Trade Talk #4

 

Let's All Follow EvS Example and Be Epicures In Living!

What Trades Told: Wedding Marches On, As Does Witchfinding

THE WEDDING MARCH --- Another Stroheim feature much mutilated, but thought his best by many, if not most. Revelatory is a You Tube job of reclamation by the Vitaphone Soundtrack Project, a best presentation of The Wedding March I’ve so far seen and a revelation if only for fact the original music-and-effects score by J.S. Zamecnik has been re-wedded to visuals. EvS was said to be fond of this music, to point of saying March was but a walk without it. Accompany is nicely synced and the Project does a service for putting a long limping classic at least partly back on feet. Arrival at awaited point harks us to early encounters, years of thinking we’d never see the Grail. Astonishing as it now seems, The Wedding March got a 1974 coffee table book by Herman G. Weinberg, pictures mostly, remaindered not long after for fraction of its $19.95 cover price. Memorizing images went with dreams of March as a moving object, any silent feature scarce outside museum walls or Blackhawk listings. Lincoln Center ran The Wedding March a couple of 60’s times to ovation according to Arthur Lenig, scholar supreme re Stroheim and there for both occasions, but how to account for Bosley Crowther panning the shows despite crowds' convulsive clapping? Stroheim was still judged by be-monocled plus cruel-to-all-comers image, him figure of fun to those disinclined to delve deeper. Humor writer S.J. Perelman grew up on first run likes of Blind Husbands and Foolish Wives, EvS branded upon child consciousness, him at the Museum of Modern Art for early 50’s revisit to Wives as possible meat for a New Yorker column. That he’d mock the Master was foregone conclusion, Perelman’s mission to amuse after all. Too bad he’d not live on to be astonished by Flicker Alley’s recent rescue of Foolish Wives, a miracle to surely impress EvS himself were he still with us.

Living the Decadent Dream ... Could Von's Fierce Appetite Ever Be Quenched?

Stroheim chivied Pat Powers to produce The Wedding March, theirs a wedding of confidence men long in the business of finding their mark and bleeding him white, or by outcome here, red. Powers surely cussed the day he met Stroheim, but some ideas, however disastrous they turn out, do sound good at one time or other, usually before vaster than expected dollars are spent. Powers was a hare teamed with a tortoise so far as pace of production, time translating to money, a million of which evaporated with plentiful footage left to shoot. Costs rose at least that far, said Powers, EvS claiming it was more like $900K. Give such levels, and in 1928, either way was ruinous. Stroheim hired relative unknown Fay Wray for a leading lady. She confessed to having fallen in love with him, heroic self-denial whispering not this time to Von (watch King Kong again, then come tell us how you could turn that down). Fay remembered going to the Stroheim’s for Christmas dinner where she saw lighted candles hung on their Yule tree. Chancy enough having such display at all, but how could you sleep that night without blowing them all out? --- this under heading of past times often strange times. Paramount released The Wedding March, had cash in it, would assert rights to edit ... Stroheim admirers know the rest. To chopping commission came Josef Von Sternberg, pilloried from then on by EvS. He’d hindsight call career work “skeletons of my dead children.” Just a fraction of The Wedding March went out. Von wanted the usual eight hours spread over two nights, or supper between two massive chunks. Like Greed and Foolish Wives, The Wedding March would make sense as was, so long as we watched on EvS wavelength. Production values were handsomer than ever, Technicolor portion a cherry on top. Stroheim was a realist like literature and plays making waves since earlier in the century, movies seldom if ever so out front of curve. He’s sympathetic up to a point, but “Prince Nikki” as Stroheim-played will still marry for money and leave love behind, even where it’s Fay Wray he’s leaving. More we ponder, the more sense his decision makes, this being Von’s Vienna and all of moral decay that implied, in other words a Garden of Eden for Nikki, and likely offscreen Stroheim too. Occurs to me that sophistication-wise, The Wedding March remains yet to be caught up with. It makes modern telling look like child fables.

The Wedding March Leads Paramount's Pack for 1928-29 Laurels, and Hopefully, Grosses.

We were at the Columbus Cinevent, I think in 1986, where a collector, whose specialty was silents, confided that he had The Wedding March on 16mm, with the color sequence, and would run it once only in his room, start time midnight. Stroheimians gathered, it didn’t need many to cram the space, this for most of us a first (and evermore only?) occasion to see such rarity. Who knows what feeble elements the print derived from … certainly it was soft … 16mm a least of formats to play host. We were just grateful to finally see The Wedding March. That Paramount would release a video cassette the following year was unimaginable, not just them but any major taking a flyer on features so antique. Para would not utilize the original score, Gaylord Carter an adequate, if not preferred at the time, substitute. I hear the venture failed to break even, no surprise. Afterward came nothing, hope a lantern aloft for forty years till The Wedding March entered the Public Domain and Vitaphone’s eagle landed. Now for me it seems less urgent for Criterion, anyone, to get out a Blu-Ray, although I’d still welcome that for extras and access perhaps to even better elements. One must, as before and since the days of Herman Weinberg, ask how many are alive and panting for Stroheim’s could-be masterpiece to reassert itself. Possibilities certainly are there --- look at Beau Geste lately rescued and filling auditoria. I'm told a MOMA show wowed capacity seating. There’s also indication that His Glorious Night will soon be back, and I but recently saw the Vitaphone Project’s A Woman Disputed with Norma Talmadge and again, an original score heard for first time since Troy was sieged. And isn’t Flicker Alley forthcoming with He Who Gets Slapped? The Silent Era hasn’t had things so good since … well, the Silent Era.

