Further Sci-Fi Sampling ...

 

Ackerman Owed Us All An Apology for Endorsing the Above

Fruit That is Fantasy Ripens With Age

I sort of “collected” genre pictures from television before there was such thing as accumulating them on tape, discs, later 16mm. This was mid-1964 when simply seeing something conferred brag rights, if not to neighbor boys, then at least to my mirror image. There was next door occupant who saw The Killer Shrews theatrically in 1959 and swore it reached a summit of scary. What others saw that I had not seen was an advantage they knew would bedevil me. A cousin clung to The Mysterians as rare artifact I’d never know. Time well spent was any Saturday afternoon that Charlotte’s Channel 9 would offload a previously unseen title, say Monster from the Ocean Floor, which need not be good so long as I saw it and could subsequently say that I’d seen it. Merit was never at issue one way or the other. Channel 9 ran Forbidden Planet flat, B/W, wretched in all ways and cut for ninety minutes besides, but no matter, I was there and could pin on the merit badge. There were no books or listings to tell how long these films were supposed to be. It was in ways like going into jungles to look for lost species, victory the sweeter where one stayed awake longest to achieve a goal, like when The Monster of Piedras Blancas showed up one midnight. Again, who cared how tedious a view it was, as morning would hang another trophy upon my viewing wall. I have in recent weeks raided tombs housing sci-fi, some new to me and joining an ever-expanded list, plus ones not visible for a past sixty years (like Monster from the Ocean Floor). Happy to report they play better than before, even so-called worst ones, especially those, bad or worse a relative term to ones dedicated enough. Science fiction has the built-in advantage of knowing that an alien, or monster, or possessed, thus dangerous, friend or family, will turn up somehow within seventy or so minutes, this alone our basis to stay.

Ten-Year-Olds Need Their Sleep, But I Forfeited Mine to See Monster from Piedras Blancas

Science-fiction paid, but only up to a point.  Spending beyond that was generally a loser proposition. Did wider audiences (that is, grown-ups) look on sci-fi as pulpy, childish, or both? Attitudes would change by the seventies, a point where perhaps we all had arrived at pulpy and childish. One might figure the fifties for summit of interest, which in many ways it was, what with fascination for space travel and other worlds, yet look at tepid reception to War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, and Forbidden Planet. There arose a barrier to budgets across an industry by 1956. Spend at your peril on space themes … leave them instead to scavengers. Ideas were big even as budgets were not. Visionary things could be done with minor money. Want oversize on terms of dinosaurs or moon monsters? Use puppets, animation, or blown-up lizards. Audiences mostly children didn’t mind. Everyone seemed to understand limit of resources and so grooved with them. I prefer cheapies to plusher carpet for artistry applied to them. To begin at beginnings, Roger Corman for instance, there was Monster from the Ocean Floor done with less than peanuts. The monster was absent from nearly whole of length, but given diminished expectation, we didn’t and don’t mind. This was 1954, when such a title and certainly such execution belonged to exploitation bills that teens and their little siblings would alone attend. There was a sweet, if narrow, spot between outlay and receipts that enabled Corman and his kind to move forward and make more monsters. He had help too that displayed real talent, as for sure he did.

Did Folks Paying Their Way To See Creature from the Haunted Sea Really Expect to See This?

A writer named Charles Griffith did horrors, wearied of horrors, then made comedy out of horrors. One he and Corman assembled was Creature from the Haunted Sea, lately out on Blu-Ray from Film Masters, a company to watch for fanta-gems. Creature came of “Filmgroup,” a shingle Roger and brother Gene Corman hung to realize dollars they’d otherwise be rooked out of by partners Jim and Sam at AIP. Roger had a thankfully long life to recount how he stayed just ahead of snakes in gardens that was “Hollywood,” a place he seldom moved in mainstreams of. His and handiwork of others was cheap, but not dumb. Actors weren't for swapping winks as in lame case of moderns inspired by Corman and likes. We note effort lent these projects, pros being pros whatever surface absurdity they’d face. To look back may be to laugh, but also to admire craft if not content, plus commitment to see them through. I met Beverly Garland at an autograph show thirty or so years ago and among other things on her signing table was a still from The Alligator People with her in clutches of titular fiend, Beverly looking scared as though men really could grow gator snouts and rampage accordingly. I held up the photo and asked her what she was thinking where posed thus. “The paycheck” was all she said and all that needed saying.

