Category Called Comedy #12

 

CCC: Merry Clipped-Out Marxes, Bouncing Baby Sandy, Dapper Offscreen Harold, and Comedies Gone Till Now

KEEPSAKE MARXES --- Clippings, shavings, call these fragments what we will, but this was collecting on clowns before there was public access to posters, stills, lobby cards, wells into which much money is presently pumped by those who seek Marx Bros. artifacts long gone from theatre fronts and shop windows. Show of hands for those willing to give five thousand for an original Duck Soup 11X14, or three grand (likely more) for Night/Opera, Day/Races title cards, each, not for the both. All gatherers had to do in the thirties was sharpen scissors and go to work on what refuse they could access, magazines spent, newsprint featuring the team, a wide world of Marx mentions. What I’ve found in fragments so far is a Duck Soup ad chunked out (at left) from the original pressbook, desecration to be sure, like taking a razor knife to hundred-dollar bills. How valuable is such an item? Let me put it this way, I’ve collected pressbooks for sixty years and have never been offered one for Duck Soup … at any price. Whose image shouted “funny” so certainly as the Marx Brothers? I don’t know artists from film more caricatured than this unit of four, eventually three. These boys dressed comic to register comic, each able to attend fights, races, restaurants, without necessarily being recognized. They were constantly group posed, so Buster Keaton was right when he pointed out how one Marx drifting off could skid progress to halt when filmmaking. Suppose these brothers were happier when they were able finally to work as singles? I’m guessing Groucho at least preferred that arrangement.

Note closely these captioned images. Many of scribes who had no professional association whatever with the Marxes presumed still to speak for them, time-honored “wisecracks” the bane of thirties print,  seeming all to vie for placement among what passed then for wits. Thought balloons ascribed to one or more Brothers seldom approached level of what pro writers supplied for their feature comedies, but where thousands of dailies spat forth Marx images, license had to extend for staff, gifted or not with words, to apply print often hackneyed, seldom amusing, into the mouths of Marxes. From under what rock did someone emerge who called Groucho the “sad-eyed senior member” of the team or described Harpo’s “impersonation of an imbecile.” The boys must have dreaded sight of themselves so mispresented. We’re told the Marx Bros. left Paramount because Duck Soup lost money. Note though their MGM features did the same but for A Night at the Opera and The Big Store, and yet … virtually all such output was brought back in years to follow. All of Paramounts were reliable for late forties “Laffmovie” dates. I’d guess rentals were flat and no more than fifteen or twenty dollars for such engagements (save larger urban dates), but each played and were presumably liked. Same for the Metros, their five back to theatres and offered well into the sixties, this before the team became manna for cultists and designated “revival houses.” Receipts Films Inc. accumulated for 16mm rentals of the Metros between the mid-sixties and mid-eighties would be informative reading.

BABY STARDOM A LITTLE ACCIDENT? --- Was Jack Pierce during retirement ever asked what making up Baby Sandy was really like? Was Sandy informed in adulthood that the man who applied her greasepaint was one and same as he who created the Mummy and Frankenstein’s monster? Baby Sandy was among what was called “infant phenomenons,” except Sandy was celebrated more for being passive and managing a goo-goo here and there, being adorable whole of her inventory. Look at Sandy and consider: You too might have been a baby star and have no memory of it. I doubt latter-day Sandy recalled a jot of her celebrity, let alone what sort Hugh Herbert was to work with. She started at age one, retired at four. Had I done the same thing, would I retain a sliver of it? There was a girl at USC who in 1975 showed me a photo of herself at age three sitting on Clark Gable’s knee, but she couldn’t recall him. Universal made a series of Sandy features around the same time they launched Gloria Jean. Chance of reviving either is remote. I fully expect to die without having seen a Baby Sandy film (notwithstanding whatever dupey remnant might surface at You Tube). LIFE gave a cover to Sandy, which we may assume was framed and hung on her wall. I attempt to speak authoritatively of a player I’ve never seen play. The only time this happened before at Greenbriar was where we addressed artists of the nineteenth-century stage. This trade ad for Little Accident assured exhibitors that “Sandy Sells Seats,” which she undoubtedly did or Universal would not have continued making Sandy vehicles. To call her movie Little Accident implies something quite beyond kin of any Code release; possibly that was lure of a sort. There was vanished time I’m sure when Little Accident ran on late night television. It was regarded as sensible to have low comedians support stars not yet having power of speech, thus Edgar Kennedy as a “paperhanger,” Fritz Feld, and of course the inimitable Hugh Herbert, all under direction of Charles Lamont, who lived long enough to be profiled re his long career, but was he asked about Baby Sandy? “Woo-Woo vs. Goo-Goo” ads said as much as 1939 should expect of any supporting feature. What is psychology behind so many films centered around abandoned babies? The thirties were rife with them. Little Accident ran 65 minutes, I’m sure a gracious plenty.

