Of Old Times and Past Personalities

 

Lillian Russell From Footlight To Spotlight

20th Fox getting musical start on Gay 90's nostalgia that would last over a decade. 90’s was when a lot of music still popular in 1940 had its start, not unlike us enjoying rock and roll/pop minted through the 50/60's. Difference was modes of dress and transport old-timey to ‘40 viewership, autos/air travel having come since a turn of the century and fashions taking radical new direction, thus memory stroll past endearing strangeness of still recalled times (equivalent to our sentiment for the 70’s?). Hollywood found comfort in presenting a nineteenth cent celeb however way they pleased, there being little film and fewer artifacts to show what these folks truly looked/acted like. So it was free interp on Lillian Russell, and if she wasn't a lot like Alice Faye, then go fish, for Fox was serving need of Faye's fanbase, not what remained of Russell's, them too old in any case to be of consequence.

The real Lillian Russell looks portly from stills, but how so? Weight was said to reach 160 later in the forty-year career, Lillian liking to eat --- in fact, she had chow contests with “Diamond Jim” Brady, the two stuffing selves amidst elegant diners of the day, to feast hearty no source of shame. Ace showman Charles Frohman would order stacks of fresh pie to see him through busy Broadway afternoons, then head to Delmonico’s for whatever more dessert waited on him. Bigger-than-life Frohman, rounder than he was tall, did everything in a large way. If men fed like starved horses, why not women, specifically Lillian, who to the movie’s credit, longs for corn on the cob and how much she puts away in a sitting. The 90’s were gay for plentiful reason. Another way they got the movie right, Alice Faye and her inspiration Lillian being somewhat zaftig, early-on plus for Faye as it had been for Russell. There was not impression that Alice went hungry for cameras. She was, in fact, a best casting for Lillian Russell Fox could have found.

They Could Be Twins! The Real Diamond Jim Brady, and Edward Arnold, Who Played Him

Recordings suggest Russell did not sing so hot, but did have what they called "something," unfair for us to judge by then-voice capture itself primitive and bare hint of what audiences heard. There was gulf of difference between seeing Lillian Russell and just hearing her, visual stimulus an essential where she was concerned. Others were as fragile, Al Jolson notable instance of needing to be there and watch him live and strutting. Moderns deal a same cold hand to both, as in what’s so great about either? Russell tended her own field, attracted powerful men, and harvested diamonds they would garland flower arrangements with. She was into physical culture, so Diamond Jim gifted a jewel encrusted bicycle for Sunday outings. Such was kick in such extravagance that, late as the mid-50’s, Marilyn Monroe, at left, recreated the sport stance to evoke Russell in flower. Lillian and Jim’s was a tie-up of convenience, publicity helpful to both for their association, though it’s said Jim offered Lil two million to marry him (more I think about it, had Faye not been available and preferred, Mae West would have been aces as Russell). The movie casts Edward Arnold for a Brady encore, his having done the role first in 1935, Arnold and the real Jim alarmingly similar when you look at old photos. Fictive Brady weeps with his back to the camera after Alice/Lillian passes on his proposal, nice sentiment even if actual Brady never took the turndown as hard (in fact, he had a dozen of the bikes custom-built for a number of pals). So where are the wheels today that he gave Russell? Inquiry says UC Davis, their having bought a warehouse of vintage bicycles from a lifelong collector. What would it be like to spend your span gathering two-wheelers, says I, as bicycle folk wonder why I do what I do. Each to his own.

We can't know what frisson existed between stage luminaries and their public. Writings handed down can evoke the spell, but not recreate it beyond descriptive word. Still and all, Lillian Russell was filled with living links to past stage and vaudeville tradition, both in front of, and behind, cameras. Director Irving Cummings had played opposite real-life Lillian in her final play, In Search Of A Sinner, and had been introduced to his wife by Diamond Jim Brady. There was supporting player Joseph Cawthorn, a performing colleague to Russell, with Leo Carrillo, another vaude vet, as Tony Pastor. Eddie Foy, Jr. is also in Lillian Russell to recreate one of his father's stage turns. The real Russell was there from variety’s start with Pastor, committed to mature vaudeville by 1905, entered folklore by 1915, did but one movie the same annum (a clip on You Tube, maybe all that exists, her seated in a chair as Lionel Barrymore gesticulates). Lillian appeared too for Kinemacolor cameras, also on YT, an adjunct for her speaking tour called “How To Live 100 Years.” She’d try making good on the notion, was around till 1922 and age 61 exit. What an era to come up in, born 1860 (did her kindergarten celebrate Appomattox?), then being vital to all of modern show biz that followed. Russell would embroider her life for articles in Cosmopolitan near the end. As with many entertainers who wrote, why worry what’s true, so long as it engages? Hers does. Oddly enough, the columns were never gathered for a book, though one installment at least (her beginnings) turns up in acting and vaudeville histories.

