Watch List for 7/7/2025

 

Watched: Looking for Mr. Goodbar, A Hatful of Rain, The Drum, and Five Fingers

LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR (1977) --- There should have been a Purple Heart awarded to Diane Keaton for toplining this massively unpleasant film. Having skipped Mr. Goodbar in 1977 (was never particularly fond of the candy either), how could I know it would disappear due to lapsed music rights, other underlies that keep so many features out of current circulation. OK to broadcast if anyone (like in this instance TCM) cares, physical media but lately to be had, Looking for Mr. Goodbar till then a London After Midnight of downer 70’s output. I took TCM’s dip, won’t call it a bad picture, too well written/directed (Richard Brooks) for that, but holy cat, was the disco decade really so ugly as this? Current Code edicts would never let it be remade today, and at over two hours, Goodbar is ultimate instance of see once being sure enough. Still there is Ms. Keaton, who having heroically done this, eventually settled into old folk rom/coms and lately an elderly cheerleader movie where she, Pam Grier, and others revived spirit of Pom Poms (another candy reference). I met her at a Manhattan paper show back when they had paper shows in Manhattan (what happened to them? I miss Manhattan paper shows). She was searching 8X10 still stacks, having just released a book of cheesy 50’s publicity photos which I complemented, the right move for she liked hearing that as opposed to talk of movies (and more specifically Mr. Goodbar?). What she goes through in Mr. Goodbar is horrific, actor abuse I’d call it. The ending is like Blood Feast with strobe lights. Club scenes make Saturday Night Fever look like The Love Bug (speaking of other then-hits). That’s where now reclaimed music is heard, it what kept Mr. Goodbar locked up from what I hear. Men that Keaton meets and picks up are dreadful creeps, all capable it seems, of killing, and once again, I’m reminded that NYC is a fair place to stay away from. Goodbar goes Taxi Driver route, speaking of another to latterly shun. Lure of Goodbar and likes is how intelligently designed they are, but so are crocodiles and cobras. Can PTSD come of exposure to certain films, or again am I too sensitive? Can’t say they bore, but tender sensibilities beware. Kudos to TCM for booking it, network’s value measured (by me) for odd outside pictures they bring from hibernation, no better instance than Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

A HATFUL OF RAIN (1957) --- Another rarity via TCM, here is hatful of then-live TV sensibilities poured over Cinemascope width that director Fred Zinneman disdained for this occasion, but Fox chief Buddy Adler said use it, so Zinneman dutifully did. He tells the story in his book, said Hatful got anything but that in revenues (“nobody saw it” FZ recalled). Fact is it lost lots, $1.8 for negative cost, $1.2 in domestic rentals, $917K foreign, eventual loss of $957K. None of networks cared, so off to syndication where I watched at age fourteen as entre to “grown-up” fare after years of late show monsters only. Don Murray as a dope addict seemed incongruous, still sort of does. At the time of seeing him in this, there was Liberty exposure to Murray as a Roman general in Hammer’s The Viking Queen. Don, we hardly knew ye. Substance addiction gets harsh Hatful revue, no quarter for Murray’s character being that way via torture by Reds while serving in Korea. A Hatful of Rain was based on a Broadway play, Anthony Franciosa ported over from that. We’ve seen Tony overplay, but when to such extreme as here? Makes him in The Long Hot Summer look lowkey. I kept wondering why these folk didn’t seek help from veteran’s services. Was such option not so readily available at 1956 time of Hatful shoot? Addiction was a stigma, period and exclamation. Once tagged as a doper, you were done. Much of A Hatful of Rain was shot on New York streets, and at night. You never saw Gotham so arresting, or spooky. What a shame this stayed off TV so long in scope, let alone HD. Again, TCM to the rescue. Hatful as kitchen sink hell evokes souped-up Playhouse 90’s, and didn’t 50’s viewers get enough of those from TV? Granted the drug theme could not have been hammered so hard on home screens. Thankful for opportunity to watch, and maybe I will again, but not for a while … a long while.

