Who's for Tales Told Quick and Short?

 

Pulp Books, Pulp Movies --- Where's the Difference?

Remember when Arthur Mayer booked The Lost Patrol after nobody else wanted to? He knew what they did not … that The Lost Patrol was a Pulp Movie, one made with men, for men, of action. At least ones that dreamt of action. Most limited participation to slump in fleapit seats where exertion by others wash over them, life as lived vicarious through characters living fuller. Pulp reading did that for a sedentary majority, those not actually pearl-diving or private-detecting. Every kind of experience we would never know was put within reach of Pulps, Walter Mitty the character more men actually resembled, like it or don’t. Pulp magazines took you places you wanted to go without really going. None of dreary exposition like mainstream novels. Transport to fantasy got done within a paragraph, or someone else would be writing the next paragraph. Pulps sold way, way more than other books. Damn their eyes for waste upon such rubbish, but pulps were reading too. Did they educate well as anything taught by school or college? What vocabulary we get is got from what we choose to read. I’ll venture fans pulp-enough devoted could write same of their own after minimal exposure to the form. In fact, a lot of them did. How many distinguished scribes emerged in the twentieth century by rolling their own via pulps, “Big Little Books,” or Dime Novels? Radio taught too, like spoken word now. Then came television and everything after that was visual. Comic books especially. What is read anymore but “texts”? I’m awed by past scribes generating five, six thousand words per day for sake not of art but of eating. Penny-a-word was as often pulp’s rate. Raymond Chandler once lived on soup for five days till finally twenty dollars came through for a sold story.

Movie scripters led a largely pulp life, but at pay almost unseemly for its yield. Some felt guilty taking such money for junk they were obliged to write. Dream of any pulper was Hollywood and ease conferred, as told by Frank Gruber in a 1967 memoir, The Pulp Jungle. He had friends who made the jump to live large, like Steve Fisher who sold I Wake Up Screaming to Fox in 1941 for seventy-five hundred, “a very handsome price for a mystery.” This was up from two hundred fifty to five hundred customarily got by free-lancers from picture-makers during the thirties. Chandler took $3,500 from Fox for The High Window because it had been a successful novel, this after RKO gave him $2,000 for Farewell, My Lovely. Screenwriters knew the value of having a prior novel in their kit, status gotten above ones who toiled for flickers or had a pulp past. Best money came of invitation to work with seasoned directors, like Chandler called by Billy Wilder to help with Double Indemnity, a job he hated but for $10,500 Paramount paid. Enough pulp writers slid under Hollywood doors to influence storytelling there. Pulp Movies emerged from the liaison, factory-generated film much the better for speed and expertise these artisans brought to mass production they understood well. In fact, Hollywood was a rest cure for most. Frank Gruber never had life so good as when churning thrillers, westerns … many westerns, at feature-length and the more prolifically for television. A postwar paperback revolution fed genre formula like slop to hogs, spin-rack America insatiable for what cost a quarter and was enjoyed at half-mast attention. We may safely credit paperbacks for much called “noir,” even if smallest percentage of PB’s eventually got to screens.

Genres were fruit of pulpy trees, often disguised by lush production. Best pulp was purest, done cheapest at a least severe length. The fifties was Gold Era to feed off pulp or what was left of it, plus paperbacks taking pulp’s place. To westerns derived from pulp you’d not associate Red River, but Borden Chase wrote it, no one more adept at pulp than he. Series cowboys were pulp for youngsters or youth-at-heart, as were serials, latter an ongoing triumph of pulp sensibility. Lush and for-everybody westerns gave way to pulp depending on star standing and changed overall circumstance. Tom Mix was a nation’s hero in the twenties, came somewhat down with talkies to a series for Universal, his audience understood now to be Pulp Kids, whom he served splendidly with Destry Rides Again (1932), a Max Brand story which had sold a million copies and bought the author an Italian villa. Reality of pulp was ongoing status as Best-Selling American literature, whether intellects liked it or not. Mix rode pulp to the finish, his serial The Miracle Rider a masterpiece of the mindset, then radio where pulp was a guiding light, or voice. “Tom Mix” survived even unto comic books long after the man passed on. Horror was product more of pulps than other media, certainly movies which shied from the style once censorship and complaints became manifest. Still, there were Pulp Chills, if much milder than what magazines with their lurid covers pledged. These were cut-rate like what newsstands sold for dimes, and a dime for most part got you in to see Boris Karloff in his bent science lot for Columbia, then Bela Lugosi roughly the same when not grave despoiling at Monogram or PRC. Class horror was a done deal it seemed, but then came Val Lewton.

