Stardom in Their Eyes

 

1940 Statement on What It Takes to Make Good in Movies

Films were written in vacuums no more than books or poetry, ideas coming always from someone’s heart or history. Star Dust as known, if known, was Linda Darnell’s Hollywood rise but slightly fictionalized, true in small part, but what the modest programmer really does is give account of other folks toiling at Fox and trying to stay ahead of backbites and gentle (or not) pushes out the door. Vets going back “long, long ago” like Roland Young’s scout for youth talent have seen it all and done most of it. Young in customarily low-key performance is “Thomas Brooke,” erstwhile “silk hat comedian” of silent days, faint honor now for most at Fox have service stripes as old, except kids recruited to be “stars” if such miracle can be managed. Brooke as former road company head of “Brooke Players” knows all aspects of performing and people who aspire to it. Others tease his age but realize it is the Brookes who best understand talent and how best to season it. Brooke is in short Raymond Griffith, parallel that eluded me over years seeing Star Dust and focusing on Darnell. Griffith had retired from cameras nearly a decade before, prior to that had been selfsame starring silk hat comedian, and who knows might have been kidded for it in his capacity as behind-scenes Fox operative since. Griffith had success as a producer at TCF and was getting single card credits. He produced Linda Darnell’s first two films. Think she ever saw a silent comedy Raymond Griffith starred in? How could she? Griffith began on stage as a child, lost his voice through combination of circumstance, became a writer and mute performer to survive, had too much ability for a single handicap to stall. People years later at Cinecons and such found out he was great, as in really, truly funny to us now rather than just folks then (as in silent era then). Him in signature topper was more bon vivant than mere clown, situational humor rather than slapstick. Downer is fact over half Griffith’s starring silent features are gone. Undercrank lately released two, Paths to Paradise and You’d Be Surprised. One or both would make a splendid evening beside Star Dust, a then-and-then for a forgot funny man who I’m sure called in favors to land himself at Fox and lend knowledge of industry past toward fantasy woven round industry of 1940's present.

We know Zanuck wrote for comedy in the twenties. Did he scribe too for Griffith? Star Dust director Walter Lang had married a girl who’d been at Sennett and became Carole Lombard’s best friend. Those who worked steady in the business shared links that were miles long. Star Dust gets at this in ways both subtle and direct. Raymond Griffith’s bow-out would be grimly appropriate, choking to death on food served at the Masquers’ Club in Los Angeles. That was in 1957 when the only people who’d remember Raymond Griffith were diners as old sitting near him. At least he died among friends and confreres. Star Dust was about youth, for youth, Linda Darnell sixteen at the time. She had played Tyrone Power’s wife the year before when she was fifteen. Guys would go to jail if they staged a deal like that today. Linda was from Texas. Dad was a postal worker, Mom nuts or enough so to drive her family nuts. Ronald Davis wrote a nice book on Darnell which I have but can’t seem to locate. Linda and brood entrained to Hollywood and took a pet rooster with them. The rooster was banned from the Fox lot after causing strife there. Imagine Zanuck being told about this. All in a day’s work at the freak house he probably thought. Linda was lovely in an almost unearthly way. She would have needed a mother with sense to keep her safe from predators. In fact, a team of mothers with sense. Linda Darnell in 1965 was visiting friends in Chicago and they stayed up to watch Star Dust. A fire broke out in the house from which the others got out but not Linda. It’s said she stayed behind because she thought the friend’s daughter was inside and in danger. Turns out everyone was safe but Linda. Took her several days to die. By then Linda Darnell was faded but from eyes of older fans and some TV stay-uppers. Carol Burnett said on talk shows how she loved Linda, to which Burt Reynolds on a same panel said he once did Tea and Sympathy with her. Imagine seeing that. Enough of sadness. Star Dust is adorable for not just Darnell, but others hopeful of stardom at Fox. I noted George Montgomery at the Grauman’s Chinese forecourt opening, him given ticket home after proving not good enough for cameras. Let go too is Robert Lowery who ends up a bellhop. What did it take to succeed? Star Dust suggests mostly luck, though Darnell gets hers more by cunning, writers saying plain that if you want it, use guile to go after it.

