Role Models for Males Apply Here ...

 

I'm All Walled Up Inside, But Thanks for the Coffee, Ma'am

Line Up Stoics, Sigmas, and Self-Reliers

Watch You Tube enough and you find out how hot ancient meditators have become. What follows are YT stars to conjure with: Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, plus later lights Machiavelli, Arthur Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, these to light way toward wisdom from times past and more so now. It’s cool to be stoic, to rely mostly if not all on yourself. Ralph Waldo Emerson published his 1814 Self-Reliance essay we could as profitably live by today. Life coaches in the meantime sell tickets to teach us how to comport like Roman generals. To be a Sigma Male they say is to be a wolf among dogs, or better put, sheep. Being indifferent and emotionally unreachable is essence of quest. Let others talk as you stand silent and wait your turn to strike. What’s this to do with films, let alone films older than any of us? Seeing enough You Tube convinces me that Marcus Aurelius invented our Classic Era star system, him and fraternal lot from time of Christ to modern if confused concept of manhood as is, or ideally would be. Who are role models now? A song from fifty years back went, Our Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys. Not now they aren’t, but ho … is it possible philosophers have surpassed film figures as guides for masculine behavior? I read Stoics, observe Sigmas, and think yes, these all speak to me, or at least the strong, silent force I'd like to be. Too late? Maybe for some, but persuaders, influencers as they’re better defined, claim we’ve got stuff to keep a hostile world at bay, so long as we let it out, or better, hold it in. Advice covered in syrup that is flattery. But wasn’t this what role modelling movie stars did all along, and did best?

My Rifle, My Pony, and Me Was All Guys Like Ladd Needed

Still Waiting for This World of Ours (Really Theirs) To Make Wider Way For Me

Artificial Intelligence we pray to says the term “Sigma Male” came into usage during the early 2010’s, being desired alternative to Beta Males, who let others boss them, Gamma Males, who sell brooms for the Lion’s Club and seek to be liked by all/sundry --- then there are Alpha Males, who boss everybody and end up liked by nobody. There are other kinds of Males, but space forfends my listing whole of Greek alphabet. Sigmas are my meat for their being so much like stars in Classic Era’s firmament. Having oft-patterned myself after he-types from then, it’s clear now that Sigma is what I longed to be. Independent … keeps his own counsel … seeks not the approval of others … a loner wolf alert to anyone who’d seize an advantage. Chicks love Sigmas they say. Remember Pee-Wee identifying himself as “a loner and a rebel”? Every man wants to think of himself on rebel if not loner terms. Try watching Ride Lonesome and not projecting onto Randolph Scott. Idea of Sigma men was so appealing that of course they’d have to be certified by popular culture, at least named for purpose of You Tube and online worship. Sigmas are however nothing new. We’ve had them long as there’s been movies … or literature … or tales told by firelight. Sigmas know the score, answer to no one, live entirely off convention’s grid. Corporations can’t own them for they survive nicely whatever their circumstance. Alpha males may get rich and control others, which means they constantly have to deal with others, if only to dominate them. Sigmas go about cool because they dig being isolated. Alan Ladd says in Appointment with Danger that his idea of true love is carrying a .45 that won’t jam. We laugh but also envy his self-possession. If you want to understand Sigma, or be Sigma, go buy or stream Ladd plus others that polished the brand, and know they were popular for understanding What Men Really Want, and Women Too (from their men).

Later, Ruth ... Me and Ward Bond Have Gotta Go Tap Another Well

If Only We Could, Marcus. Please Come Back and Show Us How

As moderation applies to all things, so then do we combine Sigma, Gamma, Beta, even Alpha, to arrive at ideal manhood. Lone wolves are assumed to walk alone, but if that’s true, how come wolves keep being born? Those who preach benefits of Stoic and Sigma are mostly self-helpers selling lifestyles they claim are good for us as they were for the ancients. What Emerson counseled plugs profitably into most any life. What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think, he said, a quote as easily emanating from Gary Cooper once he decides to haul nitro in Blowing Wild so he can finance another oil dig. Alan Ladd’s onscreen philosophy was summed up by Emerson thus: It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. Male stars were always for Self-Reliance. Scott, Cooper, Ladd became role models for the simple reason they lived for goals generally short term and let no one interfere with their pursuit. You could summarize Sigma life philosophy in a dozen or less words: Scott will find and kill men responsible for the murder of his wife, Cooper will get cash one way or another to drill another hole, Ladd will go undercover and root out mail robbers, simplest objective always the better. We watch these men’s behavior and are happily guided by them.