Friend Hopkins Supervises a Latest Village Barbecue

STILL UNCONQUERED? --- Greenbriar in September 2007 offered a column called At Long Last Conquering the Worm, which I realize now was a misnomer. It had been but thirty-eight years since initial trauma sustained from watching The Conqueror Worm (later and more commonly known as Witchfinder General), and I know now it wasn’t enough for any kind of "conquest," Worm upsetting as ever. Unrealized in 1969 was my having entered into an unspoken compact with horror filmmakers at an early age --- let them push, but not too far, a sort of personal Production Code, with rules not so strict as industry’s own, but there nonetheless to protect tender sensibilities that were mine. So far no feature had violated my Code. There were those to chill as others had not, like memorable The Haunting from early 1964, a same winter that tendered Children of the Damned, which by title alone warned of fences being breached. An incident that year might have lowered curtains altogether for myself and the genre had my mother ceded to plea for us to park at somewhat remote North Wilkesboro Drive-In for the combo of Blood Feast with 2000 Maniacs. Those would have traumatized me less than assuring that I would never be permitted to see chillers again. Disaster but barely averted. Another feature however, lush and very mainstream Hollywood, broke a barrier within moments of my entering the Liberty. That was Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, where what we saw upon adjust to darkness was Bruce Dern in the summer house softly calling Charlotte’s name, then off came his hand with him holding a bloody stump to our squealing delight. Having seen no such thing to that time, mine was a transport of joy. Narrative to follow was interminable wait for more such mayhem that wouldn't come, Charlotte having shot her bolt.

Witches Were Vince's Onscreen Nemesis, But Offscreen It Was Director Michael Reeves

What was it then about The Conqueror Worm that upset me so? I get now, at admittedly late date, that it was cruelty and hopelessness of everyone’s situation, plus the fact Worm was based on history and such horrors did actually take place. Somewhere I read that Matthew Hopkins had been a real person, that he hung alleged witches and sometimes burned them. Vincent Price engaging such atrocity took me places I had no wish to go. Maybe the actor sensing this had something to do with bad relations between him and twenty-four-year-old director Michael Reeves. Price had ground rules for bogey-playing, not forgetting that an ounce of humor was worth pounds of scares, a policy going back to House of Wax and continuing forward. What a shock for him to be confronted by this kid who knew Vince’s shtick, thought it stank, and loudly told him so. Talk about disrespect for elders. Reeves snubbed Price from the first day, showed no concern when his star fell from a horse and was injured, sent an underling to ask after him. The Vince who could make friends with a rock here saw solid stone and knew it was his very persona and concept of performing that made the helmsman burn. Reeves ended up beating the veteran down to ice-cold enact given here, many Price admirers since calling his Witchfinder a best-ever effort. I’m to point at last of saying the same. Price is a monster that never eases a crack. Did he wonder if fans would be alienated? I forgave Price at the time, knowing how AIP had by then been coarsened, ignorant of Worm as not fully their venture, the company part-financing an already formed project. Vincent Price had been subdued in previous Poes, cruel in Masque of the Red Death, chilly for Tomb of Ligeia. Trouble was a public chilling on his act, for those final Poes by Roger Corman took too modest rentals to sustain the series. Still Jim and Sam would graft Poe onto The Conqueror Worm by having Price add narration for US release.

Might Have Wished I Had Stayed Home If Not for Worm's Co-Feature, The Devil's Bride

