Showmen Sell It Hot #4

 

Showmen: Old Cartoons Better Than Ever (We Hope), Deanna on Oversea Soil, and Our Starlight Gives Them Away

CARTOONS ON YOUR CAMPUS --- “Showmen” here were non-theatrical renters looking to hike interest among grown or growing kids for content enjoyed when they were littler kids. What if someone developed a scheme to monetize the old cartoons in a way never tried but foolproof, to succeed spectacularly where no one else could for the last half of a century? When did Warners, the Popeyes, lesser but plentiful others, begin to wilt? Old animation had been saleable, on a meaningful basis, since the seventies when most recognizable of it played local stations, plus the networks. Taking all of viewing markets into consideration, including most of all home video, added up to lots, flow consistent and considerable for decades beyond the fifties. Now we get vintage cartoons on backwater streaming, and thanks be, Warner Archive still releases deluxe sets, a recent all-inclusive Tom and Jerry collection, plus ongoing Looney Tune compilations. I’ve heard Warners got way less than they should have for pre-49 features they sold to AAP, later United Artists, back in the mid-fifties. Seems to me however that the real steal was cartoons from the same epoch virtually thrown in with the full-lengths and unrecognized as a most lucrative asset $21 million bought. Of all things old, you’d think cartoons would be the last to announce themselves that way, but put beside successors often inspired by, certainly respectful of, what went before, the differences in tempo and attitude immediately date, and here were fans thinking they would endure forever. During the eighties when this UA rental catalogue was published, there still was likelihood a far-back short would be daring, sometimes outrageous. This was reaction I noted to Tex Avery MGM’s elusive on North Carolina television, discovered belatedly when bootleg 16mm prints came way for us who had not seen such cheek in cartoons before. We were seeing them same as theatre audiences of a past generation, TV on daily basis to increase exposure, please us like parents who’d been there for first-runs from the thirties and into the fifties.

Fans who devoted lives to animated study came together on UA’s classic cartoon behalf, cover art by Leslie Cabarga, who also wrote a book on the Fleischers, Leonard Maltin with an Introduction, and Jerry Beck editing the whole. Cartoon scholarship goes on yet among these three, plus others having pursued the topic at least as long. Are there historians who celebrate and graze upon Tiny-Toon Adventures? Seems like sarcasm even to ask, but rest assured there are those who treasure memories of such. Classic Era shorts were unique for being “now” and “happening” longer than any of us, or elders, stayed young. Only to recent viewership do they seem passe. I’d like knowing if ten-year-olds sitting before Popeye, that is Fleischer Popeye, might embrace him. Would black-and-white be a stopper? Maltin said “what’s good stays good” in his catalog intro, adding that “A Popeye classic from 1935 is as fresh today as the day it was made, (and) the comedy of Daffy Duck gets the same laughs in the 1980’s that it brought in the 1940’s.” Jump then to today … still true? UA’s price list is telling. $25 to rent “Parade” reels, generally three of thematic kind. Individual cartoons with reputation of their own (I Love to Singa, Coal Black, Corny Concerto, etc.) were $17 per date. I got bootlegged Coal Black for about twice that, but never had to send it back. UA offered comedy two-reelers in their catalogue. There were all six of the Fatty Arbuckle Vitaphone comedies, which try seeing those any other way at the time (sum up in two words: Im-possible). Bolder even was a Ben Blue short to hopefully tickle modern funny bones, this asking much of ardentest cultists (ardenest not a “standard English word,” but hereby anointed by Greenbriar as it does apply here). You’d need to have been plenty expert on the era to play such deep-dug obscurities, and I wonder what colleges had such radical student schedulers, and if survivors still collect or enthuse over oldies (question answered by peruse of past Greenbriar comment sections). Never mind campus marches and overtake of classrooms, the real uprisers were those brave enough to book Ben Blue.

Don't Look Up, Girls! Old Ygor Might Be Peering Out That Window

MAD ABOUT MUSIC (1938) --- Local friend had a mother-in-law that after the war worked for Universal-International in Europe. They stayed busy releasing old titles new to continentals. Here is the Danish program for Universal’s Mad About Music with Deanna Durbin. It has sixteen pages and is the size of an average note pad. Dealers would show up at Cons with odd items like this. Mad About Music had undoubted foreign appeal for its Euro setting and background, being about a Swiss girl’s school attended by Deanna. All of atmosphere was feigned on Uni stages per customary, most striking of effects a village with housing and a train platform like something off studio blueprint for Son of Frankenstein, which actually followed Mad About Music into production and then release. It could be what made Son look so lush was décor left over from the Durbin project and redressed to accommodate Basil Rathbone plus itinerary. There was no genre or thematic overlap between the two, but one sure evokes the other, and I kept waiting in Mad About Music to see Rathbone detrain behind Deanna, or vice versa. Where classic Universal horror parallels with what amounts to a musical fairy tale, well, anything might happen. I years ago had a 16mm trailer for Mad About Music and listed it in the old Big Reel paper for sale. First caller identified himself as one of the “Cappy Berra Boys,” a harmonica group that did a specialty number with Durbin for the film. He got the trailer and I got anecdotes about the making of Mad About Music. How easy it was to take for granted days when we'd encounter veterans of the Classic Era, figuring they’d always be around and accessible. Mad About Music’s story was of a movie star played by Gail Patrick who conceals the fact she has an adolescent daughter away at a private school. Did this sort of thing actually go on? Did real-life luminaries have kids hid? Patrick was an actress who often played unsympathetic, having an expression that could look moody or mean unless smiling (sometimes too when she smiled). Same went for Helen Parrish among the schoolgirls, her as often a nemesis for Deanna and though surface pretty, could register spiteful and untrustworthy. Did implied attitude like this make life harder for actresses fated with faces that said one thing even while trying to register another? Universal has Mad About Music on a nice Blu-Ray.

The Starlight in Mid-70's Free Fall

FREE TO TAXPAYERS --- Here is/was our Starlight Drive-In. This is where I saw The Curse of Frankenstein and Brides of Dracula for a first time, so of course it is sacred ground. Pretty sure Garland Morrison was owner/operator at the time. He’d been a showman since shortly after talkies came, made his bones handing out passes to hog farmers so they could see Flying Down to Rio gratis. I wrote a feature article about Garland and wife Virgie for the Winston-Salem Journal back in the eighties. By then, the Starlight was but a memory. Another friend, Eddie Knight, saw out its final days as manager (cousin to Brick Davis referred to him as “Eddie Daylight”). Eddie revealed to me that the Starlight’s screen was hollow and full of discarded stuff. Feel free to take what you want, said he, and boy, did I. Found amidst oodles a custom window card, in a glass and aluminum frame, for the Starlight’s combo of Thunder Road with Tobacco Road. These would be hung on brick walls through town, plus merchants cooperating with the drive-in. Now there’s nothing to suggest there ever was a Starlight, a non-descript food market now sat upon this once-Valhalla. Truth is I wasn’t crazy for drive-ins mostly because sound was so lousy, like a transistor radio hung just beyond reach of hearing. What displays here is a herald Garland made up for April tradition that was free movies for broke taxpayers, playdate appropriately on 15/16 April, I’m going to guess around 1963. By then Bachelor Flat would have played itself out country-wide and Garland could get it for comparative nickels. Same applied to The Command, a 1954 release still at Warners’ Charlotte exchange. Garland Morrison understood good will currency of a “Big Free Show.” I bet he and Virgie filled up both nights. Suppose they also drew the art and did home-style printing? Looks that way.