THE DRUM (1938) --- Could be it was thought in the thirties that if a film must be British, let it at least have plenty of riding and shooting to lessen tedium otherwise. Alexander Korda saw merit to that and so served action he could sell worldwide, The Drum a first too for Technicolor with which Korda further enhanced prospects. He and other Brit firms lost money continually on B/W projects. To compete with Hollywood needed outlay at least close to what Yanks routinely spent, but selling in US territory was a mountain highest to scale, even good ones like Elephant Boy and Rembrandt seeing loss at final accounting. The Drum would beat that with best earnings Korda saw since The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Private Life of Henry VIII, latter bawdy after expectation where much-married Henry was center subject. The Drum got $1.8 million in worldwide rentals against $691K spent on the negative, a bargain being it was color. Less dependence on dialogue helped The Drum travel easier, foreign receipts amounting to over a million, the story centered on Empire struggle against India insurgents led by Raymond Massey, who like all best native villains, speaks impeccable King’s English having been educated alongside his to-be enemies. Tense exchanges between Massey and stalwart Robert Livesey are a particular highlight of The Drum, as is support Valerie Hobson, Francis L. Sullivan, and top-billed Sabu, a biggest star so far incubated by Korda. Bloodletting is held till a finish, then bodies drop decorously in the face of machine guns and varied explosives, this all to word-of-mouth benefit. The Drum was retitled Drums for US markets, and since multiple drums are in play, why not? Ahead would be Four Feathers and The Thief of Bagdad, both also in Technicolor, as successful, more so in fact, and evergreen for purpose of reissues through the forties. Alan Barbour wrote of going in packs wherever they played, such being high regard in which the Korda group was held. My Region Two disc of The Drum looks fine. Even better would be a Blu-Ray release, but I know not at this point who domestic-owns it.

FIVE FINGERS (1952) --- Next time you teach Great Screenwriting, if that’s even relevant anymore, use Five Fingers as power point. It’s another to tell us the war was won but by skin of teeth. Makes me nervous watching even after eighty years. Were Germans really informed of Normandy for site of D-Day, choosing to ignore it as undoubted Allied trickery? Five Fingers says yes, as later would 36 Hours, others. Then there was The Man Who Never Was where Clifton Webb led a disinformation campaign to divert Germans from spot where the invasion would happen. Enough intrigue like this and I could wonder if Germany would have believed info sourced from the White House itself, suspicion and mistrust being what they were on both sides (especially theirs we’re always told). Fun of war drama is the enemy always outwitting themselves, but how close really did Germany come to learning vital secrets? Five Fingers says close enough to have dope right from our ambassador’s Turkish headquarter, him in receipt of strategy the Germans largely ignored for not trusting data, or each other. Did we win thanks to unbridled paranoia across whole of the Axis command? James Mason is the valet who steals documents and photographs them. All this was based on fact and a book called “Operation Cicero.” Mason sells info not for treason sake but simply for money, irony his being paid all along in counterfeit currency printed by the Germans. So how much counterfeiting did they actually do during the war? Enough to eventually wreck Allied economies? Did they print phony American bills? Five Fingers should be on Blu-Ray but isn’t. Unfortunately it is a Fox picture, which means Disney owns it and you know the rest. There was a Fox “On Demand” disc released years back, merely OK but not what we’d prefer. Bernard Herrmann’s score would be reason to watch even if Five Fingers were not the fiercely clever and entertaining show it is.

BD Scores Up Another Kill

 

Deception, Davis, and the Deal Breaker

Herewith elements of Deception: Bette Davis the kept woman of rich composer Claude Rains discovers former lover Paul Henreid, from whom she had been separated for six years and thought dead in Europe, except he's alive and arrived to New York. Soon upon reunion, he suspects she was and continues to be unfaithful. Much is embedded in Deception to confuse, in fact frustrate, viewership in 2025. I enjoy old films that baffle and even alienate modern watchers, enjoying their discomfit from go-back vehicle I drive to any year past, “Outdated cultural depictions” saying come-on-in to those that relish triggers pulled. What Deception classifies as a Deal Breaker makes little sense now and barely would fifty annums ago when late shows were haven to storms wrought by a presumed moral climate, many such starring Bette Davis. Said Deal Breaker is this: Davis as unmasked mistress of C. Rains will be full and final disqualified to be Paul Henried’s wife should he learn her scarlet past, object of Deception’s 115 minutes to keep Paul in darkest dark, even if Bette must kill to keep him there. To what lengths did women of the 40’s go to conceal a past consummation from husbands or fiancées? Laugh if one likes, but this was a serious complication then. I read of Hugh Hefner’s college-era sweetheart whom he chose as potential bride, till tearful confession re illicit involvement with one of her professors, leaving Hugh never to trust girlfriends again. So yes, to learn of a misstep however slight was a Deal Breaker for 40’s men, 30’s,  20’s, teens, why stop going backward, or forward? Question is, are there still such Deal Breakers? Is Deception so culturally outdated as we assume?

