Article 17

June 29, 2013, 5:30 am

It's 1983, and Gene Kelly Is Ushering In The Real Golden
Age For Vintage Movies

Old Extinct Movies Are Better Than Ever --- Part One

Being another of those hectoring "opinion" posts like THISandTHIS, mercifully spread to two parts. As Bob said when Bing started to sing, this might be a good time to go out for popcorn:

There's been talk in a last year of old movies facing extinction like dinosaurs, whereas it seems to me the only dinosaurs may be ones making that complaint, judging by what is, by all appearance, a peak period we're experiencing of interest and enthusiasm for vintage pix. Do so-called "millennials" indeed shun classics? Naysayers (folk I'd guess to be at least as old as me) claim there'll never be another Golden Age of film appreciation like the 60/70's, when viewing generations were said to happily co-exist in shared love of relic stuff. I'd say agreed to those who claim today's generation is not interested in the classic era to degrees we were ("we" being those who came of age in mythic Gold days). The current generation is, in fact, moreengaged than any I grew up with.

We who aren't deep in the life of IPad/Phones, Twitter, and the universe of social networking have but faint idea of what goes on. Old-timers feed off each other's mistaken notion that no one loves old movies like we love old movies. What goes onamong a large and appreciative modern-day film culture sometimes makes me wish I'd been born closer to now than back when. There are high school students, many, not a few, who blog or tweet insightfully on film. They didn't come to it the way middle-age and olders did. Pictures that were nowhere in my alleged Golden Age can be seen in the palm of their hands.

To those who would say this is no way to view a classic, I'd refer to a ten-inch B/W tube that many a night traded me classics for sleep through a glaze of snow and endless interrupt for ads (imagine viewer reaction if TCM dropped a commercial into one of their movies).This was reality of coming up then. I was lucky to see a Bride Of Frankenstein once in three years, always diminished through vagaries of syndication. Now there are numerous formats by which to enjoy it in a next five minutes. Today's student of film needn't wait for favorites to surface in revival joints ancestors attended. Those are mostly gone in any case, and never mind the romance of revival housing ... many, if not most, of them used 16mm prints that wouldn't pass muster today. Movie fans now can watch whatever they want, anytime and anyplace. It's (mostly) all out there somewhere, legitimate or otherwise.

TCM remains the temple around which everyone gathers. That is the happy co-existence many recall (or imagine) from the 60/70's, and it's a larger body by far than Shangri-La seen through rose-color glass. When came the truest awakening to classic movies? Everyone likes to think it was when he/she was young and discovering the life. I was introduced in the 60's and entrenched by the 70's. That was a Golden Age only because my enthusiasm was so, but if I'd come along in the 80's or 90's, things would have been better, at least more accessible. They had video cassettes, plus AMC when it was starting out and worthwhile. Surely this would have been a Golden Era had I been ten years old in 1984 instead of 1964.

There were two dozen oldies broadcast by the 80's for every one that I plowed for and could barely receive on stone-age TV, and wasn't TNT rolling out recently acquired MGM and pre-48 Warner titles by 1985? The Showtime network had Red-Headed Woman, Reunion In Vienna, and any number of rarities around this time (and now Reunion In Vienna's gone again, though homemade VHS of it floats freely). Certainly I wasn't the only one watching these. Things would improve yet, with TCM's 1994 arrival a buff's equivalent to invention of the printing press. This to my mind is where our Golden Age truly began. DVD's bow a few years later merely confirmed that here was opportunity's loudest knock to discover and make a life's pursuit of classic movies. The ability torecord on VCR and later DVR made film librarians of us all. I still have, and can still watch, a VHS cassette of Manhattan Melodrama captured off Chicago's WGN back in 1978. There's a guy not half a mile from me who has over ten thousand movies on every format introduced since the late-70's, even Beta. Ask him about a Golden Age and he'll tell you it's been going on for thirty-five years.

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Article 16

June 30, 2013, 2:34 am

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June 1985: Imagine One Of Them Being Yours For $29.95!

Part Two On Extinct Movies Being Here To Stay

One admitted difference, and a big one, is this: None of vintage bounty is free. Even TCM comes with a price in terms of basic cable or satellite required to get it. The streaming stuff involves a subscription or per-movie rental. You can crib features off You Tube or online elsewhere, but that presupposes you paid for Internet service and hardware/screensto view on. Truly vanished is TV as a free medium, unless you hang an antenna or still use rabbit ears to pull signals (would that even work? It's been so long since I tried). DVD's get mighty expensive when ones you must have are toted up. Before long, the house is filled to rafters and you've not looked at half. It's a good thing rats aren't lured by shiny discs or my digs would be infested.

Some will complain that too many titles remain unavailable. Outside of London After Midnight and ConventionCity, what are they? Anything that exists is somewhere. Even stuff buried in archives has been run off at some point. Don'trecall what John Ford silent it was that was found a year or two ago, but someone offered it to me last week. Maybe such looks lousy or was shot with an I-phone, but it can be got (UPDATE: As demonstration of how accessible such is, I've lately learned that the found Ford is soon out on legit DVD) . A lot of those who say they can't locate something just aren't looking in the right places. For myself, bootlegs are a last resort for pix I need to watch for some reason (assuming there's such thing as real need in this silly pursuit). They're generally not going to look so hot, although ones can surprise you. A guy handed me a plain-wrap of 1931's Graft (pre-Frankenstein Karloff!) at a show and promised a pip, and by jiggers, it proved to be just that.

I don't get logic of my generation having it made forty years ago. Full disclosure obliges recall of pathetic handful of 8/16mm prints I schlepped along to group shows where too much light poured through shade-drawn windows. Pictureyourself seated before Kino's Blu-Ray of Sherlock Jr., then imagine a classroom desk in 1972, and me unspooling an 8mm print to freshmen resolved never again to so inflict themselves. Of course,our standards were lower then. How else would I stay at it and be here today? But with current technology at hand, no one need settle for less than best (although again, it comes with costs). There's part of why I maintain more young people enjoy classics than ever before.

