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Bugs Bunny Makes War

December 4, 2014, 7:00 am
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Chuck Jones' BB More Sinned Against Than Sinning In Long-Haired Hare (1949)

Directing Chuck Jones was by most accounts doing better work for Bugs Bunny, at least calming him somewhat and devising opponents who have retaliation coming, unlike straw men we tended to sympathize with over the rabbit. I'm always refreshed when Bugs gets the worst of it: am I alone in wanting to see him taken down pegs? In this case, it's opera singer "Giovanni Jones" who picks the fight, even as Bugs annoys with his backyard concertizing. "Of course, you realize this means war" became cue for mirth among Bugs-watchers then and, perhaps, now (do we laugh as much as did '49er's?). Somewhere I heard that BB purloined that line from Groucho. True? There's an interesting gag where Bugs assumes bobby-soxer disguise, fast-prattling over"Frankie" and "Perry" in a baggy shirt and too much lipstick. Guess Warner artists were old enough by now to be disdainful of teen girls slobbering over croon idols. Certainly Frank Sinatra himself came in for withering caricature whenever his enervated figure showed up in a WB short. Another that gets a rib, and had before, is Leopold Stokowski, a real-life cartoon irresistible to spoofers. Most of us know the Hollywood Bowl thanks to so many cartoons being set there. Face color change Giovanni Jones endures as he strains to sing under Bugs' baton is back to something like 1949 appearance thanks to Blu-Ray rescue by Warners.
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Lotsa Ways To Sell A Monster ...

December 5, 2014, 6:16 am
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When Frankenstein Had Many Creators

Caricature Art For The Monster
Long ago when showmanship was more a matter of individual enterprise, Frankenstein gave ad and art staff much with which to entice scare seekers. Any hundred towns that played Frankenstein would represent as many differing campaigns on behalf of the late 1931 and into 1932 chiller. Pre-prepared ads were available, via Universal's pressbook, but these were mere baseline for highly individualized selling at local level. A managercould surround himself with company-supplied art, including posters of all sizes, and dream up whatever montage would put Frankenstein across most effectively in his town. Lobby cards to one-sheets to billboard sized displays, each singly worth from tens to hundreds of thousands today, were scissored up and hung in or out of doors, exposed or not to punishing elements, then tossed for trash once engagements ended. Such was fast-paced promotion when shows came/went in matter of days, decks cleared quick for a next push.

George Henger's Wall-and-Cell Effect For His Oklahoma City
Frankenstein Lobby Display

A threshold question might have been: Do we show the monster in ads? In smaller situations especially, you could keep his face a secret and let everyone be stunned at Karloff's reveal in Frankenstein. That scene is certainly played in terms of surprise, with slow build, BK entering backwards, then "shock" close-ups ofa soon-to-be iconic image. Staged as though here was where we'd have our first-ever glimpse of the monster, James Whale and co. may not have reckoned with Universal merchandising's later decision to use Karloff as key art for virtually all posters. Viewers entering Frankenstein would have at least known what the title character's creation looked like. Was that giving too much of the game away? A local manager could reshuffle cards by keeping the monster a mystery --- let his face for purpose of ads be obscured, or even show a headlessthreat (as at right), that last a perhaps more frightful prospect to some than what the film ultimately showed.

Universal Pushes Two Trailers --- Do Either Exist?


Best Way To Attract Children:
A Warning Not To Send Them
Query to those more expert: Did the original Frankenstein trailer show Karloff? Far as I know,  previews from 1931-32's initial release (there were two) do not survive. What we've seen as DVD extra and elsewhere dates from Universal's 1938 reissue through Realart bring-back from late 40's onward. Those very first trailers, however, could show us what wasrevealed, or withheld, of the monster. Some exhibitors made an event of the preview, much as we've lately seen with first glimpse of a next Star Wars. Oklahoma City's George Henger (the Midwest Theatre) spent six weeks building up to his first run of the Frankensteintrailer by putting a "monster" warn at the end of every short subject he ran, a teaser to build anticipation not for the feature, but for a first previewof Frankenstein. The pay-off was "a real creepy, eerie presentation," said Motion Picture Herald: "For ten seconds before the trailer was thrown on the screen, the house was darkened. During this period, groans and moans, produced on a special disc, came from behind the screen. Then,while the house was still dark and the screen still blank, a deathly green head and the hands of the "monster" were projected on the blackness of the ceiling, played across the screen and up to the ceiling on the other side." Mirrors, a projected slide, and "stage shots" aided in the effect, and all this just for a preview. George Henger's splash would be detailed and sent for other theatres to emulate. Challenge to exhibition was best expressed by Henger's sum-up of Frankenstein: "He Out-Draculas Dracula." 
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Must All Flashbacks Play Fair?

December 6, 2014, 5:00 am
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Stage Fright (1950) A Lesser But Still Good Hitchcock

The notorious Hitchcock thriller with "lying flashbacks," these less a cheat than just disorienting, the audience being asked to choose between story dénouement and what they've seen in an opening reel. Had any director used such a device prior to 1950? It didn't help that Stage Fright's narrative lurched besides, a return to English-style (and shot) suspense that had won AHinitial favor over here, but not the success he'd have with Frenzy twenty years later. That one forfeited civility we associate with UKsetting for a roughest Hitchcock ride since Psycho, and became the hit Stage Fright wasn't. Richard Todd as the wrong (?) man has to give up center spot to upper-billed Jane Wyman and Marlene Dietrich, the latter making SF more a vehicle for herself than quest over guilt/innocence of a gone-for-long stretches Todd. Alistair Sim is Wyman's eccentric dad; after Green For Danger, we'd like him instead as eccentric Chief Inspector. The thing with any Hitchcock, even failed ones, is how masterly he does individual scenes throughout. You could excerpt any from Stage Fright and guess the whole movie is great. Well, it arguably is, certainly so in comparison with anyone else'sthrillers of the period. Seen on Warner Instant Archive in HD, and looked fantastic.
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Gene Autry Opens The Paintbox

December 7, 2014, 7:00 am
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Cinecolor Enhances The Big Sombrero (1949)

I'm all for restoration, but it looks like someone's monkeyed with this Cinecolor Gene Autry to correct once limited hues and introduce bright blues into limited equation of that revered (by pic geeks) process. Reminds me a little of Warners juicing up their DVD for Mystery Of The Wax Museum in order to compensate limits of two-color Technicolor so beloved by purists. Do I carp over triviality? --- may-be, but that's nature of nit-picking Greenbriar. The Big Sombrero at least looks a million, if sneakily come by, and Retroplex viewership will obviously prefer it to dominating greens Cinecolor entailed, but what of the movie? It's frankly a size small hat, punk among Gene's litter for dearth of action and yak-yak over who controls what rancho. Autry does make with the music, plenty more than typical, and swim pool segments allow display of Elena Verdugo, fierysenorita of this and other B's. GA overspent on The Big Sombrero and so put brakes on further color lensing, this in deference to profit from horse-sits and maintaining his lucrative lead among series cowboys.
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The Man Who Gave Volume To Sound

December 8, 2014, 6:10 am
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DeForest and Phonofilm Come and Go In The 20's

Lee De Forest was called "Father Of The Electronic Revolution" by Maurice Zouary, who wrote a book about the inventor and owned what survived of pioneering sound movies De Forest made in the early 20's. These were featured in a documentary that was available at one time from Inkwell Images, but is currently out of print. Zouary was a champion for De Forest's legacy and of opinion he was badly used by industry powers that seized sound and left De Forest curbside. There is disparity as to wronged who, if that matters after ninety years. As history laced with drama or David battling multiple Goliaths, the De Forest saga is a grabber still, him not unlike the guy who developed intermittent windshield wipers only to have the idea stolen by automotive octopi. De Forest's name is a good one to throw out next time someone claims Warners and Fox were first with soundmovies, as his beat them by several years and were as technically finished as well, at least when properly presented, but there, unfortunately, was the rub.