Most remarkable of guests appearing in Lillian Russell was Weber and Fields, the joy-boys celebrating sixty-five years at show performing, having been teamed at comedy since they were kids. Fascinating here was the duo staging time-honored routine in a same year latter-day Weber and Fields in the person of Abbott and Costello were making their first splash in movies. Lillian Russell simply stops for W&F's extended turn, the two playing "themselves" in a backstage card game. Six decades had not dulled their timing (but how can we tell?, not having access to Weber-Field perfs from a half-century before), and it's nice to see clowns of such vintage come off effectively. Fox knew they had something special in the reunion, and would not hurry it along. In fact, a delighted Darryl Zanuck had the routine expanded after eyeball at rushes, letting Weber/Fields foolery run to triple the intended length. Critics would say theirs was highlight contribution to Lillian Russell.

Let's Have a Beauty Contest --- Lillian Russell at Left, or Evelyn Nesbit at Right? 

Fox publicized its year-long nationwide search for photos of Lillian Russell. 800 images were turned up. For all I know, that may be the extent of what survives today, or could it be even less eighty-one years after Lillian Russell was made? Such info raises this question too: What becomes of content from a studio's research department? Were those files eventually junked, sold, or what? I'd like to think Fox's research is still extant on the lot, but am not optimistic. Certainly the prep they did for Lillian Russell represented a most extensive inquiry on the woman's life and career up to that time, Fox having far more resource and initiative than any historian before or since. Might those 800 photos of Lillian Russell still be in file cabinets? Further burning inquiry: Was she a most beautiful woman that lived? Yet again … matter of taste, and it depends on what stage of her life portraits were taken (pre or post-corns on the cob). I’m fascinated by really old images thought gorgeous then that still are, or not, today, Russell OK so long as you don’t put her beside Evelyn Nesbit, a for-instance contemporary. So whose vintage beauty, these or others of the period, translate best to today?

Fox went junket route for a dual Lillian Russell premiere, one at their subject's hometown, Clinton, Iowa, the other in Pittsburgh, PA, Russell's last residence. Trains were loaded with stars who'd attend as part of contract duty, such cross-country trips being footloose op to live high off the studio's expense account, empty every bottle in dining compartments, and play musical berths for 3000 miles. The device was good for free publicity at every stop, had raised awareness for Dodge City, Union Pacific, others that had opened similarly. Lillian Russell was expensive to make, $1.4 million negative cost, at a time when spending seven figures was far from norm. A lot of critics recalled the real Lillian Russell, some in rose-hue terms, thus pans here/there for Alice Faye's impersonation. The picture ran to what some called an unconscionable 127 minutes, and lost money ($213K). It is fanciful telling of turn-of-century theatre and vaudeville, but for just attempting the vast job, Lillian Russell deserves credit and is a fascinating watch. Alice Faye enjoyed much residual benefit, reprising Russell often for live and TV appearances. It was as if the identities merged in 1940 and stayed that way. An outstanding sample is at You Tube, Faye doing lavish medley of Lillian for a 1968 vid appearance. Lillian Russell is on DVD from Fox, with a nice bio extra on real-life LR. There is also rental or purchase streaming from You Tube in HD.

Where would we be without LANTERN? --- the finest research/history resource movies ever had. Thanks again and again for all this remarkable team has done. 