Go into many highschool/colleges, large enrollment please, and there's a handful of at least occasional watchers, if not devotees. When I most recently did campus shows, and this was for a period between five and twelve years ago, there was steady and often capacity attendance. I made a point of showing not just boilerplate typicals like Casablanca, Singin' In The Rain, etc., but oddballs and obscurities that some in the crowd invariably recognized. Music-and-effect (never called silent) shows always did well. My audience had seen enough on TCM and once-upon-time AMC to grasp the vocabulary of non-talking features, and it wasn't just comedies they'd come to watch. To compare my average audience size with ones that attended during treasured late 60's peak (again, so-called), I consulted with a local friend who oversaw Wake Forest University's (then College) film program forty-five years ago. Wake had one of the best series in the country during the late 60's/70's (The Sopranos'David Chase was a WF student then, and much influenced by it), but according to my contact, their average attendance was no greater than mine in the 2000's.

I'm admittedly not in trenches of revival screening today. A lot of you are and thus have better perception of current reality. I just don't believe vintage pix are on any tracks out, more being at fingertips to watch than I'd see in ten morelifetimes. I'm like Joe Besser in the plunging plane who says he can't die yet because he hasn't seen The Eddy Duchin Story. Well, don't lower my curtain yet, for I've not caught The Eddy Duchin Story in HD, even as I'm secure in knowledge it'll stream somewhere provided I live long enough. If old film is headed for tar pits, then book me for a same descent toward greater accessibility plus quality on constant upswing (what better evidence than Criterion's Safety Last?). Classics going extinct? I expect them to get nothing but better.

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Leo and Huntz Are Jungle Gents (1954)

July 1, 2013, 5:28 am

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Was The Mid-60's Too Late For an All-Night Bowery Boys Marathon?
Not in Winston-Salem, N.C.!

Greenbriar still learning to love the Bowery Boys, one rediscovered masterpiece at a time:

Sach develops facility for sniffing out diamonds and so sets the Bowery Boys upon Africa safari for lost mines, soundstage jungle a congenial backdrop for BB antics. Monogram continued this series well into Allied Artists respectability, revenue predictable as a rising sun. Walter Mirisch tells it well in his 2008 book, I Thought We Were Making Movies, Not History. Exhibitors, especially in small towns, much preferred Bowery Boys over big-studio specials routinely nixed by a customer base on the dwindle. Drive-ins could fill their lot (and all-night schedule) as well on Gorcey/Hall happenings. Repeat corndog runs were encouraged by non-existent narrative of a typical Bowery Boys, another reason why showmen and concessioners liked them often. What with delight distraction of eating and social intercourse at crowded venues, the screen was a least compelling element of theatre-going, reason good as any for BB's continuing to play deep into the 60's and way past their release to TV. More than one showman asked why the Boys had quit; for the trade it was like herding off geese in midst of laying gold eggs. Any series to stay lit for over twenty years had to be doing something spectacularly right.

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July 1, 2013, 1:30 pm

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Clark Gable Between Big Pictures: After Office Hours (1935)

Clark Gable runs neutral here just ahead of major hits that would consolidate him as Hollywood's King. Constance Bennett gets favored billing, a contractual if not earned distinction. Fast-talker newshounds are wedded to murder detection, blendingIt Happened One Nightwith The Thin Man. Genre-mixing was figured to mix patronage as well, a frothy please-everyone blend, After Office Hours being what fan mag readers loyally turned out for after page-glimpse of synopsis or stills. Hundreds of the latter spewed from minor-est of star vehicles, a cast laying aside days to sit/stand for them. Stills, after all, had to be posed and lit as carefully as action for a finished film. Teaming of Bennett with Gable was fulfillment of long-held desire stoked by quarter or less priced periodicals sold at drug and notion check-out by clerks who wished they wereBennett or Gable. Less frequent, meaning choosier, moviegoers would wait for truly special Mutiny On The Bounty, the sort of event to supply momentum for fluff along After Office lines.

Let's You and Him Fight!, says Connie, as I Sit Wondering Seventy-Eight Years
Later If Gable Ever Took Home Neat Wardrobe He Donned In MGM Pics.

It was strategic placement of expensive specials that kept filler like After Office Hours on a paying basis, Mutiny for instance needing $1.9 million to complete,while AOH was managed for negative costs of only $366K. After Office Hours was a sort of programmer you'd see in 1935 when going out to a movie mattered more than what movie they played. Not a few patrons would pass under a marquee for the ticket window without even looking up at what was on. After Office Hours was for this kind of audience. Much of 72 minutes is Gable/Bennett spooning, what his matinee idolaters were primarily there for, but noteworthy is screenplay credit for Herman J. Mankiewicz, focused on a press story as he'd later be with Citizen Kane. Are there hints of CK themes to come? Not that I could discern, and based on unremarkable Mankiewicz result, it's tougher to argue Pauline Kael's case that HM, and not Welles, was Kane's truest author. Gable'sunmasking of Hours' killer involves leap of faith laughable on close inspect, though logic being lowest priority makes all that a moot point.

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Whose Golden Age Was This?

July 2, 2013, 9:32 am

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I Have a Library ... Maybe 4,000 Titles, says Video Enthusiast Martin Scorsese. This 1985
Ad Couldn't Be More Quaint If Marty Were Wearing Beads and a Nehru Jacket

Video Cassettes --- Now There's Extinct

Holy Cow --- Look At These Prices!

Belaboring the past weekend's topic about the very survival of old pix.

Home video was the first legitimate, mass-market way of owning movies. You could get chunks of them before on 8 or 16mm, even more-less complete back in Kodascope days, a pursuit limited to niche (and well-heeled) hobbyists. The first time I saw home video was in the mid-seventies, a recollection so dim as to question reality of it. Did I dream the woman who'd worked in a TV station and snuck out video recording equipment years before, just so she could capture episodes of Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea off ABC each week? Her archive, and OCD to surpass my own, foresaw home video years before anyone came to theconcept, the reward a full run of Voyages with vintage commercials intact. Never mind bulky (and probably balky) tape that was an inch, three-quarter inch ... can't recall which ... and a recorder taking up half the lady's den. You had to be impressed by anyone who loved Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea enough to go through all this to have it.

Something They Had That We Don't --- Republic Serials on Legit Home Format

Remember How Lovely Vertigo Looked on VHS?