Just Him Makes It Worth My 70 Minutes To Watch

The Colossus of New York turned up in a Kino box set. Paramount released it with The Space Children in 1958 when black-and-white combos still were viable, the pair having distribution advantage and getting greater trade respect than scratch-penny AIP’s. Like weirdies from Universal, these were steps above what independents might manage, Para and MGM for instance good for one, maybe two, thrill couplings per annum, usually during summer months. With regard rentals, Paramount might wonder if chasing after AIP’s market was worth it, for instance: The Colossus of New York earned $234K in domestic rentals, The Space Children $243K. Considering they ran mostly together, you could credit $477K to the combo, which after factoring foreign receipts, whatever those were, likely came to profit, if modest. Freaky chills done as much for laughs, at least going in, earned better still, Para prospering off The Blob ($711K), plus co-chair I Married a Monster from Outer Space ($283K). I came across The Colossus of New York featured in a FILMFAX (#16) from August 1989, contributing editor Al Taylor scoring an interview with actor Ross Martin in 1981, just months before Martin’s passing, great reminiscences to enhance Colossus viewing, reminder again what a resource FILMFAX is for vintage genre lore. What I notice going over past issues was how fan needles have moved in forty years since #16 was out. FILMFAX has only recently stopped publishing. Its focus was films from the silent era through the fifties, emphasis kept on older players and titles. Seems we now celebrate, at least at You Tube, movies from the eighties forward, latter decade itself forty years back. Everyone is entitled to their own nostalgia, that to naturally revolve around childhood or adolescence. Magazines during the eighties that monitored then-new fantasy/fear topics included Fangoria, Cinefantastique, others. I see by Google that Fangoria still thrives, having started in 1979. Has any genre fan publication lasted so long? Two occur offhand, Midnight Marquee and Little Shoppe of Horrors, former having begun in the sixties, Shoppe productive since the early seventies.

Something Tells Me Mr. Vargas Did Not Base His Art on Characters Seen in World Without End

We get but so much from far-fetch stories. Balance of narratives must rely upon conflict per usual for melodrama, be it family, romantic, whatever common threads weave through yarns set then, now, or fanciful future in this world or another. The Colossus of New York engages for its dead brought back to mechanical life, but also for brother rivals seeking scientist dad’s approval, one sibling intent to skip interval for mourning to claim the other’s widow, something Zachary Scott might do to Dane Clark so as to access Joan Crawford were this Warners of a previous decade. Point here is that however robot or brain transplanting goes, we still are dealing with conflicts basic to all, if exaggerated per custom of movies. I enjoy Colossus a lot for playing straight against science gone reliably amok and veteran Otto Kruger, his customary splendid, called upon to exchange dialogue with a seven foot metal man voiced just offscreen by Ross Martin, latter giving account of this to FILMFAX and boy, did it ratchet up my attention. Of sci-fi lensed in color there were fewer instances, all-a-more noteworthy when scope plus color was the lure. How many besides World Without End served such heaping fifties plate? WWE bore Allied Artists label and might have achieved greater grandeur if not for spending confined to color and wide but with settings confined, astronauts traveled through time not able to go outdoors because mutants are everywhere (couldn’t similar conditions keep all of us in the house nowadays?). Pinup artist Alberto Vagas came aboard to do pin-ups for poster use, these alluring but no way what the movie tendered. World Without End sat among AA fanta-science and horror titles for syndication purpose, thus us getting the lot on Saturday mornings via High Point’s Channel 8, visual values of WWE lost thanks to black-and-white broadcast and merciless cropping, lately corrected by Warner Archive with its very fine Blu-Ray.

