Ads and Oddities #12

 

What This Book Tells Will Surprise You Plenty. Go Get It.

Ad/Odds: Drews Delight in New Book, Mac/Eddy a 60's Happening, Cooped Up Lost World Watchers, and What Got Looked At Twenty Years Back

They Go Way Back but Still Are Funny for My Money

PRESENTING MR. AND MRS. SIDNEY DREW --- Neither odd nor an ad, this instead a new book by Rob Farr that explores the lives of Sidney Drew and the two Mrs. Drews, first who appeared with him on stage with second spouse filling in for movies after death of the first. Greenbriar has on several occasions dropped in on the Drews. They were funny on “genial” terms of comedy that stopped short of slapstick, deliberate device to set them apart from Sennett. For all their mirthing, no Drew threw a pie to my knowledge. They were successors in a sense to John Bunny who also got laughs from expression and reaction to absurd situations, stuff that could happen to any of us his fodder for fun. Bunny died premature and the Drews sort of took up his mantle. Author Farr does not confine himself just to their films however. There was stage drudge before to remind us how artists starved and struggled along inhospitable rail lines and tank towns where one night stands was misery few among moderns could stand, never mind dedication to art or craft. Sidney Drew was kin to the Barrymores. Farr explains the links and that enriches his telling of the Drew saga. Sidney was often (nearly always?) broke on the road, threatened with jail, stranded troupes, poor attendance, bombing in Butte and other sites, stiffing a hotel, threatened with a pistol and/or carving knife, dragged off a train and bashed for owing someone or other. Such actor’s life would sure not have been for me or thee I’d venture. We all would take vanilla after reading the Drews’ harrowing account. Rob Farr knows vaudeville plus film lore and recounts it beautifully. This is show history not to be put down, and for sure enriches whatever we watch of the Drews from now on (Rob Stone indicates a Blu-ray collection is coming). In a meantime, the Drews are spread amongst silent and comedy DVD/Blu collections. Kino’s of-late Vitagraph disc set has much of Drew humor and is not to be missed.

Forget Bonnie and Clyde or The Graduate During the Sixties. This Was the Show.

WHEN MACDONALD/EDDY GOT HOT AGAIN --- Alarming to think that during the sixties as beatniks gave way to hippies and everyone did the Limbo or Twist, and don’t forget we were “losing our innocence” that whole time … well, along comes Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy to reassert true glory in filmed entertainment of yore. The pair had adherents still, older maybe but ambulating still to local cinemas where Mac/Eddy asserted charm intact despite thirty years since same songbirds made magic. Theirs were jewels amidst operettas salted among MGM’s “Perpetual Products,” a category invented by Metro marketers and trade shorthand for movies still good for money no matter how old or tendered nationwide on TV. MacDonald and Eddy served best as a communal experience, kindreds sat in seats where music could waft about them as if the pair were live concerting. All recalled impact these features had when movie viewing was a different and shared experience. Ponder figures: The Girl of the Golden West (1938) had 637 revival bookings between September 1, 1962 and August 31, 1967. $20,540 was collected by Leo at average rentals of $32 per date. Perpetuals were generally used on slow Tuesdays or whatever wasn’t prime weekend time. $20,540 may not have been a windfall, but then again, for a 1939 title that wasn’t The Wizard of Oz or GWTW, well, yeah, it was a windfall, especially if you were a Metro field man who’d long given up on oldies as viable product. It got better: Mac/Eddy in Sweethearts (also 1938) seized 802 dates, collected $31,772 at average $40 rental. How long would graying patronage hold out? Not forever of course. Fanship for the team would fade as expected as would willingness to line up and buy tickets for ancients free at home. Stimulating the more was not having to stay up (too) late, endure endless commercials plus cuts to see/hear favorites again. Fans are still out there for Mac/Eddy, more I suspect than we realize. Consider too that MGM had a hundred more vaulties in theatrical circulation through the sixties, many in circulation even unto the eighties (I saw The Secret Garden at a Gastonia, NC matinee in 1981). Warner Archive offers Technicolored Sweethearts on Blu-ray, and more recently, Rose Marie. I hope both sell well and inspire more.

