such terms, but take these away and she’s Virginia Bruce, beautiful but vanilla. Why single out Bruce, however, actresses for most part mere utility as studios saw them. To be Harlow and project singular personality was a thing to be treasured, protected if possible. If that could be achieved simply by changing her hair, then bring on the dye.

SINATRA AT LOW TIDE --- No shame for stars landing at Universal-International during the fifties. Most prospered there, some inordinately so. James Stewart probably got his best 50’s money working at Universal. Others lesser lit landed there, if a fall at least a cushioned one, Ann Sheridan, Linda Darnell, names of still enough consequence for all concerned to fare well. Frank Sinatra signing for a single, maybe more (an option not exercised by U-I) was sound business so long as not too much was spent on the vehicle, thrift up to-including what was given Frank in advance, the record uncertain as to percentage if any he’d be entitled to provided the picture made profit. Meet Danny Wilson is up-from-pavement Frank as Danny learning how to be humble as Sinatra did not necessarily do, and if there was plot parallel to the singer’s life, it was broad enough not to rouse then-comment, maybe for fewer caring at such low ebb for Frank. Still he was a star, and many among perceptive knew he’d score again, Meet Danny Wilson distinctly not an engine to push him back up rungs, but no harm done and it pleased at least those who wanted to see-hear Frank on screen doing standards for which he was best liked. On-set tantrums were expected and maybe factored into costs, Sinatra better served than by Double Dynamite a couple of bleak seasons before. Sources say he begged Paramount Theatre management to let him perform live with Meet Danny Wilson, just like old times when he was bobby-sox idol at the same address. They gave him the spot with results OK, but this movie wasn’t one to generate lines down blocks, and I’d doubt anyone seeing it could expect much by way of acclaim. U-I’s trade ad was frisky: you’d think whole of countrywide media was aboard to boost Frank. Imagine if Universal had held Danny Wilson for a year, getting it out after From Here to Eternity and the star’s stunning comeback. What a whale this modesty could then have been, but who saw From Here to Eternity coming, or storm Sinatra would stir with it? Meet Danny Wilson is available on Region Two DVD, enjoyable and valued glimpse at Sinatra still at loose ends but on verge of spectacular rise from ashes.

PUTTING A FACE ON HOLMES --- Remind me again that Sherlock Holmes was not an actual person. Thing is, I want him to have been, and in fact, would have it no other way. Artists rendered the detective early and definitively, Sidney Paget in England, Frederic Dorr Steele in the US. Latter is less remembered, Doyle and Sherlock scholars obvious exception to that rule. Both artists kept to forge that was illustrating in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this when magazines on either side of the pond thrived in ways hard for us to imagine now that periodicals have gone passed way. Readers were early able to put a face on Holmes and so saw him real as a neighbor down streets. Helping too was William Gillette playing the detective on stage and embodying him best. Gillette befriended Steele, the two serving one-another interests after all, as did John Barrymore and the artist when JB essayed Holmes on film. Steele being Collier magazine’s man put him before a considerable readership, this beginning 1903 when Sherlock Holmes “returned” for thirteen new stories, Doyle reviving the character after error of killing him off, this reversible as some, if few after all, might survive plunge off a waterfall. Steele in all contributed eleven color covers and fifty interior pages, many also tinted as he early explored possibilities in printing. 1939 and Fox’s Hound of the Baskervilles saw Steele as star enough in his field at sixty-six to cooperate re publicity, plus Rathbone was a ringer beside Steele art now gone back a generation. Was Basil early-alert to possibility this part would type him? Being Holmes was much like being stamped for a coin. Once in, you don’t get out. Original stills and lobby cards for Hound are hard to come by, let alone Steele accessories offered to showmen, as here with six glossy images available for publicity. Collier magazines with Steele art are doubtless rare as well, though I know less of how rare or of what value issues might be.

SHIRLEY TEMPLE DONE IN OIL --- Promote a star, do an oil painting. But how often did such things occur? Art here of Shirley Temple at summit must surely have been preserved, if not by the painter, then maybe by Shirley’s family. Did she or they cop it out of Fox dumpsters like Jane Withers later did for treasures the studio tossed? We’re farther out each year from understanding what a true phenomenon Shirley Temple was. She and parents saw it rise and fall. Did Shirley have occasion to see Zanuck in later years, say the fifties, maybe sixties? How interesting such conversation would be, sort of like when Zukor sat opposite Mary Pickford to ruminate over past years, this televised and at You Tube. What valued keepsakes Shirley Temple had were auctioned years ago. I’ve wondered before if once-collectibles, Temple dolls and such, are still collectible. Writing in 2014 of Shirley’s passing, I speculated she was largely forgot by then. On the contrary said a reader, him firm that her films and image were well known even to children thanks to continued and oft-colorized play on cable networks and such. We’re ten years later and I’ll ask again how much if any this star is recalled. It all matters less now than what she meant to a first-run public, enough so to merit publicity elegant as accorded any name before her or since. Where industry goes to effort like this for a trade ad, there is clearly expectation they’ll more than get investment back. For comparison if not contrast, above is a lovely RKO title card from 1947 with nineteen-year-old Shirley Temple. Honeymoon is of delayed marriage and consummation common to alleged comedies from the era. Without knowing, I’ll guess more-than-seasoned Shirley offered performing tips to still-green Guy Madison, whose second starring role this was.