Cuss Their System All You Like, But This Commie Crew Had It All Over Us for Special-Effects

Extras Choose: Play Dead Here, or Be Dead in Siberian Salt Mines

Rehab for begotten sci-fi takes in ones obscure that for years seemed altogether gone, like previous topic Battle of the Worlds. These per usual need not have merit to those who seek them. Latest along such line is First Spaceship on Venus, for which Col. Forehand gave me a pressbook with a full-color cover, novelty in itself. Despite having and tendering the PB, he had no plan to play the feature, thus I’d wait till now to catch up on what Eastern Bloc filmmakers were doing re space themes while we worried about them teaming up against free nations including our own. One thing potential aggressors did have was expertise with special fx, our interplanetary screen travels way short of theirs for conviction. Happy solution was to either buy iron-curtain work outright for domestic release or pull footage from them to sweeten our cheaper efforts. First Spaceship on Venus had (again) color plus scope, here a bushel barrel to leave US rivals at starting gates. With Soviets and their satellites so capably depicting orbits beyond our own, how soon before they’d cross Atlantic water to enslave us all? I recall stunned reaction friends had when Moon Mullins ran off his 35mm trailer for Sword and the Dragon with its seeming millions of extras doing battle and leaving corpses piled up mountain-high. To my own gee-whizz over extras falling en masse, a fellow watcher noted that hapless players had no choice but to show up and work. Did our defense system keep an eye on Russian-and-kin fantasy output? If so, they’d have plenty basis to be Red-scared, considering skill of Soviet efforts. Talk about stolen valor, borrowed valor, or whatever that term is, how's about our buying up such impressive work by unknowns (who’d stay that way) for mere morsel, Americanzing names for changed credits, then slapping on AIP or Crown-International or whatever logos hardly deserved the association with such stellar effort.

There Was Something Distinctly "Other" About Euro Sci-Fi ... Recent Blu-Rays All the More Revelatory 

Another lately watched was same sort of porridge, Ikarie XB-1, released here, and by Jim/Sam, as Voyage to the End of the Universe in 1963, another that the Liberty tossed onto bier that was Saturday night “late show” at 9:30 pm only so I could not possibly attend. Again the wait for seeming eternity, though at least now there is the original Czech version, with subtitles, improved visuals, pretty much an art film, but who wants to know beyond hardest core fans of a genre on most obscure setting. Back round to Creature from the Haunted Sea mentioned earlier, but worth lauding again for comedic departure from norm that was serious, at least intended so, sci-fi. Here was hipster fun poked at a genre on by-then fumes (1961), even hipsters tired of laffing at themes their juniors long since jeered and heaved popcorn boxes at. This time the monster being silly (“ping-pong ball eyes”) was a given and Creature’s cast could slum. Was it OK now to take brakes off irony? Writers (like Charles Griffith here) were out-loud spoofing late shows old as they were (Antony Carbone pleasingly summons spirit of Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not), fun for all except ones who came expecting to be scared by monsters. These would feel ripped-off and bitch loudly to managers, who’d then carry complaints to trades. Fun was fun, as in Creature from the Haunted Sea, A Bucket of Blood, and Little Shoppe of Horrors, etcetera, but business tended light toward thrillers viewership preferred straight. Customers chose when to laugh, generally at rather than with, action on the screen. They didn't like being prompted along such lines. As familiarity bred contempt, science-fiction, let alone ongoing black-and-white sci-fi, showed up less at theatres, largely shunned when they did. Wish I knew how many paid way to the Liberty in ’64 to see The Earth Dies Screaming alongside me. Were they there specifically to see the feature or was it just another Saturday and here we all were riding ennui express from habit rather than enthusiasm.

Count Your Blessings #3

 

CYB: Fairbanks, Kongo King Karloff, Minty Cartoons, and Lubitsch Doing Drama

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1924) --- Blu-Ray to buy is Masters of Cinema Region Two from Eureka Entertainment, a stablest rendition I’ve seen from anybody. The Thief of Bagdad already a most amazing of silent spectacles now is among most luminous offered on disc. Look back to 1970 reveals Thief among offerings from “Griggs-Moviedrome,” home-based business of lifelong collector John Griggs. You needed $250 to acquire his 16mm print, $59 on 8mm, such money beyond reckoning in 1970. You could buy a television for as much, albeit used and certainly B/W. Those who remembered twenties filmgoing saw The Thief of Bagdad as apex of art. I more than get that watching today. Fairbanks was an only man  at the time who’d mount such pageantry, sets astounding, special effects good as could be conceived in 1924. Length at two- and one-half hours declared importance of the project. Fairbanks ought to be better remembered, but don’t we say a same about most of our favorites? Doug Jr. tried reviving his father’s work in the early fifties to cricket response, plus the films played awkward on TV. Thief is a must for theatres or at least home screens of size as available now. Kevin Brownlow ran Thief and other silents on 35mm to audiences during the early eighties, his a committed effort to stop parades from entirely going by. To have The Thief of Bagdad on such definitive terms is to get visual impact viewers felt when the show was new and setting new standard for spectacular. There really is nothing remotely like it, not even among Fairbanks’ own gallery of entertainments. He would himself protect the legacy by donating prints-negatives to the Museum of Modern Art in the late thirties, so thankfully we have quality access to this, his best and biggest, Blu-Ray ribbon-round to make The Thief of Bagdad a vanished era must.