Rains Shows Disdain Over His Toy Taken Away

Deception arrived at ideal time for sixteen million lately discharged vets to consider a burning issue: Had their significant other been true through war’s separation? Expectation of yes to that critical question was absolute and nonnegotiable. Alan Ladd got a no in The Blue Dahlia and murder followed. Imagine if Fredric March had come through Best Years reunion door to realize Myrna Loy had dallied/was dallying, with “Mr. Milton” (Ray Collins). Harsh enough for Dana Andrews to bear such insult from Virginia Mayo, but we expect as much of her character. Deception despite elevated backdrop comes down to, was Bette faithful while once-lover Paul was away, any gray area purest black so far as returned from duty men saw it. But what of a serviceman’s conduct overseas? Let anyone prove it, most figured, and indeed, we must assume few were caught. To that, however, consider Gregory Peck in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, whose indiscretion follows him from Italy, ten years after the fact, to face Jennifer Jones wrath with him obliged to pay support for the kid borne by a Euro mistress. Said notion chilled not a few former G.I’s to the bone. Double standard enabled males to be forgiven, but cheating wives or sweethearts … well, that was at the least a choking offense, as demonstrated by Paul Henreid, who upon glance at Bette’s spacious loft and hung furs takes her firm by the throat and is barred but by BD lying her way out of his grip. Davis drips sincerity but turns from Paul toward us to register guilt and make it plain that yes, she’ll sucker him along, truth reserved for the camera and our vantage. This then was essence of BD projection of personality, who she'd be for patrons viewing as opposed to screen partners seldom dealt straight. We as watchers must be played fair, however Davis misleads men on screen. This keeps us in her confidence and makes the Davis persona, if not always sympathetic, at least understandable.

Maestro Claude Humiliates Hapless Paul Who Unknowingly Poached from Rains' Bed

Enter Claude Rains. The cuckolder. He is too old to have served, which means he had whole of the war to gather wealth and graze on Bette. Claude as “Alexander Hollenius” is effete, cruel … a lion who prowls over Manhattan society and will not loose BD from his iron hold. Fun aspect of Deception is Rains throwing out clutch that would keep narrative on convention’s line. Alex is Laura’s Waldo Lyedecker and then some. Deception director Irving Rapper would recall him as the whole show so far as a public’s and his own interest went. Shadow of Waldo/Alex looms over John Hoyt in a later and lesser with Davis, Winter Meeting, and Claude Rains would to degree be Alex again as a lethal radio commentator in The Unsuspected, which needed all of charisma the character star could supply. Any type an audience embraces will be back, Bitchy Males arriving with the war, if not having served in it, and staying long after. Were they presaged by Laird Cregar in Blood and Sand, or was the sort glimpsed sooner? We had the model to thank for George Sanders in All About Eve, Bette Davis on receiving end once more. Did Bitchy Males in classic sense survive the fifties? I can’t offhand think of memorable ones after. Either way, Rains’ mean line in wit makes his cause easier to root for rather than mopey, possibly violent, Henreid. Rapper said there was consideration of a Deception finish where the trio settle their difference a la Lubitsch and exit laughing, but fan-servicing Bette realized the show needed fireworks for a third act and so imposed a shooting. We could rather wish she’d dump strung-out Paul and repair again to Rains bed, which likely was Rapper’s wish as well, as he regarded Henreid unequipped to carry a co-star part, Davis stepping up to say we mustn’t break up the sure-fire Now, Voyager team.

Bette Sits While They Stand at Attention, a Familiar Sight on Davis Sets

He Likes Funny Papers, But Nobody (Save Us) Laughs with Rains Rage in Deception

Rains makes priceless comedy of meal selection, seven minutes to beggar belief. Did any among Method arrivers imagine they could supplant Claude Rains? Without him, Deception would sag under weight of negative cost at $2.8 million, most ever for a Davis film. WB prospered with prior BD A Stolen Life ($4.7 million in worldwide rentals), which Deception did not come near. In fact, Deception and future Davises for Warners would bleed red, Beyond the Forest a last straw and her exit off Burbank premises. Of course, good pictures can fail readily as poor ones, account books replete with such, and what matter to us so long as Deception pleases? The property was one Warners bought lock/stock from Paramount, having been made by latter as Jealousy in 1929 with Fredric March and Jeanne Eagels, a feature apparently lost now. Toward joy I derive from seeing the Code undone, as it often was where one divines code beneath the Code, Deception is to my satisfaction an instance, not a first, where the lead lady commits murder and gets away with it. Code films were made for two kinds of viewership, one the sort who bought a most apparent resolution, and two, those who’d dig below surface, narrative gold being after all where you find it. Artists of greater ability laid trail to endings they and many among us might prefer, quiet conspiracy by which to please by stealth if not via obvious means. Deception by my reckoning was an instance of this, so yes, I claim Bette Davis gets away with murder, evidence aplenty to accommodate whichever outcome we’d choose.

