Greenbriar Picture Shows

2012-01-28T05:15:00.011-05:00

Wings Over Hooterville

In The Wake of Wings, Fans Received This When They Wrote
for Clara Bow's Autograph

I've got this swell idea for a sitcom episode. A rinky-dink town down South (my own perhaps) stages a forty-years late premiere of The Godfather, with guest stars Jimmy Caan and Al Pacino joining in nostalgic fun. We could recreate the kooky fashions and silly music like they had in 1972! Jim and Al could show up as if they were still big stars, but turn out to be nice guys and good sports. Everybody would get a laugh over this old movie Dad and Grand-folks thought was so great. We could all be glad too that movies have progressed so far as they have since The Godfather. We've even got 3-D now, something they never dreamed of!

Kinda Slow Uncle Joe's In Fast Company When Dick and Buddy Touch Down For 1968 Pixley Wings Premiere

A Picture So Big, The Ad Didn't Even
Have To Mention Clara Bow

Some of you will remember the November 9, 1968 episode of Petticoat Junction simply called Wings. If not, go to You Tube and watch (in three parts) before Paramount legal pulls it down. This is the most remarkable souvenir of Wings that ever was, and would have made a fab extra on the just-released Blu-Ray. A lot of Wings' following have no idea this thing is out there. I'm aware because it was a big deal that CBS (school) night when otherwise labored Petticoat Junction followed up on Beverly Hillbillies conceit that backwood South theatres were still back of conversion to sound and hopelessly stuck with relic movies the culture had grown out of. If only reality had been so! I could have sat in the Liberty watching London After Midnight and Heart Trouble while the rest of you had Angel In My Pocket and She-Devils On Wheels.

Dick and Buddy must have dined many a night on memories of Wings, but how many among Petticoat Junction viewers actually saw the 1927 (first) Best Picture winner past those around for initial release? For me at the time, there'd be no more exposure than seconds flashed on Pixley's Bijou screen. Better it was thought in 1968 to acknowledge "great old" silent pictures than sit through one, let alone offer up a Wings for network broadcast. I wonder how many runs Paramount licensed during the sixties (Films, Inc. had it available on 16mm non-theatrical by 1977). VHS and laser disc were years off, these formats a first modern (home) exposure for Wings, and now after a decade begging, fans are in receipt of Blu-Ray and likely a best presentation the air-epic will ever get. That's waiting longer than Pixley did, but for quality got here, a rewarding one.

I Went By Radio Shack and Asked For a Kolsterphone, But They Were Out

Could Paramount piggy-back Wings into theatres just off successful play of The Artist? Would satisfied patrons for that homage to silents come back for the real goods? I'd not call Wings silent, though. For music and effects Paramount has added, it's more of a sound movie than most talkies. My one-word review of this Blu-Ray is stunning, and that's 'nuff anyone need say for colossal result Para achieved. Just when you're ready to give up on these big congloms, along comes a job like this, distressed residue of Wings now within reach of digital healers to mend. Progress moves so fast in today's tech realm to keep us continually amazed. What Paramount did puts rise to speculation as to when other pre-talkers might roar back, trouble being sad fact few of them have the cache of Wings. It being Academy-anointed Best Picture of that first awarding year is primary reason we've got Blu-Ray possession now.

Director Bill Wellman Shuts Down For Wet Ground, But It Must Have Been Plenty Cold Too, If Dick Arlen's Fur Mittens Are Any Indication

Was a next generation of silent enthusiasts conceived by The Artist and theatres it filled? Should this one win 2011's Best Picture, there surely will be renewed interest in things non-talking, maybe not wide-encompassing, but well beyond closets the so-far micro-niche has been confined to. Before retreat into Greenbriar's shell, I ran silents to college attendance ... voluntary, not class-compulsory ... and these were among best-received of respective seasons (all within a last ten years). Again I cite a simplest rule: never, Never call them silent movies. Music and Effects is selling's most effective label. I'd challenge anyone to walk out of Wings calling it a silent movie. The next time I play the Blu-Ray will be as much to listen as watch (especially with the disc's two score option).

Buddy Rogers and The Guy Everyone Knew Would Be The Next Big Thing

How sales go on the Blu should be interesting. Will media support it now that The Artist makes pre-talk fashionable? This could be occasion for sheep leading us in a good direction. What if enthusiasm for (really) old movies suddenly became cool? To paraphrase Jerry Colonna, we can dream, can't we? Wings has lots to generate interest. Ancient aircraft (there are buffs for these nuttier than our community), battles fought by men instead of microchips (realism here is almost startling beside phony-baloney CGI), plus revelation for many of spellbinding Clara Bow. I loved Paramount's showman-like retrieve of the Handschiegl color effect (practiced writing that word down several times and bet I still got it wrong) used for dog-fight guns and spiraling planes. Here's a tip for whenever you play Wings or any WW1 aerial pic to a crowd: Just whisper "Guys got killed making this" before each combat. Never mind whether it's true so long as it perks 'em up, which it invariably does for my shows.

2012-01-21T09:45:00.004-05:00

Fox Plants Roots In Roadshow

The First RKO Palace Ad For Their Roadshow Roots Premiere

Twilight Time is out with The Roots Of Heaven on limited edition Blu-Ray ("3000 units"). This 1958 Fox show in Cinemascope/Stereo might as well have been silent-era nitrate for access we've had to decent presentation these fifty-four years since release. How could anyone fairly judge Roots till now? Last night was my first view, having avoided pan/scans and red print survivors from the hoped-for blockbuster on which 20th spent three million (independent producing Darryl Zanuck said at the time it was closer to four), then saw grievous loss of $2.6 million during a year when all Fox output seemed snake-bit. How many big-studio pics began as roadshows and ended with less than a million in domestic rentals? Roots' failure was 1958's most horrific for Fox, even worse than The Barbarian and The Geisha, and both were directed by John Huston. You'd think such a one-two would have all but run him out of the industry.

Darryl Zanuck had been exec in production charge at 20th since the outfit was mid-30's formed. He left in '56 to produce a Tiffany line of literary adaptations to beat back junk on TV. DFZ was for giving the lost adult audience a reason to dress up and attend movies. The Roots of Heaven dramatized a zealot's effort to rescue African elephants from poachers, and colonial government enablers of same. With initially cast William Holden, it might have worked, but Holden couldn't get Paramount's consent to appear, so Zanuck went with Trevor Howard, scuttling romance needed to juice a long narrative. The second male lead was Errol Flynn, well past screen heroics and re-positioned as a character man for what work was left (Roots his last feature of worth). Flynn's more sad than affecting, the performance a one-note drunk act some critics and many fans figured for a glimpse of real-life Errol.

Laid-Back Errol Flynn Took Africa In Stride --- He'd Visited Rough Corners Of The World Before

"All Seats Reserved" --- But The Policy Wouldn't Last

Fox proposed to swing for the fence by opening The Roots Of Heaven on two-a-day basis with mail-order tickets. Exhibition hated roadshow policy and told Fox so. The company had wanted same season's Barbarian and The Geisha to play thus, but New York was talked out of it by powerful circuits that could spank hard should distributors persist (showmen argued that John Wayne was too much "a mass audience star" to sell on anything other than a grind basis). The Roots Of Heaven charity-premiered at Broadway's RKO Palace on October 15, 1958, taking the place of long-run The Bridge On The River Kwai, a high-adventure Roots sought to emulate, at least for promoting purposes. The first week was good, advance publicity having lured curiosity seekers, but attendance tumbled quick as word got round of a sluggish first half and overall paucity of action.

Orson Welles Contributed a Colorful Extended Cameo, For Free He Said, "As a Favor" To Pal Darryl Zanuck

Sometimes Even Bad Decisions Can Still Be "Important" Ones

Darryl Zanuck noted complaints and trimmed The Roots Of Heaven (extant prints are less by a few minutes from what trade reviewers saw). The RKO Palace hung on for five weeks of roadshowing, each frame down from ones before, then went to continuous runs for a sixth, and saw business pick up, if slightly. The change was made to accommodate the holiday crowds who do a great deal of their entertainment buying on impulse, said RKO theatres chief Sol A. Schwartz. By reverting to a continuous policy (and at "popular prices"), we are providing this audience with a flexible time schedule and an opportunity to see "Roots Of Heaven" at the time they want to see it. Trouble was, as word-of-mouth got round, fewer people chose The Roots Of Heaven over competing hits like Gigi and Cinerama's South Seas Adventure (both Broadway two-a-days as well).

Lead Lady Jeanette Greco Gets a Kiss From Trevor Howard as Errol Flynn and Darryl Zanuck Look On Approvingly at RKO Palace Charity Premiere

Fox aimed for Christmas general release and abandonment of hard-ticket policy. The roadshow experiment, what Fox called "a trial balloon," failed for blunt reason that The Roots Of Heaven was not an attraction to justify inflated pricing on reserve seats. Neither was The Barbarian and The Geisha, reason good as any why 20th bent to the will of exhibition and offered both these John Huston letdowns to wider distribution without strings. For himself, Huston pitched in where possible, giving trade interviews amounting to travel lectures minus slides. Hazard of Africa filming enlivened sit-downs --- a few suggested drama behind cameras was far more compelling than what Huston put in front of them. Anyone who went to Africa to make such a movie in the future would be very foolish, said the director. The risks are far too great. Zanuck frankly wished they'd never made the trip, a punk finished movie being small compensation for hellish location ordeal (DFZ: I would never do it again).

Juliette Greco --- By All Accounts, A Good Singer, and in The Roots Of Heaven, Not At All a Bad Actress, Remembered Now as One Of Zanuck's Mistress/Discoveries

Zanuck had been bullish going in. It has majesty written all over it, said he prior to the Palace opening. While it runs two hours, twenty minutes, it is over before you know it. Others disagreed, thus the reel-or-so haircut DFZ gave The Roots Of Heaven. Distributors Complaining About Length Of "Big" Pix, observed Variety about shows which run around two hours and drag in the doing. Age old conflicts between East and West Coasts (selling vs. production)were nothing new, the former pointing up fact that an extra 15 or 20 minutes can add up to a tidy sum when a company puts out 300 or more prints. Maybe it was time to reign in creative indulgence gone overboard. Directors of renown are being given more leeway on the (West) Coast today under the independent setups, and are reluctant to cut their footage, particularly if a lot of work was involved getting it. The trade referred specifically to offenders then on view, including Inn Of The Sixth Happiness, The Big Country, and The Buccaneer, as well as The Roots Of Heaven.

From a roadshow that tanked, Fox let air out of promoting tires with a general release pressbook of only twelve pages and fairly dispirited ones at that. Did they really expect small venues to hold their own "Red Carpet Premieres" as suggested? And it wasn't news that "prestige" meant little in the hinterlands. There was a half-hour production film Zanuck had done in Africa that was network-run by ABC in November, then made available gratis to showmen who could place it on local stations (how many bothered, I don't know --- are there prints of this subject around?). Roots was, not unexpectedly, nixed in the stix. Small towns wanted Tarzan or Bomba pacing jungles, not Trevor Howard on elephant guard duty, and the film's pretentious title gave action fans little to conjure with. Distributors concentrated more and more on urban centers for grosses by 1958, but rural situations were essential to drag product into profit, and The Roots Of Heaven was distinctly not their preferred bill of fare.

Trades by mid-1959 revealed Roots' struggle to crack its first million in domestic rentals, a humiliating figure Fox confirmed, though everyone by then knew it was their biggest loss from what had been a rotten year (The Roots Of Heaven crept over a foreign rentals threshold to $1.1 million). 1963 brought network premiering on NBC --- they'd broadcast nearly the whole of Fox's 50's backlog on Saturday, and later Monday, primetime movies. The Roots Of Heaven was syndicated by September of the same year with forty-five other 20th features just off NBC rotation. Whatever values Huston derived from Africa filming was utterly lost here --- it's no wonder The Roots Of Heaven got so little respect among modern critics. Twilight Time changes all that with a stunner Blu-Ray that merits critical rehab for this neglected show, being but one of a choice series of Fox and Columbia titles they've put back in the spotlight.

2012-01-14T05:03:00.005-05:00

3-D Concludes (For Now)

Arch Oboler felt the success he’d given the motion picture industry should merit a medal at least. Lacking of wisdom in that industry had forced him to operate without proper funds, under constant tension, and in an atmosphere of ignorance and disparagement, said Oboler. Standardization of three-dimension must take place immediately, according to the producer, and companies had best beware of giving the public anything less than perfection in the production of 3-D features. He was convinced that audiences would reject Cinerama and other widescreen processes once they’d experienced true depth, and that the next five years would be golden ones. Within that period, all films would be presented in three-dimension, according to Oboler.

Judging by action at turnstiles, few would argue Oboler’s point, but was this revolution really built to last? You’d think distributors were squirreling ahead for those five years based on orders Polaroid received for glasses. Twenty-five million was the number needed as of January 1953, with Bwana Devil the only feature in release. Cost of each pair was ten cents. Polaroid stock went up eight points within that month. All sorts of problems came with donning spectacles, however. Ones supplied for Sol Lesser’s Tri-Opticon (now renamed Stereo-Cine) were plastic-framed and reusable. It was said these were dipped in antiseptic solution before transfer to the next patron.

Projecting 3-D at a Drive-In Was Usually Recipe for Disaster, According to Trades

Natural Vision’s cardboard counterpart was more fragile and of a throwaway variety. Patrons in many situations were encouraged to take these home as souvenirs. A few showmen were reputed to have fudged on disposal of the specs, collecting ones discarded and handing them out to incoming audiences as a cost-saving measure, even as community and state Boards Of Health became more vigilant in monitoring proper issuance. Ticket takers were trained to advise everyone not to put fingers on the Polaroid lens. Those already wearing spectacles were issued rubber bands in some venues to adjust 3-D glasses over their own. Others could modify the frames to fit existing ones, even as flimsy cardboard sometimes tore or bent in the effort.

Careful handling was needed for customers showing up with vision handicaps that rendered impossible their enjoyment of 3-D. Employees had to be trained to tactfully approach those with crossed eyes, one eye, and/or other myopias. One showman had an optician friend who informed him that only twenty percent of the population possessed equal vision in each eye, suggesting a possible tie-in that encouraged those who couldn’t fully enjoy 3-D to arrange appointments with his office following the show. Be sure you analyze the matter of such values as exist in “negative” advertising cooperation --- attempting to make the ad copy read to the picture’s advantage --- before going in for optical tie-ups, was that exhibitor’s warning to the wise.

Even those eagle-eyed among patrons were challenged by oft-too-dark projection. You really had to pour light on 3-D for it to register properly. Some estimated a sixty to seventy percent loss of illumination between the projector’s output and what viewers saw. Souping up the arc output could cause excessive heat in the aperture area, causing damage to the machinery and the film. Traditional style black masking around the picture would distort as well. Everything was happening so fast with this fad as to make it difficult to address problems in an orderly manner or get trained help needed to correct them.

Just getting projection equipment up to speed proved insurmountable for many theatres. Belief that accessories needed to present 3-D could be readily had from their usual suppliers left management unprepared when harsher realities became clear. Projector bases had to be moved in many instances so that larger magazines could be installed to hold oversized reels used for Natural-Vision. Running two machines at once for synchronization of left and right prints required more electrical power to generate amperage needed. Special wiring was essential and that meant bringing in licensed electrical contractors. This led to compliance issues with power companies and various city ordinances.