Sneaky way is as good a way as any, says Star Dust. Did hopeful youth see this as instructional? If football players and soda jerkers could become stars, why not any of us? Carolyn Sayres (Darnell) and Bud Borden (John Payne) have looks but nothing else to suggest they can act. Most newcomers to film had at least experience of stage, radio, vaudeville. Think Judy Garland or Deanna Durbin got in just being cute? “Deb” stars were discovered doing all sorts of things, but some potential at least was always preferred. Janet Gaynor’s character in A Star is Born wants entry for reading fan magazines, and makes it, but how likely was that to happen in film’s real world? The one-in-a-thousand rule did definitely apply. More like one in ten thousand. A book I wish had been written could be called “What I Really Had to Do to Become a Star,” for which I’d bet entries would stun. Did Linda Darnell simply walk through Fox doors and fifteen minutes later kiss Tyrone Power? There were Raymond Chandler stories where a murder victim “used to dance in Busby Berkeley pictures.” So, what did become of all those Busby Berkeley dancers? Star Dust says neophytes were protected from train arrival to being put back aboard in event their dreams didn’t work out. Dear Hollywood, you gentle, nurturing town. Who took Star Dust for truth? They could hardly do Day of the Locust, yet Nathaniel West’s novel was published but a year before Star Dust came out, and I wonder how many dreamers got wise reading it instead of buying bromides Fox sold. But Fox never claimed Star Dust for truth. Too many believed it, however, for being so desperate to believe it, some sure enough ending up like those ex-Busby Berkeley girls. One of them might have been the Black Dahlia. One became Barbara Payton, who was thirteen when Star Dust came out. I bet she saw it and said why not me?

Everyone’s intentions in Star Dust are so good, except for Donald Meek. He is a sour and bitter little man, and a schemer. Donald did not look like John Payne and never would. He knows that and it makes him mean. There are more Donald Meeks in the real world than John Paynes, but the Donald Meeks are necessary to make the John Paynes shine by comparison. Meek is sneaky like Linda but she is pretty and appealing so that is OK. Beautiful people can do a lot of damage and get away with it, in fact be rewarded for it. A rat face like Donald does the same and bam, you’re fired and get hell off the lot. Charlotte Greenwood as acting coach for newcomers is gleeful, gangly, and Greenwood-familiar from a million musicals, so where she schemes to give Darnell a leg up, well that’s OK too. Charlotte knows everyone working at Fox and has known them since trod-board days. She and lab drone Paul Hurst date to Sennett times, and he owes her plenty or so she pressures him to that effect. Veterans in the biz helped each other, and if it’s truth you seek from Star Dust, watch this exchange plus wistful earlier visit of R. Young as Thomas Brooke to a dilapidated opera house where he once performed. All this is where Star Dust most moves me over times I’ve watched, the past mentoring a young and naïve present, torches transferred, youth to lead the way as elders give ground. There’s truth in this, for despite grim outcomes for many, there was effort to boost old-timers and give them work past primes. Look far enough down any IMDB cast list from the Classic Era and there are charity cases galore. Hollywood, you tender beating heart and tent for all that served you. What if Carolyn Sayres and Bud Borden were real people and lasted twenty-forty-more years in films? Might they have expected helping hands and gotten them? Look at Linda Darnell and John Payne for the answer. She did Burke’s Law and Black Spurs towards the end, support in both. He did a Columbo and a Hunter. She lived to 40, him to 77. Would either or both say the industry looked out for them?