I disdained video for a long while because it wouldn't project. To have Beta or VHS wasn't "really" collecting. What was to brag about owning a cassette anyone could get? By late 1978, the bug had bit, though after chasing film fourteenyears, itseemed steps down. Frankly, the romance of (collecting) celluloid had dimmed a little by then as well, even as I was years admitting that to myself. Plunge into VHS amounted more to resignation than commitment. Bigger fulfill might have come of being younger at the time, but there are finite seasons any of us have for maximal joy at any pursuit. For me, the peak was 1968-78, highs never quite so high afterward. Not that video wasn't fun, and certainly a novelty. For a first time, you could record off TV! If only I'd had this when Dr. Evil was showing Universal horror on late-night Channel 3 ...

The First Batch of Pre-48 Metros To Be Offered on VHS

My set-top monolith was from RCA, with piano-looking keys you had to push hard to get down. Myriad means were there to foul up, all of which I came round to. Blank tapes being scarce made each recording a decision judiciously arrived at.Memory suggests they cost $20, maybe a little more. You could squeeze just under 130 minutes on a cassette at standard play. First features I recorded were a Selznick quartet that CBS ran as weeknight Late Movies during 12/78 holidays, being The Spiral Staircase, Portrait Of Jennie, Rebecca, and Spellbound. These were network-played as opposed to syndication via an affiliate, so prints were 35mm and excellent. Rebecca gave suspense beyond story values for being 130 minutes on the nose with doubt as to whether one tape would hold it. I got to moments before the end title and fritz-out, OK despite that because this was Rebecca and now she was mine. I'd spent two-and-a-half hours pausing precise on commercial breaks and felt at an end as though Everest itself had been scaled.

Making The Club Scene, But Few Real Oldies Were Offered

Unless I'm Mistaken, The First Disney Classic Offered on VHS

There came local movies I'd stay up to wrangle. One was Treasure Of The Sierra Madre off Charlotte's Channel 36. They unspooled at 3 AM, so there went a night's sleep, but I'd be spared edits, this being late, late night. At 126 minutes, it would be a haul till dawn, but reward seemed equal to effort, this being, after all, a Golden Age for Classic Movies I was living in. What didn't reveal itself till too late was Channel 36's intent to stop the movie after two hours, a reel at least before the end. No finish nor promise of same at a later time. I sat with a useless tape of an incomplete feature, neither a first nor last letdown dealing with yokel broadcasts. A brighter dawn would break when American Movie Classics opened doors (10/1/84). A lot of us recorded old RKO titles from there because all were complete and uninterrupted, a welcome idea in movie presentation. Sometimes the Showtime network would license post-48 MGM's like The Bad and The Beautiful, also sans breaks and from 35mm source. Tapes recorded from these were for me as near to collectable as VHS could get.

Creative, or Obnoxious, 80's Video Marketing, But Maybe This Is
What It Took To Peddle Deep Libraries Thirty Years Ago

Ivan Would Be Less Terrible Once Corinth Color-Corrected It

Eventually the companies began putting stuff out, or sublicensing to small labels who would. An outfit called Nostalgia Merchant dealt King Kong, Citizen Kane, and others from RKO (sourced off 16mm). Theirbox art appealed, but movies cost $50 at least. Pricey tags slowed public acceptance for pre-records. There was a strange sort of photo kiosk in the center of a Gastonia, NC parking lot where they kept one VHS of Sunset Boulevard for $60. I'd slow down at the drop window and ask if the price had lowered, the teen clerk saying no, and left to ponder why I'd want it to begin with. Screwy were release choices made by distributors ... CBS Video or Gold Key or whoever the H was handling pre-48 Warners at the time floated Captain Blood on VHS, and OMG, it turns out to be the lost-since-1935 119 minute version! No fanfare, drumbeat ... nothing. Then there was Wild Orchids (1929) with Garbo among Metro "classics" at $25 or so a pop. Turns out to be the first to my knowledge release of a silent feature with an original music-and-effects score. Would miracles of video mass-marketing never cease?

RKO's Was Among First Vaulties To Come Into VHS/Beta Homes

There were video clubs you could join, like earler LP membership with minimum purchases per year. For every It Happened One Night offered, there'd be a dozen Norma Rae's. Frightful lore of record clubbing from the 60's (kids join, parents cancel) kept me from signing on.Came VHS releasing onslaught through the 80's and much of the 90's during which I stuck with 16 and even 35mm film, capitulation timed with a new century when DVD and projection TV made giving up celluloid viable at last. Now we can drop by a flea market and have Psycho for a quarter on VHS, or hit the landfill on a flush day and score it plus a thousand other cassettes for nothing. There is for me no sentiment coming across nests of them in a closet, other than faint regret I'd bought them in the first place. And yet a Castle Film on 8mm in its original box can bring tears to the eye (GPS has no footie pajama stories to tell about VHS). Was I too jaded by home video's arrival to properly engage the format, or allow it to engage me? There are surely those that hold dear a first cassette as gateway to a life loving film, and maybe they're the ones who will cry when flea marketers hand over Psycho and precious childhood for the bargain price of a quarter. Everything's got meaning for somebody. Are there ones out there for whom a choice VHS box would make the perfect gift?

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A 20th Fox Flying Machine:

July 3, 2013, 8:32 am

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Women Pilots Compete in Tail Spin (1939)

The 30's aviatrix craze lures three from differing background to a "Powder Puff" race for men and marbles prize. 20th Fox trio-cast Alice Faye, Constance Bennett, and Nancy Kelly against process plates to simulate flight as dramatized by Frank Wead, whose yarn of the air this was (were there any he didn't write?). Clichés arrive to reassure those who think all Hollywood ran to such predictable pattern, Tail Spin not outstanding of its kind, but a way of aerial life it does evoke, there indeed being a fad among then-women to risk all and plunge skyward, flying for sport, profit, or to break records only a week or day old. Flight was a more democratic notion then, plane-crazed youth building own crates like Andy Hardy did jalopies. Lindbergh had much to answer for, it seems. Speaking of heights, Faye was on ascent, Bennett falling, with Nancy Kelly in career rise after the hit of Jesse James. Ground-bound Charles Farrell makes with a wrench and overalls, but virtually no dialogue, his a steep plunge from lead man height of but few years earlier. One of Tail Spin's femme trio must crack up, but which? Finding out needs 84 minutes, spent here with TCM, whose print via Fox license looked very nice.

