Scope Samples #1

 

Wide Worlds: The Spirit of St. Louis and 55 Days at Peking

“Wide Worlds” for Greenbriar purpose will recognize scope titles available to us for home view. Whether streamed, on physical media, or broadcast at TCM, they all are accessible and for me at least worth seeing upon a flat screen TV or projected at a wall to engulf like in days when these attractions were new. “Count Your Blessings” surely applies here as with titles under that Greenbriar heading elsewhere.

THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS (1957) --- Going anyplace alone during childhood meant my mother again telling what happened to the Lindbergh baby in 1932. A couple of kidnaps did take place in my town during the early sixties, “Lineberry” the accused, a name I forevermore connect with child snatching. Charles Lindbergh was secondarily the man who flew a plane non-stop from New York to Paris in 1927. Who could convey excitement this event generated? All who might have gone. My father was twenty, my mother ten, when it happened. Both recalled where they were, what they were doing, when Lindy touched down. Youth en masse went daffy for flying. There was a man I worked with selling dry goods in the early eighties who built a plane that flew after Lindbergh example. A picture of teenage him and dog companion in the cockpit, goggles and all, was proof provided. Bruno Richard Hauptmann’s widow spent decades trying to clear her husband of infamy for which he was electrocuted in 1936. Used to see her on TV testifying before one committee or other. Lindbergh was vivid for me in ways he apparently was not for 1957 viewership that shunned The Spirit of St. Louis, Billy Wilder’s telling of the Lone Eagle saga that went down like a Titanic of fact-based failures, no fault of the excellent picture it was, but what did public indifference say of ingratitude for historic achievement and those who made it? Possible explanation, if not excuse … what’s the big deal of flying the Atlantic when jets with passengers were doing so every day, and what about rockets poised for outer space?

Blame in part was fixed on James Stewart being miscast, but how many knew, or cared, of accurate age for Lindbergh when he flew? Stewart wanted the part badly for being a fan of the flyer from teen-age. Analysis suggested a younger man could soften onus of far-back setting, '27 to '57 a chasm in terms of change to popular culture. I previous wrote that Warners would have done better to cast Tab Hunter as Lindbergh and trust Billy Wilder’s strong direction plus topmost dialogue, to see the age-appropriate star through. Surely youth, which was most of a 1957 cinemagoing audience, could then take The Spirit of St. Louis past break-even, though maybe not where an astronomical seven million was spent on the negative. And what of Tab Hunter in Lafayette Escadrille, also period set, piloting, Warner money lost again in 1958. Was telling Lindbergh’s story on screen a bad idea on its face? I watch and enjoy The Spirit of St. Louis and wonder the while why it came such a cropper. They evidently spent a million dollars just building a replica of the airplane. We visited Washington in 1965 and went to the Smithsonian where the Spirit hung on wires from the ceiling. Is it still suspended that way? I had not seen the movie at that time. None among NC stations used it till much later when SFM(?) did a broadcast hosted by James Stewart. The Spirit of St. Louis seems in hindsight to have been an ultra-Establishment endeavor for which only the very best was good enough, money no object where the twentieth-century’s greatest folk hero was being celebrated. Fiscal sense seems therefore to have been suspended for this occasion. It would, in fact, have been unpatriotic to trim any of corners for such august occasion as this.

Charles Lindbergh himself sort of did and did not cooperate. He let them adapt his memoir but would not allow depictions beyond content from the book. Wilder had frisky ideas which would have made The Spirit of St. Louis a terrific Wilder movie, the sort we’d want and expect from him, but this time it was cuffs on and Billy, like everyone else, wore them. Lindbergh also would not do appearances to support the film. Everybody in and out of the industry attended the premiere but him. Wilder wove dramatic thread of the pilot being sleep-deprived over days up to, and spent in, flight. Duly impressed viewers who later met Lindbergh brought up the ordeal and his overcoming it, to which the Lone Eagle said he slept fine pre-flight, half-smiling to suckers who’d fallen for the movie’s device. What a cool deck this man dealt from. Wilder recalled him as quite the enigma. I doubt Lindbergh cared a hoot about The Spirit of St. Louis apart from the money, his likely a flat fee at front end as opposed to a percentage of profit that would have ended up worth nothing. Anybody know different? Query too: Did the wife ever catch on to those Euro families Charles sired over years after his triumph? Greater triumph sure was keeping the truth from her and his legit kids. Lawyer friend once told me there were two kinds of married men, the caught and the uncaught. Was Charlie among the uncaught?  By the time the thing became public, most of Lindbergh worshippers were too old to be much disillusioned or gathered to reward. Meanwhile what we have is The Spirit of St. Louis shows up at TCM, wide and HD at least, plus streaming at customary outlets. A fresh transfer and 4K release would be welcome, for here is one worthy and I think undeservedly obscure.

