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, November 16, 2020

Hard Sold, Soon Forgot

 



Cain and Mabel (1936) My Notion of a Howl and a Wow


I now call upon all to pit speech skills against formidable opponent that is Clark Gable in Cain and Mabel, specifically a staccato blast he issues part way in. Trick is to peel off the salvo as quick as Gable in his fit of fury against offscreen Marion Davies, so here goes, and feel free to read/rehearse before trying the rapid recite: I’m supposed to be a fighter, and what am I doin,’ playing post office all over the front page with a dame. (his manager timidly replies that all the world loves a lover) Oh, so I’ve switched titles, have I. I’m America’s sweetheart now, am I. Well, get this. That cheap little publicity hound has got to apologize for this, or I’ll wring her neck until the newspapers won’t be able to get a word out of her without a corkscrew. Remember, speed is the goal, a faster you go, the higher you score. Few weeks ago I was telling a friend from college about a recent happening. At one point, he stopped me to say, Wait a minute, John, you’re talking too fast. Alarmed and abashed, I slowed way down. What has 30’s distraction done to me?

Hardest-Earned Depression Dollars for Lad Going Down Streets Skipping Rope. Did Local Carnivals Not Have Geek Positions Open?

Funny Folk in Support Enhance Cain and Mabel: Roscoe Karns, Ruth Donnelly, and Walter Catlett


 

Watch enough of Cain and kin and you may find yourself infected by a Walter Winchell bug. Suppose I quick-time the Gable speech (not there yet, still trying), where does that get me? We’re not living in Cain and Mabel’s world anymore. I doubt we were in 1936. There is a deluxe trailer for Cain and Mabel, over four minutes, from which above dialogue came, the 16mm reel mine in 1972 for $17.50 from Glenn Photo Supply (also on You Tube). I used to drop it into campus movie shows to baffle crowds. Suffice to say, no one asked when we would see Cain and Mabel. Such tempo, plus stops-off wiseacreage, won’t again be our dish, more's the regret. Cain and Mabel represents an aggressive line in romantic comedy made necessary by teeth Code-pulled, where couples fight rather than love, beginning in fact as enemies, or victims of prolonged misunderstanding. Was there ever such sustained sublimation of the sex urge? I don’t recall any Cary Grant character sleeping with a woman after Hot Saturday and Blonde Venus. He was too busy arguing with them. Cain and Mabel might be dogmatic at that pitch were lines and situations not so clever, and dialogue so tart. Maybe it’s me too easily impressed, but this one strikes me as funnier than a stack of others celebrated for being so. Is Cain and Mabel screwball, a category I’m less enamored of than most? Thing about 30’s repartee is our wanting to remember snappy lines we can later spring on friends, but how many friends would we have, once bombarded by someone else’s wordage of eighty-five year ago?




I looked up the screenplay credit … Laird Doyle. Had not heard the name before, then found he died within a month and a half of Cain and Mabel release, age twenty-nine, taking lessons in an airplane that stalled. He had been at Warners after graduating from Stamford. There was big audience appetite for zingy word-sling during the thirties. A lot of it dates now, like comedy from any era (save possibly the silent). Humor driven by dialogue was made for the moment. Newspapers did a Cain and Mabel contest where readers submitted “Snappy Comebacks” to a chosen moment from the film, free ducats for the snappiest. Hear enough wit in movies, let alone radio listened to night after night, and who of us would not regard him/herself an Algonquin tabler in the making? Imagine chief jesters from student newspapers aiming their verbal act at Hollywood, or again, radio, where yearn for humor was unquenchable. Laird Doyle might have been such a prodigy, him a Stamford panic too good to stay campus-confined. I remember when New Yorker magazine ran caption contests for their cartoon drawings. Create the funniest and be envied by all of elites. Who of us hasn’t looked at a print photo or drawing and figured we could come up with a funnier squib?

Once There Really Were Community Sings --- Could There Ever Be Again?



I don’t wonder that movies were thought of as ephemeral. So what if Warners ordered its warehouse to throw out Convention City after some nitrate damage was found? If not for television, little of this old stuff would exist anymore. Look what they let happen to our silent film heritage. That came of guessing it had no value for TV. Movies brand new were the stuff of headlines, at least in Amusement Sections, daily bulletins, backstage happenings of crucial interest to fans panting for a Cain and Mabel to be upon them. Winds might blow from a week to months, depending on push applied to publicity. Important projects got more grease, naturally. Looking at Cain and Mabel’s pressbook, or pages devoted to it in trades, fan mags, even mainstream periodicals, you would think this was the Treaty from Versailles, or cure for Hookworm. An always clogged pipe of distribution meant no subject could stay atop awareness. Soon as we were told to mark down and remember a Cain and Mabel, there would come another to take its front of a line place. This was the engine that drove Americans into theatres a minimum of once per week, preferably twice, or however many as purses would permit.