The Conqueror Worm by trade estimate was a hit, for AIP a most lucrative Poe/Price since The Raven. Was that for being more explicit? Word must have traveled, for what gothics were selling so well by 1969? Leave the Children Home! shouted ads, and maybe this time, they meant it. Youngsters were known to depart screenings in tears (see comments with the 2007 column), The Conqueror Worm in line with stronger meat AIP now was frying. Touted also to trade was ongoing “protest” line-up to include Wild in the Streets, Savage Seven, Angels from Hell, and The Mini-Skirt Mob, none of which I would deign to see in observance of my own protest against biker and counter-culturing. Michael Reeves was interestingly of similar mind, his having strobe-lighted pre-Worm The Sorcerers but not buying lifestyle it depicted. Horror movies seemed over anyway by then, Hammer dropping notches by the month, others of AI origin progressively worse. We saw Crimson Cult for it touted as “Karloff’s Last,” plus Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele in support parts, but how could this thing have been duller? Last gasp I recall was 1972 combo of The Abominable Dr. Phibes with Murders in the Rue Morgue, Phibes pretty good, but the other … we walked out. Tentative reapproach to The Conqueror Worm saw me finally embrace fineness even worse detractors must acknowledge. Hate it okay, but you can’t brand this “bad.” The Conqueror Worm is far too well made and thoughtful in its way for that. Might as well blame history for stops-out telling had here, Matthew Hopkins and his assistant John Sternes all too real people who committed real atrocities. Both wrote books on their witch-hunt careers at twilight of life. Michael Reeves was determined to tell things as they were. He died three months before we got The Conqueror Worm, his final film, though of course I was unaware of it then. Vincent Price wrote the director after seeing The Conqueror Worm and told him how great it all turned out and that he hoped they'd work together again. We are much the poorer for that never happening.

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

Music for Hopefully Millions

 

She was Twitchy, Him Tormented, and Twirl Went Turnstiles for Columbia with A Song to Remember

Could Classical Come Back?

To collect silent movies was to find music that would accompany them. This didn’t occur to most of us age ten and watching Castle reels of Dracula, or The Lost World, those but glimpse of something it seemed we’d never own complete. Same with Woodpecker cartoons or Pluto caught on flypaper. I knew graduation to two-reel and intact subjects carried with it duty to supply sound for twenty minutes a Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy would last. Would I have applied myself more to piano lessons for realizing how handy they’d be to furnish accompany? The connection didn’t occur to me, so past went opportunity to learn a skill at the least useful for anyone who'd supply live in addition to screen entertainment. A phonograph made do, selections not ideal to all action projected, just now-and-then harmony between picture and sound. For a first several years I’d choose Chopin ... piano, not his concertos. I became a fan and would listen to him even without the films. Among “electives” at college was an appreciation course I was predisposed to enroll in, “The Enjoyment of Music,” among few keeper textbooks. The instructor was a lady who grew up in the forties and took a dim view of how Hollywood treated classical composers, being derisive toward A Song to Remember, the Chopin story as told by Columbia Pictures in 1945 wherein the suffering genius “spat bright red blood all over the piano keys,” a scene she called laughable for showing how movies always got true-based stories wrong.

Hep Ahead of Her Time Merle Wears Man Suits and Writes With a Green Feather --- I'm in Love!

Goal became to see A Song to Remember, more dreamt of than done when Columbia TV packages seemed limited to 50’s titles and lone earlier outliers like Sahara or Dead Reckoning. I contented myself with stills and a horse-blanket sized pressbook to confirm A Song to Remember as a dynamo of its day. There even was a soundtrack album when those were 78 RPM’s in a treasure box to keep till big broom 33 LP swept cruder formats away. A Song to Remember was an experience its initial audience would not forget, a lift to Columbia followed up to even greater success with The Jolson Story, a then-cousin to Chopin for making old new again. Popularizing a classical composer had barely been done, certainly not to extent of Chopin here, MGM’s The Great Waltz of years before a noble but less lucrative try, its Strauss story an alright earner but cost-heavy as to see ultimate red, happy coda come 1946 when Leo, fired by rival success with A Song to Remember, reissued The Great Waltz to more than make up shortfall of before, such being reach of hit parading Chopin. Something about him spoke loud to kids and romantics, for how else do we account for his melody informing sock hit theme of Till the End of Time, disc coverers to include Perry Como among numerous others. Chopin in short became hot again and helped by Cornel Wilde playing him, teamed with gender-bending Merle Oberon in tailored suits to become a mid-forties fashion influence.

Bob Ripley Might Say "Believe It of Not" to This Assemblage of Song Endorsers

Technicolor brightened costume setting with style its own revolutionary, most noted a scene where Oberon enters a dark room with a candelabra to reveal Wilde as Chopin performing (salon-goers think it’s Franz Liszt), a moment to forecast what Stanley Kubrick would decades later do with color and candlelight in Barry Lyndon. Song’s entire score was based on Chopin, reminding us how fit a utility he’d been and would continue to be for movies. There was something fresh if not eternal about this composer’s work, not music you’d have to “adjust” the audience to. Just start it up and stand back. Billed first for Song was Paul Muni playing his eccentric teacher-mentor after Yiddish theatre example, Muni’s own training ground. Lots say, and said in 1945, that he chewed scenes to powder, left no room for colleagues, which they’d complain of later. Nina Foch recalled Muni as “old-fashioned,” while Cornel Wilde found him insufferable, the older man off in his own world with no seeming recognition of partners in his actor orbit. It was Muni and nobody else so far as he saw it. Knowing Foch since she was a kid, Muni was friends with her father, so on the first day asked her, Do you want to be an actress or a whore? WTF she undoubtedly thought, figuring the shoot for an ordeal to come. I’ll guess Muni merely inquired in his singular way whether she’d apply herself to the art/craft or merely pull an ingenue plow. Being with Columbia threatened her plenty with that, Song but her second job after Return of the Vampire, abashing to her at the time. Any of us could have assured Nina that effort alongside Bela Lugosi was in fact an early summit.