De Forest had to run on a crutch because studio-owned and big circuits wouldn't give him playtime. So-called "maverick" showmen opened doors, but thereweren't enough of them to cover mounting expense of reels De Forest produced, plus costs distributing same. His was sound recorded on film as opposed to disc-sync the Warners would use, and ran at twenty frames per second rather than 24FPS as became standard after corporate claws grabbed hold. De Forestdidn't have a chance once these giants moved in. They weren't about to let a little fish like him tell them how to swim. Patents De Forest registered were co-opted and brazenly put to service of talkies shown nationwide. If De Forest didn't like it, he could sue, but with what? The inventor stayed broke most of the time, being notso good at business or with partners. De Forest was of sort to inevitably get it in the neck.


Maurice Zouary came to possession of De Forest prints via purchase of a stock footage library wherein the stuff was buried since who knows when. None of it would exist but for Zouary's intercession and stewardship. The subjects ran to one or two reels, best of these featuring vaudeville legends captured in many cases for a one and only time on film. De Forest was in production for a handful of years from 1922, his talkies gettingout there well ahead of everything notwithstanding crude effort by those (including Edison) who had noodled at mechanical reproduction of sound. There were complaints over (lack of) aural quality in De Forest reels, but as survivors sound pretty good even today, we must chalk that up to theatres bumbling the job or equipment on a fritz. Without heeled backing to grease wheels or put techs on site, as would be case with Vitaphone and Movietone (the latter Zouary says was filched from De Forest concept), the shows had to rely on sheerest luck to unspool to satisfaction. Then as now with untried method, how often would that happen?


Vaude names were eager to play for nickels or less, knowing they'd achieve immortality for talking before De Forest's invention. Eddie Cantor was a booster and talked stage peers into participation. Weber and Fields got aboard andleft us a one and only sustained record of their historic act. These boys dated back to 1877 performing, for all I knowgagging up the Civil War as it was still fresh in memories. They looked like Macy balloons for costume padding applied to make frequent blows impact less. Yes, they were a violent act, verbal warfare no less so. Close eyes and you'd think W&F were Abbott and Costello arrived early, as in past century early. Their De Forest routine has a pool table for locus of patter along with belly pierce with cue sticks. You have to listen close for all of staccato exchanging, the two going at twice a speed of later acts. Eddie Cantor is calminginfluence to follow, all clap-hand and mincing after fashion of male comics who played the nance to amuse. You can tell these entertainers miss their audience, a few guys behind cameras not enough to get juice flowing. To be without a crowd probably cut effectiveness by half for vaude folk stepping before microphones, and that robs us of full effect their humor would have had during primes.
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Metro Making Music and Million$

December 9, 2014, 7:00 am
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Everybody's Kind Of Music To Win The War

Was Music For Millions handing out the wrong kind of hope? A telegram from the War Department tells June Allyson that her husband has died in the South Pacific, a fact her intercepting roommatesconceal from Junie, a bad idea by itself compounded by fact that the wire turns out to be a mistake. He's still alive! I was under impression that wartime pics never did a reverse on official word of casualty. Same year's Since You Went Away has Jennifer Jones questioning bad news re Robert Walker till Claudette Colbert firmly says "that's the worst thing you can do." A warring nation did not want families kidding themselves once in receipt of bad news. Did Music For Millions make some of us doubt truth in telegrams? This was where fantasy at Metro mayhave had damaging effect. Hope was fine, false hope something else. A "Bureau Of Motion Pictures" at the government's Office Of War Information had been created "to assist Hollywood in furthering the war effort by enhancing the audience's understanding of the facts." Compliance with OWI policy wasn't compulsory, but they could and would apply pressure where necessary. Did Music For Millions get a pass for being such obvious confection?


"A Romantic Drama Of Young Love Set To Your Musical Favorites," said the trailer, this to accompany of The Hallelujah Chorus. Music ForMillions filled a big tent for all tastes, classical as performed by Jose Iturbi, swing by most everyone else, plus comic riffing on concert scale by Jimmy Durante, who introduced his to-be standard Umbriagohere. Great composers got respect from mainstream Hollywood in the 40's, especially at Metro. Servicemen go misty-eye over Grieg and Rachmaninoff. A harmonica solo of Claire De Lune reduces a filled bistro to tears. "Our song" that couples share is often as not classic derived. Jose Iturbi was another in line of plain folks conductors, Leopold Stokowski ("Stokie" to fan familiars) a previous model from pairing with Deanna Durbin. Music For Millions lets Iturbi be mildly temperamental ... he's a genius after all ... but Jose, like the rest of us, will go sappy on sight of adorable Margaret O' Brien. He'll even let her sit with the orchestra during rehearsal. So did a classical music establishment turn as blind an eye to unrealities as the OWI? For what Music For Millions did for attendance at real-life concerts, I'd guess yes.

Margaret O'Brien with Joe Pasternak and Henry Koster

MGM had ways of luring talent from elsewhere to richer preserves at Culver. For promise of better money and higher budgets, talent like MervynLeRoy, Pandro Berman, numerous others, crossed the moat. One who'd defected to Metro (from Universal) and would stay for remain of a career was Joe Pasternak. It was his kind of candy land. Joe believed in movies as fluff. His musicals for Deanna Durbin had been machinery printing money for U. Pasternak wouldn't direct, but had a friend back there who did. It was only matter of time before Henry Koster came over and joined his teammate. Pasternak/Koster would be trusted with $1.7 million of Metro dollars to make Music For Millions. That was more than had been spent on any two Durbins.Koster lived long and told some of truth from the experience to interviewing Irene Kahn Atkins for a Director's Guild oral history. He recalled a "whole high command" of departments, each an undermine to director authority. Koster found Margaret O' Brien already pre-programmed by her mother and acting coach Lillian Burns, the studio sanctioned guide for most if not all performing talent. Koster felt "very safe" at MGM, but realized such factory efficiency "interfered" at times.


Margaret O'Brien may have been a most valuable of acting assets for Metro during 1944. She was all of seven and being top-billed for a first time in Music For Millions. Unlike Shirley Temple who could admittedly sing/dance better, O'Brien was a mini-Garbo enacting high drama to wring tears not only from herself, but a nationwide public. The cry mechanism was one that O'Brien reduced to science. She'd ask Koster if he wanted tears streaming, halfway down cheeks, or merely wet eyes. O'Brien has always impressed me for never whining over hardship of child stardom. She loved the work and saw herself as an actress from beginning at age four. MGM would be her candy land as well as Pasternak's. Maybe it wasn't for everyone, but certain personalities could thrive in this Lion's den. I don't know of aninterview where O'Brien knocked Leo, Mayer, or any of co-stars, except Wallace Beery (from Bad Bascomb), a stance endemic to any and all that worked with famously truculent Beery. For those who get unwanted sugar high from Margaret O'Brien, Music For Millions is a picture to stay away from, but do note critics to a man adoring her once upon a 1944 Christmas season, when just-previous, and still playing to packed houses,Meet Me In St.Louis, established O'Brien as a top working actress and asset for Metro.


