Slow Down Soldiers, the War is Over

 

Whatever Else He Might Be, Veteran William Bendix Will Not Be Revealed as a Killer in The Blue Dahlia

Postwar Push to Tame Former Fighters --- Part Two

Not a few were apprehensive about returning servicemen. Hadn’t many killed as part of duty to their country? What of such impulse remained? PTSD was years away from being properly understood, or so medics tell us. Films were careful not to cast war wounded as subsequent killers. William Bendix comes home with a steel plate in his head and seems capable of home ground killing in The Blue Dahlia, this initial outcome for the story till wiser heads warned that it was no good letting a troubled vet be also a murderer. Humphrey Bogart and William Prince in Dead Reckoning arrive stateside to be ribboned for valor till events get latter killed and starts former investigating. Violence committed will be by civilians who stayed home while hero Bogart fought a clean war and wants justice not with guns till forced so by criminals worse than enemies he faced overseas. Dick Powell won’t be shed of war worries till he finds fascist holdovers responsible for his French wife’s death (Cornered), him tending to unfinished business as opposed to mere killing out of uniform. No one’s combat was over so long as war criminals ran loose, this why Alan Ladd goes back to Italy as Captain Carey USA, his license to kill renewed thanks to traitors who’d not yet answered for their acts. For most warriors returning, issues were simple as getting back families and hopefully the old job, deeper troubles explored but more tolerably so by support casts, Robert Mitchum in Till the End of Time, brave-cast and performing Harold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives. Not comforting were servicemen resorting to fists, let alone weapons, when minor things go wrong, like when Russell’s Homer attacks “Mr. Mollett” in a drug store for ill-chose words, followed by Dana Andrews’ Fred Derry laying a roundhouse blow to show shocked onlookers that here is a veteran far from rehabilitated.

Thanks for breakfast, Ma. Now let me tell you about stinking foxholes.

Way with firearms and bayonets was stuff of ended war and no longer to be admired. Those who had fought most fiercely would be scrap like bombers not wanted now that peace was won. We needed John Wayne as Sergeant Stryker in Sands of Iwo Jima to take that island enroute to victory, but once done, as in 1949 when the movie came out, there’d be no place for Stryker’s sort of emphatic warring, him dying preferred coda for his kind of soldiering. Sensitive sort like John Agar with marriage and family plans will better appreciate and enjoy the peace. What we dealt with on real life terms was disabusing former enemies of ideas to renew offensive, thus Japan stripped of its military and German citizens obliged to “de-Nazify,” a process heavier than inadequate Allied personnel could hoist. Movies confronted same but on comfort terms of kidding it with 1948’s A Foreign Affair, or same year’s bath in sentiment that was The Search. Biggest domestic worry was making sure muster-out meant leaving violent inclination behind. Civilians discomfited by what returned men had gone through was part-why wisest of those men chose never to speak of combat experiences. Cliff Harper’s mother in Till the End of Time doesn’t want to hear of “stinking foxholes” while serving waffles she has lovingly prepared. Mom just wants her boy back intact and more/less what he was before leaving home four years ago. Gregory Peck shocks Jennifer Jones in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit by telling her he killed seventeen men close-up, as in “I could see their faces,” not something she would ever want to know, but stress and circumstance forces his hand, and out it comes.

Let Me Alone with My Memories and Regrets, says Ex-Gunslinger Johnny Ringo. How Many Troubled Vets Identified With Him?

PTSD as a plot driver wasn’t often used. “Shell-shock” for explanation might come up, or general malaise over experiences in a war, for instance Tyrone Power haunted over incidents from the Great War in period-set The Razor’s Edge, his recite of combat horror focused more on what he observed rather than acts he committed. It was vital for ex-servicemen to maintain calm after coming home. Any sort of violent expression was best left at European or Pacific fronts. A last thing wanted, especially by movies, was veterans as objects of fear or dread. Man’s penchant toward force was better explored in westerns and a time period wherein aggression could be a natural, in fact necessary, survival mechanism. Even there might be post-war messaging, old guard John Wayne in Red River given to shoot-first philosophy countered and eventually displaced by progressive Montgomery Clift who is equally good with a gun but is loathe to use it. Audiences were said to be shocked when James Stewart rammed Dan Duryea’s face against a bar counter in Winchester’73, but it was Stewart’s expression when doing it that chilled them more, for here was a man out of control, momentarily, but all the time it takes to kill. Stewart having served and in thick of action lent layers to western work he’d do, a reason why he found popularity with the genre, not for nothing that Universal limited outbursts for follow-up Bend of the River and family-friendlier Stewarts to come. Westerns otherwise spoke a same, killer ways belonging to pasts to now be lived down, sometimes death a better penance to pay. Gregory Peck as The Gunfighter does his title deeds prior to events we see, but it’s enough to be told how lethal he once was and how doomed he now is for past acts. To kill even in self-defense was fainter excuse to kill by post-war reckoning.