Lewton made poetic chillers that were designed as, and sold as, pulp. Pleasant surprise Cat People frustrated expectations but in a flattering way, a parlor, or auditorium, trick Lewton got away with but once. Follow-up titles and merchandising stayed lurid per RKO dictate, Lewton yanking bone from wolf mouths by denying what they came to see, I Walked With a Zombie pulp that proved to be something else, The Leopard Man not about a man becoming a leopard, but wearing the disguise of one. Watchers complained, exhibitors listened, receipts fell off. Ideal Pulp Chillers in concept were being made by a man determined not to supply them, frustrating to a studio wedded since way back to precepts of pulp, two-thirds of yearly output cut from cloth ragged as edge of a ten-cent magazine. Stars who kept prestige address elsewhere took downward drive to RKO, but served well needs of those who chose action rapid and uncomplicated. Richard Dix, Victor McLaglen, Chester Morris … these and more kept sleeves rolled up for a next fight to engage or mutiny to quell. Each would do enough at RKO to be genres in themselves. Maybe McLaglen listened to Arthur Mayer when The Lost Patrol blew into Gotham on Rialto wings, knew thenceforth who his audience was and determined never to let them down. Aforementioned names were combined where fighting pals was the text, two-for-one if second-featured for your single ticket, stories mighty familiar from past issues of Adventure or Argosy. McLaglen took a freak of an Academy Award in midst of brawling but didn’t let that swell his punched-up head. Remarkable what polish vets could apply to humble surface. Look especially at Dix for The Ghost Ship with Lewton, a pulp elevated to eloquent.

Hot off the Film Daily’s August 10, 1938 wire: “House record smashed at the Rialto on Broadway … biggest take in almost three years since Arthur Mayer took the house over … the picture is made to order for the Rialto trade.” And so it was for Smashing the Rackets, game but less gamey than yarns woven into Spicy Detective’s latest number, or other of pulps lining newsstands. RKO lived by limits publishers did not. One was that Chester Morris as a dynamic D.A. must not skirt due process to crack Bruce Cabot’s syndicate. A telling scene has Chet putting suspects behind closed door where it’s implied (by a recording device) that confessions will be beaten out of them, trickery revealed after miscreants outside are scared into owning up truth and enabling arrest by square shooter Morris. Pulp authority would administer torture for real or shoot the lot to hasten justice, difference being what could be done in print vis a vis cops cuffed by a strict screen Code. Film-depicted officers carried guns but were largely estopped from using them. Later noir detectives, private eyes especially, resorted seldom to firearms used willy-nilly in pulps, and certainly law must not be taken into one’s own hand. Constant dialogue warnings emphasized this, strict out-of-bounds to empty all six from your roscoe into thugs that have it coming. Cop-and- robbing toughened up after the war but could not keep pace with what paperbacks were giving, and for cheap. There emerged dividing lines between class noir and independents down-market enough to at least suggest freedoms pulp enjoyed. The Accused for instance from Paramount was flip side of crime coin from T-Men and others of independent origin, latter stripping kid gloves to serve their public rawer meat.

Pulp Noir brings out for many the best of a genre that, like other genres, and more so literature bound in paper and pocket-size, defined much of pastime in terms of cheapness and convenience. Screen noir was given over to independent filmmakers after major studios realized there was too little money in it (Zanuck memo-wondered why Fox should do them at all). RKO continued apace because theirs had been bare threads to begin with, so yes to Armored Car Robbery, The Threat, others B/W and peeping over one hour’s running time. Novels at twenty-five cent cost bred films made for seemingly not much more, The Killing Kubrick’s salute to stripped-down literature half-baked and in a hurry. Celebrated Touch of Evil came from a dog-eared paperback, many saying later on that these and ones like them were perfect wedding between two sorts of disreputable formats. Pretty soon it got to where majors stayed off crime and dark themes, unless stars were cast: Rogue Cop at Metro, Violent Saturday from Twentieth. A gimmick plus hot source material could help something humble seem special, like I, The Jury lately out on 3-D Blu-Ray to help us understand why people paid to see Biff Elliot play Mike Hammer ($1.6 million in worldwide rentals was better than most cheap noirs took). Kid Pulp Westerns would be displaced after the war by Plain Pulp Westerns designed for everybody plus kids, elements of the old left in (George “Gabby” Hayes kept working), and many in color, if otherwise economical. Frank Gruber wrote some, hirers knowing he’d be fast and moderately coherent (Silver City a fair example, his script from a Luke Short story). “Class” westerns stood out like twisted toes, High Noon too rich for posterity’s blood. If westerns must be A and with major stars, let Borden Chase write them, like with Anthony Mann output featuring J. Stewart.

