J.D. Salinger --- Film Collector

I found out this week that J.D. Salinger was a 16mm film collector. While everyone was waiting for him to write another Catcher In The Rye, Jerry was holed up watching Bill Fields and The Marx Brothers. He fit the personality profile of many collectors I dealt with. Eccentric … check. Reclusive … yeah. Spoke in tongues and drank his own urine … well, that lost a few of us, although I knew one guy who stayed in the same pair of pajamas for three days as he ran through NTA’s entire package of Gene Autry westerns. So how much did 16mm shape this dean of American writers? I’ve never read a word of his output, being a functional illiterate as to fiction and not proud of it, but will confess to being intrigued by Salinger, more so now that I know he collected. They say he had lots of prints. Favorites included aforementioned Fields and the Marxes, plus The Thin Man, Lost Horizon, early Hitchcock, and bless him, Laurel and Hardy. Salinger’s daughter wrote a book about life around his Cornish, New Hampshire retreat. Our shared world was not books, but rather, my father’s collection of reel-to-reel movies, she wrote. Salinger would set up a screen in front of the living room fireplace, and they’d watch The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, and Foreign Correspondent, among others. He’d later switch to videocassettes, but Margaret found them a sterile substitute for the sensuous delight of 16mm. That last part struck a chord, for I’ve heard many a loyalist to film express similar feelings. Perhaps there is something sensuous about handling celluloid, and digital profanes it. Salinger’s ritual of threading and rewinding was crucial to the authenticity of experiencing movies, and his daughter lovingly describes reel changes and splices he executed with precision (He wasn’t scared of getting cut at all …). I particularly enjoyed the part where she talked of running out of the room terrified during suspense scenes in Foreign Correspondent, and how Salinger lambasted her lack of nerve. Christ, all you and your mother want to see are sentimental pictures about Thanksgiving and puppy dogs.

So how did Salinger come by his prints? Sooner or later, every collector has to deal with others. I’ll bet Salinger did too, perhaps under another name. Did we buy, sell, or trade with him without knowing it? Chances are good that his heirs will find old Big Reels when they dig through the house for unpublished novels. But who will get the 16mm stuff? Little of that is worth much now, other than for Salinger having owned it. Consider what The Bank Dick in 16mm might bring on Ebay … then imagine the same with J.D. Salinger’s Personal Print on the header. How many English Department heads can we figure to bid on that? I wonder if a fellow collector could have gotten through Salinger’s barricade. One who tried was Warren French. He’d written the first book-length study of Salinger in 1963 and sent a letter asking if they could exchange lists and maybe a few rare prints. Apparently, French got no reply (maybe Salinger suspected French was using the films as a device to engage the author about his books). Another writer, John Seabrook, was invited by Salinger’s son to come over and watch a movie. That was in the mid-eighties, according to an article Seabrook recently wrote for the New Yorker. He describes how Salinger made them popcorn and ran his print of Sergeant York, with a good time had by all. Seabrook described his host as friendly and sociable. Well, isn’t any collector pleased to share his bounty with appreciative guests? The more I read about this guy Salinger, the more I think we would have hit it off. Not having read his stuff, I wouldn’t have peppered him with dumb questions about Holden Caulfield, Uncle Wiggly, and the rest. It would have been enough for us to ruminate over a screening of Chickens Come Home and discuss finer points of the Marxes at Paramount vs. Metro. I might even have found him an original print of Young and Innocent. From such bonding as this, I bet he would have taken my calls anytime.

Taming Lion That Was Rockabilly

Outlaws On the Air and Screens --- Part Two

Nice to recall at least tail end of earlier R&R, and there are CD collections with virtual books included to detail history of marvelous movement (real) gone against the grain, “Rockin’ Bones” from Rhino good as gathers get, being four discs with one-hundred songs spread across same. I’ve seen rockabilly referred to as “gloriously primitive,” which beside generic “pop” of the period it easily is. Category, name, whatever whoever called it, melted down from country, rhythm/blues, folk, hillbilly boogie, every sort of styles one could steal, Peter robbed to imitate Paul. Visionaries were rare as genuine talent in any field, example onscreen battle of bands or singers John Ashley and Gene Vincent in AIP’s Hot Rod Gang (1958), Ashley proposed a next big thing making like Elvis, not so bad but neither was score of others. Vincent on the other hand was the real deal, glittering gold aside pyrite, him one of few rockabilly artists to score a major recording contract, with Capitol, his hit Be Bop A-Lula claimed by them to have sold two million copies, stunner number beside 500-1000 pressed for others, and which maybe-maybe not sold. Hot Rod Gang was rigid application of formula, recipe as follows: boys and girls called actors and got cheap, souped-up cars driven through L.A. minus city consent, rock and roll indifferent if not bad apart from blue moon someone like Gene Vincent hired presumably for pennies, plus dancing and a lot of it because that’s thrifty too for staging indoors with a stationary camera to eat up footage, a fist fight or three also on enclosed space, all such and more against flattest lighting.

