The 39 Steps In America --- Part Two

Greenbriar continues its participation in the third annual For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon, hosted by The Self-Styled Siren, Ferdy On Films, and This Island Rod. They've been linking to Alfred Hitchcock-related posts from around the Net all week, and would remind readers to please visit this link to make donations toward preserving The White Shadow, one of the first films in which Hitchcock worked.

Andre Sennwald was back eight days later (9/22/35) in pages of the Times to further celebrate The 39 Steps. This time he took US censorship to task for removal of isolated "damns" and "hells" from the Roxy print (It is an invitation to immoderate laughter to find that American censors have tampered even slightly ..., began Sennwald). From there was comparison to thudding H'wood effort at crime thrilling, Warners' uninspired Special Agent a ready target then smelling up the neighboring Strand. It now became a question whether any stateside mystery could measure up to The 39 Steps. The New York-World Telegram said only two came close ... The Thin Man and Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back. Indeed, The 39 Steps had risen well above British origins to reveal, said The Morning Telegraph, a thorough knowledge of timing and pace, and in the end it is a picture to take full and equal rank with the best that Hollywood has ever turned out.

It's easy forgetting how important stage programs were to Broadway film openings. Far from mere extras, they were reviewed as separate entities by trades, and sometimes reaction was severe. The Roxy's live portion to accompany The 39 Steps was nearly as long as the feature itself and subject to much patron expectation for a ticket's worth of entertainment. Broadway prices were higher than dime and quarters for subsequent play, so were naturally judged by goodies served in addition to screen fare. Variety liked The "bang-up" 39 Steps, but gave Roxy a pan for its jumbled, lame, and lethargic stage layout, which, among other things, tendered "three sections of girls" seemingly ad-libbing with their feet to accompany "The Old Spinning Wheel." Comedian Cecil Mack had seemed funnier on previous Roxy occasion, and his meandering act was vulgar besides. The both-thumbs-to-nose gesture directed at the audience is unpardonable, and the many hells and damns don't belong, added Variety's reviewer.

That latter was interesting as I'd always assumed Broadway houses kept profanity out of stage revues. How then to justify snip of swear words out of The 39 Steps with same language issuing from footlights? --- and try imagining stranger bedfellows for Hitchcock than hillbilly balladeer Billy Hill and wife, whose act was followed by a finale of tap dancers accompanying Rhapsody In Blue. As serious a breach as these was Roxy programming of animated Mickey's Kangaroo, outed by the trade for having been exhibited around town about a year ago, according to Variety. First-run customer demand for new product went across the board --- they'd tag stale bread even at a mere seven minutes length. Variety noted a first-run Voice Of Experience short from Columbia that came with 39 Steps admission, but wouldn't forgive Mickey's Kangaroo "putting a penalty on the regular theatre-goer that is difficult to justify."

Still, The 39 Steps clocked two weeks at the Roxy, with its second frame $33,000 confirming status as a bonafide hit. Gaumont used giraffe art to trade-advertise heights they'd attain, critically and commercially. Review quotes were spread thin among autumn territories yet to play The 39 Steps. Maybe now even South and Midwest houses would take a chance and buy British, even as business continued variable depending on place. Minneapolis booked an October date and kept The 39 Steps an impressive three weeks, but then Oklahoma City fizzed after only three days (a deadly $650) and replaced Hitchcock's new kind of thriller with an old kind of western, Powdersmoke Range, Okies doubtless able to identify easier with down-home Harry Carey than suave Brit Robert Donat.

Exhibitor comments were all over the map. I do not rate this picture as high as some critics have, said Leon C. Balduc of Conway, New Hampshire's Majestic Theatre, I can only call this a fair program picture. J.W. Noah of Ft. Worth's New Liberty and Ideal Theatres saw The 39 Steps differently, and came closest to modern-day appreciation for a classic he recognized early on: If all British pictures released in this country were as lively and entertaining as this mystery-melodrama, there would be a brisk competition between foreign and native factions over here, said Noah. The picture has a multitude of clever touches that cannot help (but) to make it the outstanding picture released thus far by Gaumont-British. Our patrons were intrigued by the title and came in profitable numbers. Everyone was pleased.