To stand hours in the snow suggests you want to see something badly. Above was the scene outside Broadway's Capitol Theatre, an MGM flagship and site of Music For Millions opening for holiday week '44. A photo like this makes me look back for any theatre I'd have sacrificed such time and warmth getting into. What's a lifetime's longest wait to see a movie? These hundreds shivered willingly forMargaret O'Brien, or was it live act Tommy Dorsey that appeared with Music For Millions? Trade ads tended to play down stage shows that were truer lure for Broadway crowds. Dorsey was at popularity's summit and certainly accounted for much of a first week's $75K the Capital took. The Main Stem gathered many a Christmas shopper to bosom that was first-run theatres, each with best the industry had for Yule attracting. Meet Me In St. Louis was in a fourth week at the Astor, and National Velvet made up a third for Metro at Radio City's Music Hall, the latter welcoming customers at 7:45 AM for the week. Management at most houses offered lobby check-in for Christmas parcels while patronage watched theshow. Moviegoing was a break for shoppers who'd spend all day afoot on streets or in stores. For serving such useful and practical purpose, notwithstanding their entertainment value, few pics could fail during that holiday week.
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Snowy Fields, and Sennett Adrift

December 10, 2014, 6:39 am
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The Fatal Glass Of Beer (1933) Leaves Showmen Cold

The most oft-repeated pan of this W.C. Fields short came from a North Carolina exhibitor, J.J. Medford, whose 430 seat Orpheum Theatre was/is located in Oxford, a small berg northeast of Durham. Medford lent prolific and unsparing voiceto Motion Picture Herald's "What The Picture Did For Me" column. He didn't mind chopping tall timber from major companies, thus putdown in plain words of Metro's Laughing Boy, WB's Mystery Of The Wax Museum, many others. Medfordspoke for showmen at the low end who had to live with patron disdain over dog movies. He'd fling red ink back at Paramountand Mack Sennett for rottenness that was The Fatal Glass Of Beer: "This is the worst comedy we have played from any company this season. No story, no acting, and as a whole has nothing." Medford's indictment would forever-after speak for 1933 response to The Fatal Glass Of Beer, it having been quoted in every Fields bio I've seen and certainly any discussion of a short called a stinker by most everyone recovering from initial view. So how do we account for maverick few who'd call The Fatal Glass Of Beer an enduring masterpiece of comedy?


Bill Presents Old Boss Sennett With a Special Academy Award
The story was Bill's. He'd put it on for the Earl Carroll Vanities and introduce what became a spread-among-schoolboys catch-phrase: It Ain't A Fit Night Out For Man Nor Beast. Fields beat that like a rug in the short, and many called him monotonous for it, but as Bill told producer Sennett, the idea was to put what he considered funny on the screen, and worry less about the audience. That naturally left Mack skittish, a condition made more so when the Fatal Glass was poured. Had Fields blown a fuse? His last, The Dentist, had laid them in aisles, but this would bark like the bulldog of Sennett credits, long missing from Beer prints, but happily restored to element used for The Mack Sennett Blu-Ray Collection. The Fatal Glass Of Beer was to Fields' mind a put-on, a mockery of Yukonmelodrama faked out with stage convention dating to the 19th century, but maybe that was too far back for 1933 auds not born when Bill noted foolishness of old styles. To those younger, it was just old as in not funny.


Variety gave Fatal Glass the frost, but Film Daily understood: "Clever process work and many amusing gags are part of the riot of laughter," said the trade's 6/3/33 review. Did it need sophistication and years' exposure to 10-20-30 stagecraft to "get" Bill's humor here? Clearly yes, but even Fields had to admit, to himself if not others, that comedy aimed for a mass public had to be moreaccessible. He'd not go so far out again till 40's haywiring of Never Give A Sucker An Even Break. Modern viewers are of course even less familiar with conventions Fields was spoofing, so The Fatal Glass Of Beer still has its hill to climb. I can but imagine how the thing played to college crowds during Fields-maniacal days of the 60/70's, where it had much circulation thanks to prints easily rented (generally at $10 per day) or bought (Blackhawk sold Beer at relative bargains in 8 or 16mm). I admit to liking The Fatal Glass Of Beer more with each visit. It is Fields walking the wire and maybe falling, but for some of his admirers, this is right up there with his most accomplished work.

Greenbriar highly recommends The Mack Sennett Collection from Flicker Alley, a Blu-Ray set of fifty comedies which includes The Fatal Glass Of Beer. Most all of comic luminaries from the silent and early sound era are here. It's just about the best assemblage of clowning so-far offered to home viewing, truly a one-stop for slapstick.
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Runner-Up Of Vet Homecomings

December 11, 2014, 7:30 am
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Till The End Of Time (1946) Is Best Years At Half The Sit

A drama about returning vets, Till The End Of Time is less heavy than the safe that fell on it a few months later, The Best Years of OurLives, a proud industry's Anointed One re serviceman readjust. Let's just say that if you've two hours of patience for this topic rather than three, then End Of ... may be wiser invest. It tries less hard to be The statement on discharge to civilian woes and settles instead for less intense tour 'round L.A.when it was still sun-kissed enough to seem an attractive spot for living. Thereare skate rinks, lawn parties, low dives ... spots cheery here, but soon to collect flies from noir interp. These service guys don't pack rods or prod into murder like Alan Ladd's crew in The Blue Dahlia, a darker turn on what happens to three war buddies getting off a bus in L.A. Till The End Of Time's Robert Mitchum has a steel plate in his head from Iwo action, but isn't so bent mentally as Bill Bendix in Dahlia (written, significantly, by Raymond Chandler). Till The End Of Time was really about the romance of coming home, all of troubles neatly overcome by getting chips off shoulders (Guy Madison), a little attitude adjustment (Bill Williams), and seeing your rehab counselor when needed (Mitchum).

Script Study Between Scenes for Dorothy McGuire and Guy Madison

Till The End Of Time is mentioned less, but did precede Goldwyn's brontosaurus. It was sold, not with emphasis on postwar issues, but love between beautiful people that were Dorothy McGuire (she of"kissable lips," according to publicity) and Guy Madison, who was photographed as much with shirt off as on. These were focal point of all ads, star creation a priority as dictated by David Selznick, who was silent partnered with RKO and sold them package that was Till The End Of Time, complete with stars, producing Dore Schary, and script-from-novel by Niven Busch. Selznick was by mid-forties given less to mounting own projects than developing ones to a point, then handing ready-to-go to RKO, a company happy for meals they'd only haveto microwave on soundstages. The split was good for all on a number of DOS/RKO ventures, % to each, and Schary wetting his beak as well. Some of negatives would revert to Selznick later: The Spiral Staircase, The Farmer's Daughter; but Till The End Of Time stayed with RKO, sunk deep in their TV lots, viewed often as not through bleary eye of late, late scheduling. Now there's at last a DVD, from Warner Archive, which looks good as likely will short of remaster to HD, which I hope is soon to-do by Warners.


A notable turn of phrase in 1946 promotion: Here's a photoplay that's timely and crammed with human interest, a drama of returned service men trying to adjust themselves to the forgotten conditions of peace, and anew to the influence of civilized womankind. Thus was essential difference between Till The End Of Time and The Best Years Of Our Lives, the latter focused primarily on mature men transitioning out of uniform (Fredric March, Dana Andrews), Years'younger principal Harold Russell largely immobilized by handicap. Till The End Of Time is about boys who've been rushed to manhood by combat and taking of lives overseas. Can "civilized womankind" back home straighten kinks left from three-four years at violent pursuit? This had to have been fear at least known if not felt by families taking back membership much changed by war. A potent scene in Till The End Of Time has "Cliff Harper" (Guy Madison) eating waffles prepared by his mother, who wants him still to be the boy she remembers, but distressed now as he refers to "stinking" foxholes and engages too-ribald chat with visiting Bill Tabeshaw (Robert Mitchum).