Good Job, Bogie, But Let's Not Make a Habit of Roles Like This ...

The Next One He Did ... and Back at Familiar Work We Hired Him For

YT coaches tell Sigma candidates things they long to hear, cats  stroked when influencers speak. Who wouldn’t plug themselves into these: In a world of puppets, Sigmas cut the string … Instead of reacting, they absorb … People want you to be predictable, but you will always confound them. Check, check, and check --- That’s me, we’d all say. Swap your impotence for virility reclaimed. Folks imagine this to be fresh phenomenon, but frustration modern men feel go far back as Adam, movie salve a same since film got hold 125 years back and counting. Did pioneering Sigmas begin with strong, silent, and alone William S. Hart? That alone part is price Sigmas must ultimately pay. Might “loser” more describe those who’d elect always to isolate? Movies have done good giving boys and men worthwhile examples to follow. Many were those in maturity who’d lament passing of heroes adopted in youth. Ones less given to fan following were more subtly coopted. See/hear enough of any charismatic face and voice and chances are you’ll imitate him. How else did I get to be the youngest Basil Rathbone on my street? As narrative and character developed on film, there came shading by idols, effect sometimes unintended, this where good enough actors left singular impression upon men and boys who went expecting one thing and got something else. To ponder work of favorites is to realize they early adapted Sigma, widening range an option open to personas that projected strongest, result sometimes gone sideways and leaving us to wonder whether this is a man we’d like to emulate … or not.

That Stuff's Priceless!, Warns Offscreen Waldo to Laser-Focused Mark McPherson

Where Being Sigma Costs Lives and Property, Especially in Wartime. Slow Down, Jim!

Cary and His Childlike Crew. He Alone Knows Tokyo is Their Objective

Consider then Sigma performances and spot which were default setting for actors playing them. Some roles were so definitive as to sum up and represent the stance from there forward. Humphrey Bogart is decisively Sigma in The Maltese Falcon and then Casablanca, but would himself crack the mold to, if nothing else, show he could: Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, The Caine Mutiny … would these disappoint ones who appointed him their life guide? Note a once thriving Bogart cult citing latters as less essential to revive, because who wants to grow up and be Fred C. Dobbs, Charlie Allnutt, or Captain Queeg? Bogart into his fifties would be less convincingly Sigma, returns to old Bogie form a matter of being an “official” hero who would support status quo of law enforcing (The Enforcer), or crime-busting journalism (Deadline USA). Sigmas being goal-focused to exclusion of all else could be romantic and a thing to aspire to, or distinctly neither of these. Consider Dana Andrews as Mark McPherson … we know he’ll end up with Gene Tierney’s Laura once she turns out to be still alive. Mark had a past relationship that he dumped for the gal pushing too much to marry, Sigmas sensing such as signal to back off. McPherson’s diligence on the job will put him at odds with a mainstream, attractively so in a long run, at least in Laura’s view, but what of the Sigma male too alienated from normal course of life. Laird Cregar in I Wake Up Screaming was an extreme example, Betty Grable asking him how anyone can get along without relationships, human contact of any kind, to which he softly replies, It can be done. That Laird turns out to be near psychotic comes as no surprise.

