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| Here is What a Local Theatre Could Ad-Achieve in 1924. Great Art I Calls It. |
Boots No More ... but Still: Chaney and Ford Legit ... and Not
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| Note Chaney Chair Gifted to Him By "Working Staff" on He Who Gets Slapped ... No Actors, Just Crew Signatures ... Shows How Popular Chaney Was With Those Like Him Who Labored for a Living. |
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| I Love Screwy Expressions Actors Put On for Publicity Posing |
SALUTE (1929) --- What we, we as in ones separate from archival
holdings, have on Salute is dubs off dubs off dubs made from an AMC broadcast
(their John Ford tribute) of thirty at least years ago when fans kept VCR’s
always at the ready to record on cassette films they might never have
opportunity to see again. That wouldn’t be case for classics that turned up and often in sparkling quality, Salute and others like it gone down
ratholes from which they’d not peek apart from DVD from collector to collector
or You Tube now that PD status finds Salute all over the Net, transfers still circa AMC past and blurry for most part (most? I haven’t found one yet that was
passable). AMC’s print looks to have been 16mm, cue marks throughout for
commercial TV insertions, George Eastman House credited as source. Is
this the best GEH has, or do other archives also have Salute? Whatever … it’ll pass
on a small enough screen, and it is Salute after all, a rarity among John Fords
and surprisingly ignored or dismissed by his chroniclers. Odd taste that is
mine likes it however, and though I never attended military academy, there is
still romance of same that makes me almost wish I had (not really … would they
have let me stay up to watch Shock Theater?). Ford’s Navy geekdom might have
started here, nothing about the institution he doesn’t revere, even hazing as
imposed by beginners Ward Bond and John Wayne which seems cruel in the extreme,
or maybe that’s because we are all such sissies now. This was a first time
Wayne got to talk onscreen, him in and out of groups, getting words in where he
can. It sure took Ford a long time to recognize what an asset he had in Wayne, but look how
nasty he got when Raoul Walsh did the overdue job of “discovering” Duke. Wouldn’t
speak to Wayne for years after. Not sure I could have stayed friends long with
a personality like Ford’s. |
| Ward Bond Started Off as a Sour Apple. He Does Seem Sort of Scary in Early and Small Parts |
Ward Bond lends ape-like appeal to chief bully part, softens later to
almost a regular guy. He was said to have pushed his way onto a bus headed for location,
Bond recalled by all as a guy who could not be insulted despite many trying,
was never embarrassed for being oblivious to possibility of it. A happy life
Ward must have had as result … how does one get hurt where unconscious of those
who’d try? Bond never met a twenty-four ounce steak he didn’t like and drank
others not under tables, but floors. Add nonstop smoking and cue early exit
(Ford’s mourning was profound). Wonder if the by-then “old man” regretted in
hindsight making fun of Ward. Old man thing baffles me, as Ford was younger
than me when he did his last, Seven Women. Didn’t take as much to hang old tag
on folks then, men and women, unhealthy habits getting premature job done. Salute
was shot mostly at Annapolis, thus authenticity re training and drills. Might
they yet have a print from days showing Salute to incoming plebes? Bet you could ask
a hundred and draw that many blanks, sort of like when we went to Williamsburg
the last time and I inquired of lots if they recalled the Perry Como holiday
1978 special shot there in entirety, John Wayne Perry’s guest and checking out historic
sites, talking to staff plus guests. You’d think from now it never happened. George
O’Brien is putative star of Salute, but he’s gone for long stretches where focus
is instead on William Janney and Helen Chandler. Lee Tracy as sport announcer along
with director colleague of Ford’s at Fox David Butler get a look-in, Salute
culminating with the big Army-Navy game where it looks like a hundred thousand
easy in attendance. I watched that mass of cheering humanity and thought, all gone. And look how exuberant they are for an event to now raise more chill than
cheers.
10 Comments:
Off today's topic, but Dan Mercer lately got a new and oversized picture book on Barbara Payton by John O'Dowd, and Greenbriar won't resist sharing Dan's reflections on it (Part One):
The copy of John O'Dowd's "Barbara Payton: A Life in Pictures" I ordered has arrived and it's terrific! The printing, fonts selected, layout, and photographic reproduction are all first rate.
Of course, it is the content that is most important. Barbara Payton evidently passed by many cameras in her life--snapshots by family, wedding pictures, studio portraits and publicity shots--and increasingly, as her life wore on, shots by freelancers for gossip rags and police mug shots. O'Dowd has seemingly gathered all that was available, much of which I'd never seen before. If there were several photographers present on an occasion, he'll have their shots from different moments and angles. It's astonishing, the coverage he has.
The saddest section, as you would guess, is the last, where her life was out of control. The pictures of her had become rare by this point, but there are ones of the shabby hotels where she stayed or worked out of. In the midst of this squalor, a police shot or candid for a confession magazine will appear, startling in its revelation of how ruined she had become.
There is a textual narrative, but not in mere captions. Rather, there are gracefully written vignettes placing a photo in the context or her life or career or highlighting something of note in it. There are also panels providing text or quotations from her or an acquaintance relevant to that period. It is very well done and complements his work in "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye."