"Song-Drenched Kisses" and "Champagne Love" --- Were These What Put Over Great Waltz Reissues?

Poor Schumann Was Sort of a Mad Genius, But Not Homicidally So

Was Frederic Chopin a Polish freedom fighter? He seems so here, not with guns aimed at Russian oppressors, though he does attend a secret meeting of rebels before massacre of same obliges him to decamp to Paris where remainder of narrative more/less takes place. This seems contrived even though Chopin was a booster for Polish rights and did compose music to support the cause, but we’re for the piano bench here, not Chopin ducking czarists. Writers may not have recognized early on that Chopin’s music would be plenty enough to sell this show. Merle Oberon as George Sand speaks for us where telling Frederic that he’s wasting time and energy trying to liberate a homeland when talent lies so spectacularly elsewhere. Oberon is meant to be pushy and dominating but like with so many film devices that try to manipulate my sympathies, I in fact sit firm in her corner, especially for fiery D/C/S speech to Wilde/Chopin (D/C/S meaning Davis/Crawford/Stanwyck). Of what I’ve read about A Song to Remember, few address the concert and performance scenes, which of course is bulk of what we wanted then and now to see. Pianos Chopin plays are the best of the best on 1945 terms, which means as good if not better than what we have today, but A Song to Remember took place during the lifetime of Frederic Chopin, which was from 1810 to 1849. According to Deems Taylor in a very informed essay he wrote decades ago (included in a compilation volume, Of Men and Music), instruments were throughout most of the nineteenth century inadequate to convey intent of composers, so give up hope of satisfactory time travel to concerts when classical was new.

Catherine McLeod Puts Over, and How, Keyboard Work for I've Always Loved You

Chopin at his piano, or piano forte as it was then known, saw sky-high talent brought cruelly to earth each time he sat to perform. What was put on paper was brilliant --- as translated by instruments then-available, it was something else. Taylor wrote: “The piano upon which we now play … is not the clavichord or so-called pianoforte for which … composers had to write. That was an evolutionary instrument, halfway between the harpsichord, with its jacks and quills, and the modern piano. It did possess a rudimentary dynamic range --- its very name, pianoforte, is the perpetuated boast of its inventor that it could play both soft and loud; but its tone was a pale, characterless tinkle, compared with the singing thunders of a modern grand piano.” Reality of recitals amount to cold splash for those who’d imagine Chopin or any of contemporaries mesmerizing listeners of their era, Taylor asserting that “up to the very third quarter of the nineteenth century, a composer not only had to struggle to get his ideas down on paper but then had to worry about getting a decent performance.” Chopin was gone a generation before his century’s final third. Same was case for his contemporaries Robert and Clara Schumann, memorialized by Metro in 1947’s Song of Love, a screen bio hoping to duplicate Columbia’s success with A Song to Remember. Toward this end they’d fail for $2.6 million spent on the negative with result a million lost. Romance Leo hoped to celebrate was essayed by Katharine Hepburn (Clara) and Paul Henreid (Robert), with Robert Walker as Johannes Brahms, who according to history did spend most of his life in hopeless love with Clara. This might have clinched receipts had casting been different … not that anyone was inadequate, just sparks lacking where Cornel Wilde and Merle Oberon had them on Chopin behalf. Speaking to authenticity, Song of Love and A Song to Remember saw mutual casts sat before keys and obliged to finger in close tandem with music played, each more-less doing the Larry Parks thing only with pianos rather than voice. I look at Wilde or Hepburn hands sailing keyboards and wonder how the stars would sound if left to own devices rather than being dubbed. History records that of Song of Love principals, each of three could play, Hepburn so accomplished that an idea was floated to let us hear her rather than a pro dubber, but studio feet got cold, and besides, they had already paid for the do-over.

Hail Hail, the Classical Gang's All Here for Carnegie Hall

MGM doesn’t get enough credit for enriching 40’s patronage. Look, or better listen, to Music for Millions, Song of Russia, or any of Kathryn Grayson or Jane Powell vehicles. Even some of the Tom and Jerrys. Stay into fifties and witness Rhapsody, now obscure perhaps but noticed and appreciated then. Take a hundred youth into any of these and who knows but what five, ten, maybe more, will come out tilted toward great music. This was servicing a big tent, and not just Metro was masterful at it. Any classical banquet screen-served, in whatever its size and majesty, had first to serve a story, be but handmaiden to melodrama its true, this needed to engage an audience not content with mere recital of music, however distinguished. Classics could be and were route to prestige for even Republic Pictures, set upon doing what Columbia with A Song to Remember had profitably done. I’ve Always Loved You was their two million investment toward industry standing not so far achieved with westerns and serials, Technicolor from Republic also unaccustomed. Love and its frustration was necessary backdrop to recital of Rachmaninoff, Mozart, Wagner, and yes, Chopin, plus others of classic repertoire. I could talk of production and reception the day through and come nowhere near exhaustive coverage by Jack Mathis in Republic Confidential, his multi-volume history in which “The Studio” addressed I’ve Always Loved You in stunning detail. No way could Mathis’ effort be bettered by me or anybody. I’ve Always Loved You was released on Blu-Ray by Olive, theirs derived from the UCLA restoration of a feature more-less unseen for decades. It’s a stunner of a celebration of all things classical, as is …

Shot Right Where It Happened by Edgar Ulmer, Who Sure Knew from Classics (Remember The Black Cat?)

