History for Fun #1

 

I Looked Up "Simoon" --- Means "Hot, Dry, Dust-Laden Wind Blowing in the Desert"

From Fact: Suez (1938) and Khartoum (1966)

Herein a new category where I pretend to be broadly educated. Thanks, You Tube for enriching me in ways school never did. Let search for gross errors on my part commence!

SUEZ ---1938’s Suez set me aboard Egyptalogical bobsled to head Khartoum way, my finish line two versions of Four Feathers to come with History for Fun #2. You Tube's an assist for assembling “broken bits of pottery” as Sir Joseph Whemple would suggest. Ever wonder had you been born in England, would they make you a sir, an earl, a viceroy? I’d expect knighthood at least, as wouldn’t we all during colonial epoch? Suez was Fox’s telling of how the canal got built between 1859 and grand opening 1869. The Frenchman who dreamed and dared was Ferdinand DeLessep, already well along when the dig got going (b. 1805) and eventual father of seventeen, so who other than Tyrone Power at age twenty-four to  embody him? Power’s Ferdinand was neither man nor Disney’s bull notion of a Frenchman, OK as I'd be annoyed were he burdened by an accent. He'll finish the epic job, loved by and losing two lead ladies, Loretta Young because she chooses Napoleon III and Annabella for sacrificing herself to a desert sirocco so Power may go down in history. Foregoing not sarcasm as Suez richly satisfies, streams High-Def at Fandango formerly Vudu. The canal continues to floats boats, 120 miles it stretching, forever nerve center for international transport. Pharaohs tried linking the Nile with the Red Sea, came up empty despite thousands of lives spent on the venture. Napoleon centuries later ordered surveys toward his own canal before being chased off sand by Admiral Nelson.

Aftermath of Expected Third Act Crisis to Nearly Wipe Out Canal Work So Far Done

"Color-Glos" Still to Promote Suez in 1938

That was 1798, half-century before the Egyptians got rich off cotton cropping thanks to the Civil War shutting out Southern exports. That seemed ideal time to modernize the country, plus link with France and De Lesseps to realize the ages-old dream. Problem for Khedive Ismail, Pasha of Egypt, was money spent faster than Egypt could earn it, him borrowing first from France, then more unwisely from England, who never knew a nation they couldn’t loan to and eventually dominate. Massive job at ditch digging took 1.5 million conscripts toiling in frightful desert heat, 120,000 said to have died in the doing. This wasn’t (altogether) slave labor, so imagine the costs. Goal was to join the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. Even the ancients never thought so big. “Debt trap” for Egypt was three million pounds initially owed that shot up to two hundred million by 1875, the Canal finished, but creditors largely running the show and scooping up gravy. A thing called “dual control” took effect by 1876 (France and England), the hapless Pasha having sold his 44% interest to Benjamin Disraeli acting on London behalf. 1882 would be anchors aweigh for Brits taking over, Egypt their colonial property which would stay that way for seventy-four years. The movie simplifies such process, Power asking Disraeli and latter saying sure, why not, sit down and let's have supper. England as octopus would not be Hollywood-addressed, not so long as Isles represented the film industry’s most lucrative market beyond domestic screens. Truth was the canal as critical to English interests and no way could they leave it alone. If Brits didn’t snake that waterway away from Egypt, some other imperialist power would.

Picturesque Wear-and-Tear Upon Romantic Pair that are Tyrone Power and Wife-To-Be Annabella

Viper in the Desert Garden Nigel Bruce Acting on Behalf of Would-Be Colonizers

How could any Hollywood treatment, let alone in 104 minutes, summarize events at Suez? Cost to  England in lives and treasure toted up through wars, rebellion, massacres, occurring over those 74 years, Egypt trouble spilling into Sudan and eventually Israel, Egyptians restless over inequity of Brits living high on hogs, paying no tax where in residency, crimes they'd commit heard by imported and sympathetic judges rather than Egyptian authority, which had little legal authority what with England pulling strings. Something had to give and did in 1956 when Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and saw to expulsion of UK overseers. America helped by reading riot act to England, France, and Israel after they got up a scheme to oust Nasser and take total control of the Canal, if not Egypt itself. This was where/when the sun truly set on the Empire. Don’t know how Nasser or countrymen reacted to Fox’s Suez movie, but I doubt they revived it often if at all. Hollywood was for fantasy and using barest bones of history to fill two hours for amusement, complexity an enemy to comfort films aimed to supply. Making Suez accurate would muddy water thick as the Nile, and who in 1938 wanted gloves-off telling, what with the UK mired in crisis Germany had created. Brits too still controlled the canal when Suez was released, so why rock boats with a people soon enough to be an ally against far more cosmic threats?

