Precode Picks #5

 

Precode: Double Harness, Explorers of the World, Jolson Socks Winchell, and "The Five Stages of Love"

DOUBLE HARNESS (1933) --- Double Harness meditates on marriage and how it’s better avoided by men about town like William Powell who is content to keep a mistress (or two) and why spoil all that by taking vows? Sounds glib which I don’t propose to be, as Double Harness certainly is not, being earnest in its exam of what a woman, in this instance Ann Harding, will do to snare a husband, fair play an option but optional where necessity calls for more devious means. Ad here tells the essential story: “She Tricked Him Into Marriage! --- and Learned too Late That Love Cannot be Tied with Bonds of Matrimony!” Had management been to a trade screening before inventing this squib? Harding resorts to sneakery and intervention of Dad to corner Bill and shotgun a marriage, latter’s response to go along, but forget romance and we’ll wait for divorce to loosen wedded knot, “love cannot be tied” and all that. We endorse Bill’s action and it is for Ann to redeem herself. Precode could and did make moral judgments, refreshing one of which upheld sanctity of freedom if not free love where parties enter into pact knowingly, bad cricket then for the woman to break the bargain, entrap the man, and expect him to like it. Bill ghosting Ann once he knows he’s harnessed (hence the title) is remind that convention violated will work except where one or the other party tries changing rules mid-way. Double Harness in siding with Powell promiscuity speaks loudest for precode principles during short epoch it lasted. Not once are we invited to condemn his lifestyle. It is Ann Harding’s “Ann Colby” that invites scorn for arresting free and admirable spirit that is his. Again the ad: “Her one idea was “Get your man. Love will take care of itself,” except no it won’t, at least in this instance. Do male viewers watch this and ponder how they ended up in their own marriage? Double Harness plays TCM in HD, was part of the deal done with Merian C. Cooper’s estate for a handful of RKO features he retained after leaving the company in the mid-thirties.

EXPLORERS OF THE WORLD (1931) --- Don’t let them tell you explorers are not precode. Ones I’ve seen are or at the least tickle edges. Greenbriar explored a notorious one here. Nature stuff drew parallel with Great War documentaries by snaring sensation from real-life topics, idea to take liberties because after all you’re exposing nature or gone-mad mankind in the raw. If we’re to watch animals in the wild, then by all means unleash them to be savage selves, violence the more bracing for not being faked. Some of footage was rigged however, men in ape-skins or cats starved to point of killing anything to venture by. Explorers of the World lends dignity to exploitation enterprise by gathering famous nature names at a banquet to regale us and each other of travels lately made, footage aplenty from far-flung spots. Accounts shared by the half dozen vary nicely, us on ice for a portion, then melt that is Africa or desert climes. This all has historic interest for those who study early exploration, and I wonder if scholars are aware of invaluable resource here. Theatres touted educational value but put chips on sights to shock. “A Noah’s Arkful of Beasts Let Loose in a Whale of a Picture” yelled the Criterion in support of its “Knock-Out Wallop,” and who’s to begrudge sales for a pitch so aggressive? All six explorer names are right up on the marquee, and we’ve got to assume they were known from magazines and/or news coverage. What boy/girl didn’t want to grow up and go uncharted places like Martin and Osa Johnson? Explorers of the World made that seem doable, was endlessly thrilling in the bargain. Who knew but what you might be the next Admiral Byrd? The rich enough did go safari route and had stuffed heads to show for them. What were exotic animals if not for killing? Maybe for disapproval of that we see less of these travel folders, but some do disc-exist, Explorers of the World from Grapevine Video and on Blu-Ray besides. I found it a bracing watch but did note discrepancy re running time. Are prints today complete? Who could know … perhaps care, so long as sampling survives to give us at least taste of untamed wilds.

BROADWAY THROUGH A KEYHOLE (1933) --- Consider fate of principals, Texas Guinan gone within a week of November 1933 release, Russ Columbo a casualty within the following year, Paul Kelly having served an active sentence and released four years before for beating a man to death with his fists. Lead lady Constance Cummings led them by living to ninety-five (d. 2005), so imagine workings in her mind if ever she saw Broadway Through a Keyhole revived. This was early effort for named producer Darryl Zanuck doing business as Twentieth-Century Pictures, this before formation of better known Twentieth-Century Fox. Broadway Through a Keyhole is seen if at all on bootleg discs or renegade uploads, quality generally terrible by my so-far experience. The ad here drew me for cryptic reference to dust-up between Walter Winchell, whose story supplied Broadway basis, and Al Jolson, who said Winchell based his yarn on real-life circumstance of Ruby Keeler, Al’s then wife. Jolson “saw red” at the sight of Winchell during a prizefight both attended, hopping from his spectator seat and landing two (at least) blows on the Gotham gadfly. Incident took place in Los Angeles and was mass-reported at end of July, 1933, just in time for Broadway Through a Keyhole to benefit from press however tawdry. Winchell later said thanks for Jolson’s offer to apologize and be pals again, but let’s wait a while and bask in publicity the quarrel generated. Might this whole thing have been a phony? The boys never admitted one way or other, stayed fast friends in the wake of events, Walter putting together a record album long after Al’s death to salute latter lead light of showbiz that predeceased him. Hollywood (rather New York), you big hearted town (s). Exhibition got a hypo, ads like Leow’s touting “the picture with a punch” as in why did Jolson throw his at Winchell? --- answer what twenty cents “till 5” might supply. Glamorous Amorous Girls Girls (insert four exclamation marks) helped sell what Broadway Through a Keyhole was really about (but how do I know, not having seen it). Art alone lit fuses, chorus dancers largely unsheathed and showing navels, something even AIP beach pics couldn’t do in the sixties, on posters or screens. Ever see Annette’s? Such promoting reminds if nothing else that precode was even more wide open than we thought, at least on newsprint pages if not on screens.