… Carnegie Hall from 1947 and another difficult find for years prior to DVD and occasional runs on TCM. Here was closest we commercially got to a concert feature long before such things became norm, yet like others Carnegie Hall had to serve audience need for narrative, being a family saga set inside the legendary Hall where the film was in large part shot. Carnegie Hall enjoyed long urban runs, set a record for electric lights to herald its first-run at the Winter Garden in New York. As expected there were purist complaints of soppy drama getting in way of all-star classical performing, but how could 144 minutes pass if not with help of romance and mother sacrifice for sake of a son who chooses swing rather than symphonic? Issue is resolved by letting him have it both ways, thus Vaughn Monroe and His Orchestra and later Harry James cutting rugs alongside expected longhair artists. Producing Carnegie Hall was Boris Morros and William LeBaron, both with seasoned sense of how to best put over porridge of old with new. Concert stars, plus those from opera and cultivated elsewhere, would be humanized by interacting with story enactors Marsha Hunt, William Prince, Frank McHugh, and Martha O’Driscoll, all this shrewdly managed by director Edgar Ulmer, whose only lavish film this was. For splendid work here, why wasn’t Ulmer finally promoted to A features upon artistic and commercial wings of Carnegie Hall? It would earn domestic rentals of $983K, with foreign an additional $607K for distributor United Artists. Known well was Ulmer being blacklisted for conduct unbecoming an employee at Universal during the thirties (him purloining a wife from a U executive). The Ulmer marriage sustained so maybe career spank, a harsh one, was worth it. As is, and thanks in large part to Ulmer, Carnegie Hall represents apotheosis of classical celebration in otherwise contemporary and commercial focused medium that was movies.

UPDATE --- 7/29/2025: As we know, one of the greats among writer-historians is William M. Drew. Recent e-mails from William address Greenbriar's 7/14/2025 column about "voiceless" stars I thought we'd never hear. Not so for all, says Mr. Drew, and he supplies links (inc. Mary Miles Minter!). So much detail here I had to break it down to three parts to fit Google limits. Need I add, terrific stuff. 

Scope Samples #2

 

Mastermind and Masterpiece --- Why Did It Take Me So Long to Realize That?

Wide Worlds: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Three of us drove to Winston-Salem for 2001, my cousin behind the wheel for me being two years away from a driver license. Robby and Roland were seniors to my freshman. Roland was student council president that year, so I was amidst high cotton. Here also was my first Winston movie trip not hauled by a parent. Stench from Reynolds Tobacco beckoned us toward town and the Winston Theatre, lately retrofitted for “Ultra-Vision,” which despite label was souped-up 35mm, 2001: A Space Odyssey getting but one North Carolina engagement in 70mm (says trusted authority). The Winston’s was a newly widened and deep curve screen, leagues ahead of the Liberty which notion of scope was essentially letterbox. The only times I experienced true anamorphic was out of town. My two companions were hot for 2001, having read much about it, but I suspected from ads and articles that here was a glorified art film, sci-fi treated with unaccustomed respect. Truth it took years for immaturity to know: 2001 was ahead of me that day sure as events depicted were far in front of characters on the screen. My speed was more space travelers meeting monsters, having no cope for something so sophisticated as this. Further confession: I am but now realizing how great 2001 is. As of a mere past week, it has become my favorite 60’s feature, and among evermore all-time favorites. How oft does epiphany come so late in life? Makes me realize there is still much developing to do.

He Subdued Gorgo, So Why Not William Sylvester to Spearhead This Mission?

First, the effects … they astonished … still do. It was hard then to process what Kubrick and crew had achieved. This wasn’t simulation of space, this was space, more documentary it seemed than science-fiction. We’d not been to the moon yet, but here it seemed we had. Knowing I’d not “get” 2001 going in made high hill of the watch, plus road companions saying how one needed to read Arthur C. Clarke’s book to properly understand what was happening. This I heard further at school among science and sci-fi geeks, same type who saw more to Star Trek that I’d ever divine. It’s been necessary since 1968 to rehab off half-century mild if persistent resentment toward 2001, as in me unequal to concepts smarter boys readily grasped. If this was the future of sci-fi, then give me gothic as in vampires clawing out of graves and leave far-off galaxies to those disposed such ways. 2001 seemed a boy ritual (never knew a girl who saw it, let alone cared for it), a means of asserting smarts over other boys by figuring out Rubic cube Kubrick shaped. I for first time felt sort of left out of movie conversation. The drive home saw Robby and Roland trading insights beyond back-seat-sat-me, a position both literal and figurative. Ann had a volunteer hospital job a few years back and told me Roland was working there (as brain surgeon?). “Ask if he remembers us going to Winston to see 2001 back in 1968.” She did, and he did, or at least said he did. Might I someday encounter Roland at Smokehouse Barbecue (where everybody shows up at least weekly) and tell him how 2001 no longer confuses and mystifies me? Hope so.