Part Two from Dan Mercer:
In an afterward, he concludes that she was her own worst enemy and ruined many promising opportunities by her compulsive and self-destructive behavior. It is a fair assessment. Early on, there were a number of people in the industry, like the Cagney brothers, who wanted to work with her and do good things in a good way. She was not unmindful of this, but somehow there were other desires and appetites that she cared about more. What might have seemed outwardly beautiful became itself a torment and a prison for her, with herself the jailer within.
After her notorious "ants in my pants" press conference, when she had somehow managed to become a fairly convincing simulation of the starlet she'd been, she probably realized that her career was over. No one would ever again take a chance on her. At the beginning of the book, there is a quote from her autobiography, "I Am Not Ashamed," that she was a small town girl who trusted everyone, but no one was telling the truth. Hollywood is sometimes not a very nice place, even for the factory town it was then, but probably most of the lies she heard were told later in her life, when the only thing some were interested in was how to exploit what was left of her. Contrary to the title of her book, I think that she was ashamed and that it was out of self-loathing that she gave herself entirely over to that wild life she had been living, even though she was aware of its destructive effects. The only difference was that the death she was rushing towards had become its justification.
Some might find such a book somewhat extravagant, given the brevity of Barbara Payton's career and the scandals that accompanied it. The lives and deaths of actors and other celebrities are often sensationalized for the amusement of the public. Certainly Payton's was. The way in which O'Dowd has covered her life and career, both in this book and his earlier, "Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye," allows us to better appreciate why her death was in the end a tragedy. She was a stunningly beautiful woman with genuine talent for acting. Given other circumstances, she almost certainly would have become a star. Instead, she was overwhelmed by dark influences around and within her. So, this is not so much a Hollywood story as a human one, about a troubled woman who was surprisingly valiant in trying to live her life. At the very least, in presenting it as he has, with sympathy and understanding, O'Dowd has done her a much greater kindness than others had who knew her.
Phil Smoot spells it out about Helen Chandler and Mae Clarke:
Looking at that lovely image of Helen Chandler from "Salute" makes me think of how beautiful Mae Clarke looks in recent Blu-ray of the 1932 "Night World",
yet both of these ladies looked so drab, plain, and boring in the two 1931 Universal Monster classics - -
Chandler so bland in "Dracula" that one wondered why the Hungarian Count bothered with her,
and Mae Clarke so dull looking in "Frankenstein" that I understand why her fiancé preferred working with dead bodies.
Tod Browning and James Whale needed more blood and more life for both of these women in the original classics.
Having seen both HE WHO GET SLAPPED and its remake made in Argentina, EL QUE RECIBE LAS BOFETADAS, I still consider that the remake is much better film by far and ignored by snobs.
TCM's muti-part podcast of John Ford was fascinating. He sure had a style, both personal and professional, that simultaneously was frightening yet got the best performances out of all his actors. No matter how he insulted them, they always answered when Ford came calling. Of course he was also a raging alcoholic which can be scary itself.
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I'd ask if Ford was properly appreciative of at least two people who did a great deal to enhance and sustain his career, Merian C. Cooper and John Wayne. Cooper used his many and moneyed contacts to finance Ford projects, while Wayne frequently took lower fees so Ford could get projects made. Wonder if he ever came close to acknowledging that ...
I often wonder what sort of world we would be lib ving in if the US Congress had not retroactively increased the copyright period for films not once but twice in the years from 1976-1996; by my reckoning, had those changes in the law not occurred, films from before 1970 would all be entering the public domain just about now.
Dan Mercer considers SALUTE:
I'm sure that some watching "Salute" on one of the YouTube channels would have wondered why people at the time preferred it to silent films still extant. It would seem to them slow and stilted, with poor lines badly spoken and variable sound recording. However, I can imagine why an audience then might have found that it delivered the goods. It offered spectacle and a story with drama, comedy, and romance. Not least, the setting at the Naval Academy would have intrigued them with its depiction of an institution they held in great esteem. As such, the characters were as much types as people, the callow young man making his way in the world, the overbearing upper class man, the wise guy, the young woman whose heart in its innocence was open to love, and so on. The young man is not very well played, and yet that might even have increased their interest in him. They would have understood him as trying to prove himself worthy of so worthwhile an organization, which to them represented the best of the country's young men, in their courage and intelligence and, especially, in their sense of honor. Now as then, those who appreciate such qualities would find their expression timeless, whatever reservations they might have on an aesthetic or technical basis.
I noticed that one of the advertisements on display offered "King of the Kongo" as the "First Talking Serial." That is incorrect. Rice Krispies had been introduced the year before.
The first print I saw of FOOLISH WIVES was standard 8mm from Griggs Moviedrome. I was around 17/18. Projected it on my bedroom wall. Knew nothing about Stroheim or that originally it had been much longer. Thanks to your posts and others I learned what I first saw was the most complete version (and pictorially best) up till then. . Flicker Alley has certainly more than done what survives of the picture justice. Ditto HE WHO GETS SLAPPED.
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