Such as These Never Played Fair, and We Could Wonder How Heroes Ever Prevailed

Shane rides into a lawless valley, saves homesteader’s bacon, but must ride off alone for having relied on his sidearm. Ingrates don’t want Shane around their picnic and won’t recognize his ridding them of threat that is the Ryker brothers plus deadly minions. Violence however applied was to be abhorred, a stiff price paid by every man who protects. Director George Stevens very deliberately let Elisha Cook Jr. be projected backward with Jack Palance’s pistol fire to convey what a bullet could do, Stevens shunning “comfortable” deaths movies had dealt before war service taught the director what it really meant to be shot. Rock Hudson serves a prison term for outlawry in The Lawless Breed and is afterward repelled by guns, but is it too late to prevent a teenaged son emulating his past? Again the sacrifice must be supreme. To kill for any reason was to be forever marked, to kill for revenge meant consign to a hell of one’s own from which there’d be no return or redemption. Gregory Peck in The Bravados (1958) prays he’ll be forgiven for offing the wrong men for assault and murder of his wife, Henry King as director exacting a high-as-Stevens toll upon men leaving law to follow vigilante impulse. Both Stevens and King spoke specifically to their westerns as statements, King old enough not to have been active in the last war, but knowing from experience how to make his message felt. Against contemporary settings came film noir, not defined as such during its heyday, but oft-engaged by war themes and what effects lingered from service abroad. Noirists who were veterans tended to be more sinned against than sinning. They walked alone like John Hodiak (Somewhere in the Night) or watched each other’s back like ex-servicemen in Crossfire. Glenn Ford has old war buddies in The Big Heat to protect his little daughter from vengeful hoodlum Lee Marvin, but thankfully they aren’t called upon to use their weapons. Bad women in noir could tempt veterans they knew had at least potential for violent action. Gloria Grahame reminds Glenn Ford in Human Desire that after all, he killed in war, so why not now when he can have her plus a cache of money for easy act of doing away with her husband?

These Two Fought Like Mad Dogs for Twelve Whole Chapters. Wore Me Out!

Deadly force was better presented as abstraction, a child’s world as lived in Grimm fairy tales, or “Action” as supplied by serials, cartoons, and B westerns, punches endlessly thrown but nobody shown to die. Seldom did cowboys spill blood. If a gun was shot from a miscreant’s hand, we’d not see holes in a thumb or forefinger as one might expect in real life. Chapterplay combatants fisted copiously, one I lately saw Republic’s Government Agents vs. Phantom Legion being twelve chapters of two goodies fighting same two baddies to repetitive chorus of breakaway chairs and staccato music striking same notes over and again. Mouse Trouble of recent view has Tom reading a book on how to subdue Jerry, him in receipt of dynamite with a fuse that ignites the instant he lights it. In fact, all violence directed to child audiences was “cartoonish” as in harmless, unlike with for-general-patronage features where stakes were, as with life, much higher. Irony was that as roughness ramped with abandonment of the Code, public (read nanny) concern was redirected toward taming of cartoon content, not just new ones, but those older as well, thus cat Tom, Warners’ Coyote, the rest (plus us), denied effects of explosions. Grown-up models for conduct, that is male stars burdened by “responsibility,” could no more shoot first or in cold blood than would Roy Rogers or Rex Allen, never mind how they might be abused by heavies, latter having lots more fun it seemed. Well, who would you rather be, Jack Palance or Elisha Cook, Jr.? Mainstream names after the war adjusted their image to fight fair but be rugged doing so. James Stewart could be neurotic and obsessive, but as with government agents against phantom legionnaires, he’d never shoot a man from behind.

Greg Waits Ten Years to Tell Wife JJ of Wartime Killing Experience, Then Empties Both Barrels When Stress Gets a Better of Him

People still say John Wayne was simplistic with his image and presentation, but I don’t think so. His were several personas over a long stay on screens, notable one I call his “Gentle Giant” phase. This was after the war, leading men in contact with gentler selves. Yes, there was Red River and Sands of Iwo Jima for Wayne, but also there came Angel and the Badman, Tycoon, more where he could be courtly to women, less argumentative perhaps with men. Age became him in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. He’d be a right Dad and coach to football player boys in Trouble Along the Way, refreshing to those who’d thought Wayne too hard a tack. The Quiet Man, then Hondo, capped move toward a man women and children could gravitate to, Wayne’s image done with shoot-first and now ready to meet halfway if not more with domesticity and civic responsibility. Postwar Wayne could also be sad in isolation. His characters serve useful purpose in The High and the Mighty and The Searchers, but pasts haunt in both and there seems no route back to a community’s embrace. These and others gave texture to the Wayne image till sixties, and his approaching 60’s, went patriarchal direction, less interesting, but then age as we all learn offers fewer options. Wayne could never have borrowed Clint Eastwood’s act (closest: McQ), Eastwood ultimately borrowing Wayne’s with Unforgiven long after his senior model was gone. Influences from, and behaviors modified, by the war peaked, then fell as the fifties gave way to changed attitude of the sixties. Gregory Peck as The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit seriously pondered his war traumas, saw ten-years later life changed by them, then scant five years further found the actor taking down German armor at Navarone to show how we need study war no more at serious levels. Whatever job Peck plus associates started, The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, numerous others, would finish.

Lay Those Pistols Down ...