The World Playhouse in Reduced 80's Circumstance,
 But Still a Noble Edifice

A later playdate and its ad support worth noting ... Chicago's World Playhouse was a 400 seat (at the time) showcase for foreign product that got The 39 Steps during a 1938 reissue. Impressive here is ad copy mentioning Alfred Hitchcock three times, twice by name, and once as "The Master Director Of Them All." Already there is reference to "Fun --- Romance and Suspense In The Hitchcock Manner." I've tried before pin-pointing just when Hitchcock became "The Master Of Suspense" for American audiences, settling then on a somewhat later date. Now I'm wondering if that wreath wasn't laid upon his head even earlier. Had any director established a critical (and audience) foothold so quickly? Even if Hitchcock's first discoverers were longhairs and art-mavens, still it's remarkable how prescient they were for recognizing greatness in him.

Alfred Hitchcock's Greatest Picture! said fresh prepared poster art when The 39 Steps made 1938 repeat rounds, ongoing evidence of how far his reputation (and the film's) had come in so brief a time, and still well ahead of US landfall to do Rebecca. Janus Films by the sixties took distribution reins stateside for The 39 Steps, often pairing same in revival bookings with The Lady Vanishes, the two an ideal (and not overlong) night at art/revival houses. Janus scored non-theatrically as well for Hitchcock's by-then anointed classic, The 39 Steps renting for $80 to schools and $100 plus elsewhere. Up-from-piracy Tom Dunnahoo misunderstood The 39 Steps to be Public Domain and offered 16/8mm "BONAFIDE ORIGINALS" in his 1974 Thunderbird Films catalogue, which made me wonder at the time how in the world Tom got his hands on a so-called "35mm Production Negative" for mastering prints (had such a thing even survived into the 60's?). He offered 35mm as well for theatrical bookings --- you'd wonder what those looked like. Some legal department surely shut Dunnahoo down for his infringement, but whose?

The Janus 1975 Catalogue Listing for The 39 Steps

It's 1938 and Hitchcock's "Greatest Picture!" Is Back

We've since had The 39 Steps in abundance on DVD, Region 2 Blu-Ray, and lately streaming. Enthusiasts have been years trolling for perfection among versions tendered. Several I had in 16mm approached good, but couldn't get far beyond it. Criterion's initial DVD improved on past offerings, but their Lady Vanishes looked better. DVD Beaver expertly covered a Blu-Ray from England and noted but slight advance over what we'd had. A Netflix stream I saw was quite nice and bore an MGM logo. Does MGM control all domestic rights? Now comes announcement of Criterion's forthcoming Blu-Ray, for which many have highest hopes, myself included. Will The 39 Steps finally play as crisp as it did to Roxy crowds? I'll be sure in any case to run Mickey's Kangaroo ahead of it, just for luck.

The 39 Steps In America --- Part One

On today and Friday (5/18, publish date of The 39 Steps --- Part Two), Greenbriar links up with the third annual For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon, hosted by TheSelf-Styled Siren, Ferdy On Films, and This Island Rod. They'll be covering Alfred Hitchcock-related posts from around the Net with links added throughout a coming week. Please also note this link to make donations toward preserving a recently discovered early film in which Hitchcock participated.

Alfred Hitchcock got US-known in a biggest so-far way thanks to The 39 Steps, released here in August 1935 via Gaumont-British. The company had opened an American branch in Autumn of 1934 and according to their '35 annual report, was now "firmly established, and a steadily increasing business is being built up from which a considerable revenue is anticipated in the near future." UK pics were tough sells stateside, the language barrier immense even though they spoke our own. Sophisticated-enough urbans could navigate it, but yokels voted down accented speech and got sore whenever lured to Brit shows not clearly ID'ed. Gaumont said as much about Yank stuff on their market, company chief Arthur W. Jarratt advising Hollywood producers that they must pay careful attention to American accents which creep into the wrong places in pictures sent to England, though he acknowledged the problem was more one of idiom than accent.

