Showmen Still Selling Them Hot in Mid-1934
Finishing School Is Hot Love's Address
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| Frisky Ads Promise the Moon, but Does Finishing School Deliver? |
posted by John McElwee at 8:30 AM
Thursday, July 18, 2019
Finishing School Is Hot Love's Address
8 Comments:
The "NO MEN ALLOWED" line in the ad is intriguing. Does it mean the theater staff will restrict the attendance to the ladies? Maybe not, because the phrase becomes the beginning of a descriptive paragraph.
I guess this is how the theater pitched it: appearing to restrict attendance but really using the phrase as a come-on.
Stinky once knew a carpenter who went to finishing school.
It's likely LA had a strata of old money that still looked down on Hollywood nouveaus, and exclusive schools that catered to the rich. Can't help but wonder if "Finishing School" had consequences for executives and stars trying to place their daughters in elite institutions.
In fact, one wonders if some films pulled their punches not because of censorship or controversy, but because a producer's social standing or ability to get traffic tickets fixed would be impacted.
I somehow found myself in an internet rabbit hole checking out the Black-Foxe Military Institute in Hollywood. It may have been this blog that sent me there. It seems a lot of location bound actors sent their sons there to keep them on the straight and narrow while dad was busy making movies. There were some interesting reminisces to be found.
Dan Mercer considers John Halliday's participation in FINISHING SCHOOL:
Perhaps the crowds were drawn by the presence of John Halliday. They came, hoping that his sardonic demeanor would generate a certain frisson, even a kind of sadism featuring the young female stars. If so, they would have been disappointed to find him playing only another businessman too focused on his coupons, who only needs to be distracted for a moment to reveal his heart of gold.
By the time of the film's release, the Roosevelt administration had taken the United States off the gold standard. All coins and gold certificates of $100 or more had to be exchanged for other money. It also increased the value of gold by offering to pay a fixed price of $20.67 an ounce, later increased to $35 an ounce.
Mr. Halliday's heart, at least in this film, had become a weightier proposition. No doubt it was redeemed, given his behavior in such later films as "Peter Ibbetson."
The second set of Charley Chase Hal Roach two-reelers is out; I justify mentioning it here because one short, "Girl Grief", has Charley teaching music at a girls' school (although girls are the least of his problems after pranksters fill his bed with catnip). Enjoyed the first disc; the second disc includes a Spanish-language version of "Looser Than Loose".
One can only wonder why stuff this good never found its way to television immortality like Stan & Ollie, the Rascals and the Stooges. Even the Columbia Charleys -- decidedly lesser than the Roach films -- were at least competitive anything else on early airwaves. Were the Chase shorts (or other Roach products) ever in a syndication package? You'd think it would have been tried, considering how desperate packagers cannibalized features to stretch the supply of Laurel and Hardy shorts.
I recall Blackhawk Films offering just a few Chase talkies, and some VHS releases of Laurel and Hardy would toss in a Chase or Todd as a bonus. Beyond that, Charley Chase was represented only by his silent work and his turn in "Sons of the Desert" -- but even that was enough to secure his place amongst the masters.
Warner Archive also just release a set of 75 Pete Smith Specialties. Got my set -- I'm on board for almost any kind of theatrical shorts -- but Smith has to wait till I get through Charley.
Where did you go to finishing school? On a pirate ship?
Responding to Mr. Benson's question: Yes, Moe Kerman of Favorite Films licensed all the Hal Roach talkie shorts in 1948 for TV syndication. (The Our Gang shorts came with the deal, but Kerman sublet them to another distributor.)
The Chase titles were the Film Classics reissues, with Chase's first name misspelled "Charlie." The Columbia Chases have also been syndicated, along with the non-Stooge comedies (in the wake of the Stooges' gigantic popularity in syndication), but far fewer stations used the non-Stooge shorts so they're tougher to come by these days.
The cannibalization of the Laurel & Hardy features made sense at the time, because early TV schedules were limited to 15- and 30-minute time slots, after the established formats of radio. It was easier to program the short versions. Feature films were televised in the old. old, days, but some stations cut them into chunks and showed them in serialized form.
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