A screen congenial to 3-D required buying one new (estimate: $450 minimum) or retrofitting what you had. The latter required a delicate spray-painting job. Done right, it might work. Bungled, as these rush efforts often were, made 3-D and conventional shows look worse for the "upgrade" ... all this and more such disruption for the privilege of running the one available depth feature, Bwana Devil, albeit with a promise of more, but how many … and when? Exhibitors as of January 1953 had to wonder if they were being led down the garden path to a three-dimensional briar patch.

More 3-D to (eventually) come, including the House Of Wax sensation.

2012-01-07T10:52:00.007-05:00

Part Two From The Third Dimension

People attended initial 3-D shows like they’d go to see exotic species of animal on display. It was a novelty that lured out sober citizens who’d not otherwise dream of patronizing a film called Bwana Devil. The bigger elephant in corners (or rather, booths) of each theatre was odds against smooth presentation. Single projectionists were all of a sudden performing a two-man job. Every 3-D print coming through the door was twins, and both had to play in to-the-frame perfect synchronization. Catch one sprocket in your mechanism and suddenly there are a thousand malcontents removing their cardboard glasses to glare back at you. Defusing land mines was safer work in 1953.

Audiences had a right to expect an orderly program, especially with tickets selling at advanced prices for Natural Vision shows. 3-D jumping the track was not something you could fix with a lick and a promise. These were no five-minute waits for management to re-thread. A left or right side breakdown sent the whole bag ker-flooey, and fixing that needed cooler heads than most houses could summon. More than one audience spent their bits for half a show, if that. Still, it was something like nothing they’d seen before, and social capital could be acquired by youngsters especially who longed to experience 3-D and brag about it to their friends. A harried industry could only address snafus as they occurred, all the time knowing that if these didn’t somehow abate, their dream of a boxoffice redeemer-in-depth would soon be a lost one.

Three-Dimension became a catch-all term for any process that expanded our screen vision. Cinerama was getting its legs as Natural-Vision emerged and backers announced three-panel's expansion to twenty-five theatres for 1953. Projectionist unions struck in Pittsburgh to get two operators into booths running Bwana Devil. The three-dimensional films mean more work and take more skill to operate, said an AFL spokesman. Exhibitors realized one man would be hard pressed to coordinate interlocked machinery, but generally used lone staffers to project unless forced to do otherwise.

Massive coinage at theatres hosting Arch Oboler’s freak hit was balm to disarray 3-D wrought upon house procedure. The Chicago Theatre took a smash $44,000 in its first three days of Bwana Devil, even with Sol Lesser’s competing Tri-Opticon show continuing to play next door at the Tele-News. It was the perfect backdrop against which Oboler fielded bids from major studios to take over distribution of Bwana Devil. By January’s third week, there was a dead heat between United Artists and producer Edward L. Alperson for those marbles.

A now re-titled Here Is Tri-Opticon widened in the meantime to Boston and Denver. Nationally circulated magazines were featuring 3-D and showmen everywhere were getting calls from eager patrons. When would hometowns experience the screen’s New Sensation? Hollywood’s Natural Vision Corp. geared up to equip theatres for 3-D presentation. There wasn’t much rivalry for their peculiar sort of expertise, so demand was booming. Studios entered the fray with announcements of 3-D to come. MGM prepared Arena for lensing in Arizona the following month, while Columbia and Warners forged ahead in what was looking more and more like a race to the wickets.

John Arnold, Chief of MGM's Camera Department, Shows Off The Dual
Camera He's Built To Shoot Arena in 3-D

January 31 was a key date heralding the revolution. Virtually all the trade magazines devoted multi-pages to exploration of the whirling-est dervish movies had experienced since Jolson talked. United Artists took the Bwana Devil pennant during that month’s final week. Arch Oboler and his associates received a half million up front (among these was Bwana star Robert Stack’s mother, who had invested $30,000 in the film), with another $1.25 million guaranteed later from the film’s receipts. This was a buyout of the negative and all worldwide revenue to come.

Broadway's Loew's State Sees It's Single Week Record Broken by Bwana Devil. They had to Stop Selling Tickets Four Times on the Pic's First Weekend.

UA’s sales force immediately went to work securing dates while interest was peaking. An immediate concern for the new distributor was shortage of prints and viewing glasses. UA had taken charge of 230 prior bookings in 225 cities and was reporting an avalanche of inquiry about playdates. Exhibitors wanted 3-D yesterday. There was no precedent for such anxiety to put a new attraction on screens. What UA lacked were personnel with knowledge and expertise about the exotic process they were now handling.

Arch Oboler had long been a proponent of 3-D and something of a visionary in his pursuit of feature-length depth photography. He had made a remarkable success of distributing Bwana Devil independently and securing dates in numerous first-run theatres. Oboler was tight with makers of Stereo-Realist slides and viewers, many of whom participated with tie-ins and window displays. His specially designed 3-D preview boxes attracted much attention in lobbies and out on sidewalks, while three million or so members of a thriving Stereo-Realist hobby group knew Oboler as a friend among their number and respected him. The independent producer even arranged for retailers to carry a special set of forty 3-D slides from Bwana Devil that collectors could enjoy on their own stereo viewers. Much of this hands-on enthusiasm that Oboler brought to his campaigning would dissipate once Bwana Devil was sold to United Artists.

Part Three and Conclusion on 3-D Next Week.

2011-12-31T07:44:00.001-05:00

3D Grabs Hold --- Part One

I'll tread lightly upon this subject of 3D for realizing there are experts that know it chapter/verse, and so humbly invite same to expand upon or correct data gathered here. Just understand that 3D represents a noble tradition of screw-ups and breakdowns, my own in respectful observance of that. I embark upon multi-posts about the process, mindful not to exceed an initial three (more will follow later) as we’ve all known fatigue too much 3D can inflict. Like a lot (most?) of you, I’ve never seen it decently presented. By that I mean with two projectors side-by-side running in perfect synchronization.

I'm for dealing out modern third dimensions this trip. The only sampling I’ve seen anyhow was a handful of ear-jangling IMAX shorts about jungle safaris. What I’m for exploring is so-called primitive 3D that excited patrons during 1953 and much of ’54. I was born during the boom and feel closer to it for that. The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood has run two depth festivals with practically everything extant on view. A friend flew cross-country to see them while headache fears kept me home. An experienced operator will assure you that no pain comes of watching 3D provided those in the booth know what they’re doing. As this was/is/always will be a species rare, there’s little wonder the 50’s flame burned off quickly.

Moviegoing travels brought me twice to House Of Wax on single-strip reissues (1972 and 1983), both botched. Other than that, there was Revenge Of The Creature with 16mm reds and greens having faded, thus killing the 3D effect, and more recently the challenge of DVD-delivered Spooks, with The Three Stooges. Yet I’m rarin’ to go for 3D after boning up on 50’s showman efforts to get a rope ‘round a novelty most of them figured for the flash in the pan it turned out to be.

Old timers in the business said 3D reminded them of the mess that was Vitaphone, and here they were twenty-five years later reliving sync-up nightmares. Each to a man knew what a minefield that could be. There was always option of letting the craze pass, but what of lines and epic grosses your opposition’s fielding down the street? Exhibitors sought elixir to bring people back into theatres. Hit movies continued declining in number as solid attractions on TV carved inroads. Wouldn't you elect to stay home and watch Lucy or maybe Martin and Lewis doing the Colgate Comedy Hour over going out and paying admission for a commonplace feature?

By late 1952, most were voting the tube. Whoring out to a gimmick was desperation’s last resort for an industry down on canvass and taking the count. Independent producer Arch Oboler was an experimenter from radio who guessed 3D might click at feature-length. Maybe others considered it before, but he was first to throw dice with monies borrowed and bookings scavenged where management would gamble with an unsure thing. Two Paramount theatres in Hollywood were Oboler's testing Ground Zero. For four weeks they would play Bwana Devil to what observers called unprecedented business. They'd have kept it longer but for prior booking commitments. This was December 1952.

Arch Oboler at Bwana Devil's Hollywood Opening with Stereo-Realist Lobby Display

Just as industry watchers wondered if The Jazz Singer might be a fluke back in 1927, so too did studios flinch over dives into 3D. Another independent with spring in his step was Sol Lesser, always quick to move in on someone else’s good thing. A British developer leased him rights to a process called Tri-Optican and a handful of shorts utilizing its depth (including a documentary, cartoon, ballet, and an abstract film, according to Boxoffice). Some said the latter looked better than Oboler’s Natural Vision. Lesser’s Tri-Opticon was America debuted at Chicago’s Tele-News Theatre on Christmas Day 1952. $30,000 was rung up for a week that would normally average four to five G’s. Santa Claus was finally back in town to call on besieged exhibitors.

Seizing initiative as they had with talkies, Warner Bros. announced shooting would begin January 15, 1953 on Wax Works in Natural Vision 3-D. They understood this was a race for what Jack Warner called a fast dollar at the box office. Directors of the Theatre Owners of America exhibitors group convened in January 1953 to discuss future possibilities of 3-D, and provided a print could be secured, to inspect Bwana Devil as well. Sol Lesser was meanwhile delivering equipment and accessory packages to theatres booked for Tri-Opticon. They’d need a “metalized” screen, a coupling device for interlocking projectors, and Polaroid glasses, these being reusable provided they were sterilized after each show.

Paramount's Adolph Zukor Being Prepared for His 3-D Debut

Harrison’s Reports saw those glasses as 3-D’s main obstacle to wide acceptance even as crowds braved snowstorms to break house records at northeastern theatres where Bwana Devil was playing. Every Hollywood studio was knee-deep in experimentation to develop their own “dimensional” format. Mid-January saw Fox announcing what they called Anamorphisis, the large-screen French process which offers a three-dimensional effect. The Robe was slated to be the company’s first in Anamorphisis. Paramount’s Adolph Zukor promised 3-D that would not require glasses (we’re still waiting for that). Sol Lesser was sufficiently buttressed by Tri-Opticom’s success to foresee twelve complete 3-D programs per year under his auspices. Arch Oboler meanwhile fielded offers from distributors eager to buy him out of Bwana Devil. He'd be in New York negotiating with United Artists for a sale of what was at that moment the industry’s hottest picture property.

2011-12-23T09:00:00.013-05:00

Christmas Pick --- Lady On A Train

Got an e-mail from The Film Noir Foundation promoting their Frisco/Castro Theatre "Christmas Noir" show, which this year featured a Deanna Durbin two-fer, Lady On A Train and Christmas Holiday. The latter's title misleads --- it's a downer equivalent to coal in stockings, but Lady On A Train pleases for lightly-applied Noir, a night club set lavishly appointed, and a not-so-mysterious, but still engaging, murder mystery. It's Universal-sandwiched (1945) between Phantom Lady and The Killers, of a piece with both, and gorgeous on a DVD issued several years back (as part of a Durbin "Sweetheart Pack."

Where Have All The Gun-Wielding Leading Ladies
in Romantic Comedies Gone?

Deanna recently turned ninety, so she was twenty-four or so here. Lady On A Train was the first one where they really glammed her up (maybe too much). Off-putting blonde hair has an almost Marilyn Maxwell effect at times. Beauty standards being different then (was it the war?), there's an occassionally lacquered look to the make-up. Uni in the mid-forties was for maturing Durbin while maintaining what worked from her adolescent past. The strategy made for much tightrope walking with DD's fan force, still an army to be reckoned with. Christmas Holiday of the year before was a one-off that maybe should have been a never-was (her legions didn't like it and the title was fatally inappropo). Part of Holiday's problem may have been getting in ahead of noir conventions not yet firmed. Patrons, most of all those for Deanna Durbin, were unprepared for such onslaught in a 1944 just being introduced to darkish themes.

New York's Premiere for Lady On A Train

One contribution the no-expense-spared Durbins made was lush sets left over for lower-cost brethren to later occupy. I kept figuring Lionel Atwill or Rondo Hatton to peek out from behind one of Lady On A Train's plush curtains. All of Universal seems like home once you've sat for its "Shock" package, and much of a coming generation would. Splurges like for Durbin were the anomalies there. (Comparative) cheapies such as horrors, Sherlock Holmes, and so forth were benign scavengers upon plates left by Deanna and unaccustomed "A" guests at U's table.

Off-Screen Durbin Date of the Moment Al (pre-Lash) LaRue Gets In His Few Words of Dialogue

In fact, Lady On A Train has much old house and creepy appeal, enough to vault past spookiest of straight chillers, thanks to greater $ spent and effort applied. The set-up of Deanna observing a murder from inside a passing train happens within an opening minute, assuring reasonable pace from there. Mysteries work better on me as age presses (they didn't used to), even when the killer's identity is clear for the same actor having 'dunit so frequently in the past. A huge help too is Miklos Rozsa's moody score. It's not tricked for comedy or Mickey Mouse-ing effect. You could as easily graft this music onto Double Indemnity and come away satisfied.

Former Mad Ghoul David Bruce Promoted by Universal to "A" Lead Opposite Durbin

Deanna doesn't sing until forty minutes in. A few night-club background-ed tunes follow. One of them is Night And Day, among H'wood moments where you could accurately say a camera caresses its subject. Some of the comedy is silly, if not foolish, the kind you'd need two thousand folks crowded in a theatre to make work. Again there is clash between ingénue Durbin and sexier persona developed by the actress as she grew. DD really sold allure where she could, obviously in hope of putting to bed a Miss Fix-it she deplored. I'd guess without knowing that Lady On A Train was (is) one of her favorites, for glamour treatment it afforded if not husband-to-be Charles David in the director's chair.

Akron, Ohio Gets a Life-Sized Lobby Display for LOAT

Finally among good things is Lady On A Train's Christmas setting. It makes a swell combo with MGM's Lady In The Lake, another that combines Yule cheer with murder investigating. Whether stories work in these is less vital than irresistible 40's modern-dress backdrops --- offices, night spots, trains, apartments, all so much classier and appealing than stripped-down remnants of gracious living 2011's stuck with. Such shows are a lifestyle tour of gone times and so much more vivid now that we're in digital receipt of them. Lady/Train/Lake are crisp enough on DVD to step into, and highly recommended for run-up to the holiday.

2011-12-19T07:47:00.007-05:00

Part Two of Meet Me In St. Louis

My greatest pleasure in St. Louis' Halloween section has always been the Braukoffs, having grown up in a neighborhood with latter-day counterparts in abundance. An all-time fave-for-me shot is Tootie’s first glimpse through their window (seated Mrs. Braukoff is a particularly frightful image). I grew up near several houses as forbidding and might readily have imagined certain of my neighbors with boxes of dead cats. The Braukoffs seem less sinister than people who just want to be left alone. Ann and I talked a lot about them after watching Meet Me In St. Louis. She felt they were more sinned against than sinning, and might have been more sociable had the community not ostracized them so.

As it is, we get the impression that the Braukoffs have run out of patience with Kensington Avenue youth well before Tootie comes knocking at their door. In view of the couple's standing among neighbors, it probably comes as no surprise to Mr. Braukoff that she would throw flour in his face. For characters that appear so fleetingly, I’ve expended more thought on the Braukoffs than anyone else in Meet Me In St. Louis, maybe just for having encountered so many ominous (and maybe misunderstood?) figures like them.