Certain players seemed born to night-set and rain-slick, like Sterling Hayden, Victor Mature. They did Pulp Westerns too, by cartloads. Fellows like Rory Calhoun and Guy Madison hung their own shingles to be Pulp Cowboys and earn more independently than major companies were willing to pay. Pulp sensibility extended to science-fiction after top dogs failed to draw sufficient profit from spaceman themes, War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet dressed in long pants to go out and earn knickers money. Sci-fi would be cut henceforth from pulpwood to better satisfaction of many, then and maybe more so now, as look at love for a Brain from Planet Arous or even Plan 9 from Outer Space. Universities don’t teach pulp or paperbacks … or do they? Films from scurvy source often make our best films, so there is gateway to art for words otherwise printed, then forgot. There have been fads for lowly categories, cast-off-when-new genres. Film noir seems here to stay as idol from the old, where precode hot during the nineties seems less so now. Does old finally become too old? I remember the Rat Pack being celebrated, but that seems to have cooled. Have they become dangerous to like? Serials and series westerns went with generations that processed them new. I couldn’t coax Tom Mix or Rocketman upon anyone with a free meal or cruise tickets. Comedy seems stabilized. If you grew up liking Keaton, Chaplin, the lot, chances are you still do, but are there converts to the cause, and if so, how many per annum might we guess? I expressed surprise before that pulp enthusiasts still exist, let alone meet. Postwar paperbacks sell on eBay, the rarer ones for uncommon money, and I bet they even get read, especially since thank heaven, the things aren’t being freeze-dried into frightful look-but-never-touch slabs as are comic books.

Parkland Picks with Popcorn #6

 

Pop Goes: From Hell It Came, Urban Cowboy, and A Gathering of Eagles

FROM HELL IT CAME (1957) --- “Omnivorous” entered my vocabulary via 1964 TV listing for From Hell It Came, the word used to describe a tree feeding upon those upon whom “It” wishes to revenge itself. Other sci-fi had worse premises, few duller at executing them, though there is sedative effect and capacity to carry one back to sweet sleep of childhood, my daytime summon to Morpheus a mirror to what happened sixty years before when Hell’s omnivore was late night uprooted by Channel 12 out of Winston-Salem. Why endless dialogue to explain circumstance obvious to most childish of minds? An uprooted tree now ambulatory seeks those who oppressed it in life. Why take 71 minutes to explain such so clinically? From Hell It Came seems a cynical enterprise, fraud practiced upon 1957 children’s allowance and those who’d come to a drive-in to actually watch movies. Co-feature was The Disembodied and that wasn’t much better. Ones who care tend to be completist. They want all or nothing of 50’s science-fiction, none too obscure so long as it is sci-fi. I understand such mentality up to point of Reptilicus on multi-disc Blu-Ray with foreign version plus American release as part of package, for which many will rejoice. Merit matters less with sci-fi because what we want is fantastic content, a monster or two preferred, credible monsters optional, in fact the less credible the better. From Hell It Came played TCM in HD, and I see also that Warner Archive has a Blu-Ray. Any and all that is monstrous sells, it seems, and more power to their continuing to do so.

URBAN COWBOY (1980) --- Were there discarded mechanical bulls for sale after vogue for them passed in the early eighties? I recall a few let go after bars learnt their lesson a hard surface way, folks thrown, more than a few intoxicated, heads conked, shoulders broke. You had to sign a release to ride, but many sued anyhow. Hard truth to all: Don’t try imitating movies, no matter how popular. Urban Cowboy was made forty-five years ago. Seemed at the time it would rinse off by-then stink of disco and give us back to nature that was country/western, music of the people if show-bizzed out of natural state. “Gilly’s” of filming location fame went south when the site went Hollywood, doom assured by Andy Warhol and like metropolitans slumming by to profane the sawdust. John Travolta of Jersey origin seemed on surface wrong but proved just right and got the Texas spirit plus dance he adapted from Saturday Night Fever and Grease prior, a star after fashion of his idol James Cagney, who Travolta palled with and regarded his role model in addition to boyhood idol. Urban Cowboy stands among outstanding modern Texas treatments Giant, Hud, maybe others I’ve forgot or haven’t seen so far. Robert Evans of Godfather and Chinatown fame produced. I wish shelf life for such talent were longer then, H’wood set so on self-destruct to coke out generations of talent. Mickey Gilly looked back on Paramount trucks filling up his honky tonk lot when work started, the place never to be the same again. Initially an average size, Gilley and shadowy partner Sherwood Cryer added on till environ was five acres big, capacity three to four thousand at post-Cowboy peak.

Everyone wanted to experience Gilley’s and would drive from states away to do so. Gilley and Cryer “turned sideways” as former later put it, sued one another, followed by fire to swallow whole of the business, Cryer figured to have struck the match, or arranged for blaze. He and Gilley are both gone, Cryer’s name besmirched by suspicion re fire loss, though some defend him at You Tube comments and elsewhere. Seems to me based on Cryer’s legend and repute that he was sort of a Longhorn Moe Green. I’ve sometimes wondered what it would have been like to be raised in Texas, or Arizona, places like that. One could speculate as much of New York or Jersey after seeing Saturday Night Fever, but by my reckon you could keep Gotham other than for access to Automats, picture palaces, or closer proximity to 16mm collectors and memorabilia shows (and even Automats are years gone now --- so are poster shows for that matter). Point is culture of both NY and Texas are so distinct as to stamp anyone hailing from them, but then one could say a same of any distinct point of origin. Are there states regarded as plain vanilla and therefore unworthy of movies set within them? Drifting off subject I realize, but Urban Cowboy does make me sort of wish to have known Texas for more than just a couple of visits there. Like Saturday Night Fever, Urban Cowboy has compelling conflicts beside the music, dance, and Gilley glitz. Travolta vs. Scott Glenn over Debra Winger has real tension for Glenn being wiry and dangerous, this the actor’s breakout part. Industry today would be bleak ground for a Scott Glenn equivalent, him and certainly his “Wes Hightower” character the very definition of “problematic.” There was a soundtrack for Urban Cowboy to bode for country among biggest waves music ever rode, though some said purity of the form was watered by west (and east) coast finagling. No style was ever “pure” to begin with, but Cowboy at least helped give country/western urban appeal, and so far has kept it that way.