KING OF THE KONGO (1929) --- Serial history made when Mascot brought sound to cliffhanging and shot at least backgrounds in far-away Cambodia (ancient temple ruins) to lend surface grandeur to chapters combining music/effects, some dialogue, and lots of beasts both real and faked, lizards enlarged, man/men kitted out in gorilla skins. I’m for low-crouched apes in what looks to be layers of fur overcoat, whoever inside sure to suffocate if crew doesn’t get his act in the can but quick. Producer/historian Eric Grayson climbed Matterhorn that was finding, restoring, compiling, mountain of prints, sound discs, disparate nips/tuck to pull ten chapters together and emerge with product a best we’ve seen this seminal serial look since 1929, saying plenty for here is not just jungle chasing, for who’s that chasing but first significant speaking on screen Boris Karloff, rapacious as we like him and never far from action. Dan Mercer and I once visited Richard Bojarski and he proudly showed off a Brownie shot from 1964 when he and NY boroughs pals gathered to watch a stack of Kongo reels just to see Boris in till-then elusive performance. We’d heard about King of the Kongo but till this point had not known anyone who saw it. Now of course we have it all and on Blu-Ray, this thanks to Grayson and age of miracles we live in. A chunk of King can be seen in Youngson’s Days of Thrills and Laughter under heading of wild/ wooly chapterplays, and there are glimpses too at You Tube, but see instead this Blu-Ray, it enabled by far-flung collectors plus the Library of Congress and for all I know bit/pieces dug from that Cambodian temple. Bravo to Eric Grayson for fruit borne of this ambitious project.

NEW LIFE FOR OLD CARTOONS --- Ignored for sixty years and for reasons understandable, three from 1937 emerge as extras with Warners’ Blu-Ray of The Prince and the Pauper, none I recall specific from Saturday mornings, but surely I saw them as Channel 12-Winston-Salem had bulk of the pre-49 WB’s and used same for ninety minutes per program, enough to numb the most dedicated plus all black-and-white we were limited to, Channel 12 sans Sat morning color during the early sixties. I’d trod through cat, dog, mice subjects hoping for Daffy or Bugs to show back up, me a cartoon devotee up to a point, but not like nascent historians that wrote down all of dates and credits they read off broadcast screens. Point today is how remarkable these play with color so splendidly restored. Did they really look like this in 1937? I bet not. What wizardry has been done with elements, digital it’s true, but how could even 35mm newly rendered improve upon it? Subject matter is not the object or even the point. What difference if Plenty of Money and You, Streamlined Greta Green, and A Sunbonnet Blue are “good” cartoons? They are made good, in fact spectacular, by what Warners has done with them here. Cartoons by the mid-thirties was for showing off color as much as animation, funny a lesser if not least priority. Warners by these examples seem still to be reaching for Disney’s crown. Even Tex Avery supervising A Sunbonnet Blue pulls punch to favor cute, effort saved for moments plus overall impact of color. I watch these and it’s like being born again to cartoon love. John Griggs of earlier mentioned Griggs-Moviedrome 8 and 16mm declared “Quality is Everything,” and I’m learning daily that he was right, only Griggs never dreamed there’d come times like now when film nearing ninety would astound viewers so. Never mind whether you want The Prince and the Pauper. Buy Warners’ Blu-Ray just for these extras.