Always Thought It Was Odd for Roadshowers to Refer to Unspool of Film as a "Performance"

KHARTOUM (1966) --- Khartoum showed on a Saturday only at the Liberty combined with a black-and-white chiller, The Vulture, which actually had been shot in color and  did anything but chill. Wonderment at the time was an epic like Khartoum landing, no thudding, in diminished circumstance as this. We were riper to see The Vulture, enduring Khartoum a show of pity perhaps for Roadshows having sunk so far. Little of Khartoum made sense to me at age thirteen, being ignorant of history it depicted and disinclined to learn. I’ve since if belatedly grown into it, helped by a superb Blu-Ray from Twilight Time, Khartoum like much from them out-of-print with second-hand pricing to reflect rarity. Khartoum told of Sudanese uprising the British put down at great expense of time and lives, trouble spreading in Sudan direction from Egypt proper. A self-proclaimed prophet called the “Madhi” had masses of native strength at his command, England dispatching General Charles George Gordon and too little else to protect UK interests in the region (Gordon at above right). Upshot was Gordon being killed by uprisers (per below left being speared), Brits taking a black eye they’d be determined to avenge. The United Artists film ends with Gordon’s death. Other and previous films took up aftermath which was campaign to take back Khartoum in 1898 and get even for the 1885 massacre. That episode was famously treated by Four Feathers and its varied remakes, General Gordon’s death referenced early in these with characters motivated by need to reassert British authority in Sudan’s desert. For 60’s Khartoum, Charlton Heston played Gordon with Laurence Olivier as the Madhi. Khartoum was a classy venture that hoped to duplicate Lawrence of Arabia’s success. It did not but there were adherents and still are. As to why for wickets letdown, I’d propose Khartoum lack of exotic and charismatic leads that were Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif getting stardom start. Heston and Olivier were terrific, that is were for having been around long enough for us maybe to take them for granted, especially Heston in this sort of role, plus 70mm served to reserved seats having lost much of lure by 1966.

Nigel Green Welcome Always in British Uniform, as Was Also Richard Johnson

To reckon of experts at 70mm.com, Khartoum did not have a roadshow engagement in North Carolina, prints for my state presumably 35mm as opposed to giant gauge. Khartoum had a negative cost of $6.2 million, earned $2.060 million in domestic rentals, with $5.7 foreign. More unfortunate was fact it had only 7,926 stateside bookings, a woefully low number compared with demand for Thunderball (13,325 bookings), Help! (18,423), numerous others. I’m happy to have contributed at least a pittance to Khartoum receipts, my quarter to get in at “Under 12” rate persisting to early 1968 when a local boy whose name lives still in infamy busted me at the Liberty’s boxoffice by making it known I was almost fourteen. From that day on (the picture was Bonnie and Clyde), I’d be obliged to tender sixty cents for Liberty admission. Khartoum action was profuse, safe to say they won’t make them like this again (cue further praise for “practical effects”). Khartoum reveals Empire scheming that kept Gordon behind an eight-ball throughout the mission his superiors, plus his own considerable ego, obliged him to accept. Khartoum came well after England lost strength that was worldwide power and influence, era of Empire lost to memory for many, representing faded nostalgia for increasingly few. Anti-colonial attitude floated in Khartoum would fuller blossom with Charge of the Light Brigade a couple years later, another that landed at the Liberty on a Saturday double feature. Were we presumed to have so little interest in British lore? Colonel Forehand surely figured us to care less. Why did he even play these things except maybe to accommodate a booker who needed to make the month's quota?