A GATHERING OF EAGLES (1963) --- Was A Gathering of Eagles a last hurrah for US military preparedness? Well, maybe not if you consider the Top Gun movies of much later. Eagles is sober/serious in showing sacrifice men made to keep us safe from enemy attack. Would we have been eventual targets had these guardians stood down? Cold war protection policies would be called into question because of course nothing actually happened during their watch, that being whole idea of standing watch of course. Rock Hudson, Rod Taylor, and guarding crew make message clear with aid of Air Force hardware made available when films did not disparage them, a relationship not to last much longer. In fact, A Gathering of Eagles soon seemed a relic in terms of attitude if not execution, off radars since 1963 save a Universal By-Demand disc from old elements, but at least they are intended scope and not “adapted,” so on a good enough screen or wall mount, it will do. A Gathering of Eagles is essentially Rock Hudson doing what Gregory Peck did in Twelve O’Clock High, only these aren’t combat missions, but test alerts where tension comes of speed getting aloft and preventing errors that would queer a real response if one were needed. Stress on personal lives is focal, Hudson’s marriage in jeopardy, Barry Sullivan drinking too much, ousted because of it, then attempting suicide, Rod Taylor too right a guy to drive junior officers ruthlessly as he should. Strategic Air Command is no place to be soft says Rock, relationships be hanged where performance must come first. Enforcer to that is Kevin McCarthy, counting seconds upon which rank and authority hang. Procedure is the show here, A Gathering of Eagles all-systems go to maintain attention and interest.

Film Noir #30

Noir: Cloak and Dagger, Cornered, Coroner Creek, and Count the Hours

CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946) --- Gary Cooper as secret agent for the Allies was ideal Cooper casting at 1946 or any time, no learning curve for his nuclear scientist drafted into espionage work, seemingly seasoned from a start and equal to Axis tricks coped with on enemy soil because he is after all Gary Cooper. Cloak and Dagger was for producer Milton Sperling, a Warner son-in-law who hung independent shingle that was “United States Pictures” using WB money and talent, negatives reverting to him after general release. For this reason, Cloak and Dagger was difficult to track in latter years, accessible now on Blu-Ray. Revealed was workings of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and measures taken to keep Germans from harnessing the atom before we’d utilize same for weaponry. Cooper is nobody’s fool and fights dirty, adroit also with women for and against our side. Minus mannerisms by forties ingrained, it’s refreshing to see him tough under direction of Fritz Lang, who I hope had leeway with content he was well suited for. We’re warned of how close Germany was to nuke supremacy, plus there’s alert as to others laying in possible wait to develop deadliest weapons for postwar aggression. Mere secrets in a briefcase, or what an inventor carries in his head, won’t add up to fraction of threats vaster and for real, but movies deal on simple terms, “McGuffins” a usual shorthand, that is threat a single hero can credibly overcome. Too much science thins soup and could cause confusion. Let Gary Cooper or like representative of capable manhood spare us full annihilation and leave detail of how he did it to imagining. Enough mainstream magazines would explain implications of the bomb now that at least parts of info were declassified. All that need be understood was Gary Cooper as spy for our side and he had better win (and by release date obviously did) or we’d be obliterated. Mere thought of such possibility made Cloak and Dagger an urgent sit for 1946, and source for watching joy since.

