Better Off Where Words Fail ...

 

Never Mind Voices When We Had Such Interesting Faces

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

Blanche Sweet Tells It All Sans Talk

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

They Came, They Saw, and Silent Movies Conquered

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

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

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

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

Stills That Speak #8

 

STS: More Clark Gable Captures

WELCOME HOME RHETT, SAYS TOOTIE --- The back caption says something about these two hoping someday to do a picture together. How realistic was that? Gable was great with Bonnie Blue, the more so after she flew off a pony and broke her neck. Might he similarly cry for Margaret? We could wonder if anyone floated CG as Bad Bascomb rather than Beery. Great stars, especially greatest stars, had to be cast carefully. Margaret O’Brien after 1945 was no longer Tootie. She played well with old men in support, each of Three Wise Fools born in the nineteenth century and imagine how O’Brien feels whenever she catches that on TCM (wait … is Three Wise Fools shown on TCM, for I don’t offhand recall seeing it listed). She’d be willful for The Unfinished Dance, cause real complication for adults, plus suggest maybe she’d not prosper in adolescence. To me she kept a little girl voice while getting gangly, and I wonder who gave the order to pink-slip her. Mannix? Mayer himself? There is an interesting color image of Margaret reunited with Judy Garland and Tom Drake, probably around Words and Music time, four years of water under a bridge. Gable too had his worries, Adventure successful even though he and everyone knew it wasn’t much good, grosses a pyrrhic victory borne of his being back from war and everyone eager to see how he’d comport. Problem was hanging on to what had been accumulated before years got lost, that a problem shared by all leading men who served. Suppose they got together and talked about it? Picture Robert Taylor confiding to Gable his concern at being cast for anti-heroes if not outright heavies (good direction for Taylor by my lights). Gable kept his public as well as anyone in his category. Aging and bad habits if anything made him more interesting.

DRAGON BETWEEN A PAIR OF LIONS --- First impression here is not Hedda Hopper, nor Victor Fleming, but Gable with a cigar. Since when did he take to those? Onscreen he used them as Rhett Butler, but I never saw him occupied so in candids or set stills. Gable indeed smoked cigarettes, enough of those to make me wonder if cumulative effect weakened his heart. I propose date here as 1944 when they were doing Adventure, perhaps later as Fleming was friend enough to Gable that they surely socialized on each other’s set from time to time. I understand Vic suffered grievous with kidney stones, less wherewithal in thirties-forties to deal with such malady. Hopper was doubtless said dragon in other circumstances, but Gable by this time was elder statesman enough to command her respect and besides, I always had the sense he knew how to deal with, and get along, with her. There was a Hopper memo I came across once at the Academy library where she talked about calling Gable (apx. 1955) while he was in midst of showing his 16mm print of Boom Town to a group of kids including wife Kay’s son by a previous marriage. Gable had a notable collection of his movies. Someday I need to write about what became of those prints. Again to Hopper, she was tolerated or hated, I doubt “liked” would occur to most. She got oodles of Christmas presents from stars and execs each year, joked that hers was “the house that fear built.” She had sort of a Winchell thing going with her column. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff in old Hopper writings, not all gossip but solid movie news historians could use if they dug through her output, but where has any compilation appeared? Hopper files are lush with off-and-on-record treasure. Somebody should someday mine it, or is it too late for anybody to care?

PITY THEY’D NOT CO-STAR AGAIN --- I propose that this was the last time Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable were photographed together. It isn’t like they fished, hunted, or made motorcycle runs. Gable pals were of sort that liked to crawl under cars, while Tracy idea of social was sitting round tables with talking colleagues or keeping company with K. Hepburn or shorter-term mistresses. Back caption reads The People Against O’Hara as the show in work when the old screen comrades met and chatted. Blurb says they “seem to share a mild difference of opinion,” though it doesn’t look that way to me. Gable is holding a book which I’d like knowing what it is. Tracy’s shirt fits like a few apple pies too many. Weight was often as issue for him, though it mattered less because by now he’s a character star and a little paunch was almost expected. Gable on the other hand had to watch weight for being still a romantic lead man. Remember the Dear Mr. Gable TV special from 1968 where they showed an unflattering clip from Lone Star and talked about how weathered he had started to look? I thought at the time it was unfair but that may have been because Gable vehicles of Lone Star and similar vintage was all the CG I could get from surrounding NC stations. No Red Dust or Mutiny on the Bounty for me until I bought prints later. Were Tracy and Gable a little jealous of one another? I never believed that, preferring to guess they were congenial, enjoyed talking when they did, but just did not have all that much in common other than sitting atop hill that was Metro at star-making zenith. Serious talk of re-teaming them for Green Fire took place in 1954, which you can tell from finished product was a Gable-Tracy show in conception and much of execution. I wonder how such a late co-starring would have come off. As suggested before, they would have been terrific head-to-head on Inherit the Wind, but what is that now but idlest speculation.