Jarratt could afford giving colonists a dose of their own arrogance --- Gaumont after all controlled nearly 450 UK venues, the largest chain over there and America's top film customer in all of Europe. Gaumont's origins went back to 1898, even though they were under a year releasing in the US when The 39 Steps came out. Plan was to distribute sixteen features over here for 1935-36. Among first of these was The Man Who Knew Too Much, released 4-15-35, and so far a highest profile and best reviewed of GB offerings. That was a Hitchcock too, and paved ways for even better The 39 Steps. Small towns saw less of Too Much than cities, but it wasn't enough for impressed reviewers --- they wanted more from England's directing prodigy and were ready for Steps' summer arrival, especially as advance reports labeled it, said one columnist, as the British equivalent to The Thin Man and It Happened One Night.

Gaumont had its New York office, but print distribution was through Fox exchanges, this shortly ahead of that firm's merge with 20th-Century Pictures. The 39 Steps was ripe for better bookings thanks to its cast known and liked by US patrons. Robert Donat had been a popular Count Of Monte Cristo the year before, and Madeleine Carroll had for several seasons top-lined imports to good, if not spectacular, response. The struggle for any foreign product was getting playdates. Gaumont had so far scored less of these than Brit rival Alexander Korda. Their offerings, other than the initial Hitchcock, included The Clairvoyant with known quantities Claude Rains and Fay Wray, Loves Of A Dictator (also with M. Carroll) and two featuring Jan Kiepura, an operetta name that got no traction among US cinemagoers.

The 39 Steps came draped with four-star notices from home (it had UK-played, and successfully, for several months) and that, with Hitchcock's heat off The Man Who Knew Too Much, enabled solid dates at key venues normally averse to outsider pics. So much that was foreign got stuck in art houses, then called "little theatres," but Gaumont wanted The 39 Steps to compete with Hollywood's best, as here was potential to crowd-please way beyond staid level folks figured for anything Brit-made. The rollout was slow, Boston being a first key date. Could be that was wise, as The 39 Steps stood good chance to appeal there. Keith's Memorial (2,907 seats) played it a week, got $11,000, and was city-wide second only to Curly Top, with child sensation Shirley Temple, which took an expected $24K for a same period.

A Break On The Set and My Question: What Are They Drinking?

There were happy turnstiles in Cleveland, The 39 Steps right behind competing China Seas for a week's supremacy. The town's RKO Palace reported (to The Motion Picture Herald) $11,000 for Gaumont/Hitchcock's show. Word-of-mouth saw biz increasing as days played off, always a good sign, though down-the-road Cincinnati tagged The 39 Steps a "disappointer" for getting only $4,500 at the Palace. Five sorry days saw Steps "jerked" in favor of moved-up Steamboat 'Round The Bend. Even "crix" (Variety-speak for critics) didn't go for Hitchcock there, an indifferent public agreeing it was "no dice." Was Cincinnati's a provincial patronage where Cleveland's was not?

The 39 Steps still had not played New York even as it fanned west to Denver, San Francisco, and L.A. Frisco's Paramount Theatre paired Hitchcock with Laurel and Hardy's Bonnie Scotland to a minor $9,000, while Denver's arty Aladdin followed a previous week first-run of The Man Who Knew Too Much (five days and only $800) with The 39 Steps and $3,000. A soft $5,300 was Los Angeles' take, combo'ed with Welcome Home from Fox. Each of these dates, plus others, had as common thread a single week's play, or less, with no holdovers. Sans major reviewer support, The 39 Steps might be just another Brit pic for customers to avoid. What it needed was discovery and support from influential critics, and that would come with New York's belated September run at the palatial Roxy.

Noteworthy during August and a first half of September 1935 was receipts dwindling as Hitchcock's thriller crossed-country, eastern ticket-sales ahead of those counted in the west. Did coasts differ in their willingness to embrace (or not) oversea product? Still, it was Gaumont's coup to get The 39 Steps into Broadway's Roxy Theatre and its 6,200 seats. Whereas The Man Who Knew Too Much had, according to The New York Times, "slipped quietly into the Mayfair" months earlier, this was by comparison a gala with stage entertainment to buttress the feature. The 39 Steps came out of a first Roxy week with $43,000, a third best for the town exceeded only by Radio City Music Hall's smash Top Hat ($97K) and The Big Broadcast Of 1936 at the Paramount, which beat Gaumont/Hitchcock by a mere thousand dollars. What carried The 39 Steps toward a second week, in addition to wickets success, was critics and columnists tossing hats in the air for its sinister delicacy and urbane understatement, a thriller at last to excite NY's thinking audience.