CORNERED (1946) --- Early instance of an ex-G.I. tracking those responsible for atrocity overseas, Cornered a follow-up to Dick Powell’s image modification with Murder, My Sweet. Choice was to stay a tough guy, be a detective and what all, or a la Bogart/Cagney, join wrong sides of the law ... Powell adjusted their act by being embittered instead, at least for this noteworthy occasion, his a most damaged soldier vet to serve films so far. Fredric March, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell would come home to renew normalcy, Powell staying on hostile ground to even scores. The war never ended for many who served, but Hollywood stayed mostly clear of them, the idea of revenge upon former enemies too negative a concept to fit with a world being rebuilt. Did real-life P.O.W.’s use occupation opportunity to track down guards and commandants who had tortured them? Wouldn’t anyone, given the determination and physical wherewithal? Powell tracks his wife’s killer finally to South America hideout and beats the man to death with his fists, a shocking finale I’m surprised got by the Code. Cornered was like a last venting of spleen upon fascism (released 11/45). Someone had to work out some rage, and Powell was it. He’d not give a performance so intense again. Device of wartime fugitives repairing to Latin corners was fresh and ahead of Hitchcock doing the same for Notorious, combine of exotic background with sinister forces finding refuge within. To evidence here, it appeared tropical paradise was paradise also for those who committed worst crimes against humanity back in Europe. Powell traverses a mine field of changed names and concealed identities. If only real-life could unmask miscreants with such luck and pluck as he does. Mengele ducked authority for whole of life that remained to him, hiding if barely in Brazil and lasting to 1979 (he could even have gone to the movies to see Gregory Peck play him). Powell builds his case with shards of burnt paper and addresses he steals, not relying on military authority he doesn’t trust anyway. Cornered is bitter tea then, noir as true as could be applied to get-even themes. Warner has a DVD on one of its noir box sets.

CORONER CREEK (1947) --- Randolph Scott entered into partnership with producer Harry Joe Brown to do his westerns at least a little better than everyone else’s. Coroner Creek deals as frank a get-even theme as was possible under the Code, doing so on noir terms clearly an outcome of modern-set dark dwellings at a peak of exposure if not popularity by 1947. Some rules are steadfast however, which means Scott may track his quarry but not be the instrument of death per mission … that, as is explicitly explained, belongs to a higher judge. “Vengeance is mine,” sayeth Marguerite Chapman to which so-far unenlightened Randy replies “an eye for an eye,” a debate heard in movies, or set forth in titles where silent, since images first flickered upon screens. Let the Deity even scores where deserved, as He’ll do it better and often bloodier than mortals with a grudge. Characters are layered, their problems contemporary. A dark-dyed villain has an alcoholic wife who gives him worse problems than stagecoach raids he conducts. Confrontations are lit like noir at RKO, and certainly Scott’s mission is borrowed off lone avenger Dick Powell in Cornered, a same in all ways save a near-century later backdrop. Action is brutal in accordance with license granted by a real war and understanding that fights need never be “fair” again. Hired hood Forrest Tucker knocks Scott unconscious then stomps his gun hand to disable it. Upon waking, Scott bests Tucker and stomps his hand to square accounts, both so crippled for the rest of the picture. This was something new to the west, a knowing that death or mutilation were things that might happen quick and rendered by means pitiless. Even Roy Rogers got beat up by heavies akin to Axis opposition we had fought and by Grace of G overcome. Coroner Creek was noticed by some who sorted westerns in search of unique ones (too few critics did). Fans taking them however they could were pleased, but little more so than with whatever Randy did before or after. Still, Coroner Creek earned above what was typical for the genre at its level … $1.5 million in domestic rentals. So there was reward for added effort, which Scott-Brown would remember when time came for their 50’s “Renown” group, a best brace of westerns any team ever did. Saw Coroner Creek on Starz via Amazon in HD, its Cinecolor enhanced from limits imposed in 1947, but who’s to carp, because it sure looks good. 

COUNT THE HOURS (1953) --- Director Don Siegel remembered this in terms of rush and cheapness, a case with most of what he was hired to helm during the 50's, but with TV biting an industry's rear, how could one spend beyond absolute minimum without stars or a proven property? Count The Hours had neither, being cast with lesser or faded names (MacDonald Carey, Teresa Wright) in an off-the-rack yarn cut from bolt that was Carey's previous The Lawless, which had lost money. He is again the impossibly noble crusader for justice, a lawyer waiving not only his fee, but all of personal funds, to defend a migrant worker accused of double murders. That happens in real life about like Martians landing, but pic-makers had fool ideas of charity among Bar members, thus this and just-as-silly Anatomy of a Murder, in which Jim Stewart went similarly outlandish length on behalf of a client. Count The Hours was independent-produced by Benedict Bogeaus, a jolly-roger sort who didn't mind stiffing partners to save his own slice of cake. Siegel watched him close for fast shuffles and counted hours in terms of a mere nine days it took to complete the pic. Outcome was actually pretty good for one done so quickly, Siegel helped lots by moody lensing by noir master John Alton. Count The Hours needs to be remastered by owning Warners so we can better enjoy it. The RKO-released show had L.A. distinction of supporting sex-changed Christine Jorgensen's stage act at the Orpheum, but still disappointed ticket-wise, according to Variety. It plays occasional on TCM.

Grinching a Sacred Cow

This, George, Is the Distance to Put Between Yourself and Bedford Falls

It's a Wonderful Lie

Posted again after four day rest and reevaluation, having softened text a bit, self-censorship applied not unlike cherished days of the Code. Am I still too severe on this esteemed classic?