HAROLD LLOYD: “BORN HUMORIST”? --- Harold Lloyd as himself could enter any market in any state and shop unmolested. So could Chaplin. But not necessarily Laurel and Hardy. Maybe Laurel with his hair combed back. W.C. Fields would have been unmistakable, as also Buster Keaton. Groucho Marx pre-mustache of his own and You Bet Your Life could sit all day at a sidewalk café and not be approached. Harold Lloyd posed often as offscreen man of affairs, as in affairs of high film finance and builder of mansions undreamt by even largest of stars. He was gifted in matters of business and of putting those with similar gift for comedy at his behest. Saving charm was Lloyd never claiming he did it all. He knew comedy was a corporate matter, like anything manufactured in volume. His most prolific of output was no coincidence, Harold perhaps wondering why rival comics couldn’t get as organized. Here with his cigarette, he looks like a lifelong world-beater. An industry knew him as an actor who affected funny, never as a man to be laughed at. He’d not exercise bad judgment like colleagues often did (Keaton), nor let hubris guide steps (Langdon). Lloyd could chair a lodge meeting of hundreds, this in fact his vocation once movies played out. There was no making go of reviving his old movies, efforts valiant to be sure, but I doubt it mattered so much. Lloyd’s ego did not hang on success he achieved apart from what could be counted in dollars, and of those, he kept more than most of peers combined. I note Lloyd features dried up on Blu-ray, also most of shorts, good as they all are, him in a way as hard a sell as in the fifties/sixties when going door-to-door for distributors. I salute this smoking pose for HL having a world by it’s tail at a time when/where he best basked in it. No waiting on posterity for this artist. If he couldn’t altogether revive “Harold,” there were plenty other pleasures for Lloyd to indulge.

MANY MOVIES OF MIRTH --- Mack Sennett was too successful not to be imitated. His slapstick formula seemed easy on its surface for copiers, but who of these could step before a camera and be reliably funny? Carl Laemmle hired a crew who might and called his series “Joker Comedies.” An overseer named Allen Curtis was responsible for 250 shorts made between 1913 and 1917. Pressure upon him might be imagined. Curtis hired funny folk who had plied trades on transient stages and knew from farcing, single reels done at such pace as to seem mostly improvised, but so were the Sennetts, and who complained about them? Nickel patrons liked to laugh and these humble efforts largely got the job done. Theatres changing their bill every day barely knew one clown from another, whether bought from this company or that. Split-Reel is the firm behind Blu-Ray release of Joker comedies plus others of obscure silent vintage. Subjects all derive from 35mm Library of Congress holdings, nitrate decomp here/there but who’d carp for knowing it’s the only way these rarities exist. Rivals to Sennett have too long been unseen. Diggers into comedy other than his are pleased to see something besides what forever floats about on film and video. The Jokers have not been seen for over a hundred years and would not/never have been but for effort of Split-Reel chiefs Rob Stone and George Willeman. Andrew E. Simpson supplies scores for the lot. Completists at comedy will not find a richer resource than these. Amazon among others has the two-disc Blu-Ray of eighteen shorts. Get yours and support Split-Reel’s ongoing excavation of comedy’s past.

Stills That Speak #11

 

So Much Meat on the Hoof. Can Cornel Bring One Down?

STS: Three That Speak to Survival

Been fasting this week. Told by You Tube that it’s a good idea. They could be wrong, in which event I’m in little better circumstance that casts of three seen of late to rise and fail during the mid-sixties when bare-fist survival stories had not a vogue perhaps, but did appear to come out of nowhere in a seeming lump. Said trio unique for ferocity of content and unblinking grip at reality were The Naked Prey, Sands of the Kalahari, and Flight of the Phoenix, each deserving of success none would get, proof again that good pictures never assured good grossing. Movies were/are called candy-coated, then comes ones like these refusing to compromise, each spanked by a shocked trade and put-off public. I recall them coming/gone on scant notice. The Naked Prey limped to the Liberty as part of a Saturday only combo skipped by me for a too harrowing trailer. Cornel Wilde chased by natives through seeming whole of Africa was anti-Tarzan and reassurance that series had stood for. I was not old enough at twelve to process what looked like non-stop torture for Wilde, him in mid-fifties capable of astonishing feats not unlike Burt Lancaster at same age scaling sheer rock in same year’s The Professionals. I’d be years steeling myself to watch The Naked Prey, a kind of dread discoloring the interim. All know certain titles that compel and yet repel. Will they do psychic damage should we submit? Criterion has a splendid Blu-Ray to argue for The Naked Prey as one of key features done in the sixties, utterly unlike anything out the same decade, shamefully ignored then and still so now.

Torture Served Stark, and Never Mind the Guy They Roast Over an Open Fire

If auteuring may be defined, let alone exemplified, by any single artist, then surely it is by Cornel Wilde, who expressed by talent, let alone life and limb, his philosophy re man and limits humanity will pass where faced by savagery unchecked. I’ll venture that The Naked Prey is a lot more shocking today than in 1965-66 when it nibbled at edges of decorum movies upheld to that time. We’d witness crumble of the Code where a Naked Prey and ones like it (but wait, there was nothing like The Naked Prey) bent boundaries film hitherto observed, 1968 official recognition of a mainstream letting its ship of rules go ahead and sink. Of raw meat also served in ’65 was Sands of the Kalahari, the “baboon” one I heard mention of at school but missed a first go round despite a spectacular pressbook Col. Forehand gave me which cover had long-fanged apes forward lunging in full color, Paramount putting such aggressive sell on little else that blighted year. The Liberty brought back Sands of the Kalahari for a Saturday double where we'd finally intersect, my anticipation and appetite for baboons fierce as that aroused by Pom Poms and Baby Ruth. Guess Col. Forehand knew impolite product where he saw it, or maybe Paramount’s field man tipped him off that these were best snuck in on shortest terms, then hustled out before parents caught the odor. Worry over warpage of young minds had basis where such shows applied, Sands of the Kalahari cruelest exploration of man’s inhumanity to other men and a woman (Susannah York). Sands is of classic “ordeal” structure. Can ones off a wrecked plane survive on a parched and endless desert? All are reduced to same level of beasts that stalk them, Sands of the Kalahari Brit-cast and backed, if shot in South Africa, a re-teaming for folk behind Zulu success previous (director Cy Endfield, star Stanley Baker).