Vincente Minnelli Directing The Halloween Sequence

Halloween concludes with a nicely disturbing segment wherein Tootie accuses John Truett of tearing open her lip. Meet Me In St. Louis at this point seems to be spiraling toward dark direction as the child recounts what sounds like a molestation by a boy next door we’re still not quite sure about (after all, he’s made no move to kiss Esther, despite her invitation). John’s exoneration is slow in coming. We spend nearly a reel imagining the worst. For having caused the mess, Tootie becomes herself a reasonable candidate for intervention. Such hysterical behavior and subsequent tearful business as knocking down snow people would today be addressed by way of Lithium or Zoloft regimen, putting paid to talk of doll cemeteries and rivers filled with dead bodies. Result: a twenty-first century Tootie neatly lobotomized and no further cause for family alarm.

I’m still not past this business of Rose dating her brother to the Christmas dance. The way it’s set up is distinctly creep-inducing. Did these actors realize their characters were siblings? Henry H. Daniels plays Lon. This was his first film. There wouldn’t be many more, and few of those saw him credited. Daniel’s line readings are weirdly fey. When he’s finally persuaded to ask his sister to the prom, they both play it way too boy-girl for comfort. It’s always fun watching first-time viewers squirm a little during all this. Then there’s the added fill-up of Esther being fitted for her corset in the next scene. Turn off the picture and just listen to the sound next time. It’s as close as you’ll get to a moment of Judy ecstasy beyond what she conveyed singing on stage and screen.

Why couldn’t John simply borrow Grandpa’s tuxedo? That would have been too cruel, I know, but the thought always occurs to me. As it is, the old man has the number of every geek and social outcast in St. Louis. Clinton Badger, Hugo Borvis, Sydney Gorcey. Everyone’s a perfect horror, says Rose (another reason I find her largely unsympathetic). Actually, there are several Clinton Badgers in Meet Me In St. Louis. Some wear glasses and all are adjudged not good enough to dance with the Smith girls (one is unbilled Our Gang alumna Joe Cobb). Esther rigs nemesis Lucille Ballard’s dance card so that she’ll be stuck with the three pariahs. There’s a shot of them looking on with approval, from vantage point of the wallflower’s section, as Esther waltzes off happily with late-arriving John Truett. A follow-up to Meet Me In St. Louis might profitably have explored the lives of Clinton, Hugo, and Sydney, as I’ve no doubt many audience members would have more readily identified with them.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas as sung by Judy makes me a little weepy even when I hear it in the car. As lead-up to the big emotional meltdown and cathartic finish of Meet Me In St. Louis, this is the song remembered best from the film. That it’s become a Yule standard helps too. Part of my enduring sentiment for MMISL comes of having lucked into a brand new 16mm print in late autumn of 1976. To own such a blockbuster was as intoxicating as Christmas morning itself, especially as we scarcely had St. Louis on the syndicated tube around here. There was a space heater I ran while projecting it that glowed fireplace red. Having Meet Me In St. Louis around the house enhanced a lot of Christmases. If there was ever justification for collecting film in those days, this one supplied it. Warners' new Blu-Ray looks better than most any print, but there’s no duplicating the exhilaration of threading up a rarity seemingly unavailable to anyone else at the time. I wonder if CBS ever considered leasing St. Louis for possible Christmas runs after their 1956 success with The Wizard Of Oz. Trade press at the time doubted any oldie could do perennial duty like Oz. Nothing else was in its class, they said. Still, there might be evergreen status to this day for Meet Me In St. Louis had one of the networks elected to play it yearly for the holidays.

MGM's St. Louis street would serve as backlot shrine and setting for nostalgic themes explored by filmmakers to come. One of them was Rod Serling, who walked down Kensington and saw visions of his own Binghamton, NY upbringing. How many others responded similarly? Serling would translate his sentiment to a Twilight Zone episode called Walking Distance, wherein ad exec Gig Young reclaims simplicity of youth via time travel back to "Homewood," which could stand in for nearly anyplace one was raised during the first half of the 20th Century, being perhaps best represented by familiar street and sets that bred Meet Me In St. Louis (Young's character points out John Truett's MMISL house as the one he grew up in). The culture has changed enough by 2011 for that to no longer be the case, but for many Twilight Zone viewers in 1959 at least, there was, in those St. Louis false-fronts, cherished link back to lives of their own.

2011-12-15T05:19:00.000-05:00

Have Yourself a Merry Little MMISL Christmas --- Part One

I hesitate calling Meet Me In St. Louis my favorite picture of all time, but then I can’t really think of one that's better. Among a wider public, it’s lacked the enduring appeal of The Wizard Of Oz. When I rented St. Louis from Films Inc. for a 1975 campus run, we had barely a row filled. Students were indifferent and townies who'd remember numbered few. We saw this in the forties, said a couple who seemed impossibly old to twenty-one year old me. They’d have been about the age I am now. Many who caught it new lived the era in which Meet Me In St. Louis was set. Some who attended St. Louis’ 1944 premiere would have been attendees at the 1904 World’s Fair that wraps the narrative.

All that’s passed now and we’re left with a show that maybe will remind us of right here where we live, as Judy exclaims at the fade. Certainly for me its setting and incidents evoked happy past times. Lines for MMISL stretched miles past year-end '44 and into ’45. I try to watch every Christmas, being more inclined to follow this Yellow Brick Road than the one in Oz, not least for subversive aspects partly intended (or were they?), plus as many more revealed for passage of time and much-changed attitudes since. The Smiths are a happy singing family enriched by peculiar shadings thought up by artists who did not necessarily come of so functional a background themselves, here striving to portray idyllic home life they imagined others to have had.

From an upstairs window, we see Judy Garland (as Esther) enter. She alights from a horse cart parked on a dirt street, but her clothes are pristine. That contrast made me wonder how anyone at the turn of the century (and before) kept his or her attire clean for even fifteen minutes after leaving the house. Plus she tells mother Mary Astor how hot it was on the tennis court. I’d marvel over anyone engaging exercise in so many layers of dress. Plain to see I’ve lived in this movie a long time. Wonder if Margaret O’Brien got that impression the time we met at an autograph show back in the nineties. I was thrilled talking to Tootie at last. Unlike a lot of after-the-fact whining child stars, she really liked being an actress.

John Truett is the neighbor as played by MGM beginner Tom Drake. Character and actor are tentative, Drake no doubt intimidated by high-powered talent he’s working alongside. Miss Esther, there are mice in the house. Two-of-them. How he over-enunciates that last part might be a dialogue director’s handiwork, or a young actor’s anxiety to recite it plainly. Either way, we flinch. Drake was said (in later years) to have spelled out his one-time employer’s name with as much deliberation: When I was working at Met-ro-Gold-wyn-Mayer. Never just MGM. By then, memories of association with that fabled place were about all he had left.

My Girl's Seated On The Right, But Who Was She?

The house party scene (aka Lon’s Going Away Party) about twenty minutes in gives us first opportunity to see dancers and background players that appear throughout the rest of the film. I developed sort of a crush on one of them and wondered for years who she was. Somewhat tall and dark-haired with real energy vested in a non-speaking role, this girl had a beauty not rooted in 1903 when the story took place or in 1944 when Meet Me In St. Louis was made (she’s seated on the floor lower right in the above group still). I always enjoy spotting said rare specimens. They are what I’d call The Sisterhood Of Louise Brooks, or faces that look good and never mind how long ago.

Perusal of the Judy Garland Message Board provided sort of an answer to the identity of my swoon (she’s also seated beside Esther on the trolley, dressed in blue). According to experts at JGMB, her name was Dorothy Gilmore Raye … but wait… others say the lady was Dorothy Tuttle Nitch. Both were dancers and occasional bit players in MGM musicals. Neither got screen credit, so it’s difficult confirming parts other than by facial recognition. Trouble is knowing for sure which is who. Dedicated St. Louis fans parse these matters on varied forums and I’m awed by their attention to such detail. It’s interesting to observe young women surrounding Judy Garland and imagine all of them wishing they could be Judy Garland. Did such hopefuls also recognize considerable advantage of being able to go home to reasonably normal lives while she could not?

I wrote previously about the time we visited Suzanne Kaaren. She was the 30’s/40’s starlet who worked variously with Bela Lugosi and The Three Stooges, plus B westerns and odd castings elsewhere. Kaaren also danced in Metro musicals and was among background faces in Meet Me In St. Louis. Suzanne claimed she was considered for the part of Rose Smith, but that Lucille Bremer got it for being friendly to Arthur Freed. The very mention of Lucille prompted dismissive sneers from Suzanne Kaaren. She probably wasn’t alone for objecting to rivals who got casting legs up (or spread) to secure cooperation from producers. Bremer comes across less appealing in part because her St. Louis character is a little cold and manipulative. Was Lucille maybe playing herself? The reaction her name got from Suzanne so many years later furnished a glimpse into hardball politics ambitious players engaged (still do, of course). How much less do we dislike someone for having done us a perceived wrong forty years ago as opposed to just yesterday?

Short Skirts on Not-So-Period Outfits ... Were MGM Ad Artists Trying To Conceal St.Louis' Early Century Setting?

Meet Me In St. Louis paints what seems a vivid and accurate picture of turn-of-the-century life we never knew (unlike many who saw it in '44-45 and did remember 1903). Guests bring instruments to Lon’s going away party. How else would they have had music? It’s hard to imagine households without even a radio. Parents of that era encouraged and sometimes insisted their children learn to play something, be it piano, violin, or washboard. My father was raised near around this time (b. 1907) and packed an unwilling me off to keyboard lessons during fourth and much of fifth grade. That ordeal ended in disaster of a public recital townfolk still chortle over. Sixth grade efforts at mastering the clarinet under the baton of former Our Gang member Priscilla Lyon ended with my dismissal from the band. How common was musical talent among 1903 youth? It would have assured your welcome at parties if nothing else. I should think those who played instruments well would have been most popular among peer groups. It’s a shame recorded music came along to erase such a talent advantage. Maybe without a phonograph’s prop, I’d have applied myself more to piano/clarinet, and been the hit at some latter-day equivalent of Lon’s party.

I finally looked up the Welsh Rabbit John Truett calls "ginger peachy." It was (is?) cheese melted with ale or beer and served over toast. Has anyone out there ever served such a thing? Welsh Rabbit may have been considered a retro dish even in 1944. Maybe it’s a delicacy I’m just too provincial to have heard of. Then there is the "cakewalk." Esther and Tootie perform one at the party. Turns out a cakewalk can be many things, being defined as a strutting dance based on a march, and not confined to a particular type of music. The cake refers to a prize that winners received and ate after a competition. Meet Me In St. Louis revolves around anticipation of the 1904 World’s Fair coming to “Skinker’s Swamp,” which was an actual place. There was a major sequence taking place there with Garland and Tom Drake, including a song, which was cut before release. I’ve posted here one of very few stills I’ve been able to locate from that.

2011-12-10T10:40:00.002-05:00

Precode Hails a Taxi!

Taxi went out with an exclamation point ... Taxi! ... so to convey, I guess, throb of Gotham streets just outside the Strand and other NY spots where James Cagney drew biggest coin. His early (in fact earliest) pics remind of how utterly unique a screen personality Jim was, a Vitaphone era's charging bull (quick, who were the most dynamic arrivals to emerging sound film? --- I say Cagney and Clark Gable) . All the "goodies" JC dropped (his term) came self-invented --- no one behind cameras pulled strings. It mattered little who directed him. Suggestions Cagney made were followed to the good and profit of all concerned. Much of him seems ad-libbed ... at least he made it appear so. The man must have had huge confidence, but never appears to have been ego-driven.

Jim and Loretta Young Have an Ice-Cream Break Between Taxi! Scenes

Taxi! played TCM with a Library Of Congress logo at the head, and was sure improvement on prints I'd seen before. Real-life taxi wars of the day supply backdrop. Did patrons exiting the Strand witness hacks in violent confrontation as shown in Cagney's film? His persona sold because it mirrored sensibility of those buying tickets, at least 'dose who rode underground from one borough to another. The identification is made clear during a movie night out Jim and Taxi! chums don't necessarily enjoy. Cagney regards with a sneer Donald Cook's effete on-screen lovemaking, then playfully seizes date Loretta Young to show her how real people smooch. The scene's a great indicator of distance between Hollywood romance and ways its public went about love rituals. Cagney's for telling us that movie mush is the bunk, and that was refreshing to folks fallen short of a Barrymore or Fredric March (two who come in for a Taxi! ribbing), but who could imagine themselves mating after the Cagney fashion.

Waitress Loretta Young primps before a cracked mirror. Maybe that was to show even her looks were no guard against poverty which by early 1932 had firmed its grip. Just getting in to see Taxi! meant you were flush, or at least had a dime the landlord or gas meter didn't get. With Cagney doing four at least shows a year at Depression's peak, could even most dedicated fans afford to catch his quarterly act? He was valued most for how-to on slugging ways out of hard times. Jim right away traded gangster-ing of Public Enemy for confidence tricks barely within the law, or when beyond it, stopping short of murder. Increasing appeal made us want to see him live, if not prosper, at the finish, sentiment patrons felt for most precode self-starters, Cagney most of any. One that broke rules and expectation, He Was Her Man, played TCM recently. I'll not spoil its ending for the picture having done as much in 1934. Significantly, this would be the first Cagney vehicle to lose money for Warners.

Mickey Shares Marquee Space with Cagney --- Was The Mouse Jim's Animated Counterpart?

Precode speakers had this way of making ordinary language sound profane. Or was it ordinary? Case in Taxi! point: James Cagney refers to one guy as a "wet smack," sneering that off as though it were basest obscenity. I don't recall any wet smacks cropping up after PCA enforcement took hold in mid-1934, so why was that? Turns out there was good reason for the banishment, "wet smack" being British slang for masturbation, and a pretty commonly known, if not widely used term (for obvious reasons) in the UK. Movies here have commonly dealt words a lot heavier freighted over there ... "bum" and "shag" come to mind. I've tried finding what "wet smack" meant in US utterance when Taxi! and precode thrived --- did Cagney and WB scribes figure it for a sex barb as did the Brits?

One scene after another displays Cagney versatility. He dances here, cries there, speaks Yiddish (well) not two minutes in. Jim was a fortunate (for Warners) product of the melting pot theatres dreamed to attract. A Barrymore or Fredric March couldn't throw the net he did. JG was raised among innumerable dialects and ethnic sprawl. This actor from beginnings had down their every gesture, being expert mimic he was. Cagney makes with the Yiddish for his entry scene of Taxi! and right there introduces a talking screen's concept of Street Smart. The moment still thrills for our knowing he needn't resort to phonetic memory device, as JC knew the language cold and even used it to overhear Warner bosses when they imagined use of Yiddish would exclude him from finer points of contract negotiation.

Cagney didn't just cry in that movie era when men seldom did. He convulsed. There's a younger brother death scene where JC breaks down to almost startling degree. There'd been glimpse of unchecked emotion in screen debut Sinner's Holiday, so maybe Cagney legions were conditioned for his anything-going, but imagine delight when he revealed dancing chops in extended head-to-toe demo of what vaudeville and Broadway trouping had taught him. What Cagney did was called the Peabody, which I'm told is a quick-step Fox Trot. All that need be said of this sequence is that it lasts about a tenth as long as we'd like it to (JC's rival in the dance contest is George Raft, an expert himself and picked personally by Cagney so there'd be a meaningful competition). With Taxi! now waxed and polished by the Library Of Congress, here's hope that Warners will get it out as a DVD Archive release.