INTERESTING STAR ASSEMBLAGE --- How much notice were Gable and Lombard given to dress and show up at this benefit for Greek wartime allies? No such request could be turned down, unless you were in the hospital getting a gall bladder removed. Wish I had a date for this image, but no. Anyone care to speculate? Could it have been during that brief window between Pearl Harbor and Lombard’s death on 1-16-42? Seems likely to me. Note Lombard’s hand on Gable’s knee. Is she afraid he’ll get up and wander off? I’m guessing he didn’t care much for this sort of event. Gable liked being completely prepared for whatever appearance he made. This may have been a radio broadcast or just four stars making brief speeches to support objects of charity. Could this have been the first time Gable and Tyrone Power met? Perhaps not for Power having been at Metro for a good stretch doing Marie Antoinette in 1938 and surely he and Gable saw each other at the commissary, getting shoes shined, whatever. Myrna Loy was an old Gable partner on screen and had done The Rains Came with Power, but how well, if at all, did she know Lombard? I’m fascinated by stars tethered to differing studios thrown together. It happened lots with radio, for instance a time when Gable and Marlene Dietrich did a Lux broadcast for DeMille. Think of turning clocks forward, a year maybe, and what became of these people as result of war declared. They must have looked back on a night like this to reflect how simple life once seemed, not that there was anything simple about being among biggest names in pictures. Just think … two “Kings” of Hollywood together, plus a Queen which was Loy, her crowned with Power … or was it Bette Davis? I forget and what does it matter? Just noticed sheets Power is holding. Might that be a script for him to read off when they step before microphones? These people must have gotten sick of dressing to nines five nights out of a week, especially now with war on (or close) and need for their participation the more urgent. I wonder if Gable and Power found it sort of a relief to enlist and serve among ordinary recruits instead of carrying star banner for morale’s continuing sake.

UPDATE --- 6/2/25: Dan Mercer nails the date of Gable and Lombard's event appearance with Tyrone Power, Myrna Loy, and as you see below, others:

Not a bad guess, John, as to when that photo of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard with Tyrone Power might have been taken. Carole was very apprehensive about leaving him to make those War Bond appearances, as he'd become an item of speculation with Lana Turner, hence that no doubt reassuring touch of her hand on his knee. However, I think that he was a wandering sort, anyways, whatever his feelings for her or any woman. As with many men, he was able to separate affection and commitment from more, let us say, predatory behavior. So, such a picture might have been made at any time in their marriage.

As it is, however, the photo was actually taken on February 8, 1941 at Grauman's Chinese Theater, where an "America Calling" radio broadcast was being made for Greek War Relief. Sam Goldwyn had organized it, Bob Hope and Jack Benny were co-emcees, and just about all the stars of Hollywood made appearances.

You'll notice Frank Morgan, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Dick Powell, Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, Sam Goldwyn, Gable and Lombard, Shirley Temple, and Myrna Loy.

I understand that Gable performed in a "romantic skit" with...Merle Oberon!

It is indeed good to be king, especially in Golden Age Hollywood. And maybe that was the source of Lombard's apprehension. 

UPDATE --- 6/7/25 --- from Dan Mercer

That's a charming picture of Clark Gable and Margaret O'Brien. He seems to genuinely enjoy being with her. I noticed the sheets of paper each was holding and the acoustic paneling behind them, and wondered if they were participating in a radio show. It seems that on May 2, 1945, they did appear on the "Mail Call" show carried by the Armed Forces Radio Service, reading letters from American servicemen and women and offering encouragement to them. She would have been eight years old at the time. 

Here is another picture from that appearance:

So, studio stars did make a lot of personal appearances when not before the camera, no doubt strengthening the brand, whether that was of the studio or their stardom. Given his own service, however, I'm sure that Gable didn't begrudge the time in this case, and the pictures suggest that he was having a good deal of fun as well. 

Ads and Oddities #9

 

Ad/Odds Leaping the Rails: Two-Faced Woman (1941) and Unfaithfully Yours (1948)

TWO-FACES HAD GARBO, BUT WERE THEY ENOUGH? --- Was Two-Faced Woman so dire as to lose money and wreck Greta Garbo’s career? Some history says yes, Two-Faced with but one face since 1941 and that was failure, artistic plus economical (reshooting more the culprit). Two-Faced Woman also stirred Legion of Decency uproar a wider public became aware of, being hep to such plus star lives, not as fed by fan press but understood from reading between lines vetted by studio authority, viewers resentful of effort to limit what they could watch. MGM added scenes to mollify monitors, ergo added costs. Story set-up of Garbo masquerading as her own twin sister to captivate mate Melvyn Douglas was called immoral, shots and a scene tacked in to make Douglas wise to the gambit and incidentally rob the film of humor or even logic. Farce might do without the latter, but this insulted a public spoon-fed like children, bad word of mouth the result. Surely there were smoother ways out of the mess, but Metro had not time or inclination to fashion a fix. Two-Faced Woman was textbook instance of too many cooks spoiling broth. Garbo took brunt for being most visible offender, her more laughed at than with. She was said to have big feet, at least to Tex Avery and Hollywood Steps Out reckoning, Warners’ animated demolishment of star vanities offered a same year as Two-Faced Woman. I over time saw enough Two-Faced fragments to assume overall badness, ads as here incentive to face music that was ninety-minute whole. Like much we dread, Two-Faced Woman came off not half so wretched, joy enough in sections to forgive the rest. GG rhumbas, much publicized then, enjoyable now and not just for her but crowded and dancing ensemble in night club setting. Remember a same season’s Deanna Durbin and Charles Laughton cutting rug for It Started with Eve? This evokes that, and pleases. Slapstick on skis does as well, even if Garbo and co-star Melvyn Douglas went nowhere near snowy location. This was fun enough to make memorable chunk of Robert Youngson’s Big Parade of Comedy in 1964.