Parkland Picks with Popcorn #7

 

Pop Goes: The Unseen, Starting Over, Backlash, and Castle of Blood

THE UNSEEN (1945) --- How could Paramount gloss of a follow-up to The Uninvited disappoint so? First there’s no supernatural aspect despite same director (Lewis Allen), star (Gail Russell), and promise in the title. Still as straight mystery it could work if the mystery were not so transparent. Producer John Houseman years later spoke ill of director Allen. Was he at late date wanting to affix blame for failure of The Unseen? Being out of ready circulation did not mend modest placement. Neither does Raymond Chandler among credited writers. We want ghosts to be back of sinister happenings rather than human agency easily guessed from reel one. Vital too was romance of The Uninvited as lush scored by Victor Young, Ernest Toch a weak substitute. Saving grace Gail Russell is governess to troubled kids of Joel McCrea, reddest of herrings too suspicious for actual menace, him a modern dress Rochester to Russell’s Jane Eyre, their coupling for a finish foregone. Children are a boy and girl which boy is bratty Richard Lyon, son of Ben and Bebe (Daniels) who was obnoxious also to Bob Hope a few seasons later (The Great Lover) before decamping to England with family to be further obnoxious in radio, feature, and TV sitcoms (“Life with the Lyons”). Gail Russell sells with a performance achingly vulnerable  and enough to redeem an otherwise flawed project. The Unseen is had on a Region Two Blu-Ray, but hope is that Kino will lease it from Universal for stateside release.

STARTING OVER (1979) --- Search for romance in age of anxiety that was late seventies, truth-telling to put prior proprieties behind us. Characters hail from damaged age group that is thirties leaning into forties, walking wounded, comedy by intent if mined from rejection and humiliation the stuff of presumed all who aren't happily wed, a category movies would increasingly cater to, as who’d want to watch happy couples anyhow? Burt Reynolds, divorced and bemused, stays that way for most of length, small wonder for his negotiating with deeply neurotic Jill Clayburgh, late of broken home and men unworthy of her (An Unmarried Woman), which I saw at the College Park and recall only her vomiting at a Manhattan street corner (for real? --- sure looked convincing). What of tourists that day getting their first glimpse of a picture being made and this is what they saw? Unmarried has a husband who blubbers like men had not done in films to then. I wondered if loss in love might ever bring me to so public tears. An Unmarried Woman was 1979 therapy for people who had lots more life experience than I’d so far got. Was there healing for ones what saw An Unmarried Woman? It clearly was meant to instruct us. Starting Over went down smoother even though Clayburgh plays sort of the same character. Had this actress lived, would she still be doing it? Reynolds is torn between Clayburgh and Candice Bergen, both better left alone. Ever see a movie resolution that leaves you unresolved? Starting Over has moments of what I’d suppose was truth in 1979, a scene of Reynolds having a panic attack and everyone offering him a Valium, this back when Valium was easy to get as Raisinets. Try scoring some now. Frightful to think folks popped these so promiscuously. Carefree days, the seventies. Maybe Valium or need for it gave birth to Jill Clayburgh characters. People as less-likely-to-come-together is summary statement here, a Woody Allen circumstance, only he was more for laughs, having come off then-thought 70’s masterwork Manhattan. Survivor critics have ardently walked back their words since. Kino has a nice Blu-Ray of Starting Over. As for An Unmarried Woman, I can barely find anyone streaming it.

