Trade Talk #6

 

What Trades Told: 1929 from 1970 Viewpoint

Films in Review was among few ways film folk kept in touch, (more/less) monthly means for kindred souls to share plus be reassured that others, if few, were like them. Write in and chances were they’d print your letter. Industry notables contributed, FIR house organ for the National Board of Review, which had been around long as movies themselves. Average press run per issue was 7980, this circa September 1970. There were over 4000 paid subscribers. I was on-off among them. Considering numbers printed, it’s no wonder eBay bulges with back issues. 3100 are lately listed. They go fairly cheap, two dollars and up, even less where bunched up. My submission of two multi-part articles, one about theatrical trailers, the other on reissues, got printed around 1989, 1990. Robin Little was editor at the time. Films in Review ranks high for picture history, easy to lose myself in whatever pile falls off the shelf. Certain writers were ubiquitous. William K. Everson showed up lots. Herman Weinberg had a regular column. One feature circa seventies was “Films on 8 and 16,” by Samuel A. Peeples. Clearly this was for collectors, but Peeples addressed more than just that. He had begun as a writer for westerns, mentored by Frank Gruber of prolific past penning them. Peeples made further contacts as he gained experience. Lancer was his TV series. There also was Star Trek which he helped Gene Roddenberry develop, and for which he wrote the second pilot which sold the series to NBC. Peeples did not discuss these things in his column. Latter was for helping fans find prints to home view, legal and above board of course. Sam died in 1997 and left his collection to the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. There are 225 boxes open to scholars with no restrictions. Much of that is 8 and 16mm movies. I can’t picture researchers asking to watch Sam’s black-and-white flat print of Holiday for Lovers (1959), while silent titles are long superseded by digital versions superior in visual quality. Digital has its cruel way with analog antiquity.

One extraordinary thing I came across in the inventory was a King Kong model constructed by Willis O’Brien and used in the 1933 film. That needs to be in a vault, at least under glass where visitors to the library can easier worship it. As things stand, I suspect Sam’s accumulation of a lifetime sits largely ignored, as who recalls him apart from past readers of Films in Review? Such reality weighs heavy upon all collectors who’d ask what fate awaits treasure they have gathered and nurtered. One thing I realize for looking over Sam’s backlog: No two collectors were ever alike … choices in spite of overlap were nonetheless specific to him and could not be confused with anyone else. Collecting speaks to individual identity. None need compose a memoir so long as their collection survives to speak for them. Samuel Peeple’s accumulation tells posterity who he was. There also of course is the writing. Peeples’ column reads like an ongoing story of his life, at least life spent with classic film. He’d been a child of the twenties, born 1917, saw silents give way to talkies. He’d recall this for the August-September 1970 issue of Films in Review. Sam’s mother was in the amusement business and so canvassed towns surrounding home base. Berg where they lived was small, theatres not yet wired. Some closed for lacking funds to convert, same as my hometown and lamented “Rose Theatre” that shuttered soon as ’29 curtain rang down. Sam watched silent versions of shows city dwellers got to see and hear, The Broadway Melody, Alias Jimmy Valentine, The Canary Murder Case. His being road worthy thanks to Mom gave Sam access to mute plus talkie treatments, each before or after the other, comparisons constant, him evaluating both at leisure.

Was this luck or what, Sam born in a right place at an ideal time. Late as 1970 he still remembered in detail. Alias Jimmy Valentine was “a good little melodrama” minus talk, running 7142 feet sans talk, while sound Jimmy expanded to 7803 feet, difference being seven minutes of “stand-still dialogue that was unnecessary in the silent version and would have made it drag.” What entertained before was “cinematically and dramatically useless, but necessary, in order to permit actors to speak dialogue.” Imagine being eleven (Alias Jimmy Valentine released in late 1928) and getting to compare technologies, one rushing in, the other being eased out. Stark was one Broadway Melody more/less beside the other. How far apart was the talking/singing Melody from what live accompany supplied in still "silent" houses? Sam saw The Broadway Melody with sound in the city at 105 minutes, then silent back home for 66 minutes. “Of course the musical numbers are much briefer in the silent version,” he recalled. Peeples attributed slowness of conversion not just to expense, but which system to adopt, theatres knowing but one could survive. To choose was to gamble, not unlike pick between Beta or VHS. We know sound on film won, but how could showmen long ago have anticipated that? For a meantime, they'd play safe with both silence and sound, at least till viewer preference could sort it all out. Sam, being a boy, liked his action fare, sound chosen “especially” for the “airplane ones.” Live accompany still suited best for “spooky background music” by pianos or organists addressing mysteries and “mood pictures.” For Sam, The Unholy Night was “a bore” with talk, him “loving every minute” of the same show where sound was absent save (again) that spooky music. This didn’t go so much for also mysterious The Canary Murder Case, which needed talk for explanation, especially of a “sound gimmick” around which the resolution revolved (again note length difference as estimated by Peeples: Canary with sound at 7171 feet, silent 5843 feet).

