Stills That Speak #3

 

STS: Roscoe at Sunset, Beasts and Bombs, Our Amuzu, and Exhibition's Beginning or End?

ROSCOE STRIKES A SAD POSE --- Are so-called “silent” comedians misnamed? They are all silent now in any event, just as “sound” rest of us will eventually follow them. Many of distant yore were heard by millions, having appeared more and longer upon stages than they would on film. Roscoe Arbuckle was a live performing veteran for years before movies got him, latter but a segment between bookends that was vaudeville. Was Roscoe and fellow phoenix Harry Langdon humbled by a return to roots called variety? I’ll venture both were happier back to basics than pressure cook that was Paramount for Arbuckle, First-National for Langdon. Where it was a live act, you at least rolled your own. Arbuckle back in vaudeville enjoyed creative freedom enabled by that, plus joy of live crowds delighted to be there and letting him know it. If performing was fulfillment in itself, which accounts suggest it was, then Roscoe through the twenties and into the early thirties may have known a peak of career satisfaction through what others might assume was exile and disgrace. I'm told of Arbuckle features booed off screens during scandal's first flush, a reason several were withdrawn or never US-released, but were there incidents later of Fatty driven off vaude stages by hostile audiences? I’ve not heard of such. Whoever paid ways in knew Arbuckle was part of the program, him live appearing never a secret from those attending. Roscoe stayed busy thanks to stage work and directing comedy for others in Hollywood. The caption with the above image is misleading, composed at hindsight by someone who knew precious little of Arbuckle’s final shorts series for Vitaphone. Would such a crowd of youngsters be there to stare upon a broken man? Roscoe pulls “sad clown” expression for the camera, but I bet he funned up soon as snap was taken and pleased every kid looking on. “The public, accustomed to sophisticated humor, did not find him funny” --- wrong on innumerable counts unless I totally miss my guess as to events of ninety-plus years ago.

THE BEAST WHERE HE BEST BELONGED --- Can’t imagine a fitter spot for The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms in 1953 than North Augusta’s Cloverleaf Drive-In located at 1137 Atomic Road, so-named for neighboring Savannah River Plant where H-bombs were manufactured, dinosaurs likelier spawned from this than frozen artic Warner Bros' release proposed. The Cloverleaf opened that year with space for 776 parked vehicles. Entrance marquee as shown was a model of simplicity plus impact, the Beast with head tilted downward toward billing above Enemies of the Universe, which turns out was a chapter of Commando Cody, an ersatz sort of serial made for television but routed to theatres when all-things sci-fi saw a flush of demand. Showmen used posters as much cut up as intact to promote a program, in this instance a Beast From 20,000 Fathoms billboard-sized twenty-four sheet shorn to essential that was central monster art with which to garland the display all motorists would see as they approached the Cloverleaf. What more irresistible than prehistoric progeny of atomic power that was then basis for Augusta’s 1953 economy? Was it so far-fetched to imagine a Beast crawling out of bowels that was the Savannah River Plant? Seems to me 1137 Atomic Road was ideal for Ground Zero should dinosaurs rise to answer our nuclear call. Relevant was what all attractions sought to be --- here was that in spades. Trades took note of Cloverleaf manager M.A. Paige arranging for uniformed National Guardsmen to post heavy artillery facing outward from drive-in premises in case the Beast tried a forced entry. Did Paige have kinfolk in charge of the local outpost? Either way, this was extraordinary military cooperation on behalf of any movie, let alone a monster movie.

WAS OUR AMUZU REAL? --- Evidence that a past thing was real lies in memories, writing, a photo if one or more exists. There could be no one left who experienced the Amuzu, for it left our local scene well over a hundred years ago. Not even Cinema Treasures accounts for it. North Wilkesboro, NC got by largely on one theatre, for a while two, till the Allen burned in the early sixties. I speak much of the Liberty because that’s all we afterward had, apart from a couple of drive-ins less accessible in any event. “Main Street” as what hosted the Amuzu was dirt surfaced and horse travelled, Dobbin still dominant for folk who proposed to ride rather than walk. I will guess that admission to the Amuzu was a nickel. “Storefronts” were generally twenty-five feet wide and seventy-five feet deep, OK for projection till wide screens stilled progress. What we got for “Scope” was letterbox. I'm guessing smalltown theatres were for most part storefronts, formerly any number of differing things before someone hung a sheet and began exhibiting movies. The Amuzu was undoubtedly such a place. A mere one automobile on Main Street, three carriages and/or wagons parked along front. Imagine getting film to the Amuzu. Nickelodeons in larger towns changed their program every day, some twice or more between sun up and down. Such was public appetite for fresh attractions. To swap with neighboring communities was a haul for Amuzu management oft-dependent on hoss-back delivery. Had the Amuzu once been a vaudeville parlor? I’ll never know.

SPEAKING OF BOMBS AWAY … OR NOT SPEAKING OF THEM --- Ads must make clear product they sell or go begging. Who buys tickets for an unknown quantity? And yet The Beginning or the End was smallpox as some showmen saw it. Mislead or evade was seller option, no matter if experienced patronage could smell a ruse from far down the block. The Beginning or the End was an expensive venture that went down in flames, $2.6 million in negative cost that lost $1.5 million for Metro in 1947. How much did we even want to know about the atomic bomb and how it came to be? Let the secret remain a secret, thought many. Such content was … well, radioactive to business, The Beginning or the End being cards a marketplace was dealt, management who could make it pay a colossus to colleagues. Note “Fearless Youngsters Courageously Laughing in the Teeth of a Dread, Dangerous Evil.” Imagine teeth of dread the copywriter felt upon receipt of this assignment. Show veterans learned lots about loss now that a wartime boom was passed. For licks they took off The Beginning or the End, there would maybe come The Hucksters a following week. No pain was permanent, though it seemed so with each postwar year yielding less gain, less hope of numbers like an industry once knew. Movies were for fun and escape, not confrontation with horror that was nuclear power. A smiling Audrey Totter was but faint relief from that. The Beginning or the End was warn bell against more along atomic line, yet MGM returned to the topic, profitably so, in 1952's Above and Beyond, a more commercial mix of star appeal, top secrecy, and payoff that was drop over Japan targets, a spectacle audiences had enough curiosity about to support a recreation of the true event.