Not Your Next In-Flight Movie, I Hope

Sands of the Kalahari is one for watching in maximum comfort, “This could never happen to me” a soothing accompany, but not altogether as Kalahari fights complacency with brass knucks. Again, those baboons. They scared me more than otherwise apes in any movie. Did Stuart Whitman get extra pay for fighting one to the death with bare hands? Hope so. I would have been for handing out Academy Awards to Kalahari’s entire cast. For once such a trophy could mean something. We sweat with these unfortunates and wonder how one could endure even a fraction of what they go through. That last applies to the cast in undoubted real misery of shooting where clothes they wear become rags or discard altogether over two hour’s spread. Imagine Susannah York went from this to A Man for All Seasons. An actor’s life for thee but not for me (York incidentally gives a performance for the ages). S. Baker, Stuart Whitman, Nigel Davenport, Theodore Bikel, and Harry Andrews also suffer admirably. How much different to simulate such horror than to know it for real? Full marks for this ensemble. Same for miserable lot downed by defective aircraft in Flight of the Phoenix, star-hoisted by James Stewart as pilot for the group with direction by Robert Aldrich. Fox expected mighty things from Flight, entrusting $5.3 million to the negative and shooting on domestic desert floor rather than crossing oceans to do same. Reviews were rapturous but the public pointed thumbs down. Too many by now had bought color televisions. That much as anything was what put films in a doom loop during the mid-sixties. Fox chart, like every company else’s, dripped red in 1965 when Flight of the Phoenix did crash of its own ($3.4 million lost), proof again that you can make them good, excellent even, and still lose it all and more. Aldrich never got over the beating Phoenix took. At least there is Criterion to celebrate greatness achieved, their Blu-Ray outstanding with as fine extras. Stewart and distinguished support roast under a pitiless sun and we’re 142 minutes frying with them. Takes mettle to make this march, again mood of your moment to dictate.

This Should Have Clicked Instead of Jim in True Downer Shenandoah of a Same Year

Occurs to Me That All Three of This Week's Selected Shows are Triumphs of the Human Spirit

What did it say about 1965 where three of such stripe appeared, not by design obviously, just circumstance of culture giving birth to strikingly similar ideas around a same time, varied creators speaking similar language with all to depict hardship at levels not explored before by movies. There’d be little reward for harsh cards dealt, but what could they reasonably expect? Flight of the Phoenix was seemingly most hopeful of the lot, at least from money-spent-standpoint. There has to be hope in any venture, these three expressed by endurance and ours for enduring hours where no matter how well executed the telling, we take punishment same as those stricken on screen. There is precious little humor among the lot. We’d not want that for storytelling integrity kept intact. No one could accuse The Naked Prey, Sands of the Kalahari, and Flight of the Phoenix of being soft around the middle. None gave in to boxoffice call for compromise. How did Cornel Wilde negotiate studio support for a project so outlaw as The Naked Prey? --- him far from a Top Ten name in 1965-66 or any time. The Naked Prey collected $687K in domestic rentals. Short of walloping worldwide, it surely lost money. There would not be network airplay for Prey nor Sands of the Kalahari, which collected $931K in domestic rentals. Again hope … for another Zulu?, but word-of-mouth for Kalahari, Prey, and Phoenix was likely reserved if not ruinous among ticket buyers if not admiring critics (seldom much help in any event). Go At Nervous System Risk, leave kiddies home till a next Disney or Elvis, women will surely shun, all such reactions to collapse the boxoffice. I’d not discount these or claim “we weren’t ready” for these sorts of entertainment (but how “entertaining” was patron ordeal, detractors might argue). I instead say seek them out because all score in ways unique and not captured elsewhere, certainly not of timid now, and probably they won’t be equaled, even approached, again. Here’s too to note: None resolve on bummer basis --- you won’t go home to suck the gas pipe. I felt in fact invigorated by the outcome of all three. Fact the group are accessible in High-Def, streaming, discs, etc., well … there go excuses for not rooting them out. Go watch and collect Scout badges for doing so, earn real “Courage Awards.”

