Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Monday, February 08, 2016

Symptomatic Of A Sinking Fox?


Shallow Biz For Deep Waters (1948)

This was director Henry King's next for 20th after Captain From Castile. He'd again go on location, this time to Maine, where waterfronts and fisher boats supplied authentic flavor, a sort of New England equivalent to streetwise semi-docs being done around a same time by Louis DeRochemont (who was originally tabbed to produce Deep Waters). King had filmed in Maine before, for 1922's The Seventh Day, so knew something of terrain. Fox promoted him as "The Father Of Locations" and put out much press about how King routinely scouted for best sites in his private plane before work began. Interest in Deep Waters derives from these natural settings. Otherwise, it was a loss both critically and financially. I watched a Fox On-Demand disc (an old transfer, per usual for them, but livable), mostly as follow-up to Captain From Castile, which in addition to King shared cast membership of Jean Peters and Caesar Romero. Otherwise, the two ventures could not differ more.


20th Fox was towed in a same hole by 1948 as the rest of a fraught industry. Even pictures made economically were bleeding red. Tightened measures had become policy after cost overruns made losers of otherwise big grossing Forever Amber and Captain From Castile. Zanuck was getting alarmist notes from Spyros Skouras with each mailbag. Skouras predicted collapse for the company unless Zanuck turned grim tide, which he darkly implied might put everyone out of work. A decision had been made to increase volume as well as reduce expense, so as "to keep studio overhead and distribution overhead in line with total picture costs and in line with worldwide film rentals." 20th would release twenty-one features in 1948, up from eighteen in 1947. There would be twenty-four in 1949. Average cost of a 1948 film was $1.870 million, according to Skouras. Deep Waters came in at $1.4 million, pretty thrifty for having been largely shot across the country.


Fox wasn't alone in its panic. Warners and Metro would do a same about-face, more releases for less money. WB reinstated a "B" program, and MGM hired Dore Schary to exert discipline he had learned at RKO. Zanuck would send memos to all staff warning them of dire consequence from waste. The movies got cheaper, and looked it. Compare any wartime-through-1947 Fox feature with those between 1948 and Cinemascope. A DFZ concern was "audiences ... outguessing the producers. They know all the answers. In most cases, they are way ahead of us, and thus most pictures seem formula and routine" (see p. 170-71 in Rudy Behlmer's Memo From Darryl F. Zanuck). Had the public simply grown tired of movies? Falling receipts suggested they had, and "volume" output from hidebound majors wasn't going to bring them back.


Close look at Deep Waters finds little to sell either then or now. It's clear New York had faint confidence in it, for look at misleading ads that totally misrepresent story and situations. Deep Waters is primarily about a wayward boy (Dean Stockwell) who wants to be a lobsterman. His would-be mentor (Dana Andrews) is opposed by social worker Jean Peters because she's afraid both will drown in pursuit of fish. That's about all Deep Waters amounts to. Bosley Crowther for the NY Times called it "basically silly" and deplored "stock Hollywood characters and the things which they do ... as standard as the parts for a sewing machine." Ads implied hot love between Andrews and Peters, a cheat soon enough revealed to viewers suckered in. Receipts were among lowest for Fox that year, $1.1 million in domestic rentals, a miserable $338K foreign, the latter expected thanks to Maine backdrop not likely to engage non-US patronage. Zanuck had warned that foreign grosses were essential to achieve break-even on any Fox release. A flop over there meant loss over here. Was it a mistake to even make Deep Waters? Zanuck, and certainly Skouras, probably thought so in hindsight.


The Crowther pan revealed a wider discontent. Critics had long since mocked Hollywood for its adherence to routine. By the late 40's, audiences were joining the chorus. Filmland's entrenched way of doing things made change difficult, and for many, impossible. In meantime, a postwar public sought sports, family barbecue pits, other suburb relaxation. Television would merely put cap on the bottle that was once record theatre attendance. Wiser heads foresaw draught even as the boom promised forever wealth. Now came draught, and ordinary entertainment like Deep Waters would no longer do. Outstanding Fox product for any late 40's year was counted by single digits, a situation to worsen into the 50's. Against such background, Deep Waters, like others as obscure, assumes a fascination, at least for me. It is well-named for reflecting deep water that Fox was struggling to stay afloat in.

5 Comments:

Blogger Mike Cline said...

I wonder if movie attendance would have declined sooner than it did, if it hadn't been for the WWII newsreels, which were just as much responsible for ticket sales during "The Big One" as the main feature on the program.

10:41 AM  
Blogger Barry Rivadue said...

We look back at a delightful late '40s Fox movie such as MR. BLANDINGS--woops, that was RKO! At least Fox had MIRACLE 34th and GHOST MUIR, but we rather forget all the surrounding dross.

9:10 AM  
Blogger Scott MacGillivray said...

Fox was anxious enough about the postwar slump to rehire its B-picture chief Sol Wurtzel, who had retired in 1944. Wurtzel's Bs had generally made money (Laurel & Hardy, Charlie Chan, Jane Withers, etc.) but by 1947 even Wurtzel's stuff was slumping. He had signed on as an independent producer releasing through Fox, and his new features had inexpensive featured players instead of established stars and personalities, with very little boxoffice allure (JEWELS OF BRANDENBURG or ARTHUR TAKES OVER, anyone?).

6:08 AM  
Blogger Lionel Braithwaite said...

The real reason that movie attendance declined during the late '40's was (drumroll please).....the Hayes and Breen Offices and the Movie Production Code!

People got tired of seeing movies with no bite to them dramatically or realistically and rebelled against them (why see a movie version of a certain novel when the novel was much better and more realistic?) This was the recent (1/17/17) case for me when I saw I'll Cry Tomorrow-where's all of what really happened to Lillian Roth in the book? Where's her childhood in vaudeville and her time at Educational Pictures, and the nasty sexual abuse incident (and why does the decor of her 1930's apartment look more like a 1955 luxury apartment?)

This is why despite all the crowing by classic film fans and may conservatives who miss the old days, it was good for the Production Code and both national censorship offices to fade away into oblivion, along with the state censorship ones.

6:30 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

I have DEEP WATERS on a DVD and it's an excellent picture with wonderful performances, particularly from the then eleven years old Dean Stockwell as Donny. An amazing child actor who never gave a bad performance and was very adept at playing troubled orphans looking for someone to love them and looking for somewhere to belong to. Despite the top billed Dana Andrews and Jean Peters, this is definitely Dean Stockwell's film.

The title refers not only to the deep waters of the ocean, but also those of the mind, particularly the mind of a troubled young boy. Most cinemagoers in those days were very unsophisticated and wouldn't have been able to understand the psychological aspects of this film. In other words, they weren't equipped mentally to appreciate a film that called on them to think.

DEEP WATERS was also nominated for an Oscar for the storm at sea sequence, which looks very realistic even now and they had no CGI in those days. I'd love to know how the Special Effects team managed to do that, because for a film actually shot in 1947, seventy years ago, it's amazingly well done.

David Rayner, Stoke on Trent, England, Saturday, March 18th, 2017.

1:42 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024
  • April 2024
  • May 2024
  • June 2024
  • July 2024
  • August 2024
  • September 2024