Pulling Pin Off a Seventies Nostalgia Grenade

 

Never Mind Turning Water to Wine ... CBS Running This in 1979 Primetime. Now That Was a Miracle

When Carol Burnett (and Others) Helped Make Old Movies Mainstream Again

Carol Burnett on her 70’s comedy-variety show did affectionate parodies of “old” movies thirty or so years passed. She’d open with a card reading “Late, Late Movie” or Lyle Waggoner in black tie as mock host for a local station’s “Nostalgia Theatre.” We know there was such programming then. NC Channel 8 in High Point’s weatherman doubled as presenter of pre-49 Warner titles in mid-seventies primetime, something few expected what with VHF stations abandoning older syndicated packages in favor of all-color content. What Carol Burnett celebrated, maybe without knowing, was large-scale revival of B/W now that UHF stations were on the rise and reacquainting viewers with “Movies When They Were Movies.” Advantage of deep libraries was getting them cheap. A program manager from Memphis told me how they licensed Warner oldies for seven runs on each title, $25 per play. How could then-present owner United Artists command more, competition from recent movies fierce as it was? UHF channels bought heavy from vintage preserves and unspooled them at all times of the day and night, Charlotte with two such outlets, Channels 18 and 36, both top heavy with pre-49. Classics ignored during latter half of the sixties came roaring back in the seventies to tap memory wells. Renewed popularity if not a surprise at least led to mainstream VHF use, such as with latterly mentioned Channel 8 or Winston-Salem’s Channel 12 where It Happened One Night occupied prime viewing hours in 1976, Channel 8 doing the same with Ceiling Zero, Now Voyager, you name them. What startled me was these affiliates skipping their network feed for movies they but recently would have said were played out. To theatres in a meantime came Summer of ’42, The Sting, American Graffiti, more. PBS affiliates got rarities like Once in a Lifetime and Counselor at Law, even silents in a pinch. Classics got a yearly boost from American Film Institute “Life Achievement” Awards which recognized likes of John Ford, Cagney, Bette Davis, each with a backlog finding fresh viewership on local stations suddenly awake to the appeal of old and older favorites.

Amidst this was Carol Burnett and her spoofs. She had been a fan since growing up one block up from Hollywood Boulevard, witness to red carpet premieres (she remembers seeing Linda Darnell), dramatizing films with her friends after seeing them. Burnett would be variety TV’s ideal spokesperson for the glories of Classic Era filmgoing. Being mainstream and maybe the most popular comedian on television at the time, Burnett would peak at 22.1 percent of U.S. TV-equipped households watching, which according to estimates, translated to over twenty-five million residences tuning in, and considering most homes had multiple occupants … well, those numbers are staggering beside what passes for a “hit” today. Carol Burnett made movies memorable by ribbing them: Mildred Pierce, A Stolen Life, various 30-40’s musicals familiar perhaps to an older generation, but objects of discovery and appreciation by younger watchers. “Gentle parody” might better describe Burnett’s approach, always affectionate where mimicking the old stars. Some called in to express appreciation, Joan Crawford after “Mildred Fierce,” James Stewart for enjoying a skit not even taking off on one of his, but pleasing to him still. Burnett gathered veterans to her show's guest list, Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable, Martha Raye, Dinah Shore, others who would assert existence outside late show schedules. Again point out: the seventies thanks largely to UHF stations put pre-49 back on prime, at least more accessible hours (all hours of the day and night, in fact). Not for years had vaulties known such relevance. It helped that artists who made them were alive and eager to commemorate their revival. Major current names stood up to cheer for veterans. Burt Reynolds did two CBS specials where he interviewed panels of Classic Era luminaries, these accessible at You Tube though I can’t vouch for quality, level of that evident in captures below. Still it was nice to see Reynolds hosting Esther Williams, Van Johnson, James Stewart, June Allyson, others, such appearances to let fans know they were alive and ready to take fresh bows for work playing heavily on local channels.