Alfred Hitchcock realized early how to flatter critics as well as his audience. Fans for The 39 Steps amounted to an elite corps, and their numbers grew. The New York Times' Andre Sennwald lauded a blend of unexpected comedy and breathless terror that is strikingly effective, comparing Hitchcock with Anatole France, a name-drop new to me who turned out to be a Nobel writer and "ideal French man of letters," whose artistry Sennwald compared to Hitchcock, this a bulls-eye to snob appeal The 39 Steps would generate. Critics across town noted contrast between Gaumont's sophisticated import and crude mellers domestically offered (Hollywood, home of the machine gun school of melodrama, might safely study The 39 Steps as an example of successful, thrilling restraint, advised the Brooklyn Times Union). Agreed among critics was that finally had come a civilized and adult piece of movie-making not insulting to their intelligence.

Part Two of The 39 Steps is here.

Shanghai Express Finally Pulls In

The last holdouts of Dietrich/von Sternberg are at last on DVD, not to trumpets and fanfare, but quietly from TCM's online store and bearing Universal label. Shanghai Express was (much) earlier Criterion-bound, delays said to be caused by negative material in need of work. The rendition lately out seems fine, as does companion Dishonored. These Sternbergs were close as Hollywood got to art movies during a rushed precode era. Early historians disdainful of US picture-making called truce for this Paramount group of six. They played even after the war in newly popular art theatres equating Dietrich and Sternberg with Euro sophistication. Are they less regarded now? There hasn't been much clamor for Blu-Ray coverage of the group. If anyone's work could benefit from higher definition, it would be Sternberg's, but what elements survive? I'm told Morocco's negative is long gone, but what of the others?

Shanghai Express is probably the half-dozen's best bet for sharing. There's stronger narrative than usual for Sternberg, which maybe accounts for revenue earned in 1932 --- $827K in domestic rentals and $698,000 foreign against a negative cost of $851K. You could say Dietrich peaked with Shanghai. Her vogue (at least the first one) didn't last so long. Books/trades suggest Para offered her as ready-made successor to Garbo, stardom a fait accompli. The company's promoting strength was equal, if not better, than Metro's. Did Paramount simply dust off blueprints from their Pola Negri build-up to launch Dietrich? There was an industry ball to introduce the new personality just off a boat from Germany. That room filled with Hollywoodites went numb at the sight of MD, so witnesses say. I wonder what crumbs of truth, if any, are in that ...

Paramount product annuals said Dietrich took a show world by storm, this on evidence of Morocco and afterward release The Blue Angel. The push was intense to a point of force-feeding. Could patron acceptance of Dietrich catch up to intensity of Para's hype? I'd bet lots were waiting for her to slip, then gleeful to note MD's placement on that infamous "Boxoffice Poison" list published by The Hollywood Reporter in May, 1938. Dietrich came back again and again over a long career, her reinventions parallel with Joan Crawford and ... who else? The Sternberg/Paramounts maintained their spell through her lifetime ... no telling how many stills from these she signed ... did Dietrich take fascination for them with her when she went? (in 1992) I haven't heard so much fan noise over Dietrich or Garbo these recent years. Did we need to be there, as in their 30's peak, to really embrace them now? Maybe a general decline of enthusiasm for Dietrich is what's making DVD release of her Sternbergs less of an event.

In collector days, they seemed a bigger deal. A Sternberg on 16mm was treasure continually sought, original prints a priority. Those latter weren't offered by Paramount or subsequent owner MCA. They had to be crept out of TV stations or rental houses, cloak-and-daggering of which made them so rare and sought after. A really good print could dazzle, though even the best of 16mm wouldn't hold a candle to present-day digital. Some hesitate now at  $24.99 for Shanghai Express and Dishonored, but they'd have run a minimum of $6-800 for the pair thirty years ago, in the lucky event of finding a dealer with either, let alone both. Print quality was uncertain then, even at premium rate. A Morocco I had, even though designated an "original" on 16mm, was milky. The Devil Is A Woman came high for having once been in Roddy McDowall's collection, and was a beauty, thanks to having been Kodak printed in 1958 among those first prepared for TV distribution. Edge-codes indicating dates a print was made assumed great importance among collectors, as consensus was The Earlier The Printing, The Better The Print.