 

No Guns for Our Home, Sweet Home, Counsels Mrs. Cody

Movies Taming Toxic Males --- Part One

Wasn’t enough teaching us to be civilized, movies had to constantly remind us to stay civilized, responsible moviemaking when such thing prevailed long ago. Violence was abhorred except as a last resort, as in provoked, defending life, so on. Now that we had our empire called America, it was incumbent to keep hearts and prairies pure. Dodge City only half-kidded when Alan Hale, formerly of wild inclination, joins the town’s “Pure Prairie League” to tame his fighting instinct. Gunplay we’d get in films came always with a lecture deploring such conduct. Gary Cooper as The Plainsman kills on behalf of advancing civilization, to make the frontier “safe” as President Lincoln directs in an opening segment. Hollywood agreed that the only way to tame the west was with guns, but never was this to be openly endorsed. Always there had to be spinach with the sweets. Cooper as Wild Bill Hickock, real-life personage of untamed times, is shunned and feared by polite society taking over his former free range, Hickock a bad influence and told so. Lifelong pal Buffalo Bill Cody marries, and a first command from wife Helen Burgess is for him to lose Wild Bill for a friend. Hickock’s counterargument is persuasive but ignored: I never was a murderer. I never did fight unless put upon, to which Mrs. Cody simple-replies, Though shall not kill, putting us all on defense for having enjoyed Cooper/Hickock on kill setting and hopeful he’ll stay there. After all, isn’t this why we pay ways in to see The Plainsman? Put away your guns, Mr. Hickock, she insists, what right have you to judge who is to live or die? Here was cold bath we got for heroes conquering the west. That being done and finished well before 1936 when The Plainsman was made, no more should we view these as figures to emulate. To admire them in hindsight was sentiment to be moderated, The Plainsman careful to collect tolls for each ounce of lead Coop pours into villainy. Today we want and largely get modern “heroes” that massacre willy-nilly (look at John Wick), and ache at old films that preach over each fallen varmint.

Wild Bill Writes His 30's Epitaph with Every Skunk He Shoots

Hickock totes up a body count but knows for each one he’s closer to oblivion that will be his own. The west is gettin’ to be a new kind of place. What room is there goin’ to be for a two-gun plainsman?, admission he makes moments before being shot from behind by town-dressed cowardice that would never take him face-on. The film industry, in fact every sort of industry, had more than vested interest in keeping the west, in fact all points, safe for folk to gather in close quarters and be entertained by right thinkers who’d keep a lid on whatever violent or anti-social impulse might awaken the animal within us. That’s why there needed to be a Helen Burgess/Mrs. Cody to amend applications for manifest destiny, scold and party pooper she’ll invariably be, but along always to remind us that gentle ways are best ways. If killing had to be done in bulk, let it be Indians stood in the way of expanding empire, and so it was that Hickock and Cody spend cartridges countless upon pre-approved targets figured for block to progress. Cecil B. DeMille directed The Plainsman. He believed in big brooms to sweep off frontiers we aimed to cross. Mrs. Cody probably annoyed him much as she does us, but laws of the 1936 west unlike ones of mere sixty years before when real-life Hickock/Cody stories took place had to give voice to those who’d now abhor random gunplay. This I suspect was as much a Production Code provision as anyone’s nod to good citizenship. Orderly systems must prevail in a final analysis, rough roads ultimately paved. To revel in violent means of carving a country was to endorse them, and this was dangerous in a country, any country, where conflicts threatened always to bubble to a surface and find expression in possibly hostile action.

Incorruptible Sheriff Errol Spurns Temptation By Bruce Cabot and Gang

Here was what an Establishment feared most, and why Law and Order as an overriding theme defined most if not all westerns. Dodge City was 1939 recognition of the west as wilderness tamed, a wilderness submitting to man’s control and man’s impulse to harness and control other men. Posters promised what the film could not hope to deliver: West of Chicago There Was No Law! West of Dodge City There Was No God! Neither legend was borne out by content of Dodge City, agents for order constrained from action outside rigid realm of due process, lest vigilantism prevail and “we” become no better than “them.” In this case, we are Errol Flynn and comic cohorts (Alan Hale, Guinn Williams), them being Bruce Cabot and outnumbering horde abiding by his instruction. There is plentiful law west of Chicago, too much in fact if we are to get value for leisure time and money. Villainy is rampant yet protectors in the person of Flynn plus unhelpful help are impotent to stop it, even after “Wade Hatton” is driven by a series of unpunished murders to don a badge and presumably put right to multiple wrongs. First John Litel, then Bobs Watson, then Frank McHugh --- how many must die before Errol straps on sixes? Response goes slow and we are frustrated by grinding wheels of justice amidst wide-open town that is Dodge. Action means suddenness and that is not what due process is about. To sate customer appetite comes a saloon donnybrook that relates in no way to narrative otherwise plodding, even as it would linger as Dodge City’s most memorable highlight. The fight among seeming hundreds begins over nothing, continues over less, and fails to resolve any aspect of conflicts at hand. It is instead fan service as defined for Errol Flynn admirer base as constituted in 1939, a harmless if empty nod to those coming to Dodge City for their fill-up of action.