I Say It Was Deception That Did the Goading and Mocking, with the PCA on Receiving End

Defense for Bette looks solid if/when they reach trial, chance of even that less unless she was so careless as to confess, which based on her leaving the gun to suggest suicide, she had no intention of doing. Handy too is both Rains and Davis wearing gloves, so no prints to worry with. The houseboy is off for the night. Maybe he could testify later as to arguments overheard, but would that offer sufficient evidence of motive for her to kill? Bette blabs truth to Henreid, about the affair and the murder, but he assures her that “You’ll never lose me” and pleads that they “think it over until tomorrow,” and anyone who knows Davis wiles may be assured he’s lined up as accomplice after the fact from here on. He even tells her that “these things have to be planned,” and we can bet Bette has a plan already, of which her tearful admission is merely a part. She’s got this chump squared away before they even hail a cab. What system of justice can contain Davis When She’s Bad short of her owning up or eyeball witnesses. Were it Ann Sheridan or Alexis Smith or even Crawford sufficiently browbeat or sacrificial in Mildred mode, I’d concede capture, trial, maybe the rope … but knowing Henreid is a famed cellist, more so after this concert, why not let the two book a Euro tour for war-battered music lovers eager to hear him play, preferably in places with lax or no extradition policy. It doesn’t make sense for a Bette Davis character by 1945 to be conscience-racked for offing a guy who made her life such hell. She’ll instead have furniture, furs, Grand Piano, whole of her loft content, shipped to the Italian villa Paul will arrange once worldwide success is secured. He could end up being the next Alexander Hollenius.

Precode Picks #7

 

New Genius? Her Old Genius Was Plenty Enough for Me.

Unleash These Tigresses! Image Courtesy Mark Vieira/Starlight Studios

Precode: Clara Cat Fights, Connie Nurses Good, Harding Hardly Looks Herself, and Charley Chases Precode Placement

CALL HER SAVAGE (1932) --- Not enough savage I say, too much wage of sin. Parts I’m for rewatching anytime: Clara Bow whips Gilbert Roland and he apparently digs it, Clara smashes a guitar over a guy’s head after asking him twice to quit playing it, Clara wrestles at length with a Great Dane what is bigger than her, catfights with Thelma Todd, struts about in skivvies --- so where does Call Her Savage sag? I’d say where Bow breaks on wheel of parental meanness, no-good husband (Monroe Owsley, 30’s trust equivalent of Ray Danton), and midway resort to streetwalking which I didn’t get for disappointed dad having told her early on that should she need funds, get them from the family lawyer even though he never wants to see her again, plus there’s generous allowance from the estranged cad husband. It’s like they want to punish Clara’s character by contriving her to hit bottom, me for fast forward till Clara got back in comparative chips. Her “Dynamite” Nasa is “born bad” as in sins-of-ancestors (including Fred Kohler --- now that’s bad), biblical quotes underling the point. Had this been all for fun, as likelier case from Warners, I’d unspool Call Her Savage more frequent, but do acknowledge it for playbook of “don’ts” as soon would be hard-enforced by the PCA. Just wish they hadn’t gone so hard on Bow. I’d swear writers had it in less for Nasa then the actress playing her … Clara Bow the offscreen outlaw getting overdue spank? She’s unplugged to point where you wonder if it’s altogether acting, an electric merge of person with part. Watching Clara Bow is a gift to keep giving. There was obviously something here that lit her up. Poor kid was but 28 when she did Call Her Savage, miles of hard life behind her. Definitive story was told by David Stenn, him brains also behind a Bow documentary. Call Her Savage barely saw profit for Fox. Was it the star they rejected or harshness of the film? She was wise getting and staying out, whatever hiccups such as the night club or temptation to be Scarlett.

Turns Out the Star "Everybody Adores" Wasn't Adored Quite Enough, At Least for a Long Haul

BORN TO LOVE (1931) --- Movies deal from a cold deck where using crib death to resolve a story point, worse as device to unite a love-struck couple otherwise chained by convention bound up in the child. Audiences in addition to infants paid dear for queasy-arrived-at clinches to finish not just precodes but many a melodrama to come (Caught from 1948 further egregious example). Born to Love was meat processed by RKO for frugal $338K neg cost, similarity among Constance Bennett vehicles the more where her next, The Common Law, came in at $339K. RKO could set clocks with Constance, seeing profit with her until one day they didn’t, her a star that sank for sameness of parts and execution of same. She’s a WWI nurse in Born to Love. My impression based on fiction and other films is that nurses laid down more than wounded soldiers they treated. This time it’s Joel McCrea, on British leave and spending rapturous night with Bennett before death at the front, except he doesn’t die, her with child and marrying Paul Cavanagh who is a baronet and has old Baron Frankenstein for a Dad, all which could be exhausting if Born to Love ran more than 81 minutes (in fact, 71 would digest better). Great War leaves were near-always a matter of snatch-and-run romance, back to trench or flight goggles after stolen nights and never a parson to bless couplings. Love scenes got pride of place over battles for which staging took dollars, too few of those, especially at RKO, to risk even on Constance Bennett during brief period she prospered for them. McCrea is a flyer but we never see a plane, not even stock footage of one. Boudoirs are battleground upon which warriors engage, the male as prize bull and not a stock part Joel McCrea or any male lead could bring much texture to. He’d look later on these as mere price of all and sundries, the word “sameness” a burden sure as was for Constance Bennett. Difference was McCrea could sustain, stay a tall oak indefinitely, so long as horses held out and a public relied on his reassuring presence. Born to Love plays TCM, transfer soft as with most early thirties RKO.