Back-of-camera action outlandish enough got play. If anything could happen in Hollywood, why not Clark Gable knocking cold his sparring partner, latter a “former intercollegiate champion.” Here is Gable, unversed at boxing, but being Gable, could do anything champs could in any field, just because he’s Gable. Set upon wing of publicity, the incident, bogus or not, is further embellished when Gable is supposedly offered $50,000 to enter the ring with Max Baer, a chance he demurred, because after all he's not properly trained. Was such absurdity to be believed, by anybody? I suspect if one asked Gable about all this after the “fact,” he would have no idea what they were talking about. Very real, however, was Marion Davies being billed over Clark Gable in titles and all ads for Cain and Mabel. W.R. Hearst’s money was in the "Cosmopolitan" production, also his control to large extent. Hearst policy as to Davies billing was ironclad --- she never did a talkie other than top-placed. Didn’t matter who the co-star, Gary Cooper behind her for 1934’s Operator 13, now Gable for Cain and Mabel, and he had just come off Mutiny On The Bounty, Wife vs. Secretary, and San Francisco. Certain fixes once in were not to be questioned, at least by those wanting to keep their job.

UPDATE: Scott MacGillivray sent along some caption contest samples from his Laurel-Hardy collection:

Hi, John — Your “caption contest” post sent me running to find the attached examples from 1972. The Junior Mints and Pom Poms candy brands, then based in Massachusetts, offered a Laurel & Hardy caption contest, where consumers were invited to send in their own gag lines for a $5.00 prize. 

Nice to see that Laurel & Hardy are TCM’s Stars of the Month in December. They’re drawing from most of the Laurel & Hardy library every Monday.

Best wishes — Scott





6 Comments:

Blogger John McElwee said...

Dan Mercer remembers another instance of an actor socked by accident:


I recall a blooper reel with a clip of Dick Foran punching some hapless supporting player in the teeth. While the man groaned in pain, Foran turned away from the camera with a sheepish grin on his face. Gable was a big guy like Foran, so I could see him knocking out the unfortunate Pomeroy after the latter lowered his guard to accept what was supposed to be a movie punch. There's not enough credit in that, though, to get in the ring with Max Baer, who had killed a couple of men with his fists, three, if you count Ernie Schaff, who collapsed and died in a fight with the feather-fisted giant, Primo Carnera, but who had been badly beaten in a previous bout by Baer.

I have always wanted to be able to knock out a guy with one punch, like leading men could do to contract players in the thirties and forties--or Gable to Edgar Kennedy in "San Francisco"--but have a sense that any such attempt on my part in real life would only result in annoyance, followed by a savage reprisal.

Gable might have thought that he was being loaned out for a stinker, but remembered the loan out to "It Happened One Night." Imagine his chagrin when he actually got to see it.

I like Marion Davies in her early talkies a lot--fey, slender, androgynous creature that she was then--but by "Cain and Mabel," she had become a whole lot too fleshy. I can only think that she was still in the running due to WR's enthusiasm, but had he not eyes to see?

"Operator 13" was the first movie I watched directed by Frank Borzage. I regard him as a master now, but for years after that showing, I underrated him as a studio hack.

3:36 PM  
Blogger DBenson said...

For the record, New Yorker still has a caption contest and you can enter online at https://www.newyorker.com/humor
Also, I actually won contest #660:
https://attemptedbloggery.blogspot.com/2019/04/my-entry-in-new-yorker-cartoon-caption_29.html

Kind of sad snappy patter went away. As time went on, racy comedy meant:
-- Somebody trying to have non-marital sex, but inevitably failing.
-- Somebody suspected wrongly of having non-marital sex, leading to Humorous Complications.
-- Somebody ending up in a bedroom and/or partially unclad, but it's either nonsexual or doomed to fail (and it's included in the trailer)
-- Desperate double entendres, often involving breasts.
-- The implication that legal, marital sex will take place after fadeout.
-- The suspicion nobody in the movie has more than a 10-year-old's knowledge of what sex is.

"Bachelor in Paradise" checked most of the boxes, even though couples with children implied they knew the basics, at least.

3:45 PM  
Blogger Filmfanman said...

Snappy patter is sound entertainment.

4:55 PM  
Blogger Mike Cline said...

Knocked into next week - During the filming of the first season episode (Night of Terror) of the ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, personal favorite Phyllis Coates (as Lois Lane) was off mark just enough that criminal thug Frank Richards (as Solly) popped her squarely on the jaw, sending her to Palookaland. As soon as crew people revived Phyllis, director Lee "Roll 'Em" Sholem yelled, "OK, let's do it again before her face begins to swell."

Where's OSHA when you need them?

7:35 AM  
Blogger Kevin K. said...

At first glance, I thought that newspaper headline said that Gable was offered $50,000 to fight a bear, which would have been even better than Woody Allen boxing a kangaroo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thDcXxVddO8

10:09 AM  
Blogger Dave K said...

Great post, as usual! I will suggest, however, there are still examples of breakneck patter out there in contemporary entertainment. Exhibit A.; THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL features dialogue velocity from continuing characters that will set your head revolving. Show creator Amy Sherman-Palladino has made a career of jam packing wit, and words, in every line.

10:22 AM  

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
  • October 2024
  • November 2024