55 DAYS AT PEKING (1963) --- Not so far as I know released in the US on Blu-Ray, situation common to the Samuel Bronston epics. Ownership is said to lie with the Weinstein Company. Still true? The Bronstons are imperfect enough to need whatever visual sweep they can get. With that, they mightily impress. 55 Days at Peking was among other things the last mainstream feature Nicholas Ray directed. Ten years after, he was teaching at a small New England college, showed kids how to make movies, him pretty near a wreck by that time. The story of how 55 Days at Peking was dragged to completion was told by many. To read multiple accounts is to fully commit. I chose Andrew Marton’s lookback. He oversaw second units, wound up responsible for sixty-four to sixty-five percent of the finished project, or so he estimated years later. Marton didn’t seek or claim sole credit for reasons he explains in a McFarland oral history that is very good and long out of print. Nicholas Ray had done alright with King of Kings a couple years earlier and it was figured he could handle another large-scale feature, but habits mostly bad and a general crack-up said adios to his Hollywood career. Ray made many efforts to restart and had help among industry influencers, but nobody would take a chance on him. 55 Days at Peking for such difficult birthing plays fine where seen Blu and wide, a Region Two from Europe worth seeking out. Being 70mm Super-Technirama meant roadshows and if not as long a sit as it might have been (two hours, 34 minutes), still seems long. History is recounted, the Boxer Rebellion and how it impacted world powers in 1900. Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, and David Niven are there to settle matters, whole of 55 Days shot at Spain acreage Bronston decorated to evoke the East. Like many a swollen saga, 55 Days at Peking lights up in sections, flags in others, but overall awes in ways unique to big-format filmmaking unique to the late fifties and much of the sixties. When these things clicked, there weren’t banks enough to hold all the profit, but where they didn’t … well, consider how Samuel Bronston finished up.

The Art of Selling Movies #2

 

Art of ... Carefree, Organ Hours, and Giveaway Perfume

Ads again instruct. This one for Carefree seems aimed more at the trade. “Watch ATTENDANCE RECORDS FALL!” Every showman’s prayer, but what did their public really care? In fact, Carefree lost money, a first of the Astaire-Rogers to do so. All cycles eventually felt ground shift. Astaire got percentage pay from these. I wonder if he ever sold that interest to RKO or successors. Anyone know? He’d form dance academies bearing his name in 1947, then twirl to hopefully greater profit with Easter Parade and The Barkleys of Broadway. Suppose Fred wished he had opened the schools sooner? Perhaps, but the Depression and war would have made that a higher hill to climb. Here’s for a stun … the Astaire dance studios still flourish. I can drive no farther than Winston-Salem to begin my lessons. Is it too late to learn? Note the ad pushing Carefree’s dance called “the Yam.” I could wonder when the Yam was last executed by two partners. Did it indeed “sweep the nation” as indicated by the Great Lakes Theatre? As performed by Fred and Ginger, stylings are forever fresh. You Tube, Facebook, Tik-Tok, are rife with the pair, us for a lift over minutes spent watching them. Thing is, now as before, there are eighty-three minutes of Carefree and most is not Astaire/Rogers dancing, this the rub when would-be fans sample the team online and then seek out features in whole. Well and good to that, but it requires old-movie adjustment fewer are willing to make, contrived story, comedy not necessarily comedic. Carefree signaled tiring among even those devoted, plot and situations bearing only so much repetition. Astaire had sense to know the parade was passing by, and Rogers wanted more to do drama, or at least humor where she was dominant humorist. Both get a solo number in Carefree and slide rules are visible to give each equal emphasis. Did both feel the series was holding them back? 