FIVE STAGES MORE OR LESS --- Are there really “Five Stages of Love”? A late silent era evidently taught so as here. We speak of precode as if it came on like a light switch, all before but a Puritan blur. But how could film be bawdy minus talk, specifically talk of suggestive nature? Silents were necessarily subdued but for Fairbanks jumping or clowns slapsticking. Seduction seemed more the stuff of dialogue, as was fast shuffles dealt by precode sharpies. There’s something stately about stills used to accompany this Picture Show Annual page commemorating supposed stages we must pass through enroute to true love. This was Picture Show’s 1931 number, change well afoot even if they didn’t fully realize it, this pictorial well behind times a-rapid-changing. For one thing, the films depicted were well out of circulation, and would remain so. Most now are lost … note I’m assuming that w/o even knowing titles. Players too would evaporate off talking screens. Sole of this lot to survive and prosper was Adolphe Menjou; one could ask where art thou Claire Windsor, Huntley Gordon, and Betty Compson? Precode really was survival of the quickest. Think Cagney characters concerned themselves with five stages of love? Just one and he’d be done and out. These images evoke parlor and manners taught when formalities were observed. Were we better off chucking these so completely? You’d think yes where comparing stolidity of talkless drama and demon speed of precode with pedals pressed down. So is this instructional still relevant? There are presumably same rituals to courtship and love: Introduction, Attraction, First Kiss, Flirtation, and “Wedded.” It’s the order they go in, or are supposed to go in, that had to be sorted out. By the early thirties, movies were for shuffling cards to quick-get past that first kiss, nix the wedded part, hang all of form save consummation. Could you blame an establishment’s disapproval? Dialogue was the Great Unfetter of Films and society watching them. Depression further bent rules and banished proprieties. No wonder a gone silent era came in for such ridicule. We still care less for then-ways except where they make us laugh … who’d sit for Marguerite de la Motte and Cullen Landis exchanging calf looks where alternative is Warren William compromising a co-cast before half a typical seventy minutes is spent?

Category Called Comedy #7

 

CCC: A&C Celebrate Strange Birthday, For Harold's Sake, Ty and Loretta's Second Honeymoon, and Stooge Inflected 3-D

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FOR THEM --- The cake and cutting and (maybe) eating was genre all its own where selling meant anything to arrest eyes traveling over newspapers, magazines, print media of any sort. You may bet that far more saw these birthday snaps than paid to see Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, consumption of movies by most seldom rising to anything past moment’s glance at silly stills in a morning edition and then off to activities, or recreation, other than filmgoing. Anxiety to draw patronage was profound. Was Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein monster cutting his cake with A&C incentive enough to go? Unless you were predisposed to attend Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, probably not. Posing for publicity in whatever capacity, and there was myriad of capacities, was in ways harder work than performing for the camera. It certainly took as much time, for stills were never caught on a fly. They had to be lit, composed to convey what was needed, specific purpose always to be served. Images here commemorate what is presumably Glenn Strange’s birthday, but we assume more than two were taken. Completists may have a dozen different captures, each closely wed to the other, all bound for print publication in advance of playdates. Bud and Lou might well have asked, Of what use is this?, but being pros they were, there was no need to wonder. Months later glance through a day’s delivery would reacquaint them with the hour or so spent on set to celebrate Glenn’s natal day. Always I ask: Did anyone eat the slices served? Cake ladled with lard click always for me, supermarket baked sections generous with them. All hail this underappreciated treat.

FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE (1926) --- A smaller Harold Lloyd feature, like Hot Water more a matter of shorts stitched together, in this case the second half less inspired than the first. Buster Keaton had emphasized from his full-length start that two-reel formats would not work if grafted onto six-reels. His and Lloyd’s tended toward brief as result, especially where stories were slight and narrative was carried by situation alone. For Heaven’s Sake sees wealthy wastrel Harold, that character again, supporting a settlement house so he'll have access to Jobyna Ralston, their mid-way misunderstanding readily resolved and wedding to proceed, so why last-minute race to reach the alter with guests willing to wait however long it takes, Girl Shy minus suspense and better gags that lent urgency to the previous feature. Herding a trolly filled with drunks may have seemed promising to gagman meetings, but outcome doesn’t always fulfill promise, too little at stake to sustain humor hoped for. For Heaven’s Sake plays like Lloyd filling volume’s order, his yield overall good, maybe best of then-popular comedians. Whatever disappointment crowds felt would be forgiven come a next Lloyd feature, in this case The Kid Brother and then Speedy, both improvements upon For Heaven’s Sake. Ask anyone, especially Harold adherents, if For Heaven’s Sake is funny, and they will say yes, moments splendid throughout and there are plenty of them. Maybe that is all to count in a long run, especially where end result lasts below an hour with standards more/less met. For Heaven’s Sake has not surfaced so far on Blu-Ray. Maybe Criterion opted out of further Lloyd releases, their having quit short of everything getting out (none of his talkies so far). TCM uses For Heaven’s Sake enough for it to stay viable, theirs the estate-authorized and preferred, meanwhile PD uploads are spread over You Tube, mute since underlying music is protected, so viewing will require needle-drop to whatever is handy. Good luck with that.

SECOND HONEYMOON (1937) --- Fox makes Code-era argument for adultery and crack-up of marriages that stand in a way of pretty people Tyrone Power and Loretta Young coupling at close. What’s so the matter with Young’s spouse, Lyle Talbot? Nothing to start … just wait for him to commit small wrongs that will make OK renewed union of wife Loretta with playboy rascal, and her ex Ty. Second Honeymoon was further instance of stars mesmerizer stars drawn together like magnets and never mind vow taken to others, obstacle easily overcome despite Code of conduct prevailing then, rules bent to accommodate screen lures whatever the morality of their actions. There’s always the loser, well-intentioned or not … remember Otto Kruger giving up Joan Crawford to Clark Gable in Chained as if he had any other choice to make? Same with Lyle Talbot, however dull or business-obsessed, yet hardly deserving a mate so blithely snatched by Tyrone Power, marriage an elastic bond where Power and Loretta Young are parties predestined to merge. Might male audience members resent Power for husband-be-damned outlook? And Young’s character … did extraordinary looks spare her seeming a slut given this circumstance? Implications were diluted, very much deliberate, by comic support to keep audience eyes off the ball, thus Stuart Erwin, Marjorie Weaver, Ed Bromberg … each unreal as to distract from reality of a marriage playfully dismantled. Pictures like Second Honeymoon were not meant to be delved so deeply, but issues are there for the delving. I’m just surprised the PCA let so much of this go by without objection. Second Honeymoon hasn’t shown up on TCM to my knowledge, though there is a DVD in one of the Tyrone Power box collections, and it looks OK enough.

PARDON MY BACKFIRE (1953) --- May finally comprehend my problem with the Stooges. Their gagging is grotesque. Look at Larry pulling a wire into his ear, through his head, and out his nose as thanks to 3-D we clearly see the paste-on device he’s using to affect the effect. But is this funny or what they nowaday call “cringe”? I always thought Moe had a mean face. It helped to learn later what a nice offscreen guy he was. Did fans really wander into his yard to be greeted warmly when Moe detected them? Pardon My Backfire was watched because of 3-D, being an extra with Twilight Time’s The Mad Magician. Private sellers at Amazon want $55 for a second-hand disc, which many would give for Backfire and Spooks alone (both the 3-D Stooges are there), and never mind Vincent Price. The boys have a garage from which they don’t wander (no exteriors), sixteen minutes of them capturing a trio of robbers plus moll. Countless gags feature objects, eye pokes, etc. thrust forward to the camera, fun when the films were fresh, but how many theatres in benighted days of depth got projection right as in two-print synchronized right? Too few from what reading on the period suggests. I’d guess Pardon My Backfire was a bigger spend than customary for the Stooges, though chances are some patrons went, especially children, just to see what their favorite team would do with the process. If idea is to demonstrate your 3-D for guests, then Pardon My Backfire is undoubted best for what the gimmick could give within short term of time and patience. Being asked to switch off before those sixteen minutes are up may be cue to chuck future runs of 3-D and the Three Stooges. For a meantime however, keep Pardon My Backfire in reserve if screening novelty calls for it.

Features No More?

Movies Are Like, So Yesterday

There was a show called Suits that ran from 2011 to 2019, “was” and “ran” operative words because old episodes still run, rather streams, to a gigantic worldwide audience, it said recently to be the most watched series, most watched anything, on devices including TV, laptops, smartphones, and Dick Tracy wristwatches. Success of Suits is beside point however, of characters quoting movies which meant much to them and sometimes to other characters being addressed. We were expected to recognize dialogue from filmic oysters still yielding pearls. Principals aged twenties to forties being weaned upon features reflected Suits writers raised the same, thus words borrowed from The Godfather(s), Rocky, A Few Good Men, even Fast Times at Ridgemont High, all to remind us there are those who carry memory of features when feature-watching was still meaningful. I follow with interest so-called “culture war” pitting longtime Star War fans against present corporate ownership (Disney) said to disrespect the Force and Jedis and all of rest, intent it seems on dismantling modern American folklore, sacred as odysseys and Iliads passed from Greeks down centuries to now. To be a boy born since sixties-became-seventies is to revere Star Wars and guard same against those who’d profane the brand, the 1977 original and sequels having segued from entertainment to religious expression. You Tube apostles v. pagans seems a daily, no hourly, battle fought without chance, even hope, of a victor emerging.