THREE WOMEN (1924) --- Really more about two women, being Pauline Frederick and May McAvoy, with Marie Prevost later for siren duty. Three Women looks Lubitsch- promising for comedy till Lew Cody goes fortune hunting after vain and aging Frederick, us sudden to realize this all should be taken serious, what we least want from Ernst Lubitsch. I waited for him to tip hat toward humor, but no, this is melodrama and he’s for seeing it straight to trial and jury application of the “unwritten law,” this time woman’s work which is refreshing and I’m always game to see characters in movies get away with murder, especially where it’s so irredeemable a rotter as Lew Cody taking the fall. A wild opener party at the “Waldorf ballroom” sees fun seekers on a sliding board plus a carousel built full scale, which I’d wonder if the real Waldorf ever accommodated frivolity like this. Such is distraction for neglectful mother Frederick who values gigolo love over that of needy daughter McAvoy, herself lying down to unwed bed with selfsame gigolo, outcome of such muddle my dread. Lubitsch should have been ridiculing such stuff, but I grant pardon for this property being imposed rather than chosen by the master maker. Still beautifully crafted, subtleties as expected, performances excellent per habit from Lubitsch. I understand he played scenes for actors and told them to perform exactly as he did, am surprised they don’t light a Lubitschian cigar to accent mimicry. Key is a scene where middle-age Frederick is adjusting lamps in the room, shutting curtains, etc., to keep wrinkles in twilight, then here comes her oblivious date to switch all back on again. Such is what made Lubitsch a dean among directors. Three Women is available on Blu-Ray from Kino. They used 35mm from the George Eastman House for source material and it looks terrific. “Count Your Blessings” applies well here. Seeing silents delivered so gets us tantalizingly close to joy viewers knew when pictures like Three Women were new.

Trade Talk #3

 

What Trades Told: Harlow, Sinatra, Sherlock, and Shirley

SO WHO NEEDS A “BROWNETTE”? --- To present a “New” Jean Harlow was to admit the old Jean Harlow needed newness, old still good so long as old still paid. How successful were film companies at manipulating their public? Harlow reinvented was for sake of rules that were new, as why would it be necessary to change Harlow so long as she kept delivering saucy goods as before? Trouble was she couldn’t, as neither could Mae West, Kay Francis, others who supped at precode table. Once known as edgy, you could not switch sides to serve convention. Old Harlow had to go. They couldn’t even put early stuff with her back on markets, at least intact. Maybe too it was time to soften hard bark she and certainly her platinum hair represented, that by mid-thirties a bent wheel that needed fixing. Modified vehicle would be Riffraff, a “new thrill” that “really makes her just about the most provocative girl on the screen!” Who, however, was kidding whom? A wide public knew by 1935 that pictures had been gelded, this expressed by boos greeting PCA seals to appear in front of features. I wonder if MGM was surprised when Riffraff lost money, which it did. Harlow like or not was a sex figure, ideal for the early thirties, not so useful now. Could browning her hair change public perception, if not rinse Harlow post-Code clean? Better pictures than Riffraff might help, Wife vs. Secretary pointing ways. Her as brownette would suit Wife’s more conservative part. Harlow grip of stardom was no more tenuous than others what with change forced upon the industry, self-censorship a ruinous thing for so many who spoke plainer back when one could. We think best of Harlow on such terms, but take these away and she’s Virginia Bruce, beautiful but vanilla. Why single out Bruce, however, actresses for most part mere utility as studios saw them. To be Harlow and project singular personality was a thing to be treasured, protected if possible. If that could be achieved simply by changing her hair, then bring on the dye.

SINATRA AT LOW TIDE --- No shame for stars landing at Universal-International during the fifties. Most prospered there, some inordinately so. James Stewart probably got his best 50’s money working at Universal. Others lesser lit landed there, if a fall at least a cushioned one, Ann Sheridan, Linda Darnell, names of still enough consequence for all concerned to fare well. Frank Sinatra signing for a single, maybe more (an option not exercised by U-I) was sound business so long as not too much was spent on the vehicle, thrift up to-including what was given Frank in advance, the record uncertain as to percentage if any he’d be entitled to provided the picture made profit. Meet Danny Wilson is up-from-pavement Frank as Danny learning how to be humble as Sinatra did not necessarily do, and if there was plot parallel to the singer’s life, it was broad enough not to rouse then-comment, maybe for fewer caring at such low ebb for Frank. Still he was a star, and many among perceptive knew he’d score again, Meet Danny Wilson distinctly not an engine to push him back up rungs, but no harm done and it pleased at least those who wanted to see-hear Frank on screen doing standards for which he was best liked. On-set tantrums were expected and maybe factored into costs, Sinatra better served than by Double Dynamite a couple of bleak seasons before. Sources say he begged Paramount Theatre management to let him perform live with Meet Danny Wilson, just like old times when he was bobby-sox idol at the same address. They gave him the spot with results OK, but this movie wasn’t one to generate lines down blocks, and I’d doubt anyone seeing it could expect much by way of acclaim. U-I’s trade ad was frisky: you’d think whole of countrywide media was aboard to boost Frank. Imagine if Universal had held Danny Wilson for a year, getting it out after From Here to Eternity and the star’s stunning comeback. What a whale this modesty could then have been, but who saw From Here to Eternity coming, or storm Sinatra would stir with it? Meet Danny Wilson is available on Region Two DVD, enjoyable and valued glimpse at Sinatra still at loose ends but on verge of spectacular rise from ashes.