2011-12-03T09:36:00.011-05:00

Book Choice --- Spencer Tracy by James Curtis

There is an amazing bio of Spencer Tracy just out. I went in the library and cleared out three or so previous ones to make a wide and permanent spot for this near thousand page final word on a Golden Age star who till now hadn't got definitive life story treatment. To that daunting length, I'd add that two thousand pages would have been welcome, more the merrier always my stance where writers good as James Curtis go --- but hold on, how many are so capable as this author of prior (and also best-in-category) W.C. Fields, Preston Sturges, and James Whale life-and-career coverage? Curtis by his account spent seven years on Tracy. What came of that is the best book on Tracy or any filmic figure for a long while to come (or at least till JC's next).

Fox He-Men In Residence Circa 1932 --- George O'Brien and Tracy

Tracy was one of very few movie stars who got recognized for great acting during their lifetime. Most were dismissed for having "played themselves" and many remain stuck in that speed so far as legacy goes. Tracy was said to transcend mere performance toward a naturalness other movie-folk didn't get near. Fellow players were awed just seeing him work, reason why Tracy sets became teacher lab for up-climbing Metro youth. To audiences, he seemed like a regular guy talked occasionally into doing pictures, somehow above stardom's process and disdainful of trappings that entailed. Spence shunned make-up, interviews, personal apps, etc., whenever he could --- the above-such stance woven quick into his public persona. Customers weary of artifice respected him for it. Not for nothing did my own father pick Tracy for a favorite actor, so long as he had to bother thinking about any of Hollywood's phony lot, and I'd bet many other men-folk felt the same.

Tracy with Acolytes Tom Ewell and David Wayne During Adam's Rib Shoot

Spence Subdued Even During a Seventh Cross Prison Break

Tracy generally let co-stars do the go-getting. Clark Gable was several times the reckless doer to Spence's moderation (wish they'd teamed once more at least after the war). Katharine Hepburn took mannered flight to his grounded watching. Tracy reactions to KH stood in for ticket-buyers similarly nonplussed. His underplaying tipped us off to Spence better knowing the score. Restraint earned respect as screen talking sought natural levels --- few line readings registered more sensibly than Tracy's. Ideal was casting him as General Doolittle in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. No temperament came better suited to lead WWII's most crucial raid. Patrons liked Spence best as unimpeachable good guy and horse sense purveyor. Sometimes his tamping down made for somnolence of The Seventh Cross, one that might profitably have used a live wire like Gable to contrast Tracy's by-then committed minimizing.

For My Long Haul, The Most Wide-Awake Tracys Were Ones He Did With Gable

He seemed happiest in the embrace of age, referring to himself as an old man when barely past fifty and incessantly so from there on. I've re-checked the Tracy birthdate more than once --- was he really just fifty-four when Bad Day At Black Rock was made (and a looking- sixty-plus Father Of The Bride four years before?). The drink and pace took tolls. Tracy still had authority, but health concerns made investors worry he might not make a finish line. I'd have preferred more action or combat parts during the war instead of one fey Hepburn teaming after another. He's so good as Doolittle to make us imagine Spence the sub commander, flight lieutenant, whatever victory might have been assured by his leading. Hard case and mean drunk Tracy was but glimpsed in 1949's Malaya, a startling detour to trash piles and for that reason, one of my favorite ST's. If this star played himself, Malaya was likeliest the place he did it. Too bad there weren't more along such lines.

Wanted: Less Tracy Teamings with Hepburn and More with Syd Greenstreet, As Here In 1949's Malaya

A Good One, The Power and The Glory, with Colleen Moore, But Surviving Prints Are Rough To Purist-Only Point

Coiled-spring Spence was kept to minimums once Metro handlers took charge. A Fury happened once but wouldn't again. Too many priests and excess rectitude got in the broth. Eventually you knew high roads were the only ones Tracy would travel. Playing Jekyll/Hyde spooked him for having been so long away from heavies, good as he finally was when push came to shove (though ST looked back on the venture with low regard). A treasure among many James Curtis found for his book was a day journal Tracy kept through most of his career. Turns out the actor seldom rated finished pics above barking level, him surprised most of all when one turned out to be a hit.

Bad Day At Black Rock May Be Tracy's Best Because (1) He's Great In It, (2) It's Short, and (3) He Judo-Chops Ernie Borginine Through a Screen Door

If young folks of a last fifty years knew Tracy at all, it was for his top-lining Mad, Mad World. GF Ann recognized him from that and nothing else, she having been minted in 1960. Imagine ones younger to whom Spence is altogether foreign matter. Could he have realized in 1963 that consorting among low comics would secure a place under the big tent (still) maintained by Mad World devotees? I don't know of another Tracy film with this one's staying power. If he got a Wizard Of Oz, I guess Mad World is it.

Another Of Interminable Trophies Tracy Picked Up, This One For Narrating an Appeal For a Texas Crippled Children Fund. Eddie Mannix is Second From The Left and Dore Schary Is On The Right. Do You Suppose ST's Family Still Has The Trophy?

Audiences Sat For Her With Him, But Hepburn Without Tracy Was Tougher Selling

Curtis reveals more what-if's and came closes: Tracy balked at ABC's tender of Batman villainy (or at least a "window" spot) on that 1966 camp-out (Holy Denigration! might have crossed his mind at the prospect), but he did consider Bracken's World, to which minds (at least mine) boggle. There's remarkable and detailed account in the book of ST barely getting through Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, which like others the actor had recently done, climaxed in a l-o-n-g speech which had become near as time-honored as John Wayne hurling balsa chairs over bar counters. By this time, we were all beat over heads that there was acting ... and then there was Spencer Tracy, him the enshrined 1% to the rest's 99.

Tracy's Last and The Biggest Profit of Any His Made --- Guess Who's Coming To Dinner

A Tracy ten years younger and sprung from Hepburn's influence might have knocked out Guns at Navarone or even led the Dirty Dozen. I'd rather have seen him do stuff along these lines than yelling down skull-capped Fredric March, that Inherit The Wind confrontation one I barely got through on a recent try, despite HD rendering. The making of Tracy films as detailed by author Curtis is at least as absorbing as the pics themselves, and in the case of later ones for producer Stanley Kramer, lots more so. I wish all star bios were this good ... course if they were, I'd go blind reading, as Spencer Tracy trailed me non-stop for the happy week I spent in its pages. My only regret came of reading the final one. Please, Mr. Author, sir, may I have another thousand?

2011-11-26T07:58:00.005-05:00

RKO's Second Chance 3D Summer

I'd call Second Chance the Last Of The Grey-Suit Mitchums. This was a series peculiar to RKO and characterized by the leading man's wardrobe limitation. Bob wore coat, tie, shirt in these with seldom a style or color variation. His was a rigid fashion choice (chosen for him more accurate). Grey suits seem to have been RKO policy, a dress code strictly applied to male leads. Even when a Victor Mature pinch-hit, things were much the same (size similar VM may in fact have donned the very threads issued to RM). Was inky black-and-white of noir most responsive to said slate of grey? Industry-wide inventory may reveal this shade as by-far most utilized, if not appropriate, to dark storytelling. It's just most noticeable to me in RKO's, from whose Mitchum backlog I'd defy anyone to spot him long, if at all, out of noir's regulation uniform.

Plain Wrap for RKO Leading Men --- Was This To Keep Us Focused On Their Femme Partners?

Linda Darnell's similarly limited as to fashion in Second Chance. My accounting revealed but one costume change for her through its 82 minute run-time. Seems weight gain obliged the actress, a freelance as of 1953 and less attentive to diet, to wedge into a distaff- tailored counterpart to Bob's standard issue, the fact of Second Chance being in color impacting not on how either star was turned out. Color is in fact an elastic term here, for there's few uglier or more blotchy hues than what survives of Second Chance, a decent print of which I've never seen, though 3-D revivals elude me so far. Does right/left projection in 35mm bring back Technicolor values surely there when Second Chance played new during summer of 1953?

There was a singular mindset at RKO controls. For all his seeming indifference to what went on there, Howard Hughes did lay personal stamp on what this company shipped, and based on grey suit common threads, I'd say he was most engaged by the Mitchums, perhaps as much so as actress vehicles micro-managed by the tycoon turned mogul. Hughes-maintained noir roads tended to intersect in Mexico --- stories began or got there eventually --- from The Big Steal to Where Danger Lives to His Kind Of Woman to Second Chance. Did Hughes himself pursue R&R there? If not, then why a seeming obsession with below border intrigues? Second Chance was RKO's last trip down with Mitchum. Backgrounds are if anything less hospitable. Linda Darnell runs an uphill marathon on what looks to be treacherous cobblestone in heels, fleeing Jack Palance for a reel's agonized duration.

Linda Darnell Ties-In With Leica Cameras for Second Chance Location Publicity

Jack Palance, the 50's Most Neurotic Badman, Force Feels Linda Darnell

Second Chance seems to pick up a chase begun with The Big Steal, Mitchum and company always on a run like rabbits at the dog track. Another Hughes prerequisite? There was at least fresh paint applied in its casting. Linda Darnell at post-peak tries to maintain glamour giving way to age and a figure let go (but wait, LD's not yet thirty here, though lifestyle by '53 put her closer to a seeming forty). Jack Palance is a heavy with weight to give Mitchum a run for primacy. The former's method habits made him forget Second Chance fights were make-believe, result being on-the-level slug-outs engaged with Bob, whose dead aim to Jack's breadbasket saw the latter vomiting all over Mitch's grey suit.

3-D was further novelty affixed to Second Chance. First Time! Big Stars in 3-D! cried one-sheets, not very flattering to Vincent Price, but truthful enough for Mitchum being added depth's most bankable participant so far. The process was most effective for a cable car rescue and finale that '53 reviewing found almost unbearable in terms of suspense. Here's where first-run perception parts with two-dimension remnant we settle for ... effect achieved with toys and process screening die hard without 3-D to emphasize heights from which several characters plunge. What looks risibly fake to us was edge-of-seat stuff to those issued stereo specs.

Robert Mitchum and Linda Darnell Confer with Director Rudolph Maté During Second Chance Filming

RKO's decision to go 3rd dimensioning came at eleventh hour of late February 1953, smash grosser independent Bwana Devil then filling nostrils of a caught-off-guard industry. Since time was of essence in trading off a gimmick, they'd have cameras rolling within a month, Second Chance to ASAP-open in July. Heat was on for early bookings at theatres 3-D equipped, but RKO got sticker shock over pricing of Second Chance prints. While the dimensional pic in dates so far has proved one of the biggest money-makers on the RKO line-up currently, "Chance" is being played off at a pace slower than usual because of the tricky 3-D economics, said Variety.

RKO made it known they were limiting print orders to 200. Reason for this was expense of left and right components for each Second Chance booking, cost of the pair $1,000, plus another $500 for stereophonic sound wedded to the show. This totals $1,500 for an item which, for a convention black-and-whiter, would cost around $250, pointed out Variety. Getting Second Chance out wide would represent a gamble for distribution, however well it was doing on initial dates. RKO announced they'd go with 2,200 or so 3-D engagements before releasing Second Chance in standard 2-D. Estimates by October 1953 saw a possible $2.5 million in domestic receipts for the Mitchum/Darnell starrer, considered good coin by the trade. By November and waning interest in 3-D, RKO announced it would release Second Chance flat only in England, saving increased tab for a process they felt had maxed out, both here and over there.

2011-11-19T10:59:00.014-05:00

Savant and Sputnik Have Landed!

Among fads I missed for being born too late were coonskin caps, the Elvis emergence, and one that burned briefest, but maybe brightest. That would be the Sputnik-inspired craze for all things sci-fi, its grip on a showgoer public lasting no longer than the Russian satellite's time in space from launch date 10/4/57 to burnout upon reentering Earth's atmosphere in January '58. Those three months saw a run on exchanges for interstellar product to rival a previous century's gold rushing. It was every theatre and drive-in to the ramparts for all day-or-night fanta-booking, and hang the age of pics shown, so long as they had "Outer Space," "Mars," or best of all, "Satellite" in the title.

I'd had this subject on Greenbriar's To-Do list for a while, initiative to go forward inspired by arrival of Glenn Erickson's just-published compilation of DVD reviews, Sci-Fi Savant, a bargain of this or any year at $19.95 and suited well to holiday gifting twixt fans of vintage-to-present genre pics (I've ordered a couple more for just that purpose). Glenn's knowledge comes of a lifetime gathering it. I like it when he recalls first-impression-making of all these faves, perspective gleaned from years spent blasting-off to sci-fi as it evolved. He puts fresh spin on classics you'd think were wrung out by others way less seasoned. There'll be plentiful DVD's I'll revisit after pleasurable time reading Sci-Fi Savant.

Glenn's collection would have flown off shelves that autumn of '57, for a sci-fi surge was on soon as Sputnik lifted off Soviet pads and used-to-being-#1 USA got suddenly spooked by evident USSR mastery of outer reaches. Would Reds use their satellite to spy on us, or worse, as staging area for attacks? The sci-fi cycle exhibs thought played-out was overnight ripe for an encore, tied this time to what many called all too real threat from Russia-infiltrated space. H'wood in Sputnik Spurt; Register Satellite Titles In New Space Pic Cycle, said Variety's 10/9 headline --- a rush to hit the market with sci-fi now seemed likely to knock thought-dominant horror movies off their perch, at least for a show season's worth.

Even Republic Serial Rocketmen Got Another Shot at Screens Now That Sputnik Was Aloft

Paramount was first to the trough with reissued Conquest Of Space, George Pal's two-and-a-half year old speculation of other world travel to come. Para had earlier dropped the producer, according to trades, for the reason the company couldn't make money with the type of material in which he specialized (Conquest Of Space realized but a million in domestic rentals on a negative cost of $1.6 million). Figuring now to cash in at cut-rates, Paramount brought aboard William Alland, late of nickel-squeezing Universal "weirdies," to produce The Space Children, a title that at least knew its audience.

Of Universal back numbers, It Came From Outer Space looked handiest to bask in Sputnik's glow. Showmen everywhere wanted this oldie back, its title pitched perfect to unease brought on by news events. Minneapolis saw It Came shoehorned into 4100-seat Radio City's bill with a second week of The Helen Morgan Story, that parlay good for a major B.O. spike. Ads for Universal's pic state in the smallest possible type that its a reissue, said Variety, but this was no drag to demand for more such product, be it old or new, as further proven by hurried placement of Flight To Mars and World Without End, these saturated through Minnesota territories beginning 10/13 while Sputnik was uppermost in consciousness of headline followers.