These Boys Badly Need to Settle Their Personal Fued Before Germans Start Dropping Ashcans on Them

Sigma behavior gone a bridge too far is explored by James Cagney in Captains of the Clouds, his “Brian MacLean” me-first to frightening degree. If there is screen argument against Sigma Males, Captains of the Clouds is it. Brian is capable and successful at lone wolfing way through civilian bush piloting, but can’t adjust himself to any cooperative effort, let alone team-play necessitated by war. That Brian must die for his self-centered recklessness is understood, him better off dead than to muck up combat effort on behalf of the Royal Canadian Air Force. Independence for which we applauded Sigmas had to be suspended in favor of Allied wartime effort. John Garfield is resentful that he’s washed out of flight training in Air Force, senior captain John Ridgely, stable and married qualifying him to lead Garfield and crew to victory in the Pacific. Ridgely is seasoned by experience, thus ideal to command. Cary Grant with a wife and child left behind will sail his sub to enemy shore for the Allied effort in Destination Tokyo, conduct anything but an expression of Sigma values. Devoted husband in civilian life Raymond Massey pauses all that to skipper a Merchant Marine vessel for Action in the North Atlantic, second-in-command Humphrey Bogart the Sigma who is that way in part because he’ll not lead where given an opportunity, preferring instead a footloose and non-committing lifestyle, that a less appealing option now that our freedoms were under threat. Where sub Captain and First Officer argue over a girl back in New London ... well, that could jeopardize a mission, like Dana Andrews and Tyrone Power at loggerheads in Crash Dive. Clark Gable won’t give up Sigma ways till island invasion he's smack in a middle of, Somewhere I’ll Find You being account of one Sigma who’ll fight for the team whether he wants to or not. Even Alan Ladd will forfeit Sigma stripes where Nippon perfidy pushes him past boiling point in China. Film Noir after the war would do much to restore men’s natural inclination to go it alone, thus Ladd and others back to lone pursuits per customary.

Pat Hendry Understands That to Lead Is To Do So Sans Baggage --- Will Sassy/Saucy Nikki Change His Mind?

Smug Townfolk Look On Approvingly at a Safely Gelded Jeff Webster

Urban dwelling was best done by oneself. Even with badges, Sigmas went largely solo. Dennis O’Keefe in T-Men knows any man weighted by family and domestic duties dies hard in the face of harsh reality, a lesson undercover partner Alfred Ryder learns at expense of his life. Kenneth Tobey is effective where protecting us from Arctic alien invasion but might be less so should he settle down with Margaret Sheridan. What’s a Sigma to do? The Thing’s teasing conclusion implies he’ll give in, or maybe not. We can have it either way depending on personal preference. James Stewart in The Far Country must be beaten, shot, otherwise outraged, before joining community membership. He’ll belong to them or else, Sigmas in the audience figuring Jim worse off than if felled altogether by villainy. Mid-fifties Sigmas seem at times like overgrown juvenile delinquents, less cool to us for having less control of unattractive impulses. James Dean’s Jett Rink sulks and pouts and throws sucker punches to disappointment of would-be fellow Sigmas, but maybe he was just warning us what might come of such chosen way of life.

If 1966-67 Had a Cooler Example to Follow, I Surely Missed Him

Where Even a Dedicated Sigma Could Never Undo a Grievous Past Mistake

Don't Get Too Close Ingrid, I'm a Married Man. Except He Really Isn't.

A man could turn heavy Sigma for loss sustained offscreen and long ago. Lee Marvin’s “Fardan” in The Professionals had a wife once, but she was cruelly done in by the Mexican army and he has gone it resolutely alone since. It is for Burt Lancaster’s “Dolworth” to explain in fewest words as Sigmas are wont. Water might muddy where a Sigma has committed a bad deed for which there’d be no proper penance, like Paul Newman as Hud Bannon drunkenly responsible for his brother’s death in an auto crack-up. Despite Hud being so indifferently cool otherwise, we cannot forget any more than his estranged father will. Sigmas often floated upon a past that was mild soufflé, nothing to disturb us or them. Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill had a marriage that failed, but so what? He’s Sigma now and liking it. To Catch a Thief gives Cary a reformed thief’s irresistible past plus Single Is the Best Thing philosophy per You Tube imprint above. Indiscreet sees Grant telling Ingrid Bergman he’s married to keep her at safe distance. Grant did ageless Sigma most becomingly, was able to carry it off longer than rival leading men. I could go on about Sigma Males, in fact will in future columns. For my liking of the type and actors that represented it, there could well be a series coming of this, so be warned.