There are Guitar Collectors Who Regular Cross the Country in Hope to Find Treasure Like This

A thing like Hot Rod Gang can be bad without necessarily being dull, but that will depend on one’s threshold for fisticuffs, rock-roll, and souped-up cars. Hot Rod Gang earned $263,000 in domestic rentals, and I noted among producers Charles “Buddy” Rogers, among other things more a musician than anybody appearing in the film, could play whatever instrument man had so far devised, but belonged to times and trends forever passed. Imagine Mary’s reaction when he came home from work at something called Hot Rod Gang. Among things good about AIP was how they met their target audience on latter’s home ground, no preachment nor condescension, however calculated product was, but so was radio, magazines, television, all targeting teens. Radio was how most received music lots called outlaw, late night play making fruit the more forbidden, plus fact you’d often not locate 45’s even where intent upon it. No store stocked everything. If your choice was a “hit,” OK, otherwise wait and hope a D.J. would spin it. I dug the instrumental theme for Because They’re Young by Duane Eddy and the Rebels in 1960 and recall search at age six to acquire it. Now there is 24/7 access at You Tube. I call that progress. For the record, Eddy played a 1957 Chet Atkins Gretsch 6120 guitar, which admittedly matters to me less than for many whose passion revolve around such instruments. Among reasons to travel back if such was possible: learn the guitar, opportunity long since missed, and too late now. My mother tried taking piano lessons in her sixties and no soap, her realizing too much tide had gone out to master such complex new thing. If ever I thought of picking up a guitar, there’s but her effort to discourage me.

Certain ordinary men left giant footprints on guitar sound. James Burton backed Rick Nelson, Cliff Gallup was beside Gene Vincent. Then there was Link Wray who was from North Carolina. I said ordinary because these men never pretended to rock star glamor or image molding (possible exception: Link Wray, who adopted “outlaw” image to burnish “dirty” power chords). Guitarists were generally older guys who’d adapt themselves to new style that was rockabilly and later rock and roll, their talent such as to make it look easy. Without these artists modestly doing their thing, voicers out front, no matter how teen idol-ish, could as well fold up and go home. Thing I glean from reading about such geniuses (and many of them really were that) is how music while fun and maybe profitable was a thing not to rely on where family had priority past touring grind and younger people’s idea of adventure that these comparative old-timers had seen plenty enough of. For most part, they were admirably focused and grown-up men, dedicated and always improving on their art, leaving spotlights to “front men” who'd sing and seize attention, this more occupation of youth and tendency to believe promoters who promised wealth and fame, latter which singers sometimes got, money mere vapor off transient applause. Instrumentalists, session players, worked on C.O.D. basis and trusted little apart from their own talent and how to get paid for it. Scotty Moore didn’t mind being stared at less than Elvis Presley whom he made look good, Burton of same mind where backing Nelson, such level heads less likely to end up wrapped around phone poles. Many in fact traded road life for mundane pursuits that would reliably pay bills and maintain a solid roof. Joe (“Duck Tail”) Clay recorded over a single month in 1956, left ten “incendiary” tracks before disappearing. Searchers located him thirty years later driving a school bus.

To-Be Mystery Man Cliff Gallup Performs with Gene Vincent

“Mystery men” were those of near supernatural abilities who left their public behind and played to suit themselves and occasional small venues. These were said to be unapproachable, avoiding most who admired them, though plenty were still listed in phone books and living normal among neighbors who’d not know or care of such greatness in their midst. Cliff Gallup was a Houdini of electric strings who spoke with music rather than words, reticent it’s true but only because fervid fans made him self-conscious, and besides, what was all such fuss about? He played rock and roll guitar a few years with Gene Vincent, then hung it up. Reminds me of literary counterparts like J.D. Salinger or H. L. Mencken who lived comfortably among locals who knew but did not worship them. Both so far as locals figured were plain folk, Mencken as member of clubs and lodges, Salinger helping boy scouts sell hot dogs at little league games. That which famed guitarists touched became holy relics, specifically their instruments which were objects of intense search by collectors who might themselves be transformed by mere coming into physical contact with said items of veneration. Deke Dickerson is an outstanding rockabilly performer and historian that also wrote two books where he detailed years-long quest for guitars which had belonged to his idols, surprisingly many found in attics, pawn shops, anywhere but places of honor they deserved to occupy. To touch an instrument as was touched by genius might for all one knows transmit spark of genius into the now possessor. Could it happen … has it happened?

