Count Your Blessings #5

 

CYB: A Star Is Born (1937), and Jet Pilot Either Ratio Way

A STAR IS BORN (1937) --- Charlotte’s Channel 3 (WBTV) was King Broadcaster of North Carolina, its reach the farthest, programming the most popular (a CBS affiliate). They began in 1949, celebrated for a week their twenty-fifth anniversary in 1974. WBTV had money and muscle to make pretty much anything happen for viewership. Among events to commemorate was the first feature movie telecast by the station in cradle year that was ’49, A Star Is Born from 1937 dug up via medicine made between Channel 3 and Warner Brothers, which owned/owns rights to the David Selznick property, WB having remade the ’37 Star Is Born in 1954. Stations choosing to play A Star Is Born preferred the later version. Charlotte rival Channel 9 (WSOC) in fact ran the ’54 Star back in 1961 when it was first made available to television. Channel 3’s wanting the old incarnation was something of an anomaly that Warners could not readily accommodate. Because the 1937 Star Is Born was historic for Channel 3, vital to their anniversary celebration, it simply had to be made available to them. Negotiation resulted in Warners making a new 16mm print from elements they had, a single print for this occasion only. A Star Is Born thus played prime time on a weeknight, and in color. I sat before it at age twenty like a first modern visitor to Tut’s tomb. I had till then not seen A Star Is Born and figured never to. My mother said it was her favorite movie, had been there in 1937, would be again and with me for the 1974 revival. I was concerned as to how the print would look but need not have been. Channel 3’s presentation was breathtaking. Seeing any thirties feature during prime hours was thrill enough … beholding one in color was bliss but achieved by yearly Wizard of Oz unspool. Fact A Star Is Born played so well was icing upon visual cake, but hold on: A Star Is Born was but thirty-seven at the time, like us today watching something from the late eighties and calling it a big deal.

William Wellman Directs Fredric March and Janey Gaynor

A zombified Star Is Born soon enough would plague us. Public Domain scourge saw packages of forlorn features on mostly UHF channels that couldn’t afford legit content, A Star Is Born leading a pack of, for most-part, B/W and shabby substitutes for movies badly bowdlerized and barely see/hearable. A Star Is Born kept company with Our Town, Santa Fe Trail, The Little Princess (also color, if dreadfully so), many more we could readily name. Cheapjack Channel 14 in Hickory was most-oft purveyor. I’d suffer through Reaching for the Moon to satisfy curiosity of long standing, spattered upon by mud that was its look and sound. A Star Is Born in a meantime became unwatchable, the Charlotte broadcast a one-off to seem mythical beside murk that was now. Channel 3 did not repeat it, their print presumably gone back to Warners. Video cassettes would redouble the insult, hundreds, nay thousands, to pollute dollar bins at discount stores. Newcomers questioned if A Star Is Born was really the classic it was cracked up to be. Source material for the bootlegs were often as not 16mm off Cinecolor reissue prints that distorted color values of the original. No longer would A Star Is Born glow. I gave up seeing it righted. Laser and DVD made game efforts. A Selznick-owned print was foundation for some disc releases, better at least than what came before, but we knew elements Warner had were better. Channel 3’s broadcast had proven that. Warner Archive at last offered a Blu-Ray from elements they possessed, clouds parted and all’s right in Star world, the transfer better than we had dared hope for. One could borrow hackneyed phrasing and dub this A Star Is Re-Born after generations of neglect and counterfeits. Further bounty of late is a soundtrack CD from the Brigham Young University Film Archive and album producer Ray Faiola, distributed by Screen Archives Entertainment. There also are liner notes by Faiola with an introduction by Max Steiner biographer Steven C. Smith. This score has never been tendered so complete as here, nor in such quality as Ray Faiola coaxed from Steiner’s personal acetate recordings. This soundtrack is ideal to enrich the Blu-Ray experience.

Let No One Kid You ... Jet Pilot Flies High on Blu-Ray

Jo von Sternberg of Making Friends and Influencing People Directs John Wayne and Janet Leigh

JET PILOT (1957) --- Jet Pilot is out from several sources with viewing option of wide or full-frame. More accurate is the latter, Jet Pilot having been shot largely during 1949-50. I still enjoy the 1.85 which by 1957 would be how Jet Pilot got seen as other than antiquity it frankly was. Projectionists would have cropped the full frame in any case, so accustomed were they to wider setting. Complainers said planes were outmoded by the time audiences saw Jet Pilot, but doesn’t that presuppose at least some level of knowing older aircraft from fresh models? They could show me Jet Pilot hardware as a newest thing and chances are I’d believe it, for what do I comprehend of aviation hardware? Like those ignorant of art who know at least what they like, I’ll take Blu-Ray and enjoy Josef von Sternberg making his magic for a first and only time in color (unless we count whatever work he did for Duel in the Sun). Sternberg scholars tend to overlook Jet Pilot, as if it were something aberrant amidst JvS output. He didn’t shoot air footage, but would we want our aging and fragile idol chasing jets around with a camera? Joe was for closer and quieter effort to beautify his stars, and excel at that he does. We hear the expression, so-and-so never looked better, but sure enough it applies to Janet Leigh, maybe John Wayne as well, even Jay C. Flippen should you press a point. Jet Pilot made history too as a last feature released that had used the old and behemoth three-color Technicolor camera, shown above with JvS hovering over his dance floor cast. Eastman variants were firm in place by 1957, prints via Technicolor yes, but film was being shot on single-strip Eastman, never to revert back. 16mm IB Tech prints of Jet Pilot made their way to non-theatrical outlets. I never scored one, but should have, as some floated around and must have been beauts. The Blu-Ray looks stunning enough however. If you haven't got this, go get it, or at least stream it where you can.

Coffee, Tea, or Her? Jet Pilot Struggles to Be Saucy Despite Shackles Code-Imposed.

Jet Pilot was produced by Jules Furthman, and it is speculated that he finessed the job for Joe, who had himself poisoned enough industry wells for potential hirers to shun him. Furthman was primarily a writer. He had enabled the best and most coherent Sternberg movies, though Joe would say Furthman was just another assistant far below the director’s level of competence. I can’t help liking Josef von Sternberg for his outlandish ego and arrogance, him an essence of man as his own worst enemy. Joe wanted to be disliked, and lots accommodated him. Jet Pilot’s problem is being a jet fighter picture without any fighting, a war movie in search of a war. That being case, what we get is romance comedy, this OK because Wayne appeals when relaxed and getting unaccustomed fun out of parlay with leading ladies. He’s good on “Gentle Giant” terms with Janet Leigh as he was with Nancy Olsen in Big Jim McLain, Donna Reed in Trouble Along the Way, others we could name. They reflect Wayne as easygoing escort we know him to have been offscreen, this delved deep into by Scott Eyman in his best-of-them-all Wayne biography. Just watching the big guy have steak with Janet and engage repartee is plenty joy for me, preferable to him punching yet another pest in the snoot. Give me Jet Pilot or aforementioned “weaker Waynes” for relaxing good time, Jet Pilot the better for being glorious just to look at. Greenbriar took somewhat deeper dive into Jet Pilot back in 2006, before there was choice between screen formats, let alone Blu-Ray, to enhance viewing. Count Your Blessings applies sure to this lately upgraded presentation.