Trade Talk #4

 

Let's All Follow EvS Example and Be Epicures In Living!

What Trades Told: Wedding Marches On, As Does Witchfinding

THE WEDDING MARCH --- Another Stroheim feature much mutilated, but thought his best by many, if not most. Revelatory is a You Tube job of reclamation by the Vitaphone Soundtrack Project, a best presentation of The Wedding March I’ve so far seen and a revelation if only for fact the original music-and-effects score by J.S. Zamecnik has been re-wedded to visuals. EvS was said to be fond of this music, to point of saying March was but a walk without it. Accompany is nicely synced and the Project does a service for putting a long limping classic at least partly back on feet. Arrival at awaited point harks us to early encounters, years of thinking we’d never see the Grail. Astonishing as it now seems, The Wedding March got a 1974 coffee table book by Herman G. Weinberg, pictures mostly, remaindered not long after newness for fraction of its $19.95 cover price. Memorizing images went with dreams of March as a moving object, any silent feature scarce outside museum walls or Blackhawk listings. Lincoln Center ran The Wedding March a couple of 60’s times to ovation according to Arthur Lenig, scholar supreme re Stroheim and there for both occasions, but how to account for Bosley Crowther panning the shows despite convulsive clapping? Stroheim was still judged by be-monocled plus cruel-to-all-comers image, him figure of fun to those disinclined to delve deeper. Humor writer S.J. Perelman grew up on first run likes of Blind Husbands and Foolish Wives, EvS branded upon child consciousness, him at the Museum of Modern Art for early 50’s revisit to Wives as possible meat for a New Yorker column. That he’d mock the Master was foregone conclusion, Perelman’s mission to amuse after all. Too bad he’d not live on to be astonished by Flicker Alley’s recent rescue of Foolish Wives, a miracle to surely impress EvS himself were he still with us.

Living the Decadent Dream ... Could Von's Fierce Appetite Ever Be Quenched?

Stroheim chivied Pat Powers to produce The Wedding March, theirs a wedding of confidence men long in the business of finding their mark and bleeding him white, or by outcome here, red. Powers surely cussed the day he met Stroheim, but some ideas, however disastrous they turn out, do sound good at one time or other, usually before vaster than expected dollars are spent. Powers was a hare teamed with a tortoise so far as pace of production, time translating to money, a million of which evaporated with plentiful footage left to shoot. Costs rose over a million, said Powers, EvS claiming it was more like $900K. At levels like that, what difference did it make? Stroheim used relative unknown Fay Wray for a leading lady. She confessed to loving him, heroic self-denial whispering not this time to Von. Fay remembered going to the Stroheim’s for Christmas dinner where she saw lighted candles hung on their Yule tree. Chancy enough having such a display, but how could you sleep that night without blowing them all out? --- this under heading of past times often strange times. Paramount released The Wedding March, had cash in it, would assert rights to edit ... Stroheim admirers know the rest. To chop commission came Josef Von Sternberg, pilloried from then on by EvS. He’d hindsight call career work “skeletons of my dead children.” Just a fraction of The Wedding March went out. Von wanted the usual eight hours spread over two nights, or supper between two massive chunks. Like Greed and Foolish Wives, The Wedding March would make sense as was, so long as we watched on EvS wavelength. Production values were handsomer than ever, Technicolor portion a cherry on top. Stroheim was a realist like literature and plays making waves since earlier in the century, movies seldom if ever so out front of curve. He’s sympathetic up to a point, but “Prince Nikki” as Stroheim-played will still marry for money and leave love behind, even where it’s Fay Wray he’s leaving. More we ponder, the more sense his decision makes, this being Von’s Vienna and all of moral decay that implied. Occurs to me that sophistication-wise, The Wedding March remains yet to be caught up with. It makes moderns look like child fables.

The Wedding March Leads Paramount's Pack for 1928-29 Laurels, and Hopefully, Grosses.

We were at the Columbus Cinevent, I think in 1986, where a collector whose specialty was silents, confided that he had The Wedding March on 16mm, with the color sequence, and would run it once only in his room, start time midnight. Stroheimians gathered, it didn’t need many to cram a room, this for most of us a first (and evermore only?) occasion to see such rarity. Who knows what feeble elements the print derived from … certainly it was soft … 16mm a least of formats to play host. We were just grateful to finally see The Wedding March. Who knew that Paramount would release a video cassette the following year? For any major to take a flyer on features so antique was undreamt of by fans, but how many such fans were there? (not enough, as it turned out, for Paramount to break even) They’d not use the original score, Gaylord Carter an adequate, if not preferred at the time, substitute. Afterward came nothing, hope a lantern aloft for forty years till The Wedding March entered the Public Domain and Vitaphone’s eagle landed. Now for me it seems less urgent for Criterion, anyone, to get out a Blu-Ray, although I’d still welcome that for extras and access perhaps to even better elements. One must, as before and since the days of Herman Weinberg, ask how many are alive and panting for Stroheim’s could-be masterpiece to reassert itself. Possibilities certainly are there --- look at Beau Geste lately rescued and filling auditoria. I hear a MOMA show wowed capacity seating. There’s also indication that His Glorious Night will soon be back, and I but recently saw the Vitaphone Project’s A Woman Disputed with Norma Talmadge and again, an original score heard for first time since Troy was sieged. And isn’t Flicker Alley forthcoming with He Who Gets Slapped? The Silent Era hasn’t had things so good since … well, the Silent Era.