Two Sure-Fire and Past a Century Old

 

"Written by Mark Twain" Said Credits

True or no? --- most films improve upon novels they adapt. Why buy books for adapt to movies? Many are useful as pre-sell. Lots have a concept surefire, can’t miss. How was Jaws anything other than bulletproof for screens? Mark Twain wrote The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, two not taught much at school, but bore his name on covers and him having wrote Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn made all subsequent classics by default. Fact is Pauper/Yankee had ideas a natural for picturization. Lookalike boys switch identities, complication ensues, presto makes and remakes on screen. And what of Yankee's time travel to valor and jousts? Mark Twain lived long enough to let at least one of his stories be screen-adapted. I could believe he would have seen Prince and Yankee on filmic terms had films been around when he wrote the two novels. Bernard DeVoto was the twentieth century’s leading Twain/Clemons scholar. He found The Prince and the Pauper “second-rate” but conceded it had “structure … developed from within,” that last known necessity to Classic Era filmmaking and manna to whoever was put to scripting Clemons. Again, and as with all adapted from literature, there was right-away critic assumption that result would not live up to its source. DeVoto as spokesman for the learned may well have seen Warner’s 1937 Prince and the Pauper and come away figuring it was at least as good as source material having “already lost (its) luster” (DeVoto wrote this of the Twain novel in 1946) but would “still charm children as it once charmed Victorian adults.” Here was faintest praise, DeVoto figuring grown-ups, even youngsters after 1946, too sophisticated to enjoy Mark Twain’s fancy. Think was and is as of 2026. I dug out The Prince and the Pauper plus A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to see (or read) if indeed we are too advanced for either. Verdict: Both are comfortably ahead of us. In fact, try most any nineteenth century work on WTF/OMG generation and prep for a fall.

To no surprise, I found The Prince and the Pauper a plenty sophisticated read, even as DeVoto called it kid stuff. Here was still child level as measured by 1946 education not so far declined from Twain’s time where him and those as motivated took self-improvement by daily if not hourly dose. The author has his “pauper” seek Latin study from an as-impoverished priest, then uses acquired knowledge to thrive among if not lead beggar-boy class he is heir to, such character device to make us wonder what rewards might come of latter-day boys and girls gearing toward humanities, speech, communication, even as public education shuns these things. Could skills unique and of real value (pecuniary even) come of this? I like how the Pauper teaches himself to read and uses that to assist his masquerade as the Prince once the two swap identities. Mark Twain got in digs at inhumane system that was English life in the sixteenth century. This author went medieval on then times plus current ones, his social commentary bitter as in relentlessly so. He wrote in Connecticut Yankee how “terror” of the French Revolution was as nothing beside suffering haves had imposed upon have-nots for thousands of years leading up to turn of eighteenth-to-nineteenth century, and so what if a few thousand aristocrats got theirs on French scaffolds? They had it coming, says MT. Hanged (right word) if this didn’t feel like reading modern and radicalized fiction today. It’s known that Mark Twain’s wife vetted what he wrote and laid a heavy blue pencil where he went overboard, which apparently was often. Twain wrote pal William Dean Howells that “there wouldn’t be so many things left out” if he could do his books over again, this time with “a pen warmed up in hell.”

Mark Twain offered much opinion with regard “the damned human race,” such sentiment the more as he got older and life dealt deuces rather than aces previous. Most writers get a little caustic as they go, but his stuff heated sufficient for the estate to put lids on much, and for years after Twain’s 1910 passing, this a bur under DeVoto’s seat because he wanted Mark Twain out there and unexpurgated. Warts-and-all had to wait till survivor daughter Clara at-late-date relented and gave DeVoto keys to the store, Twain nevermore a benign old humorist in the ice cream suit. His senior output is tough swimming but let no one say this author threw soft balls. Check sometime his letters just to various editors, never mind private correspondence more explicit. Man as barbarous is threaded through Prince/Pauper and Connecticut Yankee. And I thought Injun Joe was the meanest tool in Mark Twain’s kit. Warner Bros. in 1937 needed kid gloves to handle The Prince and the Pauper, Twain’s spelled-out truth of London life an impossibility for Code Hollywood. Laird Doyle of campus wit past and previous Greenbriar celebration was put to softening-plus-getting values generous within the book, mere skeleton of which was enough for a more than fine show. WB was blessed by twin boys under contract, Billy and Bobby Mauch, so no need for split-screening or camera tricks with one kid in dual roles. There also was insurance of Errol Flynn who although first billed does not enter the fray till a second half which surely saw ’37 grousing like would issue from me 2026 watching, though absorbed enough in action to forget Flynn was in wings. Mark Twain was given possessory credit over the title, plus his image briefly in case we forgot that face, bringing pedigree to the enterprise even as WB took customary liberties with property they’d bought.