When did dialogue become inconsequent? “Action” as essential thing has been the thing for generations now, part of outreach, they say, to the worldwide audience said to overwhelm domestic viewing. To be understood is to be necessarily understood in any language, and that means in terms of movement, constant movement. Movies may well have had it best during a silent era when everything could be translated by titles to reach lookers anywhere, though that presupposed a willingness to read pesky titles. Is such willingness lost to all now and for all time? Talk-less films did and for too short a time truly unite a wide world’s viewership. How else could someone like C. Chaplin achieve recognition on awesome scale as no personality could equal today? Action as the universal language seems on one hand a viable way, the best silents after all bent toward that, but what of happy times when talk was the action? Summit I’d aver was Sliver Age we know as the thirties through at least some of sixties when characters spoke much before coming to blows or firing a shot. Instances abound to offer endless pleasure: The Thing where chat and wit make a title monster superfluous and the more effective for most-part absence, Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet verbal sparring in Across the Pacific, shock the greater when latter whacks former with his stick, and behind a scrim so we don’t even see it. Late as the 60’s came James Bond to leisurely investigate Crab Key and gruffly ask “why cahn’t we go there” with Scottish burr. 007 conversing with Robert Shaw is as tense as their later fight on FRWL’s train and look at whole of the golf game in Goldfinger.

Talk as chief led always to a showdown, if verbal, a constant with Bette Davis melodramas and everybody else’s melodramas. Think of swordfights to cap Errol Flynn ventures, Stewart Granger finally having it out with Mel Ferrer, westerns a primary font of kettles boiled to bursting, conflict embodied for most part in talk, and who’d want it otherwise, that last me speaking for myself and aware that others may not see things a same. I often dope on Ride Lonesome at You Tube, cued up not to shooting guns but to word exchange that has more impact, pausing wherever I see Randolph Scott stood still and in conference with Pernell Roberts or Karen Steele, dialogue and how it’s delivered eternal joy of Lonesome and other habitual YT stop, The Tall T. Contrast these with action amounting more to what Gilbert Seldes called “ the emptiness of violence” (Seldes said that in the late forties, so imagine how he’d react to films today). The John Wick series, enjoyable as they are, remind me of Tex Avery’s roach spray commercials. Past action was confrontation with violence as a last resort. Bogart shooting Conrad Veidt in Casablanca is the least memorable of their contra taunts, language to then a more lethal weapon. Sydney Greenstreet seldom raised a hand, him and select others my Action as Talk ideals.

Old-timers today are often those in 30-50’s, longing for lost moments of moviegoing from before folks quit going to movies. These are who Top Gun: Maverick and Beverly Hills Cop 4 are meant to entice, yearners after a past where it can be recaptured. But will youth care about tropes dating far back of their birthdates? And what of nostalgists let down by a latest and hopefully last Indiana Jones, or Star Wars renouncing all that was Star Wars before? Loyalists decry output aimed at what’s ruefully called “modern audiences,” while upholders of latter call an old guard cranky, out of touch, or unkindest cut, plain old, this to fandom far from dotage. Spry in his sixties Eddie Murphy talked in a recent interview of running Beverly Hills 4 to a group including his teenage son, who rather than paying attention to narrative scrolled away on his phone and put it aside only when entreated by his father. Might Eddie have glimpsed future of features here, let alone Beverly Hills cop features? Significant is his newest made not for theatres, but Netflix, where up-down, in-out subscribers can make hash as they choose of it. Longing too is had for a vanished sitting audience, crowds that laughed at a first Beverly Hills Cop forty years ago when even small town theatres could fill up nightly. But what do “crowds” and an “audience” have to do with most movies today? Remarkable exceptions are the more remarkable for being so few, like recent Deadpool – Wolverine, superheroes back from a seeming dead. Want a full house? Invite enough to fill your den for a Netflix opening. It isn’t movies now but gaming and scrolling that matter. “Movies” mean features as in length, as in too much length for those distracted at best of times. Attention spans aren’t going, they’re gone. Gilbert Seldes complained of films given over entirely to adolescent viewership. When adolescents can’t be bothered with moviegoing, which appears to be the case today, what’s to do but fold theatrical tents?

