Thursday, July 18, 2019

Showmen Still Selling Them Hot in Mid-1934


Finishing School Is Hot Love's Address


Frisky Ads Promise the Moon, but Does Finishing School Deliver?
Interest is there for Finishing School, if lines at Hollywood’s TCM Festival are a barometer. Online scuttle said hundreds waited hours to see this obscurity on a large screen, so let’s not write off old movies as passion of a newer generation (or at least an emerging middle-aged one). I suspect RKO in 1934 knew from nothing about finishing schools, but it's a cinch they were agin' 'em, being they stood for a class that had no overlap with wage slavery at studios. Knocks on the rich increased as the Depression deepened. On one hand, wealth was celebrated for allowance of art-deco luxury that fans loved for a background and paid to watch. They'd not come for long to movies about poor people. And what of stars living large and sending daughters to finishing school? Maybe the concept was winding down by 1934; social/cultural historians know better than I how much longer such places would thrive. Writers here wield knives for schools that taught deportment and little else. In fact, student (or better put, inmate) Frances Dee becomes a virtual prisoner, her tormentors a cruel faculty and worse classmates. There is precoding amongst enrollment, Dee made expectant by struggling intern Bruce Cabot (Finishing School released but weeks ahead of PCA crackdown). RKO scraped nickels doing mellers under supervision of Merian C. Cooper, who believed in volume turnout.




Negative cost for Finishing School was $156K, a figure so low you'd think gain was assured, yet profit at the end was but $17,000, reason withal why budgets were kept to bare minimum once hard times got grip. RKO's advertising vocabulary might have made customers wish they'd gone to finishing school, or at least some institute of learning: a Sepulchral Hall Of Snobbery?? That one was a horse on me, so I looked it up: of, pertaining to, or serving as a tomb ... or pertaining to burial ... funereal and dismal. Either way, not a campaign to endorse finishing schools, and you wonder if what was left of academies took umbrage. Whatever anti-movie policy they had in place was probably strengthened after staff got a slant on Finishing School. Indifferent parents are more to blame than spoiled girls here, Dee's being silly Billie Burke and distracted John Halliday. A common touch was supplied by Ginger Rogers, up and coming as a personality thanks to well-received work with Fred Astaire in Flying Down To Rio and success in Warner musicals. Finishing School is a curiosity if not a lot else, and is available from Warner Archive.
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8 comments:

  1. Scott MacGillivray10:11 AM

    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.

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  2. stinky fitzwizzle11:52 PM

    Stinky once knew a carpenter who went to finishing school.

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  3. DBenson3:46 AM

    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.

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  4. MikeD8:32 AM

    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.

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  5. John McElwee9:18 AM

    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."

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  6. DBenson2:04 AM

    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.

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  7. Beowulf5:08 PM

    Where did you go to finishing school? On a pirate ship?

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  8. Scott MacGillivray8:36 AM

    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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