Showmen Sell It Hot #4

 

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

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

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

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

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

The Starlight in Mid-70's Free Fall

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

Hang Bunting or Crepe?

 

Luther Looking for a 2025 Auditorium Where Seats Are All Filled. No Luck So Far.

Greenbriar Turns Twenty Today

Had You Tube come along thirty, even twenty, years ago, I’d be all over it, influencing daylights out of loyal viewers. You got to know when not to take some dives. Vlogging showed up too late for Greenbriar. Besides, I prefer working with words, because as Luther Heggs said, words are my work. How many have stuck out two decades here? Part of goal was to make North Carolina seem a mecca for film life. It was in terms of collecting when that revolved around 8, 16, and 35mm. I celebrate these because someday there’ll be nobody left who will. Has Greenbriar been a “nostalgia” site? Not by design. Longing looks back suggest “footie pajamas,” as cotton-made and insubstantial. What age is Golden to exclusion of others? Usually it's when we grew up, or for fans of a Classic Era, the generation or two before we were born. I'm nostalgic if at all for last night when I watched San Antonio, just out on Blu-Ray from Warner Archive, this time to reflect on history shared with the Errol Flynn super-western. San Antonio went a likely twenty years after 1945 sans color, Dominant’s 1956 reissue a first, albeit black-and-white 35mm, TV stations the same year getting monochrome prints only. I estimate mid-sixties before it showed up in color on the tube (atn. Lou Lumenick, is that correct?). First exposure for me was Charlotte’s Channel 36 in 1972, a tepid transmission compared with glory of Blu-now. A station employee from Florida snuck me a 16mm print in the early eighties which looked OK by diminished Eastman color standards. You took these things as you found them. As of yesterday I have San Antonio fresh as 1945 saw it, maybe an improvement, sharper certainly than film could have managed what with IB images softer and registration problems inherent to the process. Great how High-Def transforms a movie to a masterpiece after years making peace with stunted substitutes. Times good? No, better.

I Bet the College Park Looked Like This Before They Finally Tore It Down

Forgive freestyle stream of random as how else to cope with twenty years at this? Yesterday on You Tube was a commentator I respect who called current moviegoing, movies themselves, a “zombie” art form like opera and ballet. Fighting words? He’s not alone to lament passing of the communal experience, the “magic” of sardining inside a cinema. How meaningful is such loss if you have almost as big a screen at home and no interruption unless you create it yourself? Darkened space commands attention, but do half-watching watchers with digital doo-dads respect darkened space? That’s me honestly wondering, for what do I know not having sat through a theatrical feature since Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, where much as I liked the movie, more of attention was on dim projection the bane of digital. Do cinemas fill up anymore? All I’m hearing is how empty they are. A friend who has worked at theatres since 1977 says his six plex is running on fumes. He recently had twenty people spread across six screens for an entire weekend. People have said since silent days that film was finished, a worse crisis perhaps in the fifties, but something always came to the rescue. What now, or is such a save past possible? There are documentaries a-plenty at You Tube about paradise that was movie palaces, interviewees basking in childhood clover. How close are we to where nobody’s left to remember that? I used to think plenty would be around always to first-hand recall B westerns and serials (did I expect such fans to live forever?), but alas, none but some of us survive to thrive on a gone generation’s memory of Ken Maynard and Spy Smasher. I missed their bliss of moviegoing when it really was blissful.

Crowds to me were useful for observing reactions to a classic revival like King Kong in Winston-Salem, or King Kong vs. Godzilla when-new at the Liberty, latter occasion for nearly being thrown out after my group was wrongfully lumped in with misbehavior of others seated too close by (I remember those guilty boys, have confronted several over years since, all recalling the event but none repentant). Over time at Greenbriar forge, my writing remains, as A.I. identifies it, “wayward.” Ever searched for yourself on AI? If you’ve done anything online, you’re there. AI draws from countless mentions made of any/all active sites. Reactions and opinions from everywhere digital are sifted and summarized, some unexpected, many surprising. I’m called “slightly distracted,” my grammar “loose,” but “deliberate and intimate,” whatever that amounts to. Suggested improvements for Greenbriar come courtesy Microsoft Word which offers to “Re-write this with Co-Pilot” for virtually every sentence I type. No use trying to fix me, however. Co-pilot makes prose acceptably conventional, if bloodless. And what if I like being wayward and slightly distracted? AI says my stuff is not academic in style or content, to which I reply, Thank You sirs, may I have another? One learns to live with bad habits baked in. Sic transit gloria mundi, like Latin talkers talk.