Are we to a point where feature films are looked upon like literature or classical music? To sit focused upon any one thing for two hours seems like prison minus bars. Doesn’t matter how “good” your feature is, such consume of others' time and patience can make well-intentioned steps a mis-step. This applies not just to civilians unschooled in favorites (distinctly yours, not theirs) but fans, kindred spirits even, who embrace also the life, or formerly did. They had favorites too, happiest times wrapped around once-upon watching, but when will they submit to these again? I had assumed it was age that made us restive, a contemporary who said how much he adored The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly but would not contemplate another three-hour sit. What's to treasure for some is recall of it, as in sentiment's placement at a table long cleared. How many younger people who haven't seen The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly will submit to do so where entertainment is consumed quick or not at all? To be fast-fed information is to reject what isn’t digestible in under fifteen seconds, that now including much of what was once enjoyed at leisure. There is Facebook option of scrolling endless half-a-minute narratives constantly reloaded to algorithm-fed preferences all your own, preferences known and chosen for you. Pleasure in music say some observers has become a matter of opening bars heard at Tik Tok, then abandoned toward next blink-of-ear sampling, to which cue Jerry Lee Lewis shaking our nerves and rattling our brains.

Most are casual consumers of film, if that. I’ve been since 1968 (new films that is). Boy on my hall at college came back from a weekend having seen Stranger on the Third Floor on Channel 8’s Shock Theatre, an event no more important for him than flicking a gnat off a soup bowl. I of course had watched too, asked his reaction to Peter Lorre, my voice impression reminding Jeff it was an actor named Lorre who played the title character. He laughed even as I realized neither Stranger on the Third Floor nor Peter Lorre would ever cross his mind again. Such was a random film watcher, for there were always more compelling amusements than a Shock Theatre, especially where it’s Saturday night and you’re age nineteen. My own priorities at college did not include going to movies, even as I collected them on 16mm, old vs. new the distinction, choice always the old. Shows were more a social outlet than an aesthetic one. It seemed nothing on current screens could challenge what had been done thirty/forty years before. We’d sit through High Plains Drifter, Live and Let Die, the “Reader’s Digest Edition” of Tom Sawyer with Johnny Whitaker (what ennui drove us to that?). Where The Sting or Young Frankenstein were regarded as the best things going, you’d not blame anyone putting movies down a list of recreations. And now fifty years hence we find options expanded past conception of days when movies were at least some folks’ idea of a best entertainment. Hollywood’s goal was always to prolong adolescence. Now adolescence has found better things to do than watch movies, much like Jeff but on mass scale thanks to diversions not to be had in his day.

Stills That Speak #6

STS: Rudy Resplendent, Preacher Powell Gone Over the Line, and Sacrosanct Strand

RUDY AND HIS BLACK AND WHITE DREAM COAT --- What becomes of clothes when we pass? I’d like mine to tour on mannequins as Rudy’s should have, perhaps did for all I know. Surely this stunning overcoat with fur collar and cuffs went somewhere other than Goodwill. Might a derelict on soup lines have ended up with it? Valentino was done with Natascha by depart time (1926), but who knows but what she claimed content of his closet and spread wardrobe among friends, for a price even. I’d wear a coat like this even in the summer just to be seen in it. Much of dress and deportment is dead and has been since RV’s time. Everything he wore was tailored to fit, despite cash flow often slowed to a drip. He had an image to protect, so couldn’t be seen at less than his best. Fashion had as much to do with Rudy being a star as what he did in movies. I’m noting similarity between outerwear in these two stills. The one with the dog lacks fur on cuffs but is otherwise very similar to the other with fur on cuffs. Could this have been a same garment altered? Rudy looks to be shipboard with Natascha so we’ll assume it was chilly enough to warrant weight of attire. With the dog, he looks more relaxed. Perhaps RV regarded his dog as better company. Impressive is Master not using a choke collar on pooch. No dog should wear a choke collar. No human either, though there is evidence this human did during marriage to Natascha. Stars very often carried pets along on drives. Was this an only time man or beast could speak freely? One of the old screen queens used to dye her dog to match outfits. No wonder so many cracked up when end-of-era reality sank in. Valentino was maybe fortunate to escape all that. I’d not like to have seen him brought humble.

TOO MUCH OF A GRIM THING? --- Am verily astonished by this image. Did someone imagine it would help sell Night of the Hunter? The film famously failed. Such publicity as here may have greased wheels toward wreckage. Are there also stills of Preacher Harry Powell kicking dogs? We of today giddily respond to such, so is it safe to say Mitchum, Laughton, et al consulted crystal balls? Wouldn’t be long before stuff as diseased dug deeper into movies. Step back and reckon Night of the Hunter for impact it surely had on few that paid 1955 ways in. Here’s frightful scenario I’d propose: Kid/teen “scare” shows using Hunter for salt upon stage ghouls, vanilla co-features (Gog? Cult of the Cobra?), maybe materialization of James Dean’s spirit. To slip in Night of the Hunter would be worst sort of child abuse, parents coming with pitchforks a la Evelyn Varden and townfolk determined to hang Harry Powell. If there’s personal parallel so far as trauma visited unexpectedly upon a Saturday matinee, I would say The Conqueror Worm came a closest for unexpected crossing of lines. Roger Ebert wrote of how Night of the Living Dead transgressed weekend boundaries to give youngsters real nightmares rather than safely comforting ones. It’s “fun” to be scared, promised theatre managements, unless we truly scare you. Yet look how quick watchers became inured to explicit horrors. I doubt Dawn of the Dead shocked anybody. Scene depicted by this still does actually happen in Night of the Hunter. Director Charles Laughton softened the show for seeing pitchforks that could come his way, Mitchum speaking to that years later and sorry they didn’t go all the way. Would/did newspapers reject this still? I’m wondering if it was killed before anyone could publish it. No matter … at least we have it now.