You Can Never Go Home (intact) Again is reality of Till The End Of Time, even as the picture goes yards toward reassuring us that these boys-suddenly-men will be OK with time and support extended by loved ones. The Brotherhood Of Broken Men is nicely conveyed when Cliff and Pat Ruscomb (Dorothy McGuire) comfort an Army discharge who's got post-trauma shakes. He sits isolated among kids in a canteen and can't pick up a Coke glass. Vets could spot trouble like his a mile off and would "close in" toassist where needed, says the film, and we can hope that was true during troubled time when so many wounded warriors were given back to civilian life. Whatever truth of the moment, it's sincerely done. Quick-to-temper and violent impulse as hangover from war is acknowledged by Till The End Of Time, Cliff a hair trigger at times (he nearly slugs an on-job supervisor), but he'll be calmed by "civilized womankind" that is Pat. Real life and solutions, if any, would not have been so simple, Till The End Of Time being palliative as most popular of movies were when addressing concerns that too sharp a focus could turn to despair. The Best Years Of Our Lives had dealt a same uplift, both films' mission to make customers feel good, or at least hopeful, on ways out of watching.


Vets from the First War are shown as lesscomplicated, Cliff's dad Tom Tully and neighbor pals sharing generation-ago laughs of Pariscelebration when their war ended. Had we forgotten post-WWI horrors by 1946, or were they best laid aside to address greater urgency at hand? To hear Tully and crew tell it, theirs was youthful lark of French leave and wine by barrels. Pop's of mind that all Cliff needs is a couple days rest before renew of school or work. You'd think less than twenty years between wars would be basis for understanding, but Till The End Of Time's father-son gap is wide. Was that a case in households shared by two generations of war service? More hazard awaits modern vets, it seems, not least a crush of suspect groups the film ID's as fascist-inspired. As in The Best Years Of Our Lives and Ray Teal at Dana Andrews' drug counter, these guys rate a sock in the jaw before getting a word out, both Best Years and Till The End Of Time of shared mind that free speech needn't apply where such intruders are concerned.

Some Of Welcome Shooting On L.A. Locations

Till The End Of Time cunningly set postwar problems to music. The theme tune was adapted from Chopin and lately sung by Perry Como. Kids found it dreamy. Imagine such a thing today. They also went for Guy Madison in a big way. He'd been in the Navy, met Selznick scouts on leave, and was tried in Since You Went Away as, what else?, a sailor on leave. Fan mail went skyward, his SYWA cameo calibrated to achieve just that, by which time DOS had Madison locked at $100 per week once out of uniform. He'd be awkward at times in Till The End Of Time, but photographed splendidly with Dorothy McGuire. Madisonwas bait on a hook tossed to bobby-soxers. They'd go see the movie on repeat basis. Ones who liked skating nearer the edge went for Bob Mitchum, his "the most immoral face I've ever seen," according to (at least) one gum-popper. Bob would serve as hard stuff to Madison's soft drink, postwar's noir landscape more congenial to him. Till The End Of Time was economically made, one million spent on the negative, and crossed three million in worldwiderentals. I suspect it was fondly remembered by first-run patronage, but time would leave Time crumbs beside the Goldwyn special, a slight hopefully to beredressed by Warner Archive's disc release.
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Perils Of A Peacetime Draft

December 12, 2014, 7:00 am
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The Girl He Left Behind (1956) Again Teams Tab and Nat

Pampered Tab Hunter drafted into the peacetime army after college grades slip. So staying in school was how to stay out of uniform in 1956? The device would work, at least for a while, into the Vietnam era. 50's conscription hung over boys through latter part of that decade, this after threat Korea had posed. Even Elvis got the compulsory invite. Being no war was on, Tab has to show mettle saving pals from errant grenades and maneuvers gone wrong. He's a wiseacre no real army would have tolerated, insolent to officers and going roughshod over drill instructors. Jack Webb in a following year's The D.I.would have had him busted out before end of a first reel. So The Girl He Left Behindmust be a comedy, as pressed by narrating Daws Butler, who I'll bet was added to cue laughs not otherwise forthcoming. Underlying story, but not the script, was by Marion Hargrove, who'd done close to a same thing for MGM during WWII. Cooperation was Army-extended, FortOrda location site. Tab Hunter plays surly against dream teen grain in anticipation of good work he'd do in Gunman's Walk, Natalie Wood in thankless title role. These two were what love teaming had come to at Warners by 1956.


Jack Warner told director David Butler to pick a young cast "from stock" and weed out ones thatdidn't click. Salary to these was $75-150 per week, so risk was slight. Butler preferred new-signed James Garner to Hunter for a lead, but J.L. was sold on another Tab-Nat to follow The Burning Hills. Garner plainly had presence the star lacked. I wonder if his part might have been shaved to protect Hunter, as was Martha Vickers in deferenceto less exciting Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep. Eagle eyes may spot other hopefuls in khaki; one I noted was future Fly-head model Brett Halsey. Again on Jack Webb topic, I wonder if his D.I. was part-riposte to service insult that was The Girl He Left Behind. Both addressed peacetime defense after singular fashion, Webb's being at least his idea of semi-doc treatment. Each now play like off-rail time capsules, which doesn't in any way reduce their fun potential.


The cloudy image at left, from going-on sixty years ago, is Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood at peak of shared fame, appearing with The Burning Hills at the Chicagotheatre, from which fire escape theygreeted  "teener" throng. The Girl He Left Behind would open at the WindyCity's State-Lake a few months later to "shaky" boxoffice, taking half in its second week of what Giant realized in an eighth at the Chicago Theatre. Elvis and Love Me Tender was trumping Tab-Nat at the Oriental. Overall for The Girl He Left Behind showed less than half of profit realized by The Burning Hills, WB wrapping the Hunter-Wood parlays with these. Competition for teen allowance had become fierce by late '56. Along with new-arrived Elvis and what footage was left of James Dean, there were rock and roll pics byincreased number and cheap chillers aimed downwind to kids (that same Chicago week saw Curucu, Beast Of The Amazon and The Mole Peoplealso licking The Girl He Left Behind). As with The Burning Hills, WB sold Girl with sex emphasis, "The Boy With The Barracks Bag and The Girl With The Overnight Case," though here it's inferred that the couple do spend a night together, judging by a hotel room embrace that dissolves to the couple drinking orange juice a next morning, that device borrowed from The Caine Mutinyof a couple years before. Warner Archive has The Girl He Left Behind available on DVD.
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Jim and Sam Fill Oversea Carts Again

December 13, 2014, 5:30 am
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Unearthly Stranger (1964) Gets Welcome Return On Blu-Ray

Saturation Booking In/Around Pittsburgh
American-International was on a non-stop shopper trip through Europe for all of the 60's. They'd handle more foreign stuff in the US than art pic purveyors. Since most of theirs were genre-based, no one gave Jim/Samcredit for quality they'd import, most titles needing years to gain cult, let alone, critical, foothold here. But look what we'd have missed but for AIP: the best of Mario Bava, afinal costume spectacularfrom Fritz Lang, many peplums, some of better Tohos w/ Godzilla and co., and backwash from Hammer that major distribs didn't want. Arkoff/Nicholson were champions of imagi-films (was that how FJA put it?), even if only for bucks. Unearthly Stranger was bought for presumed change in late-'63 as B/W support to features with more promise. There were dates through 1964 with The Last Man On Earth, then as backup for Masque Of The Red Death. Unearthly Stranger was in stateside circulation for a year and a half before Variety reviewed it, the "well-written" and ably-acted Brit film by then (September 1965) serving as second-feature to Godzilla vs. The Thing. This would also be the month that Unearthly Stranger came available to syndication, in AIP's "Amazing '66" package of sci-fi titles. By time of final accounting, it had realized  $72K in domestic rentals from 2,341 theatre/drive-in bookings, but compensation would be had from the TV sale, which more and more represented the real dollar value of genre features. Unearthly Stranger is newly available on Region Two Blu-Ray in an excellent 1.85 transfer. Fans who've waited a past fifty years to see, or revisit, this low-key and effective thriller will be well pleased with quality offered here.
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The Most Anticipated Show Of Its Year