Friends First to the Hoosegow, While Baddies Still Run Loose

The brawl is a nervous substitute for facing up to threat Bruce Cabot and his gang represent. They are by this point responsible for much carnage and unimpeded from starting more. We begin to wonder what outrage must ensue till finally they are subdued. Flynn’s is a relaxed authority, forbidding firearms on streets and arresting his friends first for violating it. We could wonder if Sheriff Wade is on the take, an offer Cabot’s “Jeff Surrett” extends but Hatton rejects, at least initially. Did small-part Ann Sheridan initially play a larger role and tempt the sheriff to turn corrupt? Something seems to slow him down. A fiery finish, too long delayed, sees nature more/less dispose of threats, good folk escaping fire that will engulf evildoers. At no time does Flynn go head-to-head with criminals as Walter Huston startlingly did in Beast of the City made seven years earlier but a seeming century before in terms of resolution it proposes to crime problems. 1932 was far more disordered than 1939, at least on a domestic front, Beast of the City and similar ones proposing swift and wholesale disposal of civic disorder. That would not do for stabler environment that was 1939, Dodge City upholding the new creed by never shooting first, but asking questions, endless questions, toward tie-up both tepid and frustrating. For gloss and Techicolorful entertainment, Dodge City succeeds brilliantly. Audiences loved it and would remember it. Warners staged a rail junket to the actual Dodge City, packed with stars for a world premiere. The trip was itself a model of precision and orderly demonstration, nothing whatever left to chance or possibility of objection … casts, guests, hosting dignitaries all models of good citizenship and beacons for American yesterdays and even better tomorrows.

It's easy to forget that the production Code was as much for curbing violent expression as it was for containing sex content. What loosed hounds for a couple years, primarily 1943, was urgency of war and necessity of our winning it. 1942 was for finding the formula, 1944-45 easing off in slight because by then overseers figured we’d prevail. 1943 however gave way to rage, this for a home front and public far removed from combat. The why was pressing need to sell bonds, see that civilians buy them, simplify same going in and out of theatres that would offer bonds through days and nights. China was designed to stoke domestic fires. We needed to know barbarism our enemies were capable of. The Japanese especially, them more so “other” than Germans. They could be made to look dangerous and jabber like monkeys. Americans wouldn’t realize until years after how they were understood by the Japanese. US soldiers were madmen, murderers gathered out of prisons and asylums loosed upon a civilized people who saw their country under siege now that Yanks was retaking islands and advancing toward the homeland. Japan’s conception of us was every bit as horrific as ours of them. Propaganda saw to that, as aggressively expressed as what US movies propagated. China was a Paramount A picture starring Loretta Young and Alan Ladd. Ladd is a trucker prior to the war selling oil to whichever side will pay, China to him an ongoing cash register. Like Casablanca’s Rick Blaine, he must be brought into the fight by events that will enrage and motivate him. Worst of these is rape of a young Chinese woman by “rapacious Japs,” a term I looked up when first I saw an ad for China in a book published years ago. “Rapacious” means “aggressively greedy or grasping,” which I’d guess would define most in times of war, but hanged if I’ve accused anyone in civilian life of being rapacious. Should I float the word next time I get annoyed? 

Hands Up, Guns Down, but They Forget It's No Longer a Code-Compliant War Ladd is Fighting

Such graphic was sugar water beside what else merchandisers resorted to in selling China. Sample ads are here to tell the tale. Ever seen any raw as these? One proposes China as “The Picture to Make You Fighting Mad.” So how well might that have worked? Civilians could do little more than buy bonds, save scrap, tires, bacon grease. Getting mad enough might lead to a bad day at Black Rock, for real rather than fictionalized like by 1954 when such possibility could be openly addressed. A shirtless Ladd “Turns the Heat on Hirohito” while sporting a body that looks borrowed from Gordon Scott, him vowing that for “every girl trapped, a thousand Japs die,” this then-expected of breathless promotion. China came close to promise of such ads with what ranks among steeliest of get-even moments in movies made during the war. Here was where Code counsel against excess violence was suspended, due process of Dodge City and restraint for Wild Bill Hickock shelved for emergency conditions. Ladd, a civilian as noted, stands Japanese soldiers against a wall and shoots all three in cold blood for committing the brutal and offscreen rape. This was shocking in 1943, the more so now as we assume such extreme never got into films far back as China. Well, they did, and follow-up discussion by Ladd with Loretta Young is every bit as serrated. “Just shot three Japs. Blew them to bits against a wall and I’ve got no more feelings about them that if they were flies on a manure heap. As a matter of fact, I kind of enjoyed it.” Now keep in mind, Laddie was the hero, not a heavy. Not even an “anti-hero.” His action and talk to follows makes Henry Hull’s Objective Burma speech sound like an address to Rotarians.

Scope Samples #1

 

Wide Worlds: The Spirit of St. Louis and 55 Days at Peking

“Wide Worlds” for Greenbriar purpose will recognize scope titles available to us for home view. Whether streamed, on physical media, or broadcast at TCM, they all are accessible and for me at least worth seeing upon a flat screen TV or projected at a wall to engulf like in days when these attractions were new. “Count Your Blessings” surely applies here as with titles under that Greenbriar heading elsewhere.

THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS (1957) --- Going anyplace alone during childhood meant my mother again telling what happened to the Lindbergh baby in 1932. A couple of kidnaps did take place in my town during the early sixties, “Lineberry” the accused, a name I forevermore connect with child snatching. Charles Lindbergh was secondarily the man who flew a plane non-stop from New York to Paris in 1927. Who could convey excitement this event generated? All who might have gone. My father was twenty, my mother ten, when it happened. Both recalled where they were, what they were doing, when Lindy touched down. Youth en masse went daffy for flying. There was a man I worked with selling dry goods in the early eighties who built a plane that flew after Lindbergh example. A picture of teenage him and dog companion in the cockpit, goggles and all, was proof provided. Bruno Richard Hauptmann’s widow spent decades trying to clear her husband of infamy for which he was electrocuted in 1936. Used to see her on TV testifying before one committee or other. Lindbergh was vivid for me in ways he apparently was not for 1957 viewership that shunned The Spirit of St. Louis, Billy Wilder’s telling of the Lone Eagle saga that went down like a Titanic of fact-based failures, no fault of the excellent picture it was, but what did public indifference say of ingratitude for historic achievement and those who made it? Possible explanation, if not excuse … what’s the big deal of flying the Atlantic when jets with passengers were doing so every day, and what about rockets poised for outer space?

Blame in part was fixed on James Stewart being miscast, but how many knew, or cared, of accurate age for Lindbergh when he flew? Stewart wanted the part badly for being a fan of the flyer from teen-age. Analysis suggested a younger man could soften onus of far-back setting, '27 to '57 a chasm in terms of change to popular culture. I previous wrote that Warners would have done better to cast Tab Hunter as Lindbergh and trust Billy Wilder’s strong direction plus topmost dialogue, to see the age-appropriate star through. Surely youth, which was most of a 1957 cinemagoing audience, could then take The Spirit of St. Louis past break-even, though maybe not where an astronomical seven million was spent on the negative. And what of Tab Hunter in Lafayette Escadrille, also period set, piloting, Warner money lost again in 1958. Was telling Lindbergh’s story on screen a bad idea on its face? I watch and enjoy The Spirit of St. Louis and wonder the while why it came such a cropper. They evidently spent a million dollars just building a replica of the airplane. We visited Washington in 1965 and went to the Smithsonian where the Spirit hung on wires from the ceiling. Is it still suspended that way? I had not seen the movie at that time. None among NC stations used it till much later when SFM(?) did a broadcast hosted by James Stewart. The Spirit of St. Louis seems in hindsight to have been an ultra-Establishment endeavor for which only the very best was good enough, money no object where the twentieth-century’s greatest folk hero was being celebrated. Fiscal sense seems therefore to have been suspended for this occasion. It would, in fact, have been unpatriotic to trim any of corners for such august occasion as this.

Charles Lindbergh himself sort of did and did not cooperate. He let them adapt his memoir but would not allow depictions beyond content from the book. Wilder had frisky ideas which would have made The Spirit of St. Louis a terrific Wilder movie, the sort we’d want and expect from him, but this time it was cuffs on and Billy, like everyone else, wore them. Lindbergh also would not do appearances to support the film. Everybody in and out of the industry attended the premiere but him. Wilder wove dramatic thread of the pilot being sleep-deprived over days up to, and spent in, flight. Duly impressed viewers who later met Lindbergh brought up the ordeal and his overcoming it, to which the Lone Eagle said he slept fine pre-flight, half-smiling to suckers who’d fallen for the movie’s device. What a cool deck this man dealt from. Wilder recalled him as quite the enigma. I doubt Lindbergh cared a hoot about The Spirit of St. Louis apart from the money, his likely a flat fee at front end as opposed to a percentage of profit that would have ended up worth nothing. Anybody know different? Query too: Did the wife ever catch on to those Euro families Charles sired over years after his triumph? Greater triumph sure was keeping the truth from her and his legit kids. Lawyer friend once told me there were two kinds of married men, the caught and the uncaught. Was Charlie among the uncaught?  By the time the thing became public, most of Lindbergh worshippers were too old to be much disillusioned or gathered to reward. Meanwhile what we have is The Spirit of St. Louis shows up at TCM, wide and HD at least, plus streaming at customary outlets. A fresh transfer and 4K release would be welcome, for here is one worthy and I think undeservedly obscure.