BACKLASH (1956) --- Pulp writing needed commitment and discipline I’m not sure exists anymore. When showing up at Greenbriar seems at times heroic, I need but remind myself of men like Frank Gruber doing as much in a single morning as I’d need a week generating. It was write or don’t eat as Gruber explained in his 1967 memoir, The Pulp Jungle, scribe life jungly on survive-for-fittest terms, him at constant odds with not only rivals but pinch-penny market that was ten-cent monthlies leaving wake that was human wreckage panting after next ideas to fill five or ten thousand word quotas. A finished novel worth at least $250, that a virtual giveaway, would sell for take-it-or-leave $100 (take-it-or-starve more accurate). Gruber wrote and sold twenty-five novels to film companies. Backlash was one of them. He based the yarn on what appears to have been fact, at least legend. Five men seek buried gold and a sixth rides off and leaves his companions to Apache ambush. Mystery deepens when Richard Widmark shows up not for the gold, but to find treacherous Number Six. Borden Chase penned the script based on Gruber’s book, both men hep to every frontier story ever spun. Universal-International made Backlash on percentage terms with visiting star Richard Widmark, augmented by contract players and freelance outdoor vets, all expert with boots/saddle. Thought for years I knew Backlash, but turns out it was The Last Wagon, another with Widmark easy to confuse, especially among so many similar. Backlash range war opponents are Roy Roberts and John McIntire, so let it be a dogfall just so both can stay to the fade, welcome as they always were to this genre. Widmark told an interviewer decades later that he sort of liked Backlash for checks still coming in for it, him one among undoubted few not ripped off re profit participation. Action is ample but talk is more welcome from a cast that convinces, Backlash evidence that Universal kept standards high for considerable time they did westerns by yearly dozens. If B cowboys had successors it was these, only now there was color (nearly always) plus names to lure, westerns at perhaps an apex of appeal before ubiquity plus television wore the category out. Backlash comes via Kino on Blu-Ray, 2:1 ratio, a nice presentation.

CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964) --- Occurs to me that black-and-white Euro chillers from the early sixties capture best the attitude and atmosphere of Victorian ghost tales penned a century before, sufficiently “old world” to differ sharp from Hollywood convention and convince us that maybe, at least over there, spooks are for real. Compare Castle of Blood with for instance House on Haunted Hill, latter slick but skittish to be serious, whereas Castle of Blood says Yes, these things happened and may still be happening at corners of the world not yet tamed by convention. Black Sunday was first among ones to whisper how truly to scare, an opening witch-burn with a devil’s mask hammered onto Barbara Steele’s face, this an affront to decorum US horror had so far observed. Black Sunday became a true test of bravery for those who’d venture to matinees, distributor American-International warning that only those “over 12” dare enter. Castle of Blood I knew was outré for being handled not by a known US firm, but by “Woolner Brothers” who relied more on bad dubbing and worse posters to promise little, though something told me in 1964 that it would score for being off even Hammer grid. Castle of Blood as gorgeously staged would look more haunted than even The Haunted Palace of a previous year, which for all its merit comforted by being familiar, Vincent Price more reassuring than frightful. Anything Americans did along scare line was undercut for mocking same on TV, Price as likely to beclown screen self with whatever once-a-week comedian hired him to guest, especially at Halloween where message was never to take ghosts seriously. Castle of Blood has a traveling writer betting tavern mates (one of them Edgar Allen Poe) that he can last through a night in bloody castle of the title, Barbara Steele along as if to assure that this libation won’t be watered. Castle of Blood was such unknown quantity in ‘64 that I could get no one to go with me to see it … their loss. Now there is 4K and/or Blu-Ray on disc, a lovely reclaim of a rarity I did not expect to see so clearly again.

Film Noir #31

 

Noir: Crashout, Crack-Up, City of Shadows, and The Glass Web in 3D

CRASHOUT (1955) --- The Filmmakers Releasing Organization, a noble try at independent production and distribution, stuck mostly with exploitable product, none more so than this nasty streak of prison-breaking and quest for stolen loot. Toward covering their Crashout bet, Filmmakers took extraordinary measure of a Variety ad inviting exhibitors to bid for, and commit to, playing time. Sort of a showman's subscription service. This was done ahead of Crashout going into production, as had been case with Private Hell 36, also fronted with exhibition promises to play and pay. Hell had gathered a hellacious 1,000 signatures "on the basis of its story and cast names," said Variety, and made news for being "the first indie-produced, indie-distributed film to play a Broadway showcase" (New York's Paramount theatre). Tempting too were lower terms Filmmakers offered to subscribers, 25-40% rather then average 50% demanded by majors as of September 1954 when PH36 opened. Success of this made Filmmakers more ambitious, with announcement of six features for 1955. The company's plan would require speed to meet terms of advance bookings. Filmmakers partners Collier Young and wife/director Ida Lupino wanted to branch out to at least partly finance outside producers, one of whom, Hal Chester, came to them with the concept for Crashout, which looked to be a safe commercial bet and so went into production with Chester-raised cash and Filmmakers participation.