Would Frank Capra or his writers have chosen to live in Bedford Falls? I say Pottersville was more their speed. It certainly was Hollywood’s speed. Mine too if I’m honest. What is Bedford Falls but a place to be managed and manipulated through an unsatisfied life giving it up time and again for plain folk looking after Number One as surely but less honestly than Mr. Potter, who yes, is my hero, just like Edward Arnold was in Meet John Doe and Claude Rains in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (truth is I want these to always get what they want in every picture they did). Mr. Potter speaks truth to suffocating power that is small town expectation and do-right-thing by ones like George Bailey who, come to think of it, is the only Bedford Fallsian to lay down sacrifice of any sort while all of others suck life blood out of him. Me watching George buy the beat-up suitcase to world travel: Go George, no run George, to the train station, get aboard. Never mind even a toothbrush. And don’t leave a forwarding address. Check back after ten years to find out what happened while you bridge-built and island hopped. We only go around once, George. Your neighbors know it. Mr. Potter certainly knows it.

But Face It, George Will Never See These Places, and Where's the Happy Ending in That?

Everyone in Bedford Falls wants a friend like George who will give and give and then some. Does real life laugh at Georges of the world? I want Capra to have made It’s a Wonderful Life in 1932 with Lee Tracy as George Bailey, or better yet Ted Healy. I don’t get a sense of creatives here really believing their bromides. And what’s so wrong about Pottersville? Looks like a live wire spot to me. I’d like going inside those bars and clubs, maybe find out what Violet Bick did to be dragged out bodily by cops. I’m guessing Mr. Potter manufactured neon among sidelines because look at those fabulous fronts, and so many! A tenderloin any town could revel in. Nobody judging you here, George, or lining up for you to forfeit hope and dreams to put roofs over their heads. Maybe George should stick around Pottersville a week or two and find out if maybe it’s an improvement. Think of freedom he'd get for not having been born. How many middle-age men stooped by responsibility and disappointment would gladly swap places with new and clean-slate George? I bet plenty. George may have lots to thank Clarence for if only he sticks around Pottersville to smell the roses. How about “Bailey’s Palace” with George a latter-day Blackie Norton? He could regale drinker pals and revolving mistresses with tales of a life he misspent before this new one was angel-sent. So who is this guy Bailey that seems to know the score on everybody in town? Never mind, figures an impressed if bemused Potter: this is my kind of sharp-thinking partner to trim suckers coming and going at Pottersville. Yes, it can be a wonderful life after all.

Mary Smashes the Record When George Momentarily Slips Free of Her Snare

Sam Wainwright has the right idea. He just goes and does what he pleases. Sam has everyone’s number early on. He got rich for seeing life as it is. Sam doesn’t have to fly from Europe to save hick bacon back home. He just wires cash enough to beat all their time at rescuing George and themselves. Frank Albertson played Sam. I wish he had been Sam again in Psycho, because his “Tom Cassidy” is essentially the same guy, realists both, and bulged with money for it (“I never carry more than I can afford to lose”). Speaking of others: Would maybe a little jail term curb Uncle Billy’s big mouth? Him shooting it off, loudly insulting Mr. Potter at the bank, leads directly to Potter happily lifting the $8000 that will put the Bailey bank square behind an eight ball. And what of birds and squirrels loose around the Saving and Loan, Uncle Billy drinking on the job and overall dimwittedness? Just another pack for George to carry on his back. Yes, more I think of it, Pottersville would be his deliverance, if George had sense enough to realize it. Mary Manipulate stakes her quarry and wins with barely a struggle. It is she, not George, who lassoes the moon, Sam the lucky third party on the phone with loose gal nuzzling him and NY night lights and life beckoning from without. Sam, you are my takeaway role model from It’s a Wonderful Life.

Keep Digging Your Hole and Then Jump In, Uncle Billy, as Fault for $8000 Loss Lies Largely with You

Lionel Barrymore was gruff but essentially kind Dr. Gillespie in MGM’s Blair Hospital series. As Mr. Potter, he is gruff and not kind, but like Gillespie, makes sense. Such was cobra in the basket that was Barrymore. He was never outright wrong, even where villainous. Audiences then, as in knowing Lionel better than we would, listened when the sage spoke. They weighed his words, figured him at least part right whatever he said. George gets his back up and brays at Potter, a by comparison young man trying to take down oaken age and wisdom that is Potter and by extension all of characters Barrymore played. Niggling is possibility that Potter has a point, “ideals without common sense can ruin this town” an argument similar to what Mr. Milton told Al Stephenson during a same year, only their difference of opinion didn’t last a lifetime as George and Mr. Potter’s undoubtedly will. And what happens with the next Building and Loan crisis, or ones after that? Rest assured a determined Potter, endlessly provoked by George and his borrowers, will get the Pottersville he wants, age and a lifetime of give-give having left George spent-spent, Bedford Falls to submit like Hadleyville had the Miller gang taken over. 

Thick Eyebrows Were Always Movie Shorthand for Spinster-Losers, So Am I a Loser for Preferring Them?