Above is One of Those Heralds They Inserted in Newspapers or Put in Grocery Bags

Ann Harding with Morganton, N.C.'s Own Robert Williams

DEVOTION (1931) --- Ann Harding had common sense quality across board of performing in precodes and after. Must have been her unless all characters she played were written a same way. Line readings have a thought-out and sincere quality, as if Harding analyzed actions/motivations going in and had made up her mind how to improve on them. Shorthand is me believing whatever the set-up, be it The Animal Kingdom in 1932 and also with Leslie Howard, or frankly foolish former, Devotion for Pathe, that company of crowing logo rooster atop world globe that surely got laughs then as it’s sure to now. Cracked is the concept, Ann as Cinderella-ish daughter of wealth who I figured first for a servant, but no, she just likes serving everyone drinks and lighting their cigarettes. Enter Leslie Howard and it’s love at first sight on her part, so why not don middle-age disguise to apply for governess spot at Leslie’s country manor? Nuts I know, Devotion but faintly a comedy, Harding already having a mature look so we almost buy Howard taken in by her disguise. She fusses over him and his kid likes her almost to point where he’d be better off having her as caretaker/babysitter rather than wife for Dad she schemes to be. Enter Robert Williams as a wife-killer that lawyer Leslie gets off the hook, Williams also an artist who wants to put Harding on canvas, him having sussed her scheme but in love with her anyhow. This sort of thing is where old movies really earn “old” appellation. Skirts stay clean, spike to argument that not all precode tickled edges. I’m astonished but gratified that TCM still runs Devotion, having watched for liking Howard, Harding, and especially Williams who as told before was from Morganton, NC and the uncle of a friend of mine at college. 

Slight Off-Topic: Do You Think Roland West Confessed Offing Thelma to Pal Chet Morris? 

CHARLEY CHASE --- Many things long obvious to others come to me like bolts from blue, like why not Charley Chase for precode totem? In fact, he and Thelma Todd for placement among oracles of early thirties sinema. There was steppingstone that was jazz associated with both thanks to casting of Todd as vamp or gold digger in features, she for support but still prominent. Chase was up-to-minute too with comedy modern-set and attitude for emphasis. Sound came to the Hal Roach company in 1928 via disc-recorded music-and-effect scores, these to buoy fun enacted by Chase, Laurel-Hardy, Our Gang, the rest. Herewith jazz became escort to clowning, keeping them current (in Chase case and L&H, years). Live accompany had been there, yes, but catch-can music did not necessarily follow fashion as recorded escort now would. Viewers, at least ones with access to wired theatres, got popular tunes they could associate with favorite clowns. Charley Chase, who already had pep we’d associate with moderns, saw youth restored thanks to music sprightly where instrumental, saucy where lyric helped. Chase even sang as settings enabled, Thelma Todd along what with speech to enhance their byplay. Could all this add up to precode as we define it? Maybe not to desired degree, Hal Roach resolute at keeping his comedies clean, personnel tempted where chosen gags they thought funny tilted toward blue. We Faw Down got showman complaints from that, “dirt, vulgar, obscene” among words bandied. So were jazz lyrics complainers called suggestive. Charley Chase looks precode ready in the portrait above, a little dark (dissolute?), at the least ready for anything. Not like chipper Charley that Robert Youngson tendered us in 1970’s Four Clowns (“the original good time Charley whose Elk’s tooth had a cavity”), 1928-29 a peak period for recorded music to make Roach comedians more up-to-moment than ever before or since. For me to declare them precode is faint as supported by filmic facts, but support is there via the Laurel-Hardy disc scores presently available plus ones for Charley Chase to hopefully come with eventual release of surviving 1928-29 output.

UPDATE (6/24): Erudition requested (in the comments), and supplied, courtesy Scott MacGillivray

Hi, John — RKO Thrift Books (or Thrift Ticket Books) went into effect on Monday, October 24, 1932. It was a discount-ticket plan honored at RKO theaters, targeting bargain hunters during the Depression. Here are the slogans for the program, as published in the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle:

:

Category Called Comedy #9

 

CCC: Charlie Calms Down and '72 Roll in Aisles for What's Up, Doc?