HOW EXCESSIVE IS 133 FEATURES IN FIVE MONTHS? --- Might as well ask depth of spirits consumed in a night, how many chocolate chip cookies ate in a sitting, any habit over-indulged. Seems we watch less features than before, sample or skip the tendency, attention deficit ruling days plus nights. You could claim it’s plight of the young, but what if change is wider spread among ages, everybody now afflicted. Too many glasses left mostly full, thirty second sips or none? I look at features in whole and feel a last left to do so. Saw three in a gulp one recent night, Angels With Dirty Faces, Three Smart Girls, and Them!. Latter was new-arrived 4K, the others Blu-Ray. A picnic and no red ants as with analog happily passed. How different was life in 2004-05? No less than change wrought over any passage of twenty years. We had DVD by then, film collecting going if not gone (but wait, recently it has roared back). Too few classics were had on disc by 2004. A lot was seen off TCM and other satellite outlets, some broadcast in High-Definition. That by itself was reason to watch Woman of Straw, Queen of Blood, or Fun in Acapulco where otherwise you might ignore them. The James Bond series was showing up in HD on HBO, Showtime, here/there. Lacking wherewithal to record and save them meant setting alarm for four am one January ‘05 morn to watch On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever. I couldn’t say what the “Best” film was from this 04-05 list, but do recall the “Worst,” Star for sure as complete heaven-help-me roadshow on a Fox DVD. Had never seen it, hope not to again. Not sure I got through to the end. A few of the 133 have screened again so far in 2026, Dial M for Murder, Mogambo, The Big Broadcast of 1938, Son of Dracula, la Dolce Vita, International House, How to Steal a Million, They Came to Cordura, Blow-Up, Helen of Troy, and Khartoum, most the fruit of Blu-Ray or 4K releasing. Certain favorites have run at least a dozen more times since 04-05 engagements: Giant, The 39 Steps, Vera Cruz, The Big Clock, Across the Pacific, Planet of the Vampires, Strangers on a Train, other evergreens. Fact is all 133 would rate an encore, 132 if I exclude Star. Latter could happen in hope opinion might change with two decade growth and increased tolerance for 60’s elephant art.

Says Projectionist: My Cigar's Gone Dead, Pal. Got a Light?

LOST TO THIS WORLD HAD FILM CAUGHT FIRE --- Of all times and places I’d not revisit, even if option were open to me, here is one to rank highest. It’s a topic addressed before: The Lost World as airborne featured attraction on a passenger flight, hosted by Imperial Airways Ltd., a British firm. I’m back to this topic for finding a slightly different and much clearer image from the well-publicized 1925 event. There also is capture of the plane’s interior to afford glimpse of seating, capacity assumed for eight not including pilots (bring back wicker chairs for flying, I say). Occupants would traverse the North Sea. Is that near where Leslie Howard was shot down in 1943? I spoke before to insanity of running 35mm nitrate at high altitude with no means of emergency egress. Do you suppose Imperial permitted smoking aboard? Bet they did, not unlike Moon Mullins stood in his film storage shed during hot-as-hell July sans shirt and rewinding nitrate. I was as reckless for helping him. Was risk worth an Out of the Past trailer Moon peeled off and gave me? The Lost World experiment appears to be the first time a feature film was shown aboard a plane for the amusement of passengers. Years later (1961), the first regularly scheduled movie shown in-air was By Love Possessed. Collectors would refer to these as “airline prints” and mixed bags quality-wise. There were sticky fingered lab employees to sell them out the back door to dealers who’d sell same at weekend Meadowland shows. This was early-to-mid eighties when Universal was still ordering 16mm prints of stuff they controlled for use as in-flight entertainment, final days of 16mm shown aboard planes. Among titles were Hitchcock and Howard Hughes properties U controlled (and still do): Vertigo, Hell’s Angels, Scarface, Rope, others. All were “original” prints and hot-sought. Air travelers now watch movies on the back of a seat in front of them, or on devices they bring aboard. Progress to be sure, no one fated to look at anything they don’t want like in days of the screen visible whether you wanted it or not.