Subscribed playdates set in advance would pit Crashout against the clock. Producer Chester and writing/directing Lewis R. Foster were sprint runners after quick completion, as would be others like American-International's Nicholson and Arkoff who would follow Filmmakers' example of committing films to opener dates before cameras turned. Crashout cast was known for bare-knuckle work, among them Gene Evans, who'd credit television for getting the Crashout gig. Seems Evans had been out of work for five months, till 1950's The Steel Helmet turned up on '54 freevee schedules around LA, this resulting in calls for him to star in a whopping three features. "TV is a boon to movie people," the actor said. Filmmakers acknowledged that Crashout was aimed at an "action market" made up of 16-30 year olds, and costs for it as well as other company projects were being held to $300,000 or below. Terms to exhibitors had to be generous ... after all, it was they who enabled pics being made ... so 25% minimum was starter scale and maybe graduated to more depending on the venue. Based on this formula, Filmmakers "was snaring 800 dates per picture," said Variety, which went long way toward getting modest costs back. Crashout was their most ambitious yet, headed for early 1955 combo release with Mad at the World and eventual 1000 bookings. This would mark both the peak and beginning of the end for Filmmakers, for despite modest success, the little company still had to compete with leviathans that were major distribs, these being tough and ruthless nuts to crack. In the end, Filmmaker jaws weren't strong enough, Collier and Lupino over and done by mid-1955.

CRACK-UP (1946) --- A mystery that is really mysterious, at least to start, and maybe the movies' first crack at fine art put to noir purpose. Early in proceedings comes a lecture by Pat O’ Brien where he explains forgeries, canvas restoration, the modern movement vs. traditional, a real insider view of museum doings and politics that attend them. Will desperate enough collectors commit murder to own a masterpiece or two? Crack-Up says sure they will, and having collected myself, I can believe it. Frustration of an art thief, or ultimate owner of knowingly stolen art, must be in having to hide your pride and joy and trusting no one to know what you have for fear of being ratted to true owners. There’s plenty You Tube videos about art in illicit circulation. Crack-Up killer collector explains that great paintings are merely wasted on hoi polloi trekked in and out of museums, that only those like himself should have possession of a masterpiece. Crack-Up is very much a curve ball among Classic Era noirs. Time is taken to explain how fakes can be detected (X-Ray), and if modern galleries aren’t using Crack-Up for modern day instruction, they are missing a bet. Commerce of copies go handsy with insurance swindling all in a gallery day’s work, and again, I wonder how true this remains in current clime where art sells for tens of millions rather than mere thousands such commanded when Crack-Up was new. There are expected swipes at modern art, read radical, or better put, too radical so far as lecturer O’Brien sees it. Wonder what he’d say to toilet seats tendered as fine art not many years after 1946. Much of art appreciation is expressed by phonies and poseurs, some depicted, then poof and they’re gone, mere straw men and women to make the casual point. Crack-Up wanted to appeal to common clay that was watching, and plain folk was known not to like modernist art. Crack-Up in this sense is quite conservative, if admirable for taking the topic of art seriously at all. Bravo to RKO for going a fresh route, if unrewarded by customers, of which there were too few to put Crack-Up in profit ($732K in negative cost toward $846K in worldwide rentals and resulting loss of $265K). Pat O’Brien seems an unlikely noir lead, but he could convey intellect, and that was what the part needed. He’s an ex-wartime investigator of phony hordes gathered by the Axis and so knows plenty of bogus art. Occurs to me that postwar noir had a leg up for protagonists coming from service background. They're experienced with weaponry and have seen dying, so we believe in them, these among myriad of reasons we won’t see authentic noir again. Crack-Up is available on DVD from Warner Archive.