Idea of Two-Faced Woman was to go Ninotchka one, no plenty, better. If Garbo was out of character then, watch her wildly so now. Critics and former admirers compared it to seeing one’s grandmother fallen down drunk. Considering appetite for comedy increased with onslaught of war (Two-Faced playdates mostly for ’42), I’m surprised the show didn’t do better, again blame heavy paw of censorship known, written about, reviled, trades and mainstream press all over the controversy. Would-be reassuring ads were like being slapped with bladders. Did her public not trust their “favorite” star to amuse them? “The New Garbo’s a Darbo” fooled few. Elsewhere for Leo, Joan Crawford in A Woman’s Face showed a loss, as did Norma Shearer’s last two, plus Jeanette MacDonald in I Married an Angel. To necessarily clean house was to let more than Garbo go. It helps to read about Two-Faced Woman ahead of watching, this to reach understanding of how and why so much went wrong (Mark Vieira gives a best account in his Garbo book). Failed films can fascinate where we know troubled background. There didn’t seem to be incentive enough at Metro to find a new direction for Garbo. Partly that was her own fatigue and detachment from the character of “Greta Garbo” which would have to change now in order to survive. Madame Curie, proposed and GG-rejected before, might have worked (did for Greer Garson), being European set with its lead harvesting uranium. Garbo had always been a fish out of MGM water, self-conscious for lack of English language skill and formal education. There were too few who’d speak for her, Garbo’s own interactions difficult for all concerned. Her powers before the camera were instinctive and maybe she understood them least of anyone. With enough money now to quit, why not quit?

UNFORTUNATELY, OURS --- What fast shuffling this was, east coast handlers faced sudden with Roxy crash and Preston Sturges’ new comedy burning. Pictures had opened soft before, never so gelatinous as this. Unfaithfully Yours was funny, right? Seems few thought so, or did they give it a chance? Zanuck had confidence from script to screen, said this was some of best writing he’d ever come across, Sturges direction his customary sure-footed. For all intent/purpose, this should have been a triumph along past line of Morgan Creek, Hail Hero, stack of others that pleased for Paramount. Skill at anything starts, peaks, eventually fades, whens and whys debated from there to frustrated forever. No crystalline ball would tell why Unfaithfully Yours failed but fail it did, far from enough admissions collected at Roxy doors. Trades attributed disaster to scandal the result of self-administered overdose by Carole Landis, late of Fox employ and personal-involved with Rex Harrison, unfaithfully hers as he similarly was to Mrs. Harrison, nee Lilli Palmer, Brit player lately known and liked in American films. A public but lightly tolerant of Harrison now viewed him as cad incarnate, cheating upon his wife and driving likeable Landis to suicide. Go see a movie, let alone a comedy, with this guy? Let's not, said 1948 viewership. Flap got beyond fan press and splattered all over Unfaithfully Yours. For Fox to offer laughs along lines of marital infidelity was ill-timed in earnest, Harrison as harried husband a fool’s errand for publicity. What was needed, desperately so, was a new as in radically new, slant for selling. Toward this came a pressbook supplement with ads aimed noir-ways, murder a principal theme, “the hands around her neck will hold a razor” proposing fate for sultry Linda Darnell with Preston Sturges also-ran below a cast unlikely except for comedy. Rudy Vallee somberly intoning “Just how far can you let a woman go?” (by Rudy’s offscreen measure, skies were always the limit).

We’d call these ads ludicrous and marvel how anyone could be fooled by them. Were they? Too little, too late was this change in direction. Sturges surely blanched in event he saw such would-be last minute rescue, or maybe they appealed to his well-honed sense of irony. I like particularly the ad with Darnell posed against a spider’s web and razor hovering like for Spellbound three years before, her a ringer for Gale Sondergaard as Universal’s spider woman. Does sinister-depicted Rex Harrison evoke departed Landis where he warns, “If a woman plays around, she deserves what she gets”? Such measures as here weighted an already sinking ship, Unfaithfully Yours sleeping among fishes with $1.3 million lost. The snakebite would not heal, though there are proponents. Maltin Reviews gave it four stars (“often side-splittingly funny”). Criterion issued a DVD, but no Blu-Ray to follow. We can stream Unfaithfully Yours at Amazon and elsewhere in High-Def. Changes I’d retroactively apply? Instead of Rex Harrison … Eddie Bracken, idea of him committing murder absurdity on its face. Trouble was Harrison too believable as potential killer, at least in the dream scenes. He’s so mean to Linda Darnell in “reality” parts to turn us off, shouts too much of dialogue at Vallee, Edgar Kennedy, Al Bridge, others. I wanted one or all of them to take a poke at him. Best line, a Sturges jewel (“You’ve got it, boy, you don’t have to yearn for it”) spotted in the trailer as sample of “sparkling dialogue.” This preview as prepared prior to release may have been portent for pall to come, Unfaithfully Yours described as “six kinds of picture all rolled into one,” kinds cited as great music, sheer terror, hilarious comedy, tense drama, earlier referenced sparkling dialogue, and high temperature romance. In other words, Fox was in trouble and by evidence of this trailer and schizophrenic ads, knew it.