Saturdays at Noon on Charlotte's Channel 9 --- (Jimmy) Kilgo's Kanteen!

“Dirty” guitars provoked in-part hostile response to rockabilly and rock-roll to come, but deliberate distortion of amplified sound had been around longer than either musical movement and besides, everybody save societal watchdogs seemed to like it. There are You Tube histories of equipment turned evil and how we supposedly were corrupted by same. I never knew that a song, an instrumental yet (“Rumble” by Link Wray) was banned from radio play in several regions, this part-why a mainstream took charge of music so as to calm us all down. Sedative was supplied by Bobby Vee generation that was the early to mid-sixties, him plus the Four Seasons, Beach Boys, Gary Lewis and his Playboys, others as moderating. Wilder rockers were ahead as the original crop perished in large part of exhaustion or their own excesses. What mercy of fate allowed Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard to live seeming forever as others went down in road, plane, and narcotic crashes? DJ’s that once pied piped for newest bold songs now were told by management what they could broadcast, management string pulled by senior management, and so on up the line. Wide open traveling hops, revues, all gone as had been big bands of the forties that thrilled towners large and often small, jukeboxes installed everywhere to encourage dance with milk shaking, clubbing of any sort, whatever went on indoors. Local TV outlets had dance shows and invited kids to participate on camera, ours on Charlotte Channel 9 and called “Kilgo’s Kanteen.” People thought different then about music, it being more social than solitary pursuit, idea of ear buds and download listening things of a far future. Some are saying however that live performance is coming back in big ways. True?

Another Great Book

Just had thirty or so pages of Dropped Names: Famous Men and Women As I Have Known Them by Frank Langella with chicken/dumplings at Hadley's. It would have been as easy to sit there all afternoon reading. The book arrived this morning and it'll be finished by nightfall. I found out about Langella's memoir at Cinema Retro, that dependable signpost to best reading/viewing in addition to marvelous articles/reviews generated by moderator Lee Pfeiffer and staff members. Retro's coverage of Dropped Names steered me to Amazon and a bargain-priced copy for $13.98 (just pages at lunch were worth that). Part of reason for buying was longtime conviction that Frank Langella is about the best actor working. His are among select contemporary pics I try never to miss.

Yvonne Criss-Crossed Burt in 1948 --- She'd Do As Much for Frank in 1974

What Langella does here is profile the famous names he's encountered over a long career, these including many Golden-Agers headed for the barn. And it's not just ones you'd expect. FL does pungent looks-back at Gilbert Roland, Oliver Reed, Yvonne DeCarlo (a notably saucy section) --- he doesn't spare barbs, but Langella views each with understanding and appreciation for greatness they once had, whatever trying times were upon them by 70's and afterward occasion when the young actor worked with, and learned much, from said seasoned pros (the Jo Van Fleet reflect is sheer spun gold for Langella finding humor and pathos in a grand old actresses' approach toward the finish line). The Oliver Reed portion is both celebration of an all-time great immoderate and scathing indictment of 90's Hollywood waste and ego-excess, the movie being execrable Cutthroat Island, from which Reed was summarily removed after drunkenly suggesting what seemed an outrageous change to his character/cameo (to which you may say --- if only they'd used it).

This is Pret-Near the Oliver Reed That Frank Langella Encountered When They Met in 1995

The photo at left shows Langella with his yellow pad on the beach, proof enough for me that he, not a ghost, wrote this book. The perspective is just too individual for any stand-in to have penned. Each chapter is bite-sized, tasty, insightful. I laughed enough to attract Hadley's waitress attention (young Langella meets Bob Mitchum on The Wrath Of God --- expected howl-arity ensues). This is no casual star-tour, though. Langella observed these people with a laser. I don't wonder for the knowing and masterful performing he's done since the first thing I saw him in, a fairly wretched ABC-TV remake of The Mark Of Zorro in 1974 (which he covers nicely in Stars Dropped). Miraculous was Langella's portrayal of Richard Nixon in 2008's Frost/Nixon --- he makes the character perhaps more sympathetic than writing/directing intended --- made me sure enough root for Dick! Then there was Starting Out In The Evening (2007) where he was a J.D.Salinger'ish writer recluse. Frank Langella's at least as accomplished a scribe as actor, that amounting to considerable, with Names Dropped work of a hugely entertaining piece with the best this artist has given us.