Bless This Precode Event

 We Need Columnists Like Lee Tracy

I have a question for broadcast authorities. Was anyone ever shot on live radio? It happens in Blessed Event and seems credible to me. Surely among hundreds of thousands of hours sent into ether orbit, blood was spilled. Certainly it was on television, incidents at You Tube if you have a stomach for them. Reporters/columnists of the roaring era were often mistook for skeet by a criminal element. They die regular in precode The Finger Points, Dance, Fools, Dance, others. To gather news was to assume risk, city streets dangerous as those of the frontier west. Audiences took much of precode for truth. I know I do, or at least want to. Blessed Event was hot, had 115 NY performances (2-12 to 5-21, 1932), was nakedly inspired by Walter Winchell. Roger Pryor as keyhole peeper “Alvin Roberts,” nee Winchell, intrigued the latter enough to stop in with "a massive bodyguard" for his own peep. Any publicity was good publicity, so Winchell left the show alone, Hollywood meanwhile eager to adapt, that confirmed by five offers, Blessed Event ideal for on-lot dynamos. Paramount had the property in mind for Jack Oakie, Universal figured Lew Ayres to lead, and James Dunn was thought right by Fox. Most serious offers were floated by MGM and Warners, WB snatching the ball with $1,000 over Leo’s offer and getting Blessed Event for $66K.

Overworked and underpaid Jim Cagney was visiting New York and caught the play. Maybe he saw little to it, or was fed up at prospect of playing another go-getter, evermore ruction with Warners over money surely a factor as well. He'd come home, start Blessed Event, then pull out. Any player less potent would have been bounced out of the industry for such affront, but this was Cagney, urgency less to punish a star who ankled than one who could fill in toot sweet. That would be Lee Tracy, late of The Front Page on NY stage, understudied by pre-star Cagney when Tracy starred in Broadway, Lee emerged as an East Coast doppelganger to West Coast Jim. He had been tried in pictures and figured for Cagney at faster clip. In fact, Tracy was quick enough with words to leave hinterlands at loss as to what this dervish was about. Too, he lacked romance, being smarmy to degree matched by demon scribes his stage/screen lot. Crowds doubted Tracy winning Fay Wray at the end of Doctor X or beauteous Mary Brian here. Still, it was raw energy Lee was selling, and at that, he was peerless.

 

The play supplied topper moments to spare. One where Tracy detail-describes electric chair ritual was morbid past what horror shows dealt, but crowds at urban caves lapped it like cats after cream (Blessed Event blessed both Warner Strands, Manhattan and Brooklyn), them hardened to what tabloids taught about reality of the streets,  attitude seeped states away to hometown Bijous. Caustic travels fast. Columnist Tracy is a "heel" to extent of valuing success more than people, but viewers caught the drift, having come round to life as struggle if not an outright racket. Soft guys finishing last was understood as the way things were, Lee Tracy handy to confirm and invite emulation. Any notion of journalism as font of integrity was dashed by Blessed Event, but didn't every profession get its precode baptism in fire? (such as Wm. Powell/Warren William telling tough truth in Lawyer Man/The Mouthpiece).

How many “keyhole columnists” thrived in the 30’s? Winchell was a most noted, but had rivals (one to reckon with: Ed Sullivan). Did these men get death threats like Lee Tracy in the movie? If so, were any made good? I’m guessing that if Winchell took a beat-down, he kept it to himself. Not much image enhancement in having your head kicked in regular. Did Winchell really fear no one? Sampling I’ve seen of his columns make me wish there were anthologies of Winchell stuff. Of course it dates --- the whole point for me. He was what they called a “word-slinger.” Winchell began in vaudeville, knew how to entertain, his output gracious for that. Briefest squibs are his best, sort of like Dorothy Parker where once you get past her quotable quotes, there is same standard her stories and poetry had to meet, others in those crafts understood to be better, but she, Winchell, select others, carried sharpest rapiers.