Stardom in Their Eyes

 

1940 Statement on What It Takes to Make Good in Movies

Films were written in vacuums no more than books or poetry, ideas coming always from someone’s heart or history. Star Dust as known, if known, was Linda Darnell’s Hollywood rise but slightly fictionalized, true in small part, but what the modest programmer really does is give account of other folks toiling at Fox and trying to stay ahead of backbites and gentle (or not) pushes out the door. Vets going back “long, long ago” like Roland Young’s scout for youth talent have seen it all and done most of it. Young in customarily low-key performance is “Thomas Brooke,” erstwhile “silk hat comedian” of silent days, faint honor now for most at Fox have service stripes as old, except kids recruited to be “stars” if such miracle can be managed. Brooke as former road company head of “Brooke Players” knows all aspects of performing and people who aspire to it. Others tease his age but realize it is the Brookes who best understand talent and how best to season it. Brooke is in short Raymond Griffith, parallel that eluded me over years seeing Star Dust and focusing on Darnell. Griffith had retired from cameras nearly a decade before, prior to that had been selfsame starring silk hat comedian, and who knows might have been kidded for it in his capacity as behind-scenes Fox operative since. Griffith had success as a producer at TCF and was getting single card credits. He produced Linda Darnell’s first two films. Think she ever saw a silent comedy Raymond Griffith starred in? How could she? Griffith began on stage as a child, lost his voice through combination of circumstance, became a writer and mute performer to survive, had too much ability for a single handicap to stall. People years later at Cinecons and such found out he was great, as in really, truly funny to us now rather than just folks then (as in silent era then). Him in signature topper was more bon vivant than mere clown, situational humor rather than slapstick. Downer is fact over half Griffith’s starring silent features are gone. Undercrank lately released two, Paths to Paradise and You’d Be Surprised. One or both would make a splendid evening beside Star Dust, a then-and-then for a forgot funny man who I’m sure called in favors to land himself at Fox and lend knowledge of industry past toward fantasy woven round industry of 1940's present.

We know Zanuck wrote for comedy in the twenties. Did he scribe too for Griffith? Star Dust director Walter Lang had married a girl who’d been at Sennett and became Carole Lombard’s best friend. Those who worked steady in the business shared links that were miles long. Star Dust gets at this in ways both subtle and direct. Raymond Griffith’s bow-out would be grimly appropriate, choking to death on food served at the Masquers’ Club in Los Angeles. That was in 1957 when the only people who’d remember Raymond Griffith were diners as old sitting near him. At least he died among friends and confreres. Star Dust was about youth, for youth, Linda Darnell sixteen at the time. She had played Tyrone Power’s wife the year before when she was fifteen. Guys would go to jail if they staged a deal like that today. Linda was from Texas. Dad was a postal worker, Mom nuts or enough so to drive her family nuts. Ronald Davis wrote a nice book on Darnell which I have but can’t seem to locate. Linda and brood entrained to Hollywood and took a pet rooster with them. The rooster was banned from the Fox lot after causing strife there. Imagine Zanuck being told about this. All in a day’s work at the freak house he probably thought. Linda was lovely in an almost unearthly way. She would have needed a mother with sense to keep her safe from predators. In fact, a team of mothers with sense. Linda Darnell in 1965 was visiting friends in Chicago and they stayed up to watch Star Dust. A fire broke out in the house from which the others got out but not Linda. It’s said she stayed behind because she thought the friend’s daughter was inside and in danger. Turns out everyone was safe but Linda. Took her several days to die. By then Linda Darnell was faded but from eyes of older fans and some TV stay-uppers. Carol Burnett said on talk shows how she loved Linda, to which Burt Reynolds on a same panel said he once did Tea and Sympathy with her. Imagine seeing that. Enough of sadness. Star Dust is adorable for not just Darnell, but others hopeful of stardom at Fox. I noted George Montgomery at the Grauman’s Chinese forecourt opening, him given ticket home after proving not good enough for cameras. Let go too is Robert Lowery who ends up a bellhop. What did it take to succeed? Star Dust suggests mostly luck, though Darnell gets hers more by cunning, writers saying plain that if you want it, use guile to go after it.