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A 50's Cowboy Filmmaker

July 3, 2013, 2:29 pm

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Rory Calhoun Produces Apache Territory (1958)

Rory Calhoun starred in and produced this western for Columbiarelease. Like much of postwar talent, he used banks and studio advanced $ to make safe vehicles, in Calhoun's case westerns, at a price low enough to assure break-even. The indie firm was called "Rorvic" after Rory and partner Victor M. Orsatti, who'd been a demon press agent married to glamour-gals from his stable (two would leave Vic to wed real-life mobsters). ApacheTerritorywas steps below outdooring Randolph Scott and Harry Joe Brown did at a same time for Columbia, Apache seeming to work off a Tall T blueprint, with results not as good, but serviceable for then-goal of gas in cars/groceries on table. Action is outdoors until a siege confines us and the cast to soundstage exteriors. Violence is upped in accord with western trend, one trooper getting his with a flaming arrow to the chest; you'd hoperisk of facial burn led to increased stunt fee. Director Ray Nazzaro was from mostly TV and budget-conscious westerns; there'd been a peck of the latter with Charles Starrett, then megging for Gene Autry's vid ventures. Nazarro stood for a kind who understood schedules and need to adhere by them, an ideal back-up for neophyte producing Calhoun. Released at a time when there was no such thing as too many westerns, ApacheTerritory benefits today from clean 1.85 presentation on TCM and Columbia On-Demand DVD (VuDu also streams it in HD), helping a routine pic approach enjoyable.

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From The July 4 Favorites List:

July 4, 2013, 9:47 am

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Yankee Doodle Dandy and The Celebration of Vaudeville

Let's say Jim Cagney was digging a posthole one afternoon in the early seventies on his New Englandfarm and some kids drive up in a Dodge Charger with eight-track tape playing Edgar Winter. Would they banter with the old man or maybe recognize him? There were still late shows, and parents who remembered, but ten years off movie screens was eternity to youth. Movie stars were discarded at a quicker clip by the time Cagney packed his in. So was this Jim's own George M. Cohan moment, minus a hammock and "Stix Nix Hix Pix"? The two lives do seem to have converged in retirement. Cagney was even talked back into the game for ill-starred Ragtime after twenty years'separation from the biz, not unlike George M. late-date encoring with I'd Rather Be Right. Stories are rife of locals or tourists having their Cagney moment. Was he, like Cohan, ready to be talked out of his hammock when time came?

Later writing got a little snide about Yankee Doodle Dandy, recognition accorded with a back-hand. Ted Sennett's book, Warner Brothers Presents, would observe that severalof the musical numbers are on the painful side, while Andrew Sarris and Andrew Bergman, in 60's and after reflection, bandied words like "hokum" and "frenzied flag-waving." A point lost since 1942, and a critical one, was YankeeDoodle's mission not just to arouse patriotism, but to salute a going era of show-life exemplified by Cohan and hundreds who trod across vaudeville stages and lived to re-tell it even as 10-20-30's were seeping into footnotes and Bob Hope quippage when he was asked about dark, empty houses: Sure, I used to be in vaudeville. YDD is Hollywood's highest tribute to entertainers on the road, done by ones who lived it and now made glorious last stand for the small time and everything adding up to musical comedy in the theatre. Yankee Doodle extra ranks and barely speakingparts are filled by vets off the boards. I'll bet not one old-timer got turned away from a job, however minor, on this show.

The Real George M. Cohan in 1932's The Phantom President with Claudette Colbert

Modern viewers will need explanatory subtitles: Kerosene circuit, tank towns, foot in the trough --- Yankee Doodle Dandy was in ways like an insider's diary of vaudeville opened to film watcher"rubes" that had supplanted patronage for live acts. The kids that bandy with Cohan in retirement stood for what viewing (and listening) had devolved to by 1942. First came movies to wipe out vaudeville, then talkies to erase silent emoting --- whose tide would go out next? Cagney and Warner staff must have looked back longingly from The West Point Story just eight years later to wonder why Yankee Doodle magic couldn't be recaptured. By then, of course, movies were headed down a pathvaude had opened, television applying the not so gentle push. Irony wasn't lost on viewership who'd observe cast-offs from vaudeville now holding court on the tube. Turns out you could reinvent these old-timers for as long as they could stay alive and perform.

I enjoy how WB sweetens the Cohan rendition of Peck's Bad Boy with music close to that they used scoring old Sennett comedies brought brassily back during the early-to-mid 40's. Was Peck's BadBoy in vaudeville anything like this? I sat thinking it might have been an ideal vehicle for The Three Keatons. Wonder what went through Buster's mind as he watched Yankee Doodle Dandy; talk about floods of memory. Well, what of Cohan himself? Could his act have been as effective as Cagney interpreting it? 19th Century vaudeville could certainly have used Ray Heindorf as an arranger and orchestrator, but they didn't have him and Warners did. Our perception of vaude is based evermore on how acts were replicated (and vastly improved upon?) by Yankee Doodle Dandy and kin. Who'd know George M. Cohan if not for Cagney playing him?

Everybody Sing!, and That Included Audiences In The Theatre

Yankee Doodle Dandy spoke to its audience in terms way too direct for comfort of writers later seeking ironic distance. When lights go out at a Cohan camp show, he criesEverybody Sing! after turning truck lamps toward the stage, close-up with eyes locked on the unseen theatre audience. Did Cagney's force pull whole auditoriums into community sing of Over There? It nearly works with alone-in-a-room me; imagine the impact on houses seating thousands across a country mere months past declaration of war. Further lightning strikes during JC's Off The Record number from I'd Rather Be Right, staring down the camera with added-for-the-movie lyrics about taking France back from Hitler and putting "ants in his Japants." 1942 roars of approval can be imagined. The whole of Yankee Doodle Dandy is about engaging the audience as intensely as possible, music and comedy as call to arms. Urgency came of production beginning days ahead of Pearl Harbor, set-breaks gathered around radios to hear Roosevelt speak and grim news pour in.

A Photo-Op Not To Be Ignored: The Yankee Doodle Dandy Cast Pose with
a Visiting Delegation from The American Legion

Warner folk might have felt nearly as military-occupied as Disney's shop down the street. Anybody in uniform had a ticket in, and work would stop for brass eager to meet Ann Sheridan. Word was out that No must never bespoken to a serviceman ... ever. Casts gathered around uniformed visitors or sat among them at compulsory luncheons became way of Warner life for the duration. No accommodation was denied those who fought. The star community suddenly found itself pulling two plows: day work on stages, nights and what used to be leisure time now spent entertaining troops. If you weren't busy at one or the other, there'd come hot air down the neck. How to justify nightclubbing or sleep at home when there was a dish to wash or song to sing at the Hollywood Canteen? James Cagney got a boon from Yankee Doodle Dandyand bulls-eye format for camp touring: just sing/dance as George M. Cohan to reliable roof-raising. Here was surprise advantage he'd have over WB bad men Bogart and E.G. Robinson, falling back on gangster gags because that's all their narrower personas could sustain in front of G.I.'s responding best to stars who were instantly known quantities.