December 14, 2014, 10:30 am
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For Whom The Bell Tolls (1943) Teams Cooper and Bergman

A wartime's big one that few remember anymore. What made interest slack? Part of trouble may be support players, all with accent, turned loose as "colorful" characters out of Hemingway; did he mean for them to come across like vaudevillians? The author was said to have been overall displeased. I'd have been too in the face of overlength alone: this runs close to three hours. Paramount cut Bells after opener engagements, then further for a 1958 reissue. Someof footage got lost and had to be culled from survivor prints for a 90's restoration. An overture was also rescued. Extensive location work took crew and cast into snowy region, all of which stuns in Technicolor and gave roadshow patronage their money's worth. Romance is favored over politics: we never understand what these resistors are resisting, or why (that was part of Hemingway's beef). The Robert Jordan lead was novel-writ for Gary Cooper, so he's ideally placed, if necessarily low-key in the face of bombast in support (is there a more annoying movie presence than Akim Tamiroff?). Once we get in the mountains, we're stuck there, whatever majesty of same. Love sceneswere daring for the day, especially a sleep bag seemingly shared by Coop and Ingrid Bergman. She wanted the Maria role desperately, little realizing the show done just before (Casablanca) would be her legacy. Tolls was the most anticipated US film since Gone With The Wind, first-run tickets for it selling higher even, but that was then and oh, how we've forgot since. Still, there are many good things here, especially in HD as on Netflix currently.
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Something New Has Been Dug Up

December 15, 2014, 7:19 am
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Ted Healy Gives His Stooges The Customary Treatment

Missing Stooge Link Hello, Pop! (1933) Is On DVD

What goes more viral than a thought-lost movie turning up? Hello Pop! was found in a garden shed by an Australian collector who'd come between the 35mm print and oblivion most film faced when outback runswere finished. Word was that Hello Pop! had been lost in an MGM vault fire back in 1967 (along with London After Midnight, many others), but there's been suggestion that the negative was junked before that. It had never been shown on television or made available to rent. There probably weren't a handful of people who saw Hello, Pop! since 1933. Being that it features the Three Stooges at early stage, the short assumes greater interest than most any that ravage of time could give up. Lots would rather this surface than Magnificent Ambersons uncut, Stooge enthusiasm not having cooled as seems case with other comics. The five orso other MGM shorts w/Stooges have been TCM-shown and doled here and there on video. Most are low on laughs, but off the chart as curiosities, being best a reflection of misguided missiles Leo aimed at theatres as support for features more carefully thought out.

Ed Brophy Tries To Reason with "Children" That Are Larry, Curley, Moe

Dancing Drop-In From Another, and Unfinished, Film
How many drove hours or rode subways from ahorizon to see Hello Pop! when it re-premiered at the Film Forum last year? And now there's Volume Three of Warner Archive's Classic Shorts From The Dream Factory to wrap rest of MGM Stooge subjects around this one resurrected from among rakes and weed eater. How to account for treasure kept in out-sheds? And yet that's where I came across 35mm during college-age search, old-timers storing nitrate alongside chickens laying, or corn in cribs (you wonder if it affected taste of the stuff when served). Hello Pop! is a little banged, but seems all there, amazing in itself for those eighty inclement years. Such rediscovery renders meaningless the question, Is Hello Pop! funny?. Fans will take what's there and levitate accordingly, as surely I would if that uncut Ambersonsturned up.


My attraction to Hello Pop! is more Ted Healythan the Stooges. To these eyes, the man was a panic and all-time least people person of funny folk, not excluding W.C. Fields. Larry, Moe, Curly had been along to crab Ted's act, the three a definition of "stooge" as practiced by vaudeville. Healy held liquor badly and didn't pull slaps. I expect most relationships in the man's life went way of crack-up with the Stooges, but there's not sense he gave much of a damn. Healy reached apex as surly sidekick, the always-vinegar served with music and more mainstream comedy. Hello Pop! is easily confused (at least by me) withHey, Pop!, a Roscoe ArbuckleVitaphone comedy released but months before (were showmen and their patrons as puzzled?). Hello Pop! has impurities, not just those Healy-imposed, but music numbers scraped off floor that was The March Of Time, a Technicolor revue MGM had blown wads on and couldn't release for the thing being so incoherent. They'd write off waste by using what numbers were finished as "highlights" of otherwise frugal two-reelers like Hello Pop!. You can see a good chunk from The March Of Time by sit through the six shorts on a disc otherwise best recognized as altar upon which Ted Healy may be worshipped, but be warned, he doesn't like wise guys, and always leads with a slap.
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A "Money Isn't Everything" Noir

December 16, 2014, 7:00 am
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Max Ophul's Caught (1949) On Blu-Ray

Of that category labeled Bummer Noir, Caught may be a weakest of Max Ophuls pics lensed in the US, though like all his done stateside, it's offbeat and never less than compelling. Reviews missed the point and called it "rusty, creaky melodramatic machinery," which sounds near right. Modern observers supply redress by citing a Euro director's trenchant observe of Yank materialism on most destructive setting, and so voila,Caught's a classic. Fact is, it sunk like stone in '49 and pleased nobody, domestic rentals a lowly $511K, the sorriest number on Metro books that year except for Tension, a cheapie noir done in-house. These were dimmest candles on the lion's 25th Anniversary cake. Releasing Caught was a favor done by Leo for David Loew, indie producer, family connected, and talent/money behind Enterprise Pictures, would-be oasis for film artists who wantedoff studio treadmills. By fall '48, Enterprisewas broke and floundering, Caught their last before giving up rented space at Harry Sherman's Hollywood lot.


Enterprise would need a big bank hypo, as in $300K, to keep making movies, but lenders wanted to wait and see how a final three from them would perform atwickets, optimism a keynote since MGM was distributing No Minor Vices, Force Of Evil, and finally, Caught. All three tanked, and so went Enterprise.  Caught had been most expensive of the trio, its negative cost $1.5 million. Loew's selling arm was flummoxed on how to sell such a narrative: Poor girl marries rich, is miserable, meets medico James Mason, ties up loose ends by, among other things, still-borning a child to pave way for happy end, a sour note Caught still sounds. Since when were dead babies occasion for smiles and fresh beginning? Parents particularly would have found this off-putting, only they were down streets watching Metro fare with greater promise: Little Women (the company's silver jubilee selection), Command Decision, and Take Me Out To The Ball Game, each with longer reach for grosses.