Sneaky way is as good a way as any, says Star Dust. Did hopeful youth see this as instructional? If football players and soda jerkers could become stars, why not any of us? Carolyn Sayres (Darnell) and Bud Borden (John Payne) have looks but nothing else to suggest they can act. Most newcomers to film had at least experience of stage, radio, vaudeville. Think Judy Garland or Deanna Durbin got in just being cute? “Deb” stars were discovered doing all sorts of things, but some potential at least was always preferred. Janet Gaynor’s character in A Star is Born wants entry for reading fan magazines, and makes it, but how likely was that to happen in film’s real world? The one-in-a-thousand rule did definitely apply. More like one in ten thousand. A book I wish had been written could be called “What I Really Had to Do to Become a Star,” for which I’d bet entries would stun. Did Linda Darnell simply walk through Fox doors and fifteen minutes later kiss Tyrone Power? There were Raymond Chandler stories where a murder victim “used to dance in Busby Berkeley pictures.” So, what did become of all those Busby Berkeley dancers? Star Dust says neophytes were protected from train arrival to being put back aboard in event their dreams didn’t work out. Dear Hollywood, you gentle, nurturing town. Who took Star Dust for truth? They could hardly do Day of the Locust, yet Nathaniel West’s novel was published but a year before Star Dust came out, and I wonder how many dreamers got wise reading it instead of buying bromides Fox sold. But Fox never claimed Star Dust for truth. Too many believed it, however, for being so desperate to believe it, some sure enough ending up like those ex-Busby Berkeley girls. One of them might have been the Black Dahlia. One became Barbara Payton, who was thirteen when Star Dust came out. I bet she saw it and said why not me?

Everyone’s intentions in Star Dust are so good, except for Donald Meek. He is a sour and bitter little man, and a schemer. Donald did not look like John Payne and never would. He knows that and it makes him mean. There are more Donald Meeks in the real world than John Paynes, but the Donald Meeks are necessary to make the John Paynes shine by comparison. Meek is sneaky like Linda but she is pretty and appealing so that is OK. Beautiful people can do a lot of damage and get away with it, in fact be rewarded for it. A rat face like Donald does the same and bam, you’re fired and get hell off the lot. Charlotte Greenwood as acting coach for newcomers is gleeful, gangly, and Greenwood-familiar from a million musicals, so where she schemes to give Darnell a leg up, well that’s OK too. Charlotte knows everyone working at Fox and has known them since trod-board days. She and lab drone Paul Hurst date to Sennett times, and he owes her plenty or so she pressures him to that effect. Veterans in the biz helped each other, and if it’s truth you seek from Star Dust, watch this exchange plus wistful earlier visit of R. Young as Thomas Brooke to a dilapidated opera house where he once performed. All this is where Star Dust most moves me over times I’ve watched, the past mentoring a young and naïve present, torches transferred, youth to lead the way as elders give ground. There’s truth in this, for despite grim outcomes for many, there was effort to boost old-timers and give them work past primes. Look far enough down any IMDB cast list from the Classic Era and there are charity cases galore. Hollywood, you tender beating heart and tent for all that served you. What if Carolyn Sayres and Bud Borden were real people and lasted twenty-forty-more years in films? Might they have expected helping hands and gotten them? Look at Linda Darnell and John Payne for the answer. She did Burke’s Law and Black Spurs towards the end, support in both. He did a Columbo and a Hunter. She lived to 40, him to 77. Would either or both say the industry looked out for them?

Parkland Picks with Popcorn #7

 

Pop Goes: The Unseen, Starting Over, Backlash, and Castle of Blood

THE UNSEEN (1945) --- How could Paramount gloss of a follow-up to The Uninvited disappoint so? First there’s no supernatural aspect despite same director (Lewis Allen), star (Gail Russell), and promise in the title. Still as straight mystery it could work if the mystery were not so transparent. Producer John Houseman years later spoke ill of director Allen. Was he at late date wanting to affix blame for failure of The Unseen? Being out of ready circulation did not mend modest placement. Neither does Raymond Chandler among credited writers. We want ghosts to be back of sinister happenings rather than human agency easily guessed from reel one. Vital too was romance of The Uninvited as lush scored by Victor Young, Ernest Toch a weak substitute. Saving grace Gail Russell is governess to troubled kids of Joel McCrea, reddest of herrings too suspicious for actual menace, him a modern dress Rochester to Russell’s Jane Eyre, their coupling for a finish foregone. Children are a boy and girl which boy is bratty Richard Lyon, son of Ben and Bebe (Daniels) who was obnoxious also to Bob Hope a few seasons later (The Great Lover) before decamping to England with family to be further obnoxious in radio, feature, and TV sitcoms (“Life with the Lyons”). Gail Russell sells with a performance achingly vulnerable  and enough to redeem an otherwise flawed project. The Unseen is had on a Region Two Blu-Ray, but hope is that Kino will lease it from Universal for stateside release.