No coincidence was That’s Entertainment landing in theatres to such fanfare and modern crowd embrace, its premiere stage crowded with faces that once populated the old musicals, would spokes-speak for them again as That’s Entertainment and sequels fanned out to audiences nationwide. Vibrant vet Ann Miller took the field as MGM’s Good Will Ambassador and spent a year spreading happy news that old musicals were new again, not unlike similar arrangement Gloria Swanson had with Paramount during 1949-50, her traveling on behalf not just of Sunset Boulevard but other Para product, Swanson ideal to trumpet past-set if not nostalgic The Heiress. Swanson selling Sunset was less simple a commission than Ann Miller’s for That’s Entertainment, Boulevard having struck more a sour note amidst cheerful look back at Hollywood the stuff of Betty Hutton as Pearl White or much-proposed screen bios of Mack Sennett, those so close, yet so far, from actual production. The seventies had Day of the Locust to muddy ponds, less noticed by a public preferring rose colored looks-back. It’s interesting that plainer-speaking Sunset Boulevard would, from late-forties, early-fifties explore of all things old, take posterity’s ribbon. Embracing a Classic Era in the seventies would not isolate enthusiasts, not with oldies drawing crowds well beyond those who'd recall the films from distant past. It was plenty OK during this epoch to be an old movie geek, be you young or past that.

Ann Would Again Do Her Dance for Leo Long After MGM Orchestras Had Left the Stage

Campus shows often were cult-driven, idols to include Humphrey Bogart, the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, us to assume students would gravitate always to these and other past personalities, but no, we'd since see it for pop-cultural gust of short-lived smoke it was. Gift we have in age 92 Carol Burnett is one of the last eyewitnesses to the best of a Classic Era. Artists who made all that entertainment are gone. No more Ann Miller or Jane Powell. What remains are fewer-every-day first-run fans of Miller and Powell, others of us not yet born when they thrived. Burnett, the pioneer fan, tells Dave Karger on TCM how she was taken to see Gone with the Wind when it was new, her barely past toddling. That’s like me at The Shaggy Dog, but what does The Shaggy Dog amount to beside Gone with the Wind? One day I’ll be among last who recalls Gone with the Wind when it still played theatres, notwithstanding Fathom Events. Carol Burnett speaks for those from best years of filmgoing largely gone, like veterans of World War Two. Original fans, fans that understood best, like Ray Harryhausen who saw King Kong when a boy and had his life changed by it, or my collector friend Bill Wootten in Statesville (him 1948 writer of the first monograph and index on John Ford’s films). Bill was fortunate enough to develop “pink eye” (is that a thing anymore?) which enabled him to skip school and enjoy Kong with the other eye. Greenbriar had joy and privilege that was access to Conrad Lane, born in 1930 and seeing everything worth seeing from three-years-old on (starting with Footlight Parade!). Conrad offered eyeball account of King’s Row, Desperate Journey, To Each His Own when they were new in theaters, his perspective not to be approached by latter-day “historians,” including myself. But then we can’t blame those who study Caesar or Copernicus just because they never conferred with either chap.

A lot from Bette Davis-Joan Crawford had been lumped into “weeper” category, obvious exception their late-career horrors, but Carol Burnett alerted viewers to values of 40’s melodrama. They may not register as modern, nor “camp,” but still could be enjoyable if not baroque by comparison with less energetic successors. Not a coincidence was music from older films being re-recorded, re-packaged, re-discovered, by those thinking “classical” might have a broader definition. The RCA Charles Gerhardt album series was successful enough to continue past initial Steiner and Korngold, and I’d ask how many campuses booked Now Voyager beside their Marx and Bogie weeks? A good reception for one aspect of oldies might suggest other ways for a deep library to prosper again, such inventory not nearly so deep fifty years ago as now. Refreshing aspect of then-youth embrace for vintage films was their not being driven by “nostalgia,” few or none having been around when the features were new. I’d like to understand mindset that took hold of that seventies generation --- actually it had begun in the sixties, lasted well into the eighties. For that matter, I was still running by then ancients to early twenty-first-century collegiate crowds, surely a last stand for campus shows based on earlier models. But wait … maybe there is college programming yet, and well attended, though insistent voice tells me, probably not.