The same applied to 8X10 (or larger) stills from Sternberg/Dietrichs. Double-weight originals were (still are) highly coveted. Shops along

Hollywood Boulevard

were vacuumed of these long ago. I recall dealer room prices climbing to $30 or so for really clean 8X10's for The Scarlet Empress, Blonde Venus, and the rest. Now they're in auction houses or E-Bay for infinitely more. We 16mm collectors should have ditched the film and gone for paper ... memorabilia having soared in present-day value while celluloid sank like rocks. Now they talk about scuttling sprockets altogether in favor of digital projection --- talking about it --- heck, they've pretty much done it. I recall dances around the maypole whenever Shanghai Express surfaced on 16mm and colossal effort (plus expense) that entailed, all amounting now to So What? and as much quicksilver. I'd have served myself better collecting horse harness.

Speaking of lost and lamented, there's a near-whole of Paramount's pre-48 library that remains mostly unavailable. With thousands of titles streaming, spinning, and beaming over satellite/cable, it's remarkable to see (or better put, not see) an inventory of 700 features largely dormant. Famed samples from the lot, including the Dietrich/Sternbergs, Island Of Lost Souls, various ones present owner Universal has released on DVD, have been pretty much it. Representation of Para's early-30's output is very limited. We've memorized the Warner, MGM, and RKO lodes thanks to TCM, Warner's Archive, etc., but early talking Paramount seems nearly as vague as memory of long ago syndicated playdates. It's poverty of these, as much as Dietrich and Sternberg's participation, that make Shanghai Express and Dishonored such must-haves on disc.

Thirty Seconds Over L.A. --- Part Two

Hollywood had always been about sweeping out the old in favor of the new. Studios and showmen weren't in business to celebrate history. Sam Zimbalist was self-preserving enough to put oldies in perspective. I believe that only 10 or 15% of the movies sold to TV are really great pictures, and I'm interested in seeing what happens when the lesser product is shown. A lot of those twenty-year-old shows would look "silly and dated" now, said the still active producer. Motion Picture Herald ran with that admission in steel-tipped boots: It's always been painful to look again at old movies that we thought were good, and find out how crude they were. The enthusiasts for ancient films have done more than any others to keep motion pictures in their infancy (Ouch --- They mean us, Greenbriar readers!).

Reissued Marie Antoinette Got a Thumbs-Down From 1956 Exhibs

The attack on Hollywood's past was unrelenting. Surviving movie relics amounted to no more than a pox on exhibitor livelihoods. MPH saw broadcasters and their newly-bought oldies  as cut-rate junk dealers: The blunt fact of the matter is that the stations, in order to get one film worth seeing today, will have to buy many which were scarcely worth the price of admission when they were originally shown. Disdain among the trade bled into theatres formerly open to re-plays, as witness hostility toward 1956 reissues Northwest Passage, The Sea Hawk, and others on receiving end of withering showman commentary in back pages of Boxoffice, Motion Picture Herald, varied trades. Lessening receipts from such "Encore Triumphs" was the very reason they'd gone to telecasters, who were grateful and willing to pony meaningful $ for access to them.

It was a no-win fight what with film companies chasing respective windfalls and showmen left holding (empty) bags. Pete Harrison of his weekly Reports warned theatres not to book vintage MGM without a written guarantee that their show wouldn't turn up on local free-vee that very night. As of Fall 1956, the following "Masterpiece Reprints" were labeled smallpox: A Tale Of Two Cities, Marie Antoinette, Mutiny On The Bounty, Boy's Town, others. Even if these weren't actually being televised day-and-date with theatres, they were listed among titles forthcoming to buyer stations in lavish newspaper ads promoting pre-48 MGM's to come. Everyone knew that all came to home viewers who waited. Spokesmen for Metro tried convincing exhibs that the library's sale to TV was a good thing --- after all, think of all that free publicity via alliance with the tube, and "a rise of interest in MGM films." Such was purest banana oil that showmen would not swallow.