CITY OF SHADOWS (1955) --- a Victor McLaglen starring vehicle … from 1955. Seems late for him to headline, the more so in what amounts to a Wallace Beery part for Republic on rapid way toward shutting doors. City of Shadows at 70 minutes sees McLaglen raise a kid inclined toward petty crime who grows up to be John Baer, a crumb on 50’s plate of The Mississippi Gambler, We’re No Angels, and later television, his eventual move to real estate undoubtedly a wise one. Baer had a good voice, was sneery, and not to be trusted. He starts out me-first here, a law student top of his class for figuring ways to frustrate law and achieve ends for future crook clients, befriending professors and vet attorneys to learn tricks of their trade. He turns legit after meeting Kathleen Crowley and ultimately breaks with lowlife repped by McLaglen plus thuggish Anthony Caruso and Richard Reeves. Small pictures like this are where type casting saved much time and exposition by letting known faces get on with conduct we expect of them, a good thing for short span devoted to City of Shadows and such like it. Directing is William Witney. There is a western street dressed to look contemporary, but cars don’t fool me where it’s hosses I expect to trot up, with maybe Roy Barcroft or Phyllis Coates astride. Engaging is Baer practicing law on mentor McLaglen behalf while still a student, masterminding strategy then handing off result to Vic’s shyster. Noose tightens for a snowbound showdown done with chairlifts that had to take time and money untypical of budget observed by Republic. There couldn’t have been much potential for City of Shadows to bring back more than a sliver’s profit. Maybe Yates liked the property and told them to go ahead and shoot the works. Kino offers a Blu-Ray of this in one of their noir boxes.

THE GLASS WEB (1953) --- Film noir in three dimensions, a rarity as the process did not often go in that direction, except wait … there was Second Chance, Dangerous Mission, Inferno, maybe others I’m not recalling. Two of these are inaccessible on home 3-D, at least on a legitimate basis. The Glass Web however is out and splendid via auspices of the 3-D Film Archive and distributing Kino Lorber. The Universal thriller was merely a title to most for many years: who’d seen it flat or deep? Not me. This was among supposed B’s Edward G. Robinson felt himself consigned to after political hounds began nipping, but I don't regard The Glass Web as B at all, and certainly U-I did not at the time. Eddie’s a developer of true-life murder mysteries, a “Crime of the Week” for local L.A. television, the latest victim close to home that is staff members of the broadcast station including him. I liked prospect of E.G. reprising his Barton Keyes character, which to some extent he does, but there’s a mystery killer angle and I’ll admit wishing Richard Denning would be the surprise reveal, since I don’t tend to fully trust Denning even where he’s a supposed straight arrow. There’s a cute scene where Eddie shows off his art collection to a date, a gag worked into several Robinson performances during the 50’s, him by then well-identified as a big-league accumulator. All of Universal-International earmarks are here, direction (Jack Arnold), cast (Kathleen Hughes late of struggle with spacemen). Depth effects are mostly staged on sets, that is interiors where lamps, chairs, etc. can figure as foreground between us and enactors. Hitchcock went a same direction for Dial M for Murder, which used similar devices with expected Hitchcock flair, but Jack Arnold was no slouch re the process, having done It Came from Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon, both effectively.

Not sure how many 3-D bookings The Glass Web had, it being late 1953 and maybe by then we were cooling off on the novelty. Of cast there also is John Forsythe, who I understand trained with the Actor’s Studio. So here was a presumed Method man who seems anything but Method. In fact, he was one of the founders of the Studio, and taught Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, others as well, or so it is said. I hope that’s true. The Glass Web is a highly recommended 3-D find and an entertaining 81 minutes with or without the gimmick. Also new from 3-D Film Archive is Domo Arigato, unknown to me till now and presumably a first time anyone has seen it deep, assuming they did even when new in 1972. Shot in Japan, Domo Arigato is a travelogue romance to ideally pair with any one of that country’s homegrown features, Arch Oboler the writer-director. This according to box info was his last feature. Oboler among previous movies and much radio did an odd drama called Strange Holiday which starred Claude Rains with support cast including my band teacher Priscilla Lyon. Had I but known she worked once with Rains. I’d have been thrown out of band even sooner than I was. Extras on the Blu-Ray are alone worth the price of purchase, an Ed Wood 3-D subject, Cleopatra Follies (aka Flame of Islam), and Skid Row Holdup, a 3-D burlesque short from 1953. 3-D Film Archive deserves much credit for unearthing such treasure, as who’d have thought any of this material would survive the long intervening years.