PUTTING A FACE ON HOLMES --- Remind me again that Sherlock Holmes was not an actual person. Thing is, I want him to have been, and in fact, would have it no other way. Artists rendered the detective early and definitively, Sidney Paget in England, Frederic Dorr Steele in the US. Latter is less remembered, Doyle and Sherlock scholars obvious exception to that rule. Both artists kept to forge that was illustrating in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this when magazines on either side of the pond thrived in ways hard for us to imagine now that periodicals have gone passed way. Readers were early able to put a face on Holmes and so saw him real as a neighbor down streets. Helping too was William Gillette playing the detective on stage and embodying him best. Gillette befriended Steele, the two serving one-another interests after all, as did John Barrymore and the artist when JB essayed Holmes on film. Steele being Collier magazine’s man put him before a considerable readership, this beginning 1903 when Sherlock Holmes “returned” for thirteen new stories, Doyle reviving the character after error of killing him off, this reversible as some, if few after all, might survive plunge off a waterfall. Steele in all contributed eleven color covers and fifty interior pages, many also tinted as he early explored possibilities in printing. 1939 and Fox’s Hound of the Baskervilles saw Steele as star enough in his field at sixty-six to cooperate re publicity, plus Rathbone was a ringer beside Steele art now gone back a generation. Was Basil early-alert to possibility this part would type him? Being Holmes was much like being stamped for a coin. Once in, you don’t get out. Original stills and lobby cards for Hound are hard to come by, let alone Steele accessories offered to showmen, as here with six glossy images available for publicity. Collier magazines with Steele art are doubtless rare as well, though I know less of how rare or of what value issues might be.

SHIRLEY TEMPLE DONE IN OIL --- Promote a star, do an oil painting. But how often did such things occur? Art here of Shirley Temple at summit must surely have been preserved, if not by the painter, then maybe by Shirley’s family. Did she or they cop it out of Fox dumpsters like Jane Withers later did for treasures the studio tossed? We’re farther out each year from understanding what a true phenomenon Shirley Temple was. She and parents saw it rise and fall. Did Shirley have occasion to see Zanuck in later years, say the fifties, maybe sixties? How interesting such conversation would be, sort of like when Zukor sat opposite Mary Pickford to ruminate over past years, this televised and at You Tube. What valued keepsakes Shirley Temple had were auctioned years ago. I’ve wondered before if once-collectibles, Temple dolls and such, are still collectible. Writing in 2014 of Shirley’s passing, I speculated she was largely forgot by then. On the contrary said a reader, him firm that her films and image were well known even to children thanks to continued and oft-colorized play on cable networks and such. We’re ten years later and I’ll ask again how much if any this star is recalled. It all matters less now than what she meant to a first-run public, enough so to merit publicity elegant as accorded any name before her or since. Where industry goes to effort like this for a trade ad, there is clearly expectation they’ll more than get investment back. For comparison if not contrast, above is a lovely RKO title card from 1947 with nineteen-year-old Shirley Temple. Honeymoon is of delayed marriage and consummation common to alleged comedies from the era. Without knowing, I’ll guess more-than-seasoned Shirley offered performing tips to still-green Guy Madison, whose second starring role this was.

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 lands stateside 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 are 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 identical notes one after other. 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 lethal 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 horde 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 follow makes Henry Hull’s Objective Burma speech sound like an address to Rotarians.