Sam saw seemingly everything off 1929’s menu. “It really was a marvelous year,” he wrote, to which we could say, Yes, it really was … and wouldn’t it be marvelous to have experienced it first hand like Samuel Peeples. Consider sobering truth of no one left to tell us what that year was like at theatres. Reading Peeples’ essay is for me like watching an early thirties film where tens of thousands of people watch a football game. You know they are virtually all gone, yet here they all were in the sunshine and having the time of their finite lives. Easy to wish I’d been around in 1929 to see The Canary Murder Case new, but then where does that leave me in 2026? Certainly not here with the rest of you. Sam chose a favorite for that pivotal year, nominees The Virginian, The Cocoanuts, Noah’s Ark, The Iron Mask, The Wolf of Wall Street (where oh where is that one now?), his pick perhaps unexpected … Paul Leni’s The Last Warning, another where he saw both silent and sound editions. Sam said Leni was such a skilled director that one couldn’t distinguish between the two, that Leni “retained the full fluidity of his mobile camera where other directors confined their cameras to sound-proof booths and boxes.” What survives of The Last Warning is the silent print, lately restored by Universal and released on Blu-Ray by Flicker Alley. That’s OK by me. From what program notes report of the sound version, we are much the better with silence, that is apart from music and effects supplied by Flicker Alley, us lucky to have The Last Warning at all. Much as I would have enjoyed canvassing theatres with Peeples and seeing silent plus sound versions of 1929 releases, chances are my vote would have tipped heavily toward the silents. Remember Murnau’s City Girl? Historians say we’re blessed it survives silent as the director intended, the talking pastiche doubtless lost for good. And what was that about Fox bringing another guy in to graft dialogue onto The Black Watch after John Ford finished it? Much of 1929 product was crazy quilt in extremis. Truth is most of it could not be digested by latter-day general viewership, but let’s be thankful Samuel Peeples stayed long enough to look back from forty years’ distance to tell us what being there was all about.

Scope Samples #4

 

Wide Worlds: China vs. Us, Raindrops Fall on Westerns, and Eastwood Deals in Dynamite

THE SAND PEBBLES (1966) --- Was there roadshow fatigue by the mid-sixties? At least for Fox, there seemed more losing than winning, The Sound of Music a historic exception, though for every one of that, there were two like The Bible or The Agony and the Ecstasy, plus barely-eecking-profit Cleopatra which needed a network sale to get even. Hits when they had them saw less spent or content the public could better enjoy, The Blue Max completed for $6.2 million, with Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machine fun-for-whole-families event to which they willingly bought hard tickets for a row-full. The Sand Pebbles was released at the end of 1966 to run mostly through 1967. Negative cost was $12.1 million and because of that, even worldwide rentals of $17. 3 million would not offset nearly two million ultimately lost. 70mm prints of The Sand Pebbles were blown-up from 35mm. We could wonder if our Blu-Rays look sharper than what 1966-67 experienced. None of 70mm presentations happened in North Carolina. Closest we got was evidently Greenville, SC for 9/28/67 which was non-roadshow, but in 70mm, albeit enlarged. Values otherwise are judged by digital access which I assume preserve integrity of sound (six-channel stereo) and picture, if not improving upon them. China conflict during the late twenties is addressed. We must care much about the characters to last these three hours, sailor Steve McQueen to my mind supplying what there is of that, opposition to him Communist hordes that win in the end and call to question our being in Orient water at all. Slap at US Vietnam policy was or wasn’t noted by reviews, point perhaps better put had the picture finished shorter. The Sand Pebbles is best watched to catch vibes of roadshow-going and what the sixties saw for biggest picture-making. Question is how many three-hour blocks would we set aside for a show we know for flawed, degree of that a matter of private opinion. Seems certain you’d not seat company down for The Sand Pebbles lest they tag you for boredom they may experience.

BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969) --- Something about Paul Newman on his bicycle to accompany of "Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head" turned me distinctly off Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Seeing and being transformed by The Wild Bunch but months distant also entered the equation, westerns having touched a level I’d not care to sit below again. There were other doubters re the song, Newman from what I understand, plus writer William Goldman (fearing “terminal cutes”). He had set a record for revenue earned off a “spec script,” Butch Cassidy the stuff of fierce bidding by studios who each saw potential in it. My own attitude came of movie fatigue overall, at least ones new and in theatres, malaise the outcome of a year reviewing for a local paper and recognition that too little was worth effort of attending. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had also whiff of the trendy, that song plus humor to warn of another Support Your Local Sherriff. Some fifteen year olds, it seems, can not be pleased. Lenoir-Rhyne’s Program Department invited me to book campus shows my senior year after three annums I competed with them. Asked to work with a “committee,” I called a first meeting, chucked further ones, and picked my own preferences, all from the Classic Era minus sops to cool complaint that I ignored “new” product. American Graffiti ($400 rental … I could have got five or six pre-49 Warners for that), Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (surprisingly low from UA/16, which was why I chose it), and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid from Films, Inc., them sending a cropped to flat-from-scope print that perhaps no one noticed and I barely did from not having seen the picture before and not yet enough of a purist to make an issue of it. Butch was passable, still my idea of “too recent” which took in much of what even was made in the fifties. Collegians were lucky I didn’t lay Judith of Bethulia on them.