Now to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, rendered first with talk in 1931(a silent done in 1921). Bernard DeVoto offered excerpts from the book in the Viking Portable edition of Mark Twain which he edited, DeVoto of opinion that Connecticut Yankee was “the most tragically marred of Mark’s books.” He went on to impugn the presumed classic of American literature by first conceding “it might have been a masterpiece … but nothing is sustained … in short the book is at war with itself.” This could be a film reviewer confronting the 1931 or 1949 versions. To defend Mark Twain, I’d point out as DeVoto did not that it was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court where the author introduced, I’d aver for a first time, the story slant others of fantasy and sci-fi bent would play to a hilt, that being time travel as plot accelerant (what Twain referred to as “the transposition of epochs --- and bodies”). Here was brilliance enough to excuse the rest. Movies muffing a job of adaptation was their fail, not Mark Twain’s. His gag of an eclipse saving the hero from public burning is one any writer would long to dream up. Whole idea of an 1879 dweller thrust back to the sixth century and King Arthur’s time was based on Twain’s meeting a castle tour guide during a trip to England who claimed he had lived through Arthurian time, Mark figuring, what if he did? From such encounter did Yankee spring. Hollywood updated via Will Rogers as a 1931 radio repairman and occasional broadcaster, then for ‘49 Bing Crosby a blacksmith in 1912. Rogers treatment allows for humor of the known satirist’s sort, nowhere near raw treatment Mark Twain applied. It’s been suggested that Rogers was an update on Twain in his writings and general attitude, but short reading of Mark Twain will disabuse most of that. Both were charged by circumstance of a popular image to pull in horns to some extent, Rogers more than Twain, latter whom could doff kid gloves more readily when truculent mood called for it.

To The Prince and the Pauper again, novel which was compact and lent itself to action, intrigue, and pageant, all which were visually compelling like the Connecticut Yankee’s eclipse as rescue from execution. Warners’ Prince/Pauper aimed their treatment toward real-life Brit coronation seemingly timed to pump 1937’s release, event-inspired newsreels playing in tandem with the feature for many dates. WB treatment skewed heavy to youth per Mauch twins presence, plus there wouldn’t be observations from the book such as church premises being host to scaffolds in non-stop use. Errol Flynn was star assurance against too literary an association, though kept in mind should be Twain’s novel published but fifty-six years before (1881) the film was released. Pedigree was the more pronounced by 1962 and a Disney version produced in England, to be released theatrically there plus Euro markets, premiering on US television screens as three-parts on Sunday night’s Wonderful World of Color, broadcast dates March 11,18, and 25, 1962. A dullish telling of the Twain story said observers, host Walt Disney explaining harshness of the era it depicts, though standard/practices for TV at the time made spoon bread of what viewers saw. Guy Williams of Zorro habit assumed Flynn’s part, while Sean Scully took the dual title roles. Disney inaugural season for NBC saw money spent on larger scale than had been case at ABC, The Prince and the Pauper looking like a feature despite its low-budget, Disney as host making the case for Mark Twain as Number One favorite author from his childhood (“I read every one of his books”). Exposure on such wide seen forum as The Wonderful World of Color amounted to best exposure for the author but fifty years passed, The Prince and the Pauper appearing also in a comic book and children’s hardbound edition circa 1962. Considering influence Disney had on consumer choices during this his strongest period in both TV and film, we can assume The Prince and the Pauper got its best-ever boost to a contemporary marketplace.

Advantage with Connecticut Yankee was you could plug current personalities to Twain’s title character and get satisfactory result, or better where handled right. Will Rogers thrived with it, as though Mark Twain in 1881 saw his successor humorist coming. This might also have applied to Bing Crosby in 1949. Beauty in whatever Twain wrote was flexible to what a current public was judged to need, never mind close adhere to text. Crosby was a good actor and a great singer subject to same hot/cold winds as any star. A Going My Way happened once, while Blue Skies and others like it happened a rest of times. Weaker vehicles by 1949 outnumbered memorable ones. Bing’s best from this period might be hear-but-not-see Ichabod and Mr. Toad, voice only putting him in fuller command than cameras would permit. Swathes of Washington Irving got in his Ichabod Crane narration as overseen by Crosby, result like one of his expertly pre-recorded radio programs, these a summit of tech perfection. As the Connecticut Yankee, he falls prey to onus that is team effort, a nice opening to foretell not just comedy, some music, perhaps bittersweet romance (Bing joins a castle tour and casually announces he “was there” when sixth century events took place, a variant on Mark Twain tour experience that gave him Yankee’s inspiration). Being Paramount supervised, plus (over) produced, Connecticut Yankee obliges Crosby charisma to drag what shading he could manage across a finish line. Result was a film no better regarded then than now, points of interest yes, enough to wish Mark Twain’s property might be remade to at last emphasize a notion compelling now as what the author devised in 1881.

Ads and Oddities #12

 

What This Book Tells Will Surprise You Plenty. Go Get It.

Ad/Odds: Drews Delight in New Book, Mac/Eddy a 60's Happening, Cooped Up Lost World Watchers, and What Got Looked At Twenty Years Back