Do we still read books? Many don’t or won’t. Some swear off on receipt of high school diplomas. Ann snapped corner shelves at Greenbriar HQ over Christmas. Favorites among books sit there, some dating far back, many I pore through often. A few were got when new and have sentimental in addition to info value. From the top there are four by Kevin Brownlow. Probably nobody that tied onto film at a young age missed Brownlow. Santa brought me The Parade’s Gone By in 1968. Has anyone noticed the wonderful aroma its pages have, or is it just my copy? Also there is Hammer Films: The Bray Years, by Wayne Kinsey. He has written innumerable books about Hammer and is a leading authority on the British studio. The Filming of the West by Jon Tuska tells of westerns both “A” and “B,” a pioneering book on the topic. Shelf below has Michael Barrier’s history of animated cartoons, unsurpassed so far. Then there are two about the dawn of sound, Douglas Gomery and Scott Eyman the respective authors. City of Nets by Otto Friedrich tells Hollywood 40's story in revelatory detail. I sat part of Christmas Eve revisiting it. Kings of the B’s has terrific text plus interviews conducted when pioneers were still around to talk. The Great Movie Stars by David Shipman was actually two volumes, this one about “The Golden Years.” Firm but fair,  Shipman was the only interviewer Deanna Durbin agreed to speak with during her retirement. There is the Orson Welles book by Peter Bogdanovich that Welles cooperated on, and then three books about John Ford, all fine. Inside Warner Bros. by Rudy Behlmer is indispensable, as is Karl Brown’s Adventures with D.W. Griffith. More from Behlmer: Selznick and then Zanuck memos, both, as with Warners, worth memorizing. The Real Tinsel, The World of Entertainment, and An Illustrated History of the Horror Film are basics (but why do I have a second copy of Kings of the B’s … afraid I’d wear the first one out?). Movie-Made America and City Boys by Robert Sklar are outstanding. W.C. Fields from James Curtis sums that subject up beautifully. Lastly to mention is Robert Ray’s A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema: 1930-1980, which probably has more highlights and underlining than any book I’ve got, except possibly What Made Pistachio Nuts? by Henry Jenkins. Greenbriar is cocktail peanuts beside these tall drinks.

Count Your Blessings #5

 

CYB: A Star Is Born (1937), and Jet Pilot Either Ratio Way

A STAR IS BORN (1937) --- Charlotte’s Channel 3 (WBTV) was King Broadcaster of North Carolina, its reach the farthest, programming the most popular (a CBS affiliate). They began in 1949, celebrated for a week their twenty-fifth anniversary in 1974. WBTV had money and muscle to make pretty much anything happen for viewership. Among events to commemorate was the first feature movie telecast by the station in cradle year that was ’49, A Star Is Born from 1937 dug up via medicine made between Channel 3 and Warner Brothers, which owned/owns rights to the David Selznick property, WB having remade the ’37 Star Is Born in 1954. Stations choosing to play A Star Is Born preferred the later version. Charlotte rival Channel 9 (WSOC) in fact ran the ’54 Star back in 1961 when it was first made available to television. Channel 3’s wanting the old incarnation was something of an anomaly that Warners could not readily accommodate. Because the 1937 Star Is Born was historic for Channel 3, vital to their anniversary celebration, it simply had to be made available to them. Negotiation resulted in Warners making a new 16mm print from elements they had, a single print for this occasion only. A Star Is Born thus played prime time on a weeknight, and in color. I sat before it at age twenty like a first modern visitor to Tut’s tomb. I had till then not seen A Star Is Born and figured never to. My mother said it was her favorite movie, had been there in 1937, would be again and with me for the 1974 revival. I was concerned as to how the print would look but need not have been. Channel 3’s presentation was breathtaking. Seeing any thirties feature during prime hours was thrill enough … beholding one in color was bliss but achieved by yearly Wizard of Oz unspool. Fact A Star Is Born played so well was icing upon visual cake, but hold on: A Star Is Born was but thirty-seven at the time, like us today watching something from the late eighties and calling it a big deal.