HAT OFF, HEADS BOWED, WHEN YOU ENTER THE STRAND --- St. Patrick’s Cathedral was located on Fifth Avenue between 50/51^st Streets (still is), the Strand Theatre close enough to invite comparison. Both sites inspired reverence and drew the devoted, St. Patrick’s a temple for one God, the Strand shrine to multiple others. May-be unfit to term attendance as religious observance, the Strand nevertheless anointed place for blessing from Warners. Did crowds surpass those worshipping elsewhere? Of stars not saints but regarded like ones, James Cagney lured most to Strand entrance, crowd above mostly men but these being matinée hours, we wonder if they were gainfully employed or just vagging at the Strand till home and supper. Frisco Kid cost but $419K to make and who knows but what much of that was got back from the Strand alone. Cagney’s New York following was a most committed. He was local, talked like streets from whence he came, got above his raisings to peril of popularity once tired of entrenched image. Cagney were reliably popular so long as costs were fixed, low that is, Frisco Kid competitive with larger projects like Barbary Coast from Goldwyn, then MGM’s San Francisco which took more in revenue but also needed much more to complete. San Francisco as seat of vice and violence was clear memory to many, Warners setting theirs in 1854, population exploding as of 1849 (gold rushers), this unabated till after the Quake in 1906. Frisco being cleaned up further made look-backs a source of pride for showing how far law/order had come. Frisco Kid has riots, lynchings, much drawn from fact as researched and embroidered by Seton I. Miller, a capable hand at action-oriented star vehicles. Miller was also a history hound who lent verisimilitude to backgrounds he re-created.

Being 1854 set, there is no earthquake which audiences came to expect of Frisco yarns period set. Cagney kitted out in stovepipe and ruffle shirt could be General Tom Thumb where pitted against bruisers Fred Kohler, Joe Sawyer, Barton MacLaine, Jim punching upward to meet chins always out. He got strength from attitude and energy enough to win any fight, no matter size of the opponent. Frisco Kid at seventy-seven minutes runs wide open, keeping watchers awake a priority to exclusion even of narrative sense. Ultra-shorthand lets new-arrived Cagney announce he’ll run all of S.F. vice, and presto, by a next scene he’s doing it. Evidence indicates speed pills administered, as why does Lili Damita’s presence come largely to nothing? Pace was all at Warners, more so than at any shop I can think of. His having WB over a contract barrel soon after this made Cagney a threat to ironclad industry rule. What other major name was able to break bonds and leave so much egg on management faces? If this Kid could rope Frisco, then why not the enactor lassoing Warner Bros.? 

Ads and Oddities #7

 

Ad/Odds: Winston-Salem as Show Town Supreme

Newspapers.com gifted us over Mother’s Day weekend with free access to their archive, opportunity to dig among microfilmed pages, reminder anew of damage done to precious print when libraries converted their lot to ugly photostat and junked original pages. Sad outcome for much of what had survived but no longer does. I at least was able to sift Winston-Salem Journal pages for what might bring back memory of showgoing in that hour-distant town. Winston was home to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco (get it? Winston and Salem cigarette brands), and you could smell the place from five miles out. I was regular hauled to a children’s dentist in Winston and afterward inveigled rides to attend special stuff at lavisher-than-Liberty theatres and a host of drive-ins. Display ads were a daily passion since we took the Winston-Salem Journal. What envy I felt for residents with access to the Carolina Theatre’s weekly kiddie shows, topic of inquiry whenever meeting anyone who’d grown up in W-S. Dan Austell managed the Carolina, he and I speaking several times long after his retirement from showman grind. Dan’s rival was the down street Winston Theatre, ads as often side-by-side to force choice among potential patronage. Here is 1960 for-instance, Psycho at the Winston and Portrait in Black at the Carolina, both to start Thursday, August 18, 1960. Two peas in a suspense pod these attractions were. Consider respective lure of both, Hitchcock as architect of Psycho, and surely talked about for sensation so far roused, Portrait in Black star powered and the Carolina’s ad looking frankly better. Imagine debate over which to see. Firm policy as applied by Hitchcock said no one seated after start of Psycho. Was this enforced at the Winston? Did management turn down sell of multiple seats in order to accommodate what surely seemed a silly rule? The Carolina meanwhile tried a similar dodge as in no admission during final ten minutes of Portrait in Black. Again, think of impatience where stopped at entry doors. As Hitchcock himself would have said, It’s Only a Movie, and remember that in those days, few cared at what point they showed up for a show, formula plots easy to divine within minutes of seating oneself. Meanwhile under stars was a first run of The Lost World at the Winston-Salem Drive-In, and we could wonder why this dinosaur, or enlarged lizard romp, didn’t rate solid roof play. Maybe it was fact the Winston and Carolina were sole premiere theatres W-S had at that time, which meant a lot of worthy bills ended up outdoors (for instance: Dr. No). Grindhouse presence deeper downtown was the Lincoln, Center, and Lafayette, three houses using old stuff and places I often dreamed of being.