Classic Era Trips To Zenda

Three Ways To Do The Prisoner Of Zenda

The legendary NBC special on David Selznick from 1968 began with a pull-back of Ronald Colman (some day I will spell it "Coleman" just to be like everyone else) and Madeleine Carroll as they enter a grand ballroom in The Prisoner Of Zenda, narrator Henry Fonda calling it a moment to epitomize old Hollywood at a most grandiose. That highlight was all I could get of The Prisoner Of Zenda at the time, because no station in NC ran it by my searching eyes, and search I did through every week of TV GUIDE for years. How we take for granted treasure so readily had today. MGM bought Selznick's Zenda for a 1952 remake. His original went from there to diminuendo. It could be rented on 16mm non-theatrical from Films, Inc., but stayed elusive otherwise. Elders maintained the 1937 version was better than what Metro later did with Stewart Granger, but where was evidence for comparison? The newer Zenda was broadcast from early 60's onward, but syndication glossaries kept a "?" beside listings for the 1937 version. United Artists broke ice when they distributed the pre-48 MGM library, Zenda among those available by the late 70's. Since then, of course, TCM has righted the wrong, and there is a DVD that pairs 1937 and 1952 treatments. Preferred one has been loudly declared and agreed upon, personnel in '52 knowing theirs was but pale patch on Selznick's work, even as Technicolor splashed paint on the pageant.

I looked at the DOS version again recently. It begins slow, has to trudge thicket of exposition, but sails admirably once we're at court and deception of one Colman substituting for another. Here is also where Alfred Newman's splendid music really kicks in, a kind of sum-up score for what we love about a Classic Era. Selznick knew the property was old-fashioned, but trusted it, just as he had Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Garden Of Allah. The producer's taste had been formed by childhood explore of literature. One writer (I think Ben Hecht) said frankly that it had ossified there. Success proved Selznick right however, as The Prisoner Of Zenda took $2.6 million worldwide, overseas gross topping what the film got domestically. All of what Selznick made had gloss beyond what even majors could achieve. He'd putter with a thing until it was flawless, bring in directors just to do specific moments he knew they'd excel at. That was how W.S. Van Dyke came to shoot the climactic duel, and George Cukor the "renunciation" of Colman by Carroll in favor of the throne she must now sit on.

I Don't Know Much About Board Game Collectibles, But This Must Be One Heck Of a Rare One

John Cromwell got directorial credit for Zenda, him a ready instrument of Selznick's will, sensible enough to realize that a man's name on studio stationary meant that his word would be final. As to whether Cromwell helmed bulk of the film, there is Douglas Fairbanks Jr.'s autobio recall (The Salad Days) that JC and DOS "had a showdown" over constant Selznick rewrites and that "John was relieved of his assignment and a good deal of the film was re-shot with W.S. Van Dyke replacing Cromwell as director." Fairbanks observed that the switch "did make everything go smoother." Certainly Cromwell gave no ground in later-in-life interviews ... so far as he was concerned, The Prisoner Of Zenda was his work, and co-workers let that impression stand so long as the veteran director lived. The Salad Days was published in 1988, nine years after John Cromwell died. A search of Selznick records might reveal how much of Zenda was actually Cromwell's, but then, how much of any Selznick production could belong to staff other than Selznick, always in firmest control of everything written, shot, and edited.

John Cromwell, Center with Pipe, Directs The Prisoner Of Zenda

An Outdoor Dueling Scene Deleted From Final Prints of the 1937 Version

Casting beyond Colman and Carroll was as perfect. Here, in fact, was where any remake would die on vines. Robert Douglas and Jane Greer for Raymond Massey and Mary Astor? And this was only fifteen years later, when memory of Selznick's Zenda was fresh. It must have amused DOS to see what he knew would be a punk try. Not that anything was specifically wrong with the 1952 version. It is most enjoyable on updated terms, especially if you'd not been exposed to the earlier one, but back-to-back, and ouch. James Mason was interviewed by Focus On Film in 1970 (#2). " ... a depressing experience for an actor ... ," he called  Zenda '52, wherein Mason played Rupert Of Hentzau. Blame was fixed on director Richard Thorpe, the players limited to one take unless something went seriously wrong. Mason recalled Stewart Granger asking to do a scene again, feeling he could improve on it, to which Thorpe responded, "No, I don't see any reason. It was fine. I'm going to print that. It was good." When Granger persisted, the director reminded him that takes with "reasonable tempo" where actors "say their lines in a way that's completely intelligible" was plenty enough to get jobs done for the boxoffice, that last Thorpe's primary concern according to Mason. 