Benefit of the break came immediately to Rogers for winning Best Actress as Kitty Foyle within a year after she and Fred’s last for RKO, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. Do you suppose she suggested they call it The Story of Irene and Vernon Castle? For the record, that one failed too. Top Hat momentum could only last so long, then it was so long to further Astaire-Rogers. I had not seen Carefree until this recent view. My understanding was they went odd direction to sweeten the formula, casting Fred not as a hoofer but a clinical psychiatrist, not so far-out when we realize intelligence he conveyed to every character he had played or would play. Mission is for him to reach Ginger’s subconscious as means to make her marry Ralph Bellamy, a move so far delayed for her indecision. Without dancing, you can imagine how such set-up would plod. We’re told Fred's character hoofed in college days to make his doing so credible here, but why bother? He was Fred Astaire, so of course he danced. Insert at least one number per reel as etched firm like commandments on tablet, seams showing the more because by 1938 the audience was restless. Not that dances fell off, far from it, as Astaire constantly looked for novelty, was loathe to repeat himself, so gave fullest value for money that his studio, and the audiences, paid. The Yam may not necessarily score as a song but look at Fred going full circle of tables and chairs, lifting Ginger over his straight and extended leg resting on them, all done in a single shot to still amaze. This is what Tik-Tokkers levitate with. You’d think from watching clips that Astaire-Rogers movies are the greatest things going, and for dedicated fans remain so. Preservation elements are tricky, which may explain why none of the RKO’s have landed on Blu-Ray yet, though whole of the group play TCM in HD and are available that way to stream.

WITH AN AD SO RICH, WHERE DO YOU BEGIN? --- Oh to have been there for Billy Muth’s daily organ club (11:00 am to 12) Did everyone get to sing as well as listen? And free prizes! Theatergoing was a heaven we will never know unless Heaven itself includes trips to the Greater Paramount Palace circa 1929. So I saw Hammer and James Bond when they were new. Big deal. Ads like this humble me. These people had it so infinitely better. My problem would have been staying away from the Palace, the Melba too. Buy why stop there … Dallas like all urbans had streets paved with show gold. Imagine the marquees alone. Like one museum after another with exquisite hangings. I looked up Billy Muth. He was, among Dallas locals, regarded a legend, had worked with Jolson, Ben Bernie, others. Mourners played his recordings after Billy crossed the bar in 1947, him but forty-six. There was a sorority delegation of high schoolers at the funeral. Fans are possibly still around for Billy Muth, but I couldn’t find anything confirming it at You Tube. He surely left recordings though. Paging old record collectors. Not that Billy was whole of a show this gala day. Jimmy Ellard and his “Bag of Tricks” had been lately installed as the theatre’s stage band. What a responsibility ... each day at your best or at least you better be. I floated Ellard as well at Google, but no soap. Wild Orchids was the Palace feature, The Canary Murder Case having just left. “A Glowing Romance of the Tropics --- Alluring Greta Fighting Herself in Maintaining Honor” Fighting herself? That sounds promising. I must get out the Warner Archive DVD and watch again. Wild Orchids had a disc score, and I don’t doubt the Palace used it, or maybe not. Surely viewers preferred their live orchestra, but bear in mind folks were drunk on newness of recorded sound. The Melba nearby had an outright talker, The Redeeming Sin, with Dolores Costello. Were she and Conrad Nagel really a “love team,” and do any of their teamings survive? Laurel and Hardy alert, they are in again with Liberty, which the ad proclaims has “sound effects,” these happily still hearable and YT viewable.