Blessed Event as a play had Roger Pryor for the lead. I see him onscreen as a stiff, first exposure being where Karloff put Pryor and others in deep freeze for Columbia in 1940. On him, hot or cold didn’t much matter, but who’s to say he was anything other than a dynamo on stage? Some could conquer movies, others live performing. Not so many mastered both. Also from Blessed stage cast came Allen Jenkins, Isabel Jewell, and Lee Patrick, each to become familiars at Warners and type-casting elsewhere. Was legit a better source for character talent than fresh stars? Potential drafted from Pittsburgh of all places was Dick Powell, favorite of locals for three years he spent emceeing at presentation houses, his said to be razor repartee twixt bands and film (he sang, played instruments, too). Powell stole Blessed Event, said at least insiders with vested interest. His mile-high tenor is chucklesome to us --- he’d poke fun at it years later on television, long after tough guy Powell was accepted fact. Cheerful oddities Blessedly abounding: Ruth Donnelly as Tracy/Alvin secretary refers to “Tennyson’s brook,” we and he expected to pick up reference to nineteenth-century British poetry (Cagney dropped a same line to “President Roosevelt” in Yankee Doodle Dandy). Proof again that writing, watchers, the lot, were more cultivated than our sad lot now.

What precode gave was keyhole view of the news game. Since daily scribes wrote most tales of their trade, it was a cinch they’d flatter themselves, and each other. Winchell was happy as a clam with Blessed Event, handing it orchids wherever run, letting Warner use squibs at will. A tough game was reporting, but Alvin Roberts has a heart, if late-emerging. Score up Blessed Event for bounce unlike weighty lift of decades-later Ace In The Hole, where we’re invited not to enjoy Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum, but instead wait for just dessert he'll be served. For such “brave” statement on media abuses, it seems to me Ace In The Hole chickens out at the end the way Blessed Event does not. Precode was the goods --- think the PCA would have let Blessed Event happen in 1951? Kirk Douglas driving all that way to tell Mr. Boot “you can have me for nothing,” before dropping headlong dead at his editor’s feet. Do please show me the door.

To save for last, then: Lee Tracy (pre-Hollywood, on stage, at left). I found fan mag profiles attacking drink rumors and aver of unreliability on Lee’s part, seemingly from a moment he detrained in California. He called it a crock framed by enemies afraid to show their face. Is it possible Lee had too much talent and energy for his own good? Cagney was as wired, but on screen only, being otherwise bookish and retiring. One could be jaunty and say Lee pi—ed away his standing, but that would require buy into accounts brought back from Mexico and Viva Villa location. I would have sent the naughty boy upstairs without supper, then had him back at work the next day. Besides, reliable sources say the thing never happened, or happened very different, and milder, than what was reported (mild version an obscene gesture from the street below, which Tracy returned). Enough of Lee --- his legacy is safe so long as Blessed Event unspools. Note above Schine’s Palace ad (Lockport, NY) where Blessed Event is featured with a one act comedy performed by the “High School Dramatic Class,” and there’s a six-person cast list, plus a director credited. Suppose College Bred was as funny as Blessed Event?

Still Panning For Pans

 

Before It Was Agreed They Were Great

Remember Agee acid poured on To Each His Own? Colleague Manny Farber could deal as harsh. Read him on first-run My Darling Clementine, or Strangers on A Train, then retire to a fainting couch, never so fierce barbs aimed at sacred cows John Ford (“unimaginative”) and Alfred Hitchcock (“ … has gone farther on fewer brains than any director since Griffith”). Classics when new were open season for critics not yet instructed on how to respond to them. Farber was an independent thinker, him bracing as old-style shave lotion. Is our accepting “Great Films” as great films just going along to get along? A masterpiece once certified is tough to un-certify. Auteurists gaining influence took down directors they saw as not singular enough: Fred Zinnemann, Stanley Kramer, even George Stevens, but Ford and Hitchcock have stayed inviolate. Farber spoke heresy to what would become strict placement for directors. I enjoy him for shock value current evaluation of old film lacks. Was Farber misguided, blind to splendor set before him? He was too skilled a thinker and writer for us to dismiss so easy. Clementine the “slow-poke cowboy epic … a dazzling example of how to ruin some wonderful western history with pompous movie making” is not a quote we’d put on the Criterion box, and much as I like the movie, Farber’s voice, niggling since 1946, causes me (and others?) to wonder if maybe he made some valid points.