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Follow-Up From Yesterday

July 5, 2013, 11:40 am

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The Warner Brothers Polishing Brass

To photos that speak volumes, add this one: It's a Warners luncheon with Harry and Jack hosting military high-ups, these representing the Maritime commission. Also on hand are civilian reps from the British Shipbuilding Conference. Table ornamentation is rounded out by contract star Humphrey Bogart and freelancing Cary Grant, the latter at WB to do Destination Tokyo. The difference between Bogart and Grant on this occasion may well be that Grant is willingly present, while Bogart looks coerced. Their expressions suggest as much, at least to me. I'd call Bogie's sullen, at the least distracted. His tie is loosened amidst orderly knots maintained by the rest. That handkerchief looks ready to jump a fence. Most importantly: Jack L. is not amused. The look he's giving Bogart captures all of what I've read about their relationship. Somewhere between mild and utter disdain. Read Sperber/Lax or Robert Sklar to learn how JL treated HB like kitchen help even after triumphs of The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. If another guest spilled something, would Jack have made Bogie clean it up? I don't know how much spread this image got in 1943. Given the job of publicity director, I might have stamped "Too Revealing" on the back and circular-filed the negative.

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Exit Jimmy Jump

July 6, 2013, 5:30 am

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Charley Chase In Looking For Sally (1925)

Early among Charley Chase starring two-reelers and the last where he's "Jimmy Jump," a moniker I never liked, being too knockabout for a talent moving toward subtler forms of slapstick. Chase had settled into congenial partnership with Leo McCarey by time they'd look for Sally and find a formula ideal for CC shorts to come. Charley dresses natty, is viewed first aboard ship and prosperous, the sort who'll get the girl if only they surmount webs of misunderstanding set up within moments of a main title. Clean-cut and presentable Chase was among few such who'd engage roughhousing the usual preserve of comedy's freak populace, so it startles to see him in a nice suit of clothes plunging into the bay to retrieve a girl interest's calling card. A story simple and straight-forward as Sally's might struggle at filling two reels, thus flashbacks (or was it a dream sequence?) to wildness that little relates to narrative I was sorry to leave. One extended bit with hotel clerk Charley trying to put a horse to bed felt cribbed from earlier, maybe discarded, go at a different short, Chase and McCarey freewheeling still as Jimmy prepared for his jump to Charley. Looking For Sally is one of many shorts included in a terrific four-disc set called Becoming Charley Chase, produced by David Kalet and distributed by VCI. Splendid accompanist Ben Model provides music for Sally, and there is fine audio commentary by Model, Yair Solan, and Bruce Lawton.

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Ghosts Taken Seriously

July 7, 2013, 6:20 am

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Paramount Invites The Uninvited (1944)

Was this a first time A-level Hollywood took ghosts seriously? Ray Milland stands in for scoffers and jokes throughout over un-likelihood of such phenomenon; even his final reckoning is capped by a quip. It was a risk to play spooks straight, other than for kids, to whom no part of TheUninvitedwas addressed. Ghosts here require unfinished business to justify return from beyond, so visitations have not only practical application, but usefulness toward clearing up a murder mystery that ends up being main thrust of The Uninvited. A help too was war-timed fantasy of the dead coming back to comfort those left uncertain or bereaved, a theme many in 1944 would connect with on deep, if unspoken, levels. All this did less to scare than to reassure us. Once matters are put right, we have nothing to fear from those departed, it being understood that morality applies as much in a next world and eternal reward comes only after earthly accounts are settled.

With so much war loss experienced among '44 patronage, you have to figure timing was ideal for sober consideration of what going beyond the veil amounted to, and whether it was possible for membership there to make short trips back. Were there sightings of thedeparted among those who'd lost family to the conflict? It would have been easier to laugh off The Uninvited before our own casualties began piling up. Paramount must have sensed this before committing to lavish and assured telling of what would formerly have been considered too tall a tale. Cloaking it all in dreamy romance was more for a plus column, and wise too was no mention of ongoing war. The Uninvited was remembered well by first-run attendance, better still by those coming by it later on television, which makes unaccountable Universal's so-far failure to release it on DVD. There's lately a Region 2 disc from

England

with a nice booklet, but quality (or lack) smacks of an old transfer that could stand updating.

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Just In For Monday

July 8, 2013, 7:03 am

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Dick Dinman Takes Greenbriar Inside 60's Exhibition

Most of you already know Dick Dinman from his websiteplus many and fabulous radio broadcasts about Classic Hollywood. He has for years hosted weekly coverage of DVD releases, recordings of great film scores, and best of all, one-on-one interviews with Golden Age veterans, many of whom have talked with Dinman and no one else about their fabled careers. I remember being astonished (yet again) when he scored a chat with famously reclusive Eleanor Parker, who to my knowledge, had never looked back with such detail on stardom years. Dick has lately been in touch with Greenbriar, having read Showmen, Sell It Hot!,which prompted him to reveal another aspect of a lifelong biz career, previously unknown to me. I was delighted to hear of Dick Dinman's background in exhibition, a boots-on-the-ground showman who sold them hot back in the 60's. Further revealed in our correspondence was his being at rampartsof Bonnie andClyde's Los Angelesfirst-run, Dick's account of which made me immediate-reply (and apply) for permission to share the eye-witness account with GPS readers. Here it is, then, in Dick Dinman's words:

John, Justfinished your book and as someone who has spent more than a decade in exhibition (at National General/Mann Theaters) I feel qualified to confirm that your book is an out-and-out masterwork. So many chapters brought back memories, but perhaps it was your BONNIE & CLYDE chapter which brought back the most. How well I remember the preview at the Village Theater in Westwood with Warren Beatty, who was sitting in front of me, constantly jumping up and charging to the projection booth when the projectionist kept turning down the sound during gunshots that Beatty had purposely designed to mimic George Stevens' "cannon in a barrel" blasts in SHANE. We expected nothing when we booked BONNIE into the Vogue Theater on Hollywood Blvd. for a locked four weeks to get us to the Christmas opening of BILLION $ BRAIN. BONNIE'S first week was respectable but unspectacular and you can imagine our surprise when the gross doubled on thesecond week, and continued to rise in the third to such an alarming degree that we called UA branch manager Dick Carnegie to try to get out of playing BILLION $ BRAIN so we could play BONNIE through the holidays, and beyond. We were "in bed" with UA at the time and when Carnegie threatened to end our association and take away the James Bonds, etc., we capitulated and opened BILLION $ BRAIN for Christmas, which totally died. Since all the other theaters on Hollywood Blvd. were booked, a porn theater across the street from the Vogue hastily cleaned up and played BONNIE for months to the tune of astounding grosses. Again my congratulations on a fantastic book which I plan to revisit time and time again.