PERFUMED UPON ENTERING --- North by Northwest had borne fruit that was Charade, and so Charade spawned more that included Arabesque plus others on slope downward that was romance plus suspense plus humor figured to please all/sundry. The sixties approaching final hurrah for lady shopper matinees made giveaway of “Taji Perfume Oil” seem a sensible idea, and to a first thousand, promised Chicago Theatre management. So what did they do --- hand women a bottle going in or just spray them as they entered? What if odor seemed noxious to some … and imagine an auditorium permeated by the stuff. Was this to be the “scent of Arabesque”? Some in the audience, if not critics, might say it was the picture that smelled. Perfume was not a first gauntlet run for this engagement, as there were out-front Sophia Loren lookalikes splayed upon a “Living Billboard,” a stunt happily confined to that day’s first showing. Human beings so displayed went back at least to The Hollywood Revue of 1929. Us enlightened could call it cruelly exploitative, depending of course on individual circumstance. Imagine old folk in Chicago who might recall once being part of the human billboard for Arabesque, or perhaps one chooses to forget such experiences. Arabesque tries being “mod” in zoom shots and screwy edit way, and I to this day am confused as to what the mystery was or why we should want to solve it. Also there was Gregory Peck who seemed wrong, but for a thing like this, who could seem right? I suspect viewers were carried upon gossamer wing that was Henry Mancini’s score, Arabesque an instance where music seals gap between something watchable or not. Did the New York Daily News really give this four stars and call it a wild, wonderful winner? Maybe that writer got a big bottle of Taji Perfume Oil for his/her pains.

UPDATE: Scott MacGillivray investigates the Arabesque perfume affair, and brings illustrations with the info:

Hi, John — The Arabesque tie-in with Taji perfume oil was strictly a local promotion arranged by the exhibitor. (Taji is not mentioned among the accessories in the pressbook for the national campaign, clipping attached).

Taji was introduced in the autumn of 1965 by Shulton (ad from September 1965 attached) so when Arabesque came out, Taji was either trendy or it was slow to move off the shelves, hence the free samples!

Best wishes — Scott

Watch List for 3/3/2025

 

Overlook Veronica if You Will, But Know She is Great in This

Watched: So Proudly We Hail, Mystery Street, Reckless, and Gideon's Day

SO PROUDLY WE HAIL (1943) --- Most striking character of this is gone after a first half. Veronica Lake has been called an expressionless player, and worse. She was said to be difficult. There is evidence she was mentally ill. Her finish was grisly. Lake got revived when glamour portraits of old stars became a thing, as in gallery-hung and collectible. Lush and hung down hair was her ticket early on, but where she swept back, as was case later, people wondered what had made her special to begin with. What for me makes Lake unique is intense work she gives So Proudly We Hail, so intense in fact that I suspect she channeled what was troubled self to be doomed character “Lt. Olivia D’Arcy.” Beside her, Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard, the rest, seem artificial and actorly as in this studio-set depiction with no war happening beyond walls. From Lake it emerges true to fusion between herself and tortured Olivia, and I for one was sorry when she cashed in for sake of nurse colleagues (and what an exit). Seems I read Lake was a pill during Proudly and that may have just been her as early and unaware applicator of technique later celebrated as Method. Actors did pay a price for living parts too deeply, considering not a few were unstable to begin with. Colbert as den mother is more typecast, as is Goddard on glam duty, and I understand these two clashed if mildly as to how and where cameras were pointed. Was Paulette really born in 1910? I sort of suspect it was earlier and maybe she hid that. So Proudly We Hail is where we get Sonny Tufts first as a star, much by way of mannerisms that he’d adjust later as noir dweller and make scarily effective. George Reeves looked like a next very big thing and director Mark Sandrich promised him a bright postwar future, but then Sandrich died with George mustered out to do small parts, even bits, then serials, then Superman. Was this very capable actor robbed? So Proudly We Hail has some of most terrifying siege stuff put to film during wartime. We feel vividly horrors awaiting troops and nurses left on islands taken by the enemy. I was wrung out after these two hours and can only imagine what it did to crowds in 1943.