Showmen Sell It Hot #2

 

Showmen: Silent Standout, Peggy in Color Print, Mush to See Smith, and Lubitsch Chopped Down

RIDE, HORSEMEN, RIDE (1921) --- Show them this to demonstrate how a silent feature can captivate viewership readily as it did a hundred years back, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse my … anyone’s … best argument against the silent era as hopeless antiquity. Quality has been fine a long time, Kevin Brownlow and team having rescued and refurbished Four Horsemen when to do so with silents was bold stuff (1993). That remains attitude now, though I’d argue restorations of pre-talk have risen in at least niche estimation, judging by online interest when titles emerge from century-long hibernation. Thirty-two years seems eons to those who follow ancient action interrupted by titles with music hopefully to propel both, Warner Archive taking ’93 rehab of ’21 effort to new height the fruit of digital makeover and visuals improved the more. To reiterate: Four Horsemen is not just for those long put to apologizing for film without talk. This is vigorous, fleet-pace epic telling of Great War impact on an Argentinian clan with roots in countries soon to face off on Euro battlefields. We seldom see sweep of this sort by modern tellers, and I wonder not at all that The Four Horsemen was long considered flat out the best not only of silent movies, but movies overall. Above revival ad dates from late 1926, consensus putting Four Horsemen at a top of All-Time lists. Someone asked John Wayne decades later to list his favorites and he included this, as would leagues of others no longer with us perhaps, but evidence of what and why they exulted is here for Blu-ray consumption. Risking contradiction perhaps, I’d say only The Birth of a Nation passed Four Horsemen for pennant that was perfection in filmmaking before voicing commenced. My not mentioning Rudolph Valentino so far is merely to affirm Horsemen would be a same landmark with or without the star born therein, though rest assured, his is the spark to ignite and hold narrative grip. Valentino was a vital if not saving grace of any show he was in, being bonus here to what is remarkable already, Rudy a linchpin among many to keep our attention undivided. Do suspend whatever doubt lingers at prospect of sitting for a silent, let alone at two hour plus length, and give this a try. It’s in all ways a viewing revelation.

ROTOGRAVURE OF OUR DREAMS --- Sometimes a frameable keepsake came no more expensive than whatever a Sunday edition cost in 1941, weekend inserts tendering color portraiture of stars and up-comers Hollywood groomed for top placement. One of these was Peggy Moran, she of lineage that was pinup photographer Earl Moran, raising question in my mind, was Peggy ever a subject for Dad’s camera? She surfaced at a Burbank autograph show I attended during the nineties. None of us forgot Peggy so long as The Mummy’s Hand unspooled somewhere, which it had and relentlessly would from release to TV along with other Universal monsters in 1957. Those who toiled in such then-minor films (in Mummy’s case 1940) had faint grasp of what their work meant to those who came upon their efforts on childhood television. We must all have seemed absurd, if not developmentally blocked, to Peggy and peers who stayed enough years to meet fans for work never figured to last beyond first-runs and likely oblivion after. I threw Peggy a curve by asking not about the Mummy, but instead Deanna Durbin. Don’t recall the specific question or her answer. Peggy Moran like many starlets toiled through minor parts in important films and major parts in unimportant films with a goal same as many a hire at the time … locate a mate with good prospects and settle down in comfort with family to follow. Peggy did that and prospered, director Henry Koster her pick and both living well as he went on directing features into the sixties (The Singing Nun his finale). It was said she had considerable influence over creative decisions Koster made. Pinups of the sort shown here were kept by fans who’d hang them or create scrapbooks. Image quality speaks for itself. I’d mention that no daily around NC had color content like this alongside Sunday funnies, although perhaps a few got round to it in 1941 when Peggy’s image appeared. If they had, and I’d been around with scissors, surely albums would have made by me rather than collecting them decades on from old timers present during glory publishing days.