Home Movie Hound Doug Jr. Gets Some Captures of Co-Stars

Ramon Novarro as a Silent-Era Rupert

Jane Greer said they kept a moviola on the 1952 set where scenes from the 1937 version were viewed and then slavishly duplicated. Outcome of the remake bears this out. It is like a photocopy done after someone figured out how to do photocopies with color. But everyone acquits fine, none seeming to slum. I had a 16mm IB Technicolor print of this Zenda back in the 70's and it was a thrill of a collecting lifetime. Affection sustains for that, if little else. I'm not at Viva Richard Thorpe stage, but those apparent first takes he printed play fine, Metro at peak of technical efficiency, if a twilight one. They were wise enough to re-use the Newman score, this time adapted by Conrad Salinger. Posters fairly had to shout The NEW Prisoner Of Zenda to avoid appearance of stale bread. Did anyone in sales alert Dore Schary that fifteen years was but wink of time to at least mature ticket buyers --- or did Schary figure attendance had gone over altogether to kids and teens? Selznick's oldie came back to theatres as recently as 1949. He was promiscuous in licensing backlog for reissues. Had MGM even looked into possible over-exposure of the earlier film? And wait, Selznick's wasn't even the first, as there had been a silent Zenda back in 1922, directed by Rex Ingram for the old Metro firm before merger that made up MGM. The Prisoner Of Zenda, then, was a tale told plenty by the time 1952 audiences took receipt of it.

Mary Astor and Colman Relax Between Scenes

Where a Baddest Man Is a Movie's Best Asset

There was also a fifteen years window between the Ingram silent and Selznick's try. The gulf in terms of pace and story construction was vast, however, as though filmmaking had got its full education in that brief space of time. The 1922 Zenda plods, misses opportunities Selznick would seize, and lets both action and the love story wilt on a near two-hour vine. Ingram was about visuals more than narrative, excelled at the first, tended to drag with the second. His Zenda has size and luminous effect later ones would not attempt, and is worth a look for elements they'd improve upon. In Colman/Granger's part is Lewis Stone, his dual role hardly separate for neither character having much verve, Stone then as now our idea of mature rectitude, one of those you imagine never saw a young day in his life. Starred in the 1922 Zenda is Ramon Novarro, who plays Rupert of Hentzau, said to be the most actor-proof part ever written. In other words, no one could emerge from it in less than triumph. When Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was offered the role in 1937, his father told him to accept by all means, that this was a best opportunity he'd ever have to make an impression, which indeed he did. My question, then: What other parts are actor-proof, that is, so good as to foreclose possibility of failure? One at least comes to my mind, Doc Holliday, but what of others? Surely there are more, in fact, lots more.

Rupert Of Hentzau getting away with murder was one of few times that happened in Code-dominated movies. Several deaths are attributable to him, only one shown, but we're given to understand he is ruthless, unsportsmanlike, and has killed unarmed men. Hentzau is utterly likeable otherwise ... well, likeable really because he is ruthless, unsportsmanlike, and laughs it off, his philosophy being that morality is for chumps. I think The Prisoner Of Zenda was onto something with Rupert. He's like a character from today dropped down over a century back (the novel published in 1894), and kept around to give readers/viewers a glimpse of anti-heroism to come. Rupert is funny and sardonic and no one wanted to see him punished, then or since. Selznick knew this and used a trick to let Rupert off the hook, telling the PCA that he had a Zenda sequel planned where Rupert would get just desserts. As it stands, he gives a jaunty farewell and swims off to safety. Of course, there was no sequel, by Selznick or anyone, even though Anthony Hope had written a follow-up novel to The Prisoner Of Zenda. The three principal versions of Zenda can be had on DVD, including the silent version from Warner Archive. Screening of the three gives good account of progress and changes in H'wood filmmaking over a thirty-year span.