Cheers, Dick

Many thanks to Dick Dinman for a unique, and first-hand, look at an exhibiting phenomenon. Greenbriar highly recommendsfurther peruse of Dick's amazing backlogof broadcasts, including all the interviews he has gathered. There is more film history here than in a hundred books.

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A Most Dangerous Game Replayed

July 8, 2013, 4:30 pm

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Widmark and Jane Greer in Run For The Sun (1956)

Persuasive remake of The Most Dangerous Gamethat delays jungle chasing till a final third, after a wade through back stories of Richard Widmark, Jane Greer, and baddie team Trevor Howard and Peter VanEyck, the latter late of treason/war crimes to update 1932 adapt of the yarn. Color brightens foliage, with unintended result a '56 jungle less threatening than one that enveloped Joel McCrea and Fay Wray before. The set-up eats time we spend in eager wait for the human hunt, knowing that's the thrust of Richard Connell's story after all, romance not needed but there in accord with 50's "A" pic pattern. Run's Widmark is a writer, softened by alcohol overuse, as opposed to big-game hunter and ripped all-round Joel McCrea in the original, but still we're asked to believe Dick can rig a sophisticated trap for bush pursuers. Here's where you need a player of RW's ability to overcome scripting incredulity, which he more or less does. Eddie Muller gave harrowing account of the price Jane Greer paid for doing Run For The Sun in his fine collection of actress profiles, Dark City Dames. Done in SuperScope, Run For The Sun is rendered nicely on MGM Demand disc.

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A Showman Speaking His Mind

July 9, 2013, 6:11 am

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"Our Dick" Gets Spanked

Back in fast and loose days of silent showmanship (in this instance, 1923), exhibs could put on their instructor hat and cite rules to both patronage and stars. Local ads gave stern reproof to either that stepped out of line, this a by-product of friend and neighbor status management had in days when a Bijou was second home to thrice (at least) per week attendees. A showman sensing dissatisfaction among his flock would not hesitate going public with it. Here it's Richard Barthelmess who's up for a dressing-down, dress being the very issue at hand. Dick had lately gone a frilly-sleeve route, and Apollo manager James Zanias wasn't having any: Many of you have seen Richard Barthelmess in some of his past attractions and doubtless you have been more or less disappointed as I have been. Zanias was right to extent that Barthelmess was lately laced and recklessly poofy in pics like The Bright Shawl andThe Fighting Blade, his character in the latter named "Karl Van Kerstenbrook."

Nix on Period Finery, Dick. We Want You
in Virile, Modern Mode

The solution? A youthful romance with "our Dick" in a modern Prince Charming role like the one he'll play in the Apollo's forthcoming (for four days!) 21. Costume roles "of the fanciful type" were the bunk. Zanias suggests that Barthelmess himself has marched producers to the wood shed and read them riot acts. Adorable details of his acting personality would be given amplechance for expression now. Was Barthelmess made aware of the Apollo's revolt? It wasn't unknown for biggest stars to follow trade mags and respond personally to aggrieved exhibitors. Sometimes a soothing telegram would mend wounds inflicted by wrong vehicles. In this case, Dick may have assured James Zanias and Apollo patronage that he was indeed washed up with frou-frou. Worth noting is fact that Barthelmess stuck with modern parts almost exclusive from 21onward, proof again that stars who'd sustain really listened to their public (Query to archivists: Is 21 a currently missing film? I'd sure like to see it)

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Calling All Buck Jones Rangers

July 9, 2013, 3:30 pm

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Buck Rides For Columbia in Forbidden Trail (1932)

Buck Jones fits in a somewhat legend category for fan-love he engendered and heroic way he's said to have died, and though that last was embroidered by tellers since (1942), it just seems natural that Buck would have gone back into a burning nightclub to save others after he'd been safely gotten out (didn't happen, but I'm for printing the legend). More was written on the topic when Jones Junior Rangers were around to deeper explore events of that night. Itwas their generation's equivalent of the George Reevestragedy. HQ rendering of Buck westerns, in this case from Columbia On-Demand, helps us toward understanding where Buck's magic lay, though leap, ride, and scrap might be better descriptive terms. Here was a cowboy as often a buffoon, given to lazyboning and practical jokes, thus underestimated by villainy till too late when he routs them. Forbidden Trail is typical of the brand, was made for cheap, but not insultingly so (its $87K in domestic rentals was plenty OK in blighted Depression terms). Columbia's program westerns were ones to beat during this period when both Jones and Tim McCoyrode for them. Hope more of these are forthcoming on disc.

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Warner Cartoons Learn To Walk and Talk

July 10, 2013, 7:30 am

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Beginner Bosko in Congo Jazz (1930)

The second Warners cartoon, following Sinkin' In The Bathtub. Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising did these for independent Leon Schlesinger, who released through WB. Bosko was yet another character set loose to dethrone Mickey Mouse. At least he's human, if rubbery and of unspecified racial origin (but shouldn't animated figures constitute a race all their own?). Bosko walks through the jungle and encounters beasts both hostile and friendly, that being about all there is to it. Simplicity was enough so long as sounds matched movement, the miracle of synchronization still impressing customers two years after Steamboat Willie showed it could be done. Harmon and Ising had been with Disney long enough to learn how to get along withouthim. Personality clash with animators cost Walt no small part of staff in days when he needed talent like H&I's, but WD was under daily stress and easily lost patience with staff not rowing quick enough. Congo Jazz doesn't get around to that music form till a final few minutes, but showed what WB's team could do in the eternal struggle for cartoon dominance.