Endless apocrypha say It’s a Wonderful Life “failed,” reality being but three surpassing it for domestic rentals on RKO ledgers: The Kid from Brooklyn, Song of the South, and The Best Years of Our Lives, all, including Wonderful Life, outside projects distributed by the company. Nothing produced in-house at RKO that year came close to It’s a Wonderful Life. High negative cost was the bugaboo and cause of loss for a show well liked and certainly a hit in terms of attendance. We could wish to know what outcoming crowds said in 1946-47. Theirs surely was a different experience from ours of fifty-years-going embrace of It’s a Wonderful Life as a certified Christmas classic. Public domain status helped, notwithstanding often lousy prints. Paramount and NBC seized exclusivity by asserting it was copyrighted after all, a specious claim I wish someone would challenge, but a feature old-becoming-too-old makes for battle less worth waging. There is of late a 4K, okay if wonky in spots. I pushed the accelerator at times, George rousting Uncle Billy as if he’d do anything other than forgive the old man and cover for him (Mr. Potter is quietly amused upon realizing that) … George saving Clarence which leads to lengthy explanation of who Clarence is and why he's there, me wanting to get quicker to Pottersville … George exulting to be back among alleged living, kissing the knob off the stair banister and such. Stewart wearies a little with all this, or again, is it me? Felt Liberty Valance withdrawal symptoms at times. It’s a Wonderful Life cuts close because my grandfather stayed home and ran the family business (clothing, dry goods, mercantile) so that his eight younger brothers and sisters could go to college, he and his father having opened the store in 1899 when my Grandfather was eighteen. He was beloved by his family and the local people he helped over many years. He started a bank in the twenties that went down in the Crash and resulting Depression with all hands. My grandfather tried making up losses suffered by the community but could not cover them all. He lived another twenty years less wonderfully, events having imitated art, or in this instance, prefigured it. 

Spun Off Greenbriar Book, Showmen, Sell It Hot #1

 

Showmen: Back to Oz, Ads That Winked, Ramon Rouses, and Iced Air Meets Vaudeville

THE WIZARD OF OZ in 1949 --- 1949 is understood to be when The Wizard of Oz went finally into profit. The “Masterpiece Reprint” as tendered by Metro collected one million in domestic rentals, $787,000 in foreign rentals, and posted $1.1 million in worldwide profit. Expense included a fresh campaign and prints, ads spun around current doings of the star cast now bigger stars than ten years before, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, and Jack Haley active and distinct marquee assets along with “never better” Judy Garland nearing end of her MGM employment. The Masterpiece Reprints were initiated after WWII to cover what otherwise might be product shortage for Leo, fulfill requests for certain oldies, and hopefully secure first-run money for the best of them. MGM sold these like new releases, terms no different from features fresh out of labs. The Wizard of Oz had lost money in 1939 but would not now. The million gain suggested an evergreen in the making, confirmation being a 1955 encore on ersatz “wide screens,” response again rosy to tune of $448K in domestic rentals, $483K foreign, and $577K in profit columns. Lease to CBS for a single broadcast the following year plus option for more suggested library stock could thrive on networks, one executive however reminding colleagues that there was only one Wizard of Oz, and don’t expect others to perform so well. Right he was, otherwise we might have had Meet Me in St. Louis annually along with any number of MGM musicals on a same basis, but again, and understood by all, there was no place like Oz.

Back for 1955 Dates, This Time on Ersatz Wide Screens

The Wizard of Oz has tumbled from specialness it had. What was yearly event on networks would become periodic filler on TCM. Theatrical saw Oz through a first half of seventies placement alongside whatever else might appeal to youngsters as part of a series that was MGM Children’s Matinee. Prints were new, if not so vibrant on Eastman stock, this mattering less to viewers many of which had for years been seeing Oz in black-and-white at home. Home video by the late seventies allowed fans to record The Wizard of Oz and watch endless from there, MGM/UA obliged to if possible improve image and sound so they could offer something special on cassette to diehards. “Restoration” became a byword, Oz a precious pearl to polish and keep on polishing. They’d even revive the old Technicolor dye-transfer process for a nineties reissue, anything to suggest something like we’d not seen before. A more recent wild card was The Wizard of Oz in 3-D, surprisingly good at least to mine eyes, Oz an ideal subject for depth per rich foregrounds in most every scene, compositions circa 1939 seeming to look toward three-dimension future. One could watch Oz in 3-D and not go back to Kansas again, Warners arguing against that with yet further enhance that is 4K. Where now possible to lay depth and clarity like this to any title, how about King Kong, The Adventures of Robin Hood, any of a hundred we could name at random? I notice even The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari available on 4K from Kino. Where indeed do we go from here?