Friend Hopkins Supervises a Latest Village Barbecue

STILL UNCONQUERED? --- Greenbriar in September 2007 offered a column called At Long Last Conquering the Worm, which I realize now was a misnomer. It had been but thirty-eight years since initial trauma sustained from watching The Conqueror Worm (later and more commonly known as Witchfinder General), and I know now it wasn’t enough. 2025 The Conqueror Worm was in fact upsetting as ever. Unrealized in 1969 was my having entered into an unspoken compact with horror filmmakers at an early age --- let them push, but not too far, a sort of personal Production Code, with rules not so strict as industry’s own, but there nonetheless to protect tender sensibilities that were mine. So far no feature had violated my Code. There were those to chill as others had not, like memorable The Haunting from early 1964, a same winter that tendered Children of the Damned, which by title alone warned of fences being breached. An incident that year might have lowered curtains altogether for myself and the genre had my mother ceded to plea for us to park at somewhat remote North Wilkesboro Drive-In for the combo of Blood Feast with 2000 Maniacs. Those would have traumatized me less than assuring that I would never be permitted to see chillers again. Disaster but barely averted. One that was lush and very mainstream Hollywood broke a barrier within moments of entering the Liberty. That was Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, where what we saw upon adjusting to darkness was Bruce Dern in the summer house softly calling Charlotte’s name, then chop-off went his hand and him holding a bloody stump to our squealing delight. Having seen no such thing to that time, mine was transport of joy. Narrative to follow was interminable wait for more such mayhem that wouldn't come, Charlotte having shot her bolt.

Witches Were Vince's Onscreen Nemesis, But Offscreen It Was Director Michael Reeves

What was it then about The Conqueror Worm that upset me so? I get now, at admittedly late date, that it was cruelty and hopelessness of everyone’s situation, plus the fact Worm was based on history and such horrors did actually take place. Somewhere I read that Matthew Hopkins was a real person, that he hung alleged witches and sometimes burned them. Vincent Price engaging such atrocity took me places I had no wish to go. Maybe the actor sensing this had something to do with bad relations between him and twenty-four-year-old director Michael Reeves. Price had ground rules for bogey-playing, not forgetting that an ounce of humor was worth pounds of scares, a policy going back to House of Wax and continuing forward. What a shock for him to be confronted by this kid who knew Vince’s shtick, thought it stank, and told him so loudly. Talk about disrespect for elders. Reeves snubbed Price from the first day, showed no concern when his star fell from a horse and was injured, sent an underling to ask after him. The Vince who could make friends with a rock here saw solid stone and knew it was his very persona and concept of performing that made the helmsman burn. Reeves ended up beating the veteran down to ice-cold enact given here, many Price admirers since calling his Witchfinder a best-ever effort. I’m to point at last of saying the same. Price is a monster that never eases a crack. Did he wonder if fans would be alienated? I forgave Price at the time, knowing how AIP had by then been coarsened, ignorant of Worm as not fully their venture, the company part-financing an already formed project. Vincent Price had been subdued in previous Poes, cruel in Masque of the Red Death, chilly for Tomb of Ligeia. Trouble was a public chilling on his act, for those final Poes by Roger Corman took too modest rentals to sustain the series. Still Jim and Sam would graft Poe onto The Conqueror Worm by having Price add narration for US release.

Might Have Wished I Had Stayed Home If Not for Worm's Co-Feature, The Devil's Bride

The Conqueror Worm by trade estimate was a hit, for AIP a most lucrative Poe/Price since The Raven. Was that for being more explicit? Word must have traveled, for what gothics were selling so well by 1969? Leave the Children Home! shouted ads, and maybe this time, they meant it. Youngsters were known to have departed screenings in tears (see comments with the 2007 column), The Conqueror Worm in line with stronger meat AIP now was frying. Touted also to trade was ongoing “protest” line-up to include Wild in the Streets, Savage Seven, Angels from Hell, and The Mini-Skirt Mob, none of which I would deign to see in observance of my own protest against biker and counter-culturing. Michael Reeves was interestingly of similar mind, his having strobe-lighted pre-Worm The Sorcerers but not buying lifestyle it depicted. Horror movies seemed over anyway by then, Hammer dropping notches by the month, others of AI origin progressively worse. We saw Crimson Cult for it touted as “Karloff’s Last,” plus Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele in support parts, but how could this thing have been duller? Last gasp I recall was 1972 combo of The Abominable Dr. Phibes with Murders in the Rue Morgue, Phibes pretty good, but the other … we walked out. Tentative reapproach to The Conqueror Worm saw me finally embrace fineness even worse detractors must acknowledge. Hate it okay, but you can’t brand this “bad.” The Conqueror Worm is far too well made and thoughtful in its way for that. Might as well blame history for stops-out telling had here. Matthew Hopkins and his assistant John Sternes were real people who committed real atrocities. Both men interestingly wrote books on their witch-hunt careers at twilight of life. Michael Reeves was determined to tell things as they were. He died three months before we saw The Conqueror Worm, his final film, though of course I was unaware of it then. Vincent Price wrote the director after seeing The Conqueror Worm and told him how great it all turned out and that he hoped they'd work together again. We are much the poorer for that never happening.