Category Called Comedy #9

 

CCC: Charlie Calms Down and '72 Roll in Aisles for What's Up, Doc?

CHAPLIN TAKING SLOWER TRAINS --- To play features vs. shorts with Great Comedians may not be a fair contest. Each had to embrace longer form eventually, the marketplace leaving them little choice. Transition from skit to “three-act” undertaking went beyond ken of most, certainly those bred of vaudeville or music halls where on-off quick was necessity understood by all. I looked at Chaplin in The Rink and Easy Street, then Modern Times. In a way it’s like a different guy did them. Near-twenty years separated shorts from the feature, dog years as many experienced and understood then, Charlie having blacked hair gone premature gray after barrel Lita and family rolled him in. The Little Tramp of kicks to rears, shortest term employs, and all etcetera’s for bumming life was no good with narratives taking longer to unfold, Modern Times at 87 minutes a challenge to Charlie as giddyap and get gone reliable. Tempo was slower, as if fleet movement might topple house he's built. Buster Keaton talked about long-form requiring his team to tell “realistic” stories, which meant no more being chased by hundreds of cops, and who really cares why? Seven Chances had similar pursuit by as many would-be brides, a situation set up by reels of exposition, heavy burden Keaton carried for playing real people against real settings. Charlie does a same in Modern Times, job toiling as he never would in Mutual comedies, the Tramp’s independent spirit our assure that he’s for hitting solitary road soon as current crisis clears. We know he’ll not last as a waiter in The Rink, nor does he pretend concern for livelihood, eating from refuse pails or stealing sustenance OK in any pinch. Modern Times loads him up with Paulette Goddard plus eventually her urchin sibs, this to likely follow happy (?) walk into sunset, or is it sunrise?

Regular jobs were bane of funsters making features ---this implying normalcy and dread absorption by convention. We are meant to identify with clowns where they hold us an hour or more, downside their having to knuckle down and deal with frustrations we expect them to relieve us from. I like Charlie loose as a goose and skidding round corners, not being “misunderstood” by authorities (the labor march) and pitched in jail for it. Search for a next job would stink in the nostrils of Mutual-era Chaplin, as would slow-go set-pieces like the Bellows feeding machine and dropping food in Chester Conklin’s mouth while he’s trapped in machinery. Charlie for me was the one trapped. He skates in Modern Times and that harkens to freedom of The Rink, but grace ends there as struggle renews and back we are to victimhood of the Depression. On one hand the Tramp seems ideal for such context, me happier with Charlie a free spirit who’d snatch what could be snatched from a system broke down with rules of conduct suspended like carefree day past. Sound era Charlie however had to be more responsible, earn his bread, never again bite off a baby's frankfurter like in The Circus. A Great Depression seemed ideal opportunity for ultimate will of the wisp Charlie to whom the world owed a living. Prudent ending to any Mutual seems temporary and refreshingly insincere. He’ll wrap Easy Street having quelled villainy, kept his police uniform, and escorting Edna to church, but not to worry for Who Cares Charlie will soon be back on the bum, no chance Easy Street would see a sequel any more than The Immigrant where for a fade he marries Edna. Chaplin features play too much for keeps, length alone requiring solutions for him to be permanent ones. City Lights was best for doubting he’ll keep Virginia now that she has seen him for the derelict he is. I prefer Charlie in such aftermath kicking up a heel and headed back for transient life as he effectively did in The Circus, such ending what we expect and prefer for a character that must never be tied down. Suppose Paulette will go a day, let alone night, without pressuring Charlie to go back and locate her orphaned relations, feeding of which will put him right back on assembly lines? Some happy ending.