HER HIGHNESS AND THE BELLBOY (1945) --- Faint cause to recall this, unless Lamarr is one’s dish, or comedy less funny but typical of time when MGM mostly bungled at the genre. So why mention Her Highness and the Bellboy? I say for ways it was sold, one here from hundreds offered in 1945. Technique was varied as theatres using a same attraction, no two ways a same. Management had to learn their audience and how it was likeliest to jump. Her Highness and the Bellboy was Hedy Lamarr and little else, ongoing bane of ordinary Metro product dependent on stars to prop formula few would care about otherwise. Lamarr was for sex but they couldn’t all be White Cargo, her acting as in H.M. Pulham Esq. no arrow toward future things. She’d stay statuary or exotic as in forbiddingly so. Lamarr as “Tondelayo” or Robert Taylor’s ill-advised consort in Lady of the Tropics lured respective men to doom, otherness baked in thanks to Lamarr’s otherworld beauty and accent to further a distance. To do comedy saw her still remote as a Princess thawed by Robert Walker’s Bellboy who translates slang and jive-talks for her as cameras caress. To sell meant to suggest, not what an audience would get, but what they wished they could get. Chicago’s Apollo Theatre teases with time-honed art of stars winking at what turns out to be nothing at all. Peruse of myriad ads from this period sees the device in common, if commonplace, use. Idea was to imply coupling to follow Hedy’s “Royal Command to Love,” Bob bashful, “… but could he give room service!” Anyone who regularly went to movies knew winks and saucy asides meant no more than they would in humdrum real life, but hope sprang eternal that perhaps this time things would be different. At least laughs might compensate for empty promise of ads. Her Highness and the Bellboy doubled its negative cost in US rentals alone, plus foreign, to generate $916K in profit. Beware Bob as role model, however, “Hey, Angel Puss! Hey Toots! Let’s Smooch!” likelier in real life to provoke a punch in the snoot.

PRIVATE NUMBER and RAMON NOVARRO --- What would our perception of Ramon Novarro have been in 1936? I mean seeing him live on the Chicago stage singing and dancing with his own “pretentious” (why that word?) revue cast, including song-and-dance sister Carmen Novarro. Here was Ben-Hur himself live! Novarro wanted to sing more than act. He built a theatre, in fact an outbuilding adjunct to his house, where he’d perform for friends and show movies. MGM preferred Novarro romantic, but his was more a specialized and non-formulaic appeal. He’d last on stages so long as there were those who’d remember him from movies. Latter-day Metro hired him to play Mexican grandees, RKO having a spot for him as police investigating R. Mitchum in The Big Steal. He even turned up years later on a Wild, Wild West episode, which I looked at and thought Isn’t that Ben-Hur from fotos in Brownlow’s The Parade’s Gone By book? Novarro has Roy Smeck as music support for the ’36 Chicago engagement, Smeck familiar for being among first Vitaphone recitals, so good with guitar that manufacturers named a model after him. Smeck laid the instrument on his lap and plucked same sitting down, his and other old Vitaphones where great performing is at. Feature-in-support on Chicago occasion was Private Number, which Greenbriar visited before. Note how Chicago misinforms on it. “Ardent … unquenchable … dangerous!” One thing to lie, but why so forcefully? “Backstairs love” implies acts explicit, 1936 a least likely of years for that. A then-public understood economic imperative to exaggerate. Robert Taylor and Loretta Young promised nothing apart from clinch piled upon clinch, him a “millionaire’s son” and her “common clay.” Enough said it seems, but Private Number needed more than those 80 minutes as fair exchange for admissions, thus a Ramon Novarro or in smaller situations, a co-feature or oodles of shorts to make dimes please like dollars.

NOW OR NEVER plus VAUDEVILLE --- Not sure where this particular Majestic Theatre was located, but it’s sure “Iced Air” was the sell, theirs “The coolest spot in town!” This was 1921, early for air conditioning as we’d know it, 1925 occasion for a first installation at the Rivoli Theatre in Times Square. Efforts prior to that amounted to electric fans, these often blown through frozen blocks to achieve “iced air” effect, ersatz AC better than swelter in summer and often houses closed when heat was severest. The Majestic was “Big Time Vaudeville” plus “First Run Feature Pictures,” Never Weaken a “feature” for purpose of placement at top of that week’s program, “funny, bespeckled grinning laugh-maker” that was Harold Lloyd, a half hour of him basis for fifteen, thirty-five, fifty cent admissions, depending on time of day and age of patrons. Nola St. Claire is among distant past that is vaudeville, no movies using her it seems, nor Wiki to mark her coming or eventual going. There are those who intimately know vaudeville long gone out with tide, but I’m not among them. Suffice that Nola led the ensemble that was ventriloquism, a “humorous trickster sawing a lemon in half,” which raises query if lemons were harder to halve in 1921, Sherrie Mathews with “Personality Plus” and turning out to be a man, in fact a man who died selfsame year he appeared at the Majestic. Hazel Moran works here with lariats, was known too for “a running fire of chatter.” Hazel claimed to be the only woman spinning eighty-five feet of rope on stage. For the record, her act generally lasted six minutes. Too bad we could never reclaim any of these entertainers unless they dipped in films, many doing so, but far from all, and so far as I know, none of these.