They Go Way Back but Still Are Funny for My Money

PRESENTING MR. AND MRS. SIDNEY DREW --- Neither odd nor an ad, this instead a new book by Rob Farr that explores the lives of Sidney Drew and the two Mrs. Drews, first who appeared with him on stage with second spouse filling in for movies after death of the first. Greenbriar has on several occasions dropped in on the Drews. They were funny on “genial” terms of comedy that stopped short of slapstick, deliberate device to set them apart from Sennett. For all their mirthing, no Drew threw a pie to my knowledge. They were successors in a sense to John Bunny who also got laughs from expression and reaction to absurd situations, stuff that could happen to any of us his fodder for fun. Bunny died premature and the Drews sort of took up his mantle. Author Farr does not confine himself just to their films however. There was stage drudge before to remind us how artists starved and struggled along inhospitable rail lines and tank towns where one night stands were misery few among moderns could stand, never mind dedication to art or craft. Sidney Drew was kin to the Barrymores. Farr explains the links and that enriches his telling of the Drew saga. Sidney was often (nearly always?) broke on the road, threatened with jail, stranded troupes, poor attendance, bombing in Butte and other sites, stiffing a hotel, threatened with a pistol and/or carving knife, dragged off a train and bashed for owing someone or other. Such actor’s life would sure not have been for me or thee I’d venture. We all would take vanilla after reading the Drews’ harrowing account. Rob Farr knows vaudeville plus film lore and recounts it beautifully. This is show history not to be put down, and for sure enriches whatever we watch of the Drews from now on (Rob Stone indicates a Blu-ray collection is coming). In a meantime, the Drews are spread amongst silent and comedy DVD/Blu collections. Kino’s of-late Vitagraph disc set has much of Drew humor and is not to be missed. HERE is where to order Rob Farr's Mr. and Mrs. Drew book.

Forget Bonnie and Clyde or The Graduate During the Sixties. This Was the Goods.

WHEN MACDONALD/EDDY GOT HOT AGAIN --- Alarming to think that during the sixties as beatniks gave way to hippies and everyone did the Limbo or Twist, and don’t forget we were “losing our innocence” that whole time … well, along comes Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy to reassert true glory in filmed entertainment of yore. The pair had adherents still, older maybe but ambulating still to local cinemas where Mac/Eddy asserted charm intact despite thirty years since same songbirds made magic. Theirs were jewels amidst operettas salted among MGM’s “Perpetual Products,” a category invented by Metro marketers and trade shorthand for movies still viable no matter how old or familiar from TV. MacDonald and Eddy served best as a communal experience, kindreds sat in seats where music could waft about them as if the pair were live concerting. All recalled impact these features had when movie viewing was a different and shared experience. Ponder figures: The Girl of the Golden West (1938) had 637 revival bookings between September 1, 1962 and August 31, 1967. $20,540 was collected by Leo at average rentals of $32 per date. Perpetuals were generally used on slow Tuesdays or whatever wasn’t prime weekend time. $20,540 may not have been a windfall, but then again, for a 1939 title that wasn’t The Wizard of Oz or GWTW, well, yeah, it was a windfall, especially if you were a Metro field man who’d long given up on oldies as useful product. It got better: Mac/Eddy in Sweethearts (also 1938) seized 802 dates, collected $31,772 at average $40 rental. How long would graying patronage hold out? Not forever of course. Fanship for the team would fade as expected as would willingness to line up and buy tickets for fare free at home. Stimulating the more was not having to stay up (too) late, endure endless commercials plus cuts to see/hear favorites again. Fans are still out there for Mac/Eddy, more I suspect than we realize. Consider too that MGM had a hundred more vaulties in theatrical circulation through the sixties, many in circulation even unto the eighties (I saw The Secret Garden at a Gastonia, NC matinee in 1981). Warner Archive offers Technicolored Sweethearts on Blu-ray, and more recently, Rose Marie. I hope both sell well and inspire more.

HOW EXCESSIVE IS 133 FEATURES IN FIVE MONTHS? --- Might as well ask depth of spirits consumed in a night, how many chocolate chip cookies ate in a sitting, any habit over-indulged. Seems we watch less features than before, sample or skip the tendency, attention deficit ruling days plus nights. You could claim it’s plight of the young, but what if change is wider spread among ages, everybody now afflicted. Too many glasses left mostly full, thirty second sips or none. I look at features in whole and feel a last left to do so. Saw three in a gulp one recent night, Angels With Dirty Faces, Three Smart Girls, and Them!. Latter was new-arrived 4K, the others Blu-Ray. A picnic and no red ants as with analog happily passed. How different was life in 2004-05? No less than change wrought over any passage of twenty years. We had DVD by then, film collecting going if not gone (but wait, recently it has roared back). Too few classics were had on disc by 2004. A lot was seen off TCM and other satellite outlets, some broadcast in High-Definition. That by itself was reason to watch Woman of Straw, Queen of Blood, or Fun in Acapulco where otherwise you might ignore them. The James Bond series was showing up in HD on HBO, Showtime, here/there. Lacking wherewithal to record and save them meant setting alarm for four am one January ‘05 morn to watch On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever. I couldn’t say what the “Best” film was from this 04-05 list, but do recall the “Worst,” Star for sure as complete heaven-help-me roadshow on a Fox DVD. Had never seen it, hope not to again. Not sure I got through to the end. A few of the 133 have screened again so far in 2026, Dial M for Murder, Mogambo, The Big Broadcast of 1938, Son of Dracula, la Dolce Vita, International House, How to Steal a Million, They Came to Cordura, Blow-Up, Helen of Troy, and Khartoum, most the fruit of Blu-Ray or 4K releasing. Certain favorites have been screened at least a dozen more times since 04-05: Giant, The 39 Steps, Vera Cruz, The Big Clock, Across the Pacific, Planet of the Vampires, Strangers on a Train, other evergreens. Fact is all 133 would rate an encore, 132 if I exclude Star. Latter could happen in hope opinion might change with two decade growth and increased tolerance for 60’s elephant art.

Says Projectionist: My Cigar's Gone Dead, Pal. Got a Light?