Showmen Sell It Hot #3

 

Where Soft Paws Meet Hard Surface ... the Rialto Again Shows Them All How

Showmen: Cats To Drag Us In, and Dream Pit That Was Winston-Salem's Center Theatre

Herewith photo proof --- there were few exploitation pictures so true to their time or place as Cat People. Where it’s most vital to push, really push … well, there’s just nothing so simple, so effective, as cat folk, especially female cat folk. Bob’s Your Uncle, as the British say. Cat People was sold around cats. Cats everywhere, big and small. The Wolf Man vaulted man-to-animal theme to best money Universal knew from horror since early ones that started the cycle. How to improve upon that? Obvious, or should have been … let a woman become a cat, feline translated simple to female, just as dogs or wolves evoke the male. Sugar was sex atop drama of Cat People. Was that Val Lewton or his writer DeWitt Bodeen? Bodeen was a film scholar in addition to penning fine films. He later wrote career profile and analysis for Films in Review, output fine as to later go between hard covers (two volumes). Cat People drew children of course, but also adults who heard of grown-up skate toward censor edges, being of a man’s frustration where his wife holds out marital favors for fear she’ll turn panther if aroused. Cat People was where subdued style of Lewton’s paid off best. Momentum from this yielded chillers less chilling till bosses appointed a supervising producer (Jack Gross) and hired Boris Karloff to push pedals and make clear RKO horrors would be horrific, The Body Snatcher most profitable instance of this. As pleasing to watch Cat People would be stroll amongst displays like banquet tables for front and lobby, sorts of spots I would have lingered long at, management to ask eventually if it’s the movie for me or just gawking entryways.

Cat's In the Bag, Bag's in the River --- In this Instance, a River of Grosses

Might as well start at the peak, which as always was the Rialto, New York’s (un)nerve center also a teaching lab for showmen far afield hoping to market Cat People as effectively. Details per Rialto custom are telling. We see review excerpts upon art of clawed hands, “Keep Axis Claws from Our Shores” also to emphasize cat motif. War being ever-present, there was push too toward bond buying by enterers. The Rialto was good always for emphasis not just on features but shorts supporting them, thus a latest Superman from Paramount with the Fleischers getting emphasis. Cat People as emphasized by looming art of many and sundry cat folk implies modern plague of them, patrons getting but one for admission, Simone Simon being sole specimen readily forgiven, as one of her was equal to an army of less descript cats. The Rialto showcased B’s as if they were deluxe A’s. That was essential where goal among insiders was to evaluate new releases and identify a “sleeper” in event one surfaced. Theatre fronts elsewhere were as lush, cats hovering over entrances or enhanced center courts once you got in. Note “Stark Shockery … Killing Chillery” as standee promise, this traversed on ways to auditoria, passing stand at which to purchase all-vital bonds, sternly recommended use for disposable income. To walk by these without stopping needed reasons why, and they better be good ones. Would we feel guilty buying candy or corn rather than another bond? Further query: Was Hershey’s rationed during the war? --- or was there maybe just enough chocolate to supply our fighting force?

Monolithic Wachovia Bank Stands Vigil Over Humble Center Theatre --- But Could It Hope to Achieve Latter's Greatness?