Watch Out ... Here Comes Bill Field's Server Nemesis from Never Give a Sucker ...

Now thanks to widescreen Blu-Ray comes Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at perhaps a point where I can finally enjoy pleasure it offers. No need wondering what made it so popular at the time, or since. Writing, performances, direction, all crackerjack. Butch Cassidy plays modern like Bonnie and Clyde and Bullitt (at least for me). Was this the first “buddy” western? We could argue Vera Cruz sort of was, and maybe comedy-westerns like The Rounders that predated Butch. Neither aspired to hep like Butch and Sundance however. Robert Redford said later that this was the picture that really put him across. You can tell this 1870’s character will own the 1970’s. Most good parts began with a long list of casting possibilities. Newman was set from the start to be Butch, but Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, or Warren Beatty for Sundance? McQueen I could envision, except how could he conceal one-up he'd have come at Newman with? (remember the beating Yul Brynner took) Brando was too old, too fussy, seeming washed up besides by 1969. Beatty I think would have been too self-conscious and intent on taking control. There was always something odd about his screen countenance, and frankly about Beatty himself. I keep seeing him swallowed up by that fur coat in Altman's half-arse western. Redford told of being passed over for another show because he wasn’t a big enough name, this right after he finished playing Sundance, but before it was released. Imagine egg on some producer’s face. Question I’d have asked Newman, Redford, others, had I ever got the chance: Did any speak to or notice Jody Gilbert, who had a blink-and-you’ll miss-her moment during one of the train robberies? Jody had long before joined immortals when she was the waitress who parried with W.C. Fields in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. There had been mostly bits since, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid her first (and as it turned out, last) screen part since Houdini in 1953. HUAC trouble saw her out. Good thing I never crewed for movies, at least movies from the sixties or seventies, for it would have been never-stopping birddog after veterans in support, even extra, ranks.

TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA (1970) --- Don Siegel devotes a chapter in his book to this. Seems to me Sister Sara suffered for its title, some of Eastwood’s army deserting because it did not sound like what they’d enjoy from him. The story and an initial script was by Budd Boetticher, who was not invited to direct. He hadn’t held such post for some time, had his Mexico travails to overcome, and maybe Universal was afraid to take a chance with him. Siegel said he was embarrassed to take the job for knowing how Boetticher should have led, but latter assured it was OK, even though in final analysis Universal passed up his screenplay in favor of one by Albert Maltz. Plot was ideal for Eastwood, his best American western so far and perhaps a best homeground for this star in that genre. Toward Sigma placement comes “Hogan” as single-minded seeker after pay for arranging strikes against French fighters opposing Juaristas, him indifferent of fate for either side, just wanting cash he’s been promised to deliver dynamite plus lethal expertise. A reason Sigmas function well for films is fact they are goal oriented and will let nothing interfere in movement toward fulfilling the mission. Movies are like that too, few of us wanting distractions, comedic or romantic, to slow pace toward opposing sides having it out. That Hogan is slowed by “Sister Sara” (Shirley MacLaine) is leavened by Siegel flair with action and use he makes with outdoors. MacLaine must be subdued to affect her subterfuge and that’s doing the audience a favor. She and Eastwood got along “despite him being a Republican,” she said. Of American westerns with Eastwood, this came closest to his Man With No Name portfolio from the Leone films, and being Siegel, there always will be cult interest. Scope plus a score by Ennio Morricone links Sara closer to Euro spirit of Good, Bad, Dollars etc. I don’t hear a lot said about Two Mules for Sister Sara, and wonder why, as in why not?

The Art of Selling Movies #5

 

Greetings from Homer ... But What Is He Doing Here?

Art of ... When Music Masters Mastered Movies

That man Homer they credit with The Iliad and The Odyssey turns out to maybe not have existed. He, whoever he (or she?) actually was, got nowhere near Greek texts, these emerging instead from oral tradition, meaning stories told, retold, translated, gone through tens of thousands of iterations till what we read today has less to do with actual ancients than 104 minutes that is Jason and the Argonauts. More I read of music movements, the more they play like Homer, best and purest when new, watered down since like whiskey spoilt by ginger ale. Ragtime morphed to jazz, so did jazz derive from ragtime? Imagine “raw” beginnings played “from Below” as historian Ian Whitcomb describes “music lost in the folk fog of pre-history.” What revolutionized the twentieth century began in the nineteenth, so says Whitcomb, revivalist camp meetings in the 1840’s, “rave-ups” from 1823, none recorded because we didn’t have recorders yet. Pre-history was made, said Whitcomb, at “saloons, brothels, clip joints, gambling halls, honky tonks, and jook joints.” What people heard without being conscious of hearing was modern music aborning. I’ve read too that things otherworldly went on among artists who had no idea they were artists and probably would not have liked being called that. Deepest diggers claim what these people did has not been surpassed, understood even, by those said to be inspired by them. I like spooky aspects of popular music at birth and before it fell under commercial/corporate control. Performers were tamed from the time they stepped before microphones, in part for being self-conscious in an unaccustomed environment, and being instructed as to how to perform for a medium unfamiliar to them, not unlike actors doing talkies for a first time. To sell popular music was always to water it down, everything made slick for mass listening.