We're often smug when looking back on pop culture relics from the fifties, especially science-fiction. Easier to forget is audiences then viewing these as prophesy of upheavals to come. Russian satellites were regarded a threat, and that lent shows we now call archaic, if not outright silly, an urgency not to be experienced again short of traveling back in time. Another plus of Sci-Fi Savant is Glenn Erickson's dig below surfaces to reveal what these pictures were really about, and suffice to say, they had a lot more going on than mere mutants and special-FX. Anxiety pulsating off theatre ads shown here is something Savant understands well --- he's thought through social/political freight sci-fi carried and explains it in all clear terms --- has any writer managed this so entertainingly before? (Savant's ever-present humor makes ideal reading for light or deep dish occasion)

Disney/Dell's Man In Space Comic Reprint Timed To Sputnik-Mania

Feeding off headlines was tough what with a genre thought waned and H'wood's conviction that sci-fi interest was spent. Renewed appetites Sputnik-inspired made it necessary to warm stale bread, as had Paramount with Conquest Of Space. Warners first released Brit-made Satellite In The Sky in July 1956 to a half million or so in domestic rentals ... now it roared back to circuits eager for anything relative to satellites (an unprecedented demand from exhibitors throughout the country, said Motion Picture Exhibitor). United Artists scored 150 repeat bookings of the May 1956 UFO in a single week, while George Pal told Army Archerd of driving past a marquee that read Destination "Sputnik" Moon, Pal's 1950 pic gathering fresh acorns thanks to the fad. Ever-opportunist Roger Corman announced and went forward with his War Of The Satellites within days of Sputnik, and Disney was inundated with requests for their Man In Space featurette, shown first on TV in March 1955, but never more timely than now.

Home viewing and record spinners as well got Sputnik-stimulated. MGM re-pressed Music From Outer Space for another LP go-round --- selections included Vibrations From Venus and Uranus Unmasked. Television was all over Sputnik. Thirty-nine episodes of mangy Rocky Jones, Space Ranger, having dated woefully in a mere three years, were back to plague weekday schedules, as was up-from-tombs Flash Gordon, satellites well before his time, but who sweated degrees of separation among tele-sitters gone outer-atmosphere daffy? Space Patrol had another go with 235 segments, while Ziv was in the chips for reruns of Science Fiction Theatre to 57 stations paying as if the things were new. NBC bought Ruff and Ready for kid slotting based on assurance the cartoon dog and cat would spend at least part of a first season in outer space.

As demand built, so did confidence. Would the Sputnik craze last long enough to get a new picture finished and in theatres? Sole beneficiary of perfect timing for these crucial months was MGM with The Invisible Boy, a quickie vehicle for a robot they'd built to buttress Forbidden Planet. Sputnik's lift-off was arm-in-arm with Metro's Fall release, happy coincidence to put The Invisible Boy nicely in profit. Lone wolf producer Benedict Bogeaus pledged to get From The Earth To The Moon "before the cameras within six weeks," and was said to be negotiating with Errol Flynn to star (didn't happen, mores' the pity). Godzilla importer Joseph E. Levine meanwhile supped with Nippon partners "at a geisha house" and dealt to release The Mysterians stateside. The pic was shot before Russia put its first "sputnik" into the sky, Levine told Variety, but the picture has sputniks in it. Looks like I'll need to consult Sci-Fi Savant's entry on The Mysterians to find out if Joe was putting us on! (bet he was)

Glenn Erickson has the best coverage of all I've read on Enemy From Space, aka Quatermass II, my vote as well as his for one of sci-fi's enduring greats. Here's one that should have rode Sputnik's tail wake to fad-kindled grosses, arriving as Enemy did in September 1957, but like so much genre product United Artists (mis)handled, this B/W vanguard of Hammer Films excitement to come fell a-sputter with $148,602 in domestic rentals, way short of what such timely merchandise merited. With a title seemingly ideal (hard to improve on Enemy From Space with Sputnik poised to launch), the question becomes ... how did UA muff this one? I looked for, but found no trade ads, a surest sign of distrib indifference. There was a pressbook for Enemy From Space so thin you could roll a cigarette with it. Exiled generally to bottom placement on double-bills, EFS had little opportunity to peak out from behind eight balls, while Metro's far less deserving Invisible Boy ran the tables. What should have been Sputnik's stoutest screen link was instead a most-missed of opportunities.

2011-11-12T10:24:00.001-05:00

Island Of Lost Souls --- Part Two

The Panther Woman contest was valued advance publicity for not- yet-shooting Island Of Lost Souls. September 1932 saw assigned director Norman Taurog replaced by Erle C. Kenton. Paramount is having trouble injecting comedy into Island Of Lost Souls fantastic yarn in which a dog's soul becomes a man, to which Variety added that he (Kenton) will supply a more subdued type of comedy in his direction. Here, if nothing else, was sampling of daft data the trade sometimes received on films in progress. If Paramount went for lightening this Island's load with comic relief, they must have reconsidered and cut same prior to release, as there's little mirth in the pic as it stands.

There was, according to Variety, much difference of opinion between Paramount's east coast home office and "west coast factions" on how best to sell Island Of Lost Souls. Some favored going with the so-called horror angle, while New York's "specially prepared campaign" for the Broadway date opted for Panther Woman emphasis. East Coast final authority, said the trade, decided that the chiller thing had been done to death in every way, adding Paramount has spent much time and expense exploiting the Panther Woman angle, including a contest, and it was also believed this should be cashed in on.

Admission prices had just been reduced when Island Of Lost Souls bowed at the Rialto (1-12-33). The first week was sufficiently healthy (over $35,000) to generate a trade ad aimed toward showmen down the line (Something New Hits Blasé B'Way!). Competing chiller The Mummy was meanwhile in its second week at the Mayfair, taking the toboggan on its holdover, slumping to $7,500 and may go out tomorrow, said Variety (Universal's monster had a good first week at $19,000, making its dismal second frame all the more a letdown). Subsequent Island Of Lost Souls playdates made clear where exploitation should focus: In theatres where it's been sold from the Panther Girl side, draw has been better than where sold as an another chiller (Variety).

Distaff response was a concern. Variety addressed Island Of Lost Souls from "The Woman's Angle" on its review page: Chills of distaste at the hideousness of this shocker's men-made-out-of-animals are not the kind of chills ladies like in pictures, while a separate column titled "Going Places" by one Cecilia Ager compared Kathleen Burke's Panther Woman unfavorably to the good common sense and clean Nordic look of co-star Leila Hyams. Clearly, the theme of bestiality, and suggestion of at-the-least miscegenation vis-à-vis Burke and Arlen, raised alarm in this and other observers. Now that bloom was coming off the Panther contest Rose, this Island was one increasingly deserted by patronage as the show wound its way beyond first-runs toward less receptive subsequent dating (too freaky to draw, came word from Lincoln, Nebraska).

Don't know how Island finished in terms of gross (does anyone?), but many (including Para staffer Arthur Mayer) recalled it as a disappointment. Not helping was revenue lost when U.K. censors banned the film altogether (too horrible being their curt March 1933 summation). Considerable of a blow to Paramount, said Variety, because the picture was made from an H.G. Wells story and features Charles Laughton, both British. Stateside snipping saw Island prints coming back a lighter weight to exchanges befuddled by content standards varying from one locale to another, dialogue and whole sequences being yanked willy-nilly and in most cases, not put back. Print inspectors must have sighed relief when a newly enforced Production Code brought at least something of an end to hinterland editing.

Lobby Card For a 1958 Paramount Reissue --- Can Anyone Confirm Playdates For That Year?

So are we finally in possession of a complete Island Of Lost Souls? I've found at least three different running times listed from 1933 trade reviews to a Blu-Ray present day. There were apparently reissues during the interim. One in the early forties (ad here) tendered The Sex-Starved "Tiger Woman," which certainly had possibilities, but imagine Code-cut remnants that audience saw. Paramount prepped a 1958 encore with new accessories, but I've not found theatre ads to reflect actual bookings. With sale to television the same year, Island Of Lost Souls bent to vagaries of 16mm printing. These were at the least variable and seldom fully-intact. Souls struck B Movie author Don Miller as more out-of-focus than eerie when he caught late-night telecasts.

For collectors, this Island was treasure filled. Soft as they pictorially were, we all wanted a print. William K. Everson played his to a Huff Society crowd in 1962 and classified Island Of Lost Souls as the last of the lost horror pictures of the thirties that we're likely to see. Everson called Island "a rather nasty and tasteless little work," but made contact with Erle C. Kenton by phone to talk about having directed it (a film he liked making, because he enjoyed doing horror films, but which he didn't seem to care for as a film, reported WKE). Observers of the Blu-Ray have noted dialogue restored that was missing from TV and Universal's laser disc. Kudos to Criterion for going that extra mile to put a complete-as-possible Island Of Lost Souls back in circulation (to which I'll add Greenbriar's humble request for next year ... The Uninvited).

2011-11-05T09:23:00.011-04:00

Halloween Harvest 2011 --- Island Of Lost Souls --- Part One

Island Of Lost Souls might as well have been London After Midnight for limited access viewers had in syndication days, being one many fans wouldn't see until VHS and laser discs brought it into homes. Rarity's reason was less station embargos (though a few locals may have been scared off by it) than Island's placement among all-or-none packaging of Paramount oldies leased by MCA with the pre-48 group's sale to television in April 1958. You could buy per picture at prices considerably upped in that event, though by the mid-sixties, broadcasters were more for transitioning out of mostly B/W fare this 700 title load contained. 1966 found ninety-six TV markets playing pre-48 Paramount in whole or part, our Channel 8 out of High Point, NC being among those blessed ...

Getting Island Of Lost Souls twice or so a year was rare privilege I recognized even then, later confirmed by friends grown up in deprived locales where the legendary chiller never showed up. Our Island tour-guide was Shock Theatre's Count Shockula, later Dr. Paul Bearer (both station employee Dick Bennick), his contribution helping to keep the Shock flag flying for near-twenty years. Now that I'm again in footie pajama mode, I'll pass along sad account of friend Brick Davis and how he missed Island Of Lost Souls one Saturday night in 1968.

We'd oft-talk on the phone up to Shock Theatre's 11:30 start point, this occasion a special one because after all, it was Island Of Lost Souls, and we'd only seen it three or so times up to then. Right at the moment of flipping the dial, however, Brick's father arrived home from a customary sixteen-hour work day and announced they'd be watching Robert Wagner in White Feather instead, his argument being, why look at a black-and-white show on a recently acquired color set? Sound enough logic in 1968, but no comfort to Brick, who'd lost his Island fix for that year.

So now there is Island Of Lost Souls on Blu-Ray, happily cleaned up to a best possible look. For all said effort and higher definition, I'd say this is worth our long wait, Souls maybe last of the truly great horror arrivals to DVD. Much of monsters we revisit amount to sentimental journeying and letdown that follows. I watch a Night Monster or Mummy's Ghost now for what they meant to me then. Not so with Island Of Lost Souls, a bell-ringer that if anything gains power since Channel 8 stay-upping. I've looked at Criterion's rendering twice so far, the encore with Greg Mank's fabulous audio commentary (he really is the master at doing these).

Island Of Lost Souls has always had an almost-contraband reputation in scare circles, heavy hand of local and sometimes (other) country censorship banning it altogether or reducing footage down to what more resembled a short subject. Trade digging reveals Island coming late to horror's first big splurge. A month before release, Paramount tried to distance it from chiller classification, according to Variety's Inside Stuff column: Admittedly a horror picture, Paramount is trying to find a selling angle for Island Of Lost Souls that will eliminate reference to it as such. With the cycle of blood and thunder deemed passed, studio is afraid Lost Souls will do a dive unless the creepy angle is eliminated.

The way to that objective was emphasis on what from summer 1932, and prior to Island's production, would be the film's top selling angle, "The Panther Woman." An entranced public's question became, Who Will She Be? You could call Para's a tacky dress rehearsal for filmdom's later quest for Scarlett O'Hara, as no fewer femmes sought this exotic part than would later queue for GWTW try-outs. It was maybe less the part than hope of cracking Hollywood and most valued prize to Depression-folk, a steady paycheck. Theatres across the country goosed attendance by parading contestants across stages and running so-called "screen-test" footage before their feature program.

The scheme was helped in no small way by Paramount's assigning demon publicist Arthur Mayer the job of ginning up Panther Woman excitement. Mayer was the genius of horror exploitation whose Rialto Theatre on Broadway would be opening site for nearly all mid-30's to 40's horror flix forthcoming. He'd write about the Panther Woman in his 1953 memoir, Merely Colossal, the promotion of which ended in a dog fall, according to Mayer, because "the picture proved a resounding dud." Winner Kathleen Burke and several runners-up were trade-tabbed "Panther Girls" or Women, depending on moods of the moment. Neither designation got respect. Lona Andre and Gail Patrick were used in Paramount's western, The Mysterious Rider, wherein, according to Variety, Miss Andre emerges a ga-ga, eye-rolling ingénue much in need of dramatic training. So far as industry wags were concerned, these Panther Girl also-runs were just so much counterfeit currency. They'd all be let go by Paramount, Kathleen Burke's pink slip issued December 1933 (though she'd be back, as a free lance, for a support part in Lives Of A Bengal Lancer).

2011-10-29T07:36:00.007-04:00

Halloween Harvest 2011 --- Black Zoo

If Newspapers Were Like This, I'd Have Chosen a Career in Journalism

I was standing in fourth grade lunch line when classmate Tony Gentry told me he'd seen Black Zoo the previous day. Knowing it had by now left the Liberty, Tony described horrors the rest of us could not verify: There's one part where a man stuck his head in a lion's mouth, and the lion bit it off, he exclaimed, to which I replied, They showed that? Tony swore ... Absolutely! Harmless fibbing it was to his mind, but permanent distrust rose in me for this and similar exaggeration peers engaged when describing shows they knew I'd missed and would likely never see. Some tall tales were easier recognized than others, like when neighbor Babes Lowe told a treehouse full of us that Natalie Wood stripped fully naked in 1963's Gypsy, out the same year as Black Zoo. You needed a lie detector in those days to talk with friends about movies (and yes, I was guilty at times for similar embroideries).

The Best Thing About Black Zoo May Have Been Reynold Brown's Varied and Vivid Poster Art

Tony was right in guessing I'd not see Black Zoo and expose his perfidy. Once a show left town, it was gone, especially in a small berg where management was disinclined toward second runs. It's only in a just past week, and thanks to Warner's Archive, that I've finally caught Black Zoo, forty-eight years not an unreasonable wait, I suppose, to know once and for all that no such scene as Tony described appears in the film. Is there primal need we all share to watch humans set upon by wild beasts? I admit looking forward to realization of lurid art shown here, even if Black Zoo but fitfully lived up to its promise.

Show Me The Nine-Year-Old Who Doesn't Relish Seeing Men Eaten By Lions

Recent news tells of a private zookeeper who loosed lions, tigers, and bears to panic an Ohio town. Born showman Herman Cohen might have wished for like serendipity to coincide with his promoting tour for Black Zoo, but the sales job Herman did was near as startling, and ranks tall among grassroot promotions headed for a mid-sixties fade. Maybe Cohen knew his kind of bally was last round-up'ing, but he'd been at it since age twelve and beginnings as youngest member of Detroit's theatre usher fraternity. Herman as eventual filmmaker was more for selling than creative ends, being like Bill Castle in that respect, but give him a tingly title and HC knew how to run with it. I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Horrors Of The Black Museum were hard-sold in partnership with AIP's wunderkind Jim Nicholson, these two a Barnum and Bailey at shock-peddling. Cohen produced a dozen for AIP by the time he jumped to Allied Artists for Black Zoo's distribution. AA needed summer chillers same as any industry player, and for 1963 slated Zoo and Brit-lensed Day Of The Triffids to fill exploitation dates.