WHAT’S UP DOC? (1972) --- You just had to be there. Our College Park Cinema of past celebration opened with What’s Up Doc? in 1972. Laughs were uproarious. Peter Bogdanovich’s screwball plus slapstick plus smart was bracingly new to a public not so inclined as Peter to sit up nights watching same tropes played against 30’s backdrop. “Somehow it doesn’t seem as funny” was what Ann said when last we sampled What’s Up Doc?, shorthand for Turn It Off, which I dutifully did. What comedies survive after half a century gone? … yet there are silent ones 100 years old to sustain aplenty, or is that my lone opinion? What’s Up Doc? I remember in terms of crowd reaction, a thing not had from old films short of see/hear first-hand with seat-neighbors for whom it’s fresh and new. Doc today is for fast-forward to scenes roof-raising in yore and again when Doc campus-ran at alma mater two years later. Most contempo-humor dates, but here is closest to one you’d play to moderns and possibly get by. I applied brakes for moments that “killed” then-audiences to guess whether still they might. First to loose howls was when “Howard Bannister” (Ryan O’ Neal) realizes madcap Judy (a sometimes too much Barbra Streisand) will be valuable toward his getting a research grant (you know the story so I won’t belabor). Mirth built while characters at a luncheon all stooped under a table as “Eunice Burns” (Madaleine Kahn) enters to demand she be seated with them. Moment when camera moves close on Howard and he says “I never saw her before in my life,” followed by Eunice dragged bodily out and leaving heel marks all the way to the exit got as huge a response as I ever saw at a movie, but the topper was still to come.

This was finish where Howard and Judy clinch as expected, him telling her he’s sorry for conduct before, to which she replies, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” her eyes blinking as Bacall’s did in a similar moment from To Have and Have Not. Cascade of laughter that began here drowned out Howard’s “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” O’Neal’s gag at the expense of previous Love Story, embraced by many now embarrassed to have done so and ready two years later to ridicule that film’s most quoted line. Porky Pig bursting from the Looney Tunes drum to say That’s All Folks is the perfect coda. In fact, crowds I saw What’s Up Doc? with were still laughing, and loud, when final cast credits came up. Good will attached to What’s Up Doc? with fond memory to carry for years to come. My college had a year’s contract with Warners Brothers Film Gallery, features to fill both semesters of which many were clucks, but not What’s Up Doc? Taking the package meant paying less per title, this a one and only that would fill every seat in our notably large auditorium. It seemed at the time that What’s Up Doc? would always please, forever more fill rooms with laughter, though like others before and since, it would retreat into recall increasingly distant and as with Ann, seem “less funny” where seen through eyes many years older. I hear tell of similar aftereffect Forrest Gump (1994) now has. Many who laughed and cried with that wonder now what made them do so. Best of movies are presumed to stay so, but how many do? We’ll none of us be here long enough to test the “forever” part, but when we see what we thought were perfect flowers wilt upon vines, it is safe to say that even those titles held most precious are fragile as are people who created them and those who’d embrace them. “As good as it ever was” is declared often with certainty, but who can begin to say for certain what will truly last among entertainments we cherish, assume never to part from, but ultimately do. My list is long … what of yours?

Better Off Where Words Fail ...

 

Never Mind Voices When We Had Such Interesting Faces

Has home viewing become a laziest of recreations? I choose flatness that lets Ann and I kibitz through Murder, She Wrote where a driverless car chases Stuart Whitman, Van Johnson and June Allyson, spam rather than red meat that is King of Kings just in from Flicker Alley, last Blu-Ray word for DeMille’s voiceless epic. Why Murder, She Wrote rather than a roadshow Passion Play? Hint lies in K of K’s silence, meaning you work at reading faces that convey everything short of words, paying close enough attention to know how un-essential speaking is. We divine what characters feel short of being told like in talkies, a concept alien to spoon-fed culture, but don’t we understand each other best from looks and body language? Speech is for most a least reliable gauge of everyday interaction. They say first impressions come in an instant, often before either party talks, so why not silent movies as most sophisticated indicator of human behavior we have? No one need “adjust” to voiceless film. We already have it in us to comprehend just fine. I blame baby food served over all our present lifetimes. Not that I underestimate babies. They take cues largely from sight and look how quick they learn to manipulate grown-ups. If a child was shown nothing but silent films for its first five years of life, we’d have a society fueling talkless disc releases. To screen silents seems a gone art for other stuff we do while “watching,” which really is every activity but what’s on a screen, Law and Order episodes as backdrop to clacking keyboards, replying to texts on inaptly named Smartphones, OK because we’ve seen most L&O’s three/four times (helps that most are easy to forget).