Pola as Silent Incidental to "Syncopation" Crowds Came Out to Hear

Academics and history hounds scoured back roads during the thirties to find “real” music as native-generated, the research supported by Depression-era government funding. Genuine folk art was thus rescued from soulless jazz soon to be swing, latter even more soulless some said. Quest for the unsullied went on against backdrop of commercial music increasingly debased. One record collector given to obscurest searching compiled his “Anthology of American Folk Music” in 1952, Harry Smith a born eccentric (had to be to pursue this). Choices for inclusion were fruit of Smith’s preference, records got from old warehouses and researched by him. Harry didn’t worry about copyrights because owners barely realized such trifles were theirs. What he did was transfer 78 RPM shellac to long-play 33, his handsome box to host ghosts recorded during infancy of music made far afield of maps. We wonder if songs were sung from beyond, so uncanny do they sound. Did players till soil off river Styx shore? Such primitivism smacked of pagan “other” to make jazz seem square. Genius guitarist Robert Johnson was told he couldn’t play worth beans, disappeared for a year or so, reemerged as best man on a guitar anyone ever heard. They naturally figured Johnson sold his eternal soul to devils at a country crossroad of lost location, his reward ability to play the instrument beyond anyone living, or undead. Lots believed this, many still do. I’d rather buy the story than not.

Violin Vet Joe Venuti Puts Bow to Fiddle for Universal's Two-Color King of Jazz

More backward the jazz, said adherents, the better. Spoiler was the more popular it got, the sooner co-oppers smoothed the style to please-everybody for vaudeville and emerging talkies like Broadway and King of Jazz these to whip safe batter from outlaw jazzing. Silent movie palaces were anything but silent what with “syncopation” now attacking eardrums. The Majestic Theatre (ad above), wherever that was, staged its “Revelous” Mélange of Mirth, Melody, and Jazz, mere one of many along jazz line identified as equal to, maybe better, than what was presented as the screen “attraction.” Googled Revelous figuring I’d bust the Majestic for using a non-existent word (me being one to talk). Turns out they just misspelled perfectly respectable “Revelrous,” which means “marked by or full of boisterous, noisy merrymaking,” great descriptive word I’ll surely crowbar in again where appropriate, maybe even where it's not. Who says literacy died with online and smart phones? The Majestic tenders seeming afterthought that is Pola Negri in Flower of Night. In event Paramount wanted Pola put in place, just park her here. Note musical notes wrapped round the actress. To be Mistress of Moods, Lady of Love, or Radiant Regent of Romance would have little currency for a Majestic mob wanting less of Negri and more of Harry Waiman and His Debutantes. Harry’s was an All-Girl band, him the only “him” but also the conductor. We can look at an extensive array of Harry Waiman photos, donated by the “Brown family” from Kentucky, to the Newberry Library in Chicago, content “open for research” in their Special Collections Reading Room. Why do I ponder such detail? Guess it’s just for wondering when was the last time anyone asked to look at this stuff … then maybe ponder what will become of my own “Collection” someday. 

Also investigated Ed and Tom Hickey, found nothing apart from obits years-too-late to have been them plus another Hickey held at present by Kentucky law enforcement (Kentucky again!). Time I put this Majestic ad aside, except to draw parallel with what happened at New York’s Paramount when Benny Goodman’s band accompanied Zaza in 1939. Remember that column? (5/31/2021) Same disaster thing happened to Zaza as was likely put upon Pola. Further evidence is here if needed that live music, preferably swing by 1939, was King, over movies at least, herewith Constance Bennett humbled at the RKO Palace where Lady of the Tropics lies beneath the Andrews Sisters plus Joe Venuti and Orch (by way of personal tribute, I am now listening to Joe, and frequent performing partner Eddie Lang, on You Tube). Then let’s step back to hear Clara Bow first-time talk in The Wild Party, an Easter 1929 open at the Palace, “Home of Paramount Pictures,” trouble being Bow spoke too soon and before kinks got ironed out. “She Talks --- and How” (inadequately, some said). Saving grace may have been live cacophony to headline All-Music over All-Talking, “Old Kentucky in Jazz” courtesy Jimmy Ellard and his Stage Band. I Google searched for Jimmy. Nothing but a song sheet for “Drink Your Beer,” credited to Ellard. Try sourcing enough of these long-ago people and you begin to wonder if they ever even existed, Jimmy at the least to be admired for staging the Kentucky Derby on stage with live horses (presumably multiple live horses). I am a fan of Clara Bow, but those steeds would surely have shaded her. Were movies more the handmaidens for music that accompanied them? Most ads I have from urban sites put priority on live acts. It may be presentation houses that made music safest for mass consumption. If it could play these without serious incident, a ruling class had nothing to worry about. So this was a Golden Age ... but a Golden Age of what? Not of movies necessarily. I'm thinking it was more music making the world go round, being bigger noise than film in populous areas at least. Were movies most magical in small bergs where there was less on the program to compete with them?