It actually does still confuse and mystify me, if less so than at age fourteen. Who can claim true comprehension of eternal paradox that is 2001? Eternity of extras that is 4K of the feature taught me that Kubrick wanted to delve further into mystery he had developed, but money and time ran out, so he essentially had to release what was done. So simple after all as that? Sounds like something that might happen to Wild, Wild Planet, or The Green Slime. 2001 had flavor of a foreign film, which meant down go grosses to ultimate loss clocked by Metro. Critics panned it to start but then came groundswell of youth to groove upon “Ultimate Trip” that was 2001. Moderns have speculated on kids “smoking grass” at screenings, which maybe they did at subsequent grinds, but you’ll not convince me conduct like that went on at roadshows, not with hard ticket patronage and parents with offspring making a night or special day of attending. Lighting up amidst such order would to my mind be unlikely (unless you showed up high). Same with myth of Fantasia as drug-fueled seventies reissue, maybe at a few late shows to hippie trade (like Greensboro’s Janus Theatre), but Fantasia was still Disney, and designated family fare. So too was 2001 for that matter, a site where too many grown-ups and monitor/tattletales might easily narc cannabis consumers.

Sheer Physical Size of 2001 Was Enough to Dazzle Us in 1968

2001 had a narrative, and it was flexible. Not till the end do things go abstract, sufficient data so far for all to figure endings that would suit themselves. For every thousand views of 2001, there’s that many meanings to take away. No one figured things out for sure, least of all Kubrick and by his own latter admission, Arthur C. Clarke. Execution was what counted, breathtaking by admission of even those to knock the show otherwise. Do astronauts Dave and Frank arrive at respective afterlives for a finish? Seemed at least momentarily that way for me. Anyone who'll claim they’re hep to the ending is shining you on, or just showing off. Intelligent life notion is explored minus aliens. Clarke said to show them would plunge the project into same trap to trip SF since stone age of film. He and Kubrick hashed over the genre and latter pledged to upend it … nothing done before would do here. Clarke sort of liked Fantastic Voyage and 1937’s Things to Come, which Kubrick watched but wrote off as antique. He wanted no part of anything tried previous. What if he had copied, “been inspired,” by even smallest aspect of Fantastic Voyage? We’d take that like something foul in a punchbowl. Fantastic Voyage seems OK until you put it beside 2001. Thing about any SF before 2001 was them all being melodramas at core with orbit or future speculations incidental. Again, nothing about 2001 was like anything tried before or since. A surface could be aped, austerity might be mimicked, like for instance Alien which I saw this week, a horror flecked would-be 2001. Or Star Wars, into which I lasted thirteen minutes on the heels of 2001, verdict … unwatchable.

Surprise at core of 2001 is their mere suggesting life other than ours beyond Earth, this admirable realism and a big reason we believed and still believe 2001. Remarkable that here is a film rushing toward sixty and in all that time, we’ve still no evidence of life elsewhere in the galaxy. Had you asked me in 1968 if extraterrestrials would be found by the year 2001, let alone 2025, I’d have said sure, naturally, of course. At race pace the space program went in those days, we’d have all bet on a Mars landing by mid-seventies at a latest, and surely there’d be populace there. I’m a little disappointed not to have been contacted so far by other planeteers. 2001 pleases by not opting for a glum ending. Better to be confused than take a downer. I suspect if it were made (or remade) today, HAL would prevail and enslave thread left of mankind. Just like AI! creatives would cry, committee filmmaking the victor in a universe where true 2001 would have little chance at fruition. HAL is everyone’s lead because he (it?) becomes a threat and locus of conflict for 2001’s second half. Keir Dullea back when he did SF shows took to stages before worshipful mobs, spoke but six words, Open the pod bay doors, Hal, to get a roaring ovation. Was ever an actor so rewarded by so simple a line spoke so many years before? Dullea is all over extras on the 2001 4K, an ideal spokesman for the film and its still devoted audience. Here’s for sobering: Keir Dullea is eighty-nine years old, Gary Lockwood eighty-eight.