55 DAYS AT PEKING (1963) --- Not so far as I know released in the US on Blu-Ray, situation common to the Samuel Bronston epics. Ownership is said to lie with the Weinstein Company. Still true? The Bronstons are imperfect enough to need whatever visual sweep they can get. With that, they mightily impress. 55 Days at Peking was among other things the last mainstream feature Nicholas Ray directed. Ten years after, he was teaching at a small New England college, showed kids how to make movies, him pretty near a wreck by that time. The story of how 55 Days at Peking was dragged to completion was told by many. To read multiple accounts is to fully commit. I chose Andrew Marton’s lookback. He oversaw second units, wound up responsible for sixty-four to sixty-five percent of the finished project, or so he estimated years later. Marton didn’t seek or claim sole credit for reasons he explains in a McFarland oral history that is very good and long out of print. Nicholas Ray had done alright with King of Kings a couple years earlier and it was figured he could handle another large-scale feature, but habits mostly bad and a general crack-up said adios to his Hollywood career. Ray made many efforts to restart and had help among industry influencers, but nobody would take a chance on him. 55 Days at Peking for such difficult birthing plays fine where seen Blu and wide, a Region Two from Europe worth seeking out. Being 70mm Super-Technirama meant roadshows and if not as long a sit as it might have been (two hours, 34 minutes), still seems long. History is recounted, the Boxer Rebellion and how it impacted world powers in 1900. Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven are there to settle matters, whole of 55 Days shot at Spain acreage Bronston decorated to evoke the East. Like many a swollen saga, 55 Days at Peking lights up in sections, flags in others, but overall awes in ways unique to big-format filmmaking unique to the late fifties and much of the sixties. When these things clicked, there weren’t banks enough to hold all the profit, but where they didn’t … well, consider how Samuel Bronston finished up.

The Art of Selling Movies #2

 

Art of ... Carefree, Organ Hours, and Giveaway Perfume

Ads again instruct. This one for Carefree seems aimed more at the trade. “Watch ATTENDANCE RECORDS FALL!” Every showman’s prayer, but what did their public really care? In fact, Carefree lost money, a first of the Astaire-Rogers to do so. All cycles eventually felt ground shift. Astaire got percentage pay from these. I wonder if he ever sold that interest to RKO or successors. Anyone know? He’d form dance academies bearing his name in 1947, then twirl to hopefully greater profit with Easter Parade and The Barkleys of Broadway. Suppose Fred wished he had opened the schools sooner? Perhaps, but the Depression and war would have made that a higher hill to climb. Here’s for a stun … the Astaire dance studios still flourish. I can drive no farther than Winston-Salem to begin my lessons. Is it too late to learn? Note the ad pushing Carefree’s dance called “the Yam.” I could wonder when the Yam was last executed by two partners. Did it indeed “sweep the nation” as indicated by the Great Lakes Theatre? As performed by Fred and Ginger, stylings are forever fresh. You Tube, Facebook, Tik-Tok, are rife with the pair, us for a lift over minutes spent watching them. Thing is, now as before, there are eighty-three minutes of Carefree and most is not Astaire/Rogers dancing, this the rub when would-be fans sample the team online and then seek out features in whole. Well and good to that, but it requires old-movie adjustment fewer are willing to make, contrived story, comedy not necessarily comedic. Carefree signaled tiring among even those devoted, plot and situations bearing only so much repetition. Astaire had sense to know the parade was passing by, and Rogers wanted more to do drama, or at least humor where she was dominant humorist. Both get a solo number in Carefree and slide rules are visible to give each equal emphasis. Did both feel the series was holding them back? 

Benefit of the break came immediately to Rogers for winning Best Actress as Kitty Foyle within a year after she and Fred’s last for RKO, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. Do you suppose she suggested they call it The Story of Irene and Vernon Castle? For the record, that one failed too. Top Hat momentum could only last so long, then it was so long to further Astaire-Rogers. I had not seen Carefree until this recent view. My understanding was they went odd direction to sweeten the formula, casting Fred not as a hoofer but a clinical psychiatrist, not so far-out when we realize intelligence he conveyed to every character he had played or would play. Mission is for him to reach Ginger’s subconscious as means to make her marry Ralph Bellamy, a move so far delayed for her indecision. Without dancing, you can imagine how such set-up would plod. We’re told Fred's character hoofed in college days to make his doing so credible here, but why bother? He was Fred Astaire, so of course he danced. Insert at least one number per reel as etched firm like commandments on tablet, seams showing the more because by 1938 the audience was restless. Not that dances fell off, far from it, as Astaire constantly looked for novelty, was loathe to repeat himself, so gave fullest value for money that his studio, and the audiences, paid. The Yam may not necessarily score as a song but look at Fred going full circle of tables and chairs, lifting Ginger over his straight and extended leg resting on them, all done in a single shot to still amaze. This is what Tik-Tokkers levitate with. You’d think from watching clips that Astaire-Rogers movies are the greatest things going, and for dedicated fans remain so. Preservation elements are tricky, which may explain why none of the RKO’s have landed on Blu-Ray yet, though whole of the group play TCM in HD and are available that way to stream.