Broidy Predicts AA Upbeat, said trade headlines reporting '63 plans for the company as optimistically conveyed by topper Steve Broidy, still reaching for glory now in a second decade of eluding Allied Artists. Hopes rested on what he called the keystone of all our plans, 55 Days At Peking, plus deals with John Huston, Samuel Fuller, and Blake Edwards for coming projects. For the meantime, there was sure thing of Black Zoo for May release, to which Herman Cohen lent his wild animal cast for whirlwind touring, this begun with a sixty theatre saturation in New York, Jersey, and Long Island, Zoo's lion and tigers aboard a float driven past venues hosting the pic. Cohen got further ink entering hotel lobbies accompanied by said beasts, one of which, "Zamba," had already distinguished himself by mauling a trainer during Black Zoo's production. This went unreported at the time, but was recounted years later for an interview Herman Cohen did with historian Tom Weaver.

Lions and Tigers In a Cemetary --- Why Didn't Anyone Think Of That Before?

Zoo yielded a whopper $260K for that opener Gotham week, Variety crediting Cohen's intensive push, plus personal appearing, on four legs, by cast members. Herman was flush with the praise, enough as to unload on distributors very undermanned in their advertising and publicity departments. Instead of trimming staff here, he said, they should lop off some of the top executives who are sitting on their backsides and doing nothing. Exhibitors came in for a Cohen blast as well. (They) do nothing either to try to contribute or help. They run for the big grossers or sit and do nothing. Herman felt horror films were an industry's salvation not properly appreciated, but you couldn't just send one out without proper exploitation.

Guess We'd All Take a Pass On Attacks Like This, Nocturnal Or Otherwise.

"Working Touter" Cohen knew his Black Zoo customer base. It's primarily a weekend audience ranging in age from 12-30, this group, he said, making up 72% of the viewing total. Herman, who was in large part author of teen slant scripts he produced, was careful not to put in anything that would offend or talk down to youth. Cohen added that the teeners in my pictures are basically good, moral youngsters, and never do anything bad except under sinister influences, and nothing that the audience can imitate. A Detroit homecoming found the city's mayor declaring "Herman Cohen Day" at a luncheon attended by HC and tethered Zamba, the latter visiting schools and shopping centers before taking up caged position in the Fox Theatre lobby.

Micheal Gough Enacts Tender Black Zoo Love Scene

Cohen had done "survey work" that identified "the booming community of suspense and terror buffs." He called theirs the biggest single audience movies have today. Herman had long been ahead of the pack for recognizing clubhouses shock fans gathered to, having used TV horror hosts to push Horrors Of The Black Museum in 1959. Now he'd widen the net to include monster magazines well entrenched by 1963. There was forgivable hyperbole in claims of "combined readership that runs into the millions," but little doubt these mags lifted Black Zoo attendance among that very group Cohen targeted, his a visionary outreach to a niche overlooked, if not ignored, by convention-bound merchandisers.

Elisha Cook Gets Comeuppance For Tiger Taunting --- He'd Later Call Black Zoo "A Terrible, Awful, Picture"

How Many Of You Out There Still Have Your Copy?

Possibly the most clever of Herman's tie-ins was the Charlton-published Black Zoo photo magazine, a thirty-five cent start-to-finish telling of the film's narrative in stills and frame blow-ups. Showmen were invited to buy in bulk at reduced wholesale of twenty-one cents per copy. I doubt many small town theatres participated ... for the Liberty it was enough that patrons could buy theirs across the street at Horton's Drug Store (where, in fact, I scored mine after Black Zoo had come and gone). Charlton paying tribute lent Black Zoo status few horrors shared at the time ... I went years thinking the film must be good to have merited such coverage (even as subsequent picture-mags devoted to The Mole People and Horror Of Party Beach should have disabused me of such notion).

Now we at last have Black Zoo on DVD, properly wide and colorfully rendered. It's a handsome show for one done on modest budget. Herman Cohen told Variety in 1963 that Zoo cost a million, which seems hardly likely ... cutting that by two-thirds might get closer to the actual tab. Still, there's nice photography by veteran Floyd Crosby of more recent AIP accomplishment (he made their Poes look like the million Herman aspired to) while hired-for-a-day-or-two faces Elisha Cook, Jerome Cowan (Wilmer Cook and Miles Archer together again!), along with Virginia Grey, made Black Zoo inviting as a curl-up with late, late movies at home, said comfort zone being what Cohen no doubt had in mind when he cast these players.

Michael Gough and Ill-Fated Rod Lauren With Looks-To-Be-Drugged Cub in Black Zoo

Michael Gough is pretty much Black Zoo's whole show, onscreen verbal abuse his specialty in those waning years when horror movies still revolved around personalities rather than blood squibs. Juve support Rod Lauren's March 1963 burglary arrest (he crashed in on a sleeping Black Zoo cast-mate in her apartment) foresaw tragic events to come in that young actor's life. Herman Cohen snuck his own cameo into an extended chimp act that eats up much of Black Zoo's opening reel. As with later Berserk, the producer felt bound to let routines, however unrelated to narratives at hand, play out beginning to end, giving patrons, if nothing else, opportunity to stoke up on concessions before getting down to horrific business.

2011-10-22T09:17:00.002-04:00

Janie's The Girl We've Forgotten

There's a scene late in Yankee Doodle Dandy where a retired George M. Cohan encounters jive-talking teens who've never heard of him or his music. Spokes-girl for the kids is Joyce Reynolds, a fresh face whose Warners audition this clearly was. She would become, for a wartime's instant, America's ingénue sweetheart, differing from Joan Leslie only for misfortune of not appearing in WB classics like High Sierra, Sergeant York, and aforementioned Yankee Doodle as did Leslie. Reynolds also ducked out of the business (marriage) and couldn't retrieve her career upon trying again afterward. There's no trace of whereabouts on the world's wide Web ... we could wonder who's even looking. Still, there's a 1944 movie called Janie in which Joyce Reynolds was showcased, and it's a topical treasure, one I wish Warners would re-master (looks a little muddy TCM-wise) and get out on DVD.

Janie came off what WB called a Seventy-Seven Week Stage Sensation. The title character was sweet sixteen and itching to be kissed, preferably by a man in uniform. Selling of Janie was what we'd call uneasy and along lines of Get Ready To Howl, You Wolves! No wonder Errol Flynn hung about high-schoolyards. Underage girls were scrubbed cleaner on then-radio faves like Corliss Archer, Junior Miss and A Date With Judy, thanks in part to vigilant sponsors not wanting protective parents up in arms. Hard to imagine the movies' Code being looser, but to some extent it was, as tender-aged Janie dons two-piece swimwear and playfully eludes soldier advances. She and friends dress grown-up and double down on cusp-of-womanhood dialogue only just removed from darker implication of juve delinquent exploiters like Youth Runs Wild and Where Are Your Children? playing just across streets from Janie.

Too many think teen pics began with the fifties, understandable considering that's when such was first customized and marketed to youth with spending empowered by a postwar's economic boom. The Janies and Andy Hardys were more about reassuring grown-ups than servicing offspring, object being to convince us high-spirited teens were manageable after all, and that parental forbearance would be rewarded with hugs and youth's promise to hereafter behave. It would have been unpatriotic to present kids as anything like a threat --- didn't the war give us enough to worry about? Revealing is fact that most wayward youth exploitation came off poverty rows, with rare exception of a Youth Runs Wild from RKO. I'm guessing the majors entered tacit agreement to chill troubled-teen themes, at least until we polished off Axis delinquents.

Delights of Janie are so myriad as to make me regret waiting years to check in. I knew it for (seeming) incongruity of Michael Curtiz behind cameras after twin events Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy. Doesn't the fact we've forgotten Janie make it an unimportant property? The answer goes to modern unawareness of what a popular show this was. Success on the stage pre-sold Janie. Mr. and Mrs. Average Moviegoers that razzed a Magnificent Ambersons at previews would reliably toss hats in the air for entertainment like this, calibrated as it was to deliver precisely what a wartime public wanted. I don't know how close Janie comes to reflecting middle-America family life during that decade (probably not very), but compare the avalanche of domestic TV sitcoms a decade later with far fewer 40's features covering the same ground, and Janie's value increases all the more.

What would become stock characters are early introduced here. The harried father, saintly mother, a kid sister more insufferable than irrepressible. Phones ring, doors slam, and misunderstandings are rife. Kids talk a language no adult (or we) can translate, slang finding its 40's level --- Janie begs her dad not to be such a "tin-type" and engages something like staccato Pig Latin with in-the-know friends. Radio's penetration into then-psyches is nicely conveyed by little sister's obsession with radio; she carries one along for a bus ride so she won't miss The Lone Ranger. It's easy to forget the hold listening had on a younger generation just ahead of television's advent. Was radio more fun than tubes that would hypnotize the rest of us?

Happy Feet On a Warners' Wartime Stage and a 40's Magical Music Highlight

Joan Leslie Assumes Janie Role For The 1946 Sequel

Lest one think Janie a mere big-screen sitcom, I'd mention transcendence of a musical set-piece during the second half --- a soldier's party dazzlingly staged by Curtiz with song, dance, personalities-to-be (Keefe Brasselle, Jimmie Dodd, Julie London, Andy Williams, plus brief vocalizing by not yet christened Sunset Carson), and the dynamic finish of a conga line snaking through a night-lit sound stage exterior. Were musical set-pieces ever so joyous as ones staged during that uncertain period of a World War? If Warners had done their own That's Entertainment, this would have been my choice for center-placement. Janie was sold as 1944's National Joy Show. It raked three million in worldwide rentals on a $1.3 million negative cost. Janie's domestic haul topped most of the Bogart, Davis, and Flynn pictures of that year, so WB's anxiety to get out a sequel made sense. That would be Janie Gets Married, with the same cast save Joyce Reynolds, shot during waning days of the war, but delay-released in mid-1946. Hopes for the sequel were reflected in its trailer to which Humphrey Bogart (!) contributed a brief appearance.

2011-10-15T08:29:00.001-04:00

Jim and Sam Present Paget and Pagans!

1960 was finally time for American-International to live up to its name. No more would Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff rely on a domestic market for the bulk of receipts. Henceforth they'd branch past US shores to sell and buy. Foreign rentals accounted for 30% of AIP's 1959 take, with 1960 projecting at 50%, this the 9/30 forecast Jim shared with Variety's Vincent Canby. A hands across seas policy had given Nicholson/Arkoff their biggest so-far hit, Goliath and The Barbarians, to be followed with economy models Euro-shot, but adorned with production values hard got in the US short of spending a million AIP didn't have. Jim and Sam wanted desperately into A's, and so charted 1960's mission of making imports and upgraded domestic product look expensive at least. Here then, was crossroads where an industry's hungriest upstart made a meal of Fritz Lang's farewell to epic filmmaking.

Jim Nicholson and Sam Arkoff Display Wares of a Boffo 1960 Season To Come

Herr Lang still had a reputation, if not many takers for directing service. US companies had cooled on him, but this was still the man who'd once done Metropolis and M, two revered if not often revived in a 50's market allergic to by-gone pics. Fritz Lang and ten cents might buy a cup of coffee in Hollywood, but native Germany held his banner high, and one producer there, Arthur Brauner, had means to make Lang's comeback a reality. Upwards of a million (way more in the end, thanks to overruns) would be sunk in costumed exotica filmed partly on India location and running a whopper 203 minutes, these divided by half so patrons could tender admission times two to see the whole thing.

The pair translated to The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb. Despite deadly reviews (some of the most unfortunate German postwar productions, one said), they did well on the continent, thanks in part to Brauner's casting a known Hollywood lure, Debra Paget, as star and promoting ornament. Germany's most expensive baubles Euro-played from January 1959 (nothing Deutsch-made had cost so much, not even Lang's silent extravagances) and would not escape notice by pleasure/business traveling Jim and Sam, always on the lookout for exploitable product AIP could retrofit for home consumption.

Arkoff wrote colorfully of he and Nicholson's screening agenda when in Rome (and elsewhere continental). The two would encamp among whatever complete or unfinished Euro-flix were available for cheap purchase, watching sometimes a dozen prospects hour after exhausting hour. It got to where they had two projectors running at once, side by side, eagle eyes darting back and fro in quest of saleable content. Unless there was promise in a first reel, they'd not move on to the next. We were looking for production value, Sam said, and it often didn't take long to figure out which pictures had it and which didn't. AIP's pragmatic pair set radar for adventurous scenes, scary moments, and pretty girls (Sam's criteria --- he knew his public). Thus was discovered Goliath and his Barbarians, a standout chiller they'd rename Black Sunday, and eventually, The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb. There was potential aplenty in these, diamonds amidst Lang and Brauner's three-plus-hour molasses serving.

Jim Nicholson spent much of August 1960 checking progress of AIP co-productions shooting overseas. There was Konga in London, Goliath and The Dragon in Rome, and Reptilicus in Copenhagen. Bounty brought home were German buys The Tiger Of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb, which Jim spent Labor Day week paring down to a single feature he'd call Journey To The Lost City. Editing/dubbing was done in New York --- a complete AIP overhaul of what Fritz Lang had shot two years before. Set for October 12 release, Journey To The Lost City would become the highest-profile and most profitable German film exhibited in the US during 1960, indication if nothing else of how shut-out pics from that country were on domestic shores.

The Debra Paget Dance That Adorned US Lobby Cards for Journey To The Lost City ...

... and the Dance Euro Patrons Saw.

Nicholson/Arkoff bought Tiger/Tomb for visual splendors and what vitality could be distilled from Lang's handiwork. What attracted AIP was clear enough --- breathtaking locations, many not captured before on camera, along with action highlights that would translate well to poster art. Most saleable, as in Europe's play-off, was known quantity Debra Paget, late of pairing with Elvis, plus The Ten Commandments, performing a snake dance that became focal point for selling Journey To The Lost City. What Nicholson could not retain from Tiger/Tomb was Paget's near-nude encore of said dance that could no way have passed US censors. Adolescent boys in 1960 would surely have come away from such an exhibition transformed, as did more than one DVD collector when the complete Lang assembly finally surfaced stateside in 2001.

Jim Nicholson cut Journey To The Lost City to 94 minutes, Lang's length split pretty much down the middle. That didn't leave much time for dull explanations of various plot details, said Variety. Reviews hinted Journey might still be too long. The "sex-and-sand spectacle" had nice scenics, but dialogue was "ali-babble all the way." Still, there were kids enough to finesse $494,000 in domestic rentals, a nice take in an AIP year that saw House Of Usher and Goliath grossing highest for the firm. Fritz Lang didn't go on record as to Nicholson's cleave-by-half of his Indian epic, but the two did meet for discussion of AIP remaking Metropolis, rights to which Jim and Sam acquired shortly after the Tiger/Tomb buy. According to Variety, Nicholson prevailed upon Lang to direct AIP's update, but the director has declined, understandably says Nicholson, on the grounds that the new version would certainly be compared with the old, and probably in an unflattering way, no matter how good he could make it.

2011-10-08T10:53:00.007-04:00

Killer's + Killing + Kubrick --- Part Two

Fortune smiled on Stanley Kubrick in 1955 by way of a producing partner who knew enough industry ropes to help SK get a real movie off the ground. James B. Harris was a distributing entrepreneur still in his twenties with five years experience hustling vid series and fossil features via Flamingo Films, a concern which, according to Variety, began with capitalization of $6,000 and was now grossing three million a year off the likes of Superman, Wild Bill Hickok, The Life Of Riley, and recently acquired jewel, Stars Of The Grand Old Opry. Harris had instinct for biz talent, having nurtured producers-to-be David Wolper (of later documentary fame) and Sy Weintraub (who'd shortly revive a moribund Tarzan series). There was no one better equipped than Harris to make good things happen for Stanley Kubrick.