Object was to read Farber with an open mind before screening again My Darling Clementine (for what, a fiftieth at-least time?). Pleased to report it remains secure in my estimation. Not for a moment was I put off by “cloudscapes … as saccharine as picture postcards,” Ford applying same techniques “ever since Art Acord was a baby,” that last good for a titter, but why not point out fact that both began around a same time, in the teens, Ford in ‘46 still a working survivor where Acord was not (d. 1931). Otherwise JF might have kept Art fed with extra work. Any reference to Art Acord was by then a gag line, which brings us to reality that critics were, still are, there/here to entertain. Where clever or funny at the expense of accuracy, or even point, well … that’s the job, and everyone, even Art Acord, has to eat, this in part why I deny being, or ever having been, a critic. Also shrink from “historian” label, for wasn't it me that misspelled Donald O’Connor’s name? (bless alert readers and Blogger edit function) There was 1968-69 on The Wilkes News payroll as “chief” (only) reviewer, visits to the Liberty grown awkward as columns got less informative, and more smarty-pants (mine should have been taken down for a paddling). Don’t know why, but Farber prose evokes tilt I had with Yellow Submarine, wherein punk pundit me swapped edifying for cute, honing on one of a kid group in the auditorium that somehow got shoes off another, hurling them across seat rows as the victim gave chase. Usher staff, what there was, paid nary heed. Not willing to let well enough alone, I pointed out the same group “wrestling for a nickel that was misplaced on the floor,” that likelier invention on my part to score another laugh. Everyone’s a comedian, they say, especially movie critics wanting to juice up humdrum work they do.

I bought Strangers On A Train blind in November 1977, $175 from a collector in Charlotte who I wonder what ever happened to. He dealt anything … 35mm, 16, had begun with military surplus equipment from age twelve. My gamble on Strangers was the more so for no one I knew having seen it, me included. I took the word of writers that here was a pearl among Hitchcocks. Glad I didn’t read Farber in 1977. Being one AH did for Warners, SOAT had not network exposure like higher profile Paramounts. Syndicated TV was heir to Strangers plus Stage Fright, I Confess, Dial M For Murder, and The Wrong Man, all largely buried on late shows since 1961. I wish I could see Strangers the way I saw it that day in 1977. A crackling thriller, everything a surprise. Being still on safe side of gross over-analysis this and others of Hitchcock ultimately got, I had not worry of duality, moral ambiguity, Guy as mirror image of Bruno, or was it other way around (in short, no baggage). How much of entertainment has been denuded by microscoping? Lots, I aver. Strangers a masterpiece? Yes for me, but let Manny Farber be devil’s advocate to that, his conception of Hitchcock a director who “has made his living by subjecting the movie audience to a series of cheap, glossy, mechanically perfect shocks … cleverly masking his deficiency and his underlying petty and pointless sadism, with a honey-smooth patina of “sophistication,” irony, and general glitter.” Simple to dismiss this as bad attitude, “dated” viewpoint, but if we lack skill and personnel to create things as good as Strangers On A Train today, how do we casually dismiss those who responded to such work when it was new? Obviously they took good movies more for granted, and so kept tougher standards. Are we since too complacent where settled classics are concerned? I wonder if anyone of cultural authority ventures that Hamlet is not so hot a play after all, and what would happen to him/her for saying it?

My Darling Clementine was 1946-sold on absurdly misleading terms. Here was not a western to be held in reverence. Wish I could have heard what people said coming out. Plain folks, that is, not Ford scholars (too early for them in any case). I had a friend, William Wooten, who lived in Statesville, did what is understood to be the first monograph and filmography for Ford, in 1947. Now there was a vanguard Fordist. “Captivating Hell-Cat, Tantalizing Siren, Luring Men To Madness … To Murder!” cried ads. Such was “Clementine,” but Linda Darnell hell-catting across print pages was not Clementine in the film, nor does she lure men to madness, unless H. Fonda dunking her in a trough amounts to that, but one could argue she lures “Billy Clanton” (John Ireland) to murder … her own. The Garrick was a first-run Chicago trend-setter for selling, independent of Fox, let alone Ford, so far as guidance toward maximum sex-sell. Showmen elsewhere would have seen their handiwork and followed suit. Lest we forget people’s concept of a movie in those days being based almost entirely on theatre ads in newspapers. Fewer actually went to see the shows. I doubt ones who did resented subterfuge out front or in dailies, all complicit in pas de deux a daily ritual between exhibitors and those they exhibited to.