HURRY DOGS, SHOW STARTS SOON! --- Exhibitor comments were trade gust of honesty against gale of hyperbole the lot of industry-controlled press. Twas ever thus except where are today's showmen speaking truth to power that controls flow of industry data? What managers wrote and mailed to exhibitor magazines could be took to bank by colleagues hardened by lies via engines run on lies, or to put it kind, gross exaggeration. Gleaned from above commentary was “team-cutter” being a dog sled, oft-means of conveyance for those amidst “rural population” of Sturgis, Saskatchewan. Wish I could access a photo of their Regal Theatre, but would lens freeze where trying to capture such place? Reference is made to temperatures at fifty-nine below, which surprises me that humans survive in cold so severe, let alone could drive dogs ten miles to see Whispering Smith, which we know was/is a swell 1948 western, but this good? Imagine parking the pack outside while seeing Smith in comparative Regal warmth (did they brag of comfort at ten degrees above freezing?). Local friend told me of his uncle and boy-chums in 1943 tying ponies in front of our Allen Theatre for Son of Dracula, a commonplace on local streets at that time. “Everyone was happy as could be” might sum up attendees to hard-earn pleasure of a day out for films. I often walked to the Liberty (apx. a mile) and for it felt righteous, especially where there was snow on the ground and surfaces limited to foot traffic. We saw For a Few Dollars More in such circumstance, not a little spooky where no vehicles were present upon exit onto Main Street. Our Liberty, like the mail, always ran.

GOOD AS BROADWAY FOR A FRACTION OF MONEY --- To beat Broadway’s time was a dream seldom attained by outlier cinemas, but distributors sometimes flattered us by playing specials day-and-date with New York first-runs, venues separated from the Main Stem by a state if not several states here offering The Merry Widow at popular prices while ultimate up-towners were still paying two dollars to see the Astor roadshow. What went unmentioned in these ads was what came with The Merry Widow at the Astor, Major Bowes of amateur hour fame doing his radio broadcast live from the theatre’s lobby. Just entering was splendor enough, arc lights outside giving off a “weird blue mist” to fall upon observers up/down the block (was that stuff toxic?). Special treat Astor patronage got, unwittingly as things turn out, was a complete Merry Widow which late in the engagement got a censor haircut, instruction sent on 10/29/34 to all Metro exchanges that Code-commanded trims, significant ones, were to be made immediately. This played havoc to prints, and integrity, of The Merry Widow, fated henceforth to go in denuded state. Irving Thalberg, who fought the edict vigorously, made sure a complete print survived for posterity’s sake. This fortunately is what we see today, but not what audiences were inflicted by for a remainder of 1934 and into 1935. All general release prints were physically, and hurriedly, cut prior to all engagements in every territory, disrupting the flow of dialogue and music. Surely a public noticed, and resented, damage so severe to an otherwise sparkling Ernst Lubitsch musical comedy. A strict-enforced Production Code would cast its baleful shadow over screens everywhere, viewers crying foul where they saw evidence of vandalism such as was done here. We’re blessed that Irving Thalberg took action to rescue The Merry Widow and preserve it as Lubitsch intended.

Thanks to precode authority Mark Vieira for Production Code info on The Merry Widow.

Further Sci-Fi Sampling ...

 

Ackerman Owed Us All An Apology for Endorsing the Above

Fruit That is Fantasy Ripens With Age

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

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

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

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

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

Just Him Makes It Worth My 70 Minutes To Watch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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