STARTING OVER (1979) --- Search for romance in age of anxiety that was late seventies, truth-telling to put prior proprieties behind us. Characters hail from damaged age group that is thirties leaning into forties, walking wounded, comedy by intent if mined from rejection and humiliation the stuff of presumed all who aren't happily wed, a category movies would increasingly cater to, as who’d want to watch happy couples anyhow? Burt Reynolds, divorced and bemused, stays that way for most of length, small wonder for his negotiating with deeply neurotic Jill Clayburgh, late of broken home and men unworthy of her (An Unmarried Woman), which I saw at the College Park and recall only her vomiting at a Manhattan street corner (for real? --- sure looked convincing). What of tourists that day getting their first glimpse of a picture being made and this is what they saw? Unmarried has a husband who blubbers like men had not done in films to then. I wondered if loss in love might ever bring me to so public tears. An Unmarried Woman was 1979 therapy for people who had lots more life experience than I’d so far got. Was there healing for ones what saw An Unmarried Woman? It clearly was meant to instruct us. Starting Over went down smoother even though Clayburgh plays sort of the same character. Had this actress lived, would she still be doing it? Reynolds is torn between Clayburgh and Candice Bergen, both better left alone. Ever see a movie resolution that leaves you unresolved? Starting Over has moments of what I’d suppose was truth in 1979, a scene of Reynolds having a panic attack and everyone offering him a Valium, this back when Valium was easy to get as Raisinets. Try scoring some now. Frightful to think folks popped these so promiscuously. Carefree days, the seventies. Maybe Valium or need for it gave birth to Jill Clayburgh characters. People as less-likely-to-come-together is summary statement here, a Woody Allen circumstance, only he was more for laughs, having come off then-thought 70’s masterwork Manhattan. Survivor critics have ardently walked back their words since. Kino has a nice Blu-Ray of Starting Over. As for An Unmarried Woman, I can barely find anyone streaming it.

BACKLASH (1956) --- Pulp writing needed commitment and discipline I’m not sure exists anymore. When showing up at Greenbriar seems at times heroic, I need but remind myself of men like Frank Gruber doing as much in a single morning as I’d need a week generating. It was write or don’t eat as Gruber explained in his 1967 memoir, The Pulp Jungle, scribe life jungly on survive-for-fittest terms, him at constant odds with not only rivals but pinch-penny market that was ten-cent monthlies leaving wake that was human wreckage panting after next ideas to fill five or ten thousand word quotas. A finished novel worth at least $250, that a virtual giveaway, would sell for take-it-or-leave $100 (take-it-or-starve more accurate). Gruber wrote and sold twenty-five novels to film companies. Backlash was one of them. He based the yarn on what appears to have been fact, at least legend. Five men seek buried gold and a sixth rides off and leaves his companions to Apache ambush. Mystery deepens when Richard Widmark shows up not for the gold, but to find treacherous Number Six. Borden Chase penned the script based on Gruber’s book, both men hep to every frontier story ever spun. Universal-International made Backlash on percentage terms with visiting star Richard Widmark, augmented by contract players and freelance outdoor vets, all expert with boots/saddle. Thought for years I knew Backlash, but turns out it was The Last Wagon, another with Widmark easy to confuse, especially among so many similar. Backlash range war opponents are Roy Roberts and John McIntire, so let it be a dogfall just so both can stay to the fade, welcome as they always were to this genre. Widmark told an interviewer decades later that he sort of liked Backlash for checks still coming in for it, him one among undoubted few not ripped off re profit participation. Action is ample but talk is more welcome from a cast that convinces, Backlash evidence that Universal kept standards high for considerable time they did westerns by yearly dozens. If B cowboys had successors it was these, only now there was color (nearly always) plus names to lure, westerns at perhaps an apex of appeal before ubiquity plus television wore the category out. Backlash comes via Kino on Blu-Ray, 2:1 ratio, a nice presentation.

CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964) --- Occurs to me that black-and-white Euro chillers from the early sixties capture best the attitude and atmosphere of Victorian ghost tales penned a century before, sufficiently “old world” to differ sharp from Hollywood convention and convince us that maybe, at least over there, spooks are for real. Compare Castle of Blood with for instance House on Haunted Hill, latter slick but skittish to be serious, whereas Castle of Blood says Yes, these things happened and may still be happening at corners of the world not yet tamed by convention. Black Sunday was first among ones to whisper how truly to scare, an opening witch-burn with a devil’s mask hammered onto Barbara Steele’s face, this an affront to decorum US horror had so far observed. Black Sunday became a true test of bravery for those who’d venture to matinees, distributor American-International warning that only those “over 12” dare enter. Castle of Blood I knew was outré for being handled not by a known US firm, but by “Woolner Brothers” who relied more on bad dubbing and worse posters to promise little, though something told me in 1964 that it would score for being off even Hammer grid. Castle of Blood as gorgeously staged would look more haunted than even The Haunted Palace of a previous year, which for all its merit comforted by being familiar, Vincent Price more reassuring than frightful. Anything Americans did along scare line was undercut for mocking same on TV, Price as likely to beclown screen self with whatever once-a-week comedian hired him to guest, especially at Halloween where message was never to take ghosts seriously. Castle of Blood has a traveling writer betting tavern mates (one of them Edgar Allen Poe) that he can last through a night in bloody castle of the title, Barbara Steele along as if to assure that this libation won’t be watered. Castle of Blood was such unknown quantity in ‘64 that I could get no one to go with me to see it … their loss. Now there is 4K and/or Blu-Ray on disc, a lovely reclaim of a rarity I did not expect to see so clearly again.