William Wellman Directs Fredric March and Janet Gaynor

A zombified Star Is Born soon enough would plague us. Public Domain scourge saw packages of forlorn features on mostly UHF channels that couldn’t afford legit content, A Star Is Born leading a pack of movies badly bowdlerized and barely see/hearable. A Star Is Born kept company with Our Town, Santa Fe Trail, The Little Princess (also color, if dreadfully so), many more we could readily name. Cheapjack Channel 14 in Hickory was most-oft purveyor. I’d suffer through Reaching for the Moon to satisfy curiosity of long standing, spattered upon by mud that was its look and sound. A Star Is Born in a meantime became unwatchable, the Charlotte broadcast a one-off to seem mythical beside murk that was now. Channel 3 did not repeat it, their print presumably gone back to Warners. Video cassettes would redouble the insult, hundreds, nay thousands, to pollute dollar bins at discount stores. Newcomers questioned if A Star Is Born was really the classic it was cracked up to be. Source material for the bootlegs were often as not 16mm off Cinecolor reissue prints that distorted color values of the original. No longer would A Star Is Born glow. I gave up seeing it righted. Laser and DVD made game efforts. A Selznick-owned print was foundation for some disc releases, better at least than what came before, but we knew elements Warner had were better. Channel 3’s broadcast had proven that. Warner Archive at last offered a Blu-Ray from elements they possessed, clouds parted and all’s right in Star world, the transfer better than we had dared hope for. One could borrow hackneyed phrasing and dub this A Star Is Re-Born after generations of neglect and counterfeits. Further bounty of late is a soundtrack CD from the Brigham Young University Film Archive and album producer Ray Faiola, distributed by Screen Archives Entertainment. There also are liner notes by Faiola with an introduction by Max Steiner biographer Steven C. Smith. This score has never been tendered so complete as here, nor in such quality as Ray Faiola coaxed from Steiner’s personal acetate recordings. This soundtrack is ideal to enrich the Blu-Ray experience.

Let No One Kid You ... Jet Pilot Flies High on Blu-Ray

Jo von Sternberg of Making Friends and Influencing People Directs John Wayne and Janet Leigh

JET PILOT (1957) --- Jet Pilot is out from several sources with viewing option of wide or full-frame. More accurate is the latter, Jet Pilot having been shot largely during 1949-50. I still enjoy the 1.85 which by 1957 was how Jet Pilot got seen as other than antiquity it frankly was. Projectionists would have cropped the full frame in any case, so accustomed were they to wider setting. Complainers said planes were outmoded by the time audiences saw Jet Pilot, but doesn’t that presuppose at least some level of knowing older aircraft from fresh models? They could show me Jet Pilot hardware as a newest thing and chances are I’d believe it, for what do I comprehend of aviation hardware? Like those ignorant of art who know at least what they like, I’ll take Blu-Ray and enjoy Josef von Sternberg making his magic for a first and only time in color (unless we count whatever work he did for Duel in the Sun). Sternberg scholars tend to overlook Jet Pilot, as if it were something aberrant amidst JvS output. He didn’t shoot air footage, but would we want our aging and fragile idol chasing jets around with a camera? Joe was for closer and quieter effort to beautify his stars, and excel at that he does. We hear the expression, so-and-so never looked better, but sure enough it applies to Janet Leigh, maybe John Wayne as well, even Jay C. Flippen should you press a point. Jet Pilot made history too as a last feature released that had used the old and behemoth three-color Technicolor camera, shown above with JvS hovering over his dance floor cast. Eastman variants were firm in place by 1957, prints via Technicolor yes, but film was being shot on single-strip Eastman, never to revert back. 16mm IB Tech prints of Jet Pilot made their way to non-theatrical outlets. I never scored one, but should have, as some floated around and must have been beauts. The Blu-Ray looks stunning enough however. If you haven't got this, go get it, or at least stream it where you can.