WITH AN AD SO RICH, WHERE DO YOU BEGIN? --- Oh to have been there for Billy Muth’s daily organ club (11:00 am to 12) Did everyone get to sing as well as listen? And free prizes! Theatergoing was a heaven we will never know unless Heaven itself includes trips to the Greater Paramount Palace circa 1929. So I saw Hammer and James Bond when they were new. Big deal. Ads like this humble me. These people had it so infinitely better. My problem would have been staying away from the Palace, the Melba too. Buy why stop there … Dallas like all urbans had streets paved with show gold. Imagine the marquees alone. Like one museum after another with exquisite hangings. I looked up Billy Muth. He was, among Dallas locals, regarded a legend, had worked with Jolson, Ben Bernie, others. Mourners played his recordings after Billy crossed the bar in 1947, him but forty-six. There was a sorority delegation of high schoolers at the funeral. Fans are possibly still around for Billy Muth, but I couldn’t find anything confirming it at You Tube. He surely left recordings though. Paging old record collectors. Not that Billy was whole of a show this gala day. Jimmy Ellard and his “Bag of Tricks” had been lately installed as the theatre’s stage band. What a responsibility ... each day at your best or at least you better be. I floated Ellard as well at Google, but no soap. Wild Orchids was the Palace feature, The Canary Murder Case having just left. “A Glowing Romance of the Tropics --- Alluring Greta Fighting Herself in Maintaining Honor” Fighting herself? That sounds promising. I must get out the Warner Archive DVD and watch again. Wild Orchids had a disc score, and I don’t doubt the Palace used it, or maybe not. Surely viewers preferred their live orchestra, but bear in mind folks were drunk on newness of recorded sound. The Melba nearby had an outright talker, The Redeeming Sin, with Dolores Costello. Were she and Conrad Nagel really a “love team,” and do any of their teamings survive? Laurel and Hardy alert, they are in again with Liberty, which the ad proclaims has “sound effects,” these happily still hearable and YT viewable.

PERFUMED UPON ENTERING --- North by Northwest had borne fruit that was Charade, and so Charade spawned more that included Arabesque plus others on slope downward that was romance plus suspense plus humor figured to please all/sundry. The sixties approaching final hurrah for lady shopper matinees made giveaway of “Taji Perfume Oil” seem a sensible idea, and to a first thousand, promised Chicago Theatre management. So what did they do --- hand women a bottle going in or just spray them as they entered? What if odor seemed noxious to some … and imagine an auditorium permeated by the stuff. Was this to be the “scent of Arabesque”? Some in the audience, if not critics, might say it was the picture that smelled. Perfume was not a first gauntlet run for this engagement, as there were out-front Sophia Loren lookalikes splayed upon a “Living Billboard,” a stunt happily confined to that day’s first showing. Human beings so displayed went back at least to The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Us enlightened could call it cruelly exploitative, depending of course on individual circumstance. Imagine old folk in Chicago who might recall once being part of the human billboard for Arabesque, or perhaps one chooses to forget such experiences. Arabesque tries being “mod” in zoom shots and screwy edit way, and I to this day am confused as to what the mystery was or why we should want to solve it. Also there was Gregory Peck who seemed wrong, but for a thing like this, who could seem right? I suspect viewers were carried upon gossamer wing that was Henry Mancini’s score, Arabesque an instance where music seals gap between something watchable or not. Did the New York Daily News really give this four stars and call it a wild, wonderful winner? Maybe that writer got a big bottle of Taji Perfume Oil for his/her pains.

UPDATE: Scott MacGillivray investigates the Arabesque perfume affair, and brings illustrations with the info:

Hi, John — The Arabesque tie-in with Taji perfume oil was strictly a local promotion arranged by the exhibitor. (Taji is not mentioned among the accessories in the pressbook for the national campaign, clipping attached).

Taji was introduced in the autumn of 1965 by Shulton (ad from September 1965 attached) so when Arabesque came out, Taji was either trendy or it was slow to move off the shelves, hence the free samples!

Best wishes — Scott

Watch List for 3/3/2025

 

Overlook Veronica if You Will, But Know She is Great in This

Watched: So Proudly We Hail, Mystery Street, Reckless, and Gideon's Day

SO PROUDLY WE HAIL (1943) --- Most striking character of this is gone after a first half. Veronica Lake has been called an expressionless player, and worse. She was said to be difficult. There is evidence she was mentally ill. Her finish was grisly. Lake got revived when glamour portraits of old stars became a thing, as in gallery-hung and collectible. Lush and hung down hair was her ticket early on, but where she swept back, as was case later, people wondered what had made her special to begin with. What for me makes Lake unique is intense work she gives So Proudly We Hail, so intense in fact that I suspect she channeled what was troubled self to be doomed character “Lt. Olivia D’Arcy.” Beside her, Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, the rest, seem artificial and actorly as in this studio-set depiction with no war happening beyond walls. From Lake it emerges true to fusion between herself and tortured Olivia, and I for one was sorry when she cashed in for sake of nurse colleagues (and what an exit). Seems I read Lake was a pill during Proudly and that may have just been her as early and unaware applicator of technique later celebrated as Method. Actors did pay a price for living parts too deeply, considering not a few were unstable to begin with. Colbert as den mother is more typecast, as is Goddard on glam duty, and I understand these two clashed if mildly as to how and where cameras were pointed. Was Paulette really born in 1910? I sort of suspect it was earlier and maybe she hid that. So Proudly We Hail is where we get Sonny Tufts first as a star, much by way of mannerisms that he’d adjust later as noir dweller and make scarily effective. George Reeves looked like a next very big thing and director Mark Sandrich promised him a bright postwar future, but then Sandrich died with George mustered out to do small parts, even bits, then serials, then Superman. Was this very capable actor robbed? So Proudly We Hail has some of most terrifying siege stuff put to film during wartime. We feel vividly horrors awaiting troops and nurses left on islands taken by the enemy. I was wrung out after these two hours and can only imagine what it did to crowds in 1943.