Blanche Sweet Tells It All Sans Talk

What became of dark rooms in which to watch? Such were called theatres. You ate in them, talked at risk of being shushed. They say in nickel days folks were entranced, nay hypnotized, by vital visuals. No lower of heads, looking at each other, or juggle of popcorn lest you miss something, and yes, there was much to miss where frames were filled and everybody acted at once. I see shorts at You Tube and come away wrung by interaction with a 1912 Vitagraph, a 1908 Nordisk, folk emoting, reacting, conflicting all over places, cameras not yet fixed on what we’re supposed to see. With multiples engaged at business of life, you choose which to follow, hefty load with priorities differing what with one crowd studying another crowd on a crowded screen, this before installation of a star system where eyes were naturally directed at the personality we’ve paid to see. Stars went a long way toward making films predictable, formulas then applied to seal the deal. Nickel drama found its level according to who looked. Like with plays, which earliest films mostly were, each from an audience could exit with his/her own impression of what they just saw, and I wonder if any two were alike. Single-reel fables offer alternatives as to who we’ll observe closest, not a little like video games where eyes fasten to one or other corner before sudden, maybe urgent shift back, early squared frames a busy landscape. I tire of moderns always directing me where to look. And by modern, I mean everything for the last hundred years. A good Edison, Thanhauser, or Biograph leaves it all to yours and my judgment, knowing conclusions can, likely will, differ. I’ll hone on Henry Walthall while a next seat focuses on Blanche Sweet, neither of us right or wrong for doing so. Others roaming onto or out of the frame keeps it busy always.

They Came, They Saw, and Silent Movies Conquered

There was no place for popcorn in such charged environment, part reason for not offering it, nor Goobers, let alone nachos or hot dogs, in movies’ maiden years. Was patronage really a lot of unwashed imports? I claim they were more alert than films would play to again, engaged far beyond latter-day insta-watchers never more than seconds from changing screen partners, barely comprehending any the while, let alone retaining what they see. Say early viewers were stopped by titles in English because they couldn’t read the language or read at all? Some one or several amidst a crowd could translate aloud, or have a narrator up front to shout needed words. Imagine mosaic of languages to meet nickelodeon ears. Here’s where depth of melting pots was measured for viewership quickly learning because they wanted to learn, in fact had paid their ways in to do just that. How many such sits were needed to get them past a nickelodeon’s comprehension curve? I bet not many. You could call at-a-start watchers “illiterate” in terms of our language and habits, but movies taught quick, your neighbor in a crowd often able and generally willing to fill gaps where needed. Imagine the community movies engendered, crowd generated barn raisings all day or night. Remember also song slides where everyone joined in. What faster or friendlier path to varied and useful knowledge, a popular culture buffet for single coin admission. Present cinema serves all senses save smell and touch. Are these next to be overcome, or have they been already and I’m not aware of it? Possibly I don’t have the right software yet. Who today could enjoy, even comprehend, radio drama? Plenty did, millions in fact, once upon a distant time. There they had the hearing, but not the sight. Again, as with silent movies, imagination was summoned to fill gaps. Are none of us today able to apply our imaginations? If we won’t abide silents, or radio drama, well ... there's your answer. Will future generations look back and wonder why we accepted such obsolete format as feature-length films? Judging by what’s happened to theatre attendance of late, we could ask how far off such future actually is.