Dan Austell was a hound for the old “Bravest Woman in Winston” gag. He had used it on behalf of Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles in 1959 (a yearly booking for Carolina kiddie shows afterward). Device was simple --- invite women to apply for a midnight sit, all alone to see The Haunted Palace, a latest Poe/Price out of AIP. Jim/Sam would surely have given Dan a ribbon for his initiative. WAIR radio co-conspired with the Carolina, spot calling for “nerves of steel … the courage of a lion.” How much courage did it need to sit 87 minutes and then collect ten dollars in cash? Miss Ida Voss, nurse, was game. Perhaps she could treat her own trauma for having watched The Haunted Palace. Date was Wednesday, November 13, 1963 at midnight (hope Ida, for hers and patients’ sake, had Nov. 14 off). She would sit in ABSOLUTE DARKNESS (with exit lights off? Don’t tell fire or emergency marshals). “Every era has its monsters” said Austell in ad copy wherein he mentions the Golem. Wow. Just how old was Dan? The Haunted Palace would enjoy a three-day run at the Carolina. It was the same for us at the Liberty. Any chiller staying that long was heady stuff. It was like a roadshow beside single Saturday berth as half of a double feature which was customary placement for genre stuff. In fact, the next two Poes, Red Death and Ligeia, got Saturday only treatment in my town, that a tip-off to the series slipping. Still and all, I regarded The Haunted Palace as perhaps the Greatest Motion Picture Ever Made for seeing it in ‘63, then again at our Starlight Drive-In come summer 1965. I sent around a petition in sixth grade for Col. Forehand to bring The Haunted Palace back, but no dice. Love persists however thanks to Blu-Ray access.

Here's a Winston-Salem mosaic, a show page for August 1, 1965 to parse with same eagle eye as applied near-sixty years ago. Where to begin amidst so much? First comes a smallest, the Carolina’s “Summer Vacation Movie Party” featuring the “Oldtime Comedy Classic” Utopia with Laurel and Hardy. This might have been selfsame 35mm print I ended up with in the mid-seventies. There surely was not more than one or two at the Charlotte exchange. Utopia needed all of help it could get from Glenn “Great” Scott of local radio notoriety, him for emcee duty and bingo wrangler plus host to the Teen-Beats Combo, local talent per customary. Seats were thirty-five cents and with that you got a free Dr. Pepper (never cared for the drink ... seemed to me like sucking acid out of a spent battery). Mary Poppins was having a first outdoor run at the Skyview, a family lure. So would be The Sound of Music with reserved seats and two-a-day, to begin August 11 at the Winston. My children’s choir group rode down one Saturday for that, me forced to forfeit War-Gods of the Deep running at the Liberty for that same and only afternoon. I just knew there’d never be another chance to see War-Gods of the Deep, and indeed there was not, at least in theatres. Operation Crossbow ceded to The Sound of Music at the Winston. Seems every war venture wanted to be another Guns of Navarone. This one got plaudits from neighbor town patrons, plus a theatre manager in Concord, NC who testified to its “pulse-pounding.” The Winston pounded to extent of refusing seats during a final ten minutes. Was this device getting tired by 1965? The Sons of Katie Elder gets first-run play at the Flamingo Drive-In. What made the Winston and Carolina pass on one so big as this? "A God-Fearing Mother Whose Four Sons All Turned Out To Be Gunfighters!!!” sounds spun by Flamingo management, and bravo to his enterprise. So many of a show world barely utilized pressbooks and were probably the better for it. Note State Fair as second feature to Beach Blanket Bingo at the Winston-Salem Drive-In, recalling Sam Arkoff’s observation that we’d not need “B” pictures again for fact that older “A’s” could serve as seconds, so few having gone to see them when they were new. Meaningful also was fact that State Fair would TV-premiere October 3, 1965 on ABC, a mere two months off.