Watch List for 4/6/2026

 

Watched: Agar Ugly Again, Invite to Ranch Party, and Muni's Angel Does His Killing

HAND OF DEATH (1962) --- Fun of fundamental science-fiction is observing the experiment, waiting on it to somehow go wrong, then aboard for whatever monster results from the failed venture. Cheapness does not deter, in fact it enhances, like with Hand of Death where John Agar develops a sort of nerve gas to ease burden of war by subduing the enemy remotely, then going in to pick up pieces. That Agar will be a first victim is foregone conclusion, wanted as much as expected. Ritual is science-fiction’s friend, accepted wait to reveal a monster or whatever untoward event will threaten the world. Low budget confine concern to an Agar swathed by mask or make-up, the actor’s ordeal as burdensome as that of the character he plays. Penny thrilling by 1962 was rare and becoming obsolete. Even children tired of what in any case was turning up on television, many barely out of theatres, sometimes staying under roof or stars to compete for dates with “new” product which could hardly be distinguished from the old. Science-fiction having taken nosedive with the sixties saw major companies fed up with it, cheaper outfits having also had their fill. Hand of Death was made by a Twentieth-Fox subsidiary and distributed on a bill with Cabinet of Caligari, a B/W combination at a time when B/W combinations were oldest hat and hardly wanted. Hand of Death had a negative cost of $116,000, took $130,000 in domestic rentals, with $62,000 foreign. Eventual loss of $28,000 probably surprised nobody. What did surprise fans was Fox releasing an “On-Demand” DVD, a passable transfer in scope as intended. Happy day when something long elusive turns up, even so minor a piece as Hand of Death.

RANCH PARTY (1959-61) --- George Ashwell of NC dealing fame had shelves filled with 16mm Ranch Party shows. Each was half an hour and to my then-estimation a lot of cornpone to never care less about. Wrong again! George respected Ranch Party and I certainly should have. It was among many things a foot bridge from country to cowboy boogie to rock and roll, biggest so far tent over every sort of down-home music folks could love or soon learn to love. Every inch of existing Ranch Parties are somewhere on You Tube, the series running from 1959 into 1961. Screen Gems syndicated it and that’s how George got his repeated hauls. Tex Ritter hosted the shows, him of avuncular mien, linking past and future as he quips with firecracker Larry Collins, age thirteen and holding, or being held by, a double-neck guitar itself building muscle just from hauling around. Larry’s act with sister Lori was called “The Collins Kids” and they, at least he, heralded a coming of R&R, Larry by later admission a “crazy kid” who had quit school at early age so he could practice his instrument eight hours a day. Ranch Party was a quilt re styles, Tex to sing, bring out Jim Reeves to sing more, then Smiley “Frog” Burnette to evoke thirties sidekicking, next might come Carl Perkins or sizzle songstress Wanda Jackson to show winds newly blowing. Era of cowboy and country was theirs to choose, stay with tradition, established form, or go a devil’s way and maybe lose more mainstream following. Some could do both for a while but sooner or later had to pick one to truly excel with either. I love porridge that is Ranch Party, none of sameness to any episode while artists bumped against ways known, ways to come, not a little frightening for them plus possibly their audience. When little Larry Collins goes wild strumming and moonwalks across barnyard backdrop, we know cows and corn are less long to dominate country culture, yet no one seems threatened, old Tex aboard for whatever revolution music cared to engage.

ANGEL ON MY SHOULDER plus CARTOON and SHORT (1946) --- VCI has put this PD feature as Blu-Ray right as I suppose is possible for guessing the negative lies somewhere on ocean bottom, theirs a compendium of 16 and 35mm elements, a mixed bag but fuller and more satisfying than what we had till now. Angel on My Shoulder was among postwar independents trying harder to do different and hopefully better than major companies given more to formula, thus story off well-trod paths and freelance casting to assure something out of entertainment ordinary. Greenbriar looked at Angel on My Shoulder before on TCM broadcast terms but this is revelatory for improved pic-and-sound, quality of content registering more than on mottled occasions past. Chief debate is whether up-from-Hell Paul Muni will avenge his gangland slaying in customary fashion, him advised to rely upon title Angel and not to get even on his own terms. Accommodating Angel relieves Paul of responsibility by backing killer Hardie Albright out a high story window, thus saving Muni further guilt and damnation. We should all have such guardian angels to get even for us, but what does such resolution say about angels? Ones on this occasion seem barely if at all operating within Code precepts. Watch Angel on My Shoulder and wonder why it was necessary for Muni to go back to Hell when this and other selfless gestures should have salvationed him. Independents suffered for lacking polish of studio making. You could recognize Warners or Metro or anybody’s product from blocks distant but ones like Angel on My Shoulder seemed alien but for Paul Muni and Claude Rains associated former with high profile projects. Plus what chance did outliers have where majors ran distribution tables?

