History for Fun #3

 

From Fact: The Hindenburg and The Big Lift

THE HINDENBURG (1975) --- Ultra-classy for Universal at a time they seemed poised for industry leadership after years an also-ran, The Sting a recent winner for Best Picture, American Graffiti an all-time profit getter, plus Jaws making history a same summer The Hindenburg was being completed. I was there for June-July 1975 as pupil with USC’s Filmmaker program, or whatever they called the course. We were turned loose on the lot three days per week and for me that was like a cat at the fish stand. Commissary lunch was a daily highlight. Stars were in and out to/from lunch. They all had been told about us so were indulgent. Jackie Cooper let me walk with him back to the Mobile One stage as we talked about Our Gang. I probably told that story before. You kind of forget after twenty-six hundred columns. One thing I know wasn’t mentioned before was us going to a scoring session for The Hindenburg and me sidling over to where director Robert Wise supervised the orchestra led by composer David Shire. Here we all were wandering around the room, not told where to sit or stand, as if at home, so much had the lot come to seem that way. USC must have had real pull at Universal for such to be allowed. Of course it was a more relaxed time then. Mr. Wise was polite if distracted. I had forgot how music booms where live, us students practically sitting on performer laps. I had chance to pose but one question to Mr. Wise and you may judge for yourselves how fully I bungled it: “Mr. Wise, are you satisfied with how The Hindenburg turned out?” He didn’t yell Security! but maybe wanted to. Wise was famously patient with young film enthusiasts, accommodating to buff interviewing. At least I didn’t ask him if he felt guilty for mutilating The Magnificent Ambersons. That would have earned me a bum’s rush. So what did he say to my query? “Ask me again in two weeks.” Now there was tact. No wonder his was unbroken industry success.

But what of The Hindenburg? I wouldn’t see it for years, enjoyed it OK when I finally did, looked again lately at a Fandango HD stream where it played splendidly. Wise by all measure was a pro director in classically trained sense. Like Jacques Tourneur, another of so-called journeyman favorites, he came always prepared to shooting, all of ducks in a row before action was called, necessary work done in advance to make sure all was ready and no time would be wasted. There is a book called Robert Wise on His Films where he comments at length on all of what was accomplished over a long career. Among much data on The Hindenburg, Wise told how original plans for the dirigible had been lost during the war and they had to go elsewhere for details to reconstruct the ship, primary model for which was twenty-seven feet long, this an interesting comparison with Hell’s Angels, where the zeppelin built for the London air raid sequence was sixty feet long. The Hindenburg was too good to be classified as a mere “disaster’ movie, being elegant in ways most film had stopped being by the mid-seventies. Appropriate that it should revolve around comfort that was lighter than air travel. Robert Wise represented something contrary to forces moving fast toward dominance of the industry. The Spielbergs and Lucases were about to inherit the earth. When I went to see Star Trek: The Motion Picture and saw Wise had directed it … well, Star Trek seemed beneath him. 1975 was at cusp of convulsive change, yet Universal seemed that summer to be on a kind of nostalgia trip. Not only were they recreating incident that was the Hindenburg crash in 1937, there also was ongoing celebration of old Hollywood in the persons of W.C. Fields (Rod Steiger) and Gable/Lombard as essayed by James Brolin and Jill Clayburgh. Both these projects skimped somewhat on period detail that The Hindenburg emphasized yet had a surface polish that made them at least seem authentic. The Hindenburg boasted visual effects equal if not better than any industry-done at the time and received an Academy Award for visuals.

We got to visit Albert Whitlock’s workshop where he showed us drawings, matte paintings, models, all that was stacked up or leaned against walls. It was OK for us to walk around picking stuff up. Imagine such license today. Among merits considerable of The Hindenburg: George C. Scott in the lead. He is a “good” German working for the Reich but wanting out. There are support parts for players who all but had cots at Universal, each excelling because here was a first-rate project worthy of anyone’s best effort. No one knows for sure what made the Hindenburg blow up. The Germans acknowledged possibility of sabotage but had no concrete evidence. The movie claims that was it and early on shows us the plotter. We knew from history what would happen and that the “disaster” would by actual account have to be brief. The thing exploded, caught fire, and everybody who was going to get out, got out, all within minutes. Query to 2026: Would anyone watching know anything about what happened to the Hindenburg? At least in 1975 there were plenty who’d recall the event but fifty years previous. Staging of the crash was novel, for most part black-and-white like the famous newsreels, actual footage blended with outcome for characters. Not sure how audiences reacted to such taut recital of the blow, but how else do you depict something seen for real, and often, since 1937 when it was photographed in “real time” (a phrase oft-used enough of late to become tiresome). It’s remarkable that so many passengers got out alive, 64% of them. 62 lived, 35 died. Looking at the newsreels you wouldn’t think anybody could get past a conflagration like that. I didn’t want Scott to die but of course he pretty much had to given circumstance of him trying to defuse the bomb when it goes off. The Hindenburg cost $15 million and “grossed” $27.9 million domestically. They (online sources) may mean rentals which is entirely different from gross, this sort of info getting often confused. Maybe The Hindenburg got by, but not on the level of a Poseidon or Towering Inferno. Might it have been too good for an audience so far fed on those simpler concepts?

THE BIG LIFT (1950) --- Allies forgive, Paul Douglas does not. He’s an officer suspicious of anything/anybody German and lo/behold is proven right for a finish where he proves Montgomery Clift’s former enemy love to be anything but reconstructed. To root out Germans pretending to be de-nazified was a job army personnel had not adequate time or manpower for, millions after all to be investigated and near as many slipping through nets. Pretty soon the job was barely being done, which was why lots never answered for war crimes or attitudes unchanged since peace was won. Clift is the innocent abroad and easy prey for Cornell Borchers who will use him to enter America and rejoin her SS escapee lover who now runs a camera shop in St. Louis (wonder if there was a spinner rack offering 8mm Castle Films). It takes raw realist Douglas to unmask her and set Monty straight. The Big Lift is perhaps plainest spoken of occupation dramas, one we know least, at least in quality prints, for it having gone into the Public Doman years ago and abused ever since on television and online. It should be recovered, but by who? “Fox” owns it, but that means Disney, which means ongoing obscurity. Location shooting for The Big Lift is a given, writer-director George Seaton and producing William Perlberg by postwar insistent on believable backgrounds. Virtually all of shooting took place in Berlin, Frankfurt, even inside the Russian sector. The Big Lift went past limited location efforts of A Foreign Affair, Berlin Express, others less semi-documentary for intent and outcome. Even the old Ufa studio hosted shooting of interiors for The Big Lift, which can be accessed on You Tube and elsewhere but do try finding a better transfer if one can be had. My best yield so far has been barely tolerable if that.