Coffee, Tea, or Her? Jet Pilot Struggles to Be Saucy Despite Shackles Code-Imposed.

Jet Pilot was produced by Jules Furthman, and it is speculated that he finessed the job for Joe, who had himself poisoned enough industry wells for potential hirers to shun him. Furthman was primarily a writer. He had enabled the best and most coherent Sternberg movies, though Joe would say Furthman was just another assistant far below the director’s level of competence. I can’t help liking Josef von Sternberg for his outlandish ego and arrogance, him an essence of man as his own worst enemy. Joe wanted to be disliked, and lots accommodated him. Jet Pilot’s problem is being a jet fighter picture without any fighting, a war movie in search of a war. That being case, what we get is romance comedy, this OK because Wayne appeals when relaxed and getting unaccustomed fun out of parlay with leading ladies. He’s good on “Gentle Giant” terms with Janet Leigh as he was with Nancy Olsen in Big Jim McLain, Donna Reed in Trouble Along the Way, others we could name. They reflect Wayne as easygoing escort we know him to have been offscreen, this delved deep into by Scott Eyman in his best-of-them-all Wayne biography. Just watching the big guy have steak with Janet and engage repartee is plenty joy for me, preferable to him punching yet another pest in the snoot. Give me Jet Pilot or aforementioned “weaker Waynes” for relaxing good time, Jet Pilot the better for being glorious just to look at. Greenbriar took deeper dive into Jet Pilot back in 2006, before there was choice between screen formats, let alone Blu-Ray, to enhance viewing. Count Your Blessings applies sure to this lately upgraded presentation.

Trade Talk #5

 

What Trades Told: Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

“Hollywood’s still the same,” says Van Johnson from a mock-up cockpit circa seventies. “Call time, six in the morning,” he adds as if it were twenty-five years earlier with him back at MGM, where he’d become their most popular leading man, at least until the first team got out of uniform and back in front of cameras. Van spoofs his Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo self, latter which predated Post Fortified Oat Flakes the star now was selling. The ad ran near, if not concurrent, with an ABC special from 1972 called Hollywood --- The Dream Factory (cited previous, and often at Greenbriar). That primetime hour entranced for it introducing treasures off MGM’s Classic Era assembly line, a first see of sights so far out of reach in feature entirety. Capper was Van Johnson leading his bomber group over Tokyo to special effects accompany still dazzling decades after the fact, authentic enough to still be borrowed by filmmakers active in the seventies. If Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was so remarkable as this in part, imagine its impact whole. The Doolittle raid took place April 18, 1942, a mission we’d call daring if not suicidal. Success was measured more by morale than damage done. In fact, Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle considered the whole thing a failure and was convinced he’d be court-martialed for bungling the job. In fact, he was promoted to Brigadier General and received the Medal of Honor. I understand from James Curtis’ Spencer Tracy biography that the actor hesitated to play Doolittle because all he’d do was brief crews, an all talk, no action part. Did Tracy observe what a canonical figure Doolittle had become? The association would do the actor nothing but good, Doolittle’s prestige and authority rubbing off on him as earlier had Father Flanagan. Tracy was famously reluctant to take any assignment, finding reasons to back out right up to start days. Popular as Van Johnson had become, it was Tracy who’d close attendance deal for Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, something MGM merchandisers understood even as he seemed less aware of that obvious fact.