Merchandising led with its chin, but how could effective ads derive from such an unpromising premise? Waitress Marries Millionaire! shouted one, You Think She's Lucky --- She Wants To Be A Waitress Again!. This was like peddling JoanCrawford's shopgirl again, only that stock had sat on shelves since the early 30's and patronage was, by 1949, lots choosier. James Mason, lately in from Britain to try America luck, offered faint hope for marquees, and Barbara Bel Geddes was untried beyond a few at RKO that weren't vehicles for her. Delegates at the 2/49 anniversary sales meet were "admonished" (Variety) by both Louis Mayer and distrib chief William F. Rogers to "be aggressive" and get MGM product into "new territories," this a tall enough order where there was good currency, which Leo's competitor's certainly had, most more negotiable than Caught. Mayer never-minded that: "We're going to make pictures. It's up to you boys to sell them." Loew's east coast division, which Rogers headed, ID'ed quick a dog with fleas, and was known to deep-six stuff that emitted smell. To their practiced minds, all of Enterprisebarked, and was for putting down. No Minor Vices, Force Of Evil, and Caughtweren't really even MGM productions, after all.


Caught is on Blu-Ray after years gone begging for home release (there was a Region Two DVD as part of an Ophuls group). Quality is upgraded from listless 16mm that was tough to locate even in that compromised state. Caught takes swipes at Howard Hughes via nutsy tycoon clearly suggested by him, played by Robert Ryan. Hughes was said to have vetted the mimicry and let same pass, which makes him either thick-skinned or tone deaf to slam thiscertainly was. Ryan's "Smith Ohlrig" is neurotic, hypochondriac, and a control freak at cosmic level, these aspects of Hughes not so known beyond insiders during the 40's, but decided catnip for 70's and afterward bio/tell-alls. That Ryan could be a nasty piece of work on screen was understood after Crossfire. Of disturbed types he'd essay after the war, Caughtmay be a most disturbing. Ophuls lets Bel Geddes be less sympathetic by selling herself to such a tyrant, a deal she'll close for pure sake of cash and luxuries. The Money Won't Buy Happiness song as composed by Hollywood (not practiced by them, but preached to us) was never louder sung than here. Did critics and indifferent trade sense a false note?
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Precode Plunge From Way Up High

December 17, 2014, 5:30 am
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Skyscraper Souls (1932) Has 102 Floors of Deco and Decadence

When there are taller skyscrapers to be built, MGM will build them. We're shown the "DwightBuilding" at a beginning and throughout Skyscraper Souls. It reaches higher than the EmpireStatethat stands alongside, another instance where movies could go reality one better. The EmpireStatehad only lately been completed, a marvel of its age. Only natural, then, that Hollywood would climb higher. In this instance, a convincing matte canvas makes us wonder if there really was a DwightBuildingthere in 1932, and taken down since. Anyway, this is a more imposing structure on the inside than I'd presume the Empire to have been. Maybe inspired by ultimate statement on modernity that was the Empire State, MGM creates art deco heaven on earth, or 102 floors above it (their inspiration had 103). Warren William's "David Dwight," who of course masterminds the miracle, loathes to calculate a number of men who fell to deaths from scaffolding, and right away we think ofEdward G. Robinson in Two Seconds, or John Gilbert and pal Robert Armstrong as Fast Workers, all welding/wisecracking way up during a same year. It seemed as of '32 that best of life was to be experienced nearest to sky. Certainly things seemed bleaker at street level.


The DwightBuilding is where rich and poor work, or play, tightest together. Bank teller Norman Foster gets $50 a week atground floor while bank owner Warren William juggles millions upstairs. Wage slaves are packed aboard elevators as WW rides his in privacy. Something's got to give, of course, Warrenpulling one two many cheats, then shot down in his penthouse not unlike King Kong a year later. To reach a skyscraper top meant having no place to go but ... well, that was OK by audiences who thought such men (or gorillas) had scaled too close to God. Was there religious significance to price paid by those rising above all humanity? A public so recently out of horse/carriage must have sensed the unnatural in buildings thatchallenged the atmosphere. And all those lost souls jumping off! One thing we could rely on with any drama set high was characters playing swan to resolve one or more plot thread. The real thing was happening often enough in concrete jungles. Imagine anyone hitting pavement from 102 stories up. Could one ever rid the mind of such horrific sight? --- and yet New Yorkers by thousands saw it happen during the Depression, some more than once.

Both Want Maureen: Will Either Have Her?

Skyscraper Souls warns of how greed can ruin you. Worship of fast money from the stock market is strictly no-win, a Code preached even by pre-Codes. As banker Dwight manipulates the market upstairs, all of chumps below him put life saving into shares he plans to render worthless by closing bell. Movies continually told us we weren't smart enough to beat that system. They still do. Better to earn honest wage and spend modestly, like on Bijou tickets with the family. Had Hollywooddeduced that richest folks didn't bothermuch going to picture shows? (a step further: How many wolves of Wall Street have ever read Greenbriar?). Hollywood's message to any Average Joe purchasing stock: Don't. Better to shoot dice or play cards for tainted cash, and lose it quicker. Millionaires in movies usually stayed well in a background, so as not to remind us that sometimes money does buy happiness. Ones viewed up close had to end badly as admonishment against wanting too much from life. That's partial letdown of Skyscraper Souls --- we don't want Warren William taking a penalty, even as status quo, maintained too during precode, deems that he must.


William is at least a fittest among plutocrats, being an only Turkish bather not 50-100 poundsoverweight. His party guests, aged roués preying on young flesh, are welcome (for us) victims of WW double-cross to come. We'll accept the latter's defile of Maureen O'Sullivan so long as corpulent and corrupt George Barbier doesn't get her, it being settled that one of them will. But what prospects has Maureen from her own working class, big-mouth and pushy Norman Foster forcing attentions with constant leap to wrong conclusion when Maureen parties at William's penthouse or lunches with him. Foster is no vote for the common man, Souls' end amounting to a sad one when O'Sullivan yields to him out of seeming sheer exhaustion. One precode breath-taker to note is her non-verbal and very visible response to a forced kiss from Foster part way into Skyscraper Souls, astartler that definitely wasn't scripted and I've seen no other (mainstream) movie duplicate.


Skyscraper concept was off Grand Hotel's rack, being multi-character and story-split among many. Adapted from a Faith Baldwin novel, there were changes, and probably improvement, made. I can see daily consult with Irving Thalberg as the script was cobbled, this a sort of project where tips from a mind like his could smooth wrinkles and make silk from burlap. As "all-star" successor to Grand Hotel, Skyscraper Souls is watered gin, but we'd not want others elbowing Warren William, whose vehicle this very much is, or should be, but for cutaways to crisis among less engaging Wallace Ford, Anita Page, Jean Hersholt, others. Page and O'Sullivan would pass each other in this Metro revolver door, Maureen just off the first Tarzan and bearer of a contract and build-up, as Page, thanks to refusal of Louis Mayer come-on (she said),was exit bound to poverty row. Skyscraper Souls would be her next-to-last for Leo. Luxury appointment of Skyscraper's setting made these monoliths seem like 30's equivalent of Disneyland. Did tourists to Gotham put the EmpireState and ChryslerBuildings on must-sight-see lists? Just hanging about a lobby like one depicted in Skyscraper Souls would have been a day's vacation for me. But then old pic fans could say as much about any NYC setting from that more attractive time.

