All Aboard For Trips Backward

 

Nostalgia --- Theirs and Ours

Heritage Auctions does a publication called “Intelligent Collector,” which may by its name be a misnomer, for how intelligent is it to OCG (Obsessive-Compulsive-Gather) when heirs will fertilize auctions or yard sales with what we leave behind? I call Heritage the intelligent ones, for depending on how long they stay in business, a same “rare” and “sought-after” lobby card for The Maltese Falcon will freshly sell one generation after another as respective owners pass. Perceptive hoarders say we are mere custodians of treasure, that all of it scatters again eventually. I’ll not belabor collecting today, have done so previous to numbing effect, but will point up an article in the latest Heritage issue titled “Sweet, Sweet Nostalgia,” premise of which reads, “Collectibles give us some degree of comfort in an otherwise topsy-turvy world.” Settled is the world being topsy-turvy, flocks taking daily refuge in the past. Call it a nostalgia pandemic if your humor leans dark. I find myself lately startled by old movies where people shake hands and hug and have parties. A lot of us are drawn to classics because they show life as it was and will not be again. Never has that been more the case than now. I always flattered myself that interest in antique film was studied as opposed to superficial, not an escape, but a serious embrace of things past, nothing so lightweight as “nostalgia.” Given present circumstance, however, it has become for me, and many … an escape.

Nostalgia is, always was, ingrained in us. Maybe not so much 150 years ago when life from start to finish was mere struggle to stay alive. Oh, to relive magic childhood digging for turnips, then dying young because a rabid dog bit you. So when did nostalgia get hold? Surely not before the Civil War. Soon as creators could express themselves on film, they did so in terms of nostalgia. Think again of One Sunday Afternoon, The Happy Years, a list gone on and on. Literature was there long before movies. Mark Twain used Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer to detail his own past. There are two kinds of nostalgia, then … theirs and ours. Sometimes theirs becomes ours. Like with old time radio that celebrants don’t remember first-hand, but celebrate anyway. Or me sat in at age twenty with old men reliving cowboys and serials, them all gone now. As mentioned before, their nostalgia became my nostalgia. Still is, for why else do I watch Spy Smasher? Walt Disney concocted oceans of nostalgia for us, but also for himself. Pollyanna in 1960 was an intensely personal project, being set in an era when Walt grew up. It fairly oozes memory, his, not ours. First edit ran 134 minutes, but Disney would not let director David Swift trim a frame … too precious a scrapbook was this. We sat restless as result, and Pollyanna did less than was hoped, a “their” that would not translate to “our.” But then 1961 brought The Parent Trap, ultimate “ours” among cheeriest of live action experiences to come from Disney. Scenes still play in my head. Latter-day saw remakes and sequels to exploit nostalgia for The Parent Trap that peaked in the 80’s, sustained through the 90’s, strung even to a 2020 reunion short for 1998’s one-of-numerous reboots.

Old enough favorites must give way to new, or at least newer. The first Parent Trap blows out 60 candles soon, enough finally being enough. Time we headed for the barn and let the ’98 cast reminisce. Sixty years after all … that’s like doing a 1925 Phantom Of The Opera reunion in 1985, Mary Philbin all alone to take bows. Who survives of Parent Trap ’61 other than Hayley? More instance of theirs becoming ours: American Graffiti and Animal House. Graffiti came out (1973) amidst thrust of 40’s swing to middle-agers, TV crowded with Time-Life album sets pitched by couples old (to me at the time), but not so old as to be pathetic. And I sure respected their music. Beside it, Graffiti stuff sounded punk. I was old enough to remember ’62, but young enough not to get misty over it. Levels of nostalgia for American Graffiti would multiply to become a precious artifact of 1962 and 1973. There may even be one or two more Graffiti cast reunions before tides go forever out. Pop/rock band Chicago did a 1975 hit, Old Days, their lament for 50’s past conveyed by fairly aching lyrics, “darkened dreams of good times gone away.” I bought the single, being a fan (Old Days reached #5 on Billboard’s Hot 100). Here were emblems of anything-go 60/70’s wanting nothing more than to go back to their innocence. The 70’s was a crest for rear-viewing, as though everyone at once realized they were older and needed to take stock. Fun times of yore were best liked, evidence Graffiti, then close cousin Animal House, a harder dose (R-rated) we were ready for by SNL-saturated 1978. House took place in the early 60’s, seemed current but for relic cars and poodle skirts, plus inevitably, the music track, old tunes by now embedded as best tunes, many agreed that anything was preferable to bane-of-late 70's disco. Older folk who remembered and younger ones who disdained current fads found common ground with Animal House.