Sleazy Cover Art and a Jack Webb Endorsement Make For '56 Must-Reading

Having Harris in the mix was probably what got United Artists off the dime for The Killing's front money. UA is backing them (Harris and Kubrick) up with 100% financing, which amounts to about $600,000, for their first film, "Day Of Violence," based on the Lionel White novel, "The Clean Break," said Variety. James Harris' 2011 interview for Criterion's Blu-Ray release gave the lie to said reportage ... the distrib, he said, ponied $200G's and not a penny more. Harris, who believed in The Killing and Kubrick, sank personal savings of $180,000 plus another $50,000 borrowed from his father to invest $130,000 in The Killing's negative. The neophyte producer knew it would take meaningful $ to elevate he and Kubrick's project beyond shambles of exploitation then flooding markets.

Over twenty years since Scarface and Little Caesar Were Made, But Bear In Mind Both Had Been Recently Back In Theatres When The Killing Opened.

Kubrick's Killing cast looked like a precinct line-up, the director having pillaged players off every crime pic he'd sat through since starting to shave. All these, even putative star Sterling Hayden, were second-tier names, though I'd suspect Kubrick preferred them over a Gielgud ... well, when it's likes of Elisha Cook, Marie Windsor, and Joe Sawyer, wouldn't we all? As to selling a finished product, UA was for more sin-smearing. Like No Other Picture Since "Scarface" and "Little Caesar," promised ads, and this time, buildups weren't far off the beam. Wrinkle was, The Killing came decidedly not off convention's blotter, despite thrill and mayhem Kubrick dutifully supplied. Thanks to a squirrelly structure with labyrinth flashbacks, the director had given his distributor what looked like a bullet-riddled art movie.

A Better Question in 1956 Might Have Been --- Can You Follow The Killing's Mixed-Up Narrative?

James Harris realized The Killing would need plenty of TLC, that being industry-speak for a tough sell. Trade reviews acknowledged it was good, but many were confused by Kubrick's puzzle. Where was precedent, after all, for story-telling this loopy? United Artists had little choice but to book and promote The Killing in old-fashioned ways ... maybe crowds would get it once they plunked admission and sat down. Harris interview-recalled disappointment at the film's NY run --- some big barn, a theatre on Broadway ... They had to put speed bumps in the aisles to keep people from walking out too fast. The engagement opened and closed so abruptly, it formed a suction. I like Mr. Harris' wit, but fifty-five years is a long time, and 1956 trade reportage reveals The Killing, on Broadway and elsewhere, to have been not quite the disaster he recalls, but far be it for me to rain on such a colorful and certainly accurate to the spirit account of how Harris and Kubrick's innovative film was received.

That Broadway "barn" where The Killing opened in May 1956 was the Mayfair, previous home for Johnny Guitar and future host to Horror Of Dracula. Harris says the theatre booked it as hasty substitution for a flop, which trades reveal to have been Columbia's Glenn Ford western, Jubal. The latter had underperformed, as would The Killing, the Harris/Kubrick film's (just short of) four week stay at the Mayfair called disappointing by Variety; even a bonus preview feature added for the final frame saw ticket sales dragging bottom. To play a Broadway house as a single (for a first three weeks of its engagement anyway) didn't reflect The Killing being dumped by distribution, but James Harris maintained UA's push was nevertheless a bungle: The picture needed special handling, he'd say: It should play a small theatre. It should build.

A Hopeful Summer '56 Trade Ad Emphasizes Critic Kudos For Kubrick

The breakout, too isolated to help much, was several months off. A meantime June-July saw The Killing as second feature support to UA's Bandido in Los Angeles saturation, while Chicago's Esquire actually sweetened ads and marquees to read The $2,000,000 Killing, which awarded the theatre with a "plump" two weeks of revenue. Local selling could make a difference in those days before nationwide rollouts and do-or-die first weekends. Initiative on a local showman's part often turned tides and made a local hit of an overall marketplace's flop. Clearest 8/56 instance of this came via gamble by a Minneapolis art houser who put chips on The Killing and won.

Kubrick's film had played a downtown Minneapolis theatre early in August and died, stuck at a double-feature's bottom for a split-week filmgoers were barely aware of. The Killing thus went unnoticed and didn't even merit a review in Minneapolis newspapers. Morrie Kotz guessed his Campus Theatre patronage from nearby University Of Minnesota might go for something off beaten paths of foreign and art pics he'd been presenting, so terms (favorable to Morrie) were met with United Artists bookers for The Killing to play the Campus (a save for UA, as local hardtops and even drive-ins had passed up the pic since its flop downtown). Kotz was even able to pass off The Killing as an "exclusive engagement" to his venue.

The Campus offered a double money-back guarantee as insurance that patrons would find The Killing "one of the most suspenseful and exciting pictures you have ever seen." No refunds were claimed during the theatre's first of many holdover weeks. Kotz proved you could wake up a sleeper with deft marketing, his example one to follow by what Variety called Smartie Arties that fed off terrific word-of-mouth generated by The Killing. Pittsburgh's 500-seat Guild Theatre grabbed the show after first-run houses passed altogether, then enjoyed biz way over and above average takes. Pleasing as these isolated instances were, they'd not push The Killing to mainstream success, however. UA gave belated tribute with Oscar ads for November trade placement, but the film had by then played out in the keys. Final figures saw The Killing with domestic rentals of $373,272, with foreign better at $591,812. Against the negative's cost of $330,000, that would presumably amount to moderate cakes and ale for Harris/Kubrick (and we can hope Harris' dad at least got his investment back).

2011-10-01T14:26:00.008-04:00

Killer's + Killing + Kubrick --- Part One

Turns out Stanley Kubrick was one of us for time (lots) he spent hunkered in theatres watching pics old and new from childhood on. Killer's Kiss reveals as much. Bad man Frank Silvera has his office decorated with posters from the silent era, and I've got to believe those set decorations were from Kubrick's private stash. Were there Manhattan shops peddling one-sheets from the 1917 melodrama, Blue Jeans (Viola Dana and a buzz saw), or Goldwyn's The Winning Of Barbara Worth? --- and if so, how much would a penny-wise collector have had to pay for them? Both these adorn Killer's Kiss walls, and I wonder if they, like Rosebud, survived among Kubrick effects after his 1999 death.

Chicago Was Still Photographer Kubrick's Kind of Town, What With Plentiful Noir On Screens and Out In The Streets.

Kubrick Himself Was a Major Selling Point for Killer's Kiss

The New York Times referred to Kubrick in Film Fan To Film Maker terms (their profile's title) for 1958 interviewing wherein he recalled a boy's life spent inside Loew's Bronx Paradise, inhaling everything they ran. Was SK buff enough to begin collecting from this early stage? Legend persists of his later hoarding a 35mm London After Midnight. Kubrick was among earliest directors with encyclopedic knowledge of film history (elder Robert Florey maybe the first) and evidence of movie-love reveals itself even in still photography for weekly mags prior to making flickers himself (going in to catch He Walked By Night at the State Lake, which Kubrick surely did after photographing its marquee, might well have inspired him to create noirs of his own).

Killer's Kiss, recently out with The Killing on Criterion Blu-Ray, is a film-hound's dream tour of Broadway in 1953's fourth quarter. Marquees are lit with dynamite bills, including November's two-theatre open of How To Marry A Millionaire. There's even a glimpse of the Holiday's front, with its reissue combo of Little Caesar and Public Enemy, that engagement covered previously at Greenbriar. No way would Kubrick have skipped this tandem, fan that he was, even as he dodged officialdom night after night to sneak White Way exteriors.

Kubrick As I Prefer Him: Making Fast, Cheap Thrillers On Borrowed Money

Killer's Kiss may not amount to much story or acting-wise, but what Kubrick captured of sidewalks, store windows, and rooftops is priceless. This is the city at its naked-est. I kept expecting J.J. Hunsecker to step up and hail a cab. An inspired pairing would be Killer's Kiss with same year's The Bandwagon. Kubrick's New York is distinctly not Vincente Minnelli's. A singing Tony Hunter wouldn't make it half-a-block down Killer's street. What joy it must have been to grow up a mere bus ride from this Eden of palaces, grind houses, and street corner pizza by the slice.

Stanley Kubrick made Killer's Kiss with $40,000 of borrowed money. He handled every task but brewing coffee. United Artists was impressed enough to pay $75K for the negative. The distrib's execs want Stanley Kubrick to align with UA and the way to nab him was to buy out Kiss, observed Variety. The same trade's review (9-21-55) figured UA's purchase best suited for lower half of the duals wherever it could eke out some bookings. Advertising leaned on the lurid, stills the distributor issued being coarse as you'd expect for an ultra-low-budget pick-up. Samples I dug out of Liberty storage by the early 70's were torn and staple-holed in ways entirely appropriate to this blink-and-it's gone release.

A Killer's Kiss Still Out of Liberty storage with Appropriate Rips and Dings --- I'd Not Want It Any Other Way.

UA Makes Publicity Hay With Kubrick's Maverick Shooting Ways

Total bookings for Killer's Kiss was a woebegone 3,130. Even UA's Gog got into more theatres than this (7,284 engagements), while oddball Sabaka, its sole lure Boris Karloff in non-horror mode, eased through 4,557 doors. Killer's Kiss would pull drag for UA releases with scarcely greater promise. Los Angeles playdates supported Katharine Hepburn in Summertime, dull said Variety for a first week with $16,000 realized out of four theatres. There was a Frisco first-run with The Indian Fighter, and Denver kept Killer's Kiss for two weeks to back Bob Mitchum's Man With A Gun. Today's cult membership would have loved K'sK with Night Of The Hunter in Detroit, but ticket sales were slim, as was Kansas City's shared bill with Robert Aldrich's The Big Knife, good for a week's meager $4,500 at that city's 3500 seat Midland Theatre.

A Sampling of UA's Sin-Smeared Campaign for Killer's Kiss

Still and all, Killer's Kiss brought $130,285 in domestic rentals and $143,993 foreign. From $75 K United Artists paid Kubrick, plus cost of prints/advertising, they probably came out even, if not better. As for the distributor's back-end deal with their producer/director, Variety would add, it's understood he'll cut in on the "Kiss" revenue after UA recoups its investment, which leaves me wondering if SK ever saw a dime beyond that initial check they'd cut him. Killer's Kiss would certainly have gone into profit with television sales plus non-theatrical (tube runs underway by 1958). Since Kubrick regarded K'sK, in hindsight, as an amateur's effort, perhaps he also left UA alone with regard divvying these further receipts.

2011-09-24T10:18:00.011-04:00

Favorites List --- Warren William and Employees' Entrance

Exhibit A For Print Ads Salacious As Precodes They Sold

Go whole hog enough on precode and you may wind up wanting to be Warren William's Kurt Anderson, or in the women's column, Ruth Chatterton's Female. Both are seductive role models for moderns yoked by social, sexual, and political proprieties re-writ since characters like these grazed on a (lots) more raffish culture. How many men bound in corporate or business chains would trade at least their souls to be an Employees' Entrance kind of boss? Current-day Mad Men is but 21st cent opportunity to quietly envy males rampant in what we're assured were bad old days thankfully past. Of course, Warren William makes even these look like lace doilies, for unlike Mad Men (and certainly us), there's never any hauling to account for Kurt Anderson, nor do we want him busted by Act Three rulebooks meekly applied since to preserve status quo. You need watch few movies or television today to recognize production codes still in place, even as same goes undocumented. It's one-of-a-kind disavowal of chalk-lines we walk that gives Employees' Entrance ongoing power to shock.

Recreate Kurt Anderson's Office From This Set Still --- Then Go Be Him!

I've seen Employees' Entrance enough times to know where best parts are. A hair trigger remote zipped me past "nice" characters Loretta Young and Wallace Ford to get back with precode oracle Warren William, whose best (dirty) work this has to be. It's challenging to speed-forward footage and stop on the dime of his face. Not an ideal way to watch movies, but once committed to memory, precode faves often repeat–play best shorn of virtue's valiant effort to overcome wickedness. I always exit Employees' Entrance right after WW drops the dog in his wastebasket --- who needs to know (or care) that less engaging Young and Ford got back together?

The Chiseled Cad --- They'd All Exit The Stage Eventually

So where do we come off judging hard products of that hardest 30s school, depression society at large or 18 hour day classes taught at WB? A lot of Kurt Andersons must have graduated from the latter, for bastard that his characters tended to be, you don't get a sense of Warner scribes disapproving the Warren William persona any more than those of fast shufflers Lee Tracy, William Powell, Cagney ... how else but to deal off bottoms for a roof and meals? Smash Or Be Smashed was no more William's credo than that of many who figured gentility for weakness or at the least a straighter route to bread lines.

Two From Kurt Anderson's Harem: Loretta Young and Alice White

The Breakthrough --- WW Featured in WB's 1932 Product Annual

College film study should begin with Employees' Entrance. It would surely open pores and disabuse assumption of what constituted old movies. Kids look at a Kurt Anderson and wonder, shouldn't he be punished?, as liberal art recipients are taught surely he must, for lustily engaging in every -ism they're conditioned to deplore. (Kurt but half-kiddingly suggests, Why don't you kill her?, when an Employees' colleague bemoans blackmailing trollop Alice White) Moderns imagine they know from bad-boy screen behavior, but look closer and there's always a reckoning for alpha dudes violating Unwritten Codes to take liberties far less egregious than William's. Mel Gibson divines innermost thoughts and learns What Women Want, but after brief middle-section of his enjoying it, we know he'll pay and dearly for invading that gender's private space. Was ever a leading man so broken and humbled, and in a comedy yet? (What Women Want's 3d act is as funny as Death Of A Salesman) Had such levelers been applied to Warren William's precode conduct, we'd not have an Employee's Entrance half so much fun.

Mock-Up a New York Skyline with a Penthouse View --- and Your Next Warren William Is Ready To Roll

It's known enough by now that William was best essaying business scoundrels and short-sellers, but who are ones (if any) that paced later his feral tracks? I enjoyed for a while Michael Douglas all Warren-ish at Me-decade scalawagging, and there was Alec Baldwin and James Woods (when cast right) to remind us of precode similars having once trod the earth. Trouble was these having to die or get jail time for perfidy from which Warren William often emerged scot-free. That unwritten Code again. Class-warring as practiced now was mirrored in William's prime. Inherited wealth is a badge of dishonor so far as Employees' Entrance portrays it. To have descended from James Monroe and Benjamin Franklin, plus unearned prosperity, amounts to three strikes and you're out. Self-made Kurt Anderson alone deserves his haul. Whatever ruthless else he does, Kurt won't live off the fat of estates, and that made him fundamentally OK to patrons also denied silver spoons.

Denton Ross' Office: Trophies, Golf Clubs, and Ancestor Portrait Reflect His Getting Rich The Easy Way --- Sure Cues For Patron Laughter and/or Disdain.

Then-published ads reveal clearest Employees' mission. They'd expose shop counters and office pools as so much brothel space, with Kurt Anderson A Man Who Can "Make" Or Break More Women Than Any Sultan. Note parentheses around "Make," its sexual connotation unmistakable. Youth got worldly fast just reading newspaper promotion in those days. Employees' Entrance was further opportunity for showmen to heat things up. Girls "Selling Their Souls" for a job "At Any Price" said it all, but as opposed to cries for reform a prisoner on chain gangs elicited, these plights apparently shared by working women were mere stuff of titillation. Has the depression brought about bargains in love? was less expression of indignation than helpful tip-off to store merchandise more alluring than mere piece goods.