Future Wrath-ful Khan Gets Tips from Tarzan

MYSTERY STREET (1950) --- Somewhere it was forum-claimed that a thing called “DVD rot” is wrecking our discs, so I got out alleged victim Mystery Street from WB to see if fears have basis. Mine played OK, at least the feature did, but extras got pixilated and wouldn’t access, so should we worry over past purchases? Checking each start to finish would take longer than I’ll live and who’d really want to watch some of these titles again? Mystery Street however is a jewel among smaller noirs, a nervous A for $729K Metro spent, but splendidly made as expected from the Lion. As police procedural it is keen and even novel, for here was forensic explore of evidence fairly new to movies and not before dealt with in such detail. We’re since sick of saturation, as in how many years has CSI lasted?, but Mystery Street serving fresh and relative first had not just novelty in its kit, but fascination for forensics circa 1950 where investigations were hands-on and ultra analog. Pleasing is Bruce Bennett as a Harvard lab rat digging among bleached bones and figuring murder behind them, Ricardo Montalban the detective in charge. We know the killer early, but how will they unmask him? Mystery Street’s 93 minutes captivated me as much for on-screen suspense as that arising from whether the disc would finish OK. John Sturges directed, an early and expected good job, atmosphere stoked further by John Alton behind cameras. Frustrating was tepid money Mystery Street earned, $429K in domestic rentals, $353K foreign (loss: $277K), proof again that making a good picture was not enough what with theatres closing, families doing elsewhere things, and television siphoning off attendance. Racket Squad began the same year on tubes, so why go out and spend to watch Mystery Street when so far as most were concerned, it was a same experience?

RECKLESS (1935) --- Nothing odder or more unexpected than a Classic Era star vehicle that simply does not work, Reckless as instance of gilt-edge casting and lavisher-than-lavish appointments that no one (at least of my acquaintance) seems to enjoy. What might have gone wrong was humor in back seat to melodrama, a too distant back, but how’s that possible with William Powell, Harlow, Ted Healy, more among mirth-makers less than funny here. Story was evidently Selznick’s, augmented by numerous others, Reckless factory-made with no pretense otherwise. Too many cooks can and will spoil broth. Trouble is disagreeable device of dipso Franchot Tone buying Harlow’s starring play and then her, Powell lovelorn and left behind, anything but desirable positioning for him. The trio is cast to disadvantage, each seem aware of same, yet stay adrift as narrative lurches toward suicide solution , no satisfactory resolve there, and sour ending to make one regret time entrusted to what seemed foolproof. Selznick was on record as wanting this to match his Dancing Lady of several seasons before, Reckless failing to capture spirit and fun of that backstage frolic. The studio system was a delicate instrument, noways to be taken for granted. Where a picture was made badly, they’d simply remake it, but where the concept is fundamentally wrong, where is ground upon which to repair? Reckless lost money, a shock considering cast alone, so let’s assume word got out-and-loud as to what a cluck it was, or worse, how unpleasant was the get-through. Thrust of narrative is the Libby Holman/Smith Reynolds tragedy, bitter tea for an audience there to be amused by Powell-Harlow who had done so reliably before. TCM runs Reckless in HD, but I’ll be surprised if they offer it on Blu-Ray.

My Man Ford with Anna Massey and Jack Hawkins

GIDEON’S DAY (1959) --- Jack Sprat might have directed this rather than John Ford and we’d get approximate same sort of Brit police procedural starring Jack Hawkins, but note how efficient Ford did this “job of work” against theme and background untypical of the great director, being proof if any were needed that he could rise to occasion of any studio assignment and make magic of material less promising on a surface perhaps, but plenty so where he is at helm. Gideon’s Day pleases the more on repeat mode, as so much goes on that I tend to forget between always pleasurable screenings. A day in busy life that is Gideon's, he deals with thefts, murder, humor back at the Yard (never time enough to eat or pick up groceries for an evening meal he’ll miss), this is Ford at quick tempo I’d expect more from early, even starting days, so don’t mistake this for old man effort at twilight juncture. Serve Gideon’s Day to civilian diners and hear them exalt Ford for level of energy not expected perhaps, colonies the poorer for Columbia distributing black-and-white prints in 1959 (retitled Gideon of Scotland Yard), this a show particularly striking in color which was intended and carefully designed for. Was Ford aware how compromised Gideon’s Day was on domestic screens? Maybe he wasn’t told, or cared less if he was. Filmmakers grew alligator hide for vandalism inflicted on output, being John Ford with mantle-full of awards no assurance you’ll not be next to the chipper. Stock folk are here if in lesser number, Anna Lee the wife to Hawkins, sense made for her being Brit and a veteran of UK features before she became acquainted with Ford. It’s said Ford staged a lifelong Irish rebellion vs. the Isles, yet there’s no taking to task of English habits or lifestyle here. Gideon’s Day is genre pure/simple and thrives at it … makes me wish Ford had done a series of Gideon thrillers. Indicator has a lovely Blu-Ray (region free) as part of a Ford box, and there are nice extras.