Dullea salutes often 2001 being free of CGI, all effects practical, he proudly states. Notice how old-school FX bespeaks integrity of hands-on filmmaking, a thing gone since digital dominion. We see stills of Kubrick and crew building models the size of a house to hark back on artist workshops of centuries gone, honest effort borne of man showing what hands and the mind might accomplish. In an era of increased AI, let alone CGI increasingly suspect and unwelcome, 2001 plays like Renaissance found, then regrettably lost again. As though to emphasize classical basis for what he did, Kubrick let go a well-along score by Alex North to favor composers long departed and show us again that here is music that won’t date no matter passage of millenniums. Others of modern sci-fi would follow suit, Alien’s ship captain Tom Skerritt playing classical themes to relax between bouts with a monster aboard craft he commands. So what was the before and aft of 2001? What were prior titles Robby and Roland and I reflected upon as 2001 unfolded? There were obvious inferiors to sweep aside, and then a few more-than-worthwhile forebears that for all we know influenced 2001 in perhaps subliminal ways. I’m thinking in particular of Euro-made Ikarie XB-1 (released here, if barely, as Voyage to the End of the Universe) and Planet of the Vampires, these trapped aboard combo vessels and chained to child matinees or drive-in tail ends. 2001 was sold in terms of ultra-prestige in addition to the Winston’s Ultra-Vision. Kubrick’s name would see to that.

More of Winston-Salem as showgoing landscape of dreams HERE.

The Art of Selling Movies #3

Art of ... Selling Around a Sock, Wish Upon Voices, and Spanish Spoken Here, Says Seattle

LOMBARD AND MARCH, KNOCK YOURSELVES OUT --- Nothing Sacred was a Selznick Technicolor comedy in 1937 that ran 77 minutes, aspects unique in themselves, the more so as this feature later entered the public domain and for years evaded worthwhile prints. Best elements are presently housed at Disney, owners of most Selznick output and seemingly indifferent to it all. Kino has a Blu-Ray, “as good as it’s ever going to look” according to more than one responsible reviewer. Considering dog-earness of previous editions, I'll concur to that. Nothing Sacred was credited to Ben Hecht as writer with contributions by half the wits of Hollywood, Selznick with that sort of reach once gone independent. Carole Lombard and Fredric March were independents too and came at a high price. The film cost lots and lost money. Parts are funny, but funnier where you’re wired to non-ending wisecracks the lot of Hecht and help. These people lived under pressure to top each other at dinners and cocktail gathers. Hecht humor varies, an emperor with fewer clothes than others paid less than he famously was. Nothing Sacred was remade with Martin and Lewis at Paramount and that’s probably where negatives crossed up. There had been before a Cinecolor reissue for Sacred that yielded 16mm prints to make collectors wonder if old-style Technicolor was good as it was cracked up to be. Much of talk (and advertising) revolved around fist-fighting between Lombard and March, each punched unconscious by the other to presumed comic effect, which maybe worked better for posters and ads than in the movie. Sure it gave pressbooks and theatre art shops plenty to chew on, the fight by far centerpiece of all promoting, at least in 1937. Nothing Sacred looks good enough to enjoy, Lombard in color and such a sum-up of Selznick’s ideal for boxoffice. He might have done better than with United Artists to distribute. They commanded highest flat rentals at least from the Liberty during those years, and DOS famously fell out with them on more than one occasion. Ultimate split led to his distributing work for himself.

OH TO HEAR THEM JUST ONCE --- Lately contemplated silent era sufferers and realize how most seem worse off for not leaving voice evidence of how hard ordeals were. Wallace Reid, Mabel Normand, Valentino, Mary Miles Minter … not one can we hear save a song Rudy recorded that disappoints for him not speaking as in talking to us like his characters did minus sound. Valentino was after all not a vocalist by trade. Sadness surrounding the lot would be more so (or less?) if we could hear one or all utter for themselves. Reid got hooked on morphine and may have explained his pain had devices been handy to memorialize the struggle, but would Edison, or De Forest, or anybody, want to get Wally’s truth down for fans or posterity to hear? Reid theatre ads are gateway to themes/genres beyond just him. How regrettable so much of this star is lost, though we could say that about whole of his peer lot. Who’s for seeing The Ghost Breaker and/or 30 Days? Neither appear to survive. Exposé features followed Wallace Reid’s death, many like The Drug Traffic sold like horror films. Twenties public was taught to shun, fear, and dread narcotic use. Reid’s wife made cottage --- no mansion --- industry of scare shows suggested by what happened to her husband. Devils with long horns came on heels of illicit drugs. You’d not sink lower than using them. Reid might be recalled for other than his addiction were more of his films extant. Most were comedies or action oriented. He was peppy like Fairbanks and a model for Reginald Denny, more to come, and might have lasted long had fate been kinder. Would legacy sustain the more were there recordings and a voice to associate with the silent face? Fairbanks and Denny got to talk, and plenty, over lifetimes longer than Wally’s. What seems so ghostly about gone players from pre-sound is so many who’d remain mute for all time.