A Mightiest (revived) Monster would turn out to be King Kong himself, thirty-eight years young when I experienced the 1933 classic in 35mm and uncut on Friday, April 2, 1971, the Carolina Theatre as host. As is obvious here, they really pushed the Janus reissue which had as primary selling point footage not seen since 30’s yore and shocking now to modern eyes. I saw Kong with a crowd for 5:00’s show, them all there to see something till then forbidden, or so ads promised. There were articles by the Journal’s resident film critic, Jim Shartzer, who promised new sensations way more than television or previous reissues had afforded us. I had seen King Kong on Channel 3-Charlotte in 1965, so was primed for a revisit in any case, plus benefit of a large screen in hopefully better quality than tube transmission allowed. I drove too fast down 421 so as not to miss RKO credits, wanting to verify they were intact and not replaced by Janus titles, or something worse. Such was this event that I stayed over with my law student brother (Wake Forest) so I could experience Kong a total of three times, one of the best cumulative viewing experiences I’d ever have. Clocking reaction was a kick, each time noting how crowds laughed when the Venture crew ran from the bronto attack on Skull Island. To me it seemed viewers were less jeering than seeking moment’s relief after intensity of the beast snacking on sailors in the water, some of that formerly censored. No doubt Kong was well enjoyed at all three shows I saw. Neat how the Carolina pasted the image of Kong beside Winston-Salem’s own Wachovia Building, 30 floors and the city’s tallest structure at that time (superseded later by the 34 story Wells Fargo Center). Janus Kong prints got play around NC, mostly larger towns, the Liberty passing perhaps for lack of interest plus fact Col. Forehand had used it in 1956, which he considered like yesterday. Having seen the Carolina’s Kong, I was more-less satiated, and would wait but two years before acquiring a neat 16mm bootleg off the Janus release.

W.C. Fields for midweek Carolina joy (May 13-14, 1970), You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man and The Bank Dick affording fans rare opportunity to see these ancients on auditoria terms. I caught a parent ride and drop-off out front to see the pair while elder business was attended, this how I saw time-to-time shows in W-S. Fields and other cult names ran constant at colleges and college towns; in fact Wake Forest used these same features roughly round same time the Carolina did, which must have miffed Dan Austell mightily. Also there was Channel 36 out of Charlotte with The Bank Dick the same week it played on paying basis to Carolina patronage, what there was of it. My matinee stay was sparsely attended, an outcome I expected. Cult stuff tended to crumble on NC screens. Remember a Bogart festival the Visulite in Charlotte tried putting on? Fields without a crowd confers but half an education, at least for knowing how he’d be received by modern viewership. I might as well have been watching at home. Still it was thrill to see Honest Man and Bank Dick in 35mm, both features new to me as stations I could pull in never used the Fields-Universals (some of Paramounts yes, but never the U’s). Latter-day marketing of Fields was afoot, a record album of voice excerpts for instance, plus mainstream magazines mentioning him. To collect Fields on 8mm meant buying one or more of his Sennett shorts, and maybe that was as much of him as anyone needed. The Paramount features finally showed up as a syndicated group the same year as I saw these two at the Carolina, and one distant station, Channel 11 in Johnson City, Tennessee, actually had them on Sunday afternoons, a double feature each week and including not only Fields, but the Marx Bros. and Mae West. Why care if reception was fairly faint? Reality of my situation was that nobody around town or at school had heard of W.C. Fields, save handful of old-timers barely recalling the Great Man since he died in 1946. Have we today gone back to that low level of Fields awareness?

Oh, my stars … The Birth of a Nation as a theatre attraction at the Winston Theatre, October 8-14, 1970. The Winston had gone to “Ultra-Vision” a couple years before, Barbarella I recall as its debut with the expanded screen. My cousin drove us down in ’68 to snore through 2001, but this time it was dear Mother that sacrificed her peaceful Sunday so I could share in D.W. Griffith’s spectacle. Might this have been moment to consider boarding school placement for me? Birth was distributed by Joseph Brenner. His was the shortened 1930 version with a recorded score. Dig these ads with the cast listed … Gish, Walthall, Mae Marsh, Wallace Reid. Was I dreaming or what? Ad copy is for the ages --- “Today’s young audience will find its mood varying from high camp to tense silence as the plot unfolds.” High camp? Never would have thunk it. And what of “laughter at Victorian romance and melodrama … quickly snuffed out by chases, rescues, battles, fights and sheer narrative drive.” If anything it would be The Birth of a Nation snuffed out at theatres; you’d think that was more/less achieved by 1970, which made this booking the more a stunner for me and undoubted others. The Winston-Salem Journal went to town on op/eds, letters to the editor, etc. during the week Birth ran. I sat the whole time not believing a 1915 feature in an Ultra-Vision theatre in year of Our Lord 1970. None so bizarre a moviegoing moment in my life since. This was in fact my first-time seeing Birth. Never having owned an 8mm print, it was all kinds of terrific to watch it this way, the show packing expected wallop. Suffice to say, The Birth of a Nation never turned up at any other NC theatres around that time, at least to my notice. Next Birth rendezvous would be come-across of an original souvenir book found at a Massachusetts antique shop in 1972. I figured this to be a rarest relic in the world till realizing some years later that many others saved such artifact to make the booklet somewhat common among collectibles from vanished day.