By mid-1966, Winston-Salem had two (deep) downtown theatres (grindhouses really), the Center and the Lincoln, to represent apex for show going, beacons against darkness that was uptown Winston and Carolina (former the site of 2001), plus the newly opened Parkway, for “lobster” first-runs (descriptive term introed by writer Rick Sullivan whose gone and lamented Gore Gazette, like Rick himself, gave gonzo account of 80’s pics). The Center and Lincoln had not long to last, being black sheep among Winston venues even as they served shows I salivated to see. Memorable instance: Mid-July and the Center bowing half-week triple of The Pit and the Pendulum, Tomb of Ligeia, and Premature Burial, these as the Carolina tendered Maya (Jay North and elephants), while the Parkway sold Arabesque (yes, but did they spray patrons with comp perfume?). The Winston at least had The Ten Commandments, which I might have opted for were it not for blockbusting Poes mere blocks away. Was it beyond hope for my mother to drive us down for the Poe shows? To evermore joy and endless gratitude, she acceded, and off we went to a venue yet unknown to me, but stuff of legend for programs booked previous. Disgorged from Winston-Salem craters so far in ‘66 was The Fighting Seabees (1944 return to twenty-two years later kiddie show), The Oklahoma Kid (Cagney and Bogart triple-billed with Call Me Bwana and For Those Who Think Young), and most astonishingly, the 1939 Stagecoach with Half-Human and The Monster from Green Hell, such unexpected oft-expected from W-S show-spots. And who cared if television was playing the same pictures a same day? The Center as entered that summer afternoon was a dreamscape of three-sheets, lobby sets, every accessory known to National Screen Service … I asked if there was any chance I could have one of the posters post-engagement. Sure, said management. I’d wait weeks for a package that would never arrive (But he promised!).

Still, I got to see Pit and the Pendulum for a first-ever time, an experience worth fifty-eight mile walk over nails had such been required. I needed no concessions, Pit being sacred observance not to be profaned by Baby Ruths. As that one ended and Tomb of Ligeia began, my mother leaned over and asked, Didn’t you see this a year ago? Yes, I had to answer, and no, it didn’t matter how good Ligeia was, we’d be heading home, thus no Premature Burial, for which I'd wait years to see finally on video. Knowing you can’t have everything in life (per Pit posters), I gave in, thrilled to have been there at all. Besides, P&P was by far the one I most longed to experience. Never would eyes again behold such extravagant display of promoting paper, memory enhanced by imagination to build the obelisk higher. Matterhorn that was the Center had been scaled, no need begging for all three features to go beyond such peak. The Center persisted in dreams if not reality. A year later found me topmost in the Wachovia building which was Winston’s tallest and stood behind the Center Theatre plus virtually all downtown. I looked out a high window and read the marquee far below at an awkward angle as implied in photo above. It read “Dr. No, From Russia with Love, and Goldfinger,” all three on a single bill. I asked to be left behind in W-S, perhaps sleep on a city bench or even a jail cell if I could provoke arrest. Someone … anyone … could pick me up the next day, or I’d hitch home, ride aback a fruit truck, walk even upon aforementioned nails. Clearly impractical suggestions, if borne of truest desire to experience the Center at least once more. That was not to be however, for it closed in 1969 after valedictory combo of Easy Rider and MacKenna’s Gold (memorialized above). My having been there in 1966 seems now like stuff of specter, this long-gone Smithsonian of showmanship and sensations far from first-running, but who then or now could rationally choose Maya over The Pit and the Pendulum?

More Winston-Salem showgoing HERE, and take a look at the fabulous Winston Theatre 2001 marquee image I came across just last week and added to the post.

Count Your Blessings #4

 

McGuffin Handlers Ponder Point of It All

CYB: North by Northwest on 4K

Hitchcock shows here how harsh fate can change destiny with the flick of a hand or a taxi driving off. Imagine if R. Thornhill spoke a second sooner and the cabbie paused so business of Mother with her cronies could be straightened out, and suppose Roger had not happened to raise his hand when the bellboy called for “Kaplan,” reminders that fate often waits on moments, not hours or events, to change our future. NXNW in a way continues AH Wrong Man fascination with random chance and what it often will do to men and women.  Every watch of North by Northwest sees me say stop! to that departing driver, no! when Roger speaks up in the Oak Room. Do I want there to be no movie --- for Cary Grant to meet Sophia Loren instead and do another misjudged comedy? I’m full invested in Cary’s calamity a mere, and exact, six minutes into North by Northwest, the moment where he is kidnapped. We care because it is Cary. What if Sterling Hayden or Richard Egan were being abducted? Would stakes seem so high? We’re less confident that Grant can get out of this mess. He’s not an action hero after all, nor a noir dweller like Hayden or Egan. I’m told James Stewart wanted the Thornhill part and expected Hitchcock to cast him. That not happening was put down to Stewart’s age and Vertigo being a disappointment. I think it’s less those things than the director wanting instead a more vulnerable leading man, a character nonplussed by his peril (“What’s this supposed to mean?”). Stewart of previous hard-tack westerns would have given abductors a fight right off whereas Grant as Roger simply can’t believe such a thing could be happening to him, let alone in the Oak Room. Grant as a man who can talk his way out of anything, steal a taxi ride at will, is the more susceptible where a gun is pointed at his ribs and quasi-comic incidents suddenly become serious. Would his abductors have shot him down in a crowded bar? Hitchcock makes us believe they would and that Roger Thornhill is not a man who can prevent that happening. All this as conveyed in six minutes bodes well for 130 more to come.