CHAPLIN TAKING SLOWER TRAINS --- To play features vs. shorts with Great Comedians may not be a fair contest. Each had to embrace longer form eventually, the marketplace leaving them little choice. Transition from skit to “three-act” undertaking went beyond ken of most, certainly those bred of vaudeville or music halls where on-off quick was necessity understood by all. I looked at Chaplin in The Rink and Easy Street, then Modern Times. In a way it’s like a different guy did them. Near-twenty years separated shorts from the feature, dog years as many experienced and understood then, Charlie having blacked hair gone premature gray after barrel Lita and family rolled him in. The Little Tramp of kicks to rears, shortest term employs, and all etcetera’s for bumming life was no good with narratives taking longer to unfold, Modern Times at 87 minutes a challenge to Charlie as giddyap and get gone reliable. Tempo was slower, as if fleet movement might topple house he's built. Buster Keaton talked about long-form requiring his team to tell “realistic” stories, which meant no more being chased by hundreds of cops, and who really cares why? Seven Chances had similar pursuit by as many would-be brides, a situation set up by reels of exposition, heavy burden Keaton carried for playing real people against real settings. Charlie does a same in Modern Times, job toiling as he never would in Mutual comedies, the Tramp’s independent spirit our assure that he’s for hitting solitary road soon as current crisis clears. We know he’ll not last as a waiter in The Rink, nor does he pretend concern for livelihood, eating from refuse pails or stealing sustenance OK in any pinch. Modern Times loads him up with Paulette Goddard plus eventually her urchin sibs, this to likely follow happy (?) walk into sunset, or is it sunrise?

Regular jobs were bane of funsters making features ---this implying normalcy and dread absorption by convention. We are meant to identify with clowns where they hold us an hour or more, downside their having to knuckle down and deal with frustrations we expect them to relieve us from. I like Charlie loose as a goose and skidding round corners, not being “misunderstood” by authorities (the labor march) and pitched in jail for it. Search for a next job would stink in the nostrils of Mutual-era Chaplin, as would slow-go set-pieces like the Bellows feeding machine and dropping food in Chester Conklin’s mouth while he’s trapped in machinery. Charlie for me was the one trapped. He skates in Modern Times and that harkens to freedom of The Rink, but grace ends there as struggle renews and back we are to victimhood of the Depression. On one hand the Tramp seems ideal for such context, me happier with Charlie a free spirit who’d snatch what could be snatched from a system broke down with rules of conduct suspended like carefree day past. Sound era Charlie however had to be more responsible, earn his bread, never again bite off a baby's frankfurter like in The Circus. A Great Depression seemed ideal opportunity for ultimate will of the wisp Charlie to whom the world owed a living. Prudent ending to any Mutual seems temporary and refreshingly insincere. He’ll wrap Easy Street having quelled villainy, keep his police uniform, and escort Edna to church, but not to worry for Who Cares Charlie will soon be back on the bum, no chance Easy Street would see a sequel any more than The Immigrant where for a fade he marries Edna. Chaplin features play too much for keeps, length alone requiring solutions for him to be permanent ones. City Lights was best for doubting he’ll keep Virginia now that she has seen him for the derelict he is. I prefer Charlie in such aftermath kicking up a heel and headed back for transient life as he effectively did in The Circus, such ending what we expect and prefer for a character that must never be tied down. Suppose Paulette will go a day, let alone night, without pressuring Charlie to go back and locate her orphaned relations, feeding of which will put him right back on assembly lines? Some happy ending.

WHAT’S UP DOC? (1972) --- You just had to be there. Our College Park Cinema of past celebration opened with What’s Up Doc? in 1972. Laughs were uproarious. Peter Bogdanovich’s screwball plus slapstick plus smart was bracingly new to a public not so inclined as Peter to sit up nights watching same tropes played against 30’s backdrop. “Somehow it doesn’t seem as funny” was what Ann said when last we sampled What’s Up Doc?, shorthand for Turn It Off, which I dutifully did. What comedies survive after half a century gone? … yet there are silent ones 100 years old to sustain aplenty, or is that my lone opinion? What’s Up Doc? I remember in terms of crowd reaction, a thing not had from old films short of see/hear first-hand with seat-neighbors for whom it’s fresh and new. Doc today is for fast-forward to scenes roof-raising in yore and again when Doc campus-ran at alma mater two years later. Most contempo-humor dates, but here is closest to one you’d play to moderns and possibly get by. I applied brakes for moments that “killed” then-audiences to guess whether still they might. First to loose howls was when “Howard Bannister” (Ryan O’ Neal) realizes madcap Judy (a sometimes too much Barbra Streisand) will be valuable toward his getting a research grant (you know the story so I won’t belabor). Mirth built while characters at a luncheon all stooped under a table as “Eunice Burns” (Madaleine Kahn) enters to demand she be seated with them. Moment when camera moves close on Howard and he says “I never saw her before in my life,” followed by Eunice dragged bodily out and leaving heel marks all the way to the exit got as huge a response as I ever saw at a movie, but the topper was still to come.

