Precode Picks #8

 

Turn Off the Spigot, Warners --- There's Folks Drowning Here!

Precode: Safety Last Where Moviemaking, Duck, Jim!, and Museum Gets a 1970 Re-Wax

DEATH VALLEY DAYS --- There were losses recorded among those beloved in the business. Think Lon Chaney, Marie Dressler, Will Rogers … gone too soon. But what of ones snatched away under violent and unexpected circumstance … perished in flames, trampled beneath horses, claimed by bodies of water gone awry. Accidents that in many if not most cases could/should have been avoided. Someone, or some institution, was invariably to blame, none better equipped to clam up and circle wagons than corporate Hollywood having goofed at the expense of lives. Consider necrologies that came off these projects, The Trail of ’98, Noah’s Ark, The Painted Desert --- each surveyed previously at Greenbriar. I’m fascinated by carnage staged, result disastrous, concealed from there on. Survivors who lasted long enough told tales to interviewers, later enough to figure it was safe to share. “55 in Studio Employ Killed in Five Years,” this trade-published in 1931, cold insurance data gone down rabbit hole that was page 18 of an Exhibitor’s Herald. Old news this was, and how does that help business, now or at any time? Movies were for fun and fantasy, not men drowned while making them. Bury such incidents deep, industry with immense resource to do just that. Quick query: Was there ever a major star that died in service to film? I’m drawing blank, but there had to be a few. I do know of a horrific on-set incident that claimed Martha Mansfield in 1923 (she of previous co-starring with Barrymore’s Jekyll/Hyde). “Majority of these accidents occurred at Hollywood plants,” said the article, ring of truth as this info derived from California’s Industrial Commission. Imagine cone of silence that dropped whenever someone died on a soundstage, such thick walls with all inside warned to keep mum. How many families were settled on terms never to talk? Lots went to eventual graves holding their tongue. Remember what Scorsese said in Quiz Show, “corporations never forget”? What about where a star was responsible for the loss, a careless error, but being assets, they had to be protected. $421,850 is lots of money on late twenties/early thirties terms, equivalent to eight million today. Working lower rungs of movies was hazard duty for many. One could moonlight hauling nitro and be no worse off.

WWI Vet Discharges a Machine Gun Right Toward You ... What Can Go Wrong?

SHOT FOR REAL --- Here is William Wellman at center lining up a next shot for Public Enemy, “shot” not inapt for WWI marksman Clem Peoples on the scaffold preparing to empty his machine gun just to the left of James Cagney, live ammo at the ready (Peoples was after many years correctly identified thanks to research by Frank Thompson and John Gallagher in their outstanding Wellman book). Wellman was a tough egg not afraid to take risks with himself or cast members. Did Bill realize he’d take the fall if something went wrong? Movies were footloose for sure in precode days, or maybe life was cheaper. Did Warners value talent so little as this? I’m surprised Cagney submitted, but he was just starting out so maybe that explains. Later on, he’d not cooperate so readily, a similar scene in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) faked per his insistence. Cagney never trusted Warners for truth, money, even his own survival. It was their chiseling that finally made him split in 1942. What Public Enemy lacked in caution was made up with conviction. Gunshot gags were done for films other than here, plenty of sure-shot William Tells happy to blast apples or otherwise off actor heads provided latter was dumb or hungry enough to stand still for it. Hard ups chose these over apples they might otherwise be selling on streets, dogs of Depression baying without. WB was the sort of place where they worked you twenty hours a day and made you like it. What price Hollywood indeed. I read where overwork exhausted Joan Blondell to a point where she went temporarily blind. Was stardom worth this? Interviewed in old-age Cagney was asked about conditions, him waving off with “No great strain.” He’d long since put most down memory holes. I would have. Was there PTSD from working in 30’s movies? This image above crossed my sightline a first time at age twelve when I got The Movies, by Griffith and Mayer, Public Enemy on page 363. They also did a two-page “story in pictures” for the film that I swooned for, dreaming to someday see whole of the feature (as illustrated previous at Greenbriar). That wouldn’t happen because prints were cut down for the 1954 reissue and left that way for TV. Some errant footage later got into the Blu-ray.

Photographing Mystery of the Wax Museum From the Ground Way Up

WHO’S FOR HOT WAX? --- The “Eighth New York Film Festival” happened at Lincoln Center from 25 to 27 September 1970. Saw word of it in The New York Times at my high school library early one morning, Mystery of the Wax Museum to beggar belief that so lost a classic had finally been found. Scott MacQueen kindly sent me these images. He was age thirteen and at Lincoln Center for the show. I had to imagine it from 601 miles distant. Film fandom derives from far-flung places. Scott says the single surviving nitrate print was shown. He would decades later use selfsame 35mm toward Wax’s UCLA restoration. 1970 saw Mystery of the Wax Museum inaccessible to all but then-attendees. Now we have it or can readily get it. Above is behind-scenes Wax doings, the molten vat as centerpiece with Lionel Atwill, Glenda Farrell, and director Michael Curtiz on a scaffold atop. Such stills had to be as carefully composed as scenes for the film. This capture, which I never saw before Scott sent it along, was published as part of International Photographer’s June 1933 nod to “Chief Camerman” Ray Rennahan, who we know ran the table on Technicolor photography for years to come, among best men for these sorts of jobs. For the record, 1970’s NY Festival tendered also Back Street (1931), The Emperor Jones, The Front Page, The Kid Brother, King of Jazz, The Last Flight, Laughter, The Miracle Woman, and Once in a Lifetime. All but two (Laughter and Once in a Lifetime) can be had today on Blu-Ray. Wonders do not cease, for even aforementioned two can be accessed provided one knows the right bootlegger or dark streaming platform. I have a feeling Mystery of the Wax Museum got the most enthusiastic response of the group in 1970. Everybody figured it for gone, legend meantime assuring greatness few could confirm or deny, though at that time there still were plenty who could first-hand recall the 1933 experience. Program notes were supplied by Carlos Clarens, his seminal An Illustrated History of the Horror Film featuring first-ever glimpse of the unmasked Atwill from Wax Museum, a shock punch we never got from monster magazines to that time.