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Monday, March 18, 2024

More Batjacs ...

 


Produced by John Wayne --- Part Two


Of the Batjacs, Seven Men from Now may be an only one called canonical. Of westerns, it is close to a top of fifties heap. Extras for Seven Men from Now are lush with profiling of Budd Boeticcher, Kennedy, Gail Russell, more from the 1956 project. 2010 and thereabouts was when DVD buyers really got a money’s fillup. “Sparkhill” made these pocket documentaries. I don’t know if they are still in business, but they did a crackerjack job. Where your 78-minute feature comes with as much length again of bonuses, there is $5.99 well spent (Amazon’s current price, used discs low as $2.50). How much visual difference does Blu-Ray, let alone 4K make, unless you intend projecting your image on a coliseum wall? Between online bargains and what flea markets turn up, one could build a more than imposing DVD collection for as many dimes, though there is argument too for streaming option, where Seven Men from Now is had in HD for $3.99. Seven Men from Now once nowhere is accessible now as a commonest object. “Collectible” is quaint term by modern parlance. I thought to have hung the moon with my turned-red 16mm print of Seven Men from Now, like revealing treasure to ones my age or less I knew would not have seen it elsewhere. Where/how could they? Here was artifact exclusive to whoever had luck of discovery and pride of ownership. Open access to come was more democratic, so of course to be preferred, but what was having a Faberge egg when anyone might get cartons of them? I could exit the house today and fairly trip over Seven Men from Now.


Coming out of late seventies televised cloud courtesy CBS (a single run), The High and the Mighty seemed less high despite fond memories from 1954, not so mighty as hit status from earlier time implied. Were watchers easier to please in the fifties, or had airplane disaster films become too much more sophisticated, like air travel itself? A damaged reputation can seep into bones of anyone’s revisit, even those making any/all allowance for things vintage. The High and the Mighty, twenty-five years old when the network booked 1979 flight, seemed older and was cramped besides by square-tube the bane of post-53 product. I had focused on what was weak about High/Mighty until recent visit to discover instead fine aspects of it, easy at last to grasp what made this a historic hit for John Wayne and distributing Warner Bros. Here was first-time spectacle of modern air travel on Cinemascope/color terms, suspense of near-doom for star ensemble as seasoning. If ever there was can’t miss feeling among trade watchers and WB sales force, The High and the Mighty had it. Peril plays for me because aspects of then-aeronautics raise concern of how resource of seventy-years back can save this planeload of humanity. DVD extra said flights from Honolulu to US west coast were a longest in the world over ocean and with no landing available in case of emergency, twelve hours aboard unless you come down sudden into water like a mountain you’d slam into. Shivers me to think on it … imagine same in 1954. Did The High and the Mighty discourage commercial air travel? Can’t imagine major lines being happy, despite repeated mantra that one is safer on planes than driving an automobile. Some reassurance when you’re going down …


Spencer Tracy was supposed to do the Wayne pilot part. I’m glad he didn’t. Like name actresses who turned down spots among crowded cast, Tracy may have balked at High/Mighty not revolving around him, as John Wayne might were this not his company producing. Wayne was chief pilot aboard whatever craft he sat, let alone one flying under his own colors, off-casting his compromised “Dan Roman,” perceived failure and now underling who saw passengers, including wife and son, perish years before in a crash impliedly his fault. Roman is humble/humbled to near finish where Wayne dynamic force comes to final act rescue of his imperiled flock. Dan Roman is among Wayne’s best and quietist leads, his authority the greater for being withheld so long. Flashback of him stumbling off a doomed craft to find his child’s burning teddy bear packs expected wallop, moment reminiscent for me of Wayne as Sean Thornton in the boxing ring just after killing his opponent, or Ethan finding torn clothes of victims in The Searchers. It works splendidly in context of full-out melodrama that is The High and the Mighty. Success of latter and previous Hondo were career peaks for Wayne, both done on his terms and without crutch that was Ford or Hawks. I don’t wonder that impetus for The Alamo increased the more around this time. If Wayne could ramrod High/Mighty/Hondo, where was limit to energy/ability? Suppose anyone suggested to Wayne a reissue for The High and the Mighty after success of Airport in 1970? Guess he would have felt it too spent by then.


Some picture DVD as a dead format, but discs like these Paramount Batjacs should be cherished. We need Blu-Ray to fill properly a jumbo screen, but for television large in themselves, plain discs work fine. The High and the Mighty has a second DVD devoted to extras, one about passenger flying in the fifties with survivors of the era, many of whom had flown during the war. I was captivated. You’ll not duplicate this today for such veterans being gone. Track of the Cat was next of watches, scope and strange and largely bereft even of color by director William Wellman on experimental tour. Never mistake him for conventional. And yet coming from Wayne meant money, Robert Mitchum the star, Track of the Cat good for two million in worldwide rentals against negative cost of $1.1 million. Wayne/Fellows and later Batjac had keen commercial instinct. Track of the Cat was bleak, dark, radical almost, yet profited. William Wellman wished in hindsight he had never done it, but could late interviews really reflect his views?, the director acknowledging upheaval that had come with age, his seventies memoir which he referred to as necessary therapy entitled A Short Time for Insanity. Wellman was in fact house director for Wayne/Fellows, having signed to do six features, overall prosperity of the firm result in part of his being there and ready to pitch in not only to projects where credited, but ones needing eleventh hour help.