She's Not What She Seemed, But is Worldly Cary Really Surprised?

“You could tease a man to death,” says Roger to Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), and we could say the same with regard North by Northwest, for doesn’t dialogue in the dining car indicate sex to come, let alone heavy kissing in Eve’s stateroom, but then comes her telling Roger he’ll sleep on the floor like splash from a still-prevailing Code pitcher. Were we to believe this or figure they mated despite what she said? --- no-means-yes as teased by Hitchcock, who lets Thornhill refer later to Eve “using sex like a flyswatter.” Well, did she, or was Roger just wanting to provoke James Mason’s Vandamm? Eve is said by Leo G. Carroll’s “Professor” to have “bedded down” with Vandamm, none of this an issue except it is an issue, who Eve spends nights with being what North by Northwest is all about. Vandamm is a charming but murderous Soviet spy. Might we call Vandamm James Mason’s reprise of embassy valet Diello from Five Fingers, selling secrets to the Germans during World War Two? Vandamm could be Diello renamed and back in business for the Communists. I’m concerned that post-end title Vandamm might get word out from his cell for operatives to track down and liquidate Eve for switching sides, Thornhill as well for good measure. Shouldn’t the Professor have tossed Vandamm from Mount Rushmore just to play it safe? Speaking of monuments, we were there in 1962, family and me, and I remember Rushmore’s cafeteria better than the stone heads. Had not seen the picture by that point, would not until CBS prime-time premiered it on September 29, 1967. This followed a 1966 reissue to theatres with an all-new, and improved, campaign, MGM losing money for their effort despite $419K in worldwide rentals the picture earned. Here was final argument, as if needed by this time, that library content would realize more on television than in theatres, never mind how well-regarded individual features were. 

Being Proof that Baddest Men Are Often, and Pleasingly, Wittiest and Most Sophisticated of Men

North by Northwest must surely be the funniest picture released in 1959. I laugh with it much more than I ever did at Some Like It Hot. Rio Bravo is also funny. Note it and NXNW were never classified as comedies. Per se’s in that category and of that year included Pillow Talk and The Shaggy Dog, two I’d say still work as amusement, Talk to grown-ups, Dog for kids. The rest of comedy as 59-tendered seems forgot, or is it just me forgetting? North by Northwest is comedy with dangerous elements, as is Some Like It Hot. Occurs to me then that the best of that category deal in high stakes and characters with very much to lose, comedy as relief to concerns of life and death. Villainy for Hitchcock goes hand-in-hand with gamesmanship, Vandamm’s “That’s not very sporting, using real bullets” a laugh line. Was there anyone in 1959 other than Hitchcock, Hawks, and Wilder so deft at juggling genres? Cary Grant among actors always seemed better to me where applying humor to serious situations. He gives in North by Northwest what I would call an ultra-modern performance, as if he saw ahead to tastes for the sixties, seventies, right on to now. I’m told Grant chose suits to classical and timeless fit, his choices ones I’d make today, if only I could look as good as him wearing them. Greenbriar talked lately of “hep” films and players. Cary Grant for me personified hep as Roger Thornhill. I ran North by Northwest to my cousin forty years ago, him a year older than me but never having seen it. End reaction was rapturous, “That was really good!” as if that was the last thing he expected of any film so old (old? NXNW was but twenty-one at the time, Tommy and I born well before it).