LOST TO THIS WORLD HAD FILM CAUGHT FIRE --- Of all times and places I’d not revisit, even if option were open to me, here is one to rank highest. It’s a topic addressed before, The Lost World as airborne featured attraction on a passenger flight, hosted by Imperial Airways Ltd., a British firm. Lately I found a slightly different and much clearer image from the well-publicized 1925 event. There also is capture of the plane’s interior that shows seating, resumed capacity for eight not including pilots (bring back wicker chairs for flying, I say). Occupants would traverse the North Sea. Is that near where Leslie Howard was shot down in 1943? I spoke before to insanity of running 35mm nitrate at high altitude with no means of emergency egress. Do you suppose Imperial permitted smoking aboard? Bet they did, not unlike Moon Mullins stood in his film storage shed during hot-as-hell July sans shirt and rewinding nitrate. I was as reckless for helping him. Was risk worth an Out of the Past trailer Moon peeled off and gave me? The Lost World experiment appears to be the first time a feature film was shown aboard a plane for the amusement of passengers. Years later (1961), the first regularly scheduled in-air movie was By Love Possessed. Collectors would refer to these as “airline prints” and mixed bags they were, quality-wise. There were sticky fingered lab employees to sell same out back doors to dealers who’d sell same at weekend Meadowland shows. This was early-to-mid eighties when Universal was still ordering 16mm prints of stuff they controlled for use as in-flight entertainment, final days for exhibition of celluloid aboard planes. Among titles were Hitchcock and Howard Hughes properties U controlled (and still do): Vertigo, Hell’s Angels, Scarface, Rope, others. All were “original” prints and hot-sought. Air travelers now watch movies on the back of a seat in front of them, or on devices they bring aboard. Progress to be sure, no one fated to a screen visible whether you liked it or not.

Parkland Picks with Popcorn #10

 

POP Goes: Dick Tracy Detects, Hombre Means Man, Tides are Passionate, and Groucho Goes Motoring

DICK TRACY (1945) --- Called in some quarters Dick Tracy, Detective, as if we’d need telling what Dick did for a living, or maybe it was necessary since he derived from a comic strip called kid stuff by most (even though grown-ups liked him too), the character better put to serials. Three of latter had come from Republic with Ralph Byrd starring, but RKO was for launching Tracy in features, and using their own Morgan Conway, at least for initial two of four, Tracy rights reverting back to strip publisher and quartet of RKO features suffering quality-wise as result. Enter VCI with a Blu-Ray set, Tracy in toto, plus one of the serial chapters for sampling of what went before. As expected, the lot never looked better. To adapt Dick Tracy faithful was to invite more comedy than police action, Gould gallery of villains outlandish enough on pages, more so as fodder for films, thus straight psychopath “Split-Face” as essayed by Mike Mazurki. Nothing's funny about this knife killer and precursor to noir slaying we’d see more of as forties ebbed into fifties and rawer thrilling. Here then was not a Tracy on comic terms, but a sleuth in dogged pursuit of menace more menacing than Sunday strips deigned to depict. Dick Tracy along with Murder, My Sweet tendered noir on budget terms, these 61 minutes with a negative cost of $202K, more than Falcon entries were spending, the company seeing potential in Tracy as ongoing franchise. $537K in worldwide rentals suggested as much, money way better than the Falcons generated. To continue with Tracy was foregone conclusion. Revenues were down however for follow-ups, each softer than the last until Dick Tracy vs. Gruesome, even with presumed help of Boris Karloff, lost money. The group by now leaned heavier into humor while RKO ramped up dark aspects of noir otherwise. Replacing Morgan Conway with more popular, at least familiar, Ralph Byrd gave the series a smell of serials, themselves on decline by 1947 and RKO’s final Tracy try. For sampling of the four, VCI’s set comes highly recommended.

Villainy Bad as Boone's Often Made Mops of Would-Be Leading Men, as Evidenced Here

HOMBRE (1967) --- Downer westerns were a coming thing by the mid-sixties, effort always to differentiate from TV's formula. I'd regularly see futility of life duly explored. However his casting as flawed or troubled sorts, Paul Newman was in essence a can-do star after tradition style, looks, charisma you’d not wrest from him no matter the part. Intended heel that was Hud did not emerge that way for watchers who found in the character a new reason to enjoy Newman. Hombre by its luck and brief “H” title indicated more of approximate same, to bend Newman brand but not break it. If he was our star however, why plop him among dreary and at times unpleasant ensemble that is Hombre? What emerged was Stagecoach unofficially revisited, interesting as Fox had done an official remake just a year before. Those aboard Hombre’s coach smack of live drama once televised where many plus Newman had starts, these to distract from the star we paid to watch. I liked Newman bashing his rifle butt against smart mouth of baddies at the bar, hoping for more of same over balance of a film that spoke revisionist 60’s voice of westerns no longer as preferred at least by me. Old man oaters would sustain however, aggressively so in the face of change. For each Little Big Man or Soldier Blue, there were half-dozen War Wagons or Five Card Studs. Producer Hal Wallis made late career stand for saddlery like dads wanted. A local friend’s took him to such defenders of norm, westerns a bulwark against counterculture until the seventies finally dealt them altogether out. Hombre compels as drama more than action, it well-played with always crisp dialogue and situations. Better from our vantage to take it as specimen of a time when westerns might still be viable, but for maybe not much longer. For that reason, it would not do for modern thinkers like those behind Hombre to serve them face up. Let posters look like westerns of yore and customers be surprised once in (or were we surprised by 60's time of so much bleak observing). Twilight Time did a nice Blu-ray of Hombre which I assume is now out-of-print and possibly hard to locate.