Walter Kerr called silent cinema as dead a language as Latin. So far I’ve met no one who speaks Latin, but will keep looking, just as I will for those who’d enjoy mute movies outside Greenbriar’s community. Let’s assume the number is few, but consider vastness of You Tube, thousands of silents hosted there, and wonder how much of that bulk is watched. Positive comments for YT entries, plus recorded number of views, are a help. Back in “Classic Film Collector” days, Blackhawk on 8mm, the rest, we had nothing like numbers recorded daily online. Fact it's all free is pertinent. Hundreds of pre-talk shorts are seeable at You Tube, Vimeo, elsewhere. I sift for nuggets often. Others are doing the same or there wouldn’t be so much treasure spread about. I’ll go on a limb and say the number of silent appreciators is many times what it was when I discovered and championed the format in pre-digital day. Trouble some of us had was not getting presentations right. I played The General to an art guild gathering in 1972 and set projection speed wrong, eighteen torturous frames per second where 24 should have been the minimum. I felt ice form round seating. Lessons learned in those days came always the hard way, or was it just me so continually inept? We now are at a place where silent film need not beg on any account. Where The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse looks and sounds at it does, and on home systems yet, why not see normies as potential converts? At least I don’t have to worry about fouling up The General again. Was my generation better for coming up the “hard way”? I’d swap that for being forty years younger now, gold fields of film stretched infinite before me and not a care about splices, scratches, or bungling my show. For plentiful education along this line, there is a new book by music accompanist Ben Model, The Silent Film Universe, where he analyzes the “immersive, dreamlike experience” that is watching pre-talk. To his mind, no talk is an asset rather than liability, his explanations plenty to attract and acquaint viewer flocks, along with (much) further education for those many who thought we understood a universe wider than I ever imagined it to be, The Silent Film Universe opening doors to greater knowledge, in fact showing me doors I never knew were there. In short, a splendid book from someone who has made a life’s work on understanding vanished time, and through his efforts, making it live again to the joy of audiences everywhere. Safe to say Ben Model has brought more disciples to his silent universe than most who toil on behalf of the art (order The Silent Film Universe here).

Doug Spoke to Us All, But Wished He Didn't Have To

Fun of silents was formerly in the getting. I’ve talked to Columbus collectors and each point out how “they” (moderns) need not drive/fly to preserves when click on a bid button will win or lose whatever it is you want. We feel superior for having long ago earned bounty our searches yielded, to which latters might answer, who cares how you get it so long as you got it. There used to be collector meets all over the map. New York had paper shows most weekends. Meadowland Sundays were plane in, frenzy buy, then wing out. Syracuse had its March blowout, plus there was “Cinecon” at a different Labor Day location until finally settling in Hollywood, now minus a dealer’s room. These ran rarities to a gathered audience, being an only place one could see The Bat Whispers for instance. Now we can saunter into dens and drop it on a Blu-Ray tray, a sinfully simple option you’d not imagine before. Silent days lasted (thirty years plus) till 1929 saw moving farewell, even if tempered by great-to-have-known-you but don’t come back (note ad above for Douglas Fairbanks in a "sound hit"). Elegiac end for The Iron Mask sent a differing message, not what merchandising intended but playing as such now and maybe did in '29 to sensitive enough viewers. Doug and his musketeers die in a third act, necessary conclusion to this story, but what they really do is usher out voiceless times by literally ascending from prospect of sound to Heaven that is forever silence, paradise for them if not for a public that must embrace talker ways or loosen embrace of movies altogether. It is one of the loveliest wraps in all of film and good arguing beyond its immediate effect for reality of an afterlife.

Stills That Speak #8

 