Future Wrath-ful Khan Gets Tips from Tarzan

MYSTERY STREET (1950) --- Somewhere it was forum-claimed that a thing called “DVD rot” is wrecking our discs, so I got out alleged victim Mystery Street from WB to see if fears have basis. Mine played OK, at least the feature did, but extras got pixilated and wouldn’t access, so should we worry over past purchases? Checking each start to finish would take longer than I’ll live and who’d really want to watch some of these titles again? Mystery Street however is a jewel among smaller noirs, a nervous A for $729K Metro spent, but splendidly made as expected from the Lion. As police procedural it is keen and even novel, for here was forensic explore of evidence fairly new to movies and not before dealt with in such detail. We’re since sick of saturation, as in how many years has CSI lasted?, but Mystery Street serving fresh and relative first had not just novelty in its kit, but fascination for forensics circa 1950 where investigations were hands-on and ultra analog. Pleasing is Bruce Bennett as a Harvard lab rat digging among bleached bones and figuring murder behind them, Ricardo Montalban the detective in charge. We know the killer early, but how will they unmask him? Mystery Street’s 93 minutes captivated me as much for on-screen suspense as that arising from whether the disc would finish OK. John Sturges directed, an early and expected good job, atmosphere stoked further by John Alton behind cameras. Frustrating was tepid money Mystery Street earned, $429K in domestic rentals, $353K foreign (loss: $277K), proof again that making a good picture was not enough what with theatres closing, families doing elsewhere things, and television siphoning off attendance. Racket Squad began the same year on tubes, so why go out and spend to watch Mystery Street when so far as most were concerned, it was a same experience?

RECKLESS (1935) --- Nothing odder or more unexpected than a Classic Era star vehicle that simply does not work, Reckless as instance of gilt-edge casting and lavisher-than-lavish appointments that no one (at least of my acquaintance) seems to enjoy. What might have gone wrong was humor in back seat to melodrama, a too distant back, but how’s that possible with William Powell, Harlow, Ted Healy, more among mirth-makers less than funny here. Story was evidently Selznick’s, augmented by numerous others, Reckless factory-made with no pretense otherwise. Too many cooks can and will spoil broth. Trouble is disagreeable device of dipso Franchot Tone buying Harlow’s starring play and then her, Powell lovelorn and left behind, anything but desirable positioning for him. The trio is cast to disadvantage, each seem aware of same, yet stay adrift as narrative lurches toward suicide solution , no satisfactory resolve there, and sour ending to make one regret time entrusted to what seemed foolproof. Selznick was on record as wanting this to match his Dancing Lady of several seasons before, Reckless failing to capture spirit and fun of that backstage frolic. The studio system was a delicate instrument, noways to be taken for granted. Where a picture was made badly, they’d simply remake it, but where the concept is fundamentally wrong, where is ground upon which to repair? Reckless lost money, a shock considering cast alone, so let’s assume word got out-and-loud as to what a cluck it was, or worse, how unpleasant was the get-through. Thrust of narrative is the Libby Holman/Smith Reynolds tragedy, bitter tea for an audience there to be amused by Powell-Harlow who had done so reliably before. TCM runs Reckless in HD, but I’ll be surprised if they offer it on Blu-Ray.

My Man Ford with Anna Massey and Jack Hawkins

GIDEON’S DAY (1959) --- Jack Sprat might have directed this rather than John Ford and we’d get approximate same sort of Brit police procedural starring Jack Hawkins, but note how efficient Ford did this “job of work” against theme and background untypical of the great director, being proof if any were needed that he could rise to occasion of any studio assignment and make magic of material less promising on a surface perhaps, but plenty so where he is at helm. Gideon’s Day pleases the more on repeat mode, as so much goes on that I tend to forget between always pleasurable screenings. A day in busy life that is Gideon's, he deals with thefts, murder, humor back at the Yard (never time enough to eat or pick up groceries for an evening meal he’ll miss), this is Ford at quick tempo I’d expect more from early, even starting days, so don’t mistake this for old man effort at twilight juncture. Serve Gideon’s Day to civilian diners and hear them exalt Ford for level of energy not expected perhaps, colonies the poorer for Columbia distributing black-and-white prints in 1959 (retitled Gideon of Scotland Yard), this a show particularly striking in color which was intended and carefully designed for. Was Ford aware how compromised Gideon’s Day was on domestic screens? Maybe he wasn’t told, or cared less if he was. Filmmakers grew alligator hide for vandalism inflicted on output, being John Ford with mantle-full of awards no assurance you’ll not be next to the chipper. Stock folk are here if in lesser number, Anna Lee the wife to Hawkins, sense made for her being Brit and a veteran of UK features before she became acquainted with Ford. It’s said Ford staged a lifelong Irish rebellion vs. the Isles, yet there’s no taking to task of English habits or lifestyle here. Gideon’s Day is genre pure/simple and thrives at it … makes me wish Ford had done a series of Gideon thrillers. Indicator has a lovely Blu-Ray (region free) as part of a Ford box, and there are nice extras.