Old Goats and Young Flesh Was A Precode Cocktail Often Poured

Did Warren William ever wish he could be Warren William? Cary Grant would later confess an envyof his own screen persona. William was ruthless and unstoppable, qualities 98% of men would covet. His characters were antidote to poverty and despair that was Depression's signature. William could beat back wolves of want and make it seem simple as a next raw deal he'll puts across. Watching him must have been opiate in 1932. It certainly is today with action and speech so severely proscribed by unwrit Production Code more limiting than that enforced from mid-'34. William is one old star who can reach across generations and make us wish we could be his kind of winner-whatever-the-means. Inscared rabbit age that is now, he's something like superhuman. And yet the man was mere actor, meekly accepting of roles assigned and able to play even milquetoast if put to that task. He got and stayed married for whole of a screen career, none of pic perfidy rubbing off on private habits or inclination. The man obviously had firm grip of difference between fantasy and reality. Lesser thesps might have been straightaway swallowed up by sorts of screen work William engaged (and seemed so much to enjoy), not unlike a Ronald Colman made mad by overdose of Othello in A Double Life.
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Nice Brit Crime Thriller Lately Out

December 18, 2014, 7:00 am
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The Counterfeit Plan Is Warner Back-Up For 1957

Co-produced by Richard Gordon in England, before he'd concentrate on horror/sci-fi subjects. The Counterfeit Plan was good enough for Warners to pick up for distribution in the US, their only Brit buy for that year other than two Hammers thatwould play wide/gross big: The Curse Of Frankenstein and X --- The Unknown. The Counterfeit Plan was of a sort trades called good for duals and action housing, being crime-centered with faces familiar to Yank market. These were Zachary Scott and PeggieCastle, the former paid $25K for his trip across the pond, according to Tom Weaver's book surveyof Richard Gordon's producing career (excellent and highly recommended). The Counterfeit Plan has Scott and cohorts printing funny money on an English estate, flooding Londonwith fake fivers. Warners needed fare like this to support '57's Untamed Youth, Shoot-Out At Medicine Bend, others that couldn't hold up singly. For L.A. saturation of Jack Webb's The D.I., for instance, The Counterfeit Plan rode back seat and had probably a largest audience for the couple weeks it played in five theatres and seven drive-ins. Afterward, there'd be spotty television and belated release to DVD by Warner Archive, where The Counterfeit Plan can be enjoyed for a brisk and enjoyable thriller long obscure till now.
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Radio Feuds Won't Rest!

December 19, 2014, 7:00 am
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Winchell vs. Bernie in Wake Up and Live (1937)

How to take a bandleader and news columnist and make them movie attractions, a cooked-up "feud" driving tissue narrative against backdrop of song. Itworks, and how, as barometer of what pleased in days when a public paid real attention to what press and radio fed them daily, there being no better demo of media power than Walter Winchell giving/taking licks from yowsah-man Ben Bernie, their contretemps profitable in a long run for both. To that slim frame add 20th Fox funmakers Jack Haley, Patsy Kelly, Ned Sparks ... well, the list goes on. Beyond these, Joan Davis just has to show up, and so does in specialty slapstick. Wake Up and Live is what we'd accurately call "escapism" in a best sense of old Hollywood. Being unfamiliar with pop culture of the day would make it seem like foreign language.When a thing like this shows up on DVD, I'm amazed, but gratifyingly so. Wake woke 1937 trade to rave response, a "bulls-eye" and single day record holder for a past five years at Broadway's Roxy. It was understood that Jack Haley was a feature star born with this. Winchell and the cast guested on Ben Bernie's radio program to stir interest, the home box holding thrall over a wider public than even movies by '37. The only rub for such synergy was its failing to translate overseas. Wake Up and Live took a lofty $1.2 million in domestic rentals, but foreign was meager with $358K. Still, there was $190K profit at the end, and indication that a cycle of such musicals would click, which they did over a next several seasons until the real breakthrough that came withFox's Betty Grable series. Wake Up from Fox DVD Archive looks fine.
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Betty Boop's Nightgown Comes Off Again

December 20, 2014, 5:00 am
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Mysterious Mose (1930) Is Deep In Fleischer Bizarre

There's an intruder at Betty Boop's door! What could he have in mind? The Fleischer team knew we knew, or were at least aware of Max's bunch as purveyors of cartoon sauce and sex, their hanging about brothels during off-hours a creative stimulant peculiar to East Coast animating bad boys. Betty's alarm is signaled by her nightgown flying upward every time there's a noise. Glimpse of Boop nudity was a carrot alwayshanging in her shorts (did I say that?); she'd be a drawn figure as leered at as laughed with. This was early in Betty's reign; she still has distracting dog ears, but is otherwise human and curve-some. Bimbo is the title's menace lover and shape-shifter, issuing Bronx cheers and less bent on defiling Betty than dancing a merry tune till sudden finish of a less than six minute reel. Well, Paramount's release schedule had to be filled with something, and Fleischer cartoons, even if oft-better in parts than whole, had imagination enough then to stand up as well now. A bunch have surfaced on Blu-Ray, not chronological nor sensibly organized, but welcome withal after years floating in netherworld of discs dubbed off laser of long ago.
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Is An Atom Brain Better Than None?

December 21, 2014, 7:30 am
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Home Lab Yields Undead in Creature With The Atom Brain (1955)

Some accounts would have us think that American-International pioneered the cheap sci-fi combo, but Columbia was ahead of them, and probably gave inspiration for double-features where a whole show could be watched inside of two and one half hours. Creature With The Atom Brainwas back-stop for It Came From Beneath The Sea, posters lurid in accord with school's out expectation for summer 1955. The majors hadspent money on sci-fi in the past, with diminishing returns, and would surrender the genre to budget-makers, then imitate the latter when it became clear what economy merchandise could earn. Creature With The Atom Brain was another from Sam Katzman's wing of Columbia, his Clover Productions an independent maker of whatever sold at given moments. Right now it was chillers, so he made them. Sam used the Columbia lot and had an office there, but tapped banks for much of financing so as to soften pressure of the distributor's thumb he was under. Creature With The Atom Brain earned an impressive $415,000 in domestic rentals, likely four times what Katzman spent to produce it. Overstuffed A's could hope to dohalf so well. The plot has something to do with dead bodies reanimated for use as remote control killers. Curt Siodmak wrote it and results aren't bad, provided you make plenty of allowance. Kids that spent theirs in 1955 were likely pleased, as I was with Columbia's entire Sam Katzman Collection on DVD.
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Nice Show, But A Tough Sell

December 22, 2014, 6:00 am
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V.Johnson and P.Douglas Switch ID's For When In Rome (1952)

Another little Metro that couldn't (break even). Seems that by early 50's, none of theirs in black-and-white, sans vehicles for top names like Gable, Taylor, or Tracy, came back with profit. Didn't matter how good pics were: without color or marquee lure, they were snake-bit. When In Rome should have been a breakout, stoked as it was with humor and heart. Director Clarence Brown had lately done one similar, Angels In The Outfield, a cockles warmer that deserved applause, which it got ... along with red ink. Execs used to say that surest cure for H'wood blues was good pictures, but here they were and not selling. The bogeyman was television, and whatever recreation a public enjoyed other than theatres. It took king-sized worldwide hits like Quo Vadis and Scaramouche to truly fill nets. MGM released thirty-eight features in 1952, but they couldn't all be Quo Vadis. Continuing overhead and need for product to fill distribution channels made small projects essential to studio health, but when even these ran past one million in negative cost, where was chance to balance ledgers?


Director Brown took cameras and principal cast abroad for six weeks locationing in the EternalCity, economic sense lying in fact that impounded lire would otherwise sit idle. "Cold coin" was better spent making movies in countries refusing to allow cash earned within borders to be taken out. Italy wanted Yank dollars spent on native soil. When In Rome would employ locals for crew work and incidental casting, these a boon to troubled economy. Twenty-eight features had been shot by US companies overseas in 1950, and six more were in progress during a first half of 1951, including MGM's team which arrived in June. Others relied on second units to capture backgrounds for process insertion to shows filmed back home, but When In Rome put stars Van Johnson and Paul Douglas on streets and in historic buildings where action took place. Clarence Brown made accomplished use of settings just as he had for a winning hand of Metros made, at least in part, on US locations: Angels In The Outfield, To Please A Lady, Intruder In The Dust, The Yearling.