Animal House was another to wax nostalgic, then usher waves of nostalgia for itself. Could modern crowds be roused as in 1978-79? Oops, used the word “crowd,” a term now quaint as “audience,” or “theatres.” I guessed when it was new that Animal House would become a sort of ultimate campus movie, booked for weekends to kingdom come. That prospect folded on 3/5/82 when John Belushi died, nostalgia hard put to bear reality so harsh. Surrender to a preferred past won’t stand clutter. Speaking of ado over music, its overtake of movies a given, is there anything so unexpected as vinyl outselling CD’s? 62% of all physical music revenue, they say. That must mean young people are buying, but why? To co-op my youth? Talk about living in someone else’s past. I want a demonstration of records sounding better than discs. Can’t return the favor, however, by showing 16mm (or even 35) capacity to beat digital, cause for me, it just ain’t so. Theirs/Ours again, brooms forever sweeping way. So where are model railroads, an ultimate “theirs,” or so I assumed. New-minted collectors, like for vinyl, may Christmas shop at the sole “directly owned” Lionel Train retailer in the United States, located in Concord, NC (will withhold double exclamation mark within these parentheses). A part of me would drive there (88 miles), observe buyers, and ask, Whose nostalgia is this anyway? There must be more devotees than I figured, even if but a few more. Do pilgrims now come to Concord like miracle seekers to Lourdes or the Vatican?

Theirs: Star Trek, the original series, and passed. Star Wars, the first three, passing fast, may-be past too. Certain movies that obsess, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for random example, unending fuss as to owners muffing one transfer after another, to which I would ask, is it principle of the G.B.&U thing, or do fans really intend to keep watching those three hours right to their own showdown with eternity? I await delivery of Warner Archive’s fresh The Curse of Frankenstein, looking better than ever they say. It will please because I never had illusion of Curse being other than cursed visually, first drive-in exposure in 1968 a fast-faded one. Not the memory, the print itself. Anything upward of that will be vast improvement. Theirs/Ours/Mine: Cartoons, Our Gang, Universal horror. How many who saw these first-run grew up to bask further in them, collect them? I’ve suspected it was mostly, if not overwhelmingly, a 1950's-1970’s group. Television accomplished that, a non-stop feed. Try reviving Our Gang today, or cartoons, at least ones I cared about. Great nostalgia while they lasted, for those who recalled them new, theirs becoming ours to spectacular affect. Nothing draws comment at Greenbriar like The Three Stooges or Abbott-Costello, long ago kid show hosts a common thread whenever chat concerns comedy and cartoons. Should TCM use an on-air clown or barker to really bring back Saturday and after-school programming? TCM is featuring Laurel and Hardy this month, me poised with VCR to check transfers, critical of each for nit-pickiest of reasons. Armchair archivism. Focusing on prints rather than performance. I’m calmest watching 8mm, so maybe should stick to those.

Eddie Cantor Contemplates His Personal Gallery of Greats

Was “their” nostalgia richer? Eddie Cantor would have said yes. Twilight years for him were spent saluting greats he had known and worked with. Old songs got reprised by Eddie on the Colgate Comedy Hour. He and wife Ida peruse a scrapbook as Eddie tells again what fabulous entertainers he had the honor to befriend. Among last things Cantor did was As I Remember Them, a book of short chapters dedicated to colleagues who became legends. Eddie’s nostalgia was like nobody’s that ever lived, at least in fields of show business. I also read Ralph Bellamy’s memoir, When The Smoke Hit The Fan. He reminisced about a long career on stage and in films. Bellamy came up slow, went hungry between uncertain jobs, had his own stock company for a while, learned ropes a hardest way. Born in 1904, he experienced acting from all angles, every media. Bellamy’s generation understood the craft by means unique to that period, having worked legit, road companies, movies, radio, television, whatever format emerged through the twentieth century. Ralph Bellamy had pals he invited to share memories, expand on accounts he gave of shared adventures, thus input from James Cagney, Edgar Bergen, George Burns, Lillian Gish, Bob Hope, Walter Kerr, King Vidor, many more. Each recall Good Old Days they knew. For instances: Milburn Stone tells of medicine shows that came to his boyhood town, how they operated, who got fleeced. Dore Schary entertained in the Catskills, wrote skits, performed, tells all about it. Nostalgic icing on Bellamy’s cake. They must have liked Ralph plenty to kick in so eloquently. He was a writing host inviting all and sundry to fill in detail from every field of entertainment. No source captures “their” nostalgia so vividly. These people got the best of a most colorful era in show business. What we are heir to is their precious memories and whatever we can generate for our own. Either way yields a feast, theirs or ours.