Where squawk over lost voices, why stop with stars? There is after all no hearing Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson. They were stars too, bigger ones in fact than most who’d emerge later on film, and we could ask why none spoke for pioneer recorders. Emerson having died in 1882 would have been early to such part, but Edison by 1877 was successfully catching sound, and Emerson with his more than robust reputation as a lecturer would have been a natural to record. Oscar Wilde too seems ideal for capture, having lived till 1900, and there's alleged track of him reading from his final work, authenticity challenged, debunked by experts who cite its revolutions per minute (78) a development to come well after Wilde’s departure. Wishful thought causes many to claim legitimacy, this to illustrate how much we’d all like to hear the writer and supreme wit of his era. Stateside equivalent to challenge Wilde would be Mark Twain and he’s said to have experimented at home with cylinders to seize and hold his voice, but not satisfied with results, he either destroyed same or let them get lost (but what if somebody found them behind a secret panel at the Clemens home which does still stand?). Closest we’ve got to hearing Mark Twain is an impression, said to be dead on, by famed stage actor William Gillette who grew up a neighbor to Clemens, knew the author well, and was in fact mentored by him. Of acting legends emerged from the nineteenth century, there at least was one, Edwin Booth, who graced cylinders with excerpts from Othello and Hamlet. Hardly matters you can barely hear him ... it's the man himself and that is what matters.

For all I know, the lot of now-silent personages were heard on radio, for what do we retain of  abundant hours spread by wireless to listeners as gone themselves as voices they heard, then forgot? There is reason to believe Normand, Minter, Rudy, infinite more, stood before primitive microphones to address home listeners. Sadness lies in virtually no recordings extant, as who preserved radio transmission during the twenties and to what purpose? What if Mabel or MMM, or both, ruminated as to how William Desmond Taylor got offed? Occurs to me that were it not for Warner Bros. inviting Roscoe Arbuckle to come in and make six talkie shorts in 1932-33, we might never have heard the comedian’s voice, would forever wonder what he sounded like. I assume Mary Miles Minter talked for radio, if not during the twenties, then certainly during the thirties when she was known to show up places and make with her opinions. How many know Theda Bara did radio? Not me for the longest time. Imagine if we had lost Chaplin right after Modern Times, or Fields before talkies could capture his voice and essence of being funny. Larry Semon was one who did not make it, missed the switch but barely, so spoken word remains a mystery. William S. Hart did single reels in guest capacity and introduced Tumbleweeds for reissue purpose, spoke for radio, but where and to what listeners? D.W. Griffith made odd appearance introducing the silent 1923 feature Dream Street, was back years later to share thoughts on The Birth of a Nation for its sound-era revival. I’ve tried finding radio work by former band teacher Priscilla Lyon but have so far come up only with Mayor of the Town (her with Lionel Barrymore and Agnes Moorehead), but so far no Junior Miss segments where she performed with Shirley Temple. Are all gone with the ether?

NEVER NEEDED SUBTITLES TO BE FUNNY --- Is the Fox Theatre in Seattle fitting foreign to the week’s comedy? Featured is Laurel and Hardy in Night Owls, “twice as long, 10 times as funny.” Ladrones was how Night Owls went out to Spanish-speaking viewership, length at 38 minutes, U.S. release that was Night Owls a customary twenty minutes. The comedians did phonetic reading of lines unfamiliar to both. Humor of Night Owls was visual, as with most L&H. It’s easy to enjoy foreign versions of their shorts minus subtitles. So too must have watchers that ’30 week in Seattle. For them, a Laurel-Hardy twice as long was that much wider spread of joy, as was for me watching Ladrones, which happily survives, is available on DVD and to my reckon one of the funniest of all Laurel-Hardys. Extended go at housebreaking sees every imaginable thing go wrong for the pair. Seekers after comedy done ingeniously right will laud loudly, few to shun spoken language not their own. Seattle counted on audience arms to embrace humor rich even if it didn’t talk same as most watching. Evidence of this ad is all I have to suggest it was Ladrones and not Night Owls unspooling for this engagement but will stand by “twice as long” and what that appears to confirm. Further research in trades might reveal other US theatres that used foreign-spoke comedies put before domestic lookers, being longer lending them lure next to standard versions. They play unique and almost exotic to fan following now. Small miracle Ladrones was located in storage thirty years back among cache of Roach comedies. Till then we’d seen stills from foreign versions but never the real thing in motion. Who knew for sure they ever existed? My Spanish teacher in high school, a refugee from Cuba, told me Laurel-Hardy ran in cinemas almost to the day he fled in 1959. Bet there are vaults down there yet to yield treasure. Hal Roach said his team did bigger business out of the country than in. Look how L&H were received when they visited and later performed in the Brit Isles. AI stats courtesy Google: Seattle’s Hispanic population in 1930 amounted to 15.9%, about 365,583. That population was surely drawn in, as would be curiosity seekers and those wanting double-dose of L&H. Few if any gag relies on language here. Is it safe to say sight comics were most liked worldwide of all film performers, silent or sound?