There Were Apparently Enough Heels Around Back Then for Mae Marsh to Always Marry One

TIDES OF PASSION (1925) --- Mae Marsh marries a rotter after time-honored fashion of melodrama still played in earnest but not for much longer as of 1925 and a talking curtain soon to descend on long-standing silents. Interesting how short a time it took for dialogue to ridicule old styles as embodied here. Tides of Passion was of Vitagraph origin, based upon an early century novel (In the Garden of Charity) by one “Basil King,” and lest we smirk, be aware a reprint was published late as 2010, question being has anyone above ground read it? Tides of Passion was a feature shaved to two reels for a 1930 reissue, probably with music/effects, those not surviving. Was idea to laugh at old-timey tribulations per here, perhaps with sarcastic narration for garnish? We’ll never know … unless then-reviews tip it off. Melodrama was still a respected format in 1925, would remain so in certain contexts, such as the “woman’s picture” and offshoots, Tides of Passion by title identifying itself on outdoor terms, a rich stage tradition however unlikely such a thing might seem to us. Not to forget though is trains, storms, chariot racing, all could be and were depicted before footlights, and darn well too. Hard making story sense of what happens to Tides as trimmed, but therein lies pleasure. Storms and stormy emotions carry all forward to reward time spent. Should we want to illustrate what melodrama was about during silent days, this will do. To jeer at pre-talk technique overlooks hardship casts endured, shooting sans stunt doubles in treacherous weather to make Griffith proud. A tougher breed then, and much exertion to admire them for (Mae Marsh surely earned her fee). Historian and preservationist Ben Model rescued Tides of Passion from a 9.5mm source. Being little larger than 8mm means hanging by a thread for many titles which survived so and no way else. Silents, all films in fact, were fair game where made by independents, juice squeezed out, then farmed to sellers wringing what still was left in them. Think of it: Seven reels in 1925 and us with but two of them. Maybe we’re the better for such limit, as I’d find tough getting through seven spools, unless they derived from 35mm with tints and tones. How spoiled we are by souped-up silents so carefully restored. Fair enough 8mm from Blackhawk used to be whipped cream with cherries atop, but no more. See Tides of Passion among Undercrank offerings in their Accidently Saved: Volume Four, all of titles enhanced by Ben Model’s sterling scores.

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG (1961) --- 1961 was not too late to laugh at tin lizzies and ponder how far we progressed from them. And who better than Groucho Marx to narrate pile-ups, Jalopies versus old Dobbin, history happily swept away and thanks be to freeways to make life happier. Groucho was however not for dismissal of such past, for he had lived through it, and we get from a coda his realizing new times were not necessarily better times. NBC’s Project 20 was intermittent hours detailing days gone and fashions spent, affectionate if not patronizing views of how quaint we’d once been. Much was newsreel-derived, not enough to fill needed 52 minutes, so recreations were done, moderns aboard antique vehicles and kitted in fashions to evoke then as opposite to now. To hear them tell it, we’re lucky autos survived onslaught of public and official reaction, Groucho telling of laws then-meant to choke progress in its cradle. Horseless conveyance seemed a worse threat than others recorded and as vigorously put down. The public would embrace motorcars if not be slow getting round to it, principal reason expense of the things, a rich man’s hobby to start, and small wonder that stirred resentment. Project 20 had a way with history lite, more likely learned by casual approach more informative than any two terms at public school. Groucho as interlocuter gets irony of rose watered past and never kids us that it was lost paradise, not where streets were less streets than rivers of mud, and here came drivers better put to swimming through same than driving over it. I like Groucho giving voice and insight to these situations because his was a persona so defined as to know his outlook going in and who better to lend perspective where fads and foibles of an earlier time are addressed? With regard those rickety autos, no thanks I said after watching, give me a hoss at least till these things were tamed. Earliest racing is shown, 55 MPH a reckless pace which sure enough was case where tip overs could squash men like bugs. Inspiration sort of runs dry for final arc where slapstick and even Keystone Kops get a look-in. Was this reward for Junior having patiently watched an initial forty minutes? Merrily We Roll Along: The Early Days of the Automobile was an early DVD release (2003) from “Stanachie Entertainment,” which appears still to be in business, if now concentrated more on music CD’s.

UPDATE (6-23-2026): Scott MacGillivray boosts Morgan Conway as Dick Tracy:

Hi, John — I’m with you on Morgan Conway. I always liked him, and so did Chester Gould. I dug up all sorts of stuff about Conway and wrote it up on Wikipedia, including this March 1948 item from the Hollywood Reporter:

I haven’t bought the Dick Tracy Blu-ray set because I have all four Tracys on 16mm, and they’re gorgeous originals. Whenever I want to spend an hour with Mr. Tracy, I thread up the projector!

Best wishes — Scott