Metro merchandising knew When In Rome would be a tough sell, their "Promotion Prize" for exhibitors being tip-off to that. If you couldn't figure in-house how to sell problematic problem, then letshowmen in the field take a whirl and use ideas they develop, cost being a drop-in-bucket thousand dollars to be split among winners ($500 as first prize, which went to Jack Sidney, manager of Loew's Century in Baltimore). The scheme was used also forInvitation and Just This Once, two others that defied marketers. These were tough nuts New Yorkcursed Dore Schary for making on the coast. How do you let customers know what this product is? Ads ran a gamut at trying, Rome's first act laid out as hopeful lure for patronage to pay ways in and see the rest. "The Story Idea Of The Year!" and "You'll Have A Wonderful Time!" read like admissions of defeat. Variety caught a preview and said frankly that "chances for more than spotty boxoffice are doubtful." The reason? "Lack of star potency and a story not strong enough on its own to carry the film." Standards were exacting then, trades knowing a jaded public would need better reason to leave home for movie shows they could as easily pass up. Final blow-off was a $900K loss from tepid domestic rentals of $503K and foreign $202K. For $1.3 million Metro (over)spent on the negative, this worthy show never had a chance.
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It's From The 40's For Sure

December 23, 2014, 7:54 am
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Have Yourself a Merry Christmas In Connecticut (1945)

Sirius radio broadcast a startling holiday greeting last week --- from Sydney Greenstreet. This is the Jolliest, Merriest, Christmas I Ever Spent, he declares just ahead of signature guffawthat by 1945 came with every Greenstreet performance. The line was part of Christmas In Connecticut's trailer, and I wonder how many 2014 listeners recognized the movie, or him. The picture wasn't built to last, being bound in 40's milieu, but somehow it has. Warners lately voted with a Blu-Ray release --- did their buyer research suggest eagerness for the title? Christmas In Connecticut never had a reissue, but like so many Yule-set oldies, was annual gift to viewers from initial syndication in 1956. Individual markets either had it regular, or not at all. We were among the not-at-alls, NC stations havingbacked off pre-49 WB's by the mid-60's and not shopping with them again until UHF burgeoned in the early 70's. Nowadays Christmas In Connecticut looks like a million. You can almost taste fake snow that fell upon sound stages posed as outdoor winter. Like so much of wartime Warners, this was shot entirely between walls, even as action called for trees, sleighs, the rest. Here is close as you'll get to a 40's Christmas card come to highly artificial, but endearing, life.


It's all less about Christmas than food. Everyone's got eating on their minds. Dennis Morgan dreams of a feast while on a lifeboat awaiting rescue, then affiances himself to a hospital nursejust so he can get steak and chops rather than gruel his stomach can stand. Barbara Stanwyck poses as a homemaker for sake of her magazine column where, among other things, she dispenses recipes. S.Z. Sakall is a chef who prepares meal after scrumptious meal. Ritual is observed for pancakes and how they're flipped. Menus are read like sacred text. Greenstreet is, of course, obsessed with eating, and will travel a distance to Christmas dine with strangers, so long as they set lavish table. So why this mulling over meals? Part of reason was ongoing shortage of ingredients. Sugar was still rationed in the US as of Christmas1945. There wasn't enough butter in Wisconsinfor the holidays, and bread was tough to come by in San Francisco, thanks to a bakery drivers strike. There was abundance of turkeys available (this not necessarily the case in other countries). Three million servicemen were home for the holidays who'd missed the year, or years, before. Christmas 1945 would be characterized as "The Greatest Celebration in American History," what with war over, most of boys back, and presumed plenty for everyone to eat.


Christmas In Connecticut fairly drowns in topical reference. Men are either in uniform or explaining why they're not. Neighbors work in war plants. A dance is held to sell victory bonds. Stanwyck "feels like Charlie McCarthy" when Greenstreet speaks for her. A player like S.K. Sakall, funny in the 40's, less so now, plants Connecticutroots deep in that era."Cuddles" could earn laughs just for jiggling jowls, to sometime annoyance of fellow players (Cagney found Sakall a pain, Alan Hale couldn't stand sight of him). Christmas In Connecticut is based on 40's assumption that everyone read slick magazines, which at that time they nearly did. Sydney Greenstreet is high and mighty publisher of same, a benign forebear to Charles Laughton's Earl Janoth in three years later The Big Clock. Barbara Stanwyck is nationwide famous for her homemaker column, a concept utterly foreign to much-changed present day. Magazines did matter then, like newspapers. Now both seem quaint, as does notion that a whole country would read them.


Christmas In Connecticut has a lot of bawdy humor, the war having loosened censorship where sex jest was based onmisunderstanding. In that circumstance, you could talk about the act, so long as no one was engaging it outside marriage vow. Housemaid Una O'Connor is ready to quit her post for thinking Stanwyck and fiancé Reginald Gardner have slept together. Greenstreet comes to towering rage in belief that Stanwyck has borne a bastard child. He'll come close to uttering the word, while O'Connor virtually does when misprouncing Sakall's character name, Felix Bassenak. Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan stand with a cow that he appreciates for having "a nice rump," Stanwyck assuming, of course, that he means hers. That's the sort of humor we're talking about, but I'll bet it raised ceilings at a crowded Strand and elsewhere. Christmas In Connecticut would have afirst cousin in Pillow To Post, released but two months ahead, and remarkably similar in all suggestive, but ultimately innocent, ways.


Home came Christmas In Connecticut for holidays, decor after Early American example. This had been fashion since Williamsburgrestoration in the late 30's and public embrace of things rustic/homey. Everyone, it seemed, wanted hearths warm and toasty as those sat before here. C In C star Dennis Morgan made request for set blueprints so he could duplicate the look in personal digs, and there was much mail to Warners with similar inquiry. Christmas In Connecticut wrapped on 8/1/44, but release was held a year to get out backlog of war-themed productbefore cessation of hostility rendered them moot. Nutty it seemed to release Christmas In Connecticut in depth of summer, but distribution knew a long autumn and run-up to holidays would see the pic in many of smaller situations likely to enjoy it most. Timing, as things turned out, could not have been more ideal. Christmas In Connecticut played like eggnog we'd come home for. It took no genius to figure the state of Connecticut for premiering, a stateside August 8 bow declared an early Xmas holiday by the governor, with Norwalk a focal point of twenty town/cities participating.


Well Along a Long Run in Chicago
Servicemen being transferred from European to Pacific theatres of war were honored, a parade led by radio's Colonel Stoopnagle, with opera fave Lawrence Tibbett in performance. Out-of-town press and magazine scribes "were met by beautiful young Santa Claus assistants dressed inshort red skirts, trimmed with white fur; red bolero-style jackets, red caps, and white boots. Bare legs and bare midriffs added to their attractiveness." 20,000 participated in a jitterbug contest that would follow. All of war news was pushed off the front page of Norwalk's newspaper to record C In C's gala. A same week saw Warners pushing Pride Of The Marines at Philadelphia site of an equally large open. Such premieres needed teamwork the equal of effort in making the movies. Celebration of a Christmas In Connecticut or Pride Of The Marines would come and go as all such events do, but effect was felt forintense local interest and far-flung coverage (live radio always playing a part). Said Showmen's Trade Review: "Perhaps the most remarkable thing about these two Warner campaigns is the fact that enormous amounts of newspaper space was devoted to the events at a time when the most important news stories of the impending end of the war with Japan and of the atomic bomb were breaking."
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