The Stable Home and Wife Didn't Have To Be Faked --- Offscreen WW Was a Straight Arrow

Dog Lover William Often Posed With Pets

The wolf's head that was Warren William had to be cleaved. PCA enforcement crowded him into corners WW could only farce his way out of. He and movies suddenly occupied a fairy-tale world. Plain diminishing was this actor in screwball mode after tours of precode duty, the chairman of Anything Goes' board donning lampshades on his head. William became a rakish uncle who's promised to stop telling ribald jokes around the children. Back as office lothario in 1939's Day-Time Wife, he's so gelded as to pose anything but a threat to Linda Darnell's secretary. This de-fanged wolf seemed less Warren William than Lester Matthews, just a face among mustachioed cast listings in support.

Code Enforcement Made William a Safe Date for Linda Darnell in 1939's Day-Time Wife

Contemplative at Home --- Was He Inventing Something at That Desk?

Most of us saw William first in The Wolf Man. By then, he was Universal's idea of past-glory (and got cheap) marquee adornment, someone to confer class upon a disreputable monster movie. WW got shoes muddy in U westerns where his credit read beneath lighter weights Franchot Tone and Bruce Cabot, less a shark than a dandy in period dress. The Lone Wolf series meant steady pay packets for OK mysteries, made so purely for his starring. Offscreen Warren William invented (useful) things and kept wire terriers. He was probably more of a renaissance man than we'll ever appreciate. A wife and stable home life wouldn't have seemed in the cards, but there his was, proof again that screen images are purest illusion. Health problems that took William at age 53 (in 1948) must have been lingering, for he seemed prematurely aged final appearing in The Private Affairs Of Bel-Ami, where George Sanders applies a verbal rapier to this weakened opponent who in his prime would have been more than a match, even for GS.

2011-09-17T11:18:00.015-04:00

When MGM Became RKO

Scene Of The Crime was one of the good things that happened after Dore Schary took over as production chief for Metro in 1948. The newly installed exec was just off supervising production at RKO where money mattered, so free spending was anathema to him, especially with overall industry receipts in a postwar freefall. Schary's strategy for MGM was to tighten budgets, increase production, and make movies more streetwise after example of what he'd overseen as RKO's topper. Metro was in dire need of belt-tightening. Dollars there had been frittered to Loews' near ruination. Schary was hired, at least in part, for known fiscal conservatism. He'd managed good pictures for less $, a facility lately unknown among MGM staffers. Was it still possible for Leo to roar at prices within reason? Schary would find out with a gritty pair done very much the RKO way. Scene Of The Crime and Border Incident were test cases DS tabbed for completion at hopefully no more than $700,000 on a schedule of less than 30 days. Since few entrenched Metro producers could be expected to perform such miracles, it was for Schary to raid talent pools he'd filled at RKO and assign them to rehabilitate a drowning MGM.

Scene Of The Crime figured into a newly revived cycle of cop-and-robber thrillers that had till recently been frowned upon by Production Code authorities. PCA restraints were lately loosened, though, to accommodate documentary styles popularized primarily at Fox with its street-shot police dramas. Action content helped sell these so-called "doc treatments," while modern dress setting held costs in check. By early 1949, Schary had several on the griddle for Metro, including Murder at Harvard (later Mystery Street), and Black Hand, in addition to Scene Of The Crime and Border Incident. This was bold initiative for the industry's most hidebound shop, but Schary, having been given a free hand, was determined to bring MGM in line with trends he'd observed if not initiated elsewhere. A pair of bold ones from his tenure at RKO, They Lived By Night and The Set- Up, demonstrated what quality could be got on minimal investment. Lawyer turned writer Charles Schnee was responsible for They Lived By Night's screenplay. Schary hired him to do an original story and script for Scene Of The Crime. Old studio timer Harry Rapf was set to produce, Roy Rowland directing, so SOTC wouldn't be too radical a departure from Metro norm, but Rapf died only weeks into filming, obliging Schary to look again to RKO and The Set-Up's producer Richard Goldstone, brought over now to assume production duties on Scene Of The Crime. More and more, this was looking like an RKO project transplanted to Culver City.

In fact, Schary had MGM plans for any number of colleagues from the old address. Norman Panama and Melvin Frank were comedy specialists also imported from RKO, as was DS's former aide Armand Deutsch, immediately assigned on arrival to produce Ambush for Metro on Arizona locations. Schary knew outside talent and was quick to gather it in his net. Few prospects turned down increased salary to be had for making the move. Among newcomers to Schary's MGM was Jacques Tournear, who'd direct the outstanding Stars In My Crown for 1950 release, along with what should've been the company's best hire, Val Lewton, producer of so many outstanding low-budget thrillers for RKO since 1942. But not all transplants would work out, Lewton the saddest of ones who, for whatever reason, couldn't make a go of big factory manufacture. Still, Schary got more hits than misses among scouted talent, his agenda a sound and sensible one. If there was a highest barrier before his succeeding, it was internal politics at Culver City and odds against small projects finding a public distracted from regular movie-going. Even a second coming of Irving Thalberg could not overcome such walls of resistance.

MGM needed to go out onto streets as had others seeking pavement authenticity. Director Roy Rowland took his Scene Of The Crime troupe down to LA's so-called Skid Row for a night sequence for which street denizens would serve as colorful background. Our E. Fifth St. is getting to be popular with Hollywood directors and it's reminiscent of the ancient days in this youngest of the arts when meg-men would haunt downtown bars and joints looking for types, observed Variety when trades got word of Metro's newfound commitment to urban reality. Scene Of The Crime would be a tug-of-war between MGM prudence and rising impulse on the part of new creative staff to dirty up the dreamscape. White gloves were coming off storytellers headed grittier ways. Charles Schnee's Scene Of The Crime dialogue was loaded enough with precinct slang to require a police Academy thesaurus, him being a writer moving up and eager to make an impression, two years later scoring an Academy award for The Bad and The Beautiful.

Director Roy Rowland and MGM Crew on Downtown LA Location Duty for Scene Of The Crime.

Scene Of The Crime wants to be sleazy and occasionally gets close, tendering Gloria DeHaven as a sort-of stripper, cameras discreetly avoiding her act to focus mostly on onlooker reaction. Protective of corporate image MGM pulls back from sights that an Eagle-Lion or RKO would have reveled in. Still, there are spasms of violence in Scene Of The Crime that would've been unthinkable even a couple of years before. Schary was clearly encouraging his people to broaden borders. Toward that end would be off-casting of till-then eternal juvenile/Bobby-Sox idol Van Johnson as hardened vice and homicide investigator. A harrowing car crash of several years before gave cameramen leeway to present Johnson smooth or scathed. He'd nearly got the top of his head cut off in the bust-up and was marked by plainly visible scars Docs couldn't hide, though generally make-up enabled boy-next-dooring parts to which Van was mostly consigned. Presenting his face au naturel would give Johnson a battered authority for ease of transition to edgier roles. He's effective enough in Scene Of The Crime to make us wish VJ had been steered further down noirish paths.

Schary and MGM seized bragging rights during the spring of 1949 and recent wrap of Scene Of The Crime, which according to Variety, was completed in 29 days and within its $750,000 budget. The negative cost was actually more like $760K, but the company wanted to emphasize the fact it had stayed within set limits. They even claimed to have brought in a Clark Gable vehicle, Any Number Can Play, for $750,000 as well, despite its actual tag being $1.3 million. Tendency on (the) Culver lot is now to try to standardize $700,000-$750,000 figure, said Variety, This will compensate for several high budgeters, such as Quo Vadis, which is slated to hit $4.5 million mark. The completion of Scene Of The Crime and Border Incident were touted as mere beginnings for a streamlined policy, Tension and Side Street scheduled to roll in late April at same reduced costs. Expensive features would still be made on the Metro lot, but Dore Schary was most engaged by ones he could see through at savings that would reflect sensibility brought from RKO. A film noir flowering at MGM would be his handiwork, even if Schary never got posterity's credit for said significant contribution.

There'd be few critical kudos and less financial reward for Metro style-merging with RKO, most films from the overlap finishing with a loss. Of them, only Scene Of The Crime saw profit, that likelier a result of Van Johnson starring. There was $968,000 in domestic rentals, $446,000 in foreign revenue, for a final profit of $168,000. This wouldn't have been achieved had Scene Of The Crime's cost gone far past its modest $760,000. Good as they were (and inexpensive), Border Incident, Tension, and Side Street each sustained financial beatings. Schary's scheme of more volume for less was but a fitful overall success. MGM features prospering now were expensive and generally musical. Schary's noirs played through a 1949-50 that saw Adam's Rib, On The Town, Three Little Words, and super-hits Batttleground, Father Of The Bride, plus biggest-of-all King Solomon's Mines to sustain Loews' overhead. Schary and former RKO colleagues' budget efforts did keep studio lights burning and contract personnel busy making what would prove in hindsight to be some of MGM's most interesting post-war features. A lot of creative and performing staff held on to jobs longer for Schary's ambitious effort to maintain Metro production at maximum capacity and thus avoid lay-offs. Had his experiment borne greater boxoffice fruit, Schary's MGM might have become film noir's most prolific haven.

2011-09-10T11:28:00.003-04:00

The Neglected Run For Cover

A lot of films are good enough to get by despite lackluster presentation. Run For Cover is one that cannot. It's a minor 50's Western needing all the visual help it can get. What we've had since this one left theatres is a big-screen essential reduced to home-viewed mediocrity. As with so many features made during that decade, Run For Cover was customized for size and scenics. Take these away and you lose the best reasons for seeing it. Run For Cover plays on Netflix and Dish Network's On-Demand. The latter is free to subscribers. Both services are hosts to a transfer Paramount made years ago, being full-frame and cropped to eliminate greater width of Vistavision. You could say Run's a lost film for slim chance that any distributor would bother releasing a proper DVD, let alone Blu-Ray. Run For Cover ranks low among director Nicholas Ray's output, the pic's best assets displayed to first-run audiences but few since. There won't be fair assessment for library titles in general until presentations can at least approach what theatres had. Ray's Bigger Than Life very much got that from Criterion's deluxe Blu-Ray. Would comparable red carpets ever be laid for Run For Cover? I guess it's time to face fact that much beyond the best of our movie past will stay shrunken and past reach of fair evaluation.

William Pine and William Thomas were industry-known as the "Dollar Bills." They'd been 14 years producing low-budget actioners for Paramount, having begun with eight or nine small pictures per annum, later upgrading to Technicolor with average costs between $700,000 and $900,000. Now they were looking past million-dollar thresholds toward "A" production with top-echelon casts. Run For Cover would be first in a group into which a total of six million would be invested. For a picture to do business now, it must be large and important, said the producers. Having been press agents in an earlier life, Pine and Thomas viewed selling as locus of fun in the picture business. To usher Run For Cover into said new class, the pair signed famed director William Dieterle in February 1954. They'd make no claim to "artistic" production, a term both Bills abhorred, but class bookings weren't got by using nobody helmsmen, so Dieterle was insurance against their first big-budget effort being confused with previous Pine-Thomas offerings.

Paramount's newly introduced Vistavision lent further prestige to P/T's venture. The company wanted a finished backlog of features before unveiling Vistavision with White Christmas, set to open in October 1954. Run For Cover would be completed well before that date, along with six others using the process. Paramount wanted momentum from White Christmas to continue into 1955 and beyond, so it was necessary to have plenty of enhanced screen merchandise in the pipeline to get maximum return on a public's curiosity and hopeful interest. Vistavision, like Cinemascope, used nature's palette to enhance the wider screen experience. Westerns most of all needed vastest canvas, and backlot streets once adequate for square frames in black-and-white wouldn't do now that cameras captured so much more. To star was James Cagney, late of his own production company releasing through Warners, now freelancing among studios that would punch his (big) ticket. Cagney exercised director approval and had input to scripts. Once Dieterle, for reasons unknown, was out, the star shared initiative to replace him with Nicholas Ray. This was in mid-March 1954, ten weeks ahead of Run For Cover's shooting start date in early June.

Cagney got along with Ray, this not always a given, as the actor regarded many if not most of his directors as functioning dimwits. JC was also proactive in matters of scripting and would go to writers with whatever suggestions he thought might enhance a finished product. He and Nicholas Ray were congenial enough to devise what Cagney later referred to as offbeat touches to differentiate their Western from conventional ones mass-generated by an increasingly genre-focused industry. Cagney liked the idea of using natural locations, in this case Durango, Colorado settings, to justify Vistavision enhancement. According to a later interview with art director Henry Bumstead, thirty or so percent of Run For Cover was Colorado outdoors, with the remaining seventy percent lensed back at Paramount. The script was credited to Winston Miller, who'd previously done My Darling Clementine at Fox for director John Ford. Perhaps it was Ray's, or Cagney's, idea to bring veteran scribe John Lee Mahin to Durango during June to help with a bogging down script. In any case, Mahin spent an uncredited week on the location.

Jim and Mrs. Cagney Pal It Up With An Exhibitor Host During the Star's Run For Cover Promotional Tour.

Run For Cover finished that summer of 1954, but would linger on Paramount shelves awaiting the release of White Christmas and 1955's rollout of completed Vistavision features. RFC's premiere took place in Austin, Texas on April 4, 1955, to which James Cagney contributed several days public appearing (the first time in ten years he's been out to meet the people, said Variety). The star was in evidence over continued weeks promoting the film, indication of a percentage participation, if not satisfaction with a western he in fact found disappointing. Cagney had attended a projection room Run For Cover screening in February, accompanied by his two children, who, according to Army Archerd, had always wanted to see their father in a western. Cagney ducked chaps and spurs since the near self-parody of The Oklahoma Kid in 1939. It wasn't typical of him to attend screenings of a finished work. According to Archerd, Cagney disclosed that of the fifty pix in which he's appeared, Cover was but the fifth he'd seen. The star was not long realizing that nearly all those offbeat touches he and director Ray cooked up were now missing from Run For Cover. Still smarting twenty-five years later when he reviewed a long career with biographer John McCabe, Cagney used explicit language to characterize studio executives who'd once again ruined a project to which he and others seriously applied themselves.

Nicholas Ray's Credit Goes Front and Prominent on this French Poster.

Run For Cover's negative cost of $1.2 million was coincidentally matched by domestic rentals in the same amount. In fact, RFC would be one of the lower grossing Paramounts of that year. Was it Cagney or westerns the public was tiring of? Nicholas Ray later said the film deflated because there'd not been enough time to prepare and see it through properly. Like others of the Pine-Thomas group, Run For Cover's negative reverted to the producers and was theirs to re-title and reissue in 1961 as Colorado, independent Citation Films handling distribution. Run For Cover would be included among 22 Pine-Thomas titles syndicated to television through Jayark Films in November 1960, probably the earliest TV exposure for any Vistavision feature before Paramount began licensing others in the mid-60s (wait a minute --- I just remembered Richard III!). It would appear that Paramount is back in possession of Run For Cover, if packaging to Netflix and Dish Network is any indication. What's regrettable is their tendering such a substandard transfer for download on these services.