Angel took but $1.7 million in worldwide rentals, deserved better, lapsed by mid-seventies into a Public Domain which was hell all its own. VCI on top of image sweetening adds a 1946 Paramount cartoon, Cheese Burglars, which I did not expect to like, but did. Called “Noveltoons” in their day, these misled me to thinking them print-derived, as in “Based on the Best-Selling Herman and Katnip novel …,” particularly dumb conclusion when what they meant was Noveltoon in terms of Novelty. The things I learn in this life. Jack out of box that opened Paramount Noveltoons would be closer associated with Harvey cartoons making up weekly TV culled from Para’s back library of animation, Herman and Katnip a regular fixture there. Sameness pervaded most of these, so surprise was Cheese Burglars emerging good as it did, plus the print VCI found looks fine in High-Def. Situation is novel as in novelty, a dog and cat fast friends against a pesky mouse who argues it goes against nature for understood enemies to bond. Kept me in suspense for seven minutes, and there were laughs besides. The other short with Angel on My Shoulder was a Castle Films goodie called Wing, Claw, and Fang, which was actually a 1940 one-reeler Castle leased from Paramount called Not So Dumb, wherein we’re shown how a lion, raven, penguin, and kitten can be and often are smarter than us. Lion in question is “Jackie” of film fame who among other career highlights fought Victor Mature in Samson and Delilah. Castle made the short available in their catalogue between 1944 and 1953, meaning you could buy and then show same in your home and to anybody you chose. Transfer from 16mm was nicely done. I had never seen Wing, Claw, and Fang, so was delighted to find it among VCI extras. Miniatures can make a show when well picked, the cartoon plus Castle reel ideal appetizers for Angel on My Shoulder.

Mabuse Madness Continued

 

What Horror Film Approached Such Unnerving Imagery as This?

Thriller-Chiller-Diller: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

Fritz Lang liked length and so let his German edition of this run past two hours, muchness his style almost from a start directing. The first Mabuse in 1922 took two feature parts to weave its story, Last Testament improving upon it for pace and thrills. Mabuse was cunning enough to seem supernatural, being everywhere and always ahead of opposition. Germanic hearts claimed him as their own and supported his efforts through much of the century, originator Lang pressed back to service and finishing his directorial career weaving yet more of Mabuse (imagine James Bond taking on this super-villain … had Lang directed, which he could have in the sixties … who’d put chips on 007?). Lang’s Testament being first of the series with sound continued aural revolution that was Lang’s M --- no director worldwide matched his skill with the new medium. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse acquits as horror if we accept the character as both crime lord and eventual spirit to cause further mayhem. Putting Mabuse in an asylum assures he’ll drive the staff crazy, then make slaves of the lot. Primary treating physician is possessed by Mabuse to continue crimes, it sure that Mabuse won't die, nor would fan following want him to. Could US pop culture generate villainy to inspire such a following? Testament has enough set-pieces to fill two dozen thrillers, an opening ten minutes a model for creators before or since. “Kommissar” Lohmann is back on the job from M. We could wish there was a Lohmann series with all directed by Fritz Lang, but maybe it’s enough knowing actor Otto Wernicke had a reasonable working lifetime (d. 1965, busy for most of his stay).

Prospects were not so bright for German actors through the twenties and into the thirties, lots falling down wrong end of history wells or dying in Reich overtake efforts. Weirdness the stuff of Mabuse was unique to Lang, stopped cars in traffic where occupant of one quietly assassinates driver in another, a room that must be flooded in order to quell an explosion (it doesn’t, but at least victims survive). Could Americans dream up such stuff? It figures that Lang got jobs wherever he touched down, France and later the US. One look at what he’d done and hirers would know they got a sure bet. Pity that through his American career, Lang had to work in the shadow of perceived-similar Alfred Hitchcock, merchandisers putting them in a same pigeonhole for selling purpose, too few realizing how different the two actually were. A French version of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was filmed, also by Lang but for most part with different actors (we miss Lohmann). Distributor Seymour Nebenzal would years later send out an American version cut to seven reels, him having been producer to begin with in Germany and, as with M, having rights to make whatever mischief he chose with both properties (Nebenzal remade M to Lang’s fury). The director came to view his former producer as an enemy. Watch the English-dubbed Testament if you can locate it, or better, just sample clips on You Tube, those being much as most will sit through. English dubbing works havoc on Mabuse narrative and performances, never mind heaviest of editing. No denying Mabuse could have used trims from a start, though the more I watch, the more necessary all of footage seems. What Masters of Cinema offers on Blu-Ray is amazing when we consider how easily elements could have been obliterated during the war.