Also seethis 6/08 Greenbriar postabout Warner cartoons and one-time efforts to collect them.

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Just This Side Of The Ratings System ...

July 10, 2013, 3:45 pm

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The Production Code In Twilight: A Covenant With Death (1967)

Hollywood's covenant with long-standing enforcement of its Production Code was headed for the finish as adult-themed dramas stood on brakes at eve of a ratings system that would turn loose frankness in films. A Covenant With Death represented a last of tentative reach toward themes long forbidden, in this case ginger approach at sex disease that leads an infected wife to promiscuity and death, her accusedhusband begging mercy from inexperienced judge George Maharis. Not what I'd call pleasant subject matter, and you wonder what boxoffice WB could expect of melodrama enacted by a refugee lead from television and support culled also from tube ranks. There is Maharis clocking bed-time with femme partners, this a declaration of walls tumbling down, but dialogue and situations barely pass speed limits observed by Susan Sladeand others of a Code compliant past. That would, of course, change, and within mere months, as Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (released 6/66) breached walls of censorship eroded further by Warners with Bonnie and Clyde in later 1967, beside which A Covenant With Death looks timid indeed. Available in a fine 1.85 transfer from Warner Archive.

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Schnozzle's The Whole Show!

July 11, 2013, 5:18 am

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Perfect Timing and What! --- No Beer?

Keaton fascination never ends, it seems. Warner Instant has just added What --- No Beer? to its HD inventory, an immediate must-watch. I drank this Beer before and recalled it being stale, much of badimpression drummed in by book/docu describe of poor Buster as junior fiddle to Jimmy Durante brass and getting a Metro pink slip for his pains. All that still goes --- kindliest revision won't improve flat brew --- but somehow BK seems less debased this time 'round, and I'll even give Durante more quarter than previous. Let's keep the review bite-sized, then: What --- No Beer? is not a good comedy, but it isn't a despicable one. I even enjoyed moments here/there, a few of which find Buster hung over, that a modern perception based on what we know of at-time circumstance. Mostly he's OK, less lithe than before, but that's like comparing human against super-human strength, and how long could Keaton have maintained his amazing athleticism even spared the hobble of drink? He was, after all, 37 when What --- No Beer? was made.

It Begins: Jimmy Durante's Name Creeps Up Above The Title With Buster's

I want to get chronology right, because Buster's Metro nest fouled in a hurry and weeks matter in summarizing it. 1932 had played him bad. Natalie got the house and kept the boys, their names changed to Talmadge as crowning insult. Keaton caused delay on Speak Easily and MGM made him pay back costs by partial withhold of stipend, this memorialized in a '32 contract thatalso wrested sole-star status and made way for Durante developing. The two were "teamed" further from here, difference being JD above the title alongside Keaton. Bad behavior escalated. A run-out to Mexico saw Buster return with a new wife, and to say a least, she lacked Nat's pedigree. There was also a drunken toot of an on-lot party that Louis Mayer was said to have interrupted (or was it a Buster-brawl in his bungalow with a disgruntled mistress?). Then there was a bosses' charity football invite that Keaton blew-off, accumulation of foregoing a final push on self-destruct's button.

What! --- No Beer? was shot between December 17, 1932 and January 28, 1933. All Keaton's MGM stuff had been profitable, the more so now that Durante was aboard, so a bright idea announced in 12-31-32 trades put Jackie Cooper into comedy's triad. Keaton, Durante, and Cooper --- Why Didn't We Think Of This Before? Itwas a natural, and served with Ed Brophy, Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards, or even Polly Moran, one fairly quivers at prospect here. Things must really have been bad, as Mayer forfeited all by stroke of a firing letter issued to Keaton on 2/2/33. What! --- No Beer? was done, and continuing guff wasn't worth it. Did Mayer act on temper rather than fiscal sense? Thalberg thought so on return from heart recovery. What! --- No Beer? would come in for a splendid spike thanks to repeal of prohibition via passage of the 21st amendment on 12/5/32, with the first "legal" bottle of beer ceremoniously delivered to the White House on 4/14/33. Trades reported What! --- No Beer? as the first movie about the country's hottest topic, with release set for February, 1933.

Variety announced Keaton departure from MGM in early February (2/3), saying it was Buster who wanted out. It was no surprise to studio officials when Keaton made the request for his release, said the trade, the comedian being put out by the fact that he had been reduced to co-starring by the company and also the fact that Jimmy Durante in the last two pictures theyappeared in together had been given the juicier assignment. A final straw, said Variety, came when Keaton found that Durante was billed above him in What --- No Beer?. Coverage added that Keaton was not figured much on his American draw, but proved to be a money-maker for Metro in the foreign market, especially in England. For all of fudging in the trade's report, the Keatons had done reasonably well in foreign markets, but no more so than, for instance, the Marie Dressler/Polly Moran comedies. In fact, the latter team's Prosperity got $348K in foreign to $289K collected by What! --- No Beer? beyond US borders.

A Backstage Shot with Buster in Boxing Glove. Is He Preparing to
Silence Loudmouth Durante?

What! No Buster? --- and Jimmy Gets Top-Billed As Well in Chicago

There was a preview for What! --- No Beer?, running at this point to 86 minutes. Variety suggested trims and Metro made them: final release was 65 minutes. The beer angle was sold to the skies. Pittsburgh's Penn Theatre put up a bar in the lobbyto serve "near-beer" to incoming patrons (the real stuff couldn't be dispersed for another couple of months), the bartender a known face to locals since pre-Prohibition and maybe since in speakeasies. Jimmy Durante sent wires of support to both the venue and Pittsburgh critics. Had Jimmy noticed ads giving him prominence over Buster? Metro was letting it happen now that Keaton was out. Chicago's booking at the Roosevelt Theatre made positions clear, Durante billed first with his image adorning open day ads. The town's Atlas Brewery was approached to do a tie-in, but now that beer was coming back legit, the bottler wanted no part of sawdust and cuspidors formerly associated with suds. Their beverage would now (they hoped) become a favorite of the elite, so any link with movies would be carefully parsed for offending reference.