KTTV saw ratings drop nearly a third for its next Friday night MGM special. That was Mrs. Miniver. Further erosion came with They Met In Bombay the following week. Viewership was considered disappointing after fantastic numbers posted by Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. One explanation for the decline is that there was less promotion for the subsequent weeks' pictures, said Billboard. Newspaper ad buys had settled down to the quarter-page class. Interesting was viewer fluctuation over the two-hour slots --- Bombay fell off sharply in its second half, whereas Miniver built up almost steadily. Movies on TV were being evaluated by thirty-minute increments, the question being less whether folks tuned in than would they stay tuned in. Still, Colgate was more than happy with "the greatest sales volume in this (LA) market of all time."

It didn't take long for KTTV, and other stations, to figure out which side old movies were buttered on. After a first season of Colgate Theater, trends were clear as Trendex figures confirming them. Said Billboard: The general rule of thumb now is that the action-adventure pictures will get ratings; comedies, musicals, problem or love stories will not (but hadn't exhibitors already known this from reissue experience? --- guess nobody asked them). Here then, was KTTV's Top Ten Metros for its first season of Colgate Theater: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Honky Tonk, Boom Town, Anchors Aweigh (thanks to Sinatra, said trades), They Were Expendable, They Met In Bombay, A Guy Named Joe, Test Pilot, Command Decision, and Homecoming.

It's the he-man type of star which gathers the audience, observed Billboard ... Female stars, except for the Marilyn Monroe, Jean Harlow type, are poor draws. The kings of TV's boxoffice, at least on KTTV's corner, were Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, he-men both. Comedies and musicals were considered outdated. People just don't dig them anymore, said Billboard. As far as television is concerned ... the best musical may command less (advertising) money than only an ordinary adventure film. Competing salvage dealers meanwhile worked double-time to pull the Metro oldies off their perch. Associated Artists, distributor of the pre-48 Warners library, filed their "Most Honorable Report" trade ad, replete with a bowing Japanese caricature, to declare Destination Tokyo a bigger ratings-getter (at least in Miami) than L.A. titan Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. 1956-57 was fast becoming a My Backlog's Better Than Yours contest.

Leo's TV Roar Now A Grunt, said Variety in a January, 1957 headline. Seems the Pre-48 Greats yielded a less than great $40 million from sales so far of the vaunted package against expectations they'd collect upwards of $60-70 million. Trouble was paucity of buyers after deep-pocket stations grabbed their marbles. Smaller markets just couldn't afford what Loew's demanded, to-wit a one-million dollar single-station tariff. Recouping that kind of money (an enormous outlay, said Variety) within a seven-year license period would be tough sledding for telecasters in secondary markets. Could they go into profit before time to send the movies back? For stations outside the largest cities, it didn't seem likely. Metro seemed to have priced their "too rich" features out of the market, and humbler outlets made do with lower-tagged product from rival sellers (NC stations were notably shy of Metros until post-48 groups came available in the sixties).

Another Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo story, too good not to mention. Chicago's WBBM premiered it on 1-5-57 after a build-up approaching KTTV's. Their projectionist grabbed three 16mm reels out of the station's time vault just before the Saturday night broadcast. The vault locked behind him and would not reopen until the following morning. To the man's horror, it became clear that Tokyo's final seventeen minutes were on a fourth reel now inaccessible thanks to the vault setting. Came the dawn and debacle ... hundreds of phone complaints, eighty per hour throughout Sunday. In an aftermath Variety tabbed "How To Go Broke-eo With Tokyo," WBBM lost $20,000 making amends, with the final reel playing off on Sunday night, followed by a commercial-free repeat of the entire film. All their regular advertising clients had to be bumped and reimbursed for commercial time lost. It was a disastrous error, said a WBBM spokesman, adding that the projectionist responsible had been fired that day.

One more irresistible footnote, also dated 1957. June of that year saw Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo finally opening theatrically in Japan, Tokyo in fact, and on a roadshow basis. It was a ten-day stand, "disappointing" at the boxoffice, according to Variety: Viewers expressed dismay over the too obvious fabrication of the Tokyo targets. Others claimed they were duped into thinking it was a new film. No protests or demonstrations otherwise took place. The film had been considered for release in Japan four years earlier, but the idea was scotched after it was screened to local dignitaries. Eihai, the firm who'd bought distribution rights from Metro, hoped Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo would gain wickets altitude at venues outside its premiere city to compensate for the Tokyo freeze.