This was finish where Howard and Judy clinch as expected, him telling her he’s sorry for conduct before, to which she replies, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” her eyes blinking as Bacall’s did in a similar moment from To Have and Have Not. Cascade of laughter that began here drowned out Howard’s “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” O’Neal’s gag at the expense of previous Love Story, embraced by many now embarrassed to have done so and ready two years later to ridicule that film’s most quoted line. Porky Pig bursting from the Looney Tunes drum to say That’s All Folks is the perfect coda. In fact, crowds I saw What’s Up Doc? with were still laughing, and loud, when final cast credits came up. Good will attached to What’s Up Doc? with fond memory to carry for years to come. My college had a year’s contract with Warners Brothers Film Gallery, features to fill both semesters of which many were clucks, but not What’s Up Doc? Taking the package meant paying less per title, this a one and only that would fill every seat in our notably large auditorium. It seemed at the time that What’s Up Doc? would always please, forever more fill rooms with laughter, though like others before and since, it would retreat into recall increasingly distant and as with Ann, seem “less funny” where seen through eyes many years older. I hear tell of similar aftereffect Forrest Gump (1994) now has. Many who laughed and cried with that wonder now what made them do so. Best of movies are presumed to stay so, but how many do? We’ll none of us be here long enough to test the “forever” part, but when we see what we thought were perfect flowers wilt upon vines, it is safe to say that even those titles held most precious are fragile as are people who created them and those who’d embrace them. “As good as it ever was” is declared often with certainty, but who can begin to say for certain what will truly last among entertainments we cherish, assume never to part from, but ultimately do. My list is long … what of yours?

Better Off Where Words Fail ...

 

Never Mind Voices When We Had Such Interesting Faces

Has home viewing become a laziest of recreations? I choose flatness that lets Ann and I kibitz through Murder, She Wrote where a driverless car chases Stuart Whitman, Van Johnson and June Allyson, spam rather than red meat that is King of Kings just in from Flicker Alley, last Blu-Ray word for DeMille’s voiceless epic. Why Murder, She Wrote rather than a roadshow Passion Play? Hint lies in K of K’s silence, meaning you work at reading faces that convey everything short of words, paying close enough attention to know how un-essential speaking is. We divine what characters feel short of being told like in talkies, a concept alien to spoon-fed culture, but don’t we understand each other best from looks and body language? Speech is for most a least reliable gauge of everyday interaction. They say first impressions come in an instant, often before either party talks, so why not silent movies as most sophisticated indicator of human behavior we have? No one need “adjust” to voiceless film. We already have it in us to comprehend just fine. I blame baby food served over all our present lifetimes. Not that I underestimate babies. They take cues largely from sight and look how quick they learn to manipulate grown-ups. If a child was shown nothing but silent films for its first five years of life, we’d have a society fueling talkless disc releases. To screen silents seems a gone art for other stuff we do while “watching,” which really is every activity but what’s on a screen, Law and Order episodes as backdrop to clacking keyboards, replying to texts on inaptly named Smartphones, OK because we’ve seen most L&O’s three/four times (helps that most are easy to forget).

Blanche Sweet Tells It All Sans Talk

What became of dark rooms in which to watch? Such were called theatres. You ate in them, talked at risk of being shushed. They say in nickel days folks were entranced, nay hypnotized, by vital visuals. No lower of heads, looking at each other, or juggle of popcorn lest you miss something, and yes, there was much to miss where frames were filled and everybody acted at once. I see shorts at You Tube and come away wrung by interaction with a 1912 Vitagraph, a 1908 Nordisk, folk emoting, reacting, conflicting all over places, cameras not yet fixed on what we’re supposed to see. With multiples engaged at business of life, you choose which to follow, hefty load with priorities differing what with one crowd studying another crowd on a crowded screen, this before installation of a star system where eyes were naturally directed at the personality we’ve paid to see. Stars went a long way toward making films predictable, formulas then applied to seal the deal. Nickel drama found its level according to who looked. Like with plays, which earliest films mostly were, each audience member exiting with his/her own impression of what they just saw, and I wonder if any two were alike. Single-reel fables offer alternatives as to who we’ll observe closest, not a little like video games where eyes fasten to one or other corner before sudden, maybe urgent shift back, early squared frames a busy landscape. I tire of moderns always directing me where to look. And by modern, I mean everything for the last hundred years. A good Edison, Thanhauser, or Biograph leaves it all to yours and my judgment, knowing conclusions can, likely will, differ. I’ll hone on Henry Walthall while a next seat focuses on Blanche Sweet, neither of us right or wrong for doing so. Others roaming onto or out of the frame keeps it busy always.