Film Noir #31

 

Noir: Crashout, Crack-Up, City of Shadows, and The Glass Web in 3D

CRASHOUT (1955) --- The Filmmakers Releasing Organization, a noble try at independent production and distribution, stuck mostly with exploitable product, none more so than this nasty streak of prison-breaking and quest for stolen loot. Toward covering their Crashout bet, Filmmakers took extraordinary measure of a Variety ad inviting exhibitors to bid for, and commit to, playing time. Sort of a showman's subscription service. This was done ahead of Crashout going into production, as had been case with Private Hell 36, also fronted with exhibition promises to play and pay. Hell had gathered a hellacious 1,000 signatures "on the basis of its story and cast names," said Variety, and made news for being "the first indie-produced, indie-distributed film to play a Broadway showcase" (New York's Paramount theatre). Tempting too were lower terms Filmmakers offered to subscribers, 25-40% rather then average 50% demanded by majors as of September 1954 when PH36 opened. Success of this made Filmmakers more ambitious, with announcement of six features for 1955. The company's plan would require speed to meet terms of advance bookings. Filmmakers partners Collier Young and wife/director Ida Lupino wanted to branch out to at least partly finance outside producers, one of whom, Hal Chester, came to them with the concept for Crashout, which looked to be a safe commercial bet and so went into production with Chester-raised cash and Filmmakers participation.

Subscribed playdates set in advance would pit Crashout against the clock. Producer Chester and writing/directing Lewis R. Foster were sprint runners after quick completion, as would be others like American-International's Nicholson and Arkoff who would follow Filmmakers' example of committing films to opener dates before cameras turned. Crashout cast was known for bare-knuckle work, among them Gene Evans, who'd credit television for getting the Crashout gig. Seems Evans had been out of work for five months, till 1950's The Steel Helmet turned up on '54 freevee schedules around LA, this resulting in calls for him to star in a whopping three features. "TV is a boon to movie people," the actor said. Filmmakers acknowledged that Crashout was aimed at an "action market" made up of 16-30 year olds, and costs for it as well as other company projects were being held to $300,000 or below. Terms to exhibitors had to be generous ... after all, it was they who enabled pics being made ... so 25% minimum was starter scale and maybe graduated to more depending on the venue. Based on this formula, Filmmakers "was snaring 800 dates per picture," said Variety, which went long way toward getting modest costs back. Crashout was their most ambitious yet, headed for early 1955 combo release with Mad at the World and eventual 1000 bookings. This would mark both the peak and beginning of the end for Filmmakers, for despite modest success, the little company still had to compete with leviathans that were major distribs, these being tough and ruthless nuts to crack. In the end, Filmmaker jaws weren't strong enough, Collier and Lupino over and done by mid-1955.

CRACK-UP (1946) --- A mystery that is really mysterious, at least to start, and maybe the movies' first crack at fine art put to noir purpose. Early in proceedings comes a lecture by Pat O’ Brien where he explains forgeries, canvas restoration, the modern movement vs. traditional, a real insider view of museum doings and politics that attend them. Will desperate enough collectors commit murder to own a masterpiece or two? Crack-Up says sure they will, and having collected myself, I can believe it. Frustration of an art thief, or ultimate owner of knowingly stolen art, must be in having to hide your pride and joy and trusting no one to know what you have for fear of being ratted to true owners. There’s plenty You Tube videos about art in illicit circulation. Crack-Up killer collector explains that great paintings are merely wasted on hoi polloi trekked in and out of museums, that only those like himself should have possession of a masterpiece. Crack-Up is very much a curve ball among Classic Era noirs. Time is taken to explain how fakes can be detected (X-Ray), and if modern galleries aren’t using Crack-Up for modern day instruction, they are missing a bet. Commerce of copies go handsy with insurance swindling all in a gallery day’s work, and again, I wonder how true this remains in current clime where art sells for tens of millions rather than mere thousands such commanded when Crack-Up was new. There are expected swipes at modern art, read radical, or better put, too radical so far as lecturer O’Brien sees it. Wonder what he’d say to toilet seats tendered as fine art not many years after 1946. Much of art appreciation is expressed by phonies and poseurs, some depicted, then poof and they’re gone, mere straw men and women to make the casual point. Crack-Up wanted to appeal to common clay that was watching, and plain folk was known not to like modernist art. Crack-Up in this sense is quite conservative, if admirable for taking the topic of art seriously at all. Bravo to RKO for going a fresh route, if unrewarded by customers, of which there were too few to put Crack-Up in profit ($732K in negative cost toward $846K in worldwide rentals and resulting loss of $265K). Pat O’Brien seems an unlikely noir lead, but he could convey intellect, and that was what the part needed. He’s an ex-wartime investigator of phony hordes gathered by the Axis and so knows plenty of bogus art. Occurs to me that postwar noir had a leg up for protagonists coming from service background. They're experienced with weaponry and have seen dying, so we believe in them, these among myriad of reasons we won’t see authentic noir again. Crack-Up is available on DVD from Warner Archive.