Precode Buster: Not The First Time Mild Eroticism Had Found
Ways Into MGM Stills With Keaton and Lead Ladies

New York's MGM flagship, the Capitol Theatre, had Ed Wynn's "Laugh Parade" troupe on stage and What! --- No Beer? for a two-week run beginning 2/25/33. Numbers were good, $53,100 fora first week, $40,000 in the second, but She Done Him Wrong at the Paramountwalloped Wynn and Beer with an extra week and better returns. Elsewhere playdates got behind the timeliness of What! --- No Beer?. Rochester's Loew house rankled local showmen by declaring that Beer would never be served at any other theatre in town, a brag made possible by Metro's oft-withhold of hit pix from venues beyond ones they owned. This sort of advertising left patronage no apparent choice but to see What! --- No Beer? on Loew's first-run ticket pricing terms, with outlier neighborhoods left to wonder if they'd ever get it at all. Would subsequent runners be forever denied access to What! --- No Beer?

Harrison's Reports lit into Loew's over this and too-high rentals for what it called "poor pictures" out of Metro. What! --- No Beer? ended up with $633K in worldwide rentals, well below the last two Keaton/Durantes (Speak Easily's $742K and The Passionate Plumber at $779K). Were the K&D's (or lately, D&K's) starting to play out in any event? Buster would keep busy post-Metro with Les roi des Champs-Élysées, produced in France, and a two-reel series for Educational back home. Admirers today would say he was better off at these than continuing at MGM. What! --- No Beer? meanwhile plays as a fascinating document of Buster's final weeks with Leo, and as backdrop to seismic shift brought by repeal of prohibition. Warner Instant gives us opportunity to HD-see it like never before. As Jimmy Durante says while sipping brew in a final What! --- No Beer? close-up, It's your turn next, folks. It won't be long now.

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A 1939 Money's Worth

July 12, 2013, 3:57 am

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Honolulu Plus A Co-Feature

Pre-Judy Garland Metro musicals often saw need to buttress lead ladies with other performers and specialties to round out a feature's length, as here for Eleanor Powell, whose dancing, mostly tap, was almost supernatural in its perfection, but less matched by charisma otherwise (Powell's manufacture is well covered by Jeanine Basinger in a 2009 book, The Star Machine). EP got by with strong leading men, in this case two Robert Youngs (dual role), and registered also with help of dizzy sidekicks. That last is Gracie Allen for Honolulu's voyage, perversely separated from George Burns, even though he's elsewhere in the show, their meet-up delayed till almost the end. Meanwhile there are numbers on a scale anticipating bigger, if not wiser, spending to come with the 40's and increased size audience (and grosses) for MGM's song catalogue. Show-stoppers include Eleanor paying blackface tribute to Bill Robinson after fashion of Fred Astaire in RKO's 1936 Swing Time, and there's a shipboard party with revelers in movie star guise, including lookalikes of The Marx Bros., W.C. Fields, Laurel-Hardy, etc. Just another Metro musical some would say, as if that were a commonplace thing, but for me, any of these are a treat.

The ad at right has first-run Honolulu playing a Fox West Coast venue with Mr. Moto's Last Warning for a second feature. Double-bills by 1939 were locked into theatre policy, audiences feeling cheated unless they got two-for-one. The majors supplied B's rather than cede the field to independent producers. Big companies that were also theatre owners wanted to control every aspect of the program: features, shorts, the works. They also had resource to make cheap product look good, what with standing sets,players on contract, and eager staff climbing hopeful toward bigger assignments. 20th's Mr. Moto group didn't aspire beyond lower berth. Small towns might play them for a single, but for a most part, Motos backed what patrons primarily came to see, in this case, Honolulu, recalled perhaps less well by fans today than Peter Lorre's Japanese sleuth. Mr. Moto's Last Warning, like other B's, rented on flat terms. 20th was able to calculate earnings based on Fox-owned houses they knew would play it, plus blocked-booked commitment elsewhere. For vertically integrated companies, there was no safer bet than B's. Mr. Moto's Last Warning had a negative cost of $200K, brought back $226K in domestic rentals, with $153K in foreign. Profit, dependable as sun-up for Fox series entries (Moto, Chan, Jones Family, et al), came to $43,000.

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Dracula's Long-Awaited Reprise

July 12, 2013, 4:30 pm

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A Ritual One Particularly Enjoys Watching at Age 12 ... I Still Do.

Dracula --- Prince Of Darkness Stakes Out 1966

This was a first Hammer Dracula since '58's Horror Of ... same, so I was pulsing to go. Even stuck with a crybaby neighbor-kid as Libertyaccompaniment didn't diminish thrill of seeing C. Lee in fanged harness, opener flash back to HoD a further tingle for my not having seen the original trendsetter up to that time (summer '66). Admittedly not a best among Hammers, D---Pof Dstill has ringer moments (monks holding down and staking Barbara Shelly --- deathless!), and there is towering Andrew Keir as vicar head of vampire disposal. A redressed castle emits happy Bray vibes, Hammer leaving that site would forfeit much of their identity. Takes awhile to get moving, but we're patient in anticipation of Chris entry, which he does and without dialogue, maybe a wise move as the character's feral to a fault in strategically placed (and limited) highlights. Monster mags of the day writ large the fact that Drac (as in Lee) was back after eight years in diminuendo.Horror Of Draculawas let go to syndication TV a few months after Dracula --- Prince Of Darkness was released, and Universal reissued Brides Of Dracula during summer '66 on a combo with King Kong vs. Godzilla, so all three Hammer Draculas were in tandem circulation that year.

Techniscope was used, a first for Hammer with a "name" monster (previous B/W psycho-thrillers and tentative go atJekyll-Hydebeing previously wide, but no Frankensteins nor Draculas). They off the vamp King this time with "running water," a new one on me. Had any movie or lore ever floated such notion before this? Father Keir confirms that Dracula is indeed vulnerable --- I'll say --- as of D --- Pof D, he couldn't even go swimming (with possible exception of an above ground pool or indoors at a YMCA). 20th Fox kicked off a US distribution pact with Hammer for Prince Of Darkness and co-feature Plague Of The Zombies, realizing better rentals ($429K domestic) than had Universal for recent (now discontinued) ones. Kid-centric promotion included sillies like Dracula teeth for boys, "zombie eyes" for girls. We got neither, and the Libertysplit Fox's bill besides, necessitating two paying trips for the dollop. For then-quarter admission though, Dracula --- Prince Of Darkness and Plague Of The Zombies, even served separate, were worth it.

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