They Love Their Hitch ... TV Staple AH at Location-Chose Train Station 

North by Northwest was copied by the James Bond series, Hitchcock commenting on their having to explain missions while he just got on with them (those opening six NXNW minutes). To start with explanation of what characters need to do is to sink an enterprise early. Even John Ford fell in the trap with his Horse Soldiers the same year as NXNW. Maybe he should have conferred with Hitchcock ahead of production. Did great directors ever preview each other’s scripts and offer tips? North by Northwest caused copycats to be themselves copied right through the sixties: Charade, Mirage, Blindfold, Arabesque … there are more but I can’t remember them all. North by Northwest would be the model for all rom-com thrillers to come, even to today assuming such things are still attempted. Hitchcock was a master for making issues matter that really didn’t matter at all. His plot was complex without being complicated. He doesn’t bother much with things he knows we won’t care about. How many modern makers forget that and bore/confuse us with endless detail about “encryptions” and rogue arms dealers? I watched the latest Mission: Impossible and predictably got lost within a reel in. I admire this series in ways, narrative not among them. Or maybe it’s me being too dense to follow plain thread that is story, except I don’t find them plain. Still, the Missions are now the Bonds, or at least their substitute. For all its influence, North by Northwest has quaintness endearing to me. There is rail dine on brook trout and Gibsons (I’ve tasted neither --- are they good?), phone booths aplenty, and newsstands. We could claim movies don’t use trains for thrills anymore, but Mission: Impossible 5 did, and how. Did it also look to North by Northwest for ideas? I called this column “Count Your Blessings” and come finally to basis for the name, North by Northwest lately out on 4K from Warners. It is the expected humdinger and reward for patient wait on such perfection to arrive. To review NXNW life since 1967 sees 16mm cropped from intended 1.85 (Thornhill and the farmer waiting for his bus barely in the frame), a 35mm print long gone, release after release on varied home video, 4K a happy culmination. Recommended? And how.

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 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 crowds' 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 at least that far, said Powers, EvS claiming it was more like $900K. Give such levels, and in 1928, either way was ruinous. Stroheim hired relative unknown Fay Wray for a leading lady. She confessed to having fallen in love with him, heroic self-denial whispering not this time to Von (watch King Kong again, then come tell us how you could turn that down). Fay remembered going to the Stroheim’s for Christmas dinner where she saw lighted candles hung on their Yule tree. Chancy enough having such display at all, 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 chopping 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, in other words a Garden of Eden for Nikki, and likely offscreen Stroheim too. Occurs to me that sophistication-wise, The Wedding March remains yet to be caught up with. It makes modern telling 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 the space, 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. That Paramount would release a video cassette the following year was unimaginable, not just them but any major taking a flyer on features so antique. Para would not utilize the original score, Gaylord Carter an adequate, if not preferred at the time, substitute. I hear the venture failed to break even, no surprise. 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'm told 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 for any kind of "conquest," Worm 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. Another feature however, lush and very mainstream Hollywood, broke a barrier within moments of my entering the Liberty. That was Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, where what we saw upon adjust to darkness was Bruce Dern in the summer house softly calling Charlotte’s name, then off came his hand with him holding a bloody stump to our squealing delight. Having seen no such thing to that time, mine was a 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 had been 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 loudly told him so. 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 depart 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 all too real people who committed real atrocities. Both 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 got 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.

UPDATE (8/6/2024): MY OCD SPEAKS --- I've just spent an hour or so re-reading this column for at least a fifth time, finding as always two dozen or so little fixes to be made. This is typical of all Greenbriar postings, Monday debut often different from surface-same text as it will read by Wednesday. I wouldn't fuss so over these things but for hope of making them better. No wonder Erich von Stroheim is among heroes, him a mad genius, me just mad. Reason for mentioning all this is to humbly suggest an improved reading experience should you drop back by mid-week once I've smoothed a latest Greenbriar picture show out.