They Came, They Saw, and Silent Movies Conquered

There was no place for popcorn in such charged environment, part reason for not offering it, nor Goobers, let alone nachos or hot dogs, in movies’ maiden years. Was patronage really a lot of unwashed imports? I claim they were more alert than films would play to again, engaged far beyond latter-day insta-watchers never more than seconds from changing screen partners, barely comprehending any the while, let alone retaining what they see. Say early viewers were stopped by titles in English because they couldn’t read the language or read at all? Some one or several amidst a crowd could translate aloud, or have a narrator up front to shout needed words. Imagine mosaic of languages to meet nickelodeon ears. Here’s where depth of melting pots was measured for viewership quickly learning because they wanted to learn, in fact had paid their ways in to do just that. How many such sits were needed to get them past a nickelodeon’s comprehension curve? I bet not many. You could call at-a-start watchers “illiterate” in terms of our language and habits, but movies taught quick, your neighbor in a crowd often able and generally willing to fill gaps where needed. Imagine the community movies engendered, crowd generated barn raisings all day or night. Remember also song slides where everyone joined in. What faster or friendlier path to varied and useful knowledge, a popular culture buffet for single coin admission. Present cinema serves all senses save smell and touch. Are these next to be overcome, or have they been already and I’m not aware of it? Possibly I don’t have the right software yet. Who today could enjoy, even comprehend, radio drama? Plenty did, millions in fact, once upon a distant time. There they had the hearing, but not the sight. Again, as with silent movies, imagination was summoned to fill gaps. Are none of us today able to apply our imaginations? If we won’t abide silents, or radio drama, well ... there's your answer. Will future generations look back and wonder why we accepted such obsolete format as feature-length films? Judging by what’s happened to theatre attendance of late, we could ask how far off such future actually is.

Walter Kerr called silent cinema as dead a language as Latin. So far I’ve met no one who speaks Latin, but will keep looking, just as I will for those who’d enjoy mute movies outside Greenbriar’s community. Let’s assume the number is few, but consider vastness of You Tube, thousands of silents hosted there, and wonder how much of that bulk is watched. Positive comments for YT entries, plus recorded number of views, are a help. Back in “Classic Film Collector” days, Blackhawk on 8mm, the rest, we had nothing like numbers recorded daily online. Fact it's all free is pertinent. Hundreds of pre-talk shorts are seeable at You Tube, Vimeo, elsewhere. I sift for nuggets often. Others are doing the same or there wouldn’t be so much treasure spread about. I’ll go on a limb and say the number of silent appreciators is many times what it was when I discovered and championed the format in pre-digital day. Trouble some of us had was not getting presentations right. I played The General to an art guild gathering in 1972 and set projection speed wrong, eighteen torturous frames per second where 24 should have been the minimum. I felt ice form round seating. Lessons learned in those days came always the hard way, or was it just me so continually inept? We now are at a place where silent film need not beg on any account. Where The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse looks and sounds at it does, and on home systems yet, why not see normies as potential converts? At least I don’t have to worry about fouling up The General again. Was my generation better for coming up the “hard way”? I’d swap that for being forty years younger now, gold fields of film stretched infinite before me and not a care about splices, scratches, or bungling my show. For plentiful education along this line, there is a new book by music accompanist Ben Model, The Silent Film Universe, where he analyzes the “immersive, dreamlike experience” that is watching pre-talk. To his mind, no talk is an asset rather than liability, his explanations plenty to attract and acquaint viewer flocks, along with (much) further education for those many who thought we understood a universe wider than I ever imagined it to be, The Silent Film Universe opening doors to greater knowledge, in fact showing me doors I never knew were there. In short, a splendid book from someone who has made a life’s work on understanding vanished time, and through his efforts, making it live again to the joy of audiences everywhere. Safe to say Ben Model has brought more disciples to his silent universe than most who toil on behalf of the art (order The Silent Film Universe here).

Doug Spoke to Us All, But Wished He Didn't Have To

Fun of silents was formerly in the getting. I’ve talked to Columbus collectors and each point out how “they” (moderns) need not drive/fly to preserves when click on a bid button will win or lose whatever it is you want. We feel superior for having long ago earned bounty our searches yielded, to which latters might answer, who cares how you get it so long as you got it. There used to be collector meets all over the map. New York had paper shows most weekends. Meadowland Sundays were plane in, frenzy buy, then wing out. Syracuse had its March blowout, plus there was “Cinecon” at a different Labor Day location until finally settling in Hollywood, now minus a dealer’s room. These ran rarities to a gathered audience, being an only place one could see The Bat Whispers for instance. Now we can saunter into dens and drop it on a Blu-Ray tray, a sinfully simple option you’d not imagine before. Silent days lasted (thirty years plus) till 1929 saw moving farewell, even if tempered by great-to-have-known-you but don’t come back (note ad above for Douglas Fairbanks in a "sound hit"). Elegiac end for The Iron Mask sent a differing message, not what merchandising intended but playing as such now and maybe did in '29 to sensitive enough viewers. Doug and his musketeers die in a third act, necessary conclusion to this story, but what they really do is usher out voiceless times by literally ascending from prospect of sound to Heaven that is forever silence, paradise for them if not for a public that must embrace talker ways or loosen embrace of movies altogether. It is one of the loveliest wraps in all of film and good arguing beyond its immediate effect for reality of an afterlife.