Inherent qualities survive even outrages committed since 1933 when The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was banned in Germany. Look how we tolerated varied versions, let alone atrocious dubs, visited upon Mabuse for all those years before a proper restoration was had. This under Suspicious of Subtitles heading: Why do we trust them? They are after all one person’s interpretation of imports, his/her reading of what was said in a foreign language and his/her notion of how same should translate for our consumption. Film historian Herman G. Weinberg supplied subtitles for films representing almost a dozen different countries. That’s an awful lot of cultures to master. I can’t think of anyone more qualified than Weinberg, but was this an unreasonably Herculean task to assign him? Surely it helped that Weinberg was pals with not just Lang, but Sternberg, Stroheim, you name the directing colossus. I know a writer-historian who took a class at City College in New York taught by Herman Weinberg. Just imagine that. Shortest route to a good grade was parroting opinions Weinberg expressed on whatever tests or essays he assigned. Well after all … who’d contradict Herman G. Weinberg? Subtitling The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, at least for disc release, came past Weinberg’s time, but principal remains the same. Per current custom, I watched The Testament of Dr. Mabuse a couple times to nail down narrative, then off with training wheels to go textless from there on, reading faces chosen over printed scrawls that do nothing other than distract from viewing pleasure. Experience has taught that faces do plenty good job at putting narrative across.

Even vague knowledge of story details is enough where visuals are as arresting as Fritz Lang creates them. Best of early German talkies make the transition easy, like with The Blue Angel (Sternberg as adept with what we see, importance less in what we hear). A printed program I came across and present as illustration would suggest at least some bookings for the original, but history says no Deutsch dates occurred till 1951. Lang told a perhaps tall tale of being offered charge of the whole German film industry by Goebbels himself, this after the Minister of Propoganda half-apologized for censoring, in whole, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (seems he didn’t like the ending). Lang listened politely then caught an express for Paris, by skin of teeth he’d swear, leaving all of assets behind, a nail-biter of an account you’d think was a Lang movie rather than real life. Let’s just say his veracity has been questioned, and on plenty matters besides this (Lang loved to mislead), but so what? The man was a supreme fantasist who made his career spinning wild improbables. There’s even speculation that Lang offed a cuckolded husband who arrived home early and forgot to knock. Fritz was no boy scout. I would not want to be the kid that stole his marbles. Just remember that Lang trod hardest pavement. And how he treated women, as in consider Lotte Eisner, slavishly devoted and outstanding chronicler of the Lang career. Beside her, doormats during a mudslide had it easier. I suspect Fritz sort of identified with Dr. Mabuse, or figured his reality beat the super schemer’s fiction. I wish someone could put Lang's life on screens.

Love's Labors Water-Logged

 

Among the One-Hundred: A Place in the Sun

Opening of A Place in the Sun is its own mini-masterpiece. American tragedy happens here before a first word is spoken. George/Monty hears, but just glimpses, a convertible streaking by and sounding its distinctive horn. He won’t know, and we might not register even later, that it’s Angela/Liz. I so lament fact she did not stop and pick George up. Imagine if she had, finding out enroute that he’s an Eastman, plus being Monty and thus irresistible. “You’ll be my pick-up” she’ll later say to George (his fate by then sealed), but why oh why could she not pick him up now? Of course then, as people keep telling me, there’d be no movie, pain of what's to come more acute because we sighted Angela w/o knowing significance of her, opportunity lost before narrative begins. What an artist George Stevens was. I credit him almost whole because word is (via Marilyn Ann Moss’ fine bio) that Stevens bent writers’ will to his own, and early on, for all projects he would direct. Montgomery Clift as George is for me the defining postwar male performance in movies, that is among males who were newcomers. It’s clear under opening credits: a new sort of leading man had arrived. Yes, Clift had been around in a western and in uniform for a Euro-set military drama, but this was him bursting upon a modern and distinctly American scene. Brando in that same year? Not so big a deal, no comparison by me-estimate. Besides, Monty predated him for Place production having commenced 10-4-49. That’s almost two years before it premiered at the Fine Arts Theatre in Los Angeles (8-14-51). George Stevens spent seeming eons editing his postwar features, routinely exposed over a hundred thousand feet of film (were there landfills large enough to contain all of scraps?). He surely went daffy during such ordeals. I’ve loved A Place in the Sun since NBC sprang it upon primetime viewership on March 12, 1966. Greenbriar told of hot-contested first network run on June 2, 2008, then visited A Place in the Sun again June 12, 2019 (“George Stevens Goes to the Movies”). I’ll try here not to repeat what was writ before, this if ever a film one could wax endlessly upon.