CITY OF SHADOWS (1955) --- a Victor McLaglen starring vehicle … from 1955. Seems late for him to headline, the more so in what amounts to a Wallace Beery part for Republic on rapid way toward shutting doors. City of Shadows at 70 minutes sees McLaglen raise a kid inclined toward petty crime who grows up to be John Baer, a crumb on 50’s plate of The Mississippi Gambler, We’re No Angels, and later television, his eventual move to real estate undoubtedly a wise one. Baer had a good voice, was sneery, and not to be trusted. He starts out me-first here, a law student top of his class for figuring ways to frustrate law and achieve ends for future crook clients, befriending professors and vet attorneys to learn tricks of their trade. He turns legit after meeting Kathleen Crowley and ultimately breaks with lowlife repped by McLaglen plus thuggish Anthony Caruso and Richard Reeves. Small pictures like this are where type casting saved much time and exposition by letting known faces get on with conduct we expect of them, a good thing for short span devoted to City of Shadows and such like it. Directing is William Witney. There is a western street dressed to look contemporary, but cars don’t fool me where it’s hosses I expect to trot up, with maybe Roy Barcroft or Phyllis Coates astride. Engaging is Baer practicing law on mentor McLaglen behalf while still a student, masterminding strategy then handing off result to Vic’s shyster. Noose tightens for a snowbound showdown done with chairlifts that had to take time and money untypical of budget observed by Republic. There couldn’t have been much potential for City of Shadows to bring back more than a sliver’s profit. Maybe Yates liked the property and told them to go ahead and shoot the works. Kino offers a Blu-Ray of this in one of their noir boxes.

THE GLASS WEB (1953) --- Film noir in three dimensions, a rarity as the process did not often go in that direction, except wait … there was Second Chance, Dangerous Mission, Inferno, maybe others I’m not recalling. Two of these are inaccessible on home 3-D, at least on a legitimate basis. The Glass Web however is out and splendid via auspices of the 3-D Film Archive and distributing Kino Lorber. The Universal thriller was merely a title to most for many years: who’d seen it flat or deep? Not me. This was among supposed B’s Edward G. Robinson felt himself consigned to after political hounds began nipping, but I don't regard The Glass Web as B at all, and certainly U-I did not at the time. Eddie’s a developer of true-life murder mysteries, a “Crime of the Week” for local L.A. television, the latest victim close to home that is staff members of the broadcast station including him. I liked prospect of E.G. reprising his Barton Keyes character, which to some extent he does, but there’s a mystery killer angle and I’ll admit wishing Richard Denning would be the surprise reveal, since I don’t tend to fully trust Denning even where he’s a supposed straight arrow. There’s a cute scene where Eddie shows off his art collection to a date, a gag worked into several Robinson performances during the 50’s, him by then well-identified as a big-league accumulator. All of Universal-International earmarks are here, direction (Jack Arnold), cast (Kathleen Hughes late of struggle with spacemen). Depth effects are mostly staged on sets, that is interiors where lamps, chairs, etc. can figure as foreground between us and enactors. Hitchcock went a same direction for Dial M for Murder, which used similar devices with expected Hitchcock flair, but Jack Arnold was no slouch re the process, having done It Came from Outer Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon, both effectively.

Not sure how many 3-D bookings The Glass Web had, it being late 1953 and maybe by then we were cooling off on the novelty. Of cast there also is John Forsythe, who I understand trained with the Actor’s Studio. So here was a presumed Method man who seems anything but Method. In fact, he was one of the founders of the Studio, and taught Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, others as well, or so it is said. I hope that’s true. The Glass Web is a highly recommended 3-D find and an entertaining 81 minutes with or without the gimmick. Also new from 3-D Film Archive is Domo Arigato, unknown to me till now and presumably a first time anyone has seen it deep, assuming they did even when new in 1972. Shot in Japan, Domo Arigato is a travelogue romance to ideally pair with any one of that country’s homegrown features, Arch Oboler the writer-director. This according to box info was his last feature. Oboler among previous movies and much radio did an odd drama called Strange Holiday which starred Claude Rains with support cast including my band teacher Priscilla Lyon. Had I but known she worked once with Rains. I’d have been thrown out of band even sooner than I was. Extras on the Blu-Ray are alone worth the price of purchase, an Ed Wood 3-D subject, Cleopatra Follies (aka Flame of Islam), and Skid Row Holdup, a 3-D burlesque short from 1953. 3-D Film Archive deserves much credit for unearthing such treasure, as who’d have thought any of this material would survive the long intervening years.