One limping was Ring of Fear, a circus cloak of many colors (plus Cinemascope) adjudged unreleasable until Wellman did repairs. Ring of Fear gave 1954 three rings of precisely what it wanted  … a wide screen, circus-based thrills, and of all incongruous things, Mickey Spillane, as himself, cracking a midway mystery at behest of lion wrangler Clyde Beatty, something for every-single-one it seemed. Wellman did miracles at his forge, Ring of Fear entertaining well as any such hodgepodge, and again, it was a hit, a sizeable one (finished for less than a million, and $1.8 million in profit). Besides being valued record of Beatty taming cats, not a thing to be underestimated, there is Spillane as actor, and a pleasing one. Sean McClory as a psycho killer applies acid-to-aerial ropes the bane of performing under movie big tops it seems. Wayne had grown a stock company of players, all good and seemingly liked by viewership. A number of support folk are profiled within Paramount/Batjac DVD’s. Others recommended but not here in depth are Island in the Sky, another by Wellman, and some say best of his for the company, Hondo directed by John Farrow, an outstanding Wayne western with or without 3-D. With Man in the Vault there is opportunity to observe Batjac’s second string showing what they could do with leads, a 73 minute B by definition but good at the time to absorb overhead for what had become a major-minor operation, Wayne-Fellows/Batjac being how-to for making star independence work.

8 Comments:

Blogger William Ferry said...

THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY adheres pretty close to the book, or at least the Reader's Digest condensed version my parents had when I was growing up. Parenthetically, if you peruse those books from the 1952-1958 period, a LOT of those bestsellers became movies.

At any rate, therein, perhaps, lies the problem. So much of the dialogue is exposition. This tends to take me out of the plot and reminds me I'm watching a movie. Familiarity with the airline disaster genre may have reduced its effectiveness from today's perspective, but it's easy to see why it made an impact back then. I first caught it on Showtime around 1981.

When Paramount released the John Wayne Collection (Batjac AND Wayne-Fellows productions), I jumped at this one and HONDO. Having been on a Randolph Scott kick of late, ill probably hunt down 7 MEN FROM NOW.

This is shaping up to be another outstanding series, John!

11:30 AM  
Blogger Filmfanman said...

Some of these Batjac titles were amongst a binful of DVDs I inherited from a late relative a few years ago; of the three John Wayne titles, 'Island In The Sky', being shot in B&W while not involving Wayne's character in any combat, real or threatened, with either Indians or WW2-era Germans/Japanese, was the most refreshing to my eyes.
The other Wayne films were both OK, but both 'Hondo' and "The High And The Mighty', the first films I watched out of the bin, were somehow too familiar to me in their plot and action even though I had never seen these particular films before; while 'Island In The Sky' played as an unexpected pleasure - a survival drama pitting Wayne against the elements rather than human adversaries was not what I had expected a B&W John Wayne movie to be.

1:56 PM  
Blogger DBenson said...

Where did the name Batjac come from? It sounds macho, and the logo on business card displayed last week evokes old school after shave or fishing gear. You mention in passing Alan Ladd had a venture called Jaguar -- again, a manly-sounding name. A declaration of the types of films they intended to make?

3:38 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

It was initially going to be "Batjack," but an error was made in ordering stationary for the company, and when it came back reading "Batjac" at the letterhead, Wayne went ahead and called it that rather than place a reorder.

Not sure how Ladd came up with "Jaguar," but yes, it does have a nice manly ring about it.

5:37 PM  
Blogger Reg Hartt said...

Allowing mistakes to lead us is the great secret. Errors are ones of conscious choice and open new doors.

8:34 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Richard M. Roberts considers the Batjac group:


John,

RING OF FEAR is one of those "guilty pleasures" for me, it is so damn silly but there is so much to love: Sean McClory's psychotic ringmaster, MIckey Spillane and Clyde Beatty's inability to act (Beatty never got any better, he's as wooden here as he was in THE BIG CAGE (1933)), Pat O'Brien endlessly chewing his cigar and spouting orders, Marion Carr in a bodysuit. Plus the opening title shot of the Circus Parade that's going right down Central Ave in Phoenix Arizona, a wonderful time capsule of my hometown, they even pass the old Vista Theater where SOUND OF MUSIC played for over a year.

You really shouldn't neglect ISLAND IN THE SKY if you're talking about the Batjacs, it's one of John Wayne's best films and was just as out of sight as THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY for decades, I nursed along an old, beat-up rental print of that for years until the DVD came out. It has a wonderful ensemble cast of old Wayne/Ford regulars and a performance from Wayne that I throw at anyone who says his best is in THE SEARCHERS, in ISLAND he even cries.

And ISLAND is really the bookend to HIGH AND THE MIGHTY, they're both aviation-peril ensemble movies but in ISLAND, it's not whether they'll make it across the ocean, it's whether they make it out of the snow. It's a much more sensitive and nuanced film than MIGHTY, though both of them still work wonders with an audience. Both films were major missing titles in Wayne's viewable filmography for too damn long.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

8:43 PM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

James Curtis offers welcome info and insight on Batjac and THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY:


John,

I’ve been enjoying your look at Wayne-produced features of the fifties. I remember THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY as being disappointing on network TV, but maybe I should give it another look sometime.

The reason Spencer Tracy did not do HIGH AND THE MIGHTY is simple: There was very bad blood between Tracy and Wellman dating back to the thirties and Tracy’s intense relationship with Loretta Young. After tentatively agreeing to do the film, Tracy refused to work with Wellman and Wayne reluctantly stepped in to replace him.

The same approximate situation hampered THE LAST HURRAH at first. Tracy didn’t want to work with John Ford, another grudge from the thirties, and it took Katharine Hepburn to intercede. It all worked out fine, but the film would have been made with Orson Welles otherwise. By the late fifties, Tracy would only work with a handful of directors, Stanley Kramer the first among equals.

Jim

1:18 PM  
Blogger Kevin K. said...

Never knew that story about The Last Hurrah. Welles was a terrific actor, but Tracy was absolutely perfect in that role.

8:32 AM  

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