STS: More Clark Gable Captures

WELCOME HOME RHETT, SAYS TOOTIE --- The back caption says something about these two hoping someday to do a picture together. How realistic was that? Gable was great with Bonnie Blue, the more so after she flew off a pony and broke her neck. Might he similarly cry for Margaret? We could wonder if anyone floated CG as Bad Bascomb rather than Beery. Great stars, especially greatest stars, had to be cast carefully. Margaret O’Brien after 1945 was no longer Tootie. She played well with old men in support, each of Three Wise Fools born in the nineteenth century and imagine how O’Brien feels whenever she catches that on TCM (wait … is Three Wise Fools shown on TCM, for I don’t offhand recall seeing it listed). She’d be willful for The Unfinished Dance, cause real complication for adults, plus suggest maybe she’d not prosper in adolescence. To me she kept a little girl voice while getting gangly, and I wonder who gave the order to pink-slip her. Mannix? Mayer himself? There is an interesting color image of Margaret reunited with Judy Garland and Tom Drake, probably around Words and Music time, four years of water under a bridge. Gable too had his worries, Adventure successful even though he and everyone knew it wasn’t much good, grosses a pyrrhic victory borne of his being back from war and everyone eager to see how he’d comport. Problem was hanging on to what had been accumulated before years got lost, that a problem shared by all leading men who served. Suppose they got together and talked about it? Picture Robert Taylor confiding to Gable his concern at being cast for anti-heroes if not outright heavies (good direction for Taylor by my lights). Gable kept his public as well as anyone in his category. Aging and bad habits if anything made him more interesting.

DRAGON BETWEEN A PAIR OF LIONS --- First impression here is not Hedda Hopper, nor Victor Fleming, but Gable with a cigar. Since when did he take to those? Onscreen he used them as Rhett Butler, but I never saw him occupied so in candids or set stills. Gable indeed smoked cigarettes, enough of those to make me wonder if cumulative effect weakened his heart. I propose date here as 1944 when they were doing Adventure, perhaps later as Fleming was friend enough to Gable that they surely socialized on each other’s set from time to time. I understand Vic suffered grievous with kidney stones, less wherewithal in thirties-forties to deal with such malady. Hopper was doubtless said dragon in other circumstances, but Gable by this time was elder statesman enough to command her respect and besides, I always had the sense he knew how to deal with, and get along, with her. There was a Hopper memo I came across once at the Academy library where she talked about calling Gable (apx. 1955) while he was in midst of showing his 16mm print of Boom Town to a group of kids including wife Kay’s son by a previous marriage. Gable had a notable collection of his movies. Someday I need to write about what became of those prints. Again to Hopper, she was tolerated or hated, I doubt “liked” would occur to most. She got oodles of Christmas presents from stars and execs each year, joked that hers was “the house that fear built.” She had sort of a Winchell thing going with her column. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff in old Hopper writings, not all gossip but solid movie news historians could use if they dug through her output, but where has any compilation appeared? Hopper files are lush with off-and-on-record treasure. Somebody should someday mine it, or is it too late for anybody to care?

PITY THEY’D NOT CO-STAR AGAIN --- I propose that this was the last time Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable were photographed together. It isn’t like they fished, hunted, or made motorcycle runs. Gable pals were of sort that liked to crawl under cars, while Tracy idea of social was sitting round tables with talking colleagues or keeping company with K. Hepburn or shorter-term mistresses. Back caption reads The People Against O’Hara as the show in work when the old screen comrades met and chatted. Blurb says they “seem to share a mild difference of opinion,” though it doesn’t look that way to me. Gable is holding a book which I’d like knowing what it is. Tracy’s shirt fits like a few apple pies too many. Weight was often as issue for him, though it mattered less because by now he’s a character star and a little paunch was almost expected. Gable on the other hand had to watch weight for being still a romantic lead man. Remember the Dear Mr. Gable TV special from 1968 where they showed an unflattering clip from Lone Star and talked about how weathered he had started to look? I thought at the time it was unfair but that may have been because Gable vehicles of Lone Star and similar vintage was all the CG I could get from surrounding NC stations. No Red Dust or Mutiny on the Bounty for me until I bought prints later. Were Tracy and Gable a little jealous of one another? I never believed that, preferring to guess they were congenial, enjoyed talking when they did, but just did not have all that much in common other than sitting atop hill that was Metro at star-making zenith. Serious talk of re-teaming them for Green Fire took place in 1954, which you can tell from finished product was a Gable-Tracy show in conception and much of execution. I wonder how such a late co-starring would have come off. As suggested before, they would have been terrific head-to-head on Inherit the Wind, but what is that now but idlest speculation.