Was a critic establishment loathe to respect Hitchcock? His seemed seldom to command respect. Rebecca had won “Best Picture,” but that was more Selznick’s award. Hitchcock never won in Academy competition. They gave him Thalberg recognition to which he spoke a terse thank you. Hitchcock left England partly because they didn’t regard him high enough (he thought) and were not likely to, no matter how much a public enjoyed him. I saw somewhere that Gary Cooper turned down Foreign Correspondent because it was beneath him. Were Hitchcock stunt thrillers unworthy to put beside serious drama? Farber seems annoyed by this director’s devices. I think part of the reason Hitchcock stayed current was his always thinking ahead of staid convention. Look at Psycho, brimming with protest toward limit movies imposed, seeming work of a maverick newcomer rather than a man sixty who had been at it forty years. For that matter, think how outlandish Strangers On A Train seemed to viewers in 1951. What we groove with easily now was break from many a steadfast rule then. What annoyed Farber, and others who’d deny Hitchcock industry reward (other than boxoffice, not within their power to withhold), was his being a true and ongoing iconoclast oblivious to custom they were of mind to uphold.

For a better if not best among Hitchcocks, Strangers On A Train kept wide of higher profile others, as did My Darling Clementine from Fords a public embraced more. Both seem vague outliers in their respective director’s output, consequence I think of stars, rather than merit, lacking. How many more would have seen My Darling Clementine over the years had John Wayne been Wyatt Earp rather than Fonda? Latter would eventually be an only recognizable name from Clementine cast. Who of latter-day viewers knew from Linda Darnell, or cared much about Victor Mature? You needed to live on late shows to realize value in these two. I wouldn’t be surprised if local listings had “Henry Fonda and Ward Bond in …” To Strangers On A Train came first-and-second billed Farley Granger and Ruth Roman, eventual strangers on promoting trains. I’d been but faintly exposed to either when Strangers On A Train came through collecting doors in 1977. Robert Walker was familiar only because I had lately got a print of Since You Went Away. Other 50’s Hitchcock had color, Cary Grant, or James Stewart, and played networks as well. “Warner Brothers Film Gallery” offered Strangers On A Train, Stage Fright, I Confess, and The Wrong Man for non-theatrical rent on 16mm., $100 each or grouped as a “Hitchcock Festival” for $340. Titles that colleges or film societies preferred, specifically the Paramounts, were unavailable with exception of To Catch A Thief. In that sense, Strangers On A Train was easier to see than others of Hitchcock oeuvre, even as it remained in the shade otherwise.

Extras with Strangers On A Train and My Darling Clementine Blu-Rays have become artifacts themselves, almost twenty years tacked on to backward glancing when content accompanied standard DVD releases. Much is here, hours, to show where these films have stood for a fan, academic, and archival community since distributors saw gain in putting more than a mere movie on discs. Instruction began with alternate versions of Clementine. Seems there was a ending that tested badly with preview audiences, was replaced by Zanuck (Lloyd Bacon hired to reshoot it). Difference was Henry Fonda kissing “Clementine” (Cathy Downs), or not kissing her. John Ford was for a handshake only, shot it thus, DFZ opting for the kiss, bringing back Fonda/Downs to see it was done. I am philistine enough to prefer the kiss, so would have made an ideal Zanuck Yes men in 1946. There is analysis of real-life Wyatt Earp and what the O.K. showdown was like. Wonder how I might have responded to all this had Channel 3 used it with their mid-60’s Clementine late show, first time view for me. Criterion bonuses being there would have kept me up till cock crow. Too much even of a marvelous thing? Strangers On A Train extras were made in 2003, eighteen years ago that seems shorter (like everything 18 years ago). Of note was most on-camera contributors gone now, or not likely to sit before interviewing cameras again. Who will take their place to deep-dish Hitchcock, Ford, the rest? Or has it all been said? Fresh crop of commentators who have come to the fore will sustain, or not, for a next twenty years, plus whoever might emerge over that coming period of time. Will another Manny Farber rise up to challenge ingrained definition of Great Films as we’ve been so long taught them?