Each Time Watching, We Wish Monty Would Say Something To Sway the Jury His Way

Was having just turned twelve for me a factor? Certainly. I knew what the dissolve off that windowsill radio meant. More meaningful was Stevens crediting me with sense enough to get his gesture. I was here sledding upon grown-up ice and had Stevens to thank for the flattery. Did George Eastman let Alice drown, or could he really not help what happened? I’m still not 100% sold either way. George in his death cell comes closest to a confession, though mother Anne Revere and priest Paul Frees prod along his recognition of fault. I maintain he could not have saved Alice given the circumstance. Is that because Clift is so deeply sympathetic in his performance? Stevens abets by avoiding detail after the boat tips over. It’s all a long shot in darkness, and we are made to guess. The director assumes we want George and Angela to work out, though this time I noticed how manipulative Angela actually is. She’s spoiled and entitled and no man, including her father, would or could say no to her. She handles George like a child. Of course he will marry her once she makes up her mind to that, and no, he will not forego his vacation with her family at the lake. George for all his lost-little-boy charm is soft and weak and just made to be ordered about by not one, but two, girl bosses. Tell mama all, indeed. George is trapped, utterly doomed, from the moment Alice lets him in her humble digs. This was 1951 and nobody who expected to earn a living could go about siring a child out of wedlock. “We’re in awful trouble,” Alice says, and she’s right. Do people say A Place in the Sun is dated primarily for that? In 1966 when I first saw it, unwed parenthood was still very much a crisis when/where it happened. There was more than one girl in my high school class who “had” to get married, college too. Does any aspect of this unwritten law still abide? One could say walk away, George, just walk away, but to where? His Eastman name and family connections would not mean a thing after disgrace like this. I understood such reality at age twelve, but how would twelve-year-olds today react? Maybe this as much as anything keeps A Place in the Sun off Fathom Event booking sheets.

Biggest Mistake of George's Life Happens Here, and All Males Watching Knew It

Prospect of Marriage to Alice is Like Rehearsal of March to the Electric Chair for Hapless George

Now for the anchor to weigh heaviest upon A Place in the Sun: Shelley Winters as Alice Tripp. No … Shelley Winters is Alice Tripp, hers if anything too good a performance. Men blanch particularly at the sight and sound of Alice, because most men have had at least one Alice Tripp in their life, save those lucky enough to meet “Miss Right” early on and stay with her. Alice is Pure Passive Aggression and ultimate nightmare for all of a male species. Writers in abundance say George should have taken her out in the boat lots sooner. Shelley Winters herself took lumps for being Alice. Frank Sinatra couldn’t tolerate Winters on Meet Danny Wilson, done the year after A Place in the Sun was released. Had he been to see latter and formed Alice-animus? Marilyn Ann Moss wrote how Winters wanted to soften the character, but Stevens said no. He preferred Alice “dour” and an anchor, “maybe I loaded the dice” he admitted later. And how you loaded the dice, GS. For Stevens, Alice was “the kind of a girl a man could be all mixed up with in the dark and wonder how the hell he got into it in the daylight.” His was obviously a voice of experience, one that millions of men would and did identify with. Many would see A Place in the Sun once and swear never again, the sight of Shelley Winters from there full-on anathema. Having read how Alice was designed specifically so by Stevens makes the more effective his intent and execution. He wants us to know what George gave up by bedding down with Alice. Angela Vickers on a silver tray cannot rescue George from the mess he has made for himself. We sympathize with him and wish for some sort of rescue, but George is a lost soul. Total of third act is law’s net tightening about him. No scene passes without a newspaper headline, radio reportage of the investigation throbbing behind unrelated dialogue. That electric chair will seem like a soothing message after what George has gone through.

Accusing Fingers Point to George ... Was He Guilty? ... We Are Left to Decide

A 1959 Reissue Pairs Previous Paramount Hits

George can’t believe Angela could love him, even as he had no problem moving in on Alice and stealing her heart and virtue. This is Montgomery Clift after all, and no woman will bar his way. Difference here is class, rank, family, position. George had these but did not realize it. He was an Eastman and would have been absorbed into the family to which he was initially a stranger but would not have stayed so. Him being a family member confers privilege. George’s uncle says he will pay whatever is needed to defend his nephew but only if George is innocent. George would have been a prize ornament for the family, especially married to a Vickers and thereby firming a business alliance, an arrangement not unlike David Larrabee pledged to Elizabeth Tyson, plastics meet sugar. Class is everything where it comes to profitable courtship. George had it made before he met Angela. For him to wonder how a goddess like her could love a guy like him … well of course she could. George was the best prospect she could have met. Did he know that and put on a humble act to disguise his cunning? Could be, and might be obvious, except for Montgomery Clift playing it so vulnerable. Let’s figure he’s awed after childhood and youth spent singing at his mother’s Mission, George ill-equipped to cope with a rich life among beautiful people. What guides viewer emotion is Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, definitions of early fifties physical perfection, our reading skewed for being entranced by both. Theirs were engines to drive A Place in the Sun, visual cues to certainty it would sell. George Stevens understood this and exploited every possibility his two stars presented. Place had a downer tale to tell and it needed you-are-there romance to make such meal edible. Swoon effect would not be overcome by courtrooms, conviction, and Monty march to oblivion. Overlay of him and Angela kissing makes his last mile manageable, at least for femme viewers who might come back a second time (but not their dates … thanks for nothing, Alice).