For a mission wherein all aircraft were lost and only half of combatants got back, the Tokyo raid was unreservedly declared a winner in all aspects. The movie was based on memoirs by Ted W. Lawson, the flyer Van Johnson portrayed. The bombing was central and what everyone came to see. It was also anticlimactic for an hour left of story to tell how Johnson’s crew gets rescued out of China. We don’t see the Japanese but are assured they are closing in. Hollywood and military overseers were for toning down atrocity stuff as by this stage of war those in authority figured us for sure bet to win, certainly against Japan which by that time was on the ropes (Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo released November 1944). Speaking of rough play by the enemy, there was one that dealt that in spades to my adolescent sensibility, Fox’s The Purple Heart, being harrowing account of Doolittle crewmen captured and put on show trial for war crimes on Nippon soil. They are tortured (offscreen) and their cause seems hopeless, which indeed it was, eight of the actuals sentenced to die, three executed. Shook me up enough to cost sleep. Sure could have used three or four Ozu features for antidote, but what did I know of Ozu in 1969? Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was long at 138 minutes but nobody squirmed. Rentals went skyward to $6.3 million worldwide and there was $1.4 million in profit. Here was a picture much of its time that sustains after fashion of Sergeant York and choice others of WWII by mainstream filmmakers. They had gung-ho jobs to do and did them, boundaries being the Code plus the U.S. Office of War Information, a censorship body not called that but every bit as controlling. Japan had assured us by word and hostile gestures that they were impregnable. No enemy could approach, let alone breach, their home islands. That seemed so for success they’d been having for opener months of the war. Americans needed to believe we could penetrate Japanese defenses, the Doolittle raid a necessary corrective to defeats more rule than exception in the conflict so far. Besides that, we wanted to get even for Pearl. This then was the first good strike we’d have at Japan, triumph at Midway achieved in part because so much of Japan’s defenses had to concentrate at home after what we did to Tokyo.

As majority of moviegoers were female during height of the war, it was essential for war-based features to address issues beyond violence characteristic of a genre long defined along such lines. Metro spread assurance among trades plus their own Lion’s Roar journal that Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo would address the private life of Capt. Lawson as essayed by Van Johnson, his wife and expectant mother played by Phyllis Thaxter. “He took off for Shangri-La,” said she and thousands of women who would wait, this then to be more than just another combat feature. An emotional finish harked back to The Big Parade, having been tested on that previous occasion, showed by a public’s acceptance to be effective, and so sure-fire for an encore in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. To bolster child support came Margaret O’Brien endorsing Van Johnson on behalf of junior patrons, no base ignored by merchandisers. Should Metro have consulted this model when they produced and tried subsequent to sell Command Decision in late 1948 and into 1949? Latter lost money perhaps for overlooking crucial segments of their potential audience, a failure too late recognized to adjust. Block-long lines braved rain to see Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo at Broadway’s Capitol Theatre as reported by the Motion Picture Herald. The Capitol Theatre had an enormous clock outside that traffic was routed around, keeping not only time but a record of war bonds dispersed by the minute, cheering for totals plus for entertainers stationed beneath the timepiece as it recorded sales. Live bands and singers would pull shifts and exchange tickets to Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo for each war bond purchased. Such was street theatre to bally the Capitol’s show, the clock face emblazoned with the film’s title. The event tied patriotism to moviegoing for a civilian home front army not to be underestimated by the industry or the War Department.

It astonishes me that Washington went so relentlessly after Hollywood for trust violations after all movies had done toward overcoming Axis forces. The government let Hollywood off the hook for years leading up to war, knowing the while how much they’d need industry assist once hostilities commenced. Studios willingly submitted to government oversight if not overtake of procedure formerly the exclusive province of company employees. Disney’s shop was virtually occupied throughout the war, salve being government dollars poured into production of animated shorts to bolster the war effort. War-themed features even mentioning the conflict or service branches had to be vetted by the OWI, movies perhaps not altogether a propaganda arm of Allied interests, but darn close according to complaints (quietly) made. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo would a decade later be the first of “Pre-48 Greats” from MGM to play television in Los Angeles and by most accounts got a record audience. Tokyo showed how certain old movies could mop up where star and subject coalesced to form an attractive viewing package. Greenbriar earlier (2012) visited L.A.’s MGM story and there is much emphasis on Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, including 1956 comments from the film’s producer Sam Zimbalist, who speculated on how well the film stood up after twelve years, a happy outcome he did not necessarily expect. Fascinating to read of attitudes re vintage tiles, how they’d wax and wane, even among creatives involved in their making. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo plays TCM and streams at Amazon, Vudu/Fandango, others, in HD. No Blu-Ray as yet.