INTERESTING STAR ASSEMBLAGE --- How much notice were Gable and Lombard given to dress and show up at this benefit for Greek wartime allies? No such request could be turned down, unless you were in the hospital getting a gall bladder removed. Wish I had a date for this image, but no. Anyone care to speculate? Could it have been during that brief window between Pearl Harbor and Lombard’s death on 1-16-42? Seems likely to me. Note Lombard’s hand on Gable’s knee. Is she afraid he’ll get up and wander off? I’m guessing he didn’t care much for this sort of event. Gable liked being completely prepared for whatever appearance he made. This may have been a radio broadcast or just four stars making brief speeches to support objects of charity. Could this have been the first time Gable and Tyrone Power met? Perhaps not for Power having been at Metro for a good stretch doing Marie Antoinette in 1938 and surely he and Gable saw each other at the commissary, getting shoes shined, whatever. Myrna Loy was an old Gable partner on screen and had done The Rains Came with Power, but how well, if at all, did she know Lombard? I’m fascinated by stars tethered to differing studios thrown together. It happened lots with radio, for instance a time when Gable and Marlene Dietrich did a Lux broadcast for DeMille. Think of turning clocks forward, a year maybe, and what became of these people as result of war declared. They must have looked back on a night like this to reflect how simple life once seemed, not that there was anything simple about being among biggest names in pictures. Just think … two “Kings” of Hollywood together, plus a Queen which was Loy, her crowned with Power … or was it Bette Davis? I forget and what does it matter? Just noticed sheets Power is holding. Might that be a script for him to read off when they step before microphones? These people must have gotten sick of dressing to nines five nights out of a week, especially now with war on (or close) and need for their participation the more urgent. I wonder if Gable and Power found it sort of a relief to enlist and serve among ordinary recruits instead of carrying star banner for morale’s continuing sake.

UPDATE --- 6/2/25: Dan Mercer nails the date of Gable and Lombard's event appearance with Tyrone Power, Myrna Loy, and as you see below, others:

Not a bad guess, John, as to when that photo of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard with Tyrone Power might have been taken. Carole was very apprehensive about leaving him to make those War Bond appearances, as he'd become an item of speculation with Lana Turner, hence that no doubt reassuring touch of her hand on his knee. However, I think that he was a wandering sort, anyways, whatever his feelings for her or any woman. As with many men, he was able to separate affection and commitment from more, let us say, predatory behavior. So, such a picture might have been made at any time in their marriage.

As it is, however, the photo was actually taken on February 8, 1941 at Grauman's Chinese Theater, where an "America Calling" radio broadcast was being made for Greek War Relief. Sam Goldwyn had organized it, Bob Hope and Jack Benny were co-emcees, and just about all the stars of Hollywood made appearances.

You'll notice Frank Morgan, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Dick Powell, Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, Sam Goldwyn, Gable and Lombard, Shirley Temple, and Myrna Loy.

I understand that Gable performed in a "romantic skit" with...Merle Oberon!

It is indeed good to be king, especially in Golden Age Hollywood. And maybe that was the source of Lombard's apprehension. 

UPDATE --- 6/7/25 --- from Dan Mercer

That's a charming picture of Clark Gable and Margaret O'Brien. He seems to genuinely enjoy being with her. I noticed the sheets of paper each was holding and the acoustic paneling behind them, and wondered if they were participating in a radio show. It seems that on May 2, 1945, they did appear on the "Mail Call" show carried by the Armed Forces Radio Service, reading letters from American servicemen and women and offering encouragement to them. She would have been eight years old at the time. 

Here is another picture from that appearance:

So, studio stars did make a lot of personal appearances when not before the camera, no doubt strengthening the brand, whether that was of the studio or their stardom. Given his own service, however, I'm sure that Gable didn't begrudge the time in this case, and the pictures suggest that he was having a good deal of fun as well.